{"id":12092,"date":"2019-12-09T10:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T18:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12092"},"modified":"2019-12-08T11:22:29","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T19:22:29","slug":"when-our-guardians-fail-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/when-our-guardians-fail-us\/","title":{"rendered":"When Our Guardians Fail Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ The Patriot Post<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One symptom of a society in crisis is the unreliability or even corruption of its own auditors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After all, when the watchmen have lost moral authority to watch, who can be believed or trusted? Or, as the Roman satirist Juvenal famously put it, \u201cWho will guard the guardians?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was recently reported that FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith altered an email to bolster a suspicious FBI effort to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant authorizing the surveillance of Carter Page, a onetime employee of the Trump campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If true, Clinesmith helped the FBI successfully delude the court into granting what was likely an illegal request to spy on the Trump campaign. Clinesmith was reportedly expelled from special counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s legal team for cheering on opposition to the Trump presidency by writing \u201cViva la resistance!\u201d in a text message discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/patriotpost.us\/opinion\/67156-when-our-guardians-fail-us-2019-12-05\">Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ The Patriot Post One symptom of a society in crisis is the unreliability or even corruption of its own auditors. After all, when the watchmen have lost moral authority to watch, who can be believed or trusted? Or, as the Roman satirist Juvenal famously put it, \u201cWho will guard the guardians?\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-392","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12112,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/former-intelligence-chiefs-fit-perfectly-into-media-advocacy-culture\/","url_meta":{"origin":12092,"position":0},"title":"Former intelligence chiefs fit perfectly into media advocacy culture","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Fox News Former FBI Director\u00a0James Comey\u00a0and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have lots of things in common. One,\u00a0they ran the nation\u2019s key intelligence and investigatory agencies under former\u00a0President Barack Obama. They were deeply involved\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10943,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-fisa-gate-boomerangs\/","url_meta":{"origin":12092,"position":1},"title":"The FISA-Gate Boomerangs","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 6, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Some things still do not add up about the so-called Steele dossier, FISA warrants, the Nunes memo, and the hysterical Democratic reaction to it. A Big Deal or a Nothing Deal? 1) Progressives and Democrats warned on the eve of the memo\u2019s release that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;CIA&quot;","block_context":{"text":"CIA","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/cia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11400,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/demonization-of-nunes-is-a-window-into-our-times\/","url_meta":{"origin":12092,"position":2},"title":"Demonization of Nunes Is a Window Into Our Times","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 14, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Much of what we now know about the unethical and often illegal behavior of the FBI, CIA, National Security Agency, and Department of Justice emerged due to the efforts of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Its chairman during its stunning disclosures has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;CIA&quot;","block_context":{"text":"CIA","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/cia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10948,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fisa-gate-is-scarier-than-watergate\/","url_meta":{"origin":12092,"position":3},"title":"FISA-Gate is Scarier than Watergate","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The Watergate scandal of 1972\u201374 was uncovered largely because of outraged Democratic politicians and a bulldog media. They both claimed that they had saved American democracy from the Nixon administration\u2019s attempt to warp the CIA and FBI to cover up an otherwise minor, though\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;FISA&quot;","block_context":{"text":"FISA","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/fisa\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10941,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-ticking-memo\/","url_meta":{"origin":12092,"position":4},"title":"The Ticking Memo","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 5, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The House Intelligence Committee memo is pretty simple. It should not have been classified and thus far withheld from the public. In fact, far more information now needs to be released. Despite the outcry, as Chairman Devin Nunes clarified, the memo can easily be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;FBI&quot;","block_context":{"text":"FBI","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/fbi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10926,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/did-the-fbi-vouch-for-the-crazy-russian-deal-from-the-steele-dossier\/","url_meta":{"origin":12092,"position":5},"title":"Did The FBI Vouch For The Crazy Russian Deal From The Steele Dossier?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 31, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Paul Roderick Gregory \/\/ Forbes The media\u2019s promotion of an unverified dossier against Republican candidate, Donald Trump, failed to cement Hillary Clinton\u2019s expected victory in November. If that were the whole story, the dossier would have faded from public view, the new President Trump would not have spent his first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;FBI&quot;","block_context":{"text":"FBI","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/fbi\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12093,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12092\/revisions\/12093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}