It Could Happen Here - Burning Objects
Episode Date: February 29, 2024Patriot Front’s Thomas Rousseau has been arrested for a felony, but what is it? Molly Conger recaps the ongoing prosecutions of the tiki torch mob.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
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From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,
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brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.
Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.
Hello and welcome back to It Could Happen Here.
I am once again your guest host, Molly Conger.
And today I'm going to tell you about something that is happening here. Here
being my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia. You might have seen the news recently that Patriot
Front leader Thomas Ryan Russo was arrested in Texas on an out-of-state felony warrant.
On February 23rd, authorities in McLennan County, Texas arrested Russo and booked him into the
county jail. The jail roster lists the offense as burn object
to intimidate O slash S. That OS means out of state, and it lists Virginia as the state issuing
the warrant. And Rousseau's arrest certainly made a splash. When the news hit, Nazi telegram channels
lit up with posts about his arrest. Gab feeds were flooded with hastily made graphics decrying this political persecution.
This sudden spike in interest in a little used Virginia Code section might make you think Rousseau was the first person to be taken into custody on this charge.
That perhaps he was targeted for arrest in some kind of grand political plan to take him out of the game.
But he is in fact the 11th person to be arrested in just the last year for participating
in the Tiki Torch March at the University of Virginia on August 11th, 2017. These cases have
been working their way through the system here for long enough that some of Russo's co-defendants
have not only already been found guilty, they've served their time and gotten back out. But with
this sudden surge in interest in this case,
I want to give you all a little background on the other 10.
If you'll indulge me for a moment, though,
I'd like to read you something I wrote nearly a year ago,
just as the first cases were being unsealed.
There is no statute of limitations on felonies in Virginia.
With that in mind,
here's section 18.2-423.01-B of the Code of Virginia.
Burning object on property of another, or a highway, or other public place, with intent to
intimidate. Any person who, with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons,
burns an object on a highway or other public place in a manner having a direct tendency
to place another person in reasonable fear or apprehension of death or bodily injury,
is guilty of a Class 6 felony. On August 11, 2017, hundreds of torch-bearing marchers traversed the
grounds of the University of Virginia. They'd come to Charlottesville from across the country,
taking Friday morning flights or taking turns at the wheel for cross-country drives
and rented vans with guys they met on message boards.
Arriving early before the big event the following morning,
they gathered at Nameless Field,
a grassy acre near the UVA tennis courts
with a deceptive name,
and distributed tiki torches.
Men with walkie-talkies clipped to their belts,
some with wired earpieces, barked orders.
Elliot Klein, an ambitious young white nationalist organizer calling himself Eli Mosley after the
20th century British fascist Oswald Mosley, shouted at the crowd as they formed into a line,
We're picking big guys, no females. Klein and his security team would be selecting the biggest
marchers to lay down their torches and keep the perimeter as the march moved through the university grounds.
They might need their hands free.
The march wound its way through grounds, up the lawn, then up the steps of the University
of Virginia's iconic rotunda.
On the other side of the rotunda, gathered near the statue of Thomas Jefferson, a small
group of anti-racist protesters waited.
In her testimony during a later civil trial,
one of the women who was terrorized that night said of the sound of the approaching crowd,
When we heard the roaring, we just linked arms and held hands and started to sing.
She said at first it sounded like thunder, like the earth was growling.
As they grew closer, but before she could see the light of the torches,
she began to make out the chants.
Hundreds of voices raised in unison shouting,
blood and soil.
Testifying about that night four years later,
she said she could still hear it sometimes
in her nightmares.
And by the time the small group of mostly students
realized the magnitude and ferocity of the approaching mob, it was too late.
They were surrounded, fully encircled at the base of the statue by hundreds of torch-wielding white supremacists.
For a few minutes, minutes that those trapped at the base of the statue said they believed might be their last as they were doused in lighter fluid, maced, and punched, there was a melee.
they were doused in lighter fluid, maced and punched. There was a melee. The police made no move to intervene as streams of pepper spray were let loose and cries of medic were audible above
the roar of you will not replace us. When the trapped counter protesters were finally able to
flee, stumbling blindly with burning eyes and covering their heads in a hailstorm of fists and
torches, the marchers declared victory. Richard Spencer, an organizer of that
weekend's rally, climbed the base of the statue and delivered a victory speech to the still-roaring
crowd, now shouting, Hail Victory! Hail Spencer! As Spencer told them, we occupy this ground. We won. We own these streets!
We argue by this ground!
We won!
We are the only people who can win! Alright! Alright! We own these streets! We own these streets! We occupy this ground! We won! We won this state of our hands!
What in the hell are we doing out here? What in the hell are we doing risking our lives?
We're risking our lives for our people, for our ancestors, for our future.
That's what we're doing.
Do you think an Antifa can defeat our strong? Do you think an Antifa can defeat our group?
They have no conviction.
The marchers dispersed to their various hotels, campgrounds, and Airbnbs.
Spencer later said cheekily that he booked his under the pseudonym, literally, Hitler.
They had to rest up for the real battle in the morning.
And while they slept, a young man from Ohio was driving through the night,
perhaps already knowing that his gray Dodge Challenger would be impounded as a murder weapon before he slept again.
He checked Twitter and retweeted a post.
David Duke had tweeted images of the torch march,
celebrating the alt-right's success that evening with the caption,
Our people on the march, will you be at Unite the Right tomorrow?
As he left Ohio that evening, the young man in the Dodge Challenger got a text from his mother,
a text we've all probably gotten from our mothers.
She said, be careful.
And James Alex Fields Jr., in one of the last texts he sent before a lifetime behind bars,
replied to his mother with a photograph of Hitler and the words,
we are not the ones who need to be careful. Years later, the word Charlottesville has become
synonymous with those two fused images, Fields' mangled challenger and an iconic photo of the
crowd, torches in hands, the rotunda at their backs. Fields was convicted, both in state and federal
court, of Heather Heyer's murder and multiple counts of aggravated malicious wounding.
Daniel Borden, Alex Ramos, Jacob Goodwin, and Tyler Watkins went away for a brutal gang beating
of a young black man. Richard Preston, an imperial wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, did some time for
discharging his firearm in the general direction of another young black man, while shouting, die and word. But all in all, for all the violence of
both days, there was a curious reluctance to bring charges for anything that didn't rise to the level
of attempted murder. And some things that did. There are thousands of photographs, videos from
every conceivable angle taken by victims, bystanders, professional photojournalists, and even the marchers themselves.
Their faces are uncovered.
Their motives are clear.
And the law is fairly straightforward.
But the University of Virginia lies within the jurisdiction of Albemarle County.
In 2017, Albemarle County Commonwealth's attorney, Robert Tracy, chose not to bring any burning objects cases under Section 18.2-423, he didn't think he could make a case against the Tiki Torch mob.
Or maybe he didn't want to. The Commonwealth's attorney for the city of Charlottesville at the
time, Dave Chapman, wrote in a memo in October of that year that he did believe the cases could be
made, but they weren't his to prosecute. But in Virginia, prosecutors come and go,
but they weren't his to prosecute. But in Virginia, prosecutors come and go, and a felony lives forever. In an October 2019 debate between then-sitting prosecutor Robert Tracy and his
challenger Jim Hingely, Tracy again scoffed at the idea of indicting these cases, even saying
that Hingely's belief that it was possible was a sign he was inexperienced and wrong for the job.
that it was possible was a sign he was inexperienced and wrong for the job. A month later,
Hingely won the election, and now it seems he's trying to make good on his campaign promise of proving Robert Tracy wrong. In February 2023, the Albemarle County Commonwealth's Attorney's
Office quietly sought, and got, indictments under the burning objects statute. A grand jury agreed
with Hingely there was probable cause to believe that objects
had been burned with the intent to intimidate. Fugitive warrants were issued. Arrests were made
by local police in far-ranging jurisdictions. And now, nearly six years after that hot night in
August, the extraditions are starting. I want to share with you the stories of the men who carried
torches that night. Some of them are now facing felony charges in Elmiraul County. Others may come to share that
fate. After the crowd dispersed that night and after the deadly rally the next morning,
those men went home. Some started businesses. Some died. Some trafficked drugs, beat their wives,
choked their girlfriends, went to grad school, went to prison, started families, ran for office, left the movement, tried to lead the movement, or just tried to disappear.
There are as many stories as there were flames in the night when their voices joined as one, shouting, Jews will not replace us.
Then going their separate ways, back to the communities they came from. And now, some of them
are on their way back, this time against their will. So I wrote that about 10 months ago, last
April, just as the first cases were unsealed. Obviously, a lot's happened since then. But before
I get into a recap of those first 10 cases,
let's hear a brief word about some products and services.
Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast,
and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.
From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,
better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech
from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.
This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists
to leading journalists in the field,
and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse
and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge
and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people.
I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand
what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.
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On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his
mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.
And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.
Elian Gonzalez.
Elian.
Elian.
Elian.
Elian.
Elian.
Elian Gonzalez.
At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.
His father in Cuba.
Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home
and he wanted to take his son with him.
Or his relatives in Miami.
Imagine that your mother died
trying to get you to freedom.
At the heart of it all is still
this painful family separation.
Something that as a Cuban,
I know all too well.
Listen to Chess Peace,
the Elian Gonzalez story,
as part of the My Cultura podcast network,
available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti.
And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden.
We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline,
the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.
One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck.
You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone.
But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean,
how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian
Toot, aka Your Rich BFF,
to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like,
every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15 percent.
I'm not saying you're going to get 15 percent every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15
and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's
episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts. So if Thomas Rousseau is number 11 on this list of tiki torch defendants, who were the first 10?
The grand jury that convened in February of last year handed down the first five indictments.
Will Zachary Smith, William Billy Williams, Tyler Dykes, Dallas Medina, and William Fears.
Will Smith of Nakona, Texas was the first in custody.
He was actually already in custody
here in Charlottesville when the first charges were filed. He had been indicted on a separate
felony charge back in 2018 for pepper spraying the counter protesters that night, but remained
a fugitive until his arrest in January 2023. So when the prosecutor brought the torch charges
to the grand jury in February, it was probably an easy first choice. Will Smith pled guilty to the torch charge in May in a sealed plea deal that dropped
the much more serious pepper spray felony and was allowed to return home without being sentenced.
Billy Williams traveled here with Will Smith back in 2017. The pair were acting as bodyguards for Robert Hasmador Ray, the Daily
Stormer blogger who is actually also still a wanted fugitive on a felony charge of pepper
spraying those counter protesters that night. When Billy Williams was extradited from Texas
in April of last year, he was denied bond after some apparent dishonesty regarding his relationship with Robert Ray.
Through his attorney, he denied having had any contact with Ray while he was a fugitive.
He, in fact, claimed they barely knew each other, having met only a couple of times.
I can tell you that's not true.
But after claiming that they'd had no contact in the intervening years,
the prosecutor revealed in the bond hearing that law enforcement partners had shared information with his office
that they believe that not only had they been in contact, but that Ray had been living with Williams,
living on his property while he was in hiding as a fugitive.
Williams, too, pled guilty to the burning object charge in July, receiving an active sentence of six months.
pled guilty to the burning object charge in July,
receiving an active sentence of six months.
But with time served and good behavior,
he was home barely two weeks after entering his plea,
but not before he missed the birth of his seventh child with his common-law wife.
Tyler Dykes was arrested on St. Patrick's Day.
He'd been out with other members of the white supremacist group
the Southern Sons Active Club,
trying to hang a racist banner from a highway overpass in Savannah, Georgia, when he was, unfortunately, bitten by a
dog. I do not have information on what came of the dog. I hope he's okay. Concerned about infection,
though, Tyler Dykes went to the emergency room to have the wound looked at. In Georgia, as in most
states, emergency rooms contact the police to report dog bite injuries.
An officer was dispatched to the hospital to take a report from Dykes about the dog bite incident,
which is a fairly routine situation. But somewhere during their interaction in the hospital,
the officer ran Dykes' name to the system, and it came back with a warrant. A panicked Dykes sent his hate group group chat a quick text. I'm being arrested
by Virginia. Nuke my account. In video of the melee at the base of the statue on August 11,
2017, Dykes can be seen throwing punches even after everyone else had stopped. And then
celebrating the victory by marching around in a weird tight little circle with his right arm
extended in a Nazi salute. Dykes pled guilty to the torch charge in May and received the same six-month
active sentence Williams had gotten. With time served and good behavior, he was released in July.
I wonder if he expected to see his elderly parents waiting for him in the parking lot
outside the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail that day. But he never made it that far.
U.S. Marshals took him
into federal custody before he ever walked outside. He's currently out on bond, awaiting
trial on 10 counts for his participation in the January 6th insurrection. Dallas Medina of Ohio
turned himself in in April and was allowed to return home on bond. He had been an active member
of an extremely online group of mass shooting enthusiasts calling themselves the Bull Patrol, so named after the bull-cut hairstyle sported by their
idol Dylan Roof. After a feud with Chris the Crying Nazi Cantwell ended with Cantwell in
federal prison, the group more or less fell apart in 2020. Medina hasn't appeared in court
since his bond hearing in April, and he doesn't yet have a trial date. William Fears was
booked into the Albemarle-Charlesville Regional Jail in June after being transferred from the
Texas prison where he was serving a sentence for domestic violence. Just two months after
Unite the Right, William Fears beat and choked his girlfriend. A few days later, he traveled to
Florida with his brother Colton Fears and their friend Tyler Tenbrink to see Richard Spencer's speech at the University of Florida. He knew when he left town
for Gainesville that week that his girlfriend had reported the assault. Having already been to
prison for abducting and stabbing a different ex-girlfriend years earlier, he knew another
conviction would put him away for a while, and he wanted one last shot at starting the race war
before they got him.
In video from the torch march,
William Fears can be seen swinging his torch at a counter-protester,
screaming,
Die, commie!
Fears remains in custody, but does not yet have a trial date.
William's brother Colton Fears joined him at the Albemarle-Charlesville Regional Jail in September.
I suspect the jail probably kept them separated,
but it still would have been the closest the brothers had been in years. When the brothers were in Gainesville in
October of 2017, their friend Tyler Tenbrink shot at a group of anti-fascist counter-protesters
after Richard Spencer's speech. Thankfully, no one was injured, but Tenbrink was convicted of
attempted first-degree homicide. Colton Fears was driving the car when the men left the scene
of the shooting and spent five years in a Florida prison for accessory after the fact to attempted
first-degree homicide. Colton was released in 2022 and returned home to Texas, where he was
then arrested in August 2023 on the burning object charge. After pleading guilty in October,
he was allowed to return home prior to sentencing.
Ryan Roy of Vermont turned himself in in May.
If you've been reading the voluminous leaks that seem to be constantly springing forth from Patriot Front's online comms,
you may know him better as Rex.
It looks like he's stayed quite busy in the years since Unite the Right as a member of Patriot Front.
He is currently home on bond and does not yet have a trial date. Jamie Troutman of West Virginia turned himself in in October.
Under the pseudonym Alt-Right VA, Troutman was an active organizer and planner of the Unite the Right rally. He was present at many of the precursor events that took place here in
Charlottesville during the Summer of Hate, including the two other torch marches,
smaller torchlight rallies that were held in downtown
Charlottesville in May and October of that year. Like Dykes, photos show Troutman was present at
the Capitol on January 6th, though in Troutman's case, no charges have been filed. He too is home
on bond with no trial date set. And before we get to the last two of those first 10 cases,
let's hear from someone who has also not been charged in connection with a militant reactionary attempt to overthrow the US government. These products and services.
And we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.
From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,
Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.
This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field.
And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.
Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God,
things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in
the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.
Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts.
Check out betteroffline.com.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.
He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.
He looked like a little angel.
I mean, he looked so fresh.
And his name, Elian Gonzalez,
will make headlines everywhere.
Elian Gonzalez.
Elian Gonzalez.
Elian.
Elian.
Elian Gonzalez.
At the heart of the story
is a young boy
and the question of who he belongs with.
His father in Cuba.
Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.
Or his relatives in Miami.
Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.
At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.
Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well.
Listen to Chess Peace,
the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Gianna Parenti. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk
Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.
One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck.
You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone.
But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money?
I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k?
Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu,
aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down.
I always get roasted on the internet
when I say this out loud,
but I'm like, every single year,
you need to be asking for a raise
of somewhere between 10 to 15%.
I'm not saying you're gonna get 15% every single year,
but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight,
that is actually a true raise.
Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
The final two of these first 10 torch cases are the messy ones.
So we've got these four guilty pleas,
and we've got four cases that are sort of moving along slowly down the usual path.
And then we've got two cases where the defendants have had some success
bogging the cases down with motions.
Jacob Dix of Ohio was arrested in July.
Dix is seen in photos and video on the 11th and 12th with two other Ohio men, his roommate Ryan Martin, who recently passed away,
and Daniel Borden, one of the men convicted of beating a man nearly to death during the rally
on August 12th. I'm sure we'll learn more about Dix as his case progresses, but I have found him
in photos with the Traditionalist Worker Party
at the Nazi rally in Pikeville earlier that same summer. In his torch case, he has been granted
both a substitute judge and a special prosecutor, based on a sort of nebulous, though very loudly
argued, conspiracy theory involving the wife of a judge who is not even presiding over his case,
and a prosecutor who has a history of expressing
anti-racist political views in his personal life. Dix is out on bond. With the recent ruling granting
him a special prosecutor, we may be seeing a trial date get set in the near future.
And finally, Augustus Sol Invictus. Until Rousseau was arrested last week, the biggest name in this batch was Augustus Invitus.
Even before his name was on the flyers as a headline speaker at Unite the Right,
Invitus was no stranger to the headlines. In 2016, he ran for U.S. Senate in Florida as a
libertarian. His campaign was marred by such controversies as his own past statements on
eugenics, a 2013 ritual sacrifice of a goat, his legal representation
of white supremacist militia leader Marcus Faella, and numerous police reports from both his wife
and his teenage girlfriend alleging domestic violence. In the years since, Invictus never
did become a U.S. Senator, despite a second attempt, and never did get convicted of
domestic violence, despite many, many more police reports. He's also no longer a pagan.
Asked recently about the goat blood drinking ritual he performed in 2013, he quipped that
he drinks human blood now. Just a little transubstantiation joke about his recent
conversion to traditional
Catholicism. Invictus was arrested on the burning object charge in Florida in June 2023
and held for a month before being extradited to Virginia and released on bond.
Like Dix, he has been granted a substitute judge. He too was seeking a special prosecutor,
but no ruling was made at his last hearing. Currently, his case is
docketed for trial next month, but I'm willing to bet that gets postponed. So that's more or less
where we are now. Rousseau is the 11th man to be charged in these cases. We've got four guilty
pleas on the record, leaving him as one of seven open cases. We can expect to see Rousseau extradited
from Texas to Virginia in the near future. I would
say maybe a week or two, although some of them have been held for up to a month before a deputy
can get down there and bring them back. Something I was really surprised to learn in all of this
is in most extraditions for state cases like this, like these are not federal cases, these are
local cases. When someone gets extradited long distance, a deputy just
flies down there and then they fly back together on a commercial airline. It's not like a Conair
situation. They're just on an airplane together. So it really depends on when a deputy can sort
of get down there and get them. So he'll be extradited sometime in the next few weeks.
And then once he's booked into the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail, he'll get an appearance in court. It's anybody's
guess right now who he'll hire to represent him. Former Proud Boy and current Patriot Front lawyer
Jason Lee Van Dyke was thoughtful enough to reply to one of my tweets about Rousseau's arrest
to say that he will not be taking this case. As much as he would have loved to try this case,
which he said that he would do a very good
job doing and he could definitely do it. And unfortunately, he just can't. He cited the
difficulty in finding local counsel to assist. He's not admitted to the bar in Virginia. So he
would need someone who is to sort of sponsor him in and be responsible for him in the case. So he
said, you know, he can't find local counsel. And also it would just be too time consuming and too expensive to try a case in Virginia
as he's located in Texas.
So it won't be Jason Lee Van Dyke.
I've been writing about these cases in my newsletter, The Devil's Advocates.
It's on Ghost, which is like Substack, but it's not Substack.
It's Ghost.
And I'm looking forward to writing some updates very soon.
The finding out for this
particular fucking around has been a long time coming, and I can't help but wonder if these
cases had been brought sooner, Patriot Front might not even exist, you know? I suspect once Rousseau
has gotten a lawyer, he will ask for a bond hearing. That's probably what's next. It's
impossible to know how much information other
law enforcement agencies are interested in sharing with the local prosecutor,
but that kind of information sharing did play a critical role in some of the other cases.
In bond hearings for Billy Williams and Tyler Dykes, information about the defendants' associations
and activities collected by other local police agencies and federal authorities was what kept
them in custody. In Dykes' case, several police and sheriff's departments in South Carolina and
Georgia shared information that he was a suspect in some swastika vandalism cases, some firing
cases. It's not clear if the feds shared information ahead of time about the January 6th
case, but it is clear that the prosecutor's shared information ahead of time about the january 6th case but it is it is
clear that the prosecutor's office was talking to other law enforcement agencies who'd been keeping
tabs on these guys and i think you would be a fool to think the feds don't have some information
about rousseau that might raise a judge's eyebrow i guess we'll just have to wait and see. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts
from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could
Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 I Heart Podcast Awards are coming.
This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award.
Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
But hurry, submissions close on December 8th.
Hey, you've been doing all that talking.
It's time to get rewarded for it.
Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast.
And we're kicking off our second season,
digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley
into a playground for billionaires.
From the chaotic world of generative AI
to the destruction of Google search,
Better Offline is your unvarnished
and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech
brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose.
Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.