Latest / The Infographics Show Podcast / 6 Strict Rules That Ex U.S. Presidents Must Follow

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6 Strict Rules That Ex U.S. Presidents Must Follow · The Infographics Show Podcast

0:10
Speaker 1: Imagine waking up tomorrow morning, the sunlight streams through your window.
0:20
Speaker 1: The sheets feel exactly the same, but the entire fabric
0:24
Speaker 1: of your reality has been just completely permanently altered.
0:29
Speaker 2: Right because just yesterday you commanded the greatest military force
0:33
Speaker 2: in human history exactly.
0:34
Speaker 1: I mean you literally held the nuclear codes. You sat
0:37
Speaker 1: in a room and made these, you know, massive decisions
0:40
Speaker 1: that dictated global markets, national borders, the lives of millions.
0:44
Speaker 1: You were the president of the United States.
0:46
Speaker 2: Which is it's the absolute pinnacle of human influences.
0:49
Speaker 1: Today today, you are not allowed to drive your own
0:53
Speaker 1: car like ever again.
0:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's gone.
0:56
Speaker 1: You can't just you know, run down to Best Buy
0:57
Speaker 1: and a wind to pick up a new laptop. You
0:59
Speaker 1: can't even open your own The ultimate power trip ends
1:01
Speaker 1: with this ultimate lifelong loss of personal freedom.
1:06
Speaker 2: It is a staggering psychological pivot. I mean, you go
1:08
Speaker 2: from being the ultimate decider right the apex of global authority,
1:12
Speaker 2: to living within this highly curated, heavily monitored, deeply restricted bubble.
1:17
Speaker 2: You are a private citizen again technically, but you belong
1:22
Speaker 2: to the state in ways that are almost impossible for
1:25
Speaker 2: the average person to comprehend.
1:27
Speaker 1: Well, welcome, to beyond infographics. Today, we are pulling back
1:31
Speaker 1: the curtain on the bizarre, highly regulated afterlife of the
1:36
Speaker 1: American presidency and really the highest echelons of government.
1:40
Speaker 2: We are exploring the hidden strings attached to power exactly.
1:45
Speaker 1: We are uncovering the truth about the massive pensions, the
1:48
Speaker 1: severe behavioral restrictions, and these terrifying eighteenth century laws designed
1:55
Speaker 1: to keep former officials from going completely rogue.
1:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're investigating the facts what actually happens when the
2:01
Speaker 2: most powerful people in the world have to give that
2:03
Speaker 2: power back, because, as it turns out, the government doesn't
2:06
Speaker 2: just let you walk away.
2:07
Speaker 1: No, they really don't.
2:08
Speaker 2: They literally cannot afford to let you walk away.
2:10
Speaker 1: Now, let's get one thing straight right off the bat,
2:12
Speaker 1: just so everyone listening is on the same page. We
2:14
Speaker 1: are completely stripping away the politics today when we talk
2:18
Speaker 1: about recent presidents or politicians. Whether we are investigating the
2:23
Speaker 1: post presidential lives of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama,
2:28
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, whoever. We're impartially looking at the
2:32
Speaker 1: cold hard records. Right.
2:35
Speaker 2: We're absolutely not endorsing any viewpoints here, none.
2:38
Speaker 1: We're not taking political signs. We are simply fascinated by
2:41
Speaker 1: the raw, unvarnished mechanics of power and the strict laws
2:45
Speaker 1: that govern these individuals once they finally leave the Oval office.
2:48
Speaker 2: Because the law applies regardless of political affiliation. We're looking
2:52
Speaker 2: exclusively at the rule book. We're sharing personal insights into
2:55
Speaker 2: the legal architecture that surrounds former officials, because you know
2:59
Speaker 2: that architecture is built on national security, not partisanship.
3:02
Speaker 1: And hey, if you are the kind of person who
3:04
Speaker 1: loves having your mind blown by these hidden facts, if
3:06
Speaker 1: you love uncovering the truth behind the headlines, and you know,
3:09
Speaker 1: looking at the world through a completely different lens, take
3:12
Speaker 1: a second right now to rate Beyond Infographics five stars.
3:15
Speaker 2: It really is the absolute best way to help us
3:17
Speaker 2: keep bringing you these intense documentary style investigations.
3:22
Speaker 1: It really is, And you will definitely want to stick
3:24
Speaker 1: around for the entirety of this investigation.
3:26
Speaker 2: Today, Oh absolutely, because coming up, we are going to
3:28
Speaker 2: look at a law from seventeen ninety nine that has
3:32
Speaker 2: never seen a single conviction but still strikes absolute fear
3:36
Speaker 2: into politicians today.
3:37
Speaker 1: Which is wild. And we're going to look at a
3:40
Speaker 1: secret registry for foreign agents. Plus we'll explore why a
3:43
Speaker 1: former president or a retired military general could theoretically face
3:48
Speaker 1: a devastating one hundred thousand dollars fine just for taking
3:51
Speaker 1: the wrong private sector consulting gig.
3:53
Speaker 2: It is an absolute labyrinth of regulations, and it all
3:57
Speaker 2: starts the precise second the new president takes the oath of.
4:00
Speaker 1: Office, exactly. But before we get into the really shadowy
4:04
Speaker 1: world of like foreigned espionage and state secrets, we have
4:07
Speaker 1: to look at the mundane, everyday reality of leaving the Oval.
4:11
Speaker 2: Office, right, the logistics of it.
4:12
Speaker 1: Because power doesn't just evaporate into the ether, right, it
4:15
Speaker 1: gets managed, it gets funded. But for a very long
4:17
Speaker 1: time in American history, it was not managed well at all.
4:20
Speaker 2: No, it was a mess. If we go back before
4:23
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty eight, the reality for former presidents was surprisingly grim.
4:27
Speaker 2: Wait really, yeah, there was zero safety net, none. You
4:30
Speaker 2: served your time, you left the White House, and you
4:33
Speaker 2: were completely financially on your own, which is just.
4:36
Speaker 1: Wild to think about today. You know, we automatically assume
4:40
Speaker 1: these people are set for life the moment they are elected,
4:43
Speaker 1: but early.
4:43
Speaker 2: On they were left to fend for themselves entirely. Take
4:47
Speaker 2: George Washington for example. Okay, he literally went back to
4:51
Speaker 2: distilling whiskey at his Mount Vernon estate. He built one
4:55
Speaker 2: of the largest distilleries in America at the time.
4:57
Speaker 1: Was he just really into making whiskey?
4:59
Speaker 2: Not at all. Actually, it wasn't out of a passion
5:01
Speaker 2: for spirits. He did it just to maintain his massive
5:05
Speaker 2: property and survive financially.
5:07
Speaker 1: Wow.
5:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, because his wealth was entirely tied up in land,
5:10
Speaker 2: not liquid cash. He needed a revenue stream.
5:13
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. So the first president is basically running a
5:16
Speaker 1: liquor business just to keep the lights.
5:18
Speaker 2: On, basically.
5:19
Speaker 1: Yeah.
5:19
Speaker 2: And if you fast forward to the twentieth century, the
5:22
Speaker 2: situation hadn't really improved. In fact, it had arguably gotten worse. Well,
5:26
Speaker 2: look at Harry Truman. After leaving office in nineteen fifty three,
5:30
Speaker 2: Truman was practically destitute. He and his wife Bess moved
5:35
Speaker 2: back to Independence, Missouri.
5:36
Speaker 1: And he refused to cash in on his name right
5:38
Speaker 1: like he wouldn't do the corporate speaking circuit.
5:40
Speaker 2: He absolutely refused. Truman was offered incredibly lucrative positions to
5:45
Speaker 2: serve on corporate boards and he turned every single one
5:48
Speaker 2: of them down. Why because he believed that taking corporate
5:51
Speaker 2: money would commercialize and cheapen the office of the presidency.
5:55
Speaker 1: Wow, that's some serious integrity.
5:57
Speaker 2: He actually wrote that he could never lend himself to
6:00
Speaker 2: any transaction that would bring disrespect to the highest office
6:03
Speaker 2: in the land. So you have to ask what did
6:05
Speaker 2: he have to live on.
6:06
Speaker 1: I have no idea.
6:07
Speaker 2: He was living on an incredibly meager army pension from
6:10
Speaker 2: his time in World War One. It was about one
6:13
Speaker 2: hundred and twelve dollars a month.
6:15
Speaker 1: That is heartbreaking. I mean, think about that. The former
6:18
Speaker 1: leader of the free world, the man who dropped the
6:20
Speaker 1: atomic bomb, ended World War Two, helped construct the whole
6:25
Speaker 1: post war global order, and he's pitching pennies in Missouri,
6:29
Speaker 1: struggling to pay for postage to answer the thousands of
6:32
Speaker 1: letters he received from the American public.
6:34
Speaker 2: It actually became a massive national embarrassment. Truman was forced
6:38
Speaker 2: to take out a personal bank loan just to survive
6:41
Speaker 2: while he scrambled to write his memoirs. Oh Man and
6:44
Speaker 2: Congress finally realized they had a crisis on their hands.
6:47
Speaker 2: I mean, they could not have former presidents, the symbols
6:51
Speaker 2: of American power and prestige, living in outright poverty.
6:55
Speaker 1: So Congress stepped in and passed the Former President's Act
6:58
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty eight exactly, and this piece of legislation
7:02
Speaker 1: essentially created the modern post presidency as we know it today.
7:06
Speaker 1: It established that the state would officially fund their lives
7:09
Speaker 1: after power.
7:10
Speaker 2: Let's break down the exact numbers here, because the financial
7:13
Speaker 2: architecture is incredibly specific.
7:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get into the math.
7:16
Speaker 2: The base pension for a former president is currently two
7:19
Speaker 2: hundred and nineteen thousand, two hundred dollars annually, and that
7:23
Speaker 2: begins the absolute second they leave office.
7:26
Speaker 1: But how is that number actually calculated? Because it's not
7:29
Speaker 1: just some random figure pulled out of thin air by
7:31
Speaker 1: a congressional committee, right, No, not at all.
7:34
Speaker 2: It is tied directly to the sprawling bureaucracy of the
7:37
Speaker 2: executive schedule. Specifically, it's tied to level IE pay.
7:42
Speaker 1: And Level Eye Just for context for you listening, that
7:45
Speaker 1: is the pay grade for the highest ranking appointed officials
7:49
Speaker 1: in the government. We are talking about cabinet secretaries. It's
7:52
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the attorney general,
7:56
Speaker 1: the people running the major departments.
7:58
Speaker 2: Exactly. The law essentially says the former president gets paid
8:02
Speaker 2: the same as the current heads of the executive departments.
8:05
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.
8:06
Speaker 2: Now, Officially, the Office of Personnel Management lists the statutory
8:09
Speaker 2: level ie salary at two hundred and fifty three thousand,
8:12
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars for twenty twenty six.
8:14
Speaker 1: But there is a massive bureaucratic catch here.
8:17
Speaker 2: A huge catch. For political appointees currently serving in the government.
8:21
Speaker 2: That rate is actually frozen by law at two hundred
8:23
Speaker 2: and three thousand, five hundred dollars.
8:25
Speaker 1: Wait.
8:25
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, Congress has enacted pay freezes for senior political
8:29
Speaker 2: officials for years.
8:30
Speaker 1: Wait, let me make sure I'm understanding the math. Here,
8:33
Speaker 1: the ext of cabinet members, the people actively running the
8:36
Speaker 1: global superpower right now dealing with daily crises, are frozen
8:40
Speaker 1: at about two hundred and three grand. Right, But the
8:42
Speaker 1: former president, who is essentially retired from public service, gets
8:46
Speaker 1: the higher, unfrozen rate of two hundred and nineteen grand.
8:51
Speaker 2: That is correct. Because the former president's pension is tied
8:54
Speaker 2: to a specific statutory formula, it often bypasses the temporary
8:59
Speaker 2: freezes place on active political appointees.
9:02
Speaker 1: That is wild. And there's another layer to this bureaucratic cake. Right,
9:06
Speaker 1: Congress created a bizarre ceiling for regular federal workers they did.
9:11
Speaker 2: The General Schedule, the gspay scale that covers hundreds of
9:14
Speaker 2: thousands of standard federal employees, has a hard statutory cap
9:19
Speaker 2: right by law, no locality adjusted GS salary can exceed
9:23
Speaker 2: level four of the executive schedule. That ceiling sits at
9:27
Speaker 2: one hundred and ninety seven thousand, two hundred dollars.
9:30
Speaker 1: So Congress decided that no regular federal employee should ever
9:33
Speaker 1: make more than the top political bosses.
9:35
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's a massive, highly regulated hierarchy of numbers.
9:40
Speaker 1: But for the former president, the financial support doesn't stop
9:44
Speaker 1: at just the pension. There are perks, huge perks built
9:49
Speaker 1: into the Former President's Act.
9:51
Speaker 2: Oh, the pension is just the baseline. If a former
9:54
Speaker 2: president passes away, their widow is entitled to a twenty
9:57
Speaker 2: thousand dollars lifetime annual pen.
10:00
Speaker 1: Okay, are there any strings attached to that?
10:03
Speaker 2: The only stipulation is that they must waive the right
10:06
Speaker 2: to any other statutory pension they might be eligible for.
10:09
Speaker 1: Then there is the transition funding. Yeah, because moving out
10:12
Speaker 1: of the White House is not like moving out of
10:13
Speaker 1: a two bedroom apartment.
10:15
Speaker 2: No, it is a massive, highly secure, logistical operation.
10:19
Speaker 1: Right. So the Former President's Act provides dedicated funding for
10:22
Speaker 1: seven months strictly to cover the transition out of power.
10:25
Speaker 2: And they get staff. I mean, they are no longer
10:27
Speaker 2: running the country, but they are still managing a massive
10:29
Speaker 2: public profile. Sure, Congress covers staff compensation up to one
10:34
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year for the first
10:36
Speaker 2: thirty months of their post presidency, and then what happens
10:40
Speaker 2: after that initial two and a half year period, it
10:42
Speaker 2: drops down to a cap of ninety six thousand dollars
10:45
Speaker 2: a year.
10:46
Speaker 1: Plus. The government covers office space in a location of
10:49
Speaker 1: their choosing, fully furnished. They cover communications, phone lines and
10:54
Speaker 1: unlimited postage for non political correspondence.
10:57
Speaker 2: Exactly. The state provides all of this money, all of
10:59
Speaker 2: this infrastructure, and all of this protection, but it is
11:03
Speaker 2: not a gift. It is a transaction.
11:05
Speaker 1: Right.
11:06
Speaker 2: In return for this taxpayer funded existence, the state demands absolute,
11:11
Speaker 2: unyielding control over their physical lives. We are talking about severe,
11:16
Speaker 2: lifelong behavioral.
11:17
Speaker 1: Restriction, the ultimate golden handcuffs Risally, this is work. It's
11:21
Speaker 1: really crazy to me. Let's talk about driving. If you
11:24
Speaker 1: are elected president of the United States, you effectively hand
11:27
Speaker 1: over your driver's license to the Secret Service forever.
11:30
Speaker 2: The ban on driving on public roads is one of
11:32
Speaker 2: the most famous and visible restrictions he did that start.
11:35
Speaker 2: It was put in place after the assassination of John F.
11:37
Speaker 2: Kennedy in nineteen sixty three. The Secret Service analyzed the
11:40
Speaker 2: geometry of a moving vehicle on a public road and
11:43
Speaker 2: determined that a president or former president behind the wheel
11:46
Speaker 2: of a car is simply an uncontrollable target. Too many variables, exactly,
11:51
Speaker 2: there are just too many variables.
11:53
Speaker 1: So Lyndon B. Johnson was the absolute last president to
11:57
Speaker 1: drive himself on an open public road. Since LBJ, it
12:01
Speaker 1: has been strictly banned. Yep. I remember hearing that Bill
12:04
Speaker 1: Clinton famously misses driving so much that he insists on
12:08
Speaker 1: driving golf carts whenever he plays eighteen holes. It is
12:11
Speaker 1: literally the only time he gets to touch his steering wheel.
12:14
Speaker 2: It's true. And Ronald Reagan, you know, he loved the
12:17
Speaker 2: open road, He loved the freedom of the American.
12:20
Speaker 1: West, right, the whole cowboy image.
12:22
Speaker 2: But after his presidency he had to settle for driving
12:25
Speaker 2: his old battered jeep strictly within the private confines of
12:29
Speaker 2: his massive ranch in Santa Barbara, California.
12:31
Speaker 1: He couldn't leave the property.
12:32
Speaker 2: He could drive the dirt trails on his own land,
12:34
Speaker 2: but the second he approached the public highway he had
12:37
Speaker 2: to get in the back of an armored limousine. Wow,
12:40
Speaker 2: the rule is absolute, no public roads.
12:43
Speaker 1: Ever, there is this great charming story about Harry Truman
12:47
Speaker 1: that shows just how different things used to be before
12:50
Speaker 1: these rules. Locked in the road trip store. Yes, after
12:53
Speaker 1: he left office, Truman and Bess took this massive road
12:56
Speaker 1: trip across the country, just the two of them in
12:59
Speaker 1: there Chrysler, no detail, no motorcade.
13:01
Speaker 2: Incredible, right.
13:03
Speaker 1: And at one point, Truman is driving his car down
13:06
Speaker 1: a rural road in Missouri, he sees a local woman
13:09
Speaker 1: struggling to corral some escaped pigs that are broken out
13:11
Speaker 1: of their pen. Okay, Truman, being a former farmer himself,
13:15
Speaker 1: just pulls the car over, gets out, and spends the
13:18
Speaker 1: next twenty minutes helping her chase down these pigs in
13:20
Speaker 1: the mud.
13:21
Speaker 2: It is a wonderful piece of Americana, truly a relic
13:24
Speaker 2: of a completely bygone era.
13:26
Speaker 1: Could you imagine a former president doing that today?
13:28
Speaker 2: Today? That scenario is functionally impossible. A former president is
13:33
Speaker 2: entirely insulated from the public. They are driven exclusively by
13:38
Speaker 2: highly trained Secret Service personnel in heavily armored vehicles designed
13:42
Speaker 2: to withstand explosive blasts and armor piercing rounds. They definitely
13:46
Speaker 2: do not stop to help with escaped livestock.
13:49
Speaker 1: And isolation does not stop the car door. Let's look
13:51
Speaker 1: at mail and technology.
13:52
Speaker 2: This is a big one.
13:54
Speaker 1: You are a former president, you are sitting in your
13:56
Speaker 1: private office and you want to order a book off Amazon,
13:59
Speaker 1: or you are expecting a letter from an old friend.
14:02
Speaker 1: Forget it. It does not come to your house.
14:04
Speaker 2: Former presidents cannot receive direct mail. Nothing goes directly to
14:09
Speaker 2: their front door. The United States Postal Service and private
14:12
Speaker 2: couriers re route everything, everything, every single piece. The Secret
14:17
Speaker 2: Service intercepts every piece of mail, every package, every letter,
14:21
Speaker 2: and diverts it to an off site, highly secured screening facility.
14:24
Speaker 1: Now this isn't just bureaucratic paranoia either. This is a
14:27
Speaker 1: very real, documented threat.
14:29
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely.
14:30
Speaker 1: Back in twenty eighteen, the Secret Service actually intercepted suspicious
14:34
Speaker 1: packages like live pipe bombs that were mailed to the
14:37
Speaker 1: homes of Bill Clinton in New York and Barack Obama
14:40
Speaker 1: in Washington, DC.
14:41
Speaker 2: Right, the screening process worked exactly as intended. The bomb's
14:45
Speaker 2: never gotten near Thom.
14:45
Speaker 1: Because the off site screening is completely non negotiable. It
14:48
Speaker 1: involves X rays, chemical swabbing, biological threat detection.
14:52
Speaker 2: Everything, and that exact same level of extreme paranoia applies
14:57
Speaker 2: to their digital lives. A former president cannot just walk
15:01
Speaker 2: into a Best Buy, hand the cashier a credit card
15:04
Speaker 2: and purchase an iPad to browse the internet.
15:06
Speaker 1: Imagine that you were the commander in chief, You commanded
15:09
Speaker 1: the NSA and cyber Command, and now you have to
15:12
Speaker 1: ask a security agent for permission to buy a cell phone.
15:14
Speaker 2: All devices must be heavily vetted, modified, and approved by
15:18
Speaker 2: the Secret Service and intelligence agencies. They track the location
15:22
Speaker 2: of the devices constantly to.
15:24
Speaker 1: Make sure they aren't compromised.
15:25
Speaker 2: Exactly, they monitor the software architecture to prevent unauthorized access.
15:30
Speaker 2: Because foreign adversaries, you know, state sponsored hackers, are constantly,
15:34
Speaker 2: relentlessly trying to breach the personal devices of former officials.
15:38
Speaker 1: What are they're looking for?
15:39
Speaker 2: They want to access their home networks, read their emails,
15:42
Speaker 2: or activate the microphones who listen to their private conversations.
15:45
Speaker 1: So you are kept perfectly safe. Your life is entirely subsidized,
15:51
Speaker 1: but your autonomy is completely stripped away, which makes me
15:54
Speaker 1: wonder if they are keeping them in this hermetically sealed bubble.
15:59
Speaker 1: Is that actually for the President's safety or is it
16:02
Speaker 1: to protect the state secrets they are walking around with.
16:05
Speaker 2: That's the million dollar question.
16:07
Speaker 1: Because at a certain point, all this protection just looks
16:10
Speaker 1: like a highly polite, incredible, expensive form of house arrest.
16:14
Speaker 2: Well, the government will always state publicly that these measures
16:16
Speaker 2: are about physical safety. They want to protect a symbol
16:20
Speaker 2: of the American republish.
16:21
Speaker 1: Sure, that's the pr answer, right.
16:23
Speaker 2: But the reality underneath that is much darker and much
16:26
Speaker 2: more pragmatic. The state views a former president as a walking, breathing,
16:30
Speaker 2: catastrophic national security vulnerability.
16:33
Speaker 1: Well liability completely.
16:35
Speaker 2: Their physical safety is entirely secondary to the safety of
16:38
Speaker 2: the classified information they possess.
16:40
Speaker 1: Think about it. If a former president is kidnapped by
16:43
Speaker 1: a rogue state or a terrorist organization, the tragedy is
16:47
Speaker 1: not just the loss of a human life. The tragedy
16:50
Speaker 1: is that a foreign adversary now has a hostage who
16:53
Speaker 1: knows the exact acoustic signature of our nuclear submarines, a
16:58
Speaker 1: hostage who knows the real idea entities of our deep
17:01
Speaker 1: cover spies in hostile.
17:02
Speaker 2: Capital exactly a hostage who knows the exact unpatched weaknesses
17:06
Speaker 2: of our domestic power grid.
17:08
Speaker 1: Precisely. They are the ultimate vulnerability. They know entirely too
17:11
Speaker 1: much so.
17:12
Speaker 2: The Secret Service detail is absolutely there to protect them
17:15
Speaker 2: from physical harm, but it is equally there to ensure
17:18
Speaker 2: that no one else can get access to them.
17:20
Speaker 1: Right.
17:20
Speaker 2: The golden handcuffs keep them tethered to the state apparatus,
17:23
Speaker 2: constantly monitored and constantly insulated.
17:26
Speaker 1: But locking their physical bodies in an armored limousine doesn't
17:29
Speaker 1: solve the real vulnerability. The government isn't just protecting a VIP,
17:34
Speaker 1: They're protecting the ultimate insider knowledge. Yes, let's look at
17:38
Speaker 1: exactly what that knowledge is and how the state tries
17:40
Speaker 1: to control it. Once the President finally leads the building.
17:43
Speaker 2: To truly understand the severity of the restrictions on a
17:46
Speaker 2: former president, you have to understand the sheer volume of
17:50
Speaker 2: highly classified, existential secrets they are exposed to every single
17:54
Speaker 2: day while sitting in the Oval office.
17:57
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the President's daily brief, the pdb ah. Yes,
18:00
Speaker 1: this is the holy grail of global intelligence. Former White
18:04
Speaker 1: House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer once famously called it the
18:07
Speaker 1: most highly sensitized classified document in the government.
18:10
Speaker 2: The PDB is a daily, highly curated summary of the
18:14
Speaker 2: most critical, high level intelligence and analysis. It contains the
18:18
Speaker 2: most sensitive information gathered by the CIA, the NSA, the
18:22
Speaker 2: Defense Intelligence Agency, the entire sprawling intelligence apparatus.
18:27
Speaker 1: What kind of stuff is actually in it?
18:28
Speaker 2: It covers immediate global threats, raw intercepted communications, highly classified
18:33
Speaker 2: satellite imagery, and deep psychological profiles of foreign leaders.
18:37
Speaker 1: And for decades, the CIA fought tooth and nail to
18:41
Speaker 1: keep the historical contents of these briefs hidden from the
18:43
Speaker 1: public forever.
18:44
Speaker 2: Oh they refused to release them.
18:46
Speaker 1: They argued in court and behind closed doors that the
18:49
Speaker 1: sources and methods used to gather this intelligence were far
18:52
Speaker 1: too sensitive to ever see the light of day even
18:54
Speaker 1: decades later. But recently the government actually shifted its stance.
18:59
Speaker 2: They did in twenty fifteen, the CIA finally relented and
19:02
Speaker 2: declassified roughly two five hundred daily briefs from the John F.
19:06
Speaker 2: Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson eras WOW, And a year
19:09
Speaker 2: later they released another massive batch from the Richard Nixon
19:13
Speaker 2: and Gerald Ford presidency, which.
19:14
Speaker 1: Is an incredible resource for US, this unprecedented release gives
19:18
Speaker 1: us a stunning historical look at exactly what the presidencyes
19:22
Speaker 1: every morning.
19:23
Speaker 2: Right, we can see exactly how the intelligence community warned
19:25
Speaker 2: them about the Cuban missile crisis or the escalating disaster
19:29
Speaker 2: in Vietnam.
19:29
Speaker 1: But what is really fascinating when we investigate the records
19:32
Speaker 1: is that not every president consumes this data the exact
19:36
Speaker 1: same way, not at all. The differences in their appetites
19:39
Speaker 1: for intelligence the way they process this terrifying daily reality
19:42
Speaker 1: check are staggering, very much. So.
19:45
Speaker 2: Take George W. Bush. According to extensive reports and historical accounts,
19:49
Speaker 2: Bush was incredibly rigid and traditional about his intelligence briefings.
19:54
Speaker 2: He held his intelligence meeting in person in the Oval
19:57
Speaker 2: Office six days a week, almost without fail.
20:00
Speaker 1: So he wanted the people in the room.
20:01
Speaker 2: Yes, he wanted the CIA director and the briefers sitting
20:05
Speaker 2: right in front of him. He wanted to hear the
20:07
Speaker 2: analysis directly, ask immediate questions, and read the body language
20:11
Speaker 2: of the analysts.
20:12
Speaker 1: Then you look at Barack Obama. A detailed analysis of
20:15
Speaker 1: his first one two hundred and twenty five days in
20:18
Speaker 1: office showed that he attended the traditional in person PDB
20:22
Speaker 1: briefing only about forty three point eight percent of the time.
20:26
Speaker 2: Now, to be fair to the historical record, the delivery
20:29
Speaker 2: method fundamentally changed during his tenure.
20:31
Speaker 1: Right the technology shifted.
20:32
Speaker 2: Obama was known as a heavy, meticulous reader. By twenty fourteen,
20:36
Speaker 2: his administration initiated secure electronic delivery of the written brief.
20:41
Speaker 1: So he's still getting it.
20:42
Speaker 2: He was receiving and reading the highly classified intelligence on
20:46
Speaker 2: a customized, heavily secured iPad six days a week, often
20:50
Speaker 2: late at night or very early in the morning, even
20:53
Speaker 2: if he wasn't sitting in a physical room with a
20:55
Speaker 2: human briefer.
20:56
Speaker 1: And then there is Donald Trump. His relationship with the
20:59
Speaker 1: intelligence came unity, and the briefings has been heavily.
21:02
Speaker 2: Scrutinized, very heavily.
21:04
Speaker 1: Looking strictly at the data, reports indicate that during his
21:07
Speaker 1: post presidency, since leaving office, he has sat for only
21:11
Speaker 1: twelve pdbs. That averages out to about one briefing every
21:16
Speaker 1: nine days.
21:17
Speaker 2: This actually touches on a fascinating unwritten tradition in American government. Historically,
21:22
Speaker 2: sitting presidents have often allowed their predecessors to continue receiving
21:25
Speaker 2: intelligence briefings long after they leave office.
21:28
Speaker 1: Wait, really why?
21:29
Speaker 2: It keeps the former presidents in the loop and allows
21:32
Speaker 2: the current administration to seek their experienced council on complex,
21:36
Speaker 2: deeply rooted global issues.
21:38
Speaker 1: But it is completely at the discretion of the current boss.
21:41
Speaker 2: Entirely. It is a professional courtesy, not a legal right.
21:46
Speaker 2: The sitting president has the absolute, unchallenged authority to cut
21:49
Speaker 2: off that access at any moment, for any reason.
21:52
Speaker 1: Okay, So the president spends four or eight years marinating
21:56
Speaker 1: in this ultra classified data. They read thousands of memos,
22:00
Speaker 1: write notes in the margins of top secret briefs, and
22:03
Speaker 1: accumulate mountains of physical documents.
22:05
Speaker 2: A staggering amount of paper.
22:07
Speaker 1: When their term ends and they walk out to the
22:09
Speaker 1: helicopter on inauguration day, what happens to all that physical paper?
22:13
Speaker 2: That brings us to a massive piece of legislation, the
22:17
Speaker 2: Presidential Records Act or the PRA.
22:19
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get into this.
22:20
Speaker 2: This law was passed in nineteen seventy eight, directly in
22:22
Speaker 2: the chaotic wake of the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon's resignation.
22:26
Speaker 1: Because before nineteen seventy eight, presidents basically treated the White
22:29
Speaker 1: House like their own personal filing Cabinet exactly.
22:32
Speaker 2: Historically, presidents treated their White House records as their own
22:35
Speaker 2: personal private property. When they left, they took the.
22:39
Speaker 1: Documents with them, just packed them up and left.
22:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, they could sell them to universities, they could burn
22:44
Speaker 2: them to protect their legacy, or they could pass them
22:46
Speaker 2: down to.
22:47
Speaker 1: Their children, which is insane.
22:49
Speaker 2: Nixon famously tried to maintain absolute control over his White
22:52
Speaker 2: House tapes and documents to prevent them from being used
22:55
Speaker 2: in criminal.
22:55
Speaker 1: Investigations, but the Presidential Records Act completely flipped the script.
23:01
Speaker 1: It established by law that the official records of the
23:04
Speaker 1: president belonged to the United States government. Yes, they belong
23:07
Speaker 1: to the American public. The absolute moment the president's term ends,
23:13
Speaker 1: legal custody of those millions of documents transfers immediately to
23:16
Speaker 1: the National Archives and Records Administration, And.
23:19
Speaker 2: The legal battle always comes down to defining the boundary
23:22
Speaker 2: line what belongs to the state versus what belongs to
23:25
Speaker 2: the individual.
23:26
Speaker 1: Because it's not always clear cut right.
23:28
Speaker 2: The PRA attempts to define personal records very strictly to
23:32
Speaker 2: prevent former officials from claiming ownership over state secrets.
23:36
Speaker 1: You can't just take a box of highly classified Pentagon memos,
23:39
Speaker 1: write personal on the side of the cardboard with the
23:41
Speaker 1: sharpie and take it to your beach house.
23:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely not. The law clearly states that personal records
23:47
Speaker 2: are documentary materials of a purely private or non public character.
23:52
Speaker 1: So what does that actually include.
23:54
Speaker 2: This includes things like private diaries, personal journals, or handwritten
23:59
Speaker 2: notes that act e schil lusively as a diary. But crucially,
24:02
Speaker 2: these notes cannot be used to transact or coordinate government business.
24:07
Speaker 1: Okay, let me give an example. If you write down
24:10
Speaker 1: your private emotional feelings about a foreign leader's personality in
24:13
Speaker 1: your leatherbound diary at midnight, that is yours, correct. But
24:17
Speaker 1: if you write down a policy directive regarding that foreign
24:20
Speaker 1: leader's country on a napkin and hand it to your
24:22
Speaker 1: chief of staff to execute, that napkin belongs to the
24:26
Speaker 1: National Archives.
24:27
Speaker 2: That napkin is state property. The PRA also explicitly exempts
24:32
Speaker 2: materials relating to private political.
24:33
Speaker 1: Associations like campaign stuff.
24:35
Speaker 2: Yes, for example, documents related exclusively to the president's own
24:39
Speaker 2: reelection campaign or the campaign of a state governor they
24:42
Speaker 2: are supporting are considered personal political property. They have no
24:46
Speaker 2: constitutional relation to the official duties of the executive branch.
24:50
Speaker 1: It is essentially the world's most extreme corporate non compete
24:54
Speaker 1: and intellectual property clause.
24:55
Speaker 2: That's a good way to look at it.
24:56
Speaker 1: If you leave a tech giant like Google or Apple,
25:00
Speaker 1: you cannot take their proprietary source code with you on
25:03
Speaker 1: a flash drive. But here, instead of the secret recipe
25:07
Speaker 1: for Coca Cola or a new search algorithm, we are
25:10
Speaker 1: talking about the troop movements of hostile nations and the
25:13
Speaker 1: identities of undercover assets operating in foreign capitals.
25:16
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate intellectual property dispute, with the fate
25:20
Speaker 2: of national security hanging in the balance of every single
25:23
Speaker 2: sheet of paper.
25:24
Speaker 1: But see locking up the physical papers under the Presidential
25:27
Speaker 1: Records Act doesn't solve the real problem.
25:30
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.
25:30
Speaker 1: We can put armed guards around the national Archives, we
25:33
Speaker 1: can track every single document, But if their mind is
25:36
Speaker 1: an absolute vault of state secrets, how do you police
25:40
Speaker 1: what a former official actually says?
25:42
Speaker 2: You really can't.
25:43
Speaker 1: They could just walk onto a golf course, play eighteen
25:45
Speaker 1: holes with a foreign billionaire who has ties to a
25:48
Speaker 1: hostile government and just, you know, talk. How does the
25:51
Speaker 1: government stop that.
25:53
Speaker 2: You are identifying the fundamental unsolvable flaw in the entire system,
25:58
Speaker 2: which is the extreme, terrifying vulnerability of human memory. You
26:03
Speaker 2: can pass a strict law mandating that every single piece
26:06
Speaker 2: of paper, every email, every digital memo goes to the
26:10
Speaker 2: National Archives, but you cannot legally mandate a brain white You.
26:14
Speaker 1: Cannot erase their hard drives.
26:15
Speaker 2: Exactly.
26:16
Speaker 1: They walk out of the White House with the most
26:18
Speaker 1: sensitive information on Earth just sitting quietly in their head.
26:21
Speaker 2: And this leads us to the absolute necessity of monitoring
26:25
Speaker 2: the post government lives of these former officials. The government
26:28
Speaker 2: cannot control what you remember. It cannot police every single
26:32
Speaker 2: private conversation you have over dinner or on a golf course.
26:36
Speaker 1: So what does it do to protect those secrets.
26:38
Speaker 2: It meticulously obsessively tracks exactly who is paying you.
26:42
Speaker 1: Because if a foreign adversary wants the secrets inside your head,
26:46
Speaker 1: they are not going to send a team of spies
26:47
Speaker 1: to break in your house in the middle of the night.
26:49
Speaker 1: Too risky, right, that is too messy. They're going to
26:52
Speaker 1: create a shell company and hire you as a quote
26:54
Speaker 1: unquote consultant.
26:55
Speaker 2: Precisely, if you cannot erase the memory, you have to
26:58
Speaker 2: follow the money.
26:58
Speaker 1: And this brings us to the massive web of financial
27:01
Speaker 1: tripwires surrounding former public servants, the legal mechanisms designed to
27:06
Speaker 1: ensure that the people who hold our deepest secrets are
27:10
Speaker 1: not quietly bought by the highest bidder.
27:12
Speaker 2: Let's get into those financial trip wires, because this is
27:15
Speaker 2: where the rules get incredibly complex and the stakes get
27:19
Speaker 2: terrifyingly high.
27:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's do it. The government has built a labyrinth
27:23
Speaker 1: of regulations to catch any former official trying to cash
27:26
Speaker 1: in on their insider knowledge.
27:28
Speaker 2: The oldest, most foundational tripwire in the book is the
27:31
Speaker 2: Emolument's Clause of the United States Constitution.
27:34
Speaker 1: We hear this term a lot, but what is it really.
27:36
Speaker 2: This is a core anti corruption provision drafted directly by
27:40
Speaker 2: the Framers in the eighteenth century. They were terrified of
27:42
Speaker 2: European powers buying off American politicians.
27:45
Speaker 1: Makes sense for a new country.
27:47
Speaker 2: It explicitly prohibits any person holding an office of profit
27:51
Speaker 2: or trust under the United States from accepting any present emolument, office,
27:55
Speaker 2: or title from any foreign king, prince, or state without
27:59
Speaker 2: the explicit concers of Congress.
28:01
Speaker 1: And an emolument is basically any profit, advantage, salary, or benefit.
28:06
Speaker 1: It is a very broad, sweeping term. But here is
28:14
Speaker 1: the shocking fact we uncovered while looking at the legal records.
28:17
Speaker 2: Oh, this is a big word.
28:18
Speaker 1: The monument's clause does not just apply to sitting presidents,
28:21
Speaker 1: active ambassadors, or current cabinet members. It strictly legally applies
28:26
Speaker 1: to military retirees.
28:28
Speaker 2: This is a crucial, widely misunderstood fact that traps a
28:32
Speaker 2: lot of people.
28:33
Speaker 1: Really, how so, if.
28:34
Speaker 2: You are a retired regular military officer, say a retired
28:38
Speaker 2: two star general in the Army, or even a retired
28:40
Speaker 2: regular enlisted service member, you are still legally considered to
28:45
Speaker 2: be holding an office of profit or trust because you
28:48
Speaker 2: can theoretically be recalled to active duty. Oh wow, Therefore
28:51
Speaker 2: you are still bound by the emoluments.
28:53
Speaker 1: Class, meaning you cannot just serve twenty years, retire from
28:56
Speaker 1: the Marines, collect your taxpayer pension, and go take a
28:59
Speaker 1: massive five million dollars consulting gig helping a foreign government
29:03
Speaker 1: build up their defense forces.
29:05
Speaker 2: Nope, you are constitutionally forbidden from accepting a single dime
29:08
Speaker 2: of that foreign money without getting permission first.
29:11
Speaker 1: So how do you get permission to navigate.
29:13
Speaker 2: This constitutional minefield? The Office of Government Ethics uses a
29:17
Speaker 2: very strict four part test to determine if the Emolument's
29:21
Speaker 2: clause applies to a specific situation, especially involving international organizations.
29:27
Speaker 1: Let's break down that four part test because it is
29:29
Speaker 1: fascinating how granular the government gets sure.
29:32
Speaker 2: First, the United States cannot be a member of the
29:34
Speaker 2: foreign state or the international organization paying you.
29:37
Speaker 1: Okay, that's one.
29:39
Speaker 2: Second, the organization must be actively carrying out United States
29:43
Speaker 2: foreign policy objectives. Third, the United States government must participate
29:47
Speaker 2: in the actual governance or board of the organization, and
29:51
Speaker 2: the Fourth and Fourth Congress must have previously approved the
29:54
Speaker 2: US participation, Meaning there is zero concern about divided loyalty.
29:59
Speaker 1: So if an organist successfully meets all four of those criteria,
30:02
Speaker 1: like the United Nations or NATO or the World Bank,
30:06
Speaker 1: then the Office of Government Ethics determines that the Emolument's
30:09
Speaker 1: clause does not apply.
30:10
Speaker 2: Exactly, taking a salary from the UN does not compromise
30:13
Speaker 2: your loyalty to the US Constitution.
30:15
Speaker 1: But if a retired Air Force general wants to fly
30:17
Speaker 1: over to the Middle East and advise a foreign military
30:20
Speaker 1: on how to structure their fighter jet squadrons, that.
30:23
Speaker 2: Is a massive blatant Emolument's clause violation unless they get
30:27
Speaker 2: explicit written advance approval from their specific service secretary and
30:32
Speaker 2: the Secretary of State.
30:33
Speaker 1: And this is exactly where the oversight system has been
30:37
Speaker 1: catastrophically failing. Recent investigations into military consulting revealed a gaping,
30:43
Speaker 1: alarming hoole in this process.
30:45
Speaker 2: It's bad. We are bringing you some personal insights into
30:48
Speaker 2: major new legislation designed to fix this massive blind spot.
30:52
Speaker 1: It is called the Retired Officer's Conflict of Interest Act right.
30:56
Speaker 2: It is a powerful bipartisan bill introduced by Representatives jus
31:00
Speaker 2: and Crow, Morgan Latrelle, Susan delban and Jakelsey.
31:03
Speaker 1: What triggered this specific piece of legislation, because you don't
31:07
Speaker 1: just introduce a bill like this out of nowhere.
31:09
Speaker 2: What triggered it were deep investigations showing that the State
31:12
Speaker 2: Department and the military branches were essentially asleep at the
31:15
Speaker 2: wheel when it came to tracking their retirees.
31:17
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
31:18
Speaker 2: The data showed that an astonishing ninety five percent of
31:21
Speaker 2: applications submitted by retired officers to work for foreign governments
31:26
Speaker 2: were being approved.
31:27
Speaker 1: Ninety five percent. That is not national scurity oversight. That
31:30
Speaker 1: is a drive through window for foreign military lobbying.
31:32
Speaker 2: They were basically rubber stamped without any serious scrutiny regarding
31:36
Speaker 2: what secrets those officers might be compromising.
31:38
Speaker 1: I mean, the law clearly says you risk losing your
31:41
Speaker 1: military pension if you violate the rule and take the
31:44
Speaker 1: money without asking. But the agency that handles the money
31:47
Speaker 1: had punished fewer than five people for it ever in history.
31:52
Speaker 2: Exactly, it was a joke. The new legislation aims to
31:55
Speaker 2: radically aggressively overhaul this broken system. First, it proposes creation
32:00
Speaker 2: of a public, highly searchable online database.
32:03
Speaker 1: That's a huge step.
32:05
Speaker 2: If a retired officer is approved to go work for
32:07
Speaker 2: a foreign government or a foreign defense contractor, the American
32:10
Speaker 2: public will know their exact name, the exact nature of
32:13
Speaker 2: their work, and exactly how much money they were receiving
32:16
Speaker 2: from that foreign entity.
32:17
Speaker 1: Absolute transparency. It also targets a massive, sneaky loophole that
32:22
Speaker 1: people were using.
32:22
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, the US contractor loophole.
32:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently retired officers were taking highly paid jobs with
32:30
Speaker 1: US based contracting companies. But those US companies were actually
32:34
Speaker 1: shell corporations doing the defense consulting work directly for foreign governments.
32:40
Speaker 2: Right. They used the US company as a legal shield.
32:43
Speaker 2: To avoid the Emolument's review process entirely. This new bill
32:48
Speaker 2: completely shuts that back door.
32:50
Speaker 1: Down, and it comes with very real, devastating teeth.
32:54
Speaker 2: It really does. The bill slaps a one hundred thousand
32:57
Speaker 2: dollars civil penalty or the total amount of money received
33:00
Speaker 2: from the foreign government, whichever is exponentially higher on anyone
33:04
Speaker 2: who violates the rules.
33:05
Speaker 1: They'll make them think twice plus.
33:07
Speaker 2: You immediately lose your high level security clearance and you
33:10
Speaker 2: are permanently banned from ever working for the federal government again.
33:13
Speaker 1: But the Emolument's clause only covers people officially legally tied
33:17
Speaker 1: to the government, like active employees or military retirees subject
33:21
Speaker 1: to recall, what about a pure private citizen.
33:25
Speaker 2: It's a whole different ballgame.
33:26
Speaker 1: What about a former cabinet secretary who is entirely in
33:30
Speaker 1: the private sector. Now that brings us to the big one,
33:33
Speaker 1: the most complex trap of all FIRI. The Foreign Agents
33:38
Speaker 1: Registration Act FRII is the ultimate transparency statute for foreign
33:43
Speaker 1: influence operating inside the borders of the United States.
33:46
Speaker 2: The history here is wild. Let's trace the origins. FERRA
33:50
Speaker 2: was not created in the modern era to stop corrupt
33:53
Speaker 2: corporate business deals or shady tech lobbying, No was it.
33:56
Speaker 2: It was created all the way back in nineteen thirty eight,
33:58
Speaker 2: specifically to fight the citious spread of Nazi propaganda leading
34:02
Speaker 2: up to World War Two.
34:03
Speaker 1: The US government realized that the Third Reich and other
34:06
Speaker 1: foreign powers were secretly aggressively funding operatives inside the United States.
34:11
Speaker 2: What were they doing?
34:12
Speaker 1: These operatives were embedding themselves in society to spread fascist ideology,
34:16
Speaker 1: manipulate the press, and influence public opinion to keep America
34:19
Speaker 1: out of the coming war. Ever, I was explicitly designed
34:23
Speaker 1: to drag those covert operatives kicking and screaming out of
34:26
Speaker 1: the shadows.
34:27
Speaker 2: And the law operates on a very complex, interlocking four
34:30
Speaker 2: part test. Right, Yes, you must register with the Justice
34:33
Speaker 2: Department as a foreign agent if you are one acting
34:36
Speaker 2: as an agent, two working under the direction of a
34:39
Speaker 2: foreign principle, three engaged in covered activities, and four you
34:43
Speaker 2: do not qualify for any of the specific legal exemptions.
34:47
Speaker 1: Let's define foreign principle because it is much broader than
34:51
Speaker 1: people think. It is not just a foreign government, a
34:54
Speaker 1: foreign intelligence service, or a foreign king, not at all.
34:58
Speaker 1: A foreign principle can be a foreign political party, a
35:00
Speaker 1: foreign based corporation or even a foreign nonprofit foundation. If
35:05
Speaker 1: the ncity is headquartered outside the US, they are legally
35:09
Speaker 1: a foreign principle, And the.
35:10
Speaker 2: Covered activities are incredibly broad as well abroad. If you
35:13
Speaker 2: engage in any political activities to influence the US public
35:17
Speaker 2: on domestic or foreign policy, or if you act as
35:19
Speaker 2: a public relations council for that foreign entity okay, Or
35:22
Speaker 2: if you solicit money on their behalf, or if you
35:25
Speaker 2: represent their interests before any US official or agency, you
35:29
Speaker 2: are engaging in covered activities.
35:31
Speaker 1: And if you meet all those criteria, you have to register.
35:34
Speaker 1: And the registration requirements are absolutely brutal and exhausting.
35:38
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a nightmare of paperwork.
35:40
Speaker 1: You have to file extensive, detailed paperwork outlining the exact agreement,
35:45
Speaker 1: the exact flow of money, and a minute by minute
35:48
Speaker 1: account of your activities.
35:49
Speaker 2: Yes, Furthermore, any informational material you distribute in the US,
35:54
Speaker 2: like pamphlets, emails, social media posts, it all must carry
35:59
Speaker 2: a conspicuous, highly visible label stating clearly that the material
36:03
Speaker 2: is being distributed by a registered foreign agent.
36:06
Speaker 1: Honestly, errari sounds less like a criminal statute designed to
36:09
Speaker 1: throw people in jail and more like a high stakes
36:12
Speaker 1: license plate.
36:13
Speaker 2: That's a great analogy.
36:14
Speaker 1: It does not actually stop you from legally driving your
36:17
Speaker 1: car for a foreign entity. It just forces you to
36:19
Speaker 1: wear a giant glowing neon sign, killing everyone exactly who
36:24
Speaker 1: owns the vehicle you were driving.
36:25
Speaker 2: EFI out does not make it illegal to lobby for
36:27
Speaker 2: a foreign dictator. You can legally represent the worst regimes
36:31
Speaker 2: on earth in Washington. It just makes it a severe
36:34
Speaker 2: federal crime to do it secretly.
36:35
Speaker 1: But the devil is always in the exemptions. There are massive,
36:39
Speaker 1: complicated carve outs in the Ferrari Statute that high priced
36:42
Speaker 1: lawyers spend their entire careers navigating for their clients.
36:46
Speaker 2: Yes, the exemptions are an absolute legal Mindfield's talk about
36:50
Speaker 2: some of them. Well, there is the humanitarian exemption, which
36:54
Speaker 2: covers individuals strictly collecting funds for urgent medical aid, food,
36:58
Speaker 2: or clothing to relieve human suffering.
37:00
Speaker 1: That makes sense.
37:01
Speaker 2: Then there is the academic exemption, designed to protect bonafide
37:05
Speaker 2: scholastic scientific or fine arts pursuits.
37:08
Speaker 1: Oh wait, if a foreign funded academic is doing bonified
37:12
Speaker 1: scientific research on climate change, but they also engage in
37:16
Speaker 1: political activities by lobbying a senator to pass a climate bill.
37:20
Speaker 1: The academic exemption instantly evaporates.
37:23
Speaker 2: Right absolutely, the moment the academic crosses the line into
37:26
Speaker 2: political advocacy, they trigger FA.
37:28
Speaker 1: It is very strict.
37:30
Speaker 2: Then you have the commercial consumption meant for private, strictly
37:33
Speaker 2: non political trade and commerce, and the legal exemption, which
37:37
Speaker 2: is crucial.
37:37
Speaker 1: What does that do.
37:38
Speaker 2: It allows lawyers to represent foreign clients in a US
37:41
Speaker 2: court of law during an actual trial or investigation, but
37:44
Speaker 2: they cannot use that exemption to lobby agency officials outside
37:48
Speaker 2: the courtroom.
37:48
Speaker 1: There is also the LDA exemption. If you officially register
37:53
Speaker 1: your activities under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, which is a
37:56
Speaker 1: slightly less burdensome transparency law, you might avoid having to
38:00
Speaker 1: register under PHARAH.
38:01
Speaker 2: Unless, of course, you are lobbying directly on behalf of
38:04
Speaker 2: a foreign government or a foreign political party, then the
38:07
Speaker 2: LDA exemption is completely void.
38:10
Speaker 1: But the most heavily debated, controversial, and terrifying exemption of
38:14
Speaker 1: all is the domestic interest Exemption's.
38:18
Speaker 2: Really look at this, this is it gets really murky.
38:20
Speaker 1: The domestic interest exemption states that you do not have
38:23
Speaker 1: to register under PHARAH if your activities are not serving
38:26
Speaker 1: predominantly a foreign interest.
38:28
Speaker 2: And this is a massive existential issue for American nonprofit organizations.
38:32
Speaker 1: Give me an example.
38:33
Speaker 2: Imagine a scenario. A US based human rights group receives
38:37
Speaker 2: a large financial grant from a foreign foundation based in Europe.
38:41
Speaker 2: The grant is given specifically to help the US group
38:44
Speaker 2: advocate for criminal justice reform policy changes in Washington, DC.
38:48
Speaker 2: Is that US nonprofit now operating as a foreign agent?
38:51
Speaker 1: Oh wow, it is like playing a terrifying game of
38:53
Speaker 1: legal chicken exactly.
38:55
Speaker 2: The Justice Department has tried to clarify this over the years.
38:57
Speaker 2: They have issued advisory opinions basic saying that if the
39:01
Speaker 2: US nonprofits activities directly further their own US objectives and
39:05
Speaker 2: they are not being microdirected by a foreign government, they
39:08
Speaker 2: can successfully claim the domestic interest exemption and avoid the
39:12
Speaker 2: stigma of registering as a foreign agent.
39:15
Speaker 1: But the ambiguity of that word predominantly is terrifying for
39:18
Speaker 1: these organizations. If the Justice Department audits them and decides
39:22
Speaker 1: they misread the exemption that they were actually serving the
39:25
Speaker 1: European foundation's interests more than their own, the penalties are severe.
39:30
Speaker 2: Extremely severe. Willfully violating Farah is a felony criminal offense.
39:34
Speaker 2: It is punishable by up to five years in federal
39:37
Speaker 2: prison and a massive two hundred and fifty thousand dollars fine.
39:40
Speaker 1: And what makes it even harder to navigate is that
39:42
Speaker 1: the enforcement affair are is a total roller coaster. It
39:46
Speaker 1: waxes and wanes dramatically based entirely on the political climate
39:50
Speaker 1: of the decade.
39:51
Speaker 2: It really does. For a long time. For decades, really,
39:53
Speaker 2: EFRA was basically ignored, was a forgotten, dusty law on
39:56
Speaker 2: the book.
39:57
Speaker 1: People just didn't care.
39:58
Speaker 2: People filed the paperwork late or not at all, and
40:01
Speaker 2: the DOJ just sent polite reminder letters. But then the
40:04
Speaker 2: climate shifted.
40:05
Speaker 1: Around the twenty sixteen election, right amidst widespread intense allegations
40:10
Speaker 1: of covert foreign interference in the American democratic process. If
40:14
Speaker 1: a our enforcement suddenly searched.
40:16
Speaker 2: The Justice Department woke up. They started aggressively publicly prosecuting
40:21
Speaker 2: high profile individuals who failed to register as foreign lobbyists.
40:26
Speaker 1: They forced massive foreign state owned media outlets to register
40:30
Speaker 1: as agents of their respective governments. Afair became a powerful,
40:34
Speaker 1: highly publicized weapon.
40:35
Speaker 2: But then the pendulum always swings back. We recently saw
40:38
Speaker 2: a memo from Attorney General Pambondi that totally shifted the
40:41
Speaker 2: landscape again.
40:42
Speaker 1: What did she do?
40:42
Speaker 2: She directed the Justice Department to shift the criminal enforcement
40:45
Speaker 2: Affair era away from lobbying violations and strictly toward cases
40:50
Speaker 2: involving traditional espionage, sabotage, and covert action by hostile foreign
40:54
Speaker 2: government actors.
40:55
Speaker 1: So the Bondi Memo essentially ease the broader, aggressive criminal
40:59
Speaker 1: scope of that had built up over the previous eight years.
41:02
Speaker 2: It pushed the Department to focus much more on civil enforcement,
41:06
Speaker 2: administrative compliance, and issuing public guidance for standard lobbying violations.
41:11
Speaker 1: Reserving the threat of prison time almost exclusively for actual
41:15
Speaker 1: foreign spies and intelligence operatives exact. So the threat level
41:20
Speaker 1: of this law literally changes depending on who is sitting
41:23
Speaker 1: in the Attorney General's chair. But wait, if a retired
41:27
Speaker 1: general registers perfectly under FRI, he fills out all the forms,
41:32
Speaker 1: he legally takes five million dollars from a foreign adversary
41:36
Speaker 1: to advise them on strategy. The public knows his name
41:40
Speaker 1: is glowing in the database. He followed the transparency law perfectly,
41:44
Speaker 1: but hasn't The damage to national security's still been done.
41:46
Speaker 2: That's a valid point.
41:47
Speaker 1: We just watched him sell his expertise transparency didn't stop
41:50
Speaker 1: the transaction.
41:51
Speaker 2: You are hitting on the central agonizing tension of American law.
41:55
Speaker 2: It is the fundamental clash between the First Amendment and
41:57
Speaker 2: national security.
41:58
Speaker 1: Freedom of speech and is sociation versus protecting the state
42:01
Speaker 1: from foreign manipulation.
42:03
Speaker 2: The United States Constitution guarantees the fundamental right to free
42:06
Speaker 2: speech and the freedom of association. The government cannot simply
42:11
Speaker 2: ban a private citizen from talking to a foreigner or
42:14
Speaker 2: forbid them from working for a foreign company without aggressively
42:17
Speaker 2: trampling on the First Amendment.
42:19
Speaker 1: So fair is the ultimate compromise. We can't legally ban
42:22
Speaker 1: the speech, so we burden it with intense.
42:25
Speaker 2: Transparency exactly, but it remains a blunt, imperfect instrument. Fr
42:31
Speaker 2: is intended to catch covert influence and spies, but because
42:35
Speaker 2: it is so broad, it also creates a massive, undeniable
42:38
Speaker 2: chilling effect on legitimate nonprofits, human rights workers, and academics.
42:43
Speaker 2: The collateral damage they are These groups are terrified of
42:46
Speaker 2: being publicly labeled foreign agents. They might delay vital human
42:50
Speaker 2: rights advocacy or outright turned down critical foreign funding simply
42:54
Speaker 2: to avoid the massive public stigma and the crushing legal
42:57
Speaker 2: fees required for fairer compliance.
42:59
Speaker 1: So the government tracks the money because it legally cannot
43:02
Speaker 1: control the memory. The financial trip wires are everywhere. But
43:05
Speaker 1: what if money is not the motive at all. What
43:07
Speaker 1: if a former official isn't looking for a paycheck?
43:10
Speaker 2: That introduces the ultimate nightmare scenario for a sitting administration.
43:15
Speaker 1: Think about it. What if a former official, someone who
43:18
Speaker 1: already has all the money and power they could ever
43:20
Speaker 1: possibly want, simply decides they know better than the current president. Okay,
43:26
Speaker 1: what if they decide the current administration is making a
43:28
Speaker 1: catastrophic mistake, so they bypass the State Department entirely and
43:33
Speaker 1: try to conduct their own rogue foreign policy.
43:36
Speaker 2: When a private citizen attempts to usurp the diplomatic power
43:39
Speaker 2: of the state, we enter the territory of the oldest,
43:42
Speaker 2: most mysterious law on the books.
43:44
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the sleeping giant for a attracts who
43:46
Speaker 1: pays you. The Emolument's clause blocks foreign gifts. The Former
43:51
Speaker 1: President's Act manages your physical life and your pension.
43:54
Speaker 2: But the Logan Act, the Logan Act, manages your diplomacy.
43:57
Speaker 1: The Logan Act was enacted all the way back in
43:59
Speaker 1: seven teen ninety nine, and if you were going to
44:02
Speaker 1: understand why this bizarre law exists, you have to understand
44:05
Speaker 1: the extreme fever pitch paranoia of the late eighteenth century. Right.
44:09
Speaker 2: The context is everything here.
44:11
Speaker 1: The United States was a brand new, fragile country and
44:14
Speaker 1: they were in the middle of the quasi war with France.
44:17
Speaker 1: It was a tense, undeclared naval war. Ships were being seized,
44:21
Speaker 1: Tensions were incredibly high, and the nation was deeply divided
44:25
Speaker 1: on how to handle it.
44:26
Speaker 2: And a Pennsylvania state legislator, a Quaker named George Logan,
44:30
Speaker 2: decided to take matters entirely into his own hands.
44:32
Speaker 1: What did he do?
44:33
Speaker 2: He was terrified the US was going to blunder into
44:36
Speaker 2: a full scale war, so he traveled across the Atlantic
44:39
Speaker 2: to Paris strictly as a private citizen, without any authorization,
44:43
Speaker 2: and tried to negotiate peace directly with the French government.
44:46
Speaker 1: I could imagine the federal government did not love that.
44:48
Speaker 2: The federal government, led by the opposing political faction, was
44:52
Speaker 2: absolutely furious. They viewed Logan's unauthorized trip as a massive,
44:57
Speaker 2: dangerous usurpation of executive authority.
45:00
Speaker 1: He was actively undermining the official diplomatic efforts and the
45:04
Speaker 1: negotiating leverage of the United States.
45:06
Speaker 2: Government exactly, so Congress swiftly passed the Logan Act to
45:10
Speaker 2: make sure it never happened again.
45:11
Speaker 1: And the text of the law is very brief, but
45:14
Speaker 1: it is devastatingly broad. It explicitly forbids any unauthorized private
45:19
Speaker 1: citizen from engaging in verbal or written correspondence with any
45:23
Speaker 1: foreign government in relation to any disputes or controversies with
45:26
Speaker 1: the United States.
45:27
Speaker 2: It makes it a federal crime for a private citizen
45:30
Speaker 2: to try and defeat the measures of the US government
45:32
Speaker 2: by secretly negotiating with foreign powers.
45:35
Speaker 1: And here is the great bizarre irony of the Logan Act.
45:40
Speaker 1: We are investigating a law that has been sitting actively
45:42
Speaker 1: on the books for over two hundred years. Guess how
45:45
Speaker 1: many people have been convicted and sent to prison under it?
45:48
Speaker 2: Zero?
45:48
Speaker 1: Zero. In over two centuries of American history, no one
45:52
Speaker 1: has ever been successfully convicted under the Logan Act. There
45:55
Speaker 1: were two minor indictments way back in the eighteen fifties
45:58
Speaker 1: and one obscure military court mark, but never a single
46:01
Speaker 1: civilian conviction.
46:02
Speaker 2: Yet, despite having zero convictions, the law is far from dead.
46:06
Speaker 2: Federal courts constantly cite it in their rulings regarding foreign
46:09
Speaker 2: policy powers.
46:10
Speaker 1: The State Department constantly points to it to warn off interlovers.
46:13
Speaker 1: The Department of Justice has written extensive, detailed legal memos
46:17
Speaker 1: analyzing its scope.
46:18
Speaker 2: There is a famous, perfectly eerie quote used in a
46:22
Speaker 2: legal justification regarding the Logan Act. It quotes Shakespeare's Measure
46:26
Speaker 2: for measure. It says, the law hath not been dead,
46:30
Speaker 2: though it hath slept.
46:31
Speaker 1: It is the ultimate legal ghost. It haunts the political landscape,
46:35
Speaker 1: casting a long shadow, without ever actually stepping into the
46:38
Speaker 1: courtroom to face a jury.
46:39
Speaker 2: But if we want to see the Logan Act in action,
46:42
Speaker 2: or at least the absolute undeniable textbook definition of Logan
46:46
Speaker 2: Act territory, we have to talk about the Shanata Fair
46:50
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty eight.
46:51
Speaker 1: This is a staggering historical story of rogue diplomacy that
46:54
Speaker 1: literally changed the course of global history. Before we get
46:57
Speaker 1: into it, just another quick reminder. If you were enjoying
46:59
Speaker 1: this deep dive into these wild historical facts, please rate
47:02
Speaker 1: the show five stars.
47:03
Speaker 2: Yes, please do so. The Shanat affair is perhaps the
47:06
Speaker 2: most audacious, devastating example of a private citizen interfering in
47:10
Speaker 2: foreign policy in.
47:11
Speaker 1: The twentieth century set the scene for US.
47:13
Speaker 2: The year is nineteen sixty eight. The country is tearing
47:16
Speaker 2: itself apart. The Vietnam War is raging, costing thousands of
47:21
Speaker 2: American lives. President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat who is
47:25
Speaker 2: not running for reelection, is desperately trying to launch peace
47:28
Speaker 2: talks in Paris to end the conflict before his term ends.
47:32
Speaker 1: And Richard Nixon is running for president as a Republican.
47:35
Speaker 1: He is running a tight, vicious race against lbj's Vice
47:38
Speaker 1: president Hubert Humphrey.
47:40
Speaker 2: Mixon and his campaign advisors knew that if LBJ is
47:43
Speaker 2: successfully announced a breakthrough in the peace talks right before
47:45
Speaker 2: the November election. In October surprise, it would give the
47:48
Speaker 2: Democrats a massive electoral boost.
47:51
Speaker 1: The American public would reward Humphrey Nixon believed he would
47:54
Speaker 1: absolutely cost him the presidency.
47:56
Speaker 2: So Nixon's campaign orchestrates a highly secret, incredibly dangerous back channel.
48:01
Speaker 2: They use a prominent, wealthy Republican fundraiser named Anna Chanault.
48:05
Speaker 2: She had deep ties to the South Vietna's government and
48:08
Speaker 2: what was her role? They use her to pass messages
48:10
Speaker 2: directly to the leadership in Saigon. The message from the
48:14
Speaker 2: Nixon camp, delivered through Channaut to South Vietnam was essentially this,
48:18
Speaker 2: do not go to the peace talks in Paris, hold out,
48:22
Speaker 2: refuse to participate. If you wait until Nixon wins the election,
48:26
Speaker 2: you will get a much better tougher deal from US
48:29
Speaker 2: than you will from the Democrats.
48:30
Speaker 1: He was a private citizen actively corresponding with a foreign
48:34
Speaker 1: government explicitly to defeat the diplomatic measures of the sitting
48:38
Speaker 1: US president, purely for personal political game.
48:41
Speaker 2: It is the exact, undeniable definition of a Logan Act violation.
48:44
Speaker 1: The twist is that LBJ actually found out about it.
48:48
Speaker 1: The intelligence community was actively monitoring the communications. LBJ had
48:52
Speaker 1: the FBI wiretap Anna Chenault's phone.
48:54
Speaker 2: He knew everything, Yeah.
48:55
Speaker 1: The NSA intercepting the cables. He knew exactly what Nixy's
48:58
Speaker 1: people were doing in the dark in recorded phone calls.
49:01
Speaker 1: LBJ famously furiously called it outright treason.
49:05
Speaker 2: But wait, if LBJ knew Nixon was sabotaging the peace
49:08
Speaker 2: talks and he had the wiretaps to prove it, why
49:10
Speaker 2: didn't he prosecute him? Why didn't he arrest Ani Schnatt
49:13
Speaker 2: under the Logan Act?
49:14
Speaker 1: Right?
49:14
Speaker 2: Then and there.
49:15
Speaker 1: Because revealing the crime would mean revealing the wire taps.
49:19
Speaker 1: LBJ kept its secret to protect the highly sensitive sources
49:22
Speaker 1: and methods of his intelligence gathering. He couldn't go public
49:25
Speaker 1: without admitting the US was spying on its own allies.
49:28
Speaker 2: So the South Vietnamese took Nixon's advice. They walked away
49:31
Speaker 2: from the negotiating table. The Paris peace talks collapsed.
49:36
Speaker 1: Nixon won the election by a razor thin margin, and
49:40
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War dragged on for several more devastating years.
49:43
Speaker 2: The Schanol affair perfectly illustrates the immense terrifying power a
49:48
Speaker 2: private citizen can wield if they choose to intervene in
49:50
Speaker 2: foreign affairs. Millions of lives were impacted by a secret
49:54
Speaker 2: back channel conversation.
49:56
Speaker 1: But it also brings up the ultimate question regarding this law.
49:59
Speaker 1: If nobody has been convicted in over two centuries, and
50:01
Speaker 1: even something as blatant and globally destructive as the Shanan
50:05
Speaker 1: affair doesn't trigger a trial, is the Logan Act actually
50:08
Speaker 1: a real law.
50:09
Speaker 2: Or is it just a constitutional scarecrow, a fake, hollow
50:12
Speaker 2: threat the government points to when they are embarrassed by
50:14
Speaker 2: a rogue private citizen.
50:16
Speaker 1: Well, the Logan Act is in many ways exactly that
50:20
Speaker 1: a scarecrow, but it is a very necessary, highly effective scarecrow.
50:26
Speaker 2: Its continued survival on the books is mostly about establishing
50:29
Speaker 2: a firm boundary.
50:30
Speaker 1: A boundary for who gets to speak for the country.
50:32
Speaker 2: Precisely, the Logan Act serves as a permanent statutory deterrent.
50:38
Speaker 2: It is a vital tool for the State Department to
50:41
Speaker 2: legitimize its absolute monopoly on foreign policy.
50:44
Speaker 1: It sets a hard legal line that says diplomacy is
50:48
Speaker 1: the exclusive constitutional domain of the executive branch. No one
50:51
Speaker 1: else is allowed to negotiate.
50:53
Speaker 2: So, even if the Department of Justice doesn't actually prosecute anyone,
50:56
Speaker 2: the looming threat of a felony indictment keeps people in line.
51:00
Speaker 1: Yes, because the Department of Justice is actually terrified to
51:03
Speaker 1: test the Logan Act in front of a jury. They
51:05
Speaker 1: know that the moment they indicte someone, a high priced
51:08
Speaker 1: defense attorney would immediately argue that the law is unconstitutionally vague.
51:11
Speaker 2: And a direct violation of the First Amendment right to
51:14
Speaker 2: free speech.
51:14
Speaker 1: There's the First Amendment clashing with national security again. Can
51:18
Speaker 1: the government really criminalize the act of simply talking to
51:21
Speaker 1: a foreign official.
51:22
Speaker 2: That is the massive legal risk. If the DOJ prosecutes
51:25
Speaker 2: someone and the case goes all the way to the
51:27
Speaker 2: Supreme Court and the court strikes down the Logan Act
51:30
Speaker 2: as unconstitutional, the scarecrow's gone forever.
51:33
Speaker 1: It is burned down.
51:34
Speaker 2: And if that happens, it would be open season. Any billionaire,
51:38
Speaker 2: any former politician, any celebrity could fly around the world
51:42
Speaker 2: negotiating their own treaties and undermining the State Department without
51:46
Speaker 2: any fear of legal reprisal.
51:48
Speaker 1: So the government vastly prefers to keep the law sleeping.
51:52
Speaker 1: It is significantly more powerful as an ambiguous, looming threat
51:56
Speaker 1: than it would be as a tested, potentially defeat legal president.
52:01
Speaker 2: Exactly. It reminds everyone former presidents retired for star generals,
52:05
Speaker 2: wealthy political donors, that there is only one president of
52:08
Speaker 2: the United States at a time, and.
52:09
Speaker 1: Only one official voice that speaks for the country on
52:11
Speaker 1: the global stage. Wow, we have covered a massive amount
52:14
Speaker 1: of ground.
52:15
Speaker 2: Today, We really have. We have traced the invisible, intricate
52:18
Speaker 2: architecture of power that surrounds the people who used to
52:21
Speaker 2: run the world.
52:22
Speaker 1: It is a profound realization when you look at all
52:25
Speaker 1: the pieces together the moment an official leaves power, they
52:29
Speaker 1: do not just walk away into the sunset. They are
52:31
Speaker 1: caught in a vast, complex web of legal and financial
52:35
Speaker 1: trip wires.
52:36
Speaker 2: Let's review the web we uncovered today. The Former President's
52:39
Speaker 2: Act restricts their physical movement, no driving, intercepted mail, heavily
52:44
Speaker 2: monitored phones.
52:45
Speaker 1: The Presidential Records Act restricts their papers, their official legacy,
52:50
Speaker 1: and their state secrets are literally confiscated by the National Archives.
52:54
Speaker 2: The Emolument's Clause, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act restricts
52:57
Speaker 2: their wallets, meticulously tracking every dollar they take from foreign
53:02
Speaker 2: entities to prevent covert influence.
53:04
Speaker 1: And the sleeping giant of the Logan Act restricts their diplomacy,
53:08
Speaker 1: threatening them with federal prison if they try to conduct
53:10
Speaker 1: foreign policy on their own. Is a total comprehensive containment system.
53:14
Speaker 2: But as thorough and aggressive as this containment system is,
53:18
Speaker 2: I want to leave you with a final chilling implication,
53:21
Speaker 2: Oh lay it on us. It's a reality that the
53:23
Speaker 2: architects of these eighteenth and twentieth century laws may not
53:27
Speaker 2: have fully anticipated. Think about the twenty second Amendment to
53:31
Speaker 2: the Constitution. It limits a president to serving only two
53:34
Speaker 2: elected terms.
53:36
Speaker 1: The core intention of that amendment was to prevent a
53:38
Speaker 1: single individual from holding executive power indefinitely, right.
53:43
Speaker 2: To prevent a monarchy, to ensure the peaceful transfer of power.
53:47
Speaker 1: But consider the reality of modern medicine and dramatically increased
53:50
Speaker 1: life expectancy. A former president might leave office in their
53:54
Speaker 1: early fifties or sixties. With modern health care, they could
53:58
Speaker 1: easily live for another thirty or forty years after they
54:00
Speaker 1: hand over the nuclear codes.
54:01
Speaker 2: Okay, I see where you're going with this.
54:03
Speaker 1: Now, combine that massive post presidential lifespan with the perks
54:07
Speaker 1: and the realities we discussed today. They have lifetime impenetrable
54:11
Speaker 1: secret service protection.
54:12
Speaker 2: They have a guaranteed, massive taxpayer funded.
54:15
Speaker 1: Pension, they have an unparalleled, deeply entrenched global network with
54:20
Speaker 1: unlimited direct access to foreign leaders, billionaires, and media empires.
54:24
Speaker 1: And crucially, they retain the enduring, fierce loyalty of their
54:28
Speaker 1: political base.
54:29
Speaker 2: If you have a group of individuals who possess ultimate
54:31
Speaker 2: state secrets, vast accumulated wealth, impenetrable physical security, and intense,
54:38
Speaker 2: unwavering political influence for decades after they leave office, are
54:43
Speaker 2: we inadvertently creating a new class of American royalty?
54:47
Speaker 1: A shadow government of formers.
54:48
Speaker 2: Exactly, a permanent class of elites who operate entirely outside
54:53
Speaker 2: the voting booth. They cannot be voted out because they
54:55
Speaker 2: are not running for.
54:56
Speaker 1: Anything, but they pull global strings. They shape international policy,
55:00
Speaker 1: see through their foundations, and they heavily influence domestic elections
55:03
Speaker 1: for decades without any direct democratic oversight.
55:07
Speaker 2: We built these incredible laws to contain their power, but
55:11
Speaker 2: by legally isolating them and funding them for life, we
55:13
Speaker 2: may have accidentally institutionalized their enduring supremacy.
55:17
Speaker 1: That is a terrifyingly plausible thought To end on. You
55:20
Speaker 1: take away the steering wheel to their car, but you
55:22
Speaker 1: give them the keys to a completely different kind of kingdom.
55:25
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate paradox of the post presidency. They
55:28
Speaker 2: lose their personal freedom, but they gain a kind of
55:31
Speaker 2: immortal political influence.
55:33
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us for this investigation.
55:36
Speaker 1: If you had an AHA moment today, if we change
55:39
Speaker 1: the way you look at power, politics, and the hidden
55:41
Speaker 1: strings that control the world. Please take a second to
55:45
Speaker 1: rate Beyond Infographics five stars.
55:47
Speaker 2: It is the absolute best way to support the show
55:49
Speaker 2: and help us uncover more hidden truths. Until next time,
55:53
Speaker 2: keep questioning the narrative.
55:55
Speaker 1: And remember the next time you see a former official
55:57
Speaker 1: playing a quiet game of golf and a driven cart,
56:00
Speaker 1: ask yourself who else is on the green and what
56:03
Speaker 1: secrets they are buying. See you next time.