The facts emerging in the ongoing investigations into the apparent abuses of the FISA warrant process by the Democrats to spy on Donald Trump raise grave questions about those involved.  The outline taking shape is of a well orchestrated plot to elect Hillary Clinton and, failing that, to delegitimize Donald Trump's presidency.  The conspirators involved in this effort to subvert our Republic used the legal and technological apparatus of the state, as well as outside smear merchants, in their effort.  One question that arises is what should happen to those found guilty of participating in such a plot.  And in hindsight, we should ask ourselves if Hillary Clinton telegraphed her own concern over her fate during the presidential campaign.

On September 7, 2016, Hillary took part in an interview with then-NBC host Matt Lauer in something called the "Commander-in-Chief Forum."  Lauer asked Clinton some apparently unexpected questions about her judgment in using a personal, unsecure email server to traffic highly classified information.  Clinton reportedly flew into a rage at Lauer's impertinence and turned her wrath on her campaign staff members.  An executive from Comcast (which owns NBC) reportedly recounted a description of Clinton's explosive outburst provided to him by NBC executives who were on the set and claimed to have witnessed the tirade.  Clinton reportedly threw a water glass at an assistant and excoriated then-top Democratic National Committee official Donna Brazile, saying, "I'm so sick of your face.  You stare at the wall like a brain-dead buffalo, while letting that [f‑‑‑‑‑‑] Lauer get away with this."  Mrs. Clinton felt she had been sandbagged by Lauer's question on the email server, which had not been pre-approved by Clinton's campaign staff.

Most tellingly, for the purposes of this discussion, Mrs. Clinton reportedly said to her aides during her rant: "If that [f‑‑‑‑‑‑] bastard [Trump] wins, we all hang from nooses!"

I attempted, unsuccessfully, to track down and obtain the original email in which this account was related by reaching out to the somewhat fringe media outlets in which it was being reported.  None of those contacted was able to produce the documentation.  But whether this anecdote is true or apocryphal, it raises an important question, which might well have prompted an upset Mrs. Clinton to speculate that she and her associates might "hang from nooses."

If the congressional and DOJ inspector general's investigations eventually turn up irrefutable evidence of a coordinated conspiracy among Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, John Brennan, James Clapper, Glenn Simpson, and others to throw the presidential election to Hillary Clinton in what is amounting to a frame-up, can a case be made for seditious conspiracy?  All indications are that top Obama administration officials obtained a FISA warrant to spy on a Trump campaign official based on knowingly unverified evidence in the Fusion GPS-manufactured "Steele dossier."  They also leaked the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Carter Page to the media before the election.  And we recently learned that the FBI was using informants to spy on the Trump campaign.  Now Robert Mueller and his team are conducting a special counsel fishing expedition based on some alleged collusion with Russia, zero evidence of which has been provided.

Seditious conspiracy is defined in federal law as follows:

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

Did Hillary's cabal "conspire to overthrow" the government?  Certainly, force was not used, but does the statute require force?

Hillary's purported outburst following the Matt Lauer interview may have reflected a deep-seated fear that should Trump win, her conspiracy would be uncovered.  If so, she may be comforted to know that rather than hanging, she and her cohorts may be looking only at twenty years in prison.

Admittedly, many caveats must necessarily accompany this discussion.  The above story about Hillary's tirade is reliant on hearsay – apparently second- or thirdhand hearsay.  The email was reportedly written by a Comcast executive who in turn was reportedly summarizing what was told to him by an NBC executive who allegedly witnessed Mrs. Clinton's outburst.  It was then reported by media outlets.

Nonetheless, as facts continue to emerge in this political melodrama, some astute analysts, such as CTH's "Sundance," are putting together the pieces of a disturbing puzzle.  It suggests that one of the gravest attacks on our republican form of government that has ever occurred was undertaken by James Comey, Sally Yates, Andrew McCabe, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, Glenn Simpson, John Brennan, James Clapper, Christopher Steele, Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, and possibly other Obama administration figures, as well as a host of British and Australian government officials, which Mark Steyn has brilliantly dissected in an analysis of those foreign officials' involvement. 

Very knowledgeable and experienced prosecutors, like the former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Joe diGenova, have insistently called for the empanelment of a grand jury to investigate these individuals for various violations of federal law, such as obstruction of justice and violating Americans' civil rights through their actions.  As diGenova told Tucker Carlson on January 23, 2018:

[T]he Attorney General needs to appoint a special counsel, and if he doesn't want to do that, he needs to make sure the criminal division of the Justice Department impanels a grand jury immediately and starts putting in that grand jury, under oath, Comey, Strzok, Page, Baker, McCabe, everybody.  And senior Justice Dept. officials Sally Yates, Bruce Ohr, and others – John Carlin, the head of the national security division. All of these people need to be in front of a grand jury.

An attempt to rig an election using falsified evidence as the basis for an investigation is a most serious crime against our form of government and cannot go unchallenged or unpunished.  An attempt to frame Donald Trump and oust him from the presidency is even more grave.

Benjamin Franklin was famously asked by some Philadelphia citizens, according to lore, what the Framers of the Constitution had created when they emerged with the Constitution.  Franklin's response was: "A Republic, if you can keep it."  The question in the wake of this latest, and most colossal, Clinton scandal is this: can we keep the Republic?

William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private and non-profit sectors for over thirty years.  Presently he is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc.  (The views expressed are the author's alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)