That theory, originating from the nonsensical “Q” end of the conspiracy pool, seemed like the most out-there of the out-there only weeks ago. Because it is. It requires a ludicrous set of assumptions, compounded with a blind willingness to latch onto the most tenuous connections, and it impugns to the Democrats motivations that aren’t just sinister but filled with Illuminati-level insights and a perfect ability to peer through time. It also requires that Hillary Clinton be more interested in smearing Donald Trump after he won, than in winning herself.

The theory is that there never was any contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, despite the greater than 100 incidents logged in the report compiled by the special counsel’s office. In Q-land, Joseph Mifsud was never a Milanese professor with a Moscow connection; He was a plant by U.S. intelligence, put in place years before Trump even announced his candidacy, for the specific purpose of luring George Papadopolous to make statements that then justified further actions. The same goes for Australian high commissioner Alexander Downer, who Papadopoulos bragged to about his inside lane to Moscow-based dirt on Clinton. In this theory, Downer was also put in Papadopoulos’ path by a conspiracy run straight from the Obama White House. And of course, over on the other side of the Trump campaign, the FISA warrant on Carter Page wasn’t based on his own Moscow meetings and the suspect connections that had earned him three such warrants in the past, it was all from the Steele Dossier—a document itself created by a former British agent working in concert with the American CIA. And for CIA, just read “Deep State.”

And all that … is the most believable part of what Barr is out to prove. Because the theory he’s pushing also requires that there be no actual Russian intrusion into the servers at the DNC. No one answered Trump’s plea of “Russia, if you’re out there...” Instead, Hillary Clinton hired Ukrainians to pretend to be Russian hackers, break into her own servers, steal her own information, and hand it to Julian Assange. Then the cyber-security firm Crowdstrike was brought in, not to investigate what had happened on those servers, but to cover up the tracks. That’s why no one has ever found Hillary’s “missing server.” Because it’s in Ukraine. At the same time, Democrats bribed Ukrainian officials into reopening investigations into Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, derailing his excellent guidance to the Trump campaign and ultimately leading to his imprisonment on false charges.

This is genuinely the theory that the attorney general is out there pursuing, with his hand-picked prosecutor at his side and a freshly opened criminal investigation and grand jury to support it. Really. According to this theory, it was never Russia. It was the Democrats and Ukraine, Ukraine and the Democrats, all the way down.

That’s why Rudy Giuliani has been riding around Kyiv for more than a year, accompanied by “associates” provided by a oligarch who the U.S. conveniently stopped trying to expedite at about the same time he stared providing help to Rudy. That’s why the first thing Donald Trump says after “I would like you to do us a favor though” isn’t about Joe Biden. It’s this:

Trump: I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible.

Trump is laying it all out right there. This is about the “they say Ukraine has it” theory, Barr is handling it, and it’s about completely repudiating everything generated by Mueller.

This is the Great Distraction. This is why Barr has been driving officials mad in Rome, and Australia, and now in London. Each of them is watching utterly aghast as the chief justice official in the United States knowingly, willingly, shreds relationships and ignores reality in a determined effort to destroy America’s own intelligence agencies. To save Trump.

Barr is going to come riding in with this thing. It doesn’t matter whether he has any evidence or not. And when he does, the danger isn’t that he destroys the CIA or the FBI. It’s that he destroys the nation.