Transcript - America This Week, The Case Against Brennan and Comey: Walter discovers source of Newspeak

The inside scoop on the latest (actually important) Russiagate developments. Plus, correspondent Boot reaches Africa in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop.

Matt Taibbi: Welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: How’s it going, Walter?

Walter Kirn: It’s going well. For some reason, I wake up early to do this show out here in the West, and I’m having a little harder time waking up this morning than usual because I’ve been working on a book all hours.

Matt Taibbi: Oh, I thought you were dying. Okay, go ahead.

Walter Kirn: No, no, no. Not dying. Not yet.

Matt Taibbi: Okay.

Walter Kirn: I’ll make sure to tell the audience because that’s ratings.

Matt Taibbi: Exactly.

Walter Kirn: But yeah, I’m doing well and I’m ready to dig into some news. Finally, a show where we have objective, reportable, on the record, some off the record news you can use.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. And this is even one that I’m a little bit in the middle of.

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: So I can get into some things that maybe aren’t out there in the public domain yet.

Walter Kirn: Good.

Matt Taibbi: So the big story, and we talked about this last week when CIA Director, John Ratcliffe released an eight-page memorandum that had an odd title. I forget what it was called. We’ll have to take a look at it. It has some verbose tradecraft something or other misgivings or-

Walter Kirn: Mistakes were made.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, mistakes were made, whatever it was, and it listed... As we discussed, it offered some concrete CIA note. That’s right.

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: And it listed a number of things, including some new facts and new quotes from emails that we hadn’t heard before. Now, a lot of this stuff had been reported on, as I mentioned, by people like Aaron Montes, Dan Bongino, Margot Cleveland, Paul Sperry. I’m sure I’m leaving somebody out, but there were a number of other folks-

Walter Kirn: The bad news bearers of Russiagate.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, exactly. Then Michael Shellenberger and I and Alex Gutentag last year also did a big story on this exact same stuff, the essence of which was the Intelligence Community Assessment of 2017 that came out on January 6th, 2017, just as Donald Trump, president elect, was about to take office. They released this big report that essentially assessed that Russia had interfered or had conducted influence operations to help Donald Trump and to hurt Hillary Clinton. And the reason this is important, and this is something that I think people who... Not so much people who follow this and are Trump supporters and already know what this story’s about need to listen to, but let’s address the folks on the other side for a moment, the people who are MSNBC watchers and who have followed this from Rachel Maddow for years.

The reason this is important, this January 6th, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, is that it has a summary at the top that says that thing about Russia interfering to help specifically Trump and to hurt Hillary Clinton. They could not have done that had they not included material from the Steele dossier. They did not have enough intelligence to support that conclusion. There was a great deal of intramural argument about this. If you go down a little further, assessing Russian activities and intentions in recent US elections, it’s the third paragraph is the money paragraph. “We also assess Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.” So that, “aspired,” line is the key line in the whole thing. Without that, there’s no Russiagate, there’s no nothing, but they couldn’t have done it. They did not have intelligence to support that. In fact, they had analysis going in the other direction that they suppressed. They couldn’t have done it without the Steele stuff.

The Ratcliffe memo that we went over last week detailed how John Brennan overrode not only some of his senior analysts, but people whose job it was specifically to warn him off bad intelligence. Told him that he couldn’t include this stuff under any circumstances because it didn’t meet even the lowest level of tradecraft or something like that. And so that’s why this is important. Without this, there’s no Russiagate. There’s no three years of anything. It all would’ve died at that moment.

And there was some intramural strife about this last week when you and I, Walter, were talking about this. There were some people who are Trump supporters, who are longtime followers of this material who were upset that this CIA note by John Ratcliffe didn’t delve into the meat of the corruption. Specifically Rick Crawford, the new Head of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a very angry letter to Donald Trump on January 2nd. And if we can look at the last part here of that letter.

Walter Kirn: You mean July 2nd?

Matt Taibbi: July 2nd, I’m sorry. Yes. It says, “I am disappointed that the agency was permitted to whitewash the full extent of their problems,” and he’s talking about the ICA. Crawford also complains that the House Intelligence Committee, that their work has been held hostage at the CIA and has not been returned, and most people don’t know what that’s about. That’s because the biggest investigation into all this stuff was done by the House Intelligence Committee in 2017 and 2018 in the 115th Congress when Devin Nunes was the Chairman of the Committee, and Kash Patel was the lead investigator. But all of that stuff has been locked in a vault at Langley since 2018 and has not been returned, and Crawford is complaining about this in this letter. He’s saying, “Our stuff is being held hostage and you left out all the important stuff.”

Well, after this letter, Trump interceded, this is my understanding, Trump interceded, Ratcliffe returned the House Intelligence stuff to Congress, and then the next day, Crawford tweeted a note of thanks. “Thanks for the swift response,” he says, and, “All is well.” And I talked to a bunch of people close to the House Intelligence Committee investigation, the original one yesterday, and they were upset and puzzled last week. Now they’re cautiously optimistic. Some of them are happy because of this new news, Walter, that criminal investigations have been opened into John Brennan and James Comey, the former FBI Director. So what do you think of this news, first of all, Walter? It could be nothing, right? We’ve all gotten jaded by now because nothing ever happens, but...

Walter Kirn: I’m not that jaded. I think things do happen. They happen very slowly and they have to push their way through endless strata of bureaucratic inertia and endangered and cautious personnel and other things. I guess you’re asking me what do I think about the supposed targeting? Well, let’s see it. Let’s get it on. I can’t think of any more interesting, as a journalist or important as a citizen, investigation other than that of the president himself than that of the two, let’s say Intelligence Chiefs of America, domestic FBI, and foreign, supposedly CIA, in an attempt what to prevent a president from taking office, to prevent him from being effective once in office, perhaps to get him out of office rather promptly after he takes it. If there is evidence of this and it can’t be looked at, then what the heck are we doing? Just standing outside the Kremlin in the snow wondering what goes on in there? No, that’s not supposed to be how it is. I think it’s time.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah. And there were some people who were upset that the crimes being looked at are perjury and conspiracy.

Walter Kirn: Well, what are the crimes supposed to be?