Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota invoked the civil rights movement Wednesday, moments after she defended the FBI from criticisms of its surveillance of the 2016 Trump campaign.
Here is a thought: If you are going to defend the FBI from allegations of seriously shady, unethical behavior, maybe don’t then also remind everyone that the bureau has historically engaged in seriously shady, unethical behavior.
“I … want to express my gratitude for the thousands of men and women who work every day on the front line with the FBI,” Klobuchar said during Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Her remarks, which came immediately after Sen. Ted Cruz characterized the bureau’s handling of its surveillance of the Trump campaign as idiotic, were intended to serve as a direct refutation of the Texas Republican.
“I come from a background as a prosecutor, and our local law enforcement work with the FBI every day in our local office in Minnesota and then in the Senate. I have had the privilege to work with many, many people in the FBI,” said Klobuchar.
Then came the good part.
“I think it’s important to put this discussion in context with what happened in the 2016 election,” said the 2020 Democratic primary candidate, “which is why we’re here today. It is now undisputed by our intelligence agencies that Russia invaded our democracy, not with bombs, or jets, or tanks, but with a sophisticated cyber mission to undermine the underpinnings of our very democracy.”
Klobuchar continued, calling it “a democracy that hundreds of thousands of men and women have lost their lives on the battlefield defending, both our democracy and democracies abroad; a democracy that four little girls, at the height of the civil rights movement, lost their lives in a church in Birmingham, Alabama, because people were trying to hold on to that democracy and make sure that it was extended to people in this country.”
That is an interesting image to end with, considering Wednesday’s hearing was about FBI malfeasance specifically, namely its use of “inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported” (Horowitz’s words) information as justification for spying on members of the Trump 2016 campaign.
The inspector general’s report also shows FBI agents routinely overlooked “inconvenient details and even [withheld] important information from the FISA court, which authorizes the spying, in order to continue justifying the project,” as Eddie Scarry notes.
If you feel so inclined to whitewash what the bureau did in 2016, even after what the inspector general report shows, go for it. But a defense of FBI conduct that ends with an explicit reference to the civil rights movement, whose leaders were harassed, spied on, and persecuted by the bureau, is probably not the best way to go about it.
