RUSH: What I want to start with today on the Trump stuff, two things here that are equally important. One of them that’s important, potentially, the judge in the Michael Flynn case is named Emmet Sullivan. Emmet Sullivan is the judge in the Ted Stevens case, the Ted Stevens trial.
And, in that trial, the prosecutors, the same group of people on Mueller’s team, the prosecutors in that case suborned perjury from the star witness against Ted Stevens, a contractor, a home repair guy. They got Ted Stevens kicked out of the Senate for supposedly accepting a kickback of 150 grand for a remodeling job at his house that he didn’t pay for. That’s what Ted Stevens was charged with.
That a contractor did a $150,000 remodeling job and gave him the work in exchange for whatever Ted Stevens could do for the guy as a senator. That guy, that contractor was asked to lie about Ted Stevens and what he asked for on the witness stand. Judge Emmet Sullivan found out about this and he raised holy hell with these prosecutors. He overturned the conviction of Ted Stevens after Ted Stevens was gone from the Senate.
They succeeded in defeating him in his election. It was too late to get his Senate seat back. But they overturned the conviction, and the lawyers in this case were sanctioned mightily by Judge Sullivan, and they’re back, and they’re on Mueller’s team. Sidney Powell has written about all of these people starting with Andrew Weissmann in her book that Amazon will not sell called Licensed to Lie. I have quoted from that book.
I have cited that book. I have suggested that you try to find that book for almost nine months now. So now Judge Sullivan wants to see. He’s ordered Mueller to turn over all of the interview documents with Michael Flynn after we learned that the FBI in the White House did not tell Flynn that he was actually being interviewed and told him he didn’t need a lawyer! He was set up. Michael Flynn — a decorated military hero for 30 years — was set up by the FBI on the orders of James Comey!
Judge Sullivan has now discovered this, and he has demanded by tomorrow that all the documents relating to the Flynn case be turned over to him. Now, among those documents will be sworn statements by Andrew McCabe and a couple other FBI agents that they don’t think Flynn lied. McCabe was the one that did the interview, and they don’t think he lied. He walked into the White House one day and wants to talk to talk to Flynn, and Flynn doesn’t know what’s up.
It’s early days administration. They’ve just gone through the transition. So here’s somebody from the friendly FBI — we’re all in this together — who wants to talk to him. Flynn said, “Sure. What do you want to know?” It was an interview. It was an entrapment interview, and they told him, “No, no, no. You don’t need a lawyer for this,” and Comey’s out there bragging about how he pulled this off, and he’s getting laughter from the audiences that he tells the story to.
So Judge Sullivan has been there and seen all this, and to demand all of these documents by Friday? We can only hope. But I tell you, folks. Judges and prosecutors hang together like pole dancers and the pole. They just do. I mean, it was such a remarkable thing for Judge Sullivan to sanction the prosecutors in the Ted Stevens case. It was so unusual. Everybody thinks of justice as a set of scales that are equally balanced, and it isn’t.
Prosecutors are before judges constantly. The same lawyers, the same prosecutors appear in federal court all the time. The judges get to know them. In some cases, this is true of defense lawyers — famous, big-name defense lawyers. But the relationship between… They’re all government. Federal judge is government. The FBI is government. The DOJ is government. They’re all government — and in day-to-day acknowledgment, they’re all on the same team.
So there’s always been massive amounts of leeway extended to prosecutors because the judges all figure, “What are we doing here if the perp didn’t do it? The perp must have done it or we wouldn’t be going through all this.” I’ve learned this the hard way. There are these massive assumptions that if you’re charged, you did it; that they wouldn’t waste time charging you if you didn’t do it. Well, that’s crazy, and we’re seeing this now.
George Papadopoulos was set up. Flynn was set up. I think Trump has been set up in all this. So late yesterday, Judge Sullivan, overseeing the Flynn criminal case, ordered Mueller to turn over all of the governments documents and memos related to Flynn’s questioning by the FBI. By Friday! All of this happened one day after Flynn’s lawyers revealed that the FBI told Flynn not to bring a lawyer to his interview with them.
We could only hope that Judge Sullivan might want to know why the FBI misled Flynn, and basically interviewed him in a criminal intent without telling him this, and then telling him he didn’t need to bring a lawyer, denying him legal representation! Judge Sullivan might want to know why the FBI took a far more aggressive approach in handling the Flynn interview than it ever did with Hillary and her aides, or even George Papadopoulos.
Now, the article here notes that the FBI agents took seven months to write up a 302 report. The 302 report is supposed to be done contemporaneously to document the interview. The 302 report just reviews what happens. It just reports what happened. It reports who said what after who was asked what. The 302 doesn’t say, “We think the perp did it, Judge! We think you need to sentence this guy for the rest of his life.”
It just reports what was said, what was asked — and it took ’em seven months! It could have been done in a day. The interview with Flynn was done. It’s transcribed. You turn it over to the court. They took seven months to write up the 302. Now, given that Judge Sullivan overturned the conviction of Ted Stevens — prosecuted by many of the same people who are on Mueller’s team — there are people hoping that he might overturn this.
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RUSH: Folks, I’ve been misspeaking here. It’s Emmet Sullivan is the judge. Emmet Flood is one of Trump’s lawyers. I get these Emmets and Brendans confused. I have a name in my mind, Brendan Sullivan. Brendan Sullivan is the lawyer who asked if he was just a potted plant during the Iran-Contra hearings. I think he was representing either Ollie North or Fawn Hall. I’m not sure which.
So Sullivan goes with Brendan, in my head — and Curt Flood, St. Louis Cardinals. Emmet Flood. So I got ’em confused. It’s Emmet Sullivan is the judge. He was the star of Sidney Powell’s book, and he’s the same judge that’s… (sigh) This case, the Flynn case should have never been brought and I hope that Judge Sullivan throws this entire thing out because of what they’ve done to this man.
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RUSH: There’s not a lawyer in this country that was gonna ever send Michael Flynn away to jail no matter what they claim he did. The guy is a 30-year decorated military hero. He has done nothing but serve this country.
Now, Mueller with all of these redactions in the sentencing memo that was released is made to look like — this guy is such a snake, folks. These people in this special prosecutor’s office, this whole cabal in the DOJ are just a bunch of snakes. Redacting all of that stuff makes it look like there may be some really, really bad, sinister stuff that Flynn did. It is so unfair.
It’s just basically unfair what they have done to this guy. They’ve destroyed him financially. They forced him into copping a plea to something he didn’t do that they set him up to do in order to save his family and the house. So they issue this sentencing document with all of these redactions made to look like, “Wow! He must have really violated a bunch of national security that they -” He didn’t do anything! It’s all PR. It’s all buzz. There wasn’t a judge that was gonna send this guy to jail for a day. He’d get probation or some such thing.
Well, now Judge Sullivan wants to see everything that led into this. And when you’re the FBI and you’re in the White House casually there, and you run into Flynn, “Hey, you got time for a little chat here?” And you conduct what is an official interview that you don’t tell him is official. In fact, you tell him he doesn’t even need a lawyer, and then, after that, you charge him with lying even though the agent after the interview said, and two other agents agreed, that they don’t think Flynn lied.
So what the hell is this charge about? Michael Flynn’s being punished for working for Donald Trump. Michael Flynn is a bowling pin that has to be knocked out of the way on the way to getting to Donald Trump. The same thing with Michael Cohen. And the same thing with Roger Stone and the same way with anybody they think they can chip out of the way in order to get to Trump. There isn’t any justice in any of this. And Comey is in the thick of this.
When liberals get together and they think only themselves are in the room and it’s only liberals listening to other liberals, they speak freely. According to the FBI summary of Michael Flynn’s 302 interview, Andrew McCabe and FBI officials decided the agents would not warn Flynn that it was a crime to lie during an FBI interview because they wanted Flynn to be relaxed. And they were concerned that giving the warning might adversely affect the rapport.
See, they didn’t want Flynn to think he was being officially interviewed. So they didn’t tell him that he had a right to have an attorney present. He would have known that if he would have known the reason this little chat was taking place, but he didn’t even know that. The FBI walks into the White House. As far as Flynn knows, we’re all on the same team here! Flynn has no idea they’re coming to set him up.
They decided they would not warn Flynn it was a crime. Meaning they didn’t say, “By the way, you can get an attorney. By the way, if you tell us things that aren’t true, you could be in trouble.” They didn’t say any of that. And Comey says it’s ’cause they wanted Flynn to be relaxed. That’s not why they didn’t tell him. They wanted him to slip up!
They were trying to create a process crime here in a so-called casual discussion setting that was actually an official interview. And it was Comey’s idea. Comey said, “Something I probably wouldn’t have done or wouldn’t have gotten away with in a more organized administration.” Comey is saying if there had to be a bunch of people in the White House who knew what was going on, I couldn’t have gotten away with this. He’s telling other liberals in the room how they pulled this off.
So they got a new administration led by Donald Trump from the outside, not suspecting that anybody’s on the warpath to set ’em up or any of that, especially Flynn as a decorated war hero. He should have known. These are all Obama people. And Obama hated him. Flynn ran the Defense Intelligence Agency. That’s the defense department’s version of the CIA. And he did so with distinction and great honor. And these guys came to set him up.
And Comey’s admitting to some of his buddies, “Yeah, probably wouldn’t have done this if somebody in that White House had known what’s going on,” meaning they fully intended to take advantage of the naivete of newly arrived personnel in the Trump administration. Something I probably wouldn’t have done or wouldn’t have gotten away with in a more organized administration. So even this he’s bragging about how he outsmarted this dimwit Trump and his administration. Yeah, outsmarted them by lying to them, by telling ’em, “Yeah, you don’t need a lawyer, yeah, don’t worry lying to us.” No warnings whatsoever.
Comey continued. He said in the Bush administration or the Obama administration, if the FBI wanted to send agents into the White House itself to interview a senior official, you’d have to go through the White House counsel. There’d be discussions and approvals on who would be there. And I thought it’s early enough, let’s just send a couple of guys over there. They’re not gonna know what’s going on. And that’s what they did. They sent a couple of FBI agents, including one of the management types, McCabe. And he’s strolling around the White House and runs into Flynn, “Hey, Mike. How you doing, buddy?” And they sit down and they start having a chat!
Little does Flynn know it’s an official interview, with Comey admitting that they set it up this way. And look at the people Comey surrounded himself with. FBI is supposed to be interested in getting the bad guys; right? Justice personified, the flag and all of that. And who are the people Comey surrounded himself with? McCabe, Peter Strzok Smirk, Lisa Page. For crying out loud, Comey wasn’t fired soon enough once Trump figured out the lay of the land here. Comey should have been gone the minute Trump won the presidency!
So after Comey is fired, he then helps engineer the hiring of Robert Mueller as special counsel by leaking classified information. Guess what Comey does now? Comey is teaching ethics at William & Mary College. Ethics. After bragging about the fact that they set up a 30-year military hero by not even asking the White House counsel if they could come over and conduct an interview with Flynn. They just strolled in, “Hey, Mike, great to see you.”
Flynn says, “Hey, Andrew, what’s happening, babe?” And they start chatting. And from that Robert Mueller charges Flynn with lying. Even though McCabe later said he didn’t think that Flynn was lying. So this is why Judge Sullivan wants to see all of the documentation and all of the memos. But I’m sorry, folks, I think this is a bombshell.
James Comey admitting they bypassed normal White House protocol when he sent a couple of agents in there to interrogate Flynn. Something I probably wouldn’t have done or wouldn’t have gotten away with in a more organized administration. Bush or Obama, the FBI wanted to send agents in the White House itself to interview a senior official. You’d have to go through the counsel’s office. There would be discussions, approvals, who would be there. And I thought, it’s early enough in this Trump fiasco, I’ll just send a couple guys over. And the audience, whoever Comey was speaking to here, they all started laughing about how clever the setup was. Comey said all this on MSNBC. And it’s clear that this is all ultimately a setup of Donald Trump.
Now, if they’ve done this with Flynn, what have they done with Cohen, a guy who actually has committed a whole lot of crimes above and beyond way nothing to do with Donald Trump. But it’s just one setup after another after a totally false and fake premise: Russian collusion between Trump and Putin to steal an election.
By the way, I have now been informed Licensed to Lie, the great Sidney Powell book, is available now at Amazon. It wasn’t for a year or two, but it’s now available. I really would recommend it to you. It’s gonna have you spitting mad. It’s a page-turner even though it’s factual, it’s historical, but it’s not dry or dull at all. It starts out with the Enron trials, the task force. You will not believe what this bunch of prosecutors did to innocent people at Merrill Lynch. You will not believe what they did.
But as many of you as possible reading this book and learning what they did, you’ll have a far greater understanding of what’s gone on in the entire Mueller investigation. But the Ted Stevens case, you have to read awhile to get to it. But Judge Emmet Sullivan eventually vacates the conviction and just chastises these prosecutors and demand they go to what is essentially prosecutor rehab, to relearn their jobs, to relearn ethics. I mean, suborning perjury of their star witness, making the contractor lie! Well, that’s what’s exactly been accused here!
Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, every number of people here are saying that Mueller is demanding that they lie about things in order to get a plea deal! And they don’t know what to do! You never lie to these people even when they tell you to because if you lie to them once even after they’ve told you to they can always deny they told you to lie and come back and get you later.
They get you coming and going, by design. Once they’ve got their sights set on you, you can’t slither out of this. They’re gonna get you coming or going if you’re in the way of where they ultimately want to go, and all of these people are in the way of where they want to go, which is Donald Trump and a political casket.
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RUSH: You know, all this talk about trying to peel away all of these people close to Donald Trump so they can have a beeline at him to finally impeach him and get rid of him, more than 25 people have been fired or resigned from the FBI DOJ over this nonsense.
Now, it’s not publicized much, there’s not a lot of news made about it because it doesn’t make that organization look good; so the Drive-By Media doesn’t talk about it. But more than 25 people have been fired or resigned, including McCabe, including Strzok Smirk, including Page, including Bruce Ohr, including Bill Priestap, just a bunch of these people, plus Comey. Comey has been fired, he is gone. Top people that Comey had a hand in picking. They’re all gone.
Now, maybe I shouldn’t emphasize this as much because I don’t know what Judge Sullivan is gonna do. All I know is what Judge Sullivan has done. And in the Ted Stevens case, folks, it was just outrageous what they did to that man. The thing I took away from it, after reading it, reading about it, it was obvious the prosecutorial misconduct. It was plentiful. There was lots of it, unquestionably.
There weren’t periods of confusion or indecision about it. It was slam dunk prosecutorial misconduct. And it took forever to deal with it. It was a major, major operation to even acknowledge it. These people, if nothing else, circle the wagons. This is the entire DOJ, from the judges down to the prosecutors, the line prosecutors, the clerical people, they’re all on the same team. And I’m telling you, when they all get into court, there are so many assumptions that take place, and chief among them is that the perpetrator did it.
And so the bias that is extended to prosecutors in trials like this, whether it’s the result of unfairness or bias, I don’t know, and it’s not even the point. It’s just the formula. It’s just the way it is and has been. Some defendants are a little rare. It’s even tougher sometimes to convict a terrorist because we don’t want to be accused of any kind of anti-Muslim bias or this or that. But in a case like Ted Stevens, a United States senator, it’s amazing. This case should have been thrown out months before it was.
The prosecutors in that case should have been sanctioned months before they were. The last step the judge took was sanctioning the prosecutors when it should have been a slam dunk with the first indication he had of what happened. The case almost survived the prosecutors suborning perjury. That’s how deeply ingrained the formula and the process on the prosecution side of these kinds of cases is. And I guess the overriding bias is that we wouldn’t be here if the perp actually hadn’t done it, if the perp was innocent, we wouldn’t even be here.
But they ruined the career of a United States Senator named Ted Stevens over a $150,000, approximately, of a home repair bill! And they got the contractor to lie about it. The star witness. The whole case was thrown out. The conviction was vacated and overturned, after Ted Stevens had lost his Senate seat. He was a Republican from Alaska. He died shortly after all of this happened, and nobody knows whether the stress, the angst, the agita, had anything to do with his death.
But, I mean, it’s just outrageous. And it was such a hard thing to do. It should have been easy. It should have been a slam dunk. And this is one of the problems I think people have with the criminal justice system. One slipup by a perp and that’s it, you’re gone, buddy. The prosecution can slip up over and over again and the benefit of the doubt is extended, “Oh, they didn’t mean to do it, Judge, sorry. The 302, you know what, we submitted to you the wrong one.”
“Well, I can give you to the end of the week to make it right.” It’s just maddeningly frustrating. And then when I find out that these prosecutors, many of them who’ve been sanctioned and had to go to prosecutor rehab essentially, the equivalent of, and relearn ethics are on Mueller’s team! He hired ’em! Even after all of this. And many of them were on the Enron task force. And the Supreme Court of the United States overturned all those convictions!
And the ancillary people whose lives were ruined in the Enron trials, the Nigerian barge case ended up — this was an offshoot of the Enron trial. The Nigerian barge case, a couple of people at Merrill Lynch that didn’t do diddly-squat! Spent years in prison, lost their careers, nearly lost their families! They were innocent from the get-go! Judges, appellate judges wouldn’t listen!
And now we’ve got the same scenario unfolding right before our very eyes, and this time the target isn’t Ken Lay or Jeff Skilling at Enron. It’s Donald Trump. And the people going by the wayside are not from Merrill Lynch and the Nigerian barge case. They are Michael Flynn and Michael Cohen and anybody else they can ensnare.
Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, are you kidding me? Russian collusion, tampering with the votes in the 2016 election and we’re now down to getting rid of a president because of payments to silence a porn star? When in 1998 we were told how silly this is, it’s just sex?