RUSH: And with half my brain tied behind my back just to be fair. We now head back to the phones. We’re gonna spend some time on the phones here. It’s Open Line Friday. We’ll go to Tallahassee first. Hey, Bob, great to have you. How you doing?

CALLER: Greetings, sir, from the former Marine Corps.

RUSH: Great to have you with us, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: Anyway, a lot of this stuff that’s going on with Flynn and, you know, the whole dilemma, it’s a lot of diversionary tactics in regards to the questions that are being asked. Now, look at both sides. Okay, the Democrats are asking the Russian connection, the Russian connection, the Russian connection! That’s low fruit. What the Republicans should be asking is who authorized the operation of the surveillance, if it did occur, who knew about it, and how was it disseminated?

Example: Pence, in regards to Flynn — and that’s a whole — I mean, we got enough here that if you ask the right questions, you got enough for a whole week next week. But the thing is, it’s Pence. He let Flynn go. Why? How did Flynn hear about this or Pence hear about this? Did Pence hear about it in the New York Times? No. Somebody leaked it to him supposedly, right?

Okay, how did Pence find out? That’s one of the big questions Pence should be asking, not Flynn, did you talk to the him and what did you say and why. It’s like, how did this happen? Was it normal surveillance, wiretapping, which supposedly was in the New York Times —

RUSH: Wait. Hold it. Let’s not confuse things. When you bring Pence into this, the way Pence is involved is because Flynn’s in trouble because he didn’t tell Pence of his phone call with that fat slob Russian ambassador.

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: For two weeks.

CALLER: How did he find out about the phone call initially?

RUSH: Wait. For two weeks after it was known. So your question is how did Pence find out it did happen if Flynn didn’t tell him?

CALLER: Correct. Now, if Pence found out via supposedly, you know, under the radar, like as you say two weeks earlier, how did he find out? Was it leaked to Pence, and by whom was it leaked to Pence? Because if it was a normal, say, NSA whatever operation in regards to Russian intelligence, okay, fine. They happen to hear Pence [sic] talking to, you know, like Igor, talking normal, whatever, and they said, okay, fine. But if that was the case, then Flynn, he supposedly by law should be masked. He was not masked. He was outed. Okay. Why was he outed? And who did the outing?

RUSH: We already know this.

CALLER: Oh? Okay, who outed him? Well, for example, Evelyn Fracas [sic] kind of let the bag out like you said.

RUSH: No, Farkas. It’s Evelyn Farkas.

CALLER: Okay, correct. Now, she supposedly let the bag out, and she at one time was a Obama employee in his administration —

RUSH: In the Pentagon, and she hasn’t been there in a while. She was deeply —

CALLER: Correct.

RUSH: — buried in the Pentagon. She was not that big and important a deal in the first place.

CALLER: Correct. And after that, where did she go? She went to the Hillary campaign, correct?

RUSH: I think so.

CALLER: Yeah. Correct. Okay. So fine. So now, if she knows about it, how and why did she know about it? And let’s assume, for example, that she still had a few connections in regards to her old job at the Pentagon or whatever.

RUSH: Well, wait. Mike, do you happen to have what was sound bite 22 from yesterday handy? If not, I’m just gonna read what she said. See if you can find it. In the meantime, I’m gonna read what she said. This is the bombshell statement that she made on Morning Joe back on March 2nd or March 3rd. This is the bombshell which she’s now saying everybody misunderstood. (imitating Farkas) “It was taken out of context. It was the process. I’m simply trying to alert people to the process, the process, the process.” (interruption) You found it, did you say? I’m sorry. That’s right, 21. I was looking at the wrong bite. I got two bites on one page.

Now, Bob, I want you to listen to this. It would actually be more impactful if I read it, but I want you to hear it in her words. Because this is everything. She is admitting what they were doing and why, and she admits the leaking and for why. Here’s what she said back on March 2nd, PMSNBC, that nobody picked up on for three weeks.

FARKAS: I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill. It was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people: “Get as much information as you can. Get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration.” Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people who left.

So it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy that the Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those the sources and methods. Meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence.

So I became very worried because not enough was coming out into the open, and I knew that there was more. We have very good intelligence on Russia. So then I had talked to some of my former colleagues and I knew that they were trying to also help get information to the Hill. That’s why you have the leaking.

RUSH: I mean, she says everything there. She gives everything away and she puts herself right in the middle of it.

CALLER: Correct, you and I both have the opinion that she did not initiate this type of surveillance, this type of operation. Who did? Somebody above her. How did she find out about it? Okay. Those are a couple of the questions that need to be asked in regards to the higher hanging fruit. Now, there’s two possibilities. She was a former employee of the Obama administration. Okay, fine. Then Hillary. Which did does it lead to or does it lead to both? And with the Hillary adage, well, that goes back to the old Watergate adage —

RUSH: Whoa, whoa, time-out again. Obama himself, there was a New York Times story that identified Obama as one of the people ordering this intel to be preserved. So Obama’s fingerprints are already there, Bob.

CALLER: All right, that’s fine. Now, did Obama initiate the surveillance?

RUSH: No.

CALLER: Okay, that’s fine. You say no. My question for that is — and I’m similar in age to you — is goes back to the old Watergate adage. Follow the money. In this case it’s not follow the money. It’s follow the presidential election. Because when Hillary was winning, what was the news? Oh, yeah, we know about the Russian situation. It’s not a problem, it’s not an issue. Trump wins, and it’s like all of a sudden it’s on the front burner. Now, why is that? Okay, because as you say before, they want to take Trump down and that’s probably the very, very valid reason. Okay, fine.

RUSH: But the reason they weren’t using it, and not just not using it, they were pooh-poohing it during the campaign —

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: — telling everybody not to worry about it, because back then the only thing the Russians had successfully targeted was the DNC servers. And remember the DNC had refused the FBI’s request to come examine them.

CALLER: Okay. And they were pooh-poohing it, as you say. One of the reasons why it’s possible that they were pooh-poohing it is because it was initiated, one, by a domestic intel agency on American citizens. Now, if that’s the case, that’s against the law. Do you want that to come out if you were either Hillary or the Obama administration? The answer to that question is “no.”

RUSH: Well, let me go back again, because I might have raised some eyebrows when you asked me if I thought Obama was responsible for the order —

CALLER: Well, I’m not saying he is. I mean, this is very similar to the —

RUSH: No, no. The reason I said “no” — I’m not exonerating Obama for anything. I’m just telling you that the NSA sweeps up everything by virtue of their existence. The NSA sweeping up everything, including and specifically targeting people like the fat slob Russian ambassador. They’re listening to every foreign agent they can, and especially in the country. So they’re surveilling the Russian ambassador, who Flynn happens to talk to. That’s how they got Flynn. As far as we know, they weren’t targeting Flynn. We don’t know if there was a FISA warrant. We don’t know any of this. But we do know they were surveilling the Russian ambassador.

Now, what happens when they get that intel, the American that is also caught is supposed to remain unidentified and labeled American 1, American 2, however many Americans are in the conversation. What happened was whoever looked at the intel said, “You know what? Let’s unmask Flynn and let’s leak to the New York Times and CNN that Flynn’s been talking to the Russian ambassador.”

It was clearly a political move. We don’t know who did that, but Farkas is admitting here that that’s exactly what happened for the express purpose of making sure the Trump people didn’t even come in there and swipe this stuff away and bury it because they wanted to use it politically. The reason during the campaign they didn’t make a heyday about this, they thought Hillary was gonna win in a landslide. They didn’t want anything tainting it.

They didn’t want this story about their victory. They didn’t want the Russians being blamed for Hillary winning, so they pooh-poohed it. They said there’s nothing here. They never once expected to lose. And all during the run-up to the last month of the election, you never heard them complaining about the Russians because they thought they were gonna win big. It’s only when they lost, and it happened on election night, that they put this plan together to start blaming it all on the Russians, because the simple reason is they can’t afford for people to think they were actually rejected.

The only reason they lost is because somebody stole it from them, not because they were incompetent, not because their policies are bad, not because the American people want no part of ’em. So this whole thing is nothing more than a technique designed to make Trump and everything about his presidency illegitimate, just like they tried to do with Bush after the Florida recount the Supreme Court stopped in 2000.

CALLER: — highest hanging fruit yet. There are other people who above her authorized this to be leaked and the operation even to be done, period. Now, if that’s the case, okay —

RUSH: Well, what are you the driving at? Are you driving that Obama had to be in charge of this operation ordering people —

CALLER: No, I am not saying that. I’m saying that if the right questions are asked and the right information is found out — it’s similar to like what Nunes is doing. He’s doing the homework, what the whole committee should be doing together. Instead the Democrats are going off on this low hanging Russian involvement which is just another diversionary tactic. Nunes is enough to see one and one plus one equals three and not, you know, some other situation. Put it this way. He can walk and chew gum at the same time. He’s two, three steps ahead of these people. And the Democrats want him —

RUSH: Recused.

CALLER: — taken off of it because he is asking the right questions. He is following, you know, like put it this way. He’s the dog with the right bone. She’s other guys, there’s nothing but diversionary tactics and why are they doing that? Because if that’s the case, you know, I’m not saying Obama, I’m not saying Hillary, but there’s other people within the old administration, put it this way, within the Washington, you know, elite, somebody has a lot to lose. And as you say, they want to maintain it as long as they can.

RUSH: Maybe so. I don’t doubt that there are a lot of people here with a lot to lose if this is ever exposed, but I’m gonna tell you this, ’cause your low-hanging fruit and your high-hanging fruit, your question who authorized this, where is the smoking gun memo that told all these people to unmask Flynn, who were the people that were told to call the New York Times and leak all this, and who told ’em to do it. My contention to you is, just like Lois Lerner at the IRS did not need a memo to tell her what to do to shaft conservative groups seeking tax exempt status. She’s a full-fledged ideological partisan leftist hack, and so are some of the people at the FBI.

They’re Obama loyalists, and so are some of the people at the CIA. Obama loyalists. And they don’t need to be told. They, in their natural existence, could do this knowing full-fledged this is what anybody else in their position would do. I don’t know necessarily you’re ever gonna get an answer to the questions you’re asking. That’s my only point. But just because you don’t answer or are not able to answer that question doesn’t mean this stuff didn’t happen. We know that it did even before Evelyn Farkas shows up.

We know that all this stuff did, because the New York Times published it all, and CNN published or ran with it, Washington Post did. We know that all this stuff happened. We know there was incorrect intelligence gathering. We know there was unmasking, illegal unmasking of American citizens. We know that there was innuendo and lies about their association with the Russians for which there has yet to be a scintilla of evidence reported or found.

This is clearly a subversion operation. This is an operation designed to sabotage and neutralize the Trump presidency and to paralyze it. And they’ve done a good job — actually, they haven’t. You know, the next untold story is that Trump is mounting success after success after success. Trump is keeping promise after promise after promise. But nobody in the mainstream media is reporting any of it. Anyway, I have to take a break. Great call. Great to have you here, Bob, but we’ve gotta go.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, there’s news today, folks, that we can add to this. It’s from Fox News. Are you ready for this? “Hillary Clinton Aides Had Access to State Department After She Left, Says Key Lawmaker — When Hillary Clinton resigned as Secretary of State in 2013, she negotiated continuing access to classified and top-secret documents for herself and six staffers under the designation ‘research assistants,’ according to a powerful senator who notes that Clinton was later deemed ‘extremely careless’ with such information. The staff apparently retained access even after Clinton announced her run for president in April 2015, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley.”

Now, stop and think of this for a second. So Hillary is secretary of state, and she’s gonna resign. She resigned somewhat in disgrace — Benghazi and some of these other things — and she’s gonna run for the presidency, and she negotiates that she and six of her people continued to receive access to classified top secret documents for herself and six staffers even after she’s gone, and including during the time she was running for president. Now, can you say “Evelyn Farkas”? because this opens up a whole ‘nother door of this.

We have the Obama administration — which would automatically have access to this stuff — and we have the Obama loyalists in the deep state who would have no problem whatsoever looking into whoever’s tapped in this incidental wiretap. Like when the Russian ambassador is targeted, his phone calls are tapped, he ends up talking to Flynn, “Ooh, look what we got.” Flynn’s gotten incidentally. They unmask him and leak that he’s been talking to the Russian ambassador, and that may not be cool.

Mrs. Clinton, during her campaign (and presumably all during), had access to the same stuff. And then the election comes, and Mrs. Clinton is humiliated in defeat and she has access. She’s still got all that stuff, and this is stuff was on her server in Chappaqua, and she’s trafficking in all of this, and now all this gets dumped into the Drive-By Media after she loses. There’s a lot to unpack here, folks. We’re not even halfway through.