This is deeply disturbing and I am not sure what the best way to prevent this is, or if there even is one. Does anyone working with agencies get subjected to surveillance even after they stop working with the agency? Do criminals identified have such large consequences to discourage others? Something else?
The question we have to keep asking is: is this a politically motivated charge or was there actual wrongdoing? Anything that the government does as of Trump's inauguration is not the work of the non-partisan civil servants we all know, but instead the work of Trump loyalists with a clear and vocal political agenda that includes persecuting those that they feel are a threat to their ideology.
The news cycle is full of this right now. "The White House" officially announces things that were "hidden" by the previous administration, and the news reports it with such decorum, but should we believe them? The Press Secretary alone is blatantly regurgitating propaganda every time she speaks. I have zero confidence that anything that comes out officially is anything less than politically motivated lies.
We don't have to look far for historical examples. When dictators come into power they quickly charge their detractors with crimes and claim to have found all manner of wrong doing that their predecessors were hiding. There are the obvious examples from the two World Wars, but the Red Scare and McCarthyism is an example more recent and closer to home. People were charged and sentenced based on flimsy allegations often by the Justice department itself.
We may have had our doubts before about the government being honest with us, but this adminstration came out of the gate saying they would attack those who oppose them. We can't believe anything they say at this point because we know they intend to use their position for political attacks rather than actually informing and helping the public.
