Internal Documents Show The FBI Is Only Interested In Punishing Anti-Trump Speech By Its Employees

Free Speech

from the protecting-the-most-powerful-man-in-the-world-from-hurtful-texts dept

It doesn’t pay to anger the man in charge. Trump’s DOJ is more vindictive than most, it appears. Documents obtained via a FOIA request by Lawfare shows the FBI is more motivated to hunt down internal critics of this administration than any other it has served previously.

Two agents involved in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server have already been served up for punishment by this administration for their texted anti-Trump sentiments. Their political texts violated FBI internal guidelines — ones meant to prevent personal feelings from tainting investigations. But to date, the FBI really hasn’t done much about this sort of behavior. It took criticism of Trump to force the FBI to finally start dealing with this misconduct.

As Scott Anderson and Benjamin Wittes point out, this recent discipline is an anomaly.

Five employees, the documents show, have been disciplined for private communications using government devices in which they have criticized President Trump. But none, at least not since 2011, has been disciplined for similar conduct with respect to presidential candidates Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney, or President Barack Obama—or for praising Trump.

This relative flurry of disciplinary activity is the only thing on record over a period covering two presidential administrations. And this lack of consistency has already been pointed out by Peter Strzok, the FBI agent demoted for his anti-Trump text messages. His lawsuit against Bill Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray pointed out the inequitable treatment of certain speech by FBI agents. There are limitations to the free speech protections granted to government employees, but whatever restrictions exist have to be enforced consistently. That simply doesn’t happen under Trump.

During the Trump Administration this viewpoint discrimination has infected the FBI as well. While Special Agent Strzok and others who expressed negative opinions of President Trump have been subject to administrative punishments of various degrees of severity, no actions have been taken against agents who expressed harsh criticism of Secretary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, or those in the New York Field Office who leaked negative information about Secretary Clinton to the Trump campaign in the weeks before the election.

This lawsuit prompted Lawfare’s FOIA request. Unsurprisingly, Lawfare had to engage in litigation of its own to obtain the requested documents. The supplemental information the FBI finally released made it clear no agents had been punished for political speech prior to 2018’s demotion of Peter Strzok.

Punishing government employees for their political opinions seems like something that comes down on the wrong side of the First Amendment. It’s also a convenient way to discourage whistleblowers and suppress criticism. But it doesn’t appear to have been enforced until Trump took office, suggesting it isn’t the FBI that has a problem with political speech, but those receiving the criticism.

If the FBI is going to clamp down on political statements and criticism by its agents, it needs to be consistent. If it can’t be, then it shouldn’t do it at all. Engaging in politically-motivated punishment of political speech is the worst route the FBI could have taken. A little bit of litigation may be all it takes to make it all but impossible for the FBI to address behavior that could raise the appearance of impropriety in investigations involving political entities. Adding another “appearance of impropriety” layer with inconsistent discipline isn’t helping anything.

Filed Under: doj, donald trump, fbi, free speech