Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We're off for the holidays, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we don't have an amazing show for you Today.
Speaker 1: NBC's Ryan Riley joins us to talk about his new book,
Speaker 1: Sedition Hunters, How January sixth broke the justice system. But
Speaker 1: first we talked to Peter Salad of the Hometown Project
Speaker 1: about how they use celebrities to elect local officials. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Peter select.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1: This is such a cool project. So we are coming
Speaker 1: off this extremely good off year election for Democrats. Before
Speaker 1: we start talking about what you are doing, I want
Speaker 1: to just take a moment because all of us who
Speaker 1: ingest the mainstream media, of which I am very much
Speaker 1: a part, a lot of us feel like we can't
Speaker 1: have a two second victory lab here. But I was
Speaker 1: told that Glenn Youngkin was going to take over Virginia
Speaker 1: and make it Florida, and instead he lost both the
Speaker 1: House of Delegates and Democrats were able to keep the
Speaker 1: state Senate, and in numerous races, Democrats over performed including
Speaker 1: in Kentucky. So I just want when we go into
Speaker 1: this interview, because this is one of these things that
Speaker 1: is a thing that really does actually win elections. Like
Speaker 1: these kind of projects actually do. They flip seats. They
Speaker 1: flip Senate seats, they flip House seats, they flip governorships.
Speaker 1: They are the sort of nuts and bolts of activism.
Speaker 1: So with that very long winded introduction, tell us what
Speaker 1: exactly is the Hometown Project.
Speaker 3: So great to be here, and thanks so much. I
Speaker 3: do want to say really quickly, I think your point
Speaker 3: about celebrating victories is very well taken. One of the
Speaker 3: Hometown board members is Preparabo, and she's a great actor
Speaker 3: and political activist, and she's had us at one point
Speaker 3: a few years ago. You know, look, we never celebrate
Speaker 3: our victories. So we're like already into twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: We've just had this you know, great election, and you know,
Speaker 3: I know for our org as well, we're kind of
Speaker 3: trying to already look into twenty twenty four and we've
Speaker 3: been doing so for a while. So it is good
Speaker 3: to celebrate victories because they allow us to ingest some
Speaker 3: of that positive energy that keeps us going and if
Speaker 3: we're always in panic mode, we don't, you know, take
Speaker 3: the time to have that kind of that positivity which
Speaker 3: leads to better outcomes in the end. Okay, So that's
Speaker 3: just about celebration. The Hometown project started after the Trump election.
Speaker 3: I'm a musician by trade, played for many years in
Speaker 3: New York City, still do sometimes did a lot of
Speaker 3: movie work, and for whatever reason, a lot of well
Speaker 3: known people are people who ended up being well known,
Speaker 3: needs to come and see me play. After the twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen election, I was kind of thinking about what could
Speaker 3: I do? Like so many people, I was think, gosh,
Speaker 3: I didn't do enough.
Speaker 2: What could I have done? What could I have done?
Speaker 3: And I started talking to a bunch of different activists
Speaker 3: and I had a conversation with an environmental activist and
Speaker 3: he said, you know, when Mark Ruffalo went back to Kenosha,
Speaker 3: Wisconsin to talk about environmental issues, that was really powerful
Speaker 3: because he's there. And a little light went off of
Speaker 3: my head. I thought, I know, Mard Ruffalo, what if
Speaker 3: we could get Mark and people like Mark to support
Speaker 3: local candidates in their hometowns. So these races that are
Speaker 3: so important that are decided often by five hundred votes,
Speaker 3: a thousand votes, could we get someone well known to
Speaker 3: support them. And in the beginning my thought process was
Speaker 3: we'll get them to go back and lead a rally,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. But you know, after going about
Speaker 3: it for a year or two, came very clear these
Speaker 3: are busy people. They don't have time necessarily lining up
Speaker 3: when they might be returning home or getting arranging. All
Speaker 3: the travel is way beyond our capacity. However, if they
Speaker 3: could take twenty minutes and just make a video on
Speaker 3: their phone, we send them a script. We then take
Speaker 3: that video, we slap some graphics on it with the
Speaker 3: candidates name, their picture, and then we digitally distribute that
Speaker 3: content within the district. Then we are reaching a lot
Speaker 3: of the right voters within that district. That's kind of
Speaker 3: just a little overview of what we do.
Speaker 1: So give us an example of a place where this
Speaker 1: happens and how this goes.
Speaker 3: So we were in both Virginia and New Jersey this year.
Speaker 3: It's our fourth cycle. In Virginia. Nadarius Clark, for example,
Speaker 3: is running in the Hampton Roads area running for a
Speaker 3: House of Delegates in a new district. And Wanda Sykes
Speaker 3: is also from Portsmouth Or She grew up there. She's
Speaker 3: from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, NOH Portsmouth, Virginia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense, Like.
Speaker 3: We define hometown in a bunch of different ways. Essentially,
Speaker 3: it's where people feel like they have roots. So Connie
Speaker 3: Britten did something for us. She's from Virginia. She works
Speaker 3: with us in Virginia all the time. But she's also
Speaker 3: well known for spending a lot of time in Texas
Speaker 3: for Friday night lights. So you know, something for us
Speaker 3: in Texas there too, because she feels an affinity with
Speaker 3: that area. So Wanda Sykes from Portsmouth. We work with
Speaker 3: state based grassroots partners, which can be an organization like
Speaker 3: Clean Virginia we worked with this past year in Virginia.
Speaker 3: They're an advocacy organization. Is primary goal is to disrupt
Speaker 3: the power monopoly, and they poured a lot of money
Speaker 3: into the Virginia elections this year and they won and
Speaker 3: it worked, or it could be For example, in New Jersey,
Speaker 3: we worked with the New Jersey Democratic Caucus, so they
Speaker 3: had three priority districts New Jersey, they're state Senate and
Speaker 3: a State Assembly. You run as a slate because it's
Speaker 3: the same district. It's just one senator and two Assembly
Speaker 3: people per district. So they had three slates that they
Speaker 3: were their highest priority slates. The Grassroots partner says, hey,
Speaker 3: here's our top nine, top twelve, top fifteen candidates. These
Speaker 3: are the people that we think are going to be
Speaker 3: in the tightest races. And then we come in and
Speaker 3: we say, you know, we do the research. I want
Speaker 3: to give a shout out to ourn incredible executive director
Speaker 3: of the Hometown Project, Aaron Frederick, without whom none of
Speaker 3: this would be possible. What we do is then we
Speaker 3: go we take those candidates. We say, okay, that they're
Speaker 3: from a specific area, Let's do the research. See who
Speaker 3: is well known that is from that area. And then,
Speaker 3: because I've been in the entertainment business for a while
Speaker 3: and now we've done this for a while, people have
Speaker 3: had a positive experience. So at its core, the kind
Speaker 3: of front of camera entertainment industry is pretty small, so
Speaker 3: it's not that hard for me to reach a lot
Speaker 3: of different people. So then I say, okay, well, look,
Speaker 3: Wanda Sykes is from Portsmouth, Clean, Virginia. Needs we call
Speaker 3: them hometown energizers. That's our term for the well known person.
Speaker 3: They need somebody from that area. Oh look, Wanda Sykes
Speaker 3: is from who knows Wanda? Well, look it turns out
Speaker 3: Mark Ruffalo knows Wanda. He puts us in touch and
Speaker 3: she makes a video for us. And so that's the
Speaker 3: way we work.
Speaker 1: Your dream is to get Taylor Swift, right, let's be honest, Well,
Speaker 1: to run for senate's percentate?
Speaker 2: Yeah, how would be amazing?
Speaker 1: Marshall Blackburn, bye bye?
Speaker 2: How great would that be?
Speaker 1: That would be amazing?
Speaker 3: I mean, she honestly does not have time to be no,
Speaker 3: she is. The Taylor Swift question is fascinating because I
Speaker 3: think we get it all the time, and I think
Speaker 3: it speaks to how people have thought about celebrity in
Speaker 3: the political space and how what we feel like we're
Speaker 3: doing at the Hometown Project is different from that. Taylor
Speaker 3: is a she's a megastar. She's a supernova. But if
Speaker 3: we are counting on Taylor Swift to save democracy, fucked.
Speaker 3: I so appreciate, shate all the things that she's done
Speaker 3: and her document the documentary about her is great for us.
Speaker 3: We're like, hey, look, somebody could be from a local area.
Speaker 3: They may not be nationally hugely known, but within their
Speaker 3: local area they're actually really well known. The local papers
Speaker 3: written about them since they got their first part on
Speaker 3: that TV show ten years ago. And you know, we've
Speaker 3: got that little lower third, the biographical information, which says
Speaker 3: exactly where they're from, Bergen Counties, Melissa Fromiro and so
Speaker 3: the thing is is those connections are real and they're
Speaker 3: you know, we get it all the time. This I
Speaker 3: won't name names, but this most recent time in Clean Virginia,
Speaker 3: they said to us, Oh, just so you know, this
Speaker 3: person that you're trying to reach, his sister used to
Speaker 3: date the candidate, you know what I mean. So it's
Speaker 3: like these are local races where the so and so's
Speaker 3: babysitter used to you know, babysit, this a cousin or
Speaker 3: what you know, It's like that this used to they
Speaker 3: used to be their second grade teacher or whatever. Those
Speaker 3: things are. Those local connections are real, and we don't have,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: What, we don't need. I mean, I think the point
Speaker 1: is that the people want their local people to come back, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a very meaningful thing, even if they're
Speaker 1: not superstars.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 3: To me, part of this work that was so key
Speaker 3: as we were thinking about it from the beginning is
Speaker 3: our danger zone is the kind of like, who are
Speaker 3: these Hollywood elites coming in?
Speaker 2: Tell me what to do?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: That kind of right?
Speaker 1: Right, right?
Speaker 3: And so if we sidestep that and we say, no,
Speaker 3: this is not a Hollywood elite person. This is somebody
Speaker 3: who is from your community. They understand your community, they
Speaker 3: grew up there, their siblings might live there, their parents
Speaker 3: or whatever it is, we really try to avoid that
Speaker 3: sense of it's not a generalized person. And then from
Speaker 3: our perspective, if I'm going out to Patton Oswald and
Speaker 3: I'm saying, hey, Paton, would you support a candidate like
Speaker 3: Russet Perry who's running in the district that includes a
Speaker 3: lot of loud in county where you grew up, He's
Speaker 3: ten times more likely to say, yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker 2: I want to do that, versus, hey.
Speaker 3: Could you support this generalized political cause that doesn't really
Speaker 3: have anything to do with what his personal life story.
Speaker 3: So it's much easier for me to recruit people because
Speaker 3: they want to help out their hometown community.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. And I think that is a really good point,
Speaker 1: and I agree, like this is the whole thing about democracy,
Speaker 1: right is we love these places we come from. I
Speaker 1: know how I feel about New York City where I
Speaker 1: grew up and my parents grew up and when the
Speaker 1: pandemic came, like, I did not go. I just stayed
Speaker 1: here because this is my place, this is where I'm from,
Speaker 1: and there was no other place to go. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is it. And so the idea of right, this
Speaker 1: is not some celebrity parachuting in. This is someone who
Speaker 1: is a person of the place.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: And because we're connected to the grassroots organization as well,
Speaker 3: if there's things that the candidate wants the stress or
Speaker 3: things are organization feels like is resonating with voters, then
Speaker 3: you know, we can integrate that into the content as
Speaker 3: opposed to being some national organization that kind of says, oh,
Speaker 3: these are the national issues.
Speaker 2: That everybody's running on wherever it is.
Speaker 3: You know, it is it about fixing Route twenty nine,
Speaker 3: you know, more than it's about some sort of other issue.
Speaker 1: And it's also just about like bringing the people who
Speaker 1: care about a place bringing them back, right. I Mean,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the larger issue because I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the things I think a lot about is Peter
Speaker 1: Teal And I'm sorry. I apologized to Jesse for this tangent,
Speaker 1: which will likely get us sued. But Peter tele got
Speaker 1: so excited about Blake Masters and worked so hard on
Speaker 1: this Blake Master's campaign. And Carrie Lake too ran for governor.
Speaker 1: I mean, Kerry Lake is from Arizona. But it was
Speaker 1: a sense in which you had a vision for the
Speaker 1: state that may not have actually been what the state was, right,
Speaker 1: This was a person who lived in Miami or wherever
Speaker 1: it is, Peter Tieli's where he had a vision of
Speaker 1: what he wanted the government to look like, of what
Speaker 1: he wanted you know, he had candidates that he had
Speaker 1: sort of decided where people who could win in these
Speaker 1: And that's not what this is about, right. This is
Speaker 1: about people who come from place endorsing candidates who come
Speaker 1: from that place because they think it will serve their community.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: And the candidates we're supporting, we always feel like are
Speaker 3: the ones that are better connected to their community. These
Speaker 3: are local races, and I think that this is again
Speaker 3: we've seen celebrity used in a national sense. Three days
Speaker 3: before the election, there's a big rally in Springsteen plays
Speaker 3: and all that, and again not to I'm a huge
Speaker 3: Springsteen fan. It's not about that, it's just can we
Speaker 3: think about this in a different way where to actually prioritize.
Speaker 3: We see now how important state legislatures are, How many
Speaker 3: decisions are made at that level. We talk about abortion,
Speaker 3: we talk about medicaid, expand gun safety, the minimum wage,
Speaker 3: so many decisions are made to the state legislation. Not
Speaker 3: to mention jerrymandering, which impacts Congress, so many decisions are
Speaker 3: made at that level. Yet for so long the funding
Speaker 3: model has been so kind of devoted to Congress, Senate
Speaker 3: and presidential races, and we've missed the boat in so
Speaker 3: many ways. And first of all, I want to say
Speaker 3: to you, it's so great that you've had local candidates
Speaker 3: from Virginia on your show, and.
Speaker 1: Jesse and I have had all. I was like love
Speaker 1: home watching the results and I was like, wait, we
Speaker 1: had that person on our show. We had that person.
Speaker 3: Nobody does this on the progressive and the Democratic side.
Speaker 3: There's the funding is screwed. It's such a blind spot
Speaker 3: and it's very hard as a small organization who does
Speaker 3: effective work.
Speaker 2: Who you know?
Speaker 3: Last year in Michigan, we worked with the Michigan Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: We had I got sixteen famous people from Michigan to
Speaker 3: support over twenty state ledged candidates. And we're not some
Speaker 3: magic bullet, but we're a part of something that if
Speaker 3: you focus on these areas, you can in theory, change
Speaker 3: an entire state legislature for as much as one single
Speaker 3: Senate seat. You know, it's like, do we need to
Speaker 3: raise one hundred million dollars to run against Mitch McConnell
Speaker 3: in Kentucky or can that money be better.
Speaker 1: You flipping legislatures which will ultimately I mean, the reason
Speaker 1: why Virginia didn't have an abortion ban in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two was because they miraculously kept the state center.
Speaker 3: That's right, exactly, and that was part of a lot
Speaker 3: of hard work that was done by a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Even though at the top of that ticket, we don't
Speaker 3: need to go into.
Speaker 1: The red vest wearing fake moderate.
Speaker 3: So and they were able to, you know, utilize some
Speaker 3: of the fear of mongering tactics for us. The other
Speaker 3: thing I want to say about our content is we
Speaker 3: sidestep again all of that negativity. All of our content
Speaker 3: is positive. We never mentioned an opponent, We barely ever
Speaker 3: mentioned party. The things that we're trying to do with
Speaker 3: these short thirty second spots and banner ads is it's
Speaker 3: a sense of connection and community and shared values. So
Speaker 3: in the beginning, we had people and that we're always
Speaker 3: talking about issues, issues, issues, and we're like, okay, what
Speaker 3: we realize is issues resonate with people like us. Who
Speaker 3: are you know, in the kind of people power of demographic.
Speaker 3: Essentially we're into politics all the time. But for the
Speaker 3: much more casual voter that are the actual voters that
Speaker 3: we need to reach to win elections. We can't be
Speaker 3: relying on just revving people up with a sense of
Speaker 3: fear and anger. We have to talk about a shared
Speaker 3: set of values and they may not be well versed
Speaker 3: on what the actual issues are. But if we can
Speaker 3: talk about a shared set of values, and if we
Speaker 3: can do it from our perspective with the well known person,
Speaker 3: that is pleasing and draws people in and to the
Speaker 3: point where we then we see right away that candidate's name,
Speaker 3: the candidate's image comes down and then people are shown
Speaker 3: that ad. We try to get saturations, so we're trying
Speaker 3: to get people to watch it between ten and fourteen times.
Speaker 3: Some part of our content, whether it's the video or
Speaker 3: the banner ad. In the two weeks leading up to
Speaker 3: the election. We found in Virginia, we ran an RCT
Speaker 3: and a study in twenty twenty one, voters that had
Speaker 3: received you know, a randomized control trial and voters that
Speaker 3: had received our content were eight point six percent more
Speaker 3: likely to know the name of their local candidate. And
Speaker 3: so we're talking about races that are decided by really
Speaker 3: small margins. And that's the most important thing that we
Speaker 3: can do for these local candidates is raise their name recognition.
Speaker 3: So people actually when they're going into that voting booth,
Speaker 3: they remember, they're like, oh, that's right, Wanda Seikes. I
Speaker 3: saw that. I saw that actually had Nindarius Clark on there.
Speaker 3: He's awesome.
Speaker 2: Let me vote for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much, Peter. This is super interesting,
Speaker 1: Grain and you're doing the work man.
Speaker 2: Great to be with you and admire all that you do.
Speaker 1: Ryan Riley is an NBC News justice reporter and author
Speaker 1: of Sedition Hunters, How January sixth Broke the Justice System.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Ryan Riley.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: So the book is called Sedition Hunters, How January sixth
Speaker 1: Broke the Justice System? Tell me how you got to
Speaker 1: writing this book.
Speaker 4: You know, when January sixth I took this approach that, oh,
Speaker 4: my gosh, this is going to take over my beat,
Speaker 4: and I was sort of bummed about it, and it
Speaker 4: was just figuring it was going to be case after
Speaker 4: case after case and sort of the same thing over
Speaker 4: and over and over again. I thought the scope of
Speaker 4: it would be big at that point, but I didn't
Speaker 4: realize the full scope of it, because you know, initially
Speaker 4: after the capital was reached, the number that was being
Speaker 4: thrown out there, it was like eight hundred cases, and
Speaker 4: in reality the number of people who could be charged
Speaker 4: is a norse of three thousand. Right now we're at
Speaker 4: about one thousand, two hundred, but there's a lot more
Speaker 4: left to go in the two plus years that they
Speaker 4: have left the stature limitations. But then I really sort
Speaker 4: of got to working with these slews and it just
Speaker 4: became this really fascinating story. I had never been ahead
Speaker 4: of so many FBI investigations. It was not something I
Speaker 4: was used to it. I was used to covering what
Speaker 4: the FBI sort of did and afterwards and oh there's
Speaker 4: a case for being brought forward, but having this sort
Speaker 4: of prior no floage of all of these criminals was
Speaker 4: quite something, and it became this this thing that's just
Speaker 4: really strange, where now it's like, oh, they finally brought
Speaker 4: that case. Right, it's not this thing that I'm surprised
Speaker 4: by something it comes up. It's like, oh, this is
Speaker 4: coming down the pipeline, the waiting this one. Oh, finally
Speaker 4: they got to that. So it's been this really interesting
Speaker 4: thing and I think has just really sort of revolutionized
Speaker 4: and brought up a lot of deeper issues within the
Speaker 4: FBI about their sort of falling behind on the technology front.
Speaker 1: But they were sort of rescued by the American people
Speaker 1: on the technology front. Right explained to us that story.
Speaker 4: Indeed they really were. This all sort of happened on
Speaker 4: the platform formally known as Twitter. Initially, there would be
Speaker 4: these photos that were posted. There was this really horrific
Speaker 4: photo posted a few days after January sixth of an
Speaker 4: officer bed dragged down the steps of the capital face first,
Speaker 4: and that's sort of what set all of this off.
Speaker 4: And there is someone who sort of sent out that
Speaker 4: photo and said, let's identify everyone in its photos. So
Speaker 4: they started giving everyone names and hashtags, and then nicknames
Speaker 4: became a huge part of this because it helped people
Speaker 4: track various people throughout the day because you're dealing with
Speaker 4: just such an overwhelming amount of evidence that it's really
Speaker 4: tough to organize. And that's one of the things that
Speaker 4: the FBI has really really struggled with, and that's where
Speaker 4: sort of this crowdsourcing really came in handy. And initially,
Speaker 4: you know, this was done out in public via hashtags,
Speaker 4: but in the years since, it's really more behind the scenes,
Speaker 4: and a number of these sleuths are feeding information to
Speaker 4: the FBI that's really assisted them. I mean, there are
Speaker 4: cases that are shoot to nuts completely built by these
Speaker 4: online sloughs and the FBI basically just has to press
Speaker 4: the button, sign the form. And then there are other
Speaker 4: cases that would have been brought forward anyway, but then
Speaker 4: miss lous are really aiding in those investigations and bringing
Speaker 4: up new information that the government was unaware of.
Speaker 1: So this really is an interesting situation where Internet, you know,
Speaker 1: the people who are so met with such disdain by
Speaker 1: a lot of people, I mean a lot of people
Speaker 1: who I think of, you know, in this sort of
Speaker 1: journalism world, and not just journalism, but a lot of
Speaker 1: these other worlds tend to have disdain towards these people,
Speaker 1: and in fact they kind of saved the day. So
Speaker 1: talk to us a little bit about that, because that's
Speaker 1: really interesting.
Speaker 4: You know, I've covered the FBI for a long time now,
Speaker 4: and I always sort of knew that they were not
Speaker 4: as you know, they were not the Hollywood image that
Speaker 4: we see trade on Tolida. But this really sort of
Speaker 4: just shattered it for me, getting involved with the loves
Speaker 4: and how far behind they were in a lot of
Speaker 4: this stuff. I remember, early on I've started covering the FBI,
Speaker 4: there is a round table. This was probably a decade
Speaker 4: ago now with James Comy, you know, a bunch of
Speaker 4: reporters were brought in and I remember it being like
Speaker 4: a stating that I was the only digital reporter there
Speaker 4: right because they weren't sort of used to that. And
Speaker 4: the top of the FBI spokesters at the time was like,
Speaker 4: so do you get like this? This is when I
Speaker 4: was at huff Post and they were like, so do
Speaker 4: you guys? You know, do you guys print a newspaper?
Speaker 4: And like say to no, no. So that was mebing
Speaker 4: a little bit of a sign of things to come.
Speaker 4: And the FBI is a use of technology but if
Speaker 4: you did, just think about the feeders who goes into
Speaker 4: the FBI, It doesn't make a lot of sense if
Speaker 4: you're really technologically skilled that you would join an organization
Speaker 4: like the FBI, because gosh, they could send you anywhere
Speaker 4: across the country. They continue you somewhere you don't want
Speaker 4: to live. And just also that the pay scale is
Speaker 4: a huge thing. Also, you can't smoke pot, right, and
Speaker 4: like that's a thing, you know, Like everyone laughs when
Speaker 4: I say that, but like James Comy himself has pointed
Speaker 4: this out, like they actually relaxing the rule a little
Speaker 4: bit bit more. But like what tech person do you
Speaker 4: know who hasn't smoked pot, like at least of their life.
Speaker 4: That's not a thing, right, And now it's like the
Speaker 4: FBI will about you, okay, smoke except to stop using
Speaker 4: you know, a marijuana, great year, I guess before you apply.
Speaker 4: But you know, it's just there are a lot of
Speaker 4: these things, and most I think, you know, predominantly being
Speaker 4: the pay scale issue, that really are sort of holding
Speaker 4: them back. And it's a real issue because this is
Speaker 4: the most important thing of our time, like open source
Speaker 4: investigations and technological skills are really what the FBI desperately needs,
Speaker 4: and I think it's something that they're struggling to keep
Speaker 4: up with right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So tell me like a sort of example of
Speaker 1: one of these cases.
Speaker 4: So let's take a guy named Logan Barnhart. So Logan
Speaker 4: Barnhart was a construction worker. He used to work with
Speaker 4: his dad. They had a falling out and he was
Speaker 4: sort of on his own. You know, he's a lot
Speaker 4: a lot of photos of him operating heavy machinery. He's
Speaker 4: also a very fit guy, like to work out a lot.
Speaker 4: Turned out he was a bodybuilder back in the day.
Speaker 4: I mean. He was also on the cover of some
Speaker 4: romance novels and so he was one of these individuals
Speaker 4: spoiled or alert who dried to cop down the Capitol
Speaker 4: stairs And it was a little difficult for the sluice
Speaker 4: to idem at first because he was kind of covered up, right,
Speaker 4: So they nicknamed him cat Sweat because he was wearing
Speaker 4: a Caterpillar brand sweatshirt and that's how they sort of
Speaker 4: followed him the whole day. But you know he had
Speaker 4: sunglasses on, is that his face was covered part of
Speaker 4: the time he had had on. It wasn't the best
Speaker 4: shot you could get of him from a facial recognition standpoint,
Speaker 4: but using some of the technology that the sluice developed.
Speaker 4: In fact, the app one of these apps that I
Speaker 4: refer to in the book, they were able to sort
Speaker 4: of bring all this information together. And the best way
Speaker 4: to think of this as sort of like your iPhoto
Speaker 4: library in that if you told me, like, hey, I'm
Speaker 4: trying to find this photo of X person, but I
Speaker 4: don't know when it was taken, right, what you can
Speaker 4: do on your phone is just sort of swipe up
Speaker 4: and it'll show you as internal facial recognition, so it'll
Speaker 4: show you every one of the photos of your friends basically,
Speaker 4: you know, and even for my kids, it takes them
Speaker 4: from when they were babies to Karen Day. It follows
Speaker 4: them all the way through the facial recognitions pretty good.
Speaker 4: And that's the best way to think of what the
Speaker 4: Slues are able to do here. So they found a
Speaker 4: really good shot of him where he had had his
Speaker 4: sunglasses off, and it was just this YouTube video that
Speaker 4: they had archived a while back. Somebody had very quickly
Speaker 4: tanned over the crowd at the ellipse during Trump's speech,
Speaker 4: and at that point Logan Barnhardt did not have his
Speaker 4: sunglasses on, and that internal facial recognition matched him with
Speaker 4: the person who was at the Capitol steps dragging down
Speaker 4: driving a cop down the stairs. So then you had
Speaker 4: a full face shot without the sunglasses when the sunglasses
Speaker 4: are on, you know, strapped to his chest or something.
Speaker 4: And then he run that through his facial recognition and search,
Speaker 4: and then what pops up is all of us bodybuilding
Speaker 4: photos and all of the photos of him on the
Speaker 4: cover of romance novels. So as the results of all
Speaker 4: of this, a few authors of romance novels have had
Speaker 4: to change the covers of their books. Oh wow, were
Speaker 4: done because he's on a bunch of them. I think
Speaker 4: one of them was something to do with stepbrothers and
Speaker 4: you know, our stepbrother or some sort of thing. That's
Speaker 4: basically how they were able to find this in the
Speaker 4: and was using this facial recognition. And then the way
Speaker 4: that they confirmed us this facial recognition isn't enough for them.
Speaker 4: Before they sent this into the VFPI, they went to
Speaker 4: his Instagram and then there they found an image of
Speaker 4: him wearing a hat of the same happ that he
Speaker 4: wore to the Capitol on January sixth. They found him
Speaker 4: punching a punching bag, wearing that same sweatshirt that he
Speaker 4: wore January.
Speaker 1: These people are kind of dumb, right, I mean, these
Speaker 1: people are kind of dumb.
Speaker 4: Some of them are tougher than you would think. That
Speaker 4: was still a lot of their investigative work. But like
Speaker 4: some of the ones that are really the huge breakthroughs
Speaker 4: are when you have somebody who was like completely covered
Speaker 4: head to toe, did a really good job of covering
Speaker 4: their face, and then they'll still find it. And one
Speaker 4: of the crazy stories there was somebody who was just
Speaker 4: completely covered and they couldn't get a good face shot
Speaker 4: out of him. As I tured out, somebody else was
Speaker 4: filming behind them at one point and they opened up
Speaker 4: their phone and what was their backscreen but the name
Speaker 4: of their LLC, their company that they found it and
Speaker 4: there it was. That was it. So someone took all
Speaker 4: of these precautions, but because their rock screen was the
Speaker 4: name of their LLC, they were id. So it's you
Speaker 4: never know what detail is really going to break this through.
Speaker 4: And the FBI just really isn't structured to investigate things
Speaker 4: in this really collaborative way. They're sort of very siloed
Speaker 4: off into these individual investigations, and that's the real thing.
Speaker 4: I think the secret that the Slows have been able
Speaker 4: to bring to this is that collaboration and those technological skills.
Speaker 1: So interesting, did you kind of get to know these people?
Speaker 1: Can you sort of explain to our listeners a little
Speaker 1: bit about what they were, what they're like in whatever
Speaker 1: vague terms you want.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, I mean, therefore all over the country, sort
Speaker 4: of all the different walks of life, the things that
Speaker 4: al This is spoiling a little bit of the book,
Speaker 4: but one of the things that really shocks people is
Speaker 4: that one of the key figures here, who I name Alex,
Speaker 4: actually voted for Donald Trump twice.
Speaker 1: Wow. So strange, not what you'd expect.
Speaker 4: Not at all. And it just sort of came up
Speaker 4: in a conversation where they were all talking about, you know,
Speaker 4: oh who sort of you know there was their primary
Speaker 4: figure or who is there you know they voted for
Speaker 4: in the Democratic primary, and he sort of needed this joke,
Speaker 4: just thought it was a joke at first, and then
Speaker 4: he's like, no, no, like I did. He's sort of
Speaker 4: by thinking now he describes himself as more of a
Speaker 4: Liz Chady Republican. But even when he's I think he's
Speaker 4: more in the Democratic camp.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: He was a successful guy, so I think that a
Speaker 4: lot of this was just you know, economics for him. Right.
Speaker 4: That is something that jocks a lot of people in
Speaker 4: here that this isn't just you know.
Speaker 1: He didn't like crime. Right. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: Republicans who voted for Trump but didn't like crime.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think one of the reasons that a
Speaker 4: lot of this lose. In addition to sort of just
Speaker 4: building up this trust over more than two years, two
Speaker 4: and a half years, almost three years, now this lose.
Speaker 4: One of the reasons I think they spoke with me
Speaker 4: was they were really interested in shattering some of these
Speaker 4: myths that people think of. Like the pushback you get is, oh,
Speaker 4: look at all these losers in their mom's basement, you know,
Speaker 4: going through this material, and like, you know, one of
Speaker 4: them was sort of I think antigonized by somebody on
Speaker 4: Twitter one time and responded back like, no, dude, I
Speaker 4: make more money than you, and I work in cancer research.
Speaker 4: They have a very wide array of people and like,
Speaker 4: these people are really successful. I've really rich family lines.
Speaker 4: But this is something also, it sort of became this
Speaker 4: passion and this obby of theirs, which you know, hooked
Speaker 4: up with sort of their interests. But it really is
Speaker 4: intriguing and can feel like this puzzle and you really
Speaker 4: do get these little adrenaline first when you know you
Speaker 4: have these ideas and you figure out a piece of
Speaker 4: this puzzle that is not known more broadly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean such an interesting and I mean just
Speaker 1: such a crazy kind story. So explain to me what happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, did people feel that they had been taken
Speaker 1: advantage of by Trump? I mean, all these people end
Speaker 1: up in jail or you know, facing thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars of legal A lot of them do have
Speaker 1: sort of come to Jesus moments, right.
Speaker 4: Some of them, And it's sometimes tough to figure out
Speaker 4: whether it's really come to Jesus moment or whether it's
Speaker 4: sort of an act for the judge. I think there
Speaker 4: are a lot of people who were legitimately remorseful and
Speaker 4: sort of realized they got up. But what's sort of
Speaker 4: fascinating about this, and it's not something that judges can
Speaker 4: or should take into consideration, is that there's such a
Speaker 4: deep link between still believing the conspiracies and being apologetic, right,
Speaker 4: like if you still believe that the twenty twenty election
Speaker 4: was stolen and that Joe Biden is unlawful president usurper
Speaker 4: in the White House, and you didn't do anything too serious,
Speaker 4: It's like, what would you be apologetic for? So that's
Speaker 4: kind of the interesting dynamic for me when it's so intertwined. Right,
Speaker 4: there shouldn't be a situation where judges are like forcing
Speaker 4: people to admit, hey, no, the election was legitimate. Right,
Speaker 4: that's not America. Right. People are free to believe whatever
Speaker 4: crazy conspiracy they want to believe. But it just is
Speaker 4: so remarkable because it is so intertwined in your mind,
Speaker 4: and I try to put myself in their shoes, and
Speaker 4: it's like, you know, if I deeply believe that the
Speaker 4: election was stolen and I'm getting in trouble because I,
Speaker 4: you know, walked in a building, you can see why
Speaker 4: some of these people would be really angry. But on
Speaker 4: the other side of the coin, there are people who
Speaker 4: just realized they were completely.
Speaker 2: Tricked and cool.
Speaker 4: Then you know, personally, as an American, those are the
Speaker 4: most rewarding moments when I'm sitting in court and like,
Speaker 4: you have someone you like just weigh themselves out there
Speaker 4: and say I can't believe I fell for this crap, right,
Speaker 4: and like right right, I'm machined and I'm embarrassed, and like,
Speaker 4: you know, I don't know if if I were on
Speaker 4: the bench, I think that would have a lot of
Speaker 4: sway over me for someone to actually sort of state
Speaker 4: that the truth and realize how dumb all what's in
Speaker 4: the first place?
Speaker 1: God, it's such an interesting and strange kind of problem. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, what happens to these people who are the sluice?
Speaker 1: Do they keep going? There are a lot more people, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, not everyone's been charged.
Speaker 4: So yeah, so, like I said, the scope is like
Speaker 4: above three thousand. Right now, the FBI knows about the
Speaker 4: identities of about a thousand people who haven't been arrested.
Speaker 4: So that's almost double the number of people who in
Speaker 4: nearly three years have been charged. And so really, you know,
Speaker 4: you're kind of getting to this situation. One law enforcement
Speaker 4: official sort of compared it to the Titanic, right where
Speaker 4: it's like, okay, you know, not everyone's getting off of
Speaker 4: this boat, So what cases it's already kind of do
Speaker 4: before that statute of limitations expires, because really, now you know,
Speaker 4: it's really just a little over two years. There's a
Speaker 4: five year statute of limitations, and and so you know,
Speaker 4: you would think that the priority would be more towards
Speaker 4: some of these more violinist enders, and we've seen a
Speaker 4: little bit of that shift in in recent months. But
Speaker 4: I think there hasn't been this sort of collective from
Speaker 4: what I've heard and the sources I talked to, there
Speaker 4: hasn't been this collective consideration within DOJ of just like
Speaker 4: what how the clock is ticking and how many cases
Speaker 4: there are yet to go? And what I've heard from
Speaker 4: you know, the book is for people who read the book,
Speaker 4: is that that's sort of you know, been sort of
Speaker 4: clarifying for them and has pushed forward a little bit
Speaker 4: more mentum within DRJ to make sure that they're sort
Speaker 4: of getting getting things going, because in order to get
Speaker 4: to anywhere near those thousand cases that they have identified
Speaker 4: right now, they really need to start pushing, you know,
Speaker 4: the pedal to the metal.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, it's just such an incredible story. So
Speaker 1: do people continue to do this? I mean, is there
Speaker 1: sort of or did they kind of go back to
Speaker 1: their normal lives or is there I mean.
Speaker 4: You know, this is less time intensive than it was
Speaker 4: before because there are so many ideas sitting out there,
Speaker 4: but now you know some of the slus are getting
Speaker 4: requests from the Bureau. One of the most shocking moments
Speaker 4: to me was actually not that long ago, was in
Speaker 4: the Proud Boys trial earlier this year, and the FBI
Speaker 4: had worked on this investigation involving five Proud Boys, so
Speaker 4: it's just conspiracy trial, one of their biggest cases for
Speaker 4: two years. Right, they had had this, they had really
Speaker 4: put all the resources into this, but they had missed
Speaker 4: a really major moment in which Zachary Reel, one of
Speaker 4: the defendants, a Proud Boy from Philly, pepper sprayed a cup.
Speaker 4: And the only reason that this came up was because
Speaker 4: the government had released other footage and connection with another
Speaker 4: case that was then published online that the sleus are
Speaker 4: sucked up and over this long weekend, when Zachary Reel
Speaker 4: was on the stand, after denying over and over again
Speaker 4: that he had assaulted any officers that day, and in fact,
Speaker 4: the government never accused him specifically of assaulting any officers,
Speaker 4: the sleuth used a long weekend and found this footage
Speaker 4: and found an image of him video of him pointing
Speaker 4: pepper spray at a cop and found another angle on
Speaker 4: it as well, And it was just a moment that
Speaker 4: Gathbi completely missed. And that was really just one of
Speaker 4: these moments because I saw how this operated and then
Speaker 4: I saw them sort of. You know, it was just
Speaker 4: really dramatic court room moment because the guy then is
Speaker 4: on the stand after lying about what he gad and
Speaker 4: then has his pastor resort two he said he did
Speaker 4: not recall assaulting any long work. Yeah, so it was
Speaker 4: like this really crazy moment. So this louser are definitely
Speaker 4: still doing a lot of these cases today, but now
Speaker 4: a lot of this is because the government's going to
Speaker 4: them and being like, hey, you know, what do you
Speaker 4: have on It's defended sometimes before they charge cases. Sometimes
Speaker 4: it's when a case is about to be brought to trial.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it's before sentencing. So you know, they really are
Speaker 4: relying upon this outside technology and this outside group to
Speaker 4: really bring these cases to fruition, just because I think
Speaker 4: of how outdated the technology is within the SBI and
Speaker 4: within the federal government.
Speaker 1: The idea that really the federal government is so behind
Speaker 1: with technology. It's just because these things are not getting
Speaker 1: funded or is there something I'm missing here.
Speaker 4: What's surprising about this is, you know, there are so
Speaker 4: many conspiracy theories now on the right January sixth, and like,
Speaker 4: really the explanation is like really in line with what
Speaker 4: used to be conservative ideology that government is ineffective, big
Speaker 4: government is bad, and the private sector is better. And
Speaker 4: I really think it is instant. This sort of illustrates
Speaker 4: that because you know, innovation is just not going to
Speaker 4: be a huge thing within government, and you know, the
Speaker 4: joke within the FBI is we have yesterday's technology tomorrow
Speaker 4: they're just really behind. And you know that's the sort
Speaker 4: of maddening thing is seeing all these conspiracy theories about
Speaker 4: the FBI pulling all these strings in orgerzing all these pieces,
Speaker 4: and then you know, I'm sorting through thousands of pages
Speaker 4: of FBI email and it's like set through my Samsung
Speaker 4: device and like how do you send a contact card?
Speaker 4: And just the most bureaucratic things that you could possibly imagine,
Speaker 4: and it's just like no, like even if you set
Speaker 4: aside the issue of whether or not the FBI is
Speaker 4: just that like evil, Like it's the competency and is
Speaker 4: a real issue there in terms of just you know,
Speaker 4: then being able to push forward and complete a lot
Speaker 4: of these sort of schemes that a lot of people
Speaker 4: seem to believe that they're behind. So I mean, I
Speaker 4: would just encourage people to like look at some of
Speaker 4: these emails. I realized that, like, this is about bureaucracy.
Speaker 4: And I think that that's one thing that the January
Speaker 4: sixth Committee sort of did be sitting on the floor.
Speaker 4: And one thing that I ended up focusing a lot
Speaker 4: on in the book is just sort of lead up
Speaker 4: to January six and a lot of the technological failures.
Speaker 4: Just one of the most like head slapping moments was
Speaker 4: that the FBI had their entire system set up on
Speaker 4: this one social media monitoring tool and they were using
Speaker 4: that to basically look for any really threatening communications and
Speaker 4: the lead up to January sixth, and as it turned out,
Speaker 4: the FBI Procurement of Office had renegotiated a contract a
Speaker 4: year earlier, and oh lo and behold, it was expiring
Speaker 4: on New Year's Eve as twenty twenty transition to twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one, and so you had this whole new system
Speaker 4: and they didn't even have logins for it yet on
Speaker 4: December thirty first, and they were trying to go from
Speaker 4: you know, one system to the other, and it just
Speaker 4: it was just a catastrophe. Right. They were not prepared
Speaker 4: and all the systems were set up on one platform
Speaker 4: and they could not possibly have set that up in time.
Speaker 4: And you see these sort of panicked emails being sent
Speaker 4: on December thirty first, in the middle of like you know,
Speaker 4: basically two weeks of vacation for the FIDS, talking about,
Speaker 4: oh my my gosh, you know, we need to get something.
Speaker 4: Why don't we have these logins yet?
Speaker 2: What's going on here?
Speaker 4: So those sort of bureaucratic hurdles and just sort of
Speaker 4: being buried in bureaucracy was a really big thing here.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Ryan, you are amazing. Appreciate youallmech fand me.
Speaker 4: That's it for.
Speaker 1: This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
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Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.