Rush Limbaugh lays out why he believes the Russia probe is full of entrapment (of George Papadopoulos) and was a setup from the very beginning using a dossier that existed solely for the purpose of media consumption on the Monday edition of his radio program.



"Now, the important thing to remember here is that Papadopoulos was a peripheral member of the Trump campaign. He didn’t know anything officially. He wasn’t close enough to anybody to know anything. He’s 24, 25 years old, whatever, but he never had day-to-day contact with Trump. He didn’t have day-to-day contact with the Trump campaign foreign policy team, none of that. He was targeted because he was a young, eager beaver. He was targeted and he was set up and he was entrapped," Limbaugh said in his explanation.



"It’s all trumped up, folks. No pun intended. None of it’s real. All of it was made up. It was simply created to permit an investigation, just like Comey telling Trump the dossier existed served as the mechanism to get the media in the clear to report on the dossier. This thing is more fake… This whole investigation is more fake and more phony — more connived — than you could possibly imagine," Limbaugh said.











Full transcript of Limbaugh laying out the theory, via RushLimbaugh.com:





RUSH LIMBAUGH, HOST: I now know who the spy is. I know now know who the FBI was running in the Trump campaign. I don’t think I’m gonna give you the name of the spy, but I’m gonna tell you everything the spy has done. It is the most amazing story. It is a story of entrapment. When you hear this, it’s gonna infuriate you. You’re gonna realize how utterly phony this entire investigation of Donald Trump is. It’s phonier than you even realize now.



And there is a CliffsNotes version of this, and there is the intricate detailed version of this. I’m gonna give you the CliffsNotes version when we get into this. The name of the spy, you may not know it, it’s not somebody when you hear the name, “Oh, that person.” It’s not that kind of person. Even to call the person a spy is a little bit of a stretch. It’s more like an operative employed by the FBI to basically entrap somebody who worked with the Trump campaign in a peripheral way, and it worked like a charm.



And it all involved the name George Papadopoulos. Does the name George Papadopoulos ring a bell? George Papadopoulos is the so-called second reason the Mueller investigation or the FBI investigation into Trump colluding with Russia began. The first reason we were given was Carter Page. A FISA warrant, as you know, was secured to spy on Carter Page because of the Steele dossier. But nothing came of Mr. Page.



The New York Times over the New Year’s weekend, 2017-2018, wrote a story saying that actually it was something else that triggered everything, and that was George Papadopoulos. They dropped Carter Page entirely and, using the media, when the Steele dossier was exposed as a fraud, when it was exposed as an opposition research document, the intelligence people, the FBI, DOJ, went into stage 2, came up with a new reason, ostensibly to trigger the investigation.



Turns out it wasn’t Carter Page. It was George Papadopoulos. And do you remember what they said Papadopoulos did? Papadopoulos got drunk one night at a bar in London and started talking to somebody that just happened to be an ambassador from Australia. And Papadopoulos told this guy that the Russians had thousands of Hillary Clinton emails. The New York Times weekend story, New Year’s weekend in 2017-2018 stressed that that is what actually triggered the investigation.



Well, Papadopoulos was entrapped by three people, including the person who is reputed to be the spy. And very simply here’s the CliffsNotes version of what happened. George Papadopoulos, 24-year-old peripheral member of the Trump foreign policy campaign team. He was a nothing. He was a nobody, which made him a perfect mark. He was a young guy who wanted to go places.



On his resume trying to get jobs with governments and campaigns, he actually put on his resume that he had participated in Model U.N. in high school and college. The spy, the operative, sent this guy from the U.K., sent this guy an invitation to write a paper on things about Turkey and Cyprus and some other things, offered to pay him $3,000, and his plane ticket to the U.K.



Before that happened, another operative had informed Papadopoulos that the Russians had Hillary Clinton emails. Papadopoulos did not independently know this. He was told this by a Russian spy or a person connected to the Russians whose name is Mifsud. Mifsud operates with the person thought to be the FBI’s informant on the Trump campaign and the Australia ambassador.



So some months before Papadopoulos was offered this research paper and speech by the informant, he was paid three grand for it and his plane ticket to Europe, sometime before that this Mifsud guy happened to see — Papadopoulos was set up and targeted. And he was told, “By the way, Russians have 3,000 or a bunch of Hillary emails, thousands of Hillary emails.” Papadopoulos keeps it close to the vest, doesn’t say anything about it, but thinks it’s really cool that somebody’s letting him in on things.



In other words, Papadopoulos, reputedly the source and the reason, the second explanation for the investigation, only knew supposedly the Russians don’t have Hillary. We don’t even know that that’s true. But they planted that news with him to set him up. Folks, this is entrapment like you cannot believe. So Papadopoulos, when he’s given this offer of $3,000 to do a lecture and write a report by the FBI’s informant, he already knows because he’s been told by this Mifsud fellow that the Russians have thousands of Hillary e-mails.



So when he is summoned — and Papadopoulos himself says his invitation to write this paper and come to the U.K. and be given $3,000 came out of the blue. He couldn’t figure it out, why me, he was asking himself. But he accepted and he went over. He met with the informant, and during a conversation the informant said, “George, do you remember, does it ring a bell, the Russians have thousands of Hillary emails? Do you remember this?”



So now Papadopoulos is hearing it for the second time. But he doesn’t know that he’s talking to an informant for the FBI, a, quote, unquote, spy. So after that, the informant gets hold of the Australian ambassador and suggests to him that he meet Papadopoulos at a London bar, which happened. Papadopoulos gets liquored up, gets drunk, this is factually known, it’s been reported, and Papadopoulos starts bragging to the Australia ambassador, “Hey, did you know that the Russians have thousands of emails?”



Papadopoulos passed this information along as though it were his own. He was just trying to fit in. He was just trying to be a big guy. Papadopoulos telling this story to the Australia ambassador is what triggered this as news. Papadopoulos did not independently know this. He was fed this information. He was used to be a Trump campaign official to make the statement to the Australian ambassador who could then report to the FBI, DOJ, that a member of the Trump campaign has been saying that the Russians have thousands of Hillary’s emails.



The whole thing was a setup. It was perfect entrapment 101. When Papadopoulos was questioned about this by the FBI, he lied about some things, and that’s why Mueller indicted him, convicted him, and he was found guilty of lying to the FBI because at some point he realized what was going on.



Now, the important thing to remember here is that Papadopoulos was a peripheral member of the Trump campaign. He didn’t know anything officially. He wasn’t close enough to anybody to know anything. He’s 24, 25 years old, whatever, but he never had day-to-day contact with Trump. He didn’t have day-to-day contact with the Trump campaign foreign policy team, none of that. He was targeted because he was a young, eager beaver. He was targeted and he was set up and he was entrapped.



The informant and Mifsud implant the news with Papadopoulos that the Russians have thousands of Hillary emails. He’s hearing this essentially from people working — unbeknownst to him — with the FBI and the DOJ. So he gets drunk one night in a bar with the Australian ambassador, which was also set up and passes that information along as though it’s his own and he knows it as a Trump campaign person. That triggered. That provided an opportunity for the FBI/DOJ to say the Trump campaign knew that the Russians had 3,000 or thousands of Hillary Clinton emails.



It is no different than Comey going to the Oval Office to tell Trump about the salacious elements of the Steele dossier, which then enabled the media to report about the Steele dossier. The Steele dossier had nothing in it that was factual — still hasn’t been confirmed — and because of that they had to drop it. They had to drop the FISA warrant on Page that wasn’t going anywhere. They needed another so-called reason to conduct this investigation. Papadopoulos was the mark.



So just as James Comey tells the president… Well, James Comey was instructed by Clapper to tell the president about the dossier. Comey has admitted in interviews that was his assignment. He didn’t tell Trump who paid for the dossier. His assignment was to tell Trump it existed. After he did that, Comey tells Clapper, “Mission accomplished.” Clapper calls CNN; CNN reports the Steele dossier and that Trump knows about it. That’s how that story begins.



They get a Pulitzer Prize for this or some kind of award from the White House Correspondents’ Association. This thing with Papadopoulos is no different than that. And there might be two other people that have been set up as Papadopoulos was. Page’s involvement here might be the result of a setup or sting as well. Now, that’s the CliffsNotes version of this. The detailed version is more harrowing, and it will tick you off, folks.



And what you conclude — what we all conclude when this is over — is that there is nothing real in this investigation, that every aspect of this investigation… You might look at this Papadopoulos story as the “insurance policy” that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were texting each other about back and forth. Remember when she was saying that they’d better keep out the possibility Trump could win? Strzok said, “No, there’s no way.” She was saying, “I don’t know,” and Strzok said, “Well, then we need an insurance policy.”



This, the Papadopoulos thing may well be the insurance policy. But the thing to know here is that George Papadopoulos did not think that the Russians had thousands of Hillary Clinton emails until he was told by the informant — the FBI informant — who was ratting on, implanted in the Trump campaign. He was actually told about it by a friend of the informant’s, this Mifsud fellow, M-I-F-S-U-D, who has ties to Russian intelligence. He may, in fact, be a Russian agent, but he does double duty. He may be the first person to actually tell Papadopoulos about it.



Then the informant, the so-called spy, calls Papadopoulos and invites him to London to write a research paper/deliver a speech on the research paper for which he’ll be paid $3,000 and airfare. And while in London on this bogus, distracting mission of a lecture the informant said, “George? George, remember that story? Have you heard about how the Russians got thousands of Hillary’s emails?” So he hears it for the second time now. He hears it from the informant, and before that the informant’s buddy, Mifsud. So now, Papadopoulos thinks he’s on to something.



But he keeps it close to the vest until he has a night at a bar in London with the Australian ambassador — who, by the way, is a huge donor to the Clinton Foundation. He gets liquored up and he starts bragging to the Australian ambassador that, “We know the Russians have three thou…” I keep saying 3,000. That’s the fee he was paid. “Russians have thousands of Hillary Clinton emails!” That then became the FBI/the DOJ telling the media, “A Trump campaign official has informed us.



“He has been talking about the fact that they know in the Trump campaign that Russia has Hillary’s emails.” That is what triggered the second phase of the investigation after the Steele dossier was outed. Remember, Papadopoulos did not independently know this. He was fed this information. He was entrapped with it. He’s a young guy, wants to matter. They gave him what he thought was super tight news, big news; not very many people knew it. He felt really important. They were tugging him close to the vest. They liked him! They trusted him.



He thinks he’s on to something here. He can’t wait to brag about it, and he did to the Australian ambassador. The Australian ambassador then followed the script. He said, “Guess what? The Trump campaign’s bragging about all these emails from Hillary that they know that the Russians have.” Bam! The second phase of the investigation is triggered. The New York Times reports, “George Papadopoulos drunk one night London bar, informs blah, blah from Australia that the Russians…”



And that’s how that all happened. That’s just one story involving the so-called spy on informant. It’s all trumped up, folks. No pun intended. None of it’s real. All of it was made up. It was simply created to permit an investigation, just like Comey telling Trump the dossier existed served as the mechanism to get the media in the clear to report on the dossier. This thing is more fake… This whole investigation is more fake and more phony — more connived — than you could possibly imagine.