by Roger Kimball
Things are always worse than they seem.
That seems to be a good rule of thumb these days.
Take the FBI.
Every sentient person knows that the Bureau has had a rough couple years.
The Russia Collusion hoax revealed an agency shot through with corruption and partisan bias.
But the rot goes far beyond the large handful of top Bureau bad hats: the James Comeys, the Andrew McCabes, the Peter Strzoks, and Kevin Clinesmiths.
It also goes back far beyond the election of 2016.
Holman Jenkins, writing in The Wall Street Journal, lists a handful of the many shocking instances in which the agency was “hip deep” in corruption, incompetence, or some combination of the two.
His conclusion? Abolish the FBI.
“By now,” Jenkins writes, “after its performance in the 2016 election, the evidence might seem conclusive that the agency is a failed experiment, however able and dedicated many of its agents. … The agency should be scrapped and something new built to replace it.”
This is a conclusion echoed by the storied civil-rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate.
Writing in The Boston Globe, Silverglate notes that the corruption of the FBI is “too deeply embedded for effective reform.”
“The best solution,” he concludes, “The best solution is to abolish the FBI and start anew. We need to rethink the kind of agency needed to investigate federal crimes.”
But perhaps the most shocking litany of rot at the FBI has been compiled by Darren Beattie at Revolver News.
Beattie’s latest story revolves around Ray Epps, a Phoenix-based professional provocateur and, apparently, FBI asset.
Epps was originally near the top of the FBIs list of “most wanted” figures from the Jan. 6 protest-cum-riot at the Capitol.
Then a funny thing happened.
Epps’s name was purged from the FBI files.
Some 700 people have been arrested for their part in the Jan. 6 demonstration.
But Epps and a handful of other major players in that drama remain unindicted.
Indeed, although the FBI surely knows their identity, they remain nameless to the public, known only through amateur video footage of the event.
Hence their colorful soubriquets: “ScaffoldCommander,” “FenceCutterBulwark,” “BlackSkiMask,” etc.
Beattie shows that what the media label an “insurrection” is almost certainly better described as a “Fedsurrection.”
And when I say “shows,” I mean shows.
His long essay doesn’t just describe what happened.
It is punctuated by scores of photos and video clips that prove the accuracy of what he describes.
We do not know with 100 percent certainty that the figures who organized and orchestrated the breach of the Capitol did so at the instigation of federal authorities.
But it sure looks that way.
Beattie takes us step by step from the moment on Jan. 5 when Epps whipped up a crowd and told them, over vocal objections from various demonstrators, that they were going to the Capitol the next day.
Beattie shows how other actors calmly removed fences and signage on Jan. 6, clearing a path for the protestors, who were carefully funneled through that one walkway up to the Capitol.
“Okay we’re in!” shouted the man known as “Scaffold Commander,” so called because he was perched, magaphone in hand, atop a tall tower overlooking the Capitol complex.
“We’re in!” he shouted. “Come on! We gotta fill up the Capitol! Come on! Come now! We need help. We gotta fill up the Capitol! They got in.”
Will coincidences never end? The blue and white megaphone he was using was identical to blue and white megaphones used by other people directing the crowd.
Beattie is not the only person to notice the oddity of it all. This Twitter thread, published the day after the event. “What happened yesterday was not as it seemed.”
Indeed. “What makes the ScaffoldCommander-Ray Epps affair complete,” Beattie noted, “is that they appeared to work in tandem from start to finish the entire day on 1/6.”
“Both set up positions at the initial 12:50 p.m. ‘Big Bang’ breach site, and they did so before the Proud Boys arrived.”
“The official story, you will recall, says that the Proud Boys group caused the riot.”
But they didn’t.
A review of the video footage shows a handful of main players that day.
None have been indicted.
Why?
The simplest explanation is that the people who took down the fences and the “restricted area” signs, who loudly directed crowd into the Capitol, were federal assets.
Beattie is right. “If Ray Epps was acting on instructions from a government handler from any federal agency (FBI, ATF, Pentagon, DHS, DEA, anything), we now are talking about perhaps the single most egregious caught-on-camera intelligence operation in our lifetimes.”
– – –
Roger Kimball is the editor and publisher of The New Criterion and publisher of Encounter Books. His most recent book is “Who Rules? Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Fate of Freedom in the 21st Century.”
Photo “Capitol Riot with flags” by Tyler Werbler CC BY 2.0.
RealClearWire partnered with Epoch Times to make this article available.
Please remember, once the FBI is demolished, that any reconstruction must not include any of the agents, directors, etc., who are acting in any supervisory rule whatsoever. Otherwise, we will just be recreating the very problem we are trying to resolve.
I agree > “The best solution is to abolish the FBI and start anew. We need to rethink the kind of agency needed to investigate federal crimes.”
The FBI has become a Gestapo controlled by Dems.
Beyond what is mentioned here is the guy who allegedly placed pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC HQs. Full video surveillance of the guy. No ID?????? This same guy is also seen on video, sitting in a local park, talking on his cellphone.
Now, the ZFBI was able to go after people who were in D.C. that day – not at the rally, not at the Capitol – but in a local restaurant, just eating. The FBI was able to pull records of everyone in that town that day, yet they can’t locate nor ID this perp? And yes, Epps is one of the main agitators. There’s no doubt he has ties to the FBI.
Look at the Fed-setup kidnapping story out of MI with Whitmer. More than half of the perps were FBI informants. Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a “demonstration” at the (I think) Lincoln memorial. Maybe 100 people, wearing red hats, matching blue fleece jackets, many carrying these round plastic shields that look like they were stolen from a junior high school production, and flags- lost of American and Don’t Tread On Me flags.Oh yeah, also the left’s favorite prop – aviator sunglasses.
What a joke it looked like. A total scam. And the MSM was trying to tell you these were insurrectionists, Trump supporters, white supremacists. What a joke. This is today’s FBI.
Entrapment
Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or agent of the state induces a person to commit a “crime” that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit. It “is the conception and planning of an offense by an officer or agent, and the procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion or fraud of the officer or state agent”.
I quote from the commentary:
“The simplest explanation is that the people who took down the fences and the “restricted area” signs, who loudly directed crowd into the Capitol, were federal assets.
. . . “If Ray Epps was acting on instructions from a government handler from any federal agency (FBI, ATF, Pentagon, DHS, DEA, anything), we now are talking about perhaps the single most egregious caught-on-camera intelligence operation in our lifetimes.”
Sure sounds like entrapment to me. But would the ‘FBLie’ do something like that? In a New York ‘minute’ they would! It is the ‘muscle’ of the ‘deep State.’ And you can also bet your last dollar that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and probably several other highly placed Congressional leaders—Never Trumpers, all (i.e., McConnell?)—not only knew all about it beforehand, but probably ordered it done to stop the January 6, 2021 Congressional challenges to the States where the 2020 Presidential was stolen (as is now being laboriously proven, State by State, despite the great opposition of the Democrats and the RINOs in those States). In short, this was part of a planned coup d’état against a duly re-elected President of the United States—President Trump. And look at all of the damage that has been done to our country by our Pretender President, and his crowd, in less than a year. In my opinion, our country cannot tolerate another three years of ‘Brandon.’