Former Vice President Mike Pence dented whatever presidential prospects he might have had last week when he criticized fellow Republicans for denouncing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago raid.
The New York Times reported:
Speaking at a political event in New Hampshire, Mr. Pence said that Republicans could hold the Justice Department and the F.B.I. accountable for their decisions “without attacking the rank-and-file law enforcement personnel.”
“Our party stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the F.B.I. must stop,” Mr. Pence went on. “Calls to defund the F.B.I. are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.”
Pence badly misread the mood of the Republican base, which is outraged at the violation of Donald Trump’s constitutional rights, and the evident political bias of the FBI and the Department of Justice, from the “Russia collusion” hoax until today.
True, Pence has never been one to go with the partisan flow — usually to his credit. In January 2021, Pence refused to yield to pressure from President Trump and from the mob raging inside the Capitol, and would not reject the Electoral College vote.
Though Pence was regarded by some Trump supporters as a traitor, he stuck to his view that the Constitution did not give a vice president broad discretion to intervene in the process.
Later, when asked by an angry Trump supporter who supposedly ordered Pence not to go along with the Trump plan, Pence wryly answered: “James Madison.”
Pence also knew that even if there was a valid constitutional argument for intervening, the country would never have accepted such action as legitimate.
In that moment, Pence remained true to his reputation as a man who would put principle above politics, and who valued the stability of the republic over the outcome of a particular battle.
That was the Pence the nation saw back in 2015, when, as the governor of Indiana, he agreed to modify his state’s newly-enacted religious freedom law to clarify that businesses could not discriminate against LGBTQ people. (The LGBTQ crowd, including South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, vilified him anyway.)
So it was puzzling last week when Pence not only defended the rank-and-file of the FBI — with which most conservatives would agree — but went further, creating a false moral equivalence between criticism of the FBI and criticism of the police.
“Defund the police” is based on a lie — namely, the canard that law enforcement is a weapon of “systemic racism.” While there are real cases of abuse, such as the murder of George Floyd, police generally try to treat people fairly.
Many of the accusations against the police are simply based on hoaxes — such as the claim that police in Atlanta, Georgia, committed “murder” in killing Rayshard Brooks after he stole and fired an officer’s Taser. (The officers were exonerated this week.)
Calls to “defund” or “abolish” the FBI, in contrast, are based on the truth that the agency has become deeply politicized, and has shown no interest in accountability or reform.
As I wrote in 2019, after the umpteenth investigation of Trump for Russia “collusion”: “The FBI, as such, may never recover the public trust. The best solution may be to scrap the FBI and start fresh with a reorganized agency under a new name and with an improved commitment to neutrality and accountability.”
For Pence to equate irrational prejudice against the police with well-founded criticism of the FBI shows that he does not take seriously the danger that a rogue FBI poses to constitutional rights.
There is simply no excuse — and, as of yet, no explanation — for an FBI raid on a former president. Thus far, the reasons that have been offered — such as a need to recover missing documents — do not justify the tactics used. The search warrant was so broad as to constitute the sort of “general search” that the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent. Moreover, the treatment of a former president as if he were lower than a common criminal — over documents — was an attack on the presidency itself.
No president, past or present — and no potential candidate — is above the law. But when investigating one, there is a special obligation to act with transparency. That was the lesson the DOJ and FBI were to have learned from the Hillary Clinton email fiasco and the “Russia collusion” disaster. But Attorney General Merrick Garland has compounded the damage, reducing the U.S. to a banana republic in which the law is weaponized against opposition.
The rot is deep, and reform is long overdue.
One might understand if Pence was motivated by irritation at Trump, who has repeatedly attacked him in public. But Pence’s great virtue has always been his ability to put ideas above emotion.
In that sense, his remark last week was both a political and a moral failure that could scuttle his presidential hopes.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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