Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, there has been chatter among many in his base that an all-powerful shadow government exists and that it has been trying relentlessly to undermine the president and throttle his agenda.
It’s commonly known as the “deep state.”
Following the release of the Justice Department’s inspector general report on Thursday, text conversations between former FBI investigator Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page revealed some of the inner workings of these mainstay government employees plotting and scheming against Trump.
Both Strzok and Page thought they had the power to stop Trump from ever becoming president.
“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page wrote to Strzok via text message in August 2016, with whom she was having an extramarital affair.
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok replied.
Obviously, they failed in this effort. But it brings up the greater question about the deep state, and just how powerful it really is.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., believes the deep state has actually existed for a long time, but everyone has a different definition of what it is, and we’ve seen different levels of it operating.
“One aspect of the deep state is the bureaucracy, the bureaucrats there, the lifers [career employees],” Biggs said in a Washington Examiner editorial board meeting on Friday. “They have a political agenda perhaps. And in most administrations they get to come down, they get to do the top level [work], maybe next level. But the whole monstrosity remains there.”
He explained that former President George W. Bush couldn’t get anything done because of “something going on,” which he likened to the deep state.
“I think what we’re seeing here at the highest levels in the FBI and DOJ — which really is bothersome to me — is this idea of corruption for political purposes,” Biggs said.
Biggs cited the case of former Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., who was indicted and convicted of corruption after federal agents found $90,000 in his freezer.
“That’s the kind of corruption where you say, ‘Yeah, there are gonna be losers who get bought off and bribed, or succumb to bribes,'” Biggs said. “But this other thing is this idea of they’re doing this for political control, political outcome. And in a constitutional republic, that’s the most dangerous game.”
