Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 4/14/22 Jim Bovard on the Michigan Acquittals, Terrorism Entrapments and the FBI’s All-Around Awfulness

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

Scott talks with Jim Bovard about the recent acquittals in the Michigan Kidnapping case and FBI entrapments in general. Bovard explains how the Supreme Court changed the definition of entrapment which allowed federal agents to take more active roles in organizing the plots they would later use to arrest and charge participants. Bovard and Scott discuss how the FBI really kicked up these operations to target young Muslim men after 9/11. Now as the government pivots to so-called domestic terrorism, there’s no indication that the tactics have changed.   Discussed on the show: “Inside the FBI’s infiltration and entrapment of a Michigan militia crew” (NY Post) “A Stunning Surprise In The Michigan Kidnapping Case Calls The Government’s Domestic Terror Strategy Into Question” (Buzzfeed News) The Terror Factory by Trevor Aaronson “Uncle Sam Wants You” (Playboy) “Two Types of Terror in Michigan” (AIER) “Inspector general's report on FBI and Clinton's emails shows secrecy threatens democracy” (USA Today) “After the FBI's Pulse nightclub failure, why should we trust James Comey anymore?” (USA Today) Scott’s 2004 interview with FBI whistleblower Frederic Whitehurst Jim Bovard is a columnist for USA Today and the author of Public Policy Hooligan: Rollicking and Wrangling from Helltown to Washington. Find all of his books and read his work on his website and follow him on Twitter @JimBovard. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show hey you guys check it out on the line i've got the great jim bovard author of most books that have ever been published welcome back to the show how you doing jim hey scott thanks for

head me on it's a really long list of books uh the farm fiasco and freedom and chains and feeling your pain oh the fair trade fraud that was a good one there and uh then of course my favorite is oh well don't let me forget the bush betrayal and then my very favorite is attention deficit democracy but then you had that great memoir too which was god dang on the right on the tip of my tongue that oh uh public policy hooligan very good i love this guy hey man uh happy to have you here back on the show. Let's talk about this thing you wrote for the New York Post. Oh, did I mention that Jim is a regular contributor to the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org? That's a fact. Although here you are in the New York Post, inside the FBI's infiltration and entrapment of a Michigan

militia crew. And not just that, but inside the jury's acquittal of most of them and hung jury on the rest and total failure of the federal prosecutors to prove their case, even to a federal jury, which, as we know, those were created by the state in order to rubber-stamp convictions on whatever they want. They get, like, what, 98% conviction rate or better in federal court? I'm gambling. Go ahead and say things. What happened here? Well, I mean, it was such a bizarre case, and this is something that the FBI, now there was a it goes back to the start of the pandemic. Governor Gretchen Whitmer was one of the most heavy-handed governors here in the U.S.,

and she basically, as soon as the pandemic started, she dictated, she basically put everybody in the state under house arrest and said that anyone who left their home to visit family or friends could be fined $1,000, and business owners faced three years in prison for refusing to close for stores. I mean, but it was a very biased set of shutdowns. I mean, there was, you know, people ragged on it because they were, people could not buy gardening supplies there in the spring in Michigan, but people could still buy state lottery tickets. So it was kind of, it was kind of peculiar, but she totally wrecked the Michigan economy. The unemployment soared to 24 percent at the kind of level they had in the Great Depression.

and her policies caused huge anger among people whose jobs were destroyed, whose businesses were destroyed. Some of those folks were very outspoken, yammering like a bunch of, well, doing a lot of yammering. And then so what happened with some FBI informants came in and started working on some of the people that were already shouting and angry and persuaded them to join this plot, which was basically contrived by the FBI. and it was a zany idea to kidnap Governor Whitmer from her vacation home and take her someplace else, maybe Lake Michigan, maybe Wisconsin, and put her on trial. So a number of the folks who were charged in this case explicitly said that they did not want to have anything to do with the kidnapping. But the federal informants and the undercover FBI, there were about, 12 guys charged in this case or fingered in this case, and there were about 14, there were more

than that of the informants and the undercover FBI agents. It was set up by the feds from the get-go. Yeah, I mean, I think I talked with Ken Ben Singer, who's done the best journalism. Oh, he has done great work on this. Excellent work. And yeah, he talked about how at one point, at least, there were more than a dozen informants inside this plot. So now, there's so many different aspects to this. I guess, you know, I forget, I've read both y'all's articles this morning. I forget which one of you brought up when the Supreme Court redefined entrapment down. Yeah.

That's, yeah, yeah, that was my New York post piece. Right. So talk about that a little bit because, you know, in other words, words, there's a real question here. There should be a real question in the mind of everyone listening. Were these guys going to hurt the governor and the FBI stopped them or not? I mean, that's what we're talking about here. Yes, this is a issue which I wrote about for Playboy back in the 1990s.

And it was, you know, back in the early 1900s, the Supreme Court carved out a clear standard for making an entrapment defense. But what happened was that Nixon's favorite Supreme Court justice, Rehnquist, gutted most of those defenses against government entrapment by focusing almost solely on the subjective disposition of the person who was entrapped. So if prosecutors can find anything in a person's history or in their comments or in their disposition that showed that they might have leaned towards that crime, then the person is guilty no matter what the government agents did, there have been a number of cases in which government undercover agents use sex to entrap people to sell drugs

or to do other things and the federal judges said, well, you know, that's not going too far. So it means that you can't trust a woman even if she gives you, well, anyhow, I think you get the chips. Be careful now, Jim, you're going to get us canceled here and be monetized. Oh, oh, hey, hey, I don't let that happen.

I saw your tweet today on your warning from Google. a load of crap. Yeah, well, you better tow the State Department line or no more dollars for you. Although dollars ain't worth what they used to be anyway, so what the hell? Well, it's all Putin's fault. So the thing that happened is you had this Supreme Court defined entrapment almost out of existence. And because of that, there was an explosion and entrapments. You know, after 9-11, the FBI basically had a terror factory as Trevor Erison wrote. But only about 1% of the 500 people who were charged with terrorism offenses after in the decade after 9-11 were actually threats. 30 times as many as those people

were induced by the FBI to behave in ways that prompted their arrest. Yeah. And listen, I know that that's true because I kept up with them all along too and not all two, 50, 300 of them, but as you attest in your article here, the great Trevor Aronson has in his book The Terror Factory, he really goes through a litany of these. And

I actually had a book proposal once upon a time to do a book like this, although no one would take it, and I didn't know I could just do it myself, really. So I didn't. But people might remember, do they remember anymore? Liberty City 7, the Fort Dix, piece of plot, the

JFK Airport, fuel storage depot, the remote control plane attack on the Pentagon, the Christmas lights of Portland, Oregon, the poor kid, Hamid Hyatt out there in Lodai, California, where the FBI informant just infiltrated him and his dad and then trapped this poor, just essentially browbeat this kid into saying something stupid and never even doing anything to anyone. And then, and it just on and on and on and goes, oh, the poor guys of the synagogue plot in Brooklyn, and, you know, all of these things. There's just completely ridiculous entrapments.

and then as Trevor documents they're 250,300 like this where it's just some poor schmuck remember the kid they entrapped on the Brooklyn Bridge they went to the Islamic bookstore and they found the slowest kid there which I don't even know what he was doing at the bookstore you know found the dumbest kid there

and said yeah what you're going to do is you're going to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge here's a blowtorch you know I don't even know if they had him a real blowtorch they just had him agreed to accept one someday or something Yeah. Well, this is, yeah, this is typical of how those plots were hatched. And part of what fascinated me about this case, BuzzFeeds Ken Bensinger did some superb work on talking how the federal judge blocked the defense lawyers from introducing into the evidence of the trial, the vast majority of evidence of how the government had set up the case and set up the defendants. I mean, for instance, BuzzFeed noted the judge.

Hold that thought for just one moment, Jim, so that I can say everyone, it's at BuzzFeed. It's called a stunning surprise in the Michigan kidnapping case by Ken Ben Singer, like Ben Singer, and it does have the litany that Jim's about to describe. Go ahead. Very important. Yeah, there was a quote from that piece noted that the judge ruled that the defendants could not inquire about the past conduct of several FBI. agents, though the government would be allowed to question the defendants about episodes in their past. But luckily, there was enough there that the jury was able to smell a federal rat.

There was some funny details on how this stuff shook out. There was the lead FBI agent who was the so-called face of the entire case against these kidnappers. And there was a wonderful, you know, FBI had trouble with this guy. There was a wonderful phrase in the New York Times that said that, you know, that the lead FBI agent was arrested for beating his wife during an argument over an orgy that the two had attended at a hotel in Kalamazoo, Michigan. So, you know, orgies in Kalamazoo always work out bad. Yes.

You know, you simply have got to avoid any orgy. Especially you invite a bunch of feds to it, you know? well yeah no there's kind of there's jokes i could make but i guess you're trying to avoid getting canceled by google so i'll shut the hell out i don't give a damn screw that man uh go ahead so so it was so it was a totally you know um i'm all in favor of the idea of fully informed juries but what this case illustrated was how the prosecutor is working with the judge can rig what juries learn because there are so many things which are the juries never hear about.

And the BuzzFeed's story had a superb litany of some of the key witnesses that could have testified, but they were threatened by the Fed, so they, you know, in both the Fifth Amendment, stuff like that. And, you know, I mean, not to sound like Pollyanna over here or anything, but some of those things seem like

there must be some kind of, precedent against feds, just looking at a list of defense witnesses and coming up with things to threaten them about in case they're thinking about testifying for the defense. And what the hell

is this? The South or something? Well, it's it was a fascinating piece in BuzzFeed because it really showed you know how the game is played for a high profile

case like this where the feds have put all their prestige on the line and the feds want to do anything to win that nope nope nope muzzle muzzle muzzle so you know so you only hear about the federal agents and then you hear the tapes from some of the dumb things that some of the defendants said I was giving a talk last year to the Maryland LP Maryland Libertarian Party and I was you know there were a number of things like this that were perkling and so I was making the point. If the FBI wants to talk to you, what do you do? You shut the hell up. You know, you get that FBI 302 form. There's no tape recording of what you said. It's your word against the FBI agent and his memo. You're screwed. So, but there were, there were a lot of dumb things that these,

these plotters said, but they would tend to sit around, smoke a lot of dope and then run their mouths. And, you know, I was telling an editor, part of my perspective on this entire case is, I was raised in the mountains of Virginia and I was used to hearing redneck blather and you know redneck oh we're going to do this we're going to blow that out while to HM a lesson. Yeah yeah yeah sleep it off

so but when you got tape recordings when you've got all these all these informants and this you know it can look really bad there was so that was that was some of how the case played out yeah man

it's so funny because this was so obviously a hoax from the beginning, just when you've seen so many of these, but you know what was important here was the timing. This is October 2020. These are all supposedly

a bunch of Trump guys. Can a kidnap and murder the lady governor, huh? Yep, and it was, it played out that way. There were a number of former FBI agents who spoke up as soon as this as soon as this case was announced, there was a

guy. Frank Fagaloozy on MSNBC announced that Trump should be investigated for aiding and abetting the Michigan plot. There were comments, similar, there were comments extreme by Andrew McCabe as well. I don't recall exactly what he said. Governor Whitmer said that, you know, said that Trump, that when our leaders meet with and fraternize with domestic terrorists, they are complicit. So this was a storyline of the same time as early voting was going on. I mean, and there were like, there were like 80 or 90,000 tweets on the day of the announcement of the arrest that said, stop Trump terror. And it got huge play, probably 100 times more than the jury verdicts last week have gotten.

And so, and it was during the early voting, and Biden won the early voting in the presidential race Trump won on the day of election. Trump's campaign wasn't too bright, but that's another story. So, but this is, this is, and it was an intentional effort by the FBI, by at least some FBI officials to, you know, it certainly appears that there was an intentional effort to aid the Biden campaign. Hang on just one second. Hey, guys, I had some wasps in my house. So I shot them to death with my trusty bug assault 3.0 model with the improved assault.

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Real economics. Real education. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, at the same time, the CIA was suppressing the Republicans' October surprise against Hunter Biden with a blatant lie that somehow what? The FSB planted a laptop at this repair shop? They never even said. They said Russian disinformation, even though it never made any sense whatsoever on the face of it, couldn't possibly really be Russian disinformation. But anyway, they completely buried that story with the CIA. Then on the other hand, the FBI is making up one for the Democrats.

And a big one, too. I mean, kidnapping and murdering a lady governor, that's not nothing if it was real and close enough for government work in this case, right? I mean, that's probably a percent or two or three across the board, Jim, right? I don't know how much influence or, I don't know how many votes it swayed, but it certainly added to the narrative that Trump was basically, you know, a total dictator who needed to be taken out of office. So it's interesting with the FBI. This was the second presidential election in a row that they tried to fix. In 2016, they were doing their, Comey was in charge of the investigation of Hillary's emails. And it was such

a sham of an investigation that they never talked to Hillary until the last day of the investigation. And the FBI agents went to meet with Hillary and her top lawyers and her A's, and they sat around the table. There was no video recording. There was no audio recording. And FBI agents later admitted that they planned to absolve Hillary Clinton unless she offered a confession. And so this is how the FBI treated someone who had violated numerous federal laws with her email cover-up, with her server in her home that was not secure. this is how they treated a presidential candidate. It was a complete sham of an investigation.

Well, and they went along with the Democrats' Russiagate hoax from the beginning, too. I mean, they were the primary drivers even more than John Brennan and Clapper and the intelligence guys. It was the FBI counterintelligence division that was really responsible for Russiagate more than anybody else.

Absolutely. So, I mean, it goes back to what Harry Truman said in the 1940s once he was president. And he was, he wrote in his diary, he was worried the FBI becoming an American Gestapo. And it's like, you know, maybe they're not a Gestapo, but they are, they are pulling an awful lot of strains. And to see the, the deference of most of the media coverage, I mean, you get so many Washington reporters who are just kind of standing out outside FBI headquarters waiting for a handout or, or some leak, which they can throw in a headline. So the media has just been, in most cases, worse and useless on the FBI. Yeah.

Oh, of course. They just take anything they say as just absolutely true. In fact, I mean, not just the FBI, but just government itself, too. Like, you know, we don't know it's raining until the, you know, National Weather Service says, so, you know, it seems like it's wet outside. I don't know, you know. But I remember right at the dawn of the wreck of War II When the space shuttle exploded over Palestine, Texas With an Israeli on board

And coincidentally enough And everybody knew the damn space shuttle blew up Jim For like two and a half hours or something Of course it blew up It didn't land on the runway when it was scheduled to land, did it? There's flaming wreckage pouring out of the sky And people like picking it up and holding it in their hands They're dead.

It's over, but the TV and the radio would only say, well, apparently, it seems like there may have been some kind of malfunction or this kind of non-committal language until finally after lunchtime, W. Bush, the president confirmed that the space shell exploded. Only then would they adapt their language from, geez, apparently, allegedly, seemingly, it might have been to like, yeah, of course, the damn thing exploded, you know? Wow. And that was, you know, that's how you know something is true, is when the president says that it is. Yeah, I mean, and that explains everything. Yeah, it's a very interesting standard because something which happens in some crime or alleged crime cases, the, you know, there's, there's slow media comments or specifics because there's concern about libel. But it's not a question of liable when it's, when it's criticizing. the FBI because the great thing about American libel law is that government agencies cannot sue

private citizens. So unlike Britain and some other countries. So I think that's how it works in Britain. I've been wrong before. Yeah, well, they certainly have an official secrets act that's Oh my God. It's horrible. It is horrible. And you know, we do too, right? I mean, our espionage act does go that far in writing. It just hasn't been applied as such until, Sange now, that publishers, too, can be indicted and criminally prosecuted, not just leakers, but leak ease. Well, it's interesting how Julianne the Sange vanished in the memory hall at the same time the Washington Post front pages every day is outraged about atrocities in a foreign war.

Too bad they didn't care about Assange. Yeah, no, they don't give a damn about him. It's amazing. And they must know, like, if anybody understands this, they must know. know the precedent being set, but they're still think they can get away with staying in the government's good graces, rather than standing on principle. It's really, Christ, dude.

Standing on principle. Okay, hell, that's the funniest thing I heard all day. I wasn't sure if you're laughing about good graces on delay there, or, you know, the government's good graces because I think they'll turn on any of their own kept little pets anytime, too, you know? That's just as laughable. Well, it's, I mean, it's a mess at so many different levels. You know, but the system doesn't have the, isn't calibrated to make the self-corrections because the biggest boot lickers rise to the top.

Hey, speaking of which, too. Oh, this is great transition. Okay. Yeah. Well, back to this judge who excluded the entire defense case here. Two questions. First of all, how come there's never even any accountability? This guy, at least he got named in Benzinger's piece.

I'm not sure if he got named in yours, maybe, but they get no publicity. There's never even a fantasy of a daydream of a question of a possibility of accountability for a corrupt federal judge who makes horrible, horrible rulings, excluding a defense case when it turns out the jury agrees they actually didn't do it anyway. Makes him look to me like a co-conspirator in a false prosecution. And this trumped-up entrapment case, he's just a. member of the prosecutor's team.

But, you know, John Oliver's not going to do a special on HBO about how he should be run out of power somehow or some kind of thing. There will be no impeachment hearing for bad behavior by the Senate, right? Like, he just gets to go on being judge Robert J. Junker, right? Yeah. Yes. And I just check in my New York Post piece. The piece did include his name.

Good. But, but. Damn him. But it wasn't a situation of the judge being corrupt. He was simply helping the government win. Oh, that's all. That's his job, after all. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's enough.

Now, here's a, you know, somebody has some interesting comments on Twitter on this. It was saying, like, you know, they saw my piece and they were saying, well, I assume there's going to be a big investigation on Washington on this to find out how all this went down. Yeah. Yeah, I'm on the edge of my chair again on this one. Oh, yeah, thank you. I wasn't able to do the laugh on Q. I got to cover, buddy. I appreciate that.

No, I just, I mean, this is the kind of thing that I would love to see the internal FBI emails and text because there may have been some people in the FBI say, folks, what the hell are we doing here? I mean, this is way over the line. Jonathan Turley had a good column on this a day or so ago where he said it was a case of entrapment, they went far beyond what was, what was, what would be considered a reasonable enticement. So, uh, but I don't, I don't expect any investigations. It might, you know, uh, there's very little, you know, focused, um, pushback against the FBI. I mean, there's been very little effective investigating the FBI for their abuses in Russigate or with a Hillary email, um, you know,

so-called investigation. And, you know, the FBI's got, way with so much they can always say hey it's state secrets go away yeah um so frustrating yeah well and you know they're not the top of my sympathy list but this horrible lady governor and her family probably believed these lies for most of this time right like she's i i don't know i mean it was okay so so there was a story which i did for the american institute uh for economic uh research This is a story which came out on the day after the FBI made the announcement. And the comment, where the hell is my comment on this? It was basically saying that the entire thing sounded like a, you know, like a crock.

I mean, there was this, you know, this crazy stuff about hijacking a Black Hawk helicopter. I love that part. I had some really nasty comments about the case where they edited it out. This is from the story, which I did in October 2020. I'll send a link to Ed. So, but. Yeah, that'll be on show notes, guys. And no question.

I'm sure you were on this at the beginning and no surprise there whatsoever. But, I mean, I think, you know, I don't know about her and her husband, but presumably, like, you know, I don't know. Grandparents and nieces and nephews and kids saw this stuff on TV really had reason to worry that their relation was going to get kidnapped and Lynn. that's kind of a big deal like if you're her 10 year old or whatever I'm just assuming I'm making up a thing but you know what I mean she must have kids and stuff like that

it was pretty scary you know well I mean I will just mention that she's one of Joe Biden's favorite governors oh yeah no question and as you described there

she was absolutely just a totalitarian monster during the lockdown phase and all that so like I said not at the top of my sympathy list but still like you know, kind of extras in the FBI skit that they put on here, right? You know what I mean? With whatever attendant collateral damage still, you know?

Maybe. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how much of what she knew. Okay, so here was my comment on the day after the FBI made the announcement. This is the day after there were 90,000 tweets, stop Trump terror, stop Trump's terror. You know, so I said the alleged Michigan plot is almost. most too idiotic to believe. The alleged conspirators

were poorly planned to kidnap Whitmer, take care to Wisconsin for a private trial. This is on part with the 2006 FBI fabricated plot, Liberty City 7, you know,

where they were talking about blowing up government buildings and the so-called terrorists were so stupid that they asked for terrorist uniforms to hold a parade.

So. Those poor guys. And you know, our friend Margaret Griffiths at anti-war.com She lives in Miami, and she says, oh, yeah, this Liberty 7, Liberty City 7 plot against the Sears Tower is what it was. They're going to blow up the Sears Tower, Chicago. She goes, I got news for you.

Here's the Sears Tower. And she published this on the anti-war.com blog. And it's a three-story building in Liberty City in the ghetto in Miami. And she's like, this is what we call the Sears Tower around here. That's what these guys were talking about. That's what they were trapped and trapped into threatening. Meanwhile, every TV news station in the top of the New York Times says these guys were going to take down the Sears Tower in Chicago, you know? Yeah, there was a PBS was a front line that actually did a superb investigation on how the FBI set up those poor guys.

Only 15 years too late, too. Good for them. Yeah, well, you know, yes, you're right. But yeah, no, I mean, I'm glad that they did take a look at it. And a lot of those guys are still in prison. And we covered this on the show all along. There were great journalists who covered this all along. And, like, there was the one poor guy who had left the group a year prior. And then went ahead and threw him in and indicted him anyway, brought him back.

You know what I mean? Just tried them all together. Just the whole thing was so unfair, dude. Well, it is. Here's $20,000. Say you love Osama into the microphone, dummy. Okay, I love Osama. Gotcha.

Okay. Whatever. You know. Does the FBI just belong in prison for that? Well, this is part of the reason why in my times I've talked to libertarians, I'm just saying, look, you know, watch your mouth. Watch your mouth. You don't know who's going to be taping you. And in fact, because you could have real good guys who went to jail and now the feds are holding something over him.

So he never was a cop before. He's a good guy. But now he's compromised and you don't know. He's working off his plea bargain. He's got to bring in some scalps. Exactly, man. And, you know, it's pretty easy to not threaten violence against people. Just don't do that.

You know, I don't know. Yes, that's a real good standard, you know. Hey, that thing you feel like saying, just say it another way. Oh, okay. It's sort of, yes, yes. I mean, it's a, you know, it's a question of nouns and verbs. That's right. This politician is making me very, very angry.

right now. Just say like that. Call them a bathroom word, you know. Hey, I have another question for you now about this judge and this courtroom and this whole forest of a proceeding here. How in the hell did these guys get acquitted by a federal jury, which is there to convict? Well, they had some good lawyers, and there was one guy who chose to testify. He was warned about that, but he testified, and he apparently connected with the jury. There were four people on trial, two of them were acquitted and two of them, the jury was hung and the feds were going to retry them. But unless the feds can exclude all the evidence next time, I don't think the feds are going to do that well. But there was enough evidence that kind of leaked into the

case and there were enough huge troubles with the FBI on this because, okay, there was an origin Kalamazoo. And then there was a second FBI agent in this case who got sidelined because he was because he set up a side hustle with a cyber security firm that he was running. And there was a third guy who had other legal issues. And it's like, so you have the whole, the whole first team of the FBI is kind of like, well, you know, we can't hear anything from them. So it's just, there are a lot of troubles. Wait, let me make sure I understand it, because this is an important point.

We did talk with Ken about this before on the show about, you're telling me the prosecutor said to the judge, hey judge all of the federal cops who worked on this case we don't want to call any of them to testify as prosecution witnesses we're just going to go with people staff from the office to read off the documents or whatever it is because we wouldn't dare put these guys under oath in your courtroom is that basically what we're talking about here um i think that's overstated i don't think that the feds that the prosecutor said that about all the FBI agents but Oh, it was three of the key ones were, you know, vanished. So, and I think that the lawyers for the defendants were not allowed to say, well, yeah, you know, the origin in Kalamazoo, you know, might have been fun, but, you know, as soon as he got home, you know, beat up his wife. So, you know, I mean, I don't know if she enjoyed it. No, shut out. God dang. I'm sure it wasn't that kind of party, Jim.

I mean until later Yeah Yes anyhow So I'm going back to the high ground here Yes Oh yeah that's where we were This whole time up until just now Hell I think I've caused enough troubles for you and Google

Yeah no it's all right No listen so I mean can you tell me anything about the kid that took the stand here You say he was warned man you shouldn't do that And he got up there and what happened is there a narrative there you know of I would think that the Detroit News or Free Press would have covered it on a daily basis and would probably have a good thing. Ken Bensinger might have had a good summary of his testimony. I was looking at other parts of this puzzle, so I didn't focus on that guy's testimony specifically, but from what I heard, it was affected with the jury.

You know, it's a hell of a thing to be sitting there on trial and your entire life is hanging here by a thread. And you're watching the prosecutors block one move after another, which, which, you know, which could put the truth, you know, which could bring the truth into the case. And instead, you're just, you know, you're sitting there like some parody of yourself. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, enough already. Timed and the War on Terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google Play and whatever other options there are out there.

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Get tickets now. Yeah, I mean, I always wonder about that people on trial who they're innocent and they got their lives in the hands of their lawyers and who could tell your own story better than you. You know, but then, of course, you're opening yourself up to cross-examination and how are they going to spin it and that kind of thing. But it always seemed to me for people who really didn't do it, more risky to let some other guy make your case for you because he's going to miss something. You know what I mean? I guess it depends on who you are. well yeah yeah it's a question of what your background is and what kind of things that the prosecutor might be able to pull into the uh the courtroom as a result of you being on the witness stand so yeah um happily i haven't had to make that decision myself so far yeah i'll tell you what um my whole life for whatever reason i think from saturday morning cartoons or whatever just from the time i was so young the idea of being falsely accused and falsely convicted and just you have your one chance and court but for whatever reason it ain't good enough and off you go like that's the worst fate that's

a fate worse than death go off the reason for decades you got one chance at being a human and and then you spend decades in a cage for some BS because of some job holder you know in fact I've told this story before I don't know if I ever told you either I did walk in on armed robbery and I did end up testifying against that guy although I didn't point my finger at him in court because I didn't get that good of a look at him so i was not willing to swear that that's definitely the guy i wasn't gonna like go you know past you know i'd never turned on a friend or whatever i just walked in on the guy beating the old man with a club over the head kind of well and but i have to say that the prosecutor she was like i don't know 26 or something i met her at starbucks two days before

i told her here's my story and you know me i tell stories pretty well and uh and i don't think i like overdid it like i was explaining the war in yemen or whatever you know what i mean I just told, this is what happened. And then two days later, she's trying to examine me on direct, and I had to do all the storytelling for her. Like, she couldn't even set me up and ask the questions in the right order or anything. And even just set me up to even just say, this is what happened. I walked into the quickie mart.

I passed by the guy and the guys behind the counter. I just assumed they were vendors or something, you know, I don't know. Walked over there to the coffee, started getting my coffee, and then realized like, oh, holy shit, this guy's beating that guy over there. oh no and then there's two of them and one of me so i left and called the cops and that's what i saw and there's the video of that happening just like i described it a second ago and whatever whatever but but um essentially she was completely incompetent is my point she couldn't even direct examine me about what i saw and then i felt bad for the defense attorneys because they

didn't really have anything to work with because i wasn't embellishing my story beyond what was certainly right and i was explaining myself perfectly well on what i did see And so they didn't really have much to work with there. But anyway, that's not the point. The point is the prosecutor, I mean, hell, for all I know, Jim, they did get the wrong guy sitting there. You know what I mean? Like, at least I didn't point my finger at him, but maybe I helped convict the wrong

guy. For all I know, they just found a black guy who was, like, in his early 20s. I don't know. I can't trust him. That's the trial I participated in. And I have my own reasonable doubts. Well, it's probably good you weren't in the jury. I know, I guess.

I would have acquitted the guy. It was good for the prosecutor that you were not in the jury. But, yeah, it sounds like you were very honest, but that wasn't maybe not what the prosecutor wanted. He did have a very unique car. It was Chevy Beretta with the back window blown out, you know. Oh, yeah, back window blown out. That's unusual.

And there ain't too many barretta around. You know what I mean? It's the two-door courts. They don't really make many of those. Okay, well, you know, it's a, um, um, that's interesting. That's interesting. Yeah, I've never, uh, I don't think I've ever testified in the criminal case, so. Yeah.

I mean, and I felt bad doing it because I'm on the side of the government here, but man, whoever it was, like damn near kill that old man. If I hadn't walked in, he probably would have killed them because I'm sure, you know, they split right after I did kind of thing, you know? Well, it's a case for carrying a gun around with you wherever you go, you know? I didn't have one. Yep. Well, I mean, part of the, you know, the backstory in these kind of things is there are bad people out there.

There are some very dangerous criminals who are very violent. And a case like this wrecks the government's credibility. I mean, because this is a problem the FBI's had in a number of court cases is people no longer trust FBI agents, especially when they're not willing do a tape recording of their interviews or people's confessions. That was how the case in Florida with a Pulse Nightclub masker blew up. I did a story for USA Today on that. You had, you know, the feds made this big deal of the widow of the guy that did the killings, and they were trying to say that she was complicit, and then she knew all along.

But, you know, but they hammered her for like, I think, 17 or 18. hours and she didn't have a lawyer and she finally signed this confession and the FBI brought it to her federal trial but it turned out it had all these false statements and the confession that just blew up their case so and it also revealed a lot of things that they had lied about about Omar Mantine the perpetrated there yes about how oh he was mad because radical Islam makes you murder gay people when in fact that had nothing whatsoever to do with it at all they were just the first Google result for Nightclub in Orlando after he gave up on Disneyland, which he was attacking

also not for their gayness, but just because he thought that would be Disney World, I mean, he thought also that would be, you know, the most spectacular attack he could do. And he decided they just had too good as security, too many layers of security to get in there. So he Googled Nightclub and went there. And as far as problems with his sexuality, this way or that, supposed problems as the government had phrased it, she said there was none of that whatsoever. That was a complete hoax perpetrated by the government. And really, you know what? Not to belabor that point, but let's belabor it for a second.

That was such a huge deal. This is a horrific massacre. And one, by the way, with a cops hid in cowardly terror outside like Columbine for hours while people were bleeding to death in there. And they even had cops who were brave enough who were storming in there, and they were going to get this guy or die trying, and they were called back, and they gave up and left. They were inside the place almost to the bathroom,

when they were called back. And then the cops stayed outside for hours while people bled in there. It was this horrific massacre, this huge trauma, like akin to the Oklahoma bombing or some kind of thing like this, completely just insane, you know, kind of mini-September 11th kind of a thing.

You know, really bad, though. And it was all, oh, oh, the terrorist enemy hates gay people. So now you have, you know, if anybody in America is soft on the terror war, it's the leftists, like to the left of the liberals, right, where a lot of the homosexual, you know, political lobby and whatever is really, you'd call them progressive or socialist or leftist, more than just liberal, you know.

And then, so their kind of opposition to the terror war got completely neutralized right there, that, ah, see, the enemy hates you for who you are. It's not just about those, you know, office workers in New York or those generals at the Pentagon. It's you just for waking up in the morning. And that's whose side you need to be on now is the American military side in this war. And that was just this huge, you know, de facto siop, if not like, direct one there in its effect that it had on, you know, the American political psyche at that time. It was terrible. And it was all pure life. Okay. But there is a huge detail that you're leaving out here. And that was the father of the shooter of the Poles Night Club was a long-term FBI informant who may have helped protect his son because his son was saying. and doing all kinds of stuff that was putting him on the law enforcement radar, he was

trouble. I mean, he's the kind of person that the feds, that police would have been justified in doing a lot more on before his mass killing. But his father was a long-term FBI informant, and that's something which came out in the trial. Yep. And then remind me on the details of when the gun shop was real suspicious about this guy and refused to sell him a rifle and called the FBI and gave them his name and said,

What's the deal with this guy, right? Didn't some like that? You remember the decent? There was, there were all kinds of warning flags, but perhaps because of his father's connections. You know, he was not, you know, he was not treated like a, like a typical private citizen would have been treated in a case like this. That's our security force for you right there. And then there's a Las Vegas masker, but that's too much. Well, I don't know enough about that.

Why don't you tell me some things? I got to tell me. Oh, I don't know. So, FBI, you know, so how many people were shot? How many hundred people were shot? FBI claims that they do a thorough investigation for a long time and then they come out with a three-page summary. Nope, didn't find anything about motive, didn't find anything.

And people let the FBI get away with that. That's incredible. Do you have an idea of what really went on there? Well, revisionist journalism about what may have gone on there or anything? Well, Scott, according to my inside sources, I don't know. I don't know. But it's just, you know, that's an awful lot of dead bodies, an awful lot of wounded folks, and to have no answers. I mean, it was the biggest terrorist attacks since 9-11.

And we really know almost nothing about it. Yeah, pretty crazy. Well, you know, back years ago when I first started doing this show, 19 years ago, right around then, I interviewed Frederick Whitehurst, who is the FBI whistleblower from the crime lab who said that they manufactured evidence in the case of Waco and Oklahoma City. And I forgot there was one more, but I'm not certain. And I interviewed him a few times. And I talked to him on the phone, too, a couple of times. And I remember him explaining to me that, you know, the FBI, I'm putting words his mouth here. It's not an exact quote, but to paraphrase essentially that. That it's a cult, right?

as a member of the FBI, it's like you're hazed into this fraternity kind of a thing where you have this like overriding, like almost religious sort of loyalty to the institution itself. And it's not to the United States of America. And it's not to the American people. It's to the Bureau.

And the Bureau is job one. And protecting the Bureau is job one. And your role as an agent of the Bureau and all of this thing. And it's almost like Scientology or whatever kind of deal where it's just, it has, it's such a thorough value system that it precludes all other values kind of a way of putting it. You know what I mean?

It's the only thing that matters. And so if that means they've got to cover up the Oklahoma bombing, then they'll cover up the Oklahoma bombing. You know, whatever it is, they don't give a damn. If it means preventing Donald Trump from getting reelected, they'll frame some guys for trying to kill the governor of Michigan. They'll go for it, you know? And I guess there's not anyone even who works there who goes, wow. Should we maybe not do this? You know what I mean?

Like, they're all in. They go for it. I don't know. My impression is that there are some FBI agents who have, you know, have maintained a moral compass and do and have pushed back a little bit against some of these things. And maybe they have been spoken out. But they certainly have not been welcomed on Capitol Hill. And, you know, it's been so politicized. and it's frustrating that there's so little investigation about the FBI's role in the most recent two

presidential elections because that is the biggest thing that strikes me about this Michigan case is this you know this this whole kidnapping Whitmer plot was a crock of a total crock from the start and yet folks who you know it doesn't seem to be holding anybody's attention in Washington there are real questions about what the FBI was doing to influence the 2020 election. And yet, you know, crickets. Yep, it just goes on. Well, that's why we're here at least. And, hey, good for you.

You put this in Alexander Hamilton's New York Post. That gets a lot of eyeballs. It's not exactly the Washington Post, but it's better for some things. That's for sure, you know? Well, I was glad the others liked the story, and it has some great artwork. It's the story in the printed paper is almost two full pages Because it's got this great artwork that's like a full page They have great artists there and great editors

Oh well that's good to hear Yeah well that the art didn't make it into the online version But it's still a very good and thorough one And one for sharing with your friends and family here Check it out inside the FBI's infiltration and entrapment Of a Michigan militia crew by Jim Beauvard at the New York Post Thanks, Jim. Hey, thanks a lot, Scott.

Hell yeah. The Scott Horton show, Antivore War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, antiwar.com, Scotthorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.