RUSH: Now, talking about Comey, I’m 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’m gonna go back to July 5th. Comey calls a press conference and says because it’s so crucial, the American people are so tuned in… With a presidential election, he’s got to get the news out.

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’s actually gonna charge her,” and then he didn’t. Then he said, “In spite all this, we couldn’t find any intent. No reasonable prosecutor to bring charges.”

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’s really a smart guy. He can’t bring charges because the DOJ is never gonna pursue Hillary because she’s a big Democrat and it’s the Obama administration.

“So Comey’s 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’s how many on the right credited Comey for what he was doing. I thought, “I’ve never seen an FBI director behave this way,” and I’ve 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’s not gonna be charged with. I’ve never seen that.

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

“He realized that she had no intention of behaving in a criminal fashion, and she didn’t, 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.

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.

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’d been some emails pending on Carlos Danger’s computer from his wife, Huma Weiner. And so he told Congress, “We gotta look into this. We’re reopening the investigation. But we don’t know where it’s going.”

Why tell anybody you’re reopening the investigation if you don’t want to have some impact on the election? This is October 28th! He wouldn’t have had to tell anybody because he didn’t know if it was gonna lead anywhere. So once again compounds the same error. He doesn’t know if there is anything to be discovered or learned — doesn’t know if there’s any criminal behavior, or activity — and yet sends a letter to Congress telling them, “We’re 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.

And then Comey says, “Guess what? Uh, nothing to see here! That’s it. We’re 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.

And we know the Russians weren’t because there wasn’t any tampering with the outcome of election. There was no tampering with votes. There was nothing. There’s not… Hillary lost for the right reasons: She was a lousy candidate, she had no campaign, she couldn’t 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’s unfit,” but they have nothing that they can ballyhoo about themselves because they don’t and they’re not.

Well, so now we come forward to last week, and Comey’s 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’t 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’s computer to her husband, Anthony Weiner. But that’s not the case. Huma was not forwarding classified emails to her husband.

She was backing up her computer, and her BlackBerry ended up backing up to Weiner’s computer as a secondary backup site. There was no purposeful transfer, and it wasn’t “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.

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’t, of course, because they’re in this (sigh) quest to find the mythological connection between Russia and Trump.

Now, last night… I want to really drill down here and find out what really is behind this, ’cause Pence is back on Capitol Hill saying, “This has nothing to do with the Russian investigation! It’s 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?”

And he answered it! He answered it in a purely political way, not in any way as an investigator. There’s no evidence that the Russians preferred Trump! There’s no evidence the Russians helped Trump. There is none! And here’s 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.

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’t think so. I know we don’t support leaking of classified information, but we don’t investigate. We’ve not…” “I’m not asking investigate the leaks. I’m asking to investigate who is unmasking people who ought not be named in these secondary traps of surveillance of foreign actors.”

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’s name should have never been made public, but somebody unmasked him (like Susan Rice), and Comey flatly refused to go there! And that’s real criminality, folks! That is statutory felonious behavior, these unmaskings are. And Comey said, “No interest. Nope! I’m not gonna go there. No interest in classified leaking and finding out who’s been doing it. Can’t go there. Too much effort.”

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

The Republicans are asking Comey what he’s 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’s back, when Comey openly refused a request and refused to even conduct an investigation into this unmasking.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I’ve assembled some things here that I found comical and interesting in terms of reaction to the firing of James Comey.

TheHill.com: “Trump Dings ‘Cryin’ Chuck Schumer’ for Bashing Comey Firing — 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’ Chuck Schumer stated recently, “I do not have confidence in him (James Comey) any longer.” Then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp’ Trump tweeted.” Trump’s not “attacking” anybody. Trump’s the guy being attacked. Trump is not mounting a coup; he is the target of a coup.

So Schumer goes out and attacks Trump, and Trump responds by calling him Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and the Drive-Bys are now blasting Trump for calling Chuck Schumer Cryin’ Chuck. None of them seem to realize that it’s a reference to Schumer’s crocodile tears over Trump’s visa ban. Remember when Cryin’ Chuck started crying over the first travel ban? Trump has these people’s number. He calls ’em 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.

Here’s a story from Joel Pollak at Breitbart. “The Simple Explanation for Trump Firing James Comey When He Did.” 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’s fired], President Barack Obama’s 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.”

So his theory is, with yet another official denial — okay, nothing there; this investigation’s going nowhere; there’s nothing to find — let’s finally get rid of Comey. We’ve 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’s hearing with Clapper and … Sally Yates was meant to reveal a ‘smoking gun,'” and there wasn’t.

That’s another thing. Remember how they’ve been salivating for weeks over Sally Yates’ 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’t. 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’t have anything new, and they were let down once again. Remember Catherine Herridge’s explanation for why Comey was fired again.

She revealed this on Fox News last night during that nine o’clock show called The Five. Herridge said that Comey was fired because Trump had asked him to investigate unmasking of Trump administration officials, and Comey had refused to conduct that investigation but had nevertheless learned who some of the people doing the unmasking were, and Comey had stalled turning that information over to the Trump administration.

So, in a sense, it’s a degree of insubordination that led to Comey’s dismissal. Wall Street Journal. Now, you need to understand something. The Wall Street Journal led the Never Trumpers. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, long thought by many to be conservative (and I guess it is) has been part of the Never Trumper brigade from the outset. And even the Wall Street Journal writes: “Comey’s Deserved Dismissal.” Let me share with you some of their reactions.

“[W]e advised Mr. Trump to sack Mr. Comey immediately upon taking office. The president will now pay a larger political price for waiting, as critics question the timing of his action amid the FBI’s probe of his campaign’s alleged Russia ties.” You know what? I disagree with that. If Comey had been fired the day Trump was inaugurated, what do you think would have happened? The same thing that’s happening now! They all want to talk about Trump was guilty of bad timing. There was no time to do this, if you’re worried about limiting media reaction.

The media was gonna make hay out of nothing here no matter when Trump did it. If Trump had fired Comey yesterday, two days ago, three months ago, what we’re seeing now is what we would have seen then. Here would have come the invisible news, the fake news leaks: Trump knew that Comey was getting close! Trump was aware that there was something to be found. Trump is desperately trying to stop the investigation as his administration begins! (You can write these sentences yourself.)

There is a very worrisome corruption of so much of official Washington. There doesn’t seem to be, at least for me — and I don’t like this. There doesn’t seem to be… Let me put it this way. When the FBI said something, you believed it. Now we question it. When the FBI said that somebody had done something or had not done something, they had a great reputation and a great image. They had not been politicized, at least not outwardly. They seemed to be totally focused on genuine bad guys. I don’t know if there is an institution left that people do not doubt.

The left has just corrupted everything that it has attempted to gain control of. It’s not healthy — and, of course, it’s not good — when there are doubts about honesty from every sector of government. When the first instinctive reaction is to calculate the political belief of whoever it is saying something and then measure what they’ve said based on that. Because everything has become politicized. Law enforcement, specifically, is not to be. But we know that it has been, as evidenced by the past year. Here’s another quote from the Wall Street Journal editorial supporting firing of Comey:

Comey “styles himself as the last honest man in Washington as he has dangled insinuations across his career about the George W. Bush White House and surveillance, then Mrs. Clinton and emails, and now Mr. Trump and Russia. [Comey] is political in precisely the way we don’t want a leader of America’s premier law-enforcement agency to behave.” Bingo! And then there’s this: “As for the Russia probe, if Mr. Trump is trying to cover up anything, firing the FBI director is a lousy way to do it. Such a public spectacle will make details more likely to leak if agents feel their evidence is being sat on. Mr. Comey’s credibility was also tainted enough that whatever he announced at the end of the probe would have been doubted.”

Well, bingo to that too!

Can you imagine what would have happened if Comey would have ever announced, “We’re closing the investigation. There is no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia”? Can you imagine, from Chuck Schumer on down — or up, depending on your point of view? Can you imagine the reaction in Meet the Press or anywhere else in the Drive-By Media, CNN, New York Times? Can you imagine it? Well, I guarantee you Comey could! I, frankly, had doubts that there was ever gonna be an end to this investigation, for that very reason. Too many of these people are seeking a perfect image, being loved and adored by everybody — and in this highly charged atmosphere, that simply is not possible.