With only a few exceptions — Fox News, the editorial pages (not the front pages) of the Wall Street Journal, and a handful of websites — the better part of the American media has spent the last two years fulminating about Trump-Russia collusion we now know never existed.

Actually, we always knew that, but finally, it’s official. It was always a bunch of — excuse the expression — trumped up baloney that made no sense except to those who wished so deeply to believe it was true.

Which makes the people who were doing that fulminating — media, politicians and (usually retired) intelligence figures, who were, as is becoming increasingly clear, betraying the American Constitutional system with impunity — sick and evil.

That may sound extreme, but it’s the all-too-obvious truth. What they did is unforgivable, particularly since few, if any of them, will have the honesty or basic morals to apologize. Some, however, may go to jail.

The provenance of what happened also couldn’t be more obvious. People who considered themselves elite guardians of our country were so appalled by the possible election, and then the actual election, of the “barbarian” Donald Trump, they thought nothing of breaking the law and then exploiting it to bring Trump down. In so doing, consciously or unconsciously, they expressed their utter contempt for roughly half of their fellow citizens, not to mention their disdain for the electoral process and the law many of them swore to uphold.

It was a conspiracy and, worse yet, a conspiracy ignited and carried out from within the FBI and the Department of Justice. Nothing could be more dangerous to a democratic society than that. How high this conspiracy went is still somewhat unclear. I say “somewhat” because the likelihood of it having reached into the White House of the previous administration is great. It’s hard to imagine how it could have happened otherwise.

These conspirators all worked in tandem, through leaks or directly, with the aforementioned media that has disgraced itself beyond words. The reputation of this media, never terrific, is in tatters and being washed, deservedly, down the drain. Anyone who believes a word they say from here on in should have his/her or zhe’s head examined.

Which brings us to the new man of the hour. Good-bye, Robert Mueller. Hello, Michael Horowitz.

More than ever, it is up to the inspector general to put Humpty Dumpty together again. He tiptoed up to the door in his investigation of the Hillary Clinton email scandal and then fled timorously away. This time it will not be so easy to participate in the coverup. We all know too much and the documents — especially the ones concerning the FISA courts and the Steele dossier — are sitting there waiting for the world to read them. Horowitz must know that no investigation will be complete without exposing all of this. Otherwise, he will be trashed by history.

And speaking of history, let’s a have a brief review of what we’ve really learned so far from the multi-million dollar Mueller investigation: who actually got indicted. The worst miscreant is clearly Paul Manafort, who, before he worked for Trump, did some dirty dealing with nasty characters in the Ukraine and elsewhere. Nothing good can be said about Manafort except he has a distinct similarity to Clinton friend Tony Podesta (with whom he worked, but who has not yet been indicted) and a whole host of other Beltway creeps that infest our nation’s capital, sucking off the body politic, foreign and domestic.

And then there’s Michael Flynn. He may or may not (it’s unclear) have been scared into lying about something minor, but his real crime, the reason they were really out to get him, was his strong opposition to the Iran deal. In any case, some investigators didn’t even think he did or said anything wrong. Mueller tried to muscle him. And so far Flynn hasn’t even been sentenced to anything. It keeps getting postponed for some reason. Will he be? Who knows? But Trump will doubtless pardon him anyway and should.

Then there’s the nefarious Papadopoulos character who also got caught making a “false statement” and did minimal time.

Next there’s Roger Stone who, it turns out, is something of a braggart and a liar. (We needed a million-dollar investigation for that?) Of course, the idea that Stone would do anything in any way meaningful is ludicrous.

And then there’s Jerome Corsi. He was supposed to be indicted unless he turned evidence against someone. But he refused and wasn’t indicted. Conclusion: Corsi was perfectly innocent. They were just trying to muscle him. Pretty creepy, wouldn’t you say?

And finally, there’s Michael Cohen, the fixer. He’s a pathetic character, but none of his multiple lies or glancing truths (there must be some) come within miles of Russia collusion. In fact, he’s the guy who didn’t go to Prague.

And, I almost forgot, the indictment of twenty Russian hackers in St. Petersburg who will never be arrested. We’re supposed to be shocked that Russkies are spewing disinformation at us when they’ve been doing it since the tzars. Of course, we’re probably doing similar things to them too, but don’t tell anybody. (At least I hope we are. We’re paying the CIA for something.)

So there you have it, folks. Two years worth of investigation and millions of taxpayer dollars for that, not to mention hamstringing the president of the United States in his activities almost everywhere he went during the same period.

Proud of yourselves, David Corn, CNN, John Brennan, MSNBC, Adam Schiff, Washington Post, Don Lemon, Eric Swalwell, New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc., etc., ad nauseam? Think you saved the republic? Actually, you owe Donald Trump billions. You made out like bandits lying through your teeth about him for two years.

SPECIAL TO ADAM SCHIFF: You represent Los Angeles, where people are defecating in the streets and living in tents. Why don’t you try to do something about that instead of lying every day about Donald Trump?

Roger L. Simon — co-founder and CEO emeritus of PJ Media — is a prize-winning novelist and an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter.