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Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the wax museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al Qaeda, Zawahiri is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw us, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like say our name, been saying, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
All right, you guys, introducing the great Jim Bovard, public policy hooligan.
That's his book.
You'll love it.
It's great.
It's his memoir.
This is a man who quite literally has been denounced by the heads of every U.S. government department for his great work.
And he wrote most of the books that are available online.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing, Jim?
Hey, Scott, thanks for having me on and congratulations on the success of Fool's Errand.
It's great to see so many people quoting that.
It's great to see you getting the speaking invites.
It's great to see you getting some of the respect that you finally deserve.
Well, thanks, Jim.
That's very kind of you.
You know what?
I got to say, you've been a great inspiration to me all along.
When I first learned about libertarianism, they were some pretty weak libertarians.
And I thought, well, I guess I'd rather run with the militia kooks than these kind of wimps.
And then you were one of the first libertarians I started reading who, you know, really was brave and telling it like it is and in places where it really matters, like the Wall Street Journal and stuff like that, where they can't ignore you.
So as I try to usually introduce you as a investigative opinion columnist, lots of original journalism in all of your books and in your opinion pieces that you write for USA Today, where you're on the board of something or other, and at The Hill, where you publish regularly great stuff at The Hill and the Future Freedom Foundation, of course, at FFF.org.
So yeah, the great Jim Bovar.
If you haven't read all of his books, you should.
And especially Attention Deficit Democracy, which is a masterpiece, and also Public Policy Hooligan, which is great and which he can actually make some money off of.
So now let's talk about the FBI.
You don't like them.
What's your problem?
Well, this is an agency that's had far too much power going back for 100 years, almost 100 years.
It's something which has thrown so many wrenches into American democracy.
It has trampled the rights and liberties of far more people than most Americans recognize.
And there have been all these promises to reform it.
We've been hearing that going back at least to the end of the Hoover era.
But the agency still has sweeping power, and it still gets far too much deference.
Even though juries are increasingly not willing to believe FBI agents, most of the media still does.
Yeah.
Well, you remember Frederick Whitehurst, the whistleblower from the crime lab in the 1990s, right?
And so one of the things I learned from him was that job one of the FBI is protecting the FBI.
And that's job one and everything else is in 100th place kind of thing.
I don't know his exact words, but something like that.
Nothing else matters to the—it's almost like a cult of power in a sense.
Well, and, you know, there are good FBI agents who follow the law and respect the Constitution and have done the best they could.
But especially in the last and recent years, I think it's been a case of some of the most power-hungry people rising to the top.
And some of the stuff coming out from the Inspector General report and other sources makes it raise huge questions about the FBI's role in the 2016 election.
It looks like they were putting their hand, if not their fist, on the scale.
All right.
So let's do history later and start with that.
This new IG report, because, boy, is this a case of he said, she said in this Trump-Russia-Ghazi-whatever-the-hell fake scandal, if you ask me, Jim.
But it seems like—and you know what?
I don't want to be partisan about this, but it really does seem more like the accusers are the ones who are guilty of conspiring here, huh?
Well, it's—you know, there's a lot of stuff which we don't know, and I hope that we can get a whole lot more, you know, files open as soon as possible.
But I heard a number of people pissing and moaning about the Inspector General's report on the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton because they were upset he didn't conclude that it was basically a conspiracy, so on and so forth.
Okay, there were some of those conclusions which I disagreed with, but there's a lot of great stuff in that 569-page report, which I, you know, raised to speed through—speed read through—had an article in USA Today the following morning, following day.
There was a lot of stuff there that's really shocking about how much—about the bias of a lot of the top investigators.
You know, I was reading through that report, and I'd always had the sense that the FBI had basically rolled over for Hillary Clinton, that they just kind of practically stretched out a red carpet for her way to the White House.
And lots of details, lots of details on that in the report, but the thing which really kind of captured it perfectly was that the FBI had decided to exonerate her unless she confessed in the final sit-down interview, you know, a couple days before Comey made his announcement that they were not going to charge her.
And so this is a hell of a standard, you know, unless she confesses and she's innocent.
This is not the standard the FBI uses in other investigations.
And there were so many things which they did which, you know, made it obvious that they weren't really investigating her.
It was kind of a facade that they were kind of like, well, you know, they were very careful not to look under rocks.
Well, I mean, it's great in a way.
It's a peek in the window, basically, of what happens when the law comes up against politics.
And I mean, obviously, it would be a very political decision whether she's outright guilty of, you know, the very worst cases of whatever she was accused of with unsafe keeping of secrets and that kind of thing, to indict her and try to prosecute her right as she's the front runner running for president.
So not that I'm saying it's legit, but I'm just saying that's the way it works, right?
When a judge is that powerful of a judge, investigating his crimes becomes politically a no-go, and so it doesn't go.
And the same thing here.
So this is just what it looks like, right, when the politics are powerful enough that the law must be placed on hold in favor of the person.
Right.
And there were so many things which were obvious from as soon as she became Secretary of State in 2009 that she was basically exempt.
I mean, there were 17 Freedom of Information Act requests for her emails prior to 2014.
They were simply ignored or shrugged off.
I mean, it was obvious she was massively violating federal law as far as her records long before the FBI began investigating her.
So it wasn't like this.
This came out of nowhere.
But part of the trouble is that a lot of the agencies in Washington, D.C. act like they have some kind of God-given right to keep all their secrets from the American people.
And that's how Hillary Clinton ran the State Department.
And there were an awful lot of, you know, it would have been great to see, to open all the files to see why the people in the Obama administration decided to bomb Libya.
And I think we still have not seen a lot of the most damning stuff on that, because they basically pulled out of a hat the same thing which they did with Syria, which they made the civil war there so much more deadly for no good reason.
The U.S. was flip-flopping back and forth.
The U.S. policy there was such a mess that you had the CIA aiding and bankrolling a terrorist group that was fighting a terrorist group that was supported by the Pentagon.
And yet, in spite of these obvious conflicts, which were reported sporadically by the LA Times and other places, the policy continued.
And it's not like Trump has straightened this mess out.
We're still doing all kinds of crazy crap in Syria.
Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you, I mean, just from the emails we do have about Libya are just damning.
Sidney Blumenthal saying, hey, the guys whose side we're taking, they're just masquering Black people.
But anyway, so let's keep continuing.
And the worst kind of motivation attributed to the French by her unofficial intelligence asset and friend, Sidney Blumenthal here, Max Blumenthal's father, interestingly, right?
But man, so there's this thing that keeps coming up, and you're kind of, you sort of made reference to it, but didn't outright say that.
The whole thing is she had this whole separate server and this whole separate email system for the same reason George W. Bush did.
It's because they're breaking the law and keeping this stuff secret.
And so that was why she had these separate servers.
And as, you know, everybody makes such a big deal about Trump, you know, half-joking and saying, hey, Russia, where's the 30,000 missing emails?
When are you going to leak those?
Right?
Which was, I thought, great.
You know, I don't know.
But everyone makes such a big deal about that.
But they missed the whole point about, there's still 30,000 emails that Hillary and her people claim that, oh, those were private.
And her example was emailing back and forth with Bill about when she's going to the gym and all that, even though Bill said on the record in public that he had actually only sent one or two emails in his whole life from somebody else's account, because he doesn't do email.
And so, you know, she's clearly lying about that.
And it was all tied up, from what we do know from some of the emails, it was all, you can see all this overlap and corruption with the Clinton Foundation and her foreign policies.
Almost the direct kind of corruption that you would think she wouldn't go that far, where, yeah, she's just outright taking all this money and doing major favors for the Saudis, especially, right?
Well, yeah, there's all kinds of fishy stuff.
It was frustrating as hell not to be able to see that before the 2016 election.
There were a lot of other examples of the State Department simply shutting down democracy as far as open government.
There was a group that wanted to see the emails from her top aides, and the State Department said it would take 75 years to disclose them.
75 years, that's like the Warren Commission.
The Warren Commission, which would not tell us the details of the John F. Kennedy assassination, and sealed the records for, what, 70, 75 years?
And hey, trust us, your great-grandchildren can see the evidence.
Yeah, it doesn't work.
Hillary Clinton's not unique that way, but it was sad to see how far the FBI bent in order to cover her up, to cover up her abuses.
And we don't know what the FBI is covering up right now.
I mean, it's good to see Congress putting some pressure on the FBI to open its files, but I'm not confident that it's going to succeed, because the FBI has a very long history of hiding its worst misdeeds, or it's things that we don't find out about until 10 or 15 years after they happened.
All right, hang on just one second.
Hey, guys, here's who sponsors this show.
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So, you have this quote here from what is in here, where, as you mentioned, this bias among these investigators, where the one agent is saying to the other that we'll stop him, and that this was their motivation, I guess, it sure seems like.
Now, the other spin on that is that, well, yeah, I mean, these guys had their opinions, but it didn't change the investigation.
There's no direct evidence of that, or at least the IG didn't say that.
But you know what?
Oh, wait, I know what I was going to say, too.
I read a thing about where they're complaining to each other about how, yeah, the New York office really screwed us.
Apparently, they're pro-Trump, and they're the ones who pushed the Wiener laptop story so bad that they forced Comey's hand, apparently, and made him do that little press conference.
And you talk about them putting their thumb or their fist on the scale.
You even have possibly the Washington office versus the New York office in terms of choosing.
And of course, the American people are just in the background.
We don't have much to do with this.
They're choosing who's going to be the President of the United States or doing their best to choose.
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't make—it's a farce as far as representative government, because the voters are blindfolded.
The quote you referenced was from the lead FBI investigator, Peter Strzok, who told his girlfriend that we'll stop Donald Trump from becoming president.
He said that in August of 2016.
They were doing everything that they could.
He was already, I think, had been assigned to the Russian investigation at that point, and he was pushing that full speed.
It's interesting, in congressional testimony, after the report came out, the inspector general was not willing to say that Strzok's anti-Trump bias did not have a biasing effect on the Russian investigation.
So there's a lot of people who are apprehensive that the IG is going to come out and say, OK, so the Hillary investigation, that wasn't biased, even though the people doing it were biased.
But the Russian investigation, that was a mess.
And that's something which could absolutely blow the Mueller investigation out of the water.
But Mueller is having enough troubles already as far as credibility.
So, I mean, there are so many different levels of mess here, and you've got so many government officials who are withholding so much information from the American people.
How the hell are we supposed to keep a leash on Washington when we have no idea what these nearly all-powerful federal agencies are doing?
Well, and just from my point of view, I don't know exactly how you feel about it, but I certainly thought that Trump and Hillary are both worse than each other in a hundred ways.
And there's certainly no favoring one or the other.
That doesn't mean I want the secret police intervening in the election like this is some old world hell hole or something like that.
America has a lot of flaws, but at least supposedly it's not a banana republic when it comes to whether the people's vote counts and they get to choose who their horrible masters are for these temporary terms.
That part of it is still supposed to work, Jim, and we still are supposed to insist upon at least that, I guess.
Scott, I've never heard so much positive thinking from you.
No, I mean, yeah, that's the idea.
This is what Americans are taught, and in some ways we still have some of that.
I mean, hell, it worked, right?
Donald Trump actually was able to crush the Clintons and the Bushes to become the President of the United States, which he's probably the only person outside of their ring of power who could have done that in America, as rich and famous as he is.
Maybe, but keep in mind the stories which I've heard was that there were Russian operatives who managed to hack ways and prevent Hillary Clinton from finding where Wisconsin was located.
Yeah, that could have been it, Jim.
Actually, them sneaky Russians, they probably were using the Cubans' mind control ray gun that the State Department's freaking out about down there.
Yeah, I mean, it's like peeling an onion.
There are so many levels of BS in this entire controversy, and it's hard to know who is gold standard credibility at this point.
But the whole idea that we should still put the FBI on a pedestal, that we should venerate them, that these are the ultimate sources of truth, I mean, this is something which has been blown up in case after case.
And it's funny, a lot of the Washington media is still tied to the FBI because they're still waiting for leaks.
They're still waiting for silver platter stories.
That was something which a fascinating part of the IG report was that so many of the FBI agents have taken basically bribes from journalists, as far as free sporting tickets, fancy free meals, alcohol, other things, which is like, what the hell is going on here?
I mean, it was—I don't know if there were other—well, it was interesting to see the controversy about the New York Times reporter, who was working for other places, was boinking the Senate Intelligence Committee guy.
So it's like, were there other cases like that?
I don't know.
And now, I know you're quite a historian about FBI abuses going back to J. Edgar Hoover and this, that, and the other things.
So I wonder if that includes a lot of intervening in elections, presidential elections, even.
Yeah.
Well, that's—there was—yeah, back in 1948, J. Edgar Hoover was leaking stuff about Harry Truman being corrupt in 1952.
Yeah, you make him sound like a pretty good guy.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
In 1952, Hoover spread rumors that the Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson was a closet homosexual.
In 1964, the FBI did wiretaps on Barry Goldwater's campaign.
They were also conducting background checks to see if he had any homosexuals on staff.
They also did a big investigation of the 1964 Democratic Convention that squelched Martin Luther King's efforts to lead a protest there.
In 1972, 1974, the FBI toppled Richard Nixon.
How many other things like that happened?
We don't know.
The FBI has done a pretty good job of protecting the secrets of its abuses.
But hopefully, we're going to learn a lot more about the FBI's role in the 2016 election.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know.
I'm not going to hold my breath for that.
But, I mean, there sure is a lot of demand for it, and I guess it's such a partisan issue.
I don't know.
I mean, and here's the thing about it, not to beg the question too much, but this story's bullshit, Jim.
Everybody knows that.
The story of the Russian collusion?
Yeah.
Even the Russian intervention at all.
I mean, I don't believe for a minute that they're behind even the hacking and the leaking of these emails to WikiLeaks, such as they were.
And even then, what a scandal that people got to see real emails and what they said.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
I mean, it was great that at least one of the veils was dropped on American politics.
I mean, we should be able to see a whole lot more of that.
But, you know, to see the—it was fine to see how much the media in 2016 was very upset about the leaks from WikiLeaks.
It's like people—I mean, this is something that's going to make people lose faith.
No, folks, people lost faith, have been losing faith for years.
This is simply confirming suspicions that American politics is often nothing more than a racket.
Right.
And you know what?
I mean, some of them, some of the sort of kind of more principled people did recognize during the Manning leak that as Manning said, the people have got to know this stuff so that they can try to fix it.
I mean, this is crazy.
This is out of control, but the people don't know.
So you know what?
Here's some documents.
Check it out.
Yeah.
I mean, that was a great service by Manning.
I mean, doesn't that sound exactly like what a bunch of tri-corner hat guys from a couple hundred years ago would have wanted him to do or what have you?
Well, I don't know that they had computers back then, so I'm not—I don't—you know, I've— I'm an original intent guy.
I say that the Americans have a right to know and that anybody who respects freedom and liberty and even the pretension that the people create this government to be our security force rather than they suffer our existence, which is how it looks more and more now, should insist on that entire frame of reference here.
Of course, we have the right to know all that stuff no matter who leaked it, but still, you know— I agree.
I agree.
And it's just sad that there was not more open support for—you know, I mean, it was almost as if since the State Department had decided to keep Hillary's record secret that we had no right to know, but that was completely illegitimate.
But the same is true of a lot of the entire 2016 election with all the lies from both major candidates.
At least we had Bill Weld.
God, you know what?
You may just get him again, Jim.
I was at a dinner last night and, you know, there were some libertarian activists.
Oh, he was so impressive.
He was—he was a great spokesman.
I said, he endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Well, aside from that, he was really good.
Yeah.
And I'm thinking, oh, Shazam, what the hell is this?
Yeah, you know, as though that kind of lapse of judgment is—must be an isolated incident with all other things being as good as you could get, huh?
And they asked me why I drank.
Yeah, this is why I need to start for sure, man.
Yeah, so it's ugly.
Hopefully we'll find out more.
You know what?
The silver lining in all this is I haven't watched TV news in two or three years.
I'm just completely over it.
I read only.
Finally cured me of it.
That's, you know, that's probably the reason you're a lot better informed than most people.
All right, Jim, I better go.
I got to interview this lady about killing Libyans now.
Okay.
Hey, Scott, thanks so much for having me on.
And once again, it's great to see Fool's Aaron doing so well.
And I hope you're getting rich off the royalties.
Yeah, well, I think you know better than that.
But thanks very much, man.
I really appreciate it.
All right.
Thanks, Scott.
Take care.
All right, you guys, that's Jim Bovard.
He wrote Public Policy Hooligan, which is hilarious and awesome and great.
And also Attention Deficit Democracy, the Bush betrayal before that terrorism and tyranny and then freedom and chains.
And I got a whole Bovard section on my shelf over here.
Shakedown.
That's a good one.
The farm fiasco.
He writes for USA Today and The Hill all the time.
Check out his website at jimbovard.com.
All right, you guys, and that's the show.
You know me, scotthorton.org, youtube.com, scotthortonshow, libertarianinstitute.org.
And buy my book, and it's now available in audiobook as well.
Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
Hey, it's endorsed by Ron Paul and Daniel Ellsberg and Stephen Walt and Peter Van Buren and Matthew Ho and Daniel Davis and Anand Gopal and Patrick Coburn and Eric Margulies.
You'll like it.
Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan.
And follow me on Twitter at scotthortonshow.
Thanks, guys!
