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It’s hard to believe that anyone could actually take the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry seriously, given how transparent its architects have been about their obsession with taking down President Trump.

This week’s public impeachment hearings have been almost three years in the making. Washington lawyer Mark Zaid, literally tweeted about his plans for a coup just days after President Trump took office. Not only did Zaid write that a "coup has started" and that "impeachment will follow ultimately,” but, a few months later, he was nice enough to advertise who would participate in this usurpation of the democratic will, predicting that “@CNN will play a key role in @realDonaldTrump not finishing out his full term as president.”

That sort of brazenness seems insane, but it’s typical of the people who have been relentlessly trying to impeach Donald Trump based on an ever-changing slew of conspiracy theories and fanciful opposition research. From the very beginning, the media, Democratic politicians, Obama administration intelligence officials, and the ranks of the “resistance” shamelessly and openly gave credence to a ridiculous “dossier”, even after it was clear that this propaganda was crafted on Hillary Clinton’s dime.

Now that “coup” plotter Zaid is representing the CIA leaker underpinning the Democrats’ latest attempt to throw Donald Trump out of office, though, this partisan lawyer has suddenly become much more discreet. His law partner, for example, drafted a letter desperately trying to gag the press and private citizens from revealing his client’s name, falsely implying that it is a crime to name him.

Why the sudden shift towards secrecy? Might it be that the more Americans learn about the “whistleblower,” the more unbelievable we find Zaid’s claim that he didn’t mean that kind of coup?

Eric Ciaramella, the CIA analyst whom Real Clear Investigations named as the most likely source of the Ukrainegate whistleblower complaint, looks less like a neutral concerned citizen and more like a partisan coup plotter with every new fact that’s revealed about him.

In a world of fake “bombshells,” here’s a real one: Reports now indicate Ciaramella worked closely with Victoria Nuland, President Obama’s infamously cavalier Ukraine policy chief. Apparently, Nuland is intimately mixed up in the creation and propagation of the now-discredited “Steele Dossier” that first popularized the “Trump is a Russian asset” conspiracy theory.

And guess who former Vice President Joe Biden’s invited as his guest to a formal banquet hosted for the Prime Minister of Italy in October 2016? Ciaramella again.

The stink of Ciaramella’s past is starting to rub off on the rest of the Ukrainegate impeachment farce. When Ciaramella’s alleged complaint proved insufficient to capture the public’s imagination, Adam Schiff and company trotted out Lieutenant Colonel Alex Vindman — who most likely worked closely with Ciaramella on Ukraine policy during the Obama administration. Mark Zaid, his client, and the other coup plotters are desperate to undo the 2016 presidential election at any cost. They’ve said so themselves, making their intentions public years before President Trump’s “perfect” call with his Ukrainian counterpart.

What’s most galling about this latest impeachment farce is how blatantly political and strikingly incompetent it is. It’s hard to believe anyone outside the Beltway is even taking this orchestrated coup seriously.

Jason D. Meister is an Advisory Board Member of Donald J. Trump for President Inc. and Managing Director of Ackman-Ziff