The FBI raided the office of Virginia State Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas on May 6, executing search warrants at multiple locations in Portsmouth, Virginia — including a cannabis business with ties to Lucas — and the mainstream media greeted the whole thing with a collective yawn. A sitting Democrat state senator's office gets kicked in by federal agents in a corruption probe, and the networks treated it like a weather update from Topeka.
Imagine — just imagine — if this were a Republican. We'd have six CNN panels, a Rachel Maddow special, and a new hashtag trending before lunch.
But Louise Lucas isn't just any state senator. She's one of the most powerful figures in Virginia Democrat politics, the driving force behind marijuana legalization in the state, and — here's the fun part — a close ally of Democrat Governor Abigail Spanberger. Lucas campaigned hard for Spanberger's gubernatorial race last year. They were practically joined at the hip.
So naturally, when the FBI showed up with search warrants, Governor Spanberger responded with the political equivalent of pretending she didn't see her friend getting arrested at the mall.
Spanberger released a tepid little statement distancing herself from Lucas faster than you can say "I barely knew her." That's the Democrat playbook, folks. Ride someone's coattails all the way to the governor's mansion, then act like you've never met when the feds come knocking.
Lucas, for her part, told Fox News she "did not know what the FBI activity involved." Sure. The FBI raids your office and a cannabis business tied to you, and you're just as surprised as the rest of us. Nothing to see here. Just a totally routine federal search warrant execution at a state senator's office on a Tuesday.
Let's be clear about what happened here, as reported by Just the News. The FBI didn't just pop by for a chat. They executed search warrants — plural — at multiple locations. This is a corruption probe involving a Democrat who has been one of the most influential legislators in Virginia for years. The woman who pushed marijuana legalization through the state legislature now has feds rifling through her files.
You'd think that might be newsworthy. You'd think that a federal corruption investigation into a top-ranking Democrat official — the President Pro Tempore of the Virginia State Senate — might warrant a chyron or two on the networks that spent four years breathlessly covering every subpoena within a three-mile radius of Mar-a-Lago.
But no. Crickets.
This is the double standard we've been talking about for years, except now it's so blatant they're not even trying to hide it. Republican gets a parking ticket? Congressional hearing. Democrat gets raided by the FBI? Must be a slow news day.
Keep your eyes on this one. When they're this quiet, it usually means the story is about to get a whole lot louder.