Bravo, Charles Grassley! The Iowa senator has turned into something of an aging Mr. Smith taking on corruption in the Obama administration (and its Justice Department) and calling for a special investigator for the metastasizing Uranium One Scandal. But is it enough?

As has been reported, this 2010 deal was made despite a hitherto unknown FBI investigation that exposed bribery, kickbacks, etc. on the part of the Russian company involved. The pact resulted in 20% of U.S. uranium in Putin’s hands (some of whic, in lethal yellow cake form, has already disappeared into the ether) and millions of dollars in the Clinton Foundation’s coffers, basically at the same time.

Or should we now call this the Podesta, Podesta & Manafort Scandal, because an ongoing and related report on Tucker Carlson’s cable show is unmasking a series of connections that make the most paranoid conspiracy theorist seem rational?

A thus-far-reliable source who used to be involved with Clinton allies John and Tony Podesta told Tucker Carlson that press reports appearing to implicate President Trump in Russian collusion are exaggerated. The source, who Carlson said he would not yet name, said he worked for the brothers’ Podesta Group and was privy to some information from Robert Mueller’s special investigation. While media reports describe former “Black, Manafort & Stone” principal Paul Manafort as Trump’s main tie to the investigation, the source said it is Manafort’s role as a liaison between Russia and the Podesta Group that is drawing the scrutiny…. Manafort was, at the time, representing Russian business and political interests during the Obama era. The source said the Podesta Group was in regular contact with Manafort while Hillary Clinton was America’s chief diplomat…. According to Carlson, “Manafort was clear that Russia wanted to cultivate ties to Hillary” because she appeared to be the presumptive 45th president.

In other words, as the French say, it’s the world upside down. Russia? Trump? Oh, sorry, no, it’s the Brothers Podesta and, through them, Hillary. Meanwhile, over at the also related (phony) Trump Dossier Scandal:

In the midst of a court case that threatened to reveal the dossier’s funding, it emerged Tuesday night that political consulting firm Fusion GPS was retained last year by Marc E. Elias, an attorney representing the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign. The firm then hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to write the dossier that contained unverified and lurid allegations about Trump and his team’s ties to Moscow.

In the latest news, it appears Elias’ firm was being used as a cut-out to avoid campaign disclosure laws in the promulgation of Fusion’s garbage. Possible criminal liability looms. It’s “unclear” whether Mrs. Clinton herself knew about this utterly disgusting behavior in her name, though loyalist Brian Fallon hinted as much on cable news Wednesday.

More disturbingly, indications are that the FBI itself relied on this execrable pack of nauseating lies to jump-start the Trump-Russia collusion investigation. They may even have made additional payments to Fusion GPS themselves. [bold decidedly mine]

Holy Toledo! Has the FBI turned into CNN? Or are they just dumber than the proverbial stones?

Speaking of which, we also have the unanswered questions about Deborah Wasserman Schultz and her Pakistani computer expert who had access to the data of dozens of congressional Democrats, not to mention the unsolved mystery of the murder of Seth Rich and the hacking of the DNC server. The FBI and the DOJ have told us next to nothing about either. In general, we learn more from Julian Assange, like him or not.

And then’s there’s the Unmasking Scandal with its attendant mysteries. Who was ordering Samantha Powers to do hundreds of unprecedented unmaskings of U.S. citizens in foreign intelligence surveillances? Where does that trail begin and end? With the death of democracy?

It’s obvious these various scandals are beginning to intersect or, more precisely, intersected long ago and now the connections are being revealed. Undoubtedly, more are to come. And it’s a safe bet they’ll be yet more astonishing.

Grassley’s calling for a special investigator for Uranium One, laudable as it is, is far too circumscribed. There are so many scandals, not to mention people at the highest echelons of our government, involved here it’s hard to count them. They keep popping up like rodents in a game of whack-a-mole.

Peter Berkowitz wrote the other day in the WSJ that “James Comey and Robert Mueller Imperil the Rule of Law. ” Indeed they do. But the recusal of Mueller, which I previously called for, is not enough. We have a systemic problem within the DOJ and FBI that has been going on for some years and has grown to the extent these organizations act like mini-states, impervious to supervision by anyone, especially the very people they are supposed to serve — you and me. They are the Deep State taken to the tenth power. The internal conflicts of interest are so many they’d fill the Mariana Trench.

The time has come for a thorough airing to renew the trust of the citizenry. That means a special investigator, but one with a wide berth to look into the entire DOJ and FBI, its patterns and practices, and, let’s be honest, our intelligence agencies as well. We’re living in a bureaucratic nightmare. As Mark Steyn put it so succinctly on Tucker Carlson’s show Wednesday night, “Everyone is colluding with Russia except Trump!”

The question is: how do we find this person or persons untainted and honest enough to conduct this investigation? Oh, Diogenes!

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already.