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- [00:00]
Steve Scrovan
Of the giants who shook the foundations.
- [00:02]
Robert Weissman
Of injustice, including James Baldwin, Malcolm X.
- [00:06]
Steve Scrovan
Angela Davis, Dr. Cornel west, and so many others from the Pacifica Radio archives. Your contribution keeps our independent signal alive and preserves these revolutionary voices for the next generation. The number to call is 818-985-5735. Press option 2 or pledge online anytime@kpfk.org donate. Donate today and let your voice be heard.
- [00:47]
Ralph Nader
Hi, this is elliot gould, and you're listening to kpfk 90.7 fm in los angeles and 98.7 fm in santa barbara.
- [01:04]
Russell Mokhiber
Foreign.
- [01:10]
Steve Scrovan
Do you believe elected politicians in Minnesota who were aware of this fraud and were complicit in it should be prosecuted? Should there be accountability?
- [01:21]
Robert Weissman
There absolutely should be accountability. It is not normal to prosecute government officials for not prosecuting fraud. That is not a standard. I'm aware of that you've advocated or that anyone else has advocated in the Senate.
- [01:32]
Steve Scrovan
So do you think it's perfectly okay?
- [01:34]
Robert Weissman
I did not.
- [01:34]
Steve Scrovan
If, let's say. If, let's say Governor Waltz or Attorney General Ellison knew about the fraud, benefited from the fraud in terms of bundling votes, benefited from the frauds in terms of collecting campaign finance violations and deliberately looked the other way. You think that. You think that's not criminal conduct?
- [01:51]
Robert Weissman
In that hypothetical? It is not okay. 100% not okay. But also, if you'll permit me, that hypothetical is, in fact happening throughout.
- [02:00]
Steve Scrovan
Okay, Yes, I get it.
- [02:01]
Ralph Nader
You.
- [02:02]
Steve Scrovan
You dislike Trump. I understand why.
- [02:04]
Robert Weissman
Sir, it is whether I have standard of accountability.
- [02:07]
Steve Scrovan
So let me.
- [02:08]
Robert Weissman
Let me.
- [02:08]
Steve Scrovan
Let me. Sir, please do not interrupt me. Please do not.
- [02:11]
Robert Weissman
Clear. I am.
- [02:12]
Steve Scrovan
Please do not interrupt me. Please do not interrupt me.
- [02:15]
Robert Weissman
Sir.
- [02:17]
Steve Scrovan
You may answer questions after I ask them.
- [02:20]
Robert Weissman
Stand up. Stand up. You've been sitting way too long.
- [02:29]
Steve Scrovan
Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co host, David Feldman. Hello there, David.
- [02:35]
Robert Weissman
Hello there, Steve.
- [02:37]
Steve Scrovan
And our producer, Hannah Feldman. Hello there, Hannah.
- [02:40]
Robert Weissman
Hello there, Steve.
- [02:42]
Steve Scrovan
And the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello there, Ralph Nader.
- [02:46]
Ralph Nader
Hello.
- [02:47]
Steve Scrovan
That clip you heard at the top of the show was Ted Cruz going after our lone guest today, co president of Public Citizen, Robert Weissman. That was at a Senate subcommittee hearing on February 4. The hearing was titled Somali Scammers Fighting Fraud in Minnesota and Beyond. Senate Republicans convened the hearing to discuss the issue of fraud in Minnesota state government programs involving Fredo money. Republican witnesses alleged that fraudsters in Minnesota have bilked billions of dollars from the federal government, that whistleblowers have been ignored and punished by Democrats in the state and that Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota have shut down investigations for political gain. In his testimony, Mr. Weissman pointed out all the ways the Trump administration is not only enabling fraud, but committing fraud and pardoning fraud. And this is just the tip of the scammy iceberg. We look forward to digging into those details with Rob Weissman. Then we close the show with Ralph commenting on a number of topics, including a report from Al Jazeera that reveals a weapon used in Gaza by the IDF made in America that literally vaporizes people. As always, somewhere in the middle. We'll check in with our indomitable corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiver. But first, who are the real fraudsters?
- [04:07]
David Feldman
David Rob Weissman is a staunch public interest advocate and activist, as well as an expert on a wide variety of issues, ranging from corporate accountability and government transparency to trade and globalization to economic and regulatory policy. As the president of Public Citizen, he has spearheaded the effort to loosen the chokehold corporations and the wealthy have over our democracy. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Rob Weissman, great to be with you all.
- [04:39]
Ralph Nader
Welcome back, Rob. Well, you produced 34 pages of testimony before a Senate committee on the Judiciary. First of all, it's available for anybody who wants to read it. On what website?
- [04:53]
Robert Weissman
It's on our website, but the easiest place is to go to the Senate Judiciary Committee website. It's unfortunately linked at the title of the hearing, which was Somali Scammers. Excuse me for repeating their title. Dealing with fraud in Minnesota and beyond.
- [05:08]
Ralph Nader
Is it on citizen.org?
- [05:10]
Robert Weissman
It is also on citizen.org for sure, yes.
- [05:13]
Ralph Nader
Okay, tell us how this came about. Who's the chair of the committee, who's the ranking member, and how did you get invited?
- [05:22]
Robert Weissman
Yeah, this is the subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. The chair is Texas Senator Ted Cruz. The ranking member is Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Cruz and Republicans generally are trying to spin up a story about massive fraud and social service programs in Minnesota carried out by networks of ethnic Somali immigrants. There's a modicum of truth, but not very much to what they're saying. And in fact, the alleged massive fraud scandal was a predicate, maybe the primary predicate for the ICE invasion of Minnesota.
- [06:01]
Ralph Nader
Before we get to that, I'm curious, how were you selected in a dominated GOP subcommittee?
- [06:09]
Robert Weissman
Well, I was there as the witness for the Democrats, sole witness on the panel. So the Senator Whitehouse, his team reached out as someone who could talk about not just the fraud in Minnesota, but the massive fraud of the Trump administration.
- [06:21]
Ralph Nader
Now, how much time did they give you to summarize your testimony?
- [06:25]
Robert Weissman
Usually they gave us seven minutes, which is more, as you know, two minutes more than normal.
- [06:30]
Ralph Nader
Well, let's run across the panorama of corporate crime enabled by the Trump regime, give a summary of your testimony in about seven minutes, and then we'll dig in deeper.
- [06:42]
Robert Weissman
So I was really trying to hone in on this issue of fraud, but and then related things and what we said was that every American should be worried about fraud. So it's fine for the committee to be talking about fraud, but it should be based on, on actual facts and what's actually happening, which is not what's going on with this focus on Minnesota. And it's also focus on the primary problems. And without a doubt, if the concern is about fraud and the public or the private economy. Right now, the number one problem with fraud is the Trump administration. And what I did is go through the various ways that the Trump administration has enabled fraud by slashing the agencies and programs inside the government designed to prevent fraud against the government and also facilitated fraud in the private sector by taking the corporate cops off the beat across the board, but most importantly by the effort to illegally close the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And then I talked about the scams of Donald Trump himself and the degree to which he's available for sale, which is really the biggest fraud of the administration altogether. It's hard to keep up, as I think you were just saying, with all of the different things the administration is doing. So you lose track of some of this stuff. But if you kind of try to take a 30,000 foot view of what's going on with anti fraud measures in the government and how they're being destroyed, in other words, how this administration is enabling fraud, it's astounding. You start at the system of the inspectors general, which is the independent entities inside of each agency that are designed both hold the agencies accountable, but to deter fraud and wrongdoing. Well, Trump famously fired 17 of the inspectors general illegally when he started office the second term. By October, he had fired two thirds of them and 3/4 of them were empty. These people have big staffs. We looked at the staffing. The staffing is down in every agency for which data is available by at least 10% at every agency, at 30% at the Department of Treasury, just means there's fewer people to look at what's going on inside the agencies, to hold them accountable for their massive wrongdoing and to address issues of fraud. If you look at the Department of Justice, which has been turned upside down all the people, career people, have been driven out across the agencies and replaced with hacks who are doing effectively the opposite of what they were supposed to do. At the Department of Justice, the division focused on consumer fraud has been gutted. The department focused on public integrity, which is supposed to monitor and crack down on basically bribery of public officials, not just in the federal government, but state and local, is down from something like 37 to two lawyers. If you look at what they, the announcements and pronouncements and policies at the beginning of the administration on corporate crime enforcement, they basically instructed a review of everything that was ongoing to soften up across the board in corporate crime enforcement, including for fraud.
- [09:47]
Ralph Nader
Haven't they dropped over 120 corporate criminal cases that are pending by the Justice Department?
- [09:53]
Robert Weissman
It's not. Yeah, we're tracking this. As you know, it's now over 150, not just from DOJ, but across the government of enforcement actions that were open. We looked also at Donald Trump's pardoning. So if you, even if you leave aside January six, he's pardoned very aggressively. You know, I think there's probably a good case that presidents don't use the pardon power often enough. They save it up for the end when they think they're politically free. But Donald Trump's pardons have not gone to worthy people, people who've engaged in, you know, non violent offenses and were given long sentences or maybe were improperly convicted in the first place or have shown any remorse. Instead, he's focused overwhelmingly on white collar crime. So more than 40% of his 114 pardons in the first year of the administration leaving side January 6th went to people who committed fraud or fraud adjacent crimes. They're serious crimes. And one thing that happens when you pardon someone is not only do you expunge their conviction and end jail time they might be facing, you also cancel what they owe in fines and restitution. So a billion and a half dollars in outstanding fines have been canceled by these pardons, including a billion dollars owed in restitution to the victims of the fraud and wrongdoing. So these pardons have actually re victimized the victims of fraud and misdeeds by the white collar criminals that Trump is letting go. And you go through the list of pardons and they're pretty extraordinary. All kinds of schemes and scams are just basically stealing from people, most vulnerable people, and also including the largest at that time, fraud against Medicare. Highly relevant because in Minnesota they claimed they were worried about fraud against Medicare social service agencies. Then we looked at the closure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and cuts and other agencies that are designed to protect against fraud and the private economy. And made the point, which is, I think, not controversial, that if you remove the enforcers, you are inviting and will get vastly more fraud scams, ripoffs against consumers.
- [12:02]
Ralph Nader
Fill that out and what they're doing to gut the Internal Revenue Service and its impact.
- [12:07]
Robert Weissman
Yeah. So also at the irs, there's been effort to massively scale it back. So in the Biden, what was originally the build back better bill and later became the Inflation Reduction act, they gave $80 billion extra to the Internal Revenue Service to do two things. Well, three. One was to sort of update their outdated technology. Second was to add more staff so they could be more consumer friendly and handle people's inquiries and turn around regular people's returns faster. But the third, and maybe the most important in some ways was to add many more staff to do audits of complex returns. That's, in other words, to look at the tax returns of the super rich corporations who overwhelm the IRS with complicated tax submissions that are almost unreviewable and in doing so avoid paying what they owe. So adding that money to the IRS was going to massively increase the net revenue for the irs. Almost all that money is gone. On top of which, thanks to Russ Vote and the various efforts to intimidate and bully staff throughout the federal government, a quarter of the staff are gone from the Internal Revenue Service. Their staffing is down 25% over the last year. Some researchers at Yale have done analysis of that. They correlate a reduction of 25% in staff with a loss of $200 billion in revenue for the IRS. Well, that's a big number. What does it mean? It basically means that rich people and corporations are going to be able to escape taxes. They owe to the tune of $200 billion thanks to this reduction in staff.
- [13:41]
Ralph Nader
This tax evasion green light will include Trump, Trump's family, Elon Musk and all the big wigs that are making tens of millions of dollars a year individually as CEOs and plutocrats. So bring it home. How is the IRS going to challenge Trump, who's going to have to report several billion dollars in profit through his self enrichment in cryptocurrency, collusion, et cetera, that you point out?
- [14:11]
Robert Weissman
Well, I sure assume they're not going to. I mean, the acting commissioner of the IRS right now, as you know, is the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessant, who like all Cabinet secretaries, spends his time giving up to the President. This is a president who's actually suing the IRS for $10 billion, suing them for an alleged raw that occurred when he was president the first time. So he is suing them on his own behalf and they themselves answer directly to him, according to the administration. So he's suing himself and preparing himself for a massive payment of public money that he can control to himself. So do I expect the IRS to carefully scrutinize his tax returns? I do not.
- [14:55]
Ralph Nader
Well, Trump is on a rampage of pardons. He's even pardoned people twice, pardoned people for crimes. And then they get out of jail and commit another crime and he pardons them. He's even talked about pardoning himself. And the signal to all these crooks, or wannabe crooks stealing from the taxpayer, consumers, you name it, is don't worry, Trump will pardon us. Talk about that.
- [15:20]
Robert Weissman
Well, I should say before directly answering that one thing I didn't mention is that a huge number of these people with these pardons that are outrageous because they have no remorse, they're escaping restitution, they're supposed to pay, and they engaged in heinous, deliberate crimes in the first place. And of course, they're all well off. It's not like they, they're living hard, scrabble lives and felt like they had no other choices. They are doing two things. They're hiring lobbyists to lobby for these pardons. Which lobbyists are they hiring? People who are connected closely the Trump world. And they're funneling money, the Trump connected campaign committees and other committees to ingratiate themselves in exchange for the pardon favor. But to your bigger point, you know, thanks to the Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, Trump believes, correctly, that he will not be held criminally accountable for anything that he does while he's president. And that is true so long as that Supreme Court decision stands. And I think it's fair to say that basically everyone who's working for him right now, I think, are committing all kinds of crimes, including through the sale of pardons and through the outrageous use of ice in Minnesota and around the country. I think they expect they're going to get pardoned before he goes. So I think they think they too will be, and they're probably not wrong expecting it, that they too will be immune from criminal prosecution, at least federal criminal prosecution, for any crimes they commit while they're in the administration.
- [16:42]
Ralph Nader
As you point out, Robert Weissman, you say that this not only cheats taxpayers, reduces public services, and it cheats people who were expecting these corporate criminals to pay them for the theft after they were convicted. Personalize that a bit. Restitution is kind of a legal term. Personalize that. What does that mean to thousands of people around the country who thought they were going to get reimbursed for the theft by these corporate crooks?
- [17:14]
Robert Weissman
It's exactly what you're saying. It's an obligation to pay back the people you stole from. And you know, it doesn't always get paid. Some of the cases involved, they stole so much money, it's kind of gone. And it's not likely that perpetrators will have enough money to pay back the people they stole from, but they could pay them something. And a lot of cases, they might be able to pay them everything. And when you read through these list of examples, including fraud schemes that are just preying on like, well, almost with Ponzi schemes in one case, preying on older people and you know, the adult child of one of the victims says the perpetrator stole everything from my father, who was just broken in his old age by the loss of all of his life savings. You understand that as you're saying, these are, these are not like just abstract accounting frauds. These are thefts. Identifiable people whose lives in many cases were completely upended and they're owed something, but not anymore, thanks to the cancellation of the money that was supposed to be paid to them from Trump's pardons.
- [18:16]
Ralph Nader
You talk about serious hazards to the safety of people from these pardons and non enforcement. You know, you're dealing with a regime that's presiding over a corporate crime wave receiving all kinds of campaign contributions and personal enrichment of the perpetrators in the government led by Donald Trump. Talk about the Boeing maneuver.
- [18:41]
Robert Weissman
Yeah, well, unfortunately, something that you know personally too well. So again, I was really focusing on fraud in this testimony and less on the other kinds of corporate crime that are being forgiven by the administration. But in the Boeing story, which of course is the entirely preventable crash of two planes killing 380 people, that was prosecuted in the first instance under the first Trump administration. And although we, you and others were calling for homicide prosecution, what they ultimately were being held accountable for was wire fraud and the failure to disclose information that they had about safety problems for the 737 Max jets. So in the first administration, they got an incredible sweetheart deal, a deferred prosecution agreement, which means that the prosecution would be held in abeyance. It wouldn't be held accountable through prosecution so long as they did not violate the law in the future. Well, these deferred prosecution Agreements are always sweetheart deals because obviously the promise that you won't violate the law in the future, you're already required not to violate the law in the future. You're not giving anything. But that was actually too much for Boeing. Boeing was unable to maintain that promise. They did break the law in the future. And most notably and the case of the Alaska jet where the door blew off and that too turned out to be from production problems that were known, foreseeable and should never have happened. But the Biden administration then had a hook to go back. Not just prosecute them for that, but prosecute them for the company for the original wrongdoing. They could have done more than try to hold them liable for wire fraud. They really could have gone and should have gone back and prosecuted them, or homicide. It should have been done in the first place. Failure of the Biden administration. They didn't do that. Nonetheless, they did have Boeing agree to plead guilty to a crime. And Boeing cared a lot about pleading guilty to a crime because it potentially jeopardizes companies ability to get government contracts. It's primarily, first and foremost a government defense contractor. So it still was a big deal and they had agreed to do it. It wasn't like it was under negotiation. Boeing had agreed to do it. And for strange reasons, it didn't happen during the time of the Biden administration. So the Trump administration came in and said, never mind, we don't want your guilty plea. We'll give you another sweetheart deal, even more sweetheart than the last one. Which basically means nothing's ever going to happen. So the sum total of criminal accountability for killing hundreds of people with dangerous jets that had known defects that were, and the information was actively suppressed, the sum total of a criminal liability is going to be nothing. And that's thanks to this administration. And again, the hook here is that was a fraud. That failure to do anything about the knowledge they had was a fraud, there's no question about it. But the consequence for the company on the criminal side is zero.
- [21:35]
Ralph Nader
Let's talk about the enrichment of the Trump family, which is really extraordinary. In two articles in the New York Times, they totaled up just in one year enrichment exceeding 5 billion with a B dollars. Here's an example in your testimony about how they go about enriching themselves and creating, as you say, insuperable conflicts of interest and transgressing the most basic ethics. You could have actually been stronger in saying violating laws as well. Tell us about the Wall Street Journal expose involving a UAE affiliated company. Just listeners, how the Trump Family's raking it in.
- [22:20]
Robert Weissman
Yes, I will do that. But I want to be clear. I did also say that it was illegal in a violation of the Constitution. I don't want you to think I was soft there, Ralph. So this is a story that the Wall Street Journal broke a couple weeks ago about something that actually happened prior to the start of the administration. So it's hard to keep track of all these companies that the Trump family has started or been engaged with involving cryptocurrency, a Ponzi scheme that Trump identified as a Ponzi scheme until he decided he could profit from it anyway. They created a company called World Liberty Financial, and the Trump family has a considerable shareholding in that, at one point, 75%, but down to 38%, as I'll explain. What happened was UAE connected companies, which are just totally tied in with the monarchy there, secretly paid $500 million for a 49% share of the company. But no one knew about that. And there's a very complicated corporate structure. But what that translates into is $187 million going directly to the Trump family. And they're doing nothing. Their name is attached to this. They're doing no work at all. So it was basically $187 million payment directly to the Trump family. And you can be sure that UAE has no interest whatsoever in this cryptocurrency business. The whole point, to make a direct payment to the Trump administration. I was actually at another hearing yesterday on the House side where we were talking about the alleged problem of foreign influence of U.S. nonprofits. And the primary point we were making is that if you're interested and concerned about foreign influence and US Policymaking, there is nothing more consequential than the money flows that are going from foreign governments to Donald Trump. Not only is it nothing more consequential right now, there's nothing more consequential in American history of foreign influence over our policymaking because they're making these payments, and they're not doing it because they think he's a good businessman, which would be bad enough. They're doing it because they expect to get things in return. So, in fact, Donald Trump has authorized the sale of of high tech AI chips to UAE national security. People in his own administration strongly object to those sales because they're worried that it's going to then siphon off to China, which is probably a good reason to be worried about. It seems highly unlikely that Trump would have agreed to let that happen, but for the fact that he's received this payment, as well as other benefits from uae. And it's the same story with Saudi Arabia and the authorization of F35 sales to a horrible regime. Why not? They're paying them tens of millions of dollars for branding rights, which means they're paying him to lend his name and do zero work to him and his family. They spent billions of dollars to lodge billions of dollars in Jared Kushner's investment business, even though it was reported that they thought he had no investment skills whatsoever. But that was a good bet. Throw a couple billion dollars there on the chance that Donald Trump would become president again, as he has become, and be able to gain favor from him as, in fact, they have. So we've got this massive compromise of American foreign policy because people are paying off Donald Trump listeners.
- [25:33]
Ralph Nader
I think we really have to find the words, describe what's going on here. Tyrant, Trump, dictator. Donald has obliterated the rule of law. He has basically said openly he can do whatever he wants as president. Six injustices of the Supreme Court has in effect immunized them. In answers to questions by New York Times and others, he says, nothing can stop me. He's used those words. Those are dictators words. And the question was, you mean the Constitution, federal law, international treaties can't stop you? Nothing can stop me said except, quote, my own moral sense, end quote. So let's stop talking about authoritarian drifts and autocracy. We have here a dictator that's digging in deeper and deeper, controlling more and more lives of the American people, not just immigrants, and turning the federal government into a business proposition for him, his family in giant corporations. This is the definition of fascism. In fact, Franklin Del Roosevelt in 1938, sent a message to Congress seeking an investigation of concentration of corporate power, which he received. And he had this phrase, he said, when private power controls government, that's fascism. So the only people that Trump is favoring are the plutocrats like himself and ruled by unfettered oligarchy. So let me ask you some straightforward, short questions. Do you think Trump is a recidivist criminal?
- [27:13]
Robert Weissman
You're asking me, or is this rhetorical? The answer is obviously yes.
- [27:17]
Ralph Nader
Second question. When the chair of the subcommittee, Ted Cruz, questioned you, it was quite clear what he was trying to do. He was trying to pin you down and protect Trump, the crook in chief by labeling you as partisan. He said, you say you're nonpartisan, but you're really going after Trump, aren't you? And he didn't give you much chance to. To respond. But basically, in your testimony, you make a devastating case that this is a criminal regime, that you're seeing fascism at its core. As the former chief of staff John Kelly, a retired general to Trump in the first term, called Trump, quote, a fascist to the core, end quote. So you have 34 pages of devastating documentation that the Trump regime's assault on fraud is itself fraudulent. It's a complete fraudulent attempt because he's covering up, as we'll see in a moment, all kinds of major theft from the taxpayer. Let's talk about how fraudulent the Trump regime's anti fraud initiative is focusing on Minnesota, of course, and his racist stereotyping of the Somali immigrants, most of whom in Minnesota are now American citizens. Here's my yardstick. Let me ask you the following question. The chief expert in this country on fraud in the health care area, Professor Malcolm Sparrow from Harvard University, who's testified in the past and has written this great book on how the billing fraud is by design, was he asked to testify? He estimates that over $360 billion in billing fraud in the health care industry alone a year. 360 billion. And he thinks that's a conservative figure. Was he asked by Ted Cruz to testify?
- [29:14]
Robert Weissman
I assume not. He was not on the panel.
- [29:17]
Ralph Nader
Now, I've contacted Dr. Oz's office. He's in charge of Medicare and Medicaid under Robert Kennedy Jr. And he's made noise about cracking down on fraud. So I brought to his top assistants, they would do well to contact Professor Sparrow who can give them a lot of information. And they said, yeah, that'd be great. Well, they haven't done so so far. And Dr. Oz, who I was told would not be averse to talking with me on the telephone, has not scheduled an appointment. So this is a huge documented area. Was that treated by the subcommittee under Ted Cruz?
- [30:00]
Robert Weissman
No, it was not. But what did happen was this. So as you and the listeners may know, but many won't know, the predicate for this is a video that went viral by like a provocateur, young, he would call himself a journalist, whatever, named Nick Shirley. And with a, with a local guy in Minnesota, they went from child care center to child care center and they knocked on the door and said, hey, let us say we don't think you're real. And people didn't answer and they didn't let them in if they did answer. And so they're like, that was it. That's basically it. So they said, see, this is totally suspicious. It's a well done. And that's the core of this story. There is actually been some investigation by the legitimate, functioning, previously functioning U.S. attorney's Office of some non trivial fraud that was done by some Somali American ethnic groups, some different social services. This daycare thing, the whole story is built around this video that's gone viral. Well, anyone knows anything about a child care center, they did exactly the right thing and not opening the door. And in the middle of the crackdown, Somalis have two white guys banging on their door. They're extra worried about what's going on. And in one case they even had some armed people with them. So subsequently state investigators have gone these daycare centers and they're there, they're working, there are kids, it's fine. So the whole story at its core is completely concocted, but then it's like, how significant a problem is this? And so the answer is they have a dollar figure for it at least they did. And the dollar figure is $9 billion. And I was prepping for this hearing that caught my attention, you know, $9 billion, it's not a big number for the federal government. $9 billion is a big number for fraud. How is it possible there's 9 billion dol going on the state of Minnesota? Well, the methodology for that was the current U.S. attorney who's a Trump appointee, so not part of the people who are actually doing the work. He said, well, I've looked at the Medicaid bills and I think half of them are fraudulent and it's 18 billion and half of 18 because they could do good math is 9. So that's the methodology for where there's $9 billion fraud. At the hearing. One of the witnesses is one of the people who appears in the video that I referenced. And he's kind of a local provocateur, pretty hardcore MAGA type, said a lot of really racist stuff that he had to take down off of his Twitter account when he was starting to get some national attention. He said, I told people that 9 billion isn't enough. You have to boost the number. He said this in his hearing, we have to boost the number. So it's 30 billion.
- [32:25]
Ralph Nader
Why?
- [32:26]
Robert Weissman
Well, just because we had to boost it. It's 30 billion. In the course of the hearing, he says it might be more, it might be 80 billion. So we went, of course, the hearing from a manufacturer, 9 billion up to 80 billion. I said, if we'd gone a little bit longer, it would have been the whole gdp. So that was that. Then we have Ted Cruz, the chair of the committee, you know, a guy who knows stuff and he is explaining how terrible this is. Well, of course, it's not enough that a lot of money is being stolen. It has to be being used to support terrorism. So there are a lot of remittances that come from the Somali community in Minnesota back to Somalia. I'm no expert in this. It appears that a lot of it moves back in cash, probably because there's not a lot of good electronics, banking systems in Somalia right now.
- [33:04]
Ralph Nader
Let's further unmask the fraud of Ted Cruz hearing. Did he have proposed legislation to tighten up the corporate crime?
- [33:13]
Robert Weissman
Well, the story that they were telling is that the fraud was not just perpetrated by the Somali ethnic people they were attacking, but known about and enabled and permitted by the Minnesota Democratic establishment because they want votes from the Somali American community. So his proposal, which he actually asked me about and actually surprised me, was shouldn't we criminally prosecute Tim Wall as the governor and Keith Ellison the attorney general because they failed to prosecute this fraud? I pointed out that that's not a standard that anybody ever uses, but I started to say, and he wouldn't let me finish my sentence on this. If that is your standard, however, you have an entire federal government that needs to be criminally prosecuted right now.
- [33:56]
Ralph Nader
If you're trying to do something about fraud, you would invite some state attorney generals. Were they invited to testify?
- [34:03]
Robert Weissman
Actually, they were. Walls and Ellison were invited. Actually. They're coming up for some hearings. They declined to come to this one. Of course. They're dealing with all the sanity right now, the ICE invasion and all the litigation around that.
- [34:15]
Ralph Nader
In Minnesota, one of the major facilitators of criminal activity and fraud under the Trump regime was the criminal enterprise known as Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. The short term is doge. You mention it, would you agree that the DOGE rampaged through the government firing all kinds of enforcement and depleting civil service staff? Closing down enforcement agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a criminal enterprise itself.
- [34:49]
Robert Weissman
Well, it was certainly. It was certainly illegal and it's certainly a massively enabled more fraud and more crime in the areas you say. I mean by now that what actually DOGE did and what actually the, you know, Russ vote, one of the primary architects of what's going on in the government. It is hard to sort of divide. But yeah, they did close down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau illegally, which we're litigating over. And that itself is probably the biggest thing they could do to encourage more fraud in the private economy. One thing I Didn't discuss. They obliterated a lot of rules and I think laws about government maintaining databases on the public. And the basic idea and the government had been, yeah, we have a lot of data, and it should never be consolidated in one place because it's too much information. If we overlay all the data from all the different departments that have information. And Doge obliterated that in ways that were still not clear. I mean, they plainly were doing it for their mass detention plan. But maybe other things. And what's recently come out in the past week is that some of the Social Security Administration information that never should have been touched by Doge seems to have been. At least some portion of it seems to have been handed over to a private organization, part of the MAGA network of nonprofits for unknown purposes. So this is just early days of this coming out. And it's not clear to what end, but it gives some sign that another component of all the illegality may be the misuse of data, for sure, to create a surveillance state, but maybe also to benefit Musk's companies, maybe also to be used by outside groups weaponized to attack people who are viewed as the opponents of Donald Trump.
- [36:26]
Ralph Nader
Of course, Congress did not authorize the creation of Doge as a creation of Trump with an executive order. And Elon Musk has lucrative contracts with NASA, Department of Defense. He went around his rampage in one agency after another in ways that protected his interests. Let's go to Steve Rob.
- [36:48]
Steve Scrovan
Assuming we have midterm elections this year and the Democrats take over Congress, let's just say, aspirationally, both houses, what is in the power of Congress to put Humpty Dumpty back together again that the people like Elon Musk and Russell Vogt have dismantled?
- [37:07]
Robert Weissman
Well, the affirmative power to fix things while Trump is president is probably going to be pretty constrained, but they could stop the damage, could stop a lot of further damage from taking place. They would have complete control over appropriations. They could take back money from ICE and cvp, and they could make sure the budgets are properly funded at the agencies where administration is refusing to spend money. They could also build in. You know, there's been some creative lawyering on the Trump side to justify some of the things that they've done that are plainly illegal or unconstitutional. They can include measures and bills to close these manufactured loopholes and maybe force, for example, force the government to spend money that administration has been trying to refuse to spend. And they could do this with just one of the Houses, begin the real serious oversight of the criminality of the administration try to hold them accountable. They could also move forward for sure with impeachment, although conviction would be awfully hard. Either some of the cabinet members or Trump administration.
- [38:04]
Ralph Nader
They can break the procurement contracts with a lot of these corporate crooks as well. It can encourage state enforcement activities, which is the subject of a forthcoming book by the dean of Berkeley Law School, what the states can do that the federal government cannot stop them from doing. I suppose some of our listeners are wondering why we're not talking about Trump's criminal close down of the Agency for International Development, the consequences of which international humane humanitarian agencies are saying is going to cost 9 million deaths in underdeveloped countries. Kids not getting vaccines, not getting clean water, food being blocked, only a few billion dollars a year. By the way. We had a lot of good publicity for America in those programs and in shutting it down. As you know, Rob, he violated the Anti Deficiency act by not spending money appropriated by Congress and flouting congressional mandates. And that's a criminal statute with a maximum jail term of five years. And also we're not talking about the criminality of the Trump regime and before that the Biden regime on genocide in Gaza and all the corruption involving contracts there back and forth, because we've covered that in other programs. Listeners, let's go to David.
- [39:24]
David Feldman
Rob, you said The Supreme Court's 2024 immunity ruling means Trump knows he can't get prosecuted for any crimes he committed in the Oval Office. And that seems to be received wisdom. But isn't it true that had Trump not won in 2024, Jack Smith came at him, was coming at him with Superseding Indictments surrounding January6 Indictments surrounding charging Trump with crimes that were committed not as in the role, the official role of president. I don't want to defend the Roberts court, but that immunity ruling has yet to be tested. It seems to me, and you and Ralph would know better than I, that immunity ruling left the door wide open to prosecute a former president for crimes he committed in the Oval Office, so long as they were not done under the umbrella of the executive office.
- [40:22]
Robert Weissman
Yeah, if it's not an official act. But that's probably a very specific instance. So Jack Smith did have to narrow his indictment in light of the decision and he was really making the case that this was election related. But one thing that's definitely not part of the president's official duties is running for office. That's plainly something that he does in a different capacity. That's not true for, I mean, most of the things we're really worried about, he is doing his official capacity. If you wanted to say, as it is, it's criminal to be sending ice out onto the streets to murder people, well, he's ordering to do that in his official capacity. And in fact, crazy scenarios that now seem not so crazy were discussed in the dissent in that case. Could he order the military as commander in chief to assassinate people? And the majority kind of dismissed the hypothetical, but it was plain that, yeah, he could do that and he would be immune. Maybe there's some extreme case.
- [41:11]
David Feldman
The self enrichment you talk about in your testimony, you talk about the self enrichment. The Bibles were not subject to his. His Bible was not subject to Chinese tariffs. Is that the official role of the president to self enrich?
- [41:25]
Robert Weissman
Well, David, let's be clear. I'm not trying to defend President Donald Trump, but in terms of that Supreme Court decision, I mean, yeah, what he's doing on tariffs, that's an official act. If he were bribed to take the official act, is it still official? Probably.
- [41:40]
Ralph Nader
The six injustices of the Supreme Court, David, did not define what they meant by official acts, which led the dissenting opinion by Justice Sotomayor to say that the president could assassinate a political opponent. Immunity, he could do all kinds of criminal things. She kept saying, immunity, immunity, immunity. So that's another slam on the intellectual disgrace of that opinion. Trump versus the US in the summer of 2024. Before we go to Hannah, you know your testimony, Robert has very detailed information, page after page on how the Trump family is enriching itself. Jared Kushner roaming the area. And then he's given the role to deal with Gaza. Like he has any experience in those things. I mean, the corruption is, it defies the dictionary, which is, I think it's almost anesthetizing the verbal capacity to Democrats. They don't use the word the most corrupt regime in American history. They don't give him nicknames like Crooked Donald or We gotta erase the Trump dump in Washington. Trump just controls like a soliloquist with the rubber stamp of the mainstream media. His false accusations, nicknames, and slander of his opponents and critics. And that intimidation is partly the reason why four ex presidents have basically shut their mouths with a few whimpers as an exception. George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They could mobilize the whole country, raise millions of dollars for powerful groups in every congressional district for impeachment and removal. They could change the balance of power. And instead they are demonstrating for historians, high level cowardliness Hannah hopping for this.
- [43:37]
Robert Weissman
I was a little confused. I was trying to succinctly identify what the point of this hearing was, some sort of prompting event. And it seems like the other witnesses weren't providing anything particularly informative. I'm curious what the prompting event actually was for this hearing. And also is this what these subcommittee hearings are actually supposed to be for? Well, they really are intent on telling this concocted story about a massive fraud scheme in Minnesota. They like the racism of it. It is used to justify the ICE invasion. They think it's got a little bit of traction. They want to spread the story to other states. It helps them pick up anti immigrant sentiment. It also helps justify slashing social service programs if they're allegedly all being defrauded. So they have an intent narrative. And Ted Cruz layered on this story about how it's a whole Democratic Party conspiracy to permit and authorize this fraud. That was the rationale. And do I think that's what congressional hearings should be about? I do not. But I do think that looking at fraud in the federal government or what the federal government is doing about fraud be an appropriate topic. So you try to bring that perspective.
- [44:51]
Ralph Nader
To the hearing before we conclude. Robert, we talk a lot about Congress on this program and introduce your new head of Congress Watch and what Congress Watch's priorities are now to our listeners.
- [45:04]
Robert Weissman
Our new head of Congress Watch was our lobby division of Public Citizen. His name, Josh Miller. Super energetic guy for our work. But we're focusing a lot right now on this top level appropriations fight and whether the administration is going to be permitted by Congress to let ICE run rampant and rampage as it has, or whether it's going to be constrained, whether it's going to get even more money or whether that's going to be pulled back. That is the really hot fight right now. We've also been doing a bunch of these hearings, but as you know, our issue set is very broad and happy to have Josh come on or me to come on and talk about that. Ranging from what we're going to do about big tech overlords who are trying to get their grips not just in the Republican Party but in the Democratic Party to control what the agenda looks like. Problem of this massive inequality which is directly related to big tech over to trade issues or what's going on with the new Trump fake proposal on drug pricing and on down the line.
- [46:02]
Ralph Nader
Well, thank you very much. We've been talking with Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen and anybody who wants more information about Public Citizen can go to citizen.org thank you very much, Robert.
- [46:15]
Robert Weissman
Thanks, Ralph. Great to be with you and the whole team.
- [46:17]
Steve Scrovan
We've been speaking with Rob Weissman. We will link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com when we come back. Ralph is going to tell us about a terrible new weapon being used on the people of Gaza. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber.
- [46:32]
Russell Mokhiber
From the National Press building in Washington, D.C. this is your corporate crime reporter Morning minute for Friday, February 13, 2026. I'm Russell Mokhyber. A federal jury in Phoenix, Arizona, last week ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million to a passenger who said one of its drivers had raped her, setting the stage for thousands of similar cases around the country. That's according to a report in the New York Times. The ride hailing giant has long maintained that is not liable for the misconduct of drivers on its platform whom it classifies as independent contractors, not employees. But the jury rejected that defense, providing a road map for more than 3,000 pending sexual assault and sexual misconduct lawsuits that accused the company of systemic safety failures. The lawsuit was brought by Jalen Dean, who said her Uber driver raped her in November 2023 during a ride to her hotel from her boyfriend's apartment in Tempe, Arizona. For the corporate crime reporter, I'm Russell Mulcaiber.
- [47:32]
Steve Scrovan
Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I'm Steve Scrovan along with David Feldman, Hannah and Ralph. Ralph, you've got some breaking news via Al Jazeera.
- [47:42]
Ralph Nader
On 10 February, there's a breaking story from Al Jazeera which has not been denied that the Israeli military has been using since 2023, October what are called evaporation weapons against civilians in Gaza. And the civil defense teams in Gaza have documented 2,842 Palestinians who have been evaporated, leaving behind no remains other than blood spray or small fragments of flesh. And this is because they're using internationally prohibited U.S. manufactured thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures over 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit. And so you have families who have been bombed by the Israelis and some of them survive and they can't find their relatives or their children because they've been evaporated. And these weapons are illegal under international law and our tax dollars are paying for them. As one expert said, quote, to prolong the burning time, powders of aluminum, magnesium and titanium are added to the chemical Mixture in order to get that level of Fahrenheit temperatures. And these are US made bombs. They call one version MK84. And the Al Jazeera has some heartbreaking stories where the family was looking for their children. For example, Rafik Badran, he lost four children in the Barrage refugee camp during the war and he was unable to recover them. They had been evaporated. He said, quote, four of my children just evaporated, end quote. Bedran said, holding back tears. I looked for them a million times. Not a piece was left. Where did they go? End quote. This is a level of Israeli Netanyahu savagery that has reached new depths of depravity, not to mention illegality and another dimension of genocide. Now we'll see if the mainstream press picks up this report.
- [50:02]
Steve Scrovan
Yeah, as heartbreaking as this whole thing has been for these years, I have never heard of such a weapon. That is incredible.
- [50:10]
Ralph Nader
Well, Steve, it's going to come out that two of the manufacturers are major companies in the United States. And I have been able to verify it for sure. But it's going to come out very shortly that two giant manufacturers are involved. By the way, another report to show you the grisly nature of this bloody rampage. An Israeli company has developed a new kind of cluster bomb and they found a huge new customer, the Pentagon. The Trump regime just put in an order for thousands of these cluster bombs, which of course used in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia are still killing children. They look like toys because they didn't explode. And the children pick up the toys and it explodes. And this has been condemned by over 100 countries. But Russia, Israel, the US still produce and use these cluster bombs. They have not adhered to the international treaty banning them.
- [51:14]
Steve Scrovan
Wow, Ralph, speaking of genocide and speaking of how you and Bruce Fine have defined genocide or have pointed out to us how the Convention on Genocide defines it, I wanted to turn to Cuba and what the United States is doing there to blockade. I mean, we've blockaded Cuba from our goods and services, but now we are threatening Mexico if they sell Cuba oil and the Cuban people are in dire straits. Is that just another genocide going on?
- [51:46]
Ralph Nader
Not a genocide yet, but it's clear that Marco Rubio and Trump and Vance want to overthrow the Cuban government. That's the goal of all this. The embargo is tightening. The inflow of oil is subject to a very severe embargo. They've blocked Mexican exports of oil. They've obviously stopped the Venezuelan exports of oil. And while the Cuban government is trying to compensate this for by trying to find modest sources of oil in their territory and using renewable energy. It's going to be a very severe cramping of essential services that rely on the use of petroleum. But Cuba is not Venezuela. Cuba has a mass base of support, even though the economic conditions are very bad. Still, they're not about to allow a U.S. invasion or a kidnapping without a real fight, unlike Venezuela. But we have a rampaging criminal empire run by Trump, and it's going to have domestic impacts because he's getting ready to disrupt the November elections. He's not going to lose without trying to. And the seizure of voting rolls in the 2020 election of Fulton County, Georgia, which includes Atlanta, by FBI agents and illegal seizure, is a rehearsal. And the state attorney generals and the state governors, most of them are ready for it. So it's going to be a colossal battle which may involve some federal state clashes. This is a president who could be impeached a thousand times. I mean, he's a impeachment paragon day after day. This is like Nixon. Watergate. One event. Burglarizing the Watergate apartments of the Democratic National Committee. This is ongoing obstruction of justice. Ongoing. Violating the Constitution. Ongoing. Defying congressional appropriations authority. Ongoing. Using federal premises in the White House to enrich himself and his family. Ongoing. Use of federal property for political advancement, which is illegal under the Hatch act, the criminal statute. So he's violating criminal statutes right and left. Finally, we're hearing that the Democrats are talking impeachment on Capitol Hill. So we'll see if they have a shadow hearing chaired by ranking House Judiciary Committee member Jamie Raskin. That's the first step to educate the public. With prominent witnesses and mass media coverage in committee hearing rooms, Republicans are in control officially, of public hearings, but they can't stop the shadow hearings of the Democrats. So look for an unprecedented interference in an election, trying to suppress votes in areas that are heavily Democratic, because Trump knows, and Ted Cruz told him in a private meeting, that if he loses the House in the Senate, Trump said, quote, the Democrats are going to impeach you every week, end quote.
- [55:01]
David Feldman
Ralph, could you explain to us what the seizure of the voting records from Fulton county, what Trump is trying to accomplish and what Pam Bondi was trying to accomplish. Right after the execution of Alex Preddy, she delivered a letter to the Attorney General Ellison of Minnesota, and I think his name is Simon, the Secretary of State of Minnesota. If you would just cooperate with my investigation into voter fraud and turn over the voting rolls, this siege of Minnesota could end. What is she looking for? In Minnesota, she's playing Trump's game.
- [55:45]
Ralph Nader
He wants to start talking about voter fraud in 2020 in Fulton County, Georgia. He wants to talk about voter fraud in Minnesota so he can start laying the basis for his seizure of state election processes based on claims of voter fraud. But he doesn't have any evidence for that. But that doesn't stop him. It's the propaganda technique of immense disruptive constitutional defiance because the Constitution reserves the manner of elections to the the state governments clearly and crisply. And he's trying to usurp that. Now this is providing not a little unease among his Republican supporters in Congress. When he put out a call to quote in his words, nationalize the November elections, end quote. The majority leader, Senator Thune, GOP in the Senate, pushed back and said he's not going to support that. So more and more we're seeing fractures in the Republican base in Congress because they see the polls plummeting, prices are rising, jobs are hard to get, and they fear disaster in November. And you know, politicians political self protection supersedes any kind of sycophantic loyalty to the lame duck, Donald Trump. And that's what happened when they told Nixon he had to resign. And Nixon was about to be impeached in the House and convicted in the Senate for modest transgression compared to Trump, who's a big time constitutional statutory criminal and a recidivist. And he's open and he's brazen about it. He doesn't hide it, he boasts about it. He's the best witness for the prosecution in an impeachment drive in Congress. So watch for more cracks, especially among senators who are up for reelection. More Epstein disclosures showing more and more connections of corruption. This is the most corrupt regime by far in American history. I mean, it can't even compare the corruption of past regimes with what Trump is going through.
- [57:55]
Steve Scrovan
Thank you for that, Ralph. That's our show. I want to thank our guests again, Robert Weissman. For those of you listening on the radio, we're going to cut out now, but for you podcast listeners, stay tuned for some bonus material we call the Wrap up featuring Francesco De Santis with In case you haven't heard, a transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour substack site soon after the episode is posted.
- [58:18]
David Feldman
The producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman and Matthew Marin. Our executive producer is Alan Minsky.
- [58:27]
Steve Scrovan
Our theme music, Stand Up, Rise up, was written and performed by Kemp Harris. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon.
- [58:33]
David Feldman
Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Thank you, Ralph.
- [58:38]
Ralph Nader
Thank you.
- [58:41]
Robert Weissman
Wow. Wow. Say you're tired of trying. You say we have no choice. Say you're just one person.
- [58:58]
Russell Mokhiber
And who.
- [58:58]
Robert Weissman
Will hear your voice.
- [59:11]
Ralph Nader
It's a funny thing because I like so many shows that instead of just, you know, giving like, a hundred dollars to one show, I kind of spread it out, you know, because I like so many shows. I like the car show. I like the morning music show. Schneider and Kathy Diaz and all the great DJs. They're fantastic. This February, KPFK is sending a love letter to our listeners. And we're hoping to receive one as well. KPFK exists because of the passion and.
- [59:47]
Robert Weissman
The hearts of people like you. We don't have corporate sponsors, but we do have you.
- [59:52]
Ralph Nader
And that's fine by us. Keep the romance with independent media alive by making a donation today. Please call 818-985-5735 and press option.