'Worse than theater': Ex-FBI official buries Republicans for fomenting 'massive distrust in the government'

12 July 2023

Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi lambasted congressional Republicans on Deadline White House for their behavior at Wednesday's Judiciary Committee hearing in the United States House of Representatives.

Right-wing lawmakers still loyal to ex-President Donald Trump were particularly aggressive toward FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom they alleged mishandled the criminal probes into Hunter Biden and accused of harboring contempt for conservatives.

Based on what he saw, Figliuzzi concluded to MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace that Republicans hope to dismantle the American administrative state.

"You know, Nicolle, my temptation here is to call this political theater, but that's, that's not enough. That doesn't do it justice," Figliuzzi said. "What we watched today, was worse than theater. It was essentially crying fire inside a theater. That's where people get hurt, because it's part of a much larger strategy. The strategy we talked about, of course, is to erode the public's trust in our key institutions."

Figliuzzi noted that "it's not just the FBI, but it's, it's all of them across the board. Centers for Disease Control, DOJ, DHS, the Pentagon, you name it. The goal seems to be to turn everything on its head and cause massive distrust in the government so that the only people you can trust, of course, are the people fabricating stories, which is what we saw happen today."

Figliuzzi stressed that "the outcome of this is not just the erosion of a public agency that protects us every day — an agency that last year, for example, Arrested over twenty thousand violent criminals and child sex predators, dismantled one-hundred-fifty gangs, re-recovered billions in cyber fraud and gave it back to citizen victims. All of that goes on every day in the FBI. But it's not just that. It's also keeping us from having really serious discussions about FBI oversight. So while we're talking about the attacks today, we're not talking about serious questions of oversight. What about the upcoming expiration of the FISA law and the renewal of international national security wiretapping authorities? What about whether the FBI is or isn't purchasing commercial data about all of us? All of these very serious questions — whether or not the FBI should be talking on a regular basis to social media platforms to try and protect us — we're not having that discussion because the GOP doesn't want us having that serious discussion. They simply want us to believe the nonsense they're peddling."

Watch below or at this link.

From Your Site Articles