The Comey-Mueller investigation into Trumpworld has proceeded like a Soviet show trial from the start, complete with confessions to crimes its targets didn’t commit. As they brag about these extracted pleas, Mueller and Comey sound less like guardians of democracy than the corrupt commissars of yesteryear, whose victims, as Pravda would duly report, had “incriminated themselves.” Mueller and Comey don’t have Pravda, but they do have CNN, which routinely trots out confirmed perjurer James Clapper to gush about the rectitude of their work. Without the slightest bit of embarrassment, CNN gives a platform to such monumental liars as Clapper to lecture Americans on the gravity of Michael Flynn’s “lying.”

The insufferable fraud Jim Sciutto, whose ludicrously mannered anchorman-ish style conceals his status as a former Obama political appointee, often interviews other Obama political appointees about the awfulness of Michael Flynn. All these weasels spent the Obama years lying their heads off. Yet now they play the shocked innocents, wondering how such a seasoned soldier and spy could do something as low as providing incomplete answers to FBI agents. Oh my, where could an Obama-era spy have learned such evasiveness? Whatever dishonesty Flynn exhibited, it couldn’t have exceeded the dishonesty of his questioners, whose account of the Flynn interview has been marked by nothing if not politicized fiddling, corrupt omissions, and after-the-fact duplicity.

Who interviewed Flynn? That pillar of probity, Peter Strzok, the agent who vowed to “stop” Trump’s candidacy and then spent hours before Congress lying about such biased texts. Every last Obama administration official connected to the Flynn affair is a busted liar, starting with Comey, who sent out perjurer Clapper to deny that the FBI had spied on the Trump campaign even as warrants to spy on Trump Tower sat on his desk.

On Monday afternoon, after testifying again before Congress, Comey threw a fit, making a great show of his exasperation at having to answer questions about the “Steele dossier” and the Hillary email investigation. He informed us that questioning a former FBI director who approved spying warrants without verifying them is tantamount to attacking “the FBI.” His actions and “the FBI,” you see, are one and the same.

An inspector general produced a voluminous report on Comey’s staggeringly unprofessional behavior. No matter; Comey insisted again on Monday that any damage done to the FBI comes not from his disgraceful tenure but from presidential tweeting: “The FBI’s reputation has taken a big hit because the President of the United States has lied about it constantly.”

It is impossible to overstate what a sanctimonious fraud and drip Comey is. His Monday tantrum was his most craven attempt at anti-Trump virtue-signaling yet. He wanted to sound like Jimmy Stewart; he sounded more like Jimmy Kimmel. First came the bipartisan claptrap — “We have to stop being numb to [Trump]; whether you’re Republican or Democrat, stand on your feet, overcome your shame and say something” — then the usual ruling-class demand that Republicans disarm out of deference to its “values,” then finally some high dudgeon about Trump calling his lawyer who secretly recorded him a rat.

But what exactly are Comey’s “American values”? Spying on Americans on the basis of what their political opponents say about them? Lying to FISA courts about utterly politicized sources? Calling a spying warrant “verified” when it demonstrably wasn’t? Calling Americans “probable Russian agents” based on nothing more than overheated partisan conjecture? Leaking to the press through law school buddies for self-aggrandizement? Treating FBI memos as private property? Using violated government confidences as fodder for a lucrative score-settling memoir? That is only a partial list of Comey’s prized values.

If anyone is guilty of narcissistic, un-American pouting, it is Comey, who treats America’s system of checks and balances and the constitutional rights of the chief executive as a personal affront. How dare Congress question him for crowning himself the de facto attorney general and deciding on his say-so to absolve Hillary! How dare a sandbagged and sabotaged president fire him! (Trump had Comey sized up as a self-serving weasel from the start.)

It came out, incidentally, on Monday that Comey’s comically hubristic penchant for self-crowning also extended to an upset Sally Yates, whom Comey said he wouldn’t dare let oversee the FBI’s questioning of Flynn (Comey kept the timing of the interview from her). She lacked, you understand, his apolitical bona fides: “… if anything came of the interview, if it advanced our investigation, the attacks from the Trump administration would be that an Obama holdover had interfered in it.” Never mind that Comey was an Obama holdover too. In the legend of his own mind, he was a government unto himself.