RUSH: Now, there are other things happening out there that are percolating, and they’re also falling apart. The Media/Democrat Party investigation into collusion between Trump and Russia has fallen apart — it is hanging by a thread — and the evidence is last Saturday’s New York Times. The New York Times has done a 180.

They realize they’re on their last legs. There isn’t any evidence of Trump collusion with Russia. There is evidence of Hillary and the Democrat Party collusion with Russia, but no evidence of any kind with Trump and Russia. Yet we have a special counsel investigating this, and nothing will happen to that. That’s gotta be protected. It’s gotta be saved. So on Saturday the New York Times comes out with a story claiming that it’s an entirely different reason now for investigating this. The Trump-Russia collusion story doesn’t have any legs, and it’s about to fall apart, and the reason for this… Well, there are many reasons.

But the primary bit of evidence in quotes involved this guy Carter Page. Does that name ring a bell? He was one of the first obscure, original, supposed Trump campaign officials. He was an adviser. And it was Carter Page who was written about more often than anybody else in the now-famous Trump dossier written by Christopher Steele.

Well, what’s become of that? Because on Saturday the New York Times published an op-ed by the two guys that created and founded Fusion GPS. Fusion GPS is the company that actually created the Trump dossier. The Fusion GPS was the connect between the Hillary campaign and Christopher Steele, who wrote the Trump dossier. They arranged for it, the money was piped through a law firm to give one level of deniability to the Clinton campaign.

And now all of a sudden the focus is not on Carter Page anymore but it is on this guy George Papadopoulos, who is an obscure member of the Trump foreign policy team. It’s even a stretch to say that. And it’s all based on the fact that he got drunk one night with somebody in the Australian diplomatic corps and happened to allude to the fact that he’d been told that the Russians have some dirt on Hillary they want to pass on.

So they have totally abandoned, the New York Times and the Drive-By Media have abandoned, the original concept of Trump colluding with Russia with Carter Page and have now glommed on to this guy George Papadopoulos. And they’ve also said in this op-ed that there now is a new purpose. Rather than collusion between Trump and Russia, what the Fusion guys are really looking into now is Trump’s business practices.

Now, it will take a while to go through the original concepts of the Trump-Russia collusion via the dossier and dropping that, Carter Page, moving on to George Papadopoulos. But the point is, that whole story is about to unravel. That whole story is on the verge of unraveling, and the New York Times and the media had to do what they could to revive it and save it, and that’s what their articles and op-eds were on Saturday.

I’m not talking about the Mueller investigation. That’s a separate entity. But it’s based on some of this. You know, this yearlong, more than yearlong everyday story in the media, Trump colluded with Russia, there isn’t anybody there, and they know it, and they’re on the verge of dropping it and redirecting it, recomposing it to be something else that still is Trump cheated.

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RUSH: Look. Here’s another way to look at all of this stuff with the collusion story falling apart, folks. Thanks to Devin Nunes, who is the head of the House Intelligence Committee, and he has hung in there, the Department of Justice and the FBI are now going to have to turn over all the documents relative to the Trump dossier from Fusion GPS. Now, that’s another story in and of itself. Fusion GPS is now demanding that those documents, transcript of their testimony be released, even though previously they didn’t want it. Now they’re claiming they want it, demanding transparency when they obstructed it in the past.

There’s a reason for this. The New York Times now realizes with Devin Nunes prevailing and all of this is gonna be produced and released at some point, the New York Times realizes that this is going to expose the Fusion GPS founder’s testimony. When that is released it’s going to expose what a fraud this whole thing about Trump-Russia collusion has been. They’re gonna discover how it was invented to please Hillary’s campaign who paid for it.

So they needed to get ahead of this. And that’s what Saturday’s op-eds were about. Now they’re claiming that the dossier was not the catalyst for the FBI investigation. That’s what they’re trying to say. “The dossier? No, you’re wrong about that. The dossier was not the catalyst. No, no. It was George Papadopoulos. Yeah, George Papadopoulos and his drunken rant to the Australian diplomat. Yeah, that’s what we’ve been looking at all along.” That’s a crock. It’s a made-up lie. The dossier was the focus. That’s been exposed now as a campaign opposition research document bought and paid for by Hillary.

Now they’re trying to say the dossier was never anything. They’re trying to get ahead of this because of Devin Nunes prevailing and demanding that all this stuff be made public. Here’s the problem with their attempt now to make it look like George Papadopoulos was the driver of this. James Clapper, what ran the national security apparatus for Obama, claimed that he didn’t even know who Papadopoulos was when he left the job as the Director of National Intelligence, he didn’t even know who the guy was.

Papadopoulos could not have been the catalyst for this, could not have been the mover and the shaker and the reason all this happened, but that’s the story they’re trying to construct, because this whole thing is on the verge of unraveling on them.

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RUSH: Okay. Some audio sound bites support of the recent contentions made by me. First Robby Mook. This was Monday on CNN’s Newsroom. Poppy Harlow, one of the infobabes at CNN, was speaking with Mook. He was Hillary’s campaign manager, and the subject was what the Democrat strategy should be for the 2018 midterms. Poppy Harlow, the infobabe, said, “Robbie, you’re a master at running campaigns.” Remember, now, these are the people that lost, okay? They lost to Donald Trump. They lost to somebody who, according to Michael Wolff, wanted to lose.

They lost to somebody who they thought was gonna lose. They lost to somebody that they didn’t think possible could win. And yet, “Robbie, you’re a master at running campaigns. What do the Democrats need to run on?” This is heartening to me: They want to consult the losers about strategy for the 2018 midterms. So Robbie, what do Democrats need to run on? Can they run on the midterms on Russia, Russia, Russia, anti-Trump, anti-Trump, or do they need more to really win?

MOOK: I don’t think the Russia investigation is a winning message.

RUSH: Really?

MOOK: You know, voters are… They watch and they look to see what your priorities seem to be, what you’re spending your time on, what your focus is.

RUSH: (sputtering) Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Wait a minute! For the last year and a half, this has been it! That has been the reason you’re gonna impeach Trump. This has been the reason Trump was elected, that the election was fraudulent, that the Russians cheated, that Trump colluded with ’em, that Hillary got screwed out of the election; it was hers — and now? “I don’t think the Russia investigation’s a winning message. Remember, now, these people have their own internal polling data, and they trust it.

You and I may not anymore, but they do. They live and die by these polls. So obviously their internal polling data is telling them: This thing? There’s nothing there. Don’t run on it. They can’t win on this, and the reason is that there isn’t anything there, folks. They haven’t been able to produce a shred of evidence. And I don’t care how low-information the lowest low-information voter is out there. The lowest low-information voter can still figure out that Trump’s still in the White House.

They haven’t found any evidence that he colluded. All it is is a bunch of allegations. So here’s Mook, the brilliant architect of the Hillary campaign saying, “I don’t think we need to run on it. Eh, it’s not gonna take us anywhere.” I’m telling you, it’s unraveling. Now, the Mueller investigation, that’s a whole different thing, and, remember, that is about impeaching Trump, and that’s about finding anything. It doesn’t have to be collusion. They’re long past that. And here’s Clapper.

I just wanted you to hear this because this was Tuesday night on CNN, Anderson Cooper speaking with… This is the guy that formally ran the Office of National Intelligence. You know what that is? After 9/11, the Bush administration created this new intelligence agency called the Director of National Intelligence, DNI, and this guy, this department is where all intel goes, the CIA, the DIA, the “FBIIA,” the “NSAIA,” whatever it is. It sifts now through this massive bureaucracy called the director of the department.

Clapper and the guy Obama chose to run it. Now, that means that all intel runs through this guy, and this guy has said that the dossier, he and the CIA director for Obama… I forget the clown’s name, mental block. Brennan. They have both said that that dossier formed the basis for investigating Trump, and now that dossier, they’re trying to whittle it away and change it to Papadopoulos being the reason. Now, this is important because they’re now saying that… The New York Times is saying that Papadopoulos has always been the reason why they’ve been looking at Trump.

So here’s Clapper on Tuesday on CNN, Anderson Cooper: “Was George Papadopoulos a major factor in the launch of the investigation?”

CLAPPER: Well, uhh… Not to my knowledge contemporaneously. I… Uhhh… George Papadopoulos was a name that, uhh, as not on my, uhh, radarscope at — at — at the time.

RUSH: What!

CLAPPER: And the first I knew about him and his role was when the, uh, plea bargain was, uh, announced. So…

RUSH: What!

CLAPPER: So, uh, the short answer to your question is, “no.” I… I… It was not a name known to me at the time.

RUSH: Wait a minute! If the Director of National Intelligence didn’t hear of the guy until he copped a plea with Mueller, then how in hell could the investigation have been about him? This is the thin ice on which is skating the New York Times. They had the entire dossier as the reason on Saturday. They’re losing that, folks, and they had to try to grab hold of their collusion story and shift it. They shifted it via op-ed. These two guys at Fusion GPS who claimed that it was Papadopoulos…

This is… Again, he is a guy that was peripheral. I mean, this is not even AAA minor leagues what this guy was on the team. Trump probably never heard of this guy. I’m not trying to put this guy down. Don’t misunderstand. He was not in the top tier during the campaign, during the administration or any of that. He got drunk one night with an Australian diplomat and was bragging about how somebody had told them that Russians had some intel on Hillary. And now, with the Fusion GPS writing their op-ed the on Saturday in New York Times, they’re shifting direction to this guy.

“Oh, this is the reason we’ve been investigating! It’s not the dossier. You guys have been wrong from the get-go. The dossier is not what the basis iss.” So they go Clapper, so it’s Papadopoulos, huh? “I — I — I’ve never heard of the guy.” And it’s these people were afraid of? It’s these people that Republican/conservative Never Trumpers want to appease? Mark my words: The media collusion story’s falling apart. I’m not saying the Mueller investigation is. Two different things.

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RUSH: Here is Jason in Woodbridge, Virginia. I’m really glad you waited. I appreciate your patience. How are you doing today?

CALLER: I’m doing very, very good, Rush. Happy New Year to you, by the way.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: The question I have for you has to do with a FISA warrant. If the FISA warrant has not been shown to Congress — which it hasn’t — and the name of the judge who signed it has not been disclosed, how do we know there really is a valid FISA warrant?

RUSH: We don’t.

CALLER: So right now we’re taking the word of who?

RUSH: We’re not taking the word of anybody. We’re guessing. We’re educated guessing.
CALLER: Wow. Wow.

RUSH: Here’s the thing.

CALLER: Yes?

RUSH: Trump could tell anybody he wants. Trump could demand that all of this be revealed and released. He’s the president of the United States. If he wanted to, he could. He wouldn’t have stand up there and act like he doesn’t know what happens, ’cause he does. He knows whether a warrant was requested on the basis of his so-called colluding with Russia. Somebody in the regime, somebody in the administration knows it.

But the media is having to guess and the learned experts are having to guess, because they are, by law, secure and private. It’s sort of like grand jury testimony. It’s never supposed to be discussed. Although if you are testifying, you can leak it. But nobody else can. But, no, this FISA warrant stuff, it’s pretty much educated guess.

Now, there might be somebody out there who knows and has reported that they know, but the latest that we have is that the theory is that the Obama administration sought a FISA warrant on Trump twice, denied the first time, the second time in October of 2016 it was granted. The theory is it was based the Steele dossier. The real question is, was a FISA warrant approved on the basis of a Democrat Party, Hillary Clinton opposition research document as opposed to real intelligence?

Was the FISA judge misled by whoever it is that sought the warrant? Was it James Comey? Whoever it was. Do we have a FISA warrant? Was the Trump campaign surveilled and spied on on the basis of an opposition research document that was made to look like official government intelligence? That the question.

CALLER: If that does come out that it was not a valid FISA, then there’s no way to find out who the judge was and then challenge them, “Why did you, as an individual, approve this? What did you see that was not available to the other FISA warrants that were requested?” There’s no way to challenge this, this particular judge?

RUSH: You’re a little bit above my pay grade. These are good questions. I’m not so sure you can’t find out who the judge is.

CALLER: Oh. Well, I tried online and I couldn’t find it anywhere.

RUSH: Well, no, not you. I mean, some principals here can find out. I mean, the FISA court is a secret court, meaning that whoever goes in there and asks for the warrant, there’s no jury, there may be a court reporter, but there’s no public, there’s no seats. It’s not a rubber stamp court. Not every warrant is granted. You know, it’s assumed that, you know, prosecutor A, attorney general B goes in there, wants a warrant and it’s rubber-stamped. It’s not the case. The thinking is that the first requested warrant from the Obama administration in March I think, March or April of 2016 was not granted. And they had to come back with something that was more evidentiary in order to — and they did supposedly in October.

But as I’m thinking about it, this is just learned, highly educated speculation. I think it’s learnable who the judge was. But, again, you’re thinking can these things be challenged if we know who the judge is after the fact. No. Not in a remedial sense like you mean or in a punitive sense. I mean, if we find out the judge that did this in the thing is bogus can we penalize the judge? I don’t think so.

I don’t think these people are gonna set up a system whereby they themselves get punished. But there is a mechanism if this thing is fraudulently obtained. In other words, if there is a warrant to spy, to surveil what’s going on at Trump Tower or elsewhere in the Trump campaign based on something Hillary Clinton paid for that was passed off to a judge as legitimate intelligence? Well, now there would be hell to pay. And I think that’s why there’s a lot of scrambling going on here to repackage and reposition this whole media story of collusion.