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You don't need to believe that the special counsel investigating President Donald Trump is a terrible person to conclude that the Obama administration and Clinton machine (and later their holdovers during the Trump administration) politicized and weaponized federal agencies to protect Hillary Clinton and damage Trump.

So if you just can't shake your instinct that Robert Mueller is the epitome of virtue and professionalism, hold fast to it, but consider the litany of facts that prove serious and abundant malfeasance on the part of the Obama-Clinton "deep state" actors.

The Department of Justice, especially the FBI, bent over backward to protect Clinton and bent over forward to harm Trump. Despite those efforts, the stubborn facts have emerged, thanks to patriots relentlessly pursuing the truth. More will be revealed as the Obama-Clinton glass house continues to shatter, but there's already enough to make an objective person gasp. If Clinton had won the election, this evidence would have remained buried, and the power-abusing left would have been emboldened to continue to thwart the rule of law and target its opponents. Before you say it's preposterous that Obama or Clinton would have politicized and weaponized government agencies, remember the actions of Obama's IRS and EPA.

As for protecting Clinton, consider this partial list:

--Then-FBI Director James Comey wrote a letter exonerating her in advance of interviewing her and other key witnesses.

--Comey presented a strong case against her yet shielded her from prosecution.

--Comey claimed that Christopher Steele's dossier was not an indispensable part of the FISA warrant application, when everyone has admitted it was. He said he didn't know that the Clintons had paid for the dossier.

--Comey earlier said there was no spying against Trump and later said there was but the "informants" were carefully regulated.

--The FBI gave immunity like candy in the Clinton case and allowed two fact witnesses to sit in on the belated Clinton interview as her lawyers.

--The FBI claimed to have lost five months' worth of texts between adulterous FBI honchos Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, which the inspector general found in less than a week.

--Then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch met privately with Bill Clinton while Hillary was under investigation. Lynch instructed Comey to refer to the Clinton investigation as a "matter" instead of an investigation.

--Strzok texted Page after Trump and Clinton became the nominees, "Now the pressure really starts to finish MYE" -- meaning "midyear exam," the FBI's code word for the Clinton email probe. Page responded, "It sure does." They were desperate to wrap up the Clinton investigation to prevent Trump's election. Page was legal counsel to then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. The lovebirds noted that Obama wanted "to know everything." As Newt Gingrich said, with all that was going on under his watch, it's inconceivable that Obama and his adviser Valerie Jarrett didn't know about it.

As for stopping, removing or disabling Trump, consider this partial list:

--The FBI planted a spy or spies in the Trump campaign with no real evidence (beyond wishful thinking, anecdotal minutiae and hearsay rumors) that there was any nefarious connection between the campaign and Russia. It appears these spies were there not just to eavesdrop but to lure the Trump campaign into the very conduct they were pretending to investigate -- trying to "honey-trap" them.

--The government opened a counterintelligence investigation against Trump without any evidence of a crime.

--Based on a disgraceful leak from Comey, the DOJ appointed a special counsel to investigate the Trump campaign without any evidence of a crime and without specifying any crime in the appointment memo -- and such specificity is required by law. Recognizing this, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein surreptitiously amended his appointment memo, but he still won't reveal its content to congressional investigators.

--The FBI deceived the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court four times by presenting the Steele dossier, paid for by the Clinton machine and based on unsubstantiated opposition research, as legitimate evidence and disclosing none of its origins to the court. It also fraudulently presented a news article sourced to the same Christopher Steele as corroborating the dossier. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires substantiated evidence; it's a strict standard because of the extraordinary encroachments on privacy it entails. The FBI also concealed from the court that Steele had been fired by the FBI.

--The government has been stonewalling and scapegoating Rep. Devin Nunes and other congressional investigators for jeopardizing national security in demanding that documents be unredacted. Invariably, when the redactions are removed, we see that no security interests were involved but that the government was seeking to conceal embarrassing actions of government officials. The government slandered Nunes for outing the FBI mole, whose existence it had previously deceitfully denied, when it leaked facts facilitating his outing.

--The Obama administration engaged in unprecedented and egregious unmaskings.

--Five or six DOJ/FBI officials have been fired, demoted or reassigned.

--The FBI agents didn't believe that Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, lied to them, yet the special counsel pressured him into a guilty plea.

--Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress but later denied he had lied, claiming he was thinking about something other than what he was being questioned about. That would be lame from any witness, but from a man of Clapper's caliber, it is stunning. Clapper also said, disingenuously, that the government's intent was not to spy on the Trump camp but to find out what Russia was doing. Then why did the government try to entrap campaign members, and why did Clapper earlier deny there were spies in the campaign? If the government's goal was to protect the campaigns from Russian influence, why didn't it plant spies in the Clinton campaign, as well? Why didn't it warn the Trump campaign of the possible interference -- unless its goal was to damage Trump and protect Clinton, as opposed to safeguarding national security?

--The Obama administration opened up a Logan Act case against the campaign opponent (Trump) of its would-be successor (Clinton). This is unprecedented and astonishing.

--The Obama holdouts in the DOJ and FBI are still stonewalling and misrepresenting the facts -- especially as to the origin of the Trump investigation.

That Hillary Clinton wasn't disciplined or prosecuted for her security breaches and deliberately destroying relevant evidence, among other things, is beyond disturbing. That Donald Trump colluded with Russia to win the presidency at this point seems fantastical.