In the past, I’ve said bureaucracies are a form of permanent government. The FBI, CIA, and IRS wield immense power. No matter who we elect, these people stay and can have an agenda. If these organizations use their capabilities to affect the choice of their nominal elected masters, democracy is in trouble.

These organizations attempted to interfere in the last two presidential elections. If we didn’t know it already from the years-long Mueller investigation turned up no evidence of collusion between Donald Trump and Russia, the recently released Durham Report details how the FBI pursued a case that originated in the Hillary Clinton Campaign with no factual basis.

The Mueller investigation cast a pall over the early years of the Trump administration. Bias towards one political party and its candidate is a central theme in the Durham report. However, it didn’t cost Trump a narrow 2016 win.

We can’t say the same about the 2022 election. The New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story a few weeks before the election, indicating at least highly unethical behavior on the part of the Biden Family. Within 48 hours, 51 former intelligence senior people signed and released a letter claiming it looked like a Russian operation. The letter received wide media circulation, while some media outlets banned linking to the New York Post Story. Biden used the letter to blunt Trump’s attempt to bring up what was found on Hunter Biden’s laptop in the last debate before the election.

The FBI had the computer for months and had to know if it was Hunter Biden’s and if the contents were genuine. The Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, said there was no evidence of a link between Russia and the laptop; he received little press notice. FBI Director Christopher Wray’s silence was deafening.