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- [00:00]
Haley Hinkle
On kpfk 90.7 fm, los angeles, and
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Ralph Nader
online@kpfk.org
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Rob Weissman
this is campbell scott, and you're
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Ralph Nader
listening to kpfk 90.7 fm in los
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Rob Weissman
angeles, 98.7 fm in santa barbara, 93.7
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Ralph Nader
fm in san diego, and 99.5 fm
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Rob Weissman
in ridgecrest and china lake, also streaming
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Steve Scrovan
online@kpfk.org this is ben cohn, the ice cream guy, and you're listening to my
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Ralph Nader
hero, ralph nader, the ralph nader radio hour.
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Haley Hinkle
Stand up. Stand up.
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Ben Cohn
You've been sitting way too long.
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Steve Scrovan
Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co host David Feldman. Hello, David. Hello, Steve. And of course, as always, our producer, Hannah Feldman. Hello, Hannah.
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Haley Hinkle
Hello, Steve.
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Steve Scrovan
And it's not a Ralph Nader Radio Hour without the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
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Ralph Nader
Hello, everybody.
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Steve Scrovan
First up, we welcome back Haley Hinkle, who is policy counsel at Fairplay. Fairplay is an organization that works to enhance children's well being by eliminating the exploitive and harmful business practices of marketers and big tech. And Ms. Hinkle advocates for laws and regulations that protect children and teens autonomy and Safety. Online. On March 24, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million for harming children's mental health and safety, violating state law. The day after the verdict, Fairplay executive director Josh Golan said, we've known for years that META enables the sexual exploitation of children. Now that has been proven by a jury, end quote. We'll speak to Ms. Hinkle about whether this is enough to alter Big Tech's behavior. In the second half of the program, we are going to present to you some highlights from the symposium Ralph organized on impeaching Donald Trump. It was live streamed from Washington, D.C. last Wednesday, April 8 and featured a number of speakers regular listeners should be familiar with, including Bruce Fine, John Bonifaz, and Rob Weissman, and as well as a few you may not know but will be interested in hearing from, including CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling, the Cato Institute's Doug Bandau, and Jessica Denson, founder of the Removal Coalition. They make the case for impeachment based on Trump's violation of the declare war clause in the Constitution, his threat to disrupt democratic elections, and this administration's attempt at extortion and various other forms of corruption and fraud. As always, somewhere in the middle, we'll check in with our indispensable corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber. But first, a New Mexico jury ordered meta to pay $375 million for harming children's mental health and safety, violating state law. Will this make a difference? Haley Hinkle is policy counsel at Fairplay, where she advocates for laws and regulations that protect children and teens autonomy and safety online. Ms. Hinkle has also worked on issues at the intersection of government surveillance, technology and and civil liberties. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
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Haley Hinkle
Hayley Hinkle, thanks so much for having me back.
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Ralph Nader
Welcome back. Haley Hinkle. In case our listeners missed the two jury verdicts that are holding Meta and in one case also Google responsible for damaging teenagers with their aggressive marketing practices, summarize the case in Los Angeles and the case in New Mexico.
- [03:36]
Haley Hinkle
Absolutely. So last week, juries returned verdicts in two cases. The first in Los Angeles was the first of a series of test trials taking place in the Los Angeles county court system. It's a not quite a class action, but a complex litigation combining many cases brought by families in California against the social media companies. And the California state courts will be running a few trials so that four of the major social media platforms, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, and these families can try a few of these cases and see how juries respond. Last week there was a verdict in the first on behalf of a plaintiff named Kaylee, went by the initials of kgm. And the jury found indeed that the two defendants in that case, YouTube and Google and Meta with Instagram, were liable for harm to her. And we can get into the questions and what they were really looking at and what the jury was presented with. And then similarly, there was a verdict last week in a case brought by the state attorney general of New Mexico against Instagram and Meta for its treatment of children in the state of New Mexico on Instagram. And again, happy to talk about, you know, a number of issues, but the core of really both cases was about what the platforms know, what the big tech companies know about how their products are designed and affect children, and whether they could have easily seen that there was potential harm there and should have been warning people who were using or had their children using YouTube and Instagram.
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Ralph Nader
Well, these verdicts are long overdue because the Silicon Valley companies have been promising members of Congress at hearings for years now that they're working to make sure these youngsters are safe. But their marketing strategies and their emails are betraying them as treacherous corporations and what my sister Claire has called electronic child molesters. This is vicious stuff, listeners. They're exposing these youngsters to pornography, violence, gambling Just describe one horrible situation where a mother spoke on Fair plays website. Her 13 year old son Griffin, who was a good student and a good son, had a kind heart, but he was exposed to something called the pass out challenge on YouTube. Explain that.
- [06:21]
Haley Hinkle
Yes, one of our parent advocates, Annie, wrote following the verdicts about her son Griffin's experience, you know, as a happy, healthy young boy. But who online was exposed to what's called the choking challenge or the pass out challenge where children try to asphyxiate themselves to the point of passing out and then wake back up and video this to try to get likes and clicks and attention from their classmates. And unfortunately Griffin tried it while he was on a video call with a couple of his friends and it was fatal to him. And you know, it's not anything in most cases these kids are looking for at all. The algorithm just puts these things in their feeds. And these challenges unfortunately have taken the lives of a lot of children.
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Ralph Nader
And the daily extreme anxiety, depression, fear. There's never been a time when corporations have controlled more of the daily hours of youngsters. In history. They have managed to corral five to seven hours of addiction to the iPhone as the portal to their mischievous marketing. And as a result, they've separated these youngsters from their own family, from community and from nature. This is considered an addiction, which was the issue in both trials. And some critics have said no, they shouldn't have been subjected to a negative verdict that these companies are just exercising their free speech. And when I heard that, I said exercising free speech. First of all, they're not the government that can violate their first amendment rights unconstitutionally. But this speech is part of a marketing process to sell them junk food, junk drinks, violent toys, violent projects, violent cinema videos describe this massive, relentless, daily usurpation of parental discipline and control, breaking up families. Give us some description from your experience with your work at Fair Play.
- [08:27]
Haley Hinkle
Absolutely. I think we see what kids are facing when they're on these popular platforms. Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, just to name a few, is that they're all built with design features that have been developed using advanced psychological techniques, things like variable rewards. The algorithm is trained to give you a video or a post that might be particularly compelling to you as a user, just every so often to keep you scrolling to find the next exciting thing. Things like like counts and follower counts. Kids, as their brains are developing and their sense of belonging is developing, they are very sensitive to concepts of popularity. And so when they see their friends getting a lot of likes for Certain types of content that's creating a lot of motivation to be online and be posting. All of their activity is generating data that's then used to refine what they're targeted with, target them with ads, and then also further test features that will extend their time online. And. And I think we saw a lot of that in the discovery where these cases and other lawsuits that are currently being brought against the companies, that they have a lot of internal research where they're very specific with their features and also their safety features, they test them to make sure safety features aren't too effective, they don't reduce too much screen time. And this is completely overwhelming for young brains, and it's completely overwhelming for families that are trying to make the choice between protecting their children and isolating them from the virtual spaces where all of their friends and classmates are gathering. And so it's not straightforward. And in many cases, the parental controls or settings that may give a family some semblance of control, they are not usually very effective. They're also buried to make it hard for parents to find them. And so it's really a perfect storm where these mega corporations are pulling all the strings. And it's exactly as you say, to really capitalize on time at the expense of other really healthy and important activities with family and outside and in nature.
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Ralph Nader
Well, the growing confrontation between big business and conservative and liberal parents is more than on the horizon with this litigation a few days ago in Los Angeles and New Mexico, and there are apparently tens of thousands of cases that are being filed under class actions, many of them consolidated from around the country in California courts. Now the big corporate law firms are licking their retainer chops at all the big fees they're going to get to engage in delay obfuscation, endless motions, endless appellate appeals in the state and federal courts. What do you see there? Are they going to succeed in wearing down the plaintiffs lawyers and their families?
- [11:30]
Haley Hinkle
Yeah, I think that's a great question. You know, I think there are a few things happening at once. One is that we are seeing the families, state attorneys general, and the school districts really break through some of Big Tech's favorite tactics for preventing these people from having their day in court. They're getting past, you know, the affirmative defense of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. We're seeing judges acknowledge that just because some of what's at issue here are posts that are words of third parties does not mean that the companies aren't making business decisions that can and should be presented to a jury as potentially negligent and harmful. So we've gotten past some of those big roadblocks. These cases are moving forward. But it's true that large litigations take a lot of time. Meta has already promised there will inevitably be appeals. It takes a lot of time for these things to make their way through the courts. I think if juries continue to make such resounding decisions on behalf of families, that that's maybe going to motivate these companies to try to find ways to avoid further jury trials and to settle. But all of this raises the fact that as these things continue, as these processes continue, and they're so important, we can't wait for lawmakers to do their part to also step in and act and try to get some strong rules of the road in place to fill the void that has, you know, created this situation.
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Ralph Nader
Let's examine this unique move by the New Mexico attorney general. It was quite impressive. Explain the $375 million verdict for what kind of damages and who's going to get this money, because other state attorney generals are looking into this type of litigation, and that's another front that's going to be difficult for the Silicon Valley child molesters to overcome. State attorney generals backed by conservative and liberal voters, I might add.
- [13:33]
Haley Hinkle
Yeah, absolutely. So what we've seen in New Mexico is the attorney general brought claims under state consumer protection law. Some of those laws have just baseline statutory damages thresholds. I believe in this case, it was $10,000 per violation. And the attorney general did an estimate on the number of teenagers that are on Instagram in the state and then presented to the jury that if, you know, you want to multiply those numbers, you could actually get quite an astronomical. I believe it was something like a $1.6 billion number, depending on how the jury decided to do the math. In this case, what they came up with was $375 million. And we're going to see a second part of this particular case. The New Mexico court will be doing a bench trial to look at some punitive damages and injunctive relief issues. So there's more yet to come. But, yeah, there's a lot of great opportunity here for states that have, you know, these really basic and fantastic consumer protection authorities to take those baseline statutory damages. And for platforms that have so many users in each state, say, okay, look, then this is where we're at. This is what you owe us. I unfortunately can't quite speak to. What I don't know yet is how the attorney general, what will happen with that $375 million, I don't quite know yet. I have a note into some of the folks on the legal team there. So I can't speak to kind of how what the state will then do with that money or the punitive damages money, but that's been the overall approach.
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Ralph Nader
You know, usually when corporations are thrown against the tort law wall, so to speak, and they see the writing on the wall of huge damages to their reputation, to their stock value and the stock market, they go for immunity. They try to get bills in state legislatures or in Congress to get rid of these cases through immunity, the way they did with the section 230 in the Communications Act. But I think it's beyond that. I think they've lost that momentum. I think the swell of conservative and liberal opinion to protect their children from these raptors is way beyond any possibility that lawmakers in state legislatures would ever dare vote them immunity. So now the scene shifts to Congress and as you've written, there is this Kids Online Safety act sponsored by Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut and Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, which passed overwhelmingly two years ago in the Senate with Republican Democrat support. And then Speaker Johnson blocked it from a vote in the House because he knew he would lose overwhelmingly. And then it seems like Blumenthal and Blackburn just stopped pushing for it in some way. Is it being revised and what's the chances of it passing before we get into what it actually does?
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Haley Hinkle
Yeah, no, they have absolutely brought back the Kids Online Safety act for this session of Congress. We actually have 76 Senate Co sponsors on the bill again this session. The House has also brought it back up. They've made some changes. Their version is not as strong as what's in the Senate and what passed a couple of years ago with 91 senators voting in favor. But the House has been working through its process and The Senate has 76 co sponsors and we're really urging them to hold a markup so that it keeps advancing in that chamber as well. So, you know, the pieces are there in place for Congress to take action. And these verdicts really highlight the need that it's more than time and these need to keep advancing through the process.
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Ralph Nader
And those are veto proof numbers you're talking about. Now, what does the Kids Online Safety act do? It's been criticized for not having adequate enforcement mechanisms. Explain to our listeners.
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Haley Hinkle
Yes, so the Kids Online Safety act is really a safety by design approach to online platforms, in particular social media and gaming platforms that are used by children and teenagers. And it establishes a duty of care that the tech companies must consider when they are designing the products that kids and teens are using. And that duty of care really points them to a list of specific harms, things like the promotion of illegal substances, suicidality and eating disorder issues, compulsive use, just the drive for extensive time online. And within that list, then it's really trying to get at what we've seen come out in the discovery of the lawsuits, the internal decisions about do we turn on this feature for kids or not? And when they see that it exacerbates, you know, exposure to dangerous substances, dangerous people, pushes them to spend more time online, the company needs to make the decision that's actually healthier and safer for children. So that's really the core of the bill. There are also some built in safeguards and parental tools, and within those safeguards, a specification that everything needs to be set to the most protective setting by default. Families are tired of going through a maze of menu options and then having to reset them every time the app updates. Really just trying to get to safety upstream from a child seeing or experiencing something that is harmful on their screen. And that's really, there's sort of a data privacy companion to that in the update to the Children's Online Privacy Protection act. And that gets at. At more data privacy as well. And those two pieces really go hand in hand, we think, to strike at the heart of tech's business model and force them to design for something other than keeping kids eyeballs.
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Ralph Nader
Does it give victims or next of kin a independent civil action right to sue the companies under the act or only the federal government can sue? And what department is the bill going to be assigned to?
- [19:50]
Haley Hinkle
Yes, great question. So the bill does not have a private right of action for victims or next of kin and families. It's enforced by the Federal Trade Commission and the state attorneys general. The entire bill is. It would be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, and then the duty of care is exclusive to the Federal Trade Commission, and the other components of the bill would be enforceable by state attorneys general as well.
- [20:15]
Ralph Nader
So it's both dual enforcement at the federal and state level, which is an encouraging part of the legislation. We're talking with Haley Hinkle, the policy counsel for Fair Play. Tell us what Fair Play is all about.
- [20:30]
Haley Hinkle
Absolutely. Fair Play is an organization really dedicated to addressing big tech's business model and marketing and the excessive screen time that it encourages. We have been around for over 25 years, really focused on our original mission, ending advertising to children. We are completely free from corporate funding or influence and really dedicated to addressing the ways in which the business environment has led to the design of products that are just so at odds with kids health and well being.
- [21:04]
Ralph Nader
And what's the website? Say it twice slowly that people can connect with Fair Play, which is out of Boston, Massachusetts.
- [21:12]
Haley Hinkle
Absolutely, yes. You can find us online at fairplayforkids.org so we're at fairplayforkids.org online and you can find us as Fairplay on social media as well to see updates and posts from us about these issues and all of the other many things that are happening in the field as families are really pushing back against big tech and its encroachment on our children.
- [21:38]
Steve Scrovan
Let's go to Steve Haley, say Mark Zuckerberg calls you and says Haley, I want to hire you away from Fair Play and I'm going to give you a lot of money to be our safety ombudsman. What would you do specifically? What are the protections that you would employ? Like for instance, what are the seat belts and airbags that you would insist on Meta having?
- [22:00]
Haley Hinkle
Fair question. Not the likeliest scenario I have to admit for myself, but if I were given the opportunity to just immediately implement some changes, I think, you know, a few design and data privacy things come to mind. Immediately ending targeted advertising to children and the sale of their data to third parties would be one of the very first on the data side to reduce the incentives to keep the kids online longer, make the sort of monetary value of their data fall away. I think then out of that you see a lot better decision making at a company like Meta. If that happens, getting rid of the personalized recommendation algorithms, using that data to push things into the feed, moving towards something like the way these platforms started, a chronological set of posts based on the friends that a child has connected with. Eliminating the opportunity for unknown adults to try to add children on Meta's products, whether that's Facebook or Instagram. And getting rid of the like and follower counts and other sort of numbers, friend counts, numbers that are really so potent to kids and drive so much sort of social anxiety. Just eliminating those, that's something that Meta piloted and decided not to do for kids, but they saw it help significantly. And I and the last one off the top of my head would also be to eliminate filters of any kind that imitate any plastic surgery effects or anything of that nature. Something else Meta considered doing, taking those away for kids and decided not to, but would absolutely implement that as well.
- [23:37]
Ralph Nader
Let's go to David what do you
- [23:40]
Steve Scrovan
say to these phony libertarians in the
- [23:43]
Oliver Hall
financial thrall of big business when they
- [23:47]
Steve Scrovan
say, what about parental responsibility? Why do we need legislation you can't legislate parental responsibility?
- [23:56]
Haley Hinkle
A couple of things. One, that families across the country are very loudly asking for legislators to step in and implement these safeguards on their behalf. This isn't being suggested over the heads of families. It is very much in line with what we see parents all across the country asking for in terms of common sense protections. The other is just that this is not currently a fair matchup. You have massive corporations that have a ton of resources and are using advanced neuroscience concepts and troves of data to tweak their features. And you've got, on the other side of that, parents who are trying to navigate safety menus that are designed to be hard to use. And so this really is about leveling the playing field and setting defaults that can give families peace of mind about just protecting our children from the jump.
- [24:46]
Ralph Nader
Let's go to Hannah Haley.
- [24:48]
Haley Hinkle
If we look at the landscape of lawsuits against tech companies like Meta and Google, how does the recent judgment differ from other recent lawsuits? Honestly, this judgment is historic in that it's really the first of its kind in the United States in terms of holding the company's responsible for their conduct in la as to, you know, an individual family and individual girl, and in New Mexico, on behalf of all of the state's teenagers in New Mexico. And so these are really the first. And it's significant that both juries found in favor of the plaintiffs in both cases. And we're eager to see what happens. There are already other trials set for this year, eager to see what else other juries have to say about this evidence.
- [25:41]
Ralph Nader
We've been speaking with Haley Hinkle, Policy Council for Fair Play, a nonprofit citizen group over many years trying to deal with the horrendous intervention in human autonomy, including children and parents. From the Silicon Valley marketeers, one last time, the website.
- [26:02]
Haley Hinkle
Yes, you can find us@fairplayforkids.org and what
- [26:06]
Ralph Nader
do you have on that website that's useful to civic action?
- [26:10]
Haley Hinkle
Absolutely, yes. You can go to our website to find calls to action, to contact elected officials, find information about work that Fairplay and our partner organizations are doing and how you can join our campaigns both to pass new laws and take action within your states and communities. And you'll also find our work doing research and submitting complaints to regulators and lawmakers trying to elevate some of these practices and get action from our country's leaders under the existing laws that we have while we work to pass new ones.
- [26:47]
Ralph Nader
Thank you, Haley Hinkle, the pride of Indiana University Law School.
- [26:52]
Haley Hinkle
Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be with you always.
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Steve Scrovan
We've been speaking with Haley Hinkle. We will link to her work@ralphnaderradiohour.com we're going to take a short break. When we come back. For those of you who missed the symposium on impeachment last Wednesday, we have put together a fast paced highlight package. Now it's time for our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber. Meet you Back here in 60 seconds
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Russell Mokhyber
from the National Press Building in Washington, D.C. this is your corporate crime reporter Morning minute for Friday, April 10th, 2026. I'm Russell Mulcaiber. Ben Cohen, co founder of Ben and Jerry's the and founder of the up in Arms campaign, joined national security experts, scientists and advocates on the National Mall last week to unveil a satirical monument criticizing Donald Trump's proposed Golden Dome missile defense system, warning it would be ineffective, exorbitantly expensive and dangerously destabilizing. The installation features a statue of Trump holding a hole ridden golden dome like an umbrella as water streams from modeled ICBMs overhead, symbolizing a defense system that collapses under real world conditions. Our country is underwater, cohen said. We are drowning in debt and wasting another $4 trillion on a holy dome ain't going to help. If we don't stop this boondoggle, we're sunk. For the corporate crime reporter, I'm Russell Mokiver.
- [28:19]
Steve Scrovan
Thank you, Russell. With most aspects of our civil life, Ralph Nader has been ahead of the curve. In that spirit, he has been pushing for impeaching Donald Trump long before just about anyone else. As Trump openly tweets about committing war crimes, a lot of others are beginning to catch up. Last Wednesday, Ralph, along with a number of other organizations put together a symposium to make the case for impeachment. We've culled a number of highlights from that four hour presentation for you right here. So let's begin with a portion of Ralph's opening remarks.
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Ralph Nader
The importance of this gathering is to have legs to bring together stalwarts, leaders in the anti impeachment drive from around the country, people who are steeped in the reasons why our founders put the ultimate power of discharge of the presidency in the hands of Congress, 535 Senators and Representatives now and to impeach in the House, convict in the Senate and remove the president without any Judicial review. I see this gathering enabled by the First Amendment rights to speech, petition and assembly to further intensify publicly committed Americans around the country. Bipartisan. They all have a stake in saving the republic and the Constitution for which it stands from the predatory fascist hands of Donald J. Trump and the people he's brought in to dismantle that part of the federal government that serves the people and intensify the privileges and immunities of the corporations that constitute the corporate state.
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Steve Scrovan
The symposium opened with a panel discussing President Trump's usurpation of the congressional war power conferred by Article 1 of the Constitution, exemplified by his gratuitous, ongoing criminal war of aggression on Iran. We begin with former Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
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Alan Morrison
We're in a moment right now where we have to decide who we are as a people, not who the President is. We already have an estimation of that. The question is who we are, because with few exceptions, almost each and every statement the President has made in the last month has been an impeachable offense. He is a, you know, a walking, talking impeachment machine, and there's never been anything like this.
- [30:53]
Steve Scrovan
That was Dennis Kucinich now proving that this effort to impeach is not just coming from the left. The symposium featured Doug Bandao, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties. This is a portion of what he had to say.
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Doug Bandao
But the real issue, of course, for this forum is, is the war legal? Is it constitutional? Because if it is not, then we have a very real problem with the President of the United States. So the question, when can presidents go to war? Well, one thing that should be obvious to us is it seems no president likes to have limits placed on him or her. You know, presidents routinely of both parties assert they don't have to go to Congress. Sometimes they act as if they're doing a favor by being willing to allow Congress to say something on the issue. But, of course, that's not the way the Constitution reads. The basic principle is that despite what presidents do and desire, this is an issue that is up to Congress. Now, American history reflects a lot of presidential, if not war making, certainly use of military. Now, many of those are kind of episodic. They are limited. And some of them, you can argue in different ways, were authorized by Congress. The authorization of military force, it is not a declaration. There are differences, but at least you do get a presidential. You get a vote, you know, by Congress. Nevertheless, there's no change in the Constitution. If presidents violated. This is not an excuse to allow other presidents to violate it. This is something where a president, duly elected and inaugurated takes an oath to support the Constitution. They don't say, and I don't have to enforce the parts that other presidents didn't like to enforce. That's not the way we view it. When we elect a president, Congress needs to act. What we see today with a president who is, shall we say, at very least in my view, disturbed, and one can think, think of other words to use as well, emphasizes the absolute importance of Congress taking on this power and looking for the future. Number one, Congress must use its power of the purse. It needs to limit what the president does. It needs to vote disapproval of the current military action. And it also needs to be prepared to impeach a president who has acted illegally and unconstitutionally.
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Steve Scrovan
Next up on the topic of violation of the declare war clause is CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling.
- [33:24]
Ben Cohn
Just through my history with the Iran task force at CIA and what's going on with currently with Iran, I keep being reminded, and I'm not trying to make light of the situation at all, I keep being reminded of Captain Barbossa's quote when he said that, you know, the code is more like what you'd call guidelines than real rules. And that seems to be what's been happening, I think, with the Constitution. I felt that that was the case when I worked at the CIA, like we knew the rules. And I also worked at the Office of General Counsel in the CIA. We knew the rules, but they were loose guidelines. And we wanted to make sure one. The first priority was not getting caught breaking those rules. And if the rule was broken and if there were questions, to make sure to wave the national security flag to stop any of those questions from going forward. Even the courts won't tread upon that water with regard to questioning operations. But when it comes to Iran, yes, true. It's been decades of the US interfering with Iran. When I joined the CIA, I mean, of course right now it's 47 years since 1979, the revolution. When I joined the CIA, I was only there within a short window of that time, but I could tell immediately when I was with the Iran Task Force and the Counter Proliferation Division as well, that this has been an ongoing operation, not for peace, but for in Iran, but regime change in Iran to justify war. And I was struck by years, how many years after 1979, that anger, that drive for revenge was still there at the CIA and it was still just burning and waiting for the right opportunity to be exploded to get its revenge back upon, you know, how dare Iran kick the US out, you know, kick out our leader that we put in place. So, you know, it was 47 years, this operation. And when it came to intelligence, when I joined the CIA, and I'm sure as many others joining the CIA to help defend this country, protect our national interests, to protect, you know, the national defense. However, with the Iran task force, were we there, I got more of the impression that we're not exactly gathering intelligence, but creating intelligence to justify war. I was involved with Operation Merlin, which was designed to plant. Failed to thwart the Iranian nuclear program. I quickly found out that it was more something that was dangerous enough to accelerate, if they even had a program. My choice to speak up about that landed me in a different turn in life. But I certainly wondered after the fact and during. It's like, is this actually something designed to stop Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, or is it something designed to continue the rhetoric, to justify the rhetoric, to essentially plant evidence enough to say, okay, here's our evidence. We're going to go to war. We got the same theater from Iraq going on. It's like, oh, the justification for war. And I was thinking about. I've been thinking about all of this, of course, from the Iran standpoint, like when I. My viewpoint when I was there is that Iran neither had the capability nor the desire to attack the U.S. where is the imminence here? I did not see, feel or was operating on the fact of any sort of imminence with regard to Iran attacking this country yet above our area. It's like intelligence more it was being gathered, more so for political purposes. It wasn't defense of the country. So this is the political line that we have, and we want you to either have disinformation about Iran's nuclear program or outright fabricate that information in order to continue the rhetoric. We've had to keep up that Iran is a bad guy for 47 years. And within that, of course, they become a nuclear, nuclear power. But it's all deception. It's all part of the deception to keep them as the enemy. Someone may think I'm speaking rather hypocritically because, hey, I was with the Iran task force, I was with the evil Temple of doom, CIA sort of thing. But no, I had a conscience and a lot of people have consciences. And I think it was really difficult for me to see the rule of law being treated like guidelines again. Working at the Office of General Counsel, absolutely. Always knew the Constitution. It was there, it was really known, it was acknowledged. But acknowledged as something that might get in the way of operations, especially operations coming from on high to continue the rhetoric on Iran, continue vilifying Iran to the point where there's going to be justification for an attack. And how many other administrations have said, well, Iran, nuclear weapons, we, you know, they're a threat to the world, an imminent threat to US Interest. However, that's all part of the deception. That's been a part of the deception. Iran has been hampered by how many years of backbreaking sanctions upon its people. And I had always thought, well, with the uprisings in Iran, maybe there will be regime change without our meddling, maybe a sort of natural regime change that certainly happened in 1979, it could happen again for the betterment of the people in Iran. Yet the US has meddled within Iran and now we're bombing Iran. There's a ceasefire. But I have to wonder, from an intelligence standpoint and from the history of what I've seen, is this another ploy while he's gathering the troops ready for another attack, just to put them in a false sense of security? I think those sort of things have to be considered. And I think also as he's going to have to find more reason to justify these, this, this blatant aggression against another country, he's going to have to start coming up with more of more concrete reasons as to why our military have been bombing Iran. So do not be surprised, and I have no idea, I've been outside of the CIA for quite some time. But do not be surprised if he comes back to more of the. Just trying to find justification or presenting justification for that Iran was imminently developing nuclear weapons. Don't trust any of it. Do not trust any of it. I tried to bring up this situation before with, with Congress, you know, the dangers, the, the illegality of such measures. I won't go into what happened after that. But what it comes down to, I think, is if the rules, if the Constitution is just a guideline, then the only check on real power isn't the law anymore. What happens is the check on power becomes the conscience of those people in the room. At one time I was in that room, I tried to stand up, I tried to say what's going on here. But what about the conscious of the people in the room with Trump? I'm wondering, do they have one? Are they human? But we got, you know, there's this wonderful legal structure and history that we have in this country, but it's being completely ignored. It's being treated like a guideline this isn't a country of guidelines. This is a country of law, a country of the rule of law. This administration has shown that whatever his purposes are, his goals are, are more important for this country than the laws of this country. I take exception to that. I've taken exception to that and other moves that this administration has done. But this is the ultimate. This is that 47 years of operations against Iran reaching its climax and without any sort of congressional oversight, without any sort of real acknowledgement of the law that should have prevented it. So, and he's not even bothering so much with the imminence of nuclear weapons in Iran. He just went ahead and pulled the trigger. I hate to use that analogy, but that's exactly what he has done. And for someone who used to work in the intelligence community and focused on Iran first and foremost, the regime is not. I by no means support that regime. Absolutely not. Again, I was saying there may be more of a possibility of natural regime change for the betterment of the people without are meddling. So it's, it kind of hurt when I saw that, you know, I was a part of the machine that developed and has essentially been destroying a nation. And you have a president. And I never thought I'd ever hear a member of Congress or any politician, let alone the president, say that an entire civilization is going to die. So I wonder at what point will members of Congress say, okay, enough of this guideline stuff, we need to follow the law. And just to add a little perspective on all this, and I hope I've kind of given the ground level view of what has been happening and the structure and everything, and I just hope that there is some change. We need change.
- [44:17]
Steve Scrovan
The second panel of the day dealt with the credible fear that President Trump will obstruct, interfere with or outright cancel the 2026 midterm elections unless impeached and removed from office. For a perspective on that, we turn to Oliver hall, the founder, executive director and general counsel for the center for Competitive Democracy.
- [44:37]
Oliver Hall
Is there a credible threat that Trump will unconstitutionally interfere with the 2026 elections? Of course there is. He said he might do it. We have reason to believe he has a specific plan to do it, and we know he's tried to do it before. So what to do now? The 2026 elections are about six months away. Congress needs to act immediately to reclaim its authority over the regulation of elections. Congress is now on notice that Donald Trump has a specific plan, or at least is reported to have a specific plan to nationalize the 2026 elections. Congress must take action to stop that. Obviously, it needs to investigate immediately. The facts need to come out. And once the facts are exposed, that can also have a prophylactic force against the unlawful actions that Donald Trump is reportedly currently contemplating. And then, of course, to bring it back to the theme of the day, if the evidence shows that Donald Trump has this plan to unconstitutionally nationalize the 2026 elections, he should absolutely be impeached.
- [46:02]
Steve Scrovan
The third panel dealt with President Trump's industrial scale bribery and extortion, exemplified by auctioning pardons, demanding free legal services to escape government retaliation, and conferring government favors or benefits in exchange for donations to Mr. Trump's sprawling business empire or pet projects like the White House Ballroom. We begin with Alan Morrison, former Associate Dean for Public Interest and Public Service and professor of Civil Procedure and Constitutional Law at George Washington law.
- [46:32]
Alan Morrison
Article 2, Section 4 lists impeachable offenses, only two of them. The first is treason. The second is bribery. I want to talk today about the first cousin of bribery, which is extortion. 18 USC 1951 defines extortion. Let me read it to you. The term extortion means the obtaining of property from another with his consent, induced by the wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence or fear, or under color of law. It is the undercolor of law that Donald Trump has been using to extort the United States. Now, the good thing about this charge is the facts are all undisputed. He has said them out loud and we know them. He has proclaimed them from the highest mountain that this is what he's doing and he's proud of it. It just happens to be extortion.
- [47:26]
Steve Scrovan
Now, on the heels of that, co president of Public Citizen Rob Weissman said
- [47:30]
Rob Weissman
three things I wanted to say up front. One, I think prior to yesterday, it was, you know, very obvious to anyone who's remotely honest that Trump has committed a long list of impeachable offenses. My friend John Boniface, it listed, I don't know how many, like the day he took office. And I think he was right and remains right. I think there's a different question about whether impeachment is a right strategy and also if it is a right strategy, how one goes about doing it. And I wanted to comment on that in the course of my remarks. The second thing I want to say is I think the answer to the question about Trump v. United States is it's totally irrelevant. Impeachment is not a criminal prosecution. Whether he has immunity in courts is irrelevant to whether he can be impeached and moreover, the standard for impeachable offenses does not have to line up with the criminal code, even though it might. And the things that I'm going to talk about, some are arguable crimes and some are not. And I want to be clear that I'm not saying in the things about to list that any of these necessarily are crimes. And the third thing I want to say is a lot of this my remarks are going to be is framed around the issue of fraud, which is a defining attribute of Donald Trump. So a lot to say, but also I think important because the administration has made fraud one of its totems and is weaponizing the idea of fraud now to go after so called blue states, but also particularly to attack benefits for low income people and people of color. In fact, the alleged fraud in Minnesota, which is manufactured to a large extent around daycare and other issues, was the predicate for the ICE invasion of Minnesota. So talking about fraud is important
- [49:14]
Ben Cohn
and
- [49:14]
Rob Weissman
that's what I want to do. I think if we're thinking in terms of impeachment or impeachable offenses, one might think about bribery, although again, as I'm going to say, these are not necessarily bribes under the code. And the Supreme Court has made bribery almost an impossible charge to prove anyway. You might think about violation of the take Care clause, the duty of the president to enforce the law. You might think about emoluments violations, which are manifold and some of which I'll reference, or a more general corruption charge, which is obviously not a criminal charge, but is probably the best way to describe the totality or one of the best ways to describe the totality of what this administration is about.
- [49:57]
Steve Scrovan
Finally, we turn to Jessica Denson, founder of the Removal Coalition, who makes a fiery and inspiring case for the impeachment of Donald Trump.
- [50:05]
Jessica Denson
I want to put an immense thank you to Ralph Nader and Bruce vine for organizing this, as well as my good friend John Bonifaz of Free Speech for People. My name is Jessica Denson. I am the founder of the Removal Coalition and the Remove the Regime movement. We have been laser focused on day one of this illegal administration in getting Donald Trump out of office by the one constitutional peaceful measure that gets us out of this mess, and that is impeachment Article two, Section four. Mind you, let me remind everybody watching this and this panel that this entire Congress is complicit in every crime of this administration for letting Donald Trump pass that threshold into his illegal presidency by not upholding Section 3 of the 14th Amendment on January 6th, 2025. I am preaching to the choir. If I tell this audience that we have passed so many thresholds when accountability should have happened, when somebody's foot should have been put down and this should have stopped, this is this obscene lawless war launched by a draft dodging pedophile domestic terrorist in concert with an international war criminal. That we have gotten to this point is such an insult to our collective dignity and integrity. And what we are witnessing today on this panel. I just want you guys to understand that this is a living, historic moment that you are part of right now. This is not an academic exercise in any stretch of the imagination. Generations are going to be looking back to this moment to see what those people, those men and women, Democrats and Republicans in that body, but the end of the day, human beings with moral compasses somewhere deep within themselves were doing when American democracy was being burned to the ground. Why have they not been calling for impeachment and removal every day up until now? The death of every child who was denied U.S. aid. The death death of Alex Preddy, Renee Goode, Keith Porter Jr. And countless others at the hands of ICE. The death of innocent sailors on the Caribbean who have been extrajudicially killed by this administration. The death of our service members now, and the thousands of innocent civilians who are being killed in this illegal war. The blood of those people is on the hands not just of this illegal regime, but on every civil single member of Congress, Republican and Democrat. Down to your favorite Democrats who diagnosed the hell out of this problem, who has not taken action to stop it. There is a man, as we have discussed today, who has filed articles of impeachment yesterday. John Larson of Connecticut, 13 articles of impeachment, every single member of Congress. And we can get to the Republicans, but for God's sakes, we have to start with the Democrats who are are supposed to be in the opposition in this country. Should be a co sponsor on those articles right now. And the moment this Congress gets back into session, they should be forcing a vote on those articles under Rule 9. Invoking Rule 9 to force a vote. Get on the phones, everybody. If you're watching this, call John Larson and every other member of Congress and say that's the next step. We're waiting for 202-224-3121. Hit up those lines. Tell them we need Rule 9 invoked on House Resolution 1154 and we need it immediately when this Congress comes back into session. I want to tell you I told you this is an academic and our movement is not, is not Something that we just talk about. This is not words. We have proven results from our activism within partnership with allies like Free Speech for People and the many effective members of our coalition, including Citizens Impeachment, we have attained a 76.7percent surge in support for impeachment between the previous forced votes filed by Representative Al Green. Imagine if everybody else in the activism space were as relentless and laser focused as we are on demanding the singular, peaceful remedy to this crisis that we find ourselves in. Imagine if we were having those votes on a weekly or daily basis, how much progress we would be making. This is also a call to my fellow activists, to anybody out there organizing any kind of protests, and whatever your downstream issue is as far as how this lawless criminal regime is violating your rights. There is one constitutional remedy that is going to get us out of this, and it is impeachment. And we all need to be making this demand in one unified voice. If we were doing this, if the leaders of groups with much greater resources than I have in my one year on the ground activism have, such as Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin of Indivisible, were utilizing mass mobilizations of millions of Americans not just to say no kings and have a day of solidarity and mutual aid, but to make a unified demand that the American people are demanding the immediate conviction and removal of this criminal regime. Can you imagine how that pressure would be translating to our members of Congress and the media? It is time for everybody, in whatever space you are, to step up. It is time for the people in this building that are watching this right now and that you're going to walk out into their offices and possibly see when you're walking down the hall to understand the owners, that is on them for what is happening right now. And remember Nuremberg, when you understand that at this moment there are three times as many people in concentration camps in the United States of America as there were in Germany in 1939. This is real life, folks. We need action now. I am so, as I said, grateful and honored to be part of this panel, and thank you so much. Please join our efforts@removetheregime.com and removalcoalition.org, it is my great pleasure to be in this fight with you. And I know that if we are of one unified voice demanding impeachment and removal and don't let anyone, especially our allies, off the hook, we can get this done.
- [56:31]
Steve Scrovan
That was Jessica Denson, founder of the Removal Coalition, and that's our show. I want to thank Haley Hinkle from Fairplay and all of the panelists and moderators who participated in the symposium on impeachment. We just gave you some of the highlights. For the full archive livestream that presents a lot more detail, we'll put the link on ralphnaderradiowour.com for you podcast listeners. Stay tuned for some bonus material we call the Wrap up featuring Francesco de Santis with In Case youe Haven't Heard. A transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour substack site soon after the episode is posted. Subscribe to us on our Ralph Nader Radio Hour YouTube channel and for Ralph's weekly column. It's free@nader.org for more from Russell Mokhyber, it's at corporate crimereporter.com to order your copy of the Capitol Hill Citizen Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight. It's@capitol hillcitizen.com and remember to continue the conversation after each show. You can go to the comments section@ralphnaderradiohour.com and post a comment or question on this week's episode. The producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman and Matthew Marin. Our executive producer is Alan Minsky. Our theme music, Stand Up, Rise up, was written and performed by Kemp Harris. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon. Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Thank you, Ralph.
- [57:55]
Ralph Nader
Thank you. Everybody up.
- [58:02]
Ben Cohn
Arise up.
- [58:03]
Steve Scrovan
I know you want to rise up.
- [58:14]
Alan Morrison
Step up.
- [58:15]
Haley Hinkle
I think that you should step up.
- [58:27]
Ralph Nader
Foreign. I'm Chuck Foster, host of Reggae Central right here on KPFK. Join me Sunday afternoons from 2 to 5 for three hours of the best in ska, Rocksteady roots and culture, dub and dance hall, from the foundational Jamaican recordings to the latest international releases. That's Reggae Central 2 to 5pm every Sunday right here on KPFK.
- [59:05]
Steve Scrovan
The Bradcast experts have said that the
- [59:07]
Oliver Hall
case has little chance of success at
- [59:09]
Steve Scrovan
the Supreme Court, much like the numerous other GOP election lawsuits that are pending in battleground states. But then again, those experts, they are just guessing. They are hoping with your host Brad Friedman and producer Desi Doyen.
- [59:23]
Haley Hinkle
There's enough going on right now.
- [59:24]
Jessica Denson
There are enough experts factor still remaining that that's when I'd rather not contemplate correct.
- [59:28]
Oliver Hall
You are as usual, correct.
- [59:30]
Steve Scrovan
Desi Doyen. Tune in to the broadcast every Monday at 3pm right here on KPFK.
- [59:39]
Ben Cohn
Looking for a unique way to support KPFK?
- [59:42]
Ralph Nader
Consider donating property you no longer need. It could be an inherited home, a vacant lot or a piece of land.
- [59:48]
Ben Cohn
That's just not part of your plan anymore.
- [59:51]
Ralph Nader
Your gift helps fund the programs you rely on and love. Get started today. Visit kpfk.org realestate or call 844-27-747.