The first sign of the impending liberation came from deep within the bowels of the American Intelligence Community. A whistleblower last August fired off a salvo that will echo till the day of liberation itself when Donald J. Trump, 45^th (so-called) President of the United States will board his plane and fly away, never to be seen or heard from again in the nation’s capital. And never again to betray his office and country under the pretense of tending to presidential duties.

The pre-liberation barrage of artillery fire erupted suddenly in the quiet of a sleepy Washington morning. The Hero Of The Day, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, sent word to Congress that a whistleblower complaint judged to be of “urgent concern” by the IG, and verified as “credible” in a limited investigation, had been released to the Director of National Intelligence (as the Whistleblower Act requires) but after its release had apparently dropped off the face of the earth. 

Meanwhile, the Director of National Intelligence, Andrew McGuire, a retired Navy Seal, barely settled and just days into his temporary appointment as DNI, found himself confronting a monumental and seemingly unprecedented dilemma. The nation’s Whistleblower Act required him to forward all whistleblower complaints to Congress within 7 days. However, seeing that the president was the focus of the complaint, McGuire was concerned about violating Executive Privilege and chose to forward it first to the Office of Legal Counsel within the Justice Department. In that moment, inside a Justice Department tightly controlled by William Barr, Trump’s Attorney General, the complaint disappeared as if it had never existed.

 Until…

Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his Senate counterpart, Richard Burr, received word of the errant whistleblower’s complaint from the Intelligence IG and all hell broke loose. Suddenly The New York Times and Washington Post began firing news reports in all directions, and it soon became clear that somewhere in the bowels of the Executive Branch there was a bombshell whistleblower complaint and it most likely involved the President himself and his ‘questionable’ pursuit of dirt to bury political rival, Joe Biden. 

‘Questionable’ because he and his chief henchman, Rudy Giuliani, chose to dig for that dirt in the cold climate of the Ukraine, where they worked a tag team strategy to force Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukraine’s newly elected president, to dig up or manufacture political dirt on Joe Biden. As leverage, The Donald held up payments of congressionally authorized military aid for the Ukraine until Zelensky showed he was willing “to play ball” as the president required.

As so often happens in battle, there were scattered and isolated confrontations and bursts of leaked information. Information so damaging in its reconstruction in news reports that the President had little choice but to release notes detailing his July 25^th phone conversation with the Ukraine’s president. Everyone in Washington expected the notes would reveal little or nothing about the shakedown of an ally whose very existence depended on the military aid President Trump had ordered suspended.

Everyone was wrong.

It is not known yet why the forces surrounding and protecting the president chose to release phone call notes as damaging as the ones released to Congress. Notes that mentioned William Barr’s involvement as well as Rudy Giuliani’s. Was this another example of Deep State sabotage? Or just the panicked behavior of villains caught in the act, scattering in panic like cockroaches in the kitchen when the light comes on?

Reality Check: the authorized military aid was intended to assist the Ukraine in fighting off Russian incursions or possible invasion, a real threat since Russian irregulars were still wreaking havoc in the Ukraine’s Eastern territory.

Yes, assemble the known details and you will quickly realize two shocking facts. First, that Trump’s actions in weakening Zelensky only strengthened Putin’s hand in his quest for conquest, an interesting outcome in light of all the questions about Trump being Putin’s lap dog. And second, Trump was actually willing to put an entire country—almost 44 million people— at risk to pursue his own political purposes! 

Even if they were in opposition to America’s National Security concerns!

It’s safe to say the liberation of Washington D.C. has definitely and irreversibly begun. It commenced when the Democrats won a majority of seats in the House in 2018, thereby ending Republican domination of all branches of government. And it continues as the gears of impeachment are set free to fully digest and act upon all the leads offered by the whistleblower’s complaint.

And leads there are aplenty!

Beginning with the highly classified server on which White House lawyers entombed the highly incriminating transcript of the July 25^th phone call. A server on which, the complaint suggests, Trump’s White House staff had hid other damaging and disturbing evidence of Trump’s…what…? His felonies, his deals, his cons, his shakedowns…?

Time will tell. And as we wait for the story to unwind, as it happily will, and as The Donald freaks out and lashes out in blind fury, the smell of liberation is in the air. If you lift your nose high above the stench of corruption, dishonesty and flagrant abuse of power, you can smell it. 

And just beyond, another scent…the liberation of America!