The 'Russian interference' scam was a pretext to criminal attempts to deny Trump the election and the Presidency

IBD:

It's now beyond any reasonable doubt that Obama administration minions launched an all-out effort to destroy, first, President Trump's presidential campaign and, when that failed, his presidency. The only question is, knowing the truth, will the Justice Department charge these people with crimes?

The whole concern over "Russian interference" with the 2016 election was little more than a smokescreen for a much wider effort to go after Donald Trump. And that's not us talking, but the New York Times.

A Times report titled "F.B.I. Opened Inquiry into Whether Trump was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia" shows that the investigation into Donald Trump for the non-crime of "collusion" with Russia's government began before the election. The inquiry aimed at stopping Trump — and not, really, at determining whether Russians interfered in our presidential election.

The actual investigation by the Justice Department and FBI began during the election campaign. Using half-baked and "unverifiable" intelligence about Trump's purported links to Russia, officials used the so-called Steele Dossier four separate times for FISA court approval to spy on the Trump campaign.

The only problem is, the Steele Dossier didn't come from the FBI or Justice Department. It came from Fusion GPS, an opposition research group linked to the Democrats. And Hillary Clinton's campaign paid for it.

"Ostensibly, the surveillance application targeted Carter Page," wrote Andrew McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and himself a former federal prosecutor. "But Page was just a side issue. The dossier was principally about Trump – not Page, not Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, or other Trump associates referred to by Steele. The dossier's main allegation was that Trump was in an espionage conspiracy with Russia to swing the election to Trump, after which Trump would do Putin's bidding from the White House."

So for all intents and purposes, the Deep State holdovers from the Obama administration were serving as an adjunct to Hillary Clinton's campaign. Early on in the investigation, CIA chief John Brennan convened multi-agency meetings about Trump. They included Peter Strzok, the head of the FBI's counter-intelligence, and James Clapper, national intelligence director under Obama, among others.

The premise of the meetings, again, was that Trump possibly colluded with the Russians to hack our election and might even be an agent of Russia.

Yet, as the Times itself admitted, virtually "no evidence" existed for such a charge.

Such actions are illegal, an attempt by supposedly nonpartisan government employees to subvert the 2016 presidential election. Bureaucrats attempting to veto the legitimate will of the people.

Ironically, these extra-legal machinations posed a far greater direct threat to our democracy than anything Trump allegedly did. And yet the perpetrators still walk free. They make hundreds of thousands of dollars on the lecture circuit and as talking heads on TV.

As the Times points out, even as he deepened his investigation into Trump on behalf of the Democratic Party, former FBI Director James Comey lied repeatedly to Trump about whether he was under investigation. He also leaked the contents of a private meeting with Trump in the White House to the media.

The idea: Create doubts about Trump and sow the seeds of broader action by the Deep State against his presidency. For anyone still harboring any doubts: This was no vindictive political act. Trump had no real choice but to fire Comey.
...

There is more.

This is an ongoing coup attempt by the Deep State and the media to remove Trump from office using a bogus dossier to push without evidence ridiculous allegations against the President.  The people responsible for the coup attempt should be held accountable.  Many in the media have been co-conspirators in this coup attempt.  Were they dupes just being used as assets by the coup plotters?