It's not just the three-letter agencies; it's the entire American ruling class

I've referenced Angelo Codevilla's landmark article 'America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution' in these pages before.  In it, he observed:

Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints. Using the right words and avoiding the wrong ones when referring to such matters — speaking the “in” language — serves as a badge of identity. Regardless of what business or profession they are in, their road up included government channels and government money because, as government has grown, its boundary with the rest of American life has become indistinct. Many began their careers in government and leveraged their way into the private sector. Some, e.g., Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, never held a non-government job. Hence whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats. It rules uneasily over the majority of Americans not oriented to government.

There's much more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

In a later article, 'After the Republic', Prof. Codevilla expanded on his vision of our future.

Because Republicans largely agree with Democrats that they need not take seriously the founders’ Constitution, today’s American regime is now what Max Weber had called the Tsarist regime on the eve of the Revolution: “fake constitutionalism.” Because such fakery is self-discrediting and removes anyone’s obligation to restrain his passions, it is a harbinger of revolution and of imperial power.

. . .

In today’s America, a network of executive, judicial, bureaucratic, and social kinship channels bypasses the sovereignty of citizens ... If you are on the right side of that network, you can make up the rules as you go along, ignore or violate any number of laws, obfuscate or commit perjury about what you are doing (in the unlikely case they put you under oath), and be certain of your peers’ support. These cronies’ shared social and intellectual identity stems from the uniform education they have received in the universities. Because disdain for ordinary Americans is this ruling class's chief feature, its members can be equally certain that all will join in celebrating each, and in demonizing their respective opponents.

Again, more at the link.

I think those two excerpts sum up the arrogance displayed by the leadership of the FBI and the NSA towards Congress and the American people, which we discussed earlier this week.  Remember, the leaders of the so-called "Deep State" are drawn from what Prof. Codevilla calls the "ruling class" of America.  They seem to genuinely believe that they know better than we do what we need, and they're determined to give it to us, good and hard.

Only when they're caught red-handed do they change their tune - and then it's never with apologies, but only with implausible excuses.  If anyone really believes that the FBI suddenly, magically "recovered" the "missing" 50,000-odd text messages, they're living in cloud cuckoo land.

Karl Denninger sums it up.

The FBI "lost" tens of thousands of text messages.

Then they "un-lost" them.

Remember, this is the "agency" that is charged with never losing anything, and having legally-defensible forensic evidence to prosecute crimes.

. . .

The FBI knows all of this and in fact it's their procedure and policy.  They didn't just have one copy and they certainly did not fail to verify that their imaging, backups and integrity checks work.  To do so would be to render all of their cyber-based prosecutions worthless as they'd never get another conviction -- ever.

So no, they didn't "lose" anything.

The FBI intentionally deleted the messages in question after making damn sure they had good archival copies in an attempt to corruptly cover up the outrageous actions of their own agents, virtually all of which meets the legal definition of obstruction of justice and some of which may even rise to the level of a seditious conspiracy -- and then lied about their actions.  It was only when faced with the inevitability of being caught in said lie (and yes, they were going to get caught) that they "decided" to "un-lose" the messages.

The FBI must be dismantled and everyone involved in that crap imprisoned right here and now, and if Trump does not direct Jeff Sessions to do so forthwith then he and the remainder of the DOJ is a knowing and willing part of it.  The bureau is intentionally, internally and irrecoverably corrupt.

Period.

More at the link.

It's almost impossible to argue with Mr. Denninger's conclusions.  Having worked in the field of Disaster Recovery Planning for information technology systems, I know from first-hand experience that his assertions about computer archival and recovery procedures are correct.

The question is thus, what is President Trump going to do about it?  I don't believe he can afford to let this slide.  I believe all those responsible, by commission or by omission, must be punished, at the very least by dismissal from their jobs and the loss of their pensions.  Anything less would be a betrayal of the Constitution and the trust of the American people.

What say you, readers?

Peter