When I started working in the White House for President Trump, I avoided the phrase “Deep State.”
I thought it an expression too redolent of the tinfoil hat brigade. The idea of a secret cabal of bureaucrats ensconced within the machinery of government, unaccountable to anyone, and implementing their ideological goals in violation of the will of the people and who they have elected as their President.
I was wrong.
In the first weeks of the Administration, I was tasked with a classified project concerning a Jihadist organization in the Middle East. The work was too much for one person to accomplish, so I drafted a team of people I had taught in graduate school and who were now in government—one woman at the CIA and three former students of mine now at the FBI.
It should have been a mere formality to have these federal employees transferred to work in the White House. Such a temporary detail is a standard procedure since the majority of White House staff are, in fact, from other government agencies, especially the State Department and the Pentagon. And that was what I was told by the seemingly lovely head of White House HR, who assured me it would take a week or two to have my team members’ clearances transferred to the White House and then all moved over.
She gave me that assurance again and again for months. Then I found out why this otherwise standard procedure wasn’t ever going to happen.
After six months of waiting, a senior FBI agent came for a meeting in the Eisenhower Executive office building, the majestic edifice next to the White House that actually houses most of the people who work for the President.
After his meeting, he surreptitiously peeled off his group and looked up my office. This individual had worked with my wife at the Department of Homeland Security, and he wanted to give me a heads-up as a favor.
And now, I will quote him directly: “Seb, those “by-name” FBI personnel requests you’ve put in for? You’re never going to get them. Because the 7th floor of the Hoover building looks at this White House and the President as the enemy.”
Let me repeat and paraphrase my government colleague. The unelected FBI Director and his deputies at Bureau headquarters consider the man they work for, elected by 64 million Americans, as their Enemy.
That’s when I knew the Deep State is real.
Over the decades, a group of unaccountable political actors with immense power have decided that they get to control America, no matter who the President – their actual boss – happens to be.
That is how the FBI, CIA, and NSA launched an utterly unprecedented covert tri-agency surveillance operation against a Presidential campaign based upon a libelous smear dossier that they knew was a lie and had been paid for by that candidate’s rival, Hillary Clinton.
That’s how a former director of the FBI was “hired” by his bureaucratic buddies at the Department of Justice to investigate a fake accusation of “Russian collusion,” an investigation that lasted 20 months and cost more than $30 million of your money only to conclude that President Trump had never colluded with Russia.
That’s how the IRS leaked the President’s confidential tax returns to the media.
That’s how classified official discussions between the President and his counterparts worldwide were feloniously given to the Press.
That’s how the FBI was allowed to send armed agents to the private residence of President Trump to raid his offices and his wife and child’s bedrooms as the President’s attorneys were ordered to remain outside the building, unable to observe what the gun-toting agents of the state were actually doing inside.
That’s how former President Trump now faces 4 indictments, more than 90 charges, and more than 700 years in prison.
Now, regarding the last point, we have to add that the undeniable existence of the Deep State no longer applies solely to federal actors. With Georgia DA Fani Willis bringing absurd charges, including making posts on social media and asking Americans to call their representatives, the extent of corruption spread far beyond Washington, DC. And that is still true even in Newt Gingrich’s shocking allegation that the county official, Willis, was illegally acting on DOJ’s orders. Add to this yesterday’s news that a local judge has unilaterally ordered the dissolution of Donald Trump, the businessman’s companies, and you begin to understand what America has become.
We have been told for decades now that “the next election is the most important of our lifetimes.” This time, it’s true.
Sebastian Gorka Ph.D. is host of SALEM Radio’s AMERICA First and The Gorka Reality Check on NEWSMAX TV. A former Strategist to President Donald Trump, he is a member of the National Security Education Board of the Pentagon. His latest book is The War for America’s Soul. Follow him on his SubStack page and website.