And then other people think, “Wait a minute, now! This is more than I expected.” You want my take on this? I cling to my theory that Obama does not want to be seen as the person who takes Hillary out, but he is toying with her big time, and this drip, drip, drip is continuing because Obama is permitting it. If Obama wanted this email thing buttoned down, shut down, and dispatched, it would have been however long ago he wanted that to happen. The State Department IG would have concluded the investigation, and would not have much to report.

The FBI would have continued to do what they do, but the Department of Justice would not have acted on it. But, no. There continues to be a drip, drip, drip, drip. And the important aspect of this one, ladies and gentlemen… You may think, “Rush, this is nothing. They softened the blow out there. You saw it, Rush. They say Condoleezza Rice did the same thing and they said that Colin Powell did the same thing, and they say Hillary’s not alone here.” Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. All true.

However, there is no way that the Hillary Clinton campaign can say any of this is coming from “the vast right-wing conspiracy.” Well, she may try to say it, but there’s no way we can even get close to having any credibility with this. The inspector general, State Department inspector general was very careful to say that Hillary violated the “rules” rather than the “law.” By the way, if you want the truth of it, I watched a big roundtable on CNN today, a bunch of leftists, and they’re beside themselves.

They think this is not going away, that it’s gonna be around the entire campaign and that it is serious. And it doesn’t matter whether Colin Powell did it or Condoleezza Rice did it, ’cause they’re not running for president. They are “been there; done that.” They are long ago. They have nothing to do with today, but Hillary does. And it just won’t go away, and they’re very much aware of it, and I think Obama is kind of like the Wizard of Oz there behind the curtain deciding when the drips and the drops happen.

But don’t be discouraged by the fact that the State Department inspector general said that she violated the “rules” rather than the “law.” Because if you read it elsewhere, the inspector general complained that the rules were implemented in accordance with the relevant law, the Federal Records Act here. So that means that, if you connect the dots, she violated the law. They haven’t said so. They say she violated “the rules,” but the rules spring from the law. She violated the law. That is conclusive. And here’s something that is just as important.

All of her top aides refused to cooperate with this inspector general investigation. Cheryl Mills, Huma “Danger,” the whole crowd. None of them participated. None of them cooperated with the government investigation. When you are asked to cooperate with the government in an investigation into potential law violations and you refuse, that refusal is implicitly a claim of legal privilege not to speak. The only such legal privilege which applies in this context is a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. The IG report obscures this point, but it still is amazing.

That is what the refusal to participate… That’s how it legally is interpreted by the investigating agency. One of Hillary’s aides refuses to talk for whatever reason, the legal assumption is, “Okay, they’re asserting the fifth, don’t want to incriminate themselves,” and it’s an amazing point. Why else would they refuse to cooperate? Remember, she didn’t do anything wrong. There was nothing. “What difference does it make now how those people died?” She didn’t do anything wrong. “Email servers? Everybody’s got one!”

Nobody thinks that anything illegal happened, so why not answer questions?

Why would they refuse to cooperate, Hillary’s aides?

Remember when the IT guy that set up her whole system, Pagliano, refused to cooperate with the FBI unless he got immunity? It was a huge story because it was obviously an admission that he believed truthful answers would tend to incriminate him. Same thing going on here with Hillary’s aides. So what are they gonna say? See, this is the bottom line. The Obama State Department is not part of the vast right-wing conspiracy. Hillary Clinton can caterwaul all day long that it’s just the rebirth of the vast right-wing conspiracy, but this is the Obama State Department. That’s my take. And I think it’s gonna be around throughout the campaign because Obama wants it.

I don’t know why, but this drip, drip, drip is obviously continuing, and if they wanted it to shut down, they could do that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Dana Bash on CNN. This is this morning — not long ago, within the last couple of hours. The cohost John Berman is talking with her. She’s the chief political correspondent for CNN. He says, “This is gonna play in politics, basically, and media. Donald Trump has already been calling Hillary Clinton ‘Crooked Hillary,’ and it’s sticking. And Hillary Clinton, by the way, is still running in a primary against Bernie Sanders.” So, Dana, what about this report from the IG? How is it gonna affect her?

BASH: This feeds directly into the narrative that her opponents — Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side and ultimately Republicans, led by Donald Trump, in a general election — will be hammering her on. The narrative, of course, is you’re hearing Donald Trump do it in only a way that he does, calling her “Crooked Hillary.” The fact that she didn’t comply with the rules, that she appears to have been doing things that were not… Maybe she thought she was above the rules or she’s different from everybody else should be. That’s gonna help her opponents in a big way.

RUSH: Right. Exactly. And they’re worried. Dana Bash and the CNN crew are very worried about this, because what has Hillary’s defense been? Hillary’s defense has been that she complied with all regulations and that what the FBI’s doing is just a security review. “There’s nothing that’s gone on here. I mean, everybody’s done it!” Just like Clinton and sex in the nineties. “It’s private, it’s personal, everybody does it, and it didn’t get in the way of her doing her job.” But you heard Dana Bash. She didn’t comply with the rules; she said that she did.

That’s her defense, that she complied with all State Department regulations and what the FBI is doing is security review. Wrong. The FBI is investigating her. And I’ll tell you something else. The FBI is investigating the Clinton Crime Family Foundation along with The Punk, Terry McAuliffe, the governor of Virginia. Now, why did Hillary run an off-site, private email server? People say it’s to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests, and it is for privacy.

Mrs. Clinton doesn’t want to be hassled. She didn’t want to have anybody know what she’s doing. Well, my opinion — once again — is I think she had to do this in order to cover up how she was selling influence to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign governments, foreign people, foreign entities. She did that. If that had been part of the State Department internet email system subject to discovery and the Freedom of Information Act, that would have been devastating. This is how she kept all of that selling of access private.

BREAK TRANSCRIPTRUSH: We’ll go to Meriden, Connecticut. This is Pat. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Thanks, Rush. It’s an honor, a privilege. First-time caller.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: I have a theory on the election coming up. Maybe you could poke some holes into it or maybe you think it’s good or not. I happen to believe that you said information about Hillary is gonna trickle through, and I think Obama’s gonna throw her under the bus. I think he has great disdain for the Clintons and she’s gonna be taken out at some place and shackled at some point. I believe that he thinks the Republicans and the conservatives hate Trump anyways, and he’s brought the country as far left as it can come. He doesn’t want her getting any credit for it, and I think he’s gonna throw her under the bus, and she’ll be taken out of some meeting in handcuffs at some point. What do you think of that theory?

RUSH: Well, the handcuff business and the frog march, I don’t know about that. But if he throws her under the bus, what’s Plan B? That means she’s not the nominee, so take your theory, what happens then?

CALLER: Well, like I said, he doesn’t care if Trump’s president or not. He thinks the rest of the conservatives hate him anyways and nothing will get done —

RUSH: Now, that one I have to take issue with you. Once again, you know, I was the first to predict that Barack Hussein O would not leave Washington, would stay in Washington to protect what he considers to be his gains in transforming this country. And then I saw a story, it was some months later indicating he was going to do that. There’s another story out today that actually has a picture of the house he has rented. He’s going to be staying in town ostensibly so the daughters can finish their education at the elite private school uninterrupted.

You know whose house he’s rented? Joe Lockhart, the former spokesman for Clinton. Everybody’s involved with the Bill Burkett stuff and the Bush National Guard, Joe Lockhart, his wife works at — name is Gray or Gay or something, some fashion magazine. He just took a job as communications VP at the NFL. So he’s gotta go to New York. This is a home that costs like $5 million and he’s gonna be renting it for a couple of years while Lockhart packed the family up to go to New York. So he cares about who does what next.BREAK TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Here’s Bob in Vale, Oregon, as we head back to the phones. I’m glad you waited, sir. Great to have you with us.

CALLER: Thank you, Mr. Limbaugh, good to talk to you, but you stole my thunder, astute man that you are. That’s what I was going to bring up, Mrs. Clinton’s attack on Mr. Trump. Here we have Mrs. Whitewater complaining about real estate profiteering.

RUSH: Oh, yeah. I’m sorry. Is that what you — I didn’t check the board up there before I started.

CALLER: That’s okay. That’s okay. I’m glad to send you greetings from eastern Oregon.

RUSH: No, no, no, I feel bad stomping all over your point, ’cause it’s a great point. I wish you’d been the one to make it.

CALLER: Ah, well, again, I yield to your superior sharpness, so, anyway, thank you very much.

RUSH: You’re welcome. It is true. I mean, forget Whitewater. Here’s a woman, $21 million in two years making speeches, wants to talk about somebody gaming the system. I want to go back, because it’s been about an hour and a half since I first addressed this. This bears repeating, because I didn’t get a chance to have the last caller, previous caller, with his theory that Obama is gonna just sabotage Hillary at some point in this campaign ’cause he doesn’t want her anywhere near his agenda, anywhere near the White House, doesn’t care if Trump is the nominee because Obama is satisfied with how far left he’s taken the country. This is the caller’s theory. And so he’ll do whatever it takes to take Hillary out without caring who the next president is.

And of course I, on that latter point, disagreed. He does care who the next president is, and he’s going to make sure that whoever it is doesn’t unwind any of his agenda. This business about staying in town for the girls and their school and so forth, yeah, maybe. But just as important is protecting the agenda. Look, that’s all these people care about. This is their lives. Obama’s poured his whole life into transforming this country and cutting it down to size, whatever he thinks needs to happen to it, and he’s just not gonna leave town and act like George Bush.

I guarantee you he’s not gonna leave town and say another word about what happens. Somebody tries to unravel Obamacare, you damn know he’s gonna be on NBC Nightly News whining about it, and he’s gonna have his media buddies all helping him out and whatever else it is.

But about Hillary Clinton and this email scandal, the point needs to be made again, just like the NBC Nightly News last night, two stories, TSA and the VA and how horrible things are and how just incompetent and how just unmanageable, but not one mention of Obama. Not one mention of the Obama administration, nothing is tied to him. And I think that’s the way he wants it.

Now, this Hillary Clinton inspector general report, where she has been directly contradicted. Her entire procedure on this has been to say that it’s just “a security review.” There isn’t any investigation here. Nobody’s done anything wrong! They’re just looking into various aspects of this. It’s just security people. Well, the inspector general comes out and says, “No, no, no, no, no. There are rules, and she violated ’em.” They tried to soft sell it by saying so did Colin Powell, so did Condoleezza Rice when they were secretary of state.

But they’re not running for president right now. The rules that she violated are derived from the law. The natural conclusion is she broke the law. It is my theory, my contention Obama does not want to be seen as the one who takes her out. The Limbaugh Theorem again. He doesn’t want to have his name attached to any of these failures or things that go wrong. I don’t pretend to understand the dynamics between the Obamas and the Clintons, but apparently it’s not cool.

And this drip, drip, drip? This IG report? This is a big deal. And even the Democrats who have been on TV this morning admit it’s a big deal because it keeps the story alive. It not going away, and the aspects of it that are alive are that she did things wrong and is now not telling the truth about it. Her campaign is being overshadowed by never-ending scandal. It isn’t gonna be long before Democrats are gonna start asking, “How long can we expect this scandal to go on?” and, “Can you get elected president from one?”

But I think by letting this IG report be released, by having the investigation take place, this is the drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip that I noticed months ago, and I think it’s coming from Obama and from the White House. And there have to be some people enjoying watching her twist in the wind. This is not insignificant stuff, folks.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You remember Hillary Clinton’s first press conference on this whole email thing? Remember where it took place? It took place at the UN. It’s exactly right. You know why it took place at the UN? She assumed that the international press corps — including American reporters at the UN — would not be anywhere near up to speed on the details of this email story at the State Department. So that’s why she did it there, and she ended up cutting the press conference short because they were up to speed, and the questions were getting too close to home.

She thanked everybody and walked out, and here’s what she said. It was March of 2015. Her first press conference about the email. Now, measure this. Compare this to what the inspector general report today has said. Quote: She said she “would answer all the questions about her emails.” Quote: “First, the laws and regulations in effect when I was secretary of state allowed me to use my email for work; that is undisputed,” close quote. No, it wasn’t undisputed.

If it were, the IG report wouldn’t say what it says. TheHill.com has even more detail on this. “In late 2014, Clinton gave the State Department roughly 30,000 emails from her personal machine. Another batch containing roughly the same number of emails, which she said were purely personal, was deleted.” That’s the stuff every… Chelsea’s wedding and tennis lessons from the tennis pro and yoga and all that, remember? She deleted those ’cause that had nothing to do with things, she told you.

“Critics of Clinton have questioned that move,” getting rid of those 30,000 emails, “and the chief litigant in the open records lawsuits has said he hopes to obtain all the deleted messages,” that they’re still there somewhere. “The stack of approximately 55,000 pages of emails Clinton gave to the federal government ‘was incomplete,’ the inspector general noted in its report, pointing to multiple emails inspectors found through other means.”

They didn’t just accept the 30,000 she gave. They went and found others elsewhere. That’s how they know what she gave was incomplete. So she didn’t tell the truth about that. “Only five of the 26 current and former Clinton aides responded to questionnaires sent by the watchdog office. Clinton herself turned down a request to be interviewed.” Only five of her staff, like Huma Danger, didn’t testify. Cheryl Mills didn’t testify, didn’t answer questions. “In addition to Clinton, four close staffers conducted ‘extensive use of personal email accounts,’ the inspector general said…”

It wasn’t just her.

Her staff was doing the same thing because her staff was undoubtedly helping her raise money from these foreign sources that she wanted to protect from Freedom of Information Act requests or from any other prying eyes. And that is sourced to the inspector general. “[F]our close staffers conducted ‘extensive use of personal email accounts,’ the inspector general said, adding up to nearly 72,000 pages worth of messages. In doing so, they also violated the State Department’s record-keeping policies….” So these are huge violations, and people have refused to answer questions about it, which — don’t doubt me on this — is seen by investigators as the equivalent of taking the Fifth Amendment.