Appearing on the Tucker Carlson Show, James Kallstrom called out the "conspiracy," the "Fifth Column" against Donald Trump and his presidency. By virtue of his professional experiences, the former assistant director of the FBI may be the perfect expert-witness to make such accusations credibly.

On paper, Kallstrom's 27 years at the FBI tell us he knows what he is talking about when he says it is unprecedented for the FBI to conduct no-knock, searching, and seizing raids without a criminal or national security predicate. It is important for Americans to learn through his institutional memory that throughout the extensive S&L investigations in the 1980s, for example, not a single law firm was raided ... and compare that to the horrifying raids on Michael Cohen's home, hotel and small law office -- for what? Documents related to an all too commonplace celebrity "nuisance settlement"?

Kallstrom outrage was similarly intense when it came to last summer's predawn raid on Paul Manafort (and his wife in her nightgown) over, at worst, white collar crime, as he also pointed out. "Out of the control," was one phrase Kallstrom used to describe the investigation under Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He also said that if he, Kallstrom, were FBI director, he would not authorize FBI agents to participate in such actions.   

Sobering stuff.

There is another side to Kallstrom's career, which provides him with a completely different kind of "gravitas" on which to draw when describing the perversion of federal law enforcement into a political hammer -- or, perhaps better, sword and shield. As painstakingly and convincingly laid out by the perceptive and persistent investigative journalist Jack Cashill in numerous articles, interviews, and two books (including Flight 800: The Crash, The Cover-Up and the Conspiracy), Kallstrom, however reluctantly, was party to the massive cover-up by Bill Clinton's Justice Department and national security agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, of the shoot-down of TWA Flight 800.

In a nutshell, Kallstrom actually knows how these things work -- government-wide conspiracies, Fifth Columns, cover-ups, "the Clinton crime family," as he has elsewhere called Bill and Hill --  from too much personal or eye-witness experience.

All of which is to say, speaking for the viewers watching at home, It's insane to pretend the Mueller investigations are normal when a not-so-slow-rolling coup is still in progress.