{"id":232867,"date":"2017-05-10T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-10T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=232867"},"modified":"2017-05-11T16:27:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-11T20:27:57","slug":"all-the-reasons-comey-had-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2017\/05\/10\/all-the-reasons-comey-had-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"All the Reasons Comey Had to Go"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Now, talking about Comey, I\u2019m not gonna go back to all the archives here and dig up the sound and play it for you. But I want to remind you of some of the things that Comey did and, at the time, my reaction to them. Including recently, that last appearance before… I guess it was a Senate committee. Some things he did in that just boggled my mind. But I\u2019m gonna go back to July 5th. Comey calls a press conference and says because it\u2019s so crucial, the American people are so tuned in… With a presidential election, he\u2019s got to get the news out.<\/p>\n

\"\"Loretta Lynch had let Clinton come on her plane, and so Comey decided that she had lost credibility and claimed that Loretta told him to take over, which is dubious. He lists her violations of crime, and it was detailed, and it took a while for him to go through it. And while that was happening, there were a lot of people saying, “My God, my God. He\u2019s actually gonna charge her,” and then he didn\u2019t. Then he said, “In spite all this, we couldn\u2019t find any intent. No reasonable prosecutor to bring charges.”<\/p>\n

Well, “intent” is not part of the statute. I made the point that afternoon. That whole thing was so odd. Now, people on the right loved it because it served a purpose for them. It got an official indictment, if you will — an unofficial indictment, a list of her criminal behavior. I remember Comey supporters at the time said, “You know, he\u2019s really a smart guy. He can\u2019t bring charges because the DOJ is never gonna pursue Hillary because she\u2019s a big Democrat and it\u2019s the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

“So Comey\u2019s doing what he can to nail the woman, and all he can go do is go out there and tell the public her crimes and let them effect be the jury and the verdict will be he wondered on Election Day.” That\u2019s how many on the right credited Comey for what he was doing. I thought, “I\u2019ve never seen an FBI director behave this way,” and I\u2019ve been involved in these things. I have never seen the department head of an investigative unit call a press conference to list the crimes somebody\u2019s not gonna be charged with. I\u2019ve never seen that.<\/p>\n

I thought, “This is odd, it\u2019s peculiar, it doesn\u2019t make any sense, and it\u2019s improper. This is why you shut up. This is why you don\u2019t do this. This is why investigators don\u2019t say anything, particularly if there are not gonna be charges. You do not smear people when you\u2019re not gonna charge them, and Hillary was smeared.” There\u2019s no two ways about it. The Democrats were praising Comey out the wazoo. “He was wise. He was smart.<\/p>\n

\"\"“He realized that she had no intention of behaving in a criminal fashion, and she didn\u2019t, and he was very mature, and he came to the only conclusion he could have come to: He exonerated her and closed the investigation.” Democrats loved Comey. Man, that was awesome! That took one of those giant roadblocks out of the way. It was smooth sailing after that. And it was strange, and it was improper, and it is cited in the memo from Rosenstein to Jeff Sessions as being one of the reasons why what Comey did is improper and way beyond the bounds.<\/p>\n

I think Comey was out of control. I think Comey loved being in the center of things. I think Comey loved being the focus of attention. I think Comey, contrary to being “nauseous” that he might have impacted elections, loved it. Most people do, folks. Most people love basking in the glow of favorable media. Most people just absolutely adore fame. Until they get it. But they do. I think Comey just got caught up in this and became, in his mind, far more and far bigger than just the director of the FBI.<\/p>\n

You know, the director of the FBI is an employee of the Justice Department and is subordinate to the attorney general and the Department of Justice. And here he had assumed control over it. That was another misstep. Then you go to the October 28th letter when he found that there\u2019d been some emails pending on Carlos Danger\u2019s computer from his wife, Huma Weiner. And so he told Congress, “We gotta look into this. We\u2019re reopening the investigation. But we don\u2019t know where it\u2019s going.”<\/p>\n

Why tell anybody you\u2019re reopening the investigation if you don\u2019t want to have some impact on the election? This is October 28th! He wouldn\u2019t have had to tell anybody because he didn\u2019t know if it was gonna lead anywhere. So once again compounds the same error. He doesn\u2019t know if there is anything to be discovered or learned — doesn\u2019t know if there\u2019s any criminal behavior, or activity — and yet sends a letter to Congress telling them, “We\u2019re reopening the case.” The letter goes public, and the Democrats are livid! And now, all of a sudden, they go from loving Comey to hating Comey.<\/p>\n

And then Comey says, “Guess what? Uh, nothing to see here! That\u2019s it. We\u2019re all good here. Nothing to see.” And the Democrats think the damage has been done and they hate Comey. So they loved Comey in July, hate Comey in October. Hillary loses the election. They blame the Russians and Comey equally. Then they started blaming the Russians more than Comey. Then we got polling data this week that shows the letter that Comey sent on October 28th, according to state polls, probably was not a factor in her losing.<\/p>\n

And we know the Russians weren\u2019t because there wasn\u2019t any tampering with the outcome of election. There was no tampering with votes. There was nothing. There\u2019s not… Hillary lost for the right reasons: She was a lousy candidate, she had no campaign, she couldn\u2019t tell people why she wanted to be president. Democrats to this day cannot tell people why they want to be president. All they can say is, “Trump\u2019s unfit,” but they have nothing that they can ballyhoo about themselves because they don\u2019t and they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

\"\"Well, so now we come forward to last week, and Comey\u2019s back up testifying, and he made a huge blunder. I had it in the Stack to mention yesterday, and all last night I was regretting that I set it aside and didn\u2019t get to it. He made a big, big blunder in his last round of testimony. He said that “hundreds and thousands” of classified emails ended up from Huma Weiner\u2019s computer to her husband, Anthony Weiner. But that\u2019s not the case. Huma was not forwarding classified emails to her husband.<\/p>\n

She was backing up her computer, and her BlackBerry ended up backing up to Weiner\u2019s computer as a secondary backup site. There was no purposeful transfer, and it wasn\u2019t “hundreds and thousands” of classified documents and emails; it was like 10 or 12. All day yesterday and the day before, the FBI supposedly was struggling with how to deal with this. They had to correct the record. Comey had wildly misspoken under oath. And when he got fired yesterday, many people thought that was actually the reason, because it was incompetence on parade.<\/p>\n

It was erroneous, and there was no effort publicly being made to correct it. And once again, it would have been Trump coming to the defense of Hillary Clinton, because it was again Hillary and Huma who ended up being smeared by Comey earlier this week or last week when he testified. So it was another instance where actually the Democrats and Hillary should be thanking Trump. But they can\u2019t, of course, because they\u2019re in this (sigh) quest to find the mythological connection between Russia and Trump.<\/p>\n

Now, last night… I want to really drill down here and find out what really is behind this, \u2019cause Pence is back on Capitol Hill saying, “This has nothing to do with the Russian investigation! It\u2019s not why he got fired.” Let me preface that. Two other things that I heard Comey say in his testimony that just boggled my mind. He was asked by some Democrat senator, “Why do you think the Russians preferred Trump?”<\/p>\n

And he answered it! He answered it in a purely political way, not in any way as an investigator. There\u2019s no evidence that the Russians preferred Trump! There\u2019s no evidence the Russians helped Trump. There is none! And here\u2019s Comey, “Well, they really like Trump better because Hillary is this and that.” It was what a consultant, a political consultant would say. Whatever his answer was, it could not have come from an investigation. And the second thing — and this was the big one. I saw it replayed last night, but not enough attention was focused on it.<\/p>\n

I think it was Trey Gowdy during a House investigation, actually. It was doubled on with another Republican senator who asked, “Are you going to investigate the unmasking of Republican officials?” And he said, “No, I don\u2019t think so. I know we don\u2019t support leaking of classified information, but we don\u2019t investigate. We\u2019ve not…” “I\u2019m not asking investigate the leaks. I\u2019m asking to investigate who is unmasking people who ought not be named in these secondary traps of surveillance of foreign actors.”<\/p>\n

\"\"For example, Flynn was unmasked. The reason we know he was talking to the Russian ambassador is the Russian ambassador was being phone tapped, surveilled. Flynn\u2019s name should have never been made public, but somebody unmasked him (like Susan Rice), and Comey flatly refused to go there! And that\u2019s real criminality, folks! That is statutory felonious behavior, these unmaskings are. And Comey said, “No interest. Nope! I\u2019m not gonna go there. No interest in classified leaking and finding out who\u2019s been doing it. Can\u2019t go there. Too much effort.”<\/p>\n

Last night on Fox, Catherine Herridge on their nine o\u2019clock show called The Fiv<\/a>e said “that FBI Director James Comey was fired because he refused to reveal the Obama administration ‘unmaskers\u2019 to President Trump. The Obama [Regime] spied on and unmasked the identities and conversations of several Americans in 2016…” This we know. That\u2019s felonious! There was no pursuit of Obama. Obama\u2019s surveilling people. Obama\u2019s engaging in a genuine criminal activity, and there\u2019s a big “ho-hum” and a range of silence from the media.<\/p>\n

The Republicans are asking Comey what he\u2019s gonna do about it, and he says, “Nothing.” So apparently Trump asked for the FBI director to reveal the Obama administration unmaskers, and Comey refused to do it. He stalled turning the information over to the Trump administration. Catherine Herridge of Fox says that was the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back, when Comey openly refused a request and refused to even conduct an investigation into this unmasking.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: I\u2019ve assembled some things here that I found comical and interesting in terms of reaction to the firing of James Comey.<\/p>\n

\"\"TheHill.com: “Trump Dings ‘Cryin\u2019 Chuck Schumer\u2019 for Bashing Comey Firing<\/a> — President Trump tweeted Tuesday night, attacking Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) for criticizing his decision to fire FBI Director James Comey. ‘Cryin\u2019 Chuck Schumer stated recently, “I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer.” Then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp\u2019 Trump tweeted.” Trump\u2019s not “attacking” anybody. Trump\u2019s the guy being attacked. Trump is not mounting a coup; he is the target of a coup.<\/p>\n

So Schumer goes out and attacks Trump, and Trump responds by calling him Cryin\u2019 Chuck Schumer, and the Drive-Bys are now blasting Trump for calling Chuck Schumer Cryin\u2019 Chuck. None of them seem to realize that it\u2019s a reference to Schumer\u2019s crocodile tears over Trump\u2019s visa ban. Remember when Cryin\u2019 Chuck started crying over the first travel ban? Trump has these people\u2019s number. He calls \u2019em out on things that nobody else does. He calls them out the way Republicans refuse to, and the Democrats — unused to being called out this way — react in genuine outrage.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a story from Joel Pollak at Breitbart. “The Simple Explanation for Trump Firing James Comey When He Did<\/a>.” This is a theory, and I just want to share it with you. “[W]hy fire Comey now? The answer is simple. The day before [he\u2019s fired], President Barack Obama\u2019s former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper repeated, under oath, what he told … Meet the Press on March 5 — that he had seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. That gave the Trump administration the breathing room to dismiss Comey — which it simply did not have before.”<\/p>\n

So his theory is, with yet another official denial — okay, nothing there; this investigation\u2019s going nowhere; there\u2019s nothing to find — let\u2019s finally get rid of Comey. We\u2019ve been wanting to do it for a long time. “Put simply, if Trump had fired Comey while there were still serious questions about Russia, then it would have been more plausible to accuse him of trying to interfere in the investigation or cover up whatever happened. It is now clear that nothing, in fact, happened. Monday\u2019s hearing with Clapper and … Sally Yates was meant to reveal a ‘smoking gun,'” and there wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s another thing. Remember how they\u2019ve been salivating for weeks over Sally Yates\u2019 appearance? They really were thinking she was gonna have a smoking gun. They could have found out before she testified if she had anything, but they didn\u2019t. They were waiting. They were hoping and praying that Sally Yates had some secret bit of news that was gonna destroy Trump, and she didn\u2019t have anything new, and they were let down once again. Remember Catherine Herridge\u2019s explanation for why Comey was fired again.<\/p>\n