Behind the Bastards - Part Two: The Complete, Insane History of American Border Militias

Episode Date: May 9, 2019

In Part Two on American Border Militias, Robert is joined again by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston to continue discussing the truly horrific history of Border Patrol.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new

podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

you get your podcasts. What's patrolling my borders? I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards. This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast will tell you bad people, talk about him. Katie Stoll, Cody Johnson, how are you guys doing today? I'm still great. Quick answer to question, races are patrolling your borders? Yes, they are. Whether or not they're in border patrol actually doesn't matter. From the top down. Boy, you know, sure seems like 2020 is going to be the worst year of everyone's life. The worst year ever. Can't agree more. I could agree more, but I'll just agree. I'll just agree with you completely. What if we spitball in here? What if we produced a weekly podcast through the entirety of the election talking about the stuff

people are leaving out, going to places other people don't go. Like to the conventions? Yeah, avoiding mentioning the president so much. Talking about policies and important things. People left behind. Maybe injecting methamphetamine into our butts and going to CPAC. Oh, God, yeah. What do we did that? You think we should do that? I think we should do it. On the spot. Sure. Okay, cool. You know what I love doing and what's super professional? Holding pitch meetings like this at the start of my show. That's where the magic happens. That's how it does. And we're actually legally forbidden from talking, not on microphones to each other. This is the only place we can have this conversation. I've had mine implanted. Which very cool move.

Everything's recorded. Check out our other podcast. Just catching up with each other's friends. Catching up when you have to record. My nighttime sleeping snore sounds is really taken off. I think the Cody and I discuss our sciatica episode. It's real good. I've got some good stretches for you guys. That's the title of another episode. Is that our soft way of saying we're going to do that? We're going to do a weekly podcast about the election. About the worst year of everyone's life. Get ready, guys. This is going to happen. Check it out. Not yet. Not even particularly close to now. Soonish, we look forward to Q3-ish. Sharing the worst year of everybody's life with you. Hooray, this sounds great. You know what else sounds great? Are the

surely crippling addictions that we will inculcate covering this nightmare of an election? Are they going to be worse than my already existing addictions? They have to be. I've already checked myself into rehab for December 2020. I've already started asking random guys under bridges if they have Adderall. I've got Adderall. Oh, fantastic. We are so on the ball. Look at this team. I've been stockpiling Benzedrine inhalers. You just pop those things out, drop them in your water, and that's 70 speed right there. Professional. Yep. Doing it right. CPAC. Sophie, you're giving me some sort of hand signal. What does that mean? I think it means scoop it up. Name more drugs. Oh, we have a show to do that people tuned in wanting to hear more about the

racists of the border. I guess we could go to the show. Fine. You know what? Fine. Fine. Chris Simcox was the first person to tap effectively into a very particular chunk of the American conservative consciousness. People had tried to run volunteer border militias before, and there had been militias for decades, but no one had managed to make that sort of behavior go mainstream because all the prior leaders of those sorts of movements had been insane people, outright Nazis, or insane outright Nazis. Chris Simcox was a clean cut, all American looking guy. He helped the militia movement go mainstream. Here's the nation. Quote. Thank you, Cody. As the Republican Party has fractured over immigration,

Simcox has become a hero of the build a wall deport a mall faction of the GOP. Earlier this year, he shed his camouflage fatigues for a suit and tie as a featured panelist at the conservative political action conference in Washington DC, the nation's largest gathering of conservative political activists. An increasing portion of his time is spent at fundraisers and forums far away from the border he once swore to defend by any means necessary. Chris had enough charisma to be able to effectively work a crowd. That nation article recounts a speech he gave during our Republican Party fundraiser at Wild Bills, a nightclub in Atlanta. I want you to remember, as I read this, that it happened all the way back in 2006.

The odor of pulled pork spread a mighty tang as members of Georgians for Immigration Reduction hawked t-shirts bearing the image of a snarling bald eagle above the slogan, ill eagles foul up my country. One fucking guess now foul the spells. I desperately want one of those shirts. I will wear it every day. That's what I'll wear to CPAC. I'm sure we can find them on the internet. You have to wear that to CPAC. I will wear it for the four days before CPAC, so it's like filthy and then we'll shoot methamphetamine into our butts and go to CPAC. It's going to be amazing. I'm going to have so many lanyards by then.

All Cody can talk about. I'm excited about all the lanyards. The crowd warmed up for Simcox by listening to The Wright Brothers, a country rock duo billed as the Shawnee anime show put to music. That's their, that's what they're billing? That's what they go by? I'm not even through the paragraph and there's tears in my eyes. We're still talking about The Wright Brothers. One Don Black sombrero with gold tassels have dedicated a song called The Illegals to Chris Simcox. The not so catchy chorus? Tell me why do we allow The Illegals? After all, they're illegal, so why do we allow The Illegals to keep on coming in? Oh, no. You can't rhyme illegal with illegal. Oh, that's so bad. Oh my gosh. Shawnee anime show put to music. What an insane thing. That's so perfect because like it's, it's so bad in so many ways because like

obviously the message is like, well, that's not good. That's Sean Hannity's show. But then like rhyming illegals with illegals, it's so inelegant. It's like, oh yeah, the other aspect of Sean Hannity. Yeah. He's really dominant in that, inelegant. They're really embracing it. It's fucking incredible. Amazing. As the music faded, Simcox strolled onto stage to rock his cheers. America's top vigilante spoke slowly and with a hint of condescension, almost as if addressing a room full of five year olds. When you put people in lawn chairs on the border, an amazing thing happens, Simcox said. No one comes across. As he spoke, giant screens behind him displayed ghostly night vision images

of immigrants marching through the desert, water jugs piled beneath a mesquite tree, and the decomposing corpses of desert crossers. What the fudge. Sounds like he's a cool guy. Cool dude. It sounds like he is a guy. You see all those videos of like migrants crossing the border and they go to the border patrol and they're dying, dehydrated, and then you see the border patrol agents take jugs of water and pour them out in front of the. Sounds like something nice people do. Okay. Cool people. Okay. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure you. Okay. Yeah. I mean, we should at some point do an episode on the terrible things the border patrol has done. The actual border patrol. There's a lot to talk about with the individual. Stay focused. Stay focused,

guys. They just sound similar. Fucking head on a swivel, Cody. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Now as the early aughts rolled along, Chris Simcox became more controversial within his group. Many accused him of taking donations to finance his own lifestyle. He earned the nickname the little prince for allegedly being a complete prick and control freak. Yeah. Oh, nice. Well, not really actually. It's mediocre. We'll make a t-shirt out of it. Obviously. Yeah. But I'm not gonna throw the bagels over that. I understand. Which right now, since I mentioned them, like, I don't know if you've heard of Checa's gun, but Checa's bagels. They're calling for you. That's the way. Yeah.

Yeah. As a result, the Minutemen splintered more and more. This was not entirely a bad thing. More than 50 different groups eventually formed all around the US. And for years, they held regular border patrolling events. Most of these were on the US-Mexico border, but Chris's Minutemen chapter did send a few guys up to the Canadian border to sit in lawn chairs and watch for dastardly Canadian infiltrators. I think the only people they caught were Americans trying to sneak into Canada. At its peak, the Minutemen project had more than 12,000 members. And that was just in the main official group. Gilchrist and Simcox remained the primary faces of the movement, but starting in 2006,

they began to share the stage with someone else. A 41-year-old woman named Shauna Ford. Y'all heard of Shauna Ford? No. You're fucking about to. Is she a Ford or is she just a person named Ford? No, she's not at all related to the motor company. Ford's first operation was actually one of the watches on the US-Canada border, which was close to her home at the time, Bellingham, Washington. After the watch, she wound up at a party at the home of Bob Dameron, the Washington state Minutemen leader. While everyone was eating dinner, she was caught alone in the Dameron's bedroom, looking through a dresser for pain pills. She was kicked out of the house, but allowed to

remain in the group. This was because Shauna was kind of a superstar Minuteman or woman. She showed up at every event, and she was the kind of person who just sort of dominated any conversations he was in. In such a way that within a few weeks, she'd become one of the most prominent members of the group. She was especially active on the Minutemen email list, The Line. According to the Herald, a local Washingtonian news source, quote, In a link to the August 20th, 2006 email, she described being attacked by a group of men. She said they were Mexicans outside of a Seattle Starbucks. The men were enraged after seeing signs against immigration piled inside her car. Ford wrote about finding herself face-to-face

with a pair of dark brown eyes filled with pure hate. One man, she wrote, wanted to rape me or kill me, probably both. Just before the confrontation got physical, though, Ford said she was saved by a group of US Army soldiers in full uniform who happened to be in the area. Did everybody clap? I'm sure they all clapped. I'll say in a little bit of defense to her. I have seen a lot of US Army soldiers in full uniform in, well, US Navy in Seattle during Fleet Week, but they were all so drunk they couldn't stand and trying to fuck everything that moved, as Marines and Navy personnel do. So she maybe got her signals crossed and misinterpreted what they were showing up for? Yeah. I mean, this is all a lie. Clearly a lie. I mean, I feel like,

yeah. I'm going to guess Seattle's racial makeup being what it is. Any group of Hispanics in that, like, city are probably like members of the US military. Well, as you were saying that, I was like, I bet someone with brown eyes, one person, saw her sign and was like, hey, man, that's not cool. I bet she was shouting about it. She was shouting. And someone was like, that's your bad person. And then a bunch of horny sailors came up and was like, anybody here to fuck? You know, that's the grain of truth I got from that. Yeah. Is literally anything bothering you right now? I know what'll make you feel better. Because I'm drunk as fuck in its Fleet Week. Oh, it's a fun time. Oh, it's time for ads also.

Maybe ads for the Navy. That was the Sean Hannity of transitions to ads. Anyway, it's ads time. Join the Navy. Get drunk in Seattle. Uh huh. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in

Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good, bad ass way. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found

himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science.

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus, it's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. We were just talking off mic about cool political ideals we have

that you could hear about on the hypothetical podcast that's definitely coming. Like if we definitely probably are gonna for sure do that. Yeah, well, we'll definitely, most likely, absolutely be talking about what we just talked about and you guys can tune in then. Yeah, it was weird that it wasn't recorded. It was weird that it wasn't recorded. Let's talk about Shauna Ford some more. Awesome. Ford with me. Yeah. Shauna became quickly the Minuteman's de facto spokeswoman, regularly talking to press on behalf of the organization. This did not go over super well

with all of the actual leadership of the group who felt that Shauna was basically just shouting her way into power. Gilchrist, Simcox, and the organization's other leadership got together and voted to fire her. Bob Dameron was instructed to actually do the deed in November of 2006 after she finished participating in a local television town council discussion on illegal immigration. Dameron later recalled, I told her I was told to fire her. I also told her I couldn't do it. Shaken, Ford drove home, or she tried to, but she rammed a guardrail in her Honda Civic and was taken to the hospital with minor injuries. This much we can confirm. The Washington State Patrol said she crashed when a truck, which was obeying all of the rules of the road,

pulled in front of her. The State Patrol seems to put the blame on her for driving like a shithead. But in Ford's recitation of events, the truck drivers ran her off the road, and of course, they were Mexicans. Yeah, she's, yeah. I like the person that can't take responsibility for themselves. It's cool, especially when they become part of a heavily armed militia. That's the best thing. Those are the best kinds of responsible people. Was she trying to end it all? I don't know. I think she was trying to have a minor car accident, so she could claim Mexicans were trying to murder her. Is there anyone who can confirm or deny that those drivers were Mexican? No, none at all. I'll deny it. Yeah, I'm going to say. I was hoping someone would.

Driving 40 or 50,000 miles a year, as I do, especially up in the Pacific Northwest, I don't see a lot of truck drivers who aren't old white dudes. But she seems to run into them all. Yeah, she does seem to run into them all. This attempt on her life was enough to delay Ford's firing. In January 2007, she took the opportunity to approach Chris Simcox directly. She told him that her state's Minuteman group leaders were shitty and disorganized. She said she could do better, and she had a whole plan laid out for how to fix things. Simcox promoted her to a state-level leadership position. Shana took to leadership like a dog takes to a fajita that fell on the floor. She quickly came up with new stories of assassination attempts against her,

including the claim that she had been shot in the arm during another attack by dastardly villains of vaguely Hispanic origin. She told anyone who'd listened that she fully expected to die for the cause. All this impressed Jim Gilchrist. In early 2008, he made her the Minuteman Project's Border Patrol Coordinator. She moved to Arizona and started her own independent Minuteman group called Minutemen Against American Defense when she was kicked out of the original Minuteman group shortly after moving down to Arizona for being a crazy person. Gilchrist sent her volunteers, though, calling her one tough lady, and soon she had around 20 armed volunteers at her beck and call in her own personal little Minuteman militia. Ford began to claim that she'd

started an undercover operation to infiltrate drug dealers on the border. Gilchrist started to worry that she was going to get murdered, which seems to have been her goal. Throughout 2008, Shana Ford took to calling Kathy Dameron, Bob's wife, at all hours of the day and night, claiming that her life was in danger and shadowy figures were hunting her. Shana would regularly cut the call suddenly just to make things seem even scarier. I'm gonna say real quick, she seems like a toxic friend that you don't want to have in your life like a real energy drink. I think people would be well-served to just cut that tie. Move on. Anyway, that's a Mediterranean. In November 2008, Ford emailed Kathy photos of drugs and money she claimed to have found at an Arizona stash house.

The photos solidified her reputation to other Minutemen. Shana Ford was out there fighting the real war on the border. This image was buoyed when her ex-husband was shot by an intruder in their Everett, Arizona home that December. The case is still unsolved. In the next week, Shana went to the police and claimed that a Latino gang had raped her. That case was eventually dropped due to a lack of evidence. In January, Ford called Kathy and, in mid-call, claimed to have suddenly been shot. Kathy did not hear any gunfire over the line. Why is so much gun violence in these? So much fake gun violence. In one real one. What happened to her husband? We don't know. Yeah, yeah, he's fine. He's fine. I mean, he lived. Did she shoot her husband? I don't know.

He shot himself? Seems like something. Maybe she shot her husband and they call the cops. I mean, home invasions do happen, but like, yeah, just giving everything else, it seems like it might have been. I mean, she's literally made everything else up. Exactly, yeah. So that phone call, which was super sketchy, and the fact that Shana stole Kathy's pain pills whenever she visited, made the Dameron slowly stop trusting her. Dameron sounds like a pill she would detect. I mean, demoral is fucking awesome. Here's how Kathy relates Shana reacting when she got caught, pill handed. She said, I've been busted, haven't I? I said, yes, you have. She said, I'm sorry, mom. I said, not good enough. Sorry, mom. Yeah, I think that was like her nickname or she was being

like trying to act like a kid. I'm disturbed by this relationship. You're about to be disturbed her. In February 2008, the Herald published an article revealing that Shana had a history of childhood felonies. They went to Jim Gilchrist for comment. His initial response was actually pretty reasonable, saying he respected her for turning her life around. And then he said this. She is no whiner. She is a Stoic Struggler who has chosen to put country, community, and yearning for a civilized society ahead of avarice and self-glorifying ego. In 2009, Stoic Struggler, Shana Ford, cooked up a plan. She had identified someone she believed to be a drug dealer in Aravaca, a small border town. Shana reasoned that this monster was getting drugs from Mexico.

If she robbed him and took his drugs and money, she could use them to fund the expansion of her border militia. Solid galaxy brain plan right there. And she could use the drugs. And she could take the drugs. Because she'd run out of her friend's pills. You know what stops drug dealers? Robbing them. That's the one thing they're ready for. They're like, I'm out. I'm done. That's it. We've all seen Breaking Bad. My God. In mid-May, Shana traveled to Colorado to recruit a few good men to help her carry out the scheme. Here's how Tucson.com describes what happened next. At that meeting in a truck stop near Denver, Ford drew a map. It wasn't specific pointing to an individual house, but it gave a generic impression of the area she meant to hit. Ron Widow and Robert

Copely, two of the men she was recruiting, kept the map and handed it over to Chris Anderson, an FBI agent in Colorado for whom they were acting as informants. This is where the bureaucratic problems happened. Anderson said he passed the information to the FBI in Phoenix. The FBI in Phoenix apparently did nothing. Eventually, it even destroyed the map. On May 30th, 2009, Shana Ford and two of her militiamen showed up after midnight at the home of Raul Flores, Gina Gonzalez, and their nine-year-old daughter, Prisinha. Shana and her men posed as border patrol officers. They accused Flores of harboring illegal immigrants and told him his house was surrounded. Flores let them in, thinking they were cops. Shana believed that Raul was a drug dealer,

so she started combing his home for drugs and cash. There was only one problem. Raul was not a drug smuggler. His house had nothing valuable in it. So, Shana and her men stole Gina's jewelry. Then they executed Raul Flores with a gunshot to the chest. They shot his wife next three times, and while she begged for her life, they blew nine-year-old Prisinha's head off. Now, Gina survived the gunshots and played dead until Shana and her men left. Then she got up, called 911, and grabbed her husband's shotgun. For some reason, Shana and her people re-entered, probably planning to search another part of the house for drugs. Gina opened fire, wounding one of the gunmen, and causing them all to run like the gutless shitstains they were.

Cool. Wow. That really upsets me. Yeah. It's the only logical extent of what these people are doing. Yeah. We didn't find what we need. I'm going to kill you. Yeah. The big bar in Aravaka, like the center of this little town, has signs that specifically say no militia, no border patrol, fake people are allowed in the bar. We don't want any of this fucking bullshit anymore. It's like there's a, for all the stuff we talked about, there's like a logical progression. And it's like the people they claim to be protecting, who live on the border, actually despise all the people doing this because they just bring trouble and they're like undisciplined violent nuts. Yeah. Shana and her compatriots were all convicted of murder.

Shana was sentenced to death in 2011. Gina also sued the FBI for having clear evidence that Shana Ford planned to violently attack people and doing nothing with it. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that she had no grounds to sue for this. According to Tucson.com, the argument that really stuck was that under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the federal government can't be sued over the exercise or performance or failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function or duty. The decision of whether or not to notify local law enforcement was a discretionary act, she said in her decision. They're not required to let law enforcement know that someone's planning a violent break in of a house in their area. Sounds like a bad policy. Yes,

sounds like a terrible policy. What if they were allowed to do that? What if they were required to tell local law enforcement when enough with the militia is talking about attacking people's homes and drawing maps of where she plans to hit? I don't have the names of the current militia situation going on, the names of people, so I'm talking generally, but the leader... Oh, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. Okay, I'll save it then, but it ties in with this. In 2010, the year before Shauna's trial, Chris Simcox ran for Senate. He was attacked from the right for his seemingly moderate views on illegal immigrants. Chris had started to support adding in new pathways for citizenship to make immigration

easier for people fleeing desperate circumstances with whom he claimed to sympathize. He was also attacked for the MCDC's financial irregularities. Chief among them, the fact that hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions of dollars, had probably been funneled directly into his pocket in spite of the fact that he officially drew no salary. Weirdly, what wasn't a huge issue was that, as early as 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center had reported that Simcox's first ex-wife had accused him of trying to sexually molest their 14-year-old daughter. Not long after that, his second ex-wife accused him of violent abusive behavior. She testified in court that, he once took a knife from the kitchen and threatened to kill himself. When he was angry,

he broke furniture, car windows. He banged his head against the wall repeatedly and punched things. Simcox repeatedly, vehemently denied all allegations. He continued to do so right up until the moment. In June of 2013, he was arrested on multiple counts of molesting and raping several of his own daughters. Here's the Phoenix New Times. Quote, Two of the daughters who took the stand are under the age of 10. Both are his children with ex-wife Alina Simcox. One of them alleges sexual abuse. The third daughter is an adult, his child from her previous marriage, who alleges that Simcox molested her on three separate occasions when she was young. I'm so angry. Cool dude, Chris Simcox! Patriot!

Yeah. Yep. This is a part where I don't, I don't know what to say. Yeah, what is it to say? I'm so upset. It's so gross. Yeah, I'm not going to go into detail about what Chris did, other than to say that this Border Patrol and Clean Shave and conservative Patriot repeatedly sexually assaulted his own daughters. In 2016, he was sentenced to 19 and a half years in prison. Should have been 40. Should have been 40. With Sean a convicted of murder, and Chris convicted of serial child molestation, Jim Gilchrist was left as the only Minuteman leader not in prison for committing numerous horrific crimes. And he's still active. A 2016 Vice article caught up with Gilchrist. He told them he takes credit for the conservative

obsession with border control that metastasized into the presidency of Donald Trump and his wall. Jim also resurrected the Minuteman back in 2014, after his co-founder was arrested for being a pedophile. So the Minutemen are still a presence in American political discourse. That said, time has largely moved past them. And we're going to talk about what time has moved on towards. But first we're going to talk about products, services, and you know what, I forgot to do this, but I'm going to act on my anger over the crimes of Chris Simcox and Sean Afford by tossing the bagel. Good on you for moving those things. My beverage is out of the way.

And I'm not even going to look at where I tossed it, so this could be real bad. No, they just came right back. It was almost perfect. That was a blind throw. You proud of me, Sophie? Sophie's proud of me. You know what else is proud of me? The sponsors of this show. Products! During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys.

As the FBI, sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark and not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen.

Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart.

And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days

after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! We were having a conversation, then I interrupted it by saying we're back. It was getting too tense. It was an act of cruelty to our engineer, Daniel, who's done nothing but be helpful to me. And Bash Taylor Swift.

So I have these bagels and I've been tossing them. We have these sound boards on the wall that act to bounce sound around. Somehow I don't understand what they're for. I've been tossing them mostly, which is why it's been bouncing back to me. Makes sense. But we also have on the end of this recording studio, for reasons that are inexplicable to me, a glass door leading out to a porch, which is not standard in most recording studios. I'm gonna try chucking them as hard as I can at the glass door. Just to see what happens. No, it's happening, Sophie. I'm sorry. Oh! Satisfying sound! That was a good sound. This is gonna be great on the podcast. Content! Listen, they love him around here. He can do

what he wants. There's always been a gas in there. Oh, gosh. He's trying to kill all of us. Yes, the people who built that soundproof that porch sealed it with toxic chemicals and didn't let it off. One thing we're not allowed to do is throw bagels at that door. The door to the walled off porch in our recording studio is filled with poison. This is such a great studio. Yeah, it keeps on your toes. I don't understand the problem. I might throw them again. Yeah. What do you mean, might? Well, you know, Anderson, fear is the mind killer. The little death that causes me to throw bagels. I think that's how it was written. Yeah, that's the, it was from Dune, right? Yeah. So it goes. Big bagel fan, Frank Herbert. Okay, so.

Bagel heart cone. Right. Yes, we'll keep on to this. So as I said, time has moved past the Minutemen, but their influence echoes in much of what's going on right now at the border. In May of 2018, Michael Meyer, founder of a militia called Veterans on Patrol, posted a video of himself walking through a homeless encampment in Tucson. Like Chris Simcox, Michael gave the government an ultimatum. They had until noon tomorrow to investigate the site. According to Buzzfeed, quote, he then turned the camera around towards a tree with straps attached to it, declaring this is a rape tree. What? Meyer painted a grim picture. The straps on the tree were not used to secure parts of a makeshift homeless encampment. Instead, there were restraints for holding

children in place while they were sexually abused by cartel members, he claimed. The space dug into the ground was in fact a prison cell for the children, and various other items of trash and debris at the site proved to Meyer that sick shit had been going on there. This is a child's sex trafficking camp that no one wants to talk about, that no one wants to do anything about, he said. Where did he get his information? Well, I'm about to get into where he gets his information. The video quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views, and Meyer's claims were even repeated by a number of local news stations. Info wars and other similar conspiracy outlets were happy to run with the tale, and it quickly got woven into the broader pizza gate, QAnon,

family of conspiracies. But the idea of rape trees did not start with Meyer. Here's a video child murderer, Shawna Ford, posted in 2009. Yeah. Sean foe. There's a coyote who uses this very specific trail. This is his territory. He brings his people through here, and they'll pick out who they want out of the group. They'll bring them to a separate location. They will rape them. They will rip their underwear off and take their bras off. They make them leave them behind, and then they throw them on trees as a trophy. Women do not leave their garments laying around. Most women come on girls. We all know that we tuck them and put them away somewhere. We're not just going to throw them out. It doesn't matter if you're out in the middle of the wilderness

or not. Women tend to be very modest with their undergarments. So what a traditional layup site is, is backpacks, clothing changes, just all kinds of items here, no backpacks, no male items, nothing that's a traditional layup. So this is a genuine rape tree in a genuine rape spot. Rape trees! Are rape trees historically a thing? No, of course not. I mean outside of True Detective Season 1. Her evidence is that women tend to be modest? Yeah. That's your evidence that a rape tree, you child murderer and disciple of a pedophile. I take my bra off and leave it places whenever I can. Ditto. Unbelievable. These weirdos. These fucking weirdos. I think the word you're looking for is psychopath. These people, they're such a bizarre cross-section of this like obsession

with like there's like a kid's sex cult going on. Also there's the immigrant thing, but also it's like a kid's sex cult thing. Also the government is in on it. And I'm going to molest my own kids. Also I'm going to molest my own kids. I'm probably going to like be a child murderer. I'm going to murder a bunch of people. But like these people, these people, they're sick cults of sex weird. Shana Freud, who ordered the execution style murder of a nine-year-old, worried about rape trees. According to Harold Shapira, author of a book about vigilante border patrols, quote, for the Minutemen, the rape trees are a powerful symbol of the Mexican male's immorality and simultaneously imbue their own actions with valor. By patrolling the border, the volunteers

are not just defending America, but women and not just American women, but all women, even the ones who are illegal. Until they shoot them in the head. Until they try to execute them. But because she's a badass, she fends them off with a shotgun, which is terrible. It's the worst thing that can possibly happen. And then like they can't even do the suit that she tried to bring. No, to the her. Sorry. It unbelievably infuriating and terrible. Yeah. Yeah. In October of 2017, the FBI public access line received reports of militia activity in Flora Vista, New Mexico. According to a government complaint, which I initially found shared by activist Emily Gorchensky on Twitter, quote. In October, 2017, the FBI public access line, POW, received reports of alleged militia

extremist activity in Flora Vista, New Mexico. Information was conveyed relating to a group that called itself the United Constitutional Patriots, located at Lakeside Ranch Trailer Park in Flora Vista, New Mexico. The United Constitutional Patriots was led by their so called commander, Larry Hopkins, who also went by the alias of Johnny Horton Jr. Information was also conveyed that the group had its base at Hopkins's residence was supported by approximately 20 members and was armed with AK-47 rifles and other firearms. Witnesses reported seeing members of the United Constitutional Patriots bearing firearms at Hopkins's residence. Hopkins also allegedly made the statement that the United Constitutional Patriots were training to assassinate

George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama because of these individual support of Antifa. Yep. Cool. This story kills me. Now, when you find evidence that a convicted felon lives in a house with multiple firearms. A convicted felon that impersonated a police officer. Just like the people who murdered that nine-year-old and that innocent man. When you hear about that, that these people illegally have guns and are planning to murder a former president, a former secretary of state, a random private person, and presumably some Antifa people. What would you guess law enforcement would do? Nothing, little nothing. I think in this situation they'd walk away for a couple years or a year and a half some change and then come back last week and arrest him

because they posted some videos online and everybody got upset. Yeah, kind of like how they threw away that map to where Shana Ford was planning to rob and murder people. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. The FBI just kind of moved on with their lives and forgot about it. Left this felon with weapons and stuff. But it comes back to this thing, so the FBI doesn't necessarily have to report this to law enforcement. It's at their discretion. It's at their discretion. But this was okay because something that I'd read is like he was like, no, no, these guns, they all belong to my common law wife. Yeah, he did say that. So that's okay, that makes it okay? Okay, then let's make that law. No, actually. You just can't have guns in the house.

Yeah, if you're a convicted felon who pretends to be a police officer and is, yeah. And it's now a vigilante. So they saw the videos, we're getting traction and they... Yeah, almost two years later, in April of 2019, pictures and video went viral of a group of heavily armed American militiamen with AR-15s, body armor and skull print balaclavas stopping a group of 200 migrants at the border and holding them until police arrived. These men were part of United Constitutional Patriots. Their leader was Larry Hopkins. Hopkins claimed that they had detained 5,600 people in the last two months. The video of their arrests went viral and it seems to have finally prompted the FBI to do something about Larry Hopkins and his illegal guns.

They arrested him a few days later after the video went viral. This is his mugshot and it's, look at that. Oh yeah. Look at that mugshot. It is so beautiful. It's quite, quite the mugshot. That's like... We talked about it briefly on the podcast this week and I just didn't know how to describe it. He looks like a convicted felon who would probably murder and rape people if he got the chance. He's like some sort of like washed up country singer. Looks like he's at a grocery store at 10 a.m. in Vegas. Yeah. Okay, that's a really good coat. He looks like... Yeah, that's exactly right. But his eyes will never open for more than that ever again. No, no. He looks like who you would cast if you needed someone to play a drunk 70-year-old Elvis. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,

it's a bad picture. It's a bad picture. It's like Elvis impersonator. Yeah. Yeah. And they chose the nicest picture. Yeah, they chose a good one. Yeah. For the press photo. So Larry is at least behind bars for a little while, but less than a week before the recording of this episode, something else happened. Behind the barsters. Sorry, go ahead. Thank you. Sorry. Russell Pierce, a former member of the Arizona State Senate, spoke at a patriotism over socialism rally in Gilbert, Arizona. He shared the stage with Laura Loomer and spoke about the border crisis, noting that it may take the shedding of blood to keep this republic an eye for one and willing to do whatever it takes. In their coverage of his remarks, Fox News noted, it was not clear what

Pierce, now an employee at the Maricopa County Treasurer, was speaking about. Was it not? I think I may have an idea. He's talking about doing what Shana Ford did. Also, Laura Loomer, come on, bottom of the barrel. Fucking Laura Loomer. Do an episode on her. Fucking... No, she doesn't deserve it. She doesn't deserve it. I mean, none of these people deserve it. I mean, Simcox definitely is a bastard, so Shana Ford. I said this before you started recording, but I do appreciate a female bastard. Thank you. Because, like I said before, the recording that you guys weren't here for, I do think it's sexist, our knee jerk reaction, like, or our thought that like, oh, women are better than men. No, women can suck. Women can

suck too. Women can suck balls. They can also... I mean, that's not bad or good. That's an amoral position. Yeah, that's neutral. I was using it in a way that has nothing to do with sex. Yeah, I was not. Yeah, I see that. I can't look at one pump, one cream in that bagel. It's right there, it's right in front of you. Tossing bagels, you know? It's semen. Yeah. Oh, oh, I get it now. Do you get it? I thought it was purely about coffee, mate. No. One... I could see why you'd think that. I get it. You'll probably have to cut this out. One stroke, one come. I get it now. No, we can say come on the show. Okay, good. I mean, I'm hoping to get on to come-town. I still don't know what come-town is. Never gonna listen to an episode. Great title. And the come-boys.

That's funny. That makes me giggle. Don't know what it is. Don't plan to listen. Don't need to know. No. What I do plan to do is toss these bagels one last time. Now, where, not Sophie, but where do the people who aren't Sophie want me to toss this that I haven't yet? Sophie. Sophie. No, I'm not gonna throw it in the roof. Don't throw it in the roof. Oh, the roof. That's a good idea, because anything can happen if I toss it in the roof. There's drinks, there's computers. Oh, this is good. The roof is made of glass, by the way. Oh, it was good. They fell behind me. No. I was hoping it was gonna do some damage, but you live by the bagel. The next person that walks on that glass ceiling. There is a glass ceiling. Yeah, there's a glass ceiling. And it freaks me out.

There's a glass ceiling above the poison room in our recording studio. This is where I want to be when the big one hits. Right between the glass ceiling and the poison room. Yeah. I can't believe all of that's true and none of it's a joke. You're gonna need to tweet some pictures of all of these places so people understand what we're talking about. There's a poison room. Oh, God. Don't open it. Don't find out. It's amazing. So you guys want to plug your plugables? Yeah, we got a podcast called Even More News. You got a podcast? We do. Even More News. And my name's Katie Stoll on Twitter and in life. Cody, take it away. We also have a video series on YouTube called Some More News. And that Twitter account is Some More News. And my Twitter account is Dr. Mr. Cody. That's D-R-M-I-S-D-E-R-C-O-D-Y.

D-Y. And I forget my name, but this podcast has a Twitter and an Instagram at BasterdsPod. It has a website behind the bastards.com. I don't think there's anything else to plug. Sophie's not saying I should plug anything else. Well, there's this show that we're probably going to do. Daniel is gesturing to his shirt. You can buy Daniel's shirt if you find him on Twitter. He'll sell anything. PayPal, Venmo, Cash App. Anything. Anything. You can also buy shirts on tpublic.com buying the bastards. Is there anything else? Sophie has a dog named Anderson, who you probably cannot buy. Probably not. Yeah. But you could approach her about buying the dog if you approach us on Twitter, because she runs the Twitter, because I am not allowed to run the

Twitter. And should under no circumstances. Yeah, no, we don't need you doing that. We don't need you being tweeted, hey, can I buy that dog? And you saying yes? Yes. So like Sophie's dog. Well, that's the episode. Go... What? What are you looking at? What's it could happen here? What could happen here? Oh, I have a podcast. Yeah. I have a podcast and a dream of exasperating Sophie by pretending I'm not going to mention it to make her frustrated, because I'm just a piece of shit. I'm just a bad person. It's working. It's working. Cody's enjoying it. That's the audience I play for. All right, play me out, Daniel. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s,

a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sorted tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with

no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.