High‑Confidence Fraud

How a Single Snippet Fueled a Deep‑State War

OPINION: By Walter Curt

This week in Washington did more than light up cable‑news; it ripped the mask off the permanent political class. When Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt told the corporate press to mail back the Pulitzers they won for the Russia‑collusion fairy tale, she wasn’t throwing red meat; she was serving notice. The myth they rewarded has been autopsied. Newly declassified communiqués show the whole saga rested on a single fragment from one biased human source—hardly the “high‑confidence” assessment John Brennan sold to the nation. The empire of insinuation has no clothes, and the courtiers know it.

Tulsi Gabbard—not exactly a MAGA cheerleader—called the scheme what it is: a coup. For that honesty she now wears the bull’s‑eye once painted on Trump. The left cannot abide apostasy, and her warning underscores the scandal. The Beltway didn’t just spy on a candidate; it tried to veto the electorate. That is seditious conspiracy, not politics as usual.

Look at the timeline. Months before a ballot was cast, the FBI opened Crossfire Hurricane on gossip laundered by Clinton cut‑outs. While Trump prepared to govern, Obama officials circulated the Steele dossier even though it read like a spy‑novel pitch. On January 5 2017 Obama ordered an intelligence review “at the direction of the President”. Translation: build a narrative big enough to hobble the incoming administration.

A decade ago, any junior analyst submitting a memo built on a single, anonymously sourced fragment would have been laughed out of Langley. Yet Brennan’s shop stamped “High Confidence” on precisely that. It was the intelligence equivalent of using a fun‑house mirror to judge a prizefight. Worse, the National Security Council knew the sourcing was junk, but moved ahead because the narrative was politically convenient. That is how bureaucracies mutate into rackets.

The fallout was immediate: markets wobbled, allies hesitated, and a White House that should have been rolling out a growth agenda spent its infancy dodging subpoenas. Meanwhile, the plotters retired to cable‑news studios, cashing in as “senior intelligence analysts” and urging Americans to wait for Mueller’s perp walk. When that fizzled, they pivoted to impeachment, then to the January 6 show trial. The pattern is addiction to narrative, not evidence.

For Trump, the cost was personal as well as political. Agents ransacked his home, pawed through Melania’s wardrobe, audited decades‑old balance sheets, and threatened loyal aides with prison unless they “remembered” damning conversations. Those tactics weren’t investigations; they were psychological warfare aimed at exhausting, dismantling and destroying Trump and his family. Instead, they forged the steely resolve now barreling toward them.

Even now you hear the defeatist sigh: “Nothing will happen.” Nonsense. Trump didn’t build skyscrapers by writing off bad debts, and he won’t shrug at an attempt to ruin his life. He has an ally this time: proof. Names, memos, signatures. And proof is a battering ram; it forces depositions, subpoenas, and, eventually, verdicts.

Skeptics ask whether investigations will shatter trust in the intelligence agencies. That faith is already gone—drained by officials who mistook security clearances for indulgences. Sunlight repairs what secrecy rots. If it lands some in jail, so be it. The republic survived Watergate; it will survive Obamagate.

James Madison warned that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” The corollary is obvious: if angels never materialize, we need mechanisms to jail the devils. Congressional oversight, special counsels, and jury boxes exist precisely for moments like this, when the guardians become the threat.

A self‑governing people cannot tolerate an unelected clerisy deciding which election outcomes are “safe for democracy.” The Founders designed a system where legitimacy flows from the bottom up. Break that covenant and you drift toward the Old World, ruled by whisper networks and secret police.

That is why this moment feels heavier than a news cycle. It asks who rules America: voters with calloused hands, or bureaucrats with passports and CNN contracts. Caroline Leavitt’s lecture mattered because it flipped the script: the governed will question, the governors will answer.

So, yes, buckle up. Exposing a conspiracy is the first cut of the fuse. Trial lawyers will joust, senators will grandstand, and legacy outlets will brand dissent as disinformation. But a movement that endured two impeachments and a weaponized DOJ will not flinch now.

Across the heartland the response is already visible. School‑board elections once ignored now draw record turnout. County commissioners vote to ban machines that can’t print auditable ballots. Ordinary citizens, armed with cell‑phone cameras and worn copies of the Constitution, show up at city‑hall meetings and quote chapter and verse. That is what the consultants miss: behind every poll number is a citizen who has had enough.

The American experiment has withstood British bayonets, civil war, and a Cold War’s worth of dread. It will survive this too—but only if ballots, not back‑channels, decide who governs. The papers are on the table, the excuses in tatters, and the first chord of accountability is ringing. The rest, as a certain New Yorker might say, will be Yuge.