For Hillary Clinton, inventing the lie was easy. Spreading the lie was even easier. For President Trump, uncovering the truth has been hard. The truth always has its enemies.
This is the maxim – and chilling lesson – of the Russia hoax.
Newly declassified handwritten notes authored by former CIA Director John Brennan show that on July 28, 2016, he briefed President Barack Obama on intelligence evidence that Clinton had approved a plan to vilify Trump with false accusations that he was colluding with Russia. She did it, the intel concluded, to distract from her own damaging email scandal.
It was an audacious plot put in motion by one of Clinton's foreign policy advisers and then sanctioned by the then-Democrat presidential candidate on July 26. But the genesis of the smear came from Clinton herself.