The FBI Was Always This Bad; Ruby Ridge Turns 30

by | Aug 24, 2022

The FBI Was Always This Bad; Ruby Ridge Turns 30

by | Aug 24, 2022

In the wake of the massive raid at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, politicians and pundits are hectoring Americans to blindly trust the FBI.

“The men and women of the FBI,” Attorney General Merrick Garland proclaimed, “are dedicated, patriotic public servants.” But the FBI would be more credible if it didn’t claim a right to secretly wield almost unlimited power.

Most Americans (53%) view the FBI as “Joe Biden‘s personal Gestapo,” a recent Rasmussen poll found. FBI actions 30 years ago at Ruby Ridge help explain the G-men’s fall from grace.

Randy Weaver and his family lived in an isolated cabin in the northern Idaho mountains. Undercover federal agents targeted him and entrapped him into selling a sawed-off shotgun. The feds sought to pressure Weaver to become an informant, but he refused.

After Weaver was sent the wrong court date and (understandably) failed to show up, the feds used any and all means to take him down. On Aug. 21, 1992, six US Marshals outfitted in full camouflage and toting automatic weapons trespassed onto Weaver’s property. Marshals circled close to the Weaver cabin and threw rocks to provoke the Weavers’ dogs.

Weaver’s son, Sammy, 14, and Kevin Harris, a 25-year-old family friend living in the cabin, ran to see what the dogs were barking at. Marshals killed one of the dogs, and Sammy fired in their direction. As Sammy was leaving the scene, a marshal shot him in the back and killed him. Harris responded by fatally shooting a marshal who had fired seven shots.

Read the rest of this article at The New York Post

Jim Bovard

Jim Bovard

Jim Bovard is a Senior Fellow for the Libertarian Institute and author of the newly published, Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty (2023). His other books include Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and seven others. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, The Washington Post, among others. His articles have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC and numerous federal agencies.

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