"And in fact when I decided to just do it I said to myself, I said, “You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.”"

And if you want to read about how the investigation was properly predicated, here's the IG report: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2019/o20012.pdf

The existence and thoroughness of this report begs the question as to why the Durham investigation was ever needed in the first place.

These are not "hoaxes", but facts discovered through investigation and detailed extensively in at least 9 reports. In total, they show the Russians hacked the Democrats to help the Trump campaign, the Trump campaign welcomed the help, the campaign publicly asked Russia for the help, and when the help came from Russia, the campaign used the help to their advantage, and they hoped for more. Then when the investigation into said help happened, they obstructed it, tried to shut it down, and called it a "hoax", which you repeat here. Everything I've said is supported by hundreds of pages of reports: The Mueller report, the Senate Intel Committee report on the 2016 election, the IG report, and yes even the Durham report corroborates what I'm saying.

Taken in total, it's impossible to conclude these reports support the theory that Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, and the Trump campaign's welcoming and support of that interference was a hoax.

> Comey brought incredible disgrace to the FBI thru his actions and leadership during the “investigation”.

No argument there.

You’re like Steele still claiming the dossier wasn’t just absolute fictional trash.

The extent to which the country was tore apart by 3 years of witch-hunting “investigation” and the way the FBI willfully lied and buried the truth due to their blind hatred of Trump is the only thing criminal that happened.

Steele didn’t have 4 government investigations to back his dossier, the main point of which was proven by the Mueller report volume 1.

> the way the FBI willfully lied and buried the truth due to their blind hatred of Trump is the only thing criminal that happened.

This assertion is at odds with the IG report, in which Horowitz finds no political bias on the part of the FBI that would have impacted their investigation.

I’m sorry, but again, I have reports from Mueller, Horowitz, Rubio, and Durham to back my position. I will weight their reports and evidence against the evidence and reports you’ve provided and come to a decision accordingly based on the facts.

They applied the full force and technology of the United States spying apparatus and all the Mueller report proved was that they found nothing.

Brennan briefed Obama and Biden on the Clinton campaign’s dirty plan right from the start, and they ran with it. They knew it was a Clinton plan and had no evidence to back it up, and lied to Congress, and lied to the American people about it.

Those are the established facts, but there will always be people like the Peter Strzoks who will never admit how wrong they were, or how much harm they did.

Then they followed it up in 2020 with 51 intelligence officer / signatories lying to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop. They’re not done lying and cheating, and the FISA abuses we know about are just the tip of the iceberg.

As far as the the investigation goes, the Steele Dossier doesn't factor into it because it wasn't the predicate of the investigation. IG Horowitz found no problem with the way the investigation began. The Steele Dossier is a distraction, and the IG report is the final word on it. That you disagree is immaterial to the results of the IG investigation.

> Brennan briefed Obama and Biden on the Clinton campaign’s dirty plan right from the start, and they ran with it.

Again, the IG and Durham looked into the role Obama played, and found nothing worth pursuing. They certainly didn't find what was alleged by Trump, which was that Obama White House spied on the Trump campaign. Your talking points are out of date and out of line with the results of concluded investigations.

> Those are the established facts, but there will always be people like the Peter Strzoks who will never admit how wrong they were, or how much harm they did.

We don't need to listen to Strzok or Page or anyone else, because the IG report says that there was no political bias in the predication of the or in the course of the investigation. Since you seem to be reluctant to read the report I linked, here's the relevant part of the executive summary:

  As part of our review, we also sought to determine whether there was evidence that political bias or other improper considerations affected decision making in Crossfire Hurricane, including the decision to open the investigation. We discussed the issue of political bias in a prior OIG report, Review of Various Actions in Advance of the 2016 Election, where we described text and instant messages between then Special Counsel to the Deputy Director Lisa Page and then Section Chief Peter Strzok, among others, that included statements of hostility toward then candidate Trump and statements of support for then candidate Hillary Clinton. In this review, we found that, while Lisa Page attended some of the discussions regarding the opening of the investigations, she did not play a role in the decision to open Crossfire Hurricane or the four individual cases. We further found that while Strzok was directly involved in the decisions to open Crossfire Hurricane and the four individual cases, he was not the sole, or even the highest-level, decision maker as to any of those matters. As noted above, then CD AD Priestap, Strzok's supervisor, was the official who ultimately made the decision to open the investigation, and evidence reflected that this decision by Priestap was reached by consensus after multiple days of discussions and meetings that included Strzok and other leadership in CD, the FBI Deputy Director, the FBI General Counsel, and a FBI Deputy General Counsel. We concluded that Priestap's exercise of discretion in opening the investigation was in compliance with Department and FBI policies, and we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced his decision. We similarly found that, while the formal documentation opening each of the four individual investigations was approved by Strzok (as required by the DIOG), the decisions to do so were reached by a consensus among the Crossfire Hurricane agents and analysts who identified individuals associated with the Trump campaign who had recently traveled to Russia or had other alleged ties to Russia. Priestap was involved in these decisions. We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open the four individual investigations. 

> Then they followed it up in 2020 with 51 intelligence officer / signatories lying to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop. They’re not done lying and cheating, and the FISA abuses we know about are just the tip of the iceberg.

This is a deflection. Please read the reports if you want to learn something. Your information is out of date and inaccurate.

My own thinking is that when you exempt yourself from constitutional constraints, as Trump did in lying about the election and inciting a riot, it's game on. I'd be curious to hear a counter-rationale other than the obvious (and equally true) "B...b...but FISA is just as unconstitutional" or the equally-true "But Trump hadn't yet done that at the time the FBI investigated his campaign." His relationship with Paul Manafort alone was arguably sufficient to put the "By any means necessary" school of thought into action. If Trump didn't wish to be treated like a caotive Russian asset, he might have tried not acting exactly like one.

At this point, I agree with those who suggest that America cannot survive a competent Trump. So given the hypothetical future appearance on the campaign trail of a similar character with all of his faculties intact, I may have to revisit the question.

When confronted with the NYT ad, reactions from over 30% of the electorate fall into one of four categories: "Wait, what? I never heard of that. Must not be a big deal," "Fake news, the ad never actually accused anyone by name," "Meh, he didn't really mean it," and "Hell yeah, fry 'em all and let God sort 'em out."

So it's not clear that anyone else's warnings could have made a difference. It was up to the Deep State to stop him. They failed. Not much of a Deep State, I guess.

- people who had spent a lot of time in authoritarian dictatorships and recognized his personality in the dictators of those countries.

- people who are familiar with history, and saw that he mirrored the personalities of historical dictators.

- people who are familiar with cluster B personality disorders, who correctly recognized his narcissistic psychopathy.

- people who were close to him, like his family, who warned us about how he treats people close to him.

- people who went into business with him, who were unilaterally screwed over by his business practices.

- Hillary Clinton.

Listening to any of these people, or even better, all of these people, would have saved us from this whole mess.

Notably, all of these people are saying the same things today, and he's still the front runner of the Republican party. So really, the problem isn't Trump anymore, it's that a lot of people actually want a dictatorship, because they perceive they can use it to their political advantage. That's where we are now. There are no more excuses about who the man is. Trump wants to be a dictator, and Republicans like that idea. There's no more assumed good faith to be had here.

Exactly, that's my point. It has been clear for a long time who Trump is and what he stands for. Long before he ever ran for office. A great many people are either fine with his positions, indifferent to them, or vote without bothering to inform themselves about the candidate they're voting for.

Once that cohort grows to dominate the electorate, there's nothing (legal) that anyone else can do. Hence the "fair means or foul" part of the question. But it may not matter: he can't be stopped by fair means if he actually does represent the values of the electorate, and if he is stopped by foul means, his supporters will pick someone even worse.

Let me say that again: If a democrat you like says somebody is Hitler, then all is fair to stop him.

Brilliant! I hope you're getting paid for this.

And yeah, Hitlers are not hard to identify. They are psychopaths who find their way into positions of leadership. Like Trump. There’s nothing special or unique about Hitler —- he wasn’t the first and he won’t be the last. But we don’t need Democrats to identify them.

you may find such things as "The Russian govemment directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure' at the state and local level." and "The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election."

[1] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

[5] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...