For months, the Democratic Party and some members of the intelligence community have maintained that President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign in 2016 aimed at influencing the U.S. presidential election between Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Russian intelligence services allegedly gained access to the email accounts of Democratic Party officials and released the hacked material to WikiLeaks and others “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances,” the IC said in a report released earlier this year.

Although there have been a significant number of investigations since then, there has been no evidence of collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign.

Despite that fact, there are three major investigations into Russian meddling: the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Intelligence Committee, and most recently, a special counsel appointed by the Department of Justice.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigation is focused on what Russia did to influence the 2016 elections and if the country used "cyberactivity and active measures" to target the United States. Part of that includes examining whether there is any evidence that members of President Trump's campaign team collaborated with Russian operatives.

Vice Chair Mark Warner is the top Democrat on the committee. The two-term senator and former Virginia governor has repeatedly said the investigation is the "most important thing I've ever done" in public service.

That statement highlights Warner’s political bias against the President, since most Americans see this investigation as having no justification because of lack of evidence and is just another waste of taxpayer money by the government.

Warner admitted on Sunday June 6, that the Senate Intelligence Committee has not yet found a smoking gun during its investigation into potential collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives.

The House Intelligence Committee said that they wanted to investigate Trump campaign members’ collusion with Russian officials, however, Chairman Devin Nunes and other Republicans on the committee have publicly focused much of their attention on leaks from within the White House and whether the Obama administration "unmasked" (exposed the identity) of Trump associates for political purposes, which would be felonies for the people responsible , and could potentially be a bigger crime than Watergate if the evidence shows that significant numbers of innocent Americans were surveilled.

In May, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller to head the FBI investigation into the same issues already investigated by Congress. Additionally, Mueller is charged with investigating any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation, which opens the door for him to investigate anything he wants.

These “matters” include the question of whether Trump or other White House officials improperly acted to impede the FBI investigation and likely includes the circumstances of the dismissals of both former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former FBI director James Comey.

In a tweet on June 16, President Trump said, “I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt”.

The biggest problem with the special counsel lies in the friendly relationship between Mueller and Comey.

The two men’s working relationship began in December 2003, when Comey joined Mueller in Washington after becoming John Ashcroft’s deputy attorney general.  “He and Mueller spent many hours together, developing a close partnership…” the Washingtonian noted.

“Both men were rising stars mentored and guided by Eric Holder in the 1990s during Holder’s time in the Justice Department under the Clinton administration.”

How can Mueller be impartial when investigating why the President fired one of Mueller’s closest friends? It’s a serious conflict of interest and shame on Mueller for not recusing himself. What is the reason for the special counsel’s existence if it’s corrupted by an obvious conflict of interest?

Now Mueller is threatening to expand his investigation into President Trump’s personal finances,  according to a Bloomberg News report.

This further supports the idea that Mueller and his team are getting desperate because they can’t find any evidence of Russian collusion. Mueller has now shifted his strategy to openly trying to bring down President Trump using evidence of shady business deals, going decades back into the past — not collusion with Russia.

The investigation is also focused on the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. met in June 2016 at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who offered dirt on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, but has not been able to find evidence of a crime.

This August 3, we learned that Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury in Washington to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections.

The grand jury will allow Mueller much more latitude in his investigation into whether Russia influenced the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign or associates colluded with the Kremlin. This is because the grand jury will allow Mueller and his prosecutors to subpoena documents, put witnesses under oath and seek indictments, if there is evidence of a crime.

Greg Andres, a top partner in the New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, has joined Mueller’s team. This is further evidence of an expansion of Mueller’s investigation.

Thomas Zeno, a federal prosecutor who became a lawyer at the Squire Patton Boggs law firm, said that Andres, a former top Justice Department official who also oversaw the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, wouldn’t leave his private-sector job for a low-level investigation.

Now that Mueller has empaneled the grand jury, his investigation can be protracted indefinitely because there is no deadline for its completion, and has the authority to go beyond the original guidelines of Russian collusion

It seems that Mueller is wasting no time expanding his investigation. Prosecutors working under Mueller recently asked the White House for documents related to the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn. The request is the first time Mueller’s team asked the White House to present records.

Prosecutors and F.B.I. agents have spent hours investigating the details of Flynn’s business dealings with a Turkish-American businessman who worked last year with Flynn and his consulting business, the Flynn Intel Group.

The investigators allege that Flynn’s company was paid $530,000 to run a smear campaign against an opponent of the Turkish government who attempted a failed coup in the country.

Investigators want to know if the Turkish government indirectly paid the Flynn Intel Group who allegedly made kickbacks to the businessman, Ekim Alptekin, to help conceal the source of the money.

This provides more evidence that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry has expanded into a detailed investigation of Flynn’s financial dealings, beyond the question of whether he failed to register as a foreign agent or lied about his dealings with Russian officials.

President Trump has questioned the neutrality of Mueller’s office, saying that Mueller’s prosecutors are “Hillary Clinton supporters” and that Mueller and James Comey are friends.

On the first accusation, at least eight members of Mueller’s team have donated to Democratic candidates, including the presidential campaigns of Obama and Clinton, according to Federal Election Commission records. Andres in March supported a Democratic lawmaker, donating $2,700 to Kirsten Gillibrand, a U.S. senator representing New York.

As for the second accusation, this article has cited evidence that after Mueller and Comey’s working relationship began in 2003, they became close friends.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post, citing unidentified sources, reported that President Trump’s attorneys are piecing together conflict-of-interest cases against Mueller’s staff and discussing the scope of the president’s pardon powers.

The FBI is not a separate entity. That’s a myth that’s been floating around for several years in D.C. The truth is that the FBI is under the control of the President because it’s part of the executive branch of the U.S. government. As such, the President can order the FBI director to investigate whatever he wants and has the legal right to fire anyone he wants, including James Comey.

It also means that the President has the legal right to fire Mueller and can put an end to the special counsel investigation if he wants.

This new overreach by Mueller may force the president’s hand, bringing up the possibility the president will exercise his right as head of the executive branch of the U.S. government and terminate the investigation.

Because of this possibility, Congress seems convinced that Mueller’s independence needs to be protected.

Sens. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) and Chris Coons (D., Del.) introduced bipartisan legislation on August 3 to make it more difficult for the president to fire Mueller. According to this legislation, a special counsel could challenge President Trump, with a three-judge panel ruling within 14 days on whether the firing was justified.

If the panel found no good cause for the firing, the special counsel would immediately be reinstated. The legislation follows a similar effort from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and Cory Booker (D., N.J.).

This brings up the question of why Republicans are working with the Democrats to keep Mueller’s investigation in place by attempting to take away the President’s power over the executive branch of the U.S. government.

None of the three major investigations into the possibility that Russia tilted the presidential election in Trump’s favor have produced any evidence.

The answer is that many Republican and Democrat politicians don’t want Trump to succeed because he is attempting to destroy the crony capitalism that they are involved in.

They are facing losing their re-elections and the cushy, million-dollar jobs they will receive from their cronies when they retire as lobbyists. It is obvious that these corrupt politicians want the government to remain as it is.

That is why many politicians, regardless of party affiliation, want the special counsel to succeed, because it serves their purpose, which is to destroy President Trump.

Robert Steven Ingebo is the president of FRI Corporation.