RUSH: Okay. Let me tell you the next thing to keep a sharp eye out for, folks, and that is people fleeing the country. If you see James Comey in Argentina, or if you see James Clapper somewhere where they can’t be extradited, then you will know that we are getting close. When these people start leaving… I’m half joking. It hasn’t started yet, but, man, are they nervous, because the attorney general has appointed a prosecutor to look into the investigation.

And not only that, Fox News is reporting that their sources are telling them that John Durham — who is the prosecutor, U.S. attorney from Connecticut, that William Barr has named — has been on the job for weeks all right, which does not surprise me. Here is a little rundown on this guy, and I’ll just give it to you from a compendium of sources, including the New York Times. They say that the attorney general has assigned John Durham, U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to examine the origins of the Russia investigations.

This guy has a long history. “Mr. Durham has a long history of serving as a special prosecutor investigating potential wrongdoing among law enforcement and national security officials. He was appointed to the federal bench in 2017 by President Trump. Mr. Durham has even investigated the use or misuse of FBI informants.” In fact, one of his best-known investigations was an investigation of the FBI’s handling of the mass murderer and Boston mobster Whitey Bulger. This is very significant.

It was Robert Mueller III… Keep in mind (we’ve talked about this a few times, but it’s been a while, and I don’t know how many of you are gonna remember this) it was Robert Mueller III, Mr. Integrity, Mr. Honorable, who kept four innocent people in prison for decades in order to keep Whitey Bulger from being exposed as an FBI informant. Four people. Four people who were innocent were kept in jail for years in order to protect the status of Whitey Bulger as an FBI informant.

Back in the late 1990s, there were “allegations that FBI informants James ‘Whitey’ Bulger and Stephen ‘The Rifleman’ Flemmi had corrupted their handlers, [so] Attorney General Janet Reno named Durham special prosecutor in 1999 to investigate the FBI’s Boston office’s informants. In December 2000, Durham revealed secret FBI documents that convinced a judge to vacate the 1968 murder convictions of” four other FBI informants because they’d been framed by Robert Mueller’s FBI.

“In 2007,” to help protect Whitey Bulger (that’s what all those people were held in jail for) “the documents helped Salvati, Limone, and the families of the two other men who had died in prison win a US $101.7 million civil judgment against the government.” Robert Mueller III! How did the guy end up being the special prosecutor? He kept four innocent people in jail for years to protect the informant status of Whitey Bulger, a mass-murdering Boston mobster who ended up dying in California, and it ended up costing the government $100 million plus in civil judgments.

So if you ask me, Barr could not have picked a man with better experience. Not only has Durham gone up against the FBI and won before and even Mueller, he has investigated the FBI’s use of informants, which played a larger role in the inception of the FBI’s case against the Trump campaign. This seems like an inspired choice. And as I say, Fox News is reporting that their sources are telling them that John Durham has been on the job for weeks.

“The U.S. attorney appointed to examine the origins of the Russia investigation has been working on his review ‘for weeks,’ a person familiar with the process told Fox News on Tuesday, to probe ‘all intelligence collection activities’ related to the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.” So this has a lot of people very, very nervous. In addition to this, the just recently retired deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, is out making speeches, and he is unloading on James Comey. Just unloading on him.

“Rod Rosenstein unloaded on former FBI Director James Comey in remarks to the Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC) on Monday evening, slamming Comey’s turn as a ‘partisan pundit,’ reiterating that [Comey] deserved to be fired, and faulting him for trampling ‘bright lines that should never be crossed.'” This is, in large part, due to Comey’s now-famous press conference on July 5th where he went out there and listed everything they had discovered in their investigation of Hillary Clinton, her server and her emails, and then announced they weren’t gonna charge her and that no prosecutor would because they couldn’t find any intent.

Now, folks, this is a violation of so much. If you’re not gonna charge somebody, you do not detail what you think they did. You don’t destroy them! You don’t ruin them if you think you don’t have… Now, he wasn’t doing that in Hillary’s case. In Hillary’s case, he was doing this to exonerate her. This investigation of Hillary Clinton was bogus from the get-go. They were never gonna find anything other than ways to exonerate her.

That’s what Comey did, and he took the position — actually assumed the role — of the attorney general, because in his mind, Loretta Lynch had compromised herself by meeting with Bill Clinton in the plane on the tarmac out in Phoenix. So she had corrupted herself in a sense. So Comey took it upon himself to go out there and announce the results of the investigation and he listed a number of things that Hillary had done that were illegal but that there was not gonna be any prosecution so he essentially exonerates her.

Rosenstein, in his speech, says this is not the job of the FBI director. This flouts Justice Department guidelines in many ways. It is not the job of the FBI director to determine who gets charged and who doesn’t. It’s certainly not the job of the Department of Justice to hold a national press conference to air dirty laundry on somebody not being charged. Which, by the way, is exactly all that’s happened to Donald Trump.

I mean, the violations of those guidelines and regulations continue to this day. “Rosenstein formally stepped aside as deputy attorney general two days ago.” I’m sure he’s been chomping at the bit to get out there and speak. “His speech specifically took aim at Comey’s comments earlier this month implying that [himself] Rosenstein and Attorney General Bill Barr lacked the ‘inner strength’ to ‘resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump.'” This is what Comey has been saying about both Rosenstein and Barr.

As though he is Mr. Integrity, as though he is the definition of our national morality, as though James Comey is our national conscience — and it’s obviously gone to this guy’s head. Because these tweets that he sent out with these words are accompanied by Comey being pictured in the forest, in the woods, looking to the treetops for inspiration. All by himself, out alone amongst nature, and tweeting his belief that both Rod Rosenstein and Bill Barr lack the inner strength to resist the compromises necessary to serve Donald Trump.

“Comey also derided Rosenstein’s ‘character’ and suggested his ‘soul’ had been consumed ‘in small bites.'” This was during the CNN town hall the other night. On previous occasions, Comey’s out there talking about these guys this way. He’s the one who’s been fired. He is the one who’s been disgraced. He’s acting like he’s been martyred and is speaking as the ultimate victim, number one.

As I mentioned, he “has taken to posting numerous photographs of himself in nature staring wistfully at trees and roadways since leaving public office, [and has] been showered with media attention in recent months, and his memoir earned him over $2 million.” Rosenstein said last night, “‘Now, the former director is a partisan pundit, selling books and earning speaking fees while speculating about the strength of my character and the fate of my immortal soul,’ Rosenstein said.

“‘That is disappointing. Speculating about souls is not a job for police and prosecutors. Generally, we base our opinions on eyewitness testimony.’ Although Rosenstein emphasized that he ‘did not dislike’ and even ‘admired’ Comey in the past, he asserted that the former FBI head’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation in 2016 was a grievous and defining professional error.” You know, Comey has gotten a pass on all of this from the Drive-By Media.

Here comes Rosenstein. For the longest time, people thought Rosenstein and Comey were are the same page. There were a lot of people who thought Rosenstein was in the hoax, in on the scam to get Trump because he had hired Mueller. Now Rosenstein is taking the occasion of his recent retirement or resignation from the Department of Justice to unload. Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Now that Trump has named John Durham… Look, he’s not called a special counsel, but he may as well be one — and let me reiterate.

This guy’s experience is investigating the FBI, investigating informants and their use, investigating the corruption in the FBI. Don’t forget, he found that Robert Mueller kept four people — innocent people — in jail for years to protect the informant status of Whitey Bulger, and those people ended up suing, their families did. Two of them died in jail, by the way.

Two of them got out once this was discovered, and there were a series of civil suits that cost the government a hundred million dollars. Well, a little tour of the audio sound bite roster today will show what a home run this choice is. First let’s start on CNN today. John Berman bringing in the former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. Question: “Do you think this kind of investigation is warranted, Mr. Clapper?”

CLAPPER: You are gonna have to stand in line, take a number to do, uhh, investigation of the investigators. There’s already one substantial investigation — which, as — as I understand, is nearing completion, being conducted — led by the Department of Justice inspector general. Now we’re starting other investigations before that one is completed.

RUSH: That’s right.

CLAPPER: We’re kind of losing sight of what was the cause of all this, uh, the predicate for all this was the, dozens of cases where Russian operatives, some of whom were known to be, uhh — have intelligence connections were trying to engage with the Trump campaign. That’s what, uhh, the concern for and was a predicate for this investigation.

RUSH: No. Mr. Clapper. Look, I don’t really blame him for continuing this fantasy. It was never about this. It was never about the Russians attempting to interfere in the election. The Russians are attempting to… The Chinese are attempting to interfere in our trade policy. The Russians attempt to interfere in everything. There’s nothing new here, and there was certainly nothing unique here, and there was nothing that had not happened before, and there was nothing that could be specifically tied to Trump.

This has been a political operation from day one.

The Steele dossier is all they had. It’s a political opposition product, and there’s never been anything… This has never been a criminal investigation, and even they admit that. They called it a counterintelligence investigation. It’s always been nothing but political. The Justice Department has been weaponized, or was weaponized, by agents opposed to Donald Trump. The criminal justice system was used as a political operation, and it was hidden under the disguise of a legitimate intelligence investigation.

So people were led to believe that there was really serious intelligence that the Russians had tampered with the election and colluded with Trump. That was never proven. There was never any evidence of it. It was totally politicized. Now here’s Clapper, “The predicate for all this was the Russians, dozens of cases where Russian operatives, some of whom were known to have intelligence connections were trying to engage with the Trump campaign.”

He can say that because the Russians always do that. There’s nothing unique about it. What he doesn’t say is the Trump campaign resisted every one of their scams. These things that Clapper is talking about were performed by FBI informants. It was FBI informants that attempted to get involved in the Trump campaign who were then going to call their contacts in Russia so as to so-called prove a connection or collusion. But the other thing he said here that is very interesting to me. He said, “I don’t know why they’re doing this now.

“There’s already one substantial investigation, which I understand is nearing completion, and that’s the inspector general investigation of the FISA warrant process that was abused and perhaps corrupted here.” What Clapper is saying is, “Why are we doing this while that investigation is ongoing?” What he is implying here is, “Why don’t we wait to see what that turns up before doing this?” I have an answer.

It’s a theory. It’s not an answer. It’s a theory. My theory is that Barr already knows much of what the IG report is going to say, and that is the reason for hiring Durham. I think we’ve all had advance knowledge of some of the things that the inspector general’s found, like yesterday’s leak was that the IG investigation will focus on a lot of media complicity in this whole FISA and Russia collusion story.

So I think whatever the inspector general has found is known, and what has been learned and discovered in that investigation is the reason, one of the reasons why Barr has named Durham. So, Mr. Clapper, I think the answer is that there’s a head start that’s taken place here, and the people doing the investigating know a lot more than you probably think they know — and what they have found out is why they think they need to investigate further.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here is another reason why we think that the attorney general, William Barr, is not going to wait for the IG to report before deciding whether to go through with his own investigation. It’s very simple. I actually think, as I say, that Barr has already talked to the IG, knows some of what he’s going to produce, and it is that which will warrant further investigation, because the inspector general of the Department of Justice cannot prosecute anybody.

All he can do is recommend changes in the future. Inspectors general do not have the power to charge anybody with crimes, misbehavior, stealing the honey bears, whatever. They can’t do anything. All they can do is recommend that changes be made in the future so that whatever he found went wrong doesn’t continue to go wrong or happen again. I’m not even sure if inspectors general can make criminal referrals. They may be able to do that, but they cannot charge anybody on their own. So if whatever the IG finds requires that people be charged criminally, he can’t do it.

Somebody else is going to have to do that, and here comes the appointment of the… He’s not being officially called here a special counsel here, John Durham, but he’s effectively serving in that capacity. So we’ll take a break here the bottom of the hour. We’ll get to the latest on the China trade thing. We’ll further update you on that, which I informed you and imparted to you yesterday, and more obvious fright over the naming of this investigator to investigate the investigation.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Holy cow. Some of you people are on fire out there today. I checked the email during the break, and I got a bunch of people sending me notes. “I don’t care about this guy’s resume. I’m fed up with hearing about people’s resume!” They’re talking about the guy that Barr has appointed. “I’m gonna wait see results. I don’t care what this guy’s done. You know, that’s all we get. We get resumes, we get past history, we get performance, we get our hopes raised, we get our expectations raised, and then nothing ever happens.

“So you can stuff this guy’s resume, Mr. Limbaugh, as far as I’m concerned. I’m waiting to see if anybody delivers on this.” I understand the sentiment, folks. I understand the sentiment. I can count as easily as you can the number of times over whatever length of time in the past you want, 30 years, 10 years, 15, five, it doesn’t matter. The number of times we’ve been led to believe that heads are gonna roll, things are gonna happen, the bad guys are gonna get caught. I mean, for two years we’ve been, “Breaking news! Breaking news!

“The bottom’s gonna fall out tomorrow,” and it never does. “Breaking news! Breaking news! Heads are gonna roll tomorrow,” and they never do. “Breaking news! Breaking news! Full operation exposed, details tomorrow morning,” whatever. Never happens. I understand that. But I think it’s only… I mean, it’s incumbent on me to tell you who the guy is. It’s incumbent upon me to give you some of his track record and some of his histoire, because it does provide at least a potential road map.

I’ll tell you, the thing that gets me about this is his resume, Mr. Durham’s resume, is impeccable, particularly as it relates to this gig. But could somebody explain something to me? And I know the answer. So here we have Robert Mueller III. Mr. Integrity, Mr. Honor. Who tells us this? Everybody else in Washington. You know, people in his tribe, people in the establishment or the administrative state. “He’s the most impeccable guy, the most filled with honor we’ll ever have.”

This guy let four people rot in jail who were innocent in order to protect the informant status of a mass-murdering Boston mobster named Whitey Bulger, and that ended up costing the government over a hundred million dollars in civil settlements. How in the world does that get a Gold Star? How in the world does somebody in that circumstance, Mueller, get promoted? “Well, Rush, you don’t understand the way things work here in the DOJ. You don’t understand the way things work in Washington.

“It was incumbent upon Mueller to keep Bulger’s identity hidden for the purposes of moving the case forward.” Yeah, but four people, innocent people in jail. They were framed. They were put in jail all to protect the informant of Bulger. What did he give them? And then we find out that during this so-called investigation — which was not an investigation — other people have now been ruined and wiped out financially, in something that was not what it was. It was a political…

Essentially, the Democrat Party was able to take over the Department of Justice. The Hillary Clinton campaign started this whole thing with the Steele dossier and all the other investigations into Trump. And then after Trump was elected, the DOJ became the opposition research team of the defunct Hillary Clinton campaign, because then it became payback time.

Since Hillary lost after they were expecting her to win in a landslide, now it’s time to get Trump thrown out of office, overturn the election results. So they concoct this magnificent scheme that’s made to convince people that there’s a serious crime that’s taken place, Russian-Trump collusion, and that a deep investigation is needed to get to the bottom of it. And there was no investigation, and there was no crime. All this is, is the continuation of the political opposition research that was started with the creation of the Steele dossier.

And in the process of running a political oppo-research operation against Trump, Manafort’s in jail for life, Michael Flynn is wiped out, George Papadopoulos went to jail for two weeks. All of these people’s reputations have been sullied for the rest of their lives, and none of them had committed any crimes until this investigation began. Every crime that they supposedly were charged with were things they supposedly did after the investigation began.

And the guy behind it is the same guy who had four innocent people kept in jail for years in a previous operation that was uncovered by the lawyer that Mueller has appointed to investigate this investigation. In the world that I’ve always lived in, an employee… I don’t care if he’s FBI director, if he’s a lawyer, if he’s whatever. An employee who kept people in jail, innocent people in jail for many years and ended up costing the company a hundred million dollars, would not be called Mr. Integrity and Mr. Honorable and would not end up being promoted.

But we’re talking about Washington, and we’re talking about politics. This guy, Mueller, knowingly served while the precious Department of Justice that he served for all these different administrations bam a political weapon rather than a law-enforcement agency. The FBI became politically weaponized. So did the CIA to the extent that John Brennan’s involved in all this. So there’s an investigation now to ferret all this out, and much of the investigation, what it’s gonna find, we already know.

We don’t know everything, but we know quite a bit. We know enough for me to say confidently what I just said to you. I don’t know how else to say it. There was not an investigation. There was an attempt to plant informants in the Trump campaign. There was an attempt to entrap members of the Trump campaign so that they could be set up as colluding with Russia, or thinking about it or interested in it or willing to take dirt on Trump like the famous Trump meeting. But there was never an investigation because there was never a crime.

Rosenstein, when he appointed Mueller, did not specify a crime for Mueller to investigate, because there wasn’t one. All there was were allegations from the media and the Democrats that there had been collusion with Russia. That’s all there was, allegations — and the allegations stem from a phony document called the Steele dossier. Yet the vast majority of Americans still think that there was some kind of nefarious behavior, criminal activity by the Russians attempting to corrupt the elections and that the investigation into it was valid and legitimate.

And none of it was.

So if Rosenstein is gonna go out and start making speeches, and he’s gonna lambaste Comey for violating Department of Justice guidelines by listing a bunch of crimes Hillary Clinton was not charged with… Again, this is very, very important to understand — and I learned this late in life. It was not something I ever was taught in school. Now, a lot of you may have learned it long before I did, but the fact remains. Whether a prosecutor is at the county level or the state level or the federal level, if you investigate somebody and you can’t find evidence, you do not go public with what you were investigating them for.

You do not have the right, as a prosecutor, to ruin somebody’s reputation by announcing what you couldn’t find. Prosecutors do not do it. Comey had no right to do that press conference in the first place, even if we’re talking about Hillary Clinton. But what he was doing was exonerating her while listing all the crimes that she had committed and then telling everybody that there wasn’t any intent and so “no reasonable prosecutor would ever pursue charges.” That’s, by the way, a bunch of hooey.

But if Rosenstein is gonna go out and now trash Comey for violating those techniques and those Justice Department guidelines, then why doesn’t he trash Mueller for doing the same thing? Because this Mueller report is 448 pages of literal BS and drivel. It is in violation of every Justice Department guideline. You’re not charging the perp with anything, in this case Trump, and yet you’re gonna list all these things you think he might have done but you don’t have any evidence for!

What Mueller has done here with this report, this 448-page report dwarfs whatever Comey did in this July 5th press conference exonerating Hillary Clinton. This report is an effort to continue the smear and the political destruction of Donald Trump. The fact that Mueller said, “Well, I’m not sure about obstruction,” was purposefully done to make possible what is happening now: endless speculation, lies and distortions in the media and on TV and in the Democrat Party and with congressional investigations.

Meanwhile, nobody has a single bit of evidence on anything regarding Donald Trump that they could charge him with in terms of having committed a crime., and yet we’ve got 448 pages of character assassination. That’s what tells you that this is a full-fledged political operation. But I’m just saying that if Rosenstein wants to be consistent, he’s gotta go out and start criticizing Mueller in the same way he’s criticizing Comey. Except he’s not. He’s defending Mueller, and he’s defending the investigation.

(paraphrased) “I promised I would see it through. I promised it would be fair. I promised I would not leave until it was through, and I promised it would not be interrupted, and I promised that it would not be dealt with. I promised it would not be obstructed, and it wasn’t.” Uh, wait? What? It wasn’t? Rosenstein’s saying, “I made sure it wasn’t gonna be interrupted is and interfered it and it wasn’t.” Well, then what the hell is all this going up on Capitol Hill about? You making sure it wasn’t interfered with. You’re making sure it wasn’t obstructed.

You weren’t gonna leave because you wanted to make sure that didn’t happen. So it didn’t happen. He’s out beating himself up here on his chest, he’s going Tarzan on us by telling us how great a job he did protecting the investigation. Yet Nadler and all these committees are investigating what they’re assuring everybody is obstruction? So if you ask me, political criminality is taking place and has been taking place for 2-1/2 years, and all of it aimed at Donald Trump and his family and as many people who worked for him as they can trash and ruin.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This is Schenectady, New York. John, great to have you, sir. Hi.

CALLER: It’s an honor to speak to you, Rush. Dittos. So I think when James Comey exonerated Hillary before the investigation was even complete, I think he was protecting Obama, because they know that her emails, copies of her emails were going to China. Those copies were also on Obama’s computer. So they didn’t want any of that information getting out. It was a “Look here, not there” distraction. So they made up the Russian collusion because China is really where all the action is.

You know, when Hillary’s computer was, quote, “taken over,” shortly after that how many of our American CIA agents in China were killed? A couple dozen? So I think… You know, the American people are waking up, Rush. We know what’s going on. We see through the smoke screen. There is a great awakening, and people aren’t getting it — and, you know, God bless President Trump. He knows what’s going on. He sees the writing on the wall. He knows everything. With the appointments of Barr and Durham, they’re all going down very shortly. It’s gonna be an interesting summer.

RUSH: Well, see, this is it. You say that, and a lot of people think that. But I know there are people out there right now shouting at it radio who are saying, “We’ve been hearing people are gonna go down for two years, and nobody has gone down yet, except people that work for Trump. Nobody’s gone down. There’s a lot of people… You may be right that there’s an awakening taking place out there. But there are still a lot of people gonna vote for Joe Biden.

There’s still a lot of people who are gonna vote for whoever the Democrat nominee is. There are still a lot of people out there that think all of this… There’s a poll. The latest poll: Over 40% of the American people think that Russia tampered with voting machines. Forty percent! It was 42%, down to 40% now. But that’s an incredibly large number. Now, about your original point, exonerating Obama. Of course it’s about exonerating Obama.

But the reason I focus on exonerating Hillary Clinton and the purpose of this Comey July 5th press conference is she’s the Democrat nominee. There is no way. A, these people are all for Hillary. They hate Trump. So they have to exonerate her. They have to find a way to exempt her from laws, from breaking laws that other people are in jail for. There are people in jail for doing what Hillary Clinton did in terms of trafficking in classified data over unsecure networks, nongovernment networks. There are people in jail.

They had to exonerate Hillary Clinton, and I focused on that because that was really the origin of this. Remember, before the Trump-Russia thing really got a lot of energy — and it’s a close call here, but remember the Democrat National Committee network computers, we were told, were hacked by the Russians. But we still don’t know that because the FBI was never allowed to investigate forensically the Democrat computer network.

They hired a private sector outfit called CrowdStrike to come in and look at it, and CrowdStrike told everybody what they found, and everybody just accepted it, including the FBI, even though the FBI had never seen it. They’d never expected the servers, never found out how the stuff got hacked. Look, just to repeat: A lot of the information that was on that network, people were able to examine the transfer speeds, and it could not have happened other than on thumb drive. Which is what gives people an indication it was an inside job and not the Russians that hacked.

If you’re gonna hack over the internet and you’re going to corrupt and steal data, you have maximum data transfer speeds available to you. Whatever they are, they’re not as fast as when you take a thumb drive, attach it to the computer, and start transferring data that way. And the data transfer speeds that were recorded as part of the hack dwarf whatever speeds, maximum speeds you can get via an internet connection.

But the purpose for this was to exonerate Hillary Clinton. They had to find a way to make sure she was not going to be held accountable to the law, because she was the Democrat nominee. And that’s when the politicization of this began. Now, they were also trying to target Trump at the same time here. But protecting her was paramount. That’s the original reason. In my estimation, the original, original, original reason for this investigation, and then it blossomed. And it may have had a dual purpose. But exonerating her was at the top of the mandate list.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, let me… I want to clarify something I said about Mueller. I was technically right, but I left something out of this involving the four people, the innocent people who were framed, put in jail and kept there for years in order to protect the informant status of the Boston mobster Whitey Bulger. Mueller was not there when they were framed and put in jail, but he found out and nevertheless kept them in jail after it was learned that they were innocent.

Mueller had to know they were innocent of what they were convicted of. He was still writing to the parole board urging that they be kept in prison. He didn’t have a hand in putting them there. I want to specify that the operation was not totally his. He didn’t put them there, but he learned that they were innocent, wrote the parole board to keep them there in order to protect the bureau’s informant status of Whitey Bulger. And again, the only reason why this…

Well, there’s not only one reason. But the reason this matters is that one of the investigators who discovered this and had the guts to report this was the lawyer that Barr has named today to investigate the investigation, John Durham. So this is why I’m making a deal about this. But, again, I do… Mr. Snerdley, it’s continuing. I’m getting emails, “I don’t care about the guy’s resume, Mr. Limbaugh. I want results, Dude! I want results. I’ve been hearing resumes for all of my life, and what has that gotten us?”

I’m sympathetic. I think… You know, it’s hard, folks. None of us are of Washington. Well, some of you may be. I know that this audience is wide and vast and has many people in Washington listening to it. But those of you who, like me, don’t live there, work there, don’t conduct our business there, we are not of Washington. And it is a different place. It is its own culture. It has its own identity, and because it’s Washington, because it’s the national capital, these are people whose differences and patterns and culture, if you will, is oriented toward running things.

I’m thinking that what has happened here in this investigation has… I don’t know what the term would be. But even inside Washington, I think what has happened here has really awakened a lot of people, ’cause they know this thing was a fraud from the get-go. They know this thing was a political operation. They know it was not a criminal or counterintel investigation, and I think for some people there, it’s a step too far.

I am assuming that the attorney general is one of these people who thinks, “This is way, way, way beyond what we do here. This is not what we do. We do not allow this Department of Justice to become weaponized.” The fact that it’s gonna become politicized is inescapable, because it’s run out of the executive branch. The executive branch is led by the president, who’s elected by the people, and he comes from one of the two parties, and he appoints people to serve in various positions. So it’s gonna have a political taint.

But in terms of the execution of the job, the execution of job responsibilities, the administration of justice, lifers and career people in the DOJ — many of them — really buy into the idea that they should not have anything to do with politics. But that got upended with, I think, the Obama administration. Eric Holder was there specifically to use the DOJ as a means of advancing the Obama agenda. By the same token, when career Democrats in the DOJ have sought to use it as a weapon to investigate or thwart the Republican agenda.

But I think even within those confines, what happened here is so far and above what has been tolerated before, ’cause this takes the cake. I mean, there never was a crime here. There never was any evidence here, and the level of deception and lying to the American people, the amount of money spent… There are people who have been wiped out, reputations destroyed and lives ruined in this that had nothing to do with anything and would not have ever been prosecuted or charged were it not for the existence of this called investigation.

I think that’s what we’re watching, and there’s gonna be significant opposition to Barr on this. There will be significant opposition to John Durham. There will be people that try to thwart this, the people that don’t want to be exposed. But many of them already have and many of them have been fired, like Strzok Smirk and Lisa Page and McCabe and Comey. So we shall see.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Bob Menendez this morning on CNN’s Newsday. Question: “Attorney General Barr’s launched a third investigation basically investigating the investigators of the Trump team’s ties to Russia.” There weren’t any!

See how this goes on? See how…? There weren’t any Trump “ties to Russia,” and we have it on none other than Robert Mueller as the source authority. There were none. But there’s 448 pages of innuendo, 448 pages of mindless gossip and smears in stark violation of Department of Justice guidelines. So here she is talking to some guy who barely escaped his own trial, Bob Menendez. “So what do you think about this, Senator Menendez? What do you think of what Barr’s doing here with this special lawyer he’s appointed?”

MENENDEZ: Absolutely not, and what is alarming about this is that the Justice Department, the attorney general — who is supposed to be the attorney for the American people, not for the president — seems to, uhh, be used by the president as his own attack force. And it is a chilling set of actions that ultimately I would see in Hungary and Viktor Orban, not in the United States of America.

RUSH: You want to know the irony? The irony here is it’s not Barr doing that; it is Menendez and his buddies that just did that. “Chilling set of actions.” That’s right. “The president with his own attack force.” No, Hillary Clinton with her own attack force that included members of the FBI and the DOJ and the CIA, and they launch this never-ending so-called investigation against Trump, and Menendez says (paraphrased), “This is a chilling set of actions, to investigate the investigator!

“They don’t do this except in banana republics and totalitarian states.” No, they don’t do this. The investigators are never investigated in totalitarian states. The investigators do not allow themselves to be investigated. If you want to investigate the investigators in a totalitarian state, you get shot, or you get sent to the gulag. Here’s Ken Starr last night with Laura Ingraham who asked him, “What is Durham gonna look at?”

STARR: He’s going to get to the bottom of this. John Durham was such a brilliant choice by Bill Barr. It was so timely. We’re all waiting for the inspector general report. But now we have perhaps the most respected prosecutor in the United States who served so brilliantly, including some assignments during the Obama administration. He’s totally above politics. You can’t talk about he’s an angry Republican. (chuckles) He was confirmed by literally every member of the Senate who voted. And why? Because of his record. So we have a really honest cop on the beat now.

RUSH: Wait a minute. What happened to Mueller? This is exactly what they said about Mueller when he was appointed! I don’t know that Ken Starr said it, but a lot of people were. Have you noticed this? Every special counsel or every prosecutor named is said to be the creme de la creme, is said to be the top of the list, the king of the hill, the top of the mountain. “You can’t call him an angry Republican. He’s above politics.

“He’s the most respected prosecutor in the United States.” It’s amazing how many of these most respected prosecutors in the United States that we have. But Starr is right. He was confirmed by everybody who voted. In 2017, when Trump nominated him to be the U.S. attorney for the state of Connecticut. He references, I should say, the inspector general again here. Since we’re all waiting for the IG report, remember, I wouldn’t doubt… I don’t know, but I wouldn’t doubt that Barr already has an idea what the inspector general has found, legally, and is going to report.

I think Barr already knows, and he knows enough to realize that that warrants a serious investigation. The IG can’t issue subpoenas. The IG… If you leave the department, he can’t talk to you. If the inspector general finds anything, all he can do is make recommendations. He can’t charge anybody criminally. Maybe make a criminal referral. But he cannot pursue anybody who he finds to be in violation of regulations or ethics or law, and that’s why you need an official investigator and a prosecutor who can do all that.

Here is Fredo Cuomo. Fredo Cuomo is close to panic time here. This was last night on Fredo Prime Time, and this is what he said about the attorney that Barr has selected, John Durham, to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation.

FREDO: (dramatic music) AG Barr has assigned a top federal prosecutor to investigate the origins of the Mueller probe. We know who it is, we know his history, and this man named Durham is no joke when he is put on a case.

RUSH: Oh, that, I think, says a lot. Fredo Cuomo knows a joke when he sees one (he looks in the mirror every day) and he knows that this Durham guy is not a joke. So for those of you worried about, “I don’t care about resumes; I want results,” there are a lot of people who think this resume stuff is for real when it comes to this guy.