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Speaker 1: Hi, this is newt twenty twenty is going to be

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Speaker 1: one of the most extraordinary election years of our lifetime.

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Speaker 1: I want to invite you to join my Inner Circle

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Speaker 1: as we discuss each twist and turn in the Race

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Speaker 1: my podcast listeners. If you joined the Inner Circle today

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Speaker 1: at newtcenter Circle dot com and sign up for a

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Speaker 1: one or two year membership, I'll send you a free

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Speaker 1: personally autographed copy of my book Jettisburg and a VIP

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Speaker 1: fast pass to my live events. Join my Inner Circle

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Speaker 1: today at newts Inner Circle dot com. Use the code

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Speaker 1: free book at checkout. Sign up today at Newts Inner

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Speaker 1: Circle dot com Code free Book. This offer ends January

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Speaker 1: thirty first. On this episode of Each World, they've put

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Speaker 1: all of us as Americans at risk. It's a little

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Speaker 1: hard to believe. They've been trying to impeach President Donald

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Speaker 1: Trump since the day he was elected as president. And

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Speaker 1: we have to ask ourselves why why has it been

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Speaker 1: a focus on Trump as a cross president when he

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Speaker 1: won the Electoral College decisively in my judgment, the news

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Speaker 1: media is mindlessly repeating this narrative, and they are biased

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Speaker 1: against President Trump, and the intelligence community has been determined

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Speaker 1: to uncover something on Trump from the beginning. Finally, a

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Speaker 1: book has come out that explains this point of view,

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Speaker 1: and the author is my guest today on folding the

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Speaker 1: fascinating plot that explains why the Left won't leave Trump alone.

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Speaker 1: I'm pleased to welcome as my guest Lee Smith, author

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Speaker 1: of The Plot Against the President, The true story of

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Speaker 1: how Congressman Devon Nunez uncovered the biggest political scandal in

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Speaker 1: US history. You really approach this with a remarkable background

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Speaker 1: as a journalist. Could you talk a little bit about

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Speaker 1: your own experience before you got to the book. Sure.

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Speaker 1: I've worked in the press for about thirty years, places

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Speaker 1: in New York like the Village Voice talk magazine. Now

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Speaker 1: I'm a columnist at a place called Tablet Magazine in

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Speaker 1: New York, where I write a lot about the Middle East.

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Speaker 1: I worked at The Weekly Standard for about seven years.

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Speaker 1: So when this story started to appear, the idea of

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Speaker 1: the Russia collusion, it appeared to me obviously nonsense, largely

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Speaker 1: because I was raised in New York. Donald Trump has

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Speaker 1: been a big figure in New York since my teenage years.

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Speaker 1: I effectively grew up with Donald Trump. There are many

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Speaker 1: things that can be said about the now president, about

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Speaker 1: his life in New York. Is a famous celebrity, always

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Speaker 1: in tabloids. But the idea that one of the world's

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Speaker 1: most famous men had somehow conducted a secret relationship with

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Speaker 1: Russian state actors was preposterous, and so that immediately attracted

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Speaker 1: me to the story. If you think about the duplicity

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Speaker 1: and the complexity of the Middle East and the degree

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Speaker 1: to which very often things on the surface aren't things

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Speaker 1: under the surface, how much do you think your Middle

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Speaker 1: East background helped you see the story differently than a

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Speaker 1: traditional American reporter would have seen it. That's a really

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Speaker 1: good question. I'd like to think that the press of

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Speaker 1: even fifteen years ago would have recognized immediately this was nonsense,

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Speaker 1: rather than participating in what was an information operation directed

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Speaker 1: at a presidential candidate than the president elect and now

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Speaker 1: the president. One of the worrying things is you're precisely right.

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Speaker 1: It was the fact that this was so clearly a

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Speaker 1: political operation conducted through the press in third world fashion

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Speaker 1: that was alarming, and that made it even easier for

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Speaker 1: me to recognize these methods are third world when you're

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Speaker 1: joining intelligence services to the press. That is how the

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Speaker 1: Arab press works, and unfortunately, that's how many Americans are

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Speaker 1: now learning how to read the New York Times and

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Speaker 1: Washington Post, where you will look at buylines and understand

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Speaker 1: which part of the bureaucracy is speaking through these different

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Speaker 1: press organizations and in particular these different reporters. We've always

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Speaker 1: had that to a certain extent with particular columnists, but

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Speaker 1: this is widespread now. It's astonishing. I did think your

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Speaker 1: analysis of the economics of the collapse of overseas offices,

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Speaker 1: the degree to which even large news organizations now rely

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Speaker 1: on leaks from the Washington bureaucracy, and then the positive side,

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Speaker 1: which is if they were adequately at I Trump, their

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Speaker 1: subscriptions went up, so they had a big vested interest

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Speaker 1: in being in I Trump. You mentioned that the Washington

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Speaker 1: Post gained a million subscribers electronically, and the New York

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Speaker 1: Times editor admitted in their town hall meeting that the

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Speaker 1: one time they wrote a neutral headline, the reaction from

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Speaker 1: their readers was so savage they had to change it

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Speaker 1: in a couple of hours because their readers wouldn't tolerate

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Speaker 1: being neutral about Trump. You had to be hostile. I thought,

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Speaker 1: it's one of the more revealing moments in modern journalism.

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Speaker 1: How do you make the jump then to Devin Nuna's

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Speaker 1: what is it that said to you at some point? Gee?

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Speaker 1: This could be a book? And the first thing was

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Speaker 1: watching the congressman conduct this fight, taking on the bureaucracy,

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Speaker 1: taking on the press. I date the beginnings of his

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Speaker 1: fight to March twenty seventeen, when he went to the

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Speaker 1: White House to notify them about evidence she had seen,

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Speaker 1: and to see everyone attack him, but for him to

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Speaker 1: keep pushing on that is just such an incredible human story.

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Speaker 1: Right there, Just to watch what the Congressman was doing,

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Speaker 1: said this is fantastic, this is great. Was that the

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Speaker 1: day when you began to think about working with him

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Speaker 1: and trying to find out what he was doing. After

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Speaker 1: a little while, we spoke about the different things that

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Speaker 1: were going on and the different things that I had observed,

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Speaker 1: because I had a different perspective, not able to look

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Speaker 1: at the intelligence community in the way that he was,

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Speaker 1: but I was looking at how the press was a

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Speaker 1: part of this how the press was operating. We began

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Speaker 1: speaking a lot, and at a certain point I said,

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Speaker 1: I'd like to write about this. I thought there was

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Speaker 1: also actually a story in there, a human drama, which

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Speaker 1: was about David Nunez, and as I came to speak

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Speaker 1: more with him and meet some of the other people

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Speaker 1: who had worked with him on his team, it struck

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Speaker 1: me that this was the way to explain what had happened,

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Speaker 1: To tell it through the congressman and his team. As Patel,

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Speaker 1: one of the lead investigators, decided to name what they

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Speaker 1: were doing Objective MEDUSA, and without these eight people, it's

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Speaker 1: quite likely no one ever would have known what happened.

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Speaker 1: So I wanted to also credit these people who had

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Speaker 1: done the right thing. We have a very good idea

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Speaker 1: now of what Obama's officialist did, John Brennan, James Clapper,

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Speaker 1: James Comey, Andrew mckaye, but no one really had a

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Speaker 1: very clear picture of what Congressman Nounez and his people

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Speaker 1: had done. When I explained to him how I thought

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Speaker 1: it should be told, he said, Okay, sounds like a

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Speaker 1: good idea. So we started speaking more and more. That's

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Speaker 1: really how it came to be New News himself in

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Speaker 1: some ways is almost a Jimmy Stewart figure. Farmer really

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Speaker 1: comes out of solid background of a family that worked

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Speaker 1: hard and had done very well on the land, and

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Speaker 1: somehow this guy ends up just being a rock who

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Speaker 1: can't be moved. As classically Americans, we as Americans tell

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Speaker 1: these stories about people who do the right thing. Mister

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Speaker 1: Smith goes to Washington to make things right. It really happened.

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Speaker 1: That Jimmy Stewart reference is very important because I describe

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Speaker 1: him kind of a self deprecating Jimmy Stewart character, because

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Speaker 1: we know there's another aspect to Jimmy Stewart too, which

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Speaker 1: is the post World War to Jimmy Stewart, where people

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Speaker 1: talk about the different things that Jimmy Stewart saw during

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Speaker 1: the war and how that shaped his worldview. People forget

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Speaker 1: he was a general in the Air Force, that he

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Speaker 1: flew combat missions. This pleasant, soft spoken guy earned it

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Speaker 1: the hard way, and I think in a sense, noonez

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Speaker 1: fits that doesn't go out to pick a fight, but

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Speaker 1: he doesn't back up from a fight. My understanding is

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Speaker 1: that the Intelligence Committee, they always wanted people with pretty

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Speaker 1: moderate temperaments on that committee because most of the work

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Speaker 1: they did was classified and they couldn't talk about it.

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Speaker 1: They didn't want barn burners on there. And I think

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Speaker 1: that the Congressman does have a very moderate temperament, and

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Speaker 1: that was also a sign when he came out and

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Speaker 1: started speaking about these things and expressed alarm, that should

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Speaker 1: have been an indication to more people to take it seriously. Historically,

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Speaker 1: the Intelligence Committee, despite some tension, tended to be relatively bipartisan,

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Speaker 1: and because it was dealing with all of seventeen intelligence

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Speaker 1: agencies and the effort worldwide to protect America, it had

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Speaker 1: a really deep bias towards being serious and reaching beyond partisanship.

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Speaker 1: So what's happened in the last couple of years, the

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Speaker 1: rise of Schiff, the whole way that they've been operating,

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Speaker 1: is a radical change coming up the core story that

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Speaker 1: every American needs to understand. What's the core story that

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Speaker 1: every American should understand about the problems we've been living

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Speaker 1: through the way that I've put it, the Clinton campaign

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Speaker 1: got a bunch of dirty cops the spy on her

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Speaker 1: political rival, the Trump campaign. After Donald Trump won the presidency,

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Speaker 1: Obama intelligence officials rolled that into a coup. A lot

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Speaker 1: of people around the country understand that story just like that.

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Speaker 1: The important thing that Congressman Nunez has wanted to do,

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Speaker 1: and I hope this book is a part of this

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Speaker 1: getting out the different details. The book is explaining how

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Speaker 1: the bad guys did this, and it also explains how

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Speaker 1: the good guys uncovered what they were up to, because

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Speaker 1: one of the amazing things is this was all a

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Speaker 1: political operation, and the Congressman talks about this a lot

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Speaker 1: in the book. Everything was hidden under programs and instruments

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Speaker 1: designed to keep Americans safe from terrorism and from hostile

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Speaker 1: foreign actors. They hid things in a classified counter intelligence investigation.

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Speaker 1: They hid things using classified human sources. They hid things

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Speaker 1: using the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court. So the

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Speaker 1: idea that they hid what they did under these classified

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Speaker 1: programs to disguise it, that's a really important part of

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Speaker 1: the story. When the Congressman released what's now come to

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Speaker 1: be known as the Nounez Memo, they wanted to be

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Speaker 1: very careful because, unlike many of their counterparts on the

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Speaker 1: Democratic side, and unlike many of the Obama officials, they

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Speaker 1: take classified intelligence and classified information very seriously, and they

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Speaker 1: weren't going to break the law. So it was important

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Speaker 1: to get that out in a legal manner to the

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Speaker 1: American people and to show them what exactly had happened.

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Speaker 1: But what's really striking about the story, as you outline it,

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Speaker 1: is that you have Nunez and his small team playing

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Speaker 1: by the rules, being disadvantaged by their caution, and you

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Speaker 1: have this extraordinary network of news media, professional bureaucracies, and

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Speaker 1: democratic politicians collectively violating every plausible rule of the American system.

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Speaker 1: And it's kind of an astonishing to have both of

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Speaker 1: those going on simultaneously. One of the things that I

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Speaker 1: want people to understand is not only the virtues of

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Speaker 1: the Nunez team, but also the very bad things that,

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Speaker 1: as he said, the press, the different intelligence officials, democratic

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Speaker 1: operatives did. I mean, these people actually put all Americans

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Speaker 1: at risk by abusing these programs. When I first began

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Speaker 1: going back in Will together all the different early references

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Speaker 1: to impeaching, etc. The first references are actually the day

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Speaker 1: after the election. That's when it began. The Intelligence Community assessment,

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Speaker 1: which was, as Congressman Una says in the book, is

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Speaker 1: a political document, the platform for the post election for

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Speaker 1: what we now know the other side was actually calling

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Speaker 1: a coup. Here's someone who is admitting that in January

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Speaker 1: twenty seventeen that there is actually an operation to take

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Speaker 1: down the newly inaugurated president of the United States. So,

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Speaker 1: in your judgment, why was the news media so complicit

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Speaker 1: in literally being spoon fed by the bureaucracies and just

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Speaker 1: sort of repeating it mindlessly No matter how often they've

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Speaker 1: been false, they come back and do it again. I

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Speaker 1: think a lot of currents merged. I mean, it's fascinating

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Speaker 1: when you look at what the national security beat is

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Speaker 1: here in Washington. It just comes from league, right, It

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Speaker 1: comes from different sources, many of whom are speaking off

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Speaker 1: the record anonymously, and they're putting through different leagues to

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Speaker 1: politicize things. In a sense, that is the core of

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Speaker 1: the Rustigate operation, at least in the media. And then

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Speaker 1: it merges with all sorts of other trends. It merges

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Speaker 1: with an anti Republican current in the media. And then

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Speaker 1: of course it was specific about this president, President Trump.

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Speaker 1: And then there's another which is the financial model. What

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Speaker 1: depending on advertisements, is broken, and so these different currents merged.

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Speaker 1: The fact is we're dealing with people who are operating

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Speaker 1: in another universe. These are people who have turned the

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Speaker 1: and verifiable fact are not important for these people who

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Speaker 1: are pushing this information operation. When you think about it

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Speaker 1: that way, there's no there there, and they can make

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Speaker 1: where the Mueller investigation was corrupt from the beginning. When

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Speaker 1: Robert Muller left the stage for what seems like the

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Speaker 1: last time July twenty fourth, many were optimistic that that

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Speaker 1: would bring an end to the Russia Gate nonsense. I

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Speaker 1: was a bit more cautious. My sense was, they've invested

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Speaker 1: they drop that instrument. The other thing is they pushed

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Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory into the American public. It lasted there

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Speaker 1: for three years, and it grew, it became increasingly more powerful.

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Speaker 1: That's real power to inject a lie into a society

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Speaker 1: and make people believe it. For a very significant number

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Speaker 1: of Americans, maybe forty percent of the American people, they

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Speaker 1: now believe in an alternative world which is probably not

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Speaker 1: subject to facts because they go through cognitive dissidents, and

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Speaker 1: if you tell them Mueller found nothing, they'll go yeah.

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Speaker 1: But now there's this new thing, and it's almost like,

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Speaker 1: as long as there's a big enough mound of accusations,

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Speaker 1: some of them must be true. Exactly what if none

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Speaker 1: of these things happened. I mean, it's really a remarkable

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Speaker 1: thing how quickly our public sphere was corrupted like this.

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Speaker 1: Of course, the press is at the center of it.

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Speaker 1: We can come back to the Intelligence Committee. This is

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Speaker 1: the committee which is supposed to be overseeing the intelligence

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Speaker 1: community to make sure that they're serving the American public,

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Speaker 1: keeping Americans safe, that these programs and instruments that they're

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Speaker 1: using are on the up and up. And instead, this

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Speaker 1: Intelligence Committee, led by Adam Schiff, is working with different

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Speaker 1: officials to try to bring down the president. Unless we

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Speaker 1: look at what's actually happened here, what are they running now?

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Speaker 1: It's an active CIA officer who is part of an

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Speaker 1: operation to take down the president's mind blockling. Instead of

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Speaker 1: Democrats saying, hey, look, I don't like Trump either, but

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Speaker 1: this is not the way to go about things. No

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Speaker 1: one is doing that to me was Arrientially part of

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Speaker 1: your reporting was the fact that Nunas needs somebody who

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Speaker 1: understands what's going on and turns to a professional prosecutor

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Speaker 1: in cash. Pateeute in some ways is almost as important

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Speaker 1: as Nunas in providing the knowledge and the capabilities to

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Speaker 1: explain a little bit of what his background was and

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Speaker 1: why he mattered so much. Mister Patel was a former

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Speaker 1: dj prosecutor. He'd worked with many of the people that

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Speaker 1: he later wound up investigating and looking into, like Andrew McCabe,

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Speaker 1: like James Comy, like Peter Struck and Lisa Page. He

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Speaker 1: also knew what it took to be able to go

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Speaker 1: against the DOJ, and as he explained it, if you

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Speaker 1: can get their documents and to see what they did do,

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Speaker 1: you have a leg up on them because it's a

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Speaker 1: very powerful organization with lots of resources. And again, one

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Speaker 1: of the important things to remember is how Congressman Nunez

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Speaker 1: and his team overmatched. They were. This was eight people.

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Speaker 1: They were going against the bureaucracy, they're going against the press,

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Speaker 1: they're going against the Democratic Party. So these eight people

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Speaker 1: needed to figure out how to muster their resources, what

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Speaker 1: to do. The other thing that mister Petel brought to

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Speaker 1: this team was a skepticism regarding the DOJ and the FBI. Now,

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Speaker 1: he worked in the DOJ, so he loves the FBI.

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Speaker 1: He loves the DJ He talks about it all the

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Speaker 1: time in the book Great Organization. I love doing these

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Speaker 1: cases with my great colleagues. But as he explains, he

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Speaker 1: also knew that these are not superhuman people, that there

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Speaker 1: are some bad people at DOJ and the FBI. And

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Speaker 1: he explained that to Congressman Nunez and his colleagues, who

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Speaker 1: had first tended to dismiss him. As they soon came

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Speaker 1: to learn though mister Petzel was correct. He had a

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Speaker 1: very good reading on people like Komey and people like

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Speaker 1: McKay Struck. As I documented the book, Congressman Nunez and

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Speaker 1: his team, with Cash Petel at the front, this is

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Speaker 1: what they found. Everything from the Struck page letters to

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Speaker 1: the role that Bruce Orr played as back channel to

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Speaker 1: the FB. I that the FBI had used the steel

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Speaker 1: Gassier paid for by the Clintons. They'd use that to

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Speaker 1: obtain a warrant to spine American citizen and collect the

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Speaker 1: campaign's communications. A lot of this depended on mister Patel's

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Speaker 1: insight and as Congress Newness says in the book, is

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Speaker 1: willingness to kick down doors. Next, the media's role in

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Speaker 1: the scandal. At the very senior levels of the federal

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Speaker 1: Beaureau of Investigation. You have a collective group who are

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Speaker 1: all committed to destroying the president, every single one of them.

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Speaker 1: I mean that it's so far outside the American sense

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Speaker 1: of norms that have become it was almost impossible to believe,

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Speaker 1: and of course the news media does everything they can

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Speaker 1: to make it unbelievable. Part of what I was intrigued

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Speaker 1: with when you look at the story you told in

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Speaker 1: the plot against the president, give this network of personal relationships.

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Speaker 1: So Komee and Muller and a whole group of these people,

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Speaker 1: they knew each other, they had worked even Rosenstein had.

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Speaker 1: I mean, they were all, in a sense part of

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Speaker 1: a fraternity, and they're all winking and nodding as they

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Speaker 1: collectively break the law. One of the things that's so

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Speaker 1: striking in your book is this machinery that goes from

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Speaker 1: the FBI or the CIA making something up, feeding it

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Speaker 1: to the New York Times in the Washington Post, having

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Speaker 1: them then print it. So now it begins to be

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Speaker 1: a fact. And since the people who are supposed to

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Speaker 1: investigate it are the people who planted it. This is

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Speaker 1: why nun Is in a sense becomes one of the

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Speaker 1: most important figures in the last few years, because without

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Speaker 1: his tenacity and without his team, the stuff would still

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Speaker 1: not be out there. I mean, we came very close

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Speaker 1: to resembling Syria or Egypt, or one of those countries

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Speaker 1: where the power center simply runs over the people. This

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Speaker 1: is what I mean about the relationship between the press

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Speaker 1: and the intelligence services. This is exactly how things around.

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Speaker 1: I've lived in Egypt, I've lived in Lebanon. This is

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Speaker 1: exactly how it works. As for our prestige press organizations,

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Speaker 1: I assume that there will be a place bearing the

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Speaker 1: name the New York Times and the Washington Post for

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Speaker 1: many many years to come, but under no circumstances will

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Speaker 1: it resemble what we grew up to know as the

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Speaker 1: New York Times and Washington Post. The press is always

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Speaker 1: tended toward the left, That's always been the case. But

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Speaker 1: what we see now these are not liberal publications. These

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Speaker 1: are places that have been involved in intelligence operations with spies.

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Speaker 1: I believe that once you've injected a conspiracy theory and

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Speaker 1: to the public sphere you can't recover from that. I

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Speaker 1: think that's it. We will have information, we will have

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Speaker 1: a media, we will have a press. At the big

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Speaker 1: names we know today, they'll just be political operations. That's

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Speaker 1: nothing like a media, nothing like a press. Let me

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Speaker 1: just say, I think you've made a major contribution to

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Speaker 1: cutting through the noise and giving people a clear roadmap.

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Speaker 1: And anybody who reads your book will see all of

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Speaker 1: this very very differently. I just want to thank you

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Speaker 1: and tell you that I really think what you've done

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Speaker 1: is a great contribution to where we are today. And

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Speaker 1: I've seldom been as struck by a book being timely

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Speaker 1: and important as yours, mister speaker. I can't tell you

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Speaker 1: how honored I am by your word. I was husually

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Speaker 1: flattered that you were reading the book, and that the

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Speaker 1: fact that you enjoyed it. I can't tell you how

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Speaker 1: my that meant to me. Thank you very much. Thank

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Speaker 1: you to my guest, Lee Smith. You can read more

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Speaker 1: about Lee Smith's book, The Plot Against the President, The

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Speaker 1: true story of how Congressman Devin Nounez uncovered the biggest

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Speaker 1: political scandal news history on our show page at Newtsworld

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Speaker 1: dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Westwood One. Our executive

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Speaker 1: producer is Debbie Myers and our producer is Garnsey Slope.

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Speaker 1: Our editor is Robert Borowski, and our researcher is Rachel Peterson.

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Speaker 1: Our guest booker is Tamara Coleman. The artwork for the

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Speaker 1: show was created by Steve Penley. The music was composed

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Speaker 1: by Joey Salvia. Special thanks the team at Gingwis Steet

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Speaker 1: sixty and Westwood Ones, John Wardock and Robert Mathis. Please

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Speaker 1: email me with your comments at newt at newtsworld dot com.

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Speaker 1: If you've been enjoying Newsworld, I hope you'll go to

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and

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Speaker 1: give us a review so others can learn what it's

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Speaker 1: all about. On the next episode of Newts World, from

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Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor to nine to eleven to modern day Threats,

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Speaker 1: we're looking at the history of surprise attacks in the

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Speaker 1: United States. We just don't have the type of expertise

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Speaker 1: such as during the Cold War we could focus on

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Speaker 1: one kind of enemy. Today we're facing not just one enemy,

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Speaker 1: but so many different kinds of enemies, and so many

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Speaker 1: that we really still don't understand. I'm New Kangridge. This

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Speaker 1: is News World, the Westwood one podcast network