From hoax to indictments? Deep state actors could face day of reckoning at last

Behind every sordid conspiracy, there’s a story waiting to be told. But sometimes the truth is hidden so deep that it takes years to fully unravel. 

It’s been nearly a decade since President Donald Trump became the victim of the greatest mass delusion in American political history. Those who abused the levers of government power and schemed to frame him are now suffering an acute case of the legal jitters.

Those behind the infamous Russia Hoax have reason to be nervous. On Monday, the news broke that the Department of Justice is convening a grand jury to assess a growing body of incriminating evidence. Indictments may follow.  

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There was never a Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy. But there was an elaborate conspiracy to falsely accuse him of collusion.  

It becomes criminal if it can be shown that people lied under oath, deceived government agencies, manufactured false documents, or if federal officials themselves violated rights and laws with the intent to persecute and/or prosecute an innocent person.  

The Most Obvious Targets

In 2016, John Brennan, James Comey, and James Clapper were directors of the CIA, FBI, and ODNI, respectively, in the Obama administration. They played pivotal roles in the corrupt investigation of Trump dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane.” There was no credible evidence to justify the dilating and damaging probe.  

Just the opposite. They knew at the outset that the collusion narrative was a dirty political trick conjured up by Hillary Clinton and her campaign to smear her political opponent and to distract from her own email scandal in which she had clearly committed crimes.  

Evidence shows that the CIA chief rushed to the White House to alert then-President Obama. In two successive meetings on July 28 and August 3, 2016, Brennan briefed Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Comey and Clapper. Brennan’s handwritten notes recounted Clinton’s plot “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”  

Instead of telling the truth to the American people and Congress, Obama and his confederates concealed Hillary’s scheme. Armed with the bogus dossier secretly funded by Clinton’s campaign, they exploited it as a pretext to implicate Trump as a Russian asset, knowing full well that he was not.

Despite planned leaks to the media, Trump won. There was no election interference by the Russians and certainly no collusion. But that did not stop Obama, Biden and his national security team from peddling the canard to destroy Trump once he took office. To do so, they had to recast the evidence.

A December 7, 2016, intelligence report stated, “We assess that foreign adversaries did not use cyberattacks on election infrastructure to alter the U.S. Presidential outcome this year.” The report added, “We have no evidence of cyber manipulation of election infrastructure intended to alter results.”  

But that conclusion did not conform to the spurious collusion narrative. So, two days later Obama ordered a new Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) that peddled the lie that “Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump” and “aspired to help” his election chances. That document appears to have been cleverly rigged by Brennan, Comey and Clapper.  

In their testimony before Congress, they insisted that the dossier played no role in the assessment, offering up a sanitized version that deliberately deleted any reference to it. The newly declassified documents expose the erasure and prove that the dossier was, indeed, referenced in the body of the ICA and misused to reach the contrived conclusion that Russia helped Trump win.

Separately, a compelling case can be made that Comey deceived FISA court judges in obtaining three surveillance warrants to spy on Trump campaign associate, Carter Page. Comey vouched for the credibility of the debunked dossier and attested to the reliability of its author, Christopher Steele, without disclosing that he’d been fired as an FBI source for lying.       

Lying under oath in any federal proceeding constitutes perjury (18 USC 1621). Knowingly making a false or fraudulent statement not under oath is also a crime (18 USC 1001). Both carry punishments of up to five years in prison. 

Conspiracy to commit perjury or to provide false statements, as well as conspiring to intentionally submitting fraudulent or deceptive documents, would constitute additional crimes (18 USC 371) with the same penalties. 

In a conspiracy the statute of limitations begins when the last overt act is committed or when purposely concealed evidence is discovered —which is fairly recent.  

Clinton and her Campaign

In any conspiracy case before the grand jury, the conduct of Hillary Clinton would have to be examined closely. After all, the genesis of the collusion hoax occurred when, according to documents, she approved the scheme on July 26, 2016. She was instrumental in propagating it.  

But Clinton did not act alone. Those running her campaign can expect to receive grand jury subpoenas to cough up documents and offer testimony. Those would include campaign manager Robby Mook, chairman John Podesta, communications director Jennifer Palmieri, general counsel Marc Elias, and policy advisers Jake Sullivan and Julianne Smith.  

According to the newly declassified report from special counsel John Durham, it was Smith who proposed the fictitious collusion scheme to Hillary. The adviser told his investigators that she “did not specifically remember proposing a plan to Clinton”… but “it was possible.” (Page 14, Durham Annex)

Also implicated in the Durham report is Leonard Bernardo, a top official at George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Although he denies writing any of the incriminating emails confirming Clinton’s approval of the plot to demonize Trump, you can add his name to the list of witnesses.

There is significant evidence that some, if not all, of Hillary’s senior campaign team helped formulate and spread the Russia Hoax. They posited that Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin in the bowels of the Kremlin to steal the election. With every new leak, the Trump-hating media became witting accessories.       

With an eye toward criminal charges, prosecutors should consider conspiracy to defraud the government (18 USC 371), which includes interfering with lawful government functions —such as an election— through false statements, fraudulent documents, and deceit.  

Deprivation of rights under color of law (18 USC 242) is another underlying crime that could attach to potential conspiracy charges. The federal statute targets abuse of power by government officials and others who act to willfully deprive a person —such as Trump— of his constitutional rights.     

Fifth Amendment and Obama Immunity

We can expect that some witnesses will invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to remain silent. Some may regard the grand jury proceedings as a perjury trap, while others have much to hide. But that doesn’t mean that prosecutors cannot bring a viable case.

There are people in the intelligence community who witnessed a myriad of corrupt acts and will be more than willing to testify about them —particularly those who warned that sham evidence was being manipulated to frame Trump. Others who were more directly involved may seek immunity in exchange for their valuable testimony.  

There is only one person who already enjoys immunity and that’s former President Barack Obama. Thanks to the case brought by his successor, Donald Trump, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that presidents have broad immunity for their official acts, although they are not immune for actions taken outside their official capacity.  

As noted above, Obama was deeply embedded in the hoax. The newly revealed records show that he pressured Comey to clear Hillary of her email crimes, joined the plot to push the phony collusion narrative that Clinton instigated, and helped engineer the counterfeit case against Trump by massaging intelligence.  

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Obama would surely assert that everything he did is protected as official acts. That, of course, is a debatable defense and would have to be sorted out by federal courts. But it’s doubtful that prosecutors would want to venture anywhere near that treacherous legal quagmire.  

In the meantime, there may be a run on criminal defense attorneys in Washington as those in legal jeopardy clamor to “lawyer-up.”  But that assumes that a grand jury would be seated in the nation’s capital. Maybe not.  

If prosecutors are crafting an overarching criminal conspiracy case that extends beyond Trump’s first term to encompass the efforts by Biden’s DOJ to unduly influence the 2024 election by machinating specious criminal cases against his opponent in both Washington and Florida, the latter venue could be where the grand jury convenes.  

That would be logical inasmuch as DC is an utterly insane place to pursue politically charged prosecutions. Trump received a scant 6.6% of the vote there in 2024. Given the makeup of the jury pool, not to mention past experiences, gaining convictions against his perceived adversaries would be next to impossible.    

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Regardless of the jurisdiction, our constitutional due process guarantees that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.  

Even the guilty.