7/23/25: GOP Blocks Epstein Vote, Former Inmate Rips Epstein Coverup, PodSave Fires Back At Hunter

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar – Episode Summary (July 23, 2025)

Breaking Points hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti delve deep into the murky waters of political maneuvering surrounding the recent GOP blockage of the Jeffrey Epstein vote, uncovering alleged cover-ups, and the escalating feud between PodSave America and Hunter Biden. This episode offers a comprehensive analysis of these intertwined issues, providing listeners with critical insights and firsthand accounts that shed light on the complexities of power dynamics in modern politics.

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1. GOP Blocks Epstein Vote

The episode kicks off with a detailed examination of the Republican strategy to prevent a vote on the Epstein files before the August recess. House Speaker Mike Johnson's decision to adjourn the House proceedings early is scrutinized as a tactical move to sidestep the vote.

• Mike Johnson's Stance:

  • Timestamp [08:16]: "The House rules resolution sets a good standard and requires all credible evidence to be released. And that's exactly where the White House is." – Mike Johnson

• Thomas Massie's Accusations:

  • Timestamp [09:47]: "Speaker Johnson, why are you running cover for an underage sex trafficking ring and pretending this is a partisan issue? MAGA voted for this." – Thomas Massie

Krystal and Saagar highlight Massie’s confrontational approach, questioning the motivations behind Johnson's actions and the broader implications for GOP transparency and accountability.

2. Donald Trump's Distractions: Accusations of Obama's Treason

Shifting focus, the hosts discuss Donald Trump's recent attempts to divert attention from the Epstein controversy by launching allegations of high treason against former President Barack Obama.

• Trump's Accusations:
  • Timestamp [12:41]: "It's dirty. Is that illegal now? Is it an assault on the dignity of our democracy? Yes, it is." – Saagar Enjeti

Krystal and Saagar analyze how Trump's narrative aims to paint Obama and other Democratic figures as culpable in electoral interference and other malpractices, thereby rallying his base and muddying the waters around the Epstein case.

3. Democratic Autopsy: PodSave and Hunter Biden Feud

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to the escalating conflict between PodSave America hosts and Hunter Biden. Krystal and Saagar dissect Hunter Biden's criticisms of PodSave America, portraying it as a vendetta against left-leaning media outlets.

• Hunter Biden's Critique:

  • Timestamp [51:24]: "You were on the board of Burisma because of who your dad is and that is what people hate about Washington." – Hunter Biden

• PodSave America's Response:

  • Krystal and Saagar explore how this feud reflects broader tensions within the Democratic Party and its outreach strategies, questioning the authenticity and motivations behind Hunter Biden’s attacks.

4. Microsoft's Workers Refuse Israeli Tech Projects

The discussion transitions to a noteworthy development where Microsoft employees have informed their superiors of their intent to cease involvement in Israeli technology projects.

Krystal and Saagar delve into the implications of this employee protest, linking it to wider concerns about corporate responsibility and the ethical dimensions of technology partnerships in conflict zones.

5. Inmate Martin Gottesfeld on Epstein's Death and Prison Conditions

In a compelling segment, the hosts bring in Martin Gottesfeld, a journalist and former inmate at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), to shed light on the conditions surrounding Jeffrey Epstein's incarceration and subsequent death.

• Martin Gottesfeld's Insights:

  • Timestamp [33:15]: "The facility was already dilapidated. The staff were already out of control. Disaster was very clearly on the horizon." – Martin Gottesfeld

  • Timestamp [35:19]: "Anyone coming onto this tier has to cross this camera and be seen. There should be a camera just like that on the tier where Epstein's cell actually was. But we've not seen footage from that camera." – Martin Gottesfeld

Gottesfeld discusses the inconsistencies and lapses in MCC's monitoring systems, questioning the official narrative of Epstein's suicide and suggesting potential foul play or negligence. He emphasizes the dire conditions inmates faced, which could contribute to such tragic outcomes.

6. The Intersection of Power and Cover-ups

Krystal and Saagar synthesize the episode's discussions by highlighting the recurring theme of powerful entities manipulating narratives to obscure darker truths. Whether it's the GOP's obstruction of the Epstein vote, Trump's strategic distractions, or the internal conflicts within the Democratic Party, the hosts argue that there is a pervasive effort to control information and maintain power structures at the expense of transparency and justice.

Notable Quotes

• Ryan Grim on DOJ and Transparency:

  • Timestamp [02:14]: "This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else." – Ryan Grim

• Crystal Ball on Media's Role:

  • Timestamp [06:23]: "We're going to ask her. Or I say, hey, cool app. As far as I'm concerned. But you thought that that was going to be okay." – Crystal Ball

• Saagar Enjeti on Intelligence Community Assessments:

  • Timestamp [23:15]: "The new assessment was based on information that was known by those involved to be manufactured. That is the Steele dossier or deemed as not credible? Yes and no." – Saagar Enjeti

Conclusion

This episode of Breaking Points masterfully unpacks the intricate web of political strategies, media conflicts, and institutional failures that define the current landscape. Through incisive analysis and exclusive interviews, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti expose the underlying forces shaping public discourse and accountability. Listeners are left with a deeper understanding of the stakes involved in the Epstein saga and the broader implications for democratic integrity and media freedom.

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Key Takeaways:

• The GOP's strategic blockage of the Epstein vote reflects deeper concerns about transparency and accountability within the party.
• Donald Trump's allegations against Obama serve as a tactic to divert attention from pressing scandals.
• Internal conflicts within the Democratic Party, exemplified by the feud between PodSave America and Hunter Biden, highlight fractures that could influence the party's future direction.
• Martin Gottesfeld's firsthand account offers a critical perspective on the conditions and management of high-profile inmates, raising serious questions about the official accounts of Epstein's death.
• The episode underscores a persistent theme of power entities prioritizing control over truth, with significant ramifications for American democracy.

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For those seeking to understand the complexities of these political maneuvers and their broader societal impacts, this episode of Breaking Points provides an essential and enlightening narrative.

Transcript

[Ryan Grim]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Emily Jashinsky]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

The world of power, loyalty and luck.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm gonna make him an offer he.

[Sagar Enjeti]

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[Ryan Grim]

Apply hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are.

[Emily Jashinsky]

So excited about what that means for.

[Ryan Grim]

The future of this show.

[Sagar Enjeti]

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[Ryan Grim]

So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad, free and all. Put Together for you every morning in your inbox.

[Crystal Ball]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media.

[Ryan Grim]

And we hope to see [e-mail] Happy Wednesday. Welcome to Breaking Points with Ryan and Emily. That's amazing, right? Emily, by the way, Programming Note will be in the new media chair at the White House later today asking Carolyn Levitt something, something.

[Crystal Ball]

We don't want to give anything away.

[Ryan Grim]

I've got an idea. So my paperback came out yesterday. You should ask Caroline if she has read the Squad.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

And say, like, by the way, it came out in paperback yesterday. So if you've been waiting to get the cheaper version.

[Crystal Ball]

So this is a good idea for the question itself. I can say Amazon.com, paperback out today. Whatever, $19.99, however much it costs.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. If she wants to understand how AIPAC operates in Washington, this would be the book for her.

[Crystal Ball]

I think they are curious these days, let's put it that way.

[Ryan Grim]

They could learn.

[Crystal Ball]

Ryan, I have a gift for you.

[Ryan Grim]

What you got?

[Crystal Ball]

All right. So you were gone last week, so I couldn't give it to you, but look at that.

[Ryan Grim]

This is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

[Crystal Ball]

It's a Turtle Boy shirt.

[Ryan Grim]

Ride the turtle. Oh, from Turtle Boy.

[Crystal Ball]

That's from the Turtle Boy merch shop.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, I went to University of Maryland, and their slogan is Fear the Turtle.

[Crystal Ball]

That's right.

[Ryan Grim]

So there we go.

[Crystal Ball]

It works either way. You could be walking around the, like, Rehoboth.

[Ryan Grim]

We had a bunch of people angry about that interview.

[Crystal Ball]

Oh, I saw.

[Ryan Grim]

Because, I mean, he's kind of crazy.

[Crystal Ball]

He's a controversial man. Yes, he's a controversial man. Now you can rock his merch.

[Ryan Grim]

It's the craziness. And craziness is putting it lightly, perhaps that allows him to be so dogged in some of these cases. Does not mean I endorse everything the man has done.

[Crystal Ball]

No.

[Ryan Grim]

Or will do.

[Crystal Ball]

Nor should you have to endorse everything that he has done or will do in order to interview him on a really important case. And anyway, basically how this all happened is that I was on his website and I noticed he had a merch shop. And I was like, oh, wow, this is amazing.

[Ryan Grim]

Thank you for this.

[Crystal Ball]

That's pretty funny. There's something there.

[Ryan Grim]

Amazing. Anyway, thank you for that.

[Crystal Ball]

Oh, my pleasure.

[Ryan Grim]

Much, much appreciated.

[Crystal Ball]

Yes. Now to the news.

[Ryan Grim]

I came in to hawk merch, and instead I'm leaving with merch.

[Crystal Ball]

But it was an exchange.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, it was a trade.

[Crystal Ball]

I mean, there you go. This is. What more could you ask for out now in paperback. It's so light, you can take it to the beach.

[Ryan Grim]

You really can.

[Crystal Ball]

Everyone know that you're smart, erudite.

[Ryan Grim]

There's perfect, perfect stuff. Got it. All right, so we're going to be talking about the latest attempt by Donald Trump to distract from Jeffrey Epstein. This time he's accusing Obama of high treason. The man is off his game. He even said to the fake news media, you need to focus on this instead of the other thing.

[Crystal Ball]

He did say it out loud.

[Ryan Grim]

He's just saying it out loud. The guy has really lost his touch. We're gonna talk about the Democratic autopsy is being conducted among the Pod Save bros and Hunter Biden. They're working their stuff out. You're gonna enjoy this one. Microsoft workers told their bosses yesterday that they are no longer going to work on Israeli tech. Microsoft supplies, as Dropsite has reported in the past, a lot of the tech for their, their AI, Their. Their cloud computing, their war machine. And now their workers are standing up and saying, we're. We're not. We're not doing. We're not doing that. Not all workers at Microsoft, of course, but a substantial chunk of them. We'll talk about that. We'll also talk about the ongoing siege, the number of people that continue to die of starvation, as well as getting killed at aid distribution sites. I'm going to have a little look back at a piece about the 1990s when a certain prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu at the time. Yeah, he's been in office that long. Not continuously, but that long. Was alleged to have blackmailed Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky tapes.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

Turns out there's a lot to it. So you're gonna want to stick around for that.

[Crystal Ball]

Absolutely.

[Ryan Grim]

We're also going to have an inmate who served basically alongside Jeffrey Epstein. And when they removed Epstein's cellmate after he died, he went to Martin Gottesfeld's cell. So we'll talk to Martin Godesfeld about what he knows about that corrections center, what he heard from Epstein's cellmate. Because missing in the reporting in this controversy is the voices of the people who were actually in the building.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

Because there were plenty of people in there. So let's talk to some of them. And then the wife of the guy who made the Ice Block app is going to join us as well. She somehow thought that she wouldn't be fired by the Department of Justice for this.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, seemed unlikely.

[Ryan Grim]

We're going to ask her. Or I say, hey, cool app. As far as I'm concerned. But you thought that that was going to be okay.

[Crystal Ball]

Didn't seem like I would fly anyway.

[Ryan Grim]

Can't wait to hear from her.

[Crystal Ball]

A lot to get into. Let's start in the Oval Office yesterday, where Donald Trump, to the point Ryan just made, did kind of say the.

[Ryan Grim]

Quiet part aloud, which is, although let's start with Massey.

[Crystal Ball]

Right, with, with the Massey.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Crystal Ball]

Well, so basically here's what's happening.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Crystal Ball]

Let's break it down this way. There were efforts among Democrats, as we've covered here, to end among Thomas Massie, so Republican, couple other Republicans to get a vote done before August recess on the Epstein files. Then Donald Trump yesterday also waited on the future of the Epstein files. So we can start here with a two. This is Thomas Massie weighing in on.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, Mike Johnson, sorry, I'm totally throwing.

[Crystal Ball]

You off, but House Speaker Mike Johnson shut down the floor basically yesterday and said we are not, we are not going to take lessons on transparency from the Democrats who covered up for Joe Biden's health crisis. That was the line. Let's roll the clip.

[Ryan Grim]

The House rules resolution sets a good standard and requires all credible evidence to be released. And that's exactly where the White House is. There's no, as I've said many times over the last, as I've said many times, there's no daylight between the White House and the House. You have to allow the legislation to ripen and you also have to allow the administration the space to do what it is doing. The president has said clearly and he has now ordered his DOJ to do what it is we've all needed DOJ to do for years now, and that is to get everything released. So they're in the process of that. There's, there's no purpose for Congress to push an administration to do something that they're already doing. And so this is for political games. I'm not going to address anybody individually, but I'll tell you that some here are much more frustrating than others. There's a small, small, tiny handful, but one in who's giving me lots of consternation. I don't understand. I don't understand Thomas Massie's motivation. I really don't. I don't know how his mind works. I don't know what he's, what he's thinking. Thomas Massie could have brought his discharge petition anytime over the last four and a half years. Over the last four years, the Biden administration, he could have done that at any time. And now he's clamoring as if there's some sort of timeline on it. It's interesting to me that he chose the election of President Trump to bring this, to team up with the Democrats and bring this discharge petition. So do I have some concern about that? I do.

[Crystal Ball]

Okay. But the timeline is that Attorney General Pam Bondi closed the case a couple of weeks ago. That's basically why this has resurfaced. Ryan, you made this point about Thomas Massie while we were watching the clip, he posted a pretty hot tweet.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, we can add this in post. He responded, speaker Johnson, why are you running cover for an underage sex trafficking ring and pretending this is a partisan issue? MAGA voted for this. And in fact, Johnson's own post on X about this has a community note saying over half of the sponsors of HREZ581, which he is blocking, which he is shutting down the House so that there won't be a vote on it.

[Crystal Ball]

And this is Massikhana.

[Ryan Grim]

That's the Messi Connor bill. Over half of the co sponsors are Republicans. So the effort to paint this as like a Democratic thing kind of falls, falls flat in the face of that. And yes, to your point, the reason that there's movement now in the White House is because of the public pressure. And separately, if it's the case that they're already doing the thing, then it wouldn't be offensive to push them to just do it.

[Crystal Ball]

Well, yeah, absolutely. And again, the only reason that this has now become the news cycle every single day is because Pam Bondi came out and said no further disclosures are warranted in the case. And then Trump has doubled down and tripled down on that point. So let's actually get to this.

[Ryan Grim]

And then literally they're shutting down the House of Representatives early.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So that they don't have to vote on this.

[Crystal Ball]

It's incredible reading from playbook right now. Johnson is adjourning House business this afternoon. The last votes are scheduled for 3pm and canceling further action ahead of August recess in order to quash an effort to force a floor vote that would hasten the release of the Epstein files. Republicans want to get back to their districts because they think that's this is how they're spinning it. But also I think they truly believe this an important time for them to be able to go out and talk about the big beautiful bill and sell it in their districts because obviously it's not polled with great popularity since its passage. So they're really eager A, not to have to take their Epstein vote and B, to get out of town and talk to people. Now, I think some Republicans actually would like to take the vote so that they don't get. It's a talking point when they're back home during August recess. And I asked a bunch of House Republicans last week about this, and they told me, yeah, they do expect to hear from people in their district about it. So it's very clear that they know they're gonna get these questions.

[Ryan Grim]

And why not just vote? It's not as if. It's not as if the Senate's gonna pass it tomorrow.

[Crystal Ball]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

And so I don't even understand why Johnson even needs to go to the Met. Like, so he put up his own resolution that's pretty toothless.

[Crystal Ball]

Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

In exchange for this one. So say, like, don't vote on this one that has, like, actual teeth. Vote for this one instead, and then we won't vote on that one. Okay, but he did that. What's the difference, though? Because it doesn't have teeth. If it doesn't pass the Senate, it's.

[Crystal Ball]

A symbolic vote either way.

[Ryan Grim]

So what are you doing? Yeah, like, you can still be cynical.

[Crystal Ball]

And we know what they're doing. This is the first clip. Let's. Because Donald Trump, we do know. Clearly, this is a one. Let's roll. Trump yesterday in the White House, I.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Didn'T know that they were going to do it. I don't really follow that too much. It's. It's sort of a witch hunt. Just a continuation of the witch hunt. The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold. They tried to rig the election, then they got caught, and there should be very severe consequences for that. Barack Hussein Obama is the ringleader. Hillary Clinton was right there with him, and so was Sleepy Joe Biden, and so were the rest of them. Comey Clapper, the whole group. And they tried to rig an election, and they got caught. And then they did rig the election in 2020. And then, because I knew I won that election by a lot, I did it a third time, and I won in a landslide. Every swing state won the popular vote. Look, he's guilty. It's not a question. You know, I like to say, let's give it time. It's there. He's guil. They. This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election, and we have all of the documents. And from what Tulsi told me, she's got thousands of additional documents coming. So President Obama, it was his concept, his idea, but he also got it from crooked Hillary Clinton. Crooked is a three dollar bill. Now it looks like Adam Schiff really did a bad thing. They have them now. Let's see what happens. It's not up to me. It's not up to. I stay out of it purposely. But it's mortgage loan fraud. It's a big deal. He defrauded banks and insurance companies and the federal government.

[Crystal Ball]

Okay, so, Ryan, you may disagree with me on this. I think two things are true in this case. It's not just that two things can be true. I think two things are true, that the documents that are being released from Trump's intelligence community, so from Tulsi Gabbard and then John Ratcliffe a couple of weeks back, are important, consequential, significant, scandalous. And they are using it to distract very clearly from Trump's bungling and Bambondi's bungling, both of them, of the Epstein case, the political fallout. Because you see Trump put it that way, saying directly, you should be focused on this witch hunt against me, not the witch hunt towards me. Right now. On Epstein, he basically just.

[Ryan Grim]

He's calling Epstein a witch hunt.

[Crystal Ball]

Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

Like, bro.

[Crystal Ball]

Yes, he's saying that. Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

And so guy was much worse than a witch.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, that's for sure. But this is, the timing of the Gabbard document dump is very convenient for Donald Trump, obviously, because it sucks oxygen away from the Epstein story and also.

[Ryan Grim]

For Gabbard, who had been in the doghouse. And then yesterday at the White House, Trump says she's the, she's the best one in the room right now. Something like, you know, real pat on the head for Gabbard, you know, who's kind of now back in good graces and tell me if I'm so. Just for people that aren't following exactly what the revelations are here, essentially, and you correct me if I'm getting the narrative wrong here, essentially, throughout the 2016 election, the intelligence community, according to these documents, assessed that Russia was not actually trying to hack into election systems. That's actually contradicted by what reality winner leaked because the intelligence community believed that they tried to get into North Carolina and some other election systems with some, with these fishing expeditions that they found. They didn't. They didn't. They don't know what they were going to do when they're in there because, like, oftentimes these foreign actors or hackers will just get in and sometimes steal stuff just, just to hang out there in case they want to do something later. In any event, let's say Isee is saying they're not trying to change the votes or do anything like cyber hacking around the election.

[Crystal Ball]

Well, and we do have emails of them saying that, saying that was their belief at the time. That's sort of what Tulsi's releasing. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

And there's no evidence they did.

[Crystal Ball]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

There's that reality winner evidence that they tried.

[Crystal Ball]

And these documents are after the election.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Crystal Ball]

So this is December of. So Tulsa Gabbard on Friday dumped a bunch of documents and put them together sort of in this narrative framing to show how Barack Obama. This is the contention. Barack Obama directed the intelligence community to first enhance its interpretation of what happened between Russia and Trump.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. And so it's a December 9th meeting which includes Clapper, Brennan, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Loretta Lynch, Andrew McCabe and others, December 9, 2016, with Obama. Then they say there's an email to the IC leaders asking them to create a new assessment, quote, per the President's request. And that's from Clapper's executive assistant that details the, quote, tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election, unquote. Now, here's where what Democrats are doing is dirty. So they're acknowledging that there's no attempt to kind of hack the election.

[Crystal Ball]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

What they're doing is they're redefining what what hack means and what cyber means. Tools Moscow used and actions it took to influence the 2016 election. What they will eventually find is like a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads.

[Crystal Ball]

Memes.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah, and they will. And like attempts to like organize Black Lives Matter rallies that like three people.

[Crystal Ball]

Showed up for basically these ham fisted attempts. You could go back and read the 2017 Senate report, these hilariously ham fisted attempts to like stoke the anger of boomers over trans issues, BLM and all of that.

[Ryan Grim]

And so what Democrats would say if they had a legal defense here, they'd say those are cyber attempts.

[Crystal Ball]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

That's what they're. So they're changing.

[Crystal Ball]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

That is cyber.

[Crystal Ball]

Totally.

[Ryan Grim]

That is cyber.

[Crystal Ball]

Hundred percent.

[Ryan Grim]

But they're playing with your understanding of the word cyber.

[Crystal Ball]

Yep.

[Ryan Grim]

The problem for Trump here is that's dirty.

[Crystal Ball]

Yep.

[Ryan Grim]

But politics is dirty. Is that illegal now? Is it an assault on the dignity of our democracy? Yes, it is. Is it gross? Is it awful? Yes, it's all those things. It's also pretty standard politics. So that's my view at least now, I think. And I was critical of them the entire time because the other reason that they wanted to focus on Russia is not just to undermine Trump, but was to also undermine the burning wing of the Democratic Party and get in the way of an actual audit of why did we lose.

[Crystal Ball]

They were using some of the same language to talk about Bernie Sanders and actually Tulsi Gabbard at the time they.

[Ryan Grim]

Were saying Russia boosted Bernie and stuff like that.

[Crystal Ball]

And Tulsi. Yeah. And they were using this Tulsi vintage, this like wink wink nod nod language about cyber infrastructure. And they knew what people thought they meant by that.

[Ryan Grim]

Bernie honeymooned in the Soviet Union. They used to point out. Yes, which was true.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, totally true. Also weird. But anyway, they knew Burlington had a.

[Ryan Grim]

Sister city in the Soviet Union.

[Crystal Ball]

Still doesn't explain the honeymoon. But your honeymoon story is equally entertaining. So.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, Burning Man.

[Crystal Ball]

Anyway, so to your point, dirty, dirty stuff right now also absolutely being used as a shield to suck oxygen out of the Epstein story. And Donald Trump basically made that explicit yesterday by saying focus over here. Look away from that. Look at this. And that's the plan Right now.

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[Ryan Grim]

No purchase necessary VGW Group void where prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply to finish this Gabbard's document says after months of investigation in the matter, the facts reveal this new assessment was based on information that was known by those involved to be manufactured. That is the steel dossier or deemed as not credible? Yes and no. Who said it was not credible? There were some intel assessments that said that the steel dossier wasn't credible. But then there's lots of feverish lunatics in the IC who are like, no, we think there might be something here we're going to investigate. And that's what the IC does anyway.

[Crystal Ball]

So the new documents reveal that Obama directed this, right? So there's an email saying, per the president, I think it's from Clapper, Clapper's team. It says, per the president's request, we're basically coming up with a new intelligence report other than this one that downplays the confidence that we have that Russia influenced.

[Ryan Grim]

But your point is exactly right. You can weigh on your own how much, how important you think these documents are. But clearly they're an attempt to distract from what's going on with Epstein. And the problem, I think, for Republicans here is that, you know, I've spent the last almost decade watching Republicans organize most of their kind of subcultural politics around pedophilia and the idea that there are pedophiles everywhere and that there are these organized sex trafficking rings that are being operated by Democrats and Podesta and Clinton and, you know, the entire Q phenomenon is, you know, heavily organized around these sex trafficking rings.

[Crystal Ball]

And it was more maga than the GOP apparatus.

[Ryan Grim]

Right?

[Crystal Ball]

Absolutely.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Crystal Ball]

Subculture, which is extremely. Culture with Trump. Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

Right, Right. So this whole thing that MAGA used to get people worked up over the last seven, eight years, that there are these hidden sex trafficking rings run by elites, is not going to just be brushed aside because it turns out that Trump was heavily involved in it, and they're not going to look away just because there's some new Russiagate documents.

[Crystal Ball]

No.

[Ryan Grim]

It's pretty funny that we're gonna be using Russiagate. Both parties will use Russiagate as a distraction from other things for the rest of our lives.

[Crystal Ball]

But it's. You know, it's. Actually, I was thinking about this yesterday. It's so depressing because both stories speak fundamentally to the same thing, believe it or not, which is that. That in the shadows of Republican government, lowercase R, Republican government, democracy, however you want to describe it, are these very undemocratic, unaccountable powers operating in the shadows that you have no idea about until 10, 20, 30, 40 years later? We're still waiting on JFK documents right now because there's just no accountability in the intelligence community, and yet they're exerting so much control over information and policy and all of that. So in some way, they're the same story, like on that basic, fundamental level, which is really depressing. Let's get to this video to the point Ryan made about this not going away. Here is Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith getting asked by Casey Hunt about subpoena power. Would you ever use subpoena power to try to find out more information about Jeffrey Epstein?

[Ryan Grim]

Well, you may use subpoena powers at any point. That is not a common thing that I have utilized within the Ways and Means Committee. But if I felt like that it was a priority for Americans, then of course. But like I said, this has not been something that's been a driving force.

[Crystal Ball]

But you did use subpoena power with Hunter Biden.

[Ryan Grim]

Exactly. We have the authority to use it, but that is the only time that.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I have used it.

[Ryan Grim]

Epstein is not the priority of everyday American who's working 9 to 5 just.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Trying to put food on their table, clothes on their backs, and gasoline in their cars.

[Emily Jashinsky]

That is not their focus.

[Crystal Ball]

And I don't think their focus was Hunter Biden either. But this is another point where two things can be true. Hunter Biden, important story. Epstein, important story. Trying to put food on your table, important story. And people can care a lot more, and rightfully so, about putting food on their table, feeding their Families and creating.

[Ryan Grim]

A child sex rings.

[Crystal Ball]

You can care. Yeah. We do have room in our hearts and minds for all of these things. And certainly people had room for Hunter Biden when inflation was even worse than it is right now. So that's not a good excuse. It does show, to the point you were making, Ryan, how silly it is they are not just voting on this. And it seems as though they're not voting on it because of the president not wanting to continue giving an inch. An inch. An inch. And fearing that they'll eventually have to give up a mile and do even more disclosures from the Department of Justice.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. Yeah. Trump clearly told Johnson, don't vote on this.

[Crystal Ball]

Voting would make it all easier. But Trump doesn't care, even cynically. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So the other thing they're doing is bringing Ghislaine Maxwell out.

[Crystal Ball]

Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

So they're inviting her to testify. Tell us, like, hey, actually, are you and your dad Mossad agents? Mossad says you're not. So I don't know. So Ghislaine Maxwell's attorney, David Marcus, told cnn, quote, I can confirm that we are in discussions with the government and that Ghislaine will always testify truthfully. We are grateful to President Trump for his commitment to uncovering the truth in this case, unquote. So it is likely that we'll get to hear from Ghislaine if she makes it to the hearing. So that'll be now, like, okay, if she says she's not Mossad, do we then just wrap this up?

[Crystal Ball]

But that's the thing. Like, this story, it's actually really good for people in power, in a sense. Like, it's. It's constructed in such a way, or it exists in such a way that it's the sprawling network of different threads that you can keep pulling on to distract from never pulling on the big thread that unravels everything. And so you can say, okay, we're going to go talk to Ghislaine, and you can run out the clock by saying, we're pulling on this thread and then taking a really long time to pull it, and then you never actually have to deal with everything. So it's actually not the worst scandal in the world to have to deal with from purely public relations perspective, because it's so sprawling that you can say that you'll never exhaust new angles to say that you're looking into, basically. And it's so easy to run up the clock and delay. So, I mean, that's probably what the next three years of the Trump administration looks like yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So in order to talk more about what Epstein's life in prison was like and the end of his life was like, let's bring in Martin Gottesfeld, former inmate from MCC.

[Emily Jashinsky]

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[Martin Gottesfeld]

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[Sagar Enjeti]

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[Crystal Ball]

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[Ryan Grim]

Play for [e-mail] let's Chumba. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law. 21 + terms and conditions apply. So one thing that's missing from the coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is the voices of people who served in the Metropolitan Correctional center with him or near the time that he did, where he met his end. And so to try to rectify that, we're joined now by journalist, activist, and former MCC inmate Martin Gottesfeld. Marty, thank you so much for joining us.

[Sagar Enjeti]

No problem, Ryan. Thank you for having me.

[Ryan Grim]

So, to set the stage here, can you talk about the time that you served inside the MCC and how that relates to Jeffrey Epstein's time there?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Okay, so I was there from November 2016 to early February 2017. Epstein died there about two and a half years after I left. But at the time I arrived at mcc, Epstein had not yet been there. El Chapo had not yet been held there. And the facility was really kind of flying under the radar. People really weren't aware of it, even though that attorneys and prisoners had been active trying to reform the facility for a long time. The facility was already dilapidated. The staff were already out of control. Disaster was very clearly on the horizon. Anyone could see it. And at the time, I was a contributor for HuffPost. You were my editor there. And we published quite a bit about the facility before it rose to national prominence. And so we were really kind of like the early warning system that something was very likely to happen here.

[Ryan Grim]

All right, and so one of Epstein's. Tell us about your connection to one of Epstein's cellmates.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So Epstein's, I understand, was Epstein's first cellmate. Nick Tartaglione. I was in the shoe on G tier. So the shoe's got, like, different pawls. They're called tiers, where you can have cells.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And like, G tier in that shoe is like, the most elite. It's where the high profile guys tend to go. And so I was already on G tier when Tartaglion came in. Like, was arrested, fresh off the street, had never seen a jail cell from the inside before. Here's a cop. So he had seen lockup but never actually experienced it for himself. And then I understand that Nick was not Epstein's cellmate at the time of the death. I think that's important to understand here.

[Ryan Grim]

Right?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So what can you tell us about the way that the cameras work?

[Sagar Enjeti]

I can tell you a lot.

[Crystal Ball]

And we have this on a 5 by the way we can loop this, this is the video that Pam Bondi released. And Marty, you've certainly seen this by now. It's obviously, as Wired has said, spliced together, it's missing a second. And now people are actually saying we're in three seconds.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Three minutes.

[Crystal Ball]

Three minutes. Yeah. I'm sorry.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And they tried to explain away one minute as like a nightly systems reboot, but then there's apparently two other min I should add. I've not double checked the digital forensics on this myself. One thing, given my background, the government alleges I'm a hacker with Anonymous and that I single handedly orchestrated one of the largest cyber attacks the government had ever seen. So I just have to say I've not double checked the digital forensics on this. So I'm going off of what Wired wrote to my understanding. There's no meaningful contradiction. Like no one's come forward with an alternative theory or whatever. But I can't personally vouch for the digital forensics on the files. But I mean, that's a view from another tier. And so the tiers are stacked like one on top of another and they're in different arms, shooting off from the main area in the shoe. And you can see the officers station there from visible from that tier. But obviously there's no cell doors, right? And so this doesn't really make a lot of sense. The video is not particularly useful for anything. And in that shoe, just so you guys know, because this is something that's not been covered, there's a camera in every cell. And on G tier there's a cam, there's two cameras in every cell. And the problem is that guys cover them up, right? Like you're, you're trying to use the bathroom, there's a camera pointing at you, like what are you going to do? You cover the camera up, right? And so pretty much at any given time in the occupied cell in that shoe, the camera's covered. Now that's against policy. But the facility, I mean, what are they going to do? Send a team to every single cell every single day to uncover these cameras? Because the guys would just cover them back up again. You also though expect that they would have cameras in the hallway, that we would have a camera that's facing Epstein's cell door. Right. And there's no explanation given for why that tape is missing or, you know, what happened to that camera. And they're trying to say that the cameras weren't working. The DVR system had problems with the hard drives all this, okay. In the floor above that shoe is the 10 South Special Administrative Measures Unit. Okay. This is national security stuff. This is like where the 9, 11 guys were held. These are the guys who don't even get attorney client privilege. Even their attorney client meetings, their visits with their attorney are listened in on by doj. Right. This is the highest of high security. And they're saying that, you know, the floor right below it that someone could use to access the 10 south unit had no working cameras or the drives are bad. Epstein died a month, two months after El Chapo left. It strikes me as very unlikely the cameras would be allowed to get into that position, and very scary if in fact they were.

[Ryan Grim]

So what's your sense of knowing people who kind of come in and out of that place? What's your sense of whether or not he would have been in a state of mind to have given up on his defense? Like, you've seen other white collar criminals come and go. Because one argument is, this guy, he felt like his life was over, and so that's a reason why he would just take his life. You know, he had this high flying life, jets, mansion, partying, the elites, and now all of a sudden he's here. So it makes sense that he would just be like, you know what? I'm out of here. I cannot take this abrupt shift. What's your read on knowing other people who've gone through that situation first?

[Sagar Enjeti]

I obviously can't comment to his particular state of mind or his mental health. Right. I can say that, generally speaking, I have two problems with the narrative that he took his own life. The first is that any good attorney would have told him that he's got two things that are very important going for him. First, he's got the money to retain a vigorous defense team. Right. And this can really matter because I put this in my write up. You only need look as far as Sean P. Didi Combs, right, who just beat federal sex trafficking charges in the same courthouse brought by the same prosecutors who are going after Epstein.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

He had a big legal team. He did it. You know, if you read the media and the press, you would have thought he was done for. But, you know, he had the money for the lawyers and they squeaked it out. Right. So I don't really buy it. And you notice Sean, you know, Combs, he didn't hang, he didn't kill himself. It's called hanging it up in prison parlance. But he didn't do it. Right? Facing a very similar racket in the same courthouse they actually held him in a different, slightly different facility. But it's also, you know, very poor conditions. It's the ADX Max shoe in Brooklyn. I've also done time there. I've done time in the shoe where did he was and at the time where Epstein was. So, you know what I mean? Like, he didn't hang it up. And then as to. The second thing is that Epstein was in a position potentially to cut a deal either with the Trump administration or with some future administration. He had no shortage of people that he could have informed on. And there's actually a federal rule of criminal procedure, it's Rule 35B, right. Where the government can. The court can depart downward, can give a much lighter sentence. It can give a sentence lower than the statutory minimum. So even if he was facing, like, say, a statutory minimum of 10 years, the court could go below that statutory minimum if he had provided substantial assistance in prosecuting another individual. Right. And so the guys that you think of in prison as being desperate enough to take their own lives are generally the ones whose all their boys have figured them out. Everyone's ratted on them. They have no one left to sell out for a deal. That's the guy who's, in my opinion, the very large suicide risk. Here's the other thing, too. Epstein was a Wall street quant. And if you do any game theory study, you hear about the prisoner's dilemma, which is basically the question of, do you rat someone else out in jail? That's one of the core exercises in game theory. I'm sure Epstein was familiar with it. It would be very unlikely in my mind that he would not have heard of the prisoner's dilemma. And so I've got these problems with the narrative.

[Ryan Grim]

And from your understanding of the layout of the jail, does the footage that we have cover all the ways in and out, or would there have been other ways that people could move around?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Also, the footage doesn't even show the main entrance to the shoe. That camera does not even show the main entrance to the shoe. The main entrance to that shoe actually has written above it, or had written above it when I was there. America's strongest shoe. It says that right as you walk into that shoe. So if it showed the front door, that's what it would show. This is the footage from some ancillary tier that is. And again, it's built with this central region where you have a little law library cage and you have the officer station, and then there are hallways shooting off in different directions, and they're stacked One on top of the other. So you'll have, like, G tier above H tier.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Like J tier above I tier. Right. And they shoot off in all these different directions. The narration of the footage that I've seen shows that Epstein's tier was somewhere off way to the right of the footage that's been released. Right. And there should be another tier camera, like the camera that you're seeing here. Right. It's recording the people walking onto a tier, the entrance of which is below the camera. Right. So anyone coming onto this tier has to cross this camera and be seen. There should be a camera just like that on the tier where Epstein's cell actually was. But we've not seen footage from that camera.

[Crystal Ball]

And so are there other things, as you've thought about this for years now, about the facility that people don't know? Like, you wouldn't know if you were just sort of a member of the public that influence the way you see the allegation that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. Are there things going on there that make you see this story differently than if you've never stepped foot inside the shoe? People would see it, I think mostly.

[Sagar Enjeti]

The stuff that I've gone over, I mean, obviously, knowing the facility itself and having experienced the staff. And this is all public record. I published it back in 2016 and 2017 at HuffPost and Shadowproof, and we dropped an article at the Intercept, I think, in 2018 or 2019. Right. So, you know, it's all out there. But, you know, I sued over this facility. I filed in federal court because of the conditions there. So, yeah, I mean, it is. It is. I will say that it is a place where people can feel particularly desperate, especially in the winter or the summer, because you freeze in the winter and you boil in the summer in that shoe. There's no air conditioning. The heat is insufficient. You know, I had leaky water. There's cockroaches and rodents and everything in the shoe. You have to, like, put something under your. In the. In the gap, under your cell door. So stuff doesn't come in at night, you know, so that. I mean, I can see how someone could potentially get somewhat desperate. But again, you know, you have all these guys who are facing, like, frankly, worse situations who don't have the money for the attorneys, who have their friends fingering them, and. And they don't commit suicide. They don't die by suicide. About three or four dozen guys were on death row, sentenced to die for really heinous crimes. Right. On the day that the Biden Administration announced the commutation of their death sentences. Right. None of those guys had killed himself.

[Crystal Ball]

Can I ask also about the guards? You just mentioned that, and that's part of the story is that the guards just who were subsequently fired just werethey were distracted, they were asleep, they just missed what was happening. That also is an element that it seems insane to a layperson and maybe it is insane, but what have you made of that?

[Sagar Enjeti]

So when I was there, you had a couple of COs who were good, a whole mess that were lazy and some that were outright malicious. And that's pretty much the mix. Wherever you go in the Bureau of prisons in the U.S. federal, it's going to be that way in pretty much any facility. You know, certainly they're supposed to do half hour rounds in any shoe. So a shoe is a special housing unit and shu and it's pronounced like, you know, like footwear, like shoe. But there's certain rules in the shoe and they're supposed to be the same wherever you go in the federal prison system. Right. So they're supposed to do these half hour rounds. You know, we haven't seen camera footage that definitively answers one way or the other whether those rounds were done. But we're told that they were not done and that, you know, there had been this long period, you know, before anyone had gotten to them. I find that realistic from my time there, because you pay attention, you hear when the guards are coming on rounds. And they definitely did miss rounds more than once.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, I would think. Yeah, that part actually did square for me too. Just knowing people in the middle of the night, if you can get away with staying in your chair and closing your eyes and sleeping, you're probably gonna do it. So that part of me kind of did track. In the army, they call it pencil whipping when you're told to go make sure all of these Humvees have oil, sufficient amount of oil in it, and instead you don't do it and you just check off that you did it. Like that's actually pretty standard bureaucratic laziness.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I mean, again, you see it in the Bureau of Prisons everywhere. But you know, there were a couple of COs. There was one, his name was Ortiz, and he would make his rounds every half hour and you'd see it from the light because the light's off in the hallway at night, right. So you can see the flashlight like coming and going. And I was up late writing a lot. I took 500 pages of notes in that shoe because Rolling Stone had asked me to write down everything for a piece that they were working on about my case. So I have 500 pages of notes, date and time stamp about everything that happened in that shoe. And yeah, so there were a couple who were diligent. I'm not trying to throw everyone under the bus, but you know, for the most part lazy and some outright malicious.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Yes. If people want to learn more about I would encourage they go really Google Martin Gottesfeld and you can look up HuffPost or Intercept for his piece on the conditions at MCC and then also his story on serving alongside Chapo. That's a pretty interesting one that people can go find if they want to.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Well, for a minimum security guy. For a guy who is supposedly minimum security the whole time.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes indeed. Well Marty, thanks so much for joining us. Very much appreciate it.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Thank you for having me.

[Emily Jashinsky]

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[Martin Gottesfeld]

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[Crystal Ball]

The bravo worthy feud between Hunter Biden and the Pod Save America host rages on. And not surprisingly, here's Tommy Veder yesterday and actually John Lovett as well, reacting to some of Hunter Biden's comments about them on Andrew Callahan show just the other day. Let's roll the clip.

[Ryan Grim]

You were on the board of Burisma because of who your dad is and that is what people hate about Washington. And it was part of the problem. And like there's some other weird shit. Like he said he blames the debate on his the Biden's staff saying they gave him Ambien on his foreign trip. But like Biden got back from the G7 on June 14. The debate with June 27, a lot of ambient. If Ambien was the issue. Like I don't think it's ambient. It's age also it's like he was tired so they gave him Ambien. Also like just like allow me to rent one more second. Like his big beef is that Republicans stick together and Democrats are united. But he's obsessed with this show, obsessed with George Clooney me. They don't talk about Gaza until 2 hours and 50 minutes into the interview. I'm guessing that that was the bigger threat to party unity than a George Clooney op ed.

[Sagar Enjeti]

You know what I mean?

[Ryan Grim]

It's just this sense of entitlement that like from Biden, from his family, from the inner circle that he was like owed the presidency, owed a second term. It is just very fucking grating that Hunter Biden throughout Joe Biden's presidency was a terrible liability for husband him and put the addiction aside. It is because he was on Burisma, because he became an artist, because he was Part of a kind of, like, sleazy Washington that, as Tommy said, people hated you were a liability. You should be ashamed of the ways in which you made your father's political life worse. And like, the idea that we're gonna listen to you now, like, give me a fucking break. It's ridiculous.

[Crystal Ball]

So you may remember that Hunter Biden actually really was cooking Ryan when he it slammed the Pod Save America hosts for basically being guys holed up in multimillion dollar mansions in la. Yeah. In Beverly Hills. And then giving the Democratic Party advice based on their time in the Obama White house at least 10 years ago at this point, and saying, this is how the Democratic Party can recapture the hearts and minds of the American people. Hunter's kind of right. And they're kind of right.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, Hunter's definitely right. On the other hand, who is Hunter Biden to be talking?

[Crystal Ball]

It's incredible.

[Ryan Grim]

He goes on and on about all of these people who he says have insignificant life accomplishments, including James Carville and David Axelrod. By the way, if all you ever do in your life is get a president elected, you actually accomplished a pretty significant amount. But without looking inward and being like, oh, wait, I'm Hunter Biden. I was born on third base and I just got tagged out, like, standing off the bag. So, you know, while his brother was governor of Delaware and was possibly on his way to being president, I think if he had not gotten killed by the burn pits in Iraq. So anyway, let's hear a little bit more of Hunter Biden's griping, particularly about Clooney and some others. He's not a big fan of Clooney.

[Crystal Ball]

And this is not on Callahan's show. This is from. So it's actually sort of.

[Ryan Grim]

He's been making the rounds. Yes.

[Crystal Ball]

Well, he's done two podcast stops. The first one was his good friend Jamie Harrison's new podcast that is being pitched in all seriousness as like, a real effort to reconnect with the American people, to connect with the American people. Yeah. Weigel made that joke in his Semaphore exclusive, like, debuting the podcast. And. And it actually isn't like, you can tell Jaime Harrison thinks that's what this podcast is. And anyone who's funding it thinks that's what this podcast is. But Jaime Harrison didn't have any idea how to promote his newsy conversation with Hunter Biden. So nobody discovered what he said to Jamie Harrison until after he was going on that he had said anything interesting on Jamie Harrison.

[Ryan Grim]

He had all the good stuff.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah. Yeah. So here's Hunter Biden with Jamie Harrison on George Clooney.

[Sagar Enjeti]

The President of the United States didn't know who the actor was that had written him in. His staff, I don't know. 10, 5, 6, 4 letters, text, texting the staff over and over again saying.

[Ryan Grim]

He'S going to pull out, he's going.

[Sagar Enjeti]

To embarrass the administration, he's going to.

[Ryan Grim]

Embarrass the Democratic Party, he's going to.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Pull out of the biggest fundraiser because you disrespected his wife, because you don't agree with the policy as it relates to an arrest warrant for Netanyahu. Whether that's right or wrong, I don't give a shit. It that's good for the party. And I'm not saying he's not a good Democrat. I'm not saying that he's not smart. I'm not saying that he's not a brilliant actor. I'm not saying that he's not a good friend to the friends that he's friends to. But in that moment, no, he wasn't. And he didn't do the right thing. And to say something that is so patently untrue in order to justify what you did afterwards is cowardly, is weak.

[Crystal Ball]

He's also right that George Clooney was kind of cowardly. He wrote that New York Times op ed not until after Joe Biden had his debate crash and burn. Right.

[Ryan Grim]

When Clooney said it was pretty, like, it was pretty close, right?

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a couple weeks.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Crystal Ball]

But Clooney, and this is, I think, reported out in the Tapper Thompson book, people at that LA fundraiser were really apparently kind of shocked by Biden's state.

[Ryan Grim]

And if you remember, it was televised. Like, it was a huge. One of the biggest fundraisers ever. We covered it afterwards. That's when he. So there were. There's video footage of it where he, like, wanders off the stage and Obama has to, like, grab him. And that was one of the times that they called it a cheap fake.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So it wasn't just Clooney that. Now Clooney had the interaction where Biden's aide was like, sir, this is George Clooney, right? George who? What? George Clooney. And this one, Clooney is like, what? Now, what Hunter Biden is referring to there is that Amal Clooney is an advisor to the International Criminal Court. And Biden was threatening sanctions on anybody involved with the icc, which would mean that perhaps the Mall Clooney would be barred from the country and would have her, like, bank accounts frozen and couldn't do financial transactions. So Hunter's saying that Clooney actually had an axe to grind there, which is crazy.

[Crystal Ball]

I mean, that's like a story also.

[Ryan Grim]

It's like, Biden, what are you doing?

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

You're choosing the side of this war criminal who's going. Who's trying to cost you the election, and you're going to sanction Amal Clooney over this? Get a grip.

[Crystal Ball]

It's such a crazy set of circumstances that Hunter Biden is casually revealing on this podcast appearance.

[Ryan Grim]

But Ryan, that's also crystal flagged that he took credit for Leonard Peltier's commutation. I asked somebody who was involved with that, and they said it is a fact that that last minute commutation was done with the family. So that's a credible. We can confirm that. That's a credible claim, at least from Hunter Biden.

[Crystal Ball]

I mean, he went pretty deep with Callahan on Leonard Peltier. Like he pretty. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

And to overcome Biden's instinctive hostility to somebody like Peltier, who was convicted of killing two FBI agents, it must have taken somebody like Hunter to overcome that.

[Crystal Ball]

So I actually. Did you watch the whole Andrew Callahan interview? It was three hours long. It was. I think I actually really like it, to be honest, because his. I found his comments on narcotics and addiction to be really interesting.

[Ryan Grim]

He's a smart, charming guy.

[Crystal Ball]

He's very smart. He's obviously beyond messed up and in like, the most tragic ways, and some of which he's aware of, others of which he's not aware of at all. But I was thinking about yesterday, like, there's this part of him right now that' sthe jokes about him being the new Joe Rogan. It's funny because it's actually, he's kind of like the new Trump in the sense that Trump. The reason that people are making this joke about Hunter being the new Joe Rogan is because he comes out and laughably, of course, flames the Dem establishment and positions himself as a victim of elites. Him and his family is a victim of scheming elites who just couldn't wait to get rid of his dad, which is obviously not true. But he's flaming the political establishment. He's flaming elites in a way that Jaime Harrison sure as hell isn't going to do. None of these influencers, Harry Sisson sure as hell isn't going to do. That's why they got rid of David Hogg. And that's the thing that Hunter Biden is doing that Trump forced Republicans to do in 2015 and 16. He went out there, he wasn't scared to criticize Fox News. He wasn't like, ooh, I won't get on Fox News. Or ooh, Pod Save America will go after me if I say something mean about them. And Hunter Biden's kind of forcing Dems to reckon with the reality that people want to hear you flaming the establishment right now, and that's the best way to get traction.

[Ryan Grim]

I don't want it to take away from his art career. But Hunter should do a podcast, right? And with Hunter, there's so many pun names you can come up with for a podcast.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

But yeah, Hunter, I mean, the right should love him. He loves guns. He loves liberty, freedom.

[Crystal Ball]

I think the sad thing is he doesn't actually love guns.

[Ryan Grim]

Probably not anymore.

[Crystal Ball]

No. Maybe sober Hunter doesn't love guns as much as Addict Hunter.

[Ryan Grim]

But yeah, three hour conversations with Hunter.

[Crystal Ball]

And like whoever, just about Leonard Peltier. Like I'd listen to three hours from Hunter Biden on Leonard Peltier.

[Ryan Grim]

Get Netanyahu on there. Like with the Nelk boys.

[Crystal Ball]

That was wild.

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