Over the past three years, controversy after controversy has rocked our nation, exposing many of our most beloved institutions as mouldering bastions of decadence at the highest levels (#MeToo). The two infamous imbroglios of the 2016 election—Email-gate and the Russian Collusion—also spring to mind. As the dust has settled and emotions have been tempered, a disturbing fact has emerged: The FBI has been compromised by politically animated individuals.

From former FBI Director James Comey to disgraced Deputy Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok to Strzok’s paramour, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, a number of upper echelon actors within the FBI are complicit in these two debacles. Former U.S. Attorney and Independent Counsel Joseph E. diGenova comments that he has “Never witnessed investigations so fraught with failure to fulfill the basic elements of a criminal probe as those conducted under James Comey.”

It appears clear that Comey was fired with good cause and a housecleaning may be in order at the FBI.

The trouble started when the New York Times broke the story on Secretary Hillary Clinton’s private email server. During the ensuing FBI investigation, the Clinton camp was not exactly forthcoming with documents and data the agency requested. Sensitive information was purposely destroyed (a la hammer and bleachbit) while the Justice Department and the FBI failed to follow reasonable procedures.  

Senior leadership of the FBI showed remarkable reticence toward issuing subpoenas, refusing to do so even after Clinton claimed 39 times in a July 2, 2016 interview that she could not recall certain facts because of a head injury. Despite the requests of agents on the case, Comey refused the task of subpoenaing Clinton’s medical records.

This attitude toward Clinton comes in stark comparison toward that shown to four-star Marine General James E. Cartwright that same year. The general plead guilty in October of 2016 regarding information he had leaked to the New York Times. For general Cartwright, subpoenas and search warrants seemed to suit the FBI just fine.

As the pivotal election of 2016 neared, the focus shifted from the Clinton email scandal to the link between Trump and Russia. Though allegations on this count had long been smoldering, they quickly were fanned into flame as soon as Trump became the heir apparent to the Republican party.  Thanks to the discoveries of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, we now know key members of the FBI played a key role in this conflagration.

High-ranking officials the FBI—notably Deputy Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page—used their positions to validate rumors of Russian collusion as a result of deep-seated political animus. Even before the election, on Aug. 15, 2016, Strzok concernedly wrote Page that he wanted “to believe the path you threw out for consideration in [Andrew McCabe’s] office—that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

The insurance policy in question? The Russian collusion narrative.

This kind of partisan chicanery is unacceptable from our leading investigating minds. The FBI has a storied tradition of excellence—a tradition acquired by refusing to allow personal bias to trump agency objectives. The corrupt leaders within the FBI must continue to be removed from their positions to make headlines for all the right reasons.