OPINION:
FBI Director Kash Patel recently told “Just the News” that his agency is undertaking a “huge” criminal investigation into the federal personnel involved in Arctic Frost.
“I’m not going to let people get off the hook or get a hall pass,” Mr. Patel said Thursday. “I don’t care what position you held in the FBI, you’re going to be held accountable, and this DOJ is assuredly backing us.”
That’s nice to hear because the taxpayer-bankrolled Arctic Frost, the Biden FBI’s partisan witch hunt, was involved in the illegal surveillance and gathering of cellphone data of numerous Republicans in and around the Beltway, including people who weren’t even under investigation.
So, yeah, we look forward to the upcoming justice promised by Mr. Patel. Unfortunately, if history is any indicator, it’s not likely to materialize.
This song and dance have happened so many times that they are almost formulaic now: Republicans finally uncover Democratic malfeasance, make the obligatory outraged calls for investigations and punishment, hold hearings and then … nothing.
Oh, sure, matters occasionally get elevated to the courts and — as we saw last month with the dismissal of Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis’ “election interference” case against President Trump — legal vendettas are sometimes put to a very justified end.
But somehow, by and large, the culprits of costly, leftist inquisitions seem to get off scot-free. That was what happened after the atrocious Benghazi terrorist attacks in Libya in 2012 that killed four Americans — attacks for which the Obama State Department, led by Hillary Clinton, was woefully unprepared despite repeated warnings. It was what happened in 2015 after we learned about Mrs. Clinton’s use of an unsecured server to send classified emails, and again, what happened after President Biden’s horrific, misguided Afghanistan pullout in 2021.
It was also what we saw just last month when a judge dismissed the cases against former FBI Director James B. Comey (for lying to Congress) and New York Attorney General Letitia James (for mortgage fraud and lying to a financial institution). Attorney General Pam Bondi has said her Justice Department will appeal these indictments’ dismissal, but for now, Mr. Comey and Ms. James are free to live their lives as if they hadn’t spent tens of millions of Americans’ hard-earned dollars on years of trumped-up fishing expeditions.
Ms. James remains in office, and Mr. Comey is available as a speaker for events, presumably for a fat fee, and he recently released his third crime novel.
As for the former first lady and 46th president? Mrs. Clinton continues to do what she and former President Bill Clinton do best: make money on the strength of their somehow still weighty reputations. She is a presidential fellow and professor at Columbia University and runs a political action committee, among other doubtlessly time-consuming activities.
Mr. Biden, Democratic embarrassment since July 2024, is undergoing treatment for prostate cancer but apparently felt well enough last week to address a “packed room” at the 2025 LGBTQ+ Victory Institute International Leaders Conference in Washington.
Republican efforts to hold Mrs. Clinton accountable for the loss of life in Libya, including that of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, fizzled. Ditto for attempts to call Mr. Biden to account for the Afghanistan withdrawal, in which 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians were slaughtered.
So Mr. Patel will have to excuse those among us who take his recent promise about justice for wrongdoers in Arctic Frost with a tablespoon or so of salt. That said, we would be happy to be proved wrong.
• Anath Hartmann is deputy commentary editor for The Washington Times.
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