RUSH: Rand Paul tried again today to get the whistleblower’s name in. Sound bite 27. Here is how it went….

PAUL: Mr. Chief Justice.

ROBERTS: The senator from Kentucky.

PAUL: I have a question to present to the desk for the House manager Schiff and for the president’s counsel.

ROBERTS: The (cough) presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted.

RUSH: Rand Paul, for the second day in a row, is trying to get the name of the whistleblower on the record, and the chief justice of the United States (that’s actually the title — Chief justice of the United States — you can add “Supreme Court,” if you want, to it) has said, “No, we’re not gonna mention the whistleblower’s name here.” So Rand Paul’s at least trying to get that done.

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RUSH: By the way, Rand Paul has just tweeted that he is not trying to get the name of the whistleblower mentioned. He says, “My question today is about whether or not people who were holdovers from the Obama National Security Council and Democrat partisans conspired with Schiff staffers to plot impeaching the president before there were formal House impeachment proceedings,” and he’s actually talking about somebody named Sean Misko as well as Ciaramella. So the chief justice is joining the Democrats and the media in suppressing that fact in this whole process.

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RUSH: Rand Paul is getting a little fed up. The chief justice, John Roberts, is censoring his questions. He’s in the Senate. This is question and answer time. This is where senators get to ask the lawyers and the House managers questions. Rand Paul has had his questions censored each of the past two days. So he’s released it.

Rand Paul tweeted, “My question today is about whether or not individuals who were holdovers from the Obama National Security Council and Democrat partisans conspired with Schiff staffers to plot impeaching the President before there were formal House impeachment proceedings.” He wants to ask that question. I don’t know to whom he wanted it asked. He must have been asking it to Schiff, the House managers. He might have been asking it to the Republicans. Well, the president’s lawyers.

But the point is, the question doesn’t mention the whistleblower, and the question does not mention the whistleblower’s name, and yet the chief justice is censoring it. And the chief justice is saying, “We’re not gonna have the whistleblower’s name mentioned while I preside over this trial.” Well, there’s a name here besides the whistleblower that’s involved in this. You know, the whistleblower is Eric Ciaramella. But there’s a friend of his, a guy named Misko, Sean Misko.

Sean Misko and the whistleblower were both Obamaites on the National Security Council staff, and they did not leave when Trump was inaugurated. They stayed, and they are the source of everything going on here. Ciaramella is the whistleblower. He was not on the phone call. He was told about it — we think from Vindman. But his buddy, Sean Misko, was hired by Schiff before the proceedings began, and we know that the whistleblower met with Schiff and members of Schiff’s staff before he went to the inspector general.

Now, whistleblowers are supposed to blow the whistle to the inspector general of whatever department that they are blowing the whistle on. But Ciaramella did not go to the IG. He went to Schiff, and then it was Schiff and his staff that prepared the whistleblower complaint and then took it to the IG. You need to remember: The inspector general made a ruling and changed a rule on the fly that would permit secondhand knowledge to be admissible from whistleblowers.

Prior to this, a whistleblower had to have firsthand knowledge of what he was blowin’ the whistle on. Ciaramella did not. He was not on the phone call. Remember Ciaramella’s first characterization of the phone call. (impression) “It was shocking! It was terrifying! I was scared to death at what it meant for my country. Oh, my God, I couldn’t contain myself. I had to report it.” Then Trump releases the transcript of the call, and there’s nothing shocking or terrifying or anything close to that.

That’s when this all began to blow up on Schiff, and that’s why the whistleblower has not been heard from. It’s why he’s not been named. It’s why Schiff doesn’t want him called as a witness. Because the conspiracy of the whistleblower and Sean Misko working with Schiff and his staff to make all this happen would be revealed, and they don’t want it to be revealed — and that’s ultimately why there aren’t gonna be any witnesses. Mark my words.

But the story here is the chief justice censoring all of this, the chief justice not allowing this question. Let me read to you Rand Paul’s question again: “My question today is about whether or not individuals who were holdovers from the Obama National Security Council and Democrat partisans conspired with Schiff staffers to plot impeaching the President before there were formal House impeachment proceedings,” and then Rand Paul tweeted out the question that Roberts censored:

“My exact question was: Are you aware that House intelligence committee staffer [Sean] Misko had a close relationship with Eric Ciaramella while at the National Security Council together and are you aware and how do you respond to reports that Ciaramella and Misko may have worked together to plot impeaching the President before there were formal house impeachment proceedings.” This is Rand Paul the tweet:

“My question is not about a ‘whistleblower’ as I have no independent information on his identity. My question is about the actions of known Obama partisans within the NSC and House staff and how they are reported to have conspired before impeachment proceedings had even begun.” Now, this, folks… (chuckles) Look, all this is true. Rand Paul’s asking a question to which everybody in the Senate chamber knows the answer. Do not doubt me. The chief justice knows the answer. Everybody knows the answer.

Sen. @RandPaul: “My question made no reference to any whistleblower…”

He then reads the question.

“I think this is an important question. One that deserves to be asked.” pic.twitter.com/D2iafDrv4X

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 30, 2020

I just told you. Sean Misko and Ciaramella are Obama holdovers, and they worked together, conspired prior to formal impeachment hearings to set this all up. Everybody in that room knows it, folks. That’s another reason that all this is so damn bogus. Everybody knows what happened here, and it’s one of the reasons I have been hell-bent in suggesting to Republicans, “Shut this down. It is corrupt. It is bogus on its face. This is not legitimate. There is no rational explanation for this impeachment in terms of the president’s actions.”

I’ll tell you what else, by the way. We had this call earlier from a guy. “If the president’s not afraid of anything, then why doesn’t he let Bolton testify? Why doesn’t the president waive his rights so that…?” He has! Do you realize what releasing the transcript of the phone call was? The president is the one who has gone out of the way to help people find and learn the truth here. That’s why this thing has to be shut down. Folks, literally it’s bogus. The premise, the evidence. There is and was no collusion; there was no withholding of aid. There was no quid pro quo.

I know the Republicans are saying, “That’s not the right stance, Rush. We need to admit there was a quid pro quo and to say it’s fine, that everybody does it,” and Dershowitz tried that, and you see what they’re doing with it. That’s essentially what Dershowitz put out there. Now, before we get to the break, I want to go back to yesterday ’cause when I heard this first question… (interruption) No, I’m not glossing over the chief justice. How much more can I tell you about it? The chief justice — and we had calls about this. People ask, “Rush, I’m really worried about the chief justice.

“I know he’s a Never Trumper,” and I try to tell people, “Don’t sweat it,” that the chief justice does not run this hearing like a trial judge runs a courtroom. For the most part, that’s true, but this is really suspect, because everybody in the room knows the answer to Rand Paul’s question. This is akin to it raining and there’s a leak in the Senate and water is pouring and somebody stands up and asks, “Mr. Chief Justice, is it raining in the Senate chamber?”

“I’m not permitting that question! That question goes to a problem in the Senate roof and I’m not gonna acknowledge it exists.” So it’s raining in there and everybody knows it, but the chief justice is not allowing it to be stated. That’s essentially what’s happening here, okay. Everybody in that room knows the answer on that question. So kudos to Rand Paul.

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RUSH: I want to demonstrate for you the pathological nature of Adam Schiff, the lead House manager. My friends, the people following all of this know full well that the route to impeachment involved Sean Misko and Eric Ciaramella. Eric Ciaramella, the whistleblower, was informed by (we’re pretty sure) Lieutenant Colonel Vindman — O say can you see? — about this shocking, shocking, unbelievable phone call that president had with Zelensky. Twenty people were on the call. The phone call happens in the summer.

They don’t get around to whistleblowing on it ’til October. Well, actually not August. The process begins… The way the process happened was that Misko is hired by Schiff and put on his staff. Then Ciaramella, after being informed of the phone call… At this time, nobody thinks that Trump is gonna release the transcript, so they can say whatever they want about it — and they know that many of the people on the phone call are allies of them and not Trump.

So they think they’ve got a clear road to lie about what happened on this phone call, because they don’t think Trump will ever release the transcript. Presidents just don’t give up that kind of private communication. They do it to the protect themselves. They do it to protect the presidency, separation of powers. They just don’t do it. So they were very confident that Trump could be mischaracterized and lied about and that nobody could do anything about it because the transcript would never be released.

So Ciaramella is supposed to go to the inspector general and whistleblower. He didn’t. He went to Adam Schiff’s staff where Sean Misko already was. They’re both National Security Council staffers, holdovers from Obama. The Schiff staff then helped Ciaramella write the complaint. Everybody looked at that complaint and said, “This is the product of some really damn good lawyers writing this thing up,” the characterization of the phone call and the frightening, terrifying, scary things.

And then after that happened then Ciaramella took that to the IG. At that point, the inspector in general made a ruling on the fly that would — for the first time ever — permit secondhand knowledge by a whistleblower to count. Prior to that, whistleblowers had to have firsthand knowledge of whatever they were blowing the whistle on — and everybody knows this now. It’s been reported widely all over the place.

The Drive-Bys have not reported it, but they know it. They’re proud of it! This is the kind of chicanery — this is this kind of abuse of the system in order to get Trump — that they protect and privately applaud. They think Schiff is brilliant. The point is Schiff and his staff were in on this, and they directed it, and they steered it. Well, here is Schiff on the Senate floor during the trial answering questions last night about this…

SCHIFF: I don’t know what the whistleblower is. I haven’t met them, uh, or communicated with them in any way. The committee staff did not write the complaint or coach the whistleblower what to put in the complaint. The committee staff did not see the complaint before it was submitted to the inspector general. The conspiracy theory — which I think was outlined, uh, earlier — that the whistleblower colluded with the intel committee staff to hatch an impeachment inquiry is a complete and total fiction.

RUSH: That, right there, is why there aren’t gonna be witnesses, because if that’s is ever exposed for what it is — a pathological lie — then it has so many problems for Schiff and for Pelosi and his staff that they don’t want to deal with it. So all this huffing and puffing about witnesses is simply posturing. It’s for sound bites on the news. It’s to send signals to the Drive-Bys what to hit, what to hammer: “Trump’s afraid. Trump doesn’t want witnesses!” It’s these guys that don’t want any witnesses — and if you doubt this, let me take you back to a couple of instances during the televised hearings.

This is after Schiff has conducted his private hearings where Republicans were not allowed to call witnesses in that basement room in the Capitol. They took depositions from all these ambassadors and the assistants and all this. And they took the best comments from all of them, and that’s what they characterized or planned and wrote as the testimony of the questions. During the televised public hearings, the name Ciaramella was mentioned. Remember? Schiff interjected, “I don’t… We’re not gonna allow that name to be mentioned!”

“Wait a minute,” people said. “If you don’t know who the whistleblower is, why does that name bother you?” You remember this? Twice this happened! The name Ciaramella was mentioned by somebody, either a Republican asking a question or some witness… (interruption) It was Louie! That’s right, Louie Gohmert — and Schiff jumps out of his seat. “We’re not gonna permit the name!” Everybody said, “How do you know? If you don’t know the whistleblower, you don’t know who it is and you never met him, then why does that name cause you to jump out of your chair?”

That’s all right. It was Louie that exposed it. This whole thing, that statement, folks… If you’ve wondered what a pathological liar is, that’s it — and just as everybody in that Senate chamber knows the answer to Rand Paul’s question that the chief justice is suppressing, everybody knows what Schiff did with the whistleblower and with Sean Misko. The difference is on the Democrat side, that’s the kind of stuff they applaud. That’s the kind of stuff that Pelosi would admire. That kind of strategic warfare with the enemy kind of operation and thinking.

I’m telling you, none of that can happen without the knowledge of Schiff and Pelosi that the media is gonna cover it up for ’em. The Democrats are getting away with more and more scandals because they’re being covered up and ignored while phony scandals are being attached to Trump, made up, like the Kavanaugh thing was about him. Trump-Russia collusion. Trump traitor. All of that. It’s incredible how we have a media that is fully now part of the Democrat Party left-wing activist agenda and may be even the leadership of it.

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RUSH: Well, I knew this was gonna happen. You know, I play that sound bite of Adam Schiff and I describe it: “If you want to know what pathological lying is, here it is.” (angry person) “How do you know, Rush? How do you know?” I love you people that don’t believe me. You just step in it every time, every time you think I’m making something up. It was in the Washington Post. They’ve got some fact-checker over there, a guy named Glenn Kessler.

He gave Schiff four Pinocchios!

Do you realize that for the Washington Post to give any Democrat four Pinocchios is unprecedented? As far as the Washington Post is concerned, Democrats never lie — they can’t lie — and they gave Adam Schiff four Pinocchios over his claim he never contacted the whistleblower, never met the whistleblower, doesn’t know who the whistleblower is.

Everybody knows that Schiff knows who the whistleblower is.

Everybody knows how this whole thing was coordinated.