Camp Gagnon - Exposing the Most Infamous Sex Cult In US History

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Frank Parlato Jr. is an American publisher widely credited for bringing attention to the NXIVM cult in 2017. Frank's experience working for the cult and later facing legal retaliation for defecting makes this among the best inside looks at one of the most insidious cults in American history. WELCOME TO CAMP! Shout out to our sponsors, Huel, Morgan &Morgan, and Bluechew! Shout out to our sponsors, Huel, Morgan &Morgan, and Bluechew! Huel: https://huel.com/camp TIMECODES 0:00 Intro 1:11. Origins Of Nxivm + Keith Raniere 6:12 Where members come from + Keith’s Knowledge 7:45 How Does Indoctrination Work? 9:12 When Does Nxivm Meet? 10:39 How Did Raniere Remain Prominent? 13:14 When Do The Crimes Start? 15:09 Prominent Figures Joining Nxivm 17:12 Parallels Between Members 19:06 Bronfman Sisters 22:20 How Were Actresses Brought In? 24:01 Losing $26,000,000 + Illuminati 25:30 Frankie’s Recruitment 34:21 What Were Raniere’s Motives? 38:19 Dinner With Keith Raniere 45:36. After Recovering The Money + Getting Fired 52:28. Exposing The Criminal Side 58:47 Bronfman Sisters Take Frankie To Court 1:05:47 Frankie’s Report 1:11:12 Catherine Oxenberg + Branding 1:15:40 DOS Women 1:18:00 Main Things Frankie Exposed + Raniere Escapes 1:21:34 Who Was Charged? 1:23:06 Victim’s Reimbursement 1:25:18 Nxivm Members Today 1:26:08 Member’s Thoughts On Frankie + FBI Planting Evidence 1:34:22 What Made Frankie Special? 1:42:21 New Definition Of Sexual Misconduct 1:46:21 Who Were Raniere’s Connections + Regrets From Case 1:49:07 Frank Receiving Death Threats 1:50:08 How To Fight Back Against Being Targeted 1:52:01 Power Of The Jury + Prosecutor 1:56:20 Process Of The Prosecution + Defense 1:59:03 One Taste Case 2:05:37 Trump's Case + Job Of Jury 2:12:15 William Penn

This is Frank Parlato Jr. He's an author and journalist of The Frank Report and is basically the reason that the Nexium cult got taken down. That's right. If you're not familiar with Nexium, it was a prominent sex cult that existed in New York, operated by this guy Keith Reneery. They're known because they recruited very many prominent Hollywood stars, and many of those stars were actually used to recruit other members.

Some of these members, in the court testimony, actually alleged that they were sex slaves, that were branded with the initials of Rennery. And this entire cult was basically taken down because of the guy sitting across from me right now. We go through all the details. He explains how he was originally hired by Nexium and what he saw on the inside. He talks about cults and their leaders,

specifically Keith Rennery and the type of manipulation of tactics that he would use on the members of his cult. And ultimately, Frank tells us how he took down the cult, the channels and the processes and the legal battles that he went through and why so many others failed

when Frank eventually succeeded. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Frank Parlato, Jr., specifically. How are you, sir? Very well, and thank you very much for having me here. Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. I've been on a deep dive of different rabbit holes,

specifically regarding mysterious organizations' power and the corruption of power as it involves small groups, and organizations that seem to be, you know, resembling of a cult. Not that that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about a different organization that has no cult-like qualities at all. An organization known as Nexium that you have an interesting history with, initially being hired and then working as one of the lead journalists and investigators to expose the organization.

So just for any of the viewers listening, that might not be familiar, Could you just get everyone up to speed? Could you first explain what Nexium was and how you got involved with it? Nexium was a name of a company that purportedly taught self-improvement classes. It was founded by a man named Keith Reneery and assisted by a woman named Nancy Salzman. and they taught classes called executive success programs. And in it you were to learn certain truths that they proposed were not available anywhere else. And this started in like the 90s?

1998 began and it began quite successfully attracting prominent people. It was based upon a fanciful notion that, the founder, Keith Reneery, was the smartest man in the world. Based on what credition? Well, that's a great question. He got himself credited for something that is a story unto itself. But in 1989, he managed to get his name placed in the Guinness Book of Records, Australian edition, as one of the top three.

problem solvers as judged by a certain very specific IQ test. The category was highest IQ. Ranieri, along with two others, achieved the highest score of a particular test. And the gullible editors of Guinness accepted this as a category and named him. Then when they did a little more research, they retired the category. But with his one appearance in 1989 in the Guinness Book of Records as the man with the highest IQ, he was then able to advertise that he was the smartest man in the world. Australia edition. I think that that is a funny caveat, because I've met some Australians, no disrespect to you guys. It's a low bar, okay? But that is a funny ripple in this whole story that based off of one IQ test that isn't even necessarily

standardized IQ test. This is like a subset of intelligence quotient testing. Well, there's worse to follow. It was a take-home test. Which, if anyone went to school through COVID, you know, the take-home tests are, you know, a little easier, maybe, for lack of a better word. Well, it's, it's rumored that he has several assistants helping him with the, the, the test that was 50 questions, difficult questions, I will admit, but they were not unknown. They had been published. And he managed to also co-opt the IQ society that created the test and later controlled it. And so he was able to change his score.

When he missed one question, he was able to have that changed post facto. And that's what elevated him up to the highest score. Interesting. So does he come from a well-to-do background? Does he have any type of high academic scholarship throughout his adolescence? No, not really. He did go to a college where he managed to graduate. And he had often said that he was the genius of the school.

It's a lamentable thing, but the prosecution in the subsequent prosecution of Reneery uncovered his scholastic records, and they weren't quite up to the standard that he had previously boasted. Hmm. Interesting. So he creates this course and immediately gains intrigue from, I guess, people in the immediate community. Where does he start it and where are most of the early membership coming from?

It began in Albany, suburban Albany, and that's where it began and ended, but they had classes in Los Angeles, New York City, in Brooklyn, in London, and wherever they could gather a group to pay between $2,000 and $10,000 for a course. the people would come, pay, and learn the secrets of Keith Renary's wisdom. Can you share what any of these secrets were? Do you feel like the classes in the nascent years of the organization were legitimate in any way? You know, I think for modest, people of modest intelligence, he had called different logistical and problem-solving techniques from his, history and use them to kind of stimulate people who hadn't really thought outside the box, who just accepted whatever the status quo was.

And so he, in some ways, encourage people to, and it's ironic, think for themselves, while at the same time he was working on a program to indoctrinate people so that they wouldn't think for themselves. Hmm. And how does this indoctrination work at that time? Like, how are you simultaneously teaching people, you know, sort of like logical proofs to then think outside the box, but then simultaneously hindering their ability to think? Well, I think the idea of thinking outside the box was the bait. And the hook was greater acceptance into the nexium world. And there was a hierarchy based on not dissimilar to martial arts where you have various belts from white to

yellow to orange etc and he did the same thing you would get not a belt but a sash which you could wear in class and the color would denote your rank and furthermore denote your intelligence I imagine. Yes. In fact, they were down to the hand shakes. You had a certain hand clasp. And if you were in a higher rank than the person you would shake hands with, your hands would go on the outside of the lower ranked individuals. There was quite a bit of hierarchy and that encourage people to want to rise in the ranks and one day be in the shadow of the greatest thinker of them all. And then how frequently does it, do these groups meet?

Because it initially starts classes, I assume, where people are coming from a one-off, or they're doing a package, where they're coming in every couple of weeks for a period of months. But then at what point do they start meeting on a weekly or daily basis? Well, that's an excellent question.

They began with weekly classes for an hour or two. Then you were encouraged, if you really wanted to catch the spirit of Keith Reniery, you needed to take an intensive. And an intensive is a 5, 11, or 16-day class where it is straight on every day from 7 in the morning till 9-10 at night. In this class, Shulis,

kept going constantly with instruction after instruction, tapes, sessions, breakout sessions and for 12, 13, 14 hours a day straight, you are indoctrinated

into the teachings, the rare teachings of Keith Renary who was referred to, not by his name, but by his title, Vanguard. Which comes from a video game,

correct? It does come from a video game. He loved that game. Interesting. That's kind of, I would have gone with Zelda or something. I feel like there's a cooler video game name to go with. But it's an interesting thing. What does he do in these early days that sort of preserves his mystique as some type of wise sage from a foregone era?

What he did was wise. He used women, women praying on women. Most of his students were women. And his teachers were women. And so he used women to persuade, new prospective students, especially if they were slender, attractive women, and or affluent of either gender. He would have the women extol him. And the women, especially a few of the top women, were extraordinarily good at inflating his, not only his genius, but his highest ethics.

In fact, he called himself. It was a word I was unfamiliar with, an ethicist. Interesting. And so he's able to use these people internally in the group to sort of inflate his status within the organization. And then I'm assuming keep a certain amount of distance from the newer members to kind of keep that mystique and the lore kind of going. That's right. He would not teach. But his picture would adorn the walls.

next to slightly smaller pictures of Mahatma Gandhi, an athlete that he admired by the name of Thorpe, Jim Thorpe. Jim Thorpe, absolutely. There's a town named after him in Pennsylvania. Yeah, it's actually a nice town. I bet it is. And the third character in his trio of portraits was Albert Einstein. That's good company.

Well, that was the intimation. he was the head, the athleticism of Jim Thorpe, the ethics and heart of Gandhi and the genius of Einstein all combined in one human being. Wow. That's a good selection. I would have gone with a different athlete probably. I would have gone with like, I don't know, Michael Jordan or I wouldn't have picked a white guy from like the 1900s. You know what I mean?

If I was going to pick Supreme, I would have gone like Beau Jackson. But, you know, to each his own, I'm not the leader of the organization. That's an interesting thing. So so far, there seems to be no, you know, it has sort of the calling cards of kind of an organized, alleged cult, again, using that word with some distance. But so far there's no misconduct, right? He's teaching these classes, people are coming in and out. At what point does it take a turn? Is it early or does it go on for a number of years before there starts to be, I guess, criminal action?

Well, I think two factors come into play here. Number one is that Reneer, at least ostensibly, had a libidinous side to him. And it turned out that he was sleeping with most of his female teachers. And he had an interesting doctrine with his lady friends. He was so brilliant. His greatness was so enormous that they had to dedicate their entire, life to him because should they have sex with anyone else, these subtle vibrations could revert back to him. That is if you, for example, Mark, if you were to have an intimate relationship with one of

Reneer's harem, the vibrations that you admit or I admit would rebound back, so he told these women, and it could potentially kill him and end the entire mission. Oh, damn. Ouch, right? That kind of, it's a diss to us. You know what's wrong? What's the wrong with us, Frank? Your DNA is not up to standards. No offense.

I mean, none taken. Yeah, so I can see how all of a sudden now there's a power dynamic sort of infused with his sexual propensity. And he's now able to control these women. Uh-oh. Skateboard down. And now he's able to control these women using the sexual dynamic of their relationship. And this goes on. I'm assuming for the better part of the 90s.

This just continues. Yeah, it was a constant from the beginning through the time of his arrest. Now, at what point do high-ranking members of society's aristocracy start coming into the fold? As, you know, we're going to find out later, there's very prominent actresses and, you know, billionaires and things like that. But from my understanding, there's even allegation that, like, people like Richard Branson or, you know, like the children of. billionaires are now entering into this organization and are in either some way aiding and abetting the organization or you know funding it directly when do they come into the fold and why within a couple of years enough of a established reputation that this was a new and

exciting form of teaching and it attracted a few interesting people with some prestige including some government officials and some executives of corporations. And then they landed some interest in Mexico. And they were able to secure the interest of a prominent son of a former president of Mexico. Emiliano Salinas was the son Carlos. Salinas was the former president of Mexico and a very wealthy man. And Carlos is a man who strikes fear in Mexicans hearts for it is widely rumored that he was, while president, the literal head of the drug cartels. Emiliano was his good-looking playboy type son who then joined Nexium and made a very public announcement that Nexium was the greatest teachings of the world had ever known.

and this immediately attracted a large Mexican contingent, and suddenly now it's international. Interesting. Emiliano was not as wealthy as his father, but he was on a very handsome stipend. I can imagine. Now, I think that there's a misconception about organizations like this, whether you call them, you know, self-help organizations or, you know, following some type of guru or just an outright cult. And I think a lot of people look at this from the outside that have never really had any proximity to these types of groups. And they say, oh, these are for losers. These are for, you know, destitute people with no purpose in their lives.

You know, this is the behavior of, you know, the downtrodden of society. And I think that this case, as well as many others, but this one specifically highlights that I don't think that that belief is actually accurate. that I think anyone is susceptible to falling into groupthink, specifically when you have a charismatic and intelligent leader. So I'm curious in your research of this case and speaking with, you know, survivors and victims, was there any type of solid through line amongst people that were joining, why they were joining, what they were seeking? Or was it, you know, sort of miried across the group? Well, you know, I heard one observer who had seen it pretty up. close who felt that almost everyone that was in it was in some way what he called a broken person. And whether that's true or what that means precisely, maybe just more poetic than literal,

but I think that everybody came there seeking something, maybe the fundamental question, all beings to get the answers. And here was a man reputed to have the answers. and with a number of intelligent, good-looking, smart women saying that he was competent to provide all the answers that all your life you've wondered about. What escalated the progress of nexium was the acquisition of two sisters, Brothman by name, daughters of Edgar Brothman, senior, the billionaire, who was the chairman of Seagram Liquor. And they came with their own inherited wealth. And they were very publicly enamored and began to spend the money that Reneery had never had access to before. Now he had hundreds of millions at his disposal.

And he probably used this money for a good cause, right? He, like, donated it and gave it to people and stuff? He donated it to lawyers to sue people. Okay. He donated it to the commodities market where he lost $66 million of their money. He donated it to a scam artist in Los Angeles to connive the girls, the two sisters, out of $26 million. That's where I entered in because I recovered their 26. million dollars. Okay, story time. Now we're talking, Frank. So he's now running this organization by

the mid-2000s, roughly how many members, maybe a couple hundred at this point? Well, depending on how you define members, bedrock, hardcore members, a couple hundred, people who were seriously taking classes, you know, a thousand or more. And casual students, maybe 10,000 people, 15,000 people had come and gone through the doors. Interesting. So there's a couple hundred intersect them and, you know, tens, thousands up into the 10,000, maybe even north of that of people that are familiar and following this guy as a, and like him, as a wise teacher. And they're enamored by him. And he's got millions and millions of dollars. And then you are now brought into the case. You're initially hired by them. Is that true? Is that true? That's correct. And what does that look like and how do you get involved?

And what do you think initially when this email comes into your inbox? Well, what happened just that preceded my arrival in 2007 was that he began to get some glamour people to. Several actresses and flashy people came into the fold and became enamored. Some of them quit their acting world. None of them, I would say, were tremendous stars, although there were some famous people who took class. But serious advocates who were actresses were Allison Mack, Anne Kristen Kruke, Grace Park, were three. And these were attractive women in their 20s who were prominently featured on television at the time. And that added now beyond the wealth, the international appeal, glamorous and attractive actresses who would go up front and recruit for him.

Do we understand how these actresses, how they joined into the fold? Like obviously I can understand, you know, a local business person in Albany, you know, Googling, seeing a flyer talking to a friend, getting pulled in. But someone that's living in Hollywood that's, you know, in a show that's filming however many days out of the year, a ton of friends. does someone like Allison Mac get brought into the group? It was through Vancouver and a woman, an aspiring actress with a modest list of appearances by the name of Sarah Edmondson became a branch manager of anexium teaching facility in Vancouver. And she knew a number of actresses because she had appeared herself in a number of. of productions and she recruited Kristen Kruk, who then recruited Alison Mack and everyone recruited somebody. And did they have some type of direct incentive to do recruitment or was it just because

of their infatuation with the leader? I think it was a threefold infatuation with the leader and getting his pleasure. There was an economic incentive because it was based on a multi-level marketing. if you brought someone in and they took courses, you would get a slice of that. And if they recruited someone, you'd also get a slice in the, I guess they call it an upline. Yeah, it kind of makes like a pyramid. I wouldn't say that, Frank. I mean, that is slanderous.

Well, that's what the prosecution called. All right, in that case. I think they nailed it. So they now have a financial incentive as well as a social and sort of status incentive. And then they bring in all these high-ranking people. And then they lose $26 million and they need Frank Parlato's help. Well, that was kept kind of on the low. And initially, they didn't even understand they had lost the money.

They understood they lost $65 million because the commodities were, went against them. But Keith explained it to the two sisters. He said that the Illuminati, in combination with their own father, who was one of the members of the Illuminati, had manipulated the market to defeat his mathematically perfect strategy for taking control of the commodities market. Oh, that's a good alibi. I'm going to try that my wife.

That's a good... Next time, like, I get an argument with her, and she's like, oh, why did you... I'll be like, hey, look, your dad's in the Illuminati, and that's why I was late for dinner. That's smart. Wow. So it worked.

And they believed it. They were like, oh, I guess. Yes, they did believe it. Wow. They blamed a guy named Stephen Herbitts as being the master manipulator who was the conduit with the Illuminati and the Brofman's. Herbitts was a man, a friend of mine, by the way, a good man, who was with the Pentagon at times and also worked for Brofman. So now you are brought in, and at this point, what type of work are you doing upstate? And why did they recruit you to try to retrieve this money?

Well, they didn't recruit me initially to retrieve the money. They didn't even know they were being robbed. They recruited me initially because they felt I had enough knowledge about the following things. Media, spin, press spin, philosophy, and a history of religions so that I could articulate the difference between a religion and a cult, if there is any. And so I was initially hired at the sum of, it's a little embarrassing to say because it's way lower than I deserve to be paid, but it was in 2007.

I was originally hired for the sum of $75,000 per month to manage their media strategies. And to get them away from what was increasingly happening is media would portray them as a cult. I see. And what did you think of the organization? Had you had any prior knowledge, had you seen or met people that were involved with it?

Or did it just come across to your desk? And you're like, what are these, this bizarre looking word? What does this mean? Well, what happened was two people who were on the opposite side of the political spectrum approached me. Steve Pidgeon, who was a Democratic, at the time a Democratic fundraiser and strategist, former counsel to the New York State Senate, and a figure who's pretty well known today, Roger Stone, from Florida. and Roger was up in Albany at the time.

He had worked for Nexium for a time, so had Pigeon as consultants. And they asked if I'd be interested in looking into this matter and maybe taking on a challenging task. I see. And you're up for it. You're like, oh, this seems interesting. Two guys that I know in respect

are kind of giving me a little pitch here. Might as well check it out. When do you start your initial investigation and kind of looking into the organization and seeing, you know, how you can kind of help the brand and help the strategy, and what do you uncover there for? I relocated there for the winter of 2007 so that I could observe and look at what we had up against them. I had been familiar with the concept that it's very easy to label somebody, a cult or anything, and it's hard to get out of that shadow.

So I wanted to see what they were, and my initial impression of them was good. Ostensibly, this was a group of happy, healthy, people that were enjoying what they were doing. They liked their lives, and they were smart, intelligent people. Were you going to any of the classes? Were you meeting with the members,

or was this based off of the media that you were consuming? I never went to a class. In fact, at one time, they told me that if I really wanted to work for them, I'd have to go to a class. And I said, well, I don't really want to work for you that badly. I'll teach a class, if you like. And they said, okay, you don't have to go to class. Would you write some modules for us, some one-hour classes? I never got around to that.

What were you going to write? I don't know. We never got that far. Oh, that would have been kind of fun. Writing a class, that would have been interesting. So what stopped you from ultimately pursuing the class writing? What interrupt that? I get busy on this matter of a Los Angeles real estate project that I alluded to before,

where $26 million appeared to be evaporating. Money had been invested by the Braffin sisters. Why are two-man named Deer-R-Eyplyan who has since changed his name? and it struck me as a project that had some hair on it. For one thing, they were to be buying and fixing, or rather buying and building, hillside mansions. And they had purchased 30 lots in Los Angeles County,

all of the lots south of Venture Boulevard, where prices were pretty good and considered to be upscale neighborhoods. They bought stray lots that had here to four been believed not to be buildable because of the unique characteristics of the hillside, the possibility of sliding down a hill and so forth. And the concept was Renieri's genius was such that they could build on these heretofore unbuildable lots and create super valuable properties. The art was in the foundations. Then they were supposed to build the rest of the house. curiously they had purchased the land and built a number of foundations and two years had passed

and not a house was built. Just the foundations. I thought it was awfully strange. Interesting. So what did you uncover as you started digging deeper into this? What happened with the homes? Was anyone contracted to build the homes? And was this all coming directly from Reniri?

Or was there shell companies and mediators that were kind of handling this development? The man that was the developer was this aforementioned Pliam, Yuri Pliam, who was described to me as Keith's best friend. And one of the things I found out, ironically, was that Keith's best friend was also the commodities broker that had conducted the trades that had lost $65 million. dollars. And so having failed in the commodities due to the, as Keith said, the Illuminati, he then went back to Plyham now to be the real estate developer using the Braffman's money. And what aroused my suspicion was the Braffmans came to me and they said, we need five, can you get us $5 million?

I said, for what? And they said, well, we need it for this real estate project. We've put $26 million, and now we're $5 million over budget. Can you find us alone? So that's when I began to investigate. And I flew out there, much against the wishes of Reneerie and his lieutenant Nancy Salzman. They didn't think I had the ability to comprehend the genius that was behind this project. And when I went out there, I didn't bother to tell your reply him or anyone else.

I just slipped into town. And I looked at their payroll records of 140 employees each week. And I went to all the properties and there wasn't but maybe a dozen people there. So they had phantom payroll. And then I looked at the properties in these foundations that were so brilliantly conceived were actually rusting because there was rebar exposed. And once that Russ, you don't really have the foundation you thought you had. I confronted Plyham with his payroll records and so forth.

He caved right away and signed over all of the properties. And we recovered the money the two sisters wept with joy that I had exposed this. thief that was taking their money and I got most of the money back but Reneerie was not pleased why that's a question I'm not sure if you thought I was with the

Illuminati or what or working in tandem with their father but he felt that I had exposed something that he should have as the world's smartest man right your inferior DNA finding out about this and getting the money back might be a

might be an front to his power. I would say so. Now, do you believe that Reneery believes in these sort of external factions of power against him in the organization, or do you think he was using these things as a tool to control people? I don't think he believes it. But he thinks he can sell that to gullible people. I see.

Because, you know, his schick was he's so good. he's so pure that only invidious forces on a global level could conspire to undo him and the goodness that he wanted to give to the world. Did he believe that truly? I don't think so. Even that was, he knew he was kind of playing a ruse. I think what his real secret motive was, was he enjoyed destroying people's happiness. Hmm.

And just out of some type of bizarre parapheria or, was it some type of trauma that he endured? Do you have any speculation as to what the root of that would be, the desire to destroy happiness? I think he had an epiphany at some point. Originally he misdiagnosed himself

as a sex addict. And he was of the nature of a kind of a beast that has to constantly engage in sexual activity. And then one day he realized that wasn't bringing him happiness. That wasn't the thing. And then he realized, much like his game, Vanguard, you get power, you get happiness when you destroy the enemy. And so I guess technically in the

game of Vanguard, when you stay alive, you keep your power by destroying the enemy and then you get more power. You have to kill. If you don't kill, you lose your power. I see. So happiness is in some way zero sum. And in order for me to be more happy, other people need to be less happy. Yeah. There's nuances to making people unhappy. You can make people unhappy by putting poison in the water and killing people and making them sick. But that's not really the art of making people unhappy. The real art, the beauty of it to him was to make these people think he was helping them that they were his students while he slowly evaporated, diminished, and by degrees decimated their lives. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick, because if you're anything

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It was a dinner. And Claire Brofman, the Eres, was there along with his top lieutenant Nancy Salzman and his legal liaison, Kristen Keefe, Renieri and myself. In fact, somewhere there exists a video of that dinner because they filmed everything that this genius did. Oh, really? I mean, I don't think they followed him into the bathroom, but whenever he was available to talk to anybody, there was usually someone filming it.

Was it clear to you that there was. was filming going on? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Interesting. Cameras were set up by none other than Claire Broffman. Did that feel strange to you walking into a dinner and being like, oh, there's cameras here? I understood the idea that they thought he was an astounding person. So I was prepared to accept the fact that there were cameras that was disclosed.

And so we had dinner, which was vegetarian. Keith purported to be in all of his followers, had agreed that they were vegetarians. They must be for the kindness element of it. He can't harm animals. One interesting culinary aspect, I don't know, do you use, do you ever eat garlic? Yeah.

You'd have to, well, maybe you wouldn't have to, but the women had to issue garlic in their diet. I see. I can't imagine this is for a digestive purpose. I assume this was for some other type of sexual reasons. Yes. You've discerned accurately. And so he did not personally care for the secondhand odor of garlic.

I see. Interesting. So even through what you consume, not only through teaching and means, media, but straight up to your diet and your food, was sort of curated and cultivated by one person. Yes, except he didn't mandate it, per se. He suggested it and his suggestions were realistically understood to be coming from the smartest and most ethical man in the world. I also imagine there was a social incentive as well, that if you were someone that was admitting a secondary scent of garlic, that maybe you would have less proximity to the most

supreme being. That is correct. And then that would lower your status. You'd have less access to his tongue. I see. Literally and metaphorically. That's an interesting way to control power. Now, Frank, where did you grow up? In the Buffalo Niagara Falls area. Just kind of like a regular upbringing. Was it a wealthy upbringing or was it more? I wouldn't call it wealthy. I'd call it middle class. My dad was an attorney who made a decent living. And you grew up around regular people. Like, you didn't grow up around, you know, wealthy Hollywood types and, uh, influencer, so to speak. Like, I feel like you have a pretty good metric for kind of calling out bullshit and seeing when things were a little fugazi. Is that fair to say? I'd like to think so. So you walk into this dinner

and this guy is the supreme being and he's, you know, you're technically, you're high, by his organization and you're like, are you trying to decipher what's going on? Is this ringing alarm bells in your head? We're like, oh, this is all like, so crazy. Or are you just like, I got a job to do? I'm going to keep my head down and do the job. No, I think it was something different.

I've seen bullshitters before. In fact, some people have said that that's one of my stock and trade techniques is bullshit. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I have seen it. I think I can smell it. And I saw Keith in a very different way at first. Now, he's Sicilian and I'm Sicilian. So I think I understood a little bit about his schick. I love Italians.

You guys are the best. Thank you. Even just like classifying to like specific towns in Italy, like, look, as two Sicilians, I know what the fuck's going on. So what did you see in him that you were like, all right, this is? I saw on him, he was a little younger than me. maybe what, seven years, six years younger. And I saw him kind of doing what Sicilians occasionally do, acting the Don, playing the role.

He had these adoring sycophants, and he had a certain message he wanted to teach. And maybe, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he had certainly had the legal and the practical right to teach if adult, consented to be taught and they wanted to pay money for it. He had the right to teach his BS. Or I'll take it to stuff farther. Maybe there was some value in some of the things he taught. And so what I was there for was to protect his right to be a teacher without being labeled a cult.

Did anything interesting happen at that first dinner other than the cameras and the vegetarian food? Was there anything else that you noted that you were like, huh, that's interesting? There was two things I found interesting. One was that I realized that I'd have to try to teach him to not pontificate. He ran long. He'd go on and ramble about philosophical things. And he was accurately quoting philosophical concepts that had been espoused thousands of years before he was born. But he was talking about Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and principles that were not unknown to me,

but they sounded most wondrous to his devotees. And I recognize that he could potentially be taught to shorten up his monologue. I see. And did he have mentors? Did he have people that he trusted that he kept sort of out of the public view that he was getting this information from? Or was he just like a voracious reader? Like, where was he actually acquiring this knowledge? He would, his ego was too enormous to ever permit having a mentor.

He read a lot. And, you know, it's a remarkable thing because he was severely afflicted with Strabismus. That is, he was cross-eyed. And so, um, despite that serious hand. He was a ferocious reader. Interesting. So you leave this dinner and go back to work. And at this point, had you already recovered the, those funds that was prior to?

So you go over, you know, recover those funds. And now you're back at your desk and you're thinking like, okay, how else do I work with this organization? What are the strategies can I employ? What do you begin to do next? Well, I didn't get that far. After I recovered the assets, they had 30 properties. that were in need of some kind of action.

You can't just leave properties half built on a hillside next to Paris Hilton's house. That becomes a tax liability, right? More than that, it becomes a neighborhood nuisance. You've got this house with just a foundation that's sitting there for two years. We needed action, so I proposed to Reneery, who had spent a lot of time with on the phone particularly.

that I could finish the project. I could turn it around despite the challenges we could still make this a moneymaker. So he negotiated a contract with me and on behalf of the Broffman sisters wired me a $1 million advance. I got the properties, got control of them, got the financing so they didn't have to put another dime into it, started all the work and all the properties. And then I began to look into how they lost that $65 million. And the next day, after I announced it, that I didn't think the Illuminati really, if they did indeed exist, had anything to do with the loss of the commodities.

And on the following day, I was fired. Not only fired, but he wanted the $1 million back. Uh-oh. And you readily handed it over? I wanted to be an ethicist too, and I didn't think it was ethical, to give them back a million dollars after I just recovered $26 million and saved an $80 million project. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I wouldn't give the money back.

Are you crazy? That is rule number one of dealing with these type of egotomaniacal leaders. You don't go against their sacred teachings and break the group's trust in what they say. And, Frank, unfortunately, that's what you did. I don't. That was a mistake. You should have just went to the classes and said, been like, hey, this guy's right. And then, you know, nothing would have happened.

I'm ashamed to be so transparently, simple. Yeah, you're too much of an ethicist, Rick. So you get fired. And then immediately, what happens? Are they now coming after you for the money? I mean, technically, he thinks this guy owes me a million dollars. That's not a great position to be in, specifically with a group like this. So how do you feel the following weeks?

Are you kind of nervous? Are you trying to get attorneys lined up? What is the next course of action? I went on with my life. I had other things and other projects and people waiting for me to do things. So I just moved on and was prepared to essentially forget about them, not have any hard feelings. I didn't really understand the depth of their true nature. So I just moved on.

I declined to return the million and they declined to sue me, at least at first. All right. Seems like a wash, kind of bad terms to end on. save them a couple of $26 million, and then you get a mill plus $70,000 and we'll call it a day. Yeah. That's how I would have liked to have left it. And so that's the end of the story and there's nothing else that happened, right? A good story would end and they lived happily ever after.

In this case, there was two subtle nuances. One is that to recover the assets I had commenced a lawsuit against the absconding partner you reply them. And I laid out the entire case with affidavits, lined up the witnesses. This was while I was still employed at Nexie was a consultant. And they did not want to move against me until the lawsuit that I had architected was completed. I had brokered a settlement where they would have gotten their $10 million.

in real estate, but they really didn't want money. They really wanted to get the partner in jail. And so I learned a very interesting thing then. It was just after I was fired. Their goal wasn't the money because they could have had the extra money. I had brokered that. They wanted to destroy this guy. You're a plan.

Yeah. So they spent $10 million suing him in legal fees. I had nothing to do with this part of it. I was gone, but it was the lawsuit that I had architect, which they ultimately won. And they won a $10 million judgment against him. They won just as I had designed the case. The difficulty was he had gone bankrupt in the meantime,

and he didn't have a dime to give them. So they spent $10 million. Instead of collecting an additional $10 million that I had lined up for him, they spent $10 million and got zero. And paid a bunch of lawyers to all them. They paid 10 millions of their lawyers. But again, it wasn't about the money. It was about ruining this guy.

And they were successful. Wow. Now, you see all this unfolding. What are your thoughts as you see kind of the dominoes falling here? Well, he did steal the money. If there's too stupid to take the money and they wanted to prove it in court, like many people do, that's their business. I see. Now, did you ever speak with Stone or Pigeon about your...

Sort of falling out with this organization. Did you ever reach out to him? Yeah, this whole thing is a little weird. Like, did that ever come up? Actually, Stone reached out to me before he had left them. And he felt that they were not terribly good people. And so we were able to discuss the fact that they probably weren't. And that was while you were still employed as a consultant.

Then and then again afterward. I see. Stone would call with his usual sarcasm and say, How's the world's smartest man doing? And I would answer, oh, I'm doing fine. I see. So there was a little sense even from the people that had given you the opportunity. They're like, hey, this whole thing is a little shady.

Yeah, but I don't think anybody really understood the criminality that was on the underbelly of it. And when do you start becoming aware of the criminal? in the underbelly of the organization. When I discovered that Claire Broffman secretly went to the FBI and filed a criminal complaint against me right after she won the case that I had set up the $10 million judgment against Plyam, Claire Broffman, with Reneer's insistence,

filed a false criminal complaint against me with the FBI saying that I defrauded her out of $1 million. Oh, wow. With the FBI, this is a federal case. Oh, wow. And do you try to, do you just get lawyers immediately to try to fight this? Like, what is your initial thought? Like, oh, shit, I got to deal with this now?

My initial thought came rather by surprise when one day I got a call from the FBI to ask me about a contract or lack thereof with Claire and Sarah Broffman, who they told me had filed a criminal complaint against me. Shortly after finishing this phone call, I learned that the FBI had, with pairs and pairs with IRS agents,

had essentially descended on. many of my business colleagues in Niagara Falls and conducted interviews, surprise interviews explaining to these

interviewees that I was the target of an FBI investigation. Wow. And why do you believe the FBI was so ready and eager to move on this case? Do you think it was because of sort of the political and, you know, financial influence that these sisters had? Or do you think that they brought evidence and painted like a very clear one-sided narrative?

Or is that just the nature of FBI proceedings that once they get a tip, they start to investigate readily and by surprise? Well, that is not the nature of the FBI to enforce or investigate every tip they get. That's what I'm thinking, right? It's hard to get the FBI to do anything. And all of a sudden, now they're raiding your friends in offices in Niagara. So why were they so ready to act? I believe it had an element of what you might call a perfect storm. I had owned a newspaper called the Niagara Falls Reporter.

It was quite a prominent newspaper in Niagara County, I would say. It was the most red most prominent, highest penetration publication in Niagara County. And I had undertaken a series of stories that had cost some business people in the community about $380 million and lost revenue because I exposed some sweetheart leases. And by a curious stroke of luck, misfortune, the men that lost the money were the leading donors to a governor. of New York by the name of Andrew Cuomo. And he had a lieutenant governor by the name of Kathy Hockel, who is now presently the governor. And she had a husband by the name of Bill Hockel,

who happened to be the U.S. attorney for the Western District of New York. So that means that he was the top law enforcement person in Buffalo Niagara Falls, and he could direct the FBI. and Bill Hokel directed the FBI now that they had something they thought maybe they could pin on me

to go and we have the man find the crime. Oh, wow. So now they bring up this case and they claim that this thing happened to them by you and all of a sudden the powers that be in that jurisdiction say, oh, we've been waiting to get this guy for five years.

This is perfect. and then bang, your offices are getting raided. Everyone you know is getting, you know, interviewed and investigated. Well, in fairness to the FBI and the politeness of Bill Hockel, they didn't actually raid. They just came for interviews. They were good enough not to just break down the doors. And I give him credit for that. He was a little more sophisticated than, say, the prosecutors here in Brooklyn.

And so he politely said, give me all your records. Now, he would have broke down the doors if I refused, but I was also polite enough not to. And so what do you do? What is your feeling at this point? Like, are you stressed out by this? Are you concerned? Are you afraid for your life? Or is this just going to be a, you know, a legal battle you're going to have to muster through? I was quite a naive child at the time. I was in my mid-50s then. Just a boy. Just a child, really. A good boy with optimism and the thought that. that there's an honest system. I see. And so consequently, what happened was,

I knew it was bullshit that the profanments were lying. They had actually perjured themselves in front of the grand jury. They lied about a contract that they never signed. They used this unsigned contract as the evidence that I had defrauded them. But they never signed that contract. It wasn't a valid contract.

contract. But the prosecutors didn't really care. There's one thing you have to know about the FBI and the U.S. attorneys throughout this nation, innocence or guilt is largely irrelevant. It's conviction stats that count. Hmm. So now when do you start making your journal and actually publishing work on the organization? Does that happen after the lawsuit is filed against you? But it wasn't lawsuit, it was, first it was a four-year investigation by the FBI. They found, they had a little difficulty finding a case, but if you keep looking long enough, you can exaggerate things. And then they had a stroke of luck. My partner died. And while he had told them that I was a great partner, even just before he died, they wanted him to be a victim so they'd have another victim

besides Claire Broffman. And so after he died, they included Broffman and my late partner in an indictment. And in 2015, I was indicted on 19 felony counts that would have put me, if convicted, in prison for the rest of my life. I mean, that is crazy. And when that comes across your desk, when you find out that you're facing 15, you know, accounts, what are you feeling then? Claire and Sarah Broffman were on every single count of the indictment. That and my deceased partner, whose lawyer came forward and wrote a letter saying, his lawyer of 35 years old lawyer said, you know, he's not, Frank didn't defraud his partner.

He thought his partner was a great partner. They made a lot of money. There's no fraud there. So I realized that Brofmans were at the bottom of this whole thing, and then it finally hit me. I always thought they wouldn't indict because there was no evidence. But they went ahead and indicted, and that's when I had a realization that the prosecutors today

have so much power that they don't have to worry about innocence or guilt. So I started a blog called The Frank Report. and I started to expose both the prosecutor and the brothans. I see. Now, when I was a kid, I always assumed a grand jury is a much more difficult, you know, legal or situation to be in. I've always heard, like, you know, juries and a grand jury, that's a big one, that's really important. That's going to be the most, you know, scrupulous, you know, sort of process of justice. But from what I've read and kind of different people I spoke to, grand jury seems slightly easier to manipulate.

Is that fair to say, like, prosecutors can kind of get juries to, you know, believe certain things in a grand jury versus a regular jury. Is that a fair assessment? I think it's a very fair assessment. A grand jury once had a historical purpose, which was they were a group of citizens who were to keep an eye both on the prosecutors and the potential abusers of society. criminals and potential criminals, but they also knew the human beings, being what they are, prosecutors included, can do things for political purposes. So at one time, the grand jury had a very important role. But back in around the 1940s, the federal laws changed and they eliminated the power of the

grand jury. It lost its independence, and it became just a tool of the prosecution. It's almost a joke. And when I write a story, I never write that a grand jury indicted somebody. I always say the prosecutors indicted. Because grand juries don't indict anyway. Just do what they're told. Right.

And the prosecutors have a lot of power on a grand jury. When I was on the throes of indictment, I told the prosecutor, I wanted to appear before the grand jury. In federal cases, you don't have an absolute right as a defendant to appear before a grand jury. but I told the prosecutors I wish to appear but I want you to be dismissed I want to talk to them alone you put on your website at the Department of Justice that the grand jury is an independent body

and you know that's not true and I will come and I will tell them that I want you to dismiss it's up to them they're independent I'm going to tell them that they have the right to dismiss you and then I want to talk to them for three or four days alone and present my evidence. And I got a call on November 20th in the morning and said, if Frank wants to appear before the grand jury, he has to be there in a half an hour

because we're going to indict him today. So what did you do? I tried to get ready. I was more than an hour away. And before I could get ready, I was indicted. Wow. Now, why the Bronfen specifically? Why are they coming for you?

Why is it not Reneri? Why is it not other people in the group? Why do these two women who seem to be independently wealthy and have tons of funds and resources, a million dollars to them is, you know, a large sum of money to most people and objectively a decent chunk of cash, but for people like this, it's not that much. Is this the same situation where they want to destroy you entirely? What is your theory or speculation as to why that is? They did whatever Ranieri told them to do.

So you think it came from him? Absolutely came from him. Hmm. There's documentary evidence that shows that he, from the simple point that you have to be fully ethical, if they wanted to be ethical, they had to pursue these charges because I was, in fact, working in tandem with the Illuminati.

Oh, wow. And were you working with the Illuminati? I wanted to. They wouldn't return your calls, though. I couldn't even get to, even the lower level, Illuminatus. Yeah, really? The secretary wouldn't even pick up your phone call. Didn't get any respect.

Oh, that's, that's tough. That's probably because you're from Niagara. That's what it is. I think it's because I'm Italian. I think Sicilian, specifically. I think if you were like Venetian or from, like, the north or even Florence, I think they'd probably give you a shot. But these lower-level Italians, I mean, what are the...

It's nice in the summertime, but, come on, the rest of the year, what are we talking about? that's a wild thing. So he basically was like, we're kind of come for him specifically and then used these women as sort of a mediator to kind of give him some distance from the case.

Was he ever brought up in any of the indictments or anything like that? Against me? Yes. No. I see. So he was savvy enough

to create a little bit of separation. Yeah, he was savvy. Yeah. So now in your report, when you start actually publishing, you're speaking about the prosecutors, speaking about the Bronfmans.

Are you speaking about Reneery and the whole organization immediately or does that come later? Right away. Right away. I determined I'd do two things that expose the prosecutors and I'd expose the nexium organization.

So I took out ads in my own newspapers with pictures of the prosecutors and saying if you've been falsely charged by these men, you know, contact me in. I got a slew of calls. and then I began writing about Reneery, and I learned a lot of things. I wrote thousands of stories. And I uncovered certain crimes that he committed, which led to the New York Times picking up my story, crediting me for it.

And then beginning shortly after the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, that's Brooklyn, began an investigation based on my stories and my information into Reneery, which led to his arrest and Claire Broughman's arrest and for others. And the tables got turned. The headlines in the Buffalo News, my local paper, were that Claire Broffman, the heiress, went from accuser to accused. And the charges against her were far more serious. She was facing like I life in prison, but the unfortunate local office that was indicting me, they had to then change their indictment. They had to drop the brothman charges. They had to rewrite the entire indictment. Now they were stuck just with my now long-deceased partner, and they threw in

a attempted tax evasion charge, not actual tax evasion, but attempted. I didn't actually not pay taxes. I paid all the taxes that would do, but I had planned to not pay them. Well, everyone does that. Every time I get a tax bill, I'm like, I really should just go to Puerto Rico and not pay. Everyone thinks about it, you know. You could be probably charged for that if you thought about it. If you talked to your wife about it. Oh, I'm guilty. I should go straight to jail. I mean, that's just what taxes are. You look at it and you go, oh, fuck this. And then that's attempted tax evasion. more or less. So this is just bullshit. They're trying to find anything.

They have this original thing that gets scrubbed off and then the tacked on things now they're kind of stuck with and they're like, all right, I guess we go forward with this. And the state and the people in that prosecuting district still have a little bit of a vendetta against you. More than a little. Plus, they have the honor of the core, you know, the reputation at stake that we are infallible.

Right. It was bad enough being spanked in the media that they had me down for cheating the brothmans, and they had to drop that after I caused her arrest. She's still in custody. I never spent a minute. Reneer is in custody. So the two people that architected my demise are perfect examples of the adage if you plan to dig a grave, dig two.

But in this case, one guy might not happen to it. So I avoided the grave so far. And ultimately, they dismissed all of the charges against me. And we were ready to go to trial. And then the prosecutors came up with an offer of no jail, essentially no jail. And I would plead guilty to failing to file a form, a tax form. 12 years earlier in the sum of $19,000. It wasn't tax evasion.

I paid the tax on the money. I had merely neglected to inform the IRS as required by law that the money came in cash. That is, I reported the cash as income, but I didn't tell the IRS that it came in cash. Wow. And that was the result, no jail time. and from stealing millions to failing to report $19,000 was the resolution, was either that or go to trial. Well, I'm disgusted by your behavior, okay?

For one, you're not off the hook with me, okay? The fact you didn't say it was cash, I mean, shame on you, Frank. That's reprehensible. But as long as that, you know, I trust the judicial process in this regard. Oh, yeah, we've learned to trust. So it's strange, actually, because now you're in between two, like egos and power structures. You're through the power structure of this organization in Reneer at the behest of the

Bronfans to prosecute you for going against their power. And you're also against the power structure of the Western District of New York for going against their power. So now it's basically two power structures that are trying to get you. One of them gets mitigated by your efforts with the Frank report. The other one now has to kind of dwindle what their original assault on you was. It dwindled to what started as a mountain became a semi-mole hill. Yeah.

Now, when you start doing the Frank Report, at the time when you were a consultant for Nexium, you're seeing some, you know, maybe unethical financial movements. You're seeing some interesting things happening with this leader. But I don't know if the nature of the criminality is exposed to you at the time as a consultant, especially to the degree that we know of now, including, you know, sexual extortion and blackmail material, branding, ritualistic abuse. So how do you uncover these things? And then how do you move to basically report this to your report and then to larger newspapers and media companies? The nature of relentless publishing is that you develop sources.

People call you and they want to tell you things. and I had written quite a bit about Rennery. And one day I got a call from an actress by the name of Catherine Oxenberg. She had once appeared as a major star in a television show called Dynasty. And she called me to say, my daughter's been branded. She's in a master's slave relationship called Doss. And her name is India. and she's basically being starved and coerced to do things.

But she doesn't believe it. She likes what she's doing and she's proud of it, but she's been branded. When I heard this from her, I knew that I had him at last. Wow. Not that branding per se is illegal and the location of the brand, by the way, also buried him. If he had branded these women on the butt, the shoulder, the abdomen, he could have survived, but he put him his brand, which were his initials on their pubic area. Oh, wow.

The location of the brand actually affected the criminality of it. Yeah, it was, it's not a crime. You can get a brand. That wasn't the crime, but I knew that you don't have to necessarily have a crime. You have to have a thing that shocks the conscience to make people believe a person, dirty than you find the crime. It's the exact process that the government uses. Oh, wow.

So you're even just tapping to the human psychology to say, when people find out not necessarily the brand, but where it is, this is going to wake up America to the evil nature of this person. And also the fact that it was women being branded. If men had been branded, it wouldn't matter. And does the consensuality of the brand matter? At this point, do you know that these brands are done without consent

or did that part not come up in the... They were done with consent. So called consent was to be part of this sorority. But I knew from a psychological standpoint, there's two things that are part of society. One is the nature of the brand with his initials, which was actually a bit of fraud because he didn't tell these women

that they were his initials. They told the women it was a symbol of the four elements. But if you turned it counterclockwise, 90 degrees, you could then see very clearly, K-A-R, Keith, Ellen Reneery. We'll put the image on the screen now so people can see it. It's a pretty disturbing element of this entire story. So you get this call or an email from this woman.

A phone call. That my daughter's now in this group. What is your initial action? Do you go meet with her? Do you try to find other stories of other people? What happens next? I had to confirm it because Keith was not averse to me being his enemy. and under indictment on his work,

I had to make sure this wasn't a plant, a phony. I didn't want to write this and then get sued. So I had to independently verify it, and I was able to do so. On June 5th, 2017, I wrote the first story about the branding and named Allison Mack as the actress of top lieutenant, the story became most effective. Within a few weeks and a few more stories, 75% of his organization left.

Wow. Because he didn't tell people this is a secret. Yes, the women. The branding element happened specifically within DOS. Right. Can you explain what DOS is? It was meant to be a secret society to empower women with a brand new kind of power.

Brand new, pun intended. Brand included. and the idea of empowering women in Reneerie's mind was making them all slaves to him. So he was the only man in the sorority. There were 105 women. And they were in a hierarchy. And Alison Mack was one of the leaders. And I knew that would be helpful because she's a names, make news, worthy figure.

And so I started writing. And the major media started looking. at it, but they thought I was just making this up. Nothing could be this crazy. But finally, a New York Times reporter contacted me, and we were able to persuade him. Together, we worked in tandem so he could understand the truth of it. He talked to people and verified that this was true. And he wrote a story about it, that he thought for the longest time wouldn't even be a very important story. They were much more, they have, at the New York Times, they have a fascination with Donald Trump. And at that time, they were

far more interested in his doings. Right. This is 2017? Yes. Yeah. 2017. Makes sense. And so consequently, they finally were persuaded with my assistance to finally publish the story, with the simple explanation on my part that if you don't publish the story the Albany Times Union will be publishing it within 24 hours which was true. Right.

Because they had contacted me also. That'd be embarrassing if the New York Times lost out on a story to the Albany Times. And they had been working on it for four months. Wow. They picked it up almost immediately after I published the first report, but that took him four months to, first of all, verify it.

Corrobate everything. And then secondly, Trump was always upstaging a simple case of a guy in Albany branding women. Right. Wow. So now, once it gets picked up by the New York Times, now it's a national story. Oh, yeah, it spread wildly around the world. And what were the main points of Renieri's malfeasance that you uncovered that got sort of the most fan for? Obviously, the branding, the inappropriate and sort of hierarchy.

sexual relationships with many of the women in leadership. What else came up in sort of this organization that people found the most abhorrent? Well, that was the abhorrent thing. You know, there's two things. There's the law, and then there's dirtying up a person. And the government now, the Department of Justice, their main interest now is if they don't have the law, they dirty up a person and a jury will dislike the defendant enough that they'll convict him on anything. The charges were racketeering. I wrote a dossier that I gave to the government, which pretty much they mimicked in their indictment. It's not illegal to brand somebody. That wasn't the crime, but the coercive, the extortion, the fraud, not telling these women that

it was Renieri's initials, racketeering financial crimes, everything that I had written out and prepared for them, wound up in the indictment, but they took it to new extremes. I saw these as a different kind of crime than the government did, but Brooklyn wanted to push it, and they created a brand new kind of sex trafficking and were successful in prosecuting and Reneery for sex trafficking and forced labor conspiracy that were, in my mind,

really more like state law extortion and fraud. Wow Now when this comes out Does Reneer go into hiding He sees this New York Times article This is if I'm him This is a big deal This is a bad one

Yeah he split Where does he go He ran off to Mexico Where he had many followers And How powerful friends Yeah, lamudably He had some wealthy friends

And he snuck off And was down in Mexico And a billionaire father of one of his DOS slaves, a really brilliant man by the name of Alejandro Hunco, who is the largest media magnate of Mexico. He came to me and said, you know, we've got to get my daughter out.

And here's a little tip for you. I've been hiring investigators. Here's where Reneer is. Here's a photograph. Publish it. Wow. He couldn't do it himself. But he sent me the picture.

I published that Ranieri was in Mexico. The FBI read my publication as they admitted in their filing for a search warrant. They went down there and they found him. Had the Mexican federal police arrest him. They deported him within hours. And he was then arrested in Texas. arraigned and sent up to Brooklyn, where the prosecutors took the lead on this case, and he never got out of jail since.

That was March 26, 2018, and he has 99 years to go. Wow. Now, who all was charged in relationship with your reporting, and what were their charges? Six individuals were charged, Keith Reneery, Claire Broffman, the one, who filed the criminal complaint against me. Nancy Salzman, his lieutenant, who was technically the president of Nexium, their helpless bookkeeper, Kathy Russell,

the actress Alison Mack, and the daughter of Nancy Salzman, who was the director of education. Her name is Lawrence Salzman. She became a cooperating witness. And what happened to all the money? from nexium. I mean, there must have been millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in random trusts and funds and accounts. Where does all that go?

That's a good question. Is there any official story as to what happens to it? Well, if you hear Keith Reneery tell it, he didn't have any money. The brothmans admitted they had money, but they were able to buy their way out of more seizure by pain, I believe, a $6 million restitution payment, which the government kept most of it, and they made restitution to some of the so-called victims of a portion of that money. Wow. Interesting. And how many, you know, are there relief efforts for these victims in terms of like social groups

and, you know, therapy or anything like that for any of the people that suffered psychologically at the hands of Runei? Well, they got some money for therapy. How much... The victims began to exaggerate their victimization. You know, and this is a standard thing. They are suing Brofman, the Broffman sisters now.

And so there are stories of victimization grew and grew and grew. I see. Some of them were abused. And some were... exaggerated their abuse. I see, probably also at the hands of lawyers. I can imagine that attorney gets in their ear and is like, are you sure this happening?

What if this happened to you? Because it's the difference of a million dollars. And, you know, not to say that the victims themselves are aggrandizing their trauma, but I could also see people within their corners trying to, you know, get a little extra percentage gone. Well, yeah, the attorney lays out hypothetical scenarios. And he said, if you remember this, you'll make $5 million. But if you don't remember this, you'll make $100,000.

You're nothing at all. And the victim thinks for a minute. Oh, I think I remember. Yeah, it's interesting. Almost planting a false memory. I mean, this is, we've heard of things like this with like hypnosis and sort of malevolent forms of NLP and things like that. It's interesting, interesting behavior. Now, were there any people, and you don't necessarily need to say by name, but were there any people that weren't,

weren't indicted or criminally prosecuted that you felt were in some way involved or should have been investigated? Do you think the prosecution did a thorough and a fair job? They could have indicted more people. That was their discretion. I don't think they wanted to indict anymore. They had a nice medley of people. They didn't need any more. They could have indicted 100 if they wanted.

But they chose six because that was. how they felt they put their case together. I see. Now, without the leader, does the organization disband completely, or do any of the other high brass that weren't prosecuted sort of create defactions or factions or sort of create other sex of the organization and still continue the teachings? Like, what is the nature of Nexiam today?

It has a few rag-tag people that still believe in it, maybe a dozen or so. They still get together annually for Vanguard Week. a 10-day celebration of the nativity of Keith Renary. I see it. Now, I imagine these people are not fans of you. No, although we've come to an interesting reconciliation. And so that I've become to know them, and they've come to know me. We've spent some time together.

Interesting. And I wonder, do they have any respect for your work in the sense that they acknowledge that what Reneer was doing was wrong, but the teachings were actually good? No, no, they don't respect the work I did to take down Reneery. I was the enemy number one, but they respect the fact that I might be able to show a piece of the case that was completely in doubt, very skeptical part of the case, and that is that the FBI may have planted evidence

in the case to ensure his conviction. Interesting. That's what they believe. They believe it, and there's reasonable doubt there. There is the possibility that evidence was planted to ensure the conviction. What would that evidence be, hypothetically? What I think it is, is very specifically 22 photographs taken of a woman by the name of Camilla Mexican woman when purportedly she was 15 years of age. his girlfriend, his long-standing girlfriend.

And the pictures are, and I've never seen them, because they constitute child porn. But I've read the descriptions. And those 22 photographs appeared on Renieri seized Hard Drive a few days before trial when there were six defendants. Here to four, it had been a case of adults,

and the defense was going to be consenting adults. Now they introduced a child. It was a late innings discovery, quote unquote, by the FBI of these 22 photographs. With the net resulted, the other five defendants all took plea deals within a few weeks. Trial was delayed slightly. Everybody got out of the case in renunciated.

year he stood along. Wow. Now is the suggestion that these photographs are don't exist and that they may be fabricated or is it that they somehow acquired these photographs of his, the woman is now his girlfriend or at the time was his girlfriend, yeah. That they acquired these photos at some later date and then planted them. Like I guess, how would you acquire photographs like this if you were to plant them? The key to the photographs, and I would, if I were to guess, I'd say he did take the photographs. The date's a little unclear because the mystery around the metadata is confusing. It has a creation date of 2003, which was a year before the camera was manufactured.

But the XIF data shows it was taken on two dates in 2005 when she was 15 years old. but then there's an additional metadata that suggests a 2009 date. So there was contradictory metadata that looked along with some of the other pictures in the file like someone had clumsily manipulated the metadata. If I were to guess if it was illegally obtained, I think what happened was her sister, who was a cooperating witness, or not a cooperating witness, rather, a witness for the prosecution, provided those photographs to the FBI

and they planted them on Reneer's hard drive. Wow. Was this brought up by the defense at all, or did the jury not hear this at all? The jury did not hear it because it wasn't discovered until after the conviction. Wow. Which makes me believe that he did, in fact,

take the pictures. But there's a point here. He may have taken those pictures, but if the FBI didn't obtain them legally, it's tainted evidence, and he should not have been convicted of that charge. Right. Would that have lessened his sentence in any significant way? Well, not really. However, it was the game changer in the entire case, because up until that point, you had six defendants

and 27 lawyers that were going to appear in courtroom. at a trial. And each one of those lawyers, or at least for each of the six, would have had an opportunity to cross-examine. It would have been a very unwieldly scene. But when they found the child porn, that changed the entire game. And everyone bamused, with the exception of Reneerie. Did any of them testify against Reneerie? Yes, one of the defendants, Lawrence Salzman, was the Starwitz.

Oh, wow. And completely exposed everything? Do you think she was keeping some secrets? Or did she completely sort of open the book on Reneer and his misconduct? Well, she'd been clearly coached for days by the prosecution, and she was most persuasive. And an interesting thing happened that told me a lot about the way the Eastern District conducts itself. The judge stopped her cross-examination at a critical time. Just when she would have unraveled her plea deal, he halted her cross. And he's allowed to do this?

Well, it was brought up an appeal. The appellate court did not feel it was outside the boundaries of his trial judge discretion. They then attempted to appeal it to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court denied to hear the case. And what is the benefit of halting? her testimony. Well, he said that she was having a breakdown and that the attorney for the defense

was questioning her too hard and that he was badgering her. And yet, the question that he halted the cross-examination on was a question that was subjected to by the prosecution, which he specifically said

the judge that she could answer. When she answered it and started to cross, he said, okay, that's it, it's over. You're done. And he shouted it at the top of his lungs, at the front of the jury and to the defense lawyer. And what was the question? The question is, did you intend to do harm when you were doing these various things in DOS? And then she started to blubber out and answer along the lines of, no, my intent, intentions were to do good. I wanted to live up to what Keith Reneery thought of me. And then he saw,

I think the judge saw that she was about to unravel the plea deal, because her plea deal specifically said she admitted that she knew it was wrong. What she did was wrong. Her intent was bad. And now she was undoing her intent. Ah, I see. Interesting. Now, the judge said it was because she's a broken person and that she was having a nervous breakdown or a breakdown. So he stopped it out of the compassion that goes beyond being a judge. He says, I'm a human first and a judge second. But actually, what I think I'd rather have is a judge first, a neutral impartial judge if I was being tried. Wow.

And she ended up getting sentenced to probation. Was that two years, I think? I don't recall. It was three years or what. She became a dog groomer. So she went from a couple hundred thousand dollars in your salary to grooming dogs. I see her a little like the character and psycho at the very end of the film where he says,

look at me. If I hope they're watching, I wouldn't even hurt a fly. Now, why you? I'm sure they've gone after many people. They've tried to fuck over probably dozens, if not hundreds of people throughout, you know, since the 90s until 2006 or 7 when you get involved. Why did no one else try to stick up? Or why did no one else try to get out in front of this?

Or did people try to expose the organization when they were getting fucked with? They almost all of them got indicted or destroyed, bankrupted. Anybody that complained, you know, at one time he had all of his enemies indicted. And how did you evade it? Like, obviously they came for you. But how, like, what was it about you and your work that made you impenetrable to his assailants. I think that as an investigative reporter,

I was able to expose the falsehoods and cut between truth and falsehood. Hmm. And so it worked out very promisingly for me because once I did that, I became very much in demand on a more national level, both from people who are guilty of things in, but people who are falsely accused.

Mm-hmm. And then I discovered, now the Reneering case had a lot of hair on it. He was guilty of some things, but he was, I think, way over-sentenced. At 120 years, the average murderer, I think the Department of Justice issued some statistics that suggests that the average murderer gets 17 and a half years of incarceration time. Reneery got 120 years, but no one was murdered. Yeah, but this is also, if you count the social context of the Me Too movement, And I also think by and large the Trump presidency probably played a large role on, I think, the sentencing of the judge at the time and also the social attitude, which I don't know if that necessarily should factor in, but I think it certainly did.

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He sentenced him to life, in effect. And maybe he deserved it for things that he wasn't convicted of. But if we're sticklers to due process, he should only be sentenced to what he was actually convicted of. And what would that sentence hold based off of what his actual convictions should have been? Well, what's in line with the convictions that the prosecution was able, because they stretched new boundaries with sex trafficking. They created a brand new precedent that makes probably every one whoever has sex in America

potentially guilty of sex trafficking. They changed the definite, by changing the jury instructions in the Reneery case, They diluted the definition of commercial sex. And commercial sex is an element of sex trafficking. That is, you can't sex traffic unless there's some commercial profit to somebody, the sex trafficker, or someone involved in the scheme. And in this case, there was no money that changed hands. It was a single incident. And they diluted the sex trafficking to...

a jury instruction that said all somebody had to do is to be commercial sex to get something of value. I see how that could be open to interpretation if that's all it says. Well, the example it was given is let's say you're a boss in a company and I set up a girl for you to be intimate with. and because of that you're pleased with me that's sex trafficking right

but there would have to be some type of exchange in that hypothetical the exchange is just your pleasure you were pleased with me because that's the only commercial benefit and that would be considered something of value by an attorney interesting

hmm and it's it slipped in between the hatred of Reneery because no media would defend him so that we've changed the sex trafficking law into one that is now so much different than what was intended by Congress that you have now the potential that anyone could be guilty of sex trafficking, even if there's no commercial, typically understood to be commercial sex. Now, is the new definition, has that been brought up in any cases since then? It was used in other cases like R. Kelly and other cases where money didn't specifically change

hands, it's become the new tool of prosecutors. Similarly, they're in the Carlos Watson case. They've tried to expand and successfully so far, the definition of wire fraud. In the one-taste case, it's all coming out of Brooklyn, too. They are attempting to expand the definition of forced labor conspiracy. And what would fall under that in some type of hypothetical? Well, in the one case, you've got something extraordinary going because you have a stand-alone charge against two women, Nicole Dadeon and Rachel Cherwitz, for forced labor conspiracy without the typical accompanying charge of forced labor. In other words, they conspired to force people to labor, but were unsuccessful.

Hmm. And that's the first time in U.S. history that anybody's been. charged with just simply forced labor conspiracy. It's interesting. It's interesting how these overcorrections can potentially cause more problems and that you hope that eventually we've reached some type of equilibrium where, you know, certainly there's misconduct. You know, in this workplace example, there are people that are using their power as a means

to have inappropriate relationships and people that they have power over. That shouldn't happen. But when the overcorrection is so broad. and vague, that opens up new issues legally, and that hopefully we can reach some type of common ground and some type of reasonable understanding in the middle, some type of Hagellian dialectic possibly. That would be essential if there were, was anyone that would be willing to even read Hagell for two minutes.

We have a prosecution in the United States, the federal prosecutors that have almost unlimited power. And it's gotten to the point where find me the person and we will get you the crime. Show me the person and I'll get you a crime. And reverting back to the one taste case, extraordinary case of prosecutorial misconduct. Their indictment alleges that these two women, Nicole Daydon, who founded One Taste, a San Francisco. Corporeation and her head of sales Rachel Cherwitz conspired to force people to labor, but they never succeeded. And as the U.S. Attorney said, we don't need any victims. All we have to

show is that they conspired to force people to labor. Now it becomes laughable when you realize that in the indictment itself, which has no victims, no names, no specific dates of anything. Just that they conspired, they conspired for 12 years. And why these, why these people, why do they want to get these women? It's a very good question. It's a fundamental question. Good headlines. Remember, prosecutors are not justice driven. They are conviction stat driven. And for some unknown reason, people believe that prosecutors are ethicists. They are people above the temptations of presidents, senators, congressmen, mayors who could be corrupt. Prosecutors, they believe, because they get the bad guys or girls in this case, are above

corruption. So we don't need checks and balances on their unlimited discretion. And one time we had something called a grand jury and no longer exists. Hmm. Do you think Reniri was working solely on his own as some type of, you know, malevolent dictator within the organization? Or do you think that, he had any connections to other people, you know, whether it's in politics or other billionaires, that he was somehow using his power and leverage amongst this cohort of valuable and wealthy constituents. Or do you think it was just a lone wolf that was crazed with power? I've heard the allegations that he was connected to Epstein or to Branson or other people.

I've seen no evidence of that. And when I was there, My impression of him is he was too egotistical to really be able to work with anybody and his lieutenants, because he didn't talk to many people. His lieutenants were not competent to arrange sophisticated networking with underground traffickers or anything close to it. I see. They actually thought they were doing good. Right, which is maybe the most even. component of all, the real, you know, 1984 situation. I'm curious if you, in all of your sort of

reporting on this case, do you have any regrets in hindsight about how you did the reporting, any of the nature of the conduct? Is there anything you would have done differently going forward? Or do you feel like things resolved in a way that you're completely happy with? I'm sorry for the fact that my reporting wound up changing the sex trafficking law in the United States. I'm not saying that sex trafficking should be at all tolerated, but some things are sex trafficking, and some things just aren't. They may be some kind of prostitution, they may be some kind of abuse of power, but sex trafficking comes with a mandatory 15 years. And for what Ranieri did with this one woman, that's not a, I think he got 40 years for that. That isn't

40 years since. And there was a lot that wasn't told. However, I was in the fight for my life. Reneerie was trying to put me in prison for life. So I had to throw some wild heavy blows, and if it hurt some of his supporters, that was the price of being his supporter. I tried to warn Ellison Mack. Leave him.

I tried to warn the others to go away, don't fall with him. I'm taking him down. And I'm sorry that they had to be prosecuted. I was only going after Claire Brafman and Keith Reneerie. Hmm. Were there any other types of intimidation that was done by Reneer or any of his henchmen to you or any of the people that you know outside of sort of the legal framework? Was there any

type of physical intimidation? I don't think so. Although, you know, I got death threats, but... Is that from him or is that from anonymous? And, you know, from various people, Mexican-based. But I don't know that he pulled the trigger on it. I think his lieutenants were not violent people. They thought they were doing good. They believed in him. I don't think Ellison Mack thought she was doing anything evil.

She probably thought she was doing good. They'd been a little selfish. Was a little stupid. But her intent wasn't to hurt the people. It was to, she thought she was. promoting Reneerie's magnificence. I see. Do you have like 15 more minutes?

Is it okay if I'd want to just kind of pivot a little just to speak about the nature of media? I'm curious what your thoughts are. If someone is accused of, say, something that is, you know, against their character, whether rightly or wrongly, how would you counsel them to fight the allegations? Let's say there is, you know, oh, this person defrauded someone or this person did this type of sex crime. And let's say it's completely bullshit. What should they do? Should they just get an attorney immediately? Should they fight it with truth?

Should they counter sue? What do you think is the best way to handle that situation? The game has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. And it is serious. Now, they used to say that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich. I would say now you could say a jury, a federal jury will indict a baloney sandwich. Doesn't matter what the evidence is. The rules are so cocked up in favor of the government that federal prosecutions are no longer a quest for truth, but rather sentencing advocacy.

It's about securing a plea deal on the bluff that you could go to trial. what I would advise someone who has been targeted by the feds to do is to obviously if they're innocent which many people are they need a many-fold strategy one you know would be the legal side of it but the other is they need to explain themselves to the media they need the reason I think I avoided prison was that I spun every story and won every spin. Every time the government thought they had a story to smack me down with, I spun it to make them look dubious. Could you give an example of an effective spin? Yeah, in the case of the initial superseding indictment where they dropped the Broffman charges,

they put it out as a press release that they were indicting me on new charges. That would was the story they wanted. And I said, wait a minute, Buster. Look who's not in the new indictment. They didn't mention that. Look who's named, whose initials aren't in the new indictment. And so the runaway headline was, Brofman's, after four years of being charged as a defrauder of the brothmans, they're now out of the indictment. Accuser becomes the accused. Because I spoke. My attorneys told me, don't speak to the media. said, you want to bury me?

I have to speak to the media. Wow. Now, why is it important to get the public opinion on your side? How much does the public sway actually affect the way that a jury will go? It's not the jury. Juries have become neutered. It's the way the judges handle this. The judges are pretty much now almost useless appendages.

The prosecutor has all the authority in a criminal case. federal prosecutor and to a large extent of state as well. Judges are essentially fourth prosecutors. They stand in as prosecutors. And most of their role today is just sentencing plea bargains. And many innocent people take plea bargains because the penalties for going to trial is so severe. So we don't have justice in the federal system. Whatever the prosecutor says is going to wind up being the case in almost every instance. Now, if you have a lot of money, you have a chance of escaping the injustice,

if you're falsely accused. If you don't have money, there's very little chance of escaping conviction, whether you're innocent or not. And this, like Lord Acton said, power corrupts an absolute power corrupts. And absolutely, it is true prosecutors have absolute power. They have managed it. First, they got rid of the grand jury,

their first check and balance. And then by Congress and acting such severe penalties for federal crimes and through their habit of overcharging people, they've eliminated the judiciary in the criminal justice system. Now it's just prosecutor alone with a defense lawyer and it's sentencing advocacy. It's going for a plea by the court. bargain. Unless you have the talent, as I did in my case, or you have the money to hire talent to bring it in front of the public and undress the case. Now, why did you go through traditional news apparatus? Did you try to do social media or things like that? Did you try to influence Twitter? Like, was that of any need for you?

I didn't use it myself. I know some people do use it. I used my own blog, which got accredited as a news site by Google News, and is accredited, because it is, it provides news, broke a lot of stories. And because of the mainstream media, and the only thing that could slow down a train that's going to head to run you over was the media. that was the only chance of anybody being saved from a system that is not interested in justice. You can't go to federal trial because the rules are all cocked up against. The defendant. You know, the jury sits here.

The defendant sits here. The prosecution sits here. This is by design. Jury here, prosecution here. Defendant, you can barely see him. And you can, jury can smell the cologne of the prosecutor. And when somebody says something they don't like that was. Oh, look at that liar.

And they shake their head. Or they'll show a flash a picture. They all pretend this doesn't happen, legal fictions. But they bond with the jury. That's just one of many things. Let me ask you a question. Please. There's opening and closing statements, right?

Trials and what's your impression? How does that work? Do you know? I have no idea, but if I had the guess based off watching one OJ documentary, I would say the opening is why you are, sort of proving, you know, depending on whether your prosecution or defense, basically proving the motivation of the criminal that you're prosecuting or effectively trying to lay out the truth of the matter. And then the closing would basically be summarizing all of the events that took

place and why your defendant or why the, I guess, the person being prosecuted is either guilty or not guilty. And what's the order? How does it go? Do you know what the order is, prosecution, defense? How does that work? If I had a guess off the top of my head, my brother's an attorney, he'll be very frustrated that I got this wrong. But if I had to guess, I think it's probably, and you're leading me here a little bit, I think it's probably the defense and then the prosecution closes. Here's how it works. Prosecution opens.

So the first impression the jury gets is from the prosecution, then the defense makes a opening statement, which is fair, because the prosecution has the case defense, wants to rebut it. But the closing in federal is different than most states. at the closing after all the evidence, much of it way beyond a jury or boring a jury, the prosecution makes a closing. Then the defense makes a closing.

And then, here's the dirty little secret. Prosecution gets the second closing. Really? To rebut everything the defense just said. So they have primacy and they have recency. They have the first impression and they have the last impression. That's a huge advantage. Huge advantage. Very few people know that. You think if you watch Perry Mason or any of these law shows, the defense gets the last word, no, not in this case. Not in federal.

Wow. I did not expect that. And why is it that way? Is that in order to secure convictions, in which case it helps the prosecuting the DA? It helps to defer trials or, you know, the system is so cocked up against the defendant that it encourages plea deals. and this encourages the criminal justice industry by if you had to try all these cases so expensive so much time so much time and so few people would go to prison that you couldn't even keep the industry moving right now we have a big industry in putting people in prison

and we don't want to lose that and the best way to do that is to put innocent people along with the guilty in jail by going through the legal fiction of a plea bargain And I'd like to take if I could just a minute to talk about this one taste case, which I'm handling. Because it's a very serious thing Brooklyn is doing again, trying to move the ball further into a police state territory. Do you know anything about the one taste case? Other than what you've mentioned. A woman started a group.

It's a sexual wellness company or a philosophical company. One of the things they do, and I know it may sound terrible. and I don't practice it myself, but I believe they should have the right because it is legal. They do a partnered meditation. And their partnered meditation is involving a stroker and a strokingi. Stroker dons a rubber glove and he then strokes the clitoris of his partner, a woman, for 15 minutes. it is built as a meditative practice and there is a good deal of literature around it that it has a certain effect on the meditative or intuitive qualities of the woman and the stroker who is usually a man

and this practice began to take off it was in San Francisco and a number of people became very enamored with it and what they tried to do is nexium 2.0. They wanted to turn this. The Brooklyn prosecutors wanted to make this into their next high headline nexium cult case. And yet there are some tremendous differences in the two organizations. And yes, the practice may seem repugnant to some, but it's not illegal. And these are all consenting adults was never a breath of anyone saying that there were anyone under the age of even 21, I don't think, that ever attended. There were 16,000 people who did this, took some kind of course, where they teach this practice. So, right in class, it sounds shocking, maybe it came out of San Francisco, so it's maybe not so strange.

with women take their pants off and they lie down right in class and a man will go next to one put on a glove and stroke her clitoris for 15 minutes

with certain teachings that are devised to raise awareness does it I don't know I've never practiced it but I will fight for the right

to be able to practice this because every philosophy was met with repugness and with certitude that it was evil that ever was introduced to the world. And who's prosecuting the case and for what reason? The Eastern District of New York here in Brooklyn, same people that prosecuted Reniery, and they're taking this case on brand new territory, forced labor conspiracy. Without any forced labor, they're basically trying to say that this was a cult in the

the two leaders conspired to force people into labor, laboring for free, either sex or free labor, but they never succeeded. On its surface, it's ludicrous. How did two women conspire for 12 years to force people to labor and fail? I mean, you and I could conspire to make somebody do labor, we could do it in probably three hours. It wouldn't take us 12 years and fail. Now, I know they're women. not as good at forced labor, but they failed. Now, were these women that were going to these, these, these meditations, were they free to leave at any time? Absolutely. Were they checking identification when they were coming into the meditation?

Just for age. Right. What I found fascinating was there was never a charge of sexual harassment, never a legal charge of rape or any accusations for 18 years, this company was in business. when you look at the records, the educational level of the attendees, particularly the women, their educational and income levels are higher than the average, a higher number of college educated people, higher medium income than the national average. Were the advertising materials misleading? I couldn't see it. No. The government said that they explored or tried to recruit

sexually traumatized women, but I can't find one single advertisement that ever suggested that. The government started this case based on a media report, much like in my case with Rennery. They came off of a Bloomberg story that was very speciously and dishonestly written. And what they thought they had was sex trafficking, and they went into a five-year investigation. And if you know anything about the FBI, they can't afford to spend that kind of time without coming up with something. It's not about justice. It's about conviction stats. And so they had to charge them with something.

So they came up with the flimsyest of all charges, forced labor conspiracy, two women trying for 12 years and failing. And of course, they look like dumbasses. And what we're doing is I'm showing this case to be what it really is. aggression against people because they felt they could get the headlines. They blundered because they're not getting the headlines. And now they're backtracking. Interesting. It's the headlines that are savings.

But the media is in goose step, is in lockstep with the prosecution, almost invariably. Yeah, I mean, without knowing more about the case, I would probably defer comment. But it is an interesting situation. And I do fully believe that there are these cases where you have government agencies that are looking to get convictions and they go down a road and there's sunk cost fallacy that goes along with that to say, we've already invested this much. What can we get? And yeah, no question that happens. I'm curious as someone that lives in New York. Did you see, I guess what are your thoughts or if you have opinions about the case against Trump? Would you be comfortable discussing that? or any of the charges that were brought against him? Do you feel like that was a similar thing where they're trying to get headlines and trying to get prosecution?

Well, I don't know enough about the case as I'm pretty absorbed with my clients and the cases that I have defending people in real serious trouble, but I do know prosecutors have almost absolute power. So I expect absolute corruption. I don't know the details of Trump's crime and, you know, I'm not really,

able to speak about it, except that a prosecutor can get anyone indicted and, at least in the federal system, anyone convicted. Juries are now neutered. They don't know their rights. Juries don't know why they were put on earth. Why, the founders, why in Magna Carta jurors were established, which is not just to judge innocence or guilt, but to judge the law to, to judge the law, judge the prosecution. They can judge everything and they don't have to follow the law. What do you mean? They don't have to follow the law. The jury can make, the jury is a law unto themselves and this is by absolute design. You know, when Thomas Jefferson was asked, what would you rather have? The right for people to vote, if you can only have one.

The right for people to vote or the right for people have a jury. And he said, I'd give up voting in a second. I'd go just with a jury because anyone can make a law. But only a jury can enforce a law. Now, what did he mean by that? What he meant was, you can't overturn an acquittal. A judge does not have the power to overturn an acquittal. So if you are charged with, say, for example, helping a fugitive slave escape, that's against the law. At least it was in 1850.

But juries refuse to convict people on that. They didn't follow the law. they've made their own law and say, we don't think that should be a crime helping a human being escape. So they hung juries and they acquitted people who were criminals

who actually helped slaves escape. This is what they did. During Prohibition, juries acquitted or hung on more than 50% of the cases, so finally they couldn't enforce prohibition. They had to undo the count. constitutional amendment. This happens from time to time, but now today juries don't know. When they see a

crazy prosecution, they're intimidated by the judges. They're intimidated by the prosecution who they practically sit on their laps. And consequently, they vote to convict when they don't even understand what's really going on. And how do you ameliorate these juries' lack of knowledge? We have to teach them. They are in charge in that courtroom because if they acquit, nobody can undo it and a jury can't be punished.

They don't have to say why they acquit. They could just feel that the guy did sell marijuana. He did. He absolutely sold it, but I don't think marijuana people should go to jail because they sell marijuana. I'm going to just hang this jury and I'm not having to say why.

and if they stand up to the other 11. Now the judge, of course, will tell them, you must, if you feel that they broke the law, you can't judge the law. But that's not true. The whole purpose of the jury was to judge the law. It was to prevent the king from putting anyone he wanted in jail. He had to get the consent, unanimous consent, of 12 people.

Wow, that's so interesting. I never knew this. I always thought, like if I was called to jury duty, I would say, look, this law is bullshit, but this person did break it. They knew that they were breaking it, therefore they're guilty. That's not your job as a jury. Your job is to judge the law. Wow.

That's what prevents a tyranny. And that's why Jefferson said, I don't care about voting as much as I care about a jury, because a jury knows, at least it was at that time well known, that the jury has the absolute say about any law. Government can make a law. only the jury can enforce the law, and that means unanimous consent of 12 people. This is trial by the country instead of trial by government. When you take the jury away, you have trial by government.

And this is why the jury was put into the Constitution. Jefferson was well aware of the case of John Peter Zenger, where he published falsehoods or truths, depending on how you look at it about the government, but he criticized the government. It was illegal at that time. colonial time, criticized the colonial governor of New York. He went to trial. And his attorney persuaded the jury that they had the right to nullify that law because he published the truth. And the jury defied the instructions of the judge because he broke the law. Zenger broke the law. He

wrote bad things about the government. But the jury said, we don't care if he wrote bad things. We don't think that should be a law. And the jury gave the people freedom. And why don't defense attorneys tell juries this while they're actually going through hearings? Would you believe that the federal government made it illegal to tell? In 1895, they saw this was happening. They made it illegal to tell this if the judge won't let them. So it's not illegal that the jury can nullify the law.

Because you can't overturn the verdict. That's just logic. fact. But a judge can prevent a lawyer from telling the jury their power. On what grounds? I mean, we have Miranda rights for people that have been arrested. The case was Sparf, USAV. Sparf, 1895, where the Supreme Court acknowledged that juries do have the right to nullify the law, but the judges have the right to prevent the defense attorneys from telling the jury this in the courtroom. Wow One more case to hammer at home

William Penn You've heard of him Sure Pennsylvania is named after him He was a Quaker And it was illegal in England To have public assemblies And preach Quaker

Quakerism He was arrested of course And tried And it was clear he broke the law He Everybody saw him He preached Quakerism to a group of people He was arrested

The judge said to the jury, you must find him guilty. 1640 or 1650. You must find him guilty because the evidence shows that he did break this law. You don't have any right to do anything but find him guilty. And this one juror enshrined in people's hearts who love liberty, Edward Bushnell, he said, no. I don't think it should be wrong to preach Quakerism.

I don't think it's wrong for people to get together and say what they want. And so he hung the jury. They put him in jail. He and four or five others who insisted that they weren't going to find a man guilty because he taught Quakerism. They put him in jail. He was there in jail and an uprising occurred.

Wait a minute. This is undoing Magna Carta. You can't punish a jury for its verdict. You can't force a jury to find a man guilty. Even if he did break this law. And ultimately they let Bush know out and Penn went free. And the jury established freedom of religion. Wow.

That is fascinating. I knew nothing about this. I feel much more well informed now. I will. I know it's something that people don't know. I wish it could restore liberty to this country. Yeah. If we're in danger of losing it, this was the remedy.

not the Second Amendment, but the Fourth Amendment, the right of a jury to stop tyrannical prosecutors and tyrannical laws. So a couple points to wrap up. Juries can sort of nullify laws that they see as unjust. In the case with nexium, absolute power corrupts absolutely, as with the courts as well. And I guess lastly, don't fuck with Frank. That's something I learned. Well, I think if I could just bring back one taste for one second, just because women get together and have a different sexual kind of teachings, it shouldn't be grounds to railroad them into prison.

And I'm going to fight that, and I think you'll see in the next month or two, a very embarrassed prosecution. I'm curious about this. Keep me updated with this. I'd love to learn more. I'd be delighted, and I appreciate your time, and thank you. Of course. Thank you so much. Appreciate you.