JOHN HINDERAKER: Our Long National Nightmare Is Over. “Impeachment must be viewed in the context of the Democrats’ effort to destroy Donald Trump that began prior to his inauguration. For more than three years, their get-Trump campaign has dominated the news. Mostly, it was the Russia hoax. The Democrats originally intended to use that as the basis for impeachment. When the Mueller report negated that plan, they switched–literally overnight–to the much weaker Ukraine theory. No matter. It was impeachment or bust, if only to continue filling up the nightly news with purported Trump ‘scandals.’ Now the smoke will begin to clear, and I don’t think the Democrats will like the landscape that comes into focus.”

Plus: “For a long time now, the Democrats have used their hysterical attacks on President Trump to deflect attention from the real scandal–the misuse of the Obama administration’s Department of Justice, FBI and CIA to spy on, and plot against, the Trump presidential campaign and, subsequently, his administration. This is the biggest political scandal in American history, and the Democrats, with the Russia hoax, Ukraine and impeachment now a spent force, are naked, so to speak. One can only imagine with what anxiety they are awaiting the findings of John Durham’s investigation and any criminal indictments that may accompany them.”

Flashback, March 2017: “Hypothesis: The spying-on-Trump thing is worse than we even imagine, and once it was clear Hillary had lost and it would inevitably come out, the Trump/Russia collusion talking point was created as a distraction.”