Hunter Biden’s not the only crook the FBI wants to protect: The Bureau let it be known last week that it will no longer be making any more documents related to famed Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger’s case public.
Its claim is that the relevant records are now “investigative” and no longer subject to Freedom of Information rules.
Pathetic.
Bulger, you’ll recall, was a killer, thief and general criminal all-star who served as an informant for the Bureau and in exchange enjoyed an effective blank check on his criminal activities, with his fed handlers severely compromised: One tipped him off before his looming arrest, letting Bulger go on the lam for 16 years.
That his brother William was a major force in local Democratic politics (running the state Senate for 18 years) no doubt helped grease the wheels there.
Boston Bureau agents John Connolly and John Morris were up to their eyeballs with Bulger as he fought and won a brutal war against Boston’s other gangs to make his Winter Hill Gang the top outfit.
Being able to sic the feds on his rivals was Whitey’s competitive edge.
He stole and murdered his way to the top — prosecutors tried him for 19 killings — as the nation’s chief law-enforcement agency looked on.
For the feds to now refuse any more publicity — to try to bury this dirty laundry out of the public eye forever — is obscene.
Remember, the FBI — like any law-enforcement agency — is responsible above all to the public, which has entrusted the Bureau with great powers in the name of protecting American citizens.
The Boston FBI, and anyone higher up at Justice involved in this morass, need full and immediate transparency.
No one is accusing Hunter of anything nearly as bad (the first son’s far more pathetic than he is fearsome; and make no mistake that Bulger was feared).
But there are ugly similarities.
Crimes let pass that would ruin ordinary people’s lives; FBI agents deeply invested in making bad stories go away; high political connections.
But the chiefest similarity, of course, is that every instance of special treatment, every corrupt favor done for any connected perp, erodes everyone’s faith in the justice system.
And that is the biggest crime here — and it does harms almost impossible to repair.