I now will join the chorus of those who are saying that Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s pending departure from the White House will be no great loss to the cause of transparency, accountability … and telling Americans the truth about what their government is doing.

Sanders has served for a couple of years as White House press secretary. I was one who thought at the very beginning of her tenure that she could repair the mess left by her predecessor, Sean Spicer.

Oh, my. I was so wrong!

We now have heard, via special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into the Russian collusion matter, that Sanders actually admitted to Mueller’s legal team that she lied on behalf of the president.

Astounding, yes? Yep, it is.

The regular White House press briefings have been relegated to some form of dormancy. This comes after Sanders spent a good deal of her time parroting Donald Trump’s mantra that any news that he deems critical to be “fake news.” She even uses the term “fake news” while talking to the very journalists who were questioning her.

Sanders’s most ferocious critics have suggested she has attacked the First Amendment. Surely she has joined the president in denigrating media reporters, editors and others charged with the duty of chronicling the news coming from the Trump administration.

I am one observer who won’t miss her.

The task now for the president is to find a successor who will talk candidly, openly and — and most critically — truthfully when faced with the media’s often-aggressive questioning.

I know it’s a huge stretch to think Trump will find such a person, given his own paranoia about the media.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders’s upcoming departure merely closes another dark chapter in the administration she served.