gravitas_deficiency comments on [Video] Jeffery Epsteins butler was caught in an FBI sting in 2009 trying to sell the client victim list. He told them the entire operation, 17 years ago. And the FBI did NOTHING.

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Tbh, the J Edgar Hoover era was deeply problematic for a number of huge reasons, but one issue they didn’t have was investigatorial independence from whoever was in office. This whole “the regime gets to wield the DoJ and FBI as a cudgel against our political opponents and people who don’t support them” thing is unbelievably caustic, on so many levels.

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[–] HailSeitan@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

You’re right, instead Hoover got to wield the FBI as a cudgel against his political opponents and people who didn’t support him

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[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago*

That’s one of the big reasons. Hoover was deeply misguided in what he did and how he did it. But at the same time, he was definitely more mission-driven - in the sense that a large part of his motivation was to establish the FBI as an investigative agency beholden to the country, not any politician in particular. It’s just that his interpretation of “what’s good for the country” unfortunately included a lot of somewhat paranoid and violently reactionary motivations, because he perceived a lot of relatively benign political disagreements as personal attacks on him and/or the agency.

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