The Trump-Russia collusion investigation is on life support. After months of investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his army of highly partisan investigators, spending millions of taxpayer dollars, all Mueller has to show for his efforts is a handful of process crimes that have nothing to do with the original allegations that the Trump campaign worked with Putin to influence the 2016 election.

There is an old expression, "a fish rots from the head down," meaning that in any organization, leadership sets the tone. For better or for worse. Where does the DOJ-FBI rot begin?

With 90 percent of media coverage negative toward President Trump, you can be certain that if Trump conspired with Russia to hack the election, these same media would have long ago found evidence of collusion. But they haven't, have they? Instead, they hyperventilate over nonsense, such as a truck blocking their view of Trump's golf course, now a three-day story for CNN.

In reality, the only collusion was a bunch of Obama imbeds, scheming and conspiring to drag their coughing and collapsing candidate across the finish line by interfering with the right of Americans to choose their next president. Then there was a bogus dossier, created as opposition research, used by the FBI and DOJ as a "national security matter" to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on candidate Trump and his family and associates.

The conspiracy was legion, with many agency heads and upper managers working together to undermine an election. After failing to undermine the election, they then concocted the collusion story to justify a special counsel, staffed with the same Obama administration imbeds, to cover their illegal tracks. Gateway Pundit compiled a long list of bad actors and actresses participating in this melodrama.

Who's the head of the rotten fish? Former attorney general Loretta Lynch? She met with Bill Clinton on the airport tarmac ahead of the election, directing FBI director James Comey to exonerate candidate Hillary Clinton over "gross negligence" in her handling of classified emails.

Or is Comey the head of the fish, as FBI director, tying himself and the law into a pretzel to excuse Mrs. Clinton's criminal behavior? What about Mueller when he was FBI director, giving a pass to Fast and Furious, the Clinton Foundation, and the Uranium One deal?

How about former A.G. Eric Holder, directing his energies to another bogus narrative, "hands up, don't shoot," rather than voter fraud and the same illegalities that Mueller ignored as FBI director?

Is Hillary Clinton the head of the fish? Close, but no cigar. She had her share of scandals with her Clinton Foundation, Uranium One, and her overall "pay to play" approach to public service as secretary of state. But during her ramp up to running for president, she was not a government employee, despite her family tentacles reaching into many dark recesses of the Deep State.

Her campaign did commission and pay for the phony dossier, but it was beyond her power and influence to convince the DOJ and FBI to dress up the dossier as legitimate intelligence worthy of a major counterintelligence effort, including domestic surveillance.

These players could not have behaved as they did without the approval of the head of the fish, the occupant of the Oval Office – none other than President Barack Obama. Whether explicit or implicit, his directions were crystal-clear to his underlings – his attorney general, his FBI director, his IRS commissioner, and all the other agency heads serving at his pleasure.

No one working in the Obama administration would take on such chicanery and corruption on his own. This all had the blessing of the boss. Don't expect a smoking gun – a videotape of Obama directing his underlings to buy a salacious dossier, gussy it up as an intelligence report, convince a FISA court to permit wiretapping of American citizens, all in an effort to thwart an election. Maybe there are some incriminating emails floating around, assuming they haven't been wiped from someone's server or hidden from congressional investigators.

But make no mistake that none of this would have happened without the approval of the boss man in the Oval Office. If his standard were to respect law and electoral tradition, none of this would have happened. Yet his name is conspicuously absent from lists and photo montages of Deep-Staters working for Mueller or recently "reassigned" to less visible positions within the swamp.

Will a former president ever be held accountable for such misdeeds? Fat chance. Bill Clinton, despite the wave of sexual harassment and abuse stories of the past few months, is still a darling of the Democratic Party.

The DOJ OIG report is due in mid-January. Will this report be a reckoning for President Trump against the swamp? Will lower-tier players squeal on their superiors to stay out of prison? Will the thousands of sealed indictments see the light of day, served against the guilty? Or will it be another whitewash, typical of the swamp protecting its serpents?

I believe the former but fear the latter. And I am under no illusions that the former president will be held to account, despite serving as the captain of this corrupt ship for eight years.

It's easy to blame Lynch, Comey, Mueller, and their underlings, but they are only the body of the rotting fish. Not the head. It's fine to look at the rotting fish body, but answers and accountability come only when the focus is on the rotting head. Maybe next month, we start dissecting the rotting fish.

Brian C Joondeph, M.D., MPS is a Denver-based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.