RUSH: The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has not appointed a second special counsel to look into the FBI, FISA court, DOJ abuses. He’s instead asked a federal lawyer, prosecutor to look into it, do an investigation. And some people are very, very upset about this, including President Trump.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, this next story, I’ve alluded to it each of the past two days, but I never delved into it. It was my mistake. I intended to. It just got superseded by other things. It was a Fox News report. “Newly uncovered text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page suggest a possible coordination between high-ranking officials at the Obama White House, CIA, FBI, Justice Department and former Senate Democratic leadership in the early stages of the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”

In other words, Strzok and Page texts lend credence to the idea that the whole operation was run out of the Obama White House. Now, it’s not news in the sense that you have heard me suggest that this was the case, ’cause I believe everything that happened on the Hillary campaign came from the Obama White House. And this whole collusion business was actually the third such Obama operation. There were two previous Obama operations that served — I don’t think they were intended as such, but they served as trial runs for the Trump collusion story.

And the big one was the Obama campaign, the Obama White House, actually, spying on Americans, domestic Americans who were opposed to the Obama Iran deal. And in that instance, the Obama White House was actually spying via warrants on Americans who were opposed to the deal. But what made it what it was, the Obama administration was successful in using media to advance their agenda, and especially and particularly the intelligence community.

They ran a test, essentially. They would have Intelligence Committee people leaking things to chosen reporters led by Adam Entous, Washington Post and The Atlantic. He was the chief guinea pig, but he was not alone. And what they found out was that there was so much adulation and unquestioning support for Obama that reporters were like groupies. And if anybody in the Obama presidency, especially the intelligence community — you know, the intelligence community’s at the top of the food chain of the deep state. They know all the secrets. They know what’s really going on.

And so select members of the intel community would call these reporters. And they would leak stuff. And the Obama team found out these reporters just regurgitated and printed it almost verbatim and didn’t even try to corroborate it. And one of the greatest illustrations of that was an intelligence community official leaked to Adam Entous that the Russians had succeeded in shutting down a power grid in Vermont that had caused a dam in Vermont to go nuts and much damage occurred.

And the guy ran with the story. He didn’t once call anybody in Vermont to find out what the hell this was about. He didn’t check with anybody about the electrical grid in Vermont. He just printed story. And it turns out it was all made up. There wasn’t an electrical grid failure in Vermont, much less at the hands of the Russians, and there was no problem with any dam.

Now, we know this from a Lee Smith column at tablet.com. Done great work there on this. There was another Obama administration attempt at using the media prior to that one. So after they had the trial run with the Iran nuclear deal, they implemented the exact same thing in the Trump-Russia collusion story. And Adam Entous again was at the top of the food chain being fed a bunch of leaks supposedly tying Trump and Russia together in collusion to steal the election.

And it went on for a year, and the reporter simply regurgitated everything they were told. They didn’t even try to corroborate. They accepted the Steele dossier as factual evidence. And what was remarkable about it in a number of ways was it wasn’t that long ago it was the intelligence community that the media and the American left despised. They hated the CIA.

If you’re not old enough to remember, the American left, American liberalism has for my entire life until recently, blamed the CIA for all of America’s problems around the world. They believed the CIA was overthrowing duly elected governments in Central America. They thought the CIA was corrupting the political process in nation after nation, both in the southern hemisphere, in Central and South America, and in Europe.

They just despised the CIA. And for Obama to come in and convert this to where American reporters would accept whatever they were told by anybody in the intelligence community and not even try to corroborate it, was a massive reversal. And so that’s what happened. And you remember the year of seemingly four different stories every day, each with a new leak that supposedly confirmed what everybody thought has happened, that Trump had colluded with the Russians.

And every one of those stories contained a line somewhere in it, “Officials haven’t yet been able to establish convincing evidence of this, but the indications are” blah, blah, blah, blah. They had to put that one line in there, usually buried in the last 25% of every story.

So on that basis I’ve always believed the Obama administration was behind all this, because I’ve always believed the Obama administration’s objective was to essentially, in their desire to transform America, what that meant was to chip away at the traditions, institutions, values of our founding and to replace that with essentially socialism, to be simplistic about it.

So this news from Fox News, “Newly uncovered text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page suggest a possible coordination between high-ranking officials at the Obama White House, CIA, FBI, Justice Department and former Senate Democratic leadership in the early stages of the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to GOP congressional investigators on Wednesday.

“The investigators say the information provided to Fox News ‘strongly’ suggests coordination between former President Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, and CIA Director John Brennan — which they say would ‘contradict’ the Obama administration’s public stance about its hand in the process.”

Now, these texts indicate that Strzok and Lisa Page knew that their actions were illegal. Or at a bare minimum they were improper, and they intended to keep them safe from Freedom of Information Act requests or congressional investigations, which was standard practice in the Obama administration. The texts indicate that struck and Page knew what they were doing was illegal.

“Page texted Strzok on Aug. 2, 2016, saying: ‘Make sure you can lawfully protect what you sign. Just thinking about congress, foia, etc. You probably know better than me.’ … Days later, on Aug. 8, 2016, Strzok texted Page: ‘Internal joint cyber cd intel piece for D,'” meaning Director Comey, “‘scenesetter for McDonough,'” that’s the chief of staff for Obama, “‘brief, Trainor [head of FBI cyber division] directed all cyber info be pulled. I’d let Bill and Jim hammer it out first, though it would be best for D to have it before the Wed WH session.'”

Now, in these texts, D is for Comey, FBI director, McDonough is the chief of staff, and so Strzok and Page are texting back and forth here about internal joint cyber intelligence, a piece they were preparing for Director Comey. And a scene setter and explainer for the chief of staff and for the head of the FBI cyber division. And it was directed all cyber information to be pulled. “I’d let Bill and Jim hammer it out first, though it would be best for D to have it before the Wed WH session.”

Meaning that whatever Strzok was texting about with Lisa Page, the FBI was making the White House aware of it. The White House was very aware of what the FBI was doing on the collusion effort. “The congressional investigators pointed out to Fox News that the CIA and FBI are supposed to be ‘independent agencies,’ and noted that ‘coordination between political actors at the White House and investigators would be inappropriate.'”

But that wasn’t all. The Democrats at the CIA, the FBI brought Senate Democrats into the act as well. This is weeks later. All this happening August 2, August 8th. On August 25th of 2016 the CIA director, John Brennan, went to Capitol Hill to brief Harry Reid about what all was going on.

It was unclear whether FBI officials attended that briefing, but Brennan, of the CIA, was there. Two days after that briefing, Harry Reid writes a letter to James Comey requesting an investigation into collusion between Trump and Russia. So the CIA director goes up and briefs Dingy Harry on what the FBI and the CIA and the White House are doing. And what they’ve learned and what their plans are regarding collusion. And then Harry Reid says okay, well, I’ll write a letter, and I’ll demand an investigation. And that puts the elected representatives of the people into the mix.

Reid’s the Senate majority leader at the time. Don’t know if McConnell was briefed. But the CIA director goes up there and briefs Harry Reid, and Harry Reid requests an investigation much like Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham have requested an investigation, which Jeff Sessions has said I’m not gonna do special counsel like you want. But he has appointed a former U.S. attorney to look into it. So on August 30th of 2016, after Reid’s letter has been received requesting the investigation into collusion, Strzok sends a text to Lisa Page, says, “Here we go,” and he sends a link to the New York Times story saying, “Harry Reid Cites Evidence of Russian Tampering in U.S. Vote and seeks FBI inquiry.”

So we know what happened. Brennan goes up, briefs Harry Reid on all that the White House, the FBI, the DOJ, CIA, what they’re thinking on this collusion angle. Harry Reid sends a letter requesting an investigation, even though there’s one already going on. These people already have this operation in the works! But they get this letter from Reid, which then gets reported in the New York Times. This is before the election, we’re off and running before the election on a collusion angle here! Because Reid’s letter gets published in the New York Times August 30th, Strzok texts Page, “Here we go” and includes a link to the Times story with Harry Reid’s letter in it.

Lisa Page replied, “‘D [Comey] said at am brief that Reid called him and told him he would be sending a letter.’ Congressional investigators suggested that the Reid letter possibly provided ‘cover’ for the fact that the FBI and Justice Department had already begun investigating the Trump campaign.” And sure as hell that’s what this is.

The Harry Reid letter is what everybody used to say instigated this investigation when in truth it was well underway. It was the insurance policy that Strzok and Page had previously texted about. So now we go to audio sound bite No. 8. Mark Meadows was last night on The Ingraham Angle on the Fox News Channel, and he was talking about the appointing of a second special counsel.

MEADOWS: When you look at the facts, the facts speak for themselves. When we’re looking at is it a material fact that Peter Strzok had a relationship with the FISA judge and they concealed it, the answer is yes. We now know that the investigation into Donald Trump started late July. Within seven days there was a meeting with the Department of Justice where they said the White House is leading this.

RUSH: Right. And that includes the time the Harry Reid letter gets written and so forth. And so it’s on the basis of all this that people have been asking the attorney general to appoint a second special counsel. And Sessions had said, no, not gonna do that, we’re use a former U.S. attorney, and he is going to check this out. Well, Judge Jeanine and Gregg Jarrett at Fox News were not happy about this. They were on Hannity last night.

JEANINE: He’s saying no special counsel and instead he’s gonna refer this FISA abuse to a guy from Utah.

JARRETT: Right. John Huber is his name, originally an Obama appointee. I suspect this was all engineered by —

JEANINE: By Rod Rosenstein.

JARRETT: — Rod Rosenstein who is an Obama-Clinton acolyte, pals with Barbara Mikulski, the most liberal now former senator on Capitol Hill. You know, Sessions doesn’t even realize that he is being manipulated and exploited. This is a guy who spent most of his career on Capitol Hill as a senator doing nothing, and suddenly he’s in charge of the Department of Justice and the FBI. And he’s in way over his head. So he relies on people like Rosenstein.

RUSH: Well, that’s quite a take, but that’s what they thought, that’s what they said last night. Gonna take a break. Not so sure Sessions is that big a bumpkin.