It’s a little like the proverbial child killing its parents and throwing itself on the mercy of the court because he's now an orphan, but, with the wheels of Barr-Durham-Horowitz justice inexorably turning on them, there are Fusion GPS founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, on a media book tour claiming they are the victims of right-wing vengeance for their role in orchestrating a criminal fraud upon the FISA court and a coup against a sitting president of the United States. Holy Michael Avenatti!

The coup leaders were the subject of discussion on Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle” recently along with a well-deserved rebuke from one of the true victims of their perfidy, California congressman and House Intelligence Committee ranking member, Devin Nunes.  As Fox News reports:

MSNBC lobbed softball questions at Fusion GPS founders, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, in recent days and allowed their political bias to overshadow the facts, said Laura Ingraham and Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., on Wednesday.

Simpson and Fritsch made the rounds on several MSNBC shows, to promote their new book, "Crime in Progress," which detailed the Steele dossier and their investigation into President Trump.

"It’s typical -- whatever they accuse you of doing, they're actually doing," Nunes said during an interview on "The Ingraham Angle."

"Even the title of their book is hilarious because they're the ones that are continuing the crimes... I think part of what this book is about is not to sell a bunch of copies, it’s to get out ahead of the lawsuits that are coming…

Ingraham said the network went out of its way to paint the research firm founders as the good guys and promoted the book as if it were the truth.

"The same media outlets who fell for the ridiculously phony... Steele dossier, are now embracing the founders of the firm behind the Steele dossier," she said earlier in the segment….

Nunes then called for Fusion GPS to be shut down for engaging in criminal activity and racketeering.

"They're the ones that went to foreigners, they took money from the Democrats and went to Ukrainians and Russians to dig up dirt on Trump," he said. "These guys are a complete joke, they're a racketeering operation and they need to be shut down -- very dangerous for democracy."

Nunes has filed a lawsuit against Fusion GPS and a Democratic group called Campaign for Accountability charging them with racketeering and organizing a campaign to discredit and marginalize him in retaliation for the exposing their efforts in the production and distribution of the Steele dossier which was used as the launch vehicle to unseat Donald J. Trump:

Nunes’ complaint, which was first reported by the conservative news website Daily Caller, alleges the two groups engaged in a “joint and systematic effort to intimidate, harass, threaten, influence, interfere with, impede, and ultimately to derail” Nunes’ investigation into the so-called dossier Fusion GPS compiled on President Donald Trump in 2016.

Nunes is seeking $9.9 million in damages. The Campaign for Accountability is preparing to fight the lawsuit.

The perfidious pair had it in for Nunes, too, and their activities -- if there is any true justice left in America -- deserve criminal as well as civil penalties. They are as guilty in this coup as any of the others such as Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, James Clapper, John Brennan, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, and, yes, former FBI director James Comey. McCabe has said that without the dossier they provided, there would have been no investigation, prosecution, or impeachment of Trump. Their campaign against Nunes was almost as vicious and reprehensible as their vendetta against Trump, something they admit to in their book, as the Daily Caller notes:

…Simpson and Fritsch reveal for the first time that they conducted opposition research against Nunes in 2018 during his congressional reelection bid.

Simpson and Fritsch are highly critical of Nunes… They express particular frustration at Nunes’ efforts to obtain Fusion GPS’s bank records in October 2017. Those records revealed that the law firm for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS more than $1 million in 2016 for an investigation of President Donald Trump…

Simpson and Fritsch wrote that Fusion “ordinarily didn’t work on congressional races” but decided to investigate Nunes, in part because the California Republican was “a threat to [former special counsel Robert] Mueller’s ability to do his job.”

They refer to Nunes as “a rabid conspiracy theorist who turned the crank on the GOP’s anti-Mueller fog machine.”

“Fusion had no illusions about being able to topple Nunes, but the notion of digging into his record made many at the firm salivate,” they wrote.

Simpson and Fritsch wrote they obtained a copy of the DNC’s research of Nunes. They said the material was “disappointing,” so they launched a public records search of their own.

The purpose of their research to “dig up dirt” on Nunes was to slime and slander the congressman who was working to slay the deep state dragon. It is a standard leftist tactic used to demonize those whom they would destroy, from Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, to President Donald J. Trump himself. Along the way, slime and slander were directed against Paul Manafort, Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn and anyone else on their hit list. But Nunes was having none of it, and took them and others involved in the campaign to court:

The Fresno Bee reported some of the information cited in “Crime in Progress,” though Simpson and Fritsch do not say they provided it to the newspaper.

Nunes sued McClatchy newspapers, which owns the Fresno Bee, on April 9.

Nunes sued Fusion GPS and a liberal nonprofit group called the Campaign for Accountability on Sept. 4 for racketeering, accusing the two organizations of working to “joint and systematic effort to intimidate, harass, threaten, influence, interfere with, impede, and ultimately to derail” his investigation of the Steele dossier.

One of the tidbits unearthed by his investigation and the efforts of groups such as Judicial Watch was that Nellie Ohr, wife of DOJ official Bruce Ohr, was actively involved in the Fusion GPS sedition effort and served as a conduit for the dossier and other information from Fusion GPS to the DoJ and FBI: Among the juicy tidbits in the FBI 302s on Ohr that were obtained by Judicial Watch:

•On November 22, 2016, Bruce Ohr said that  “reporting on Trump’s ties to Russia were going to the Clinton Campaign, Jon Winer at the U.S. State Department and the FBI.”

In late September 2016, Ohr describes a person (likely Christopher Steele) as “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President.”

“Ohr knew that [Fusion GPS’s] Glen Simpson and others talking to Victoria Nuland at the U.S. State Department.”…

On December 5, 2016, Ohr promised to “voluntarily” give his wife Nellie Ohr’s Fusion GPS research to the FBI.  He also provided the FBI with a report on Paul Manafort titled, “Manafort Chronology.”…

•On December 20, 2016, Ohr provided the FBI with his wife’s Nellie Ohr’s Fusion GPS research, “which contained the totality” of her work “but the Fusion GPS header was stripped.”

•On January 23, 2017, Ohr tells the FBI that Steele told him that Steele “spoke with a staff member of Senator John McCain’s office sometime prior to October 2016.”

•The FBI interviews show that Ohr texted and talked to Christopher Steele using the WhatsApp application….

“These new Bruce Ohr FBI 302s show an unprecedented and irregular effort by the FBI, DOJ, and State Department to dig up dirt on President Trump using the conflicted Bruce Ohr, his wife, and the Clinton/DNC spies at Fusion GPS,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Parenthetically, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who also recognized the effectiveness of Nunes and was also worried Nunes might find the truth, also led an effort to defame and derail his counterpart, forcing his recusal from committee investigations at a critical juncture.

Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch were ringleaders in this corrupted process, this attempted coup. The only interviews they should be giving now is to legal and law enforcement officials prior to their trial and incarceration. Media complicity in their crimes is shown by this fawning book tour hype by MSNBC and the usual deep state suspects.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former freelance editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.