Glenn Greenwald has been writing about the story, with lengthy posts here and here.
He writes:
Ordinarily -- meaning when our Republic works the way it is supposed to -- grave misconduct of this sort is investigated by Congress, which has as one of its principal functions the duty of oversight. It is the responsibility of Congress -- and, really, only Congress can fulfill the responsibility -- to ensure that the vast law enforcement powers under the control of the Executive branch [in order (theoretically) to execute our laws] are not abused.But, needless to say, our Republic hasn't been functioning the way it is supposed to, in large part because the Congress has been ruled by authoritarian followers of the President who believe that the Leader does not err. Therefore -- outside of Narco News and a couple of isolated, ignored reporters -- nothing relating to any of these events has been investigated, neither by the media nor the Congress. And that is really as pure of a microcosm of the last five years as anything I can think of.
There just must be a Congressional investigation into this entire matter. The extent of wrongdoing here is staggering. It would be one thing if it were just some rogue law enforcement officers engaging in excessive, criminal and/or violent behavior. By itself, that would compel all sorts of investigations and corrective actions, but that would be a more commonplace outrage.
This case goes far beyond that. Agents of our government worked with, paid and recorded a serial murderer who repeatedly tortured and slaughtered people with the knowledge of high-level DOJ and DHS officials.
Glenn is not wrong, but it is an error to frame this scandal in partisan terms. It takes very little imagination to see this sort of thing happening under Democratic Party rule. I believe under the Clinton administration there was an increasing manifestation of ruthlessness by federal agents with little to no accountabilty. You may remember such incidents as well. The biggest difference is the lack of public attention to this scandal, as opposed to the Branch Davidian or Randy Weaver standoffs of the last decade. There seemed to be very little effort in the previous administration or previous congresses to bring out-of-control federal agents to justice.