Just when you thought the FBI couldn't fall any further, the Bureau utterly, hilariously, and luridly beclowns itself.  In a formal document, a criminal charge.  Using a Photoshopped picture from 4chan, the reviled (by all people who abhor wrongthink) website where a wag substituted a lurid picture for the official portrait hanging on the wall of the U.S. Capitol in the background of a shot of the Viking horn helmet guy and others who stormed in on January 6, 2021.

Seamus Hughes was the eagle eye who spotted it, though the arrow in his picture on the following tweet directs the eye away from the object of humor:

I’ve studied extremism for 15 years, I’ve reviewed mostly every court record for decades. I can honestly say very little surprises me. That said, I have absolutely no idea what to say about the Internet image the FBI used in a criminal complaint of the picture hanging on the wall pic.twitter.com/nznszFmif7

— Seamus Hughes (@SeamusHughes) February 4, 2021

Here is a blurry enlargement of the key detail:

Source.

This is so sloppy a job that it suggests extreme pressure to act in haste.  That need for speed, of course, is the excuse used by Kevin Clinesmith to explain away his lying to a federal court — and the judge in question, James Boasberg, bought it and let him off with no prison time, a $100 fine, and community service.

I am so old that I remember when the FBI was adored by the media and most of the citizenry other than communists.  And J. Edgar Hoover's insistence on getting the details right was legendary.  Back then, not having enough Brylcreem in an agent's hair could get one exiled to the field office in Butte, Montana.  Considering the light punishment handed out to FBI lawyer Clinesmith, will anyone at the FBI even care about this?  Will the judge hearing the complaint?