{"id":22193,"date":"2026-02-02T14:44:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T19:44:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=22193"},"modified":"2026-02-06T13:58:43","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T18:58:43","slug":"how-the-fbi-crippled-democracy-in-2016-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/02\/how-the-fbi-crippled-democracy-in-2016-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"How the FBI Crippled Democracy in 2016 and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

How the FBI Crippled Democracy in 2016 and Beyond<\/strong><\/a><\/h1>\n
by James Bovard\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
In last month\u2019s Future of Freedom<\/em> article, I explained how the 2016 presidential election made \u201cpost-truth\u201d become the Oxford English Dictionary\u2019s word of the year. Americans felt forced to choose between two candidates that most voters despise<\/strong>d. The political system\u2019s credibility plummeted in the 2016 campaign.<\/div>\n
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But the 2016 election was actually far more corrupt than it appeared at the time. The FBI sought to cast a veto over the votes of American citizens.<\/div>\n
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Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic Party\u2019s 2016 presidential nomination, had used an unsecured private email server to handle top-secret documents while she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. The server in a bathroom of Clinton\u2019s Chappaqua, New York, mansion exposed emails with classified information to detection by foreign sources, household servants, and others. Clinton\u2019s private email server was not publicly disclosed until she received a congressional subpoena in 2015. A few months later, the FBI Counterintelligence Division opened a criminal investigation examining the \u201cpotential unauthorized storage of classified information on an unauthorized system.\u201d Attorney General Loretta Lynch swayed FBI chief James Comey to mislead the public by denying the existence of a criminal investigation; instead, it was referred to simply as a \u201cmatter.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The private email was intended to prevent Americans from ever seeing Hillary Clinton\u2019s emails in her four year term as secretary of state. Clinton effectively exempted herself from the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and any public scrutiny on how she used her power. The State Department ignored 17 FOIA requests for her emails prior to 2014 and insisted it required 75 years to disclose emails of Clinton\u2019s top aides. A federal judge and the State Department inspector general slammed the FOIA stonewalling.<\/div>\n
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FBI passivity toward Clinton<\/strong><\/div>\n
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The FBI treated Clinton and her coterie like royalty worthy of endless deference<\/strong>, according to a 2018 report by the Justice Department Inspector General. The FBI agreed to destroy the laptops of top Clinton aides after a limited examination of their contents (including a promise not to examine any post-
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The Inspector General criticized FBI investigators for relying on \u201crapport building\u201d with Team Hillary instead of using subpoenas<\/strong> to compel the disclosure of key evidence. An unnamed FBI agent on the case responded to a fellow FBI agent who asked how an interview went with a witness who worked with the Clintons at their Chappaqua residence: \u201cAwesome. Lied his ass off. Went from never inside the scif [sensitive compartmented information facility] at res [residence], to looked in when it was being constructed, to removed the trash twice, to troubleshot the secure fax with HRC a couple times, to everytime there was a secure fax i did it with HRC. Ridic.\u201d When his colleague replied that \u201cwould be funny if he was the only guy charged n this deal,\u201d he replied, \u201caint no one gonna do shit\u201d as far as filing charges.<\/div>\n
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FBI investigators shrugged off every skullduggery they encountered from Hillary\u2019s staffer<\/strong>s. The Inspector General report revealed that key FBI agents in the investigations were raving partisans. \u201cWe\u2019ll stop\u201d Trump from becoming president, lead FBI investigator Peter Strzok texted his mistress\/girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, in
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The FBI delayed interviewing Clinton until the end of the investigation, after she had clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, and just before the Democratic National Convention. FBI agents at that interview found Clinton\u2019s answers \u201cstrained credulity\u201d; one agent put her responses in the \u201cbucket of hard to impossible to believe.\u201d The FBI planned to absolve her \u201cabsent a confession from Clinton,\u201d the Inspector General noted. There was no recording or transcript of that final interview. Minimizing the evidence maximized the discretion of FBI officials in a landmark political case.<\/div>\n
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Shortly after that interview, FBI chief Comey publicly announced that \u201cno charges are appropriate\u201d because Hillary didn\u2019t intend to violate federal law. But that law is a strict-liability statute; \u201cintent\u201d is irrelevant to the criminal violation. After his actions outraged supporters of both Trump and Clinton, Comey blamed Twitter \u201cdemagoguery\u201d for the widespread belief that the FBI was not \u201chonest\u201d or \u201ccompetent.\u201d<\/div>\n
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After voters made their choice in
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The Durham Report<\/strong><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
In
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Top FBI officials also saved Hillary Clinton by scorning the federal statute book and treating her pervasive, perpetual violations of federal laws on classified documents as a harmless, unintentional error. Shortly after FBI chief Comey announced no charges against Hillary, \u201cClinton allegedly approved a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to tie Trump to Russia as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server,\u201d according to the Durham Report. CIA chief John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama and other top officials on \u201calleged approval by Hillary Clinton on
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The Steele dossier<\/strong><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign paid former British agent Christopher Steele to create a dossier \u2014 known as the \u201cSteele dossier\u201d \u2014 with lurid, unverified accusations against Trump. The FBI was willing to pay any price to defeat Trump and offered Steele $1 million in cash if he could prove the charges in the dossier before the 2016 election. Steele could not do so. Steele was already on the FBI payroll, though he was terminated in
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The FBI relied on the Steele dossier to get warrants to spy on Trump campaign officials from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Even after the Steele dossier was discredited, the FBI paid Igor Danchenko, the primary Russian source for the dossier, as a \u201cconfidential human source for more than three years until the fall of 2020 when he was terminated for lying to agents.\u201d The Federal Election Commission fined the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign $113,000 in 2022 for their deceptive funding to cover up their role in spawning the Steele dossier.<\/div>\n
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The Russian collusion fraud<\/strong><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
After the 2016 election, FBI officials sought to cripple Trump\u2019s presidency with fabricated evidence of connections to Russia. A 2019 Inspector General report concluded that FBI officials made 17 \u201csignificant inaccuracies and omissions\u201d in its application to the FISA Court to spy on former Trump advisor Carter Page. The FBI withheld details from the court that would have crippled the credibility of its request to spy on Trump campaign officials.<\/div>\n
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Kevin Clinesmith, a top FBI lawyer, was convicted for falsifying evidence to secure a FISA warrant to target Trump campaign officials. A federal prosecutor declared that the \u201cresulting harm is immeasurable\u201d from Clinesmith\u2019s action. But Federal Judge James Boasberg conducted a \u201cpity party\u201d at the sentencing, noting that Clinesmith \u201cwent from being an obscure government lawyer to standing in the eye of a media hurricane….. Clinesmith has lost his job in government service \u2014 what has given his life much of its meaning.\u201d Scorning the prosecutor\u2019s recommendation for jail time, the judge gave Clinesmith a wrist-slap \u2014 400 hours of community service and 12 months of probation. The FISA court in late 2019 publicly condemned the FBI lies that resulted in nuclear-powered surveillance warrants targeting the Trump campaign. \u201cThe frequency with which representations made by F.B.I. personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other F.B.I. applications is reliable,\u201d Judge Rosemary Collyer wrote.<\/div>\n
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The Robert Mueller investigation\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
After he was fired in
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop<\/strong><\/div>\n
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The only lesson the FBI learned from the 2016 election was to work harder to rig results. In
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When news finally leaked out about the Hunter Biden laptop in
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Exalting the FBI<\/strong><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Special Counsel John Durham asserted that the FBI\u2019s abuses in the Clinton and Trump investigations caused the agency \u201csevere reputational harm.\u201d But Congress awarded the FBI a record budget regardless, and that is the only \u201creputation\u201d that matters inside the Beltway.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The Washington Post<\/em> fretted that the Durham Report \u201cmay fuel rather than end partisan debate about politicization within the Justice Department and FBI.\u201d The FBI announced that it had taken \u201cdozens of corrective actions\u201d to prevent similar \u201cmissteps\u201d in the future. Law professor Jonathan Turley scoffed that the FBI\u2019s statement \u201cis ample evidence of a lack of remorse by the FBI like a habitual offender giving a shrug in his court \u2018allocution\u2019 before a judge.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
When getting caught trying to steal an election is a mere \u201cmisstep,\u201d it will happen again. Unless Congress and federal courts leash or slash the power of the FBI, there needs to be a change in inaugural festivities. Instead of invoking \u201cthe will of the people,\u201d perhaps future presidents should invoke \u201cthe will of the FBI.\u201d If that happened, much of the Washington press corps would probably stand up and cheer for their favorite agency.<\/strong><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
James Bovard is a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation and is the author of the ebook <\/em>Freedom Frauds: Hard Lessons in American Liberty<\/a>, published by FFF, his new book,<\/em> Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty, and nine other books.<\/em><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the FBI Crippled Democracy in 2016 and Beyond by James Bovard \u00a0 In last month\u2019s Future of Freedom article, I explained how the 2016 presidential election made \u201cpost-truth\u201d become the Oxford English Dictionary\u2019s word of the year. Americans felt forced to choose between two candidates that most voters despised. The political system\u2019s credibility plummeted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22346,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3740,2791,4730,3526,753,3737,47,815,339,362,1073,890,1450,2219,2631],"class_list":["post-22193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-3740","tag-boasberg","tag-brennan","tag-clinesmith","tag-donald-trump","tag-durham-report","tag-fbi","tag-foia","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-inspector-general","tag-james-comey","tag-loretta-lynch","tag-peter-strzok","tag-russiagate","tag-turley"],"yoast_head":"\nHow the FBI Crippled Democracy in 2016 and Beyond - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"FBI machinations corrupted the 2016 election and the 2020 election. Never again? 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/www.jimbovard.com\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.facebook.com\\\/jim.bovard\",\"https:\\\/\\\/x.com\\\/jimbovard\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/author\\\/admin\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How the FBI Crippled Democracy in 2016 and Beyond - James Bovard","description":"FBI machinations corrupted the 2016 election and the 2020 election. Never again? 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Never again? Ha!","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/02\/how-the-fbi-crippled-democracy-in-2016-and-beyond\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/02\/how-the-fbi-crippled-democracy-in-2016-and-beyond\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/02\/how-the-fbi-crippled-democracy-in-2016-and-beyond\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/FBI_LIVE_FIRE_TRAINING_AT_FORT_MCCOY_160427-A-PP120-048-scaled-1920x600_ccropped-brightened-fff-photo.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/FBI_LIVE_FIRE_TRAINING_AT_FORT_MCCOY_160427-A-PP120-048-scaled-1920x600_ccropped-brightened-fff-photo.jpg","width":1140,"height":600},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/02\/how-the-fbi-crippled-democracy-in-2016-and-beyond\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"How the FBI Crippled Democracy in 2016 and Beyond"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/","name":"James Bovard","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f","name":"Jim","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","caption":"Jim"},"description":"Bovard's homepage is at http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com He can be contacted at jim@jimbovard.com James Bovard is the author of ten books. The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22193"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22381,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22193\/revisions\/22381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}