What is Spygate?
Spygate began as operation to spy on a political campaign that morphed into an attempt to overturn an election result and remove elected President.
It was a combination of campaign political dirty tricks and intelligence.

Does Spygate have a start date?
Yes and no. The operation was conceived as a part of the political cycle but evolved from a culture of political surveillance by the intelligence services.

The two key operatives in Spygate were Stefan Halper and Christopher Steele.

A lot is known about Steele. His main use was his network of contacts into the FBI and State Dept.
More is emerging about Halper who is a veteran political campaign operative.

Spygate falls into two parts

-pre election "the insurance policy" in case the unthinkable happened and Trump won.
-post election a rolling soft coup exploiting the "intelligence" fabricated in the pre election period.