There has been a lot lately about Americans eroding trust in our institutions. Some point to President Trump's conspiracy theories he promotes, and that's partially true. But let's not get it twisted and act like the erosion didn't start until January 20th of this year. Just read this letter the Senate Judiciary Committee sent to FBI Director James Comey...

On February 28, 2017, the Washington Post reported that the FBI reached an agreement a few weeks before the Presidential election to pay the author of the unsubstantiated dossier alleging a conspiracy between President Trump and the Russians, Christopher Steele, to continue investigating Mr. Trump. The article claimed that the FBI was aware Mr. Steele was creating these memos as part of work for an opposition research firm connected to Hillary Clinton. The idea that the FBI and associates of the Clinton campaign would pay Mr. Steele to investigate the Republican nominee for President in the run-up to the election raises further questions about the FBI’s independence from politics, as well as the Obama administration’s use of law enforcement and intelligence agencies for political ends.

I read that paragraph twice, because Senator Grassley has a hard time getting to the gist. Here's the gist: the FBI has become a political weapon and nobody trusts it. But wait, there's more.

It is additionally troubling that the FBI reportedly agreed to such an arrangement given that, in January of 2017, then-Director Clapper issued a statement stating that “the IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions.” According to the Washington Post, the FBI’s arrangement with Mr. Steele fell through when the media published his dossier and revealed his identity.

One slight factual error, it wasn't the media who published the dossier. It was BuzzFeed. "Media" implies BuzzFeed is a legitimate news outlet (see Even Liberal MSNBC Slams BuzzFeed: “You Just Published Fake News!” and BuzzFeed Tries to Defend Planned Parenthood. Caught in Blatant Lies"). BuzzFeed is to legitimate media as Michael Moore is to GQ cover men.

But other than that, here's the FBI being accused BY THE WASHINGTON POST of getting involved with partisan politics. Reminder: the FBI has no business in partisan politics. It's supposed to be an apolitical entity. In fact, I went to the fbi.gov website, and after getting over my initial irritation caused by the terrible column and container padding, took a screen capture of their mission statement. See if you can spot where it says the FBI becomes a bludgeoning tool for whatever president is in power:

Seriously, FBI. Hire a front-end developer. Gawd.

I'm guessing the FBI would define the Trump Wants Prostitutes to Pee on Him dossier as "combatting public corruption at all levels" or "protecting the USA from foreign intelligence operations and espionage." Is that what you're guessing too? Not really sure, I'm distracted by how an unsubstantiated report on urinating hookers falls into any sort of category the FBI would be keen to investigate. But hey, I'm a biased "right-wing" nut of some kind.

People don't trust the FBI and authorities to begin with. When the bias is so blatant, though, it's no wonder the distrust worsens like a first date with a rabid feminist. In fact, it's hard to know who or what to trust anymore. Such is the state of our political (and supposedly apolitical) institutions.

Especially when the media can't be trusted either...

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