Lawyers, lobbyists and communications professionals every day withdraw from, or decline to take on, work due to far lesser conflicts of interest with clients. Yet, Mueller’s lawyers and investigators didn’t even attempt to disclose them from the outset, much less bow out of the investigation.

Given all of this, why are people surprised that, in some quarters, Mueller’s efforts now appear to be nothing more than a witch hunt run by a pack of partisan wolves seeking to do nothing less than nullify the 2016 election.

But the questions about Mueller’s team and its motivations are little more than a prelude to the far more important question: Is this entire investigation into the fairytale of Trump-Russia collusion in 2016 even legitimate?

We now know that the Fusion GPS dossier, largely unsubstantiated and really nothing more than news clips, gossip fodder from Reddit and other left-leaning conspiracy sites, and yes, information from either former or current Russian intelligence agents, was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

That dossier — which somehow ended up in the “top secret” files at both the CIA and FBI, and was used to brief Obama, as well as other senior Obama administration officials — is in many ways the basis for this entire investigation.

Given what we now know, it’s completely fair to ask if an investigation based on false pretenses and a fake dossier funded by Democrats is legitimate.

I’m all for investigating Russian efforts to influence our election. What I’m not for is funding ongoing witch hunts into fairytales of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, which after almost a year and a half into this, not a scintilla of evidence has been unearthed, leaked or confirmed.

Honestly, do we believe that if Rep. Adam Schiff Adam Bennett SchiffPelosi, Democrats unveil bills to rein in alleged White House abuses of power Chris Matthews ripped for complimenting Trump's 'true presidential behavior' on Ginsburg Trump casts doubt on Ginsburg statement, wonders if it was written by Schiff, Pelosi or Schumer MORE (D-Calif.) had any evidence, he wouldn’t be spending even more time touting it on MSNBC than he already does?

If there is a silver lining to the Mueller mess, it’s allowed us to understand where the real scandals are: The actions of the FBI and the Department of Justice in the use of the Fusion GPS dossier to open their investigations and the role former FBI Director James Comey and his colleague Peter Strzok played in nullifying the Clinton national security investigation, which ensured she remained competitive in the presidential race.

If the Department of Justice or Congress won’t act, the president should jumpstart it by simply ordering all materials related to these investigations be declassified, and allow the American people to decide on their own.

Ned Ryun is a former presidential writer for George W. Bush and the founder and CEO of American Majority. You can find him on Twitter, @nedryun.