9 months ago
50
We begin today with Dana Milbank of The Washington Post reporting on the absurdity waiting to greet FBI Director Christopher Wray in the House Judiciary hearing room last Wednesday.
When Wray walked into the House Judiciary hearing room this week, he entered a parallel universe. Awaiting him in the audience were three women wearing T-shirts saying “Ashli Babbitt, Murdered by Capitol Police.” A few seats down, next to the woman with the “Biden’s Laptop Matters” phone cover, Ivan Raiklin, a self-styled “Deep State Marauder,” rose to heckle Wray: “Sir, can you stop violating our First, Fourth and Fifth amendments?” Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) ordered a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, which ended in the women in the Ashli Babbitt T-shirts shouting, “Justice for all!”
Jordan opened with an ode to paranoia: “American speech is censored. Parents are called terrorists. Catholics are called radicals. And I haven’t even talked about the spying that took place of a presidential campaign or the raiding of a former president’s home.” [...]
Patiently, Wray tried to disabuse the Republicans of their fantasies. No, the FBI doesn’t investigate parents for attending school board meetings. No, there were not undercover FBI agents in the crowd on Jan. 6. Actually, the FBI has opened more investigations into violence by abortion rights supporters than by abortion opponents.
But each time Wray batted down a wacky accusation, Republicans popped up with another.
Most of the panels that I attended at Netroots Nation this past week were about identifying and combatting misinformation and disinformation. We are swimming in this stuff.
