Good riddance – finally – to a D.C. disgrace
What the hell took so long? That’s how every normal person responded to yesterday’s announcement that amorous
FBI agent Peter
Strzok had finally been sacked. The Trump-bashing bureaucrat was banished to the FBI’s basement a year ago. But Strzok kept the paycheck-pension gravy train rolling until now.
The question most of us have is “how?”
If we’d been caught in an extramarital affair with a co-worker while using company texts and emails to trash our clients or customers — we’d be fired on the spot.
And yes, that’s what Donald Trump was when the still-inexplicable investigation into his campaign’s foreign connections began in the spring of 2016 — a customer of the justice system. An odd turn of phrase, yes. We usually just call them “citizens.”
Citizens, even despicable ones like marathon bomber and dirtbag punk Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, are entitled to fair treatment. Would a prosecutor who talked about Muslims the way Strzok talked about Republican voters (“ignorant hillbillies”) be allowed to stay on the Tsarnaev case? No way.
But in Washington, it seems to be the only way.
How many times have American conservatives watched government hacks break the rules but keep their jobs? Break the law but beat the rap — or more accurately, never get “rapped” in the first place?
The most glaring example is Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state mishandled classified information in a way that would have gotten any low-level soldier or sailor fired — or worse. Just ask Kristian Saucier.
Remember when the IRS was weaponized by the Obama administration to target Tea Party groups in the wake of the GOP’s 2010 election success? It was so over the top that eventually (aka “after the damage had been done”) the IRS bigwig in charge, Lois Lerner, issued an apology. Even President Obama himself called the actions “outrageous” and vowed to hold the IRS accountable.
And then ... nothing. Open collusion between a sitting president’s administration and the IRS to attack his opponents, and everybody walked.
Because in Washington, everybody walks. Or, if they do get fired, there’s a sweetheart job in the D.C. swamp waiting for them.
The back-scratching among D.C. bureaucrats is so bad, you can’t even keep them fired once you get rid of them. A new Inspector General report found that the IRS has re-hired more than 200 workers it previously fired, including people fired for forging IRS documents, accessing taxpayers’ personal data without permission, and even physically threatening co-workers.
In other words, there’s a decent chance fired and disgraced Peter Strzok could return to the FBI. Still a disgrace, but still picking up a paycheck.