Q&A of the Day – What’s the Likelihood the FBI Planted “Evidence” at Mar-a-Lago?
Bottom Line: I’m reticent to travel down this path because there’s nothing here but sheer speculation as it pertains to the Mar-a-Lago raid. However, from Trump himself having introduced the possibility, to numerous listeners having asked about it, I’ll address the prospect as analytically as possible. That means at the onset I’ll disclaimer this story by saying there’s currently no evidence of evidence planting, and while I have serious concerns about what transpired with the raid (especially with the Miami field office agents having been excluded from the process with a hand-picked D.C. crew of agents), I don’t think it’s constructive to embrace narratives without evidence. And I personally won’t latch onto any like narratives unless there is evidence which emerges. That said, in the words of my dad, there are few people better than good cops and few people worse than bad cops. Thankfully almost all cops are good ones. So, let’s get to it. How often has evidence tampering been proven?
This is one of the hardest topics to research because we don’t know what we don’t know. However, information flow in recent years has improved considerably – in part due to the post-George Floyd debate over police reform. On that note I’m able to tap into some of research I’d used a couple of years ago during the peak of that debate. USA Today conducted the most comprehensive independent study of law enforcement misfeasance to date. Along with other data, I’ve been able to draw from we’re able to see a view of the possible.
In the United States we have approximately 800,000 law enforcement professionals. Of them an average of 670,000 have been full-time over the past decade. Over the ten-year window, a total of 110,000 situations brought about formal investigations into police conduct and in the end a total of 30,000 officers were decertified as a result of misconduct discovered. This paints the picture of the “good cop/ bad cop” breakout. While there are no doubt varying degrees of good cops and bad cops, over the course of a decade we saw the following:
- 3.8% of law enforcement professionals were found to be “bad cops”
So again, the vast majority of law enforcement professionals are good cops, and these facts underline the importance of not painting law enforcement misfeasance with a broad brush. So, in general, and independent of those who’ve risen to the ranks of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we see that the odds of law enforcement misfeasance of any sort isn’t likely. So, let’s drill down a bit further here. Of those who were found guilty of misfeasance, how many were specifically engaged in evidence tampering, which is the topic in question with the Mar-a-Lago raid? 2,227. So, what that means is that...
- Three-tenths of one percent of law enforcement professionals have engaged in some type of perjury/evidence tampering
Does it happen? Obviously. Is it extraordinarily rare? No doubt. So now let’s focus this to the extent we can on the FBI specifically. The FBI maintains a force of 37,254 employees – 13,233 of which are field agents. During a six-year period a total of over of 1,600 instances of broken rules were uncovered. Given the sensitive nature of the material and investigations involved that’s the extent of what’s known. About the only takeaway is this. The FBI has averaged 267 instances of inappropriate activity per year. Without knowing the severity of what we’re talking about it’s hard to read a lot into that number but what can be inferred is that rule breaking isn’t exactly uncommon within the Bureau with an average of more than one improper instance every other day. So, let’s bring this full circle.
There are two sides to stories and one side to facts. My point up to now has been to establish as many potentially related facts as possible. Which paints a generally unlikely picture of shenanigans having taken place by field agents during the raid. What I’m going to say next doesn’t negate that reality, but it does cast an additional shadow and level of concern over their activities. It’s a fact that the FBI, at the highest levels, was guilty of conspiring with the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC to create the fraudulent Trump-Russia collusion narrative. At the time that was going on I could have painted a statistical analysis based on what had been uncovered previously which would have suggested that was completely implausible – but yet in a first, it happened.
Notably, the FBI as recently as May was still known to have been investigating itself over the misfeasance associated with their role in the conspiracy they called “Crossfire Hurricane”. Credibility matters. The FBI has lost the benefit of the doubt with regard to matters involving Donald Trump. Therefore, skepticism isn’t just warranted – it's imperative given their role in a criminal conspiracy to attempt to undermine the President of the United States. All bets are off at that point. That said, just as I did February 2nd of 2018, in waiting until facts were know before making specific claims of wrongdoing, I will handle this accordingly as well.
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Gettr, Parler & Twitter: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.
Today’s entry: Submitted via talkback