The years in which James Comey led the FBI, the usually steadfast bureau lied to the American people. The basis for the four warrants to put Trump campaign aide Carter Page under surveillance in 2016 was the Steele Dossier, a discredited document authored by a previously discredited source in former British spy, Yemen-born Christopher Steele.

Steele's paid-for-information was on behalf of the Hillary Clinton Campaign, via Clinton's lawyers at the Coie Perkins law firm who contracted Fusion GPS to do the Trump opposition research. Fusion GPS subsequently hired Steele to dig up dirt on the 2016 Republican Party nominee, Donald Trump.

Fusion GPS founder Glen Simpson assigned Steele specifically to look into any potential problems Team Trump might have with his decades of Russian dealings. Steele alleged that he would make the most of his Kremlin contacts in Moscow to do just that.

FBI director Comey insisted that there was also a second dossier that was used to justify requests for the unusual and extreme FISA warrants. It turns out to be true. We'll get to that a bit later.

First, some insight into the genesis of the colossal smearing of the Trump campaign and the candidate.

The original Trump opposition research file was financed by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative political journalism website. The editor-in-chief there is Matthew Continetti, son-in-law to the Neo-Con Trump nemesis, Bill Kristol.

The CEO of the Washington Free Beacon was Michael Goldfarb, the former communications director for Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), another "never-Trumper." They were the original clients of Fusion GPS for the purpose of Trump opposition research.

For me, this adds to the probability of a "Deep State" reality, that family of and former aides to two Republican D.C. institutions like Kristol and McCain would be willing to assist the rival party by handing over whatever information they obtained while looking into Trump in support of their unnamed preferred Republican primary candidate (my money would be on Jeb Bush).

Don't forget, Senator McCain handed the Steele Dossier over to the FBI – a file partially constructed by his son-in-law's company.

Back to the Brookings Institution.

Christopher Steele did not call Moscow to dig up information damaging to Trump's campaign. Steele called the Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank in Washington D.C., to do that. Igor Danchenko, a senior research analyst at Brookings, was the chief source for Steele's dossier.

You may recall the FBI went through great pains to try to block the requests to reveal the source for Steele. I refuse to believe that it was "to protect" Danchenko. It seems much more likely that the resistance to block his identity was to hide the shame from who and where the "Kremlin" source was coming from, setting off a federal investigation characterized by them as a Russian with connections to the intelligence community.

Danchenko's boss at Brookings was Strobe Talbott, a former Deputy Secretary-of-State in the Clinton Administration. Talbott was also one many considered to be a shoo-in invitee to the incoming Hillary Clinton Administration.

When you think about it, the Clinton campaign tried to manipulate information gathered, not by unbiased professional investigators, but by biased liberal operatives with much to gain by her winning the election.

Strobe Talbott was "outed" as either a witting or unwitting asset for Victor Louis, a  journalistic operative for the KGB by now-deceased Senator Jesse Helms during his nomination hearing on February 8, 1994 (beginning at 1:37:37 of the video). Talbott refused to answer questions about whether or not he was ever in the home of the deceased Louis.

Talbott went on to be the point-man for Congress, charged with informing them on Russian activity that would be relevant to foreign policy. According to Kenneth Timmerman and other sources, Talbott omitted or hid information for Congress to see how illegal weapons like ballistic missiles were delivered by Russia to Saddam Hussein and to Iran.

Talbott was also very successful in lobbying congress to pump many millions into the Russian economy during all this.

Now, that sounds like Russian collusion to me.

So Steele was getting "Russian" dirt on Donald Trump by going to Strobe Talbott's underlings at Brookings and the FBI knew how incredibly inappropriate it was to open an investigation with such dubious origins of information, let alone request a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISC.

But, as I said, FBI Director Comey insisted that the warrant was obtained through information from "another dossier." It's true, as I said. The dossier he referred to was authored by Cody Shearer – Strobe Talbott's brother-in-law and a long-time Clinton operative.

Shearer was once caught posing as a US official, taking bribes from a Bosnian warlord and war criminal.

Shearer was also a business partner with Hillary Clinton's right-hand man Sidney Blumenthal. Blumenthal and Shearer had some business dealings in Libya after the 2011 Obama-backed overthrow of the Libyan Arab Jamahiria led by Muammer al-Ghadafi.

This Clinton-based organization with these two characters had designs to get in on the new Libyan economy on the ground floor. Blumenthal was blocked from working in the Hillary Clinton-run State Department by President Obama's aides. However, emails hacked from Clinton's personal server revealed that it was he and Shearer's reports that seemed to have led her decision making in that nation.

Lest we forget the U.S. Libyan consulate in Benghazi fell under attack, resulting in the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others just 11 months later.

Remember Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California), when he publicly stated that the FBI “provided additional information obtained through multiple independent sources that corroborated Steele’s reporting?" Another big, fat lie from the House Intelligence Committee chairman.

The bottom line here is the FBI knowingly used information paid for by Hillary Clinton, paid to and provided exclusively by unquestionable, long-time Clinton allies, and most of whom would likely have realized personal gain with her winning the presidency.

A lowly licensed private investigator may have had his or her license yanked for such standards and abuse of trusted discretion.

In fact, I believe that James Comey threw in that "eleventh hour" reopening of Hillary's email server investigation in order to throw accusers of his bias off the trail, and it also served as a tool to discredit such theories. He even admitted that he had no doubts she would win despite the spectacle of the October 29, 2016 announcement.

Ken Pittman is the host of The Ken Pittman Show on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon. Contact him at ken.pittman@townsquaremedia.com. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

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