Speaker 1: Alz Media.
Speaker 2: This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly
Speaker 2: newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
Speaker 2: and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today,
Speaker 2: joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This
Speaker 2: episode recovering the week of April sixteenth to April twenty second. James,
Speaker 2: some small news items.
Speaker 3: At the start, Yeah, a few things I want to
Speaker 3: discuss op top. The United States government appears to be
Speaker 3: running multiple propaganda sites with associated X accounts that are
Speaker 3: opposing as Iranian media. One of the accounts is located
Speaker 3: in Florida. This is not like massively uncommon in a
Speaker 3: conflict of this right now, the information war is part
Speaker 3: of the war.
Speaker 2: This is what like US actual psyop is like. This
Speaker 2: is what the United States syop operations are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the syop is not like the woman sold you
Speaker 3: that you follow on Instagram.
Speaker 4: This isn't new for the US to be doing. It
Speaker 4: is new for it to be like this sloppy. I
Speaker 4: think that's probably fair to say this is like a
Speaker 4: sloppier than normal.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's what's remarkable here. It said it's shoddy and
Speaker 3: that is not a good sign for their for like
Speaker 3: the whole US sort of capacity in this regard.
Speaker 1: But it depends on how you think about it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, yeah sure. Secondly, a number of former
Speaker 3: DHS Department pronoun Security and iOS Immigration and Naturalization Services
Speaker 3: officials have filed an amicus brief with a Supreme Court
Speaker 3: explaining why the cancelation of the hat TPS Temporary Protected
Speaker 3: Status is illegal. They do include Janet Napolitano, which is nice,
Speaker 3: but a ton of people from Obama Bush, even Clinton
Speaker 3: admin pre DHS I ins were part of this amakus brief.
Speaker 3: An IDF soldier has been photographed destroying a statue of
Speaker 3: the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ in Lebanon, showing it with
Speaker 3: a splitting more the reporting called it a sledge hammer.
Speaker 3: That's not what a sledgehammer looks like. I know, I
Speaker 3: get really picky about this, but like, maybe if you
Speaker 3: haven't worked with your hands, you should write things that
Speaker 3: can be read by someone who has scan and not
Speaker 3: be completely ridiculous. The IDF has launched an investigation and
Speaker 3: so far subjected two soldiers to thirty days in military detention,
Speaker 3: which is more than they would get if they had
Speaker 3: killed actual Christian children in Palestine, says a Lot. I
Speaker 3: think that this image is like, we spoke about this
Speaker 3: in our group chat, but this is the it's one
Speaker 3: image at Comic Book Evil. There are many reasons why
Speaker 3: this is the thing that's blowing up for them. Ken
Speaker 3: Paxton is investigating Act Blue. Act Blue is a major
Speaker 3: donation website for Democratic candidates, is claiming that they have
Speaker 3: continued to accept gift card donations, which could hide donations
Speaker 3: from foreign individuals or corporations or even states. I suppose
Speaker 3: the United States government's plans to send Afghans who are
Speaker 3: stuck in Limbo and Kata to the democractic Republic of
Speaker 3: Congo being reported on by the New York Times. Just
Speaker 3: for some context here, I saw people sharing this and
Speaker 3: thinking that they that this referred to Afghan SIV recipients
Speaker 3: who are resident in the United States. That is not
Speaker 3: what it's referring to. It's referring to people who the
Speaker 3: Biden administration removed from Afghanistan or wherever they worked in
Speaker 3: Pakistan right and then took them to katter As like
Speaker 3: a temporary stopping off point where they would continue to
Speaker 3: do their vetting and background checks. This is normal for
Speaker 3: refugee admissions as opposed to asylum admissions. And then the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four election happened, Democrats lost, and that's people
Speaker 3: have been in limbo ever since, and it appears to
Speaker 3: Trump administration has been trying to get them various states
Speaker 3: in Africa to accept them, and it's now proposing the
Speaker 3: Democratic Republic of Congo, a country which already has a
Speaker 3: significant refugee crisis.
Speaker 2: Ron Desentis, who is term limited as governor, has been
Speaker 2: jockeying for a position inside the Trump administration. Axios reports
Speaker 2: Dessentis has expressed interest in being Secretary of War, attorney general,
Speaker 2: or even a Supreme Court justice. Trump is expected to
Speaker 2: reclassify marijuana as soon as maybe today. We're recording this
Speaker 2: on Wednesday, April twenty.
Speaker 1: Seconds fingers crossed.
Speaker 2: Earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order to advance
Speaker 2: its psychedelic treatment for mental illness and possibly reschedule certain
Speaker 2: substances which have completed phase three clinical trials.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is the real sign that their internal polling
Speaker 5: is showing Trump really closing on getting blow thirty percent approval.
Speaker 1: That's that's the most whatever, it's actual legal marijuana. Fuck it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like at this point.
Speaker 3: It's such an easy win, and it's been an easy
Speaker 3: win for the last three presidents.
Speaker 4: And anyone could have done it. It's a gun that's
Speaker 4: been left on the ground and fucking Trump finally just
Speaker 4: picked the damn thing up after it got covered in
Speaker 4: an inch and a half at dust.
Speaker 1: Like unbelievable.
Speaker 5: They're desperate, keep pushing. We can get like completely legal LSD.
Speaker 5: I believe in us.
Speaker 2: On Fox News's Sunday Morning Show, Cash Brittel announced that
Speaker 2: the FBI will soon make arrests related to Trump's claims
Speaker 2: that the twenty twenty election was stolen, with Patel saying, quote,
Speaker 2: they tried to thwart our elections and rig the entire system.
Speaker 6: I can announce on your show that we've got all
Speaker 6: the information we need. We're working with our prosecutors, a
Speaker 6: Department of Justice and their Attorney General Todd Blanche and
Speaker 6: we are going to be making arrest and it's coming,
Speaker 6: and I promise you it's coming soon.
Speaker 2: Patel later said it's a conspiracy case and that quote,
Speaker 2: we have the information to back President Trump's claims. On Tuesday,
Speaker 2: voters in Virginia approved a redistrating measure which would likely
Speaker 2: move four Republican seats to Democrat seats in the midterms.
Speaker 2: This measure passed was fifty one point five percent of
Speaker 2: the vote, totaling over three million votes. Virginia joins California
Speaker 2: in approving new congressional maps to combat the recent gerrymandering
Speaker 2: in red states like Texas. At the behest of Trump,
Speaker 2: but now with Virginia, Dems are actually up one seat nationally.
Speaker 2: Ronda Santis has called for Florida lawmakers to meet next
Speaker 2: week to consider redistricting in their state. Trump has called
Speaker 2: the Virginia election quote unquote rigged, saying that Republicans were
Speaker 2: winning until a quote massive mail in ballot drop un quote,
Speaker 2: which is just how elections work. That's just how voting works.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we were winning until more people voted for the
Speaker 4: other until.
Speaker 2: We counted more votes that showed that we did not win.
Speaker 5: We just live in the twenty sixteen election forever.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 4: I was doing pretty well in that boxing match until
Speaker 4: it started.
Speaker 3: Until the other guy punched me into face.
Speaker 2: The margin of victory closely matches the result of the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four presidential election in Virginia. Republicans have challenged
Speaker 2: the Virginia redistricting in court since before today's election, and
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court of Virginia ruled that the measure could
Speaker 2: go to a vote while legal challenges continue. This is
Speaker 2: the second most important election this week, the most important
Speaker 2: one obviously being the Webbys, in which I think can
Speaker 2: announce we have won in the unrigged election matters, the
Speaker 2: only fair election that this country is seen possibly in
Speaker 2: like over twenty five years.
Speaker 3: That's why they selected Claude as Person of the Year.
Speaker 4: Clearly, the Webbys in twenty twenty six are the only
Speaker 4: election that's going to affect anybody's lives.
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree on that anyway.
Speaker 4: So as you probably are aware because the President shouts
Speaker 4: about it every ten minutes, there's a ceasefire currently in
Speaker 4: effect in the conflict with Iran, the war of choice
Speaker 4: that we started with Iran. James is going to talk
Speaker 4: a little bit more about that in a second. But
Speaker 4: because of the stand down, there's been kind of time
Speaker 4: for both forces to you know, reassess things, and time
Speaker 4: for outside people to reassess, like kind of what we
Speaker 4: can tell about what's going on. Obviously in the immediate
Speaker 4: wake of Operation Epic Fury, and is recently as last Tuesday,
Speaker 4: President Trump said quote, we've taken out their navy, We've
Speaker 4: taken out their air force, We've taken out their leaders.
Speaker 4: On April eighth, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Operation Epic
Speaker 4: Fury a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield. By
Speaker 4: any measure, Epic Fury decimated Iron's military and rendered it
Speaker 4: combat and effective for years to come. Now that last sentence,
Speaker 4: the first part is technically accurate, but not in the
Speaker 4: way that Hegseth means.
Speaker 3: No one knows what decimate means anymore.
Speaker 4: Decimate literally means to destroy like a tenth of a group.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, yea, And yeah, that's pretty accurate, right, But
Speaker 4: the second part of that sentence, rendered it combat and
Speaker 4: effective for years to come is not accurate. Neither is
Speaker 4: Trump's statement that we've taken out their navy and their
Speaker 4: air force. CBS published an article today reporting that roughly
Speaker 4: sixty percent of the naval arm of the Islamic Revolutionary
Speaker 4: Guard CORES is still in existence, including fast tag speedboats
Speaker 4: and Iranian air power. While it's been degraded, is still
Speaker 4: significantly more functional than actually I had assumed. About two
Speaker 4: thirds of the Iranian Air force is still believed to
Speaker 4: be operational despite the massive US and Israeli air strikes
Speaker 4: largely targeting air production and storage facilities. The fact that
Speaker 4: you're looking at two thirds of Iran's navy and air
Speaker 4: force still functional and at least about half their ballistic
Speaker 4: missile stockpile and their launch system stockpile intact. That's a
Speaker 4: significant difference from what the administration has claimed and evidence
Speaker 4: that where we to continue to press with the open
Speaker 4: fighting part of this conflict, it would be years probably
Speaker 4: before you're talking about like a complete degradation of Iranian
Speaker 4: fighting capability if that was ever achieved, Like when you
Speaker 4: factor in the United States would continue to suffer casualties,
Speaker 4: and we've already been losing more of you know, particularly
Speaker 4: our interceptor missile capability and a number of advanced systems
Speaker 4: like a wax then we can avoid to replace James.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 3: the ceasefire itself, right, and then like what's been happening there.
Speaker 3: Let's start with, like I guess straight off, hor mows
Speaker 3: updates and then get into the ceasefire. The Navy intercepted
Speaker 3: an Iranian vessel in the in the Arabian Sea this week,
Speaker 3: close to the Iran Pakistan border. The Tuska was warned.
Speaker 3: Imagine they use an l rad to warn it. People
Speaker 3: see l rads on ships sometimes that think they're coming
Speaker 3: to like make you deaf. That's one of the reasons
Speaker 3: of ships have lrads. But they could have also used
Speaker 3: a radio that if they can talk to them on
Speaker 3: the radio of they're receiving communications with the radio. They
Speaker 3: then ordered it to evacuate its engine room. They then
Speaker 3: shut out its engine with the five inch gun.
Speaker 1: First time they've gotten to do that in forty years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was looking at I guess it was. It
Speaker 3: was since what nineteen eighty eight the last time that
Speaker 3: I was thinking it's it's been a lot. It's been
Speaker 3: a minute since its ship engaged in the ship with
Speaker 3: its main gun. It was a USS Spruance, a guided
Speaker 3: missile destroyer that did that. Subsequently, US marines on the
Speaker 3: Tripoli we were reported on when the Tripoli first moved
Speaker 3: towards that region. Right, We specifically said that this is
Speaker 3: one of the capacities that it had they boarded the ship,
Speaker 3: so they transferred to by helicopter and then boarded the ship.
Speaker 3: The US has since inspected other ships, including outside of
Speaker 3: the Saint Comeo. So the US perceives its blockade to
Speaker 3: be global right of Iranian assets, of Iranian vessels and
Speaker 3: the quote unquote shadow fleet, which we've already explained on
Speaker 3: D so I'm not going to go into depth on
Speaker 3: what that means. The IOGC also fired at several vessels
Speaker 3: in the street. There is some reporting that one of them,
Speaker 3: an Indian tanker, had paid a fee in cryptocurrency to
Speaker 3: what turned out to be a scammer. I am certain
Speaker 3: that these scams exist because there have been multiple warnings
Speaker 3: of them. I haven't seen any evidence that is satisfactory
Speaker 3: enough for me to be confident that that particular ship
Speaker 3: had been scammed. But perhaps the most compelling piece of
Speaker 3: evidence a ship is called the San mar Herald. Is
Speaker 3: this audio that we're going to play right here, if my.
Speaker 7: Baby sef my naby, is this modeling a San Marda.
Speaker 1: You give me Clarence to go, my name second.
Speaker 2: On your list.
Speaker 3: You get me Clarence to go.
Speaker 2: You are fighting.
Speaker 3: Now let me turn back. Just to guess I wasn't
Speaker 3: clear you gave me clearance to go. You're firing now,
Speaker 3: let me turn back. So it does seem that that
Speaker 3: vessel believed that it had clearance to go and was
Speaker 3: sent fired upon This morning, there was some ocynth pictures
Speaker 3: of IIGC and they looked like kind of fast attack
Speaker 3: boat kind of things. Throughout what was talking about in
Speaker 3: the Strait of Hornmuz Yeah, something of a flex Yay,
Speaker 3: we still have a navy like yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: think that's important in the context of the ceasefire. I
Speaker 3: want to explain very briefly, there's been a lot of
Speaker 3: contradictory reporting on when, where, and how negotiations are going
Speaker 3: to happen. The ceasefire was set to expire the day
Speaker 3: we're recording Wednesday. On Tuesday, we saw Donald Trump laterally
Speaker 3: extend the ceasefire by truthing quote based on the fact
Speaker 3: that the government of Iran it's seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so,
Speaker 3: and upon the request of Field Marshal Simonia and Prime
Speaker 3: Minister Shabbad Sharif of Pakistan, we have been asked to
Speaker 3: hold our attack on the country of Iran until such
Speaker 3: time as their leaders and representatives can come up with
Speaker 3: a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our military to
Speaker 3: continue the blockade and in all other respects remained ready
Speaker 3: and able, and will therefore extend the cease fire until
Speaker 3: such time as their proposalists submitted and discussions are concluded
Speaker 3: one way or the other. President Donald J. Trump, the
Speaker 3: consensus seems to me that this is not like an
Speaker 3: infinite extension. This is like maybe less than a week
Speaker 3: for Iran to either comply with US terms or submit proposals.
Speaker 3: In the US consider it's acceptable. A lot of that
Speaker 3: reporting does seem to come from Baraque Revied, who's not
Speaker 3: really good at journalism, so take it with the pinch
Speaker 3: of salt. Trump, though, is correct that the state of
Speaker 3: Iran is on a unified entity, and I covered this
Speaker 3: in the piece I did last week on an update
Speaker 3: on the Iron War, Right, Like, I think there's a
Speaker 3: tendency from people in the global North to look at
Speaker 3: a state and see it as like a pyramid. Right,
Speaker 3: you have the head of state, and then you have government,
Speaker 3: and then you have legislature, and then you have the
Speaker 3: people they commanded, right, military and all the civil bureaucracy.
Speaker 3: That's not quite how Iran works, and I went into
Speaker 3: more detail in that episode that I made, so I'm
Speaker 3: not going to go into it here. But there are
Speaker 3: a series of overlapping but not entirely aligned power centers
Speaker 3: within Iran and within its military capacity, both within its
Speaker 3: military and traditional sense and within the IIGC. Why this
Speaker 3: is relevant to the negotiations is it's not possible for
Speaker 3: politicians to negotiate if they do not believe that they
Speaker 3: can agree to terms and that their military will then
Speaker 3: comply with those terms. Right. If the Iranian Foreign ministry
Speaker 3: agrees with the US to do something, the IGC doesn't
Speaker 3: do it, that then immediately undermines any further negotiations.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So when we see, for instance, this morning, a large
Speaker 3: number of boats going into straight upform news, that looks
Speaker 3: a little bit like a flex right, in the context
Speaker 3: of this power struggle, In the context of Trump acknowledging
Speaker 3: that Trump has once again been truthing this week about
Speaker 3: Iranian nuclear weapons, I'm just going to read one of
Speaker 3: his truths because I think it contains it shows that
Speaker 3: the administration feels that it is weak on this particular accusation.
Speaker 3: Israel never talked me into the war with Iran. The
Speaker 3: results of October seventh added to my lifelong opinion that
Speaker 3: Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. Did Yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't know what's going on with that sentence.
Speaker 2: That's just that's that's Iran can never have a nuclear
Speaker 2: weapon in karmadd did the word did?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, I'm not reading that wrong. Yes, it's a
Speaker 3: hang out.
Speaker 1: Just what he says. Yeah, he's simply senile.
Speaker 3: I can't help you. I'm just saying the words. I
Speaker 3: watch it and read the fake news pundits and polls
Speaker 3: in total disbelief of what they say are lies and
Speaker 3: made up stories, and the polls are rigged, much as
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty presidential election was rigged, Just like the
Speaker 3: results in Venezuela, which the media doesn't like talking about.
Speaker 1: The results in.
Speaker 3: Iran will be amazing and if it RAN's new leaders
Speaker 3: regime changed, exclamation mark clothes, parentheses are smart, Iran can
Speaker 3: have a great and prosperous future. President DJT. That's one
Speaker 3: of the more challenging passages of English language texts that
Speaker 3: I've ever approached. I speak four or five languages, and
Speaker 3: that's that's why I set me back. But I've tried
Speaker 3: to give you a good faith reading of it. He's
Speaker 3: clearly sensitive to the allegation that Israel pushed the US
Speaker 3: into this conflict. Right, He's clearly sensitive. The last thing
Speaker 3: that I want to add is that strikes on Kurdish
Speaker 3: groups have continued despite the ceasefire, right despite the renewed
Speaker 3: cease fire the PAK. Just two hours after Trump announced
Speaker 3: the extension of the ceasefire, Tehran sent four drones to
Speaker 3: attack a PAK base. There have been more injuries in Kurdistan.
Speaker 3: It doesn't seem that Iran considers any ceasefire to apply
Speaker 3: to its ongoing attack against Detroit Gilati groups who are
Speaker 3: currently in southern Kurdistan inside the borders of Iraq.
Speaker 2: Next up, we will discuss the charges against the SPLC,
Speaker 2: But first listen to these airs. Okay, we are back.
Speaker 2: On Tuesday, April twenty first, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche
Speaker 2: and FBI Director Cash Battel announced that a grand jury
Speaker 2: indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on eleven counts, including
Speaker 2: wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and
Speaker 2: conspiracy to commit to concealment money laundering. The indictment argues
Speaker 2: that the SPLC defrauded their donors by using donation money
Speaker 2: to pay confidential informants within white premacist or neo Nazi organizations.
Speaker 2: Here is a short clip of the press conference of
Speaker 2: a reporter asking Todd Blanche a question.
Speaker 5: I just want to make sure I understand you're alleging
Speaker 5: that the Southern Poverty Law Center was paying the leaders
Speaker 5: of KKK and other groups to continue.
Speaker 1: Their operations.
Speaker 8: Is that I'm not alleging it the grandeurary return and
Speaker 8: indictment that says that, and so what what the what
Speaker 8: the investigation found, according to the indictment that was returned today,
Speaker 8: is that they were paying So so, the Southern Poverty
Speaker 8: Law Center is raising money, asking folks to give them
Speaker 8: money to dismount racism, and over a very long period
Speaker 8: of time, they were using some of the money they
Speaker 8: raised from donors to pay to they call them feel
Speaker 8: you know, basically, to informants too, for information, for access,
Speaker 8: to just pay them for for certain to do certain things.
Speaker 8: And and so yes, that's exactly what the indictment charges.
Speaker 2: The SPLC is a nonprofit advocacy organization aimed at quote
Speaker 2: unquote dismantling white supremacy and exposing hate. They operate a
Speaker 2: blog called hate Watch and run a public database of
Speaker 2: hate groups and far right extremists. This indictment claims that
Speaker 2: the SPLC is utilized informants to gained information on far
Speaker 2: right activity since the eighties, but between twenty fourteen and
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, the SPLC secretly paid over three million
Speaker 2: dollars to individuals associated with various violent extruist groups quote
Speaker 2: unquote in a clandestine manner.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, one, if you kind of have been in the
Speaker 4: world of CVE countering violent extremism like research, or like
Speaker 4: involved in NGOs in that sphere at all, or a
Speaker 4: been a researcher there, you're probably aware of the fact
Speaker 4: that the SPLC, like has been paying informants. A lot
Speaker 4: of their scoops are because some Nazi tells on another Nazi,
Speaker 4: essentially right, So that part isn't surprising. The weirdness is
Speaker 4: how the SPLC was going about it and how much
Speaker 4: fucking money they were giving.
Speaker 2: Some of these The amounts of some of these.
Speaker 1: Is, yeah, it was legitimately shocking.
Speaker 2: And I do want to get into some more details
Speaker 2: about those amounts in the groups and the sort of
Speaker 2: nest of fake businesses the SPLC used to distribute this money,
Speaker 2: according to the indictment. The indictment reads that this was
Speaker 2: domnination money quote received under the auspice that the funds
Speaker 2: would be used to qu unquote dismantle violent extremist groups.
Speaker 2: This money was instead being used in part by the
Speaker 2: SBLC to pay leaders and others within these same violent
Speaker 2: extremist groups. That money was then used for the benefit
Speaker 2: of the individuals as well as the violent extremist groups.
Speaker 1: Unquote.
Speaker 2: Money was funneled to individuals associated with violent extreamist groups
Speaker 2: including the klu Klux Klan, the United Clans of America,
Speaker 2: Unite the Right, National Alliance, National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations,
Speaker 2: and the affiliated Sadistic Soul's Motorcycle Club, National Socialist Party
Speaker 2: of America, American Nazi Party, and American Front. One informant,
Speaker 2: according to the indictment, was quote a member of the
Speaker 2: online leadership chat group that planned the twenty seventeen Unite
Speaker 2: the Right event in Charlottesville, Virginia, and attended the event
Speaker 2: at the direction of the SPLC. This informant made racist
Speaker 2: postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate
Speaker 2: transportation to the event for several attendees. Between twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: and twenty twenty three, the SPLC secretly paid this informant
Speaker 2: more than two hundred and seventy thousand dollars. From twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen to twenty twenty three, more than one million dollars
Speaker 2: was allegedly paid to someone affiliated with the National Alliance
Speaker 2: who served as an informant for over twenty years while
Speaker 2: fundraising for this Nazi group. The Imperial Wizard of the
Speaker 2: Rebooted Imperial Clans of America was a paid informant, according
Speaker 2: to the indictment. This is likely a guy named Bradley Jenkins,
Speaker 2: an officer in the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan
Speaker 2: Nations affiliated Sadistic Soul's Motorcycle Club, secretly received more than
Speaker 2: three hundred thousand dollars Between twenty fourteen and twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: The former chairman of the National Alliance was secretly paid
Speaker 2: more than one hundred and four twenty thousand dollars, while
Speaker 2: the SPLC website featured an extremist profile page for this individual,
Speaker 2: likely Eric Glebe. The SPLC also paid the leader of
Speaker 2: the National Socialist Party of America seventy thousand dollars between
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen. This individual was a former
Speaker 2: director of an Aryan Nations faction and a former member
Speaker 2: of the KKK. This is likely a guy named Paul Mullett,
Speaker 2: who the SBLC hosts an extremist file web page on
Speaker 2: their website. A few other unidentified informants are listed in
Speaker 2: the indictment, as well as a claim that the SPLC
Speaker 2: funneled more than one hundred and sixty thousand dollars from
Speaker 2: a fictitious entity to an informant quote, who then sent
Speaker 2: funds to various violent extremist group leaders, including the former
Speaker 2: Grand Wizard of the Knights of the klu Klux Klan unquote.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of money now. To obscure the nature
Speaker 2: of these payments, the SBLC opened a series of bank
Speaker 2: accounts at multiple banks for various fictitious businesses. These weren't
Speaker 2: actually incorporated, but they claimed to be businesses with names
Speaker 2: like the Center Investigative Agency or the CIA. Why Yeah,
Speaker 2: Fox Photography, Northwest Technologies, Tech Writers Group, Rare Books, Warehouse Imagery, Inc.
Speaker 2: JNJ Electronics, Kelly's Marine and Turner Personnel.
Speaker 1: Great good work guys.
Speaker 2: Essentially, the DOJ is arguing that the SBLC solicited donations
Speaker 2: under false pretenses and then transferred that money to extremist
Speaker 2: groups using a network of fake businesses. To get a conviction,
Speaker 2: the DOG will have to argue that this activity constitutes wirefraud,
Speaker 2: false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to
Speaker 2: commit concealment money laundering. A conviction will result in the
Speaker 2: forfeiture of financial gains from the alleged illegal activities. The
Speaker 2: right has reacted to this news by calling the Unite
Speaker 2: the Right rally and kind of the alt right movement
Speaker 2: as it existed from this time period a syop or
Speaker 2: a false flag. Senator Mike Lee, right wing political influencer
Speaker 2: Nick Sorter, and Elon Musk have boosted these claims, getting
Speaker 2: tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of likes on
Speaker 2: x the Everything app. This seems to be a new narrative.
Speaker 2: It's not really new, I guess, but an enhanced narrative
Speaker 2: that is emerging among the online right as a way
Speaker 2: to dissuade some of the uglier parts of that era
Speaker 2: while still carrying along a lot of the same politics.
Speaker 2: Especially on the Great Replacement, which is more of a
Speaker 2: mainstream idea among the conservative movement at this point in time,
Speaker 2: so they're able to walk away from the uglier kind
Speaker 2: of imagery and explicitly not see elements of this like
Speaker 2: the KKK, which is very boomer very very Boomer coded
Speaker 2: the KKKA, so they're able to call stuff like that
Speaker 2: and the Unite the Right Rally a syop or a
Speaker 2: false flag while still reaping the benefits that the alt
Speaker 2: right movement achieved by kind of trailblazing certain rhetoric into
Speaker 2: the conservative mainstream. Right wing commentators have also used this
Speaker 2: news to reassert one of their favorite claims that Patriot
Speaker 2: Front is a psyop or a false flag operation, that
Speaker 2: whenever a group of young Nazis show up in a
Speaker 2: U haul all wearing matching outfits and masks, that this
Speaker 2: is a staged event by either the deep State, the FEDS,
Speaker 2: or a group like the SBLC. Patriot Front is not
Speaker 2: actually named in this indictment. There's no evidence that the
Speaker 2: SPLC was paying anyone at Patriot Front to inform on
Speaker 2: the operations of that group, and obviously paying an individual
Speaker 2: to inform on the details of an upcoming event like
Speaker 2: Unite the Right. Does not mean that the Unite the
Speaker 2: Right event in Charlottesville was planned or staged by the SPLC.
Speaker 2: Dozens of people were involved in the planning of this event,
Speaker 2: and hundreds participated of their own volition. One person in
Speaker 2: a planning group chat sending info to the SPLC does
Speaker 2: not mean that this action was staged or fake.
Speaker 4: Anyone who's in the field has had a lot of
Speaker 4: issues with the SPLC over the last few years, especially
Speaker 4: people who work for them. I have a lot of
Speaker 4: I know a lot of a lot of good people
Speaker 4: have worked for them and gotten fucked over by them.
Speaker 4: They did a lot of union busting too. The people
Speaker 4: who run the SPLC, and some of them are the
Speaker 4: people who are specifically accused of having committed these crimes.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I feel like that, like the
Speaker 4: specific things they have to prove in order to date
Speaker 4: a conviction are accurate, because fundamentally, anyone who donated to
Speaker 4: the SPLC knew that they were like getting shipped from informants,
Speaker 4: you know, like I don't think that was like the
Speaker 4: amount of money though, is shocking.
Speaker 2: That's what That's what they're gonna have to defend in court. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're going to have to have to argue that the
Speaker 2: money that was donated was used for its intended purpose,
Speaker 2: which was dismantling white premisies. You'll have to say that
Speaker 2: the information that they obtained through these through through paying
Speaker 2: these informants, was still in furtherance of that mission. Right,
Speaker 2: That's going to be what they're going to defend in court. Now.
Speaker 2: You know, obviously the FBI also uses information, sure, right,
Speaker 2: the FBI does this same thing. Famously, the FBI paid
Speaker 2: the OH nine A affiliated Joshua Caleb Sutter over one
Speaker 2: hundred and forty thousand dollars. From twenty three to twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one.
Speaker 1: The FBI funded a publishing.
Speaker 2: House, a neo Nazi publishing house essentially yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: which is responsible for, in part, the political direction of
Speaker 2: the atom off in division. Now, Acting Attorney General Todd
Speaker 2: Blanche has said that quote, the SBLC is manufacturing racism
Speaker 2: to justify its existence end quote. Using donor money to
Speaker 2: allegedly profit off klansmen cannot go unchecked.
Speaker 3: Unquote.
Speaker 2: Patel has said that quote this is illegal and this
Speaker 2: is an ongoing investigation against all individuals involved. The SBLC
Speaker 2: released a video statement saying that the use of informants
Speaker 2: was quote unquote necessary and claimed, quote these individuals risked
Speaker 2: their lives to infiltrate and inform on the activities of
Speaker 2: our nation's most radical and violent extremist groups unquote. The
Speaker 2: indictment does not characterize many of these informants as quote
Speaker 2: unquote infiltrators, but rather individuals who were already members of
Speaker 2: these groups and were paid by the SBLC to share
Speaker 2: information and gossip on fellow members. The SBLC statement also
Speaker 2: said that they quote frequently shared what we learned from
Speaker 2: informants with local and federal law enforcement, including the FBI.
Speaker 2: We did not, however, share our use of informants broadly
Speaker 2: with anyone to protect the identity and safety of the
Speaker 2: informants and their families unquote. Like a lot of the
Speaker 2: people in this field, the FBI knew the SBLC was
Speaker 2: doing this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Cash, Betel announced that
Speaker 2: the FBI was severing ties with the SBOC, saying the
Speaker 2: organization had been turned into a quote unquote partisan smear
Speaker 2: machine that defamed quote unquote mainstream Americans.
Speaker 3: With its hate map Okay.
Speaker 2: Attorney Ed Martin, former head of the DOJ's Weaponization Working
Speaker 2: Group as in weaponizing the DOJ against political enemies, shared
Speaker 2: news of the indictment on x everything app and wrote, quote,
Speaker 2: they killed Charlie and they will pay unquote. So clearly
Speaker 2: this prosecution is politically motivated, right. There is political motivations
Speaker 2: behind behind deciding to do this right now. The FBI
Speaker 2: already knew that this was happening to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: but now they are going after the SBOC as a
Speaker 2: part of a targeted political prosecution, and this indictment could
Speaker 2: be seen as part of the anti Antifa nonprofit crackdown.
Speaker 2: Last March, CBS News reported that the FBI and the
Speaker 2: IRS formed a new initiative to investigate fraad at nonprofit
Speaker 2: organizations with suspected links to domestic terrorism, following federal directives
Speaker 2: to pursue Antifa aligned groups. A spokesperson from the IRS
Speaker 2: told CBS News quote, IRS Criminal Investigation is collaborating with
Speaker 2: federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to investigate individuals
Speaker 2: and entities that may be funding domestic terrorism or political violence.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's unfortunate that the SPLC was so reckless and sloppy,
Speaker 4: and the fucking amounts are shocking and indefensible, and again
Speaker 4: not necessarily in a legal sense. Like I'm very doubtful
Speaker 4: of the government's case, but I am very angry at
Speaker 4: the Southern Poverty Law Center, and I don't think it
Speaker 4: should continue to exist as an organization if it's going
Speaker 4: to do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like when you combine this, as you say,
Speaker 3: like anyone who works in this world, people working there
Speaker 3: had a mitiable time for a long time, for a
Speaker 3: great variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm I'm livid at them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is obviously evidence that the Trump administration is
Speaker 4: doing what they've said they're doing that, Like the DOJ
Speaker 4: is going to be looking into these like big you know,
Speaker 4: liberal and left aligned in goos, particularly that like are
Speaker 4: focused in combating the far right. But in terms of
Speaker 4: this showing any reason to be like scared that they're
Speaker 4: going to disappear people Like, No, the SPOC did something crazy,
Speaker 4: and I don't think that the charges specifically are valid,
Speaker 4: but like they open themselves up to get fucked with
Speaker 4: by doing something so not like give one of these
Speaker 4: people a million dollars a million dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why do they have a fake company named after
Speaker 1: the CIA? What are you guys doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, someone thought they were being a really cool secret spy.
Speaker 2: And I mean those those are some of the charges
Speaker 2: that may be able to stick. Is the sort of
Speaker 2: stuff about misrepresenting, Yeah to a federally insured bank, that
Speaker 2: that type of stuff could be easier to argue based
Speaker 2: on what I've read in the indictment. But of course
Speaker 2: that'll get settled in court.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: And as a way to sort of close this out,
Speaker 5: I think one of the things that we're running into
Speaker 5: here is one of the things that the right is
Speaker 5: being able to use here is the fact that a
Speaker 5: lot of these sort of liberal and central left NGOs
Speaker 5: absolutely sucked and like we have covered on this show,
Speaker 5: you know, a whole bunch of these organizations do in
Speaker 5: union busting, and they're like their priorities don't necessarily match
Speaker 5: what you know, I would say ours should be. And
Speaker 5: I think this is something that this administration is going
Speaker 5: to continue to sort of in some ways use as
Speaker 5: a rift point, like the fact that these groups are
Speaker 5: doing all of this unhinged shit, right, this is this
Speaker 5: is the political consequence of the structure that these NGOs
Speaker 5: use in the way that they've operated, and now there's
Speaker 5: sort of chickens are coming home to roost.
Speaker 3: I want to talk this week in our immigration segment
Speaker 3: about the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. This is
Speaker 3: the agency task with vetting and adjudicating immigration benefits. It's
Speaker 3: the only immigration agency at DHS, so traditionally hasn't done
Speaker 3: enforcement sweeps right. So for a while, particularly recently, people
Speaker 3: there have felt a little out of place at the
Speaker 3: Department of Homeland Security. Right. The idea has been keep
Speaker 3: enforcement and processing separate so that people don't have very
Speaker 3: reasonable reasons to fear doing the legal process. Right, So
Speaker 3: people continue to show up to their interviews, to submit
Speaker 3: their documents, etc. And generally they are funded in a
Speaker 3: large part by immigration fees and perceived as the friendly
Speaker 3: and more welcoming side of the process. Their job isn't
Speaker 3: historically has not been to kind of root out bad
Speaker 3: migration as so much as to help people, or at
Speaker 3: least to process people to do the bureaucratic part of migration.
Speaker 3: Under the second Trump administration, however, this has changed. There
Speaker 3: have been detentions at interviews, there have been cancelations of
Speaker 3: citizenships ceremonies. The USCAS has begun hiring for a new position,
Speaker 3: and this new position is eligible for remote work, for
Speaker 3: more remote work than existing hires, and it's called the
Speaker 3: Homeland Defender. So like we probably many people have seen
Speaker 3: these Homeland Defender advertisements on x dot com the everything website. Right,
Speaker 3: Homeland Defenders been offered up to fifty thousand dollars in
Speaker 3: signing bonuses, and at the same time as offering remote
Speaker 3: work benefits for the Homeland Defenders, the agency has been
Speaker 3: forcing other people to return to offices that could no
Speaker 3: longer fit the number of staff it had and the
Speaker 3: years of work from home. The agency grew and changed
Speaker 3: right like almost every organization did, and there were reports
Speaker 3: that you literally had like lawyers sitting in corridors working
Speaker 3: on their laptops or like trying to perch on a
Speaker 3: radiator or window sill because their offices could fit people right.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, the branding around Homeland Defender
Speaker 3: is not the way that USCIS staff traditionally saw themselves.
Speaker 3: In Minnesota, USCAS has begun reinvestigating people admitted with the
Speaker 3: incredibly highly vetted refugee status, so we already spoke about
Speaker 3: it once today. Right, the refugees are vetted before they
Speaker 3: even enter the United States. Across the country, executive orders
Speaker 3: were followed with memos pausing or entirely stopping the process
Speaker 3: of legal and veted immigration for people from an increasing
Speaker 3: number of countries. The legally mandated green cards for adult
Speaker 3: children and siblings or current citistants, as well as spouses
Speaker 3: and minor children of existing permanent residents has gone unfulfilled.
Speaker 3: This is quote unquote family based migration. They used to
Speaker 3: call it chain migration. Right. That used to be the
Speaker 3: language on the right. It's something that Trump administration has
Speaker 3: hated since its first term. Right, this has been a
Speaker 3: thing that they spoke about and that has been spoken
Speaker 3: about on the right for some time. These green cards
Speaker 3: could be reused for employment based claims, which is going
Speaker 3: to have a much larger number of people who are
Speaker 3: already in the country. It's not bringing new people in
Speaker 3: or they might go unused. Refugees are being detained without
Speaker 3: any clear legal authority and requizzed about their applications. According
Speaker 3: to reporting in The New Yorker, this means that people
Speaker 3: are being taken in detained at an ice facility right
Speaker 3: and then quiz about stuff that they'd already been asked
Speaker 3: about before they came to the United States. When they
Speaker 3: were doing that vetting, people who are married to United
Speaker 3: States citizens are being arrested at interviews, even though generally
Speaker 3: there was an amnesty of people who, for instance, had
Speaker 3: overstate a visa and then got married before. USCIS has
Speaker 3: also committed significant resources of the agency that may well
Speaker 3: have been taken away from processing claims and devoted them
Speaker 3: entirely to investigating naturalizations with the goal of denaturalizing naturalized
Speaker 3: United States citizens. This is very differ got process right.
Speaker 3: The Afreem case is the Supreme Court case which governs
Speaker 3: this right. It where refers to someone who was a
Speaker 3: Jewish communist or had been in Israel. What it says
Speaker 3: is the government cannot de citizenize someone because it doesn't
Speaker 3: agree with their politics, even in the time of anti communism. Right.
Speaker 3: Once somebody becomes a citizen, their files are removed from
Speaker 3: USCIS and they go to the National Record Center, and
Speaker 3: so calling the presumably tens of thousands of files of
Speaker 3: naturalized United States citizens and hundreds of thousands over time
Speaker 3: millions right would require some kind of filter. The most
Speaker 3: likely way this is being filtered is through their nationality right.
Speaker 3: One can imagine, for instance, that the seventy five countries
Speaker 3: Trump has paused green card processes for might be a start,
Speaker 3: or their specific focus on Somali people might even prove
Speaker 3: a more focused way of doing it right. They have
Speaker 3: had some success this week, a Belizean woman was found
Speaker 3: guilty of naturalization fraud for submitting a fake divorce degree
Speaker 3: she married an American citizen without being divorced from a
Speaker 3: previous spouse. Belize they found that she had falsified those
Speaker 3: documents right. They are also pursuing a case against a
Speaker 3: Nigerian man who's already been convicted of fraud and has
Speaker 3: already been put in prison for that, but they are
Speaker 3: now pursuing a denaturalization case as well. Virtually every interaction
Speaker 3: with USCIS now seems to require interviews in person and
Speaker 3: biometric connection. This means that applicants now have to come
Speaker 3: into an office where they know that people have been detained,
Speaker 3: and this leads to people being afraid to do that right.
Speaker 3: Petitions are slowing down as they're moved around to a
Speaker 3: dwindling workforce which is still focused on processing those as
Speaker 3: opposed to the growing amount of the USCIS workforce which
Speaker 3: is looking for quote unquote fraud in applications or attempting
Speaker 3: to denaturalize people. As we just covered, among the people
Speaker 3: waiting without visas are some people who are waiting for
Speaker 3: special visas, which are given to people who are survivors
Speaker 3: of human trafficking, gender based violence, or other crimes. This
Speaker 3: includes children. There's especially immigrant Juvenile visa, which every single
Speaker 3: person I've heard of coming on an SIJA visa has
Speaker 3: had things happen to them which I didn't struggle to
Speaker 3: think about. That we keep you up at night, and
Speaker 3: the thought that those people are waiting in limbo because
Speaker 3: they're trying to denaturalize people is particularly upsetting. I'm sure
Speaker 3: it's also upsetting to some people who've worked at USCIS
Speaker 3: their whole life, and I know that morale among those
Speaker 3: people is pretty low. While the agency sort of has
Speaker 3: changed beyond all recognition in the last couple of years.
Speaker 3: Talking of changing beyond all recognition, we're going to now
Speaker 3: pivot from journalism to probably some adverts for online Yeah,
Speaker 3: it would be shocking and jarring.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: You could change your life beyond all recognition. If you
Speaker 3: have a big win like that or a big loss. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you can change your life that way. Derekson, we're not
Speaker 3: supposed to mention that.
Speaker 1: We're back.
Speaker 4: And we all just voted on Forbes dot COM's newest
Speaker 4: prediction contest, how many people will be wounded in the
Speaker 4: next three American mass shootings.
Speaker 1: I'm excited. There's a big prize for this one.
Speaker 3: Sick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's only slightly an exaggeration of what Forbes is
Speaker 4: actually doing. Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty gross. It's pretty
Speaker 4: really hideous.
Speaker 2: It's okay, guys, it's not it's not a market, it's
Speaker 2: just our prediction platform.
Speaker 1: Prediction platform.
Speaker 2: There's no real money, only social capital.
Speaker 3: That could be the slogan of most journalistic enterprise is
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty six, to be honest, Yeah, Forbes has
Speaker 3: kind of been a blog rather than a news website.
Speaker 3: But this is still pretty disgusting.
Speaker 2: Speaking of there being no real money. Yeah, let's talk
Speaker 2: about the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 5: So when we last left are I hesitate to call
Speaker 5: them heroes, But when we last left the Federal Reserve Board,
Speaker 5: there was a very obviously cooked up investigation by the
Speaker 5: Justice Department into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. This investigation
Speaker 5: doesn't really seem to have advanced at all, but the
Speaker 5: conflict over Powell and over Powell's replacement has been intensifying
Speaker 5: in recent weeks. Last week, on the fifteenth of April,
Speaker 5: Trump threatened to fire Powell if Powell stayed on as
Speaker 5: basically the temporary Federal Reserve Chair after his term expired. Now,
Speaker 5: the reason this is happening is because Trump's attempt to
Speaker 5: get someone confirmed to replace Powell has not been going well,
Speaker 5: and if no one is confirmed by May fifteenth, then
Speaker 5: the office is just empty. And Powell has said that
Speaker 5: he wants to stay on and become the temporary chair.
Speaker 5: This is sort of unprecedented, but then again, we've also
Speaker 5: not ever had the president's open an investigation into the
Speaker 5: sitting chair of the Federal Reserve, causing him to give
Speaker 5: a reverse hostage video. So where things are right now
Speaker 5: is that we are getting hearings on Trump's preferred nominee,
Speaker 5: a man named Kevin Walsh. However, there is a real
Speaker 5: problem with worsh as as a candidate that's not doesn't
Speaker 5: have anything to do with who he is. We'll get
Speaker 5: to that in a second. The biggest issue that Trump
Speaker 5: is facing here is that Tom Tillis, who's an outgoing
Speaker 5: Republican Senator, is refusing to let any Trump appointee pass
Speaker 5: through the Finance Committee unless Trump ends the investigation into
Speaker 5: Jerome Powell. So this has had everything at a complete standstill.
Speaker 5: It was sort of unclear though a lot of different
Speaker 5: Republican senators had threatened to do something like this, But
Speaker 5: because Tillis is just leaving, he's just he's retiring at
Speaker 5: the end of this, at the end of the session.
Speaker 5: He's the one who's you know, up there doing it.
Speaker 5: And this has ground the nomination to a halt. We're
Speaker 5: still getting hearings, but there's no way for him to
Speaker 5: actually get a vote to get get this process out
Speaker 5: of committee. So into this morass steps Kevin Walsh, who
Speaker 5: he's not the most unhinged guy Trump could have picked
Speaker 5: high bar.
Speaker 3: This is, at least.
Speaker 5: Nominally, on the surface, sort of a fed guy like
Speaker 5: he has worked for the Federal Reserve Federal Reserve banks before.
Speaker 5: He's not a podcasting right, yes, actually actually.
Speaker 1: That he might have one. There's a non zero chance.
Speaker 5: He might be. He might be. I I don't know,
Speaker 5: but I am not willing to say that he is
Speaker 5: not one. So now this, this, this whole nomination has
Speaker 5: also become a mess because again, as as we've been
Speaker 5: talking about, the reason why Trump wants to basically take
Speaker 5: dirrect control of the Federal Reserve and and FED independence
Speaker 5: by installing his guys as a chairman of the Federal
Speaker 5: Reserve Board is that he wants to FED well, he
Speaker 5: wants to be able to control the FED so he
Speaker 5: can control interest rates.
Speaker 1: He wants interest rates cut.
Speaker 5: Now, this is coming up a lot in the hearings,
Speaker 5: and so far Walsh is giving answers that if you've
Speaker 5: ever watched the testimony of someone who's who's trying to
Speaker 5: get onto the Supreme Court, it's a lot like that,
Speaker 5: where they he is saying the things that he is
Speaker 5: supposed to see. He's saying that he opposes an interest
Speaker 5: rate cut. He's saying that the primary job of the
Speaker 5: FED is the combat inflation. He's saying that he believes
Speaker 5: in FED independents. But he also has said that Trump
Speaker 5: has not asked him to cut interest rates. And Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 5: who has been sort of leading the Democratic charge against this,
Speaker 5: has pointed out a number of things, one of which
Speaker 5: is in workerboard. He gets some more of the weird
Speaker 5: shit with him in a second. But one of the
Speaker 5: major things here is that the President has said that
Speaker 5: he's asked Worsh to do just rate cuts. So somebody's
Speaker 5: lying here. Worsh isn't giving non answers about that. I'm
Speaker 5: also just going to read this quote from the Associated
Speaker 5: Press quote. Warren also noted that Worsh has not disclosed
Speaker 5: all of his financial holdings, which include investments in startups
Speaker 5: and private companies, or the size of those financial stakes.
Speaker 5: For example, Worsh has said he has holdings in SpaceX
Speaker 5: and polymarkets, but has not said how large those investments are.
Speaker 3: Great, well, you can't win them off.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So later on Warre said he would divest from
Speaker 5: one hundred million dollars in investments. But you know this
Speaker 5: is great. Warren also points out that he's in the
Speaker 5: Epstein files because Epstein apparently invited him and his wife
Speaker 5: to a party. It is unclear at this point what
Speaker 5: what a connection he had, or if there was more,
Speaker 5: But that's not a great sign. Where we are right
Speaker 5: now is that Worsh is normal enough of a guy
Speaker 5: that Tom Tillis is willing to vote for him if
Speaker 5: the investigation is dropped. Tillis and some other members of
Speaker 5: the committee have been Republican members of the committee have
Speaker 5: been talking about this scheme to get the investigation transferred
Speaker 5: from the Department of Justice to the Senate Committee. I
Speaker 5: think at which point they could basically just kill it
Speaker 5: or just have it be a thing into budget overruns.
Speaker 5: That's not like an attempt to depose their own Powell.
Speaker 5: That's it's not clear what's going to happen with that,
Speaker 5: and it hasn't started yet. This is the point that
Speaker 5: we're at right now. This conflict is going to keep
Speaker 5: heating up as the May fifteenth deadline for getting a
Speaker 5: new nominee in before the board vacancy happens and Jerome
Speaker 5: Powell basically stays in power longer than his terminally last happens.
Speaker 5: So we're going to keep following this story. And there's
Speaker 5: one other story that we are going to keep following,
Speaker 5: which is there was an exclusive by the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 5: which is a report This is from unioned US officials,
Speaker 5: but it claims that the uas Central Bank governor is
Speaker 5: reportedly trying to get what's called a currency swap with
Speaker 5: the US. So what a currency swap is basically is,
Speaker 5: it's like it's a way to try to fix an
Speaker 5: exchange rate and get a country a certain amount of
Speaker 5: US dollars by just like just at the fixed exchange rate,
Speaker 5: just like swapping X amount of dollars for x amounts
Speaker 5: of another country's currency. This report was immediately denied, very
Speaker 5: very quickly denied by a series of posts on x
Speaker 5: the everything app by the UAE's embassy to the US
Speaker 5: where they gave a thing. Trump also had like started
Speaker 5: talking about this too. I'm just gonna read a little
Speaker 5: bit of this quote. We very much appreciate President Trump's
Speaker 5: recognition of the UAE is one of America's most important
Speaker 5: economic and trade partners. That recognition reflects a depth the
Speaker 5: mutual trust based on mutual investment, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 5: et cetera. Any suggestion that the UAE requires external financial
Speaker 5: backing misreads the facts. The UAE is one of the
Speaker 5: most financially resilient economies, underpinned by more than two trillion
Speaker 5: dollars in the sovereign assets, more than three hundred billion
Speaker 5: dollars in foreign currency reserves held by the UAE Central
Speaker 5: Bank and banking sectors with approximately one point five trillion
Speaker 5: in deposits. So when they start listening out the deposits,
Speaker 5: that's when things are not going great.
Speaker 3: And yeah, the.
Speaker 5: Issue here and something this is what the wallsher Jourtle
Speaker 5: is talking about, is that this is not an IDIA proposal.
Speaker 5: This is a proposal for what's becoming increasingly clear, which
Speaker 5: is that there's no there's not actually an end to
Speaker 5: the war and Iran in sight. And if the strade
Speaker 5: out from Moves remains closed, this is an existential crisis
Speaker 5: for the UAE because not only are all of their
Speaker 5: exports stopped, you know, like the UE itself is just
Speaker 5: physically under threat, is infrastructure is under threat, and it's
Speaker 5: very difficult for them to get more investments. And this
Speaker 5: could in the future start a dollar crisis of the
Speaker 5: kind that we've talked about on this show before Go
Speaker 5: if you want to, Yeah, I've talked about basically dollar
Speaker 5: crises and how you can have balance of payments crises
Speaker 5: for running out of US dollars. What's interesting about this
Speaker 5: reports and the reason that we're sort of talking about
Speaker 5: it right now, is that one of the things that
Speaker 5: the UAE reportedly was mentioning was that they might be
Speaker 5: forced to turn the Chinese currency.
Speaker 3: Its Basically, they might be forced to like sell.
Speaker 5: Oil in Chinese currency in order to like get it
Speaker 5: through the straight, which would be a apockal shift to
Speaker 5: the entire global political economy, right, which is like, the
Speaker 5: America's status in the world is in part, but in
Speaker 5: no small part, based on the fact that you can
Speaker 5: really only buy oil in dollars. And it seems like
Speaker 5: what's happening is that the UAE is looking at their
Speaker 5: long term prospects, going we're completely screwed. They're going, oh, well,
Speaker 5: don't If you don't just hand us a bunch of money,
Speaker 5: we're going to have to start looking at the underpinnings
Speaker 5: of you know, American imperial power. So we're going to
Speaker 5: continue to see where this goes. As this war continues
Speaker 5: in asces stray continues to be blocked, countries around the
Speaker 5: world are going to become more and more desperate. As
Speaker 5: the economic consequences of this ripples out across the world,
Speaker 5: We're probably going to start seeing more things like this.
Speaker 5: And at some point, if it becomes clear that the
Speaker 5: war is not going to end. In Trump's early week
Speaker 5: announcement that the ceasefires are going to keep going, stops
Speaker 5: being able to keep the stock markets from being up.
Speaker 5: We're going to start seeing an even wider spread impact
Speaker 5: of this. But this is a bleak sign from staunch
Speaker 5: us ally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have one final story before closing, which is
Speaker 2: a little funny, also worrying, but more funny.
Speaker 3: I think I think that's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Shawnee Kerkhoff, the woman that Glenn Beck's right wing outlet
Speaker 2: The Blaze falsely accused of being the January sixth pipe bomber,
Speaker 2: has launched a lawsuit against The Blaze and the two
Speaker 2: quote unquote journalists who wrote the story for context. Last November,
Speaker 2: The Blaze published a story claiming to have identified the
Speaker 2: bomber as a Capitol police officer who responded to the
Speaker 2: January sixth insurrection, based on quote forensic gate analysis which
Speaker 2: determined the officer was a quote up to ninety eight
Speaker 2: percent match to surveillance video of the bomber. Oh god.
Speaker 2: This lawsuit claims five counts of defamation and one count
Speaker 2: of defamation by implication, and Kerkhoff is requesting a jury trial.
Speaker 2: The documents claim that the Blaze report targeted her because
Speaker 2: of her actions on January sixth as a police officer
Speaker 2: and testimony she gave against insurrectionists in court, and part
Speaker 2: of the intention of targeting her was to build on
Speaker 2: this larger idea that the defendants had that January sixth
Speaker 2: was a quote unquote inside job. As these reports were
Speaker 2: getting published by The Blaze, Glenn Beck said on his show, quote,
Speaker 2: this is one of the biggest stories. I think it
Speaker 2: is the biggest scandal of my lifetime, maybe in the
Speaker 2: last one hundred years. Monstrous, bigger than Watergate. Pullit surprise
Speaker 2: winning stuff.
Speaker 3: Do you have a capacity for self delution? Stuff?
Speaker 1: Waiting for the pullets are committed to finished reviewing this one.
Speaker 3: They're gonna have to get in line after the police
Speaker 3: serprise are surely going to get for interviewing the dude
Speaker 3: who murdered Minneapolis Democratic politicians. Well, Yeah, which I'm sure
Speaker 3: was an action that his lawyer was super stoked about.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Court documents to say that because of this false claim,
Speaker 2: the CIA placed the plaintiff on administrative leave and she
Speaker 2: was forced into hiding amidst online threats from conspiracy theorists.
Speaker 2: Quote for her role in supporting the deep state, including
Speaker 2: in posts on her mother's obituary web page. Unquote, she
Speaker 2: was getting death threats on the obituary page for her mother.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in constant frustration in my life, his journalists posting
Speaker 3: screenshots from court cases and then not listening to the
Speaker 3: court listener page. So I decided to find the page
Speaker 3: so I could not be that guy. But yes, some
Speaker 3: of the threats this woman got genuinely probably made her
Speaker 3: life very difficult to live for a period of time. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: The pseudo ledgers that even after she was cleared as
Speaker 2: a suspect and weeks later another suspect was arrested who
Speaker 2: seems to be the likely bomber, these Blaze quote unquote
Speaker 2: journalists continue to harass her and that their quote false
Speaker 2: and defamatory accusations have irreparably changed her life unquote. The
Speaker 2: documents say that this ruined her lifetime career in public
Speaker 2: service by forever linking her to the bombing and records
Speaker 2: of an FBI investigation, making any potential security clearances needed
Speaker 2: in the future difficult or impossible to pass. One of
Speaker 2: the journalists was fired by the Blaze on April first,
Speaker 2: just earlier this month, and the other resigned two days later.
Speaker 2: They have since raised over twenty thousand dollars since leaving
Speaker 2: the Blaze to continue their claims on a new independent
Speaker 2: website that they're launching.
Speaker 4: Given the name of the website, the website is called Yeah,
Speaker 4: They're a toss Regnant LLC. Yes, yes, veritas. I think
Speaker 4: that just means the truth is King based trains.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, thing, that's what they were going for at least.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 4: When I read that detail, I was you guys are
Speaker 4: going to be the most sued any people have ever been.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful.
Speaker 3: Something about PITOD seems you're relevant here, mm hmmm.
Speaker 2: The document says that the plaintiff was called in to
Speaker 2: work on November sixth, where two FBI agents then asked
Speaker 2: her about quote unquote online chatter that she was the bomber.
Speaker 2: She consented to a phone and car search and was
Speaker 2: placed on administrative leave. Later that day, a quote unquote
Speaker 2: caravan of FBI vehicles arrived outside her home, including a
Speaker 2: bomb disposal truck and a helicopter. I'm just going to
Speaker 2: read from the document quote. The agents claimed that they
Speaker 2: were primarily looking for shoes agents edited their vehicles with
Speaker 2: their guns drawn in full tactical gear. An agent called
Speaker 2: mister Dickert, who is the plaintiff's boyfrien, and commanded him
Speaker 2: to quote, come out of the house unarmed with your dogs.
Speaker 2: Mister Dickard and missus Kirkhoff complied and stepped outside. Agents
Speaker 2: swept through the house, then re entered with bomb sniffing dogs.
Speaker 2: They opened cabinets, rifled through drawers, and scattered Missus Kirkhoff's
Speaker 2: and mister Dickard's belongings, all without obtaining Miss Kirkhoff's or
Speaker 2: mister Dickard's consent. It suddenly occurred to Miss Kirkhoff that
Speaker 2: they were not simply looking for a pair of shoes.
Speaker 3: Quote never heard them asking for the dogs to come
Speaker 3: out before. That was a new one for me.
Speaker 2: That is an interesting detail. That is an interesting So
Speaker 2: the plaintiff asked the agents there why they would do
Speaker 2: all this to investigate quote unquote online chatter, and as
Speaker 2: senior official responded that these orders came from quote unquote
Speaker 2: higher up and that Miss Kirkhoff could quote clear everything
Speaker 2: up just that night if she would accompany agents to
Speaker 2: the FBI office for a polygraph interview. Ms Kirkoff agreed,
Speaker 2: and agents assured her that the drive out to the
Speaker 2: office would take longer than the interview itself. This was
Speaker 2: not true. The interview lasted almost three hours. Agents repeatedly
Speaker 2: accused the plaintiff of placing the bombs and continually asserted
Speaker 2: her guilt. Part Way through the interview, the interrogator changed
Speaker 2: out the tubes on the polygraph because they quote did
Speaker 2: not like how they were reading unquote.
Speaker 3: That was a remarkable detail.
Speaker 1: Jesus yeah, oh, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: And at one point told the plaintiff that she quote
Speaker 2: unquote fail Wow, oh gosh. The plaintiff assumed, was just
Speaker 2: an interrogation technique.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't fail a polygraph test, right, It just
Speaker 3: gives information, yes, often not actually information which he's very
Speaker 3: useful in any way relevant whether you're telling the truth
Speaker 3: or not. Polygraphs not not really something that should be
Speaker 3: used in this capacity. But here we go anyway. But
Speaker 3: yet it's not like a past fail. It doesn't like
Speaker 3: a bleep, bleep bleep. I had to take ta now.
Speaker 2: After midnight, she asked if she was free to leave,
Speaker 2: and the agents said yes, so she went home. In
Speaker 2: the next day, the FBI returned her phone, and then
Speaker 2: once she got back her phone, she saw this quote
Speaker 2: unquote online chatter exploding all over alleging that she was
Speaker 2: the bomber. A day later, the Blaze published a report
Speaker 2: explicitly naming her as the bombing suspect, something they already
Speaker 2: alluded to in previous reporting, which sparked the online chatter,
Speaker 2: which caused the FBI to search her home and interrogate her.
Speaker 2: This was all intentional on the part of the Blaze.
Speaker 2: According to this court document, the defendants, these quote unquote
Speaker 2: journalists purposely forwarded a tip to the Office of the
Speaker 2: Director National Intelligence in an attempt to get quote unquote
Speaker 2: coroboration of their reporting from sources inside the government by
Speaker 2: getting the plaintiff placed under investigation prior to their publishing
Speaker 2: of the articles identifying her as the bomber that this
Speaker 2: was This was basically all.
Speaker 1: Part of a ski Their goal was to set the narrative.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ m months later, the defendants have refused to
Speaker 2: remove headlines or social media posts claiming to identify the bomber,
Speaker 2: even after the actual text of these articles was removed
Speaker 2: after the FBI arrested the real suspect in December, well
Speaker 2: just last month, the quote unquote journalists published another article
Speaker 2: on The Blaze titled quote Brian Cole Junior's physical presence, posture,
Speaker 2: mannerisms are no match to FBI's hooey clad pipe bomb
Speaker 2: suspect unquote. This was another article on The Blaze saying
Speaker 2: that Gate analysis showed that Brian Cole Junior, the actual
Speaker 2: suspect who has been arrested, does not match the Gate
Speaker 2: does does not does not have a positive Gate analysis
Speaker 2: match to the surveillance footage from that night.
Speaker 4: It's god because it's not real, because because gaate analysis
Speaker 4: is bullshit.
Speaker 3: But they break that down in the quote documents, right,
Speaker 3: The footage of her that they had was when she's
Speaker 3: carrying like fifty pounds of tactical gear and a heavy
Speaker 3: bag tactical gear.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, and she suffered a serious laying injury in college.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's comical that like they this is what they
Speaker 3: went with. But then the fact that they're doubling down
Speaker 3: on its very funny and legally baffling. Yeah, they really
Speaker 3: are not ready for the consequences to hit them on
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 2: No, So, like I said, these two Quoe unquote journalists
Speaker 2: were fired and Slash left The Blaze earlier this month,
Speaker 2: but in posts and podcast appearances, they assert that Brian
Speaker 2: Cole Junior is a quote unquote patsy, and that quote
Speaker 2: the truth about the pipe bomber has been quote unquote
Speaker 2: floored it, and that quote unquote legal considerations are preventing
Speaker 2: them from further disclosing the quote unquote darker details about
Speaker 2: their Yeah, pipe bomber theory.
Speaker 1: She's christ now.
Speaker 2: Brian Colt Junior's defense lawyers have filed a subpoena for
Speaker 2: miss Kirkoff which misleadingly states she quote unquote failed a polygraph.
Speaker 2: This subpoena also contains her home address, and the subpoena
Speaker 2: has been spread online by these quote unquote journalists as
Speaker 2: evidence that they were right all along. The plaintiff continues
Speaker 2: to deal with doxing and death threads as a result
Speaker 2: from the subpoena and the quote unuote journalists continued reporting
Speaker 2: spreading claims that she is in fact the real bomber.
Speaker 2: So Kirkoff is requesting a jury trial with these six
Speaker 2: counts of defamation, and I hope she gets a lot
Speaker 2: of money from everyone involved in this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope she gets every dollar.
Speaker 3: Glenn Beeck Hans, Yeah, I mean I hope the outlets
Speaker 3: existing that is that would be ideal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I hope the outlet becomes yet another subsidiary of
Speaker 4: the Onion.
Speaker 3: That would be a magnificent way for this to end.
Speaker 3: But yeah, like yeah, And then another element of the
Speaker 3: documents I noticed was that they talked about how the
Speaker 3: quote unquote journalists had benefited from their blue check X posts, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, monetized accounts on X.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would be interested to see as we get more
Speaker 3: in the discovery element of this case, how much were
Speaker 3: they making, how much were it making from X versus
Speaker 3: the Blaze, Like, I'm going to follow this one just
Speaker 3: because so many of the bits of misleading reporting we
Speaker 3: see are because of this financial incentive structure. So it'll
Speaker 3: be very revealing for us.
Speaker 2: And this financial structure is something that X Everything app
Speaker 2: is somewhat attempting to take on, at least for news
Speaker 2: aggregator accounts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they specifically went after Dom Lucret apparently.
Speaker 2: Yes, one of X's guys announced like a week or
Speaker 2: so ago that they're going to be reforming reforming the
Speaker 2: payout system for news aggregators. This is Nikoli de Beer.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Part of the way they're doing that is that Ex's
Speaker 4: traffic is in free fall, and this is something that
Speaker 4: we're seeing like across social media. There was a really
Speaker 4: good report that Peter Tornberg, who's an assistant professor in
Speaker 4: computational social science at the University of Amsterdam, published earlier
Speaker 4: this year. I mean, like just today came up with
Speaker 4: an update on it. On like the most recent numbers
Speaker 4: we have on like what's happening to the different social
Speaker 4: media networks. Visiting and posting on x the Everything app
Speaker 4: and Facebook have seen like a nearly fifty percent drops,
Speaker 4: a significant decline among like the youngest and the oldest
Speaker 4: users on social media, particularly like people over sixty five
Speaker 4: and people from eighteen to twenty four have seen like
Speaker 4: the biggest decline and like the time that they've actually
Speaker 4: spent on site. I'm going to be doing something more
Speaker 4: detailed about this in the future, but a lot of
Speaker 4: what you're seeing from these big social media companies and
Speaker 4: these like big pit It's right, are moves in desperation.
Speaker 4: This is not working as well as it used to.
Speaker 4: The economics that wants underpin this system are falling apart.
Speaker 4: None of these companies are as profitable as they used
Speaker 4: to be, and people are pulling away from social media,
Speaker 4: particularly from like a lot of the text based social
Speaker 4: media sites which were never as profitable as like short
Speaker 4: form video was. So I don't know, that's something that
Speaker 4: made me less bummed.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope she gets certainly all the money they
Speaker 2: got from X and learning how much money that was
Speaker 2: will be super interesting in discovery and hopefully much much
Speaker 2: much more money as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of money, James, you wanted to plug a donation.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to talk pretty briefly about the guys
Speaker 3: from Cobra column. So Cobra Column if people aren't familiar,
Speaker 3: it's a special Force or it's a PDF that is
Speaker 3: aligned with the Karen National Union COREN National Liberation Army
Speaker 3: and the struggle for liberation in the m Ar against
Speaker 3: the Hunter right. They have been fighting intensely in an
Speaker 3: area near Miawity, place that Robert and I spend some time,
Speaker 3: actually just across the river from place Robin I spend
Speaker 3: some time. Albeit the Hunter has successfully launched munitions into
Speaker 3: Thailand several times now, and they are really like if
Speaker 3: you want to look at the frontline of people's autonomy
Speaker 3: against autocracy, against dictatorship, against tyranny, like, they are at it,
Speaker 3: and they need money to sustain their efforts, to feed themselves,
Speaker 3: to equip themselves, to buy medical equipment. And I think
Speaker 3: they're also trying to buy a replacement helmets and body
Speaker 3: armor because they're getting hit by drones right and people
Speaker 3: have survival injuries, but their armor is destroyed. If you'd
Speaker 3: like to help, you can send fifteen euros for ten stickers.
Speaker 3: Stickers have the Milk Tea Alliance salute, which is the
Speaker 3: same as the solute that the Cupscats use and the
Speaker 3: one from Hunger Games. I'm not going to describe it,
Speaker 3: becauess you can work it out. It is stickers for
Speaker 3: Meanmar at ProtonMail dot com. You can send fifteen euros
Speaker 3: for two stickers. That's s T I C K E
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Speaker 3: A R at ProtonMail dot com. If you want to
Speaker 3: email us cool Zone tips at proton dot me. If
Speaker 3: it's a marketing email, I'll block you.
Speaker 5: Put a trans girl on your couch.
Speaker 1: We reported the news.
Speaker 3: Ay bye, We reported the news.
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