In the Mountain West, a pre-dawn FBI raid has left one man dead and many questions unanswered.
I’m not talking about the Wednesday forced entry that killed a Provo, Utah, man who allegedly threatened President Joe Biden and other elected officials, including progressive Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. I’m talking about a separate, unrelated shooting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which the bureau is hardly releasing any details about — including where it happened.
As for the Provo incident, you’ve doubtlessly heard about that one: According to The New York Times, 75-year-old Craig D. Robertson was fatally shot by agents after a 6:15 a.m. raid on his home. Court documents accuse him of threatening both elected and law enforcement officials.
“A federal law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the shooting, said that Mr. Robertson was armed at the time. Officials offered few other details,” the Times reported.
“A White House official said that Mr. Biden had been briefed on the matter, and a woman who was listed in public records as Mr. Robertson’s daughter declined to comment when reached by phone,” the report continued.
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According to the court filing, Mr. Robertson owned numerous firearms, including a sniper rifle. The complaint also laid out his history of threats on social media, where he referred to his guns as Democratic eradicators. In one post last year, he photographed three rifles and said he was ‘getting ready for the 2024 election cycle.’ He repeatedly taunted the agents investigating him, saying they came close to ‘violent eradication.’”
Well, this does not indeed sound like a charming gentleman — although it’s worth noting that, as we know, this is just the FBI’s side of the story and it’s somewhat difficult to believe the we’re getting just the facts out of an FBI that’s becoming increasingly weaponized and unnervingly unaccountable. (For their part, Robertson’s family gives a markedly different account of the man — as did his neighbors, who called him a “teddy bear” and expressed fury that agents reportedly left his dead body visible for hours after the shooting.)
Naturally, the Times’ narrative is that by even mentioning the obvious weaponization of federal law enforcement, conservatives are potentially breeding more Craig D. Robertsons.
“The shooting comes at a moment of intense polarization in American politics,” wrote the Times’ Adam Goldman and Jesus Jiménez.
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“The three indictments of former President Donald J. Trump have offered fodder for supporters and allies, who have seized on his mounting legal peril to fan a narrative of a Justice Department weaponized against him and bent on derailing the Republican front-runner’s campaign to retake the White House.”
Again, just because that’s true doesn’t give one the license to make threats against public officials — but that also doesn’t negate the fact that the FBI and other organs of the Department of Justice have been weaponized against peaceful political opposition to the Biden administration, including the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
And it also doesn’t necessarily mean that the FBI is being transparent about the necessity of pre-dawn raids. For a case in point, one needs only to look to what happened in Albuquerque, 550 miles to the southeast of Provo, one day before the Robertson raid.
This is the entirety of the writeup in the Albuquerque Journal, for instance:
“The FBI shot and killed a person Tuesday morning in Albuquerque but released few details about the incident, including where it took place.”
“The agency’s Public Affairs Office said in a news release that the shooting occurred around 6 a.m.”
That’s some transparency, all right.
Nor has there been much apparent follow-up on this, either. The Journal seems to have focused mostly on reporting the shooting in Provo, with few additional details to the local shooting.
KRQE-TV reported that no agents were harmed and that the shooting was subject to an ongoing review by the FBI’s Inspection Division. They also noted their news crews “captured a heavy law enforcement presence near Chelwood Park Blvd. and Mountain Rd.,” but their reporting including no confirmation that’s where the shooting and/or raid occurred.
Even social media users noted the lack of details that had come out about the New Mexico FBI shooting:
Y’all probably missed this one… not hearing anything about it. Probably justified and it leads to questions about why the FBI still hits doors at 0600. https://t.co/xe2jDBYtwk
— Kyle Seraphin (@KyleSeraphin) August 11, 2023
Now, was it justified? Was the Robertson shooting justified? Could either have been done in a manner that didn’t involve a pre-dawn raid, where the fog of the moment is more likely to lead to a shootout and innocent lives being taken along with any potentially guilty individuals? Those are questions that need to be answered.
Conservatives have good enough reason for not trusting the FBI dating back to the bureau’s bogus FISA warrants against members of the Trump campaign and the subsequent Russiagate hoax. Between James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Merrick Garland and the Christophers — Steele and Wray — a wide swath of America has every reason to distrust the federal law enforcement apparatus.
Sadly, we no longer live in a time where the FBI has our trust and can hide behind vague details — particularly when politics enter into the mix.
