Twitter Faltering on Free Speech Promise? New CEO Pushes Strict Content Moderation & “Civic Integrity Teams.” Plus: Michael Tracey on Trump Indictment, Ukraine, & More | SYSTEM UPDATE #132
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight...
Twitter executives, led by its new CEO Linda Iaccarino, have been unveiling what they are describing as their new content moderation policies.
This week, they even announced the hiring of what they are touting as their election year quote, civic integrity team.
At first glance, that sounds like something Yoel Roth could return to do.
Ever since it was announced that Elon Musk was purchasing Twitter, accompanied by vows to restore free speech to the platform, I've been no secret of the fact that I am rooting for that to succeed.
The primary reason I moved my platform from Substack to Rumble and Locals last year, agreeing to produce a nightly live show, something I've never done before and that is quite labor intensive, is because I really believe that fortifying as many platforms as possible that are truly devoted to resisting censorship demands.
To be clear, I was convinced and still am of Substack's devotion to that cause, but I see Rumble as one of the few platforms both capable of reaching a mass audience while remaining fully devoted to resisting those censorship demands, even if it means sacrificing its own corporate self-interest.
It's hard to overstate the positive impact that would come from Twitter's long-term devotion to that cause.
Indeed, the mavens of corporate media and the Democratic Party certainly recognize how important that is, which is why there has been a non-stop assault on Musk and his reputation ever since he vowed to restore free speech to Twitter and remove it from the control of those power centers.
And it is precisely due to that importance, the importance of that cause, that it is vital to report honestly on what is happening at Twitter and whether they are adhering to those commitments or not.
I would not be honest if I did not say that these recent developments are beginning to be disturbing and will explain and analyze why this is the case.
I do so primarily in the hope of having Twitter continue to fulfill the vision and promise that Musk laid out when he first took over the platform.
Then we will talk to the independent journalist Michael Tracy about several topics, including the harsh critiques he has been voicing about the latest indictment of Donald Trump, his fourth, that one from Georgia, the most recent developments in the U.S.
proxy war in Ukraine, including the admission by one of Congress's most steadfast war supporters, Republican Congressman Andy Harris of Maryland, who has been the co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, He today said that it was time to accept that the vaunted counter-offensive in Ukraine, the one that we've all been told we should wait for because it will transform the dynamics of the war, has seemed to fail, and that the U.S.
as a result needs to start seriously reconsidering the policy that it has announced of endlessly financing this war, given what he says is the growing likelihood that all of that would be futile.
As a programming note, we are a little bit pressured by time tonight because we have committed, I have, to being on a panel starting at 8 o'clock p.m.
Eastern tonight convened by the Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy to discuss both state and corporate censorship of the Internet, and in particular that I have support for his candidacy.
It just indicates my interest in this topic and my conviction about its importance.
That discussion can be viewed live on RFK's channel right here on Rumble starting at 8 p.m. Eastern, so essentially immediately following the conclusion of our live program, and that's a channel he began on Rumble for the same reason so many people with large and mid-sized audiences are now migrating to Rumble, namely how often and that's a channel he began on Rumble for the same reason so many people with large and mid-sized As a reminder, we're encouraging our audience to download the Rumble app, which works either on your phone or your smart TV.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
When Elon Musk bought Twitter, the reason it was so controversial among many people and so hopeful for many others, such as this program, was because of his very such as this program, was because of his very vocal vows to restore free speech to major social media platforms, by which he meant that he would refuse to succumb to the demands, the various tactics imposed typically by power centers
the various tactics imposed typically by power centers in corporate In order to pressure social media companies to ban dissent from establishment orthodoxies.
And there's a lot that Elon Musk has done since buying the platform that deserve a lot of credit that definitely are a fulfillment of those visions.
I would say the most praiseworthy thing he has done was open up Twitter's corporate files to allow Matt Taibbi and other journalists the ability to use what is now known as the Twitter files to document
Just how extreme and aggressive was the pressure by the US security state, the FBI, the CIA, the Homeland Security Department, the various health agencies led by Dr. Fauci to pressure platforms to censor anything they disliked or found challenging to their pieties from social media.
He has also restored a lot of accounts that had been previously banned and I think made it More difficult for Twitter censors to ban accounts.
He has often personally intervened and all of that deserves credit and I think is a testament to the fact that I do think he means well in terms of the commitments he has made.
That said, he is under a lot of pressure.
Remember, he bought Twitter for $44 billion.
He himself now says that Twitter is worth something like $10 or $15 billion.
It is struggling financially.
It was struggling financially before he purchased it.
And one of the tactics that establishment liberals use, people in the media, people in the liberal activist world, is they try and pressure large corporations to avoid any platform that doesn't obey liberal censorship demands by essentially is they try and pressure large corporations to avoid any platform that doesn't obey liberal censorship demands by essentially saying you are associating your product And by doing so, you become responsible.
Corporations want, above all, to avoid controversy that might harm their brand.
And they're very easy to scare away.
And he has lost what Elon Musk has.
And Twitter has a lot of corporate advertisers and the massive amounts of money that come with it.
It's very difficult to monetize a large social media platform if you don't have the GMs and Fords and Kelloggs of the world that are advertising on your platform.
And they have lost a lot of those as a result of Elon Musk's attempt to restore free speech to the platform.
Now, as you undoubtedly know, several months ago, Elon Musk stepped down, at least technically, as the CEO of Twitter after conducting a poll asking whether he should.
And the person that he appointed raised some eyebrows.
It was Linda Iaccarino.
And the reason it raised eyebrows was because she has worked for the last several years at NBC News, which I would argue is ground zero for liberal establishment orthodoxies and It was one of the most aggressive spreaders of Russiagate, of the lie that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation.
In general, it has been on a hiring spree to put on its payroll operatives of the US security state, as well now in the last couple of weeks, as reported on Monday, communications officials from Joe Biden's White House.
It really is a propagandistic network.
And he didn't just pick somebody from NBC.
He picked an executive responsible for courting large corporate advertisers.
And the question is, how is she going to do that, namely lure back corporate advertisers, unless she promises to reintroduce certain kinds of content moderation policies, i.e. censorship, that assuage their concerns about not being associated that assuage their concerns about not being associated with...
What they regard, or what liberals regard, or what elite circles regard as disinformation or hate speech.
That is the conflict Twitter faces.
And she, in several appearances in media as well as on Twitter over the last several months, but really escalated over the past week or so, has become increasingly explicit about her intention to implement what sounds a lot like The old censorship regime that Elon Musk clearly hated and was determined to rid the site of.
Now, here is something that she said back in May, and I think people are willing to give Elon Musk some space to kind of Trust him.
He, like I said, has taken meaningful steps that built up some trust and good faith in his willingness to do so.
And so back in May when she said this, the question always is, is Linda Yaccarino pretending that they're going to do more content moderation to lure back corporate advertisers?
Or are they really going to do it?
I mean, I don't think corporate advertisers, who are pretty sophisticated actors, are going to be placated by illusory promises Of content moderation if they don't actually implement it.
It's the same reason why I have a lot of doubts that very wealthy corporations in Ukraine were willing to pay Hunter Biden a lot of money for a long time simply because of the promise of Joe Biden's interventions on their behalf without actually getting any results.
Sophisticated actors don't keep paying Hunter Biden if no benefits ever really come, if they're just promises that he keeps making for access or influence.
So I don't think it's a very effective strategy, if that's what it is, for them to pretend they're going to implement content moderation that satisfies corporate advertisers if they're not really going to do it.
Nonetheless, here's what she said in May, just as a reminder.
So you've got a massive platform.
You have a vision that is a spectrum of just daily, open-sourced conversation.
They can conduct their lives, their business, their commerce, whatever they can do on your platform.
That's a pretty big vision.
But in the middle should be advertising opportunity.
That sounds like a great opportunity.
I can talk about my brand, I can get my customers to communicate, and then they could also buy stuff.
That sounds pretty good, right?
You'll be able to buy things just directly on Twitter.
One click, boom, done.
All right, so there she's saying something that seems kind of benign, but it's clearly reflective of the challenge she faces, which is how to get corporate advertisers back on Twitter, how to convince them it's a brand with which they want to associate themselves and it's a friendly place to market their brand.
People wondering, rightly, what that meant, what they intended to do, but I think he had a lot of space.
Now the rubber is meeting the road.
It's time to explain exactly what these policies actually are.
So here was Lyndon Yaccarino on August 10th, so last week on Twitter Spaces, where she says on Thursday I'll be on Spaces and then on CNBC to talk about X, that of course is the new name for Twitter.
And here are some comments she made about what she envisions Twitter doing, essentially now, in order to lure back corporate advertisers.
Since acquisitions.
We have built brand safety and content moderation tools.
Okay, so already those are alarming words.
Safety is the name under which Big Tech has been censoring.
It's this creepy kind of utopian concept that the people who pioneered the internet and Big Tech can actually Create safe spaces for adults to use on the internet, that that's their obligation to spread happiness and safety.
And she specifically said, That she intends to do that with content moderation, which, as I've argued many times well before Elon Musk took over Twitter, is just a euphemism that journalists use when they're cheering for it for censorship.
Nobody ever likes to say they're going to start censoring content moderation.
Instead is the phrase they use for it.
Listen to the details of how she describes what she's envisioning.
That have never existed before at this company.
And we've introduced a new policy to your specific point about hate speech called Freedom of Speech, Not Reach.
So if you're going to post something that's illegal or against the law, you're gone.
Zero tolerance.
But more importantly, if you are going to post something that is lawful, but it's awful, you get labeled.
You get labeled, you get de-amplified, which means it cannot be shared, and it is certainly demonetized, back to your direct point about brand safety.
So they are protected from the risk of being next to that content.
And it's also why it's really important to note that once a post is labeled and it can't be shared and the user sees that, 30% of the time, they take it down themselves.
Staggeringly, they take it down.
All right.
So there's a lot going on there.
What you're saying is that, first of all, when Elon Musk announced his intention to import onto Twitter what he called free speech absolutism, and he was then asked what he meant by that, He gave the answer that I would give if I'm asked that, that I have given many times when I'm asked that, which is namely that I think social media companies should essentially follow First Amendment law.
They're obviously not required to, unless you see them as monopolies, in which case they might be, but assuming they're not, they're obviously not required to follow First Amendment law.
The First Amendment governs what states can do, not private corporations.
But nonetheless, it's a good guidepost for understanding how free speech should function, which is essentially, as long as it's not illegal, It's permitted under the First Amendment.
So pretty much the only thing that you can't do under the First Amendment in terms of expressing speech is you cannot go to a corner where there's a mob gathered and instruct the mob to go burn down a house while they have torches, because then you're inciting imminent violence.
You can do everything short of that, including defending violence in the abstract, saying, I think our government is so unjust, it's time to engage in violence, it's now justified, and anything short of that.
So that was what Elon Musk said his vision would be and that he would follow.
If it's not illegal, it won't be banned from Twitter.
He violated that very quickly by banning Kanye West after Kanye West went on Alex Jones' show and said something like, I like Hitler, I don't mind Hitler, and then banned Nick Fuentes, the white nationalist, neither of whom said anything arguably illegal.
And yet they nonetheless got banned.
And when asked, Elon Musk said it was because they were inciting violence, which under the First Amendment framework is not even a close call.
They did not do anything that was outside of the bounds of protective speech.
But I was willing even there to say, OK, you know, he's not going to be perfect on it if he's heading in the right direction.
I think we should be happy about that.
There are realities.
It's probably true that corporate brands don't want to be advertising next to somebody who's talking about the virtues of Adolf Hitler.
And there's commercial realities that probably is going to make it impossible for him to be perfect.
But as long as he's headed in the right direction, then with the right intentions, I think he deserves some space.
But having her now talk about not only that if you're illegal, you're gone, which is what he said, but also that if it's lawful but awful, it's going to be severely repressed and basically no one's going to hear it.
Which on some level is worse than being banned.
If you're being banned, there's at least a knowledge or recognition that they're banning you.
That people are, that the company has a policy of censoring.
But if they're tinkering with the algorithms to make it so that you can't be heard, basically it means that you're just relegated to screaming into oblivion.
And in a lot of ways that's a form of censorship more insidious and subtle and therefore in a lot of ways more threatening.
And of course the question is, what is awful speech?
And who determines awful speech?
Is it a safety board of the kind that Twitter used to use?
Is it consulting with disinformation experts?
So the idea that now awful speech, in the eyes of unnamed people, will now be very aggressively suppressed.
Nobody can even share it.
So technically you have the right to say it, it's just they'll make sure nobody hears it.
Is a form of aggressive censorship, no matter how you slice it.
Remember, Twitter, prior to the 2020 election, banned any discussion of the Hunter Biden reporting for the New York Post by simply having a brute, blunt prohibition on linking to that story.
But Facebook did something more subtle but more damaging, which was they algorithmically suppressed the story in ways they've never explained, where they ensured that the story didn't spread.
They severely limited the number of people who could hear about that reporting while not actually banning it.
That's what she's talking about.
She's saying, if we think your speech is awful, no one's going to hear it, which is most definitely a violation of the vision Elon Musk read out.
And it's essentially a lot closer to what Twitter in the pre-Musk era was doing than what he had promised he would restore.
Now, in case you think that was just something she said off the cuff or without a lot of approval, obviously the phrase, lawful but awful is something that she didn't think of on the spot.
That was a phrase that came out of branding professionals hired by Twitter or inside meetings or in PowerPoint operations.
But then she went on to CNBC and she said something very similar.
There you see the phrase.
Phrase on the screen, ex-CEO Linda Iaccarino on content moderation.
So this is what they're touting.
New content moderation policies that, as she put it, are tools that no social media platform has ever used before.
They're brand new and apparently they see them as innovative.
And here's how she described it.
staggeringly they take it down.
And that reducing that hateful content from being seen is one of the best examples how X is committed to encouraging healthy behavior online. - Okay, who wants big tech companies, including X, to encourage healthy behavior online among adults?
Where do these big tech companies and people like Linda Gaccarino get off believing they're competent to decide what healthy behavior is when it comes to political speech and that they can, like, paternal figures or teachers foster it?
That's something my kids' teachers do.
They reward positive behavior and they stigmatize or punish negative behavior.
That's how you raise children.
That's not how you And the fact that she's so proud of the fact that 30% or so just voluntarily censor their own speech once they get a warning.
Seems creepy to me.
That is exactly what this will do, is it will create a climate where you know the only way you can stay on Twitter is if you avoid saying things that Linda Gaccarino and the people she hires think is awful.
Awful content.
She's from NBC News.
I wonder what she thinks is awful, but I don't have to wonder that hard because of her career and where she came from.
And that kind of self-censorship Where Twitter sends you a warning and you say, oh my God, I'm so sorry.
I'm going to take it down myself.
I'm never going to do it again, is a chilling effect.
That's what censorship often does is it fosters self-censorship.
That's what they're explicitly saying they want to engender.
Let's listen to the rest.
And today I can confidently sit in front of you and say that 99.9% Of all posted impressions are healthy.
How do you define healthy though?
Is porn healthy?
Are conspiracy theories healthy?
You know, it goes back to my point about our success with freedom of speech not reach.
And if it's, if it is lawful, but it's awful, It's extraordinarily difficult for you to see it.
But how many millions of people follow Kanye West?
Lawful but awful.
And he's allowed back on.
You know, Kanye... First of all, notice that every time journalists, corporate employees of big media corporations ask questions about big tech officials, it is always, and I mean always, Hello, hello, can you hear me?
From the direction of insisting and demanding that they censor more or complaining they're not censoring enough.
So, if I were conducting this interview, I'd be asking her things that I just raised.
Who determines all four?
And how is this any different than what the pre-Elon Musk Twitter regime was doing?
And how is this not classic censorship?
But instead she's I'm dissatisfied that this goes far enough.
This employee, this journalist, is upset that there's still, for example, a lot of Kanye West on the net.
In her view, this isn't going to prevent people from seeing them.
But you see Linda Yaccarino eagerly trying to convince the public that Twitter will do everything possible to impede these people from being heard.
That's what she's saying.
Yeah, you have freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.
I mean, go ahead and sit in the corner and talk.
We're just going to make sure no one hears you.
Yeah, who hasn't rejoined the platform yet, but is planning to do so will operate within the very specific policies that we have established that we're clear on that everyone who's watching this or listening on spaces can access themselves.
And we have an extraordinary team of people who are overseeing hands-on keyboards, monitoring all day, every day to make sure that that 99.99% of impressions remain at that number.
They have a team, she says, an extraordinary team of employees who are monitoring everything that's being said 24 hours a day to make sure that it is healthy content and not awful and that any awful an extraordinary team of employees who are monitoring everything that's being said 24 hours Thank you.
That's what she said.
Staggering that we have established, that we're clear on, that everyone who's watching this or listening on spaces can access themselves.
themselves.
And we have an extraordinary team of people who are overseeing hands-on keyboards monitoring all day every day to make sure that that 99.99% of impressions remain at that number.
But we also have to remember what's at the core of free expression.
You might not agree with what everyone is saying.
We want to make it a healthy debate and discourse, but free expression at its core will really really only survive When someone you don't agree with says something you don't agree with.
And what a great place we would live in if we were able to return to a healthy, constructive discourse amongst people that we don't agree with.
I mean, that's a nice aspiration.
But the problem is that every time big tech executives have tried to foster what they regard as a healthy discourse by intervening, it ends up being censorship, which is exactly what she's describing here.
Here was Elon Musk himself, I believe yesterday, when he was asked about these new policies and the attempt to win back corporate advertisers.
And here's what he said.
And we're also going to be showing, like, if your account is in any way affected by the Twitter system, you can see it clearly.
He's essentially saying, and we should have played a longer version than that, it's something that, it's hard to see the context, but the context was he's essentially saying that if you remain, if you're somebody who's being shadow banned or in some way restricted in the way Linda Iaccarino is saying you will be, they're going to try and make it more transparent so that you'll have tools that will enable you to know whether you're being restricted.
Which is better than not knowing, but it still means Twitter will continue to shadow ban and do these sorts of things that have been so controversial that I believe in the past Elon Musk has criticized and vowed would end.
Now here is an article by Forbes that talks about
How Twitter has complied with almost every government request for censorship since Musk took over, a report finds, and they say, quote, Twitter has fully complied with more than 80% of government and court requests to remove or alter content since Elon Musk bought the company, up from around 50% from before he took over, according to a report from the technology publication, Rest of World, reflecting a discordance with the billionaire's promises to limit political censorship.
No, I do think the case of a government or a court ordering Twitter to remove content or ban somebody is a little bit different because it can mean and sometimes does mean that Twitter will simply lose the entire market.
They'll no longer have Twitter in Turkey or Poland or wherever that these court orders are coming from.
Brazil.
These countries have become very aggressive about simply banning platforms that don't comply with their censorship orders.
So I don't think that it's the responsibility of a social media company to self-destruct in pursuit of a value that they can't actually pursue without destroying themselves.
On the other hand, if you're serious about this cause, if you're serious about these values, you do sometimes have to take on those fights.
And as I mentioned, one of the reasons I became so convinced of the authenticity of Rumble's commitment is that when the French government ordered them to remove RT and other Russian state media, They were offended.
RT produces very little traffic for Rumble.
That was never the issue.
It was a principle that they're not going to start taking orders from foreign governments about who they can and can't allow on.
The minute you do that, your free speech crusade is a fraud.
And as a result, Rumble would rather not be available in France, as they're not now, while they can test the validity of that order in court, than comply with those demands.
Now, if it's a question of losing a bigger market like Canada or the U.S., maybe they'll have a different calculation.
I'm not suggesting these companies be impervious to considerations of their own self-interest.
They can't be.
But you do have to sometimes step up and be willing to demonstrate that you're going to take on this fight.
And I actually believe that if Big Tech united against these kind of censorship demands, If Facebook and Google and Twitter and Rumble and Telegram all gave the middle finger to say court in India or Turkey or Brazil or wherever to remove content, then I think that would put those countries in a very difficult position around.
Are they really going to explain to their public why no major social media company is available any longer in their country?
I think that would be very difficult to do.
But short of that, I think you are required in a lot of instances to stand up and contest at least some of these that you're able to, and according to this report at least, Twitter is not doing much of that.
Just this week, one of Twitter's employees, Aaron Rodericks, announced the following, quote, first interviews kicking off today for the civic integrity elections lead at Twitter, as well as the senior IO investigator.
If you are thinking about it, apply here.
I'd like to know what the civic integrity elections lead at Twitter is.
It sounds a lot like.
Efforts to start regulating content in advance of the 2024 election, which is exactly what old Twitter did to such controversy.
That's why I say it sounds like something UL Roth might be interested in doing.
Once you start talking about integrity, civic integrity, and elections lead at Twitter, absent a real explanation about what that is and isn't, combined with the CEO's promises to institute these new tools, I consider this pretty alarming, and I think other developments as well.
Here, for example, is a disinformation docket saying, check out the latest tool from the Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University.
The top FIB dashboards track the worst disinformation super spreaders of the month on Twitter and Facebook.
And the reason that is...
Relevant is because it seems as though, here you see from Andy Roderick, him saying that that's part of whom they're going to work with.
Senior Specialist in Information Operations, Civic Integrity Elections Team Lead, Senior Software Engineer.
Those are the positions for which they are now seeking to hire.
So, I'm not here to pronounce Twitter's free speech commitments dead.
I continue to have hope that Musk will be willing to provoke the rage of corporate media and the government by refusing to adhere to their censorship demands, but it seems a lot like at least some of these trends are indicative of an erosion of that commitment.
And at the very least, I think it's worth keeping a real eye on.
I say that recognizing That there is a real censorship regime in place that puts enormous pressure on these companies.
If you listen to Jack Dorsey, he will tell you that he always was disturbed by the need to censor.
And felt like there was pressure coming both from his workforce and external forces that almost forced him to do it.
Twitter was never a big company.
It was nearly as big as Facebook and Google.
It was vulnerable to threats from the Democratic Party to impose legal and regulatory reprisals that they didn't obey censorship demands.
There's all kinds of pressures brought to bear on these companies.
But Elon Musk bought Twitter in large part because he said he wanted to use it to resist those.
And as somebody who Thought that that was at least possible to happen, that that would be a major benefit for our country, for the world, for a free internet, if it did, as somebody who still hopes it will.
I think it's incumbent upon people like me who have been encouraging people to have hope for that, that we report truthfully on these events and to at least raise the warning signs about what some of these latest policies seem to suggest in the way of succumbing to a lot of these that we report truthfully on these events and to at least All right. - Okay.
All right, so for our next segment, we don't have a lot of time, so we're hoping that he is on his best behavior and controls himself whenever I need to interrupt and he doesn't keep trying to talk and fight me for airtime, is our very good friend, friend of the show, my personal friend, the intrepid independent journalist, Michael Tracy, here to talk about several different issues.
Michael, good evening.
Thanks for joining us.
Sorry Glenn, I'm tied up at the moment.
I'm putting together my application for Senior IO Investigator at Twitter.
I think that you could play a really important role in keeping Twitter safe and healthy.
You know that's one of Big Tech's obligations is to make sure we live in a safe and healthy environment, and I think you'd be great at that.
By the way, I know why Linda Iaccarino gets paid the big bucks.
She figured out that the words lawful and awful rhyme.
You can tell she's so proud of that.
Whoever invented that phrase, I'm sure got a bonus.
They got one of those gold stars.
You know, she's a big believer in encouraging positive behavior with positive reinforcement.
I'm sure that person got, I don't know, a bigger office or whatever because she really loves it.
You can tell.
Every time she goes to say it, she kind of pauses for dramatic effect and like unveils it on the world as something very innovative.
Anyway, let's talk about This latest indictment from the Fulton County District Attorney based in Atlanta who has now brought the fourth indictment against President Trump very similar to the fact pattern of Jack Smith's prior indictment in the federal court based essentially on what they regard as his unlawful efforts to invalidate the outcome of the 2020 election.
You have been pretty vocally critical of this latest indictment.
Why don't you tell us in kind of a summary way why that is?
Well, actually, for fairly similar reasons, as I was critical of the initial Jack Smith indictment, that under the guise of these expanded interpretations of these conspiracy statutes, they've sought to criminalize behavior that wouldn't have been previously foreseeable as constituting criminal conduct.
So in the case of Jack Smith, he resurrected this Civil War era statute, Conspiracy Against Rights, which had been largely used in the recent past when it is used to go after, you
Racialized violence such as the literal hoisting of a burning cross on the bones of black families in the South, that's the same statute he now uses to say that Trump was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to deprive unknown persons of rights.
And likewise, Fannie Willis in Georgia Decided to go with the Rico statute, the state version of the Rico law, which was basically invented or concocted in the 70s to target organized crime, mafia crime families.
But she's turned on its head the ordinary commonly understood application of that law to posit in a sense that Trump is the equivalent of the leader of like the Gambino crime family, which is just not What would have been foreseeable is how a statute like this could have been used?
So I'm going to give you one particularly absurd example of what is cited in the Georgia indictment as one of the necessary predicate acts that underlies the use of the RICO statute.
So she has to establish that there have been acts taken by a whole cadre of people in the Trump campaign orbit up to and including Trump himself that makes the RICO statute in Georgia Who was indicted?
This is one of the acts committed pursuant to a conspiracy or in furtherance of the alleged conspiracy.
This is act number 98, 92, sorry, of 160 plus, I think.
It alleges that on the 22nd day of December of 2020, Mark Meadows, then Trump's chief of staff, traveled to Georgia.
Who was indicted, who was one of the co-conspirators.
Right.
So unlike the federal case, in the Georgia case, a whole slew of actors other than Trump have been indicted as participants in this alleged conspiracy.
Whereas in the case of Jack Smith, it was just Trump himself who was indicted and there were several unnamed co-conspirators listed in the text of that indictment.
The DA in Fulton County took a different course of action here.
And she says that Mark Meadows committed an act in furtherance of the conspiracy by simply traveling to Cobb County, Georgia on December 22, 2020, and going to a facility where there was an audit of votes being undertaken to match signatures.
And according to a Deputy Secretary of State in the Georgia Secretary of State's office, simply asking basic process questions about the manner in which that signature verification audit was being conducted.
Now, they say in the indictment that this was, I guess, pursuant to some sort of criminal conspiracy because the vote auditing session was not meant to be open to the public, which is kind of questionable unto itself.
Using the incredibly broad, expansive, copious nature of this RICO statute, they're saying that Meadows is a co-conspirator of Trump in this sweeping felony criminal conspiracy.
By simply showing up to a ostensibly public facility where an ostensibly public action is being carried out, meaning auditing votes, asking questions about it, and then leaving after 20 minutes.
So that's the kind of conduct or political activity that they've sucked up into this catch-all category of newly criminalized And I think that's one of the most ominous aspects of this whole frenzied crusade to prosecute Trump.
They're criminalizing what would have been, I think, almost universally seen before August of 2023 as political conduct that you can object to on the merits.
And I did object to a lot of this Trump campaign operation conduct on the merits at the time.
But I never would have tried to construe it as criminally prosecutable.
And that's the key difference.
Yeah.
And just I unfortunately, we are very time limited tonight.
And I want to delve into that a lot more with you and a couple of other questions as well.
I want to ask you one last question and then I have to let you go because I have to do this RFK panel.
Just to be clear, we're keeping the show an hour or so right before our show airs so that I can go do this RFK Junior Show.
So I only have one question left that I can ask you and I want to ask you about Ukraine.
I mean, I do just want to say though, When it comes to conspiracy, the nature of conspiracy laws, which is what makes them so menacing potentially in the hands of prosecutors, is that you really only have to do one act to join the conspiracy, and after that, sometimes that act can be pretty benign,
You are as part of the conspiracy then chargeable with every crime committed by the conspiracy even if you didn't actually participate in any of those acts other than the one that you did that they can say that you joined.
Actually, when I was charged in Brazil, criminally, as a conspirator with my sources, I had one little tiny thing they alleged that I did that made me join the conspiracy and then I was suddenly charged with, you know, multiple felony counts involving hacking and the like that was done well before they talked to me on the grounds that I became a member of the conspiracy and therefore was charged
By everything, and ironically, this is part of the tough on crime Republican political movement that put a lot of power in the hands of prosecutors, took away a lot of rights from defendants, and now it's kind of coming back to bite them in the sense that Georgia has a very aggressive RICO statute, racketeering statute, that does make this a dangerous case, I think, against Trump, not only because he's going to be tried in Atlanta, but also because the law is so broad.
Let me just quickly, Michael, ask you about this development.
And when it comes to the war in Ukraine, which is one of the people in the House of Representatives, the Republican conservative, who was the head of the Freedom Caucus, who has been a steadfast supporter of Biden's policy and the war in Ukraine, Andy Harris of Maryland, The Politico today has a headline, Ukraine's top Freedom Caucus ally gets cold feet.
And it essentially describes that he now accepts that the counter offensive that had been touted for so long is the thing that would change the war in favor of the Russians.
Has been a failure and as a result he sees no end in sight to this war and now believes we need to start seriously re-evaluating whether it's worth it to pour unlimited resources into a war that likely will be futile, that will be a stalemate at best for years to come.
What do you make of these latest developments?
Do you think this actually signifies any meaningful chance that the Republican House caucus might block the latest Biden request for an additional 25 billion dollars for the war?
No, not at all.
First of all, I don't see any commitment or conviction in that quote from Andy Harris, where he's saying that there ought to be a recession or there ought to be a cessation of U.S. provision of armaments or financial resources to Ukraine.
It just says that we ought to be realistic about this phase of the war, potentially not going as we would have anticipated.
But since they view it, I mean, since proponents of this war effort...
I do want to read the article just to put the exact quotes.
He does say, quote, I'll be blunt, it's failed about the counteroffensive.
Then he says, I'm not sure it's winnable anymore.
And then he does say he remains steadfast in his support.
But he also said, if there's humanitarian monies, non-military monies or military monies without an inspector general, I'm not supporting it.
I I mean, it seems relatively meaningless to me.
It's an offhand comment that they can spin as somehow reflecting some kind of major sea-changing Congressional attitudes toward the Ukraine war that doesn't seem to be reflected in the policy.
And I'll just give you an example of why I don't put very much stock in that at all.
Just today, I interviewed Congressman Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, who happened to be a speaker at this event that I've been covering in Omaha, where I am now, which is held by STRATCOM, basically the branch of the military that oversees the US nuclear arsenal.
And Don Bacon addressed this crowd today, and I asked him about some Ukraine-related policy issues, and his conviction is just as steadfast as it's ever been that the problem, to the extent that there is any with U.S.
policy, is that the Biden administration has been too reluctant to send missile systems or to send F-16s or other weapons provisions to Ukraine.
So his problem is not that the mission itself is fundamentally flawed or fruitless.
It's that the Biden administration has not prosecuted the mission aggressively enough.
And that was the line from Kevin McCarthy on down right from the beginning.
And it's still the line reflected in the Republican leadership in the House.
So a fleeting comment that can kind of be interpreted in a variety of ways by Andy Harris at a town hall somewhere in Maryland, I don't think should be overinterpreted.
Because for one thing, they're already planning to package the next round of Ukraine, quote unquote, aid with Taiwan aid, which provides a political buffer to the Biden administration because they know that Republicans, Republicans, some of whom might be more skeptical of the Ukraine aid, are not probably going to be as willing to forego provision of aid to Taiwan because China is their big, scary enemy that they're attempting to elevate.
And so that's a clever political move on the part of the Biden administration if the idea is to sort of push back on maybe some of the marginal opposition within the Republican caucus to these aid packages.
So nothing Andy Harris said there, nothing really any Republican of note has said recently gives me any real assurance that they're going to take what would be a politically – you know, vulnerable move or a risk risky move and oppose, for example, the next tranche of Ukraine and Taiwan aid that is packaged together for the purposes of shepherding it ever the more seamlessly through Congress.
Yeah.
And just to be clear, I mean, even if you take all these Republicans who are expressing any degree of reluctance or resistance about this war, newfound or long held, There are obviously 60 or so House members who voted no the first time around, but even if you take the new ones, there's more than enough votes to form a majority when you have every Democrat in the House still in favor of the war, combined with enough Republicans to do so.
The question is, is there enough Republican opposition, and will it be aggressive and steadfast enough to prevent Kevin McCarthy from bringing it to a vote on the House floor.
If it's brought to a vote, there's no question it will pass between Democrats and enough pro-war Republicans.
The question is, are Republicans serious about not just opposing it and voting no meaninglessly, but taking meaningful measures to actually block it from happening?
Unfortunately, we do have to run.
I do have a lot more to ask you about both the indictment, Ukraine, and a bunch of other stuff as well.
We're probably going to harass you to come back on the show a little bit later this week, maybe even tomorrow.
So get ready for that.
But for now, we need to go.
So thank you so much.
All right.
Well, I don't know.
Leave me alone for a little while.
All right.
Bye, Michael.
Thank you for coming.
Because there's too much to handle.
OK.
Bye.
So that concludes, look I'm at the wrong camera.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
As I said, we taped this episode shortly before it aired because I have to go and do this.
