Latest / Brian Thomas / Congressman Warren Davidson joins Brian Thomas this morning

Transcript

Congressman Warren Davidson joins Brian Thomas this morning · Brian Thomas

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Congressman Davidson. I know you're not a huge fan of
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: the Corporate Transparency Act, and I understand you were leading
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: an effort to try to repeal it. Earlier this week,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: the US Treasury Department said that well, entities created in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the United States, including those previously know as domestic reporting companies,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: and their beneficial owners, are now exempt from the requirement
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: to report beneficial ownership information. I guess the bill required
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: corporations to identify all entities with whom they had an
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: ownership and for interest, and so now they no longer
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: have to do that. Then does that solve the problem?
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Or is this subject to maybe a change of administration
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: and a change from the Treasury Department's perception of these businesses.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Doesn't it sound nice like the Corporate Transparency Acts? Who
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: doesn't want more corporate transparency? Right? It sounds like it
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: applies to the biggest corporations like well, who's cutally pulling
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: the strings at Google? No, it doesn't do that. It
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: applies to businesses that are twenty employees and fewer. It
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: even applies to homeowners' associations with no employees. It's just volunteers.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: No one owns an owners association. What I really want
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: to know is who controls the bank account for your company,
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: because we suspect that it might be a shell company.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: So yeah, we want to crack down on shell companies,
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: and we want to cut down on money laundering. But
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: you can't presume that owning a business, particularly owning a
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: small business, means that you're engaged in money wandering. That's unconstitutional.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: So the Bide administration imposed this. They basically said, if
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: you don't tell us what you own, we're going to
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: put you in jail and find you, you know, ten
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: thousand dollars. So if you look at that, it sounds
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: like the burden is really on corporations. The reality is
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: the individual basically has to disclose what do you own?
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, the corporation does the filing, but it's essentially
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: a registry of what every individual owns. It creates a
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: registry what do you own, Brian, which companies are you
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: affiliated with? And how do we target you? I mean,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: so it's an unconstitutional violation of the Fourth Amendment. And
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: he'll say, well, we need to know these kinds of things. Well,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: you can still know, I mean, if you want to
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: create a business that's a registered business. You have to
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: register in the state of Ohio, where a state. Lots
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: of big companies are in Delaware. But you know, you
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: file corporate papers, that's how the company's are and when
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: you file there's a reference to who did the finaling.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: And even if you use a law firm, if there's
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: a need to know who's behind it, they give a
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: warrant or a subpoena and the law firm complies with
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: the warrant or subpoena. So this is all doable. Every year,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: you got to file taxes, so that's already a surveillance scheme,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: and you're disclosing all this today. And then here's what
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: really drove it is banks have these provisions called know
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: your Customer. They're obligated to know who their customers are.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: And the government was cracking down on banks because you know,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: they're moving lots of money turns out to be illicit
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: finance and laundered through conventional banking systems. And the banks said, well,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: don't blame Moss. We couldn't possibly We know who our
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: customers are even though they're moving millions of dollars. And
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: for example, Epstein affiliated companies moved lots of money into
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Virgin Islands. Reached the settlement with them for not knowing
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: their customers and doing a list of finance and I
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: say them Chase, JP Morgan Chase had to pay fines
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: and hundreds of millions of dollars of fines elsewhere because
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: they didn't cut down on any of these shell companies.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: So they lobbied and got a bill through. Then it
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: puts this burden on the smallest, least sophisticated businesses. You know,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: a drywall contractor somewhere never heard of the Financial Crimes
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Enforcement Network. But if you don't file a form with them,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: your risk going to jail and paying a ten thousand
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: dollars fine. So it's a crazy or welly in system.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: We are trying to get it done undone by law,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: and why because executive action can be more easily done.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: President Trump did an executive order Fencein followed through and
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: it it'll make it harder. You have to do a
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: rule making. Fencein did a rule making and applied you know,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: something that is constitutional. And nevertheless, the Democrats are seeing
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: this in a partisan way and they're pitching it. So
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: we need to do it permanently and get it through
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: as a law. So I'm told this is going to
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: pass as part of a writer on a bigger package
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: by the end of the year. Speaker Johnson is committed
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: to that, the White House of the Aison team committed
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: to that. So I'm hopeful that we get it across
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: the finish line. It looks like we're going to get
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: it done. Got one hundred and ninety three co sponsors
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: on the bill, so a lot.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Of suppo good. I am glad to hear that that
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: level of support because I share your concerns about this
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: pivoting over something I am absolutely outraged about. Is more
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: and more information pours out over the amount of fraud
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: that's out in the world based on government programs, people
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: bilking us in American taxpayer at I was getting ripped off.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: We've been all paying attention to the war. However, apparently
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: some good news over the summer. The House passed a
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: package of eleven anti fraud bills. How come we didn't
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: hear about this, Congressman Davidson, what was past that? Has
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the Senate taken any of them up?
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah? So if you look at it back in detection
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: systems on this as part of what happened. Doge came
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: in and made a lot of data public that was like,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: here's where some of the payments are going, and there
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: aren't matching principles that would be done in very small businesses,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: So can't we follow the money? Investigative journalism helped motivate
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: the agencies that are doing this. But you know, when
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: I talked with auditor Keith Faber run for Attorney General,
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: he was exposing some of this as an auditor that's
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: going on, and I think fundamentally, these tools in place
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: will put a bigger burden on states to detect it.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: And part of the problem is right now, states aren't
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: incredibly incentivized by it. And in the long run, if
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: you ran the safety Net as a state program and
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: the federal government simply had a federal office that made
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: sure you're not double dipping in multiple states, that would
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: be the way that aligns incentives. Because right now, some states,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: let's pick on California or Illinois for example, they view
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: that the federal dollars or at least of get spent
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: to Chicago or LA So why would we care about
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: the fraud. It's all federal cash coming into the city.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: And if you look at Medicaid. One of the things
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: we turned off last year was payments to illegals. California
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: was counting that as they're matching dollars. So when states
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: put a dollar of Medicaid money in, they get matching
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: dollars from the federal government. That multiplies it. So they're like, well, yeah,
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: why wouldn't we want to spend more money because every
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: time we put a dollar in, we get more than
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: a dollar back. In the case of Obamacare, you get
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: nine dollars back for every dollar you put in. In
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: the case of traditional Medicaid, you put four dollars in,
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: you get six dollars back.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: It's amazing how that result has the result that you're
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: talking about here, Congressman Davidson, I with great reluctance, I
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: don't know what your schedules like. I'm inviting you to
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: stay over for one more segment. I mean we can
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: talk about Fizer renewal and perhaps the Clarity Act, which
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: evolves Crypto if you have the time. If you don't,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: I certainly understand. Can you stick around, Yeah, I'd be honest.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: One more segment with Congressman Warren david and thank you
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: very much. Really important information coming the talk station seventy
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: nine fifty about Krcity talk Station Ampy Friday, Eve loved
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Congressman war and David's is on talking common sense, logic
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: and reason. He's one of the few we've got that
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: we can count on along those lines and pivoting over
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: to something I believe you and I see eye to
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: eye on. I've always believed to be believed that that
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: FISA section seven and two is a violation of a
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Fourth Amendment rights and it's been abused quite sometimes. It's
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: up for renewal, and so a question is do we
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: reform FISA or do we do a clean authorization? Where
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: are we on this, Congressman David from Davidson from your perspective.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Well, it actually laughed a little bit. And so what
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: does that mean? Does that mean that the government stops
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: spying on folks? And the answer is no. And of course, look,
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: the foreign intelligence part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: is fine. We do want to collect intelligence on foreign adversaries.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: What happens is the mechanism for doing it catches an
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Americans communication when it becomes foreign. And so if you've
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: spoken to communicated with anyone offshore, and frankly, in some cases,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: if your email or phone calls are even routed offshore,
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: then the communication itself is collected. And then because it's
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: already stored in a database, the government makes the case
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: that well, then we can search it however we want.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: They call it querying, so it's clear that they're not
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: doing a Fourth Amendment search. But people with the saurus
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: know that querry is another word for search. Yeah, and
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: so they do cute stuff like that, which you know,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: very disingenuous. And so we've tried to put it into
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: that and say, look, if you know you're searching Brian Thomas,
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: an American citizen, then you get to get a warrant.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: And if fine, if you're want to go to Brian Thomas,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: the British guy, querry away, have a great time. And
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: in any case, if there's an exigent circumstance and you
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: get a communication that's flagged that says he thanks for
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: the bomb making classes, well, well, okay, let's figure out
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: how urgent this situation is. And you don't need a
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: warrant in an exigent circumstance, I an emergency. And so
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: that has made it through the house kind of with
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: modest reforms in the past, it always dies in the Senate,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: and that's kind of where we're at. The Senate wouldn't
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: take up even modest reforms this time. They want clean,
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: and the public really doesn't want clean, and that's why
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: clean won't pass. Well.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you have evidence of a commission of
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: a crime, that's easy to get a warrant from a judge.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're already fairly easy to obtain under any
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: given circumstance. But I don't see that as being a
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: huge challenge for law enforcement officials. You know, go in
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: like all law enforcement agencies do, talk to a judge
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: and make sure everything's clean and our rights are protected.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look, there are some specific scenarios that you go, Yeah,
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: I'm glad that we have some tools in place to
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: protect America. So look, you know, Mike Johnson was always
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: a clean, get a warrant guy. He became speaker and
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: then he changed his vote cost us the passage last
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Congress of what we thought we were going to get
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: the reforms. And we said, well, what changed? He said, Well,
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: when you become speaker, you get the briefing there you go, please, sir,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: give me the briefing. You know, I've had a top
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: secret clearance from my Ranger regiment days. Every member of Congress,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: in theory, can be read in on anything, depending on
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: what the legislative purpose is. Of course, not everyone should
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: be read in on some things. Not advocating for ilan
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Omar to get all the briefings. But if you look
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: at it, I said that, and this year we got briefings,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: and to those to Speaker Johnson, he led some good reform.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Rick Crawford became the chairman of Intel has handled his
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: chairmanship in a very different way, and so there's been
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: a collaborative set of reforms. It's a more narrow warrant
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: requirement than what we've pushed for in the past. That
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: allows definition around what is this exigent circumstance? You might
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: know immediately, but if you're quarry in the same person
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: three days in a row, I think you can say
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: that you get time to get a warrant, right, And
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: so there's a backlooking and look, we've become so fixated
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: on this in part because there's a sunset provision, right.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: There are other provisions of the Patriot Act that don't sunset.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: And this is Title one. This is where the real
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: abuse is. This is Title one is what was abused
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: to go after President Trump. And in the midst of
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: all this, things that aren't even covered by laws very
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: clearly are out of control. Flock cameras are everywhere. I
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: think there's like one hundred and twenty nine thousand of
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: them everywhere. I think one hundred thousand of them must
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: be in the eighth District of Ohio. Everywhere I go,
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: I see flock cameras. And everyone wants to be safe,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: But how do you use safeguard the public against that?
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: It shifts it. What really shifts is is if anyone
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: makes an accusation and say, well, we've got flock data,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: well that's treated as binding and now you are guilty
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: in your position where you're viewed as guilty and you
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: have to prove your innocence. And that's not our constitution.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: So it is a corruption of our constitution. We're losing it,
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: and we're effectively building up essentially a police state.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Police state, there's no doubt about it. And quickly we
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: can talk briefly, we'll hold you over a little bit
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: here and ask you about the Clarity Act. Donald Trump
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: just said earlier this week or maybe even yesterday. We
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: need for Congress to take the next step and pass
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the Clarity Act, which relates to crypto. Congressman Davidson, are
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: you in favor of this and what will it mean
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: if you can boil it down to its finest points.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: Well, there are securities like stocks, they're regulated by the
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Securities and Exchange Commission. Their commodities like corn and soybean futures,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: they're regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. And then
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: you have real world assets, you know, titles to cars,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: titles deeds to property. You know, they're regulated differently. And
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: because crypto is sort of new, it's not clear where
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: the lines begin and end when it's tokenized or it
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: becomes quote crypto, and we've needed a lot to make that. Unfortunately,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: a lot of folks have, you know, Gary Gensler in
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: particular under the Bide administration went to war with crypto.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Elizabeth Warren shared Brown, they've been very anti crypto. And
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: what we really need is just clarity so that you
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: don't have these you know, arbitrage events where people are
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: exploiting securities laws, running pump and dump scams and a
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: lot of people have gotten hurt by this, and the
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: remedy is a law, so it's clear this is legal
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: and that's illegal, and you can cut down on the
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: bad actors and then focus on development of really good
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: use cases. That's why there's been a lot of blocking
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: of this. Some of the bad actors want to keep
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: doing bad things and some of the good people want
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: to protect their market shares, which isn't so good, you know.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: So we need the law so that we have a
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: clear bright line test and the regulators can do their
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: work far enough.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Congres More and David, so thank you so much for
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: your time this morning. As always, I'll look forward to
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: doing this again, hope.