Former CIA Director John Brennan has become the sleaziest man on cable news — and that, my friends, is saying something. He continually peddles wholly unsubstantiated horror stories about the president of the United States, stories which the insanely anti-Trump press is only too happy to echo and magnify. It’s time to wonder just what this guy is trying to accomplish and why.

Let’s begin with a couple of cases in point.

An Obama-appointed Department of Justice inspector general finds that former FBI Director Andrew McCabe lacked candor while testifying under oath about stories he leaked to the press. The IG report goes to the FBI-run Office of Professional Responsibility, which recommends McCabe’s firing. Attorney Jeff Sessions fires McCabe. It’s true the president taunted McCabe relentlessly on Twitter, but it’s pretty clear he had nothing to do with the firing.

After accusing the president of “venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption” for making McCabe a “scapegoat,” Brennan rose up out of the MSNBC cesspit called Morning Joe to deliver this completely fanciful scenario about what might happen next. Calling Trump a “cornered animal,” he said he feared Trump might try to distract us from his own wrongdoing by starting a war.

“On the international front, I’m hoping we’re not going to see a wag the dog scenario whereby he is going to try to distract the attention here domestically and politically on him and engage in some type of international initiative that is going to really put our nation at risk. Military action against North Korea, maybe doing something vis-a-vis Iran, tearing up the Iranian nuclear agreement and provoking and pushing for some type of confrontation in the Gulf.”

When, a few days later, Trump congratulated Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin on Putin’s phony re-election win, I could’ve understood a bit of harrumphing and disapproval. But that was not enough for a full-fledged fantasist like Brennan. Brennan speculated to Morning Joe’s Willie Geist that the president was being blackmailed by Putin: “The Russians may have something on him personally that they could always roll out and make his life more difficult.” Geist pressed, “Something personal?” And Brennan, smiling smugly, replied, “Perhaps, perhaps.” According to the New York Times, Brennan later admitted he had no inside information suggesting this was true.

All this is nothing new for Brennan. Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute has assembled a timeline from mainstream news stories which he believes shows that it was Brennan (probably with Barack Obama’s approval) who began the whole Trump-Russia collusion fantasy. It was Brennan who used Democrat senators like the truth-challenged Harry Reid as “ventriloquist’s dummies” to spread Hillary Clinton’s anti-Trump propaganda to the public and Brennan who pressured the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign using Clinton materials like the scurrilous Steele Dossier.

This is incredibly low and smarmy stuff. And since Brennan feels comfortable sitting on television and suggesting, without any evidence whatsoever, that the president of the United States is being blackmailed by our enemies, I think it’s perfectly fair for the rest of us to speculate in turn about why a former spook would spin such fantasies.

It now seems clear that Barack Obama, in transforming the federal government into a Chicago-style machine, allowed and perhaps encouraged the leadership of the Department of Justice and the FBI to behave in shamefully political and dishonest ways. Loretta Lynch’s tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton. Adulterous FBI Agent Peter Strzok’s anti-Trump bias and his mysterious “insurance policy” in the event of Trump’s election. McCabe’s recently uncovered and clearly absurd witch hunt investigation into Jeff Sessions at the instigation of two Democratic senators. Much of this leadership has been, rightly, reassigned or replaced.

But what about the CIA? What were they up to during this time? Why was Brennan so afraid of the election of Donald Trump that he was willing to spread fantastic stories to prevent it, and why does he fear the president so much now that he is making up even more nonsense in order to discredit him. Is he worried the Trump administration will uncover his illegal behavior while he led the CIA? Was Brennan’s agency spying on Americans? Doing dirty deals with the Iranians? Betraying the Israelis to their enemies?

Perhaps. Perhaps.

For more commentary, listen to my podcast Monday through Thursday.