Durham report shows the FBI threatened democracy as much as Capitol rioters did

We need to save our democracy. It’s an important message we’ve heard often, especially once Donald Trump took office.

But the report released on Monday by special counsel John Durham revealed how precarious our democracy actually is.

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr appointed Durham in 2019 to investigate the origins of the FBI’s probe into a Trump-Russia connection.

Codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane,” the FBI launched the project during the 2016 election.

FBI wanted to intervene in the election

“Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion” between the Republican’s campaign and Russia, the report says.

This was a significant departure from how the FBI treated other questions related to the presidential election.

Durham also found that officials showed potential “confirmation bias” in favor of continuing the inquiry, and “ignored or simply assessed away” evidence in Trump’s favor.

“The Department and FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham concluded.

In other words, unelected government officials directly intervened in a presidential election because they opposed one of the candidates. They wanted to select their next boss instead of letting voters decide.

Voters, not the FBI, should make that call

Set aside whether you wanted the Republican, the Democrat, or neither. All Americans should agree that the voters make the call, not the FBI. That’s the point of democracy.

Some D.C. bigwigs appear to disagree. They think they know better.

This attitude entered our politics more than a century ago, thanks to President Woodrow Wilson.

He thought the modern world was too complicated for the rubes in the hinterland to figure out. Instead, it had to be run by “experts” never subject to the ballot box.

A lot of people agree with this view. Just understand that it’s anti-democratic.

Wilson advised granting ever-increasing power to a non-constitutional fourth branch of government. In his 1887 article “The Study of Administration,” he argued that the Constitution was outdated and the people not to be trusted.

The masses, Wilson believed, were “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn, or foolish,” not to mention “rigidly unphilosophical.”

Voters can be meddlesome. Democracy is messy

By creating a Beltway-centered Administrative State, government would “make public opinion efficient without suffering it to be meddlesome.”

And we all know how meddlesome voters can be. Democracy will always be a messy business.

Wilson’s new-and-improved rule by experts grew further under FDR and most presidents since.

Today, we have 2.9 million federal workers, not counting the military, post office and other jobs deemed “non-civilian.” Compare that to the Beltway’s 537 directly elected politicians, and you can see the problem.

Americans distrust their institutions because they have little say.

On the other hand, Wilson’s model sounds great to Beltway officials.

Why leave laws to senators and representatives when it’s more efficient to write a few regulations? Why allow a certain candidate to be elected president when he or she might fire us from our well-paying jobs?

The Administrative State protects its own

We do need to save our democracy. Not only from sore losers storming the Capitol, but also from high-ranking officials weaponizing their lofty positions.

Don’t expect anyone from the FBI to be punished for their wrongdoing. No one was fired for bungling the USA Gymnastics sexual abuse investigation either.

The Administrative State protects its own.

Hours after Durham released his report, the bureau replied.

“The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time,” the statement read. “Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented.”

Let’s just hope those “corrective actions” prevent any “missteps” in 2024.

Jon Gabriel, a Mesa resident, is editor-in-chief of Ricochet.com and a contributor to The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. On Twitter: @exjon.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: FBI report proves that when bureaucrats go rogue, democracy loses