RUSH: Well, I don’t want to make this personal but I have to tell you, folks, this stuff scares me. The stuff going on with the deep state, the Washington establishment, whatever you want to call them, and their never-ending pursuit of Donald Trump, either get rid of him or to paralyze his presidency, the lengths to which these people are willing to go openly and brazenly is frightening.

Greetings. Great to have you. It’s 800-282-2882 if you want to be on the program. The email address, ElRushbo@eibnet.us.

The thing that I have to keep in mind as I keep up with the latest so-called developments of this story, the one thing that you have to always keep in mind if you want I think to have the best chance of understanding what’s going on and putting it all into some kind of perspective, you have to remember that the objective of all of this is to get rid of Donald Trump.

From the moment Trump won the election, the tampering with his transition, the creation of the Steele dossier, the use of the FBI and the DOJ and the entire apparatus of the Washington establishment, to the appointment of Mueller as the special counsel, the whole purpose of that has been to reverse the outcome of a fair and duly constituted election that many in the Washington establishment simply do not wish to accept.

So we’ve had terms being thrown around like “coup” or “silent coup,” however you want to phrase it or characterize it. Everything that’s happening you must keep in perspective is happening underneath the umbrella of “the objective is to get Donald Trump.” So now when you accept that and then look at everything, whether it’s what happened yesterday and last night, or what happened last week or last month, then you have a better chance of keeping it all in perspective and understanding what’s happening.

One thing that I have noticed — let’s take a look. The FBI is being squeezed by Congress for FISA documents from Obama’s time in office. The FBI has been ignoring subpoenas from various congressional committees for many, many months. Get this. Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch was just told that the FBI told him it will take three years to produce the file containing all of the text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, three years.

Freedom of Information Act request. Three years to produce what the inspector general already has. But nevertheless the FBI is being squeezed and publicly, members of the congressional committee going on TV expressing outrage the FBI will not cooperate, sending ’em redacted stuff, not ending ’em anything at all. These documents currently being sought, FISA documents, are from Obama’s time in office.

We’ve also had Trump’s favorability ratings rise. In the Rasmussen Reports daily tracking survey, Trump is over 50%. We also have news that the Department of Justice has an inspector general report coming out soon that’s gonna be critical of the FBI. So naturally you would expect the FBI and the DOJ to do something to deflect attention from all that. And they did. They raided the offices of President Trump’s personal attorney.

Now, I’ve read all of the supporting documentation, that it’s magistrate judges and not presidentially appointed federal judges who review warrant requests, search warrant requests. And I’ve read all the data about this, that these are very serious things because lawyers take attorney-client privilege very, very seriously, and this is not something that is granted lightly. There must be something really, really big here.

There must be something really, really grave, Cohen-Trump, somebody must have really, really done something in order to convince this magistrate that a search warrant and a raid of not just the lawyer’s office, but of his home, which is under renovation, and his hotel room.

So while the initial reaction is, “My God, what’s happening to attorney-client privilege?” Here’s the Drive-By Media assuring us it’s okay, nothing wrong here. What’s really wrong is the outrageous behavior of Trump’s lawyer. And we know it’s outrageous because a judge simply would not grant this search warrant unless there were something serious.

But remember, how many incidents like this have occurred in the last year and a half that are unprecedented, that we’re told, “Hey, this normally wouldn’t happen unless there’s really something big.” And the thing is, there hasn’t been anything big! There isn’t any collusion! There hasn’t been anything found that Mueller was charged — I’m sorry. He wasn’t charged with anything specific. He was told to go on a fishing expedition. And even despite the fishing expedition, they don’t have anything.

fThey’ve got nothing right now to impeach Donald Trump with. They’ve got nothing to force Donald Trump out of office with. So now they’re raiding the offices of a personal attorney who had dealings with a woman, a porn star the president reportedly had a dalliance with 12 years ago, the now famous Stormy Daniels.

And she’s all over the place on whether anything happened. If anything did, it was one occasion and then of course Cohen supposedly tried to pay her $130 grand, which she accepted, by the way, 130 grand 12 days before the election, two weeks before the election to shut up. This is being looked at now as a serious violation of campaign finance.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s lawyers were granted immunity. Cheryl Mills and others that were not even lawyers were granted attorney-client privilege and immunity so they could sit in with Hillary Clinton during her interview with the FBI, in which Hillary Clinton was given an exoneration letter before her interview. The real collusion with Russia that we know of is being ignored by everybody involved. That is with the Hillary campaign and her cutouts at the law firm and Fusion GPS to get the Trump or the Steele dossier written.

Professor Dershowitz was on Hannity last night. Hannity asked him, “Is this the end of attorney-client privilege?” And Professor Dershowitz said, “Well, no, but it’s very close. If this had been done with Hillary Clinton, Hillary — but the thing here is — I have to say this — if Hillary Clinton had decided to pay off some male porn star she wouldn’t have had her personal lawyer do it. She would have run it through the Clinton Crime Family Foundation or she would have Cheryl Mills or somebody do it.

She would have insularity from it. She would not have been able to get directly traced to it. Because Hillary knew how to hide and protect herself legally from any future pursuits. Trump and Cohen here I don’t think had any idea they were violating law, skirting law, attempting to get around the law in any way, shape, manner, or form. But here they are both in the crosshairs.

Now, there’s also a body of thought that says that what this really means is that Mueller is attempting to goad Trump into firing him. And that means that Mueller doesn’t have anything, that Mueller has nothing to prosecute Trump on or with. And I believe that’s the case. I believe that’s why all this extraneous stuff is happening, because there isn’t anything.

But the objective is to get rid of Trump. If there’s nothing to charge him with, if they haven’t found any collusion — and they won’t, because there wasn’t any — then the best way to get rid of Trump is to force him to do things, to take action that makes it look like he’s out of control or hiding something or trying to prevent something from being discovered.

And so the pressure is on — in fact, a series of sound bites I’ll get to in just a moment from all kinds of people in the media and the legal community suggesting that this is what Trump is on the verge of doing, and if he does it, it’s gonna be the end of the Republicans and the midterms. And if he doesn’t it’s gonna be the end of Trump.

They’re goading him into it. They think they can. They think they can goad him into firing Mueller. They think they can goad him into firing Rod Rosenstein. They think they can goad him into firing Sessions. Many people have sent me emails overnight, “Rush, I thought the president ran the executive branch. The Department of Justice in the executive branch. How can this be happening? How can the Trump administration DOJ be behind what’s happening here?” Excellent question!

Remember what this is. This is a Washington establishment full frontal effort to get rid of Donald Trump. The Department of Justice has a lot of people that work there that are called career people. They’re not appointed by presidents. They don’t come and go with presidents. And they are the ones that control the Department of Justice. The truth is that Trump and his appointees probably are not in control of the Department of Justice, at least elements of it that they have people in charge of.

The left constantly tells us that it’s the career people that have to run these cabinet positions, these posts, these departments because the political people, they come and go with presidents, but the people that really make it work, they’re there all the time. They’re career people. They’re the ones that ought to be in charge. And that would appear to be the case.

I mean, if Trump appoints a director of the FBI and the attorney general, then why is the Department of Justice and why is the FBI participating in this effort to get rid of Donald Trump? Well, there has to be an answer to it. The answer is probably readily available via common sense, and it is that Christopher Wray and Jeff Sessions are really not running the show, or they can’t stop whoever is.

And whoever is is likely a bunch of leftists and even people that may not be leftists who just hate Trump, who just love government, who love Big Government, who love the idea of an independent judiciary, who love the idea that the Department of Justice has its own agenda. And it’s not gonna be determined by whoever the president is. If they get lucky and the president happens to agree with what they want to do, the careerists, then fine and dandy. It could be a combination of things.

Meanwhile, the president most likely thinks his people do run the show at the Department of Justice. The sad fact is that the so-called career people that we’re supposed to have all this respect for, we’re supposed to have all of this admiration for, they’re just lifelong leftists. They wanted these jobs precisely to be able to control these departments regardless of who won elections just like is happening in the judiciary. The left wants to control judgeships and the judiciary as insurance against losing elections. And it’s the same thing in the Department of Justice.

And the revelation of this news is also designed to goad Trump into firing somebody. Firing Mueller is what they actually I think are seeking. They want Trump to do something after which they can go get him because they haven’t found anything yet to get him. They’ve got the attorney-client privilege.

The way this works I’m told is, the magistrate authorizes the search warrant, and the reason that the search warrant is granted and the reason for the raid, we’re all told — you can find this anywhere in the Drive-By Media today — is that, “Well, it has to be that the lawyer, Mr. Cohen, is a flight risk. It has to be that the lawyer, Mr. Cohen, would destroy evidence.”

You can find that ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, CNN, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, whatever Drive-By Media drivel you read, you’ll read that the justification for this is it’s gotta be so bad because normally judges wouldn’t grant a search warrant, violation of attorney-client privilege, it must be so bad and it must be so bad that the lawyer Cohen might even try to destroy evidence. They gotta go in there, they gotta get it quick.

No matter where you go in the Drive-By Media, that’s what you’re gonna see, that’s gonna be the explanation for this. I’m told that after they get this data, after they’ve gotten all this material, after the raid of Cohen’s office, his home, and his hotel room — by the way, he’s staying in hotel room ’cause house being renovated. So he’s no doubt hiding stuff behind the brand-new insulation, and they gotta go in there and they root all that stuff out.

Now, I’m told that an uninterested, dispassionate third-party lawyer, not from the Mueller team and not from the DOJ, but an independent lawyer is then given all of the information they get in the raid and goes through that information to find out which of it should be protected attorney-client privilege and which of it should be produced in pursuit of crime and a criminal.

And of course you have to allow for the fact that not all lawyers are honest, some of them do commit crimes, and they’re not allowed to hide behind attorney-client privilege. There are mechanisms whereby lawyers engaging in criminal activity — we know that’s so rare, but when it happens, there is a mechanism to root them out. And that’s what we’re being told this is.

One more observation here, one more possibility might be going on. Lawyers as a profession are incredibly protective of attorney-client privilege. I’m kind of surprised that Dershowitz is the only one that seems to be up in arms about this, but I’ll guarantee you privately, there are a lot of people afraid to stand up here right now, folks. There are tons of people afraid to stand up and say anything. Because this is the equivalent of — some people are calling it police state.

I mean, some people don’t even want to get in the way of this for fear they’ll get caught up in it. Some people don’t even want to be critical of this for fear they’ll be noticed and something will happen to them or done to them. But I think because of the ongoing effort here that I see as goading Trump into firing Mueller, and this, I really think that Mueller doesn’t have anything yet to prosecute Trump on.

Now, I could be dead wrong about that, but this has been going on for who knows how many months now, and there’s nothing. And we know there’s nothing because it would have leaked and it would have been part of the process of getting rid of Trump.

So maybe Mueller has given up on ever prosecuting Trump, but that doesn’t mean they’re giving up on getting rid of Trump. Lawyers are incredibly protective attorney-client privilege, big part of how they maintain their franchise. Clients have to trust that. If clients stop trusting that, lawyers are not gonna have clients.

So what happens? Let’s say there is a trial or any court proceeding brought against Trump in any court and it relies on anything that he ever discussed with Cohen. What happens if, in an upcoming court trial or proceeding, they attempt to get anybody using things they found uncovering attorney-client privilege, what is a judge gonna do?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Look, I’m just a casual observer here like everybody else is. And I probably talk to fewer people than most do on this. So all I have is my instinct, my intelligence guided by experience. And I look at all this, and it is scary as it can be to me, folks. This kind of thing wasn’t even contemplated against Richard Nixon, even after the Saturday Night Massacre.

This is clearly an unstoppable train on the way to derailing Donald Trump. And the irony is, it all tells me — again, nothing official here — it tells me they don’t have anything. And they’re ticked off, they haven’t found anything, they probably all believed — which I think is such smoke. Everybody knows there isn’t any collusion. Everybody knows there was not any Russian collusion in this. That’s what really frosts me. All of this is made up, manufactured.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Remember, folks, the original Mueller investigation did not start as a criminal investigation because there was no crime. Rosenstein did not specify a crime for Mueller to pursue. Therefore it was a counterintelligence investigation which doesn’t require a special counsel, but they got one anyway. Rosenstein appointed one because the whole point here is to get rid of Trump.

I also maintain that while this was ostensibly about collusion between Trump and Russia, and it’s frightening too, to read wherever you go in the Drive-By Media — you know, I read a lot of tech blogs. And these little kids in these tech blogs, they believe it hook, line, and sinker. They believe Trump colluded with Russia. They believe the Facebook story proves it. They believe that Zuckerberg is up there and might admit it, they’re hoping Zuckerberg admits that they’ve got evidence that Trump was colluding with Russia.

It’s bogus! There wasn’t any! Hillary did it! They’re also all uptight about Cambridge Analytica and these little kids at these tech blogs have no idea it was the Obama campaign that used every user’s data in 2012. But they’re all caught up in Cambridge Analytica ’cause it’s a Republican organization supposedly.

So all of this is being reported to uneducated, ill-informed, and in some cases stupid people who are just sopping it all up. And they know there was no collusion! They couldn’t point to any in charging Mueller to go find any because they didn’t specify a crime.

So what we have here is the politicization of policy differences and policy differences and election disagreements. We essentially have the attempt to criminalize somebody who won an election because the powers that be disapprove of that victory and don’t like it! And so are manufacturing and making up lies to explain how it happened — i.e., Trump stole the election by colluding with Putin and Russia.

Now, everything happening in Syria at this moment with Russia serves to disapprove that on a silver platter. And is anybody mentioning that? No. But I will, in due course. So if the establishment can politicize, criminalize the losing of an election or in this case the winning of an election, this is what scares me. And I’m gonna tell you something, folks. If the Republican Party doesn’t stand up, they’re gonna be swept away in all of this as well, if this succeeds. And that, too, is the secondary objective.

The primary objective here is to nullify the Trump win, to get rid of him, and to do it with as much shame and perceived guilt as they can so that no outsider again will ever try something like this. This is a project designed to ruin Donald Trump. Which is not hard for the left to do because they ruin everything they touch.

They’re in the process of ruining the NFL, they’ve ruined religion, they’ve ruined church, they’ve ruined schools, they’ve ruined education, they’ve ruined normal sexual relationships between people, they ruin everything they touch. And they are out to ruin Donald Trump and, by extension, the Republican Party. They have the full force of a compliant supplicant and accomplice media helping them move this ball forward.

And everybody playing on the Mueller team knows that there was no Trump collusion with Russia. I know I’m contradicting myself to some of you because you might recall me saying, “Hey, folks, don’t laugh. They believe this stuff.” I think some of them might now because it’s been going on so long, they’ve created this alternative reality that they have fallen prey to believing it.

I’m talking about the principals here, the Muellers, the Rosensteins, the people at the DOJ and the FBI, they know there wasn’t any collusion. They know they were making things up to be leaked to the media. They know there isn’t any ’cause they can’t find it, they couldn’t prove it and they haven’t leaked it. They’ve leaked innuendo.

Now, some in the media are so blind and just a bunch of sponge-like creatures who soak up everything they’re told by these officials they respect that some of them may believe it by now. But none of the principals here really believe this, and that’s what makes this doubly offensive to me, is that they know what they’re pursuing. Didn’t happen.

It doesn’t matter. Getting rid of Trump, paralyzing the Trump presidency, sending a message to anybody who wants to side up with Trump, don’t do it, don’t replicate Trump, don’t try to do this yourself. There’s a lot here. The deep state, the establishment, whatever, is doing everything it can to protect itself in the midst of a shocking defeat none of them saw.