Republicans criticism of the FBI is bold face hypocrisy

Echo opinion published in The Free Lance Star, a Virginia newspaper written by Michael Paul Williams: 

It has been an article of faith that the political right supports law enforcement and vice versa.  But, Republicans have a selective sense of equal justice for all.

Blind justice is not applied equally in the world of Republican hypocrisy

A U.S. Capitol Police officer took a selfie with the insurrectionists attempting to overturn the results of a presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump's "big lie".

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (inappropriately) came to Trump’s defense in a dubious tweet. And (#shitforbrains) Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene- an extremist GOP - Georgia Republican, had the audacity to tweet “DEFUND THE FBI!” without a trace of irony, after that agency executed a search warrant at Donald Trump’s Florida residence as part of an investigation into potentially missing classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago.

Yes, Greene appropriated the language of the Black Lives Matter movement she holds in contempt. Who has more reason than African Americans to be leery of the FBI, who spied on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, and even kept a file on basketball star Bill Russell?

Those abuses were ignored, if not encouraged, by the political right. But in this bizarre moment, Trump and his supporters are suggesting that the FBI had planted evidence against him. And a man police say was armed was fatally shot on Thursday (August 11) at Cincinnati’s FBI office. (In fact, the suspect was believed to be armed with an AR-15 rifle and a nail gun, a federal law enforcement source told CNN, and was wearing body armor, according to officials in an Ohio county. He was Ricky W. Shiffer, 42, of Columbus, the state highway patrol said Friday.)

Criminal justice in America was built on a foundation of inequity, designed to police the impoverished and people of color and treat the powerful with deference. The noise you hear is people squawking that the FBI has gone off-script, i.e., blind justice, "no one is above the law".  Like Attorney General Merrick Garland says, "without fear or favor". 

The reaction to policing in America has always been situational and political. Some of the loudest voices decrying the Trump residence search could rationalize police killing an unarmed Black person like, say, Breonna Taylor, who was slain in bed by Louisville police.

In case you missed the disregard by congressional Republicans for fallen U.S. Capitol police officers, “Back the Blue” has always depended on whose ox is being gored, tasered or shot.

For hypocritical Republicans, the problem is this: When the rule of law is under assault, support for law enforcement is illusory. There is no there there.