Matt Gaetz lashes out at the FBI for encouraging ‘snitching’
Speaking to the right-wing news outlet Newsmax this Tuesday evening, Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz accused the FBI of carrying out politically motivated prosecutions at the behest of the Democratic Party.
"When the FBI is busy trying to make us all believe that our family members and our neighbors are extremists, we missed the opportunity to actually dig into important threats, cybersecurity threats, national security threats that they should be focused on," Gaetz said on the Cortes & Pellegrino show.
On Sunday, the FBI tweeted: "Family members and peers are often best positioned to witness signs of mobilization to violence. Help prevent homegrown violent extremism. Visit https://go.usa.gov/x6mjf to learn how to spot suspicious behaviors and report them to the #FBI." The message has sparked a backlash from some Republicans.
"Let's remember who the [FBI] building is named after, [FBI founder] J. Edgar Hoover, who would use information in a compromising way against politicians and people to be able to maintain his own power," Gaetz continued. "And then you saw the FBI weaponized against elements of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and now you see the FBI really becoming the enforcement wing of the Democratic Party in a lot of circumstances."
"Back during the worst days of the Soviet Union, one out of every three of the folks in that country was providing some sort of information to a centralized governing authority," Gaetz said. "Snitching really is a tool of the repressive security state, and we don't want that to happen in our country."
"This is an effort to identify people based on their politics, and I don't think we want an FBI that is resolving familial disputes through the lens of extremism," he said. "That seems to really take them away from an otherwise important mission."
Gaetz is currently embroiled in a federal sex-trafficking investigation.
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