Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's Behind the Bastards the podcast that I
Speaker 1: opened this episode with something that might kind of sound
Speaker 1: like an orgasm, So you know what, why don't you
Speaker 1: take that clip of Um? Oh gosh, what was the movie?
Speaker 1: Why are you doing? Meg? Ryan has like a loud
Speaker 1: fake orgasm? Movies when Harry met Sally, When Harry met Sally.
Speaker 1: Why don't you mix those together and and put it
Speaker 1: up on the subreddit and be real? Okay, first of
Speaker 1: all yourself? Why not? Because maybe Sophie, if I stare
Speaker 1: into the little of their own madness, then they'll then
Speaker 1: they'll turn around. Maybe that's the healthy thing to do.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to have a meeting. We have
Speaker 1: so many meetings. Um, isn't this the intervention? I thought
Speaker 1: that was the yeare more heavily armed people than either
Speaker 1: of you have tried. Um, although since we are recording
Speaker 1: in my house right now, you might be closer to
Speaker 1: my my living room rifle than I am at the movie.
Speaker 1: All I've got is my nine um boy. Margaret kill
Speaker 1: Joy Behind the Bastards Podcast Margaret host Cool People who
Speaker 1: did cool stuff and live like the world is dying,
Speaker 1: author of We Won't Be Here tomorrow. See that's how
Speaker 1: you fucking and so you do an introduction? Alright, can
Speaker 1: do it when I want to? Margaret? Yeah, now, Margaret,
Speaker 1: is it not true that you are currently crashing in
Speaker 1: my house? Uh? I plead that? No? Yeah I am Yeah.
Speaker 1: How's that? How's that going? Did did we or did
Speaker 1: we not? Go to a renaissance fair last weekend where
Speaker 1: we and then afterwards watch the Ed Harris George Romero
Speaker 1: movie Night Riders. It was amazing both both parts of
Speaker 1: this absolutely amazing. Is it all so true that we
Speaker 1: got to hang on it? It was super fun? I
Speaker 1: know it. I finally got to meet my co workers
Speaker 1: at the Cool Zone Media by driving out to the
Speaker 1: West Coast and watching Robert by a very large sword
Speaker 1: and being kind of jealous. That's essentially the standard practice here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I wanted you to buy a large sword so that
Speaker 1: I have a sword fight in my backyard, but I
Speaker 1: know I almost did. But then instead I bought a
Speaker 1: really nice, like handmade woolen cowl. You did? It is
Speaker 1: a nice cow? Yeah, it is a nice cow. Your
Speaker 1: cow will keep you warmer than my sword. Yea. Though
Speaker 1: if we're attacked by saracens, then who's got the advantage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, that's right, that's right. UM, possibly still you,
Speaker 1: depending on what kind of year it happens. So, Margaret,
Speaker 1: I am, among other things, having to rejigger the script
Speaker 1: slightly because I had said it in my head the
Speaker 1: whole time as Nigrid K. Even though I have been
Speaker 1: too many play is that our keys? And I know
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be pronounced key, I still called it
Speaker 1: k in my head. And I don't know why. I
Speaker 1: don't know why my brain did that to me, but
Speaker 1: it feels like an affront. How is it spelled c
Speaker 1: A y huh? So like the Florida keys are spelled No,
Speaker 1: no they're not. They're spelled k E y s. If
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken. None of it makes sense, and I
Speaker 1: am livid. I'm just angry, Margaret. That is the real
Speaker 1: bastard of this episode. The dictionary. This one's pretty bad, actually,
Speaker 1: tumatic war machine geared towards destroying the Mirriam Webster dictionary
Speaker 1: or whoever makes things be pronounced ways. I don't actually
Speaker 1: know who that is. So Nigard key was the society
Speaker 1: was not society destroy society? Um, I guess this is
Speaker 1: now an accelerationist podcast. Niagard Key was not the only
Speaker 1: thing Peter and igerd named after himself. His fashion company,
Speaker 1: his jet, his bottled water that he served at his compound,
Speaker 1: and a specific copyrighted shade of electric blue. We're all
Speaker 1: named after him, um, and it's the shade of blue
Speaker 1: that he wears on himself all the time. I bet
Speaker 1: his car is that color. Oh, I bet a lot
Speaker 1: of them are. Yeah. Now, before the stories broke that
Speaker 1: we talked about last episode and that we're about to
Speaker 1: talk in this episode. This all helped to solidify his
Speaker 1: legend as one of the most infamously wealthy playboys of
Speaker 1: the fashion industry. Peter tended to wear Niggard blue v
Speaker 1: nex with a V that went down further than I
Speaker 1: think ought to be entirely legal. I found a really
Speaker 1: good shot of it where like there's a woman next
Speaker 1: to him who is wearing a V neck or like
Speaker 1: a V front top that like shows the most of
Speaker 1: her breasts and her belly button, and it's only slightly
Speaker 1: deeper than his shirt. Like he is, he is almost
Speaker 1: showing as much chest dis serve cuts it above his
Speaker 1: belly because he yeah, he's yeah, Yeah, he's a little
Speaker 1: bit shy. I thought he wouldn't have done that twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. Um. And I think the blue of that
Speaker 1: old dress that she's wearing, she's wearing his old clothes.
Speaker 1: I just can't do it anymore. Um, it's interesting. I
Speaker 1: also think that blue shirt he's wearing is the shade
Speaker 1: of blue he named after himself, which just looks like
Speaker 1: light blue, not that exciting a shade of blue. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't have any is. It's perfectly pleasant shade of blue.
Speaker 1: But it's not blue. It's blue, right, it's blue. Didn't
Speaker 1: invent like a new cut like it's blue, bros. It's
Speaker 1: just blue. Alternatively, if he had to dress up for
Speaker 1: a party or a social event, he tended to wear
Speaker 1: layers of elaborate costume grade clothing that made him look
Speaker 1: like a cross between an elderly fabio and an extra
Speaker 1: from Pirates of the Caribbean. And boy, this next shot
Speaker 1: is quite an outfit. He's got like a really and
Speaker 1: this ascot is an electric blue, looks like it's silk.
Speaker 1: He's got a tuxedo shirt and then what looks like
Speaker 1: it's not quite a tuxedo jacket because it's a little
Speaker 1: more casual than that. But it looks like it's almost
Speaker 1: like a volure or maybe a velvet gray on the inside.
Speaker 1: It's a vampire extra. He looks like he's playing Vampire
Speaker 1: the Masquerade tonight. Like he looks like he's doing vampire LARPing,
Speaker 1: except for he has an incredibly deep tan, and no
Speaker 1: one who has ever played Vampire the Masquerade had a tan.
Speaker 1: That's true, because they would die if they're exposed, they
Speaker 1: would die exactly. That's just not very good. Kfabe. Um,
Speaker 1: do you call it kfabe and larpin because you should.
Speaker 1: I don't know what kfab is, but I also I actually, um,
Speaker 1: I'm a poser about larpin and that I write about
Speaker 1: it sometimes, but I'm really a tabletop girl. Well I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that I get. Um, But you do have a
Speaker 1: nice set of Renaissance bear clothes, that's true. I kind
Speaker 1: of just wear them anyway. Okayfabe, Margaret, this is important
Speaker 1: for you to know, Okay, for fabe is a wrestling term,
Speaker 1: and it's the practice of like maintaining the illusion that
Speaker 1: like whatever it is, whatever ridiculous ship you're doing on
Speaker 1: in your wrestling storyline, is completely real, Like if you
Speaker 1: hate a guy that you actually hate each other than
Speaker 1: the character is like a bad guy, that he's a
Speaker 1: real bad guy. Yeah, Like that's cafe. Um. Wrestling is
Speaker 1: fascinating from a cultural standpoint. Um. And also he does
Speaker 1: kind of look like a wrestler because of how much
Speaker 1: skin he shows and precisely where he shows it, from
Speaker 1: what I can discern from a truly unfortunate amount of
Speaker 1: time it has been looking at photos of this man.
Speaker 1: He tended to go shirtless much more often in his
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties in the early aughts, which were the
Speaker 1: height of his party days. One photo shows him wearing
Speaker 1: a vest and nothing else. Skin is red as a
Speaker 1: stop sign, hair down past his shoulders, and Robert de
Speaker 1: Niro standing next to him, looking absolutely Robert. Robert de
Speaker 1: Niro does not want to be in this photograph. It
Speaker 1: is an amazing shot. Oh no, I scolled down. Please
Speaker 1: tell us about the next Bob. Bob de Niro does
Speaker 1: not want to be there. And there's a there's here's
Speaker 1: a photo of him and around the same time, slightly
Speaker 1: less red but just as shirtless, with a camo jacket
Speaker 1: over his naked chest and a parrot, a live parrot
Speaker 1: on his shoulder because his arm around Sean Connery. That's
Speaker 1: what I thought, And Sean looks perfectly comfortable. Sean Connery
Speaker 1: was meant to be there. This is what he was
Speaker 1: born to. The look on his face is the I'm
Speaker 1: posing with a fan the way I do this every
Speaker 1: day and my life is fine. That is his look.
Speaker 1: Unlike de Niro, who is like, in the process, are
Speaker 1: you having someone to get this man away from me?
Speaker 1: I came down here and there's no walls between the bedrooms.
Speaker 1: I would like to go home. I need to leave.
Speaker 1: I've never actually seen walls in a bedroom. Um. Peter
Speaker 1: bragged constantly about his sexual partners in libertine lifestyle. He
Speaker 1: joked in one interview that Celebacy was quote the worst
Speaker 1: twenty minutes of my life. Workers at the key say
Speaker 1: his nightly routine was to have them light torches at
Speaker 1: sunset and play the theme from the Phantom of the
Speaker 1: Opera before he and his guests engaged in pamper parties.
Speaker 1: How you doing, Margaret Jesus Christ, I mean like it's
Speaker 1: one of these things where was like if everything he
Speaker 1: did was consensual and sort of nothing. Yes, of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just like all right, like I have partied with
Speaker 1: a much less wealthy version of this guy who didn't
Speaker 1: commit sex crimes, and like it's kind of exhausting but
Speaker 1: more or less harmless right where it's like, oh you
Speaker 1: like theatrics and big groups of people cuddling, yea, and
Speaker 1: everybody drinks terrible mixed drinks, but nobody has a bad time.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of kind of a lot um. Now,
Speaker 1: of course one of the and this is one of
Speaker 1: the ways in which you can tell, like, um, that
Speaker 1: what's going on here was not in fact a cool thing.
Speaker 1: Basically all of the guests are extremely young women. The
Speaker 1: only other men that Peter would ever invite were like
Speaker 1: celebrities that he wanted to impress. Um. Now, obviously we
Speaker 1: don't know precisely who attended these parties or what they did,
Speaker 1: but we do know that his frequent guests included Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson and George H. W. Bush. Cool, what a what
Speaker 1: a party? You could have done cocaine in the fucking
Speaker 1: Bahamas with Michael Jackson and George H. W. Bush and
Speaker 1: then committed the kind of crimes that make God damn
Speaker 1: your children, Like, what a what a lifestyle? What a
Speaker 1: and this is the way it's so mad at all
Speaker 1: the like pizza Gate type ships. I'm like, no, there's
Speaker 1: plenty of this happening for real. Yeah. Um, obviously we
Speaker 1: don't know what George h. W. Bush got up to,
Speaker 1: but Georgia h. W. Bush has some allegations against him,
Speaker 1: as does Michael Jackson. So now that said, I actually
Speaker 1: am less inclined to think Jackson engaged in anything while
Speaker 1: hanging out with Peter than George H. W. Bush, because
Speaker 1: I think Jackson was kind of more private about it,
Speaker 1: if I understand him kind of correctly. But who knows,
Speaker 1: who knows what went down. It is always possible, as
Speaker 1: was sometimes the case with Epstein, that a lot of
Speaker 1: these famous guests were not introduced to anything illegal at
Speaker 1: Niagard's compound. Right, you can bring in a lot of
Speaker 1: young adult women for parties and a lot of well
Speaker 1: the drug parts would have been illegal, but not actually
Speaker 1: be committing any serious crimes that are certainly going to
Speaker 1: get you penalized. And if you've got super famous people
Speaker 1: coming over to your house, like George h. W. Bush,
Speaker 1: that's probably the smarter thing to do, especially since George
Speaker 1: is going to have members of law enforcement who have
Speaker 1: to be tailing him, right um, And that's probably more
Speaker 1: likely for Niagard than for Epstein. Um. While the deceased
Speaker 1: financier made much of his fortune and reputation from providing
Speaker 1: wealthier and more powerful in with young women and girls,
Speaker 1: Niagard was more into celebrities as far as we know,
Speaker 1: just for the clout again, I have no interest in
Speaker 1: defending anyone here, and it's possible his friends, who include
Speaker 1: former President Bill Clinton as well, Oh slick Willie, is
Speaker 1: that the fucking Niagard key too. Don't go to get
Speaker 1: me wrong, it's very possible, if not somewhat likely, that
Speaker 1: they got up to some shady stuff. But also from
Speaker 1: every story we get, Peter is a wildly jealous man,
Speaker 1: and all of the allegations of rape and sexual assault
Speaker 1: focus on him and his use of wealth and his
Speaker 1: fabulous compound to lure young people into his bed. And
Speaker 1: so I do think it's entirely possible that as as
Speaker 1: far as the actual illegal sex trafficking stuff, that's just
Speaker 1: Peter because he doesn't really like the idea of sharing.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to be like an Epstein figure. He
Speaker 1: actually made money for himself, right, he wants to be
Speaker 1: the guy getting the thing. You know. Yep, a lateral
Speaker 1: move if I've ever heard one from an actor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure to make like a major moral decision.
Speaker 1: I'm not just trying to separate them, but I think
Speaker 1: there is kind of a difference between what they were
Speaker 1: up to. Um pamper parties tended to occur on Sundays,
Speaker 1: and most of the female guests were women who lived
Speaker 1: elsewhere nearby in the Bahamas, or who were visiting as
Speaker 1: tourists from somewhere else. A decent number of them were
Speaker 1: local women and girls. Negred would send his staff out
Speaker 1: into the cities nearby to invite we women and again
Speaker 1: girls back for free massages, manicures, horseback rides, and an
Speaker 1: open bar. The New York Times talked to six of
Speaker 1: him his employees who who recruited people at shops, clubs
Speaker 1: and restaurants to come in party. Quote one time, he
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know where you find these girls from,
Speaker 1: but there's pretty girls in the ghetto as well, recalled
Speaker 1: Freddie bar Mr. Negard's personal assistant in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: you need to find pretty girls in need cool cool. Eventually,
Speaker 1: his staff compiled an invitation lift list provided to The
Speaker 1: Times with the names of more than seven women, and
Speaker 1: former workers said they photographed guests when they arrived, uploading
Speaker 1: the images for their boss's perusal only those who were young, slim,
Speaker 1: and with a curvy backside, which Mr Ni called a
Speaker 1: toilet we're supposed to be allowed inside, according to the
Speaker 1: ex employees, including Mrs Taylor, So basically a private version
Speaker 1: of the origin of Facebook. Yeah. Yeah, he did kind
Speaker 1: of make his own because he was already rich, just
Speaker 1: for him to like molesque people with terrible and The
Speaker 1: actress Jessica Alba, who attended a Nigrid party while filming
Speaker 1: Into the Blue in two thousand four, later described it
Speaker 1: as gross. These girls are like fourteen years old in
Speaker 1: the jacuzzi, taking off their clothes, she said on a
Speaker 1: press tour. And here's the thing. First off, I don't
Speaker 1: know much about Jessica Alba. Kudos to her for saying
Speaker 1: something at all, because number one, that's pretty unsparing. That
Speaker 1: is a direct allegation that he is like doing inappropriate
Speaker 1: things with children. Um on a press Jessica Alba's pretty based. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know I know very little about her, but
Speaker 1: she went and said something, and fucking nobody else did, like,
Speaker 1: very very little, very few people of her at her
Speaker 1: level of kind of clout and influence said anything about
Speaker 1: what Peter was doing. For sure, a lot of them
Speaker 1: were aware of some of it, right, Yeah, so good
Speaker 1: good for you, Jessica Albert. You get the behind the
Speaker 1: bastards seal of doing good stuff. Yeah. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: at what point is this the first person who's like
Speaker 1: coming forward and being like, there's fourteen year olds in
Speaker 1: this hot tub or well, this is obviously there were
Speaker 1: allegant We just went through that history because that the
Speaker 1: Winnipeg Freebeacon or whatever it was reported on a number
Speaker 1: of allegations. A number of women made allegations, but were
Speaker 1: some don't know. I think about the kid thing more specifically,
Speaker 1: but I guess in his mind the same thing. This
Speaker 1: is the first like national level, large scale public person
Speaker 1: with any kind of platform to allege that, um, that
Speaker 1: Peter Niagard is doing inappropriate things with children on his compound.
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, it's Jessica Alba's the
Speaker 1: first person to do that. So again, like, seriously, kudos
Speaker 1: to her. Is very few other people did, and fucking
Speaker 1: Sean Connery probably knew. Right. Maybe DeNiro did too, Although
Speaker 1: to be entirely fair, it does not look like Bob
Speaker 1: de Niro wanted to be next to Peter Niager, so
Speaker 1: he may not have. He may have shown up once
Speaker 1: and been like it seems like it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: bad thing bounced. I don't know. I don't know Bob
Speaker 1: de Niro. Um. I think her example makes it clear
Speaker 1: that we can probably assume a number of famous people
Speaker 1: were at least present for some fucked up ship, even
Speaker 1: if Niagard wasn't trafficking children specifically to them, right, we
Speaker 1: could have been aware people if Jessica Jessica Alba. I
Speaker 1: don't believe Jessica albat is the only celebrity who witnessed
Speaker 1: stuff like this, right, she's just the one who said something. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: some people did allege to The Times that Niagard also
Speaker 1: tried to stop his employees from inviting black people to
Speaker 1: the key or whatever it's worth. I don't actually think
Speaker 1: that's true. There's photos of his parties, and a number
Speaker 1: of the people there are black. Um allegations Also, like
Speaker 1: a number of the people who accused him of abuse
Speaker 1: are black women. And I think people who were black
Speaker 1: women who were like children at the time of the abuse. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I think that one is true.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying he's not racist. I just it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like he discriminated in that particular way right. Niggard,
Speaker 1: for his part, has claimed for years that one reason
Speaker 1: his wealthy neighbors hated him because he blames them for
Speaker 1: cooking all of this up and and and faking all
Speaker 1: of this, which will get to an amid that they
Speaker 1: hated him because he's not racist. And I'm gonna quote
Speaker 1: from Vanity Fair here. Nigard's supporters say his parties do
Speaker 1: stand out because they're full of people who wouldn't otherwise
Speaker 1: be in life and key. He has poor kids and
Speaker 1: athletes out to his house every day, says his best
Speaker 1: friend Carlos Mackie, who was the host of a sports
Speaker 1: program on a local TV. He's a philosopher, a visionary,
Speaker 1: a genius, but his heart's as big as Shemu the Whale.
Speaker 1: Neigart is well known about the Bahamas for his financial
Speaker 1: support of the country's Olympics running squads, among many other charities.
Speaker 1: Wendell Jones, the publisher of The Bahama Journal, says the
Speaker 1: residents of Lifford Key said they don't appreciate his flamboyance,
Speaker 1: when what they don't like is the fact that he
Speaker 1: invites so many black people over. Peter Nigard is a
Speaker 1: force for good. This is from an article back before.
Speaker 1: All of the things that we're about to talk about
Speaker 1: have talked about broke um. But that's the way, Like,
Speaker 1: obviously those are people who he has influence on, who
Speaker 1: he's got talking to the press for him, right on
Speaker 1: his many personal websites, on his MA and on his
Speaker 1: many personal websites, and these are the kind of things
Speaker 1: they're saying. He's like, No, he's a philanthropist and a
Speaker 1: philosophy and a philosopher, and you know he it's just
Speaker 1: their racist actually, because he's so not racist. And that's
Speaker 1: why his neighbors don't like him. Now, the job of
Speaker 1: Niagard's employees and some of the women that he dated
Speaker 1: was to find girls that he liked the most at parties,
Speaker 1: and once things got kind of loud and chaotic and
Speaker 1: people weren't really paying attention to get that particular targeted
Speaker 1: person drunk um and either drug them or can instant
Speaker 1: to just take drugs and as you're kind of dose
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, you know, you know what we
Speaker 1: should do is like, if you really want some good cocaine,
Speaker 1: we can go up to the Peter's bedroom that's where
Speaker 1: he keeps the good stuff and we'll do some blow.
Speaker 1: Yeah um. Niger denies all this uh and says that
Speaker 1: no underage girls were allowed at the key. He provides
Speaker 1: Affidavid's from a former employee who called Peter the bahamas
Speaker 1: most generous and honest. Expatriot. Nigret's house manager, Rochette Ross,
Speaker 1: told The New York Times that as social media became
Speaker 1: more prominent, his staffers would use Facebook posts to promote
Speaker 1: parties and even send messages directly to women, offering free dinners, massages, pedicures,
Speaker 1: and boat rides. Sometimes he rated his new guests ABC
Speaker 1: or D upon entry. Ross says that his primary judgment
Speaker 1: criteria was again whether or not they had a quote
Speaker 1: nice toilet. He uses that a lot. You can't avoid
Speaker 1: seeing it. Yeah um. There are allegations that he drugged
Speaker 1: people's drinks. There are allegations by one of his former
Speaker 1: employees that a woman escaped from the property and was
Speaker 1: brought back by the local police. Um, the person who
Speaker 1: made those allies. This is where it gets messy though,
Speaker 1: because the person who made those specific allegations, which is
Speaker 1: a minority of the allegations of sexual harassment and assault,
Speaker 1: also herself claims to have been a victim of Niagard
Speaker 1: um and who to have been drugged by her girlfriend.
Speaker 1: But this person also so here's where it gets kind
Speaker 1: of weird because the person who like makes those claims
Speaker 1: also has been accused by other people who previously accused
Speaker 1: Peter of sexual harassment of having that she bribed them.
Speaker 1: And this is what gets us into kind of the
Speaker 1: next messy stage of things. Right, So this woman Ross
Speaker 1: makes a lot of She claims Niagard had her family
Speaker 1: dog killed um and the New York Times did find
Speaker 1: evidence that Niagard wired her ten thousand dollars and emailed
Speaker 1: her I sent you money for a new dog, but
Speaker 1: we don't really know. Like this is where it gets
Speaker 1: all because again this is this is this what we're
Speaker 1: getting to is like there's a lot of messiness here.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that I don't want to discount
Speaker 1: Ross's allegations, but also Ross is alleged by other women
Speaker 1: to have bribed them to have claimed that Nigrid assaulted them. Um.
Speaker 1: And again those are like two of the dozens of
Speaker 1: women who have accused him. So I don't think it
Speaker 1: says anything about the the legitimacy of the allegations against him,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that, like we do have to
Speaker 1: kind of wonder is Ross a little bit right, because
Speaker 1: this is whether we're yeah, or whether he's trying to
Speaker 1: like muddy the waters by getting someone to go do this. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know we're getting There's another part of the
Speaker 1: story that's critical to understand why finding out kind of
Speaker 1: exactly what was going on a Nigrid key is so messy.
Speaker 1: Cash payments were the near billionaire's favorite way of dealing
Speaker 1: with problems. He was heavily involved with the Progressive Party
Speaker 1: Liberal Party of the Bahamas. We kept happy with constant
Speaker 1: Liberal payoffs two officials. When more than ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: was required, he would try to do things like half
Speaker 1: larger quantities stuffed into fresh fish and shipped to whoever
Speaker 1: he was trying to befriend. Um, that's kind of fun, uh,
Speaker 1: as I noted earlier, Peter is really scared of aging.
Speaker 1: So the one thing that caused him to seriously alter
Speaker 1: his fashion habits was getting older. This is not something
Speaker 1: he agreed to do without a fight. And I want
Speaker 1: to quote now from the New York Post, which normally
Speaker 1: I wouldn't use here, But the allegations they're quoting here
Speaker 1: appear in a number of other places that are just
Speaker 1: annoyingly paywald, and this is kind of an easier place
Speaker 1: to get them. Quote. Nigard, obsessed with staying young, ended
Speaker 1: up establishing his stem cell research company in nearby St.
Speaker 1: Kitts the alleged purpose to use abarded fetuses from his
Speaker 1: pregnant girlfriends to provide him with fresh stem cells. Nigi
Speaker 1: seemed to suggest that something like that could be a
Speaker 1: foot when he talked about the technology behind his treatments publicly.
Speaker 1: I may be the only person in the world, he bragged,
Speaker 1: who has my very own embryos growing in a peatrie dish.
Speaker 1: One of his girlfriends, suell and Miadros, wrote in her
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen memoir about a trip she took
Speaker 1: with Niggard Ukraine, where he was having stem cell research done.
Speaker 1: He asked, Swillen, do you know what the best stim
Speaker 1: cells are, She writes, she did embryos, correct, she says
Speaker 1: Nagurd responded, if you got pregnant and had an abortion,
Speaker 1: we could use those embryonic cells and have a life
Speaker 1: supply for all of us, you, your mother, and me.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are doing it. So again, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's boy. I never even thought of that one.
Speaker 1: That's a new one for me. Yeah, be a misogynist,
Speaker 1: that is. That is certainly not a thing that I
Speaker 1: had heard about a person doing before. Um, although I
Speaker 1: guess I'm not. Again, he's like the sleazier version of
Speaker 1: more famous guys. He's like Jeffrey Epstein, but without like
Speaker 1: the veneer of philanthropy. He's he's Peter Teal, but without
Speaker 1: like the image of of of Wall Street cunning. Um like,
Speaker 1: he's he's all of these He's he's all of the
Speaker 1: worst aspects of all of the rich demons who infest
Speaker 1: our world. It's kind of amazing, actually, Um. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know who's not the ARCon of the darkest parts
Speaker 1: of wealth Anderson. That is correct. Anderson doesn't even know
Speaker 1: what a stem cell is. She does not honestly not
Speaker 1: really doesn't really know what Ukraine is. Mm hmmm. I
Speaker 1: don't think dogs recognize geographical boundaries. Yeah, well, actually they
Speaker 1: kind of do. I did. I did. If you take
Speaker 1: them on walks around the edge of Ukraine, they know
Speaker 1: not to leave your Craine. Did she did? Kind of
Speaker 1: just whisper, you know, fuck Vladimir Putin under her breath.
Speaker 1: But well, that could be about a number of things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we should all mold this over while we
Speaker 1: let these ads soothe our tired souls. Yeah, Anderson, tell
Speaker 1: us what you think, all right, and we're back. Oh man,
Speaker 1: Anderson had a really good joke. She did? She did?
Speaker 1: I think that might get you canceled in some parts
Speaker 1: of Twitter. But then then then you can get a
Speaker 1: Netflix special where you really lean into it and eventually
Speaker 1: get paid twenty five million dollars to do another Netflix
Speaker 1: special about what a brave truth teller you are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is how Sophie and finally retire. Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: Howson shares. Yeah, it's here. We should probably deal with
Speaker 1: some very sketchy aspects of the story because two of
Speaker 1: the women who spoke with The Times and accused nigrative
Speaker 1: sexual assault have now recanted their claims. Now, obviously, this
Speaker 1: comes after ten other unidentified women filed a federal lawsuit
Speaker 1: in against Niagard, which prompted an FBI rate on his
Speaker 1: Manhattan office and eventually his arrest. Again, none of this
Speaker 1: should state too like muddy the waters of the overall
Speaker 1: allegations against him. It just makes it kind of hard
Speaker 1: to know the specifics in certain cases. Um. While the
Speaker 1: Times reporting still holds up, they spoke with more than
Speaker 1: a US and other women who have not recanted. I
Speaker 1: would be responsible not to note that the two women
Speaker 1: who recanted claim we were paid to live by Ross
Speaker 1: um Ros denied this and took a polygraph test, which
Speaker 1: does not particularly mean much to me either way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a profoundly messy case, and this is due
Speaker 1: in large part to a bit of the story that
Speaker 1: we have not talked about yet, Margaret, the decade long
Speaker 1: turf war between Peter Niagart and his neighbor, a billionaire,
Speaker 1: which is ultimately what helped to bring him down. So
Speaker 1: we're past the bad parts the well, it's all bad,
Speaker 1: but we're past the parts that are like soul crushing.
Speaker 1: And now we're into the part where two rich guys
Speaker 1: destroy each other, or at least one rich guy destroys another.
Speaker 1: Either way, it's fun. Um. So the community that Niagard
Speaker 1: lived in, as we've mentioned a couple of times, it's
Speaker 1: called Lyfford Key. It was created as a planned community
Speaker 1: for the uber rich by ep Taylor, the Canadian beer
Speaker 1: brewing millionaire. Taylor planned Lyfford as a winter community and
Speaker 1: built his dream out of a three thousand acre plot
Speaker 1: formerly owned by Sir Harold Christie. The manners that were
Speaker 1: constructed for the first wave of owners in the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties had names like tra La Lah Safari, tea
Speaker 1: Time and out of bounds. So I suspect some sex
Speaker 1: crime stuff might have been happening in Lyfford Key prior
Speaker 1: to um. In nineteen sixty two, when JFK flew to
Speaker 1: the Bahamas to talk with British Prime Minister Harold McMillan,
Speaker 1: they both stayed in Lyfford Key at probably a tral
Speaker 1: law or maybe it out of bounds. So did at
Speaker 1: varying points in this period in Reford the second Aga
Speaker 1: con the fourth the Prince of Monaco, and Sean Connery,
Speaker 1: who went on to own a home there. The Hinzes
Speaker 1: and the Melon family also had homes there. It was
Speaker 1: a veritable who's who of the bluest bloods in the
Speaker 1: world and a handful of celebrities for good measure, but
Speaker 1: celebrities like Sean Connery who were like at least of
Speaker 1: a certain level. You know, So why the Great Lakes
Speaker 1: because I have this other idea. Okay, um, if all
Speaker 1: of the who's who are and anyway, so please continue.
Speaker 1: I think we dropped them in the Great Lakes kind
Speaker 1: of like like George C. Scott at the end of
Speaker 1: that movie where they're with they're hugging the bombs, but
Speaker 1: they're not. They're not on there by choice. Intercontinental Billionaire missiles. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: exactly that way. The president really thinks before he fires them,
Speaker 1: hopefully not too hard. Um, yeah, but it's time. So
Speaker 1: at first, Lifeford Key is like classy and pretty high profile, right,
Speaker 1: those are not little names, the Melons, the fucking uh
Speaker 1: Carnegie fans like those are. Those are significant fortunes. But
Speaker 1: things started to change kind of as the years went on.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna quote from Vanity Fair here. Today's roster
Speaker 1: is sleepy by comparison, aside from Sean Connery, who nearly
Speaker 1: half a dozen James Bonds ago shot Thunderball in several
Speaker 1: of their films. Here there are scores of semi anonymous
Speaker 1: businessmen or their progeny. Bacon and Nygard's neighbors prefer to
Speaker 1: keep a low profile. Count and Countess de Ravenel of Ants,
Speaker 1: the resilient reinsurance magnate Antonio Braga, Jane Lewis, the wife
Speaker 1: of the English inventor Joe Lewis. It's quiet money, says
Speaker 1: David McLoughlin, a New York financier, second generation Lyford and
Speaker 1: chairman of the Lyfford K Club. Long before the Puddle,
Speaker 1: Nigard clashed stylistically with much of the Glyfford k establishment.
Speaker 1: He threw a lot of parties and was always doing construction,
Speaker 1: and that puddle is kind of the beginning of an
Speaker 1: issue between him and his neighbor, a guy named Bacon,
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about in a bit. But Nigard
Speaker 1: is kind of for these blue bloods who are again
Speaker 1: quiet money, Nigard is a nightmare for them. He's got
Speaker 1: about eight hundred million dollars in personal wealth um and
Speaker 1: he's got a couple of us presidents who's at least
Speaker 1: friendly with. So he's too rich and powerful to force
Speaker 1: out right, you can't kick this guy out of your
Speaker 1: fancy rich people community. But he's also he's like gross, right,
Speaker 1: Like he's not These guys are all doing sketchy ship,
Speaker 1: but they're not doing sketchy ship in their fake Mayan
Speaker 1: temples wearing fucking electric blue uh spandex body suits or whatever.
Speaker 1: They paid extra for walls. Yeah, they have walls in
Speaker 1: their bedrooms where they're also I'm sure committing crimes. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so he's hated. He's denied entrance to the
Speaker 1: Lifford k Club, which is a golf Yeah, right, they
Speaker 1: won't they won't let him in the club. Um and
Speaker 1: uh yeah. Most of his neighbors insists he clashed with
Speaker 1: them from the start, but Nigrated is adamant that everything
Speaker 1: was fine with him and his neighbors until he met
Speaker 1: his next door neighbor Louis Bacon. Now Louis Bacon is
Speaker 1: a New York City hedge fund billionaire in most one
Speaker 1: of the most addictive forms of food. Yeah, he did.
Speaker 1: He did create bacon um after inventing the pig, which
Speaker 1: previously a lot of people don't know this, but prior
Speaker 1: to his invention of the pig, all pigs had actually
Speaker 1: been ducks. Um, that's the way it worked. Look it up,
Speaker 1: Google it on Wikipedia, dot in carter um. So obviously
Speaker 1: Niggard incorrectly gets referred to as a billionaire a lot
Speaker 1: he's not. I think he tops out like seven fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars, which is still quite a fortune. But Bacon
Speaker 1: is a real billionaire, like he's he's actually got more
Speaker 1: than a billion dollars, and he's widely seen as one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful men in the financial industry. Right
Speaker 1: Like he's I'm sure he's got even more than that
Speaker 1: now because it's been a good couple of years for
Speaker 1: the finance industry. Um. The two men have very different personalities. Well,
Speaker 1: Niagard is showy and ostentatious and like these big, lavish,
Speaker 1: gross parties. Bacon is quiet and comparatively introverted. His main
Speaker 1: interest outside of his job seems to be hunting. Um.
Speaker 1: And he's one of those hunters who raises a lot
Speaker 1: of money for conservation, right, Like, he pays to protect
Speaker 1: a lot of lands and stuff and all that good
Speaker 1: things so he can go shoot birds on it. Or whatever.
Speaker 1: So he's about to go. Since he's about to go
Speaker 1: to war with Niagard, who's an actual monster, it would
Speaker 1: be easy to portray Bacon as a hero. Obviously, I
Speaker 1: don't think he is. He's a man who got wealthy
Speaker 1: running hedge fund, which is generally not a business I
Speaker 1: find particularly ethical. But I don't think there's any evidence,
Speaker 1: um and I. In fact, I think it's probably unlikely
Speaker 1: that he's any kind of systemic, systematic sexual predator or
Speaker 1: abuser of his employees. Um and I think it's particularly
Speaker 1: unlikely because Peter Niager tried desperately to dig up like
Speaker 1: dirt st and like the thing he wound up finding
Speaker 1: is that like one of his ancient ancestors a long
Speaker 1: time ago was like a klansman, but he had another
Speaker 1: ancestor who fought for the Union against the Confederacy. So
Speaker 1: it's like this whole like yeah, yeah, is he probably
Speaker 1: had a bunch of rich guys in his family and
Speaker 1: then in all sorts of ship I don't know, he
Speaker 1: didn't find any evidence that this guy had done anything
Speaker 1: like the things that Nigert had done, right, um, So
Speaker 1: obviously by comparison, he does look quite good. The two
Speaker 1: had problems over a shared roadway, and like there's this
Speaker 1: fucking puddle as a result of like this kind of
Speaker 1: thing that's in between their properties, and upkeep on. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit unclear. Um, libertarian assholes are for shared
Speaker 1: infrastructure right right, exactly, Um, And this is just kind
Speaker 1: of them bickering over this kind of thing between their
Speaker 1: two properties until in two thousand five, Nigrit attempts to
Speaker 1: add parking to his property by laying a fifteen by
Speaker 1: twenty ft slab on the property line, specifically Bacon side
Speaker 1: of the property line. Now, now you're fucked up, Peter.
Speaker 1: All all of the sex crimes, all of the horrible
Speaker 1: violence that you've done to at this point. I mean,
Speaker 1: the allegations are hundreds and hundreds of women like wearing
Speaker 1: a thousand um, none of that got you in trouble.
Speaker 1: But you're fucked with a rich guy's property line. I
Speaker 1: can't even imagine if if I had this kind of money,
Speaker 1: I would not live in such a way that neighbors
Speaker 1: would exist, right, What the funk? Man? Like, how are you?
Speaker 1: How do you have this much money? And he says
Speaker 1: it's because it's the most beautiful place in the world.
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm sure mohammas are very pretty, but there's
Speaker 1: other islands. May seven fifty million dollars. You can make
Speaker 1: it work. Um, what is wrong with you? Vanity fair
Speaker 1: rights quote. Bacon responded by suing Niagard and obtaining a
Speaker 1: court injunction to remove it. Two years later, Bacon dealt
Speaker 1: with his long standing irritation with the noise from Niagard's
Speaker 1: parties by installing industrial grade speakers at the edge of
Speaker 1: his land and pointing them at niagard Key at night.
Speaker 1: We hired a sound consultant in the UK to see
Speaker 1: if we could somehow muffle the sound from Niagard's by
Speaker 1: omitting a counter sound, but that proved terribly complicated, so
Speaker 1: we went and got four huge rock concert speakers to
Speaker 1: play something loud. In response, Bacon's architect, Peter Talty, says
Speaker 1: it was horrible, squawking sounds that would drive you out
Speaker 1: of your mind. Says Eric Gibson, Niagard's former property manager.
Speaker 1: In illegal filing, Niagard's lawyer characterized them as military grade
Speaker 1: speakers that blared dangerous, pain inducing sound waves towards Mr
Speaker 1: Niagard's home. It was supposed to create white noise on
Speaker 1: my side, but that didn't work. Bacon says what it
Speaker 1: did to his side wasn't really interested in. Honestly, that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Um. And also what a
Speaker 1: whiney baby Peter military grade speakers come on? Man, like
Speaker 1: fucking a higher I don't know what's a kind of
Speaker 1: band A guy who looks like him would probably listen to.
Speaker 1: Besides Jimmy Buffett. Yeah, I hired Jimmy Buffett to come
Speaker 1: play a counter sound. You can, you can afford it. Um. No,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett would never work with this man. Um. He's
Speaker 1: He's a fundamentally moral actor. That's that's what I choose
Speaker 1: to believe about James Buffett. Um. As a conservationist, Bacon
Speaker 1: was also enraged at the fact that Niagaret had started
Speaker 1: dredging up sand from the sea floor and moving it
Speaker 1: to physically expand the size of his property. He's making
Speaker 1: his chunk on the islands bigger by stealing the sea
Speaker 1: the bottom of the sea. He kept a suction dredge
Speaker 1: on a float platform, destroying underwater habitat and adding to
Speaker 1: his coastline. Every day and the time he lived there,
Speaker 1: Peter expanded his property from three point to five to
Speaker 1: six point one acres, destroying eighty four thousand square meters
Speaker 1: of sea floor in the process. I know, such a
Speaker 1: weird crime, Peter, just buy a different spot. I know, unbelievable.
Speaker 1: A local ecologist interviewed in two thousand fifteen by Vanity
Speaker 1: Fair says the environmental damage was extensive. Niger, to counter this,
Speaker 1: pointed to a study that he paid the commission that
Speaker 1: said it was all fine. Again, these are rich guy crimes, right,
Speaker 1: So you don't just fuck the sea floor up. You
Speaker 1: pay a scientist to say it's okay. Um, just to
Speaker 1: building stock systems like build a yeah, beautiful weird shanty
Speaker 1: town on. But I don't know whatever. You have a
Speaker 1: number of options with all of that money. Peter Bacon,
Speaker 1: who was also influential with the local government, brought their
Speaker 1: attention to the matter. Inspections and injunctions and all sorts
Speaker 1: of unpleasant legal ship followed. They're kind of it's my
Speaker 1: opinion that they're kind of bribing and counter bribing the
Speaker 1: local government right now. This was more or less the
Speaker 1: situation in two thousand nine, when an accidental electrical fire
Speaker 1: destroyed a lot of Niagrid key, including Peter's Biggest Stupidest pyramid.
Speaker 1: This was a problem, but one well within Peter's financial
Speaker 1: means to rectify. But when he sought the permits necessary
Speaker 1: to replace his home, the local government refused. This is
Speaker 1: when The New York Times alleges the war began. Quote
Speaker 1: Mr Niagard sued over changes his neighborhood made years earlier
Speaker 1: to their driveway than he sued the government, saying it
Speaker 1: was colluding with Mr Bacon to force him off the island.
Speaker 1: The allegations became more bizarre. One street protest in Nassau
Speaker 1: featured men in white hoods and placards proclaiming Bacon is KKK.
Speaker 1: New websites funded by Mr n Iagard claimed Mr Bacon
Speaker 1: was responsible for several murders. Court records show a video
Speaker 1: made by Niagrid staff, according to a former contractor, superimposed
Speaker 1: Mr Bacon's face on the collapsing twin towers, leven him him. Um,
Speaker 1: that doesn't even make sense. At least, there's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's got a family member who was in the clan.
Speaker 1: Let's like turn him into a racist or whatever. Like,
Speaker 1: what does that even mean? Peter, and then he painted
Speaker 1: a big tunnel on the cliff, but it wasn't a tunnel,
Speaker 1: and Bacon drove his car right into it, nearly killed him.
Speaker 1: Now I do feel confident that Louis Bacon would not
Speaker 1: have fallen for that trip. Now I think he is
Speaker 1: the road runner in this situation. Peter's absolutely the wily coyote. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Bacon goes right through that fake tunnel and then Peter
Speaker 1: and Iger tries to run into it, but he hits
Speaker 1: his face on him. Then he gets blood all over
Speaker 1: his blue shirt. Um, so I'm quoting in from the
Speaker 1: New York Times. Mr Nyagard was a formidable opponent. Police
Speaker 1: officers and local journalists dined at his home. One later
Speaker 1: admitted in court that Mr Niagard had paid him to
Speaker 1: smear Mr Bacon. Mr Niagard also had allies in the
Speaker 1: Progressive Liberal Party, which he wanted to legalize stem cell injections.
Speaker 1: He bragged he'd given the party five million dollars during
Speaker 1: the two thousand and twelve election campaign, legally as the
Speaker 1: Bahamas has no campaign finance laws. After it won the election,
Speaker 1: a Niagard YouTube channel posted a video featuring six ministers
Speaker 1: visiting his estate. He threatened or sued media outlets that
Speaker 1: investigated him. He slow walked lawsuits, filing countless motions and
Speaker 1: requesting the lays, exhausting his foes. So I also should
Speaker 1: say I don't know that anything legally that happened here
Speaker 1: was bribery, because you could just give money to political
Speaker 1: parties in the Bahamas, right, which is probably more what's
Speaker 1: happening is just they found a place where they could
Speaker 1: just give as much money to people as they want
Speaker 1: until things happened. So that's the actual reason why they're
Speaker 1: all cramming onto this island. That's I think a big
Speaker 1: part of it. I think there's a number of things
Speaker 1: in the Bahamian legal code that take it enticing for
Speaker 1: guys like Niagard, particularly um So this would have been
Speaker 1: an insurmountable obstacle for any other person going up Peter Niagart.
Speaker 1: But again, Bacon has more money, and in fact, Niagard
Speaker 1: has now picked a nemesis who has nearly doubled his
Speaker 1: net worth. Peter could pay protesters and by articles and newspapers,
Speaker 1: he could pay to have websites made. He can bribe
Speaker 1: entire political parties. Bacon can afford to do all that too,
Speaker 1: not to say that he does. That is not an
Speaker 1: allegation that he in fact did do those things, but
Speaker 1: he could afford to um It's simply a statement of
Speaker 1: their relative levels of wealth. What they can did do
Speaker 1: is form a nonprofit called Save the Base, which targeted
Speaker 1: Niagard Key for a number of environmental abuses. He also
Speaker 1: hired as many lawyers and private investigators as he could find,
Speaker 1: vaguely near the Bahamas, and I think flew in some
Speaker 1: other guys from the FBI and Scotland Yard to help.
Speaker 1: They've found evidence for a defamation lawsuit which was filed
Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen. And it is allegedly through this
Speaker 1: process that some of Niggard's former allies began deserting him,
Speaker 1: allegedly because the money is a lot better on the
Speaker 1: other side. Although this is why, and this is again why,
Speaker 1: it's hard to know precisely what happened, right, because there's
Speaker 1: so much fucking money flying around here, right, so many
Speaker 1: people who were saying, like so, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: for certain precisely what of the things that Peter is
Speaker 1: accused of happened. Just that these allegations go back like
Speaker 1: fifty somethings, so and and there. There's at this point
Speaker 1: hundreds of people involved. So I don't think that's at
Speaker 1: all in question. It's just like when you get down
Speaker 1: to the specifics of like what was going on in
Speaker 1: his house parties and how bad was it and how
Speaker 1: many famous people were involved, Well, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: fucking allegations flying, and a lot of them have money
Speaker 1: behind them, and it's really hard to tell exactly what
Speaker 1: went down. Um, well, but the guy who invented the pig,
Speaker 1: he also probably paid his employees better, or like treated
Speaker 1: his employees better. It probably wasn't like you went on
Speaker 1: that KKK march, but your white hood wasn't tucked in properly.
Speaker 1: So that's twenty five dollars less than I'm going to
Speaker 1: pay you. Like, that's not a way to keep your
Speaker 1: paid protesters. And no, no, you get the feeling that
Speaker 1: Bacon knows how to keep his people happy. He's opposed
Speaker 1: to Niagard, who apparently makes an enemy of everyone he
Speaker 1: knows for more than about five minutes. Um. Anyway, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote again from the Times to self described former
Speaker 1: gang members Livingstone, Toggy Bullard, and whistler Bobo Davilma told
Speaker 1: the Bacon's investigators that Mr Niagard had hired them for
Speaker 1: dirty work like torching his ex girlfriend's hair salon and
Speaker 1: staging anti Bacon rallies. According to court records, the men
Speaker 1: claimed Mr Niagard had given them a hit list that
Speaker 1: included Louis Bacon and Mr Smith. Mr Niagard has denied this.
Speaker 1: Mr Bullard and Mr Divilma, working with the Bacon investigators,
Speaker 1: hatched a plan to videotape Mr Niagard. The private Eyes
Speaker 1: acted like secret agents, using encrypted phones and dropping cash
Speaker 1: for the two men in a box behind a post office. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the Bacon's paid the two about one and a half million,
Speaker 1: mostly for secretly recording five meetings with Mr Niagard. The
Speaker 1: video has turned up no sign of Mr Eigerd's plotting murder.
Speaker 1: I can't get into killing, he said in footage obtained
Speaker 1: by the Times. But the investigation did find photos of
Speaker 1: Peter looking at very young women from his car and
Speaker 1: saying stuff like do you see those toilets and lamenting
Speaker 1: all of the people that he hadn't yet had sex with.
Speaker 1: And I think this is apparently what turns the Bacon
Speaker 1: family onto the possibility that Peter might be having sex
Speaker 1: with underaged people. Um So, in late two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: they hire a security firm two in the Times as
Speaker 1: words push American law enforcement to investigate whether or not
Speaker 1: he'd done some sex trafficking. Now, the firm that they
Speaker 1: hire is run by a guy named Jeff Davis who
Speaker 1: claimed to be a tenure veteran of the CIA, who
Speaker 1: runned what he'd called the ghost program, which is not
Speaker 1: a real plan doesn't exist since some movies about it though,
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, ghost protocol. Um. Bacon was conned by this
Speaker 1: guy and spends like six million dollars, which is very funny.
Speaker 1: All of this is extremely funny, but again it is
Speaker 1: part of why it's like kind of hard to know
Speaker 1: the precise details of what happened, which is like sucks
Speaker 1: to be clear. Yeah yeah, yeah, this is not this
Speaker 1: is not gonna Bacon is not like hurting for money
Speaker 1: because he burned six million on this this con job.
Speaker 1: It's all really funny, um, and it's but it's also like, again,
Speaker 1: it's hard to part of why I emphasized the early stuff,
Speaker 1: his mistreatment of workers, the outright criminal behavior, they're all
Speaker 1: of the rape and sexual assault allegations against him from
Speaker 1: people who were extremely young, gooing back further than even
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. This goes back to the very beginning
Speaker 1: of his career because once you hit this period where
Speaker 1: he's fighting with Bacon, tens of millions of dollars and
Speaker 1: dis info, we're just flying around. So like nailing down
Speaker 1: what happened is very very touchy, right, um. And I'm
Speaker 1: being so careful about what I say here because like
Speaker 1: this is even though Niagart is kind of probably down
Speaker 1: for the count, this is a fight between two very
Speaker 1: very Richmond and you don't want to be uncareful when
Speaker 1: you talk about totally may have done what right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know who's always careful when they make allegations
Speaker 1: about sex crimes. Is gonna be an ad for bacon,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I hope it's an ad for bacon. The
Speaker 1: bacon industry would never do anything like that to us.
Speaker 1: I mean the guy, oh well, honestly he seems like
Speaker 1: he's in the clear for that one too. Um. But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: there you go. We're back Anderson. So another cancellable thing. Boy,
Speaker 1: he sure did and Anderson. He she if you're gonna
Speaker 1: accuse her of doing something wrong, Oh but it was
Speaker 1: actually it wasn't an it was that wasn't an actual
Speaker 1: thing that she said. I regret starting this bit, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I I almost fed into the bit by being like, yeah,
Speaker 1: she made a comment about her appreciation of Rhodesian pattern camouflage.
Speaker 1: But then I decided not to. And I feel bad
Speaker 1: that I have led us to the chain of events
Speaker 1: that has taken us to where we are. Margaret, this
Speaker 1: was this was your fault. This was all what a disaster.
Speaker 1: Recognized that this is this is the podcasting equivalent of
Speaker 1: starting a fight with your neighbor who has one and
Speaker 1: a half billion dollars. Because Anderson can actually do no wrong,
Speaker 1: let's be on that's right, that's right, and Peter Bacon
Speaker 1: can pay to have done no wrong at the very
Speaker 1: least and to eat Bacon. So here we are, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and anyway, let's get back on the old on the
Speaker 1: old train. So well as when we left off, Louis
Speaker 1: had just gotten conduct of six million dollars by the
Speaker 1: ghost program CIA guy who was just a con man,
Speaker 1: and the guy who conned him told Bacon and Niagard
Speaker 1: had put hits out on his family and like actually
Speaker 1: got got like hooked Bacon up with bodyguards who drove
Speaker 1: him and his family to safe houses and must have
Speaker 1: been a very exciting afternoon for everybody. Bacon eventually realizes
Speaker 1: he's been had, and the FBI and Homeland Security both
Speaker 1: did launch investigations, but they didn't go anywhere into Peter.
Speaker 1: So Bacon and his brother decided to put together a
Speaker 1: lawsuit in two thousand seventeen, patterned off of some of
Speaker 1: the most prominent ME two cases. Right, they're kind of
Speaker 1: paying attention to what's happening. They know there's there's no
Speaker 1: there's smoke and fire with Peter Niagard, right, because they
Speaker 1: do have it. At this point, stuff is online. They
Speaker 1: found the old allegations, right, They've got people who are
Speaker 1: able to see the ship that had happened in Canada,
Speaker 1: find those old Winnipeg whatever newspaper articles and stuff. So
Speaker 1: they put together a lawsuit. They get their private investigators
Speaker 1: to introduce fifteen Bahamian women to American lawyers um to
Speaker 1: do like sue Peter her out of New York. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from the Times here. One woman now
Speaker 1: when involved in the suit, told the time she was
Speaker 1: fourteen when she met Mr Niagard at one of the
Speaker 1: stores in two thousand fifteen. She is a photo with
Speaker 1: him that day. She said that she was later invited
Speaker 1: for a modeling interview at Niagard Key, where he assaulted her.
Speaker 1: She said that she had never told anyone what happened.
Speaker 1: Another woman in the suit said in an interview that
Speaker 1: she was fourteen when she attended a pamper party in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven after her mother asked Mr niagar to
Speaker 1: sponsor her in a beauty pageant. Is this what my
Speaker 1: life can be? She recalled, thinking of the models in
Speaker 1: the room. Her glass of wine never seemed too empty,
Speaker 1: she said. Later she recalled she swallowed pills that Mr
Speaker 1: Niagard told her models took. Then she said, he took
Speaker 1: her upstairs and you know, um. Drawn by the money
Speaker 1: and promise of modeling gig, she later returned recruiting other women,
Speaker 1: she said. Tamika Ferguson found her way at a Niagard
Speaker 1: key in two thousand four after being kicked out of
Speaker 1: high school. An orphan from a poor neighborhood, she said
Speaker 1: a DJ had invited her to a pamper party. She
Speaker 1: drank too much and ended up in a bathroom barefoot
Speaker 1: in her bikini. She said, when she emerged, your friends
Speaker 1: had gone. Mr Niagard steers through upstairs, and I don't
Speaker 1: think I need to finish that. Um yeah, uh so.
Speaker 1: The Times has photographs of this woman in that this
Speaker 1: woman took of herself in Niagard key. Three people, a
Speaker 1: former Niagard girlfriend and ex employee and a guest said
Speaker 1: that they remembered her here. So this is again. These
Speaker 1: are all been backed up. These are very for all
Speaker 1: of the stuff that is kind of murky, there's a
Speaker 1: lot that's extremely clear right in terms of the allegations
Speaker 1: against Niagard. Now, but back to the things that are complicated.
Speaker 1: The investigators and lawyers that are putting together this lawsuit
Speaker 1: were paid by a nonprofit called Sanctuary. Mr Bacon was
Speaker 1: a generous donor to Sanctuary. There are claims from people
Speaker 1: interviewed by The New York Times that Bacon or entities
Speaker 1: which received funding from him, gave money to a number
Speaker 1: of women in exchange for going forward against Niagard. Peter
Speaker 1: would probably say that they were paid to lie. It's
Speaker 1: worth noting that Several of these women claim the money
Speaker 1: was necessary to keep them safe from Niagard, which is
Speaker 1: certainly not without merit. Right. Again, it's very messy, but
Speaker 1: I get that point right, Like, Yeah, you're being asked
Speaker 1: to go up against a very rich man. You don't
Speaker 1: want no backup there, especially in a place like the
Speaker 1: Bahamas where it's really easy to buy the law and
Speaker 1: buy the government. Um. So it's a mess of a case.
Speaker 1: I think there's plenty of clear reporting though about what
Speaker 1: happened and about what Peter did, and I don't have
Speaker 1: trouble believing uh in his guilt, And apparently neither did
Speaker 1: the FBI, because they eventually decide they have seen enough
Speaker 1: and accused him of sex trafficking, sex trafficking involving miners, rape,
Speaker 1: and racketeering after raiding his offices in one Nagaret was
Speaker 1: charged by the Toronto Police with multiple cases of sexual
Speaker 1: assault enforceable confinement from cases between the mid nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: and the mid two thousand's. With the dam broken around him,
Speaker 1: more allegations flooded out, the earliest of which dates back
Speaker 1: to nineteen sixty eight. There are at least fifty two
Speaker 1: plaintiffs currently pursuing legal action against him in several cases,
Speaker 1: include a class action. In two thousand eighteen, Niagard Key
Speaker 1: was seized by the Supreme Court of the Bahamas. The
Speaker 1: property is currently in ruins. Peter Niagard remains in custody
Speaker 1: in Canada awaiting extradition to the United States. He says
Speaker 1: that his health is terrible and that he can't get
Speaker 1: the kind of food that he wants to eat while
Speaker 1: he's fine bars. Yeah, I again, I don't really care
Speaker 1: what happens to this guy at this point. Um, as
Speaker 1: long as he's kept away from doing any harm. His
Speaker 1: finances seem like they're in disaster. His company is failing. Um.
Speaker 1: I wonder who's going to buy his property. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's already been like confiscated by the government. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'll tell you this, don't get into
Speaker 1: a fight with Louis Bacon. Um. And honestly, like credit
Speaker 1: to Louis, apparently nothing else was going to fucking take
Speaker 1: this man down. Um, and by god, it needed to happen.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just glad that it did. Um. Louis,
Speaker 1: good work. Um, although it is pretty funny that you
Speaker 1: got caned by the fake CIA guy. Yeah, real here,
Speaker 1: that's pretty funny guy that that is the most likable
Speaker 1: version in the story, the guy who got a bunch
Speaker 1: of money for fucking nothing. Um, I could have made
Speaker 1: a money for nothing in the Chicks for Free joke,
Speaker 1: but in an episode like this that wouldn't have. But
Speaker 1: I thought about it because that's a pretty good song.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's just always that irony of like
Speaker 1: all of the like anti sellout songs that are on
Speaker 1: the radio from like the seventies or whatever. Is that
Speaker 1: an anti sellout song? Though? I thought so? Is that
Speaker 1: kind of just a like it's making fun of It's
Speaker 1: not like anti sellout, but it's like anti music industry,
Speaker 1: which is like, I mean, to be fair, if I
Speaker 1: was engaged at a professional level in the music industry,
Speaker 1: I would absolutely write songs talking shoot on it. I
Speaker 1: mean on like, you know, my professional engagement in the
Speaker 1: podcasting industry, which I absolutely love. My corporate overlords. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting because well, I don't know, now we're completely
Speaker 1: off the topic. But I've never sat down and looked
Speaker 1: at the lyrics. But isn't it like some guys who
Speaker 1: work at like a furniture store or something, being like
Speaker 1: we're busting our asses all these day and the all day,
Speaker 1: and these guys just like half as some songs and
Speaker 1: they get all that money for nothing and the chicks
Speaker 1: for free. I thought that was what the song was, probably, right,
Speaker 1: I I think, well, but they also, like you know,
Speaker 1: wrote Sultan's a Swing, which was like way more of
Speaker 1: a like it's much better to just go be the
Speaker 1: guy who plays at the bar every I you know what,
Speaker 1: the world doesn't need to know my opinion about Dire Straits. No,
Speaker 1: this is what we're talking about. Welcome to the Dire
Speaker 1: Straits Cast, a podcast where I Robert Evans, a guy
Speaker 1: who only knows the song money for Nothing and the
Speaker 1: Chicks for Free, which is probably not what that song
Speaker 1: is called by the Dire Straits, and Margaret Kiljoy, who
Speaker 1: knows at least one other song same band. Amazing that
Speaker 1: this podcast is in its seventh year, you know, and
Speaker 1: people keep no one actually listens, but we found a
Speaker 1: weird loophole where the advertisers keep up and we just
Speaker 1: get automatically downloaded to your phone like that one you
Speaker 1: two album. Well, Margaret, how do you feel about Peter
Speaker 1: Niker's I feel very negatively about him. Um, I hate
Speaker 1: being reminded that people like him exist and are everywhere. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they helped make NAFTA a reality. I love. It
Speaker 1: is amazing that this is one of the guys who
Speaker 1: made NAFTA happen. Yeah, Like, there is a world full
Speaker 1: of heroes who have dedicated their lives, like the Zapatista
Speaker 1: movement right, like you know, kicked off in response to
Speaker 1: naf to nafter signing, right, And there's this like world
Speaker 1: of unsung heroes who will dedicate their amazing lives to
Speaker 1: fighting this. And then there's the guy who's like built
Speaker 1: a weird thing in the Bahamas so that I can
Speaker 1: sectually saw people, because the whole thing was just so
Speaker 1: I could sextually it's sault more people, and it's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I just helped destroy Number one helped destroy
Speaker 1: like the unionized garment industry in two countries, and number
Speaker 1: two like roped people from around the world and particularly
Speaker 1: in Mexico into nightmarish working conditions and abuse in order
Speaker 1: to make enough money that I could build a fake
Speaker 1: Mayan city in the Bahamas and commit sex scrids in it.
Speaker 1: That's that's Peter Niagard and he got taken down because
Speaker 1: he built a parking lot on a richer guy's land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what a real world timeline we're in that What a
Speaker 1: what a good way for that to all get This
Speaker 1: is the best system the world has ever seen. Again,
Speaker 1: Louis Bacon, if you're listening and thinking of suing us,
Speaker 1: I have nothing but but respect and happiness that you
Speaker 1: took him down. He needed to be taken down. I'm
Speaker 1: just frustrated that one of like five different countries legal
Speaker 1: systems didn't at first. Um, outstanding good stuff. So I
Speaker 1: guess if you ever encounter a man with hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars who is horribly harming people, hope that
Speaker 1: he pisces off a richer man or or hear me out.
Speaker 1: You now know that they carry a lot of cash.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, you could get the I'm gonna yep anyway, yep,
Speaker 1: thirty straight bleeped seconds and then we roll out. All right, Margaret,
Speaker 1: you want to plug anything here? UM. I have a
Speaker 1: book called We Won't be Here Tomorrow. I have a
Speaker 1: podcast like Live, like Thorls Dying. I have another podcast
Speaker 1: called Cool People Did cool stuff. And I have a
Speaker 1: dog named Rentraw and I love my dog, great dog,
Speaker 1: solid dog so much. Learned how to herd baby goats
Speaker 1: today a natural just immediately knew how to do it. Um.
Speaker 1: Speaking of things that are known, I have a book too.
Speaker 1: It's called After the Revolution. You can google that and
Speaker 1: a k Press together and find a place to buy it,
Speaker 1: or type it into any of the various book related
Speaker 1: websites and stores that you go to. They all sell it.
Speaker 1: You can buy it, and then it will be yours
Speaker 1: and then you will own a piece of my soul,
Speaker 1: black magic or whatever. Yep. It also contains a complete
Speaker 1: manual on how to um. Oh, no way, that's a spoiler. No,
Speaker 1: that's a spoiler, and also a federal crime. So we're
Speaker 1: going to just bounce for today. Alright, bye everyone. Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For
Speaker 1: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com, or check us out on the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.