RUSH: Under the category of Mueller has nothing… (interruption) What? The tar…? (interruption) Yeah, we’re gonna get to the tariffs. Be patient. I’m gonna use phone calls to get to the tariffs. Are you burning with passion and obsessed about the…? (interruption) All right. All right. Well, Mueller has nothing, but that doesn’t mean anything, because Mueller can keep looking ’til he finds anything. There are no limits on Mueller’s investigation. He was not given a crime. What Mueller is doing, in the strict sense of things, is not even legal. Justice Department regulations require that for a special counsel to be named, there has to be a crime to pursue.

Here, there’s no crime. When Mueller was impaneled by Rod Rosenstein, he was given no specific crime. It all happened after Trump fired Comey, and there was this general rat-tat-tat about obstruction and the overall claim that Trump and Russia colluded — and, of course, we all know that even as of now there’s no evidence for it. Well, the latest from Mueller is this. “George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman, has hovered on the fringes of international diplomacy for three decades.

“He was a back-channel negotiator with Syria during the Clinton administration, reinvented himself as an adviser to the de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, and last year was a frequent visitor to President Trump’s White House. Mr. Nader is now a focus of the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel. In recent weeks, Mr. Mueller’s [left-wing, liberal lawyer] investigators have questioned Mr. Nader and have pressed witnesses for information about any possible attempts by the Emiratis,” people from the United Arab Emirates…

Think Dubai and Abu Dhabi. They want to see if there have been attempts by those people “to buy political influence by directing money to support Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign, according to,” yet again — dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut — anonymous “people with knowledge of the discussions.” Are you kidding me? What in the name of Sam Hill does United Arab Emirates have to do with Russia, and if Mueller is gonna start investigating the possibility of foreign governments trying to buy political influence, then would somebody explain to me how this doesn’t start and end with the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation, because that’s what the Clinton Foundation did.

The Clinton Foundation was soliciting contributions and donations on the come, on the premise that Mrs. Clinton would someday be president. There’s no reason for these people all over the world to be giving Hillary and Bill Clinton a quarter of a million dollars here, $2 million there, $150,000 here, just because the Clintons are popular and just because the Clintons are liked, because that’s not the name of the game. These people were donating money to the Clinton Foundation — and, of course, the Clinton Global Initiative — under the premise that she was gonna be president someday.

She was… You could say she was already selling her presidency, and if you want to really investigate the foreign investment — if you want to look at the possibility of foreign governments try to buy political influence — I don’t know how that you don’t start with the Clinton Foundation. Which, by the way… Am I correct? Is my memory correct the Clinton Foundation kind of went kaput after the election? I mean, a shell of it still exists, but the massive fundraising came to a screeching halt, and the Clinton Global Initiative, I think, ditto.

There was no reason for any of it. It all existed for years as a prelude to Mrs. Clinton being elected president, and then when she lost in a shockingly embarrassing manner this stuff all ends up sort of evaporating. So is the Clinton Foundation being probed? I mean, here you have George Nader, United Arab Emirates? It says here… This here, by the way, is a New York Times story, obviously.

“The investigators have also asked about Mr. Nader’s role in White House policymaking, those [anonymous] people said, suggesting that the special counsel [left-wing lawyer] investigation has broadened beyond Russian election meddling to include Emirati influence on the Trump administration.” Now, we can all see what’s happening here. Here’s what this is. There’s nothing… They don’t have anything. Mueller still does not have a thing on Trump and Russia collusion. And now, by introducing this guy George Nader and United Arab Emirates…

You realize the path for all this? So somebody in Mueller’s left-wing organization leaks to the New York Times, “Hey, we’re looking at this Nader guy. You know, United Arab Emirates? They might have something to do with Trump. This guy is in the White House a couple times and they wanted to buy influence.” So they publish the story in the New York Times, and it gets amplified and magnified and blown up all over social media, where a bunch of genuine twits read it and end up believing it.

So now not only did Russia collude with Trump, but we find out now that the rich guys in the United Arab Emirates are trying to buy influence with Trump too, and then the reverberation all throughout social media picks up and kicks up. A whole lot of uninformed, ill-informed people end up believing that this investigation is really big and really sweeping up a lot of people. When, in fact, Mueller has nothing. This is pathetic. Now, theoretically, Rosenstein, who is the deputy AG, has to sign off on every new area of investigation Mueller wants to go.

Those are the regulations. You see, when the special counsel is behaving according to regulations, there’s a crime specified, and the special counsel focuses like a laser on that crime. And if in the pursuit of that crime the special counsel learns of something unrelated but is also criminal, he needs to go back to the managing partner in this sense, the deputy AG, for permission to take the investigation off into this ancillary area, wherever it might be, if it doesn’t fit within the boundaries of the original crime.

Did Mueller go to Rosenstein and say, “You know what? We found something over here in the Emirates. This Nader guy — who’s been in bed with the Clintons for the longest time — may have been selling influence with Trump. Do I have permission to go look at this?” Do we know if this happened? We don’t know; we probably will not know. I doubt that it did because nobody’s conducting this investigation as it should be. It’s wide open, it has no boundaries, it has no limits on funding, so it can go as long as it wants.

It can go wherever… This investigation can go wherever it wants, and I think this is why Trey Gowdy… Trey Gowdy was on, I think… Was it Meet the Press yesterday? We’ve got the bite that I’m looking for here. Trey Gowdy thinks we needed a second special counsel investigation, is the point, and I just… When I hear that, I just cringe. You talk about another delay? If we start another special counsel, how long’s it gonna be?

Well, I thought I had it, and I can’t find it. (interruption) It’s No. 11? How did I miss No. 11? Oh, two pages stuck here. Let’s see if this is what I’m thinking it is. Well, it’s about the fi… Let’s go ahead and use it. It was this morning on the Fox Business Network “Mornings with Maria” Bartiromo, and she’s talking to Trey Gowdy. She says, “You believe we should have another special counsel to investigate these matters?”

GOWDY: We need an independent arbiter, and the Department of Justice cannot investigate itself. Horowitz can. Horowitz is a fair guy, but when there are two dozen witnesses that have left the department or work for another agency, someone else has to do it. And I am reluctant to call for special counsel, but I think it may be unavoidable in this fact pattern.

RUSH: So this is in this case about FISA, Gowdy is specifically referring to how the hell was a FISA warrant granted on this phony dossier and that the DOJ cannot investigate itself. Horowitz is the inspector general. He said we need a special counsel to investigate what happened here at the FISA court and the FBI and the DOJ and how they sought the warrant, the affidavit. Did the judge know that he was looking at a political opposition document? Did the judge know, was the judge misled?

Well it’s the same thing here with this branching out that Mueller is engaging in here. I mean, there’s no stopping this. There’s no end to it. And if we have a second special counsel investigation of this investigation, what does that say? You know, it’s so easy to do. “We need” — and I’m not being critical of Gowdy here. Don’t misunderstand. But these things move at a snail’s pace, and the objective of this current investigation is to get Donald Trump. They’re not trying to really find Russian collusion. They’re not even worried about that. All of that is a bunch of made-up, make-believe outrage and anger.

These people don’t even really have a problem with the Russians. They traditionally have loved the Soviets, Soviet communism, the Russians. This is all about getting Trump. So a second investigation, which, if Gowdy got what he wanted, would be a legitimate investigation. It would be pursuing a specific event, and that would be the application for warrants at the FISA court. It would still take eons to get going. Meanwhile, Mueller could be out there churning away on the mission to get trump.

And all of this is about the Democrats winning the midterm elections, the House of Representatives in 2018. That’s what all of this is. All these leaks, all these new developments in the investigation, all designed to be blown up and amplified on social media so that people by osmosis, by inference just end up thinking that Trump is dirty, sullied, guilty, under the premise, “They wouldn’t be looking into it, Hazel, if there weren’t something there.”

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

By the way, this United Arab Emirates thing, this guy George Nader — I mentioned this about a half hour ago. This is the latest guy that Mueller is looking into for maybe selling influence into Trump. He worked closely with the Clintons for 30 years. He’s an envoy, he has relationships with the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, George Nader. It turns out that whatever Mueller’s looking at is stuff that happened after the election. It has nothing to do with collusion, Russia, tampering with the election, stealing this or that, nothing to do with the original charge.

And then — I don’t know if you’ve heard the latest, but this is how deeply the bottom of the barrel they’re scraping. This story out of Bangkok. It’s in the New York Times. “Escort Says Audio Recordings Show Russian Meddling in U.S. Election.” They have a hooker, a hooker from Belarus. The New York Times is calling her an escort.

“A Belarusian escort with close ties to a powerful Russian oligarch said from behind bars in Bangkok on Monday that she had more than 16 hours of audio recordings that could help shed light on Russian meddling in United States elections.” Her name, Anastasia Vashukevich. She said would hand over the recordings if the U.S. granted her asylum. The oligarch is Oleg Deripaska. You talk about now they’ve got a hooker with 16 hours of audiotapes that prove this? After all of this time, that’s where they’re gonna end up?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: “Escort Says Audio Recordings Prove Russian Meddling in U.S. Election.” New York Times. This… Hang on just a second, here, folks. I may as well not have this TV on if the screen saver is gonna come on every 30 seconds. Anyway, you talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel? A hooker from Belarus, who is in jail, “with close ties to a powerful Russian oligarch…” By the way, this oligarch has been mentioned in connection with… Deripaska is his name. He’s a billionaire with close ties to Putin. (interruption)

Oh, that’s right, Manafort.

He had business ties with Paul Manafort who has, you know, been charged by Mueller. She has “16 hours of audio recordings that could help shed light on Russian meddling in United States elections.” Do these people have any idea…? I mean the reporters at the New York Times. I know what they’re doing. They’re doing everything they can to convince as many people that Trump is guilty. They’re doing everything they can to get their stories amplified, that, “There’s evidence everywhere of Russian meddling; we just can’t find it yet! But he did it, and Hillary should have won, and Trump didn’t. They shouldn’t have,” and so on.

I know what they’re trying to do. But now there’s a hooker with “16 hours of audio recordings that could help shed light on Russian meddling in United States elections”? To put this in perspective, let’s go back just one year. One year ago the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN were running stories endlessly — there were more than one a day on many days, and the sources were deep inside the intelligence community. They were “credible sources.” These were sources that knew intelligence committee, intelligence community. These were people that worked CIA, the NSA.

They were anonymous, and, “There wasn’t any evidence yet,” these stories said, “but these people knew that it had happened and we were on the verge of uncovering it!” The point is a year ago, the anonymous sources at least had the specter of august credibility, and yet not a one of these nameless anonymous sources in any of the past 18 months has had anything that has come anywhere close to being true because there is no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. The maddening thing about this is that the evidence is that Hillary did.

There’s all kinds of evidence that Hillary colluded with the Russians. You know the drill on this. The dossier, Hillary essentially had it written and paid to have it written and it’s a political opposition research document may — probably was — have been used to secure a warrant to spy on the Trump administration and the Trump campaign. All of that’s being ignored, and now we’re down to a hooker. This is gonna give hookers a bad name! We’re down to a 16 hours of audio recordings made by a hooker! What, are eight hours of them gonna be (panting), something like that? What, 16 hours?

“The escort, Anastasia Vashukevich, said she would hand over the recordings if the United States granted her asylum. She faces criminal charges and deportation to Belarus after coming under suspicion of working in Thailand without a visa at a sex-training seminar in the city of Pattaya.” A sex-training seminar. “Ms. Vashukevich, who described herself as close to the Russian aluminum tycoon Oleg V. Deripaska, said that audio recordings she made in August 2016 included discussions he had about the United States presidential election with people she declined to identify. …

“‘If America gives me protection, I will tell everything I know,’ Ms. Vashukevich said on Monday. ‘I am afraid to go back to Russia. Some strange things can happen.’ Her assertion could be easy to disregard were it not for a 25-minute video investigation posted last month on YouTube by the Russian opposition figure Aleksei A. Navalny, which relies heavily on videos and photographs from Ms. Vashukevich. She and nine people from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus were arrested late last month in Pattaya, a city about 70 miles south of Bangkok known for its adult entertainment scene.”

I guess they don’t have to Make Thailand Horny Again. They don’t even need a Make Thailand Horny Again Tour there, because they’ve got this babe over there at the “sex-training seminar.” (laughing) This the woman that’s gonna bring Trump down? This is the woman after all of this, a hooker has the goods on Trump (laughing), and the New York Times is buying into it! “According to her version of events, she was working for a modeling agency when she and several other models were sent to spend time on Mr. Deripaska’s yacht.”

You see, every oligarch has to have a yacht, and everybody oligarch’s yacht has to be parked in either the Greek isles or the harbor at Monte Carlo or Nice. You don’t go to Marseille, but you might go to San Tropez. You couldn’t muscle in on the crime lords of Marseille if you wanted. Just stick a San Tropez, maybe Nice, maybe Cannes. You can dock right there at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. Anywhere there along the Cote d’Azur. Every Russian oligarch, along with Paul Allen, has a yacht that’s over there.

There are models galore, and they’re always having parties. You might even find P. Diddy and his manservant carrying the umbrella for him to shield him from the sun. You find all these people. You have Hollywood actresses. You have models. You have now, apparently, hookers — and these Russian oligarchs are everywhere. “[S]he was working for a modeling agency when she and several other models were sent to spend time on Mr. Deripaska’s yacht. She later posted photographs and videos on social media showing Mr. Deripaska and Mr. Prikhodko together on the yacht. Financial…” (interruption)

Well, it doesn’t prove anything except that she might know what she’s talking about because she was on the oligarch’s yacht, and she’s got video of the oligarch talking to another Russian the buy, and these guys are close to Putin. “Financial records show that companies controlled by Mr. Manafort owed millions of dollars to Mr. Deripaska. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Manafort offered to give Mr. Deripaska private briefings on the campaign.” It’s scraping the bottom of the barrel.

It just… It all adds up to they’ve got nothing.