Speaker 1: If you thought four hours a day, minutes a week
Speaker 1: was enough, think again. He's the last remnants of the
Speaker 1: old republic a sole fashion of fairness. He treats track
Speaker 1: heads in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich
Speaker 1: pill poppers in the penthouse to clearinghouse, some hot takes,
Speaker 1: Break three for something special. Fifth Hour with Ben Maller
Speaker 1: starts right now in the air everywhere. We are back
Speaker 1: at it again, another weekend in the Magic podcast Box.
Speaker 1: He're good to have you hanging out. We'll have podcast
Speaker 1: every single day. We do is eight days a week.
Speaker 1: Today obviously the Friday podcast, but we have on Saturday
Speaker 1: we will take a look at some random things that
Speaker 1: pop up. Whatever is on the Saturday podcast and the
Speaker 1: mailbag on Sunday. So very exciting. Joined by the man
Speaker 1: west of the four oh five making his way down
Speaker 1: east of the four oh five, David Gascon on the
Speaker 1: fifth foul h. It's a nice little bag of fun
Speaker 1: that we have over the weekend. And of course I
Speaker 1: dip my hand into the deep end of the pool
Speaker 1: and pull out guests that is unsuspecting to those that
Speaker 1: listen to our show, do not pull the muscle here
Speaker 1: patting yourself from the back. I will not. I will
Speaker 1: not do that. I will not do I U. I
Speaker 1: don't have any fan boys like you that do that
Speaker 1: for me either. I do not. I do not have
Speaker 1: fan boys. I have supporters. I have people that are
Speaker 1: believers in the Mallard Militia cause and support what we
Speaker 1: do here. But yeah, every Friday. Now. Last week we
Speaker 1: had the big radio story, so we didn't have anyone
Speaker 1: on because the big Clay Travis replacing Russia INMBOSS story
Speaker 1: was a big, big deal in our world, so we
Speaker 1: didn't end up putting anybody on. But this week the
Speaker 1: big story. It's not a sports story, although guests on
Speaker 1: will argue it is a sports it's it sampled our
Speaker 1: occupation for quite a while. Yes, the world, we know
Speaker 1: the music stopped in the world. We know there were
Speaker 1: no no games, no games for you, no games for you.
Speaker 1: The sporting world shutdown for a hundred and thirty four
Speaker 1: days as a result of the COVID and the whole
Speaker 1: world shut down, working from home and whatnot. So I
Speaker 1: bring this up because BuzzFeed News, through a freedom of
Speaker 1: information requests, they had to file a lawsuit here. They
Speaker 1: tracked down not all but a large number thousands of
Speaker 1: pages of email from Dr Fauci, the man running the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen crisis in America. And as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: the reaction to these emails has been over the top,
Speaker 1: split down party lines of some But I think this
Speaker 1: is nothing, and there's other people who think, my god,
Speaker 1: this is the smoking gun. And it's it's like a
Speaker 1: jury trial where you put two people into a room
Speaker 1: and you give them the same evidence and they look
Speaker 1: at it differently. It's like my it's like my minor
Speaker 1: investment into a MC stock. It is pretty volatile at
Speaker 1: the moment. Fair to say, right is it up or down?
Speaker 1: It's up right now? I don't know. It depends did
Speaker 1: I short the market or did I find I don't know.
Speaker 1: I see the problem is when to It's like being
Speaker 1: a gambler. You gott know when to hold it and
Speaker 1: you gotta know when to let it go. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's the tough thing about the stock market. That's the
Speaker 1: interesting thing about this story, though, is is when when
Speaker 1: was information I guess discovered and what was it released
Speaker 1: to the public, And then of course what happened between
Speaker 1: I don't want to say enemy lines, but for all
Speaker 1: intensive purposes. You're you're working with a foreign adversary. So
Speaker 1: a lot of these things that are happening with the
Speaker 1: coronavirus have been upening on foreign land. And you know,
Speaker 1: BuzzFeed obviously looking into this heavily. It's uh, it's a
Speaker 1: mountain of information. Yeah, it's a it's it's an interesting story.
Speaker 1: I didn't get through a fraction of the emails. I
Speaker 1: did look through some of them, but I read the
Speaker 1: story that was on BuzzFeed News and and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's like I used the analogy all the time. We
Speaker 1: do this in sports, but in politics, it's a political term.
Speaker 1: You have a public position and you have a private position.
Speaker 1: And so with Dr Fauci, you know, the way you
Speaker 1: read these emails, you could interpret them that he had
Speaker 1: a public position that he was telling the American people,
Speaker 1: and privately he thought this was a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: he was saying was bullshit based on based on what
Speaker 1: we were reading in some of those emails. That's that's
Speaker 1: my takeaway from it. But let's talk to the one
Speaker 1: of the people to put this story together, one of
Speaker 1: the reporters at BuzzFeed News joining us. He's a up
Speaker 1: and coming reporting star. You're gonna hear a lot from
Speaker 1: this woman here over the next few years. Imagine. Natalie
Speaker 1: Bentendorff is her name. She was one of the writers
Speaker 1: there at BuzzFeed to put the story together and went
Speaker 1: through all Dr Fauci's emails there. So, uh, Natalie, welcome,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us here on the fifth hour.
Speaker 1: And in your opinion here, what was the most interesting
Speaker 1: thing that you uncovered from these thousands of emails from
Speaker 1: Dr Fauci. Yeah, so I think that the thing that
Speaker 1: I took away was really what we see is the
Speaker 1: content of these emails. Right. There's a lot of interpretations
Speaker 1: as to what some of these emails mean, what this
Speaker 1: Faucci Um, what he's thinking at the beginning of this pandemic,
Speaker 1: where is it going? But if we're looking at the
Speaker 1: actual content and his words, I think the thing that
Speaker 1: struck me the most was really this email where you know,
Speaker 1: an ABC reporters asking him early on of last year
Speaker 1: in you know, what do you think the death toll
Speaker 1: is going to be from COVID nineteen and he responds
Speaker 1: um with the number that the report has given him,
Speaker 1: which is five K, and says, you know what I
Speaker 1: think that's way too high, um. And just reading that exchange,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a short sentence in reply to the
Speaker 1: reporter saying that he thinks that death told too high.
Speaker 1: And we're here, right, we're well past five hundred thousand
Speaker 1: deaths from COVID in this country. And I think it
Speaker 1: really is a telling um thing about Fauci, which is
Speaker 1: that you know, he's a human, right, he's the physician
Speaker 1: who a lot of us have turned to in pandemic,
Speaker 1: but he also didn't understand how much of a force
Speaker 1: this virus was going to take our country by, um,
Speaker 1: And so I think a lot of those emails actually
Speaker 1: showcase that. Right from January until June, I mean, we
Speaker 1: didn't know how long this thing was gonna last, even
Speaker 1: Sauci didn't, and he didn't know how how many lives
Speaker 1: it would claim, and it's a really devastating thing to see,
Speaker 1: but it's very enlightening to see how much we've learned
Speaker 1: from that point. So I think that's what I really
Speaker 1: took away from a lot of these emails. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love the fact that they were like regular people, and
Speaker 1: you mentioned in that were like emailing, and he was
Speaker 1: writing back to like regular people. I think it's amazing
Speaker 1: to me because you know, most people are like, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna lead that, why would I write back? But
Speaker 1: he hes a number of times right and right back exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean he was revered as a celebrity. I mean
Speaker 1: we all know, we were all laughing right about just
Speaker 1: kind of the the fourth of nature that it became
Speaker 1: with Sauccia's um, you know, creating all these this merchandise
Speaker 1: right around him with his name everywhere and these touchy
Speaker 1: sucks and saucy doughnuts and his face on T shirts. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting seeing actually in these emails, UM,
Speaker 1: how uncomfortable it was for him to actually see all
Speaker 1: of that, like the same and kind of this these
Speaker 1: people being obsessed with him, um, and revering him to
Speaker 1: this state of you know, he's just regarded so highly. Um,
Speaker 1: he's not super comfortable with that. I mean, science and
Speaker 1: health is what he specializes in, and he it just
Speaker 1: blew up so quickly. UM. So it's really interesting seeing
Speaker 1: his responses to a lot of those. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and also now it kind of walked me through
Speaker 1: you're part of the team there that you're you're talking
Speaker 1: about tons of email. I mean, this is a lot
Speaker 1: to go through, Like what's the process like, like how
Speaker 1: you know, how did you guys work your way through
Speaker 1: tons of data? He is is an amazing Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really cool. I like sharing kind of the process behind
Speaker 1: UM stories, Right, the story behind the story is really
Speaker 1: fun to talk about because there's so much that goes
Speaker 1: into especially putting out a story of this size. Now,
Speaker 1: as we stayed in in the article, UM, what made
Speaker 1: this possible was for your request, right, So that's the
Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Act, and that actually allows us to
Speaker 1: get documents from government agencies. Right, It's legal to put
Speaker 1: in those requests and basically the government agency is supposed
Speaker 1: to turn those over. Now, we sent these in obviously
Speaker 1: to the National Institute of Helps UM, and we were
Speaker 1: able to obtain um plus pages of these emails. And
Speaker 1: this request was one that Jason put in. This was
Speaker 1: actually probably UM starting in March and then you know
Speaker 1: went into the summer. But the way that works is,
Speaker 1: you know what we do to actually speed up the
Speaker 1: process because obviously to get all of these emails is
Speaker 1: a really long process. And sometimes what happens is, you know,
Speaker 1: very often actually the government agency won't respond or they'll
Speaker 1: just kind of say, hey, this is too much to
Speaker 1: get back to you. And so BuzzFeed actually ended up
Speaker 1: biling a lawsuit UM. And really all that does is
Speaker 1: just speed up the process, right because they have to
Speaker 1: get these We had documents to us a little bit
Speaker 1: quicker UM, and so what we did is we asked
Speaker 1: for all emails text sent and received by Dr Fauci
Speaker 1: mentioning or referring to COVID nineteen coronavirus, and any and
Speaker 1: all internal studies on COVID. So that was our specific request,
Speaker 1: and we had to send in multiple UM to just
Speaker 1: really keep expanding the time period. So that's really how
Speaker 1: we got these documents. And then kind of the last
Speaker 1: five months is what Jason and I have been working on,
Speaker 1: which is the article itself of how do we really
Speaker 1: write an article that is going to sum up what
Speaker 1: these UM documents are saying? Right, so not all people
Speaker 1: are going to see these documents and read all three thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred pages of these, but we want to pull
Speaker 1: out what's the important parts of these and what are
Speaker 1: the things that people really need to know? What are
Speaker 1: we learning there's no crazy smoking guns, in here, Right,
Speaker 1: it's really what we're seeing from a broader you know,
Speaker 1: stepping back, what is Fauci's communication style and what were
Speaker 1: some of the things of the points of discussion from
Speaker 1: early on in the pants mix. So that was kind
Speaker 1: of the process of how we got this thing out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure you've seen the reaction here and
Speaker 1: it's um some of these I mean it's been picked
Speaker 1: apart some of the emails and and right not in Uh,
Speaker 1: what is your take here on the the reaction As
Speaker 1: everything in the country, it's divided on party lines, right,
Speaker 1: people have strong opinions on each side. Something this makes
Speaker 1: Dr Facci, as you said, look more human. Other people
Speaker 1: think that we know, wait a minute, he was saying
Speaker 1: one thing privately and there was something else publicly. So right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's a good thing you discussed. And something you
Speaker 1: know that we did at BuzzFeed is we said, you
Speaker 1: know what, it's important for us to release all of
Speaker 1: these documents. And that's something that differs from the article
Speaker 1: that the Washington Post wrote. Right, they obtained um eight
Speaker 1: hundred pages of these emails, and we had, you know,
Speaker 1: several thousand of them, and we actually released all of
Speaker 1: them instead of kind of summing them up and releasing
Speaker 1: a few of the ones that we mentioned like the
Speaker 1: post did. Obviously, what comes with that is people create
Speaker 1: their own interpretations of what these emails say, right, without
Speaker 1: actually maybe reading all of the pages or getting all
Speaker 1: of the contact. And so that's the thing that comes
Speaker 1: along with releasing this entire batch to the public, for
Speaker 1: them to really just do what they will with them. UM.
Speaker 1: And so you know, the things that we've heard a
Speaker 1: lot about UM and seen response wise is a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff about the email where Fauci is referring to
Speaker 1: masks um not really being effective, right, and this is
Speaker 1: in back in February UM, and so people have really
Speaker 1: grabbed onto that and said, you know, this is proof
Speaker 1: that you know this masks are helping or fout she
Speaker 1: knew and kind of these very um like making these
Speaker 1: statements that that's you know, generalizing um what thought she
Speaker 1: was thinking about that? But to be frank, I think
Speaker 1: that that shows what I was stating earlier, which is
Speaker 1: that we've really grown scientifically of what we know about
Speaker 1: this virus, and it's just showing that you know, Facci
Speaker 1: doesn't know everything about this virus. No physician in the
Speaker 1: world knows everything about um COVID nineteen and how it
Speaker 1: overtakes the human body and what works and what didn't.
Speaker 1: And this was you know, before the who actually declared
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen pandemic. We did not know at this time
Speaker 1: that people needed to wear masks for this airborne virus.
Speaker 1: So that's an example of something that you know, people
Speaker 1: are grasping onto us this could mean this, or this
Speaker 1: could mean that. But I think as a as a
Speaker 1: journalist's important for us, and when we were reading these
Speaker 1: emails is you know, it's not something that we can
Speaker 1: do where we can read these emails and actually interpret
Speaker 1: and guess you know what Sauchie meant? Well, what was
Speaker 1: STOUCHI like really saying like, let's read between the line.
Speaker 1: You can't do that as a journalist when you're reading
Speaker 1: these documents. You have to take it up face value,
Speaker 1: and then you have to look at the bigger picture.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's what gets really dangerous is
Speaker 1: when people start making these assumptions and bigger interpretations onto
Speaker 1: what found she could have meant, or what this means,
Speaker 1: when it's really going beyond the words on the page. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I saw his quote the other day here
Speaker 1: he said he did say his emails he thought were
Speaker 1: taken out of context there and he kind of like dismissed.
Speaker 1: The reaction was just kind of like what you're saying, right,
Speaker 1: But it really is that's like, that's like a jury
Speaker 1: trial right now. I mean, that's one of the things
Speaker 1: about the court system. You know, people look at the
Speaker 1: evidence and they have different opinions on the evidence, and
Speaker 1: so that's that's where we are right now. Uh, totally
Speaker 1: with this. And I also saw I saw the White
Speaker 1: House they said they did not want to comment. What
Speaker 1: was your reaction to that they wouldn't comment on your story? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that there's you know, one of
Speaker 1: the big things that we had in our article was
Speaker 1: addressing the political pressure right that fell onto Sauci. And
Speaker 1: obviously that expands because now we're in a different um
Speaker 1: administration that's in the White House than was when we
Speaker 1: were actually filing these Foyer requests and reading through these documents, UM,
Speaker 1: and so it's really interesting to see the responses. I
Speaker 1: don't see any of these kind of you know, UM
Speaker 1: Fauci didn't comment on our story. Also, UM for the record,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't see that necessarily as a
Speaker 1: good or bad thing when I'm reporting on this stuff, right,
Speaker 1: So my job, um, and Jason's job is really to
Speaker 1: obtain these documents and see, you know, whoever we are
Speaker 1: mentioning or getting in touch with as a source for
Speaker 1: the article is to just see, you know, reach out
Speaker 1: to them, Hey, we have your name in here. You know,
Speaker 1: we wanted to know if you'd like to comment, would
Speaker 1: you like to add anything? Um? And obviously the White
Speaker 1: House is mentioned in their fauci has mentioned in there.
Speaker 1: Other people who have written emails to Faucier mentioned, and
Speaker 1: so it's important for us to reach out to those
Speaker 1: people and ask for comment. I think that information is important,
Speaker 1: whether they comment or not. And I can't be the
Speaker 1: judge of what that means or what that says. But um,
Speaker 1: it's important for the public to know that the White
Speaker 1: House didn't have anything to add. Thought she didn't have
Speaker 1: anything he wanted to add to our story. UM. And
Speaker 1: that you know, people will do with what they will. Natalie,
Speaker 1: you mentioned him a couple of times, but Jason, Jason Leopold,
Speaker 1: he's obviously the colleague of yours. Can you give us,
Speaker 1: and for those that don't follow BuzzFeed, can you give
Speaker 1: us a little bit of background on Jason and what
Speaker 1: he actually does for the company. Yeah. So Jason Um
Speaker 1: has been a great mentor to me. Actually, So he is,
Speaker 1: you know, someone who I've learned a lot about UM
Speaker 1: document reporting and really what Foyer requests are UM. And
Speaker 1: he is the senior investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and
Speaker 1: he was previously at Al Jazeera and Vice News as well. UM.
Speaker 1: And he did some really fantastic work with the Finson
Speaker 1: Files that came out a few years ago. And so
Speaker 1: his beat really is he is a fantastic reporter when
Speaker 1: it comes to filing Foyer quests and really getting into
Speaker 1: the nitty gritty when it comes to the government and
Speaker 1: getting those documents and publishing them. That is his UM
Speaker 1: strong suit and what he's really fantastic at. And so
Speaker 1: he you know, was a two thousand eighteen Pulitzer Prize
Speaker 1: winner UM and he was the recipient of the IRA
Speaker 1: two sixteen fl I Award UM. And he's gotten you know,
Speaker 1: many many awards for his reporting and this deep investigative work.
Speaker 1: Because it's time consuming stuff UM to read through documents
Speaker 1: and to put these stories together. But he's been a
Speaker 1: fantastic person to learn from. UM. I'm more of an
Speaker 1: early career reporter and who's really interested in investigative work.
Speaker 1: And I've just been blown away and really impressed with
Speaker 1: um how much I've learned on this project, especially so Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jason's great. The gravity involved in this is obviously one
Speaker 1: for a generation and generations UM. I think Ben and
Speaker 1: I have talked about this at good length in the past,
Speaker 1: just because profession were in UM we oddly enough how
Speaker 1: to bear down when sports weren't going on for a
Speaker 1: long period of time. And I think the biggest thing,
Speaker 1: and they're not just for us, but I think Americans
Speaker 1: and a lot of people across the world as a whole,
Speaker 1: like we're looking for not only information but now accountability,
Speaker 1: and so looking at Foucci's emails and the correspondence that
Speaker 1: he's had with a lot of people, I mean, the
Speaker 1: mask issues is one thing, but the other thing is
Speaker 1: just the relationship with Foucci, the Wuhan Lab and the Chinese.
Speaker 1: And you know, oftentimes you're taught, even when you're young.
Speaker 1: If you don't know the answer to a question, typically
Speaker 1: the answer is always money and and so that is
Speaker 1: the biggest thing for for me, and what you and
Speaker 1: Jason are doing right now is that you're connecting a
Speaker 1: lot of different dots. So where does this lead or
Speaker 1: where do you feel like this is leading? And have
Speaker 1: you looked under the I guess the Christmas tree that
Speaker 1: is the the Chinese government because obviously there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things underneath that thing. Yeah, I think that you
Speaker 1: know again what I said about just like what we
Speaker 1: were able to extract from these right, because this is
Speaker 1: something that Jason and I were thinking about the whole
Speaker 1: time while reading through these documents, is what's the bigger
Speaker 1: picture here and what are we really grasping from his
Speaker 1: correspondence thouts correspondence with foreign officials. I mean, it's really impressive, Um,
Speaker 1: how many emails there are from you know, different health
Speaker 1: authorities and physicians all around the world who thought she
Speaker 1: has been able to make connections with Um with his
Speaker 1: work from the AIDS crisis in the nineties and working
Speaker 1: through different epidemics, right and just building this network of
Speaker 1: physicians all around the world. Right, So we saw this
Speaker 1: correspondence and specifically with some of those Chinese health officials too,
Speaker 1: and so I think that you know, one of the
Speaker 1: emails that people are really circulating is one from April
Speaker 1: eighteen in and that was UM from Dr Peter Dazac
Speaker 1: and that was UM, you know someone who got he
Speaker 1: made very he was acquaintances with, right, And so they
Speaker 1: actually were corresponding about UM the origins. Right. This is
Speaker 1: obviously something that they discussed early on in UM. But
Speaker 1: I think people have really pulled that part of it
Speaker 1: and saying you know, UM, where Dr Dazak says, from
Speaker 1: my perspective, your comments are brave and coming from your
Speaker 1: trusted voice, will help disturb the myths being spun around
Speaker 1: the viruses origins and so UM. I think the thing
Speaker 1: that you know is on the top of all of
Speaker 1: our minds is what was covered up, right, like where
Speaker 1: did this virus come from? UM? Was it from a lab?
Speaker 1: And I think that these emails actually don't give as
Speaker 1: much of you know, UM, as many ants or as
Speaker 1: we might hope to that question about where the virus
Speaker 1: came from if it came from a lab. UM. It
Speaker 1: really is just showing that this was a discussion that
Speaker 1: was happening among health officials very early on in maybe
Speaker 1: even you know, before many people had come up with
Speaker 1: different conspiracies at this point, right. So I think that
Speaker 1: for me, like Jason and I really didn't spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time looking into you know, what do these
Speaker 1: emails confirm, rather than what are the discussions that were happening.
Speaker 1: I don't think that there's anything that can be gleaned
Speaker 1: from that. Um. But as you mentioned, I mean, like
Speaker 1: really Sauci has addressed that and said that, you know,
Speaker 1: he feels his emails are being taken out of context
Speaker 1: and um, that there's a lot being pulled out and
Speaker 1: kind of words put in his mouth from words that
Speaker 1: weren't said. And so I think that, you know, out
Speaker 1: of fairness and out of you know, the ethical practices
Speaker 1: of journalism, we really can't say anything definitively about the
Speaker 1: viruses origins and if the emails really say anything about them.
Speaker 1: Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
Speaker 1: Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific. Be
Speaker 1: sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller Show
Speaker 1: weekdays at two am eastern eleven pm Pacific on Fox
Speaker 1: Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the biggest thing though, and something like this is
Speaker 1: that your job and that kind of capacity, especially since
Speaker 1: it is so unique, is you have to ask those
Speaker 1: questions and not be afraid of challenge. And absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: the relationships that Dr fouch has had throughout the years, Uh,
Speaker 1: what those relationships comes power and influence And from what
Speaker 1: you guys have actually unfolded with these emails in the
Speaker 1: f O I A that you've had Mark Zuckerberg come
Speaker 1: into play. And I find that fascinating because a Washington
Speaker 1: Post article was recently edited that had Senator Tom Cotton
Speaker 1: talking about the origin of the coronavirus and prior to
Speaker 1: that it was a conspiracy theory. Now it's just an alleged,
Speaker 1: you know, hypothesis. But Zuckerberg comes into play, and he's
Speaker 1: got things that are tied into the political atmosphere, voting wise,
Speaker 1: and now this and so we've seen doctors, we've seen
Speaker 1: people that have had information squash on Instagram and on Facebook.
Speaker 1: And so I guess my question comes down to this,
Speaker 1: are you and Jason looking into the relationships that Dr
Speaker 1: Fauci has from these email correspondence. That's a great question.
Speaker 1: And honestly, absolutely, because you know something that's important is
Speaker 1: that this is UM an ongoing investigation. Right, We're gonna
Speaker 1: keep getting more documents, and we're gonna keep reading these
Speaker 1: documents UM. You know the foyer requesting basically the way
Speaker 1: it UM works as that because we put in so
Speaker 1: many requests, right, we'll still get some of these emails
Speaker 1: trickling in from later and later, or maybe ones that
Speaker 1: were miss that will just be getting in the mail.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're going to keep investigating that. And for
Speaker 1: the question about you know, the relationships that Dr Duchy
Speaker 1: has with these people, is it is really important UM
Speaker 1: for our reporting because you know, as much as I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to take these emails at face
Speaker 1: value and really look at that. It does kind of
Speaker 1: feel like being a detective right when you're doing this
Speaker 1: kind of work, because you know what Stout she's saying
Speaker 1: to a regular person who is just asking, you know,
Speaker 1: a health question about how does having COVID affect UM?
Speaker 1: You know, my grandmother or my grandfather or someone who
Speaker 1: is a celebrity, who's who's saying, how can I use
Speaker 1: my platform to UM spread information about COVID and help
Speaker 1: people get to better resources. You know, we do have
Speaker 1: to evaluate those relationships and who's reaching out to him,
Speaker 1: who is stoutily choosing to respond to, who's the choosing
Speaker 1: to ignore are and who is he getting really familiar with? UM?
Speaker 1: So those are That's a great question because that's absolutely
Speaker 1: something that like we have to consider, is how is
Speaker 1: Sauchi relating to these people and who is he um
Speaker 1: what tone is he using with each of these individuals
Speaker 1: because of their position? And so I think that's something
Speaker 1: that we're just continuing to investigate and something that people,
Speaker 1: you know, members of the public, you and I can
Speaker 1: just look at these emails and glean for ourselves too,
Speaker 1: is um You know, it's so easy to do a
Speaker 1: Google search of anyone's name and be like, are they
Speaker 1: in the health community? Are they kind of just a
Speaker 1: regular person who is just asking for health advice, who's
Speaker 1: worried about their family, who's maybe harassing Dr Fauci too
Speaker 1: because of political pressure, Right, So those relationships are essential
Speaker 1: to understanding UM facties communication style as a whole totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Natalie, when you were going through the emails there,
Speaker 1: and you know how much I do see some things redacted?
Speaker 1: I mean how much basically how much of that stuff
Speaker 1: was covered up where you couldn't read it. I know
Speaker 1: the email addresses obviously were, but there's there's some of
Speaker 1: these emails I'm looking at were like large chunks of
Speaker 1: them are not not available. So one of the sensitive
Speaker 1: stuff was not allowed for you to to view. That's
Speaker 1: a good question. I actually don't know like the percentage
Speaker 1: of it. But basically how FOIA work is that there
Speaker 1: are exemptions from FOIA and what that means is there
Speaker 1: are things that are redacted from government documents. If it
Speaker 1: has something to do with um national security especially that's
Speaker 1: a big one. So if there's something in the government document, right,
Speaker 1: not everything can be declassified because there can actually be
Speaker 1: something that poses either a national security risk or there's
Speaker 1: just you know, more stricter privacy around people's private information,
Speaker 1: right That can be sometimes other health information, which is
Speaker 1: probably very pertinent in some of these emails, right because
Speaker 1: people are talking about their own health talking about other
Speaker 1: people's health around COVID, So that could be a big
Speaker 1: reason things are redacted. We published the emails as we
Speaker 1: saw them, so we didn't take anything out. You know,
Speaker 1: the emails that are redacted. We didn't get to see
Speaker 1: people's emails. Um, you know, so you're looking at the
Speaker 1: emails that Jason and I saw just as they are. Um.
Speaker 1: So there are different reasons why things are redacted. So
Speaker 1: that's something that Jason and I really have to go
Speaker 1: through and see. Um. But it's impossible to guess, right,
Speaker 1: It's impossible to guess what's behind that black box. Um,
Speaker 1: And we just kind of have to work around it.
Speaker 1: It's definitely definitely like you know, doing a puzzle, because
Speaker 1: you just gotta work with what you have, the words
Speaker 1: that are on the page. Um. But yeah, those are
Speaker 1: some different reasons as to why things are redacted, but
Speaker 1: usually it has it falls under, you know, one of
Speaker 1: those few categories. And Natalie, what's the approach that you
Speaker 1: and Jason have and going on on something like this,
Speaker 1: Because the reality is is that doesn't matter the publication.
Speaker 1: You know, BuzzFeed and has not been immune to this,
Speaker 1: But it doesn't matter the publication, you're going to take
Speaker 1: fire from one side of the political aisle or the
Speaker 1: there right, how do you try to be not only
Speaker 1: as transparent but as as open ended as possible when
Speaker 1: it comes to this research and information? Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: something we we talked about a lot from the beginning,
Speaker 1: what Jason really was advising me to do is just
Speaker 1: read through these documents because obviously there's thousands of pages
Speaker 1: of them, and just get familiar with them. You know.
Speaker 1: He'd tell me to, you know, read through as many
Speaker 1: as I could for a week, take notes, take screenshots
Speaker 1: of ones that were pretty outstanding or things that I
Speaker 1: wanted to save and save for later, to go back
Speaker 1: to UM, and then just take a break, step back
Speaker 1: from them, and then go back in right. And so
Speaker 1: basically are for the first few months that we were
Speaker 1: working on the actual article, we were just reading these
Speaker 1: documents and just getting really familiar with the content. UM.
Speaker 1: We would identify people over and over again, like maybe
Speaker 1: some of Guti's team members, his staffers who he was
Speaker 1: emailing a lot more frequently. UM. So that was the
Speaker 1: first step of it, and that was our approach UM.
Speaker 1: And so I think that helped set up the rest
Speaker 1: of the process and kind of my mindset about reporting,
Speaker 1: because I was really thinking, you know, I'm taking this
Speaker 1: UM kind of just being as unbiased as I could,
Speaker 1: and just being really open to whatever these emails were
Speaker 1: going to hold. You know, obviously, when you get this staff,
Speaker 1: you get really excited of these documents where you're like, man,
Speaker 1: I really hope something in here is like juicy and
Speaker 1: good and we're just gonna like find a huge secret, right.
Speaker 1: But that's not always the case, UM, with doing document reporting. UM,
Speaker 1: A lot of these emails are pretty standard, pretty boring,
Speaker 1: you know, just back and forth administrative stuff. UM. And
Speaker 1: so I think that kind of put me in the
Speaker 1: mindset of just getting used to pouch to style UM.
Speaker 1: And I felt like it was once I got in
Speaker 1: that mindset, it was easy to take away this kind
Speaker 1: of like if there was any sort of political bias, UM,
Speaker 1: because ultimately my number one job is to just report
Speaker 1: what is in these emails, would do it as accurately
Speaker 1: as possible, UM, and in an unbiased way, but also
Speaker 1: be really frank and transparent with UM, my audience and
Speaker 1: the people who were writing this for who want to
Speaker 1: know more about Faucci as a person. UM, Be frank
Speaker 1: about his relationship with the Trump administration, that it was
Speaker 1: tents at times, and that they did clash, right, So
Speaker 1: we do have to be, um, you know, really transparent
Speaker 1: and honest around those very real relationships and the political
Speaker 1: relationships around UM. You know, Sauci and his community and
Speaker 1: really what influenced a lot of that. So, um, it's
Speaker 1: really taking that into consideration. But I think when it
Speaker 1: comes down to it, me and Jason were really prioritizing
Speaker 1: this idea of just being open to whatever we saw
Speaker 1: in these emails and just reading it as if we were,
Speaker 1: you know, someone just reading both feed News, not as
Speaker 1: an editor or not as a reporter. What would we
Speaker 1: find interesting that we'd want to share with other people.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the approach we took. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's a great story. Natalie can congratulation. I know you're young,
Speaker 1: you're young reporter, your USC Trojan, I understand and all that.
Speaker 1: So is this is this your future you? I'm sure
Speaker 1: we'll hear from you many more times over there. Do
Speaker 1: you want to be a this is this what you
Speaker 1: would like to do? If we would go twenty years
Speaker 1: from now looking back at your career as a journalist
Speaker 1: is twenty as far away. I have been into journalism
Speaker 1: since I was fourteen years old, um, and I can
Speaker 1: definitely see myself sticking on this path. I mean, investigative
Speaker 1: journalism gives you a rush like nothing else, at least
Speaker 1: that's how I feel and this has definitely been the
Speaker 1: biggest story I've worked on, and so it's really fantastic
Speaker 1: to see, um, kind of what this might be like, right,
Speaker 1: and get the exposure to what doing political reporting on
Speaker 1: a national scale like this looks like. Um, so you
Speaker 1: might see a couple more pieces for me, I think
Speaker 1: in this realm. So um yeah, no, I really appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and that you took the time to read through our
Speaker 1: piece and wanted to get this, you know, piece out
Speaker 1: to your listeners as well. I'm so excited. That's great,
Speaker 1: that's I'm excited. I'm looking forward to seeing what you
Speaker 1: guys you do next in particular, So thanks for coming
Speaker 1: on you. Be sure to catch live editions of The
Speaker 1: Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific.
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