Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/13/22: Twitter-Trump Censorship, Fusion Energy Discovery, Putin Humiliation, RNC Turmoil, Qatar EU Bribery, German Far Right Coup, CoffeZilla Interview

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

Krystal and Saagar bring the news about SBF’s Arrest, Bari Weiss Twitter Files, Fusion Energy, Putin, RNC, Qatar Corruption, German Prince Arrest, and an interview with Coffeezilla on his SBF interviews.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@breakingpointsMerch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it means the absolute world to have your support. What are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Boy, oh boy, do we have a show for you today. So we're going to jump in this morning with one of the indictments against a Sam Bankman Freed has been unsealed from the SEC. So we will give you everything you need to know about exactly what is in there. And it is comprehensive. It is in depth. They went all in. So we'll get to that. We also have new Twitter files broken by Barry Weiss that we will get into as well with the communication specifically that led to Donald Trump being banned from Twitter and some of the glaring inconsistencies in the way

that Twitter applied their policies or didn't apply their policies. We also have a massive breakthrough in terms of potential clean energy. This is something that scientists have been working on for decades. I went in deep on this yesterday to try to understand exactly what it is and what it means, how long until this could actually be commercially viable. So we'll talk about that. We've also got new nuclear threats from Vladimir Putin. What does all that mean? And we have a delicious clip of

RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel getting pressed on, hey, isn't Donald Trump kind of a problem for the Republican Party? She, of course, very uncomfortable. And we're really lucky. I would like to say that we planned for the SBF indictment to drop today. And we have CoffeeZilla on, who has been one of the most effective commentators, both in terms of directly interviewing SBF, but also in terms of seeing this guy as the fraud that he absolutely was long before the mainstream press ultimately caught on. So very excited to talk to him this morning. But let's jump in to that now unsealed indictment. Just got the indictment this morning from the SEC, or I should say SEC complaint.

The actual indictment from the Southern District of New York is yet to be released. So here we have the initial SEC filing complaint against Samuel Bankman-Fried. And let's just go through it. And it starts out with this. From at least May of 2019 through November of 2022, Bankman-Fried engaged in a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX to a crypto asset trading platform, which he was the CEO and co-founder, that he was also defrauding the platform's customers.

He raised $1.8 billion from investors, including U.S. investors, who bought an equity stake in FTX, believing that FTX had appropriate controls and risk management measures. Unbeknownst to those investors and to customers, Bankman Freed was orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars to the trading platform's customer funds for his own personal benefit to help grow his crypto empire. And Crystal, he was also, I would be remiss, I did a breaking segment on this last night, but let's put it up there on the screen. Regardless, he was arrested last night by Bahamian authorities, taken into custody with the expectation of the US Department of Justice filing for extradition.

Go to the next one there, please, as well. This is what we're awaiting still continually, an actual indictment by the US Attorney's Office from the Southern District of New York with the expected charge of wire fraud. But the SEC complaint that we're going through and have in front of us right now, Crystal, is just damning in its own right. You can see they're personally holding him responsible for a years-long, multi-billion-dollar fraud. Yeah. So just to clarify, this is the SEC's civil charges of fraud. There will be additional criminal charges against him. Those are expected later today, as you said, from the Southern District of New York. And the expected charges there are wire fraud.

But what we wanted to do is to actually go through the first bit where the government really lays out their case here because it's very understandable and it has a lot of incredibly key details. In that very first paragraph that Sagar read, the thing that jumps out at me is the fact that this has been going on for a long time. They say since at least May of 2019, SBF has basically been lying to and defrauding his customers. Now, just to back up for a second, for those of you who are forgetting the details or haven't followed closely the details, SBF was involved in two different firms. One of them is called FTX. That was basically like a sort of crypto brokerage where people felt like they could park their money, including their fiat currency, and then it would be safe.

Maybe they'd get an interest rate return. But if they were putting their money there, they had an assurance, terms of service from that platform, that that money would be there, it would be safe, it would not be used to gamble on other ventures. So what did he do? He used it to gamble on other ventures through his other firm, Alameda, which is sort of like a crypto hedge fund, which apparently did a terrible job of trading and lost a whole bunch of money. And the whole house of cards basically collapses when crypto valuations start to plummet and go way down. So he has long

maintained like Alameda, even though this is the firm he started, this was his original baby, a woman that he used to or currently dated or on and off or whatever is in charge of that. He likes to pretend, oh, I didn't know what was going on there. Totally arms like a relationship in all these interviews with the media he's been doing. He's pretended like he had no idea what was actually happening there. What the government lays out here is that he was in direct control. He knew what was going on. They, in fact, implemented direct mechanisms to make sure that there was no transparency around the fact that these customer funds were being siphoned and played

with on the Alameda side. And so this initial piece here just indicates this has been going on for years and years. This is not a new development. He's been defrauding customers basically the whole time. Oh, absolutely. And they really are damning. We'll continue in the second paragraph here. Throughout the period, Bankman Freed has portrayed himself as a responsible leader of the crypto community. He's touted the importance of regulation and accountability. He told the public, including investors, that FTX was innovative and responsible. Customers around the world believed his lies and sent billions to FTX, believing their assets were secure. But from the start, he improperly diverted customer assets to his privately held crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research,

and then used those customer funds to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations. I mean, that is just truly the smoking gun because what they show and continue as you read on further into the indictment in their expansion on this civil complaint, is that he was actually both originating loans from Alameda in his responsibility as an executive at the platform, and also was the borrower of the loan. So he was originating over a billion dollars in loans to himself without any proper accounting, without any actual accountability. Furthermore, guys, he was doing this with stolen customer funds. So he's basically taking FTX money, transferring it

to Alameda, then borrowing personally against it, using that cash, actual fiat dollars to make massive real estate investments for himself, for his parents, in order to fund his lavish lifestyle. He's not the only one. Other FTX employees also borrowed up to half a billion dollars. Like the amount of cash that they were siphoning off of Alameda Research with customer funds is mind-boggling when you're reading this. And the other thing that I took note of in this piece is basically all of his PR plays and his positioning himself with the media and with politicians here is like the good guy of crypto. And, oh, I want regulation.

And, oh, I'm this great philanthropist. Here it comes back to bite him because they say basically you were full of it. This was all a farce. It was all a ruse. And in fact, while you were portraying yourself as the golden boy of crypto and getting these puff pieces in the media, what you were really doing was stealing money from your customers to fund your own lavish lifestyle. So it's not just that you were stealing the money to engage in these risky bets. I mean, that's bad enough to start with. also directly taking those funds for yourself to purchase property, to fund your lifestyle, to buy multimillion-dollar property for your parents, something that he also denied having any knowledge of.

Oh, I had no idea what happened. And let's recall, too, to your point, Sagar, about how he wasn't the only executive that was cashing in using the customer funds. When this whole thing starts to collapse, there were reports that millions upon millions of dollars were withdrawn from FTX. So whatever assets were remaining there that perhaps customers could have been able to withdraw to be made whole in the end of this thing, those appear to have been siphoned off at the end as well as they all just did their final cash grab to get out of this thing. Yep. Next paragraph here. Bankman Freed hid all of this from FTX equity investors, including U.S. investors, from who he sought billions of dollars in additional funds.

He repeatedly cast FTX as innovative and conservative trailblazer. He told investors that FTX had top-notch, sophisticated, automated risk measures in place to protect assets, that those assets were safe, and that Alameda was just another platform customer with no special privileges. Those statements were false and misleading. In truth, Bankman-Fried exempted Alameda from the risk mitigation measures and provided Alameda with significant special treatment on the FTX platform, including a, quote, virtually unlimited line of credit funded directly by the platform's customers. So there it is, which is that he lied to U.S. investors. And let's all be honest here. The SEC and the Department of Justice is not going after

Bankman Freed just for simply ripping off customers. They're going after him because some of the biggest billionaires and venture capitalists in the United States got scammed out of billions of dollars when he lied to them. And that's also where they have him dead to rights on any sort of wire fraud charge. When they knowingly prove that he lied to these investors when he was seeking their capital, you wire it through a U.S. bank. Well, it's actually not that hard to get you in a court of law now. Correct. Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of people sort of speculate, oh, he may not go to prison because he, you know, funded political donations and all of this. It's actually quite the opposite.

Yes, they were friendly with him when they were getting that cash. That has now dried up, and now he has publicly humiliated and embarrassed them. And they will not stand for that. I mean, this man is going to prison. Make no bones about it. Let's just say that's allegedly blah, blah, blah. But he's going to prison. And just some of the specificity around what they're talking about here, how Alameda was given special treatment on the platform. They had a multi-billion dollar liability that, again, SBF claimed in interviews, I had no idea it was this big. I had no idea really what

was going on. Well, they had a special internal account in the FTX database, and this is further down in the complaint, that wasn't tied to Alameda, but was instead called fiat at FTX.com. Characterizing the amount of customer funds sent to Alameda as an internal FTX account had the effect of concealing Alameda's liability in FTX's internal systems. So that's the crucial detail about how exactly they hid the fact that they were siphoning off billions in customer funds to funnel to Alameda. They didn't have, like, something on their books that said stolen funds that we, you know, shifted to Alameda. Instead, they used this sort of like covert terminology that in fact did reflect an internal accounting of how much money had been siphoned from customer accounts into these risky speculative bets over at Alameda. And also that's what enabled them to take these personal loans and fund their

extravagant lifestyle. This was the mechanism by which they did that. Absolutely. Okay, let's go to the next paragraph. While he spent lavishly on office space and condominiums in the Bahamas and sank billions of customer funds into speculative venture investments, his house of cards began to crumble. When the prices of crypto assets plummeted in May of 2020, Alameda lenders demanded repayment on billions in loans, despite the fact that Alameda lenders demanded repayment on billions in loans. Despite the fact that Alameda had, by this point, already taken billions of dollars of FTX customer assets,

it was still unable to satisfy loan obligations. Bankman Freed then directed FTX to divert billions more in customer assets to Alameda to ensure that the Alameda maintained its lending relationships and that money could continue to flow in from lenders and other investors. So it is not only the fraud, it's the collapse of the assets that leads to initial customer funds being used to float his hedge fund and then even more customer funds to be used. And again, it's all to satisfy not just Alameda out of the goodness of his heart. It's because Alameda was the center of his wealth. It was the center of his loans. It was the center, really, of the criminal or alleged criminal enterprise that was happening here.

Because it was the originator of the billions of dollars in personal cash to so many of, but not only SBF, but many of the coterie and the people who are around him. That is exactly, exactly correct. And, you know, just to reiterate again, the expectation spelled out in the terms of service for customers who had their money sitting supposedly safely in their accounts on FTX is that it would not be used for any of this. So it's just outright, clear, direct fraud. I'm sure SBF thought he could keep the balls in the air, keep the effectively Ponzi scheme going. And then once the bottom fell out of crypto prices, they started to scramble.

They started pulling even more customer cash to keep Alameda solvent. And that's when the whole thing comes tumbling down. Yeah. And then finally, the last paragraph, but Bankman-Fried did not stop there. Even as it was increasingly clear that Alameda and FTX could not make customers whole, he continued to misappropriate FTX funds and throughout the summer of 2022,

directed hundreds of millions more in FTX customers to Alameda, which he then used for additional venture investments and for loans to himself and other FTX executives. All the while, he continued to make misleading statements to investors about FTX's financial condition and risk management. Even in November 2022, faced with billions of dollars in demands that FTX could not fulfill, Bankman freed misled investors from whom he needed money to plug a multi-billion dollar hole. His brazen multi-year scheme came to an end when FTX, Alameda, and their tangled web of affiliated entities filed for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022. So it's only been a month since the entire collapse. I think it just becomes increasingly clear here that given the data and the bank

statements and other things that they are privy to, this did not all just crumble from in that one week, fateful week of November for SBF. It was a long, long time coming. It really does. I was reading a book recently about the Madoff case. This is a lot like Madoff in terms of his ability to keep it going. All he really needed was enough assets to commingle and stuff around. His own personal wealth was derived much from the fraud itself. And Bankman-Fried seems to have orchestrated just a house of lies.

It came undone by truly what is a fluke. I think it probably would have eventually come to light. Madoff himself knew that it would, you know, almost 20 years before it did, but it could have kept going for a long time if Cointelegraph had not did a great job. Exactly. That is an amazing thing to think about. There is a different universe in which crypto prices don't collapse. He's able to keep the scheme going. He's sort of able to get out of this thing. He continues to be hailed as a genius and a visionary and be feted in DC and given media puff pieces. That was a real possibility until the bottom fell out in terms of crypto prices. There's a couple more things to note in terms of the

details that are further down in this complaint. First of all, they use both his tweets against him. You guys might recall he put out a tweet infamously that was like, we've got plenty of money. Anyone can withdraw. No problem. We didn't ever bet with customer funds. He then deleted that tweet and they halted withdrawals and filed for bankruptcy immediately. So that was clearly a lie and undrew. And he knew it at the time, allegedly. And they also used some of the statements now that he's made in the media as he's been on his little press tour to try to, you know, try delusionally to rescue his reputation here and try to avoid any sort of legal scrutiny. Those statements, some of them were used against him in this complaint as well. And then the last thing I want to point out is the SEC obviously put out a press release along with filing these charges.

And, you know, they obviously go after Sam Bankman-Fried and what he did at FTX and Alameda. They call it a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors it was one of the safest buildings in crypto. There's also, though, a bit of a warning shot at other crypto fraudsters because they say the alleged fraud committed by Mr. Bankman-Fried is a clarion call to crypto platforms that they need to come into compliance with our laws. Compliance protects both those who invest on and those who invest in crypto platforms with time-tested safeguards, such as properly protecting customer funds, separating conflicting lines of business. It also shines a light into trading platform conduct for both investors through disclosure and regulators through examination authority. To those platforms

that do not comply with our securities laws, the SEC's enforcement division is ready to take action. There's been a little bit of a turf war between some of the different regulatory bodies, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the SEC in particular. There have been a lot of debates about whether you need new regulations in order to sort of bring crypto to heel. What Gensler is saying here basically is, no, we have actually all the laws we need to be able to come after you. If you are perpetrating fraud, we will come after you. Be warned.

And this is quite a warning shot across the bow for other people who are engaged in these types of schemes. Yep. So there you go, guys. That's everything that we have as of right now. We're still waiting on the DOJ indictment. The only major question that I still have is why didn't they let him testify? You know, because he was about to testify under oath today before Congress, which would have been- Wasn't he kind of backing out though?

So it's possible. So he was saying he wouldn't come to the US because he was afraid of getting arrested. I think we have, by the way, that tweet where he said, quote, I don't think that I'll be arrested. That's right. Yesterday, right before he was arrested, he said, quote, I don't think I will be arrested. He said he didn't want to come here because he was afraid of the paparazzi and because he thought it would be too much of a media circus. Yeah, I think we have,

almost certainly he got the notification. He's like, you're going to be indicted, just so you're aware. Yeah. And maybe he's going to try and fight this in Bahamian extradition court. Although the prime minister of the Bahamas himself is like, look,

we're ready to get this guy the hell out of here. So I wouldn't count, I wouldn't count on any of that. I do wish they'd let him testify under oath. They were about to grill him. Several Republican legislators actually kind of pissed off about it because they had questions ready. It's an interesting question. I think if, I don't know, it could be a media event also, as in SDNY wanted the credit to go after him before he was taken into custody or to take him into custody first and not let Congress take the credit. Regardless, it's going to be good. We're going

to have some fun times, I think, covering the story. The last thing I'll say about this is remember that we covered that story about how there were a number of legislators, both Republican and Democrat, many of whom had received Sam Bankman Freed contributions, who basically had told regulators to lay off of SBF and FTX. And, you know, that may end up being incredibly fateful. It's something to really keep an eye on here in terms of did they call off these regulators or they were unable to or they decided they were bullied and pressured into not pursuing charges, not digging deeply into what was going on here until the whole thing had already collapsed. I also wonder if they had already started to develop some of this information before the whole thing collapsed, because this is this is very comprehensive. It is, you know, obviously long overdue in the sense that it would be better to catch the fraudster before all the

funds are gone and missing and all the customers screwed over. But in terms of post-collapse, this is actually relatively quick and timely in terms of the SEC and the Department of Justice. So it'll be interesting to know that trajectory of how this all ultimately unfolded. There you go. All right, let's move on to the Twitter files. We thought we were going to be leading the show with this one. It is noteworthy, of course, in itself, but SBF, the biggest story. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Barry Weiss now releasing the latest element of the Twitter files. This is from January 8th. The reason we're going to spend some time here is January 8th was the day that Donald Trump was officially banned for all time from Twitter.

It was the total deplatforming along with the beginning of the Parla saga. And one of the things that we found really interesting in the correspondence that Barry releases here in the Twitter files is the total capricious nature through which they arrived at this process. So as you saw in that screenshot directly, Twitter executives were admitting, quote, it's pretty obvious he's going to try and thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules. Other staffers were pressuring, saying, quote, we have to do the right thing and ban this account. And I think the reason why that's important is that on the morning of January 8th, Crystal, it was a tacit acknowledgement. Not one tweet by Trump had technically violated their terms of service. And from that day forward, it was basically social pressure from within the company that led them to rewrite their rules to ban Trump

and arrive at the decision to do so. Yeah, because what we had learned up to this point is they had basically gotten an agreement from Jack that, okay, he's got a strike against him. If he violates any of the terms of service at all, we're allowed to ban him. And so they're closely watching, hoping that he's going to step over the line. There's a kind of internal debate where they're trying to really make a stretch case for like, maybe this theoretically

could have been an incitement to violence. And even internally, they're like, no, you really, there's no way you can really argue that either of these tweets actually violates the terms of service. So then even though, you know, they had already kind of laid out this one-off path of we're going to ban him if he violates any of the terms of service again, he doesn't even meet that threshold, but they still decide to go ahead and ban him. Yeah, so let's go to the next one, and it actually shows you the level of histrionics

that were going on in there. Yoel Roth, of course, says, multiple tweets have quoted the banality of evil, suggesting that people implementing our policies are like Nazis following orders. Just amazing the way that they see themselves on the morning of January 8th. Let's go to the next one there, please. A few minutes later, Twitter employees on the, quote, scaled enforcement team suggest Trump's tweet may have violated Twitter's glorification of violence policy.

That's if you are able to interpret the phrase American patriots to refer to the rioters. So again, they are just coming up with scheme after scheme. They're like, well, he didn't violate this rule. He didn't violate that one. Well, maybe we can get him on this one. My own favorite was actually this one dissenter in the chat. We don't actually know who it is, but a very poignant comment that they made. This was actually January 7th, the day before. I put it up there. When he says, or she says, maybe because I'm from China, I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation, to which he or she is immediately shot down. I understand this fear, but I think it's important to understand censorship by government is different than censorship of the government. The First Amendment in this country with similar concepts exists specifically to prevent the government from silencing people,

implicitly then saying, well, we are not subject to that. Now, technically, of course, that's true. Real libertarian argument. It's a ludicrous argument also because, on the one hand, they're trying to say that they have this immense social responsibility, almost like a quasi-government institutional responsibility. And on the other hand, they're like, well, we're not the government, so we can do whatever you want. I'm like, well, you can't have it both ways. Like, you either do have social responsibilities, a la government, meaning that you need democratic input, or you don't. And that means that, you know, you,

or you're the government and, you know, you're one of those which should and should be governed by the will of the people. They really are just trying to split both ways here. People use the, even outside of Twitter, they use this like, well, the First Amendment is just about the government. Like, this is a private company. They can do what they want. And it's like, yeah, we all know they can do what they want. The question is, number one, should they be able to do whatever they want? Should you have power concentrated in the hands of whether it's Jack or whether it is Elon? Like, is that a good state of affairs? That's question number one. And then it's also a question of, OK, you have if you we accept that

you have this power, how should you be wielding it in a way that is most consistent and, you know, best ultimately for our democracy and for free speech? And I see that both of these arguments being used very selectively and very hypocritically, depending on people's level of comfort with the current head of Twitter. So when it was Jack and his team making these decisions and liberals felt more comfortable, then they were all in on the like, it's a private company. They can do what they want. And now that it's like Elon doing it, there's a totally different attitude towards it. And both sides have sort of flipped on this one. But, you know, it wasn't just I think this is important because the international context, not just from this one Twitter employee who was like, I'm from China and I kind of get why this is really a problem.

The decision to ban Trump really landed with a lot of dismay from leaders around the world. And these aren't people who were like buddy-buddy with Trump, but they also could understand from the outside looking in, you're banning the president of the United States. You are banning a world leader. This is a major issue. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. They say, Barry says, outside the United States,

Twitter's decision to ban Trump raised alarms, including with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, and Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Macron told an audience he didn't, quote, want to live in a democracy where the key decisions were made by private players. I want it to be decided by a law voted by your representative or by regulation, governance, democratically discussed and approved by democratic leaders. That is a very accurate reflection of my view of how these things should be handled as well. And like I said, I think it's important to remember, if you're able to take yourself out of the American context, there was a lot of global concern from world leaders about how this decision went down and what it meant for

democracy. Yeah, I think that's it. I mean, it just shows you that it was a world important ramification decision. And they also show directly, put this up there, that in June of 2018, Twitter specifically decided, I think correctly, not to take down the Iranian Ayatollah's tweet that, quote, Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated. It is possible and it will happen. They didn't delete the tweet or ban the Ayatollah specifically, and Jack defended it for this reason, that the words of the Ayatollah are within the public interest. They belong in the public sphere.

You can find it abhorrent. You can find it disgusting. But we are better off understanding and knowing the direct thoughts of Ayatollah Khomeini or Donald Trump. I mean, I would even say, hey, Kim Jong-un, you should join Twitter. Like any of these people. Yeah. Just to be able to get some sort of insight. I mean, I remember thinking that during Trump.

I was just like, what an extraordinary insight into the leader of the free world's brain that you get to see every single day, for better or for worse. It's not always fun. Yeah, I don't agree. I often hated it. That said, I mean, look, transparency, input, and knowledge of what's happening there, that's a rare thing that we have in the year 20-whatever. It was like 2019. I was like, and I think we're obviously generally better off for it a lot of american siloed tweets they got to decide fully they i think they knew exactly who donald trump was when they cast their vote either for him or for against him i think that's a good thing don't you yeah yeah and uh you know that also just underscores how inconsistently applied their um any of their rules were you you know, what they would do is they would

basically make a decision. And by they, I pretty much mean Yoel Roth and Vijay Agati, who seem to have been really driving this train, at least based on the files that have been revealed. And I would like to say, I would like this whole process better if they just sort of put everything out and let other independent journalists be able to go through it and, you know, see what storylines and what information is relevant. And that's something that Jack has called for as well. But, you know, it really shows you that they would basically make a decision and then they would try to come up with some justification to, you know, to back it up. It wasn't like we're applying our terms of service consistently and here's what they say and here's how the tweet

violates it and now here's our decision out the other end. Listen, those decisions, even if you are trying to follow what your rules and what your previous precedents in terms of service are, there are going to be gray areas. It's going to be complex. I'm not saying that it would be cut and dry, but what really comes through consistently in these Twitter files is they are making it up as they go along based on their own ideological inclinations, based on what they feel is public pressure, based on what they feel is employee pressure, and then trying to come up with a rationalization after the fact. And they even basically acknowledge as much. But it's never been more clear than with the banning

of Donald Trump when you have other leaders like the leader of Iran who's out there saying death to Israel. And you're like, yeah, that's fine. And you have this very sort of coded call for patriots and saying things like come to D.C., it's going to be wild. And that gets you ultimately banned. So that's the piece that I think is really clear. And again, the bottom line here that I always want to come back to is whether you like Jack more or whether you like Elon more, wherever you find yourself on the ideological spectrum, I actually think Macron put it really well. Do you feel comfortable having this kind of power to control speech concentrated in the hands of a few with zero democratic accountability? To me,

that is the core of this whole question. And then also the piece that we discussed yesterday about how Twitter was in literally weekly meetings with the FBI. So you have a completely unaccountable process being backed up and pressured by the government, none of which we knew at the time. It's a very, very disturbing set of events. Absolutely. And just to show you the slippery slope, the very next day, this is actually my favorite part of the Twitter files, put the final one up there. They decided they were going to start eagerness to ban, quote, medical misinformation as soon as possible. So the moment that they got Trump, they immediately started going after the COVID regime or started enforcing the COVID regime on their platform and to immediately

institute more censorship on the COVID front. So I actually, like I've said previously, one of the Twitter files I'm looking forward most to, it actually has more to do with COVID, the lab leak theory, some of the Alex Berenson casework and more. And I think that we are all going to find out a hell of a lot about that. So let's go to the next part here. Censorship. This also matters significantly because for all the talk now of Twitter, of the Twitter files, of the censorship and the idiocy that was going on inside, Elon is increasingly making it a regime where he is really the only person who is going to decide. Let's go and put this up there on the screen and why I think it matters. So the Twitter tough head of trust and safety, the new head, says that the platform is emphasizing moving swiftly to address problematic content,

even if it means figuring out some specifics later. So why does that matter? What did we just cover? The capricious nature, no principles, no policies, basically an invention based upon the ideological nature of Yoel Roth and Vijay Agade to come up with policies that govern the entire world's at least political discourse. And unfortunately, he seems to be moving in that direction. And I don't even know if I prefer either model. Cause I'm curious what you think at the end of the day, all these troughed and safety councils also it's bullshit. Like, you know, you can include like, right. No one's ever going to decide when Facebook

tried to do this, Mark Zuckerberg, he remember he created that whole democracy government. And then they kicked it back to him. They're like, no dude, like it's your company. Like you decide whether Trump is on the platform or not. They're like well shit supreme court right he's like his fake supreme court exactly and i'm like look maybe it's a good thing to just know it's like actually it is all in the hands of elon under jack it was all in his hands too you can like it or you can hate it i think we should change it but it does show you that the new boss is basically moving in the same direction like you may like his current orientation, but one of the things that a lot of people were pointing to,

one of the previous leaks that came out after the Twitter files is that almost immediately after Elon took over the platform, they applied the same shadow banning to the ElonJet account, which tracked his private jet. Or I don't think it's a surprise that the Chappelle video was immediately taken down by the main account that put it out. Luckily, there were other people who ripped it, who put it out there. We were able to put it out on our show.

But it does just underscore the capricious nature of which all of these platforms are being governed and Elon really moving in that direction. So, look, I mean, at the end of the day, I don't know what else that can be done. What I would say is I wish that they would just sit down. Like, I understand you have to run a company, but you need to sit down and publish, like, a manifesto almost of sorts. You should be like, these are the principles that we believe in. This is how we're going to govern our platform. But when you move in an ad hoc basis like they are right now, that's how you end up getting Kathy Griffin banned for no reason. Right?

You know, comedy is legal now on Twitter. It's like, well, yeah, I think it should be. But, you know, you have to come up with real policies and then enforce them in the future. Well, and we already know that he basically is operating in exactly the same way that the, you know, one off, like based on my own personal inclinations way that Twitter was operating previously, because we've seen that in his decision to keep Alex Jones banned and to ultimately, you know, ban Kanye West as well. I mean, he argued, listen, the things no one here is defending Nazism, Kanye West, the things he's been saying have been absolutely abhorrent, disgusting. Sharing swastikas is deplorable. However, Musk argued that West sharing an image that included a swastika was a, quote, incitement to violence. We have a lot of Supreme Court First Amendment precedent that says, no, it is not. It's not even close to that.

So, again, you are just using your own sort of personal decision making what offends you, what you think is over the line versus anything approaching a standard or consistent principle. Incitement to violence is exactly the thing that they tried to use to justify banning Trump from the platform, which also, if you just looked at the tweets, you couldn't argue that they were a direct incitement to violence in the same way that you can't argue that Kanye's tweet was a direct incitement to violence. You can say they're terrible. You can say they're deplorable. You can say they're disgusting. That doesn't mean that it constitutes under the First Amendment case law a direct incitement to violence. And again, we've had really clear case law on this front. So if you're a free speech warrior and you're going with the First Amendment, you wouldn't have banned Kanye West. You would have allowed Alex Jones likely back on the platform.

And it's because of your own personal views and how those particular acts struck you personally that you ended up making those decisions. And as you know, I'm not a fan of either one of these people. I don't enjoy defending them and their right to speak. But if you are being consistent with your principles, that is the way that Elon would have handled these things. And let's put the final one up there from Elon himself. He's actually spelled this out about the new Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach, even on freedom of speech. And the problem was he's like negative and hate speech will be maxed, de-boosted and demonetized and no ads or other revenue to Twitter. Who decides what's negative? Who decides what's hate? Is it the Elon jet account?

Is it not? We're back the same boss, you know, old boss, same as the new boss. Like what is happening here? Uh, I think it's a massive problem. They need to go back to what they originally said. Otherwise, they're just going to find themselves in the same boat and you're just going to have as much of a, you know, a complete and total, just, you're going to have more capricious decision-making. Elon saying Kanye's tweet was an incitement of violence because it made him incite to violence. It's like, dude, that is not what- That's not the way this works. Absolutism actually works. That's not the standard. But it is insightful into how exactly they intend on running the platform there, Crystal.

Yeah. I mean, listen, ultimately, there is no private solution to this problem. There's only a public solution to this problem. It is what Macron laid out. You have to have some sort of democratic check. The government has to be more involved. At least, you know, listen, the government is far from perfect. We are critics here all the time. But at least you have a process where you can get some sort of transparency, where there is some sort of democratic input, where it is not just solely subject to the whims and personal proclivities of one individual and how they feel on that particular day. So, you know, there have been sort of like competing debates about how to deal with this issue of content moderation in the new digital public square, whether it's at Twitter, whether it's at Facebook or any other property. And one idea was, well, we just need to start new companies that have like better people with better ideology running them. I think we have seen already to this point with Elon at the helm, that model is never gonna work.

You just can't have this much power. If you accept that these platforms matter, and I think that they do, you cannot consolidate this much power in the hands of any one person or small group of people. It is going to end up being very poorly run and a very bad decision for our democracy. Well said.

Big science breakthrough that Sagar and I are both, I think, a little bit nerding out on and excited about. There has been long, decades-long efforts to try to generate fusion energy, which right now we have nuclear fission, which is you break things apart. Fusion would be you bring atoms together that is sufficient enough to cause a net energy gain. Decades long efforts to achieve this. And I'll tell you why it matters a lot in a moment. Let's go ahead and put this Financial Times.

They broke the news. Major breakthrough by U.S. scientists boost clean power hopes. Let me go ahead and read you the beginning of this. U.S. government scientists have made a breakthrough in the pursuit of limitless zero carbon power by achieving a net energy gain in a fusion reaction for the first time, according to three people with knowledge of preliminary results. Physicists have since the 50s sought to harness the fusion reaction that powers the sun and other stars, of course, as well, but no group had been able to produce more energy from the reaction than it consumes. That's the milestone that's known as net energy gain or target gain, which would help prove the process could provide a reliable, abundant alternative to fossil fuels and conventional nuclear energy.

Again, to reiterate, there are private companies and a lot of actually investor money that has gone to trying to achieve this end. They have not accomplished this first. U.S. taxpayer dollars funded public research that led to this massive technological breakthrough that could, could in the future lead to a clean source of limitless energy. I mean, long-lived radioactive waste, which, of course, is the problem with nuclear energy. And a small cup of the hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years. One of the stats that I saw was that a cup of seawater could provide the same amount of energy as an entire barrel of oil. So that is what we're talking about here. Ultimately, it's described as the holy grail of clean energy. And if they can make this commercially viable, which we continue to be a long way from,

this could be a whole energy revolution on the scale of like the industrial revolution. Yeah, I mean, look, I hope so. This is one of those where I also just want to put in a thread here for public research because this was something built called the National Ignition Facility, and it was designed actually to test nuclear weapons by simulating explosions to advance fusion energy research, or sorry, for advancing nuclear testing,

but then was repurposed for the $3.5 billion facility for fusion energy research where they were able to build, I think it's the world's largest laser, which is kind of cool, which they use to bombard the plasma. I don't understand the science as much. I've been looking much more on the business end. And we should be careful, right? Which is, look, even the initial data, it's relatively unclear. Yes, they did get that net energy gain, but it's going to be very close. It does, unfortunately, take a hell of a lot of power to power the world's most powerful laser. That said, as you said, look, are we a decade away from this? Probably not. But are we $100 billion away from getting the first facility off the ground with some real testing? Yeah, I think we are. I think we are at that point. And

that's a very hopeful story. I mean, the you consider the Pentagon budget is like $800 billion. So this thing only costs $3.5 billion to build this facility. Let's say we throw $100 billion at this or something with new federal research, we could be living in a whole new world. Maybe what, 40, 50 years from now. Economies of scale take a long time to develop. But initial government research, and I hope what we can see is I don't want this thing to get culture warred the way that nuclear energy was. Yeah. Even though I still believe, you know, cost-effective-wise and all that. Oh, where we are today, we have to continue to lean into nuclear. Right.

So, like, nuclear in the interim, fusion in the future. That would be my future. I like that slogan. That we could go for. The things that we should watch out and look for are we have got to encourage more public research dollars towards this because it is still,

the breakthrough is there in terms of the experiment, but now we have to replicate the experiment multiple times, possibly in different facilities, build even more, throw possibly like contests and things at this to get different physics departments and all of that involved. So that's the frontier I think that we're moving into right now. Yeah. My dad is a physicist, long retired, but a physicist nonetheless. I was talking to him about this last night. He was super excited. And let me try to explain the science as best as

my feeble brain possibly can. So as I said before, the reaction that they're trying to achieve here and that they did achieve here is what ultimately powers the sun and other stars. And the reason they are able to pull it off and we have not been able to up to this point is because they have the benefit of having a large amount of mass.

And it's that pressure that basically creates the heat that makes it possible for this reaction to form this plasma and have this net energy gain that just sort of continues. So there's two methods that scientists have been using to try to achieve this net energy gain. One of them is, like Sagar said, using giant lasers to basically, like, you know, superheat things up, which means move the particles faster. That's the one that's been successful here. The other method that's being tried in other places is basically using super powerful electromagnets. That's the other method to try to achieve this gain. And so that's really the central challenge that they've been trying to figure out. Now, the hopeful indication here is that they're actually still crunching the data.

There is going to be an announcement from the government of the Department of Energy led by Jennifer Granholm sometime today. So we'll see the specifics of what they said. But they said actually one of the challenges with getting the measurements is that the net energy gain was more than they expected and actually broke some of the instruments. So that seems like a hopeful indication that they even went above and beyond. It appears there may have been a second experiment that also was able to replicate this net energy gain. However, put this next piece up on the screen. This is from Power Mag. They see U.S. officials set to announce this fusion energy breakthrough. As I mentioned, Jennifer Graham Holm, who is energy secretary, has said she's going to make an announcement of a major scientific breakthrough. And all expectations are this is going to be it.

But they go on to talk about the challenge of commercializing fusion. They said it includes developing machinery that could affordably turn the fusion reaction into power that could be deployed to the grid. Scientists have said that building equipment large enough to create fusion power at scale requires materials that are difficult to produce. In addition, the fusion reaction creates neutrons that significantly stress equipment and could potentially destroy that equipment. So there are a lot of challenges still ahead. One scientist I saw quoted said, listen, is this going to be a significant part of climate crisis abatement in the next 20 to 30 years? No, it is not. So keep in mind, this is more of a long-term hope for the future. Clean energy, completely transformational,

hopefully in our lifetimes, and this is a major step forward. There was one other piece that I just wanted to bring you on the front of clean energy, which is, you know, we've talked here before about how the U.S. has really gotten majorly behind the game in terms of securing the mineral elements needed for EVs and electric vehicle batteries in particular. China has been very aggressive in securing these mining rights. The Obama administration dropped the ball. The Trump administration dropped the ball. It looks like the Biden administration is trying to do a little bit of a better job. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from Axios. They say that the headline here is exclusive behind Biden's overseas mining funding. They are trying to fund roughly a dozen different

mineral projects overseas and a bid for more resources used in lower carbon technologies. Supporting more mining overseas could ease a raw material squeeze, hurting electric vehicles in particular. They also talk about the politics could have a side effect, giving Biden's foes fodder against him for rejecting mines at home. That to me is kind of the sideshow from the main key piece here, which is they're at least making some moves to secure the type of minerals that we would need to have a larger scale up of electric vehicle technology.

I don't know if this is sufficient. I sort of doubt that it is. But you can see the, you know, again, they like dabble in some good things, dabble in a little bit of industrial policy that we just haven't had in this country in a very long time. Yeah, mineral rights are very important and electric batteries and all that lithium

ion deposits across South America, Mexico. There's some major titanic battles happening in Chile with respect to mining rights and government and all that. So there's some interesting stuff that's down the table. If that treaty does end up passing, which maybe we'll do a little bit of a segment on it if it becomes more newsworthy. But there's a lot of really interesting things that are happening at the governmental level to try and secure the ground through which companies can then begin establishing a domestic or more of a less China-reliant electric battery supply chain. Because right now, at least for the next decade, we are locked in almost 100% with China, which is not a good place to be. Not ideal. If you want to bet the future on electric vehicles. Great planning from our political leaders. Way to go, guys. Okay, next up, we have some important news on the Ukraine, Russia's war on Ukraine front.

This is one of these significant sort of tea leaves of how Putin feels things are going and how he's doing. Let's go and put this up on the screen. He canceled this annual press conference. You can see that on the right side of the screen. I think that'll be the right as you guys are looking at it. As unease grows over Ukraine, wore this again from the Financial Times. He, they say, is usually a large-scale event lasting for several hours attended by hundreds of journalists. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday the conference will not happen before the new year. We hope that the president will still find an opportunity to talk to journalists. The reason it's a big deal is Putin usually loves this thing.

Right. He usually loves doing it. It's a big deal. He brings in all these journalists. He loves holding forth. He goes over the time limit. And so for him to be like, nah, we're just, we're not going to do it right now. Seems noteworthy. There's two potential

theories here. One is things are obviously going very poorly for them in terms of this war. And maybe he just feels like he doesn't really have the information even for sort of like friendly handpicked journalists that he wants to go with right now. The other more conspiratorial but also possible potential here is that he is really sick. I mean, there have been some indications that his health is failing. And so it could be he is physically not up to the task. Could be some combination of the both, of both, but that's basically the speculation I'm seeing at this point. Yeah, I think I have to err on the side of humiliation on his part because the issue is even in state media. They are criticizing him. They are

airing stories, questioning the strategy. The conscription was a horrific domestic disaster. I think there's just no way around that. You had mass fleeing of the country. You had an activation of the Russian populace. They're all like, hey, listen, you can do whatever you want in Ukraine, but when you're going to start shipping my ass over there, this is a whole other story. And people's brothers, uncles getting just thrown back into the service. These were major stories inside of Russia.

So I think that's what it's all about. I just don't believe that he would cancel this for any other reason because he loves doing it so much. I mean, I've watched and covered it almost every year since it's happened. It's an extraordinary event because, you know, usually also there's foreign journalists there and you'll even kind of take them on. For him to cancel this and especially everything that we know about what's happening inside of Ukraine does certainly matter. And so, yeah, I got to look at it within that context. That is my assumption as well. I think that is the most likely explanation here. And, you know, I mentioned this before, but there's decently reliable public polling that at the beginning of the, quote unquote, special military operation, the Russian public was for it. They were majority for it. There was a, you know, a maybe 30% minority that were against it, but overwhelmingly public opinion was in favor of it. Those numbers have basically completely flipped. And I think you're right that the conscription was the real turning point because up until that point, there had been such an effort to sort of

protect the Russian people from the realities of this war, from the hardships of this war. You'll recall when the conscription was initially announced, Putin was out like inaugurating a Ferris wheel or something like that. That was the length that they were going to, to try to maintain normalcy for their people. When his hand was forced and they basically had to go forward with this fairly significant wave of conscription that really left everyone in the country who was a military age man or even could vaguely be defined as such or anyone who knew or loved a military age man really left the entire population feeling very uncomfortable and very uncertain. And then it's like, yeah, maybe I supported the idea of this in theory, but am I

willing to die for it? Am I willing, but am I willing to die for it? Am I willing to send my loved ones to die for it? Not so much. So that has resulted in a major flip in public opinion with the Russian people based on the polling that we can see that seems to be relatively credible and independent. At the same time, you have more sort of reckless and, frankly, terrifying nuclear rhetoric coming from Vladimir Putin. Let's go ahead and put this Bloomberg tear sheet up on the screen. He said Russia might consider formally adding the possibility of a preventive nuclear first strike to disarm an opponent to its military doctrine. That was just days after he warned that the risk of atomic war is rising.

Quote, we're thinking about this. If we are talking about a disarming strike, perhaps we should think about using the approaches of our American partners, he said, citing what he called U.S. strategies to use high accuracy missiles for a preventive strike. He always does this. He always says, like, well, the U.S. did it. So now maybe we should do it too. On Wednesday, he said the risk of atomic warfare is rising and called Russia's arsenal a deterrent factor in conflicts. So listen, how do you take these threats? Well, we have already and Ukraine has already crossed a number of the supposed red lines that Putin has laid out before, you know, the attacks on the Crimea bridge, the wanting to take back before, you know, the attacks on the Crimea bridge, the wanting to take back Crimea, you know, attacks on the territory that they supposedly had, you know, annexed, attacks now inside of Russia. And there hasn't been a nuclear escalation. So do you look

at that and say, well, it's just saber rattling? Or do you have to continue to take him seriously? Because at the end of the day, this is a desperate man whose back is against the wall and running out of options. And with a domestic populace that is none too impressed with how this is all going and who the hell knows what he's ultimately going to do. I'll just reiterate what I always say with these things. It's only been 10 months. That's actually not a long time. Consider what the first 10 months of World War II looked like. And if you were trying to judge that outcome based upon what the eventual one was, you'd look like an idiot based on that. So we have no idea. I think in general, changing the nuclear doctrine, yeah, that would be really bad. That would be a major escalation. Now, on the one hand, nuclear doctrine in Russia is fake

because it's all up to Putin and he gets to decide regardless. But to remove any of the official guardrails, these are longstanding policies which nations, responsible nations supposedly, publish in order to reassure the world like, no, this is not something that we're going to do. In the U.S., we even have strategic ambiguity where we don't really even lay it out one way or the other. But for them to remove it straight up, that's not good. That's a move. Not even the Chinese have that. So there you go. Listen, it just underscores my contention all along that we should be doing everything we possibly can to wrap this war up as soon as possible. And the U.S. has a lot to say about that.

We are, you know, very much engaged in this thing. So that's all I'll say about that. That's all we can really do. Yes. All right. We've also got a little update for you on how it's going over in the Republican Party in terms of moving on from Trump, right? The election results were as clear

as they could possibly be in terms of an indictment of his impact on the party, at least in terms of electoral results. All of the Republicans, effectively, who distanced themselves from him, like Brian Kemp, like Roffensperger, even DeSantis, who's kind of tried to keep a bit of an arm's length. They did very well. The candidates who were most closely tied to him and especially most tied to

his Stop the Steal conspiracy bullshit, they crashed and burned almost unanimously throughout the country. So interesting exchange on Fox News with Stuart Varney pressing current RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel about whether, hey, isn't this kind of simple? Isn't Trump ultimately your problem? Let's hear what she had to say. Would you publicly say that Donald Trump bears any responsibility for some of the losses in the midterm elections? Would you say that publicly?

I don't like this. I don't like these parceling out because he supported Ted Budd, who won, and he supported J.D. Vance, who won. I think there's a lot of things. That's why I've put together an after-action report. We've got to look at Dobbs. But here's the one thing that I think people should be talking about, the amount of ticket splitting, the amount of Republicans that went out and voted for Republican at the top of the ticket. Look at Arizona. The top vote getter is a Republican. Look at Georgia. We had eight of nine statewide races won by Republicans. But why are Republicans going and voting for one Republican and not the other? We have to work hard to bring those independents in.

Is that the answer to your question? But that means turnout was not the issue. The answer is Trump, isn't it? I'm saying I'm not into the blame game right now. I think we've got to do an analysis. I think it's too quick. And I think you can't parcel out, well, this endorsement helped this one and this. It's the whole message. It's what did each candidate do? What was their turnout? But most importantly, how do we get independents to support Republicans? And how do we get Republicans to support other Republicans?

And this infighting within our party is never going to help that. We need Trump voters. We need McCain voters. We need Romney voters. And then some if we're going to beat the Democrats. Come on. It's eight out of nine. It's actually very simple why eight out of nine Republicans in Georgia won. These people are such clowns. My always theory with this, I'm like, why even go on? You know, when even the Fox guy has to be like, yo, come on.

Like, this is obvious. I'm not into the blame game. It's humiliating. And when he's president, okay, I get it. You know, he's the president. Like, you know, you got to suck. He's not even the president anymore. Yeah.

Like, what are you doing? I mean, and obviously the RNC is going to be really important for his presidential run this time around. I'm not saying that the whole campaign launch has, like, gone particularly well for him. Right. But it's in moments like this that you see, like, they're not ready to move on. Exactly. They're still terrified of this guy. They're still afraid of him and what his followers will ultimately do.

She knows that if she says it's his fault, he'll truth out like she's got to go and you may well be done. Like that might be it for you, even though the message of this election vis-a-vis Trump could not possibly have been more clear. And you're right to point to Georgia. I mean, in Georgia, every other Republican won except for Herschel Walker. Like, gee, I wonder what the like differentiating factor was here. All of these candidates that were backed by Trump, that backed his conspiracies, all the more closely tied they were to him and that stuff, the worse they ultimately fared. It was so clear, so consistent across the board. And you had not just her in this moment, which I really enjoyed watching. You had Josh Hawley come out with a piece

that was attempting to say, ah, it wasn't really Trump. You had J.D. Vance really going over the top, being like, Trump is not to blame. Listen, they have yet to come up with anything approaching a credible answer that does not involve sort of the problems with the former president of the United States.

But good luck moving on from them because they clearly are not really ready to do that. We'll see. I have so many minds and such a different and difficult concept. There's a poll actually just came out while we're doing the show, Crystal, about Republican voters becoming a lot more split on Trump. But really, to me, the crazy one was they did the top line like Trump v. Biden. And right now they have Biden 47 and Trump at 40, whereas they have DeSantis at 47 and Biden at 43. But the problem is, is that, you know, the GOP electorate is relatively split. So look, he's got them caught. They can't move on, as you said, because he'll, you know, truth out whatever happens. He has them in a real pickle. And, you know, even DeSantis himself, he hasn't said a word. In some ways, that's beneficial, but you can't beat somebody when you can't say anything bad about them.

That's not how it works, folks, especially whenever you're going to have a whole host of other candidates who run too. So I think it's a nightmare scenario for them all the way around. It's one of their own making. You know, it really is. Absolutely. Absolutely. Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, the World Cup is nearing its end right now. And even though I honestly don't care about soccer, I'm still looking forward to the Battle of Tours rematch between Morocco and France. You would think at this point that all the scandals are over.

We already know that Qatar never should have gotten the World Cup in the first place. And the only reason FIFA was willing to look past their inadequacies, their culture, and their inability was because they were lucky enough to be born on a pile of natural gas money. But even now, today, more than a decade after the initial bribery, which we have well documented here, took place, there's still more. So let's dig in. when Belgian authorities seized some $600,000 in cash from a member of the EU parliament as part of a broader investigation into Qatar buying influence in Europe in support of its World Cup status. The charges hit four separate EU parliament members and affiliated people

and exposed even more corruption in the ongoing saga. The bribes appear to have been paid in part to secure visa-free travel to Europe for Qatari citizens as some sort of reciprocity which was about to be voted on in parliament. Belgian prosecutors said, quote, third parties in political and or strategic positions within the European parliament were paid large sums of money or substantial gifts to influence parliament's decisions. Qatar immediately denied the accusation, but the emerging facts are damning for them and for the EU Parliament as a whole. The allegations center around Eva Kiley. She is a vice president of the EU Parliament, who was stripped of her duties in the legislature and within the Greek Socialist Party.

In fact, she now seems was taken, actually took and gave a speech in the EU parliament previously, hailing Qatar as a, quote, front runner in labor rights and said other European parliament members who were criticizing the country, quote, accuse everyone that talks to them or engaging in corruption, but still takes their gas. She might've been right on the gas run, but it turns out she was actually literally getting paid when she made that statement. Incredible. The details of the crime are hilarious. She was literally detained with, quote, bags of cash and was brought before a judge under a charge of being caught basically red-handed. The total amount of cash seized includes €600,000 in a home, several hundred thousand in a suitcase

in a hotel room in Brussels, and another €150,000 at her house. Her own father was seized leaving a hotel room with cash in a suitcase. Qatar, for the record, says it had nothing to do with bribing her in this incident. But the Belgian prosecutors allude to a, quote, Gulf country, and the Belgian media is clearly reporting it without any pushback from the Belgian state. The scandal actually goes deeper, as another one of those who was charged in a quote non-profit called quote fight impunity that man pierre antonio panziere was a member previous member of the eu parliament who was actually chaired delegations to the middle east in the past and appears to have been at the center

of a criminal ring which influenced decision making within the eu parliament itself dispersing cash and gifts on behalf of the qatari government. The Italian media says his wife and daughter were also detained in connection with the case, revealing that he too was likely on the take. And that's just what we know so far. Early in the morning, actually, Belgian authorities raided even more offices throughout the EU parliament, including 19 different homes and offices, including other members. Six others have now been arrested, although they are aware of waiting their names. In a way, it doesn't even matter. It just shows us what we knew already. In many ways, a lot of these Western legislative bodies, they're totally for sale to the highest bidder, no matter who you are. So probably the most significant corruption

scandal in years for the European Union. And at the center of it is a country which has it all figured out. In a way, I don't blame the Qataris. They got this far by buying people off to overlook how they run their society. They literally bribed their way to the World Cup. For those who may have forgotten, we have literally have people on tape accepting bribes in those instances. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that both Russia and Qatar straight up bribed FIFA officials to secure hosting rights for the Cup, including outright payments for their votes. The scandal has even been admitted to by FIFA, including listing off names of those, and of course, even after the payments were made public by the FBI, they still continue to

stand by Qatar. I can't be the only one who saw the EU Parliament member's comments and didn't immediately then remember the current FIFA president's justification for Qatar's World Cup. I'm European. Actually, I am European. Not just I feel European. I think for what we Europeans have been doing in the last 3,000 years around the world, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years

before starting to give moral lessons to people. Today, I have very strong feelings. za naslednjih 3000 let, pričakali bi se ljudem moralnih učenj. Včasih imam zelo stranične čutnice. To lahko vam povedam. Včasih se zdi Katar. Včasih se zdi Arab. Včasih se zdi Afričan. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled.

Today I feel a migrant worker. Still astonishing. Will this change absolutely anything? No, probably not. Qatar still got the World Cup. They still and got, they caught this time. Even if they do change, it's not like other countries aren't doing this stuff all the time too.

The only way it could really change is with us. I mean, it's just kind of stunning, Crystal. Like they straight up bribed this EU parliament member. She gets seized with all this cash in her house. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. You've got another European monologue, Crystal. What is it? Indeed. So last week, while we were on the road, the German government executed a mass raid, arresting 25 people and involving some 3,000 security personnel to disrupt what they described as a plot to overthrow their government. Now, the details seemed absolutely fantastical.

Some minor hereditary aristocrat self-styled as Prince Heinrich VIII of Reuss, was allegedly meant to be installed as a new German Kaiser by a group of extremists who subscribed to something called the Reichsburger movement. This movement supposedly had a whole government in waiting that they imagined was going to take the reins of power once their coup was successful. So basically, some sort of weird imperial fantasy turned into a violent coup plot, and somehow this also had something to do with QAnon? I had so many questions. First of all, who is this dude, Prince Heinrich VIII? Well, here's the official photo that everyone seems to be going with. You've got glasses, receding hairline, earlobe, length, gray hair, blue eyes, staring into the camera with a sort

of self-satisfied look, tired in paisley tie, paisley pocket square, and a windowpane tweed jacket. In other words, if I pictured elderly fake German prince in my head, this is pretty much exactly what my mind might generate. And apparently the man really loved this beige tweed jacket with red windowpane pattern because he was wearing it for his arrest photo as well as you can see here. This time paired with a blue shirt open at the, and sienna-colored corduroy pants. Now, his ancestors reigned over the city of Gera, which is located in the modern eastern German state of Thuringia. The history of House Royce goes back at least 700 years and includes overseeing the reconstruction of Gera after a devastating fire.

The family's roots in Thuringia end up being kind of significant because this is also the area where the far-right AFD party has found the most traction and has been somewhat of a hotbed of the Reichsburger conspiracy movement. The fake prince's family, well, they had already disassociated themselves with him due to his political beliefs. This summer, a spokesperson for the House of Royce said, quote, I am afraid that he is now a conspiracy theorist, a confused old man. This distancing might have been due to a poorly received speech at the World Web Forum in Switzerland that was titled, Experience the Rise and Fall of the Blue-Blooded Elite, in which he peddled his conspiracies with some anti-Semitism thrown in for good measure. Gotta give it to this guy. He is always on brand. So Heinrich VIII was still able, however,

to operate a successful business as a high-end real estate broker in Frankfurt. That was the location of his arrest. He split his time there in Frankfurt and between a hunting lodge in his ancestral homeland, sort of small castle fortress-looking place. New York Times described it as crenellated, which apparently is what those prototypical castle-looking walls are called. It was here that he allegedly plotted the now-aborted coup, and this lodge also offers a clue as to how the fake prince went down the extremist rabbit hole. He and his family members have been engaged in a variety of lawsuits against the state of Germany to reclaim their family's former land and property holdings to include this hunting lodge. All of these holdings were

nationalized by the Soviets. These lawsuits were mostly unsuccessful, and in the end, he was actually forced to buy back the family's ancestral hunting lodge, which had been serving as a state-run hostel. Simmering resentments over these losses and his family's loss of noble status could have fueled his turn toward fantastical imperial conspiracies. That all brings me to my second question. What the hell is the Reichsberger movement? So, Reichsburger means citizens of the empire. So basically, it's the German version of the so-called sovereign citizen movement here. The basic belief is that the post-World War II German government is illegitimate, it's fake, and it's in fact just a corporate entity set up by the U.S. and other allies.

The movement combines anti-government ideology with this nostalgia for a glorious imperial past. Inherents have been known to harass local officials, refuse to pay taxes, and refuse to obtain driver's licenses. They've also been known to file mountains of frivolous claims in courts in an attempt to gum up the workings of the state. Again, this all sounds a lot like sovereign citizens here in the U.S. Let me give you a little bit of a sense of the rhetoric that they use. A local journalist in the town where the fake prince had that hunting lodge, he described a Rice Burger affiliated letter which went out to local citizens and it read, do you also have the feeling that something in this country is not right? Did you know that you actually are not in possession of any citizenship, that you are actually stateless and possess no

rights? Interviews by the New York Times with locals actually found some sympathy for the sense of unease and disconnection, if not so much with the violent coup plans. Now, there are an estimated 20,000 or so Reichsberger believers in Germany. Seems like until recently they were seen as just sort of a goofy nuisance, small group of harmless cranks cosplaying statecraft. But according to media reports, which also have some echoes in what we've experienced here, they cross-pollinated with other extremists and conspiracy movements during COVID lockdowns, while also at the same time becoming a lot more radical.

I mean, it kind of makes sense. Bunch of angry, disillusioned people cut off from social ties, put under economic pressure, way too much time on their hands to spend going down deep internet rabbit holes. It's no wonder that some crazy shit is gonna come out the other end of that toxic brew. Which finally brings me to the alleged QAnon links and what any of this has to do with the U.S. other than my own personal fascination.

So the government's post-raid press release claimed that QAnon ideology had helped to inspire this group of would-be insurrectionists. But most of the reporting I've seen on this link is actually kind of vague. I'm not saying it's not there, but based on what I've been able to glean in my rather obsessive internet research, it's mostly that all of these fringe, radical, and conspiracy movements have intermingled online. It's a sort of choose-your-own-adventure of global cabal plots where everyone feels like they have access to some secret special knowledge, that they're part of a group of global truth hunters putting together the pieces of a forbidden puzzle.

Just as here in the U.S., QAnon mixed with anti-lockdown protests, mixed with Stop the Steal, mixed with Proud Boys, mixed with Oath Keepers, etc., etc. And I guess to me, that is really the most interesting part. How do you end up, for example, storming the Capitol on January 6th genuinely believing you are acting as a patriot? Or dedicating your life to the nonsensical musings of the 8chan administrator who is pretending to be some deep government insider previewing an inevitable coming storm? Or how do you end up planning intricate details of a plot to reestablish the Kaiser from the hunting lodge of a self-styled aristocrat? Well, I would guess to say it's pretty complex. But researchers say that people who are suffering some sort of identity crisis,

they tend to be more vulnerable to conspiratorial or extreme ideology. That identity crisis could be triggered by, let's say, an influx of refugees that cynical politicians warn will upend your culture and destroy your way of life. Could be triggered by a personal financial calamity of the type that befell millions during the Great Recession, could be triggered by a pandemic that cuts you off from your work and your social outlets. Research, in fact, shows that financial crises from the 1870s on, they have consistently triggered surges in right-wing authoritarian movements. There is some indication that the Reichsberger movement has preyed on those facing evictions and facing financial struggle.

Believers tend to be older single males who are socially isolated. It also jumped out to me right away that these fringe and far-right movements in Germany are concentrated in former East Germany, where the economy has lagged and many are nostalgic for the communist pre-unification era. Every year, the government actually produces an annual report on the status of German unity. In 2019, that report found that 57% of citizens in Eastern Germany felt like second-class citizens. Just 38% of those asked in the East see reunification as a success, including only, get this, 20% of people under 40. That is a stunning statistic.

It would appear that the promised capitalist dream has failed to materialize for East Germany, just as it's failed to materialize for a lot of people right here. At the same time, it has stripped local communities bare, turned us from connected citizens into atomized consumers, and subjected us to financial crises that plunge our societies

into these sort of doom loops, thus preparing fertile ground for desperate conspiracies to grow and burst from online chat rooms right into the real world. The truth is, the real plot against the people, it's out in the open for all to see. You don't need a conspiracy theory, a system that puts profit over people and corporate power over democratic power. And I fully support a peaceful revolution to overthrow that system. And Sagar, I know you are a student of history. Yeah. I know you found this all very interesting as well. So what do you make of this whole thing? And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Very excited about this. We've got a great guest to join us on the show today, CoffeePoints.com. Very excited about this. We've got a great guest to join us on the show today, CoffeeZilla. Some of you might know him. He's a journalist. He's done a fantastic job over on his YouTube channel, which we'll have a link in the description, exposing crypto scams, but really being at the forefront of the SBF scandal from day one. And what a fortuitous day for you to join us, CoffeeZilla.

Thank you so much, man. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we've got him getting arrested. It's an incredible day, for sure. Okay, so I think one of the things we wanted to start with, so you could recap for the audience, is when you did a video, I accidentally got SBF to admit to fraud. So why don't you dig into some of the details there and maybe even take it back to what set your BS radar off with SBF from the very beginning when you started covering it many months ago? Yeah. So months ago, he was on a podcast with Matt Levine, where he was saying that basically everything's a Ponzi scheme. All of DeFi is a Ponzi scheme. It was kind of an

incredible admission. And at the time I said, look, here's this crypto CEO that everyone loves, who's basically glorifying Ponzi schemes as if it's a legitimate business. And Matt Levine famously said, sounds like you're in the Ponzi business and business is good. Now, later when all of this collapsed, I tried to get an interview with him. He didn't want to talk to me, although he talked to a lot of journalists. So instead, I snuck up on a Twitter space and managed to basically kind of trick him into talking to me. At first, he ran away the first couple of calls, but finally I nailed him down and I got him to admit that there was fungibility between accounts. This is a really important point. Basically, Sam Bankman Freed was never supposed to have control over customer funds. It was supposed to be separated per their

terms of service. And what he admitted to me was that was never the case. There was what they called generalized withdrawals the day of the bankruptcy, the days leading up to the bankruptcy, which meant fundamentally your funds were never safe. They were always being used by Sam and Alameda to make risky trading decisions. Absolutely scandalous. And today you saw the results of that. Obviously, you have the DOJ announcing that they're about to they're about to really release the charges on him. You're very strategic about the way that you went about questioning him because you had seen him very successfully dodge other interviewers who were relatively skilled over at the New York Times and with George Stephanopoulos. Can you talk about some of the tactics that he would use

to deflect scrutiny in these other interviews that he was doing. Absolutely. So what he was really good at was he was able to deflect by going to a bunch of complicated financial instruments that he knew very well. And by doing that, he could get the interviewer sort of off their game. So he would invoke Alameda Research, which was his trading firm, which he started, he owned, but ultimately had nothing to do with, he started, he owned, but ultimately had

nothing to do with, he would say he knew nothing about, right? He would say, I knew nothing about Alameda. I was not the CEO. So anything that happened there is not my fault. So an interviewer would say, what happened at FTX? It looks like there's a bunch of money stolen. And he said, well, that was with what was going on with Alameda. We had this banking issue. We had an accounting error. And each interviewer just kind of kept getting trapped in this mire of excuses. So what I decided to do was really focus on FTX itself, ignore Alameda completely, and say, look, even if you just take what happened on FTX, that's fraud.

Because customers should have been backed one-to-one. Let's say your grandma put a Bitcoin on FTX. That money should still be there even if they didn't have money for everyone else who is on their riskier side of the trading. So they didn't have the money. He eventually admitted they didn't have the money. And that by itself is definitively fraud. You cannot tell people in your terms of service that you're going to keep their money safe and then not do it. So by focusing in on that, I was able to get around a lot of his kind of excuses of going into Alameda, going into these complicated instruments.

Basically, the SEC agrees with you because they nailed him for exactly what you said in the complaint that we read on our show this morning. I want to go a little level deeper. You've been exposing kind of crypto frauds, scammers, really just online in the broader universe for quite a long time. It's something that I think that the mainstream media really misses until it just explodes into a multi-billion dollar catastrophe. Why do you think that is? Why is it that these obvious, you know, multi-billionaires in this case, multi-millionaires and many other cases which you've exposed now for a long time. Why do they seem to fly under the radar when they're obviously so influential with younger people and on the internet writ large? I think a lot of mainstream journalists just haven't caught up with the crypto world. And I

think they're struggling to catch up even now. In the case of Sam Bankman Freed, it was a bit different because he was actually funding a lot of these institutions. You had him actually giving grants to journalists. You had him working sort of hand in hand with journalists. So it's no surprise they didn't see it, right? A lot of these people are still struggling to see the fraud. You have some puff pieces going out there. Don't get me wrong. There's some great mainstream pieces about Sam Bankman Freed, but a lot of them miss this. And the question is, okay, it's some combination of maybe they don't understand crypto, but also how much of it is, well, he was the poster child. He was the guy from Jane Street

who was so smart and he was helping all the journalists. He was a huge democratic funder. How much did that play a role in it? It's hard to know. I mean, we see this across industries, not just in terms of finance or tech, but certainly in terms of politics. A lot of times the journalists get cozy with the subjects they're supposed to be holding to account. And their career depends more on access to that person than it does on, you know, potentially exposing them. And so it creates a bad incentive structure

where it's like they want to be in the club rather than they really want to be covering and holding the club ultimately to account. I am curious though, I mean, your YouTube channel, though your description of it is, I uncover scams, fraudsters, and fake gurus that are preying on desperate people with deceptive advertising,

which is an incredible space that you've carved out for yourself. What are some of the tactics that you use to, when does your BS radar go off? What are some of the commonalities between these various crooks that you are ultimately exposing and revealing? And what sort of characteristics does Sam Bankman-Fried share with some of those other individuals you've covered? Sure. Yeah. I'd love to talk about that. A lot of the tactics and methods people use to gain this status with people or grip on people, it's a lot on quick status. But I mean, a lot of these guys, my BS goes off whenever somebody comes out of nowhere, seemingly no pedigree, and all of a sudden is taking the world by storm.

They seem to have wealth from nowhere. They're advertising some get-rich-quick scheme. And really, FTX was kind of doing that. I mean, they were offering people high interest rate loans. They said they were low risk. You have Sam Bankman Freed himself, who, although he came from a great school, he came from MIT, he had some pedigree, he really didn't do much before FTX. And all of a sudden, he's the smartest guy on the block. He's telling people they have no risk. He's telling people he's making money without any kind of risk associated. It just didn't make sense.

And then you just have his talk about Ponzi schemes favorably. That was a huge red flag. So it's these types of things that kind of set it off. With his case, I think just a lot of people missed it because they were blindsided by all the other rubber stamping that goes on. I mean, this is something a bit different with Sam is so many people had checked him off. You had Sequoia Capital. You have BlackRock.

You have a lot of people doing so-called who are supposed to be doing due diligence who really didn't do it. But a lot of those same tactics that I see over and over with deceptive marketing, predatory marketing, you saw that with SBF. And he actually admitted in an interview that that's actually why he talked a lot about, or at least it was part of the reason he talked so much about charity, about all this effective altruism, was it was part of brand building. And I think that's such an important point is what are our blind spots as institutions, as the fourth estate, as journalists to people like this? Who else should everybody be paying attention to?

Because obviously you called SBF from the beginning. Are there any others that people should watch out for? I mean, certainly it's hard to say like one person without making a whole story about it. But for sure, anybody who pops up out of nowhere, who claims to have the whole crypto industry on a string, has it all figured out. And we've seen this time and time again. Usually there's undisclosed risk. So that was a big thing this year. And in crypto in general, people have been saying, oh, it's different. You can get 8% a year, no risk with crypto, or it's 8% a year is easy to get with crypto. It's different from the fiat markets. Listen, anytime anyone's promising you huge amounts of money for no risk, run. If you don't understand it, if you don't understand why there's risk associated, there's something hidden there. And that's exactly what you've seen in the crypto

industry is over and over and over again, these people who are promising high rates of return, they blow up because they had something that they were trying to hide eventually comes out. Some things are too good to be true. Would have been useful advice for Saga a few months back. Lost $5,500 on a block buy. I'm right there. Oh, I'm sorry to hear it. It's all right. It's all right. I'm here to live another day. I'm here to talk to you. I should have been watching your channel more often. That's one of the reasons we wanted to have you on. Such an amazing job that you've been doing over there.

I encourage everybody to go and to subscribe. You do a really good job of both breaking it down for anybody who's just coming into it, really entertaining, great interview style, breaking news journalism, and I consider you in the highest regard in this story. So congratulations. Yeah, thank you so much. We're super grateful for your time. Thanks, guys.

Appreciate you having me on. Absolutely. Link down in the description to go ahead and subscribe to his channel. Okay, guys, thank you so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Thanks, shout out to our premium subscribers who are enabling our big expansion in 2023.

We've got some stuff cooking that we're gonna reveal to everybody in like a little rear-end review like we did last year, which is a lot of fun. We've also got another announcement, which we'll tease on Thursday. Everybody will be excited. It might sound familiar, but it is still fun to say out loud regardless. Okay. I think that's it. We'll have great partner content, counterpoints on Thursday, and obviously we'll be here on Thursday morning. We'll see you later. This is an iHeart Podcast.