The reactions could hardly have been more violent. Republicans were furious after the FBI raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The anger testifies to a deep-seated distrust of the federal police. Where does it come from?
Law and Order. Hardly any principle is more at the center of conservative politics than striving for and securing law and order. US Republicans are no exception. A federal police force like the FBI would therefore have to have the full support of the Grand Old Party (GOP), the Republican party. But far from it.
After the raid on ex-President Donald Trump’s luxury Mar-a-Lago estate, the verbal attacks by Republican politicians on the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the White House could hardly have been more shrill and violent. There was talk of a politically motivated action. About the fact that the “regime” in Washington () uses the FBI as a weapon against members of the opposition. And about the fact that the investigations against an ex-president in the USA are like a banana republic.
FBI – with “Gestapo raid border exceeded”
Statements, mostly circulated via Twitter, which goaded the right-wing clientele accordingly: “This unelected, illegitimate regime has crossed the line with its Gestapo raid! It’s about time the liberal socialist filth was cleaned out of American society! ‘ read a post on Gab, a social media outlet popular with white supremacists and anti-Semites.
On Thursday (local time) a man in Cincinnati (Ohio) got serious and tried to break into the local FBI office armed with a nail gun. After the alarm went off and armed FBI agents intervened, the man fled in a car in which he also had a semi-automatic weapon. According to the FBI, when the chase stopped in a rural area, there was an exchange of fire, during which the man was killed.
Such an act of violence, hateful revolutionary rhetoric on social media and the harsh reactions of some high-ranking conservative politicians indicate that there is more at stake than just outrage at Donald Trump’s search. There’s a deep-seated distrust, a basic skepticism about the FBI. This has been building for many years, fueled by Donald Trump’s lack of respect for all state institutions, and raising many questions.
A powerful control tool for a government
It is correct: The FBI construct was never unproblematic. As the central security agency of the United States, the Federal Bureau includes both the federal criminal investigation and law enforcement agency as well as domestic intelligence – and still reports to the US Department of Justice. In the event of abuse, it is indeed a powerful control instrument for a government.
This is exactly what the Republicans are now accusing the administration of President Joe Biden of – without asking whether Trump is actually guilty of something. The accusation that the FBI was used as a “weapon against the opposition” is nothing more than an allegation. Comparisons must be used as “evidence” that investigations against Biden’s son Hunter or ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are less relentless.
Federal police do not declare themselves on the Trump case
However, the federal police are currently not countering the suspicions. The organization has not yet declared that it legitimized the raid on Donald Trump. Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday that he personally requested the search warrant, which was issued by a federal court. The reason for the raid will be made public at a later date, Garland said. Presumably it is about secret documents that Trump is said to have illegally taken from the White House – an offense that should also cause concern for Republicans in principle, but which they do not publicly blame “their” ex-president.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, appointed by Trump himself in 2017, said during a press conference in Nebraska on Wednesday that the verbal attacks against his organization were “regrettable and dangerous”. “Violence against law enforcement is not the answer, no matter who you’re angry at,” Wray said.
“It’s not really appropriate for the FBI to defend itself politically or respond to a political allegation,” says Noah Bookbinder of Citizens for Ethics (CREW), but the silence doesn’t help dispel suspicion or a sense of opacity . An impression that has basically been associated with the FBI since its first director J. Edgar Hoover.
“I don’t care who is president below me”
The equally relentless and legendary fighter against communism and the civil rights movement enjoyed an excellent reputation for a long time, which gradually reversed after his death. His secret dossiers, created on countless public figures, including stars like Frank Sinatra and Charlie Chaplin, but above all high-ranking politicians, are today considered an example of an almost perfect surveillance state within a democracy. Thanks to special encryption, the dossiers were only accessible to Hoover himself and a few confidants. He built himself and the FBI into such a power in the state that he is credited with saying, “I don’t care who’s president below me.”
That’s long gone, J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. The FBI Building in the capital Washington still bears his name. And the building is pretty much exactly halfway between the White House and the Capitol, that is, between the President’s seat and Parliament, on Pennsylvania Avenue. You don’t have to “knit” a conspiracy theory out of this, but the location of the FBI headquarters can be a further building block for the belief of the non-governing camp that the federal police are politically biased.
US Institutions: A Comprehensive Crisis of Confidence
This is especially true in an atmosphere of generally dwindling trust in American institutions in their institutions. Whether it’s the presidency or parliament, the police, the Supreme Court or the judicial system in general, whether churches or schools, whether the health system or the media – not even half of Americans trust any of these institutions and organizations, according to a Gallup survey from July the way. A new low. Particularly devastating: Only seven percent of the citizens respect the congress, the parliament they have elected. Only the army and smaller companies enjoy more than 60 percent trust.
The FBI has a firm place among the institutions Americans distrust. Only among the Democrats does the federal police still enjoy stable approval (according to Gallup 66 percent in 2021), among the independents (41 percent) and especially among the Republicans (only 26 percent) it is significantly less; tendency to fall further. “There’s always been skepticism about law enforcement, within the government, the FBI, the CIA… All those doubts that were already there, [Trump] fueled it and ultimately used it to his advantage,” says political professor Kelly Dittmar from Rutgers University in New Jersey to the political portal “The Hill”. The reactions after the raid in Mar-a-Lago show: his supporters follow Trump in this regard to this day.
Intelligence in an open democracy
Justified or not: Time and again, the ambivalent behavior of FBI investigators fuels distrust in the organization. Example of the 2016 election campaign: The then FBI chief James Comey played into the hands of the ex-president when he announced further investigations into the e-mail affair against Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton a week before the election, probably in favor of the Republicans decided. On the other hand, Hans von Spakovsky, an expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, condemned the investigative report outright: “This report is so shocking and so full of FBI agent misconduct that it’s hard to have any reaction other than a lack of Trust in the FBI.” Comey later dropped the allegations against Clinton – despite alleged evidence of government e-mails being deleted.
Such an approach is probably in the nature of a police force, which is also a secret service – and thus an institution that basically would have to investigate its own members again and again. “Secret agents can be lawbreakers; their traditional trades include phone tapping, bug installation and burglary,” writes author Tim Weiner in his book FBI: The True Story of a Legendary Organization. It is the story of a “hundred-year conflict over running a secret service in an open democracy, the tug-of-war between national security and civil liberties, […] of the struggle for security and freedom.”
A confidante not trusted
Donald Trump and the Republicans don’t seem to like this conflict. “There is a dangerous possibility that we are moving in a direction where we have a party that does not trust the institutions,” warns CREW President Bookbinder. “They start dismantling these institutions, and then a lot of the things that keep us safe and healthy that we’re supposed to be doing as a society stop working,” the former federal prosecutor told The Hill.
Unless the FBI proves its worth in just such a situation: “For decades, the FBI has served national security primarily by perverting and breaking the law,” writes Tim Weiner. “A secret police has no place in a democracy, but the extent of the FBI’s powers makes it America’s closest confidant.” A confidante that many conservative Americans in particular find it difficult to trust at the moment.
Note: Text updated following US Attorney General’s statement on the Mar-a-Lago raid and raid on an FBI office.
Sources: , , , ; DPA; AFP
Source: Stern
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