I was so furious watching AG Pam Bondi’s presser announcing the arrest of a suspect for planting pipe bombs the night before January 6 I knew better than to write about it. She and FBI Director Kash Patel outright trashed the Biden administration and the FBI. They claimed the case was IGNORED, that NO effort had been made but by golly they were Jonny on the spot and got it done. Well, maybe the guy they arrested is guilty and if so good. Reportedly during a four hour interrogation he confessed.
It was something of a day for me but one thing I learned is that yesterday’s depiction of him as an ‘anarchist’ has given way to an inconvenient truth for Team Trump. Reporting indicates they’ve learned this guy was a TRUMP supporter.
Anyway I couldn’t help but be outraged over Bondi’s accusations which are complete and total bullshit. Here’s a question no journalist in DC or at major outlets seems to be asking. If the FBI did ‘nothing’ during the Biden years how did they then interview over a thousand people? How did they collect thousands of hours of video from government security cameras, Metro (Bus and the subway and yes there are cameras at entrances to stations operating even when they are closed), businesses, analysis of the components of the bombs which thankfully were found before they went off? No doubt they tried to scour cell phone data during the relevant time frame. So why the hell doesn’t someone have the guts to ask Bondi or Patel “You talk about all this data you sifted through and found a new lead in, so how does all that (stuff like I just mentioned) square with your saying the FBI did NOTHING under Biden and Wray?”
If they don’t have the guts to ask Bondi, at least some of them could start bugging Wray and asking HIM about that and how he feels that given all the information his agents collected and the work they put in HE feels about being accused of doing ‘nothing.’
Now, I don’t expect the milquetoast former AG Merrick Garland who probably got himself Witness Protection Program anonymity out of shame to speak up. Chris Wray however has to be seething. I can only imagine how angry he was to learn Trump would fire him and intended to replace him with Kash Patel! For his faults, the fact is Wray was a competent FBI Director and while he showed his Federalist Society leanings at times, at others he was willing to stand up to Trump. Which of course is why Trump would have fired him on Inauguration day if he could have. Wray is faced with a choice – defend himself and the FBI which he loved or just sit there and take the bullshit being dumped on him.
So this is where we are. Someone with fresh eyes connected some dots that no one else was able to before and it led to an arrest. That’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned. What’s not is the truckload of B.S. that was dumped on the FBI and then Wray yesterday. It was a downright ugly thing to watch. And it sure won’t do much for morale at the FBI. For all the purging that’s taken place in the FBI since January there are still professionals there trying to hang on, and one day help rebuild the institution. If I’m mad as hell I can only imagine how pissed THEY are!
Not that Patel, Bongino or Bondi care about the people they lead. They only care about pleasing Trump. However the intensity of the trashing of the FBI made me start to wonder why they went as far as they did? Having thought about it and reading this article from Mediate explaining the main focus of the announcement I have an answer. It was not to paint a picture of of a ‘radical Democrat bomber’ because it seems they knew right off he wasn’t that. It was mentioned, almost in passing he was an ‘anarchist. FYI it turns out he was a TRUMP supporter!
Well, since they didn’t find any evidence he was connected to ‘Antifa’ or ‘radical left-wing groups’ during his arrest and the initial search of his home (he lived with his parents in Woodbridge, Virginia) they went with ‘Anarchist’ but the way I see it since they couldn’t pin being a radical left-winger on the guy Wray and the FBI, along with the Biden administration was the proverbial “bad guy” Bondi and others railed about. Patel both in the presser and later made a BFD about putting Dan Bongino in charge of reviewing every piece of evidence that had been collected:
“The prior administration sat on the evidence for four years,” Patel claimed. “There wasn’t any production of new evidence from five years ago.”
According to Patel, catching the suspect came down to using existing evidence, like identifying the limited edition shoes he was wearing on security footage of the suspect from the day of the crime.
“Here’s what we did — we went out to the country, brought in our experts, and Deputy Director [Dan] Bongino led the charge and said, ‘We are going to look at every single piece of evidence again,’” Patel said.
He argued the Biden administration was either guilty of “sheer incompetence or complete intentional negligence” when it came to the pipe bomb case.
Bullshit, bullshit bullshit. For her Part Bondi had to go on TV later and make her own bullshit statement:
Attorney General Pam Bondi similarly took swipes at Biden’s DOJ and FBI during a Friday morning Fox News appearance, saying the case came down to “old evidence, new people.”
“This case languished, it sat there for years collecting dust,” she said. “No one did anything to solve this.”
Spare me. The way I see it is they initially were SURE when they obtained the warrant to arrest this guy he’d turn out to be some wild-eyed radical Democrat. A true nutjob. Instead, he was a quiet and reserved 30 year old living in his parent’s house in a nice suburban neighborhood across the river from DC. So, instead of getting in a couple of digs along the lines of ‘It was one of OURS that finally figured it out’ instead the broad theme was Biden/Wray ignored this case – but WE made it a ‘priority.’ Don’t get me started on the irony in that with diverting a thousand agents to scouring Epstein files.
The point I want to make is Bondi needed to create a completely different narrative than the one she was so sure she’d have been able to present. Going thermonuclear on the FBI (and by extension Wray) was her way of doing that. It’s almost like she knew before taking the podium the suspect had turned out to be a Trump supporter.… If you want to have a little fun seeing Bondi get slammed by conservative news consumers check out this piece from The Daily Express. Apparently Fox News is getting lots of comments about viewers being sick of Bondi being on TV all the time instead of doing her freaking job. I sure enjoyed seeing them take her down a few notches.
Well, we’ll see if Wray just sits back and takes it or if he punches back. I suspect as a staunch Federalist Society acolyte he’s having some serious chats with Leonard Leo’s folks. Trump is messing up over four decades of work and they might feel this is a chance to strike out at a weakened Trumpty Dumpty.
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So what they’re saying is like winning the race is only about crossing the finish line and none of it is running the marathon up till then.
All the work leading up to arresting the suspect means nothing?