Russia Investigation: As the saying goes, a fish rots from the head down. Well, so do bad governments. Recent revelations about the behavior of President Obama and his CIA director John Brennan in pushing the bogus Russian collusion investigation suggest that's been the case.

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The release of the FISA application by the FBI to investigate alleged collusion between Russia and President Trump's campaign and recent comments made by top officials are eye opening.

Not only did President Obama know about the investigation, he seems to have pushed it from the very beginning.

But don't take our word for it. Here's what Obama's Director of National Intelligence, the nation's former spy master, James Clapper, told CNN's Anderson Cooper:

"If it weren't for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of event which are still unfolding today, including Special Counsel (Robert) Mueller's investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place."

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Why didn't this get more attention in the media? Obama and Brennan not only knew the dubious nature of the allegations against Trump, but pushed them anyway.

As Kimberley Strassel wrote in the Wall Street Journal, Brennan in particular has revealed himself to be a total anti-Trump partisan to an extent that's shocking for a public official. His animus is raw and deep, as his actions suggest.

"The record shows (Brennan) went on to use his position — as head of the most powerful spy agency in the world — to assist Hillary Clinton's campaign (and keep his job)," Kimberley Strassel wrote last week in the Wall Street Journal.

Brennan's manic partisanship could be seen last week in an over-the-top, bizarrely unhinged tweet following Trump's press conference after his mini-summit with Vladimir Putin. Brennan called Trump's remarks "nothing short of treasonous" and said they exceeded "the threshold of 'high crimes & misdemeanors.' "

While Brennan's hate for the GOP nominee may be public now, it wasn't in the summer of 2016. His evidence for collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was so weak neither the FBI nor Clapper would commit to it.

Knowing his role as CIA head forbade him from intervening in domestic spying and trying to take the investigation from a low simmer to a high boil, Brennan got the ball rolling in August of 2016 by telling thenformer Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid a tale of Russians interfering in our election on Trump's behalf.

It worked. Pushed on by Brennan, Reid, then the most powerful person in Congress, wrote a letter to FBI Director James Comey citing "evidence of a direct connection" between the Trump campaign and seeking an investigation.

Not only did Brennan share intelligence with the FBI, but soon after, the Democrat-linked opposition research firm Fusion GPS began leaking the "Trump Dossier" to the media. The fix was in.

As the release late last week of the FBI's FISA court application used to spy on former Trump aide Carter Page indicates, the dossier was used extensively for the application. That's contrary to what the FBI had maintained.

Moreover, an influential article written by Michael Isikoff detailing the dossier's contents and Harry Reid's letter to the FBI were likewise used to get approval for the FISA court application.

What do they all have in common? They all go back to the same phony dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele for Fusion GPS. It was never verified or validated by the FBI. It was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and her pals at the Democratic National Committee, solely to smear Trump.

Give Hillary credit: She was adept at insinuating her phony oppo research document into the public record and at using it to weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies on behalf of her failed campaign.

But then, we all knew this had happened. What's stunning is the casual way Clapper let us know that President Obama "was responsible" for the whole shebang.

If that's so, there are really only two possibilities:

One, that a gullible Obama was fed phony information from Brennan and the Hillary Clinton campaign. He then over-reacted by tasking the intelligence community to look into it.

Or, two, that Obama knew he was dealing with tainted information. Instead of halting a bogus investigation, he let Brennan carry it forward. Why? He thought it would help elect Hillary Clinton — and cement his own presidential legacy for posterity.

At a minimum, what seems obvious is that the deep state triad of Obama, Clinton and Brennan colluded. They did it to damage Trump's campaign with allegations of Russian interference in the election. And they got the FBI and, later, a special prosecutor, to conduct a high-profile investigation.

Such collusion, if only in the political sphere, wouldn't be a crime. However, using federal assets and personnel and misrepresenting what you're doing to a FISA court to influence an election are crimes. Felonies, in fact.

Investigation Without End

The investigation of Trump is now entering its third year with nothing to show for the effort. We don't know if there'll be some kind of sweeping indictment released by Mueller just before the midterm elections, but given the degree of politicization of this investigation so far it wouldn't surprise us at all.

But instead of investigating Trump, shouldn't we investigate those who subverted our democracy for rank partisan purposes to influence a presidential election? That's Obama, Brennan and Clinton.

Questions abound: Did they plan this? Who coordinated it all? Did they do it all with a nod and a wink to keep it clean? Or did they meet and discuss it? Or did it all come together at the insistent prodding of a virulently anti-Trump Brennan? America needs to know.

Removing security clearances for those in the Obama administration who lied or were guilty of misconduct and political bias would be a minimum. These crimes, if real, are bigger than Watergate.

The only real question is whether our justice system is too compromised to bring those who committed real crimes, not imaginary ones, to justice. And whether our equally compromised and biased media are capable of reporting it.

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