NEW: Top Obama Officials Descend Into Full-Blown Panic As ‘Russiagate’ Heats Up

Two former Obama aides implicated in the Trump-Russia hoax are going on the offensive amid news that they may soon be charged with crimes for activity during the 2016 election.

In a New York Times op-ed, former CIA Director John Brennan and James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, purport to try and “set the record straight” after facing accusations that they weaponized U.S. intelligence services to paint President Donald Trump as a Manchurian candidate under the control of Russian forces.

Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence, are seeking to “rewrite history” by alleging a conspiracy between the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, they wrote.

Brennan and Clapper’s 2017 report concluding Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered interference in the election was “validated” by “multiple thorough, yearslong reviews,” including one by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and its chair Marco Rubio, now Trump’s secretary of state.

They similarly spin the findings of special counsel John Durham as a vindication of their work, claiming he “found no evidence of an Obama administration conspiracy against Mr. Trump.”

“Every serious review has substantiated the intelligence community’s fundamental conclusion that the Russians conducted an influence campaign intended to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election,” they added.

Elsewhere, the former Obama intelligence advisors defended the inclusion of the discredited Steele dossier in a final report on the 2016 election. However, Brennan does not address a central criticism by Gabbard that he fought for its inclusion over the objection of other intelligence agencies that were restricted from contributing to drafts of the report.

They denounced Trump’s “wild and baseless” claims that the report somehow accused Trump of “collusion” with Russia.

“The real politicization is the calculated distortion of intelligence by administration officials, notably Mr. Trump’s directors of national intelligence and the C.I.A., positions that should be apolitical,” Brennan and Clapper concluded.

“We find it deeply regrettable that the administration continues to perpetuate the fictitious narrative that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election.”

The Trump administration on Thursday continued to produce records from “burn bags” found in the FBI that they say proves Clinton approved of the intelligence community tying Trump to Russian activity. Some of those discussions were written by Leonard Bernardo, an employee at a George Soros-aligned outside group that assisted Clinton in the election.

“HRC approved Julia’s idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections,” Bernardo wrote in the email, which was found within a newly uncovered annex to Durham’s report. “That should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level,” he added.