If you lie to Congress under oath, you go to jail. The rules are simple, and they certainly apply to conservatives. Steve Bannon is currently serving a prison sentence for contempt of Congress because he refused to testify in a politically motivated inquiry centered on the events of January 6, 2021. However, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Director Paul Abbate have both blatantly lied to Congress about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Neither of these men hesitated to lie; neither do they expect to face consequences for their flagrant disregard for the truth.

The FBI is a dangerous rogue agency that regularly acts with political malice to harm the opponents of the Democratic Party. The agency now appears to be involved in a coordinated misinformation campaign surrounding the shooting of a former president, and it does not expect anyone to hold it accountable.

The FBI is a dangerous organization that sees itself as above the law and immune to consequences, and its top officials have every reason to feel that way.

When the iconic photo of a bloodied Trump pumping his fist after a failed assassination attempt first appeared, progressives reacted by immediately spinning out several conspiracy theories. The heroic image of the former president simply could not exist alongside the left’s conception of Trump as a cowardly con man stoking the resentment of white Americans to make a few dollars.

At first, the hysterical social media mob concocted an elaborate narrative about the Great Orange Hitler paying a skilled sharpshooter to graze his ear, creating a bloody but nonlethal spectacle that would become the new Reichstag fire to usher in an authoritarian regime. This fiction proved too absurd even for rabid and delusional Trump-haters, so a new theory emerged: It was broken glass, not a bullet, that ultimately struck the real estate tycoon.

This theory was not as satisfying but sounded slightly more plausible. Celebrities quickly joined leftist news outlets in speculating that Trump had not taken a bullet but had simply been grazed by shrapnel. It's worth noting that Alex Jones faced a $1.5 billion judgment after a jury determined that he made false claims about the Sandy Hook shooting. Despite photos clearly showing a bullet midflight during the event, this conspiracy theory was enthusiastically repeated by those hoping to blunt the impact of Trump’s courage in the aftermath of the attempted assassination.

The “shrapnel” conspiracy theory was stupid and obviously false, so it was very strange to hear FBI Director Christopher Wray last week offer it as a possible explanation for Trump’s injury when he testified in Congress.

Wray, who was appointed by Trump, is not the kind of guy who walks into a congressional hearing and repeats whatever he hears on MSNBC. Wray operates the nation’s premier law enforcement agency and has access to high-level briefings. The director would have been perfectly aware of what really happened to Trump, yet he chose to insert a blatant lie into his own testimony, feeding the delusional fake news of the left. Wray inserted this lie because he knows that he is above the law.

Authorities have released suspiciously little information about the man who attempted to kill Donald Trump. Like Audrey Hale, the trans shooter responsible for the deaths of six people at a Christian school in Nashville last year, Thomas Matthew Crooks’ motives may prove inconvenient for those in power, prompting law enforcement to work hard to conceal them. Initially, it appeared that Crooks was the only 20-year-old with no social media footprint or indication of his political leanings. Then the FBI revealed it had discovered one account on the social media platform Gab that it believes belonged to the failed assassin.

For those unfamiliar, Gab is a social media website with a radical commitment to free speech. Due to its dedication to open conversation, the site is dominated by very right-wing users who have been banned from other platforms. Progressives and their allies in law enforcement want to paint Crooks as a disgruntled right-winger angry with an insufficiently radical Trump, but that simply is not the case. According to documents released by CEO Andrew Torba, the shooter was on Gab but spent his time trolling conservatives, making pro-Biden posts, and supporting the administration’s lockdown and border policies.

On Tuesday, Deputy Director Paul Abbate was called in front of Congress to testify. While being questioned by Senator John Kennedy (R-La.), Abbate contradicted Wray’s previous testimony. He made it clear that Trump had most definitely been hit by a bullet and went on to claim that no one at the FBI had ever believed otherwise.

It would be odd enough if Abbate had simply testified under oath that his boss had committed perjury on live television, but Abbate proceeded to spin his own falsehood in front of the committee.

The existence and content of Crooks’ Gab account was already public knowledge, as Torba had released the information after receiving a request from law enforcement. Despite this fact, Abbate appeared to perjure himself by testifying that Crooks’ social media account had posted 700 comments with anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic views and that this was the only social media activity available to elucidate the shooter’s motives.

Torba immediately took to X (formerly Twitter) and presented the FBI’s information request along with the posts in which Crooks revealed a political ideology very different from the one portrayed by Abbate. It is possible that Abbate was referring to a previously unknown account, but the deputy director failed to mention the pro-Biden Gab posts. From the evidence available, it seems likely that Abbate knowingly lied under oath to misrepresent Crooks’ political leanings and create the public narrative the notoriously biased FBI would prefer.

The events surrounding the shooting of Donald Trump and the tremendous security failures involved are already incredibly suspicious. The fact that FBI leaders are willing to add to the air of mistrust by championing wild conspiracy theories and perjuring themselves in front of Congress is utterly bizarre.

One thing is for sure: The FBI is a dangerous organization that sees itself as above the law and immune to consequences, and its top officials have every reason to feel that way. No conservative politician has been willing to take meaningful action against these malicious political actors. If Donald Trump manages to return to the White House, he had better plan on dismantling the FBI brick by brick. If he doesn’t, the bureau will bury him alive.