America's GM, strike at Ireland, if government miscalculation ended in gunfire and death.

The FBI has come in for a lot of scrutiny these days. A 2018 poll from Penn State University found that just 45%

of political independence say they trust the FBI most or all of the time. Only 39% of Republicans,

only 67% of Democrats trusted the agency. Over the past few years, those numbers are becoming

even more stark, thanks to the perception by Republicans, that the FBI has been weaponized on behalf of the Democratic Party and against Donald Trump.

But what is the FBI?

What's it supposed to do?

Do we even need it?

This video is sponsored by our friends over at Birch Gold.

All righty.

So let's start at the very beginning.

The FBI was born in 2008 because there were concerns across the country about state crime moving across state

borders. Remember, the United States is a very, very large country. Most crime happens

in trust states, right, inside each state. And so state criminal law typically covers that

stuff. But as the country grows larger and more populous, now crimes are happening across

the state lines. Virtually all law enforcement had been done

to this point within state borders. There wasn't federal force with the power or ability to even

really enforce the criminal law across state lines. So Teddy Roosevelt, who is a really nationalist,

kind of big government thinker. His attorney general is a guy named Charles Bonaparte. Yes,

actually related to Napoleon. He actually had to borrow secret service agents from the president

to investigate federal crimes. Well, in May 1908, Congress steps in, and they stop Bonaparte

from doing even that. So Bonaparte, he's puzzled. He needs to focus in on crimes that are crossing

...