{"id":330854,"date":"2019-12-09T16:13:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T21:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=330854"},"modified":"2019-12-10T15:42:10","modified_gmt":"2019-12-10T20:42:10","slug":"cutting-through-the-spin-on-the-horowitz-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2019\/12\/09\/cutting-through-the-spin-on-the-horowitz-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Huge! Durham Disputes the Horowitz Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: The IG report is out. Nobody\u2019s read it in detail yet, but they\u2019ve presented a summary, and the Drive-By Media\u2019s all over it. And let me tell you what it is. The FBI\u2019s application for a FISA warrant to spy on a Trump campaign volunteer was perfectly fine. There was no political bias whatsoever on the part of McCabe or Comey or Strzok. Neither Comey nor McCabe nor Strzok showed any bias in their investigation. Oh, and a PS: Climate change is real and we all only have 12 years to live.<\/p>\n

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I told you this is what the IG report was gonna say. This guy\u2019s a swamp rat. Now, here\u2019s what it means. And, by the way, in a previous IG report James Comey — people have forgotten this. In a previous inspector general report on something — it was about, I think, the press conference he did with the Hillary Clinton emails. He was referred for criminal prosecution, and the DOJ refused to do it. Horowitz cannot charge anybody with anything. The IG cannot prosecute, cannot charge. All he can do is refer, suggest.<\/p>\n

And he suggested in a previous report that Comey be charged. And the DOJ said, “Nah, not gonna do it.” Now, what this means — here\u2019s a statement from Barr. “The inspector general\u2019s report now makes clear the FBI launched an intrusive investigation and found 17 areas of misconduct in the FISA warrant application, that it launched an intrusive investigation into a presidential campaign on the thinnest of — this is Barr\u2019s statement on the IG report. So what\u2019s the conflict?<\/p>\n

If Barr is saying that the IG report proves that the FBI launched an intrusive campaign into a presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions, then how can there be no political bias shown by Comey or McCabe or Strzok? Let me explain this to you. As I understand it, all that means is that Horowitz did not encounter a witness who said so. It doesn\u2019t mean that there wasn\u2019t. It just means he didn\u2019t find any because nobody copped to it.<\/p>\n

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These IG reports are not what everybody thinks they are. It\u2019s more like a watchdog, but there\u2019s a protective — this is not BIA. This is not the Bureau of Internal Affairs. Do not be confused. Everybody associates the inspector general with the equivalent of internal affairs at a police department. It\u2019s not the same at all. When the IG comes to do an investigation, nobody quakes in their boots. If internal affairs is after you, and you\u2019re a cop, you\u2019re not happy. And all it means is is that nobody admitted and no witnesses provided any evidence that there was any political bias.<\/p>\n

So if the IG says to McCabe, “Were you motivated by political bias?” “Oh, no, not at all, Mr. Horowitz.” “Okay. Fine.” You can\u2019t find any evidence for it because there wasn\u2019t any testimony. As far as I\u2019m concerned, just because he couldn\u2019t find a witness — of course they\u2019re all circling the wagons in there. You think they\u2019re gonna spill the beans on each other? That\u2019s for later. That is for the Durham investigation. And Barr\u2019s statement here that the DOJ IG report makes clear the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a campaign on the thinnest of suspicions, that ought to reassure everybody. That\u2019s the attorney general\u2019s assessment of the report now.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Okay.\u00a0 A couple things happened during the break. So we\u2019ll get to the phones here in just a second.\u00a0 Mark Meadows has just spent two hours being shown and having reviewed for him the IG report.\u00a0 He has two tweets.\u00a0 First tweet: “I just got out of a nearly 2 hour briefing on the IG report. It is deeply disturbing. Some former FBI and DOJ officials are about to have some serious explaining to do.”\u00a0 The second tweet: “And after reading this, it\u2019s no wonder we\u2019ve been seeing defensive leaks in the New York Times and CNN.<\/p>\n

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“And that the Democrats rushed to hold an impeachment hearing the same day,” to cover this up. “It\u2019s every bit as bad as advertised. And certainly worse than the media has been suggesting.”\u00a0 So it looks like the best they\u2019ve got is to say that the IG couldn\u2019t find any political bias to explain what happened.\u00a0 But one of the things that the IG report details is that the FBI relied totally on the Steele dossier for the FISA warrant, and that they never cared who paid for it or whether it was verified.<\/p>\n

That is damning.\u00a0 That confirms so much of what many of us have known, that the dossier was all they ever had, that it was never verified. It was Hillary Clinton opposition research, and apparently the report mentions that that\u2019s all they had to get the FISA warrant, and that the FBI knew that\u2019s all they had. They knew that it was unverified and that they were not interested in who paid for it.\u00a0 Now, how you get that without then concluding there was political bias, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Unless Horowitz can\u2019t presume anything, and if nobody alleged it and if nobody admitted to bias, then he can\u2019t report that there was any.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t mean that there wasn\u2019t some.\u00a0 There have been. There have been defensive leaks now for the past three or four days suggesting the IG report, “Ah, nothing to see here.\u00a0 This thing is gonna pretty much confirm that the investigation was legitimate and everything about it was okay,” and apparently that\u2019s not the thrust of this report.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s gonna be trickling out, and — exactly, by the way, as I predicted — Fox has dumped out of the hearings now to cover this.\u00a0 CNN has not dumped out of the hearings to cover this, which is another indication that it\u2019s not good.\u00a0 If the IG report… If the IG report were a total exoneration, CNN would cut away from these impeachment hearings and go and report it, but they are not.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, an even bigger piece of news, if it\u2019s possible.\u00a0 The special counsel appointed by Attorney General Barr to look into the coup, John Durham, has issued a statement: “I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff.\u00a0 However, our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department.”<\/p>\n

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What that means is exactly what I told you: The reason there\u2019s no political bias found is that nobody that Horowitz talked to admitted any, and Horowitz can only talk to DOJ people.\u00a0 He can only talk to people in the midst of this operation, Crossfire Hurricane, and of course none of them were gonna admit that they were politically biased.\u00a0 So Horowitz reports that he found none.\u00a0 But Durham says, “Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities…<\/p>\n

“Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the inspector general that we do not agree with some of the report\u2019s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”\u00a0 This is a slap in the face.\u00a0 This is John Durham telling Horowitz (translated), “Your whole take on this is not true.\u00a0 It\u2019s not right.\u00a0 We have more evidence than you\u2019ve found.\u00a0 We don\u2019t agree at all with your conclusion that the beginnings of this were warranted and justified.”<\/p>\n

That is why Barr\u2019s statement today is as, shall we say, biting of the inspector general\u2019s report as it is.\u00a0 So again, John Durham — and let me say something about this, by the way.\u00a0 Let me point something out.\u00a0 Do you realize how unusual this is?\u00a0 For example, during the Mueller investigation with all the wild-ass, crazy crap being reported, did he ever pop up and say, “No, no. That\u2019s not right! No, no, that\u2019s not right”?<\/p>\n

Only one time.\u00a0\u00a0 It was almost near the end when BuzzFeed or some Millennial newsgroup reported something outrageous, and Mueller said, “That just isn\u2019t true. We haven\u2019t found that. We didn\u2019t say that.”\u00a0 For this guy, for John Durham — a fellow DOJ investigator — to issue a statement expressing abject disagreement with the conclusion in the IG report? That, my friends, is big.\u00a0 That kind of thing doesn\u2019t happen, but Durham felt compelled.<\/p>\n

After reading the IG\u2019s report and then measuring and balancing it against what he found, he felt compelled to issue a statement stating not that he just disagrees, but that he has way beyond what Horowitz has, and that\u2019s why he disagrees.\u00a0 There\u2019s another reason this is happening.\u00a0 I gotta be very careful pointing this out, however.\u00a0 You don\u2019t want to tell anybody I said this.\u00a0 But that\u2019s the political component of this.\u00a0 Barr knows exactly what\u2019s going on here. The whole thing, folks — every damn bit of this — is a political operation, is a silent coup political operation to get rid of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Durham knows that his report\u2019s not ready yet.\u00a0 He\u2019s got some time yet remaining, a lot of witnesses to go.\u00a0 He\u2019s got a grand jury, which means there are gonna be criminal indictments here, and he doesn\u2019t want this… He and Barr both do not want this misleading conclusion from the inspector general to go unanswered in the public domain, for both legal and political reasons.\u00a0 This is big.\u00a0 This is a very, very good thing that Durham did this.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Another tweet here from Mark Meadows, who has spent two hours seeing the inspector general report<\/a>.\u00a0 He says, “Wow… page 341. IG says FBI used an Aug. 2016 ‘defensive briefing\u2019 with the Trump campaign as an ‘opportunity to gather potentially relevant investigative information\u2019 about Michael Flynn.”\u00a0 In other words, what the IG report says — and it really… By the way, from everything I\u2019ve been able to tell so far (while digesting it all while also doing the award-winning program here), this IG report slams the FBI on all kinds of things.<\/p>\n

The original report was they could find no political bias.\u00a0 That\u2019s the best they\u2019ve got, and all that means is that the inspector general didn\u2019t encounter anybody who admitted it, not that he didn\u2019t find it.\u00a0 And we know that Durham has issued a statement disagreeing almost categorically with the IG report that says the beginning of this investigation was warranted and valid.\u00a0 So fireworks are coming.<\/p>\n

But this page 341: “FBI used an Aug. 2016 ‘defensive briefing\u2019 with the Trump campaign as an ‘opportunity to gather potentially relevant investigative information\u2019… on Michael Flynn.” What that means is you got presidential campaigns.\u00a0 Both of them get briefings — foreign policy, defense, you name it — because one of the two\u2019s gonna be elected president and you want them inaugurated hitting the ground running.<\/p>\n

\"\"You don\u2019t want \u2019em to know nothing.\u00a0 You want \u2019em to be up to speed. It\u2019s common practice. It\u2019s been that way for many, many, many years that both campaigns — well, the out-of-power campaign — gets briefings.\u00a0 What this report says is the FBI was using these briefings to conduct investigations on people who did not know they were being investigated, like Flynn.<\/p>\n

Flynn thinks he was literally being briefed.\u00a0 He\u2019s the incoming national security adviser for Trump.\u00a0 He thinks he\u2019s being briefed.\u00a0 They\u2019re running an investigation on him, and the IG report says the FBI was doing this frequently — which aligns perfectly with so much of what we know about the way the FBI operated here.<\/p>\n

Let me grab Line 1 quick because this goes with it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got Mark here in Upstate New York who wants to make a point.\u00a0 Mark, I\u2019m glad you waited, and welcome to the program, sir.\u00a0 Hi.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 Hello, Rush.\u00a0 Thank you for taking my call.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Yes, sir.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 I\u2019ve been a loyal student of yours in the Limbaugh Institute since 1996.<\/p>\n

RUSH:\u00a0 Thank you, sir.\u00a0 I appreciate that.<\/p>\n

CALLER:\u00a0 Oh, thank you.\u00a0 I find it very ironic and funny that in July of 2016, super patriot James Comey was able to say that Hillary did commit all these crimes but could find no intention, therefore “no reasonable prosecutor” would take the case and prosecute it.<\/p>\n