RUSH: I have now had time to figure this out. I had it figured out five minutes ago, but I only had 10 seconds to tell you. Now I have a little bit more time. Greetings and welcome back. Rush Limbaugh here, your guiding light through all of this muck and murk. Great to have you. The telephone number is 800-282-2882. The email address is ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

Okay, I probably should not proffer an opinion on Manafort’s lawyers. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see any of it.

I didn’t do anything but read transcripts of it. I just… I have this overall belief that people on our side still do not know what we are up against and then believe that we can make hay by being nice and being respectful of the left and honorable and all of this. I just don’t know that we have enough people on our side who realize the nature of the life-and-death-for-America war that we are in, and that every day has its own special set of circumstances, battles, confabs, what have you.

Imagine you’re Paul Manafort today. How long did you work for Donald Trump? Four months? Four months out of your life means that you are going to spend the last years of your life in jail, 7-1/2 years. The guy’s in a wheelchair. He’s 70-some-odd years old. Even though the judge disputed this today, I don’t know how. One of the points made by Manafort’s lawyers was that none of this would ever have been brought. None of the charges would have been filed.

There certainly wouldn’t have been trials on any of this if not for this special counsel investigation into something that didn’t happen. The judge just blew that up and said (paraphrased), “That’s not true. I resent that. These are legitimate charges, and they have nothing to do with Russian collusion, and that’s why I’m making the point and so forth.” Yeah, but Manafort would have never been pursued. The Department of Justice looked at stuff Manafort had done years ago and gave it a pass. Anybody that wants to sit there and deny that Manafort got — and I don’t know the guy.

Folks, I’m not here defending Manafort. We have a justice system here that is obviously two-tiered, and it’s obvious that we have a preferred class in this country. There are our elites, whoever they are (and everybody in that elite group seems to know who they are) and then there’s everybody else. Now, that’s always been the case. But the elites of today seem to want to wipe out everybody else, just eliminate everybody else, brush us all off the playing field. I don’t know how this judge can say that Manafort would have faced what he faced if there hadn’t been a special counsel.

Nobody would have found anything. Nobody would have charged him with anything. All of this was done by the special counsel’s office to create this ongoing illusion that there was collusion between Trump or the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election. So Mueller’s got his guilty pleas. Now, the business that I found difficult to understand is that Manafort had pled guilty to state crimes that weren’t even charged.

This is back in the original plea when he started pleading guilty to various things, seeking leniency and trying to cooperate with Mueller. For some reason that I have not yet been able to figure out, his lawyers went ahead and let him plead guilty to crimes in states that had not been charged. He hadn’t been charged with any yet; so he pleads guilty to them anyway. Those charges involve defrauding banks in the states where he did business, and that would include California, New Jersey, and Virginia — oh, and New York.

But why plead guilty to charges that have not yet been filed? Obviously you’re trying to curry favor, you’re trying to show cooperation, you’re trying to get leniency, what have you. Well, what has happened? Almost instantly after the judge announced her sentence, New York State indicted Manafort for bank fraud and any number of other things. What this does is eliminate any possibility at all of a pardon meaning anything. Donald Trump cannot pardon state crimes. No president can.

So whatever federal crimes that Manafort pled guilty to, Trump can pardon him from those, but the states — and Manafort’s pled guilty! He’s pled guilty before the charges, so now these come down with the indictments and Manafort’s already pled guilty to them. (chuckles) Somebody want to explain to me how in the world this is allowed to happen? I’m talking about by the legal team. Look, I’m being very, very reserved about this because I was not there, and I don’t know anything at all about Manafort’s lawyers nor the relationship he has with them.

So I probably shouldn’t be, but I’m incredulous. If I’m in this situation and my lawyers say, “We think you should plead guilty to things they haven’t charged you with yet,” I’m gonna be looking at them and scratching my head and saying, “What? Why?” “We think that this will impress the prosecutor! This will impress them that you’re cooperating and that you’re not gonna be a troublemaker.” “But a guilty plea? And they haven’t even charged yet?”

Well, now they have, and they’ve got the guilty plea. He pled guilty before he was charged. Now the charges have been filed. They include bank fraud — and, I mean, it was instantaneous in the State of New York. It was instantaneous that he was charged with state crimes immediately after Judge Amy Berman Jackson had sentenced him. So you can read the tea leaves as well as I can. Manafort is the highest-ranking campaign official.

He’s now pled guilty, period. In the Robert J. Mueller investigation of Trump-Russia collusion, Manafort has pled guilty, period. Now he has been charged with committing state bank fraud to which he’s already pled guilty. So you can imagine the news stories that are being written right now. (impression) “In the matter of the Trump-Russia investigation, spearheaded by the brilliant Robert J. Mueller, campaign official Paul Manafort has pled guilty to four counts of…” Period.

And then a bunch of local yokels running around (impression), “Did you hear? Wow! Wow! Trump’s campaign manager pled guilty to this collusion stuff!” No, he didn’t. But the media’s not gonna be specific about it. So you create the illusion, ’cause remember, everything is about driving Trump’s approval numbers down. So we shall see.

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RUSH: We’ve got Jeffrey in Cleveland, which may now be the powerhouse in the AFC north in the National Football League. You gotta be feeling good today if you’re a football fan up there, Jeffrey.

CALLER: I’m a Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

RUSH: You’re a Steelers fan. Then you gotta be feeling really down in the dumps and wondering what the hell happened to the great culture of your team.

CALLER: I have been, yes. Anyway, they said keep this short. I know why Manafort’s pleading guilty to every charge they’ll throw at him.

RUSH: Tell me.

CALLER: Well, there was a case in December brought before the Supreme Court. I think it’s U.S. v. Gamble where a person was charged in state court for possessing a firearm, got a year in jail. And then the Feds prosecuted him and gave him another two years, and there’s a double jeopardy issue going before the court now. Hasn’t been decided. In Manafort’s first trial, there were seven hung juries — I mean seven hung counts that he never was prosecuted again on, and any count that he was tried the second time that he wasn’t charged with, he can be charged in the state of New York for. Any count that he pleads guilty to, anything that he’s been held in jeopardy of, if Gamble was ruled in favor that it’s not allowed for a second trial, the state of New York can’t try him for any of the charges he’s pled guilty to because of double jeopardy.

RUSH: Does the state of New York not know this?

CALLER: No, the state of New York knows it. They had not been ruled on yet. Once Gamble is ruled on, even if these charges were held to be true, there’s still seven charges where he hasn’t been retried in the first trial. So it’s in Manafort’s best interests to plead guilty to every count that they throw at him, because that’s one less count the state of New York can go after.

RUSH: Well, but that’s the thing. They didn’t throw anything. He was pleading guilty to charges that had not been filed or even mentioned to him. He was pleading guilty to state charges. Now, I’m going to have to take this under host advisement, because you may be right about this to one degree or all of it, because on the surface it makes no sense to plead guilty to things in state jurisdictions that have not even been charged yet. But yet they did. Manafort’s lawyers had him plead guilty to a bunch of state charges that hadn’t even been filed.

Well, now we’ve got the sentencing in federal court, and here comes the state of New York, I mean lickety-split announcing these new indictments of bank fraud and mortgage fraud, is what it is in New York. And whole point of this — folks, this is vindictive, totally vindictive. This is to deny the effectiveness all of Trump pardon. Trump can pardon Manafort from the seven-and-a-half years he gets here in federal court, but whatever they give him in state court, Trump cannot pardon him for that.

I guarantee you what Mueller, Weissmann, what these people are thinking, this is really a bad bunch of people in this special counsel’s office. I mean, they have ruined so many lives of innocent people in the Enron cases, the Nigerian barge case which I went into great detail about late last year. Some people at Merrill Lynch lives, years in jail having not been found guilty of anything. It was audacious. Suborning perjury of a star witness in the Ted Stevens case.

These are the people that are on Mueller’s team. And this state action is coordinated action with the state of New York attorney general, even the SDNY — of course that’s federal, but it is designed to make sure that Manafort spends time in jail no matter a Trump pardon. This is just flat-out, pure, mean-spirited. I don’t know what else it is. It’s vindictive.

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RUSH: I checked something here during the break. I believe New York State had to change their law to allow the attorney general to go after Manafort, because previously it was considered to be double jeopardy to go after a federal convict on similar charges. I have a New York Times story here from April 18, 2018. So this is about 11 months ago. Quote, “Attorney general Eric Schneiderman…” More on him in a minute.

“Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman of New York is moving to change New York state law so that he and other local prosecutors would have the power to bring criminal charges against aides to President Trump who have been pardoned, according to a letter Mr. Schneiderman sent to the governor and state lawmakers on Wednesday.” Now, we haven’t been able to find out if and when they changed the law. But I guess the move by New York State today to charge Manafort may mean they succeeded in changing the law to eliminate the double jeopardy aspect of it so they can go after him.

But they clearly had to change the law, and Schneiderman a year ago was hell-bent on making sure Trump wasn’t able to have any of his aides skate out of any of this by way of pardon. I’m just telling you, the vindictiveness of the deep state here and these people to penalize anybody that had even… If they got within two feet of Donald Trump at any point, they’re gonna try to get ’em on something to send the message that nobody else ever better try what Trump has tried here ever again.

“Nobody better even think about it! We’re gonna destroy you, we’re gonna destroy your family, we’re gonna destroy your kids. We’re gonna take you out.” That is the message they are sending with Manafort. Now, let’s go back to Eric Schneiderman for just a second, okay? He is now the disgraced former New York attorney general. Remember the stories of how he was beating the living crap out of a bunch of women? This guy was practicing rough sex. He was Sexual Abuse 101. He was into sexual harassment.

He was forced to resign once the stories were made public. But guess what? The Manhattan DA didn’t bother charging him with a crime. Eric Schneiderman was allowed to pretty much skate away after he resigned on all this stuff. Eric Schneiderman broke a woman’s jaw and then afterwards forced her to perform a Lewinsky! The Manhattan DA couldn’t care less. Now the New York attorney general who replaced Schneiderman is going after Manafort for mortgage application fraud! We have a two-tiered justice system here.

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RUSH: Let me spell something out for you on Paul Manafort. All of this today is all the evidence you will need of how livid these people after Trump, the people trying to destroy, how livid they are. There is a coordinated effort here to ruin Paul Manafort. It’s a coordinated effort between the special counsel’s office and the Manhattan DA, and it’s all because Manafort did not give them what they wanted.

Paul Manafort did not know any horrible things about Donald Trump. So he wasn’t able to share them. There was no collusion with the Russians. Manafort had nothing to do with Russians ever. The only thing he had to do with was as a foreign lobbyist with Ukraine, which is an enemy of Russia and Putin. Paul Manafort had nothing to give them. And so he didn’t give them anything, and they are livid!

There is a visceral anger and hatred for Paul Manafort! They are mad at hell at this poor guy! In one sense, folks, this is terrifying what we’re looking at here today. This man would not have been charged with anything he’s going to prison for were it not for this bogus special counsel investigation, which was based on nothing as well other than that phony dossier.

I just received a tweet here. I didn’t get it. It was forwarded to me. Bernard Kerik, who worked with Rudy when Rudy was the mayor of New York, and Bernie Kerik tweeted, “This is the greatest demonstration yet of a politically motivated and corrupt Manhattan DA who preannounced his intent and then coordinated with Mueller’s team to ensure that Manafort dies in prison. The U.S. attorney general must investigate this.” That’s the demand from Bernie Kerik.

Of course there should be an investigation, but there never is. The people that conduct themselves this way get away with it! They got away with it even after having been rebuked in the Ted Steven trial! And they’re back at it again on the Mueller special counsel team.

They want Manafort dead. They want him dead in prison because he didn’t give them anything that would help them get rid of Trump, because he didn’t have anything. And I guess he refused to make it up or recite as they say.

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RUSH: We’ll go to Billings, Montana. This is Westin. Great to have you, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Hey, Rush.

RUSH: Hey!

CALLER: Great to talk to you. If I first could give a shout-out to my Uncle Trace and my father-in-law, Aaron. They’ve influenced me in my life, and they’re actually the reason why I am talking to you and I listen to you. So I thank them and thank you, sir.

RUSH: You’re welcome, sir.

CALLER: But, anyway, my question is: Do you think Nancy Pelosi has seen the Mueller report? And if she has, is that why she said she won’t talk impeachment about Trump?

RUSH: No, I don’t… I think the not impeaching Trump is a strategic statement that we can take with a proverbial grain of salt. Whether she has seen the Mueller report? I don’t know that, either. But I will tell you that if I were to learn that the Hillary-supporting lawyers on the Mueller team had shared various elements of their report in advance with select Democrats, I wouldn’t be surprised. I don’t think there’s anybody left in that town, folks, that’s worth an honorable reputation.

They’re telling us, “Robert J. Mueller is an American hero. Robert Mueller is Mr. Integrity!” If that were true, he wouldn’t have even taken the gig! If that were true, he would have shut this down after one week, after learning that all there is to this is a bogus dossier. I’m really… This is a tough one for me, folks, because we keep being bombarded with character references on all of these people, and I know for a fact that many of the people that Mueller hired are not impeccable. They are not overflowing with integrity.

They are hacks!

They are political hacks.

They engage in prosecutorial abuse and misconduct. They’ve been documented for having done so. They’ve been reprimanded by courts for having done it. I know the story of Mueller that he was valorous in Vietnam and rescued a hundred people and so forth — and more power to him. But I’m telling you, honor and integrity don’t mean what they mean if somebody can take a look at the fact that there’s no evidence for anything that’s been alleged and waste two years of the country’s time on this.

When all they’ve got is that dossier, and everybody knows the history of the dossier. We know the pedigree, the providence. We know that it was bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton. We know that a guy that hates Donald Trump — Christopher Steele, who’s out of work at the time, a retired British agent — gets hold of some sleazy former Russian agents and they start making some things up, like Cohen in Prague and Carter Page is an agent and Trump hiring prostitutes to urinate on a bed.

We know that Trump was set up by Comey.

We know that Rosenstein was thinking of wearing a wire.

We know that these guys were personally affronted by Trump.

If there’s anybody with integrity in this whole thing, they would have shut it down, and nobody shut it down. So I’m having a tough time finding anybody with honor and integrity. And we’re talking about within the confines of the law. Instead, we’ve enabled people to use the limitless financial resources and power of the federal government to target somebody they don’t like personally for ruination simply because that person had the audacity to win the presidency.

So whether Pelosi has been advised or told that there’s nothing to it so she’s walking back impeachment? I don’t think she has given up on impeachment at all! I don’t… I don’t think that’s what Pelosi meant. She’s just… They’ve got polling data. If she has been given a heads-up by Mueller’s team… I really don’t know if that’s happened, and I guarantee you that most people in Washington will tell you (impression), “No, Mueller would never do that! Robert Mueller is impeccable.

“Robert Mueller would never share any of the results of his investigation with any political person. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Well, maybe Mueller wouldn’t, but who knows the stink bombs on his team. But I think what Pelosi probably has more than Mueller’s little inclinations is polling data that shows that there is not anywhere near a majority of people in the country that want Trump impeached!

So that’s why she’s dialing it back in terms of rhetoric. But don’t for a minute believe that Pelosi and the rest of her team don’t want to impeach Trump. This clown Al Green said, “Screw Pelosi! I’m gonna introduce my own articles,” and you’ve got Maxine Waters basically saying the same thing. So Pelosi’s efforts to tamp this down are not even working within her own party. I appreciate the call out there, Westin.

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RUSH: Here is Ed in Elgin, Illinois. Great to have you, Ed. Hello.

CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. Thank you for the illuminating beacon from the Florida EIB lighthouse that’s shining coast to coast and clear up here in the Midwest.

RUSH: Thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Real quickly I’d like your illumination on the possibility that the Mueller, all that stuff, all of the attacks on President Trump, that those are all diversions while the Democrats slowly and deliberately fill red states especially with illegal immigrants that can then be voting soon by law one way or another in 2020 and beyond.

RUSH: Okay. So your theory is that the Russia meddling thing, the Mueller special counsel investigation, all of this is simply a distraction to get everybody looking at that while the left floods the southern border with illegal immigrants and then funnels ’em to the red states, securing a Democrat future?

As time has gone on and as I have hosted this program, this theory comes up with every issue. There’s one variation, “Rush, you’re missing it. You’re missing it. You’re letting ’em get away with distracting you. This isn’t about — I don’t care what it is. It’s about getting us to not be noticing all this illegal immigration.” Except that we’re noticing it. We’re noticing it. And nobody’s happy about it.

I appreciate the idea the Democrats are so crafty that they could get everybody distracted from what they’re really doing, except we’re not distracted. We notice it. And I also know that their hatred for Donald Trump and what happened in 2016 is real. It is visceral and real. The problem at the border notwithstanding, all this other stuff is legitimate too.

But I don’t think it’s happening stealthfully. I don’t think anybody’s not aware that it’s happening. That’s one of the reasons everybody’s so ticked off about it. We see it happening. And Trump has made numerous efforts to stop it, and people continually try to undermine him.