In this episode, I address the panic breaking out in the deep state as the IG Report release looms large. This key player emerged from the darkness to spin a tall tale about her role. I also address the continued collapse of the Democratic 2020 field due to ridiculous proposals about “free” stuff.
News Picks:This key Spygate player is panicking ahead of the release of the IG report.
Lisa Page is very worried.
This August, 2019 Rowan Scarborough article is a stunning indictment of this Spygate player’s work.
The latest NY Times story on Spygate is an enormous flop.
The Supreme Court will hear important cases on the Second Amendment & Obamacare in the coming weeks.
Warning signs from overseas about single-payer healthcare.
My appearance on Fox and Friends this morning discussing the Spygate 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.
Hi.
I can't anymore with the Joe.
I'm not even going to play the Joe Biden clip.
I'm not even going to play it.
I can't even do it anymore with Joe Biden.
It's not even part of the show today, although I've just made it part of the show by saying it's not part of the show.
Did you hear it, Joe, this weekend?
Joe Biden again.
So I was at the pool and these kids were rubbing my legs and his blonde legs and they like the hair and the hair stands up.
So the kid jumped on me because I love when kids jump on.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you're like, what are you talking about?
Just Google it.
Biden, I'm telling you, folks, seriously, I almost feel bad for him at this point.
He is completely detached from reality.
Just a weekend of big news, a lot to talk about.
Shockingly, our Black Friday show, on what I'm going to talk about again today, was one of our most listened to shows ever, even on Black Friday with the Thanksgiving Day, where we addressed Spygate and everything going on.
Welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Fine, sir.
I'm doing good.
And I'll tell you, everybody knows that this is the show to watch or listen to.
If you need to know everything, you need to know in an hour.
That's it.
Especially on Spygate.
Joe said something to me before the show.
He's like, man, you're becoming the source on this.
And I say that thanks to you.
I, you know, I get my, a lot of my material from other people and other sources too.
And so I'm really glad like this show has kind of become a compendium, a repository of all the Spygate information.
So we're going to hit some of that again today.
Quick update for you on the Bongino report.
I'm tired of drudge.
I know you're tired of drudge.
He has gone not only left, but far left.
The anti-Trump stuff is ridiculous.
The Bongino report, coming soon.
I don't want to give you a definitive date because I don't want to let you down,
We're working hard to get this thing out, get rid of Drudge.
The Bongino Report is coming where as our tagline is going to be, our only agenda is freedom and liberty.
All right.
There you go.
Coming soon.
All right.
Let's get right to the show today.
There's no ding ding ding.
Oh, you have a spot.
Oh, is that after?
Did I mess that up?
The ding ding ding?
On the spot?
Really?
And I'm like pointing at you, like, Joe, what are you doing?
I don't know.
Well, good.
Lending Club just got an extended spot now.
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All right, Joe, now let's go.
There it is!
Totally, totally blew the intro to the show on that one.
I've just had so much going on.
I get up so early for Fox and Friends on Monday morning.
By the time we record the show, I've been up for like 10 hours already, rocking and rolling.
All right.
More importantly, before I get to the Spygate stuff, which is critical.
You know about Lisa Page, FBI lawyer, spoke to this far leftist who writes for the Daily Beast, Molly, whatever, Fast, whatever her name is.
It was a total disgrace.
I'm going to get to that in a second.
But before I get to that, I have to address this because it happened last night to a lot of you CBS viewers who were watching 60 Minutes.
There was a just abomination of a piece that some of you might have seen, some of you may have missed, but ladies and gentlemen, it was important.
It was important for all the wrong reasons.
The CBS 60 Minutes piece last night on YouTube was a... The CBS piece on YouTube, not the CBS piece on YouTube.
You know what I mean?
They were covering YouTube.
The CBS piece was a clear shot across the bow to conservatives that the media is going to pressure tech companies to squelch your free speech, there's no doubt about it.
The media now is all in on an anti-free speech rebellion.
They're doing it in conjunction with liberal activist groups.
Ladies and gentlemen, the idea that the media, media people, leftist media activists have any interest in fair and open dialogue, ideology versus ideology, speech competing with other speech is over.
Over.
Stick a fork in it, forget it.
If you watched 60 Minutes last night, make no mistake.
The media, 60 Minutes, CBS, ABC, NBC, liberal activists at CNN and MSNBC, these networks are all in on crushing conservative content.
Let me play for you a small piece.
I want you to listen to Leslie Stahl, full-time anti-free speech activist now, trying to pressure the CEO of YouTube.
The piece was on YouTube.
Trying to instigate a pressure campaign on the CEO of YouTube to get rid of content like this and other content because Leslie Stahl is a devout, hardcore leftist.
Listen to how this is all phrased, folks.
This is really, really serious what's coming down the waterway here.
It's real trouble.
Check this out.
The struggle for Wojcicki is policing the site while keeping YouTube an open platform.
You can go too far and that can become censorship.
And so we have been working really hard to figure out what's the right way to balance responsibility with freedom of speech.
But the private sector is not legally beholden to the First Amendment.
You're not operating under some freedom of speech mandate.
You get to pick.
We do.
Here we go.
Yep.
Hey, would you see it?
Yeah.
Now, Leslie Stahl, devout leftist, is not incorrect.
I do not support government intervention into private markets, selecting what good speech and bad speech is, no matter what.
Even though I know, and I know a lot of you disagree, and that's okay.
That's okay.
This is not a lemming show.
You are not lemmings.
I have a brilliant audience.
I read your email.
So does Paula.
You, the ladies and the gentlemen that listen to my show, I'm not kidding.
This is not some virtue signaling effort to kiss your butts.
You're brilliant.
Some of your points are incorporated into the show.
They're so good.
I do not support government intervention into these markets.
If YouTube wants to destroy its business model like the mainstream media did for decades by catering to a liberal audience until we saw Fox News come in and supplant them as number one, let them do it.
I'm simply suggesting, she's not inaccurate by saying this, this is not a free speech issue constitutionally.
These are free market companies.
Having said that, make no mistake, This is a liberal effort to push these people off, conservatives, off of these platforms.
Why?
There are a couple things going on.
And notice how she frames it.
Leslie Stahls says, well...
It's not a free speech issue, you pick, right?
In other words, liberal activists, folks, if you're watching on YouTube right now, wink and a nod, liberal activists, because the CEO of YouTube, because they pick what's allowed on their platform and not, because it's not a free speech constitutional issue, YouTube is not the government, it's a private company, they can do what they want with their site.
Right.
Because you pick, Joe.
That means if conservative content is allowed to stay on YouTube, you picked it, YouTube, meaning pressure campaigns, liberal groups, pressure them.
Yes.
Liberal pressure campaigns, we're going to blame you for it.
Folks, get ready!
A full-time corporate activism campaign by liberal radical groups to get this show and other shows like it booted off YouTube platforms and other platforms.
Facebook is underway.
That's number one.
The number one takeaway.
They want to squelch conservative content.
Leslie Stahl doesn't care about liberal groups.
She didn't even mention them.
The 60-minute piece didn't mention Antifa and these radical leftist violent groups.
These liars on YouTube talking about how socialism doesn't kill.
A deadly lie because it does.
They're not talking about getting any of that booted off.
This is a pressure campaign targeting YouTube.
Yeah, you guys pick the content.
Conservatives are allowed on here.
Wink and a nod.
We're coming for you next.
And CBS and these other media outlets are all in.
The days of what we believe to be a corporate allegiance at least to basic principles of fairness are over.
So takeaway number one, I'm telling you, it is only a matter of time.
Don't worry about us.
We are working on plan B here, me and Paula and Joe and others.
We always, you know, we have other platforms as well.
We're not going anywhere.
And I'm, listen, I'm good.
I am not naive to the fact that we are using platforms that are going to be pressured by liberal groups to boot us in the near future.
I promise you, I will leave you all turners.
The show's not going anywhere.
Ever.
Takeaway number two from this.
These liberal pressure campaigns you pick, we're coming for you next because you picked the content, are working.
They are working because Google, Facebook, and others have changed policies regarding political ads.
There are some of these platforms like Twitter that aren't even allowing political ads anymore.
Facebook and Google are changing the contours of what allowable targeting is.
What do I mean by this?
I'm going to put up this Wall Street Journal article in a minute because it's important you understand prong number two.
Prong number one, kick off conservative content.
Let the media campaigns pressure them.
Prong number two, get rid of political advertising.
Why?
Why?
Ladies and gentlemen, it's not a coincidence that Brad Parscale in the Trump campaign, he's one of the digital managers of the Trump campaign.
I believe he's the campaign manager now.
Brad Parscale was using Facebook and others to do what the Obama team had done in their re-elect effort.
They were using digital targeting to target voters.
Nothing even mildly unethical or untoward about that, folks.
Nothing.
The Obama team used, they bragged about using Dashboard and Facebook platforms, the Obama team, to target voters.
Now, they're changing the context.
Twitter's banned these things outright.
Now, you may say, this is where this show's a little different.
You may say, well Dan, okay, but if Twitter is banning political ads altogether, Facebook is making it more difficult to run political ads, and Google is changing their targeting provisions so you can't voter target appropriately to get out to GOTV, get out to vote, that does not affect Democrats and Republicans equally.
Yes!
So, if you're watching and you're bright, like many of you watch my show and listen are, you're probably saying, well, if it affects Democrats and Republicans equally, how is this targeted at Trump?
Oh, check out this Wall Street Journal article about how the Democrats are always three steps ahead in conjunction with their media bootlicking, sycophantic, ass-kissing buddies.
From their editorial board is an article today, Who's Afraid of Political Ads?
With its new restrictions, Google targets a red herring.
In other words, it's a fake problem.
Leslie Stahl goes on in that 60 Minutes piece to say, are you taking down political ads that lie?
What do you mean, like every Democrat ad ever?
Every ad ever?
We're not going to raise your taxes.
You can keep your plan.
Public schools are doing great.
UK health care is terrific.
Social security isn't broke.
Medicare isn't broke.
Like every Democrat political ad ever run.
You mean those ads?
No, Leslie Stahl's not talking about that.
She's talking about the Trump ad.
Because they're not just gonna pull down Trump ads and Democrat ads.
The Democrats already have a plan, and check this out what their plan is.
This is just, this is great work by the Wall Street Journal.
It says, Google is also inviting chicanery when it comes to what is or isn't political content.
Of course, that's only, by the way, gonna target conservatives.
Bloomberg reported last week, listen to this, On a project by a progressive campaign operative to create Joe, donor-funded quote, local news sites, oh, aimed explicitly at persuading people to vote for Democrats.
Groups like this could get around Google's targeting restrictions and get more reach than parties or campaigns which are more heavily regulated and transparent.
Ladies and gentlemen, as I've warned you about repeatedly, over and over and over again, The Democrats always think 52 steps ahead.
That's slick.
They know they have media ass kissers on their side every single time.
They know it.
They know academia, Hollywood elites, the dopiest among us.
Yes, academia and Hollywood, these are the dumbest among us.
They know they will always back them up no matter what, even when it comes to things like the Constitution.
They always have a plan.
Their plan now, boot off conservative content number one, restrict political advertising that would potentially benefit the Trump campaign, and if it hurts the Democrats too, don't worry, we'll go to plan three.
Plan three will create local news sites which are really Democrat propaganda that's classified as local news, Joe, dreaded air quotes, and not political advertising.
Man, like political bodegas.
On the web!
Yes!
Yes!
And what'll happen?
When Republicans try to do the same thing and establish local news sites, they'll be declared political, hate speech, they'll be declared propaganda, botnets, and they'll be kicked off these platforms immediately.
Bang.
No kidding.
Yep.
Folks, nothing they do is by mistake.
Nothing the Democrats... I'm not talking about voting Democrats out in the country.
A lot of them are tired of this too, and many of them are actually voting for Trump.
I'm talking about radical activist Democrats on the inside in this iron triangle.
Media, congressional committees, and activist groups, to quote Fred Siegel, his iron triangle.
These people are anti-free speech.
They are hyper-aggressive, in many cases super-violent.
They will do anything to suppress free speech and free thought and legitimate political debates.
They will lie, cheat, steal.
Their only effort right now is to boot conservative content off these platforms because it's making a difference.
Content like this.
Restrict political advertising until they get in office.
And while you're restricting it, implement new local news organizations that are strictly Democrat propaganda outfits.
It's a genius plan.
Genius in its depravity.
Unreal, folks.
It's coming.
It's coming.
Get ready.
That's why I humbly beg of you to please— I know this sounds counterintuitive, but I mean this with the greatest respect and humility.
I ask you to please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Basically, why are we supporting these outfits that are going to come after us later?
That has, in some cases, come after me now.
They've deleted a couple of my shows.
Because, folks, I'm already working on Plan B, and the only way you're going to hear about it is by transitioning from this platform to another one later.
But we have to start what we have now.
Please subscribe.
YouTube.com slash Bongino.
It's the only way.
There is no easy path out of here.
All right.
All right.
Let me get to the second ad.
You know, we run roughly three, sometimes four ads per show.
But it's important because I want to roll through this Spygate stuff because it's been a major break I discussed on Fox News this morning.
And I'm telling you, panic is breaking out all over the place amongst the deep staters.
All right.
Before we get to that, today's show brought to you by our buddies at Bowl & Branch.
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Even though Paula was working really hard last night, she's still on those bowling brand sheets.
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I want to thank you, Paula, in front of the audience for all the work you're putting in.
This Bongino report, she's been all over it.
It looks super nice.
I cannot wait to launch it.
Very, very, very soon.
You're gonna love it.
Okay.
So.
One of the key Spygate players, Lisa Page, who, make no mistake, was at the upper echelon of the FBI reporting to Andrew McCabe, the deputy director, at one point acting director, and the lead lawyer on the case against Donald Trump where they spied on his team is Lisa Page.
Lisa Page Of course goes to a friendly media outlet.
I'm not putting the article up because the woman who wrote it is a disaster, Molly Fast.
She is a total phony fraud when she's not busy attacking cancer victims at CPAC.
That actually happened, by the way.
She's writing horrible articles that are... I don't even know where she gets her information.
They're just garbage.
I can't say enough about it because her work is so awful, but she is a friendly because she can't stand Trump and anybody who tells the truth about Spikey.
She knows nothing about the case, by the way.
But Lisa Page went to her to put up an article in the comically bad fake news site, The Daily Beast, which is a joke.
I mean, they reported again that I was dropped from the NRA TV despite knowing otherwise, which was just embarrassing, an embarrassing misstep.
So she goes to the Daily Beast and basically says like, ah, it was unfathomable that I committed a crime.
What's going on here?
Put up this Washington Examiner piece.
Jerry Dunleavy and Dan Chatelain have an interesting take on it.
She says, Lisa Page, I'm done being quiet.
Lisa Page emerges ahead of Pfizer report.
The Washington Examiner piece will be up in the show notes today.
Again, if you subscribe to our newsletter, we'll send them to you, bungino.com slash newsletter.
Matt Palumbo has a great piece on this too, about the lies disseminated in this Daily Beast piece.
So, first on Lisa Page, who is stunned that she's being targeted for this.
Folks, just to reset the argument because your liberal friends will lie to you repeatedly on this and it just gets disturbing.
Lisa Page was a lawyer for the FBI in headquarters who reported to the deputy director She was not a low-level lawyer.
She was also having an affair with an SES-level FBI agent, Peter Stroke, who was the lead investigator on the Trump case, and they were both assigned to the Mueller probe before being summarily dismissed for their 50,000 texts.
They were texting to each other about how awful Trump was.
Which is funny, Joe.
Lisa Page, I'm not going to be quiet anymore.
You texted your boyfriend 50,000 times.
I'm not exactly sure that was being quiet.
Slight bit of hyperbole?
No.
When was she ever being quiet?
The answer?
Never.
No, that's number one.
She was never quiet.
She texted 50,000 times on an FBI device to her boyfriend about how much they couldn't stand Trump people.
He could smell them.
How there was an insurance plan.
How they were gonna stop him.
Their quotes, not mine.
Also in the interview, she talks about how, hey, this case was properly predicated because we had information that Papadopoulos was talking to a Russian agent.
Folks, again, for the 15,000th time, there is no evidence Joseph Mifsud, who was talking to Papadopoulos, was a Russian agent.
The evidence is overwhelming.
His affiliation was with Western friendly intelligence assets.
There is no evidence this guy was a Russian agent.
Not even Mueller concluded that.
So please stop the garbage!
Now, why is Lisa Page panicking?
Let me just put this proviso in there.
Little caveat emptor, buyer beware.
I do not know what is in the Inspector General report coming out December 9th, this coming Monday.
We will have a week of shows, I promise, dedicated to breaking down everything you need from that report.
These shows in the next few weeks are going to be critical.
Please recommend them to your friends.
This is going to be critical for getting the straight scoop.
I don't know what's in that report.
There are obviously, tautologically, two possibilities.
It's either super damning or it's not.
Okay?
It's as simple as that.
What leads me to believe, and what I addressed last week, that the New York Times leak saying, oh, no big deal in this report, there was no spying, etc, etc.
What leads me to believe that the report might be more damning than the liberal media is letting on is the actions of Paige.
Paige is obviously mentioned in the report, meaning what, folks?
She's in the report, means she's probably seen or heard about what's in there.
Her efforts to get out, talk to a dreaded anti-Trumper, I mean dreadful to be more precise, Mollie Fast, are probably a loud exclamation of how badly she comes off in this report.
Folks, this report could be devastating.
Now I addressed some of what I believe to be the more devastating, could be, it may not, I don't know.
I'm just telling you things we do know that if they come out, you can't hide this stuff forever and no amount of verbal judo is going to change the facts.
Here are the facts we know.
We know the Trump team was spied on.
The question I discussed on Friday's show, which did enormous numbers.
The key takeaway, and why I think Page and the other deep staters may be panicking, is not that the Trump campaign was spied on.
We know that.
That's a fact.
You call it whatever you want.
Informant, undocumented informant, some stupid euphemism.
I'm not interested.
The Trump team was spied on.
Period.
Full stop.
End of story.
Thanks for playing.
The only question right now is, did you pay for it?
Don't worry.
I'm not going to redo Friday's show, which addressed this very topic.
But I do want to reintroduce this topic because a counterpoint on Twitter has been reintroduced by a couple of very smart people.
A guy I cited on Friday, Steven McIntyre, who's at Climate Audit on Twitter, does great work on this.
I know we had a little friction there for a moment, but you know, this happens.
It's fine.
People can have sensible disagreements.
And Svetlana Lakova, who I'm going to line up for an interview on the show.
I just have a couple things I got to get out of the way first.
And don't worry, the Kill Me interviews coming soon.
We did that on Friday.
We will launch it today or tomorrow.
We're just trying to we just got to produce it.
It takes a little bit.
We didn't forget about it.
But Svetlana Lakova and Steven McIntyre have an alternate view of some other conclusions on this.
Remember, keep in mind your headline.
Did we pay for this?
Halper, I believe, Stéphane Halper, the spy who spied on the Trump team, I believe may have had significant input into the dossier.
Halper was paid by the Office of Net Assessments and the DoD.
Now, let's walk through this, because when I get to Svetlana Lukova and ACT Climate Audit, Stephen McIntyre's conclusions about why that could be deep trouble and what else is going on here, you're going to see how the Democrats have painted themselves in the corner.
Remember the question we're talking about?
Not that the Trump campaign team was spied on.
They were spied on.
Was your tax dollars, were your tax dollars used to pay for it?
Let's go to photo number one first.
This is from Svetlana Alkova's excellent thread, which I have on my Twitter feed as well.
You can check it out.
She posts this photo from the Grassley letter.
Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator, she posts the top of this.
On January 16th of 2019, sent a letter Over to the Inspector General in the Department of Defense asking this question about, remember we're talking about money paid to Halper who spied on a Trump team.
Did you finance this disaster?
He says, Inspector General, fine.
This is Grassley, Republican Senator.
I'm writing to you to request a review of the allegations that the DOD Office of Net Assessment Contracts were used to support Partisan, political, or other improper or wasteful activities.
Oh!
Oh, here we go!
So Chuck Grassley, Republican Senator, who his entire career has been focused on government malfeasance and potential law enforcement abuses.
He's been all over this stuff.
Anybody who knows him knows that.
Sends a letter in January of this year, Joe, To the DOD, ask him about some payments in Office of Net Assessment, their Office of Net Assessment, that may have been for, quote, what is this here?
What do we have here?
Partisan political activities?
Joe, let me ask you, you think Grassley just made that up, just wrote that letter?
He's like, hey, he's sitting around eating some leftover turkey on an everything bagel, a little mayo and adobo, oh no, sorry, that was me, on a weekend, and he's sitting there going, what am I going to do in January?
Oh, January, I got nothing to do on the weekend, there's no movies playing, let me just Let's write a letter to the Department of Defense about payments from the Office of Net Assessment that paid the spy who spied on the Trump team for partisan political activities.
That's what he's looking into?
You think he just made that up because it was just some random chance and he was bored on a weekend?
I think he's probably had that in mind for, you know, a while.
I think he's been thinking about it.
I would say producer Joe is right.
That is a fine investigative analysis, Joe.
You are the MacGyver of executive producers.
Well done.
Of course, Graslie knows what's going on.
What did I tell you on Friday?
ONA and DOD paid Halper.
If Halper contributed to the dossier, and the dossier was used to spy on Trump, you paid your taxes, the DOD took your taxes, paid the Office of Net Assessments, who paid Stefan Halper, who then in turn may have fed information to Steele, who put it in a dossier to spy on Donald Trump, and you paid for it, right back to the top of the stupid ladder.
I feel so dirty.
You should!
Take a bleach bath!
Dude!
This is the question!
Seriously, dude.
Now, you may say, well, what's the angle?
You addressed on Friday a lot of this stuff that you pay for.
Well, they may have painted themselves in a significant corner, folks, because the angle is this.
If Halper got his information from Trebnikov, who was a former Russian SVR head, he was a Russian intel head.
Halper and Trubnikov, this Russian intelligence guy, are buddies.
They teach a course together at Cambridge.
Follow me here.
Yeah.
If Halper got his information from Trubnikov, we have a big problem.
But even if he didn't, we have a big problem.
Think about this.
If your tax dollars paid Stefan Halper to the Office of Net Assessment for, quote, partisan political activities from the Grassley letter to target Trump, And then Halper goes and gets his information from the Russians, notably Trubnikov, a Russian guy.
Paula, you gotta follow me too, here's your audience ombudsman.
Folks, do you understand your tax dollars then were paid for a Russian collusion scandal?
By default!
Yeah.
If Halper's right, And Halper was dealing with a Russian intel guy to get information on Trump that turned out to be false.
Do you understand that the Russian collusion scandal is huge and real, but it doesn't involve any Republicans?
It just involves Democrats?
And the Obama administration?
You may say, well, I don't understand how they paint themselves in a corner.
Because even if that's not true, which is where Lakova and McIntyre believe are going, In other words, folks, what if Halpern lied?
What if Halpern made up the whole thing?
What if Halpern said he got the information from Tribnikov to feed into the dossier to spy on Trump and just made it up?
Now, I hinted at this months ago.
Folks, I'm not, again, this is not me, like, you know, me patting myself on the back with a gavel.
I hinted at this a little while ago.
Some of you regular listeners know, and probably picked up the hint, that the Democrats are setting themselves up for failure because both of those paths lead to horrible outcomes.
Path number one, we paid a spy to spy on Trump, feed it into the dossier who got the information from Russians.
Path number two, everything we were told about the dossier was made up, and they spied on Trump anyway.
Do you understand?
Paul, are you getting this?
Yeah, yeah.
Joe, you getting this?
Yeah.
Either path, the Democrats are done.
Yeah.
The spygate plotters are done.
They're finished.
I told you they were painting themselves in a corner.
You either paid for a Russian to provide disinformation, or the guy you paid to go to the Russian lied about the whole thing.
Now, again, Svetlana Likova, who was the target of this whole Flynn operation, where they targeted Mike Flynn.
Remember they accused her disingenuously, these liars, of having an affair with Flynn, despite no evidence?
Yeah.
That's Likova.
Okay.
Yeah, I remember.
Likova's thread is excellent.
She points out this piece at the Daily Caller, too, pointing out how, quote, Daily Caller, June 5th, 2018, a campaign aide was invited to a Cambridge event where Spygate started.
In this Daily Caller piece, Likova makes a great point.
We now know that Halper didn't only target Papadopoulos, didn't only target Carter Page, didn't only target Lakova.
We know that one of Halper's aides at Cambridge, a guy by the name of Stephen Schrage, Stephen Schrage, sounds like a comic book name by the way, invited who else to come over to Cambridge?
Halper's aide, who's being paid by the Office of Net Assessments, invites Stephen Miller.
Stephen Miller, yeah, the Trump aide who's been the face of the immigration debate, a key Trump aide.
Ladies and gentlemen, we know Michael Caputo was targeted.
How many other Trump people, Sam Clovis, how many other Trump officials, Trump associates, Trump people in the Trump orbit were targeted by this guy Halper, potentially using your taxpayer dollars.
Do you see the scandal here?
Now, keep in mind, they have painted themselves in a corner.
Lakova and Stephen McIntyre's theory is that Halper made all of this up and was using Trebnikov's name, we got this information from this key Russian, and it's all a farce.
I'm not sure.
I'm not.
They present compelling information that that may in fact be true.
And I've heard from others that that may in fact be true as well.
In other words, Halper made the whole thing up.
You know, Joe worked at a radio station at WCBM.
If I had a criminal investigation against WCBM, I do not.
I was still a federal agent.
And I said, hey, Joe told me this would be credible.
Joe worked there.
But what if I made the whole thing up just because I didn't like the people at WCBM?
I do.
They're great.
You see how either way they're screwed?
They either colluded with a Russian, Tribnikov, or they lied about colluding with a Russian and the whole case was bogus from the start.
None of this ends well for them.
Now, to present to you Lakova's argument and McIntyre, let's go back to this Rowan Scarborough Washington Times piece.
It's all in the show notes today.
This is definitely worth your time.
Please, Bongino.com, read the articles.
It's critical.
Check this out.
This is a piece from August 2019 we keep going back to because it's evergreen.
Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times.
Loose contracting practices at Pentagon office waste millions, and a whistleblower was punished.
Remember this story.
Adam Lovinger, a whistleblower in the Office of Net Assessments, had paid Halper with your money.
Came out and blew the whistle on these loose contracting practices.
Lovinger was then suspended and investigated.
Because I believe he was closing in on the scandal we're talking about.
Take it back to the lead.
Did you pay the US government, take your tax dollars to spy on the Trump team through Halper?
That's the only question.
Was it exposed by Lovinger?
Is that why Lovinger, the whistleblower on this, was suspended?
But from the Scarborough piece, This is where it gets really dicey, and I think Lakova and McIntyre have a great point that Halper may have made this whole thing up.
There was an Inspector General report into this, into this whole pay for spying operation.
Scarborough writes, after examining the paper, the Inspector General concluded, talking about a paper Halper wrote, folks.
That none of the 348 footnotes in the deliverables attributed to source material that was attributed to an interview conducted by Halper.
None of it.
ONA personnel could not provide us with evidence to show that any of these high-ranking officials cited in the footnotes in Halper's paper, folks, contributed to Professor Halper's India-China study.
You may be saying, I don't get it.
Halper was paid by the Office of Net Assessments to produce these reports.
And the people he cited in the report said, I don't know what you're talking about, I never spoke to this cat.
Folks, I'm telling you, this is an apocalyptic scandal for the Democrats.
There's only two stories Only two.
Page, Lisa Page assuredly at this point knows these stories.
And her other Spygate, you know, co-workers in the case who were involved in this debacle.
Story number one, you paid for a United States government spy to spy on the Trump team, who then worked with a Russian intelligence head to impact the US election.
Devastating.
Or story number two, Donald Trump's team was spied on based on information from a guy, Halper, who cited Russians and made it up.
There's no getting out of that corner, folks.
There is no option C. Lakova and McIntyre believe strongly if I'm citing their thread correctly.
And again, I'm trying to get Lakova on the interview show.
I'll get that set up sometime soon, hopefully.
That Halper made the whole thing up and just used Trebnikov's name.
They may be right.
I have some other information indicating that they could be right.
But I am going to take Steele's word for it at this point that he used Trebnikov as a source and that the real Russian collusion scandal is theirs.
I desperately hope that Lakova's right, and I think she may be.
They may be making the whole thing up, but it doesn't matter.
Either path ends in disaster for the Democrats.
They have no way out of this.
All right, I have a lot more to get to, folks.
There's a ton of news happened over the weekend.
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Okay.
So you got that, I hope.
I hope you're picking up how that was the add-on to the Friday story.
It was not just that you may have paid for these guys to be spied on, that the spy who provided the information may have been lying the whole entire time.
And it's all- None of this.
It's all bad, no matter what happens there, yeah.
No, it's all bad.
No good ending, no.
Okay, so moving on, because we do have a presidential election coming up, and I have a lot to get to with this stuff as well, including the disastrous Democrat field that is imploding as we speak, as evidenced by swing state polls.
Elizabeth Warren.
Her campaign has completely collapsed.
She's trying now to save herself.
Some guy wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today trying to resuscitate on CPR, her disastrous government-run health care plan, which will double and triple your taxes, and in some cases has tax rates up to 100%.
So Elizabeth Warren, in an effort herself to resuscitate her campaign, retweeted an older piece from when she was running for Senate in Massachusetts.
And I guess the argument she's trying to make here, Joe, is, look, I've been a progressive the whole time.
This is what I said when I was running for Senate in this past election or the election before.
I'm a far leftist.
You far leftists should trust me and therefore vote for me.
But what she tweeted out was dumb men.
And it's even dumber now.
I'm going to play it.
Then we're going to play some Obama video.
And I'm going to Let me just play it, then I'm going to dismantle the stupidity and this nonsense.
Check this out.
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.
Nobody.
You built a factory out there, good for you, but I want to be clear, you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.
You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.
You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.
You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did.
Now look, You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea.
God bless.
Keep a big hunk of it.
But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
You know what's funny?
She's really proud of that.
Yeah.
As if it's some, uh, dispositive statement on, uh, economics and taxing.
She's proud of that.
Everybody's clapping.
It's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard before.
I tell you why.
And there's so much stupidity in there.
It's hard to address a single point.
I want to play as a hat tip.
Joe picked this producer, Joe picked this out this morning.
Here's Obama doubling down to the exact same sentiment that no, don't worry.
Don't worry.
You didn't be other people did that for you.
Didn't your own hard work.
Didn't get you wealthy.
It was other people who did it.
Check this out.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.
There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.
Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we had that allowed you to thrive.
Somebody invested in roads and bridges.
If you got a business, you didn't build that.
Somebody else made that happen.
Folks, The stupid is strong with this kind of stuff.
Their central tenet is not inaccurate.
That police departments, fire departments, by the way, how out of touch?
Police versus fire force.
This is how like elitists talk.
Police departments, police officers.
There's no doubt that they've contributed to the greatness of the United States of America.
There's no doubt that having a decent infrastructure to drive on To have roads that are not impassable contributes to interstate commerce and commerce in general.
Nobody doubts that.
Saying things like that that are obvious and, you know, turning into Captain Obvious like a superhero doesn't make you some economic genius.
But the premise for arguing that she makes is absurd and Obama's is even dumber.
Ladies and gentlemen, those things were largely financed by the rich and middle class too!
So the things she's talking about were not paid for by everyone.
They were not!
I'm sorry I have to break to you the hard facts, but the show doesn't do BS, okay?
They were not paid for by everyone, folks.
There are successful middle class, upper middle class, and wealthy people who pay the overwhelming majority of taxes used to finance the police department, the fire department, interstate roads, state roads, county roads, local roads.
Those are paid for by successful, hardworking people who paid for that too!
In other words, Elizabeth Warren's point and Obama's point that you, hardworking middle class, upper middle class, and wealthy folks, who work your butts off your whole life to get a nice nest egg and some assets to pass on to your kids to get an education and produce products that make society better because people are buying them and they like them, that somehow you're leeching off this group of others who paid for you to get rich is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Do you even do economics?
The top 20% of earners in this country, earners, the top 20% pay over 80% of the tax load.
She's making the counter argument to the argument she thinks you make.
You didn't pay for that, Obama, you didn't build that.
All those bills were paid for, I believe, by other people.
No, they were paid for by you, too.
To help other people who don't pay nearly the tax bill you do.
Nowhere close to it.
To help them get wealthy and into the middle class too.
The argument's the opposite one.
Not the one she thinks she's making because she's an economic ignoramus or a liar.
The successful and the middle class pay for the police and fire, brigades, fire departments, fire forces as she calls them, and the roads you drive on to help you accumulate wealth.
They pay for them overwhelmingly.
Do you do numbers?
You think the rich are getting over in this country?
You think they have an easy- They pay 80%!
The top 1% pay significantly more than the bottom 40%!
If you don't like that because you're a jealous loser, I'm sorry, who spends your life envying the success of others rather than getting off your ass and doing something to get wealthy yourself, I'm sorry you're pathetic and live a soulless existence.
But you need to do facts, man.
Facts!
Argue you hate them.
I don't like the rich because I don't like them.
Fine, whatever.
Unlike your liberal buddies, I respect free speech.
Say what you want.
But arguing somehow that, what, lower income folks are being wrecked by the tax system because they're being taxed to pay for rich people's police forces?
It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
There's not a scintilla of truth to that.
Public services are financed by rich upper middle class and middle class people.
End of story.
You want the Elizabeth Warren plan?
Let me show you this Wall Street Journal article today.
Hey, we need to be more like the Europeans and the Germans with their social services.
All right, well, here's a piece in the Wall Street Journal today.
Quote, the middle class always pays.
That's the headline.
From the piece.
You want some of this?
You want some of the European Scandinavian model?
Yeah, we want that.
That's where only rich people pay.
No, no.
No, no, no.
Not true.
Quote.
Let's start with the income tax.
Most European governments tax most household income more heavily than Washington does because they impose their highest marginal rates on lower levels of income.
It goes on.
Pay attention, liberals.
Get the cotton out of your ear and stick it in your mouse.
Germany's second highest marginal income tax rate of 42% kicks in for married households earning about $124,000 a year in U.S.
currency.
$24,000 a year in US currency.
An American couple with that income, $124,000, pays a marginal rate of only 22% and would need to earn $612,000
before paying the top marginal rate of 37%.
Do you get what they're saying there?
If you have two $60,000 incomes in your house, an upper middle class income, $120,000, right?
We can all agree, in most parts, unless you're in a liberal city, then you're poor with that income, which is true.
In San Francisco, you can't even afford a house.
You're living in a Connex box on that salary, because liberals run it.
Most American cities not run by liberals, $124,000 for a married couple, you're living a decent existence.
Nice car, decent house, maybe a couple vacations once in a while.
Do you understand at that middle class income, you are paying half the income tax, the same income for a family in Germany pays?
They pay double that!
I'm just trying to get through your liberal skulls that if you're professing an allegiance to Elizabeth Warren thinking only the rich are gonna pay more for your police forces and fire forces and fire brigades or whatever elitist language they use, you are wrong!
You want European models of social welfare?
You are going to get European tax bills.
Meaning your $60,000 job.
You work in the post office, you're an architect, your wife's $60,000 a year job.
She's a teacher, a nurse, cop, whatever it may be.
Your $120,000 combined salary feeding four or five kids, whatever it may be.
You will pay double the taxes.
Understand that.
If you understand that, and that's what you're arguing for, fine!
At least you're honest.
But this phony, fake crap, these rich people got rich because of cops you paid for, is garbage!
Right, right, right.
It's not true!
You want free healthcare?
You want free college tuition?
You want free education from birth till death?
You want free Social Security benefits?
Of course, I'm jokingly using the word free because none of this is free!
You're gonna pay for it!
Just understand, your middle-class household is gonna suffer tax rates double if not triple what you're paying for now.
Stop lying!
You want Europe?
You'll get Europe.
You'll get it right in a wallet.
The rich are gonna pitch.
It's so dumb.
Juvenile.
The arguments are ridiculous.
All right, moving on, because there's a lot to get to.
Here's a quick piece from The Daily Signal in the show notes today, too.
Again, do you want European health care?
Oh, the United Kingdom's got a great system.
Really, it's collapsing in front of our very eyes.
Daily Signal, Robert Moffitt, really great piece today in the show notes.
Some British lessons on single-payer health care.
The piece has a lot of great points on why the UK National Health Service government-run health care is totally collapsing, but here's one takeaway.
Again, Elizabeth Warren wants this at double the tax bill you're paying now.
The clash of high patient demand for free care at the point of service with limited healthcare supply is manifest in the notorious British waiting lists.
That's what you want here, folks?
You want waiting lists?
According to The Guardian, by the way, this is a left-leaning British newspaper, folks, a total of 4.3 million British citizens were awaiting hospitalization.
The highest level in 10 years.
Oh!
It goes on.
This is what you want here?
For double the tax bill.
As for shortages, the cost to patients are manifest in many other ways, especially in doctor and nursing shortages.
According to a recent edition of The Guardian, again a left-leaning outlet, the British healthcare system is facing a serious physician shortage, particularly specialists, and especially in rural areas.
Worse, 43% of advertised medical positions went unfilled last year, exacerbating the shortage in England.
Again, I know leftists, I know you don't do facts, so you want double the tax bill of what your middle class bill is now.
You want to double that to pay for rationed healthcare, to get on a waiting list for a doctor you can't find because they don't have enough doctors or specialists.
That's what you want here.
But our system is a great- Yeah, because the government's involved in the healthcare system.
Whatever the government touches, they torch.
They're like that character from the Fantastic Four, the human torch.
They burn everything down.
Everything.
Whatever the government touches, it wrecks.
Outside of our military and law enforcement, it wrecks.
It burns it down.
And Elizabeth Warren wants that here.
Yeah, the rich people are gonna pay for it.
Do you even do math?
This is shocking.
We're making good progress here.
I never get through my stories.
You may actually make the whole thing.
All right, another story up at the Wall Street Journal.
Because again, as Joe says, everything you need in an hour.
I don't want to miss this out.
Very important case going on this week, the Supreme Court.
Supreme Court's about to hear two really important ones.
I'll just address one.
The Obamacare one is about some payments, these risk adjustment payments, which maybe we'll talk about another day because it's a little complicated.
But more importantly, they're hearing this week, this article on the Second Amendment.
Wall Street Journal has a piece on guns, liberals, and the Supreme Court.
I have a great Daily Signal piece about it, too.
But there's an interesting takeaway here from the piece.
The genesis of this story is this.
New York City tried to implement this draconian gun law.
You can't take your gun out of the city.
You can't take it to the range.
It had to be in this unloaded case.
You couldn't take it to your second home.
This case was going up to the Supreme Court.
At the last minute, New York City tried to bait and switch.
They said, no, no, we're going to take away some parts of that law.
So Supreme Court, we don't need you to hear this.
Why?
Why'd they do that, Joe?
Because New York City knew it was going to lose, and the Second Amendment, anti-Second Amendment, anti-self-protection advocates out there were afraid that the Second Amendment firearm rights and the right to self-protection would be reinstituted again by the Supreme Court.
From the piece, they bring up this interesting defense.
The Second Circuit Court that echoed the other courts in rejecting Heller's historical standard for reviewing infringements on the Second Amendment.
Second Circuit agreed with New York City, basically, is what they're saying.
The judges weighed New York's compelling interest in protecting public safety without requiring evidence that the transport ban advanced that interest.
Here's the problem, folks.
Any government's restriction could be sustained under this lax standard.
What are they saying here?
The courts that have upheld this draconian, medieval, anti-gun law by New York.
You can't take your gun anywhere, to your second home, anywhere.
It doesn't matter.
We're saying, well, we have a compelling interest in public safety, and the Second Circuit shockingly agreed with this.
Folks, there's no evidence that any of that's actually true, that this would have affected public safety at all.
This law.
Legal gun owners have a lower crime rate than police officers.
That's a fact.
If they can just make that up, Joe, and say, well, we're going to restrict free speech as well.
See how the show ties in?
Because there's a compelling government interest in doing so.
Without providing evidence that's actually true, the government could basically throw out the Bill of Rights.
Liberals are terrified now that this case made it to the Supreme Court.
They're terrified they're going to lose.
We'll see what John Roberts does.
As we've seen in the past, John Roberts is easily intimidated by liberal op-ed columns.
It's an embarrassment.
Chief Justice Roberts.
All you have to do is write that John Roberts said, we're going to, we're not going to like you anymore after this.
We're like Nelson Muntz.
And John Roberts changes his mind.
So rewriting the constitution instantly.
Guy's been a total disappointment.
All right, you know what?
I was going to get this last one, but I'll cover it tomorrow.
It's an interesting story on immigration in the Wall Street Journal, how Holman Jenkins, how they covered the Washington Post immigration under Obama versus Trump.
It's fascinating, some of the quotes.
You'd think they were the people supporting Trump.
They were people supporting Obama.
Total embarrassment.
Folks, please spread this show today.
It is super important.
The key takeaway, we covered a lot of stuff, a lot of topics.
Monday's always a busy news day.
The key question in what this report on Monday is gonna say, is it going to show that the government taxpayer dollars taken from you were used to pay for a spying operation, where either the spy lied or the spy colluded with Russians?
Those are the only, only questions of interest right now.
Or the primaries, I should say.
Important stuff.
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Bongino.
We really appreciate it.
Subscribe to our audio show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.
It really means a lot to us.
Thanks a lot.
Stay tuned for the Bongino Report coming very soon.
