WEBVTT - Encore Presentation: The Deepest State (with Mark Zaid) 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:03.400 You remember when Trump came in and he thought the generals 0:00:03.480 --> 0:00:07.120 in the Pentagon were making millions of dollars. They told 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:09.280 him like, they make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:11.120 a year, and He's like, what, why would he do that? 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:15.200 I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:18.720 I served in the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, 0:00:18.760 --> 0:00:20.640 living undercover all around the. 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.080 World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA, 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:26.279 I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:28.720 Although we don't usually look at it this way, we 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:30.880 created conspiracies. 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:33.320 In our operations. We got people to believe things that 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:34.080 weren't true. 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:37.120 Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:38.360 news almost every day. 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:40.839 Will break them down for you to determine whether they 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:43.240 could be real or whether we're being manipulated. 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:50.000 Welcome to Mission Implausible, Adam. 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:52.680 There's a lot of discussion about the deep state and 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:55.440 what it is and so forth. Why don't you now 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:57.200 that you know John and I, why don't you tell 0:00:57.240 --> 0:00:59.640 us just how impressed you are with the deep state 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:01.120 and you know who were in it? 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:01.640 Sure? 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:03.560 I mean, I've gotten to know two guys in particular. 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:06.800 I mean, here's how it works. You have a sort 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:11.600 of questionable background, You're somehow attracted to this large bureaucracy, 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:14.520 and apparently if you stick around long enough, you keep 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.520 getting promotions, and if anyone's like, well, did you accomplish anything, 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:21.080 you get to say, oh, yes, but it's top secret. 0:01:21.120 --> 0:01:24.119 I can't really tell you the specific things I accomplished. 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.240 So that's my impression of the deep state. 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:27.600 Dude, you nailed it. 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:30.720 I can't argue with You're there pretty accurate. 0:01:31.040 --> 0:01:33.479 The deep state. It is sort of weird though, because 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:36.920 on the one hand people would portray us as incompetent 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:40.240 bureaucradits and on the other were like capable of anything. 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:41.560 Which is it? 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:42.920 I'll just say I think a lot of it came 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:45.440 because people who don't have an experience in government or 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:48.160 in their security. Things came in and then they just 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:51.040 wondered when they would say things at a whim, whether 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:54.040 they made sense or not, didn't just happen. And so 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:57.040 they said to themselves, well, there must be people there 0:01:57.080 --> 0:01:59.920 that are purposely trying to stall and stop the thing 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:03.279 that I'm saying should happen. Now, there is a large 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:07.960 group of professionals in Washington who have laws and regulations 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:10.760 and policies that have been built up over years, and 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:14.239 so it isn't possible when someone just says do this 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:17.600 for it to happen until it's gone through lawyers and 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:20.040 just make sure it's legal and make sure you know 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:23.120 everybody has input into whether it makes sense, because different 0:02:23.400 --> 0:02:26.600 organizations and different partner people in the political process have 0:02:26.639 --> 0:02:28.120 different opinions on things. 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:32.000 Teach state people are people who follow the rules and 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:34.640 know what the rules are. And the rules were given 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:39.400 to us by Congress, right, and they're complicate called laws. Laws. Yeah, 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:43.400 so we follow the laws and then we're damned because 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:45.240 we can't ignore the laws. 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:49.560 If there's a sort of term like bureaucrat or deep state, 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:54.120 or jew or financial elite or whatever it is, a 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:56.480 lot of these are predicated on the idea that they're 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:59.639 all thinking the exact same thing. They're all aligned and unified, 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:03.160 and they're goals and be there like actively working together. 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:06.119 And if you happen to be a member, like I'm 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:08.200 a member of the Jews, I'm a member of the 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:10.679 media elite. I think I'm now officially a member of 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:13.560 the intelligence community, right because I have a podcasts with 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:16.480 you guys, you realize really quickly, like the two of 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:18.800 you don't agree on a lot of stuff. The idea 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.160 of there being this not even the same title, but 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:24.880 sort of this a similar kind of title we must 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:28.040 all be working together is I mean it just as absurd. 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:29.800 I mean that seems to be the cornerstone of a 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:30.560 lot of conspiracy. 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:33.040 There's sort of assumption, like, you know, if you're a 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:35.640 Republican president and you want certain policies that miss mean 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:37.800 the whole deep Stater is all Democrats right and want 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:40.280 of democrats in they must be all Whereas essentially there's 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:43.080 Democrats and Republicans inside all of this deep state. So 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:45.800 the notion that somehow we would all agree on whatever 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:48.320 this political thing is. The thing we agree on is 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:51.120 on the mission of our organization. Our mission of organization was, 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:53.160 you know, to keep Americans safe, but we didn't agree 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:54.640 on the policy of how to do that. 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:57.800 From things you've told me, it CIA seems filled with 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:01.000 a lot of different pretty left wing people, right wing people, 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:04.119 pretty centrist people, pretty a political people right. 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:06.680 And today we're going to be taking a look at 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:10.720 conspiracy theories around what some people term is the deep 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:15.440 state and how conspiracies around that have become part and 0:04:15.520 --> 0:04:18.520 parcel of our political culture and central to it. 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.960 Our guest is Mark Zaid, a well known lawyer in Washington. 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:27.359 He's an attorney. He's focused on national security issues. He 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:31.279 deals with law, whistleblowers, freedom of speech issues, and he 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:33.000 has some connections to Jerry and I. He went to 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:36.800 the University of Rochester and Jerry's a Rochester native. So Mark, 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:38.480 it's really great to have you here. Thanks for being 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:38.800 with us. 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:40.920 Oh, it is a pleasure to be with both of 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:41.440 you guys. 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.160 So let me ask the first question. At least these 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:45.880 days and some of the things that I see you 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:49.920 getting involved with. You're a lawyer, You're preparing cases, you 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:52.480 might even have to go to court, and in being 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:54.520 a lawyer is about, you know, following the facts where 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:56.760 they may lead. But so much of what we're seeing 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.919 nowadays is politicians sort of spewing and things that just 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:02.880 don't have any relation to reality. And how do you 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:06.520 square those things? How do you defend people when the 0:05:06.640 --> 0:05:08.400 chargers are just sort of crazy? 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:12.680 Yeah, it is always difficult in that sphere, and anyone 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:15.119 who has spent a good amount of time in DC 0:05:15.360 --> 0:05:18.760 will tell you how things have changed. I've been here 0:05:18.800 --> 0:05:22.080 now for thirty years, and it is a very different 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:26.200 world in DC in politics than it has ever been before, 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:28.920 which has fed a lot of the conspiracy theories. Now 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:33.640 some of it is because of ideology and jerry mandering. 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:36.719 There's a lot more divisiveness in the country in the 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:41.960 political parties because so many seats in politics are safe, 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:46.720 which has led politicians to be more extreme because they 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:51.800 get elected. Now that is really fundamentally important because you 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:55.200 talk to the sort of old timers who were in office, 0:05:55.320 --> 0:05:58.920 and Democrats and Republican members of Congress used to share 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.520 apartments together because it was expensive to have residents here 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:05.880 in DC. It was also harder to go back home, 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:08.320 more expensive to go back home out of the area, 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:11.680 and you didn't have communication capabilities the way we do now. 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:15.880 So the Internet and the minimization of transportation costs also 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:19.920 has actually fed into these problems that we have today. 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.000 I want to come back to you being an insider. 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:25.800 Yeah, So the first thing I have to smirk it 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:28.720 what every time I'm called an insider, and in some 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:32.520 ways i am, But I have never served in the 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:37.320 federal government at all, and I have always represented individuals 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:40.920 I'll say, against the US government, you know, representing folks 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:43.719 like you guys when you're inside the agency and you've 0:06:43.720 --> 0:06:47.280 got a security clearance issue, a personnel dispute, an IG complaint, 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:51.320 you're being investigated by security, whatever it might be. Conspiracy 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:54.840 theories actually got me into the world that I work 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.760 in today, But it was particularly the Kennedy assassination that 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:01.560 brought me and interested me in dealing with the CIA 0:07:01.600 --> 0:07:05.800 and accountability. But because I've represented so many people, one 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:09.480 hundreds thousands over the thirty years, yeah, I guess I'm 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:12.640 part of the deep state, as President Trump would call it, well, 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:15.600 even though that's what I fight against every day, and 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:17.600 I'd say he's more of the deep state than what 0:07:17.680 --> 0:07:18.119 he says. 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:21.840 The question is often cult or conspiracy. Is this like 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:24.360 they're in a cult and this is now what they 0:07:24.400 --> 0:07:28.560 believe or is it a conspiracy and like they know 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:29.720 it's not true. 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.840 It is a fair question, you pose. There's no doubt 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:38.160 that there are some who completely know they're spewing crap 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.960 and what they're saying is absolutely false, and they're just 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:44.960 doing it for whatever reason to get a rise out 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:50.200 of someone to fuel fundraising, to gain strength in powers 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:53.480 and number, whatever it might be. And then there are 0:07:53.640 --> 0:07:59.520 the others, which are probably frankly the majority, generalizing, ignorant, naive, 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:03.240 and fall in line with what they believe. When I 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:05.360 was a freshman in college, I took a course on 0:08:05.400 --> 0:08:09.160 the Holocaust. Their maternal grandfather was a rabbi for the 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:12.119 US Army liberated Dacau. We had to do a paper 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:16.000 and the paper was why Germany And thirty five years 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:21.240 ago I had a lot of trouble understanding how this unbelievable, intellectual, cultural, 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:26.960 westernized country, pinnacle of the pinnacle of Europe became what 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.520 Hitler turned it into. And obviously it's an extreme that 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:33.160 we thankfully don't have here. But you look at the 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:36.560 early days of national socialism in the late nineteen twenties, 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:39.160 in the early thirties, and I think we have I 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.640 do at least a much better sense of how Germany 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:46.640 became what it became in watching how Maga and the 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.920 ultimate Trump supporters have become what they are. You know, hey, 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.640 Jewish space lacers. You know Marjorie Taylor Green where she 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:57.959 Trump's vice president. Would I have a concern for my 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:01.160 well being as a Jew, as a lawyer, as an 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:02.640 opponent to their beliefs. 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:05.400 Oh, hell yeah, let's take a break. 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:06.319 We'll be right back. 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:15.680 And Rebecca, So, I want. 0:09:15.520 --> 0:09:17.559 To talk a little bit about one of the conspiracies 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:20.240 that seems to be bandied about around a lot nowadays 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:22.160 is about the deep state. And so I know you've 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:26.520 defended whistleblowers for years. Are these people insiders that are 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:28.640 telling us things that we should be worried about with 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:30.559 our national security the agencies? 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:34.480 So my understanding of what deep states somebody had said 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:37.320 that term to me fifteen years ago. You know, you 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:39.840 got to be careful about the deep state. You know, 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:44.320 that brings to my mind Eisenhower's statement at the end 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:48.600 of his tenure about the military industrial complex taking over 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:53.680 the US government, or thinking about the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, 0:09:54.080 --> 0:09:57.640 who are sort of the secret government doing what they 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:01.480 want without any regard to to the rule of law 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:04.559 or the policies and procedures that were in play at 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:08.600 the time. And somehow that term deep state has been 0:10:08.679 --> 0:10:12.520 twisted by former President Trump and his supporters to mean 0:10:12.880 --> 0:10:17.800 essentially anyone who challenges their authority, even lawfully. You know, 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:22.720 the whole notion of representing whistleblowers and the existence of them. 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:26.400 It is still looked at as a somewhat bad word 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:28.920 and it is not anything I would ever wish upon 0:10:29.000 --> 0:10:31.360 someone to be a whistleblower. It is not a fun thing. 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:35.200 You do not generally gain any rewards from it. There 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:36.959 are certain types of cases where you can make a 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:39.240 lot of money as being a whistleblower, but those are 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:43.240 called keytam cases, and those are generally basically revealing fraud 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:47.640 upon the US government by a contractor. That entity is 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:51.400 fined and the whistleblower gets a percentage of that fine, 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:54.040 which could be tens of millions of dollars. But it's 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:59.200 been twisted now of course, the fake whistleblower. And again 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:01.000 because I don't want to just beat up on President Trump, 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:04.280 although there's so much to beat up on. It's both sides. 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:08.320 The term deep state for me, I struggle with it 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:12.360 strikes me as a meaningless, chivalous that lends itself to 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:16.080 conspiracy theories. The deep state is made up of like 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:18.720 tens of thousands of people who will mostly live in 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:23.520 Northern Virginia, who are your neighbors who have struggled with 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:28.439 mortgages and with their kids and have rules and regulations, 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:34.200 and they're not some coherent group that like secretly rules things. 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:39.640 And so when that term is used, it's like the Illuminati. 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.960 It means everything and nothing. And let me ask you 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:45.960 to come in on one just instance in how this 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.400 would actually could work in the real world, which I 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:52.760 don't think it does. So President Trump a while ago 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:57.480 retweeted that bin Laden was still alive and that President 0:11:57.559 --> 0:12:01.800 Obama had murdered her assas needed all the people who 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:05.240 would supposedly claim to have killed him on Sealed Team six. 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.080 In the world that we live in, there would have 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:11.000 to be a deep state that would I mean, think 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:13.800 about this. There's the widows who would all have to 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:16.959 be quiet. The people who carried this out would all 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.400 have to be like incredibly loyal after all these years 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:24.120 still to Obama, and where's Osama bin Lad and if 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:26.439 he still kept living? And yet an idea like this 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:30.120 can be put out and explained with two words deep state. 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:33.000 How would you define deep state? And how do you 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:34.040 see it defined? 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:36.800 Yeah, So, when I first came to d C, I 0:12:36.920 --> 0:12:39.160 spent then and I still do now a lot of 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:42.640 time on the Kennedy assassination. I was a sort of 0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:45.880 up and coming youngster as a twenty five year old 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.880 inheriting the mantle from the first generation who were alive 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:53.360 when Kennedy was killed, and I realized as a result 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:56.640 of all that there is no way that so many 0:12:56.720 --> 0:12:59.480 of the conspiracy theories that people believe could be true, 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:01.520 because there's no way the CIA and some of the 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:03.679 other agencies could have pulled it off. And if they 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:05.320 could have pulled it off, there's no way in hell 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:07.439 they could have kept it secret for so many years. 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:12.120 The system just doesn't work that way. Are there really 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:15.440 really cool secrets that are still secret? Yeah? You know, 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:18.520 the three of us know that is absolutely true. We 0:13:18.600 --> 0:13:21.679 may know the same cool ones, but for the most part, 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:27.559 it's very seldom that something so momentous has so few 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:31.280 people that every one of them could keep something secret. 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:34.360 One of my favorite conspiracy theories has always been the 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:37.160 Lockness Monster, so much so that when I lived in 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:39.600 England in the late eighties working for the British government, 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:43.040 I went up to Lockness in Inverness, Scotland and spent 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:46.400 hours walking around the lock just looking for NeSSI you know, 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:49.920 turned out to be if you believe that, you know 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:53.200 decades later where these guys came forward and said that 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:56.240 they concocted the whole thing. They made this like paper 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:59.160 mache dinosaur and took photos of it. And then there 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:03.840 was another guy. He had a hippopotamus leg, real hippopoonymous 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:08.080 leg umbrella stand that he would take and walk around 0:14:08.120 --> 0:14:11.440 the lock and put footprint in the sand that people 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:15.920 would see. Those were theories or conspiracies that were created 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:20.000 by a small number of people, one to three people, 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:22.480 and usually within the same family, so that they could 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:25.280 keep those secrets until someone's on their deathbed and set 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.800 finally says what happened the stuff that we're talking about 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:32.800 with the deep state, as you described this vast military 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:37.800 industrial complex where everybody's involved. It's not the way our 0:14:37.880 --> 0:14:42.160 government works. Our government is so bureaucratic. The government is 0:14:42.360 --> 0:14:46.160 like an ocean liner or a freight train. It takes 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:49.760 a mile to stop. People think the federal government is 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:53.600 like this one monolithic entity, whereas you could have a 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:57.440 war between one agency versus the other agency. They're not 0:14:57.560 --> 0:15:00.280 working together at all. I was them with one case, 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:05.120 a very senior Department of Defense official within the IC agencies, 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:09.400 all sorts of wrongdoing, all sorts of personality problems, that 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.400 people didn't like this person, and there was an IG 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:14.680 report that even found a whole bunch of stuff. So 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:16.840 what was done. The person's not fired, they were just 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:18.080 moved to another position. 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:19.840 We'd call that passing the trash. 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:21.360 It's really hard to fire someone. 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:23.400 I have a lot of clients who might disagree with 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:24.360 that because they got fired. 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:27.720 But yeah, rule you know, we could talk about someone. 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:29.960 I've tried to get some of those people fired. 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:33.400 Hey, sometimes I got to tell you. Sometimes I agree 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:36.640 that that my clients should be I will do my 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:39.200 best not to have them fired. But I'm behind the 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:42.760 scenes going, oh man, I can't I get even hired 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:43.680 in the first place. 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:45.440 I just went you up in and ask for some 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:49.600 free legal advice. So what is a conspiracy legally? If 0:15:49.640 --> 0:15:54.040 what you've outlined, If someone knows something is false, a 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:57.080 group of people know it's false, and yet they put 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:00.720 it out there to trick other people to make money, 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:02.240 is that a conspiracy legally? 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:05.960 So, a conspiracy is generally two or more people who 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:10.880 conspire to engage in an overt conduct. Give an example, 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:14.520 and this is what's frustrating too, the recent Georgia indictment 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:17.560 which has rico charges. You know, it was written to 0:16:18.120 --> 0:16:22.280 go after organized crime predominantly, and the notion is you 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:27.880 can have individuals engaged in lawful conduct, but it's part 0:16:27.920 --> 0:16:32.400 of an unlawful conspiracy. And there are a lot of 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.680 the paragraphs set forth in this complaint of which the 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:40.440 conduct is completely lawful, protected by First Amendment, but it 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:46.120 was in furtherance of an unlawful conspiracy. And you can 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:47.920 see you just look at Twitter or you look at 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:51.360 any right wing media will they'll seize upon the lawful 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:55.360 conduct in the one paragraph to say, oh, now the 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:59.800 Democrats are criminalizing the First Amendment. And no it's not. 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:05.240 This is an established legal precedent to take lawful conduct, 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:10.879 but to carve it into in furtherance of an unlawful conspiracy. 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:14.000 So if you think of money laundering, I just finished 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:17.040 watching Breaking Bad. But you know the notion of you 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:21.840 earn all this money by cooking meth that's illegal. You 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:25.880 take the unlawful money, and you lawfully purchase a car 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:32.720 wash that's lawful. Running the car wash completely lawful. When 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:36.520 the government finds out that you earned that money from 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:41.040 a criminal enterprise. They can seize the lawful car wash 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:45.440 because the lawful transaction relates to the unlawful conspiracy. 0:17:46.200 --> 0:17:50.160 Thanks Mark, it's always great talking to a fellow upstate 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:53.880 New Yorker and wishing you good things in future endeavors. 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.520 Now we'd like to welcome back Adam Davidson. 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:00.119 Can't keep me away. But first we'll take a quick 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:02.440 break and then I'm going to have a bunch of questions. 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:11.040 Welcome back to Mission implausible. So John and Jerry, we 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:13.959 just learned all about the deep state. I mean, you 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:16.159 are exactly the deep state, and. 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:18.480 It has a great dental plan. I want to get 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:19.080 that out there. 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:21.959 So one thing that I find so interesting about this 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:25.919 particular conspiracy theory is that there is a bureaucracy. There 0:18:25.960 --> 0:18:28.840 are people who work in government. I mean, it's a 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:32.520 kind of conspiracy that's like taking a thing that exists 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:36.960 and giving it more malign intent and coordination than it 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:39.720 really has. But it's not inventing a thing that doesn't exist. 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:42.720 What's interesting is it's actually a very clever conspiracy. It's 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:46.520 weaponizing sort of concerns that what people have. So if 0:18:46.560 --> 0:18:49.560 you're a leader like former President Trump was for example, 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:52.560 and you can't just dictate and get your ways. You 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:54.240 can call it a deep state, but what what I 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:57.760 would call is sort of an existing professional bureaucracy of 0:18:57.760 --> 0:19:03.359 public servants who are in phibited by laws, regulations, norms, 0:19:03.600 --> 0:19:08.160 professional standards, making sure that everything is written down, everything 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:11.000 is put through processes to get done. You can't just 0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:14.399 say invade Syria and expect that the next day are 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:16.520 people going to invade serious So I can imagine that 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:19.159 if you came in from the outside you don't understand 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:21.520 how government works, you say, well, they're not doing exactly 0:19:21.520 --> 0:19:24.199 what I said. They think different than me, Their political 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:26.720 enemies are trying to stop what I'm trying to accomplish. 0:19:26.960 --> 0:19:28.960 Whereas those of us who worked in that space, we 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:32.359 understand that, No, there's a lot of things. Over time, 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.679 civil service rules, regulations have been put in place to 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:39.440 make sure that when the government takes action, it's done openly. 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:44.400 It's done with input from the necessary bureaucracies and other agencies, 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:48.720 but it's not done for nefarious or political reasons, which 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:51.760 is what the term deep state suggests. The US government 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:55.560 is huge, These agencies are complex and complicated. It's so 0:19:55.760 --> 0:19:59.160 complex you can't get your head around it. It's easier 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:02.280 just to say, oh, they're evil, or they're working against 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:03.399 my president or what have you. 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:06.199 And it's dehumanizing as well. It's sort of along the 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:11.120 lines of referring to the honorable opposition as radical Marxist 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:15.080 Democrats or fascist Republicans or Rhinos, when these are just 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:17.800 people that view things differently and do things differently. 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:19.840 I will say the friends of mine who've been sort 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:23.359 of permanent civil servants, actually I find it almost annoying 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:26.840 when they work for an administration that I know politically 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:30.840 they're not aligned with how obsessively nonpartisan they are. I 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:34.080 can think of one administration fairly recently. 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:36.760 It's not the current one, but it was. 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:40.000 Recent where I actually felt like we needed a little 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:43.120 more deep state, We needed more of that civil servant 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:45.119 to say this isn't okay. 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:48.000 Right. We take an oath on the Constitution, not to 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:51.919 a particular president or political party, and it's not like 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:54.720 we want to have a dictator, like even for a day. 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:57.159 What is it like when you're we don't even have 0:20:57.200 --> 0:20:58.960 to get into what your politics are, but like, have 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:02.280 you had to support or missions that you weren't personally 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:03.520 totally sold. 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:06.440 On, you know, Iraq War weapons of man's destruction. I 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:09.800 have to admit that I changed my mind on that. 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:13.360 I believed at the time, deeply, truly that we had 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:14.440 the evidence on there. 0:21:14.600 --> 0:21:17.639 Also with the CIA, it's a weird institution, and we 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:21.879 take pride in sometimes actually telling administrations and things they 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:23.639 don't want to hear. And it's our job to come 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:26.640 in and say, well, sir, that's just actually not how 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:29.639 it's playing out here. Your plan is not likely to 0:21:29.680 --> 0:21:32.920 work for ab and C reasons. And it allows young 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:35.880 officers to go into very senior places in the government 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:39.000