A telling narrative that began with  warning signs deeply troubling to the FBI

By Andrew Lidden Pate

At first they were just flickers popping up here and there:  A potential presidential candidate with a large entourage  visits Moscow. . .the candidate's personal attorney and lesser aides make repeated contacts with Russian intermediaries ....the campaign begins and the Russian-to-candidate signals become more than flickers, they become blips frozen for too long on your PC monitor... and as the campaign weeks pass, the Russian contacts increase significantly.

You're an FBI investigator assigned to watch closely (impartially) campaign developments.  After a few weeks of hard examination of the signs, you begin to wonder.  What's going on? You ask a co-worker, more than one, several.  They're seeing the same things and wondering too.

Along this path, the head of the FBI, one James Comey, is communicating with all of the agents involved.  He's as puzzled as they.  Is Hillary involved?  Trying to make her primary opponent look bad?  Or is it the other way around?

As is well known, Comey did not want it to appear that the FBI was partial to Hillary, or to Trump.  So, as his own party, the Republican, wished, Comey had Hillary thoroughly investigated.  Then,  in  what became a "puzzling" announcement he made shortly before election day, Comey cleared Hillary of criminal wrong-doing, but in a manner that actually made her look incompetent.

To your consternation, and that of the American public, Trump wins the electoral college and is the president elect.

Meanwhile, the Russian contacts with members of the new president's entourage have  continued to add up, limiting your options.   You must investigate those connections, look seriously into whether and how deeply Russians (their allies as well) may have been involved in getting Trump elected.

The rest of the story is pretty well known.  The Mueller probe was begun, and now has held America's and the world's attention for over two years

Notably, during the Mueller probe, key members of Trump's entourage were charged both with campaign crimes (most importantly, Michael Flynn and Michael Cohen) and with crimes not directly related to the campaign. Several of the key figures involved confessed to certain of the crimes charged against them.

In counter-response to the FBI investigation, Trump and Republican strategists developed a conspiracy theory:  the FBI was attempting a "deep state" coup  d'etat,  the purpose of which was to oust the president from office.

__________

Which side is right, the Alternative or the Conspiracy?  That is the question.

Clearly, to confirm the negative judgments in the Conspiracy theory a person must (a) adopt the notion that virtually every one of the FBI agents involved, including Comey and Mueller,  are not patriots but traitors; (b) ignore the many favorable statements the president has made of his relationship with Putin and other dictators; (c) agree that testimonies under oath by key members of Trump's  staff—Flynn, Manafort, Cohen, confessed criminals—are not to be believed; and (d) perceive Donald Trump to be not the cause of but the victim of the investigation into the connections of his campaign with Russians or Russian sympathizers.

The Alternative story told here  is the American way!  And I'm traveling on it until it is shown conclusively to me that Donald J. Trump is neither grossly incompetent nor a real-life mobster fraudulently residing in the White House..  I believe him to be both.

Too—were it established that the FBI has attempted a coup e'tat, was the FBI justified in doing so?

Based on the damning evidence stated in the Mueller report and Trump's glaring mental and moral deficiencies, I should hope so.  Democracy, first and last!  And when it is threatened, we fight for it!