RUTHFULLY YOURS

As Matt Margolis noted in July, the FBI is “corrupt and needs reform.” This reform became all the more urgent last week, when it was revealed that the feds were far more deeply involved in the January 6 insurrection-that-wasn’t-an-insurrection at the Capitol than had been previously known. But instead of moving to restore its shattered reputation and proving it hasn’t become little more than the far-Left’s muscle, the FBI on Tuesday raided the home of Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA) President Ed Mullins, a Trump supporter and outspoken critic of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

According to the New York Daily News, the raid “also targeted the police union’s Lower Manhattan headquarters.” The FBI confirmed that it was “carrying out a law enforcement action in connection with an ongoing investigation” into the 13,000-member SBA. Said de Blasio: “All I have been told is the FBI has raided the SBA HQ and it’s in connection with an ongoing investigation, but we don’t have further details on that at this moment.”

The mayor couldn’t resist, however, kicking Mullins while he was down: “A lot of what he’s done has been really, really destructive — especially in the middle of a crisis where we’re trying to unify and we’re trying to get through together. I think he’s been a divisive voice. … All I hear is the FBI raid. I want to hear the details before I comment further.”

Mullins aroused de Blasio’s ire when he posted the arrest report of Chiara de Blasio, the mayor’s daughter, on Twitter; Chiara de Blasio was arrested in May 2020 during the George Floyd riots in Manhattan. According to the Daily News, Mullins was accused of “violating department rules” in disclosing Chiara’s private information, while his lawyer, Andrew Quinn, noted that the report had already been publicized and stated: “We see this case an attempt to chill Ed Mullins’s First Amendment rights.”

Amid the controversy, Mullins “vowed to continue speaking out whenever he believes cops are vilified or mistreated” and declared: “De Blasio’s City Hall has been at war with cops since his first days in office. Charges against union activism that City Hall doesn’t like — speaking truth to those who claim power — is sadly what we’ve come to expect from this administration.”

Mullins has made other enemies as well. Former mayoral candidate Maya Wiley, who previously had worked for de Blasio, excoriated Mullins for alleged “racism.” And in May 2020, New York’s then-Health Department Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Babot declared “I don’t give two rats’ a**es about your cops” in response to a request for more masks for the police. Mullins tweeted in response: “Truth is this b***h has blood on her hands but why should anyone be surprised the NYPD has suffered under DeBlasio since he became Mayor.”

In May 2021, Mullins wrote that New York’s then-Governor Andrew Cuomo “never met a murderer he did not want to parole,” and that de Blasio “never passes up an opportunity to bash the police.” He also criticized City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, “who along with many cohorts was a strong supporter of bail and police ‘reform’ laws which have rendered the cops all but impotent and turned New York into an urban facsimile of a Wild West frontier town.”

Mullins added: “Words have consequences and, since first taking office in 2014, de Blasio’s incendiary anti-police rhetoric has already resulted in three police officers being executed while sitting in police vehicles, Molotov cocktails being lobbed at officers and into police vehicles, armed assaults on police facilities, cops being pelted with debris, and wholesale damage to police and public property.”

He even called out these Leftist officials’ race hypocrisy: “Despite these officials presenting themselves as beacons of hope for communities of color amid a mushroom cloud of systemic racism, they have all been notably silent despite there being a steady increase in violent crime since the ‘reforms,’ including a 166 per cent uptick in shootings from April 2020 to the same month this year. The 2020 ‘reform’ package has done nothing but kneecap the police and increase violent crime to levels not seen since the early 1990s. All the progressive changes meant to even the playing field for minority residents has only resulted in scores of Black and Hispanic becoming victims of crime.”

Now the FBI has raided the home and offices of one of New York City Leftist establishment’s most high-profile critics. This will only fuel suspicions that the FBI is an institutionally corrupt and compromised agency that does not work impartially, but is simply a tool in the hands of the political and media elites. If we had any journalists today, this would be a huge story and there would be urgent calls from people at every point on the political spectrum for a thorough investigation of the FBI. But nothing is less likely than that.