When and Whom to Fear About Dictatorship, Part Four

Victor Davis Hanson

3) Does the government pick and choose which laws to enforce in order to punish enemies and reward friends, and advance the political narrative? Do officials lie under oath with impunity?

Note further that all three intelligence heads under Barack Obama had lied under oath: CIA Director Brennan did twice to Congress, claiming his CIA had not spied on senate staffers’ computers and insisting no collateral civilian damage was occurring during Obama’s some 500 predator drone assassination missions along the Pakistani border.

Director of National Intelligence Clapper admitted to lying when he said he gave the “least untruthful answer” when asked whether the National Security Agency spies on private citizens.

James Comey, former FBI Director, on 245 occasions while under oath before the House Oversight Committee, claimed he could not remember, or did not know, when asked direct yes/no questions pertaining to illegal activities conducted by the FBI under his direction and demonstrably known to him. Only Comey has so far been indicted.

All of the last four FBI heads prior to Kash Patel have lied repeatedly under oath: Robert Mueller incredulously claimed he knew nothing of the Steele dossier when asked by the House oversight committee—the very dossier that had sparked his appointment.

His successor, James Comey, not only dissimulated on 245 occasions but falsely assured the President that he was not under an FBI investigation, which in fact was ongoing at the time.

His successor, Andrew McCabe, lied on four occasions to federal investigators when he repeatedly denied that he was the source of massaged leaks to the media.

His successor, Christopher Wray, lied when he said he knew little of FBI personnel in the crowds of January 6, and again when he claimed that FBI surveillance of traditional Catholics was a one-off, isolated incident, when it was, in effect, a widespread FBI agenda.

Note that from June to October 2020, the Left, led by BLM and Antifa, rioted almost continuously for five months. They burned a federal courthouse, an iconic church, and a police precinct. Some 35-40 died violently. Over 1,500 law enforcement officers were injured. Two billion dollars in property damage ensued. Some 14,000 were arrested? And almost all were released, and the vast majority in most cities, between 80-95 percent were released and never charged.

In contrast, over 1,200 of some 1,500 January 6 protesters and rioters were jailed quickly and served time. Many sat in solitary confinement and then were sentenced for years, until pardoned by Trump. Only one person had died violently at the hand of another on that day—a 14-year military veteran and unarmed Ashli Babbitt, lethally shot by Capitol Police Officer Byrd, whose identity was concealed for months.

A one-day riot, consisting of a fraction of the violence of 5 months of constant rioting, ended up with far more jailed and imprisoned, mostly due to left-wing prosecutors and judges who saw the post-George Floyd violence as “justified” and the January 6 day of occasional illegality and violence as an “insurrection.”

Examine the disparate treatment accorded to Trump and Biden in reference to their respective removals of supposedly “classified documents.”

Biden, for over 30 years as senator and vice president, had removed an unknown but large number of classified documents. Biden had no ability then, as either a senator or vice president, to declassify such files. He stored them in his unsecured rickety garage near his beach house, his unsecured private library at his home, and at his Penn Biden Center office in Washington, D.C. Biden, in addition, used his classified files to collaborate with his ghostwriter, who was working on the Biden legacy, but had no security clearance and for whom it was illegal to look at the files. Special counsel Hur subpoenaed the transcripts of oral conversations between Biden and Mark Zwonitzer, the ghostwriter. Yet Zwonitzer destroyed the tapes instead, alleging that he was worried they might be hacked. Of course, Hur, the special counsel, never prosecuted Zwonitzer or Biden, although he had good cause.

In the case of Trump, as a president, he had the right to declassify any of the documents he wished, albeit in a formal and legal fashion. Mar-a-Lago is far more secure than the Biden offices and residences. Biden, fearing hypocrisy, did not come forward to disclose his removals of some 30 years (compared to Trump’s two years) until he was about to appoint a special counsel to investigate Trump for the same, though still undisclosed, crime of removing classified documents. The FBI tiptoed around the Biden residences, ransacked the private Trump quarters at Mar-a-Lago, and searched his wife’s underwear drawers.