In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Mark Antony stands over the murdered leader’s body and repeats with cold irony: “For Brutus is an honorable man; so are they all, all honorable men.” The line works because the audience understands that the repeated claim of honor is itself the accusation. We have been living inside our own version of that scene. 

For years, a network of officials in the intelligence community, the FBI, and the permanent foreign-policy apparatus presented themselves as the last defenders of democratic norms. They spoke constantly of duty, institutions, and a “higher loyalty.” They told the country that extraordinary measures were required to deal with an unacceptable threat. When their actions were questioned, they protested too much. 

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These honorable men launched and sustained the Russia collusion operation. They used the powers of the state to plant resentment and turn institutions, media, and portions of the public against a presidential candidate and later a sitting president. When that effort began to lose force, they shifted to lawfare and procedural warfare. They did this while insisting they were acting out of institutional duty rather than ideological hostility. 

It is worth noting that many of these officials held positions whose explicit statutory purpose was to prevent exactly this kind of coordinated political interference. The FBI’s core........

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