A Conversation with a Congressman "The FBI is bad top to bottom"

[jtssrx]

A Conversation with a Congressman

Larry Schweikart Jan 14

I had a conversation with a friend, a ranking Republican congressman who shall go nameless, about current goings-on in Washington.

First, we discussed the situation with the January 6/Patriot Day investigation committed. “This was all a set-up by agent provocateurs, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“Absolutely. We don’t think there’s much question the FBI was involved.”

Senator Ted Cruz really went after them, I noted.

“He could have been more aggressive,” the Congressman said. “He could have pushed them to deny any involvement, rather than offer up nebulous claims they had ‘no knowledge.’”

“Agree,” I said, “But at least it was nice to see him attacking. This seems to indicate a shift in the winds, that he thought it was safe now to go after them.”

“Yes. There has been a shift.” (It should be noted that on another occasion I asked why more on our side—-including himself—-hadn’t come out with more public support for the Patriot Day political prisoners, and he said “Many of us are working from the inside to try to help.” This led me to consider the possibility that perhaps this inside pressure had mitigated some of the plea agreements and so on, but we did not get into details.

Our conversation shifted to the FBI itself. “It’s truly frightening what a political gestapo they have become,” I observed.

He said, “I have even been working on a book on this. The organization needs to be dissolved, top to bottom, and replaced with something much smaller and subject to real control.”

“I don’t think the current organization can be fixed,” I said. “It isn’t just a few bad apples at the top. It’s throughout. Am I wrong on this?”

“No. You’re right. Not a single whistleblower came forward during the Russia Hoax. Not one. Ok, I could see a lower-level agent not resigning, losing a career, but to have not one say that what was going on with the Russia investigation wasn’t corrupt? That was eye-opening.”

“It shows that the claim by people like Hannity that “the ‘rank-and-file’ are solid guys, only the top needs to be replaced” is completely misguided,” I said.

“And you can’t ‘reform it,’ he answered. “If you try to do that, it will make matters worse, because they the organization will have the endorsement of the reformers. The whole thing is bad, and these guys are way too full of their own power. It’s been this way from the beginning, with Hoover. It needs to be dismantled and replaced. But you have to do it right. You can’t just rip it down. I think there is a place for a federal law enforcement operation—-we do have federal laws, for example. But it must be much smaller and much more accountable and you need to have this ready to go when you take this organization down.”

We then shifted to what it would take to actually do this—-and many other necessary acts to fix D.C. “So Congressman Thomas Massie has been the first to come out and say we need to eliminate the FBI and CIA. How many MAGA/true conservatives would it take to accomplish this? Let’s leave aside the Senate for now, cuz that’s a different animal.”

“I think you would have to get many of the moderates involved. And that would be hard. Many of them don’t even believe there is anything wrong; many others can’t say so because of where their districts are.,” he replied.

”Well,” I said, “this is sort of what I am asking. What would it take to move the Overton Window so that the ‘moderate’ position is really the MAGA position in the House?”

“I think you’d probably need at least 40-45 MAGA people to come in. There are about 40 moderates in there now.”

“So,” I said, “in 2022, some are saying Republicans could get 30, or 40, or more seats. Now all of those wouldn’t be MAGA or conservatives, but a lot would, right?”

“Yes. I think we’re looking at around 40 to 45 pickups, max. Remember we won about 20 seats in 2020 even when Trump was losing. People forget that. So that makes it harder to get 60 or 65 seats right there. Still, we’re in for a wave.”

“Ok. What makes you say that?” I asked. “I mean, I believe it, but I’d like to know what you know.”

“I’ll just give you one example. Lee Zeldin is running for governor of New York—-very, very blue. He tells me that he has independents and a lot of Democrats coming out for him saying they are just sick of how the Democrats have run things.”

I pointed out that so far 26 Democrats have announced they won’t be running for reelection, and he noted that was a very good sign. He just thought the whole Biden administration was imploding, and that it would only get worse for them.

All in all, I was extremely encouraged. Someone at his position would be realistic about the numbers. Most of all, it was good to see that there is real, serious discussion in D.C. about addressing the thuggery at the FBI and DOJ.

Good talk, dad.