A sting operation intended to dirty a presidential campaign.

Ace of Spades writes,

It's almost as if there were a covert operation against Trump, directed by high partisan officials of the US government.

Here's the first approach, and the second.

I have long found it very interesting that one man with connections to Western intelligence attempted to "incept" George Papadoplous with the claim that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton, and then another man with connections to Western intelligence then arranged, for some reason, to meet with Papadopolous and extract this same information from him.

Then this information was fed to the US government, and used as the basis for opening an investigation.

Almost as if this was all a set-up.

Ace then links to an article in Real Clear Investigations by Lee Smith. It is a summary of what has been uncovered by investigative journalists like Smith.