It has been a rough period for the nation’s—the world’s—leading law enforcement agency. As the historically independent, objective guarantor of equal and neutral application of federal criminal law and enforcer of civil rights, from “Mississippi Burning” to Ferguson, a robust FBI has served as the guarantor of our democratic principles for nearly a century.
But in recent years, the perception of the FBI as being free from political influence has eroded. While under the late stewardship of Director James Comey, the bureau came under fire from both the right (due to failures in the Clinton server investigation) and the left (due to the inexplicable release of emails perceived as tipping the 2016 presidential election toward Donald Trump in a particularly close race).
