Liberal media does 180 on FBI abuses after bureau goes after Trump team
The liberal press used to denounce FBI abuses until the Trump administration; former deputy assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division Terry Turchie weighs in.
Former FBI Assistant Deputy Director Terry Turchie said on “Fox & Friends” on Monday that he has noticed that the mainstream media used to denounce Federal Bureau of Investigation abuses — until the agency went after President Trump.
“It’s something that's kind of surprising,” he said.
Turchie made the comment reacting to The New York Post editorial, which noted that “Democrats and their puppets in the media – once fierce critics of US law enforcement and spying agencies – have suddenly become their biggest champions, at least when the issue is these agencies’ targeting of Team Trump.”
The editorial board pointed to recently released documents in the case of former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn, writing that they “add to mounting evidence of what seem like serious, politically motivated abuses by the FBI and Justice Department, adding that “liberals are cheering the abuse.”
On Monday host Brian Kilmeade noted that critics are saying that many in the media are “being unusually quiet” about the FBI’s scrutiny over the handling of the Flynn case.
While Turchie told Kilmeade he has noticed a change in the media’s behavior regarding FBI abuses, he noted that “on the other hand, over the years the radical left element in both the Democratic Party and the media essentially wanted the FBI to rebuild so it would be a more comfortable kind of fit for them."
He went on to say that "that’s actually what Robert Mueller spent many years doing.”
Mueller served as the director of the agency before former FBI Director James Comey.
“It became so bad, in fact, that when Mr. Mueller left in September 2013 and James Comey was coming on, FBI employees, and I'm told hundreds of them, signed a letter and essentially the letter said the FBI is being deliberately led in the wrong direction and we have some chance and some time to turn it around and we hope you do that and we’ll be committed to helping you,” Turchie said.
“Comey ignored the letter and kept on the same course and you saw what happened in 2015 and 2016, the FBI hit the rocks and so did the country,” he continued, referencing FBI actions leading up to and following the 2016 election.
Kilmeade pointed to examples on Monday showing that “the Democrats used to be very suspicious of the FBI" and noted that "now they are just loving what the FBI is doing.” Examples include a 2014 article in The Atlantic titled, “How FBI Lies Can Damage Civil Society” and a 2017 article in The Daily Beast titled, “The FBI’s War on Civil Rights Leaders.”
“Now it seems to have flipped and they don't seem to have a problem with all these unmaskings,” Kilmeade said, referencing a list of names made public last week that revealed that top Obama administration officials purportedly requested to "unmask" the identity of Flynn during the presidential transition period.
Kilmeade then pointed to examples in which the media was “downplaying the significance of anything with the Flynn case.”
“But, of course, they don't tell you, that we’ve changed our whole rules about guidelines and classifications after what Hillary Clinton got by with and how careless she was with 30,000 emails,” Turchie said.
“The bottom line is the FBI that used to be fidelity, bravery and integrity was rebuilt and recast as an FBI all about diversity, equality and social justice so it's a better fit for the people who now are not going to turn around and complain about exactly what they wanted and that's a real dangerous time for us,” he continued.
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“There should be no kind of political agenda or bias inside the FBI and yet that five-page letter presented to Director Comey was all about political bias and political compromise of the FBI and it should really worry us all because we still don’t know the truth about all the things that happened in the last four years to essentially subvert a presidency.”
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