THE STUFF TRUMPISM REQUIRES YOU TO SWALLOW:

Instead, consider the possibility that the U.S. intelligence community--desperate to prevent Trump from ascending to the presidency--worked with the Clinton campaign, Democratic National Committee insiders, intelligence agents in multiple foreign countries, and Ukrainian oligarchs in order to fabricate evidence of Russian interference and cover-up what was an inside job all along. And that they used former British spy (and dossier author) Christopher Steele as their vehicle.

That's what the president and his team seem to believe.

Their theory is . . . complicated. It took several days for me to unpack it and even still there are a few remaining holes that need filling. So for anyone having trouble grasping its full majesty, I'll take each claim separately, so you can see how the structure of this belief was assembled piece by piece and what is left to be uncovered.

At the center of the case is the U.S. intelligence community. We already know through private communications that FBI employees Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, and Lisa Page wanted to "protect the country on many levels" from the possibility of a President Trump. They even texted on government phones about a "secret society" they had created. Also, since the election the heads of the FBI and CIA--James Comey and John O Brennan--have become #Resistance warriors. So Trump World assumes that they must have shared the views of the "secret society." It is the belief of Trump World that these individuals and/or their associates masterminded the entire plot--with Brennan as the ringleader.

Trump World believes that this conspiracy's first step was to fabricate a basis for an investigation into Trump some time during the Spring of 2016, just as he was sealing the GOP nomination. It was then that the intelligence chiefs worked with their partners in the Clinton campaign to hire Steele, who would serve either as their ally in fabrication or an unwitting dupe to be used as part of their efforts to launch the investigation.

Next they brought friends from the international intelligence community into the conspiracy. Using a shadowy Italian agent named Joseph Mifsud--who has Russian ties, making him an excellent head fake--and Australian ambassador Alexander Downer, they entrapped low-level Trump staffer George Papadopoulos in a brilliant scheme where Mifsud offered phony Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton. He did this knowing that Papadopoulos would brag about this highly secretive and illegal offer in a meeting with Downer a month later. Downer then relayed the "intelligence" (wink wink) back to the Americans who had positioned it there in the first place.

Like a skilled LAPD officer/Fox News analyst, the intel agencies had successfully planted the evidence they needed to begin the greatest witch hunt ever conducted outside of Salem. But, despite having this information in May, the investigation of Donald Trump couldn't start until something happened to precipitate it. So the intelligence community sat on their evidence for two months, patiently waiting for the moment to strike.

That opportunity came in July, when Wikileaks began releasing highly damaging information about Hillary Clinton--the candidate the intelligence community was ostensibly trying to help.

Wait, what?

This is one piece of the theory I haven't been able to puzzle out. When the intelligence community was planning this brilliant trap to frame Trump, how did they know that the Wikileaks emails would be coming a few months later and could be used as a pretext to spring the trap?

I suppose it's possible that they had a counter-intel informant in Russia. But that doesn't make much sense, because Trump World keeps saying that Russia wasn't involved in any of this. Plus--as we'll see shortly--having a source in Russia would have negated the need for the Crowdstrike cover-up.

Trump World has its own theory...

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