Despite what the “drive-by media” is insisting, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio program Tuesday, the newly released report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz does not clear the FBI of accusations of political bias in their handling of Donald Trump and the Russia probe — in fact, quite the opposite. “The IG report confirms that there is an ongoing coup to get rid of Donald Trump,” the famous conservative host argued at length Tuesday.
The Justice Department released the much-anticipated IG report on Monday, and the Democrats and mainstream media promptly portrayed the report as having cleared the FBI of accusations of acting with political bias against Trump. “The FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia and did not act with political bias, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog declared Monday, undercutting President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he has been the target of a ‘witch hunt,'” the Associated Press reported Monday.
But while the establishment media rushes to exonerate the FBI and dismiss the Trump camp’s “witch hunt” accusations, Limbaugh noted, the man heading up another investigation that has a wider scope and more resources to dig into the issue deeper, United States Attorney John Durham, issued his own reaction to the report that has some in Washington “freaking out.”
“I have the utmost respect for the mission of the Office of Inspector General and the comprehensive work that went into the report prepared by Mr. Horowitz and his staff,” Durham said in a statement Monday. “However, our investigation is not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department. Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S. Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”
“So the IG report shows that there was no coup against Donald Trump, right?” Limbaugh began an IG report-themed segment on Tuesday. “…Don’t believe that. The IG report confirms that there was. The IG report confirms that there is an ongoing coup to get rid of Donald Trump.”
Those maintaining that the report proves there was “no coup,” said Limbaugh, are “ignoring the basic facts of this and instead are relying on the inspector general saying that he couldn’t find any evidence of political bias. He didn’t say that. He said he couldn’t find any testimonial or other kind, meaning nobody copped to it, meaning nobody admitted it. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist. It just means nobody he interviewed or had the authority and power to interview admitted to it.”
“Durham made clear in his statement that the inspector general report is not even close and that he disagrees strongly with the conclusion that there was a justified reason to open this investigation,” said Limbaugh, noting that Durham has been given authority to conduct a far more comprehensive investigation and has the ability to indict. “This is highly unusual for this kind of thing to happen, for one government agency to issue a report and another government investigatory unit publicly, almost immediately, issue a statement disagreeing with it and contradicting it.”
One of the most damaging facts the IG report confirms is the key role played by the Democrat-funded, discredited Steele dossier. After the FISA court turned down the FBI’s first effort to get a surveillance warrant for former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, Limbaugh said, they tried again, this time using the partisan Steele dossier as supposed evidence.
“The FISA court turned down the first effort,” he said. “The second application worked, and we know that the second application is when they used the Steele dossier — and that made all the difference. ‘According to the IG report, FBI investigators considered seeking a FISA warrant against Carter Page in August of 2016, but they were rejected by lawyers at the FBI. That changed one month later, September 19, 2016, when six of Steele’s dossier memos arrived in the inboxes of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigative team. The IG report says the FBI immediately sought to obtain warrants to spy on Carter Page,’ i.e., the Trump campaign, after they received elements of the Steele dossier. ‘Those warrants were approved October 21, 2016.'”
“Bottom line: If it had not been for the Steele dossier, we wouldn’t have had any of the things that have transpired over the last three years,” said Limbaugh. “The Steele dossier is all they ever had. They knew it was bogus, they knew that Hillary Clinton had paid for it, and they did not tell the FISA court — and this is in the IG report.”
“This hearsay and the jokes were collated by a person who never thought Steele would ever present them as fact,” said Rush. “That same person said that Steele even lied about what he had passed on to him. ‘The dossier alleged that Carter Page was part of the Trump campaign’s well-developed conspiracy of coordination with the Kremlin and that he had worked under the direction of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. In truth, the two never met.'”
Limbaugh also highlighted some damning details from the report on the involvement of former FBI Director James Comey, who infamously presented some allegations from the unverified, salacious Steele dossier to President-elect Trump in their January meeting in Trump Tower. “So even though everybody at the FBI knew that the dossier was based entirely on hearsay and gossip and even jokes — and everybody knew that it was uncorroborated, everybody knew that it was not true — Comey and [Andrew] McCabe demanded that it be included in that January 6th intelligence community assessment for the president,” said Limbaugh.
“This is when Comey comes out of the meeting, calls Clapper, and says, ‘Mission accomplished!'” Limbaugh claimed. “Clapper calls CNN, and the dossier thus makes it into the news. BuzzFeed publishes the whole thing. All of this happened with everybody involved knowing the dossier was bogus. We now know that Comey fought to put the dossier in the community assessment, intelligence assessment so he could brief Trump about it so that they could get it into the news.”
“The idea that this report does not document that a coup was underway is absurd,” Limbaugh concluded. “[T]he evidence is so overwhelming of lies and fraud that Durham and Barr have one of the greatest gifts they could have gotten this Christmas with this report, folks.”
While in its initial coverage of the IG report, AP portrays it as clearing the FBI of allegations of acting with political bias against Trump, the news agency also acknowledges that the report contains a lot of damaging information, particularly by identifying “17 ‘significant inaccuracies or omissions’ in applications for a warrant and later renewals from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.”
“The report also details that the FBI used an informant to set up and record a September 2016 meeting with a high-level Trump campaign official,” AP adds. “The official wasn’t identified by name, but was not a subject of the Russia investigation, the report said. While the information collected wasn’t used during the Russia probe, it does lend support to the assertions by Trump and Barr that the Trump campaign was spied upon.”
Transcript via RushLimbaugh.com