I am not a conspiracy theorist. I believe America landed on the moon, that Area 51 is not inhabited by aliens, and I do not for a minute believe September 11th was an inside job. I typically shut-down when people start spouting-off conspiracy theories, because I think reality is often as insane as theory. Recent events, however, have established the fact that various agencies of government have acted outside their charter and have been weaponized for political purposes. Such actions are what turn republics into banana republics, and lead to a loss of liberty.

Nowhere has this been better illustrated than with regard to the politicization of the FBI during the waning days of the Obama Administration and the transition to President Trump. Evidently, a cadre of agents wanted to form a “secret society” to counter the possibility of a Trump presidency and, in the event of his election, mount an internal resistance. Two of the agents at the center of this unfolding controversy are Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who exchanged very colorful messages about how to counter the “threat” of a Trump presidential win. In a text exchange in August, 2016, Strzok tells Page: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office” – referring to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — “that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

Amazingly, after incendiary messages like these were unveiled between Strzok and Page in the run-up to the 2016 election, the FBI now admits that the majority of their text messages were not archived between December, 2016 and May, 2017. These missing texts were sent in a crucial timeframe between the election through the presidential transition, and into the beginning of the Robert Mueller Russia Probe. Both Strzok and Page were assigned to the Russia probe in its earliest days, while Strzok was also a senior counterintelligence officer who helped lead the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email usage. For their text messages during this crucial period to have gone missing stretches credulity.

The bombshell about the missing texts was initially blamed by the Department of Justice on faulty technology. In a letter to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Stephen Boyd wrote “The Department wants to bring to your attention that the FBI’s technical system for retaining text messages sent and received on FBI mobile devices failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page from December 14, 2016 to approximately May 17, 2017.” When asked by a reporter, however, if other similar Samsung 5 devices, like those used by Strzok and Page, failed to archive an FBI agent replied “no comment.” Are the American people really supposed to believe that the archive system at the FBI failed only to capture texts between two romantically involved senior FBI agents involved in the Russia probe, who talked of creating a “secret society” to oppose Donald Trump?

Trust must be restored in the FBI, as failure to do so would jeopardize trust in the rule of law in this country. The FBI is supposed to be an impartial, unbiased agency committed to the pursuit of justice. Political activism while on duty by agents is always unacceptable, regardless of which party is in power. In order to restore trust in the FBI, law and order must be restored at every level of the Bureau. This means, among other things, that Strzok and Page need to be fired, the archives need to be recovered, and people need to go to jail if there was political collusion taking place before or after the 2016 election. The more we learn about the sad state of affairs at the FBI, the more that it appears that James Comey was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to corruption.

The FBI is critical to our national security, thus it is critical that corruption be routed-out of the bureau. I hope Congress continues to peel back the layers of the onion to expose the corruption that is crippling the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency.