Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/7/23: FAA Near Death Accidents, Clearest Signs Of Trump Indictment, DHS Illegal Spying Program, Fauci Prompted Lab Leak Coverup, New Jan 6th Footage Revelations, Alex Murdaugh's Verdict, California Housing Crisis, Introducing BP Partner Spencer Snyder

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the FAA in a state of emergency after multiple near death accidents, Jet Blue and Spirit airlines merger blocked, the clearest signs yet of a Trump indictment, Dems celebrate the return of Trump, DHS revealed to have illegal spying program, Fauci caught prompting a coverup of the Lab Leak theory, how a CNN Boss quashed lab leak investigation, Jan 6th footage shows police escorting the Q-Anon Shaman through the Capitol, Saagar looks into Alex Murdaugh's verdict based on data from his cell phone establishes a dangerous new precedent, Krystal looks into how California's Housing Crisis is sweeping the rest of the nation, and we introduce our newest BP partner Spencer Snyder (https://www.youtube.com/@SpencerSnyder).To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. Lots of interesting stories that are breaking this morning. So there is an FAA emergency meeting planned to deal with all of these near miss incidents. We have a bunch of them to show you. It is absolutely terrifying how close some of these planes have

come to absolute disaster. So we will tell you about that. Also, Department of Transportation and the Department of Justice moving to block an airline merger. This is good news, so we'll dig into all of that as well. We also have some interesting developments in terms of potential Trump indictments. DOJ may have just shown their hand, so we'll break that down for you. Also, revelations that did not get nearly enough attention, that the DHS was caught spying on Americans. Huge implications there. Speaking of caught, Fauci caught helping

to organize that very influential letter that led to basically everyone in the media saying, oh, no lab leak. It's definitely natural origin to say otherwise is racist. And new revelations about exactly how CNN controlled the narrative with regard to lab leak. Last night, Tucker Carlson dropped some new January 6th footage that I think we could say is perplexing. It's a nice way of putting it. Yeah, perplexing. We'll show it to you and you can see what you make of it. We also are very, very excited to introduce you guys

to one of our new partners, Spencer Snyder. I know you've been already enjoying his content. His latest piece was about Jen Psaki and the media government revolving door. Foc on her, but then does a bigger deep dive. He does phenomenal, phenomenal work. Could not be more excited to have him as part of the breaking points community. So we're going to talk to him so you can get to know him a little bit better. But we wanted to start with this emergency FAA meeting. Let's go and put this up on the screen. This is quite extraordinary. So the headline here from Bloomberg is FAA calls urgent air safety summit after U.S. near crashes. To give you some of the details here, they say the U.S. aviation regulator is calling the summit next

month, ordering a review of industry data following a spate of recent near crashes. They specifically cite two serious incidents in which jetliners came dangerously close to one another. In one event on February 4th, a FedEx wide-body cargo jet attempting to land came within 100 feet of colliding with a Southwest Airlines plane that was taking off in Austin, Texas,

by the way, on the very same day that we were flying out of Austin, Texas. I think I flew an hour after this occurred. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Also, we showed you before, this was insane and terrifying as well. This jet that took off from Hawaii

and then it came within feet of crashing into the ocean, plunged within 800 feet of crashing the ocean before righting itself and then everything going okay from there. But there have been so many of these incidents recently. Unrelated to that, also this week, they're going to be testifying, the head of the FAA is going to be testifying on the Hill about that massive software failure. The NOTAM system.

Right, exactly. That led to everything being stopped one morning. And what happened there, they say, is that a contractor accidentally deleted data that completely crippled the system, which also calls into question the use of so many contractors within government rather than having the internal capacity themselves. Not only that, it's that easy? I mean, for all the talk of cyber attacks and all of that, that costs billions of dollars for a single day of ground stoppage. Right, a little oopsie. Yeah, a little oopsie.

So if that's a little oopsie that can cause it, what about somebody who intentionally is trying to take down the whole system if the code was that vulnerable? Also, as I understand it, he needs to answer for why the NOTAM system is not scheduled to be fully up and running, a new version, until 2030, Crystal. They're going to take seven years. I don't think people understand how delayed, old, and brittle the infrastructure behind the FAA and behind the entire U.S. aircraft system is. So much of the federal government. In another several lifetimes ago, I actually worked for one of these federal government contractors, my first job out of college. And it ended up being the one that down the road after I was long gone,

they were the ones that screwed up the Obamacare website launch. That was their, ended up being their claim to fame. But when you're inside that system, you see how it happens. I mean, they use these archaic systems. The federal government themselves, I mean, this was back in 2004, and I was working with the U.S. court system. Many of the U.S. courts were still tracking their caseloads using literal paper and pencil. It was insanity. And so then they're trying to implement this new system, which is like still not modern and totally clunky, but there becomes this incestuous relationship between the contractor and their employees and the agencies they're working with.

And basically, they end up in this relationship where you can never cut them off. And they keep just, you know, bilking the government and bilking the taxpayers. And there's this illusion that, oh, it's a private market, so it's going to be better. But that's not often how it actually works out in practice, as is, you know, this is one potentially little example of exactly what goes on there. But just as a reminder, there have been so many terrifying near misses lately that it really is quite astonishing. So let's go through a few of these that we highlighted in the past. Take a look at this diagram, this animation that you can see. This is the one, the Austin incident, where you have a FedEx plane coming within feet of this other Southwest Airlines plane that is attempting to take off.

I mean, this was a really, really near miss. Go ahead and put this next one up on the screen because this is absolutely terrifying. This was from The Guardian, a United flight from Hawaii plunged within 800 feet of the Pacific Ocean. They say it was heading for San Francisco. It took a steep dive shortly after takeoff in a dramatic incident in mid-December. This was during that same storm that caused turbulence, which injured a number of passengers on a different plane from this one. The details here are that flight tracking data analysis revealed that it had reached an altitude of roughly 2200 feet when it began a steep dive descending at a rate of about 8600 feet per minute. After dipping below 775 feet, the flight recovered altitude and traveled to San Francisco without further issue. So really, really narrow miss there in this difficult storm and heavy rain.

You had, let's put this one up. This is a new one. Southwest Airlines plane fills with smoke after taking off from Havana. For those of you who are just listening, there's smoke in the cabin. Those the air mass things dropped down from the ceiling. So they had to, you know, go ahead and land the plane, figure out what the hell was going on there. But there's wait, there's more. Here's the next one.

Airbus A330 Lufthansa flight reported severe turbulence at an altitude of 37,000 feet while flying over Tennessee. It was so severe that they had to make an emergency landing actually right here outside of D.C. at Dulles Airport. Seven people were hospitalized because of this turbulence. You can see in the photo, I mean, just stuff scattered everywhere all over the floor from this severe turbulence that left seven people hospitalized. They say they're all going to recover, which is good to hear. And then the very next day, put this one up on the screen. There was actually a private business jet where a passenger died because of severe turbulence. They say authorities are investigating after a passenger aboard a private

jet died from injuries inflicted last week during a spell of severe turbulence, which hit the aircraft as it flew over New England and forced it to land before reaching its destination. I mean, you put all of these things together and this is absolutely terrifying. The number of close calls and in this case, an actually fatal incident that had been happening in our airspace. So at the very least, I guess I'm glad to see that they're finally getting their act together to say, what the hell is going on here? Yeah, it would have been the Austin event in particular. It would have been one of the deadliest and biggest disasters in modern American aviation. And this is one of those where, as far as we understand it, you know, it's not mechanical.

That's one of these. It purely has based on FAA, on air traffic control. The turbulence issues. So I asked some of my friends in the aviation community. And they're like, look, you know, turbulence, it happens. Like these are one of those where they were pointing to. But the unusual event is actually what really people are spun up about is the guy who died on that business jet. Because that really just doesn't happen all that often, especially that type of severe turbulence. It also comes down to the way that the flights are, the path that they're

being directed to. So the Austin to Frankfurt flight, the Lufthansa flight, that flight dropped a thousand feet in a single second. That's one of the reasons why they had such severe turbulence. And you could actually see in the photos where there was just trash scattered about the cabin. Yeah. That does happen from time to time. And most of the injuries people say is most likely people not wearing their seatbelts. Also another one,

it's possible they may not have been wearing their seatbelt as well in the business jet. The reason though that it matters for safety procedures is A, you want to make sure that any passenger death is an insane incident. Like if we'll remember, oh, it's about a decade or so ago, the woman, you know, a window shattered, and she actually died because she was sucking.

Yeah, it was a crazy event. People should go and read about it. But the one that people are especially worried about is the United flight that plunged within 800 feet of the ocean and these two near misses, because they are indicative of, the thing about the FAA and about air flight or air travel is it's very safe, as they say,

but a single incident is so high consequence that we have to establish a system where faith in all of it is that we don't screw up ever. Period. And that we have to get to, the NTSB is set up so that every single incident, just like this, which, let's be honest, we are a hair's breadth away

from hundreds of people dead and crashing into the middle of the ocean. We have to go to the absolute bottom of that incident. And the reason I was scared, especially from that United incident, is it was only on the ground for two hours. The plane after, it took off again and flew another leg. Can you imagine if you were posted on that flight and they're like,

yeah, aircraft is cleared to land. Apparently, you know, it's been flying. No indication it was ever taken out of service. But then, okay, is it pilot error? If it is pilot error, are those guys still flying? Because I sure as hell hope not. Yeah. Well, the fact that you had two near misses

of planes colliding while they were taxiing, one at what was a JFK, it was one of the New York airports. And this one that we showed you in Austin within a short period of time is also very troubling and eyebrow racing because it shouldn't be easy to screw something like that up because you have to allow for the fact that human beings are human beings and there's going to be error. So you have to have systems in place that you double, triple, quadruple check to make sure you're not going to end up with these planes smacking into each other, um, with massive, you know, devastation and loss of life. So it's been crazy to watch all of this unfold. We've been tracking it pretty closely and we'll see what comes out of this FAA emergency meeting, which

in my opinion is long overdue. So that's the safety side of things. But there have also been a lot of issues on the sort of customer service and not just screwing over your clientele side of things. And we actually have some positive news in that regard. You know, one of the issues in the airline industry, like so many other industries, as our friend Matt Stoller would, I'm sure, explain to all of us, is there's been massive consolidation. And so you have four companies that control over 80% of the marketplace. That means they basically feel free to screw you over and they feel like you don't have another choice. They feel like they can jack up prices. They can cancel flights.

They can stick you with the bill even though they're supposed to pay for your expenses. All the shenanigans that we have seen, the fact that they have so large of a market share and so much market consolidation and they've all decided to treat their passengers like crap means that they feel that they can get away with it. So there is a potential merger. Let's go and put this up on the screen between JetBlue and Spirit. Now, Spirit is kind of important because it is the largest low-cost airline. They're one of the ones that, you know, it's really annoying. You think you're getting a good deal on the flight, and then they, like, nickel and dime you for literally everything. You're like, oh, you want water? That'll be $12.

Exactly. They're literally everything. But they still serve at least an important place in the market and trying to keep prices down and reasonable for people. And as I just said before, there's already huge consolidation within the airline marketplace. So it looks like the USDOJ is going to file suit to block this JetBlue Spirit merger. Bloomberg had some additional details that I'll read to you because part of what is extraordinary, and we are very much in the business of giving credit where credit is due here, is it's not just the Department of Justice. It's also the Department of Transportation, helmed by our friend Pete Buttigieg,

which is actually expected to take action here. He's actually doing his job on this one, so that's exciting to see. So what they say is that Elizabeth Warren had actually argued in a letter to Pete back in September that the agency had the authority and should act to block this merger on the grounds that it isn't in the public interest. So they are expected, the Department of Transportation, to begin a parallel proceeding to block the transfer of Spirit Airlines operating certificate as incompatible with the public interest, that is largely unprecedented in the modern era. The agency has not used that authority

to block the transfer of a certificate or the formal federal approval to operate aircraft and carry passengers among major airlines since the industry was deregulated in 1978. So for once, Pete, at the urging of Elizabeth Warren, not two typical heroes on this show, actually using the power that he has at his agency to try to deliver for customers. Well, a lot of Republicans have raised ones about this as well, because while this would be great for Spirit Airlines shareholders, for actual customers, for lowcost travelers, this would absolutely be a bad deal. Let's put the next one up there on the screen. One of the things is that four airlines already controlled 82% of the market. So as More Perfect Union lays out here, if JetBlue is allowed

to buy up one of the few budget airlines, it would cut flights and would hike prices industry-wide. The reason that that matters is that Frontier, Spirit, Southwest all play a very important role in the marketplace is that that is the way that a lot of families who very rarely, rarely travel, not business travelers especially, that is how they mostly move about the country. And in my opinion, it's one of those where I've had the misfortune of flying these. But if you're only flying once or twice a year, you don't care about status or any of this other stuff. These are great deals that a lot of people have or from random vacation, et cetera. Or if you just want to save as much money as possible whenever you're flying, time and delays and status and all that stuff not of any importance to you.

These play a very important role in the marketplace that we see in Europe like with EasyJet and Ryanair, those type of airlines. We've never been able to replicate the same level of price just because of geography, but we've gotten it actually pretty damn close. So it's very important to preserve some of these routes specifically to allow as many Americans access to air travel as possible without price being the single most prohibitive factor. Other thing you've got to consider is that with the airlines, most of these people are operating on razor thin margins in the first place. So whenever mergers happen, inevitably, while they always say, this is going to be great for the customer,

inevitably what happens? They cut staff and they cut routes, especially the routes. They cut as much as possible. They try and consolidate. And then with the limited number of new routes, what happens? Well, they jack up the price on those and it's just a major hit to the bottom line. It's one of those where it's really difficult because you really just don't have any other options sometimes whenever you're flying. And that is why it's important to have as much competition in the space as possible. And Spirit serves especially an important place in that market. Yeah, that is all very accurate. And More Perfect Union put together a great video on this that I recommend that you guys check out. They also had some more detail here about the history of how we ended up

in this place in the airline industry that I think is worth going into. Put this next piece up on the screen. So there was an Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, because of course there was at the, you know, beginning of the era of market fundamentalism. They say there was actually initially a huge influx of new airlines. So it seemed like the promise of deregulation, oh, there's going to be an influx and the free market, it's going to be amazing. The initial promise seemed to pay off. You had about 50 new airlines that popped up in the 1980s. Well, guess what? Not one of those airlines exists anymore. They were all gobbled up or stomped out of existence, is what More Perfect

Union says now, as we pointed out before, for airlines control 82% of the industry. And not only that, but this last part up on the screen, it's not like airlines are investing in customer service or staffing or safety or new routes or any of that. Of course not. Instead, they line the pockets of wealthy executives and shareholders. Ninety six percent of airlines free cash flow in the last decade has gone to stock buybacks. This is an industry that taxpayers just bailed out during covid. And the minute that they were able to, what'd they do? They pushed staff out and they continued with their practice of engaging in stock buybacks, which do nothing for you, do nothing for the country, do nothing for consumers, and do everything for their own

rich executives and shareholders. That's this industry. Yeah. And it's important to understand that because with the stock buybacks, one of the reasons why our airlines are held back in many respects is they don't invest in a lot of new technology and a lot of new aircraft in making sure that they have staffing. One of the issues that we have right now is the staffing pipeline, where if you look at a lot of delays, a lot of delays are because there's a limited amount of staff, staffer. You know, you have crew flying from one aircraft to the other. These guys are all back to back to back. They're also getting a short end of the stick because they don't really get paid, you know, even if there is a delay.

They don't get paid really until you have flight time. So it's actually structurally a huge problem. And this actually really, I want to zoom out. Airlines are the perfect illustration of how broken something that's so fundamental to American life is. You have a shortage of pilots. For what reason? Well, there's complicated. You have like forced retirements. We had the whole vaccine thing happen. Some people were forced out of the workforce. And then in terms of training people up, we have crazy standards, which don't really make any sense at this point to have as new pilots that are in the seats. So to get them flying. Then two,

same problem with the bailouts. They still had staff reductions at some of these airlines, even after they took taxpayer dollars. And then three, the airlines themselves, they are not just focused on flying. They are focused on juicing their stock prices as much as possible. And a lot of them have basically turned

into financial corporations with leverage. They have leverage contracts on jet fuel. And they're playing markets like you people wouldn't believe. Yeah. When you look at where their actual profit margins, we think of them as being in the business of like selling tickets and buying people around the country when a large portion of what they're doing and what they extract profits from is actually just behaving like Wall Street. Yeah. I mean, that's what they really it's it's a big part of the whole financialization of our economy that we talk about so much that, you know, most of their profit is not even coming from the thing that they purport to do.

It's from all of their financial speculation. And then, you know, they goose their own stock prices by just buying back their stock, rewarding themselves over and over. So, yeah, it's, it's a tragedy. And, you know, it's one of those things that we all need. And especially if you fly a lot, inevitably over the last two years, you will have noticed that the quality of service and the amount of delays and all that is just catastrophic. It's so bad.

And then when you leave the country and you go to, you know, even places, India and other places I've been to, their airports, their infrastructure, their on-time, also their competition for routes inside of their country. They're amazing. Flying in India is like is a breeze. It's so much nicer than flying here. Well, this is another thing. I mean, you know, transportation, this is important infrastructure within the nation that shouldn't just be subject to like what is profitable. You know, it's important that communities and cities be served,

that you have these routes available, that you have competition and choice. So one small positive step in that direction that we wanted to make sure to highlight for you because it is really important. All right. We've got a little bit of this is like a little bit of reading of the tea leaves of whether or not Trump is going to get indicted. We have the first piece is about the January 6th and fake elector portion. And then we also have some news that was reported in The Washington Post about some really heated battles between FBI agents and prosecutors who were involved in that Mar-a-Lago raid. So that's really interesting as well. We'll get to that in a minute. Actually, let's start with that one. That's the order we have it. And go ahead and put this up on the screen from the Washington Post. So showdown before the raid, FBI agents and prosecutors

argued over Trump, an exclusive look at behind the scenes deliberations as both sides wrestled with a national security case that is potentially far reaching political consequences. So what is revealed here by a team of reporters, including Carol Lennig, who's kind of their like star national security reporter, is that everybody was not on board with the FBI raid. It was incredibly controversial. And the lines broke down basically where you had the FBI agents on one side saying, hey, let's try to get cooperation. This is too provocative. At one point, point actually this i think it's kind of foolish but after they got that signed letter from christina bob that was like

oh yeah we turned over everything they actually just wanted to like close the case and walk away yes so they were very uncomfortable and hesitant about going forward with this raid but the prosecutors that prosecutors that were involved argued that evidence suggested Trump was knowingly, they say, concealing secret documents at his Palm Beach, Florida home. They urged the FBI to conduct that surprise raid at the property to senior FBI officials who would be in charge of leading the search, resisted the plan as too combative, and proposed instead to seek Trump's permission to search his property, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation. I'll give you a little bit of the color here because I think it's

interesting to see how heated this was behind the scenes. You know, they were kind of going back and forth. There was clearly a push and pull, the prosecutors consistently on the side of being more aggressive, the FBI agents consistently on the side of like, let's not, let's get cooperation. Like I said before, at one point, even like, let's just shut this thing down and walk away. So things kind of came to a head at this key final meeting. And according to the Washington Post report here, they say tempers ran high in the meeting. Bratt, who's on the side of the prosecutors, raised his voice at times and stressed the FBI agents at the time for trusting Trump and his lawyer was over. He reminded them of the new footage suggesting Trump or his aides could be concealing classified records at the Florida club. The folks on the FBI side complained how bad it

would look for agents with FBI emblazoned on their jackets to invade a former president's home. The FBI's top counterintel official, Alan Kohler Jr., then asked the senior FBI agents to consider how bad it would look if the FBI chose not to act and government secrets were hidden at Mar-a-Lago. FBI agents on the case worried the prosecutors were being overly aggressive. They found it worrisome, too, that Bratt did not seem to think it mattered whether Trump was the official subject of the probe. They feared any of these features might not stand up to scrutiny

if an inspector general or congressional committee chose to retrace the investigator's steps, according to the people. So, Sagar, what did you make of this report and this sort of behind the scenes clash? Well, there's a lot of talk about FBI, but actually what really stuck out to me is that the bite for all the talk of Merrick Garland and all of that being very cautious, it seems to me that this was a political decision at the end of the day that came from the highest levels of the DOJ where they're like, no, we're going to raid the, we are going to raid Mar-a-Lago with basically the full intent, like the full purpose and the knowledge

of what the fallout of such an investigation might be. Now, I think obviously at the time, Crystal, they weren't aware that President Biden also had classified documents in his garage, and they're not quite sure what exactly the Pandora's box they were going to open with all of these former officials. So my kind of takeaway was this was a political decision at the top.

I read it a little bit differently in that clearly both sides were very concerned, like the FBI side and the prosecutor side, very concerned about the careers, about their own asses, about their reputation, about how this would look, about becoming a target. And the prosecutor's way of feeling like, OK, this is how we're going to protect ourselves. Their view was like, well, we can't be caught like treating this guy differently than we have treated all these other people when they have held on to an obscured classified documents. So they thought that was the way of sort of covering their own ass. The FBI agents, who, of course, are like the public face of actually going in and doing the raid.

Well, they took a different lesson from history. You know, they saw like what went down with Hillary Clinton and all of these different things. And they felt like it would be a lower risk for us to not do this big public raid and would probably be smoother sailing. So that's kind of how I read the piece is both of these sides had different interests and different calculations about what would be the least risky paths for them personally and professionally that kind of led them into these different camps. Yeah, I think that's certainly possible. And when you combine it with the what the what we learning about how the DOJ is looking at the potential indictment of Trump, I think it does fit together, like with the overall architecture of what they're looking at. Yeah. OK, so let's talk about this next piece. This has to do not with the documents, but with potential incitement on January 6th and also with fake elector schemes.

This is reporting from the Daily Beast based on a recent DOJ court filing. So their headline here is how a new DOJ memo sets up two potential Trump indictments. The subhead here is what seemed like a narrow decision could have far-reaching implications. All right, this is a little bit complex, but I think you'll be able to understand it. They say that at the behest of the D.C. federal appellate court, the DOJ last week submitted a legal memo weighing in on a civil dispute by injured police officers. In that memo, they clarified that Trump's speech was not protected by presidential immunity, nor was it protected by his own free speech rights under the First Amendment. Here's a little quote from the memo.

They say such incitement of imminent private violence would not be within the outer perimeter of the office of the president of the United States. They went out of their way to say it does not necessarily support the officer's lawsuits against Trump, noting that they expressed no view on that conclusion, but they made it clear that Trump's speech was outside the norms of his office. It stripped the president of virtually any defense he could make is the way that the Daily Beast characterizes it. They have a couple quotes from expert legal analyst type of people. One of them said, if they're saying it's outside the scope of immunity of civil suits and outside the scope of protected speech, there really isn't anything else out there protecting Trump.

The two indictments Trump could face for his incitement of the January 6th riot, a federal crime, and his attempt to overturn the election results in Georgia, a state case there. I think most people have felt that the fake elector scheme stuff is a more clear-cut case to make because of the free speech concerns and because he really gave himself kind of some wiggle room in terms of what he said on January 6th. So all the analysis I've seen is that that is a more difficult case to make. But the DOJ laying out here that they do not feel that his speech was protected First Amendment speech, nor was it within the bounds of the office of the president. Yeah. Good luck trying to prove that one. I don't know. I don't see how you could possibly argue that, especially in terms of how high the bar is around incitement.

If you give yourself even the slight out of which, you know, you could argue that he did. I'm not defending his actions. I'm talking about legal culpability for the actions. I think that would be a difficult one that would actually stand up to First Amendment case law. As you said, the fake elector scheme is by far the one where you have a much better case on defrauding the government or a conspiracy to obstruct a government procedure because he literally held meetings in the Oval Office with people who wanted to do exactly that

and entertained many of those schemes. So anyway, I think that's probably where he probably, if he faces any legal jeopardy at all, that is the one where I think it's probably more likely. Yeah. And that's what they say here, too, is that the most likely potential charge is conspiracy to defraud the United States over these fake elector schemes. And they also say that this memo could provide some direction to the Georgia investigation that is going on. We know because we covered the like kooky, as we described her, jury for woman making all kinds of weird comments and looking for her 15 minutes of fame and, you know, making the whole situation very uncomfortable for them down there. But

ultimately it's going to be in the hands of the DA there to decide what she's going to do and what indictments she's going to bring if Trump is involved. So another analysis here is that potentially this memo helps to justify whatever she wants to do with regards to that. Okay. So that's all we know about that. At the same time, apparently folks over in liberal media are getting very excited about the possibility of Trump being the Republican nominee because apparently they have learned literally nothing over these past eight or so years. Let's take a listen to how this went. I am so excited that Democrats are once again going to be given the gift of Donald Trump being the Republican nominee for president of the United States. I know that the White House is elated.

This is a dream for any Democrat running to flip a House seat or a Democrat running to keep a competitive Senate seat. I see nothing that would suggest that Republicans have learned their lesson. I see a bunch of people planning to enter this race and to give Donald Trump the minimum of 30 to 40% that he will need to prevail in a crowded field once again, like he did in 2016. And I would agree. I mean, watching the CPAC conference, it was like watching some of the outtakes from the cantina scene in Star Wars. And it would be funny if it weren't so terrifying at times.

But if you believe, as I believe, that whether the nominee is Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or even Nikki Haley, that that would pose an existential threat to democracy itself, which is what we've seen with the opposition to voting rights and the election denialism and so many other things, then you're happy that Donald Trump will be the easiest person to defeat on that side. Good luck. He says that as Mondaire Jones, for those who are just listening, and then the female voice, there was Liz Smith, Pete Buttigieg's former campaign manager.

And, you know, he says Mondaire there at the beginning, Republicans have learned nothing. It's like, maybe. Maybe you learned nothing. But it sure looks like Republicans have learned nothing. It's like maybe maybe you are like you have. I mean, the amount that people continue to underestimate this man, he barely lost last time. If he hadn't nuked mail-in balloting for Republicans, he very likely would have won if he had pushed out one more round of checks in the final weeks before the election. He likely would have won. So the arrogance to think that, oh, Joe Biden, who will be pushing 86, whose approval rating is in the toilet, that he's a shoo-in if Donald Trump is the nominee.

I just I just will never understand. I don't get look. Trump is not 10 feet tall. Nobody's ever said that he is. No, he's also not two feet tall. And you people need to learn. Like he is a contender pound for pound with Joe Biden. He barely lost by 40,000 votes across four different states in the 2020 election. As you said, if he literally, all he does is mail in ballots, he's going to win Arizona. He's going to win Georgia. There's no question he would have been president of the United States. So how can you possibly be so arrogant? Also, one of the takeaways that I would have from the GOP primary of 2022 is guess what, guys? Yeah, they may have lost in the general, but his power over the Republican base to make stop the steal a litmus test, it worked. The vast majority of people who were anti stop the

steal, who had a Trump endorsed candidate against them, they lost their primary race. So he not only has control over the party, but he remains one of the most popular political figures in the United States. Now, look, that is one of those low bars because Joe Biden also has like a 30% popularity. But as we learned, just because people don't necessarily like you doesn't mean that they won't vote for you should the time come. Well, Trump and Biden have similar approval ratings, but the Trump fans are all in. And everybody has always felt like, eh, about Joe Biden. And that has always been the difference. I mean, listen, I think it would be

I think I'm not saying Joe Biden would definitely lose. I don't think you could you know, I don't think you could argue that Trump does have a way of, you know, being inflammatory and reminding people just why they kicked him out of office last time. But you also have to say, you know, his recent speeches, commentary issue focuses have been a lot more intelligent than when he was just 24-7 mouthing off about insane election conspiracies. So he has recaptured some of that old political feel and sensibility that brought him into the White House in the first place in 2016. I went and took a look at the most recent polling in Trump versus Biden. Now, of course, I think we all know at this point to take all the polls with a million grains of salt, they can be wrong in either direction at this point. So who knows?

However, in Virginia, which Biden won by, I think, nine points last time around, latest poll has him up by one on Trump. That's within the margin of error. And by the way, him losing to DeSantis and getting his ass kicked by Glenn Youngkin, who's the current governor of Virginia, who may run for president as well. In a national head to head, this was from Emerson. The latest poll has Trump 46 and Biden 42. Does that sound like a shoo-in for Joe Biden to you? Does that sound like you should be like praying and ecstatic that Trump may be the nominee because Republicans can't get their act together ever to defeat him? No, I don't think that you should be excited about that or gloating over that whatsoever. And it just, I cannot believe that these people never, ever,

ever learn a single thing. They never will. And they continue to underestimate him to their own peril. It's like the classic Jonathan Chait articles and others where they're like, we want Marco Rubio to go down so we can face Trump. Or Hillary, who actively wanted to face Trump. Well, you know, you can, it's one of those like, how many times does he need to fool you to take him seriously?

I still don't think 2020 was ever grappled with enough at the fact that they did nearly almost lose. And don't forget about the House of Representatives either. I mean, they were supposed to blow out the House, right? She only won by what? She had a three vote margin. Marching a three. Yeah, she had a margin of three. It's as pathetic.

Her showing in 2020 was as pathetic as the Republican showing in 2022. How short are our political memories here? It's astonishing. It is astonishing. It is astonishing. It is. All right, let's go to the next one here from the Department of Homeland Security with a new intelligence gathering program that, quote, nobody knew anything about. Let's put this up there on the screen from Politico, Betsy Woodruff getting the scoop. Quote, a new program called the Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program,

described in a large tranche of internal documents, has revealed widespread internal concerns about legally questionable tactics and political pressure. The documents show that people working there fear punishment if they speak out about mismanagement and abuses. One unnamed employee in April 2021 said that the leadership of this office is, quote, shady and runs like a corrupt government. Another said employees were so worried about the legality of their activities, they wanted their employer to cover legal liability insurance for exactly what they were doing. All of this comes down to the fact that you have this new program where they were trying to exploit a loophole. And the loophole, as they explain it, is that officials work with state, local, and private sector partners, collect intel, and analyze the intel. Now, exactly what they're doing, though, is that they were able to speak with prisoners

who are already inside of the system, Crystal, without notifying their lawyers and potentially violating civil liberties. So one of the things is that the Title 50 that governs the way that the intelligence agencies are supposed to conduct themselves restrict the collection, maintenance, and dissemination of U.S. persons' information, and place additional emphasis on preserving the privacy and civil

liberties of U.S. persons. Now, one of the things that they fear is both the retaliation from all of this, but also, quote, the politicization because they were worried that the use of this new program could be used to target people who have sensitive intelligence that is available to the US government by directly violating their civil liberties and using it in connections from both the January 6th investigation but also the George Floyd investigation. So I think that this is a perfect example of how when the Trump administration is in power, they are violating, potentially, I'll say allegedly, violating the civil liberties of prisoners without notifying lawyers and squeezing them with this new intelligence program around the George Floyd investigation. And then the Biden administration is using it against on January 6th.

This is a perfect example of the bloating of government and the violation of civil liberties within the Department of Homeland Security. Yes, in the way that every administration can use the existing powers that actually exist and also powers that they claim and are probably actually illegal and unconstitutional, but that they keep secret in order to pursue their own aims and why it's really important that these issues be discussed in a nonpartisan way because it goes so much deeper than whether it happens to be a D or an R who holds the office of the presidency. So there's a few things here. I mean, first of all, the fact that they're using this, what you described accurately, as what they see as a loophole to speak to incarcerated individuals who have not been put on trial yet, who have been Mirandized, without the presence of their lawyer, this is as dicey as it gets. They have a quote here from Patrick Toomey, who is deputy director

of the ACLU's National Security Project. He said, DHS should not be questioning people in immigration or criminal detention for human intelligence purposes without far stronger safeguards for their rights. While this questioning is purportedly voluntary, DHS's policy ignores the coercive environment these individuals are held in. It fails to ensure that individuals have a lawyer present, and it does nothing to prevent the government from using a person's words against them in court. So let me break that down for you. They have these guidelines in place where supposedly when they go in to talk to these inmates, they're supposed to present them. You don't have to talk to us. And they are also they are not allowed to offer anything in exchange for whatever it is that this person is going to tell them. But imagine that you're sitting there in a prison cell and someone from DHS comes and says they want to speak with you. I mean, imagine what an

intimidating and confusing circumstance that is for the individual. So that's what he is referring to here of the coercive environment. And then at the end, he says it does nothing to prevent the government from using a person's words against them in court. Well, if that information that is gleaned from the DHS individual then ends up in the hands of, you know, people who are involved in this person's case, police officers, prosecutors, et cetera, there's no provisions to protect that information

from being used against these people that was obtained, again, without their lawyer's presence. So it's a civil liberties nightmare. And you know it's a civil liberties nightmare. And you know, it's a civil liberties nightmare because even within this program, she has quote after quote after quote of employees being deeply concerned that they're breaking the law and even insisting that they receive professional liability insurance in case they end up being held liable for the actions that they're taking here.

And they also had numerous times where something that they were told was OK, and this is what you should go and do. And here's the proper protocol that all of a sudden there was a hard stop of like, yeah, let's not do that. Actually, I'm not sure we got some guidance. So the fact that it was so unclear made people deeply uncomfortable. They also expressed and this was not like a few isolated people. This was like the majority of people who were involved. Their own employees were like, hey, this is not me. This is not good.

Yeah. Exactly. And then you have deep concerns expressed here in these documents that are revealed about the political targeting that you mentioned. And also deep concerns, this is what people were willing to say. There were also deep concerns

that they were terrified to actually speak out and say anything because they feared for their job or to be put in some undesirable post and sort of like pushed to the side because of criticism. I don't think people understand that DHS is the largest law enforcement agency in the United States. I mean, they are gigantic in terms of their overview of thousands of law enforcement officers who work there. There are all kinds of crazy and sketchy intel programs within them that you and I have no idea about. I feel like I learn about a new domestic surveillance program every six months. The other day, you know, I remember whenever we were covering this over at Rising. Turns out the Postal Service is spying on you. It's like, oh, I didn't know.

It's not, by the way, not about your mail. They're using records that they have to have essentially lookups and have a complete warrantless surveillance program on your cyber movements. And I was like, what does the Postal Service have to do with it? They exploit all kinds of these legal loopholes.

There are internal agencies that are sprung up everywhere. And then what have we also learned? You know, church committee going all the way back, which is even the modest guidelines that we have laid out for these people. Okay, if you're going to spy in the U.S., here's what you got to do. Here's what you can't do. They go to extraordinary lengths to break them. They don't follow the rules. And then in many cases, their own employees are like, hey, we're not following

the rules. And then also, how did we even find out about this? It was leaked to the press. Well, you know, it's supposed to come through congressional committee. And then not only that, you're supposed to have an inspector general process or even Congress write new rules to say, OK, legally, this is what you're allowed to do. It never happens. They just keep expanding and expanding. They break the law all the time. CounterPoints is obviously going to have a show tomorrow and Ryan and Emily will cover this themselves. But our own Ryan Grimm was in the press briefing room and asked Corrine Jean-Pierre about which, it was revealed that a member of Congress was spied on by the government. And he asked, hey, what's going on with that? Who,

Tetlas, who it was, wouldn't say anything. And there are so little curiosity from almost anyone else in the mainstream press about any of these issues. I mean, this should be a bombshell report from Betsy Woodruff. It's well reported. It's, you know, deep, very detailed with all of the concerns and the complaints and the civil liberties violations, et cetera. And it barely gets noticed in the mainstream press. That's because they support it. I think that they like the fact that the government can do all this because then the government does what they leak, uh, whatever sensitive information they can to the press and the rest of us can just get to scream into the void. To be honest with you.

Yeah. It's I think because Joe Biden is in the office of the presidency right now, they feel more comfortable. Of course. If this came out during the Trump administration, then they would potentially be more worried about his weaponization. But it shouldn't matter which president it is when you have these sort of abuses consistently occurring against American citizens. Absolutely. Okay, let's move on to Dr. Fauci. Just some more stuff that just crystallizes for all time how complicit he was, not only in the lab leak, in funding the Wuhan lab, but in covering up his own role and the implication that the COVID-19 virus did leak from the Wuhan lab.

Let's put this up there on the screen. New emails, which were uncovered by a committee investigating the lab leak hypothesis reveal that dr anthony fauci prompted and commissioned a final approval for a scientific paper which we've covered here ad nauseum in february of 2020 to disprove the theory that the virus had leaked from the lab now why that is important is that just two months later, he stood at the White House podium and said that, quote, there was a study recently where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now totally consistent with a jump from species from animal to a human. So the paper will be available. I don't have the authors right now, but I can make it available to you. Why does that matter? Because he sent a final approval editing in draft form for that paper that was published in Nature magazine on February 17th,

2020. He then used that paper to actually tell his boss, the United States government, and the American people in the press that showed that the lab leak theory was thus disproven. Now, look, we've actually focused quite a bit on that February 17th paper. I've done a lot of monologues about the emails showing Christian Anderson and many of the other virologists who initially had believed that this was a lab leak and had not consistent with evolutionary theory, effectively being browbeat by Dr. Fauci, by Peter Daszak, by many of these other characters were involved to ultimately come out with this paper. The paper was then extraordinarily influential by the media, by the scientific

establishment, by quashing any dissent as to how exactly COVID-19 might have come from the lab. And then we didn't find out for nearly two years until a FOIA investigation. And now these emails show you not only that Fauci knew in January that the virus was not, quote, not consistent with evolutionary theory, but that he actually commissioned the paper himself. He prompted the drafting of the publication. His hands are so dirty on this that it's difficult to even describe. And, you know, it's unfortunate because, of course, even if you want to cover this, who's the only outlet that's covering it? New York Post? Daily Call?

You know, it's like it's only the conservative media. This is a huge story that people refuse to pick up on. Yeah, but it goes against the narrative of Fauci, the saint, that has been peddled and continued to be peddled right up until his retirement with his own, you know, puff pieces in New York Times, etc. And just to give you the details here, this paper was submitted to Nature Medicine with a cover email that read, There has been a lot of speculation, fear-mongering, and conspiracies put forward in this space. This paper was prompted by Jeremy Farah, Tony Fauci, and Francis Collins.

So explicitly stating that the paper was prompted by Tony Fauci and Francis Collins. So explicitly stating that the paper was prompted by Tony Fauci. And just to remind you of the timeline here, this paper, this letter drops four days after that initial conference call, when there were several, at least members of the call who at least thought it was plausible that it came from a lab leak. And in particular, and some who thought it was much more likely than not that it came from a lab leak. So it's mere days after this call that there's a marshalling of forces to destroy any semblance of that narrative and make it off limits for the press. And I mean, it worked as a cudgel incredibly effectively. He knew what he was doing. This was a set piece. He knew, OK, if we put out this this letter and we have all of these scientists sign on to it, media doesn't really understand this stuff.

Then we hint to the oh, if the other theory is just conspiracy, it's just Trump talk. It's just, you know, racist, etc., then that will put any idea that this could have leaked from the lab off the table and no one will investigate it. And guess what? Almost no one did for quite a while. It was extraordinarily effective. Right. And I think people need to remember, you know, with Christian Anderson, with many of the other people who were involved, you had Dr. Peter Daszak also use this paper and then thank them and then send it to Fauci and to other people in the scientific establishment to continue to quash it. By April, it was completely impossible to discuss the lab leak hypothesis in the public sphere. It was

knocked down so quickly, Doth protest a little bit too much then. At the time, it was used to take zero hedge off of Twitter. It was obviously used as a censorship mechanism all over YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, many of the other social media platforms. And, you know, three years later, literally three years later, what do we know? It was almost certainly true. At this point, you're, in my opinion, you're a conspiracy theorist if you don't think that it came from the lab, because there is just such little evidence to even back that up. Now, even, you department, the FBI, have to admit that, yeah, it probably came from the lab. The former CDC director under Donald Trump, who came out

years ago now, almost two years ago at this point, he's like, yeah, I think it came out of the Wuhan lab. Apparently, that was just not considered an influential enough figure to prompt investigation. And to this day, the only way that the mainstream media will cover it is, you know, one segment we were going to do, Crystal, was about the Washington Post. And the Washington Post wrote this effective hit piece on the lab leak theory where they're like, this little known department in energy is the one who is coming up with the idea that it came from the lab. That little-known department, by the way, is tasked with overseeing safety of actual virology labs. So yeah, maybe they happen to know something about lab safety and about how to read intelligence about how

this virus might have escaped from the Wuhan. Yeah. Even beyond the censorship, which was obviously outrageous, the smearing of people who suggested there was something to this theory as, you know, racist and xenophobic and all the rest. There was a real cost to putting people off the track for years where, you know, this was a critical time period when we could have had a better shot at getting to the bottom of what actually happened here. And we'll never get that time back. So there was a real scientific cost to this whole, what looks very clearly to me at this point, like a conspiracy, to hide a potential possibility and reality from the American public and quash any potential debate or investigation in that direction. Well said.

Second part here, which is amusing, but also not all of that surprising. Let's put this up there on the screen. It's now being revealed that then-president CNN's Jeff Zucker ordered staff not to chase down the lab leak theory as the pandemic unfolded. So this is a report from Fox News' Brian Flood and Joseph Wolfson, two who I know, and they've done good work in the past. So I lend some credence to this report. Here's what they say. In the early months of the pandemic, then CNN president Jeff Zucker would not allow his network to chase down the lab leak story because he believed, quote, it was a Trump talking point. Now he says people are slowly waking up to the fog. It's kind of crazy that we didn't chase it harder. Throughout Zucker's tenure at CNN, he had, quote, here's how to debunk coronavirus misinformation

and conspiracy theories from friends and family that include debunking the idea that COVID-19 had leaked from the lab and that the origin was not entirely consistent with the natural origin hypothesis. CNN host Fareed Zakaria also said, quote, the far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory. And in February of 2020, they published a facts first examination of Tom Cotton where they tried to knock him down.

They have all kinds of stories spanning over the year of how many times that they tried to debunk the lab leak hypothesis from CNN's New Day to Chris Cuomo to people who were writing there at the network. And I will give them only one slight ounce of credit, which they did not cover in this. Josh Rogin, who we've had here on the show, who's been also on the Joe Rogin Experience, he works for The Washington Post, he is a CNN analyst, and he did at least talk about it a little bit whenever they did it. So I want to say that they did air it because Rogin is a fearless journalist whenever it comes to this issue and never, ever dropped the idea that it might have come from the Wuhan lab because, you know, he just wanted to do a very basic investigation. However, outside of Josh Rogan, there was a complete effort from the very top of the network, it seems, to quash any

investigation here of the lab leak theory. I will also say that they played down CNN Sanjay Gupta's report about COVID, if we'll recall, Crystal. Gupta is the one who went ahead and interviewed, was it Robert Redfield, I think is his name? He interviewed him and is the one who got that quote about him saying that the virus had leaked from the lab, but they were, of course, important to air. They're like, well, people disagree with Dr. Redford on this issue. And so even when they had the scoop from the former CDC director, they felt the need editorially, it seems, to tone all of this down.

Anytime lab leak was mentioned, they went out of their way to say, well, there's no evidence for this. But guess what? There was no evidence for the zoonotic wet market theory either. I mean, they never found this theoretical animal that passed the virus, whatever. These were both theories. At this point, you do have some evidence in the direction of lab leak. But, you know, you can't say on one hand, oh, well, there's no evidence to support this. It's just a theory. But then the other one that is equally as hypothetical and theoretical that also has no evidence backing it, that one you just push

forward as like, oh, well, this is the one that the serious people are taking a look at. And that's really what it came down to. I mean, Jeff Zucker doesn't know anything about science. And so they all used this sort of partisan analysis of who they liked more. So they liked Tony Fauci and they didn't like Donald Trump. And that's how Zucker ends up labeling lab leak a, quote, Trump talking point and essentially forbidding the network from investigating it. And again, that goes to the point of what Fauci did in terms of pushing for this paper and then putting the paper forward to saying, look, here's the analysis of all the serious people. This is what they think. That was very effective when it came to liberal networks like CNN. My favorite example that they gave here, he went through like Oliver Darcy and whatever.

I personally enjoy Chris Eliza's contribution. They headlined it, Anthony Fauci just crushed Donald Trump's theory on the origins of the coronavirus. It notes that Trump has been making the case the coronavirus originated not in nature, but in a lab in Wuhan, China.

Insisted Fauci's claim that the virus likely originated naturally was more accurate. Quote, here's a quote from the piece. I love this. Now, before we play the game of he said, he said, he said,

remember this, only one of these two people is a world renowned infectious disease expert. And it's not Donald Trump. So Liz wrote. So giving up the game that your entirety of your analysis is Trump is bad. Trump said a thing. Therefore, the thing must be wrong. And I'm going to believe this person over here who he's the good guy. He is science. He's on the side of science. And so I'm just going to reflexively without thinking, assume that he's the one that's correct. So there's journalism there. He really is the king of the midwits. We also have a hilarious tweet here from Elon Musk. I just got to say here at the top, look, let's put it up there on the screen. He says that he floats the idea that

if an organization portrays itself as balanced, it should be labeled to inform the public. After somebody floated the idea that because CNN told their staff not to share COVID, that they should label CNN as state-affiliated media. Now, look, let's not go down this road. As terrible as I think CNN is, I think that editorially trying to place factual notes on different organizations as to how they lean. And all of that is a terrible idea just because I think that basically everything should be allowed to float completely equally. And then we can all make up our minds and, you know, CNN itself can humiliate itself three years later and we can all take a victory lap on them. That said, it is kind of funny. The idea of labeling them as state-affiliated media. Amusing, but bad idea. Yeah, bad idea, but

amusing. And if it happened, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I would speak out about it, though. Okay, let's move on to an important segment with January 6th and some new video, which was debuted last night on Tucker Carlson's show. So, of course, let's step back. Part of the speakership deal that Kevin McCarthy apparently had to agree to was to give thousands of hours of January 6 footage to the Tucker Carlson show producers that they could comb through to see if they could find some different stuff that had not been reviewed by both the January 6 committee and had not yet been aired by CNN, by the New York Times, or any of the mainstream media outlets. One of the clips that

Tucker aired on his show last night is, I think, pretty extraordinary. It shows the famed QAnon shaman effectively being led through the halls of the Capitol by Capitol Police, multiple Capitol Police who could have taken him down at any one point. And at one point, Crystal opening the door to the Senate chamber for the QAnon shaman to then take those famous photos where he was literally on the Senate floor. So let's go ahead and play this for everybody. Tucker is narrating some of the footage here. Let's take a listen. Dangerous conspiracy theorist dressed in outlandish costume who led the violent insurrection to overthrow American democracy. For these crimes, Chansley was sentenced to nearly four years in prison, far more time than many violent criminals now receive. What did Jacob

Chansley do to receive this punishment? To this day, there is dispute over how Chansley got into the Capitol building. But according to our review of the internal surveillance video, it is very clear what happened once he got inside. Virtually every moment of his time inside the Capitol was caught on tape. The tapes show that Capitol Police never stopped Jacob Chansley. They helped him. They acted as his tour guides. Here's video of Chansley in the Senate chamber. Capitol Police officers take him to multiple entrances and even try to open locked doors for him. We counted at least nine officers who were within touching distance of unarmed Jacob Chansley.

Not one of them even tried to slow him down. Chansley understood that Capitol Police were his allies. Video shows him giving thanks for them in a prayer on the floor of the Senate. Watch. Yeah, I don't think there's a single innocent explanation for that. And one of the reasons why I think that's important is, as Tucker said, Chansley was not only sentenced, he's now serving, I believe, a pretty lengthy four-year sentence in prison. We should remember this, that the judge involved in this case and many other cases actually denied these defendants access to this footage, specifically because the defendants were like, hey, the footage is going to show that these cops let us in there. And it goes against the narrative. So anyway, I think that that certainly is important when we're dealing with this. I'm not defending this guy. Clearly he was an office rocker and clearly he

was crazy. But you got nine uniformed police officers armed who are opening doors, effectively escorting him around the building. That's crazy. You and I were talking a little bit about the show. Yeah. I cannot come up with any innocent explanation for this. I don't think it exists unless they just sympathize with him. Right.

For part of the reason why he's like, part of the reason he thanks them in his shamanistic prayer for allowing him on the floor. Sees them as allies. Right in the wake of,

first of all, let me say, look, Tucker has a narrative that he has been pushing about January 6th and he, you know, has like attempted to cherry pick, I have no doubt, the footage that backs up his version of the day. Okay. So let's just put that out there. But that aside, let's deal with what is actually portrayed in this video. Because I remember right after January 6th, there were all these videos floating around of like Capitol police officers opening up the gates outside and people, people on the left were like, and liberals were like, what the hell is this about? Like, why are you doing that? Now it's also absolutely the case based on other footage that we've seen that there were

violent scuffles and assaults and there were Capitol Police officers who are trying to keep the doors closed, et cetera, et cetera. But when you look at this footage, like I want to know what was going on in their heads where they're just milling around or they're actively helping him find an entrance into the chambers. How do you justify that? And it seems like remember Sagar also right after January 6th, there's a little bit of reporting that was very critical of the Capitol police because the response was atrocious. I mean, we covered that investigation into how all of their riot shields were like locked in a bus that nobody had the key to. I was total Keystone Cops thing. And it was also there was also continue to be huge questions about how it could be the case that you had infiltrators in some of these groups.

We know that. And yet you were unable when there was an actual like real threat going on here to disrupt this event. And you were too busy, like, you know, inventing conspiracies for Gretchen Whitmer or as we covered on the show with Trevor, Trevor Aronson, the focus on like inserting agent provocateurs into Black Lives Matter, like you're doing all that stuff, but you've got infiltrators in these groups and you're not able to like muster sufficient security to disrupt this actual threat.

So to me, it just adds to a whole lot of questions about what exactly happened with the Capitol police, about whether they saw themselves as allies with these people who were storming the Capitol and the failures of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to get ahead of this threat when they should have had all of the assets in place they needed to know that this was ultimately coming. Tucker also exposed something important about Ray Epps, the potential Asian provocateur who is on video multiple times saying we need to go into the Capitol. Minutes after texting his nephew, quote, I orchestrated it, Epps swore to the January 6th committee that he had left. Surveillance video clearly shows him on the Capitol grounds

30 minutes later after he told investigators that he had left the grounds of the Capitol. So he lied. He's just been exposed straight up as a liar to Congress. He committed an act of perjury. Now, do I think that they're going to refer him to the Department of Justice and they'll prosecute potentially one of their own? No, I don't. You also remember from the New York Times, their very sympathetic portrait of Epps. He's like, I've had to move and all that. They never asked him really point blank one time. They're like, hey, did you cooperate with the FBI? Were you an FBI informant. Let's also not forget the Proud Boys that has come out in the trial and the indictments. The leader of the organization was an informant. We also, from the Oath Keepers indictment and the eventual convictions and stuff that came out in the trial, there was a lot of FBI infiltration into some of these groups. So look, I don't know what happened. And I'm not saying that it was a total setup.

I'm not saying that it was a peaceful day or any of that. Clearly, there was a lot of violence that occurred. But I think that there is a hell of a lot of questions to ask about the Capitol Police officers that were involved. Specific, I mean, the QAnon shaman effectively is what? He's like the mascot of what happened. He became the most visible symbol of he got nine cops were standing outside and opening a door for an unarmed guy when he's

walking onto the senate floor and also i don't know if you people remember but there was video from the floor of the senate where one of the officers was like hey like just so you know like this is one of the most hallowed important grounds well why did you let him in there i mean why would you why would you open the door to make sure that the guy can get into the chamber? It seems to me like there was a you know, there was like a chaotic period of actual exploration of the events of the day in the immediate aftermath of January 6th. And then the Democratic Party decided the narrative they wanted to go with was the Capitol Police officers were heroes. Yeah, you're right. Uniformly, right? And again, I'm not saying there weren't heroic efforts on that day among individual members of the Capitol Police.

But I think that these images raise a lot of questions about, to say the least, about whether that was uniformly the case. But they wanted this very black and white narrative. And so they killed any potential nuance. They, you know, didn't show the public any of this footage that paints a very different picture that's at odds with the very Disney-fied black and white version of events that they were portraying in which the Capitol police officers were the heroes and, you know, these individuals coming to the Capitol were the villains and they were clashing. And that was the end of the story. So in any case, like I said at the top, listen, Tucker has his narrative that he's pushing and he wants to pick the footage that is going to serve his narrative, just like the Democrats had their narrative that they were pushing and they wanted to pick the footage that, you know, more public revelation of all of this footage so that we could have the nuanced picture of that day that the American people still deserve and will probably never get.

Part of the reason I'm not that troubled by it is like, look, at this point, the New York Times literally won a Pulitzer Prize for reconstructing the violence on Jan. You can watch every violent clip known to man that happened on Jan 6. This is the stuff that we have not had any real expose into. So, look, I don't agree. I mean, I don't disagree. Tucker has his agenda. He's been saying it's a, what did he say? It was a setup, basically. He says it was a false flag. There's not evidence of that. No, I don't think it was 100% the false

flag. Do I think that there were, you know, elements of informants and agents and all that stuff that were involved on the day of January 6th? I think that's effectively a fact at this point. To me, the bigger question isn't like, oh, did the FBI like set this up? Because, listen, honestly, seeing the way that they operate, I really severely doubt that they have the capability and the competence to be able to pull off some like grand scheme such as this. I think the bigger question, and Trevor Aronson, who's written a lot about the FBI,

and who we had on for his podcast about the agent provocateur and the BLM protests in Denver. I think the bigger question is, what is the FBI, how is the FBI so incredibly failing at their job when it comes to actual threats that they should be able to disrupt? While they're so busy, you know, with these agent provocateurs here and Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plots there and going back in time, obviously the, you know, effectively entrapment of young Muslim men with regards to war on terror. Like, they're so busy creating crimes that they can then try to disrupt

and write in like they're the heroes. How do you miss was that distracting you from actually paying attention to the intelligence you could have been gathering from your infiltration of these groups and if that's the case like what use are you ultimately if you can't do the thing that you're supposed to do because you're so distracted by these like big shiny plots that you want to construct over here. So to me, that's the sort of bigger picture question about this day, about the operation of these agencies. And then specifically with regard to the Capitol Police, they really need to be.

I wish there was one mainstream outlet with some level of credibility that would ask some questions about why were you just milling around? Why were you letting this dude like trying the doors and letting this dude into the chamber? What is that about? Like, give us an answer that makes some sense here. Instead, we gave him $500 million more. We didn't fire anybody who was involved. And we turned the United States capital city into effectively the green zone from Iraq. So, yeah, that seems like a reasonable one. Good. All right, so how are we looking at? Well, like apparently many people across the country, I got interested in the Alex Murdoch trial after watching the Netflix documentary on his family.

There's a lot to say about the class element of a patriarchal family in the South effectively owning the legal system even today in 2023 in the United States of America. But I have a slightly different take, which is likely to be unpopular. But look, still bears some thinking about after the most recent guilty verdict. The means through which the state got his conviction makes me very uncomfortable for the future of jurisprudence in the United States. And to be clear, if you ask me, I think he probably did it. Certainly, things look that way, but that's kind of the point. For those who haven't watched the wild twists and turns of

the case, I guess a fair way to sum it up quickly is this. There's this Murdaugh family down in rural South Carolina. It's very powerful. Over the years, a number of crazy things resulting in the deaths of local residents have happened around them, which culminated in the murder of the wife and son of Alex Murdaugh. The state of South Carolina asserts that Murdaugh murdered his wife and son in a fit of desperation to draw attention away from his myriad admitted financial crimes supporting his ongoing drug habit. That means that the means, though, through which the state proved this murder is what I want to focus on. From day one, prosecutors indicated that despite the fact that such a murder would normally be pursued as a death penalty case, they would instead seek life without parole.

Why? Because the case against Murdaugh is largely circumstantial. Murdaugh maintains that his innocence and his son was likely killed in a revenge scheme after he was previously a lead culprit in a drunken boating accident that killed local girl Mallory Beach. Now, the way in which the state proved beyond a reasonable doubt to the jury that Murdoch committed the crime was not only circumstantial, but relied in almost entirely on technology. Murdoch's version of events was that he was not present at the scene of the crime when the murders were committed on his property. The state, however, reconstructed the crime, relying almost entirely on cell phone usage of the victims and of Murdaugh himself.

They placed nearly the exact time of the murders based upon the last time that both victims had last unlocked their cell phones. They looked at the exact timestamp of Snapchat video allegedly posted minutes before the murders, which preferred to show Murdaugh's voice in the phones. They looked at the exact timestamp of Snapchat video allegedly posted minutes before the murders, which purport to show Murdaugh's voice in the background. They looked at the exact step counts of the two murder victims and of Alex Murdaugh to see how much they had moved and if Murdaugh himself had intentionally didn't have his phone on him at the time of the murder. Prosecutors then showed exactly minutes after the purported murders had taken place that Murdach's phone showed a massive increase in activity where he allegedly worked to construct an alibi for himself.

One of the ways they show that is he left the house after the alleged murder at an exact point was by pulling the records from the OnStar system on board his car. They even were able to pinpoint the exact speed he was going on the highway. And they posit, based upon his step count, gleanamed from his Apple Health data that he'd been pacing around during his alleged alibi time while he was on the phone in a nervous fit. Now, you put it together that way, and it sounds bad, right? But as Farhad Manjoo at the New York Times notes, there's another explanation that could make some sense. For instance, the son's phone, which was never unlocked again, was a 2% battery the last

time that he opened it. The other victim, Maggie Murdaugh's phone, which was never unlocked again, was a 2% battery the last time he opened it. The other victim, Maggie Murdaw's phone, showed changes in orientation from sideways to vertical and recorded moving some steps after her alleged murder. Her phone was later then found on the side of the road, where prosecutors say that he throw it out the window. But weirdly, he apparently is also the guy who gave them the password to his wife's phone, where they got all this data. Furthermore, the OnStar system shows him speeding not only to the place of his alibi, but also on the way back from his alibi. And as for the pacing, as Manju writes, lots of people walk around while

they're on the phone. That's totally normal. I do it too. Not necessarily as a state says evidence that he was trying to, quote, hide something nervously or pacing. Look, I am not saying he didn't do it. Somebody obviously killed those people, and he had a very good motive. He had a sketchy history, and if someone else did a decent job of ruling out other suspects. The point, though, is that we need to be weary of putting people away for life in prison based purely on cell phone data, which we think is ironclad. In reality, it's an imperfect picture of a complicated real world. As Farhad points out, previous studies have showed that the Apple step count data is off by a very wide range.

On average, some of it is 12% compared to a comparable pedometer. None of this, apparently, was considered by the jury, who found him guilty within three hours after the reams of evidence were presented. And to be transparent, maybe I would have voted for the same way. But something has to stick in the back of our minds about this type of technological framing around inaccurate data, and we need to have some hubris about what we really know and don't know to question how much confidence that we can actually have. Consider, for example, the Adnan Syed trial. Syed, of the serial podcast fame, famously was put behind bars under a similar presentation

to the jury. Prosecutors used Syed's cell phone data to say his phone was in the area of the body of the victim, Haymin Lee, because it pinged a tower nearby the park between the hours where they suspect that her body was buried. However, AT&T data at the time noted incoming calls are, quote, not considered reliable information for location. Despite this, prosecutors presented the cell phone tower data as fact, and it was one of the major reasons he was granted a mistrial and he remains free right now. As you can see, at the time of the trial in 2000, they considered this open and shut, no questions asked. I can tell you also as someone who uses a WootBand and Apple Watch and rely on

my data, I know it's not 100% accurate, which they themselves will tell you. It's useful because if it's off, at least it's off consistently. So you can judge for yourself how you're doing. That's perfectly okay when you're using it to track calories, heart rate zones, and working out. But just a few months ago, a man was sentenced to 65 years in prison where prosecutors relied on the victim's Fitbit data to disprove the alleged alibi of her husband. Again, looking at the case, he looks guilty as hell. His explanation is incredibly dumb. A random masked man broke

into his house, killed his wife, and then only happened to give him superficial knife wounds. Okay. But an independent study of the Fitbit step counts showed it was only consistent, quote, approximately half the time. We increasingly have prosecutors who are casting this type of data as absolute fact, when at least in my mind, it's right there on the edge of reasonable doubt. I don't exactly know what the point of this monologue is, only to raise awareness of the new tools that the state is using against criminals and for people to be very aware of the real consequences of what it actually means to be tracked all the time. Who knows the cases they can build against anyone in the future using this type of data?

So I'm curious what you think, Crystal. I'm going to be honest. I'm looking at this. And if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, Bloomberg is out with a new report on just how brutal the housing market is for people who are just starting out. According to new data, quote, first time buyers made up the smallest share of sales on record last year at 26 percent, even as home value started to cool, according to the National Association of Realtors

and rising borrowing costs and still high prices have pushed housing to the most unaffordable levels in records that go back almost four decades. This is the nightmare scenario that we have been talking about, one that was, by the way, intentionally engineered by the Fed. Housing prices have more or less remained high due to low levels of housing stock. And high mortgage rates mean that attempting to finance a home purchase is wildly unattainable for most would-be buyers. In fact, the high interest rates engineered by the Fed make the housing stock problem worse as well. High borrowing costs deter developers from building new homes

that might help ease price pressures, and existing homeowners would have to be fools to move right now and give up the low mortgage rates. Many of them locked in while rates were at rock bottom. The housing supply issue is particularly dire in affordable housing. Take a look at this chart. So while middle tier and top tier home inventory expanded significantly year over year, actually the priciest home stock jumped by 37 percent nationally. The bottom tier of housing, what, of course, most first-time homebuyers would be looking at, that actually fell by 1.5 percent. Cities like New York, D.C., Chicago, they saw the largest declines in affordable housing stock. But the state with the largest housing deficit has long

been California. And the epicenter of that crisis is Los Angeles. The LA Times recently did a deep dive into the history of LA's unique housing horror that would be sprawled combined with wildly overcrowded living spaces reminiscent of New York City tenements from a century ago. Now, LA was originally pitched to the nation as a land of single-family homes where you could enjoy the amenities of city life with the natural beauty and the personal space of rural life. But it took a lot of immigrants and a land of single-family homes where you could enjoy the amenities of city life with the natural beauty and the personal space of rural life. But it took a lot of immigrants and a lot of low-wage workers to build that California dream.

And so before long, the city bifurcated into those white affluent residents enjoying the dream in those single-family homes and those immigrant and low-wage workers who were doing the back-breaking labor of the dream in crowded trailers and in shacks. Now, once the city's identity formed and all those single family neighborhoods were created, it was pretty hard to change course. In fact, it's been impossible. Classism and racism played their part in preventing the building of affordable housing stock. NIMBY liberals

weaponized supposed environmental concerns to pass and keep zoning laws, which locked the status quo into place. Now, it's worth reading this entire article. It's very nuanced, but for a flavor of the opposition here, there's one particular incident that really serves as a sort of parable for the mounting housing disaster. Liberal reformers mid-century who were concerned with the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions of the poor worked to turn a working class immigrant neighborhood into a gleaming new community centered around public housing. The mayor signed on, the city started forcing residents out of their homes, but with a promise that at least

they would get new housing in the end. But the real estate developers, they didn't like this. They thought the public housing would cut into their profit margins, so they declared an all-out war on the project. According to LA Times, quote, they financed opposition groups that warned in leaflets that public housing would be the last rung in the ladder toward complete socialism. One step this side of communism and our downfall. They sponsored an amendment to the state constitution to effectively block public housing projects. They sicked federal and state un-American activities committees on the architect of the city's plan, who was fired as housing director after accusations that he was a communist. And to seal their victory, they handpicked a candidate to defeat the pro-public housing mayor. And in the end, they won. The neighborhood was not

converted into public housing or even housing of any kind. Instead, it was given as a gift to the Dodgers to lure them from Brooklyn to L.A. So it has gone ever since. Those who profit from the housing disaster status quo have used every trick in the book to protect their own self-interest and have in the process continued the ever upward escalation of housing prices. This is great for developers. It's great for current homeowners. It is absolutely terrible for everyone else. Now, a lot has been made of the number of former California residents who fled the state. People have read all sorts of political motivations

into this larger trend. But the biggest cause seems quite simple. People are leaving because they cannot afford to stay. In fact, nationwide, I was kind of surprised to see this, people do still believe in the California dream. In a recent survey, out of every city in the country, Los Angeles was actually number one when people were asked where they would like to move if money was no object. But of course,

money is an object. And for most people, achieving that California Dream, let alone the American Dream, has become a near impossibility. It doesn't take a genius to see that this crisis of housing availability and affordability has led to a mounting homelessness problem that is escalating far faster than the state or the county can pour resources in to combat it. Grid News' Matthew Zeitlin took a look at this. He recently wrote a long piece. Here he is summing it up on Twitter. He writes, California spends billions on homelessness. It's essentially a second federal government in terms of funding.

The services reach hundreds of thousands of people, yet the number of homeless still rises. Why? Housing costs. It really is that simple. The state cannot dream of keeping up with the homelessness crisis as long as the housing affordability crisis continues to escalate. They cannot build units fast enough to keep pace with the way that ever escalating prices continually pushes thousands more out of their homes and into shelters or onto the street. Now, this is obviously a disaster, a moral catastrophe for those who are on the brink and has contributed to a sense of decline and chaos for all of the residents who are living there. The whole cascade of problems is weighing heavily on Californians. In a recent survey across partisan and demographic lines, Californians

cited homelessness and housing affordability as two of their top issues of concern. 70% of Californians cited homelessness and an equal share cited affordability as big problems. Roughly 90% said that they feared housing costs would keep their children from being able to stay and buy a home anywhere in the state. Now, listen, California, it is definitely ground zero for this crisis. But if you ask people here in D.C. or New York or Seattle or practically anywhere else in the country, you're going to find the same core issue. People are being priced out of housing. They can't afford to buy. They're struggling to afford rent. The dream of basic stability is increasingly out of reach and visible homelessness is skyrocketing. Frankly,

it is generational warfare as older generations, which were able to build wealth by buying a home, they benefit from these skyrocketing home prices and younger generations predominantly are left on a treadmill trying to save up enough for a starter home that doesn't even exist. It's one more example of how the entire nation is rigged to benefit the people who have already gotten theirs. And the truth is, it may be the worst in California.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Wanted to take a minute to introduce to all of you a new partner here at Breaking Points that we are very excited about. And judging by the reaction to his first content he's put out, you are very excited about as well. Joining us now is Spencer Snyder, who has been doing some fantastic explainers

and videos for us. Great to see you, Spencer. Thank you so much. Good to see you, man. Thank you so much for having me. We are in awe of what you've been putting together, as is the audience. All the comments on your work have been phenomenal.

For those of you guys down there who haven't checked it out yet, his latest video was about Jen Psaki and MSNBC, but really a broader look about the sort of revolving door between government and media and what we should make of all of that. Fantastic. I learned things about the history that I didn't know, the editing, the presentation, all of it is spot on. So everybody go and watch that. Um, but Spencer, just tell people a little bit about who you are, how you approach your work and what your goal is with the videos that you put out. Yeah, great question. Um, well, you know, I got started making videos, um, working on,

you know, progressive long shot campaigns in, uh, 2018, 2019. And my approach really has been just that media is incredibly important. I mean, it's the window through which everyone understands anything. No normal person is going to press conferences. They consume everything through media and their understanding of the world is is through media and so getting into politics and campaigns was really just a way to um contribute in some way that i felt was meaningful i mean at that time i didn't have the most confidence in my skills but i knew that i could make a video better than uh you know, certainly a campaign that had no videos. And then getting further into that and going through 2020 and just feeling so much frustration at the media in particular,

the way they handled the Democratic primary and the larger election in general. I felt really motivated to start working on my own understanding of just a theory of media. So I started working on videos about manufacturing consent. And it's actually really cool. I've heard from a few people that they've watched my manufacturing consent videos in college courses. Wow. That's cool.

Yeah, very cool considering they're videos I made in my bedroom in the only clean part of my apartment, which you're seeing. So that's kind of where I got my start. And the obsession with media and illness just kind of grew from there. Yeah. Well, your research and your skills are absolutely fantastic. Like I said, the jet sake video, I was watching some of your stuff. I'm like, this guy's a rare talent, man, because, uh, for people who don't know, like you not only shoot it, you edit it yourself. You make your own graphics, you put it all together. And, uh, clearly an informative explainer, less than 10 minutes of history of the white house press secretary, the revolving door. That is a very, very difficult thing to do. So how did you learn,

uh, how to do this? Like, how did you kind of find this composite of all of these skills? People reach out to us all the time and be like, how do I get into this? So you tell them you, you, you made it here for sure. Well, um, I, I came from music and, um, I'm a composer. And then I, I, at some point in college, I started film scoring, which made me a lot of friends with, uh, filmmakers. And so I, I, I can't overlook the filmmaker friends of mine who have taught me a lot, but, um, it's, it's YouTube, all the information's on YouTube. Everything you want to know is, is there. I, I didn't go to film school. So how do you come up with the ideas for your content? How do you do the research? And, um,

do you have a preview for us? Do you have any ideas sort of percolating about what your next video might be? Hmm. Really good question. I watched the news and whatever makes me the most angry, I do a video on. That's a good point. I just fight content. I can relate. But yeah, I mean, that's my approach. And I think if you're constantly watching with the idea in the back of your head that you're looking for something that might make an interesting video, if you're just trying to answer your own questions, if something in the way the media relates something to their audience, to you always feels missing. I mean, the Jen Psaki video, to me, the interesting thing was you see, you know, in liberals and conservatives, people calling out the idea that it's somehow there's some discomfort in seeing a press secretary go to a media outlet.

And you see it on both sides. And I just want to examine what what is that discomfort? Why why does it make people feel weird? you see it on both sides. And I just wanted to examine what, what is that discomfort? Why, why does it make people feel weird? And, um, is there any, any through line between, uh, all the press secretaries? And of course there is, but if my advice, anyone trying to get into this, you, you just got to watch more YouTube. Good, good advice YouTube rabbit hole. Yeah, go and watch his videos. We'll have a link down to his specific channel right there. Keep watching the videos that he makes for us. Shout-out to our producer, Mac, who spotted you and gave us some insights and put your content in front of us because you've been a phenomenal addition to the Breaking Points ecosystem.

Tell people where they can find you. They can find some of your content on our channel, but where they can find you. They can find some of your content on our channel, but where can they find you on YouTube? Certainly the latest videos I've made for you guys. And, uh, you can go to my own, uh, personal YouTube channel, which is, I should know the link, but it's my name. Okay. Spencer. Don't worry. There's a link in the description. Yeah. Well, um, let us know how we can support you. We are very, very excited to have you as part of this. So thank you so much, Spencer. It's great to chat with you. Thanks, man.

Thank you so much for having me. Man, Spencer, truly incredible guy. Go ahead and subscribe to his YouTube channel, as we said, link down in the description. Thank you guys so much for watching. Premium members, you're not just supporting our work, you're supporting people like Spencer, expansion, all the fun stuff that we're doing over here. So we appreciate and we thank you every single day. And we'll have a great CounterPoint show for you tomorrow. Obviously, we'll be back here on Thursday. We love you and we'll see right back. Ryan Adams, Ed Sheeran, Fade, Glorilla, Jelly Roll, Sean Fogarty, Lil Wayne, LL Cool J, Mariah Carey, Maroon 5, Sammy Hagar, Tate McRae, The Offspring,

Tim McGraw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community.

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