Jack - MSW Volume 2 - Authoritarian Slide (feat. Craig Unger)

Episode Date: November 21, 2021

This week: more on the Russian election interference; Iranian indictments; AlfaBank; Flynn; a conversation with Craig Unger; plus AG hits another Fantasy Indictment League.Craig Ungerhttps://twitter.c...om/craigungerAmerican Kompromathttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/635379/american-kompromat-by-craig-unger/Follow AG on Twitter:Dr. Allison Gill https://twitter.com/allisongillhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://twitter.com/dailybeanspodWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?https://dailybeans.supercast.tech/Orhttps://patreon.com/thedailybeansPromo CodesProtect all of your online information and devices with one simple subscription. For a limited time, Aura is offering our listeners up to 40% off plans when you visit http://aura.com/MSW. I highly recommend it for all podcast lovers! Follow “Operator” on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or you can listen early and ad-free by subscribing to Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery App. Get your first $5,000 managed for free at Wealthfront.com/MSW. It takes just minutes to start building your wealth. Wild Alaskan Company seafood is how nature intended it to be. Right now you can get $15 off your first box of premium seafood when you visit WildAlaskanCompany.com/MSW.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, it's Kimberly Host of The Start Me Up Podcast. If you like your politics with some loose talk and salty language, you're going to love my show. I interview the coolest people like Mary Trump, Kathy Griffin, and DNC Chair Jamie Harrison. The Start Me Up Podcast has an easygoing, casual style and a strong emphasis on left-leaning politics. We also have Frank discussions about sex and more than a few spirited rants. Just visit patreon.com slash start me up or wherever you get your podcast and start listening today.
Starting point is 00:00:29 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 he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what the opposition is. I'm not aware of any of those activities.
Starting point is 00:00:53 I have been called a surrogate at a time, a true, in that campaign. And I didn't have, not 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
Starting point is 00:01:05 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.
Starting point is 00:01:23 Like all members of the oldest profession, I'm a capitalist. Thank you. Thank you. Hello and welcome to Muller She Road for Sunday, November 21st, 2021. I'm your host, Alison Gill. You might know me as AG. And today we have a lot for you. Some news on Russian election interference and investigation happening there,
Starting point is 00:01:46 a very special fantasy indictment league today, and a discussion with the author of American Compromot, Craig Unger, which I'm very much looking forward to. We have some Flynn news, as well as some fresh information on the Alpha Bank server Trump Tower back channel story, the whole thing that Durham, who was investigating the oranges, and dited Michael Sussman over. Sussman was a lawyer
Starting point is 00:02:05 who took a bunch of the Alpha Bank and Trump Tower communications information over on a flash drive to the FBI and a second agency. Well, I think we found out what the second agency was and what he was taking to them. So we have a lot to cover this week. Let's jump in with just the facts. All right, first up from our friend Scott Stedman at Forensic News, which I highly recommend you subscribe to. There's really important news coming out of his organization on a continuing ongoing basis. It's really, it's well worth your time. The FBI is conducting a wide-ranging criminal investigation into a Russian diaspora group,
Starting point is 00:02:40 which announced on November 18th, it was packing up, shutting down, and head now because of FBI scrutiny. The Daily Beast first reported FBI interest in this community. This is called the Russian Community Council of the USA, which is abbreviated in Russian as K-Source, K-S-O-R-S. So I'm going to be referred to that as K-Source from now on. And that was in June of 2021, the Daily Beast reported that the FBI was taking a look at K-Source. Now, information coming from K-Source and sources who spoke with forensic news indicate that the FBI investigation is criminal in nature and more expansive than previously known,
Starting point is 00:03:21 and publicly reported by the Beast. While a statement from K-Source announcing its suspension of activity says the FBI is investigating potential violations of FARA, the Foreign Agency Registration Act, sources tell forensic news that investigators are also keenly interested in K-Source political activities, including rallying Trump supporters in 2020. As stated in the Daily Beast article, the FBI investigation is included multiple
Starting point is 00:03:45 search warrants conducted at the residents of senior members of the group. Numerous electronic devices were seized in late 2020, that's according to a former member of the group who spoke on the condition of anonymity. And the group's former chairwoman, Elena Branson, fled to Russia around the same time of the electronic device seizures, because she was worried about a potential arrest. Interesting. Branson also shares a copy of her search warrant and says that the charges being investigated included not only failure to register under FARA, but also conspiracy to defraud the United States and 18 U.S. Code section 951. A law often referred to as espionage light, if you'll remember, Maria Boutna was
Starting point is 00:04:26 convicted under the same statute. Section 951 is more serious than Pharah and contains stiffer penalties, and that was according to law fair, as they were looking at the Boutna case. An enhanced screenshot of the search warrant presented in Branson's interview with Boutna confirms that section 951 is a pillar of the probe. A 2020 byline Times article found that Branson and other case source official, another one named Sergei Gladysh, promoted the Trump 2020 Labor Day cruise rally
Starting point is 00:04:55 in Portland, Oregon, and that Gladysh had a history of pushing vitriolic pro-Cremlin narratives. And a different source with knowledge of the FBI probe, who spoke to forensic news on a condition of anonymity says that some of the federal interest in case source centered around McAle Morgullis, a Soviet-born fielogen and honorary counsel to Belarus.
Starting point is 00:05:18 Morgullis sat on the board of case source from 2014 to 2018 kept a close personal contact with Branson according to one of the sources. And Morgulus died on November 16th this year, just a couple weeks ago, or a couple of days ago. Morgulus attempted to rally Russian voters for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, and allied himself with numerous associates connected to Russian intelligence and influence operations that have caught the attention of the FBI, including that did a Sergei Million. He worked on a plan with him to rally Russian voters in 2016.
Starting point is 00:05:50 Million, who was in contact with Trump aid George Papadopoulos, later fled the country was not able to be interviewed by investigators. Senate intelligence committee later found that much about Sergei Million resembles the activities by Russian intelligence officer or Koopty and million exhibited behavior consistent with intelligence trade craft and both have significant ties to Russian government and business circles. And in a 2017 interview, Morgan was claimed he personally visited 11 cities in Florida, where I said if you want our new president to be homosexual, you should vote for Hillary. In the 2020 election, Morgan was once again claimed he helped organize Russian voters for
Starting point is 00:06:28 Trump and Florida. And in another interview with the Belarus state-owned television station, just days before the 2020 election, Morgulis said he passed a statement from Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin to the U.S. Congress containing unfounded claims of corruption by the Biden's in Ukraine. Now, as you know, Sergei Milion, same guy mentioned in the steel dossier and the latest Durham indictment of Den Shenko. And, you know, he thinks Durham has somehow exonerated him from the terrible things that Steele said about him in the dossier. Shoken is under investigation, along with Rudy Giuliani and both Southern and eastern districts of New York for his Ukrainian
Starting point is 00:07:06 Backed interference in 2016 and 2020. I will keep you posted about these folks and they might show up later in the fantasy indictment league and in light of new reporting That former national security advisor Mike Flynn actually pushed the Pentagon to seize ballots during the 2020 presidential election. A House Armed Services Committee member is calling on the retired general to lose his military pension. This story is about Flynn in the new book coming out by Jonathan Carl called betrayal, I think.
Starting point is 00:07:37 I don't know, I'm not going to buy it because there's much in it that should have been released earlier. Anyway, Flynn called the Pentagon his buddy, who's named as Racoan Watnik, and tried to get him to seize voting machines and ballots after the election, but ahead of the insurrection. But in a new letter to Secretary Defense Lloyd Austin by Ruben Gallegos, a Democrat of Arizona,
Starting point is 00:08:03 said taxpayer should no longer foot the former defense intelligence agency chiefs bill. Flynn should be, quote, stripped of any military benefits he receives due to his encouragement of an involvement in violent attempts to overturn our democratic process. These outrageous actions are unacceptable for anyone who currently serves or previously served in uniform. Any retiree or service member who suggests committing treasonous acts such as overthrowing or democratically elected government, forfeits their moral entitlement to the support of
Starting point is 00:08:29 the people of the United States. They called a brief with Guy Ego, this reporting agency, Natsack, that is doing this story to understand why he's leading the charge and he says because he's a traitor, I think he should go to jail. But what's currently within the power of the DOD is to remove his pension. And this goes back to Jonathan Carl's book, where we, what I was talking about earlier, the scene where Flynn called his friend and DOD official Ezra Kohn-Watneck, implored him to overturn the presidential election results. Flynn told Cohen the Pentagon's top intelligent official at the time he needed to get order signed and the ballots needed to be seized
Starting point is 00:09:04 and the extraordinary measures needed to be taken to stop Democrats from stealing the election. Cohen Wattnick and Chris Miller and Cosh Patel, they were all installed late in the game. But Cohen said, sir, the election is over. It's time to move on and Flynn snapped back your acquitter. It's not over. Don't be a quitter. So it seems like Ezra Cohen, what Nick might be willing to cooperate? Because he seems like the source for this story. But in the AlfaBank server case, let's take a turn over here. This one would Durham has recently indicted Michael Sussman,
Starting point is 00:09:36 who's a lawyer. Who was working for a tech exec at the time named Jaffee and Perkins Kui for the Clinton campaign. That's the lawyer. Remember, the Durham indictment, well, it turns out Alfa Bank suspicions were only half of what the researchers sought to bring to the government's attention when they brought that stuff to the FBI, and that's according to several people familiar with the matter, reported in the New York Times.
Starting point is 00:10:00 There are other set of concerns that are in data suggested that a Yodafone, which is a Russian-made smartphone rarely seen in the United States, had been used from networks serving the White House, Trump Tower, and Spectrum Health. That Spectrum Health is the... Um, DeVos joint. Betsy DeVos is connected to that. Mr. Susman relayed their Yodhone findings to counter intelligence officials at the CIA
Starting point is 00:10:25 in February of 2017. Counterintelligence. So we wouldn't have heard of this. It's not clear whether the government ever investigated them and it probably won't be clear. I'm willing to bet though that the agency to and the
Starting point is 00:10:37 assessment indictment is the CIA and might have something to do with this utiphone thing. Interesting that Durham left that part out. The involvement of researchers traces back. Yeah, I mean, think about that. Durham's inditing assessment saying, yeah, he went to the FBI with this alpha bank stuff and then he cherrypicks emails to say that there was nothing to the alpha bank stuff. And then
Starting point is 00:11:00 he went to a second agency, agency two, and told them the same lies. But fails to leave out the fact that Russian smartphones were involved, and that's why he took it there. Cool. Cool, bro. Now the involvement of the researchers traces back to the spring of 2016, these researchers. DARPA, the Pentagon's research funding agency, wanted to commission data scientists to develop the use of so-called DNS logs. DARPA, the Pentagon's research funding agency, wanted to commission data scientists to develop
Starting point is 00:11:25 the use of so-called DNS logs. Records of when servers have prepared to communicate with other servers over the internet is a tool of hacking investigations. DARPA identified Georgia Tech as a potential recipient of funding and encouraged researchers there to develop examples of Mr. Antonakakis and Mr. DeGon. They both reached out to the Office of Mr. Jaffy to gain access to Noistar's repository of DNS logs. That's according to people familiar with the matter.
Starting point is 00:11:50 They began sifting through those DNS logs. Separately when the news broke, in 2016 Russia hacked the DNC and their servers. Mr. DeGon and Mr. Lawrence and began talking at a conference about whether such data might uncover other election-related hacking. And Mr. Lawrence and eventually noticed an odd pattern, a server called male1.Trump-email.com, and that it appeared to be communicating almost exclusively with servers at Alpha Bank Inspectorum Health.
Starting point is 00:12:18 And he shared the findings with Mr. DeGon that people said, and they both discussed it with Mr. Jaffee. Mr. Jaffee is tech executive one. And by early August, the researchers had combined forces and they were increasingly focused on alpha bank data. And Mr. Jaffee reached out to his lawyer, Michael Sussman, who would take the researchers data and hypothesis to the FBI in September of 2016. Defense lawyers contend the indictment of Sussman presented a skewed portrait of their clients thinking by selectively quoting from their emails I'm certain assessment the assessment indictment is gonna be laughed out of court if it even makes it that far After pretrial motions, which I will tell you all about once we start seeing them
Starting point is 00:12:59 All right, we'll be right back with the author of American Compromot Craig Unger right after this quick break stay with us we'll be right back with the author of American Compromot, Craig Unger, right after this quick break. Stay with us. Hey everybody, it's A.G. In the 90s, ads for phone sex lines could be seen everywhere, flickering on late night cable channels and printed on the back of magazines, phone sex operators worked around the clock to fulfill fantasies, and it started with an idea from Mike Pardez, CEO and founder of American Tellnet, who proudly coined himself the telephone Pimp. He was joined by tech genius and co-founder Michael Sulf, who proudly coined himself the telephone pimp. He was joined by tech genius and co-founder Michael Self, who was known as the Bill Gates
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Starting point is 00:15:23 All right, everybody, welcome back. Joining me today is the author of the book American Compromot one of five he's written please welcome Craig hunger Craig welcome great beer. I'm really glad to talk to you because you know you're such an expert at kind of you know slides into authoritarianism what happens to democracies but especially in the face face of kind of Russian active measures and you're really good at getting to the roots of problems as they're stemming up, as we've seen since the election of Trump. And before that, going all the way back to the 80s, but, you know, because we've talked
Starting point is 00:16:02 to you before on the show about that and the background here, but what I want to talk to you about today are the current active measures going on right now. And one of the things that you've brought up in some of your tweets and some of the discussions I've seen you have is this projection, this sort of, it's opposite day on the side of the GOP when they call the election of Biden the coup, for example, instead of the actual coup that took place, or when Rudy Giuliani calls Adam Schiff a traitor, when Rudy is the one under criminal federal investigation for lobbying illegally for foreign interests. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about how this disinformation, these disinformation campaigns and whitewashing of history have seeped into the United States, not that they
Starting point is 00:16:50 haven't been here since the founding of our country. But they seem to be on the rise again, and I'm wondering if it's coming from Russia, from the former president, from before that, how is it getting in and taking root? Well, it's a little all of the above, I think, but it reminds me of kindergarten kids saying, I'm a year glue, everything you say bounces off me at six on to you. I mean, that's what the Republicans are doing really.
Starting point is 00:17:18 And I think it does go back to the roots of the Republic and our founding. I mean, hundreds of years ago, as a nation, that, which slavery was an essential part, and I think the Russians know that. And they deliberately sort of picked that and made it come alive to again. In this regard, there's a really interesting book
Starting point is 00:17:39 that a woman named Susan Neiman wrote called Learning from the Germans. And I found it kind of fascinating because I had personal experiences that were similar. When I was just 13 years old, I had my first trip to Europe. And when we got to Germany, my father showed me DACA.
Starting point is 00:17:59 And if you go to Germany then or now, Germany, not proudly, but they admit their crimes. They say, we committed genocide. If you love Germany today, you'll have to love it with a broken heart. Could we committed mass murder? And you can go to Auschwitz or .au and see what they did, and it's all there, and they admit it. But when I came back from that trip, and this was 1962 or three, I was in eighth grade, I immediately went to, we studied Texas history, I grew up in Dallas, we went on a trip to the Alamo. And you know what, I did not get a straight version of our history, we do not admit our crimes.
Starting point is 00:18:49 The Alamo, if you know there was a movie, there was David Crockett, Ida David Crockett, lunchbox, Ida David Crockett, T-shirts, everyone worship David Crockett. What I didn't learn until 40 or 50 years later was the Battle of the Alamo. They be crockered, these were slave owners. Back then, Texas was part of Mexico.
Starting point is 00:19:11 Mexico had just abolished slavery. So they got every kid in America to have lunch box rooting for slave owners. We didn't know the real story, and it has been buried. And I think that's happened a lot. And I think it happened after the Civil War with Reconstruction, with James Crow, where you didn't have slavery ended and everyone got 40 acres of mule was happy. No, there were different forms of it.
Starting point is 00:19:42 There was indentured servitude there. Sharecropping. Sharecropping and all that. And when I grew up in Texas, even in my lifetime, it was, you know, I remember separate water foundings for blacks and whites. Blacks couldn't sit on the, on the, uh, at a certain balcony and movie theaters. I mean, it's been true forever. And we do not admit that history. We gloss over it again and again.
Starting point is 00:20:10 And initially, I hadn't been that, there it's obviously been the controversy about all the monuments to Confederate soldiers. Well, I can just imagine, if I went to Germany and saw monuments to Hitler and Gering and so forth, you wouldn't do that. And I think the larger takeaway is that we have not come to terms with our crimes. America does not admit to it was. And the Confederacy in many ways was sort of a pre-fascist state
Starting point is 00:20:45 that is really very much part of America and has been subsumed by the Republican Party. I mean, it's kind of a cliche. If you look at Red States Blue States, well, see, the Red States looks at awful lot like the Confederate States of America. Yeah, and it's interesting you bring that up too. We just finished a book series on the Reckoning Mary Trump's latest book, where she says, we don't face these traumas of our past, societally speaking, we can't deal with the ones that are happening to us right now,
Starting point is 00:21:11 COVID, the big lie, the insurrection. And I love that you bring up the alimo and Texas because there are so many families in Texas, a Mexican families in Texas, who've been there for generations and say, you know, we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us. We, you know, we stayed put. And you know, I want to go back to something that you mentioned about how Russia doesn't
Starting point is 00:21:38 necessarily create the divisiveness as much as they find it and exploit the existing divisions. And I feel like the current Republican Party has taken a page out of the Russian 2016 election interference efforts and just sort of run with it to find these divisions, flip the script around on everybody, and then hammer home the messaging over and over and over and over again to say the Biden election was the coup, et cetera, et cetera. When we know precisely what happened, and we're still learning more each day about what happened, particularly. I know we just found out Jenna Ellis wrote a memo trying to get Pence to overturn the election by throwing out electors from six states. And Mark Meadows emailed that memo to Mark Short, Pence's chief of staff. And so it talked, talk a
Starting point is 00:22:33 little bit about, because I'd there have to be parallels with other authoritarianists stay, other authoritarian states, where it seems like John McIntee, who was the head of the PPO, 29-year-old douchebag, put together a shadow legal team because Pat Sepoloni and other people in the White House lawyers, Sekolo and stuff, they're like, we're not having any part of this. So he put together like this back channel legal team
Starting point is 00:23:00 in the Oval Office of Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Boss, Art Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Bossark Clark, John Eastman, who were on board with the plan to overthrow the election by throwing out electors, but Pennston go along with it. Right. Well, one of the interesting things, there was a very interesting article I found on the Washington spectator by Jonathan Winer. And I'm not a lawyer.
Starting point is 00:23:24 So apologies if I don't get everything exactly right. But one of the fascinating things is as you look into what Johnny's been in every clerk and the others were putting together, there are two ways of looking at it. And one is in terms of what they were doing in January 6th and Trump's role in it. And you see memos from him that are quite damning really saying just say it's corrupt and we'll figure out the rest later.
Starting point is 00:23:52 So he was clearly trying to overturn the election, but it's also worth looking at what they were doing in terms of seeing it as a blueprint for what may or will happen in 2024. And one of the most disturbing things is if, you know, we were sort of saved in this most recent election, buying one by a fairly comfortable margin as it turned out, but there were these five or six states like Georgia that could have gone either way. And fortunately in Georgia, you had Secretary of State Rathansberger, who was a Republican, and for once a Republican actually stood up for reality, and he allowed the votes to be cast for Biden because he had actually won the popular vote. Next time around, that may not be so simple, because if you look at some of the documents between Jeffrey Clark, it includes what they call the independent state legislature doctrine. And this was a doctrine established,
Starting point is 00:25:00 I think way back in 1892. And theoretically, at least, it gives state legislatures the power to take back certification of the electoral votes. And that doctrine was invoked in 2000 election when we had Bush v. Gore. Yeah, and not only that, but you know, based on the big line, they're passing laws that allow Republican legislatures to throw out slates of electors and assemble their own slates of electors. Voters be damned. We could see that in states like Georgia, Texas, et cetera, in the next election so that
Starting point is 00:25:41 the vice president's role can remain ministerial, but throw out electors based on these new state laws. It's frightening. That to me is the most frightening part of these new voter suppression laws that are being churned out in multiple states based on lies about election fraud that these legislatures will be able to appoint their own electors if they don't like what the voters decided. Right.
Starting point is 00:26:08 And it goes back to when I grew up in Texas, there was actually a kid in high school and his father had named him his first name was stayed and the second name was rights. And state rights and state rights was really a cover for slavery really for the fending slavery. That's what it was, but it became a much more sanitized way of saying it. And here you see again, they're promoting the rights of individual states so that they supersede the national will. And this has really been going on for some time. I wrote a book about Karl Rove about 15 years ago, and Rove was all about taking over state legislatures in the state Supreme courts in Texas, Alabama,
Starting point is 00:26:56 and all over. And that's one reason now you have, I think you're only 35 of the states in out of 50 states are controlled by republicans. These are the state legislatures and Supreme Court and so forth. And that is a battle that is very, very frustrating because it's really hard for any of us in the blue states to have any impact on that whatsoever. Yeah, I mean, we vote, we vote our pants off, but it doesn't make a difference, you know.
Starting point is 00:27:27 And then she exactly how undemocratic the United States in so many different ways. I mean, we know all this. Idaho has as many senators at California. It's just everything is screwed up. Well, that's a big part of the misinformation and disinformation campaign by the GOP. The messaging now is that we aren't a democracy. In fact, I think Mike Lee texted or tweeted out,
Starting point is 00:27:53 rank democracy is the enemy of liberty, rank democracy. And they're moving, you know, they're always like, this is a republic, we're a electoral republic and using language to sort of like almost like a like a Reflexive control sort of language tool to to convince their base that we are not a democracy and therefore we shouldn't be voting like one Right, it's crazy. I mean we should be arguing for more democracy not less and and the idea that these little local localities, whether smaller states or the or the few legislators in Texas or Georgia or whatever, can take away the electoral votes is very, very disturbing. It will be very interesting
Starting point is 00:28:41 to see what happens in Texas with Beto running coming up. So that's going to be a fascinating race. Right. Because Jeremy, Jeremy Endering does an impact a statewide election like that. That's one vote, one person when you're talking about the statewide governorship. What do you think besides obviously our own sorted past of ignoring and whitewashing history, backsliding into white supremacy after failed reconstruction, changing the terms from slavery to sharecropping, and then we have got the school to prison pipeline,
Starting point is 00:29:14 all of this stuff that we ignore, and now the Republicans don't want anyone to learn about. Is there another source for this kind of disinformation like the whitewashing of the insurrection the big lie? And of course the COVID vaccine conspiracy theories because this is what scares me. I mean this all this scares me But you know, we have the lowest percentage of vaccinated adults in the g7 and that has to really please someone like volatim or Putin Yes It's very weird. I just find it the same that people educated people will refuse to get a vaccine or at least say that
Starting point is 00:29:52 because it has political, it's a badge of courage politically for them on the right. And there's certainly been a fair amount of this being fueled by Russian trolls. It's hard to quantify that, I think. But certainly they played a role in the growth of QAnon. They played a role in the events leading up to January 6th. And I suspect it's strongly going on.
Starting point is 00:30:20 We've also had massive hacking. I mean, this is different than this information, but it's very, very dangerous. Of course, we had the soloins hacking. In Tampa, Florida, I don't think they ever determined the source of the hack, but the water supply was actually hacked and someone was alert enough to keep them from putting in huge amounts of chlorine, which would have made the water supply poisonous, and could have killed thousands and thousands of people in Tampa. So this is a very electrical grids that have been compromised, and we see this all over. It's hard to know when and where something chaotic will erupt.
Starting point is 00:31:05 When you saw the ice storms and Texas last year and you understand that the electrical grid has been compromised, sometimes that can become very, very dangerous. And I think as we coach both first the midterms and then 2024, it's gonna see a lot of trouble that it's gonna be real chaos.
Starting point is 00:31:25 This thing is not at all over yet. So and that brings me to my final question. We got just about a minute left here. What can we do? I ask all the experts what what actions can we take? Is it just to keep sharing the truth and countering the lies? Do we just keep trying to shed light and put sunlight on what's really happening? Is that pretty much all we can do? It's enormously frustrating. I mean, if I didn't
Starting point is 00:31:52 couldn't write, I don't know what I'd be doing. I make small contributions to people and states that I think are strategically important, like Beto and Dallas and know, and there are selective, but it's very, very scary. And I think that's what's becoming painfully apparent is exactly how powerless millions and millions of people are and that we don't really have a democracy. Biden won by over seven million votes. That should be comfortable enough that we don't, I mean, and yet you see how weak the Democrats are, having one vote houses and the White House, they still don't have real power.
Starting point is 00:32:38 And that's what's been frustrating, and that's what the Republicans are masters of. And I think we have to toward that at many, many different levels. I also think just one other thing that one of the big problems, and I say this again, and again is the real scandal is often what is legal. And so much of this has been done,
Starting point is 00:32:59 slips between the cracks and what the legal system has been fighting. I try to write about it every opportunity, but it should be scandalous. And what it means is we need real reforms. We need real oversight in Congress. And the Democrats in Congress aren't strong enough to get it through. And we have to support them and make it stronger
Starting point is 00:33:20 and get some of that oversight through. Yeah, lawful but awful, as they say. I appreciate your time today. Another thing that we can do is educate ourselves and read as much as we can. And I really highly recommend everybody check out your books, especially American Compromot. They're all amazing. And then we have that, to me, knowledge is the enemy of anxiety. The more I know, the more
Starting point is 00:33:45 confidence I have to march forth and help win elections, help prevent the backslide into authoritarianism. And I appreciate your time today. So thank you very much for coming on. Craig Unger. Thanks for having me. Everybody stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. This portion of the show is brought to you by Wealthfront. If you want to invest for the long term, it helps to invest on your terms. Maybe you're pro-solar, maybe you're cannabis supporter, maybe you're an emerging market crypto nerd. Whoever you are, you should invest in what you believe in, and that's what makes Wealthfront
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Starting point is 00:35:04 It takes just minutes to start building your wealth, so visit wealthfrontfroint.com slash MSW. That's wealthfront.com slash MSW. And today's show is also brought to you by Wild Alaskan Company. If you'd like to cook, you know that flavorful meals start with high quality food and simple ingredients. With Wild Alaskan Company, their seafood is frozen right after it's caught for peak freshness so you can avoid the fuss of unhealthy sauces and over-seasoning. Instead, all you need are a few simple ingredients and you've got a delicious lunch or dinner.
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Starting point is 00:36:10 slash MSW. That's Wild Alaskan ALASKAN Company.com slash MSW for $15 off your first box. Wildalaskincumpeny.com slash MSW and please use our URL to let them know we sent you. All right welcome back it's time for the fantasy indictment league. I'm gonna be a dinosaur! No it is gonna be a dinosaur! I'm gonna be a dinosaur! I'm gonna be a dinosaur! A dinosaur!
Starting point is 00:36:34 I'm gonna be a dinosaur! Hold it! It's gonna be okay. Just calm down. I can't calm down I'm gonna be a dinosaur! All right we've got a few for you today. First of all I'm gonna give myself points for drafting Ingersoll last week. Federal prosecutors investigating the crimes of former Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg have charged two of Greenberg's associates
Starting point is 00:36:52 and accused them of a multi-million dollar real estate fraud scheme. That's according to an indictment unsealed Monday. Authority say Keith Ingersoll and James Adamsick, working with other unnamed co-conspirators, built and Orlando area investor out of 12 million bucks by persuading the investor to put money up for more than a half a dozen fraudulent real estate deals in Florida. And other states and the Bahamas. Ingersoll and Adam Chick claimed to the investor they needed money to cover deposits. On contracts, they had signed to purchase various properties
Starting point is 00:37:21 they planned to immediately flip for other buyers. At least some of whom were fabricated. And they were fabricated using fake IDs out of Greenberg's office. The same fake IDs that Matt Gates was going through on video late at night. And they used to make women who were young, be 21, so they could get into clubs and bars with them. Records show Ingersoll to whom Greenberg gave $48,000 in a contract to serve as a real estate advisor to the tax collector's office, was also involved in the transaction on behalf of the tax office. Several of Greenberg's other top advisors helped broker the deal, too. An auditor who later examined the deal wrote that the acquisition of this property has collusion written all over it. Auditors also separately said they found no evidence of work from Ingersoll for his consulting contract.
Starting point is 00:38:11 Weird. That's going to play a role in my new fantasy indictment, League Draft, which I will tell you right after this other indictment that happened, too, actually. Remember when Trump and Rick Grinnell accused Iran of interviewing in the 2020 election to help Biden? And that message was sort of passed around a few certain members of Congress, I remember. Well, Damien Williams, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who just got there, by the way, October 10th, and Brian Vorn-Dran, the Assistant Director of the FBI's Investigation Cyber Division, and Matthew G. Olson, Assistant Attorney General
Starting point is 00:38:45 for National Security, announced today the unceiling of an indictment charging Iranian citizens and residents, Syed Mahamed, Hossein Musa Kazemi, who has a lot of different A.K.A.'s, and Hossein Zamani and Zajad Kashian for the involvement in a cyber-enabled campaign to intimidate and influence American voters,
Starting point is 00:39:05 and otherwise undermine voter confidence and so discord in connection with the 2020 presidential election. As part of this campaign, the conspirators obtained confidential United States voter information from at least one state election website sent threatening email messages to intimidate voters, created and disseminated a video containing disinformation pertaining to purported but non-existent voting vulnerabilities, attempted to access without authorization several states voting-related websites, and successfully gained unauthorized access to a U.S. media company's computer network that, if not for successful FBI and
Starting point is 00:39:40 victim company efforts to mitigate, would have provided the conspirators with another vehicle for further disseminating false claims. The case has been assigned to US District Judge Victor Marrera. Damien Williams said, as alleged, Kazemian Kashion were part of a coordinated conspiracy in which Iranian hackers sought to undermine faith and confidence in the US presidential elections, working with others, Kazemian Kash access to voter information from at least one state, voter database, threatened US voters via email, and even disseminated a fictitious video that purported to depict actors fabricating overseas ballots. The United States will never tolerate any foreign actors attempt to undermine our free and democratic elections.
Starting point is 00:40:22 As a result, the charges on sale today and the concurrent efforts of our US government, Kazemi and Kashyan will look forever look over their shoulders as we strive to bring them to justice. Mm-hmm. So, Trump and Rick Grinnell and certain Republican members of the Senate and Congress were saying, it's Iran, it's Iran that's the problem, not Russia. And hey, look, these Iranians in congress we're saying it's a rand it's a rand that's the problem not russia and hey look
Starting point is 00:40:45 these are anians uh... put it said that they were proud boys to make trump look bad the these these are anian hackers are trying to help biden win the election but as it turns out the emails were they prepare they pretend to be proud boys saying that they would physically harm Democrats if they didn't vote for Trump. And all of the voter data that was stolen and everyone who was targeted with these harassing emails were Democrats. And yeah, I'm not sure, you know, I mean, if what they were doing was gaining access to certain media sites, sites trying, at least, to do that, and they had a fake video of ballots being fabricated overseas to show that the election was rigged. That doesn't sound like it's helping Biden.
Starting point is 00:41:50 Anyway, here's the scheme starting in August 2020 and proceeding till November 2020, because Emmy and Kashy and other co-conspirators began a coordinated four-stage campaign to undermine faith and confidence in the 2020 election. It's called the Election Interference Campaign, and otherwise they were trying to sow discord within the U.S. Society, which helps Trump. We know this. So, in a doubt about the election integrity and discord is Trump. That's a Trump camp. The campaign had four components. In September and October 2020, members of the conspiracy conducted reconnaissance on and attempted to compromise approximately 11 state voter websites, including state voter registration websites and state voter information websites. This efforts resulted in the successful exploitation of a misconfigured computer system in a particular US state, and they don't tell you which state it is, and the resulting unauthorized downloading of more than 100,000 state one voters information.
Starting point is 00:42:52 On October 2020, members of the conspiracy claiming to be a group of proud boy volunteers sent Facebook messages and emails. These are the false election messages to Republican senators, Republican members of Congress, individuals associated with the presidential campaign, a Donald Trump White House advisors and members of the media, the false election messages claimed the Democratic Party was planning to exploit serious security vulnerabilities in state voter registration websites to edit mail-in ballots or even register non-existent voters. The false election messages were accompanied by a video, the false election video, which purported via simulated intrusions, and the use of state one voter data to depict an individual affiliated with the Proud Boys hacking into a state voter website and using stolen voter information to create fraudulent apps and tube ballots through a federal voting assistance program for military and overseas workers to show you that the election was being stolen
Starting point is 00:43:40 by Democrats. But this is to help Biden. Of course, also in October 2020, they engaged in an online voter intimidation campaign involving threatening messages. These are called the voter threat emails, purporting to be from the proud boys to tens of thousands of registered Democrats, including some voters whose information and the conspiracy obtained from state ones website. The emails were sent to register Democrats threatened the recipients with physical injury
Starting point is 00:44:04 if they did not change their party affiliation of vote for Trump. On November 4, 2020, the day after the US presidential elections, the conspirators sought to leverage earlier September and October intrusions into an American media company's computer networks. Specifically on that day, the conspirators attempted to use stolen credentials to gain access to the media companies network Specifically on that day, the conspirators attempted to use stolen credentials to gain access to the media company's network, which would have provided them another vehicle for disseminating false claims concerning election security through conspirator modified or created content. However, because of an earlier FBI victim notification, media company one had by that time mitigated the conspirators unauthorized access.
Starting point is 00:44:40 So they've been indicted. Happy indictment week. We had quite a few indictments this week. I think there's going to be more to come. And for my picks this week, I'm giving Greenberg's cooperation a little bit more juice here because the fact that Ingersoll and Adam Chick were nabbed based on their weird contracts for $48,000 with tax collector's office for which no work was done. That means I'm going to continue again to draft Jacob Engels. And Ella Key, L.A. Key, is her name or one of her aliases or something like that.
Starting point is 00:45:13 Last name Key, I think, is the most important part. She had a weird contract and did no work, too. Pishy contracts. So those two, then add Madgates. Madgates, that has to be happening soon. And then Rudy toesing into Geneva. And I'm going to add Shokin and Lutsenko to the Ukrainians in that scheme with Rudy. Maybe even Fertosh. I'm going to put the Trump organ ice for a little bit. They just have a new grand jury, so it might be a minute. But that gives me just a couple more and I'm going to add Trump
Starting point is 00:45:47 for obstruction because the DC US attorney just got there in November 5th and that's where the obstruction of justice charges from the Mueller report would come from. Maybe even possibly Trump again for the Stormy Daniels case in the Southern District of New York because Damien Williams just got their US attorney for the Southern District got their October 10th. But we'll see. We'll see. They've since since they got there. They've been dropping big indictments, including banan for criminal contempt of Congress, the two Iranians.
Starting point is 00:46:17 Anyway, that's my hope. We'll see what happens. But that is the show for this week. Thanks to everybody for listening. I appreciate your patience and your concern for what went down last week with me personally. I was assaulted at a hotel in case you hadn't heard. But anyway, I'm doing much better and I appreciate your patience with me this week because I get my head back on straight. So thank you very much for that.
Starting point is 00:46:40 And everybody, please, until next week, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, take care of the planet and take care of your mental health. I've been A.G. and this is Mullershi Road. Mullershi Road is written and produced by Allison Gill in partnership with MSW Media. Sound designed and engineering, or by Molly Hockey, Jesse Egan is our copywriter and our art and web designer by Joa Reader at Moxie Design Studios. Muller She wrote as a proud member of MSW Media, a group of creator-owned podcasts focused
Starting point is 00:47:11 on news, justice, and politics. For more information, visit mswmedia.com. Season 4 of How We Win Is Here For the past four years, we've been making history in critical elections all over the country. And last year, we made history again by expanding our majority in the Senate, eating election denying Republicans and crucial state house races, and fighting back a non-existent red wave. But the Magga Republicans who plotted and pardoned the attempted overthrow of our government now control the House.
Starting point is 00:47:58 Thanks to gerrymandered maps and repressive anti-voter laws. And the chaotic spectacle we've already seen shows us just how far they will go to seize power, dismantle our government, and take away our freedoms. So, the official podcast of the persistence is back with season four. There's so much more important work ahead of us to fight for equity, justice, and our very democracy itself. We'll take you behind the lines and inside the rooms where it happens, with strategy and
Starting point is 00:48:29 inspiration from progressive change makers all over the country. And we'll dig deep into the weekly news that matters most and what you can do about it, with messaging and communications expert co-founder of Way to Win and our new co-host, Jennifer Fernandez and Kona. So join Steve and I every Wednesday for your weekly dose of inspiration, action and hope. I'm Steve Pearson and I'm Jennifer Fernandez and Kona and this is how we win. M-S-W Media.

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