Miranda Devine
Opinion
March 15, 2023 | 10:26 p.m
Stacey Plaskett is a senior member of the federal government’s Select Subcommittee on Weaponization. AP
Now that the Democrats are in the minority in the House of Representatives and cannot abuse their power as easily as they have for the past two years, they resort to shameless lies to sabotage hearings and trash whistleblowers and other uncomfortable witnesses .
They have anointed a little known Democrat named Stacey Plaskett as queen of this disinformation operation who is not even a full member of Congress.
Plaskett’s favorite adjective is “so-called,” which is ironic since she’s a so-called member of Congress.
As the “at-large” delegate for the US Virgin Islands, she has no voting rights.
Nonetheless, she is a senior member of the federal government’s Select Subcommittee on Weaponization, the first time a non-voting delegate has held such a senior post.
Fresh from the smearing of two independent journalists, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, as “so-called journalists” who endangered people’s lives by exposing Twitter’s censorship regime, Plaskett and her colleague, the Democratic New York Congressman, get down to dirty work , Jerry Nadler, FBI Whistleblower at .
In a 316-page unauthorized report full of falsehoods and misleadingly edited quotations from his confidential testimony before the committee last month, Plaskett and Nadler derided hero FBI agent Steve Friend as a “so-called” whistleblower.
War on whistleblowers
They lied about the status of his whistleblower complaint with the Justice Department inspector general, breached his confidentiality by leaking select portions of his testimony to the media, and then falsely portrayed him as a crank on the pay of “far-right” Trump agents.
Despite being a senior member of the federal government’s Select Subcommittee on Weaponization, Plaskett does not have voting rights as the “general” delegate for the US Virgin Islands.C-SPAN
Friend, who first published his whistleblower complaint in The Post last year, sacrificed a career he loved as a respected member of the FBI’s Florida Special Weapons and Tactics team to do the right thing.
He uncovered the ugly truth about a hyper-politicized office, falsified the books to exaggerate the threat of domestic terrorism, and used an overzealous January 6 investigation to go after conservatives and violate their constitutional rights.
He opposed a two-tier justice system in which Antifa revolutionaries commit domestic terrorism with impunity while the FBI raids pro-life groups and traditional Catholics who celebrate the Latin Mass.
For his troubles, Friend and his FBI whistleblowers have been berated by congressional Democrats, whose slimy deceptions have been uncritically reinforced by the media.
The main allegation against Friend was that the inspector general dismissed his whistleblower complaint.
But that’s just not true.
IG confirmed this week that the investigation is ongoing and that Friend will be interviewed soon.
Democrats are the minority in the House of Representatives, having been the majority for the past two years.C-SPAN
That admission was prompted by Friend’s attorneys at whistleblower protection organization Empower Oversight.
After the Democrat smear paper was published, Empower President Tristan Leavitt wrote to IG on March 6 asking it to set the record straight because his office’s silence was “exploited by partisans and their allies in the media to rewrite creating a false impression on the public – all in the service of subverting a whistleblower for political gain.”
On Monday, Assistant Inspector General Sean O’Neill confirmed in an official letter that the investigation is ongoing.
“As we informed your office in early February, we are interested in interviewing Mr. Friend about his allegations, which are still being investigated by our office. We will be in touch with you shortly to set up an interview.”
To date, the Washington Post and Rolling Stone have issued corrections to aspects of their reporting.
But the damage is done.
The Plaskett-Nadler report was concocted to try to discredit the damning testimony of Friend and other suspended FBI employees not as whistleblowers but only as “damaged” employees who “acted on right-wing conspiracy theories.” . . and received financial backing from a top ally of former President Donald J. Trump.”
The insinuation is that they are scammers and sell-outs.
The truth is that Friend, a father of two young children, was suspended without pay as soon as he filed his whistleblower complaint.
“Afflicted” employees who “acted on right-wing conspiracy theories received financial assistance from a top ally of former President Donald Trump.” Getty Images
Then, under strange circumstances, his wife lost her job.
The FBI then denied him access to his weapons training records, which he needed to obtain a license to do security work in Florida.
He had to resign in order to earn a living.
That gotcha, that wasn’t
So, yes, during five months without a paycheck, he gratefully accepted $5,000 from the 501(c) charity Fight With Kash, founded by former prosecutor, Trump adviser, and House Intelligence Committee Russiagate investigator Kash Patel to help the very FBI and other whistleblowers who face retaliation for speaking out publicly.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Patel knows all too well after his Russiagate troubles that it’s a very different story on the other side of the political fence.
If you’re useful to the Democrats, you’ll be offered a constellation of legal, financial, and narrative protections on a silver platter.
Take the BLM Antifa rioters rescued at the urging of Vice President Kamala Harris, or FBI agents like Timothy Thibault, who allegedly suppressed Hunter Biden’s laptop evidence and was forced to resign with a full pension anyway, and let yourself be pro bono represented by an expensive Democratic law firm.
It is despicable to portray an act of charity as a form of corruption, but that is exactly what it is in Washington, where Democrats are scrambling desperately to cover up the abuses of the past two years, whether it be the dishonest recounting of their partisan Jan 6 Committee , the cover-up of the Biden corruption story or the censorship industrial complex.
But the American people are beginning to see the truth.
The day Friend’s revelations were published in the Post, a stranger came to his door, a retired Marine, who just wanted to shake his hand.
“He was crying,” Friend recalled.
“It meant a lot to people.”
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