Last October, Harry Reid, the ruthlessly partisan former senator from Nevada, wrote a nasty and bumptious letter to FBI director James Comey. The letter remains a significant piece of evidence in Obamagate, as it confirms his role as conduit for Obama administration’s political espionage against Trump.

“In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government,” he wrote. “The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information.”

Who were those “top officials” whispering the fable of Trump-Russia collusion in Reid’s ear? One was John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director. Last August, Brennan shared his political espionage with Reid, knowing that Reid would then disseminate it to his friends in the liberal media.

“In an Aug. 25 briefing for Harry Reid, then the top Democrat in the Senate, Mr. Brennan indicated that Russia’s hackings appeared aimed at helping Mr. Trump win the November election, according to two former officials with knowledge of the briefing,” reported the New York Times earlier this month. “The officials said Mr. Brennan also indicated that unnamed advisers to Mr. Trump might be working with the Russians to interfere in the election. The F.B.I. and two congressional committees are now investigating that claim, focusing on possible communications and financial dealings between Russian affiliates and a handful of former advisers to Mr. Trump. So far, no proof of collusion has emerged publicly.”

Was Brennan also using Reid to put additional pressure on Comey to accelerate his investigation into Trumpworld? Notice this extraordinary paragraph in the Times report:

In the August briefing for Mr. Reid, the two former officials said, Mr. Brennan indicated that the C.I.A., focused on foreign intelligence, was limited in its legal ability to investigate possible connections to Mr. Trump. The officials said Mr. Brennan told Mr. Reid that the F.B.I., in charge of domestic intelligence, would have to lead the way. Days later, Mr. Reid wrote to James B. Comey, director of the F.B.I. Without mentioning the C.I.A. briefing, Mr. Reid told Mr. Comey that he had “recently become concerned” that Russia’s interference was “more extensive than widely known.”

It was reported this week that the discredited dossier of the former British spy Christopher Steele — which he slapped together at the direction of Trump’s political opponents — served, astonishingly, as one of the justifications for spying on campaign volunteer Carter Page.

This is the same dossier that John Brennan denies even reading. In January, after Trump wondered if he had leaked it, Brennan played the innocent, saying, “First of all, this is not intelligence community information” and that he had “no interest in trying to give that dossier any additional airtime.”

But Harry Reid says that he saw Steele’s dossier before firing off his letters to Comey. As BuzzFeed reported in January, “Harry Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson tweeted Tuesday that the former Senate Democratic leader had seen the documents before writing a public letter to FBI Director James Comey about Trump’s ties to Russia.” In other words, Reid must have discussed Steele’s dossier during his briefing with Brennan.

Brennan’s claim that he never read the Steele dossier is also contradicted by the British press, which has reported that Steele took it to the CIA. Reported the Independent: “Mr Steele also decided to pass on information to both British and American intelligence officials after concluding that such material should not just be in the hands of political opponents of Mr Trump, who had hired his services, but was a matter of national security for both countries.”

What emerges from these fragments is a picture of far-flung and stunningly flaky political espionage — a game of Russian whispers played by partisans desperate to interpret the shoddiest “intelligence” in the most sinister light in order to help Hillary and hurt Trump.