Just a reminder before getting into the FBI update for today: As the revelations of corruption within the “Justice” Department grow ever more infuriating, the one real spark of hope the left have is that this might provoke us into behaving in some ill-advised way. Imagine how joyful the left would be if we gave them some phony excuse to crack down even more on so-called “domestic terrorism.” They’d love for this to happen, say, a week or two before the election. Don’t fall for it!

A Viciously Political Hit Man

That said, Timothy Thibault, the senior official at the FBI’s DC field office who’d been reassigned after information surfaced about his role in preventing the laptop investigation, has reportedly resigned or been fired — that’s still not clear — and was seen being escorted out of the building’s elevator by “two or three headquarters-looking types.” He’s a 25-year veteran of the Bureau.

The Washington Times has details about the viciously political social media posts he’d made. One was a retweet from the Lincoln Project calling President Trump “a psychologically broken, embittered and deeply unhappy man.” Thibault was apparently known for pushing out unvaccinated agents from the FBI’s “election squad,” on the assumption they were Trump supporters. (Editorial aside: That’s an interesting term, “election squad,” with some, shall we say, unflattering connotations.)

In fact, one former FBI official who’d simply attended Trump’s January 6 rally — he did not enter the Capitol — was placed on indefinite suspension last year. As a whistleblower talking to the House Judiciary Committee, he said others in the FBI were treated similarly for attending the rally, even though it was on their own time. “Look,” the whistleblower said, “I think some of the executives that were involved in my indefinite suspension are the same cast of characters involved in pulling security clearances for conservative employees in retaliation for their disfavored political speech.”

In other words, Thibault is just one of a number of people who’ve been running the Bureau this way. I call his firing “a good start.”

Killing the Hunter Biden Laptop Story

The New York Post has details as well. When Thibault ordered the Hunter Biden laptop matter closed, it was the same month that Miranda Devine’s story first appeared there. Recall that her story was suppressed on social media — after a warning to Facebook from the FBI about an imminent “dump” of Russian propaganda — and in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and that 51 former intel officials signed a letter saying the story had classic earmarks of Russian disinformation. (There was never any evidence that it was Russian disinformation.) In other words, Thibault certainly wasn’t acting alone to kill the laptop story. At the moment, he appears to be the fall guy; there’s plenty of blame to go around.

Deliberate Manipulation of the Criminal Code

Next, we have a scathing, must-read legal analysis of what the “Justice” Department has done, from Margot Cleveland. She accuses them of twisting the criminal code to search the home of a political enemy — “an appalling weaponization of the criminal justice system.” This might be the definitive explanation of their misuse of the Presidential Records Act, their disregard of the President’s unique ability to declassify, and their deliberate manipulation of the criminal code to make it “fit” what they had. Everyone involved in that sham should just read this and go home.

Retired Assistant FBI Director Kevin Brock unloaded to investigative reporter John Solomon on his podcast “Just the News, Not Noise” about the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Prior to the raid, on July 31, Brock publicly defended the FBI after Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said it was corrupted to its core. “Grassley gets some things right,” he said, “and raises specific legitimate concerns appropriate to his role of oversight. He falls out of the logic tree, however, when he claims that those legitimate concerns, which are fairly isolated, are proof somehow of a thoroughly corrupted FBI.” He said Grassley was engaging in “political oversight…over-the-top hyperbole and scare tactics.”

But after the raid — and after the release of the largely redacted affidavit that supposedly justified it — Brock wasn’t so supportive. “I think they’re going to regret this,” he said on Solomon’s podcast last Friday, declaring that the Bureau should not have criminalized the dispute between President Trump and the National Archives. He said the Bureau appeared to have failed to meet the probable cause threshold for the invasive search of Trump’s property. He noted Trump’s wide latitude as President to declassify documents and declare them personal.

“The FBI should not have participated in this investigation,” he said. “…There was no need for law enforcement involvement in this. And there was certainly no need for an invasive search of the residence.”

Solomon writes: “Brock said if the redacted sections of the affidavit don’t lay out evidence that Trump’s possession of the documents was clearly illegal, then ‘basically we have the search of a man’s residence without cause being stated as to why something illegal happened.’”

More details from Solomon here, highly recommended.

The DOJ’s Honor System is a Joke

It gets worse. The “Justice” Department admitted Monday that it had swept up privileged communications while raiding Mar-a-Lago. They made light of this, saying they have a process to segregate such material, but don’t buy it. As Solomon explains, that process — called “filter teams” or “taint teams” — “has itself been tainted by a string of legal controversies over the seizure of attorney-client privilege protected materials in other cases.”

It’s basically the honor system. (I’ll pause while you fall to the floor laughing.) The teams are made up of the prosecutors’ colleagues — I am not making this up — at the very agency responsible for the prosecution! The DOJ has had to apologize for lapses before, which, as Solomon writes, “only further heightened defense lawyers’ concerns that the government’s regard for protecting privileged materials is waning or non-existent.” In other words, this “process” is a joke.

Yesterday, we were picturing FBI agents hurriedly fishing through Trump’s boxes for anything they could find before the neutral “special master” took them. Today, that would seem to be the case. Kyle Becker at Becker News has a good summary.

Before leaving the White House, President Trump had been working on declassifying documents related to the Russia Hoax, according to his former adviser Kash Patel, and he did issue declassification orders.

“One of the times in the Oval Office he had RussiaGate docs,” Patel told Solomon. “And he said that these are declassified and the American public needs to see them.” Maybe the DOJ was trying to get those away from him. Just a thought.

It’s up to the DOJ and FBI to show that this material was handled improperly or not declassified, Patel said. “There’s a whole other debate that’s already been settled by the DOJ and FBI application of these statutes to Hillary Clinton.”

Something else regarding Patel: Though the DOJ cited “protection of witnesses” as a reason for their redactions, they left his name unredacted. A name isn’t usually left unredacted unless that person is a target of investigation. He says they did it to try to silence him.

Trump Has Not Been Silenced

Trump was most definitely not silenced after the story came out about the FBI’s effort to bury the Hunter laptop story. “This is massive FRAUD & ELECTION INTERFERENCE at a level never seen before in our country,” he said on Truth Social, adding that the “remedy” was to “declare the rightful winner” in 2020 or, at a minimum, “hold a new election.” If only.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, speaking Sunday on Sunday Morning Futures, made essentially the same point to Maria Bartiromo about what the FBI had done to change the outcome of the election. If you didn’t see his segment, here’s what he said.

Finally, here’s a must-read article about the person President Biden is appointing to head his “Intelligence Advisory Board.” Jeremy Bash, former CIA head and MSNBC host (always a good combination), was one of the loudest voices saying Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation. Biden is apparently digging in.

The New York Post covered this, too.

Mike Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. A New York Times best-selling author, he hosts the weekly talk show Huckabee on TBN.

Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com. Reprinted with permission.