RUSH: Reiterate that point. I really have to reiterate, because to me it is crucial. It is, well, crucial. Yeah, key. It’s very important to understand this. Greetings, folks. Great you have to here, Rush Limbaugh revved and ready for yet another three hours of broadcast excellence right here behind this the Golden EIB Microphone at the distinguished and prestigious Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative, anti-media, and Anti-Leftist Studies. The curriculum keeps expanding. No graduates, no degrees, the learning never stops. The telephone number if you want to join, 800-282-2882. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

First things first. Want to go back to me on this program back on November 22nd, 2016. I want to go back about 13 months because everybody — and correctly, by the way, everybody’s correctly say that what Mueller is now aiming at is impeachment, not collusion. There was never going to be any collusion charges because there wasn’t any collusion.

And this is what steams me about all of this. Everything that we’re dealing with every day here, it’s actually Trump and his people dealing with it, but we are, too, because it’s an attack on all of us. It’s an attempt to deny our votes. The Washington establishment is attempting to overturn a duly constituted legal election, because they don’t like the outcome. And they are stopping at nothing.

Mueller is now subpoenaing Trump bank records from Deutsche Bank because Trump took out a lot of loans to build real estate projects, something like $300 million, and they’re gonna try to find some irregularity there that has nothing to do with Russia and nothing to do with collusion and nothing to do with the election and nothing to do with Trump’s campaign. Literally nothing.

So 13 months ago — we had a call yesterday, “How did you know about Brian Ross? How did you know? Why were you so confident to tell us that the Brian Ross report that Trump, as a candidate, had told Flynn to call the Russians, how did you know that it was not true?” ‘Cause I know these people, folks. I know them. I know the left. It’s been a lifelong study of mine, and the study has included learning it sufficiently well to be able to explain it to others.

Last November, we’re not even three weeks out from the election, November 22nd, 2016.

RUSH ARCHIVE: The Drive-By Media is going to be devoted to getting Trump out of office. Not just bottlenecking his presidency and not just ruining it, their objective is going to be — I don’t care whether it’s impeachment, resignation, I don’t care what. They’re gonna do everything they can to destroy his presidency. And if they can’t force him out of office, the next thing they’re gonna do is make sure that he fails at everything he wants to do. They’ll do this for a bunch of reasons, among them and at the very top of the list, I think, is so they can prove to themselves they can still do it.

RUSH: Now, that claim is about the media. The swamp is not doing it to prove to themselves they can do it. They already know they can. The swamp is doing it just to do it. The swamp is doing it because they just refuse to accept the results of an election.

We are so far outside the United States Constitution right now, folks, that it’s serious. Mueller, the FBI, none of these people are behaving according to the Constitution. They’re all acting outside it. They have to. There’s no legal reason to disqualify the election. There’s no reason whatsoever to claim the election was fraudulent.

The only thing they can claim is that they don’t like Trump; Trump is unfit; Trump’s not one of them; Trump poses a threat to their lifetime of work and devotion to establishing the United States, not as the lone superpower in the world, but nothing more than a single nation among all nations operating under a global umbrella that does not seek to believe nor promote the concept of American exceptionalism. That’s not exclusively a liberal view, although all of them hold it, but Washington establishment types look at it in much the same way.

Look at this. If you think that that’s nuts, here’s a headline from Bloomberg: “Europe to Weigh Whether U.S. Tax Cuts Violate Global Trade Rules –– European Union finance ministers will discuss U.S. legislation to slash taxes at a meeting in Brussels Tuesday and whether the new plan violates international trade rules.”

Well, okay, fine and dandy. The problem here is that there are going to be a number of Americans who will agree with that premise. “The centerpiece of the tax bill that passed the U.S. Senate over the weekend is a reduction in the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent. The bill still needs to be reconciled,” between the House and Senate.

The Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said, “There are some elements of preoccupation — some discriminatory measures — and the possibility that some parts of the reform will violate World Trade Organization rules. I will request the commission to make further analysis of the potential consequences of the tax plan.”

And you know who’s gonna be joining this clown in the World Trade Organization? Everybody you can think of in the Democrat Party. And the Democrat Party might even be so bold as to cite this as a reason why this tax bill should fail. Pelosi’s already out there claiming it’s Armageddon. And the only reason it’s Armageddon is because she doesn’t like the corporate tax rate reduction, and she doesn’t like the concept of the American people being allowed to keep more of what they earn.

You know what else I like about this? Just as predicted, the elimination of the deductibility of state and local taxes from your federal income tax return has residents in Illinois, in New York, and California screaming like stuck pigs on an animal farm. They are beside themselves. “It’s unfair! It’s not right!” They’ve had this big tax deduction because these states are high tax rates, high income tax rates, and they’ve been able to deduct that from their federal return. Meaning U.S. taxpayers have been subsidizing, essentially, taxpayers in California, New York, Illinois, Connecticut, other such high tax places.

Now they’re screaming like stuck pigs. These are the people who have been running around for years accusing the rest of us of not paying our fair share. While they have been subsidized. And now once they are faced with the concept of paying higher taxes, which is what they claim everybody needs to be paying, these are the people that are for every tax increase comes down the pike except when it hits them. And now when they are being called on to pay their fair share, guess what happens? They run around and they whine and they moan and complain.

The World Trade Organization wants to weigh in on the American tax system and claim that it may violate trade regulations, international trade regulations. And, as I say, they can do what they want. The problem is gonna be there are gonna be several the Democrats and a lot of Washington establishment types which will point to this, say, “See? This is bad for the world. We’re being an irresponsible global partner,” they will say, “we are being selfish. We cannot do this to the rest of the world. We must remain on par with the rest of the world. We cannot be better. We cannot be exceptional. We cannot leave. No way. Unfair.”

My prediction is right, it won’t be long before this European Union squealing will be cited by some in the media and on the left as reason to oppose the tax bill that’s now winding its way through the House and the Senate.

Now, back to the establishment here and impeachment of Donald Trump, back to November 22nd of last year, it was perfectly clear to me what was on tap. They were gonna impeach, they’re gonna render impotent whatever they could do, but the dream was to get rid of Trump. The dream back then was to get rid of Trump.

And I’m telling you, folks, all of them, not just the media, everybody that lives and works and breathes that’s in the establishment, the swamp, gets up every day and hopes and dreams that that day is the day that the incontrovertible evidence is produced that forces Trump out. And they have so immersed themselves in this illusion that it has become their reality, and it guides them.

Now, obstruction of justice or lying to FBI investigators, both of those things are process crimes. To me, this is one of the most important points of all of this. Both of those that they’re now aiming to get Trump on, Flynn with lying to investigators and hoping Flynn can point them at ways to get Trump, and now Trump supposedly obstructing justice, these are both process crimes, meaning they have nothing to do with the stated purpose of this investigation. They are things that are happening because of the investigation. And if there was no investigation, there wouldn’t be any of these process crimes.

So the investigation gives us all of these so-called crimes. But what is the investigation? It’s a scam. It’s a total sham. The investigation is rooted in the false allegation that Trump and his team colluded with Vladimir Putin and the Russians to change the election, to cheat Hillary Clinton out of her victory. That is what got all of this started. And that is bogus. There was no collusion. After a year of thousands of people trying to find evidence, there isn’t any. The only evidence has been made up by the deep state, by the intelligence community.

Christopher Steele writing the Trump dossier, for example. All of it is made up. There was no collusion. Therefore, this investigation — which is causing paralysis of a presidency, or it’s attempting to — which is ensnaring people in the commission of crimes, is entirely unjustified. This special counsel was impaneled in violation of Justice Department regulations. Those regulations require there to be a crime to have been known to have been committed, and the special counsel is then charged with investigating that crime.

When Mueller was impaneled and charged, he was not told of a crime because there isn’t one. He was effectively told to go find one, which is what he’s doing — and the only crimes he can find are the crimes that have occurred as a result of his bogus investigation. None of this that’s happening — Flynn lying to the FBI, Trump supposedly obstructing justice, none of this — would have happened had there not been a fake, bogus, totally corrupt investigation of something that didn’t happen. And, furthermore, they know that it didn’t happen.

They know there was no collusion with Russia. They know that the collusion with Russia occurred with Hillary and her campaign and their law firm purchasing and commissioning, if you will, the Trump dossier. The collusion occurred between Hillary Clinton and Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz to rig the Democrat primary against Bernie Sanders. The Russians tried to hack both party computer networks, succeeding in hacking the Democrats’.

The Democrats refused to let the FBI investigate, and now we know why. It didn’t matter. The FBI wasn’t there to find any dirt on the Democrats! The FBI is there to find dirt on Trump! The FBI is there to protect Hillary! The FBI is there to protect the Obama legacy, the Obama administration. The FBI is there for one reason: To get rid of Trump. Not the agents. I’m talking about the people running the place. I’m talking about management. I’m talking about Comey, McCabe, and some of these other people we’re now learning about.

But, folks, I really… I’m hell-bent on making this point: The last 12 months of this investigation have all been the result of a bogus scam, and that is supposed collusion between Trump and Russia. There isn’t any evidence. Nobody’s ever had any. There was no reason to impanel a special counsel to look for any because no crime has been found even today, despite thousands of people in the deep state trying to make it look like a crime or collusion did happen.

Therefore, all of these process crimes — crimes that have supposedly occurred (supposed crimes that have supposedly occurred during the course of the investigation) — would not even have happened. We have an illegitimate event (the investigation) an illegitimate setup (the investigation) which still then caused Comey to be fired. It has caused the tarmac meeting between Clinton and what’s-her-face out there, Loretta Lynch. All of this — all of this that has happened — has been to secure the election of Hillary Clinton.

And when that failed, despite… You look at this as a seesaw and look at how out of balance it was. Look at the disadvantages Donald Trump overcame, the disadvantages Donald Trump’s voters overcame. The full-fledged power and the projection of that power by the Washington establishment still could not get Hillary Clinton elected. And that will not stand. The establishment launched everything it had, and it failed, and, “Hell’s bells,” they’re saying. “We’re gonna get it back no matter what.”

So we have a phony investigation, which now leads to all of these process crimes, which would not have occurred at all if there hadn’t been this bogus investigation. I don’t know how else to say it. I wish there were a more powerful way to say it. Perhaps there is, but, you know, I ad-lib everything. I don’t plan all of this and script it out before the program begins. Perhaps on this I should have. But I think it’s pretty clear. We’re living in the Twilight Zone. Obstruction of justice?

Obstructing the investigation of something that didn’t happen and that the investigators know didn’t happen, and so now they’re looking for other crimes that are not even related to what this original investigation was about? And notice how everybody’s fallen in and plays along. It’s like establishing the premise. The premise: Trump cheated; Trump stole the election and worked with the Russians. Okay. We accept the premise, and now everybody behaves accordingly. This investigation’s been a lie. This investigation’s been a fraudulent, phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roller thing from the first day it began.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Do you remember Scooter Libby? Remember Patrick Fitzgerald? Patrick Fitzgerald was the special counsel who was charged with finding out who had leaked the name Valerie Plame. She was a CIA agent. I’m not gonna get into what kind of agent, whether she was genuinely outed or not. That’s not the point. Pat Fitzgerald, special counsel out of Chicago, was charged with discovering who it was that outed her and thereby violated security and put her life at risk along with the CIA. The problem is, everybody knew who had leaked her name!

His name was Richard Armitage.

He worked at the State Department.

He was a close confidant of Colin Powell.

Richard Armitage leaked her name to the columnist — the late and great columnist — Robert Novak, who wrote about Valerie Plame being a CIA agent. He did not out who leaked her name to him, but it came to be known that it was Armitage. It didn’t matter. Pat Fitzgerald proceeded to scorch the earth with multiple interviews of Karl Rove, attempting to entrap him in a process crime. Rove was called in to answer questions I can’t tell you how many times. You couldn’t count ’em on one hand.

Scooter Libby, who was in the office of Vice President Cheney, was called in numerous times. And Scooter tripped up. He ended up telling two versions of a story in his multiple interviews, and here we go: “Process crime! Lying to investigators! Lying to the special counsel! Lying to the FBI,” and Scooter Libby was sent to jail. Even though everybody knew that it was Richard Armitage who had leaked Valerie Plame’s name — and despite everybody knowing that it was Richard Armitage — they still went after Scooter because the objective then was to get George W. Bush.

They tried to frog march Karl Rove out of the White House in handcuffs and leg irons, and then they went to Scooter Libby. It was the most amazing thing. And people, friends of Scooter’s, said he had never done thing. He’d never broken a law. He’d never taken a rubber band and killed an ant with it as a kid. He’d never had magnifying glasses and fried ants as a kid like we all do. He didn’t even do that. And they get this poor guy on something that had nothing to do with outing Valerie Plame.

He might have spread the name around after it was already known, but he was not the leaker. So Libby got prosecuted for a process crime for lying to the FBI. This was another one of these investigations that really wasn’t necessary because we already knew who the leaker was. It was Armitage over at the State Department. But nobody disliked him. He was a ranking member of the establishment. Well, that takes us now to Michael Flynn. The thing about Flynn’s supposed lies is that he was not lying to cover up a crime because nothing he talked about with Kislyak was illegal.

And how we know this? Because he’s not been charged with committing any illegal act. He’s been charged with lying to the prosecutors again. He’s been charged with telling conflicting stories. Flynn was not lying to cover up a crime. Nothing he talked about with the Russian ambassador was illegal. Flynn had to know that his conversations were being taped and transcribed because he would know (as the former head of the DIA) that the Russian ambassador would be subject to ongoing telephone surveillance.

His wires were tapped. That’s pro forma, and everybody knew it, and it was perfectly fine. It’s accepted policy. You wiretap foreign agents when they’re in your country. You get a FISA warrant; you do it. And that’s how Flynn got entrapped. He’s talking to Kislyak, who was the subject of the surveillance. So Flynn didn’t even… They have a transcript of the call, and the Washington Post in January of this year did a story saying that they didn’t discuss sanctions. They didn’t discuss anything. He did nothing illegal.

So in any case, the bottom line is that Michael Flynn had no criminal intentions when he was talking to the Russian ambassador, and yet he was prosecuted by the same people who did not prosecute Hillary Clinton because she had no criminal intentions. Hillary literally did break the law! Hillary literally did skirt all kinds of regulations and laws with her private email server. She was passing classified data back and forth through an unsecured server in her basement. Comey said, “We couldn’t find any intent, and no reasonable person would bring a charge.”

“No reasonable prosecutor,” he said, “would bring a charge.” Flynn did not break the law, didn’t intend to break the law. But the same people who gave Hillary a pass because she had no intent, nail Michael Flynn. And we now know that this clown, this Strzok guy who conducted the interviews with Hillary Clinton, did not record them, did not put her under oath — and furthermore, allowed personal assistant Cheryl Mills to actually be called a lawyer for the purposes of granting attorney-client privilege when Cheryl Mills should have also been under investigation.

Cheryl Mills and Huma Danger both lied about when they first learned about Hillary’s servers, there’s documentary evidence from their emails that they lied, and they were not prosecuted. Patrick Fitzgerald ordered Richard Armitage to be silent, to not say a word about anything he had done from the start, because he wanted to use the witch hunts to bring down Cheney and Rove. They were all aiming for Bush. And it’s the same thing here.

So we have precedents. We have experience with this: A bogus special prosecutor investigation to find the leak of a CIA agent when we already know who the leaker was. Now we have the investigation of process crimes against Trump for obstruction of justice and Michael Flynn and whoever else they can ensnare on the basis of an investigation that is hoax, bogus, and fake because none of it ever happened. There was no collusion between Trump and the Russians, and I think everybody knew that from the get-go.

I think it served as the purpose and it was intended to sway public opinion, and it was intended to allow the public to accept the idea that there needed to be an investigation. Once that began, then anything they find, why, all we have to do is act shocked and disappointed and surprised. “Can you believe poor Flynn? Can you believe it?” And this was a long overdue attempt to justify what in truth is an inside-the-Beltway/Washington establishment effort at a silent coup to overthrow a duly constituted/elected president: Donald Trump.

That’s what’s been going on for the last year. That’s all it is. I don’t mean that to say it’s a minimal thing. But that’s all it is. It’s not an investigation. The Russians did not affect the outcome of our election. This is also an insult to the people that did vote. It’s a sideways attempt to say that the people who elected Donald Trump were idiotic and stupid and didn’t know what they were doing — and that their votes, therefore, don’t count. We’re in a dangerous era here, folks, where the powers that be in the upper levels of our government are acting outside the Constitution.

They’re acting outside the rule of law, which is the glue that is supposed to keep us from becoming here average, run-of-the-mill, tinhorn dictatorship banana republic. All of these years we’ve had honorable people who — amazingly so — accepted and obeyed the Constitution. It’s actually kind of amazing, in over 230 years, that we haven’t had somebody come along and try to rip it up. It’s amazing we’ve had a sense of honor. I’m not saying we haven’t had people who have tried. I’m not saying we haven’t had presidents who acted outside it.

But we haven’t had what we have now. I also got emails last night: “You gotta turn on Hannity! You’ve gotta turn on Hannity! You’re coming up on Hannity!” I said, “What?” “Yeah, you’re coming up on Hannity!” This is after I’d been told on turn on the football game. It was about 9:10, 9:12, last night. So I turn on Hannity, and they’re in a commercial. So I wrote back the person that flashed me, “Well, I missed it. It’s in commercial.” “No, no, no, you’re coming up.” “Oh, okay.”

So the commercial break ends and the Hannity show resumes, and there’s no me. Finally, Sean promotes that I’m coming up. I said, “A-ha! I need to tune in about two minutes before the program ends. That’s what they’re holding it for.” Well, it was about 10 minutes, but they used a clip of me on the program yesterday to set up a guest appearance by Cory Lewandowski and David Bossie, who have a book about the inside Trump campaign.

And while I was waiting for whatever they were gonna do with me, I actually thought that the clip they would play… I had no idea, but I thought the clip they would play would be the point that I just made, ’cause I made it yesterday too, that all this — all this process crime stuff, the obstruction of justice and Flynn lying to the FBI… Do you realize, folks…? I really beside myself on this. (sigh) None of this would ever happened. None of it’s legitimate, if you ask me, because the investigation that’s caused all this is illegitimate and has no basis.

But it is happening and these events are taking place as a result of it. But, man, is it an orchestration. Anyway, Mr. Newt was on, and Mr. Newt said, “I don’t think I fully appreciated until this evening how really important it was for Trump to win the election. If Hillary Clinton had won, none of this would have surfaced.” Bingo! No question about that. That’s exactly what the swamp was counting on. The swamp, the establishment was counting on Hillary winning so that none of what we now know about Hillary and the fake Trump dossier and Hillary and the email servers and Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch…

None of this, we were supposed to know. Because if Hillary had won the election, none of this would have been brought up. There would have never been a story about colluding with Russia. Never! Certainly not with Hillary in office. Our election would not have been tainted. It would have been clean and pure as the wind-driven snow. There would have been not one negative word written about the sanctity of the election. That’s just another way of illustrating to you how bogus this is.

In fact, this was not played up — the Russia collusion angle was not played up — before the election because they all thought Hillary was gonna win, and they did not want to taint her victory with any news about how the Russians were trying to affect the outcome. But when Newt says, “I don’t think I fully appreciated until this evening how really important it was for Trump to win,” I think that’s a TV statement, ’cause I think Newt knows.

I think Newt knows exactly what’s going on. I think Newt knows as well as any of us what is happening with our government inside the Washington establishment. I don’t think he’s shocked by any of this. Well, maybe he is. I think certain people probably could be shocked, because there’s a certain amount of respect that is automatically accorded to ranking members of any leadership. Maybe he is a little shocked by it. I’m not — and I don’t mean this as a swipe to Mr. Newt, so don’t anybody try to start anything here.

But I’m not surprised by any of this. I’m not shocked. In fact, predicted it, as I have so demonstrated with playing audio sound bites of me from the Grooveyard of Forgotten Sound Bites. Now I must take a brief time-out. There’s much more on this clown Strzok and what he did, and the Wall Street Journal has just a killer editorial today demanding that Mueller resign, that Mueller is tainted maybe more than Trump or anybody else, and it’s really standout because the Wall Street Journal up to now has been leading the Never Trumpers.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, I want to illustrate to you the power of the Washington establishment, the allure, the power of the swamp. The story I just told you about Patrick Fitzgerald and the bogus investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame’s name, which sent Dick Cheney’s aide, Scooter Libby, to jail, attempted to do the same thing with Karl Rove, while exonerating the real perpetrator, Richard Armitage.

Those very people today would still choose whatever the swamp wants and does over what Donald Trump’s policies are. It’s a powerful club and membership is highly valued. And even if the swamp targets you, and even if the swamp nails you, you never betray the swamp.

So when Trump comes along and you think it’s payback time, “I’m gonna vote, I’m gonna support Trump for what these clowns did to me.” No. You stay in allegiance to the people that tried to ruin your life and put you in jail. You do not support Donald Trump. That is a powerful club, folks.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Latest numbers on the Mueller investigation after six months, $7 million. Do you think if they gave you $7 million and counting, you might be able to find some stuff on whoever it is you hate? If you had the media helping you with another free $7 million thrown in in terms of cost of coverage?