RUSH: So the news is that the Mueller report is coming Thursday. And it’s been on the Drive-By Media. Others in the know have been texting it out there to people. So the Mueller report on Thursday. We already know what it says from the summary by William Barr. But the Democrats are refusing to accept it. Devin Nunes was on Fox News Sunday yesterday — an amazing appearance, by the way, and I’ve got the sound bite, the things that I want you to hear with some commentary coming up.

But first, here’s Mueller presenting this thing on Thursday. Now, Friday is Good Friday. Sunday is Easter. This is a weekend – its’ not talked about a lot, but a lot of people travel on Easter. It’s not like Thanksgiving or Christmas, but still a lot of people do. A lot of people, in other words, are out of what would we would say is their normalcy. So is issuing the report on a Thursday the equivalent of issuing it on a Friday going into a weekend, hoping nobody will pay any attention to it?

Now, I know this thing has got a lot of anticipation because there’s some really insane people who think that it’s gonna say Trump colluded with Russia, they just think it. Even though there, to this moment in time, there isn’t any evidence of that at all and there never has been. There has never been any evidence.

Now, I found out, by the way, why some people are arguing with me about my interpretation of the George Papadopoulos story. Let me run through this quickly. I’m not gonna recount the whole thing because you heard it. As you know, Papadopoulos told the Australian ambassador at a bar in London that the Russians had 30,000 emails, and he had heard this. Well, we know that he was told this by two people: Stefan Halper, who was an FBI informant, Cambridge professor, MI6 — he’s got intel community all over him — and a professor from Malta named Joseph Mifsud, M-i-f-s-u-d.

Now, Mifsud was the one who first explained to Papadopoulos that the Russians had 30,000 emails. I have learned that a lot of people in the never-give-up-the-ghost camp think that Mifsud has contacts with Russian intelligence. And so Mifsud proved in their distorted view the collusion. If Joseph Mifsud has contacts with the Kremlin and then told Papadopoulos that the Russians had 30,000 emails, then there’s your collusion.

Well, I don’t think Mifsud was a Russian anything. I think Mifsud was another FBI informant. I think Mifsud was working with the FBI. Now, this has not been confirmed yet, but this is why so many people are holding onto the idea the investigation began when Papadopoulos told the Australian ambassador. Bottom line is, somebody told Papadopoulos this, and some think that Mifsud was a guy that had contact, he was a professor from Malta. He’s known in these stories as the Maltese professor, comma, Joseph Mifsud.

There isn’t any evidence, there never was. And let’s go to the audio sound bites. Devin Nunes, if it weren’t for Devin Nunes, we wouldn’t know that there was never any evidence, and if it weren’t for Devin Nunes, we wouldn’t know that all of the FBI ever had to get warrants to spy was the dossier. We might have learned it by now, but Devin Nunes refused to stand down. He kept probing, he kept demanding the release of documents. He is a genuine hero in this regard because he was a singular figure, couldn’t even get very many people in the Republicans on his committee to back him during this.

So let’s go to Fox & Friends Weekend. Nunes is talking to Jedediah Bila. “Congressman we talk about investigating the investigators and getting to the bottom of this. Are you confident that we’re actually gonna get answers on this? I mean, are you confident that the media will cover it at all? They’ve been really eager to cover it as it relates to President Trump, but will they be as eager to cover it when it relates to the Obama administration or what the justification for all this investigation was to begin with?”

NUNES: No, they won’t. But that’s why what Attorney General Barr said last week is still important, because I think it’s where the Russia hoax becomes Spygate, which is what this really was the whole time. And let me explain it like this. Think about it. Bob Mueller gets appointed as a special counsel. He walks in the door of his new offices, sits down and says, “Okay, boys, show me all the Russia information. What do you got?”

And Peter Strzok pulls open the file cabinet says, “Um, you know, we don’t have anything. We’ve been surveilling Carter Page for six months. We’ve been looking at the Trump people for probably a year and a half, probably dating back to 2015. We don’t really have anything.” Now, I’m not making that up. That’s Peter Strzok’s own text message just weeks before the Mueller investigation began. So what did they do? They just started running an obstruction of justice investigation on a crime that had never been committed. Think about that for a second.

RUSH: I want to amplify this. Because this is something that deserves everybody to understand here. Nunes on Fox yesterday morning explained that there never was any proof of Trump-Russia criminal collusion other than the Steele dossier. And he tells the story because we know it from Peter Strzok Smirk’s texts. Mueller walks into the Comey investigation, which is what it was at that time, when Mueller is hired, we have the Comey investigation.

Comey is the guy that’s been running this. And Comey has been fed information from Brennan, who’s getting in his information from the Brits. Went through all this last week. The Brits feeding Brennan, Brennan CIA, they can’t do domestic operations. Brennan passing it off to Comey. Comey — and we know this because Comey did his July 5th press conference and Comey’s out there commenting on Trump-Russia and all this. But it was the Comey investigation when Mueller is hired.

So Mueller walks into his office after having been named special counsel, he walks into Comey’s investigation — this is May of 2017 — and the file’s empty. They have been at it for a year. Comey has been investigating for a year, and the file is empty. There isn’t anything. When Mueller asks to see what they’ve got, it’s a zero. All they’ve got is the Carter page FISA warrant to spy.

Folks, this is huge. This documents once again that it was the dossier. They had nothing. So they decided to use the dossier to get this going. That’s all they ever had, and it was made up. There was never anything here.

But I want to make a couple of other points here. Now we have Comey and his gang all in a twit because Trump is out there saying and Barr is out there saying that they were spying on the Trump administration or the Trump campaign. And Comey’s saying, “No, no, no, no, no. Court ordered surveillance. Big difference from spying.” It’s spying. But they weren’t spying! They were attempting to embed people as spies in the Trump campaign.

I was talking about this with my good friend Andy McCarthy yesterday. And this is an interesting point. Stop and think of it this way. Pretend that you are Comey. That is, you hate Donald Trump. You are Mr. Morality. This is your reputation in Washington. Comey, along with Mueller, Mr. Morality, Mr. Boy Scout, Comey sits at the top of that pile of people. And he hated Donald Trump because Trump’s an ogre and just a mess, he just hated Trump. Couldn’t abide Trump.

Now, you’re James Comey, you’re Mr. Morality, you’re Mr. Boy Scout, and you genuinely hate this guy, and you genuinely think he’s going to be rotten for this country. And you tell everybody that you have evidence of deep-seated corruption, Trump and Russia corruption. You’ve got evidence of this, so much so that you are prompted to investigate Trump during the campaign.

If you’re James Comey, why do you remain silent? Why do you go through the motions of a year’s-long investigation? If you’ve got the goods on Trump, if you hate Trump, and if you despise Trump, and if you’ve got the goods on Trump colluding with Russia, you wouldn’t wait to tell the world what you knew. And then you couldn’t wait to tell the world why you took the action you took.

But that’s not what’s gone on. These guys claiming to have all this evidence, these guys claiming to all of us that they’re certain that there was collusion and telling everybody in the media they don’t want to talk about it even now. They’re trying to destroy the reputations of anybody who simply asks, “What happened here?” Which is what Barr is doing, what all of us have done. When did this start? You guys never had any evidence.

But that’s not what they told us. They told us they had all kinds of evidence, enough to get a special counsel. Why wait? Why go through two years of chance trying to destroy the Trump administration if you can do it with one press conference? If you’re James Comey and you’ve got the goods, why not call a press conference after the Hillary conference and let it all out? You just did it with Hillary. Put everything out there.

This guy’s unqualified. If this guy is a danger to the country, if this guy’s been colluding with Russia, then why go through all of this for two years plus when you’ve got the goods? Well, they never had the goods because there was ever any evidence. And the purpose of the two years was to try to find some. The purpose of the two years was maybe even to try to manufacture some.

The only reason not to do that is if you are aware that your actions can’t be defended. The only reason not to call a press conference and lay it all out, all the evidence, Trump colluding with Russia or just Trump’s a reprobate, the reason not to do that’s cause you couldn’t defend it.

Think about what Comey did when he was fired. He leaked his memo about his conversations with the president and with Flynn. That is, when Trump struck at him, Comey’s instinct was to return fire, and he must have calculated that the Flynn thing was his best piece of ammo, so he got in the New York Times.

The point is, when he thought he had a chance to go nail Trump, he did. He didn’t sit around and wait. He went right for Flynn. When Trump fired him, he fired right back. So why didn’t he fire first? You’re Mr. Boy Scout, you’re Mr. I’m king of the world when it comes to morality, I single-handedly am gonna protect this town from reprobates and rabble-rousers like Trump. You got the goods, do the press conference, tell the country, be the hero that you think you are in your own mind.

But no, there is none of that. Instead, we get this two-year investigation that roils and tears apart the country, keeps Trump approval numbers down, paralyzes the Trump administration to a certain degree, all because they’ve got nothing! And they’re try to find something.

And they never did find anything. And now we got the report coming Thursday that isn’t gonna have anything in it except Nadler and the rest of these guys are gonna try like hell to make sure that there’s something in there they could say, “See? See? We told you.”

But there’s nothing. There never has been anything. And I’m gonna tell you, I got a feeling — I can’t explain it to you — but I think Barr is serious. I think he’s gonna get to the bottom of this. I keep he’s gonna look into this soon. I don’t think we’re gonna be waiting three to five years to find out what happened here. I think it’s gonna happen.

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RUSH: Look… Look, folks. James Comey is not kind of guy who sits on information if he thinks it can help him and hurt Trump. He went after Flynn immediately. He leaked his presidential memos immediately to get a special counsel. He’s the kind of guy that if there was some egregious piece of information he had about Trump that he was aware of — collusion, spying, whatever — that made him open a political spying investigation, he’d make sure everybody knew what it was. But he didn’t! Because there hasn’t ever been anything.

He testified five times. He’s written a self-congratulatory, tell-all book. He still hasn’t chained explained what triggered the investigation — and they are still trying to hide that! They don’t want anybody to know what triggered the investigation. Damn it, if they had evidence of Trump colluding, they would get it out there. Comey would have done it years ago! They have nothing. Right now is when… If they had evidence of this…

Barr has summarized Mueller’s report. If Comey’s got evidence that Mueller didn’t report, by golly he would get it out there, especially right now, when it would help him the most. Because Barr is gonna open up an investigation into the investigation. If Comey had the slightest bit of evidence that could help him, he would put it out there now, instead of running around ripping on the investigation! He’s running around talking about how bad it is for Barr to be doing an investigation.

He’s talking about how bad it is for Barr to use the word “spying.” They’ve got nothing. But more importantly, they never had anything. That’s why I say, imagine you’re Comey. You’ve got the goods. Do you think by now you would have spilled them? Now that it looks like Trump has survived everything, do you think you would finally go public with what you have? Yes, you sure as heck would. But he doesn’t. Now, some of you might be asking, “Well, Rush, he could have made it up.”

Not at this stage. Not at this stage. They tried to make it up. They tried to create it. There never was any. It’s a fascinating way of looking at this. Here you’re Mr. Boy Scout, the guy who’s gonna single-handedly protect Washington and our country from the evil clutches of this scumbag Donald Trump, right? James Comey is single-handedly gonna do it! If he had the goods, he would have proven that he’s Mr. Boy Scout.

But they won’t even tell us, they won’t even come clean, they won’t even tell Nunes. They won’t tell anybody when the investigation really began. Remember Nunes. He’s read Strzok Smirk’s texts with the paramour, Lisa Page. Mueller walks in, day one, asks to see the file on the Comey investigation of Trump-Russia collusion, and it’s empty. There’s nothing in it except for the Carter Page FISA warrant application, which uses the dossier.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. So the Mueller report’s coming Thursday. Now, I realize it’s not Ramadan or anything, but it is when things start ramping up out there. Catholics commemorate the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, although this pope is probably gonna make it recycling day or whatever. You never know. But it is the beginning of a religious weekend, the day they’re releas– (interruption) Well, he might! You never know with this guy.

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RUSH: Kathleen, Reading, Pennsylvania. You are next. Hello.

CALLER: Hello, Mr. Limbaugh. Thank you so much for taking my call. I’ve been listening to you forever. I’m 32, and I even remember seeing you on TV when I was younger watching.

RUSH: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that.

CALLER: Sure. I wanted to ask you if you think all the effort and crimes made by the left and government to spy on Trump and destroy him… Do you think that’s motivated simply because they hate Trump, or is it because the left wanted to and needed to cover-up a more serious crime that Obama and his administration committed that they were fearful and Trump could uncover and expose?

RUSH: Well, I think, depending on who you’re talking about. We have two groups of people. If you’re talking about the Obama CIA, John Brennan, the Obama national security apparatus, James Clapper, the Obama FBI, I believe that they hated Trump for a host of reasons. I think they hated Trump because of his personality because they deem him to be much lower class than they were, and I think there’s some substance.

Trump comes out against NATO. Trump comes out against NAFTA. Trump comes out against dumb leaders that have done dumb things, and I think they personally were offended, scared to death, and began a process to deny Trump the nomination, then to deny him the presidency. Both failed, and I think these two years hence have been to try to cover up what they did, which would include Obama and Hillary and all this.

I mean, I’ve said before that I think that this whole Mueller thing, in large part, was a cover-up. But if you’re talking about the elected Democrats in the House and Senate like Jerry Nadler and Pelosi? I think their hatred for Trump is genuine and it’s epitomized or illustrated by the fact that they are running parking lot campaigns based on hatred for Trump and assumption that everybody else hates Trump too.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Dave in Huntington Beach, California. Glad you waited, sir. You’re up. Hello.

CALLER: Yes, sir. How are you? Quick observation before my question. I’m driving down the street in California, and every hundred feet I see a sign, “Adopt a Beach,” “Adopt a Bridge,” “Adopt a Park.” Why don’t we have “Adopt an Illegal Immigrant”?

RUSH: Exactly right! Exactly right! You could donate… Have you ever adopted a highway, by the way?

CALLER: I adopted a beach. (laughing)

RUSH: What did you get when you adopted a beach? What did that mean?

CALLER: You paid money and they used that to help clean it.

RUSH: Yeah, but —

CALLER: So you feel responsible, as when a person adopted an illegal immigrant. So, you know, pass it on to the president. This could be a great idea.

RUSH: You know, the first time I ever saw Adopt a Highway thing — I’m not kidding — I was driving in Connecticut. (I wasn’t driving. I was riding.) I saw “Adopt a Highway.” I asked the person there, “What the hell is this?” The person lived in Connecticut. They said, “Well, you adopt the highway. You…” “What do you with it?” “Well, you’re paying for cleanup.” I said, “They already tax us for this!”

CALLER: (laughing)

RUSH: “We’re taxed out the wazoo, particularly in Connecticut, for the roads! What do you mean, ‘Adopt a Highway’? Does it come home with me when I’m not using it?” “No, of course not.” Anyway, it’s just another government scam to get even more out of you. But I like thinking of Adopt an Illegal. That’d be a great appeal right to the heart of leftists who supposedly to support them.

CALLER: They did put your name on a sign. My question. So —

RUSH: And address. Your name and address.

CALLER: (laughing) Right, right. (laughing) And Wi-Fi code. So if Mueller’s investigation is proven to be based on a complete falsehood, lie, fabricated stories, fake news — if that’s the case — can that then be used to negate all of his criminal filings and all the people that were prosecuted, because it was based on that tenet?

RUSH: It probably could, but that’s… I don’t know. For example, there is… Again, my friend Andy McCarthy had a piece over the weekend about the… Remember when Mueller indicted these Russian troll farms in St. Petersburg, and they were never gonna stand trial because they were never gonna come to Washington to face charges? Well, one of them did. But his point is that Assange will probably not be indicted on things to protect Mueller.

It’s a long, convoluted explanation and I don’t have time to get into it here, but the theory is that Assange will not… They all think Assange was working with Russia to get dirt on Hillary and Podesta out there. But Andy doesn’t think that they’re ever gonna charge or indict Assange for that because that would somehow — and I know it would challenge Mueller’s indictments on the Russians. You can’t… They both don’t go together. The reason I say this is in answer to your question.

If Barr investigates here and they find out that there was nothing, there was never any evidence, there’s nothing — and I think Barr’s gonna do this. Folks, it’s just… (sigh) I don’t know. It’s an instinct or a feeling but I think he’s serious about it. I don’t think he’d have mentioned it otherwise. I think it’s soon. I think he’s gonna get started on it soon. ‘Cause I think Barr really does believe that it’s important to protect the intelligence apparatus in this country, and if it was turned inward…

If the intelligence apparatus of this country was used under the auspices of Obama people at the FBI like Comey and Clapper and Brennan and all of that on an American citizen and his business, that will discredit the entire operation and the industry and so forth. I think Barr really believed that it is crucial that we have a respected intelligence gathering apparatus like CIA, NSA. I think he’s gonna get to the bottom of this.

And just to take your hypothetical, if he finds that this thing never had a single bit of evidence to propel it… Well, it didn’t. That’s why it was a counterintelligence investigation and never criminal. Your question, could Flynn then argue (impression), “Well, my conviction, my plea is thrown out because I’m a process-crime victim. I lied…” (sigh) I don’t think that whatever adjudication there might be on an investigation, that the investigation would, like, let Manafort out of jail.

You mean, “Well, it should if the whole thing was fraudulent!” I understand that, and maybe it will. Maybe it will. I don’t know how far Barr wants to take it. I think he wants… This is my feeling. I think he wants to get to the bottom of what happened here to make sure that, A, it doesn’t happen again. But also, when it’s over, to make sure that the intelligence apparatus is not denuded, ’cause it really has been corrupted here.

This is inescapable.

The intelligence apparatus, the FBI leadership, the people that were involved here have really corrupted the purpose and the objectives and the techniques. I think that’s what they want to get to the bottom of and find out and expose it, so that it don’t happen again — and expose it in a way that protects the ongoing ability of this intelligence apparatus to actually look at real enemies credibly and do what they do to keep the country safe. I don’t think Barr wants to tear that apart. I think he wants to build that back up.

But that’s just my guess, so take that for what it’s worth.