The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

In a week when Robert Mueller found no Trump-Russia collusion; when virulent Trump-hater Michael Avenatti was arrested for trying to extort Nike; when Avenatti’s attorney, Mark Geragos, was found to be an unindicted co-conspirator in that case; and when Geragos’s client, Jussie Smollett, had his hate hoax case dismissed in Chicago – it’s easy to get lost in the weeds.

At Smollett’s press conference, it was clear that he’s in a hurry to get back to his pre-hoax life without looking for the MAGA-mad white men who beat him up in a polar vortex. But America cannot afford to move on so quickly from the Russia collusion hoax.

With the collusion inferno still smoldering, it’s time to work backward, find the “point of origin,” and hunt down the political arsonists who set this blaze in the first place. The collusion hoax has scorched large swaths of our political landscape, burned through millions of tax dollars, destroyed innocent lives, and caused far too much institutional damage for us to just rush back to pre-collusion America.

If they’re not held accountable, incorrigible Trump-hating pyromaniacs will start more fires. Democrats, disappointed with Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report, have already begun drenching the airwaves with rhetorical gasoline to keep the collusion embers burning.

“I have said, and I’ll say again, no thank you, Mr. Attorney General,” said Thursday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at her weekly press conference. “We do not need your interpretation. Show us the report and we can draw our own conclusions. We don’t need you interpreting for us. It was condescending, it was arrogant, and it wasn’t the right thing to do. So, the sooner they can give us the information, the sooner we can all make a judgment about it.”

These people will not stop! Why? Because what we’re seeing is much bigger than the Russia collusion hoax.

We’re witnessing something organic in American history – something new and evolving right before our eyes. It is a bona fide political coup d’état attempt – a relatively small group of people attempting to overthrow a duly elected president with the non-lethal weaponry of disinformation, high-pressure tactics, and aggressive judicial and legislative chicanery.

This is not hyperbole. We’re watching a coup attempt.

There was never a case for collusion. There were never facts on which to base a criminal investigation. There was never a reason to create a special counsel. The Trump-Russia collusion fiasco was all a gargantuan political hoax. I’ve been saying this for nearly two years.

Yet, like the man behind the curtain working the levers to keep the fake image of the scary Wizard of Oz alive on the big screen, deeply deceitful Democrats are using the wizardry of political theater to create the illusion that the collusion is real.

How did this happen?

After sifting through the wreckage of the torched collusion landscape, it’s now clear that the point of origin for Peter Strzok’s counterintelligence operation (“Crossfire Hurricane”) that led to the FBI’s criminal investigation was not the ramblings of George Papadopolous, or Team Trump’s meetings with Russians, or the Clinton campaign’s Steele “dirty” dossier.

The point of origin was the combustible contempt for Trump that burned inside a small ideological cabal at the highest levels of the Obama administration. Without that contempt, there would’ve been no spark to crank up the diabolical scheme of using America’s powerful intelligence apparatus to take down Trump.

How else can you explain the FBI’s laser focus on an imaginary collusion compared with their blindness to the elephantine lawlessness in Hillary’s email investigation? Trump hate was the spark. Trump hate was the point of origin. It still is.

“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors,’” Obama’s ex-CIA Director John Brennan tweeted in July 2018. “It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”

Brennan, who Rep. John Kennedy called the “craziest bat in the barn,” was the “evil force” behind the Russia investigation, Rep. Peter King said this week. Rep. Rand Paul wrote on Wednesday that Brennan was the man who pushed for the Steele dossier to be included in the classified intelligence report over Russian interference.

Brennan and the rest of the collusion cabal must be smoked out and held accountable. Hurrying back to pre-collusion America and letting it all go would create institutional gangrene.

“The question now is: If there was no evidence of collusion – three investigations – no evidence of collusion – who made it up?” Rudy Giuliani asked on “Fox & Friends” this week. “It didn’t just come out of thin air. It had to come from somewhere. I want to know who did it. Who paid for it? Who fueled it? Because the person who did it and the group who did it, knows it was untrue – because they invented it.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham said, “When it comes to the FISA warrant, the Clinton campaign, the counterintelligence investigation, it’s pretty much been swept under the rug. Those days are over. I’m going to get answers for this.”

So no, it’s not quite time to shake hands and move on as if the hoax never happened, as some are suggesting. You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist, as Indira Ghandi used to say. Trump-deranged ideologues will not stop until they’re stopped.

Shaking hands with political arsonists while standing on piles of institutional debris is exactly the kind of thinking that got Trump elected. Before Trump, professional politicians kept repainting the outside of the American house to cover up the termite-infested infrastructure underneath.

Trump was the only candidate in 2016 who said, in plain English: “This house is a mess! If we don’t do something quick, it’s all coming down!”

Trump voters knew from the start that he wasn’t some precision tool used to put finishing touches on fine works of political art. We saw him for what he was: An ax behind the glass that you break out “In Case of Emergency Only.”

We broke that glass in 2016. He’s been rushing to the nation’s emergencies ever since, even as the Police of Political Correctness ticket him at every turn for speeding, running lights, ignoring stop signs, and disturbing the peace with his ear-piercing sirens.

So, for us “smelly, ignorant hillbillies” (from Strzok’s texts describing Trump’s base), voting for Trump was never about Trump, per se; it was always about the emergency, stupid. It still is.