The State Department official is accused of being connected to a vast foreign conspiracy, hostile to America.  The official denies it, as the Establishment rallies around the accused official. Indeed, Establishmentarians not only dismiss any possibility of the official’s guilt or complicity, but they also ferociously denounce those who raise the possibility. After all, the official is a part of the in-group; it just isn’t possible to think that the official could do anything wrong. The Establishment is thus united around the proposition that the accused official is a good person, and that the accusers are bad people. And anyone who deviates from that orthodoxy risks being thrown out of the Georgetown-to-Manhattan golden circle of status and respectability.   

Am I describing the case of Huma Abedin, the aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?  No, I am describing the case of Alger Hiss, back in the 1940s.