Russiagate Revisited: Uncovering the Truth (Part 1 of my notes on the 38 minute Podcast)

In this Just the News special report, John Solomon tackles the grand conspiracy against President Donald Trump. Senator Ron Johnson unpacks the intricate web of political scandals that have shaped the recent landscape of American politics. From the Ukraine impeachment to the ongoing investigations into Hunter Biden and the alleged misconduct of various intelligence officials, Senator Johnson sheds light on the truths that have been obscured by the mainstream media.

Congresswoman Claudia Tenney shares her insights on the evolving narrative, the role of intelligence agencies, and the potential for criminal charges against those involved in the alleged conspiracy.

Finally, Mike Benz, the Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, delves into the intricate web of the Russiagate conspiracy and its far-reaching implications on American society. Benz unravels the role of censorship in shaping the narrative around Russiagate and explores how this event has influenced the landscape of free speech in the United States.

~~~~~PART 1 notes on the Podcast begin

John Solomon introduces the episode on RussiaGate, the grand conspiracy and weaponization which starts with the clearing of Hillary Clinton and ends with Jack Smith, thet raid at Mar A Lago and everything in between.

That's how the FBI is looking at it. Now there are criminal referrals from CIA Director John Ratcliffe, ODNI Tulsi Gabbard. Several members of Congress have made referrals, some going back to 2018 when Devin Nunes made criminal referrals. This is becoming a criminal investigation.

For those frustrated, sitting and home thinking nothing is ever going to get done, Ron Johnson, Claudia Tenney and Mike Benz why this moment may matter more than others.

Solomon says today they are going to try to break it down as to why you should care.

Why what Pam Bondi has done with the Strike Force, what Kash Patel has done by predicating a grand conspiracy case, why what Dan Bongino has done by pulling the documents, why what Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe have done by declassifying them.

Why what President Trump has done by setting this whole dynamic to get the American people transparency, what people lilke Senator Johnson and Grassley and others have done to keep fighting until we got the truth. Why it would matter.

Solomon says yesterday his program described the Annex of the Report (Durham). We'll see how that plays out.

In the meantime, a discussion about the bottom line. Why should we care? Does it matter? Is there criminality?

He says guest Claudia Tenney was one of the first people to make criminal referrals years ago. She sits on the House Intelligence Committee today. She knows the darkest deepest secrets on this - things that are still going to be declassified weeks from now.

He says Ron Johnson 'always lights it up' and Mike Benz will bring in an important element of this - the complicity of the United States legacy media - the news media, and the fact that we could have unraveled this way earlier if not for the censorship. If we weren't censored, if we weren't called Russian disinformation when we had true information, we would have unraveled this much sooner.

Censorship, demonization and deplatforming were a big part of this and Mike Benz is gonig to bring that in. That is the show for today.

[Body of the podcast begins at 5:02 min/sec]

Solomon introduces Sen Johnson, says he's been at the forefront using his Oversight Committee powers to get the American people the truth, often truth denied by the media and the establishment in Washington. Solomon says of all the people in Washington right now, Sen Johnson could take a victory lap about what's happened in the last few months as the truths that we were denied now coming out. ObamaGate is real. RussiaGate is real.

Solomon asks, when you look at the period, all the things that you've investigated that you've said were affirmed, is this one grand conspiracy of just constantly clearing a Democrat who did something wrong, and then projecting a fake crime on the Republican to get away from it?

Sen Johnson thinks so, it's pretty much the same cast of characters. He said he didn't come here (ransomnote: D.C.?) to be an investigator, but when he became Chairman of Homeland Security it pretty much coincided with the Hillary Clinton email scandal. He said 'we started digging into that', a lot of details in that.

He says in general, his staff uncovered was the exoneration memo written by people like like Peter Strzok and Bill Preistap and other names which really laid out exactly how they exonerated Hillary Clinton. How they changed things from 'grossly negligent' to 'extremely careless' so it wouldn't fit into the criminal statute.

When James Comey issued that exoneration speech, that same cast of characters moved right on over to Crossfire Hurricane. And they're still going at it, until we break them up.

[7:00 min/sec into the podcast]

Johnson says you've got people like John Brennan becoming an MSNBC personality, they get paid to continue to spread the lies, spread the propaganda. It never stopped.

Johnson wants to point out, it goes way beyond the impact it has had on our body politic, on the election interference, this has rammifications on our foreign policy. You think Vladimir Putin doesn't look at the really treasonous behavior of the Democrat party and notice their weakness and decide to move against Ukraine once Joe Biden becomes President ( a completely incapable man)

This assault on our democracy - any intereference that China or Russia could hope to accomplish would pale in comparison to the deviousness, the viciousness, again, the danger to our democracy which are these Democrats, starting with Obama and all of his henchmen.

Benz asks, 'So what's the end game for these investigations we've been seeing? A lot of this information has been out. It is being verified now with actual documentation. As you said, China, Russia, foreign adversaries - they would be salivating at the idea of what they are doing now with just the chaos that our own intell agencies have created working with the media. But what is our end game here in the short-term?

Sen Johnson says it has to be totally exposed. He's not learning anything particularly new (ransomnote: by exposures by Gabbard, Ratcliffe?) If we didn't already have evidence of it before, if it was something we suspected, now we're just getting more documented evidence on this.

He notes it would be interesting to uncover the legacy media's role in colluding with the criminals in our government, how complicit the media was in all this, some of those communications woudl be extremely valuable, because this has to be fully exposed.

Again, he says he doens't know what percentage of the legacy corporate media is full of a bunch of leftists - he thinks it's a pretty big chunk. Obviously we've got news outlets like Solomon's, more consevative outlets, alternate media, but still the bulk of our media is basically the communications arm of the Democratic party which is radical leftists.

The American people aren't hearing this, people that watch Solomon's show are aware of this, but the vast majority of Americans are still clueless to exactly what Obama, and Biden, and Clinton, and Brennan, and all that cast of characters, what they did.

So how do you expose it, in his opinion the best way to do it is undertake a conspiracy investigation, Bring charges outside a Washington D.C. venue.

"The problem with John Durham, and you have to respect this, is he wouldn't indict if he couldn't get a conviction." He knew he couldn't get a conviction in a Democrat controlled District of Columbia, so he didn't indict.

Johnson wants to move the needed corruption trials to an area outside DC. He wants to spend days painstakingly, exhaustively, accurately laying out all the evidence before the American public, and for a historical record of it. He thinks that's the best way.

He says he and Grassley can continue to collaborate in writing reports, but notes that when the released their report earlier, the MSM not only ignored the report(s) but they also called them 'Russian Disinformation.'

Solomon concurred with Johnson and said tomorrow, the anex to the John Durham report was to be released. (ransomnote: the annext to the JD report was released, July 31, 2025) and in that report, Solomon says we'll see that the Russians, who were intercepting some of Hillary's communications, believed that the FBI had agreed in advance to further her RussiaGate story, to open an investigation, acting on it, and to act as an accelerant to the story.

Solomon says while he knows this is just a Russian intercept, the Russians are pretty good on such intercepts. He askes, "Should we be concerned that the FBI was in on the game right from the beginning?"

Sen Johnson: Didn't we already suspect that any way?

Solomon seems to be pointing to emerging proof of what was once only suspected.

Sen Johnson says James Comey, General Kelley, Peter Stzok those guys, the way they set up Donald Trump by briefing him on the Steele Dossier so they could leak it to BuzzFeed?

It was obviously a setup. James Comey tried to cover his tracks with the last minute investigation of the Hillary Clinton computer prior to the election - it had no impact. So Johnson thinks people like Comey, Strzok and McCabe were completely complicit.

Sen Johnson - "I would say a treasonous conspiracy." The way DNI Tulsi Gabbard has described this is 100% accurate. This is a multi-year coup attempt against a duly elected president. They did everything they could to sabotague his administration and they are doing it this day.

That's what's so disgusting about this - these people are undertaking the exact same actions, the same type of sabotague and they do it with impunity because the legacy media will never hold them accountable.

Mike Benz - not only hold them accountable but John Brennan is going on these news shows, James Comey has high visibility, Peter Stzok is releasing a pod cast. Do you think they maintain that sort of visibility as a way to obfuscate and be able to project... or what's the strategy there. They seem to continue in the public eye when a lot of us know what went on.

Sen Johnson - The best defense is a good offense. These guys are always on offense. The leftists are always on offense. They are relentless Conservatives just want government off our backs. Dems, for liberals they think government is the answer and they want all that power and try to maintain it. They do everything they can to destroy their political opponents.

[13:23 min/sec into the video]

We just don't have that blood lust for power like the Democrats do.

Solomon asks about the Ukraine impeachment, saying Sen Johnson did more than anyone to unravel the false stories that were part of it. It's forever in our Congressional record as a legitimate impeachment of a president, albeit he was acquited afterwards.

But now we know a lot of things said in it weren't true and that there was a good reason to investigate Hunter Biden, it wasn't Russian disinformation, it was true, he actually cheated on his taxes (not paying taxes on Burisma) . He was involved in this grift.

Solomon asks, "Is there a moment for Congress to go back and for history's sake say, "I think we ought to take that impeachment and say you should disregard it because new evidence suggests that it wasn't warranted.

Sen Johnson - That would be nice to do, but it occurred. So the best thing we can do is expose the corruption within these federal agencies who are populated by a bunch of leftists, the corruption of the Democrat party, what they did with the J6 Committee. The way they destroyed the records from that Committee. Why would they do that unless it was corrupt.

Our big impediment to exposing them to more of the American public to be outraged, as they should be outraged, is the legacy media. Again, they're not turning back their Pulitzer prizes won on a complete false story, which they were either duped or more likely, I think they were complicit in.

It's a huge impediment. The good news is that we do have alternate news sites like Solomon's, and a larger percentage of the American people are becoming aware. A good sign is that Donald Trump won.

So now we have people in positions who are still battling the Deep State. People have to understand this is a tough slog for people like Kash Patel, Pam Bondi and RFK Jr. Democrats are holding up confirmations at an unprecedented levels so you can't get the political appointees to try to rein in and get some control over the leftists in the Deep State.

There's a big hole in the Department of Justice. He had radical left attorneys just quit. They couldn't work for Trump. I think they terminated some other leftists. Now you've a got a big hole there that's hard to fill because of the lawfare.

We've got an honorable Judge, a great person, James Troupis (ransomnote: former Trump attorney) in Wisconsin. The state Attorney General Josh Kaul approved the actions of the Judge Troupis a year or two prior re alt slate of electors. Now he's trying to put Judge Shoupous in jail for the alternate slate of electors, for being Trump's attorney. They are bankrupting him. They are ruining his life.

It doesn't take many people like Judge Troupis to be made an example of before people say they'd love to serve the Trump Justice Department, but I have a family to take care of. I want a career after this administration. I want to pay off my student loans.

So again the left in their viciousness and relentlessness, they continue to sabotague the second Trump administration as well.

John Solomon breaks for commercial and says Congresswoman Claudia Tenney (NY) serves on the House Intelligence Committee today. Years ago, she was helping Devin Nunes, John Ratcliff, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Chuck Grassley, and Ron Johnson in Congress unravel the Russian Collusion scandal. Mike Benz will also speak.

[16:59 min/sec into the podcast]

End of my notes on Part 1 of the podcast featuring Sen Johnson

My notes on the rest of the podcast will be posted as Part 2.