Justice, we are told, is blind. Our top law enforcement officials repeatedly remind us of their integrity and their heroism; the men and women of the FBI are dedicated public servants who take on bad guys around the world at great sacrifice, and do so without bowing to stress or political pressure. Only evidence and a commitment to the impartial execution of our laws drive them to protect our country each and every day.
Undoubtedly this is true for rank-and-file FBI agents who face unimaginable danger and investigate the most despicable lowlifes who walk among us. By and large, people in law enforcement maintain a higher degree of purpose, patriotism, and yes, steeliness, than your average professional.
But impartiality and temperance evidently have not been the defining traits of the top brass at the FBI in recent years. Rather than administering blind justice, James Comey and company seemed instead to consider political affiliations, electoral outcomes, and media coverage over a preponderance of fact and evidence.
Further, they often let their emotions and intuition guide their choices. Feelings and hunches ruled the decision-making process. Something akin to supernatural powers, we are to suppose, allowed them to grasp the deepest thoughts of their adversaries and anticipate the next move of their subjects and colleagues with clairvoyant certainty.
Call it Third-Eye Justice.
“Third Eye” is a goo-goo spiritual term that suggests people have a hidden ability to see things that aren’t visible to the naked eye. As one online guide explains, the Third Eye allows you to “already predict what’s going to happen before it actually takes place. Let it happen! When you have to make decisions, it’s very well possible that you see in a flash the way it should be.”
Given what we now know about the people who led the FBI, can you think of a better description of their approach than that? (Yes, obviously, “corrupt,” “seditious,” and “deranged” also come to mind.)
But for the sake of momentarily giving them the benefit of the doubt—not to mention giving us a chance to mock their jaw-dropping sanctimony and egotism—let’s indulge their belief that they possess the superduper instincts beyond mere mortals like us. Journey into the minds of Guru G-Men who saw crimes that didn’t happen and guiltlessness that didn’t exist.
Come Along If You Care, Come Along If You Dare
For example, in the case of Hillary Clinton’s unlawful email server, it wasn’t evidence or intent that swayed the judgment of Comey the Oracle. His agency would not recommend charges for Clinton’s “potential violations” regarding her mishandling of classified emails because, as he informed us in July 2016, “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
You see? Comey and his team were so prescient that they could see into the mind of an unknown, unnamed prosecutor and confidently determine that he would not charge with a crime the perpetrator, who happened also to be a presidential candidate.
Comey could even tap into the brain of one of the world’s most despised authoritarians who lives on the other side of the planet. When Comey was asked by Congress to explain why his agency’s assessment on 2016 election interference concluded that Vladimir Putin favored Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, Comey again channeled his instincts. “It was a fairly easy judgment for the community,” Comey explained to the House Intelligence Committee in March 2017. “Putin hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was that he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much.”
Beyond the Seas of Thought, Beyond the Realm of What
Sometimes a Third Eye can take you to a scary place, like the minds of disgraced U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) and his wife, Huma Abedin. Comey’s FBI didn’t charge the pair for illegally sharing classified information because “we didn’t have any indication that [Abedin] had a sense that what she was doing was a violation of the law,” Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2017. He went on to explain the entire reason no one was charged in the Clinton email case was based on his inability to prove the culprits “had some sense that they were doing something unlawful. That was our burden and we weren’t able to meet it.”
Assessing the president, Comey detected all sorts of stuff that didn’t require facts or even reason. Trump is like a mafia boss, he concluded, who lies about everything. Comey thinks Trump might be compromised by the Russians not because of solid evidence but because “there are things that lead my common sense to believe it’s possible.”
Ah.
Comey’s acolyte, Andrew McCabe, has followed in his boss’s footsteps. Despite his repeated insistence this week during his book blitz that he and his team acted based on purely “actionable evidence,” McCabe speaks a lot about feelings and thoughts and intuition and perception. Without evidence, McCabe this week has accused the president of being a threat to the nation and a possible Russian asset.
He added Trump to the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into Russian collusion, he told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday, because of the president’s “suspicious behavior” and not based on intercepts, source reporting or other secret evidence. “There is no rational, tactical, diplomatic explanation for the things we had seen,” McCabe said.
McCabe assigns nefarious purpose to the slightest move or word. “I don’t know that we have ever seen in all of history an example of the number, the volume and the significance of the contacts between people in and around the president, his campaign, with our most serious, our existential international enemy: the government of Russia,” McCabe told NPR on Monday. “That’s just remarkable to me.”
Now, obviously, that is a preposterous thing to say, in no small part because it’s an unknowable and unprovable conclusion: When was the last—or any—investigation into a president, his campaign and the Russians? Further, calling the government of Russia an “existential threat” doesn’t even mean anything except, “look at how aware and deep-thinking I am.”
McCabe even paused for a moment when asked (in jest) whether he thought Putin ordered Donald Trump to fire James Comey. “Well, we don’t know,” he answered.
Think about that. Instead of dismissing that ludicrous question out-of-hand, he actually considered it for a moment.
For It’s the Land Unknown to Man, Where Fantasy Is Fact
Now sometimes, that Third Eye can send a person into emotional overload: Having a sixth sense is uber-stressful. McCabe has warned us several times this week about the enormous pressure he and his team faced in 2016 and 2017 as they attempted to sabotage the president. “We were all operating under incredible stress,” he complained on “The View.” The atmosphere at the FBI was “chaotic” and “turbulent.”
Someone forgot his namaste time.
Of course, none of this really is amusing. To the contrary, it’s outrageous on so many levels that one almost has to take a step back and consider the most absurd and implausible reasons for why these men conducted themselves the way that they did. And it’s not just their actions that were appalling—it’s the matter-of-fact way with which they now explain and defend themselves.
Comey, McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and others were not impartial adjudicators; they acted based on feelings and perceptions, seeking both revenge and vindication, then justified their malfeasance as merely the gratification of their uncanny impulses. They left behind a legacy of public distrust and a dangerous precedent for how future FBI officials can behave—but that’s only if they get away with it.
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