"Putin is now America's puppet master -- and we are his empty-headed playthings dangling from his Kremlin strings."

Victor Davis Hanson writes at Jewish World Review,

Some members of Congress are asking why Obama administration officials such as Brennan, Samantha Power and Susan Rice requested surveillance files on Trump campaign officials, may have unmasked names, and may have allowed those names to be illegally leaked to the press.

...Earlier, some Republican anti-Trump operators (and later some Clinton campaign operatives) hired former British spy and opposition researcher Christopher Steele to compile a dossier on Donald Trump that would include some ludicrous Russia-related allegations. Weirder still, Steele's firm may have had some contacts with none other than Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Sen. John McCain, a former target of candidate Trump's invective, acquired the anti-Trump dossier and made sure that the FBI investigated the phony dirt. Comey did just that.

In no time, the so-called Steele dossier was leaked. The website Buzzfeed admitted it could not verify any of the accusations but published the entire sordid file anyway.

One of the principals of the Clinton campaign, John Podesta, was a board member of a green energy firm that suddenly saw an infusion of Russian cash -- purportedly in an attempt to sway Podesta.

Congressional science and energy committees and subcommittees are currently interested in whether the Russians funneled cash into American anti-fracking groups such as Sea Change on the expectation that they might help derail American energy exploration and production.

The Russian government has lost nearly half its oil revenue because of the innovative American ability to frack gas and oil, which has crashed world energy prices. Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently will do anything to see it stopped.

Who could prompt enough investigations and inquiries to overwhelm and distract the entire U.S. government at a time when North Korea is aiming missiles at U.S. territory, Iran is pressing ahead to develop a nuclear weapon, Syria is a genocidal mess, and immigrants from the war-torn Middle East are sweeping across Europe?

Putin is now America's puppet master -- and we are his empty-headed playthings dangling from his Kremlin strings.

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