'Nothing comes close in size, scope or harm to the republic than the years-long effort to cripple Donald Trump’s presidency by claiming he conspired with an enemy state to steal the 2016 election and then do its bidding as commander-in-chief.
Its notorious predecessors – L’Affaire Lewinsky, Iran-Contra, Watergate, Teapot Dome, Crédit Mobilier, the XYZ Affair – involved relatively small numbers of malefactors engaged in specific acts of illegality and corruption (we still don’t know who, if anyone, planned the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol)
Russiagate, by contrast, is a vast conspiracy involving innumerable powerful forces, including the Democratic Party, NeverTrump Republicans, the Obama administration, the FBI, Department of Justice and the nation’s most prestigious news outlets.
Where previous scandals often ended with public accountability for the perpetrators – Watergate saw the imprisonment of top White House aides and President Nixon’s resignation – and public reforms, Russiagate has produced no such reckoning.
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