Speaking on Fox Network’s “America’s News HQ” on Sunday with host Leland Vittert, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro was asked about the latest revelation that an FBI agent working on the investigation targeting members of the Trump Administration had been found to have a clear bias against Trump. Shapiro responded bluntly, “The FBI has its own biases.”
Vitter began by referencing Trump’s response to the new information. He said, “The president says, ‘Now it all starts to make sense.’ Is this FBI agent a critical piece of the puzzle?”
Shapiro replied:
I’m not sure the FBI agent is a critical piece of the puzzle, but it’s pretty clear, for a long time, that the FBI has its own biases, and to remove those biases would be to paint an impartial, a not-complete picture. One of the problems here is that we know that James Comey was basically letting Hillary Clinton off with nothing but a public slap on the wrist.
Now we know that another FBI agent who was working on that particular case was biased against President Trump. One of the things I haven’t found out from the story, maybe you can tell me, I just don’t know, is how we knew that this agent was doing this. If we found it out from Mueller’s investigation and then Mueller fired him, then that obviously reflects better on Mueller than if this were an outside force that had found out that this FBI agent was biased against President Trump and then Mueller had to fire him for no other reason.
Vittert said that Fox reporters James Rosen and Jake Gibson had reported that Mueller had fired the FBI agent, although how he had done so was still unknown. Vittert noted that Trump had said the FBI’s reputation was in tatters. He asked, “If everything is political, and nothing is sacrosanct any more, does that become a larger problem for the Republic?”
Shapiro responded:
It’s certainly a problem when we have no trust in any of our institutions. The president is at war with the FBI; the FBI’s at war with the president; the president’s at war with parts of the DOJ. Right now, it seems like no one trusts any member of any institution, and that means that you’re just going to side with the people that you feel best about; the people whom you agree with most on policy. There’s a new poll out today from Alabama showing that a vast majority of members of the Alabama voting public feel that Roy Moore is innocent, not because they actually have verified the fact, but because they don’t trust the media. That demonstrates the level of antipathy toward the media, a level of antipathy which I don’t think is completely unwarranted. So, yes, as the institutions are torn apart it’s going to be very difficult to put the country back together; we’re not operating off the same basis of common facts.
Vittert turned to the fact that Barack Obama had been flouting the tradition of former presidents eschewing speaking ill of the current president, especially overseas. He showed Obama in Paris over the weekend saying of President Trump vis-à-vis climate change, “I grant you that at the moment we have a temporary absence of American leadership on the issue.” He commented, “What a break.” (With tradition.)
Shapiro replied:
This is kind of usual for Democratic presidents, actually. Bill Clinton was largely absent during the Bush Administration, but Jimmy Carter, obviously, never went away; he’s still running around, blabbing about whatever he feels like blabbing about. President Obama couldn’t last a full year before he started going abroad and talking about the current president of the United States. George W. Bush has been absent from the public scene since he left public office. There is a stark gap, it seems to me, between Republican ex-presidents and Democratic ex-presidents when it comes to speaking about the people who come right after them of the opposite party.
Vittert referenced Matt Drudge quipping that the Logan Act should be invoked regarding citizen Obama conducting American policy.
Shapiro immediately explained that Drudge’s quip was in reference to some leftists insisting the Logan Act be used to target former national security advisor Mike Flynn:
The fact is that a lot of people are saying that Mike Flynn violated the Logan Act when he was talking with the Russian government about policy for the incoming administration; the Logan Act is probably unconstitutional; it’s really never been enforced; I think that there’s been one trial on it since it was imposed in the very, very end of the 18th century. I don’t see why what Mike Flynn was supposed to be doing talking to the Russian ambassador is so bad, and the fact that Matt Drudge is pointing out that if we’re going to start going Logan Act on people then Barack Obama would be in that penalty box, he’s not wrong about that. Nancy Pelosi, if you recall, during the Bush Administration, was flying over to Syria and making her own foreign policy. If we’re going to start imposing the Logan Act as some sort of actual legal standard, there are going to be a lot of people who find themselves in the dock.
Video below:
Source: The Daily Wire
