← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
6/17/26: Feds Charge Anti-ICE Protesters, Vance Pressed On Epstein, AIPAC Tracker Pledge
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hope to see you@breakingpoints.com 15 protesters in Minnesota have been charged federally for their role in what the feds are saying is obstructing, I guess, the lawful carrying out of official immigration duties. Here is federal prosecutor Daniel Rosen. Is that right?
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Ryan Grim
Last year, President Trump issued national security Presidential Memorandum 7 which directed the Department of Justice to prioritize politically motivated violence. To accomplish that mission, the Deputy Attorney General stood up Joint Task Force Vanguard to enforce a national security strategy to investigate, prosecute and disrupt those who engage in political violence and intimidation. Today a federal indictment was unsealed charging 15 defendants with conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers and other charges related to efforts of two Minneapolis based antifa groups that violently opposed the enforcement of federal law in our state. The defendants are members and associates of Direct Action Minnesota.
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Ben Rhodes
And we have footage of one of the, one of the people getting arrested. Here's D1. This is outside somebody's home in Minnesota pulling out a guy with a beard from a signal chat who's doing,
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Guest or Correspondent
you
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Ben Rhodes
know, help, you know, organizing against the immigration crackdown.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
This is Isaac Amund sound in Minnesota.
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Ben Rhodes
This, this comes after we could put up D5. This comes after three protesters in Washington state were found were found guilty of conspiracy to protest basically related to protests against immigration facility out in Washington state. And also comes after the eight, eight federal indictments were handed down in Michigan against encampment protesters there. So that's not immigration, that's. Those are the encampment processes. We covered those on Friday. So this, as you know, Ken Klippenstein has been very heavily focused on NPSM7.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
He broke the news a bit right,
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Ben Rhodes
which is this security memo, national security presidential memo 7 which the subject of it is straightforward countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence. And it directed federal prosecutors to try to roll up left wing groups more or less that are organizing these protests. So tell us about the, tell us about the indictment because you were telling me before we started that you think that they've got, they actually do have a case here against some of these protesters.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
I think they have a case against some of them. And so just to be very clear, this is going to be overly broad. I don't doubt that One second, this is not in any way an endorsement of the administration's probably dragnet that's going to catch up people that were not doing actually illegal activity. If you read Indictment is an absolutely wild ride. It's like 100 pages long and I pulled a couple of pieces of it. But what you do see is again, it's actually, this is. We've heard this trotted out but 18 USC 111 is what's being invoked here. NSPM 7 is a big directive that is wildly unconstitutional. It is a total threat to free speech. There's absolutely no question about it. The way that it's written is so so broad as to direct federal officials to investigate people who are engaged in perfectly constitutional activity. 18 USC 111 punishes anyone who, quote, this is according to the Justice Department's website, forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes intimidates or interferes with any person who is a federal officer in the course of their duties. And so that's assaults, resists 19th century law.
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Krystal Ball
Right.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
It probably does go back. Opposes, impedes, intimidates or interferes with any person that is doing federal duties. So this could easily be used against anti abortion protesters who are trying to get in the way, for example, of federal agents who are trying to clear them from blocking access to an abortion clinic, for example. But if you look in this indictment, there are places where you clearly see, I mean, it's infiltrated whatever this network was. It was an anarchist network, basically in Minneapolis. Yeah, Signal group. But also people who are identifying themselves as anarchist activists. It's clearly infiltrated by federal informants because they have the goods. They clearly have what looks like recordings from private meetings. They have excerpts from signal chats. I'll just go through a couple of things that stood out to me from the indictment. Let's start from the first one. So 0.106 in this indictment says on or about February 15th, at approximately 3:00pm Robinette and others attended a meeting held at the United labor center building in Minneapolis and sponsored by tcda, bcwc, Ray Rainbow Memorial Shooting Club, Socialist Alternative and other organizations. Robinette wore a Ray Rainbow hat and served on the special security team for the event. The group discussed medical firearms and quote, hard security training. Participants began planning a March 1 directive at the Whipple Building. Stamp proposed. That was the person you just saw organizing another blockade at the east entrance of the Whipple Building. So they're charged for conspiracy to impede or obstruct. And I think what you're seeing here is a private meeting where they are clearly conspiring to obstruct with a blockade. And again, this is the indictment. So it's entirely possible that more evidence comes out that they were not trying to blockade federal officers. But it looks like they would probably even admit at this point that they were intentionally blockading federal officers from being able to conduct their duties. This is from a signal chat on February 17. You have Sant again saying, quote, who else wants to be added to the 3 1Whipple Action Planning tract. I know there are people who didn't get added yet. Another guy says please add me. And then they are saying melt the ice organizers are asking us to do the same thing we did on 23rd street block, Minnehaha, while their march takes the street on the other side by 62E. So soft blockade with shields, one of them says, I say, if we can figure it out, we go further than just that. That is somebody named Mr. Rec. Now, Sant posed on February 17, according to the indictment, posted a screenshot of a map showing the Melt the Ice organization's proposed march route for the action against the Whipple Building. So again, like what you're seeing, here's Morgan explaining, quote, there is an inherent militancy to this project. Quote, this is something that comes with the explicit aim of stopping and combating an armed federal agent trying to violently abduct your neighbor. That's a quote, that is basically a confession to this crime. If we want to say that that shouldn't be illegal, then you have to change the law. But if this is meant to be civil disobedience, I would say even that is not what you see in this indictment. From what appeared to be direct quotes, they're basically saying intentionally that this should not be civil disobedience, that they're questioning the, they're questioning the commitment of people who believe in civil disobedience in some of these chats, which again, own it. If that's what you believe. A lot of people believe that. It goes back to like Fanon. A lot of people believe that you can't accomplish what you want to accomplish with civil disobedience. And so if that's the case, I'm not going to say that this is an unjust prosecution if you're intentionally trying to be engaged in non civil disobedience. So Kennedy, according to this, says he's a, quote, revolutionary anarchist. The anarchist movement will achieve the ability to have fluid communication between independent groups, groups without state or any centralized leadership. I believe that's exactly what we're seeing in Minneapolis. So again, all this is to say there's a debate about blocking, whether that should be legal or not, what actually constitutes imposing. But there were also a lot of obstructing. There also were a lot of. There was a lot of civil disobedience in Minneapolis, whether it was Will Stancil following around the cops and honking the horn. That's not illegal. That should not be illegal. It isn't illegal. And there are a lot of people who are training people in genuine civil disobedience to, you know, be loud, make noise, try to alert people. That's different than what we're seeing in this indictment, again, we haven't heard from the defendants, so this can change. It does look like this is a pretty serious case against some of them who are openly admitting in the chat and at these private meetings with verbatim quotes, meaning they likely have recordings to saying, hey, we're going to conspire. What we're doing right now is organizing to block federal officers from making arrests.
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Ben Rhodes
Yeah, in some of the cases. So they'll have, in one case, they have them kind of talking about getting a truck and having the truck kind of block the road and they'll say like, we're going to get arrested for this. So that, that, like, that's the kind of level of civil disobedience that it, that it is civil disobedience and you're, you know, committing to engage in it, which then comes with consequences in a free society. When you're committing civil disobedience, though, it's, it's not, it's generally not met with an attempt to put you in jail for life in prison. For life or for, you know, 20 or 30 years or whatever.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Yeah, and I won't, I won't dispute. Actually, keep talking. I have to take a drink.
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Ben Rhodes
And so while it is true that there was some civil disobedience going on here, the reaction here is not what we expect from kind of a free society. And the legal argument, the legal counter argument that I would make to say, like, oh, well, look, it's on the books that says you can't intimidate a federal officer. First of all, it's like, that's unconstitutional. Come on, grow up. In the indictment, it says you caused emotional distress to the ICE agents.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
It's like, that's silly.
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Ben Rhodes
That's not a crime. Sorry, sorry that you're.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
So did Will Stancil.
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Ben Rhodes
Yes. Causing emotional distress. I'm sure they'd love to arrest Will Stancil, but the counter argument would be prove that you are lawfully carrying out your duties. Because what we see as a free people is a bunch of goons going around and snatching brown people off the street without asking them questions, grabbing them and then putting them in vans and driving off and then finding out later whether or not they are citizens, whether or not they're legal residents, whether they have asylum cases that are processing or whether they're here completely illegally, they are grabbing first and then often then just dumping them somewhere else when they find out that they are here legally. And so that would be the counter argument. Say if you really are carrying out lawful duties. You have to actually prove that. You have to demonstrate that to us because otherwise we are a free citizenry that is here to support the law. And the law is you cannot snatch people off the street. You guys are the criminals.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
And if the law is that people should have unrestricted or unphysically blocked access to abortion clinics, then the law is that the federal officers should be able to move people away from the abortion clinics without having interference from the activists who will physically block. And so I would just say people who are skeptical of this because what I was gonna say before I started coughing was I don't dispute that there will be over prosecutions here. I think that in maybe even overly punitive sense, sentencing, I'm not going to dispute that. I don't doubt that that might happen at all. What I'm saying is that some of our. I was going to say friends. I don't know that I have a lot of friends who would make this argument, but you probably do. I mean, it's a serious thing, both on the hardcore left and on the hardcore right. Some people believe that violence is the only or is at a certain point the last resort. And that we've reached that point of last resort, whether it's with ICE or some people think it's different things. And I'm just saying then own that if that's what you're trying to do. If you're trying to use physical blockades to interfere with federal officers, that's a violation of federal law. Own it. And it's not necessarily a crazy prosecution of you if you're openly conspiring to break federal law.
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Ben Rhodes
And what I would say to that is the same thing. I'd say we put this in a second. If somebody puts a truck on the street and blocks it and they're doing that as an act of civil disobedience, then arrest that person for that act.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Right.
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Ben Rhodes
This where you put these things in the indictment, but you don't ever prove them and instead you fluff up some giant conspiracy involving lots of other people. That's not how it's supposed to be done. If we can put up D6. So the Palestinian protest, the pro Palestine protesters are pleading not guilty to these eight charges. And if you read through the indictment,
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Brian Tyler Cohen
this is in Milwaukee.
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Ben Rhodes
This is. Well, this isn't. Yeah, this is in Michigan. But this particular person is from. Is from. Is from Milwaukee. Most of them are from Michigan. I think this person actually is a. Yes, this person is a cancer researcher who was doing kind of post grad research at the University of Michigan and wanted to. Wanted to try to stop University of Michigan complicity in the genocide. If you read the indictment, there are some bad things, like they threw some noxious chemicals into somebody's house or something. But if you notice, they never try to prove that. They never, they never give any details of it. And they're not even apparently proposing to try to prove it in court. They're just saying, oh, bad things happened here. These people opposed the genocide and wanted to put pressure on the University of Michigan Board of Regents. And so we're then going to link these two things without proving or charging this to try to get a conviction over here on this, on a giant conspiracy. They're doing a similar thing in some cases with the Minnesota case where it's like, if you can prove this thing, they committed this crime, then charge that crime. If you can't, then you do this whole giant, oh, antifa. And like, they support revolution. And like, shut up. Like, you're allowed to support revolution. Like, that's. This is America.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
And we've seen this with students in particular. I mean, Mahmoud Khalil, different case, apples and oranges. But an example of something similar where they're saying, oh, bad stuff is happening on this campus. This guy was involved in leadership. Therefore we are pinning everything that everybody did on you. And the tether is going to be some Instagram post. But that's it. Like, that's how we're connecting you to this.
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Ben Rhodes
Some Instagram posts from some group that you used to be involved with or something.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Yeah, and this, by the way, is what is frustrating because we covered this a lot at the time. The first Trump administration actually radicalized a lot of people on the right against overbroad uses of the intelligence agencies, especially domestically. The Biden administration radicalized a lot of people on the right against. Not even radicalized, but sort of was eye opening to a lot of people against the FBI and the CIA, how they were using, abusing their powers domestically, how they were infiltrating groups with informants and all of that. And there was a big movement against that. Right now you see some people to this day fighting against 702 reauthorization. Literally right now that's happening. And yes, there's clearly like the NSPM7 on its face. If the Biden administration had put something like that out and you were swapping antifa for like Trad Catholic. Yeah, yeah, exactly. People would be furious about it. So, yes, there's something very frustrating about that too.
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Ben Rhodes
And especially as Stephen Miller, we can put up D7 real quickly. Big scoop from Jonathan Swan and Maggie Hayman that isn't getting enough attention that Miller pushed really hard to suspend habeas corpus, which is the fundamental right that all people have in the United States to challenge their detention as unlawful. If you don't have that, if you can't challenge your detention, then you can just be grabbed and you have no recourse to get out. Meanwhile, nobody in the Epstein files has found themselves on the business end of any of these prosecutions. While they seem to have like an enormous amount of creativity when it comes to, you know, rounding up these folks. But let's, let's get to Epstein.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Let's do it.
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Krystal Ball
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- [20:36]
Brian Tyler Cohen
Just as the New York Times dropped a major investigation into the final days of Jeffrey Epstein questioning some of the let's say, quote unquote conspiratorial narratives about how Epstein's life appears to have ended. Vice President J.D. vance went on the View where he got pressed by the hosts on whether he was an Epstein conspiracy theorist. What happened with Epstein? The President's relationship with Epstein? Let's start here with E1 by the
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Guest or Correspondent
way, again, sorry, Joe, I do have to defend my boss. I know you guys don't always appreciate this, but, you know, one of the things you see in the Epstein emails is that Jeffrey Epstein hated Donald Trump and that Donald Trump literally reported Jeffrey Epstein to the police. That's one of the things that came
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Brian Tyler Cohen
out of these best friends for about a decade. And remember, he signed that transparency act under duress. When some Republican women congresswomen like Lauren Boebert, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, did not give in to his pressure of not signing, he brought Lauren Boebert into the Situation Room to pressure her into caving on not voting for that bill.
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Guest or Correspondent
So let me respond to that.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
So it's all true.
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Guest or Correspondent
Let me respond to that. So number one is, yes, Donald Trump, he said this. He knew Jeffrey Epstein back in the 1980s. He also threw Jeffrey Epstein out of his club when he found out he was a creep and reported him to the police. That's something that the media often misses when it reports this story. They tell the fact that they knew each other in the 80s, which the president himself admits. They ignore the fact that he narked on him to the police and led ultimately to Jeffrey Epstein's downfall. To that point, Anna, you know the Republican Party well, it's one of the things that led to law enforcement investigation. But on the point that you made
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Brian Tyler Cohen
was allegedly over a real estate deal that they had got into a fight over.
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Guest or Correspondent
But the email says, the email says
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Brian Tyler Cohen
actually he didn't just know each other. Let's just be truthful and transparent here. They didn't just know each other. They were incredibly close friends.
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Guest or Correspondent
He reported him to the police. That's what I'm saying. That is objective. That is objectively true. But Anna made another point that I think, if I may have a very important point. This question about did Donald Trump release these files only under duress from Republicans? And Anna, you know the Republican Party probably better than I do. The idea that Donald Trump runs around afraid of Republican congressmen as opposed to the other way around is kind of crazy.
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Ben Rhodes
What was it?
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Guest or Correspondent
Bipartisan Democrats. But because the Republicans control the House and the Senate, particularly the Senate, you need the Republican sign off. What the President did is, look, I will say this again. I was in there, in the meetings. He was very frustrated that the Democrats were making this about him. When he's like, look, I threw the guy out of my club. I am the guy who reported him to the police or one of the people who reported to the police. The President was frustrated about that. Absolutely but he eventually came to say, you know what, let's just get everything out there, let's have this out in the public. And he actually called the senators, I was there. He called the senators and said, you know what, Pass this bill, I'll sign it. And that was it.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
And just a couple of hours later, he told Megyn Kelly that he believed the big New York Times story. Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, about the Situation Room conversation regarding the Trump administration's plans for disclosure in the Epstein case. He said that there were certain things in there that, quote, legitimately made me worried that people were taping and in the Situation Room, which is a felony. He said that story was very bizarre. It was sort of a nothing of a story in the sense that everybody started to know these details. But the fact that somebody had taped. So that seems to be some confirmation from J.D. vance that it was taped.
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Ryan Grim
Right.
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Ben Rhodes
Or certainly that it's all true. That's also the interesting. If there was any doubt as to whether or not what was reported by Swan and Haberman there is accurate, it's put to bed by Vance saying that it basically matches verbatim his recollection of the, of the meeting, which means that they used the Situation Room to devise a scheme to cover up the Epstein files.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Nobody is talking enough about the fact that this was in the Situation Room, first of all. Now, do I know how the Trump administration uses the Situation Room? No, but you're not supposed to be able to bring phones or recording devices in there. And actually what it sounds to me is like they were discussing a story with serious national security implications, per the drop site reporting in the NFC case.
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Ben Rhodes
Yeah, apparently. Apparently there is national security implications to it.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
I don't think they're taking political meetings normally. Now, the Trump administration, not exactly normal, but I think it's pretty odd to be taking a meeting about political strategy in the Situation Room.
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Ben Rhodes
But didn't, didn't say Kash Patel and Bongino or at least Cash Patel joined by speakerphones.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Yes.
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Ben Rhodes
I wonder who. I mean, I'm not accusing anybody of anything, but come on, if somebody's going to tape it, it's the dude on the speakerphone.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Or presumably they were in a skiff. I don't know, maybe they weren't. But yeah, Ben, he's at the club. He's at the club. Yeah.
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Ben Rhodes
It was the guy with him at the club, the Poodle Lounge, who recorded it.
- [25:13]
Brian Tyler Cohen
Yes. Yeah.
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Ben Rhodes
So maybe he was in an Uber.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
He could have been. The New York Times dropped a major story about questions into Epstein's death. And this happened, I think, just within, like, 24 hours of Vance going on this tour and answering Epstein questions. And it's a very, very long story. Many new interviews, many new details in but a couple of the nut graphs here I'll just read from. They say our reporting establishes that Epstein showed a clear pattern of behavior in the weeks before his death, suggesting an intent to kill himself. The apparent suicide note memorialized Epstein's despair and desire to, quote, say goodbye on his own terms. That's referring to the suicide note that Tartaglioni, his once cellmate, discovered, gave to his lawyers and talks about a bit in the story as well. Other writings from his final days, the times continues, presented a picture of a fraying mental state that sharply contrasted with the upbeat picture he presented to jail psychologists, including another note in which he hinted at ending his life. In addition to this, we were told by a former cellmate that Epstein made more than one previously unreported attempt to craft a noose. And we located a former inmate, never before interviewed, who was housed in a neighboring cell at the time of Epstein's death and whose account circumstantially supported the conclusion that Epstein died by hanging himself. This cellmate says he heard Epstein tearing what sounded like sheets. He wouldn't have known that, but that's what he says. Consulting with independent pathologists, we determined that a likely error in cataloging evidence from his cell created the appearance of mysteries regarding his injuries that were, in fact, potentially explained by other evidence from the scene that was overlooked at the time. They say what Michael Baden, who was hired by Epstein's brother to observe the autopsy, said about some breaking around the neck area could have been because of the way that he attempted to hang himself with a noose connected to the bed. So, Ryan, this is going to be used as a way to undercut, quote, unquote, conspiracy theorists. It's sort of always been true that Epstein could have legitimately killed himself. And a lot of this other stuff, as Dropsite has reported from both the leaked emails and the released emails, is quite obviously still accurate and true. Some of the foreign dealings and the like that you've dug really deeply into at the same time. Also, there are coincidences in this New York Times story that kind of get some explanations. You know, what was going on with the guards? Why did the guards not do the rounds? Why did they appear to sleep? That you get some explanation for. But you don't have to buy those explanations because it's still very weird. Yes, it's true that they had cameras down for a long time. Still doesn't change the fact that they had a camera precisely missing that L tier Epstein access point to his cell. It still doesn't change the fact that the guards were sleeping on the jobs, that they incorrectly lied on forms. So none of that stuff changes. And I'm willing to buy some of the story actually, but there's still some big questions.
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Ryan Grim
Right.
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Ben Rhodes
And they've got interviews with Nicholas Tartaglioni, the guy the cop accused of or convicted of murdering four people, strangling one of them, who after they determined that Epstein was a suicide risk, they made him his cellmate. A lot of people have said that they believe that he's the one that was then contracted basically to kill him. He tells the New York Times that when he came back from one of his hearings he said, how do you make a noose? He says he caught him, caught him with a noose under his mattress once and told jail guards who laughed it off Time says they can find no evidence of him telling that to jail guards. The counterargument is that Epstein had always wiggled out of everything, that his life was a series of obstacles that he overcame and that they, it's not obvious that they had much new in the way of criminal activity and he had a non prosecution agreement in place. So like he had a legal, plausible, legal path towards freedom. Now it had taken him a long time to reconstruct his social standing after the first time in prison. Now he was facing global cancellation plus this. So yeah. Though on the other, so the counter, counter argument is that on the other side of this, even if he got free, he'd have his money, but he wouldn't have what he really craved, which was being the guy at the middle of the party.
- [29:52]
Krystal Ball
Right.
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Ben Rhodes
And so he could, you know, he could escape to France or whatever like, and continue to do like sex crimes with like 16 year olds.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Yeah.
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Ben Rhodes
And some of the evidence that that's not really. But he can't do with Bill Clinton anymore.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Some of the evidence that the time story brings out is the way he was communicating with people close to him in the days before his death, leading up to his death are him seeming down actually kind of about that point that he's not going to be able to wiggle out of this one, that there's really not enough money in the world.
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Ben Rhodes
Social death was, was, was upon him.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Yeah. At one point he says, like, you know, you can't. I'm paraphrasing.
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Ben Rhodes
This is the height of MeToo and everything too.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Yes. At one point he says something like, you can't. This is no way to live. Like, there's no way to live in prison. And so he makes a.
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Ben Rhodes
Compared to what he's used to.
- [30:36]
Brian Tyler Cohen
Yeah, exactly. And that seems to be what he's getting is in some of these communications, he makes a call that could be perceived as a goodbye call to his girlfriend at the time saying, I won't be able to talk to you for a month, blah, blah, blah. And he has this note that does seem to be his because Tartaglioni saves it, gives it to his lawyers right away. So that. That looks somewhat legitimate that he did find the note that said, whatcha gonna do? Bust out crying. The joke that he often used to his brother, I think it's from Little Rascals. And, yeah, I actually am willing to accept, to some extent, he felt like his life was over and that the walls were quite literally closing in on him and that he wasn't gonna be able to buy his way out of this, that it had.
- [31:19]
Ben Rhodes
And also for people who were like, oh, it's impossible. They definitely killed him, driving him to do this would also accomplish the same goal in a more effective way.
- [31:28]
Brian Tyler Cohen
Right. And some questions still remain. He didn't have a cellmate that night, which he obviously should have been a cellmate. There were questions being drawn about his mental state. So there's still some weird stuff going on, which in and of itself, to quote JD Vance, the fact that you have a man who is a sexual predator who has all of these connections in the world of international politics and finance, it's weird. And then you add to this that there are all of these legitimate questions about what happened to him. Also weird. You can't dismiss any of that. So it just leaves us, I think, even once again, with more questions than answers. But that is par for the course as we cover Epstein stories. All right, let's bring in Ro, Khanna and Corey from APAC Tracker.
- [32:09]
Ben Rhodes
From APAC Tracker.
- [32:10]
Brian Tyler Cohen
Yeah, that's right. Let's get to it. My name is Jessa. One of the things I love the most about working for UnitedHealthcare is that everybody matters. Every moment.
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Krystal Ball
Matters, matters. There's a person behind every problem.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
I care because it's what I was put on this earth to do.
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Ryan Grim
I'm Ben, and I work at UnitedHealthcare. I am just one piece of a
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Ben Rhodes
larger puzzle, but every piece matters.
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Ryan Grim
It's more than just work.
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We wanna make the healthcare system better for everyone. I care because I wanna make a difference. That's what committed to care means to me.
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- [33:44]
Ben Rhodes
Joining us now we're going to have two guests. Representative Ro Khanna from California, Cory Archibald from APAC Tracker. Congressman Khanna, thank, thank you for joining us.
- [33:54]
Ryan Grim
Good to be back on.
- [33:55]
Ben Rhodes
And Cory, thanks for being here. Really appreciate it.
- [33:58]
Krystal Ball
Always good to be here.
- [33:59]
Ben Rhodes
And Corey, you've got some interesting news that we're going to get to in just a moment when I get Congressman Khanna's reaction to it. Before we get to that real quickly, I wanted to ask you, Congressman, you had in the Armed Services Committee tried to strip out language that is fusing kind of US and Israeli military and intelligence capacities. That amendment, that effort failed in committee. It's now head for the floor. This is starting to pick up an enormous amount of attention. I saw Trita Parsi and Tucker Carlson talked about it on his recent appearance on Tucker's podcast. A lot of people are pretty alarmed at the prospect of fusing the US Military intelligence capacities with the foreign government. What is the latest on this effort to block it from becoming part of the NDAA?
- [34:50]
Ryan Grim
Ryan, as you know, Section 224 would do an end run around any human rights check in providing weapons to Israel. What happened is Netanyahu realized that it's becoming more unpopular for Congress to just rubber stamp these cells. So he wrote a letter to two members of Congress in the House of Representatives, Republicans saying why don't we just have joint production of weapons? Why don't we have joint production of sales? So you have to basically give us the weapons because there are weapons. When I introduced the Amendment to strip 2 to 4, there was only awareness of a few days. And so people were just beginning to realize how problematic this provision is now. More people realize it thanks to your reporting. Other reporting so Thomas Massie and I are going to introduce an amendment to try to strip this from the House floor when the NDAA comes up for a vote on the House floor. We want this amendment to strip it first. We need it to be ruled in order. It's obviously in order. It's germane to the ndaa, but that is one issue and then we will have a roll call vote on that amendment.
- [36:02]
Brian Tyler Cohen
I just have one quick question that's a follow up on this Congressman, which is have you found other people who are maybe even pretty supportive of the alliance with ISRA Israel were surprised like as you've started working with Congressman Massie to get this strip from the ndaa, have you found people who might normally be pretty supportive of the alliance with Israel being like what on earth is this? Or were they kind of like the hawks defensive of it?
- [36:27]
Ryan Grim
Those who are in the middle, the independents, are surprised. The questions they ask are do we have this kind of arrangement with other countries? Turns out no. I have not found a single example of another country where we have a coordinated individual who is basically responsible for co production of weapons across departments. And as this becomes more obvious, there are two concerns. There's of course the concern of the human rights to a giving weapons to a country that is committing genocide. There is also the secondary concern of the lack of American sovereignty. And on that secondary concern you're getting a lot of people raising questions.
- [37:10]
Ben Rhodes
So Corey, so AIPAC trackers now iconic kind of red cards have become, it turns out, something that really seems to get under the skin of politicians and I suspect arson. Khanna can confirm that from his, his private conversations with his colleagues. So much so that AIPAC even started a, or some AIPAC offshoot, started a like Islamist tracker or something and started making red cars that just mimicked yours, is it?
- [37:41]
Krystal Ball
Laura Loomer yeah, there's a lot of copycats out there. It's funny in some ways and also disturbing in others. Yes.
- [37:49]
Ben Rhodes
And so one problem I guess that, well, tell me where the idea came from to allow people who have in the past taken AIPAC or pro Israel money but have since changed and are committing not to, to kind of wipe away the red car. Because I think it's an interesting idea because if we are really and Graham Platner has a version of this where he says if we're going to transform the country, we have to allow people to transform themselves because like people make up the country. And so if you're going to transform our relationship with AIPAC in Congress, you're going to have to allow individual politicians to transform on the issue. So what is the pledge that people are being asked to take? And how do you kind of guys come up with this idea?
- [38:39]
Krystal Ball
Sure, absolutely. So thank you for again, for having us on. This is a very exciting development for us. We have been thinking and working towards this for some time. The bottom line is, is that while we have created a very successful pressure campaign to highlight and expose the extent of the influence of AIPAC and their allies in our lawmakers, we also have a responsibility as an organization to give people a bridge, to get on the right side of history and to reflect that their policy have changed and to chart a new course. And so the idea of the pledge is really born out of that. It's a very firm set of policy commitments that are very clear and spelled out that really just reinforce the commitment to enforcing US Law and countering foreign influence and ending our complicity in war crimes.
- [39:40]
Brian Tyler Cohen
And you've seen some response. Interestingly enough, Ryan and I were just chatting about this before we started the segment from people on the right, some of the folks on the right, especially on the younger right, who are much more skeptical of the American alliance with Israel. And I just wanted to ask you what you've seen, how significant you've seen, if it's significant at all. Some folks sharing AIPAC tracker stuff actually from the right and maybe actually using it to some effect, particularly on social media.
- [40:09]
Krystal Ball
We definitely see it shared by people all across the political spectrum. Right left, mainstream Democrats. Ironically enough, our largest cohort of supporters are the Democratic wine moms, by and large. But, but, but we see it shared among people on every single part of the political spectrum because this has become really a litmus test for our politicians. And this is something I think that Ben Rhodes said about a year ago when they were having a conversation on Pod Save America. He said that voters are not going to think that you're, you're, take you seriously about health care if they think that you're full of crap about Gaza. And that is exactly what we have seen reflected in the kind of social dialogue.
- [40:55]
Ben Rhodes
And Congressman Khan, let's roll through the pledge a little bit and see I'm getting your take on how palatable you think this will be to kind of an average member of Congress. It starts out by saying you're not going to take money from aipac Democratic Majority for Israel, which is an AIPAC offshoot. Republican Jewish Coalition, Christians, United States for Israel, and then any affiliated pacts or kind of highly coordinated activity that kind of goes around those pacts. It basically then says you'll acknowledge there was a genocide in Gaza. It says you'll respect the Lehi laws which say that we cannot fund a foreign military unit that has been plausibly engaged in human rights abuses. It pledges actually to oppose what you were just talking about at the top of the segment, Section 224, to oppose the fusion of any foreign military or intelligence services with the US Notice it covers all foreign governments, not just Israel. Pledge to support and promote accountability for those who misused U.S. weapons and will oppose measures to restrict the First Amendment when it comes to, you know, openly discussing these questions. And then finally to try to overturn Citizens United and pledge to, you know, to get big, all big money out of politics. It doesn't call for sanctioning Israel. It doesn't call for boycotting. It doesn't call, you know, for any of the more kind of ultra demands that people might want to see. Basically says American dollars, American weapons, and American political power must never be used in violation of the law or to enable mass atrocities. Seems pretty straightforward. How do you think people will respond to this? And is signing this worth that green card?
- [42:46]
Ryan Grim
I'm proud to announce that I'm going to be signing it today and I hope all Democrats will sign it and some Republicans will sign it. You know, Apecracker has become such an icon that AIPAC attacks me for not attacking APEC Tracker. They'll sometimes tweet out to members, why aren't you attacking AIPAC Tracker? But this is a pretty simple way for folks to say, after Gaza, we have moral clarity. They may not have voted with Mark Pocan and me and Pramila against the aid, but this gives them a clean start. And it's not very controversial. I mean, the UN has said there's a genocide. Most Americans don't want aid going there. They don't want our military sales going there. It's very carefully worded on apec, so you can't play games. I mean, a lot of people don't take direct APEC money or Democratic Majority for Israel money. This is. You can't have bundling from people affiliated with it, so you can't go around it. You can't get third party groups and that you need to be committed to overturning money in politics. I hope that what we have done today inspires many, many people to sign up and then they'll get the green card. The coveted green card, which has now become part of debates, constituent questions. In fact, at one point I think I had in APEC Trapper said decent, but could be better. And so I'm looking forward to my, my green card.
- [44:19]
Ben Rhodes
No, go ahead, Corey.
- [44:20]
Krystal Ball
Well, I was just going to add to that, that that is forthcoming today. So we are also, in addition to announcing that we're very proud to have Representative Ro Khanna as the inaugural signer of this pledge, but also that track APAC is, is endorsing and will be issuing the green card for signing the pledge for Representative Khanna today.
- [44:43]
Ben Rhodes
And I think it's an interesting kind of intervention into the conversation which has you guys have, Corey, you guys have been accused of kind of putting your thumb on the scale and saying, well, this person gets some of this money, but this person doesn't yet, but this person supports this policy. So they get a green card, but you get a red card. This does seem to clear it up a little bit to say, you know what, you want a green card? It's quite easy. Here it is just like just sign this piece of paper and you get, you get the green card.
- [45:11]
Krystal Ball
Absolutely. I mean, the issue of what determines whether or not someone earns a red card in our metrics is based both on funding that they have accepted or have benefited from. Because we also count independent expenditures that are spent on behalf of a candidate or to promote or support a candidate's candidacy, but also their policy positions, if they're elected, then their voting record, if they're running for office, then their public statements and what they have committed to in both public and, you know, independently reported and verified private communications. Because we do know that there are some that are circulating, circulating APAC position papers that are commonly circulated in secret. So because it has been based on that combination, this pledge is designed to give people the off ramp. Okay, I've maybe accepted support from the lobby in the past or I've maybe taken some votes that I would not take today based on the changing of my policies. And so this pledge gives people that are in that kind of position an off ramp to get there.
- [46:28]
Brian Tyler Cohen
And how are you anticipating, Corey, what may happen? You've already seen it happen with, and Brian's reported on this often about AIPAC money coming through or money that supports bolstering the American Israelis alliance coming through, things that aren't now named apac because you all have been a part of making the APAC brand very toxic, especially among Democrats. How are you planning to kind of track that going forward?
- [46:52]
Krystal Ball
Well, we've already started, we've already built reporting tools that are helping us triangulate onto the various shell packs and pop up packs that they utilize. We are monitoring when we are able to detect trends that they are utilizing pass throughs. I know that Ryan has done a lot of reporting on both of those activities and we're continuing to refine and expand our reporting tools and growing our data team to be able to get more sophisticated. The truth is that we have to keep adapting because APAC is adapting their methods and the lobby is adapting their methods. They do require recognize that their brand has become toxic. There's a reason why that anytime they're spending on behalf of a candidate, their ads never mention anything about that candidate's position on US and Israel policy. They are always about some other issue that's not related. So you know, we are continuing to create tools and refine the tools that allow us to be able to trace that money and, and report the full picture accurately.
- [47:50]
Ben Rhodes
And I'm curious, the last question, how you draw the kind of distinction between just kind of random people who are donating to a candidate and coordinated activity. Last this week at Dropsite, Julian Andreoni and I reported on Adriano Espaillat. For instance, on June 4th he reported getting 69 contributions. I think 67 of them had been major. Either AIPAC or other pro Israel organization donors had given at least like $1,000. So we're not talking about somebody who got an email from an APAC linked group and gave $25 to support Whatever, who knows what the email said might have been something innocuous. We're talking minimum four figure contributions from each one of these people. And one of the guys, Bob Cohen, was the former president of AIPAC and had raised tens of millions of dollars to try to defeat the Iran nuclear deal. So we look at that, we're like, okay, we're going to call that highly coordinated pro Israel activity. Like it's just, it just obviously is. But how do you guys think through that? Because AIPAC will say, oh, now you're just coming at Jewish Americans who want to support a candidate and participate in the political process and you're stigmatizing that in an anti Semitic way.
- [49:05]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, of course we have heard that argument and that is nonsense on its face. I mean AIPAC themselves doesn't even believe that. You know, AIPAC brags all the time and all of the members of the Israel lobby brag all the time that their members are made up of people from every part of the ideological spectrum in every kind of identity. So it's silly that they knew that they make that argument. Tracking and reporting on the activity of the individual donors is definitely a lot harder, and that's one of the reasons why they've moved to that as a task tactic. I know that we lean very heavily on great investigative journalism like what's happening drop site, you know, with other outlets when we want to be able to detect that. Because one of the challenges is that these, these donors will, or this activity will happen in these kind of buffers of the reporting periods where it might. Might not show up on the disclosure until after an election is actually done. That happens a lot with the shell packs, for example. So, you know, it does get tricky, and we've got some work to do to figure out how to really refine the individual donor reporting part.
- [50:18]
Ben Rhodes
And just to be clear, like somebody like Maxine Dexter, who's an incumbent Democrat, you know, she. She got well over a million or $2 million in kind of APAC super PAC support when she ran in her Oregon race. But she has since said she regrets that the money is toxic. She supports block the bombs, you know, etc. So somebody like her, if she signs this pledge, she's. She's in the green.
- [50:42]
Krystal Ball
Absolutely. She's someone that I hope would sign the pledge. You know, we've seen, as the APAC brand has become increasingly toxic, we've seen members that have kind of stuck their finger in the wind and seen, okay, I see which way the direction is going now. And so I'm not taking APAC money anymore. Great. Okay, that's a nice step. But it's not enough. And that's what this pledge is designed to reflect. I certainly would love for Congresswoman Dexter to be one of the signers of this pledge. I think there are some others who have come forward and said that they're no longer taking APAC money that are probably less likely to agree with the finer points of the pledge. But we're open to anybody who's interested in signing it. We would love to have those conversations.
- [51:25]
Ben Rhodes
Well, Corey, thank you so much for joining us. And Congressman Khan, I really appreciate it.
- [51:28]
Krystal Ball
Thank you.
- [51:29]
Ryan Grim
Thank you.
- [51:30]
Brian Tyler Cohen
Well, that does it for us on today's edition of Breaking Points. We will be back Friday. Right, Ryan, Friday show. Friday show. Saga and Crystal are in tomorrow. BreakingPoints.com if you want to get a premium subscription. Thank you all so much for supporting the show.
- [51:44]
Ben Rhodes
It's not a premium subscription anymore. It's an environmental fee.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
It's an Environmental fee.
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Ryan Grim
Yes.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
What?
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Ben Rhodes
That's for the heads.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
I don't even know what you're doing there.
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Ben Rhodes
This is straight up Hormuz head.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
It's an environmental fee. I see what you're doing now.
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Ben Rhodes
Not at all.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
I needed to have it explained. I needed to have it explained.
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Ben Rhodes
Not at all. Not a premium charge. It's an environmental fee.
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Brian Tyler Cohen
Yeah, sounds good to me. We'll be collecting the convenience fees@breaking points.com and we'll see you on Friday.
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what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients@goodtokknowfacts.org no spin, no judgments. Just the facts straight from the experts. For more than 140 beverage ingredients, visit goodtonofacts.org this is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.