Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/1/23: Second Largest Bank Failure In History, Leaked Epstein Docs w/ CIA Director, Charlamagne Trashes "DNC No Debates", SCOTUS Wife Cashes In, WH Correspondents Dinner, Fox Ratings Plunge, Biden Set To Lose NH

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss First Republic bank being seized by regulators and sold to JPMorgan Chase, Charlie Munger's dire banking system warning, leaked documents showing Epstein met multiple times with the CIA Director, Noam Chomsky, and others, Wall Street bankers joking about Epstein's Child Trafficking, a Biden voter is speechless on 2024 support, Charlmagne trashes the DNC for not hosting debates between candidates, Chief Justice Roberts' Wife cashes in on SCOTUS connections, Krystal and Saagar react to the White House Correspondents Dinner, Saagar looks into how Fox News ratings have plunged after Tucker's departure, Krystal looks into how Biden is set to lose New Hampshire to RFK, Marianne, and we're joined by Seth Hettena to discuss his reporting on how the FBI suspects 9/11 Hijackers were CIA assets.(Seth's article: https://www.spytalk.co/p/exclusive-fbi-agents-accuse-cia-of)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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So we'll see you in one second. So the biggest news this morning, as I mentioned before, is the second largest bank failure in history. This is First Republic Bank. Let's put this up on the screen. They have now been seized by regulators and sold to JPMorgan Chase as part of the deal. Eighty-four First Republic branches in eight states will reopen as JPMorgan branches on Monday. Let me read you some of the details here. This is courtesy of The New York Times. They say regulators seized control of First Republic Bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase on Monday, a dramatic move aimed at curbing a two-month banking crisis that has rattled the

financial system. First Republic, whose assets were battered by the rise in interest rates, that Fed rise in interest rates, has struggled to stay alive after two other lenders collapsed last month, spooking depositors and investors. First Republic was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the FDIC, and immediately sold to J.P. Morgan. The deal was announced hours before U.S. markets are set to open and after a scramble by officials over the weekend. Later on Monday, so happening today, First Republic branches will be converted to J.P. Morgan branches. It's all happening like this. J.P. Morgan will, quote, assume all of the deposits and substantially all of the assets of First Republic Bank. The FDIC said in a statement they estimated the insurance fund would have to pay out about 13 billion dollars to cover First

Republic losses. Put the next piece up on the screen so we can give you some of the backstory of how we got here. So last week we learned that First Republic lost $100 billion in deposits during the banking panic. So this is basically in the wake of that Silicon Valley bank collapse. People freaked out about First Republic Bank primarily because they shared a very similar wealthy Silicon Valley clientele with a lot of uninsured deposits. And most of what fled the bank during that period was those uninsured deposits over 250K. After people, you know, similar clientele, watched Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, realized that there was a similar interest rate exposure at First Republic Bank, and those customers pulled about $100 billion in deposits out of First Republic Bank. The bank management has been

trying to hold on. They had a huge infusion, $30 billion infusion from the other major banks in the first quarter, hoping that they could keep it together. But after that revelation of just how much of the deposits they had lost, the stock completely fell off a cliff. We have that for you as well. You can see what it looked like, lost over 90% of its value. Put this next piece up on the screen so you can see the chart. This is the year to date. So you see things are going along OK. And then where you see that initial plunge is right around the time that you've got the situation, Silicon Valley Bank, and then in recent days when you had the revelations about how big the deposit losses were, you see another plunge. But obviously, the stock had been getting hammered for some time.

And over the weekend, we kind of knew this was coming because the government had solicited bids from JPMorgan Chase and a number of other banks. It's also worth noting here, Sagar, that JPMorgan Chase now, I mean, this bank, it was already behemoth. It's going to be even more so. I was reading from the Financial Times, if they were to win, it would need the U.S. government to actually provide an exception to a rule preventing any bank from making an acquisition, providing with more than 10% of all U.S. deposits. JPMorgan, the nation's largest bank, is already above that cap. So they would need another exception in order to do this. And, of course, it would put CEO Jamie Dimon at the center of a national banking crisis

for the second time in 15 years. For me, my takeaway is that 2008 was all about making sure too big to fail never happened again. But the de facto policy of the U.S. government and financial regulators since 2008 has basically just been to enshrine too big to fail and make it so that these massive corporations, the JP Morgans, the Wells Fargos, and those other financials, Citibank and others, are so big that they basically become infused with the state. And it's like a quasi-state policy. On top of that, you have several regional banks, people like Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank, where it turns out, though, that the regulators were totally asleep at the wheel with those. And so what happens when they fail? They get rolled up into the behemoths. And now,

I mean, yeah, it's a catastrophe. How can you have a guy like Jamie Dimon? And it's not even just about Jamie Dimon. How can you have a single financial institution be in charge of 10, 15, 20 percent almost of all of the deposits in the entire nation. I mean, that person is frankly, even more powerful in some ways in the U.S. government in terms of what they can, overnight policy. He gets treated that way too, by the way. Of course he gets treated that way. I mean, an overnight change in their interest rates or savings policy or checking policy impacts tens of millions of Americans on an instantaneous basis, could literally change the entire U.S. economy. They're not idiots, and they know that as well when you consider the top

three banks in the entire country. So the problem has been is that we've moved to more corporatized banking away from some of these smaller regional banks and credit unions, which had ties into the community. They were willing, you know, evolved in such a way that they had a real relationship, I think, with many of their depositors where we are now moving to an overall like corporate umbrella. And it's really troubling, too, because how did this happen? Why is this the second largest bank failure in history? It's not just about irresponsible behavior within a First Republic bank. It's also a tale about interest rates. And that's an interesting question, too, where the people who are interest rate proof are the too big to fail institutions.

And then the little guys like Silicon Valley, I'm not justifying their behavior, but we should bear note that the reason that they failed is 100% because of the Federal Reserve. There's actually a new Fed report looking into the failure of Silicon Valley Bank that we're going to get to in a moment that points the finger in all directions. Failure, you know, the rollback of regulations, Fed regulators, especially the San Francisco Fed folks, Silicon Valley Bank president sat on the board of, by the way, their failure, the bank's failure. So I'll get into those details in just a moment. Before I get into the bigger picture here, I think it is important to understand some of the specifics of what happened. As I said before, after Silicon Valley Bank fails and you have the same very wealthy clientele with their asses out with huge uninsured deposits at this bank, they pull their deposits like crazy after Silicon Valley Bank fails.

So that's one piece. The other part of this is this bank's specialty was in very large, low-interest mortgages. So again, that's where the huge interest rate risk comes in from them. And that's where the Fed policy of continuously hiking rates, even in the wake of the Silicon Valley bank collapse, ends up hammering them to the point that, you know, their balance sheet is a disaster and a mess and there's no way that they can recover. So it's those two pieces coming together that led to this collapse. I also think it's important to note in terms of broader contagion, it's early, but it does look like Signature Bank, which was that like crypto aligned bank that failed, Silicon Valley Bank, and First Republic

Bank. It seems like these three were sort of outliers in terms of their exposure, in terms of their clientele, in terms of their concentration in one industry, which created additional risks for them. It doesn't look like the rest of the banking sector is directly impacted by these particular failures. But again, it's early. And I'm going to tell you, we also have some warnings from Charlie Munger about some other risks that may be going on for banks in terms of their balance sheets. I'm also taking a look at the markets right now. This is per CNBC. Dow futures are flat. There was, I think, sort of an expectation that this was probably going to happen that was already sort of priced

into the market. So not a huge market reaction here either. Now, in terms of what this means for our banking sector, what it means for too big to fail, you know, Kyle said this to me, and I think it's true. It's like, well, whenever capitalism fails, socialism's there to, like, backstop it and prop it up. But it's not just the big banks like JPMorgan Chase are too big to fail. With Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, now we de facto have a policy that all banks are effectively too big to fail. So you've got Jamie Dimon sitting now on top of his own massive, incredibly powerful empire, making tons of money himself as executives, shareholders, whatever, and with the implicit backing and guarantee of the U.S. taxpayers. So it is the definition of privatize the profits and socialize the losses.

And far from fixing this problem after 2008, we've actually just expanded the definition of too big to fail to be throughout the entire banking system. Yeah, actually, if you even read Diamond's statement about why he bought First Republic, quote, our government invited us and others to step up, and we did. Our financial strength and capabilities allow us to develop a bid to execute this transaction. And in fact, they are taking no losses on the transaction. It's all upside.

It's basically just like what happened in 2008 when Tim Geithner and the other regulators got involved, called Jamie Diamond up and said, we will guarantee basically all of the downside and we will make sure that you have only upside. And how did that work out for them? It worked out incredibly well. So, you know, it's a nice business that you can get into where you can make dumb decisions. And look, government policy, it impacted us, our bottom line, and impacted every small business in the entire country.

Nobody's coming to save us if things go down. What we have to do is turn to the people who support us and do better business and say, hey, please, this is the thing that we're in, and you have to make tough decisions. None of those appear to apply to the banking sector. And I think that's crazy. Why don't they just get to do business like everybody else? Yeah, I think the Fed context here is really important because there were specific risks with these banks, you know, who were irresponsible, made bad decisions and, you know, put themselves in a very precarious position. And they're pushed over the edge by a Fed policy of hiking rates that hasn't even directly impacted what it is supposed to be impacting, which is bringing inflation down. Why? Because the Fed policy, as we've discussed many times before, but it's always worth reiterating, this is designed to

bring wages down and unemployment up to kick people out of their jobs. But it actually doesn't get at one of the most key pieces of inflation, which is the way that corporations have used their market power in order to lift their prices and price gouge consumers. It deals nothing with the supply issues that we have, for example, in the housing market. In fact, it's creating some additional issues in the housing market because of the way mortgage rates have gone up. That's kind of created a freeze in the market that has kept prices from going down significantly. So that policy is underlying a lot of the turmoil and chaos that you're seeing in the economy right now and specifically with these banks. As I mentioned before, let's get to this piece regarding Silicon Valley Bank. We just got a report from the Fed of their own analysis of what exactly went wrong here. And lo and behold,

they actually point some fingers at themselves and their own regulatory failure. Let's put this up on the screen, this next piece. So the U.S. Fed admits this from Barron's to failings in Silicon Valley bank oversight. They called for greater banking oversight. They admitted some failures of their own in a widely anticipated report that was published Friday about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. They write, following Silicon Valley Bank's failure, we must strengthen the Federal Reserve supervision and regulation based on what we have learned. That was written by Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr in a statement accompanying the report. They said Silicon Valley Bank's management failed to adequately manage risk

prior to the bank's swift collapse, while Fed supervisors failed to take forceful enough action after they had identified issues at the California high tech lender. So a few things that they point to. Number one, they point to a what they describe as a culture under the previous Fed chair for, Fed vice chair for bank supervision that, you know, did not force accountability even after they identified problems with this bank, because this is something we reported before, that it's not like they didn't know that there were risks here. They knew they sent their little notices to the bank of like, hey guys, you might have a problem. They didn't know that there were risks here. They knew. They sent their little notices to the bank of like, hey, guys, you might have a problem. They didn't actually do anything. And this was all the San Francisco Fed.

So there's that piece. They also point to those Trump era regulations, which were rolled back so that Silicon Valley Bank themselves went and lobbied for these regulations to be rolled back so that they would have less stringent standards and not have to face some of the stress tests that they would if they were a larger bank. So they point specifically to that, and it's called tailoring the rules. The tailoring obviously completely failed. And then, of course, they point the finger, rightly so, at the management of Silicon Valley Bank, which was more interested in sort of like covering their ass and short-term gain than really understanding the risks that were posed by the, they're supposed to be the watchdogs and their entire existence is around the independence set up by Congress outside of the democratic process

and the theory that these experts can do a better job than democratic oversight. Well, how did it work out? It turns out they're not doing it. And this is, again, why I think that the preferential policy is to have as few banks as possible that have massive control because they're easier to regulate. Of course, you only have to deal with six guys. You're like, hey, guys, this is now the policy. Everybody's like, OK. They don't actually want to have smaller banks to be regulated because when they do, especially like Silicon Valley Bank, which is outside the norm, they operate very differently, mostly intertwined with the tech sector. They basically just said, you guys do whatever you want. You're good. You guys are printing money. The tech sector economy, you're very different than the rest of these banks. So

we're just not going to even develop a new agency or whatever to try and understand your business model. And it fails overnight. And everybody in the country is like, wait, what? Are we living in 2008 again? What's happening? I mean, I don't think we should – just because First Republic isn't a contagion across the banking sector, that doesn't still make it a crazy story. You have two massive – no, three actually – bank failures in the span of three months. I mean, that's actually more than what we had in some of the early periods of 2008. So, yes, it may not impact you directly. But we're setting the stage for something pretty crazy down the line. Yeah. And I think people should get that. Yeah, absolutely. Um, in terms of fed oversight, uh, Stoller and others have pointed to a cultural shift that, you know,

this guy, Michael Barr is pointing the blame at his predecessor, like, Oh, that guy, he didn't do a great job here. I'm doing a much better job in the position. Maybe that's the case, but it, you know, it doesn't really appear that way at that way at this present moment. But there's been a longer term cultural shift that came from an assumption in the Greenspan Fed era that effectively these banks were now so big and they were so complicated that there was no way the government could really effectively understand them and effectively supervise them and effectively regulate them. So the shift in the culture happened really decades ago, where there was a view of, you

know what, since we can't really do this ourselves and really get our arms around this in the way that we used to be able to, we are going to outsource the job of supervision to the marketplace. Our focus is going to be on creating job of supervision to the marketplace. Our focus is going to be on creating these sort of rules and guidelines, these hoops that they have to jump through, and then this push towards just making things transparent so that the investors and the depositors and the customers, so they can do their own due diligence and really understand and hold these banks to account. Obviously, I mean, it's like the ultimate neoliberal view of the world, right? Like, we'll just kick it to the markets and let them

figure it out. That culture and that direction of banking supervision has obviously been an utter and complete failure. And it leads to situations like you have with Silicon Valley Bank, where the regulators were like, this is kind of an issue. We're going to flag it for you. You know, we're going to tell you like maybe you should do something about this, but we're not actually going to take action because they no longer had that culture of feeling like this was really their responsibility to take on. So I think that's underlying all of this, which is a much bigger problem than these three banks. It's a much bigger problem than Randall Quarles, the last, you know, Fed vice chair for supervision. It's even a much bigger problem than Randall Quarles, the last, you know, Fed vice chair for supervision. It's even a much bigger problem, even though this was a major issue as well, than the regulatory rollback that was in 2018, which I'll remind you, I mean, this was defending the rollback of these regulations

that allowed Silicon Valley Bank and other banks to skate and not face the type of supervision that they should and scrutiny that they should have been under. And the explicit argument that was made by Silicon Valley Bank at the time was, we're not systemically important. So, you know, we're good. We're not risky. Like we're fine anyway. Don't worry about us. But even if we were to fail, it's no big deal. We're not systemically important. And of course, we saw the way that that was clearly not the case,

at least in terms of the way that our federal government reacted to their failure. I personally think it might have been fine if they let it be unwound in the standard process. But they came in and basically transformed the entire banking system and put in place extraordinary measures, extraordinary programs in reaction to that bank failure, really exposing the lie that obviously, at least in terms of our federal government, the way they viewed this, they did view Silicon Valley Bank as systemically important. And logic would dictate that they also view other medium range banks of that size in a similar manner. First Republic Bank is actually larger. I mean, this is the second largest bank failure in history.

This is a huge bank failing. So nobody should just be like shrugging their shoulders about what any of this means. No. And Charlie Munger, you know, to your point, as you said, has also been raising some alarms. Put this up there on the screen. He says that the banks are, quote, full of bad commercial property loans and that while it's not as bad as it was in 2008, quote, trouble happens to banking just like trouble happens everywhere else. In the good times, you get into bad habits. And when bad habits come, they lose too much. So what he's basically speaking there is about those commercial property loans that they have on their books, not as penetrating as the original mortgage-backed securities that were on the books in 2008,

but that's directly how it relates to the interest rate rises, which is, and plus COVID, all the catastrophes happening in the commercial property sector. And voila, people were overexposed to that, get nuked, and now they're just dead overnight. And we're supposed to have the Federal Reserve and other regulators make sure that this doesn't happen. And now we've had three in the last couple of months. Yeah. Does anyone feel confident that there aren't other banks out there that are super exposed to this commercial real estate situation, for example, or some other interest rate risk that, you know, that they maybe are aware of but didn't really push or do anything about. So we're going to find out in the coming days and weeks and months exactly how all of this unfolds. But already an extraordinary situation with these three significant banks failing in succession in a very short period of time. Yeah, I think that's right.

And I think the sad part is that from a rational actor point of view, on the individual level, you know, the thing you should do is you should move your money to the safest banks, which are the big ones. J.P. Morgan Chase. I mean, again, on an individual level, that is probably the best thing to do. The whole point, though, is to try and make the incentives

such that we don't want to do that. This was some of the worst nightmares of the original progressive era and the era of combination and of power. They understood what a completely oligarchic-controlled banking sector progressive era, in the era of combination and of power, they understood what a completely oligarchic controlled banking sector would mean for the entire country. There were a lot of farmers and others who had been foreclosed on and destroyed over the years who fought very hard against that. Unfortunately,

probably going to have to learn that lesson all over again. Go to the next story here which is very important and just stunning, stunning but also not stunning. It's just confirmation, I guess, of some many things that we already knew. Let's go ahead and put it up there on the screen. The Wall Street Journal broke this massive story where they got access to Jeffrey Epstein's private calendar from 2014. That calendar alone, just from 2014, shows some of the most extraordinary names in the

United States, one of them being William Burns. You may not know who that is. It's the director of the CIA, who apparently, quote, had three meetings scheduled with Jeffrey Epstein in 2014. I guess, to be fair to Mr. Burns, he was only then the mere deputy secretary of state at the State Department with longtime ties to U.S. intelligence. He actually confirmed the meeting that was shown on the Epstein calendar, one that happened here in Washington, another that happened at his private residence in New York. His excuse was this. He had no idea who Jeffrey Epstein was. He knew that he was connected in the financial sector. And since that he was transitioning out of government,

he thought it would be a good person to meet. Keep in mind, this is after Epstein has already been convicted in Florida and is a registered sex offender. So it takes no more than a Google search. This is where, do you really believe in the era of Google that a deputy secretary of state of the United States goes to New York City to a townhouse which is infamous for being a pedophile playground and does not Google the person that he is going to have dinner with. I've never gone to dinner with somebody who I didn't know. I recently went to a dinner party with people who I didn't know. And, yeah, I Googled.

I was like, who are these people? You know, I don't even want to be in a sketchy situation. So that's what most normal people do. And I'm not the Deputy Secretary of State. I'm the current CIA director. I was saying this in our editorial call. It almost just takes all the mystery out of it. At this point, you're just like, yeah, all right.

When you have the CIA director having multiple meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, in a single year, by the way. This is the only one year that we know about. There could be many more meetings. These are the only ones that you're coppingping to because happened to appear in his calendar. What else is left? I mean, this is it, people. It's almost case closed. In terms of what he did and how many more people are ensnared, who knows? But this CIA director, it's done. It's done. I mean, his pattern, which comes out very much in this Wall Street Journal report, which by the way, I am dying to know how they got this trove of documents, how they got their hands on it.

I suspect it came from the U.S. Virgin Islands because we're doing our second segment here in a bit. It almost certainly had to come from them because they have so much access to this. Yeah, I mean, incredible information because this is all, you know, we've heard all about like the Black Book and whatever. Like these were all meetings that were nowhere to be found in that. So this is new revelations about many people that, you know, we had no idea were associated whatsoever with Jeffrey Epstein. And the picture that is painted by the Wall Street Journal here, which is one that we've seen painted before, is he uses his wealth and the connections that he's already established with wealthy and powerful people to bring more people in and get more meanings and sort of convince them, oh, I'm in the club and I can help you with whatever it is that you need help with. I'm there to like, you know, fix your, oh, you're going to be transitioning the private sector. No problem.

I'm buddies with Bill Gates. I'll get you a gig with him. You could represent him. This is a specific example, by the way, I'm not making this up, that comes out in these documents with regard to Catherine Rumler, who was a White House counsel under President Obama and had apparently dozens of meetings with Epstein

in the years after her White House service and before she became a top lawyer at where? Goldman Sachs Group in 2020. He also planned for her to join a 2015 trip to Paris and a 2017 visit to Epstein's private island in the Caribbean. Some of the other details here that come out are the way that he would cultivate these relationships, like making sure that they had, that he knew what kind of food they liked. And if they're vegetarian, make sure they had that on hand.

He made sure apparently Catherine liked avocado sushi rolls. So he'd make sure that those were ready for her. There were emails, internal emails that they got their hands on too, where he and others are discussing whether because she's a woman, she might be uncomfortable with all of these young women being around. So do we need to make sure that they're not around when she's there, et cetera? So there was a very explicit project of Jeffrey Epstein to cultivate all of these relationships, find out who these people were, what their likes were, what their dislikes were, what they needed. And as Sagar was saying, I mean, it makes a lot of

sense that someone who was involved with one or more intelligence agencies, that that sort of information might be very vulnerable, very valuable either to this country or potentially to another country like Israel, that he has a lot of connections to. This is my thing. You know, at a certain point, like, let's just all just stop the farce. It's just so obvious, like with the CIA director being met and Bill Gates and the nation's top bankers and JP Morgan and the level of special access. I mean, yeah, look, I get, by the way, also, if you're out there, if the U.S. Virgin Islands or anybody else access these documents would love to see them. I would publish them straight up. I wouldn't protect

these people at all. Not a single one of them is worth protecting. Miss, you know, Rumler, the freaking White House counsel, but also Noam Chomsky, whose book that we have here on the set, Long Time Intellectual, comes out looking real bad in this one. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Apparently had not only dinner with Jeffrey Epstein, but actually arranged a meeting with Ayyub Barak, then the former prime minister of Israel, to discuss, quote, Israel's policies with regard to Palestinians.

Mr. Barak, we'll show you in a bit, is long confirmed to have known Jeffrey Epstein. The thing, though, about Chomsky is that he said, quote, when asked about his relationship, he said, first response is that it is none of your business or anyone's. Second is that I knew him and that we met occasionally, okay? And then in March of 2015, Epstein not only scheduled a gathering with Noam Chomsky and Harvard University, but he also scheduled a flight for him. Epstein actually planned to fly with them to have dinner with Woody Allen and his

wife. Woody Allen, huh? Interesting. I didn't know why him and Epstein would be friends. And Chomsky says, quote, if there was a flight, which I doubt it, it would have been from Boston to New York, only 30 minutes. I am unaware of the principle that requires that I inform you about an evening spent with a great artist. So, yeah, look. He's done some great work in his life, Noam Chomsky. But doth protest a bit too much at age 94. It lost me on this one. Yeah.

It lost me on this one. I mean, the first response is that it's none of your business. Yeah. What's going on here now? I think it's really important to reiterate, too, that these were all meetings that occurred after Epstein was a known pedophile and on the sex offender registry. So, you know, anyone could claim innocence, and I had no idea, before there was an actual— Yeah, that's right. Pre-2005.

Even then, it doesn't take a genius. Yes. I mean, in another piece, so we're going to talk about, you know, Chomsky, I mean, not Chomsky, Epstein's relationship with the banking sector. And these executives are joking about his taste in young girls. So it really reveals, too, that they knew what was going on. Like this wasn't a mystery. They were like, Oh my gosh, I had no idea. Like, please. They, they knew, but he was very effective at maintaining all of the trappings of elite high society. And I'm in the club and I'm one of you. And look, if I'm, if I can meet with Bill Gates,

like who are you to not meet with me? Like, obviously it's fine. And I'm giving all this money strategically, or at least cultivating relationships with various high profile universities as also another way of sort of reputation laundering and getting him into these elite circles and elite rooms. And, um, you know, he, uh, was able to get to a whole lot of people. Yeah, I'm really curious just in general about all this because I've heard this excuse too many times. You know, for example, one of them is the president of Bard College. He says that he went to the room because he presented himself as a billionaire and to thank him for unsolicited donations. And they all have the same story. They said, I found him odd and arrogant.

What I finally came to believe is why we stopped contact with him is that he was simply stringing us along. Everybody's like basically like, oh, I came to the conclusion that he was full of it. The only person who's count on that that I do believe is Eric Weinstein who's talked a lot about the dinner party or lunch party or whatever that he had with Epstein. And he came to believe he's like this person is a fake. He has no idea what he's talking about because Eric was – know a lot about, he worked in the finance sector for a long time. And he's like, I don't believe that you know anything about the purported way in which you make your money. The rest of them though, I'm not so sure I'm willing to be so charitable here. They're like, yeah, that's why we stopped contact. Maybe you stopped contact, A, like you said, because he stopped cutting your check. Or

maybe you just remembered that this is a creepy pedophile that we're dealing with here. Well, some of these people, like Bill Gates. Yeah. Sorry to keep bringing him up, but. No, you should. I mean, he's one of the richest men in the world. He hung out with this guy dozens of times. He was getting, like, marriage advice from him, apparently.

You know, he really claimed, like, oh, I barely knew him. Yeah. No, he didn't. And so also some of the representations about, oh, I totally cut off contact because I saw this guy was a creep and I saw he was a fake and a fraud and whatever. Some of those representations have also not been at least the complete picture or wholly accurate as to what the actual relationships were. Yeah. All of these people are liars. I mean, listen, if you met with him and you did so, if you did so and you really didn't know, you need to come out and say so at

this point because now you're just going to continue to look like a fool. And also look, CIA director, just let it sink in. The director of the CIA, the former ambassador to Russia, longtime connected intel official, three meetings in a single year. And we're just supposed to believe it's totally true. Yeah, the CIA director had no idea who he was having dinner with. Right. This is bullshit. And the money has always been another piece too. Because we know he had this benefactor in Les Wexner who was head of the limited corporations like Limited Express, all those companies.

Okay, so we know he has that benefactor. But this is a man who presented himself as and lived as a billionaire, private island, you know, one of the most expensive residences in all of Manhattan, et cetera. And it doesn't add up where because he didn't actually really work in like no one was he didn't really have a lot of clients or anything like that to justify the lifestyle he is able to lead. So it's like, OK, also, who was fully funding you? Where was this money really coming from? And, you know, what interest did that person have

or that entity have in the information that you were gathering? Because that's what's really clear here. He spent his entire life, until that life was no longer, you know, intact, gathering information about the likes, dislikes, really in many instances, probably sexual proclivities of some of the world's most powerful, wealthy, well-connected individuals. I'll let you connect the dots as to what sort of entities might be interested in that type of information. You can also surmise that rich people don't have good taste.

Avocado California roll when you got that much money, come on. Put it up there on the screen that I referenced Ayud Barak, the former Israeli PM. I've talked about this a decent amount before, who not only met with Epstein many times, almost funded one of his businesses, had entanglements, literally used to stay at his house, but says he never attended any of the sex parties. Okay. All right. I'll leave that to you, allegedly. All right, let's go to the next one and put it up there on the screen.

This is very important. JP Morgan executives apparently joked about Jeffrey Epstein's behavior. This is from the lawsuit ongoing with the US Virgin Islands and Jeffrey Epstein's estate. This is part of why, Crystal, I think that the Wall Street Journal scoop likely came from the Virgin Islands because they have subpoena power and they have so much insight into what was going on behind the scenes. This one directly came out in a filing and shows you that JPMorgan Chase executives were joking, allegedly, behind the scenes about his interest in young girls while he was a client at JP Morgan and Chase, which directly contradicts the idea that, which they said, we had no idea who this guy was. We didn't know anything about him. He was, you know, part of our wealth management division in

error. If we had known, we never would have done business. Well, as the Virgin Islands is alleging here, his behavior was so widely known that senior executives were literally talking about his interest in young girl behind the scenes. One of them is actually a woman in an email to a woman, the contents of which some are redacted, in which it was directly to somebody who runs the asset and wealth management division, and they are literally making private jokes about this. We don't have the exact text, but look. Again, how much more obvious do we have to get here?

And also, even within this, just the level of penetration that he has in some other rich and powerful people here. Look at this, Crystal. The US Virgin Island is currently subpoenaing Google founder, co-founder Sergey Brin, Hyatt Hotels founder Thomas Pritzker, some of Hollywood super agent, former Hollywood super agent Michael Ovitz, the real estate mogul, Mortimer Zuckerberg. I mean, these are some of the richest and most powerful people in the world. The Google CEO? Yeah.

Come on, man. The Google CEO here. And call back to our last segment about the bank collapse and being bought up by JPMorgan Chase. Jamie Dimon will, in May, be deposed despite attempts by the bank to prevent him from having to testify. The U.S. Virgin Islands complaint contains an internal communication which references a diamond review into the relationship with Epstein, of which the bank says it has no record. So they want to find out, you know, how high up did this go? What knowledge did Jamie Dimon have? What is this so-called Dimon review that

the bank is denying ever happened or that they have no knowledge of, et cetera? So again, we were just discussing how Jamie Dimon, with this massive bank, which has had to receive an exception because they have so much of the deposits in the entire country, more than 10% of all U.S. deposits located now at this one bank, which has just become even larger with their takeover of First Republic Bank. Jamie Dimon, one of the most powerful people on the planet, also entangled in all of this. Of course he is. And he's going to get deposed. And, you know, is any of this stuff, is anything going to happen? This is why I always hear from people why they almost don't want to get interested, because I feel this way, too. I've been doing this now for three years, how long we've been covering this story. And every time I'm like,

man, this is crazy. And then nothing changes. Nothing happens. We're covering this Virgin Island suit for a long time. Virginia Gouffre, apparently there's been some issues there, you know, behind the scenes too, in terms of some of the things that were happening in that case. Now, you know, in reference to this one, the CIA director. But, you know, here's what I would wish. I hope that somebody asks the White House press secretary and just be like, hey, why did your nominee have dinner with Jeffrey Epstein on three separate occasions? Do you have any comment on that for the CIA director? Do you think that that looks good or is acceptable conduct for the Biden administration? But this is the other problem with the press is we learned all about that ABC News report.

Even the press themselves are compromised in many ways whenever it comes to the story. So, yeah, because who knows? Because it touches. So, I mean, this was how he protected himself for so long because he has so many rich, famous, powerful people who are connected and snared in ways that are very embarrassing for them. So yeah, there's a, you know, all elite effort to make sure that none of this ever comes out. And kudos to the U.S. Virgin Islands for pushing some of this forward. Well, yeah, I mean, they're the ones who got the most screwed really out of this and had some of the most heinous acts most likely perpetrated on their soil. That's exactly right.

Okay, let's talk a little bit about Joe Biden. We always are just on the look for real Biden voters who are out there, allegedly who are excited. And we'll get to the alleged excitement first. But we wanted to start with an amazing clip that came from ABC News' Martha Raddatz, where she was doing some man on the street interviews. They find a woman who is a Biden voter, a Biden supporter. And so they go up to her and on camera, I mean, presumably she had some time, Crystal, to at least come up with the response. And they say, why do you support Joe Biden? And the response is everything. Let's take a listen. What do you like about Joe Biden? That he's not Trump.

That is the whole election right there. That's it? That is the whole election right there. That he's not Trump. I am brutal. It's brutal because it just, it's perfect. It's just exactly, that's why they, you know, that's why he has any support whatsoever because they hate Trump. They have no positive

things they could say about the guy. They don't like the guy. Everybody thinks he's way too old to be president. I'll give him credit. You know, we'll talk about the White House correspondence and it seemed generally with it, but what's one thing that everybody who's ever interacted with geriatrics knows? They have their good days and they have their bad days. And we've seen plenty of the bad days on display. Happened to have a good night.

I think that's great. But it literally, you know, the White House is putting out, or the analysis came out, Crystal, that he only does events from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., that his staff

will not schedule him outside. There was so much cope about that, too. People like, what's wrong with just working in normal business hours? It's like... Well, you're the president. Maybe that's what's wrong with just working in normal business hours? It's like, well, you're the president. Maybe that's what's wrong with it.

You know? Well, especially when you put that together with does not do press conferences, does not do fewer interviews than any other, you know, sitting president in modern history. Hasn't sat with any of the major newspapers, Wall Street Journal, New York Times or Washington Post. Put all of that together and you're like, and isn't going to do debates and isn't has no as announced his reelect and has to plan any rallies or public appearances to speak of. You start to wonder like, OK, you don't start to wonder. You start to have your fears confirmed that maybe he is not up for another four years. But, you know, the flip side of that is this person who can't find a single positive thing to say about the man that she's going to vote for is still going to vote for. And that like I don't want to I don't want people to get the mistaken impression that I think Biden will lose to Trump.

I think it's a jump ball. I think it's possible that he loses. that people are so sick of Trump and his insanities and his legal woes and whatever is going on over there, are enough where they're like, I'm not excited about this one over here, but what other choice do I really have? I mean, this is the thing that I keep coming back to. You have two men in Donald Trump and Joe Biden who are likely to be their party's nominees, both of whom have said they don't intend to debate in the primary. They don't intend to earn the nomination, bottom line, or give voters a real choice in the matter. That's number one. And number two, overwhelming majorities of the country are like, we don't want these guys. 70% of the country says no to Joe Biden. We wish we had another alternative.

60% of the country says same thing about Donald Trump. And yet that's where we're ending up. So even though this is less than an inspiring case to be made here for Joe Biden, it might be the case that wins the day. It was last time. It was last time around. I'm denying it. There's no denying it whatsoever. And just so people know where some of the excitement is coming about for Joe Biden. It turns out-

Very genuine and authentic excitement. Very genuine, authentic, and totally organic and not paid for propagandists that we're seeing for Gen Z Biden people on TikTok. One of them is named Harry Sisson. We'll tell you a little bit about who's paying him, but here's what some Biden propaganda looks like for the youths that are out there. Let's take a listen. So a new NBC News poll shows that 70% of all Americans, including 51% of Democrats, don't want President Biden to run again. It goes like this. Right now, there's three Democrats in the mix. Marianne Williamson, who's seen as very out there and fundamentally unserious. There's reports that she abuses her staff. And I know she said she

wants free health care, free college for all. But when you ask her how she's going to achieve this it's radio silence then we have a kennedy in the mix who's backed by a bunch of trumpers he's a conspiracy theorist and he's anti-vax so no marion williamson no kennedy and lastly we have president biden who has been quite productive and delivered on a lot of promises although not enough americans know about it i get age is a factor but right now as it, the clear choice for president of the United States in 2024 is Joe Biden. Apologies, that was actually Chris Mowry. He is another Biden paid influencer who often does collaboration content with Harry Sisson. Both of them, though, Crystal, were identified in April of 9th, 2023 as, quote, unpaid independent content creators that have been given access to the

Biden White House. Now, that's not exactly true, is it? Because while I guess, yes, the White House is not paying them, somebody is paying them to create this content. Yeah. So they apparently work for this palette management or something like that, which gets payments from the DNC. So I'll let you put the dots together there. They do get paid. Got it. Now, they deny they're paid, et cetera, et cetera. But look, if you look at their content, it's hard to mistake it for being truly authentic

views. If you're not getting paid, how does that work? You just hand out emails for free? Right. Come on. Yeah. It's funny, though, because this is part of something we reported on before, which is this whole like digital influencer strategy that the Biden campaign is rolling out

because they know they have no organic enthusiasm online. I mean, they have lots of people who will like yell at you if you say something against him that like you're helping fascism. But in terms of actual genuine grassroots enthusiasm for Biden, certainly not. And certainly not on TikTok either. I was looking at the comment section of that one that we played and like overwhelmingly in the comments, they're like, no, Marianne 2024. I mean, Marianne on TikTok thing is a genuine phenomenon, as Ryan Grim was reporting. And that is very much reflected in the comment section here. I also don't think it's an accident that all of this starts to really ramp up after some of the reporting came out about how she was finding a real audience on TikTok and genuine,

authentic Gen Z support. So they're trying to buy some cool here, and I don't think people are really falling for it, Zagre. Yeah, I think you're right, Crystal. I mean, really what it comes down to is that these kids you know all this stuff are trying to astroturf a fake narrative into existence i think it's like you said at the top with that woman but i don't want to make fun of that woman uh she may not have known what she was getting into because here's a deal a lot of people vote that way i

found it very honest to be honest with you that's why i appreciate it yeah i please don't go after but you know why a lot of people vote that way She just had the balls to say it on camera. And that's how a lot of you people are. I've met a lot of, I don't like the tweets, but this is better than that guy. That's the same version. I hear it all the time behind the scenes. And I think we'd be better off if we were more honest about that. Now, do I think politics should work that way?

No. But that's not the voters' fault. That's the fault of these, like, you know, anachronistic parties and, yeah, a system that's set up that doesn't let in any third parties. I mean, the first-past-the-post system and lack of ranked choice voting that creates this dynamic where you're stuck with these two guys that, yeah, most people don't want and aren't excited about or actively hate. And yet you're left with these two choices. So this voter who's like, man, I don't really can't really come up with anything that I affirmatively like about Biden, but I'm definitely with him just because he's not Trump. That's incredibly reflective of the electorate. And so, no, I don't like I don't judge her for that whatsoever, because what other choice does she have?

This is the binary that's created. Exactly. It's not her fault. It's really sad that things have ended up this way. But, you know, maybe we'll eventually get out of it. Let's go to the next one here. Just a fun clip. Friend Andrew Schultz on his podcast, Brilliant Idiots with Charlemagne, had a great rant Charlem did, about the DNC, about the lack of Democratic debates. I think that very much strikes to why people are frustrated with the system. Here's what he had to say. What about you, Chris? You like Biden? You voting for Biden again? I think we could use a fresh new person on the seat.

That's why it's whack that the DNC won't let nobody prime. They won't do no primaries next year, man. Do a fucking primary debate. Put Joe Biden up on that stage with Bobby Kennedy, who's challenging him, and Marianne Williamson and whoever steps up to the plate. And let's have a fucking discussion, yo. I mean, the man is right. He has an amazing ability to kind of cut through the BS. Like with remember when Kamala Harris was pretending not to be able to hear him? Yeah, that was incredible.

He's like, she's pretending not to hear me. Well, he's the one who got the you ain't black comment out of Joe Biden. Yeah, you ain't black out of Joe Biden. Yeah, he really does. Joe Biden's barely done an interview since then. That's true. That was it. He has his moments.

Or whenever he went after Elizabeth Warren. And yeah, I mean, props to him. Yeah, that's right. When he was like, what, are you the new Rachel Dolezal? Yeah, he was like, are you the new Rachel? And she was like, oh. She was like completely short-circuited. Because he doesn't care if he talks to these people again.

But that's why they come back because the show is huge. Not only Brilliant Idiots, but The Breakfast Club. But I think what he's getting at, too, is a deep frustration, I think, for a lot of people about the lack of openness in the process. By the way, everyone, we are working on getting Robert Kennedy here on the show. We've been in contact with the team. RFK Jr. will appear on Breaking Points in the very near future, either remote or hopefully in person, which is what we are working on. So if you see a little bit of a delay, it's because we would very much like to have him here at the desk in the show and talk for a little while as opposed to Zoom, even though we might have to wait a couple more days. Just keep that in mind. Let's go to the next one and put this up there on the screen,

which is a piece about black voters and their frustration, not just with the Biden administration, but with the Democratic Party, whenever they are remaining the most loyal voters to the Democratic Party. Let's remember that Joe Biden would be dead without elderly black voters in the Democratic base. There's just no way around it.

They saved him in the South Carolina primary and in conjunction with Jim Clyburn, coming really at the behest of Clyburn, who said, we need to come out and save this guy. And then in conjunction with Super Tuesday, just swept the entire Democratic nomination in an overnight success on top of what was happening with COVID. But Crystal, what comes out in this piece from the New York Times with interviews with, you know, not just elderly black voters, some are like middle class, younger voters, is they're not too happy. They say, quote, Biden is pandering to us whenever it is time to vote. Yeah. They quote a man named Travis Williams, who is a Democratic organizer, not just like random person, someone who is actively invested in the Democratic Party and has put at least like manpower into this party

success previously. And he says folks are just tired of being tired. They're just sick and tired of being tired and disappointed whenever our issues are never addressed. So Biden has really staked his reelect in a lot of ways on South Carolina by pushing them to the front of the line and pushing New Hampshire trying to out of the way, which I'm doing my whole monologue on what a disaster he's created for himself there and what the repercussions might end up being. But the very voters that he considers to be his core base, that he is depending on to hand him the nomination again and to vote for him in droves to get him back in as president of the United States. They're not impressed. They are not impressed. There's another piece in The New York Times this morning about interviewing

independent voters in Arizona, key swing state. And they also were these were people who had voted for Joe Biden before, and they were similarly not impressed. And some of them actively saying, you know what, I'm going to consider both candidates a lot more this time around. Some of the disappointment, too, came from people who had a lot of student loan debt that felt like, you know, there were promises made there that didn't come to fruition. People who felt like his pitch had been to the American people, I want to bring the country together. And they feel like we're more divided and more polarized than ever. People who feel like they've really been crunched by the economy and by inflation. So, you know, there's a lot of disappointment. There's a lot of feeling that there were broken promises and probably

overwhelmingly, there's a lot of concern about his age and whether he can actually handle the job for another four years. But again, on the other side, to go back to that original voter, you also have a lot of people. And these were the people who were determinative last time around who don't like either candidate but ended up voting for Joe Biden. Now, in 2016, that group that didn't like Trump and didn't like Hillary Clinton, at the end, they moved to Trump. So it's almost like the core swing vote at this point is people who are disgusted with everyone. Do they show up and vote? And who do they end up voting for? Yeah, I think that's right. Now, one of the more fascinating things they point to is the drop off in black voter engagement from 2022, which could manifest in lack of numbers. But I just think Trump, such a polarizing figure.

You know, 2020 was the ultimate anti-election where millions more people came out to vote against something rather than for something. Not a lot of evidence to say that any of that will change, but it puts you in a precarious situation where people hate something even marginally less than you are gonna get marginally less votes, which could end up mattering,

let's say, in an election where you only won by 30,000 votes. Just throwing that out there because of how it might manifest. All right, let's turn to the very latest revelations, which are getting hard to keep track of, around Supreme Court corruption. Put this up on the screen. So this one involves Chief Justice John Roberts may provide some insight into why he has refused to come and testify to lawmakers about corruption in the Supreme Court. He is married to a woman named Jane Roberts, who has made $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms by placing, you know, lawyers, top lawyers at these elite law firms. She is earning commissions. This is according to documents revealed by a whistleblower who worked with her at this at this like legal headhunter firm that she was at. They say Jane

Roberts generated a whopping ten point three3 million in commissions. This was paid out by corporations and by law firms for placing high dollar lawyers with them. They include analysis that for this industry, this is like the tippy top of the spectrum of what people make doing this job. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when it is the wife of the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who's like, hey, why don't you hire this lawyer, big corporation or big law firm, you're probably going to do it. Why? Because you want to curry favor with the chief justice of the Supreme Court in case your clients or your business have business in front of the court. And maybe that personal relationship might be the thing that puts you over the top. Now, am I saying that that is 100 percent happened or that decisions have been swayed by this type of what I would consider wildly disgusting, inappropriate relationship? No way to know. But every other federal judge in the country is supposed to hold themselves to a standard of not even the appearance of impropriety.

And yet we have to learn about these multimillion dollar payments from a whistleblower who worked with her, who said, this is insane. Let me read you a little bit of the statement. And then, Sagar, I want to hear your reaction to this. This whistleblower said, what I found out that the spouse of the chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately it was wrong. According to a whistleblower named Kendall B. Price, who worked alongside Jade Roberts at the legal recruiting firm Major Lindsay in Africa. She said, during the time I was there, I was discouraged from ever raising the issue. And I realized that even the law firms who were Jane's clients had nowhere to go.

They were being asked by the spouse of the chief justice for business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was no one to even complain to. Most of these firms were likely appearing or seeking to appear before the Supreme Court. It is natural that they would do anything they felt was necessary to be competitive. Yeah, I just think that the issue is, and I've actually heard of feminist arguments in defense of people like her or Ginny Thomas

or actually any of the spouses of the Supreme Court. And it's one of those where nobody asks you to be on the Supreme Court. When you do, you would presume you need to take extraordinary sacrifice. If you are the best legal recruiter on earth, let's just say that that's true. Well, then you probably should tell your husband, honey, can't go to the Supreme Court because I want to continue cashing in and making these dollars. But whenever your family signs up for that, then frankly, especially whenever your finances are totally intertwined like this, I'm sorry. It's just not appropriate.

And I see this constantly. The amount of intermingling that I see of all of these justices would shock you. I mean I recently heard about Supreme Court justices, and this is well-known, who are attending dinner parties with lawyers who are arguing things before their own, before the court. Now, do you really believe that has no impact on that, the social scene in terms of Justice Breyer or any of these others who are co-mingling and sitting with people who are then appearing before the court? And this happens all the time in terms of this dirty secret relationship. And the crazy thing is, is that these are the people who are supposed to make the law. And I just,

I don't care. You know, I've heard a lot of conservative defenses are like, they're going after Clarence Thomas. They don't like him. Yeah, it certainly may be true, but nobody made him just not report financial disclosures. You know, it's like, you're the one who do. One of the reasons whenever you're a, one of the things you should do when you're a target, dot your I's and cross your T's. Pay your taxes. Make sure that you're a financial of the things you should do when you're a target, dot your I's and cross your T's. Pay your taxes. Make sure your financial disclosure. Is that so much to ask? Yeah, I just don't think it is. Clarence Thomas and I think some of the other all the conservative justices, to be honest with you.

I mean, they have this view, number one, that money is speech. Yeah. So they look differently at this like money that's going to benefit them, their spouses, whatever, number one. And number two, they also have this very limited view of corruption where it's actively like you have to be taking a bag of cash in exchange for giving a favorable decision in order for them to view it as corruption. So their ideology is at the core of this rot specifically with regard to the conservative justices. But I think it goes beyond the conservative justices. I think this is one of those instances where there's a whole ecosystem created around all of the justices on the court. I think there is a view among all or most of the justices that because they are put into this elite position of power, that they should live the high lifestyle of other elites who make a lot more money than

they do. And so what do they make? They make like $200,000 as a Supreme Court justice. I mean, they make a good amount of money, right? I mean, you out there will probably be, you know, feel pretty good about earning 200K. It's not some, it's not a pittance. 286. So we're not talking about a pittance here, but they feel like they should be leading the life of a multi-multi-millionaire. And so when Harlan Crowe comes along and is going to take you on his, you know, trip on his luxury super yacht and fly you there on the private jet and all in all spend half a million dollars on one vacation, you feel like that is the life that you have earned and deserved rather than seeing yourself as a true public servant with a lot of power that, yes, may come with sacrificing the multi, multimillion dollar payouts that you could have achieved if you had gone to work in the private sector. And that may also come with a cost for your spouses in terms of some of the things that

they have to give up in terms of their own careers and ambitions, connections, etc. That's the true way that you look at public service, not how do I get around this measly, almost $300K salary to cash into the tune of multi, multi millions of dollars and live that high lifestyle. And I say this is an ecosystem because there's another piece that is, you know, lengthy from the New York Times about the way that universities and specifically George Mason University have created these very cushy teaching positions, have done all sorts of over-the-top things to curry favor specifically with the conservative justices. The George Mason Law School is now been named the Scalia Law School. They are deeply entwined with the Federalist Society. This has become

one of, if not the major locus of sort of conservative ideological legal thought in the entire country and very intentionally made it so. Put this up on the screen, this next piece. The headline here is how Scalia Law School became a key friend of the court. George Mason University's law school cultivated ties to justices with generous pay and unusual perks. In turn, it gained prestige, donations, and influence. So here's the way this cycle works. George Mason University offers these tremendous perks, things like, oh, you'll go teach in whatever city you pick in Italy for multiple weeks. So we'll put you up there.

This is one of the loopholes of things that Supreme Court justices are allowed to do outside of their work on the court. We'll put you up there in, you know, lavish fashion. We'll pay for your meals. You do a little bit of teaching in the morning, I guess, but then you can do whatever you want the rest of the day. So, and there's these sort of bespoke experiences created to lure the justices. They use their proximity to the justices to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for these law schools. So the school benefits tremendously. And then lo and behold, their students also end up getting far more Supreme Court clerkships and other high level elite clerkships than they ever did before. So it's, again, this whole ecosystem that is created

of favor trading and big, big money. And again, to get to the influence here, also a lot of the justices' co-professors end up filing amicus briefs intended to sway the court. So these are people that they've met, that they've taught with, that they've gone on lavish Italian or whatever vacations with, and they're submitting briefs. Scalia Law professors, they say, are not simply regular amicus brief filers. A quarter of the school's briefs submitted to the court since the justices joined the faculty have been written by professors who served as the justices' co-teachers some while classes were ongoing. So it would, it creates the appearance of an explicit attempt to use the people that the justices know in order to sway their decisions on the court here.

Yeah, I think, I just think it's important too where this is a look into the, but I mean, Harvard University has multiple people who have fellowships and connections. I mean, all of these justices are intertwined in a nonprofit corporate industrial complex, which is difficult to wrap your mind around. I also don't think that people fully appreciate how much big law is ingrained in all of this as well. There are only a couple of firms that really specialize in Supreme Court litigation, and lo and behold, they hire a bunch of former clerks. This is a social scene, probably more than anything.

I have limited insight because I know a few people who are involved. I mean, they consider themselves like families. Like once you've, it's almost like the mafia. Like once you've been a clerk for like one particular justice, you're like part of this world of former clerks. And they help each other and all that. And they all know about what's going on behind the scenes and whispers.

And it all entails like Harvard and Yale gossip. So it's actually pretty incestuous and gross. But anyway, the point is that there's a tremendous amount of money that is involved with all of this. Where the appearance of corruption has been there, I would just say, for a long time. And I think it's a good thing that we're all beginning to look into it. So people are like, oh, they're going after the conservative. It's like, okay, nothing is stopping you, by the way, from going out and finding the same with Eleanor Kagan or Sotomayor. I guarantee you it's out there.

I guarantee you it is. Well, even with the George Mason University Law School, which is, like I said, a sort of hotbed for conservative legal thought now. Some of the other justices, I think Kagan was named in this piece as well, is getting some, you know, cushy gigs and them reaching out to her as well, because they don't care. They curry influence and favor with whoever, regardless of what your ideology really is. So just to, you know, finish this off, I want to read you a little bit of the details here of Justice Gorsuch planning his Italian teaching gig. The law school was courting him in 2017. They asked him to help choose the Italian city where for two weeks the following summer he would co-teach a seminar on national security and the separation of powers. A memo offered options including Padua, I don't know how you say it, a first-tier city in a picturesque setting, Venice with its seven-mile-long sandbar known as Lido, and Bologna, Italy's most prestigious academic city.

In the end, the class would be in Padua, where the law school put up the justice and his family in what a listing clear his teaching responsibilities would be limited to the mornings, leaving plenty of time for excursions, including planned visits in the afternoon. Fantastico, the justice responded. It's nice work if he can get it, folks. Bologna is a beautiful city. I'll give him that. All right, let's talk about the White House Correspondents Dinner. We've got the best, I think, of Joe Biden's performance. Again, I want to be fair. The guy, he had one of his good days that exists. I wouldn't say his delivery or jokes were all that great, but what I found interesting is how much time he spent going after Ron. It's like DeSantis was a main character almost more than Trump was. Of course, Trump got several jokes there, but he really did appear to be going

after DeSantis, I think, in a special way. One of those was the focus of President Biden's jokes. Here's what he had to say. At Ron DeSantis, I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready, but Mickey Mouse beat the hell out of me and got there first. Now, look, can't be too rough on the guy. After his reelection as governor, he was asked if he had a mandate. He said, hell no, I'm straight. I'm straight. You say I'm ancient. I say I'm straight. You say I'm ancient.

I say I'm wise. You say I'm over the hill. Don Lemon would say that's a man in his prime. Look, it's great the cable news networks are here tonight. MSNBC owned by NBC Universal. Fox News owned by Dominion Voting Assistance. I'm going to turn this over to Roy. Roy, the podium is yours. I'm going to be fine with your jokes, but I'm not sure about Dark Brandon. I mean,

Dark Brandon broke. They were okay. I don't know. I liked the Don Lemon prime joke. The Don Lemon prime. Yeah, even then. It's so overwrought now at this point. Every YouTube comment is like, Don Lemon's past his prime. And that's funny. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's like we're several days late to the discourse. I thought I did fine. I didn't think there was anything in there like a particular zinger.

I enjoyed the Fox News joke. I thought that was probably the best joke. We always grade Biden on a bit of a curve, I feel like. Yeah, exactly. You can't help but be like, oh, he's got a little bit of energy and vigor. Okay, some of these jokes like half landed. Not bad. I also can't help but reflect on how much this whole dinner has diminished.

Yeah, that's a good point. during the Obama years. I mean, that was the height of the like social scene. Yeah. It was the height of the media administration, social scene in this, you know, glittering, like excited, optimistic people felt still excited about Obama, et cetera. He was very good at delivering the jokes. He was genuinely funny, like had good timing. They'd use the Daily Show writers, I think, to help craft the jokes, et cetera. It was a real, it was a huge to-do in D.C. and to get that invite and all the after parties and all of that. And Trump, to his credit, I mean, this is one of the things that he really killed. And I think that's a good thing. I also can't help but there's always at this dinner, there's a lot of like

moralizing about the free press and the importance of the free press. And I just can't take them seriously anymore. I mean, it's like, okay, then why is Julian Assange locked up? Why are you getting like, you know, the questions in advance, Mr. President, before you go out there and do your pressers? Why don't you do press conferences more often? Why don't you sit for interviews more often if you actually respect this institution, respect the free press, respect its importance as a critical, you know, bedrock of democracy as you should? So I just have a hard time taking these people seriously at this point. The whole thing is gross. Even the comedians, I mean, look, nothing will ever top Stephen Colbert, you know, just absolutely eviscerating George W. Bush to his face.

There are a few other moments. That is just, I mean, that's actual courage, honestly. Like, that's what that should look like when the White House Correspondents Association president roasts the president to his face or speaks up, brings up press access issues, urges him to do more press conferences. That's what you should do. That's not what happened. And then same with the comedian. The comedian should not be, should not be like culturally going after like whoever is the opponent of the president.

Roy Wood, he did an okay job, I think, of poking some fun at Biden. But there's a hell of a lot more to play with. Here is what we thought were some of his best. Happy to be here. Oh, real quick, Mr. President, I think you left some of your classified documents up here. You can get them. Yeah, no, don't give them to him. I'll put them in a safe place. He don't know where to keep them. Scandals have been devouring careers this year. The

untouchable Tucker Carlson is out of a job. Yeah. Okay. Some people celebrate it. But to Tucker's staff, I want you to know that I know what you're feeling. I work at The Daily Show, so I, too, have been blindsided by the sudden departure of the host of a fake news program. No scandal more damaging than the scandal of, is Joe Biden awake? Hey, say what you want about our president, but when he wake up from that nap, work gets done. He might doze off with a, mmm, infrastructure bill. Mmm, mmm, student loan forgiveness. Mmm, did we free Brittany Griner? Free Brittany Griner. The issue with good media is that most people can't afford that. All the essential fair and nuanced reporting, it's all stuck behind a paywall.

People can't afford rent. People can't afford food, not healthy food. They can't afford an education. They damn sure can't afford to pay for the truth. But you all can't afford to go find the truth for free. It was OK. You okay. Like I said, at least you poked fun at Biden's age. I think the takeaway is, like you said, it's just almost irrelevant now at this point, where it was a big to-do, now it's not. And I think that's probably a good thing. You know who you have to give credits for killing it? It was Trump, because he didn't attend, I think, for his entire four years in office. It lost the cultural cachet. Then COVID happened. Not enough people were able to come in

in the first two years. They tried to make it into a whole thing with all the Vanity Fair parties and all that. But because such a bad time for the media business, they don't have the cash to throw these things in the same way on top of the Don Lemon firings and the cable crashing and the CNN drama, et cetera. They just don't have the same level of like being on the upswing that they thought they were back in 2010 or 2011. Dying relic of a struggling industry. That's what it feels like. Yeah. I think Glenn Greenwald's always referred to it as Versailles. And I think that's very apt. Actually, Julia Fox came in whiteface. So it really is one of those where it's as Versailles as it gets.

Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, is Fox News the star or the stars on its channel? This is the biggest debate happening right now inside the media business. And if you asked 10 years ago, the answer was obvious. It's Fox News. It was under the control of the iron control of its founder and president, Roger Ailes. It had fired its highest rated talent, Glenn Beck, for getting too big for britches and survive. It'd gotten rid of O'Reilly, despite his mainstay on TVs for nearly 20 years, bounce back soon with the Tucker Carlson Tonight show. That's the line that you're seeing over and over and over again. And history often rhymes, teaching us many lessons. Too many people, though, are not realizing how much times have changed. The reason that Fox News survived O'Reilly's departure was not just Tucker's talent and difference in programming and taking over the time slot, it was because it happened

in 2017, the biggest Fox News and cable news boom in modern history. It was squarely not just during the Trump era where the content was endless and in the Fox context, his people were more riled up, more dedicated than ever to tune in and see how their beloved savior, Donald Trump, was being persecuted. That's not the case right now, is it? And not only is it not the case, it's not going to be the case again. How do I know? Because if you haven't noticed, Rupert Murdoch, the founder of Fox News, is trying to move on from Trump. Not just move on, but actively pushing Governor Ron DeSantis. And Trump's people, they're taking notice. You already had Steve Bannon call out Murdoch from the CPAC stage. You've had Trump release multiple statements going after Fox News.

You've had Trump basically move for his most fawning interviews to the Newsmax channel. And that brings me to my point. This time is different because of a major and one word, competition. In 2017, Fox News was the universal hub of MAGA. But stop the steal changed everything. Even when Fox had to back away from its claims around the stolen election, people flocked then to newsbacks to One America News. We saw a Trump blackout of coverage and their ratings during the Biden era, like most cable news channels, have been lower than ever before.

But even I was stunned at how right I appear to be with the latest numbers from Fox News primetime. Consider on April 21st, Carlson's last show, Fox News got 2.65 million viewers. The day that he was fired was roughly the same, probably because the boomers who watch it hadn't even heard he was fired. The next day, though, boom, they dropped by 1 million viewers. By April 26, they were now at 1.33 million. That is their lowest primetime figure since pre-9-11. And it's not just Fox News' decline, which makes things so interesting. It's where those people went. Newsmax ratings skyrocketed after Tucker's firing.

Eric Bolling's 8 p.m. show has gained 500,000 viewers. That's a 400% increase from the week before. Insanity. Not just the Newsmax ratings, though. It actually was roughly 80% of what CNN's Anderson Cooper gained on the exact same day, meaning CNN and Cooper could soon fall behind Newsmax in primetime, making them number four. None of this, though, stopped Brian Stelter from somehow rearing his ugly head again in the Tucker Carlson debates. Simply cannot quit cable news even if they have quit him.

Stelter wrote a fawning tribute to the cable news medium in New York Times, which bears dismantling. The crux of his argument is Fox News is still the star, as is all the cable channels, all because cable TV has the cultural power. Now, in other words, while CNN and Fox News ratings are low, according to Stelter, because their clips circulate online from Twitter to YouTube or elsewhere, it's much bigger. And look, he is not wrong, at least in part. The reason why I think, though, it's pathetic cope is this. Anyone who works in the content game knows, sure, you can get 20 million views on a

viral Twitter clip. It means squat for revenue. More so, even if you do have viral for the right reason, you've got very little proof any of those people are going to stick around for you for the months to come. Most importantly, Twitter or YouTube views is not going to float a behemoth business like Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN. And CNN is a dying business. We still should not forget, though, their profit margin is some $1 billion a year. Fox is actually $2 billion. MSNBC, in the same range. How are they making all this money? How do you make a billion dollars when you're failing at your job? I'll tell you why again. The cable providers are the ones who pay them. When you pay X amount for cable TV, a pretty good chunk of change is going directly into the cable news profits. Those fees make up the bulk of the

profit centers of these companies. It floats their multi-billion dollar operation. Millions of YouTube views, that's just fine for a company like ours, but we're a startup. We're lean, mean. We work much harder than these fat cat executives. We punch big above our weight, but that's not going to work when you're paying rent on skyscrapers in Manhattan or floating the whims and billionaire fortunes of Rupert Murdoch and whatever house or wife he wants next. The ultimately is why cable news, in my opinion, is doomed. It is why, in my opinion, Tucker and Maddow are probably the last to ever play the game at this level. And even they, honestly, they were on their way out too. Consider this press release from April 2003. Bill O'Reilly was the king of Fox when he was getting 6 million viewers on his show. They list his competitors at CNN with

a record 5 million average. Think about that. Tucker, at his best, was half O'Reilly 20 years ago. CNN collapsed by 500% in the same time period. At the same time, the trends are only accelerating in the opposite direction. Last month, the latest 2022 numbers came out. Six million people cut cable in 2022. A million more than the year before that, double what it was in June 2021. Next year, it's going to be even higher. Already, only 30% of people between the age of 18 and 25 pay for cable. Unsurprisingly, households with U.S. adults above the age of 65 are the overwhelming consumers of the cable news platform.

As I laid out in my actuarial table monologue, it's not looking good for them either on a long-term basis. So in the end, I don't think things are looking good for cable. That's it, Crystal. I mean, you can take a look at this and, you know, Brian Stelter and others are trying with the cope of like, yeah, but cumulatively they're getting 18 million views a week. That'd be like. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, the

biggest union in the state is pointedly declining to endorse Joe Biden. The state Democratic Party chair is furious and Democratic members of Congress are begging Biden to reconsider. The media is finally waking up to the fact that Joe Biden is facing utter disaster in the state of New Hampshire, an early primary state mess entirely of his own making. Because in attempting to snub and demote the Granite State, he may actually be handing their voters a club to punish him and to elevate his rivals. He has basically scheduled an early loss for himself in this crucial state. Now, over the past few days, multiple mainstream outlets have published panic reports about how Marianne Williamson or Bobby

Kennedy Jr. could end up with the win in New Hampshire. But of course, in typical fashion, these reports are slathered with layers of cope and spin about how losing an early state, obviously that's not going to matter. Pissing off voters in a swing state, that's no big deal. And that Biden is in no way whatsoever vulnerable in this primary. The truth, of course, is a lot more complex. You got the oldest president in history. You got a base dying for alternatives. You're effectively ceding an early state to one of your rivals.

That sounds like trouble. In spite of the media's anxious assurances that this is all no big deal and really means nothing, methinks they doth protest too much. So here is the backstory. New Hampshire voters have never been too keen on this current president. During his 2008 run, he was polling so miserably in the state that he withdrew before voters could actually render a verdict. In 2020, you will recall, he finished in a humiliating fifth place behind Bernie, Pete, Amy Klobuchar, and even Elizabeth Warren. So in an attempt to deny New Hampshire voters a chance to hand the president yet another poor result, he and the DNC collaborated to strip

them of their first primary positioning in the Democratic primaries. Instead, they gave South Carolina the top spot, a state where Biden can depend on Jim Clyburn rather than his own appeal. And where Democrats can pretend that their real concern is diverse representation rather than an outright rigging of the Democratic process. Of course, the truth is so obvious that some top Democrats, they don't even deny it. Listen to what Leah Doughtry, a longtime top DNC official and rules committee member, recently admitted to New York Times reporter Astead Herndon. How do we separate those reasons from the politics of it? Because at the same time, Iowa, New Hampshire states Joe Biden's a bad end, South Carolina's a state he did well in. Couldn't this also be read as a president rewarding a state or prioritizing a state that serves his political interests and okay i don't have a problem with that he's the president he's the head of the party

so he gets to make the decisions that are best for the party whether his personal interests played a role in line with our objectives which is to shake up this system to ensure that the base of your party who shows up every single cycle for you, have an early say. That's interesting because sometimes I've been asking folks that question. They've been acting like politics is just not the bottom to this. We're a political party. This is just about, you know, representation. It was just about.

And so I appreciate you saying that because I feel like it has to be political. Well, I mean, this is the Democratic Party. We are political. Every decision we make is political. So I think, you know, to say that it's not is kind of disingenuous. Yeah. I mean, I kind of appreciate the honesty here. So they fixed it up perfect for Biden, right? Wrapped it in some identity virtue signaling. Good to go, right? Not quite. First of all, South Carolina is not anywhere close to being a competitive state for the general election, while New Hampshire is a perennial swing state that Donald Trump has come

very close to winning. So if you're all the fascists are at the door and democracy is on the line and we must do absolutely everything to stop them, pissing off the entirety of a vital battleground state, that seems like a pretty bad idea. But more immediately for Biden, it has created a political quandary because New Hampshire is not planning to back down from their first in the nation status. And actually, they can't back down even if they wanted to. A state law requires New Hampshire to go first. And since the state is right now controlled by Republicans, they have no desire to help Joe Biden out of his little jam here. So he can put his name on the ballot and effectively abandon his plan to have South Carolina go first. Not to mention, he'll then be in an actual competition in a state that is

furious with him. Or he can not put his name on the ballot and let Bobby Kennedy Jr. or Marianne win and pray that his media allies effectively convince everyone that this is inconsequential and doesn't matter whatsoever. Or he can do a low-key write-in campaign, which carries a huge amount of risk because then he is competing with all the risk and potential embarrassment, but he's put himself at a major disadvantage by not actually having his name appear on the ballot. In a sign of the mounting political troubles, the state's largest union, as I alluded to earlier, just issued a statement pointedly declaring they are not endorsing Biden and also demanding an

actually democratic process. They say, after careful consideration, we are not endorsing Joe Biden for reelection in the presidential race at this time. Following a robust analysis of the current political landscape, we have come to the conclusion that our members and New Hampshire voters deserve a competitive Democratic primary. Couple this with Democratic members of Congress hitting the panic button and the media was actually forced to cover it. Politico's got an article out headlined Biden's New Hampshire mess.

NBC News has a similar piece headlined why Biden may have to forfeit the first contest in his reelection bid to Marianne Williamson or RFK Jr. But while they admit the issue, both outlets, of course, go out of their way to insert a million Biden-approved caveats about how this is all no big deal. NBC characterizes Bobby Kennedy and Marianne as, quote, fringe rivals, in spite of the fact Bobby Kennedy is hitting 20 percent in polls both have polled in double digits. The article goes on to describe a potential Biden loss there as inconsequential, quotes Democrats hand-wringing not about the two candidates in double digits already in the race, but about potential, quote, big name Democrats who might decide to jump in. Well, guys, you can relax. No elite approved candidate is going to

primary Biden. Politico's coverage is, if anything, even worse. They compare Kennedy and Williamson to the convicted felon who won 41% against Obama in West Virginia in 2012, as if an obscure federal inmate is remotely similar to two nationally known figures, one of whom hails from the most famous political family in the entire country, and as if the West Virginia primary holds nearly the significance as the New Hampshire primary does. As if that's not enough, they explicitly in this article assert that Biden's nomination is in no danger and that losing this primary

is totally fine and cool. They write, quote, either way, losing a primary that doesn't actually count for anything isn't a problem, nor are Kennedy and Williamson a threat to the president's renomination, not by any stretch. This isn't an opinion piece, remember. It is a supposed journalist offering ironclad assurances that Biden faces no threat at all. Look, maybe. But guess what? Y'all been wrong about a whole lot. And by the way, it's not up to you to decide who is a threat and who is not.

What's a big deal and what is not. That's up to the voters. Take a look at these latest primary polls from Emerson, courtesy of our friend Sager here. Kennedy is actually outperforming DeSantis in these polls. Does the media say, oh, DeSantis isn't a threat? He's not serious. Marianne is outpolling every other Republican on the list. Do so-called journalists go out of their way to label Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, and co. fringe? Tim Scott is literally at zero percent. Does the media feel the need to nervously guarantee its readers he isn't by any stretch a threat to Trump's nomination? Look, Biden is the favorite. There is no doubt about it. But when 70 percent of the country says they don't want him, no amount of media cope and propaganda should persuade you that he is not

vulnerable, especially when he's not even capable, apparently, of campaigning. The media is doing all they can to cover for this man, to persuade everyone they have no other choice in the matter. If Biden's opponents are really so fringe, not a threat by any stretch in their language, then they should have no problem calling for debates so our president can show the nation why he deserves to be reelected. And this New Hampshire thing is a real problem. And I see this as an attempt by the media to get ahead of it and pre-spin. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now, we have Seth Hatana. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, Thank you. for me. So you got a hold of some court filings that shed some light on a key meeting in the run up to 9-11. Go ahead and put the element up on the screen there, guys. This is something that a lot of folks have focused on, which is you had two of the eventual hijackers in this supposedly, theoretically, chance encounter with a man named Omar al-Bayoumi, who was a Saudi intelligence asset. Take us back to that meeting, why that meeting ends up being so significant, and what you were able to uncover through your reporting. Well, it's one of those extraordinary meetings you read about in spy

stories, something that seems like an innocuous everyday event that turns out to be a huge, huge momentous event in the 9-11 attacks. So this happened at a restaurant in Los Angeles, Middle Eastern restaurant. Omar al-Bayoumi was there. Supposedly by chance, he says, drops a piece of paper and strikes up a conversation with these two men who also just happened to be there. But now we know a lot more. It's taken 20 years to learn that Obar Bayoumi was a Saudi intelligence asset and that he was directed to go there by a network, an intelligence network that was a Saudi intelligence network, was operating inside the United States. And the more astonishing fact is there are onion.

This is like an onion that you have to peel is that many FBI agents believe that not only was this not a chance encounter, but it was being directed by the CIA, who is using the Saudis to try to recruit a member of Al Qaeda. The two guys who had just arrived in the United States and were at that Middle Eastern restaurant. Right. Yeah, this has been a focus of the, you know, what was it, the 18 pages or whatever, the hidden pages. We've known about the al-Bayoumi meeting for a very long time, but can you go into a little bit about why the CIA would be pursuing this? I'm not sure, you know, many of our viewers probably weren't even born on 9-11. So one of the important things for people to step back is

there was a big rivalry between the CIA Al-Qaeda unit and the FBI Al-Qaeda unit with no intelligence sharing, which resulted in the fact that these two gents were even allowed to come to the United States along with the rest of the 9-11 hijackers, despite being known to intelligence authorities without ever flagging it to the FBI. This looks like it might have been an intentional cover-up. Am I right in that, Seth? And just lay out some of what I'm talking about for the audience. Yeah, so that's what the FBI agents believe. They believe that the CIA knew, the CIA did know that these two guys had arrived in the

United States. We know that these two guys had arrived in the United States. We know that for a fact. What happened was there were FBI agents who were co-located inside the CIA, which means that they were there to report on something that might be of interest to the FBI. The CIA cannot operate, cannot really conduct spy operations against United States citizens, but the FBI can. So the CIA will tip the FBI, hey, there's a guy of interest. And so they had this, they had two guys of interest, two guys from Al Qaeda. The reason why this was of interest to the CIA is they were desperate to get a source inside

Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda, the terrorist network, and like all terrorist networks, are very close circuit. They rely on very personal communications, bonds of trust, very hard to get a source in there. So these two guys arrive at this restaurant, and here's a golden opportunity for the CIA to land a source. The FBI also learns that these two guys, through the CIA, they learn these two guys are in the United States, and they type up rankles to the FBI agents who were there. And it's something they can't let go of. And it's one of the pieces that led them to believe that this was an intentional cover-up, that they were keeping the FBI out of the loop so that they could recruit these two al-Qaeda hijackers. You write in your article, the theory that the CIA had launched

a failed effort to recruit the hijackers through the Saudis has been around for years and was always circumstantial at best. But the document obtained by Spy Talk reveals there is more evidence to support it. One former FBI agent claimed to the investigator that the CIA possesses top secret operational files in a, quote, paper trail about that Saudi spy, that's al-Baiyumi, who met the hijackers that are still being suppressed. A CIA spokesperson denied the agency was hiding information. The FBI declined to comment. Can you talk to us about the significance of that? And also, what's the context within which you were able to obtain these documents? Okay, so these documents were filed in Guantanamo, where the 9-11 defendants are on trial.

They've been held there for 20 years, and there have been interminable court proceedings going on. This was on the docket. It was posted, but it was posted completely redacted. It was 21 pages of basically black sheets. But I read some discussions about this cable, about this document, sorry, and was able to obtain a copy. Yeah, the thing that really jumped out at me was the thing you just mentioned. One agent who says that the CIA has paper, there's a paper trail. And, you know, for years, the FBI and others had believed this theory that there was a CIA operation that failed to try to recruit these hijackers. But now it seems there's a paper trail that's just gotten lost or hidden or whatever. And that would show that the CIA had contacted sometime with Al Bayoumi.

We don't know what those papers say, but operational cables means that, you know, that there were some kind of CR operation that ran across all by you me somewhere. I don't, we don't know where, uh, but it's, it's evidence, it's hard evidence that Congress or someone can obtain, uh, that would shed light on what really happened on the events running up to 9-11. Yeah, I mean, Seth, this is where I just come in and, you know, I'm just like, are we sure it hasn't just been destroyed at this point? I mean, so much was hidden from the 9-11 Commission.

We have basically known the contours of all of this since 2002. It's been absolutely not only covered up, but many of the initial investigations by Congress, they frankly just failed. I mean, many of them had the broad contours of what was going on and, you know, in the midst of Iraq and sanity and all that, basically just let it go. And now finally, you know, a journalist like you is just picking it up. Do you think we can ever get to the bottom of this even now, years later? Will it make it easier or harder just because so much of the information is probably gone? Yeah, the information is gone, but the memories are not.

And I don't think something like this will will stay secret forever. It's too big. There's there's too much blood on people's hands or guilt or I don't think it'll stay secret forever. I think it may be a deathbed confession. Who knows if this did happen? But you know, I believe that information eventually comes out.

It just takes time. Yeah, I hope so. Well, Seth, great job reporting on this. I really recommend people go and read through the entire piece, which I think lays out the evidence in very compelling detail.

Again, it's over at the Substack Spy Talk, which I also would recommend to folks. And we're really grateful for your time and for laying this out for our audience to understand. That's right. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it. It's our pleasure. Link to Spy Talk down in the description. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Thanks for all the yearly and the lifetime members who've been helping us out with the lights and the set

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And I know how much it means to so much of you and it means so much to us, I think, for all of your support. So thank you all very much for the new ones, BreakingPoints.com, if you're able. Otherwise, we'll see you all tomorrow. See you all tomorrow. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free

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