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The idea that the FBI used the Russia investigation to intervene in the election to hurt Trump and help Clinton has always strained credulity. After all, the Russia investigation remained secret during the election while the FBI not only publicly reopened the Hillary email investigation, it also confirmed the existence of an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation and exposed rifts with the Obama Department of Justice -- casting the FBI as heroically resisting Obama-administration pressure to avoid any "overt steps" in the Clinton Foundation investigation during the campaign.

Publicly the FBI torpedoed Clinton. Privately it investigated the Trump campaign.

And now, with each new revelation from the Mueller investigation, we understand that claims of "entrapment" are increasingly bizarre. The more we learn about Trump World's contacts with Russians or Russian operatives, the more astounding it becomes. Consider this partial summary:

Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, lied to Congress about his contacts with a Russian government official as he tried to negotiate a Trump Tower Moscow deal deep into the 2016 presidential campaign.

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has lied about his contacts with Konstantin Kilimnik, an alleged asset of Russian intelligence.

Longtime Trump friend and adviser Roger Stone (and Stone's sidekick, conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi) allegedly tried to communicate with WikiLeaks, a "hostile intelligence service," to obtain advance information about Julian Assange's planned document dumps.

Donald Trump's son, campaign chairman, and son-in-law met with a purported Russian representative with the intention of receiving "official documents" as part of a "Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

Former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about his own contacts with a professor who "claimed to have substantial connections with Russian government officials" and who claimed to have access to "dirt" on Hillary in the form of "thousands of emails."

Indeed, the list of known contacts between Russians and senior Trump officials (and Trump family members) keeps growing. In less partisan times they'd generate far more bipartisan concern. Even now, they should at the very least demolish the worst of the pro-Trump conspiracy theories.

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