Washington is all abuzz over what former FBI director James Comey will say Thursday when he testifies in front of the U.S. Senate. It's the hot story because it may lead to the toppling of an American president. At least that's what the liberal intelligencia who run "the swamp" seem to believe. They still cannot accept the fact that Donald Trump won the election and are doing, apparently, all they can to keep him from implementing his agenda. If they can, they'll drive him from office.

Comey's opening statement was released by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday in advance of his appearance. It's seven pages long but the section that will likely attract the most attention – and generate the most questions from senators on the committee – is this one:

The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, "He is a good guy and has been through a lot." He repeated that Flynn hadn't done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go." I replied only that "he is a good guy." (In fact, I had a positive experience dealing with Mike Flynn when he was a colleague as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the beginning of my term at FBI.) I did not say I would "let this go." The President returned briefly to the problem of leaks. I then got up and left out the door by

The people who want Trump removed from office will argue that passage is proof the president is guilty of attempting to obstruct justice, which is both a felony and an impeachable offense. To them, this is the smoking gun.

As they say, if horses were wishes then beggars would ride. The progressives whom he defeated in the last election are so consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome they're ready and willing to believe anything that fits the narrative they've constructed.

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The focus on Comey ignores what National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats had to say on Wednesday when they testified before the same committee the former FBI director will face on Thursday.

Both men, each of whom has a reputation as being above reproach, testified that at no time did they feel pressured by the president to interfere with the FBI's ongoing probe of alleged Russian efforts to subvert the 2016 presidential election despite published reports they had.

"In the three-plus years that I have been director of the National Security Agency, I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate and to the best of my recollection during that same period of service I do not recall ever feeling pressured to do so," Rogers told the committee according to an account published in Politico.

It's important to say no one has yet been able to say precisely what it is the Russians were supposed to have done that tipped the outcome of the election to Trump. We've heard about hacking and fake news stories and other activities that might be labeled political espionage, but only in the theoretical sense. Hillary Rodham Clinton lost the election for plenty of reasons, including overconfidence and being a spectacularly bad candidate. It didn't help that the major media did all they could to cover up her flaws either; the American people knew what they would be getting in a second Clinton presidency, even if those who live inside the liberal media bubble could not face up to it. The president did not need the Russians or anyone else to interfere while Clinton was self-destructing.

As it turned out, Clinton was adjudged – by no less a figure than Comey – to have committed a number of offenses, none of which were prosecutable, essentially because of who she was. The applicable phrase is "too big to jail." But that's all in the past.

What follows over the next few days on Capitol Hill will be a circus of a kind rivaling the late, lamented Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey show in its best days. The Russia investigation, as Marc Short, a senior White House official tapped with the responsibility of working with Congress said Tuesday, has interfered with the Trump administration's ability to get its agenda up and running. No one wants to get too far in front on anything the president wants to do if he's not going to be there in six months.