OPINION:
The admiration and respect I once held for the FBI is gone (“FBI official who worked Trump-Russia probe, later accused of conspiring with Russia, to plead guilty,” web, Aug. 7).
Directors of the agency, who used to rarely appear before Congress, are now hauled in frequently to defend themselves.
And the FBI has become sloppy. The recent seizure of former President Donald Trump’s documents was apparently made without any on-site bagging or tagging.
The FBI hasn’t produced any of the logbooks that are required to keep record of the location of every page of every document taken. There is no provenance for these documents, no chain of evidence.
The FBI failed to report that it had found 11 empty folders marked “classified,” as well as some secret documents mixed in with family photo albums.
Would Mr. Trump or any of his staffers really have been this careless? I think not.
Moreover, fingerprints on paper or cardboard are among the easiest kind to recover. Why hasn’t the FBI announced that Mr. Trump’s fingerprints are all over these documents, as they surely would be if he had taken the papers?
Is it because the FBI hasn’t been able to find any? The FBI had motive, opportunity and the means to drop documents and folders haphazardly into the Trump papers — could it be that is precisely what happened?
JAMES FRENCH
Dakota, Illinois
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