Ep. 708 Explosive New Texts Suggest the Witch Hunt Is Real
Summary:
The new texts, released yesterday, contain some explosive information indicating that the witch hunt against Trump may have been preplanned. Also, I address Jim Comey’s outrageous interview with Bret Baier and recent economic and Obamacare news.
News Picks:
Today’s edition of liberal myth-busting: “Is the CDC really banned from researching gun violence?”
Are Republicans giving Obamacare repeal another shot?
An incredible piece which describes a potential intelligence back-channel used to build a case against the Trump team.
Jim Comey can’t be telling the truth; here’s why.
The teacher walkouts are spreading.
Some sour economic news. But better days are ahead.
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Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, anything going on?
Anything happen yesterday?
Are you kidding?
Nothing in the news.
Don't worry, folks.
Nothing to talk about.
My gosh, for a Friday again.
Stack Newsday, Comey, North Korea, Economic Numbers, some devastating text release last night.
I'm going to try to get as much of it in as I can.
Don't go anywhere.
There were some mega bombshells, if you know what you're reading, in those texts released last night from Stroke and Page.
I just think a lot of people, unfortunately, don't know what they're reading.
You're going to splain though, aren't you?
I'm going to do some splaining, but if you've been following this from the beginning and you know the names, remember, remember the names.
All of it will make sense.
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All right.
Man, do we got a stacked show today.
Let me start quickly with the Comey interview, and let me give a hat tip to Brett Baer for doing an absolutely phenomenal job on Fox News.
I was really impressed, man.
That was great.
Boy, did he have Comey running.
Comey was 12 minutes late for the interview, by the way.
It reminded me of a time I was going up to do Neil Cavuto's show in New York and made a left turn on a through street in New York and got a ticket going to see Cavuto and got in the studio about two minutes before the hit.
They were like, forget the makeup, just get on the set.
True story.
Happened, by the way.
A couple key takeaways.
Jim Comey, and I quote, asked about the origins of the dossier and who was paying for it.
Quoting him.
When they said, Brett Baier said, well, you know, don't you think it was a key point that Hillary and her team paid for the dossier?
This is an astonishing, I can't believe he said this.
I still don't know that for a fact.
Oh, my God.
You're the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations and you still don't know that the Clinton team, the Democrats paid for the dossier?
Everybody in America knows this but the former FBI director who used the monopolistic force powers of the government through the FBI to spy on Trump.
I don't know what else to say about that.
Other than Jim Comey is either lying or is exemplifying a level of incompetence we haven't seen in the FBI director position ever.
Well put.
He doesn't know who fired him.
How do you not know that?
Do you understand what he's saying?
The key...
The point for Republicans has been the information used to spy on Trump, let's be clear on this, was not legitimate, verified law enforcement or intelligence information.
It was political.
Comey gets this.
He knows he will be seen as a political animal if he acknowledges that the dossier, while he was the FBI director, that he knew it was funded by the Democrats.
Am I being clear on this show?
Yeah, man, you're cool.
So what does he do?
He just lies about it.
Oh, he said, I'm quoting, I still don't know that for a fact.
You're the only one, Jimbo.
Jim-Beb, as Joe would call him.
Joe would call him Beb.
Beb, Beb.
It's a sign of respect for Joe, too, even though we don't like Comey.
That is, Beb, how do you not know this?
He knows it, folks.
Jim Comey is not stupid.
He knows it.
He just understands that the minute he acknowledges that the information he used to spy on Trump was political, he knows his reputation, whatever is left of it, is completely gone forever.
So he just lies.
I still don't know that for a fact.
Wow.
That's amazing.
Then he said something to Bret Baier, which is factually incorrect.
Again, he's either lying or is the most incompetent man to ever be in the FBI management office, especially at the director level.
He says to Bret Baier, well, what I do know is it was originally, talking about the dossier, by the way, it was originally a document funded by Republicans.
Not true.
That is not true, folks.
That is categorically false.
Comey is either lying or doesn't know what he's talking about.
The Washington Free Beacon, which is a Republican news outlet.
Conservative-leaning news outlet is probably a better way to say it.
Did finance opposition research on behalf of some Republican candidates into Trump.
Again, none of this is illegal.
Whether Democrats or Republicans pay outlets to investigate candidates is nothing.
It's not even unusual, folks.
I've ran for office.
It happens all the time.
But where Comey's trying to trip Brett Baier up, and Brett Baier nailed him on this, he says, oh, well, you know, the dossier Was initially funded by the Republicans.
Not true.
Bayer's like, that's just not true.
Yes, Republicans did hire Fusion GPS to gather some information on Trump.
The dossier, the Russian information, the Christopher Steele stuff, the damaging stuff that was used to spy on Trump.
Are we clear why Comey's dancing here?
Not Diopo stuff.
The damaging stuff from Russia that was used by Christopher Steele, the British spy that Clinton's hired.
That was exclusively a Democrat operation.
The reason Democrats on the Hill, so I love to distill this down to tidbits here, the reason Democrats on the Hill are trying to confuse you folks and say, oh Republicans were in on it too, is because they understand that if they say Republicans are in on this too, that it'll seem like a legitimate intelligence gathering operation and not a partisan hit job.
That is not what happened.
That Christopher Steele dossier was funded exclusively by Democrats, making it by definition a partisan hit job against the Republican.
Why Comey is fudging the numbers on this is clear.
It's the same reason he doesn't want to admit he knew the Democrats paid for the dossier.
I still don't know that for a fact.
Because Comey's... Folks, the title of the guy's book is a higher loyalty.
Which is farcical right now.
I've heard it called, jokingly, a higher royalty.
That's what he's looking for, a higher royalty from his book.
The premise of his book is that he was beyond politics, he was a white knight, he was the savior in all of this, and we should all listen to him because he's credible.
You understand if he acknowledges one he knew the document was paid for by Democrats and that the Democrats exclusively paid for the dossier he used to spy on Trump, his entire reputation, whatever he thinks it is right now, which I think he believes is far greater than everyone else believes, is over.
Oh yeah.
Now, a couple more things because I really do have a lot to get to today and the texts were just, a couple of these were amazing.
He said at one point about the memos, That these were personal memos, that these were not work documents.
Folks, he is not telling you the whole story on these memos.
Just to be clear, Jim Comey wrote seven memos.
He wrote these seven memos about his interactions with Donald Trump.
He leaked one to his friend Daniel Richman.
I think I said Whitties at one point, but Whitties is his friend, but that's not, the leak was to Daniel Richman, who he now conveniently is hired as an attorney.
Now look, look, you guys can't, which apparently doesn't matter anymore if you're a Republican in the Michael Cohen incident, but if you're a liberal like Jim Comey, I don't care what his party registration is, it matters a whole lot.
Now what's interesting about this is in these personal memos, he wrote seven.
Four of those memos have been deemed classified by the FBI.
One, we know he leaked to Richmond.
He's already acknowledged that.
But here's the thing that's fascinating about this, folks.
He's insisting that he only leaked this one memo that he believes was unclassified.
Again, there's even some dispute about the sensitivity of the information in that memo.
He's saying he only leaked it to Richmond.
Ah!
Hat tip, Byron York, for picking out this gem, though.
Byron York, piece of the show notes today.
Washington Examiner.
Go to Bongino.com.
You'll see it right there.
Subscribe to my email list.
We'll email them right to you.
These are five really winner articles today.
Byron York says, wow, that's interesting.
So just to set this up, he's talking about his personal memos he wrote, which were not personal.
He was conducting FBI business with the president.
Claiming their personal diaries like he was talking to Joey Bagadonis about a trip to 7-Eleven is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.
The FBI director's meeting with the president.
Joe, you think that may be public business?
Nah.
Nah, no big deal.
Actually, he's talking to me and Joe about putting a sound drop in the show or something.
Yeah.
Again, hat tip, Byron York.
So Comey said he only broke the story of this one person.
But the New York Times, which reported the leak, Joe, of the Comey memo.
So Comey said, I only leaked it to Daniel Richman, my lawyer, this lawyer guy.
The New York Times sourced the story to quote, two people who read the memo.
Suggesting that more eyes had seen the memo than Comey said.
Who's lying?
Who's lying?
Is Comey lying or is the New York Times?
Listen, for as much as I can't stand the New York Times, I sincerely doubt on a story like that that they would cite two people who have read the memo if Jim Comey's story is accurate that only one person read at Richmond.
Keep in mind, he's not even saying Richman, the guy he leaked it to, read it.
He says he dictated the content of the memo in lieu of turning it over.
So the story's wrong on two fronts.
Because the Times is claiming not only did someone read it, but another person read it too.
Jim Comey.
Someone's lying, Joe.
Yeah.
It's either the New York Times or Jim Comey.
Because one doesn't equal two, and two doesn't equal one, no matter how, you know, we don't need Jay Zabikus.
We haven't seen Jay Zabikus in a long time.
But we don't need Jay Zabikus in here for that.
You all, you've consistently said.
We haven't brought that up in so long.
Some of our listeners are like, who's Jay Zabikus?
We gotta get that shirt.
You gotta listen to the library.
You'll figure it out.
Somebody's not telling the truth.
So on the personal memos, number one, they're not personal.
That's absurd.
He was conducting official government business as the FBI director with the president.
Jim, give it a break.
Personal memos?
Stop.
Just please stop.
You're embarrassing yourself.
Second, if you only leaked the contents of the memo and no one read them, you dictated them to one person, how is it that the New York Times sources the story to two people who claim to have quote, read the memo?
One more point, and I brought this up before, so forgive me for repeating it, but it's important because you're gonna need this, because this is the... I watched Julian Epstein last night, I think that's his name, on Fox, on Tucker, get dismantled by Tucker Carlson, but again, Julian Epstein is a police state supporter.
He is, he just, they revel in the fact that Trump was spied on despite no probable cause to do so, and they just invent excuses over and over.
Now, I think he's a lawyer, I'm not sure.
But Epstein seems to be defending the Pfizer process despite an acknowledgement on multiple levels that the probable cause was not in fact there.
How do I know this?
Because even Comey danced on this yesterday.
Comey said at one point, when asked about the dossier, Bret Baier was questioning him, saying, well, you know, did you use the dossier basically to spy on Trump?
And Comey says, well, that wasn't it.
There was a mosaic of facts.
Gosh, I don't know how many times I have to explain this to you folks.
Do you understand how the federal warrant-seeking process works as an affiant and as a prosecutor and from the judge's perspective?
Let me explain this to you quickly one last time because there's so much confusion on this that the Democrats are taking advantage of the public's non-legal expertise or investigative expertise in this.
If I go to get a warrant on Joe, it doesn't matter what it is, if it's a search warrant, if it's an arrest warrant, if it's a FISA warrant to spy on Joe, I need to establish probable cause that a crime was committed, and I will lay out a series of facts that do that.
Now, Joe, serious question, if you don't know the answer, I'm not putting you on the spot, but you'd be a good proxy for the general population.
I'm gonna ask you a serious question.
If me as an investigator, right, I have information on you that I'm going to use to spy on you for felonious moping.
Why do you think I would only include the minimum amount of information to establish probable cause that you did this, and not include extra stuff?
Do you have any idea?
The extra stuff might screw up your request, for one thing.
Right, number one.
Who else may later on get a look at that?
The guys that we're spying on.
Yes!
Yes!
Exactly.
Now, the FISA court, that would play a little bit differently.
But yes, actually, I wasn't setting you up.
A lot of people don't understand this.
When you are an investigator, an FBI agent, a Secret Service agent, you're applying for a warrant, it's not an extra credit exam.
Matter of fact, folks, you include the minimum amount of investigative information you've obtained.
Surveillance.
Hey, I saw Joe do this.
I watched Joe commit felonious mopery on this day.
A statement from someone who saw Joe commit felonious mopery.
Joe's fingerprints on a felonious mopery incident.
You don't put in extra stuff.
Right, I understand.
Because later on, at some point, it's likely Joe's lawyer, defending him against felonious smokery, is going to have access to that information.
Now, it'll come out, but you don't want to give them a preemptive strike.
You don't include extra credit.
What I'm trying to tell you is if you need 10 points to get probable cause, 10 points of information.
Point one, felonious mulberry fingerprints.
Point two, surveillance on Joe committing felonious mulberry.
You don't put extra stuff in there because you're exposing information unnecessarily that you don't need right now.
Why does that matter?
Folks, Jim Comey was the deputy attorney general.
This guy's a lawyer.
He's the FBI director.
He's not stupid.
Jim Comey knows what I'm telling you.
So telling Bret Baier that, oh, we included the dossier, but don't worry, Joe, it wasn't critical, it was part of a mosaic of facts, is just simply dumb.
That's not how the process works!
You don't include a dossier of unverified information in a warrant to spy on someone, one, if you don't know it's true, which, ladies and gentlemen, they didn't!
It hadn't been verified!
And secondly, if you didn't need it anyway!
This is... I'm sorry, but I have a lot to talk about, but I cannot move on until you understand.
I would be doing you an enormous disservice if you don't understand soup to nuts what I'm telling you right now.
Let me simply state this.
If the dossier wasn't needed, it shouldn't have been included.
He knows that, and it wouldn't have been included.
If the dossier was needed to get to those 10 points of probable cause, 9 doesn't mean, you need to, I'm making it, 10's an arbitrary number, I'm just trying to give you like a perimeter and a fence.
If the dossier was needed, because you only had 10 points of evidence to establish probable cause, and the dossier later turned out to be false, which it did, You didn't have probable cause to spy.
The whole thing's a farce.
You spied on someone without any legal ability to do so.
Either way, Jim Comey's story is garbage.
Nobody includes information they don't need.
Especially when it's not verified and can blow up in your face later.
Nobody.
So scrap the Mosaic of Fact story.
I'm telling you from experience, you talk to any federal agent, they will tell you the same thing.
Nobody includes unverified information they don't need in a court-transcribed warrant.
It will blow up in your face later when it turns out the information's garbage.
And you swore to it.
Nobody.
Scrap the Mosaic of Fact story.
Now, the second story.
So if, obviously, if I told you they wouldn't have included it if they don't need it, by simple logic, remember modus tollens and modus ponens?
Logic in college, I took that a couple times, right?
If I'm telling you that they wouldn't have included it if they didn't need it, that means that they must have included it because they did need it.
And I'm telling you, if they needed it to reach a probable cause standard, and it now turns out that the document was false and unverified, Comey's in a whole world of trouble, and he knows that.
Guys, ladies, if you have to listen to this portion of the show and rewind it twice, please do.
Because this is the- I watched Julian Epstein last night.
Listen, he's free to do his thing and defend his cause.
It's not personal.
But I watched him dance.
I believe he's a lawyer.
I watched him dance on this last night.
And I wished so deeply I was on the set.
Because he doesn't understand, or he does and he's lying about it.
You don't include unverified information.
Period.
Full stop.
If you do, it means you're desperate to get the probable cause and hoping nobody finds out the information you have is bogus and you're in a world of trouble.
Sorry, Mosaic of Fact story is entirely BS.
Okay.
Quick shout-out before we go.
One of our contest winners, I want to give a shout-out to Alex.
Joe, this is a great story.
Our dance stories.
I love your emails about you all dancing out there.
I read them all, folks, and you're very inspiring, but one of them, Alex, my wife's like, you've got to read this one.
He did a project for his school, the correlation between gun ownership in states and gun violence.
And it turned out to not, you know, of course show what we showed that the correlation is in many cases more guns, less violence.
And apparently his professors were all over him, busted his chops.
So hat tip to Alex.
We're going to send you a book.
Nice job.
Yeah.
Good job there, buddy.
All right, this I'm going to cover quick because I want to jump into the text, but some good and potentially good news.
I say potentially because we've been disappointed and let down by Republicans so many times, I'm hesitant to put any stock into what they say anymore.
But from what the Washington Examiner, Quinn Hillier, and from what I'm hearing from a couple other people as well, there's a legitimate push At the grassroots level, being joined now by some people up on the hill, Joe, to actually repeal Obamacare, which is crazy.
I know we've been down this route.
I don't want to get your hopes up.
The news of the day matters to me.
It's out there.
I will put the article in the show notes by Quinn.
It's very good.
I encourage you to read it.
It's short.
It's sweet.
It's not, you know, too pushy or anything.
But in the piece, it mentions in the piece how And I have in caps here, profiles and courage.
Jokingly, I'm being sarcastic.
How the Republicans who never had the cojones there, I know, I know that's not how it's said, but they never really had the nerve, the spine to repeal Obamacare anyway, which they don't.
Now, Joe, that they've resolved themselves to the fact that they're probably going to get annihilated in the midterms.
That these Republicans are like, well, we're going to lose anyway, so we might as well repeal this sucker.
Now, this just goes to like, this is how the lack of courage is so disgusting and disturbing.
But at this point, folks, I'm so desperate that really for anything good to happen with these Republicans that I don't even buy the motivation at this point.
I don't care.
Just do it.
So she writes in the piece how they're so convinced there's going to be a blue wave that these gutless wonders, Joe, are like, well, we might as well make a move on this anyway.
We're all going to lose.
So finally, in order for them to do the right thing, they've got to be inspired by losing, which is just amazing.
Like most teams, professional teams and everything, are inspired by winning.
The Republicans are 0-8 and they're like, you know what?
We're 0-8.
The NFL season's 16 games long, Joe.
We're 0-8.
I think now we should start playing seriously, because what the hell?
We got nothing to lose.
Like, oh, well, you guys are really... Man, are you guys solid.
Thank God we're buying all your gear and merchandise.
Bunch of goofs.
So they're convinced they're going to get smoked.
There's a legitimate push, though, now to say, hey, we're going to lose anyway.
Let's get rid of Obamacare.
And they want it moved towards a block grant program to states.
It's better than what we have now.
model, I'm not saying it's the greatest idea, and it expanded health savings
accounts. Instead, you'll be able to put money into a health savings account
tax-free. It's better than what we have now. Thanks Donnie.
What are you gonna do? I don't know.
But it's the best we've got. I mean seriously, these guys are really
pathetic. Okay, let me get this done because once we get motoring on this,
there's not gonna be any stopping because these texts were, there was a few
I picked out of there that are just gems.
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All right, let's get motoring on this.
So last night I was, Feverishly going through the, what, 49 pages of text that were released.
To be fair, a lot of it's redacted.
I'm not going to say it's a nothing burger.
It's not.
There are some real gems in there.
But it's not the explosive stuff I think we thought, because some of the redactions are redactions on critical information.
This is important stuff, though.
Here are some That are going to blow your mind.
Now, to be clear what I'm talking about, for those who may be listening for the first time, there is an FBI agent, a senior manager in the counterintelligence division by the name of Peter Stroke.
He is intimately involved in both the Mike Flynn case, Trump's national security advisor, former.
He interviewed Flynn.
He is also involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation at a senior level management position.
He is also involved in the investigation into Trump and the special counsel team at the early stages.
This is a critical figure.
There's an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, he's having an affair with.
They text each other over and over.
These texts were alleged to be missing.
They are not.
We now have them, some of them.
They are redacted, but there's some really good stuff in here.
Now, this, here's, this one is, let's see, which one should I get to first?
Here, there's a redaction here.
I'm going to try to fill in the redaction.
Now, to be fair here, I'm going to be speculating a bit, but I'm speculating based on the available evidence.
If I'm wrong, I'll correct it later, but it'd be irresponsible for me to say, we're going to open a case in the blank and not tell you who I think it is.
Here's a quote from one of the texts.
This is Stroke and Page texting back and forth.
We need to open the case we've been waiting on now while Andy is acting.
We need to lock in name redacted in a formal, chargeable way soon.
This is right after Comey's fired.
They're talking about opening up a case on someone while Andy, the number two, Andy McCabe, who's now been terminated himself, he's acting.
Why is he the acting director?
Because Comey was fired, just fired by Trump.
Now, why is this important?
Do you sense in their text a sense of urgency on a charge while Andy is acting?
In other words, while McCabe, who we know is politically tainted, why the sense of urgency to do it before another FBI director?
In other words, what I'm getting at, folks, is if there's an investigation into name redacted, Then why the urgency to do it before a new FBI director?
Joe, if my case against you for felonious mopery is solid, why such urgency while a politically tainted deputy director who's now acting is still in charge?
Folks, do you see where I'm going with this?
If the case is there, why worry about who the director or acting is?
Maybe because McCabe was politically tainted and they knew if they had something on whoever name redacted is they better do it now?
Now, may I suggest to you that this was possibly Mike Flynn.
That they needed to move on Flynn, and here's why I say, because remember they say while Andy is acting.
Andy McCabe and Mike Flynn do not like each other.
They have history together.
Mike Flynn came out in support of a woman who had made some allegations against Andy McCabe about unfair treatment and things like that.
Andy McCabe and Mike Flynn do not like one another.
Mike Flynn, Trump's National Security Advisor, as you probably know, was charged with false statements to the FBI despite Jim Comey saying in a transcribed congressional record, despite his allegations otherwise, he said yesterday, I don't know if I said that, he did, it's transcribed, that they thought Mike Flynn was being honest in the interview.
So just to be clear, Strokes, the investigator in the case, he's texting his girlfriend here, an FBI lawyer, that, hey, we need to move on this guy while Andy's still here.
I think it's pretty obvious that it's probably Mike Flynn.
Knowing Andy Joe doesn't like Flynn and that Flynn did you know if they got to move on they have to move on them they got to get going on this on this case that if they're going to target someone they're going to target him now that person again to be I'm speculating could be the president the name redacted which would be even more devastating by the way it could be Jeff Sessions but I'm guessing it's Flynn based on the Reference to while Andy is acting.
Knowing Andy.
Does that make sense, Joe?
Knowing Andy and Flynn don't like one another.
By the way, can I say a quick story?
I don't tell a lot of personal stuff.
This is funny.
The name redacted thing?
Yeah.
You're like, hey, he was looking for a case against name redacted.
Name redacted?
Who's that?
What's this for?
You know, who's on first, right?
When I was a young Secret Service agent, this is a true story.
It's a little embarrassing, but I'll tell it anyway because I love you all.
I get in the office and my boss says to me, I'm like as green as you can get.
I'm in the office a day.
And my boss goes, hey, read these case files and we're going to transfer them over to you.
And some of them were fugitive cases and see if you can find any new tidbits and we can go get these people.
So I'm reading, it's like 10 or 20 cases.
And in all these cases, I keep seeing this name, Fanu Lanu.
And I'm like, Fanu, who is this Fanu Lanou guy?
I'm like, gosh, this guy is like involved in everything.
He's in every single case.
Do you know where I'm going?
Do you have any idea?
I know, go.
Good, because it'll be funnier when I tell you who Fanu Lanou is.
I know that federal agents listening now are laughing their butts off.
They're like, you are the dumbest.
I really had no idea.
Fanu Lanou was in every case.
They're like, and we tracked Fanu Lanou this.
I'm like, my gosh, this guy is like Kaiser Sosa.
He's involved in everything.
This is the John Gotti of New York crime, Fanu Lanou.
Fanu Lanu means first name unknown, last name unknown.
It's basically, you stick it, but you don't know that every case has an unknown target.
Fanu Lanu.
And I was like, thank the Lord.
I figured it out in about 10 minutes.
But if I would have went to my office and been like, boss, I got it.
There is a criminal mastermind in New York right now, the Secret Service is tracking by the name of Fanu Lanu.
He would have, I think I would have been fired the next day for stupidity, but that's a true story.
I tell my wife that, she thought it was the greatest thing ever.
Fanu Lanu.
So name redacted is not a real person.
That means it was a name redacted in case the very small portion of people did not understand what I was saying.
I think that could be Flynn.
I think that is, and I think that text is, Amazing.
We need to open it.
Why?
If you had a case, what's the pressure while Andy's there?
Is Andy politically tainted?
We know that.
Okay, here's where it gets really good.
And this completely, again, I don't mean to keep hammering the source, but dismantles the theory that Mueller is a nonpartisan actor.
He is not a nonpartisan actor.
They were targeting Trump from the beginning.
Now we have some texts, finally, that give us evidence that this is an investigation targeted at Trump, not an investigation targeted at crime.
And Mueller had zero interest in putting together a nonpartisan team.
At one point, Stroke and Page text each other, and Stroke says, I'm emailing with Aaron.
Emailing with Aaron?
Now, if you all listen and you remember the names, you may see where I'm going with this.
You may not.
Even if you remember the names, this may be a little confusing.
This is before, remember, this text is before any official appointments on the special counsel.
Bob Mueller's bulldog team to go after Trump has not been named yet.
Yet Stroke, who knows all of this stuff about the Trump team and the spy operation and everything, he's texting his girlfriend how he's emailing with Aaron.
Who's Aaron?
Aaron is most likely Aaron Zebley.
Aaron Zebley was Bob Mueller's old chief of staff.
Aaron Zebley at the time worked for WilmerHale, which is a law firm where Bob Mueller had been employed.
What was he emailing Aaron about?
Aaron Zebley, who is now on the special counsel job, was not appointed yet.
What was he emailing Zebley about?
We got to see those emails.
Were they preemptively planning their attack Trump strategy?
Now, If you are a remember-the-names person, because you're a regular listener, the best advice I can ever give you, remember the names.
They're always going to creep on you.
Always.
You got to have them on the tip of your tongue.
What's the significance of Aaron Zebley?
One, Zebley's Mueller's old chief of staff.
All right, so Mueller appoints people he knows.
No big deal.
Mueller worked with him in this law firm.
Here's where it gets crazy.
Zebley has not been appointed.
He's already emailing an FBI agent.
And Zebley was the guy who was acting as an attorney for Justin Cooper, the guy in Hillary Clinton's orbit, a staffer for the Clinton team, who admitted to smashing the BlackBerries, covering the email scandal up.
So let's be clear on this and this is why I still can't believe some people think Mueller's treating this thing fairly.
He's not.
I think he found stuff that he's got to refer because he can't run away from it.
Mueller's strategy appears to be from the start to bring people in that would cover the Clinton operation up and attack Trump.
They're emailing Peter Stroke.
He's in the text before they've even been appointed to the special counsel.
Joe, do you understand what I'm saying here, buddy?
They're emailing each other before the dude's even been appointed.
The guy who they're emailing is the same guy who represented the Clinton guy who admits his role in the email scandal.
How is it that a government employee, by the way, is emailing Aaron Zebley before he was even appointed?
Now it gets better!
This is Stroke texting his girlfriend, Paige, who's a lawyer.
And I quote, You could go work with Aaron.
For him.
You heard it from me first.
And go to Wilmer when it's done.
Wilmer Hale, the law firm.
Was there some kind of trade-off here?
I want to see those emails now from Aaron.
You see what may be being imposed?
Folks, these were mega bombshells on this thing, right?
Is he saying that him and Aaron were talking and that there was some kind of deal cut?
We don't know that.
We haven't seen the emails.
But you could go work for Aaron in a high-paying law firm after we're done with this?
He says, you heard it from me first?
How does he know?
Did Zebley say something in the emails?
Like, hey, you know, we go get Trump, you guys all get nice gigs at WilmerHale when we're done.
Where Mueller worked and where Zebley worked?
Is that in there?
Maybe, may not.
Was some verbal promise made?
How does Stroke know this?
How does Stroke know that, quote, you could go work with Aaron?
And later on he says, and go to Wilmer, when that's what they're talking about, WilmerHale, this high paying law firm, million dollar jobs.
Again, I only bring this up to refute the far-left talking point that the Mueller investigation, oh, it's all above board.
Really?
They were emailing each other before anyone was even appointed about jobs afterwards in Mueller's law firm.
Yeah, folks, don't worry.
Sounds totally legit.
No problem there at all.
Nothing to see here, folks.
All right.
Here's another one.
This one, I don't know how to take this one, but it was interesting.
Picked it out of the lot there.
Stroke's texting page after the appointment of Mueller, and he says, I can hear the shredders in the White House and DOJ from here.
Now, you could take that either way.
Obviously, if you're a liberal, you could say, well, you know, they had a, they believe Trump was guilty of significant crimes in the White House and the DOJ are shredding stuff.
Or you could take it another way, which is where I'm leaning.
Again, chalk it up to my partisan affiliation.
I don't care.
I'm trying to be as objective as I can.
It's not easy.
I could hear the shredders in the White House and DOJ from here.
The special counsel wasn't appointed yet.
Shredding what?
Does that mean they already had this idea that Trump was guilty before this even started?
The investigation hadn't even begun!
The special counsel was just reported.
In other words, Joe, they came into this with this, which we already know based on their texts and their hatred for Trump and how they can smell the Trump supporters.
They'd text each other in the past.
That this was never going to be a fair investigation from the start.
That's like saying, all right, here we go.
Special counsel to Joe on suspicions of felonious mopery.
And I text, uh, you know, my, my girlfriend that during the invest, who's working on the investigation, I can hear Joe shredding everything now.
I pulled it out just to set up for you that the intent was there, I believe, to already set up the Trump team.
And I think it makes a world of sense.
Okay.
Let's see, what else do I got here?
Alright, I got some news of the day I want to get to, but another great piece.
I'm trying to get this guy on my show today on NRATV, which is available every night, 530p Eastern Time, live, NRATV.com.
It's free.
It's also on Roku, Google Chromecast, Apple TV, Amazon Fire.
Thank you for all the feedback.
The show is doing bonkers numbers.
We appreciate it.
But I cover some of the same material at night in a little bit more detail with charts, and I cover some other stuff as well.
So check it out.
I'm trying to get the author of this piece on tonight.
There's a real clear investigations piece by Lee Smith.
Remember the names in a good way.
Lee Smith, I brought up his name before.
This guy is just knocking it out of the park.
He is.
Whether he's writing a tablet mag or real clear, he is just killing it.
It's a rather lengthy piece.
I'm not sure how many, about 1,200 words.
Take you about 10 minutes to read.
But it is terrific.
It's at Real Clear Investigations.
It'll be at the show notes.
Someone tweeted me today, Dan, you give us a lot of homework.
If you really want to understand this case and the devastating effects this is going to have on our constitutional republic, I suggest you read this piece.
We've been talking over the last few days about how the bombshell interview on Monday's show, which Monday's show is our most listened to show ever.
Please go back and listen, where I cover Devin Nunez bombshell interview with Maria Bartiromo, where he discloses on a weekend Fox interview that no official intel at all was used to start the Trump investigation.
In other words, they investigated the President of the United States, President-elect, and their political opponents with nothing.
It was an amazing statement.
It's on Monday's show, which has been really crushing it.
But I said to you that he's very clear at one point that he's talking about official information.
So I've suggested to you, based on the reporting and the information out there, well, was there unofficial information?
Was there a back channel set up?
To not leave a paper trail.
I go over that on Tuesday's show as well.
Information moved to the cloud from another cloud.
Another Lee Smith gem, by the way.
Remember that show, Joe?
How they covered their paper trail.
So understand, before I get into this, what I'm telling you.
Just because Nunez said there was no official channels of information exchange, he did not say there weren't unofficial channels.
In other words, back channels.
Now, one of the theories, operating theories out there now has been the back channel was set up through the State Department.
The State Department is not an intelligence entity.
It is not a law enforcement entity.
It is a diplomatic vehicle for the United States to conduct diplomacy with foreign countries.
It is not an intelligence gathering operation.
You know, I need to explain this to you because people are having a hard time understanding how devastating what I'm telling you is.
If an unofficial backchannel through the State Department was set up to conduct law enforcement matters, we have a very serious problem.
Joe, again, I'll ask you another question.
You may know the answer, you may not, but you are the audience on BuzzFeed.
When I was in the Secret Service, right, we were actual law enforcement officers.
We had GS-1811 law enforcement.
I can arrest you on federal crimes.
We were prohibited from gathering intelligence.
Now, I'm going to ask you a question after this.
Why do you think the Secret Service, who are actual law enforcement officers, the State Department people are not, outside of DSS, they are not.
That's the protection entities, right?
The State Department diplomats are not law enforcement.
We were prohibited from gathering intelligence.
Why would you think if the Secret Service was protecting, say, the President of Pakistan, That we would not be gathering intelligence on the President of Pakistan the whole time.
You think the President of Pakistan would be comfortable with us in the room if he felt that the Secret Service agents were taking notes?
Absolutely not.
No.
Pretty easy to figure out, right Joe?
This is how serious the fine line between intelligence, law enforcement, and diplomacy is.
The State Department are not intelligence gathering officials.
The trust goes down the drain, yeah.
It does.
If there was a back channel to spy on the Trump team of information flowing into the State Department to avoid the intelligence and law enforcement community's paper trail, we have a very, very serious problem.
Because they're not even talking about spying on the President of Pakistan, they're talking about spying on the President of the United States.
Understood.
I mean...
What?! !
If you read Lee Smith's piece, he puts some hints out there, and these names you'll... I'm not taking credit for, but we've discussed a lot of this in the past, but he sums it up so much better, I think, than I did in this piece.
Remember the names.
He talks about a back channel between Sid Blumenthal, Cody Shear, and the State Department.
Sid Blumenthal and Cody Shear were clear as day feeding information to the State Department.
Sid Blumenthal is not even a government employee.
He is a Clinton hatchet man.
He's not a governor.
He's strictly a political operator trying to get contracts for himself in Libya.
Cody Scheer is a private citizen.
He is a political hatchet guy.
He has zero law enforcement, investigative, or government authority at all.
It looks clear as day now, Joe, that the air quotes here, unofficial channel, was probably flowing through these two political hatchet men who were giving the information to the State Department.
This is not open for dispute.
Jonathan Weiner, an official in the State Department, has already written an op-ed stating how he spoke to Blumenthal and passed this information to the FBI.
I believe he's covering his own butt because he realizes he's got a serious problem.
Now, here's where it gets crazy.
From Lee Smith's piece.
Weiner, talking about Jonathan Weiner, who remember, does work for the State Department.
He's not an intel guy.
He's not a law enforcement guy.
Weiner asserted that in reading Cody Shearer's memo, which Joe, not coincidentally, contains some of the same information that's in the Christopher Steele dossier.
I'll get to that in a second.
Don't forget that.
Weiner asserted that in reading Cody Shearer's memo, he was, quote, struck how some of the material echoed Steele's.
but appeared to involve different sources.
He shared Scheer's memo with Steele, who described it as potentially collateral information, presumably to buttress his own findings.
The FBI, as Weiner explained, had asked Steele to provide any supporting information.
From the Graslie-Graham letter, it appears that Steele gave the FBI the Scheer report, titled FSB Interview, the second in a series.
Oh my gosh.
Do you understand what I just told you?
You may not.
You may, but you may.
Here's what I just told you.
Hillary Clinton hires Christopher Steele to generate information on Donald Trump.
The information Steele generates is the same information that appears in Cody Scheer's memo.
Cody Scheer is a political hatchet guy.
Steele needs, in order, Christopher Steele, a foreign, foreign guy, a former foreign intelligence officer, working with, this is amazing, working against the U.S.
citizen with the FBI and the Hillary Clinton team.
Steele's information he presents to the FBI.
In other words, hey, I'm Christopher Steele, we should spy on Donald Trump and here's why, Joe.
The FBI apparently says to him from Lee Smith's account, we need some more information to buttress those findings.
Okay.
In other words, not enough.
Right.
What is Steele Brigham?
Cody Scheer's memo.
Which is the same stuff.
Do you see the circle of treachery?
Scheer's memo, Scheer is totally a political guy, has the same information as the Steele memo.
Steele brings his memo to the FBI.
Hey, we got a spy on Trump.
Well, what's your evidence of that?
Well, here, look, the Scheer memo says the same thing.
Folks, it's the same information.
You want to add one more element to the circle of doom?
In order to buttress the Steele Memo, which is buttressed by the Shear Memo, that has the same information as the Steele Memo, they use press reports from Yahoo News by reporter Michael Isikoff that's taken from the Steele Memo.
What the hell is going on here?
You want to see the unofficial channel here?
Steele has fake information.
Scheer has the same fake information.
They feed the same fake information to a reporter.
The reporter cites Steele who cites Scheer who cites Steele who cites the reporter.
The circle of stupid was Did anybody at the bureau think to ask, hey guys, is this the same source?
Think about it.
Bunch of circle jerks.
Big time!
I got a guy who's got a beef against Joey Bagadonets.
Guy comes into the FBI.
He's making all this up.
I saw Joey Bagadonets in a Golden Shower episode in Russia.
I say, you know what, guy?
I can't investigate based on that.
You gotta verify your information.
He comes back with another guy who says the same thing.
No, no.
I have information about a guy who saw a guy who saw this Golden Shower thing.
Keep in mind, they're all citing the same guy.
And then the guy comes back on the third day and goes, no, now I'm really sure it happened because a reporter at Yahoo News talked about the Golden Shower thing.
Hey, how did the reporter get that story?
Oh, I told him!
That's not verification!
Guys, do you understand what's going on here?
Like, the tier one level BS?
Scheer cites Steele, who cites Scheer, who cites Steele, who cites a reporter who cites Steele.
And they're like, oh, we verified it!
You know what this is?
Here, let me give you a simple analogy.
You know those kids used to cheat on tests in school?
Oh, yeah.
One time, I remember being in Archbishop Malloy, where I went to high school, and I remember these two kids got caught.
And they got caught cheating because they had the exact same wrong answer.
Exactly.
It was clear they copied.
It was like, you know, who was the 43rd President of the United States?
Calvin Coolidge!
Like, who would screw that up?
It's not even close, right?
It was Bush.
So, they got the same question wrong.
This is what happened.
The FBI got the information wrong, but they cited people who were cheating off each other.
They were just looking at each other's paper.
Scheer's looking at Steele.
Steele's looking at Scheer.
The reporter's looking at Steele.
They're all citing each other, and they're laundering the information, cleaning it to make it look unique through other people.
Oh, if we give it to John Weiner at the State Department, Oh, he'll clean it up.
If we give it to Christopher Steele, Joe, who used to be a British spy, then it'll look legit.
In other words, if Mother Teresa cheated and we get her on it, it'll look like we didn't cheat because Mother Teresa had the same wrong answer, right?
You say, this wasn't a conspiracy to cheat.
Mother Teresa wrote Calvin Coolidge, too.
You see what I'm saying?
This is what they did.
They laundered the information to what they thought would be clean sources, knowing sheer was going to be dirty.
Scheer would have been laughed out of the FBI.
He was a political hatchet guy.
So they launder it through Weiner.
They launder it through Steele.
They launder it through Isikoff.
It's the same wrong answer!
The same one!
It's the same wrong answer that makes its way into court.
Now, just one final egg-scrambling episode to show you how disgusting and polluted this circle of doom was.
Cody Scheer.
Cody Scheer's brother-in-law is a guy named Strobe Talbot.
So keep in mind, a political hatchet guy who's cheating on the test and is laundering fake information on Trump.
His brother-in-law is a guy named Strobe Talbot, who was a high-level diplomat in the Bill Clinton administration.
Follow?
Strobe Talbot, Scheer's brother-in-law, his chief of staff was a woman by the name of Victoria Newland.
Newland is alleged to have passed the information laundered through the State Department whiner on to John Kerry and the FBI.
They all know each other, folks.
Newland was the Chief of Staff to Talbot, who's Scheer's brother-in-law.
By the way, Victoria Nuland was a high-level diplomat in the State Department who also put together the Benghazi talking points.
Where was Sidney Blumenthal?
Cody Scheer's partner?
The originators of the fake information?
Where was he working?
Libya.
Benghazi.
Nuland knew everything.
They all know each other, folks.
This was information, test cheating, passed from one to the other to the other.
And they said, if we can get a couple of really good students to cheat with us, no one will believe it's a cheating scam because, no, Johnny wouldn't cheat.
Johnny's a good kid.
Disgusting.
Really disgusting what happened.
All right, let me wrap with some news of the day so I don't let you go on Friday.
GDP numbers came in.
Disappointing in the first quarter, 2.3%.
Listen, I'm not covering for anything.
I don't do that.
Don't be discouraged.
Pretty much everybody expected first quarter, January, February, March, okay?
GDP, a measure of our economic growth, gross domestic product.
2.3 is probably a little bit below.
We had hit 3% in some prior quarters.
Have no fear.
The tax cuts have not kicked in yet.
There's a lot of seasonal junk that goes into that.
Nobody really expected an explosive first quarter.
I'm telling you, don't worry.
The numbers, by the way, are above Obama's average, which is 1.9 to 2%.
So we're still doing better than Obama, even though they disappointed.
Don't sweat it.
The second quarter is going to be okay.
I have an article in the show notes about it.
Take a look.
Even CNBC gives a pretty fair projection of how not to sweat these numbers too bad.
So don't worry too much.
Investment's great.
Investment's looking really good.
The job market's looking strong.
I wouldn't worry very much about that, but I do want to put it out there.
North Korea, major, major breakthrough in North Korea.
Listen, folks, I mean, I'm not willing to put too much stock into what the North Koreans say, but I'll tell you, having them at least discuss the potential to denuclearize the peninsula is far better than having them discuss nuke in the United States.
This is not a competition to see who has a bigger... You get what I'm saying?
This is serious.
I mean, I'm not talking down to anyone.
Please don't take it the wrong way, but this is good.
If it turns out to be a nothing burger later on, fine, but I'd rather have them talking about peace than talking about nuclear annihilation.
I love my kids too, right?
Sad story over in England.
Alfie, you know, the case of Alfie lost the legal fight.
He's a child who has taken off life support.
He lived the British government for some reason with their qualities.
They don't want to give him any more additional health care.
I just want to bring this up that it's, this is, you know, evidence exhibit number one against government-run health care.
The parents, they have to be absolutely horrified.
That legal fight appears to be coming to an end and it's basically the government putting this kid to death, which is just beyond disgusting.
And as I said, I'll put some of these stories in the show notes today.
This one's a good read, too, at IJ Review.
As I warned you about, the teacher protests are spreading.
These teacher protests, they smell victory in West Virginia.
They protested and got a big raise.
Listen, I love teachers.
Thank God for everything you do.
But I'm sorry, but striking and, you know, keeping these students out of school, I just don't think is the right approach.
When I was a police officer, we were forbidden from doing that.
There were other ways to negotiate.
They're starting to spread.
They're starting to spread rapidly in red states.
And I think it's being done in advance of a Supreme Court decision that's going to entirely, I think it's a Janus case, that's going to deconstruct public unions.
You're not going to have to join anymore.
And I think the teachers' unions smell that, so they're trying to get everything they can now, money-wise, before they get out.
I love teachers, love you to death, but this is the wrong move.
Read that story, though.
They're starting to spread.
You're gonna see more of this, I promise you.
Alright, folks, thank you for another great week of shows.
Please go to my website, Bongino.com, and I humbly implore you as a...
Your radio host and producer Joe asks as well, if you wouldn't mind, please subscribe to our show.
It helps us on the charts dramatically.
We were down to, I think, number 16 yesterday on iTunes.
iTunes, so you can subscribe on iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Spotify.
Please, if you get the chance, please hit that subscribe button.
It really, really matters to us.
Thanks a lot, and I will see you all on Monday.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
