RUSH: We also have Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He has temporarily stepped down because of a series of complaints lodged against him by left-wing activist groups. That would be Obama and George Soros. The House Ethics Committee is claiming he mishandled intelligence by showing it to Donald Trump, the president of the United States. Now, Matt Lewis… Grab audio sound bite number two. This is the only version of this I’ve heard that’s different.

Matt Lewis was on CNN today on their Newsroom program and he has got a different theory about why Nunes is gone, and it’s all about Paul Ryan. It’s not about the ethics committee business. And I have to tell you, this ethics business… John Koskinen is still at the IRS. Obama’s guy that ran political scams and directed them against conservatives is still at the IRS. We don’t know what the hell’s going on with Bannon. But they’re celebrating like they’ve scalped Bannon, even though he’s still there and claiming that all of this is much ado about nothing.

Jeff Sessions has recused himself from the Russian investigation for no reason whatsoever. They’re trying to neuter Bannon. Now they got rid of Devin Nunes. This is exactly what I meant yesterday when I was talking about how we are in the middle of a quasi-civil war, and that is there is no respect for authority by the Democrats, the authority represented by the Constitution. The only authority that they respect is their own. Do you think Adam Schiff, Pencil Neck, would resign if the Democrats ran this committee and if there were ethics complaints?

No! They would trash the ethics committee and they would claim it’s nothing more than a political witch hunt and Pencil Neck wouldn’t be going anywhere. And an Obama attorney general would not have recused himself. This is why people on our side get demoralized right in what should be the afterglow of victory, we running around acting like we still have to behave so as to show the American people that we’re honorable and trustworthy with power. I share your feelings, folks.

It gets frustrating here with all this. Plus, when you add to it that many people thought this was among the kind of things that were gonna end with Donald Trump winning the presidency and being in the White House.

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RUSH: Here’s Matt Lewis who was on CNN Newsroom today, John Berman speaking with…

He’s at The Daily Beast. Now, Matt Lewis used to be… Where did he used to be? Matt Lewis used to be at a conservative outlet somewhere. Matt Lewis is among those… I say this with great affection. Don’t anybody send this guy emails. Please don’t. He’s one of the guys that claimed I was a conservative sellout for not killing off Trump during the campaign, or some such thing. But, anyway, he’s on CNN, and he’s from The Daily Beast now, which is Tina Brown’s creation.

(interruption) Yeah, the Daily Caller, Chatsworth Osborne Jr.’s out there. I knew where… The Daily Caller, Daily Beast. Sometimes you get callers and beasts confused, even though a beast can be calling you. But in this case, the beast is the libs and the caller is Chatsworth, who’s on leave from his website because now he’s got his Fox show. So, anyway, the question here, “One of the things that Devin Nunes always said is his feeling that there were people in the Obama [Regime] were improperly questionably unmasking officials in the Trump campaign.

“All of a sudden this week there’s the reporting that Susan Rice may have unmasked names of Trump associates.” By the way, this is getting hairier too. This is… There’s a name that I mentioned. I’m sorry for interrupting myself but I do this so that I don’t forget this later on. There’s a name that’s been conspicuously missing in all of this talk of unmasking surveilling and all that. You know what that name is? It’s John Brennan, Obama’s CIA director, who is a partisan leftist. I think he may…

I read the other day he has converted to Islam, that our CIA director had converted to Islam. I haven’t been able to confirm it. I’ve seen it in one place. But his name has been totally absent all of this, and I think he’s in the thick of it. But, anyway, here’s the question: “All of a sudden there’s the reporting that Susan Rice may have unmasked names of Trump people, and that’s now public after Chairman Nunes kept it secret for a long time. After it’s public, he then steps aside. Doesn’t make sense. Why is Nunes stepping aside here, Matt?”

LEWIS: I do not understand the timing. The one thing that I do think is interesting and possibly important here is remember how, you know, Mike Flynn was taken down not because of the communication with Russia, but because he misled the vice president, Mike Pence.

RUSH: Yeah.

LEWIS: It appears that Nunes may have misled the speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Remember, he didn’t tell Paul Ryan that the information he received came from White House; he said that it came from a whistleblower-type person. So he very well may have misled Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, the one guy who could push him off.

RUSH: Okay. So that’s an entirely different take on this. Matt Lewis of the Daily Caller formally — I’m sorry, The Daily Beast, formally of the Daily Caller — claimed that Nunes didn’t quit on his own and has nothing to do with these left-wing groups harassing the Ethics Committee. It is that Ryan forced him out of there because Nunes wasn’t straight with Ryan. So to repeat: Matt Lewis says, “It appears that Nunes may have misled [Ryan]. Remember, he didn’t tell [Ryan] the information he received came from the White House” when he went up to the Executive Office Building. He told Ryan that it “came from a whistleblower-type person.

“So he may have misled Ryan,” who said you don’t mislead me just like Flynn doesn’t mislead Pence. And you know what happened to Flynn. So, see you later, Nunes. That’s Lewis’ theory. I haven’t seen that anywhere else. The theory that is carrying the day in the Drive-By Media is that Nunes temporarily stepped down to avoid becoming a “distraction,” what with all these claims from left-wing groups to the ethics committee. Now, those are not gonna stop. So I don’t know — and by the way, the ethics committee moves at a snail’s pace.

And Congress is only gonna be working eight days in April. So when is this gonna get resolved?

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RUSH: While Nunes is gone now from the chairmanship. And, by the way, Mike Conaway and Trey Gowdy are effectively going to be the new… Well, Conaway’s the chairman and Gowdy is now second in command on the Intel Committee, and they’re good. You know, Gowdy is a former prosecutor. He knows exactly what he’s doing. The investigation isn’t gonna suffer. That’s not the point here. The point is that we keep taking our players off the field. They don’t. We won. This is why people on our side get demoralized and don’t quite understand this, and I’m with you on it. I didn’t understand Sessions’ recusal.

Well, I say, “I didn’t know.” I understand why he’s doing it. All these wrong reasons. “We have to show our virtue because we agree our virtue’s in question because what the media says about us. We have to prove we’re fair and totally aboveboard.” We’re not gonna score any points on that.

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RUSH: Madison, Indiana. Joyce, it’s great to have you on the program. How you doing?

CALLER: I’m doing fine, Rush. How are you?

RUSH: Fine. Thank you very much. I’m glad you’re here.

CALLER: Thank you. I wanted to just say, first of all, I want to thank you for always standing your ground and always giving us a voice. We who are conservatives out here, you’re our voice.

RUSH: Well, thank you very much.

CALLER: I want to thank you for that.

RUSH: I sincerely appreciate your saying that, Joyce. Thank you very much.

CALLER: I wanted to… This morning when I saw that Chairman Nunes stepped aside, I… I could not believe it. I could not believe that he folded when it seemed like things were going well, especially with the Susan Rice revelations.

RUSH: I know. I can’t tell you the number of emails I got in the first five minutes where the subject line was “WTF.”

CALLER: Ugh!

RUSH: I’m not kidding.

CALLER: And who is this House Ethics Committee investigating him? Who are they?

RUSH: Well, it’s like a bipartisan committee of Republicans and Democrats. Republicans seldom use it; the Democrats do. It is what you think it is. It’s there to be used if there are legitimate ethics complaints. These complaints apparently from outside the House, from left-wing activist groups working through members of the House to lodge these complaints that Nunes violated ethics by going up to the White House and reporting Trump, rather than reporting to Pencil Neck.

CALLER: And then this morning Ryan said he still was standing behind him and all that. But it seems like every time we’re going two steps forward, then something like this happens —

RUSH: I know. I know.

CALLER: — and we go about like 10 steps backward and we slide back down the hill again and we have to start all over again.

RUSH: Well, let me go grab the next caller, ’cause the next caller has a theory about this that you may be interested in. In the first place, I understand how you feel. This is the exact kind of thing that demoralizes people on our side. They see the IRS commissioner who’s corrupt as anybody, still there. They see a bunch of Obama holdovers still in the deep state. Nobody does anything about them. They never resign. You’ve got Susan Rice in there who’s proudly parroting around what she did or didn’t do and it looks like she’s getting away with it.

(More on that as the program unfolds.) But then the slightest, the slightest thing, and Sessions recuses himself on the Russian investigation. People say, “Why? You weren’t even accused of anything!” And then Nunes says, “I’m gonna step aside ’cause I don’t want to be a distraction.” The thing about this is Nunes is gonna step aside, and Adam Schiff is gonna continue to talk about Nunes no matter where Nunes is!

He’s gonna forever say the investigation is tainted, no matter they got rid of Nunes, ’cause Nunes tainted it and the Republicans haven’t made any changes. That’s the way it always works. We ought to be able to see this stuff coming and be ready for it. Look, I’ve been saying this for 25 years. (sigh) All I can do is join you in your frustration and tell you I relate to it and understand it.

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RUSH: Here’s Christina in Fresno. Christina, I’m glad you waited. Great to have you with us on the EIB Network today. How are you?

CALLER: I’m doing great. You know, Representative Nunes is my congressman, and I do not approve of him stepping aside. You know, Congress needs to be reminded that their oath is to the Constitution, not to the House rules or the Senate rules. The Democrats, they manage to advance the cause of tyranny when they’re in power, but Republicans can’t advance the cause of liberty to save their life!

RUSH: Yeah, I understand the frustration; to a certain degree, I share it with you. They do take an oath to defend and protect the Constitution, but the House rules are the House rules. When there’s an ethics complaint lodged, it has to be acknowledged. I think recusal here, the temporary stepping down, the stated reason for it is so that he doesn’t provide or create or continue to be a distraction. But I don’t think that washes, because like Adam Schiff, Pencil Neck? I don’t care where…

Nunes could quit the House, and they’re still gonna be talking about what he did in their minds and how it invalidates the whole investigation, because it’s been corrupted. So it doesn’t matter where Nunes is; they’re still gonna… This is the one thing the Republicans, to me, have never figured out. It doesn’t matter what they say or do. The Democrats are still gonna attack them the way they attack them because of who and what liberalism is. But the alternative theory… I don’t know if you heard the first hour of the program.

But there’s a reporter for The Daily Beast who thinks that the reason Nunes is gone is because Ryan forced him out because Nunes did not tell Ryan the truth about who tipped him off to the intelligence he went to the White House to look at. The story is that Nunes told Paul Ryan that a whistleblower alerted him to the existence, and the truth is that somebody in the White House told him about it. The reporter’s Matt Lewis and he says that it was Ryan that actually forced Nunes out because Nunes wasn’t honest with him. So who knows?

CALLER: Nunes and Paul Ryan, they are BFF. So whatever is being advanced in the press, it’s smoke and mirrors. It’s all good behind the scenes. I know that.

RUSH: They’re “BFFs”? Best Friends Forever?

CALLER: They are. Absolutely.

RUSH: Okay. Well, look, a lot of people share your frustration. Like I say, the number one subject line in my email this morning when the Nunes news broke — email after email subject line — “WTF?” People on our side don’t believe it, don’t understand. We won many elections on Election Day. What is this? Sessions recusing himself? (sigh) Anyway, I appreciate the call, Christina. Thank you.