RUSH: During the break right before the conclusion the previous hour, I did something I seldom do.

I actually turned on the audio here during a break. I was listening to CNN. They had a roundtable discussion. Comey’s testimony had just ended so they go into closed session. Yeah, closed session, where the real juicy stuff can be thrown out there for Richard Burr to slurp up and whatever else! I’m watching Toobin — Jeffrey Toobin, the supreme legal analyst at CNN — and he’s acknowledging that it was true that Comey had said Trump was not a target three different times, but now he is.

“Today we know that there is a criminal investigation of Trump.” I went, “What? What criminal investigation of Trump?” Are you aware of any new investigation of Trump that’s criminal? Seriously, now. Have I missed something? Well, he said it! He said, “Yeah, Trump was not a target, but we know today — right in June of 2017 — that there is an investigation of Trump.” And then they went to this Jim Sciutto guy (who I think Trump personally called out as fake news once in a news conference) and this guy says, “That’s right, Jeffrey!

“That’s absolutely right, and the investigation…” That’s how they identified it. They said the criminal investigation of Trump is his comment to Comey “I hope you can let the Flynn thing go…” CNN now says that that comment from Trump has opened a personal, new investigation of Trump. I didn’t hear Comey say that, but I do know this. When Comey was asked, “After Trump said all this, why didn’t you resign? I mean, if it’s such a great affront — if Trump saying, ‘Gee, I hope you could find a way to let this Flynn thing go.

“‘You know, he’s a good guy,’ and you, Comey, said, ‘Yeah, he’s a good guy.’ Why didn’t you quit, and why didn’t you report this to the attorney general? Why didn’t you go out and immediately tell your colleagues at the FBI?” Comey says, “I guess I just wasn’t courageous enough,” and then he said, “I didn’t want to taint the investigation.” How in the world can the FBI director “taint” the investigation by announcing new information? Bottom line: I don’t believe that this investigation of Trump is about the Flynn comment.

They’re just lying through their teeth about this — and then Jim Sciutto went on and said, “You know, Anderson…” Anderson Cooper was hosting. “You know, Anderson, this famous dossier, the golden showers dossier that everybody says there’s nothing to? I’m told that there might be something to it, Anderson. I’m told… You heard Comey wouldn’t answer about this in open session, and I’m told that there may be that this is not discredited fully, that it’s not fully off the table, that there might, in fact…” It is fully discredited!

It was made up. It was admittedly manufactured like a novel. It is total fiction, this golden showers memo. But there’s CNN now claiming that Trump is under investigation as of today, despite Comey saying that he was not a target three different times, and that dossier? That’s still active. There may, in fact, be something there! This is why I don’t want you to get caught up in this stuff because you’re just gonna get frustrated. You’re just dealing with people who have… CNN’s gone total pathological now. CNN is clinically, psychologically off kilter.

Something’s happened over there and everybody working there is lost, and I mean this in the greatest sincerity. They have been so overtaken by whatever it is, the hate that governs them. You know, hate is a poison. The longer you hate and the longer you hold on to it and don’t let it go, the more poisonous and destructive it becomes. And these people have forfeited all presence in reality. They’re off on a dangerous, dangerous pathological trail now: Openly, wantonly lying about Trump being under investigation and this memo now.

“There’s something to it! I’ve got sources that say that this is big! They’re going to really dig even further into this.” So let’s go to the audio sound bites. This is last night, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360. First up, a sound bite with law professor Alan Dershowitz, and Cooper said, “Professor Dershowitz, you say this actually strengthens Trump’s position against Comey.” They’re talking about the release, the prerelease of Comey’s testimony came out yesterday. CNN was on hour six or seven of “Comey’s testimony is going to see to it that Trump is impeached and we’ve got him!”

After six or seven hours of this yesterday and last night, Dershowitz showed up, and Cooper said, “Professor, you say that Comey’s testimony actually strengthened Trump’s position against Comey. How so?”

DERSHOWITZ: He could have said to Comey, “Stop this investigation. I am now pardoning Flynn.” That’s what President Bush did. In the beginning of the investigation of Caspar Weinberger — which could have led back to the White House, to the first President Bush — President Bush, on the eve of the trial, pardoned Caspar Weinberger; pardoned six people. And Special Counsel Walsh said, “This is outrageous! He’s stopping the investigation.” Nobody talked about obstruction of justice. You cannot have obstruction of justice when the president exercises his constitutional authority to pardon, his constitutional authority to fire the director of the FBI, or his constitutional authority to tell the director of the FBI who to prosecute, who not to prosecute. So let’s get out of the weeds.

RUSH: Dershowitz is frustrated. I think he used to appreciate going on CNN, but I’m convinced… I don’t want to put words in the professor’s mouth, but he has to be bothered watching this network, especially if he’s lined up as a guest. Because he’s hearing things from these people that are asinine. And that’s why he says something so simple. Nobody talked about obstructing justice because the president cannot obstruct justice when he behaves constitutionally and pardons somebody.

There is no obstruction. The president has the constitutional power to pardon — and if he does it, he’s not obstructing justice. And CNN wouldn’t let it go. CNN says he’s obstructing justice when he hasn’t even done anything. The next thing that Dershowitz said: He can fire the director of the FBI. It is his constitutional authority to tell the FBI director who to prosecute. In other words, Dershowitz was saying if Trump had actually told Comey to drop it on Flynn, he could have! There’s no crime. The president is the executive branch.

The president runs it. The FBI director works for the executive branch; therefore, the president. If the president wanted to tell Comey to drop the Flynn thing, he could have, and been constitutionally in bounds. But he didn’t. So Dershowitz is watching CNN manufacture things out of clean air, thin air, that have no relationship to the Constitution. That’s why he finished: You gotta get out of the weeds here, you people. You’re making fools of yourselves.

So up next to prove it was Jeffrey Toobin. Cooper said, “Jeffrey, what’s your take on Professor Dershowitz’s recent argument here?”

TOOBIN: I could not think Alan is more wrong, and the simple response is: Watergate. I mean, under Alan’s theory —

DERSHOWITZ: (interrupting)

TOOBIN: Let me finish! Under your theory, the president… Since the FBI works for the president, he can tell ’em to do anything they want. Well, in Watergate, the president — Nixon — and his… They conspired. They made an agreement to stop the FBI investigation of Watergate. Was that a constitutional authority?

DERSHOWITZ: Absolutely. Absolutely.

TOOBIN: No! It was a crime. Several people went to jail and the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach President Nixon over it.

DERSHOWITZ: Impeachment is very different.

TOOBIN: So, yes, he could pardon him but he cannot obstruct justice.

RUSH: All right, so Toobin thinks that he’s just destroyed Dershowitz. Dershowitz sat there patiently waiting for Toobin to make his point. He says that Nixon made an agreement to stop the FBI investigation of Watergate. That’s not… These guys have been so consumed with their hatred, they don’t even remember what Watergate’s about. In fact, I defy nine out of 10 people today to tell you what Watergate was.

“Well, yeah, that’s when Nixon was impeached, man! I remember.” No, Nixon wasn’t impeached. “Well, he resigned.” That’s right. But why? Nine out of 10 people cannot tell you, including those that work at CNN. So here’s Dershowitz picking up after Toobin says that the Watergate affair set the precedent for the president being impeached for obstruction of justice for exercising his authority.

DERSHOWITZ: Impeachment is political. There is no judicial review of impeachment. You can impeach a president for jaywalking, and nobody can review that. I’m talking about was there an obstruction of justice. He didn’t commit an obstruction of justice. You, Congress, you can impeach him if you don’t like what he did, if you think obstructionist-ish —

CNN WOMAN: (giggling)

DERSHOWITZ: — or would be an obstruction if he wasn’t the president. But you cannot say it’s a crime. It’s simply not a crime for the president to exercise his constitutional authority to pardon, to direct the FBI. It wasn’t a crime when Thomas Jefferson directed the attorney general what to do. It wasn’t a crime when Lincoln did it.

RUSH: And it’s not a crime if Trump did it, which he didn’t even do! Once again, Comey thinks Trump did because Comey doesn’t understand real-guy language. Comey is a person of Washington; Trump is not. Trump speaks a different way, uses different words, different intonations, different dialects. He doesn’t speak Washingtonese. “I hope you can let this thing go, Man. He’s a good guy. I hope you can let it go. There’s nothing here.” Comey says, “He’s trying to interfere! He trying to… Oh, my God, I’m so scared! The president’s trying to interfere.”

Meanwhile, Obama is out getting involved in things in genuine ways that nobody seemed concerned about. Anyway, I don’t want to get too far out of the mainstream focus. But the point is that Dershowitz once again explains to all these people at CNN how they’re way off the reservation here, that they don’t know what they are talking about. The best evidence of it is these judges at the Fourth Circuit. These appellate judges? These are supposed to be the best judges in the country. The appeals court judges — by historical reference — are the best of the bunch, supposed to be.

And these guys even said, “Well, the Trump travel ban? We’re gonna call it unconstitutional because of what Trump said on the campaign trail.” But it’s not in the executive order. “Well, it may not be, but he said during the campaign trail he wants to ban all Muslims; therefore, he’s in violation of the Constitution’s religion clause, and so we’re gonna strike it down.” It’s asinine! Now you’ve got these guys on CNN basically saying that the president exercising constitutional authority is committing crimes, and Dershowitz… He ends every appearance on CNN with less hair. I have noticed this. I think it’s taking a toll.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Cookie gave me these two sound bites of CNN that ticked me off. The first one’s Toobin. Now, this is about… Let’s see. I think this is… It’s either 20 minutes ago or an hour and 20 minutes ago. Yeah, it’s an hour. I’m not sure. It’s either one of the two. This is Toobin. Remember, now, we’ve learned today that Trump is telling the truth: Comey told him three different times he was not a target. He has never been a target of the investigation. It’d be… One of the reasons is that it’s been a counterintel investigation, not criminal. But Trump has never been a target, and Comey would not leak that. He leaked everything else but that.

CNN cannot let that stand.

Here comes their legal beagle, Jeffrey Toobin…

TOOBIN: In the letter that Trump wrote firing Comey, um, he said, “Three times you told me that I was not under investigation,” and that was in May. (dramatic pause) Well, here we know in June, Donald Trump is under criminal investigation — and that’s a big deal, and that’s (dramatic pause) important.

RUSH: We don’t know that. That’s just an out-and-out lie. I don’t know what else to call this. These people have gone off their rockers. This is pathological. It’s psychological. Where is Trump under investigation today? How is Trump under criminal investigation? What? Did Comey say something today that made these people think that all of a sudden criminal investigation into Trump has been opened? If that has happened, that’s the only headline we’d be seeing up there. Now, here’s Jim Sciutto.

This is the guy… Trump’s called this guy out for fake news to his face at a press conference once. This was the guy that was talking about the famous Russian dossier that was total… Folks, it was made up. It’s a piece of fiction, written fiction on purpose. The person who did it has been identified and admitted it was fiction. It was put together by intelligence people hoping to convince Trump to meet with them every day. Trump had said he didn’t need to go meet with intel people every day ’cause he’s a smart guy; has a good memory.

The intelligence people put this together as an example all of kind of things that could be said out there, and they wanted to prepare Trump for it. None of it is true. It was running around Washington for six months. The media had it. It was BuzzFeed finally decided to publish it raw, admitting no evidence, no backup, nothing to it. None of the claims could be substantiated. I want you to listen to how CNN (which has reported that previously) talked about it. Here’s Jim Sciutto talking about it a while ago…

SCIUTTO: On the dossier — the famous dossier — which has been dismissed by Republicans and others — ah, it’s been discredited. The fact is — and I’ve been asking folks involved in the investigation for weeks now — it is not completely dismissed and Comey said today, “I can’t comment on (sic) open session.”

RUSH: Yeah, let me tell you, folks. It’s not been dismissed by just Republicans. It’s been dismissed by the Washington Post who refused to run it and the New York Times. It’s been dismissed by everybody. It’s been dismissed by the intel. The golden showers dossier? For this guy to say now that it is alive and well and is part of the foundation — and, furthermore, you know, Comey said, “I can’t answer the question in open session”? I told you how to interpret that. Do not doubt me.

At every opportunity where Comey said today, “I can’t discuss that in open session,” I’ll guarantee you his answer exonerates Trump, and that’s not why he’s there today. To say, “I can’t talk about that in public session,” is designed to create reactions just like we got here from this clown, Jim Sciutto. There’s nothing to this dossier. If there were something to the dossier… By the way, along the lines of the Russians are everywhere and the Russians are hacking and we all know it and we all must be vigilant and we all must be ever observant because the Russians are hacking everything?

Yeah? Show me. Show me where they’ve hacked. How long is this damn investigation gonna go on when there’s nothing that’s been proven, there’s nothing that’s even come to light? What the…? Who does this investigation every day? What are they doing? Who are the investigators? What are they looking at? Why do we need an independent counsel? There’s nothing here! There hasn’t been any evidence for anything to date.

The investigation’s purely political, and it’s gonna go on throughout 2018 and the midterm elections. What investigation? Where are the gumshoes? Who are the detectives? Where are they? Where are the boots on the ground? Where’s the rubber hitting the road? Where are these people and what are they looking at? What computer systems? What is this investigation? Who is doing it? What does it consist of? Nothing, and nothing, and nothing. Just like the Russians and the mysterious hack.