The firing of 10 FBI officials who spied on FBI Director Kash Patel and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles when they were private citizens – as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s witch hunt against then-candidate Donald Trump – is a sorely needed win for government accountability.
Even more, it serves as a sobering reminder of how much work needs to be done to bring the “deep state” to heel.
The recent report that the FBI under then-President Joe Biden secretly subpoenaed the phone records of both Patel and Wiles prior to their time working in the second Trump administration and the subsequent cover-up is a disturbing illustration of how far Smith and his team of federal prosecutors were willing to go to ”get Trump.” It’s also another giant crimson flag that the rot in the D.C. bureaucracy is still there.
Unfortunately, it is neither shocking nor surprising that private citizens were targeted by federal agents in their reckless pursuit of Trump. As we know from other instances, the feds have been accused before of inappropriately spying on Trump’s friends and even his allies in Congress.
Reuters reported the FBI director’s claim that the bureau found evidence that agents acquired Wiles and Patel’s “toll records” during Smith’s investigation of Trump allegedly mishandling classified documents. These toll records, obtained by the FBI between 2022 and 2023, detailed the timing and recipients of calls both Wiles and Patel made during that period, in what appears to be an effort to find damning information on Trump through his associates.
Both Patel and Wiles were unaware the federal government was spying on them and the agents who engaged in this political espionage went a step further by classifying the records as “prohibited” so they would be harder to find.
This signals two things. Number one, the agents appear to have known that what they were doing was an abuse of government and they were covering their tracks. Number two, someone’s support of or proximity to a political candidate can warrant domestic spying by the supposedly impartial FBI, even if the candidate is a former president.
These things alone should send chills down every Americans’ spine.
The cover-up alone is a tacit admission that these unelected bureaucrats do not answer to the American people, nor to the officials they elect. Rather, they answer to their own political ideologies and professional whims, idolizing themselves as Judge Dredd-esque arbiters of justice. Kash firing the agents involved should only be the beginning response to their clandestine operations.
It gets worse. Smith and the agents’ investigation into Wiles may have violated one of the most important principles in the legal world: attorney-client privilege. Among the Biden FBI records was a recorded phone call between Wiles and her lawyer in 2023. Despite FBI officials claiming that Wiles’s attorney consented to the recorded call, the now-White House chief of staff denied that she or her attorney knew about the recording. The attorney also denied it, telling Axios that he would never have had a recorded call without Wiles knowing about it, which makes sense because that’s a sure-fire way to lose one’s law license.
It appears the Biden FBI lied about the recorded call, and the American people deserve accountability.
If there is one thing Americans should take away as a lesson from this, it is that this can happen to you. It doesn’t matter how invincible you feel or if you think you are untouchable – you are not. If this can happen to Kash Patel and Susie Wiles, it can happen to you.
And it will happen unless real accountability is undertaken. The firings are a great start, but more can be done. The FBI must release every file involved in this subversion of the American legal system and the cover-up undertaken to hide it. That is justice, and it is justice that Patel, Wiles, and the American people rightfully deserve.
Most of all, the American public deserves a truly impartial, mission-focused FBI – not the red, white, and blue monster Jack Smith, his cronies, and their political allies forced upon the nation.
Houston Keene is a journalist and contributor covering national security and federal policy with Democracy Restored.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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