Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 6/17/26: Feds Charge Anti-ICE Protesters, Vance Pressed On Epstein, AIPAC Tracker Pledge

Transcript

6/17/26: Feds Charge Anti-ICE Protesters, Vance Pressed On Epstein, AIPAC Tracker Pledge · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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0:33
Speaker 3: Fifteen protesters in Minnesota have been charged federally for their
0:38
Speaker 3: role in what the Feds are saying is obstructing I
0:42
Speaker 3: guess the lawful carrying out of official immigration duties. Here
0:47
Speaker 3: is Federal Prosecutor Daniel Rosen's that right.
0:50
Speaker 4: Last year, President Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum seven,
0:56
Speaker 4: which directed the Department of Justice to prioritize politically motivated violence.
1:01
Speaker 4: To accomplish that mission, the Deputy Attorney General stood up
1:05
Speaker 4: Joint Task Force Vanguard to enforce a national security strategy
1:11
Speaker 4: to investigate prosecute and disrupt those who engage in political
1:15
Speaker 4: violence and intimidation. Today, a federal indictment was unsealed, charging
1:22
Speaker 4: fifteen defendants with conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers
1:28
Speaker 4: and other charges related to efforts of too Minneapolis based
1:32
Speaker 4: ANTIFA groups that violently opposed the enforcement of federal law
1:37
Speaker 4: in our state. The defendants are members and associates of
1:42
Speaker 4: Direct Action Minnesota.
1:44
Speaker 3: And we have footage of one of the one of
1:46
Speaker 3: the people getting arrested. Here's D one. This is outside
1:51
Speaker 3: somebody's home in Minnesota, pulling out a well guy with
1:57
Speaker 3: a beard from a signal chat who's like, doing you know,
2:02
Speaker 3: help you know, organizing against the immigration crackdown.
2:05
Speaker 5: This is Isaac Aumond's sound in Minnesota.
2:12
Speaker 3: This this comes after we could put up D five.
2:17
Speaker 3: This comes after three protesters in Washington State were found
2:23
Speaker 3: We're found guilty of conspiracy to protest basically related to
2:30
Speaker 3: protests against immigration facility out in Washington State. UH and
2:35
Speaker 3: also comes after the eight eight federal indictments were handed
2:42
Speaker 3: down in Michigan against encampment protesters there. So that's not immigration,
2:47
Speaker 3: that's those are the encampment approaches. We covered those on
2:49
Speaker 3: on Friday. So this as as you know, Kenklippenstein has
2:56
Speaker 3: been very heavily focused on np s M seven, the
3:00
Speaker 3: news of it, right, which is this security memo, that
3:05
Speaker 3: National Security Presidential Memo seven, which the subject of it
3:10
Speaker 3: is straightforward countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence, and
3:14
Speaker 3: it directed federal prosecutors to try to roll up left
3:20
Speaker 3: wing groups more or less that are that are organizing
3:23
Speaker 3: these protests. So tell us about the tell us about
3:28
Speaker 3: the indictment, because you were telling me before we started
3:30
Speaker 3: that you think that they've got they actually do have
3:32
Speaker 3: a case here against some of these protesters.
3:35
Speaker 6: I think they have a case against some of them.
3:36
Speaker 6: And so just to be very clear, this is going
3:39
Speaker 6: to be overly broad. I don't doubt that one second
3:41
Speaker 6: is not in any way an endorsement of the Administration's
3:45
Speaker 6: probably dragnet that's going to catch up people that we're
3:47
Speaker 6: not doing actually illegal activity. If you read the indictment
3:50
Speaker 6: is an absolutely wild ride. It's like one hundred pages long,
3:53
Speaker 6: and I pulled a couple of pieces of it. But
3:56
Speaker 6: what you do see is again it's actually this is
4:00
Speaker 6: we've heard this trott it out, but eighteen USC one
4:02
Speaker 6: eleven is what's being invoked here. NSPM seven is a
4:06
Speaker 6: big directive that is wildly unconstitutional. It is a total
4:10
Speaker 6: threat to free speech. There's absolutely no question about it.
4:13
Speaker 6: The way that is written is so so broad as
4:15
Speaker 6: to direct federal officials to investigate people who are engaged
4:20
Speaker 6: in perfectly constitutional activity. Eighteen USC one eleven punishes anyone
4:25
Speaker 6: who quote this is according to the Justice Department's website
4:28
Speaker 6: forcibly assaults, resists, and opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with
4:32
Speaker 6: any person who is a federal officer in the course
4:36
Speaker 6: of their duties. And so that's assaults, resists, opposing, It
4:40
Speaker 6: probably does go back, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with
4:43
Speaker 6: any person that is doing federal duties. So this could
4:48
Speaker 6: easily be used against anti abortion protesters who are trying
4:51
Speaker 6: to get in the way, for example, of federal agents
4:53
Speaker 6: who are trying to clear them from blocking access to
4:57
Speaker 6: an abortion clinic for example. But if you look in
5:00
Speaker 6: this indictment, there are places where you clearly see, I mean,
5:04
Speaker 6: it's infiltrated. Whatever this network was, it was an anarchist
5:08
Speaker 6: network basically in Minneapolis. Yeah, signal group, but also people
5:12
Speaker 6: who are identifying themselves as anarchist activists. It's clearly infiltrated
5:17
Speaker 6: by federal informants because they have the goods. They clearly
5:19
Speaker 6: have what looks like recordings from private meetings. They have
5:24
Speaker 6: excerpts from signal chats. Here's I'll just go through a
5:27
Speaker 6: couple of things that stood out to me from the indictment.
5:30
Speaker 6: Let's start from the first one. So one point one
5:32
Speaker 6: oh six in the indictment says on or about February fifteenth,
5:36
Speaker 6: at approximately three pm, Robinett and others attended a meeting
5:39
Speaker 6: held at the United Labor Center building in Minneapolis and
5:41
Speaker 6: sponsored by TCDA, BC towc Ray, Rainbolt Memorial Shooting Club,
5:45
Speaker 6: Socialist Alternative and other organizations. Robinett wore a Rainbolt hat
5:48
Speaker 6: and served on the special security team for the event.
5:51
Speaker 6: The group discussed medical firearms and quote hard security training.
5:54
Speaker 6: Participants began planning in March one directive at the Whipple Building.
5:57
Speaker 6: It's not proposed that was the person you just saw
5:59
Speaker 6: orizing another blockade at.
6:01
Speaker 5: The east entest of the Whipple Building.
6:03
Speaker 6: So they're charged for conspiracy to impeter, obstruct, And I
6:06
Speaker 6: think what you're seeing here is a private meeting where
6:08
Speaker 6: they are clearly conspiring to obstruct with a blockade. And again,
6:14
Speaker 6: this is the indictment, So it's entirely possible that more
6:17
Speaker 6: evidence comes out that they were not trying.
6:19
Speaker 5: To blockade federal officers.
6:22
Speaker 6: But it looks like they would probably even admit at
6:25
Speaker 6: this point that they were intentionally blockading federal officers from
6:28
Speaker 6: being able to conduct their duties. This is from a
6:31
Speaker 6: signal chat on February seventeenth. Do you have Sant again
6:34
Speaker 6: sayinge who else wants to be added to the three
6:36
Speaker 6: to one whipple action planning chat? I know they're people
6:38
Speaker 6: who didn't get added, yet another guy says, please add me,
6:41
Speaker 6: and then they are saying melt the ICE organizers are
6:45
Speaker 6: asking us to do the same thing we did on
6:47
Speaker 6: twenty third Street block men ahaha, while their march takes
6:50
Speaker 6: the street on the other side by sixty two e
6:52
Speaker 6: so soft blockade with shields. One of them says, I say,
6:55
Speaker 6: if we can figure it out, we go further than
6:57
Speaker 6: just that. That is somebody named mister reck Now Sant
7:01
Speaker 6: posed on February seventeenth, according to the indictment, posted a
7:04
Speaker 6: screenshot of a map showing the mouth the ICE organizations
7:06
Speaker 6: proposed march route for the action against the Whipple Building.
7:10
Speaker 6: So again, like what you're seeing in this, here's Morgan explaining, quote,
7:14
Speaker 6: there's an inherent militancy to this project. Quote, this is
7:17
Speaker 6: something that comes with the explicit aim of stopping and
7:19
Speaker 6: combating an armed federal agent trying to violently abduct your neighbor.
7:22
Speaker 6: That's a quote that is basically a confession to this crime.
7:26
Speaker 6: If we want to say that shouldn't be illegal, then
7:29
Speaker 6: you have to change the law. But if this is
7:31
Speaker 6: meant to be civil disobedience, I would say even that
7:34
Speaker 6: is not what you see in this indictment. From what
7:35
Speaker 6: appeared to be direct quotes, they're basically saying intentionally that
7:39
Speaker 6: this should not be civil disobedience.
7:40
Speaker 5: That they're questioning.
7:42
Speaker 6: They're questioning the commitment of people who believe in civil
7:46
Speaker 6: disobedience in some of these chats, which again own it.
7:50
Speaker 6: If that's what you believe, a lot of people believe
7:52
Speaker 6: that it goes back to like Phenahen, a lot of
7:53
Speaker 6: people believe that you can't accomplish what you want to
7:55
Speaker 6: accomplish with civil disobedience. And so if that's the case,
7:58
Speaker 6: I'm not going to say that this is a an
8:01
Speaker 6: unjust prosecution if you're intentionally trying to be engaged in
8:06
Speaker 6: non civil disobedience. So Kennedy, according to this, says he's
8:09
Speaker 6: a quote revolutionary anarchist. The anarchist movement will achieve the
8:13
Speaker 6: ability to have fluid communication between independent groups without state
8:16
Speaker 6: or any centralized leadership. I believe that's exactly what we're
8:19
Speaker 6: seeing in Minneapolis. So again, all this is to say,
8:23
Speaker 6: there's a debate about blocking, whether that should be legal
8:29
Speaker 6: or not, what actually constitutes imposing, But there were also
8:31
Speaker 6: a lot of or obstruction. There also were a lot
8:34
Speaker 6: of there was a lot of civil disobedience in Minneapolis,
8:38
Speaker 6: whether it was Will Stancil following around the cops and
8:40
Speaker 6: honking the horn. That's not illegal, that should not be illegal.
8:44
Speaker 6: It isn't illegal. And there were a lot of people
8:46
Speaker 6: who were training people in genuine civil disobedience to be
8:50
Speaker 6: allowed make noise, try to alert people. That's different than
8:55
Speaker 6: what we're seeing in this indictment. Again, we haven't heard
8:57
Speaker 6: from the defendants, so this can change, which it does
9:00
Speaker 6: look like this is a pretty serious case against some
9:03
Speaker 6: of them who are openly admitting in the chats and
9:07
Speaker 6: in these private meetings with verbatim quotes, meaning they likely
9:10
Speaker 6: have recordings to saying, Hey, we're going to conspire. What
9:14
Speaker 6: we're doing right now is organizing two block federal officers
9:17
Speaker 6: from making arrests.
9:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, in some of the cases, so they'll have in
9:23
Speaker 3: one case they have them kind of talking about getting
9:26
Speaker 3: a truck and having the truck kind of block the road,
9:30
Speaker 3: and they'll say, like, we're going to get arrested for this.
9:33
Speaker 3: So that like that's the kind of level of civil disobedience.
9:36
Speaker 3: That it is civil disobedience and you're you know, committing
9:41
Speaker 3: to engage in it, which then comes with consequences in
9:45
Speaker 3: a free society when you're committing civil disobedience, though it's
9:50
Speaker 3: not it's generally not met with an attempt to put
9:54
Speaker 3: you in jail for life, in prison for life or
9:57
Speaker 3: for twenty or thirty years or whatever I want.
10:00
Speaker 5: Dispute Actually keep talking, have to take a drink.
10:03
Speaker 3: So while it is true that there was some civil
10:07
Speaker 3: disobedience going on here, the reaction here is not what
10:12
Speaker 3: we expect from kind of a free society. And the
10:15
Speaker 3: legal argument, the legal counter argument that I would make
10:18
Speaker 3: to say, like, oh well, look, it's on the books
10:19
Speaker 3: that says, you know, you can't intimidate a federal officer
10:21
Speaker 3: vers all. It's like that's unconstitutional, Like get like, come on,
10:25
Speaker 3: grow up. In the indictment it says you caused emotional
10:29
Speaker 3: distress to the ICE agents, Like that's not a crime. Sorry,
10:33
Speaker 3: sorry that you're yes, causing emotional distress. I'm sure they'd
10:37
Speaker 3: love to arrest Will Stancil. But the counter argument would be,
10:42
Speaker 3: prove that you are lawfully carrying out your duties, because
10:46
Speaker 3: what we see as a free people is a bunch
10:51
Speaker 3: of goons going around and snatching brown people off the
10:55
Speaker 3: street without asking them questions, grabbing them and then putting
10:59
Speaker 3: them in vans and driving off and then finding out
11:03
Speaker 3: later whether or not they are citizens, whether or not
11:07
Speaker 3: they're legal residents, whether they have asylum cases that are processing,
11:11
Speaker 3: or whether they're here completely illegally. They are grabbing first
11:14
Speaker 3: and then and then often then just dumping them somewhere
11:19
Speaker 3: else when they find out that they are here legally,
11:23
Speaker 3: And so that would be the counter argument, say, if
11:28
Speaker 3: you really are carrying out lawful duties, you have to
11:31
Speaker 3: actually prove that. You have to demonstrate that to us
11:34
Speaker 3: because otherwise, we are a free citizenry that is here
11:38
Speaker 3: to support the law and the laws. You cannot snatch
11:41
Speaker 3: people off the street. You guys are the criminals.
11:45
Speaker 5: And if the law is that people should have.
11:48
Speaker 6: Unrestricted or unphysically blocked access to abortion clinics, then the
11:54
Speaker 6: law is that the federal officers should be able to
11:57
Speaker 6: move people away from the abortion clinics with having interference
12:01
Speaker 6: from the activists who will physically block. And so I
12:05
Speaker 6: would just say people who are skeptical of this, because
12:08
Speaker 6: what I was going to say before I started coughing
12:09
Speaker 6: was I don't dispute that there will be over prosecutions here.
12:13
Speaker 6: I think that and maybe even overly punitive sentencings. I'm
12:17
Speaker 6: not going to dispute that. I don't doubt that might
12:20
Speaker 6: happen at all. What I'm saying is that some of
12:23
Speaker 6: our I was going to say friends, I don't know
12:26
Speaker 6: that I have a lot of friends whould make those argument.
12:27
Speaker 5: But you probably do.
12:29
Speaker 6: I mean, it's a serious thing, both on the hardcore
12:31
Speaker 6: left and on the hardcore right. Some people believe that
12:34
Speaker 6: violence is the only, or is at a certain point
12:37
Speaker 6: the last resort, and that we've reached that point of
12:41
Speaker 6: last resort, whether it's.
12:42
Speaker 5: With ice or some people that it's different things.
12:45
Speaker 6: And I'm just saying, then, own that if that's what
12:47
Speaker 6: you're trying to do, If you're trying to use physical
12:50
Speaker 6: blockades to interfere with federal officers, that's a violation of
12:53
Speaker 6: federal law.
12:55
Speaker 7: Own it.
12:55
Speaker 6: And it's not necessarily a crazy prosecution of you if
12:59
Speaker 6: you're openly conspiring to break federal law.
13:01
Speaker 3: And what I would say is to that is the
13:03
Speaker 3: same thing I'd say. We can put this in a second.
13:07
Speaker 3: If somebody puts a truck and on the street and
13:10
Speaker 3: blocks it and they're doing that as an active civil disobedience,
13:15
Speaker 3: then arrest that person for that act. This where you
13:19
Speaker 3: put these things in the indictment, but you don't ever
13:23
Speaker 3: prove them, and instead you fluff up some giant conspiracy
13:26
Speaker 3: involving lots of other people. That's not how it's supposed
13:29
Speaker 3: to be done. If we can put up D six,
13:32
Speaker 3: so the the Palestinian protest, the pro Palestine protesters are
13:37
Speaker 3: pleading not guilty to these eight charges, then if you
13:40
Speaker 3: read through the indictment, this is this is well, this
13:44
Speaker 3: isn't Yeah, this is in Michigan, but this particular person
13:49
Speaker 3: it's from it's from Milwaukee. Most of them are from Michigan.
13:53
Speaker 3: I think this person actually is a Yes, this person
13:55
Speaker 3: is a cancer researcher who is doing kind of postgrad
14:00
Speaker 3: research at the University of Michigan and wanted to wanted
14:06
Speaker 3: to try to stop University of Michigan complicity and the genocide.
14:12
Speaker 3: If you read the indictment, there's some bad things, like
14:15
Speaker 3: they threw some noxious chemicals into somebody's house or something.
14:20
Speaker 3: But if you notice, they never try to prove that.
14:21
Speaker 3: They never give any details of it, and they're not
14:25
Speaker 3: even apparently proposing to try to prove it in court.
14:29
Speaker 3: They're just saying, oh, bad things happened here. These people
14:34
Speaker 3: opposed the genocide and wanted to put pressure on the
14:39
Speaker 3: University of Michigan border regions. And so we're then going
14:43
Speaker 3: to link these two things, yes, without proving or charging
14:46
Speaker 3: this try to get a conviction over here on a
14:49
Speaker 3: giant conspiracy. They're doing a similar thing in some cases
14:53
Speaker 3: with the Minnesota case, where it's like, if you can
14:56
Speaker 3: prove this thing they committed this crime, then charge that crime.
15:00
Speaker 3: If you can't, then you do this whole giant Oh,
15:02
Speaker 3: Antifa and like they support revolution and yeah, like shut up,
15:07
Speaker 3: like you're allowed to support revolution, like that's this is America.
15:11
Speaker 6: And we've seen this with students in particular. I mean
15:14
Speaker 6: Ma mu Khalil, different case apples and oranges, but an
15:16
Speaker 6: example of something similar where they're saying, oh.
15:18
Speaker 5: Bad stuff is happening on this campus. This guy was
15:21
Speaker 5: involved in leadership.
15:22
Speaker 6: Therefore, we are pinning everything that everybody did on you.
15:26
Speaker 6: And the tether is going to be some Instagram post.
15:30
Speaker 5: But that's it. That's that's how we're connecting you.
15:33
Speaker 3: This some Instagram posts from some group that you used
15:35
Speaker 3: to be involved with or something. Yeah.
15:37
Speaker 6: And this, by the way, is what is frustrating because
15:40
Speaker 6: we covered this a lot at the time. The first
15:42
Speaker 6: Trump administration, UH actually radicalized a lot of people on
15:46
Speaker 6: the right against overbroad uses of the intelligence agencies, especially domestically.
15:51
Speaker 6: The Biden administration radicalized a lot of people against on
15:54
Speaker 6: the right against not even radicalized, but sort of was
15:56
Speaker 6: eye opening to a lot of people against the FBI
15:58
Speaker 6: and the CIA, how they were using a using their
16:00
Speaker 6: powers domestically, how they were infiltrating groups with informants and
16:04
Speaker 6: all of that. And there was a big movement against
16:08
Speaker 6: that right now. You see some people to this day
16:10
Speaker 6: fighting against seven oh two reauthorization literally right now that's happening.
16:13
Speaker 6: And yes, there's clearly like the NSPM seven on its face,
16:18
Speaker 6: if the Biden administration had put something like that out
16:21
Speaker 6: and you were swapping Antifa for like trad Catholic, Yeah, yeah, exactly,
16:26
Speaker 6: people would be furious about it.
16:27
Speaker 5: So yes, there's something very frustrating about that too.
16:30
Speaker 3: And especially as Steven Miller, we can put D seven
16:32
Speaker 3: real quickly, big scoop from Jonathan Swan and Maggie Harman
16:35
Speaker 3: that isn't getting enough attention that Miller pushed really hard
16:38
Speaker 3: to suspend the Habeas corpus, which is the fundamental right
16:41
Speaker 3: that all people have in the United States to challenge
16:44
Speaker 3: their detention as unlawful. So if you don't have that,
16:48
Speaker 3: if you can't challenge your detention, then you can just
16:51
Speaker 3: be grabbed and you have no recourse to get out. Meanwhile,
16:58
Speaker 3: the nobody in the Epstein files has found themselves on
17:03
Speaker 3: the business end of any of these prosecutions, while they
17:06
Speaker 3: seem to have like an enormous amount of creativity when
17:10
Speaker 3: it comes to, you know, rounding up, rounding up these folks.
17:13
Speaker 3: But let's let's get to Epstein.
17:15
Speaker 5: Let's do it.
17:18
Speaker 6: Just as The New York Times dropped a major investigation
17:21
Speaker 6: into the final days of Jeffrey Epstein, questioning some of
17:24
Speaker 6: the let's say, quote unquote conspiratorial narratives about how Epstein's
17:28
Speaker 6: life appears to have ended, Vice President J. D. Vance
17:31
Speaker 6: went on the View where he got pressed by the
17:34
Speaker 6: hosts on whether he was an Epstein conspiracy theorist. What
17:37
Speaker 6: happened with Epstein, the President's relationship with Epstein.
17:40
Speaker 5: Let's start here with E one.
17:41
Speaker 8: By the way again, Sorry, Joy, do you have to
17:43
Speaker 8: defend my boss? I know you guys don't always appreciate this,
17:46
Speaker 8: but you know, one of the things you see in
17:47
Speaker 8: the Epstein emails is that Jeffrey Epstein hated Donald Trump
17:52
Speaker 8: and that Donald Trump literally reported Jeffrey Epstein to the police.
17:55
Speaker 3: That's one of the things that came out of the.
17:57
Speaker 9: Best friends for about a decade. Remember, he signed that
18:01
Speaker 9: Transparency Act under duress when some Republican women Congress, women
18:05
Speaker 9: like Lauren Bolbert, like Marjorie Taylor Green did not give
18:08
Speaker 9: in to his pressure of not signing me. He brought
18:11
Speaker 9: Lauren Bolbert into the situation room to pressure her into
18:15
Speaker 9: caving on not voting for that bill.
18:17
Speaker 3: So let me respond to that. So true, let me
18:19
Speaker 3: respond to that.
18:20
Speaker 8: So number one is yes, Donald Trump, and he said this,
18:23
Speaker 8: he knew Jeffrey Epstein back in the nineteen eighties.
18:25
Speaker 3: He also threw Jeffrey.
18:26
Speaker 8: Epstein out of his club when he found out it
18:27
Speaker 8: was a creep and reported him to the police. That's
18:30
Speaker 8: something that the media often misses when it reports the story.
18:33
Speaker 8: They tell the fact that they knew each other in
18:35
Speaker 8: the eighties, which the President himself admits. They ignore the
18:37
Speaker 8: fact that he knarcked on him to the police and
18:40
Speaker 8: led ultimately to Jeffrey Epstein's downfall. To that point, Anna,
18:43
Speaker 8: you know the Republican Party, Well, it's one of the
18:46
Speaker 8: things that led to.
18:47
Speaker 3: Law enforcement investigation. But on the point that.
18:49
Speaker 9: Hemail was allegedly over a real estate deal that they
18:51
Speaker 9: hadn't got into a fight over.
18:53
Speaker 8: But the email says, the email says.
18:56
Speaker 5: Actually he know each other. Let's just be truthful and
18:58
Speaker 5: transparent here. They didn't just know each other.
19:01
Speaker 8: Incredibly, he reported him to the police. That's what I'm saying.
19:04
Speaker 8: That is objective, That is objectively true. But animated, but
19:08
Speaker 8: animated animated.
19:09
Speaker 3: Another point that I think I would be if I
19:11
Speaker 3: may be animated.
19:12
Speaker 8: A very important point this question about did Donald Trump
19:15
Speaker 8: release these files only under duress from Republicans? And Anna,
19:20
Speaker 8: you know the Republican Party probably better than I do.
19:23
Speaker 8: The idea that Donald Trump runs around afraid of Republican
19:26
Speaker 8: congressmen as opposed to the other way around is kind
19:29
Speaker 8: of crazy. But because the Republicans control the House and
19:34
Speaker 8: the Senate, particularly the Senate, you need the Republican sign off.
19:37
Speaker 8: What the President did is, look, I will I will
19:40
Speaker 8: say this again. I was in there in the meetings.
19:42
Speaker 8: He was very frustrated that the Democrats were making this
19:45
Speaker 8: about him when he's like, look, I threw the guy
19:46
Speaker 8: out of my club. I am the guy who reported
19:49
Speaker 8: unto the police, or one of the people who reported
19:51
Speaker 8: into the police. The President was frustrated about that, absolutely,
19:54
Speaker 8: but he eventually came to say, you know what, let's
19:56
Speaker 8: just get everything out there. Let's have this out in
19:58
Speaker 8: the public. And he he actually called the Senders.
20:01
Speaker 3: I was there.
20:01
Speaker 8: He called the Senders and said, you know what, passed
20:04
Speaker 8: this bill, I'll sign it.
20:04
Speaker 3: And that was it.
20:05
Speaker 6: Just a couple of hours later, he told Megan Kelly
20:08
Speaker 6: that he believed this big New York Times story. Jonathan
20:11
Speaker 6: Swan Maggie Haberman about the situation room conversation regarding the
20:16
Speaker 6: Trump administration's plans for disclosure in the Epstein case. He
20:19
Speaker 6: said that there were certain things in there that quote
20:22
Speaker 6: legitimately made me worried that people were taping and in
20:25
Speaker 6: the situation room, which is a felony. He said that
20:28
Speaker 6: story was very bizarre. It was sort of a nothing
20:30
Speaker 6: of a story in the sense that everybody.
20:31
Speaker 5: Started to all these details. But the fact that.
20:33
Speaker 6: Somebody had taped, so that seems to be some confirmation
20:36
Speaker 6: from Jade Vance that it was tape drain.
20:38
Speaker 3: Or certainly that it's all true. That's also the interesting
20:43
Speaker 3: If there was any doubt as to whether or not
20:45
Speaker 3: what was reported by Swann and Haberman there is accurate,
20:49
Speaker 3: it's put to bed by Vance saying that it basically
20:52
Speaker 3: matches verbatim his recollection of the of the meeting, which
20:56
Speaker 3: means that they used the situation room to devise a
21:00
Speaker 3: scheme to cover up the Epstein files.
21:03
Speaker 6: Nobody is talking enough about the fact that this was
21:05
Speaker 6: in the situation room. First of all, Now do I
21:08
Speaker 6: know how the Trump administration uses the situation room. No,
21:11
Speaker 6: but you're not supposed to be able to bring phones
21:13
Speaker 6: or recording devices in there. And actually, what it sounds
21:15
Speaker 6: to me is like they were discussing a story with
21:17
Speaker 6: serious national security implications for the drop ste reporting.
21:20
Speaker 7: In the end.
21:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, apparently apparently there is national security implications to it.
21:23
Speaker 6: I don't think you're taking political meetings normally, not the
21:26
Speaker 6: Trump administration, not exactly normal. But I think it's pretty
21:29
Speaker 6: odd to be taking a meeting about political strategy in
21:32
Speaker 6: the situation room.
21:33
Speaker 3: But didn't say Cash Hotel and Bongino, or at least
21:36
Speaker 3: Cash Hotel joined by speakerphones. Yes, I wonder who I mean.
21:40
Speaker 3: I'm not accusing anybody of anything, but go on, if
21:43
Speaker 3: somebody is going to tape it, it's the dude on
21:45
Speaker 3: the speakerphone.
21:46
Speaker 5: Or presumably they were in a skiff. I don't know,
21:47
Speaker 5: maybe they weren't.
21:48
Speaker 3: But yeah, he's at the club.
21:50
Speaker 5: He's at the club.
21:52
Speaker 3: There was the guy with the club the poodle and
21:54
Speaker 3: recorded it. Yeah, so maybe he was in an uber.
21:58
Speaker 5: He could have been.
21:59
Speaker 6: The New York Times dropped a major story about questions
22:02
Speaker 6: into Epstein's death and this happened, I think just within
22:06
Speaker 6: twenty four hours of vance going on this tour and
22:08
Speaker 6: answering epstein questions.
22:09
Speaker 5: And it's a.
22:10
Speaker 6: Very very long story, many new interviews, many new details
22:15
Speaker 6: in it. But a couple of the nutgrafts here I'll
22:18
Speaker 6: just read from they say. Our reporting establishes that Epstein
22:21
Speaker 6: showed a clear pattern of behavior in the weeks before
22:23
Speaker 6: his death, suggesting an intent to kill himself. The apparent
22:26
Speaker 6: suicide note memorialized Epstein's despair and desired to quote say
22:30
Speaker 6: goodbye on his own terms. That's referring to the suicide
22:33
Speaker 6: note that Tartaglioni, his once cell mate, discovered, gave to
22:38
Speaker 6: his lawyers and talks about a bit in the story,
22:41
Speaker 6: as well other writings from his final days. The Times
22:43
Speaker 6: Continues presented a picture of a fraying mental state that
22:46
Speaker 6: sharply contrasted with the upbeat picture he presented to jail psychologists,
22:50
Speaker 6: including another note in when he hinted at ending his life.
22:53
Speaker 6: In addition to this, we were told by a former
22:55
Speaker 6: cellmate that Epstein made more than one previously unreported attempt
22:59
Speaker 6: to craft a noose, and we located a former inmate
23:02
Speaker 6: never before interviewed who was housed in a neighboring cell
23:05
Speaker 6: at the time of Epstein's death and whose accounts circumstantially
23:07
Speaker 6: supported the conclusion that Epstein died by hanging himself. This
23:11
Speaker 6: cellmate says he heard Epstein tearing what sounded like sheets.
23:15
Speaker 5: He wouldn't have known that, but that's what he says.
23:17
Speaker 6: Consulting with independent pathologists, we determined that a likely error
23:20
Speaker 6: in catallying evidence from his cell created the appearance of
23:22
Speaker 6: mysteries regarding his injuries that were in fact potentially explained
23:26
Speaker 6: by other evidence from the scene that was.
23:28
Speaker 5: Overlooked at the time.
23:29
Speaker 6: They say what Michael Bowden, who was hired by Epstein's
23:33
Speaker 6: brother to observe the autopsy, said about some breaking around
23:38
Speaker 6: the neck area could have been because of the way
23:41
Speaker 6: that he attempted to hang himself with a news connected
23:44
Speaker 6: to the bed. So Ryan, this is going to be
23:49
Speaker 6: used as a way to undercut quote unquote conspiracy theorist.
23:53
Speaker 6: It's sort of always been true that Epstein could have
23:56
Speaker 6: legitimately killed himself, and a lot of this other stuff
24:00
Speaker 6: drop Side has reported from both the leaked emails and
24:03
Speaker 6: the released emails is quite obviously still accurate and true
24:08
Speaker 6: some of the.
24:09
Speaker 5: Foreign dealings and the like that you've dug really deeply into.
24:12
Speaker 6: At the same time, also, there are coincidences in this
24:15
Speaker 6: New York Times story that kind of get some explanations.
24:17
Speaker 6: You know, what was going on with the guards, Why
24:19
Speaker 6: did the guards not do the rounds? Why did they
24:21
Speaker 6: appear to sleep? That you get some explanation for. But
24:26
Speaker 6: you don't have to buy those explanations because it's still
24:28
Speaker 6: very weird. Yes, it's true that they had cameras down
24:31
Speaker 6: for a long time.
24:33
Speaker 5: Still doesn't change.
24:33
Speaker 6: The fact that they had a camera precisely missing that
24:37
Speaker 6: el Tier Epstein access point to his cell.
24:41
Speaker 5: It still doesn't change the.
24:42
Speaker 6: Fact that the guards were sleeping on the jobs that
24:44
Speaker 6: they incorrectly relied on forms. So none of that stuff changes,
24:49
Speaker 6: and I'm willing to buy some of the story actually,
24:52
Speaker 6: but there's still some big questions.
24:54
Speaker 3: Right, And they've got interviews with Nicholas Tartaglioni, the guy
24:57
Speaker 3: the cop accused of convicted of murdering four people, strangling
25:03
Speaker 3: one of them who after they determined that Epstein was
25:06
Speaker 3: a suicide risk, they made him his seal made a
25:11
Speaker 3: lot of people have said that they believe that he's
25:14
Speaker 3: the one that was then contracted basically to kill him.
25:18
Speaker 3: He tells The New York Times that when he came
25:23
Speaker 3: back from one of his hearings, he said, how do
25:24
Speaker 3: he make a noose? He says, he caught him. We
25:28
Speaker 3: caught him with a news under his mattress ones and
25:30
Speaker 3: told jail guards, who laughed it off. Time says they
25:34
Speaker 3: can find no evidence of him telling that to jail guards.
25:39
Speaker 3: The counter argument is that Epstein had always wiggled out
25:44
Speaker 3: of everything that he His life was a series of
25:49
Speaker 3: obstacles that he overcame, and that they it's not obvious
25:55
Speaker 3: that they hadn't much new in the way of criminal activity,
26:00
Speaker 3: and he had a non prosecution agreement in place, so
26:03
Speaker 3: he had a legal ap plausible legal path towards freedom.
26:09
Speaker 3: Now it had taken him a long time to reconstruct
26:12
Speaker 3: his social standing after the first time in prison. Now
26:17
Speaker 3: he was facing global cancelation plus this and so yeah,
26:22
Speaker 3: on the other so, the counter counter argument is that
26:24
Speaker 3: on the other side of this, even if he got free,
26:26
Speaker 3: he'd have his money, but he wouldn't have what he
26:28
Speaker 3: really craved, which was being the guy at the middle
26:32
Speaker 3: of the party. And so he could, you know, he
26:36
Speaker 3: could escape to France or whatever and continue to do
26:40
Speaker 3: like sex crimes with like sixteen year olds.
26:43
Speaker 5: Yeah, and some of the evidence of that's not.
26:44
Speaker 3: Really but he can't do with Bill Clinton anymore.
26:46
Speaker 6: Some of the evidence that the time story brings out
26:48
Speaker 6: is the way he was communicating with people close to
26:50
Speaker 6: him in the days before his death leading up to
26:53
Speaker 6: his death. Are him seeming down actually kind of about
26:57
Speaker 6: that point that he's not going to be able to
26:59
Speaker 6: wiggle out of that one, that there's really not enough
27:01
Speaker 6: money in.
27:01
Speaker 3: The world social death. Yeah, it was upon him.
27:05
Speaker 6: Ye.
27:05
Speaker 5: At one point he says like, you know, you can't.
27:07
Speaker 3: I'm paraphrases and everything too.
27:09
Speaker 6: Yes, at one point he says something like you can't.
27:13
Speaker 6: This is no way to live, like there's no way
27:14
Speaker 6: to live in prison, and so he makes it what
27:17
Speaker 6: he used to Yeah, exactly, And that's that seems to
27:20
Speaker 6: be what he's he's getting. Is this this In some
27:22
Speaker 6: of these communications, he makes a call that could be
27:24
Speaker 6: perceived as a goodbye call to his girlfriend at the time,
27:27
Speaker 6: saying I won't be able to talk to you for
27:28
Speaker 6: a month, blah blah blah. And he has this this
27:33
Speaker 6: note that does seem to be his because Tartaglione saves
27:36
Speaker 6: it gives it to his lawyers right away, so that
27:39
Speaker 6: looks somewhat legitimate that he did find the note that said,
27:43
Speaker 6: you know what you're going to do? Bust out crying,
27:44
Speaker 6: the joke that he often used to his brother. I
27:46
Speaker 6: think it's from little rascals, And yeah, I actually am
27:50
Speaker 6: willing to accept to some extent, he felt like he
27:53
Speaker 6: was his life was over and that the walls were
27:55
Speaker 6: quite literally closing in on him, that he wasn't going
27:58
Speaker 6: to be able to buy his way out of this
28:00
Speaker 6: that it had.
28:01
Speaker 3: And also for people who are like that, it's impossible
28:03
Speaker 3: they definitely killed him. Driving him to do this would
28:06
Speaker 3: also accomplish the same goal in a more effective way, right.
28:10
Speaker 5: And some questions so remain.
28:12
Speaker 6: He didn't have a cellmate that night, which he obviously
28:14
Speaker 6: should have been a cellmate. There are questions being drawn
28:16
Speaker 6: about his mental state, so there's there's still some weird
28:19
Speaker 6: stuff going on, which in and of itself, to quote
28:21
Speaker 6: jd Vance, the fact that you have a man who's
28:23
Speaker 6: a sexual predator, who has all of these connections in
28:27
Speaker 6: the world of international politics and finance, it's weird. And
28:32
Speaker 6: then you add to this that there are all of
28:33
Speaker 6: these legitimate questions about what happened to him, also weird.
28:38
Speaker 6: You can't dismiss any of that. So it just leaves us,
28:41
Speaker 6: i think, even once again with more questions than answers.
28:43
Speaker 5: But that is part for the course as we cover
28:45
Speaker 5: Epstein stories. All right, let's bring in Row Kana and.
28:51
Speaker 3: A PAC tracker.
28:52
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right, let's get to it.
28:55
Speaker 3: Joining us now, we're going to have two guests representative
28:58
Speaker 3: of Row Kanna from a California Corey Archibald from APAC Tracker.
29:02
Speaker 3: Congressman Kanna, thank you for joining us, Good to be
29:06
Speaker 3: back coming, and Corey, thanks for being here. Really appreciate it.
29:09
Speaker 10: Always good to be here.
29:11
Speaker 3: And Corey, you've got some interesting news that we're going
29:13
Speaker 3: to get to in just a moment when we get
29:15
Speaker 3: Congress and Kha's reaction to it. Before we get to
29:18
Speaker 3: that real quickly, I wanted to ask you, Congressman, you
29:21
Speaker 3: had in the Armed Services Committee tried to strip out
29:25
Speaker 3: language that is fusing kind of US and Israeli military
29:29
Speaker 3: and intelligence capacities. That amendment, that effort failed in the committee.
29:35
Speaker 3: It's now head for the floor. And this is starting
29:37
Speaker 3: to pick up an enormous amount of attention. I saw
29:40
Speaker 3: Treaty of Parsy, and Tucker Carlson talked about it on
29:42
Speaker 3: his recent appearance on Tucker's podcast. A lot of people
29:46
Speaker 3: are pretty alarmed at the prospect of fusing the US
29:52
Speaker 3: military intelligence capacities with the foreign government. Is what is
29:55
Speaker 3: the latest on this effort to block it from becoming
29:59
Speaker 3: part of the the NDAA.
30:02
Speaker 7: Ryan, As you know, section two to two four would
30:04
Speaker 7: do an n run around any human rights check in
30:08
Speaker 7: providing weapons to Israel. What happened is Netanyahu realized that
30:12
Speaker 7: it's becoming more unpopular for Congress to just rubber stamp
30:16
Speaker 7: these sales. So he wrote a letter to two members
30:19
Speaker 7: of Congress in the House of Representatives Republicans, saying, why
30:23
Speaker 7: don't we just have joint production of weapons? Why don't
30:27
Speaker 7: we have joint production of sales? So you have to
30:29
Speaker 7: basically give us the weapons because there are weapons. When
30:33
Speaker 7: I introduced the amendment to strip to two four, there
30:37
Speaker 7: was only awareness of a few days, and so people
30:41
Speaker 7: were just beginning to realize how problematic this provision is.
30:45
Speaker 7: Now more people realize it thanks to your reporting other reporting,
30:49
Speaker 7: So Thomas Massey and I are going to introduce an
30:52
Speaker 7: amendment to try to strip this from the House floor
30:56
Speaker 7: when the NDAA comes up for a vote on the
30:59
Speaker 7: House floor. We want this amendment to strip it. First,
31:02
Speaker 7: we need it to be ruled in order. It's obviously
31:05
Speaker 7: in order. It's germane to the NDAA, but that is
31:09
Speaker 7: one issue, and then we will have a role called
31:12
Speaker 7: vote on that amendment.
31:13
Speaker 6: I just have one quick question that's a follow up
31:15
Speaker 6: on this, Congressman, which is have you found other people
31:18
Speaker 6: who are maybe even pretty supportive of the alliance with Israel?
31:21
Speaker 6: Were surprised, Like, as you've started working with Congressman Massy
31:24
Speaker 6: to get this strip from the NDAA, have you found
31:27
Speaker 6: people who might normally be pretty supportive of the alliance
31:31
Speaker 6: with Israel being like what on earth is this? Or
31:34
Speaker 6: were they, you know, kind of like the hawks defensive
31:38
Speaker 6: of it.
31:39
Speaker 7: Those who are in the middle the independence are surprised.
31:42
Speaker 7: The questions they ask are do we have this kind
31:45
Speaker 7: of arrangement with other countries? It turns out now I
31:48
Speaker 7: have not found a single example of another country where
31:51
Speaker 7: we have a coordinated individual who is basically responsible for
31:57
Speaker 7: co production of weapons across the apartments, and as this
32:02
Speaker 7: becomes more obvious, there are two concerns. There's, of course
32:05
Speaker 7: the concern of the human rights to a giving weapons
32:09
Speaker 7: to a country that is committing genocide. There is the
32:13
Speaker 7: secondary concern of the lack of American sovereignty. And on
32:17
Speaker 7: that secondary concern, you're getting a lot of people raising questions.
32:22
Speaker 3: So Corey so APAC trackers now iconic kind of red
32:27
Speaker 3: cards have become. It turns out something that really seems
32:33
Speaker 3: to get under the skin of politicians, and I suspect
32:37
Speaker 3: Arson Kona can confirm them from his private conversations with
32:40
Speaker 3: his colleagues, so much so that APAC even started a
32:45
Speaker 3: or some APAC offshoot started a like Islamis Tracker or
32:49
Speaker 3: something and started making red cards that just mimicked yours
32:52
Speaker 3: was a Laura Lumer.
32:53
Speaker 11: Yeah, there's a lot of copycats out there. It's funny
32:57
Speaker 11: in some ways and also disturbing in others.
33:00
Speaker 3: Yes, and so one problem, I guess that will tell
33:06
Speaker 3: me where the idea came from. To allow people who
33:10
Speaker 3: have in the past taken APAC or pro Israel money
33:15
Speaker 3: but have since changed and are committing not to kind
33:20
Speaker 3: of wipe away the red cars. I think it's an
33:22
Speaker 3: interesting idea because if we are really and Graham Platter
33:25
Speaker 3: said has a version of this where he says, you know,
33:27
Speaker 3: if we're going to transform the country, we have to
33:30
Speaker 3: allow people to transform themselves, because like people make up
33:34
Speaker 3: the country, and so if you're going to transform our
33:36
Speaker 3: relationship with APAC in Congress, you're going to have to
33:40
Speaker 3: allow individual politicians to transform on the issue. So what
33:45
Speaker 3: is the pledge that people are being asked taken? How
33:47
Speaker 3: do you kind of guys come up with this idea?
33:50
Speaker 5: Sure?
33:51
Speaker 11: Absolutely, so thank you again for having us on. This
33:54
Speaker 11: is a very exciting development for us. We have been
33:58
Speaker 11: thinking and working towards this for some time. The bottom
34:02
Speaker 11: line is is that while we have created a very
34:06
Speaker 11: successful pressure campaign to highlight and expose the extent of
34:12
Speaker 11: the influence of APAC and their allies in our lawmakers,
34:18
Speaker 11: we also have a responsibility as an organization to give
34:22
Speaker 11: people a bridge to get on the right side of
34:25
Speaker 11: history and to reflect that their policy positions have changed
34:31
Speaker 11: and to chart a new course.
34:32
Speaker 10: And so the idea of the pledge is really born
34:35
Speaker 10: out of that.
34:36
Speaker 11: It's a very firm set of policy commitments that are
34:40
Speaker 11: very clear and spelled out that really just reinforce the
34:45
Speaker 11: commitment to enforcing US law, encountering foreign influence, and ending
34:49
Speaker 11: our complicity and war crimes.
34:52
Speaker 6: And you've seen some response, interestingly enough, Bran and I
34:54
Speaker 6: were just chatting about this before we started the segment
34:57
Speaker 6: from people on the right, some of the on the right,
35:00
Speaker 6: especially in the younger right, who are much more skeptical
35:04
Speaker 6: of the American alliance with Israel, and I just wanted
35:05
Speaker 6: to ask you what you've seen, how significant you've seen,
35:10
Speaker 6: if it's significant at all, some folks sharing a pack
35:12
Speaker 6: tracker stuff actually from the right and maybe actually using
35:16
Speaker 6: it to some effect, particularly on social media.
35:21
Speaker 11: We definitely see it shared by people all across the
35:23
Speaker 11: political spectrum, right left, mainstream Democrats. Ironically in our largest
35:28
Speaker 11: cohort of supporters are the Democratic wine Moms by and large,
35:34
Speaker 11: but we see it shared among people on every single
35:38
Speaker 11: part of the political spectrum. Because this has become really
35:42
Speaker 11: a litmus test for our politicians. And this is something
35:45
Speaker 11: I think that Ben Rhades said about a year ago
35:50
Speaker 11: when they were having a conversation on Hot Save America.
35:52
Speaker 11: He said that voters are not going to think that
35:56
Speaker 11: you're take you seriously about healthcare if they think that
35:59
Speaker 11: you're full of crap about Gaza and not as exactly
36:03
Speaker 11: what we have seen reflected in the kind of social.
36:06
Speaker 3: Dialogue and Congress, and kind of let's roll through the
36:09
Speaker 3: pledge a little bit and see, I'm get to get
36:11
Speaker 3: your take on how palatable you think this will be
36:13
Speaker 3: to kind of an average average member of Congress. It
36:16
Speaker 3: starts out by saying, you're not going to take money
36:18
Speaker 3: from a pak Democratic Majority for Israel, which is an
36:21
Speaker 3: APEC offshoot Republic Republican Jewish coalition, Christians United for Israel,
36:27
Speaker 3: and then any affiliated packs are kind of highly coordinated
36:31
Speaker 3: activity that kind of kind of goes around those packs.
36:35
Speaker 3: It says, basically then says, you'll acknowledge that there was
36:37
Speaker 3: a genocide in Gaza. It says you'll respect the Lahy
36:41
Speaker 3: laws which say that we know we cannot fund a
36:45
Speaker 3: foreign military unit that has been, you know, plausibly engaged
36:48
Speaker 3: in human rights abuses. It pledges actually to oppose what
36:54
Speaker 3: you were just talking about at the top of the segment,
36:57
Speaker 3: section two twenty four, to oppose the fusion of any
37:01
Speaker 3: foreign military or intelligence services with the US notice. It's
37:04
Speaker 3: it covers all foreign governments, not not just Israel. H
37:09
Speaker 3: pledge to support and promote accountability for those who misused
37:13
Speaker 3: US weapons and will oppose measures to restrict the First
37:17
Speaker 3: Amendment when it comes to you know, openly discussing uh,
37:22
Speaker 3: these these questions.
37:24
Speaker 6: Uh.
37:24
Speaker 3: And then finally to try to overturn Citizens United A
37:28
Speaker 3: pledge to you know, to get big all big money
37:30
Speaker 3: out of politics. It doesn't call for sanctioning Israel, it
37:34
Speaker 3: doesn't call for boycotting, It doesn't call, you know, for
37:38
Speaker 3: any of the more kind of ultra demands that people
37:41
Speaker 3: might might want to see. Basically says American dollars, American weapons,
37:46
Speaker 3: and American political power must ever be used in violation
37:48
Speaker 3: of the law or to enable mass atrocities.
37:51
Speaker 11: Uh.
37:51
Speaker 3: Seems pretty straightforward. How do you think people will respond
37:55
Speaker 3: to this? And is signing this worth that that green card?
37:58
Speaker 7: I'm proud to announce that I'm going to be signing
38:01
Speaker 7: it today and I hope all Democrats will sign it
38:07
Speaker 7: and some Republicans will sign it. You know, APEC cracker
38:10
Speaker 7: has become such an icon that APEC attacks me for
38:15
Speaker 7: not attacking APAC trackers Bill sometimes tweet out to members,
38:18
Speaker 7: why aren't you attacking APAC tracker. But this is a
38:22
Speaker 7: pretty simple way for folks to say, after Gaza, we
38:26
Speaker 7: have a moral authority. They may not have voted with
38:29
Speaker 7: Mark Pocan and Me and Promila against the AID, but
38:32
Speaker 7: this gives them a clean start. And it's not very controversial.
38:37
Speaker 7: I mean, the UNA said there's a genocide. Most Americans
38:41
Speaker 7: don't want AID going there. They don't want our military
38:44
Speaker 7: sales going there. It's very carefully worded on APEC. So
38:48
Speaker 7: you can't play games. I mean a lot of people
38:49
Speaker 7: don't take direct APEC money or Democratic Majority for Israel money.
38:54
Speaker 7: This is you can't have bundling from people affiliated with it,
38:58
Speaker 7: so you can't go around it. You can't get third
39:00
Speaker 7: party groups, and that you need to be committed to
39:03
Speaker 7: overturning money in politics. I hope that what we have
39:08
Speaker 7: done today inspires many many people to sign up, and
39:14
Speaker 7: then they'll get the green card, the coveted green card,
39:16
Speaker 7: which has now become part of debates, constituent questions. In fact,
39:21
Speaker 7: at one point I think I had an APEC DRAP
39:24
Speaker 7: percent decent but could be better, and so.
39:27
Speaker 10: I'm looking forward to my green card.
39:30
Speaker 11: No go ahead, Corey, Well, I was just going to
39:34
Speaker 11: add to that that that.
39:35
Speaker 10: Is forthcoming today.
39:37
Speaker 11: So we are also in addition to announcing that we're
39:41
Speaker 11: very proud to have Representative Ocanna as the inaugural signer
39:44
Speaker 11: of this pledge, but also that track APAC is endorsing
39:49
Speaker 11: and where were issuing the green card for signing the
39:52
Speaker 11: pledge for Representative Conna today.
39:54
Speaker 3: And I think it's an interesting kind of intervention into
39:57
Speaker 3: the conversation which has you know, you guys have cor
40:00
Speaker 3: you guys have been accused of kind of putting your
40:02
Speaker 3: thumb on the scale and saying, well, this person gets
40:05
Speaker 3: some of this money, but this person doesn't yet, but
40:07
Speaker 3: this person supports this policy, so they get a green card,
40:10
Speaker 3: but you get a red card. This does seem to
40:12
Speaker 3: clear it up a little bit to say, you know what,
40:14
Speaker 3: you want a green card. It's quite easy here. It
40:17
Speaker 3: is just like just sign this piece of paper and
40:20
Speaker 3: you get the green card.
40:22
Speaker 10: Absolutely, I mean the the the issue of.
40:26
Speaker 11: What determines whether or not someone earns a red card
40:29
Speaker 11: in our metrics is based both on funding that they
40:34
Speaker 11: have accepted or or have benefited from, because we also
40:38
Speaker 11: count independent expenditures that are spent on behalf of a
40:41
Speaker 11: candidate or to promote or support a candidate's candidacy, but
40:47
Speaker 11: also their policy positions. There if they're an elected then
40:50
Speaker 11: they're voting record if they're running for office, and their
40:53
Speaker 11: public statements and what they have committed to in both
40:58
Speaker 11: public and you know, independently reported and verified private communications,
41:04
Speaker 11: because we do you know that there are some that
41:05
Speaker 11: are circulating circulating a PAC position keepers that did are
41:10
Speaker 11: commonly circulated in secret.
41:12
Speaker 10: So because it has been.
41:14
Speaker 11: Based on that combination, you know, this pledge is designed
41:18
Speaker 11: to give people the off ram. Okay, I've maybe accepted
41:24
Speaker 11: support from the lobby in the past, or I've maybe
41:27
Speaker 11: taken some votes that I would not take today based
41:30
Speaker 11: on the changing of my policies. And so this pledge
41:34
Speaker 11: gives people that are in that kind of position an
41:37
Speaker 11: off ramp to get there.
41:39
Speaker 6: And how are you anticipating, Corey, what may happen? You've
41:42
Speaker 6: already seen it happen with a brand supported on this
41:45
Speaker 6: often about a PAC money coming through or money that
41:49
Speaker 6: supports bolstering the American Israeli's alliance coming through the things
41:52
Speaker 6: that aren't now named a PAC. Because you all have
41:55
Speaker 6: been a part of making the APAC brand very toxic
41:58
Speaker 6: especially among Democrats. How are you planning to kind of
42:02
Speaker 6: track that going forward.
42:04
Speaker 10: Well, we've already started.
42:05
Speaker 11: We've already built reporting tools that are helping us triangulate
42:08
Speaker 11: onto the various shell packs and pop up packs that
42:11
Speaker 11: they utilize. We are monitoring when we are able to
42:15
Speaker 11: detect trends that they're utilizing pass throughs. I know that
42:18
Speaker 11: Ryan has done a lot of reporting on both of
42:20
Speaker 11: those activities, and we're continuing to refine and expand our
42:24
Speaker 11: reporting tools and growing our data team to be able
42:26
Speaker 11: to get more sophisticated.
42:27
Speaker 10: The truth is that we have to.
42:29
Speaker 11: Keep adapting because APAC is adapting their methods and the
42:32
Speaker 11: lobby is adapting their methods. They do recognize that their
42:36
Speaker 11: brand has become toxic. There's a reason why that anytime
42:39
Speaker 11: they're spending on behalf of a candidate, their ads never
42:42
Speaker 11: mention anything about that candidate's position on US.
42:45
Speaker 10: And Israel policy.
42:46
Speaker 11: They are always about some other issue that's not related.
42:50
Speaker 11: So we are continuing to create tools and refine the
42:56
Speaker 11: tools that allow us to be able to trace that
42:57
Speaker 11: money and report the full make sure accurately.
43:01
Speaker 3: And I'm curious the last ques, how you draw the
43:05
Speaker 3: kind of distinction between just kind of random people who
43:08
Speaker 3: were donating to a candidate and coordinated activity. Last this
43:12
Speaker 3: week at drop site, Julian Andreoni and I reported on
43:17
Speaker 3: Audiano espayat, for instance, on June fourth, he got he
43:21
Speaker 3: reported getting sixty nine contributions. I think sixty seven of
43:25
Speaker 3: them had been major either APAC or other pro asual
43:28
Speaker 3: organization donors, and had given at least like one thousand dollars.
43:31
Speaker 3: So we're not talking about somebody who got an email
43:34
Speaker 3: from an APAC linked group and gave twenty five dollars
43:38
Speaker 3: to support, you know whatever, who knows what the email
43:41
Speaker 3: said might have been something innocuous. We're talking, you know,
43:45
Speaker 3: minimum four figure contributions from each one of these people.
43:47
Speaker 3: And one of the guys, Bob Cohen, was the former
43:50
Speaker 3: president of APAC and had raised tens of millions of
43:54
Speaker 3: dollars to try to defeat the Iron Nuclear Deal. So
43:57
Speaker 3: we look at that, we're like, okay, we're going to
43:59
Speaker 3: call that highly coordinated pro zeral activity, like it's just
44:02
Speaker 3: it just obviously is. But how do you guys think
44:05
Speaker 3: through that? Because APAC will say, oh, now you're just
44:07
Speaker 3: coming at Jewish Americans who want to support a candidate
44:12
Speaker 3: and participate in the political process, and you're stigmatizing that
44:14
Speaker 3: in an anti Semitic way.
44:16
Speaker 11: Yeah, of course we have heard that argument, and that
44:19
Speaker 11: is nonsense on its face.
44:20
Speaker 10: I mean, APAC themselves doesn't even believe that.
44:23
Speaker 11: You know, APAC brags all the time, and all of
44:26
Speaker 11: the members of the Israel Lobbie brag all the time
44:28
Speaker 11: that their members are made up of people from every
44:30
Speaker 11: part of the the ideological spectrum, you know, in every
44:34
Speaker 11: kind of identity.
44:37
Speaker 10: So it's it's silly that they need that they make
44:39
Speaker 10: that argument.
44:42
Speaker 11: Tracking and reporting on the activity of the individual donors
44:46
Speaker 11: is definitely a lot harder, and that's one of the
44:47
Speaker 11: reasons why they've moved to that as a tactic. I
44:51
Speaker 11: know that we lean very heavily on great investigative journalism
44:55
Speaker 11: like what's Happening drop site, you know, with other outlets
45:00
Speaker 11: when we want to be able to detect that because
45:02
Speaker 11: one of the challenges is that these these donors will
45:06
Speaker 11: or this activity will happen in these kind of buffers
45:10
Speaker 11: of the reporting periods where it might might not show
45:13
Speaker 11: up on the disclosure until after an election is actually done.
45:17
Speaker 10: That happens a lot with the shell packs for example.
45:20
Speaker 11: So you know, it does get tricky and that we've
45:24
Speaker 11: got some work to do to figure out how to
45:26
Speaker 11: really refine the individual donor recording part.
45:29
Speaker 3: And just to be clear, like somebody like Maxine Dexter,
45:32
Speaker 3: who's an incumbent Democrat. You know, she she got well
45:36
Speaker 3: over a million or two million dollars in kind of
45:38
Speaker 3: a pack super PAC support when she ran in her
45:42
Speaker 3: Oregon race, but she has since said she regrets that
45:44
Speaker 3: the money's toxic. She supports blocked the bombs, you know,
45:48
Speaker 3: et cetera. So somebody like her, if she signs this pledge,
45:51
Speaker 3: she's she's in the green.
45:54
Speaker 10: Absolutely, She's someone that I hope would sign the pledge.
45:57
Speaker 11: You know, we've seen as the APAC brand has becoming
46:00
Speaker 11: crazingly toxic, We've seen members that have kind of stuck
46:03
Speaker 11: their finger in the wind and seen, Okay, I see
46:06
Speaker 11: which way the direction is going now, and so I'm
46:08
Speaker 11: not taking a back money anymore. Great, Okay, that's a
46:11
Speaker 11: nice step, but it's not enough, and that's what this
46:13
Speaker 11: pledge is designed to reflect. I certainly would love for
46:18
Speaker 11: Congress with Mendexter to be one of the signers of
46:20
Speaker 11: this pledge. I think there's some others who have come
46:23
Speaker 11: forward and said that they're no longer taking APAC money
46:25
Speaker 11: that are probably less likely to agree with.
46:28
Speaker 10: The finer points of the pledge.
46:30
Speaker 11: But we're open to anybody who's interested in signing it.
46:34
Speaker 11: We would love to have those conversations.
46:36
Speaker 3: Well, Corey, thank you so much for joining us in
46:38
Speaker 3: Congress and conn. I really appreciate it.
46:40
Speaker 10: Thank you, thank you.
46:42
Speaker 5: Well.
46:42
Speaker 6: That does it for us on today's edition of Breaking Points.
46:46
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