Why are the Republicans rushing to the FBI over the clothes? Ron DeSantis crashed

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was founded in 1908 and has had eight directors to date. They were all white, all male – and all Republican. The most famous of these directors, J. Edgar Hoover, was a legendary communist glutton known for his pathological pursuit of one target: civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. discredit.

Those were the days. Republican members of Congress are currently waging a bizarre campaign against the FBI. Led by Jim Jordan, their speaker in the House of Representatives, they unleashed a barrage of accusations against Christopher Wray, the current FBI director, at a hearing on Wednesday: The FBI is a tool of the Democrats. It refuses to expose the alleged corruption of the Biden family. For years it had pursued Donald Trump under false pretenses and stormed his residence. Yes, the FBI is part of the Deep States and is trying to turn the US into a socialist and atheist hell.

So bad so far. Director Wray – appointed by Trump to succeed the fired James Comey – no longer understood the world. He’s more or less the epitome of the decent old-school G-man, conservative and dutiful. In the face of the same constant litanies of Republican hardliners against the FBI, Wray could only resignedly declare, “It’s crazy to say I’m biased against the conservatives.”

The example of Ray Epps shows how absurd the allegations against the FBI are. This is an ex-marine. Epps has voted for Trump twice, believing the propaganda from Fox News and other conservative media outlets that the election had been rigged in Trump’s favor. So he followed up on his request for protest and traveled to Washington on January 5, 2021.

On the eve of January 6, Epps delivered a fiery speech calling for a storming of the Capitol. He was filmed doing it. Although he attended the demonstration outside the Capitol on January 6, he never entered the building. Therefore, no criminal proceedings have been opened against him.

So much for the facts. The conservative media, especially Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, has turned it into a washed-up conspiracy theory. It reads as follows: According to Carlson, Epps is in fact an FBI agent who was used as a provocateur to incite the masses. Overall, the storming of the Capitol was by no means a popular uprising, but a demonstration of mostly peaceful patriots. Only a few were animated by the FBI and agents like Epps after the well-known riots.

Carlson has spread this conspiracy theory over 20 times on his show without being able to provide a shred of evidence to support it. His incitement had an effect, as Carlson was the star of Fox News at the time – he’s since been fired, as is well known – and his word weighed heavily in the right-wing scene.

This had serious consequences for Ray Epps. He soon received death threats, although he repeatedly said he had never worked for the FBI or any other agency. He had to move and give up his wedding business. He has since sued Fox News and Tucker Carlson for libel.

No less absurd is the case of Gal Luft. This is a self-proclaimed whistleblower who wants proof that Hunter Biden and his father were involved in corrupt deals with China. James Comer, a Republican congressman and chairman of the committee to investigate allegedly corrupt Biden deals, announced to the cameras that the air of the star witness would finally reveal the sordid machinations of the presidential family and also the fact that the FBI was blind been paying attention to this.

Meanwhile, Comer has become meek. His alleged key witness has disappeared. Now you know why. Indeed, unlike President Biden, Luft is involved in corrupt China deals and has been charged by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. He awaits a long sentence. As for the evidence of President Biden’s alleged involvement in his son’s shady dealings, the interim result is: null, nada, ništa, zilch.

For decent Republicans, the FBI has long been not only a guarantor of internal security, it has also been a symbol of WASP America, an America ruled by white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants. For the far right, on the other hand, the FBI has always been the symbol of a dictatorial state that wants to suppress the freedom of the individual and take away their guns.

Incidents such as the Ruby Ridge siege sparked the far-right’s hatred of the FBI. Here, in August 1992, FBI agents shot the wife of Randy Weaver, head of a far-right militia. Even more significant is an incident that occurred in April 1993 in the Texas town of Waco. At that time, a cult had holed up in a kind of fortress and had been battling the FBI for a week. Finally, the agents stormed the fort. A fire broke out, 76 people died, many of them children.

Waco was the catalyst behind Timothy McVeigh’s assassination attempt on an Oklahoma office complex. On April 19, 1995, 168 people died. The right-wing terrorist McVeigh wanted to unleash a revolution against the alleged dictatorship of Bill Clinton. Failing miserably, he was sentenced to death and executed on June 11, 2001.

McVeigh was a loner and an outsider. His act also caused disgust among Republicans. Thanks to Donald Trump, his seeds have now sprouted. “A few hundred people who stormed the Capitol really believed they could overturn the election. As with McVeigh, the anger was at least as important as the outcome,” writes Jeffrey Toobin in his book Homegrown, which chronicles the short life of Timothy McVeigh. describes.

The Republican campaign against the FBI may seem ridiculous at first — and it is. The second look, however, gives food for thought. Before Trump, hatred of the FBI was only widespread among the far-right scene, among neo-Nazis and militia groups such as the Oath Keepers. This hatred has now become socially acceptable to a majority of Republicans.

This shows how far the Grand Old Party has strayed from the principles of a democratic party and has become a cult. In this light, it was no coincidence that Trump chose Waco as the opening rally for his election campaign.