Republicans on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government "are missing the point" in claiming the FBI is anti-Republican, legal expert Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Thursday.
The few bad apples in the FBI are "anti-Trump," but not partisan, Dershowitz told Thursday's "National Report" and "John Bachman Now."
"I think the Republicans are missing the point: This is not the FBI turning against Republicans," Dershowitz said in the second of three segments on the network. "I think the majority of FBI agents are Republicans. And most of the leaders of the FBI, many of whom I've known over the years, have tended to be Republicans. This is all about Donald Trump.
"The vast majority of FBI agents are anti-Trump, even the Republicans, and it's the anti-Trump issue, the get-Trump aspect of this, which is most significant.
"So I think it's a mistake to accuse the FBI of favoring Democrats over Republicans. I just don't think it's true."
The allegations of the "deep state" just might be true with regard to efforts to "get Trump," Dershowitz added, referencing the title of his recent book: "Get Trump: The Threat to Civil Liberties, Due Process, and Our Constitutional Rule of Law."
"It is true that many FBI agents, perhaps most, and certainly the heads of the FBI, are very anti-Trump," Dershowitz continued. "You might call them, you know, the deep state. I don't know whether that exists or not, but the focus — really, the change — occurred when Trump announced his candidacy.
"And there's a widespread feeling among FBI agents and among many in the intelligence community and government — Republicans, Democrats alike — that Trump was dangerous to the national security.
"That doesn't justify what's going on."
There are "bad apples" in the FBI, especially those who believe they are doing the right thing in an effort to get Trump out of office or keep him out of office, according to Dershowitz.
"In my book 'Get Trump,' I argue that these are good people doing bad things," Dershowitz said. "They're doing it because they think that there's a higher purpose to defeat Trump — to defeat anybody that's on his side, to defeat anything that he's done, and they are destroying the Constitution in the process.
"But it's not anti-Republican. It's anti-Trump, and I think that's a key distinction that has to be made."
With host John Bachman in a later Newsmax appearance, Dershowitz said FBI agents were willing to "cheat" to fulfill their mission to "get Trump."
"I think a lot of FBI agents and leaders of the FBI, genuinely they're good people: They genuinely think that Donald Trump poses a great danger to national security in America and to Americans, and so they began to cheat," Dershowitz said. "They began to take shortcuts.
"They began to compromise the Constitution and the Bill of Rights."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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