The Dan Bongino Show - Interview with Devin Nunes (Ep 1141)

Episode Date: December 21, 2019

In this episode, I interview California congressman Devin Nunes about the biggest political scandal in US history.   Copyright Dan Bongino All Rights Reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get ready to hear the truth about America on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino. All right, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show. We've done quite a few interviews, some really good ones, but honestly, the one I'm looking forward to most is about to go down right now. I'd like to welcome to the show the Dan Bongino, Person of the Year at Bongino.com, Congressman Devin Nunes. Congressman, how are you today? I'm doing well, Dan. Thanks for the compliment. I really appreciate it. You know, we meant it. We did it kind of sarcastically. No,

no, you've, listen, we have taken a distant third or fifth place to you. You put your butt on the line to expose what I believe and I think you'd concur is probably the biggest political scandal of our time. And, you know, time had this person of the year. We kind of we almost did it sarcastically. But, you know, it took off so fast. I said, no, no, this is serious. Like, let's make Congressman Nunes a person of the year. So let's get to the questions first here. No one knows this case better than you do. We're seeing now with the IG report and some leaks, especially last night from the New York Times, what came

out Thursday night, this John Brennan becoming the renewed focus of this and a renewed attention on something you and I think have discussed frequently in the past. I'll just ask you straight out here. Were foreign governments assisting the Obama administration in spying on their political opponents? Well, you know the answer, which is we don't know, okay? But I think we can put some different items together. And let me start by saying that whatever was in the New York Times, that's their best day, right? From here on out, it gets worse. So the fact that the story that was in the New York Times, what they're looking for, you know who leaked that, right? We know it has to be someone tied to the people that are the target of the story. So we've seen this too many

times before. So it only gets worse from here. Now, we have long had real concerns about what was happening overseas. And so you can start with, and all your listeners know, and I want to thank you to all your listeners, all the people you put that are out there on Twitter. It really made, in the grand scheme of things, a big difference because it really helped out our investigation. And we'll probably talk about that a little later, but I really do want to thank a lot of your listeners and Twitter followers because they would dig stuff up and we'd say, oh, we didn't think of that. And it would help us to go out and look at different items. And as you know, there's people all over the globe that helped aid this.

So to answer your question, we still don't know who Mipsud was working for, okay? I know that Papadopoulos and others have speculated, but the truth is we just don't know. I have confidence that he was never working for the FBI, not directly in this case, and of course Horowitz grew that also. But, you know, was he working for a foreign government or was he working for individuals? And, you know, he obviously has ties in the UK, he has ties in Italy, has ties to Saudi Arabia. I kind of discount the Saudi Arabian ties to some degree. But I think we can say one thing.

He likely was not working for Putin. Yeah, I want to get to MISSA. You have so many questions, but I didn't even know where to start. But there's other operatives that were in and around. I like to use the word spying. I don't like to try to deny you know, these, to try to deny that they were spying. Right. Yeah. The euphemism game, right? The undocumented informants or whatever. There was a lot of spying going on, a lot of invitations, whether it was to Sam Clovis, Stephen Miller, who's the top advisor to the president. Clovis was an advisor in the campaign and worked in the administration for a short time. Everyone knows

the most popular ones of Papadopoulos and Carter Page. But look, there was a whole lot of spying going on in foreign countries. I mean, everyone who was invited by this Stephen Schrage, an American, to the Cambridge conference is a big problem. Schrage is somebody that we were never able to interview. We would have liked to. He was clearly the point man for whatever the hell the Cambridge club was doing. Were the Brits behind it? Maybe. Was it Fusion GBS?

Maybe. Was it both? Was it John Brennan? Was it McCabe? I mean, you know, all those are are real possibilities, which is why we need Durham to actually get to the bottom of all this. Well, I think one of the reasons I ask you specifically about the foreign governments and out of respect for you in the office, as I said to you before the interview even started, you know, I don't want to ever put you out of your comfort zone. You know that whatever you can't answer, that's absolutely fine. The audience understands. Obviously I understand, but Congressman, a lot of this stuff has already been reported on by left-leaning

outlets. And one of the articles I point to often is an article by Jim Sciutto at CNN. Yes, CNN, not Fox. It was at CNN. It was April 14th of 2017. And the headline of the article basically states that the United Kingdom wasussia collusion story is an absolute discredited hoax. That's a fact. Even the leftists have said, do we have to start acknowledging that now? Then what exactly was the United Kingdom doing passing information about Trump's contacts to Russians? It sounds to me, again, based on their reporting, there's nothing top secret about it. What was going on here? It seems to me that Brennan and Hannigan, who had, you know, that they've already reported on Hannigan, who was a former spymaster with the UK, that they were already meeting at the director level. What the heck could they possibly have been talking about? Well, let me first say that I don't want to, I'm not going to argue with you,

especially on your show. And you know, you know a lot about this, but let me first say that I don't want to, I'm not going to argue with you, especially on your show, and you know a lot about this. But let me remind you, you mentioned CNN and Jim Scudo, okay? These are also the geniuses that reported on Cohen being in Prague. They got, several times they laundered fake information on behalf of Adam Schiff. And then most recently they said that I was in Vienna meeting with Ukrainians in December 2018. So these are not trustworthy people. They're really just total hacks. They're assassins for the left.

I mean, all of CNN, that's all they've done. And I believe it was Scudo who also, at the very beginning of the Russia hoax, when I was still speaking to the press in early 2017, I think he was one of the geniuses that suggested that they were investigating the Trump campaign and Flynn and talking to the Russian ambassador under a law that was like 200 years old, which was totally ridiculous. So that's that guy for you, and the rest of CNN is totally corrupt. So with all that said, you just can't take CNN at their word because it could be totally fake news, or it could be partially true. But let's go back to what we know to be a fact. And that is that in 2014, somebody set up General Flynn and dirtied him up and fed that into the FBI. At the time, John Brennan is on Obama's National Security Council. I think he's the – wait, no, he's the CIA director at the time that that happens. And before that, he was the deputy national security advisor.

Now, they had a strong interest in getting rid of General Flynn, most notably because General Flynn, who was the best wartime intelligence officer that we've had. You have to go back to the Vietnam War and before that, the big wars. top intelligence officer that managed to really turn the tide against al-Qaeda in Iraq back during the surge time of 2006, 2007, and 2008. So he was an authoritative figure. He was the head of the DIA. He was a change agent. And yet, he did not support Brennan and Obama's Iran nuclear deal. Okay, now, I'm only speculating.

I know I don't know what was in their head at the time, but he got railroaded out, right? Flynn was railroaded out. And then we find out, you know, through all this, that, you know, they were saying in 2014 that he was meeting with this Svetlana Lokova, who was part of this Cambridge group, and this is what they used to dirty him up. And that's a fact. That actually did happen. He was

there. They dirtied him up. They briefed us numerous times on, does Flynn have these connections? Big, big problem. And I think Brennan's got to answer for that. And all the British citizens and U.S. citizens that were involved in dirtying up General Flynn in 2014, and the whole thing on its face is asinine, because, you know, I don't think General Flynn at a dinner party with, you know, 20 people or whatever it was, is going to start an affair with a British citizen that had been born in Russia. It's just totally ridiculous. Yeah, I've spoken to Svetlana Lakova, I'm hoping to interview her on the show shortly, and she is furious about this whole thing, you know, the impugning of her character.

And I think the story you tell there of Flynn, which those are facts, those are facts. Those are not opinions, although the left will paint them as conspiracy theories because that's all they have in the face of facts. That actually happened. And it points to, again, one of the central tenets of my show for the last two and a half years. I always say, Congressman, that the scandal is called, or I call it Spygate, not Trumpgate. Not that Trump wasn't a target of it, but this spying operation, whatever you want to call it, whatever euphemism the left likes to use, sadly, I don't believe started with Donald Trump. You know, one of the things I wanted to ask you about as well is I find it awfully convenient. Speaking of this spying operation that was, I believe, bigger than Donald Trump by Barack Obama's administration, you know, that George Papadopoulos became a target. by Barack Obama's administration,

you know, that George Papadopoulos became a target. George Papadopoulos worked for the Carson campaign before he worked for the Trump campaign. And if you were going to fabricate this collusion hoax around someone, why would you pick a low-level guy like Papadopoulos? It's not a knock on him. And one of the people I talk to frequently about the case thinks that it has something to do with the fact

that Papadopoulos had worked for a prior campaign that may have been the subject of some, let's just say, in the interest of fairness, illicit activities before. Does any of that sound plausible? Well, I think the issue here that you bring up is if you're going to, it has all the hallmarks of a setup. You know, that's the problem here, right? Because why would you, you know, we don't know what all the truth is with Papadopoulos and all the different meetings that he had and trips and, you know, why he was invited to work at London Center and the different Americans that were with him. Those are still issues yet to be resolved. And the same with Carter Page. So this is all the pre-July 31st,

2016. I know your audience definitely knows what this is because you hit on this all the time. And that's what really, I've summed it up as the same spy ring that was in full operation in the fall of 16 was actually in operation late winter, spring, and summer of 16. Same people, same spy ring, same spy ring that had picked up General Flynn in 2014. So the question is, why do you pick up somebody, you know, Papadopoulos and Page? The only logical explanation is, is because Donald Trump went before the Washington Post and named those people. And so then they became targets of whoever was running this operation. And that's what we still don't know. Yeah, Lee Smith makes a great point in his book about that.

You know, that's the only logical explanation is because Trump had named them, and then they just went out to dirty them up. in, you know, the fall of 2016, it was clear at that point that they went at great lengths to hide exculpatory evidence on both Papadopoulos and Page. And by the way, the first time I ever heard that, I think that the big turning point for me was the interview that you did with Papadopoulos on your show in the fall of 2018. I don't remember the exact date, but I remember, because I think that was one of your first interviews, because you don't really do interviews, and you didn't just start... No, it was the only interview I had ever done.

But that interview was really telling when Papadopoulos had laid out a lot of things that we actually had not heard before. Because if you remember, we hadn't had a chance to interview him because he was under, you know, he was being indicted. So he didn't come to our committee to be interviewed until later. And then you interviewed him and then we got him in. And I remember that Trey Gowdy, Ratcliffe, myself, after they had done the interview and they came outside, we had a meeting and they said, wow, you know, we actually thought Papadopoulos might be, you know, might have had some issues, but boy, it looks like the poor guy just got set up.

Oh, railroaded. Yeah. And when you talk to him, it becomes painfully obvious that he was railroaded. Let me move on to another set of questions here. The official story the FBI has been telling for a long time through the New York Times and through the deep state leaks and openly is that the investigation started because of the Papadopoulos tip that came in from what they call the FFG, Friendly Foreign Government,

the Australia tip from Downer. So, you know, my audience knows that Papadopoulos meets Downer. Allegedly there's a conversation about the Russians and some help, but how it went down, there's 16 different versions. Downer's run away from versions of it. Papadopoulos given a few different versions of, we don't even know what happened anymore at this meeting, but the official story is that's what kicked this off on July 31st and that they get the tip in mid-July. Also, the non-official story that I think is the real

story is that the Steele information obviously initiated this. And I bring this up to you, Congressman, now in light of the IG report, if you look at the infamous footnote 461, which has become a famous footnote on my show, in the IG report, it's fascinating because in footnote 461, they talk about this meeting they're having with a confidential source congressman that sounds awfully a lot like Christopher Steele. It's a source who has a company who's being paid for by the DNC and somebody else, and they're feeding them information. And they say they were getting this information from that source back in July.

Now, that obviously can't be if the official story is that they didn't have the dossier until September that they started the case because of Papadopoulos. I ask you just directly, do you believe this case started because of this ridiculous Papadopoulos tip? No, no, definitely not. So the way that I see this, they made it official. So one of the things that one of our lead investigators, Kash Patel, who's now at the White House, and he's been in Lee Smith's book,

I think Lee Smith talked to you about him. One of the things that he said, they needed some reason to open up an official umbrella investigation because they wanted to ensnarl the whole campaign. So, yeah, they're technically telling the truth. Crossfire Hurricane, you know, did not start until July 31st. But as everything with these guys, it was a setup job, right? So you really have to go back and just to kind of cover ground. The way this runs is they're already looking at stuff in the fall. They're looking at Flynn. They're looking at Trump.

I think this investigation and FBI's involvement likely begins in the fall of 2015, the winter of 2015. 2015. And then what really gives them an opening is when Donald Trump was being criticized for not having any foreign policy experts. And then he just happens to mention Carter Page and Papadopoulos. And then boom, Fusion GPS, because they're smear masters, they're a racketeering outfit, and I'm suing them in federal court because they are a racketeering outfit, they saw this as a huge opening. And so they clearly are involved in this. Possibly the FBI is involved in this. We don't know if they're actually coordinating or not coordinating. But this is when they begin to, this outreach to all these different cast of characters,

culminating with this, you know, this Cambridge Club party that they had in June of 2016. And then that allows them to then, you know, and obviously all the interactions they're having with Papadopoulos, you know, it just has all the hallmarks of a setup. It's just not believable, you know, that Downer starts this whole thing. And like you said, their stories don't make sense. Plus the fact that the FBI actually had this, you know, a couple months before.

Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Or the State Department had it, and it didn't get to, you know, it just happens to not make it into the proper hands until July, you know, late July. And then all of a sudden they're like, oh, my God, we have to open an umbrella investigation in the Trump campaign. And look, this is where this is what really, really ticks me off about all this is that, you know, there was a massive obstruction of a congressional investigation. And guess what? It wasn't done by Roger Stone, you know, in line to Congress. You know, I mean, he obviously is found guilty of lying to Congress. But the real obstruction occurred in 2017 and 18 by the top levels of the FBI and the Department of Justice.

And when we went into numerous meetings, and I know you were covering this at the time, Trey Gowdy and I would walk in these meetings, Speaker Ryan would walk in these meetings, and we'd have to ask the question, like, what was going on? It looks like you were spying on him in the fall of 2016. Oh, we can't talk about that, right? And then they said, well, we actually started this on July 31st, you know, with what was originally supposed to be, you know, reported as Five Eyes Intelligence. Well, now we know that was all a lie, which, you know, I was the first one to come out and say that there was no Five Eyes Intelligence. Can I ask you about that? Because of all the emails I get

on my show, you know, we joke on the show. I know you've heard it once in a while, but we have the Nunes translator because I know you can't, there's things you can't say on TV and we totally understand that. So we have this thing called the Nunes translator where we try to translate what you're saying. The audience gets a kick out of it. we had a tough time with early trying to figure out what exactly you were getting at is you said that often on tv and i think i got it but i don't know if i explain it well what exactly do you mean that there was no official intelligence to start this case that seems insane that we were investigating a presidential campaign and yet nothing was official what did you mean by that so so just like um you know back to the point you were making about the CNN story about the UK transferring, you know, evidence over on Russians, right? Remember, we got in there, and I always like to say this too, is that when Comey gets fired, Mueller comes in, we know all about that whole story. that whole story, Mueller gets there on day one and walks in the door and says, okay, guys, we're all these Russians that were chasing around. And they say, sorry, Bob, we actually don't have any Russians. Okay. There were no Russians by that time. Believe me, we combed through everything.

Like we had most of the information, anything and everything that existed in the deep state, okay, apparatus of 17 different agencies by late January, February, okay? And you can believe me, they gave us everything that even mentioned a Russian or Soviet Union or, you know, I mean, everything they gave to us, you know? And you know why? Because they wanted Trump to be gone. They wanted Congress to have all this stuff. Okay? So they didn't withhold anything. And we combed through

all that and there wasn't a damn thing in there, okay? So there wasn't some memo like... Including any information from the UK or anybody else.

You know why? Because there weren't any Russians. There were Russian ghosts. The whole thing was a joke and a lie. All right? So what was Mueller doing the whole time?

Well, we'll get to the, so I'm going to get to the, you know, what I'm saying about no five-eyes intelligence. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. So I knew there was no five-eyes intelligence because they would have already provided that. would have already provided that. So what there is, is the five, I think your audience understands this, but it's Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and Australia. We have a sharing agreement where we essentially share information at a higher level than let say, we would share with some of our NATO allies, right? It's been a longstanding, dates back to World War II. It's a longstanding tradition, standards, standard operating procedures that are in place

that have been set up over years, and this has been an enduring status of being part of this Five Eyes intelligence. Well, I knew there wasn't any Five Eyes intelligence. And if you remember, we had to fight for like two months. Where's the Five Eyes intelligence, right? Like, you know, all these, the press people are all saying, oh, it's Five Eyes. So it's got to be good. It's got to be rock solid. Well, the truth is when we got to it, it actually didn't have anything to do with that.

It was essentially Downer telling them that he had met with some guy a few months before that said that there might be some compromising information and dirt that the Russians had on Hillary. Nothing to do with emails, nothing at all. So the whole thing, you know, I don't know what the whole truth is there. I don't want to accuse Downer of lying, but Downer sure shows up at places where the Cambridge boys show up, what I like to call the Cambridge Club. Steven Schrage is there. Page is there. How the hell are all these guys showing up at all the same places?

What are the odds of that? They always happen to show up around Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, whether it's Downer or any of the Cambridge Club people, Michael Flynn, General Flynn. They all show up at the same place. So the point is that there was no Five Eyes Intelligence product. We knew that. We had to fight to get them to actually, so I could actually go out and say, yeah, there was no Five Eyes intelligence product. We knew that. We had to fight to get them to actually, so I could actually go out and say, yeah, there was no Five Eyes intelligence product. But yet they continued

to push that narrative. And it wasn't until really this Horowitz report that it came out with this, you know, this new acronym. You know, I've been doing this for, you know, looking at intelligence reports for a decade now. I have never seen the acronym FFG, Friendly Foreign Government. I've never seen that in my lifetime. You know why? Because that is essentially code word for hearsay. It doesn't make it into intelligence products, okay? And that's all this was. Yeah, some guy downer or yeah. OK, talk to this guy. Papadopoulos on the Trump campaign says he got something about Clinton somehow, which I don't believe at all. It takes two months for it to get from the State Department people to the FBI.

It's just all a bunch of BS. Can I ask you about that two months? Because that's an important note right there. Again, the official story from the FBI and their media allies is that, yes, the meeting happens with Papadopoulos on down around May 10th. The official story is that they don't get this tip until July. But Congressman, I have them in front of me.

If you read the stroke page text, hat tip to one of my sources, by the way, pointed me in the direction on this one. If you read the stroke page text from the next day, May 11th, after the Papadopoulos Downer meeting, they're texting each other late at night, sadly, between these two, not that unusual for reasons outside of the scope of this, but they're texting each other late at night and they're all worried about this. They all seem wired up about some affidavit and something that just happened and then noticeably here's where it gets interesting

page text stroke or or stroke text page the deputy director's calling the state department now she says oh i want to hear about it you already talked to and it's redacted the congressman listen i'm not i'm not trying to put you on the spot. Granted, there's a degree of speculation here, but it seems highly unlikely if this friendly foreign government air quotes tip that was so serious to initiate this about a meeting that happens May 10th, that they held it until July when the next day they're texting each other about the deputy director all excited about something and they're calling the state department about it now it seems to me like common sense would dictate they knew about it on may 11th the day after and they sat on it because they know what you and i know that

it was worthless it was a garbage tip it was nonsense well and it was likely they were all in on it i mean i think is the more likely you know the higher likelihood you know we don't once again that's me speculating just, once again, that's me speculating, just for your audience to know, that's me speculating. Understood. But, you know, just very odd that Downer, who is everywhere with the same people, happens to meet with George Papadopoulos, who happened to be, you know, poor guy got named in the, you know, by Trump in the Washington Post, and there was one picture with him and the

president. And then you fast forward, then all the same people are around Page. They're inviting Stephen Miller. They're inviting Sam Clovis. You know, we don't know who else they invited. Those are just the people we found. But I can tell you that, you know, we never got to the bottom of what those text messages, you know, were about because they weren't exactly forthcoming in their interviews. But I can tell you that this is that we have other sources that we did interview that told us that Downer and the Australian embassy had actually brought that to USG before the date that we have been told officially by the FBI.

Okay. Nice. So, so that kind of, it doesn't, it's circumstantial between the text messages and knowing that it happened weeks, you know, weeks before, uh, we just don't have the exact date, you know, and until you could actually get, you know, until, until Durham could actually try to get to Downer and try to get to, um, you know, until Durham could actually try to get to Downer and try to get to, you know, the different State Department people and really pin them down. It's going to be hard to know that, but like you said, it's just common sense tells you this didn't just arrive.

They were, they had this set well in motion long before, you know, the DNC emails came out. Let me ask you this. The Papadopoulos downer meeting would have been worthless on May 10th, if not for just days prior, the original meeting between Papadopoulos from the Trump campaign. And as the F4 mentioned, we spoke about before mysterious Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud, who is alleged to have said something to Papadopoulos about Russian assistance for the campaign. I've always speculated this was a push-pull, inject-eject operation. I'm not asking you to do that. But having said that, Attorney General Barr and John Durham, his United States attorney, have been doing a lot of international travel. And they've seemed very cryptic about, you know, and justifiably so about their investigation. And given the leak to the

New York Times last night, which makes it seem that, oh, this was politically motivated to look into Brennan. Are we going to learn more about Mifsud? Do you think Barr, and you may just be speculating here, but just an educated guess being that nobody knows more about it than you. Are we going to learn more about Mifsud from Barr and Durham's investigation? Yeah, I believe so, right? I have no idea to know because, you know, we're not, you know, that's a, there's separation of powers and, you know, we're not involved in the investigation.

You know, we've made our criminal referrals over and I just don't see how you get to the, you know, one of the things that I've asked and I think, and I think General Barr, Attorney General Barr has been very clear on this. The main thing we want above all else is we want to put Americans at ease, at least on one subject, and that is what are all the facts? And part of those facts are very clearly who the hell is Joseph Mifsud? I mean, he's at the heart of this. He's the guy. He's the guy that, you know, supposedly tells Papadopoulos this. Okay. It's impossible

to believe that we don't ever get to the bottom of who Joseph Mifsud is. And I think, you know, Mueller was quite telling when he backed away from, you know, calling Mifsud, you know, what did he say? He had Russian connections. That's much different, you know, with, you know, calling Mifsud, you know, what did he say? He had Russian connections. That's much different, you know, with, you know, you have Russian connections. I'm sure, Dan, I have Russian connections. I've been to Russia twice. Yeah. I'm on my investigation too. Yeah. But, you know, as far as if you're in Congress or you work in any government position, we all have Russian connections. So, so, you know, it's, it's not a, not a surprise. So guess what? Mifsud who runs around, yeah, Russian connections. That's not a Russian agent. So, you know, it's not a surprise. So guess what? Mifsud, who runs around, yeah, Russian Connections, that's not a Russian agent like, you know, James Comey claimed.

And it's fascinating that Comey's the only guy, Congressman, talking to Congressman Devin Nunes, by the way, he's a rock star, and this is for those of you who just tuned in, but the only person who's actually called Mifsud a Russian agent after the fact, ex post facto, when all this has come out, has been Comey in his Washington Post op-ed. And it says to me a theory I've had for the longest time, which leads into my next question. I just want you to kind of give your comments on it. I believe, based on two books and multiple sources and people who've said stuff to me, that Brennan misled Comey. I am not giving Comey a pass for the listeners. I get nasty emails. Comey led an investigation that after July of 2017, he knew conclusively it was a farce. The FBI at the upper level did a

really bad thing. I get that. I'm not giving them a pass. But a couple of folks have kind of pointed me in the direction that Brennan initially may have misled the FBI about the robustness of his information. In other words, Brennan's not telling Comey as they're starting to push the FBI through Harry Reid to open this case up that they're getting the information in conjunction with Fusion GPS steal in the Cambridge Club. Brennan's leading people to believe this is through some official or vibrant CIA channel. And this thing has kind of become a theory of mine that I really, I believe we can back up. And if I may, for a second,

I'd just like to read to you just quickly, Lisa Page's testimony. It's one of the few times I think she's telling the truth. She's up in Congress and she's answering one of your colleagues,

the great Mark Meadows, sad to see he's leaving, by the way, you guys both did a great job, but Mark Meadows says to her, he's asking her specifically about did Steele basically talk to the CIA? And, and Mr. Meadows says, we do know there are multiple sources. Page says, I know that I do know the information founds it, found its way to a lot of different places. Certainly in October of 2016, Here's where it gets interesting,

Congressman. Page says, and I don't think she's lying. She says, but if the CIA, as early as August, in fact, had those reports, talking about the Steele reports, I'm not aware of that, and nor do I believe they provided them to us. That would be very unusual. Now, I don't think she's lying here. Again, I'm not absolving her of malfeasance and misfeasance in this case. I'm simply suggesting that of all the guilty parties, I believe Brennan and the CIA are more than responsible for the initiation of this spying scandal. it once they found out in the latest July of 2017. It's a scam. Do you think Brennan may have done something like that? Pushed them into investigating this through that Harry Reid brief he did? Because you said, I believe you said, and correct me if I'm wrong, that when Brennan briefed Congress, you didn't get the same briefing as Harry Reid. Is that right? Yeah, that's correct. So I think there, well, we don't know exactly what Brennan briefed to

Harry Reid, right? Because there's no notes, you know, until you got Brennan under oath, which, you know, he would then claim gang of eight privileges. You know, this is what these guys are very good at, and it's why Comey would not accept his clearance back, right? It's a very, you know, it was a perfect legal way. I'm not accepting my clearance. Therefore, you can't show me anything. So you can't ask him any questions.

They're very, very clever about how they've went about this. But it's hard to not believe that Brennan didn't give that and brief Harry Reid on that, which is what triggered Harry Reid to write that letter. And if you go back and if you've kind of listened to what I've said through all of this, is they clearly wanted us to legitimize all of this and legitimize the investigation. I give a lot of credit, a lot of people don't know this at the time, but it's in Lee Smith's book, that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell get a lot of credit for September 2016 when they came in with a bunch of smoke but no fire.

Okay, oh, Russians are bad, Russians are bad. Oh, look, look, look, Russians are bad. And at that time, we all kind of asked, well, yeah, we know Russians are bad. Russians always do bad things. What do you got here? Crickets. That's a fascinating part of Lee's book.

I read that part. It's called The Plot Against the President by Lee Smith. And that is a fascinating account of what McConnell and Ryan did. I mean, listen, we, you know, there's a lot of this stuff down, which I read and I hadn't heard that before. Well, if it would have been, you can imagine what they were trying to do. And it's really clear, looking back at it now, they were trying to get McConnell, Ryan, all the Republicans in 2016 to legitimize the shenanigans that were in full motion by then, right, no matter who started it. And then let me be, so let me, I think I can kind of sum up for you the two different areas, like the difference between kind of the FBI and CIA that would be helpful for you and your listeners.

You've probably heard me say it before, but it's worth repeating. And that is that the two major criminal referrals, okay, that we've sent over, that we briefed the Department of Justice on, one is, well, the two big ones are on conspiracy. One is, well, the two big ones are on conspiracy. One is that people conspired to manipulate the FISA court, okay, to abuse the FISA court. So that, I think, that's kind of the greater FBI shenanigans, right, that this was conspiracy because one of the challenges we had at making the criminal referrals is because nobody ever thought that the FISA court would be turned on its head and our intelligence agencies would be used to target a political campaign. You know, it's not against the law for these guys, you know, to just lie to the FISA court, ironically. OK, they put lots of little checks and schemes in so that it's not it's not against the law.

But conspiracy is against the law. And to conspire, to abuse your power, to take away people's or infringe on people's civil liberties, that is against the law. That's why we think all of those people should be looked at under conspiracy. The same thing goes for the, to manipulate intelligence for political purposes, right? It's not necessarily illegal. It may be against code and ethics, but for people to say, well, I'm going to kind of leave some things out of the intelligence products, but I think these need to go in, you know, that's not illegal, okay? But if you're conspiring to do it, to put forth a narrative, and you're involved and you're manipulating it to make it happen, that would be against the law, okay. So, and I think that's where you have the difference.

Comey and company are involved in the manipulation, the conspiracy involving the FISA court. You have Brennan and CIA operatives and Obama administration people, what I call Obama's dossier, which was the intelligence community assessment that was done after the election. That is where you're going to have possibly Brennan and others involved. And those two, as you understand, those two weave and merge together along with what the DNC and Fusion GPS was doing. And I'll tell you one of the big questions that I have, outstanding, is what was Fusion GPS's involvement with the FBI?

How close were they actually cooperating? And I'll tell you, I said that the entire time, and I'll give IG Horowitz credit here. I said the entire time, one of the things that I went back and forth on, I knew that you knew Comey was anti-Trump. You knew McCabe. We knew about Strzok and Page. But there always seemed to be one missing link. And we used to be jokingly refer to them as there has to be a deep throat at the FBI that was involved in all of this.

Somebody was involved in setting all this up. Because Strzok and Page and McCabe, they're not going to be out going and doing all the dirty work on this, right? Right, right. They're going to be at the top. Somebody had to be involved at the ground level. And thanks to Horowitz, we know now it's, I think it's described as Special Agent 1. Special Agent 1 who meets with Carter Page five times

and he's scattered all throughout IG Horowitz's report. Do you know who that is? I think that's Deep Throat. Well, we can speculate, but as you know, those are one of the things that I probably can't talk about. Yeah, I don't want you to- I think you and your listeners would be able to figure that out. Yeah, I have an idea. I'm not even going to give the initials, but I have an idea who that is,

and I think you do too. It's a name that's been on my radar for a very long time that I'll say in the beginning, I thought was possibly a white knight in this thing and was a good guy who had flipped, And I'm starting to change my mind on that. Listen, you've been very generous with your time. I just got one final exit question for you and I'll let you go. And really, I can't thank you enough, Congressman. I mean this from the bottom of my heart. You have really done this country a service. And I've said this to you privately and I'll say it to you publicly. I'm not kidding. This is not hyperbole. I know you don't like compliments and you don't like us wasting a lot

of time on this stuff. But I think when the history book is finally written, you are going to come out of this and people are going to say, gosh, what happened to this guy? I mean, your character's been maligned. Your family's been attacked. You become the target of everything from social media ridicule to lawsuits to fake ethics complaints, all because you expose the single biggest political scandal in U.S. history. And on behalf of an audience I know loves you, I mean, really likes you so much, I just want to thank you. And with that, I'll just ask you my final question. If I could say before you ask the final question, I want to, and I've mentioned this to you before, because you and I didn't speak for a long time through this. And I tell you, one of the reasons why is because I can't remember at what point we started kind of tracking some of the things that you were talking about.

I love this story. some of the things that you were talking about. I love this story. So we were starting to then wonder, okay, who in the hell is giving Bongino this information? Because you seemed to be like, it was like we would find something out and then you would be either a day before or a day after you'd be talking about it.

And of course, we couldn't talk about it, but somehow you knew about it. So we, you know, you were like Adam Schiff spying on me before there was Adam Schiff spying on me. It was down when I saw you in the green room, because somehow you guys were figuring this stuff out. And I still don't know how the hell that was happening. Remember we ran into each other in the green room at Fox. You told me this exact story and I laughed because you said to me, you were like, gosh, is someone in the office talking to Bongino? And I swear to you on my life to this day on my soul.

No, we just had a very good source from another direction that had some stuff. Let's call him the Dan Bongino deep throat. So I appreciate that. And again, with that, I'll give you this exit question here. You know that, and again, it may be a fair degree of speculation, but based on evidence, it's fine.

We have the text, you know, the White House is running this, the POTUS, President of the United States, an acronym wants to know everything we're doing amongst the FBI investigators. People forget though, as well, there's also the emails between Andy McCabe and Lisa Page, where McCabe says to Page listen we're we're going over to the white house with dave cohen

who was the number two at the cia at the time you know we need to speak about this case with one voice you know we have brennan saying up on the hill at one point that he's given this statement in conjunction with the white house i mean i just what is the probability congressman that the barack obama administration of barack Barack Obama himself knew nothing about the biggest political spying scandal in U.S. history? Oh, zero to none. Yeah, that's impossible. That's totally impossible. I mean, they had to figure that out.

And I say that knowing that, but I don't actually, I don't think the word came down. The operation wasn't being run out of the Obama White House. I believe this did start with Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign, and dirty cops at the FBI and potentially some people at the other agencies. I think there was a cabal of them that started all of this. And then they fed this all into the intelligence apparatus. But for sure, by the fall, they know about this. I mean, we know that. Well, remember, I think it's in Horowitz's report now, or I, you know, Brett, or maybe I've heard this

publicly, that, you know, they were like, the Obama administration was calling Putin and Putin's people say, knock this stuff off. Right? So... Congressman, I know I said this was the last question, but can I ask you one more thing when you're talking about Obama and just on this one thing, because this is another

email I get often from my audience that are super sleuths. They're so good. You know, the left characterized your visit to the White House as the stupid midnight run, which is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. But that's just what they do. They make up dumb names for things. It was just you going over to the White House. It's complex because that's where the information was to gather information about the biggest scandal in U.S. history.

This happens early in the Trump administration. I believe it's around March of 2017, if I'm right. You come out of that meeting and you give a little bit of a press avail and you seem visibly stunned. I mean, I've gotten to know you a little bit personally now. And I go back and watch that video a lot because there's so much in it and you look visibly stunned at what you saw was this the first time oh i'm sorry go ahead yeah so let me walk everybody through that because there's so much fake you know total fake

news out there on this so the we had i had first had uh sources come to me, okay, what we called informants that came from within the intelligence agencies that said, hey, there's something not right here going on with leaking of intelligence and questions about what was happening and spying on Trump transition officials, etc., etc. And so that happened basically about the same time that the phone call with Flynn leaked to the Washington Post. So I'm getting my first informants that are coming talking to me about this. talking to me about this. And so by late January, I have it pretty well locked down that there is something really wrong about Trump, that Trump transition people were being spied upon or were ending up in these intelligence reports. So I was trying to figure out how to get my hands on these because these are not what are called – because we get finished intelligence reports, right, that have been kind of through all the different checks and balances. That way Congress, when we finally get a product, we're not getting any misinformation, like from friendly foreign governments. friendly foreign governments. You don't want Congress getting intelligence products that are, hey, downer met this guy at a bar that was American, and they were drunk, and they heard something. You don't want that, right? So we get what are called finished intelligence products.

So what this was is this was essentially, these were not finished intelligence products, but they were unmaskings occurring, which is what I was being told. Finally, I actually got the number, like some actual numbers of these reports, and I was able to find them. Well, the only place that I could go to see these, because we didn't have them at the Congress, was at the old executive office building. Okay, so the day before I went to the White House, Patriot Americans helped arrange so that I could view this to see what the hell are these. And then I looked at those and I said, holy, you know what? Like, oh my God, this is out of control. Really? Okay.

It was that bad? At the time, I said there were dozens that raised high alarm bells for Really? Okay. And at the time, at the time I said there were dozens that raised high alarm bells for me. Okay. Just of, and look, it wasn't like, and remember at the time, the stupid press is like, oh my God, he must've seen that, you know, you know, somebody was talking to Vladimir Putin. No, it was stuff that was totally ridiculous. It had nothing to do with Russia. And in no way, no shape, no form should any intelligence ever be, you know, gathered from Americans the way that that was being gathered, and then those people being unmasked, okay? So you're damn right.

Like, when that happened that day, so what happened is, is it happened the day before. I went that night to brief the Speaker of the House, and I briefed him that night. I went and met with him early in the morning, and I said, look, I've got to get this to the White House. And he agreed. He's like, yeah, definitely, the White House needs to know this. So what I did, then I went and briefed. I brought in our Republicans, okay?

And remember this whole thing, why didn't you brief the Democrats? Well, look, by that time, the Democrats were already talking nonsense. They were already out there telling people, we have more than circumstantial evidence, you know, of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. So, sorry, you know, at that point, you know, they're already playing their games. I'm not going to brief you and tell you where these reports are. Because what you're going to do is you're going to go build a fricking narrative. You're going to lie about it and it's not going to be true. Okay. So, but now here's where I was still naive at the time. I actually still believe that by holding and briefing the press people, a lot of them I had known for a long time and, you know, look, you know, they're center left,

but you, you at least think they're going to be somewhat fair. So I briefed the Republicans. I come out and I brief all the press in the Capitol, people who have been covering me in some cases for 15 years. Okay. And I said, okay, look, guys, here's the thing. Unmaskings occur of Trump transition officials. I'm very uncomfortable with it. I briefed the Speaker. I briefed the Republicans. I'm headed to the White House. I'm going to brief the President because he needs to understand this.

And we've got to get to the bottom of just how widespread this is. And I was very clear, look, this doesn't have anything to do with Russia. I didn't see one report that had anything to do with Russians. All right? This has to do with unmasking. So I go to the White House. I told the president, I said, look, you know, here's the ones that raised trouble, you know, real trouble for me, and there were a handful of them

that I just thought were totally wrong. You know, and we still haven't had a proper investigation into this, by the way. We then, as you know, the rest of the story is that I go outside of the White House and, you know, and I said it again. I think by that time it had probably ratcheted it up in the news media that morning. And I just said the same thing I had told the press at the Capitol, which is, look, this isn't right. And but by then they had already started building the narrative. And you remember what the narrative was, Dan. You and your audience will know.

It wasn't like, wow, this is wrong. Like, you know, who's responsible for this? Right, why were they spying on these guys, right? Yeah, none of that. You know, why the hell is the government looking at, you know, why is the Intelligence Committee chairman able to figure out that they were spying on Trump transition officials when the apparatus is not supposed to be spying on Americans at all. Okay. That's the question that should have been asked.

But instead it was, it was who gave you this? Are you leaking? Did you just share classified information on Russia with the president? It was an embarrassing low point in the United States. I can give him whatever I want. He has the highest clearance there is in the land. I mean, it was question after question after question. It was totally stupid. And, you know, that was so dangerous for them. They had to then, they had already tried, you know, getting me before that, but they had to take me out at that point. And that's when they said, he leaked classified information.

Do you believe he took that to the White House? And then, you know, later, you know, it comes out because, you out because now we know that the whole National Security Council was a den of spies that were Obama holdovers. And so at the time I wasn't even trying to sneak over to the – they always said I was sneaking over. I strolled in there, daylight. I saw a bunch of ambassadors. I saw people I knew. Everybody knew I was in the old executive office building the day before. This wasn't some, you know, midnight run nonsense. You know, walk in there, looked at the reports, went back to the House of Representatives,

briefed the Speaker, briefed our members, briefed the press, briefed the President, briefed the press again. And then it's like, you know, all holy hell breaks loose. And then, you know, what do we find out later? Samantha Power and a few others, you know, all holy hell breaks loose. And then, you know, what do we find out later? Samantha Power and a few others, you know, had hundreds and hundreds of unmasking requests of American citizens. Yeah, I got some interesting stuff on my show coming out about that, too. But, Congressman, you've been very generous with your time. Now with the IG report out, you have been vindicated.

Your memo's been vindicated. Adam Schiff has been candidly made a fool of. You've been lied about. Your memo has been vindicated. Adam Schiff has been candidly made a fool of. You've been lied about. We now know those were lies. We know this midnight run thing was garbage. We know it was nonsense. And we know what you were doing was the right thing on behalf of the American people. You're the real civil libertarian in this. And take a bow. I deeply appreciate your time. I know my audience was looking forward to this. Thank you so much. And folks, please support Congressman Nunes. I know I do.

He is on the front. We would be lost in this fight without the work he's doing. Well, Dan, let me just tell you, next time we do this interview, let's do it live in Vienna with all my Ukrainian friends. We'll invite them there, too. Right. Yeah, well, I'll be investigated, too. There'll be a Mueller investigation on Dan Bogino.

That'll be next. I know these guys are crazy. They lie about you so often, though, after no one takes it seriously anymore. All of the lies about you, each one has become less and less of a press affair. The last one about your fake, you know, Ukrainian Vienna nonsense trip, that one got no traction. I know because it's about you, it's always sounds so profound, but as a content producer in this space, I'm telling you for a fact, that story got zero traction. Nobody takes these people seriously anymore. I'm glad you're fighting back against it, but honestly, my audience loves you and follows everything you do. I'll bet 90% of them have no idea what you're talking about. And that's a good thing because nobody takes the media seriously anymore.

But again, Congressman, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. Good luck up there. Thanks for fighting a good fight. Thanks, Dan, to you and your audience, everything that you've done to bring out the truth. And then Merry Christmas, Happy New Year to everybody there. All right, Congressman. Talk to you later.

Take care. Thanks a lot. All right, folks, that was Congressman Devin Nunes. Again, I mean, there was so much in there. I think we're going to have to break that out on the Dan Bongino YouTube clips channel into like four or five different gems. I really appreciate you tuning into the show. Thanks so much. I've got a special announcement about next week's show. Next week's show, we are hoping to have, I think we have a confirmation of Rudy Giuliani. So we've had President Trump, Don Trump Jr. We've had Devin Nunes, Candace Owens, Brian Kilmeade,

Greg Jarrett. The lineup has been great. I appreciate you supporting the show. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com. Thanks, folks. See you next week. You just heard the Dan Bongino show. You can also get Dan's podcasts on iTunes or SoundCloud and follow Dan on Twitter. 24 seven at D Bongino.