Mudd Throws Steele Under the Bus

RUSH: I gotta play for you audio sound bite number two. Phil Mudd. I think Mudd is a former CIA guy. (muttering) Yeah, former deputy director, CIA Counterterrorist Center. He’s routine guest on CNN, and he has (for the past two years) been selling the Steele dossier. He’s been promoting it. He has been one of the most vociferous Never Trumpers. He’s been in the Clapper and the Brennan camp. “Trump’s guilty, Trump’s gonna go, Trump’s gotta go, Trump’s a scumbag,” whatever it is.

It’s no different than what anybody else at CNN has been saying, but since he’s former CIA deputy director, what he said was given additional weight. It’s like Brennan. When Mueller came out with his report and said there was no collusion, Brennan said (impression) “Well, I — I must… I must have been given false information! I — I don’t know how this could have happened.” ‘Cause Brennan was out predicting that Trump was gonna be not just impeached but indicted and sent to jail. I mean, Brennan was one of the ringleaders of all of this. I want you to listen to what Mudd here says because I think this means that the Barr investigation…

I had a great interview yesterday with Devin Nunes of the House Judiciary Committee — he’s former chair — and his thoughts on what’s happening now with all of this. It will be in the next issue of The Limbaugh Letter. I might do excerpts here on the program to promote it and plug it. But he was unencumbered, shall we say, was Congressman Nunes, and he is… I’ll just tell you: He is convinced that there are going to indictments of some of these people. He’s convinced of it. Not convinced of jail time, but he’s convinced that there’s gonna be indictments.

I think the sound bite from Mudd who, again… I mean, he cuts a very suave and debonair figure, and I’m told that many of the female guests and analysts at CNN really have a kind of Clintonesque attachment to the guy. He could be in a Bond movie. So he was on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzed, and he said, “Christopher Steele, former British spy, author of” now it’s “the so-called dossier,” that’s Wolf Blitzed (chuckles), “has agreed to talk with the Department of Justice investigates about his work, his cooperation with the FBI. How significant is it, Phil Mudd?”

MUDD: This is significant. This will be a car wreck! Let me give you how this game ends. Christopher Steele shows up in front of the Department of Justice and I’m guessing doesn’t have terrific answers for the quality of the information in that Steele dossier. I’m telling you, Wolf: This is not gonna go well. I can’t believe he has perfect answers about the origins of the Steele dossier. I’m not even sure why he’s showin’ up. If I were him, I’d go to Disney World. I would not go to the Department of Justice, because it will not end up well.

RUSH: Well, he’s already on record. He had to testify in trial in the U.K. They have much different libel laws there. You have a much easier time proving libel and being awarded damages, libel and slander, in the U.K. than you do here. They don’t have any public figure obstacle there. Just because you’re a public figure, doesn’t mean anybody can say what they want to say about you over there. He’s already testified that he can’t prove anything in his dossier. So he’s got really no hope.

The fact that he’s gonna talk to these people is another sign of the rats scurrying among all the other rats on the ship and trying to get off. Now, Mudd… This had to be a devastating day when Mueller came back with no collusion and the dossier was demonstrated to be nothing. This dossier has had nothing factual in it from the first day it was ever seen by anybody, the first day it was used. I don’t know if Mudd knew that or was faking it or didn’t know it and believed everything in it. I actually think… You know, we talk about the media and how they were instrumental.

Nunes yesterday was talking about this. I ran my question by him: “How do you think it is that not one journalist saw a career opportunity here to go get the real story?” He said, “They believed it, Rush. It’s not that… None of them doubted it. They all believed it. They’re cozy with their sources. They think they live in the same world. They want to be in the same league. So if these big time intel people are talking to ’em, that’s a big deal. They believed it!”

But now, now, “The Steele dossier? Ha-ha-ha! It’s nothing. This guy ought to be ashamed. He shouldn’t even show up and talk to anybody!”

This is falling apart rapidly, is my point, and I wanted to share that with you.

RUSH: Wyandotte, Michigan. Rob, I’m glad you waited. Great to have you with us, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Rush, do you have any more Phil Mudd sound bites from yesterday? I heard that interview and I also heard him say if the dossier does turn out to be fake, and Clapper, Comey, and Brennan used it for a FISA warrant, there’s going to be trouble.

RUSH: I’ve got the story. I only have the one sound bite from Phil Mudd. Grab sound bite number 2. Let me play it quickly and I’ll go through some of the other things. He was on CNN all day. I’ve got a story of his interview with the smartest man on TV, Don Lemon. But here is the question that he got from Wolf Blitzed last night. “Christopher Steele, former British spy, author of that so-caller dossier has agreed to speak with Department of Justice investigators about his work, his cooperation with the FBI. How significant is that?”

This is the stupidest — Blitzer is quaking in his boots like everybody in the media is. How significant is it? They all know by now this thing was a crock. They should have known from day one it was a crock, but they certainly know now. So Blitzer’s asking Phil Mudd, “How significant is this?”

MUDD: This is significant. This will be a car wreck! Let me give you how this game ends. Christopher Steele shows up in front of the Department of Justice, and I’m guessing doesn’t have terrific answers for the quality of the information in that Steele dossier. I’m telling you, Wolf: This is not gonna go well. I can’t believe he has perfect answers about the origins of the Steele dossier. I’m not even sure why he’s showin’ up. If I were him, I’d go to Disney World. I would not go to the Department of Justice, because it will not end up well.

RUSH: Okay. So you saw him elsewhere, and what else did he — he said the same thing about Comey?

CALLER: No. Right around that time, right when he was saying those other things, he said if the dossier turns out to be fake and they used it for a FISA warrant, there’s gonna be trouble. Right during that same interview.

RUSH: There’s no question. The thing again, look, I’m not by any means an expert on CNN. I have it on here every day. I listen to it rarely, but I see what’s going on. And I know that Phil Mudd’s a former CIA deputy director, and he was on CNN for one reason. He’s part of the group of people that just can’t abide Trump, and he was part of the group — they all were — that was spreading the myths associated with this dossier.

The dossier is all they ever had. All they ever had was so-called intel from the Hillary campaign. Everybody associated with this, it turns out, was associated with Hillary. Downer, the Alexander Downer, the ambassador from Australia. One of the points Devin Nunes made yesterday — it’s a really, really great question — is he acknowledged that it’s true, that all of this that we know came from Hillary Clinton-related people.

Steele was paid by Hillary. Glenn Simpson paid by Hillary, Fusion GPS. Perkins Coie law firm. But then how’d the FBI get involved? Nunes wants to know when did that happen? We know that Hillary was running a political opposition research program here and the dossier is part of that. But what caused the FBI to pick it up and start treating it as legitimate intel? And he made it sound like he’s not sure of this. He’d like to know when that happened and who facilitated that.

The answer to that is gonna be contained somewhere in the Obama administration because all of these people that then end up in the FBI, like Comey and McCabe and then the CIA, Brennan and the director national intelligence Clapper, these are all Obama people. At some point the Hillary Clinton opposition research division ends up being taken over by the FBI and converted into a counterintelligence investigation. And that’s when the FBI takes this dossier and gets a FISA warrant on it.

And as our caller points out here, Phil Mudd did say last night that if they did that, there are — I don’t know “problem.” These guys that were all on CNN, there’s not a one of them that was ever warning anybody that the dossier could be fake. They were all believing it. There was more fake news in this story than we’ve seen in any single story in our lifetimes.

Three to four times a day Washington Post, New York Times, anonymous intel sources, former and current government officials. And they were reporting this on CNN every day for two years breathlessly. They’re all part of the “the walls are closing in on Donald Trump” crowd. Now all of a sudden we’ve got the Mueller report and the dossier doesn’t even get mentioned in it because everybody knows the dossier was political oppo research. It was not intel.

And now all of a sudden these people that were warning that Trump’s history, it’s only a matter of time, are now warning that people that believed the dossier, that were spreading the dossier around, that were using the dossier, they’re the ones in trouble?

Here’s Phil Mudd talking to Lemon last night. “If you’re conducting oppo research, somebody’s paying me to find oppo information, let’s say about you, Mr. Lemon. In the intel business, I gotta validate that. I need a second source, a third source. I need to confirm my information on the intel side that Don Lemon is accurate.”

Lemon says: “Wasn’t Steele just supposed to gather the information and the intelligence community figures out whether it’s true or not?”

Mudd: “No. Steele is supposed to gather the information, then the Republicans or Democrats use it in a political ad. This is not an intelligence game.” This is incredible as an admission here!

RUSH: I want to go back. I had to hurry through this before we get back to the phones. Don Lemon and Phil Mudd here talking about Christopher Steele’s work. And Lemon — this is classic — Mudd is trying to tell him that Steele, all of a sudden, now we know is a bad actor, he’s trafficking in BS. None of what he said was real, none of it was true, he’s got a lot of explaining to do, says Phil Mudd, who originally bought into it and loved it.

So he’s talking to Don Lemon about it, and Don Lemon wants to protect Steele! So Don Lemon says, “But how’s this Steele’s fault? Isn’t he just supposed to gather the information and then the intelligence community’s supposed to figure it out?” And the stupidity of the question is that Steele is the intelligence community! Steele is the guy. It’s supposed to be verified before he presents it to anybody.

If it’s legitimate intel, it’s supposed to have some grain — that’s what Mudd’s telling him here. It’s gotta have some relation to the truth because then the analysts take over and start putting it all together and seeing if there is anything here. But you just don’t submit BS. If you’re an intelligence agent and you’re doing legitimate counter intel, you don’t make stuff up and submit it.

And what Mudd says here, no. What he’s supposed to do is gather investigation and then the Republicans or Democrats use it in a political ad. No ho-ho! Unless I’m missing something here, this is an amazing admission. This is Phil Mudd, Never Trumper extraordinaire, admitting that the only thing Steele’s stuff was to be used for was dirty political ads for Hillary Clinton. And he was a political opposition researcher!

Well, excuse me. Yes, he was. But for two years you guys didn’t portray him as that. He was legitimate intel. And you made the smartest man in TV, Don Lemon, believe that he was interested in legitimate intel. Man, I’ll tell you, they are really fleeing now. And like our caller pointed out, Phil Mudd then went on to say, if they use this, if they use this dossier to get a FISA warrant to start spying on people, there is going to be hell to pay.

What do you mean, if? Not only did they use it, they renewed it three times. Four times it was used. And people like Comey vouched for it to the FISA court and the FISA judge! What do you mean if? And Barr is gonna get to the bottom of this. I think Barr’s farther along in this than anybody knows.

The real question everybody asks me, “Do you think they’re really gonna be, Rush, indictments? I just can’t see Washington indicting these people. I don’t care. I just can’t see it.” I know you can’t see it. It’s hard to envision. But I think it’s not just us, folks, that realize what a really — this is so worse than dangerous, what has been done here.

Devin Nunes told me yesterday in the interview, we’ve got so much lying going on here under oath by people that have testified to various congressional and Senate committees. And there are legitimate penalties and punishments for that, as we all know.

But Hillary Clinton got away with it. She got away with lying. She got away with everything, trafficking in classified data, having an illegal server, illegally raising money. I mean, she got away with it all. That’s what Comey did on July 5th, 2016, when he exonerated her. So it’s understandable that people would think everybody else is gonna get away with it. But I don’t think they are. Whether anybody’s going to jail, who the heck knows? I don’t know.

But I think Barr is on this case, end of his career, nothing to lose here really, no deleterious impact on his career future. This kind of stuff cannot be allowed to go on and unpunished and people not held accountable. But Nunes really did have a good question: When did and how did the crossover happen from all of these Hillary people to the FBI?

At what point did the FBI intelligence community decide to take Hillary Clinton opposition research and turn it into a counterintelligence investigation for the purposes of destroying Donald Trump? First his campaign, then his presidency. Because the FBI was not originally part of the Hillary Clinton oppo research outfit. That was Glenn Simpson and whoever else she’d hired to work on that.

At some point, somebody — was it Comey? — somebody in the FBI had to accept that file and then make the decision that they were gonna treat it not as political opposition research, but a legitimate investigation of intelligence to find criminal activity on the part of the Donald Trump and the Russians. Hillary just wanted an opposition research document to be able to run ads or do whatever saying that had happened.

But the FBI decided at some point to get in on it and make it official. And the FBI and all these people at that time are under the auspices of Barack Obama, folks. You want to talk about Russia collusion and why didn’t Trump stop it. Why didn’t Trump stop it? Why didn’t Obama, if it was really happening, which it wasn’t.

Related Links

CNN Pitbull Phil Mudd looks like a defanged poodle in that video. Don Lemmon pretends to not read between the lines of Mudd's admission that the Steele dossier is salacious gossip that the FBI claimed was verified without bothering to verify.

Translation for Don, the FBI lied to the FISCA court.

A caller to Rush yesterday brought up the DNC leak and said the forensic evidence proves the leak was an inside job and Seth Rich was likely the leaker. You should of heard Rush do verbal gymnastics on this one. He made up some phony ass excuse that there was no empirical evidence to support that Rich did it just after he had admitted that forensic evidence proved that it could not have been an outside hack over the Internet. Just like the way he continually tap danced around the callers years ago who pointing out Obozo’s BC fraud. This gutless wonder refuses to step forward on the really big issues until they are already proven, Maybe it’s that he is way too comfortable in his position in radio to take on the really important conservative political issues. Whatever it is, he will not use his bullhorn to make breaking news. He merely chimes in after the fact. Remember, during the primaries he even refused to endorse Trump under some cockamamie excuse that he didn’t want to influence the primary outcome. He is a spineless follower and not a true leader. He doesn’t make news he only comments on old news.

Correct. Rush is not a politician and he is not really a newsmaker. He has never endorsed candidates in primaries, and has avoided other incendiary issues in the past. During the Clinton years he was circumspect about Vince Foster and the Mena cocaine smuggling deal, and a few other things IIRC.

With everything Rush has done for the patriotic cause over the last twenty odd years, and all you can say is “spineless follower.” Tell us, what have you done for the nation in the last twenty years that measures up to “the majority maker?”

Limbaugh doesn’t pretend to be what you think he is
supposed to be. Obviously you don’t get him but you
bitch about him. So, the question is why do you ever
bother to listen to him
______________________________________________
I listen to the radio during the day because its unique hands-free quality allows me to listen while I’m working with my hands. That’s pretty much why I still listen to radio talk shows in the shop. I find Limbaugh basically a validator of conservative issues and an entertainer. He is basically telling you what you already know as an informed conservative. I suppose to that extent he adds some value but when you stop and think about it, as an informed Conservative, you learn very little new from listening to his radio show. What really bugs me is when he bumps into a hot issue on which he obviously must have an opinion and deliberately leaves you hanging without voicing his opinion. I got ticked me off the other day when a caller wanted him to voice an opinion on the key issue behind the phony DNC server Russia hack claim. I stopped my work, thinking this was going to be interesting to hear his view on the matter since he prides himself on being a very computer savvy geek. Alas, no substantive comment from Rush as he cut to a commercial. As we all know, the DNC’s claim that the Russians did the hack has basically been shown to be an inside job by William Binney, not an Internet hack. Therefore, the whole two year Spygate fiasco collapses in on itself. The server and the related forensics hold the key to the last two year masquerade by the Left and there happens to be another Hitlery dead body in this one to boot.

Tell us, what have you done for the nation in the last twenty years that measures up to “the majority maker?
_______________________________
Let’s just start with serving my country for 30 plus years in the USMC. There’s much more that I won’t get into. Like Rush, I will just leave you hanging.

You use the term “informed conservative”. The basic
target for Limbaugh is the “less informed conservative”
listener, You may be at the top of the class but it
doesnt mean that they are any less conservative than
you or me.

Limbaugh may very well have opinions he is holding back.
Unlike the two of us he has about 20 million listeners
per week. Our opinions we can express or keep to
ourselves and our personal listenership is not
effected. Limbaugh is more circumspect and I get why.
He does assemble and disseminate info from various
sources which is a pretty fair service.

In your previous post you mentioned that Limbaugh
had not endorsed Trump. That told me things about your
understanding of the man. I have listened to him as
much as work and life would allow since his first
year in Sacramento in 1985. He has never endorsed a
primary candidate. Would he endorse a RINO in a
general election? He would and has. Limbaugh sees his
job as a spokesman for anti liberalism more than an
advocate for a specific conservative candidate. For
better or worse he believes RINOs can be redeemed
on an issue by issue case.

If Rush doesn’t measure you might give Dennis Prager
a shot if you can locate a station that carries
his show. He is in the same time slot.

Thanks for your intelligent, measured, and insightful comments. I will give Prager a try. Another conservative talk show program I listen to occasionally is WMAL-FM in D.C. Larry O’Conner who hosts the evening talk show segment from 3 to 5 p.m. is a sharp cookie who is not afraid to weigh in on important national issues. Unfortunately, on occasion he addresses local D.C. area issues as well.

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