The cynicism of Americans regarding integrity and accountability in government grew as swamp thing James Clapper avoided his part of the bog being drained. The statute of limitations for prosecuting his perjury before Congress regarding surveillance of Americans expired on Monday:

As the House Intelligence Committee on Monday announced its findings that there was no collusion between Team Trump and Russia, more evidence of the collusion between Deep State swamp creatures and a disloyal media to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump was also revealed. James Clapper has been exposed as both a perjurer and a criminal leaker of classified information to the press.

Clapper, director of national intelligence from 2010 to 2017, admitted giving "clearly erroneous" testimony about mass surveillance in March 2013, and offered differing explanations for why. Two criminal statutes that cover lying to Congress have five-year statutes of limitations, establishing a Monday deadline to charge Clapper, who in retirement has emerged as a leading critic of President Trump. The under-oath untruth was exposed by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who sparked national debate on surveillance policy with leaks to the press. Many members of Congress, mostly Republicans supportive of new limits on electronic surveillance, called for Clapper to be prosecuted as the deadline neared, saying unpunished perjury jeopardizes the ability of Congress to perform oversight. "He admitted to lying to Congress and was unremorseful and flippant about it," Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., told the Washington Examiner. "The integrity of our federal government is at stake because his behavior sets the standard for the entire intelligence community."

Right now his behavior wouldn't set the standard for a shoplifter at a convenience store, as this poster child for corruption is revealed by relentless investigative journalist Sara Carter to have leaked classified information to CNN regarding briefings on the Steele dossier to President Obama and then-president-elect Trump – leaks he himself hypocritically condemned.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper allegedly leaked information to CNN early last year regarding the classified briefings given to then President-Elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama on the salacious dossier claiming the Russians had compromising information on the president-elect, according to government sources, who noted the evidence of the leak was collected during the House Intelligence Committee's Russia investigation. Clapper, who was one of four senior Obama administration officials to attend the briefing with the presidents, also stated his "profound dismay at the leaks" in an official statement issued in January, 2017 and warned that the leaks were "extremely corrosive and damaging" to national security, according to his press release. ... according to government sources Clapper, who is not mentioned in the report released Monday, had spoken to CNN at roughly the same time Jake Tapper broke the first story regarding the briefings conducted by senior intelligence officials with Trump and Obama on the dossier. Tapper's story, which published in January 2017, created a snowball effect of allegations in the media that Trump's campaign had allegedly colluded with the Russians in the 2016 election and that Russia had compromising material on Trump, sources with knowledge of the investigation concluded. ... it was when CNN published the first report that Trump and Obama had been briefed the dossier's findings that other news agencies began to report on it. The committee found evidence that Clapper, who is now a contributor at CNN, contacted CNN shortly before the story was published by Tapper, Evan Perez, and Jim Sciutto. The story detailed the briefings given to Trump by the senior officials on the contents of the dossier and "gave the dossier legs and news agencies began to publish its contents because it had now become official news," one congressional source told this reporter. Shortly after CNN published the report, Buzzfeed made the decision to post the entire 35-page dossier and referenced the CNN report in its decision to publish it, according to the website.

This is the same James Clapper who once reassured the Congress that the NSA wasn't conducting surveillance of the American people. As U.S. News and World Report noted, his resignation didn't assuage critics, who believe that James Clapper, like other Obama administration personnel, dodged a perjury bullet when he testified before Congress on the issue of NSA surveillance of American citizens.

Some lawmakers reacted to the long-expected resignation announcement from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Thursday by wishing him an eventful retirement, featuring prosecution and possible prison time. The passage of more than three years hasn't cooled the insistence in certain quarters that Clapper face charges for an admittedly false statement to Congress in March 2013, when he responded, "No, sir" and "not wittingly" to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting "any type of data at all" on millions of Americans. About three months after making that claim, documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the answer was untruthful and that the NSA was in fact collecting in bulk domestic call records, along with various internet communications. To his critics, Clapper lied under oath, a crime that threatens effective oversight of the executive branch. In an apology letter to lawmakers, however, Clapper said he gave the "clearly erroneous" answer because he "simply didn't think of" the call-record collection. Clapper later told MSNBC he considered the question akin to asking, "When did you stop beating your wife?" and so gave the "least untruthful" answer.

Critics who say President-Elect Donald Trump had no right to disparage our good and faithful intelligence servants or to be skeptical of the intelligence they gather might be willing to accept "least untruthful" answers, but others are not:

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper struggles to explain why he told Congress in March that the National Security Agency does not intentionally collect any kind of data on millions of Americans. "I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying 'no,'" Clapper told NBC News on Sunday. Least untruthful? Lying to Congress and the American people is just that, except in Clapper's mind. And it seems to depend on the meaning of "collect," a reminder of President Bill Clinton's defense that charges of his lying depended on the meaning of the word "is."

Our constitutional republic is being shaken to its foundation by corrupt unelected officials like James Clapper, who conspire to undermine a duly elected president. The only collusion is between these officials and one political party, aided by an agenda-driven media, using foreign sources and a fake dossier to aid one political party at the expense of another.

Jeff Sessions, who plays an attorney general on TV, has let another felon slip through his hands, just as he did with Lois Lerner, a conspirator who used the IRS to target Obama's political opponents such as the Tea Party and other conservative groups.

This abuse of government power by the unelected Deep State might have been stopped with the prosecution and incarceration of one James Clapper. Every day that a second special counsel investigating this real collusion is not appointed is another day closer to the final transformation of the world's oldest constitutional republic into a failed banana republic.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.