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Combating Illegal Marijuana · Newsradio WGAN

• 0:01
  You know, in other main political news and one of the
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  other stories I had on my list I was probably going to get to
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  when we came back from our last break and then I had to, of
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  course, call an audible was about Susan Collins and Cash
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  Patel. Senator Susan Collins on
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  Wednesday told the heads of two federal law enforcement agencies
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  that Maine needs more federal help combating illegal marijuana
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  grow houses. At a hearing to review budget
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  requests from federal law enforcement agencies, the
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  Republican senator from Maine asked FBI Director Cash Patel
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  what the Bureau is doing to address the dangerous grow house
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  operations in Maine, Oklahoma, California and other states.
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  A leaked federal government memo in two, 2023, Excuse me,
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  connected illegal marijuana grow houses in Maine to Chinese
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  organized crime, estimating at the time the presence of 270
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  grow sites in Maine linked to China that could provide more
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  than 4 billion dollars, $4 billion in revenue.
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  I guess if you are Bobby Charles and you're looking for your 4
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  billion, there it is 4 billion, $4 billion.
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  Thank you, Lee. I can connect to anything,
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  right? I can.
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  About 60 properties were searched in 2024.
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  At the end of that year, and Assistant US Attorney estimated
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  that well below 100 such properties remained in the
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  state. Collins said that federal
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  agencies have been helpful in the past to track money
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  laundering, which is often linked to these grow houses, and
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  provide interpreters to question suspects who are arrested who
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  may have been trafficked and forced to work and live at the
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  illegal operations. Quote, last year you testified
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  that the FBI would be sending more resources to the field,
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  specifically to Maine, to combat these dangerous operations,
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  Collins said, adding the local sheriff's have reported some
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  improvements in federal interest and participation.
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  Patel said that many of the Chinese citizens running the
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  illegal grow operations have severed their with their home
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  country. In response, he said the FBI is
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  working with Homeland Security task forces to reverse engineer
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  the connections through banking records in an effort to shut
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  down the financiers of the US operations.
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  Asked by Collins if a connection existed between the grow houses
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  and the fentanyl trade, Patel said that revenue from the sales
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  of the illegally grown marijuana quote always goes back into
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  drug, into the drug trafficking trade, into the drug traffickers
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  pockets. But the federal officials have
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  not been able to confirm a direct connection to the Chinese
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  government quote. I'm not saying it doesn't
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  happen, Patel said. What we're not seeing yet is the
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  money directly being shipped back over to mainland China and
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  the CCP from these grow house operations.
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  But you see, therein lies the rub, right?
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  It's pause for a second and just do a little, little mini
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  analysis, shall we? It doesn't have to go back.
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  I mean, if the Chinese government is sponsoring,
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  supporting and otherwise lifting up or at the very least excusing
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  and allowing this kind of operation to happen, you know,
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  the entire goal of it could actually be domestically
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  American. Like there, there does not
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  necessarily have to be some sort of a ship of cash back to the
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  Chinese government. In fact, if I was them and and
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  part of my goal was fostering chaos, drug addiction, social
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  problems, etcetera in the United States, you know you wouldn't
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  need it to. There's no there's no reason to.
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  And all I would do would be put your fingerprints all over it
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  And you want plausible deniability, right?
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  I mean, I'm sorry, do I think like a criminal in in that I'm
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  thinking like this? It's like you want to have the
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  ability to deny it. You want to not have a
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  connection on paper. You want to be able to kind of
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  have a distance so that if anybody catches anybody else,
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  they don't lead anyone to you. Seems logical to me, right?
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  But that doesn't mean that this stuff isn't at the behest,
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  direction or otherwise orchestration of the Chinese
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  Communist government, because I have to imagine there is a
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  significant involvement in this. Because when you look at what
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  else they do, what are we talking about?
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  I think even with Craig Peterson yesterday, right?
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  I mean, I know we talked about Russians more than the Chinese,
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  but he did mention the Chinese. Like, we have geopolitical
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  adversaries that we compete with militarily, economically,
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  socially, we we compete with him a lot.
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  And we're not friends. We just aren't.
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  And they are constantly trying to do us harm.
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  You know, the Russians have been the more famous of the two
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  because they're, I don't know, Dumber or worse at it.
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  So they get caught more often. But they have operations which
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  are intended to sow social discord in the United States.
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  Like when you go on Twitter and you find really stupid arguments
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  about like racial politics, I mean, you probably are not aware
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  of this, but about 50% of the things that you're seeing, there
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  aren't even real people. That is, I mean, and this is not
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  even this is not even up for debate.
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  This has been shown to happen right where by these bots that
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  the Russian government sponsors has the goal of social, social
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  discord. And so they go into places that
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  sow it, often times social media, you know, the Twitters of
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  the world, the Instagrams of the world, the Tik Toks of the
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  world. And they, they try to sew that
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  division. They try to inspire it and stoke
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  it and poke the bear. And so they, you know, a lot of
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  the, the most ridiculous statements and fights and
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  whatever else that you've seen have obvious obviously been at
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  the behest of foreign governments that are just trying
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  to screw with us. And so you're expecting me to
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  believe that the Chinese government and the Russian
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  government does that. But in the case of sponsoring
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  more social discord, sponsoring more social degradation, more
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  economic loss, more problems and crime, they wouldn't be
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  interested in doing that. Really, really, really I think
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  they would be. And that's what I think we're
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  ultimately getting at here. And that's what Collins was
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  getting at by the question, right.
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  Like is there any sort of direct link proven?
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  Not yet. No, we're not seeing the money
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  flow directly back to mainland China.
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  But that doesn't mean that there isn't a connection.
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  It is right. And that's the other part of
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  this is that you can hide it and, and it's, it's by its very
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  nature, it's sort of obfuscated a bit, so a little a little
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  obscured from public view. So I don't, I'm not surprised
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  that you have been able to put those fingerprints on anything.
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  And I doubt you will be able to and we'll see.
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  I mean, if it is indeed, if it has gone from like 300 of these
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  down to 100 or less, that is progress obviously.
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  But I can tell you they are certainly still there and they
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  are certainly still a problem. So any sort of federal
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  involvement in the law enforcement side of things to
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  tackle that? Oh, that'd be a.
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  Good thing visa be Trump and Xi Jinping right now, XI.
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  Jinping, a very good point. Yes, that is indeed a other
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  story I might be getting to today, but let's take a break.