A Manufactured Scandal

Consider what it takes to lie to a free people at scale.

A private liar can deceive a neighbor. A campaign can deceive a district. But to deceive an entire nation, and to do it durably, you need something rarer.

You need an institution the public has been trained to trust, and you need to borrow its authority. The intelligence community is that institution.

When career officers say a thing is so, citizens reasonably assume the judgment rests on secret evidence too sensitive to share. That trust is precisely what makes the apparatus so dangerous when it is turned, because a borrowed badge of credibility can launder a falsehood into a fact.

This is the heart of the matter, and it is why the events of 2016 through 2020 deserve a stark description. The coordinated politicization of U.S. intelligence by the Obama administration, the Clinton campaign, and an interlocking network of operatives was the single greatest disinformation campaign in American history.

I want to be careful with that claim, because careless conservatives have squandered credibility by overreaching, and the fact-checkers are waiting. So let me say plainly what I am not arguing. This was not treason in the strict constitutional sense, which requires levying war against the U.S. or adhering to its enemies, proven by two witnesses to an overt act. That high bar is not met here, and pretending otherwise only hands critics an easy rebuttal.

What I am arguing is more precise and, in some ways, more damning. The conduct fits the ordinary legal definition of conspiracy, a secret agreement to achieve unlawful ends through unlawful means, and it carries the unmistakable character of sedition, the deliberate poisoning of public perception against a lawful government.

The aim was to subvert an election and, having failed at that, to cripple the presidency the voters chose. Obama, Comey, Clapper, and Brennan deciding to screw Trump, stamping it as Russian collusion, and then classifying it so nobody could see it.

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