FBI is using its files to conduct 'oppo research' on Jack Smith and other Trump critics
President Donald Trump is deploying old-school tactics against some of his enemies: using FBI files to target them.
The New York Times reported Sunday morning that FBI Director Kash Patel is helping Trump target his foes using the information it has collected.
Now, the report said, "the bureau has added payback to its portfolio."
While Trump spent years alleging the “weaponization” of law enforcement against political foes, the new administration is “using federal law enforcement to carry out a partisan opposition research operation.”
The report said that Patel has been poring over files, trying to uncover documents that can “expose and discredit federal law enforcement officials who investigated Mr. Trump and his allies.”
The Times noted that it is currently unknown how “wide-ranging” Patel’s coordination with political appointees and Republican allies has been. The official overseeing the operation was Patel’s deputy, Dan Bongino, who recently left the FBI after a tumultuous year in the post. Internally, they referred to Bongino’s unit as the “director’s advisory team.”
Most of the focus has been on the investigation into the 2020 efforts to overturn the election and stage an attack on the U.S. Capitol. Former special counsel Jack Smith spoke to the House late last year about the findings of the probe and said he had "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that what Trump did was unlawful.
During Trump’s last administration, the IRS was used to go after former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe.
While President Joe Biden’s administration refused to turn over documents tied to the ongoing investigation, Patel is now claiming that Smith broke the law. Speaking to the House, Smith said that all of the information he gathered was approved by a federal judge, which will make it difficult to argue that he went rogue or violated the law with his probes.
J. Edgar Hoover ran his own operations while overseeing the FBI. Recently released information detailed the way in which the FBI was surveilling civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences detailed, the counterintelligence campaign against MLK involved "illegal wiretaps on his phone and bugging hotel rooms when he traveled."
The FBI also spread misinformation about King being an "immoral communist."
The Times reported that the FBI now claims it is the “most transparent in history,” even as it refuses to release the legally required files on the investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The bureau has strategically released batches of anti-Smith material right before he testified behind closed doors.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who once cast himself as a champion of whistleblowers, is now helping funnel FBI leaks through his office. An unnamed FBI whistleblower, for example, alleged that one member of Jack Smith’s team was not “impartial.”
That agent, who no longer works at the FBI, is Walter Giardina, whom Trump has personally attacked for supposedly having “animosity” toward him. “Mr. Giardina vehemently denied those allegations in a meeting with bureau officials last July, two days after the funeral of his wife, who died of adrenal cancer at 49,” the report continued.
Lawyers representing FBI agents who have been fired under the Trump administration’s weaponization effort are calling out the double standard of using the government to attack someone for their politics while accusing others of doing the same. Those making the accusations are granted anonymity, allowing them to hide behind their own partisan protectors.
