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A veteran of nearly two decades in Congress, now the chairman of the Center for Security Policy board of advisers and a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, is demanding leftists in Washington, D.C., explain why there is a double standard for accountability, one for others and one for them.
It is at the Gatestone Institute website that Peter Hoekstra, formerly U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands and for 18 years a congressman representing Michigan, who cited dangerous anti-Trump comments from former CIA Director Mike Hayden.
Hayden, responding to social-media comments after Joe Biden’s FBI raided President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, taking possibly boxes of documents to which the bureau had no right, posted on social media his perspective.
He “seemingly endorsed the idea that Trump was a spy who, for allegedly having taken classified documents, should be executed by the government as the Rosenbergs were in 1953 for having passed US nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.”
In fact, over a photograph of the Rosenbergs, Hayden wrote, “Sounds about right.”
Hoekstra, who confirmed he opposed Hayden’s appointment to the CIA some 15 years ago, said Hayden’s comment actually confirms “what many fear: that there is a real double standard for certain Americans versus protected bureaucrats, politicians, and those favored by a mainstream media that has been accused of behaving like an arm of the Democratic Party…”
It’s an issue right now because of special prosecutor John Durham’s work on the Democrat creation – with the assistance of the FBI and DOJ – of the now-debunked Russiagate conspiracy theory used against President Trump before and after his election.
Further, there are apparent federal gun, drug and lobbying charges that might be, but haven’t yet been, brought against Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, for his numerous scandals.
Hoekstra wrote, “When President Joe Biden stood in Philadelphia before a blood-red wall flanked by U.S. Marines whom the Commander-in-Chief used as political props, he did not condemn Hayden’s suggestion to execute the former president; instead, he attacked everyday Americans with whose politics he disagrees.”
He also noted, “When local Democrat official Robert Telles was arrested in the alleged murder of a Las Vegas reporter who investigated him for having an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate, you would have been hard pressed to know he was a Democrat. The media simply left that fact out of the story or buried in later paragraphs. Similarly, there was not much coverage of the Democrat political operative who hired a hit man to kill a political opponent. Similarly, when a North Dakota teen was run over and killed, the mainstream media ignored the suspect’s claiming that he did it after a political disagreement with the teen, whom he labeled a ‘Republican extremist.'”
Hoekstra asks, “President Biden, where is your condemnation of this Democrat political violence? How about the FBI agents who raided the home of former president Trump and reportedly rummaged through the former first lady’s clothes closets and took Trump’s passports? Was this not politically excessive, President Biden?”
He cited Hillary Clinton’s famous email scandal, where she put classified government information, on a private email server that was unsecure.
“The FBI did not raid her home in Chappaqua, New York. They did not overturn her office or closets when classified emails turned up that she had not sent back to the government or when she wiped the data on her personal server with BleachBit, which meant the government would never know the full extent of the documents Clinton kept. Why was she treated differently by the FBI?” he asked.
And he noted that Democrat and other leftist bureaucrats also are in a bubble of protection.
“Consider the case of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who lied to the Senate when he declared that the intelligence community had no mass surveillance program collecting data on Americans. Not only did he lie in his public testimony before the committee, he also refused to acknowledge his lie and instead tried to explain it away. Because Clapper is a protected bureaucrat, he faced no consequences, and even joined CNN as a paid national security contributor, regularly attacking former President Trump. CNN does not note that he perjured himself before Congress – with evidence – when they put him on the air.”
There also was the CIA’s destruction in 2005 of 92 video tapes about its enhanced interrogation program.
“For those who do not remember the enhanced interrogation program, it was a CIA program that attempted to gain valuable information, intelligence from captured al-Qaida members about the plans, intentions, and capabilities of the organization,” Hoekstra explained.
“The enhanced interrogation program was extremely controversial when it, along with the existence of secret prisons, was leaked to the media, but Jose Rodriguez, the director of operations for the CIA at the time, staunchly defended it. The CIA claims that it provided valuable insights into al-Qaida, including information that eventually led to the successful raid that resulted in the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Others have concluded the program was tantamount to torture, including Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who conducted a review, and the European Court on Human Rights.”
Congress had wanted to see those tapes, but Rodrigeuz had them destroyed, despite both Democrat and GOP insistence they be preserved.
“No one was ever charged for destroying the tapes. As far as I know, no homes or offices were ever raided to uncover evidence. But because these unaccountable bureaucrats took this action, the American people, Congress, and the courts will never know what really happened during this controversial period of American history,” Hoekstra wrote.
He continued, “What of Michael Hayden’s role in all of this? After The New York Times advised the Bush White House that it would be running a story on the destruction of the tapes, Hayden wrote to the CIA staff that congressional leaders had been briefed on the existence of the tapes and their planned destruction. Wrong. I had not been briefed on the existence or destruction of the tapes when I became chairman in 2004 and Jane Harman had earlier objected to the tape destruction in 2003. Hayden also stated that the tapes were destroyed, ‘only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries.’ Again, all evidence points to the contrary, and Hayden is wrong to make these clearly false assertions.”
He said there’s been a “long line” of schemes to “cover up the actions of unaccountable bureaucrats.”
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