Biases against Trump not political

I don’t know what to make of the Horowitz report, which President Donald Trump hoped would show that Hillary Clinton was a criminal and the FBI was biased, and therefore, his campaign did not collude with the Russians.

(Anybody miss that non sequitur, I mean, besides the president?)

The New York Times and Washington Post say the Horowitz report makes everybody look bad, but it shows that the FBI was not politically motivated in its investigations of Russia’s possible involvement with the Trump campaign.

The report does nothing to discredit Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

Fox News and the conservative Wall Street Journal have cherry-picked the report’s contents that make the FBI look biased and Clinton look like a criminal and given them far more weight than they deserve.

I will continue to give more credibility to professionally reported, edited and verified “fake news” than to Fox’s blatant propaganda.

The Horowitz report agrees with FBI conclusions that Clinton may have been cavalier about some classified information, but not criminal.

Well, if you don’t like Hillary Clinton, her misjudgment was criminal.

If you didn’t like President George W. Bush, his launching of the Iraq war based on faulty evidence was also criminal.

Neither was criminal, and we are all experts after decisions have played out.

In all accounts, however, former FBI Director James Comey comes off as arrogant to the point of insubordination in trusting his own judgment.

He should have humbled himself enough to consult with higher-ups more accustomed to balancing urgent investigative findings with the weighty realities of politics.

Comey’s politically ham-handed handling of the Clinton affair damaged his agency.

The biases among individuals in the FBI, as in every other organization, I’m sure, run the gamut of political beliefs. Newsrooms, too, are populated by liberals, conservatives and Libertarians.

FBI investigators, like journalists, do the job they are trained and educated to do as professionally as possible, knowing their biases and putting them aside as much as they can.

I think even Peter Strzok, who was in charge of the Russia investigation but expressed distaste for Trump in emails he assumed would remain private, would have put professionalism first. The FBI took him off the case, and wisely so, after his bias became known.

I would like to think, however, that biases against Trump among knowledgeable FBI personnel were not based on politics.

I would like to think they recognized that Trump’s delusional narcissism, paranoia, childishly thin skin and abysmal ignorance of history, government, world affairs or politics made him dangerous to the nation, no matter what party he declared.

On the other hand, they, like Trump, didn’t think he’d win.

But he did, and the rest is — no, it’s not history. Regrettably, not yet.

Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at:

stevenmhansen

@plateautel.net