RUSH: I want to get to the McCabe sound bite from CNN. This is crucial. Now, for many of you who’ve been regular listeners it’s gonna be old hat, but that’s what I mean. It’s gonna take some time today to revisit all this because this is what’s been brought back to life now with the announcement that there is a criminal investigation of the investigation.

The beginning of that investigation is still something that we don’t know, folks. We don’t know actually when it began. We have a pretty good idea. We know why it was begun. It was begun to stop Trump from being elected, and then it changed into a coup to prevent him from being inaugurated. There was a three-month period — well, a two-month period, December, January, that they were in full speed motion trying to undermine his election. They didn’t have ever much of a chance, but one of the objectives was to prevent him from being inaugurated.

Well, they failed. And after he’s inaugurated, then they’re full-fledged into getting him thrown out of office, 25th Amendment, emoluments clause, unfit, Russian conspiracy, you name it. They weren’t gonna wait for the 2020 election. They went after the Electoral College; they went after a number of things.

Now, the beginnings of this, we don’t literally know the moment or how. But they are lying about what they claim began it. And when Andrew McCabe was on CNN today to revisit this, I was stunned. I was really shocked that he told this story, because it has been debunked. It has been thoroughly exposed as a lie. It has been shown to be entirely manufactured to at least half of the people of this country.

Now, I have to admit that the people watching CNN hearing McCabe tell this story today, more than likely the three to four hundred thousand people watching don’t know the truth. So here’s McCabe explaining what happened, and I’m going to explain the lie to you afterwards.

He’s talking with Jim Sciutto, who is an activist participant in all this, not just a media guy. And he said to McCabe, the fired former deputy FBI director, “Is it possible, Andy, that there are legitimate questions about how the investigation began?” So all of a sudden the attorney general’s got a criminal investigation going on. So CNN, they’ve lost control of the news cycle. “Is it possible, Andy?” Now, granted it’s a setup question and he’s prepared to hit it, but, “Is it possible, Andy, that laws are broken? Is it possible, Andy, that there are legitimate questions about this?”

MCCABE: We all knew that the Russians had been attacking our cyber infrastructure since as early as the fall of 2014. We knew that they had focused those attacks on the DNC. We knew that they had stolen the DNC emails. We knew that they weaponized that material during the convention against Hillary Clinton.

And then we found out that before that weaponization was made public, an individual associated with the campaign, George Papadopoulos, who none of us knew anything about prior to that point, told a foreign diplomat before it was public knowledge that the Russians had reached out to the campaign and offered that assistance.

That is incredibly serious to the organization, the FBI, that has as part of its mission constantly investigating the Russians and their efforts to undermine our democracy. So when that information came to our attention, we made the obvious and rational decision to investigate whether or not anyone affiliated with the campaign was working in concert with the Russians.

RUSH: All of that is a lie. And I’m being charitable. All of this is a lie. Now, let’s start with the Papadopoulos stuff here. “We had stolen the DNC emails.” The Russians didn’t steal any DNC emails. This is a combination of Hillary emails and Podesta emails. We don’t know that the Russians hacked the DNC server. We don’t even have the server. It’s in Ukraine. CrowdStrike is the only source for that. The FBI never examined it. They don’t know who got those emails.

Podesta’s emails were the result of Podesta falling for a phishing attack. The Russians had nothing to do with it. But this Papadopoulos story is entirely made up. And McCabe knows it. And the fact that they are continuing to tell this story is quite interesting to me. Papadopoulos was a junior foreign policy adviser in the Trump campaign. He had not been there very long. Trump had never even met him.

He had been hired – and this is not to put down Papadopoulos — he had been hired because Trump’s early stage campaign didn’t have any foreign policy people on it. The media, “Well, who is your foreign policy adviser?” So they ran around and they hired a bunch of people to fill positions.

Stefan Halper, who is a major player in this, a major FBI spy, Cambridge, U.K., calls Papadopoulos and offers him some money and a plane ticket to come present a talk on energy to some group in London. Papadopoulos shows up. I’m giving you the CliffsNotes version. Papadopoulos shows up. He’s introduced to two people. He’s introduced to Halper. He’s introduced to a guy named Joseph Mifsud.

Both of them tell Papadopoulos, they ask him, they tell him, “Are you aware the Russians have a bunch of Hillary Clinton emails?” Papadopoulos didn’t know it. Nobody in the Trump campaign knew it. Nobody to this day knows whether the Russians had any Hillary Clinton emails. But they put the thought in Papadopoulos’ head.

Then they schedule a meeting with him and the former Australian ambassador, Alexander Downer, at a bar in London. Before Papadopoulos goes to the bar to meet Downer, Halper reminds him, remember those emails, George, remember Russia’s got a bunch of Hillary Clinton emails. So Papadopoulos tells Downer. Downer, who already knew the plan, then called the FBI, who set up the entire thing. Downer calls the FBI, “Hey, I got a Trump guy here telling me that they know the Russians have a bunch of Hillary emails.”

It was a gigantic setup. Papadopoulos knew nothing until the FBI agents told him. Then they set up a meeting where he would tell the ambassador. This is the CliffsNotes version. And I’m telling you it’s an outright lie that the FBI didn’t know anything about it. We heard this, we panicked, we thought we better investigate. None of this is true. They planted that idea in Papadopoulos’ head, and then when he started telling people about it, they acted like they had no knowledge of it. I’m out of time. But this investigation is filled with similar type occurrences.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah. And what the Mueller investigators tried to do to Papadopoulos and his fiancée, you probably won’t believe that, either.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

I had to hurry through this Papadopoulos thing. I want to go back to this because it really is key. Because what we are learning, I think, you know, people say, “Rush, why today, why the opening of an official criminal investigation?”

Well, there’s a bunch of possible reasons. Barr and Durham have been traveling. They just got back from Italy. Italy is an epicenter of this. I’ll have the details for you in a second. But one of the figures I mentioned, Joseph Mifsud, he’s disappeared. Nobody can find him. They may, however, have gotten hold of a couple his BlackBerry’s.

Now, the Mueller people have tried to pass Mifsud off as a Russian agent in his involvements with Papadopoulos. He’s not a Russian agent. He’s an FBI agent as is Stefan Halper, as was Alexander Downer. These people are all… call ’em agents or spies or embeds of the FBI.

Now, let me review the Papadopoulos thing because, folks, this story, if I can make this understandable, is how they did almost everything in this investigation. It’s how they lied to the FISA judge or court to get warrants to spy. I think — I’m getting ahead of myself — to answer the question, why now? I think that the Horowitz IG investigation — remember, the inspector general cannot charge anything. All he can do is make recommendations. All he can do is ferret out misconduct and report it.

I think Barr and Durham know what’s in that report. I think they see criminal behavior in the IG report. Remember, the IG report’s about FISA and how the system was abused to get warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. I think they went to Italy. I think they’ve uncovered a lot about Mifsud. The Papadopoulos story — and again, I’m gonna stick to the CliffsNotes version of this. It’s much more intricate and detailed, but I just don’t have the time to get this in and everything else I want to try to impart today.

I don’t mean to be insulting Papadopoulos with any of this. I don’t mean to be leaving things out on purpose. I just want to get to the nub of it. Papadopoulos was a new hire. He did not have power or prominence in the Trump campaign. He was a foreign policy adviser. It was early on. He had not been there long enough to be a principal. It’s key! The way the FBI and Stefan Halper looked at it, they thought they had a guy they could manipulate and mold. They thought they could dazzle this guy, young, new to the presidential campaign, they thought they could run a trick on him and make him feel really important, make him feel special, in this way they could manipulate him.

So Halper offers him some money and a plane ticket to come make a speech to some august group in London. He was an energy specialist, Papadopoulos was, and they asked him to come make a speech on the latest discoveries and activities he had engaged in in the energy sector. So he accepted it. When he gets to London, they wine and dine the guy. They set him up with a honeypot who had ties to Russia or could be made to look as though she did. And they plant a story with him.

They think he’s going to be impressed as hell to be meeting people from MI5, from Cambridge University. They think Papadopoulos’s head’s gonna swell. They think he’s gonna be just thinking he has arrived, he has hit the big time! And they think he’s the kind of guy, if they plant information, he’d love to go around bragging about it to try to impress people with his importance and status. I don’t mean to be insulting him here. This was the trick that was played on him.

So they get him to London. Stefan Halper, who has a home in Virginia, the guy is thick as thieves with the FBI. But he’s a Cambridge professor, maybe he’s dabbled a bit at Oxford as well. His best friend was the guy that ran MI6, Richard Dearlove. They were faculty members together. They’re thick as thieves with the FBI on this and other things.

So Papadopoulos is told by Halper and by Mifsud, M-i-f-s-u-d, he might pronounce it Mifsud, but we all say Joseph Mifsud. He was told, “George, you know the Russians have a bunch of Hillary Clinton emails?” He’s supposed to be impressed and dazzled, thinks he’s been let in on a big secret. They want him to tell — it’s like you plant gossip with somebody and you want them to spread the word by telling them not to say a word.

So they tell Papadopoulos about all these Hillary Clinton emails the Russians have. He doesn’t know they’re working with the FBI. He doesn’t know any of this. They’re just people that invited him to come make a speech and paid him to do it. They’re taking him to dinner, they’re wining and dining, he thinks he’s important, he’s in the Trump campaign, he’s an energy expert.

Then they set him up some days later to have drinks, adult beverages at a bar in London with somebody named Alexander Downer, happens to be another FBI informant, an ambassador from Australia. Think establishment member, think elitist, think member of the Washington elites. Diplomatic core, State Department.

So they go have drinks, and before he goes, Halper reminds him, “Remember, George, remember those e-mails the Russians have, remember that, right?” I’m paraphrasing. The point is that they put the notion in his head again before he goes and meets. During the adult beverages at the bar in London he happens to mention to Downer along the lines of, “Hey, look what I know. You know, I’m in your league. I know things too, you know. I’m not just some junior guy who doesn’t know things.”

So he tells Downer. What does Downer do? Downer calls the FBI says, “Hey, I just met with this guy from the Trump campaign, and he’s going on and on and on about how the Trump campaign’s well aware that the Russians have the Hillary Clinton emails.” Now, Downer knows Halper, Downer know he’s part of the setup!

So Downer calls the FBI and reports as though they don’t know it, but this was the closing of the loop! Papadopoulos had just closed the loop by making the phone call that would allow the FBI to act like they had no knowledge of it. And now McCabe’s on CNN today saying this is when the investigation began. And it’s not! This was in the July-August time frame of 2016. This began in 2015.

Again, this is the CliffsNotes version of this. But it’s how they did the FISA warrant. What would happen is that somebody in the FBI would call somebody at the New York Times or Washington Post, give them a bit of information about Trump and Russia colluding and all that. The Times would run the story. And then when the FBI goes up, Comey and whoever, Rosenstein, to apply for the FISA warrant, guess what are the sources? The media. They say, “Look, Judge, even the media knows about this.” Well, the only way the media knew about it is because they told the media.

They ran these double loops throughout this investigation. They planted information in the minds of all kinds of people who then went and spread the information. Then the FBI supposedly heard about the information that they had planted, and they used it as supplemental evidence to support their premise. None of it was real. All of this has been orchestrated. And the route for this, for all of this stuff from the U.K., obviously went to John Brennan at the CIA, and then he gave it to the FBI.

They had plausible deniability set up. This whole thing is an intricately written and orchestrated play. And all of the actors are following the script unaware that there is a script. And as the actors, who don’t know they’re actors — they think they’re legitimate players — as they follow the script that they don’t know has been written, the FBI is then permitted to build a case based on the fruits of their investigation when there isn’t an investigation because there’s never been a crime.

There wasn’t any collusion or anything of the sort. Everything that’s in the Mueller report, everything that ends up being disseminated publicly was stuff that was made to happen, that was orchestrated by who? Obama, Brennan, Clapper, McCabe, Comey. They’re all in on this. The meeting at the White House on January 6th, it was set up in a meeting with Obama. Clapper and Comey and a couple others are gonna go meet with the president-elect on January 6th.

After the meeting is over Comey says, “Can I have a couple minutes with you, Mr. President?” “Sure.” Clapper and his other participants leave the room, and Comey, “Mr. President, I know you don’t want to meet with the intelligence community, but I want to try to convince you you need to. I want to show you something that’s out there that you need to know about, and you wouldn’t know this if you don’t meet with these people,” and he presented to him the golden showers story from the Steele dossier. This is where Trump supposedly had hired some prostitutes to urinate on a bed in Moscow that Obama and his wife had slept in.

Trump says, this is silly! I didn’t do that! This is nuts! Comey says, I know, but this is what you gotta know. So Comey leaves. And according to his own testimony he called Clapper. He said, “Mission accomplished.” Clapper called CNN. “Mission accomplished, the president knows. You can run with it.”

CNN runs with the story, the golden showers. It’s the first aspect of the Steele dossier that legitimately appears in the Drive-By Media. CNN got a Pulitzer for this story that was set up to happen in the Obama Oval Office! It was an orchestrated script again. They had to get the dossier in the news. They wanted it to appear in the news. The way you make news is tell the president about it.

So Comey tells Trump, meeting is over, Comey leaves, calls Clapper, “Mission accomplished,” Clapper calls CNN, who then hires him, by the way, as an ongoing analyst and expert. CNN’s off and running. Then BuzzFeed publishes the whole dossier even though none of it to this day’s ever been corroborated because it was nothing more than Hillary Clinton bought and paid for oppo research.

Look. You know all this because we’ve talked about it for two years. This is what is now going to surface in an official criminal investigation. This is the stuff that Comey and Obama and McCabe, all these people thought would forever be relegated to, quote, unquote, wacko conservative media. It would never go mainstream. But it has now, and it’s going to break out.

The Papadopoulos story as the reason for the investigation is McCabe’s biggest lie, and that’s saying something. And we haven’t touched yet on Strzok Smirk and Lisa Page. And I haven’t gotten to the story here about how Michael Flynn was totally set up by the same people, Stefan Halper and others in the FBI.

It is outrageous what has happened to Michael Flynn. When Mueller’s people, when it was time to interview Papadopoulos, they went to his fiancee, and they said, “You better drop this guy. He’s a toad. This guy’s deadweight. This guy’s going nowhere. This guy’s a bad actor, you need to get away from this guy fast.” What was the point of that? They want chaos in Papadopoulos’ life. They wanted a story that even his fiancee left him because she couldn’t stand to be around somebody that had something to do with collusion with the Russians.

They were doing everything they could to diminish the guy, to lie about him, and now here’s McCabe to this day even though this has been blown to smithereens, everybody that’s been paying any attention to this knows that McCabe was lying through his teeth today and yet there he is on CNN doing so.

This is why I say they are scurrying. This is why I say they’re trying to keep this and hold this together. This is why they’re afraid that they’re losing the monopoly of the news cycle.