IF THE FEDS WEREN'T SPYING ON THESE GUYS IT WOULD BE A NATIONAL DISGRACE:

Consider what we know, now widely verified through bipartisan sources.

We know that at the very least the Russian government engaged in a disruption operation to sow discord and chaos in the 2016 election. The CIA, NSA, FBI, and the Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee agree that this disruption operation morphed into an effort to help Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.

At the same time that Russia was attempting to help Trump, the candidate had surrounded himself with a constellation of advisers who possessed problematic ties with the Putin regime. Trump's campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, had long been on the payroll of Putin allies, receiving millions of dollars in compensation for his work on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine. One of Trump's closest military advisers, Michael Flynn, had received tens of thousands of dollars in compensation from Kremlin-affiliated sources. One of the campaign's foreign-policy advisers, Carter Page, had been actively recruited by Russian intelligence (to his credit, he apparently rebuffed those advances) and had long sought business relationships in Russia.

And that's not all, not by a long shot. We also know that Kremlin-connected Russians reached out to the Trump campaign, and that key members of the campaign team were enthusiastic about receiving Russian help.

Donald Trump Jr. responded positively to a direct invitation to collude with Russia, taking a meeting with a Russian lawyer after being promised information that could hurt Hillary Clinton as part of an official Russian effort to help Trump. Trump brought Manafort and the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to the meeting.

Campaign adviser George Papadopoulos had contact with a Russian-affiliated professor who told him that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails." He received this information months before the first WikiLeaks releases rocked the Clinton campaign, and he later lied to the FBI about it.

Trump confidante Roger Stone apparently had advance knowledge that WikiLeaks had obtained damaging emails from John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee.

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