Episode 1313: The Golden Age of Fraud w/ Fr. Emmanuel Lemelson
00:00You know,If you want to get the show early and ad-free, head on over to the Pekkinionez Show.com.There you can choose from where you wish to support me.Now listen very carefully.I've had some people ask me about this, even though I think on the last ad I stated it prettyclearly.If you want an RSS feed, you're going to have to subscribe through.substack or through Patreon. You can also subscribe on my website, which is right there,
01:07Gumroad, and what's the other one? Subscribe Star. And if you do that, you will get access to theaudio file. So head on over to the piccunioness show.com. You'll see all the ways that you can supportme there. And I just want to thank everyone. It's because of you that I can put out the amount ofmaterial that I do, I can do what I'm doing with Dr. Johnson on 200 years together and everythingelse, the things that Thomas and I are doing together on continental philosophy. It's all becauseof you. And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank you enough. So, um, thank you.The Pekignano Show.com. Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show.I'm here with Father Emmanuel Lemelson. Are you done, Father?
01:56Thank God, Peter. Doing very well.and very happy to join your show thank you so much for the invite of course of course you werejust you just appeared on my friend buck johnson's podcast and um yeah we're going to talk about adifferent subject than then you guys talked about but before we do that please introduce yourselfyeah so my name's father emmanuel lemelson uh i'm a greek orthodox priest but i'm also an activistinvestor. I'm also a writer. We have a substack that we recently started that you can see therebelow my name, lemelson.substack.com. And I've been a priest for I guess about 15 years, but had aprior to that as an entrepreneur and an academic. As a young person, I thought I'd be a teacher,
02:41a professor, something of that issue, but life took me in a different place. And as an Orthodoxpleasure, like many Orthodox pleasure, I'm actually married with a family. So for the Catholicsout there, it may seem a little different, but most of our clergy are married.You sent me a video that, I guess it was an interview you did, but it's actually well produced.And it looks like the first minute and 55 seconds is a really good introduction.This isn't something I normally do on the show, but I think this is a good way to kick off the, kick off the conversation.So let me play this.Absolutely. Let's get some popcorn.
03:15All right.You trust in the market.You believed in justice.Nicola shares are tumbling after a short seller called.the company, quote, an intricate fraud built on dozens of lies.Then the unthinkable. A giant fell. Billions vanished. Trevor Milton, a name whispered,then shouted across Wall Street. In a lifetime of listening to stories aboutinnocent people wrongly prosecuted, I have never heard anything like what happened to Trevor
03:47Milton. He cried foul, a quote, hit piece. He called it a deep state conspiracy,orchestrated by, quote, evil forces.So a shortseller is a person or a fund that actively bets against you that your stock is going to collapse.So unlike a regular investor that buys shares and they hope that the stock goes up, shortsellers buy shares and they force it down.So it's like a, it should be, it should be completely illegal.What was your reason for pardoning Trevor Milton?But what of the very architects of the accusation?the true manipulators what if that quote hit piece was a spotlight in a world drowning in distorted
04:31narratives one unlikely voice rises a man who exposed the real corruption she understands theirplaybook the lies the leverage the ruthless quest for power this guy uh he's a greek orthodoxpriest able to work and be a man of the cloth this is actually kind of like the opposite of wolfof wall street where he was uh belfort was trying to like promote the stocks and then sell out beforeeveryone else did this is you know the you know the inverse of that where you're you're taking ashort position you're betting against and then trying to put to push the stock down silence for goodkill the messenger they will fight they will deceive because when the truth is an inversionnothing is as it seems this is part one if yeah that was a lot yeah just a little bit
05:23going on there. I remember that Trevor Milton episode. Why don't you, why don't you kick in and givesome background about, you know, exactly what we're going to talk about here. Yeah. So when I sawthat Trevor Milton episode on Tucker Carlson, I, I was, I woke up in the middle of night andjust it came up in my beat or something on X and I started watching. I was outraged becauseMilton was being presented as this sort of faultless guy. Now, I'm not here to pass judgment on onthere. Relitigate his case, he was already found guilty of fraud, and he was exonerated by Trump,so to speak. But what really drove me nuts is that the lawyer he hired to help get him clearedwas Brad Bondi, the brother of the sitting attorney general Pam Bondi, who incidentally was the same
06:12lawyer responsible for my unlawful prosecution. And I was struck by Milton because, one,I mean, reading the reports on his conduct and his history,It looks to me like the jury probably got it right in his case.And I wanted to find, I wanted to be a sympathetic viewer, frankly.You got to understand that, you know, the saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.So we're talking about the U.S. government here.I'm not shedding any tears for the U.S. government.But this guy, I mean, what he was doing was unbelievable.
06:41And for Tucker to come on and basically say the short sellers who do some of the best research out there are these bad dudes who are manipulating them are, is just so far removed from the truth.It just was infuriating.But getting back to Bondi, you know, Bondi will deny this.He'll say, oh, he had nothing to do with Trevor Milton's pardon,but I'm very suspect of that.I would bet if I had to that he was 100%, 1,000% the person responsible for his pardon.And as I said, same person responsible for ensuring that I face 10 years of unlawful prosecutionby the U.S. government for exposing a fraud in the pharmaceutical industry.
07:16So, you know, to the extent your listeners are interested in what really is the deep state,you know, it's not, it's not a theory, it's not this thing that people think might exist.I've sat across the table from this Bondi character, and I know how that family operates.And, you know, with the Epstein files coming up again in the public purview, and this problemof all his redacted files, it just reminded me when I was exposing the ligand fraud.The pharmaceuticals, the fraud I exposed.And I just remember Brad Bondi redacting all these files and clawing them back and hiding the fraudso that this sort of unlawful prosecution could move forward.
07:52Anyways, ultimately, I took on the government, one, after over a decade, and spent a pittancecompared to Milton.Milton spent apparently like $180 million, both of Nicola's cash and his own.He cashed out almost a billion dollars from the IPO, created no real enduring value.Obviously, Nicola went bankrupt, but lost.And he's on Tucker Carlson crying, like a little baby, basically.And Tucker is a sympathetic guy.I'm thinking, what is going on here?
08:19This is ridiculous.So it's a complete inversion of the truth.And I watched, I just got in fear.I'm like, you know, I'm going to make a podcast episode about that.It was intended to be a three-part episode.That was part one.We never actually got to parts two and three.I might still make them.
08:31But I just thought, I know your listeners might be interested in the story because thisBondi family, they're like the definition of parasite on our government and on our society,the harm they do from the shadows.You know, a lot of people don't, nobody really knew Pam Bondi very well prior to her appointmentis the Attorney General unless you followed the Epstein Saga in Florida before it became a nationalheadline. But the way they operate these people in the Showsy's attorneys, they're not reallypolitical operatives, believe it or not. I mean, they are sort of in a way, but they don't takea political position. I think you don't actually care about anything. Their God is actually
09:02money and power, and they'll probably sell, not probably, they'll sell their own mother actuallyto increase their power or their money. So I have firsthand experience with the same players involvedin the Nikola's saga. The Lawson versus the U.S. government, not as well known, butJust I thought it was absolutely ridiculous that episode that Tucker Carlson produced.He might be a good guy.I don't know, but he got it dead wrong on that episode.One thing you said there, short selling.Yeah.
09:31I mean, I understand what short selling is.It's betting against the, you believe that a stock or a future,any kind of instrument is going to go down.So you borrow money to sell it, basically.basically that's well you borrow the security you borrow the security so you mayremain right you do that but right you borrow the security so there's a differencebetween doing that and doing things like what the who is that guy I can't remember thethe billionaire Zionist who Tucker is always talking about Bill Ackman yeah who
10:13purposely they will seek to destroy acompanies, you know, short the stock and then seek to destroy a company's reputation in orderto, you know, make, make millions and billions off of that. I mean, short, there's a differencebetween short selling, me sitting here and saying, you know, I think, I think Apple's going down,so I'm going to bet against it. And somebody who has the powers absolutely destroy the reputationof a company, thus tanking the stock that they've already shorted to the tune of millions, right?Well, you're leaving one thing out of that.You're leaving out accounting fraud.
10:53Now, you're referring probably to one of his more high profile shorts, which was herbal life.And look, I'm not a huge fan of Bill Ackman.I think he's a pretty smart guy.I also think he's kind of a pretty boy.I mean, I don't know.He looks like that really soft hands, but I'm not here to judge.The bottom line is he was actually in on the pharmaceutical jig that I was shorting.So his investment, he was long, valid.
11:17which had the exact same business models like in pharmaceutical and I'll tell you theseSOBs in the pharmaceutical industry they prey on the sick and the dying the most vulnerable in oursociety now you might say what's a priest doing on Wall Street fine I get it but you know becausethat brings up the issue of usury and Christianity and the whole history and all that let's putthat aside for a minute but if you come across an accounting fraud and you're a fiduciaryfirst of all you have a civic moral and ethical responsibility to expose it now if you're also a fiduciaryoverseeing capital and you're let me tell you something with accounting frauds the chickens alwayscome home to roost they're actually guaranteed returns when you're right so if you're a fiduciary
11:57you're overseen capital and you come across a fraud then you've got a responsibility a fiduciaryresponse to your investors to also short it so i always wonder when people criticize short sayswell they just trash companies ruin their reputation if that company is a fraud you're nottrashing or ruining their reputation you're exposing the fraud and in fact the gospel sayshave nothing to do with the fruitless acts of darkness, rather expose them.So Bill Ackin plays both sides of it, as far as I can tell.He was actually right about Herbalife, though he lost a fortune on it.I agree with him.
12:26Herbalife was a pyramid scheme preying on vulnerable customers.If you can call him, we should call him victims, actually.But then he was completely indifferent on his valiant investment, which also lost a fortune.So he knew what he was buying in value.You know, he testified before, Conner, I didn't know what was going on.The drug price increase had.No idea. Give me a break. The guy is not dumb. He's a lot of things, but he's not dumb.And so, you know, I don't like that kind of investing where you take no moral position on anything.
12:55And, you know, sometimes I think you can tell the people who take the least ethical or moral stand, Pete, by how wealthy they become because they're compromising all along the way.It's the guys who won't compromise who don't make billions because they put their foot down when they come across something that's wrong.And no matter what the cost is, they're not willing to be silenced.No, it makes sense that if you find out that a company is committing fraud, which at this point,I have to wonder how many big companies aren't.Well, I always say, would have been a golden age of fraud.It's gotten out of hand.It's embarrassing.
13:35It's a totally embarrassing place.I mean, our country, we used to care.We used to have guidelines.We've got a completely corrupt regulator.See, it's the most corrupt regulator in the U.S.I mean, that's a remarkable statement given the fact that D.C. is such a swamp.But the SEC has powers that no other branch of government has.They can silence speech.
13:56Most people don't know that.It's really, really unique.They were given a statute by Congress called Rule 10B, and they created a rule from,well, they were given a piece of legislation called 10B, and they made it rule 10B5,which allows them to silence me.That's why CEOs are so careful in Congress calls, what they say, what they don't say.The SEC can silence people, and they try to silence me.and let me tell you something you know plato once said there's nobody more hated than he who speaks the truth
14:19all you have to do to get the government's wrath upon you speak the truth and uh there's so much broadit's so endemic you know what i i wrote open letters to congress about the ligand fraud the company went on tocollapse like 70 80 percent lost billions of dollars shareholders got wiped out it was a total blood bathbut these the executive management team john higgins the CEO and a lot of his executives were able to selltens of millions of dollars of stock before the stock crash because Brad Bondi co-opted the governmentto hide their fraud. So while they publicly accused me of being one of these short sellersyou're describing what they call short and distort is the term for it, where you're puttingout misleading information to crash the stock price, when in fact I was putting out the most,
15:00the best research on the company you could find anywhere in the fraud they were committing,they actually insulated the ligand fraud, got the SC to publish completely and knowingly falseinformation about their financial condition. The insiders all sold.and the thing collapsed.Go figure.How much short and distortment?It's that corrupt. It's that corrupt.It's so bad.
15:20If you saw the heart of Wall Street from where I've said, what I've seen, you might never,ever go near it again.How much short and distort goes on?Almost none.There's been four short and distort cases brought by the SEC since its inception.The other, I was, I think I was the fourth one.Maybe I was the fifth.We researched almost, we researched almost a thousand cases.
15:42It's very rare. They all have the same profile. Usually somebody publishes under a pseudonym, meaning you don't know who's publishing it. They will use derivatives to amplify the leverage. And they'll hold the position usually for about 15 minutes after a breaking news type story. So for example, the other three cases are cases like this. Somebody comes out and says, the CEO of Microsoft was just assassinated on Twitter. And like just moments before that, he takes out all these options, right, on the stock price went down. He disseminates it to 50s.analyst on Wall Street. The stock crashes. He covers it. Makes a killing. Disappears. Nobody knowswho he has. He uses a pseudonym. I published under my own name, held my position for fourmonths, published 55 pages of research, made over 900 allegations of business accounting andsecurities fraud, including two open letters to Congress. I hid nothing. They couldn't findanything wrong. They had to lie and manipulate to try to make it appear as if I said,and by the time we got to trial, you know what they told the jury. They said, it might be accurateor true statements, but it's still misleading.
16:43What the hell does that mean?When was accurate and true misleading?Accurate and true cannot be misleading.I was charged for statements I made about a company.I never even traded in.That sounds extremely Talmudic to me.Well, you know, I'm going to tell you something interesting.I don't, I don't know, it's like an anti-Semite.
16:59I'm not.But all the lead prosecutors in that case were, they were Jewish.They also were very anti-Christian.They also are extremely liberal left.the whole SEC at that time had become an infestation of LGBTQ ideology rainbow flags everywhereand inclusion parties and you're asking what does this have to do with policing markets nowbut in all fairness i'm going to say my lawyers were also some of my lawyers are also jewishand they were great lawyers i'm just want to put that on the record i had a great litigator
17:28representing me and so you know the the the whole thing though like at the SEC like it was soanti-christian like like they leaked brad they leaked to brad bondie who had like a hit piece writtenabout me a wall sheet journal and bloomberg and like bloomberg polishing are like three big crosseson golgotha and like they would be asking questions like do you think you're jesus christwhat does this have to do with my research report on the ligand fraud you know it was like it wasinsane like absolute insanity pete and um the CEO of that company i'm going back to him for a secondjohn higgins and his i r rep this guy named bruce was i remember sitting in the trial and uhone of my lawyers in order, he goes, he's like, these guys are totally gay. I'm like,
18:10wow, you know, I think he's right. It never, never occurred to me. I mean, the guy's blaminggay. And so I realized they have this, like, they're like in their 50s. They're like these angrygay men. They're like, they hate the church probably. They certainly hated me. And, you know,I'd expose their fraud. And they were able to have successfully vis-a-vis Brad Bondi, co-op the entireUS government to try to silence me. When I say silence, I don't throw that word around lightly, Peter.we uncovered an email during discovery from the executive's company saying lemelson this is a quoteneeds to be silenced for good what does that mean to you that's how la cosonostra talks that's who you'redealing with now incidentally and you can look this up online i'm sorry well when you say cosonostra i'm
18:54like well yeah it has one meaning i mean it's an ethnic mobAny mafia could talk that way.It could be the Asian mafia.Sure, of course.And anyway, the point is that a guy who lived not far from where I lived in Vermont at the time had my same legal first name.My legal name is Gregory.My baptismal, my ecclesias name is Emmanuel.His name was Gregory.
19:18Gregory Davis.You can look them up.Family man, just like me.Beautiful children.Same age in his 40s.He was a whistleblower on another pharmaceutical company just like me.I submitted five whistleblower reports on Ligin.Now, the SEC says they protect whistleblowers.
19:33And these people at Ligon, who had all sorts of conflicts of interest, the co-heads of enforcementat the time, Steve Pekin and Stephanie Avakian, that was their names.Pekin had been working for Novartis, which was Ligens licensee.It was making a billion dollars at the time off this drug promacta that I said it was worthlessand that they were just basically preying on the sick and the dying with a worthless drug.Anyways, he approves the case against me.Brad Bondi's involved.Bradbony was a formal, former high-ranking official.
20:01In fact, he was counsel to the current chairman of the SEC, Paul Atkins.So he's been around the city for like 20 years.Everybody knows him.He opens and closes the doors.It's a revolving door between these, you know, white shoe law firms on Madison Avenue and the SEC.So he gets his case approved.At first, Ligon brings it to the SEC.They're like, we're not going to touch it.
20:17He did the guy didn't say anything wrong.Then they hire Brad Bondi.Case gets brought right away.He goes.He calls his pals.They approve the whole thing.At all right, Greg Davis gets two bullets in the head.So when they're saying we want to silence Lemelson for good,
20:31like it's sort of serious so you know absolute tragedy and you know i know his widow and um you knowwhen they say they wanted to be silenced for good and again the CEO of that company you can lookit up it's in the vermont court system he's actually i think you just got a life sentencehe was a turkish guy but again it's really weird like a gay guy i don't really understandif there's a coincidence or what's going on but like these are angry gay men in their 50s whohate um i guess truth honesty i'm not sure what it is they love fraud but the whole pharmaceuticalindustry is just an infestation of terrible, terrible business conduct. And anyone who tries toexpose it is really at great risk. And that's what I was caught up in. And then you've got these
21:10scrupulous attorneys, you know, these attorneys who have no moral compass at all, like Bradbony.They're paid, you know, tens of, they're in an eight-figure range, what they're getting paid.And they'll make anything happen to silence the critics. So it's a really, it's like a veryunholy alliance, you could say. It's far outweighed that somebody,if somebody is being prosecuted or being persecuted by the SEC,if they're trying to expose,if they're exposing fraud,if you're trying to expose fraud,
21:43you have a much better chance of being prosecutedthan if you're actually committing fraud.I mean, it's a thousand percent.You know, look, there's tons of pump and dumps going on.In fact, the lagging case was a pump and dump.It was an inversion of the truth.They put out the headlines.It was a shortest court.
21:59It was actually the SEC.helping lag in insiders pump the stock price up so they could sell we've got a great presentationon our website you can look up on mvona.com it's a mvona.com and we have got a link to the wholepresent all the evidence there it's like a hundred page deck it's really fascinating if you'reinto accounting fraud and stuff and how the SEC is a completely captured regular I mean theywork they're they totally work for the pharmaceutical industry or whatever big interest isyou know willing to pay these lawyers to open the doors for them but you know at the end of theday we had ligand on the stand in court admitting to trading helping hedge funds trade on material
22:37non-public information that's insider trading the transcripts are right there there was a hedgeone called cardinal capital they actually went out of business because when you're dishonestthat's what happens to you they had an 80 million dollar long position in ligand and we actuallyshow the emails could see you could see the emails of lagging giving them in inside informationmaterial non-public information so they could trade on it to try to push the stock price up totry to squeeze my short position. Completely, without question, illegal. So when I'm watchingthis Tucker Carlson episode with Trevor Milton, I'm like, is this even real? I couldn't figure out.I'm like, is Tucker dumb? Is he corrupt? I couldn't put my finger on it. I mean, I just, I could not
23:15understand for the life of me because I know all the prominent short sellers. And I'm telling you,Peter, they do the very best work on All Street. There's always going to be some bad apples.And there have been apparently a handful. You could count on one hand. And they were,prosecuted and they succeeded in those prosecutions they clearly did things wrong but byin large the short sellers are the ones doing the best work because you know what peter they canlose an infinite amount when you're long as stock you can lose 100 when you're short there's nolimit on how much you can lose so you've got to be right and most of the guys out thereand how short selling is basically dead right now because partly because of the lemelson case it
23:50scared it scared the hell out of short sellers when the government came after meand then the doj opened an investigation to several other prominent short sellers and then thethey, you know, got very scared.So it's almost like the government sending a message, like get the, the short sellersout of the way because they're doing the best work, and then you can create this, what I calla golden age of fraud, which is what we're seeing right now.And it seems that they have, I mean, Bill Ackman has got out of the short selling businessa long time ago, but he wasn't good at it, to get it with.
24:21Well, okay.He lost millions.The whole gay angle makes a whole lot of sense.these are people who they're not going to have children so they can devote their whole they candevote their whole lives to hate no marriage is the natural course of things and when you don't dothat you get a very frustrated man to be sure unless he's deeply religious the amount andespecially in the GOP the amount of gay men in GEO I mean people think that this islike the left in america like it comes up with a meme of some sort but no when there are like
25:06gop events or conservative events in like cities no the grinder app does actually crash wellyeah and you have to ask you you have to ask yourself if you actually believe that you'rethese people are out here working for you oh they're going to fight for youyou know, in an age of fraud, as you're describing, why are there, and it's all about family valuesand being right wing and being Christian and being, you know, T.P. USA, all this stuff. Why are thereso many homosexuals just infested in this? I don't know the answer to that question, Peter.I can tell you, though, at the SEC when I was there, every woman was butch. I can tell you right now,It was like the woman who was, like, charged with interrogating me.
25:57Her name is Virginia Rosado DeSolette.You can look at her up on LinkedIn.And they deposed me for 47 hours.You know Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Shthrano, she's in jail right now?She was deposed for four hours.Bernard Madoff, I'm sure you've heard of him, deposed for zero hours.47 hours.The only thing left for him to do was to waterboard me and call out German Shepherds and, like, put a spotlight out in my face.
26:17Anyways, this woman, Virginia, Virginia Rosado disloist, foul woman.She's all of like four and a half feet tall, five feet tall.like just foul like just complete i mean i was like if she's married man i feel sorry for her husbandthen i realized i'm like there's no way she's married and i started looking around me and i'm likethey're all like they're all gay and lesbian and then like you go on their website and they havethis video they'd play like it was super disturbing we actually did two other episodesabout my unlawful prosecution episodes 29 parts one and two so that's 29 part one episode 29part two uh before we did this episode on the travel milton connection with brad bondie
26:54and we actually captured a video they've since taken down off their website it's the biggestLGBTQ propaganda video you'll ever find in your life and it's really disturbed because not only showall these gay men at the SEC on his game so you might say father male is little crazy he's just talkingabout all these things he perceives but no they're openly promoting it it's not like it's up for debateit's not my opinion it's not subjective but um you know it's kind of disturbing because they show allthese men then like with these children around them it's like wait a second here this is reallydisturbing. Like, where is this going? So, you know, if you think the SEC is there to regulateand police the markets, like you'd be profoundly confused. It really has nothing to do with that.
27:28It's, it's, well, you know, in the scripture, in the Holy Scripture, we say that it's beensaid that sinfulness is lawlessness. So there is a connection between living a lack of sinand living in lawlessness, a complete disregard for the law. So the SEC has a total disregard forthe law. Everyone who was involved in my prosecutor, the lead prosecutor, the lead prosecutor,Mark Jones. And it was hilarious, too, because when I started naming people after I was winningand stuff, we wanted the trial. It was incredible trial because the SEC, the jury completely ruledagainst them all of fraud allegations. And they still put out a press release saying I was foundliable for a scheme to do fraud, completely false statement. And they won't take it down to this day.
28:09They got four false press releases out there. So that didn't work. So then they tried to drag me throughthis administrative process to try to bar me from the industry. They felt more, you know, unlawful.pleadings and what's called ultra virus lawsuits they went and actually filed another lawsuitagainst me without even getting commission approval which is completely illegal so um this guy markjones jewish guy i never mentioned that before today his first time i mentioned since you brought it upand his partner al day i mean that really pretty quite effeminate so you've got the mask in the feminineroles there at any rate he gets all offended i start bringing up his name and i'm thinking he's likeoh you're an anti-semit i'm like i never i didn't even know you're jewish till you accuse me of that but it makes
28:49perfect sense because like everyone else is in you know and uh it's just man what a what a what awhat a circus p you know what a you know what a circus but you know i'll tell you something 98of people targeted by they see settle and uh there's this guy leon kuperman you might have heardhis name you knew bill actman billionaire i think he's worth about four he was about fourbillion dollars when he was charged by the sea i don't know if he was really guilty or not hemight have been it kind of seemed to me he was actually but anyways he goes on bloomberg and theythe legendary investor Leon Cooperman.You're like, oh, this guy's so great.
29:20He's legend.He's got actually mediocre returns.And he's literally, I'm not kidding you, literally crying.He's crying on TV.Like, I don't know what the thing with grown men crying is.I guess it's like a thing that's been occurring in our society.But I'm like, dude, you're worth $4 billion.You have complete D&O insurance to cover you to defend you against the SEC.
29:39He's like, I'm never going to settle.And then he settles.I think he paid him like $160 million or something.I don't know the exact amount, but he totally settles.I'm like, you know, what a wimp.What a weak man.You know, I didn't have $4 billion to defend against you.I gave away most of what I owned when I was young.
29:53And you know what?I still bought them for a decade and won.And you know, that's after Bloomberg, did one hit piece after that.I mean, you saw it in that first two minutes of that show.That was an episode Bloomberg did on me.You know, I called the producers and the editors.I said, you know, why don't you put me on that show?Let me tell my side of story.
30:11Oh, no, no, we're never going to do that.Really?That's great.Anyways, so a lot of these presentations Brad Bondi created for the SEC were full of lies.And it's interesting because we were able, he's also a super sloppy attorney.I call him sloppy Brad Bondi because he gave us all these documents we weren't supposed to get.And two of the really important things came out of that.One was that, you know, they were using this drug to prey on the sick and the dying.
30:34And they gave us by accident, Brad Bondi gave us by accident this president called Project Goldmine.And it was a meeting between Ligon and Novartis.And Novartis is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world discussing how they'regoing to pray on people who are dying from a serotic liver from hepatitis C. Hepatitis C had been curedby Gilead Sciences at the end of 2013. And that was the focus of my reports. Not only their financialmalfeasance, but they're ethical failures. So I would go to the hospital. I'd be praying for the sickand then dying. And these people were going to the hospital and saying, how do we squeeze the lastbuck out of them we can because they're so vulnerable? And so they were feeding them this drug that had
31:11no therapeutic value at all. Tremacta. They had a curable disease. So voluble.was the drug that Gilead developed, that totally cured hepatitis C, which I don't know if youknow this, but prior to the pandemic was killing more people every year than any virus in theworld. So when it was cured, it was like a cure for polio. It was like, it was like a miracledrug. And so, but Ligon and Ovaranus went on to make billions of dollars off promacta, even thoughit was totally worthless. So one, I got a hold of the project goldmine, which reallyexposed the whole racket. And then it was funny because we could see these emails between theexecutives at Ligon. They're like, how could this priest have the high returns he has? It's not
31:41possible. He's ranked consistently, one of the top hedge fund managers in the world. He must becommitting fraud. So we just got to find the fraud. And it's funny because we got all theseemails that they tried to call back and we can't find the fraud. Everything seems to like out andhe publishes his audit reports and it was really quite funny. So really, you know, just anunbelievable thing. And then, you know, I thought more about it as Pam Bondi sort of ascendedto power. And then what happened is that Brad Bondi started getting all of his clients. LikeBrad Biden never, he couldn't win cases save his life. He's he's not smart at any way. He's just corrupt.So all he can do is operate in the shadows.
32:15And then all of a sudden,his sister becomes Attorney General and his clients are like the Nicola founder,Trevor Milton, get pardoned.It wasn't just him.He had like five people card pardoned like successively.You're like, well, that's an incredible track record.It's probably one for the Guinness Book of World Record.Like no attorney in history has had five of their clients pardoned in succession like that.
32:31Caroline Amnesty was another one.Anyways, it's just hilarious because he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room,but the whole world can kind of see what he's doing.but you know it just just blows my mind the corruption you know pete that that goes on and it reallyit irks me though as a priest and put aside being a priest as a man i mean what kind of man wouldyou be if you saw this fraud and you let it happen like see bill actman that's why i don'trespect him because he invested in valiant he knew exactly what they were doing ligand was a feedercompany for companies like valiant they would find these old obscure molecules like promacta
33:07and they get what's called the Orphan Drug Act designation,which gave them like patent-like protections,and they could just jack the price up.So we hear a lot about how Scott Bessent was brought in to fix the financial systemand how Jerome Powell has to go at the Federal Reserve,even though he seems to be the best Federal Reserve chairman since Volker, in my opinion.Is there any fixing this financial system?Is there anything that can be done to fix this financial system other than burn it to the ground?
33:47Yeah, I think that ship has sailed, Peter.I think you've got to burn to the ground.Not literally.Obviously, we're speaking metaphorically.But, you know, in 1928, 1999, things got out of hand like this.People were openly running syndicates and insider trade agents was crazy.And, you know, this institution, usually institution.The institutions, the older they get, the more corrupt they become.
34:11Modern Wall Street is not that old, but it's old enough that, I guess, the corruption is compounded.And then you've got a government that increasingly has been pretty much run and controlled by big Wall Street banks.You know, look at the Goldman Sachs alumni in powerful positions for the last couple of decades.So, you know, I don't see how they can fix it.You can't send, you know, box to watch the henhouse.people think that this that not only the financial system but the system itself can actually be fixedand when you you have a system that's run by that's infested with homosexuals first of allI mean I'm sorry the Lord's not going to bless that you know I think the key thing is really
34:58that movement says it all it's pride is the issue you know peoplesay, well, we're Christians, we love the sinner. That's not exactly right. We love a repentancesinner. Like the God loves a repentance sinner is what we learn. You cannot say that, I mean,who amongst us is without sin? None of us, right? But it's one thing to say, I feel regretand remorse for my sins, and the other to say, I'm proud of my sins. So they'll tell you whatthe main sin is. It's not, their main sin is not sexual misconduct. The main sin is pride over theirsexual proclivities, that is actually the more serious one, which can't be seen. It's in the heart.It precludes repentance. We can repent from any sin, and we're all guilty of them,
35:46heterosexual, homosexual, whatever. Only God can judge, but when you're proud, then you cutyourself off from the very thing that you need, which is God's love. Without repentance,we can't even begin to taste the sweetness of God's love. Yeah, it's a system that's basedbuilt on everything there there's nothing there that can be considered to beholy or set aside the people still fighting for it I can understand fighting for yourpeople fighting for your ethnos fighting for your nation a nation being apeople fighting for your your fellow co-religionistsfighting for this thing that is beyond this is beyond saving and you know you don't want to say that
36:44about a person ever that they're beyond saving but when you you can look at an institution you canlook at a structure you know you can there there will come a time when this house will be beyondsaving and will need to be we'll need to be torn down and rebuilt andwe're probably there already yeah you can't show me anything you can't show me anything in thein the united states government that's worth saving at all yeah well i had a front row seat tothat for over a decade yeah let me ask you this um you you alluded to this for for a secondbut I wanted to come back to it.Being a Christian and being engaged in usury,
37:39being engaged in hedge fund, being engaged in the system,how does one square that circle?That's a great question.You know, Pete, the problem of the prohibition on usury,which existed for centuries in Christendom is real.in a perfect world, we would not have the collection of interest.But I'd like to think that my work will be viewed favorably by the Lord insofaras I've given so much of my life for it.
38:15I mean, I don't know that we can call short activism usury.First of all, you're borrowing a share and selling it short, and you're uncovering fraud.They'll one time the Lord shows anger in the gospel, as I'm sure you know, is in the courtyard of the temple with the money changers.So modern Wall Street is the money changers.They're the liquidity providers, right?And so if you're out there exposing fraud and crashing it and paying a huge price, huge, blacklisted, debanked, untouchable, and you refuse to settle.They asked me seven times to settle.And I told them to, you know, I'm not going to tell you what I told them because it's not the most priestly thing.
39:02But, you know, in terms of earning a return on capital for our shareholders, I have yet to meet a Christian group that isn't directly or indirectly involved in Wall Street.And I get calls all the time for help and advice from very high-level people.include monasteries.I have yet to meet a faithful person.I get that sometimes.I get that sometimes. You're like, oh, Father, what are you doing?That's wrong.You know, it's terrible.
39:34You're a wolf and sheep's clothing, all that.Like, really?But then if that were true, then why is everyone connected to Wall Street?You know, from the investment committees at Catholic hospitals and universities toparishes that have their investment accounts, the difference is most of those people arejust not going about it in a particularly intelligent way.They just outsource it to somebody, like an advice.who's not even really an investor, it's just a salesman, and they're not really good stewards over
39:57that capital. I've worked with the church at the highest levels, the highest levels. And I wouldjust say, we really can't ask people to make donations to the church if we can't tell them that we'regood stewards over the capital. So the idea of stewardship, particularly like Matthew 25, for example,I think it's very relevant. In fact, it specifically makes reference to earning interest on one'stalents and talents being a measure of money at that time we use it to describe charisms now charismabut talents was a measure of money so in a perfect world would we have wall street and usuallyprobably not but the reality is everybody's already involved so all i've tried to say is thati don't think we're better christians by sticking our head in the sand i think we're worse christians
40:47i think we should open our eyes and be intelligent about it that's what i have tried toteach well considering how the system is built and considering that you're if you were to try anddivorce yourself from everything that was you serious you basically wouldn't be able to buy foodyou wouldn't be able to i mean you'd have to grow your own you'd have to be living off the gridand grow your own food because everybody this is the system that that has been builtand it's a system that we we exist and it's a system um you know i ihave no you know i know some you know i have i have another i have another friend who um he's uh he'sprotestant hard hardcore very very ecumenical when it comes to um respect you know respect between
41:41uh between you know catholics and orthodox and everything and he has he has a hedge fundand he's like look i mean i just want to do i want whatever i do i want to do well with it i want toI want to put it to good use. I'm not doing this for the most selfish of purposes. I'm doing thisso that I can serve my people. And I think that when you're in a system where basically the wholesystem is an enemy to you, the one way when you examine the way that you can fight the systemthe best is by acquiring as much capital as you can, then it's hard for me toplace, you know, to judge somebody for wanting to do what they can to use the systemto actually gain the means they need in order to protect themselves from it.
42:41Well, that's right, Pete.And I would often tell people, too, that if we don't have Christian voices in the market,then, you know, we're going to leave it to the, you know, the great investment.thinkers, Ben Graham was a Jewish man. His greatest and most famous student Warren Buffett isagnostic. I don't know how people think he's wise. He's telling you he's not wise. He'ssaying he's agnostic, which literally the etymological root is he doesn't know. So a wise personcan't say they don't know. And so every commentator who gets on CNBC, you mentioned BillAckman. They have a religious position. It's not a Christian one. So like shouldn't we have a
43:12voice? And but the reality is that we are held to a higher standard, Peter.as Christians, and we cannot overlook Christ's words that the love of money is the root of all kindsof evil. It's true. So it's really super risky to take that path and work on Wall Street. I just tellpeople to stay away from it, actually. People ask me, I'm like, you know, just go get a job doingphysical work or something. You'll be so much healthier spiritually. The spiritual risks aretremendous. There are the risks of wealth and power. Because money gives you power, right? So you've gotthis confluence of money and power, and then you can make a lot of wealth without doing a lot of work,even if you're not talented.
43:48But it's not like I went to Wall Streetand they welcomed me with open arms.Like, oh, we're so happy to see you, Father McMonds, go have a drink.You know, like, that's not what happened.Look what happened to me.You know?So that should tell you that, you know, insofar as we have the system we have,the three market capitalist system,
44:05we can't just stay out of it completely, I don't think.We have to have a position and a voice.And like everything I've written,I've written hundreds of articles on these topics,on fraud, on stewardship,on a Christian philosophy of investment,on value orientation should take the work of say Ben Graham or say what would you do with this ifyou were a Christian you know because you got like what's Warren Buffett do he's like he's financing
44:24abortion essentially with his charitable contributions like the guy's got a fortune like if we hadChristians with that kind of capital they might allocate it differently which would make a you knowa demonstrable difference in the world so I don't think we can just say you know and I see thisI see it all the time like freeze and hire something oh I don't I don't touch that you know let's behonest you're just ignorant you're putting your head in the sandversus dealing with the problem you know like if you're an accountant there's a lot of goodchristian accountants and you come across the company and see you work at a CPA firm and theygive bring you their books and they're totally cooked you're going to do nothing about it you
44:59go you're going to watch the investors get fleeced you're going to watch like lagoon wastaxing the it was like a fleecing the taxpayers the the investors the sick and the diei mean everyone was getting fleeced so we can do a lot of good peter as christians we have tohave courage but the goal should never be the accumulation of wealth you might accumulate wealth but itshouldn't be the goal and it definitely should not be directed inward if you're thinking about how do i getthe next Rolex and i love the new Porsche and that's what's in your mind you're going to get into acrisis as a christian if you're going there because you want to protect shareholders you want toprotect taxpayers you want to do your job as a good steward and a fiduciary and you have a good
45:39beyond yourself then i would say go for it but you better be pretty spiritually mature and youyou better be grounded in prayer and a fear of God because you're going into a pit.You're going into a pit with a bunch of serpents, frankly.What do you think the average, you know, what should a Christian be doing in this system right now?I mean, it's falling apart, but, you know, it could take decades for it to fall apart.So in the meantime, we have to be able to live.And we not only live, we have to be able to thrive.And that's, you know, that's a hard thing.
46:17A lot of people have bought into, you know, what they call the black pill, where it's like,well, things were just, why should I even care?Are governments occupied?And no one.And it's like, no, I know people, I know regular people who are doing really well.They don't have the education that people who are complaining about things have.they're thriving, they're living, you know, how now shall we, how now shall we live?Well, I think to a certain extent you've got to get off social media a little bit
46:52and then constant scroll of news because it's highly manipulative.We are Christians, we live with hope.You can't live in despair.And you cannot live with fear.You can't say I'm a faithful Christian, I'm afraid of tomorrow.That's a contradiction.Fear and faith like oil and water.They don't mix.
47:07So look, empire's come and go.If the American empire is on the way out, it wouldn't be the first one.And we are the people of God.We belong to Christ.So this political system works.This one doesn't.This one comes to past.This empire did well.
47:20I mean, look at the British Empire.It was something 100 years ago.Now it's basically nothing, let's say.So maybe this is the end of the American Empire.I don't know.I pray it's not.Actually, I really love America in a lot of ways.I'm very saddened by what I see today.
47:33But you know what?As Christians, we first and foremost, we belong to a kingdom of heaven,a beginning of God.That's the first citizenship we have.is in that community and so we pray for the country we pray for the political leaders we don't needto go and attack them all the time for their failures yes they fail their politicians everyone knowsthey're not altar boys and we take care of the things that are we have direct dominion over that wehave been entrusted with namely our families if you're married take care of your wife and children
48:04that's what you should be worried about if you're a married and family man you don't need tosolve all the political problems of the world by going on social media or fretting over them orbeing afraid here for tomorrow yes you should be wise as a serpent and innocent as a dub you shouldprepare for the worst if things happen be very shrewd and wise financially and the way you prepareyourself for inevitabilities which may occur but you know you just can't go through life afraidor in despair or with a sort of spiritual numbness you're talking about a listlessness if you willan apathy about there's no hope and i think we see this in the young generation where they'remaking reckless decisions they're gambling wildly online with sports betting and and you know meme
48:44stocks and they're like i better just get rich quick because there's no hope for a career or job orfamily i don't know that is horrible i mean that's just a horrible way to look at the world so that's whatthe devil really wants the devil loves discouragement perhaps above all else you know peter so you can'tyou can't give into that you got to fight that and the way to fight it is by participation in the lifeof the church participation with the community and to cultivate an inner life of prayer and if you'remarried definitely with your family and if you're not married then with the family you came fromyour parents your siblings i wanted to ask you about this too you know people it's often thrownin our face um even by fellow christians that um you know we're supposed to love our enemies and
49:29i'm the first one to say yeah it says to love our enemies it doesn't say to love god's enemyme is that nowhere does it say to do that but what a lot of this can bring people to is notnot only despair but hate and you're starting you're seeing that in a lot of young peopleand what i've taken a saying is if you if you're consumed by hate you can't build anythingyou can't go yeah you're you're not you're not constructive you're notuseful. You're not useful to anybody, including yourself. So what do you, when you see people gettingconsumed by hate, and I want to say consumed by hate rightly, but not rightly, but you can understandwhy somebody's being, why somebody can become consumed by hate when they look around at the
50:24world today, especially if they have a foundation in some kind of ideology or something likethat how do you how do you recommend we deal with hate yeah well there's no such thing as a righteoushatred there's a righteous anger but anger allowed to fester beyond its shelf life becomes hatredand i think you hit the nail in the head about ideologies you know if you are you know we'rewired for religion people say i'm not religious i say really like tell me about your life i'llfind a religion in your life it could be your daily ritual of going to starbucks could be you knowyour gambling proclivities could be your addiction to porn.Well, turn anything to a religion.
51:05But there's only one religion that doesn't hurt us, and that's the one that revealed to usby God and the person of His only big God and Son, Christ.That's the only thing that doesn't hurt us.Everything else, if we do too much, it hurts us.Prayer does not hurt us if we do too much of it.Participation in the sacramental life of the church does not hurt us.It heals us, actually.So hatred is a prison for the heart, Peter.
51:25It's a horrible, horrible place to be.It paralyzes you.It paralyzes your spirit.your psychology or your intellect you like you said you can't build anything so be very verycareful of the snares of the devil that he will suck you into a political ideology or some otherideology that you begin to make that and end in itself because that place is reserved for godwe are designed to glorify one thing only and that is god when you start glorifying somethingelse like you will destroy yourself we'll stop so you know if you find yourself
51:59getting sucked into despair and you find that hatred is building up which is a terrible terribleemotion there's probably worse emotions like jealousy or something like that but you know or the feelingto betrayal hatred is really really corrosive they're actually all corrosive the devil probablyloves it when you're angry enough that it turns into a sort of crystallized hate but you have got tolet that go and one way to do it is to remember the very simple prayer uh our father thy will be doneIt's that simple.Like hatred is a byproduct of believing that you have control over the outcome, everythingaround you.
52:33And that is simply not right.That is not true.It is completely false.And when you stand before an all knowing and all loving God, in all of your finitude,and you realized you didn't give yourself one thing that you have that was all given toyou freely, that's very freeing.They say, that will be done.I don't have to control the outcome of everything.
52:54You start just remember the blessing.in your life. The fact you got out of bed and you put two feet on the ground and stood up,some people didn't have that this morning. So you got a chance at a better tomorrow. That's whathope is. The despair and discouragement and all these things, the hatred, bitterness, it's fromthe devil. There's actually beautiful things around you. You just got to have the eyes to see them.There's a lot of ugginess, but don't think everything around you is ugly. When you seeugliness turn away from it if it's doing something unjust fight it but do it with anunderstanding that you are in relationship to your god not that you're alone you didn't bring
53:34yourself into this world you didn't give yourself life you didn't give yourself anything not onehair on your head it was all given to you so don't go through life thinking that you've got tocontrol every outcome and your will's going to be done and it's going to trump everyone elsearound you that is just a formula for disaster and i speak from experience for my early lifeWhen you look around and you notice that you're being ruled by your enemies, anyone who at this point is really taking politicians seriously, and they're not just completely like, yeah, this person's my enemy, but I don't, they have no, they have no real power over me.you know 99.9% of the people who are relived they're not going to be targeted by the stateindividually the kind of thing I mean present company present company in that small in that smallpercentage but the how do you live when you realize that you're surrounded by your enemies and
54:37not only you're surrounded by your enemies but actually your enemies are in power thank Godit means you're doing something right look at changehistory people who are surrounded by enemies start with the archetype no say to yourself hey greati'm in the club if they take christ and drag him through streets blog him put him through it canthe most ignominious death you can imagine nail him to a cross put a crown of thorns on his headmake fun of him he did nothing wrong by all accounts even the romans couldn't find what do you meanIt's nothing wrong. You didn't do anything wrong. Consider yourself in good company when you're surrounded by your enemies. Better to be surrounded by your enemies than to be your enemies because they're living in darkness. You cannot do it alone. If you're a humanist, you cannot make it to church. You cannot bring yourself to make the sign of the cross. You cannot live with or try even to make a step towards God. It's going to be very hard for you. Very, very hard because no human has the power to do that. But with God, all things are possible. But with God, all things are possible.what's the best way to protect you in your what's the best way to protect you in yours then
55:50well you have to be shrewd and wise begin with prayer if you have a clear mind stay away fromdrugs and alcohol you know assess be aware of your surroundings to be sure but don't do it insuch a way that causes you panic or anxiety which a lot of people probably suffer from in our societynowadays teach your wife and children you're the head of your household if you're a man listeningsays you're the head of your house. What does that mean? Take up your cross and follow Christ.Be willing to be crucified. You cannot shy away from that. Your job is to provide physically for yourfamily, to be sure. But you also have to provide for their salvation, which means your childrenneed to see you praying from time to time, if not daily. You need to take your family and say,
56:34let's go to church. Let's participate in the sacramental life of the church. And help yourneighbor occasion, if you can. When you do that, when the focus is off yourself,to the good beyond yourself because you are what you are in relationship to your god and you realize and you feel that love that you are unworthy of because actually you begin to realize actually i'm a sinner as well yes that politician is horrible but maybe there's things in my heart that aren't so great maybe they're worse like that politician he's out there like in the public it's pretty bad but nobody can see what's in my heart only i know but god knows and then you say well okay i'm gonna make fun that apologize because he's dumb and he's corrupt and all that but like i got a reallyfocus on myself and my family as well. That's very freeing. So then you, now you're like,you're helping your family, you're leading them, you're providing for the salvation, you'reteaching your kids how to pray, you're helping your neighbor out whenever you can. Even he might dosomething terrible. Like I had somebody do something terrible to me recently. I had this feelinglike somebody was wrong, you know, I just went and I brought her a gift. She would be treating
57:36me terribly this person. And then just yesterday, actually just today, I just found out she had aclose family that died. I felt so bad. But then she changed, you know, she'd become humble.so like when someone's doing something bad to you tell you like like what's this person going throughi don't know i mean obviously be wise about nobody should mistreat you but like you can have a little bitof flexibility with people a little bit of human understanding goes a long way just show a little kindnesssometimes you know to people and i think that will go a long way for your sanity you don't want to be inthat situation where every day's dark and every day you know this anger is turning into hatredand your heart's in prison and your family's going to be suffering you're going to be yeah you got
58:13let that go and just you know you got you'll be able to think clearly too once you i really believe thatin in the silence especially the silence of prayer peter that we find the truth i i truly truly believe thatso you're you say well what do we have to every man's life is different every circumstance is differentand everyone's got to draw his own boundaries of course you shouldn't like i said you shouldn'tlet anyone you know abuse you or take advantage your family or something like that butyou're you're going to find those answers in the silence and in prayer you will not find it by scrollingon x to be sure i'm a thousand percent sure of that there's so much manipulation especially with the powerI now. So you've got to get back to the silence, the quiet, and really focusing on gratitude
58:48for the simple things, cultivating a life of prayer and fulfilling your role, your unique roleas a man. And again, if you're married as a husband, a father, whatever. For some people, it mightbe taken care of their elderly parents if they're not married or something like that. But, you know,that's the things you have control over. Everything else is thy will be done. Oh, you're persecuting me.You found me worthy. Look, 11 years, I was persecuted. Over 10 years, Peter, I was perspired by the U.S.Every major financial newspaper in the world wrote something terrible about me.And you know what I tried to do during that time?Of course, I had great advisors and people bring, but I just tried to say, you know,
59:23thank you, God, that you found me worthy of this.I don't know what I did right to be found worthy of this, you know?And I wouldn't trade it for anything today, Peter, as I look back.Because we could only understand and interpret our suffering in hindsight when we look back.When we're going through it, we cannot see it clearly.All we say is, why did this happen?I didn't deserve it.why am I going through this but you know that's a lack of faith that's a crisis of faith if we believe
59:49god has a plan that he's ultimately in control that he sees everything then we'll say there must be areason for this too and then very often with faith when we look back we have that spiritual eyes to seewe see the purpose for that you see it often enough i'm not the only person who's gone throughsomething you know sort of terrible and said i wouldn't change it for the world you hear that frompeople all the time so you have to be open to these things that happenwe can't spend our whole life saying we want to minimize pain and suffering and maximize pleasureand avoid every thing that's discomfort discomfort is uncomfortable or causes us discomfortmaybe you have a calling you know maybe god found you in this position of our country that's
01:00:27suffering or with your local politician or town rep or something because you're supposed to fulfillan important role to it maybe that's you're there for a reason you got to think about thatyeah i think about the um that most people they want to change the world before they change themselvesthat's right maybe it's just a spirit of our age and that's the way it works is we don't seethe faults in ourselves before we um before we look outside i think people think that they canfight a war against an enemy without being ready for it without building up to it and um theydon't realize that like the biggest enemy that they have is themselves i think that's exactly rightyeah and they're and they can't see they can't see it we're all guilty of it to some extent
01:01:15at some point in our life oh oh i mean yeah guilty 100 percent yeah right here this guy yeahthe only the only way out of it is humility and the way to humility is prayer and humilityis the prerequisite to love and love uh you know love of the truth will set you freeas Christ says, truth will set you free.You have to love the truth. The way to find that is through humility.So it's a fight.You know, look, we're all on a journey together.You know, we're all trying to find the answers and move forward.
01:01:48But the church in her wisdom provides the framework.But we've got to show up there.We've got to hear the word of God.Again, participate in the sacramental life of the church.You know, you don't find people who cultivate that interior life of prayerwho have these feelings of hate or frustration, depression, anxiety. It just doesn't exist. There's areason for that. So, you'll have moments, but you won't be consumed by it. You'll catch your son.Yeah. You'll catch yourself in hate. You'll catch yourself in anger. You'll catch yourself in despair,
01:02:25but you're going to pull yourself out of it because there's, if you allow it to fester,you've become of no use to anyone.Yeah, and I'll tell you, when I was undergoing this trial with the SEC,which is the full weight of the U.S. taxpayer coming against you,it's different than normal civil litigation.Normal civil litigation, people worry about the money they're spending,the budget.The government has basically a limitless budget.
01:02:49So it's like having an elephant sit on you for a long time.They set out first to destroy you economically.So you can't open a bank account.Nobody will work with you.Like no one wants to be your administrator, your auditor, or whatever.No one wants to talk to you.That's their goal because they want you to settle.so they look like they're right. But during that time, if I could just share a little bit more,
01:03:06Peter, you know, I began building the chapel of St. Catharines in the mountains of Vermont.And you can look it up at St. Catherine's Orthodox Chapel. And that was my service to God.So every morning I would wake up and I'd go for a walk through the forest. And in the silence,walking through the forest, you know, Vermont is all snow so it muffles any sound. And I would walkto the place where I was building St. Catharines. And I would get on my knees.and from the time when we had a slab poured for the altar and there the solea where the faithful would sitI would go on my knees even there was no ceiling or maybe a couple walls and I'll just kneel down and I would prayyou know Lord Jesus Christ some living God had mercy on me a sinner that those words the Jesus prayer
01:03:47and I would just repeat that and I would say you know God you know just show me the right wayand I don't want to settle with these people they're wrong they're predators but I'm just one manbut I know that God is with you who can be against you.It looks like an insane fight, right?The U.S. government on one side and just one dumb priest on the other.Like who would think?I mean, Leon Cooperment, they all fold.They all fold. The public companies fold all the time, 98%.
01:04:14And the 2%, I'm guessing a lot of them, you know, might be guilty.And they have to fight it.But that was my service to God.And as the SEC was getting ready to charge me publicly,because this thing went on years and years and years years you know where there's actually a momentwhere I had a chance to put the cross this beautiful Justinian cross on top of the dome and I was probably30 35 feet up in the air on this beautiful dome you have to look it up online it's just it's a beautiful chapelglory to God not not because of me because of the moving of the Holy Spirit but I'm putting this huge cross
01:04:48on the top of the dome and honestly I was just in tears because I felt so privileged to be able tobuild that where the faithful could come and enlighten a candle and to be in that sacred placewhile all this was going on. So, you know, we have to give our service to God, our glory,to go. We, no matter what happens in our life, we, you know, our life is meant for God. We'llstop, you know? So, you know, that's how I was sort of dealing with it when it was going on,those trials is that I thought I'm going to build this place of worship to glorify the livingGod. And so that case is come and gone. And now we're just waiting to get our legal fees.The SEC's on the hook for our legal fees now. It's pretty extraordinary. I think it might be
01:05:36one of the only times in the history of the SEC where they're actually liable now for someone else'slegal fees as they are in my case. And so that case is come and gone. And people will forgetabout it eventually, but the chapel of St. Catharines will endure it will be there for thefaithful. Did you pull it up online while I was talking to you?Do you see it?Yeah.Yeah.It's incredible.
01:05:56If you go to the Facebook page, you can actually see the inside with all the hand-carvedwoodwork.It was all the work.It was really a labor of love.Yeah, I see it.And people offered me donations.No, no, I don't want any money on it.I'm just going to do this myself.
01:06:08You know, we never accepted any donations or anything.It's open to the public.It's all hand-carved inside and all that stainless steel.It's all real materials.That's African mahogany around the top and hand-polished steel from Germany on the dome.And that's like three quarter inch slate from local queries on the roof.It's really, it's actually the first Orthodox church to be built in the state of Vermont, believe it or not.Well, do you want to promote your podcast and we'll get out of here?
01:06:38I'd love to shamelessly promote it.We have a podcast on YouTube.It's at Lemelson.We don't have a huge following yet.It's just emerging.We have bigger followings and other platforms.It's a very visual podcast.You saw, obviously, almost two minutes of it today.
01:06:51We try to put out an episode about every week or two.We hope people will come and watch it.It's really a labor of love like St. Catharines.And of course, we have our substack, which we're growing quite quickly.I just learned today, actually, that we're ranked number 70 on the site in the faith and spirituality category.There's over 50,000 publishers on substack.We've been at it consistently for about seven weeks.We're already ranked number 70.
01:07:14So glory be to God for the support we've gotten.And we're incredibly grateful to people like you, Peter, because we couldn't do any of it without support.from people like you and your viewers.So if you're inclined to watch some pretty unusual podcast episodes,you can do so on our YouTube channel at Lemelson.We're also on Facebook and X and everything.Usually the handles my last name.And then you've got the substack you all are right there underneath my name.
01:07:37And any feedback, comments, criticism, we're happy to hear from you.And I'm just grateful for any support we get.I'll like all of it.Thank you, Father Lemelson.I appreciate it.Absolutely, Peter.Thank you so much for having me on the show.I hope we can do it again sometime.
01:08:21Thank you.
There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click any sentence in the transcript to leave one.