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RUSH: I want to start today with the Scooter Libby verdict. There’s just an incredible amount to say here. I want to go through it as quickly as I can and get on to some other things here. This whole trial and the verdict and the aftermath, the way the media is playing this, have serious consequences for the future. I want to address some of these things with you in a semblance of order. I want to start with this juror, Denis Collins. It turns out that in the jury selection phase before Denis Collins’ name came out, he was identified as having worked with Bob Woodward. He was identified as being a neighbor of Tim Russert. Both would later testify in the case. So this juror — who I have no doubt took over the jury room and ran this whole show — lived near Russert, worked with Woodward and at the Washington Post, and said last night on Larry King Live he plans to write about this.
I’ll bet he took copious notes in there. And of course if you’re planning on writing about something it’s far better to write about a conviction than if you have to right about an acquittal. What’s sexy about writing about an acquittal here when you are a Democrat, a registered Democrat, as this juror was? People are saying, ?How did he end up on the jury?? I asked that question myself to people last night who were able to answer it. The people close to the Libby defense trust, people that were raising money for his defense fund, said, ?You would not have believed this jury pool. We had MoveOn.org people in the jury pool. We had as many leftists as you could think of, and we used up our strikes. By the time they got to this guy we had no strikes left, no peremptory challenges left, and we ended up being stuck with him.? He was on Larry King Live last night, and Larry said, ?Denis Collins, you going to write about this??
COLLINS: I am going to write about it. I’m not quite sure what the format or where it will be.
RUSH: I’m told, I haven’t seen it, that he’s already written about it. This morning he’s got some piece already up at the Huffington Post. I’m wondering, ?Did he have contact with the Huffington people before the trial ended or did they get hold of him after the trial ended?? So you?ve got a guy that worked with Bob Woodward. You’ve got a neighbor of Tim Russert’s. Both would testify in the case. He now says he’s going to write about it. I’ll bet he took careful notes of events. All of this was a stage. The bottom line here, when you look at Fitzgerald — and we’ll have comments about his press conference yesterday because he told some real laughers — nobody in this case shines. Like I told you yesterday, the unearthly difference that differing groups of people can have about a singular truth, the singular truth that Joe Wilson is not credible, that Joe Wilson is an out-and-out, confirmed liar. The Senate intelligence committee, no less, said so about him.
The Washington Post said so today in an editorial. Yet the liars are getting rich and getting famous, and Tim Russert has convicted Scooter Libby. Tim Russert, who said yesterday, “I take no joy in this,” was the same Tim Russert who said when the indictment came down, “We felt like it was Christmas morning.” The defense was not allowed to skewer Russert to try to damage some of his credibility. One of the things that Russert had said was that he did not — he has a law degree — know that the grand jury testimony, people that were summoned to testify before grand juries, were not allowed to bring lawyers in there when in fact the defense had tape of Russert saying just the opposite on Meet the Press and on other television shows three other times. They were not allowed to introduce that, which will be one of the things that, no doubt, will be on appeal.


Now, I, ladies and gentlemen, along with a lot of other people, have referred to the Drive-By Media as a bunch of libs — and they are. There’s no question. But I think we need to go further now, and I think we need to just come out and say that the Drive-By Media today is nothing more than a branch office of the Democrat Party. They are Democrat Party activists. Now, you may think that it’s a distinction without a difference here, but I think it’s profoundly different than saying they are a bunch of libs. I know Democrats are libs, too, but the Drive-Bys in Washington especially, and in the New York-Washington axis (throw Boston in there as well) have just become Democrat activists. Here you’ve got Russert, who’s worked with Democrats. You’ve got Chris Matthews. He’s a Democrat, too. You have a Democrat juror. You have Chris Matthews on television pushing this as a Democrat, using all the things on the side of this case that are not factual and not true.
Some headlines. Washington Post: “Libby Verdict Deals Blow to Bush Administration.” New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg: “White House Already on the Defensive, Takes Another Hit with Guilty Verdict.” Also the New York Times: “A Judgment on Cheney Still to Come.” What do we have here? We have the media rooting for more charges even though Fitzfong said the investigation is closed and has been inactive since prior to this. He did say, ?If somebody comes forward and says something, we’ll go further.? That clearly meant that if Libby decides to come forward now and give up Cheney. Fitzfong said he mentioned Cheney’s name over and over in court. He mentioned it yesterday. He made it clear to the jury he really wanted to get Cheney out of this, and Libby is all he could get. He really wanted to get Cheney. This verdict and this trial, as the Washington Post is even forced to admit today, had nothing to do with the war in Iraq. Furthermore, the trial produced no information about the war in Iraq. Zilch, zero, nada. Yet as I predicted, because I know these people, last night on all the cable network channels, all we heard about was how this totally debunks the Iraq war. “Bush lied, people died,” was confirmed a little.
It did no such thing!
It is stunning. It is profound just how devoid of fact the Democrat Party, from Dingy Harry to Nancy Pelosi on down to their allies in the Drive-By Media, are pushing a fraudulent version of not only the trial, but of what the contents of trial were and what the meaning of the verdict is. So we have the media rooting for more charges; rooting for more guilty verdicts; rooting to destroy Republican officials; rooting to destroy this White House — and in the process, they don’t even really care if it damages their own profession. Now, they’re out there saying, ?Well, we’re a little worried now. Sources may not be as open with us.? Da-da-da-da. Well, they must not be worried too much about it, because to them the end justifies the means in all of this. It’s incredibly frustrating and very sad, ladies and gentlemen, to see all of this come down the pike.
Now, you turn on Conan O’Brien the other night, and guess who shows up on Conan O’Brien? Another fraud: Algore. NBC is now using comedy shows to advance the lib Democrat agenda here. Algore, who’s in the process of being discredited and is already a laughingstock with millions of Americans, is becoming an even larger one, with all these carbon offsets. Now he ha PETA out there saying, ?Hey, Algore, you can’t be a meat eating environmentalist. You gotta give up meat if you want to be a genuine environmentalist.? People are nuts. We have people out there now saying that there are green ways to have sex. There are ways to have sex that will improve the environment or not damage the environment. These people are idiots. They are living, breathing, literal idiots out there. Of course they are credited with care and concern and all of the great compassion.


But here’s the problem. The libs and the Democrats have created a permanent part of our government: courts, the bureaucracy, and institutions of higher learning and the media. They have taken control of much of the country’s basic fabric. What it means is that it’s becoming more and more difficult to reach them through elections. Even if we win elections, we don’t get rid of the liberal establishment that is in academia, for example. We don’t get rid of the liberal establishment that is in the Drive-By Media — and more and more we don’t get rid of it as it has taken root in the courts. Of course we talked about the bureaucracy yesterday. People are saying, ?Well, Bush is the boss of all these people at the CIA and the state department.? No, he’s not. There are career lib people in those agencies that have been there for years. They’re going to stay there for years. They aspire to these kinds of jobs. No matter who you elect, you don’t get rid of them. No matter who we elect, you don’t get rid of college presidents and faculty. No matter who we elect, we don’t get rid of the media.
This is actually a very strategically well-done move on the part of the left. They have made sure that elections can’t touch them. They’ve done everything they can, because they can’t trust elections. They don’t trust the electorate. They don’t trust the electorate to empower them, and it’s just what it is. It?s going to require an ever increasing vigilance to continue to educate as many people in this country as to just what has happened over a number of decades, and what continues to happen. The media is pushing for this prosecution. They’re pushing for Cheney to be included. Then they pushed for the Libby prosecution. They pushed during Watergate. They pushed during Iran-Contra. They pushed back during Clinton. In fact, we have a montage here,: Katie Couric, Robin Roberts and Kelly O’Donnell. Now, listen. This is all from last night and this morning as they report the Libby verdict.
COURIC: Scooter Libby is convicted in the CIA leak case, the highest ranking White House official found guilty of a felony since the Iran-Contra scandal.
ROBERTS: The highest ranking White House official to be convicted since the Iran-Contra affair.
O?DONNELL: The highest ranking White House official convicted since the Reagan era and the Iran-Contra scandal.
RUSH: Notice what they left out of there. There were dozens of convictions in the Clinton era. Remember Web Hubbell, just for one? How about Clinton himself? He was not technically convicted of perjury, but a federal judge found him in contempt of court for it, and they withdrew his law license. Look at the penalty Clinton got. He lost his license to practice law in Arkansas. Yip yip yip yahoo! He had a fine of something like $90,000. Yip yip yip yahoo. His privileges to argue before the Supreme Court were taken away, which he had never done and which he had never intended to do.
Scooter Libby is going to prison. So they pushed for all this, the prosecution. They pushed during Watergate, pushed during Iran-Contra, pushed back during the Clinton impeachment. The Drive-By Media that has become Democrat Party activists, need to remain our focus — that and any, any individual reporter. The bottom line is that what happened with Scooter Libby was an injustice. The liars are getting rich and famous. Libby was crushed by a rogue prosecutor trying to make a name for himself and actually targeting someone else — and that would be Vice President Cheney.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: Let’s go to the audio sound bites. Joe Wilson last night on Larry King Live. King said, ?What do you feel? How do you feel tonight, Joe??
WILSON: Valerie in particular will sleep better tonight than she has the last several nights. It proves that the system works, that this is a nation of laws and no individual is above the law. I think the judge and the prosecution and the jury acted in — in the very best — best manner of — of American citizens doing their civic duty.
RUSH: You are a sick, psychopathic liar, sir. You are just sick. You are living a lie. I don’t even know if Joe Wilson understands it anymore that he’s living a lie, so immersed in it is he. This trial was not about his wife. This trial was not about him. It should have been! This trial was not about anything to do with outing her as a CIA “agent.” There is no reason Valerie Plame should not have been sleeping well up to the verdict and there is no reason she should have been sleeping better last night and tonight after the verdict because this is not about her. Nobody, Joe Wilson included, was charged with leaking her name.
We know who did it, and you’re best buds with the guy who did it: Armitage!
You know, Fitzgerald goes out there yesterday and says, ?If people come forward and tell the truth.? Mr. Armitage, are you listening? Mr. Fitzgerald, are you interested in who had the truth? No. You didn’t even subpoena the guy! You knew who it was. The justice department knew who it was before this all started. This trial had nothing to do with Iraq. It had nothing to do with Joe Wilson and his wife, other than the independent counsel attempting to convince the jury that it did — and of course the jury fell for it hook, line and sinker. Last night on Nightline, Wilson reacted to the verdict.
WILSON: I look at the prosecution and the conviction of Mr. Libby much as I would look at the prosecution and conviction of Al Capone. He was convicted of tax evasion, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a racketeer.
RUSH: Scooter Libby did not leak your wife’s name! Scooter Libby is not who put your wife’s name in play. You did, Mr. Wilson, when you listed her in your own entry in the book Who’s Who in America! (How he gets in there is an inconsequential matter to me, but I’m still curious.) Nevertheless, Libby had nothing to do with this. What are you guys feeling good about Libby going down for? This just perpetuates the lie that the Wilsons are living! Here’s Tim Russert last night on the NBC Nightly News. Brian Williams talked to him and said, ?The title ?star witness? was applied to you. What’s your reaction??
RUSSERT: I take no joy in this, Brian. It was not our doing. We didn’t ask to be involved, but when you are asked to testify under oath, you tell the truth. I am concerned that we not create a pattern of having journalists called forward in cases in the future.
RUSH: Well, of course. Of course! The Drive-Bys want to be able to drive-by. Drive-Bys want to be able to drop the bombs and keep going. The Drive-Bys want to be able to drive by, lob rounds into a crowded room, and then drive on. The Drive-Bys don’t want to be stopped; the Drive-Bys don’t want to be interrogated; the Drive-Bys don’t want to be questioned; the Drive-Bys don’t want any analysis of what they do! They don’t want any investigations of what they do. They don’t want any hearings into what they do. No, no, no, no! They just want to drive on by after lobbing all the ammo and the explosives into a crowd, creating a huge mess, sometimes destroying people, and they just head on down the highway in the convertible, ready to do it again. Tim Russert said he “takes no joy in this,” but, remember: when the indictment came down, it was Russert who said that they all felt like it was Christmas morning.
Now, back to Joe Wilson. For those of you on the left who are automatically predisposed to not believe anything anybody says other than people on your side, let me read to you from today?s Washington Post editorial, which is subheadlined: ?The serious consequences of a pointless Washington scandal. The fall of this skilled and long-respected public servant is particularly sobering because it arose from a Washington scandal remarkable for its lack of substance. It was propelled not by actual wrongdoing but by inflated and frequently false claims, and by the aggressive and occasionally reckless response of senior Bush administration officials — culminating in Mr. Libby’s perjury. Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had ‘twisted,’ if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq.?
But wait ’til you hear what else they say about Joe Wilson.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I have two Washington Post stories today. Both indict Joe Wilson as a lying fraud, and the Post says in an editorial he’ll be remembered as nothing more than a “blowhard.” Listen to this, and remember who we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the single credible source the left has on this: Joe Wilson. The left, I think, is psychopathically involved in a lie and an alternative reality as Wilson and his wife have become. ?Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had ‘twisted,’ if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq. In conversations with journalists or in a July 6, 2003, op-ed, he claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration.?
Remember, now, I’m reading to you from the Washington Post. ?A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false.? A bipartisan investigation. Senate intelligence committee established that every one of Joe Wilson’s claims were false and that, ?Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife,? not the vice president, not the administration. How many of you watched any cable news last night and heard any of this referenced? None of you heard any of this referenced. ?When this fact, along with Ms. Plame’s name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson.?
Another sensational charge, none of which is true. Yet it forms the actual foundation for all of the Drive-By Media’s reporting on this story before, during and after the trial. They persist in making the trial about all of these lies! ?The partisan furor over this allegation led to the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Yet after two years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking Ms. Plame’s name. In fact, he learned early on that Mr. Novak’s primary source was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, an unlikely tool of the White House. The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame’s identity — and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.?
Yet the thrust of reporting by the Drive-By Media is just the opposite, that there was a conspiracy in the White House to discredit Wilson by exposing his wife’s covert status to destroy her career. It’s all lies! A jury came to a conclusion in this case having been told this set of lies by the prosecution, or having been implied by the prosecution. There was no convincing evidence. The trial was not about Iraq. There is no evidence that there was a conspiracy to “punish” Wilson from the White House. ?It would have been sensible for Mr. Fitzgerald to end his investigation after learning about Mr. Armitage. Instead, like many Washington special prosecutors before him, he pressed on, pursuing every tangent in the case. In so doing he unnecessarily subjected numerous journalists to the ordeal of having to disclose confidential sources or face imprisonment.?


If I may take a break on this, the Drive-Bys were pushing this. The Drive-Bys wanted this. They wanted this independent investigation! Look at PMSNBC: “Verdict Puts New Focus on Iraq.” It does no such thing. The verdict has nothing to do with Iraq. Now, the Drive-Bys are going to act like it does. The Democrats are going to act like it does, and they are acting like it does, and of course the administration will go defensive and react as though it does, but it doesn’t. We are truly in the Twilight Zone here! ?Mr. Wilson’s case,? concludes the Washington Post, ?has besmirched nearly everyone it touched. The former ambassador will be remembered as a blowhard.? I wonder why the Washington Post thinks that? He’s a…hero? I almost uttered an F-word obscenity there. I’m really frosted about this, folks. I’m doing my best to restrain myself, but I can’t tell you how frosted I am. I am literally frosted about this.
This Wilson is the biggest sicko fraud come down the pike in I don’t know how long, and he’s a hero, and he’s getting rich! The liars and the guilty are getting rich, and they’re becoming famous. They’re being held up as icons by a sick political movement known as liberalism and its political party, the Democrats. He’s not going to be remembered as a blowhard. They’re going to do everything they can to get his picture on a dollar bill. ?Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were overbearing in their zeal to rebut Mr. Wilson and careless in their handling of classified information.? I’m not even going to go into all that because we’ve done it, but I still don’t know where it’s written that the White House cannot respond to its critics.
?Mr. Fitzgerald has shown again why handing a Washington political case to a federal special prosecutor is a prescription for excess. Mr. Fitzgerald was, at least, right about one thing: The Wilson-Plame case, and Mr. Libby’s conviction, tell us nothing about the war in Iraq.? Don’t tell that to the Drive-By Media. Don’t tell that to the Democrat Party, because this conviction tells us everything. It’s just the tip of the iceberg. Even though Fitzfong says there’s no further investigation, ?It’s over unless somebody else comes forward with some earth-shattering information.”
“It’s just the tip of the iceberg,? Howard Dean is out saying. Now another Washington Post story, this by Walter Pincus. This was not published today. I want to go back to this whole business of British intelligence and the “16 words” in the president’s State of the Union speech (They [the Bush administration] took ’em out, by the way, and apologized for them) talking about the Iraqi effort to purchase yellow cake uranium from Niger. Now, remember, this is Thursday, July 15th of 2004. ?For example, British intelligence based its prewar 2002 assessment that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa on reports that Baghdad had made such inquiries in the Congo and in Niger more than two years earlier, according to the Butler report.?
Now, this is somebody working for the United Nations. ?It showed that British and CIA intelligence were relying on a similar though less-than-conclusive reports that Iraqi officials had visited several African countries in 1999. When it came to Niger, whose main export was uranium, the JIC judged that Iraqi purchase of uranium could have been the subject of discussion, the Butler report said. However, based on what was known in 2002, the Butler panel concluded that references in Britain’s September 2002 dossier that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium and in Africa throughout Africa and its repetition in Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2003 were well founded.? The Brits have never recanted on their assumption that the Iraqis were purchasing nuclear materials, not just in Niger, but in the Congo, which is why in the president’s 16 words he used the word “Africa.”
So Wilson’s wife gets him appointed to go over there and debunk this whole thing. Wilson comes back, writes an op-ed in the New York Times full of lies about it. The lies are exposed by a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee. The Washington Post today is basically throwing Wilson overboard, and yet he’s hoisted as a hero throughout much of the Drive-By Media! Here, let’s listen to Howard Dean. This is last night on CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, and Wolf says, ?You say the president would make a mistake in pardoning Scooter Libby? Why??
DEAN: That’s been done before, as you know, especially around the Iran-Contra times. The problem is that Scooter Libby now has a — a great incentive to tell what else was going on in the vice president’s office. Don’t forget, this is the tip of the iceberg. This is about the president and the vice president trying to discredit people who turned out to be right about the war in Iraq. And they didn’t — Scooter Libby didn’t do this all by himself. The best way that the president has to shut Scooter Libby up before sentencing is to pardon him. I hope that will not happen.
RUSH: As though they think that Scooter is going to flip; that Scooter’s got something to flip about; that Scooter is going to flip. He’s going to give up Cheney; he’s going to give up Bush. On what? We know that Wilson lied! Don’t trust me. It’s in the Washington Post. The Senate intelligence committee is bipartisan and it said so. Wilson lied, folks. In fact, the CIA later said that the stuff he came back and told them actually confirmed what had been in intelligence about Iraq and Niger as the Iraqis were attempting to reconstitute their nuclear program in defiance of all those UN resolutions. Tip of the iceberg? This is about the president and vice president trying to discredit people who turned out to be right? Joe Wilson wasn’t right about anything. He hasn’t been right about anything since, Howard. You guys are living a lie. You’ve told this lie so often to protect yourselves from an embarrassing vote, you are now living a lie. You are living a lie in pretty much every aspect of your day — and this is just the tip of the iceberg of the lie that Democrats and the media and the left in this country are living each and every day, and it is going to cost us unless something’s done about it.

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