(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., reacted to the FBI’s politicized raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, saying the most practical first step would be to move the corrupted law-enforcement agency and its parent department out of the Washington, D.C., Swamp.
“Most of the skulduggery has its roots in the Washington nerve center,” he told Headline USA in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
Bishop’s remarks seemed to dial back a tweet from his official account on Monday that “Republicans must smash the FBl into a million pieces.”
The FBI and DOJ are acting as the
political enforcers of the Democrat
Party.The FBI must immediately release the
information used to obtain the
warrant. Garland and Wray must
immediately come before@JudiciaryGOP.Republicans must smash the FBl into
a million pieces.— Rep. Dan Bishop (@RepDanBishop) August 9, 2022
He suggested that recent calls from fed-up conservatives to dispatch with the law-enforcement agency altogether might have unintended consequences.
“It’s a little bit of a ‘pick your poison’ here,” Bishop said, noting that to “decimate” the Justice Department would have a chilling effect and make federal agencies less willing to take on matters with political overtones that might favor Republicans.
“You want to make sure you get a fair hearing,” he said. “… You don’t want to hamstring law enforcement.”
Nonetheless, Bishop said the current double-standard of justice under Attorney General Merrick Garland was swiftly bringing concerned citizens and lawmakers to the brink of needing to take more drastic measures.
“It’s spiraling to where the only thing you can do to get their attention is something as reprehensible as they’ve been doing,” he said of the DOJ’s overtly political actions.
Yet, Bishop feared that if left unchecked they might lead outraged conservatives to take matters into their own hands.
“I think that would be a horrendous defeat for the country,” he said. “My job is to address it so that it doesn’t come to pass.”
Yet, beyond a general agreement, there seemed to be no clear strategy within the GOP as to what the next steps must be.
While Bishop said he and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, had discussed the DOJ’s corruption at length and agreed on decentralization as a solution.
On the other hand, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., a fellow Freedom Caucus member, tweeted Wednesday that in order to save America, the FBI must be destroyed.
The FBI raid on Trump's home tells us one thing.
Failure is not an option.
We must destroy the FBI.
We must save America.
I stand with Donald J. Trump.
— Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) August 9, 2022
Although caucus members haven’t decided on the best way to proceed, “there’s similar sentiment,” Bishop said, adding that they had “come to a consensus that something has to be done.”
Current House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., meanwhile, has pledged to investigate the FBI at length should Republicans regain the House majority and elect him as its next speaker.
“I’ve seen enough. The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” McCarthy said in a statement Wednesday following the Mar-a-Lago raid.
“When Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned,” he continued. “Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar.”
Biship said he took McCarthy “at his word” that those promises would translate into action, although it is unclear what real-world consequences would spring from such hearings.
It would seem to be familiar territory for the GOP, hearkening back to the two years Congress was under GOP control during the Trump administration, when the FBI and other agencies continued to push flagrant abuses undermining the party in power.
Bishop said it was particularly galling that the Left—including partisan idealogues operating within the federal government—seemed to delight in bending the rule of law to serve their political ends.
“They think their job is to perpetuate the institutional power of the bureaucracy,” he noted.
Even more important than attempting to hold a single agency like the FBI accountable, Bishop said the key to cleaning up the Swamp must be a broader effort at sweeping civil-service reform.
Measures during the early 20th century to create independent and nonpartisan institutions, protected from the political spoils system, may have been well-intentioned at the time, he said, but “the pendulum has swung too far,” leaving duly-elected leaders with little recourse when unelected bureaucrats decide to usurp their authority on behalf of the ‘resistance.’
For now, however, Bishop lamented that there was little to be done except to wait for the political tide to shift, and to bear the indignities of leftist abuses with a keen memory and a steady resolve.
“Nobody’s in a position to stop this,” he said. “Suffice it to say, I’m ready—but I have my doubts exactly how far we’ll be ready to go.”
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at truthsocial.com/@bensellers.
