Trump’s biggest lie

Above and beyond the headline grabbing news from the James Comey hearing about presidential lying and pleas for the FBI director’s “loyalty,” was the subtext — Russia’s numerous efforts to strike at the heart of the American democratic process.

That is the news that we ignore at our peril.

President Trump has repeatedly insisted, as he did in this Feb. 26 tweet: “Russia talk is FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks!”

Call that the BIG LIE — the whopper that Trump perpetuates because he believes it casts doubt on the legitimacy of his own election. He seems incapable of acknowledging the reality that Hillary Clinton lost because she was a lousy candidate

and that the Russians did interfere — that those two things are not mutually exclusive.

“There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever,” Comey said during his Senate testimony Thursday. “The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did so with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts.

“It was an active measures campaign driven from the top of that government. There is no fuzz on that. It is a high confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community and the members of this committee have seen the intelligence. It’s not a close call. That happened.

“That’s about as unfake as you can possibly get,” Comey added. “It is very, very serious, which is why it’s so refreshing to see a bipartisan focus on that. This is about America, not about a particular party.”

All of that has gotten lost in the shuffle, especially when the Leader of the Free World is so very eager to put all that “Russia stuff” behind him that he’s willing to fire the man heading up that investigation at the time.

In open session, Comey testified that the “first Russian-connected cyber intrusion” he became aware of was in late summer of 2015. It was, he said, “A massive effort to target government and non-governmental, near-governmental agencies like nonprofits.”

The “spear-phishing” campaign affected hundreds and possibly thousands of entities.

So, yes, under the circumstances it was damned disturbing to have a national security adviser in the White House who not only had inappropriate conversations with the Russian ambassador before he took office but a guy who accepted money from the Russians in December 2015 — after the hacking had begun.

And, yes, Comey told the committee the Russians “will be back. They’re going to come for whatever party they want to.”

And that’s not fake news.