It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #33

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

The gang discuss the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Epstein birthday book, an ICE raid of a Hyundai plant in Georgia, the DOJ's consideration of a trans gun ban, and an update on the Cop City RICO... case. Fundraiser: https://gofund.me/da39f7d0b Sources: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/422/873/ https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/customs-and-border-protection-settles-federal-lawsuit-american-citizens-racially https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/l.g.m.l.-v.-noem--a-hearing-diary ttps://qz.com/higher-investment-means-hyundai-could-get-2-1-billion-1850832920 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/10/hyundai-factory-ice-raid-legal-visa https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-reactions-charlie-kirk-shooting-civil-war/ https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09/11/us/charlie-kirk-shooting-news https://x.com/mkraju/status/1965108206969241953 https://x.com/TheJusticeDept/status/1963635111112446449 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-considering-banning-trans-people-buying-guns-us-media-2025-09-04/ https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/04/politics/transgender-firearms-justice-department-second-amendment  https://archive.ph/kI2Uo https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/rfk-jr-hhs-to-link-autism-to-tylenol-use-in-pregnancy-and-folate-deficiencies-e3acbb4c  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yok1fhPICAYSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack, available now.
Starting point is 00:00:27 Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple, podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I always had to be so good, no one could ignore me.
Starting point is 00:01:08 Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at tetherpaperceiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council.
Starting point is 00:01:35 Lauren came in hot. From viral performances to red carpet looks that had everyone talking. The podcast, The latest with Lauren the Rosa, is your go-to for everything being amazed. We will be right here breaking it all down. I'm going to be giving you all the headlines, breaking down everything that is going down behind the scenes, and getting into what the people are saying. Like, what is the culture talking about? That's exactly what we'll be getting into here at the latest with Lauren the Rosa.
Starting point is 00:01:57 everything being amazed. To hear this and more, listen to the latest with Lauren the Rosa from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio at Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. CallZone Media This is It Could Happen here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what is happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you, I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Sophie Lichtenen, Robert Evans, and James Stout. This episode, we are covering the week of September 4th to September 11th.
Starting point is 00:02:36 Never, wait, remember? Wait, what? Never forget, whichever one of those we're supposed to do. So we had a very big news week already, and then a very big piece of news happened yesterday when we usually record executive disorder, but this is Thursday. we waited a little bit to get some more information before we talk about this story, which will probably be the biggest story of the week, the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Starting point is 00:03:06 So on Wednesday, September 10th at Utah Valley University at around 1223 p.m. Mountain Time, Charlie Kirk was shot during a campus event. It was a big outdoor event, the crowd. I mean, there's some good footage of elevation of the size of the crowd. It was, it looked like several thousand people who had shown up to, I think it did all, it seemed like largely supporters, but there were certainly a mix of supporters and protesters around. And yeah, Kirk was shot once from a distance of, I think the, right now the best estimate is around 150 yards. But, I mean, that's precise, not accurate, because people are kind of basing it on just sort of like looking at the images and doing like. Google Maps the satellite estimation.
Starting point is 00:03:51 Right, right. But that does seem credible. based on what I've seen, about 150 yards or so, which is not long range. That's not like short range. It's like low, medium range for a rifle. And they found, or at least the FBI is saying they found the rifle. And the pictures show it to be an extremely normal looking bolt action hunting rifle.
Starting point is 00:04:09 Kirk was shot once in the neck. It hit his brainstem. You can kind of tell by the way his arms moved after he was shot. So he probably lost consciousness immediately. And he was declared dead about two hours later at the hospital. but that's largely because that tends to be how it's handled when somebody is shot like this. They don't like to announce their death immediately, even if they died immediately. Like, that's just kind of, it's best prep.
Starting point is 00:04:35 You want to make sure you've contacted the family and everything like that. So that's what happened. Yeah. And his case, the family were present, I think, at the event. I mean, I'm sure some of them, but there's, like, not ever, like, they would have probably wanted, like, I doubt his parents. or whatever, we're all there or whatever, like, even if his wife and kids were. Sure, yeah, totally makes sense. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:57 Yeah. Those are the facts that we can verify. And there's actually fairly little besides this other than some time stuff that we can verify perfectly. Like, they're currently saying that about 11.52 a.m. mountain time, the shooter arrived near campus because they do have some videos of the person they think was the shooter. There were at least two people who were taken into custody right after the shooting who proved not to be the guy.
Starting point is 00:05:21 I think they were just grabbing people. Like, it did not, there did not seem to be any good reason. One of them had a pellet rifle. The first guy started shouting after the shooting, and I'll do it again, and this prompted him to be detained, but was later found to not be a legitimate suspect in the shooting. No, because he was right next to the shooting. Yeah. Had no weapon, nothing.
Starting point is 00:05:45 So, I mean, those are the facts as they stand right now. The photo that has been released of the guy they think did it looks like about 80% of the male population of Utah, clean-shaven. But otherwise, he looks just as nondescript as, like, this dude takes his hat off, maybe shaves his head. Like, it would not be wildly difficult for him to hide because he does not look like. Pretty grainy pictures, not as clear as something like the United Healthcare CEO shooting. And the FBI did offer a reward of up to $100,000 for information. We do know that. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:27 Which points towards the usefulness of the tips they have been getting so far. Exactly. Yeah. The rifle is for anyone who's interested. They said it was a Mouser. I guess it didn't look like one from the photos that they've released, but maybe that was yet again not the gun. because the FBI has said a lot of things and then backtracked on that. Yeah, the New York Post has a picture of a sporterized Spanish Mauser with a composite stock.
Starting point is 00:06:56 Have you seen that one, Robert? Yes, that's the one I saw that it looked like a savage to me, but is that a sporterized 8mm that was rebarreled to 30 at 6? That would be my guess. The Spanish Mouser is the only one I'm aware of that has the bolt turned down in that way. Good idea. But it's not a great picture. It could also do something else. Because it just looked like any hunting rifle on a store rack, the photo that I saw.
Starting point is 00:07:20 Yeah, no, I think it's someone has done a sported job on it. Yeah. What's somewhat interesting about that, like, other than just being a dweeb, is that potentially one could acquire a gun like that without having filled out a 4473 form, right? Like an FBI background check. I know if they have the weapon, they will certainly be pursuing trying to trace that as one of the ways. they're trying to locate the shooter. Yes.
Starting point is 00:07:47 So if this person's either a relative could have acquired it before it was necessary to do a 44-73. Yes. Or I think with curios and relics in some states or antique weapons, you don't have to do a background check. No. And you don't have to do a background check. I mean, face-to-face sales are, I believe, legal in Utah. Yes, private face-to-face sales are legal in Utah. Okay.
Starting point is 00:08:11 So if this guy bought, basically what that means is if this guy just bought a gun in cash from a dude there's not a record of that although said dude might come forward sure that said the fact that this is a sporterized old mouser means this could be a gun that's been in the family a while that he's sporterized in which case there's absolutely no record of it yeah yeah definitely you know i'm guessing i've seen people call it a high-powered rifle and stuff like just just be aware it's kind of an old gun i think it's an old gun i mean if it's 30 if it is 30 at 6 i would say that's a high-power cartridge. Yeah, no, it is. That's a big round, but yeah. It's a full-sized rifle cartridge, for sure. People hunt deer with 30 out six all the time. It's an extremely normal hunting rifle.
Starting point is 00:08:53 Yeah, like probably top five most common kinds of rifle for someone to have in this country. And that was bolt action hunting rifle was my assumption as soon as I saw the video, because the guy fired one shot. And it's relatively uncommon for people who are shooting in mass crowded public situations like this to limit themselves to a single round. Which it just suggests, number one, like a bolt action, which I also thought was likely because they didn't leave any ammo behind. And if he was firing something like an AR, those can fling brass so widely that you can't easily catch it. Like if you're, especially if you're trying to escape immediately after shooting. And yeah, I would guess I'm seeing a lot of people online.
Starting point is 00:09:31 Obviously, conspiracy start. I'm seeing so many people say, like, this had to have been a hit. This was a professional. Only a professional could have done this. This was Trump distracting from Epstein. This was the Mossad. that this was any number of unhinged theories around this event. And I will say right now, as pertains the competence of the shooter, anyone who had picked up a gun for the first time couldn't have easily done this.
Starting point is 00:09:55 Like, I doubt this as someone who was new to firearms. But anyone who, like, shot a deer once or twice a year could have made this happen. Anybody who went to the range, you know, once or twice a month for a while could have gotten competent enough to make a shot like this very easily. Very doable for, like, hobbyist shooters, which there are many of in the United States and many of in Utah. I would be shocked if, like, less than about 80% of the adult male population of Utah could have made this shot, right? You do not need, like, military training. You do not need to be a veteran to make this shot. Absolutely not. And I think it's very irresponsible to see so many people, like, including people who are journalists, speculating like that.
Starting point is 00:10:36 Like, I know that generally firearms are not covered well in the U.S. media, despite them being ubiquitous here. But in cases like this, it's okay not to know, but it's better to be quiet if you don't know. Yes. The other thing I guess we should get into is in terms of the escape. And what we know, this is also not something that necessitates fucking Navy SEAL training, right? Like, you're a white, clean-cut guy in fucking Salt Lake City. If you have a bag that you can hide your gun in and you get down, maybe throw on a different jacket or something like that over your shirt or change shirts, walk away, get to, your car drive off very hard for them to track you salt lake city's not new york it's not
Starting point is 00:11:15 blanketed in cameras not like new york there's not a massive police presence for this rally and there certainly wasn't a massive police presence doing concentric circles around the rally this was not like a fucking the presidents in town and the secret service is locking everything down for two miles now and charlie's own security tends to stay close to him at the event they're not set up with giant perimeters no because none of them expected something like this yeah i'm sure that Charlie Kirk has received threats before, but yes. I mean, there's only so much a private individual can do
Starting point is 00:11:46 right in these situations. He often wears a bulletproof vest. Yes. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. There's only so much a private individual can do, and there's only so much you can do if you're holding an event outside. Yeah. Like, to stop somebody who's got a
Starting point is 00:12:03 scoped rifle from getting on top of a roof, right? Like, I'm sure his family is firing their current security right now, obviously. But, I really don't know what they could have done, like what his personal security could realistically have done. Other than say, don't do an event outside, Charlie. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:12:19 A few other notes that we should touch on on Thursday morning, some unverified information related to the ongoing investigation notes leaked online through fellow campus debater Stephen Crowder. Stephen Crowder shared an internal memo,
Starting point is 00:12:39 which contained unverified information, which reads, in part, quote, ATF and other law enforcement located an older model, imported Mouser 30-od-6 caliber, bolt-action rifle, wrapped in a towel in a wooded area near the campus. The location of the firearm appears to match the suspect's route of travel. The spent cartridge was still chambered, in addition to three unspent rounds in the top-fed magazine. All cartridges have engraved wording on them,
Starting point is 00:13:08 expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology, unquote. So this claim linking the shooting to transgender and quote-unquote anti-fascist ideology, whatever that means, spread around the internet like wild as expected. Though a few hours later, the New York Times reported, quote, according to a preliminary internal report circulated inside the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, federal and local officials recovered ammunition with the shooter's rifle that appeared to be engraved with statements expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology.
Starting point is 00:13:40 But a senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation cautioned that report had not been verified by ATF analysts, did not match other summaries of the evidence, and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted. In fast-moving investigations, such status reports are not made public because they often contain a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information, unquote. Yes. And again, when that person with the pellet rival was arrested, Cash Patel, director of the FBI, posted on Twitter, we have the man who killed Charlie Kirk. And then had to post like an hour later, nope, which is not a thing you saw with previous directors of the FBI for a good reason. Yeah, like their handling of this has been pretty unorthodox.
Starting point is 00:14:28 No, and I can see why a fucking Stephen Crowder fan in the ATF would want to get that out immediately. Especially because he probably knew at some point that's going to get corrected. But what matters is it gets out for some degree of time. Yeah. And then that bakes into the reality of a certain number of people forever. Yeah. Right. And that's what matters whether or not it's true.
Starting point is 00:14:48 We don't know yet. Is it true or not? Right. We simply don't know. Hey, this is Garrison. This is just a short update on Thursday evening. Law enforcement gave a press conference where Utah governor Spencer Cox cautioned against, quote, unquote, A tremendous amount of disinformation circulating online about the killing of Charlie Kirk
Starting point is 00:15:11 and specifically cited bots from China and Russia, which were encouraging violence and instilling disinformation into discourse around the shooting. Now, while there certainly have been many on the left who have been joking or even celebrating this shooting. Oh, yeah. Lots of people. Rhetoric from the right has been similarly violent with calls to do. mass violence or purge the Democrats or people on the left. I'm going to play a video that the White
Starting point is 00:15:40 House released late Wednesday night of Trump giving a statement on the shooting. It's a long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For you. years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political
Starting point is 00:16:34 violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country. From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ice agents, to the vicious murder of a health care executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalia, and three others. Radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. The Trump assassin was not left wing. No. No. It was a registered Republican. There is currently no indication of the political alignment of this shooter. Just because they killed Charlie Kirk
Starting point is 00:17:26 does not mean that this was a left-wing Antifa super soldier. Charlie Kirk has had a memeified status on the internet for the past few years, which has encouraged vitriol and threats from those on the extreme right as well as the far left. Yeah, he's particularly disliked by like the hardcore anti-Semites on the right. And the Groypers have long had fun
Starting point is 00:17:46 with making threats against Charlie Kirk in the quote unquote Groyper War, which we don't have time to get into. But it's not just Trump's worrying statement there, promising a degree of crackdown. Jesse Waters on Fox has claimed, quote, Charlie's death.
Starting point is 00:18:03 Yep. Here's a clip of Jesse Waters on Fox News last night. Trump gets hit in the ear. Charlie gets shot dead. They came after Kavanaugh with a rifle to his neighborhood. They went after Musk's
Starting point is 00:18:18 cars. They just shot two Jews outside the embassy. Think about it. Scalise got shot, barely survived. It's happening. You got trans shooters. You got riots in L.A. they are at war with us whether we want to accept it or not they are at war with us
Starting point is 00:18:37 and what are we going to do about it how much political violence are we going to tolerate and that's the question we're just going to have to ask ourselves now charlie would want us to put as much pressure on these people as possible dana nailed it this is unacceptable and has to stop and it has to stop now and everybody's accountable and we're watching what they're saying on television and who's saying what the politicians and the media and all these rats out there this can never happen again it ends now gregg's right again this is a turning point and we know which direction we're going he made a turning point joke huh yeah that's jesse waters doing a turning point on also the uh the use
Starting point is 00:19:26 of rats to refer to yeah other people is uh i know it's giving like Radio Mill Colleen vibes. It's also worth noting Republican Representative Clay Higgins from Louisiana is saying that he's seeking to have social media companies place lifetime bans on users who celebrated the assassination. It's not
Starting point is 00:19:44 just Jesse Waters calling for war. Other commentators are employing very similar rhetoric, including Alex Jones and Steve Bannon. We're in a war. The left has been saying put a bull's eye on Trump, a bull's eye on his supporters. Charlie Kirk's a casualty of war.
Starting point is 00:19:59 We're war in this country. Chaya Reichek tweeted on the lips of TikTok account, quote, This is War. The Oathkeeper founder, Stuart Rhodes, announced on InfoWars that his militia would be reforming to help with security at right-wing events. Oh, gosh. There was a good Wired article Wednesday night, which collected various calls to violence among the right in the aftermath of the shooting.
Starting point is 00:20:23 Quote, Ed Martin, U.S. pardon attorney and former acting with attorney for D.C., wrote on Twitter, quote, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord, citing Romans 1219. Elon Musk posted, the left is the party of murder, then quoted a post blaming the left-wing and mainstream media as well as figures like Gavin Newsom for radicalizing people against right-wing figures like Kirk. Kitty Miller, who works with Musk at Doge, and is the wife of Stephen Miller, wrote on X that even liberals condemning violence, quote, have blood on their hands.
Starting point is 00:20:55 You could be next, influencer, and unofficial Trump advice. Laura Lumer posted on Twitter. The left are terrorists. Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who popularized the demonization of critical race theory, suggested in a Twitter post that the radical left was responsible for the shooting and urged the U.S. government to, quote, infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all those who are responsible for this chaos, unquote. There's many, many more. This is after the right has long celebrated certain types of political violence. Oh, yes. Constantly. Yeah. Like that old guy in Panama who shot a protester blocking the street.
Starting point is 00:21:32 The entire right rallied behind that man. Kirk himself has embraced Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two people after a plastic bag was thrown in the direction of Kyle Rittenhouse. Kirk was vocally supportive of the man who tried to attack Nancy Pelosi in her home. And did attack Paul Pelosi. Yes, specifically, specifically urged his audience to bail him out. It was, like, not even two months ago that a Minnesota state senator and her husband were killed. Political violence exists across the spectrum.
Starting point is 00:22:06 This is not a left-wing problem. This is an American problem. Yeah. I mean, the vast majority of political, like, terrorist attacks that are politically motivated in the U.S. are right-wing, like, and have been for the last several decades, per the FBI. In the 2012 to 2021, 55 percent of murders tied to political extremism came. from white supremacy, 14% anti-government, 6% other right-wing, 20% Islamist, 4% left-wing.
Starting point is 00:22:35 And the white supremacy, 55% are far-right Nazis. Yeah, in terms of who did this, yeah, I think we touched on Groyper's a little bit, but we should probably talk a bit more about the kind of online feud between a chunk of Nick Fuentes' fan base and Charlie Kirk. It was certainly more prominent a few years ago, as Kirk himself has moved further to right,
Starting point is 00:22:58 has adopted great replacement theory, the feud kind of dissipated. But it certainly was a legitimate thing in the right for, for like years. Yes, to the extent that that's a number of folks that kind of have suspected that, like, maybe that's who did it. Again, we really have no idea. I'm just bringing this up to make the point
Starting point is 00:23:15 that, like, there's a variety of reasons why this guy could have done this, why this person could have done this, including could be an Epstein-related thing, right? There's a lot of anger at figures who kind of bought into the Trump line that we're done now with the Epstein stuff. There's no way to know.
Starting point is 00:23:31 And I think that's kind of where we have to end that part of our discussion here is we don't know why this was done to extent it doesn't matter. If it comes out tomorrow that this guy was like a White House staffer working for Donald Trump who did it because he thought Charlie Kirk could disres like if some crazy shit like that happened,
Starting point is 00:23:50 it wouldn't change at all the way that they're talking about this shooting. Like it just doesn't matter. Like, we are where we are with them. And they're saying a lot of the same stuff. Like, this is an escalation in rhetoric, but it's not a massive escalation in rhetoric over the way they've been talking about fucking the people changing like the cracker barrel changing. We have to go to war.
Starting point is 00:24:12 We have to go to war. We're at war. Right. I was thinking about that when you said that, like, the lips of TikTok are tweeted that we're at war. Like, you could probably go back and see dozens of other instances of almost exactly the same statement. Yeah. Right. And is this something that could lead to mass? Could this be? Because I've seen people comparing this guy, like Charlie Kirk, to Horst Wessel, who was a Nazi, literally a pimp that was a member of the Nazi brown shirts who was murdered. And it became a huge rallying cry for the Nazi party, right? They made a song about him. It was a big deal. I think that's kind of a very silly comparison for one thing. Horst Wessel is meaningful because he was killed before the Nazis came to power. And they used his death in order to get to power. and Trump is in power if you're not aware.
Starting point is 00:24:57 They don't need to invent excuses either to crack down on the left or carry out their policies. They're already doing that. I've seen people go into complete panic mode because they're going to be like, they're going to use this shooting to now do terrible things, as if they're not already doing terrible things. They don't need to wait for events to happen.
Starting point is 00:25:20 They are more than willing just to do whatever they want, they want to. Yes. That is exactly like the, that's exactly what I would tell you. And in terms of like comparisons, I don't even think it's super useful to try to compare this to specific figures from fucking German history. Because there's really nothing. No, because it's America in 2025. It's America in 2020. There's a viral TikTok of a man talking about the Book of Mormon like seconds after the shooting.
Starting point is 00:25:51 Standing next to where Kirk died. And we now know that he stole a bunch of shit from the booth that was covered in blood to sell it online. Like, go, go read all of the books about Wymar, Germany. You won't find anything like that in it. Yeah. Like, a better historical
Starting point is 00:26:07 comparison, we will see, right? Might be Jose Calvo Sotelo, like, whose death did immediately sort of was one of the things that accelerated the start of the Spanish Civil War, I guess. Yeah. But even then, like, no one was tick-talking and grabbing merch that was stained by his blood.
Starting point is 00:26:23 No, and there's no, you can, like, say, like, oh, well, this figure's assassination preceded this kind of violence, but, like, okay, was that figure a guy who did what Charlie Kirk did and was connected in the way, no, like, this is an American thing. This is new. This is a novel, his moment in history, and we don't know what's going to happen. I'm not saying, don't, you know, if you're the kind of person who has been worried about right-wing violence accelerating, you shouldn't be less worried right now. And I think that's a good thing to be worried about. There's been a spree of bomb threats called into like historically black colleges today. And DNC headquarters last I checked. I don't think anything actually has been done. But it makes sense. It's an anger reaction from the right. You know, you've got some people who woke up pissed off this morning and decided to call in some bomb threats, apparently.
Starting point is 00:27:15 We'll see, you know, who the culprits were there. But I didn't want to touch on something else that I've seen in the wake of all this that is pretty novel. but we should do an ad break first. My name is Ed. Everyone say, hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin, so like it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago.
Starting point is 00:27:49 I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. Well, 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Starting point is 00:30:23 Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term. highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs.
Starting point is 00:31:09 Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts all right coming back i wanted to talk briefly about the way ai is being used by civilian investigators to try and crack this caper people have been using AI to enhance
Starting point is 00:31:49 the images that the FBI released of the maybe shooter. Again, we don't even know that that guy's the shooter because they fucked up very badly on this initially. But people have been using to like clarify and we know that the AI is doing a bad job because again, he's wearing a distinctive shirt. People found the shirt online. And when the AI was like solidifying the image on the shirt, it did it wrong. Like it put like a silhouette of a man on there that wasn't on there. Like it like you can also submit the same image to like five different AI imaging programs and get five wildly different results. for what the face, quote, looks like.
Starting point is 00:32:26 And I just brought that up because I haven't seen that happen before with one of these things. And it was like, oh, okay, cool. That's a fun new. This is going to be something we're going to have to deal with now for every single preceding event. Absolutely. Yes. Whatever this hellscape of the American century
Starting point is 00:32:42 of humiliation looks like. Yes. The other thing I wanted to bring up is within about like two to three hours after Kirk was killed. And after, again, it had been announced that he was dead. people were asking Grock, is this video? Because the video was spreading wildly of him dying on everywhere, really. But people asked on Twitter, they asked Grock, Elon Musk's AI, is this real?
Starting point is 00:33:03 And the response that was posted initially was, Charlie Kirk takes the roast in stride with a laugh. He's faced tougher crowds. Yes, he survives this one easily. And then someone responded, Grock, he got shot through the neck. What are you talking about? And Grock responded, it's a meme video with edited effects to look like a dramatic shot, not a real event. Charlie Kirk is fine. He handles roasts like a pro.
Starting point is 00:33:24 So again, I bring this up just because this is going to only become more of a factor in the immediate wake of shootings and terrorist attacks and disasters is people going to AIs for information about the validity of videos, about the validity of threats. And what scares me is not, this didn't do any damage, right? Like this doesn't, didn't hurt the manhunt for the killer. It didn't like do anything. It's just ridiculous. But let's say you've got videos of a disaster ongoing.
Starting point is 00:33:56 Like a fucking natural disaster coming or whatever. And people are being told to leave their homes. And somebody asks a fucking grok, hey, do I need to hear? I'll plug this video one. It'll tell me if the storm's going to hit my house or if I can stay here. People are going to do shit like that. Like that's going to happen. Yeah, you're right.
Starting point is 00:34:15 Anyway, just his heads up. Oh, that's bleak. Yeah. It's pretty terrible. All right. Well, that's, I think, all we've got to say on this. Yeah. We'll keep updating you as we learn more.
Starting point is 00:34:29 I'm sure this will keep developing over the weekend. Yeah, this is going to keep being a major story. I'm sure we'll do a dedicated episode on it next week. Yeah. Something else that happened on Wednesday, the same day as the Charlie Kirk assassination, was a school shooting in Colorado. Two students were shot before the shooter killed himself.
Starting point is 00:34:48 police have said, quote, we are looking at a motive. We don't have one yet. He was radicalized by some extremist network in the details of that will be down the road. And we wanted to give you that much about maybe a mindset for him, unquote. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's just a marking of what kind of shootings Americans are in your two and not school shootings. That's business as usual. Yeah. Especially if it's just a regular white male teenager. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be kind of following that one as well as to see what its online radicalization was that they've already found so early. But yeah, it's pretty tragic that two school shootings happened in a day. It was reported in multiple outlets last week that the Department of Justice was considering restricting gun ownership rights for transgender Americans in the wake of the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting last month. This was first reported by the Digley Wire who quoted the source inside the Justice Department, saying, quote, individuals within the DOJ are reviewing
Starting point is 00:35:52 ways to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell, unquote. CNN said that their sources describe the proposal for a transgun ban as, quote, preliminary in nature. And since then, the DOJ and the Trump administration have not made any clear statements confirming or denying this reporting. A DOJ spokesperson acknowledged these reports with the statement reading, quote, the DOJ is actively evaluating options to prevent the pattern of violence we have seen from individuals with specific mental health challenges and substance abuse disorders. No specific criminal justice proposals have been advanced at this time, unquote. Trump declined to answer
Starting point is 00:36:33 a question about a possible transgun ban last Friday. This is something right-wing influencers have been advocating for years now. Yeah. On September 5th, the NRA made a statement reading the Second Amendment isn't up for debate. The NRA supports the Second Amendment rights for all law-abiding Americans to purchase, possess, and use firearms. The energy does not and will not support any policy proposals that implement sweeping gun bans that arbitrarily strip law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights without due process. Yep, which, you know, is consistent with the NRA's messaging for years because the line has been. The recent messaging, you definitely. Yeah. Well, I mean, the line has been for as long as I have been a
Starting point is 00:37:15 gun owner, which is 20 years now, from the NRA. Yeah, after the civil rights movement. Yeah, yeah. Registration and like laws forcing people to register their guns. And like gun control laws in general are that restrict at all access to firearms are a prelude inevitably to mass confiscation, right? Like that has been the, that has been the line for a long time. This does not surprise me. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:40 No, the stance doesn't. The fact that they said something publicly during this does, because the NRA, has been quiet a lot when there's an issue. Like, for example, the shooting, the Falano Castile, right? Who was legally carrying a concealed firearm when the police murdered him in his car. They kept pretty fucking quiet about that. So I am a little surprised that they said something, but what they're saying is very consistent with other shit they've been saying.
Starting point is 00:38:05 There's no current legal mechanism that exists for them to do this. They would have to invent or heavily alter the current way that gun rights can't be taken away, which is right now through individual court cases where a judge finds an individual person, quote unquote, mentally deficient. And it's highly unlikely that the gun lobby will support any policy proposals that start adding certain diagnoses
Starting point is 00:38:29 to a list that excludes you from gun ownership. Because, sure, if you add gender dysphoria now, that might not be a huge problem to many on the right. But let's say, a Democrat administration and Democrat House and Senate come into power. Now there was this precedent that you can add diagnoses to take away gun rights, which would enable adding things like depression or PTSD,
Starting point is 00:38:54 which a lot of veterans have. And this is like the slippery slope that the NRA warns about. So it makes sense that they would be taking this stance. Similarly, I don't necessarily see a very clear path for them to restrict HRT through this mechanism. cis people, including a lot of men who own guns, take testosterone and cis women take estrogen. So that would be a very tricky way to handle this, I think.
Starting point is 00:39:22 The only way they could, again, would be if they try to restrict in mass, like the prescription of hormones, specifically to people with gender dysphoria or trans people, which is difficult for a lot of reasons, but would provide it like a pretext for, okay, these people are now taking stuff elite. an illegal substance, and you can go after people with guns for that. But I feel like, I don't know how you would judicate that, how you, like, force, like, the federal government does not theoretically have the ability to force the medical community to say nobody who's got gender dysphoria gets hormones ever again. Yeah, I mean, you could maybe do something through the FDA, but I don't see how you could do it just to trans people and not cis people. How?
Starting point is 00:40:05 Right. Like, how would you keep it legal for all of Joe Rogan's friends? Yeah, that's just like through the FDA, right? I literally just don't know. Yeah, I'm not super familiar with that. But this is obviously something that we will keep an eye on. This is like a possibility that we've discussed the right wanting to enact for years now. And the fact that the DOJ might even have some people in there who are doing preliminary considerations,
Starting point is 00:40:32 it obviously is a worrying sign of the general position on trans rights and trans gun rights. Yeah. For our immigration update this week, I want to start by talking about the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court confirmed in its case that CBP and more pertinently ICE can continue their policy of racial profiling. This overturned a lower court judge's order that prohibited them from stopping someone in Los Angeles based on ethnicity alone. It didn't just look at ethnicity. It said that it prohibited them from using either one or a combination of four factors, which were apparent race, their accent or they use for non-English language, their job, there are jobs that tend to have a higher proportion of undocumented people, right?
Starting point is 00:41:14 They get construction and some agricultural jobs and their presence at a certain place, again, right? Places like a home depot or a farm, Garrison, smiling at how I correctly pronounce the word depot there. CBP has always been able to profile you at the border, right? That's kind of what they do. There was a 1975 Supreme Court decision. That one was called USAV. versus Brignon. I think it's Brignoni, like Italian, Brignoni Ponce. That decision looked at a roving traffic stop up here, I believe it's in San Clemente. And in that case, the CBP had stopped someone, not at a checkpoint, but whilst sitting by the side of the highway in their vehicle. And they had done so solely based on the apparent ethnicity of the driver. That was ruled unconstitutional. And the standard that officers needed to have was, quote, reasonable suspicion. that pertains to roving stocks, which is kind of what ICE is doing in L.A., right? CBP officers have also previously been sued more recently for using language as a sole basis for detention. Like if you're speaking Spanish.
Starting point is 00:42:20 Yeah, exactly. That was the case, right? It's Suda and Hernandez versus U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That one was in Montana. The ACLU of Montana sued them to Spanish-speaking ladies who were speaking Spanish in a store. They actually said hello to a Border Patrol agent in the English, who proceeded to detain them, on the basis that not many people speak Spanish in Montana. I think the name is from Spanish, like Montania, but maybe I'm wrong. The State Department has also issued guidance that non-immigrant visa applicants can now only schedule interviews in their own country. So this is a further burden for people seeking visas to come to the United States, right?
Starting point is 00:43:00 Previously, you could do it at another U.S. embassy or consulate. But for instance, you know, if you were, let's say, French but resident in Spain, you could apply at the consulate or embassy there, right? Now you have to go to your country's embassy. In some cases, there are designated embassies or consular places for national states where the US has no embassy or a similar presence. Like, US hasn't got an embassy in Afghanistan right now for pretty obvious reasons, right? So I believe it's Islamabad for those people, for example. Finally, I want to get on to this case of the dozens of Guatemalan children who came to the US and accompanied by adults they're related to and who the Trump admin attempted to deport over the Labor Day weekend. Sometimes I don't like the phrase unaccompanied minors because maybe they are accompanied by someone who's just not in their family, right?
Starting point is 00:43:50 That people have taken care of them on the journey, almost certainly. And I've seen this myself. And so I don't know the idea that they're not just walking alone, but they're not with their relatives, right? have undertaken this journey themselves. So Judge Sparkle Sukhnananan temporarily halted their removal in the early hours of Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend. This is an extremely unusual decision, right? But the judge decided it was warranted because not doing so would put the children in potential
Starting point is 00:44:19 extreme danger. The government categorically attempted to remove these children like very quickly and literally got them out of bed, right? like we've got these little children out of beds in their foster homes and attempted to shove them on a plane to Guatemala. Their attorney literally ran onto the tarmac at the airport to tell flight control personnel that they were likely in violation of a court order if they allowed the plane to take off.
Starting point is 00:44:45 It couldn't be more last minute than this, right? They were literally working all night. Judge Tim Kelly now has to rule on the legitimacy of the government's claims. The claim the government makes here is that it was, quote, reuniting children with parents abroad, not deporting them. And that would mean the children don't have the statutory protections that they do if they were being deported as quote-unquote unaccompanied minors, right? Previously, the government had made the claim that the children's parents wanted them
Starting point is 00:45:15 to be returned. It's dropped that claim after Reuters published a Guatemalan government document, which completely refutes that. None of the children's parents seem to want them to come home. So what the government is claiming here is that the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is under HHS, is moving the children, not the Department of Homeland Security. So they're not being deported. They're being reunified with their families. Yeah. That's a pretty sketchy claim. Meanwhile, the kids are in shelters. Many of them were in long-term foster care and have been now removed from that environment and they're in shelters. Lawfare, which is an online publication, has a pretty good account of the courtroom exchange that I've linked in the notes.
Starting point is 00:46:00 I also, several people have asked about this, so I should talk about it. I wanted to talk about the Hyundai plant. In Georgia? I don't know what to call this, raid. Yeah, in Georgia. I guess raid is the right word. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, like, more than 300 South Korean workers were detained at the plant.
Starting point is 00:46:19 They should be going home today. They were supposed to go home yesterday. but there were some delays. So far, ISIS claimed that these people were working without proper authorization and slash all, we're not in the US with proper authorization. Their lawyers have claimed
Starting point is 00:46:34 and the Guardian has found leaked documents that confirm that many of them had B1 visa status. B1 is like you can do some work on a B1. It also can be just an extended term tourist visa. You can do certain jobs but not other jobs and you still get paid at home.
Starting point is 00:46:53 where you were on a B1, which seems to be what these people were doing, right? Like, they can supervise construction on a B1, but you can't do construction. And it would make sense for people who are very expert in the construction of these highly technical buildings to supervise that construction. It seems that they were in the country to supervise the setting up of this car plant. Correct, yeah. Most South Koreans can also get Esther visa waivers, which, like, it's not exactly the same, but it's kind of a 90-day B-1 visa.
Starting point is 00:47:20 So there are some people who cannot, right, like if they have been committed of crimes and such, they'd have to go through a B1 process. But it seems very unlikely at least that they were not in the country without any documentation because, like, that would just be a strange thing to do when they can get a best of visa waiver. What's really weird about this is the state of Georgia has invested millions, if not billions, in bringing this plant to Georgia, right? It has created a significant economic boost. Something like 90% of the products that go into the car come from there.
Starting point is 00:47:56 So there are lots of small businesses and local businesses that have started up to provide this factory with the goods it needs. There are all the other services that come with that, right? Like it's bought economic benefit to the region. I know the state has spent more than 300 million on improving the roads. Apparently they've deepened port. in some regions to allow larger ships to arrive. It's bought in over 12 billion investment, more than 8,000 jobs.
Starting point is 00:48:26 It's received massive tax breaks as going to total over $2 billion, according to reporting that I'll link to in the notes. Yet Georgia state police blocked off roads as part of the raid, and it was Georgia Department of Corrections buses that took people away. this seems an odd choice for Kemp, Brian Kemp, right, Georgia governor. He's not Trump's favorite. Maybe he's trying to become Trump's favorite. But previously, even Republicans in Georgia have been very behind this. I mean, Garrison, you lived in Georgia for a bit, right? This was a thing that the Republicans have supported is a way to revitalize a place where there wasn't much economic
Starting point is 00:49:07 opportunity before. Well, and this follows the whole point of Trump's tariffs. If you're trying to bring manufacturing to the United States, you have these specialized workers to help supervise the, like, construction and managing of equipment. They get this plant up and running. And even if you're, even if you're doing that, even if you're bringing manufacturing back to the States, somehow you still get bitten. Yeah, big time bitten by the Trump horse, I guess. Yeah, I mean, it does, it does sort of line up with this working closer to the furor hypothesis, right, that you have these countervalent impulses and everyone's just trying to do things that they think Trump will like. And kind of, sometimes those
Starting point is 00:49:45 can directly contradict each other as it's happening here. There's not really a coherent policy platform. No, they're just so focused on trying to get like the base numbers up, like trying to get the number of deportations higher than it's ever been. Yeah. And therefore, and you have this sort of series of impulses which motivate Trumpism, one of which is deport as many people as possible. Yeah. Another is broadly writ, bring manufacturing jobs back to America, but not if foreign people are helping supervise the construction, I guess. Understandably, South Korea is very upset, more so, I think, because these are, like, middle-class professionals who have been detained, right? They appear to have negotiated a voluntary departure
Starting point is 00:50:25 for these people, which it's not like a voluntary departure, like you came on holiday, Disney landed, you're going home on the plane. It can still have long-term consequences, but the hope there is that it won't make it harder for these people to get US visas in the future if they have to come back, because obviously it's going to be very hard for this company to build a plant in Georgia if they can't bring any of their staff to Georgia. Yeah, that is about all I have. I'm going to keep looking, especially this George story, see if it develops any further, and if it's worthy of a whole episode, we'll do a whole episode on that. Speaking of Georgia, the long-delayed Cop City RICO case has finally made some progress in
Starting point is 00:51:07 the courts. I have been working on the final, like, scripted piece of my Cop City coverage for basically this whole summer I've been slowly chipping away at it. Part of the reason why I have not finished that yet is because essentially the whole court case, like the 61 defendant Rico case, got reset in May. They changed judges. And that has delayed an already long delayed case even further. So I was waiting to see a little bit of the results of the court case or at least get a better indication where the court case is going to go before I finish that final piece, and we're going to get that final piece out probably in the next month or two here. But I will give this small update because it's pretty substantial this past
Starting point is 00:51:52 Tuesday, September 9th. The defense successfully argued that the state attorney general's office did not have the jurisdictional authority to prosecute the 61 defendants under the state's RICO statute. This was due to simple procedural error in neglecting to first ask, Governor Brian Kemp, if the AG's office could prosecute the case, Judge Farmer found that the AG does not have the authority to prosecute count one of the RICO indictment, which is the racketeering and conspiracy charges affecting 61 people. So without the sweeping RICO charges engulfing the 61 defendants, just five defendants would be left with count two of the indictment, the domestic terrorism charges, which the AG does have the authority to prosecute. And count three, which is the
Starting point is 00:52:38 arson charge, which Judge Farmer indicated could be thrown out on a similar technicality as the racketeering and conspiracy charges. This is still heavily in flux. The prosecution is going to appeal this decision, and it's unclear how this ruling will affect how the rest of the Cop City case will unfold as removal of the RICO charges kind of undermines the rest of the indictment. On Wednesday, they were arguing about the constitutionality of Georgia's domestic terrorism statute, which has never been tested in courts before. So a lot of this case is currently up in the air, but this is a positive sign for the defendants at this point. One brief RFK Jr. update, I guess. RFK Jr.'s soon to be released, Autism Report from HHS, is reportedly going to include
Starting point is 00:53:30 the claim that use of Tylenol during pregnancy could cause autism in children. Jesus Christ. this is not believed to be true by reputable medical authorities. But the report is set to release sometime in September. It was announced like months ago when RFK Jr. said that by September, we will finally know the cause of autism, quote, unquote. And it seems the report is still churning away, but set to be released this month. And it will include a few other claims, which we will report on in more detail once the report is actually out. But the Wall Street Journal got this little heads up about the Tylenol inclusion in the report. Fantastic.
Starting point is 00:54:12 So I heard from somebody who is waiting on their work permit, a Kurdish woman who came to the United States to claim asylum from Turkey, from northern Kurdistan. And because she doesn't have a work permit yet, and she's going to be waiting for her work permit some time, she's asking for help to cover her basic sort of day-to-day expenses. And this is a thing that people often find themselves in a situation, right? They have come here, done all the documentation, but it can take a long time to get their work permit.
Starting point is 00:54:41 And without friends or family, it can be very hard for them. The website is go fund.me slash DA39F7D0B. We'll have that link in the show notes as well. If you'd like to email us, you can do so. The way to do it is to reach out to Coolzone Tips at Proton.com. That is an encrypted email address. All that means is that you will have to also use an encrypted email address if you like it to be end-to-end encrypted.
Starting point is 00:55:13 All right, and here's some ads. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer, walks into a comedy club.
Starting point is 00:55:35 I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. The 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family.
Starting point is 00:55:58 And then he came to my house. So what do you? get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club. A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Power struggles, shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity. There's no
Starting point is 00:56:33 loyalty. That's all gone. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. Book, book, book, make deals. Let's get models in. Let's get them out. And the models themselves? They carried scars that never fully healed. Till this day, honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out.
Starting point is 00:56:53 The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis. this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change.
Starting point is 00:57:37 Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable.
Starting point is 00:58:14 Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth. Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York State number, and we own you. Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short-term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discipline,
Starting point is 00:58:54 physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months. The first night was so overwhelming, and you don't know who's next to you. And we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything. Listen to shock incarceration on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:59:24 we're back and uh i guess it's time to drop some bars about geoffrey epstein somehow epstein has returned yeah that joke it always gets old um so one of the big pieces of news this week before the thing that we started the episode with i mean this was the story before that happened is that as a result of the ongoing investigation into epstein and whether or not you know how involved was trump how involved were democrats what's do we care that the book the first 50 years birthday book that that drawing that Trump is accused of having done where he signed his name as the pubic hair of a very obviously young girl with a poem that seemed to hint at child molestation that the whole book that
Starting point is 01:00:18 Epstein had has has been released to Congress and is now public right yeah the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Epstein book from Jeffrey Epstein's estate once the estate made a statement saying that they have the book and would cooperate with a subpoena. And there's a bunch of news articles summarizing it. If you want to read the thing for yourself, just Google Document Cloud
Starting point is 01:00:40 Jeffrey Epstein 50th birthday book. And the whole thing is in there. Yeah. I would say like just to have a slight diversion, I guess, between this and the Charlie Kirk shooting, maybe you don't need to. Give yourself a break. You don't need. I'm not saying you should. I'm saying I just wanted to let people know where they can get to the original source if they don't want to have it mediated by a media, right? It's always good to do that.
Starting point is 01:01:03 We're going to mediate it for you now. So it opens, as far as I can tell the first, well, I mean, there's a list of contents. The prologue is written by Gieland Maxwell. Then there's letters from the family, Paula Seymour and Mark, or I guess, are relatives. Then it's split into Brooklyn. So there's friends of his from Brooklyn, who are Warren Eisenstein. neutral. I don't know who that is. Terry Kafka. Very funny that there's a Kafka involved. Dr. Stephen Levy and Michael Bocles. The next section is all girlfriends. Their letters from girlfriends
Starting point is 01:01:36 all of those names have been blacked out for reasons that should be obvious. The section after that is children. God Almighty, I don't know who's kids, because this is blacked out too. But who boy. Oof. Yeah. And then we get to the section that is friends. That is all the letters from friends. and the friends are Leon Black is on there, Bill Clinton is on there, Alan Dershowitz is on there. The Dershowitz letter is really unsettling. Yeah, Donald Trump is in there. We'll get to that in a second yet. Donald Trump is in there, obviously. These are not Mortzuckerman is on there. Leslie Wexner is on there. So a number of like very prominent people unknown is at the very end. I don't know. That's like literally how the book listed it. So they just have a
Starting point is 01:02:21 letter from someone who's presumably his friend but didn't put a name. I mean, it's a smart move if you're doing things, which are federal crimes. And then after that, you've got the letters from scientists, friends of his, which include people we brought up on my episode about the bioscience company who pretends that they're cloning dire wolves, Burry Gelman, and Martin Nowak are both on here. So that's great. Oh, good. And then after that, I just noted girlfriends is like the third group of people who had letters
Starting point is 01:02:49 and all those names were blacked out, but then under science, there's another section that's girl dash friends. That's longer, and all of those names are blacked out. No fucking idea what that is supposed to mean. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:03:02 But upsetting. It's not good, whatever it is. Yeah. Anyway, there's some more names on there, but they're not super relevant. Gillen Maxwell's prologue is handwritten, or at least the note in front of it, is handwritten.
Starting point is 01:03:16 I know you will enjoy looking through the book, and I hope you will derive as much pleasure looking through it as I did, putting it together for you. Happy birthday, love Gillen Maxwell. So that's the prologue. One of the first pictures, I mean, the first picture in the book
Starting point is 01:03:33 is Jeffrey Epstein standing around with a bunch of soldiers. They look like, I mean, I would guess from some African country. They're all in a camo pattern that's not immediately familiar to me. And, yeah, I can't fully read what it says down here.
Starting point is 01:03:50 Some of the lines say something about a president and the Secret Service to greet you. I don't know who these soldiers were that Jeffrey's standing around. I kind of want to know, but it's a weird photo to start. And then immediately after that is Jeffrey Epstein's Cub Scout graduation photo. They've got that in there.
Starting point is 01:04:07 And it's just a bunch of like pictures of Epstein throughout his life. Like that's kind of how this thing opens before we get down to the letters. Yeah. One thing I wanted to get at, so there's on page 57, there's a photo of Jeffrey Epstein wearing a weird shirt with a bunch of handprints on it when he was younger. That's just titled Girls on My Boat.
Starting point is 01:04:25 We picked up Girls on Beach, went out on boat. I tell them with knife in my hand to take suits off. But Warren tells me, don't worry. His name is Jahan. He's just joking. He lives at so-and-so. I tell Mark to throw him into water. He did.
Starting point is 01:04:39 No idea what the fuck that's about. But a lot of it's like that. It's like very upsetting stories that are handwritten crudely. I think, and often by Gillen, but yeah, it's, it's like pretty deeply upsetting stuff. Okay, I do, I do kind of want to read this Bill Elkis letter. It just starts with, it's no secret that Jeffrey appreciates beautiful women
Starting point is 01:05:01 that not many people know he can create them at a thin air as he did in Iowa in 1988. Good to give a place in time when discussing things that are illegal. Yeah, this guy says that he was managing the money of a family who lived in Fairfield, Iowa. Hog farming is a serious industry there and many people feel there is more than a little truth
Starting point is 01:05:20 in the saying that it's hard to tell the difference between the girls and the hogs in southeast Iowa. Jeffrey came to Fairfield to check in on their investment opportunities. He asked about the nightlife and we could only laugh as we dropped him off at the local motel. The next morning group of four of us picked up Jeffrey
Starting point is 01:05:36 to give him a tour of the area. At our first stop, we parked in front of a bookstore as we were getting out of the car. A spectacular tall blonde woman suddenly came out of the store. Walk directly up to Jeffrey and announced I am new to this area. What's going on?
Starting point is 01:05:47 It turns out she was a sales representative for a firm sawing academic branded athletic clothing. She was literally driving through Iowa visiting local campuses. Jeffrey invited her to join us and did his magic. Within a few hours, he had invited her to return to New York with him for the weekend. Yeah, a lot of stuff like that. Cool. We should probably read Dershowitz's letter. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:06:08 Yeah, one sec. Yeah. You can do that. Okay. Here's Dershowitz. Who was that man with Epstein? is the title of the letter. Inquiring minds are asking,
Starting point is 01:06:19 who is that man with Epstein? Jeffrey Epstein is, of course, one of the world's most famous men, a household name throughout the planet. His picture has appeared on the cover of every magazine in the world. Everyone knows his story, from his humble roots on Coney Island,
Starting point is 01:06:30 to his rise to one of the most envied public figures in the Western world. But what is he doing flying to Africa with an obscure former politician from Hope, Arkansas? Who is that politician? And why would Epstein have picked him for the coveted seat on his private jet?
Starting point is 01:06:41 Vanity Unfair was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery man and to reveal the story behind the story. Normally, we would not pry into the private life of an obscure Arkansas politician, particularly one who has tried so hard, up to now so successfully, to keep his private life to himself.
Starting point is 01:06:55 But the moment this obscure man stepped under the Epstein jet, he became fair game for probing inquiry. Why would a man like Epstein, who can pick and choose his companions from princes to professors, select a flying companion from the Ozark Mountains. To be sure he was a Rhodes Scholar, but we all know how easy it is to get a Rhodes
Starting point is 01:07:08 if you're from Arkansas. There must be something else, Vanity Unfair decided to snoop around. As obscure politician reluctantly agreed to be, to an interview on the express condition that it was completely off the record. This is what he told us. And then it's blank. The letter ends. It comes
Starting point is 01:07:22 with a note. Yes. Reading, dear Jeffrey, as a birthday gift to you, I managed to obtain an early version of the Vanity Unfair article. I talked them into changing the focus from you to Bill Clinton, as you will see from the enclosed excerpt. Happy birthday
Starting point is 01:07:38 in best regards. And then there's a fake vanity unfair article. Yeah. Or a cover. Yeah. Yeah, that, who is Jack the Ripper? Was it Jeffrey Epstein? Al-Qaeda in South America, financed by Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein stole my heart, another courtroom dispatches.
Starting point is 01:07:53 It's like really crudely animated, but yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, what do you even say? Oh, there is a quote on the fat, on the Vanity Fair cover attributed to Epstein that says life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us. So I guess that's a Jeffrey Epstein original. Wow. How profound. Before we talk about the Trump letter, there's this one other. image I'd like to discuss this, what I can only describe as a grooming-themed drawing.
Starting point is 01:08:21 Oh, God, yeah. ...to him as part of his birthday card, depicting Jeffrey Epstein in 1983, giving balloons in a lollipop to three young children, girls, like children, children, and importantly, his pockets are turned out, out, and the pants he's wearing are, like, patched and old. He's clearly poor in this. In 1983, by the way, he was working as a tutor and a teacher. Like, he was teaching kids at private schools. Like, so that's what's represented here.
Starting point is 01:08:49 Yeah. The other section of the drawing is in 2003 and has Jeffrey Epstein sitting on the beach with four women touching his body. One woman is very clearly touching his genitals and has J.E. tattooed on her ass. Jeffrey Epstein's jet is flying above. You know it's his jet because the actual in number of his real jet is written on the side of the jet. Yeah. And on the beach, he is on a lawn chair outside of what sort of resembles Trump's Marlago resort in terms of the architectural style, the arch to doorways, the tiered structure, and layout of the palm trees, and the beach. This building does not match his house in Florida or his house in the southwest or his house on the island, which appears very different with blue roofing.
Starting point is 01:09:41 I'm not saying this necessarily is Mara Lago, but if I were to try to draw Mara Lago from memory, it might look something like this. There's certainly a resemblance, which is notable. Yeah, we should talk about literally the next photo from this is a picture of Jeffrey Epstein holding a check for $22,000 to him from Donald Trump. There's three people posing next to him. One of them is a woman whose face is blacked out. There's also another woman with her face blacked out behind them. But the man who's sitting next to the woman at what looks like a dinner table does not have his face blacked out. I don't know why.
Starting point is 01:10:22 And it says on this, Jeffrey, showing early talents with money and women, sells fully depreciated. And then the name of the woman who is being sold is blacked out to Donald Trump for $22,500. $100. Shoot, early people skills, too. Even though I handled the deal, I didn't get any of the money for the girl. So pretty sickening joke. Yeah. Yeah. Genuinely, like, nauseating. Literally, yeah, like him holding up a check, Donald Trump gave him for a girl. Like a fake novelty check signed by someone who's not Trump, just someone signing Donald Trump, not Donald Trump's signature. But people joking about Jeffrey selling a woman to Trump for $22,500. Was it say fully depreciated?
Starting point is 01:11:05 Was that the phrasing used? That is the phrasing. Yes. Yes. Yeah. It's fucking disgusting. And then we get down to the original Trump letter, which we've talked about on the show. We've read it to you.
Starting point is 01:11:17 This is the one where he's, Donald says, it's framed as a conversation between them. And Donald says, Enigmas Never Age. Have you noticed that? Anyway, the only thing noteworthy about this is now we have the drawing of the woman. It's drawn around the script. and it's, I would say, pretty clearly a pubescent girl. Like, there's breasts drawn on there. The breasts do not look fully developed.
Starting point is 01:11:39 And they do not look. They're not large. Like, no, and the position of them is higher. They look like underdeveloped breasts. Yes. It looks like a drawing of a young girl, like of a child. It's so much more creepy than anyone who, like, tried to draw what this might have looked like has, like, previously imagined.
Starting point is 01:11:59 Yeah. Like they were all drawing, you know, like conventionally attractive, like adult female bodies. This is much more creepy. Now, I will say it doesn't look like his signature is meant to be pubic hair here. It's in a similar position, but no, this is a very abstract drawing. Yes. His signature is just his first name, Donald, which he signs a lot of personal notes with, not his full Donald Trump's signature.
Starting point is 01:12:22 Trump is maintaining that he did not sign this, that this is a forgery. He is unaware of this letter, even though the signature. matches other signatures from him around this time. And this just feels like a very Donald Trump thing to do. Yeah. And is worded similarly to how he talked about women in this era. He now makes statements being like, I don't talk this way. Everyone who knows me knows I don't talk this way. And if you watch like clips from Donald Trump in the early 2000s talking about women, it is this type of language. It is, it is very gross. Yeah. Like everyone remembers the Howard Stern clip. Like, come on. Right.
Starting point is 01:12:59 Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. Now, it's also worth noting one of the last things in the book is recipe for, like, chocolate chip cookies. I try to figure out who put the recipe in there, but their name is blacked out. They're right under Henry Rossovsky and right above Les Wexner. I don't know who put that chocolate chip cookie recipe in here, but I might try to make those cookies. The Epstein biscuit. I wouldn't eat those. Yeah. A few other things before we close this episode. related to Epstein. On September 5th, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that Trump was actually a secret FBI informant tasked with taking down Jeffrey Epstein. I hadn't heard this. He did a great job. Yeah, I will. I'm saying that what Epstein did is a hoax. It's a terrible, unspeakable evil. He believes that himself. When he first heard the rumor, he kicked him out of Marilago. He was an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down. The president knows and has great sympathy for the women who have
Starting point is 01:13:58 suffer these unspeakable harm. It's detestable to him. He and I've spoken about this as recently as 24 hours ago. There should be documents that could corroborate that one, would imagine. Yeah, one would think. On September 8th, Mike Johnson walked back, his FBI informant comments. Of shocking. Telling reporters, he was referring to what Epstein victims' attorneys has said that Trump was, quote, willing to help law enforcement to go after the guy who was a disgusting
Starting point is 01:14:21 child abuser, sex trafficker, all the allegations. That's what they heard. I don't know if I use the right terminology, but that's common knowledge. Everybody knows that. I was repeating what has been common knowledge for a long time. The president was helpful in trying to get Epstein for the law enforcement to go after Epstein, unquote. Great stuff from Mike Johnson. Sure. A day later, White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt confirmed that Trump was not, in fact, an FBI informant.
Starting point is 01:14:50 One other weird Epstein story from this week is how the DOJ has been beefing with James O'Keefe's Project Veritas. Yeah. Project Veritas did a operation against a DOJ employee in which they recorded him saying this. Oh, those files do exist? Yeah, thousands and thousands of page 5. They'll redact every Republican or conservative person in those files. They've all the liberal, democratic people in those files. And they visited that Maxwell person.
Starting point is 01:15:25 Yeah. And also involved? Got transferred to a minimum. security prison too recently, which is against BOPI policy because she's a convicted exonerated to offer her or something to keep about. That was the acting deputy chief of the Office of Enforcement Operations, Joseph Schnitt, telling a stranger about the FBI and DOJ's handling of the Epstein files. The DOJ responded to O'Keefe saying, quote, Joseph Schnett had no role in the department's internal review of Epstein materials. He has confirmed as much to a leader.
Starting point is 01:15:58 and we plan on publishing his written statement to that effect when we have it. In his words, the comments he made were based on, quote, what he learned in the media. And he has, quote, no knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Ms. Maxwell other than what was reported in the news, unquote. And then Schnett used the Department of Justice X account to post a, what it could be described as like an Apple notes apology statement with 30 percent bad. displayed on his phone where he talks about where he talks about meeting
Starting point is 01:16:34 a quote woman named Skyler on hinge a dating app in July 2025 her profile is no longer findable we had two dates she gave no clues that she was a reporter or recording her dates
Starting point is 01:16:47 had I a clue the first date would have ended immediately and there would have never been a second one my profile indicated I did quote unquote government work but did not specify for which agency I never discussed what I do at DOJ. The comments I made were my own personal comments
Starting point is 01:17:02 on what I've learned in the media and not from anything I've done or learned via work. Incredible. The United States government, everybody. Yeah, and James O'Keefe out there with the journalism thirst trap, I guess. I wonder if it's, uh, is it a one party consent?
Starting point is 01:17:19 This is in D.C., right? I don't believe D.C. is one party consent. Yeah, I would be shocked. I, I'm not sure how O'Keefe pulls all this stuff off legally. He could get in trouble for this one. Yeah. My understanding would be, just to be clear for people who aren't in on the jargon, like, in most states of the union, I think you need both people's consent to record a conversation. You could argue, I guess he didn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy sitting out there, but I think this is very clearly a clandestine recording.
Starting point is 01:17:48 Oh, wait, no, no, no. Sorry, DC is a one-party consent area. Damn. Okay. Oh, there you go. Wow. Okay. I did not know that.
Starting point is 01:17:56 Yep. So, well, he's safe. Yeah. I guess if that date was in D.C., you got a lot of... If the date was in D.C., yeah. A lot of jurisdictions around there bumping up. But, yeah, that's surprising. No, he's good.
Starting point is 01:18:06 All right. Well... I think that's all we have for this week, which is a lot. This was a massive news week. This is an extra long episode. Yeah. But sometimes that happens. Congratulations on making it this far.
Starting point is 01:18:19 Yeah. And may every day be a new wonderful secret as... No. Donald Trump told Jeffrey. abstain. Stop him. Just turn it off. We reported the news. We reported the news. We reported the news.
Starting point is 01:18:37 It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, poolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources where it could happen here, directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech? Upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon,
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