Election security

FBI spying is a far bigger scandal than the Trump impeachment

Of the two biggest news stories this year, only one of them is truly a scandal, and it’s not the one that's led to the ridiculously partisan impeachment.

No, the big scandal is that our most important and powerful law enforcement agency, the FBI, engaged in an unwarranted spy operation against a major party's presidential campaign. That story is only just now being told, thanks to U.S. Attorney General William Barr having called for multiple investigations into the matter.

It’s a scandal of epic proportions, and yet New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who insists he’s a conservative living in the real world, thinks it’s only on the same scale as an impeachment by Democrats over a phone call.

“If conservatives are right to object to the abuse of power by F.B.I. agents,” wrote Stephens on Wednesday, “shouldn’t they be far more alarmed at the abuse of investigatory and other powers for political ends by the president of the United States?”

Well, yes, that would be the case if Trump had abused his “investigatory and other powers for political ends.” But that’s not what he did. Whether Trump abused the power of his office is at best debatable. But at minimum, we know that high-level FBI agents, elected to nothing, abused their own power for what looks like the purpose of taking down a presidential candidate they didn’t like. That fact isn’t up for debate. The inspector general said it, and so did the head judge of the FISA court, which the FBI relies on for surveillance warrants.