What was long suspected has now been confirmed by ex-FBI director James Comey’s Thursday testimony: Donald J. Trump (shown), our 45th president, colluded with patriotic Americans from coast to coast to “steal” the election from Hillary Clinton.

What won it for him wasn’t Russia.

It wasn’t space aliens (although illegal aliens were in the mix).

It was the people leftists disparagingly call “'Muricans,” who had the temerity to defy the media, Hollywood, academia, pollsters, and what Clinton deemed her birthright in electing an anti-establishment candidate. They snatched a measure of Americanism from the jaws of globalism.

Comey confirmed other things as well. He vindicated President Trump’s decision to fire him by admitting that he leaked a document through an intermediary, thus confessing that he was not in fact trustworthy. He also confirmed (as if we needed confirmation) that the mainstream media also isn’t trustworthy, revealing that the New York Times and CNN peddled fake Trump-Russia news based on anonymous sources who, obviously, were lying. You’d think they’d have learned something from the Dan Rather/forged documents scandal (that is, if you didn’t know leftists).

There’s so much more to this story as well, just not what the media would like there to be. When young leftist Reality Winner leaked a classified NSA document stating that Russian intelligence did try to hack certain voting machines, perhaps she didn’t know this wasn’t the first such occurrence and that the Russians weren’t the only ones making such mischief. Espionage is big business. And maybe if she realized that the information she had access to was like seeing a couple of sentences from a book — it was only one pixel of a picture and lacked context — she might not be currently facing a decade in prison.

Nonetheless, the National Association of Secretaries of State, whose members administer elections, has stated confidently, “The election was not hacked.” This is just common sense, as our elections are conducted locally, with systems not connected to the Internet (another good reason to avoid big government/centralization). Of course, there’s still the very rampant — and very American (quasi, anyway) — Democrat vote fraud, which involves the stealing of possibly millions of votes each election cycle.

What was hacked, to death, was the media’s and Democrats’ Trump/Russia/collusion narrative. Thus have the demo-media complex pivoted to the idea of “obstruction of justice,” an equally fanciful notion.

At issue is Trump’s having said to Comey about the investigation of General Michael Flynn, “I hope you can let this go.” Comey said he felt pressure to comply, even though hoping isn’t synonymous with arm-twisting. Even if it were, however, it wouldn’t matter. As law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote yesterday:

[While testifying,] Comey confirmed that under our Constitution, the president has the authority to direct the FBI to stop investigating any individual. I paraphrase, because the transcript is not yet available: the president can, in theory, decide who to investigate, who to stop investigating, who to prosecute and who not to prosecute. The president is the head of the unified executive branch of government, and the Justice Department and the FBI work under him and he may order them to do what he wishes.

As a matter of law, Comey is 100 percent correct. As I have long argued, and as Comey confirmed in his written statement, our history shows that many presidents — from Adams to Jefferson, to Lincoln, to Roosevelt, to Kennedy, to Bush 1, and to Obama — have directed the Justice Department with regard to ongoing investigations. The history is clear, the precedents are clear, the constitutional structure is clear, and common sense is clear.

Yet virtually every Democratic pundit, in their haste to “get” President Trump, has willfully ignored these realities. In doing so they have endangered our civil liberties and constitutional rights.

Dershowitz states the obvious. The FBI is part of the government’s executive branch. The president is head of the executive branch. Thus, the FBI director must do the president’s bidding.

In other words, there is a tradition of relative FBI independence, and this may be a good thing. There is nothing, however, illegal about what Trump is accused of having done.

Those protesting this, saying, “But then the president is above the law!” haven’t thought matters through. Sure, a president could order an FBI director to cease an investigation into his own misdeeds. But this is irrelevant because the FBI is not the vehicle through which a malfeasant president is held accountable.

That vehicle, as constitutionally dictated, is impeachment — via Congress.

Note that the FBI wasn’t created until more than a century after our nation’s birth. So it should surprise no one that it’s largely irrelevant with respect to taking a president to task.

But if the president can halt any FBI investigation, couldn’t he ensure that information about his misdeeds is suppressed so that Congress doesn’t even know impeachment is in order? He can try. First, though, the FBI director may have the integrity to resign and tell what he knows; second, he can be subpoenaed by Congress and forced to testify under oath.

Most significantly, however, again note that the FBI is an extra-constitutional bureau. If the Founders thought such a thing necessary to ensure executive branch rectitude, they’d have created such an entity. If we disagree with their judgment, then our argument is not with President Trump. It’s with the Constitution, with our system of government itself.

Political judgments can be made about President Trump’s actions — and political consequences may be suffered. As for the law, though, it’s completely on his side.

Photo of Donald Trump: Donaldjtrump gallery