Cohen: With Ukraine controversy, welcome to Russia Hoax 2.0

As the attempted coup to oust a sitting president failed spectacularly, Democrats have now pivoted to impeachment -- a replay of the same old "movie," only with a different title.

With the Russia hoax, Democrats waged a massive disinformation campaign against the president, telling the American people our duly elected commander in chief was a Russian asset. They accused President Donald Trump of treason and conspiring with a foreign enemy to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton -- none of which was true, evidenced by the special counsel's 22-month investigation, which didn't charge the president with a single crime, despite turning over every stone.

Now that the Mueller Russia hoax has collapsed and Democrats' lies and conspiracy theories have been exposed, they've launched an impeachment inquiry over a classified July phone call the president had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stemming from a whistleblower complaint filed with the intelligence inspector general -- a complaint most Democrats didn't read before the impeachment inquiry was announced.

Nor did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other liberal lawmakers bother to review the transcript of the phone call. This key information was of no interest to them. Democrats in Washington today are more fixated on a never-ending political "narrative" that Trump did something wrong than on actual proof.

If that isn't the definition of a partisan witch hunt, what is?

But that's not all. The complaint from the so-called whistleblower was found by the inspector general to have a political bias against the president and -- surprise -- support for his political rival. We've also learned the "whistleblower" had "no direct knowledge" of the phone call. In an Aug. 12 letter to Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence Richard Burr and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff -- a venomous Trump foe -- the whistleblower said, "I was not a direct witness to most of the events described."

Translation: I'm a Trump-hating political hack spreading hearsay to help Democrats like Schiff -- an architect of the Russia hoax -- remove a duly elected president.

Democrats are using this "whistleblower" -- a known partisan with third-hand information about a phone conversation he wasn't privy to -- as a launchpad to impeach Trump.

Understandably, the president expressed frustration with Democrats' baseless impeachment crusade, tweeting on Thursday, "THE GREATEST SCAM IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN POLITICS!"

Indeed. Before any voters fall for yet another hoax, they should take a look at the lies the left has already peddled this week.

They've quickly been exposed by the president's swift release of the phone transcript. The American people were told by Democrats and the #FakeNewsMedia that the president engaged in a quid pro quo, threatening to withhold U.S. military aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigating Joe Biden and his son Hunter -- lie No.1. The transcript shows no such quid pro quo took place.

Then we were told the president relentlessly pressured the Ukrainian leader to investigate the Bidens. At the U.N. this week, while meeting with Trump, Zelensky told reporters, "Nobody pushed me" into investigating Biden or his son. That followed a TV interview from another top Ukraine official, Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko, who said, "I know what the conversation was about, and I think there was no pressure."

But Democrats won't let facts -- or evidence -- get in the way of their hateful obsession with overturning the results of the 2016 election. If they cared about bribery and corruption, they'd turn their attention to the front-runner of their own party, who appears to have engaged in a real quid pro quo while vice president in the Obama administration.

At a Council on Foreign Relations event last year, Biden bragged on video that if former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko didn't fire its prosecutor who was investigating the natural gas company where his son Hunter sat on the board of directors, Ukraine wouldn't get a windfall of U.S. aid. "You're not getting the billion," Biden said. "I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money. Well, son of a b----. He got fired."

Double standards and hypocrisy that are sure to repel voters come 2020.

Adriana Cohen (on Twitter @AdrianaCohen16) is a columnist for the Boston Herald and Creators Syndicate.