For many bureaucrats, politicians and spies working in the United States government, lying is a way of life.

“They lied and lied and lied—and were caught in their lies!” my father writes in Great Again regarding President Barack Obama and his top officials. “That administration covered itself in a cloak of deceit. In some cases, they even joked or bragged about their lies!”

President Obama worked with the deep state and deepened its power further, especially toward the end of his term. Perhaps the most-used tool of radical leftists in elected office and in the deep state is lying. Some of the clearest examples that have emerged publicly are statements made by two of the Obama administration’s most powerful spy chiefs.

Radicals are not the only ones in Washington telling lies, of course. Using deception always hurts everyone in the end. It certainly weakens politicians who present themselves as honest, moral representatives of honest, moral people. But the deep state’s intentional, intelligent, interlocking system of lies is far more concerning. It’s not just a no-no. It’s not just a frustration. It’s a weapon. And the radical left is using it to destroy America as we know it.

Radicals who share the same agenda collude to tell lies in order to hurt their opponents or to deceive voters. They work together to help each other escape the penalties for their deception. But when they catch conservatives in a lie, they prosecute them up to, and oftentimes beyond, the full extent of the law. This double standard is not just unfair, it’s dangerous. I talked about this during my April 30 radio show, which you can listen to here:

We have about half a dozen examples of this system of lies that is designed to fundamentally change America and its place in the world. In all of these cases, evidence has now emerged proving these statements to have been false.

In 2011, the Obama administration helped push out Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a U.S. ally. As expected, the Muslim Brotherhood took over the government. The Obama administration’s director of national intelligence at the time, James Clapper, told a House of Representatives Intelligence Committee hearing: “The term ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ is an umbrella term for a variety of movements. In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam. … They have pursued social ends, betterment of the political order in Egypt ….”

Many in Washington immediately challenged Clapper’s distortion of the truth. It was kind of obvious: The name of the Muslim Brotherhood is the Muslim Brotherhood. Its leaders have made quite extreme religious statements. Clapper’s office later walked back his false statement, but he had already given the world an indication that even the director of national intelligence would be treating the Muslim Brotherhood as if it was something it is not.

In March 2013, Clapper was on Capitol Hill again testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Sen. Ron Wyden asked Clapper point-blank: “Does the nsa collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Clapper’s now-infamous response: “No sir.” After a brief pause, he added, “Not wittingly.”

In the summer of 2013, National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked classified documents to the press that proved the agency was using prism and other spy programs to “wittingly” collect metadata on phone records as well as monitoring Internet activities of millions and millions of Americans who were not suspected of any wrongdoing. The facts he revealed about the government’s ability and willingness to spy on Americans was frightening.

The director of national intelligence lied under oath about a hugely important matter affecting all Americans. That’s not an accusation. It’s a fact. He later went on national television and explained his lie by reasoning that Wyden’s question was “not answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no. So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful or least untruthful manner by saying ‘no.’”

Clapper is now even more infamous for that “least untruthful” line.

Senator Wyden gave his question to Clapper a day before the hearing. Clapper then lied in order to deceive Wyden and millions of Americans into believing his agency was not spying on them. Wyden was skeptical about Clapper’s answer and gave him an opportunity to amend his testimony in writing afterward. Clapper did not take it. Clapper continued to maintain his lie—until Snowden made those internal nsa files public. Then Clapper admitted that he lied (under oath)—but tied his admission to an accusation: The real problem was not my deceit but Senator Wyden’s “not answerable” question! The deception continues. It’s a way of life.

Fast-forward to the last month: The House Intelligence Committee released its 253-page report saying that there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016. No collusion! We now know that the Obama administration’s fbi was spying on the Trump campaign and yet still it has been unable to bring forth any evidence of collusion. Yet Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues an investigation based on what is almost certainly a false accusation. And there is no end in sight. But you can bet that if Mueller uncovers any lies made by people connected to President Trump, he will make full use of them.

According to that report, after fbi director James Comey briefed President-elect Trump regarding an unverified, scandalous dossier in January 2017 (the dossier that the Bureau secretly used to spy on the Trump team), guess who quickly leaked the information about the dossier to the press? James Clapper.

And who was called before yet another congressional hearing in July 2017? James Clapper. He was asked, “Did you discuss the dossier or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists?”

His response: “No.”

This was six months after Clapper leaked that information to cnn. That testimony has been proved to be a flat out, bald-faced lie.

The House Intelligence Committee report said:

When initially asked about leaks related to the [dossier] in July 2017, former dni Clapper flatly denied “discussing the dossier [compiled by Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists.” Clapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the “dossier with cnn journalist Jake Tapper,” and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic. Clapper’s discussion with Tapper took place in early January 2017, around the time IC leaders briefed President Obama and President-elect Trump on “the Christopher Steele information.”

Another powerful man who spied on Americans and on Trump was James Comey. After the January 2017 meeting with President Trump, the fbi director wrote a series of now-infamous memos to himself about what the two men had discussed. He later leaked those memos to a friend in order to leak them to the press in the hope that it would provoke an investigation, which it did. Comey said in June 2017, “I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter—didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”

In one of those memos, he wrote about the allegations contained in the infamous Steele dossier: “I said media like cnn had them and were looking for a news hook. I said it was important that we not give them the excuse to write that the fbi has the material …” (emphasis added throughout).

So Comey told the president-elect that the media wouldn’t report the allegations because they were unverified salacious gossip. They needed a “news hook” in order to publicize it—something to justify them going ahead with the reporting.

Last month, Comey had an interview with Bret Baier at Fox News. Unlike Comey’s much-promoted abc interview with George Stephanopoulos, Baier’s included pointed questions about what really happened in those critical transition months in late 2016 and early 2017. Here’s a section from that interview, talking about Comey meeting President Trump to discuss the Steele dossier:

Baier: Did you or your subordinates leak that?

Comey: No.

Baier: Did James Clapper?

Comey: No—not to my knowledge, no.

Baier: John Brennan?

Comey: I don’t know who leaked it. I had no part in any leaking of it. It was about four or five days later that it leaked, but—I remember, because the president elect called me about it.

Baier: Did you ever try to find out?

Comey: … who leaked an unclassified public document? No.

Notice the careful wording: Not to my knowledge. It was an unclassified public document. So, he’s saying that it’s not that big of a deal who leaked an unclassified public document like the Steele dossier. This is coming from a man who is himself a leaker—he leaked his own memos, which contained classified information.

Baier then grilled Comey about the Steele dossier:

Baier: Did you inform the president-elect at the time what you knew about how it was funded or who was behind it?

Comey: No, I did not.

Baier: Did you inform him that Christopher Steele had been fired by the fbi?

Comey: No.

Baier: Or that he had lied?

Comey: No. And I didn’t know those things at that time anyway.

Baier: Or that it had been used at least in part to get this fisa application to spy on somebody in his campaign?

Comey: No. Didn’t come up.

How did that not come up? He didn’t talk about Christopher Steele. He didn’t tell the president-elect that Steele had been fired by the fbi. He didn’t say that the dossier was ultimately funded by the Democrats, specifically by the Hillary Clinton campaign. He didn’t say that he had relied on the dossier to receive a secret court order to spy on Carter Page—even while knowing that it was unverified, salacious gossip. “Didn’t come up.”

And then check out this revealing little tidbit:

Baier: And who suggested you brief that?

Comey: I think the director of national intelligence did.

That would be … James Clapper.

What a tangled web. Talk about collusion! They know the accusations of Russians and Trump associates working together is a hoax. Yet they continue pounding away at that false narrative to get more and more people to think, Maybe there’s something to this Trump-Russia collusion accusation.

Clapper and Comey were among the most powerful men in the most powerful positions of the Obama administration! They lied and lied and lied—and then lied about their lies! They lied so much that several of their lies are now public knowledge! The Obama administration indeed “covered itself in a cloak of deceit.”

Contrast this cozy arrangement with lying to what has happened to those who oppose radicals and the deep state. President Trump’s first national security adviser was Michael Flynn. According to the House Intelligence Committee report, the fbi “did not detect any deception” in its interview with Flynn in January 2017. But President Trump fired him after only about a month in office because he was not completely honest about what he discussed with the Russian ambassador.

But Trump’s detractors were not satisfied. Mueller targeted Flynn as the center of his Russia investigation because he found an apparent contradiction in Flynn’s sworn testimony. The Daily Mail summarized the case: “In December 2017, Flynn agreed to plead guilty to making false statements to the fbi regarding his December 2016 conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. Flynn’s son was spared prosecution as a result of the plea deal.”

So Mueller’s probe basically threatened Flynn: If you don’t plead guilty, we’re going after your son!

The Daily Mail wrote:

“According to the charging documents, on or about Dec. 22, 2016, ‘a very senior member of the Presidential Transition Team’ (ptt) directed General Flynn to contact representatives of foreign governments,” the House Intel Panel report reads.

“This request concerned a resolution about Israeli settlements submitted by Egypt to the UN Security Council around Dec. 21, 2016. Later, on December 22, General Flynn contacted Ambassador Kislyak and ‘requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution,’” the report continues. …

Flynn’s plea agreement states that he had falsely told the fbi that he had merely asked Kislyak how Russia planned to vote on a UN resolution condemning Israel’s settlements.

The implication of the intel committee’s finding is that the fbi did not initially believe Flynn had intentionally lied, but that Mueller used unintentional contradictions in his interview to force a plea.

If this is the case, the fbi detected no deception from Flynn because he wasn’t being deceitful. He mistakenly said something at one point that contradicted something he said at another point. And Mueller ran with it—ran so far as to threaten Flynn’s son unless he pleaded guilty.

Another example is Dr. Ronny Jackson, President Trump’s personal physician. Most people had never heard of him before the news broke of President Trump’s first physical. Now Jackson is the worst person in the world because he signed off on Trump’s medical evaluation. This is despite the fact that he was President Obama’s personal doctor for 3½ years. Then President Trump wanted to promote him to secretary of Veterans Affairs and a firestorm of allegations came out. Double standard, anyone?

The American Spectator wrote:

No one was interested in Jackson for several years, but now that Trump wants him to have [a] higher profile job, the “journalism” knives are out and wrecking him has become a media priority. …

The as-yet unsubstantiated claims are numerous. He allegedly over-prescribed painkillers. He allegedly wrecked a car while drunk. He allegedly is the worst person ever to work with.

The allegations are so damning and overwhelming that even a casual observer could be prompted to ask, “Why now?” …

Whether true or untrue, it seems pretty clear that we wouldn’t know about any of this unless Jackson were about to become a member of President Trump’s cabinet. The clear signal from the Democrats and the [mainstream media] (redundant, I know) is that they are willing to destroy anyone who dares accept a job offer from this president.

Where were these investigative, probing, unrelenting members of the media when it was time to vet Ronny Jackson as he was brought into the White House during the last 3½ years of the Obama administration?

Which side is coming under a vicious and slanderous attack? Which side is aggressively attacking America, undermining the law of the land, bypassing congressional authority, and constantly attacking the presidency of the United States? Which side has weaponized all the intelligence agencies—the nsa, fbi, cia and others?

Which side rushes to defend the enemies of America, saying that they’re not radical at all? Who are the real villains and the real victims here? Which side cannot get away with even making an unintentional contradictory statement—even as the other side lies with impunity?

As my father writes in Great Again, they lie and lie and lie. When they get caught in a lie, they just go right on lying—even bragging and joking about their ability to lie as they weave yet another false narrative.

You want to know something else interesting? After James Clapper retired as director of national intelligence, he was hired by cnn as an intelligence analyst.

Where is the actual collusion? Who is conspiring against whom? Who is accusing others of what they themselves are guilty of?

And lastly, which side—no matter how corrupt and deceitful they are—is never fired, indicted or prosecuted? Which ones retire after a legacy of lies, leaks, perjury and “least untruthful” statements—and then go on to get a job at cnn or write a bestselling book?

It’s a pervasive double standard. And it is dangerous. We are witnessing the death of truth, the death of justice, the death of democracy.

My father writes in Great Again, “It is impossible to measure the damage that such deception wreaked on the fabric of our politics and our society. But nobody seems to care. …

“We must see reality: Something deadly dangerous has seized the country—far more than what people realize. There is a spiritual dimension to what is happening, and you cannot understand these events unless you recognize this.”