“If you take on the intelligence community they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” —Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) during an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Jan. 3, 2017

Perhaps due to Schumer’s reputation as a Democrat Party hack the enormity of the above quote was lost. Yet it is enormous: Schumer is saying a duly-elected commander in chief has something to fear from an unelected group of bureaucratic insiders that, Schumer implies, operates completely on its own.

An interviewer more attuned to getting at the truth than titillating an audience (a heavily-hyped flop about Donald Trump’s 2005 tax returns comes to mind) would have followed up that statement with one essential question:

Is a de facto shadow government OK with you, Chuck?

What we got instead? “What do you think the intelligence community would do, if they were motivated to?” Maddow asked. “I don’t know,” Schumer answered, “but from what I am told they are very upset at how he’s treated them and talked about them.”

Is there any American who fails to understand who serves at the pleasure of whom? And yet it’s “dumb” to take on “upset” subordinates intent on delegitimizing your presidency?

Regardless, America will now endure an investigation led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller regarding “Russian influence” in the election and Trump’s campaign. One driven by an overwhelmingly slanted Leftmedia campaign determined to shape a relentlessly anti-Trump narrative, one anonymous felony-committing source after another.

Yet what — exactly — is Mueller investigating? As former CIA director John Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday, there was “information intelligence about interactions and contacts between U.S. persons and the Russians” — even as he admitted he didn’t have “sufficient information to make a determination whether or not there was cooperation or complicity or collusion.”

That’s the evidentiary “standard” for precipitating a special counsel-led investigation? Then why did Democrat exchanges with the Russians never precipitate one?

Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 for a 2010 Moscow speech by Renaissance Capital, a firm with ties to Russian intelligence. Uranium One, a company whose sale to the Russian government was approved by the Clinton-led State Department — giving them control of over 20% of America’s uranium supply — donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

Clinton campaign manager, John Podesta, enjoyed a relationship with Joule Unlimited, a Kremlin-financed company that employed him as a director and gave him 75,000 shares of stock. His brother Tony lobbied on behalf of Sberbank, an institution completely beholden to Vladimir Putin, and one accused by Ukraine’s Security Service of financing terrorism.

Couldn’t those contacts could be characterized as “cooperation or complicity or collusion” by law enforcement officials and a hysterical media — if it suited their purposes? If this investigation doesn’t examine Republicans and Democrats, it’s a sham.

Another element of these machinations that doesn’t pass the smell test is the appointment of Mueller himself, championed as a paragon of integrity and impartiality.

Impartial? “While Mueller technically reported to Comey as deputy attorney general, Comey, two decades his junior, treated Mueller as a close friend and almost mentor,” Politico reported last week.

If Mueller is the consummate straight-shooter we’re assured he is, why not recuse himself for this transparent conflict of interest? “The law governing the special counsel (28 CFR 600.7) specifically prohibits [Mueller] from serving if he has a conflict of interest in the case,” Fox News contributor and attorney Gregg Jarret explains. “The rule has been interpreted to mean that even the appearance of a conflict is sufficient for disqualification.”

Jarrett presumes Comey himself is being investigated. Yet on Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz revealed Comey’s scheduled testimony was postponed — because he “wants to speak with” Mueller prior to going public. Thus, unless this is Comey-Mueller version of the Clinton-Lynch a “Tarmac Moment,” we now know Comey is not being investigated.

Why not? In a masterful connect-the-dot piece of journalism, columnist Diana West explains a substantial part of the assertion the Russians hacked the DNC computers is based on statements made by security experts from CrowdStrike, the private cyber security firm hired and paid by the DNC.

The FBI? At a March 20, 2017 House Intelligence Committee hearing, Comey testified the agency “never got direct access to the machines themselves.”

At the same meeting, NSA Director Michael Rogers, another Obama administration holdover, was asked if his agency directly accessed the computers. “The NSA didn’t ask for access,” he stated. “That’s not in our job…”

Rep. Will Hurd pressed the issue with Comey. “So, director, the FBI notified the DNC early, before any information was put on WikiLeaks and when — you have still never been given access to any of the technical or the physical machines that were hacked by the Russians?” he asked. “That’s correct,” Comey answered, “although we got the forensics from the pros that they hired. … Again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this, my folks tell me, was an appropriate substitute.”

Second-hand information provided by a biased source is an appropriate substitute? For what? What stopped Comey from getting a subpoena and seizing the machines?

By itself, this example of Comey’s seeming determination to avoid conducting a thorough investigation should warrant his investigation. Yet the FBI also allowed Hillary Clinton to testify about her personal server without recording or transcribing the conversation. And the agency granted wholly unnecessary immunity deals to Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson that included two side agreements — one limiting the FBI’s scrutinization of documents to a time period before the most likely evidence about obstruction of justice occurred, and the other a promise to destroy the aides’ computers after their examination. Even more egregious, Mills and Samuelson were allowed to function as part of Clinton’s legal team even though they were subjects of the same FBI investigation.

If all of that was done with Comey’s knowledge and presumed approval — how can he remain inviolate?

According to yet another unnamed source, CNN is reporting that Comey is sharing his Trump memos with Mueller. What about memos with regard to Obama, Clinton, or Loretta Lynch? The same Loretta Lynch whose meeting with Bill Clinton prompted Comey to assert the DOJ “could not credibly complete the investigation and decline prosecution without grievous damage to the American people’s confidence in the justice system,” in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee?

“If the massive intelligence capabilities of the NSA and the CIA are being used for internal political purposes, the United States of America, as we know it and the Founders envisioned it, no longer exists,” warns PJ Media’s Roger Simon. “We are [suffering under] post-modern totalitarianism and the Russian collusion scandal was just an excuse to impose it — or, more scarily, to cement what was already there.”

A bombshell report released yesterday — one so far avoided by every mainstream media outlet — reveals Obama’s NSA routinely violated Americans’ Fourth Amendment-based privacy protections. Were Trump and/or his associates some of those Americans?

Either this blatant abuse of power now becomes an integral part of the investigation — or America has ceased being a constitutional republic.