{"id":264260,"date":"2018-02-13T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/?p=264260"},"modified":"2018-02-14T15:54:11","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T20:54:11","slug":"one-of-the-most-gigantic-political-scandals-of-our-lifetime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2018\/02\/13\/one-of-the-most-gigantic-political-scandals-of-our-lifetime\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the Most Gigantic Political Scandals of Our Lifetime"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: One year ago on this program I offered up opinions\/feelings about some of the stuff going on. At the time, one year ago, Michael Flynn was the big thing. And now we\u2019ve got the news that on the day that Trump was inaugurated, Susan Rice was frantically creating a paper trail — an email paper trail and an email paper trail timeline — designed to protect Obama. We find out from Byron York the FBI didn\u2019t think Mike Flynn had done anything wrong!<\/p>\n

Do you know that Comey testified to Congress that he didn\u2019t think Mike Flynn had done anything wrong, didn\u2019t think he had lied? And yet that investigation was pursued, and now we\u2019ve got this indictment from Mueller where a plea deal and people say, “If he didn\u2019t do it, then why did he settle?” ‘Cause they were driving him bankrupt! Flynn was broke. He was worried about the effect this was having on his family. But we\u2019ve got on the Congressional Record that James Comey of the FBI told members of Congress on a committee that Flynn had not lied to anybody.<\/p>\n

It takes us back to the actual FBI interview of Flynn anyway. It was not set up as an interview. Flynn is the incoming national security adviser. That means there\u2019s frequent contact with the FBI and the CIA. They called over to the White House and said they wanted to come talk to Flynn. Flynn said, “Okay, come on over.” He thinks it\u2019s gonna be a consultation. Instead it turns out to be a full-fledged interview that he wasn\u2019t aware of. But Byron York in the Washington Examiner has a really, really great piece today on all of this, and I just want to kick it off with my comments on this from one year ago almost to the day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"RUSH ARCHIVE: To show you just how lame the media is and how little they\u2019ve got, they\u2019re already asking, “What did Trump know and when did he know it?” and that\u2019s not the question. The question is, what did Barack Obama know and when did he know it and what has he engineered here? This all happened with Flynn back in December. Trump had not even been inaugurated yet. And it\u2019s still mysterious to me what really happened. Even if — even if — Flynn, as the incoming national security director, had called the Russian ambassador to talk, so what? That\u2019s not hard to imagine. That\u2019s not a big deal. It really isn\u2019t a big deal.<\/p>\n

RUSH: Not a big deal. It\u2019d be standard operating procedure. We\u2019re talking about the Russian ambassador here, and the new administration reaching out, familiarizing themselves with various representatives of other countries. It wasn\u2019t just the Russians that Flynn was talking to. The Russian ambassador, remember, was being surveilled. Standard operating procedure. Also, we wiretap foreign officials. This guy\u2019s phone call to Flynn therefore Flynn was unmasked. Susan Rice, hi! Flynn\u2019s unmasked. It\u2019s reported what he and Kislyak talked about, and, bammo!<\/p>\n

Flynn is destroyed. Byron York, Washington Examiner: Flynn is destroyed. Byron York, Washington Examiner<\/a>: “In March 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey briefed a number of Capitol Hill lawmakers on the Trump-Russia investigation. One topic of intense interest was the case of Michael Flynn, the Trump White House national security adviser who resigned under pressure on February 13 after just 24 days in the job. …<\/p>\n

So in March, lawmakers wanted Comey to tell them what was up. “And what they heard from the director did not match what they were hearing in the media. According to two sources familiar with the meetings, Comey told lawmakers that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not believe that Flynn had lied to them, or that any inaccuracies in his answers were intentional. As a result, some of those in attendance came away with the impression…”<\/p>\n

After hearing from Comey, these members of Congress “came away with the impression that Flynn would not be charged with a crime pertaining to the January 24 interview” with the FBI. “Nine months later, with Comey gone and special counsel Robert Mueller in charge of the Trump-Russia investigation, Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to the FBI in that January 24 questioning. What happened?<\/p>\n

“\"\"<\/a>With Flynn awaiting sentencing — that was recently delayed until at least May — some lawmakers are trying to figure out what occurred between the time Comey told Congress the FBI did not believe Flynn lied and the time, several months later, when Flynn pleaded guilty to just that. None of those congressional investigators has an answer; they\u2019re baffled by the turn of events. But they know they find the Flynn case troubling, from start to finish.<\/p>\n

“The questioning in that January 24 interview apparently revolved around the Flynn-Kislyak phone conversations,” but Flynn was not told he was in an investigation-type interview. “The first thing to remember is that it appears Flynn did nothing wrong in having those” conversations with the Russian ambassador. “As the incoming national security adviser, it was entirely reasonable that he” would be having such discussions.<\/p>\n

As I pointed out, even “the Washington Post reported” more than a year ago “that the FBI had reviewed the” transcripts of those phone calls and found Flynn did nothing illegal. So what happened here? Why did he end up pleading guilty to one count? Why has the sentencing been delayed until May? According to Byron York, indeed it appears the FBI did not think Flynn had done anything wrong in the calls.<\/p>\n

If you take the Flynn thing out of this, if Comey\u2019s assessment and transcripts of the phone call show that Flynn did nothing wrong, does this investigation ever really get going? And I don\u2019t think it does. I think… Folks, we are living in the midst of one of the most gigantic political scandals of our lifetime.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Now, I want to reiterate. We\u2019ve got two different sources — and one of them official. James Comey, at the time the director of the FBI, testifying on Capitol Hill to the various congressional committees that the FBI, in its January 24th interview with Michael Flynn, determined he did nothing wrong and did not lie. Comey told members of Congress this under oath. The Washington Post got hold of transcripts of the phone call between the Russian ambassador, Kislyak, and Flynn, and they read the transcripts.<\/p>\n

\"\"And the Washington Post published independently of Comey\u2019s testimony that Flynn didn\u2019t say anything. He didn\u2019t compromise national security, didn\u2019t lie about anything, did not press, did not say a word about lifting sanctions. That\u2019s been the undercurrent of this, that Flynn got on the phone with the Russians and promised them that once Trump was inaugurated, they\u2019d get rid of Obama\u2019s sanctions.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019ve lied about that, and they\u2019ve put that out there, and there isn\u2019t any evidence of it. Flynn said he did not say that, and Comey backed it up, said he didn\u2019t lie. And the Washington Post transcript investigation said that Flynn didn\u2019t do it. So yet despite that, the guy has had his life destroyed. Despite that, the guy has been rendered practically bankrupt because of this special counsel investigation and pleaded guilty just to end it, apparently.<\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: And I am well-known radio raconteur, Rush Limbaugh. And I\u2019ve been doing this a long time, and I am telling you that we are in the midst of one of the biggest political scandals of our lifetimes here. Okay. So stay with me, folks. I\u2019m unpacking all of this and leading to a crescendo today that has been provided by Victor Davis Hanson.<\/p>\n

But first, back to Flynn, why plead guilty when Comey had told Congress that he had not lied. And the Washington Post examines transcripts of a phone call between Kislyak, the lunching Soviet ambassador, and Flynn, and found that Flynn didn\u2019t break any laws and didn\u2019t give up any secrets, didn\u2019t do anything wrong, and they published that.<\/p>\n

\"\"Yet Flynn remains target one in Mueller\u2019s investigation and indeed pleads guilty after a year, \u2019cause he\u2019s out of money. Supposedly his family is understandably shaken by all of this. Flynn\u2019s been nothing but a super patriot his whole life. If Michael Flynn has characteristics that the Washington establishment don\u2019t like, it\u2019s that he\u2019s a super patriot, and he was one of the first uniformed military personnel on board publicly at rallies with Donald Trump. He made himself an enemy.<\/p>\n

He was the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama administration, the military\u2019s version of the CIA. He ran that. You won\u2019t find a more loyal, patriotic American than Michael Flynn, and this guy is the numero uno target at the outset of this investigation for supposedly giving up secrets or making promises to undo Obama\u2019s sanctions on Russia in a phone call to the Russian ambassador. None of it happened.<\/p>\n

Well, there\u2019s another figure in this. And guess who it is? According to this great piece by Byron York, it\u2019s none other than Sally Yates, the disgraced former acting attorney general that Trump mistakenly didn\u2019t get rid of after he was inaugurated. She\u2019s an Obama holdover. She was the one who was working diligently in the Department of Justice to undermine Trump\u2019s travel bans.<\/p>\n

Well, it turns out she was fired for insubordination for failing to implement the directives of President Trump. Insubordination. But it was Sally Yates who advocated the theory that Michael Flynn had violated the Logan Act. Nobody has ever been charged under the Logan Act, and nobody has ever been prosecuted under the Logan Act. It\u2019s an obscure, long-time-ago law that she dredged up. And all she had to do was call a couple of buddies in the media and plant the seed, “Yeah, he might have violated the Logan Act.”<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all it took, and here comes a never-ending Drive-By Media narrative, “Michael Flynn may have violated the Logan Act. This is something of great interest to the special counsel, Robert Mueller.” And off they were. Off to the races they were. And because he had violated the Logan Act, Sally Yates was saying that Flynn might be subject to blackmail by the Russians. But there was no lying to the FBI. None of this sticks.<\/p>\n

\"\"So everybody\u2019s asking, why would Flynn plead guilty to a single count when at the highest levels of this investigation he was proclaimed to have not lied. Well, maybe Flynn didn\u2019t know that Comey had told Congress that he hadn\u2019t lied. I doubt that anybody told Flynn. I doubt anybody told Flynn\u2019s lawyers. Because in an investigation like this — the name Scooter Libby ring a bell? — in an investigation like this, somebody\u2019s gonna get their head lopped off for something.<\/p>\n

There is no such thing as a special counsel investigation where nobody did anything. If they have to make up a baseless, specious crime and charge somebody with it, somebody is gonna end up being the fall guy. And it looks like Michael Flynn was the fall guy, but he didn\u2019t know it. Or maybe he did. Which takes us to the next phase of this and that is the discovery of emails that Susan Rice has been writing to herself on the day Trump was inaugurated. And these emails are designed to give plausible deniability to Barack Obama for having his hand in any of this.<\/p>\n

Here is — it\u2019s audio sound bite number 2 — Fox last night, Senator Lindsey Grahamnesty appeared with details, highlights of an email that Susan Rice, national security adviser, she\u2019s the woman that made five TV appearances on Sunday shows in one day to spread the lie that it was a video that led to the terror attack in Benghazi. That\u2019s who this is.<\/p>\n

Susan Rice was sent out to lie for the Obama administration, for Hillary, went on five Sunday shows claiming that a video was responsible. It was one of the biggest lies in the Obama administration — and that\u2019s saying something — but it was right up there in the top five. She emailed herself about a meeting that occurred. Here\u2019s Senator Grahamnesty explaining this.<\/p>\n

GRAHAM: I found an odd and disturbing email from Susan Rice. At 12:15 on January 20th, the day of the inauguration, she emails herself about a meeting that occurred on January the 5th. The president was being briefed by the intelligence community about Russian hacking in the 2016 election, and they had a follow-on brief meeting with Sally Yates, Jim Comey, herself, and Vice President Biden.<\/p>\n