RUSH: So the IG report shows that there was no coup against Donald Trump, right? That’s what some people are saying. Don’t believe that. The IG report confirms that there was. The IG report confirms that there is an ongoing coup to get rid of Donald Trump. Don’t be misled by what they first reported. They first reported that the IG could find no bias, no political bias in the investigation. That’s just because nobody he talked to admitted it.

We’re gonna go through everything of note that was found, and it confirms everything that we’ve told you. The people that were informants, the Stefan Halpers, all of these people, Mifsuds, they’re in this report, the FISA court abuses are legion in this report. Folks, virtually everything that you have heard me and maybe others explain about this is documented in this report. The only thing that the media can hang their hat on here is that opening report that there was no political bias.

Now, it’s gonna be necessary to try to overcome that with people because, remember when the Mueller report came out, what was the first thing said about it? That it found no collusion. That’s what people heard, and that was the end of it. They didn’t hang around for the details. The Democrats have spent all of this time – this is a very key point here — the Democrats have spent every day since the Mueller report coming out trying to tell people that it says something that it doesn’t. And that culminated today in two of the flimsiest articles of impeachment.

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RUSH: Now, I’m told that a lot of people don’t know what the FISA court is and so when people discuss the abuses of the FISA court, lying to the FISA court, people don’t know what — I reject that. You people that have been listening to this program for three years know exactly what the FISA court is, you know exactly how it was abused.

The one thing — well, it’s impossible to say the one thing. A big thing that this IG report confirms is that all they ever had was the Steele dossier. And that they knew all along it was unverified and uncorroborated, that it was made up. And they used it anyway.

Now, if there are people in light of that who want to run around and say there’s no proof of a coup in this, then they’re ignoring the basic facts of this and instead are relying on the inspector general saying that he couldn’t find any evidence of political bias. He didn’t say that. He said he couldn’t find any testimonial or other kind, meaning nobody copped to it, meaning nobody admitted it. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist. It just means nobody he interviewed or had the authority and power to interview admitted to it.

I think it would be useful to remind everybody here that after that aspect of the IG report was made public first, that there was an immediate response from John Durham who’s conducting the investigation of all of this for the Department of Justice and the attorney general. John Durham is conducting the only full and comprehensive investigation of this coup. He has impaneled a grand jury so he has the power to indict, and because there’s a grand jury the likelihood that there will be indictments is great.

And do not doubt me when I tell you that Durham’s statement has people freaking out in Washington. They’re hiding publicly under cover of the opening statement that no bias, no political bias could be found. And, by the way, I’m gonna give you an example of it that was stared right in the face by Horowitz, a guy who changed emails — Clinesmith is his name — changed emails and was texting people “vive la resistance.” You can’t find any political bias in that?

There was all kinds of it throughout. This thing is exactly what we thought that it was. Durham made clear in his statement that the inspector general report is not even close and that he disagrees strongly with the conclusion that there was a justified reason to open this investigation. This is highly unusual for this kind of thing to happen, for one government agency to issue a report and another government investigatory unit publicly, almost immediately, issue a statement disagreeing with it and contradicting it. That is a seminal occurrence you don’t see very much.

And I’m telling you that his statement, his claim that he disagrees — even though he respects Horowitz and all that yada yada, that he disagrees profoundly — with the conclusion that there was a justified reason to open this investigation and that there wasn’t any political bias. Durham has kind of shown some cards and the cards that he has shown has people worried. I’m telling you, there are media people and people like Comey and others in Washington — despite their public appearances — who are quaking over what is going to be found.

And you even have… I’m getting a little ahead here. In this IG report, Comey has acknowledged that he told Obama some of this. Now, we’ve always suspected that Obama was the tip of the iceberg on this thing. Obama was the tip, and from that everything flowed. So what’s the significance of Comey admitting that he told Obama? Because I’ll tell you, when it comes time to indict — when it comes time for the rubber to meet the road on this thing with the Durham investigation — Comey and McCabe and others are gonna be able to say:

“Hey, Obama was in charge! Obama told us! Obama… Obama knew,” because I guarantee you when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, we still have time for people to flip, and there’s gonna be some serious questions people asking themselves. “Do I want to go to jail to protect so-and-so? Do I want to go to jail? Do I want to spend the rest of my life in jail to protect X?” So Comey admitting that he told Obama is already laying down a potential defense that it was simply following orders.

They were all simply following orders, that Obama knew what was going on.

Now, let’s start with the Steele dossier because that’s where all of this starts, and the inspector general report buries it. I don’t mean hides it; I mean destroys it. People who have followed this — this entire hoax, this entire coup — very closely, which includes all of you. You remember that the FBI’s first application to spy on Carter Page was turned down by the FISA court, the foreign intelligence security act, the foreign intelligence security court. This is a secret court. It’s designed to…

It’s actually something created by legislation by Senator Kennedy. It’s in the aftermath of Nixon and Watergate. But it has its modern application to terrorism. It is where you go to get secret warrants to spy on Americans, people in the United States as well as foreign, and that court largely is a rubber stamp. The FBI and law enforcement go up there; they present evidence. “We want a warrant to spy. We want a warrant to do this.” “Fine. You got it. Next case.”

Well, they lied, the FBI, when applying for FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. If you don’t know anything else (and if you don’t want to get caught up in the complications of it), in order to spy on a political campaign, you have to get a warrant. And you don’t go to a standard, ordinary district court judge. You have to go to the FISA court, secret court. You have to go there. What happens there is secret and private. Nobody knows about it, by law.

The FBI took the Steele dossier — it’s all they ever had — and they applied first for a warrant to spy on Carter Page, and it was turned down. The FISA court turned down the first effort. The second application worked, and we know that the second application is when they used the Steele dossier — and that made all the difference. “According to the IG report, FBI investigators considered seeking a FISA warrant against Carter Page in August of 2016, but they were rejected by lawyers at the FBI.

“That changed one month later, September 19, 2016, when six of Steele’s dossier memos arrived in the inboxes of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigative team. The IG report says the FBI immediately sought to obtain warrants to spy on Carter Page,” i.e., the Trump campaign, after they received elements of the Steele dossier. “Those warrants were approved October 21, 2016.” Bottom line: If it had not been for the Steele dossier, we wouldn’t have had any of the things that have transpired over the last three years.

The Steele dossier is all they ever had. They knew it was bogus, they knew that Hillary Clinton had paid for it, and they did not tell the FISA court — and this is in the IG report. They knew that it was bogus. They knew that it was unverified and uncorroborated. They knew that it was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton. That he knew Glenn Simpson/Fusion GPS helped write it. Steele did not write the whole thing. The Steele dossier is actually a collection of different memos assembled at different times into one gigantic dossier.

And everybody involved in it knew that nothing in it was true, including the golden showers story. But they did not tell the FISA court this. If the Steele dossier had not found its way to the FBI, then none of these last three years would have happened. That is all they had. It was complete and utter fraud based entirely upon hearsay and gossips and jokes that were told and heard in bars — and I am not…

This is all in the report, folks. This hearsay and the jokes were collated by a person who never thought Steele would ever present them as fact. That same person said that Steele even lied about what he had passed on to him. “The dossier alleged that Carter Page was part of the Trump campaign’s well-developed conspiracy of coordination with the Kremlin and that he had worked under the direction of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. In truth, the two never met.”

Manafort and Page never met. “Steele also alleged that it was Page’s idea to release DNC emails through WikiLeaks.” That wasn’t true. The IG report exposes all of this. “The IG report also exposes that Comey and McCabe fought to include the Steele dossier in the intelligence assessment on Russian interference that was presented to Trump at Trump Tower on January 6th, after a meeting with Obama in the Oval Office on January 5th.”

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RUSH: So even though everybody at the FBI knew that the dossier was based entirely on hearsay and gossip and even jokes — and everybody knew that it was uncorroborated, everybody knew that it was not true — Comey and McCabe demanded that it be included in that January 6th intelligence community assessment for the president. This is where he was told about the golden showers story. He was told that they could get this whole thing in the news.

This is when Comey comes out of the meeting, calls Clapper, and says, “Mission accomplished!” Clapper calls CNN, and the dossier thus makes it into the news. BuzzFeed publishes the whole thing. All of this happened with everybody involved knowing the dossier was bogus. We now know that Comey fought to put the dossier in the community assessment, intelligence assessment so he could brief Trump about it so that they could get it into the news.

The idea that this report does not document that a coup was underway is absurd. You take a look at the Real Clear Politics poll averages today. Trump is cleaning up. This is not hurting him. Now, this Horowitz report is huge. If you sit down to read the whole thing — which most won’t. It would take you four hours. But if you want to read something brief, go to the synopsis in Appendix A — the synopsis in Appendix A. It. Is. Damning. Horowitz is whitewashing and cowardly on the motive, couldn’t find any bias.

But the evidence is so overwhelming of lies and fraud that Durham and Barr have one of the greatest gifts they could have gotten this Christmas with this report, folks.

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RUSH: Here’s the bottom line: The Democrats tried to impeach Trump on a joke, much like they have tried to do with their claim that Trump asked Russia to hack Hillary’s emails. Neither of these are true. The pee tape (you know, that Trump hired prostitutes to urinate on a Moscow bed because Obama had slept in it) was a joke overheard at a bar that ended up in the dossier. They all knew that it started as a joke. This report is so damning.

This report is an indictment of its own of so many of these people. Comey and McCabe insisted that this dossier be put in the intelligence assessment. It was just two weeks ago, maybe last week that I told you the story again. Comey and McCabe and Clapper and Brennan have a meeting with Obama in the Oval Office on January 5, 2017, before Trump’s inaugurated. They discuss strategy. They’re gonna try to present Trump the intelligence community assessment.

Trump has told the intelligence community that he doesn’t want to meet with them every day, doesn’t need to meet with them. He has a good memory. He doesn’t want to give these people access to his administration. He’s already suspicious. They are upset. They demand to meet with every president every day. They want to have input on foreign policy. Like everybody else wants access, they wanted ongoing, continued access.

Bush met with ’em every day. H. W. Bush met with ’em every day. Carter met with ’em every day. Obama did. Here’s Trump saying he didn’t want to. So they conceive of a meeting, McCabe and Comey insisted to include the golden showers story in the assessment. On January 6th they have a meeting with Trump at Trump Tower. And after the meeting is over, Comey asked if he can speak with Trump alone. Everybody leaves, Comey says, “This is why you need to meet with the intelligence people every day. Look at this,” and tells him the golden showers story.

Trump thinks immediately that he’s gonna be subject to blackmail. He knows it isn’t true. He says, “What the hell is this? Somebody’s out trying to blackmail me.” So Comey tells him why this is important. Trump says, “You know this is not true.” Comey says, “I don’t care if it’s true or not. The point is, this is what’s being said about you out there. You need to know this every day!” So the meeting ends. Comey leaves the meeting, calls Clapper, and says, “Mission accomplished!”

It turns out that it was Comey and McCabe insisting that that aspect of the dossier be put in the intelligence report. This is all in Horowitz’s report, folks. Everything that we’ve told you about this is in this report. Horowitz is whitewashing it, very cowardly on motive, claiming that he couldn’t find any bias. Really? How can this guy Clinesmith alter emails, and then tweet, “Vive la resistance,” and be fired (even from the biased Mueller team) and not be a partisan? If you’re wondering, “Clinesmith, what’s this, Rush?” here is the story.

You remember when one of the first things leaked about the Horowitz report was the news that a low-level FBI lawyer had falsified a document in order to help get a FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page? Remember there were a lot of leaks before the Horowitz report came out, and the leaks were designed to undersell it. The leaks were designed to say, “There’s really not gonna be much here, if this is the best they’ve got.” It was that kind of mentality. Well, it turns out that the low-level FBI lawyer who had falsified a document to help get the FISA warrant to spy on Page was a guy named Kevin Clinesmith, FBI national security lawyer.

He not only falsified documents to show that Page was a Russian agent… This is in the report. He lied. Clinesmith lied about Carter Page being a Russian agent in order to get a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. He also falsely claimed that the CIA had told the FBI that Page was not a source in a counterintel operation against the Russians. Clinesmith was lying through his teeth about things. The truth is that Carter Page had been an informant and a witness for the CIA in a federal espionage case against a Russian intelligence official, spy.

“Horowitz also found that even though all exculpatory information about a potential target is required in a FISA warrant the FBI and DOJ deliberately withheld exculpatory information about Carter Page from the FISA court in order to paint him as a Russian spy.” It was Clinesmith who altered emails — and then after he did this, started tweeting. He ends up on the Mueller investigating team after all this, and then he starts tweeting out things like “Vive la resistance,” and Horowitz can’t find any evidence of bias?

The evidence of bias is all over the report! What Horowitz means is that nobody he talked to admitted it, and that’s all he can do. He cannot draw conclusions like other people can. There’s no political bias in this because nobody involved in this admitted any, is all that that means. This report is so overwhelming in what it confirms, the lies and the fraud that Horowitz has actually handed Barr and Durham a big gift, and they seem to know it.

It’s almost as if this Horowitz guy said, “You know, I’m gonna say there was no bad motive and then my friends won’t hate me for showing how crooked the FBI and the deep state are,” because that’s what his report shows, and don’t believe anybody who tells you otherwise. This report documents the deep state’s behavior. It documents political bias. It documents hatred for Trump. It documents lying. It documents that all they had was the Steele dossier.

It documents the Steele dossier was never verified, never corroborated. It was totally made up. It is safe to say that if there were not the Steele dossier, that we wouldn’t have any of what’s happened the last three years — and where does the dossier come from? It comes from the Clinton campaign, and the report says the FBI knew that! They knew that the Hillary Clinton campaign paid for it. They held that information back from the FISA court.

Essentially, pretty much everything that we suspected about this… This report verifies everything Devin Nunes uncovered about the FISA court, about the FISA warrant application process, everything Devin Nunes uncovered about the FBI using informants like Stefan Halper to try to corrupt and create contact with Russia from inside the Trump campaign. Devin Nunes has been validated in pretty much everything he claimed to have found and documented.

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RUSH: Yes, all of the informants were wearing wires, ladies and gentlemen. That’s what Barr referred to. It wasn’t just Rosenstein. All of the informants were wearing wires. For example, Horowitz said that all of the conversations Stefan Halper had with Carter Page, Papadopoulos, and Sam Clovis were monitored by the FBI. They were wired. And that’s what Barr was talking about.

Here are the details on that. “FBI Targeted Trump Campaign With 4 Informants, More Undercover Agents.” And again, this is all in the report for which Horowitz says he couldn’t find any political bias. This report, folks, is such a vindication for Devin Nunes. It is a vindication for John Solomon. It’s a vindication for Lee Smith. It’s a vindication for Chuck Ross, for Kimberley Strassel.

There have been people who have worked their tails off to get to the bottom of everything that happened. And they have all been vindicated. They’ve all been verified. The details in this inspector general report are overwhelming. The original take was that there wasn’t any noticeable or discoverable bias is so flat-out misdirecting, it is done purposely to get people to stop paying attention. This is their version of what happened with the Mueller report.

You know, the first news from the Mueller report was no collusion. Okay. People stopped listening. That’s all that mattered. It’s all people were prepared for for two years. Trump cheated, colluded with Russia, stole the election. Mueller report says nope, no conclusion. This report says we couldn’t find any evidence, couldn’t find any documentary evidence of any bias. Meaning none of the perps admitted it.

I’m ecstatic because everything I independently learned and passed on to you has been verified in this report. The Horowitz report confirms what we have long known. In addition to Carter Page, the Obama FBI was spying on George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis and also Michael Flynn. As we also knew, the FBI had undercover informants who tried to infiltrate the Trump campaign, including Stefan Halper. Stefan Halper, a Brit. He’s either Cambridge or Oxford. I forget which.

He’s just tight as he can be with a guy named Richard Dearlove, who ran MI6, which is the Brit CIA. He’s the guy who first contacted Papadopoulos along with Joseph Mifsud, planted the news with Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary. Everything about that’s true. We knew it was. Halper tried to get hired by the Trump campaign as a foreign policy adviser.

By the way, Halper was not an unknown guy. He’s got ties to Bush administrations in the past. He has a farm in Virginia. He is very steeped in the American deep state, administrative state, establishment, whatever you want to call it. So he applies for a job in the Trump campaign in foreign policy. Thankfully he was not hired. What he was going to do was get hold of some Russian agents that he knew, as a Trump foreign policy adviser, and close the loop. They couldn’t find any collusion. They were gonna create it.

Folks, they came so close to this, it’s scary. Whoever made the decision not to hire Halper for whatever reason, that’s either a stroke of luck or some really brilliant genius. But there were others besides Halper that were trying to affect and get involved in the Trump campaign this way. Horowitz says that all of the conversations Halper had with Page, Papadopoulos, and Clovis were monitored by the FBI, meaning they were wired.

“The agent said it was a coincidence that Halper happened to have met with Page two months earlier, and that he also knew Flynn and Manafort.” Just a coincidence. Very hard to believe. It sounds like the FBI had planted Halper before the time the FBI claims to have started investigating Trump.

There were also at least three other FBI informants who tried to infiltrate the Trump campaign via Papadopoulos. One “talked to Papadopoulos multiple times after he left the campaign. Another two informants were supposed to talk to Papadopoulos too, but ‘those attempted contacts did not lead to any operational activity,’ the OIG report says.

“The report also says that at least one FBI informant worked directly in the Trump campaign, but his handler didn’t learn about it until the source had already left the campaign. In an email to the handler, the Crossfire Hurricane team said they wanted to use the informant as ‘a passive listening post regarding any observations [he/she] has of the campaign so far.’”

It’s insidious. It is literally insidious. And of course there’s a very, very valid question here. If in fact — which we know is bogus — but if in fact the Trump campaign had been infiltrated even unknowingly by Russians, why wouldn’t they tell Trump? Do you think they would have told Hillary? They didn’t have to tell Hillary. Hillary was knowingly working with Russians. Hello, Christopher Steele. Hello, Glenn Simpson, Fusion GPS.

That’s the rub of this. Everything that these people tried to set Trump up for Hillary was doing. Ditto in Ukraine. Everything they’ve tried to set Trump up for, Biden did. It’s insidious what these people did. There has to have been, unquestionably, a political motive and a bias. And you know what it was? It was preventing Trump’s election.

Then after he won, it was sabotaging his transition period. And then after he was inaugurated, it was about getting him thrown out of office on the basis that he had conspired with Russia and colluded and that somehow that led to an invalid presidential election. It’s just insidious and they got caught. And that’s why Barr and Durham are doing what they are doing.

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RUSH: Well, lookey here, Lisa Page, former FBI agent and lawyer, is suing the Department of Justice and the FBI for publishing her text messages with Peter Strzok. Suing the DOJ and the FBI for publishing her text messages. Hee-hee-hee. That would be Horowitz. Horowitz was the first guy. Horowitz is how we know about that, by the way. Horowitz and one of these prior inspector general reports.

This guy’s been busy investigating the FBI ever since Trump got elected, and it was he who published the text messages back and forth. That’s how we found out about the insurance policy and these guys, these two just scared to death Trump was gonna get reelected, they were working on efforts to sabotage. And Strzok was assuring her ’cause she was manic. (imitating Page) “He’s not gonna win. Oh, my God. He’s not gonna win. Oh, my God. It would be horrible.”

“Don’t worry. He won’t win. He won’t win, Babe. He won’t win. We’ve got a backup plan. We’ve got an insurance policy.” It was only then, by the way, that Mueller fired them. Only then. In fact, six months later it was I think he fired them. So now she’s suing because it’s all been made public. Never mind the subterfuge and sabotage she was engaged in along with Strzok and the rest of them to overturn the election of 2016.