The president* is very proud of himself. The president* has thought up a new word. The president* has established a Brand, which is all the president* really knows anything about, even though the president*’s personal Brand has become synonymous with international influence-peddling of the highest order. Nevertheless, the president* is very proud of his new word and his new brand.

SPYGATE!

Forget the fact that it isn’t even original—it has been used for more than a decade now to describe the alleged shenanigans of the New England Patriots prior to the Super Bowl in 2002. The president* became who he is because of other people’s money. Now, he’s trying to profit politically on other people’s neologisms. However, his pride in claiming to invent things that everyone’s been using for decades, very much like his pride in discovering things that “not many people know about,” like Abraham Lincoln’s having been a Republican, remains undiminished.

He has his new word, and he has leapt onto the electric Twitter machine to crow about it, like a not overly bright Great Pyrenees with a new chew-toy in the back yard.

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 23, 2018

There is polling data that says this most recent political counterattack is working out there in the country, but, as long as Robert Mueller still has a staff and a job, the polling data doesn’t matter a damn. Nonetheless, there are ominous signs that, as The Master put it—and Happy 77th, Bob!—conformity’s in fashion. Catch how The New York Times gently refers to “unconfirmed claims of campaign spying.” The absurdity of the Republicans-only meeting, followed by the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” briefing, on the totally spurious claim that the FBI “spied on” the Trump campaign, cannot be minimized, nor can the fact that the Democratic members of Congress practically had to use the jaws of life to pry that second meeting out of the White House.

It’s that first meeting, the one in which the classified information will be shared with Congressman Trey Gowdy and the execrable Devin Nunes, that is the main event. That’s the meeting that will provide the carefully barbered leaks that will send the conservative media into what my mother used to call “HIGH-sterics” for as long as it takes to devalue whatever Mueller comes up with in the minds of the rubes and goobers of the Republican base.

Devin Nunes Getty Images

The whole thing is an exercise designed to warp the public mind into something resembling the twisted, malignant, guano-dripping bat-cave that produces what passes for thought in the current president*. There is not a bit of truth to it, but, unfortunately, there are meetings, which means the elite political press has to cover them and, in covering them, has to pretend that there is something to the whole thing beyond a clumsy attempt to save the president*’s political hindquarters.

But there is something else going on, too.

You may recall that, during the 2016 campaign, there was a lot of talk about how agents in the New York office of the FBI had gone medieval in their dislike of Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband. It was the threat posed by these renegades that was said to have driven James Comey to do the tarantella on his own dick late in the campaign. The mouthpiece for these rogue gumshoes was said to be Rudy Giuliani, currently working as the president*’s Mueller-whisperer. At one point, Giuliani told Fox News that there was a “revolution” going on within the FBI because some agents felt that Comey was not chasing the Clinton email affair with sufficient ferocity.

Rudy Giuliani Getty Images

Now, though, it appears that a similar dynamic is beginning to play itself out in the White House’s current counterattack. On Wednesday, The Daily Caller was fed a piece by longtime Republican lawyer and current White House hack Joseph DiGenova that there are FBI men who are eager to talk about the perfidy of Comey, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder, the Clintons, and god alone knows who else.

The DC independently confirmed the veracity of the consultant’s position and access, and reviewed detailed transcripts of his Q&A with the special agent, who requested the arrangement due to internal dragnets and fear of vicious retribution. These agents prefer to be subpoenaed to becoming an official government whistleblower, since they fear political and professional backlash, the former Trump administration official explained to The DC. The subpoena is preferred, he said, “because when you are subpoenaed, Congress then pays…for your legal counsel and the subpoena protects [the agent] from any organizational retaliation…. they are on their own as whistleblowers, they get no legal protection and there will be organizational retaliation against them.”

In a statement to the Daily Caller, an unnamed FBI agent claimed, “Every special agent I have spoken to in the Washington Field Office wants to see McCabe prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They feel the same way about Comey…All Congress needs to do is subpoena involved personnel and they will tell you what they know. These are honest people. Leadership cannot stop anyone from responding to a subpoena. Those subpoenaed also get legal counsel provided by the government to represent them,” the agent added.

Gee, I wonder if Devin Nunes will cooperate with this plan?

Getty Images

This story was quickly picked up by right-wing Twitter, as well as by the folks at Breitbart’s Mausoleum For The Chronically Unemployable. It’s probably dogma among those folks by now. As it happens, I think it’s all true. I have no doubt that there are FBI agents suffering through the late stages of Clinton Derangement Syndrome who would be more than willing to share their opinions with the wider world.

(The DC even names one of them—former assistant FBI director James Kallstrom, who is positively bughouse on the subject of the Clintons.)

The House majority undoubtedly would help them in this enterprise. So, as Mueller’s investigation grinds on, the FBI gets truly and thoroughly politicized. This president* is willing to pull the temple down on his own head, and the Republicans are willing to compliment him on his renovation. The FBI will rip its own guts out, and it might just be a good time to be a bank robber.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io