RUSH: I think this may be the scandal of scandals. It certainly is in the top three, and it is fascinating to me — not surprising in the least — that it’s being ignored, especially being ignored by the publications that broke it. They broke it and that’s it. Washington Post, TheHill.com, maybe the New York Times a bit. But now you have to dig deep to find it. You won’t find it on USA Today. You won’t find it on Yahoo News. You will not find the story anywhere where millions of Americans get their news.
I need to conduct a test here, folks. Just a second. (interruption) When I just finished saying what I said, Dawn and Snerdley looked at each other with perplexed facial expressions, as though one of you didn’t know what I was talking about. Is that true? (interruption) It is true. (interruption) One of them doesn’t even know what I’m talking about. When I first heard about this last night, I lit up. I went through every emotion, because, A, I knew it. I knew from the get-go that this was contrived and made up and it was opposition research, and I had said so numerous times.
And then I got livid when I saw how little relative interest in it there was in the Drive-By Media last night. I turned on cable TV; I couldn’t find anything on it. So I came in here today and I’m watching the Drive-By Media on cable TV, and there’s scant mention of it here and scant there. But clearly to the denizens of the swamp, it isn’t that big a deal. Let me tell you what it is. You know the Trump dossier. Let’s review the Trump dossier, shall we? This is the golden showers dossier. Among many things, this bit of intel…
Remember that the Trump dossier was presented to President Trump and to us as intelligence that had been produced by a combination of intelligence agencies. One of the stories we got was that the intel people put this together after Trump openly said he didn’t want a daily brief from the intel people. He was smart enough to remember from day to day what they had told him. So one of the stories that we got was that they prepared this dossier that was knowingly false to demonstrate to him the kind of things that could show up every day that he needed to know about.
And they did present it to him. It was James Comey who presented the Trump dossier to Trump, and that then made it qualify as news. That opened the floodgates, permitting the Drive-By Media to report on it. The Trump dossier was put together by a guy named Christopher Steele, and he was hired by Fusion GPS, which we now know. The bottom line here is that this dossier — which was presented to the American people; which was presented to President Trump as intelligence, as reliable intelligence — was nothing more than opposition research bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee.
They paid a guy to make this stuff up. It is not intelligence. There’s not a shred of it that’s true. It never has been true. But look at how it was used. Look at everybody who went along with this. The CIA director, John Brennan, informed the world that this dossier formed the basis of his investigation into whether or not Trump had colluded with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton. The CIA director said that it formed the basis of his investigation. The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, working for Obama, ditto, same thing.
(paraphrased) “We were deeply troubled by the contents of this dossier, and it formed the basis and the foundation of our investigation.” The FBI, James Comey, used this dossier as a basis and foundation for this entirely bogus, nothing-to-it investigation of Trump-Russia collusion! Adam Schiff on the House Intelligence Committee kept citing it. The media kept citing it. Everybody. It was all over Washington all last summer, two summers ago. Nobody would run it because nothing in it is verifiable.
BuzzFeed, which is a unit of NBCUniversal, decided to go ahead and publish the whole thing in its entirety with caveats. “Sorry. We can’t confirm anything here. There’s not one element of this that’s verifiable, but we think you have a right to know and make up your own mind.” Once they did that and once it was news that Trump had been shown this, the floodgates opened, and this thing became reported on as though it was legitimate intel, folks. This is not an insignificant thing. The director of the CIA during the Obama administration proudly, happily said this dossier formed the basis of his investigation.
There was no dossier! It’s nothing more than made-up drivel bought and paid for as opposition research by Hillary Clinton and her campaign and the Democrat National Committee. They treated it as genuine and legitimate intelligence. Did they secure FISA warrants to tap and investigate people on the basis of this opposition research? They tried to pass opposition research off as legitimate intelligence. I cannot emphasize that enough. For over a year people have been told that the contents of this dossier — which contains the story of the golden showers.
This is where Trump found himself in Moscow and was told that he and Melania were staying in the same hotel suite that Barack and Michelle Obama had stayed in, and so the dossier — among other things — claims that Trump called some prostitutes over and had ’em urinate on the bed. This dossier also said that one of Trump’s lawyers had had a secret meeting with Russians — in the Czech Republic, I believe. And it was later learned that this guy has never been in the Czech Republic!
It was easily refuted, but this never went away because the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party and the Obama administration were in cahoots to use this to try to get Donald Trump impeached and thrown out of office and have his election questioned, and it was not intelligence. It was opposition research. It was bought and paid for by the Democrat Party via Fusion GPS. There’s also another connection. You know when the Democrat National Committee servers were hacked?
You remember the DNC would not let the FBI forensically examine the server. Instead, they hired CrowdStrike to do the forensic examination. It turns out that CrowdStrike was also hired by the law firm that hired Steele, that hired Fusion GPS to make up this dossier. All of this is Democrat Party, Hillary Clinton, and Obama administration opposition research! All of this is lies. All of this is patently made up. Oh, there may be a sentence or two in the dossier that’s got some connection to something that happened to give it some sense of credibility if deeply examined.
Look at what this has led to. It has led to the investigation of Jared Kushner and Russia. It has led to the investigation of Trump and Russia. It has led to — it has formed the basis of — the investigation of all of these people: Donald Trump Jr. and Russia, Paul Manafort and Russia. By the way, there’s an update now on Manafort. It turns out that the Mueller investigation, according to the latest leak, is not looking at Manafort’s roles and actions on behalf of Trump, but rather on behalf of some Democrats.
But, my friends, all of this is BS. It is literally toxic BS. John Brennan, the director of the CIA, said it was the basis of the CIA’s investigation into whether Trump colluded with Russia, for which there still is no evidence, for which there will not be any evidence because of: It didn’t happen! Hillary Clinton and her campaign… By the way, one of her spokesmen, Brian Fallon, was on CNN today, and he was asked pointblank if Hillary knew. He said, “I don’t know.” This begs another question:
Why are the Washington Post and New York Times all of a sudden dumping on the Clintons on this? I have a theory to explain that, but I’ll get to that in due course. Well, in short, I’ll tell you. They want to continue investigating Trump, and when they find evidence that the Clintons have actually done what Trump has done, they’ve gotta get rid of somebody in order justify pursuing Trump. But I’ll get into that in more detail in due course. These people — John Brennan, James Clapper, Adam Schiff, the Hillary Clinton campaign — are not public servants.
They are vicious partisans. They feel so entitled to power that they feel freely capable and entitled to actually ruining people in the pursuit of their power. They are so entitled to it that they think it’s nothing to literally lie and destroy and ruin people in order to get what they believe they are entitled to. They have no sense of fairness. There is no sense of duty here. Have you noticed the swamp’s not all that upset about this? Have you noticed that? To the swamp, “Hey, y’know,mpolitics-as-usual. Get used to it! Suck it up. Do like Bush did: Just take it.”
I’m sorry, folks. I can’t take it, and it’s not because I’m offended at what they did to Trump. I’m offended at how they lie to me. I’m offended how they lie to you. I’m offended at the very actions they have taken here: Corrupting, corrupting the CIA, corrupting the office of national intelligence, corrupting everything they touch in pursuit of their own power while lying to everybody about somebody else: Donald Trump and his family and people he worked with. Look at the people whose lives have already been damaged by this! Michael Flynn. Jeff Sessions. Yeah, he’s still attorney general, but he’s damaged.
All of this was done after a knowingly false bit of political opposition research was treated as legitimate, serious, worldwide intelligence. Let’s not forget Senator McCain. Senator McCain, when he heard about the Trump dossier, was so excited! He just had to have a copy. He dispatched an emissary to the United Kingdom to pick up a copy and bring it to back to make sure everybody in his orbit knew about it. Jeff Flake is not the news today. What Jeff Flake said or is saying about Donald Trump is not the news today.
The fact that a guy in Arizona is so pathetic that he can’t get reelected and wants to blame it on Trump and goes to the floor of the Senate to whine and moan about the behavior of the president is not the story. The story is the Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee created — out of thin air — phony, fake intelligence and passed it off as intelligence. It was treated as intelligence. It was acted upon as intelligence. People were investigated because of it. People had to hire lawyers because of it.
People have had their homes raided predawn by SWAT teams over a fake opposition research document prepared by Hillary Clinton, the Democrat Party, and the Democrat National Committee that we were told was legitimate intelligence. There are a lot of people on our side who believed a grain of it could have been true! I have also been stunned — and I mean stunned — to learn during the course of all this that there are some people who voted for Trump, who are eagerly still pro-Trump on our side, who thought there might have been something to this.
Because Trump’s win was so unexpected, it was so unusual, what could possibly explain it? With the media talking about this for hours every day for over 365 days, it couldn’t but help make an impression on some. “My gosh, they won’t stop talking about it. There must be something to it.” There. Was. Nothing. To. It. There has never, ever been anything to it. It has never, ever been anything but totally fraudulent, fake, made up. And the evidence to back this up was long available in that book written about the Clinton campaign where this plot was hatched and it was openly written about in that book.
Just count the people that they have tried to destroy over this document. It may be… If you ask me, it may well be that the golden showers dossier, the spying, the unmasking… Let’s not forget Samantha Power. Let’s not forget Susan Rice. All of the unmasking of Americans overheard in wiretap conversations on the basis of this dossier, which the director of the CIA said numerous times formed the basis of his investigation?
That opened the floodgates for unmasking Americans, investigating Americans, accusing Americans — by name — by anonymous sources in the New York Times, in the Washington Post, in a giant case of opposition research disguised as real intelligence. This phony Russia collusion scandal, Uranium One, the unmasking may be all connected. At least we know that it all traces back to the Democrat Party. None of this traces back to that supposed ogre in the White House. This traces back to that mean-spirited, extremist, partisan radical ogre named Hillary Clinton and her husband, Bill, and every associate of theirs in that campaign and the Democrat National Committee.
The president of the United States is involved. Barack Hussein Obama. It was his CIA director, it was his administration treating opposition research — bought and paid for opposition research — as legitimate intelligence. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the FBI directors. That would be Robert Mueller and James Comey. A special counsel. That would be Mueller. A Democrat nominee for president and her husband, the Clintons — a former president — are all involved in this. And one of those former FBI directors is investigating who? Donald Trump? While all of this we learn?
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RUSH: This is one of the biggest bombshell revelations in my memory. Let me ask you a question: If the news had broken that Donald Trump had hired someone to forge a Barack Hussein Obama birth certificate showing him born in Kenya after a year of claiming something other than that, do you think you’d know about it? Do you think the cable networks, the news networks would be talking about it? Do you think it’d be front page the New York Times if that kind of slanderous, fake, phony stuff had been presented as intelligence, learned and used by the CIA? Damn well it would! This, to the swamp denizens, “Hey, politics-as-usual. Washington’s a nasty place. Nothing to see here.”
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RUSH: Look at all that’s happened. Look at all the phony congressional Senate and House investigations over nothing! Remember, folks, it is crucial to remember that the Trump dossier was used as the primary evidence, and we know that it was simply made up. It is nothing but lies bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton. Look at what the Washington establishment did with knowingly false and made-up information.
A year of phony congressional investigations.
A year of unmasking completely innocent people and trying to destroy their lives.
A year of phony, fake, lying news reports with quotes from anonymous sources in the deep state attempting to back up the lies and the made-up drivel in the Trump dossier — which, again, the CIA director, John Brennan, touted as the basis and the foundation of his agency’s investigation into the allegation that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal and tamper with U.S. elections. Look at the money that has been spent on investigating elections and voting machines in various states and precincts. All of it a scam. All of it a giant sham.
All of it totally made up to carry out the notion that this was something real, when it was not. After Donald Trump’s stunning upset, the great unmasking began. A Russia collusion fiction was dreamed up by Hillary’s team as noted in the book Shattered. They were to pin this collusion on Trump, perhaps to drum Trump out of office even before these scandals were uncovered. The Obama Department of Justice was about to be turned over to Donald Trump with all of this having happened — and, therefore, all of this simply awaiting discovery.
Do you remember when Hillary Clinton apologized to President Obama whenever she conceded? It was either election night or the next day. I always thought, “That’s a strange thing. Why’s she apologizing to Obama? She lost. He went out there and campaigned for her and probably inflicted as much damage on herself as she did. Why was she apologizing to Obama?” It had to be about more than simply losing. It’s because Hillary had bought and paid for a pack of lies that was then presented as real intelligence.
The Obama administration had accepted it and acted on it as such. Hillary Clinton had thus opened the Obama administration up to multiple investigations, which are ginning up right about now. And the truth is going to come out about this. And that’s why the New York Times and the Washington Post look like they’re willing to throw the Clintons overboard after all of these years. Why now? They have known this thing was a pack of lies, folks. Now, there may be some Drive-By journalists who got sucked into it and believed it.
I probably think that’s true because so many people on our side did not have the strength to resist it day in and day out. I just want to tell you — just for the record — that I never bought a word of this. In fact, grab audio sound bite number one just to demonstrate. It’d be easy for me to come here and claim something. Audio sound bite number one, January 12th, 2017, nine days before Trump is inaugurated — eight or nine days — and this is what I said…
RUSH ARCHIVE: Do not ever doubt me when I tell you that everything in opposition to Trump is gonna have its roots in the Democrat Party, to one of their think tanks, to one of their groups, to one of their institutions, to Hillary and Bill Clinton. It’s inescapable.
RUSH: And here we have the Trump dossier now linked and created by — on the orders of, with payments from — Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democrat National Committee. And again, Brian Fallon who worked on that campaign for a year when asked, “Did Hillary know?” said, “I don’t know.” That’s not normal Clinton behavior, procedure. The procedure is to defend the Clintons to all ends and say, “Hell, yes, she didn’t know! Are you kidding? There’s no way she would have sanctioned this. Don’t insult me by asking again if Hillary Clinton knew.
“Of course Hillary Clinton didn’t know!” That would be the answer. Now Brian Fallon is saying (summarized), “I don’t know. I don’t know she knew or not.” “After the election, the FBI…” This from the Washington Post story. “After the election, the FBI agreed to pay Christopher Steele,” the actual author of this pack of lies. “After the election, the FBI agreed to pay Christopher Steele to continue gathering intelligence about Trump and Russia.” This is outrageous! This is so beyond the pale. This is so beyond Watergate, folks. James Comey, Robert Mueller, the FBI, they knew that it was made up.
Everybody in this chain did. I will not believe that the Hillary was able to fabricate a document with these players and that the FBI thought it was real and that the CIA thought it was real. These people are too partisan, they’re too vicious, they’re too power entitled, and they’re too willing to destroy people to keep their power or get it back. I don’t believe for a minute that anybody in this chain actually thought any of this was real. It’s too outrageous! Hiring prostitutes to urine on a bed? That’s Bill Clinton-Harvey Weinstein stuff, not Donald Trump!
Harvey Weinstein and Bill Clinton do that kind of stuff and their buddies and their crowds! Their people they run around with do that kind of stuff, not Donald Trump! I don’t believe for a minute that Brennan or Clapper or Comey or Mueller actually believe this. In fact, when Comey presented it to Trump, he presented it as largely made up but it’s an example of what you need to know can be said out there about you. But, look. After the election, the FBI continued to pay! The nonpartisan, the holier-than-thou (paraphrased), “We’re just gonna get the bad guys, ma’am. Thank you.
“We don’t care who’s running the country! Republican, Democrat, doesn’t matter. We’re gonna get the bad guys.” Really? “[T]he FBI agreed to pay Steele,” the author of the lies, “to continue gathering intelligence about Trump and Russia…” There wasn’t any to gather! He was paid to continue to write lies! “[B]ut the bureau pulled out of the arrangement after Steele was publicly identified in news reports.” So once sunlight was shining on it, the FBI threw Steele overboard. They said (paraphrased), “You know what, Christopher? We’ve got enough. Just can it. Since everybody knows who you are and what you’re doing, you need to get outta here,” and they let him go.
Christopher Steele — MI6, British intel — received money directly and indirectly from the Clinton campaign and the DNC. And the FBI — which, at the time, was run by James Comey, who extricated Hillary Clinton from legal consequences after she violated the Espionage Act thousands of times… Remember that July 5th press conference? “I just can’t find where she intended to violate the law this much, and so no reasonable prosecutor would ever bring charges.” A total crock that people relied on because of Comey’s unassailable reputation for propriety and fairness and decency.
When in fact, the FBI played a serious role in treating this gunk as legitimate intel. Ask yourselves and your memory: For the past year, whenever you would see news about the Trump dossier or anything about collusion, remember, it was rooted in real intelligence, right? The New York Times and the Washington Post had all of these stories day after day after day — anonymous sources, deep former and current intelligence agency experts. None of them ever named. None of them ever identified. But the press ran sometimes with just one source.
Every story had to bury a sentence or two saying, “To date, no evidence has been found to confirm the allegations.” There never was going to be evidence found because this entire thing had been made up. They simply started writing lies and untruths to make it look like the product of intelligence gathering. To me, as a non-denizen of the swamp, this may be the scandal of all scandals. And I know, as I say, that a lot of people on our side actually thought there might be something to this, because they were likewise so shocked that Trump had won and because the news was relentless.
You know people say, “Yeah, Rush, maybe. But not every day. I mean, they wouldn’t openly lie every day about.” Yes, they do! Not “would.” Yes, they do! It isn’t news anymore! I know you’re asking, “Well, then, why do we know it now?” A-ha! That is a fascinating question. Why have the Clintons and the DNC… By the way, the people running the DNC today are not the people who ran it when this was all happening. So why are they Clintons and the former regime at the DNC being thrown overboard?
One of the answers is because they think everybody’s gonna weather the storm, that nothing’s really gonna be done here. “A couple of bad days maybe in the media, and after that we’ll move on. We’ll get back to Jeff Flake, and by that time there will be another Republican senator stand up and say what an ogre Trump is.” So they’ll be able to cover this stuff up. Well, they’re not going to be able to here. It’s not gonna get covered up here. Still, a lot of people on our side do not yet, to this day, understand: The media runs Washington, DC.
They do not understand that the media runs the Democrat Party. They do not understand that the media is not about news anymore. Anyway, let me take a brief time-out. We’ll come back and continue. I purposely started with my reaction to this. When we get back, I’m gonna give you some of the details actually found in the story in the Washington Post. I chose to go at this in reverse order, ’cause I couldn’t have waited 45 minutes ’cause, folks, I am so outraged, livid, angry about this. I’m doing my best to contain it.
But this stinks. This is just… You combine this with Mitt Romney not caring that some employee’s wife died of cancer, and he put the dog on the roof of the station wagon? Just everything you could think of. Everything these people have done to destroy the war in Iraq and destroy George W. Bush, and there was not any pushback by the Republicans on any of it. Everything they have done and continue to do to try to destroy Donald Trump and in the process destroy the people — and the dreams of the people — who voted for Trump. This is not, “Gee, this is typical Washington, Rush.”
No, no, no, no.
It may be, but it’s time it stopped. It may be typical Washington, and it’s time people got fed up to the point of not taking this kind of crap anymore.
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RUSH: “Hillary Clinton’s Campaign, DNC Funded Trump Dossier. Here’s What You Need To Know. — The bombshell report from the Washington Post comes just days after Clinton told C-SPAN that President Trump and Fox News were trying to distract the nation from the ‘real Russian ties between Trump associates and real Russians…'” You know how Trump did that? Do you remember what Trump did? Trump just a couple of days ago blew this wide open by asking, “Who paid for this? You people in the media, who paid for this? Did Hillary paid for this? Did the DNC pay for it?” He was right on the money!
“Who paid for this?”
Donald Trump broke this wide open, and it was “just days after [Hillary] Clinton told C-SPAN” I think in a book interview “that President Trump and Fox News were trying to distract the nation from the ‘real Russian ties between Trump associates and real Russians…'” So, “[H]ere is what you need to know from The Washington Post’s report: Marc E. Elias, an attorney who represented Clinton’s campaign and the DNC, used Fusion GPS to conduct ‘research’ on then-candidate Donald Trump.”
In other words, there’s no intelligence agency here. There’s no CIA, DIA. There’s no MI6. They hired Fusion GPS, Democrat operatives, to “conduct ‘research’ on” Trump as a candidate. “According to sources, Fusion GPS hired former British intelligence official Christopher Steele to compile the dossier.” Still no intelligence gathering. “Elias reportedly retained Fusion GPS starting in April 2016 ‘on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC’ — right before Trump became the GOP presumptive nominee — all the way until the end of October 2016.
“Prior to working for the Clinton campaign and the DNC, Fusion GPS began researching Trump and was funded by ‘a still unknown Republican client,'” and nobody knows who that is yet! But there’s a Republican in this mix that joined the effort to create lies about Donald Trump. “While it is still unknown how much was paid for the dossier, the [Washington] Post alleges that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid [Marc] Elias’ law firm, Perkins Coie, a total of $9.2 million from June 2015 through December 2016.
“The [Washington] Post claims that neither the Clinton campaign nor the DNC directed Steele’s activities who then shared some of his findings with officials at the FBI. ‘After the election, the FBI agreed to pay Steele to continue gathering intelligence about Trump and Russia,” based on a fake, made-up dossier, “but the bureau pulled out of the arrangement after Steele was publicly identified in news reports,’ the [Washington] Post reports.” That’s basically a summary of what the Washington Post reported. You’ll note there’s nothing in there about Brennan.
There’s nothing about how they relied on this as the basis of an investigation.
None of that’s in there!
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RUSH: Snerdley’s chastising me for calling it “opposition research.” That’s why I started calling it “lies.” Opposition research is when you dig for stuff that’s true that the candidate’s trying to hide. This is just totally made up! There’s no oppo research. It’s just… That’s the convenient term for it.