re: The timeline doesnt lie. Trump investigation was started AFTER he won the nomination

I think the FBI was duped in all of this. They were Brennan, Clapper and Hillary's useful idiots. A lot of people say Strzok was a Clinton fan, but he was not. In some of the texts, he clearly bashes Hillary (and says he was a Kasich supporter). Yes, he hated Trump, but he wasn't a Hillary fan either. Strzok, it is clear from his texts, really believed Trump was a Russian agent. So he was being duped by fake intel coming from CIA/state department/Steele/Fusion.

I think this is why Rosenstein isn't cooperating. He knows "muh Russia" is BS, but he doesn't want the world (including Russia) seeing how easily they were fooled. Same goes for Sessions, I think. It could indeed be damaging to national security if Russia gets insight to how the FBI co-intel branch operates.

Now Brennan, Clapper, Hillary are a different story. As Nunes said, he's seen the documents and there was no intelligence whatsoever from official channels relating to Trump working with Russia. This means the intelligence they did have was being funneled through "back channels" in order to keep it out of the purview of oversight. This means (as Nunes has implied) that it was State Department people (Hillary's people) funneling this stuff back and forth with allies like Britain (Steele, Halper, etc.).

Now, why would they not use official channels? There's only two reasons:

1) They knew their info was dubious and honest intel analysts would see right through it. (That's why we have intel analysts, folks. Their job is to ferret out bullshite like this. We don't need to start a war over fake news).

2) There was no intelligence in the first place -- they were making it up. This goes back to bullet point #1.

Either way, you only hide intel from official channels because you know your intel is either complete bullshite, or at least unreliable.

So, yeah, it's possible the FBI started this in good faith, but it's clear they didn't continue that way. They knew Steele was FoS (they actually fired him), but continued with his fake information anyway. I think at some point Comey began to hold a personal animus against Trump and threw all ethics out the window.