Jack - A Hymen-Coup (Feat. Seth Abramson)

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

This week on Mueller, She Wrote, we have an interview from Seth Abramson to discuss the house oversight report that dropped this week on the Middle East Marshall Plan. We also discuss more problems for the NRA, former Cambridge Analytica employees, the Manhattan district attorney’s investigations and more. Thanks for supporting Mueller, She Wrote!

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Hey all, this is Glenn Kirschner and you you're listening to Mueller, she wrote. So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs. That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is. I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time of truth in that campaign. And I didn't have, and I have communications with the Russians. What do I have to get involved with Putin for having nothing to do with Putin? I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about a mother than he will respect me.

Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. So, it is political. You're a Communist! No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring. Like all members of the oldest profession I'm a capitalist. Hello, and welcome to Mollarshi Road. I'm your host A.G. and with me is always Archie Lisa Johnson. Hello. And Jordan Coburn. Hello. How are you guys? You know, had better days. Yeah. I had scripted this 48 hours ago. I started this and I have a how was your weekend cheerful, you know, kind of notes in here. And within 48 hours, the whole mood has changed. So,

I was just wondering how you guys are feeling and how you're doing, how you're handling these two. And then if you count Gilroy 3, mass shootings, white supremacist acts of terrorism, domestic terrorism in our country, it's been a rough few days. Yeah, I was just going to say that I noticed one of our listeners tweeting asking us if we're in a civil war. They're like, is this, you know, is it happening? And I get to have some people might think that's extreme, but I wonder like what what would the transition look like if it's not, you know, race-based hatred and people going out and trying to kill as many people as they can, it just seems like the beginning of something really bad if not a civil war.

And I think that's how it's being touted on these websites like HAN and stuff like that, is that it's a race war and a lot of the language that they use in their manifestos, and I do call them manifestos. I know the media's out there like, we're just gonna call them essays because we don't wanna give it too much importance, but I think that what their beliefs are are important, and I do think that these are manifestos, and it shouldn't be downgraded or downplayed because it's hate, it's a hate crime.

Yeah, you have to call for what it is because these are successful manifestos. These shooters are referencing Christ Church's manifesto. And it's like, you know, maybe you don't want to admit that that's what it is, but it totally is. These things are written for the intention of other people to read them after they do it. And like one of the guys, I read that his posts on 8chan, the one that did the El Paso shooting. I read that his posts on 8chan, the one that did the El Paso shooting, and he wrote on

there, here's my manifesto, obviously only take this to heart if I'm successful or something. And it's like, these first off, I don't understand how 8chan isn't like ground zero for finding these people preemptively. I think it is, but they just can't do it fast enough. Everyone, yeah, they have them on watchlists for sure. Yeah, well, and they post it like right before they do the event too, but there's lead up to all of that. Right there. Yeah.

These people are members of those websites well before that. Yes. And we do cover these shootings more in the daily beans that comes out tomorrow morning, tonight, for patrons. So if you want our coverage on that, that's where you're going to find it. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention it and to see how you guys were doing over the weekend.

I know that I just spoke to a lot of friends and talked to loved ones. And I took comfort in our communities that we've built in trying to oppose these, but it's not so much about how I'm feeling as it is about these families and the victims and all that. So our hearts seriously go out to everybody that is affected by these and the whole country is affected by this too. And so I couldn't not acknowledge it.

So or couldn't, anyway, I had to acknowledge it. And double negatives with standing. So just a couple of housekeeping things before we get into the news here on the molar side of things. We're home for the month. We're not back on the road until August 30th for San Francisco and then September 13th at the Triple Doran Seattle.

We do have a big show for you this week, including an interview from Seth Abramson. He's here to discuss the House Oversight Report that dropped this week on the Middle East Marshall Plan. And that's a big thing, you guys. It's sort of slipped under the radar this week. We began discussing this way back in episode six, Jalisa, and I had a conversation about it

with our guest at that time, which was Zach Miller. Let's listen to that clip. Now, I want to talk a little bit about some of the theories that I've been mulling over. Yeah, let's hear it. Mjollering over. That's an interesting one. But I wanted to, Jalisa, I wanted to give you a chance to tell us about who KT McFarlane is. Give us a little background on this later. Yeah, so KT McFarlane is the, what do you call it? Minty of what's the guy's first name? Bud McFarlane. I get their last hand confused, but Bud McFarlane is the guy who was at the Mayflower meeting, I don't know if you remember that, but April this year or last year there was a meeting where he was there,

Kizliak was there, and there was this like VIP, I guess, event before the main event that a lot of people were at like sessions and, oh I made a lit sessions coach there, all of our usuals, Trump, Jr. Manafort, so this event was a big deal and the way that she got involved is because Bud McFarland was her mentor He was kind of orchestrating this meeting and what the intentions were and then it seems like she was pulled in Because they work so closely she ended up in the Trump administration kind of helped these plans all come through So you can help me out with the details But this ties into the Saudi Arabia nuke deal plans and then also the Russian sanctions

Yeah, well Bud McFarlane wanted needed somebody in the Trump White House, because he's a Russian oil magnate, and he has always been a proponent of the Marshall Plan, which is building nuclear reactors in Saudi Arabia, which you can't do without the help from the Russians, which you can't do with their sanctions on Russia. They're all in it together, yeah.

So basically you're right, they had a cocktail party, there was 24 people there. Everybody was at that party, either lied about contacts with Russia or helped fire Comey. Everybody. Yeah, exactly. It's a long list too. So this cocktail party, 24 people, sessions,

McFarland, Kushner, Trump, Lewandowski, Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort, Kislyak, and three ambassadors from Singapore, Italy, and Spain. Who are all with that Russian oil deal, Lewandowski, Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort, Kislyak, and three ambassadors from Singapore, Italy, and Spain. Yeah, who are all with that Russian oil deal, yeah? Yeah, the Rosneth. Yeah, I'm looking so many foreign words. It was the biggest Russian oil deal in history in the history of Russian oil.

And it was closing. That deal was closing, I believe, the week that Trump had this speech, had this event, where he was his first foreign policy speech. So that same week, they were pretty much closing the oil deal. And so all of these ambassadors, well, four of them were invited, but no other ambassadors were invited.

You aren't actually supposed to have ambassadors at those events, but they were still. Right, it's a game like international protocol. But Trump speech that night was about giving Russia a good deal. And it was actually co-written by a Russian pipeline advocate. Bird something. Interesting. Right?

So, so McFarland, who wants to get all this shit done over there, he, with the help of the, these ambassadors, Russia and Trump, he, he wanted, he put Kate, he helped Kate team McFarland get the national depsec. Exactly. Position. So, she now works – she worked for Flynn. After Flynn was fired, Trump nominated KT McFarland for the Ambassador to Singapore. That was one of the ambassadors that was at – the Singapore Ambassador was at the May

Flour meeting. Right. Switched them out yet. Now, the goal was to have Trump give Saudi Arabia nuclear reaffirty technology. But US needs Russia to build the real world. We have to have sanctions lifted to do it. Oh, man.

Oh, shit. McFarland did lobby Trump to drop sanctions to allow his nuclear plans to go forward. And Eric Prince is also an oil man, and a pipeline advocate. And now we can see why the United Arab Emirates set up this meeting between him and the Kremlin and the St. Shell. So that report that came out this week. It's called corporate and foreign interests behind

the White House push to transfer US nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. It's a huge piece of news, like I said, I think it flew under the radar this week. So we brought Seth Abramson on. His whole book, his second book, because he's got two books, Proof of Collusion and Proof of Conspiracy. His whole second book is about this Red Sea Conspiracy or the Grand Bargain, and it talks about the Middle East martial plan as being one part of a larger sort of deal that was made by all these countries who eventually and inevitably helped Trump win the presidency and interfered in our elections. It's not just Russia, it goes beyond Russia,

and it just sort of illustrates what a tiny slice of this whole thing the Mueller investigation was, because he was only investigating Russia. he was only investigating Russia. He was only looking at criminal conspiracy. He wasn't looking at counterintelligent stuff. He wasn't looking at finances. And a lot of this Middle East Marshall Plan has to do with personal finances because so

many people stood to gain personally from it. Right. And proof of conspiracy is his second book, The Follow-Up. Yes. That's so smart because they were like, who's not a crime? He's like fine. Proof of conspiracy. Yeah. And it's all there. And the thing about it is people will say

Mueller found no conspiracy. Correct within with just the Russian hacking and dissemination of stolen materials from the DNC DEE, Triple C and Podesta. That's what he was looking at. He wasn't looking at this entire black cube, wiki strat, looking at this entire Black Cube, Wiki Strat, Sci Group, XAML, MBS, MBC, American Media Inc., Russia, Eric Prince, United States, like, Nader, he wasn't looking at any of that. That was all the counterintelligence investigation, and there is proof of conspiracy there. We just haven't seen it because the way that the counterintelligence community works is, they either assess that it's a counterintelligence threat and what level of a threat it is and with what with what confidence they can report it is they don't charge crimes so that is with the help of KT McFarland and Flynn and how they've been communicating with Saudi Arabia and UAE since 2015 to build his reactors and

ignore international and US law, the 123 agreement as it's known. Tom Barich was involved. Jordan, that's your fantasy indictment league quarterback, I guess. VB. And we mean nice. He hasn't scored once. Yeah, he's not yet, but he's going to score back. Quarterback, I guess. VB. NBB. Nice. It hasn't scored once. Yeah, it's not yet, but you go to score big.

And Barrett, who's the one who got Manafort the job. And all of this is part of the deal to involve Russia by lifting sanctions so that they'd turn their backs on Iran. And of course, Israel is involved too. We saw that little bit in the Mueller report where we found out that they were considering charging Papa Doppler with failure to register as a foreign agent for Israel, and that has to do with this I'm sure.

And I honestly thought we were kind of crazy when we recorded this episode, like, is this is a little and white. I recommend you take some time and read it. Seth Abramsen and I will be going over it in more detail in the interview later in the show. So have a listen to episode six, the Marshall Plan. It's from, I think, December of 2017. Read Elijah Cummings Report and then listen to the interview. It's really important. It also explains Trump's racist attacks this week on Cummings, I think. Why he was probably knew that report was going to drop. It's Elijah Cummings joint. And so he got really upset. Oh yeah. In addition to this important interview with Seth we all have the fantasy indictment league this week of course sabotage and my new favorite

segment corrections. Oh, I made a mistake. So in part 11 of the Mueller Report, we joked around about the Russian military training cats. Mo Rex, a listener, wanted us to know, our own CIA tried this. It was called Operation Acoustic Kitty. And I thought this was a joke. It seemed like a... I've seen that before.

Like an onion thing. It was acoustic kitty, yeah. It cost it cost $20 million. And it was a total disaster. They tried to train cats to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies. And it makes me wonder if this is where we got the phrase, it was like herding cats. Interesting. You know, that makes a lot of sense that it failed though, because cats don't do anything

you want them to do Cats or assholes. Yeah, they do whatever they want to do like you have to make them think they want to spy on the Russian and I say that in the most loving and wonderful way Oh, I'm a cat person 100% yeah, yeah We have a cat going to an anarchist and trying to turn them into a spy for your government or something, right? It's like starting at the heart is possible into the spectrum of following orders It's like hurting cats. Am I right? I'll show myself out.

Correction, too. The Sex Pistols album is called Never Mind the Ballix, not Never Mind the Bullocks. And yes, of course, we were referencing Bullock from the debates. We know that. We were punding around, sorry for not clarifying. I'm very familiar with Bollocks versus Bullocks.

But I just... What is it? Bollocks are like balls? Yeah nice. Yeah like a British Lingo or something Bollocks. Yeah, yeah Cool, and I just probably popped really loud in your air. Sorry listeners Tom Barracks name is pronounced Barrack like a military barrack. We were like Barack Barrack Barrack Barrack Barrack, but it's Barrack like a military barrack I know we'd been trying different ones,

but this came in an email from someone who has him as a client. Oh, yeah. In what way? I can't tell you. Oh, okay. They asked me not to say. I'll tell you later, but they asked me not to say.

You see, yeah. The thing. Alia wants us to know in our response to our discussion on stage in Chicago that cow tipping is a myth. Apparently, it doesn't happen, it doesn't work, and it doesn't exist, it's not real. She challenged us to find a video

of a successful cow tipping. So if you have one, send them to us. And please don't go out and try to make one. I don't want any cows harmed in the making of this podcast, I love cows. But if you have an old video of cow tipping that was successful, send it to hello atmolorshearrope.com subject cow tipping, I would love to see

if you've successfully tipped a cow. I've only heard of it. It's only like suburban or rural myth. It's fake mousse. Or it's not even an urban myth. It's a rural myth. That's not from the audience in Chicago, right? Yeah, mousse.

Yeah, yeah. They were right. Also, if you have any videos of humans just getting charged and flun up in the air because they're pissing off a cow, send those to Yeah, we'll take it. Yes. In fact, to balance out the universe that we wonder. Well, this ain't no bullfighting ones though. We have just this. Cal justice. Cal justice. Seriously. How are we still having bull fights in this world? It is the dumbest thing and it's horrible and inhumane, but If you have an old cow tipping video again do not create a new one. I'm not condoning that. Yeah, yeah Do not hurt cows and

Those are corrections guys. That's it. Thank you for sending them if you have any for either of our shows either Mola She wrote or the Daily beans or our special coverage of the Mueller report You can head to molashewrote.com, click contact and select Corrections. We'll get it right eventually. We have a lot of news to get to this week, so let's jump in with just the facts. We got some big Comey news this week. I'll go over that and hot notes a bit later. Comey is back in the news.

Interesting. I know. The tall drink of justice. Sanctimonious choir boy. Yeah, yeah. Some people talk. Some people talk glass of holy water. Some people think comies are homies, some people not so much. Yeah, it's, we're pretty split. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, my own wish washing on that issue is documented by the corner peeling off

of the comies. My homie sticker on my laptop, or I've changed my mind and tried to take it off, and I'm like, fuck, this looks way worse than liking so many stickers. Let's see, forensic news reports this week. That's Scott Stedman's new joint, forensic news on this story. Walter Soriano has ties to disgraced former RNC deputy finance chair in Vegas, Casino, Mogul, Steve Win. Soriano is the most mostly faceless, intelligence consultant guy, security guy, currently wanted by the Senate, not like wanted, but has been asked by the Senate Intelligence Committee

as part of their ongoing investigation into Russian interference. We reported on the letter the committee sent to Soriano via Politico. They got a hold of the letter a few weeks back, which asked him for communications with Flynn and Manafort, his connection to Oleg Darapaska, and any communications with him, and his involvement with Israeli intelligence, including Black Cube, Cygrip, and Wikistrat. It's all kind of part of this, you know, Red Sea conspiracy, or proof of conspiracy that Seth talks about. Cygrip, as you know, if you're a long-time listener, as the Israeli Intelligence Group, where Joel Zamol works, he was present at the August 3rd

Trump Tower meeting with George Nader and Don Jr. among others. Nader who is now in prison for child sex trafficking, transportation of children for sex and child pornography, was a Trump campaign associate who ended up paying Zamol $2 million after Trump was elected. And I know that we see like that photo that people with red X's or three stars in their handles on Twitter, these weird Q and on Trump supporters. They have this picture of Bill Clinton and a pool with a guy, the arrow pointing down

and everyone says it's George Nader. It's not. That guy's name is George Nader, but he's an art financier. He's not this George Nader. So that's been debunked. You can find it on snopes if anyone tries to pull that one past you. That's also such an unconvincing piece of media. Yeah, so cool. I'm going to believe that.

Yeah, that's a photos are out. Yeah, photos are so out. We have other ways of corroborating things. And if you look at it, they don't even look anything alike. So it's just the dumbest thing ever. And it's easily debunked. It's been debunked for a while. So if you see that, you can get it on snopes. You just Google fake Bill Clinton,

George Nader or something like that. It'll pop up. So Soriano, this guy, this mysterious guy who we've only just recently seen a picture of for the first time. He's tied to all these groups. And in the new reporting, we now have testimony from an online gambling CEO that says Soriano, who she, this CEO paid over $30 million to help her with a DOJ investigation into her company. He has close ties to Steve Win. Prior to Win and Trump becoming friends, they were bitter business rivals that accused each other of corporate espionage and blackmail. And then magically in 2016, Win began cow-towing to Trump and supporting Trump. kind of reminds you of who's the granda pool boy situation foul-fowl well,

right? All of a sudden the magical turnaround when they were like enemies. And he was selected, when was selected to be the vice chair of the Trump inaugural and then eventually the RNC deputy finance chair, which is a that's a position you don't want because you either are which is a that's a position you don't want because you either are a rapist a woman beater a child pornographer or Michael Cohen and So he like Elliott Broydian Michael Cohen left his position as deputy finance chair amidst scandals for him it was sexually assaulting and harassing women, but we'll stay on this story We don't know much else about it right now, but they are connected. So we'll see how that goes. Gross. Well, they both weren't wrong in their accusations against each other.

Nope. They're both assholes. That's one of the, like when you see two jerks fighting, you're like, okay. Get it. Yeah. And they're like, wait a second, we're both going to go down. We should just pair up and put it under the rug. Yeah, I read Blackmailed him, made him be RNC finance chair, and all that stuff. Yeah. We also have this week more news on the NRA death rattle from Jordan.

That's going to come up in hot notes to stick around for that. We have some news from Brittany Kaiser. And Jalice is going to cover that. That's your MVP for fanciend diamond leaf for the last couple of months. Here we go. Both sides in the Rick Gates case, the defense in the prosecution,

filed a joint notice with the federal court Thursday, signaling that they're ready for sentencing after his extensive cooperation with the government and the Mueller investigation and beyond. Both sides agree they can begin the pre-sentencing process as Gates prepares to testify in the Roger Stone trial, beginning in November and the Greg Craig trial. He's also expected to be a witness in New York States case

against Manafort, which makes sense because he be a witness in New York states case against Manafort, which makes sense because he was a witness against Manafort in the federal case. And that case is for real estate and tax fraud. Those are not pardonable crimes, by the way. The defense has asked Judge Jackson, if you're nasty, to commission a report from the probation office by November 15th. This is procedural. And that would allow them to start sentencing gates in the weeks following that. No sentencing date has been set yet, but you know, we will be following this for you along with all three trials he's set to testify in. So stick around for gates.

I like the wording in that. They said a sentencing in beyond. It's kind of like Buzz Lightyear. To jail and beyond. There we go. This week we got a direct link between Mitch McConnell and the Kentucky aluminum mill funded by Oleg Darapaska. Until now, we'd only been speculating. We only had feelings about it. But according to a new lobbying disclosure, we now know that two former McConnell staffers lobbied Congress and the Treasury for the new plant.

This comes as congressional Democrats are pushing the White House to review Rousaul's $200 million investment in the project, though I'm certain the White House will do nothing. We've been on this story since the Senate voted to lift sanctions actually before this, but the Senate voted to lift sanctions on Darapaska's Rousal when the Treasury worked to get him to sell off shares so that he would be allowed to for Rousal would be allowed to do business in the United States. Darapaska is still under sanctions, but we know this. Derapaska did sell enough of his shares to go below that, I think, 46% mark, but he sold his shares to the Kremlin and family members.

And while on paper he doesn't own controlling interest in Denver, Carrington, he still is in charge of Rousseau. Sorry, that wasn't, that was from Dynasty. And now we have a direct link between McConnell and the lobbying for the project. This helped McConnell earn the title Moscow Mitch, which was trending on social media this week. That in his 2.5 million in donations he accepted from Len Blavotnik during the 2016 election and his vote in the Senate to lift sanctions on Olektr Paska, the oligarch that accepted polling data from Manifording Gates. Hopefully Congress will investigate further, we'll keep you posted.

Additionally, Brady Industries, the developer for the plant, in Kentucky, has hired a PR firm with ties to Senator McConnell to give the project a public relations boost as we continue to probe and ask questions about the oranges of the deal. The firm is called Runswitch PR, and it was founded by Scott Jennings, a former McConnell aide and he's a CNN pundit who ran a super PAC called Kentuckyians for strong leadership that was a McConnell super PAC. If I remember he is correct. Russo has more of a share in that whole project than the American based company does.

I think so. Yeah. It's a $1.7 billion project. They're investing $200 million. But I think that, like, I think there's a share. We're only going to invest this little bit, but we want shares as well. Yeah.

I can fact check myself, but I did that hot note way back when that story first dropped. And I'm pretty sure one of the revelatory things about that was that the American company isn't even getting that much out of it. I know. It's mostly a, I don't know personally how McConnell is going to benefit from this, but there has to be a way other than just to get reelected for creating jobs in Kentucky. Right.

I think that's what Republicans are going to run on super, super hard for the next as long as the jobs, the jobs numbers are still doing well. So they've got, yeah. Right. And the reality he's likely compromised, right? Is that what you're betting on? I think so. Even on being even just his 2.5 million from Blabatnik. Yeah. Yeah. I think he doesn't even need to be compromised. He's obsessed with winning and he's obsessed with money. So he doesn't even need to be compromised. He's obsessed with winning and he's obsessed with money. So that's what Russia embodies. Unfortunately, he would lead to him being compromised.

Yeah, that's a definition of compromise. I think, like just this leverage, this money greed leverage, that's what the Russians do. They find greedy stupid people. Totally. A wave shit in front of their faces, get it, and then tell them to go fuck themselves, as we know. That's their MO.

And speaking of Russian-backed senators, Rand Paul was called out this week by Russia as being the point of contact for Trump in the Kremlin. As we know, Rand Paul traveled to Russia last fourth of July with seven other Republican lawmakers, I think six senators, six other senators and one congressional rep. And returned a month later with a personal note from Trump,

which Rand asked Trump to write, so he'd have an excuse to talk to Putin, school, turns out, no, junior high, turns out Putin wasn't available and he never got his chance. Don't meet your heroes, Rand. In Roger Stone, Henge News, the judge in his case, Judge Jackson, she's all over this story, has denied Stone's motion to dismiss his case. For all the reasons that he wanted to try to dismiss his case, you know, and she said, you have no one but yourself to blame for where you are right now for being investigated by the

Department of Justice. Nobody but yourself because he was trying to blame everybody else. Separately, the judge will allow him to see the redacted portions of about 20 pages of the Mueller report. And I was trying to find out where I said that I put beans on that. I said, I bet she's going to let him see a little bit of it. Like, and that's true. 20 unredacted pages he can see of the 36 that are about him. So it was proportional, and I mean, not proportional, but he's allowed to see part of it.

So beans came true there. The New York Times reported this week that federal public integrity prosecutors in Brooklyn are investigating whether Tom Barrack violated the Foreign Agent-Ret Foreign Agent Registration Act by lobbying the Trump campaign on behalf of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia without registering to do so. Apparently, Barrack volunteered for the interview. He's been volunteering for a lot of interviews and they're done talking to him. And he wanted to discuss his push to strike language about Saudi Arabia and the 9-11 connection from the RNC platform, which ultimately happened. So you know how

we've been having that discussion about, it does your lobbying, is it successful? This is an instant where, instance where it was, because he was talking to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Saudi Arabia wanted the language of the RNC platform about connecting 9-11 to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, wanted the language of the R&C platform about connecting 9-11 to Saudi Arabia and an investigation and to get those 9-11 papers. Saudi Arabia wanted that out of the R&C platform. Barak lobbied for that and it was removed. So along with Barak's coordination with Al Malik and Michael Flynn to shape Trump's mid East policy

with regard to the Middle East Marshall Plan, which is ongoing and I mean, it hasn't been successful yet, but they've successfully done a lot, they've taken a lot of steps to get there. It just hasn't come to fruition yet. Talk about thinking, sorry, thinking that we were crazy back then when it sounded like a conspiracy theory. I was in Canada back in June, I think it was,

and I was picking up a little sister from school, and there was a guy in the car with me in a taxi and he asked what I do and I told him about the podcast and everything and he seemed like a sympathizer with us and I was explaining the martial plan to him and I felt like an insane person and he was looking at me like I was an insane person and now when this news came out I was like,

God, I hope that guy is just sitting there shaking Okay, so she wasn't freaking crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Which part do you think freaked him out? I think that it's a bit of like throwing a pebble across the room kind of thing to bring into the picture when we're talking about Russia specifically

and all of the other slew of crimes that look like they happened and that it's like, oh, and on top of that, they're also trying to recall and eyes the Middle East through back-deal nuclear reactor deals. It's like, okay, I want to put on my fedora. It'd be like, you know why? They want to live sanctions in Russia so they can supply the gas and oil pipeline to build nuclear reactors in the Middle East so that America can recolonize it in effect for tearing up the Iran nuclear deal.

High five? Yeah. Oh, and also Israel. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it does sound a bit extreme, but yeah, the connections are there, so that is validating. Yeah, and if you think about the two things that Michael Flynn did that he lied about during the transition period was one to lobby the UN

to vote against the resolution against Israel occupying the West Bank, they lobbied for that, pro-Israel lobby before Trump was even president, and then of course the conversations with Kisley act to not retaliate to the sanctions because sanctions were going to go away. And so when you think, Seth and I talk about this a great length later in the interview, but when you think about every single thing, if you look through the lens of this grand bargain with all these countries, it all make every single thing they if you look through the lens of this grand bargain with all these countries,

it all make every single thing they've done makes total sense. Yeah. Finally, remember you guys when the DNC sued Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for their role in the 2016 Russian election interference? Well, that's it was dismissed this week on first amendment grounds. And we've had these discussions before us, but particularly when Assange was brought up, I think, on 17 counts of espionage for obtaining and disseminating stolen information in the 2010 Chelsea Manning case.

And everyone was like, good, extradite them and put them away for life. And we're like, no, because it shouldn't be against the law to obtain and disseminate stolen information. Legitimate media organizations do it all the time. There's nothing in the law that delineates what a legitimate media news source is and without that you could curb the first amendment rights of journalists. So for example, when the Pentagon papers were stolen by that employee for the Rand Corporation, that employee was stole the documents. That's the crime. That guy goes to jail. But when the New York Times, the Washington Post got a hold of it of the papers from that guy and disseminated it, that is not a crime. That is public reporting. So

to that is why this lawsuit was dismissed. They said we don't want to be friends on First Amendment rights. We don't even want to go there. And we're not going to. So a lot of people were like, damn it. I wanted the DNC to be able to successfully sue Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for interfering in our 2016 election. But I agree with this ruling because unless you can prove Julian Assange and WikiLeaks stole the documents, they didn't commit a crime, at least not yet in this country. And I'm still worried about those espionage charges against Assange. Right. So they should have sued Russia or more specifically the hackers,

Gucci for 2.0? Yeah, but they're already a question. Yeah, exactly. I mean you could do a civil suit against that. I don't know what you would win or get because you take a bear. Bring them in. Bragging rights. Yeah, it's not worth it. We did it, but they're already indicted. So it's like It's not worth it. We did it, but they're already indicted. So it's like, yeah. All right, guys, we'll be right back real quick. Hey, guys, it's A.G. I've been looking for a one-stop shop to find every all-natural, eco-friendly home beauty

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Slash AG. You'll be glad you did. All right. Welcome back. Hot notes. Hey guys. Welcome back. It's time for Hot Notes.

Julie, so you had a story today about your long time fantasy draft pick, Britney Kaiser, but first. More infighting is the NRA implodes and it's nice to watch Jordan. What's the latest? It is very nice to watch. Yes. So back all the way on August first, right? That was on Thursday. Three so much news. Three of the NRA's top board members, I guess just regular board members. They're all at the top of that point. They are resigning. And this is just another blow basically to the level of distrust. That seems to be continuing to breed within the organization. And it mostly falls down to mismanagement of funds. So it's like, yes, yes, five. Exactly. The the three members left just to give them a shout out, Esther Schneider, Texas A.

Sean Maloney of Ohio. Sean Maloney, Ohio. And Timothy Knight of Tennessee. Timothy Knight of Tennessee. Um, so they decided to leave and they are being accused from some of the other more Stockholm, Sindrumi, board members of... That's okay. They're getting a lot of glamour here. People that are more NRA believers are saying that these three are leaving after an unsuccessful

coup to try, which is something that keeps coming up with all the dissent that's going on within the NRA. People keep accusing them of coups. It's like, why did everything have to come down to freaking coups and guns? You crazy freaks. Everyone's crazy free. I know. But everyone on that board should just be named Felicia. So these three people, they are one of three of the many people that are related to the NRA currently who are giving Wayne Lapierre their CEO shit basically for lavish spending. And this is the thing that I think is going to continue to happen because

they're just going down and down in the public eye as well. Like I was talking to my grandpa who is a lifelong NRA member. He was CHP for his career. He's a as well. Like I was talking to my grandpa who is a lifelong NRA member. He was CHP for his career. He's a Trump supporter. And he was like, I'm starting to question all of these emails they're sending me because they're sending me shit like, the New York state is shutting us down.

You need to send us more money so we can continue to live on. And my grandpa's like, why don't you just go to Alabama or something? Obviously New York is a shitty place for you guys to be. Really? New York? That's where you picked your headquarters. Yeah. And so, yeah, they could have like that feeling of being under a coup or, you know, maybe it was designed that way. So they can always be under attack and need money from their members. Right. And on top of that, there's all these sketchy executives that have, that they're truly

bipartisan because they're truly bipartisan because they're just gonna, you know, throw a support behind the biggest bitters. So that's a great place for the NRA to be sketch executives. Yeah. Sketch executives. Sketch executives.

That's amazing. Okay, so what they wrote in a letter to NRA officials that was obtained by the Washington Post was while our belief in the NRA's mission remains as strong today, as ever, our confidence in the NRA's leadership has been shattered. Crazy to hear that language from people in the NRA, because they're so notoriously like, writer dies.

And in border or board level, people too. Definitely. These aren't just like your grandpa, for example. Right. These are writer dies, like you said. Yes. And there are 76 members on the board so three is not like a huge amount. But how many virgins you get in heaven? No, it's 72. I think it's slightly more than, oh my gosh. Such a strange fixation. The virgin thing. Spans all cultures. It's a hymen coup. Yeah. Oh, but... There's a title in the episode. Oh, hymen coup.

That's just a great... this sounds like the name of a poem structure. It's kind of beautiful. You think out of contact. Instead of 575, it's like 696. Yeah, yeah. 696. Oh, I'm going to show myself out on that one. No, that's great. So, of course, we've been reporting on the slow downfall of the NRA for months, really since, honestly, the March for our Lives movement just made crazy ground, I think, in the public eye. But one of the things that we've been reporting on was Oliver North, the NRA president. He was ousted right after people, again, were concerned

about his finances and his choices. And then there's also top lobbyist Christopher W. Cox, who resigned. I think he was also upset about Wayne Lopier's mismanagement of the money in the company. Yes. And they accused him of the most successful coup as well. That's their favorite thing to do. This guy Christopher W. Cox, he was one of their like biggest lobbyists.

We reported on him as well a while ago. He resigned after he was accused of allegedly participating in an extortion scheme to push out Lopier. So they're going down. Good. Yeah. They're going down. And it's really good. It is fun to watch. They also are being investigated in New York state. That is true by the district's attorney general and the New York attorney general. And they're asking for their financial records because they need to prove that they're not profit essentially because they just start making

way too much money in sketchy ways. And there's a lot of breadcrumbs there. So sketch. Yes. And they're also being investigated potentially into funneling Russian money to the Our and the Republican Party through them, right? Oh, that's a huge thing. $30 million to the Trump work. Yep.

It's just a it's a it's a laundromat for Russian money. Mm-hmm. And we only took $2,300 in fees from Russians. Yeah. Yeah. $2,300 in fees from Russians. Yeah, yeah. But they're getting a really high amount of pushback from people on the board and people that are just citizens and patrons of their awful lobbying group alike. There's a nonprofit called Save the Second that is now looking to overhaul the NRA

and lessen the number of members that are on the board and also impose term limits and set a minimum attendance requirement. So they're trying to like self-regulate which is very interesting. It's always a coup. Very interesting. Yeah. At this rate I feel like the NRAs can eat like a Patreon account or something. Oh my god. That'd be so great. Go fun me. They wouldn't let them on though, probably. We need to kick starter. Well, I think what's interesting is there's this combat between people that are like their supporters, which very much responded to Trump's entirely misplaced

and disingenuous, I'm for the anti-wealthy elite cause. So there's people that are like that, I'm against my self. That's a popular list. That's right. And then there's the people that are like that. I'm against my stuff. And I'll be honest. Right. And then there's the people that are like, we have all this money. And Waymla Pierre is, is he funds all of their airplanes, all of their, like, fucking just all these lavish expenses, right?

Yeah. So that's in direct contrast with the base of this group in a lot of ways. It's like, stop spending all of this money this way. I don't give a fuck if you guys stay in the foresee. Two sex. I just want to keep mugging In the other in the coup. Yeah, and yeah, which is just just just keep using war language because I know they always say coup it's so the fucking drug. We need a state solution for the NRA Yeah, I'm really interested to see how this negatively impacts our ability to lobby Congress.

And if that makes any difference in whether or not people will change gun laws, I think now just because of the lobbying success that the constituents of most of these Republican Congress people, lawmakers are just so fixated on, don't touch my guns, don't take my guns. And then they create this false choice where it's either we're gonna take all your guns away or full free guns and RPGs for everyone. And it assault weapons and everyone gets an AK-47 with a toaster when they open a bank account.

Like, it doesn't, that's a false choice. And they need to stop with that bullshit. And that is why we have to vote blue because the Republicans will never stop with that false choice. Yeah. Yeah, I'm also waiting for another lobbying branch to come up to.

I think that's inevitable. The NRA has been in power for so long. I think there's going to be more pop-up groups that are going to gain more traction over time. I don't fucking know how long I've been in. There's so many more of us, right? Like why aren't wide anyway? Yeah.

Well, there's a lot of, I mean, there's Democrats that support the Second Amendment, right? And their option is to basically join the NRA or just not donate money to a cause that they care about because it's never advocated in ways they agree with. Or create our own, RGO, responsible gun ownership. Instead of the NRA, we have the RGO and we make our own organization.

We just have to have somebody that's big enough to back it and make it huge and nationwide so that we can make our own organization. We just have to have somebody that's big enough to back it and make it huge and nationwide so that we can make our own lobby. Yeah. And this is, I don't know how to do that. No, that's it. I just thought, I don't know how to do that. Hey, Tom Steyer.

Yeah. I bought some money. Yeah. A kind of strange unintended consequence I see with that would be Democrats that might be on the fence about getting guns. And then if there's a Democratic gun lobby, then they would be more comfortable getting them. Maybe oh well at least because part of me being so

Anti-gun personally is the NRA. Yeah, so That's yeah, I don't know Whatever who would you celebrate by getting a gun the day the NRA went down? You can actually go poop poop poop the inner way went down. You can actually go pee, pee, pee. You can actually pee, pee, pee. You can actually pee in the argyo with nerf guns and paintball guns. I love that.

That's what I say. I love that. And archery. We'll bring in the archers. What about laser guns? Right, we have a confetti's gun. Laser tag. Oh, laser tag, yes.

Yeah, yeah. They're more specific. I think it's like real laser guns. In Atari 5200 with Duck Hunt? That gun, too. You could be, or that dear hunt one that you see in bars. Yeah. And you got this.

Yeah. For toy guns? Yeah. For sure. You can race for. In our two. I actually think toy guns are a bad idea. But, you know, we'll just get more members.

It's a coup. It's a coup. We need more members. True. Yeah. And I was just thinking this too. The fact that they say coup is so reflective of their grandiose image It's a coup. It's a coup. We need more members. True. Yeah. And I was just thinking this too.

The fact that they say coup is so reflective of their grandiose image of themselves as some legitimate, like, government-to-t, right? Or a bunch of chickens. Yeah. Might be very interesting. We are kids. And we must be, you know, therefore, whoever comes at us is part of a coup to overthrow our regime and just the language.

Right. Just like calm down with your, I'm not gonna dick shame. Yeah, instead of like infighting or a term that we're accurately describes what is going on. Yeah. Yeah, well, there they go and hopefully down the toilet. Good riddance, yeah, totally. All right, Jelisa, both you and Jordan were on point

this week with your picks for the fantasy indictment league. Jordan, you picked Tom Barrett. He's now under federal investigation for possibly violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. And we'll have more on that in the interview. But Jelisa, your pick, Brittany Kaiser. She's your number one.

She's back in the news. What's going on with Brittany? I mean, besides this documentary that just came out. Totally. She came out and did like an interview, right? Yeah, yeah. She had a busy week, so we learned new details about Britney Kaiser, the ex-cambered analytic I employ, who's been on my fantasy indictment lessons forever.

One of the things that we learned is that Julian Assange was interested in publishing Britney's entire hard drive on WikiLeaks. And that seems to be her reason for why she was even in contact him, with him in the first place. But keep in mind, she met with him while he was already hiding at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. So that's really a sketch. And we also learned that this was left out of Brittany's documentary, The Great Hack. If you haven't seen it already, I highly recommend it. It does a really good job of explaining how data science predicts and influences our political views.

It also shows how Brittany laid out all of Facebook's data mining secrets, which led to five billion dollars in fines for her Facebook or for Facebook, her personal Facebook. Another part of the film mentions the Breitbart doctrine, which is if you want to change society, you first have to break it. And for this reason a lot of people think that Brittany's assistance with Steve Bannon's culture war. I know. Why? So sure, Maddie. That's your whole deal. Calm down. Yeah. She really can't be a martyr with this language. And yeah, some say it's just too late. I took a poll on Twitter asking people how they felt about her. And I think at the time of this recording, 29% say they

think she's a whistleblower and 79% or something like that. They believe that she's just whistling Dixie. So just talking out of her ass basically. Yeah. Oh, math wrong. 23% think she's a whistleblower, 77. That's right. And there's a scene in a documentary where she's doing an interview in a pretty much an infinity

pool. Like, she's trying to make herself seem like she's relatable, but she's got like sunglasses on. She's like in Thailand. Well, you guys don't have infinity pools? It's very strange. You're like, I'm struggling. I can't even afford a fourth wall.

Exactly. You don't even have infinity pool, bruh. Yeah. It's so weird. That's what breaking the fourth wall is. Yeah. Getting an infinity pool. Definitely.

And I don't think this is an interview again. And then looking at the camera. Yeah, it was very dramatic. Something else I noticed, I don't know if this is interviewing. And then looking at the camera. Yeah, it was very dramatic. Something else I noticed, I don't know if this is like body shaming or face shaming. I think it's kind of cute. She looks just like the curly head kid from Stranger Things. Oh, you guys noticed that?

Oh, Dustin. Yes. Right? That keeps it doorbell. Absolutely. Yeah, it's all in this way. And that's not shaming. That kid is adorable.

It's so cute. Yeah, yeah. But regardless of all of that, this seems like it's bigger than Brittany, right? I feel like this is about Steve Van En and Nick and Zuckerberg and all of them and it's a little Cambridge Analytica and Brad Parscale who is now the chairman of Trump's 2020 campaign and he's had his own new data thing with all the same players and it all just piles into interference

from those countries in the Grand Bargain, the Red Sea Conspiracy to help Trump stay in office. Absolutely, yeah. And for a former Kamenna employees are working on Trump's campaign right now, they just have a new name. It's called a data appropriia, which is so weird,

because it should be like inappropriate. Right? It's just so sketchy. They're inappropriate. Inattropia, yeah, I like it. I do too. Yeah, but that's that. It's just more sketchy. They're inappropriate. Yeah, I like it. I do too. Yeah, but that's that. Just more sketch.

Yeah, definitely sketch. Not na. Super sketch. Yeah. I think for that, yeah. Oh yeah, I was just gonna say, I really like the, someone gave us a gift in Chicago of a pack of, whether coloring pencils or something like that.

Oh, like marker, yeah, colored pencils or colored markers. Yeah, it's called, it's always sketch. They just added their own little thing to it. And then there's a white privilege color in there. Yeah, they took a lot of time naming the colors. That was incredible. Maga hat red, white privilege. Yeah, yeah.

I think of it every time now. Sketch or not. Yeah, I think of them. It's a good thing to think. Yeah. Especially with the new jingle. That's right. Yeah, we got to do it.

Oh, it's, do you think they broke the law? It's time to play Sketch or Na. It's so perfect. And yes, I did get that from Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence by Red and Stimpy. And yes, I do know that he was me too, and I'm not supporting him. I don't know, getting that at all news so fast.

Yeah, escalated. John Creek, Faluzy. Oh, my God. Red and Stimpy, awesome show. I know you can't separate the art from the artist. Anyway, I just- Sexual assault, sorry. All the things we have to do to like not get emails.

It's pretty great. Yeah, yeah. Sexual assault is like Kevin Bacon now. There's always six degrees away from it that someone is. Yep, definitely. Yep, that's someone. That's true. It's true.

It is, and we laugh because- Six is generous. Don't want to cry. It is, yeah. You can probably connect two degrees of sexual assault. Sorry. I had a moment of silence. All right, guys, let's see here.

What do we got with Comey? Is Mahomi, the Department of Justice this week declined to prosecute former FBI director James Comey over his sharing of two memos he wrote about his interactions with Trump. Those contemporaneous notes he took about the loyalty asking all that shit. He shared those two of those memos with a friend who eventually gave them to the press, a Richmond, I think his name is.

Trump wanted Comey's leaked memos to be investigated. This is why he was called him an illegal and a liar. And Trump wanted those investigating, saying he mishandled classified information, but the memos were not deemed classified. In fact, it wasn't until after Comeomi was fired that the FBI upgraded them from routine information to confidential, which is the lowest level of classification in the FBI. And that, again, after the FBI, after the press, the FBI released, yeah, no, after after Komi was fired, got it, got it, got it, got it.

Prosecutors quickly determined, quickly determined the case did not warrant Oh, got it. Komi was fired. Got it, got it. Prosecutors quickly determined. Quickly determined, the case did not warrant charges. Though it's not clear which memos spurred the inquiry, because there were several memos that he took, those contemporaneous notes. And we do know, and we talked about this since way in the beginning, the Komi 5, the 5 people actually, I think it turned out to be 6. And then if you add Richmond, that 7, that he shared these memos with, were all driven out of fired, moved, fucked with, publicly these memos with were all driven out of fired, moved,

fucked with publicly humiliated by Trump and driven out of their jobs in the FBI. So that, and we called them the Komi five forever. Um, so it's really important to know how angry Trump was about these contemporaneous notes and how he tried to get them moved up to classified or secret or how they could, you know, damage national security after he fired Comey just to keep them from getting out. They've all been published since we've seen them all. And he talked about them in his book too, which means he had to get permission from the FBI.

But the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, Horowitz. And I want to be clear here because we've sort of been sort of hazy on the structure of the Inspector General. I thought Horowitz at the DOJ Inspector General was in charge of all the other Inspector General, but he's not. Every agency has its own Inspector General that is equal to Horowitz. He's just the IG for the Department of Justice. So anyway, the Inspector General Horowitz, he's been investigating Comey's handling of the memos and a report is due out on this by fall, but he did come out.

The DOG did come out and said they're not going to press charges. Comey told Congress he sought to make his memos public to prompt the appointment of special counsel. He was asked in 2017 about all this and he testified to it. In response, Fox News pundit and lawyer Joe DeGeneva has said that this is the right call and proves William Barr is trying to restore fairness to the Department of Justice. Fox News says get this, this is their spin. Quote, the decision not to prosecute Komi over his deliberate leaks to the media is not a sign of weakness or lack of will, but the

professionalism and well-reasoned restraint of a president-Trump Department of Justice. When actually the federal judge said nothing in the Komi memos is a matter of national security. It shouldn't be considered classified material and they said we're not gonna... there's nothing here to prosecute. It's not because they're you know bending over backwards to be fair to Komi. They would go after him with a pitchfork and hang him in the square and the town square if they could. There just wasn't enough evidence and And they're just trying to make it seem like we're just going to move forward from this and look how fair it is.

Like, yeah, it's fair because he didn't fucking do anything wrong. Like I said, they've all been published. Comey wrote about them in his book, as I said. And I, again, he couldn't have done that without the permission of the FBI. So they weren't classified. It wasn't a matter of national security. It's obvious Trump was pissed that Comey leaked the memos to the press to

prompt the appointment of Mueller. And like I said, trying to get the FBI to upgrade them to, you know, more secret than they were. And of course, he's attacked Comey several times calling him a Lyrena leaker. It's because of this. It's illegal. We're going to take him down and he lost. So when he tried to get the DOJ to prosecute the case was so weak They had no other choice, but to decline to prosecute. There's nothing here And it even said that they determine Horowitz determined this early on. There's nothing here You're absolutely insane. Go shut the fuck up. So deep state So Joe DeGenevine mentioned him a minute ago. It's probably sounds familiar

DeGenevine is the lawyer that criticized Komi's decision not to prosecute Hillary over her emails. And of course, as he says on Fox News, that Barr is fair for not prosecuting Komi. He will not say that Komi was fair for not prosecuting Hillary. And he was one of the people, along with Rudy Giuliani and a former FBI

named Callstrom, who seemed to know about the Hillary emails on the Weiner laptop at the New York FBI field office ahead of time, right? He's like, oh, big surprise coming this week, dirt, dirt, and right before Comey reopened that investigation, when he sent that letter to Congress to reopen the Hillary email investigation because of the discovery of the Weiner laptop, DeGeneva publicly told the Daily Collar that he would represent for free any FBI agent that wanted to testify against Comey.

And what that did was it drove the FBI agents away from talking to the FBI about what was happening and started leaking to the Daily Collar. And that could have been what prompted Comey to reopen this case into Hillary's emails from the Weiner laptop to get out ahead of the story, alluming leak from Giuliani, DeGenernava Prince, Callstrom, the New York FBI former agents. So he could control the message and try to make it as apolitical as possible because

if it leaked from them, it would be totally political and it would make the FBI look really shitty. DeGenernava also announced this past Monday that Barr would be releasing previously classified documents on Wednesday in the Durham investigation. And this is the other investigation into the Trump investigators, headed up by Connecticut, US Attorney Durham. He was appointed to investigate the oranges of the investigation. That was also, by the way, one of QAnon's false alarms.

In case you didn't know, QAnon keeps announcing predictions, like churches announced the end of the world. And they do this like document dumps or coming declassifications from bar and the Department of Justice. Obama is gonna go to jail. You know, these indictments are coming for the Obama administration and Susan Rice and Lynch and Clinton, they're

all going to go down and you're going to be sorry. And this is just their whole, like what I thought was crazy for thinking about the Marshall Plan. This is their actual crazy. So then they use the fact that these events don't occur as further proof that the deep state is controlling everything. So it's one of those self fulfilling prophecies, right? And DeGeneva has said the Durham investigation, he came out on a some

stupid right-wing talk show and said, the Durham investigation is a federal grand jury probe. And which means he's either lying about that or someone is leaking grand jury materials to him, either directly or indirectly. How do you know? I mean, there's never been a snap in an ounce or has it been announced? But he talks about he knows what's going on

in this grand jury probe. You can't. It's a grand jury. Our Congress hasn't even gotten the grand jury materials from the Mueller report yet. So calm down, DeGenerna. We had beans on Komi being exonerated and he was. So I also put beans on Horowitz finally releasing his FBI New York

Field Office investigation findings showing there was no or that there was a conspiracy by Trump supporters to leak the weener laptop in the weeks leading up to the election, which is what forced Komi to reopen the investigation that probably cost Hillary the election, along with the Russians and the Grand Bargain. But this report was due out almost eight months ago. And I don't know why they're keeping it under wraps. Maybe so as not to politicize the investigation, which could taint future prosecutions of Trump's obstruction of justice. I mean, if you think about it, if the inspector general came out and said that Komi was right,

and he was backed into a corner by Trump supporters like Giuliani, Prince, and Calstrom, and DeGeneva to reopen the Hillary investigation a week before the election. That would be astounding news that could taint a jury pool that might have to deliberate about whether Trump obstructed justice when he fired Comey in the first place. If you know, once Trump leaves office, he can be prosecuted and you don't want to taint that jury pool. It could also send shockwaves through the 65 million people who voted for Hillary by totally delegitimizing the election of Donald Trump, not that it wasn't

already illegitimate before. That's also the reason Mueller wouldn't even accuse Trump of obstruction of justice for fear of tainting future prosecution because he can be charged with obstruction once he leaves office and he doesn't want to taint that jury pool. So if we don't see the IG report on the FBI New York field office soon, we likely won't see it until after any future obstruction

Prosecutions of Trump are off the table either because he resigned and was pardoned and they're not going to happen or because he was convicted of them. But then again, the Department of Justice may determine that revealing that information to the public would do a reputable harm to our faith and fair elections. It might never come out. So that's my hot note. All right. That's quite a bit. Yeah, it's a lot going on. It's a lot going on.

It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on.

It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. wondering if I talk like this and you speed it up if I sound normal. So now we'll find out. Are you guys ready for sabotage?

Yes. Haha, you guys, the Manhattan District Attorney Sive Ants, seems to be picking up the torch on the investigation into the Trump Organization's handling of the hush money payment scandal that the Southern District of New York mysteriously shuttered right after William Barr was appointed Attorney General. What Asha Rangapa says in the FBI, we call a clue. The Weiselberg partial immunity that was granted in the federal case, I don't think is applicable here, nor can Trump pardon any crimes charged out of this office, and the Office of Legal Counsel memo prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president

doesn't govern the actions of the Manhattan District Attorney. So put some beans on it and think about drafting Weiselberg, Calamari, one of the guys, I know Calamari, he was a tough guy. Calamari and shrimp. Yep, and any other Trump org execs for your fantasy indictment, League Trump Jr. signed those checks Weiselberg did, Calamari, there were two other executives I can't remember the name of, but might think about putting them in there because Vance is on this now since the SDNY dropped it. I don't know what charges he could bring because you can't bring federal charges again in a district or state court like this or you know like the Manhattan District Charter always can't bring federal finance, campaign finance charges

that you have to do that in a federal court. I think, but we'll see. Maybe there's something else. Maybe it's just falsifying business documents because they said when they signed those checks to repay Cohen that they were repaying him for legal work, legal consulting and not reimbursing him for a campaign finance violations. That just could be, there could be a New York state law against falsifying business records like that, signing checks like that under false pretenses. So look for those charges. It'd be funny if they'd be saved by just putting campaign finance violation on the memo. Like, see, we told you what we're doing.

Right, with the memo. Yeah, I was just thinking like, saying like, this is for murder. Wah-wah. Yes. Abortion payment. Yeah, it's just right in the check memo. That would be great. Are you guys ready? Speaking of that, to play just right in the check memo. That would be great. All righty guys ready speaking of that to play the fantasy indictment league. Yes

Gonna be okay Dick Okay, just come down. I can't come down. I'm gonna be inside. All right So the order this week Jalice you get to pick first then Jordan and then I'm last so Let's uh right, so the order this week, Jelisa, you get to pick first, then Jordan, and then I'm last. So, who's gonna take notes on this? I can take notes. Yeah, yeah, I can do it. All right, cool.

So I'm gonna start with Brittany Kaiser,. Nice. I will do the NRA. Ooh. Like the organization itself. Yeah, yeah. Cool. I'm going to do DTJ. Good, good one, junior. I'm gonna do the Trump org. Yes. Yes. I'll take Nick, Alexander Nick's. Oh, good one. Who's he? He was the former, I guess, CEO of Canald. Yeah, he was like Brittany's boss. Ah, yeah. And a wash-head documentary, I still haven't washed it.

It's good. Yeah. Okay, Trump and Al, you're all. Oh, you took mine. I'm gonna go with Wayne Lopp here. Oh, I was gonna do that. Beat you to it. I Will pick no one has a Dersuit yet, right?

Underwear. Yeah, I'm going to do Soriana. Ah, you pick mine. Ah ha. Then I'm selecting Pecker. Calamari. Yeah, go for it, man. Cool. I knew that guy. Um, I'm going to do AMI. Okay, good one. How many more do we have? One more?

One more, yes. Flynn. Michael Flynn. I think they're going to bring him up on Farah Charges, Crossbow fingers. Yeah. That would be awesome. Um, I will go with, um, oh man, Trump and inaugural. Oh, we got that one.

Yeah, Trump victory then. Trump victory fund. Yes. That's a super pack, right? Mm-hmm. Cool. Alright, and I will do... Drum roll.

Um, Igor. That's right. I forgot about Igor. I'll do a rando. Rando, awesome. Egor is rando now too, but he should count, right? We've named him. I'll give you a bonus point if you want to tag it to be a Russian. One of the rando Migos, there's multiple Egos.

Rando is work one, but if you can tag the origin of that rando, the oranges of the rando, it'll give you a bonus point. Okay, he's Russian rando, so new category. Unless you just wanna do like a straight up rando. No, I'll do, can I do someone with ties to a country, maybe not exactly a citizen of that country? They're all tied. Cause I think like Barik has ties to a UAE and Saudi Arabia,

for example, so like a rando that has ties to a UAE and Saudi Arabia, for example. So like, a rando that has ties to UAE. Or yeah, maybe if that's like, maybe because of their dealings with. Yes. And so what country? UAE. UAE? Okay. So, a rando with ties to the UAE.

Yeah. Wow. Like a Jeopardy category or something. Noice. Okay. My last one. So you just did a rando with ties. I'm gonna go with Sullivan.

He's a stone associate. I think he's going down, but I could be wrong. All right guys, that's how we play the fantasy in Diamond League. We will be right back. Stay tuned. We have an interview with Seth Abramsim. It's well worth your time.

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It's the easy way to compare all the top insurers and find the best value for you in less than two minutes. Policy genius, delicate what you hate, especially if you hate getting life insurance. Joining us today is curatorial journalist and author of Proof of Collusion and his new book Proof of Conspiracy. Please welcome back Seth Abramson. Seth, thanks for coming back to Molar She wrote. Thank you for having me.

So this week, a little report came out from the House Oversight Committee on the Middle East Marshall Plan. And I have to say, it's interesting for us when reports like this come out for, you know, curatorial journalists like you or I or the Mueller report for that matter because it kind of puts in writing what we've been talking about for us for about two years for you much longer. You were on this story really early on and I don't think we picked it up until the end of 2017 when we started. But can you give us, first of all, your top line thoughts about the release of this report and then a little background information going, you

know, on the Mayflower meeting, who was there and why it was important? Sure. Well, I was very happy to see this new report from the Oversight Committee because it focuses attention on some individuals who have not yet received enough attention, at least in the public eye. You know, people like Thomas Barich, one of Donald Trump's two best friends, the other being Howard Lorber, who have been under investigation, at least in the case of Thomas Barich, have been under investigation by the feds for some time, but we haven't heard that much about them in the public.

So a report like this focuses some attention on them and on what they were up to, and also some renewed attention on Michael Flynn, which they were up to and also some renewed attention on Michael Flynn, which is certainly warranted now that he appears to be making noise about not being happy with the deal that he signed and his new attorney, Dean of Power, causing substantial problems with the cooperation deal that he had such that he didn't even testify in one of the trials he was going to testify in. But one thing I would say, though, about this report, is that it really focuses primarily on what happened after Donald Trump was inaugurated, which makes a lot of sense because it's the oversight committee

and so they're supposed to be looking at what the presidential administration has done, but the story of the report and the events in the report, and frankly, the story of the Mayflower speech really begins not just before 2017, but before 2016 all the way back in 2015. Yeah. And so can you go a little bit into that because I know that there was this this report just isn't about Saudi Arabia. It's about Russian sanctions. And now we have emails showing that Flynn was communicating as you said as as 2015, involving Russia and Saudi Arabia.

What can you tell us about that and maybe piece together a little timeline for us about those emails in 2015 leading up to the Mayflower meeting? Sure. So the so-called Mayflower speech happened at the Mayflower Hotel on April 27th, 2016. It was Donald Trump's first big foreign policy speech. And that was kind of the moment when I guess I became most interested in curatorial journalism in a public way and on social media because looking into that particular speech and the VIP event that preceded it just exposed for me. And I think for a lot of people, a number of loose threads, things that just didn't make sense about this big coming out

party for Donald Trump in terms of being a politician who actually had a foreign policy. And so I have to give full credit to the many media outlets that may be in far-flung places and may be without a lot of follow-up, we're nevertheless exposing some of the elements of this event on April 27th, 2016. And when you started to pull on those loose threads, who attended the VIP event before the

speech? Why did the speech happen in the first place? The people who were invited, the ambassadors who were invited to the VIP event, who hosted the event. You started to pull on these loose threads and you discovered an entire story that really was then broken up or broken open in a serious way by ProPublica, the organization and media outlet

that exposed this quote unquote Saudi nuclear deal. We've all heard of the Iran nuclear deal that many of the Sunni Arab nations in the Middle East were not happy about, but we found out that there was this deal that Michael Flynn was working on in 2015, alongside a company that at the time was called ACU. And so what Michael Flynn, who attends the Mayflower speech in April of 2016, what he spends 2015 doing, is visiting four countries, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt that were central to this plan he was working on with ACU to effectively nuclearize the Middle East by bringing

nuclear power more than 30 new nuclear power plants to countries across the Middle East countries across the Middle East and doing so, and this is important in a way that would violate what had conventionally been what's called the gold standard or the one, two, three agreement that governed any transition of nuclear technology from the United States to other countries, which is that those countries would agree not to use that nuclear technology to build and design nuclear weapons. And so the ACU Flynn plan not only would have brought nuclear power to the Middle East, a number of nations in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, but it would have led to a nuclear arms race between Iran and those countries that could

have gotten extremely dangerous. And frankly, if it still happens, could well be very dangerous for the entire world in the next 10 years. The side shoot before we talk about the Flynn emails with Barrick and all Malik trying to sort of formulate this plan, or at least to me, it seemed like they were lobbying Trump to adjust his policy and the RNC platform.

But what does this sort of have to do with that? I mean, when we start bringing in how you have to relieve Russian sanctions to have this plan go forward, and then we take a look at things like the Seychelles meeting with Prince and Nader. These are all tied together, aren't they Seth? They are. And one of the things that's been frustrating about, I mean, I just wrote a book on this essentially, on this Middle East deal that Flynn was working on called Proof of Conspiracy. And one of the things that was frustrating in talking on social media about the fact that I was writing this book

and giving a sort of preview of some of its major events and characters and topics is that people would immediately say, wow, you know, everyone is now switching from Russia to focus on other things. They're switching from discussing collusion with the Russians over the topic of sanctions to talk about completely different unrelated countries and unrelated events. And in fact, as you just said, that's not at all the case. So let me break down in as simple terms as I can, the deal that Michael Flynn was working on with ACU in 2015. The idea that Michael Flynn and ACU had was that the US,

US companies and the US government could work with the Russians to build nuclear reactors across the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. And the idea they had is that they could get the US ally, the chief US ally in the Middle East, Israel, to come on board with that plan, even if it meant the possibility of new nuclear powers arising in the Arab world. If the Saudis and the Emirates promised to help Israel number one, counter Iran and number two, get its way in the ongoing Palestinian dispute.

Okay. That was what the Israelis felt they would get out of the deal. And that has a lot to do with one of those two issues that Mueller brought up in his report with Flynn, where they were lobbying the UN Security Council to either delay or lobbying other countries to vote against the resolution banning the West Bank occupations by Israel. Is that also part of this? Absolutely. It's a great example of how this plan that Flynn and ACU created and took around the world pitching to leaders was in fact adopted by the Trump campaign.

By the time you get to the presidential transition, you have Donald Trump calling the Egyptian leader LCC directly and telling him he needs to withdraw a resolution in the United Nations that the Israelis are strongly against regarding the building of new settlements in Israel. And immediately the Egyptians withdraw it because what you have by December of 2016 is this as I have turned it a grand bargain or what you might also determine. We can talk about why I call it this the Red Sea conspiracy. And the Egyptians are particularly LCC members of that conspiracy and they know that the railings have to be placated or else this deal can't go forward But what I also want to mention is you talked about Russian sanctions and how that factors into the Flynn ACU deal that he was working on in 2015 some people might wonder well why would Russia Agree to work alongside the US to build nuclear reactors

work alongside the U.S. to build nuclear reactors throughout the Middle East when the relationship between the U.S. and Russia has been not good since the sanctions were imposed following Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in the spring of 2014. And the answer is exactly what you said. The only way, and Michael Flynn knew this, ACU knew this, the only way Russia would agree to be part of this incredibly lucrative Saudi nuclear deal is if the future US President agreed to drop all sanctions on Russia. And there was only one candidate in 2015 on the Republican side or the Democratic side who was willing to drop all sanctions on Russia.

And therefore, there was only one candidate who really could be a partner with these countries and with Michael Flynn and with ACU as of August of 2015 when Michael Flynn and Donald Trump have their first fateful meeting at Trump Tower. Okay, so both violations of the Logan Act, which weren't obviously prosecuted under the Mueller investigation, that Flynn committed during the transition, which is the UN Security Council interference votes on Israeli occupation on the West Bank, and the Kisley Act calls about sanctions and not responding to sanctions.

Both of those now make 100% sense in the light of this agreement. That's correct, but here's the even scarier thing, right? Is that we talk about the Logan Act, and it's a federal crime to violate the Logan Act. And of course, for those listening who don't know, you can't as a private citizen negotiate U.S. foreign policy under color of authority, pretending that you have authority to do so, when in fact you do not. Frankly, if you even implicitly are negotiating in a way that suggests that you have some sort of authority, even if you don't explicitly claim that authority, that's illegal as well.

And the reason for that is exactly what happened here. Michael Flynn didn't start violating the Logan Act during the presidential transition in 2016. He started violating the Federal Logan Act, committing crimes by wrongly negotiating U.S. policy as soon as he became a national security adviser to Donald Trump in August of 2015. So, let me mention something quickly about that meeting. First of all, let's understand that Donald Trump has lied about every part of that August 2015 meeting that he had with Michael Flynn. He first claimed that it never happened and that he didn't meet Michael Flynn until 2016. Then, when everyone pushed him on this and said, well, you definitely did meet with him. And Michael Flynn said that you

met with him, Trump lied again and said, well, he contacted me and he wanted to meet with me. Michael Flynn has said that that's not true. In fact, the Trump campaign reached out to Michael Flynn for reasons we don't know, but I think we have some indication of to say Donald Trump really wants to talk to you about your vision for the future of international geopolitics, I guess, for lack of a better term. Once that meeting happens in August of 2015, it was supposed to go for 30 minutes. It went for 90 minutes. And from that point on, Michael Flynn is an advisor to Donald Trump on national security.

And it is shortly after that particular meeting. Michael Flynn has already gone to Israel and Egypt prior to August of 2015. That he did in June of 2015. But after that meeting, now that he's advising Donald Trump, he goes to Saudi Arabia in October of 2015 and he goes to Russia in December of 2015. And in both instances, he is representing himself because he wants to make money off the Saudi nuclear deal and also ACU. But what he is positing is a new U.S. foreign policy. And he is doing

so under the color of being Donald Trump's top national security advisor. So the promise there is implicit, and I'm sure, frankly, in the private conversations, it was explicit that if you help Donald Trump get elected, you will earn yourself a new U. new US foreign policy that will be lucrative for the Russians because sanctions will be dropped. It will be lucrative for the Israelis because they'll get help in the Palestinian dispute and help counting Iran. It'll be lucrative for the Saudis and the Egyptians and the Emirates because they'll get nuclear power and ultimately nuclear weapons with which to counter Iran. Everyone's going to benefit. And what is essentially being negotiated is US foreign policy illegally on Donald Trump's behalf

in 2015. And here's what I'll sort of leave this little monologue with and say that the countries that end up illegally aiding Donald Trump in securing election in 2016 are all the countries that Michael Flynn visited and all the countries that are part of this brand bargain. Yes, and not to mention everybody at that Mayflower meeting, either met with Russians or people from those countries or ambassadors to those countries or lied about it. For example, I know we know Jeff Sessions was there and one of the reactors that was going to be

kind of the the test reactor for these reactors being built in Saudi Arabia was going to be built in Alabama his home state. And of course we know Flynn's deputy secretary, KT McFarland was pretty much placed there by a guy named Bud McFarland and and Manafort, right? So I mean this is all, once you look at it through the lens of this grand bargain as you call it, everything and everyone's actions make a hundred percent sense. Because before we were sort of trying to piece it together under the guise of Russian interference only, but not until you bring in this entire grand bargain, does it make full-throated sense of why they're all acting this way? Well, that's exactly right. that's the the aspect that was the

biggest disappointment in the Mueller report because Robert Mueller didn't look at collusion with any country other than Russia and because he didn't frankly even look at any collusion or I should say the term that he used conspiracy or coordination collusion would have been a much broader focus than the one he had so he had had a narrow focus on Russia, a narrow focus on conspiracy and coordination, and he only really looked at whether the Trump campaign had a before-the-fact agreement with Russian military intelligence or the Internet Research Agency, a troll factory sponsored by the Kremlin, prior to the hacking campaign by the GRU and the interference campaign in terms of domestic disinformation and siop's by the internet research agency.

And he was not able to find beyond reasonable doubt that there was that sort of conspiracy. Had he just broadened his focus slightly to think about other crimes that are undergirded by collusive activity and other nations that were involved in what the Trump campaign was up to on national security issues, he would have seen what we can now see. And you mentioned the Mayflower speech as being sort of a touchstone moment, it really was. As soon as Michael Flynn is hired by the Trump campaign formally, he had been working with them for months.

As soon as he's hired formally in January of 2016. The Trump campaign starts to build out its national security team, putting Jeff Sessions, who you just mentioned in charge of that team. And it spends the next 45 days or so putting together that team. Carter Page is the first person brought on even before Jeff Sessions, George Papadopoulos, comes on board, JD Gordon, other people that we've heard about.

That team is the team that ultimately does the negotiating of the Grand Bargain alongside Paul Manafort. It is also during this period, February and March of 2016, that Paul Manafort gets involved in the campaign, and it's really important for us to understand that that only happens because of Donald Trump's best friend, Thomas Barich, who has numerous connections to the United Arab Emirates, whose leadership is literally thickest thieves with the royal family of Saudi Arabia, and Barich is the one who gets Manifort his job. Manifort comes on board at the very end of March 2016 when the National Security Committee that was initiated after Flynn's hire has its

first meeting in Trump International Hotel in DC on March 31, 2016. And now by the moment you have the Mayflower speech on April 26, 2016, you have all the pieces in place. You have Thomas Barich using his connections to the UAE to get youIF al-Otiba, the Emirati ambassador, close to Jared Kushner. You have the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dürmer, who now has become a close advisor to Jared Kushner. You have Demetri Symes, who is a quote unquote friend

of Vladimir Putin, and runs the center for the national interest, which hosts the Mayflower speech as a regular advisor to Jared Kushner, and you have Paul Manafort in place as the de facto campaign manager. Yeah, and of course, we have Barric and Gates running the Trump inaugural, where all sorts of money via just one example, Sam Patton, bringing money in from foreign interests, funnling it, basically using straw donors to the inaugural. And of course, the inaugural made more than twice of the previously largest inaugural under Barack Obama. So that's being investigated now. And so two other questions. Well, this is, I know this is a multi-part

question. But do you think all of this information, all this, which I would consider either counterintelligence information or just what wasn't covered by the Mueller report? Do you think Sally Yates knew about that when she ran to the White House to advise Trump about Flynn? And then also, I have to wonder if Judge Sullivan had all this information. So that's a good question. I mean, obviously neither of us can give an absolute answer to that question. I would say this, though, the history of counterintelligence in terms of the FBI's counterintelligence division and, of course, the work done by the CIA, and we saw this going as far back as September 11th, 2001, is that these agencies tend to hold the intelligence that they gather

closer to the vest than might be wise for U.S. national security. What you had beginning in 2016, in the summer of 2016, were at least two counterintelligence investigations that were focused not just, and this is important to note, not just on Russia, but they were also focused on George Papadopolis and his interactions with Israel. So you did, even at that time, in the summer of 2016, have some focus being paid to or focus attention being focused on not just Russia, but on other countries.

Whether or not that information got to the acting attorney general in January of 2017, I don't know. I certainly think that she had a very broad understanding and view of what Michael Flynn was up to in terms of the sanctions question with Russia and in terms of his, the presidential transition teams contact with the Israelis once he had his interview with the FBI and revealed some of what's going on. But you, I think put your finger on exactly what the problem is here. The oversight committee can look at what happened after the inauguration. You have federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere who are looking at activities that occurred during the presidential transition.

And the question becomes, who is still looking at multinational collusion that occurred between the Trump campaign and several countries prior to election day? And the answer there appears to be now that Mueller has closed his investigation, the FBI counterintelligence division. They're the ones who have that information. They're the ones who have created presumably a lengthy report or at least a running case file on that issue. And so it's incumbent now upon Congress to find the appropriate committee, presumably the

intelligence committee, to get that report and to get that case file so that we're not just looking at the presidential transition or just looking at what happened after the inauguration, but the full story because I know from having been a criminal investigator myself and a criminal defense attorney as well for many years, you can't simply start at the end of a story, the second-to-last chapter or the last chapter, and ignore everything that came before and understand what you're looking at. Yeah, and then of course the problem then becomes as I've heard James Baker and Andrew McCabe address is that when you have moles in the intelligence committee like Nunez and Ratcliffe, how do you brief them on this without giving all of that information then to one

of the targets or at least subjects in investigation, Donald Trump himself. It's like, and everyone's just sort of, at least there might be an answer that they can't give us, but that's where I start to get freaked out is, who do you tell? Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, as I was doing research for proof of conspiracy,

I found myself getting freaked out early and often. And frankly, as people will know who followed my Twitter feed, I get pretty freaked out starting in 2013 when Donald Trump goes to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant, and he's talking about his presidential ambitions and presidential politics with Kremlin agents there, and he's negotiating a business deal that he ultimately signs a letter of intent for, and he negotiates that deal with the help of Kremlin agents. I mean, I'm freaked out at that point. But what really I think in the story that people are focused on right now, where that really starts to me, is that meeting in August of 2015

between Donald Trump and Michael Flynn at Trump Tower that Donald Trump felt he had to lie about and that went three times longer than it was supposed to. And we know that Michael Flynn's entire vision of the future of international geopolitics at that point in time when he goes to that meeting was focused on this Saudi nuclear deal, which he saw as a way to solve all the geopolitical conflict between the US and Russia, solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and solve the Iran problem. So you can imagine, even though we have to regard him by any lights as a radical, you can imagine from Michael Flynn's viewpoint that the one thing worth talking about in terms of foreign policy and national security on August 25th, August 2015 when

he visits with Donald Trump is this single plan that he and ACU have developed that solve three of the biggest geopolitical problems on earth. Now the question is, how did it come to pass that Donald Trump is the one who invites Michael Flynn to Trump tower? Who is telling him you've got to talk to this guy? He's got some good ideas such that by the way, those ideas end up in Donald Trump's public rally speeches in the fall of 2015. So clearly, he picks up Flynn's idea in August 2015 or shortly thereafter. And I think a couple of things that are important to note here is of course Thomas Barich is his best friend at that point

in August of 2015. We know that Thomas Barich becomes incredibly involved in the Trump campaign as soon as Trump announces in June of 2015. He basically drops everything at Colony Capital to help Donald Trump become elected. We now know because he thought he would personally be enriched significantly if this sort of a Middle East

deal, Middle East Marshall plan went through, but he had substantial contacts with the Emirates and through the Emirates with the Saudis. So he would have been and we now have seen emails from him in which we've even seen editorials from him actually, public editorials, in which he's talking about this grand bargain. So he would have been a possible conduit for Donald Trump to say, look, you should talk

to this guy. But you also have to know that Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is close friends with Benjamin Netanyahu himself, the Israeli prime minister, and Netanyahu wanted this deal. So that's another means by which Donald Trump, who had really put Jared Kushner in front of a lot of his national security Issues as soon as his campaign started in June 2015 Kushner might have said Flynn's a good guy to talk to he just went to Israel He impressed a lot of people there with his big ideas

And so there's every reason to think that when Trump meets with Flynn in August 2015 It's to discuss this grand bargain and to adopt it as his foreign policy and in so adopting it, he induced not just the Russians, but the Saudis and the Emirates and the Israelis to illegally aid his campaign so that he, the one presidential candidate who could make this grand bargain happen, would be elected president of the United States. Yeah, and of course, Russia, who started getting compromised on Trump, who knows how many decades ago, and then the meeting in 2013, they also saw an opportunity to get their sanctions dropped,

which is Putin's number one goal in life, right, is to get these sanctions, these US sanctions dropped, and obviously to repeal the Magnitsky Act, so we have that too. And do you think, and this is just an opinion, a question here, but do you think maybe Jamal Koshogji was onto this? Well, I would say this, because I do write a lot about him in proof of conspiracy.

I take what happened to him, his kidnapping, his execution, his dismemberment, his incineration. It is a gory and terrifying and horrifying and tragic story. I take that primarily as a sign of how close the Trump administration and the Trump family had become to the autocratic, cruel and despotic Saudi royal family's leadership and the Saudi royal family itself by the time of the fall of 2018, which is when these events happen to this Washington Post journalist, Jamal Kashokchi. I don't know whether that's what he was working on. I think his editorials for the Washington Post show that he was primarily focused on the slow, perhaps not so slow, descent of Saudi Arabia

into the status of being an autocratic state, a police state run by a despot. And I think that was his focus, but I will say that he was originally forbidden from the practice of journalism in Saudi Arabia because of his criticism of Donald Trump. And the criticism he had of Donald Trump, which implicitly was a criticism of the Saudi royal family and Muhammad bin Salman's close relationship and growing a relationship with Donald Trump. The criticism he had is this sort of relationship that these two men are developing

doesn't make sense with respect to Syria and what they want to do in Syria if you're going to counter Iran. And one of the points that I make in proof of conspiracy is that the reason Jammal Pashokshi would have had that particular criticism. And frankly, that anyone would have had that criticism is because most people didn't have any information

about the Grand Bargain. And so it looked like the arrangements that Donald Trump had with Mohammed bin Salman, MBS, the head of Saudi Arabia, the leader of the kingdom. It looked like the arrangements they had really wouldn't be a very effective way of building a coalition to counter Iran. What would make it effective is if you knew that as part of a grand bargain,

they were going to be dropping sanctions on Russia to get Russia on board with the plan they had for eventually toppling the regime in Tehran. And so I don't know how far Jammal Kashokshi had gotten in breaking down the fact that there was a grand bargain, but his criticism certainly exposed the fact that you had to get more information about what Trump and MBS had agreed to for it to make any sense. And so his work would have opened the door for some really difficult questions being asked. Yeah, and certainly Trump's response to it and his, you know, ignoring of his duties under the Magnitsky Act to come to a conclusion within 120 days of being asked by Congress

to do. So, he just let that date pass him by. I think that that all speaks to the teamwork that's going on behind the scenes as well. Well, can I make a comment actually about Russian sanctions, which we've mentioned a number of times. Sometimes people will ask me, what is the association between the Grand Bargain, what you're talking about now involving these six nations and the Trump family and the Trump campaign? What's the association between that and the Trump Tower Moscow deal that Donald Trump

was working on with Andre Rosov and signed a letter of intent in the fall of 2015. And the answer is sort of a pretty simple one actually. Russian intelligence like many intelligence agencies builds in redundancies to its intelligence activities. If it wants a particular end, it's going to try to achieve that end if it can through multiple people and through multiple means. Because you know that not every pathway you follow down as an intelligence agent is going to work. It's not always going to, you know, bring fruit ultimately in the end. So yes, there was an attempt to directly convince Donald Trump to simply drop sanctions on Russia

over its annexation of Crimea using business deals. There's no question that that occurred. Simultaneously, there was a more Byzantine and complex and frankly, you could argue less favorable to Russia, plan that Putin was working on and that was this grand bargain. But while it might have been less lucrative for Russia, because it would drop sanctions, but it would also require them to pull back on

their relationship with the Iranians, while you might say it was less lucrative, it also had a much higher chance of success, because of the fact that it made sense for, in a very public way, everyone who was involved in it. There was even a means under the Grand Bargain for the Trump administration to say this benefits America. We can solve the Iranian terror problem as they would have framed it. We can solve the Israel-Palestine crisis. We can solve our problems and our tensions with the Russian by doing this. So there was a way to sell it to the American people that didn't exist with the Trump-Tarrahmasow deal. That was just naked bribery. And it was bribery and bribery is an impeachable offense and Donald Trump should be impeached for having been

bribed for his foreign policy over Trump-Taramaascow. But Robert Molled didn't look at that and I'll put that aside for a moment. But that really wasn't going to fly. That sort of a quid pro quo with the American people. The Grand Bargain could be dressed up as being in the u.s. uh... in in america's interest in a way that the trump caramass cow deal couldn't and it was essentially a redundancy that the kremlin had built in to get its way on sentience yeah like an insurance policy alright is there anything else we should be paying attention to uh... before we

let you go today anything else uh... that else that I know I was going to ask you how the August 3rd meeting fits into this. I know that when we had you on last time during December during our season finale, you had said probably the most consequential story to break in in 2018, even though this meeting happened before that the story broke in 2018. Was that August third meeting? And I was wondering if you could maybe just let everybody know how that sort of fits into this grand bargain? Oh, absolutely, because it fits into it

in a very significant way. And I would stand by that earlier statement that the most significant meeting between the Trump campaign and foreign nationals did not occur in early June of 2016. It was on August 3rd of 2016, but one thing I'll just note before I get to August 3rd is a major event that's talked about in the Oversight Committee report

is this May 26th energy speech that Donald Trump gives in North Dakota. And prior to that speech, so really in the four weeks between the Mayflower event where Bud McFarland, who we should be very clear, Bud McFarland goes to the Mayflower speech as Bud McFarland, who we should be very clear, Bud McFarland goes to the Mayflower speech as a VIP on April 26th, he is running IP3, which is the company

that ACU morphed into. So Bud McFarland is really in charge on the business end of this Saudi nuclear deal. He goes to the Mayflower VIP event that all the principals are at, Jared Kushner, Paul Manifort, Michael Flynn, on April 26th. Four weeks later, Donald Trump gives a speech in North Dakota on energy on May 26th. And what happens between the Mayflower event

and that energy speech on May 26th, 2016, is a lot of conversations between Thomas Barich and Emirati agents, agents of the Emirati government about how to ensure that now that Donald Trump is really going to drill down on his energy policy, which of course is what the Saudi nuclear deal is all about, that he delivers a speech that is consistent with what I call the Red Sea conspirators, what they want to see happen in terms of the Saudi nuclear deal.

And Paul Manafort assures Thomas Barich that the language that Barak wants in and that the Emirates want into that energy speech will get into that speech. And that's what happens. But you know, I just realized that I did not yet, before I get to August 3rd, I didn't yet talk about why I call this the Red Sea Conspiracy. And what this book proof of conspiracy really starts with on page 1. And it's an event that many of your listeners will not have heard of because it was only reported as an exclusive by the top Middle East watchdog in the United Kingdom, a media outlet known, which is called the Middle East Eye.

And this was a story by David Hurst and Donia Akad, two top journalists, David Hurst, had previously been an editor with the Guardian and what they reported over a year ago was that in October or November of 2015. So this is 2015 now well over a year before the election. There is a meeting on a yacht in the Red Sea where future Trump foreign policy advisor, George Nader, who now is in jail as, he's previously be convicted of pedophilia, he's now in jail on new charges relating to pedophilia. But he's a Trump campaign advisor. He gathers together the leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates on a yacht in the Red Sea in October and November of 2015, and they decide that there is only one presidential candidate

who can ensure that what they want to see happen in US foreign policy happens, which by that point is this grand bargain, this Saudi nuclear deal we're talking about, and the one presidential candidate who they decide to assist at this meeting is Donald Trump. So as of October, November 2015, you have ascent among three of the nations that we've been talking about, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, to illegally assist Donald Trump in being elected. elected, fast forward now to August 3rd of 2016. And that's the day on which agents of

the Israeli government, the Saudi government, and the Emirati government, including George Nader, who has regularly been making trips to Moscow to the Kremlin, come to Trump Tower and explicitly, this is a report from the New York Times, explicitly offered to the Trump campaign in the person of Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower, the assistance of the Saudi government, the Israelis, and the Emirates to ensure that Donald Trump is elected. And according to the New York Times, Donald Trump Jr. responds approvingly. Now, what people may wonder is, okay, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Emirates can make this offer in early August of 2016, but what actually happens? And the answer is, we know what happens.

The Israeli agent who is at that meeting, his name is Joel Zamal, he's an Israeli business intelligence expert who is introduced to the Trump campaign via member of Benjamin Netanyahu's office. Joel Zamal later says to George Nader, who's also at that meeting, as well as Stephen Miller and Eric Prince, Zamal says to George Nader after the election, I ran an entire disinformation campaign in the United States, and we know from other reporting that that disinformation campaign was funded by the Saudis and the Emirates, consistent with the offer they made to Donald Trump Jr. in August of 2016. Moreover, we know that AMI and David Pecker, and people will be stunned that they are part of this story as well, because we know about the hush payments that AMI made to women

to ensure that they wouldn't tell their story publicly and that Donald Trump wouldn't lose his opportunity to be elected president, AMI did not feel that it had the money to pay off these women, particularly Karen McDougal in August of 2016, until suddenly, immediately after the Saudis offered monetary assistance to the Trump campaign, suddenly, AMI had enough money to pay these women. Now, you might say there's no connection there between AMI and Saudi Arabia, but in fact, guess who David Pecker was trying to go into business with at that very moment? MBS, the ruler of Saudi Arabia. And so we have two clear instances where the Saudis and the Emirates and frankly

Israeli agents make good on their offer to assist the Trump campaign illegally prior to election day, and we know why they were doing it, because they were part of this Grand Bargain. And who else was very busy in August of 2016, Paul Manafort, who was meeting privately and secretly with Rick Gates and Constantine Kalimnik, an agent of the GRU, and what was he negotiating? Sanctions. Dropping sanctions, another necessary part of the GRU, and what was he negotiating? Sanctions. Dropping sanctions. Another necessary part of the Grand Bargain. The story is very clear. We know who the nations were that were involved.

We know who their agents were. We know what they wanted. We know what they were negotiating. We know how they helped the Trump campaign. We know that that help was illegal. We know that that help had an effect. We know that that all of these events have been investigated by counterintelligence and we need now to see that report so that all of this can be revealed to the American people.

Yeah, and of course we also have the AMI, Pecker and Howard of AMI, putting out that new princes and great leadership in the amazing new Saudi Arabia, the great new Middle East, to this whole magazine issue dedicated solely to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, MBS and MBC. And then, of course, we have Pecker and AMI breaking their non-prossecution agreement and the Hush Money Payment investigation by trying to blackmail Bezos regarding some of that whole situation. So everything, just like you said, everything that anyone has done that we've reported on, you've reported on, all make sense when looked at or filtered through the lens of the Red Sea conspiracy in the Grand Bargain.

Well, and you always look for the lies as an investigator or as a prosecutor. You mentioned that glossy, expensive propaganda magazine that David Pecker and AMI published that was solely intended to bolster MBS's reputation in the United States. Every single aspect of the production of that propaganda by Trump's friend David Pecker was lied about by David Pecker and AMI. They lied about every single aspect who paid for it, who looked at it beforehand, why did it come out, was it lucrative for them, or was it something they did for other consideration that we don't know about. Every aspect was lied about because it clearly, from the outside looking in and investigator would conclude, it was part of a quid pro quo between the Saudis and Trump's friend Pecker and his company AMI.

And that quid pro quo didn't just start in 2017 and 2018 when you're seeing these business deals between Pecker and MBS. And you're seeing investment by MBS in places where AMI wants to see it. And you're seeing this glossy propaganda magazine. That could pro quo began in August of 2016 when the Saudis offered help to the Trump campaign, but everyone knew that that help was not going to be the wiring of money from MBS to the Trump campaign. That's not how this works.

What was going to happen and what did happen is that the Saudis, the Israelis and the Emirates tried to figure out how can we provide value that benefits the Trump campaign indirectly, without directly giving money to the Trump campaign. The problem is the moment the Trump campaign has knowledge that this aid is being given on its behalf through in-kind donations, you have a conspiracy to violate election law. Absolutely. And this story is far from over. Everybody check out the House Oversight report on the Middle East Marshall Plan that's just come out.

And pick up your copies of Proof of Collusion and Proof of Conspiracy wherever you get your books. Seth Abramson, thanks so much for coming back on the Mollarshi Road. Thank you for having me. All right, guys, that's our show. Thanks again to Seth Abramson. What a great interview.

Please subscribe to our new show, The Daily Beans, on its own feed by searching for the daily beans wherever you get your podcast. And sign up as a patron and get access to premium content for both shows for the price of one at patreon.com slash muller she wrote proceeds pay for our health insurance until we can vote blue and get a free option. So thank you so much for all your support, all the love.

Any final thoughts, guys? No, just be safe, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Be safe, take care of each other, take care of yourselves. Awesome. I've been A.G. I've been Jolissa Johnson. I've been Jordan Coburn. And this is Mullershi Road. Mullershi Road is produced and engineered by A.G AG with editing and logo designed by Jolissa Johnson. Our marketing consultant and social media manager is Sarah Lee Steiner and our subscriber and communications director is Jordan Coburn. Fact checking and research by AG and research assistants by Jolissa Johnson and Jordan Coburn. Our merchandising managers are Sarah Lee Steiner and Sarah Hershberger Valencia. Our web design and branding, our by Joelle Reader with Moxie Design Studios and our website is mullershoewrote.com.

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