Speaker 1: Probably the thing that I'm most proud of reporting wise
Speaker 1: is I was able to figure out that Nigeria's vice
Speaker 1: president was staying at the Trump hotel based on the
Speaker 1: pattern of the throw pillows on the couch where he
Speaker 1: gave an interview.
Speaker 2: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she I served in
Speaker 2: the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover
Speaker 2: all around the.
Speaker 3: World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA,
Speaker 3: I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 2: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 2: created conspiracies.
Speaker 3: In our operations. We got people to believe things that
Speaker 3: weren't true.
Speaker 2: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 2: news almost every day.
Speaker 3: We'll break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 3: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Mission Implausible.
Speaker 3: So, John, now that the election's up, do you think
Speaker 3: we're finally going to hit a Trump tower Moscow?
Speaker 2: I'm more worried about our government becoming like Russians. Right,
Speaker 2: Like Russia has a system of oligarchs, some sort of
Speaker 2: informal money people who are tied to the government and
Speaker 2: pay to play and loose corruption and those type of things.
Speaker 2: And in some ways we're becoming a little more like Russia.
Speaker 2: You know, media gets pushed down, misinformation gets pushed into
Speaker 2: the media by the leaders themselves for their own personal reasons,
Speaker 2: what have you. So, I'm a little worried about that.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think our oligarchs will kick their
Speaker 3: oligarch's ass. We've got Elon ew have they got, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not even sure is he our oligarch or is
Speaker 3: he somebody else. Their oligarchs seem to fall out of
Speaker 3: windows all the time, or their airplanes crash.
Speaker 2: Elon is he's an American, but he's from South Africa.
Speaker 2: But he's got huge stake in places like China and
Speaker 2: Russia and other places.
Speaker 3: I'm just worried that he's going to get deported, seeing
Speaker 3: as how, at least according to the press, he entered
Speaker 3: the US on a student visa and never study. Instead
Speaker 3: he went to work, taking a job from an American.
Speaker 3: We might have hit an American oligarch instead of Elon
Speaker 3: if he hadn't taken that job.
Speaker 2: What I think is, yes, Elon Musk has spent amazing
Speaker 2: amount of money to get closer to Trump, and right
Speaker 2: now he seems to be at mar A Lago. He's
Speaker 2: with Trump all the time. They're making these calls to
Speaker 2: foreign leaders. But I have to say I expect, just
Speaker 2: like many people who sort of buy influence, when the
Speaker 2: time comes, they get pushed away. Joseph Kennedy spent tons
Speaker 2: of money on elections, and when push came to shove,
Speaker 2: he got nothing. And Henry Ford in the United States,
Speaker 2: there's a history of these guys buying their way in,
Speaker 2: but when push comes to shove, they're not part of.
Speaker 3: The Money can't buy you love or loyalty.
Speaker 2: We should maybe put little bets for ourselves. A how
Speaker 2: long before Elon is tossed from the net. But it's
Speaker 2: disheartening to me throwing away some of the norms. They're
Speaker 2: talking about not having people do security clearance checks. They're
Speaker 2: talking about Trump being able to just put things in
Speaker 2: place without Senate approval, these type of things. But I'm worried,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure you are too. Jerry has spending time
Speaker 2: in their security state and CIA in particular, I'm waiting
Speaker 2: to see what they do there. I mean, are you
Speaker 2: going to put someone in charge of CIA who can't
Speaker 2: get a security clearance or doesn't get a security clearance.
Speaker 3: My major concerned is for the entire US government, and
Speaker 3: this doesn't make it a Republican or democrat. It's the
Speaker 3: possible politicization of the women and men of the intelligence
Speaker 3: community in the US government who served in silence following
Speaker 3: the rules. And that's where we were in the eighteen
Speaker 3: eighties with the spoil system.
Speaker 2: If a republican FBI, then you have a democratic FBI.
Speaker 2: Right now, we have a professional FBI and professional CIA,
Speaker 2: and I worry what they're going to do is they're
Speaker 2: going to go looking through political roles to see who
Speaker 2: gave money to who and essentially just fire all the
Speaker 2: senior people who gave money to other political parties or
Speaker 2: other than Trump. You're throwing away professionalism that way, and
Speaker 2: you're going to get answers to questions that you already
Speaker 2: know the answer to. So Trump wants to believe I
Speaker 2: don't know something, and that he wants the intelligence community
Speaker 2: to tell him that he's right, rather than that role
Speaker 2: of truth to power to try to give leaders information
Speaker 2: they may not want, they may not like, but it
Speaker 2: helps them in the long run, and it helps national security.
Speaker 2: In the lawn run.
Speaker 3: I just want people to realize that the genius I
Speaker 3: think of American foreign policy architecture, of security architecture after
Speaker 3: World War Two is that we created this messy group
Speaker 3: of allies. You know, our former adversaries, the Germans, the French,
Speaker 3: sort of our former adversaries, the Japanese South Koreans. We've
Speaker 3: actually got this series of alliances that have stood by this.
Speaker 3: And if we're going to be walking away from NATO
Speaker 3: theoretically or in practice, that leaves us isolated, it alone,
Speaker 3: it doesn't leave us stronger.
Speaker 2: It creates other problems. So, okay, so we're going to
Speaker 2: pull out of Europe. What happens when we're gone? Who
Speaker 2: leads Europe? Does France lead Europe? Does Germany? It's by
Speaker 2: far the biggest country East Europe, who's much more focused
Speaker 2: on Russia and those type of things. Are we going
Speaker 2: to move back to those where those kind of squabbles
Speaker 2: start to get deeper and they instead of working together
Speaker 2: as a European Union, it starts to split apart and
Speaker 2: we get pulled back into different squabbles for different reasons.
Speaker 2: There's no easy path, and unfortunately, in foreign policy and
Speaker 2: national security.
Speaker 3: You can never tell what conflicts we've avoided by being
Speaker 3: in an alliance were we not in NATO, If we
Speaker 3: didn't have NATO, would we have been dragged into wars
Speaker 3: over and over again? And I suspect we probably might
Speaker 3: and putin understands that divide and conquer. He is trying
Speaker 3: to divide us from our allies because he has no allies.
Speaker 3: No one trusts Russia, Chinese don't trust him. Even his
Speaker 3: near abroad is surrounded by people, the Armenians who don't
Speaker 3: trust him, or the Ukrainians who are fighting them, the Georgians,
Speaker 3: and I really don't want to see us becoming closer
Speaker 3: to Russia and their North Korean and Iranian allies.
Speaker 2: We've been at that front line where we are living
Speaker 2: with and working with allies and partners overseas, and we
Speaker 2: see on a daily basis how much that helps us.
Speaker 2: People give us information that they otherwise wouldn't. That helps
Speaker 2: American interest, that helps American business, that helps save American lives.
Speaker 2: They do it because we've developed relationships, We've developed relationships
Speaker 2: of trust. They know that America stands for something and
Speaker 2: it's going to be there for them when something tough
Speaker 2: comes down the road. So they're going to help us now,
Speaker 2: hoping that maybe we'll help them in the future.
Speaker 3: Years ago, John, I was in the Baltics and I
Speaker 3: bumped into a guy when he mentioned this really isolated
Speaker 3: province up in the Hindu cushion. I said, whoa, I've
Speaker 3: been up there too, And he mentioned this one horrific
Speaker 3: battle that the US had been involved in, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: that was really bad, and I realized we weren't talking theoretically.
Speaker 3: He was actually there shouldered the shoulder with US forces
Speaker 3: in northern Afghanistan after nine to eleven as Ourli, risking
Speaker 3: his life to fight for US. And then he looked
Speaker 3: at me afterwards and said, so, if the Russians invade
Speaker 3: my country, you'll be here to stand with me, right.
Speaker 3: I looked at him and I said, I hope.
Speaker 2: So no, are we at a point where the big
Speaker 2: powers make decisions over everybody else? Or do we work
Speaker 2: with the people that have Western values and support us
Speaker 2: around the world. So today's episode, I think we're going
Speaker 2: to talk a little bit about that sort of soft corruption,
Speaker 2: the kind of money that gets involved either in politics
Speaker 2: or around politics. How do we deal with it with
Speaker 2: presidents who have investments in money and connections and places.
Speaker 2: We've had presidents before that have been quite wealthy and
Speaker 2: it had foreign connections. Donald Trump is something different altogether.
Speaker 2: He had this massive hotel in downtown DC that he
Speaker 2: wanted to push people to when he was president, and
Speaker 2: so it'll be interesting to talk to our next guest
Speaker 2: about what he's learned as he looked into these things.
Speaker 3: We'd like to welcome Zach Everson. He's a journalist best
Speaker 3: known for well, for a lot of things. He writes
Speaker 3: on the murky and mucky intersection of politics, money, conspiracies,
Speaker 3: many reals, some imagined, and not surprisingly even on one
Speaker 3: business in particular, a famous hotel with your infamous newsletter
Speaker 3: eleven hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. But you always covered the tricky
Speaker 3: and sticky topic of ethics and the galen so of
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, for sure, but also other places along the spectrum,
Speaker 3: so Cornell West and Alexandria Ocasio Cortes as well. Zick,
Speaker 3: How and why you were thrown out of a hotel
Speaker 3: and banned for life? What does this say about you
Speaker 3: other than coming on this show?
Speaker 1: You know, I honestly was surprise that happened. Didn't happen earlier.
Speaker 1: So the hotel in question is, of course Trump's DC hotel.
Speaker 1: I really, I mean, I had a newsletter dedicated to
Speaker 1: the place. That's the eleven hundred Pensylvania, that's its address.
Speaker 1: I had been doing this for a couple of years
Speaker 1: at this point, and I really thought they weren't going
Speaker 1: to throw me out because they figured it's you know,
Speaker 1: they'd realized, oh, it's good publicity for him. You know
Speaker 1: when I went under cover with Inside Edition there and
Speaker 1: they caught one of the videography guys like, I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm done. This is the trade off. If
Speaker 1: I can get my reporting in front of the demographic
Speaker 1: that watches Inside Edition, I'm good with this. Well, what
Speaker 1: finally happened was the Trump was out of office and
Speaker 1: he was selling the place. There was a spike in prices.
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out what it was. So
Speaker 1: I went down to the hotel, immediately walked in and
Speaker 1: saw signage in the lobby that they were having a
Speaker 1: gathering of exterminators there as a conference, not to actually
Speaker 1: do some work. By job done. I went to the bar.
Speaker 1: I had a drink, you kind of see who comes
Speaker 1: around see if there's anybody notable there. I get up.
Speaker 1: I take a couple of pictures, not really of people,
Speaker 1: but just of the building. My editor, who's the one
Speaker 1: who does our Forbes's valuation of Donald Trump, wanted me
Speaker 1: to just document what the retail spaces inside the hotel
Speaker 1: were like for his valuation, So I took a couple
Speaker 1: of pictures. I walked round the lobby, I head to
Speaker 1: the bathroom. I'm about to make a swing by the
Speaker 1: conference room so I can check out the exterminators. On
Speaker 1: my way up the door, when the head of security, Ernest,
Speaker 1: comes and says, you know, hey, write this way. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay about me walking by the conference He's
Speaker 1: leading me out this way. He's like, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to ask you to leave. I'm like, really, we're doing
Speaker 1: this now, okay. And then when I get out the door,
Speaker 1: the head of marketing was there, and I'm sure she's
Speaker 1: not somebody who's usually involved in throwing people out, but
Speaker 1: she was right there as it happened, and you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to ask you not to come back.
Speaker 1: So I went home. I wrote the article and it
Speaker 1: was most on boards to that day. It got covered
Speaker 1: in a whole bunch of other outlets, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, we knew this was gonna happen, and here
Speaker 1: we are to the audience.
Speaker 3: Maybe just a quick overview of what the newsletter was
Speaker 3: and what you were trying to do with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I was a travel writer, as you mentioned
Speaker 1: it earlier, and focused on food and dining, and I
Speaker 1: had the assignment to cover the brand opening of Trump's
Speaker 1: hotel here in DC in the waiting days of the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen election, and for all places covering it for
Speaker 1: Fox News but for their travel section. And I was there.
Speaker 1: It was very different. Typically when I go to a
Speaker 1: hotel event, it would be a boozy affair. There'd be
Speaker 1: a few writers, they'd be wining a dinasts. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was just hordes of people. There's some hard and
Speaker 1: whitical journalists who were just like, oh man, they're giving
Speaker 1: us muffins. This is the greatest day ever.
Speaker 2: There weren't for CIA guys, by the way, Yeah, not
Speaker 2: as much as FBI guys, But yeah.
Speaker 1: I was looking to get out of food and dining,
Speaker 1: and nobody really takes you seriously when you want to
Speaker 1: leave that, Like, why would you ever want to leave that?
Speaker 1: Wasn't that a picture of you driving a Ferrari on Rome?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Why do you want this? But this seemed like an
Speaker 1: out because it was the uh, you don't have travel
Speaker 1: he had a travel angle. So I pitched my editor
Speaker 1: on an article about it, not just the standard travel
Speaker 1: stuff but all the legal issues. And as I was
Speaker 1: reporting that, I started looking online at pictures every morning
Speaker 1: to see who was at the Trump hotel. In part
Speaker 1: because it took me so long to submit decent copy
Speaker 1: for this article that the and Trump was turning through
Speaker 1: people of his administration. The references I had would be
Speaker 1: dated by the time it was ready for me to
Speaker 1: file another draft. But if you had concerns about ethical
Speaker 1: problems with the president owning a hotel a couple of
Speaker 1: bucks in the White House, you can see him on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I started documenting that on social media, started a thread
Speaker 1: there that picked up some followers. The founders of substack
Speaker 1: reached out. It was in its early days. They reached out.
Speaker 1: So I watched the newsletter and then for a couple
Speaker 1: of years it would go out three or four times
Speaker 1: a week, highlighting who was at the hotel and why
Speaker 1: it might be a conflict, and I taught myself how
Speaker 1: to look through campaign finance filings and foyer requests and
Speaker 1: all that other kind of stuff, and you know, built
Speaker 1: it up from there.
Speaker 2: For those people who haven't been there, that the Trump
Speaker 2: Hotel was in the old post office building, which Jerry
Speaker 2: and I are old enough to remember. It used to
Speaker 2: be the FBI Washington Field office was there even and
Speaker 2: it was always a little bit run down.
Speaker 1: But what is it now, Well, now it's a Waldorf Astoria.
Speaker 1: It's a governmental building. And Trump won the lease from
Speaker 1: GSI General Service Administrations. He bid on the lease Hilton,
Speaker 1: which was part of another consortium. That group said, why
Speaker 1: are you guys awarding this to Trump? Are you not
Speaker 1: aware that he has several bankruptcies involving hotels. If you're
Speaker 1: not aware, here's you know, seventy five pages of print outs.
Speaker 1: Please take a look. You accepted it just because it
Speaker 1: was the biggest bid, and that that's wrong, and that's
Speaker 1: what happened. The finance has never really made sense. Trump
Speaker 1: sold it to sold the lease shortly after he left
Speaker 1: to a group of investors who turned it into Waldorf
Speaker 1: for Astoria, and the financial problem still existed. And they
Speaker 1: recently defaulted on the loans, so it is now owned
Speaker 1: by a private equity bank associated with Michael Dell and
Speaker 1: they have kept it a Waldorf for now. But it's
Speaker 1: going to be interesting because I don't think this is
Speaker 1: the last step of where it is. I think they're
Speaker 1: going to need to figure out a way to make
Speaker 1: this financially viable.
Speaker 3: So Zieh, we're sort of at the end of the story,
Speaker 3: at least of the hotel, but I want to come
Speaker 3: back to the beginning the story. And something I found
Speaker 3: really creepy is that when you first checked into the
Speaker 3: hotel for the newsletter, they knew who you were, right,
Speaker 3: they were spying on you.
Speaker 1: I wasn't totally surprised. So there's a really good book
Speaker 1: called The gold Standard written about Ritz Carlton, and one
Speaker 1: of the things they do is that they have a
Speaker 1: system where they track high profile guests, journalists, other people
Speaker 1: like that, and they have a database where they not
Speaker 1: put in what your favorite drink is. So when I
Speaker 1: was a travel writer and I showed up at a
Speaker 1: Ritz Carlton, they would have an expressing they wrote that
Speaker 1: down the first time I had It turns out that's
Speaker 1: actually actually not my favorite drink. The fact that they
Speaker 1: had found that on social media doesn't surprise me, and
Speaker 1: the manager explained it. He's like, you know, we have
Speaker 1: an act a shade apartment that just does a quick
Speaker 1: look at our guests to see who it is, in
Speaker 1: part for security, but in part for hospitality, Like why
Speaker 1: are these people coming? Is it a special day? Is
Speaker 1: there something we should know about these people? And you
Speaker 1: type in my name and the first thing you have
Speaker 1: this pictured me holding champagne on a cruise boat saying
Speaker 1: travel writers. Yeah. They immediately came down, introduced themselves to
Speaker 1: me and poured me another glass of champagne.
Speaker 3: You checked in and they just pulled you aside. It
Speaker 3: was like, hey, man, we know who you are.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, But I wasn't doing any political reporting at
Speaker 1: the time. It was all travel stuff, so they were
Speaker 1: probably excited thinking, oh, here's a guy who does a
Speaker 1: lot of writing for Conde nas Traveler and he's staying
Speaker 1: here for a weekend. Great because a lot of concerns
Speaker 1: about the ethics of the hotel, but in terms of
Speaker 1: actually a luxury hotel, it's really nice. I thought they
Speaker 1: did a pretty good job.
Speaker 2: So was zech talking about this sort of world of money.
Speaker 2: It's interacted with politics. I was reading about Cash Patel
Speaker 2: and Devin Nunez who now works for Trump Media and
Speaker 2: True Social and others. And these aren't necessarily talented people
Speaker 2: or people who were able to make a lot of
Speaker 2: money in their previous lives but now are making tons
Speaker 2: of cash. Nunia's is a dairy farmer, and now he's
Speaker 2: supposedly this big business tycoon. What have you learned about
Speaker 2: the financial ties of Trump and those associated with him.
Speaker 1: One thing to keep in mind with Trump, the last
Speaker 1: time Forbes looked at it, Trump would have done better
Speaker 1: financially if he had just taken his dad's inheritance and
Speaker 1: stuck it in an S and P. Five hundred For
Speaker 1: all this business acumen that he likes to put out there.
Speaker 1: And he's very well, he's wealthy, he's worth several billion dollars,
Speaker 1: but it would be more if you just put it
Speaker 1: in the market and let it ride. But there's no
Speaker 1: shortage of people who've done pretty well by themselves by Trump.
Speaker 1: I mean, Michael Cohen did pretty well up until the
Speaker 1: moment he did it. A lot of people go into
Speaker 1: business with Trump and then find themselves discarded. That hasn't
Speaker 1: happened to news. He's the CEO of Trump Median Technology Group.
Speaker 1: But yes, he's doing pretty well for Himselfie. You see
Speaker 1: that with other people who published books through Winning Team Publishing,
Speaker 1: which is Don Junior's imprint. They have a book that's
Speaker 1: been putting out some conservative publications out there. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has put out a couple books that way, and you
Speaker 1: know people can do well by that.
Speaker 3: More of this after a quick break back to our conversation.
Speaker 1: Say you're stationed in East Berlin back in the day.
Speaker 1: The president of East Berlin has a hotel a couple
Speaker 1: of blocks from his residents, where all of the hangers
Speaker 1: on are there, members of his administration, members of whatever legislature,
Speaker 1: legislative group. They've had party operaatchicks, all scrifters, all sorts
Speaker 1: of people. How do you handle that hotel? What do
Speaker 1: you guys do?
Speaker 2: Jerry's our Berlin guy, go at it, Jerff.
Speaker 3: So that hotel sort of exists in law and legend,
Speaker 3: but it's the Metropol in Moscow and Stalin famously used
Speaker 3: that hotel. He took all the foreign journalists and he'd
Speaker 3: put them in there, and he gave them all beautiful
Speaker 3: translators who all slept with them and then spied on them.
Speaker 3: And the Metropol was like KGB central for spying on people.
Speaker 3: So yeah, when you control the hotel, you control hotel security.
Speaker 3: We control who comes in and out. They may even
Speaker 3: ban people like you from the hotel. It's a secure
Speaker 3: space if you want to be involved in things that
Speaker 3: you don't want law enforcement or counterintelligence to know about.
Speaker 3: It's also a big money laundering possibility for bringing in
Speaker 3: foreign kits. John your thoughts.
Speaker 2: If you ever saw the book and the movie, A
Speaker 2: book and TV show Gentlemen in Moscow, that's about the
Speaker 2: Metropol Hotel. It's not the greatest example because both Russia
Speaker 2: and East Germany in the time, when you're the dictator there,
Speaker 2: like you don't actually need to steal money through a hotel.
Speaker 2: You own the country and you can make money in
Speaker 2: so many other ways.
Speaker 1: I always thought, and I never saw any evidence of
Speaker 1: foreign spies at the Trump Hotel, but I thought they
Speaker 1: would be derelict in their duty if they weren't a
Speaker 1: low place.
Speaker 2: Of course, that's the point. A job as an intelligence
Speaker 2: officer is involved what we call targeting, right trying to
Speaker 2: find the people that have access to secrets. And in
Speaker 2: Trump world, that was where you went to run into
Speaker 2: Rudy Giuliani and the people who are around Trump. So
Speaker 2: if you wanted to do that for drifting purposes, or
Speaker 2: if you want to do that for intelligence purposes, that
Speaker 2: was the place to go to meet somebody. Now, in
Speaker 2: our world, you would want to meet them and then
Speaker 2: pull them away from there because it's a place where
Speaker 2: there was a lot of eyes, a lot of people
Speaker 2: paying attention. What you want to do is develop a
Speaker 2: relationship away from those prying eyes. But yeah, you're right,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of issues and problems with that. There's
Speaker 2: the issue of corruption, there's the issue of money lunder,
Speaker 2: there's an issue of of spying, and all of it
Speaker 2: is of concern. And that sounds like the Trump Hotel
Speaker 2: was all of those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, marl Laga, since Trump has had classified documents there.
Speaker 1: So during his presidency up until the date of the
Speaker 1: FBI raid, the club sought to employ three hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty short term temporary foreign workers. Yeah, this smirk on
Speaker 1: your face is at all say that's a foreign leader.
Speaker 1: How would the CIA approach that? And I've got to
Speaker 1: imagine we're sending over twenty five different people applying to
Speaker 1: be maids and chefs and all that other stuff.
Speaker 3: John and I are. We've damaged our livers and put
Speaker 3: on a lot of extra pounds going to diplomatic receptions
Speaker 3: at hotels where being there is if the bile like you,
Speaker 3: look around, who do I need to meet and how
Speaker 3: do I need to meet them? And how do I
Speaker 3: bump into them? How do I continue the relationship? And
Speaker 3: yet those same social skills we use inside the agency,
Speaker 3: But in the Constitution there is the Emolument's clause.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm familiar with it, and I hopefully I can
Speaker 1: describe it succinctly, because I have been told by editors
Speaker 1: from multiple outlets not to use the word emilliuments, because
Speaker 1: that's when you lose readers. It's basically the president can
Speaker 1: accept payments from foreigner state governments, and that was one
Speaker 1: of the issues that was central to the hotel is
Speaker 1: whether or not a foreign government paying Donald Trump's hotel
Speaker 1: would count as an emiliument's a violation of that clause.
Speaker 1: The first day, the first business day of his administration,
Speaker 1: a group a watched our group named crew sued over
Speaker 1: the violation of the emolument's clause. That case ended up
Speaker 1: getting tossed by the Supreme Court is moot because Trump
Speaker 1: was no longer office in office, and they weren't even
Speaker 1: at a point where they were going to discuss the
Speaker 1: case on the merits. They were still trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who had the standing to suit Trump over that.
Speaker 1: It's likely that even if they had resolved that it
Speaker 1: would have been another four years. At one point, I
Speaker 1: was recording a podcast and there were three different candidates
Speaker 1: for president and Nigeria were there actually too, two sorry,
Speaker 1: two candidates from Nigeria Congress, people from Nigeria's legislature. Their
Speaker 1: sitting Vice president was there. So certainly stands to reason
Speaker 1: that the Nigerian government was paying Donald Trump via his hotel,
Speaker 1: and that continues to go on. He doesn't have the
Speaker 1: DC Hotel, which is not as central, but he certainly
Speaker 1: has other properties. I think it was the government of
Speaker 1: China rented office space in one of his New York buildings.
Speaker 1: You know, that continues to go on and we never
Speaker 1: got a vertical. Whether or not that's okay, And part
Speaker 1: of it has to be blamed on the Democrats. I
Speaker 1: really think they dragged their feet on this. They were
Speaker 1: playing by some of the old give me some old
Speaker 1: school courtesies, like oh you need more time to file, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's fine. Oh they I don't even think they held
Speaker 1: a hearing on the monuments class they scheduled when they
Speaker 1: canceled in and I don't think they ever got around
Speaker 1: to having it. Here we are again, and you could
Speaker 1: certainly have government in China looking if you know mar
Speaker 1: al Lago's banquet room, if they want to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a quick question for you. Right when
Speaker 2: politicians often talk about the quote Biden criminal enterprise, what
Speaker 2: have you learned about Biden's finances?
Speaker 1: They're boring. They are what you would expect for Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: He's a career politician. So yeah, Biden's worth about ten
Speaker 1: million dollars largely. You know, he's had a government pension,
Speaker 1: just the same way you guys, I'm sure are worth
Speaker 1: that much too, from your government pensions. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know about that, but it's a solid pension. You know.
Speaker 1: He obviously was making a lot of money when he
Speaker 1: was doing it, now did he probably could have done
Speaker 1: better as well if he invested a little bit differently.
Speaker 1: Most of his money he likes to invest in real
Speaker 1: estate is where he's put it. He said, okay, by
Speaker 1: that he had this really huge house that's lended hisself
Speaker 1: to some conspiracies. He had a former Jupont mansion that
Speaker 1: he owned, and it was how can this guy afford
Speaker 1: such a mansion? And for it because it was the
Speaker 1: market was in a downturn, you know. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it was Eric Trump saying that, and Eric should know
Speaker 1: it well, like Donald Trump got a steal on forty
Speaker 1: Wall Street in mar Lago because the economy wasn't doing
Speaker 1: well and nobody really wanted those buildings. So that's exactly
Speaker 1: how Joe Biden got his men.
Speaker 3: I think Joe Biden also wrote a book too, didn'ty
Speaker 3: after he was once he's out of office. He had
Speaker 3: that four year in a readdom and yeah, speaking like
Speaker 3: two hundred thousand dollars for a speaking gig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he made a few million from that. But the
Speaker 1: book doesn't even hardly have much of a long tail.
Speaker 1: I think on his last financial disclosure, I don't think
Speaker 1: he disclosed making any money off of it.
Speaker 2: And it's cheaper to buy things in Delaware too.
Speaker 1: Frankly, maybe that's how he's doing it.
Speaker 3: Trump famously went through a series of bankruptcies, right, he
Speaker 3: couldn't even make a casino, it was sort of and
Speaker 3: hotels and went bankrupt, and yet he got financed weirdly
Speaker 3: to Deutsche right, and we're not quite sure who guaranteed
Speaker 3: the loans even today. It could be a foreign entity.
Speaker 3: I've read a conspiracy theory until it's proven that that
Speaker 3: Russian oligarchs were involved and guaranteeing this. And I was
Speaker 3: wondering if you get a sense it off. You've ever
Speaker 3: tried to go down that rabbit hole and figure out
Speaker 3: where before he ran in sixteen, like where did his
Speaker 3: financing come from? After those huge failures?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't jumped down that rabbit hole that much.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the things he's done is that
Speaker 1: it seems like he's always able to find somebody he's
Speaker 1: able to convince that they want to work with him,
Speaker 1: and that that's just think he is somebody who's going
Speaker 1: to be good for the business. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a lot of what you had with Deutsche back, where
Speaker 1: his personal backer went to bat for him in whay
Speaker 1: she probably wouldn't have with other clients. I would strongly
Speaker 1: recommend my editor's book White House, Inc. By Dan Alexander.
Speaker 1: I would definitely take a look at that one. So
Speaker 1: he keeps coming back and financially, he was looking at
Speaker 1: a lot of his buildings where he had a mortgages
Speaker 1: coming due towards the end of his administration, but he
Speaker 1: was able to find finance and he got this bank,
Speaker 1: Axos Bank which used to be called Bank at the Internet,
Speaker 1: to a load of money for a Trump Tower mortgage.
Speaker 1: And he keeps finding people who are willing to do this.
Speaker 2: You wrote, Trump cashed in on the January sixth events.
Speaker 2: What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one of the things that's really we talk about.
Speaker 1: So much of the attention on Trump is political for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons, but he's able to continuously like cash out
Speaker 1: on a lot of these conspiracy theories and other events
Speaker 1: where in January sixth, shortly after he tweeted will be wild,
Speaker 1: the hotel Jack the hotel in DC jackas prices up,
Speaker 1: they went ridiculously high, and I was able to go
Speaker 1: back and look and say, oh, prices weren't that high
Speaker 1: at all before he tweeted that, and then comparing it
Speaker 1: to industry data from other luxury hotels in the area.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like they all spiked, it was just the
Speaker 1: Trump Hotel. I mean that that hit a level like
Speaker 1: a two thousand dollars a night, which is far more
Speaker 1: than I'd ever seen it before. And there's also the
Speaker 1: oh they did that because they didn't want the rif
Speaker 1: rafts at the hotel. The manager of the hotel tweeted
Speaker 1: that room service did a record business that week.
Speaker 3: So let's see if I can stump you on this one.
Speaker 3: Do you know where the term lobbyist comes from.
Speaker 1: I do. Supposedly the Willard.
Speaker 3: It's the Willard Hotel. President Grayat used to go to
Speaker 3: the Willard Hotel and it was just the scene is
Speaker 3: like what you described, with everybody there. And he would
Speaker 3: sit in the lobby and try to smoke his cigar
Speaker 3: when you could smoke inside in those days, and have
Speaker 3: a drink, and he would be accosted by people looking
Speaker 3: to have him use his influence on their behalf or
Speaker 3: to get jobs or whatever. And he called them these
Speaker 3: damn lobbyists because they were always in the lobby.
Speaker 1: And we got to use that word a lot at
Speaker 1: the at Trump's Hotel, because the bar was in the lobby.
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't some sort of like cloistered thing away.
Speaker 1: It was like right out there in the lobby. It
Speaker 1: was the lobby bar. So yet I've I've probably used
Speaker 1: the word lobbyist in more art.
Speaker 2: I'd like to think, how do politicians make money from
Speaker 2: conspiracy theorists and those who believe in qan on these
Speaker 2: kind of things. I mean, it seems like people have
Speaker 2: been able to figure out a way to make money
Speaker 2: off these conspiracies out or do they do they put
Speaker 2: out the conspiracies hoping to figure out a way to
Speaker 2: make money.
Speaker 1: One of my favorites was the hotel in Chicago had
Speaker 1: a every year around Christmas time. It does a gingerbread
Speaker 1: display in its elevator, and apparently the number seventeen in
Speaker 1: the letter q were there prominently and people were going nuts.
Speaker 1: But qwan On supporterers booked Trump's DC Hotel for an
Speaker 1: event where the guy they all thought was JFK Junior
Speaker 1: was there. And that's actually how it warned a lot
Speaker 1: about QAnon was from going down that rabbit hole. I'm
Speaker 1: looking to see who's at the Trump Hotel and then
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait, they think this guy is JFK Junior
Speaker 1: and then they think, oh wait, they think there's another
Speaker 1: one of these JFK junior guys because they're different heights,
Speaker 1: Like what the hell am I looking at? And that's
Speaker 1: when I first was like, all right, can't ignore this
Speaker 1: QAnon nonsense anymore. I need to get up to speed
Speaker 1: on it. And it caught me up. But he's had
Speaker 1: conferences at Durrell as well, where they have a lot
Speaker 1: of people who just go there and spout off theories.
Speaker 1: I think the way politicians benefit from it, and again
Speaker 1: not necessarily financially directly, but is by go they were
Speaker 1: at these conferences, they go then embrace these people. They
Speaker 1: might not come all the way out and say, you know,
Speaker 1: as much as like Marjorie Taylor Green does that they're
Speaker 1: going to agree with the conspiracy theory, but they'll dog
Speaker 1: whistle or they won't deny it, or they'll say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, that might that's an interesting point. And that
Speaker 1: way they were able to pick up their following, and
Speaker 1: I think it works.
Speaker 3: And most people become small donors too, right, and especially
Speaker 3: people who are passionate about their beliefs, even if those
Speaker 3: beliefs are QAnon conspiracy theories. Once you've got the all
Speaker 3: important list of donors right their email addresses, those are
Speaker 3: the folks you can go out to time and time again.
Speaker 1: I had also seen a couple reports from like legitimate
Speaker 1: news services that in the hotel there was a room
Speaker 1: that they called the Tinfoil Room. This is the DC Hotel,
Speaker 1: and it was to provide secure communications for Trump in
Speaker 1: a way that the deep state could not monitor. Now,
Speaker 1: I filed Foyer requests, which you know, I wasn't expecting
Speaker 1: much of response from that. I talked to people who
Speaker 1: were intimate knowledge of the building. I couldn't get any
Speaker 1: confirmation of it. No place sells something in these two
Speaker 1: outlets seven or eight years ago reported it. Do you
Speaker 1: guys even think that's plausible.
Speaker 2: So it's in terms of grifting and things. There's a
Speaker 2: large security industry. Back when we first started, it was
Speaker 2: by the FBI and CI had all the fancy little
Speaker 2: gear and listening devices and ways to block listening devices
Speaker 2: and all that type of communications and ways to hide things.
Speaker 2: Now there's so much of that stuff that's publicly available.
Speaker 2: So I'm sure somebody is coming in and saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to sweep this room, and we're gonna put
Speaker 2: foil behind the walls. We do this overseas like metal
Speaker 2: caging to try in case someone's trying to send in
Speaker 2: signals from the outside microwave signals or something, and we're
Speaker 2: gonna have you know, full time security there. Like, there
Speaker 2: are things you can do to create a room that
Speaker 2: is generally secure. And the notion that the deep state
Speaker 2: is trying to listen to the President of the United States,
Speaker 2: who's in charge of the deep state, listening to his
Speaker 2: stuff is crazy. If in fact that was say the Chinese,
Speaker 2: and they thought they could create a room in a
Speaker 2: hotel that could protect against the deep state, the FBI
Speaker 2: to see idea to say, do have the ability probably
Speaker 2: to make it so that as hard as you tried,
Speaker 2: they could probably find a way around it. But for
Speaker 2: somebody like Trump, if they actually believe this and they're
Speaker 2: going to have these meetings of Rue Julian and this
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, there's security places that could build it
Speaker 2: to make it. When someone went in there, they would
Speaker 2: feel like they are really important, and there's all these
Speaker 2: kind of bells and whistles and stuff. So I think
Speaker 2: that's certainly possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he might actually qualify for a skiff, right for
Speaker 3: a bubble, because he still is I think he's still
Speaker 3: hand received briefings, classified briefings as former president at least
Speaker 3: other former presidents get him, so he could probably make
Speaker 3: a call for a classified space either at mar A
Speaker 3: Lago or apps in his hotel. And I think if
Speaker 3: the government provided that, if there was a jumble in that, yeah,
Speaker 3: you could probably find it out through a foyer request.
Speaker 2: But there was reporting in the paper today about this
Speaker 2: very thing. So apparently the Biden administration went to him
Speaker 2: and pulled him aside and gave him a classified briefing
Speaker 2: on the fact that the Iranians are interested in potentially
Speaker 2: assassinating him, and they gave him this briefing. And what
Speaker 2: happened with the Mueller briefing at the beginning of his tour,
Speaker 2: he thought that this was reported that he doesn't trust
Speaker 2: the Biden administration. He thinks that they're trying to trick
Speaker 2: him in some way, and so he's refused classified briefings
Speaker 2: because he thinks it's the administration trying to put disinformation
Speaker 2: into his head. And so, yes, he does probably have
Speaker 2: the right to have a skiff and get regular briefings,
Speaker 2: but apparently he's turned them down because he thinks he's
Speaker 2: being fooled, which is silly.
Speaker 3: That's called duty to warn. So if we know you
Speaker 3: no seriously in the agency, if we have intelligence that
Speaker 3: someone is faces mortal danger, to include our enemies. At
Speaker 3: one time, there was a there's a nation state who
Speaker 3: is really not friendly to us, and we had credible
Speaker 3: information that someone was trying to assassinate this guy. And
Speaker 3: I was overseas as station chief, and I arranged a
Speaker 3: meeting and I sat down and I said, people are
Speaker 3: trying to kill you, and I gave him some basic details.
Speaker 3: He's what's the catch, Like, there is it one? This
Speaker 3: is us law. I need to tell you this, and
Speaker 3: he was certain I was up to something, but really
Speaker 3: we work.
Speaker 2: Hold on just a second. Well, we take a quick
Speaker 2: break and we're back.
Speaker 1: I like the stuff that's hiding in plain sight. Probably
Speaker 1: the thing that I'm most proud of reporting wise is
Speaker 1: I was able to figure out that Nigeria's vice president
Speaker 1: was staying at the Trump hotel based on the pattern
Speaker 1: of the throw pillows on the couch where he gave
Speaker 1: an interview. Somebody had posted a picture with the Nigerian
Speaker 1: Vice President, saying that they were interviewing him at Trump Hotel,
Speaker 1: but the background was all white, so I couldn't confirm it.
Speaker 1: That wasn't good enough, but at least it hid me
Speaker 1: in that I should look for this guy. So I
Speaker 1: start looking at what was he doing around the dates
Speaker 1: that picture was taken, and I find a video interview
Speaker 1: he did with Voice of America and it doesn't identify
Speaker 1: where he is, but I can't. I took screenshots at
Speaker 1: the background and you can see, you said, the design
Speaker 1: on the throw pillows, where the lamp is, where the
Speaker 1: pictures are, where the pictures are of the background. And
Speaker 1: then I went to the Trump Hotels website it started
Speaker 1: looking at pictures of their nicer sweets and was able
Speaker 1: to find one that matched it. And then I just
Speaker 1: lined up where the boxes are and it was like,
Speaker 1: oh great, that was throw pillows. It's what belling Cat does,
Speaker 1: but for you know, cushions rather than missiles.
Speaker 2: So Zach, what are you working on now and are
Speaker 2: you looking into anything that conspiratorial nature?
Speaker 1: A lot of campaign finance stuff. Still looking at Trump
Speaker 1: media through social I find very interesting what's going on there.
Speaker 1: Just the fact that it's so overvalued and he's made
Speaker 1: so much money. I'm fascinated to find out when he
Speaker 1: might sell those stocks. He hasn't, he said he's keeping them.
Speaker 1: But he is a man of many debts, both legal
Speaker 1: and mortgage. In Particulous, forty Wall Street Building is a
Speaker 1: bit of a money loser by our accounts, and it
Speaker 1: has a mortgage coming due, and he might have a
Speaker 1: hard time finding somebody who's willing to lend him money
Speaker 1: on a business that looks to be underwater. And the
Speaker 1: way that list is set up, it's about to get
Speaker 1: worse for it in about ten eight years. He has
Speaker 1: plenty of good uses for that money, and that would
Speaker 1: be interesting to see if you sell some of it
Speaker 1: and uses it for that. You know, right now he's
Speaker 1: got a pretty good thing, Gallen, where he can take
Speaker 1: his political money and use it to pay off his
Speaker 1: legal fees.
Speaker 2: Good luck, keep at it, very interesting. Well, get you
Speaker 2: back as things developed. But zex, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for your time to that really interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: A lot to thank you guys for having me.
Speaker 4: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Cipher,
Speaker 4: and Jonathan Stern. The Associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission implausible.
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Speaker 2: Oh