For six years and running, the bureau has portrayed Donald Trump as a public menace who must be destroyed at all costs. Trump and those around him are the villains in the FBI’s “good story” while any number of FBI officials and assets—James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Christopher Steele, Michael Sussmann to name a few—are victims and martyrs.
Props and optics such as an FBI-endorsed dossier, an FBI-drafted FISA warrant, an FBI-fabricated threat assessment on domestic violent extremists, and the FBI-executed raid of Mar-a-Lago on Monday all serve to bring the “good story” to life. Facts, as Impola boasted, to the FBI are quickly branded “conspiracy theories” or “disinformation” if any pesky realities get in the way.