All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 31, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
50:24
FRIGHTENING REALITY Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep697
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This podcast is brought to you by Dr.
Kirk Elliott, PhD. In an uncertain economy, if you're looking for wealth management solutions and financial advice, go to kirkelliottphd.com and make an appointment today.
Coming up, I'll discuss how Halloween is about make-believe fear, while police data is about fear that is very real in this country.
FBI whistleblower and author Stephen Friend joins me.
We're going to talk about how the police agencies of government became corrupted and mobilized against patriots, Republicans, conservatives, and Christians.
And financial advisor Dr.
Kirk Elliott joins me. We're going to talk about a financial strategy for today's volatile environment.
Hey, if you're watching on Rumble or listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
The times are crazy.
In a time of confusion, division, and lies, we need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
The movie Police State is now in streaming and it's streaming on three separate platforms. One is the video platform called Rumble and the cool thing about getting it on Rumble is that it's very easy.
You have a smart TV, very easy to use the Rumble app to play the movie on your big-screen TV, which is not the same as the theatrical experience but is still pretty good. Probably better, of course, than watching on a computer or on a phone.
The film also is available on Salem Now.
That's the Salem website, SalemNow.com, and also on Epic TV. Now, if you go to the website, policestatefilm.net, it links to these places and also links to DVDs.
So we're selling DVDs through...
Through Salem Now, we're also selling DVDs directly through Shopify, and those links are on the website.
Today is Halloween, and we aren't going to be around.
In fact, Debbie was like, this is going to be a little bit awkward because our neighborhood is just swarming with Halloweeners, and normally we get a giant supply of candy, and I'm sort of the candy man.
I man the door. But we are going to be on our way to Florida.
We have our red carpet here.
a premiere for Police State.
So in any event, we're not gonna be celebrating Halloween, but Halloween is the sort of remarkable event.
I knew nothing about it, by the way, in India.
I'd heard of it, but didn't know what it was really like.
And it's all about fear, but the fear is artificial, isn't it?
It's make-believe.
I've seen probably some of, not most of, and certainly not all the sequels, because a lot of these Halloween movies part one, part two, part three, and who knows when they stop.
But I've seen the original Halloween.
I've seen, of course, the Freddy Krueger movies.
Of course, some of the...
Some of the other Halloween movies and some other horror movies that kind of seem to come springing back to life during Halloween, Amityville Horror and others.
And all of this is a fear experienced vicariously.
It's like, wow, what would it be like if I lived in a haunted house?
So what would it be like if there was a monster coming to get me?
And usually the premise is extremely preposterous, but you go with it because for an hour or so, you can kind of put yourself in a state in which you're like, that could happen maybe, or at least I can sort of pretend that it did.
Now, police state is a little different.
It doesn't resort to exaggerated horror. In fact, the film is understated.
It allows the individual accounts of people to be revealed, in some cases using actual footage.
In some cases, using recreations.
And I think the horrifying thing is that these are things happening to everyday Americans.
They're not just happening to Trump.
They're not just happening even to January 6th defendants.
Those people are in the movie.
Trump is in the movie. There's a section called Primary Target.
There's a pretty good section on January 6th, and the reason I put it in is I think we have a new way of looking at January 6th, different than what's out there so far, and I think you'll come away seeing it in a new light.
But beyond that, I wanted to have people going about their business, participating in civic life, and then suddenly, bam, they come face-to-face with the police state.
And this is a harrowing experience.
Why? Because they're not prepared for it.
I mean, we as a country aren't prepared for it.
We haven't had anything like it.
Now, arguably, there's been a police state in America in a very limited way involving particular groups.
Blacks, I think it's fair to say, lived under a police state under slavery.
I mean, they were literally slave patrols that would go around looking for Blacks who had sort of Welcome to my show!
Sometimes in wartime, there are police state measures that have been taken, even in this country, World War I, even more so, as far as I'm aware, than World War II. But that's in wartime.
I think never before in our history are we seeing a police state consolidate itself right here under conditions of peacetime.
Now, it didn't come at us, and the movie lays out the story beautifully all at once.
The pretext, in fact, varies.
So some of our liberties with regard to surveillance and privacy disappear in the aftermath of 9-11.
Other freedoms, like the right to go to church, freedom of assembly, are curtailed under COVID. Other freedoms, freedom of speech, the censorship becomes accelerated, the scope of it becomes widened after January 6th.
So the occasion, the pretext might vary, but the movement is all in the same direction.
And all of it has happened, well, slowly and now rapidly.
So slowly over the past 15 years, since the aftermath of 9-11, It picked up under Obama, but look at the way it's accelerated under Biden.
Even we, in just the project of making the film, have experienced in ways I'm gonna outline subsequently tomorrow or the next day, ways that even we are feeling police state scrutiny, police state interference, police state attempts to thwart this film.
Well, you don't be thwarted.
Make sure you see it.
Make sure you share it.
the website PoliceStateFilm.net.
PoliceStateFilm.net.
♪♪♪ Mike Lindell just keeps on introducing great deals.
He's featuring the new My Towels.
Save 50% on the six-piece towel set.
Regular price $59.96, but now for a limited time, only $29.98 with promo code Dinesh.
Debbie and I have Mike's My Towels all over the house.
We love them for ourselves. We also like to give them for...
Christmas presents. Good idea for you to consider.
My Towel's six-piece set includes two bath towels, two hand towels, two washcloths.
These towels are amazing.
The long staple length of the Sherpa cotton fibers make them very soft.
Because of the long fibers, they can wrap around each other more easily, creating a smoother and softer fabric, softer the touch without the lotion-y feel, and they're also super absorbent.
So take advantage of this 50% off on the six-piece towel set.
Call 800-876-0227, the number again, 800-876-0227 or go to mypillow.com.
Don't forget to use the promo code DINESHDINESH. Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast a new guest.
It's Dr. Kirk Elliott, PhD.
And he started in the wealth management industry, gosh, about 30 years ago.
He's got over 18,000 clients all over the world.
He has two PhDs, one in finance and public policy and administration, another in theology.
And the website is KirkElliottPhD.
That's two L's, two T's.
KirkElliottPhD.com slash...
Dr. Elliot, welcome to the podcast.
You know, let's talk a little bit about how to think about investments in this crazy environment.
It seemed that investing was a kind of easy task in which you put some money in real estate, you put some money in the stock market.
If you're a little older, you put some money in bonds.
And then you pretty much sort of forgot about it and just went about your daily life and you kind of benefited from the upward trend in the market.
Are we in a different situation?
And if so, why?
We are. Those were the days, right?
Those were amazing days.
And I would describe that as like the Trump years and the Reagan years, which had very similar economic policies, lowering taxes, lowering interest rates and job creation.
When you have that, people spend money.
When people spend money, profits, revenues, earnings go up and stocks go up.
But what we've got now under the current administration is 180 degrees opposite.
We've got rising taxes, rising interest rates to slow down inflation that they're creating by printing money out of thin air to find every stimulus under the sun.
And instead of job creation, we have wage reduction.
So therefore, what worked in the past doesn't work in the present.
And every investment that we have is either going to grow or shrink because of policies coming out of D.C. So that's what we have to look at now.
The biggest thing that I think is facing America today, which is going to impact your investments, is debt.
So to put this into perspective, Dinesh, from 1776, when we became a country, until 1980, when Ronald Reagan became president.
So that's 204 years.
Debt went from zero to just under a trillion dollars.
Our national debt was like $900 and something billion in 1980.
So 204 years to go to $900 and something billion.
Now, last month alone, in the last 30 days, our national debt went up $600.
I mean, it's like, what?
In 30 days?
See, they're spending like drunken sailors.
So if you multiply that out times 12 for a whole year, we're on pace to add $7.2 trillion to our national debt over the next 12 months.
So this, you know, if you look at it biblically, if you didn't have any debt, who cares if interest rates are 15 to 20 percent?
It wouldn't bother you because you don't have any debt.
However, America is in debt up to its eyeballs at the federal level, state level, municipal level, individual level.
So now these rising interest rates that they have to keep raising to slow down inflation is the Achilles heel of our economy.
And people aren't going to have the money to spend like they used to.
So investments that worked in the past don't necessarily work right now, Dinesh.
Wow. I mean, I think for the ordinary American, debt is a little abstract, at least the national debt.
And I think it's because those numbers are so big, it's very difficult to get your head around them.
But whether or not you consider the debt as a whole, isn't it a simple fact that we have to pay interest on that debt?
Every single year.
That's a real dollar amount.
And you can't get around that.
And that's going to keep eating into the available resources that the government has.
And then I think I also hear you saying that this is going to reduce corporate profitability because people are going to cut back on spending.
And so what is a sensible person who is looking to the future to do in this environment?
Well, sensible right now, again, take everything into consideration, right?
Where we are right now.
The only way to maximize your future is to maximize each and every day.
I would allocate into tangible assets right now.
So you want to stay away from bonds when interest rates are rising.
Because it doesn't make sense.
Interest rates, when rates go up, the value of bonds comes down.
When rates come down, value of bonds goes up.
Bonds were amazing for the last 40 years.
Not until they started having interest rate hikes.
Now they started to be disastrous.
So tangible assets like gold, silver, oil, things that are things, things always go up with inflation.
So we're hearing rhetoric right now out of Jerome Powell at the Fed, Janet Yellen at the Treasury, saying, we're going to pause interest rates.
Meaning, they want us to think they've won the war on inflation.
They don't have to keep raising rates.
No, not so fast.
If they won the war on inflation, they could lower interest rates again.
They're not. Probably have one more rate hike increase of another quarter point, and then they're going to pause them at these high rates.
That will handcuff anybody that carries debt.
And that tells us one thing.
By their own actions, they haven't won the war on inflation.
They're pausing rates at a high level.
See, this is going to be death to the U.S. economy.
Now, add to that really quickly, what happened in August 22nd through 24th?
The BRICS nations met in Durban, South Africa.
Putin, on day one of that, said, we're going to de-dollarize the world.
It's our objective and it's irreversible.
What did he mean? By January 1st of this year, they added six of the nine largest oil producers in the world into the BRICS nations.
So they're going to trade in their own currencies.
That means there is no petrodollar anymore.
Come January 1st, 70% of the world is no longer using the dollar.
The demand for the dollar is done, which means they're going to have to print their way out of it.
It's going to add more inflation.
Tangible assets go up with inflation.
Right now, this time in history, not always, but right now, I would look at gold and silver, quite honestly, because it makes the most sense.
Where during the Trump years, during the Reagan years, stocks, bonds, mutual funds made the most sense.
Because the policies of growth were there.
They're not right now.
Guys, if you need some guidance with your investments, this is the man to talk to.
It's KirkElliottPhD.
The website is KirkElliott, two L's, two T's, KirkElliottPhD.com.
By the way, you can follow him on X. It's at KirkElliottPhD.
Dr. Elliott, great to have you as a guest and would love to have you back sometime.
Sounds good. Thank you so much for having me.
Last month, the G20 announced that it welcomed discussion of the effects of implementing central bank digital currencies in their countries.
Now, these digital currencies could allow the government to track every purchase you make.
They could even allow officials to prohibit you from purchasing certain products or easily freeze or seize part or all of your money.
In essence, they give the government full control over your finances.
Now concerned Americans like me are diversifying our assets into physical gold with the help of Birch Gold Group.
If you want a physical asset held in a tax-sheltered retirement account, you should call Birch Gold.
Debbie and I are customers.
We buy our gold through Birch Gold.
But find out for yourself.
Text Dinesh to 989898.
They'll send you a free information kit on gold.
Here's the easiest way to become a Birch Gold customer.
If you have an IRA or a 401k from a previous employer, Birch Gold can help you convert it into an IRA in gold.
You don't pay a penny out of pocket.
Text Dinesh to 989898.
Claim your free information kit on gold and call them.
Because if digital currency becomes a reality, it'll be nice to have some gold to fall back on.
Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast Steve Friend.
Steve is actually featured in Police State.
He's a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America.
He's an FBI whistleblower, but now a writer and author.
He also served in law enforcement.
His book is called True Blue, My Journey from Beat Cop to Suspended FBI Whistleblower.
He became a whistleblower in 2022.
You can follow him on X. It's at Real Steve Friend.
Steve, welcome. Thanks for joining me.
We were just talking a moment ago that you were able to see the film in its final form.
And did you see it in the theater?
How did you see it? I had a link sent over to me because I'm trying to promote it with as many journalist friends as I've been able to accumulate over the last year since becoming a public outspoken whistleblower.
I remember that when we did the interview with you, and it was in a kind of a roundtable format, you had sort of lost your voice.
And so you speak a little differently, a little more hoarse in the film.
And we had talked about whether we should re-record your comments, but I think it came out great.
Were you happy with the way that you looked and sounded in the movie?
Yes, there was definitely that distraction.
I did my best RFK Jr.
impression, it sounded like, but they were able to bring it up, and I think that the message was more important, the substance over the sizzle.
Steve, let's hear your story.
Talk about where you grew up, how you decided to go into law enforcement, and then we'll talk about your more recent experience.
Well, I'm from Savannah, Georgia, and actually planned on a white-collar career in accounting, but after a year of that, that was not for me, and wanted to do something in public service.
Military was off the table.
I have some medical conditions that preclude me from joining the service, but police work seemed like something I could deploy to every day and serve my community and come home at night, and I became a police officer in Savannah for a number of years, and then eventually applied to the FBI because that was the NFL of law enforcement.
2014. And because of my law enforcement background was sent to Iowa to work on Indian reservations in northeast Nebraska for my first seven years. And that was really a great experience. I got to open about 200 cases and arrest 150 violent criminals, eventually culminated with me transferring to where I currently live in Daytona Beach, Florida. And I took that transfer in 2021. In the summer, and I was expecting to work on child pornography and human trafficking. But after a
few months, my office determined that those were not a priority and they were not going to be handled in our office going forward. And I was essentially voluntold to work on the January 6 cases. So Now we're talking nine, ten months after the actual event.
I hadn't had any exposure to them.
But from my experience in the FBI, it was immediately apparent to me that the FBI is juking its stats on domestic terrorism and using some very aggressive means to arrest the subjects.
In our office, we were going to send a SWAT team to arrest an individual who had pledged to be cooperative.
And those just didn't sit right with me, with my oath of office, with the training I received.
So I came forward to my executive management in my office.
And they facilitated my removal from duty within 30 days.
It seems like with regard to January 6th, you noticed that one of the things that they were doing is they were decentralizing these January 6th cases to make it look like there was an upsurge of domestic terrorism all over the country.
Can you describe that process?
Yes, that's precisely what I came forward with.
So January 6th happens, it's one incident, one location, Washington, D.C. But the decision was made to open a separate case for every single subject, and then instead of having them exist in Washington, D.C., wherever the person lives, so if you traveled from Florida to Washington...
Now it appears that there is a domestic terrorist investigation of an actual cell in Florida.
So when a politician stands at the bully pulpit and says, look at the map, there's a problem with domestic terrorism in America, almost all of those numbers are derived from this January 6th case where individuals were mostly committing some sort of trespass at worst.
There were some very violent examples, but they were few and far between.
And the other thing you're saying is that you were initially tasked to work on child pornography, those kinds of cases, and you noticed a shift of priorities, almost like the FBI was saying, this is what we care about now, this is what we think is a bigger problem.
We're not all that concerned about the stuff you've been working on so far.
There was a specific statement made from high level in my office that that was going to be a local issue.
When I say the child pornography investigations I was doing were no longer going to be resourced.
Local matter going forward, I needed to focus on domestic terrorism because that is the new priority within the FBI bureau-wide.
So I was voluntold and sort of shifted over.
And even though there was not really a whole lot of work to do because What is not being told is that these January 6 cases are being worked from Washington, D.C., and the field is just following orders and opening cases for those guys in Washington to populate with documents.
And as an experienced guy who's gone to court, I knew that that was a problem for even a righteous case.
I would go in there as the case agent and the defense attorney, if they were worth anything, would ask, Agent Friend, did you do anything on your case?
And I would have to answer honestly that no, I hadn't.
And I felt that that would actually jeopardize a righteous prosecution.
We'll be right back with Steve Friend, Senior Fellow at the Center for Renewing America.
The book, True Blue, My Journey from Beat Cop to Suspended FBI Whistleblower.
Debbie and I on a really good health journey, but we still struggle to eat enough fruits, veggies, and fiber, and it's a requirement.
Now, lucky for us, we discovered Balance of Nature.
And what better way to get all your fruits and veggies plus fiber than with Balance of Nature?
This is Balance of Nature's fruits and veggies in a capsule so easy to take, made from fresh, whole produce.
The produce is powdered after an advanced vacuum-cold process, which stabilizes the maximum nutrient content.
And this is Balance of Nature's Fiber and Spice, a proprietary blend of fiber and 12 spices for overall and digestive health.
Join Debbie and me. Start your journey to better health right now.
Call 800-246-8751 or go to balanceofnature.com.
You'll get 35% off your first preferred order by using discount code America.
Again, it's balanceofnature.com or you can call 800-246-8751.
Get 35% off your first preferred order by using discount code AMERICA.
I'm back with Steve Friend, FBI whistleblower, one of the stars of Police State and author of True Blue.
Steve, you're saying something interesting, which is that in the January 6th cases...
The quarterbacking of these cases was entirely from Washington DC, from the central office.
And so although you've got these regional offices that are opening files and opening cases, they're not in fact driving the investigation.
Is that a departure from the norm?
Normally, is it the case that if you open an FBI case in Denver, it's the Denver office that does the investigations, not necessarily DC. DC might help coordinate with Denver, but it's a Denver investigation.
Was there a different approach taken in January 6th, and why do you think that is?
You've nailed it. That's actually specifically in the FBI's guidebook, the Domestic Investigations Operations Guide.
And it specifies when an incident happens in a location, typically you open it up in that office and you investigate it.
And if you need to do some sort of investigation elsewhere, you would do what's called cut a lead and ask for help because it would make sense for me to fly from Florida to California to conduct an interview.
An agent could do that for me.
But the decision was made very early in the process to open up these cases separately for each person, and then wherever they lived, that office on paper would have responsibility.
But Washington, D.C., there was a task force.
They would essentially do a behind-the-scenes investigation and then give directives to the field.
So if I opened the case up in Florida, Washington would tell me how to run my own case.
And that specifically is the departure from the rules.
I should be able to Call the shots on my own case and then proceed as I see fit.
I'm a trained investigator. And the reason for that, when I asked, was they said from the headquarters very early on after January 6th that this was to get buy-in.
Now, that could mean one of two things.
One, you have a macabre view of your workforce and you don't think that they're going to do a good job unless their name is on it.
Or two, this is going to allow the FBI to hit all of its quotas.
And I said quotas because one does exist in the FBI for domestic terrorism where the appetite for domestic terrorism from executives, from politicians, vastly outstrips supply in this country.
So the FBI is always working from behind the curve trying to generate cases.
I mean, see, this is a startling point, and you make it very vividly in the movie that the demand for domestic terrorism on the part of the government and elites exceeds the supply.
It's almost like they want more than they got.
And so, as a result, they've got to concoct some.
They've got to produce more supply to meet the demand, so to speak.
And they do this in all kinds of ways.
How do they gin up these numbers?
How do you make the numbers go up?
Is it that you just find more defendants, people who, for example, did virtually nothing in January 6th, and you rope them in and start counting them as potential terrorists, even though it could be...
Some kid who was in there for 30 minutes or a grandmother who walked in there, looked around and walked back out, and she too falls into the category because, hey, she was inside the Capitol, wasn't she?
Is that how they kind of kicked the numbers up?
Yes, it's the human nature.
Work smarter and not harder.
If I have, separate from January 6th, let's say I have a domestic terrorist cell of four potential terrorists, will I open up one case with four bad guys when I can open up four cases with one bad guy and just duplicate my work?
It's juking the stats here.
And the FBI's own numbers belie what's actually going on.
The FBI's last year's goal was to disrupt 600 terrorist operations.
They only achieved 397.
So if that's accurate, you would have to believe that every day of the year and twice on Sunday, the FBI stopped a domestic terrorist attack from occurring.
I don't think you have to be too much of a critical thinker to look out your window and know that that is just plainly not accurate.
So you're describing something here that is...
Very remarkable and perhaps goes all the way back to the aftermath of 9-11, which is that maybe right after 9-11, the FBI and also the other police agencies of government, there was the newly formed DHS, maybe expected that there would be a lot more terrorism and that they would need to be thwarting it left and right.
Maybe it was that the US military bombings of the Taliban and US actions abroad disabled some of those groups like al-Qaeda, at least in their ability to do harm here.
And then the FBI goes, we're getting this giant river of cash to fight terrorism.
We're not seeing a whole lot of terrorism.
Do you think that that's maybe when all of this got started and now it's being just redeployed with a different target?
I think that that's when things got wrapped up into hyperdrive.
I think 9-11 is really the catalyst because the military did a great job through counterinsurgency of combating those foreign actors.
And the FBI really, as the national security arm, didn't have a whole lot to do.
They were the sentry on the wall.
And that's when mission creep happens.
That's when the FBI started looking at homegrown violent extremists.
And those were first-generation Americans who might have sympathy for an al-Shabaab or an al-Qaeda.
And then when they ran out of them, they adapted and evolved into domestic violent extremism.
And most recently now we're seeing the agave, the anti-government, anti-authority violent extremist.
And you have to look to what President Biden said a year ago at Independence Hall when he said that MAGA Republicans were anti-government and they were white supremacists.
And interestingly, those are the two top priorities for the FBI We'll be right back with Steve Friend, FBI whistleblower.
You follow my next, At Real Steve Friend, the book, True Blue, My Journey from Beat Cop to Suspended FBI Whistleblower.
If aches and pains are your problem, this right here, Relief Factor is your remedy.
Debbie and I started taking Relief Factor a couple of years ago, and what a huge difference we've seen in our joints.
Nothing short of amazing.
Aches and pains are totally gone, thanks to this 100% drug-free solution called Relief Factor.
How does it work? We're good to go.
Order the three-week quick start for the discounted price of just $19.95.
Go to relieffactor.com or call 800-4-RELIEF to find out more about the software.
The number again to call, 800-4-RELIEF or go to relieffactor.com.
Feel the difference. I'm back with FBI whistleblower Steve Friend.
He's featured in the movie Police State.
Steve, one of the things I learned from you, from Kyle Serafin and from the movie, was the way in which a police state operation can get good guys to do bad things.
Because that's a bit of a mystery, I think, for people.
They'll often think, well...
Is the FBI really made up from top to bottom of just villains who are some sort of goons who just enjoy sadistic violence?
That seems unlikely.
It would seem that you've got people there who are patriotic and normal guys who have a wife and a family.
And yet, those very mundane human motives...
How do I succeed at work?
How do I get ahead? How do I protect and provide for my family?
Can be mobilized by some bad people to get good people to do bad things.
Let's talk about how that happens.
How does a guy, you know, how do you get an FBI guy to sort of smash into somebody's apartment, let's say, grab some grandmother by the hair, pull her to the ground and twist her arms behind her back, pull her in the street where her neighbors come out and they're horrified?
I mean, this seems like a very brutal thing to do, and yet you've got seemingly good guys doing it.
How do you make them do it? I think there's a couple elements to that.
I think that basically when you have this perverse incentive structure where people are trying to gin up cases, they look at Americans as opportunities.
I sort of compare it to the small town police department that really all they do is write speeding tickets.
They start looking at the citizens of their town as the enemy, and they look at them as opportunities to write those tickets.
And they're not really doing the job of protecting and serving.
They're not looking for burglaries or any sort of property crimes.
And that's sort of trickled into the FBI's mindset now.
Because they're an intelligence agency rather than law enforcement, they're looking at the American citizen as the enemy.
And then you have the problem of just basic people are compromised.
You have this high salary, and people have this great job with a lot of accolades attached to it, a lot of steam.
And then they start outliving what their means are, and then they're vulnerable.
And they threw that at you whenever you raised the alarm flag.
And that's what my experience was.
I mean... Within a minute of me coming forward, my frontline supervisor and then up the chain of command all had this similar interaction with me.
And they said, you're jeopardizing your career.
Are you sure you want to do this?
Because being an FBI agent is a pretty plum gig.
There's an opportunity there to be very underworked and overpaid.
And it's just very disappointing because I took my oath of office seriously and And I don't think too many others did.
They sort of view it as this iPhone user agreement and they're checking yes.
And finally, I'll say that there's a question of what constitutes success.
To me, following the process is success.
I don't care about the win or the loss at trial.
That's up to a jury of that individual's peers.
I want to follow the process by the book.
I'm not a system disruptor.
I'm a system idealist.
I follow the law. I follow the procedures.
I follow the constitution. And the results don't matter to me.
And you're saying that what's happened in the FBI is there's now a view that if I can sort of get this guy, that will be a notch in my belt because the FBI will now see me as very effective in achieving its objectives.
And this whole notion that the FBI has its own objectives, I mean, isn't it true that at one point, I think you say this in the film, they told you, hey, Steve, you know what?
You have a duty to the FBI, not to the U.S. Constitution.
I mean, what a telling statement.
Yes, that's true. My assistant special agent in charge said that to me when I had a private meeting with him and another ASAC. I cited my oath of office and my training where I went to the Holocaust Memorial and I learned that genocide only occurs when you just follow orders and it's incumbent on you to throw the flag if you perceive that the FBI is off the rails.
And they said, yeah, you have an oath of office, but you have a duty to the FBI and you have to do what we tell you to do.
And this is not a question of, we're in the military, in combat, and you're ordering me to take a hill and taking on gunfire.
This is a question of my oath of office, which should supersede anything that I perceive to be anti-constitutional.
So, what you're saying is that if an FBI guy is given a task that seems distasteful, kind of like the one I described, he can rationalize it to himself by saying, hey listen, I'm merely making an arrest.
I don't know what this woman has done.
We'll let the courts figure that out.
We like to do these early dawn raids.
We like to surprise people.
We don't want them to know we're coming.
Otherwise, they could sort of be ready for us in some way, and maybe it's more dangerous that way.
If I do this, I'll be seen as a good guy in the FBI. I'm one of the boys.
I'm on the team.
I'm not a troublemaker.
And then maybe one day I'll be able to retire comfortably with a nice pension, So these human motives, which people have all across the society in corporate America and everywhere else, can be mobilized to get ordinary people to do some pretty brutal and sadistic things, can't they?
Absolutely. The banality of evil, the police battalion 101 is real.
It does exist in the FBI. That proposition was given to me.
They said, Steve, you're just going to be driving him to court.
That's your only contribution to this warrant.
And I said, look, that's no different than putting somebody on a train to Auschwitz in my mind.
If I know that he is going to face no due process and his rights are going to be violated, he's going to face cruel and unusual punishment.
My oath of office supersedes this order and directive that you're giving me.
We'll be right back with Steve Friend, FBI whistleblower.
follow my next at real Steve friend.
Hey guys, with the new movie police state just out this is a great time to check out and join my locals channel I post a lot of exclusive content there, including content that's censored on other social media platforms. On locals you get the mesh unchained and ash uncensored. You can also interact with me directly I do a weekly live q&a on Tuesdays 8pm Eastern no topic is off limits. I've also uploaded some very
cool films to locals documentaries feature films mine but also films by other producers 2000 mules is up there and now for annual subscribers so is the new film police state you'll get the inside scoop about that on locals. And if you're an annual subscriber, you can stream and watch this content for free. So check out my channel.
It's dinesh.locals.com.
I'd love to have you along for this great ride.
Again, it's dinesh.locals.com.
Steve, um...
You know, you took a big step and a brave step, and you weren't the only one, Kyle Serafin, there are others.
You have sort of walked away from the FBI, and that means walking away from some good, reliable salary, benefits, the promises of greater benefits down the road.
It must have been a scary step to take in a sense.
What made you make that final decision that said, you know what, I can't do it.
I got to get out of here, even if my road ahead is completely uncertain at this point?
I've always subscribed to the belief that doing the right thing isn't always easy, but it's very simple.
I have two small children and setting an example to them and then laying my head down at night knowing that I'm doing the right thing is more important to me than carrying around a government-issued credentials and gun and badge.
And my responsibility to my community is That I felt as an FBI agent continues to this day.
I can serve my local community.
I can serve my state. I can serve my country.
And I don't need any sort of affirmation with the FBI logo or monogram behind me to do that.
Do you miss the kind of daily work of being a cop or an FBI agent?
I mean, in a sense, you've moved into a world where you're a writer, a speaker, an author, you're on podcasts.
It's a different kind of life.
Is it one that you've adjusted to or do you go, whoa, I'm a little bit a fish out of water here.
I was much more myself when I was an FBI agent.
Yeah, I'm glad you asked that. This has definitely been a very unusual now 14 months for myself.
I never envisioned myself in this sphere.
You only go around once.
I'm really grateful I got to meet some really smart and interesting people like yourself, like Dan Bongino, these people who had my back when I was up against it.
That was my hope that...
Stepping away from the FBI and my fellow agents might come to my rescue and sort of this Captain America endgame finale type of situation and it didn't come to pass.
And I do have a little bit, it hurts my heart because I really enjoyed being an FBI agent.
I had a pretty exemplary career.
I got to do a lot of really great things and I felt like I was in the right place.
But that place didn't Didn't want me anymore.
And that means that you have to adjust and you have to serve in another way.
And I'm really lucky because so many other whistleblowers just drift away into the dustbin of history.
Whereas I've been able to connect with my fellow whistleblowers and we've got this nice little unit.
We call ourselves the Suspendables.
And other people in media have helped to amplify our message.
And we're really optimistic that we're going to be able to bring some actual reform to this agency, which is clearly in duress.
Let's talk about how that would occur.
Let's just say that the Republicans win the White House next year.
They're like, let's fix this.
I'm assuming that we do need something like an FBI. There are lots of cases and many of them mundane cases that don't have any political tinge to them, solving murders, things like that.
How does one root out the corruption in the FBI if it's not just one or two guys at the top, but it somehow now also filters and you've got strategically placed bad guys in many parts of the organization?
How do you get them out?
I think you have problems top to bottom because the people that are in there right now know what is going on and they are compromised or they're complicit with it.
So I think I've done away in my lexicon with saying the good men and women of the FBI. I don't think that's an appropriate statement at this point.
But to your question, I think that if Congress and if a new president comes in, if they're unwilling to take the step, which I believe is necessary, and that is eliminating the FBI, one sort of middle ground that you could do is eliminate the armed special agent within the FBI, make it an unarmed investigative agency as it originally was as a Bureau of Investigations, and then force it to partner with the local sheriff's offices, local police departments, and then you would cross-deputize their
personnel, give them federal arrest of powers, so they would be the armed component.
And that would allow a sheriff to be able to work against an out-of-control, politicized FBI, and also you would then do the bidding of that local sheriff who is elected to bring So he could say, I don't care about your domestic terrorism quota that you're ginning up stats on.
You're not going to investigate Dinesh D'Souza for domestic terrorism.
I have a problem with fentanyl or with illegal immigrants in my community, and my constituents elected me to address those problems, so we're going to direct our resources and the FBI's know-how, resources, technology at bringing those numbers down, which would serve the community on the whole better.
Well, what a great idea.
They flagrantly violate their mission and the law.
And so it is completely consistent to support local law enforcement and law enforcement when it's doing its job and at the same time oppose police agencies of the government when they are not doing their job.
Guys, the book, you need to check it out.
It's by Steve Friend. It's called True Blue, My Journey from Beat Cop to Suspended FBI Whistleblower.
Steve, thanks very much for joining me.
Thanks for having me. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is talking about the two codes that exist under Soviet law.
One is the criminal code, and the other is the code of criminal procedure, which is called the UPK. The other is called the UK. Now, Solzhenitsyn says even though you do have this body of law, and it's supposed to come to the aid of defendants and protect the rights of defendants, He goes, it doesn't really work like that.
Listen to Solzhenitsyn.
The grass has grown thick over the grave of my youth.
What a beautiful line.
Not in the cultural education sections of the camps, not in the district libraries, nor even in medium-sized cities have I seen with my own eyes held in my own hands been able to buy, obtain, or even ask.
For the code of Soviet law.
So here he is.
When he was in prison, he didn't have access to this code.
He gets out.
He can go to a library.
No luck. Go to a bookstore.
No luck. There is no place to find the code.
It sort of exists, but yet it doesn't exist.
And of the hundreds of prisoners I knew who had gone through interrogation and trial, and more than once two, who had served sentences in camp and exile, none had ever seen the code or held it in his hand.
So you have rights, but you may as well not.
It was only when both codes were 35 years old and on the point of being replaced by new ones that I saw them.
So, he gets the code, and he can look at it, and I guess he can use it for writing the Gulag Archipelago, but it becomes a sort of a retroactive document, in the sense, retroactive in the sense that it doesn't know good, he's already served a sentence, but now he has the code, he wishes he had it before, but he never did.
And then he looks at the code and he goes, yeah, there are some good things in here.
And he says, for example, Article 111 is obliged to establish clearly all the relevant facts, both those tending toward acquittal and any which may lessen the accused measure of guilt.
And yet he goes, even though that's in the code, no interrogator that he knows of, either interrogating him or anyone else, ever did this.
He says that...
If a guy is being interrogated and he says, Hey listen, I'm a Communist Party member.
I took part in the dispossession of the kulaks.
I saved the state 10 million rubles in lowered production costs.
I was wounded twice in the war.
I have three orders and decorations.
He goes, the interrogator goes, You're not being tried for any of that?
So, whatever good you may have done has nothing to do with this case.
So what happened to the idea that you should look at all the relevant facts, including those that may lessen your culpability or mitigate your guilt?
Turns out they don't do that.
Article 139.
The accused has the right to set forth his testimony in his own hand and to demand the right to make corrections in the deposition written by the interrogator.
And then Solzhenitsyn says, almost with rueful humor, oh, if only we had known that.
So, if only the defendants had been taught some prison science, if only interrogation had been run through first in rehearsal and only afterward for real, Solzhenitsyn is basically saying, we are just helpless lambs in this situation.
We don't have the same cunning.
We don't have the same resources.
We are not allowed to lie like the interrogators are.
And then Solzhenitsyn talks about the loneliness of the accused.
He goes, that's the key.
They keep you isolated.
It's kind of a shock period, as he calls it, from interrogation to conviction.
You're not supposed to encounter others like yourself.
They don't want you to get any sympathy, any advice, any support.
They don't want people who have been through what you have to advise you, hey, listen, say this, don't say that.
They don't want any of that. He says, it was the habit of the organs of the state...
To destroy you and those you love, as well as the authority to pardon, which the organs didn't even have.
So they give you the idea, hey listen, if you cooperate, we'll send you to a less severe camp.
And you go, oh wow, that's going to help me.
But they don't have the authority to do that.
They're just saying that. Or, listen, if you really tell us the truth that's going to go well for you, you could walk right out of here today.
That's never going to happen.
They don't even have the authority to release you, but they let on that they do.
And so, as a result, you are more obliging.
Some defendants become so depressed, this is under conditions of isolation, that they even ask not to have the depositions read to them.
They could not stand hearing them.
They asked merely to be allowed to sign them just to sign and get it over with.
So think of how much you are broken down in which they're saying all these fantastical things.
Remember from last time, this guy is colluding with the Japanese generals who are passing espionage documents to him.
None of it's even true.
And yet you're so worn down, you're so broken in terms of your psychological resistance and your physical resistance that you're like, you know what, don't even read it to me.
What difference does it possibly make?
Let me just sign, get it over with.
Essentially, my fate is sealed.
Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
▲
Export Selection