Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - EXPOSING THE LARGEST ACTIVE COVER-UP IN US HISTORY!

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

Jordan Chariton (Status Coup News Owner) shares what's really going on with the Flint River Crisis. Use promo code COX to double your first deposit at https://www.mybookie.ag Jordans Book https://www.amazon.com/We-Poisoned-Exposing-Poisoning-Americans/dp/1538194244 Audio https://www.amazon.com/We-Poisoned-Exposing-Poisoning-Americans/dp/B0DBW8HD8B Flint Doc https://flintfatigue.com YT Channel https://youtube.com/@StatusCoup?si=Ox_dN2sWVg1uYjpG X https://x.com/JordanChariton?mx=2 Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7 Send me an email here: [e-mail] Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content? Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime 📧Sign up to my newsletter to learn about Real Estate, Credit, and Growing a Youtube Channel: https://mattcoxcourses.com/news   🏦Raising & Building Credit Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/credit 📸Growing a YouTube Channel Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/yt 🏠Make money with Real Estate Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/re Follow me on all socials! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8 Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438 The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402 Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1 Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel! Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here: Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69 Cashapp: $coxcon69

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you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexsavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam. Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. This is the biggest government cover-up of the 21st century. This makes Watergate look like Childsplay. You got the EPA, the state of Michigan, the city of Flint, private foundations, Wall Street Banks, and the media. The cover-up is still going on.

The city of Flint, as soon as I got there, I was seeing bottled water on porches. In almost every house, something was broken, laundry machines, dishwashers from the water. like the toxic water had broken house supplies. I was meeting kids with, you know, full body rashes from the water. And this is as the government was saying, things are improving. Right. And the more I interviewed residents, you know, I gravitated to the human suffering part, but I also couldn't ignore, like they were just spoon-feeding me that this is not,

this is not happened based on the narrative the media was saying. The media was saying this was just a tragic mistake because some government officials had just cut corners and tried to save money and they just, you know, forgot to add the proper chemicals into the water. So they were telling me like, no, this is like a corruption scandal, basically a decade in the making, that this was a privatization scheme, basically a money-making scheme. and I was kind of like I didn't know where to start because this was like I had like done some investigations before but not about like a whole community being poisoned right so I you know kind of convinced my boss at the time like this is not like a one and done thing like I need to go back there and dig a little more and again to his credit he did and that was 2016 21 trips later I believe I uncovered the biggest government cover up definitely the 21st century

So where did you start? You know, I mean, I know you wrote a book, but, you know, like when you went back, like, was there anybody that was there that was helping? You're like, here's the person you needed to talk to. This is where we believe it started. Yeah. Because I'm sure the local people kind of, they have their feel. They kind of understand, but they haven't gone out and done huge an investigation. They haven't talked to anybody.

It's always, sometimes it's probably, you know, they're off on a wild goose chase. Yeah. I, from what I've learned over a decade is that. I had no offense, if you're in journalism school watching. Most of what they teach you is junk. Right. Because you're kind of taught to go straight to the experts, you know, go to the politicians or the think tanks or historians. And I kind of learn, no, go to, like, residents and activists because they know where the bodies are buried, like, figuratively.

Right. And sometimes literally. So I just spoke of residence. And it was really like this kind of referral system where you talk to one resident and they'd tell you about, like, this corrupt local politician or this corrupt. You got to talk to Kathy. Yeah. Kathy knows so she used to work for so-and-so.

Exactly. Right. And so it's kind of just like building blocks where I talk to one person. They tell me to go talk to this person. That person led me to this politician who's like the one out of ten who's not super corrupt. And then they start leading you to sources that are involved with the criminal investigation. And then you get, you know, suddenly you're like meeting deep throat in the parking garage. And a couple years into this, as I was establishing relationships with residents, I landed thousands of documents from the criminal investigation.

And that was like really, holy, holy shit. Like, this is, to me, this made like Watergate look like Child's Play. Right. Because Watergate, everyone has really been nostalgic about it. It's like the government cover up. It's the iconic cover up, right? Yeah. And what was really, like, bizarre at the time, and I think I understand now more, I'm not, you know, I'm not from Michigan. So I was like an out-of-towner continually coming in, and residents kept telling me, we keep telling the local news about this.

We keep telling, like, the Detroit Free Press, the Detroit News, but they won't touch it. Why would, why do you think that, like, why? That's local. This is local. At first, I thought it was just laziness, you know, like media can't wrap their heads around. something that's more than a week old. Right. But then I, you know, I learned that it's in the book that some media, I believe there were advertisers involved that wanted to kill certain stories because those advertisers might have played a role in the Flint water cover up. Right.

Then I think it was a lot of just, a lot of the media, unfortunately, is like, yuppie, disconnected white folks who don't go to Flint or, you know, they live, you know, in the suburb. suburbs around Detroit. And yeah, they care about those people that were poisoned, but day-to-day, they're not speaking with people in the community. They're covering stuff, you know, in their cities. So they're kind of disconnected from it. And they just, for lack of better description, stop caring about it. I mean, it happens all the time. We have mass shootings of this country. They're covered for five minutes and the media moves on. In one case, I discovered that a local ABC station in Flint, had the goods. They had documents showing there was a massive legionaire's outbreak, which is

the deadly waterborne bacteria that killed a lot of people in Flint because of the water switch. They had documents showing it. The reporter started working on the story and then mysteriously got killed six months, six months after the water switch. One reporter? One reporter. Okay. And I reached out to the station 10 times. Why would you, I mean, besides that this was the right thing to do, like you could win awards. Yeah. And I can never nail it down, but I do believe they got calls from the governor's office to kill that story.

Is it also possible that, like, if you're running a news station that you're saying, hey, like you said earlier, you know, these are stories that bring in views. And this is a story that is tragic, but it's, but people don't want to, you know, it's like hearing that there's no Santa Claus. Nobody wants to hear that. You know what I'm saying? So, you know, so let's go with the, what everybody else is pumping out, which to me a lot of times is, and I only know this because, I don't know if, you know, I've written a bunch of stories, right? And I was, so this is obviously when I was incarcerated. But some guy would tell me, you know, his story. And then, of course, I start researching it. And I'm not able to research it the way, you know, what I can do is I can order the Freedom of Information Act. I can order his court transcripts, his indictment, his, you know, those types of things, court documents. And then I would have someone do an internet search for me.

And it's funny how I constantly found this. The U.S. Attorney's Office would put out, you know, let's say, I'm going to say 1,000 words is probably only 400. But let's say 500 words. You put out a 500 word press release on, you know, on Tuesday. And on Wednesday, there's 20 or 30 news outlets that came out with the almost the exact, They would rewrite it. It's almost like they went to chat GPT and said, and cut and pasted it and said, rewrite this for me. And they rewrote the whole thing.

Maybe one out of 20 or 10 or whatever would maybe have called somebody, you know, involved in it to get a quote. But that's it. Otherwise, they were just regurgitating whatever the government told them. Stenography. Right. So I was like, this is nuts. Like these people are like, I'm like, oh, but so I stopped doing the whole, when I would talk to one of these guys, you know, subject. I stopped doing the whole, well, you're saying you didn't do it, bro, but there's all, what about these articles?

Not realizing like, none of those guys, they just repeated what the government told, told them in a way, and that's so much easier, right? Like, they don't have to order anything. They don't have to order transcripts, Freedom of Information Act. They don't have to call anybody. They don't have to get a quote. I can just regurgitate what the government has already told me, and it looks like I did a bunch of work. And it, how inexpensive is that? Right.

And the other thing is, and of course, now, you know, my source is the government, which is, you know, as far as the government, as far as most people in general feel, that's ironclad. That's what they said. That's what happened, which, you know, we know if you obviously know, that's just not true. But the other thing is that Nike is like, hey, I don't want to be advertising on a news station that is focusing on poison water that the government's saying doesn't exist. So is that also maybe you think part of it? Like maybe it's not necessarily even a phone call. Maybe it's the managers of these channels saying, you know, hey, this is like this is, this is bad for business. Or do you think it's like what combination?

It's a combination, but in Flint, I found just this cascading cabal of factors. So for example, that station, let me give you the quick timeline. They switched to the Flint River in April of 2014, so 10 years ago. Now we're talking October 2014. So April 2014, six months later, I mean, at that point, residents had been showing up the city hall carrying brown jugs of water. Kids have rashes. So this was the biggest story in Flint. Right.

And it was a moneymaker for the news. I mean, poison kids. For a few months. Yeah, brown water. So I didn't know it at the time. That station, the local ABC station, one of its biggest advertisers was McLaren Hospital. Right.

Well, McLaren Hospital is where they got the documents showing that there was a legionaire's outbreak. Legionnaires is a deadly waterborne bacteria, and it was because of the Flint River switch. Right. So they have these documents, internal documents from the hospital saying, hey, we're stepping up our cleaning procedures because we've detected legionnaires. At that time, two plus two equals four, you have people showing up with brown water. kids with rashes. You have residents begging to switch Flint, get off of the Flint River, and switch back to Detroit. That's where they were getting their water from. And the story mysteriously gets killed. I mean, based on my sources, it was partly because the hospital is

the biggest advertiser, one of the biggest advertisers to the local ABC station. Also... So you think the hospital wanted to kill the story? Yes. Okay. Because the hospital had the outbreak. And obviously, that's not particularly good for a hospital that, hey, we have this deadly bacteria spreading to our hospital. I wasn't putting that together. Yeah, yeah. We've got tons of people coming in this hospital with a deadly bacteria. Yeah, yeah. But I don't want to go there. Also what I learned, and this goes to it's worse than just lazy journalism. In the case of Flint, you know, there's a massive private foundation called the Mott Foundation. and it's named after Charles Stewart Mott.

He was basically the inaugural investor in General Motors. So this guy in the early 20th century was the largest investor in GM. By all accounts was a great guy, philanthropist. His foundation later on, I mean, Flint could not run without the Mott Foundation pouring money into schools, youth programs, hospitals. But the Mott Foundation has been accused of, you know, racism, supporting racist policies, housing policies, de facto school segregation, et cetera. And based on my reporting, I learned that they were very involved in pulling the strings behind the scenes on decisions that actually caused the Flint water crisis.

And Mott basically owns downtown Flint. Like most of the real estate development is indirectly or directly funded by Mott. A lot of the news stations don't cover anything negative about Mott. Mott basically runs Flint for all intents and purposes. The Flint Journal, I learned, because I was like, why is the Flint Journal not basically doing what you're saying? Why is the Flint Journal just regurgitating everything the government's saying? I learned, oh, the Flint Journal's building, they rent from basically the Mott Foundation. Right.

Their building is they rent from a real estate company that's funded by Mott. And Mott's role in this. So a lot of people don't realize, you know, you're getting flooded with these emails right now. Democracy is on the line in the 2024 election. With elections heating up, it's time for you to get involved and make your voice heard. There's a way to support your candidate and double your cash before you even step into the voting booth. Right now, when you sign up for MyBooky, you can double your money on your first bet. That's right. Put your dollar behind your vote and back your candidate while boosting your bankroll.

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of democracy actually being removed. If people don't know, the governor of Michigan got in in 2011 Republican Rick Snyder. He declares a financial emergency in Flint. And he installed unelected emergency managers. I just call them czars. So people's votes got canceled. He just appointed unelected czars to take power over the elected mayor, the elected city council, and the first order of business for these czars who were basically just carrying out the bidding of the governor was let's try to privatize the water system. So that's how it starts. That's how it starts. Okay. And why the financial, why did he say this is a financial emergency? I mean, I understand that Flint like who is it was it was a GM that left who left okay so GM had a massive plant was

it one or multiple plants so GM was born in Flint yeah GM at one point I mean probably had like 15 to 20 plants and uh there were a lot of reasons uh you know offshoring of jobs uh white flight they started moving to the suburbs right out of Flint and then started moving to other countries So Flint went from like In the mid-20th century Flint was like the envy of America Great way upper middle class It was to succeed in the future of work

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Conditions apply. Yeah, everybody had a job. And then every one of those factory jobs was supporting multiple jobs. Like, everybody in some way was connected to those factories, and everybody was making great money. Yeah, you know. I mean, middle class, kids playing all over the neighbors. I mean, that's what Michael Moore's Roger and me was about. Right.

But by the time, turn of the century, 2010, I mean, the whole country was feeling it because of the financial crash. But Flint, like in my book, I called it a rotting economic corpse. I mean, the tax base cratered potholes everywhere. And that's why private foundations were relied upon to, fund. I mean, not just schools, youth programs, even government jobs. Because they didn't have enough tax, tax base. Oh, yeah. The cops, they got like, I forget the amount of cops that they have. Like, they're literally, that, did you ever see that? There's a whole program. It's like a, is it a series or is it a documentary on Flint police officers? Yeah, Flint Town.

Oh, yeah. Bro, it's like these cops are doing everything, everything. Yeah. I mean, they're just going from one call to another call to another call. They just don't have anyone, near the amount of police, you know, they're not getting paid well, you know, they're dealing with, they're, they're dealing with every single, there's no specializing, hey, you're going to be working on this, you'll be working on these types, that they're just doing every single thing they could possibly do. They're holding the whole thing together with like bubblegum and, you know, duct tape. Yeah. So basically that foundation, I learned through my reporting, basically struck a deal with the governor, uh, put in our guys as your emergency managers.

Right. So they were pulling the strings behind who was appointed emergency managers because the foundation had always had a goal of regionalizing services, which to be is code for privatizing. Okay. So they wanted Detroit, which was majority black, they had the basic monopoly on water in Michigan. And for people that don't know, Michigan is part of the Great Lakes. And the Great Lakes provide 20% of the world's surface fresh water. So water is a cash cow. I didn't know that.

Yeah. So the Great Lakes, 20% of the world's water comes from the Great Lakes. And for 50 years, Flint had gotten its water from Lake Huron, which is one of the great lakes, glacial, pure, clean water. And they got it through the city of Detroit. So Detroit piped the water to Flint. And there was no problem, like quality-wise, for 50 years. but the local officials in Flint were complaining that Detroit kept price gouging Flint. So that was used as the original reason.

Well, let's just build our own water system. And this foundation wanted to regionalize services, meaning take control away from Detroit and let's make a regional system that the county would control because Flint was part of Genesee County. So basically it was that water come, was that new water come from? The same source. So they did something that, in my view, and many there was a complete scam. They built a completely duplicative water pipeline to run along the same exact path, literally identical. Right.

From Lake Huron, it would just run parallel to the existing Detroit water pipeline to Flint. The only difference would be the water that Flint had gotten from Detroit for 50 years was treated already. So Detroit added in the chemicals to be. make it safe and then set it to Flint. This water in the new pipeline would be raw water. What do you need a lot of raw water for? Things like fracking, which the governor was trying to frack the hell out of Michigan, agriculture, the auto industry, GM, just business. They could get cheap raw water from this new pipeline. They actually were being open about it. The politicians were calling this the blue economy. We were going to make a lot of money because most of the water for

this new pipeline, it was being said, we're going to build this new water pipeline to save Flint residents money, but most of the water was not going to be used for residents. It was going to be used for business. So it was basically a scam to build a completely unnecessary new water system. And we know this because at the last minute, Detroit, which was nearly bankrupt at the time, they could not afford to lose Flint as its water customer. Flint was Detroit's largest water customer, if Flint left the water system, Detroit's water system was going to go belly up. So Detroit offered Flint a 48% discount.

Well, there goes the price gouging. That sounds like a deal. If the mall has a half off sale, what do you think? Yeah, that sounds, yeah. Stop digging those holes. Analysis was done. And the city of Flint, if they would have just stayed on Detroit, was going to save about 20% over 30 years compared to this new water system.

And this new water system was going to cost like nearly $300 million to build. And where's that money come from? I'm going to get to that. Okay. I was going to say that you just said the place is practically bankrupt already. I'm telling you, the biggest financial boondaga of the century. So essentially, the local officials and the governor's office together said, well, thanks for the offer, but we're going to go with this.

and we already have the we already have the guys ready to do the construction so we get kickbacks we already have my buddy jimmy from high school is gonna he's gonna handle the you know the pipeline uh so-and-so's gonna handle the we're buying the concrete from uh my cousin todd yeah that's basically what happened and what was so it's you know it's kind of in the weeds but it's important so flint is part of genesey county and genesey county has a drain commissioner it's the position's called different in other places but basically... I'd hate to have to put that on my business card. Basically, you run the water for your county. And this guy was an elected official. His name's Jeff Wright. He's an elected official running the water and his other job.

He's the CEO of the new privatized water system. Kind of a conflict of interest. So this guy had been... And by the way, he was an FBI informant. He had a corruption scandal a decade earlier and he became an FBI informant essentially to avoid prison. He was going through a bad time.

He's all better now. So he worked it out. He might be a swell guy. I don't know. But he basically was angling for this new water system for 15 years. So they created one of the biggest boondoggles in, I think, economic terms, history. Flint was broke. Like Flint was broke for the reasons we talked about.

And in 2013, 2014, it was, it had no credit rating. legally based on Michigan's laws, it could not borrow any more money. Right. But they could not build this new nearly $300 million pipeline without Flint helping to fund construction. So essentially, even though Detroit had offered a half off discount, this was never about saving money. They wanted this new pipeline built.

So basically to get around Flint's legal limit, the only way that Flint would be able to borrow money to help fund this pipeline was if they created an emergency, like a fake emergency. Okay. That like legally, it was like an environmental emergency, then then the cash trap city could have an

exception. So the unelected emergency manager, this drain commissioner, Jeff Wright, with the help of our friends that J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo, they created an emergency. It was basically to clean

up a lime sludge pit next to the Flint water plant. Okay. This had been, the cleanup had been needed for like two decades, but it was never an emergency. Suddenly it became an emergency. So the Michigan State Environmental Department issued the city of Flint. It's only an emergency because it's next to the place where you want to build a plant that you don't need. Correct.

If you don't have an emergency, if you simply take the discount that. Detroit is offering you. We don't have to clean that. We don't spend money to clean this up. We don't have to, we don't have to declare an emergency, and we don't have to pay to build a new plant. Correct. The Flint water plant was already there, but it was basically like these Boeing planes that are falling apart in mid-air. I mean, it had been used as a full-time treatment plant in 50 years, because Detroit already treated the water and sent it to Flint. Right. And essentially, they created this BS emergency, and in that environmental order, for this lime, clean up this lime thing, they kind of snuck in like the fine print,

oh, Flint's going to be able to borrow $100 million to join this Carragondi Water Authority, KWA. So basically it was just a bait and switch. They created a fake emergency. And through the back door, the actual purpose of that was to allow Flint to borrow $100 million so that $100 million was the last piece of the funding needed to fund this new water system, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, they issued the bonds. So it was a bond deal. And J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo, they were supposed to do the due diligence to make sure that the Flint water plant

could actually treat the water. So we'll get to that. But in the short term, and that's contractually. They're supposed to send like inspectors out to make sure. Okay. So basically in the short term, this new water system was going to take two years to build. So Flint could have stayed on Detroit. The county, Genesee County, they, as this new water system was being built, they decided we're going to continue getting water from Detroit until the new systems built. Flint, who had a $12 to $13 million annual deficit, they had this brilliant idea. Well, let's just save money for this two years and use the Flint River. the Flint River if you lived in Flint I mean it was horrifying right it looked green I mean people

joked to me when I first got there I don't even know if they were joking like that's where they dumped the bodies right general motors had dumped its waste in there for a hundred years DuPont Dow Chemical it was just a dumping ground it was very polluted and not only did that environmental order I just described it mandated that while this new water system is being built. Flint has to use the Flint River and they have to use the Flint water plant to treat the Flint River water. That doesn't work. No. Does anybody, does anybody check to determine that the water's clean? Like, is there a specific person? In my book, A, I learned that the governor of Michigan was warned a year before the water switch that if they switched to the

Flint River, there was a bacterial risk and carcinogens. So there was basically, basically risk of bacteria and cancer-causing chemicals in that river. He allowed it to go through anyway. Well, he doesn't live in Flint. And also, I have a whole chapter in my book, workers at the plant. So like Joe and Jane Sixpack, they were screaming a year before the water switch, hell no, we can't do this. And it was just mad dash to get the plant ready, even if it wasn't ready, to switch to the

Flint River, they did not have, like, the media reported that, oh, they failed to add the corrosion control chemicals. So what that means is all the pipes underneath us, whether it's Flint, Florida, I mean, our water pipes are 50 to 100 years old. So by law, if you have a city with over 50,000 people, you have to add corrosion control chemicals so that lead doesn't leach off into the pipes. What if it's under 50? Yeah.

You're expendable. If it's 49,000, good luck. Move to a bigger city. So the media just reported that, oh, they failed to add those. It's not that they failed. They did not have the equipment in the plant to add it. They were literally mailing equipment to the plant the week that the water switch was happening. Two weeks before the water switch, they were so understaffed.

They switched people from the sanitation, the garbage department to the water plant who had no water experience. It was a shit show. And the plant workers were telling the unelected emergency manager, all the city officials, we're not ready. I mean, I have in my book quotes like, hell no. I mean, one plant worker was calling his sister and telling her, call, reach out to everyone you know, tell them not to drink the water, people are going to die. And a week before the water switch, the head of the water plant, he emailed the environmental officials at the state of Michigan. Michigan saying this switch is against my... Man, my better judgment.

Yeah, this is... I can't sign off on this. They didn't respond to him. And the reason was it was all about the balance sheet. They, the state and the unelected emergency manager, they had already signed on to that new water system. And they had to start paying back the bonds later that year. So they need to, they need to start pumping out the water so they can collect the money for the water so they can pay on the bonds. Otherwise, it's just more of a deficit.

Because technically, even though there was no need for this new water system, they could have just kept getting water from Detroit for a year and a half, two years, and then switched to the new water system. But they were already on the hook to start paying back the bonds. So they couldn't pay Detroit and pay the bonds. So they just said to themselves, oh, we'll just build the parts as the plane is mid-flight. It'll be fine. Yeah. So they basically said, and there's email showing that, like, government officials were acknowledging, yeah, we're working on making the river water safe. Right.

As they were telling residents, it is safe. So they switched basically with a decrepit plant. Half the systems weren't working. Data wasn't like you couldn't even read real-time data properly if you're a plant worker. They didn't have the equipment to add the needed chemicals, like within two or three weeks residents were. The first email to the EPA, the first phone calls to the EPA were within three weeks that kids are getting rashes, the water's brown, and I obtained phone logs. I got the governor's phone calls, his top lawyer's phone calls, his chiefest dad's phone calls.

The logs? I don't know what was said, but I have the logs. They're clearly making calls back and forth, back and forth. There's something. The governor's first call listed with his top lawyer for the year 2014, was. was on the day that the EPA got the first complaints. And then the next day, the governor's chief of staff is on the phone with the top lawyer three times. And all the dates, I mean, it took a while to go through all this, pretty much most of the dates

where the governor's on the phone with his top lawyer, the chief of staff are on the phone with the top lawyer, it all matches like major red flags were piling up with the water. So my question is, I mean, I understand that you're saying they wanted it. But, I mean, is there actual proof in the book where you're stating that, you know, this, you know, John Smith was the czar, one of the czars, and his cousin owns a construction company that got the contract, you know, that is it, so that you can, because, because let's face it, you're not going to get, you know, Flint, you know, the, the treasury czar is not cutting checks directly to himself. his wife, and three other people on the council. You do it in other, like, that's just stupid. You should go to prison just for stupidity if you're doing that. You should do is you have somebody who's not really related to you.

You know, my best friend from high school, John's cousin owns that thing. But we already have an agreement. I'm going to get you this $12 million contract. But I'm going to need, I'd like my wife and I would like to go to Europe for two weeks. You know, I'd be great if you gave my cousin a boat. and here's here's the boat you know what i'm saying like there's ways to get that money ask ask mayor uh the mayor of new york what is that like there's ways to get paid without getting direct without with having plausible deniability you know like hey what are you telling me

i had no idea they paid for that thought it was just a gift so there was kind of two things going on at the same time one on the local level and one in the governor's office on the local level there is proof. So that drain commissioner I told you about who was also the CEO of this new water system, I mean, he started getting massive campaign donations from the contractors on this new water system. They just like him. He's just a coincidence. So all the contractors, they, you know, basically no bid processes. He's handing out contracts for this completely scam water system. It's the way to speed it up. You can't have all that bidding process. It's too much. It takes too long. Based on my reporting, which the current Attorney General of Michigan, which we could get

to, she's trying to keep this buried. Based on my reporting, they had change orders nearly 70 to 80%, which in English means in contracting engineering, if the work changes. As you're going, you're making changes to try and hold up that you're juggling. You don't have a great plan in place that we're just simply following the plan because the plan keeps changing because your plan's not working. So the normal, like, change order is, like, 10 to 50%. They were having change orders upwards of 70%. So it was just all, you know, scam.

So basically the drain commissioner was, you know, getting massive campaign donations from all the contractors and engineering firms that he handed contracts for this completely unnecessary new water system. So it was a grift, basically. But the governor, so let me take you to a time, like a galaxy, far, far away before, Donald Trump came down the escalator.

Okay. So 2014, like Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan, he was angling to run for president on the Republican side in 2016. And his bumper sticker was going to be like, I'm an economic wizard. I ran government like a business. And I rescued, rescued distressed cities like Detroit and Flint. So I got Detroit. I took him into bankruptcy and then I got him out of bankruptcy and saved all.

this money for Detroit. And his message through using the Flint River and cutting down the deficit, he was going to say, I rescued Detroit's balance sheet, Flint's ballot sheet, and I could do this nationally and economically wave a wand and help all these distressed cities. So he was angling in 2014 to run for president. So you kind of can't have a massive water poisoning right under you and run for president right so there was two things there was the direct grift which i just described where the the drain commissioners get the kickbacks um the former FBI informant and then the governor he knew early on that there was problems with the water but he wanted to run for president and first he had to get reelected he was up for re-election the same year they

switched the water. So basically, he and his top officials just engineered this massive cover-up as they knew the water was toxic. And it went on free. It's still going on. Even though he's not governing anymore, the cover-up is still going on. So yes, there was direct proof of basically kickbacks, you know, contracts going to, you know, friends and family, inflated contracts that should have never, but also a lot of this was your standard, you know, local politician has larger ambitions and as a result made decisions that led to people dying. Like the media doesn't cover it, but Flint has one of the fastest growing cancer rates in America. It's not from the weather. Right. It's from the lead bacteria. And I went there in 2018 and I was knocking

on doors for a story I was working on, on that governor's administration cheating on the water testing and almost every block I went to, you know, when people would open up, I'd say, hey, I've noticed like nobody's home like for most of the block or nobody's answering and they tell me, oh, that person just died, that person just died. And like not all elderly. Like I'm talking people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, kidney failure, liver, liver problems, cancers. Because lead, bacteria in the water, I mean, it's like a wrecking ball to every system. We don't do well with lead. Right.

Yeah. Or arsenic or, yeah. So like with COVID, for example, you had the real-time death count on cable news, right? With this, based on sources I have, I mean, there could be thousands of people that have died from this. and they're not, it's not counted as the Flint water crisis. Well, you know what's funny is I actually had a friend that went in to have, you know how they don't do this anymore, but, you know, they would put lead fillings in, right? And he was my age, so like I have those fillings.

And so he went in to have them removed. You can have them buzzed out and then they'll refill them with whatever the new material is that's safe, right? And it's white and it looks good. And he did it because he's vain. And he went and he went to the dentist and had it buzzed out. And, of course, they put, they put something in there to try and collect it. But it's still, it's, you know, it's very thin and they don't get it all. You swallow a lot of it.

Well, you're not supposed to. There's supposed to be some kind of a guard that they put. He didn't put the guard. This is a new dentist. He's just doing this procedure. Still figuring it out. So within a day or two, my buddy ends up in, in the hospital. Like, he's not feeling good.

He's not, he's color is bad, everything goes there. He's there for like two days with their doing tests. And doctors are coming in saying, I don't, we don't know what the issue is. And then some, you know, PA or something is there while they're doing all the tests. And he says, have you been in the dentist recently? Like, you just spent $10,000. doing every test imaginable, but nobody tested for lead. And he was like, I mean, yeah, why?

He was, did you have any, do you have, do you have lead? And he was like, yeah, I just had it. I went and I had him buzzed out. He was the, we test for lead. It was a simple, he was, it's a simple, 20, 20 or $30 test. They tested your blood. It's got lead in it. They stuck him on a machine.

They did the swirly thing, you know, in the next few hours. And he's like, bro, I felt like a fucking million dollars. and I'm all safe and I'm good. So that's a massive amount of lead. If you slowly give someone lead poisoning, it renders all kinds of issues with your body. And they typically don't test for it because it doesn't always necessarily affect you in exactly the same way. How much are you drinking water? Some people never drink water.

Some people are drinking filtered water. Some people are. So, I mean, I know that lead, just from that one guy's experience, and I've thought about getting my thing done. and that's my fear. Yeah. Because I know somebody. But if I didn't know that, who knows? And people will kill people because it's so hard to detect.

It's not a normal thing. That's not a normal poison. And it wreaks havoc in such a way that it's, you don't quite know. Well, with lead also, testing is very deceiving because after a month, the lead gets stuck in your bones. So it's no longer in your blood. It's caught in your bones, and it doesn't show up in the test. So if you, you know, if you don't get tested right away, large quantity is a lead are not going to show up on the test but are stuck in your bones. It's still poisoning you.

Exactly. So, for example, I know residents in Flint who, you know, are deeply sick. I mean, everything from the cognitively to physically, but they get the test and it's showing up under the limit. But they only got, you know, they were able to get tested, you know, a year later or something. You haven't been drinking lead water. Well, and not just that. It's any place you go for food. And if you go to the sandwich shop, to subway, to anybody, you know, all this stuff has water in it.

You know, you're getting a soda, you know, my wife's always saying, you know, you don't drink enough water. I'm like, I drink water. There's water in my coffee. There's water in here. There's water in everything you're drinking. But, you know, and if this was poison, then it all be coming out of the, even if I'm filtering it. And with Flint, you know, part of the problem is the media only focused on lead. but there were a lot of other things on the water.

You said other carcinogens, right? Like, well, general motor. You had 100 years of corporate waste dumped into a river, and they didn't treat the river properly. So people were drinking lead, bacteria, e coli, Phaas, which are those forever chemicals they're founding everywhere, arsenic. I mean, independent testers that are not on the EPA payroll, not on the state of Michigan they were testing, they were finding high levels of chloroform, you know, the stuff

they put out in those movies. Chromium, chloroform, all sorts of stuff. So it was this petri dish of contaminants, but lead was the only focus. And I remember a story that was horrifying to me. So, you know, basically there were residents who were sick and offered payoffs because they were getting a little too loud. And the media was starting to cover them. So one resident after the governor's...

right-hand man tried to pay him off, which we could get to, he was invited to the state environmental lab to show like how, you know, how thorough their testing is. So he sees this machine that looks like it's a massive machine with all these gadgets and this and that. And he says, oh, is that what you test with? And the head of the lab was like, well, that could test for everything on the periodic table. But we don't use that because by law we only have to look for lead and copper. So they weren't even using, they were only looking for lead and copper. They weren't looking for bacteria and other things.

So basically, you know. You're missing a bunch of stuff. Did you ever read the book, A Civil Action? Oh, man. It's about a chemical plant that's dumping chemicals. Actually, they made a movie about it with John Travolta. Bro, it's a great movie, too. It's not nearly as good as the book, but the book is a, it's a challenge.

so it's a chemical plant and I forget the name of it I it's it's a well-known chemical plant and they were so people all over the place are getting sick they're they're getting you know they're getting ulcers and you know all kinds of things they're you know children are dying people are having their you know they swim in the pool like oh we have a pool and they our kids swim every day and then your 12-year-old daughter has to have her full hysterectomy. You know, I mean, it's just like there's all these problems in this, in this area, and they finally go to this lawyer and they get this lawyer and he, you know, and this is the

problem is that you say, okay, well, if all these things are happening, we can sue. Okay, yeah, you can sue and you think, yeah, yeah, we'll go get a lawyer. Okay, first of all, even if a lawyer says, okay, we're going to sue, and I'm going to take 50% of it, you know, I know it's 30 to 40, but sometimes. they can charge you like a bunch, 50%, 60%, whatever, plus their costs. This guy fighting the case because these people that are connected with this chemical plant are so huge, they just drive the lawyer into the ground. And this guy, he has to, first of all, his credit line with the bank is completely extended. He's 20, 30 million into the hole.

And finally the bank's like, yeah, we're done. we're done like you're you're you're you're never gonna you know we can't lend you any more money he levered you know then it's borrowing money on his house then he's selling his car then he's you know i mean it's just killing him and eventually he goes under and when he finally goes under he takes all of his the information that he had even though they destroy him they destroy him he can't fight these companies he finally sends it to like the EPA and the EPA has all this stuff laid out for them and he ends up, you know, they go in and then they clean the whole it. It was a massive case. They clean it up. But what was so interesting about it is all of the

workers at the plant that he deposes had been, you know, they're answering his questions, but they had been coached. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a Small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. Long-bendy Twizzlers candy keeps the fun going. And here's how you answer that.

going. Twizzlers, keep the fun going. And here's how you answer that. They were like professional. You got, you got a guy who drives a forklift, but he's now, he's been coached so well. He's a professional witness at this point. Like, you know, he knows exactly how to answer everything. And in the end, he finds out that these guys are.

being honest, but he wasn't able to answer the questions correctly because they had such the way they're answering are is so, you know, all over the place. And it turns out that because they could find, by the way, they could find that the soil and the water was poisoned around the plant in certain ways. They just couldn't figure out where they're dumping all of these chemicals. And so at the very end, they do find out where these guys are all. And they, finally, when they start asking that question, they're like, you should see them. Like, they're face, they're just like, oh, shit. They're like, well, I dumped the chemicals here because this is how, and then they

once they start telling the truth, but they, they crush them. This guy doesn't have a fucking, this lawyer doesn't have a chance. And people don't realize like, well, why don't you go get a lawyer? Like, who? Some guy from Flint's going to go convince a lawyer to take a case and go in the whole $50 million fighting DuPont or, you know, Dow Chemical or, you know, Dow Chemical or, you know, whoever these people are connected to. Like, he can't do that.

He may listen to you and be like, man, that's just horrible. But you don't seem to realize what it takes for me to fight this battle. Right. This isn't writing a couple of fucking motions. I have to, and I have to pay for all this out of my pocket. Right. And I don't have it. I don't have the credit lines for it.

That's basically what happened in Flint. I mean, this was a massive cover up. The EPA was involved. The state of Michigan government. The city of Flint, private foundation, uh, Wall Street banks. So activists on the ground, residents on the ground, independent testers, they were up against basically this unholy cabal of federal, state, local government, private foundations, banks. And that's why 10 years later, like, still the truth that the financial scam has never seen the light a day because it's been buried.

And that's why I've been, that's why I've stayed on this because, you know, if you don't expose, not just that they were poison, but why? like why did this happen the truth and who is involved that this is the playbook then for other places it doesn't it's not i'm sure in the government's mind there they're all these players are justifying this is an isolated event it won't happen again but the truth is if you get away with it once you just become emboldened and before you know it's happening everywhere they are getting away with it in other places now i mean if people don't remember in ohio last 2023 norfolk southern blew up five train cars of toxic vinyl chloride uh literally the EPA, the state of Ohio are using the same playbook in Flint. They're doing some BS testing. They're declaring everything's fine. Meanwhile, residents are sick. I was there in April. I got sick.

It's a chemical petri dish, but they're not looking for certain chemicals. Independent testers are coming in, finding, like, staggering levels of dioxins, which are some of the worst chemicals known to man, vinyl chloride, so many other things. I'm talking to residents, I'm talking to an 18-year-old, suddenly having seizures. She was healthy before this. I'm talking to a man who's got double breast cancer, which is pretty rare. I'm talking to a 50-something-year-old woman, suddenly has dementia.

Residents are peeing blood, pooping blood. People have full body tingling. And the EPA and the state of Ohio are saying, yeah, it's not, our testing isn't finding anything. So they're basically using the same playbook that was used in Flint. And in the case of Flint, frankly, I mean, it's been a systematic cover up. I mean, we're talking political payoffs. We're talking destruction of evidence, witness tampering. So, well, let's talk about that. Like you, what's, let's talk about the cover up. Sure. So basically, you know, like I said, the governor wanted to run for president. So he has to bottle this whole thing up. So when did all this

start. So when did you feel like there was an active cover-up? Would you start from the very beginning? I would say probably within two or three months after the water switch. So you start seeing phone calls between the governor, his top lawyer, the governor's chief of staff, and the phone call activity really spikes when the EPA finds out about the complaints on the ground from residents. The phone calls start spiking. When six business This is in Flint, test high for T-THMs, which are cancer-causing chemicals. Then in August, we have the first phone call between the health director of the Michigan Health Department and the chief of staff, first phone call on record between them at the same time

that this hospital has an outbreak of this deadly legionnaires. And then in October, I have a whole chapter on October 2014. That was six months after the water switch. General Motors announces they're going to stop using the Flint River because it's destroying their car parts. You would think if the water is destroying car parts, maybe we'll not have the residents keep drinking from it. So I got phone calls between the governor, the head of the health department, and the chief of staff. Over two days in October 2014, they're on the phone 22 times. at the same exact time that the environmental department and the health department,

like it's a frenzy of communications about this legionnaires outbreak. So the normal number of legionnaires cases, which is like a, it's a waterborne pneumonia. Right. So it's, it's sometimes gets misdiagnosis pneumonia, but it's, it's from water. And it's deadly. It will kill you, particularly if you have a bad immune system. So in writing, like a top epidemiologist with the governor's administration. administration said my hypothesis is it's from the Flint River. But the residents didn't know that

there was legionnaires. They didn't know about this outbreak. So they're just getting sick and going to the hospital with pneumonia and dying. Yeah. So the governor, his chief of staff, the health director, they're on the phone over two days, like a bunch of drunken teenagers, 22 times. The prosecutors, I got documents from the criminal investigation, they concluded because they had mapped out how, like the normal phone, how many times do these people normally talk on the phone? Right. So they mapped it over two years. And it was like basically a surge over those two days.

And the rest of the time, some of them don't talk on the phone. So they concluded they're covering up the Legionnaires outbreak. And that was a week after that news station I told you about mysteriously killed the story they were working on about the Legionnaires outbreak. And then five days after the phone frenzy, I uncovered a briefing memo that the governor got about the Legionnaires outbreak. Okay. He told Congress, he didn't know. Where did you get the, where did you get this?

I can't get it to sources, but I obtained that he got a briefing memo that said Legionnaires outbreak at McLaren Hospital. He did not notify residents for another 16 months about the. deadly legionnaires outbreak. He told Congress he didn't learn about it until January 2016. So he just lied to Congress? Correct, which typically is a crime, but he's never been convicted of that either. So between the phone calls, the briefing memo, a week later at the end of October 2014, there's this big summit at Flint City Hall. So the environmental officials are there, the governor, people from the governor's office, the unelected emergency manager to talk about the water problems. And based on my reporting, the head of the environmental department

mentioned it's legionnaires there. So they all knew about it. They all knew that there was this deadly bacteria spreading around Flint. They could have and should have notified the public. Right. And they didn't because he was up for reelection in November. So I, It was a close race between the governor and his Democratic opponent. And, you know, it's probably not good that there's a water. There's poison in the water. And he also wanted to run for president. So then the cover up, it goes from 2014 to 2015.

Does he win that? Yeah, he won re-election. Really? Okay. So it worked out for him. And then it's like, you can't make this stuff up. All right. I mean, I, you expect politicians to kind of be, you know, greedy, corrupt.

But like, I don't know. I think once it reaches the law. line of like, oh, people are being poisoned. Maybe I'll say something. So there's more, you know, it's 2015 rolls in. There's more evidence that the governor was briefed about the legionnaires outbreak. And then it gets to lead. So residents have been complaining about lead.

Independent testers were finding high lead levels. But the governor's office were basically the governor's office and the environmental department, they threw out some of the high lead tests so that they could get the average down because if you get, if you throw out a couple high tests, then you could say, oh, we're still meeting EPA regulations and you don't have to do anything. So they did that in 2014. And then in 2015, there was a local doctor who she kind of caught wind that there's probably high lead levels in the water. So she got the data from the state of, children's blood levels and she saw there was a big spike after the water switch so they tried to basically make her crazy so they said you're creating a panic you're cherry picking the numbers all the thing they were doing exactly but finally like it was becoming clear i mean there's brown water there's kids with rashes so finally in october of 2015 so this is 18 months after the flint river switch people had already died from legionnaires uh

The governor finally acknowledged there's lead in the water, not the legionnaires, the lead. Right. He holds a press conference at the beginning of October. I learned pretty much like a week after that. All of a sudden, phones are dropped off at the, in the state technology office, wiped clean. So phones belonging to environmental officials, health department officials, are dropped off to the, basically the tech guy, just erased. And this is a couple months before the launch of the criminal investigation.

So the tech guy, not directly, but he told another official, I had never seen anything like that. Like, the phones were dropped off to me. I turned them on and, like, the phone logs were gone. The text messages were gone. It's basically just destroy communications. Right. It's like a complete factory reset to just wipe everything clean.

Some of the phones, like the first communications coming up were like. from, you know, that period, but nothing from April 2014 through September 2015, which was when they used the Flint River. So the governor- These are government-issued phones given to government-issued employees that are been wiped. Okay. The governor's press secretary, so like she's a spokesperson, she leaves in November 2015, so two months before the launch of the Flynn criminal investigation, her phone's wiped. I mean, she's got

direct communication with the governor. She's asked about it under oath. And she says, yeah, I didn't really think about, think anything about it. And the prosecutor's like, well, did you have it saved on ICloud, like a backup? And she's like, no, I don't think so. And I was told by like, you know, whistleblowers like, no, you're supposed, by law, they're supposed to save. The phones aren't supposed to be deleted. The head of the health department's phone. Did they ask her, like, who came to you? Did they come to you and say, we need your phone? We're going to wipe your phone. So basically environmental officials around the same time that the governor finally, like, went public and a bit of the water was toxic. The head of the environmental department secretary started

going around to environmental officials saying, we need your phones. And they would be, a lot of them would be given phones back just they thought it would like brand new phones because there's nothing on it no history no messages but it was basically other their colleagues phones it was like this ring around the rosy like they were given other people's phones just everything was erased which is a illegal uh it's against government retention you're supposed to retain data um the governor's press secretary phones wipe the head of the health department who later was charged with involuntary manslaughter. His phone was erased.

So you got destruction of evidence. And when the prosecutors got the phones, they were like, where is everything? And so then you have the launch of the criminal investigation. Can I ask a question? When the government, governor did the press conference, did he take any responsibility at all, like say, hey, listen, this is what's happened as a result of, or no, he just said it. Basically, blamed it on bureaucracy, kind of one hand, not knowing with the other. He was big on, you know, let's move forward and trying to fix it, not looking in the river mirror. I'm sure

he was lawyered up at the time, too, because they were expecting a criminal investigation of this. You don't want to look in the river mirror. You see all those bodies. Exactly. That I ignored. So, yeah, then it goes into 2016. That's when, like, nationally it became a scandal. You know, you start seeing news channels go down there, Rachel Maddo did a town hall, you see lines of cars waiting for bottled water. So essentially, they launched a criminal investigation out of the attorney general's office and they hired a special prosecutor. So like Robert Mueller think like nationally like something like that. So but from the beginning it was kind of bizarre because like the attorney general, although he hired a special prosecutor, the attorney general was a

Republican, and he wanted to run for governor. So it's kind of like if I go after the sitting Republican governor, it might not be beneficial for me to win a Republican primary. So he allowed like the special prosecutor and his team to go after certain officials, but they kind of got the stop sign more or less to go after the governor. But based on my reporting, I mean, basically a month after the launch of the criminal investigation, the investigators learned that one of the governor's unelected emergency managers, because he had appointed four over four years during the water crisis, he was shredding documents at his office on his final day. So they got a search warrant. They go down there. His hands are shaking when they provide the search warrant

and just document shred. As 2016 goes on, I learned that basically the governor had like a right-hand man. His name was Richard Baird, and I just equated to the Sopranos like Tony's Consigliary. Right. So this guy called himself the governor's fixer. I mean, that's not, that's a bad idea. Yeah. I mean, I don't, whether you're doing anything illegal or not, that's just not what you want on your business card.

And for the first three years of the governor's administration, he wasn't even paid on the books. As a state employee, he was paid out of, like, the governor's nerd. The governor called himself one tough nerd. So he was paid out of the nerd pack until finally there was outcry and he got paid on the books. But, I mean, this guy was like in Michigan politics. It was infamous. Like, when the governor got in office, he went around to different departments and explained the definition of teamwork, which was essentially. doing whatever the governor wants the way this is going to work right and rules be damned so what you

described before about kind of getting everybody on script so prosecutors who were investigating the case they caught when that the governor's right-hand man was basically witness tampering so going around before administration officials were going to sit with prosecutors basically getting them on script to lie right and i got thousands of documents and And in a lot of the confidential criminal investigation interviews, as soon as, like, the special prosecutor, like, hits on a lie or is about to get them, they, the government officials, they stop the interview or their lawyer stops the interview and ask, we have some time to talk to my client because they were about to, like, they were basically getting off script. Yeah, they're about to say, here's where we dump the chemicals. Exactly. Like in the book, yeah.

Right. So he'd stop it, take them aside and what? and then would they come back and plead the fifth or something? They basically, you know, just pivoted or, you know, said, I don't recall. I mean, if you play the drinking game off of, I don't recall. So basically this goes on in 2016, the beginning of the investigation, pretty early on, the special prosecutor who, based on my reporting, was kind of working this like an old school mob case. Like, let me start from the bottom, charge the lower end people and get them to flip until you get to the kingpin.

That's how you do it. So they charged a couple officials from the environmental department who were in on this and knew about it. They charged one of the Flint plant workers. They then worked their way up to the head of the health department. And are these guys flipping and saying my boss, you know, the manager told me this, you know, that so-and-so took me aside and said this. Okay, cool. So then we get into 2017, and this was the period like I at first went to Flint in 2017. 16. And at first, I was just kind of, you know, talking to people covering the human suffering,

but they were just dumping on me like, you need to look into this foundation. You need to look into this official. So I had heard about Richard Baird, the governor's right-hand man. Right. And in one residence home, she told me this story. So basically, her husband, who had gotten very sick, he was having seizures, his memory was faulting. He would be driving a couple blocks home. a couple blocks away from the house and call his wife, like, I forget how to get home. Yeah. And it was from the lead. So he popped off.

He went off at a town hall in Flint in January, just screaming, rightfully so. Like, you know, you're barely testing homes. You're letting us die and basically getting nothing from the government officials there. So are these still SARS? At that point, no, they were. They've been phased out. Okay. So he was basically pulled, he was pulled away by a cop.

And the cop says to him, it was a state trooper, I might know someone in the governor's office that could help you. And the next day after he was pulled out, he's getting media coverage. And that was kind of always when the sirens went off in the governor's office. Like we need to control the narrative. We can't, like, if there's activists speaking out, if the media is starting to cover this, because their narrative was things are getting better when it wasn't getting better. better. So this guy pops off. A couple news outlets cover it. And two weeks later, three weeks later, the governor's right-hand man is in his living room. To his left is a state trooper. To his right

is a former army colonel. And he presents to the Murphy's. This is the first chapter of my book. You know, I'm here to help you. I'm from the government. I'm from the government. So he offers them, you know, help, which was for the state to pay for Adam's treatment. It's called chelation therapy. And they should have offered it all across Flint. Basically, it pumps in chemicals to extract lead out of your body. You know, some people say it's controversial, but it's been shown to help in the many cases reducing lead levels.

And they said, we're going to pay for this. but yeah yeah yeah sign this non-disclosure you can't tell anyone where it's coming where it's coming from you know they were desperate like he couldn't work anymore the bills were piling up uh she was pregnant during the water crisis and gave birth to a kid high lead levels so they took it they didn't realize that this guy was basically going around flint offering these deals i.e. payoffs to sick and loud residents. And he told them, I'm going to go back and talk to my best friend about this, the governor. He always represented that the governor and I are best friends because the governor's right-hand man hired the governor out of college, gave him his first job. So the governor's fixer was basically

going around Flint and trying to neutralize any residents who were getting media coverage or the loudest ones. So he's offering payoffs. Then, what? of the top residents, one of my sources, her brakes mysteriously get cut. So her husband was driving her car, but it was under her name. They're leaving a concert. She had been talking to the media, and they had been digging into this KWA pipeline. So they had been going to city councils and telling the rest of the residents, no, no, this is a scam.

We're sick because they built this new pipeline. and all of her 2 a.m., they're leaving this concert, and all of a sudden, the brakes aren't working. And her husband almost crashes in her car. And the next day he goes under, and he sees three punctures in the brakes. And they go back to the concert hall and ask, can I look at the tapes? And they see that somebody went under their car during the concert. Whoa. So they contact the police?

What the police were not that they're going to track them down. You never know if they could, though, with, you know, with that. I don't think they did because they didn't know if it was somebody from the city or so I could never prove that it was somebody from the governor's office, but like this was one of the loudest activists getting media attention. But that's not your typical teenage, you know, prank to go cut people's very specifically their breaks. So that resident got in touch with Aaron Brockovich, who obviously there was movies about her, Julia Roberts played her. Colby doesn't know who she is. Colby, do you know who? Are you serious?

Great movie. I didn't read the book, obviously. Aaron Brockovich actually wrote the foreword for my book. Really? So I was very lucky. Yeah. And I don't know now, but I know she used to be pretty hot. She's probably still hot.

She's just an older woman now. She's probably in 50s, yeah. Yeah. So she got in touch with Aaron Brockovich because she was scared. I mean, like, I got three kids who, by the way, all of them were sick because of the lead. And Aaron basically gave her advice, like, You got two choices. One, shut up and go away to protect your family.

The other is get in front of every camera and don't stop. Right. Because if you get in front of every camera, then, and you name names, then they're less likely to do anything because it would be kind of obvious if something happens to you. So, I mean, the payoffs, residents, breaks mysteriously getting cut, phones mysteriously disappearing being wiped so this went on and still the prosecution based on my reporting they were like they were going for the governor they were building a case against the governor for involuntary manslaughter but but this is the the special counsel so even though

he's a republican or the attorney general was a republican okay he appointed a special prosecutor okay so the special prosecutor has no you feel like he's pretty much based on based on everything I know They were, they were building a case against him for involuntary manslaughter. Okay. Based on he knew about the deadly legionaire's outbreak and didn't notify. 16 months before, 18 months before, right? They were also going after the money, which as I'm sure you know. Yeah, that's going to lead to.

So they, they were kind of like in football terms, they were on like the five-yard line of charging a RICO case. So RICO was created in the 70s to go after the mafia. Yeah. So it's usually financial racketeering, bribery, extortion, those kind of things. So they had built a massive RICO case about that fraudulent deal that led to that pipeline. And this is fall of 2018. All of a sudden, you have a Democratic candidate for attorney general started running her mouth, basically saying that this case is.

taking too long. It's a political show trial. It's a witch hunt. Yeah. So they had the prosecutor, the special prosecutor, had cooperating witnesses starting to flip, like on bigger fish, including some of these emergency managers. And they were providing information that could lead to the governor. But they shut up. Their lawyers told them, stop cooperating because this, this woman's going to win. And she's basically saying, I'm going to fire everyone. You're saying this is a Democrat

You wouldn't think She's running interference for the current governor Like she's okay It was bizarre And I got emails Where One of the That resident who had her car

brakes cut Yeah She reached out to Gretchen Whitmer Who was running for governor She won Saying like Flint residents are very worried Because Dana Nessel The candidate attorney general

She's basically crapping on the special prosecutor. She's basically saying she's going to fire everyone, and we're very worried because we feel they're doing a good job. So Whitmer, like two weeks before the governor's election says, I'll talk to her. Who knows if that ever happened? They both win. Gretchen Whitmer becomes governor, a Democrat, and Dana Nessel becomes attorney general.

And the residents of Flint were like happy because they thought, oh, finally, the Democrats are going to come in. And because the water was still toxic, but the governor had declared that the water was safe. I skipped that part. Yeah, yeah. So those doors I was knocking on that I described, I caught wind that the governor was sending his environmental officials in to cheat on the testing. Okay. So I knocked on 400 doors in the summer and fall of 2018, and I got dozens of on the record accounts of the environmental department running people's water and then putting the sample by.

under, which just flushes out lead. Okay. So EPA, EPA regulations, water is supposed to be stagnant for six hours, so not used, and then right when you turn on the tab, you put the sample bottle up. Right. Because that's how you'll get the true levels of lead and other contaminants. They were basically flushing out the evidence and then doing the samples. So voila, the lead levels are magically getting low in Flint.

So the governor in 2018 declared Flint's water, quote, restored and shut down the free water stations that residents have been going to churches and things like that to get bottled water. So they just cooked the data. Right. They cheated on the testing. I mean. And you just put everybody in jeopardy. Yeah. And speaking of media, I was going to run that story for Newsweek, which would have been a big break for me.

gotten it in Newsweek magazine, I land in Flint, and they killed the story the week it was supposed to go out, claiming I didn't have enough data. Okay. And I was like, when's the last time you guys have knocked on like 40 doors, let alone 400? Right. I have 35 residents on the record. I also have documents showing like very, very alarming discrepancies in testing. So they killed the story.

but the attorney general gets in she fires a special prosecutor she fires the so the governor never does co-inst and talk to her and say look we're not doing that you're not going to fire okay so fires the special prosecutor she also fired the chief investigator this guy his name's andy arena he was the head of the FBI office in detroit he helped bring down the gambino crime family in New York after 9-11 he was like one of the FBI's go-to people on counterterror like he was like a serious big deal guy and he was the one in charge of the financial part of this ineffective we can't have him involved in this he didn't fire him based on my reporting they didn't even do a debrief with him like hey can you tell us where things stand they just walked in

with a couple boxes and said pack your shit so they basically clean house and then they do things that based on like I've talked to probably 12 or 13 lawyers in other sources I won't get into they do something that no one in legal cases have ever seen before they basically start from scratch they put in prosecutors to replace the qualified ones they were placed with basically amateurs who had never even like tried a case before a jury they the attorney general put in people that just happened to have donated and helped raise money for her campaign. So she puts in amateurs. This is in my, or this is sources on her investigation told me they were amateur.

And she drops, she drops all the remaining cases because the special prosecutor and his team, they had charged 15 officials over three years, as including the head of the health department, the number two health official, two of the unelected emergency manager. a top city official, and they charged them with everything from involuntary manslaughter to misconduct in office. So by all accounts, like, they were building a case here. Yeah, there's criminal conduct here. People have been charged.

Yeah. And they won two pretrials. So in Michigan, these were two of the longest pretrials in Michigan history. And they had gotten two judges to, they call it binding over, basically advancing the head of the health department and the number two health official to face the judge. jury trial. So she fires all them, starts from scratch, and then she drops charges eight of the remaining cases, including involuntary manslaughter against the head of the health department, financial fraud, what they called false pretenses against the emergency

managers, and those cases were basically over the bond fraud that led to a nearly bankrupt Flint borrowing $100 million to join this new water system because it was all under false pretenses. She drops all that. She claimed incompetence on their part. They made this big show because they found dozens of boxes in the basement of a state building, which she claimed was millions of documents and devices that the special prosecutors team had failed to obtain. I learned that it was mostly duplicates of stuff they had already gotten. But the media in Michigan and just, we talked about, regurgitated all this. So basically, I don't, I can't get in her head.

I don't know if it was intentional or incompetence, maybe both. She drops all these charges. She says this doesn't preclude us from recharging. A year and a half later, she charges nine officials, including the governor. She charged the governor with a misdemeanor, willful neglect of duty, which could face up to a year in prison or a thousand, a thousand dollar fine but won't um which uh and this is just because he didn't notify anybody about the uh is this specific to the uh we don't we have no idea because she used something called a one man grand jury okay so one man grand jury it's not like the most common process like her

predecessors did a public pretrial so everything's out in the open she used the one man grand jury which is all done in private right and the the one man grand jury is a judge So in private, the prosecution provides the judge's witnesses, the evidence, and then the judge determines if there's enough to issue indictments. It's typically used on lower level, like street gang violence to protect the identity of witnesses. Right. Because witnesses are afraid they'll be. Yeah, they'll be shot or killed or something. So they use this, and it's all under seal.

So we don't know. What is the evidence she provided? I found out that the governor's chief of staff was one of the witnesses. So apparently they used the chief of staff against the governor, but how they only charged the governor with a misdemeanor when the predecessors felt there was enough evidence for involuntary manslaughter. They also recharge some of those emergency managers that they had previously dropped charges against.

And when they recharge them, they did not bring back the financial charges. And based on my reporting, I think the true reason she dropped all of the charges against eight officials was really to get rid of the financial charges because that financial scheme, which allowed Flint to borrow $100 million for this pipeline, the attorney general's office of Michigan was the one who signed off on it. So if that went forward in criminal court, the state of Michigan was on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. of liability because it's basically bond fraud. Right. So bondholders investors could sue and J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo were on the hook for hundreds of

millions of dollars of liability because as part of the deal that allowed Flint to borrow the money. They had to make sure that the water was clean. They had to do their due diligence to make sure the water plant could safely treat the water. They were actually sued civilly in 2020

on behalf of like 2,500 kids in Flint. They were sued civilly and that, of course, got thrown out because where's justice in this country? But basically, you had a double whammy. It was described to me that this could bankrupt the state of Michigan because that's hundreds of millions of dollars in liability. If this went forward, forget like a jury, just even a pretrial because it would have exposed all the financial actors and the scam that led to a basically bankrupt city.

I mean, the former mayor put it to me, How does a broke city borrow $100 million? How does that happen? So today, why I say this is an ongoing cover-up. And to be clear, obviously, you have experience with con artists. This is the biggest government cover-up in the 21st century. This makes Watergate look like child's play. Right.

Like you got the EPA, the state of Michigan, the city of Flint, private foundations, Wall Street banks, and the media. I mean, I don't know any other scenario and people dying. Right. Right. Ordergate didn't kill anyone. People are dying as a result of this. So 10 years later, present day, because the attorney general used a one-man grand jury, which based on my sources, she was warned, they are going to challenge this. They're going to challenge that this is not constitutional. her people blew that off and what do you know the governor and all these defendants brought it to the Michigan Supreme Court because they said they did not have their pretrial and their their protections were violated and in a six nothing decision the Michigan Supreme Court threw out her charges okay and are they bringing new charges statute of limitations for most of these crimes has passed fuck that almost seems It seems like it's perfectly orchestrated, right? That's what a lot of people think.

So basically, the Michigan Supreme Court threw out the charges. So I had put in, I was putting an amount in a freedom of information requests, particularly for the documents about this RICO case. Because I know that in anything, follow the money. That's usually where the truth is. Yeah, that's a motivation for most things. So I wanted the documents outlining the RICO case that was going to be charged because it was going to expose. Who is going to be charged, what the evidence was. I think the bank's role.

They kept telling me, we can't give this to you because there's an active investigation. Oh, the investigation was over because they threw it out. Right. Did you resubmit? So I resubmit in 2023. They told me they don't have the documents. I knew that was a lie. I had sources who had receipts that they did have the documents.

So I publicly, around the 10-year anniversary of the water crisis, which was in April, I publicly threatened to sue them. I was just going to say. Which was kind of a bluff on my part because I'm independent and don't have the money for that. And then they suddenly saw Jesus, unprompted, her office, email me back that they're going to look again for the documents. Right. Which is never, I've never dealt with that. I've never seen that.

We have 4,500. 4,500 documents, and it's going to cost you 15 cents per and send us a check for $17,000 and we'll get them right over to you. I wish it was as easy. of that because that could have done a go fund me. No, first they told me they didn't have it. Then they saw a Jesus and told me they'll look again. Then magically they found the documents, but they gave me an avalanche of legal statutes, why they can't release them to me.

Bottom line, it's clear to me. Number one, the poison people of Flint and Michigan taxpayers have paid upwards of $20 million for this investigation. They are entitled to those documents. she could redact certain information, like redact who is going to be charged if they're private citizens. So there's no legal reason that I know of that they're withholding those documents. Her office told me they plan on releasing the documents with their report because they made a big thing that it was the Michigan Supreme Court's fault, not theirs. And they were going to release a report at the end of the year that included those documents.

So I said, so you're pledging to me now that you're going to release all those documents unredacted, and then they walked it back. Well, we still have to go through to see what could be, they're not going to release it. And they're probably going to release the report like Christmas Eve or something. But bottom line, I have been told by sources that the financial fraud that they found, a former law enforcement official, I can't get into like details. but a source told me they had never seen anything like this in many years of working in top agencies, that this fraud was staggering, that nobody had seen shit like this before, that, I mean, 80% increases on contracts for engineering firms. And basically, sources have told me that she's burying this because it would expose the biggest financial boondoggle of the 21st century. that poisoned the whole city, and right now most of the cases are outside of the statute of

limitations, this is the one case where there's still a possibility of criminal charges because the federal racketeering statute is more flexible than the state. So I believe that they're bearing this because for a lot of reasons and a lot of people want the Flint water crisis to be over. and if the financial fraud that caused this was exposed, A, there could still be a criminal case, but B, the state of Michigan could go belly up financially, and the Wall Street banks that basically have purchased politicians on both sides could face hundreds of millions of dollars of liability.

So my question is, is like, is the water safe now, or have they changing or, like, has it switched over to the new pipeline? Has it? Well, if you listen to the EPA, the state of Michigan, it's great. Right. If you actually go there and talk to residents, no, it's not safe. And like... Did they switch over? They switch off directly?

No, actually, the residents succeeded in averting, joining this new water system. So where's the water coming from now? So they basically switched back to getting it from Detroit's water system. Okay. But the problem is, 10 years later, they have not replaced all of the damaged pipes. Right. I mean, you had basically, by all accounts, acid water going through your pipes. Right.

So it really doesn't matter if the water is coming from a clean source now, which it is. And even if the plant is sending the water out clean, if it's going through, I mean, I've seen the inside of some of these pipes, it looks like a disease. Right. If it's going through damaged pipes, you're going to have lead and other things leaching off. The other thing is the testing they're doing is bullshit. it. They test like, you know, 50 homes and declare the water safe. The other thing, and this is kind of in the weeds, but it's important, the city of Flint's water system was built for a city of 200,000 people. A lot of cities around America, their infrastructure was built for a bigger system,

like more people live there. And for a lot of reasons, cities size have shrunk. So there are whole sections of Flint of abandoned homes where water is not being used. It's just the old water could be just sitting there. So basically through the pipes, there's points where water is just stagnant. And when water is running through a system stagnant, chlorine that you add into the water system that kill bacteria is just being soaked up. So basically you have water running through still damage, corroded, busted pipes where it's moving too slowly.

I was just there for my book a couple weeks ago. I mean, literally there are residents online showing me their fresh rashes from the water. there are residents still losing hair in the shower. I was in the activist whose lines were cut. Her water stinks in her home. Meanwhile, they're telling, I have nothing to see here. The water's meeting testing regulations. And there's residents just, like, sending out videos on Twitter showing brown water.

So, I mean, not just in Flint, like, I'm not one of these people that say, never trust the government, you know, I think you have to actually. actually get facts. Not every government official is corrupt. However, I've seen the playbook in enough places where I know there's constantly government testing, EPA testing, state environmental testing, that shows nothing to see here, but then independent testers come in and voila, they're finding much higher levels of things. So in 2023, testing showed the lead levels were rising again in Flint. There's been legionnaires cases in Flint that don't get covered.

The media does not want to be bothered. That's a whole other part of this cover-up. I could do three more hours just on the media's part in this. So, no, I don't think the water's safe because I'm talking to the residents. I'm seeing rashes. I'm smelling. I'm in homes with smelly water. And just common sense, if the damage infrastructure has not been replaced, you're just, you have the same stuff leaching into the water.

I know you said you could go on for. but what what is the media doing now to kind of covering it up yes i was going to i could i could i could tell one or two stories if you want okay yeah yeah so at first i don't know i just assume you know media is lazier media gets tired of staying on certain stories but residents just kept telling me like no no like the flint journal they're corrupt or like the detroit free press they're corrupt. And obviously, the residents are right to feel heated and angry at the media if they're not covering it. But I learned, like, through my own experience, like, no, this is more than just laziness. So in 2020, you know, at the height of the pandemic and nobody knew anything, like I drove to Michigan

because I had obtained all these documents and I got the phone logs of the governor, his chief of staff, the health director, all on the phone, like a crazy event. So I got in touch with someone from the Detroit Free Press. I think he was like the number. two editor there, and he agreed to meet with me. So I drive there. We meet in, like, a parking lot. It's freezing. And I just handed him, I handed him in the documents. The prosecutor said this was showing they were covering up Legionnaires disease. He said to me, you got the smoking gun. I was like, thank you. And I even offered like, hey, if you want to put one of your reporters names on it with me, because a lot of these outlets don't trust like freelancers.

Right. Like, you know, of course, I'm a human. I'd like some credit, but I was okay with, you know, sharing it. Yeah, I want to get it out there. Yeah. And he says to me, like, you know, I can't give you a firm, yes, because I have to get sign off from the boss, but, you know, we're inclined to do this. Like, two or three days later, I get an email.

Like, we don't have the resources for this, yada, yada, yada. I just handed you a complete file. Right. And I had already like, I mean, yeah, you have to edit it and stuff. But, like, I had basically done everything. So they just didn't want to run it. And I spoke with a lower level person there, told me that the top editor there was kind of friendly with the governor.

Okay. I can't prove that that was why, but that's what I was told. But it just didn't make sense. Like, you're the Detroit Free Press, and you have confidential documents from the Flint Criminal Investigation and the chief prosecutor saying, this is evidence that the governor of Michigan covered up the dead. deadly waterborne bacteria that killed a lot of people.

And you say you don't have the resources? Well, I'm pretty sure whatever other story you're working on could kind of... Yeah, yeah, you could pull somebody off of the current... Right. And they told me they had like six investigative reporters. Pull somebody off of the bus, the school bus crash. Exactly. So then there's the New York Times. So that story where I was knocking on doors and learning that they were cheating on the water

testing. You know, I'm an independent outlet. I have a YouTube channel, but like if I just publish this stuff on my own, it's not going to go viral. So I was constantly trying to, you know, get picked up by the New York Times of Washington Post. So I reached out to the New York Times. I sent them documents I had. I sent them audio I had on the record from residents. And they, I said, like they're cheating on the water testing and then declaring the water is fine.

So they tell me, yeah, this is good stuff, but we have our own like Midwest reporters. So if we were going to do something, we'd do it on our own. 20 minutes after I got that email, I got a call from like one of my top sources in Flint that they had got a call from the New York Times reporter asking about, you know, water testing. And if they knew anything about, you know, environmental officials coming in, running your water. And she was like, yeah, I do. You should talk to this reporter, Jordan. Right. Because he's the one uncovering it.

And basically they were just trying to jack my story. and they didn't end up. I guess they didn't want to do it with me. No. I mean, countless others, the Flint Journal, that's like the hometown paper of Flint. They literally, every single story, and I was breaking to these stories and Vice, the Guardian, the intercept, so like decently known outlets, national outlets would cover it, but the Flint Journal would not. The local outlets in Flint would not, like local ABC, CBS, NBC. And I learned, oh, this private foundation that pulled a lot of the strings behind the Flint Water Crisis, this private foundation, like these outlets, they're in the building that the private foundation rents, or the private foundation funds all the nonprofits in Flint, and the nonprofits are big advertisers to the stations.

So I basically like there was just this conspiracy of silence among the media, and I'm talking like evidence that the governor's right-hand man was going around paying off residence. evidence that they destroyed their phones, witness tampering. I mean, I even had a story that residents had sent 1,000 water bottles to the governor's office with messages in them. Like, please help us. And I got evidence that the governor told his people, get it off the premises, and they burned them in burn barrels. They burn the water bottles from poisoned people begging for help in water bottles, in burn barrels. I brought that to the station. I had video of it.

Nothing. So I went to the Flint Journal after I broke the story about the wiped phones. And I like, we printed out like pamphlets for like fifth graders. Right. With like bullets. Here's like the who, what, when, why and where. And we got it on tape. Like the editor acted like he was just learning about this even though I knew he knew about it.

And I kind of got in his face. And I was like, I don't understand why the Flint Journal. It's your name is the Flint Journal. Right. isn't covering this stuff. So I got in their face, still didn't cover it. So I don't want to be an armchair psychologist, but the bottom line is when these outlets,

A, either are directly or indirectly getting funding from massive private foundations that were involved with the water crisis, B, a lot of their advertisers were directly or indirectly involved with the water crisis. But it's very troubling, not just for Flint, but just us as Americans, yeah local media has been gutted and disinvested in but the ones that are left i'm not from

michigan and i've been there 21 times and i've managed to break most of the flint water cover up when people from the detroit free press or the flint journal could have just driven down the block and like this was all out in the open you just need you need a reporters that had a will and i've also spoken with like lower level reporters as some of these places who've just said we've been stopped from the one person who's a colleague of mine now, she was at the Detroit News and she was like obsessed with the financial fraud and she was going after the banks and digging on the contractors and the kickbacks. Detroit News told her you can't, we can't run these stories and she quit. So something is it's something that smells wrong if the media, because the bottom

line is people are busy. A lot of people have two jobs, raising kids. Right. Your most exposure to news, five minutes of the local news at night, or you're surfing online to your like Detroit Free Press, Detroit News. You know, a lot of people get it from YouTube, but like normie Americans, I think more and more get their news from still, the local news, the traditional outlets. Just think of TikTok. As horrible as that is, but I mean, I get most of my stuff when something comes to my attention, it's because some fan texts me, bro, have you seen this? And they'll send me a link and I'll watch a YouTube video on it or somebody will send me a, you know, something, you know, a TikTok or I'll see it on TikTok because I just don't

watch even the local news. You know what I'm saying? It's just, and now if it's something where I see that and then I go, oh, wow, then I look into it. But other than that, bro, you know, you're working 60, 70 hours a week. Like it's impossible. And unless it directly affects you, unless you live in Flint. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, people are selfish. I can't tell you how many times, like on my YouTube channel, I'll cover a story.

For example, this Georgia chemical explosion that's happening. I've been covering it extensively and I get comments under like, I live down the block and I saw it on your outlet before my local news. Or I covered things where like I live 20 minutes away from here and I learned about this from you, not my news. So I learned about it, by the way, from TikTok. There I go. because I remember and you know who brought that to my attention my wife she said did you see this such and such and it just and she and you know what she said she said it's funny because I've been looking but I mean you know what it she's like I can't see what chemical was it just says that there was a chemical spill she was she said I don't she said I don't know what she says it doesn't say what chemical like is it she's like I mean is it you know is it toxic is it like what is it and I was like that's word I said I said well you know what that is she said what I said anything.

You know, did you, there was a thing, and this is horrible for me to make fun and make, make joke, but there was a, you know, there's a thing where Las Vegas gets taken over by zombies. It's a, it's a, it's a B movie, but they're driving and like the vehicle flips over, and it's because it's carrying like a super soldier that's really also a zombie. And I say, it's just like that zombie movie where the thing falls over. Then they, they quarantined the whole thing. And she's like, that's not what's happening here. So it could be. You don't know. But anyway, yeah, it was my first thought because I'm like a 13-year-old boy.

I mean, the bottom line is an American city was poisoned, phrase it however you want, either intentionally or through incompetence. And 10 years later, the water's still toxic and no one has been held accountable. There's not one person in jail. Right. That could only happen if the media allows this to get buried. Well, it sounds like it's incompetence. Like, I don't think that they, anybody intentionally. The governor woke up and said, let me poison a bunch of poor people.

Yeah. But I also think when he knew people were being poisoned, he did not immediately step in. Yeah, he's covering it up. He's not taking responsibility. He, you know. I also should say, I got, it's in my book, I obtained, the governor was testified under oath in 2020, confidentially. So it was the first time he's been under oath about this. And, oh, boy, did he have massive amnesia?

Right. So his under oath in front of Congress in 2016, I first learned about the Legionnaires in January and that 2016, and I held the press conference the next day, which was not true. But anyway, under oath, clearly lawyered up, but I mean, you could die from a drinking game of how many times he said, I don't recall. Was it Reagan that, did you ever see the Reagan Iran contra? Yeah, yeah. Like, he managed to say, I do not recall. He had like six or eight different ways to say, I. I can't remember, and he was just churning him.

It was like, it was masterful in a way. You don't know what I'm saying? Obviously, but it was just like, it's amazing. He basically said, I don't recall what my name is. Yeah, over and over and over in all these different ways. And it was like, God, this is insane. Like, you're so, you don't pair, you apparently can't recall anything. I'm not sure you should be running the country.

You can't recall nothing. But, yeah, he was under oath, and he basically contradicted his congressional testimony. He, he was directly asked, like, are you sure you didn't know about this in October 2014. And he just said, as far as I know, I believe, I don't believe I did. So it was basically like lawyered up language. But the media, I go back to that six months after the water switch, there was a local ABC station that had documents showing there is a deadly legionaire's outbreak and they were working on the story and then killed it. They could have stopped the Flint water crisis six months into it rather than people learning about it.

a year later. So the media was both directly involved in dropping the ball. No, they were not like on the phone with the governor helping him cover it up, but through just killing the story and then burying developments that independent outside people were breaking. They basically normalized the poisoning of a community and they allowed this narrative that has been pushed by the federal government, the state government. This was just some tragic mistake born from government trying to save money this wasn't government trying to save money this was government trying to make

money it was a for profit privatization scheme and there's a lot of bad financial ideas and there's a lot of scams out there but there's a difference between this financial scam that just makes a lot of grifter's money and one that kills people and I truly believe

and this is not just my opinion this is based from toxicologists I've spoken with lawyers when this is all said and done if they did an accurate count thousands of people have died from this because it's not just, I mean, cancers that you never would have had without the lead, liver failure, kidney failure. And, you know, I know you're as a journalist, you're supposed to be neutral and not have an opinion. I think that's nonsense. If you're neutral to something like this, I think you're a sociopath. And I've become friends with a lot of

the residents. And every time I go back, another person I've become friends with has died. I mean, I was there in April for the 10-year anniversary, and watching people march, I just really depressed me because I knew that Tony Palladino would have been there on the megaphone, but he's dead now. And Virginia Murphy, who would have been there with her poster, she's dead now. And Clara Moore, and I could go down the list. So many people who were water warriors. I mean, residents who were just normal people became like full-time activists fighting for justice. they're dead now people in their 50s 60s and that's not on the news and obviously there's a lot of

different crises going on I don't care if you're Democrat Republican doesn't matter to me like there's a lot of different disasters going on but I think at the end of the day not to get not to go biblical on you like the most important thing in the world is water yeah you can't really live that long without water and if you have dirty water you won't die right away but it will I mean, it's contaminated water has been linked with cancer, miscarriages, reproductive, high crime. So lead, there's research shows areas with high lead leads to crime because lead affects your mood and it leads to crime. There's teens in Flint committing suicide now at higher rates because they were children when their brains were poisoned. Right.

So this is an ongoing, I don't even like calling it the Flint water crisis because crisis is kind of people are numb to that. it's a disaster like I was just there a couple months ago I'm seeing the water still bad people have rashes people are going bankrupt paying for a specialist because they didn't get expanded health care and then there's the criminal part like no one is in prison where would you suggest or how would you suggest people go about finding like trying to find accurate news I thought you were going to say what like you know where could they write a an email or call like let's give the governor's phone number but yeah go ahead sorry well which would help it would definitely it might be uh self-serving but i would i would suggest they get my book uh i'm not going to make much money off of it but i want people to know the truth so uh it's called we the poisoned exposed into flint water cover up yeah we'll put the link in the description box it'll be there you just click it no straight there um i have a youtube channel status coo news on YouTube status C-L-U-P.

Unfortunately, I have to say, like, I would tell people to go to independent sources. You know, you got to take everything. You have to, unfortunately, you can't just consume news these days. You have to then, you know, do your own research and vet it. Of course, like there's some, it's not to say, mainstream media doesn't do decent job. Like The Washington Post, a couple years ago, did an amazing report on the Afghanistan War

and how that was a complete scam and grift. and they exposed that, you know, generals were ordered to spend $300 million a day no matter what. So it's not to say, like, there's no decent reporting, but on this stuff, when there's environmental calamities, and I think it's environmental genocide at this point, I would not trust what the EPA is saying. I would not trust what the state officials are saying, and it's not just because they're deliberately lying to you. there's a lot of ninkum poops running these agencies who I mean in the case of Flint environmental officials did not know much about water so I would go to independent sources I would go to environmental groups I mean say what you want about you know Sierra Club or Greenpeace you know a lot of people don't like them because they say they're raging liberals but they have exposed some of these things more than the government I go So a lot of time I go to activists on the ground, I go to residents on the ground, I go to, I can't go to myself, but I go to independent outlets that cover, whether it's the environmental stories, some independent outlets cover, you know, worker exploitation or union organizing, but I say really go to independent outlets. And most importantly, follow whether independent outlets tunes change over time.

Like, I take pride that I've stayed pretty consistent. I don't switch from like a lefty to a righty or a righty to – I just stick on the stories and the facts. But my best advice is turning to independent sources. You might end up seeing somebody on TikTok that's dramatic or bombastic, but actually providing factual information. But you've got to vet it. You have to go to multiple sources. You know, another important thing is I think that – We are, we don't realize that we're kind of being algorithmically manipulated.

And what I mean by that is, I do. Yeah. By the way, I've talked about it before. Yeah. But go ahead. I mean, the truth is I covered this stuff like Flint, uh, environmental processes and that in 2016, 2017. It would blow up on YouTube. And then YouTube changed its algorithm to cater more towards authoritative voices, which they labeled CNN and Fox.

they changed their algorithm basically to cater more towards like reactionary content. So stuff that typically for me was getting like 50 to 100,000 views, environmental disaster, local corruption, stuff like that, all of a sudden I could barely break a thousand. So did people just suddenly stop caring about those things or were people not seeing those things in their feeds? Yeah. The algorithm's being tweaked. Yeah.

So like if I started doing videos every week shitting on Joe Rogan. or anything on Joe Rogan. If I did a sock puppet video but had Joe Rogan at the headline, it would do very well on YouTube. But if I do a story on like a community being poisoned, a follow-up on that, it's not going to go anywhere. And I've learned it's, for the most part, I've learned that whether you're a lefty or righty,

it really doesn't matter. Most people in America actually are compassionate. Most people don't know what the fuck is going on. I use my parents as an example, both, you know, I love them. We disagree politically, but like, when they see this stuff I'm covering, they're like, why isn't this on CNN? Why isn't this on Fox?

Why don't I even see this online? And it's like, because the algorithms are not delivering it to you. I mean, Facebook basically shut down news. I used to do very well on Facebook with this stuff. Now nobody sees it. So I would tell people, in addition to go to independent sources, you have to actually, like, seek out news because you're not going to get a lot of stories on your YouTube feed or your Twitter feed. And the stories you are getting, you know, aren't necessarily everything that's

going on. It's stunning to me. Like when I, for example, I'm covering the chemical plant fire in Georgia, I have like now like 30 emails from different places telling me about similar things that happened that their local news isn't covering. So I would say that, right now like we're in an information war and part of that information war is we have tech companies that are basically rigging the level which is the algorithm to stuff you with in my view a lot of distractions and fluff that's like kind of like popcorn while hiding from you like the bad stuff going on was it uh caesar who was you know uh when your things were bad they just throw the get they more more games

More game, you know, more gladiator games, you know, take your mind off of what the tragedy of this plague or hunger or, you know, give them bread and give them game and entertain them and they'll let you run this place however you want. Listen, if a city could be poisoned and a decade later, nobody's in jail, the water's still bad, then everybody just says, oh, it's better. They can do what they want. Good luck to you if you're in the wrong city at the wrong time. The government ain't coming to save you. Hey, you guys, do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button and the bell so you get notified videos just like this. Listen, also please share the video that really helps us.

We're going to put all of Jordan's links in the description. We're going to put the book, We the Poisoned, so it'll be the Amazon link. You can click it, go straight there by the book. It's also an audible for those of you like me who don't really like to read. We're also going to put all of his social media links. Please check them out. please subscribe please look into it really appreciate you guys watching also please consider joining our patreon it's ten dollars a month and we put patreon exclusive material on patreon

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