It's a conspiracy!(SMOKING GUN) (president Donald Trump's nominees for top government positions)

• Author: Lueders, Bill

As befits a President who has no regard for whether what he says is true, Donald Trump has taken pains to surround himself with people who spout crazy things. His roster of nominees for key positions is rife with lunatics and conspiracy theorists. Here are some of them.

MICHAEL FLYNN

National Security Adviser

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Less than a week before the November 8 election, this retired lieutenant general tweeted a link to a fake news story linking Hillary Clinton to "Sex Crimes w Children." "U decide," he advised his followers about these obviously false allegations. "MUST READ!"

KATHLEEN "KT" MCFARLAND

Deputy National Security Adviser

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In 2006, during her quixotic bid (she withdrew pre-primary) to oust then-Senator Hillary Clinton from her New York seat, this Reaganera Pentagon official purportedly claimed the incumbent was so rattled over this challenge that "she had helicopters flying over my house in Southampton today taking pictures."

JEFF SESSIONS

Attorney General

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In 2015, this Republican Senator from Alabama lectured an Environmental Protection Agency official on the science of climate change: "Carbon pollution is CO2, and that's really not a pollutant; that's a plant food, and it doesn't harm anybody except that it might include temperature increases."

BEN CARSON

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

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The neurosurgeon-turned-failed-presidential-contender has suggested that Barack Obama is a communist, dismissed the Big Bang theory as "ridiculous," and declared that Darwin's theory of evolution "was encouraged by the adversary," meaning Satan.

MIKE POMPEO

CIA Director

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This Republican Congressman from Kansas in 2015 grilled Hillary Clinton on whether she had used the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, for a gun-running operation to arm Libyan rebels. He's also called for the creation of a huge database to assist the federal government in keeping tabs on private citizens.

MICK MULVANEY

Director, Office of Management and Budget

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In July, this U.S. Representative from South Carolina addressed a local chapter of the John Birch Society, which deemed Dwight Eisenhower "a conscious agent of the...