Some in the news media who have been intensely critical of the Trump administration are now anticipating a potentially anti-climactic end to the investigation into President Trump's ties to Russia, as even Democratic leaders are admitting they have seen no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to interfere with the election.

In early May, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said on CNN that she saw no evidence of collusion, a statement she reiterated last Thursday when asked if anything had changed.

"No, it hasn't," she said on CNN's "Situation Room."

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif, who has called for Trump's impeachment, also said in early May that there was still no proof of collusion. Asked by liberal Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart if congressional committees had found anything to "back up" accusations of collusion, Waters said, "No, we have not."

Those warnings have prompted some of Trump's opponents in the press to start laying the groundwork for the possibility that the investigation won't turn up anything.

Discussing the controversy Monday on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," co-host Mika Brzezinski allowed that the investigation now headed up by former FBI Director Robert Mueller may turn up empty handed.

"There are three options," she said. "Wrong doing; stupidity leading to wrongdoing, stumbling into it; and nothing."

The other co-host, Joe Scarborough, a frequent critic of Trump, said it's "much more likely" that proof of "direct collusion" is not born out of the probe, bur rather "a cover up or something they stumbled into …" though he didn't say what a "cover up" could entail.

The day before on CNN, David Frum, a Republican and editor at the Atlantic magazine, said everyone "should be prepared" for no evidence of illegality.

"You should be prepared to accept that even if the most heinous version of the facts proves to be true, there may not be any crimes committed or any laws broken. … Even if the worst turns out to be true, it's a political, probably not a legal, problem," he said.

The White House has still faced reports almost daily that feed the controversy, including a New York Times article published Friday that said Trump said in a meeting with Russian officials that he no longer "faced great pressure because of Russia" after firing James Comey, the now-former FBI director.

Last week, Glenn Greenwald, the editor of the Intercept news site, characterized the focus on Russia as a type of obsession by Democrats and the media.

"From MSNBC politics shows to town hall meetings across the country, the overarching issue for the Democratic Party's base since Trump's victory has been Russia, often suffocating attention for other issues," he wrote on May 16. "This fixation has persisted even though it has no chance to sink the Trump presidency unless it is proven that high levels of the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Kremlin to manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election — a claim for which absolutely no evidence has thus far been presented.

"The principal problem for Democrats is that so many media figures and online charlatans are personally benefiting from feeding the base increasingly unhinged, fact-free conspiracies," he said.

But Brzezinski, Scarborough and Frum are just the latest voices in the media to suggest that the chase for evidence of collusion may be a waste of time. Last week, other left-leaning people in the media were drawing the same conclusion.

"It may well be difficult to identify any criminal laws violated by the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia," CNN commentator and writer for the New Yorker Jeffrey Toobin wrote last Friday. "It will be important for Mueller to investigate, for example, whether anyone associated with the Trump campaign aided and abetted the hacking of e-mail accounts connected to Hillary Clinton's campaign; that would certainly be a federal crime."

"But unlike, say, the Watergate investigation, which began with a break-in, it is not immediately clear what crimes may have been committed," Toobin added.