A day after the Mueller hearings, they pulled the same scam again.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Stop me if this sounds familiar.

An intelligence operative backed by a Clinton lawyer accuses Trump of an inappropriate relationship with a former Soviet bloc country leading to an investigation and calls for everything from imprisonment to impeachment. The political half of Washington D.C. is muttering quietly, “Didn’t we do this already?”

After spending years accusing Trump of working with the Russians to undermine Hillary, they’re accusing him of working with the Ukrainians to undermine Biden. If Warren pulls far enough ahead, the Democrats will accuse Trump of working with the Poles or the Latvians to undermine her campaign.

The impeachment push is the same discredited scam that the Democrats had pushed on the country at the cost of millions of dollars, years of legislative stalemate, ruined lives and fake news. It’s like getting a scam email from a Nigerian prince, turning him down, and then receiving another email from the same address, except he now claims to be a Zambian prince, but still wants you to cash the same check.

The Democrats could barely be bothered to shake up the scam they’re once again pulling on America.

This time it’s a CIA officer instead of the MI6 guy who put together the Steele Report. And instead of a report authored secretly at the behest of Clinton lawyers, it’s a ‘whistleblower’ complaint defended by a lawyer who had worked for Hillary Clinton and donated to Biden, and comes by way of a whistleblower outfit co-founded by a Hillary Clinton donor who worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Yes, we did this already.

In April, the Mueller report was released. And it was a big, giant nothing. Democrats tried to play it for all they could. At the end of May, Mueller officially called it quits. At the end of July, despairing House Dems dragged him in to testify. Mueller had more trouble remembering things than Joe Biden.

The vicious scam that had begun with the Steele Report was finally dead. Time for a new edition.

The day after Mueller killed the Russia smear dead, President Trump spoke to President Volodymyr Zelensky of the Ukraine. And the Democrats immediately slotted it in as the new Steele Report. A few weeks into August, the complaint was filed. And by August’s end, it was passed along to Rep. Adam Schiff through the connivance of an intel oversight official who made sure it ended up in Adam’s sweaty hands.

That’s the same scheme which took a product of the Clinton campaign and routed it through the DOJ, FBI and intelligence agencies in order to give the Steele Report a veneer of official legitimacy. This time around the key players fixed the problem that came up when the Steele Report was traced to its source, who turned out to not only be an FBI informant, but was being paid to smear Trump by Hillary Clinton.

Now they did a slightly better job of making their smear look like it originated within the government.

The latest incarnation of the Steele Report, like it, is a tangled mess of hearsay. Its author claims that "more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts". That's a very fancy way of saying that seven dwarves told him where to find their diamond mine.

And of conceding that this isn't a whistleblower, but a gossip.

"I was not a direct witness to most of the events described," he concedes.

Steele was passing along dubious material from sources that may or may not have existed. His new American counterpart is doing the same thing. Whistleblowers are supposed to report on what they actually saw. Not on what they claim somebody told them at the watercooler or the donut counter.

Had the Trump administration and its allies not immediately moved to make all this material public as quickly as possible, Rep. Schiff and the Washington Post could have spent months making things up.

Instead, Rep. Schiff’s efforts to push a false recreation of the phone call between President Trump and the Ukrainian leader fell flat because the transcript and the complaint had already been made public.

And that’s the biggest challenge for Democrats.

The Mueller investigation and the media’s conspiracies theories were able to drag out the Russia hoax for years because so much of the information remained under lock and key, classified either by the government, or hidden by the Mueller team which doled out tidbits to favorite reporters. But this time there’s nothing to hide. And that leaves Rep. Schiff inventing his own imaginary transcripts.

And then claiming that it’s satire.

That’s an act of desperation from the Democrat point man on impeachment. And desperation at the very beginning of the process does not bode well for Team Coup. The Russia hoax was a bruising few years for Trump and his people, but they appeared to have learned a few lessons from it. Rep. Schiff and the Democrats are going into impeachment assuming that they can run the same plays all over again.

That’s not going to work anymore.

After their Russian scam fell apart, they decided to pivot to Ukraine a day later. The Russians and the Ukrainians don’t actually get along. But the average Democrat who, unlike the Biden clan, doesn’t have financial interests in the Ukraine, doesn’t know that and doesn’t care. After spending years accusing Trump of being in bed with the Russians, they’re now accusing Trump of misconduct with their worst enemies. And if neither Russia nor Ukraine pan out, they’ll throw another dart at a map of the world.

The third scandal may involve a French Surete agent revealing that someone once told him in a dream that Trump was secretly working with the Hungarians against Cory Booker. Or someone from NZSIS (New Zealand Security Intelligence Service) announcing that a note slipped under his door proves that Trump is trying to undermine Pete Buttigieg on behalf of Burundi. And Rep. Schiff will make up the rest.

The two elements of the story that remain the same, even as the minor details shift, are not accidental.

The Democrats and their media allies are lazy. And the laziness conveys their contempt for the public. But there’s a reason that they maintained the two key elements, the foreign country and the claim of election sabotage, in both their scams. The reason goes to the heart of the real crime committed here.

The foreign country, especially a former Soviet bloc nation, is a crucial element because it allows the Democrats to tap into counterintelligence resources in targeting the political opposition. The Soviets accused political dissidents of working for the CIA or MI6 for the same reason. The goal is to criminalize the political opposition and to unleash the resources of the intelligence agencies in going after them.

The election sabotage is the second crucial element because it undermines the legitimacy of elections.

After Hillary Clinton lost, the Russian scam was used to reject the legitimacy of President Trump. The Ukraine scam will be used to similarly claim that Biden might have won if it wasn’t for the Ukraine.

Impeachment can’t actually succeed. But it’s a preemptive excuse for claiming Trump didn’t really win.

In 2016, the Democrats rejected President Trump’s first term with a Russian conspiracy theory. In 2020, they intend to reject his second term with a Ukraine conspiracy theory. And if the Ukraine doesn’t work out, there’s always Poland, Hungary, Latvia and Estonia. And all the rest of the old Soviet empire.

There were 7 Warsaw Pact countries and 15 countries that were part of the former Soviet Union. There are 20 Democrats still running for the 2020 nomination. Pick a candidate, pick a country and make up your own scandal. Match up Andrew Yang and Estonia. Or Wayne Messam and Kyrgyzstan.

You too can make up your own case for impeachment. Just like Rep. Adam Schiff.