RUSH: Here is the latest news on just how deep — and this is going to continue, by the way — this conspiracy was and how fraudulent it was, the FBI, slash, DOJ investigation of Trump. It’s a Fox News story on their website. It was just published about 45 minutes ago. The headline: “FBI Clashed with DOJ Over Potential ‘Bias’ of Source for Surveillance Warrant.”

What this story is going to claim is that the texts between Andrew McCabe — not Strzok Smirk — the texts between Andrew McCabe and Lisa Page ended up being cited as sources in the application for a FISA warrant. And the reason is that those texts cited media stories about the dossier, which happened to be written by Benjamin Wittes, a friend of Comey’s!

“Just nine days before the FBI applied for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil a top Trump campaign aide, bureau officials were battling with a senior Justice Department official who had ‘continued concerns’ about the ‘possible bias’ of a source pivotal to the application, according to internal text messages obtained by Fox News.

“The 2016 messages, sent between former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, also reveal that bureau brass circulated at least two anti-Trump blog articles, including a Lawfare blog post sent shortly after Election Day that called Trump possibly ‘among the major threats to the security of the country.’”

So the FBI is reading blogs! One of them called Lawfare. And there’s some guy, a friend of Comey’s there named Benjamin Wittes. And he’s posting things on his blog, which are his opinion! Including, “Donald Trump could be among the major threats of the security of the country.” So they printed these blog posts out and they put ’em in the FISA warrant application.

How did any of these people know? The FBI had told these people various bits of information. Then they wrote the pieces. Then the FBI go gets the media stories that they sourced, put them in the FISA warrant application as though they were independent pieces of evidence, when they were nothing more than blog posts, opinion posts.

“Another article, sent by Page in July 2016 as the FBI’s counterintelligence probe into Russian election interference was kicking off, flatly called Trump a ‘useful idiot’ for Russian President Vladimir Putin.” A blog post! “Page told McCabe that then-FBI Director James Comey had ‘surely’ read that piece. Both articles were authored in whole or part by Benjamin Wittes, a Comey friend.”

This is blog posts! Lawfare. Left-wing blog posts by friends of the director of the FBI end up as evidence supporting a warrant to spy on Carter Page. “Further, the texts show that on Sept. 12, 2016, Page forwarded to McCabe some ‘unsolicited comments’ calling then-House GOP Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy a ‘total…’” Uhhh, I’m searching for a word here. Penis!

I’m not kidding. In the texts between Lisa Page and McCabe, Lisa Page forwarded to McCabe some unsolicited comments — I mean, some yokel opining somewhere — Twitter or a blog post, calling Trey Gowdy a total penis!

“Gowdy, at the time, was grilling FBI congressional affairs director Jason Herring at a hearing on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. But perhaps the most significant Page-McCabe communications made plain the DOJ’s worries that the FISA application to surveil Trump aide Carter Page was based on a potentially biased source — and underscored the FBI’s desire to press on.

“The texts were connected to the ultimately successful Page application, which relied in part on information from British ex-spy Christopher Steele.”

Now, Kim Strassel at the Wall Street Journal today, her column deals with the fact that the counsel, the lawyer for the FBI, guy named James Baker, was very worried about the bias of all of the people reporting so-called facts that were pending in FISA application warrants. We know this because his testimony is leaking out, it’s trickling out. He’s testified within the past year before various House committees.

And there’s testimony from Comey, “Nah, there was no bias going on in this investigation. We didn’t fear any biased sources.” And James Baker, the FBI counsel, said, “Oh, yeah, we were very concerned, I was, about biased sources,” because he knew that Glenn Simpson was involved, Fusion GPS, and hired Steele to do the dossier. The bottom line here is that the FBI — well, these people leading the FBI ran a whole bunch of shenanigans that were in fact directly the result of their anti-Trump bias. They manipulated blog posts to look like real evidence that Trump was a Russian agent and stooge and got the FISA warrant, and then it was reauthorized four times — well, three times, total of four warrants to spy on Carter Page.

Now, Comey says that he doesn’t care, and he hopes Trump isn’t impeached, but he doesn’t care what the investigation uncovers, James Comey.

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RUSH: James Comey leaked memos in order to spark the Mueller probe. Now he says he doesn’t care what the investigation uncovers.

From The Daily Caller: “James Comey claimed in an op-ed Thursday that he does not care one way or the other whether special counsel Robert Mueller finds evidence that President Donald Trump conspired with Russia.”

What? Doesn’t care? Why would he write an op-ed that says he doesn’t care, after all of this? Does this mean he knows Mueller got nothing or is this part of a grand sandbag to make everybody think there’s nothing and then Mueller’s gonna try to lower some kind of boom.

Quote, “Even though I believe Trump is morally unfit to be president, I’m not rooting for Mueller to demonstrate that he’s a criminal.” You’re such a fine guy, Mr. Comey, so impeccable, just like Mueller.

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RUSH: Back to James Comey. I had to finish this halfway through the story because of the screeching tone signaling the end of the segment. Let me read this again. This is James Comey in an op-ed yesterday in the New York Times.

“Even though I believe Mr. Trump is morally unfit to be president of the United States, I’m not rooting for Mr. Mueller to demonstrate that he is a criminal.” Well, I flat-out don’t believe that. I just flat-out don’t believe it! I also don’t believe that Comey didn’t know from the get-go that this dossier was a bunch of bogus drivel! They all knew it was bogus drivel, and yet they used to it.

It was the thing! It was all they had to start this entire two-year surreal disaster! And they knew it was bogus! They knew it was Hillary Clinton’s work! And they still used it to try to bring down Donald Trump. And now, “Even though I believe Mr. Trump is morally unfit, I am not rooting for Mr. Mueller to demonstrate that he is a criminal.” I just flat-out don’t believe that.

He also wrote, “I also am not rooting for Mr. Mueller to ‘clear’ the president.” Really? So you have no stake in this at all, Mr. Comey? You don’t care whether Mueller’s got the goods or not? “I’m not rooting for anything at all –” Mr. Comey writes. “– except that the special counsel be permitted to finish his work, charge whatever cases warrant charging and report on his work.”

There’s nobody trying to stop Mueller! There’s not a single person that’s made one effort to stop Mueller! And I don’t care, you can’t say Trump calling it a witch hunt has been intimidating to Mueller to get him to stop. The only way to stop Mueller is to fire him, and he hasn’t been fired. Nobody has impaired Mueller at all here!

Mueller has had free reign to investigate anything the hell he wants. He wasn’t even given a specific crime to look at! Comey claimed he only cares about transparency, which is a laugh, because that’s the last thing he wants unless he wants to go to jail. He doesn’t want transparency on the various lies and prevarications he’s been caught telling under oath before various House committees.

He also wrote this. “I have no idea whether the special counsel will conclude that Mr. Trump knowingly conspired with the Russians in connection with –” Mr. Comey, you know that didn’t happen! This is my ongoing big problem with it. This is what makes all this stuff seem surreal and of another world. They all know there was no Russian collusion that explains Trump’s election victory! Zilch, zero, nada! They know it! And yet he writes, “I have no idea whether the special counsel will conclude that Trump knowingly,” blah, blah, blah, “or that he obstructed justice with the required corrupt intent. I also don’t care.” You don’t care again.

You’re writing an op-ed in the New York Times about how you don’t care about anything except that your buddy Mueller be allowed to finish this travesty. “I only care that the work be done well and completely. If it is, justice will have prevailed, and core American values will have been protected.” Core American values have gone out the window in this investigation! That is the entire point!

Core American values? Core American legal principles have gone out the window in this investigation! An investigation everybody involved knows that the primary impetus for the investigation is a bogus hack job from the Democrat presidential candidate? They are continuing to create this narrative that all of this was legitimate precisely because they know it isn’t.

And I still maintain that the Mueller investigation was actually a cover-up for all of these illegalities and transgressions and all of the efforts to ignore the real collusion and real criminality that occurred between Hillary Clinton and the Russians and the Democrat National Committee.

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RUSH: Wichita, Kansas. Mike, welcome, great to have you, sir. Get started on what you want to talk about.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, it’s a tremendous honor. My brother in Lubbock, Texas, turned me on to you about 30 years ago, and I’ve been listening to you every day for 30 years.

RUSH: I appreciate that more than you know.

CALLER: You are truly the antidote. Anyway, I have a question for you. I haven’t been able to figure out the answer. The very first time the intel chiefs came into the Oval Office and sat down with Trump and said, “Hey, we’ve got this dossier on you with some pretty bad stuff, hookers urinating on beds and all the other collusion stuff,” why didn’t Trump, knowing that he didn’t do any of that, and he’s an aggressive, combative guy, why didn’t he just say, “You guys are all incompetent. This is an attempted coup. You’re fired.”?

RUSH: I don’t think he thought that at that time. This is January of 2017 when this happened, and — well, you hang on here. It’s actually a good question, especially as months and months went by, why didn’t he do it. But we’ll continue after this obscene profit break here. Don’t hang up.

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RUSH: Now we go back to Mike in Wichita. Mike, your overall question, why didn’t Trump just fire these guys? At a certain point in time, that question becomes relevant. Now, the reason it didn’t happen when you described it — when Comey went in and presented the dossier to Trump the first time, he didn’t show him the whole thing, he showed him one story, and that was the golden shower story, and it was a setup.

At the time, Trump had been very firm that he didn’t think he needed to meet with intel people every day. He didn’t need a daily briefing. He’s a smart guy. He’s got a good memory. He can read on his own, and he didn’t think he needed to have these people in there every day.

Well, that ticked them off. The intelligence people are one of the leading elements of the administrative state. They want Oval Office access every day. They want to have influence on American foreign policy. And here’s Trump telling them that he doesn’t need them. Not good! That ticked them off! That really ticked ’em off!

So they got together — I’m shortening this up — they got together with Comey. The dossier was running around. They’re already using the dossier to get going on their investigation. Trump doesn’t know nearly enough about this at this stage because he just hasn’t been at this long enough and the investigation official was — remember Mueller hadn’t even been named yet. This was not gonna happen for a couple of months.

At the time that Comey showed Trump the golden shower story, they were struggling, the investigators, the FBI and everything wanted to get that thing reported, they wanted it in the media, but they couldn’t because none of it was true. None of it had been verified. None of it had been corroborated.

So the scheme was that Comey would kill two birds with one stone. He would take an element of the dossier, show it to Trump and say, “This is why you need to meet with the intel people every day because this is the kind of stuff that’s gonna be out there about you every day. And you do need to know about it.”

Trump looked at it. “You mean hiring prostitutes to urinate — who’s gonna believe that? I don’t need to be told this, that’s nuts!” So after the meeting Comey calls James Clapper, who was Obama’s director of national security, says, “Mission accomplished.” Clapper calls CNN and tells them that the president has seen the dossier. That was the signal to be able to report on the dossier.

So CNN acknowledges, after BuzzFeed publishes the whole thing on a Friday, CNN early next week then reports on the fact the president has seen it, that the FBI has shown it to him, and the whole thing begins to unroll or unfold at that point. So Comey’s presentation of the golden shower story had two objectives. A. Get the whole thing reported and ostensibly to try to convince Trump that he needed to meet with these intel people every day.

So now we move forward and they appoint a special counsel. That’s what you want to know. Why after a certain amount of time when this appeared to be as bogus as it was, didn’t Trump just can them all. Right? That’s your question?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: Well, because it wouldn’t have ended the investigation. If he fires Mueller, they’ll just appoint somebody else. Because the investigation has begun. Once it’s begun, the president can’t stop it. He can fire the investigator, he can fire the special counsel, but that just meant that Rosenstein would go out and find another stooge and step in and continue things.

But there was another overriding reason by the time this got, you know, six months down the road. It became clear that the, quote, unquote, investigators were investigating whether or not Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey. He wasn’t. He can fire anybody. He can fire anybody in the executive branch, and he doesn’t even need a reason. The price he will pay for making a dumb move theoretically is political. Maybe not get reelected, lose his approval numbers. But there is nothing anybody can do. But they presented firing Comey as obstruction.

So Trump knew that if he fired Mueller there’d just be somebody else put in there and that they would ratchet up even further that Trump is obstructing justice. Why, he just fired the investigator. And he also knew that if he fired Mueller, the story is, “Mueller must have really found something. Trump must be in real trouble. Oh, my God.” And they would have started running with a new pack of lies. So that’s my theory. I don’t know any of this for a fact, but I think the guesses are pretty solid.

There would be no stopping anything by firing Mueller. And, by the way, Mueller hired all of these Never Trump, hate-Trump lawyers. They would have remained unless Trump fires all of them. But they would have just been replaced. And whoever replaced them would have had additional fervor in there. ‘Cause Trump can’t name the special counsel.

CALLER: Can I share with you a quick Rush merchandising story?

RUSH: Yeah. Absolutely.

CALLER: About 25 years ago —

RUSH: Wait a minute. Wait. When I answer a question, nobody has any questions. When I tell people what happened, it’s the whole story. Nobody says, “Can you explain this?” because I have explained it in full. Now he wants to go on to something entirely different. Feel free. What was your merchandising story?

CALLER: I bought your first book and it came with a T-shirt with your picture on the front and on the back it said “10 reasons to elect liberals.” I’m wearing that T-shirt into my daughter’s birth in the delivery room and your picture is on the front of the T-shirt, I’m cutting the umbilical cord of my daughter, and I get sprayed with blood, and the blood lands on your forehead, and it turns you into Gorbachev.

RUSH: (laughing)

CALLER: And at the time you were doing the Gorbasm bits on your radio program. So I’ve always referred to that shirt as my Gorbasm shirt.

RUSH: That’s funny. What a story!

CALLER: True.

RUSH: No doubt that that’s true.

CALLER: And I still have the shirt, 30 years.

RUSH: Have you washed it?

CALLER: No. I don’t want to take the blood out.

RUSH: Holy smokes.

CALLER: You looked like Gorbachev.

RUSH: Man, the day comes if you ever put that on eBay, you know how much you’re gonna get for it?

CALLER: It’s priceless.

RUSH: That’s exactly right. It is. Well, Mike, that’s awesome. How old is your daughter now?

CALLER: She’s going on 27.

RUSH: Twenty-seven. What kind of tricks have you pulled to get her into school?

CALLER: Yeah, exactly. I sent her with a Rush Limbaugh book to read to the students.

RUSH: All right. Thanks much for the call. I appreciate it.