It became one of the primary pieces of “evidence” supporting the Democrat/Leftmedia narrative of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax — the hacking of emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee.

Back in April 2016, the story broke that DNC servers had allegedly been hacked, with thousands of emails from both Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta and Clinton herself compromised. It was a bit of poetic justice, given the cloud already hanging over her due to the FBI’s investigation into her own illegal private server. CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC, “confirmed” that Russians were the guilty party. To the embarrassment of both Clinton and the DNC three months later, WikiLeaks published 20,000 emails and revealed what many already suspected — that the DNC colluded with Clinton to ensure that she, not Bernie Sanders, became the party’s nominee.

Notably, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange insisted that his source for the stolen DNC emails was not Russians or anyone working for the Kremlin. Yet, his denials were, understandably, believed by almost no one.

Several weeks later, then-candidate Donald Trump jokingly called on Russia to release the 30,000 emails that went missing from Clinton’s home server. Leftmedia pundits cried “collusion.” It was a nonsense claim and they knew it, though it helped to frame up the collusion hoax.

Strangely, following the hacking, the DNC refused to turn over its servers to the FBI (don’t try this at home) and insisted on using only CrowdStrike to investigate. James Comey’s FBI didn’t put up much of a fight and agreed to essentially take CrowdStrike’s conclusions as gospel. Furthermore, the FBI didn’t get all the data that CrowdStrike had collected as only “a couple of actual digital images” were given to the FBI, out of a total number “in excess of 10.” Comey admitted to lawmakers that the FBI “never got direct access to the machines themselves,” but rather relied on CrowdStrike to “shared with us their forensics from their review of the system.”

In fact, Robert Mueller’s team later used CrowdStrike’s “findings” as evidence to indict 12 Russian intelligence officers. As The Washington Post reported, “The indictment against members of the Russian military agency known as the GRU marks the first time Mueller has taken direct aim at the Russian government, accusing specific military units and their named officers of a sophisticated, sustained effort to hack the computer networks of Democratic organizations and the Hillary Clinton campaign.” Yet another piece of the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy, the Leftmedia loudly declared at the time. Of course, a year later, Mueller also concluded there was no evidence of collusion.

Well, the Justice Department’s recent release of declassified documents has once again revealed the opposite of what Americans were told for over three years. According to declassified House Intelligence Committee testimony from CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry, “There’s not evidence that [the DNC emails] were actually exfiltrated [moved electronically]. There’s circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.” Henry was repeatedly questioned on this point of evidence and he was consistent in his response.

So, if there was no actual evidence that Russians hacked and stole the emails, then how did the FBI come to such a conclusion, as the DNC did not permit agents to access its servers? How did Mueller’s team come to such a definitive conclusion used to indict 12 Russian officials?

Some with authoritative technical knowledge questioned two years ago whether the DNC had actually been hacked. “VIPS [Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity] concluded that the DNC data were not hacked by the Russians or anyone else accessing the server over the Internet,” wrote George Parry. “Instead, the data were downloaded by means of a thumb drive or similar portable storage device physically attached to the DNC server.”

Finally, RealClearInvestigations’ Aaron Mate observes, “Henry’s recently released testimony does not mean that Russia did not hack the DNC. What it does make clear is that Obama administration officials, the DNC and others have misled the public by presenting as fact information that they knew was uncertain. The fact that the Democratic Party employed the two private firms that generated the core allegations at the heart of Russiagate — Russian email hacking and Trump-Russia collusion — suggests that the federal investigation was compromised from the start.”

President Trump needs to drain the swamp.

(Updated.)