In the bizarro world that has become the Federal Bureau of Investigation, up is down, left is right, and reality is simply whatever you choose to say it is.
Take this one tiny fact: The former FBI director, James Comey, leaked details of a private with the president of the United States -- and told a roomful of senators about it under oath. Their response? Eh, whatever. Comey's expected to make as much as $10 million with a coming book deal.
But this latest strangeness from the FBI takes bizarre to new heights.
The FBI held a press conference this week to release more information about James Hodgkinson, the Democratic activist and Bernie Sanders supporter who drove from Illinois to shoot Republicans as they practiced for a baseball game at a park in Alexandria, Va. Tim Slater, who leads the criminal division of the FBI's Washington field office, uttered this inexplicable line: "At this point in the investigation, it appears more spontaneous."
Spontaneous?! Hodgkinson was a vehement critic of Republicans, raging online about President Trump. He was investigated by Illinois authorities after neighbors reported him for doing target practice in his yard. He cased the Virginia field where Republicans practiced for an annual congressional game, taking photos. He lived in his van at a YMCA right next to the ballpark, where he could keep an eye on it. He rented a unit at a storage facility where he kept ammunition -- a lot of ammunition. Right before the shooting, he asked a bystander: "Is this the Republican or Democrat baseball team?" And after he was shot to death, police found a note in his pocket that contained the names of six congressional lawmakers -- all members of the Freedom Caucus, the most conservative group in the House.
But to the FBI, none of that matters. Spontaneous! they say.
The Associated Press took the bait, hook, line and sinker.
"FBI: Gunman who shot congressman had no target in mind," said the headline of their June 22 story.
"Adrift and nearly out of money after three months of living out of his van in the Washington area, the gunman who shot a top House Republican and four other people on a Virginia baseball field didn’t have any concrete plans to inflict violence on the Republicans he loathed, FBI officials said Wednesday," read the lead.
On the pictures that Hodgkinson took of the ballpark and other sites in Washington, including a Senate office building: “The FBI does not believe that these photographs represented surveillance of intended targets,” the bureau said in a statement.
To the FBI, the whole things was just one big coincidence. Hodgkinson “had no concrete plan to inflict violence” against Republicans, the bureau said (although he owned two weapons, and brought them to the ballpark). He "happened upon" the congressional baseball practice (right next store from where he was laying in wait). The attack -- in which Hodgkinson fired more than 60 shots -- appeared "spontaneous" (hey, these things happen!). And the "context" of the note in his pocket, containing the names of conservative House members, was "unclear" (check your pocket right now: Don't YOU have a note with the names of congressional lawmakers on it?0.
To the crack agency of professional investigators, Hodgkinson was just "a down-on-his-luck man with few future prospects.”
We've heard the "spontaneous" thing before, remember? After a mob of heavily armed terrorists swarmed a U.S. embassy outpost in Benghazi, Libya, murdering four Americans -- including the U.S. ambassador -- President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the exact word to describe the events of that night, Sept. 11, 2012. Obama sent his U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice onto all five Sunday talks shows after the attack, where on one she said: "The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex."
But everyone in the administration knew that narrative was a lie. The Chicago Tribune reported that an 800-page report of the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi, which took two years to complete, said this: "The crux of it is that during and well after the chaos of the attacks on the State Department's outpost and nearby CIA annex in Benghazi, Clinton and the Obama administration promoted a false narrative for public consumption: that the violence came from a spontaneous outburst of mob anger. Although Clinton confided to her daughter, Chelsea, in an email that night that an al-Qaida faction was responsible, for two weeks she let fester the story that mob action, not a planned assault her department might have anticipated, killed her employees."
So the FBI's decision to step out now and say that the carefully planned attempted assassination of Republican congressman was "spontaneous" is beyond bizarre. And simply more evidence that the once respected agency is now fully ensconced in the politics of the day.
That should terrify every American.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/17861..._content=062316-news&utm_campaign=benshapiro#
Take this one tiny fact: The former FBI director, James Comey, leaked details of a private with the president of the United States -- and told a roomful of senators about it under oath. Their response? Eh, whatever. Comey's expected to make as much as $10 million with a coming book deal.
But this latest strangeness from the FBI takes bizarre to new heights.
The FBI held a press conference this week to release more information about James Hodgkinson, the Democratic activist and Bernie Sanders supporter who drove from Illinois to shoot Republicans as they practiced for a baseball game at a park in Alexandria, Va. Tim Slater, who leads the criminal division of the FBI's Washington field office, uttered this inexplicable line: "At this point in the investigation, it appears more spontaneous."
Spontaneous?! Hodgkinson was a vehement critic of Republicans, raging online about President Trump. He was investigated by Illinois authorities after neighbors reported him for doing target practice in his yard. He cased the Virginia field where Republicans practiced for an annual congressional game, taking photos. He lived in his van at a YMCA right next to the ballpark, where he could keep an eye on it. He rented a unit at a storage facility where he kept ammunition -- a lot of ammunition. Right before the shooting, he asked a bystander: "Is this the Republican or Democrat baseball team?" And after he was shot to death, police found a note in his pocket that contained the names of six congressional lawmakers -- all members of the Freedom Caucus, the most conservative group in the House.
But to the FBI, none of that matters. Spontaneous! they say.
The Associated Press took the bait, hook, line and sinker.
"FBI: Gunman who shot congressman had no target in mind," said the headline of their June 22 story.
"Adrift and nearly out of money after three months of living out of his van in the Washington area, the gunman who shot a top House Republican and four other people on a Virginia baseball field didn’t have any concrete plans to inflict violence on the Republicans he loathed, FBI officials said Wednesday," read the lead.
On the pictures that Hodgkinson took of the ballpark and other sites in Washington, including a Senate office building: “The FBI does not believe that these photographs represented surveillance of intended targets,” the bureau said in a statement.
To the FBI, the whole things was just one big coincidence. Hodgkinson “had no concrete plan to inflict violence” against Republicans, the bureau said (although he owned two weapons, and brought them to the ballpark). He "happened upon" the congressional baseball practice (right next store from where he was laying in wait). The attack -- in which Hodgkinson fired more than 60 shots -- appeared "spontaneous" (hey, these things happen!). And the "context" of the note in his pocket, containing the names of conservative House members, was "unclear" (check your pocket right now: Don't YOU have a note with the names of congressional lawmakers on it?0.
To the crack agency of professional investigators, Hodgkinson was just "a down-on-his-luck man with few future prospects.”
We've heard the "spontaneous" thing before, remember? After a mob of heavily armed terrorists swarmed a U.S. embassy outpost in Benghazi, Libya, murdering four Americans -- including the U.S. ambassador -- President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the exact word to describe the events of that night, Sept. 11, 2012. Obama sent his U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice onto all five Sunday talks shows after the attack, where on one she said: "The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex."
But everyone in the administration knew that narrative was a lie. The Chicago Tribune reported that an 800-page report of the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi, which took two years to complete, said this: "The crux of it is that during and well after the chaos of the attacks on the State Department's outpost and nearby CIA annex in Benghazi, Clinton and the Obama administration promoted a false narrative for public consumption: that the violence came from a spontaneous outburst of mob anger. Although Clinton confided to her daughter, Chelsea, in an email that night that an al-Qaida faction was responsible, for two weeks she let fester the story that mob action, not a planned assault her department might have anticipated, killed her employees."
So the FBI's decision to step out now and say that the carefully planned attempted assassination of Republican congressman was "spontaneous" is beyond bizarre. And simply more evidence that the once respected agency is now fully ensconced in the politics of the day.
That should terrify every American.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/17861..._content=062316-news&utm_campaign=benshapiro#
