‘Russiagate’ was never anything more than Hillary Clinton’s paid-for lies

Newly declassified intelligence files bring fresh, hard proof that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign completely cooked up Russiagate — a total lie that top intelligence officials nonetheless proceeded to amplify, and that all too many Democrats still believe.

These memos from the first half of 2016 center on “confidential conversations” between members of the Democratic National Committee and top staff at George Soros’ Open Society Foundations — and the info is damning.

“Julie [sic] says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump,” runs one quote of July 25. “Now it is good for a post-convention bounce. Later the FBI will put more oil into the fire.”

That shows a clear expectation that government agencies would be colluding in the scheme — making it far more than just a campaign trick.

Yet the campaign’s plans included “raising the theme of ‘Putin’s support for Trump’ ” and “subsequently steering public opinion toward the notion that it needs to equate” Russian influence campaigns with actual hacking of voting machines.

Not only did the memos envision the FBI eventually helping out, that later happened under bureau boss Jim Comey and his No. 2, Andrew McCabe.hines.

The memos also envisioned the FBI eventually supporting the phony scandal — as later actually happened under bureau boss Jim Comey and his No. 2, Andrew McCabe.

Clinton OK’d the scheme to create a distraction from the scandal of her email abuses as secretary of state — and then-President Barack Obama and his top intelligence officials were all briefed on the campaign’s intentions.

Yet Obama, Comey, CIA chief John Brennan and others all seemed to forget about it when the planted “information” began rolling in later in 2016, prompting the absurd Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Donald Trump’s campaign and (eventually) the Mueller investigation that plagued Trump’s first two years as president.

Brennan and Comey even made the Steele Dossier — an utter fiction ordered up by the Clinton campaign — part of the official, post-election “intelligence finding” that cherry-picked info to claim that Russia had worked to elect Trump.

Clinton’s scheme was a dirty trick (that failed to turn the 2016 election for her), but it was Obama & Co. who truly betrayed the American people here.

Obama actively spread the lie in his final days in office, telling a pack of progressive journalists that “the Russia thing is a problem,” and suggesting the new prez could have a “relationship with a foreign entity” that “might shade” policy.

Then came the endless string of New York Times and Washington Post stories citing anonymous “current and former intelligence officials” — completely fake news that consumed the nation’s capital in Trump-Russia hysteria.

It’s all now been 100% debunked, but only after kneecapping a presidency — and with all too many Americans failing to realize even now that it was nothing but lies from start to finish.

Obama, Brennan and the rest pulled off the greatest smear campaign in American history: For shame.