Decades ago, in his final address to the nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans about an unseen ‘institution,’ if you will, that was already beginning to pose a threat to their freedoms and liberties.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist,” he said on Jan. 17, 1961.

Ike — the former five-star general who led the allies in the D-Day invasion — was spot-on in his assessment. And as he predicted, that nefarious nexus of defense contractors and the armed services grew into a monstrous “Deep State” that has since encompassed the political and media establishments (the Swamp), the U.S. intelligence community, and beyond.

We’re seeing its dirty work in action on a daily basis now, as more and more is learned about how this unseen gaggle of “Washington insiders” (and presidents) unleashed a nefarious plot to first undermine the candidacy of a major party presidential candidate — Donald J. Trump — and then seek to destroy his presidency.

“There is a growing consensus among many observers in Washington that the national security agencies have become completely politicized over the past seventeen years and are now pursuing selfish agendas that actually endanger what remains of American democracy,” writes Philip M. Giraldi. “Up until recently it has been habitual to refer to such activity as the Deep State, which is perhaps equivalent to the Establishment in that it includes financial services, the media, major foundations, and constituencies, as well as lobbying groups, but we are now witnessing an evolutionary process in which the national security regime is exercising power independently.”

The plot against Trump was hatched by the Obama White House, likely in collusion with the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton — don’t ever doubt that. But the apparatus used to carry it out was the intelligence community.

When the FBI used a document that was allegedly created as “political opposition” (the infamous ‘Trump dossier’) as a piece of legitimate “intelligence” (though none of its contents and allegations were ever substantiated) to get a counterintelligence surveillance warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) — for the sole purpose of spying on a rival political campaign — then you can see that Giraldi’s absolutely correct in his assessment.

We have reached a point in our history where the institution established to protect the country is no longer accountable to the American people or even their representatives in Congress.

And trust me when I tell you, it’s a bipartisan affair.

Right now Democrats are in the hot seat because they have blocked every reasonable Republican effort to get to the bottom of what, by now, is a very obvious scandal — one that not only dwarf’s the Left’s favorite trigger scandal, Watergate, but every other political scandal combined. (Related: Deep State WAR with Trump proves the people have lost control of their government.)

When they aren’t blocking efforts to find all the answers as to how deep this anti-Trump scandal really goes, they are embracing former Obama-era officials like Director of National Intelligence James Clapper — he who lied to Congress when he said the NSA wasn’t spying on Americans (and got away with it) — and CIA Director John Brennan, who kept a “kill list” of everyone he ordered targeted for drone strikes.

Republicans aren’t blameless in this. Their “hero” is former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden, who, during the Bush administration, violated the Constitution in any number of ways during his decade of “service” at the nation’s top intelligence agencies.

The point is, we don’t have an intelligence community beholden to the American people any longer. We have a Deep State “tool” that can be wielded by presidents to attack our civil liberties at whim while working to destroy political opponents.

That’s why they hate Trump so much; he’s the first real threat of Deep State exposure since Eisenhower.

By attacking a duly-elected president, they are attacking all Americans — even those who voted for someone else.

Read more of J.D. Heyes’ work at The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

Strategy-Culture.org

TheNationalSentinel.com