John Podesta, the former chairman of the Hillary Clinton campaign, as well as the victim of a Russian cyber-attack that influenced the outcome of the presidential election, used an “old school” yet incredibly effective tactic to lambaste the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He wrote an opinion column. And what an opinion it was.
The Washington Post published Podesta’s withering critique of the agency on Thursday, December 15 and already Podesta’s words are making waves.
In the letter, Podesta said:
“As the former chair of the Clinton campaign and a direct target of Russian hacking, I understand just how serious this is. So I was surprised to read in the New York Times that when the FBI discovered the Russian attack in September 2015, it failed to send even a single agent to warn senior Democratic National Committee officials. Instead, messages were left with the DNC IT ‘help desk.’ As a former head of the FBI cyber division told the Times, this is a baffling decision: ‘We are not talking about an office that is in the middle of the woods of Montana.’”
He continued:
“What takes this from baffling to downright infuriating is that at nearly the exact same time that no one at the FBI could be bothered to drive 10 minutes to raise the alarm at DNC headquarters, two agents accompanied by attorneys from the Justice Department were in Denver visiting a tech firm that had helped maintain Clinton’s email server.”
In what should be clear to anyone paying attention, the FBI is playing by two sets of rules. A set of kindergartner’s rules for when the FBI supports a candidate, and a set of varsity rules for when they want to use the agency for political influence.
Podesta goes on to write:
“Comparing the FBI’s massive response to the overblown email scandal with the seemingly lackadaisical response to the very real Russian plot to subvert a national election shows that something is deeply broken at the FBI.”
Something is indeed deeply broken at the FBI. And this is not good news for our country.
Watch John Podesta speaking about the FBI’s double standard on CNN here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWAbnrCH3o4
Featured image via YouTube screengrab.
