Sarge wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2025 12:28 pm
Considering the CIA was busting spying on congress, when they're not even supposed to be operating in the US, and that the FBI submitted knowingly false evidence to a FISA court in an effort to bring down a sitting president, I wouldn't trust them either. I hope Grenell and Patel gut both agencies to the core.
The CIA was busted spying on Congress (really a few Senate staffers) a decade ago. That is a call for action over a decade later seems odd.
In both cases, it was a small number of workers that were found to have done anything wrong. Especially with the FBI where very few of the workers are involved in political/national security, why would gutting them do any good? If you just fire 50% of the work force is there any reason to think you're not firing as many good people as bad?
Is anybody he's firing at all connected to the CIA spying or the FISA court violations?
You are applying the same logic that resulted in the left supporting the defund the police movement which failed pretty spectacularly and almost certainly helped lead to increased crime in several major US cities.
This logic from the right now with respect to FISA and the FBI is particularly rich as left-leaning civil rights groups have been pointed out for years that the FISA system is flawed and likely unconstitutional (especially given a literal reading of the Constitution) (From 2002:
https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/c ... ontext=jil.
You don't stop criminals by gutting law enforcement agencies. All that does is cause those left to be jaded, less likely to catch criminal in their own organization, with fewer resources to do so, and you end up with more criminals. You stop criminals, including those in law enforcement organizations, by having a robust system to identify them and then aggressively prosecuting those caught breaking the law.
If it wasn't after the CIA spied on Congress thing, the CIA IG office should have been beefed up substantially. The FISA system should be redone. Both are things Trump could have done his first term and could do now (The CIA IG office might have been beefed up. I don't know. But he's not and didn't touch the FISA system). What he will do is gut the FBI across the board, including the parts related to white collar crimes and general political corruption. Because he's not actually interested in fixing the problems.
Gutting the FBI in response to the Carter Page FISA issues makes even less sense than gutting the Minneapolis police force after George Floyd's death.