From RushLimbaugh.com:
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Another sound bite from the FBI director James Comey under questioning from Republican Mike Conaway from Texas. “As of early December 2016 the FBI assessed that the active measures conducted against Secretary Clinton were to denigrate her, were to hurt her, her campaign, and undermine her presidency.” Again, he’s reminding Comey that the FBI assessed in December of 2016, after the election, that active measures conducted against Hillary Clinton were to denigrate her, to hurt her campaign and undermine her presidency. “And the conclusion that active measures were taken specifically to help Trump’s campaign, you had that by early December, you had that conclusion. Is that correct?”
COMEY: Correct. They wanted to hurt our democracy, hurt her, help him. I think all three we were confident in at least as early as December. Putin hated Secretary Clinton so much that the flip side of that coin was he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much.
RUSH: This is an incredible bit of news from the FBI director. Now, there’s an ongoing investigation. I’m just trying to put these pieces together. There’s an ongoing investigation and there has been now since July. Comey told lawmakers today that his agency’s been investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russian officials since last July. It doesn’t make sense. I mean, who’s running the FBI and the Department of Justice last July? It’d be the Obama administration doing this. But James Clapper, Obama administration, and a couple of others have said they’ve seen no evidence whatsoever of any collusion.
And yet Comey knows all this? That Putin hated Clinton so much, the flip side of that coin was he had a clear preference for the person running against the person he hated so much. So Russia wanted to hurt our democracy and Hillary and help Trump.
Now, mind you, folks, all of this is being said, and there isn’t any evidence of it. So it’s clear to me what’s going on here. Look at what has actually happened. We have Donald Trump on the phone with foreign leaders after he becomes president, and even during the transition, classified phone calls. Those are leaked. The transcripts of his phone calls are leaked, and they’re lied about. In the case of his phone call with the president of Mexico, it was said to be an abomination of a call, a disaster. It turns out not to be true.
Same thing with the prime minister of Australia, said to be so bad that somebody hung up on somebody in the call. Turns out neither was the case. Now Trump’s private taxes have been leaked. The New York Times and the Washington Post have run story after story after story using the word “wiretaps.” There have been nameless sources in the intelligence community all over the past two months of last year leaking various elements of things, but no evidence of any of it.
The New York Times, on January 20th, said there were wiretaps in which Trump and his team were being investigated. And yet with all that there’s no evidence of collusion, and yet Trump’s the subject of the investigation, when his taxes have been leaked, when his phone calls are being monitored, Trump is the subject of an FBI investigation.
Some of the reason why this doesn’t makes sense to me, in the first place, folks, if you’re the Russians, and you want to affect the outcome of the election, you don’t have to get in touch with one of the candidates. You can do that on your own. You don’t need anybody’s permission. Let’s say the Russians wanted to help Hillary. They don’t need to call her and get her permission to help her undermine Trump, or vice-versa. They just do it.
The next thing. There hasn’t been any kind of a quid pro quo here. And by that I mean, Trump has not lifted the sanctions that Obama placed on the Russians. Trump has not let the 35 ambassadors or diplomats that Obama sent back to Moscow, he’s not let them back in. There hasn’t been one, not one indication of Trump going soft on Russia, not one. Nikki Haley at the U.N. speaks out against Russia in no uncertain terms.
And if there were collusion, let me ask you this. If there were collusion, let’s say if Trump and the Russians were actually working together, don’t you think Trump, rather than acting all buddy-buddy with Putin and all friendly, would have been scorching Putin all this time to throw everybody off the scent? If there were actual collusion, if Trump and Putin were big buddies and working together to somehow undermine the election, which even today it was stated didn’t happen.
The big news of these hearings is not even being reported! The big news of these hearings is that the Russians did not, could not, would not, have not, don’t know how to tamper with votes. They didn’t do it. I mean, there wasn’t even any hemming or hawing in the answers. Both Comey and Admiral Rogers definitively said in one-word answers “no” to all kinds of questions about whether or not the Russians had anything to do with votes, either the way they were cast or the way they were counted. Nope, nope, nope, nope. We even know that this Jill Stein babe, the Democrat, the Green Party candidate, whatever, she did this recount, Trump ended up getting more votes in some of these states than what he ended up with in the official count.
There is no evidence. That, to me, is the news of these hearings. But that’s not what’s being reported. That’s in fact being ignored. So if you’re Trump and you’re working with the Russians anyway, even though there’s no way to sabotage the vote, wouldn’t you go out of your way in public to scorch Putin every chance you got, scorch the Russians, instead of talking about how much you admire Putin, what a great guy Putin is, and how much you appreciate Putin complimenting you, which Trump did?
So much of this is simple violation of common sense and human nature. And as far as the Russians are concerned, okay, so they hack the Democrat National Committee network and they leave evidence that it was them. And yet what did we learn recently? We learned in another WikiLeaks Treasury trove of documents released from the CIA that the CIA has software that can hack computers and leave fingerprints of other nations. (interruption) You were not here that day. That’s why you’re frowning, but that is big news.
Well, it is big news, but it’s not being reported, not being talked about. But the CIA has numerous hacking tools that allows them to hack any computer network and make it look like the Russians did it or the Chinese or the Japanese or the Norks. Why would the Russians leave evidence that it was them? If they were serious about hacking the DNC and they wanted to really make it work, and they wanted to remain in the shadows, have nobody know it, why would they leave fingerprints that trail right back to them?
Now, if you want to play the double psychology move, okay, “Well, they wanted to do that precisely, Rush, because people would ask questions like you. And so they left their fingerprints so that people would say just what you said. ‘Why would the Russians — it couldn’t be the Russians. They wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave their own evidence.'” Well, you gotta be too cute by half to come up with answers to this that violate common sense.
But again, all of this, see, this is the frustrating thing, folks. The big news of the day is, no evidence whatsoever that the Russians hacked voting. No evidence whatsoever. It’s not possible. They’re not investigating whether any of that happened. It just didn’t because it couldn’t. Obama has said so. Any number of people before all this heated up the way it is said so. But that’s not the news. Because the purpose of all of this is to permanently damage Donald Trump and make it impossible for him to govern.
That’s all this is about. There’s a secondary aspect of it with the Democrats on the committee having to service their lunatic base, which has been led to believe that Russia did hack the election and that Trump was part of it. That story has been around for so long, it’s been added to for so long and it’s been amplified, they believe it now. The expectations have been raised to the point here that the truth, the Democrats are scared to death of the day their base learns that none of this happened.
So that day has to be kicked down the road. That day has to be delayed as long as it can, and that’s what the purpose of these hearings is, to make it look like there’s something there there, to make it look like the ongoing investigation’s getting close. But it is to overall paint Donald Trump’s presidency as illegitimate and therefore his agenda illegitimate and things that he wants, his budget, health care revisions, tax cuts, whatever, is to make it all illegitimate and subject to reversal should they be able to get rid of Trump because he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. That’s what this is about.
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RUSH: I got a message from somebody who’s shocked at all of this incoming at Donald Trump, who just can’t believe it, who thought there would be some support and some unity by now. This person believes that what Trump wants to do is what’s exactly needed in this country and thought that there would be — after a certain passage of time — at least some support for doing the right thing, for changing the direction of the country. To bring it back economically. To help people do better. To make health care more affordable.
This person is just shocked at what he’s seeing today and is asking me if I… Folks, look, I… (sigh) I’m not. I hate playing the “I told you so” game — y’know, the nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah — but I just want to go on record: None of this surprises me. And I’m sure that if we search the archives of this program I can come up with countless examples where I predicted something like this. I mean, obviously not specifically. But, you know, this isn’t left versus right. This isn’t Democrat versus Republican. This is establishment versus outsider or whatever term that you want to attach to Donald Trump here. And what we’re seeing, what all of this is…
These hearings today, what happened last week and the week before that, what happened during the transition period… What all of this is can be explained simply by saying, “Look at how terrified they are in the Washington-New York establishment, of Donald Trump and draining the swamp.” The Never Trumpers on both sides of the aisle. There are conservative Never Trumpers today celebrating over the fact that Comey made it official that there’s an investigation of Trump and colluding with the Russians.
These people know that there isn’t any evidence of this, but that doesn’t matter. What everybody in Washington supports is the smearing, the slander, and the libel of Donald Trump. And these hearings today? The FBI director, James Comey, is trying to save the jobs of a lot of people. He’s trying to save the careers of a whole lot of people — his included — in, I think, an inappropriate way. And the Republicans in this committee? Look folks, I’ve been waiting. I’ve been patiently waiting. I’ve been trying to hold it, keep the powder dry. But the Republicans on this committee…
I know it’s early, and they’re gonna go on all day. But so far, outside of Trey Gowdy and a question from Peter King and Devin Nunes the chairman, there just hasn’t been much. For example, “Are you still investigating the Clinton Foundation, Director Comey?” “I can’t say.” By the way, Comey said he got special permission to reveal this investigation. Who gave him that special permission? He said he went to the Department of Justice. Who’s over there? Who runs that? That it would be Jeff Sessions.
The Trump administration itself granted permission for Comey to announce this today. (interruption) Well, no. My point there is that there’s no attempted cover-up of anything going on there. The Trump administration could very well have said, Jeff Sessions could have said, “Comey, look, it’s just like you said last summer about Hillary: We don’t detail ongoing investigations.” But he today was given permission to do just that, and he’s running with it. And the whole point of this today — and, by the way, it doesn’t mean I’m not gonna go through this and give you what the real news of these hearings is today and what the backdrop of all this is.
Because there’s a really salient factor that’s driving this from the Democrat side that is never going to be reported or commented on, which I’m going to touch on myself today. But, as I say, the purpose of this is to further the narrative that Trump is illegitimate, that he should not be president, that his election was the result of tampering by the Russians. So the objective is that Trump either stops this reform business he’s got, stops this drain-the-swamp stuff, and starts letting the Washington Republicans run the town again, or they’re gonna impeach him.
That’s the message being sent today: “You either straighten up and fly right or you’re gone.”
“We’re coming for you,” is the message of these hearings today.
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RUSH: James Comey says the Russians are trying to undermine faith in our elections. Maybe. But I’ll tell you what’s happening today on Capitol Hill is doing more to undermine faith in our elections than anything the Russians have done.