RUSH: Grab audio sound bite number 2. This is President Trump. He was on with Hannity last night on the phone. By the way, Hannity was gonna use some audio clips of me last night from yesterday’s sterling show, and Trump went on for so long that Hannity didn’t have time to use ’em. So Hannity could have had two presidents on last night, but Trump didn’t give him time to get me in there. But Trump did say some interesting things.
Of course, I’m just kidding, folks.
I’m having a little fun here, after what we’re faced with here daily.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is President Trump last night explaining why he hasn’t declassified all of the FISA documents and all the investigation documents to let everybody know everything that has been memorialized on paper about this investigation.
THE PRESIDENT: I do. I have plans to declassify and release. I have plans to absolutely release. But I have some very talented people working for me, lawyers, and they really didn’t want me to do it early on. I’m glad I didn’t do it. We got a great result without having to do it. But we will. One of the reasons that my lawyers didn’t want me to do it, is they said if I do it, they’ll call it a form of obstruction. You know, in politics you always hear “transparency.” It would make it transparent, and then they’d call it obstruction, knowing the people we’re dealing with. So, frankly, I thought it would be better if we held it to the end. No, but at the right time we will be absolutely releasing it.
RUSH: I’m gonna tell you what. The temptation, I’m sure, to declassify this stuff has been overwhelming — and he’s right about something. They would have called it obstruction, and it doesn’t matter that it would not have been. No way would declassifying that be anything but informative. It would further the investigation along. It would help people to better understand what happened. But I’ll guaran-damn-tee you that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and all of these reprobate cable networks… Trump’s exactly right.
They’d be harping on the fact that it was nothing but obstruction, and of course, a narrative would be created, and that’s all that anybody would dealing with. (impression) “Mr. President! Mr. President! Did you obstruct justice by declassifying…?” And as much as we wanted that stuff declassified, it was probably a wise call. But the time to do it is now. The time to do it is now. Move on? No. Don’t move on. Don’t be passive. Declassify all this stuff. Move on to audio sound bite number 4. This is Rand Paul this morning on Fox & Friends. Brian Kilmeade: “What can you tell us about the lead that you got?” Rand Paul is telling everybody that a high-level source told him that John Brennan was behind the dissemination of the dossier.
PAUL: My source tells me that the intelligence community, Obama’s intelligence community — Brennan, Clapper, Comey. They were frustrated because they had this Russian dossier, but nobody believes it was like real. Nobody would publish it because it was so scandalous, unverifiable, and likely fiction. So finally, they decided, “Well, what we have to do is attach this fake dossier to an intelligence report.” What they do is they staple to the report the Russian dossier. So now Obama’s officially seeing it and then also it’s given to Trump at this point. But realize that this is a big circle. So when John McCain is given the dossier, it’s given to him by people who may have leaked it from our government to John McCain so John McCain can give it back to the FBI.
RUSH: It’s obvious how this all happened! This started as political opposition research from the Hillary Clinton campaign with the assistance of Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele, the law firm Perkins Coie. They’re all in on this, complete with Obama and Brennan and Comey and Clapper and Susan Rice and Sally Yates. These people are all in on this from the get-go, ladies and gentlemen. Samantha Power. They’re all in on it.
I have no doubt that they were desperate to get this dossier into the public domain as an official intelligence document, and they succeeded in doing this. It is impossible Barack Obama did not know about this. These people would have done this to impress Obama and to impress Hillary. All of this was about Hillary Clinton winning and then all of these people jockeying for positions in her administration. There would have been a parade in and out of her office.
“Mrs. Clinton, my name is John Brennan. I got you elected. I’m responsible for that dossier being put in the right hands so that everybody found out what a reprobate Trump was.” Comey’d be doing the same thing. McCabe would be doing the same thing. Strzok Smirk and Lisa Page. They would have all been in a line waiting to get into Hillary Clinton’s office to make the case why they should be getting top jobs. It was to get her elected, it was to get them positions of influence, it was to punish Trump, it was to send Trump packing.
The whole thing backfired on ’em, and now the Mueller investigation comes along, I’m convinced, as a cover-up of everything these people did. I’m not surprised for a moment that Brennan is the ringleader of this! He was the director of the CIA for Barack Hussein Obama, and he once voted for the Communist Party candidate for president in this country. He has an affinity for communists. But he was the CIA director!
There’s none of this that he didn’t know, and Rand Paul is saying that he, more than likely, was the impetus and the ringleader. You know, on a flowchart, Brennan would be at the top right under Obama — well, under Obama and Hillary. Clapper would be underneath Brennan. Clapper was the Director of National Intelligence, which is a presidential executive branch office. The CIA is technically in the executive branch.
But it’s independent and outside the West Wing, the executive office of the president. But Clapper’s in the executive office of the president. The same thing with director of Homeland Security, whoever. But there’s no question that Brennan was in on this and there’s no question, if you go back throughout these entire two years, it was John Brennan who — foremost among all of these conspirators — was speaking with the greatest certainty that Trump had colluded.
He was speaking with the greatest confidence, the greatest certainty, the greatest assuredness that Trump had indeed colluded. In addition to that, he was tweeting out what a reprobate Donald Trump is, what a moral failure Donald Trump is, what an embarrassment to humanity Donald Trump is, and how all of Trump’s failings are gonna come home to roost and he’s gonna be sent packing because the American people don’t knowingly elect reprobates like Trump.
This was Brennan for two years. Now, all of a sudden, none of it’s true. So I don’t know if somebody really sandbagged Brennan; I don’t know if somebody really, really led him down the path or if he knew full well that they never had any collusion but was simply trying to make the case using allies in the media. I choose the latter. The CIA director being lied to for two years and getting away with it?
The CIA director being bamboozled and fooled for two years by sources lying to him, sources he trusted, sources he believed — and he’s going out on national TV? No. They thought they were gonna pull this off, folks. They thought they were gonna get this done. I’ll guarantee you what they’re all talking to themselves about right now is, “What the hell happened to Mueller?” In the private of their offices, homes, closets, wherever they hang out, I’ll guarantee you they’re asking, “What the hell happened to Mueller?
“What the hell happened to Weissmann?” Because it is abundantly clear that they were convinced that whether it happened or not, there was gonna be the allegation that Trump had colluded with Russia. Somehow! Even if it meant accepting a smoothie from Putin at a G8 meeting, there was gonna be something. They were dead certain. There was dead certain there was gonna be some kind of collusion — and zilch, zero, nada?
I guarantee you they were blindsided and shocked, because these are the kind of people who are convinced that they can make whatever they want happen. Whether it’s legal, illegal, shady, aboveboard, whatever, they were going to get rid of Donald Trump. Go back, revive your own memory. All these people in the media — the New York Times, CNN, everybody that was a guest, every reporter. They spoke with the maximum amount of certainty that you could hear. It was a foregone conclusion for two years that Trump was gone.
Now Clapper’s out there (muttering), “Well, I must have had bad information, I… Oh, I don’t know. Uh, uh, I…” BS. These people just failed. All of the power that they think they’ve got, and all the allies and friends, say, in media and elsewhere that they think they’ve got, they just were unable to pull this off. Because somewhere, somewhere someone decided they’re not gonna lie. After two years of lies from virtually everybody in the mainstream media, the FBI leadership, the counterintelligence apparatus of this country…
Everybody was lying about collusion with Russia and Trump multiple times a day. Somebody somewhere at some point in this decided they weren’t gonna lie, and that blew this whole thing up. All they would have had to do is include a couple of examples, just a couple — and they could have weak, lame, whatever. Just a couple examples of so-called collusion and that’s all it would have taken to move the ball forward. To give the Democrats justification for focusing on impeachment.
Just a couple of little lies!
Somebody was unwilling even to do that at some juncture in this whole thing.
Maybe Mueller. I don’t know.
But note now the New York Times’s latest hook. (summarized) “The report is 300 pages; Barr’s summary is four pages. It must mean Barr is lying. It must mean that Barr is suppressing the collusion news. There must be collusion. We need to see the whole report,” and you know what’s gonna happen when they see the whole report? They’re gonna get smacked upside the head again! They’re gonna get slapped in the face again with this! They’re like somebody… You put a sack of horse manure in front of them and they keep stepping in it, and they’re gonna keep stepping in it as long as they head down this particular pathway or sidewalk.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’m gonna play it again, folks. I’m gonna play the montage. It’s three minutes, three minutes that encapsulates all the lies that were told over two years. Yeah, we can summarize two years in three minutes. Now, look at this. I’m gonna hold this up to the side camera. Do you see that? That is just the list of the names in this sound bite. The top half in bold is just the list of names. It would take me three minutes to read that to you. So I don’t have time to do that. Here is a montage of all the lies that we were told over a two-year period…
ROSANNA SCOTTO: (music) …bombshell allegations…
PHILLIP MENA: …a bombshell!
NANCY CORDES: …drop a bombshell.
DAVE BRIGGS: …bombshell…
JOHN AVLON: … the really bombshell revelation…
YASMIN VOSSOUGHIAN: …bombshell allegations…
AYMAN MOHYELDIN: …bombshell details…
DON LEMON: … what could be the biggest bombshell of them all.
NANCY PELOSI: (whispering) We saw cold, hard evidence of the Trump campaign — indeed, the Trump family — eagerly intending to collude.
DICK BLUMENTHAL: (rotunda noise) …colluding with the leader of a hostile power.
ADAM SCHIFF: (rotunda noise) I could certainly say with confidence that there is significant evidence of collusion.
ERIC SWALWELL: …collusion…
JERRY NADLER: …collusion…
BETO O’ROURKE: …collusion…
JIM SCIUTTO: …the golden shower allegation.
ERIN BURNETT: …Moscow prostitutes urinating…
DON LEMON: He brought up what he called, “the golden showers thing.”
CHRIS CILLIZZA: …the golden showers….
CHRISTINE ROMANS: These golden shower allegations…
ALEX MARQUARDT: The golden shower allegation…
JEFFREY TOOBIN: This golden showers claim…
NATASHA BERTRAND: …allegations that he had prostitutes pee on a bed.
RANDI KAYE: …Russians had a so-called “pee tape” of prostitutes, the golden showers thing.
JIM SCIUTTO: (music) Are the walls closing in?
BOB MENENDEZ: (rotunda noise) It seems to me that the walls are closing in on the president.
LAURENCE TRIBE: He feels the walls closing in!
DON LEMON: The walls are closing in.
MATT VISER: The walls sort of closing in.
MARA GAY: The walls are closing in.
NICOLLE WALLACE: It feels like the walls are closing in.
STEVE SCHMIDT: He sees the walls closing in.
DAVID AXELROD: Those walls are closing in on him.
DICK BLUMENTHAL: The walls are closing in on Donald Trump and his inner circle.
NEERA TANDEN: This is a scandal of 15 on a 1-to-10 level.
JOHN DEAN: This is a level that Richard Nixon never went to.
CARL BERNSTEIN: Today, I read the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, and everybody should go read Article 2 of it and how similar it is to what we’ve seen Trump do here.
DICK BLUMENTHAL: It is a break-the-glass moment.
WOLF BLITZER: …a slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre.
SHEPARD SMITH: …a break-the-glass moment.
CARL BERNSTEIN: …a slow-motion Saturday Night (crosstalk) Massacre.
HEIDI PRZYBYLA: …a break-the-glass option.
JAMES CLAPPER: …slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: A break-glass scenario in case there’s a Nixon-era Saturday Night Massacre.
JAKE TAPPER: We are all going through a slow-motion, multi-monthed Saturday Night Massacre.
RACHEL MADDOW: Protests across the country! More than 900 are planned. Question as to whether or not this was the break-glass moment.
ERIN BURNETT: (sfx) …tonight, the push to impeach.
DAVID CICILLINE: …obstruction of justice.
PAUL BEGALA: Boy, this looks like obstruction.
WOLF BLITZER: …the level of obstruction of justice?
APRIL RYAN: There’s a constitutional crisis.
BROOKE BALDWIN: (background noise) … this could potentially be an impeachable offense.
MARK MAZZETTI: …which could lead to impeachment.
TOM STEYER: The Constitution gives us one solution, which is to impeach.
JACK QUINN: This is an impeachable offense.
ARTHEL NEVILLE: Will Democrats look to impeach the president?
CHUCK TODD: Let’s go to this issue of impeachment.
LARRY O’DONNELL: Donald Trump will be, must be impeached.
CARL BERNSTEIN: They are the kind of offenses, uhhh, that would call for impeachment.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: …may be grounds for impeachment.
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: …the prospect of impeachment.
TOM LLAMAS: The drumbeats from Democrats for possible impeachment get louder.
KIMBERLY ATKINS: If House members find impeachable offenses, it is not just the right thing to do. It’s their duty.
JOHN DEAN: The House is going to have little choice other than to start impeachment proceedings.
RUSH: Nothing. Absolutely nothing but bold-faced, 100% speculation, lies — but more importantly, hope. Three minutes of compressed hope in two years that this man, Donald Trump, is dispatched, and there wasn’t one moment of truth.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I’ll tell you somebody else who did he see suffering grand delusions is James Comey. James Comey said with Lester Holt on NBC that he is happy that this investigation proved that there was Russian collusion. This is one of the most unbelievable interpretations. Let’s see. What is it? James Comey’s big take-away, he told Lester Holt: “We were right that there was a massive effort to elect Trump and to defeat Hillary.”
Well, of course there was! It was the Trump campaign they were trying to defeat Hillary! But he’s saying, “We were right. There was a massive effort on the part of the Russians to help Trump!” They’re just making it up. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Here’s Comey. We’ve got three of these, and he’s with Lester Holt last night NBC Nightly News. Lester Holt: “Your tweet this weekend standing in the woods with the caption, ‘So many questions.’ What are your questions?”
COMEY: They’re all about the obstruction piece. Obviously, I want — and I think the American people should want — transparency on the so-called conspiracy piece. But the obstruction piece confuses me. I think both Director Mueller and Attorney General Barr are entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
RUSH: Uhhhh, okay. So he thinks that there was obstruction, even though Mueller didn’t name any, left it up to Barr. Barr looked at it and didn’t find any obstruction. But yet Comey’s maintaining there was. So Lester Holt says, “Well, look, I sat down with President Trump, and he said, ‘When I decided to just do it,’ talking about firing you, Comey, ‘I said to myself, I said, “This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.”‘ What do you think when you heard that?”
COMEY: I thought that’s potentially obstruction of justice. And I hope somebody is going to look at that. Again, the president appears to be saying, I don’t know what’s in his head, which is why I can’t reach the conclusion, what he appears to be saying is I got rid of this guy to shut down an investigation that threatened me.
RUSH: Now, folks, James Comey has benefited from all of his years in Washington as having an impeccable reputation for morality and intelligent. He’s played off of that, he has benefited from that, he has furthered it himself, he has done his best to cultivate that. But this is just asinine. I saw even on Fox News today they found some former FBI executive that was not in any way a part of the FBI leadership during this sordid period who was literally scratching his head saying, “I don’t know what James Comey is talking about here. It is not obstruction for the president of United States to fire anybody he wants. Furthermore, firing James Comey did not shut down the investigation.”
Comey actually says here: “I don’t know what’s in his head, which is why I can’t reach the conclusion, but what he appears to be saying is I got rid of this guy to shut down an investigation that threatened me.” He didn’t shut down an investigation. This firing of Comey did not affect the investigation. It didn’t slow it down. It didn’t detour it. It didn’t do anything to it. It just got rid of Comey.
And the reasons for getting rid of Comey, let’s not forget, Rod Rosenstein wrote a memo recommending that Comey be fired over his illegal activity during the press conference on July 5th of 2016 when he went out and pretended to be the attorney general. The one thing prosecutors never do, if you’re not gonna charge anybody, you do not talk about their potential crimes. It’s considered illegal to tar and feather and trash somebody that you’re not gonna charge. You just don’t do it, but that’s what he did.
He went out and he detailed every crime Hillary committed and then announced that they’re gonna exonerate her because she didn’t have any intent. The FBI director does not determine who gets charged and who doesn’t. He submits evidence to the Department of Justice, the attorney general. They take care of it in one of the U.S. attorney’s offices. The FBI director’s got nothing to do with this. He went out and he totally took over the role of Loretta Lynch, he violated department guidelines on listing the crimes while not charging her. Then we find out he exonerated her before he even interviewed her — well, Strzok Smirk interviewed her.
But Rosenstein recommended that Comey be fired. Trump wanted Comey fired because Comey was lying to Trump. Comey was telling Trump that Trump was not a target. Trump was the target. Trump wanted Comey to go public with this. “Look, if I’m not a target, tell everybody.” Comey wouldn’t do it.
But the president doesn’t need reasons to fire. He can fire anybody he wants. It did not deter the investigation, did not detour the investigation, didn’t stop the investigation, didn’t slow it down. Comey is so full of it, it’s almost incomprehensible to me why he would make a fool of himself suggesting that him being fired is the equivalent of obstruction because Trump was trying to stop the investigation. He didn’t.
One final bite. Lester Holt: “On the issue of whether you need an underlying crime to prove obstruction, is that a legal principle that you’ve always understood?”
COMEY: No, that’s part of my confusion. That’s just not been my experience as a prosecutor for decades. Every day in this country people are prosecuted for obstructing justice to avoid embarrassment, to avoid harm to their business, to avoid threats to their families, where there isn’t an underlying crime that they committed. And you wouldn’t want it any other way, because if you had to always prove the underlying crime, you would create incentives to obstruct, because people get away with both if they successfully stop an investigation.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I mentioned the John Crudele column earlier today, New York Post, and he writes of a New York Times story that ran in 2017, January 20th, the day of Trump’s inauguration. Headline: “Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides.”
Do you remember Trump running around talking about how his wires were tapped at Trump Tower and everybody was pooh-poohing this? This is what the New York Times story was about. It was true. It is why Trump moved all the campaign operations out of Trump Tower. They were wiretapping. The New York Times ran that story and then dropped it. They never followed up on it. Instead, deciding to pursue this mythical hoax of collusion for which they got a Pulitzer. They got a Pulitzer Prize, so did the Washington Post on a pack of lies.
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