We take no pleasure in printing that headline. But it has to be done. And we suspect the overwhelming number of good people at the FBI are relieved and even grateful for it.

What we now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that the FBI knew by January 2017 that Christopher Steele’s Hillary Clinton-financed “dossier,” its primary piece of evidence for securing FISA warrants with which to spy on a major party candidate for president of the United States, was total rubbish. And yet the FBI continued to use this manufactured piece of political pablum as a means to continue spying on Donald Trump and his presidential campaign — even after Trump took office.

Let that sink in.

As Friday’s article from The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board puts it, “The Justice Department’s release of documents from the Obama Administration’s 2016-17 Trump-Russia investigation is beginning to paint a picture, and the more we learn the worse the FBI looks.”

The title of the WSJ editorial is “The FBI’s Dossier Deceit,” and that’s exactly — though not exclusively — what it was. Just five years ago, it would’ve been near impossible to name a federal government organization with a better brand name, a more sterling reputation, than that of the FBI. The U.S. military? Maybe.

Today, however, the bureau’s reputation is in tatters, thanks to the actions of a lawless few Trump-haters whose names have become household bywords: Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page. (To that disgraceful group we should add a name that’s less well-known — that of FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who’s somehow flown under the radar despite having intentionally altered evidence that was exculpatory toward Trump campaign associate Carter Page.)

Credit for the declassification and release of the FBI notes goes to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, who said last week, “The dossier was a critical document to justify a FISA warrant against Mr. Page and this DOJ memo clearly indicates that the reliability of the dossier was completely destroyed after the interview with the primary sub-source in January 2017.”

Graham continued, “Most importantly after this interview of the sub-source and the subsequent memo detailing the contents of the interview, it was a miscarriage of justice for the FBI and the Department of Justice to continue to seek a FISA warrant against Carter Page in April and June of 2017.”

Got that? Graham is a lawyer himself, and he doesn’t lightly throw around terms like “miscarriage of justice.” And yet here he’s using it to describe the actions of Barack Obama’s Department of Justice.

The FBI notes also put the lie to a much-ballyhooed New York Times story claiming that the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians. “The comments of Peter Strzok regarding the February 14 [2017] New York Times article,” said Graham, “are devastating in that they are an admission that there was no reliable evidence that anyone from the Trump Campaign was working with Russian Intelligence Agencies in any form.”

As the Journal sums things up, “Democrats and the press corps that touted the phony Steele dossier will say this is a pursuit of a conspiracy theory, but it’s not a theory. The more evidence that is made public, the clearer it becomes that the Steele dossier and collusion narrative were dirty political tricks that became abuses of power.”

Will justice ever be served? And without justice, will the FBI ever be able to rebuild its reputation? U.S. Attorney John Durham is doggedly building his case, but the clock is ticking — perhaps toward a Democrat administration that would love nothing more than to dismiss this matter entirely.

Fidelity, bravery, integrity. Those three words, the FBI’s motto, are written on a white ribbon that stretches across the bottom of the bureau’s iconic logo — a logo that was designed in 1940 by Special Agent Leo Gauthier.

How different the meaning of those words must be to the overwhelming majority of FBI personnel, whose commitment to their motto never wavered, compared to those contemptible few on the 7th floor of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, who dishonored their bureau and their motto in the lawless pursuit of our nation’s 45th president.