← Pod Force One
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Pod Force One podcast. I'm Miranda Devine. Today we're joined by the lawyer and Internet sleuth who broke open Russiagate, Hans Munke. He's author of Swift Boating America. Hans Munke, thanks so much for joining us on podforce One. And I first got to know you from afar because of your amazing Twitter and now X podcast posts in which you and a handful of other, I guess we call them, Internet researchers on the side, people like Steve McIntyre, people like you who have now written books and become quite famous because of your discoveries on a whole lot of mysteries and scandals that the media has failed to fully investigate for various reasons. I think it's because the media sort of become so, so much of it, the mainstream media, political, rather than investigating anything that might damage their side of politics. But so thank you for coming and tell us you're, I think, best known, or I knew you best for your revelations on Russiagate on the Russia hoax. So can you tell us just the broad brushstrokes of the Russia hoax and how you got involved?
- [01:23]
B
Sure, yeah. Thanks for having me. And you're absolutely right. If the media had done its job, we wouldn't be sitting here right now. My Twitter account would be tiny. I wouldn't, might not be even be on Twitter, and I'd just be, you know, teaching law and kind of living my, my old life. And that all changed because the media did not do their job. So Russiagate is a. Well, it began as a Hillary Clinton campaign smear. So the Clinton campaign, like all campaigns, kind of do some opposition research and they want to come up with some kind of plan as to how to attack their opponents. So in early 2016, the Clinton campaign hatched this plan that they were going to cast Donald Trump as a Russian agent. And that's really all it was. And we would have never heard about it again had Hillary won. Yes. So they tried and there's multiple instances within 2016 when again and again they try and push this hoax into the media. Trump has connections with Russia and a Russian bank, and there's these Russians and so on, and they ran some ads, but it didn't really take off. But anyway, everyone expected her to win and then she didn't win. And that's when things became very, very nefarious. Because that's when the government co opted the hoax.
- [02:38]
A
Right. Repurposed it to cripple Donald Trump's presidency.
- [02:42]
B
Exactly right. So, and this we can trace it right back to November 8, 2016, the day that Trump won because on November 9, the infamous Peter Strzok, the agent over at the FBI who was investigating Trump for a supposed Russia collusion, which was a hoax, and he knew it was a hoax, but nonetheless, he started texting his paramour, Lisa Page, and we have those text messages about now. They're going to have to spring their plan into action and you know how horrible it is that Trump has won, and so on. And of course, that plan was to co opt the Hillary Clinton campaign smear. So then it became the government pushing that idea. And by the government, I mean the CIA, James Clapper, who was the DNI at the time, Director of National Intelligence, of course, the FBI. Obama himself was involved with many of.
- [03:30]
A
These meetings because Obama held a famous meeting in the Oval Office, didn't he, in which he instructed James Clapper, John Brennan and Jim Comey to come up with an intelligence product that would frame Donald Trump as a Russian agent.
- [03:48]
B
That's exactly right. And that is called the intelligence community assessment. And what that was meant to do, it was meant to kind of give the official seal of the US Intelligence services to this idea that Trump only became president because of the Russia collusion hoax, or Russia collusion because Putin made him. That it was Putin, with Putin's help. That was the idea. And they put it right, right on the, on the front cover there, that Russia meddled to help Trump get elected, which kind of was very convenient because that would then excuse the fact that Hillary lost.
- [04:21]
A
And it also was good for Barack Obama's ego, wasn't it? Because the election of Donald Trump he saw as repudiation of him and his legacy. And so to cripple Donald Trump's presidency, to make him seem like an illegitimate president, satisfied them. And it worked. Really.
- [04:42]
B
It did work. Trump likes to say he was very successful in all these different ways. But let's compare it to Trump 2.0. Every single day of Trump 1.0 was occupied with this Russia stuff. If you go back and look at the newspapers, at the news broadcast every night, they led with Russia. It was all Russia, Russia, Russia for years and years and years.
- [05:04]
A
And how did you get involved then? You're a lawyer, you're not really involved with US politics.
- [05:10]
B
No, no, I'm not. And I wasn't. And I neither politics at all. And, you know, I was very happily ensconced, actually, in the Caribbean, kind of my dream job, which was to be a law professor teaching all across the Caribbean. It was just fantastic. And when Donald Trump started running, I. That really caught my attention because of course, we can talk about lots of problems broadly, kind of in the Western world, not America, but kind of broader. But, you know, you got immigration and you got debt and you got so many other things. And he really kind of embodied the answer to so many of those things. So I followed that very closely. Of course, I was very happy when he won. And then this, this collusion thing, the hoax started in earnest, I have to say, when they released a Steele dossier, this was in early January of 2017. And I read that and I was like, this is a joke. This whole thing is so flimsy, it's so threadbare, there's nothing to it. This is a total joke. And yet it consumed everything. And I just felt, no, I mean, we have to dismantle this, we have to disprove it, because otherwise it's just going to eat everything up. Which unfortunately it did.
- [06:22]
A
You figured that out. Isn't that interesting? And the Steel dossier, just explain a little bit about what that was and why it was so preposterous.
- [06:30]
B
The Clinton campaign hired Christopher Steele to write a dossier to allege Russia collusion. That was his goal or his, those were his instructions. Write this thing for British spy. Correct. To give that sort of the image of all this British spy saying that. And he used to be in Russia. They never say that. The last time he was in Russia was in the early 90s. So he didn't actually know anyone there. They never mentioned that part. And the media bought that. The fact that this guy is saying it. But then when you start looking. Well, first when you read it, it's it. I, I thought it was, but as a joke, I mean, as if some like 10th grader was in a Moscow.
- [07:08]
A
Hotel room with Donald Trump, who's a germaphobe. As if.
- [07:11]
B
And the P. Tape. And then, you know, on, on one page it says Putin has been collaborating with Trump for five years. And then you flip a page and then it says eight years. So he wasn't even like, right then there were other things in there which he had obviously picked out of Wikipedia, which were just wrong.
- [07:27]
A
Right.
- [07:28]
B
To do with when Putin was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, so very much in the weeds. So Steel just went into Wikipedia, just lifted stuff and stuff that was wrong, hence we know that's where it came from.
- [07:40]
A
Yes.
- [07:41]
B
So it wasn't very difficult to disprove that thing. But unfortunately the media ran with it. But the government also ran with it. So even though Clinton was the one who paid for was co opted by the FBI and they used it to get all these spy warrants. And the ica, which we just talked, that was also based on. On the Steele dossier. So they kind of made that the center of the government effort to get Trump.
- [08:08]
A
And Comey knew that the Steele dossier was bogus, didn't it?
- [08:12]
B
That is exactly right. And I think that is such an important point that may not be kind of appreciated widely enough, in my view, that, you know, some people might, you know, well, meaning people might think, well, you know, there was something there he had to investigate and so on. The truth is that back In July of 2016, US intelligence uncovered the fact that this was a Clinton plot. Now, the way they found out is sort of a bit backwards, because a Western intel service was monitoring Russians, talking about this and that, and they heard them talking about the Hillary Clinton plot to frame Trump as a Russian agent, Right? So through that kind of backdoor, they found out that it was a Hillary Clinton plot. And so they knew by they, I mean Obama knew, Brennan knew, Comey knew, Clapper knew, they all knew in July of 2016, before they started their own investigation. So when they should have been investigating Hillary Clinton for pushing this hoax, they doubled down on it.
- [09:14]
A
And John Brennan, we now know, thanks to the current CIA director, John Ratcliffe, declassified a lot of information and had his career agents do their own investigation into that intelligence community assessment that was bogus that Obama ordered. And they found that John Brennan had forced Moscow experts in the CIA who had objected to including the Steele dossier because they said it would discredit the entire assessment. But John Brennan insisted that it be included. And there were lies told about that, even that it was only included as part of the appendix, or they call it the annex. But in fact, it was included in the body of the report. And when those Moscow experts in the CIA were pushing back on Brennan, there's an email in which he says, well, it sounds good, doesn't it? Or it sounds true, doesn't it? He knew it wasn't true either. So, to me, John Brennan is the real. Apart from, obviously, Obama and Hillary Clinton. But in terms of the sort of deep state, it seems like John Brennan is really at the root of all evil.
- [10:35]
B
He is. And it's even worse than that, because it wasn't just the Steele dossier. It was also the fact that they were Russia experts within the CIA who'd been doing this for 40 years. And he sidelined them and brought in his own people who knew nothing about anything other than what the plan was. And the plan was to smear Trump. So those people later piped up, in fact, they told Mike Pompeo when he was CIA director for that short period of time that that had happened. And unfortunately, Pompeo never did anything about that. We only found out many, many years later when Pompeii Pompeo wrote his book. And there he says, well, on my first day at the CIA, two guys came to me, Russia experts, and told me that Brennan had sidelined them. Well, why didn't you tell us? You know, so, yes, Brennan, absolutely horrific. But other people were part of, you know, making it worse as well. And in terms of steel, you're absolutely right. This is where Brennan's current, like, legal liabilities come from because he went to Congress over and over and testified that he didn't want steel in there. He said that CIA had nothing to do with steel. They were against putting steel into that intelligence product. And of course, now we know because of Tulsi Gabbard and the notes and so on that she released, that he did in fact not only know it and approve it, he was the one pushing it.
- [11:56]
A
Yeah, against the advice of his own people. And in fact, the people that he was against the advice of were his hand picked people, not even the ones he'd sideline. So do you think anything will happen to John Brennan? I know we've had almost 10 years now of promises and false leads and, you know, people's hopes dashed. Now, there seems to be some. Certainly Donald Trump is not as magnanimous and merciful as he was, as he prided himself on in his first term. I feel that he now understands it's not really about vengeance, it's about deterrence.
- [12:33]
B
It is, unfortunately there are a lot of people, saboteurs, I have to call them still within sort of doj, that kind of orbit, because just to give you an example, yes, we have Brennan testifying before Congress and lying. Straight up lying. Okay, we can charge him for that, but it's always difficult to try and charge someone with answers to Congress because it depends on how the question was asked and he can say he didn't hear it properly and you can come up with all kinds of excuses, whereas we had something much better. But unfortunately, we can no longer pursue him on that more than five years ago. And unfortunately, five years is the period of time in which you have to bring these charges. So back in August of 2020, so more than five years ago, you had the, you had Brennan talk to John Durham, special counsel for an entire day and a lot was said in that entire day. And they should have clearly charged him for things he said during that session.
- [13:31]
A
In terms of perjury.
- [13:32]
B
Correct. Because he said the same things, but he said them in a much kind of tighter environment where you have a special counsel asking you. It's just a much better basis for bringing charges than something you say in Congress when people are shouting and you're in this big room. And you know, that's always very problematic as we now see with the Comey case as well. It's much nicer when you have basically the policeman, you know, John Durham asking the questions and the subject is lying. And they missed their chance because they never brought the charges. And now it's more than five years ago and you can't do anything about it.
- [14:04]
A
Wow. So what are the. I mean they're. Obviously there's a grand jury looking into John Brennan at the moment. And I mean people like Mike Davis have talked about bringing conspiracy charges.
- [14:17]
B
I'm hearing just as you are that there is something afoot, especially in Florida where there's actually a US Attorney who is not a saboteur. Yeah, I'm sure he has saboteurs in his office like they all seem to have. You know, DOJ has been stacking or Obama, you know, years and years stacking DOJ with all these people. And the legal profession is pretty swing at every level. So you can't, basically you have to fire everyone and you can't do that because you still have bread and butter cases, non political cases, and on and on and on. Yeah, so it's, it's very difficult.
- [14:47]
A
And is Florida because you've got the Mar A Lago raid and that's really tied into, goes right back to the Russia hoax and the conspiracy against Donald Trump.
- [14:58]
B
Right. I mean you're always trying to create a hook. Now the hook is always in D.C. because that's where all the bad stuff happens. The trouble is you cannot bring charges in D.C. because you'll just be laughed out of court. John Durham did it once he brought charges against Hillary Clinton's campaign lawyer who not only lied, but it was on his own text message. I mean, absolutely proven. And the jury just said, nope, not guilty and walked out. And then the jury for a person even went to the media and said, well, we're not going to convict some, you know, Hillary supporter or, you know, words to that effect. Yeah, lying to the FBI is no big deal. You know, that's what she said. And so whatever you do in D.C. is not going to stick.
- [15:33]
A
94% Democrats.
- [15:35]
B
Correct. So it's just not going to happen. So you have to find another jurisdiction, but then you have to find a hook to sort of explain why it's going to be here or there. So you're absolutely right. The hook is the Mar a Lago raid. And so from what I'm hearing is there were documents to do with the raid that were uncovered within the FBI in a burn room or in a, in a skiff, which is a sort of a secret room in a burned bag. But the bag was never burned. We don't know why. This was discovered by Kash Patel and his people back in April of this year. So among those documents were handwritten notes by Comey proving that he lied. Some of the stuff that Tulsi has been talking about, as well as stuff from the Mar a Lago raid. So you can then build the case where. Well, this whole bag that they were going to burn but for some reason did not burn. We don't know whether they forgot about it or ran out of time or maybe there was a guy who was told to burn it, but he had a bad conscience and didn't burn it. We don't know. But we do know there was this bag and there was all this different stuff in it. And since there was Florida stuff in there, well, there's your hook. Yeah, it's a bit of a construction, but you have to do that because if you bring the case in D.C. you're just not going to win.
- [16:49]
A
You ended up writing this very rip roaring book I would recommend people called Swift Boating America. And that was about your journey in from being a citizen researcher, I guess, a lawyer who in your part time started looking into this. And you have an uncanny knack of just in my observation of just uncovering information that everyone else has overlooked or not understood the import of and you managed to bring it to light and connect it with other pieces of information. So tell us about your journey to becoming this, you know, one of the top Russiagate exposers. And that was with a group of other people. How did you meet them and, and how did you realize they weren't, you know, a lot of nutcases online? So how do you sort out the wheat from the chaff?
- [17:43]
B
Yeah, you have to, you certainly have to weed them out. The, the nutcases of which you're right there, there are many and, and people.
- [17:50]
A
Deliberately sending you down rabbit holes. Other thing journalists have it, but sludes online are very prey to it. Podcasters, et cetera.
- [18:00]
B
Absolutely. It started with a little kernel of information. So this, we already talked about, generally, the Steele dossier and how it was obviously fraudulent. I mean, anyone. I would ask anyone, just read the first page and you will just laugh. It's just not right. It doesn't sit right. It doesn't feel right. And then once you look into the details, it all falls apart. But it was actually happened a bit later. So that was just kind of. I. I thought everyone was making those observations. Yeah. But a bit later, you had Mueller appointed, which was sort of the escalation of the government effort to not only sabotage Trump when they appointed Mueller, it was to just get rid of him. And again, that ties back to Obama trying to save his legacy and, you know, all those sorts of things.
- [18:43]
A
And Mueller, of course, had been former FBI director, very esteemed, and so he was put in charge of this special counsel investigation into Donald Trump's links with Russia.
- [18:54]
B
Right. And then you pick up these little bits of information which maybe you. Maybe you're right that I picked them up and others don't. I don't know. I mean, I don't think they're that difficult to pick up. But what I picked up is the first person that was charged by Mueller was a guy called George Papadopoulos. And George Papadopoulos said in an interview somewhere many, many years ago that he had never even seen Mueller, never spoken to the guy. I'm like, you guys are saying that the Mueller investigation is all based on this guy.
- [19:23]
A
Never talked to Trump, you mean?
- [19:24]
B
No, to Mueller.
- [19:25]
A
To Mueller.
- [19:26]
B
Oh.
- [19:26]
A
Oh, I see.
- [19:27]
B
So that was just like, how is that possible?
- [19:29]
A
Right.
- [19:29]
B
You got the Mueller special counsel investigation and your linchpin, the guy whom they're claiming it all started off with Papadopoulos, was a Trump campaign advisor. And he's. They said the Mueller people said he had gone to a bar and bragged about contacts with Russia and so on.
- [19:43]
A
To the Australian ambassador.
- [19:45]
B
To the Australian ambassador, no less.
- [19:46]
A
Yes. Alexander Danna. Yeah, he's not. Not being forthcoming about it. But I will say that he's a man who is more British than Australian. There are some Australians who are like that. And he really loves the whole idea of, you know, being a spy and wearing a trench coat and that sort of thing. So, you know, MI6 and his connections there.
- [20:11]
B
In, in the book, I write about that whole story, how that whole thing unraveled. But, I mean, the short version of it is that Papadopoulos was. Was claimed by Mueller's people to be the guy who got drunk and brabbled about this collusion plot, which he didn't do, but they basically made it up. It sort of downer helped a bit. And it's kind of a bit of a complex story.
- [20:32]
A
What were they charging him with?
- [20:34]
B
So they were charging him with lying to the special counsel. Well, earlier to the FBI, when the FBI came to talk to him about that, again, my interest was piqued by the fact that he said he'd never spoken to Mueller. So then I was like, okay, this is not right. Because that's supposedly, as you mentioned, you know, he's a former FBI director. He's supposedly this, this super neutral but super trustworthy guy. And suddenly he's not involved at all in this. And then you look at these other people, Andrew Wiseman and, you know, Brandon Van Grack and many others whom, who don't have that kind of stellar record.
- [21:11]
A
Right.
- [21:12]
B
And then I started looking at the documents coming out of the Papadopoulos case, and I saw that what he was being charged with, he didn't actually lie about. So I was like, why would he say he was guilty of something that he wasn't guilty of? Now, there are reasons for doing that. And in his case, it was they coerced him with other charges, just like.
- [21:32]
A
Alexander Smirnoff with the tax charge. And then he pleaded guilty to something he wasn't guilty of.
- [21:37]
B
Correct. And in Papadopoulos case, it was the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Farah, they go after you. Oh, you do. You are in his case. You, you acted on behalf of Israel and you didn't register. We're going to charge you with that unless you plead guilty to this minor.
- [21:52]
A
Same FBI that was turning a blind eye to Hunter Biden, reaping money from Ukraine and Russia and Kazakhstan and Romania and etc. And not signing up for Farah.
- [22:02]
B
Correct. So I just posted on Twitter, which I had not used up until that point in time. Like, has anyone else noticed this? And then someone did notice or had noticed, and we got in touch and that was Steve McInty, who you mentioned.
- [22:17]
A
Earlier, who was famous for, I think, debunking the Michael Mann's hockey stick, which was that sort of underpinned the entire climate hoax. And it was. Didn't he do Climate Gate as well?
- [22:31]
B
He did.
- [22:31]
A
He did, yes.
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B
He's probably the sort of the original version of what we're doing here, because he got a leaflet in the post with a hockey stick and he was like, well, this can't be right. Then he tried to get data, and over many, many years, he finally kind of figured out that the whole thing is a hoax.
- [22:48]
A
He's a mathematician.
- [22:49]
B
Yes.
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A
Yeah, that's right. From Canada.
- [22:51]
B
Right. So he was able to do that. And. Well, we just got on really well and started chatting endlessly about this stuff. And then we met some other people online whom I've, in the meantime, met in real life as well, which is always nice, but for the first few years, it was all just done online.
- [23:08]
A
And what. And are you all sort of lawyers, mathematicians, what work backgrounds.
- [23:13]
B
Very different. I mean, one works at a bank, one works at a hospital. So, no, not necessarily kind of lawyers, mathematicians, just, I think people with a healthy dose of, you know, common sense and curiosity and.
- [23:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's very exciting. I guess it wouldn't have happened pre social media.
- [23:29]
B
Absolutely not. But then maybe the media was still doing its job pre social media, so sort of those two paths kind of crossed. Yeah.
- [23:36]
A
And. Because what you're doing is journalism and. But you're sort of crowdsourcing a lot of your information. And so what was your big breakthrough?
- [23:44]
B
The big breakthrough was really a guy called Danchenko. So at some point, we didn't know much about the provenance of the Steele dossier or any of these things. And then there were bits and pieces of information which we, again, crowdsourcing, you know, picked up here and there. So one of the people who was involved with the Clinton campaign wrote a book, and he mentioned a collector. What's a collector? Well, you know, that's all we knew, like one word. And then, you know, about a year later or so, we figured out that. That Steel hid his lies behind someone else, so that if it all turned out to be lies, he could say, whoa, there's this Russian guy who told me.
- [24:19]
A
And that was the collector.
- [24:20]
B
That was the collector.
- [24:21]
A
The collector of information. Right.
- [24:23]
B
But no one knew his name. And the FBI was guarding this guy's name. Like, it was incredible. The. The lengths they went to to hide who this guy was. So, of course, that piqued our interest. So that was a very complicated sort of puzzle to solve. And eventually we did solve it, and then we found out it's a guy called Igor Danchenko who knew nothing about anything. He didn't even live in Russia, he lived in D.C. right. And he was just a guy whom Steel paid some money to hide behind.
- [24:53]
A
And to make up stories with friends around a bar, wasn't it?
- [24:59]
B
Correct. But it was more that Steel told him which stories to make up, and then the stories were just blamed on this guy or that guy.
- [25:06]
A
Right.
- [25:06]
B
And then we even got in touch with the other people who supposedly told Danchenko about these stories. And of course, they completely disavowed any knowledge of any of it.
- [25:16]
A
And didn't they say they were drunk and at a bar and they made it up because that's how the Steele dossier read. Really?
- [25:21]
B
Correct. And some of them have come forward and signed affidavits and so on. This is exactly where they explain those things, where they say, well, no, this guy we got. He got drunk and we didn't say anything, and that's all we know. You know, but not. The thing is, there were six of them and not one of them admitted to anything whatsoever. And it's very. You know, they wouldn't have known anything. They were just. Just his childhood friends. Not even from Moscow. From a town called Perm.
- [25:48]
A
Of Danchenko.
- [25:49]
B
Of Danchenko in eastern Russia. These people wouldn't know anything about anything.
- [25:53]
A
No.
- [25:53]
B
They would just happen to be at the same school as him 30, 40.
- [25:57]
A
Years ago and could make a few bucks and.
- [25:59]
B
Well, I don't think they got anything. I think he just blamed some friends in order to hide behind someone else. Yeah, everyone's trying to. So Clinton campaign was hiding behind their lawyers. The lawyers were hiding behind a research firm called Fusion gps. Yes, Fusion GPS was hiding behind Steel, Steele was hiding behind Danchenko, and Danchenko was hiding behind these random Russian people who I feel, you know, very bad about because they didn't do anything wrong.
- [26:23]
A
The FBI ended up offering Christoph Steele $1 million if he could back up the facts in his dossier, and he didn't take it. So I think that's pretty clear, considering he was such a mercenary person that he didn't have any facts to back it up.
- [26:40]
B
And they did that before they went to the court to get a warrant on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page while the election was still going on in 2016. So. And they didn't tell the court that. Oh, by the way, our source here didn't give us any information and we offered him money, and he didn't. You know, the story just said they didn't tell any of that to the court.
- [27:01]
A
So the FBI was keeping Danchenko's identity secret, even though they knew that this information that Steele was giving them was bogus. And so they weren't keeping Danchenko secret to protect him as a source, but to protect their hoax. So how did you find him? Because I know there was. Part of what you did was you worked out that the redaction in a document was the right size for his name, but obviously there were Other clues?
- [27:30]
B
Yeah, you get these documents from time to time, either court documents, or released to Congress Chuck Grassley, or in this case it was Lindsey Graham. And then they will release it on their website. But it's just sort of redactions, redactions everywhere. And you can hardly make sense of it. But then there's some really, really smart guys that I worked with who were able to do exactly that. And the FBI has since changed its whole procedure because of us. The working out the redactions depends on each letter occupying the same amount of space.
- [28:05]
A
Right.
- [28:05]
B
So then you can say, okay, this is a 13 letter word and this is six letters or whatever. So we knew early on that Danchenko was a four plus nine. Igor Danchenko.
- [28:14]
A
Right.
- [28:14]
B
But we didn't know what the four plus nine was. But anyway, since then, they've now changed their typeface so they. That's no longer possible.
- [28:20]
A
Oh, really? Oh, that's interesting. Probably smart. So what were the other clues that led you to him?
- [28:25]
B
There were some clues about that. The first one was that he was not Russian based. There was that. That. But that term was missing. So this was in the. Something called a Horowitz Report. Michael Horowitz wrote a report about this fraudulent investigation into Carter Page.
- [28:41]
A
That was like 2019.
- [28:43]
B
Correct? That was 2019. It was a very long report. It was one of our first kind of real pieces of, of very solid evidence. And we just went through this. 450 pages, and we went through, you know, every page.
- [28:54]
A
It was amazing. I mean, there was so much information in there. Very damning.
- [28:58]
B
There's a footnote in there where there's a very weird redaction. You can read almost everything. And then there's that redaction. And then one of us, it wasn't me, figured out that it said not Russian based. It's like, okay, so this guy who supposedly knew Putin's innermost secrets is not Russian based. And that just happens. The term that Horowitz or DOJ or whoever redacted so that we don't know about that, which of course is very incriminating. So he was not Russian based. Okay, where was he based? So we, we just took a guess that he was based in D.C. or in a D.C. area. Just basically because so many people are. We didn't have anything else there. And then we worked out that he had been at Georgetown. And again, just from the amount of letters that were redacted in terms of what college he was at, and there was the four where he was from. It was four letters Four letters in Russia. You go and look for all the cities in Russia and find one or four letters. It was perm and many, many other instances like that. I mean, in the end, we probably had 30, 40 of those kinds of clues.
- [30:07]
A
And it must have been exciting, like, as you're picking up each clue for you to share them and, you know, figure out the light bulbs go off.
- [30:15]
B
Oh, yeah, it was, it was very exciting. But at the same time, it was also. We expected this guy to be a total nobody who knew nothing about anything.
- [30:24]
A
Yeah.
- [30:24]
B
But the extent of it was just. Just blew us away. So, for instance, when we figured out his, his birth date or his, his rough age, again by unredact, trying to un. Redact this and that, we figured out he was in his 30s. And at the time, like, how's that possible? You would have been like a child when the, the, the, the, the Berlin Wall came down.
- [30:44]
A
Right.
- [30:45]
B
How would he know about all these things? That would be. We assumed if there was any credibility to it, it would be like a former KGB agent. Yeah. Remember, Steel left Russia in the early 90s, so these are the only people he'd know.
- [30:58]
A
Yes.
- [30:59]
B
And it turns out that this guy is. Is far too young to know anything. And then more and more, we found out that he literally knew nothing about anything.
- [31:06]
A
And he worked at a think tank.
- [31:08]
B
He did.
- [31:08]
A
And one of his colleagues was involved in the. Russia in the impeachment first. Impeachment, Correct.
- [31:14]
B
He worked at the Brookings Institution and again, dc and his colleague was Fiona Hill. And she wrote a. Some kind of endorsement letter for him that he posted. And of course, we knew about Fiona Hill because of impeachment and so on and so forth.
- [31:29]
A
So she was one of the most potent witnesses against Donald Trump.
- [31:34]
B
She was. So you can see it. Even though we were expecting the worst, it just got worse and worse. Yeah.
- [31:41]
A
The upshot of the Russiagate hoax was really to poison relations between America and Russia. And I don't know if you have any insight into whether that was the motive. In part because Donald Trump came to office promising, I mean, Hillary Clinton had done this too, to reset relations with Russia. And instead he even said it, that he was kind of, because he'd been framed as a Putin puppet, that he was extra tough on Russia and he was. And, you know, he killed some Russian soldiers, etc. And then, of course, we had the Biden years when Biden was so weak and compromised with the Hunter Biden and Jim Biden stuff, getting money from Ukraine and Russia and China and so on. And so Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine and the tragedy ensues. But do you think that Russia, the Ukraine war would have happened if there had been no Russiagate?
- [32:53]
B
No, there would have been no Ukraine war. Really?
- [32:56]
A
And that confident?
- [32:57]
B
Yes, absolutely confident on. In on that. And I'm also very confident that part of the reason why they chose Russia was because Trump at the time wanted to. If you look back to his speeches in 2015, after he started running, he talked a lot about normalizing relations with Russia. And of course, the establishment did not want that at all.
- [33:18]
A
No.
- [33:19]
B
For various reasons.
- [33:20]
A
Why was that?
- [33:20]
B
Well, Ukraine being one reason. You got old cold warriors and neocons still have that mindset, that mind frame of, you know, Russia bad, or Russia is still the same. Same as the Soviet Union.
- [33:32]
A
And they had some dream of having Ukraine energy to starve Russia of its markets in Europe.
- [33:41]
B
Exactly. So I don't think it was the main reason they chose Russia, but it was certainly one reason. The fact that Trump was talking about normalizing relations. And to be fair to him, he was very diplomatic about. He didn't say, you know, we have to be best friends, but why can't we just get along? And it makes a lot of sense because it's not just a Ukraine war. That, in my view, is a direct result of the Russia hoax. And specifically because Trump's first four years were essentially wasted as far as Russia is concerned, he was not able to do anything in terms of diplomacy. In fact, I would say diplomacy was criminalized.
- [34:17]
A
Yes.
- [34:18]
B
If the Russian ambassador came to visit Trump at the White House, which is a completely normal thing to happen. And it did happen. And then once that happened, you had all these headlines about collusion and so on and so forth. President Putin gave Trump a soccer ball.
- [34:33]
A
Right.
- [34:33]
B
For Baron Trump, who was, I think, 12 at the time, and he liked soccer, so. And the World cups in soccer was in Russia at the time in 2018. So he gave him a soccer ball, and then the media said there was a listening device in there, and all that kind of just absolutely, you know, craziness. So any time anything happened with Russia, there was just a meltdown in the media, and it just stopped anything productive from happening. Unfortunately, if things had been normalized or at least improved, I just don't think there would have been a Ukraine war. Now, of course, we have to get into why did Ukraine happen? The coup In February of 2014 in Ukraine, Joe Biden's involvement, Obama's involvement. Victoria. Exactly. Cookies.
- [35:19]
A
And then she's eavesdropped on talking to Ambassador Pyatt about how they were going to install their people in as the new government.
- [35:28]
B
That's right. And if Trump had had a free hand in his first term, you can imagine him sort of saying, well, yeah, this wasn't very good. And acknowledging that.
- [35:35]
A
And that would have certainly, or maybe uncovering malfeasance.
- [35:39]
B
Oh, for sure. But just for a start, kind of apologizing and saying, well, you know, that this was your backyard and we, we meddled there and that wasn't very good. You know, sorry about that. And I think that would have just been a much better basis for something constructive to, to come of it. But it just, we never ever had a chance. And as you said earlier, in order to disprove this Russia collusion thing, Trump was actually extra harsh on Russia. So I, I have no doubt that this Russia collusion hoax directly led to the whole situation in Ukraine right now. But I also have no doubt that it led to the, this, this newfound friendship between Russia and China.
- [36:15]
A
I was going to ask you about that. That's right. It really forced Russia into the arms of China, which was not something I think that Putin wanted. I think Russia and China have been sort of adversaries for a long time, but now they're bosom buddies. And, and do you see anything? Because I look at John Brennan again and the, the deep state, the rogue, maybe they're rogues inside the CIA, or maybe it was the, the CIA who, at the same time that they're framing Donald Trump, they're also protecting Joe Biden and his family with their, you know, extraordinarily flagrant influence peddling around the world, making millions of dollars, including, you know, Russia and China, were going to enter into this energy agreement that ended up falling apart. But the company cfc, the Chinese company that was paying Hunter Biden a million dollars a year, sorry, that was the Ukrainian company, it was paying Hunter Biden tens of millions of dollars. CEFC was involved in that deal between Russia and China on energy. So that fell apart. So, but John Brennan was again part of the COVID up because he was one of 51 former intelligence officials that included five former directors or acting directors of CIA that signed the letter during the 2020 campaign that dishonestly falsely said that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. So again, that, that's a direct correlation between, you know, Ukraine, China, the Bidens, Obama. It's all one big conspiracy. Protect Joe Biden, frame Donald Trump.
- [38:16]
B
Absolutely. And on that letter, one of the most frustrating things, and we get Back to, you know, the media. I know we kind of keep coming back to the media, but the media is such an important part in all these stories because they're not doing their jobs. If they did their jobs, the whole letter would have meant nothing. Here's the thing. When you look at the exact language they used, they said that the Hunter Biden laptop had all the hallmarks. Earmarks or. Earmarks. Right.
- [38:43]
A
Which is a weird word. It's not the correct word. It should have been hallmark.
- [38:46]
B
Right, yeah. So of. Of a Russian hoax or a Russian.
- [38:50]
A
Russian information campaign.
- [38:53]
B
Campaign, right.
- [38:53]
A
Yeah.
- [38:54]
B
And if you then look at how the media reported it that day and the day after, you go back to October of 2020, look at the headlines and so on, they all reported as fact.
- [39:04]
A
Hunter Biden laptop, Russian disinformation.
- [39:06]
B
Yeah, go political. All these sites, that's their headline. So they misreported this. What it says, maybe on purpose, maybe not. I think on purpose, maybe they're just incompetent. But, you know, probably that's how they were.
- [39:18]
A
Brief gift.
- [39:19]
B
But now we've got this problem because now when you might want to charge these people, at least take away their. Their security clearances and so on, but do a lot more with them, and there have been efforts to go after them. The excuse is always, no, no, this was just a maybe, you know, an opinion. You know, earmarks.
- [39:39]
A
We don't know it was Russian disinformation. Exactly. John Brennan said that the other day when someone buttonholed him at a conversation conference in Washington. He said, we never said that.
- [39:46]
B
You're lying.
- [39:47]
A
We just said it was a Russian information campaign.
- [39:50]
B
So.
- [39:50]
A
Which is technically what they said.
- [39:52]
B
And if the media had done its job, they would have followed up like, hey, before we're going to report on your letter, what does earmarks actually mean? And what do you mean by this? Are you saying Russia did it or not? And then they would have not gone on the record and then the whole thing, you know, would have fallen apart.
- [40:07]
A
But, you know, I don't think it's an excuse for Brennan and Clapper and Comey and so on, because, I mean, Brennan and Clapper were going out on MSNBC and CNN after that first Politico story broke with the letter and, and agreeing with it. They were. They were furthering the lie. So they can't really hide behind their.
- [40:26]
B
Language, not in terms of any moral accountability and so on, but legally they. They can, because they can say, well, the letter wasn't. It wasn't incorrect technically.
- [40:39]
C
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- [41:11]
A
Do you have any sort of connections then between Joe Biden and any of this, the, the Russiagate hoax and further on?
- [41:21]
B
Oh, I mean, there's, there's. I completely agree with you that all of these things have to seem be seen as kind of one big hoax. Now, of course, Joe Biden initially got involved. Well, that we know of. I always like things that we can document. Those are always the best things.
- [41:36]
A
Yes.
- [41:37]
B
So we know that there was that White House meeting when Obama tried to pin Russia collusion on Trump and when he was still president. And during that meeting, Joe Biden said to go after General Flynn for something called the Logan act, because General Flynn had talked to the Russian ambassador, which.
- [41:55]
A
By the way, Joe Biden wouldn't know anything about the Logan act, but. So someone's given that to him.
- [41:59]
B
Exactly. Someone put those words sort of in the room and he wanted to sound clever so he put it out there. So he certainly was part of going after Trump and his team, no doubt about it. But I mean, I agree with you that in terms of when he ran for president himself and the COVID up of what was on the laptop. And it wasn't just the laptop. Even before the laptop came out, we knew so much about what was going on with Marisma and so on and.
- [42:27]
A
So forth because Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley had done that fantastic Senate report with all the senior, the bank records showing suspicious activity.
- [42:37]
B
Exactly. And we also knew that the Ukrainian government had colluded with the Democrat party in the 2016 campaign. And we're doing it again for this impeachment hoax and again for the 2020 election. And Joe Biden has had his hands. Well, again, it's so difficult to say that he had his hands in all these things because half the time I think he doesn't really know what's going.
- [42:58]
A
On, but, oh, I think he knows enough.
- [43:00]
B
Maybe back then he knew more. But there's certainly, there's a lot of overlap between all these situations. And I mean, some People say that the. The whole Russia hoax was designed to cover up Biden corruption in Ukraine. I think that goes a bit too far, and I don't think we can actually prove that.
- [43:17]
A
No, but it's small beer. I mean, it's, you know, tens of millions of dollars.
- [43:23]
B
True. But we can certainly prove that the Russia collusion hoax ran in parallel to Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election against Trump. That we can absolutely prove. And by the way, Ukrainian officials apologized once Trump got elected, and they said, well, maybe we shouldn't have done that, and so on. And there's articles from the prime minister and other people during the election campaign. Absolutely. Shooting against Trump in the worst possible way. And that was totally unprecedented. When does a country like that do that during someone else's election campaign?
- [43:59]
A
Well, of course, in those days, Ukraine was completely controlled by the United States and by, you know, the Obama administration.
- [44:06]
B
Correct. And they had. We had a. We have a whistleblower from within the Ukrainian Embassy In Washington, D.C. a guy called Andrei Telejenko, who came forward, not recently, but he came. Actually, he came forward after Trump's election in 2016. So, you know, nine years ago, and he said that his embassy, he was there in meetings where they were colluding. The embassy was colluding with the Clinton campaign and with the Democrats in terms of coming up with bad stories about Trump, tying Trump to Russia and so on and so forth. So they were involved with that.
- [44:37]
A
I know that Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley wanted to interview him as part of their committees in the Senate when they were investigating what they call Hunter Biden burisma and corruption. And their excellent report came out and just fell like a stone. No one reported on it except the New York Post and a few others. But at the time, they wanted to interview Teleshenko, I believe. And there was such a furor about it from the Democrats that at the time, they stirred up a false accusation that Johnson and Grassley were being fed Russian disinformation. And in fact, Ron Johnson has told us that he was ambushed with a bogus FBI briefing. Defensive briefing. It was painted as. And he said within a few minutes, he knew that this was a setup. And he told the two FBI agents who were giving him this bogus defensive briefing. If I see this in the media, I will know that you've set me up. And within a day or two, there it was, Washington Post, Russian disinformation. And that bad publicity actually led to two Republican senators on Johnson's committee, Mitt Romney being one of them, who refused to go along and sign off on subpoenas and so on. So that. That sabotaged the committee's oversight work. Another Russian, Russia, Russia, Russia lie.
- [46:07]
B
And just to make sure that it wasn't going to fly and there was going to be no interview with this guy, they sanctioned the guy, claiming that he had spread Russian disinformation.
- [46:15]
A
That's right. And this is during the Trump campaign. We have to remember that this is during.
- [46:18]
B
This is just.
- [46:19]
A
Sorry, the Trump presidency.
- [46:21]
B
Correct. This was Pompeo and Mnuchin who did that.
- [46:23]
A
Yes.
- [46:24]
B
So two departments imposed sanctions on this guy. When, when you have sanctions imposed on you, it just kind of destroys your life. It destroys travel, banking, you know, just basically can't do anything anymore that. That even touches the US in any way. That means any Western bank won't, you know, bank with you. And traveling is very difficult and on and on and on. So his life has sort of been miserable all these years. And by the way, he's still sanctioned even now. And the whole point of sanctioning was simply to back up this campaign, to shut up Johnson and Grassley. They just wanted to shut that down, shut it off. And that's just to make sure that it really was. You also shut down the whistleblower. Now, even if whatever you might think of the guy, he came forward in 2016 about the.
- [47:13]
A
And everything he said was correct.
- [47:14]
B
Everything he said was correct. That to me is like, when you come forward that early, you're not looking for something or whatever. He was just a guy working at the Ukrainian embassy and he just thought, that's not okay. The fact that my people here are colluding with the Democrat Party.
- [47:30]
A
Well, I mean, I know of two other whistleblowers, let's call them one being Gal Luft, who was. Is an Israeli American professor. He had been in the idf. He was working with cefc, the Chinese company that was paying the Bidens. And he observed that they. The Bidens, Jim Biden and Hunter Biden were getting paid these certain amounts regularly. And he went to the FBI, he did what's called a proffer interview in Brussels. And he told them all of this. He gave them chapter and verse, all of the, the. The information. This was back in. I can't remember. I think it was 2015. No, no, sorry. When did. It was just before Joe Biden announced his candidacy for 2020. So it was 2019. So it was April 2019, he announced. So it was just before that Galof told the FBI about the money from China that was coming to the Biden family, and yet he ends up in jail. And then another guy, Alexander Smirnoff, who had been a longtime FBI confidential human source, I think the highest paid in the FBI at the time. He told his handler at the FBI in passing about some conversations that he'd picked up between the Ukrainian owner of Burisma, the corrupt energy company that was paying Hunter Biden a million dollars a year. He picked up some information and then a few years later he was asked again about this information and he was forthcoming. And he said that Lachevsky Michelojevsky, the owner of Burisma, had said he'd paid a bribe of $5 million to two bidens, which everyone assumed was Hunter and Joe, he's now in jail for again, lying to the FBI. So do you see that there's something nefarious again in shutting down whistleblowers or are they legitimate?
- [49:37]
B
That story is so similar to the one we talked about earlier with George Papadopoulos. In both cases, if you look at the actual facts as alleged, there was no wrongdoing, there were no lies. In Papadopoulos, it was about getting some dates mixed up. But he didn't even get them mixed up. I mean, I went through all these things, all the emails with a fine tooth comb. He did not get them mixed up. He said he knew this, this guy in London before he joined the Trump campaign. That's actually true. Why Papadopoulos? I was like, well, if you look at him, and when he talked about the five million dollar bribe again, they, they said oh, said oh. He said it in Vienna, but he only traveled there a year later or whatever. They tried to sort of smudge things. But when you read his exact words in the transcript, he did not lie.
- [50:28]
A
And it could well actually misconstrued a date that he'd said had happened roughly about such and such. The miss. The FBI handler who's either stupid or trying to set him up just misconstrued the dates and gave the FBI this pretext.
- [50:46]
B
Correct. And they use the same playbook over and over, which is, that's why, you know, we're talking about those cases sort of being so similar. They will charge you for something unrelated or threatened to. In Smirnoff's case, he taxes.
- [50:59]
A
Yes.
- [51:00]
B
In Papadopoulos case, Farrow Foreign Agents Registration act and. But what they really want is a confession on something that you didn't do.
- [51:08]
A
Yes.
- [51:09]
B
Which they then sell you as well as just a lying to the, the FBI. Just a tiny thing, you know, no jail time, whatever, or a couple of weeks or whatever it might be. And then we'll make this tax problem.
- [51:23]
A
And we won't charge your. Your. In Smirnoff's case, his girlfriend and her son.
- [51:29]
B
And we had the same situation with Hunter Biden. They also made the bigger problem go away by making him make a deal about a tiny problem.
- [51:39]
A
His sweetheart deal.
- [51:40]
B
His sweetheart deal. And out of those three cases, that's the only one where the judge, Judge Norieka, just lovely. I don't know much about her or whatever, but she was, she must have been there and said, no, this doesn't smell right. Something's not right here. In the other two cases, that did not happen, unfortunately.
- [51:57]
A
And Judge Norieka was able to do that because there'd been an amicus brief filed in Delaware, in the court in Delaware, which was full of the information from those very brave IRS whistleblowers who complained bitterly over and over to their superiors about their investigation into under Biden being slow walked and obstructed and finally had to blow the whistle. So that was a good news story. And Judge Noriega did the right thing. Amazing. In Delaware, where Hunter Biden told his Chinese partner at one point that, you know, I know all the judges in Delaware.
- [52:32]
B
Yeah. No, I mean that, that sort of. Isn't it shocking when you think back about the laptop and many, many other things, but just the laptop in particular here with the stuff that was on there, such as that email.
- [52:45]
A
Yes.
- [52:46]
B
I mean, if it had been. Imagine a Trump son. Yes. Has a document where he threatens a business partner by saying, I know all the judges in New York and they're going to do what I want them to do, you'd never hear the end of it.
- [52:58]
A
And there was worse on there. I mean, there was one where he said, I'm sitting next to my father and if you don't do, you know, pay us the money, basically, he'll use all his power and everyone he knows to make, you know, to destroy you. So.
- [53:12]
B
And yet most people don't know about these proven stories.
- [53:17]
A
And we'll say with Russiagate, I mean, people still, even though there's been so much exposure, so many of the initial reports, like our reporting has been vindicated over and over. And Russiagate, there are still a lot of Americans who believe that there was. Where there's smoke, there's fire.
- [53:37]
B
That's the problem. And it is true that most hoaxes have a kernel of truth somewhere. And I think people just assume that that's the case every time, that that's how the whole thing builds up. That's how it develops. And I can say with certainty. And this makes Russia get kind of special.
- [53:57]
A
Yeah.
- [53:58]
B
There is absolutely no kernel of truth to any of it. It was all made up. Normally you say, well, Trump had something dodgy going in Russia, so let's exaggerate a bit and let's kind of make something of it. But conversely, he did not. In fact, he had nothing to do with Russia.
- [54:13]
A
Right.
- [54:13]
B
They just made everything up.
- [54:15]
A
Yeah. Now, let's just go back to your background, because you've had a. Had a very interesting childhood. And I think, like me, we were talking before, we're rootless cosmopolitans, and you grew up in all sorts of countries, and I think that's interesting in terms of how you ended up being one of the most important people in. In exposing the Russiagate hoax. So you were born in Germany in the mid-70s, and your parents, though, were living in Iran, so you ended up having your childhood in Iran. Your father, I believe, is German, your mother Czech.
- [54:51]
B
That's right.
- [54:51]
A
And your mother was on the same ski team with Donald Trump's first wife.
- [54:57]
B
It does. This is a such a weird thing thinking about it. Ivana and my mom are like, just. They were born five days apart.
- [55:04]
A
Oh, really?
- [55:05]
B
Yeah. Both near a city called BRNO or BRNO in Czechoslovakia back then, Czech Republic. Now, they met on the ski team. Both fled that country in their, I think, teens or so, but went to different places. But of course, the name Trump was always kind of, from as long as I can remember, when I was probably a toddler or whatever, I heard, you know, my parents talking about that, because Ivana had ended up with this, you know, famous real estate tycoon. And, well, my mother had not. So it became sort of a running joke. So, yeah, Trump was always sort of. Well, I knew who that was and I was very interested in that. And I would always kind of see what he was up to or listen to the grownups talk about him. I remember we came to New York when I was pretty young, and it was. They had, you know, met in the 60s or 70s, and it would have been, you know, they would have still known each other. So we were at Trump Tower, and I remember my parents arguing about whether they're going to ask the concierge about, you know, going to. To see Ivana, and they ended up not doing that.
- [56:08]
A
She probably would have liked it, probably.
- [56:10]
B
But I don't know, maybe shyness or whatever it was, it didn't happen. But the funny thing is they then got divorced around the same time they went.
- [56:18]
A
They both your parents in the Trumps?
- [56:20]
B
Yeah. Iana and my mom had exactly the same dress sense. They both had their little dog. They both died young. They both died at home alone. Oh, wow. I mean, it was so many things where I just go, whoa.
- [56:34]
A
Yeah.
- [56:34]
B
And no, they never met again after Czechoslovakia. But I think for that reason, the name Trump has always been kind of there, part of your life. Yeah. And, you know, I would. Whenever he was up to something, I'd like, oh, Trump, man, what's he up to? And that kind of.
- [56:49]
A
Yeah.
- [56:49]
B
And of course, when he ran for president, I thought I was very, very good.
- [56:54]
A
And so you grew up in Iran. What was that like in those days? In the 70s, it was still quite, like, normal, wasn't it? Still quite Western?
- [57:02]
B
Yeah, very much so. It was just. Yeah. I mean, maybe like some of the. The more westernized Middle Eastern countries that you can think of today, you could just go and do whatever you wanted to. And it was. It was good. Cold winters. People don't appreciate that. I mean, I remember playing really. In the. In the snow and all that kind of stuff, because you don't.
- [57:23]
A
You're in Tehran.
- [57:24]
B
Yeah, in Tehran. Yeah. You don't associate that with snow. But those are. Those are some of my memories. And then, you know, of course, there was a revolution. We stayed on for about a year, but then it just became not sort of healthy being there anymore.
- [57:42]
A
Like, how. How did it manifest?
- [57:44]
B
Well, in terms of my mom couldn't leave the house anymore and just getting basic necessities and just. It was all very kind of, you know, fraud.
- [57:54]
A
How old were you then?
- [57:56]
B
I was five when we left.
- [57:57]
A
Oh, okay. So you. Gym memories.
- [58:00]
B
I do, yeah. I mean, my first memories, for sure. Yeah. But very good memories.
- [58:06]
A
Right.
- [58:06]
B
And I still know some people as well from that time who. Two of them stayed, so most of them got out.
- [58:13]
A
And then you went to London?
- [58:15]
B
We kept moving. We were in so many different places. So we were in. In. In England. We were in. In South Africa. That was very interesting.
- [58:22]
A
Your dad was a logistics mathematician guy?
- [58:25]
B
No, no, just. Just transport kind of stuff. Johannesburg was extremely interesting. This was during apartheid.
- [58:33]
A
Oh, wow.
- [58:34]
B
And that I all remember very well. I mean, that was just a very. Such a weird thing. You go to the mall and there's just white people.
- [58:41]
A
Right.
- [58:42]
B
Because they're the only ones allowed in there.
- [58:43]
A
Right.
- [58:44]
B
And it's just very strange. But at home, everyone had a helper that would be a black person.
- [58:50]
A
Right.
- [58:50]
B
And just, I mean, very nice for a kid. Growing up, everyone had a big garden and lots of dogs. I always, you know, loved all my dogs, and we had a lot of them over there. Some people even had swimming pools. You know, you had all the nice stuff. But you also sense, you know, something's not quite right. As a kid, it's difficult to really compute what that all means, but. But, yeah, Very, very interesting.
- [59:15]
A
A sense of living on borrowed time or in a surreal fantasy world.
- [59:22]
B
I don't think I sort of understood it to that point, but I certainly understood there was something not quite right. There's also. I remember one guy threatened us with a gun in the car for getting his parking spot or whatever. Just thought a white guy, just like, whoa, that sticks with you. That guy with a gun at the window sort of thing.
- [59:44]
A
Welcome to New York. Actually, not New York anymore.
- [59:46]
B
South Africa is pretty. Can be pretty kind of rough.
- [59:49]
A
Right.
- [59:49]
B
Or even back then was.
- [59:51]
A
Yeah.
- [59:52]
B
Already fronted.
- [59:53]
A
Yeah.
- [59:53]
B
Yeah. Just. But I mean, still amazing. You know, you got a Kruger park, you go to Durham, you got a Cape Town, these endless highways, you know, with hardly anyone around. And it's just. It's very, very interesting.
- [60:06]
A
And then you moved to Canada.
- [60:08]
B
No, Korea. Seoul as well.
- [60:10]
A
Right.
- [60:11]
B
Another absolutely fascinating country. Hong Kong.
- [60:17]
A
Right.
- [60:18]
B
When it was still British. Yeah, Canada. I mean, many other places. Then I ended up studying in Holland and in Switzerland.
- [60:29]
A
And how many languages do you speak?
- [60:30]
B
Oh, I. I don't. I speak German and I used to speak Farsi, but I forgot all of that.
- [60:35]
A
Right.
- [60:36]
B
And I used to speak Czech, and I forgot all of that.
- [60:38]
A
Like me with Japanese, I forgot it all.
- [60:41]
B
If I hear it, it sounds very familiar, but. Yes, I just can't know.
- [60:44]
A
Yeah. And so where did you end up putting down roots?
- [60:47]
B
I haven't. I don't think I. Well, no, it's like every. Everywhere I am. Like, after three, four years or so, I kind of feel now I need to move on, you know, see other things.
- [60:58]
A
Have you got any current fascinations that you're working on, sleuthing on anything with your Internet friends?
- [61:06]
B
Well, I mean, there's a. There's a few of them. I mean, first of all, we have these upcoming cases with Comey, for instance, who's been indicted. Brennan? Not yet. Hopefully soon. There are still stories to be told about that. So, for instance, in terms of Comey, I want to write another book about March of 2017. It was 20 days in March of 2017 when the whole thing ramped up, when it went from hoax to, we're going to get rid of the president and he was in overdrive and he did so many things within. The starting date was when they got rid of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. Yes, they sidelined him. And the end date is when Comey went to Congress and said, we're investigating the, the Trump campaign.
- [61:49]
A
Right. 20 days.
- [61:50]
B
It was 20 days. But what, it's absolutely crazy what happened within those 20 days. So that's a fascinating topic.
- [61:56]
A
What a great idea. That'll be great. But what would you call it?
- [61:59]
B
20 days in March.
- [62:00]
A
20 days in March. I love it.
- [62:01]
B
The other one I think is Covid. I mean, I'd like to do something on that. I mean, I did a lot on that. I did a lot of, I had a lot of breakthroughs on Covid with Anthony Fauci. I think I was the first to report on what his emails really exposed. They came out in June of 2021 and they exposed a huge cover up. And I'm not inclined to think in conspiratorial ways. I assume the opposite. But as far as Fauci is concerned, he covered up the origin of COVID.
- [62:31]
A
And was this with the orchestrating the Lancet article saying that it was a wet market.
- [62:37]
B
Correct.
- [62:37]
A
Origin, Correct.
- [62:39]
B
So late January of 2020 he found out this thing is, has been engineered and he went into overdrive similar to what Comey did in 2017. And it's all documented, it's all there. So I feel a bit like I've kind of, I should really pick that up again so. Because in my mind that story is done and it's clear and we all know what happened and so on. And then I remind myself, well, we, some of us do, but most of us don't know what happened.
- [63:05]
A
And a lot of people died because of the lie.
- [63:08]
B
Millions and millions lied. Died because of the lie. Correct.
- [63:11]
A
And also the COVID up and the, the response which Fauci was responsible, responsible for the overreaction, the masking, the shutting down of schools and so on, has had, will have deleterious effects for a generation.
- [63:27]
B
It will, I mean, the biggest part, the biggest sort of problem that he caused in terms of his cover up, whether it was natural or came out of a lab, is in any natural pandemic, a virus takes time to spread because it has to learn how to infect humans. Throughout all of history, you see the same pattern. So you think of it, think of it as a key and the key doesn't quite fit. You have an old key and you have to wiggle it and so on. It might work. Sometimes it won't Work at other times and so on. And maybe with the right mutations, it can sort of get there. But the point is, while it's doing that, you have several months to learn about it and find remedies and so on and so forth. But of course, if it's been made in a lab in order to infect humans with that specific purpose in mind, then the key fits perfectly from day one. And that is what made this virus different from all other viruses from day one. And they knew that. But of course, they applied the pandemic response to the version, the natural version, where the key does not fit.
- [64:32]
A
Right.
- [64:32]
B
And that caused tremendous damage in so many different ways. If they had just come clean and said, everyone is going to get infected. Yeah, because the key fits. It was made in a lab in order to infect humans. That was the whole purpose of it. If they had just come clean, everyone would have just gotten on with life. You could have done something about vulnerable people, old people and so on. But everyone else just gets on. They're going to get it, they're going to. Going to be sick for a week.
- [64:58]
A
And the virus mutates into something less virulent.
- [65:01]
B
And that's what we had with Omicron a year or so later. But you would have had that much earlier, right?
- [65:06]
A
Oh, because. Because people would have been infected earlier. Right. Wow. So Anthony Fauci, I think, is another untold story. And I think for. To make sure it doesn't happen again. But also I think another terrible effect was the just collapse of trust in science and medicine. And Anthony Fauci had the hubris to say, I am science. You criticize me, you're criticizing science.
- [65:37]
B
Very much so. And what the. The part that always gets me, and I keep thinking about how it makes me angry even, you know, as we sit here thinking back about the fact of how advanced science is, is some of the things you. You learn about and you read about, that can be done, that can be traced, that can be done medically in terms of surgery and in terms of procedures and all these kinds of. Across the spectrum. I mean, it is absolutely amazing where we are in 2025 with all these things, but to then at the same time pretend that there's this virus and it's somehow natural, when it takes like one millionth of the brain power and the knowledge and the science to figure out that this thing came out of a lab. Yeah, you don't need all this advanced anything to know that this thing came out of a lab. But suddenly they all pretended to be Stupid?
- [66:33]
A
Yes.
- [66:34]
B
No, no. We don't know. Probably natural. You know, that makes me so, so angry.
- [66:38]
A
It's like the way the New York Times, the Washington Post, sex. Like, they're so gullible and so stupid that when some intelligence guy tells them something preposterous like the Steele dossier, they all, you know, we'll just report it straight.
- [66:50]
B
That is another one that makes me so angry. I don't. I don't mean to sort of hop back to Russia Gate, but it's all the same thing. It is.
- [66:55]
A
It's about the gullibility, the fake gullibility of, you know, these impressive media institutions that everyone trusts and that set the agenda for media all over the world, like the New York Times. And they, they are selectively gullible. And yet if Donald Trump, someone said jaywalks, they're on him straight away.
- [67:20]
B
When back in the 2016 election campaign, the Clinton campaign flew Christopher Steele into Washington, D.C. they brought him to a hotel called the Tabard Inn. Then they invited all their media friends to brief for Christopher Steele, to brief them about Russia collusion.
- [67:39]
A
Wow.
- [67:40]
B
This is September of 2016.
- [67:43]
A
Right.
- [67:43]
B
And the Washington Post was not at the Tabern. You might think, oh, what's going on? Well, that's because they got a private session at the Washington Post headquarters.
- [67:52]
A
Right.
- [67:52]
B
So what does that mean? That means that from the beginning, from 2016, whether you believe still or not, at a minimum, the media, and by the media, I mean, they were all there. New York Times, you know, all.
- [68:03]
A
They were all there in Curious.
- [68:05]
B
No, they knew. They knew that this guy was being paid by Clinton.
- [68:09]
A
Ross, Ross, Ross.
- [68:10]
B
But what actually then happened is it took Devin Nunes and Cash Patel another year and subpoenas and all sorts of things to figure out that this guy was being paid by Clinton. And during this entire year, 2017, no one in the media said, yeah, actually, we know that this guy was paid by Clinton because they were the ones who brought him to us.
- [68:31]
A
Well, Hans Monkey, we've come full circle, and I think we started. You said you wouldn't have done this, you wouldn't have even had an X account if it wasn't for the media failing in their job. I mean, I hate to say that I think you're right, but you've ably made up for that by your amazing work, that you've done your research. And I just recommend anyone to read Swift Boning America. And I hope you keep going with Fauci and with the 20 days in March with Comey. That'll be fascinating.
- [69:01]
B
Thank you so much.
- [69:04]
A
Thank you so much for watching. I'm Miranda Devine. We'll be back with more soon. Let us know what you thought of this episode by leaving a comment below. And make sure you hit the like and subscribe button so you don't miss any future episodes of Quad Force One.