Startling revelations of corruption this week have shown Americans how “deeply dishonest people” in government and media have combined to form a “danger to democracy,” says Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.

Americans “should feel outraged – outraged, that they were lied to for years by their own government. They were lied to by the media,” Hawley said in an interview with The Heartlander Thursday.

Hawley was reacting to the release of the John Durham report that painstakingly details how Hillary Clinton’s disinformation campaign against 2016 presidential rival Donald Trump became the FBI’s Russia collusion hoax and a sham multimillion-dollar Mueller probe built on a lie made out of whole cloth.

“It was the Democrat Party that used the FBI to try to rig the 2016 presidential election,” Hawley said. “That’s the Durham report. That’s what we learned. Hillary Clinton used the FBI, and the FBI leadership gladly went along with it to lie to courts in order to get wiretaps on Trump associates; to try and spy on the Trump campaign; and then to create what we now know was a 100% false narrative, that Trump was somehow colluding with Russia.

“There’s no basis for that, as Durham has found. There is no basis for that, as the Mueller report found. And yet, the Democrats and the FBI worked together to try to influence the election. 

“You talk about a danger to democracy. That’s a danger to democracy.”

Hawley called the Durham report 306 pages of “extremely alarming material showing that there was no basis to open up the investigation into Trump for Russia collusion – none at all. That the Steele dossier was 100% fake. That FBI leadership knew or should have known it was fake, and they went along with it anyway. And that there was interference in an election.  

“What it shows is, the 2016 election was actively interfered with by the FBI and the Democrat Party working together. It really makes you wonder who’s in charge of this country. Is it the voters and the people, or is it the FBI and other members of the Deep State in Washington? 

“It’s a serious danger to the basic conduct of our democracy to have the FBI behaving like this, and there’s got to be some accountability. And more than that, there’s got to be reform. It just can’t go on like this.”

Records show then-FBI head James Comey was not only going along with the hoax but was eagerly prompting it, Hawley argues.

“He was positively giddy at the idea of trying to tie Trump to Russia, even knowing that there was no basis for it. You had, of course, the deputy director at the time, and then those who were running the Trump collusion investigation who hated Trump and were rabid partisans. Their whole motive was to bring down Trump. 

“I mean, think about this: Their motive was to say, ‘We don’t think the people of this country should be able to elect this guy, so we’re going to make the decision for them.’ That is not a democracy. And the idea that the FBI leadership would think that that’s OK somehow is out of control. These people are out of control.”

How high does the Russia collusion hoax go? Did it reach the Obama White House?

“Oh, probably,” Hawley says, noting that “Barack Obama and Joe Biden were both briefed on Hillary Clinton’s effort to create this fake Russian narrative.” Hawley also points to Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, as someone else who was actively involved in the scheme.

Sullivan, says Hawley, “worked with Hillary to create this this Russia hoax. He was in on it from the beginning, and now he is running the national security apparatus of the United States. So yeah, the corruption goes really high.”

That bleak picture of a rogue federal government looked no better on Thursday, when several FBI agents testified to Congress that they were punished for speaking out against the politicization of the agency against conservatives – including pro-lifers, Catholics and parents attending school board meetings – to create an illusion of a domestic terrorism threat. One agent said the FBI ginned up prosecutions to “persecute its political enemies.”

Three agents said they were subjected to suspensions without pay and had their security clearances withdrawn in retaliation for their speaking out.

Does Hawley believe all that?

“Yes, I do believe it, because we’ve seen the evidence for it,” he told The Heartlander. “We know that the FBI sent a SWAT team to the home of a pro-life demonstrator who was totally peaceful, who was acquitted later by a jury, and they did it to intimidate him, frankly, to terrorize him and his young family. Absolutely unconscionable.

“We know that the FBI has been trying to spy on Catholics and their parishes – probably lots of churches. I mean, if they’re doing it in Catholic parishes, you’ve got to believe they’re doing it everywhere. 

“So, I think this FBI is totally out of control. I think it is corrupt at its leadership. And I think that corruption has totally infected the Washington Bureau, the Washington leadership, at the very top of the FBI, and they’ve got to go. The answer, here, is you’ve got to root out the corruption.”

As for the whistleblowers, Hawley said retaliation against them isn’t just wrong, it’s against the law. 

“Whistleblowers are protected by law. Listen, I’ve worked with a lot of whistleblowers who’ve come to me from all over the government. They are protected in the law. And for Democrats now, and the FBI, to retaliate against them and punish them is frankly illegal. 

“So, there’s got to be some major, major accountability here.”

Hawley was explicit about what kind of accountability he sees as necessary in an appearance this week on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime.”

“I’m of the mind we need to end the FBI as we know it,” Hawley told Watters. “It needs to be broken up. Clearly it has become corrupt. The leadership is corrupt.”

Is there a chance of that happening, even after all the stunning revelations of the past week?

“Well, not with the Democrats in charge, because now they’re great lovers of institutional corruption,” he tells The Heartlander.

Nor is Hawley expecting a mea culpa from the many left-leaning media outlets that unquestioningly perpetrated the Russia collusion hoax for years. 

“You know, I can’t wait for the Washington Post and the New York Times and CNN and all of these spewers of disinformation – who gave themselves Pulitzers for fake stories – I can’t wait for them to apologize and retract all the stories. But I don’t hear anything from them. 

“I mean, it’s unbelievable to look at the corporate media and to realize how corrupt they are in this. They won’t even admit they were wrong. They won’t admit that they lied to the public over and over and over. 

“And then, of course, they did it again in 2020 with the Hunter Biden laptop stories. So, these are some deeply, deeply corrupt people who are in positions of power. And I think you cannot read the Durham report, and then look at the Hunter Biden stuff in 2020, and not conclude we’ve got some major problems in the U.S. government and we’ve got some deeply dishonest people in the corporate media.”