Joe Biden’s presidency was a multi-trillion dollar criminal conspiracy that shred every “norm,” violated nearly every right, and abused any power it could to punish its political opponents. The Trump administration’s prosecutions of Team Biden’s abuses of power may be the healthiest development for the rule of law since the end of Jim Crow.
This is a story Republicans should tell with pride — and must tell incessantly, or the next Democrat administration will make Biden’s four years look like Camelot under Arthur.
The Seeds of Corruption
The seeds of the Biden administration’s weaponization of government were sown while he was still vice president.
Remember, the great “scandal” of President Trump’s first term — that he colluded with Vladimir Putin to rig the 2016 presidential election — was a lie. The Russia Hoax was invented by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. It only ballooned into a story because partisan Democrats inside the FBI, led by then-Director James Comey, broke precedent, procedure, and the law to launch a criminal investigation — Operation Crossfire Hurricane — that almost derailed a duly elected president for the crime of … being a Republican.
(The real scandal is not that Comey has now been indicted for lying to Congress, but that lying to Congress is the only thing he’s so far been indicted for.)
Fast forward four years. In October 2020, Hunter Biden’s laptop implicated the president’s son — and maybe “the Big Guy” himself — in criminal influence peddling, tax evasion, and much else. Once again, anti-Trump partisans inside the FBI falsely declared the laptop story “misinformation.” Partisan Democrats within the intelligence community, without any evidence, condemned the whole thing as a Russian op.
Biden’s Weaponized Government
This backstory is outrageous in its own right. But just as important is the precedent it set for authoritarian-minded Democrats taking office with President Biden in 2021. The positive reinforcement leftists received for their anti-Trump abuses of power from the media, establishment elites, and Deep State bureaucrats incentivized them to push the envelope even further.
This is the context for Joe Biden’s FBI putting a “threat tag” on parents opposing woke extremism at school board meetings in 2021. And targeting traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists. And Team Biden’s illegal partnership with Big Tech to censor dissent on social media.
Now we know those were only the weaponization scandals Biden’s cronies couldn’t cover up at the time. Congressional investigations this year are finally revealing what else his people were up to.
FBI Targets Conservative Groups
Such as Operation Arctic Frost. Ostensibly a narrow investigation focused on Jan. 6 Capitol trespassers, we now know it was an open-ended dragnet targeting any conservatives and Republicans that Democrat FBI agents disliked. Under Arctic Frost, the FBI seized the cell phone of conservative U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., and surveilled him — not to collect specific evidence of wrongdoing, but simply to get to know Perry’s “pattern of life” — just like the Founders intended!
Arctic Frost also subpoenaed the financial records of 92 Republican organizations and individuals, including my employer, the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI). Our bank never told us. The FBI never told us. We only found out thanks to whistleblower documents handed over to and made public by Republican senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson.
As Sen. Grassley put it, “Arctic Frost wasn’t just a case to politically investigate Trump. It was a vehicle by which partisan FBI agents and Department of Justice prosecutors could achieve their partisan ends and improperly investigate the entire Republican political apparatus.”
CPI is a 501(c)3 organization. We play no role in campaigns and endorse no candidates. The only crime we could be accused of is the only one the Biden administration cared about: being conservative. Why did they do it? It wasn’t to stop my colleagues and me from writing op-eds or teaching Senate procedure to staff assistants. It was to identify CPI’s supporters — to get their “pattern of life” — for future surveillance, intimidation, and worse.
Left Embraces Organized Political Crime
Which brings us up to the past year, during which the left, stripped of the power to weaponize the federal government, has cut out the middle man and embraced organized political crime.
From riots to raids on immigration officers to illegal antisemitic harassment at universities to violent rhetoric to the attempted assassination of Republican members of Congress and the actual assassination of Charlie Kirk less than a month ago, we are now living through an era of left-wing terrorism.
Democrat elites trivialize it. Condone it. Incite it. Celebrate it. Spin it. And some fund it — which is against the law. Investigating this criminal conspiracy is not tit-for-tat or “norm-busting,” as some have claimed, or “worse than Watergate.” It is a moral and constitutional imperative for a constitutional republic to maintain public order and safety.
Of course President Trump should prosecute Biden administration officials who criminally weaponized the government against innocent citizens. Of course he should designate Antifa and related gangs as terrorist organizations. Of course his Justice Department should be investigating who funds the left’s criminal infrastructure.
Because remember: the Biden administration’s corruption wasn’t the work of one bad apple. Biden was not a Messianic bigot like Woodrow Wilson or a lecherous predator like Bill Clinton. He was an incapacitated figurehead. His government’s authoritarianism was the cool, cooperative work of hundreds — maybe thousands — of well-heeled, well-educated, highly credentialed, and respected professionals. If they’re not brought to justice today, they will only take that as evidence of their permanent untouchability.
No Equivalence
There is no equivalence between the Trump administration’s prosecution of criminal Democrats and Biden’s persecution of innocent Republicans. In the same way, “If the Right does X now, the Left will do it in the future” is unserious advice when innocent Republicans are already being doxxed, de-banked, perp-walked, and shot at — Democrats continue to up the rhetorical and tactical ante.
Just in the last week, a Biden-appointed judge reduced the sentence of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s would-be assassin on the grounds that “she” (he’s a guy) is transitioning. In Virginia, the Democrats’ attorney general candidate fantasized with friends about murdering a Republican legislator and his children.
It’s time to apply the broken windows theory of crimefighting to liberal elites’ authoritarian fanaticism. Failing to address the unconscionable, unprecedented abuses of weaponized government is just building a permission structure for the next Democratic administration to engage in far worse.
Democrats will continue to excuse, encourage, celebrate — and commit! — criminal misconduct until they believe it will have real, personal consequences. Not for the next four years, but the next 25 to life.