Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 310 | American Mafia aka. Profiles in Corruption | Guest: Peter Schweizer

Episode Date: February 22, 2020

Washington insiders operate by a proven credo: when a Peter Schweizer book drops, duck and brace for impact. For over a decade, the work of five-time New York Times bestselling investigative reporter Peter Schweizer has sent shockwaves through the political universe. Clinton Cash revealed the Clintons' international money flow, exposed global corruption, and sparked an FBI investigation. Secret Empires exposed bipartisan corruption and launched congressional investigations. And Throw Them All Out and Extortionprompted passage of the STOCK Act. Indeed, Schweizer's “follow the money" bombshell revelations have been featured on the front pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and regularly appear on national news programs, including 60 Minutes. Now Schweizer and his team of seasoned investigators turn their focus to the nation's top progressives—politicians who strive to acquire more government power to achieve their political ends. Can they be trusted with more power? In Profiles in Corruption, Schweizer offers a deep-dive investigation into the private finances, and secrets deals of some of America's top political leaders. And, as usual, he doesn't disappoint, with never-before-reported revelations that uncover corruption and abuse of power—all backed up by a mountain of corporate documents and legal filings from around the globe. Learn about how they are making sweetheart deals, generating side income, bending the law to their own benefits, using legislation to advance their own interests, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That's annoying. What? You're a muffler. You don't hear it? Oh, I don't even notice it. I usually drown it out with the radio. How's this? Oh, yeah.

Way better. Save on insurance by switching to Bel Air Direct and use the money to fix your car. Bel Air Direct, insurance, simplified. Conditions apply. Mafia. An organized international body of criminals. Operating originally, well, in Sicily,

but, you know, here in the U.S. And now, especially here in the U.S., and having a complex and ruthless behavioral code. What does that sound like? You know what it sounds like? Profiles in Corruption with Peter Swiser.

Peter, welcome to doing the bat. How are you, sir? It's great, Jeff. Great to be here with you. So, America loves to tune in to shows about corruption. In fact,

I mean, America was, one could argue that America was built on corruption. You look around, I mean, and one could argue that, you know, our infrastructure railroad built by our friends, the Chinese. You know, with help, obviously, from us. Yeah. But in real life, when you turn around, you start digging into your book, Profiles and Corruption and so much of your other work. It's a little scary.

Yeah. It's like, what are we doing? Yeah. Well, how are we doing? So as I was going through your book, first, I would like to. just maybe, call it first thoughts and just go through your chapters and give me the first thing that comes to your mind from each chapter, okay? First thoughts.

Kamala Harris. The priest abuse scandal and how she covered it up. Joe Biden. The United Nations of Global Corruption. Cory Booker. Machine politician from Newark, New Jersey. Elizabeth Warren. corporate sellout

sure out making his brother's a legal career skyrocket Bernie Sanders the socialist millionaire Amy Klobuchar

the crony capitalist Eric Garcetti that's a name I didn't plan on being in this book just as a side know that's yeah the the corrupt machine of Los Angeles. Yeah, no kidding.

Wow. Here's one for you. First thought. Conclusion. Chapter 10. The conclusion, the first thing that comes to mind is, my God, I can't believe all these people have been doing all these things, all these years. I find it fascinating that you see, as I go through this, now, a lot of what you've

talked about in the past, especially when we were first, when Glenn was first starting to talk to you a little bit about this, was Joe Biden. Right. And how his, really his eight years as vice president, he turned the heat up on bringing his family. And do we know him, his bank account has been, has been deepened? Yeah, since he's left the administration, the Obama administration, yeah, it has. I mean, he went from basically having nothing to now he has $9 million. But just $9 million. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Just $9 million. No, Biden was really about corruption by proxy, which was setting up his, you know, we call them the Biden five. They're like the Jackson five, but they can't sing and dance. And the Biden five are the five family members that cashed in while he was vice president. Incredible. Right? I mean, just incredible. And it's incredible that it, now, I guess I mean, I want to say I understand it. You know, and he, you know, he does come across as that he loves his family and it's all good. But much of it seems to be at the detriment of the United States, which he's supposed to be in love with. Absolutely. I mean, that's the thing. People think of corruption. You know, when they think of corruption, they think of like, you know, the county commissioner. whose cousin gets the cement contract to extend the road.

And we know that goes on, and that's a serious thing that needs to be dealt with. But when you're dealing with a Biden, you're dealing about global corruption. This is not some cement company back in the home state. You're dealing with foreign governments, foreign oligarchs, and they want something. They want something from Joe Biden. And I would argue they're getting those things from Joe Biden. So this is not victimless corruption. The victim here is the United States, our national security.

security in our national interests. I would argue basically being bidded and sold away in exchange for making his family wealthy. And in the right. And in the long run, I mean, we're the ones being screwed. Yes, that's right. I mean, hard in the end. Yeah. I mean, you look at like, you look at China.

I mean, Hunter Biden did some of these deals with China. Joe Biden's going around saying China's not a threat. China's not a challenge. Well, China, you know, they have a plan. Their 2025 plan. Their goal is to supplant us as the global power. So, you know, how can you go around and say they're not a threat? The fact that your son's doing deals with them, maybe that's influencing you.

I think it is. It certainly seems that way. And it certainly seems that it's going against what you're supposed to be or were supposed to be doing as a representative of our great nation. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And the problem is so many political figures, and this is people in both political parties, They're supposed to be performing public service. They're really performing self-service.

I mean, they really are adopting positions and carrying out policies that they know are going to benefit their families. And that's why they're pursuing them. So the latest book, Profiles in Corruption by Peter Schweizer, you know, you talk a little bit about the cementment contractor in your hometown. Yeah. Who is, you know, started off. and I started off with talking about how the country was pretty much built on corruption. Well, really, that's why that a guy like Joe Biden, and we'll get to Eric, I want to get to Eric Garcetti,

because I haven't heard anything about Eric Garciti. And I mean, it's incredible that his name's on the list. And I believe that that's why guys like Joe Biden and women like Kamala Harris and Clovishire and Elizabeth Warren all get to the point of feeling it's okay because grandpa was the cement contractor who paid off bill downtown 100 years ago so that he could build the road and then we all got rich.

Yeah, no, I think that's a very important point, Jeff, because the culture of Washington, D.C., revolves around this stuff and I'm convinced the longer you stay there, the more acceptable becomes. I was told this great story by Bobby Jindel, you know, the former Louisiana governor. He served three terms in Congress in Washington. And he told me really explicitly,

he said, when I first got to Washington, D.C., these backroom deals, he says it really looked like a cesspool. It just felt like a cesspool. He said, but you stay there long enough, that cesspool becomes a hot tub. Yeah. It becomes normalized. It becomes regular.

That's how you get business done. Yeah. And I think the key thing is it's very, very hard for a political figure to stay in Washington for 10, 15, 20, 30 years. Some of it, Joe Biden's been there 40 years and not have this stuff rub on you. Some of them have. But I would argue most of them have not. And that's one of the reasons I'm a big support of term limits. You just cannot trust people with that much power for that long.

Eventually, it's going to rub off. I mean, it certainly feels that way. And even if you justify it with, I'm sure that many justify that their little bit has to be done so that they can get other business done. Right. Well, okay. Yeah. And look, we all recognize, like, you know, in Congress, you're trading votes. Like, you know, you're a senator from a state.

I'm a center from a state. You're trying to get me to support, you know, some, you know, part of the defense budget or whatever. And I say, well, you know, Jeff, I really need this help with this highway extent. in my state. People understand that. I need an off ramp. Yeah, exactly. I need an off ramp, you know, in my hometown.

People kind of get that that goes on. What we're talking about here, though, are deals that are making your family rich, right? We're not talking about something that's going to help you get reelected or something that's good in the home district that's going to make you popular. We're actually talking about deals that are going to make your family wealthy. And a lot of times the deals aren't even done, like in our scenario, we're two senators or whatever, the scenarios are now done with foreign governments. Nations. Yeah, and foreign oligarchs. People that are competitors or they want something for

us or they're rivals from us. So it really has eroded. The corruptions become globalized. We hear about globalization. Well, corruption's been globalized too. And I realize that, you know, we start talking about, and that's kind of where you get the argument of the evils of capitalism because of that. Because, you know, I want to be like, well, you know, they're doing business and we're building things and things are going up. But in the long run, when, you know, I remember as a 150-year-old man that, you know, the days of radio hosts talking about, what are you worried about China for? They don't even have a Navy.

Right, right. They certainly do now. Yes, that's exactly right. They certainly do now. Yeah. You know, that's a building process. Yes. They're not, they were back then, obviously right. Yeah, they didn't have a Navy. They had, you know, a couple of guys rowing in a boat. But back in Port, they were building up that Navy. That's right. And they were building up that Navy, which I found fascinating with the help of our great senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is the thing. I mean, this is a bipartisan problem. I mean, this is a bipartisan problem. I mean, Mitch isn't in your book. Yeah, no, that's okay. It was in Secret Empire as a previous book. And, and yeah, I mean, it's, you know, this is the problem. The Chinese are our rivals.

It's, you know, people look to Russia. Russia is declining power. They're declining demographically. Their economy's not in good shape. China's the ascendant power. They view us as a rival. The world knows that. Yes.

Exactly. And what Jeff, what they figured out is the way that we are going to win this competition with the United States is we are basically going to buy off their political class. We're going to buy off their leaders. So we're going to do deals with Joe Biden's family. But we're bipartisan, right? We're bipartisan. So we're going to buy off.

you know, Mitch McConnell's family, which is essentially what they've done. And so Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader and Joe Biden, who was vice president of the United States, both had deals with the heart of the Chinese state, the Chinese military industrial complex. And their family made money of it. In Mitch McConnell's case, Elaine Chow, his wife and her family have a maritime business. And their business partners are the Chinese Navy. which builds their ships, finances the construction of their ships, provides crews for their ships.

I need a little help myself. This is what's wrong. Are you looking for a China deal, Jeff? I'm telling you. You are. See, that's the problem. Does Glenn know about this? Does Glenn know you're looking for a China deal?

Shh. He knows I need help. It's okay. I mean, it's just incredible, right? I know you were, I didn't mean to cut you up. But I mean, it's, it's, that's part of the problem. So Mitch is never going to, he's not going to want to bring it up. No.

He's not going to want to say, oh, Joe Biden, bad for dealing with China, bad, bad, bad, bad. Exactly. You flip the page and there's his family. Yeah. And the realities of the business and people in the industry talk about this and know this is, if Mitch McConnell did something as a senator that upset the Chinese, they could destroy the family business tomorrow. Tomorrow. I mean, they would have no ships.

They would have no clients. They would have no customers. everything would be completely gone. So what is that going to do if there's a critical issue of vote coming up on U.S. policy towards China and China does not want that policy to pass? What is Mitch McConnell going to do? He's in a pickle, as they say. And the more, I mean, looking at it from Mitch's point of view, which is, you know,

I'm sorry, America, but I'm doing this, Mitch would say, well, I'll fight. I'll have other senators do my bidding for me, right? So look, I'm going to say China good, but you just make it China bad and we'll be out of it. But that's where we get into having people with more Jews, Joe Biden and the Biden family. So, I mean, when you say they're bipartisan, they most definitely are, and that's the reason why. That's right. They planned on that. They planned on Mitch.

Because Joe, as a senator, couldn't do what he did as a vice. Vice President. He didn't have, he didn't have the, you know, the mob, the mafia juice to pull it off. As vice president, he did. Yes. No, that's exactly right. And look, they're very strategic and they're thinking. And I talked about in Secret Empires, I had a chapter on the Trump family. And the Chinese are very explicit. I mean, they clearly do not like Donald Trump's China policy. They don't like his policy on trade. They don't like the fact that he is attuned with their, their territorial claims in the South China Sea. They want Donald Trump's policy to change. And they're very explicit the way they hope to do it is they want to give sweetheart deals to his kids and then the

kids are like oh come on the chinese are not that being like joe biden says they're not really that's right that's the strategy now the family has resisted those deals i hope they continue to resist those yes good but that is the chinese strategy because their point is why you know engage in this massive competition when we can spend five percent of that by just buying off their political leaders and neutering them and that's what they're hoping to accomplish just unbelievable So the magic of profiles of corruption is Biden and Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, who, you know, Elizabeth Warren, all right, let's talk about this now. We've got, you know, I know we're in the smack dab in the middle of the Democratic primaries for who's going to run against Donald Trump, but Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are right there. Joe Biden, hey.

But, I mean, Biden, of course, you know, had the, you know, the Biden five. So he was busy performing all around the world with that. But Elizabeth Warren seems a little strange because she's a senator. She has a little bit of juice like Bernie Sanders and Mitch McConnell has a little bit more as the head of the Senate. But Elizabeth Warren, I mean, she's a school teacher. Right, right. Exactly. What is she doing?

Well, here's an interesting thing. So before she becomes a senator, her net worth is about $12 million. So she didn't get that. Yeah, not bad. And she did not get that by teaching at law school. Even at Harvard University, they don't pay that kind of money. Or helping children. Yeah, exactly.

Or helping children or trying to clean up government. No, it's she exercised one of the dirtiest games in Washington, D.C. A lot of people don't know. In the mid-1990s, she was hired by Congress and paid by taxpayers. She was a law professor at the time to rewrite part of, U.S. bankruptcy laws and these are bankruptcy laws that deal with large corporations dealing with class action lawsuits. So she's being paid by us in 1994. Some of those rules make it into the new U.S. law. So what does she do? She goes to large corporations who are going to be

affected by this law. And she says, hire me to work for you and I will help you navigate the laws that I myself actually wrote. That's a good move. And that's what she did. And so she went to Dow Chemical. She went to Anderson Worldwide. And these companies are going to be paying for it, right? I mean, they want to.

Absolutely. And they're paying her more than $1,000 an hour to consult. So she made millions of dollars doing this. It's the classic, the classic, you know, D.C. corruption moves. So when she now goes on the campaign trail and talks about, you know, corporate power and corporate corruption. I helped write these laws to bring these. companies down. Right. I didn't mention that I got paid by those same companies to help them,

you know, neuter those laws so they wouldn't affect them. That is amazing. It is. It's amazing. I almost want to love her for that. You like that move, Jeff. Is that it? I do like that move. Yeah, I'm kind of on the criminal side for that. Oh, wait, it's not criminal. No, I'm sorry. It's just her being helpful. Yeah, that's all it is. So Bernie Sanders, another one on the campaign trail telling us how bad, well, billionaires are now since he's been outed as a millionaire. Right. So we can't, millionaires are okay. We just hate billionaires now.

And that's actually true, by the way. We charted this beginning of the 1970s, sorry, beginning of the 1980s, he would have this phrase that our politics is dominated by billionaires and millionaires. Use that phrase for 36 years. In that 36th year, he became a millionaire. So he dropped the millionaire. Scratch the millionaire. Exactly.

We're only going to talk about the billionaire. Bernie has the only jobs. These guys are just. Yeah, it's remarkable, isn't it? Bernie, since he was 39 years old,

the only adult job he's ever had in his life has been in politics. Right. I mean, he was trying to make albums as a mayor or something. That didn't work out well for him. And so he becomes mayor of Burlington, Vermont.

First thing he does is he hires his girlfriend, Jane, who later becomes his wife, and puts her on the city payroll. and the city council is like, wait to me, you can't do it. That's working for us now. Yeah, you're not, yeah, you're actually not even giving her a job that exists.

This hasn't been authorized. I'm the fair. She gets a job. You didn't advertise it. Bernie blew him off and said, too bad. She's on the payroll. And that kind of began the predicate. And he's done the same thing when he ran for Congress and ran for the U.S. Senate.

He steered campaign money to his wife and to his family. And this has been kind of the way the Sanders family is rolled. And so today, one of the reasons that they're millionaires, they have three homes, is that he has steered money to his family and they've benefited from it. And then when you look at his investment portfolio, I mean, this is really interesting, right? You want to know a lot about a man. Look what they actually do with the hard-earned money that they have. So Bernie Sanders is a socialist, denounces corporations, believes in climate change, all these issues.

Let me ask you, Jeff, do you think that Bernie Sanders has taken his stock portfolio and put it into socially responsible investment funds? You ask me the question makes me want to say no, but I mean the answer should be he absolutely does, right? He absolutely does. Yeah, that he would be invested in socially responsible investment. He's not. He's invested in Fortune 500 investment funds.

He and his wife have done this. So the thing that I always tell people, whether it's Donald Trump or whether it's Bernie Sanders, pay less attention to what they say and focus on what they actually. do. Yeah, but what if they tweet about something? Yeah, that should be, I mean, we're going to look at a tweet to assess policy towards Russia. We're not actually going to examine Russia policy.

And with Bernie Sanders, we're going to look at the fact that he's going to fight the corporations rather the fact that he's earning money based on his investments in corporations. And I find it a great inside little side point of Bernie, you know,

three homes. Yeah. It's nice that he struggles. He struggles with the people. Yeah, by the way, the third home is in what's called the Island Family Trust, which is a tax avoidance. I mean, it's set up to minimize taxes for the family. So not only did he buy the third home, he put it in a trust so his family could avoid certain tax burdens. Of course.

Of course he did. I mean, of course he did. It's just, you know, it makes me. It makes me so angry. And let's say, you know, if you read this book and you don't get angry, what are you doing? What are you doing with your life? Yeah. But on the end of that, we know that it got started by, you know, great-grandpa Bill paying off the mayor to get the cement contract for the roads.

And we know that Bernie is hiring his wife to go buy commercials at the local radio station and take her cut for the family. which, by the way, that sounds like a good gig. Especially when you don't really, you never really done that before. Good gig. I have, and I would like to say, Bernie, I'm with you. You know how this works. You know how this works.

I mean, how does it end? I mean, how does it end? Without burning, I mean, without literally burning it to the ground. My point is no person is irreplaceable. And what I tell people is we've got to hold everybody into account, especially your own. I mean, if you are a conservative Republican, you cannot say, well, yeah, okay, that guy did sweetheart deals for his family and yet's corrupt, but he, I agree with him, so it's okay. You can't say that as a liberal Democrat either.

The point is you have to hold them into account. And we've got to get away from the notion that we need certain people to run the country. We don't need certain people to run the country. This country is run by institutions that were set up by genius. That were set up by genius founding fathers. Nobody's irreplaceable. So my point is we need to hold these people accountable. When necessary, we need to expose them, even mock them, even explicitly say this is outrageous.

It needs to stop. And they need to learn to hold into account for this. It's funny how they, and I say they as our government entities are all trying now to stop us from being able to mock them. I wonder why that is. Yeah. Yeah, no, exactly. They write their own rules.

So a lot of things they do, if you did it as a corporate executive, I mean, if you did self-dealing stuff where you were the CEO of General Electric and you hired your nephew's consulting business and you didn't disclose it, I mean, you're going to get, you're going to be in serious legal trouble with the SEC. All right. Because there are rules against that. Well, if you're a politician, you do that, guess what? It's okay.

Yeah, because the politicians. write their own rules. I mean, we're seeing, they just, they just filed a thing for these, for Google and Microsoft and a few other companies to put down now to document the smaller deals that they do that went under the wire. Right. Right. So they're going after them.

Yes. For the smaller deals that went under the wire that they didn't have to report. Exactly. But not in Washington. Yes. Not in Washington, D.C. That's exactly right. And this is, this is the inherent problem.

I mean, we have a representative government. So we realize it's not a direct democracy, but the challenge is when you allow politicians, they're allowed to write their own rules. So they're going to write rules that they can get away with stuff that if you and I did it or a corporate executives did it, they'd be facing serious legal jeopardy. It's funny. When you talk about, and you go back to term limits now a little bit, when you, the original outlay against that would be, well, look, you find someone in your hometown or your area that

is saying and doing the things that you believe, get behind them, get more. people behind them and get them in office, right? So that's your term limit. And if he does something that goes against what you and your people are for, get him out. Yes. Find somebody else. Yeah. But in putting those people in office, in going to the cesspool and having them be in the hot tub

for so long and writing their own rules and laws, we've found that they've written their own laws to help them avoid being voted out of office. That's right. That's exactly right. I mean, that's why. And so you're back, get back to your term limits. I think I'm with you on that.

Yeah, I've changed on this, by the way. I used to not be in fair room, but what you realize is like that, you know, the founders didn't actually imagine that a guy would actually want to go to

the swamp of Washington, D.C., which is literally a swamp, and want to spend the next 20 years of their life there. They never envisioned that. They thought that people would come out of a sense of responsibility. They would serve as a couple of terms in Congress. They'd serve a term or two in the Senate.

Do what they could. What's best for the country out of their heart. And then go back home. And that's not what happened. It's become so lucrative. You know, you get people coming into Congress in the Senate. You know, their net worth is $100,000, $200,000. They leave 20 years later.

And they're $20 million. It's like, how on earth did that happen? I remember my dad saying that those guys, they go in. They're going from a $30,000 a year, job and two years from now he's going to be worth a couple million. They're not leaving that. Yeah. There's an old joke about, you know, old timer that's saying, yeah, you know, my congressman,

he's not very bright. They're like, well, how do you know? They said, well, he's been there 20 years and he's not worth very much money. That's how cynical it's become. Yeah. But the reality is, you know, we now have people that want to make a career out of politics, not just to serve and to make policy, but because they see it as an avenue for self-enrichment. And that's a dangerous place for us to do.

is absolutely Peter Switzer Proviles of Corruption. Okay, I know you're busy I know you got to get out of here but tough I hear you're not letting you leave. How about that? I wanted to get to I know the rest of these are tremendous people but I teased Eric Garcetti so I have like three things for you before I let you out of here

right? One is Eric Garcetti Give me the best story about Eric Garcetti in LA because I mean that guy was he was around for a long time. Yeah, yeah. So Eric Garcetti's very interesting. Eric Garcetti decided as mayor to set up something called the mayor's fund. Oh, that sounds really nice. I like that, actually.

A mayor's fund. And he's going to take this money and he's going to give it to deserving charities and people in the community, community activists, et cetera. Now, what does he want to do? Well, this has got to be funded. How is he going to get this funded? Well, he's going to create a new pocket so that, you know, developers and people that want to have construction projects approved not only can give money to his campaign, but now they can

give to the mayor's fund. Almost sounds like Hillary's money. Hillary Clinton's plan, as Secretary of State with the Clinton Foundation. That's exactly right. It's very. I don't know what I'm talking about, Peter. So you go ahead with more about Eric Garcetti. But you're exactly right.

This is what it is. So it's a new pocket. And what you find is that, you know, if you wanted to build a project in Los Angeles and it was zoned, you can only build 12 stories. Well, if you made a large donation to the mayor's fund, he'll give you a waiver. Well, you can build a 22-story building. Yeah. You know, these rules are meant to be broken.

They're meant to be changed. And so it's a pay-to-play system, and Garcetti has used it to master effect. In one term, he raised $33 million by doing this. And these were companies from around the world. There are now two FBI investigations in Los Angeles looking into the mayor's fund and how all of this was done. Oh, there should be. Yeah, massive cronialism and corruption in Los Angeles.

And I think it's another one of the reasons why California is struggling. Los Angeles is struggling because people, this is the kind of stuff you associate with Tammany Hall. The old New York Catamine Hall. Well, it's come to Los Angeles and it's very hard to do business there without paying people off. Well, that's the same as, you know, Booker was in the book with

that in Newark, New Jersey. I mean, holy cow. It's just built on corruption. It's built on corruption. In fact, that's the time. I love your next book. You're welcome, by the way. You're welcome. No, no, I'm here for you. I mean, it's just, it's incredible that it has been. And I, you know, it's a matter of

just paying attention. really not putting up with it. Exactly. All right. So two more things. Yeah. All right. You have like a basement or another building that you keep all these books and records.

I mean, you've got footnotes and you've got people. You've got you documenting things. I mean. There's this thing called the cloud. So we've got them all on the cloud. You don't have like a Faraday cage to keep everything in. So you're not losing it anywhere. I mean, how are you doing it?

You've got to have a great team. We do. We have 12 researchers. and we do forensic research. So, Jeff, there's no anonymous sources in the book. It's all based on paper trail. What I mean by that is either corporate records. It's either a journalistic account that, you know, is based on, you know, good

journalistic source. It's based on foreign corporate recommends. It's, we've got court documents, court cases, for example. You can get a lot of financial information out of that. So we take that material and we do what we call a 360. We look at Kamala Harris. Who are the financial people that are important? to her life, who are the financial people important to her family? How is that in any way connected

to her political career? And you start to form a picture. That book took 18 months worth of research, a 12-man team doing research over 18 months. So it's very, very extensive in detail. Maybe you get a faster team. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe you get, I just think talking out loud now. But you know, we have 1,200 footnotes in there and you can replicate it. You can take the document. you can take the material. You can locate it yourself. 99% of it is available on the web if you know where to find it. And you can retrace your step.

So there's nothing hidden here. There's no, you know, fake news or anonymous. That's great work. Thank you very much. It's very tough. I would keep your head down, too, by the way. I mean, wear a different hat every day. We do.

Just so I would be very careful with that. All right. Now on a personal note, the last time you were here. Yeah. And this is, you know, this is chewing the fat. So we do discuss, you know, people's eating habits. from time to time on the program, including my own. And I've struggled with being 800 pounds for most of my life.

But the last time you were here, you appear to weigh more the last time than you do now. And I don't want to say that you're pissing me off, but you are. I don't know what you're problem. I mean, you know, I don't want, you know, you're not sick, are you? You're right? Okay. I mean, you're attempting to lose weight, right? Yeah.

What are you doing? What are you doing? Low-carb diet. It's and you know life is hell when you're on a low-carb diet. I don't know. But it's, but I tell you, it's the key thing that that's what I found is I love sweets.

I love donuts. Oh my gosh. I love pie. It's a good thing I don't. I'll tell you that. I just can't tear me away from this. I love, I love sweets.

And the key thing is I just went cold turkey. And I basically go six days a week where I don't have really any baked goods. I'll have one slice of toast for breakfast. Okay. Other than that, I'm eating vegetables. I eat bacon. I eat, you know, all that kind of stuff. But that's been the key, and it's worked for me.

Yeah. I lost 28 to 30 pounds doing that. Keeping it off, you have to kind of stay off of, but one day we... I know, it's tough. Listen, I lost a bunch of weight before, and then, you know, I've struggled with it coming back. And, you know, I've done hardcore and softcore. Have you tried to... A long time ago.

Long time ago. Yeah. Was the, you know, back in the olden days of when Atkins was still alive. Yes. The key thing that it works for me is I have to have less than 20 net carbs a day. So that basically is one slice of toast and two Michelobulsa beers. That's basically it. That's basically it, Jeff.

The day is good. Did you do? I just read a story where they're asking people to give their DNA to get the diet plan for the DNA plan. Have you tried that? No. No. I just saw the story. I was going to talk about it on the show.

Yeah. And I haven't got to it yet because I'm not sure that I, if it sounds good. I don't know that I want to get, you know, I guess the government has everything about me anyway. Who cares? Just take my idea. What I did like about the low carb thing, having done other diets in the past, is you're not hungry because you can eat. You can eat as much chicken. You can I like cheese.

You can eat cheese. You just stay away from carbs. So you're not sitting there, oh, I'm so hungry. Right. You're having a little bit of withdrawal because you're not having a little bit of withdrawal because you're not having sugar. No sugar, yeah. But the point is, is you're not sitting there with your stomach growling because you've been

given a little box that says, this is all you think. Do you focus on a lot of things? Like, there's the number of things that have, you know, sugar in it. Correct. That, uh, for me, it's all about the carbs. So, so as long as the carbs are okay, um, then I'm good. And then on this, on the seventh day on Sunday, you know, I don't go crazy. I don't get two dozen donuts.

But, you know, I let myself have a little bit. Half. Yeah. You know, I let myself, okay, I can have a slice of pie. I can, you know, because you don't want it completely. But then the next day I get back on it. So that's work for me. I know different people are different.

I have friends that have tried a low carb and have struggled with it. But, you know, just keep fighting the fight, man. You look like you're down from what you're world. I am. I am a little bit. Yeah, I am. Now you piss me off. Get out.

Thanks, Peter. I appreciate it. Peter Swanson. Profiles in Corruption is the latest book and there's plenty more great books from Peter. And I'm sure there's plenty more to come. Thank you. I appreciate you coming on today. Thanks, Jeff. Great to be with you.

It was the night before the gathering and all through the house. The host wrapped a cozy cashmere throw from Home Sense for their spouse. Kids toys for $6.99 under the tree. And crystal glasses for just $14.99 for their brother Lee. A baking dish made in Portugal for Tom and Sue. And a nice $5.99 candle perfectly priced just for you. Happy holidays to all. And to all a good price.

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