QAA Podcast - Episode 155: Mike Lindell's MyCyberSymposium feat Zach Petrizzo

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

Ron Watkins, a quacking duck, and promises of a smoking gun. Mike Lindell of MyPillow fame continued his crusade to prove Trump's election win at his 'Cyber Symposium' last week. It devolved into accusations of 'antifa' infiltration, a supposed assault of Lindell, and the vilification of our guest this week: journalist Zach Petrizzo, who was in attendance. ↓↓↓↓ SUBSCRIBE FOR $5 A MONTH SO YOU DON'T MISS THE SECOND WEEKLY EPISODE ↓↓↓↓ https://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Follow Zach Petrizzo: https://twitter.com/ZTPetrizzo Read his work: https://www.salon.com/writer/zachary_petrizzo QAA Merch / Join the Discord Community / Find the Lost Episodes / Etc: https://qanonanonymous.com Episode music by Rudy (http://soundcloud.com/rudy-3)

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome listener to Chapter 155 of the Q&ONONANANANANANAS podcast, the Mike Lindell's My Cyber Symposium episode. As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakatansky, Liv Egar, Julian Field, and Travis Vue.

Today we're mounting our magic pillows once again, and floating from our windows, up into the sky, an endless procession of dreamers soaring towards a smiling sun with a human face, that of Minnesota man, Mike Lindell. Just last week, the pillow magnet held a cyber symposium in South Dakota, which prominently featured Ron Watkins of Q&ONN infamy, as a key expert on the matter of election voting machines. A three-day event filled with stutter step gags, a quacking duck, and giant blurry projections of windows operating systems. in the mind of Mike Lindell, this symposium would finally be proof that Donald Trump only lost the presidency due to Chinese communist hackers and their American accomplices in the Antifa Democratic Party, alongside with the corrupt voting technology companies like

Smartmatic and Dominion. In attendance for this supposed big reveal was journalist Zach Patriso, our guest this week. He's been covering Mike Lindell over the course of the man's post-election mania, and he's survived multiple documentaries like Absolute Proof, Absolutely. interference, scientific proof, and absolute 9 to 0, as well as the launch of what was supposed to be a social media network, prank speech. Lindell's relationship to Petrizo is, of course, of the stormy kind. Although the MyPillow CEO sometimes engages with Zach in good faith, he has recently claimed that the young reporter was a, quote, cancer to this country and that

he should, quote, lose my number. But before we get into all that, I'm handing you over to Travis Vue, who has prepared a segment explaining the latest shambling developments in voting slash pillow technology. My Cyber Symposium. So Mike Lindell, or Mike Pillow, as I assume he likes to be called, has been just on a months-long crusade trying to prove voter fraud, an election fraud. Now, the normal venue for proving these claims is court.

But Lindell has tried a different route, namely digital content. He's going to post his way to Trump being back in the office. He really thinks he's going to post. He's going to post Trump back into the Oval Office. Mainly producing fake documentaries and live shows. The most recent documentary was called, which was just produced just a couple months ago, it was called Absolute 9 to 0,

which reflects Lindell's conviction that after all of this evidence is revealed in the form of this digital content, the Supreme Court will rule 9 to 0 in favor of invalidating the election and presumably reinstating President Trump. The Supreme Court is going to upvote this post. No, unfortunately, all of those documentaries didn't do the trick, so Lendell held what he called a cyber symposium in South Dakota. There he promised to show data called packet captures or P-Caps, which are snapshots of

internet traffic. He claimed that these P-Caps would demonstrate that China somehow hack the election. Lindell has also claimed that he has 37 terabytes of information related to voter fraud. That's a very specific number, so, you know, that lends it some credibility, I assume. Lindell also said that that he would give $5 million to anyone who could disprove the data about election fraud, provided they actually attended the event in person. Unsurprisingly, you know, no one collected and he eventually rescinded this offer. I really wish that he had like, yeah, like a, I don't know, like a suitcase suspended above the symposium with the money in it and like some sort of mechanism.

Like if he had just made it into a little more of a show, I think that people would have enjoyed it more. Now, this claim about P. Capps from Lindell isn't new. In fact, he discussed it in his recent absolutely 9 to 0 film during a scene in which he talks to an anonymous supposed cyber expert whose identity is obscured with pixelation and voice modulation. And it was like taking a movie. I compared it to like taking a movie and they have all this information, millions of lines of data. Why don't we show that right now? Can you go ahead and say what we're watching here? Yeah, that's essentially the raw and critical.

data and I mean that would run for the next couple days you know that's the amount of data that we're dealing with here so what this contains here is what are the what are these is this cyber forensics what are we what are we looking at what are these called I know I know you had told me before they're called like PCaps or something yeah I'm disappointed that the numbers that were scrolling on the screen way too fast to like read in any way weren't green I know it looks like yes it looks like the matrix transition screen. And, yeah, it's just, I think this is like a lot of talks about it. It's like, oh, we have so much data. Just look at it. Just look at it. It's like you can't even see anything. It's just meaningless characters scrolling on the screen.

Oh, it's there. Because it's there, it means I'm right. You're going to argue with those numbers? Don't even know what they mean. How can you argue against them? Look at all the numbers. So there, he obviously, he has no idea what P-Caps even are. But since then, he has become so convinced that this evidence that,

when shared publicly, would be so devastating that would cause President Biden to resign. In fact, here's what he said while promoting the Cyber Symposium on Steve Bannon's podcast. Once we have the symposium, Steve, I told these people, I said, you know what? I said, well, how are the pathways of Donald Trump coming back? And I said, I said, well, the first one would be once we have the symposium by the night of the 12th or the morning of the 13th, if everyone has seen it, including the administration that's in there now that didn't win, Maybe, you know, Biden and Harris would say, hey, we're here to protect the country and resign. You know, and I'm serious.

If you have any moral character about you, you are, we're all in this together. And this was an attack and you're going to see that at this symposium. It's all going to be, you know, everything will be revealed there. You know, I did watch the live stream of the symposium for the three days. Not all of it. Occasionally, I did have to step outside and, like, look at the trees and wonder what I'm doing with my life. because it was really absolutely grueling. Before I discuss what happened at the symposium itself,

I have to talk about what happened a few days before the event because that's going to help make sense of some of the chaos that ensued. So what happened was that Ron Watkins, a.k.a. Code Bunky Z, aka the former A. Coonadman, who was a prime suspect for being one of the people behind Q, claimed that he was contacted by a whistleblower who could supposedly demonstrate that Dominion voting systems were compromised. The big reveal on this telegram channel was a one minute and 17 second video. Now, prior to the release, Ron Watkins spent a lot of time hyping up the bravery of the supposed whistleblower in some telegram posts.

Our whistleblower is a hero. Our whistleblower is a patriot. Our whistleblower had access to all of the passwords. Our whistleblower took pictures of what was locked behind those passwords. Today, we learn what it takes to go up against the devil's schemes. Today, we learn what true digital heroism is. Today, a new legend is made. I like your new Ron.

He almost sounds like Ron plus Obama. Let me be clear. The P caps, they're real. The basic accusation that Watkins was making is that Dominion's voting systems are connected to the internet and therefore a remotely controllable by dominion themselves. Thus, the inference is made that the vote tallies were compromised or can't be trusted, or it's really kind of vague what he's insinuating.

But here's how the publication Ars Technica explained why the video and screenshots they posted were less dramatic than promised. Unfortunately for this narrative, all this leaked media really exposes is a generic set of server hardware with explicit instructions to keep it off the internet and lock down its remote management functions. Watkins' video cuts together. footage of Dominion CEO John Poulos telling U.S. Senators that the machines aren't designed for internet connectivity with footage of the EMS server's BIOS setup interface. The BIOS shots

include configuration options for IDRAC, a Dell-specific technology for remote control of server hardware. Curiously, Watkins also includes, although he does not address, Poulos statement that Dominion does not have access to the password necessary to access these technologies. He also leaves in the part of his quote-unquote whistleblower video in which the Dominion employees states, we don't have access to the BIOS passwords. The state is keeping them, and he ignores the installation manual's explicit instructions to disable IDRAC entirely.

Watkins appears intent to convince less technically savvy viewers that Dominion specifically designed these machines to be remotely managed at all times, a narrative contradicted by Dominion's own installation procedures and the fact that the state manages BIOS passwords, which someone with physical access to the machine could use to enable IDRAC as its own secure assets. This is, I mean, it seems like

this is a general sort of strategy for Ron Watkins and other people who are participating in Stop the Steel narratives is that they engage in a lot of technical babble that and then insinuation that makes it sound like something nefarious is going on, but when you actually pick it apart, it's nowhere near as interesting as actually described. So if the video and screenshots aren't very substantial, where exactly did he get this information? So there is a big clue in the video itself because it included an image of an election system's BIOS password, which is a massive breach of the voting system security. So the password is unique, which means that it's possible to identify where that information came from, which is the Mesa County Clerk's Office in Colorado. Now, that creates some problems for a woman named Tina Peters, who is Mesa County Clerk and recorder, because it appears she, at the very least, is completely. implicit with this leaked information, which was also published on Gateway Pundit. As a consequence of this breach, the Colorado Secretary of State's office announced an investigation into the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder's office. So doing election fraud to own the libs, basically.

Yeah. So what happened was that Secretary of State, Griswold, released an order calling on Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to supply surveillance videos and documents showing how the breach occurred and how security information ended up online. Griswold told the newspaper the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel this. We have these security protocols in place for a reason. This is a very serious breach in chain of custody and security protocols. That's why I will be issuing this order and investigating. If the Mesa County clerk cannot show proof in the chain of custody or of the voting equipment after inspection, if there's anything that comes to our attention, the voting equipment will be decertified. So Mesa County's election equipment was in fact decertified, which means it can't be used for the next election.

That serious, apparently. So what's going on here? We've got a pilled... Yes, we have a pilled county clerk who is working with these right-wing disinformation pushers to advance the stop-the-steel narrative. The Colorado Secretary of State determined that the county clerk's office allowed an unauthorized person into sensitive areas where its election equipment is located, had turned off surveillance cameras that were supposed to be monitoring those machines, and failed to show proper chain of customers. the afternoon software was installed. So, yeah, yeah, ugly situation. I'm just, I'm imagining a pilled Ethan Hunt, you know,

descending from the ceiling, you know, in the black suit with the glasses, you know, accessing like the camera. Yeah, turning off the camera. Stealing the Dominion machines. No, but you know, you know what it really was is, you know, they used a key to open a door and knocked over a waste bin or something. You know, I'm sure, very unprofessional heist. Now, this is all very serious.

is so serious. In fact, Tina Peters is reportedly facing a criminal investigation right now. So I guess we'll see where that goes. And all of this is relevant because both Ron Watkins and Tina Peters wound up speaking at the Cyber Symposium. So on day one of the Cyber Symposium, they started right off the bat with technical problems. Like from the first minute they started going. This prompted Mike Lindell to announce that the conference was under attack. Here's one of the very first things he came to say. out on the stage. This was attacked. The whole technology was attacked. We expected that, but we do have a backup plan. It'll be probably another five minutes. And I want all of you guys to know that out there, that this is why, because I need to get the word out.

We can't even get the word out to the people that are crankspeech.com because they block the thing, or block the thing. But this is part of what I'm going to talk about today. This is the cover-up. This is the absolute cover-up of this, of the worst crime in history. So this really set the tone for the next three days, which are full of ranting, confusion, technical problems, and paranoia.

Lindell kicked off the event by making big promises and griping about display problems. And we're going to talk about all this today. This is, and you're going to see all kinds of things. We're going to educate everybody. We're going to show them the, we're going to be running. I'll show you over here. You see this data that's running there. That's cyber data from what I,

I've got. Let's see if it's moving. Yeah, it's not rotating up, but there's going an endless stream for days. And we put six states up there. All this is noise. It's just a big, long gish gallop. It's just screaming and saying stuff is happening. And I think it's, again, like old gish gallops, it's designed to be exhausting rather than actually convincing. Lindell spent a lot of time bloviating about various grievances. He, for example, recounted the time last May when he was kicked out of the Republican government. Governor's Association Spring Conference after he showed up to that event in Nashville and vowed to confront GOP governors about his false claims of election fraud. If you all remember, I got kicked out of the Republican Governors Convention because Doug Ducey and Brian Kemp were afraid I would talk to him. I was invited there.

Now we're going to talk about the terrible media. I was invited to that convention. Here's the real story behind it. I get down there. I got my things. We're all going to head to the governor's mansion. And the guy comes up and he goes, Mike. You've been kicked out, and he goes, you've been uninvited.

I said, what do you mean? He goes, it's something to do with Brian Kemp and Doug Ducey. Well, and I said, the whole event? He said, yeah, the whole event. Well, let me tell you a little side thing. Doug Ducey's the president of the governor's association, and Brian Kemp is in charge of election integrity of that committee. And it's disgusting.

So I called up a bad media, and I called up political. I called up political, and I said, hey, you want to do this? Can you believe they kicked me out of the, they kicked me out of the Governors Association, and I got my credentials. I wouldn't give them my credentials back, right? Because I knew they were going to put what they were going to pull. A special guest of the first day was Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of the right-wing populist president of Brazil. But when Lindell announced this appearance, he had difficulty pronouncing his name, which he all fair.

It's tough. We have the president's son, Eduardo, coming here, Barcelona, if I say it right, Barra. Barsar, how do you say, Barcerano, Borsenaro. Bulsanaro. Okay, Bolsonaro. He's going to be coming here to speak. Eventually, Lindel just gave up on the pronunciation attempts and just refer to Eduardo Bolsonaro as Brazil. It was a cyber war, and it's a cyber attack by China.

And they just did it to Israel. It's just reported. And there's got, you know, Brazil, when he gets here today, that's what they're going to, it's what's going to happen in Brazil. That's what they're trying to change. He's going to talk to you all about that. A few hours into the symposium, Lindel rebuffed a co-presenter who tried to announce a break. I'm not breaking.

It's the name of the clip. I got something to want to show you offstage. Okay, I guess we have something offstage, so we're live streaming, though. So you want to talk? Well, I think we're going to, I think we're set up for a break, and maybe we're going to talk a little bit right when we get back there. We're going to go into. No, we're not going on a break.

Put up that movie again. Run the movie. There's no breaks. We're streaming. So around the world, this never stops. You guys can go eat. That's fine, but I ain't eating. I'm staying up here for 72 hours before they ruin our signal.

You know, unsurprisingly, he actually did not stay up for 72 hours. In fact, Lindell left the stage shortly after he said that. Now, the clip I just played for you was actually tweeted out by Daily Beast reporter Justin Barragona. And when Lindell returned to the stage, he got out his phone and read that tweet, very angry, and questioned whether he said what he actually did in fact say. This is the garbage they see. Mike Lindell is legit upset that some people want to break for lunch. in his side. Okay, this is Justin Barragona. Okay. Justin Bargona. Mike Lindell is legit upset that some people want to break for lunch in his cyber symposium, yelling that he's

going to stay up on stage for three days straight. There's no breaks. You guys can go eat. That's fine, but I ain't eating. I'm staying here for 72 hours. Do you remember me saying that? Does anybody remember me saying that? No. You can sleep. We'll cover for you. The only true thing in there is I haven't eaten. It's bizarre interactive experiences because you could make a mean tweet about Lindell that went viral and then he would live on stage, read it, angry that people are tweeting about him.

It's the most expensive like Twitch production. It's like the, but the chat is just Twitter. All you have to do is at him. He would make an incredible streamer, by the way. He needs to get on Twitch. Yeah, he, I don't know. Why he hasn't. You can go for 72 hours, and it costs, you know, the overhead is very small.

Lindell spent a lot of time ranting about being censored. He indulged in a fantasy about the Twitter and Facebook CEOs being imprisoned with bars made by melted-down Dominion machines. You think I needed a social media platform to put out like this? No, I built it because we were losing our voice. Your Twitters, your crooked Jack Dorsey's and Mark Zuckerbucks of Facebook, they're criminals. They are criminals. They're going to be the first ones when we melt down. on the machines to make bars.

Day one wrapped up with David Clements, who is a business law professor, who has been peddling a lot of misinformation about election fraud, comparing his crusade to the Sylvester Stallone film, Rocky. So Mike is setting the stage. Everyone here has seen a Rocky movie, right? Everyone's seen Rocky. What the last eight months or nine months has felt like is the first two-thirds of a Rocky film. you know, Rocky's down on the mat.

What he's foreshadowing is you're going to start seeing these pack and captures coming in and that's a jab. Rocky's getting up. It's another jab. What we're going to set in the motion this week is that third act. And we all love the last five minutes of those Rocky movies, right? So it's time to start punching back and it's coming. So excited.

Now, to Mike Lindell's credit, he did actually invite experts to the symposium, to examine the data he supposedly had. The problem is that they all seemed unimpressed by the spectacle. One such expert, Robert Graham, who goes by At Erratah Rob on Twitter, tweeted this. Here's the current status. Nothing. They've given us a drop of data that makes no sense that they can't explain. They promise, just wait until later tonight. That's the real data.

I mean, they've given us a bunch of confusing stuff they can't explain, but have not given us the real stuff yet. They promise the real stuff is coming tonight or tomorrow for us. us to look at. Another expert on the scene was Bill Alderson. He is the chief technology officer at an organization called the Security Institute, and he paid his own way from Texas to attend the event. After the first day, Alderson said this to Dakota News Now. We were unable to get the data from the actual 2020 election. Very disappointing. But every person who came specifically looking for those P-CAPs was very disappointed. Some were somewhat angry. First day concluded two more

to go. It's already not looking for very good for Lindell. But things didn't get really crazy until day two. By the way, our friends over at their rumor flies podcast made a super cut of all the craziest went on on day two. That's very entertaining to watch. So the main event is that they got Ron Watkins himself to call in. However, they had a lot of difficulty connecting with him so that they could be seen on the giant displays that were behind and to the right of the stage. Well, the presenter at the time, he goes by the name, Dr. Frank was stalling for time, he led the crowd in the rendition of God Bless America. Maybe we should sing together. Roll, row, roll, roll, roll. That would be funny. No, I'm kidding. Okay. Land. This country needs to be flattened by communist China.

It needs to be carpet bomb. President Xi, my country earns for free. Please, please liberate us, President G. Finally, they managed to connect with Ron Watkins, but as Watkins started to speak, they still suffered from technical problems, which made the conversation seem like a corporate conference call from hell. Now, before I play you this next clip, bear mind that these are people who are asking you to trust their technical expertise. Ron, go ahead. Test one, two, three. Test one and three.

Testing, testing, one, two, three. Testing, testing, one, two, three. I think it were. Let us work for you have to take the details. All right, so we're good to go. All right. All right, greetings, I'm Ron Watkins. He's there as just a quiet.

Okay, Ron, go ahead. That's Mark, the spider. Okay, okay. Greetings, I'm Ron Watkins, also known online as Code Monkey Z. Yeah, I refer to that properly. Recently, a pair of publicly available files were brought to my attention. These files are allegedly forensic images of the Mesa County, Colorado, Dominion Election Management System. Wait a minute. Before he starts, I think he's still too weak.

Does he need to be louder? We need the volume up on Code Monkey, please, on Ron. Is where votes are stored, tallied, and prepared into a final. Ron. Hold on. Turn your speakers off. My speaker, I'm using headphones. All right. Greetings.

My name is Ron Markins. I think it's still too weak. Don't you think it's still too weak? It's good? And recently a pair of... When you say an image of a computer, you mean... It's a complete... So the issues, I can't hear what you guys are saying.

What did you say? All right. That's okay. We're explaining what you just explained Ron to them. So just wait a minute. Okay, Ron. Can we turn black that box? It's so bad we're not even sure if the clip is over yet or if they're just experiencing more technical difficulties.

I think the clip is over. My favorite early part was when they had to explain what a software update was to the audience. Yeah. Watkins went on to insinuate that all of these problems were part of some sort of attack designed to keep the information from coming out and not a result of their own poor planning or incompetence. is video feed issues Okay It's quite coincidental that the video feed breaks

And the live streaming platforms break As soon as we start talking about this During CodeMonkey's appearance There was some drama When he said that he just got a call from his lawyer He said that he had to stop the data review Because hard drives from Mesa County Were taken without authorization

Watkins specifically says that they were taken by a man named Conan Hayes, an ex-professional surfer who was involved in the Arizona audit and was cited as an expert witness in the voter fraud lawsuit filed in Antrim County, Michigan. That lawsuit, like dozens of similar lawsuits, was dismissed. I mean, the scene was absolute chaos. We have a problem. My lawyer just called me Ty Clevenger, Mr. Ty Clevenger.

and he said that I should put out this statement and I just learned that Conan James Hayes may have taken without authorization the actual hard drives from the Mesa County or the Mesa Colorado County Clerk and he needs to produce those hard drives immediately and return them to the clerk and we should stop this data review

until he produces the hard drives. Repeat that. Ron, Ron, did you just say... Everybody, this is important. Quiet, quiet. Yeah, this is really important, guys. It's important. Everybody, quiet.

Ron, did you just say that someone took all of the hard drives from Mesa County office just now? So what I said was, I just learned that Conan James Hayes may have taken, without authorization, the actual hard drives from the Mesa, Colorado. county clerk and he needs to produce those hard drives immediately and return them to the clerk. No. Hold on. That may not be it. And we should stop this data review. Hold on. This is Toby from from Mesa. He knows. No, Tina said no. That didn't happen. Tina just said it did not happen. The actual physical hard drives. Hold on. No, Tina says no, Tina says no. That did not happen. Okay. Ron, you may have heard that incorrectly then.

Thanks. okay how about can can tina explain this then because i just got a call for my lawyer that he talked to tell me that can we get tina so no i'm confused hey beth can you have tina call her lawyer so i mean just some background on cohen hayes who ron watson's claims possibly stole the hard drives so he he co-founded the surf company rvc a no shit yep yeah yeah another pilled millionaire that's right Another pill millionaire trying to ruin democracy. RVCA is huge. All the surfer bros wear that shit.

But apparently, you got less interested in surfing, and he actually built some notoriety for himself using the anonymous Twitter account, We Have Risen. And a shout out to Twitter user at get underscore innocuous for being the first person to connect the We Have Risen Twitter account to Hayes. Also, we was at Get Undersore Anacuous. Great follow for her. He does great OSINT work. So Hayes promoted Q&ON under that account in 2018, but in 2020, he gained more notoriety for himself when he tweeted pictures of what he implied were raw vote tallies, photographed in Antrim County.

He also posted photos of voting machines. But his involvement in the Stop the Steel campaign kind of like burst out when he was mentioned by Ron Watkins at this event. Like, yeah, he's just, I don't know, all the sort of the board millionaire people are just sort of converging. They're posting anonymously. and they're trying to erode faith in democracy. Yeah, I mean, this is like a big, even like the idea of like a constitutional liberal democracy is like, oh, okay, well, we can't have people violate these norms and regulations. But if everyone who is running the government is peeled or a decent portion of them, a sizable amount, then that, those like constitutional stops don't actually work anymore. Yeah.

Yeah. If you reach a certain level of success, you should just become an MCU character. They should let you become like an Iron Man or whatever you want to pick. You have to put up the money. It's like a franchise thing. You have to like put up your own money to get the costume and all the tech and stuff. But you can do it if you want. Yeah, like the expendables, but just like billionaires who realize that at the end of the capitalist ladder lies only a vacuous emptiness.

It seemed that the threat of legal action loomed over the whole second day of the event. In fact, during the event, news broke about a definite. Lawsuit against Lindell that was filed by Dominion Voting Systems. It was reported that a federal judge denied Lindell's bid to dismiss the voting machine maker's lawsuit. When this story broke, Lindell could be seen checking his phone and then immediately leaving the stage. Uh-oh.

Now, even more absurd, occasionally the sound of a duck quacking was heard while people were speaking. this was apparently designed to prevent people from saying something that would put them in legal jeopardy. As in once they start saying things that were so bad that it increased their legal exposure, there was just quacking sounds. This could be heard when Tina Peters took to the stage to push back against Ron Watkins' claims that physical hard drives were taken. I was watching this and I thought it was a goose and I believed I was losing my mind. there was there was not nothing no hard drives that belonged to our equipment that were taken off the premises from our election voting equipment unless it happened during the raid and that

and they did not allow anyone to be in there there were no bipartisan judges that were allowed to be in my election department yesterday there was not my chief deputy who is the acting clerk in my absence, no one was allowed to be in there with them when they were there yesterday. So. Is there anything else you want to say to us?

Because we're not allowed legally to let you answer Q&A right now. Okay. I just got to notice. All right. Anything else you want to say? There's so many questions. I've got what the hell is going on right now.

First of all, why quacking? Why do they have to suggest that already this whole event is already so absurd? But why not like a ding sound or something? that would like, why not like an alarm, you know, some of like, woo, you know, or something kind of Tom Clancy at like, right, you know, so, ah, well, that is an iPhone alarm, that quacking noise, because I know, because it used to be my alarm sound in high school. So I have that, like, automatic response to an alarm you hear. So I, I would have to imagine that whoever's in

charge of that was like, looking through the Apple alarm sounds and was like, hmm, I can have a fire truck noise. No, I don't want that. That's too much. How about this, this duck Quack. Ah. They're like the lawyers will never pick up on that. They'll think it's just

an innocent duck. Yeah. They'll never know that we're trying to stop people from putting themselves in legal jeopardy. During a delay in Ron's

presentation, a man who goes by the name Cannabis Conservative grab the microphone. He said that the CNNs of the world should start reporting what they're seeing

and stop fact checking. He repeated a debunked claim that adjudication logs in Antrim, Michigan were deleted. And in reality, Antrim did not. have adjudication logs because they did not purchase the Dominion adjudication module.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not a computer guy. I don't know what most of this stuff means, but I've been researching this election since November 3rd. And I can tell you right now that everything we're seeing right here, we saw in Antrim County. The adjudication logs being deleted. It was absolutely censored by the media. Most people don't know that this isn't anything new. We've seen it in Antrim County. We've now seen it in Maricopa. County, and we're now looking at it with our very own eyes in Colorado. What does Colorado matter? Why are the attacking Colorado?

We need to wake up as people, and you, the camera's in the back there, not all of you, but the CNNs of the world. You guys need to start reporting this and stop fact-checking it. They're basically calling for Travis to be put to death. This is where it ends. The fact-checker gulag. So all of that was awkward and weird, but what about the actual evidence that Lindell supposedly provided? That proved to be insubstantial, according to the very experts that Lindell himself hired.

Josh Merritt, one of the experts summoned by Lindell, gave an interview in the Washington Times saying that the data failed to establish that China hacked the election. Now, it's kind of interesting that he provided this interview to the Washington Times because it is a right-leaning publication and is in fact owned by the universe. church cult or the Moonies, as they're better known. I don't know why. Perhaps it's a sign that there are some segments to the right who are just really unhappy with how Lindell is doing this. Here's what that Washington Times article said. Cyber expert Josh Merritt, who is on the team hired by Mr. Lindell to interrogate the data for the symposium, told the Washington Times that packet captures are unrecoverable in the data and that the data as provided cannot prove a cyber incursion by China.

Quote, so our team said, we're not going to say that this is legitimate if we don't have confidence in the information. Mr. Merritt said on Wednesday, the second day of the symposium, Mr. Merritt's break from Mr. Lindell accelerated the unraveling of the MyPill millionaires' months of spinning of a conspiracy that he said would reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and restore former President Donald Trump to the White House. Cybersecurity expert J. Kirk Wiby, a former senior national security agency analyst and whistleblower, also said Mr. Lindel did not have the actual. data sets. He said the scrolling text was likely meant to resemble what the packet captures would look like in the dataset, but were not actual packet captures, which are vital to prove the claims. Several cyber experts at the symposium became frustrated late into the first day with not being provided with packet captures. Mr. Merritt and Mr. Wiby said the missing packet captures could be a result of either the format the data was sent in or they were withheld

by the source of the information. Dennis L. Montgomery. That last detail that the man who is the source of the information is Dennis Montgomery. It's really interesting because Montgomery has a decades-long career of making millions of dollars by scamming people, most notably the Pentagon. Now, our friends over at Knowledge Fight the podcast, they have a full episode on Dennis Montgomery for those who want a deep dive on him. But just to summarize, so Montgomery claimed that he developed software that could find terrorist plots that were hidden in broadcasts of the news network Al Jazeera. It could also, he claimed, identify terrorists from Predator drone videos

and detect noise from hostile submarines. His analysis had real-world impacts directly leading to National Code Orange security alerts and canceled flights, even though it was all a hoax. He was just straight up scamming the feds by lying. Okay, critical support. Player Pimp.

More recently, Montgomery scammed world-class piece of shit and human rights abuser Sheriff Joe Arpaio In a 2015 contempt of court hearing in Arpaio's racial profiling case, Arpaio testified that Montgomery had come to him two years earlier with claims that the U.S. Justice Department had been tapping the sheriff's office phones and emails. Arpaio ultimately admitted that the claims were not credible despite the fact that he spent tax money pursuing them. Even more recently, Montgomery is behind the claim that widespread voter fraud is the product of a deep state supercomputer called The Hammer and Software. were called scorecard. Now, the hammer and scorecard theory was even repeated by Q&N lawyer Sidney Powell

in her attempts to overthrow the election. So here's the funniest part. Apparently, some attendees were told that they were unable to receive the promised data because Montgomery had the stroke the night before the event. I don't believe this because he's a world-class bullshit. But Montgomery is a weird case. I understand why he's still active and running. I mean, how can you go this long without being, like, imprisoned or being killed?

killed by one of the right-wing people that he's scammed. What do you mean? He's an exemplary representative of the system we have. He's the top student. He's graduating emeritus. There's so many right-wing, like, grifters and scammers that it's just hard to distinguish him between, like, a non, a totally sincere right-wing guy. It is.

I think maybe Montgomery's innovation be like, well, I can, these people are basically rube, so I can scam the high-level right-wing people. We need more people like Montgomery on the right, honestly. So that's day two, which was obviously a disaster. So Lindell opened day three of the event by claiming that he was attacked the previous evening. He even got choked up while talking about it. I last night when I got to the hotel, I was attacked. And Phil here we're going to talk about where we're going today in light of this.

On the live stream show Flashpoint, after the event, Lindel elaborated on the incident. Now, Lindel is a very confusing storyteller, but it sounds me like he was confronted by a couple of trolls, one of which grabbed him a little too tightly while attempting to get a picture. Well, what it was is we got back to the hotel, and Kendra and I were walking,

and we got our key, and I turned around, and you've got to realize I've been in bad places before I've had swords to my throat. I've had guns to my head. I owned bar for 13 years, and you had to read people. sure and I walked we went back we turned back I go

come on we got to we got to go on and two guys kind of ran down the thing by the elevator there and he goes can I get a picture but the way he was running it wasn't like a fan it was like it was just something different and so I took the picture and then this other guy came up out of nowhere and he goes I want

one too and he put his arm and he stuck his thing it was so much pressure I mean and I just knew if I did anything there was something more coming and he jammed it in to where it was just piercing pain and I'm just going and I acted like you know that I didn't feel anything and I'm sitting there like that and I go I go okay you know do you have it well what I think now after then we and then we let go and that guy looks to me and I mean it was like I was almost doubled over and the other guy then

was like this and it seemed like he was going to grab me and Kendra's not knowing because I'm not letting out in the chair pain pulled into the elevator and I got upstairs and I and I and buckled over and she said what's up I said that guy tried to you know hurt me I don't know what he I didn't on what he was doing, but I think what he was doing, if I would have reacted, I think they were videotaping, and I think it was a setup, like, if I'd either fought back, and they would have said, oh, look what Mike Vendell does with pictures, or if I'd have turned, there was something else that he might have done, sure. Yeah, I mean, he's genuinely, like, a clinically paranoid person.

Yeah, right? Yeah. No sleep, no food. Someone touched me. I'm dying. It's perfect because he, like, even reports that there's someone else there who's like, oh, everything's fine, just doesn't notice anything. wrong. After spending several months insisting that it was China who stole the election, Lindell

on the third day also pivoted by insisting that actually it doesn't matter who stole the election, but he still insists that it was stolen. But the journalists, if you're out there and you're a journalist, you need to know, this is our country. This isn't about any politics or president or anything. If we don't get rid of these machines and computers in our election, it's over. They stole this thing that could, you know, you can say, oh, Mike, it wasn't trying, it, wasn't this, what it doesn't matter? They did it through the, it doesn't even matter who did it anymore. It's over. As cyber expert Robert Graham, aka Arada Rob, left the event, here is his final assessment of his experience.

Final verdict of this, quote, cyber expert, number of packet captures or cyber P-CAP scene equals zero. Amount of absolute proof seen equals zero. Amount of any evidence seen equals zero. Lindell rescinded the $5 million offer, and all in all, it was a huge cluster fuck, a waste of time for everyone involved. We are joined now by Zachary Patrizo, a reporter for Salon, who was at the Cyber Symposium

and has been following Lindel's antics for quite a while now. Zachary, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me, guys. Now, you have a, I think, an interesting special relationship, with Mike Lindell. So he, in fact, he knows you and he, in fact, called you out from the stage several times. And you were even, I recall, invited to come and speak on the stage to debate. It's my understanding he didn't actually wind up doing that. Is that correct? You got that right. Of course, Mike Lindell at the event was pushing his normal claims about the 2020 election,

his baseless claims. And at one point, he invited me up on stage, offering me to ask him questions and vice versa, I guess, him asked me questions. So when push kind of came to shove, so to speak, Lindel pulled back from that offer. And even Steve Bannon and others were a little bit shocked that Lindel had pulled back because the questions were pretty basic, such as, you know, where is the evidence and who gave it to you and chain of custody and questions like that. Now, you've been sharing a lot of, like, interesting sort of text messages that you had received from Lindell. He seems as angry in private as he is in public. He's a pretty angry guy. I mean,

for a guy that's worth $300 million, you would think, man, this would be the last thing kind of on his list of things to do. But Lindel is pretty dead set on these baseless claims. And one of the things he does a lot is he randomly texts me at random hours. It could be, let's say, three o'clock in the morning or whenever have you. And he says these kind of ridiculous things. things. He says things to get media attention, you know, at sometimes, but other things are pretty serious in terms of the claims he's making about the election and things he's claiming about even like pro-Trump outlets, one of them most notably, you know, now claiming that this far, far-right outlet called True News is now involved with Antifa. He also accused you

of being Antifa and said you were being investigated or something? Yeah, you got that right. So now I am being investigated not only apparently by Mike Lindell and his team of elite private investigators, but also the Sioux Falls Police Department, according to Lindell. So now the wide-ranging investigation continues to open, and it remains to be seen exactly what they'll find. They claim that I'm a soldier with the Antifa, if you will. So that's their big claim. And Lindel is now also claimed that I might have been behind this, like, sereticious attack. on him, which is, of course, false because, you know, I was never even near the hotel, which

the incident happened. But you actually had an incident occur to you at the symposium that was then reinterpreted. Could you, first of all, explain what happened to you and then how it was twisted? Yeah. So when I was at the symposium, you know, I was kind of hanging up at this second level of the event space. There was kind of a pretty big hall. And, you know, kind of your your run-of-the-mill average Republican state legislators kind of hanging out on the bottom what they were calling the quote-unquote deck plates of this event. And then upstairs, there was kind of media personalities, you know, far-right personality types. There was also, you know, more liberal media per se. And, you know, we were all kind of milling about. And myself and another

reporter with the conservative fact checker, the dispatch was there. And, you know, we were just kind of hanging out. Everything was okay. And then, all of a sudden, this other reporter went to go charge her laptop, pretty normal stuff. And then from that point on, there was a far, far right reporter with the Gateway Pundit, of course, that had kind of come up to her and started harassing her and being really aggressive and rude, you know, mostly stemming from, you know, her Facebook fact checks of the Gateway Pundant. And then from that point on, it really, really started to escalate. This reporter had come up to me, started seratitiously, like, recording my laptop screen from

behind to me. I kind of turned around and was like, you know, what's going on, bud? Like, you know, how can we help you type of thing? And, uh, and, and this, this character, uh, you know, kind of immediately shoves the camera in my face and, and starts asking me, you know, why I call him a conspiracy theory publication and, and things like that. So from that point on, it kind of continued to escalate. But then he got kicked out. So how did you do this ninja Jedi trick? Yeah. So he ended up getting kicked out on the second day, surprisingly. which was, I think, shocking to a lot of people, but security had kind of seen the situation going on

and approached him and said, you know, why are you shoving a camera in this guy's face? It's probably pretty unnecessary. So from that point on, you know, he was kind of like frog marched out by at least 10 security guys. And then, you know, he allegedly kind of got some help from his fellow right wingers and right wing media that kind of convinced, you know, the Lindel posse to let him back in

and the Gateway Punant because, of course, you know, they're friendly. And then a couple days later, the Gateway Punant puts out this hit piece on myself and another person claiming that we are, you know, facial recognition, quote unquote, has tied us back to Antifa gatherings, which, of course, is baseless and false. So from that point on, we are kind of made into these, you know, Antifa soldier fighters and now Lindell is, of course, investigating us from there. but at the time you described them as resembling a high school student yeah so so one of the things i did when this jordan character from the gateway pundit had initially approached us was i kind of

you know kind of laughed him off i was like dude are you from high school you know like uh like what's your deal like you sure do look like it but does is he i think he is so apparently this guy's like a high school he's like a real estate agent in arizona oh my god like part-time real estate agent part-time, you know, political hack. But yeah, so I'm pretty sure he's in high school. He sure does look like, and I'll say that much. And then, so he was let back in. I guess there was like a period of grace for the third day.

And then Mike Lindell started talking about that issue in very different terms. So tell us what happened there. Totally different terms. Mike Lindell, I think what happened was his, who he is calling his red team are like these kind of security experts of sorts. and one of them's name is Phil Waldron, Colonel Phil Waldron, and this guy, he has an iffy track record on accuracy. And I think what happened was is Phil Waldron kind of probably purposely, you know, distorted the situation so that it seemed as though, you know, what had happened was perpetrated by a liberal outlet when, in fact, it wasn't that. It was that of the work of a conservative outlet that clearly did something wrong.

Mike Lindell's team initially, you know, saw what was wrong, called out what was wrong. But of course, Lindell and his, you know, his team later on had to spin it so that it was the fault of the liberal outlet, right? So they had misconstrued this and purposely kind of twisted it so that, you know, now Lindell, of course, can blame, you know, Salon, myself, and even the dispatch and, and other reporters, the Washington Times, etc. etc. Even right of center outlets, you know, now are being accused of being Antifa and all of these things when, you know, that's not true. Let's pull back a little bit because you watched how many documentaries now and you've attended and or watched how many events. This is a very long-lasting circus act that's been going on the road. You know, what do you make of the entire thing? So I started covering Mike Lindell about a year and a half ago at Mediite.

And since that point, I've been fascinated with him just from the standpoint of, look, he's a rich guy with a lot of money that tosses around his weight in Trump world. He's very influential, I think, more so than what many people even think. He not only was one of the largest advertisers on Fox News for a very long time, but the average Trump World character really thrives and lives off of Mike Lindell's pillow company. I mean, when you look at how many of these C-list maga types from, you know, guys like, you know, Harris Jr. to like, you know, even guys like Dan Bongino are like shilling my pillow products every single day. So a lot of the conspiracy theories ultimately kind of trace back to him in more ways than one. So that was where my kind of obsession, if you will, with Mike Lindell started, was, you know, in covering Trump world and seeing how many connections he has. but it really morphed into something much larger. You know, the past year and a half I've been covering Mr. Lindell, you know, kind of

everywhere. I saw him down at Dallas CPAC more recently. But of course, he's had events all across the country, these quote-unquote Frank speech rallies where he basically pulls up to a remote cornfield and, you know, wherever have you and tosses up a jumbotron and starts just touting random things and diamond and silk come along, right? So it's like, it's really become something perhaps, you know, totally engulfing Trump world in many ways. You wrote for Salon that if when Lindell is saying is true, some of his recent claims, that he would be violating wiretapping laws? Could you explain

how that works exactly? Sure, yeah. So Mike Lindell, some of his biggest claims revolve around the way in which he obtained the 2020 election data. So this is the data that he claims that his white hat hackers, quote unquote, captured on the night of the election. And while this is something that many might brush aside and say, oh, that's easily not legit in terms of the way he obtained the data, I kind of looked at it from a different angle and said, what if it is legit?

What if these packet captures that we now know, you know, never again? existed and it's entirely false what he's claiming, but what if they were right, right? So I checked that out and a cyber expert with over 20 years of experience and a law firm that was working with the cyber expert shared with Salon that if in fact the claims that Lindell, you know, touts are true, he could ultimately be tied up on some pretty hefty wiretapping laws, you know, in breaking those laws because of the way he obtained to these packet capture is being kind of sent from from one computer to another the way he intercepts them.

So that would have broken federal wiretapping laws, which I think is really interesting because it shows just to what extent these Trump world characters are willing to claim and not totally look at like the consequences of their actions, you know, and also not look at, you know, what could potentially be, you know, a pretty bad situation for Lindell to get himself into when he doesn't really even have the data to begin with. Yeah. Speaking of, like, not thinking about the consequences of his actions. Lindel, I think, is a unique figure because he kind of, like, he seems to be someone who is, like, sincerely believing a lot of the bullshit that's being fed to him.

I don't know exactly who is in his ear. He's being agged on by big figures like Bannon and stuff. But he seems to, he seems to be on the, frankly, self-destructive path. He's being sued by Dominion. He is breaking relationships with his media partners and his political partners in this pursuit. Where do you think this ends from? I mean, is he going to end up in the poor house because he believes in this campaign so much? It's a great question.

This is one of the questions I get a lot from people that are like, you know, pretty big followers of Lindell. It's like, what happens to Lindell? I will note, I think one of the biggest mistakes Trump world has made is at times going all in for Lindell. And I think we've seen that some of the people not at the Cyber Symposium more recently, you know, those outlets, the conservative pundits, the outlets that didn't cover it weren't there, it's quite telling, right? Because we have, you know, more mainstream conservative outlets like The Daily Caller, not writing anything about the symposium. We have other, you know, more mainstream types that are actually starting to ignore Lindell in many ways. Fox News, for example, et cetera. So I think that's one thing.

I also think Steve Bannon kind of like pushing him to a great extent. shows kind of maybe perhaps how desperate Steve Bannon is now to show the products to to keep pushing Lindel into you know possibly just more and more legal trouble right so that kind of takes us to where Lindel is going I would say Lindel is going to kind of this dark place this place where perhaps Dominion wins a suit perhaps it's not all his wealth and perhaps you know my pillow gets turned into a shell of what it once was was, you know, a smaller my pill operation. But I really do believe that, you know, he is self-destructing and he's going to a place

that, you know, basically, you know, he's pretty much doomed. I mean, when you don't have the right-wing media ecosystem behind you fully and Trump world characters are starting to abandon you, all you have is Steve Bannon, things are looking pretty bleak. Of course, Antifa, the large claim was that Antifa had infiltrated the event, right? So that was kind of at the center and at the crux of why he couldn't give that data. But of course, you know, Salon, myself, we had walked outside and seen firsthand that there were no Antifa agitators. There was no one out there besides three people deep in gospel song.

Right. But speaking of characters, you ran into Jeffrey Peterson or in The Matrix, the Q&On influencer at this event? He was. He was. He was there. He had some choice things to say about. Salon's coverage of him. One of his big things is that he's not QAnon.

He told me he's not QAnon. He is, he believes in Anans and Q. And you guys informed me that this is basically just a way to kind of trick the media, right? What else did he have to say about your writing in Salon? It was interesting because his big thing was claiming that he's not Q. And he basically kind of wanted a retraction by like everyone in the media claiming that he is involved with QAnon, right? So it was kind of a strange dynamic because here he is on his phone and there's like the Matrix and stuff. And he's telling me everything Lindell said was in QAnon and it's like intertwined and all this stuff.

But at the same time, he's telling me he doesn't want to be associated with QAnon. So it was very, it was a confusing conversation. Yeah. I mean, this whole is like there are Q and there are nons. There's no Q&N is a weird way to sort of resolve the cognitive distance between the sort of the bad branding of QAnon and the fact that they're all true believers. And, you know, Jeffrey Pedersen, he's kind of an old hat at this. He's been using QAnon for years. He appeared at the Q conference.

So it's an old habit that he appears not be able to break quite yet. Zach, what else is going on right now? What other stories are you working on? I would say some of the other interesting things in following include kind of this growing rift between Gab, Rumble, and like the parlor crowd. So in right-wing media, of course, Rumble being the new YouTube alternative. that is seemingly found itself at the center of some drama. So, of course, Rumble is kind of run,

and kind of the spokesperson for that is, of course, Dan Bongino. And Dan Bongino is now getting into these kind of tirade and rants against the founder of the far right platform, Gab, which also has like Gab TV, Andrew Torba, of course. So, like, there's this huge, like, kind of, like, tech civil war happening there. And it seems to me every time these right-wing platforms kind of get off the ground, get going one of the biggest things that you know it's kind of like self-sabotage they they ultimately

you know shoot themselves in the foot um whether that be with like sonic the hedgehog furry porn on you know getter or whether that be you know infighting between rumble and and gab or whether that be you know parlor um you know just you know their users abandoning the platform it it always seems like you know it's kind of uh trump supporters um and their own users are kind of of, you know, ultimately being their own downfall. And so people can go and follow you at Z-T-Petrizo, that's P-E-T-R-I-Z-Z-O, on Twitter. And where else can they find your work? They can find my work at salon.com, where, you know, we try to get up all the gossip on

right-wing Trump world, if you will, pretty usual. You got to be careful out there. Do you see agents sometimes, like, you know, now that you're under investigation, do you ever get tailed. You know, I haven't seen that yet, but I bet the Sioux Falls Police Department is on their way en route to Washington, D.C. now for serious questioning. Just look for a giant van in the shape of a pillow with four Pinkertons in it. My pillow, we put Zach to sleep. Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAnonan Anonymous podcast. Please go to Patreon.com slash QAnonanonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole

second episode every week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes. When you subscribe, you help us stay advertising free and editorially independent. We usually stream twice a month at twitch.tv.tv.com. Other Twitch handles you can follow are Julian Field, Live Agar, and Florida Flynn, which is me. For everything else, go to the website, QAnonanonanonymous.com. Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you. It's not a conspiracy. It's fact. And now, today's AutoCube.

He went on his Frank speech platform, and he made another statement about True News. Yes, this is one where he actually says he does know who True News is, an organization. He said it's a fake news outlet. We might be able to tie him back here to Antipa. We're allegedly, we're looking into that. All these media guys that were there, that were letting people in with their media badges and using masks to disguise himself like Zach started wearing a mask, I think, on the second day. These guys, we're going to, we're going to bring it. It's all going to come out.

This true news, which is a fake news outlet, uh, we have, we have Zach on video with all these people, we have an intelligence, counterintelligence team that was there. We're going to investigate all of them. I have a report from, from our counterintelligence, the people that were there. Um, they've given me this report and this will be ready by tonight. Antifa, on our counter intelligence, Antifa, they were, the individuals were working with true news, which is a fake news site established by Media Matters for America. We believe Zachary Patrizo and Salon was involved. We've got them all on tape colluding with masks on. There were people there that said they were from Fox News, but those we believe those were also infiltrators because Fox News was not there.

But when you use mask brand and to get into things, I mean, bad people, just like you go back to the riots across America, they're using masks now to do bad things. Hey, I got to say this, Everett. I am the first person to be accused of being both a white nationalist and an Antifa domestic character. Oh, boy. I pull it all. How about that? You did it, Rick. A white nationalist left. Antifa Domestic Terrace.

That is so bonkers what I just heard. I really is sad. Mr. Lindell, I don't know one person at Media Matters. And if they're funding us, their checks are late. They're about 22 years late because I've had to get on my knees and pray every day and for the funds to come in from donations from people around the world. And Antifa, no, we didn't smuggle any Antifa people. Antifa people in. That just didn't happen. I don't know one single Antifa

member. So Rick, where's always coming from? Somebody's feeding Mr. Lindell a lot of bad information and I think he should wise up and take a look at who he's surrounded himself with and whether somebody has gotten inside his group and they are now turning him into a clown. destroying his own credibility they're destroying his credibility okay so he has this big you know show to show truth right just that statement alone about disparaging us yes just neglects all that stuff that he might have been true because that is blatant lies what he's saying i mean it's just that i he's but he said that he's got counterintelligence team that is

giving him this report is that massad the dirt through dirty dursowitz somebody is feeding him information. So if he's so wrong on us, right, on that intel report, what about the other stuff he's trying to feed the American people about the election? So that's what it's doing to me. Now I'm in the story.