A lot has already been said about the results of the Mueller probe, which, according to Attorney General William Barr, absolved the president of claims that he colluded with Russia and obstructed justice. Now who will be held accountable for promulgating the Russia hoax in the first place?

The Trump-Russia hoax was originally a black propaganda campaign to smear then-candidate Donald Trump as a compromised individual who, if he became president, would be a commander in chief subservient to the Kremlin.

The Russia hoax began during the late stages of the 2016 presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton’s campaign hired the now-infamous opposition research and PR firm Fusion GPS, presumably to conduct an investigation into then-candidate Trump’s ties to Russia. That effort resulted in the Trump-Russia dossier, which was allegedly crafted by former British spy Christopher Steele. In parallel with Fusion’s efforts, political operatives with deep ties to the Clinton family emerged with a second dossier and began to disseminate false information about Donald Trump’s supposed ties to the Russians.

Thanks to the assistance of Hillary Clinton’s connections in government and useful idiots in the Republican Party, the Trump-Russia narrative made its way into the upper echelons of the Obama administration’s Intelligence Community. CIA Director John Brennan, DNI chief James Clapper, and FBI Director James Comey were but a few of the high-ranking intelligence officials who were all too eager to lap up the false Trump-Russia claims. They even leveraged this information to launch an unprecedented surveillance campaign against Donald Trump and his associates.

Although Hillary Clinton ruthlessly smeared Donald Trump as a Russian agent and Obama intelligence agencies regularly leaked stories to the media about the supposedly compromised man that was Donald Trump, none of it stuck. On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.

At first, it seemed that the clock ran out on their investigation. But Hillary Clinton’s campaign set in motion a continuing effort to delegitimize President Trump’s mandate to serve as president.

Thanks to shoddy reporting in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and countless other legacy media publications, coupled with television pundits and politicians on CNN and MSNBC promising that there was indeed collusion, The Trump-Russia hoax was alive and well in the hearts and minds of much of the American public. In addition to the anonymously sourced leaks coming from Obama holdovers in government, many pointed to an Obama Intelligence Community assessment that reportedly relied on the Steele dossier as evidence of a sophisticated Russian plot to interfere in American democracy. The Obama intel report, published just two weeks prior to Donald Trump’s inauguration, concluded that the Russians did indeed interfere in the election.

The appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, largely on the basis of the sketchy intelligence assessment, allowed for the creation of what amounted to a fourth branch of government. To many on the Left, Hillary Clinton was the president in waiting. She was the real president, they said, and many concluded that it was only a matter of time before Mueller and his team of Democrat prosecutors found evidence of collusion.

In the end, there was no collusion or obstruction. The president has been vindicated and his mandate for office restored beyond the shadow of a doubt. In the end, it was Hillary Clinton who refused to accept the results of the election. Clinton is a seasoned veteran when it comes to escaping criminal prosecution. Will she also escape blame for creating and advancing the biggest hoax in American history?