Clapper on Russia collusion hoax: stick to the narrative (08-15-2025--Hour3)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepeakclendarshow dot com make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support our number three, the final hour of the week here on the Peate Calendar Show. Thanks a lot for hanging out. I appreciate it. Seven oh four five, seven zero eleven ten If you want to call in and be part of the program. At the end of the hour, as we always do on Friday, we'll chat with Brett Winterble for a little segment we like to call Pregaming with Brett And What's today? Is today a day that ends in the letter Why? Yes? Yes, it is? Okay, good. So it's another day that ends in the letter Why. And so we have another story on another batch of declassified documents from our Intel agencies. Yes, I'm not going to stop covering this, folks, I'm not going to stop highlighting that we were right. This is a weaponized quote unquote deep state. It was targeting Trump and his campaign, his aids, his advisors. Right. It was weaponized by Obama. It was weaponized by these intel chiefs and people in the top ranks of the government. And many of those people are actually still in government, and a lot of them are in their shadow government posts in universities and think tanks and NGOs, just waiting for a Democrat to regain the White House and then they will all move right back in. That's their system. Republicans do not have this kind of a system. What little elements they do have are little. Okay, they may have a couple of think tanks here and there, but they do not have the university posts. They don't get the John Edwards treatment. You know, the former US senator ran for president and then vice president, right and after he was out of the US Senate, they gave him a soft landing pad at UNC Chapel Hill for him to do his you know, poverty work and all of that. But that was just a placeholder, give him a paycheck until he could then turn around and run for office again and lose. But he But the point is like same thing with Roy Cooper going up to Harvard, former Governor Bev Purdue going also to Harvard. Right, they get them these posts, they pay them a bunch of money, and then they get some breathing room to chart their course for the next uh, for the next run. So the latest now we have is declassified emails from James Clapper. Former Director of National Intelligence. James Clapp was adamant about sticking to the narrative that Russia interfered in the twenty sixteen election to help President Trump, despite concerns raised by a top intelligence official. Clapper described the Obama administration's effort to revamp an intelligence community assessment called the ICA on this ICA was about Russia election medaling, and he described the effort as a quote unquote team sport and one that may require the intelligence community to quote compromise its own standards. This latest intelligence declassification provided by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Telsea Gabbard. Former National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers, a Republican, warned at the time that his team had concerns about this rush that Clapper and Obama and Brennan, the head of the CIA, that they were in this rush to get the ICA to get this report out as quickly as they wanted to. You know your recall, we went over this timeline like a week and a half ago or so, right when the timeline became clear thanks to another batch of declassified intel and memos and emails, right that the timeline was in December. The key dates are in December, from mid to late December of twenty sixteen, So after Trump beat Hillary and before he gets inaugurated and takes office, you have this intelligence community assessment that was worked up and given to Obama. Believe the date was December ninth, twenty sixteen, and it is then pulled back and a new one is rushed through, And the new one that is rushed through is now representing a higher level of confidence in this assertion that Putin wanted Trump to win, and that Putin directly had involvement in hacking the DNC, ordering the hack of the DNC's emails and servers in order to help Trump win. Right, And that was all based on the Steele dossier, which Brennan at the CIA refused to let other people look at, and didn't he classified it at the highest level and then buried the thing, so people could not see the original source material. So the analysts in all of the you know, fifteen other intel agencies couldn't see the source material. They just had to take Bread word for it. That got released too a couple of weeks ago. See, so we're putting together the timeline of events here, and we're filling in these gaps, and so this rush to redo the assessment to include the Steele Dosier and then also to include representations made to Brennan by a source of his that he never would disclose. It was just trust me, and he literally said this, doesn't it sound true? And what is now understood is that that source was a guy named Igor Denchenko, and Brennan said he could not tell anybody who his source was because Putin would have him whacked. And that does sound like Putin. That's very on brand for Puti Puot, you know. But slight problem. Denchenko is actually like living out in the open. He's not in hiding or anything. And like his home addresses Lissi's in Northern Virginia and whatever. So it's not even like, yeah, it's not like he's in hiding from Putin. He's doesn't seem to be terribly afraid, and either way, it's like, that's not whatever he told Brennan allegedly, which I think that came out. I'm trying to remember if Denchhenko was attributed with this information, but he actually claims to have not said any of this. Anyway, that's what gets used to prop up this false narrative that Trump is Putin's puppet, and Putin wanted Trump to win, and the timeline has to be accelerated because the president gets a thing called the PDB, the Presidential Daily Briefing, President's Daily Briefing comes in and it's based on these icas, these intelligence community assessments. And the problem was that they had been running around accusing Trump of being this Russian asset based on the Hillary Clinton campaign lies, their opo smears and stuff that were developed during the campaign, and they had been planning for months. She loses, and now Trump is getting access to the pdbs because he's the president elect, and so they now start looping in the president elect before he actually takes office. So this way he's not walking in the door blind to the last month, month and a half of intelligence community assessment reports. So now they know he needs to be he's going to be included, So that's when they falsify the reports. That's when they start adding this stuff in while masking through classification status masking the root sources in order to convey this idea that the intelligence community believes Putin wanted Trump to win and helped him do so when it was never true and they knew it wasn't true. But that, of course is then used to launch crossfire Hurricane, the investigation of Donald Trump, the wiretapping of his campaign, all the people around him, and it is used to hobble any efforts that he may have had in making success or delivering results on his make America Great Again agenda. It was to hobble his administration's first term and maybe get him impeached, right because they hated Trump so much, they viewed him as an existential threat, so everything was justified in taking him out. Mike Rogers at the NSA said his team has concerns about this rush to get the report out so fast and the fact that they couldn't see the underlying intelligence that was used to produce this product, so they were very hesitant to sign on to it because we couldn't We can't say we have a high confidence in this assessment because we don't have that. We don't know what you know, and the CIA wouldn't tell them. All Right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground news as they make the media landscape more transparent. News Talk eleven, ten ninety nine to three WBT. So this is a story at the New York Post from Victor Nava, and it's called Declassified Emails show James Clapper's dismissive response to Intel community concerns over Russia election interference report. Former NSA director Mike Rodgers was telling Clapper that he and his intel people are concerned about this rush to put out this report, this ICA, the intelligence community assessment, the timing of it was of concern, but also that his own people could not get access to the underlying intel that was used to produce this ICA, and specifically the part where they were accusing Russia of hacking the DNC and the d Triple C and getting all their emails and stuff right, He said, I'm concerned about the expedited nature of this activity. Clapper urged Rogers to fall in line, saying, quote, understand your concern. It is essential that we be on the same page and are all supportive of the report in the highest tradition of that's our story, and we're sticking to it like what's he's describing there, like that when the legend becomes truth, print the legend. That's what he's saying. This is our story and we're sticking to it. But it's our story. See. He went on to shut down any more talk of any more time being needed to produce this. He said, we will facilitate as much mutual transparency as possible as we complete the report, but more time is not negotiable. We may have to compromise on our normal modalities since we must do this on such a compressed schedule. This is one project that has to be a team sport. This exchange over email came a couple of days after that December ninth, twenty sixteen meeting between former President Barack Obama, Clapper Brennan, and other top administration officials, during which the president demanded a report detailing the tools that Moscow used and actions it took to influence the twenty sixteen election to help Trump win. The previous intel the ICA Intelligence Community assessment that was rejected by Obama determined that quote Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyberac activities against election infrastructure. So the new Ica said the opposite, and it was based on nothing, nothing that was not debunked, nothing that was provable. The NSA would actually go on to sign off on the new report. Tulci Gabbert has been on the warpath against the actors behind the Trump Russia collusion narrative and said Clapper's email reinforces what we already exposed. The decision to compromise standards and violate protocols in the creation of the twenty seventeen manufactured Intelligence Assessment was deliberate and came from the very top. Now there's another, Uh, there's another related story here, and this comes from the Federalist piece by Hans mankey Menca Monk Mahnke. I don't know how he pronounce it. It's m ah n Cke, probably man. He's an in house council at a global business advisory firm, so a lawyer guy, and he's the author of Swift Voting America exposing the Russia Gate fraud and the Steele dossier to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation. He's been covering this for years at the Federalist. And there's a larger point here. Beyond just our internal national politics and the corruption of our intelligence services. Right in releasing these two emails and doing it when she did it. Tolcy Gabbard, I, according to him, and I agree with him, thinks she did this when she did this because Trump is in Alaska meeting with Putin their meeting they should be meeting. Well, yeah, looks like he has arrived now in Alaska. Right, it comes just two days before the release of the emails, was just two days ago before this summit. These emails again reveal that Clapper pushed the fraudulent narrative that Russia hacked the DNC. He overrided objections from the NSA and the timing manners because this very narrative, this claim that Russia hacked the DNC to help Trump, was used to sabotage the twenty eighteen Trump Putin summit in Helsinki. Three days before that meeting, in twenty eighteen, Special Council Robert Muller indicted twelve Russian nationals on charges of hacking the DNC. The indictment was designed to create political chaos. Muller knew that the twelve Russians were located in Russia and would never stand trial, meaning he would never need to prove his case. The result of the indictments was exactly what Muller, his team, and any yet to be identified coconine spirators intended, which was to sabotage the summit and defectively criminalize diplomacy with Russia. Trump addressed the hacking directly at that summit when he was up there. He took questions because Trump, you know, and what Trump said at the summit sparked all sorts of outrage and consternation. He said, you have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server from the DNC. Right, the FBI never got ahold of that server. The DNC said it was hacked, and the FBI comes in and says, well, all right, we're going to do an analysis on that. Let's get access to your computers and servers whatever. They're like, no, we'll do it ourselves and then we'll tell you what we get. But the government, the Intel community, they never got access to the company that they used was called CrowdStrike, and the Intel agencies and they never got access to the CrowdStrike data. CrowdStrike just told them it was Russia. And the Intel people were like, we can't confirm this low confidence. We can't confirm it. They won't show us anything. Basically, we don't believe it to be true. It might be true, but we don't believe it's true right now because there's no evidence. They presented no evidence to us. But that two got changed, completely flipped around, and that was then cited that it is high confidence. Remember we covered that one a couple weeks ago, that declassified dump, which was they switched it from a low confidence assessment to a high confidence assessment based on nothing, based on pressure from the top. And so when Trump is asked about this, he says, people are wondering, why didn't the FBI take the server. Why haven't they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democrat National Committee. It was never examined by the FBI or any other US government agency, and people went nuts. This proves he's in the pocket of Putin and at tanked the summit. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. Just a quick drive up the mountain and cabins of Ashville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion. Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Ashville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local attractions with hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditions, smart TVs, Wi Fi grills, outdoor tables and your own private covered porch. Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call her text eight two eight, three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins of Ashville dot Com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. News Talk eleven, ten ninety nine to three WBT. On the text line, Jeff says, could we could ask the DNC crowd strike and whomever else was in on the coup if they feel bad about the fact that their lie led to the depths of how many hundreds of thousands or maybe millions of people in Russia and Ukraine. They'd probably answer, well, he didn't win, did he? Well? Slight problem there is that Trump actually did win, and he can't use the Harry Lyon read that he used in defending the lie and smear against Mitt Romney on his tax returns. So at this Helsinki summit in twenty eighteen, he got the whole Russia Gate thing swirling all around Trump, and he's asked about it, and he points out that the FBI never got a hold of the server from the DNC to prove that they were actually hacked, and he's like, what's up with that? Outrage ensues. He's labeled a trader for refusing to accept the truth capital t truth, the Russian hacked narrative without any evidence, even his own DNI at the time, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates, as well as a lot of Republicans publicly pushed back against him. But as it turns out, Trump was right, and the newly released emails from Tolsey Gabbert now confirmed that his skepticism was one hundred percent justified. The fact that Clapper was pushing a false narrative to undermine Trump is further corroborated by an earlier DNI report released by Gabbard. It was from twenty sixteen that stated the FBI in the NSA lacked sufficient technical details to correlate the information posted online to Russian state sponsored actors, meaning there was no way to determine whether Russia had actually hacked the DNC. The fact that the DNC hack, if it indeed even was a hack, as opposed to some internal leak that has never been resolved, has much to do with how it was initially handled. When the issue first arose. Rather than calling in the FBI, they called in Clinton's campaign lawyer, Michael Sussman. He brought in the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. Now what is clear is that Sussman would later funnel a fabricated story about secret Trump putent communications via Russian's Alpha Bank. Susman was the guy who gave that lie to the FBI to get them to investigate it, because Susman used to work for the FBI and knew what was the guy's name, James Baker I believe was his name. CrowdStrike quickly and very publicly then proclaimed that Russian state actors were responsible. However, when the head of CrowdStrike, the chief security officer, Sean Henry, was called to testify under oath in twenty seventeen before the House Intelligence Committee, which was led at that time by Republican Devin Nuness, he said CrowdStrike had quote no direct evidence that any data had actually been exfiltrated, in other words, removed. Well, if you are going to hack the DNC servers get all the information in order to help Trump, why wouldn't you take it? Why wouldn't you take the information? Why would you just gain access and not take anything in order to help Trump? Right? I mean, like, I'm no spy expert here, but it seems like if you hack in the purposes to then take stuff and bring it out and then you can use it to help Trump. If you don't take the stuff out, then there's like, what's the point. This new release of classified declassified intel by Tulsa Gabbart is a vindication for Trump. It strengthens Trump's position ahead of the upcoming summit. Actually, no longer will he need to contend with fake hoaxes dominating the agenda. He can focus on the task at hand, which is bringing peace to Ukraine. The release also serves as maybe a bit of an olive branch to Russia, effectively amounting to an admission by the US intel community that the people who ran it knowingly advanced a false claim trying to under mind Trump and sabotage US Russian relations. So I thought this was interesting that the timing of this two days before the summit may actually be an attempt to strengthen Trump's position as he goes in there for that meeting with Putin. We shall see. He has arrived in Alaska. He's sitting on the tarmac right now, and it's totally something that I think Trump would do, is to make Putin wait a while, you know, or no, you know, maybe he's on the tarmac chatting it up with Loretta Lynch, showing pictures of their grand babies or something that could be it. I don't know. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. 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We are celebrating here today. We've got this is. Particularly of interest to you because we are gonna be. Watching the night's take on the Memphis Redbirds, and you've got a tribute. Show going on here tonight. Oh grateful dudes. Yes, your guys, no, man, there you go. So it's gonna be a wonderful night, very exciting. I always love being here in the early part of the day because it's just you can really take everything in and it's it's just really remarkable, and then who knows what's gonna end up happening. We have to hop a jet and head up to Alaska and see what we can do to kind of, you know, officiate the Sitch. Are you being summoned? Are you summoned to Alaska? Have they asked for your your expertise and. Your d But I think you and I would be the perfect team to go up there and kind of put things together. Because I but I don't speak Russian. It doesn't matter. He doesn't either, right, So this is my concern, like we don't like I heard like at some other meetup, I think it was witkof met with some Russian guy and they used the Russian translator, like the guy from Russia, they used him as their translator. Like that's not wise, Like, please hire your own Russian translator, who is not going to be like telling you something different than what Putin is saying, you know, because Putin speaks English, so he doesn't even need the translator. He does he does you look, you saw him in that movie with Rocky I Must Break You. That's true, that's that's it. Very clean. Yeah, he's very clean. He knows a lot of English. So yeah, I would just that that would be like my one piece of advice is bring your own Russian translator. I think that's really smart. Let me ask you this, if you were if you were in charge of sending somebody with Trump into the room from his administration, okay. From the administration. Yeah, who would you have riding in that second chair with President Trump? Hmmm, I don't know, well I would, yes, Yeah, so Rubio crossed my mind. But also Steven Miller because that guy, Wow, he's like he's like the Iceman. He strikes me as somebody who could get into a staring contest with Putin and the and like it would last probably weeks. You know, Yes, that's really good. I don't know why you would need a staring contest in order to get anything done, but you never know, like that might pop up at some point where it's like this is the way we settle things in Russia, you know, staring contest. Or then again, you may want to go with somebody who's a bit more jacked, because maybe it's like an arm wrestling kind of a deal. Maybe that's the way they settle stuff. Yeah, yeah, who would you take? I gotta tell you, man, I think I would take the guy who's doing all the deals around the world. I'm driving a blank on his name wi cough No, not no, Wick cough. Is that is the nice guy? Uh? The other guy the other guy that yells all the time. Uh you know, no, oh God Navarro, no never never the uh here, hold on a second. The trade who's the trade who's the trade guy for Trump? Uh? Tariffs? I'm looking this up in real time because I know it's I can see his face. He's balding. He's an older guy. That's that's not with cough gets is a much more sedate Nah. Yeah, you know, I mean it's it's you know who. I'm oh, you the Alex Jones. It's not Alex Joe. I would know. I'm saying, maybe maybe bring Alex Jones. Why just for just just to create chaos. He's gonna deny that there's a meeting, like you know, he's he's the denier. Now if they bust out some babies to be eating, oh, Circle of Live. Yeah, how did you find the guy yet? The guy you're trying to name, Yeah. Isn't it. It's not Wick. It's not Wick cough. It's uh, it's the other guy, all right, that guy, the other guy? All right, Well, maybe Brett we'll find out before his show starts. Momentarily, I'm better reveal it at the out of the box, all right, I'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to the epclenarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.