Peak Prosperity - When Corruption Is the Path

Episode Date: March 8, 2025

When plunder becomes a way of life, and when Control Fraud dominates, there’s really no reform possible. You just have to start over. I think this is where we’re headed, and it’s going to be really bumpy along the way.Click Here for Part 2

When corruption is the path, there's really only one destination. The following is the audio version of a video released at peakprosperity.com. Visit peakprosperity.com to watch the video and to find other insightful content such as articles, discussion forums, and exclusive subscriber-only content. content. Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Chris Martenson of Peak Prosperity. Look, there comes a moment in time, sometimes, when you just have to sit back and ask, look, can I even do this thing that I'm trying to do here? When it comes to an entity, say a company, an individual, a country, there's an invisible line of corruption beyond which there's really no recovery.

And so today I'm going to make the case that the US government as an entity is it's too far gone to recover, at least in certain agencies, whole parts of it are going to have to be torn down, completely rebuilt from scratch. We're going to be talking about this because it has huge implications. Look, the West collectively has passed over that corrupted visible line. I'm not going to talk about Europe today, talk about my own country, but this is a pretty wide ranging story. An enormous amount of economic and legal and political pain.

That's what's in our future. And if we're really lucky and refuse to put up with their deflections and shenanigans of nonsense, we might even be able to avoid World War III. I'm not sure about Europe. If not, if we can't avoid that, well, you'd better take stock of your provisions and basic life skills and prove them where they're deficient. Now, Frederick Bastiat in the 1800s captured this whole dynamic very well. We're going through something very ordinary, very usual in the course of human history.

He said, quote, when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men or women in a society over the course of time, they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. End quote. And I think that's a dead nut sign. And once the fraud and corruption have been allowed to persist for too long, this is what happens. You get a legal system that authorizes it.

You get a moral code that glorifies it. But the people benefiting from this system here, well, they stand up an entire system to protect themselves from Discovery and also to advance their rackets right and that's that's where I think we are right now That's what doge has been revealing for us now a really good way to begin to understand this You know what I do. I do framing I look at systems. I help make complicated things more Simplified for you to understand them and a really good way to begin to understand and dig through the systemic mess we're in is to familiarize ourselves here yourself with the idea of

control fraud which William K. Black gave us. Now William Black was trained in jurisprudence also in criminal again a PhD criminology anyway perfect perfect combo for him to investigate the savings and load frauds back in the 1980s so what is control fraud this is a term that he developed and popularized so what do you got key characteristics of control fraud one an abuse of trust the fraudsters leverage their leadership roles where they are trusted to act in the best interest of the organization or the people And instead pursue self-serving schemes. This is Anthony Fauci

This is Rochelle Walensky. This is all the people at USAID The DOJ the FBI we'll get into some of those in just a minute. So they abuse their trust Obviously to is is the systematic deception. So they manipulate financial records, misrepresent performance, hide losses. This happens in companies, but it's happening in our government as well at this point in time. Really lost the plot, what they were supposed to be doing. And it has to have number three, which is high level involvement.

Like unlike, you know, petty theft or low level employee fraud control fraud Involves those at the top who have the authority to direct operations override safeguards or influence decision-making Does it sound like anything you've been hearing about over the past month and a half two months since Trump took office Number four is the covert nature of control fraud. It often goes undetected for long periods of time. Why? Because the perpetrators bypass all the internal controls. They intimidate subordinates into compliance.

We saw this over and over again with what the FBI did and did not investigate what happened to whistleblowers. The fact that the U S treasury department's disbursement system has no internal controls, no oversights for where the stuff is going, who authorized it, where it went, because they didn't put codes and things like that. Right. There have only been 17 internal administrators of that system since 1944. 17 just career lifer bureaucrats. It's astonishing really and so that's what we've been Going up through here. All right, so and by the way, um, you know, as I said

William Black his lawyer PhD criminology and He has those just everything you need to really develop and understand this idea of control fraud So let's look now. Here's an example of control fraud. So look, Elon Musk was really ran afoul of the Biden administration. So the Biden administration sick the department of transportation on him for space X violations and finds department of interior, put them under a big, laborious star base review, the justice department lawsuits, the National Labor Relations Board compliance

issues, agriculture investigating him, Securities Exchange Commission investigating him in lawsuits, Department of Defense on his security clearance stuff, Federal Election Commission complaints, Office of Government Ethics oversight. This is what it looks like when you run af foul of what Frederick Basjiat was talking about. There is a system, a legal system that authorizes it, a moral code that glorifies it. This all made sense. Let's take Elon Musk and put him through the ringer because he's doing things that could fundamentally put our control fraud at risk of exposure. And they weren't wrong to be worried about Elon Musk early on because he's done exactly that.

So let's go through some FBI, because he's done exactly that. So let's go through some FBI failures, because there's like here when we see at the end to get out of a system of control fraud, you need two things. You need enforcement, right? You need prosecutions and you need investigations. Well, the FBI is supposed to be doing the investigating, but let's look at what they did over the past, I don't know, just 10 years or so. They lost Seth Rich's laptop. Oops, then they found it, but then they wouldn't release it and then they found it again

And then it's gone. It's just They did the one thing they didn't do was comply with legal orders to release the laptop in its entirety What else well they lost all this Epstein evidence right went into his townhouse in New York City Went off with carts if not truckloads of materials and then claim they lost it if you understand evidentiary procedure procedures That's not what happened. They lost it on purpose Obviously, they didn't raid any of Epstein's properties in particular his New Mexico property until long After he was dead not what he was understood to be a child trafficking molester and up to his eyeballs in in blackmailing high level people, which you would think would be of

interest to the FBI. But apparently not. They failed completely to investigate Hunter Biden's laptop at first. And then when they finally grudgingly took possession of it, they didn't even look at it. And then they allowed rumors to persist that maybe it was false or fraudulent when they knew the opposite They didn't find the j6 bomber despite being handed the case on a silver bladder by a private investigative Firm or a person I forget exactly how came about but they said We tracked down the license plate number at the train station

This is this is the person you want. And still the FBI couldn't manage it. That was a failure, right? We saw they ruined the careers of agents who asked too many questions about the 2020 election, which was as dodgy as all get out. They arrested January six people with prejudice, never looked into Patriot front and arrested you know, people outside of abortion clinics. So clearly just doing the sort of the enforcement, the mob enforcement arm of,

of the control fraudsters. Cause now we're seeing the FBI was mainly in service to what we'll call the DNC, but includes a bunch of rhinos as well. And we see now that instead of like looking at where are all those billions and billions of dollars being siphoned out of the government through USAID going, they instead went after vigorously people who we would call very low on the totem pole in this overall story, mostly to make an example out of them. And they totally whiffed on Ruby Ridge, the Oklahoma City bombing, 9-11, every other

major event. The FBI was just absolutely unable somehow magically to figure out what was going on or investigate it properly. But there were agents within the FBI who did investigate it properly, then they always ran into trouble with their higher ups. It was clear that's not what you're supposed to do. This is what control fraud looks like. So now you have a term for it. All right, moving on.

This was back in, when did this come out? This was, I put this up a couple years ago, I think. At any rate, there's a FOIA document looking at the Department of Justice and the FBI. So that's both the investigatory and the enforcement arms. They uncovered alarming 2020 election ballot fraud in Detroit, Michigan, but covered it up. Huh, in the emails DOJ official says,

this allegation and accompanying photos is alarming. So this was a lower level DOJ official, which again went nowhere and nothing happened. In green, somehow the two investigative bureaus with real authority to investigate credible allegations decided to both pass the buck on to the secretary of state Michigan, who would have been a huge reason why the election was so fraudulent in the first place, right? So we have corrupted rigged elections. All the data is there. We have all the all the receipts, of course.

Then we found out, uh, Catherine Herridge did a really nice piece of reporting last October in 2024 showing that IRS whistleblowers involved in the Hunter Biden tax case reveals that the IRS, the DOJ and the FBI all knew the laptop was real. Of course they did. Anybody could tell that looking at it with about five minutes of investigation, having any experience in this at all And claim prosecutors demanded they not ask questions about Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election So that is election interference. There's laws against this. It's illegal

So, what are we talking about here? Well, we're talking about control fraud obviously, okay So all of these, you know failures that we're looking at here It's patently clear the FBI the DOJ have somehow become part of the cleanup and cover-up arm of other agencies running their own frauds and illegal activities so You know Let's see Yeah, let's move here. This was from Trump's speech, a culture war report bothered to type it all out.

Thanks for doing that. But you can read through some of these, you know, free housing and cars for illegal aliens. Why? Because they're going to vote and because the more people are concerned with and consumed by their country being invaded, the less likely they are to notice all your other grifts and scams. This is the divide and conquer This is throwing dust in your opponent's eyes. That's part of it. Part of it was just getting more voters

They thought buying them all these of 40 50 68 million for this and that 32 million for a left-wing propaganda operation in Moldova I'll bet you not much of that 32 billion actually made it to Moldova It went out to K Street went off to some NGOs that were secreted somewhere nearby. The overall center of corruption, 1.9 billion recently created to recently created homes committee headed up by Stacey Abrams again. Oh, this is so infuriating. And then 59 million for illegal hotel rooms, illegal alien hotel rooms

down in New York City and on and on and on. This is what it looks like when control fraud is running rampant. You get all this stuff. And if you peel back any one of these, you would find that there wasn't eight million going for making mice transgender. That wasn't what was happening. There was eight million going to some people who said that's what they were doing, but they were yanking down fatty salaries, 250, 450, 650.

I'm talking hundreds of thousands, right? That's what it was. All right. Charlie Kirk reporting here that New York Times is reporting that Act Blue, the big Democratic PAC, Political Action Committee, is in turmoil. Mysteriously, seven top executives have left in the past three weeks, several of whom have been there more than a decade. None of them will explain on the record why they left rats sinking ship.

The last remaining lawyer in Hack Blue's general counsel office has been locked out of his email and put on leave after sending internal messages that we have whistleblower policies for a reason. Bad career move there. Uh, the last remaining lawyer guys, like we have whistleblower policies for a reason. Obviously there's a lot of cruft corruption and we're going to look into this just a little more deeply because it just talks about the control fraud act. Blue was able to operate with open impunity for a long time because they knew the control fraud was

deep enough that they didn't have to worry about enforcement or prosecution. That's just how these things end up working out over time. Okay. Um, and, uh, let's see, you know, all those people in act blue leaving kind of reminds me of this, uh, Dave Chappelle skit. This is called black Bush. He did this on SNL a long time ago. Here he is pretending he's Bush.

You got people who say you're only interested in the Middle East for oil. What? Huh? Oil? Who said something about oil, bitch? You cooking? Oh. Oh, you're black!

President Bush. That's just so awesome. Well, so just, just insert act blue on the top of that mentally and you'll get, get the image there. Okay. So remember James O'Keefe of, of OMG media has been just on this for a long time. Here's from August of 2024. I've got ones from way earlier. So look at this. Here's a top act 2024. I've got ones from way earlier. So look at

this. Here's a top act blue donor, a top donor, top donor in Colorado had allegedly given $230,000. Now this is a retired lady living on a pension, you know, and she's been in retirement for 21 years and gave $230,000 from 2017 to 2023. Probably not possible, okay? So she said, quote, no, my money's not being stolen. There's nothing there to steal. Who has reportedly donated over $230,000 to Eck Blue from 2017 to 23, living in a retirement home and having been retired for 21 years.

She finds it hard to believe that she could have contributed such a large amount where would that have come from at any rate there's the lady right there she's got a nice little be happy thing on her wall so you would think immediately with election violations with campaign donation violations you should have immediate investigation of that enforcement but that was 2014 nothing happened James O'Keefe just nailed this nothing happened. So who is act blue? Well, listen, it got started in 2004 For the first three years it did raise 19 million dollars for Democratic candidates So it started to grow along but somehow by June of 2024 did raise

13.7 billion since its founding with over 16 billion mentioned in the recent report so how did we jump from 13.7 to 16 billion from June to the end of 2024 you might ask good question okay um let's just listen in very quickly here's a different case this is from 2022 I believe FEC data shows that some senior citizens across the US have been donating thousands of times per year. Some of these individuals' names and addresses are attached to over $200,000 in contributions. We went and knocked on a few of their doors

to corroborate the data that we received from a group of citizen journalists called Election Watch in Maryland. This is James O'Keefe with OMG. I'm here in Annapolis, Maryland. It's an individual who has donated a total of $217,000 made through 12,000 different contributions in a three-year period of time. Now sometimes these contributions have been made in variations of his name and variations. 12,000 contributions in three years Hmm, nothing suspicious about that with 356 days per year

So if you just did one donation a day over three years, it'd be about a thousand 12,000 so 12 donations a day. That's come on Just couldn't be more obvious Titions of his address you see this chart here could be more obvious. actually participated in the scheme. We're making phone calls, we're knocking on doors. These are things that you can do. We hope you do that. Follow me along and see what happens. This is something that you guys can do.

Very easy to do. A lot of homes with bizarre amounts of data showing tens of thousands of contributions made through different contributors here. So with a lot of questions, and we hope the citizen journalism army at OMG can answer them. This is an easy thing to do, knocking on doors, asking questions. 12,000. I mean, when you walk up to the house, just an ordinary looking guy. ordinary looking house. There's not a chance in the world that this is anything other than a giant fraud. And of course,

it's an obvious fraud was the FBI investigating this. Once you see something like this, it's clear election violation, laws are broken. Did anybody do anything? No. That tells you that you're in the midst of a control fraud regime. It means the fraud is part of the system. It's not an outlier. It's not a random thing. It's not this exception. It is the rule.

So that's what's been going on here now. So we have to ask overall like, um, this is a outlays receipts and outlays for the U.S. Government for 2024 receipts over there on the left outlays, obviously much larger over here on the right.lays obviously much larger over here on the right this is just for February of twenty twenty four actually so two hundred ninety six billion dollars of deficit for one month. How weird it all that money where is that money going well you're seeing some of it is somehow siphoning back and flowing back through act blue and ordinary people were making you know I don't know 12

donations a day for three years straight you know small amounts that won't raise any flags but any rate that deficit right there has a huge amount of fraud in it so we have to ask how much was pure corruption how much is pure waste fraud that happens to be 26% of GDP they put quotes around it because it's not really GDP. If it's fraudulent money spent and stolen, that doesn't really do much for us. Okay. So again, when we're at this point where we see that the top investigative and prosecutorial arms of the government are not just neutered, but captured within a

legal system that authorizes the frauds and a moral system that glorifies them the game has already been lost We're down to the part which is like how painful is this breaking down and rebuilding going to be otherwise you persist with the Frauds and then it just breaks under some other terms later. Anyway, so it had to happen Not happy we got here and i'm not happy about what's about to happen next, but I am happy It's finally gonna happen that that was needed so control fraud very expensive to fix very expensive there There has to be a lot of economic legal political pain first so what happens first you have to identify and acknowledge the fraud That's what's happening right now when you're seeing all these doge releases and Trump talking about eight million for this and 30 million for that 59 million for that This is identifying and acknowledging the fraud and we're just getting our arms around at seven billion dollars Given to Stacey Abrams firm, which we'll talk about in part two of this for my subscribers

You then you have to implement strong internal controls strong, right? There have to be checks and balances and oversight and audits and all kinds of things And then when people get in trouble you have to take legal and regulatory action When people do things there have to be what are called public hangings, right? I put air quotes around that but hey, maybe literal public hangings at some point people who are thinking about doing these things need to know There are consequences so if we don't so I'm giving you this roadmap because we are obviously shot through a control fraud epidemic.

If we do not take these steps, if Trump only makes it to step one and we don't get to steps two through six, then nothing will change. And this whole thing's going to break and break worse than any of us could even imagine at some point. Then you got to rebuild the trust and you got to create a culture where this kind of stuff doesn't happen. There are good people out there. There are there are good people who will run things and do the right things for the right

reasons but not if they have to come into a system where they will be abused for doing the right thing. Not if they come in and will be treated like Elon Musk is being treated by the Democrats right now. Right. Because he's just in there trying to do something that takes their control fraud, their grifts, their scams apart.

They hate that. And to be fair, there's some Republicans in that same boat. So you have to rebuild the trust. You gotta rebuild the culture. You have to recover financial losses. People who committed crimes, committed frauds, they should have to pay that money back. I mean, a lot of money.

Absolutely. And then finally, to prevent recidivism and future fraud, you have to put in really strong new regulatory controls around everything. So this is the path that we're on. And I really hope we get there. Now, in part two of this, for my subscribers, I'm going to cover how these frauds actually

are probably going to unwind, probably explosively. It'll lead to pretty painful and massive economic and market pains, um, as well as legal political turmoil, as I mentioned, but my inescapable conclusion is that these systems of these systemic shocks could well result in the great taking machinery. If you don't know what that is, you really got to look into that. I've done a whole series on it. If that great take machinery. If you don't know what that is, you really gotta look into that. I've done a whole series on it. If that great take machinery gets activated, that's gonna lead to legendary losses

for everyone who is wrongly positioned, ignorant, or unprepared. So I mean, after all, if there's one thing, the one last thing the fraudsters always do on their way out the door, well, George Washington said it. He said the last official act The one last thing the fraudsters always do on their way out the door. Well, let George Washington said it he said the last official act of any government is to loot the Treasury well

That's what these fraudsters are gonna do on their way out the door one last desperate act damn the consequences Who cares about the people the nation none of that none of that none of that matters to them now Since our Treasury no longer has any gold or silver in it, really, the last official act is going to be to seize control of your assets. It's nothing personal. It's simply the moral code of these people we've been talking about. Cut off from their government flows, they're going to come after your house, your stocks, your bonds, you name it. Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to avoid the predations or at least not be low hanging fruit in this story. And that brings us to, um, what the path is and how we go through this.

So for all my subscribers, follow me back over to peak prosperity. We'll continue the conversation because I think I know what comes next for everybody else, please be safe. Keep your head on a swivel and stay aware of what is actually going on until next time I'm Chris Martinson of peak prosperity. Bye for now you