Joe Scarborough talked to former FBI agent Clint Watts this morning about the movement by Republican to discredit the FBI.
"If you look at what happened yesterday, and I want you to talk about this, this is the most troubling thing, that the Republicans now are so desperate, because they see that Donald Trump is going to have to go and actually tell the truth -- try to tell the truth for once, or fall into what his associates call the perjury trap. Which means they know that Donald Trump is a liar," Scarborough said.
"They brought up -- Republicans are talking about this secret society inside the FBI? They sound like crackpots that Bill Buckley kicked out of the conservative movement back in the early 1960s. Like you know, the Illuminati. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, all because of a FBI agent who sent text messages to a friend.
"And we have the Wall Street Journal this morning, the same FBI agent was hesitant to join Robert Mueller's team because, quote, 'My gut sense is there's nothing there.' And yet, there is a declared-- Lou Dobbs said it, a declared war from the right on the FBI and the Justice Department," he said.
Watts said it was "baffling" that Republicans want to destroy a U.S. institution, and that Trump has learned nothing from the uproar over the firing of former FBI director James Comey.
"We saw the triggering of the special counsel based on the firing of Comey. And then he walks right back to the acting deputy, the acting FBI director, McCabe, and is trying to figure out, are you on my team, can I coerce you or push you in a way that's not in line with justice and doesn't represent the American people well," Watts said.
"Every time we see somebody from the Trump team or the campaign go in to get interviewed, suddenly there's a rash of GOP outrage about text messages or attacking the FBI as an institution. I don't know how that's good for the country. Ultimately, it damages our ability to do law enforcement and push for justice."
Scarborough reiterated that they're going after an FBI agent who said he didn't want to be involved in the probe.
"And when they start talking about secret societies inside the intel agencies, this is what Erdogan did in Turkey, to go after and persecute the military and his intel services. This is what Erdogan did to destroy democracy step by step, piece by piece, in Turkey," he said.
"I mean, what -- are Republicans going to sit back and allow this to happen? Are the board members of News Corp. going to allow Fox News to declare war on the FBI?"
"We've heard Republicans show up on Morning Joe and say that they're going to purge it, and that's what we see in the third world and that's what we see is the discrediting through conspiracies," Watts said.
