In this episode I address the disastrous decision by Mitt Romney to attack President Trump. I also address the stunning new revelations about the Obama administration’s efforts to destroy LTG Mike Flynn and the Trump team.
News Picks:
President Trump is not backing down on the wall.
Sell-out Mitt Romney gets slammed by his own niece for his disgusting attack on President Trump.
Stunning new evidence emerges that LTG Mike Flynn was set up.
Was the Steele dossier the basis for the framing of the Trump team?
4 spicy debates to monitor in the incoming congress.
Are we physically training our soldiers the wrong way?
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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, how are you today?
Well, hello to you in New York.
Yeah, man, what a day yesterday.
Joe and I were kind of chatting a bit off the air.
One of these days I'll be able to tell you some crazy stuff's been happening, folks.
All good.
Uh, really all good.
Uh, most of it, of course, thanks to you and your support of this show, which is now, um, I guess we can say Joe, uh, been blown up in importance dramatically lately.
Uh, so, uh, thank you to all of you.
So, uh, we really appreciate it.
Thank you everyone.
Also who watched the five yesterday on the Fox news channel, 5.00 PM.
Eastern time.
If you DVR it, watch it.
I was on yesterday.
Uh, had a good time going back and forth with, uh, with the, with the good crew over there.
Why do they always put you on with Marie Harf?
Because we like debating each other.
It's so much fun.
Listen, unlike liberals, I am not, although Joe, I am not an inherently angry person.
I'm not.
I get fired up and passionate about issues that matter to me, but I don't have any personal beefs with anyone.
So Marie and I like to debate on here and I think it works for TV.
So I'll be back with Marie today, Thursday, and tomorrow, Friday, on The Five.
Please tune in.
It gives us a great boost and I really appreciate it.
And thanks to all the liberal losers at Media Matters and stuff who watch it, listen to my show, and do free promotion for it.
Thanks, losers.
Appreciate it.
Marie, by the way, seems to be a very nice person.
No, it's just, you know, on the air, you gotta go at it, though, man.
You gotta defend your turf, and that's the way it is.
But Joe, honestly, that's what makes for good debates.
As I said yesterday on The Five, folks, the difference with Fox and everywhere else is Fox hires actual liberals, and although it may seem annoying on the air, I get it.
I mean, we're conservatives.
We don't want to hear about how big government rules and we're all stupid.
We're not.
It's totally not true.
We know that.
It makes for interesting debates.
Folks, honestly, do you want to watch the debate on the air?
No, I agree.
No, I agree.
No, you don't want to watch that.
You want something spicy.
So Fox hires actual liberals.
CNN hires fake conservatives like Ana Navarro, who's really a liberal.
So it works well.
Listen, I got a lot to get through today.
We haven't even covered Mittens yet.
Mitt Romney.
I just absolutely filleted Mitt Romney and his disgusting sellout op-ed to the Washington Post.
This guy is really a sad sack.
Romney For those of you who amazingly may have missed the story, Mitt Romney, former presidential candidate, multi-time loser in the presidential race,
Now listen, to be fair, I ran for office and I lost too, and if you put your hat in a ring, good for you.
But, you know, constantly taking shots at President Trump while you couldn't bring home the bacon, or as my daughter says, obtain the grain, or I guess the new thing is get that bread.
That's what these kids say now, right?
For a guy who couldn't do it to be taking shots at Trump is ridiculous.
But I filleted him on Fox & Friends on the 5 yesterday.
And just quickly, here's what I want to, because I don't want to, you know, re-cover material I've already covered.
On other shows, but this is important.
The reason the Romney op-ed about Donald Trump written in the Washington Post is so disgusting is, number one, what it covers.
He lays out in the op-ed, Joe, incredibly and seemingly with no sense of self-awareness at all, Romney, how successful Trump has been on fighting back and combating China's aggressive use of economic warfare to basically hollow out the United States' manufacturing economic base.
He talks about his Romney talking about Trump's successes there, Trump's successes on deregulation, Trump's successes on tax reform, Trump's various successes on economic growth.
He lays this whole case out and then in the end he starts talking about Trump's character as it's some kind of a net negative.
Listen, I'm not willing to concede that point anymore, okay?
No, I'm not.
I've told you the stories about Donald Trump.
I've heard behind the scenes what he does for people, what he does for his employers, what he does for his staff.
You've heard these stories if you've been here before.
I am not willing to concede anymore that a guy who gets into office like Donald Trump makes a series of promises and does his best to keep them, as we're seeing now by this border wall fight, where you know damn well, Joe, if President Mitt Romney was in office right now, he would have folded on that border wall 10 minutes after the government shut down.
Yep.
Because he doesn't have the spine or the guts to stick by his word.
Trump did not do it.
Trump is still standing by his word on this because it mattered and it was a campaign promise and that is what's been lost.
Romney taking a shot at Trump's character is absolutely outrageous and absurd.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what disgusts me about politicians and should disgust you too.
How do you measure character in a politician?
How?
You measure character by the ability to do, and try to do, because not everything is, it's not a monarchy, Trump is going to require some cooperation by the House and the Senate, but the ability to make a promise and stick to it.
That is how I measure presidential character.
You want, listen, you want a preacher?
You want someone else?
Fine, go to church.
It reminds me of that line in, what was that, Richard Gere movie.
Where he says, the language is a little more colorful, but you know, he wants, he says, you know, you want justice, go, go find a prostitute.
He says, you know, you want to get screwed, go to court.
I mean, that's a lie.
I forget the movie it is, but this is the thing, you know, Justice and politics?
What is justice and politics?
Justice and politics and character and politics has to be based on the ability of a politician to make a point out of keeping promises he made.
The border wall was one of them.
You and I know darn well right now that if this had anything to do, anything to do with any other president, the Bush administration or anyone else, they would have folded on this government shutdown already.
Yet he's still standing fast on this Trump and he's saying we're not doing this without this wall.
I don't want to beat this thing to death because I talked about Romney yesterday.
I filleted this guy.
But this guy is done.
He is finished with me.
I want nothing to do with him.
Not that he cares.
I don't care either.
We have no relationship.
We never had a relationship.
We ran in the same election cycle.
Joe, remember me in the Senate that time?
We ran in the same election cycle.
He did absolutely nothing for me.
Zero.
You know, I supported him and spoke positively about him in the past, but Mitt Romney is a sellout.
Remember what Mitt Romney did too.
Look, kids, it's Willard, the fake Republican!
Every time.
Every opportunity he had, fake Romney to sell him out, he did, Joe.
I know.
Every single time.
First, remember, let's look at the history of Mitt Romney flip-flops with regards to Trump, just so you understand what we're talking about, right?
Good, yeah.
When Romney runs for president in 2012, what does he do?
He goes out and he meets, he flies out, yeah, he grovels to Donald Trump and he seeks his support, right, in 2012.
Yeah.
He then loses that presidential race, obviously.
Donald Trump runs in the next cycle in 2016.
Mitt Romney goes and gives a speech declaring Donald Trump unfit for the office, calling him a fraud.
Who's the real fraud?
The guy who sought the guy's support and then in turn calls him a fraud?
Or the guy given the, you know, the guy he's claiming to be a fraud.
And the answer is Romney's the fraud, of course.
And then Romney, after giving that speech, Trump gives him a pass because Trump has character, unlike Romney, gives him a pass.
He meets with him up in Bedminster, New Jersey to discuss a potential Secretary of State appointment.
He meets with him again in a famous dinner meeting in Manhattan with Romney, giving him a second and a third chance to redeem himself.
What does Romney do?
Romney screws him over again.
Even worse, Romney decides to run for Senate from Utah, and despite the fact that he believes, quote, Trump has low character, what does he do?
He accepts Donald Trump's endorsement, which probably pushes Romney over the edge and helps him in that race get through to the end, because Trump's still relatively popular in Utah.
Who's the real fraud?
Mmm, something smells.
Who's the real fraud, folks?
Yeah, it does.
And it's Romney right now.
It's ridiculous.
Fraud.
Yeah, to be serious though, I'm with you, this sucks what Romney's trying to pull.
Oh, it's your first, I mean he swears in today, his first official, his first official what act is the Senate's going to be backing up an op-ed where he takes a shot at our president?
Folks, I'm not willing to concede that character point anymore, I'm sorry.
I've heard too many things about Donald Trump.
Listen, I got no skin in this game, okay?
I don't.
I'm not a member of the Trump administration.
I was never paid by the Trump team.
I was never any kind of a paid surrogate or anything like that.
I'm telling you the stories I've heard about Donald Trump from the people who surrounded him and know him intimately are not the stories about Donald Trump that Mitt Romney wants you to believe.
They're just not.
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Okay, there were some just stunning articles yesterday, you really have to read, that came out, one by Lee Smith in The Federalist, and another by John Solomon in The Hill.
We haven't discussed a lot of Spygate stuff recently, but this was some really, really explosive stuff that came out yesterday, and I wanted to make sure I got this across to you, because it's something we've been discussing for a really long time.
One of them, one of the topics we've been discussing a long time at Spy Game, folks, is what is paragraph one?
When you write a report on a counterintelligence investigation, on a criminal investigation, if Joe is investigating me for a bank robbery or whatever it is, at some point Joe has to write a report on it.
And what I call paragraph one is how that case initiated, how it started.
One of the biggest cases I ever had was a bank fraud case that all started, I remember I was driving in to do a protection detail for the leader of Grenada.
And I get a call from this Bank of America investigator.
He says, hey, I think I got a fraudulent credit card charge at a Home Depot in Long Island.
And I was like, oh man, I really don't have time for this right now.
It turned out to be a $300 million credit card fraud case, one of the biggest cases I ever worked.
That was paragraph one.
On such and such a date, bank investigator's name was Bob.
I won't say his last name, called me and said they had a fraudulent credit card fraud charge and then we turned that case into a bigger case and more charges and rolled them into more people and where they were getting the cards and who they were getting them from.
Any criminal investigator knows what I'm talking about.
Every case has a paragraph one.
What we've been asking about the Spygate case.
Why did they spy on Donald Trump's team?
Why?
We've been asking repeatedly for you regular listeners, what the heck is paragraph one?
How did this thing start?
The story has changed ladies and gentlemen, four or five and six times.
How the case actually started.
I think we got an answer.
Joe, what have I been telling you about John Solomon from the Hill from a long time, the reporter?
He's got it together, man.
Right?
Have I not said this?
Yeah.
Folks, I've rarely, listen, now almost a year and a half, we've been covering Spygate.
If you go back and listen to episode 628, it's on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Dan Bongino.
It's under the title of my most listened to show ever, episode 628.
If you go back and listen to that now, very, Almost 99% of what we said a year ago is now coming true.
I've told you from the beginning, because I'm sure of it, that John Solomon from The Hill has information and understands this whole case and I think he has shed some light on what I anticipate is paragraph one and how this started.
Stories in the show notes today, please read it, it discusses an infamous Mike Flynn trip to Russia, now infamous, 2015 trip to Russia that Lieutenant General Mike Flynn had taken at the time, right after he left office under Obama.
Folks, I think this is paragraph one.
Yeah, even Joe's like, because he's been dealing with this for so long.
Remember what paragraph one?
How did the case against Donald Trump and his team, the Spygates case, start?
We have never had a coherent story.
We were told it was Carter Page.
Then we were told it was George Papadopoulos.
Then they went back to Carter Page.
The version of this event has changed a thousand times.
Folks, it makes all the sense in the world now.
Solomon has always known this story.
I knew it.
I knew it from the start.
So the piece he has today, here's the gist of it.
Lieutenant General Flynn is an enemy of the Obama administration.
He is Barack Obama's Defense Intelligence Agency Director.
He's one of the most senior level members of the intelligence community.
He's a member of the military, but he does not believe in the Iran deal.
He does not subscribe to the Obama agenda, and he's been vocal about it.
He understands with clear eyes the world, the threats in the world, And he doesn't want to subscribe to the blindfold that the Obama administration took on when engaging with the Iranians.
Joe, if any of this, you're the audience ombudsman, if any of this is confusing, please stop me.
This is going to be one of the more important shows we've done in a while on this topic.
Alright, 10-4.
Flynn is an ideological enemy of the Obama administration.
They give him the boot.
Here's the problem with giving Mike Flynn the boot show.
Flynn is a senior member of the United States intelligence community, or was in 2015.
Flynn knows everything.
Well, not everything, but almost everything.
He understands the threat, he understands the Obama administration acquiescing to the threat, and he knows we've got a real problem.
Flynn has to be silenced.
You may say, I don't get it.
Where's this going with the Spygate?
Oh, no, no.
Hang out.
Hang tight.
Hang tight.
Flynn has to be silenced, Joe.
Flynn gets an invite to go to a dinner in Moscow in 2015.
Ladies and gentlemen, who reports back to the intelligence community about Flynn's activities at that dinner in Moscow?
Stefan Halper.
The very same Central Intelligence Agency spy who contacts Carter Page and George Papadopoulos later in an effort to report back to the intelligence community on their work with the Trump team as well.
I want you to give the job to Halper.
It all makes sense now.
Do you understand why in the beginning, if you go back to episode 628, I've been constantly hammering you on the Iran deal and the central component of the Iran deal to all of this.
Flynn was an enemy of the Iran deal.
Listen, I can't say it any simpler than this.
He was an enemy of the Iran deal, therefore an enemy of the Obama administration.
Flynn is given the boot by the Obama administration.
Flynn has to be silenced.
Flynn takes a trip to Russia.
Some genius in the Obama administration goes, I got an idea.
Let's get one of our spies to report that at that dinner with the Russians that Flynn was engaged in some surreptitious activity with this woman Lakova, her last name Lakova.
Keep in mind, there was no surreptitious activity.
He spoke to this woman for a few minutes.
Nobody else reported anything strange about the interaction at all.
And then all of a sudden, Joe, what do we have?
We have the Russians are trying to take over.
And then mysteriously, Flynn starts talking with the Trump team and advocating for the Trump team.
Paragraph one makes all the sense in the world now.
Flynn.
It was all about Flynn from the start.
It was about Flynn.
But what happened?
I'll go into the, I haven't even scratched the surface yet.
We're going to go light on ANSA because this is a really important show.
Don't miss this.
This is the key to understanding Spygate.
Flynn and the Iran deal.
This is all about the cover up for the Obama administration.
Flynn then starts speaking with the Trump team and advocating for the Trump team, doing speeches for the Trump team.
Now, the Obama team, which previously considered Flynn an ideological opponent and an enemy, and a guy who was full of information about all their misdeeds.
Even worse, Joe, now isn't just a renegade out there.
But now he's out there on the opposing team talking with Trump.
The Obama team's got to be crapping their pants, thinking to themselves, gosh, what are we going to do now?
Not only does Flynn know what happened with the Iran deal and everything else, but Flynn is now going to be working for what?
Going to be working for Trump, who could possibly win this presidential election?
Don't you find it awfully odd?
That when Trump meets with Obama after the election, when Obama's still the president, but Trump's the president-elect during the transition phase, Joe, there's only one name Obama brings up when he talks to Trump about the dangers of this person being in his administration.
Who's that name, Joe?
Flynn.
Flynn!
Flynn!
Flynn.
Flynn is an existential threat to the Obama administration when Trump gets in office.
And the Obama team knows this during the transition and elsewhere because Flynn has all the information about the Iran deal, the threat the Iranians posed, how the Obama administration sidelined these threats.
Flynn has always been the target.
Paragraph one of the effort to spy on the Trump team is an effort to take down Flynn.
But it doesn't work.
Why?
Please, please, please read this Solomon piece of my show notes today.
If you subscribe to my email list, I will email them to you.
I'll make it easy for you every day.
Please do it.
I'm humbly, respectfully asking you to read this.
This will all make sense to you.
What's the problem with the setup of Mike Flynn?
Again, Flynn has to be set up to take down him and the Trump team at the same time.
So what more of a convenient narrative than, look, Flynn went over to Russia at a dinner and he sat near Putin and we're going to use that spy, Stefan Halpern.
And when it doesn't work against Flynn, the setup via Halpern and everything, what does Halpern do?
He moves on to Page and Papadopoulos, the same CIA asset.
It doesn't work.
Why?
Because as Solomon reports in his piece, Joe Flynn reported the Russia trip to the DIA.
He reported the whole trip beforehand.
Not only did he report the trip beforehand, Joe, despite the fact that he had already left as the DIA director, Joe, he came back and did a debrief and provided valuable intelligence on the Russians to our people.
Dude!
Dude!
So Joe, let's just be clear here.
Oh!
So let's just play stupid liberal for a minute, because that's the only way.
Because you may be scratching your head going, this doesn't make any sense.
If the Obama administration's trying to claim that Flynn's a Russian spy, how exactly is it that Flynn briefs them before he leaves, and then does a debrief when he comes back, assisting the intelligence agencies on what he learned about the Russians on this Russia trip?
The answer is you're not confused.
That's actually correct.
Because he was not a Russian spy.
Folks, he was set up.
There is speculation in the piece by Solomon, who I'm telling you knows everything.
He has the story.
This guy's sources on the inside are impeccable.
There's an insinuation in the piece that Halper, the intelligence agency asset, the U.S.
government spy that was interacting with Flynn, may have made it so or look so at the event and put Flynn near Putin at that table and near this woman, Lakova, for the sole purpose of setting him up to be a Russian stooge, even though he wasn't the entire time.
They set him up to be a Russian stooge despite the fact, Joe.
That before he left, he briefed the DIA and came back and was briefed again.
There is no way he was over there for anything other than what he said he was, which was a simple business meeting.
He would never have briefed the DIA on the way back otherwise.
I didn't see this coming as a possible paragraph one.
I didn't.
You know, I'm not, uh, I don't, you know, I don't want to being honest with you.
You know, I know you are.
I know you are.
And I don't want to, I'm always candid about stuff too.
I did.
A long time ago?
You did, yeah.
And I was hesitant because I did not want to make... A little while ago, folks, about three weeks ago, we did a show and there was a missing piece of information, even when I wrote Spygate, I didn't have that apparently Solomon did and hat-tipped to him.
So let's be clear.
I had known a long time ago that I believe Flynn was the nexus of this whole thing.
If you go back, matter of fact, like I said, listen to 628, you can hear it in the tone of the conversation.
I mean, the proof is in the pudding there.
The problem is I don't like to say things I don't have, you know, categorical, provable evidence of.
And one of the pieces of information I was missing, some sources had kind of pushed me in the direction, but they never told me what it was, was that Remember three weeks ago we covered a show or four weeks ago on Flynn where I said that the DIA was holding some exculpatory evidence about Mike Flynn that they refused to release?
Yeah.
Folks, a couple of weeks back I had said to you that Solomon, John Solomon, went on Sean Hannity and said that the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which Mike Flynn used to run, is holding a a sensitive piece of exculpatory information meaning evidence evidence showing Mike Flynn is not guilty of any Russian collusion at all and refuses to release it.
Now people in the House and Senate have seen this information and we're requesting that this be released so that Mike Flynn could be exonerated.
I also said to you that if Mike Flynn If Mike Flynn is guilty of what the Obama administration folks, the liberals and the media, are insinuating he's guilty of being a Russian spy, Joe, then how is it that Bob Mueller was requesting no jail time for Mike Flynn in his sentencing?
That doesn't make any sense.
Right.
Now you remember this conversation?
Oh, I remember.
And I said to you there's a piece of exculpatory information.
Yep, yep, yep.
Led to believe, but I couldn't nail it down.
I'm not an investigative reporter.
I write books and I have sources, but I don't have 18 hours a day to run this stuff down like reporters do.
I was led to believe that that piece of information Was a notification that Mike Flynn had notified the DIA of his trip to Russia and had debriefed them on the way back.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's a critical piece of information for incredibly transparent and obvious reasons.
How the heck is Mike Flynn a Russian spy or a Russian colluder or guilty of treason while he's simultaneously reporting his trips to our intelligence agency and debriefing on the way back about valuable Russian intel he gained on them?
Do you realize the degree of stupid you have to accept to believe any of this?
More than I will.
So now we know, Joe, what the DIA exculpatory information is that they won't release.
The fact that Flynn engaged in a significant debrief afterwards and gave them the information about this trip, while simultaneously another United States government intelligence asset in Halper is alleged to have been reporting on Flynn to the intelligence agencies.
Apparently, Flynn Beg them to let this out.
And they wouldn't do it.
Joe, put yourself in this man's shoes.
Imagine, you know what, let me reverse it to me for a second.
This would be the equivalent, and I only say it because the Secret Service is very sensitive when I was there about fraternization, especially with foreign heads of state.
When you're in the Secret Service doing protection, you get offered all kinds of stuff.
Hey, come to my country, I'll do the, you know, because you're leading, you know, you're with the head of state.
It's not like the presidency here.
They are very, very, very careful about that stuff.
Folks, if I took a trip on my own time to Russia as a Secret Service agent, on my own time, it was completely legitimate on the up and up, even if it was, say, when I retired, a paid engagement.
Before I go, though, I brief the Secret Service.
I tell them what I'm doing.
It's a paid speaking event in Russia.
It's not illegal.
Not illegal.
Also, I am retired, just like Flynn was.
Flynn had left.
He had left the DIA.
And then I come back and the Secret Service says, hey, can we talk to you about the trip?
I talk to them about the trip.
I notify them about the trip and I provide valuable intelligence on the Russians.
Imagine for a moment how you would feel.
If months after that, you are simultaneously being accused of being a traitor to your country, guilty of treason, and selling your country out knowing you did everything by the numbers.
And even worse, say the Secret Service or the DIA will not release the information to exonerate you to people that need it.
Therefore, the system never realizes you did everything by the numbers and you get convicted in a court of law.
Folks, this was paragraph one.
It is now clear as day what happened.
I should have used preparation H. Big time.
If there ever was a time for preparation H, this was it.
it. It is now clear the initiation of the counterintelligence investigation into the
Trump team was a clear effort to set up Flynn that failed.
It failed.
After the government finds out that Flynn briefed him and was debriefed upon coming back, Joe, investigation closed.
Case closed.
There's nothing to see here, Johnny.
It's over.
Flynn went to Russia.
He reported on it.
Great.
Thanks for your service.
There's no accusations of illegality about the trip at all.
Nothing.
The Obama administration could not let it go.
They had to keep the Russian collusion fairy tale alive, Joe, no matter what, because it was the only stick they had against the Trump team and Flynn.
You may say, but Dan, they didn't have anything on Flynn.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
They were gonna find something on Flynn.
However long it took, but to find something on Flynn, they still needed some form of an open investigation because it's going to be tough to nail Flynn on Russian collusion now or later.
If the case on Russian collusion with the United States and the Trump team, excuse me, with the Trump team to impact an election in the United States, if the case is closed, they've got nothing.
It's all about Flynn.
It's all about Flynn and taking the Trump team down.
So what do they do?
To keep the investigation open, Halper, the Central Intelligence Agency asset that was reporting on Flynn at the Russia thing that went nowhere because Flynn comes back and debriefs them, now they have to move on to another target.
Here comes target number two.
Maybe three, depending on when Papadopoulos enters the scene formally for their investigative purposes.
He may be two-way, but it doesn't matter.
Here comes the next target.
Carter Page.
Enter another character in our play here, the fantastic Lee Smith of now the Federalist, Real Clear Investigations, Tablet Mag, he writes everywhere.
He's at LeeSmithDC on Twitter.
You need to follow him.
You need to.
You can't be serious about the Spygate case and not be following Lee.
He came out with a manifesto yesterday in the Federalist.
Oh, it's long.
It'll take you a good 15 minutes to read.
If you don't read it, I don't know what to tell you.
Matter of fact, if you don't read it twice, I don't know what to tell you.
It's at my show notes.
It's not only worth your time, it is your time.
This has to be the meaning of the next 15 minutes of your life when you're done with it.
Lee Smith comes in and writes this unbelievable takedown of how he doesn't describe it as phase two, but I'm going to do it.
The Flynn thing collapses.
The interest in Flynn doesn't collapse, but the case against them collapses because Flynn does the right thing.
And he's not actually guilty of spying.
He's actually helping the U.S.
government with information on the Russians.
They then move on to Carter Page.
Joe, they have to keep this investigation open at all costs.
They move into Carter Page.
Why?
Because at this editorial board meeting with a newspaper, what happens?
Donald Trump brings up the fact that he brings on Carter Page and George Papadopoulos to his campaign team.
Some entrepreneurial FBI type at the management level who's interested in taking down the Trump team as well says, Carter Page, that name sounds familiar.
Didn't we use this guy as a spy in a case against the Russians?
Russians, aren't we trying to get Flynn for the Russians?
How we got a different guy for the Russians?
Here's a Russian, there's a Russian, here's a Russian too.
Russians everywhere.
There's Russians everywhere.
Joe's popping around.
They needed the Russian connection.
Some genius says, yes, we use Page.
Page was an informant in the Buryakov case.
This is great.
Look at all these Russians, Russians everywhere.
Now, since we got nothing yet on the Flynn case, here's how we keep this thing open.
Let's investigate.
Page for collusion with the Russians.
Awesome.
Now we know they've been unmasking.
We know they've been listening in through the, we know we've been, they've been using the NSA database.
We've seen the information by the FISA court thing.
So that's ongoing at the time, but we know Mike Rogers from the NSA is getting a little hinky on that, shutting that down.
So now they decide to keep the investigation open because they got to get Flynn.
They got to get Trump.
They're going to use Carter Page and they're going to use plan B, the FISA courts.
Let's go to the FISA courts.
We can get a warrant to spy on them.
We can get a warrant to spy on Carter Page.
And it's all legal.
Ladies and gentlemen, but there's a problem.
Here's the problem with Carter Page.
He hasn't done anything.
He hasn't committed a crime either.
So let's be clear.
Flynn starts this whole thing, paragraph one.
It doesn't work on Flynn because he hasn't committed a crime.
So now they move on to another innocent victim of this, which is Carter Page, but they don't have a crime.
And what's the problem with spying on someone through the FISA court, Joe?
The problem with spying on someone through the FISA court is you need two things to do it.
You need to show number one, That the person you want to spy on is acting as an agent of a foreign government.
But number two, you have to show that he's doing so in violation of a specific U.S.
law.
Acting on behalf of a foreign government, number one, is not illegal, Joe.
Lobbyists all the time.
Lobby the United States government on behalf of Saudi Arabia.
There's nothing illegal about it.
All you have to do is report it under FARA.
Which is what, ironically, they got Flynn for on one of the charges.
Which they rarely charge, but they found, of course, because they had to keep the attention on Flynn.
But remember, lobbying on behalf of foreign interests is not illegal.
Doing so in contravention of a U.S.
law and in violation of a law is illegal.
Well, what's the problem with Page?
They don't have number two.
They did have actually number two, if we're thinking about the other way.
They had, maybe you'll figure that one out.
I know the adults in the room will, but it was number two what they had, but they didn't have number two, if you get what I mean.
They didn't have Page acting in violation of any US law.
Enter Lee Smith into the picture with the manifesto of the day, the must read manifesto.
He brilliantly picks apart.
You're gonna have to read the story twice, but it's so good.
He picks apart how what I said to you in that viral speech at the breakers, which is now close to 2 million views.
How in plan B, in order to manufacture a crime, they had to invent it.
When I say manufacture a crime, you may say who?
The FBI managers, Peter Stroke and the small team, Cabal, that were committed to taking down the Trump team.
We know they hated Trump.
We know Comey hated Trump.
We knew they were working in conjunction with DOJ people like Bruce Ohr, who couldn't stand Donald Trump.
They needed a crime.
Well, how do you get a crime, Joe?
Make one up.
You just make one up!
And who better to make one up than their old buddy Christopher Steele, who they worked with in the past on the FIFA case, the soccer corruption case.
Conveniently, Christopher Steele's being paid through Fusion GPS by Hillary Clinton's team and Perkins Coie, their law firm, to hide the money.
So some genius in the FBI says, a crime on Carter Page?
I've got an idea.
Let's just go to this cat Christopher Steele.
He seems to have all the goodies, Joe.
The problem is the goodies were baddies.
The story is bogus.
I spent last week and earlier this week debunking entirely the dossier.
It is false.
It is fake.
It is made up.
But there's something in the dossier that Lee Smith points out, which is a genius find.
How between the June memos, the dossier is a series of memos, A series of Christopher Steele memos, so we're clear on that.
Steele had a number of memos that compose this thing we call the dossier.
There's a fascinating difference between the July memos Steele wrote and the October memos used to secure the Carter Page warrant.
Remember, Joe, they tried to get a FISA warrant on someone earlier in the Trump team and it was denied in the summer.
Follow me here, folks.
This is a beautiful point.
The FBI tries to get a FISA warrant on somebody in the summer.
It's denied.
Memos written in the summer describe Carter Page's meeting with Igor Sechin, a Russian and the head of Rosneft.
The meetings are about some negotiations for waivers of sanctions.
Now, however untoward these allegations are, there's nothing illegal.
Joe, these are the summer memos.
Follow me, buddy.
Follow me.
It's going to be key.
The summer steel memos describe Carter Page meeting with Sechin from Rosneft, this Russian petroleum company, about waiving sanctions and the Trump administration and all this other stuff.
Ladies and gentlemen, the meeting never happened.
Page doesn't even know Sechin.
They try to get a FISA.
It's denied.
Joe, is meeting with the Russians to discuss sanctions illegal?
No, no.
I wouldn't think so.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to put you on the spot.
It's not.
No, no.
I wouldn't think so.
Untoward?
Yes.
Keep in mind, the meeting didn't happen.
I'm not even alleging it didn't happen.
I'm just saying, even if it did, it's not illegal.
Untoward?
Ugly?
Unpatriotic?
Of course.
One, it didn't happen.
But secondly, it's not illegal.
Does that explain, Joe, why the FISA warrant wasn't granted in the summer?
That they somehow, in their efforts to fabricate a crime through a fake dossier about a fake meeting, neglected to leave a crime out?
I mean, excuse me, neglected to include a crime.
I'm sorry, forgive me.
Yeah, that's problematic.
A little bit, because Joe, what's the two components of a FISA warrant?
Acting on behalf of a foreign agent, number one.
They have that, right?
Page is supposedly meeting with Session, right?
They got number one.
Joe, number two, in violation of U.S.
It is not illegal to discuss foreign policy with a foreign government agent.
It is not.
They don't have number two, number two!
Now, they get denied a FISA warrant.
What happens, Joe?
Wow!
Bingo!
All of a sudden in October, a new memo shows up describing the exact same meeting, Joe, with an interesting little addition to it.
The interesting little addition to that very same meeting is, oh, now we forgot to include in the last memo That Carter Page was offered a 19% stake in this company.
He was going to personally benefit from doing this.
In other words, Joe, bribery and an actual crime.
Oh boy, that magically appears in October.
Look at that.
Isn't that great?
Isn't that special?
Amazing how that so conveniently conveniently pops up at this time
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Isn't that great folks?
So the summer, their case against Flynn collapses, but they still need Flynn and they need a Russian collusion conspiracy because it's the only thing they can use to take down Trump and Flynn.
The Flynn case collapses because Flynn comes back and debriefs the DIA.
They have nothing.
No evidence of criminality at all.
They then move on to the FISA courts because they can't keep unmasking and tapping into the NSA database because the head of the NSA, Mike Rogers, is already getting hanky and demanding an audit of what's going on.
Still determined to take down the Trump team, Flynn, and anyone around them with regards to this Russian collusion narrative.
They are intent on faking.
What do they do, Joe?
They move on to Carter Page.
They don't have anything on Carter Page.
But someone has something on Carter Page.
Here's our old buddy Chris!
Christopher Steele to the rescue with the memos known as the dossier.
But in the memos these idiots forget to include an actual crime.
So they go to the FISA court and what happens?
They're denied.
Someone goes back to Steele and says, hey, buddy, you know those allegations against Page?
Yeah, that was great information.
I'll wink at an eye.
That was great information.
It's all crap.
None of it's true.
That was great information, but there's a problem.
There's no actual crime in there.
You think maybe we can include a crime?
All of a sudden, an October memo appears.
Yes, Carter Page was bribed!
He was offered millions of dollars.
What?
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Look at this.
We've got a court.
They go back to the FISA court.
And amazingly, folks, tape this show and keep it for good.
Because when this comes out in the redactions, this is what's going to ring your bell.
This piece of information right here.
This is what they're hiding.
The criminality appeared on request in this bribery charge.
The criminality was the bribery in the October memo that just magically appears.
And all of a sudden, Joe, the FISA warrant is magically approved.
They're magically delicious.
That's exactly where I was going.
We got horseshoes.
We got stars.
Anything you need, Christopher Steele had.
They needed a crime and they found it.
Now, here's the point on this that I want you to remember.
And hat tip, Lee Smith, you are a good man, buddy.
Your research is amazing.
Andy McCarthy also has pointed this out as well, as Lee indicates in his piece.
You know what's fascinating, Joe, about the redactions and the October warrant finally secured to spy on Carter Page?
What would that be?
The crime Carter page crime air quotes he committed is redacted.
There is no crime.
Oh, it's redacted.
It's blacked out.
Now, Joe, I'm not going to put you on the spot cause I don't, but I'm going to ask you in the audience to think about this for a second.
In the October warrant against Carter page where they finally discover a crime through the steel October memos, A nice addendum to the January or July memos that we're not good enough because there's no crime in it.
Why would you redact the crime in there?
There's an awful lot of importance attached to that crime.
I have no idea why you would redact it!
Maybe they redacted the crime, Joe, because the crime is taken nearly verbatim from the dossier.
And all they had the entire time was a politically paid for, nuclear charged, dirty dossier that had been entirely debunked, that they never verified through the Woods procedure they're supposed to use to verify this information.
They blacked out and redacted the crime because once they acknowledged that the only, remember, the FISA court, two things, far acting on behalf of a foreign agent in violation of US law, All they had to meet that second fork, second prong of the Pfizer fork, all they had was the dossier.
And if they open up and unredact the October FISA warrant, it'll be clear as day that the crime they used as a predicate to get that FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page was only the crap information provided by a crap source to other crap sources in Christopher Steele.
There was nothing else there.
Folks, that's what's in the redactions.
Understand, please understand the magnitude of this.
This may seem, some of you who are getting it are probably like wide-eyed right now.
Some of you who are not may not, and I understand it, so it may be a little complicated.
Hillary Clinton's team paid a guy to give information for the FBI they needed to spy on the Trump team.
It's as simple as that.
Right.
The only information they had of a crime was provided by a guy working for Hillary Clinton.
Do you understand what that means?
They went to the FISA court, got denied, went back to a political source.
He was political.
He was working for Hillary.
Simple as that.
Who fabricated a crime, made up this entire bribery charge, they then went back, stuck it in a revised FISA in October because they got denied before, stuck a new fake charge in there, redacted it later to hide the fact that that was all they had the entire time.
And this happened in the United States.
Not in some third world republic.
This is what actually happened in the United States.
Folks, I got, wait, don't go anywhere because Lee has, there's another angle to this I do not want you to miss.
I do not want you to miss because it's very, very important.
But this is an important show you need to listen to.
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Okay.
One more point on this that Lee Smith makes.
So please read the Solomon and Smith pieces.
They're so good.
They're both in the show notes.
Smith additionally makes a point.
We've been, I'm not trying to like take credit for his stuff.
Please don't take this the wrong way.
I just, if you're a listener to the show, you've heard this already.
And that's why I don't want to act like it's new news to some of you, but how many times Joe, have we brought up the two hop rule?
How many times?
Since what?
Since, uh, since a year and a half ago, when we started this or a year ago, whatever.
Early on.
Now Smith calls it the two jump rule.
I don't care what you call it.
Uh, so for the sake of this, since most of you know, it is the two hop rule.
Smith brings it up in the piece.
He talks about how when the Carter, the initiation of the case against Carter Page, which I'm tying to the Solomon piece.
He doesn't do, but understandably so.
Solomon has his own piece going on.
I believe strongly that the initiation for the Page case is the collapse against the Flynn case.
I think they realized they made a mistake with Flynn, Good Joe.
I think the mistake they made with Flynn was going for the top dog right away.
The top dog was a little savvier than they thought.
Flynn came back from the Russia trip, he debriefed him, did everything by the numbers.
Flynn's a patriot, too.
He made some mistakes, there's no doubt, but I refuse to throw Mike Flynn under the bus.
He made some mistakes, he's been, you know, punished for those mistakes, he's acknowledged them, but far of violations and forgetting to register as a lobbyist when he wasn't really even in fact a lobbyist, but he was a spokesperson.
I mean, I don't want to put any Uh, and a cover on it, but it's not a capital crime.
I mean, give me a break.
I mean, really, where's, where's the Podesta group in any of this, right?
But when the case collapses, I think they figured out quickly that they went for the top dog.
And what's that old saying about the, the King Joe, if you're going to shoot at the King, you better not miss.
The problem with going for Flynn was they had taken on a little bit too much at one time.
If you keep that in mind while reading the Lee Smith piece, a lot of what he says will make sense.
Because he insinuates halfway through the piece that they figured out that I think the best way to do this was to be to go for a guy less connected in the Trump team, Joe, without the assets or the connections to be able to appropriately defend himself.
So who did they think they would find?
They were looking for a sucker.
I'm not suggesting he is a sucker, I'm just saying what they thought.
And they thought the sucker was Carter Page.
Because they had known him and worked with him before on the Buryakov case, where he worked with the FBI to nail a Russian spy in the United States, and the Russians on tape had called him an idiot.
Soft target, yeah.
Yes, well said.
The bureau small group cabal at the top, it's not a knock on the guys and women working over there, but the small group working on this, who had kept it away from the field offices because they knew they'd be exposed, right?
They must have figured out Carter Page was their sucker.
All they needed was an in, and that in was going to be page because once they got that in, what Lee Smith calls the two jump rule, what I call the two hop rule, takes effect.
Once they get an approved FISA, which I believe they never, they were never going to get on Flynn, Joe.
Why?
Because again, for the 15th time, Flynn did the right thing.
There was no evidence of criminality.
He came back and briefed everybody on what had happened at the Russia meeting.
There was no evidence of criminality.
They couldn't walk into court and be embarrassed again.
Although they, you know, I'm not willing to forego the fact that they may have lied about a Flynn, a Faison Flynn too, but I'm just, I'll hold that for a later date because that's something brewing in the back of my next project, but.
They could not continue.
They had no evidence against Flint.
So they move on to Page, figuring to themselves, Joe, once we can manufacture a crime against Page and get a FISA warrant on Page, the two-hop rule takes effect.
What the two-hop rule is, is you get all of Page's communications with his people, his emails, his texts, his comms.
But then you get another hop.
So the first hop is from Page to his contacts, and the second hop is from his contacts to everybody else.
Ladies and gentlemen, think about that.
If I am a foreign policy advisor for the Trump team, which Paige briefly was, and you email one person on the Trump team in a management level capacity, say a guy like Clovis or whatever, a guy who was dealing regularly with the inner circle of the Trump team, then you get to jump to them, to all of their contacts too, folks, which basically takes down the entire Trump team.
I mean this was just a unbelievably genius plan.
I can't even describe to you the deviousness of this.
You know, Joe said something before.
He's like, this happened in the United States.
And the answer is yes, it did.
You know, it's so brutally disappointing.
That there isn't a couple of, there aren't, excuse me, a couple of entrepreneurial media types at the Washington Post or New York Times who you thought were interested in journalism.
But as we found out yesterday through the upcoming book by Jill Abramson, who is an executive editor, former executive editor at the New York Times, we covered this on the five yesterday, who has now exposed the deep, dark secrets of the New York Times that they cover anti-Trump stuff because it makes them money, even though a lot of it is probably BS propaganda.
I'm humbly and respectfully asking the reporters out there in the world, even if you're a liberal, why aren't you looking into this?
Do you understand this is the biggest story of our generation?
It is the biggest story of our generation, the framing and setup of innocent American citizens for the sole purpose of taking down a presidential campaign and opponents of the Obama administration.
Folks, it's disgusting.
All right, I was going to go into some Ocasio-Cortez stuff, but I'm just, I'm getting so tired of this.
She just says stuff on Twitter that's so dumb.
I'll just quickly, because I just want to sum up where we were and then we'll depart for the day here.
But she put out this thing on Twitter about how PAYGO, in other words, paying for new government programs by generating cuts anywhere else so that it's zero-sum.
You know, the government spending doesn't increase.
Paygo is garbage.
It's nonsense.
It doesn't even work.
No one cares.
No one's interested in cutting money.
I'd love to see it enacted, but it doesn't really matter because nobody's serious about it, Joe.
Point being, Nancy Pelosi, as the incoming speaker, wants to enact PAYGO on the House side.
In other words, let's pay for what we're doing.
So of course, Ocasio-Cortez, who's to the left of Bernie Sanders, comes out with this tweet, and she tweets Ro Khanna, another representative out there who's very leftist, saying basically, you know, PAYGO is garbage, and it's just, it's so stupid, and I'm getting tired of Ocasio-Cortez's stuff.
It's just, it's so juvenile that, I mean, the idea that government should pay for its government services by government money taken through tax dollars, that's a radical proposal.
Just speaks to the ignorance of the people who ignore it.
So you get my point.
She thinks pay goes, you know why she thinks pay goes nonsense, right, Joe?
Because she wants to spend money we don't have.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just simple, but she's like, this is, and what she called it, quote, bad economics, paying for government services with actual tax dollars is bad economics.
So I'm not, I don't even want to spend any time on it.
I was going to, it's just a waste of time, but it is out there and you may hear about it today.
We may talk about it later on the five.
Make sure you watch the five today.
So just to sum up again where we've been and we'll wrap it up for the day because this is such an important story.
The Solomon piece covers the hit on Mike Flynn.
It's apparent now that Mike Flynn was framed.
Mike Flynn was framed because Mike Flynn was an enemy of the Iran deal.
The Iran deal was a big, big part of the Obama administration.
Being an enemy of the Iran deal and a truth teller made Mike Flynn an enemy of Obama.
The Obama administration gets rid of Mike Flynn.
Mike Flynn goes to Russia after that to give a speech.
Conveniently, a US intelligence asset spies on Mike Flynn at that meeting and reports back on it.
An investigation opens up into Mike Flynn after that.
The DIA had exculpatory information indicating Mike Flynn was innocent of anything on that Russian dinner.
Why?
Because Mike Flynn reported the Russia trip before he left and reported on it when he came back.
The DIA did not disclose that information.
An investigation then was opened up into Mike Flynn despite the fact that they knew he was innocent of these charges of Russian collusion and hackery and treachery.
That investigation clearly went nowhere on the FISA front or the legal front because there was no evidence of a crime.
They had to take down Flynn.
They had to take down Flynn and the Trump team at the same time.
Flynn is conveniently working with the Trump team now, which is an extra threat to Obama.
They open up a case against Carter Page.
They have no crime against Carter Page either, but they're not going to make the same mistake they made with Mike Flynn.
They didn't have a crime against Flynn.
This time they just make one up.
They get a series of memos from Christopher Steele, but those memos don't show a crime because Steele's so stupid he doesn't even put it in the memos.
But they go back to Steele.
Hey, you need to put a crime in there.
Steele conveniently includes in a later memo an allegation of bribery.
One of the two forks needed for a FISA warrant.
All of a sudden the FISA warrants opened up on Carter Page and they get the spy and listen in on Page's calls, Page's emails, and everyone else through the two hop rule that he emails and they email after that.
What's the coup de gras of this story?
What happens right after Donald Trump takes office?
Because there is still an ongoing investigation into Russian collusion that never happened via a warrant against Carter Page to keep this Russian collusion fairytale going.
Who gets interviewed at the White House, Joe?
Mike Flynn.
Yeah.
Under the predicate that they're trying to clear up Russian collusion that never happened.
Flynn is interviewed at the White House about a call that the Obama administration listened in on because they're still investigating X-files-like fairy tale made-up Russian collusion.
Flynn is then arrested and prosecuted later on and silenced for a conversation he had and not remembering accurately every word of it.
But the only reason the interview ever happened and the investigation into Flynn ever happened was because the Russian collusion fairytale was kept alive after it fell apart after the initial attack on Mike Flynn.
Folks, Flynn is the key to all of this.
Go to my YouTube, listen to today's show and listen to our, it's called the most listened to show ever, episode 628.
That show was recorded almost a year ago.
Listen to it now and you'll see how prophetic a lot of this was.
I told you Solomon knew everything.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
Please watch The Five today on the Fox News channel.
And if you don't mind, please subscribe to the podcast.
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