Remember when the FBI were the good guys? Remember the TV series about the FBI going after Al Capone? Somehow in recent years, the FBI has lost its way.
On Friday, The Blaze reported the following:
On August 17, Former FBI Special Agent Robert Cessario signed a plea agreement, admitting to having paid a business to permanently erase data from his hard drive so that forensic examiners could not analyze its contents. The data he had wiped was considered relevant to former state Sen. Jon Woods’ corruption trial (R-Ark.). Woods was convicted of mail and wire fraud in 2018, having received kickbacks for directing funds to Ecclesia College in Springdale.
Cessario admitted in the plea deal that he had erased the contents of the hard drive knowing that the court had ordered the computer be submitted to an FBI forensics examiner in Little Rock. His stated intention was to make “the contents of the computer’s hard unavailable for forensic examination.”
The former FBI special agent also stated that he knew “the contents of the hard drive were relevant to an official proceeding, that is, Cause No. 5:17-CR-50010, United States v. Woods et al.”
Just curious–did anyone raid his house?
The article notes:
Court documents indicate that Cessario’s texts revealed his bias ahead of the trial. In one text, he told Shane Wilkinson, former Arkansas Rep. Micah Neal’s counsel, that the trial would be “hilarious.” In another, he claimed that Woods was a “true narcissist.”
Extra to the perception of bias and the destruction of evidence, there was also a potential conflict of interest related to the trial involving the FBI special agent.
Cessario, who attended and conducted part of an interview of Woods on November 11, 2015, not only knew Woods’ attorney W.H. Taylor, Esq., but had been represented by Taylor. A year prior, Taylor acted on Cessario’s behalf in divorce proceedings.
Taylor is said to have instructed his new client, Woods, to meet with Cessario on numerous occasions without a legal representative present.
I am really concerned about the state of our country. I hope there are enough honest people left in our judiciary and Justice Department to turn things around. Right now I see American on a rapid road to becoming a banana republic.