Dem
47
GOP
53
Following from the previous item, it's clear that the crisis in which the American justice system is enmeshed is primarily due to a fairly small number of people within the vast law and order infrastructure. Obviously, some number of the nine people currently sitting on the Supreme Court are doing enormous harm. How many of those nine is a fair question. Is it all of them, since they are the institution, and they all bear responsibility for what it does? Is it the six right-wingers, who seem, some days, to have become full-time employees of the Trump Organization? Is it just Chief Justice John Roberts, who is supposed to be a sheepherder, but who has lost control of the sheep? Is it maybe Roberts and the two or three right-wingers who seem to always place personal ideology above the law? We just aren't sure.
Outside of the Supreme Court, the harms being done to the American system of justice are the responsibility of two people, in particular. We speak, of course, of AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. Yes, they are both MAGA, which is part of the problem. But the bigger problem is that they are both constantly in danger of being fired, and they both know it. Donald Trump takes no particular interest in what, say, the Department of the Interior does. Heck, he may not even know what the Department of the Interior does. But he's VERY interested in what happens with the justice system, since he wants to use the justice system to punish his enemies (and, at the same time, he needs to protect his many, many shady allies). That means that Patel and Bondi are both constantly putting on a show, primarily for an audience of one.
And that brings us to the ICE shooting in Dallas. Most readers have likely heard about it by now. A single shooter opened fire on an ICE facility, killing one detainee before turning the gun on himself. Those are about the only facts we feel confident are actually facts.
The problem when it comes to any facts beyond that, is that Trump (and thus Patel) are eager, in roughly equal measure, to: (1) blame Democrats for the incident, and (2) exonerate Republicans for any responsibility. And so, Patel and his underlings have already shared numerous pieces of "evidence," including a bullet casing with ANTI-ICE written on it, and a note with violent, anti-ICE messages.
At the same time, Patel announced that the attack had an "idealogical [sic] motive" and was "politically motivated." Trump was even less subtle, and got on his low-rated social media platform to share his assessment:
I have been briefed on the deadly shooting at the ICE Field Office in Dallas, Texas. It has now been revealed the deranged shooter wrote "Anti-ICE" on his shell casings. This is despicable! The Brave Men and Women of ICE are just trying to do their jobs, and remove the "WORST of the WORST" Criminals out of our Country, but they are facing an unprecedented increase in threats, violence, and attacks by Deranged Radical Leftists. This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to "Nazis." The continuing violence from Radical Left Terrorists, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination, must be stopped. ICE Officers, and other Brave Members of Law Enforcement, are under grave threat. We have already declared ANTIFA a Terrorist Organization, and I will be signing an Executive Order this week to dismantle these Domestic Terrorism Networks. I AM CALLING ON ALL DEMOCRATS TO STOP THIS RHETORIC AGAINST ICE AND AMERICA'S LAW ENFORCEMENT, RIGHT NOW! The Trump Administration is fully committed to backing Law Enforcement, Strong Borders, securing our Homeland, deporting Violent Illegal Criminals, and fully rooting out the Left Wing Domestic Terrorism that is terrorizing our Country. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
In support of Trump, the National Republican Congressional Committee helpfully put together a press release of the "evidence" that Democrats are to blame for the ICE shooting. For example, "Democrats are explicitly targeting ICE officers and arguing that 'masks and lack of uniforms have led to chaos in Los Angeles,'" and "LA Mayor Bass announced a 'cash assistance' program to immigrant families affected by ICE raids." And just in case you had any doubt this was intended to score political points, this press release was reconfigured dozens of times, changing only the title "[X]'s party is blatantly demonizing ICE," where [X] is the name of a Democratic member of Congress who is in one of the RNCC's battleground districts. So, for example, the version of the press release we link to above is headlined "Frank Mrvan's party is blatantly demonizing ICE," but there are also versions for Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Josh Riley and Tom Suozzi (both D-NY), Jared Golden (D-ME) and many others.
Under these circumstances, how can one possibly believe what comes out of the FBI? There are plenty of people on the left suggesting that the evidence that Patel has shared, like the bullet, is fake. We doubt that is the case (although we certainly aren't 100% sure about that). What we do think is that it takes a while to investigate a crime properly, and to develop a solid interpretation of what all the evidence really means. For what it's worth, the early returns suggest that the ICE shooter, like the killer of Charlie Kirk, was deeply ensconced in Internet culture, and was not overtly political, at least not in a way that can be characterized using the right-left spectrum.
"You can't trust the Trump/Patel-led FBI" may sound a little like Trump's longstanding rants about the "Deep State" but, as Mediaite's Colby Hall observes, it's really apples and oranges. The Deep State stuff was broad, and unsupported with specific evidence. Distrust of the current DoJ/FBI is rooted in now-ample evidence, including blatant rushes to judgment (e.g., "We've got the Kirk shooter! Oops, no we don't!"), withholding of evidence unfavorable to the administration (e.g., the Epstein files), disregard for the law (e.g., illegal deportations), etc.
And in the end, if the federal law enforcement apparatus cannot be trusted, nobody wins. (Z)