So the headline in various sites was that conservative Fox commentators Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes, fine people both, were departing their roles as Fox News contributors. Why? Because they objected to a three-part Tucker Carlson special for Fox Nation, the network’s online streaming site. The series is called Patriot Purge. The essence: a focus on the January 6 riots at the Capitol, and allegations the U.S. government is targeting Trump supporters — American citizens.

Patriot Purge can be found here and the statement by Goldberg and Hayes here at their Dispatch site.

For the record, I watched the series. And I am baffled at the Goldberg-Hayes reasoning.

To state the obvious in my case, I did not go to the Capitol on January 6. But I was in fact in the literal front row of the earlier rally on the White House Ellipse featuring President Trump. Afterward, I peeled off to go back to my hotel room to make various television hits. At no time while I was on site did I hear from anyone a hint that there was violence on tap. In fact, the people around me were literally dancing to the blaring rock music played before the president’s arrival.

Thus, when I read the following from Goldberg and Hayes in their statement I am baffled. They state as follows, bold print for emphasis supplied by me:

The domestic war on terror is here. It’s coming after half of the country,” says one protagonist. “The left is hunting the right, sticking them in Guantanamo Bay for American citizens — leaving them there to rot,” says another, over video of an individual in an orange jumpsuit being waterboarded.

This is not happening. And we think it’s dangerous to pretend it is. If a person with such a platform shares such misinformation loud enough and long enough, there are Americans who will believe — and act upon — it.

One can only shake one’s head in amazement at this flatly untrue assertion. Have Jonah and Steve never heard the names of the FBI’s Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, James Comey, or Kevin Clinesmith? These were Trump-hating bureaucrats and they were indeed, in fact, hunting both the Trump campaign and Trump campaigner Carter Page, using the resources inside the United States government to do their hunting. All of this is documented fact. See: John Durham.

Then there is Ashli Babbitt. A literal killing by an officer of the United States government of an unarmed protestor, a woman. Pretending that she was not shot to death by exercising her constitutional right to protest is the real danger here. Her killing is exactly what Goldberg and Hayes pretend is not going on, their denial that “The U.S. government is targeting patriotic Americans.” Babbitt, a decidedly patriotic American, was literally targeted with a pistol held by a government agent — who shot her to death.

Then there’s the FBI again, the bureau’s decidedly political corruption issues and the issue of the bureau infiltrating various targeted groups, using informants who in fact are not averse to committing violence themselves.

Over there at Judicial Watch there was this headline in August of 2020:

Judicial Watch: New Strzok-Page Emails Show FBI Investigated President Trump’s Tweets Critical of Obama and FBI

In sum, these emails document in detail exactly — yet again! — that “the left is hunting the right.”

And as to the idea that the government infiltrated the pro-Trump crowd to instigate the riot, it is hardly some farfetched conspiracy theory. Let’s recall a few names.

William O’Neal. Here’s a Newsweek headline on O’Neal: ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’: What Happened to William O’Neal?

O’Neal, an African-American, is the “Judas” here. Why? At the request of the FBI, he infiltrated the Black Panthers in 1960s Chicago. He then gave inside information on Panther leader Fred Hampton, specifically including information on Hampton’s apartment layout. As a result, there was a police raid — and Fred Hampton was killed.

Way back there in 1919, according to the Guardian in a 2020 article by Mike German, a former FBI agent and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program.

[A] young J Edgar Hoover, director of the Bureau of Investigation’s general intelligence division, targeted “Black Moses” Marcus Garvey for investigation and harassment because of his alleged association with “radical elements” that were “agitating the Negro movement.”… But the bureau, the precursor organization to the FBI, infiltrated Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association with informant provocateurs and undercover agents who searched for years for any charge that could justify his deportation.

The Justice Department ultimately won a conviction against Garvey on a dubious mail fraud charge in 1923.

The German article also reports:

The FBI used similar tactics to disrupt, discredit and neutralize leaders of the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. The FBI’s Cointelpro program targeting civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael was specifically designed to “[p]revent the rise of a ‘messiah’ who could unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement” rather than to prevent any violent acts they might perpetrate. The methods included informant-driven disinformation campaigns designed to spark conflict within the movement, discourage donors and supporters, and even break up marriages. Overt investigative activity was also used, as one stated goal of the Cointelpro program was to inspire fear among activists by convincing them that an FBI agent lurked behind every mailbox.

Then there’s Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. A simple trip to Wikipedia reveals this:

[Rowe]  was a paid informant and agent provocateur for the FBI. As an informant, he infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan to monitor and disrupt it, and incited violence as part of the FBI’s COINTELPRO project. Rowe was accused of participating in and helping to plan violent Klan activity against African Americans and civil rights groups.

As I distinctly recall as I was, in the day, a news junkie as a kid and vividly remember, this FBI provocateur was in the car when Klan members followed and murdered the white civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo during the Selma to Montgomery voting rights campaign in 1965 Alabama.

Over there at the Daily Caller, historian Victor Davis Hanson has his own list of FBI problems in a piece titled: “Can The FBI Be Salvaged?”

On that list is a reference to an episode that is discussed in Patriot Purge. Writes Victor:

One could add to such misadventures the mysterious leadership roles of at least 12 FBI informants in the harebrained kidnapping scheme of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

One could go on — and on and on. Tucker Carlson’s reporting in Patriot Purge is hardly “conspiracy-driven.” It is a much-documented fact that, yes, the FBI is indeed capable of infiltrating X group — Trump supporters in this case — and having their informants/infiltrators stir up violence.

So farewell to Jonah and Steve. It’s a free country, they can go where they wish. But always — always — facts, documented facts count.

Which is exactly what Tucker Carlson has spent his career doing: documenting facts.