Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed The Tennessee Star’s National Political Editor Neil W. McCabe to the newsmaker line to discuss the recent release of the Durham report and how this affects Hillary Clinton’s upcoming appearance at the Democratic National Convention in New York and Putin’s positioning against the United States.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line now, the very best Washington correspondent in the country, my colleague from Breitbart, my very good friend, National Political Editor for The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network, Neil W. McCabe. Good morning, Mr. McCabe!
McCabe: Michael, very good to be with you, sir.
Leahy: I think I do a better job of introducing you than the guy that does the introductions for the boxing matches. (McCabe laughs)
McCabe: Are you ready to rumble?!
Leahy: Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to rumble with Neil W. McCabe?! I think I do a better job than The Rock did at the Super Bowl. That was pretty bad, wasn’t it?
Carmichael: That was another one that was very bad. He was asked to do it, and I’m sure it was fun for him.
Leahy: Yes. It wasn’t fun for anybody else.
Carmichael: He’s a big guy. Sheesh.
Leahy:Â He’s very big. Well, Neil W. McCabe, what’s going on in Washington? What’s the fallout of the Durham filing on Friday? Tell us what it said. Tell us what it means.
McCabe: Basically, what’s going on is that John Durham, who I don’t know, it was more than two years ago when he put out a statement saying that with all due respect to the inspector general of the Department of Justice, I do not support his conclusions, and I will not be cooperating with the inspector general of the Justice Department.
And we’ve just been sort of waiting and waiting and waiting. And then slowly but surely, Durham has been coming up with things.
I think the most critical thing that he came up with is that he was able to tie the Hillary Clinton campaign to a scheme to monitor computer traffic at the Trump Tower, at the Trump offices, and the Executive Office of the White House, through a back door that was allowed because there are certain people who had a federal government contract.
And because of this federal government contract, they had access to federal information systems. They abused and exploited that access to sort of see what was going on at the executive office of the president, and because these guys were absolutely convinced that Trump was working with the Russians, or they were absolutely desperate to frame Trump as working with the Russians. But either way, this is really the most remarkable private spying operation I’ve ever heard of.
And just the huevos that was necessary to start bugging the Executive Office of the president is just well, you have to step back and admire just the gall to actually attempt something like this.
And the idea that we had no idea what was going on, and that The Washington Post and The New York Times got Pulitzer awards for covering the Russian collusion hoax, and we never knew any of this stuff.
We never knew about Charles Dolan. We never knew about the guys at Georgia Tech who were bugging the White House computer traffic. None of this stuff was told to us. In fact, we were told just lies all the time. It’s really incredible.
Carmichael: Neil, question: They were monitoring the traffic. But in a debate with Trump, Hillary Clinton alluded to some connection between Trump and some bank in Russia.
That connection turned out to be 100 percent bogus. I mean, literally 100 percent bogus. Were these people actually planting false information on Trump’s servers in one of those three places?
McCabe: That’s the real question. Were there people who sincerely thought that Trump was working for the Russians? Yes, I’m sure of that. But I think at the heart of this conspiracy were people who are basically trying to frame the guy and they thought they could get away with it.
And I’m convinced that if Hillary Clinton had been cleared the winner of that election in 2016, they were going to arrest Trump and everybody who ever shook hands with Trump.
And basically, everybody, including the Republican establishment, was ready to let this guy twist in the wind, and maybe in three or four years, he would be found not guilty because there was no evidence. But I believe that was all part of the plan.
Carmichael: That’s fascinating because that happened. There are now tweets and there’s now video of debates where Hillary Clinton is making claims that turned out to be false. Completely false.
But how could she make the claim if she didn’t know that fake records were being planted? Because they’re very specific. They weren’t like Trump was doing business with banks in Russia. She actually named the bank in Russia.
McCabe: It’s more specific than that, because Jake Sullivan, who is currently the national security adviser, was a top aide for Hillary at the State Department, and he was at the campaign. He sort of handled the national security desk.
He was putting out statements. He was going on TV, and he was pumping this conspiracy theory, this hoax, in tremendous detail. And his wife works for the Justice Department. And her office is in charge of overseeing John Durham.
Leahy: Yes. That is what you might call a conflict of interest. What does this do to Hillary Clinton’s efforts to kind of come back on the scene, like in a couple of days?
She’s giving a big speech to the New York Democratic Party at some event. I saw yesterday that she was dodging questions about her role in this. What does this do for yet another Hillary Clinton comeback?
McCabe: I believe that up until this point, Durham has stayed out of the public fray. The FBI plays with the media all the time. They’re constantly leaking. The Justice Department is also constantly leaking.
The Justice Department will always be at the service of power in Washington to take over a news cycle. So if a president is having a tough time or something, they’ll call a press conference.
And remember when the news came out that the FBI knew about the Parkland shooter, the next day, Mueller had a big press conference saying that he indicted twelve Russians. They do this all the time.
Durham hasn’t played this game, except now it seems that he has put a shot across her bow to sort of tell Hillary that you’re in our sight. And also Michael Sussmann, the Clinton attorney who is also on the hook for lying to the Durham and FBI agents, Sussmann is also putting out statements where he’s complaining that Durham is putting in too much information into his filing.
He’s trying to paint the jury pool. But really, I think that what Sussmann is doing is he’s signaling to other people that he knows in a public way, hey, this is where this thing is going. Hunker down and make plans.
Leahy: I think you’re right about that because he’s not a stupid guy. He’s just a guy who allegedly was involved in illegal activity according to the special prosecutor. Crom has a question for you.
Carmichael: Neil, I’m going to ask you a question way out of the box. Putin is obviously aware of all of this stuff going on with Durham and all the stuff about Putin and Trump and everything else.
Do you think what’s going on with Russia and the Ukraine and Putin passing his troops on the Ukraine border is real? Or do you think that’s Memorex?
McCabe: I believe that Putin has a cultural, historical, and practical interest in Ukraine – not the least of which is that Ukraine cannot be part of NATO in his head. Back when I was at One America News, I interviewed a man who was the ambassador for the United States to Ukraine under Clinton.
And he told me that Clinton told Yeltsin that you don’t have to approve these guys, all these different former Soviet states joining NATO, he said. But Clinton told him directly, don’t tie yourself to the tracks in front of the NATO train.
That was the phrase that Clinton used. And both Clinton and George W. Bush were very aggressive in expanding NATO. And maybe that’s a good idea, but it freaked out the Russians and they couldn’t do anything about it.
So this thing has been seething for 20 years. And now Putin is in a position where he can do something about it. And he’s certainly not afraid of Biden.
Leahy: And on that note, very descriptive; Putin is certainly not afraid of Biden. Who is afraid of Biden? That’s a good question. Neil W. McCabe, the best Washington correspondent in the country. Thank you so much for joining us today.
McCabe: Thank you, guys.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Exactly, and this wasn’t the first time it was used. You don’t deploy that kind of operation on the fly.