RUSH: Now, let me go back to another point I want to make about Mueller. I watched it again when I got home last night without the presence of time pressure.
I was watching Mueller at 11 o’clock yesterday — and, I’ve gotta watch it, digest it, do a whole bunch of stuff to get ready to talk about it an hour later. I went home yesterday; I looked at it without any kind of pressure attached to it. Obviously, I had a little more time to start-stop it, replay various things that caused red flags, and, basically, absorb it. When I did that, I could not get over how many things Mueller said that just sounded weird and bizarre, legally. For instance — and everybody knows this because it’s been trumpeted out there ever since this happened.
Mueller said (and he gave the impression) that the only reason he didn’t indict Trump is because he can’t indict a sitting president because of the Office of Legal Counsel guidelines — which, again, were written in 1979 and say you cannot indict a sitting president. Let me tell you the reason for that. Not to get sidetracked here, but the reason you can’t is, if you can indict a sitting president, all you would need is a renegade lawyer from the opposition party filing a lawsuit! Or filing any kind of indictment. You could stop the president cold. You could shut him down.
This is the reason for it, and because there’s a constitutional remedy for an out-of-control president called impeachment. So it’s not because we have a king. It’s not because we have somebody who’s above the law. You can’t even indict and seal it for after he leaves office. If you want to take legal action, you gotta wait ’til he’s out of office or you have to impeach. But it’s not because we treat the president as a king. A lot of people are making the mistaken assumption that the Office of Legal Counsel says you can’t indict a president ’cause you can’t indict a king.
It’s not that.
Well, what the hell are they doing? They’re trying to turn the legal system into a political weapon to stop Trump and to get rid of him. Now, back to what Mueller said. He said he didn’t indict Trump because you cannot indict a sitting president because of the OLC guidelines, and because it would be unconstitutional. He left the impression (impression), “If I coulda, I woulda. If I coulda creamed this guy, I woulda done. But I can’t! I can’t! The guidelines! The Constitution!” And yet? And yet Mueller left it up to the attorney general to determine whether there had been obstruction of justice.
Remember, Mueller would not come to a conclusion in the report. He claimed there was no collusion. But obstruction, he would not come to a conclusion on. He left it up to Barr. Well, now, wait a minute. Wouldn’t Barr be under the same OLC guidelines and constitutional restraints? If Mueller can’t indict a sitting president, how the hell could the attorney general? So why leave it up to Barr? In the report, it’s clearly stated (summarized), “We make no finding here on obstruction.”
But the point was made, “We’re not sayin’ the president didn’t do it. We’re just saying that the evidence is inconclusive and insufficient and what have you. We’re leaving it up to the attorney general.” So the attorney general looks at it and says, “I see no evidence of obstruction here,” and we’re off and running. Well, why leave it up to anybody if you can’t anyway? Also, as we noted yesterday, Mueller said that it would not be fair — fairness was a big deal to Robert J. Mueller III. He said it would not be fair to indict Trump since Trump couldn’t have a trial.
Trump would not be able to take the occasion of a trial to prove his innocence or to establish his innocence and refute the charges. So it wouldn’t be fair. (impression) “It wouldn’t be fair to him! Even if I could, I wouldn’t, because he wouldn’t have a trial, wouldn’t have a chance to refute the charges.” But wait. Mueller indicted a bunch of Russians knowing they would never have a trial. In fact, that’s why he indicted ’em. The Russian troll farms that he indicted? He knew that they were never gonna come to court. He knew that Putin would never extradite them.
He indicts these guys; he doesn’t care whether they are treated fairly. Robert J. Mueller III is perfectly fine with everybody thinking the Russians did it. “Go ahead! The Russians did it. I indicted ’em; they’re guilty.” But, Mr. Mueller, they’re not gonna get their day in court because the Russians aren’t gonna extradite them. My point is, it didn’t stop him from indicting the Russians, this so-called fairness business. He couldn’t have cared less whether they got their day in court.
He wanted to make sure everybody knew the Russians were innocent until proven guilty, but he said practically the opposite about the president of the United States! When it comes to the president of the United States, he said, “Just because we haven’t found any evidence that we can indict doesn’t mean the president didn’t do it.” And that’s where he clearly stood the presumption of innocence on its head and took it away from Donald Trump while anointing the Russians with it.
I’ll tell you, Trump must be a stable genius. He’s able to collude with the Russians, then prevent the FBI and Robert Mueller from investigating him and finding out about it. Mueller and his 19 lawyers and 50 FBI agents and 500 witnesses could not find a single crime, and yet they are convinced that Trump did it. In fact, I don’t even think this is the Mueller report. This is the Weissmann dossier. It’s what we ought to call this damn thing.
Also, yesterday I made a point of pointing out, ladies and gentlemen, that the media was gonna run with this disparity between Barr and Mueller over why Mueller didn’t indict. Grab sound bite number 3. This is the attorney general under oath, folks. He’s at the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 1st. Here is a portion of his testimony under oath.
BARR: Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting in response to our questioning that he emphatically was not saying that but for the OLC opinion, he would have found obstruction. He said that in the future the facts of a case against a president might be such that a special counsel would recommend abandoning the OLC opinion, but this is not such a case.
And Barr says that Mueller said three different times zip, zero, nada, had nothing to do with it. The Office of Legal Counsel guidelines on not indicting the president had nothing to do with the fact that I find no evidence to charge obstruction. But to add to that, Barr says that Mueller told him and his people that there may be a case someday where the president is in such gross violation of the law that you have to ignore the OLC guidelines and go ahead and indict, because it’s so outrageous. But that’s not the case here with President Trump.
So that’s Barr. Said it twice. Yesterday Mueller shows up and contradicts that as bigly, as largely as can be disagreed with and did so — this is what I think is Mueller going rogue. He contradicted Barr as big as you can. He went out and said, “The only reason we didn’t indict, the only reason is because of the OLC guidelines. If the president didn’t do it, we would have said so.”
So somebody here is lying and this is not a small lie. It’s not a misunderstanding lie. This is a huge disagreement. And Barr’s out there in Alaska while this is all happening? This was a political press conference yesterday. We all know what this was.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, let’s move on to… Oh, two sound bites before we get to impeachment. I want to just make the case, illustrate the case I made yesterday. You have Mueller and Barr now saying two totally different things about why Mueller chose not to indict or not to charge Trump with obstruction crimes. As we know now, Mueller is saying (impression), “Well, the only reason is the Office of Legal Counsel guidelines say I can’t.” But William Barr said that Mueller said that had nothing to do with his decision.
This is a dramatic variance here. One of these two people is lying big time, and Barr has witnesses. Rosenstein was in the room with him, and some of his other aides were in the room when Mueller came in to do the preliminary discussion before the report was released. Barr testified to this under oath. Mueller didn’t take any questions yesterday, and we now understand why. He chose to do this when the attorney general was out of town. I don’t know if any reporters were trying to get hold of Rosenstein or anybody else that was with Barr to ask for their interpretation of what Mueller said.
Probably not, because they don’t want the truth here! They don’t. They want the presumption to be that Barr is lying because Barr is running the investigation of the investigation, and so when Mueller came out yesterday and essentially said (without saying it) that “the attorney general is lying through his teeth about what I said in my report, or about what I told him…” I want you to listen. We put together a montage here of Drive-By Media people and Democrats viciously attacking Barr now.
BROOKE BALDWIN: Do Mueller’s words not ding the AG’s credibility?
ELIE HONIG: Bill Barr’s credibility has already been damaged, and I think it took another serious blow.
FRANK FIGLIUZZI: I don’t know how he ever again stands up at a podium before the American people and says anything with credibility.
DAN ABRAMS: There’s no way to reconcile what Barr is saying with what Mueller’s saying.
ALISYN CAMEROTA: … the shame of how Bill Barr misrepresented…
NANCY PELOSI: …misrepresentations under oath by the attorney general…
STEPHANIE CUTTER: The problem with Barr is he has lied.
ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Barr lied.
ARI MELBER: Barr was less than accurate.
ERIC SWALWELL: I see him as a front-door obstructer.
MARK WARNER: I think he ought to resign.
RUSH: So that’s about the guy that is running the investigation into the investigation. So Mueller comes out and gives a completely different version of the story. Again, here’s Barr under oath (this is sound bite number 3) at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 1st. So this is 29, 28 days ago.
BARR: Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting in response to our questioning that he emphatically was not saying that but for the OLC opinion, he would have found obstruction. He said that in the future, the facts of the case against a president might be such that a special counsel would recommend abandoning the OLC opinion, but this is not such a case.
RUSH: So answer a question. Why would Barr lie about this knowing that Mueller could tell anybody at any time that he was lying? Which is what Mueller did yesterday. But you notice that the Drive-Bys and the Democrats automatically decide that it is Barr who is lying, without even asking him about it! Even though he wasn’t available yesterday, they were not even waiting to ask. Without waiting to inquire with somebody at the Department of Justice, they just assumed, because it’s a continuation of the fake news story and narrative that they want.
Now, what we don’t know is how far in the race Barr and his investigators are. But we know that this investigation has been going on longer than Barr talked about it because we know that Mr. Durham, the attorney hired, has been up and running for a couple of months now in advance of when Barr announced that this was gonna happen. We also had the inspector general out there whose report is due… Well, it was gonna be either this month or next, so now it’s obviously gonna be sometime in June. Okay. So we’re in a race.
Do the coup people get exposed first? That’s what we’re up against. These people yesterday — with the assistance of the Mr. Boy Scout, Mr. Integrity, Mr. Honorable, Robert Mueller — have now succeeded in doing it. They think they’ve succeeded in destroying William Barr. Look at what they do. Destroy Trump! Destroy whoever! Destroy George W. Bush! Doesn’t matter! Destroy whoever they have to destroy! They cannot win by advancing their policy ideas! They cannot win by defining what they want to do for the country and getting a majority to go along with them.
They have to destroy, and now they are trying to criminalize their political opposition! And they are weaponizing the Department of Justice to do it — and they have co-opted, now, the Drive-By Media, which has become just another weapon in their arsenal. So that’s the race that we’re in, and we’re gonna have to win this race. This race against the people that have run this coup is going to have to be won by us. They are going to have to be exposed — and not just exposed. There are going to have to be various events where these people are held accountable.
If that’s indictments? I hope it is. If it’s trials? I hope it is. Because there are so many people who have so much to explain. There are so many people caught up in this, and it’s a bottom-line fact that they don’t have a shred of evidence to support what their primary assertion is. This is a thing that continues to gnaw away at me. There is no evidence of any of this collusion which is what got us all of this started. There’s not a shred of it — and that’s why I say that what Mueller did was not an investigation; it was a hunt!
The big question that Mueller didn’t answer and the reason he didn’t take questions yesterday, “Well, when did you know there was no collusion? Did you know before the midterm elections? And, if so, why did you not say so before the midterm elections?” Well, everybody knows he knew it before the midterm elections, but he doesn’t want to go on the record. Don’t have to answer that question.
The answer to that question will tell everybody what they need to know. We can already answer it: There was no collusion, and it was known by everybody at the get-go because they had to manufacture it. They manufactured the appearance of collusion with that fake dossier. And that is all they ever had.
The report’s out, the report doesn’t say anything! The report is being contradicted by an eight-minute statement by Mueller who said nothing other than what’s in the report! It is the most astounding thing. The report does exonerate Trump on collusion, and yet look. Everybody is behaving and proceeding today as though the report says the exact opposite. That Trump did it. “We just can’t prove it because of these stupid guidelines.”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, CNN right now is running what they’re continuing to say is “breaking news.” I guess Barr has granted an interview to CBS This Morning, and in this clip that they are playing. They’re quoting Barr as saying, “Mueller could have reached a decision on obstruction.” Remember, Mueller said yesterday, “Nah, we couldn’t decide on obstruction because the guidelines say we can’t indict anyway, so we didn’t reach a decision on obstruction. If we could have exonerated, we would have.”
So Barr is saying, “No, no, no! He could have reached a decision on obstruction. There was nothing stopping him from reaching a decision on obstruction.” I knew this was gonna happen. We’ve got these two guys who are saying now different things, and I don’t know where this is gonna go, because Mueller’s making it clear he doesn’t want to say another word about this to anybody, and he’s really made it clear that he doesn’t want to answer any questions about this. But Barr still has a microphone. He still has a podium. He still has the ability to go out and say what he wants to say.
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