ENDORSED: Break Up the FBI.

Certain parts of the FBI, especially in its top ranks, are cesspools of politicization and abusive treatment of citizens. A House Republican report highlights some of the problems, and a National Review essay proposes one significant corrective.

The Republican staff of the House Judiciary Committee released a 1,000-page report on Friday on the “politicization of the FBI and Justice Department.” While sometimes overwrought and sometimes overbroad in its claims, the report supports well its fundamental assertion that “the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the stewardship of Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, is broken. The problem lies not with the majority of front-line agents who serve our country, but with the FBI’s politicized bureaucracy.”

Garland and Wray have repeatedly stonewalled legitimate attempts at congressional oversight, sometimes (by this observer’s reckoning) almost criminally. In a Nov. 2 letter to Garland, ranking committee Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio listed an astonishing 32 outstanding requests for information (stemming from eight different inquiry letters from committee Republicans) that Garland or his agents have yet to fulfill. Likewise, Wray has failed to fulfill 38 informational demands from eight other letters.

Even accounting for a tendency for the minority party in Congress to make some demands for information seemingly more crafted for political “gotcha” theatre than for legitimate oversight, the recalcitrance of Garland and Wray on obviously substantive demands is an affront to the public. Instead of the transparency due in a government based on the citizenry’s consent, this behavior looks like the sort of cover-up common to authoritarian rule.

It looks like that because that’s what it is.