In this episode I address the stunning new revelation about the Obama administration’s role in the attack on the Trump team. I also address the latest economic growth numbers and what it means for you.
News Picks:
Mexico must step up to stop this illegal immigration crisis.
Astonishing new FBI texts show agents discussed recruiting White House sources to spy for the FBI.
Explosive new revelations about the Obama administration’s role in the real foreign collusion scandal.
Biden’s senior political advisor says “we don’t need white men leading the party.”
Disturbing video surfaces of Bernie Sanders emerges where he says he was “very excited” for Castro’s revolution.
The US economy defied expectations in the 1st quarter and continues to hum along.
We must do something to stop the debt crisis looming in our future.
This older Jeff Carlson piece addresses the role of Mike Rodgers in the Russia-gate scandal.
Copyright Dan Bongino All Rights Reserved.
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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.
Alright, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
I'm producer Joe.
How are you today?
It's Friday!
I'm, uh, mouthing your, uh, for those of you watching us on YouTube, I'm mouthing Joe's, uh, it's Friday routine.
Oh man, is it a stacked news day today?
Yes, sir.
I always come on the air a little excited to talk about things, but after last night's tactical nuke dropped on the battlefield of ideas in this whole scandalous thing going on with the Trump administration, I was super excited to get on the air.
Listen, let's get right to it today for the battle.
Yes, let's go.
Okay, so I've been telling you, that was like a Howard Dean script.
Yes, it was.
We're going to Washington!
Yeah!
Joe, forget it.
That was the end of Howard Dean.
Hopefully it's not the end of this show.
I've been telling you guys and ladies all along about some key dates in this scandal, okay?
Key dates!
July of 2017 was a key period.
July and June of 2017 in this entire debacle with the Obama administration spying on the Trump team.
This is gonna be key stuff.
We had another key date get launched last night, okay?
So I've called July and June of 2017 the Civil War period.
Why?
Because this, within our government, this whole battle breaks out.
July of 2017, follow me, and June, right around this period.
Okay.
This is when the Inspector General, who is looking into, effectively the Internal Affairs Officer for the government, is looking into this whole Stroke paid spying on Trump thing.
Stroke is the lead investigator.
He's looking into this whole debacle.
Lead in July of 2017 headline.
That's when the OIG gets the text up until November 30th.
So he gets the text of the lead investigators involved.
He looks at them and goes, holy, I have no doubt.
A lot of things that happened in July of 2017 and June in this period.
I got another thing.
There's news to add as of yesterday.
Hat tip to Sarah Carter, Chuck Ross, and others who broke this story yesterday.
July of 2017 is also when Papadopoulos is arrested at the airport in a quickie PC arrest.
Paul Manafort's house is raided all of a sudden.
In other words, everything on the Bob Mueller side speeds up, I believe, because Mueller probably gets wind that, hey, listen, the inspector general has the texts of the people investigating Trump.
And Bobby, Bobby, it ain't good, buddy.
It is not good.
We're reading these texts about all this stuff going on behind the scenes to target the Trump team, and it ain't pretty.
Well, we can add something to the list of what happened in, in, uh, look at this, the timeline up on the screen.
Yeah.
For those of you watching on YouTube, we have the July, 2017 timeline up on the screen where all of this stuff happens at the same time.
We'll put it up on the website too today at Bongino.com.
We have another addition to this timeline, which, uh, maybe after the show, we'll, we'll, we'll put in the, uh, we'll put on it on the graphic.
There's an article in the Indy Star magazine from a while ago, Indy Star newspaper, about a certain key player in the Trump-Pence White House leaving the administration in, suspiciously, June of 2017, towards the end of June.
Here it is, indystar.com.
Mike Pence's first major staff shakeup.
Josh Pitcock out.
Nick Ayers in as chief of staff.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Josh Pitcock, the Mike Pence chief of staff, leaves.
Now, they said, don't worry.
Pitcock, this was a pre-planned departure.
Oh, was it?
Was it?
Now keep in mind, keep that stuff in mind.
Take it, silo it, put it in a cabinet for a minute, because you're going to have to open that cabinet in a minute.
We're talking about, we have the one key period is July, June 2017.
I'm gonna talk about another key period now.
But the takeaway from this July period is a bunch of suspicious stuff with the Mueller team, where they speed up their investigation, arrests, search warrants, all that stuff, happens right after they find out that this investigation is corrupt, because they get a hold of the FBI's texts Back and forth about how corrupt the investigation is.
And right around the same time, a guy by the name of Josh Pitcock leaves the Mike Pence administration.
Boom.
He's gone.
Same time period.
Hold that.
Pitcock leaves.
Why does Pitcock leave?
Let's transition to story two.
Chuck Ross, hat tip to him in the Daily Caller.
These stories will be in the show notes.
Please check out the show notes today at Bongino.com.
It's always attached to the podcast.
If you drop a drop down the menu on our website, it's really important.
Chuck Ross.
Yesterday, put this story out.
Stroke page text suggests FBI use post-election briefing to gather intel on Trump team.
What?
GOP senators say Chuck Ross.
This, ladies and gentlemen, again, this isn't even a tactical nuke.
This is a neutron bomb, like dropped on this thing.
So some new texts emerged yesterday.
Again, Sarah Carter had them.
Chuck Ross had them.
Wrote stories.
Adam Hannity covered this last night on his show.
Some new texts have emerged between these goofballs running this investigation, Stroke and Lisa Page at the FBI.
And in the text, they talk about a couple things.
Here's some screen caps from the Chuck Ross piece.
Now, keep in mind the VP's guy leaving in the summer of 2017.
Keep that all in mind, okay?
Here's some of the information from the piece.
Quote, This is, this is fascinating.
This is a text that we just found from Peter Stroke of the FBI.
He's texting his girlfriend, Lisa Page, who's an FBI lawyer.
Talking with Bill, talking about Bill Preston.
Do you want Joe to go with Evanina instead of Charlie for a variety of reasons?
Stroke wrote to Page on November 17th, 2016.
Remember that date!
Remember November 17th, 2016.
Some of you have been listening to my show already putting two and two together.
But stand by.
Hmm, not sure.
Would it be unusual to have someone that's blanked out show up again?
Maybe another agent from the team, Page responded.
He writes back, or he's the CI guy.
Same.
Might make sense.
He can assess if there are any new questions or different demeanor.
If Katie's husband is there, he can see if there are people we can develop for potential relationships, wrote Stroke, who initially led the FBI's Trump-Russia probe.
We're going to use this slide again, so keep this thing handy.
I'm going to bring this up again.
Now, there's a lot in there, and some of you may be confused.
What did you just read?
Yeah, what did you just read?
So if we're calling June and July the Civil War period, I'm calling November of 2016, which obviously is before July of 2017, I'm calling this the big mystery.
The black hole, okay?
Ladies and gentlemen, on November 17th, Peter Stroke is texting his girlfriend, in that text, Lisa Page, about sending a counterintelligence FBI guy there, I'm assuming to the White House or some White House briefing, that's what they mean.
The FBI guy he's sending over there, they're asking if they can use him to, quote, develop relationships.
What do you think he's talking about?
You think he's talking about going to a party at Chuck E. Cheese's with his boy?
He's talking about going to the White House to develop relationships.
They're not talking about having burgers and Smashburger.
They're talking about developing assets, information channels into the White House.
In other words, spying.
Oh, thank you.
Now, they mentioned specifically someone called Katie's husband.
Katie's husband?
Would that be Catherine Seaman's husband who used to work for Peter Stroke?
Who's Catherine Seaman's husband?
Oh, Josh Pitcock!
Oh!
The vice president's chief of staff, who conveniently leaves in June of 2017 when all of these texts come out.
Gee, isn't that a major coincidence?
Gosh, how did that happen?
So Peter Stroke has someone working with him by the name of Catherine, aka maybe Katie Seaman?
They're wondering about Katie's husband, who happens to be a guy by the name of Josh Pitcock, who's the Vice President's Chief of Staff, if he'll be there so they can develop potential relationships, or as Joe said, a mole.
They're trying to- Ladies and gentlemen, I can't tell you this enough.
This is the greatest spy story of all time, except it's full of idiots.
This isn't the James Bond saga, it's the Bond James saga.
This isn't the Jack Ryan saga, it's the Ryan Jack saga!
They weren't even smart enough to cover their tracks!
Now keep in mind, let's walk through this.
Now we're not, just to be clear here, we're not positive, because I don't want to do what liberals do, that Katie is in fact Catherine Seaman.
The information there seems pretty strong that that's the case.
It may be.
Katie works for Stroke.
Katie's husband is the Vice President's Chief of Staff.
These texts are unearthed months later in June and July of 2017, and all of a sudden, Pitcock, Katie's husband, winds up leaving?
Were they trying to develop this guy as some kind of information channel into the White House?
What else could that text possibly mean?
Now, I said to you in the text there was a date that when did this specific text about Katie's husband and developing basically moles inside the White House, when did this text come out?
November 17th.
Put that up again if you don't mind.
They asked something very specific on this November 17th, I can't emphasize this date enough, 2016 text.
They're looking to see, through their sources, that are at this White House meeting, or this meeting with White House staff to be precise, that if there's any change in demeanor or any new news... Now, Joe?
Yes?
Why would the FBI investigators investigating the White House, the transition team at that point, excuse me, the Trump team, Why would they be looking for new questions or any change in demeanor?
Well, what else happened, ladies and gentlemen, on November 17th, 2016?
If we could go to the excellent Jeff Carlson piece at The Market's Work, which I will include in the show notes again as well.
It's an older piece.
But there's a piece by Jeff Carlson, January 10th, 2018, An American Hero.
They're referring to Mike Rogers of the NSA.
And the death of a FISA narrative.
This is an older story, but here is a screencap from the piece.
Which is just peachy.
He says, Jeff, I first discussed Mike Rogers in an April 2nd, 2017 post.
I quoted the following timeline.
On November 17, 2016.
Oh!
Oh!
Oh, wait.
Oh.
The same day Peter Stroke is worried about a change in demeanor with the transition team or the White House or anything?
They're looking for transition team changes in demeanor?
November 7, 2016.
So this is the transition, just to be clear.
I don't want to confuse anybody.
So on November 17, 2016, what happens?
NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers travels to see President-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower up in New York.
Director Rogers does not inform his boss, DNI Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.
Isn't that fascinating?
Yeah, it's intriguing.
It goes on!
Oh!
On November 17, 2016, the Trump transition team announces they are moving all transition activity to Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Wow!
Isn't that fast?
All of a sudden they decamp from Trump Tower and the Trump team heads all the way to Bedminster, New Jersey.
On November 17, 2016, the same day, Stroke and Page are texting each other back and forth about getting information from the transition team and they're worried about a change in demeanor.
What happens immediately after that?
On November 19th, just two days later, the Washington Post reported on a recommendation
by Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Jim Clapper in October that Mike Rogers be removed from his NSA position.
Folks, there are a lot of big mysteries left in this case.
Some huge myths.
Who was Joseph Mifsud?
What exactly did the scope memo say?
But I'm gonna rank up there as one of the top two.
Maybe the top mystery of this is what the heck did Mike Rogers tell Donald Trump on November 17, 2016?
17, 2016.
What did he tell them?
What did he talk to them about Trump Tower?
In a meeting he doesn't tell anybody in the Obama administration about?
The NSA director, one of our lead spy agencies, who must be aware, at this point, of the spying activity on the Trump team.
How do we know that, Joe?
Because Mike Rogers has already lodged a complaint with the FISA court and the Office of Compliance indicating that he's detected unusual surveillance activity in the NSA database.
He already knows!
This is all documented.
It's not a conspiracy theory.
This is on the record.
Rogers already knows there has been some serious malfeasance and abuse of the NSA system.
He then pops up during the transition to Trump Tower.
Doesn't tell anybody in the Obama team who he had worked for.
All of a sudden, Trump gets out of Trump Tower stat.
Next thing you know, two days later, Obama wants him fired, and on the same day he heads up there, Stroke and Page are texting each other, worried about some change in demeanor amongst White House, seeing if they can get incoming White House staffers.
Use them as moles and information channels to detect a change in demeanor.
What change in demeanor?
The change in demeanor you would likely see if Donald Trump just found out his entire transition team was being spied on?
You mean that change in demeanor?
Ladies and gentlemen, the big mystery.
And I know I saw the clip the other night on the Fox show.
I get it.
I'm not willing to go that far yet.
When I am, I'll let you know.
You know what I'm talking about.
Some of you sent me emails.
What did Mike Rogers tell Donald Trump?
That explains, ladies and gentlemen, this entire series of events.
If Mike Rogers warned Donald Trump about a malicious surveillance operation and abuse of the NSA system to target his team on November 17th, this whole chronology of events now makes sense.
Rogers goes up the Trump Tower, doesn't tell the Obama team that's been spying on the Trump team.
Number two, he warns Trump on November 17, 2016.
Potentially.
Trump gets out of Trump Tower immediately.
Possibly better ComSec up in Bedminster where they can control the traffic more.
November 19th, the Obama team freaks out, demands he's fired Mike Rogers.
The same day as the Rogers briefing, Stroke and Page freak out.
They're looking for an information channel, as Joe said, a mole inside the Trump team to detect any changes in demeanor.
Those texts, nobody finds out about those texts until when?
June, July 2017.
In those texts where they're looking for a mole, it appears the mole they're looking for is Mike Pence's chief of staff, Josh Pitcock, through his wife who works with the FBI investigator.
Those texts are aired, the OIG finds out about him, Pitcock mysteriously leaves, Papadopoulos is arrested, there's a search warrant at Manafort's house, The GOP calls for a second special counsel.
Jim Baker is being looked into at the FBI for leaking to the media.
Folks, this is the greatest spy story ever told, but I can't emphasize enough, it is chock full of idiots!
They were texting over unsecured devices their entire plan!
These are counterintelligence investigators for the FBI!
And they couldn't figure out not to expose their plot on text to each other?
Lord of the idiots.
We needed a little comic relief there, didn't we?
We did.
This story is fascinating!
Wow.
Folks, please, read the Chuck Ross piece, read the Sarah Carter piece, read the show notes today.
This text last night is explosive.
Explosive.
If Katie's husband is, in fact, Josh Pitcock, and Mike Rogers did, in fact, in some way, warn Donald Trump on November 17th, this whole story now makes sense.
Rogers would be the hero that a lot of people think he is.
Only open question is what exactly did he tell Donald Trump that day?
This is unbelievable.
Please share this show today.
Please.
Because this story... Now I can see why everybody's panicking.
When I say everybody, I mean the Dems, the RINOs who assisted in this nonsense, the media people who were co-conspirators, and the FBI and intel community people that were involved.
Now it makes the world a sense.
Now you weren't only spying through human assets with Stefan Halper, using national security letters to spy on the Trump team, actual secret surveillance warrants from the FISA court to spy on the Trump team, now you're trying to recruit moles inside the transition team because you're worried you've been exposed?
Oh my gosh, can this thing get any uglier?
All right, I got a lot more.
That was only story one.
There's more.
Don't go anywhere.
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Okay.
Let's see.
Story number two.
I wanted to hit this too because there's been some important economic news.
I'm gonna get back to some other just monster bombshells that were launched yesterday.
But some really good news.
Tempered by some bad news, but it is Friday, so you know what, let me give you the good news first.
So some economic numbers came out today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and it looks like the first quarter of the year, the economic growth rates were an astonishing 3.2%, beating expectations.
I have a piece up at the Washington Examiner today, Joe Lawler, April 26, 2019.
3.2% beating expectations, ladies and gentlemen, that's an incredible number.
3.2%, listen, it's our historical average of growth, but given how long this prolonged recovery from a recession has been, thanks to the Obama administration's awful economic policies, in other words, this thing is long in the tooth because we could have had 3.2% rates earlier.
Instead, he dragged it on with his heavy regulatory policies, taxes, and Obamacare, and now finally that Trump is curbing some of that stuff, we're starting to see some of this robust growth.
Now, keep in mind some perspective for this number.
First quarter, 3.2% number is critical.
It's critical because it's a big number, and it's critical because Obama never averaged annually, annually, 3% growth in any year of his eight-year presidency.
I've said this before, but it's critical you remember this.
He is the only president in modern American history, despite the fact that he served two terms, I even said this yesterday, to never, ever reach an annual growth rate of 3.2%.
Depending on how you calculate it, Trump hit that number last year, but it looks like in the first quarter we may be on track for that again.
3.2% is a solid number right now.
Put it in perspective.
At 7% growth, which granted is Probably out of the realm of possibility, barring a major breakthrough.
It's a reach.
7% growth, the economy doubles in real terms in 10 years.
Real terms, not inflation, not nominal.
In real terms.
Meaning if the average income in America today was $50,000 and the economy were to grow for 7%, in 10 years the economy would be worth, the average income would be $100,000.
That's average.
That's pretty phenomenal.
3% means it doubles, obviously, by simple arithmetic calculation, 20 years.
If we could hit 3% for 20 years, in many of our lifetimes, Joe and mine included, definitely my kids' lifetime, their incomes and the GDP of our country and our wealth and productivity would double.
That's a huge number.
Double.
That's big.
We need to hit that 3% number.
That's been our historical growth rate that's led to our prosperity we have today.
This is a great number.
Also in that number, real disposable income up by 2.4%.
Solid.
Wow.
That means there is more money in your wallets.
It's as simple as that.
This was a solid, solid report.
Smile a little bit on Friday.
The Donald Trump economy is motoring along.
Now, I always, I don't mean to be Debbie Downer or Danny Downer in this case, but I don't want to give you an overly rosy picture.
I think Trump is doing the best he can right now, but if we don't get a hold of our out-of-control spending, ladies and gentlemen, we are looking at potentially a debt apocalypse coming up.
There's a debt apocalypse, excuse me.
There's an interesting report up at Zero Hedge today.
I'll have up in the show notes.
Headline.
$220,000 for every man, woman, and child in America.
We are now at $72 trillion in debt.
Folks, this is astonishing.
You may say, $72 trillion?
That sounds outrageous, Dan.
I heard the debt was only $20 trillion.
Yeah, the federal debt.
But when you look at the calculation of corporate debt, consumer debt, Student loan debt.
State and local debt.
And you marry that all up with the federal debt, we are $72 trillion in debt.
Put that in perspective.
The entire value of our economy, what we're worth right now collectively, is $22 trillion annually.
We owe nearly four times that.
Take that to a micro level.
Pull it out of the macro scale.
Imagine you earn and you produce and value $100,000 in income every year.
Ladies and gentlemen, if your collective debt was $400,000, do you think you'd be in trouble?
The answer is obviously a big, sad, but resounding, yes, of course.
We are in a world of trouble on the debt front.
Now, I'll leave it at this.
If Donald Trump, on the good news front, because I don't want to leave you in a macabre mood on a Friday.
If Donald Trump can maintain this growth rate through the election of 3%, I saw a commentator on Fox this morning, forgive me, I forget his name, he's on a lot, he's an interesting guy.
He said the odds of Donald Trump winning re-election are overwhelming if in the three quarters prior to election day, the nine months prior to election day, if he can maintain that 3% growth rate we've seen now, election day is obviously next year, he is almost guaranteed re-election.
Alright.
That's the good news.
If he can maintain it.
Obviously the downside is this debt overhang, which we're working on a big Ponzi scheme right now.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are borrowing money in an endless spigot of debt.
We are borrowing money in the hopes that this borrowed money is eventually going to collectively pay off in major growth rates.
We are not growing fast enough right now, Joe.
To outrun our debt.
Again, forget collectively our debt, because when you explain it in the macro, it gets confusing.
Think about it in the micro.
If you're $400,000 in debt and you're making $100,000 a year,
and you're borrowing essentially $50,000 to $100,000 more a year, piled on the $400,000 you
already owe, you may say to yourself, "Well, gosh, how would you ever recover from that debt?"
You won't.
But if you're doing it in the hopes that you're investing in a business that's going to make a major breakthrough, Joe, the next medical innovation, some AI breakthrough, whatever it may be, and you're going to be worth a billion in 10 years, then all of a sudden that $400,000 in debt doesn't seem so bad, even the $100,000 more you're adding every year.
You tracking me here?
Yeah, work that sucker to debt.
The problem is, we are borrowing money so fast that even at 3% growth, we're not growing fast enough to ever be able to catch up to the interest on that debt.
We are walking off a debt cliff.
The only bright side to this debt apocalypse we're looking at, straight ahead of us.
I mean, this is the most predictable financial crisis in human history.
We all better pray that the U.S.
economy comes up with the next big thing quick.
And I don't know what that next big thing is.
There's a lot of people out there who write about this kind of stuff.
Greg Ip is one of them.
And people who write about productivity and things like that.
Is it artificial intelligence?
Is it materials technology?
3D printing?
What is it?
Is it the next breakthrough in chip technology?
Transportation technology?
I don't know.
I don't know.
There's a lot of speculation about what it may be.
If I knew, I'd be a billionaire myself.
I'd go invent it tomorrow.
I don't know what it is.
But everyone in this listening audience better darn well hope that next breakthrough, that next industrial revolution through this major breakthrough comes quick.
Because I don't see how we make it the next 10 years as a constitutional republic functioning with this kind of a debt staring us in the face.
I don't see it.
I don't see it.
Read the article on Zero Hedge where it explains to you.
Joe, every American owes $2... every American, not every working American, every man, woman, and child in the country at this level of debt owes $220,000.
I don't have that kind of money.
That is staggering.
No, but I don't either, laying around.
Not now, we just bought a house.
I don't have it now.
Gosh, I talk too much on this show.
Paula's probably like, what the?
Right?
What did you say?
She goes, be quiet.
We do things differently here, I'm sorry.
This is a constant back and forth.
If I can issue an aside for a second.
So all right, we're going to just wrap that up and say, if we can hit that, if we can get that major breakthrough, that's the only way out of this.
Okay, folks, the only way.
Let's all pray it happens.
But I remember watching, you ever see Private Parts with Howard Stern?
That's a movie.
I'm not asking if you saw it, but the movie's called Private Parts.
I didn't see it.
But you know, growing up in New York, he was always on the radio and I saw the movie on HBO, not that long ago, actually.
There's an interesting part in the movie where he's talking to his wife about his radio career and how he's holding back and he says, you know, I think we should just go for it.
He becomes like the Howard Stern you're probably all familiar with and, you know, just does whatever on the radio.
And my wife and I talk about that clip a lot because a while ago, when I made the decision to do this show and do it the right way, It reminds me of something that happened to me recently, which I'll have to remain quiet about for one reason, not because I don't want to, but you know, I just don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.
That's the only reason.
But I decided a long time ago on this show to just kind of go for it and that I would never allow myself to be leashed.
And, um, you know, it leads to some uncomfortable moments for me and Joe and everyone else involved, but I'm going to show you one thing.
And Joe, you know better than, this show is real.
Hi lad.
There ain't no messing around here.
Okay.
You know, I'm not going to sit and uh, remember Dirty Dan?
You're not going to put baby in the corner.
Ain't going to happen.
Sorry.
Wrong guy.
Okay.
Moving on.
Here we go.
My wife's really like, dude, dude, she's doing the Rob Schneider dude.
Remember the 200 ways to say dude?
This is one of those, dude.
Oh, okay.
Story number three.
This is a good one.
This is a short one, but Kim Strassel, who just, I can't say enough about her work, is just so terrific at the Wall Street Journal.
She has a piece up today, and I have a big, big chapter in book two.
Book two, Exonerated, available on Amazon and barnesandnoble.com.
It's the title of it by me.
I'm almost done with it, but I have a big chapter.
I don't know if this is going to be the title yet, But the title of the chapter we're working with, the working title is What Mueller Missed.
Basically, Mueller did this whole thing and missed magically, Joe.
Bob Mueller, special counsel assigned to investigate Russian collusion, managed to miss all the big Russian collusion questions.
So Kim Strassel sums this up in a beautiful piece, very well done, in the Washington, excuse me, Wall Street Journal today, title.
Her column is called Potomac Watch.
the Russians and the dossier. Mueller should have investigated whether Moscow used steel in its
interference. So just to be clear on this, Mueller's initial charter was to investigate
how Russians tried to interfere in our election, yet he missed.
I have a whole chapter on the big questions he missed that's going to blow your mind.
You're going to be like, how could he possibly have missed all the big questions and hit on all the nonsensical stuff?
So she writes in the piece, first, the first big takeaway, what Mueller missed.
That the former spy known to the public in Russia, also, she's talking about Steele, became known for sending reports to the U.S.
government.
Last year, former Obama State Department official Jonathan Weiner explained that in 2009 he became friendly with Steele, and this relationship, starting as early as 2013, ensured that more than 100 of Steele's reports on Russian topics were shared with the State Department.
Hold that for a second.
Keep in mind what she's saying here.
Bob Mueller is supposed to investigate Russian collusion in the election.
Christopher Steele, we now know, according to this piece, had a working relationship with the State Department going back to 2009, providing reports on Russia.
She goes on.
Given that the dossier is largely based on Russian sources, if you watched yesterday's show or listened to it, you know that, some supposedly connected to the Kremlin, Did the Kremlin know about this arrangement and see an opportunity to spoon feed into U.S.
government disinformation?
Ding ding ding ding ding ding!
Thank you, Kim Strassel, for so eloquently putting into words what you, Chuck Ross, Jeff Carlson, and others have been asking forever!
You watch yesterday's show again where I show you the FISA and the footnotes.
The FBI has already acknowledged that Steele's subsources were Russian.
Did the Russians know this?
That Steele was feeding information to the State Department as early as 2009 in the FBI and feed him bogus information?
This is the penhead scratch moment.
You're the FBI!
Bob Mueller, you didn't think to ask that question?
I thought we were investigating Russian collusion.
The Russians know steel is a back channel to the State Department and the FBI.
Do you, Joe, do you think it's just possible that if the Russians knew that, they'd say, hey man, this is a golden opportunity to feed this guy some BS information that makes its way into the U.S.
government?
You think that's possible?
Yeah!
You're darn right!
I spent a lot of time in Russia when I was a Secret Service guy.
They're not stupid.
They may not be the wealthiest country on earth, but they're not idiots.
Joe, just full disclosure, Joe, because you know we'll be investigated by Bob Mueller next.
Were you in Russia too?
At one point.
Yeah okay, I just want that out there folks, because Bob Mueller, I know why, it was a personal thing, and I'm not gonna, but I was in Russia for work.
Bob Mueller, I did not collude with the Russians.
I'm just putting that out there folks, okay?
Bob Mueller be knocking on my door next.
Joe too, he was in Russia too.
Leave Joe alone!
Free Joe Armacost!
Someone wanted me to put that on a t-shirt up at our store.
What is it, Save Joe or Free Joe?
It's pretty funny.
Like Free Willy from the movie.
Free Armacost!
Poor guy robs banks, Russian colluder, everything.
It's unbelievable.
Takeaway number two from the Strassel piece.
So takeaway number one, were the Russians aware of the steel backchannel into the government?
Takeaway number two, quote, we've also learned more about steel and fusion's connections to Russians.
Gee, I thought Mueller was investigating this.
Steele sent a series of emails to the Justice Department employee Bruce Ohr in 2016 inquiring about the status of a visa for Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch with Kremlin ties.
Wait, okay, hold on, hold on.
So Steele, working with the State Department and the FBI, the Russians are clearly aware of this because Steele has Russian sources documented, okay?
Steele is also emailing, texting Bruce Ohr from the Department of Justice, a lead Department of Justice official, whose wife works for Fusion GPS, the company Steele's working for, is emailing about a Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska and his visa status, curious, trying to help him out.
Deripaska's connected to Putin!
Where is that in the Mueller report?
Was he even remotely interested?
How did he miss this?
Mueller must be, and Weissman, His chief lunatic on this thing.
They must be the dumbest investigators in human history to have missed this.
So you don't investigate the back channel Steele has with the State Department.
You don't investigate his Russian sources.
You don't investigate his ties to a noted Russian oligarch in Deripaska.
Also, did you bother investigating what we've been talking about on this show forever?
That Fusion GPS was working alongside Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who arranged the Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016?
Fusion was hired as part of a team to help Veselnitskaya undermine Bill Browder, the man behind the Magnitsky Act, a law that imposes sanctions on Russians for corruption and human rights activities.
Did you bother at all to look into the Russian lawyer who meets with Trump Jr.
and her connections to Fusion, the same company hired by Hillary?
Are you even remotely interested?
We don't need to beat that one to death, you've heard it on this show a thousand times.
Now, None of this was investigated by Mueller, but expect no questions from the left or the media that are unbelievably incurious about the biggest scandal of our time.
They don't care about Russian collusion at all.
They care about lying about Russian collusion now.
I'm gonna play this video of Buck Sexton on Hill TV.
Buck Sexton's one of my friends.
He's a great guy.
We've known each other for a long time.
Former CIA employee, worked with the NYPD in the intel section.
Very bright guy.
Buck Sexton has clearly had enough.
He has a show on Hill TV.
He has clearly had enough of this far-left stupidity regarding the dossier and this whole case and Russian interference and Mueller and Mueller not doing anything.
He had on his show a liberal, I don't know who this guy is, I've never heard of him, but watch this guy completely, utterly humiliate himself on Buck Sexton's show, trying to insist that the dossier, Joe, which has been debunked by every sane person on the planet, they're going back now to the starting gate, two years ago, that now the dossier is real again.
Listen to this stupidity and watch Buck Sexton's reaction.
This is priceless.
Regardless of what Russia did, there was no collusion with the President of the United States, and that's what it comes down to.
Joe, any reaction to that?
That's not true.
Exactly right.
There was no indictable conspiracy.
There was absolutely collusion.
You know there was.
They took a meeting with the Russians.
They took the information from the Russians.
He called on the Russians to release emails.
What is your definition of collusion?
That would be it.
Taking a meeting with somebody.
Not knowing what they're going to tell you or what you're going to tell them.
Oh yes, they did know what they were going to tell them.
They knew exactly.
Well, that's weird because they didn't give them any information in the meeting.
They were taking the meeting because they were proffered negative information on Hillary
Clinton from the Russian government.
That's just the stuff.
It was from a Russian lawyer.
It was absolutely not from the Russian government.
And I need to know something.
If that's a really bad idea, if that's wrong and terrible and nasty, what is it when the DNC pays a law firm to hire a foreigner, Christopher Steele, who is not a U.S.
citizen, has no role in U.S.
elections whatsoever, to use Russian sub-sources in a smear campaign that now the New York Times itself says may have been a Russian disinformation campaign, and run that through the FBI and the press in this country, who bought the whole thing hook, line, and sinker?
Listen, I had a... This is... Buck, you are the man, brother.
Thank you.
That clip goes on for a few more minutes, but in the interest of time, I had it cut up.
He then goes on, and I don't want to bore you to say how, oh, no, no, none of that.
The dossier was real the whole time.
It's fake.
It's a discredited hoax.
Thank you, Buck Sexton, for finally nailing this guy to the wall.
There you go.
The guy tries to argue this premise.
That a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Veselnitskaya, is evidence of collusion.
And then when Buck hits him on the fact that, really?
How do you answer the fact that Russian subsources were used by the guy paying for Hillary?
In other words, they paid for actual Hillary.
He goes, the dossier is real.
This is embarrassing.
Embarrassing.
Nice job, Buck Sexton.
I had a play that he hits every one of our points in that.
And it's never addressed in the report at all, while in the FBI's own FISA, if you watch yesterday's show, they clearly write about this steals information coming from Russians.
And yet the Democrats are still clinging to this talking point, that information that was never exchanged from Russians at the Trump Tower meeting, they wanted to talk about Magnitsky, that that was in turn evidence of collusion.
It's so ridiculous, but nice job by Buck Sexton.
Excuse me.
All right.
I got a couple more things to get through.
A lot of stuff here.
So it's a very busy news day.
All right.
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Okay.
All right, moving on.
John Solomon, who I really have come to admire a lot, has been doing just incredible work on this case.
Drops another one yesterday at the Hill.
Story will be in the show notes.
This story just gets juicier by the minute.
Headline, John Solomon, how the Obama White House engaged Ukraine to give Russia collusion narrative an early boost.
Engage Ukraine?
Joe, I thought foreign collusion was a big deal.
Apparently not with the Obama admin.
How about that?
So, in the piece, John Solomon launches this just salvo here that's going to be tough for them to get away from, especially given Joe Biden's connections to Ukraine, which we covered extensively yesterday.
Yeah, yeah, they're bad.
So, let me lay this out for you.
Solomon's Peace says this, that there's this meeting in the White House complex, the 18-acre complex, with Ukrainian officials and the Obama White House, Obama officials inside their White House there.
In that meeting, again, I thought collusion with foreigners during the election was a big deal, right?
Two specific things are addressed.
The Ukrainians, according to their account, they think they're there to talk about corruption Oh, they're there to talk about corruption, alright.
Just not the kind of corruption you think.
From the John Solomon piece.
The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination.
Again, on the corruption front.
But Ukrainian participants said it didn't take long, during the meeting and afterwards, to realize the Americans' objectives included two politically hot investigations.
One that touched Vice President Joe Biden's family.
Oh, isn't that special?
If you listen to yesterday's show.
And one that involved a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump.
Folks, wait, wait, wait.
Again, I thought colluding with foreign officials during an election to get your vice president's investigation into his kid, to get that investigation suppressed, and to then get information about a guy working for Donald Trump, I thought foreign collusion was a bad thing.
Apparently not!
The peace goes on!
U.S.
officials, quote, this is from the Ukrainians, kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united, said Andriy Telizhenko, then a political officer in the Ukraine embassy in Washington tasked with organizing the meeting.
Telizhenko no longer works there, said U.S.
officials volunteered during the meetings, one held in the OEOB in the White House complex, That they had an interest in reviving a closed investigation into payments to US figures from Ukraine's back party of regions.
That 2014 investigation was led by the FBI and focused heavily on GOP lobbyist Paul Manafort, whose firm long had been tied to Trump through his partner and Trump pal Roger Stone.
Now, Before we dig into the unsavory details of this continued debacle of foreign collusion with Ukraine, I'd like to play you a little video of Vice President Joe Biden, former Vice President, talking about how he visited Ukraine.
Again, listen to yesterday's show for the details.
He visits Ukraine in April of 2014.
Mysteriously, that same week, his son Hunter gets a lucrative position on a Ukrainian natural gas company.
Wow!
How'd that happen?
A lot of major coincidences, Joe.
Now, here's another coincidence for you.
Biden's given a speech.
Again, this is a spy story full of idiots.
Idiots.
Biden's giving a speech that people are recording.
At a foreign policy seminar, and he goes into talking about how he had a Ukrainian prosecutor, coincidence totally Joe, I'm sure, wink and a nod, the same prosecutor looking into his kid and these payments to his kid through this natural gas company.
Biden goes on to brag about how he gets the guy fired.
Here's your Bondo James moment.
And so I got Ukraine.
And I remember going over convincing our team or others to convincing us that we should be providing for loan guarantees.
And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev.
And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion dollar loan guarantee.
And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor and they didn't.
So they said they had, they were walking out to press conference and I said, I'm not going to, we're not going to give you the billion dollars.
They said, you have no authority.
You're not the president.
The president said, I said, call him.
I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting a billion dollars.
I said, you're not getting a billion.
I'm going to be leaving here.
I think it was what, six hours.
I look, I said, I'm leaving in six hours.
If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money.
Oh, son of a bitch.
Got fired.
And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.
(laughing)
Do you have that Pee Wee Herman drop?
I mean, I don't even know what to say.
I need a drop right now.
Any creative drop you have, I would deeply appreciate right now.
Chewbacca, Peewee.
Seems weird a little bit.
Play that again!
You think it's a little weird?
Folks, this guy, Joe Biden, this knucklehead, is at a foreign policy speech actually bragging about holding back U.S.
funds to Ukraine, a billion dollars, in conjunction with Obama.
Call him.
He brags.
Call him.
In conjunction with Obama, until they fire a prosecutor, knee-deep in an investigation into an appointment of his kid onto a natural gas company.
He's bragging about it!
Again!
Jesus!
You're almost like...
You know, sometimes when you're involved in a story as knee-deep and neck-deep as I am in this whole Spygate drama, you want to believe you're uncovering, like, really sinister, awful people.
And they are awful, don't get me wrong.
I'm not trying to sugarcoat this.
Right?
But, you know, Joe, just to feel like you're part of the larger good.
You want to feel like... I remember when I was a cop, you know, when you got the guy who had, whatever, kidnapped someone or someone who had assaulted someone, you felt really good.
I feel no such sense of reward.
I don't.
I feel like this is the biggest group of idiots you have ever seen in your life.
I have no sympathy for them, no empathy, nothing.
I'm not saying they're not awful people.
They are awful.
But some of the people in this were so stupid, there's a side of my brain like, really?
You have Stroke texting his girlfriend, hey man, basically how do we get a mole inside the White House?
You have a chief of staff guy for Pence who's married to a woman working for Stroke who's mentioned in the text.
You have Mueller trying to investigate Russian collusion who simultaneously leaves out the three biggest Russian collusion questions of all.
Steal Russian sources and Natalia Veselnitskaya.
You have the Vice President trying to, according to John Solomon's news story, interfere in an election into his kid and then bragging on tape about firing the prosecutor looking into it.
You have Ukrainians at the White House being asked to open up an investigation into Paul Manafort after the investigation's already been closed by the FBI.
Suspiciously, a few months later, Hillary Clinton hires Glenn Simpson, who wrote the story in 2007 that likely led to the FBI investigation of Paul Manafort.
Wow, the movie script returns!
Geez.
Gosh, the stupid is legion.
It is a thick cloud of stupid you can't escape from.
Joe, this may be more your vintage.
You're just a little older than me.
Remember the blob movies?
I used to watch them on Saturday morning when I lived in Long Island.
Remember the blob?
It was the worst special effects ever.
Remember the kids running out of the movie theater?
And the blob, it looks like a big blob of jello.
And the funny thing about the blob movie is the blob was so slow, you wondered, how stupid are these kids if they can't get away from the blob?
It wasn't like the zombies in 28 Days Later that can sprint, you know?
It was like the George Romero Walking Dead zombies.
Just run away, dude!
Run away!
How do you get caught by the blob?
What is wrong with you?
My infant child when she was one could have crawled away from the blob, quicken up.
These were the dumbest victims ever!
It reminds me of watching The Blob!
Remember 28 Days Later?
Those zombies could run!
You couldn't get away from them!
Those were scary zombies!
These are like the Walking Dead zombies!
They just sit there!
Oh my gosh.
This is really like watching one of those shows where you're like, dude, just run.
How stupid are you people?
Yeah.
This is the spy story for morons.
I'm telling you, book two, you're going to be, if you think they're morons now, wait till you finish the book.
Holy Moses.
Man, I mean, what are they doing?
Taking the stupid intravenously?
Must be!
They're mainlining it.
They're like, with a used insulin needle or something.
I mean, gosh, it's like a stupid injection.
You have the lead investigators for the FBI counterintelligence division.
This guy Stroke is a supervisor, a management level guy.
Probably an SES level employee.
Who's been doing this his whole life, who can't figure out that he's probably a tool in a Russian disinformation probe, and then he decides to text on a non-secure device a woman he's having an affair with, exposing the whole plot?
Oh my gosh, dude, are you this stupid?
You have Bob Mueller, a decorated FBI director, who by the way, had his own share of issues too, but the left thinks he's the greatest thing ever.
You have Bob Mueller, a career public servant, who is supposed to be investigating Russian collusion, who misses every single component of the Russian collusion case.
You have the Obama White House bringing in Ukrainians, bragging about firing Ukrainians, investigating people in the Obama White House.
And then you have the same Obama White House bringing in Ukrainians, asking to reopen a closed FBI case into Paul Manafort, who's already being investigated by a reporter, a former reporter, Simpson, who's been hired by Hillary to gin up a movie script about Donald Trump.
Oh my gosh are you people idiots.
This is the dumbest spy story in American history.
You know what?
In American history.
I should retitle my second book.
Exonerated, a comedy.
I should.
I should subtitle it.
Like a Seinfeld episode.
I mean we need like a laugh track to this show.
Remember the laugh track?
People would laugh You ever see a sitcom, they used to have live audiences, now they have laugh tracks?
Joe, for next week, can we get a laugh track for the show?
Can you just pull one off the internet that's not copyrighted?
We need a laugh track, because this show is becoming like a sick, tragic comedy.
I mean that in a good way.
These were the dumbest people I have ever seen.
And then finally, and we'll let you grow for the weekend.
Mueller figures it all out.
He gets the text from the IG and he doubles down on stupid.
Instead of issuing an index card like thing, I'm sorry America, this case is colossal BS.
I have wasted your time.
Look at these morons.
What does he do?
He goes and arrests Papadopoulos at the airport.
Serves the search warrant on Paul Manafort.
Arrest Trump's lawyer.
I mean, excuse me, starts investigating Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, who gets arrested later.
And we're all supposed to celebrate this guy?
Was that movie Village of the Damned?
This is the Village of the Stupid!
Oh, man.
I had so much fun on today's show.
All right, folks, it's the weekend.
So just know this.
Justice, I believe, is coming.
I'm serious.
Sources are pretty decent on this.
Justice is coming.
Smile a little bit.
Great growth numbers.
It's going to be a good weekend.
I have some date night with my wife I always look forward to.
By the way, some guy emailed me and stopped talking about my wife.
I'm sorry.
I dig my wife.
It's part of the show.
I mean, listen, the show's free, folks.
You don't have to listen to our sponsors pay for it.
But, you know, it's part of my life.
It's part of my show.
And, you know, I look forward to the weekends and stuff.
So sorry, but that's not going to change.
She's also an integral part of the show, just like Joe.
You know, she works here too, so.
All right, thank you so much.
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