Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 1: But enough with that, Let's get to the show. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Counterpoints. We have a big show for everyone today.
Speaker 1: We're going to start with twenty twenty four. Go to
Speaker 1: a really concerning new bill that a bipartisan coalition of
Speaker 1: senators is promoting. On TikTok, We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: Stephen Donzinger's case and an interesting Supreme Court decision, an
Speaker 1: interesting sort of cross ideological Supreme Court decision. We're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about Sam Bankmin Frieda and China, an
Speaker 1: update in the serial case of on Sai Ed. Ryan
Speaker 1: and I both have some interesting stories. I'll be talking
Speaker 1: about Stephanie Rule, Ryan and You'll be talking about Elon
Speaker 1: Musk and India and Twitter. And then you have a
Speaker 1: fascinating interview with churn No Ba on the lab leak
Speaker 1: for everyone to watch. But just as a reminder, by
Speaker 1: the way, if you are a Spotify subscriber, you can
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Speaker 1: Spotify now. So that's awesome. I love that. I do
Speaker 1: that all the time with Brogan. I'm a huge fan
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Speaker 1: can watch full video on Spotify, which is super cool.
Speaker 1: And as people have notice, we're not rolling out all
Speaker 1: of today's show on YouTube. It'll still obviously be on
Speaker 1: the YouTube link. It'll be on the video link for
Speaker 1: premium subscribers, but for the free loaders on YouTube, don't
Speaker 1: just be just be a couple of clips and then
Speaker 1: some some more of them posted kind of throughout the
Speaker 1: week and over the over the weekend. Right, But that's Spotify. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's Spotify, and there's the and there's also the podcast
Speaker 1: of course, if you if you need the entire show
Speaker 1: today for free, yes, and as a premium subscriber myself,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad to be able to watch Crystal and
Speaker 1: Sager's beautiful faces on my Spotify, but not while you're scootering.
Speaker 1: I hope no. I would never do that. I would
Speaker 1: never do that. I actually I'm not convinced by that.
Speaker 1: I do isn't a podcast while I'm scootering, But I
Speaker 1: don't watch that. I do. You know, sometimes, like last night,
Speaker 1: I wore noise canceling headphones on a bike and I
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't be doing it. Not a great idea. This
Speaker 1: is going to come back to bite me. But let's
Speaker 1: dive right into twenty twenty four Chris Christie, which you
Speaker 1: just asked me whether or not he was declared. I
Speaker 1: don't believe he is declared. I don't think he's declared.
Speaker 1: Chris Christy, are you serious? So anyway, so Chris Christy
Speaker 1: is in the news. We can put this up here
Speaker 1: because he's telling Republican voters that you need somebody that's
Speaker 1: going to be able to go mano amano with Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And the reason that he says he's going to be
Speaker 1: able to be that one even though he was completely
Speaker 1: humiliated by Jared Kushner. If you have been humiliated and
Speaker 1: like beaten down by Jared Kushnan. I don't think you
Speaker 1: get to call yourself like the man of the macho
Speaker 1: moment if you emasculated by Jared Kushner. So he is
Speaker 1: referring back to, as everybody can probably guess by now,
Speaker 1: that time he owned Marco Rubio. Oh he loves it.
Speaker 1: It's like a high school quarterback. But the entire here's
Speaker 1: the problem. And everybody has to remember that that viral
Speaker 1: debate moment where Marco Rubio kept repeating himself saying, don't
Speaker 1: let's dispel with this notion that whatever something Obama Obama,
Speaker 1: and he said it like three times. Christy didn't own him.
Speaker 1: Everybody watching that across the world, it's like, why do
Speaker 1: you keep saying that? Like it? It was the most
Speaker 1: obvious debate gaff that I've probably ever seen in my life.
Speaker 1: And kudos to Chris Christy for saying, oh, you're doing
Speaker 1: it again. But he was doing it again. If that's all,
Speaker 1: If that's your whole rationale. He was sort of Trump
Speaker 1: before Trump in a way, like when he won the
Speaker 1: New Jersey governorship, he was this brash, macho dude who
Speaker 1: was telling the liberals, you know, where they needed to
Speaker 1: go and that that was like refreshing for a lot
Speaker 1: of kind of Republican voters. Then he buzz up with
Speaker 1: Barack Obama in twenty twelve after Hurricane Sandy, and he's
Speaker 1: been pretty much persona on Grada since then. And Trump
Speaker 1: is just you know, he's a twenty ten Chris Christie
Speaker 1: times like a thousand. You can't it's I think it's
Speaker 1: even apples and oranges. Yeah. This is the direct quote
Speaker 1: from Chris Christy, who was at sant Anselm in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire on Monday. So he's not declared, but he is
Speaker 1: roaming the New Hampshire Wilderness, which can only mean one thing.
Speaker 1: He's seriously considering a bid. Quote. You better have somebody
Speaker 1: on that stage who can do to Trump what I
Speaker 1: did to Marco, because that's the only thing that's going
Speaker 1: to defeat Donald Trump. That is a ridiculous opinion. Like
Speaker 1: first and foremost, like that is if you compare what
Speaker 1: he did to Marco to any of their attempts to
Speaker 1: take down Donald Trump, not just in the Republican primary
Speaker 1: and sixteen, but since then, absolutely nothing works because as
Speaker 1: soon as you try to mud wrestle with Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: you lose. There is absolutely nobody who can mud wrestle
Speaker 1: with Donald Trump and beat him. He is the in
Speaker 1: disputed champion of American political mud wrestling. And if someone
Speaker 1: can show me another politician that can beat Donald Trump
Speaker 1: at mud wrestling, I would be shocked. And it's not
Speaker 1: going to come from you saying that Marco Rubio is
Speaker 1: repeating himself. It is just not on par with that
Speaker 1: at all. Right, And Trump had already almost literally emasculated
Speaker 1: him with the little Marco and then you know they
Speaker 1: got into the whole contest about who had bigger hands, yes,
Speaker 1: and Trump just went right there. Yeah, none of these
Speaker 1: people are up for what Trump's going to bring. That's
Speaker 1: a good point because Mark Rubio memorably went after the
Speaker 1: size of Trump's hands in South Carolina because there were
Speaker 1: all of these reports saying Donald Trump is really really
Speaker 1: insecure about the size of his hands, because that's innuendo,
Speaker 1: and is actually very insecure about the size of you
Speaker 1: can fill in the blank. And Marco Rubio's team really
Speaker 1: thought that they got him on that one, like they
Speaker 1: really thought that was the way to go. And you
Speaker 1: can't mount wrestle with Donald Trump. He basically came out
Speaker 1: and had a hilarious response that endeared more voters to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. It completely backfired. It's just impossible. So if
Speaker 1: Chris Christy, who by the way, is asked by an
Speaker 1: audience member, when are you going to take down Trump, replies,
Speaker 1: I have my timetable. If he seriously thinks that he
Speaker 1: can mud wrestle with Donald Trump and come out on top,
Speaker 1: he's more delusional than I even realized. So speaking of
Speaker 1: delusional Ron Santas, so let's I do not support or
Speaker 1: endorse that transition. So let's play. So. Megan Kelly has
Speaker 1: apparently been asking Rond de Santis to come on to
Speaker 1: her show for an interview for quite some time. He
Speaker 1: hasn't said yes yet. She saw him on Pierce Morgan recently.
Speaker 1: That got her upset and that led to this clip.
Speaker 1: Let's play Meagan Kelly here. I will say for the record,
Speaker 1: we asked DeSantis to come on the show. He has
Speaker 1: not said yes, and I find that very interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: I love Piers Morgan, He's a pala mine. Well why
Speaker 1: would you go sit with the British guy and not
Speaker 1: come on the show. And I do think there's a
Speaker 1: reason for it, and I will adventure to say he's afraid.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna put out there he's afraid because he
Speaker 1: knows the kind of interview that I would give him.
Speaker 1: He's not going to get a pass, same as Trump
Speaker 1: never got a pass from me. This is into the machismo,
Speaker 1: tough guy, who can do you know, who can handle
Speaker 1: it better? And so how does this work for DeSantis
Speaker 1: to have, first of all, to have Megan Kelly here?
Speaker 1: So who is Megan Kelly in the Republican ecosystem right now?
Speaker 1: Because she's she's kind of transformed her role a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Megan Kelly is an extremely popular podcaster. I mean
Speaker 1: you can just call it at this point what it
Speaker 1: is an extremely popular broadcaster who has pretty wide reach
Speaker 1: on the right and I think probably in the center
Speaker 1: as well, voters that rond de Santis will definitely need.
Speaker 1: I actually was on a jeep tour in a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, and a woman from Florida recognized me
Speaker 1: from going on Megan Kelly's show. Whenever I go on
Speaker 1: her show, I hear from people I went to high
Speaker 1: school with. That's always kind of like my marker of
Speaker 1: how big the show is, Like if it gets out
Speaker 1: into kind of your high school friends you haven't seen
Speaker 1: twenty years or something. It's huge, h It's a huge show.
Speaker 1: And I do think it's important to the voters that
Speaker 1: Rond de Santis would need to win, So I anticipate
Speaker 1: this actually means Rnda Santis is going to be on
Speaker 1: Megan Kelly's show fairly quickly, and I actually think that's
Speaker 1: probably what she was doing. And I do think it's true.
Speaker 1: People definitely, especially on the left, I think, underestimate Megan Kelly.
Speaker 1: She gives good interviews, She's like very prosecutorial in her
Speaker 1: interviews of candidates, and I think it's probably makes sense
Speaker 1: that ronand DeSantis, at this stage, not having formally announced anything,
Speaker 1: would want to avoid that on his book tour because
Speaker 1: that's where he's been making all these media appearances with
Speaker 1: Piers Morgan and everyone else that you wouldn't necessarily want
Speaker 1: to dive into like a pretty prosecutorial back and forth
Speaker 1: worth and in a venue that is important to you
Speaker 1: because of the people that it reaches. So that would
Speaker 1: be my road on the situation. But I think this
Speaker 1: probably does get DeSantis on the show. So basic you're
Speaker 1: saying that she's right, that right, that he that tough
Speaker 1: questions like the kind that Megan Kelly delivers don't play
Speaker 1: into the strategy around a book tour, right, the book
Speaker 1: tour strategy Megan Kelly's is not on it for a reason. Interesting,
Speaker 1: I think that's true. I mean with Piers Morgan it's tabloidy, right,
Speaker 1: it's more you know, what do you think about Donald
Speaker 1: Trump saying this and that and it's not going to
Speaker 1: be I think probably like you've said this and you
Speaker 1: did that, like you you used to support privatizing sales security,
Speaker 1: Like where are you now that kind of thing? Right,
Speaker 1: here's Morgan's not going to do that. No, he's not
Speaker 1: going to do that. That's what we would do. So
Speaker 1: we should put a request out to DeSantis and then
Speaker 1: if he does, if he's not on here by next week,
Speaker 1: we can shame him. How's that We should start doing
Speaker 1: that more often? Once a week we should shame someone
Speaker 1: into coming on the show and see what happens. We'd
Speaker 1: love to have to Santis. It would be a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. But on that note, Mike Pence is also
Speaker 1: making the rounds. He though even though he's making the rounds,
Speaker 1: I will also say he is wrapped into the January
Speaker 1: sixth situation. This is news for me. Yesterday, a federal
Speaker 1: judge has ordered former Vice president Mike Pence to testify
Speaker 1: before in the federal probe of Donald Trump's bid to
Speaker 1: subvert the twenty twenty election. According to a person familiar
Speaker 1: with the ruling, so that's a big hurdle. Mike Pence's
Speaker 1: team has sort of resisted it, so clearly they see
Speaker 1: it as a big hurdle. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know that it's well, why does this team against because
Speaker 1: they they've turned kind of state's evidence in public pretty consistently.
Speaker 1: They've come after him on every platform that they can find.
Speaker 1: Is it just the fact that they don't want to
Speaker 1: be seen collaborating with Democrats and coming after him. I
Speaker 1: think that's probably it. I think that's when I was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, you know, what the sticking point
Speaker 1: might be. There's I think it's the optics. First of all,
Speaker 1: it's the optics of being pulled into a grand jury
Speaker 1: probe not great, and on top of it, yet looks
Speaker 1: like you can see how it would be framed as
Speaker 1: like collusion with the force that are out to get
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Now this is a quote from Politico. Legal
Speaker 1: scholars generally agree that Pence has a legitimate case that
Speaker 1: his role as President of the Senate may warrant immunity
Speaker 1: from testimony sought by the executive branch. So the Federal
Speaker 1: Appeals for Court in Washington is expected to rule imminently
Speaker 1: on a separate effort that's related to Scott Parry. So
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of about a power's situational axceparation of
Speaker 1: powers question and not as clear cut as maybe it seems.
Speaker 1: On top of that, did you see what John Stewart
Speaker 1: said about uh, about the Trump and diaverments. This was
Speaker 1: pretty fun. Yeah, we rolled rolled John Stewart here. Oh,
Speaker 1: the law should always take into account someone's popularity. I
Speaker 1: think that's that's I mean, what what's happened to our
Speaker 1: country for It's as though you can't even commit financial
Speaker 1: fraud anymore. You can't. You can't inflate the value of
Speaker 1: your properties when you need a loan and then deflate
Speaker 1: it with taxes. I mean, the next thing you know,
Speaker 1: they're going to send you to jail instead of your
Speaker 1: lawyer and your accountant and your campaign manager and everyone
Speaker 1: else around you. It's no to the idea that someone
Speaker 1: may face accountability who's that rich and powerful is outrageous
Speaker 1: and this country shouldn't stand. But what if what if
Speaker 1: it turns out to be his get out of jail
Speaker 1: free pass, it's his bath to people will see him
Speaker 1: as a martyr. He gets here, Okay. I regreon with
Speaker 1: that is I don't I'm president again. He could become
Speaker 1: president anyway. For Reid, we either have the rule of
Speaker 1: law or we have no rule of law. The rule
Speaker 1: of law does not take into account if that might
Speaker 1: make you a martyr to somebody. I'd much rather have
Speaker 1: the conversation be what is the law? Well, that is
Speaker 1: the conversation, now what is the law? He also goes
Speaker 1: on to say, this is on Free Zakaria Sunday show,
Speaker 1: that all prosecution is political something to that extent. I
Speaker 1: think Zakaria said that was sort of the issue here,
Speaker 1: and I think that is fundamentally the issue here. If
Speaker 1: we're talking about trumping up a campaign finance violation into
Speaker 1: felony on a legal theory that is not very widely
Speaker 1: accepted and applying it to a former president, that's not
Speaker 1: just saying we either have the rule of law or
Speaker 1: we don't, so that would be my pushback on it.
Speaker 1: He is. Generally, the point I think is correct that
Speaker 1: it's laughable to say we shouldn't have accountability for very
Speaker 1: powerful people, whether they're on the left of the right,
Speaker 1: or whether it creates sort of discord in the public
Speaker 1: or not. I mean, that's how you end up getting
Speaker 1: in this stupid tip for tat. So I agree with
Speaker 1: that point, but in the specific case of the campaign
Speaker 1: finance probe, I think it's ridiculous, right, because rule of
Speaker 1: law doesn't mean you can kind of produce a new
Speaker 1: law to fit a new rule, and the rule being
Speaker 1: that you're under a lot of pressure to indict Donald
Speaker 1: Trump for something. It's the opposite, right, I think Donald Trump, obviously,
Speaker 1: I think to me, has committed a bunch of different
Speaker 1: crimes and it shouldn't be that difficult for Democrats to
Speaker 1: find a serious one, rather than this thing where they're
Speaker 1: saying that the bookkeeping wasn't done correctly around the way
Speaker 1: that they made the payment to Michael Cohen to reimburse
Speaker 1: him for the payoff to Stormy Daniels, and that then
Speaker 1: campaign finances involved. So then we're gonna rash it up
Speaker 1: to like a low level fellon. They're related to that,
Speaker 1: we don't you know, there are these types of deals
Speaker 1: are done all the time, you know, a settlement, a
Speaker 1: payoff for silence, an NDA. It's it's not necessarily criminal.
Speaker 1: And so what they have to do is they have
Speaker 1: to then find some basically paperwork violation around it, rather
Speaker 1: than saying, wait a minute, did this guy sell American
Speaker 1: foreign policy to Saudi Arabia for a two billion dollar check?
Speaker 1: But let's let's see if he did that. If he
Speaker 1: did that and we can watch and we can see
Speaker 1: how the money flows, Uh, then let's let's prosecute him
Speaker 1: for that. But then that's where we don't actually have
Speaker 1: rule of law, because once you kind of if you
Speaker 1: subpoena the bank records of the Arab Emirates leadership, the
Speaker 1: Saudi Saudi leadership, you're gonna see money flowing in all
Speaker 1: sorts of places. And if you actually did follow that money,
Speaker 1: you'd have to corral a lot more people than just Trump.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's why he's gotten away with
Speaker 1: his bigger, more brazen crimes, because there are crimes that
Speaker 1: are obviously like way outside the bounds, but so is
Speaker 1: most of what Washington does. He's just a little bit
Speaker 1: more kind of reckless and unapologetic about it. So they
Speaker 1: have to try to find other things. And the porn
Speaker 1: star thing is perfect because very few politicians you're gonna
Speaker 1: get caught up in something like that. That's a very
Speaker 1: trumpy thing. And so they're like, all right there that
Speaker 1: that seems like outside of what the normal politician does.
Speaker 1: So let's prosecute him for that. That way, we can
Speaker 1: let the rest of this ecosystem just rest in peace.
Speaker 1: Even the charges done in Georgia I think are more serious.
Speaker 1: Don't go for those. Find me eleven thousand votes, like
Speaker 1: that's like, just try that see if like and you know,
Speaker 1: they are trying to try it. We'll see how the
Speaker 1: grand jury goes. But I would much rather see a
Speaker 1: jury hear that evidence and weigh that, like, did he
Speaker 1: actually try to illegally, you know, flip the election in Georgia? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll see how it plays out with Pence DeSantis, potentially
Speaker 1: Chris Christy. The way they handle this January sixth probit
Speaker 1: is ongoing and of itself, I think is an interesting question.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to TikTok Ryan. This is fairly big
Speaker 1: news that I haven't seen basically any coverage from the
Speaker 1: corporate media of and I looked, actually, when the Restrict Act,
Speaker 1: which is being supported, it's sponsored by Mark Warner, has
Speaker 1: a very bipartisan coalition behind it, eleven Democrats, eleven Republicans.
Speaker 1: It is aimed at TikTok. It does not say the
Speaker 1: word TikTok once in the bill, which is always a
Speaker 1: giant red flag here in Washington. When a bill that
Speaker 1: is aimed at doing one thing doesn't mention it, that's
Speaker 1: always a sign that the language is probably wildly overly broad.
Speaker 1: Some screenshots from the bill started circulating on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: I think this is where a lot of people in
Speaker 1: the media, myself included, turned and paid attention to the
Speaker 1: Restrict Act after Mark Warner was promoting it on Face
Speaker 1: the Nation Sunday. If you dig into the text of
Speaker 1: this bill, it is outrageously broad. And I think it
Speaker 1: was Greg Price on Twitter. So this is the Patriot
Speaker 1: Act for the Internet. A couple of things. This is
Speaker 1: Michael Sabolik. He says, there's a reason the White House
Speaker 1: supports this legislation. They don't want to ban TikTok. The
Speaker 1: bill gives them a gigantic loophole to avoid doing so.
Speaker 1: The Warner Thoon restrict Act is not a TikTok bill.
Speaker 1: If this thing passes, the chances of a TikTok ban
Speaker 1: or forced divestment grow incredibly small. Why the bill slow
Speaker 1: walks actions against transactions that are under review right now.
Speaker 1: So if anything, when we saw that like bipartisan display
Speaker 1: of animosity towards TikTok, which by the way is like
Speaker 1: five years overdue in Congress last week, and you know,
Speaker 1: people who are maybe on the anti establishment side started
Speaker 1: getting nervous, rightfully, So this is why. And we already
Speaker 1: have Syphius, which is what they're sort of referring to.
Speaker 1: So Syphius is a law that says that if there's
Speaker 1: some type of infrastructure that is critical to the United
Speaker 1: States that is being taken over by a foreign government,
Speaker 1: then that can't just be a normal business transaction. It
Speaker 1: has to get approved by this licifious board. I think
Speaker 1: one example was, like I think the UAE back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and six tried to buy a bunch of ports,
Speaker 1: And this was right after a couple of years, after
Speaker 1: nine to eleven, and the country was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: we don't want to sell our ports to a foreign government,
Speaker 1: and whether no offense to UEE, but just in general,
Speaker 1: we'd like to keep control of that. As what's Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's line, you don't have a country. Yeah, if somebody
Speaker 1: else controls your ports like that, you can imagine how
Speaker 1: that can become problematic at some point. Yes, And so
Speaker 1: that's why there has to be these sifiust reviews. And
Speaker 1: so if there is a case the government can make
Speaker 1: that TikTok is encroaching on some type of critical infrastructure,
Speaker 1: whether social media, the narrative control is basically what this
Speaker 1: is coming down to, then put it before the safiest
Speaker 1: review and beat it there like you, in other words,
Speaker 1: where it is right you already which is where it
Speaker 1: is and frankly should be, and you already have the
Speaker 1: laws in the book. So then why why this Resist Act?
Speaker 1: Why this overly broad piece of legislation that they're pushing forward.
Speaker 1: And the people who are circulating these screenshots on Twitter
Speaker 1: might seem paranoid, but if you read the law, they're right,
Speaker 1: like this it is. It is extremely overbroad. It does
Speaker 1: it even mentions the Patriot Act. It linked you know,
Speaker 1: it's using Patriot Act language in the It combines power definitions, right,
Speaker 1: it combines powers with Patriot Act. It references parts of
Speaker 1: the Patriot Act that would apply in this case to
Speaker 1: the entities they're describing. And some of it is just
Speaker 1: funny jingoistic American imperialism. I think we have this first
Speaker 1: part up here, where it says where they define foreign
Speaker 1: adversary means any foreign government or regime determined by the
Speaker 1: Secretary pursuant to sections three and five to have engaged
Speaker 1: in a long term pattern serious instances of conduct significantly
Speaker 1: adverse to the national security of the United States or
Speaker 1: the security and safety of United States persons. So all
Speaker 1: the Secretary would have to do is say this a
Speaker 1: country fits this definition, and then if that country has
Speaker 1: any controlling, any share at all in the company that
Speaker 1: it would then be under the kind of unilateral authority
Speaker 1: of the Secretary. And then they list some just in
Speaker 1: case you're curious about who they are. These ones are
Speaker 1: definitely included, China, Cuba, Get out of here, Cuba, are
Speaker 1: you serious? The Cuban apps come on, Iran, of course,
Speaker 1: North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. But they specify Venezuela under
Speaker 1: the regime of Nicolas Mondoro Moros so Venezuela as long
Speaker 1: as they get rid of because we don't recognize. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: So that's why they're saying that that that Venezuela doesn't
Speaker 1: really exist as far as we're concerned. But since it's
Speaker 1: actually alive, now we're going to put them in this law.
Speaker 1: And then when I said any amount of stock that
Speaker 1: they that they own, they define holding as quote an equity, interests,
Speaker 1: a stock, a security, a share, a partnership interest, an
Speaker 1: interest in a limited liability company, a membership interest, or
Speaker 1: any participation right or other equivalent, however, designated end of
Speaker 1: any character. So basically, you know, if anybody that the
Speaker 1: Secretary finds to have done anything negative to any US
Speaker 1: person has any interest in a company, then that company
Speaker 1: comes under their purfew. It's nuts. Tucker Carlston called attention
Speaker 1: to what you were saying about foreign adversaries, and he says,
Speaker 1: what's a foreign adversary? And who gets to decide? The
Speaker 1: Secretary of Commerce and the Department and the DN I
Speaker 1: not the Congress, they get to decide what foreign adversaries are.
Speaker 1: He goes on to point out that the transactions with
Speaker 1: foreign adversaries covered by the restrict Act would include quote
Speaker 1: this is from the bill, any acquisition, importation, rants for installation,
Speaker 1: dealing in, or use of any information in communications technology,
Speaker 1: product or service, including ongoing activities such as mandated service
Speaker 1: as data transmission software updates, repairs with the provision of
Speaker 1: data hosting services. And it gives the government basically the
Speaker 1: ability to tap into all kinds of your different communications
Speaker 1: technological communications methods in order to make these determinations valuations
Speaker 1: as they're referred to in the bill. It's just incredibly broad.
Speaker 1: No surprise that you have a bipartisan coalition of Mark Orner,
Speaker 1: je On Thun all kinds of establishment Republicans and Democrats
Speaker 1: are ready to have twenty one sponsors is a fairly
Speaker 1: big deal. Josh Hawley has a clean TikTok ban on
Speaker 1: the table, and he has for a while. It is
Speaker 1: just a ban of TikTok. Of course, that's not what
Speaker 1: they want to do when they say they want to
Speaker 1: ban TikTok. They want to expand the surveillance powers of
Speaker 1: the federal government. And that is exactly what they put
Speaker 1: in writing here. And when reading these types of bills,
Speaker 1: it's always useful to go to the very end of
Speaker 1: a section because there'll be specific, specific, specifics specific, and
Speaker 1: then the very last one will be like and anything
Speaker 1: else we didn't cover. They have a good example of
Speaker 1: this one here in what is this section section three
Speaker 1: a subsection two here that a company that quote otherwise
Speaker 1: poses an undo or unacceptable risk to the national security
Speaker 1: of the United States or the safety of United States persons.
Speaker 1: So all of these things, but then also anything that
Speaker 1: we say is unacceptable, like literally if it's unacceptable, well,
Speaker 1: what's what's something that's not acceptable? Well, it's something that's unacceptable.
Speaker 1: So why right there in the law my t shirt
Speaker 1: is explaining I don't understand why I'm raising so many questions. So,
Speaker 1: and I think this goes to the broader point that
Speaker 1: the debate has been held publicly around data security and privacy, which,
Speaker 1: as somebody who has covered data security and privacy for
Speaker 1: fifteen years now, it makes a mockery of the way
Speaker 1: that Congress thinks about data security and privacy. They have
Speaker 1: no interest for them. I mean, there is a bipartisan
Speaker 1: coalition that we've talked about on the show before that
Speaker 1: does really good work and trying to push back against
Speaker 1: the national security state when it comes to this. But
Speaker 1: in general, the majority of Congress it does not care
Speaker 1: about privacy, does not care about that type of thing.
Speaker 1: They barely understand it. And so to have them now
Speaker 1: saying that they're so concerned about your data that they're
Speaker 1: going to ban TikTok just doesn't pass the sniff test.
Speaker 1: What it really is about, and I think Crystal's talked
Speaker 1: about this too, is that they don't like the fact
Speaker 1: that a China backed social media company can control the
Speaker 1: narrative inside the United States. I think they should just
Speaker 1: have that debate, because I think you can actually make
Speaker 1: you can make a case like, Okay, you know what,
Speaker 1: maybe that isn't good, And a lot of other countries
Speaker 1: would say, you know what, we don't want if Voice
Speaker 1: of America, for instance, was like as dominant in China
Speaker 1: as TikTok is in the United States, unthinkable, China be
Speaker 1: like no, no, no no, no, no, what are you doing.
Speaker 1: In fact, lots of countries did ban Voice of America
Speaker 1: because we're sending in American propaganda and then we would
Speaker 1: try to like figure out ways to like get it
Speaker 1: in anyway like this, the propaganda war between countries has been,
Speaker 1: you know, has been basically part of kind of geopolitics
Speaker 1: going back to the medieval ages, with like ever since
Speaker 1: you had a printing press, you had people slipping propaganda
Speaker 1: in the behind enemy line. So have that argument rather
Speaker 1: than trying to pretend like all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: care about privacy. Yeah, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And the
Speaker 1: House Financial Services Committee put out a tweet where they
Speaker 1: said the restrict Act is using TikTok as a smoke
Speaker 1: screen for the largest expansion of executive power since the
Speaker 1: I E E. P A. The US can't beat China
Speaker 1: been becoming more like the Chinese Communist Party, which is
Speaker 1: to say, expanding surveillance powers massively over people. I think
Speaker 1: that's fairly well put, and it signals to me, honestly
Speaker 1: that the restrict Act has been come in short time,
Speaker 1: fairly toxic. I expect you'll see people actually revoke their
Speaker 1: support for the bill. I don't think it'll get much
Speaker 1: more support since it's gotten this level of public attention,
Speaker 1: at least on the right. I have again really not
Speaker 1: seen mainstream so called mainstream outlets cover this at all.
Speaker 1: The bill has been out for a while some conservatives
Speaker 1: were on top of it several weeks ago. But I
Speaker 1: think that even the House Financial Services tweet is from
Speaker 1: several weeks ago but really not getting any coverage in
Speaker 1: the mainstream press that said, it's not going to pick
Speaker 1: up any more Republicans. I'm fairly confident at this point,
Speaker 1: and I would if I were going to make an
Speaker 1: appeal to my fellow lefties, I would say, would you
Speaker 1: want to give this authority to Donald Trump to pressure YouTube?
Speaker 1: Let's say he has a falling out with Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk is like, you know, juicing the algorithm
Speaker 1: against Trump. Would you want Trump to be able to
Speaker 1: threaten to shut down Twitter because Saudi Arabia has a
Speaker 1: gigantic entry. Do you want Trump to be able to
Speaker 1: threaten YouTube? Or Trump to be able to threaten Facebook
Speaker 1: or Like or any president to have this amount of authority.
Speaker 1: I made those arguments all during the Obama era, over
Speaker 1: the Drone War and over other you know, warnings of
Speaker 1: what a theoretical Republican president who followed Obama might do
Speaker 1: with this executive authority that Obama was aggregating to it himself,
Speaker 1: and it all fell on deaf ears. So I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that this argument is going to work well with
Speaker 1: them either. But of course it turned out that all
Speaker 1: of your warnings were just hyperbolic and wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Trump.
Speaker 1: Trump didn't do anything. It didn't didn't abuse executive thory
Speaker 1: at all. That was fine. Why would he do that?
Speaker 1: That was totally fine, you know. Yeah. And the other
Speaker 1: thing that I just to add really quickly is the
Speaker 1: administrative state or the executive branch, is one of the
Speaker 1: most indirect forms of democracy that we have right now,
Speaker 1: especially the way it's abused, the way the powers that
Speaker 1: rest in the administrative state are often abused. And this
Speaker 1: punts so much power to the Secretary of Commerce that
Speaker 1: the bill is specifically just like creates a new universe
Speaker 1: of powers for the Secretary of Commerce in a way
Speaker 1: that is very hard to hold to account outside of
Speaker 1: a presidential election. You'd have to take this out basically
Speaker 1: on the president of the United States. So another thing
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on, ye, And the Secretary Commerce
Speaker 1: is basically just a big donor as the position that
Speaker 1: goes to like the richest person, right yeah, in this administration.
Speaker 1: And the last one, speaking of money and politics, let's
Speaker 1: move on to the Supreme Court case involving or the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court's decision actually not to hear a case involving
Speaker 1: Stephen Donzinger, something that the show has certainly covered over
Speaker 1: the years. Ryan, Basically, you have on Monday, Neil Gorsich
Speaker 1: Brett Cavanaugh dissenting from the Court's decision not to review
Speaker 1: a lower court's ruling involving Donzinger's case, who's sentenced to
Speaker 1: six months in prison for contempt of court. You know
Speaker 1: this case like three years in the end, right, right,
Speaker 1: And you know this case much better than I do.
Speaker 1: But the descent was really interesting. It basically gets over separation,
Speaker 1: It gets into separation of powers questions, which is where
Speaker 1: you see Gorsich and Kavanaugh dissenting and where you see
Speaker 1: interesting decisions from the ostensibly liberal members of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: What did you make of this? And we were just
Speaker 1: last segment talking about an administrative state and the rights
Speaker 1: hostility toward it, and I suspect that that's where some
Speaker 1: of this is coming from. So why the liberals wouldn't
Speaker 1: side here and why Gorsich and Kavanaugh fell down the
Speaker 1: way they did. But I think Gorsis and Kavanaugh are
Speaker 1: right on this one. So to recap for people who
Speaker 1: haven't followed this the key thing to understand here. So
Speaker 1: Donziger represented plaintiffs who were suing Chevron and Ecuador Chevron.
Speaker 1: Chevron requested that the case go down to Ecuador and
Speaker 1: be handled there where they thought they had a better
Speaker 1: chance of prevailing. As Neil Gorsich rights in his descent,
Speaker 1: Chevron would live to regret that decision because there's a
Speaker 1: nine plus billion dollar verdict against Chevron that that Donziger won.
Speaker 1: Chevron then comes back to the New York, back to
Speaker 1: the United States and starts fighting Donziger there, saying that
Speaker 1: it was unfair the way that Donziger, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: was able to you know, manipulate, manipulate and bribe the court,
Speaker 1: et cetera, in order to give in order to give
Speaker 1: him this uh get get in order to win this verdict,
Speaker 1: which is just hilarious to hear one of the wealthiest,
Speaker 1: uh and most powerful organizations on the planet saying that
Speaker 1: they got got beaten by you know this these indigenous
Speaker 1: plaintiffs down in Ecuador and just just completely unfair in
Speaker 1: the court hippy lawyer in the court that they asked
Speaker 1: to be sent down to so uh they got they
Speaker 1: get back to the United States. The judge demands to
Speaker 1: demands Donziger turn over all of his electronic equipment in
Speaker 1: order to kind of go in a fishing expedition to
Speaker 1: see if they can prove these Chevron allegations. He says, no,
Speaker 1: that that's a massive violation of attorney clink privilege, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. The judge holds him in contempt, refers to
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice for a criminal prosecution. The Department
Speaker 1: of Justice looks at it and says, no, thank you,
Speaker 1: like we are going to use our prosecutoral discretion and
Speaker 1: we are not going to prosecute this contempt case. Go
Speaker 1: on about your case, leave us out of this. The
Speaker 1: judge then appoints a private prosecutor from a law firm
Speaker 1: that had done business with Chevron, and the private attorney
Speaker 1: then prosecutes this contempt charge. Donziger is prevented by the
Speaker 1: same judge from having injury. Instead, it's the judge who
Speaker 1: is prosecuting him. It's bizarre that finds him guilty and
Speaker 1: then sentences him to prison. And so Donziger has appealed,
Speaker 1: and the appeal is narrow on the question of whether
Speaker 1: or not the judge had the legal or the constitutional
Speaker 1: right to appoint this prosecut And I would encourage people
Speaker 1: to read Coursach is decent, it's short, it's signed by Kavanaugh.
Speaker 1: It's very clear. He makes the point. He says, Look,
Speaker 1: nobody thinks that the executive can appoint my law clerks.
Speaker 1: Why I have the quote right here? Go ahead, He says.
Speaker 1: The notion that the Constitution allows one branch to install
Speaker 1: non officer employees and another branch would come as a
Speaker 1: surprise to many. Who really thinks that the president may
Speaker 1: choose law clerks for my colleagues, that we can pick
Speaker 1: White House staff for him, or that either he or
Speaker 1: we are entitled to select aids for the Speaker of
Speaker 1: the House. Why do judges on the left not join
Speaker 1: a dissent like that? If they had, there's three liberals
Speaker 1: left in the court. If they had and they joined
Speaker 1: these two, they could have vacated this conviction. Absolutely so
Speaker 1: why didn't they, my guess, and they didn't. They don't
Speaker 1: have to give a reason when they reject cert things,
Speaker 1: just say we don't want to hear this. My guest
Speaker 1: goes back to the administrative state that they that they
Speaker 1: were worried that if this judge's appointment of this prosecutor
Speaker 1: is ruled invalid, then somehow they're going to peel that
Speaker 1: back and say, okay, well then OSHA is also unconstitutional
Speaker 1: or the e p A is on constitution or something
Speaker 1: like that, which I think is just absurd. Like, first
Speaker 1: of all, the idea that you're you can capitulate away
Speaker 1: and the right is going to stop coming after OSHA
Speaker 1: or the e p A is absurd, like're you're coming
Speaker 1: for it, like it's it's happening. Whether this dirty water
Speaker 1: and dirty air and I want it now unsafe conditions
Speaker 1: in all workplaces, yeah damn it. And but so whether
Speaker 1: whether this particular case went that way, I don't think
Speaker 1: UH is going to affect that broader war at all.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, the the liberal justices are liberal
Speaker 1: when it comes to kind of civil and civil rights
Speaker 1: and cultural issues over the years. But if you look
Speaker 1: at cases that the Chamber of Commerce has, you know,
Speaker 1: has weighed in on liberal justice, is often are siding
Speaker 1: with the Chamber of Commerce. So it's not as if,
Speaker 1: in other words, they're not going to stick their neck
Speaker 1: out to buck Chevron. Yeah. Now, I remember when Catanja
Speaker 1: Brown Jackson was up for confirmation. I interviewed Marshall Blackburn
Speaker 1: about some of her plans for it and asked specifically
Speaker 1: if her staff was reviewing Jackson's record on sort of
Speaker 1: corporate powers, and she told me yes. I don't know
Speaker 1: whether or not that was the case, but that's what
Speaker 1: she said. And I think it's kind of an interesting
Speaker 1: question as to whether you see that aligned realignment start
Speaker 1: hitting the Supreme Court because corporate power is on the right.
Speaker 1: One of the big things they challenge when it comes
Speaker 1: to ESG, when it comes to DEI, is in fact
Speaker 1: the sort of corporate consolidation of powers and the way
Speaker 1: that they're used. But at the same time, the rights
Speaker 1: entire institutional judicial movement is fairly Chamber of Commerce friendly,
Speaker 1: so it would take a lot of like unwinding. But
Speaker 1: I think it's a good point too, because you see
Speaker 1: it on the left as well, that the sort of
Speaker 1: institutional progressive legal movement is tied up in many ways
Speaker 1: with the political establishment. And we'll just just wrap with
Speaker 1: Gorsich here. He concludes, however much the District Court may
Speaker 1: have thought, mister Donzeger warranted punishment. The prosecution in this case,
Speaker 1: Brokes broke a basic constitutional promise essential to our liberty
Speaker 1: in this country. Judges have no more power to initiate
Speaker 1: a prosecution of those who come before them than prosecutors
Speaker 1: have to sit in judgment of those they charge. In
Speaker 1: the name of the quote United States, two different groups
Speaker 1: of prosecutors have asked us to turn a blind eye
Speaker 1: to this promise. Respectfully, I would not with this court's
Speaker 1: failure to interview today only and he goes on to say,
Speaker 1: I hope that this doesn't become precedent because that helps her.
Speaker 1: Would that be like then we're in the kind of
Speaker 1: like the Spanish court where the judges become the prosecutors, which,
Speaker 1: all right, if you want to have that system, have
Speaker 1: that system. But that's not the one that we have. No,
Speaker 1: not at all, not even close. No, speaking of our system,
Speaker 1: let's transition to Sam Bankman Freed. This is from Reuters.
Speaker 1: US prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled a new indictment against SPF,
Speaker 1: accusing the founder of the now bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange
Speaker 1: of paying a forty million dollar bribe to Chinese officials
Speaker 1: so that they would unfreeze his hedge funds accounts. This
Speaker 1: adds to the pressure on the thirty one year old
Speaker 1: former billionaire, who now faces a thirteen count indictment over
Speaker 1: the November collapse of ftx SO, says Reuters. He's expected
Speaker 1: to be arraigned on the new indictment on Thursday before
Speaker 1: a Manhattan judge in federal court. He intends to plead
Speaker 1: not guilty. According to a person familiar with the matter.
Speaker 1: That's cited in the Reuters report, forty billion dollars or
Speaker 1: forty million dollar bribe to Chinese officials to unfreeze hedge
Speaker 1: fund accounts just to drop in the bucket if you're
Speaker 1: overseeing a sports million crypto. Yeah, this monopolynyess? Is that really? That?
Speaker 1: Really a crime? What's funny is that this guy in
Speaker 1: some ways is getting arrested speaking of Trump doing things
Speaker 1: that everybody else does. Really for doing what everybody else does.
Speaker 1: So he's getting arrested for campaign contributions and political spending
Speaker 1: in races in the United States and bribing Chinese politicians
Speaker 1: and Chinese government officials. Just another day in the life.
Speaker 1: He's got to be like, wait, these things are illegal.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? Like they have a billion
Speaker 1: dollars of our assets frozen because it's caught up in
Speaker 1: a separate kind of investigation going on in China. And
Speaker 1: the way to get it out is we bribe people
Speaker 1: to get our money back. And now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: that's a crime. And then when it comes to the
Speaker 1: campaign finance stuff, it's like, wait a minute, we set
Speaker 1: up dark money groups, we funnel money to politicians. Politicians
Speaker 1: sign questionnaires saying that they support all of our issues.
Speaker 1: That's how we do this. Now, they the one law
Speaker 1: they do actually enforce when it comes to campaign finance
Speaker 1: is this straw donor thing. You give two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to a candidate and I pay you back. Densh just susan,
Speaker 1: Yeah like that. That that's the one thing that they
Speaker 1: still seem to care about. And he apparently did that,
Speaker 1: legendly did that. Well, yeah, so this is Prosecutors are
Speaker 1: saying that he ordered this forty million dollar crypto payment
Speaker 1: to a private wallet from Alameda's main trading account, and
Speaker 1: that was to persuade Chinese government authorities to unfree unfreeze
Speaker 1: Alameda accounts with more than one billion dollars of cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: and u this they were frozen as an investigation, as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, ran into this unnamed Alameda counter party and
Speaker 1: his dance spegling, and so he also apparently, according to prosecutors,
Speaker 1: they're alleging he authorized a transfer of tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars of additional crypto to quote complete the bribe
Speaker 1: back in November of twenty twenty one. He's apparently expected
Speaker 1: if it's a plead not guilty. From reading this report
Speaker 1: in Reuter's about the indictment, it looks a lot like
Speaker 1: the case is solid. Then again, when you're charging people
Speaker 1: with bribery, you really have to have a very clear
Speaker 1: evidence that their intentions were X, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: SPF was fairly shameless, so they may well have if
Speaker 1: there's anybody who will give them that evidence it's SPF.
Speaker 1: Then you have a signal chat called wirefraud, don't we all.
Speaker 1: If there's anybody who is going to be texting his
Speaker 1: subordinates to say, please send forty million dollars in bribe
Speaker 1: money to these Chinese officials and using the word bribe,
Speaker 1: it would be Spfah not say he did that, but
Speaker 1: if there's anybody who did it, it would be him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it seems like again and word otherwise. Don't call
Speaker 1: your signal group wirefraud. Don't call your bribes bribes, call
Speaker 1: them contributions fraud. Advice from Ranger Anthropy. Yeah, set up
Speaker 1: a foundation. It's so easy. Don't be stupid. Let's move
Speaker 1: on to breaking news yesterday. As of yesterday, in the
Speaker 1: case of Adnan sa Ed, this is from CNN and Maryland,
Speaker 1: a pellate court on Tuesday reinstated the conviction of say Ed.
Speaker 1: He you remember his murder case was the serial case.
Speaker 1: Of course. It was a two to one ruling from
Speaker 1: the appellate court, who said that the lower court had
Speaker 1: violated the rights of the victim's brother, Young Lee, to
Speaker 1: attend a key hearing. Here's more from CNN. Because the
Speaker 1: circuit court violated mister Lee's right to notice of and
Speaker 1: his right to attend the hearing on the state's motion
Speaker 1: of vacate, this court has the power and obligation to
Speaker 1: remedy those violations, as long as we can do so
Speaker 1: without violating mister Sad's right to be free from double jeopardy.
Speaker 1: It's actually from the court's opinion, not from CNN. Fairly
Speaker 1: Big News. Ryan I am not at all in the
Speaker 1: rabbit hole, in the serial rabbit hole. Obviously, this is
Speaker 1: a huge decision do you make of it? This is
Speaker 1: a case, I think where the headlines did a little
Speaker 1: bit of a disservice to to how big of a
Speaker 1: deal it is, because it's kind of a technicality, and
Speaker 1: all of the experts on all sides of this seemed
Speaker 1: to think that there's no reason that it would go
Speaker 1: any differently the next time that this happens. It has
Speaker 1: an interesting kind of victim rights question that we could
Speaker 1: get to yes in a second. But briefly, the facts
Speaker 1: of the case. Her brother was given apparently thirty minutes
Speaker 1: notice to come to this hearing, and it's not that
Speaker 1: he just needed to be there to witness it. He
Speaker 1: was going to participate in it. He was going to
Speaker 1: make his case for why the evidence should not lead
Speaker 1: to an exoneration of non Siad. He couldn't get there
Speaker 1: in purpose, in person. He was at work. He just
Speaker 1: had to quickly zoom in. He didn't have anything prepared,
Speaker 1: and as a foul like the judge should have you know,
Speaker 1: they couldn't. Judge could have delayed a day doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you have to delay it months and months. The judge
Speaker 1: could have given more warning. Now, what what defense attorneys
Speaker 1: are saying is that the problem here is that now
Speaker 1: you're giving kind of victims too much of too much standing,
Speaker 1: and victims families too much standing in the process, which
Speaker 1: can which runs up against the party that has the
Speaker 1: actual standing, which is the people. You know, the people
Speaker 1: versus non side. The people are prosecuting on side on
Speaker 1: behalf of the victims. It's not the the victims themselves
Speaker 1: or the victims families themselves are doing it. Because when
Speaker 1: you get into the victims themselves doing it, and then
Speaker 1: then it becomes less rule law and more vigilante oriented.
Speaker 1: And so that's why the kind of defense community was
Speaker 1: really bothered by this ruling because it it could open
Speaker 1: up the floodgates for all sorts of other kind of
Speaker 1: procedural claims made by victims and victims families to to
Speaker 1: redo and reinstate entire convictions. But nobody thinks that the
Speaker 1: evidence has changed much. Basically, the prosecution, it has been proven,
Speaker 1: had significant exonerating and evidence at the time of the
Speaker 1: prosecution and did not turn it over to Adon Saad's
Speaker 1: defense attorney. And there's nothing the prosecution can do to
Speaker 1: go back in time and undo that, and so the
Speaker 1: entire thing is toxic and we'll probably get thrown out
Speaker 1: as a result. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about this part from the opinion.
Speaker 1: They say the quarter is the power and obligation and
Speaker 1: remedy those violations as long as we can do so
Speaker 1: without violating mister said's right to be free from double jeopardy, right,
Speaker 1: Because the question is does his conviction getting tossed out
Speaker 1: count as a not guilty verdict? And if it does,
Speaker 1: then double jeopardy kicks in and you can't come back.
Speaker 1: So that clearly they're saying that it's not close enough
Speaker 1: to a not guilty to say that you can't come
Speaker 1: back in. But yeah, you don't want people in a
Speaker 1: situation where they get found not guilty and then you
Speaker 1: go through different procedural hoops and be like, oh, you
Speaker 1: got to come back again, we'll get you this time.
Speaker 1: Like that would really undermine one of the bedrock principles
Speaker 1: that protects people's individual liberty. Where can people expect this
Speaker 1: to go from here? I think he'll it'll get tossed again,
Speaker 1: and he's not being brought back in to prison or
Speaker 1: anything like. He's free until the next hearing, and at
Speaker 1: the next hearing it's very likely that it'll be tossed again.
Speaker 1: Such a mess. Yeah, what's your point today? Oh, we're
Speaker 1: talking about one of my favorite people in all of
Speaker 1: cable news, Stephanie Rule. It's been clear for a while
Speaker 1: that Stephanie Rule abused her journalistic platforms to help her
Speaker 1: very very close friend, Kevin Plank and his company Under Armour.
Speaker 1: In addition to Rule providing extensive business advice and flying
Speaker 1: on the company jet, the pair reportedly carried out an
Speaker 1: extra marital affair as well, which The Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: first brought to the public's attention back in twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: after the Under Armour board discovered quote intimate e between
Speaker 1: Rule and Plank. The rest of the media largely ignored
Speaker 1: Rule's misconduct. By the way, if you google her, you'll
Speaker 1: be hard pressed to find any substantive critiques of the
Speaker 1: journalistic malpractice at hand, not the affair or the ethics
Speaker 1: the journalistic malpractice. Today, Rule hosts The Eleventh Hour on MSNBC.
Speaker 1: She has her own show, and this senior business analyst
Speaker 1: over at NBC News, but her support for Plank and
Speaker 1: under Armour may have been even more problematic. Follow me
Speaker 1: over to Scotland, where the City Council of Aberdeen has
Speaker 1: been fighting under Armour in court, accusing the company of
Speaker 1: artificially boosting its share price. As Fox News reports quote,
Speaker 1: the Scottish town allegedly lost millions from a pension fund
Speaker 1: for local workers as a result, as it was heavily
Speaker 1: invested in under Armour. So where does Rule factor in
Speaker 1: this lawsuit over Scottish pension funds? Well? As Fox notes,
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, Morgan Stanley published a report that downgrained.
Speaker 1: It graded under Armour stock to underweight and reduced its
Speaker 1: price target from one hundred and three to sixty two
Speaker 1: dollars per share, which caused the stock to plummet. According
Speaker 1: to the filing, the document alleged that Rule then offered
Speaker 1: a detailed counterpoint to the Morgan Stanley report on air,
Speaker 1: attacking its underlying data and essentially cheerleading under Armour in
Speaker 1: the process. So this is where things get a bit hairy.
Speaker 1: Aberdeen's lawyers want Bloomberg to turn over rules emails with Plank,
Speaker 1: based on the argument that their personal relationship which seems
Speaker 1: to date back to about twenty fifteen when she was
Speaker 1: working at Bloomberg, is not deserving a First Amendment protections
Speaker 1: that quote an independent journalist source relationship generally warrants. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: disagrees with that, But we actually don't have to settle
Speaker 1: that argument here and now, or even see the emails
Speaker 1: to recognize what Stephanie Rule did was deeply unethical and wrong.
Speaker 1: It also fits a very clear pattern of behavior too,
Speaker 1: when that NBC News would address publicly if it cared
Speaker 1: more about than ideology and ratings. The conservative Washington Free
Speaker 1: Beacon was one of the only outlets to report on
Speaker 1: Rule's coverage of under arm Armor back when the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal story broke. Here's what they wrote. Quote. In
Speaker 1: June of twenty sixteen, the company released Steph Curry branded
Speaker 1: sneakers that were universally roasted as ugly and boring. Under
Speaker 1: Armour employees were told not to address criticism because Rule
Speaker 1: told the company she would step in and discuss the
Speaker 1: shoes on TV. The Wall Street Journal reported, sure enough,
Speaker 1: archived video of rules appearance on NBC's Today that weekend
Speaker 1: shows she defended the shoes without disclosing her and Plank's
Speaker 1: relationship business friendship or otherwise, or revealing that she coordinated
Speaker 1: with under Armor. Okay, let's just watch the segment, because
Speaker 1: with all of that said, it's pretty hilarious. I don't
Speaker 1: figure the market a bit of a problem. Twitter killed
Speaker 1: these shoes, calling them the Metamucial sixes the sevens. But
Speaker 1: they look an awful lot like a classic Nike or
Speaker 1: a New Balance. That's a mass market she is. It
Speaker 1: is a taxi and this is what he was wearing
Speaker 1: during the games. Yes, this is what he goes from
Speaker 1: this to this, so naturally some for sure. I think
Speaker 1: that's why the pushback when you think about a stepf
Speaker 1: curasue of basketball shoe. It's hard. Yes, just in time
Speaker 1: for Father's Day, dad. There you go. It's so good.
Speaker 1: She actually then used a professional Twitter account to post
Speaker 1: twice about those shoes in particular. The Beacon went on
Speaker 1: to note quote Rule would continue to hawk under Armoured
Speaker 1: products and feel good PR campaigns at least a dozen
Speaker 1: times throughout the next two years, a dozen, never just
Speaker 1: closing her reported relationship or role as an advisor. Now,
Speaker 1: none of this is especially surprising from a longtime Deutsche
Speaker 1: Bank managing director and the former quote highest producing credit
Speaker 1: derivative salesperson in the United States, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: was apparently unfaithful to her hedge fund CEO husband during
Speaker 1: her affair with Plank. Rule is basically an archetypical corporate
Speaker 1: democrat in the new mold of liberal suburban mom who
Speaker 1: wants low taxes and smug Sheryl Sandberg feminism. Her show
Speaker 1: is basically just for people with Equinox memberships and g
Speaker 1: wagons full of shin guards and orange slices. But the
Speaker 1: lawsuit out of Aberdeen shows why this isn't fun and
Speaker 1: games at all. Chatting about tennis shoes might be a
Speaker 1: cute way to help your secret CEO boyfriend, and it
Speaker 1: may seem like no big deal to read corporate talking
Speaker 1: points about his company stock on air. To wealthy media
Speaker 1: talking heads, these conflicts are mere playthings. They don't think
Speaker 1: twice about Scottish pensioners who may be invested in the stock.
Speaker 1: They sit around, do each other favors and assume it
Speaker 1: it'll all work out just fine. It's pretty much how
Speaker 1: you get Gotham, and it should be a very big
Speaker 1: deal to rules peers in media and to her co
Speaker 1: workers at NBC News. But my best guess is that
Speaker 1: it won't unless they get win. That it's affecting the
Speaker 1: bottom line without mainstream media criticism, that seems quite unlikely.
Speaker 1: All right, Ryan, what is your point today? Well, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at India and Elon musk and so so. Two
Speaker 1: months after teaming up with the Indian government to censor
Speaker 1: a BBC documentary on human rights abuses by Prime Minister
Speaker 1: and Andramodi, Twitter is yet again collaborating with the government
Speaker 1: to impose an extraordinarily broad crackdown on speech. I have
Speaker 1: a new story up at the Intercept with my colleague
Speaker 1: Martaza Hussain looking at the latest successful effort by the
Speaker 1: Indian Prime Minister to persuade Twitter to censor its critics.
Speaker 1: So last week, the Indian government imposed an Internet blackout
Speaker 1: across the northern state of Punjab, home to thirty million people,
Speaker 1: as it conducted a manhunt for a local Sikh nationalist preacher.
Speaker 1: The shutdown paralyzed the Internet and text communications in Punjab.
Speaker 1: I asked readers and viewers in India about the crackdown
Speaker 1: and some told me that for much of the time
Speaker 1: the shutdown was targeted at mobile devices. All of this
Speaker 1: is worth reporting on here because it could easily be
Speaker 1: a dry run for other countries. Now, while Punjab police
Speaker 1: detained hundreds of suspected followers of Amrit Paul Singh, Twitter
Speaker 1: accounts from over one hundred prime politicians, activists and journalists
Speaker 1: in India and abroad have been blocked in India at
Speaker 1: the request of the government. On Monday, the account of
Speaker 1: the BBC news poonjob Punjabi was also blocked, the second
Speaker 1: time in a few months that the Indian government has
Speaker 1: used Twitter to throttle BBC services in its country. The
Speaker 1: Twitter account for jag Meet Singh, who's a leading progressive
Speaker 1: seek Canadian politician and a critic of Modi, was also
Speaker 1: not viewable inside India. Under the leadership of owner and
Speaker 1: CEO Elon Musk, Twitter has promised to reduce censorship and
Speaker 1: allow a broader range of voices on the platform. But
Speaker 1: after The Intercept reported on Musk's censorship of the BBC
Speaker 1: documentary in January, as well as Twitter's intervention against high
Speaker 1: profile high profile accounts who shared the documentary, Musk said
Speaker 1: that he had been too busy with his other jobs
Speaker 1: to focus on the issue. First, I've heard Musk wrote
Speaker 1: on January twenty fifth, he said, it is not possible
Speaker 1: for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight
Speaker 1: while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things. So
Speaker 1: in late February, Singh's followers sacked a Punjab police station
Speaker 1: in an attempt to free allies that were held there.
Speaker 1: The Indian media reported that the attack triggered the government's response.
Speaker 1: In the void left by Twitter blocks and the internet
Speaker 1: shut down across much of the region, Indian news outlets,
Speaker 1: increasingly themselves under the thumb of the ruling government and
Speaker 1: its allies, have filled the airwaves with speculation on Singh's whereabouts.
Speaker 1: On Tuesday, Indian news reports claimed that CCTV footage appeared
Speaker 1: to show Singh walking around Delhi masked and without a turban.
Speaker 1: While Modi's suppression has focused on poon job, Twitter's collaboration
Speaker 1: has been nationwide, restricting public debate about the government's aggressive move.
Speaker 1: And so basically they're saying that this Sikh preacher, Imri
Speaker 1: Paul Singh is a dangerous and wanted criminal and that
Speaker 1: he needs to be captured by any means necessary, and
Speaker 1: that's why they're going to kind of shut down the
Speaker 1: Internet for thirty million people. But what Twitter has done
Speaker 1: is not allowed any public discussion to be held about
Speaker 1: whether or not the Indian government is actually justified in
Speaker 1: carrying this out. Anybody who would be critical from the
Speaker 1: kind of either the opposition party or critics outside of
Speaker 1: the country, like jag Meat Singh, who's the leader of
Speaker 1: the kind of leftist Canadian political party, they can't even speak.
Speaker 1: So you're just left with Mody's narrative that this guy's
Speaker 1: so dangerous that we have to lock down an entire
Speaker 1: region of thirty million people to round him up. Musk
Speaker 1: hasn't responded to this yet, which I find really disturbing
Speaker 1: because if somebody has his ear and they bring him
Speaker 1: a problem, he's like interesting looking into it. On top
Speaker 1: of that, two months ago he responded because there was
Speaker 1: so much attention to our first story on this. It's
Speaker 1: like I can't deal with everything. Come on, man, I
Speaker 1: got so many jobs. Leave me alone. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well it's been two months and now you've only kind
Speaker 1: of taken your censorship to a higher level. So why
Speaker 1: is that okay? If it's not okay here? Well, and
Speaker 1: are you telling me that a request from the Indian
Speaker 1: government is not being debated at high levels to his awareness.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just have a hard time believing that.
Speaker 1: I do think you said something in the monologue I
Speaker 1: thought was really important, which was it could be a
Speaker 1: dry run for other countries. And when you look at
Speaker 1: Elen Musk who I think, you know, we could have
Speaker 1: a conversation about some of the good some of the bad.
Speaker 1: One of the bad is his relationship with the Chinese government.
Speaker 1: You've pointed out his relationships with other government. I mean,
Speaker 1: in order to do business on the scale that he
Speaker 1: does and the types of business that he does, it's
Speaker 1: basically unavoidable. But to take over a speech platform with
Speaker 1: those pre existing relationships, I think raises some obviously problematic questions.
Speaker 1: And to your point, when you already have proven a
Speaker 1: willingness to cooperate literally in Shinjong with the Chinese government,
Speaker 1: he opened a big tesla factory in Shinjong. Well, they
Speaker 1: were sort of in the middle of conversations about treatment
Speaker 1: of weaker Muslims. You don't get the benefit of doubt anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you and I talked about this a lot when
Speaker 1: they were when he was just debating whether or not
Speaker 1: whether or not he was going to buy Twitter that
Speaker 1: he could believe in his heart he could be the
Speaker 1: the most the most pure free speech absolutist that has
Speaker 1: ever lived. But if you have all of these financial
Speaker 1: entanglements across the world that that's going to push on
Speaker 1: your heart, you're gonna say, well, free speech is good.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you know, I kind OF's
Speaker 1: got a factory over here that needs its needs its
Speaker 1: supplies to keep moving, or it's just you don't care
Speaker 1: because it's not not here in the United States. And
Speaker 1: then finally a lot of what a lot of people
Speaker 1: will say as well, MOSC has said he's going to
Speaker 1: follow the laws of the cunt Tree that he's operating
Speaker 1: in two things. So that one, a request from the
Speaker 1: executive in India is not quote unquote following the law
Speaker 1: like the old Twitter. If they would get a request
Speaker 1: from the executive in India and they did all the
Speaker 1: time to take down this critic or that critic, they
Speaker 1: would say, no, you'll come back with a court order.
Speaker 1: And when the court order would come, if it came,
Speaker 1: often it wouldn't, but if it came, then they would
Speaker 1: challenge that order in court and they would and they
Speaker 1: would fight and make it as difficult as possible for
Speaker 1: a government to censor an account, rather than a request
Speaker 1: comes in and you're like, oh, you know, jag meats
Speaker 1: saying Canadian patolitician. Okay, boom nut, he's down, He's down.
Speaker 1: And then the second point would be, I don't even
Speaker 1: think that's a good policy to say that you're going
Speaker 1: to follow the laws of every country that you're in,
Speaker 1: because if that's the case, you never would have had
Speaker 1: an Arab spring, because you know, move Barak's laws did
Speaker 1: not allow for Twitter and Facebook to just allow people
Speaker 1: to communicate freely and publish criticism of the government. But
Speaker 1: it was that ability and their ability to share actually
Speaker 1: WikiLeaks revelations that got people out into the street and
Speaker 1: gave people the sense that they could actually take control
Speaker 1: of their own destinies. And if you would have had
Speaker 1: a policy at the time that said, well, we actually
Speaker 1: only allow speech that is allowed by a government in
Speaker 1: that country, then you would have no you know, you
Speaker 1: have no ability to protest against authoritarian governments like a
Speaker 1: Mobaric regime at the time, and that's where Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: and Jack Dorsey sort of earned their rebel bond. They
Speaker 1: felt really good. They clearly loved it, like they relished
Speaker 1: having those rebel bona fides, and that very quickly changed.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think it's a bad policy. Obviously, it's
Speaker 1: bad policy. We should be exporting positive American values and
Speaker 1: not bending to the will of authoritarian governments. But to
Speaker 1: your point, I mean, is it even the policy, Like
Speaker 1: that's another completely legitimate question. The big takeaway, one of
Speaker 1: my big takeaways from this is just that when you
Speaker 1: have a platform as important and influential as Twitter, it
Speaker 1: does make me nervous. Like I love the entrepreneurial startup
Speaker 1: energy that Elon Musk has brought to it. I genuinely
Speaker 1: think that's like interesting and exciting. That's fun. It's been fun,
Speaker 1: and I think it can be a recipe for success
Speaker 1: at other sort of startups and small companies and even
Speaker 1: companies that have a footprint that's much bigger than the
Speaker 1: size of their company. I think that's cool. But man,
Speaker 1: do I think it also when you have something that's
Speaker 1: so influential like Twitter is, it's such a recipe for
Speaker 1: disaster and chaos. When you're understaffed, overworked, and unorganized, it's
Speaker 1: it's creating problems I think with speech here in the
Speaker 1: United States already uneven sort of violation decisions, We've already
Speaker 1: seen that happening. That's inevitable, but it feels like it's
Speaker 1: happening at a disturbing rate. Things that are promised like
Speaker 1: that impact people's business, like this verified membership which would
Speaker 1: cost like ten grand a year or something to that extent.
Speaker 1: It's going to happen now, No, it's going to happen then,
Speaker 1: you know it just it's It does feel like a
Speaker 1: really powerful, influential and serious space of public discourse is
Speaker 1: a mess right now, and that could go in some
Speaker 1: dangerous directions here or abroad could indeed. So up next,
Speaker 1: we're going to have an interview with Sierra Leoni and
Speaker 1: journalist Chernoba, who wrote a book on the Ebola outbreak
Speaker 1: from twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen. We recently reported on
Speaker 1: a new apparent admission by virologist Christian Anderson that a
Speaker 1: lab run by the US based Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium
Speaker 1: in Kenema, Sierra Leone was in fact performing a Bola
Speaker 1: research in twenty fourteen, contrary to previous denials. The presence
Speaker 1: of that lab along with gaping holes in the zoonotic
Speaker 1: theory have long led to calls for a deeper investigation
Speaker 1: into the origin of the twenty fourteen a Bola outbreak
Speaker 1: and calls for restrictions on dangerous research and tighter lab
Speaker 1: safety regulations. Now for background on that question, see our
Speaker 1: reports from last week in the week before. But today
Speaker 1: we're fortunate enough to be joined by a journalist who
Speaker 1: has been examining this issue for years, Churno Boz the
Speaker 1: editor of the Africanist Press, and he's the author of
Speaker 1: the book The Abola Outbreak in West Africa, Corporate Gangsters,
Speaker 1: multinationals and Rogue Politicians. He's also the ongoing target of
Speaker 1: death threats from the government from his government back in
Speaker 1: Sierra Leone. He's in exile here in the United States
Speaker 1: right now, and we're very fortunate to have him with
Speaker 1: us in the studio. And so Turno and if we
Speaker 1: could put up the first tearsheet here the CNN report,
Speaker 1: So Tcherno, the kind of mainstream version of the story
Speaker 1: of the Abola outbreak is that there was this two
Speaker 1: year old boy who's playing with some bats. YadA YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: we get an Abola outbreak. So you explored this theory
Speaker 1: by actually going to the village. Did the story hold up? No,
Speaker 1: that was when we first read the story. When the
Speaker 1: report came out in December twenty fourteen, I knew that there,
Speaker 1: you know, there must be or their obvious inadequacies in
Speaker 1: the report. In the first place, it was reported that
Speaker 1: the in this case of the outbreak, Emil woman was
Speaker 1: a two year old child who the alleged was involved
Speaker 1: in the hunting and grilling and eating off bat that
Speaker 1: transmitted the virus to the child. So that did not
Speaker 1: hold up. So in fact, that was what triggered my
Speaker 1: interest to investigate the narrative, to interrogate the narrative. So
Speaker 1: I traveled from Cerrillly onto Guinea and then met family
Speaker 1: members of Emil, the father. I spoke to the father
Speaker 1: who was never by the time mentioned by any of
Speaker 1: the reports, and I that is what I documented in
Speaker 1: my book. Basically, part of the book, or the main
Speaker 1: aspect of the book, is to challenge the Domino narrative.
Speaker 1: We found out at the time that the child was
Speaker 1: not even two years old. He was eighteen months old. Yes,
Speaker 1: he was eighteen months all the time. So since then
Speaker 1: there has been a revision of the age of the
Speaker 1: child by even journalists who had earlier reported who had
Speaker 1: taken on that narrative, so many of the and there
Speaker 1: was no clinical evidence to support the fact that the
Speaker 1: child had actually died of ebola. In fact, medical practitioners
Speaker 1: in the village, in the health clinic who had dealt
Speaker 1: with all of these supposing this cases, earlier cases of
Speaker 1: the supposed outbreak, believed that the child died of malaria
Speaker 1: related conditions. So that was too obvious. And I think
Speaker 1: more work has now increased work into that examination of
Speaker 1: that narrative has rendered it basically baseless. And you found
Speaker 1: a couple other inaccuracies or omissions around the size of
Speaker 1: his family and other people who were involved. What were
Speaker 1: were some of those? Yeah, there were also this is
Speaker 1: what you might call a larger family of the childhood
Speaker 1: or the siblings who were basically in the household who
Speaker 1: we are never infected. There was a sister, eight other
Speaker 1: siblings who were in the house that were never infected.
Speaker 1: And the report also made no mention of his of
Speaker 1: his p limits. So and and the key thing here
Speaker 1: is that but hunting in that area is not done
Speaker 1: by by by children so eighteen month olds. So MHM.
Speaker 1: On the surface of it, it was too obvious. And
Speaker 1: the report i think also mentioned the fact that insect
Speaker 1: eating bats were responsible for triggering the outbreak. And in
Speaker 1: that region, the bats that are obviously present there are
Speaker 1: foot bats and at the time food bats. We are
Speaker 1: not known to carry a boy or so, like I said,
Speaker 1: every aspect of that of that narrative has been on
Speaker 1: the mind by the fact that there was no clinical
Speaker 1: evidence to support the argument that Emil was the index case.
Speaker 1: The fact of the child was also not infected. Even
Speaker 1: though he dealt with all of the suppose index cases,
Speaker 1: the mode of the child and the other relatives or
Speaker 1: other members in the village who were supposedly identified as
Speaker 1: the primary victims of the of the of the outbreak,
Speaker 1: and and the family still believed that the child was
Speaker 1: not The child never died of ebola, right and you know, right,
Speaker 1: so you get this major outbreak later in March. This,
Speaker 1: this is happening in December. This in December. What about
Speaker 1: the rest of the people in the village. Did they
Speaker 1: believe that in hindsight that they were the epicenter of
Speaker 1: of the Ebola outbreak or what was there. What was
Speaker 1: their thoughts as you talked to that now they were
Speaker 1: even surprised with the fact that you know, all of
Speaker 1: these people, we are going there and pinpointing, you know,
Speaker 1: the village or highlighting the village as the as the
Speaker 1: epicenter of the of the outbreak. They it's we have
Speaker 1: to underline the fact that many of the under five
Speaker 1: deaths in that region are basically are shooted with malaria.
Speaker 1: So that is the known, the known epidemic or disease
Speaker 1: that's responsible for many of the debts and has a
Speaker 1: similar symptoms, similar symptoms to fiver and and and and
Speaker 1: all of that. So they, like I said, recent even
Speaker 1: writers did a follow up interview with the father in
Speaker 1: which he actually reported exactly what we had documented, what
Speaker 1: I had documented in the book, that the child was
Speaker 1: never the in the case of the outbreak, was also
Speaker 1: not a victim of of of ebola. So I think
Speaker 1: that that argument has been has been settled. So because
Speaker 1: we disputed the fact that uh but amilian do the
Speaker 1: village was could not be the episode of the outbreak.
Speaker 1: We had raised the question about the lab in Kenema,
Speaker 1: which we believe there was what going on there and
Speaker 1: in all of the earlier conversations, nobody had mentioned the
Speaker 1: presence of research as in in in the neighboring region
Speaker 1: in in in Srira Llian. So in my in my book,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, that was one of the
Speaker 1: things that I argued that why was that aspect the
Speaker 1: presence of western research as in Kenema never part of
Speaker 1: the relevant Yes, so it's finally it's finally getting attention now.
Speaker 1: And so Christian Anderson, who worked in that lab, was
Speaker 1: recently on a podcast and in trying to knock down
Speaker 1: what he called the conspiracy theory, ended up making this admission.
Speaker 1: We want to roll this this clip from the podcast.
Speaker 1: The problem is that people see these quincs and says
Speaker 1: one of the new ones is the Ebola lab league,
Speaker 1: which also is being blamed on us because we have
Speaker 1: been studying Ebola in Canaman, Sierra Leone and Lo and behold,
Speaker 1: Ebola emerged just a few miles from there in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: right obviously across the border in Guinea, but it's maybe
Speaker 1: one hundred miles or so away. And people then put
Speaker 1: that together and saying, oh, so that Ebola must have
Speaker 1: been aliab league too, And it was Robert Gary and
Speaker 1: Christian Anderson again. And the reason why these names keep
Speaker 1: coming up, and the reason why we get grant money
Speaker 1: to study infectious diseases is because we study infectious diseases
Speaker 1: and have done so for many, many decades. And that's
Speaker 1: why the names keep coming up again. Right, It's not
Speaker 1: because there's some major conspiracy theory here where all of
Speaker 1: us have been sort of fiddling with the fields well
Speaker 1: prior to the pandemic. So hearing doctor Anderson apparently acknowledged
Speaker 1: that bola research was going on, which seemed to be
Speaker 1: the conclusion that so many other people had drawn already
Speaker 1: based on research papers and other evidence, and also the
Speaker 1: fact that it was called the hemorrhagic centers it. What
Speaker 1: was it like for you when you first heard that
Speaker 1: that admission from doctor Anderson. Well, I wasn't surprised because
Speaker 1: in my book I had called for the disclosure of
Speaker 1: all of the information relating to the work that was
Speaker 1: happening in Kenema, which had received a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: funding Western defense funding from the United States and all
Speaker 1: the parts of the world who were basically concerned about
Speaker 1: the potential weaponization of certain pathogens that could be used
Speaker 1: as part of the modern day warfare. So I knew
Speaker 1: from my work as a journalist in the region that
Speaker 1: Kenma had been the center of biodefense research way back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four subsequent to the Antras incident here,
Speaker 1: that increased funding was going on by twenty ten. I
Speaker 1: also knew that an Umbrell organization called the Viral Hemorrhagic
Speaker 1: Fever Consulting VHFC has been formed that coordinated all of
Speaker 1: these defense funding and research that was going on in
Speaker 1: the region. So what I was surprised about was that
Speaker 1: in all of the conversations that happened from twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: right up to this admission, nobody was willing to admit
Speaker 1: that we should be looking at the possibility that the
Speaker 1: outbreak may have or the outbreak likely emerged out of
Speaker 1: the lab itself, or how is the lab the activities
Speaker 1: of that lab connected to what was what happened in
Speaker 1: instantly and in the region in twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: So the admission here is, you know, we've been calling
Speaker 1: for that, We've been calling for the disclosure of information
Speaker 1: relating to the kind of research what's happening, and kind
Speaker 1: of my if you look at it. We most underline
Speaker 1: the fact that that kind of research should not be
Speaker 1: undertaken in an environment that lacked all of the Yes, actually,
Speaker 1: we have a aal aerial image of that figure. All. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all of the security protocols that are needed to undertake
Speaker 1: a class air patrogen and resart deliver with a class
Speaker 1: air patrogen are absent here. We're talking about the dilapidata,
Speaker 1: this hospital environment where medical officers lacked the basic tools
Speaker 1: of protection, right, you know, and if you and this
Speaker 1: was underlined by a writer's researcher, a writer as reporter
Speaker 1: who had interviewed some of these researchers about the site
Speaker 1: being part of the US War on Terror, and researcher
Speaker 1: was going on there and they said they lacked the
Speaker 1: security protocol, but they're able to carry out to you know,
Speaker 1: they think it's possible to carry out the kind of work.
Speaker 1: So we are still calling for the disclosure, complete and
Speaker 1: full disclosure of information about the kind of research that
Speaker 1: was happening and the link, the potential link between that
Speaker 1: research to the outbreak, because we're talking about hundreds of lives,
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of lives, you know, people dying and
Speaker 1: often now the families in the region who have been stigmatized,
Speaker 1: who have lost family members, who are still dealing with
Speaker 1: that trauma of the horrific nature of the outbreak, the deaths,
Speaker 1: and this is a region that has a history of
Speaker 1: crisis and conflict, was tremendous exploitation of environmental and resources diamonds,
Speaker 1: gold box sized aluminumris that have been mined and transported
Speaker 1: by leading corporations. So it is not surprising that Western
Speaker 1: scientists and researchers will also use the same environment for
Speaker 1: the production of medical knowledge that would serve defense and
Speaker 1: other interest outside of the protection of the communities in
Speaker 1: that region. And there's also a potentially interesting thing slip
Speaker 1: that doctor Anderson makes in that clip. If you noticed
Speaker 1: he said, we're doing you a bowl of work in
Speaker 1: this lab, and then there was an outbreak a few
Speaker 1: miles away. Then he says, well, what I mean is
Speaker 1: that there was an outbreak one hundred miles away in Guinea.
Speaker 1: But if the if the original outbreak, as you're saying,
Speaker 1: has been rejected by everybody in the community and has
Speaker 1: fallen apart and doesn't make sense, would it be more
Speaker 1: accurate what his original claim have been more accurate that
Speaker 1: actually the the original epicenter could have been within very
Speaker 1: close proximity to Kinema. Yes, because I even one of
Speaker 1: the statements I made in my book is the fact
Speaker 1: that the Lenda's narrative, which located at the European Investment
Speaker 1: not Investment Investigative, is located at the outbreak in Guinea
Speaker 1: miles away from Kenema. Was could be a potential cover
Speaker 1: up because if we if they had identified Kenema as
Speaker 1: the site of the outbreak, then the defense funel and
Speaker 1: operation that has been going on since twenty and four
Speaker 1: to twenty ten and twenty fourteen would have been the
Speaker 1: subject of the primary interrogation. So by locating the outbreak
Speaker 1: and the initial in this case is miles away from Kenema,
Speaker 1: it takes people's attention away from what was potentially happening
Speaker 1: in Kenema and how that is related to the outbreak itself.
Speaker 1: So I think that is the essence of the Lender's narrative,
Speaker 1: with all the inadequacies, It was just repeated and popularized
Speaker 1: by mainstream media out here and also the academy itself.
Speaker 1: So without pausing and examining the potential of a two
Speaker 1: year old boy to participate in the you know ads
Speaker 1: task of hunting and grilling of a bat. So that
Speaker 1: is the it provided an alibi basically where all of
Speaker 1: these scientific research that is potentially implicated in this tragedy
Speaker 1: that has claimed the lives of people in the region
Speaker 1: could not be part of the conversation. So in five
Speaker 1: years down the line, now we're beginning to get admission
Speaker 1: and research related to Ibola had been ongoing and happening
Speaker 1: in the region. And the subtitle of your book talks
Speaker 1: about corporate gangsters and rogue politicians, and that gets us
Speaker 1: a little bit into why you're in exile now from
Speaker 1: Sierra Leone. I wanted to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: your own career kind of evolving out of the out
Speaker 1: of this book, but the what the Africans press is
Speaker 1: up to and what kind of threats you're facing. So
Speaker 1: and I think I think we have a clip made
Speaker 1: from this one one of the journalists protection organizations that
Speaker 1: is that has stood up, that has stood up for
Speaker 1: you and for your organization that you've been the illegitimate,
Speaker 1: you know, illegitimate subject of of threats from the government
Speaker 1: for your reporting on government corruption. What what what was
Speaker 1: the what was the reporting that that really got you
Speaker 1: in the crosshairs of of the the government and what's
Speaker 1: the status of that now. Well, for the last twenty years,
Speaker 1: through the African e space, we've been holding different core politicians,
Speaker 1: especially in Isralian and in the region in West Africa,
Speaker 1: accountable to minimum standards of good governance and accountability. And
Speaker 1: for the last four years, we have been perhaps with
Speaker 1: all humility, the only press organization in Isralian that is
Speaker 1: holding the current government accountable. We've reported on high levels
Speaker 1: of corruption involving the current president, the wife of the president,
Speaker 1: and all of the leading officials in government. That has
Speaker 1: led to a a tremendous amount of exposed the government's facad
Speaker 1: and hypocrisy in its commitment to fight corruption, and that
Speaker 1: has actually resulted into all kinds of threads against my
Speaker 1: life to the point that I cannot go back home
Speaker 1: right now. And then, Yeah, their threat has and their
Speaker 1: response has been almost comically aggressive. Yes they've Yeah, they've
Speaker 1: gone as far as sacking the Auditor General of the
Speaker 1: of the of the National Audit Service is Relion including
Speaker 1: fire their top order thinking he is a source of
Speaker 1: yse Yes, it's a woman's thinking. She's a very credible
Speaker 1: woman who was known over the years whole you know,
Speaker 1: for presenting reports that detailed public the misuse of public funds.
Speaker 1: And the current president sacked, fired constititionally on the suspicion
Speaker 1: that the Audit Service was responsible for providing details of
Speaker 1: government corruption to The African Express and only that. Even
Speaker 1: people in the Central Bank have also been sacked, bankers,
Speaker 1: other public officials to we have counted over one hundred
Speaker 1: and seven where you're getting this, yeah, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how we should blow us or the source of
Speaker 1: our information. How many they fired? Did you say? More
Speaker 1: than one hundred and seventy of people who've counted so far,
Speaker 1: in in in, in in across the government, from the
Speaker 1: Minister of Finance, the President's office, the Central Bank Australion
Speaker 1: to the Audit Service and still an ongoing process of harassing,
Speaker 1: harassing people. Nobody could even identify themselves since relion affiliates
Speaker 1: of the African Express, because it's dangerous to do so.
Speaker 1: So your reporters are writing under names, yes, yes, underground
Speaker 1: those of us who put our real names and people
Speaker 1: who are outside of the country, right. Yeah. We talk
Speaker 1: a lot about in the United States about so and
Speaker 1: so just produced a courageous report. And I always think
Speaker 1: about reporters, I like the ones who are working for
Speaker 1: you and yourself, that who are doing actually courageous journalism
Speaker 1: that could lead to real consequences rather than some mean
Speaker 1: things said about you online. Yes, that's what I've witnessed,
Speaker 1: threads coming from all, you know, both sides of the
Speaker 1: political divide, from the opposition parties in parliament and also
Speaker 1: the ruling parties. So you find those who support your
Speaker 1: work would only do so when they find a political
Speaker 1: interest in doing that. When you write about their opponents
Speaker 1: or you reveal things that are supposedly damaging to the
Speaker 1: opponents the Halia work, you present something that affects their
Speaker 1: own political interest, they also condemn you. So we are
Speaker 1: caught between that line, you know, in the middle of
Speaker 1: that crossfire among these correpor politicians. I called them two
Speaker 1: functions of the same ruling class who've divided themselves along
Speaker 1: these parties that you know, but they pursue the same thing,
Speaker 1: loot public funds. Uh, this disregard the welfare of ordinary
Speaker 1: people and then are committed to uplifting society. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have that here too, We sure do. So everybody
Speaker 1: here at the Breaking Points Networks certainly deeply supportive of
Speaker 1: the work you're doing to expose this corruption. Really, thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us here, and I'm glad you could
Speaker 1: be in studio. We're lucky that you were coming through town.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. All right, So that was Chernobo.
Speaker 1: We taped that. We taped that interview earlier this week.
Speaker 1: Emily wasn't able to join us for that one. Starry,
Speaker 1: you couldn't be there. No, no, no, this is this
Speaker 1: is this topic also you know it inside and out
Speaker 1: because you've been looking at this for a while. What
Speaker 1: were your big takeaways from this conversation with Turno, Well,
Speaker 1: a couple of things. One, Uh, just the extraordinary courage
Speaker 1: that that Turno and his colleagues have shown at the
Speaker 1: at the africanis press uh to be to be going
Speaker 1: up against the be, going up against the powers that
Speaker 1: be in those in those countries, not just Sierra Leone,
Speaker 1: but Guinea Liberia elsewhere. It's it's real, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: sad that he is in exile. Uh, it is it
Speaker 1: is a credit to the authenticity and the power of
Speaker 1: his work that he has been pushed into exile. There
Speaker 1: there are going to be elections in June in Sierra Leone,
Speaker 1: and there's there's some hope that there will that there
Speaker 1: will be some enough political change that could allow uh
Speaker 1: some uh churno bond some of the other uh you know,
Speaker 1: kind of dissident journalists to return back back into the country.
Speaker 1: Before the interview, he and I were talking about how
Speaker 1: how the way that he was describing their work felt
Speaker 1: very similar to the way that the Intercepts work is received.
Speaker 1: He's like, whenever we are attacking the government, then the
Speaker 1: opposition party is sharing our work, is celebrating us as
Speaker 1: these as these courageous independent journalists who are just speaking
Speaker 1: truth to power. And then the next week they'll they'll
Speaker 1: expose corruption within the opposition parties and then they're just
Speaker 1: you know, stooges of this and that other thing, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't this is just character assassination. And
Speaker 1: and but and but the very clear differences that have
Speaker 1: won to one hundred percent clear about it. They are
Speaker 1: facing you know, serious, you know, physical and safety risks
Speaker 1: for the for the work that they do, whereas we
Speaker 1: suffer from mean tweets, yes, basically brutal yeah, and some
Speaker 1: mean dms every now. Yeah, but his his work on UH,
Speaker 1: you know, his his work on the Ebola outbreak is
Speaker 1: it was was path breaking and you know, he was,
Speaker 1: for instance, the first one to demonstrate that the patient zero,
Speaker 1: the meal was not two years old, was eighteen months
Speaker 1: and that was that was a critical discovery which later
Speaker 1: the rest of the kind of conventional narrative had to
Speaker 1: incorporate helped discovered that the dates were off. He also
Speaker 1: he also discovered that a Meal was, as he mentioned
Speaker 1: in the interview, part of a very large family, and
Speaker 1: that his siblings did not end up catching a Bola,
Speaker 1: which nor did his father, who treated him the entire time,
Speaker 1: which is just extraordinarily difficult to imagine, which would make
Speaker 1: it more likely that the local doctors diagnosis of what
Speaker 1: he had of malaria was actually was actually accurate. And
Speaker 1: so that if you cannot pinpoint the patient zero to
Speaker 1: early December or even late December as they changed as
Speaker 1: they changed it to later in this village, and where
Speaker 1: did it start and how and the overlap with COVID
Speaker 1: is obviously fascinating and direct, Like like several of the
Speaker 1: key figures in the UH COVID lab League controversy were
Speaker 1: literally present at that one. Unbelievable. I look forward to
Speaker 1: your future reporting on it. I know that you're you're
Speaker 1: not giving up on this. Yes, it's yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's awful to think about how these all of these,
Speaker 1: all of these deaths, all of the suffering, may have
Speaker 1: been preventable by just smarter policy, smarter policy and more transparency. Wow.
Speaker 1: All right, well that does it for us in this
Speaker 1: edition of Counterpoints. Thank you so much for watching. We
Speaker 1: hope you have a great rest of your week, and
Speaker 1: we will see you back here next Wednesday.