RUSH: Now, as to the memo that was released on Friday, my friends, in many cases the mainstream media has not reported — I mean, they’ve reported the memo exists, but they have not gone into the bullet points of the memo, they have not explained the bullet points of the memo. They are covering it. They are covering it up. They are using misdirection. They are not giving it any weight.

We’ve got a little montage here to illustrate. We have MSNBC, CNN, NBC. We’ve got former White House communications director for Obama. We have the New York Times. These are all people discussing the memo. Now, you have to keep in mind when you listen to this that CNN, the New York Times, they have audiences, and the people that consume CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, New York Times do not know the bombshell aspects of this memo. This is what they are told about it.

STEVE SCHMIDT: We remember the big nothing burger of Geraldo in Al Capone’s safe.

MAX BOOT: To call it a nothing burger is probably to elevate it more than it deserves. It is just a nothing nothing nothing.

CAROL COSTELLO: The memo, the memo, a great big nothing burger.

ARI MELBER: Really just more of a nothing burger.

FAREED ZAKARIA: A nothing burger.

JESSICA TARLOV: This memo as a nothing burger.

ALEX WITT: It has been called a nothing burger.

WILLIE GEIST: The technical term is a nothing burger.

JEN PSAKI: It’s pretty much a nothing burger.

MARY LOUISE KELLY: Or is it a nothing burger?

DAVID BROOKS: I wouldn’t say it’s a nothing burger, more of a White Castle slider.

RUSH: That was David Brooks of the New York Times… Somebody sent the memo out calling it a nothing burger, and all these different people, they were appearing in different places there — they were not all on the same show — echoing each other. So somebody sent the memo out, “it’s a nothing burger.” So they repeat that a paranoid Republican committee chairman releases a memo that doesn’t have anything to it, it’s embarrassing, and it is threatening our democracy.

They’re not told of the details. They’re not told anything about a FISA warrant being achieved. They’re not told that Hillary Clinton wrote the memo essentially. She paid for it. They’re told it’s all bogus, that the Republican exposure of this is all bogus. Half of these people don’t even know what Fusion GPS is.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to replay this montage, this nothing burger montage, because I have a question about it. Here it is, audio sound bite number four, just a whole lot of leftists. This is after the memo had been released.

STEVE SCHMIDT: We remember the big nothing burger of Geraldo in Al Capone’s safe.

MAX BOOT: To call it a nothing burger is probably to elevate it more than it deserves. It is just a nothing nothing nothing.

CAROL COSTELLO: The memo, the memo, a great big nothing burger.

ARI MELBER: Really just more of a nothing burger.

FAREED ZAKARIA: A nothing burger.

JESSICA TARLOV: This memo as a nothing burger.

ALEX WITT: It has been called a nothing burger.

WILLIE GEIST: The technical term is a nothing burger.

JEN PSAKI: It’s pretty much a nothing burger.

MARY LOUISE KELLY: Or is it a nothing burger?

DAVID BROOKS: I wouldn’t say it’s a nothing burger, more of a White Castle slider.

RUSH: That’s humorous David Brooks, who may not be smart enough, by the way, to do a late-night talk show. Aside from the unanimity, who sent the memo out that it’s a nothing burger? They probably all heard somebody they respect call it a nothing burger and they’re all just a bunch of copycats.

My question is, if it’s such a nothing burger, why did they work so hard to prevent its release? If there’s nothing to it, if it’s all a bunch of mishmash nothing burger, then why not promote its release, and why not quote from it extensively if it’s so egregiously wrong or bad? These people worked harder than I’ve ever seen ’em work to stop a nothing burger.

It occurred to me during the break while I was waiting for the next beta release that didn’t come so I opened this hour slight bit depressed, it occurred to me out there that there still may be some people that don’t know what the memo said. I mean, it was only released on Friday. And if you didn’t have a chance to be here on Friday and you weren’t listening and you had been paying scant attention over the weekend it’s very likely that the details of the memo remain unknown to some, and particularly because the Drive-Bys are not reporting it.

So let me go through my summary again from last Friday, the on-the-spot. That memo came out the moment this program began, not a minute before, and not a minute after, and if you don’t think that was a coincidence, it wasn’t. Whoever released that memo, they could have released it at 10 a.m. They could have released it at 11:30. They could have released it at 3:30. They released right at 12 noon because they know I am a quick study.

And there are essentially five, and some might say seven, big bombshells in the memo. The biggest one to me — and, Mr. Snerdley, have you read any conservative blogs? We have many conservative blogs. “I don’t see what’s in this. This is not that big a deal. I’m kind of embarrassed so much attention was paid.” We’ve got more people on our side trying to torpedo it ’cause they hate Trump. They just hate Trump. It’s the most amazing thing. They are willing to consign America to just an absolutely horrible course in the future if it means getting rid of Trump.

The big thing to me, if nothing else in this memo is true, the thing that is true that’s in it that makes everything else possible is the fact that this memo, which is properly identified as an opposition research document — in fact, you know, I jocularly said that Hillary Clinton wrote the thing last hour. It literally is true. It is being reported now that Hillary’s aides gave information to Christopher Steele that he put into the dossier. So Hillary’s team didn’t just commission this. They provided data. They provided Steele data points or information that made it into this memo, this dossier.

This thing is entirely made up, folks. It was commissioned by the Clinton campaign, who then called Fusion GPS because the guy at Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, knew Steele. They used the law firm to funnel the payments to provide attorney-client privilege on who paid for this. Christopher Steele then never went to Russia. He started calling people that he knew from his career as a spy in the Great Britain era, he called Russians and they fed him data, and he put it in the dossier. And then he dressed it up and made it look like it was a summary intelligence report with many different credible intelligence sources.

And it wasn’t that. This was written and compiled as an opposition research document the Clinton campaign could use against Trump during the campaign for the presidency that Hillary and her team decided 24 hours after her concession speech to then use in the strategy they came up with to claim the election was tainted because of Russian involvement. And the dossier was used as Exhibit A. The dossier, again, folks, is made up. It’s literally made up.

It’s false stories, unverified, not corroborated. Not a single element of this dossier has ever been found to be true. In fact, much of it can be factually disproved. This dossier was used… This is the thing in the memo of all other things that nailed it for me. The FBI used that memo, that dossier, as evidence to get a search warrant from the FISA court to surveil Carter Page — and, by extension, anybody Carter Page would be talking to, which would include people at Trump Tower and who knows who else.

So the FBI did not tell the FISA court that the primary ingredient in their warrant application was made up. They did not tell the FISA the court that it was political. They passed off to the FISA court that this dossier was actual and real intelligence. So if they were willing to do that, then all else — using common sense, intelligence guided by experience — could be possible. If they were willing to take an opposition research document that had been totally made up, fabricated out of thin air, and pass that off to a high court as legitimate intel, then what else could they possibly do?

In addition, the FBI included as evidence for the dossier a news article that appeared on Yahoo News. The news article was written by none other than Michael Isikoff, the reporter who wrote the Newsweek Monica Lewinsky story that was buried that Matt Drudge dug up and published and exposed Clinton for what he was doing with the intern. They spiked it at Newsweek. So it’s the same reporter, Michael Isikoff. The FBI, in order to convince the FISA court that this dossier was real, included in the application a Yahoo News story about Carter Page’s visit to Moscow.

Now, what’s funny about this is Yahoo News used the dossier to write their story! This is a good, old-fashioned circle you-know-what. The dossier is there. Yahoo News uses the dossier to write a story about what it says. The FBI then includes that story with the dossier in the warrant application at the FISA court. The FBI cited the Yahoo News report as evidence to corroborate information in the dossier, when the story was written from the dossier! The FBI incorrectly asserted to the court in its application that Steele did not provide information to Yahoo News about Carter Page’s trip to Moscow.

However, court filings in Britain show that Christopher Steele admitted that he met with Isikoff in September 2016, two months before the FBI got its warrant to discussing the trip at the direction of Fusion GPS. This is… Folks, this is so incestuous, it’s impossible to describe this. The FBI also knew that Christopher Steele (and I just alluded to this) was being paid by the Democrat National Committee and by Hillary Clinton and did not tell the court. Hillary Clinton was paying Christopher Steele.

The DNC was paying him to create an opposition research document. The dossier, therefore — written and paid for in part by Hillary Clinton — was presented to the court as legitimate intel. The court was not told that it essentially had its origins in the Clinton presidential campaign and the Democrat National Committee. We also learn the FBI spied on Carter Page for nearly a year. The FBI got their initial FISA warrant to spy on Page October 21, 2016, after he went to Moscow.

He spoke to a Russian official who had expressed support for Trump in July of 2016. So Carter Page goes to Moscow, meets with a guy in Russia who had supported Trump, and ergo we need to spy on Page. This warrant, as I said last hour, was renewed three times for a total of 360 days of surveillance. Comey signed one of the three renewal applications on behalf of the FBI. Andrew McCabe signed one and Sally Yates. Dana Boente and Rod Rosenstein each signed at least one or more of these renewal applications.

There was never any evidence on Page. Nothing was ever produced. They continue to get this warrant renewed to spy on him even though the dossier, which was the reason they got the warrant, was a novel! It was a work of fiction! We then learn that the FBI got rid of Christopher Steele as a source soon after it got the warrant. The FBI dismissed Steele because he was bragging about his relationship with the FBI to reporters.

The guy wouldn’t shut up. He was telling everybody, “Yep, the FBI has hired me. They liked the dossier so much, they’ve hired me to keep digging stuff up.” This was after the warrant had been granted by the FISA court. The FBI said, “My God, this guy can’t shut up. He’s gonna ruin us.” So they can him ’cause he won’t shut up. He’s essentially letting the cat out of the bag — and, by the way, when does law enforcement start paying for news?

I know they do rewards and that kind of thing, but look how they vet everybody claiming to have news that gets a reward. You start paying… If you’re law enforcement and you start paying for tips? Good Lord, you’re gonna be drowning in these things! When did this start happening? However, the FBI did not tell the FISA court that they had fired Steele.

The FBI did not admit that the warrant application was bogus because the dossier was not what they represented it to be. They didn’t tell the court as they renewed the application every 90 days that they had gotten rid of Steele ’cause he wouldn’t shut up. And finally, Bruce Ohr’s wife was getting paid by Fusion GPS. She was working at, I think, the State Department or the FBI. Folks, so much more than nothing burger, it’s impossible to describe it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, people have asked me, “How much did Hillary and the DNC pay for the dossier?” They paid minimum $10 million for it. You hadn’t heard? $10 million. Hillary and the DNC paid Steele, and then Steele had to go out and pay whatever it cost him to put this thing together. The FBI never told the FISA court that the dossier had not been verified. They presented it as, “Judge, we got some good leads here.

“We need to be able to spy on some people to find out what’s going on. There’s a dossier here. We may be in deep trouble.” They never told anybody at the court. You know, people say to me, “Rush, there are safeguards. It’s not that easy to get a FISA warrant. You’re overplaying this. There’s so many safeguards put in place; it takes all kinds of people to sign off on it.” Folks, where I am right now, I am by now means comfortable saying this. But I don’t think…

I think, given what we’re talking about here, which is really whatever we want to call it — the ruling class, the Washington establishment, whatever. They are in a knock-down, drag-out to save themselves, and I don’t think they’re going to be held back by rules, regulations, or anything of the sort. Now, the idea that something could become fully corrupted to me is entirely possible, not hard to believe.