#754: Formulaic Objections Part 12
Today, Dan and Jordan release the Kraken. In this installment, the gents review the 2021 deposition of Dan Bidondi, who is much less Kraken-like in a formal setting. Still a little Kraken-esque, but not very.
Dec. 7, 2022 - Knowledge Fight
02:43:24
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dan and Jordan. | |
| knowledge fight. | ||
| Need money. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| It's time to pray. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I love you. | |
| Hey, everybody! | ||
| Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm Jordan. | |
| We're a couple dudes like to sit around, worship at the altar of Selene, and talk a little bit about Alex Jones. | ||
| Oh, indeed we are. | ||
| Dan. | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| Dan! | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| Quick question for you, buddy. | ||
| What's up? | ||
| What's your bright spot today? | ||
| My bright spot today, Jordan, is actually my computer. | ||
| I had to relaunch, and Spotify had been launched along with the restarting of the computer, and that jogged my memory that I don't really use Spotify for anything, except for if I'm exercising, listening to music on there, because you just make... | ||
| Make playlists. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Fuck Spotify, Joe Rogan, all that nonsense. | ||
| Yeah, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| But there is a Doughboys side podcast that they just started called The Snack Stack. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| On brand. | ||
| They do a live show on Spotify. | ||
| Apparently you can do that, and they take callers and stuff. | ||
| It's a lot of fun. | ||
| I've enjoyed it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I like that show, Nick and Mitch. | ||
| That does sound fun. | ||
| And they're very mean to the callers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's a lot of fun, and it reminded me that I feel like, at certain points, we should try and abuse our notoriety in some way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Or our modicum of celebrity that we have, or whatever. | ||
| Our audience. | ||
| Power of the audience. | ||
| Naturally. | ||
| I need to put this out there into the universe to manifest. | ||
| I would love to end up being on Dope Boys. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Get it done. | ||
| I feel like almost everything that's happened to us over the last couple years has been this absurd, like, that's never gonna happen kind of idea. | ||
| And then it does. | ||
| These things do end up happening. | ||
| We're in the Times. | ||
| We're on CNN with Stelter. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| Here's the problem. | ||
| Here's the problem, Dan. | ||
| What? | ||
| The problem is, in order to achieve those things, you have always had an unreachable goal in front of you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that is being on the Doughboys. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| That's going to ruin everything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| If you grasp that, then what is there to grasp for? | ||
| Be careful what you get, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's dangerous. | ||
| Don't make me go to Quincy. | ||
| I'll show up in Quincy. | ||
| Hunt Mitch down. | ||
| Do it. | ||
| So anyway, that's my bright spot. | ||
| It's a lot of fun. | ||
| It's a dumb, dumb show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe you. | |
| Anyway, what's your bright spot? | ||
| My bright spot is... | ||
| I don't know if you can see these right here, my man. | ||
| Nice socks. | ||
| These are some new socks with my pups on them. | ||
| Oh yeah, those are actually your dogs. | ||
| Yeah, that's Fanny and Jake. | ||
| And then I got this new hoodie. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And the reason is because my wife is amazing. | ||
| She got me these things. | ||
| She is amazing. | ||
| She loves... | ||
| I didn't know you could put dogs on socks. | ||
| Yeah, you couldn't. | ||
| Brand new technology. | ||
| You cracked the code. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| It didn't exist there. | ||
| Early Christmas presents, are you saying? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Very nice. | ||
| She does a fantastic job of hiding Christmas presents until the moment they arrive and then giving them to me to make me happy. | ||
| Only a good 19 days early. | ||
| It's fantastic. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| They've never been hidden. | ||
| Not once. | ||
| But it's fantastic. | ||
| But what's the point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's a hero! | |
| What's the point of waiting, you know? | ||
| She's a hero. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Those are great socks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| I always like a nice novelty sock. | ||
| Oh, love them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I didn't used to. | ||
| I'm not a things guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| But now, it's novelty socks all the way. | ||
| Well, it kind of puts a little pep in your step. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| Because you have a secret. | ||
| Oh! | ||
| You're wearing silly socks. | ||
| You gotta sell my secrets. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| During the winter. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, Jordan, today we got an episode to do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We felt like our last episode was a lot, requiring us taking a little bit of a, you know, a little pause for Monday. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And I didn't want to jump right back into all that, necessarily. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, just give that a little bit of breathing room, give it a little bit of time to sit. | ||
| And then Friday, unfortunately, you're going to have to come back to some other swamp nonsense. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| But for today, we have ourselves a little deposition to go over. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh. | |
| And I am going to say that it is time to release the Kraken. | ||
| Oh, God, it's the Badondi. | ||
| It is the damn Badondi deposition. | ||
| Oh, it's the Badondi. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-oh. | |
| He's an interesting cat. | ||
| I really got a different feel for him based on this than I had before. | ||
| You know, you have this image of him as kind of, I mean, he's a pro wrestler. | ||
| He has quite a northeast accent that I think a lot of people code as dumb, which, you know, certainly unfair, prejudicial, and what have you, but he also has a bombasticness to him, | ||
| and he yells at the press conferences, and you don't really get much of a chance to ever hear thoughts or his personality be expressed, and I found it really interesting to see Uh, six to eight hours of him in a deposition room. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| How? | ||
| Does he, I mean, obviously he's not a wrestler anymore. | ||
| Yes he is. | ||
| He is still. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Okay. | ||
| How do you keep kayfabe in a deposition? | ||
| Well, actually that's an interesting question because I think he might a little bit. | ||
| Oh shit. | ||
| More than some. | ||
| Yeah, he talks about how he has scars on his head and stuff from chair shots or what have you. | ||
| But yeah, you know what? | ||
| That's something interesting to keep track of. | ||
| There is a little bit of protecting the business that he does. | ||
| I would be interested. | ||
| I imagine the big show at A Deposition is a different story. | ||
| You mean Paul White? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh wait, is he the mayor of something now? | ||
| No, that's Cain. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Yeah, he's a MAGA. | ||
| He's the demon's favorite patriot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Or the devil's favorite patriot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| So yeah, actually, I think that there is maybe more of a sticking to his guns than a lot of other people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Interesting. | |
| So that kayfabe idea is actually... | ||
| I'm sitting with it, and we'll see what happens. | ||
| So before we get into that, Jordan, let's take a little moment here to say hello to some new wonks. | ||
| Oh, that's a great idea. | ||
| So first, very high-placed dental associate. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Next, the midnight sodomite. | ||
| What sent that bucket of poop? | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I always love a tick reference. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Always. | ||
| Next, Michael the Scott Truesdale. | ||
| You got our wonk status, so don't be an asshole, Steve. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| A lot of names in there. | ||
| That is a confusing syntax. | ||
| Yeah, I'm confused. | ||
| Next, Andy in Boston. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Next, Bobby, a.k.a. | ||
| The Other Shane. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And Tars the Voyeur and Cuck Deployer. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And we got a couple of technocrats here, Jordan. | ||
| So first, Ye's saliva-soaked balaclava resting beside Owen's puddles of tears boiling beside a fake campfire. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a technocrat. | ||
| And Oops All Plants. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a technocrat. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| I have risen above. | ||
| My enemies. | ||
| I might quit tomorrow, actually. | ||
| I'm just going to take a little breaky now. | ||
| A little breaky for me. | ||
| And then we're going to come back. | ||
| And I'm going to start the show over. | ||
| But I'm the devil! | ||
| I've got to be taken over here! | ||
| Fuck you! | ||
| Fuck you! | ||
| I've got plenty of words for you, but at the end of the day, fuck you and your New World Order, and fuck the horse you rode in on, and all your shit! | ||
| Maybe today should be my last broadcast. | ||
| Maybe I'll just be gone a month, maybe five years. | ||
| Maybe I'll walk out of here tomorrow and you never see me again. | ||
| That's really what I want to do. | ||
| I never want to come back here again. | ||
| I apologize to the crew and the listeners yesterday that I was legitimately having breakdowns on air. | ||
| I'll be better tomorrow. | ||
| He's not. | ||
| Oh, no! | ||
| And we'll talk about that on Friday. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But for now, Alec's getting very little play in this deposition. | ||
| Good call. | ||
| So that's kind of fun. | ||
| We just get to hear about the Kraken and his business. | ||
| But here's another context drop that I think sums up some of this stuff pretty well. | ||
| And so the only basis for your knowledge that was your common sense and the TV shows you've watched? | ||
| No. | ||
| If there's anything else, tell me. | ||
| No, I think we're done with this. | ||
| Alright, alright. | ||
| I like that. | ||
| Yeah, you came up with an idea and the only thing you had to back it up was common sense and TV shows. | ||
| We're done here. | ||
| No, I think we're done with this. | ||
| I think I've given you everything I have to give you, is a simple way of describing that. | ||
| So, Badandi, his deposition begins, like all the depositions, you have to swear in the witness, and what have you. | ||
| But it does not go down the same way all of the other ones do. | ||
| I'm amazed that before we start, if you're saying that the swear in the witness part has a clip, this is going to be interesting. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Here you go. | ||
| Would the court reporter please swear in the witness? | ||
| Mr. Padondi, could you please raise your right hand? | ||
| For the record, I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. | ||
| I don't take sworn oaths, but my yes will be yes and my no will be no, as instructed to us in the book of Matthew. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Mr. Padondi, well, you're free if you choose not to take an oath. | ||
| You do need to affirm. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| In some manner, that the testimony that you're going to be giving today will be truthful. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And so you can either swear, and if you choose not to, you can affirm that all the testimony that you're going to give today will be truthful. | ||
| I affirm my yes will be yes, and my no will be no, and my words will be truthful. | ||
| This is interesting to me because, like, all of them, you know, they have religious inclination. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| I think the only person I've heard who's like, I don't swear on things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is against my religion to swear oaths. | ||
| Yeah, is there a new type of sovereign citizen that believes they already live in heaven? | ||
| Like a heavenly citizen? | ||
| Like something along those lines? | ||
| Yeah, we talked about one of them. | ||
| Oh, well, that's true. | ||
| Like 20 episodes ago or something. | ||
| Right, but I mean... | ||
| The guy who has the DMV of heaven. | ||
| That's true, that's true. | ||
| Yes, that is a sovereign citizen of heaven. | ||
| I wonder what... | ||
| Badandi's imaginary friend will judge him in the courts of heaven. | ||
| Well, he's got to get a good lawyer first. | ||
| It's not going to be Norm. | ||
| No, but Norm is here. | ||
| He is an observer. | ||
| He's not representing Badandi. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| There's another... | ||
| I don't think... | ||
| Badandi may not have a lawyer. | ||
| Because I think that there are just people observing and making objections and stuff on behalf of InfoWars and such. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Norm is there for Alex. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then in terms of free speech systems... | ||
| There's a guy who is like the lawyer, one of Mark Randazza's associates. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Who is there, who's the voice you'll hear objecting. | ||
| I think he, yeah, I think he's representing free speech systems. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Maybe partially, but it's not really that important. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| So, in terms of coming to Infowars, coming down this path, Badandi was drawn to Alex for some... | ||
| Great reasons. | ||
| Totally good reasons. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Would it be fair to say that... | ||
| As part of your views as an independent constitutionalist include a high level of distrust for the media. | ||
| Is that fair? | ||
| The mainstream media on both sides, absolutely. | ||
| Right and left, both of them lied through their teeth. | ||
| And what we have the ability is to, and credit to alexjonesandinfowars.com, what we have the ability is to see through the lies and slice through the lies and show the public what really is going on. | ||
| And that's why we're all the most hated networks in the mainstream. | ||
| That's what people love. | ||
| That's why we've got millions of followers and everything else, because people want the truth. | ||
| And most of the time, it's hard. | ||
| It sucks. | ||
| It stinks. | ||
| But we can't sugarcoat things. | ||
| We need to tell people the exact truth of the way things are. | ||
| I'm not speaking for Alex Jones or anything. | ||
| I'm speaking for myself. | ||
| That's the way I conduct journalism. | ||
| If I see something wrong, I'm going after Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| I've confronted Obama. | ||
| The question was, what is your name? | ||
| Governors of both parties, congressmen, all that sort. | ||
| And Michael Bloomberg and many other people like them. | ||
| I'm not a party bias, so to speak. | ||
| If somebody's telling a lie, I'm going to come after them, plain and simple, politically. | ||
| And I do my best to ask questions and, you know, if they answer them, they do. | ||
| You know, whatever the case. | ||
| And is it true to Alex Jones your view that he was telling the truth where the other mainstream media outlets would not? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| No, the thing is that he was just asking questions and they don't like that. | ||
| Yeah, they don't like it. | ||
| They don't like it. | ||
| That he asks questions. | ||
| Yeah, you might have hit a little bit of an important point in this, that is that he does not end sentences. | ||
| He talks. | ||
| He is a talker. | ||
| He's got things to say. | ||
| One of the reasons this is so fucking long, these depositions, is he keeps answering questions that weren't asked. | ||
| It just goes on and on and on. | ||
| Medi's beautiful... | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay, and... | ||
| Let me try and ask this again. | ||
| I do appreciate that, because I do think that there is some sincerity in Badandi's part of, like, he thinks that, like, this is hard and it sucks, gotta tell these hard truths. | ||
| It's delusional, but I think that it does... | ||
| There is a part of me that believes that he believes it. | ||
| I was thinking the same thing. | ||
| I was thinking we're dealing with a believer, and that we... | ||
| It's so sad. | ||
| Knowing what we know now, when he says we in regards to him and Infowars, ooh boy. | ||
| There is a sort of thread that runs throughout this that I really do get the feeling that he doesn't understand how little Alex cares about him, how much they wish they could just blame all this on him and let him be the fall guy. | ||
| It is a little bit of a bummer. | ||
| On that level. | ||
| Because he does seem to think, like, we're all best friends. | ||
| No, I know! | ||
|
unidentified
|
No! | |
| I mean, describing him as an attack dog is to remind yourself of, like, the attack part, but... | ||
|
unidentified
|
That dog goes home to its master and is like, oh, yeah, I love you. | |
| You're my favorite guy. | ||
| You're the best. | ||
| You make me happy all the time. | ||
| Still a man's best friend. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And Bongino does not have a best friend in Alex. | ||
| Badandi. | ||
| Badandi, yeah, my bad. | ||
| Too many fun B names. | ||
| Too many fun B names. | ||
| And both Dan's. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Giving Dan's a bad name. | ||
| And Dan's probably. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Badandi has a kid. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| But I don't know if Bongino does. | ||
| I don't know his life. | ||
| Anyway, there's some training at InfoWars, apparently. | ||
| Not much, but a little bit of training. | ||
| Well, we've got training at InfoWars. | ||
| Excuse the language. | ||
| Operation Cover Your Ass. | ||
| Basically, when you make an accusation or statement or write an article or a report, you put the proof where it comes from. | ||
| And then the people get to decide from there. | ||
| Now, if the source is wrong, just say, in other words, an example. | ||
| ABC said, the sky is purple, right? | ||
| We reported that ABC said the sky is purple. | ||
| Now, people say, no, it's not. | ||
| It's blue. | ||
| We're not the ones that are wrong. | ||
| We just recited the information. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And Alex Jones gets bashed all the time for the gay frog thing because of Yatrazine and the Roundup. | ||
| That's on record. | ||
| That was from Berkeley University. | ||
| We printed that out for him. | ||
| And all you did was recite information from Berkeley Medical... | ||
| And then all of a sudden now he's getting castized as a gay frog, man. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That's the stuff we're talking about. | ||
| Because when you put off the truth right from the sources, they don't want to hear that. | ||
| So this is something that comes up a couple times. | ||
| This Operation Cover Your Ass. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Which I guess is their way of saying use sources for claims. | ||
| I mean, due diligence or just like report factual information? | ||
| Yeah, it's apparently Rob Doe's way of like sort of sexying up elementary aspects of journalism. | ||
| Do your job is another way of saying this. | ||
| Don't make things up. | ||
| D-Y-J. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's... | ||
| It's kind of cute. | ||
| If it wasn't InfoWars, I guess it would be kind of cute. | ||
| Yeah, if it wasn't one of the more evil organizations. | ||
| We need to be able to blame this on somebody else. | ||
| You can say whatever you want as long as you have a link. | ||
| And spoiler alert, they almost never have sources. | ||
| If you're like a middle management employee and you hate your job and the people you work for, cover your ass is fine. | ||
| But an institutional business... | ||
| With the policy of cover your ass is not a good business. | ||
| Make it someone else's fault. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Get out clean. | ||
| Yeah, well, actually, that's the oil business. | ||
| So, Badandi is a man who is known to use confrontation in his journalism. | ||
| In the past. | ||
| And this is something that predates his time at InfoWars. | ||
| He was doing that before he met Alex. | ||
| And actually, he knew InfoWarriors before he knew Alex. | ||
| The idea of... | ||
| Confrontation journalism was one that you yourself used as well, correct? | ||
| Yes, and it's not confrontation as physical. | ||
| It's a confrontation that's like putting on the spot, like questions and answers at a forum somewhere or in public. | ||
| You ask the person about the allegations against them. | ||
| And whether they answer the question or not, that's not the point. | ||
| But that's why he's going up to asking real questions that no other journalist would ask. | ||
| Those were my words. | ||
| Yeah, before I even knew Alex Jones, I was doing the same thing. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| When did you first hear about Alex Jones? | ||
| When I first started radio, I kept going on the news and all that, getting some reports from alternative media, and I came upon Infowars. | ||
| I actually was a friend of Aaron Dykes from InfoWars, and so I got to know who InfoWars was more and started watching Alex Jones shows. | ||
| Granted, I could even watch it every day when I could. | ||
| So yeah, he knew Aaron Dykes as a producer and writer for InfoWars, who has now left and does not like Alex. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Him and his now-wife, Melissa Melton, both worked at InfoWars, and they were mixed up in the... | ||
| Don Salazar. | ||
| We talked about them in that episode of The Deposition because they were both sort of tertiarily involved in his reporting on Sandy Hook's stuff. | ||
| Did they have a workplace romance? | ||
| I imagine they did. | ||
| I don't know the exact path through. | ||
| I don't know if they came into and for as already a couple or whatever. | ||
| But I only know that they're married because of the... | ||
| Last episode, when they came up. | ||
| I'm just saying that we have the bones of an incredible romantic comedy, alright? | ||
| Two propagandists. | ||
| She's trying to have it all. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| We have the makings of the next office. | ||
| We got Jim and Pam right there. | ||
| That's not bad. | ||
| A will-they-won't-they for a while. | ||
| And then it's a will-they-won't-they deny that Sandy Hook happened. | ||
| Rob Dew is Dwight. | ||
| Alex is Michael Scott. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Yeah, well, I mean, obviously Alex is the Scot. | ||
| Steve is Creed. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Who else? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who else could we work in from the cast? | |
| I don't know the office that well, so I'm already out on my cast of characters. | ||
| My bench is low. | ||
| I'm trying to think if anyone there is actually responsible at Infowars. | ||
| Is there, like, trying to do a good job? | ||
| Oh, that's a good question. | ||
| I mean, after the election board, I'm going to have to give Owen is at least trying something. | ||
| Owen can also be Dwight. | ||
| Anyway. | ||
| Agreed. | ||
| Dan Bedondi loves the Constitution. | ||
| This is important to him. | ||
| He loves the Founding Fathers. | ||
| I don't believe that. | ||
| He loves them and he's right all about them. | ||
| I don't think he understands that. | ||
| He's right all about them. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And so would you say beginning in about 2009 that Alex Jones came to be a pretty influential voice in your own thinking? | ||
| Well, not just him in general. | ||
| I mean, like, I've always been a critical thing like that, challenging things, and it's mainly when the TSA started running naked body skinners. | ||
| Right about that time, that's when I really started, you know, becoming a good liking to InfoWars, when I held my own TSA protests here in Rhode Island, and, you know, things like that. | ||
| And it was inspiring that, like, anything which goes back to history. | ||
| Learning who the Founder Fathers were in person, you know what I mean? | ||
| And Thomas Paine, I'm looking, like, Thomas Paine was me back then, you know what I mean? | ||
| He was doing what I'm doing today, but of course digitally, you know what I mean? | ||
| And same thing with Alex Jones, and I'm seeing, and you can pick people out like this, like, these people are revolutionaries that stand up against overwhelming odds and tyranny, and, you know what I mean, they were castized back then. | ||
| All the Final Fathers, they were cast eyes as nut balls back then, conspiracy theorists, you know, all the insurrectionists, everything. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And they paved the way for this country. | ||
| And they clearly, tons and tons of quotes, it says, and it's our job and our duty to keep that liberty going. | ||
| And liberty is eternal vigilance, as Thomas Jackson says. | ||
| No, come on! | ||
| Oh, those Irish. | ||
| Oh, those Irish. | ||
| This abbreviated, much more pithy version. | ||
| It was first attributed to Jefferson in 1834, which is after it would have been popular already. | ||
| What a weird country. | ||
| As a country, we have a habit towards myth-making that isn't quite as what we consider the myths of, like, what did Rome tell itself? | ||
| Rome didn't tell itself. | ||
| It's not like Zeus just had some weird quotes that the Greeks would ban to... | ||
| Although, I mean, maybe they gave Julius Caesar all of the quotes. | ||
| Like, all of the good... | ||
| Virgil, they were just like, ah, Julius said them. | ||
| Who cares? | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| It is possible. | ||
| But yeah, it is a kind of... | ||
| Soft version of mythologizing. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| And it's one of the reasons that I kind of bring this up constantly, like, whenever they deploy some of these spurious quotes, is that, like, on a certain level, they live in a fantasy of their own history. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| And the myth of the sort of... | ||
| Wistful patriotism, heroic patriotism. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And it's a dangerous myth when it's taken to the lengths that people like Infowars take it. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| There's maybe a benign version of it where you're not super connected to it and it doesn't make you... | ||
| Scream that all shootings are false lies. | ||
| Maybe there's a benign version of it, but that ain't this. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
| I don't know if anybody's like, oh man, Abraham Lincoln, this dude, delivered the most mail in a month. | ||
| Isn't that crazy? | ||
| He was the all-time record holder for most mail delivered in a month. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| And he had this great quote, snoochie boochies. | ||
| So Benandi was... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Silent Abe. | |
| Benandi was drawn to Alex, at least in part because of 9-11 conspiracy theories that he had. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| Now I'm going to say in advance, a slur comes out in this clip, which is early in the deposition, and I found it shocking. | ||
| One of the other stories that attracted you to Alex Jones was his claims about 9-11, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And the substance of that claim, in essence, was that the United States government perpetrated the 9-11 attack, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And before I even listened to him, I had my own questions because I'm very knowledgeable in the aviation world. | ||
| And it is utterly ridiculous to believe that, excuse my French, but a towelhead... | ||
| With minimum flight training to fly a 747, 757, sorry, into the towers like that in perfect precision, especially the Pentagon, 50 feet over the ground, that violates so many laws of physics and everything else. | ||
| And that's the questions I based off. | ||
| Now I'm listening to Alex Jones coming up with the same dairies, and I'm like, wow. | ||
| So a pretty weird move to the pardon my language slur. | ||
| Yeah, that was... | ||
| You're aware that what you're about to say is deeply inappropriate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was the thing! | |
| Why would you say pardon my language if you were about to say that? | ||
| I feel like if you recognize that this is inappropriate, you could just say people. | ||
| You're in a deposition. | ||
| This is a deposition. | ||
| You know... | ||
| By saying pardon my language, you're not supposed to say it at the very least here. | ||
| Yeah, anywhere, but definitely not here. | ||
| Anywhere, but definitely not here. | ||
| It's, um... | ||
| Just can't not? | ||
| But these are, like, these little kernels of, like, the character of this person. | ||
| And it's... | ||
| That's a weird... | ||
| That is a weird person. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So, um... | ||
| You know, I think at a certain point, Badandi kind of realizes that if he's answering questions... | ||
| He sounds dumb. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because the answers aren't good for the questions that are given, and so he'd rather not be asked questions. | ||
| Wait, wait, wait. | ||
| So early on, he's gone a little bit too far, so he recognizes that, and now he's basically just going to try and stop the deposition? | ||
| Well, or at least focus it. | ||
| Like, really finely centered on Sandy Hook. | ||
| Okay, okay. | ||
| He doesn't like this idea that questions are coming up about 9-11, Colorado, the Aurora shooting and stuff. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Smart! | ||
| I mean, it doesn't work, but it is maybe a sign of some kind of instinct that is maybe better than a lot of the other people we've seen in these rooms. | ||
| Well, can I ask a question here first, before you go any further? | ||
| We're here for the Sandy Hook thing. | ||
| Why are we dabbling into things that's going to build up irrelevant cases for this whole operation? | ||
| Because I see what's going on here. | ||
| I see the pattern. | ||
| I see exactly what's going on. | ||
| They're building up a case to make Alex Jones look like a nutball, make me look like a conspiracy theorist, so when we get to the Sandy Hook stuff, we're going to look like complete morons. | ||
| All the stuff we just talked about, all of it, it's irrelevant to this case of Sandy Hook. | ||
| So why don't we just get to the meat and potatoes, save everybody some time here, because none of this is totally irrelevant at all to Sandy Hook. | ||
| Mr. Badani, I appreciate your view on that. | ||
| I have a different view. | ||
| There are reasons that I'm asking these questions. | ||
| I certainly don't want to waste anybody's time, so I'm going to continue to ask them, and you're obligated to answer them truthfully, as impatient as you may get with them. | ||
| No, it's not a personal attack on you, sir. | ||
| It's just to the point. | ||
| Because all this is irrelevant. | ||
| Where I worked is irrelevant to Sandy Hawk. | ||
| Where I went to school is irrelevant to Sandy Hawk. | ||
| Where I broadcast the radio stations is all irrelevant to Sandy Hawk. | ||
| I understand that's your view, sir. | ||
| I have a job to do here, and I guess what I would say to you is that I'm going to do my job as long as it takes, and if that means coming back another day to ask you questions that you think are irrelevant, that's what's going to be required. | ||
| Why don't we just go ahead and continue and we'll be as efficient as we can, okay? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Not as much staying power to that gusto as you might think there would be. | ||
| Spectacular handling by Chris there. | ||
| I appreciate that, but no. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| You are making some very good points that I can completely disregard. | ||
| This is a law. | ||
| I don't know how to explain laws to you. | ||
| You have a point, and I disagree with that point. | ||
| I think the opposite, and I'm right, because we're in a deposition. | ||
| One of us can compel you to do things by law, so it's me. | ||
| But that instinct is good, because it's kind of like a, boy, you hope it's going to work. | ||
| I know that I'm coming in here to answer questions conceivably about Sandy Hook stuff. | ||
| Maybe I've thought about it a little bit in advance. | ||
| I don't want to answer these questions I didn't think about in advance. | ||
| Maybe if I can just point that out and be like, this is about Sandy Hook, maybe the lawyer will just go along with me. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| It's sad how... | ||
| Again, much like thinking Alex is his friend. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How unrealistic this is, but the hope is there, and I appreciate that. | ||
| It's interesting that he's, you know, like the way that Owen or the like went into these depositions was almost like a naive animal, you know, like a dodo bird. | ||
| Like they had no idea that the predator was right there in front of them. | ||
| And Badandi has this like, it seems like he came up and touched the predator on the nose and was like, no, no, no, no, I get this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I get what... | |
| What's happening here? | ||
| I gotta back off. | ||
| This is pro-wrestling training. | ||
| Yeah, unfortunately, he is in the trap. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Too late. | ||
| Too late, buddy. | ||
| So, Matty asks about what is the journalist's job. | ||
| And Padandi has a really weird take. | ||
| As a journalist, would you agree with me that part of the journalist's job, as you understood it, was to ask questions, but then after asking those questions... | ||
| To convey the truth of the matter to your audience, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| In other words, the point of asking the questions is so that you can accurately inform your audience, correct? | ||
| Yes, and if there's unanswered questions, obviously we can't. | ||
| We ask the questions, they didn't answer them. | ||
| To me, that's guilt. | ||
| That's my personal opinion. | ||
| However, just asking questions seems to be... | ||
| Act of terrorism these days. | ||
| So, he has a perspective that people not answering questions is a sign of their guilt. | ||
| And he is not answering questions in this deposition. | ||
| He said that immediately after saying, I don't want to answer these questions. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's a little bit dissonant. | ||
| And, I mean, even just, like, taking away the sort of hypocrisy there or whatever, it's a really fucked up view for someone who... | ||
| Is in media or in broadcasting and information dispensing. | ||
| If you believe that someone not answering a question is indicative of their guilt, you cannot possibly ascertain what's going on. | ||
| You can't watch news. | ||
| You can't watch a press conference and get the point of things. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's bad. | ||
| You're playing like... | ||
| Football with a broken leg. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Anytime somebody's like, no comment, you're like, oh, they definitely killed that guy. | ||
| Oh, that's a murder! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, he said no comment! | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It's very strange. | ||
| Yeah, that's not good. | ||
| So, Badandi does not get his wish, and questions are asked about other things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| And so, the underwear bomber comes up, and Badandi did a little bit of work on this. | ||
| He doesn't want to answer questions about it. | ||
| But then he does. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| He doesn't want to, then he does. | ||
| So, let me ask this. | ||
| Do you recall whether Mr. Jones claimed that the Unabomber, I'm sorry, the underwear bomber was a federal government operation? | ||
| Do you recall whether or not he claimed that? | ||
| What does this have to do with Sandy Hook? | ||
| Do you recall whether or not he claimed that? | ||
| I'm not going to answer no more irrelevant questions. | ||
| I refuse to. | ||
| This is totally outrageous. | ||
| And you can call me back a million times, I'll keep coming back. | ||
| None of this has nothing to do with this, okay? | ||
| This is nothing but a setup to make him look like a kook, make me look like a kook. | ||
| Get to the answers about Sandy Hook. | ||
| Underwear Obama had nothing to do with what happened in Newtown, Connecticut. | ||
| Let's put it that way. | ||
| And I'll answer your questions if you want me to. | ||
| But the thing is, they're irrelevant. | ||
| But if you want me to, I'll answer those questions, okay? | ||
| He questioned the underwear bombing because the facts came out by the people who were on the plane. | ||
| As on record, the lawyer, attorney, Kurt Haskell, said the State Department escorted him around security to get on that flight, even though he was denied by the airline to board the plane. | ||
| That's the question that Alex Jones was asking. | ||
| Why did they do that? | ||
| Why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So after the attempted Christmas Day bombing in 2009, Kurt Haskell went public with some claims that he saw a well-dressed man helping Abdul Muttalib get sorted out to get boarded onto flight 235 from Amsterdam to Detroit. | |
| Haskell claims that this person was trying to help Abdul Muttalib get on the plane without a passport, but this was happening in an area of the airport where he should have already been passport screened, and there's no one else who really corroborates this story at all. | ||
| And even, like, accepting all of it. | ||
| He didn't claim that this was the State Department. | ||
| That's interpretation that Badandi's making. | ||
| Abdul Muttalib's past in terms of radicalization towards terrorism is pretty clearly well established, and he pled guilty in a fairly aggro and non-repentant way, and none of Haskell's claims went much further than a guy saying something. | ||
| He was interviewed by outlets ranging from NPR to Infowars, and no greater information ever came out. | ||
| And then, in 2012, Haskell decided to run for Congress in Michigan, and he really didn't want to talk about that stuff. | ||
| Quote, I consider it part of my personal life and not part of my campaign. | ||
| I don't think it's relevant. | ||
| Sounds like he's guilty. | ||
| It's debatable whether it's relevant or not. | ||
| One could suggest that Haskell's actions speak to a lack of judgment, and the consequences of that ripple to this day are used by people like Dan Badandi to justify their other conspiracy bullshit activities. | ||
| In that kind of light, maybe Haskell doesn't display leadership qualities that would justify him being in Congress. | ||
| And then, there's a little bit of weirdness that comes out in his interview with NPR. | ||
| When he's asked if it's possible that he got people confused, and if it's possible that the person he saw with the well-dressed man was someone else, he says it's not possible. | ||
| The cause for concern was that he said that the well-dressed man referred to the person with him as Sudanese, whereas Abdulmutallab is Nigerian. | ||
| Haskell explained, quote, there were very few black men or black people on this flight, and he's a rather different-looking person, so it was pretty obvious to me. | ||
| I wonder what he means by different looking, because Abdulmutallab is pretty normal looking as far as I can tell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| The things Haskell was saying immediately after the attempted attack were really interesting, hence the little bit of news coverage in outlets like NPR, but none of this is substantiated and none of it proves anything. | ||
| But, for someone like Badandi and an outlet like Infowars, one person saying something that they can use is the equivalent of a smoking gun that closes the case. | ||
| They're not very rigorous, is what I'm saying. | ||
| And Badandi, here, even a decade later, is still citing this one thing this one guy said as, like... | ||
| Proof positive that this underwear bombing was fake in order to sell the naked body scanners. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I'm going to have to say we all know what different looking means in this context. | ||
| And, uh, yeah. | ||
| I don't know of any other history that he had that would corroborate this, you know, like another data point with Haskell. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But, like, that comment is a little weird. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It seems a little racist-y. | ||
| It's noticeable. | ||
| It is of note. | ||
| Perhaps one should put it in a permanent record of some sort. | ||
| And he should have to answer questions about it if he runs for Congress. | ||
| It's on my mind. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So one thing that I noticed for sure throughout this deposition is that Dan Badandi is, um... | ||
| He's like one of those fire logs that has its own accelerant. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He speeds himself up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He does not need help getting going and just ramping. | ||
| He goes from answering a question to a rant unprompted quite a few times. | ||
| And so here's one example of that. | ||
| He's just winding himself up. | ||
| These are the questions we're bringing up, and these are the valid questions. | ||
| And I don't care less what the courts have to say. | ||
| I'm not involved with this, okay? | ||
| I'll speak my mind when I want and how I want. | ||
| And that's the way it's going to go. | ||
| And I'm not going to be shut up by no court or by nobody else. | ||
| I stand for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. | ||
| This is not a damn thing. | ||
| The judges over the air or anybody else are going to do about it. | ||
| I'll speak my mind to my death. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And this is the way it's going to go. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| We're asking questions. | ||
| We're out there trying to save this country for what's left of it. | ||
| And people like this in the media are slimeballs. | ||
| They want to stay for free speech. | ||
| They want to attack our gun rights, the very fundamental rights of this nation. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And we're sick of it. | ||
| We're standing up against us. | ||
| And it doesn't matter what the courts say. | ||
| I'm going to speak out. | ||
| I don't care if I've got a gag on. | ||
| I'm going to speak out and speak out and speak out until somebody puts a bullet in my head or the Lord takes me home. | ||
| Bottom line. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So, the whole thing with the... | ||
| Alex Jones didn't draw me to any of this stuff. | ||
| I have already come to my conclusions. | ||
| But everything you're going to ask me, it wasn't Alex Jones' inspiration. | ||
| I think I was inspired to him because he was a man of integrity. | ||
| That man, we had... | ||
| Balls of steel that will go up to anybody and question them with other reporters. | ||
| I was at the Boston Marathon, for example, right? | ||
| Hundreds of reporters in the room, nobody's asking the tough answers. | ||
| I'm the one up there asking the tough questions, and all of a sudden I'm being labeled all over the media as a conspiracy desk, me and Alex Jones. | ||
| You know, when it was, I reckon these things were happening that we asked. | ||
| Sir, I asked if you were at large. | ||
| So if that makes us some bad guys, a conspiracy lunatics, then hey, I stand guilty. | ||
| Mr. Redondi, I hope I haven't said anything to suggest that I think you're a bad guy. | ||
| No, no, it's not. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Please let me know. | ||
| It's not personal attack against you, and I don't think that was himself. | ||
| He reminds me a little bit also of me on the phone with Xfinity. | ||
| Listen up, okay? | ||
| I'm fucking sick of this internet going down. | ||
| This is the fourth time this week I've called you. | ||
| I'm so sorry. | ||
| This is not about you. | ||
| You're just doing your job. | ||
| I'm so sorry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Comcast makes this difficult. | |
| I understand. | ||
| I'm so confident and furious about how bad Xfinity is, and then I realize I'm talking to a person. | ||
| Oh man, I'm sorry. | ||
| Listen, I'm sure you deal with this exact same abuse. | ||
| All day. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| I don't want to contribute to it. | ||
| That's on me. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| There's a little bit of that turning around, that instant recognition of like, hey, look, I'm not trying to be a dick to you. | ||
| This is unwarranted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're people. | |
| We're people. | ||
| I'm just mad about the Constitution being attacked. | ||
| That's not you. | ||
| In this deposition. | ||
| But then again... | ||
| Conceivably, he should have disrespect for Matty, because Matty is the lawyer who's representing the thing that's supposed to be destroying the First and Second Amendments. | ||
| I mean, he started with saying, I literally don't care about the law. | ||
| True. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| I will not shut up. | ||
| He reminds me of Bailey Blaze Finnegan from, there's a Godspeed, You Black Emperor song, BBF3. | ||
| And it's him reading one of his poems and telling the story about how he got a parking ticket. | ||
| And the story winds up with him. | ||
| Him just being like, listen, Judge, I am not going to stop speaking in your courtroom! | ||
| I am a person and I can do what I want! | ||
| Just because you wear black robes and can send people up the river for 20 years means it! | ||
| And it's so good. | ||
| It's so good. | ||
| And then the end of the song is, I'm so sorry about that. | ||
| Listen, Judge, it's not you. | ||
| You're the one who wears the robe and I get it. | ||
| It's just a gig. | ||
| So, before coming to Infowars, like we've already touched on, Badandi knew Aaron Dykes. | ||
| And it turns out he knew him through an interesting way. | ||
| During that time that you were an audience member of Mr. Jones's, did you ever reach out to him or anybody at InfoWars for any reason? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I already knew Aaron Dykes from We Are Change because I belong to an organization called We Are Change. | ||
| And I don't know if he was a member or not, but I knew him. | ||
| He actually seen a lot of my videos and all that and made comments here and there. | ||
| So yeah, they knew each other through We Are Change, which is the organization that was a 9-11 truth thing that pivoted into Ron Paul campaigning, and was run by Luke Radowski, who is now Tim Pool's co-host on his dumb show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sick to my stomach of these people. | |
| Yeah, well, there's a lot of ambitious shitheads, it turns out. | ||
| Again, we get back to my least favorite thing, the naming of organizations. | ||
| We Are Change. | ||
| We Are Change sounds so innocuous. | ||
| It is a little bit bland and aspirational. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It could be like any kind of old thing. | ||
| Like, oh, we need to save dolphins or something. | ||
| But no, it's also we need to bring fascism into America. | ||
| It's unfortunate. | ||
| Yeah, and I believe that they got a little bit of traction to during like the Occupy Wall Street stuff. | ||
| I think they attached themselves a bit to that. | ||
| We Are Change sounds like an organization that, you know, is like, hey, you know, I'm into change. | ||
| I like change. | ||
| We're here for change. | ||
| We're occupying the place that stops change. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| It's a Ron Paul front. | ||
|
unidentified
|
God damn it. | |
| Fuck. | ||
| Again! | ||
| So, there's a non-disclosure agreement that Badandi has signed. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But it's unclear about exactly what that covers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so the question comes up, like, what was your job when you got a job offer? | ||
| And how much was the job offer for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-huh. | |
| And he doesn't know if he can answer it, so there's a little bit of back and forth between him and the lawyer. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Wallman. | ||
| As the lawyer who's representing Infowars on Badandi's side. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Ish. | ||
| And so there's... | ||
| No one really knows. | ||
| I... | ||
| Okay. | ||
| This is a... | ||
| Just a clean sweep of inability to just tell me what your job is. | ||
| I understand that he has a different reason than other people's reasons, but everybody can't just tell you what their job is. | ||
| Well, I think, you know, as we get further through this, you'll... | ||
| Get a better sense of what Badandi does. | ||
| Well, I assume so. | ||
| I think he tells probably more information about the, like, just sticks and stones of what his job is. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But there is a little bit of difficulty out of the gate. | ||
| So I did ask you what the offer was and you indicated that you weren't sure whether you could answer that question. | ||
| Is that a question that you're willing to answer? | ||
| I'm sorry, let me clarify the question. | ||
| Is it the offer of the amount of the salary? | ||
| I'm asking you for the amount of the salary, the position that they were hiring you for, and any other benefits they may have offered to you at that time. | ||
| Six figures in shape. | ||
| I will tell you this, obviously, because it's public. | ||
| They hired me as a reporter and a producer. | ||
| And that's public. | ||
| And the salary, I don't know if I'm allowed to disclose. | ||
| I mean, if the attorney there agrees with that, I'll disclose it. | ||
| But other than that, because there's a non-disclosure agreement, I don't want to violate that. | ||
| Sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Perdoni, if you're comfortable disclosing your salary, you're welcome to do so. | |
| Okay. | ||
| So, stats on record, I was started off the salary of $45,000 a year, and plus bonuses whenever... | ||
| I would get a good story or something. | ||
| So we know that some of these other folks, like Daria and Owen, have substantially higher salaries than that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I also think that this was 2012. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That's probably about... | ||
| The equivalent of Owen's salary now based on the size of InfoWars. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You know, like, I think that that's a shockingly high salary for Badandi in 2012. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| To be getting at InfoWars. | ||
| I will say that one of the things that we haven't really kind of discussed because it's been glossed over for any number of million reasons, but... | ||
| This is yet another time where we've gotten the idea that you get a bonus for a particularly juicy story. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And we know that juicy story does not mean, like, oh, it's true. | ||
| You know? | ||
| It's, did your bullshit get traction? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You get a bonus for making up things. | ||
| Well, there's even other layers to it, too. | ||
| Like, once Badandi isn't an employee and he's just a contractor or whatever... | ||
| He's incentivized to come up with juicy stories just to get on. | ||
| Totally, totally. | ||
| He's a freelancer at that point, yeah. | ||
| And so you're not going to get paid anything unless this story is good and has legs and we can work with. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then Josh Owens, in his piece in the New York Times and other interviews, he's talked about how... | ||
| If you went out to do a story and it wasn't what Alex wanted, you'd get in trouble. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You'd get yelled at by him. | ||
| It was not the narrative that you were supposed to deliver. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And so there is a very clear... | ||
| I mean, what you're talking about is a financial and an emotional incentive system to make things more salacious, make them more... | ||
| Detached from the truth. | ||
| Yeah, it's an almost abusive carrot and stick. | ||
| It's almost a bad system. | ||
| It's a terrible system! | ||
| It almost seems like inevitable that it would come to what it's come to. | ||
| It seems rife for corruption. | ||
| So we get back to the matter of training, and Operation Cover Your Ass comes up again. | ||
| Did you receive any training relating to your work as a journalist with InfoWars? | ||
| I mean, most of the stuff, like I said, I was doing my own, but it was additional training, I should say, like advanced training. | ||
| What was your advanced training? | ||
| Yeah, so putting aside the equipment and how to use the email system and everything else, did you receive any training? | ||
| Substantive training concerning how to conduct yourself as a journalist once you arrived at Free Speech Systems. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Well, just simple. | ||
| Just Operation Cover Your Ass. | ||
| I mean, like, if you've got to report something, make sure you've got documented facts so we don't get sued. | ||
| That was the big thing. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And that was the term that they actually used, Operation Cover Your Ass? | ||
| Yeah, that was Rob Dew's term. | ||
| Just make sure I, you know... | ||
| And is Rob Dew the guy who explained Operation Cover Your Ass to you? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay, and what did he explain that meant? | ||
| That meant, basically, if you've got to report something, make sure you get the source where it came from. | ||
| The solid source where it came from. | ||
| And this way, again, like I explained earlier, somebody said, it's just like CBS News, for example, said the sky is pink. | ||
| And everybody says, no, it's blue. | ||
| Well, this is what CBS News is saying. | ||
| Not us, you know what I mean? | ||
| So, and we provide, if it's an article, either way, the videos want an article, and with an article, there's always... | ||
| The sources where people could click on right at the bottom. | ||
| That's why a lot of media ignored because when we post something, we had the sources. | ||
| Like the documents from the federal government. | ||
| For example, we had all the sources at the bottom. | ||
| And even in the video link description, we always provided the sources. | ||
| So we can't come back on us. | ||
| This is what we're reporting. | ||
| This is what's been, you know, so that was the main focus to make sure you didn't come up with some wildlife. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That system did not work, apparently. | ||
| Because they came up with a lot of baseless conspiracy theories. | ||
| And they do not have sources on the bottom of all their articles. | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| I was going to say, I was like, has he ever read one of the articles that his videos were in? | ||
| Likely not. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I do love the moment, though, of like, did you get any training? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ba-ba-ba! | |
| Ay-ya! | ||
| No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. | ||
| We could have been. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Did I mention Operation Cover Erase? | ||
| Yeah, I was gonna say. | ||
| Because I'd like to talk more about that. | ||
| I was told not to get sued, and yet here we are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The best laid plans. | |
| Oh, if only. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, this training that he had beforehand, you're a little confused about that. | ||
| And it turns out his uncle gave him some training. | ||
| But his uncle, I don't know about this. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| Journalism training from your uncle, is that right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And what's your uncle's name? | ||
| Bobby Cooper. | ||
| Bobby! | ||
| Cooper? | ||
| Yeah, Cooper, like a... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like somebody who makes barrels, or like the hockey equipment. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And Mr. Cooper, is that your mother's brother? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, he's not an official uncle. | ||
| He's just been in the family a long time, one of those type of deals. | ||
| We're from Boston. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know how to explain this to you. | ||
| Has he ever been employed as a journalist? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Oh, who did he work for? | ||
| He worked for several news outlets and he was a PR guy for American Idol for a while. | ||
| One of the PR guys. | ||
| Great journalist. | ||
| He lived in Rhode Island? | ||
| Yeah, yep. | ||
| Whereabouts? | ||
| Providence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And you said he worked for several news outlets as a journalist? | ||
| Yeah, independent. | ||
| Like, he would be... | ||
| He would reach out to, like, if there's something going on, people would go to him saying they need this promoted. | ||
| He would, with his PR sources, reach out to all the media outlets and say, hey, this event's going on. | ||
| He has the information about it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| He would send out the press releases to all the media. | ||
| That's not a journalist. | ||
| No. | ||
| So he got journalism training from his uncle who isn't his uncle and wasn't a journalist. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right. | ||
| He got journalism training from a PR guy who's not his uncle. | ||
| Which, I mean, considering where he works, that is the training that you might want best. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, like a publicist type person is basically just trying to get attention for things. | ||
| Yeah, it's a liar. | ||
| InfoWars is essentially just an intention aggregator. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| So, I mean, it is appropriate. | ||
| It's just not journalism. | ||
| It's not journalism. | ||
| That is the issue. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It is not that he cannot do what he's asked. | ||
| Yeah, and so his, Benandi's not Uncle Bobby. | ||
| We call him Coop. | ||
| Yeah, the Coops. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He also ran the radio station that Padandi was on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| Because all of these people... | ||
| It's just nepotism everywhere. | ||
| Am I correct that, as far as you know, he did not work for a media outlet that published information to the public? | ||
| Yeah, because he was running the radio station, and we were a CBS affiliate. | ||
| He works for your radio station? | ||
| No, this was back when I first started radio. | ||
| He was a station manager. | ||
| And he's the one that ran the station. | ||
| And we were a CBS affiliate. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And my uncle was a volunteer firefighter. | ||
| He also works at three other jobs at a car wash. | ||
| He does any number. | ||
| Anyways, my uncle doesn't actually have a job. | ||
| But he trained me in journalism. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| So, when you're talking about how no one talks about what their job is, Badandi is a little bit different. | ||
| He actually has some details, and I think these details actually reveal quite a bit about how things work and how the broadcast is made. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You were a producer for a specific show, is that right? | |
| Oh, yes, the Alex Jones show, the radio show. | ||
| Okay, you were a producer on the Alex Jones show? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And what did that entail? | ||
| Just like basically when he's talking, what I would do is get there early in the morning. | ||
| I would print up all the articles from like every source imaginable and I would separate them into certain categories. | ||
| And so basically U.S. news, world news, I don't know, Second Amendment news, stuff like that. | ||
| If that explains it right. | ||
| And what I'll do is I'll put him on his desk. | ||
| He'll go through the articles, decide what he wants to talk about. | ||
| In the meantime, what he's on the air. | ||
| We'll have several computers going on with the TriCaster and everything. | ||
| So basically he says there's a document out there that you say the HR 2977 Space and Preservation Act in 2001 to back that up. | ||
| My job was to back them up. | ||
| On the screen- How do you think you did? | ||
| The source is where he's talking about them. | ||
| It's not just coming out of his butt. | ||
| This is from document sources. | ||
| So if he's talking about the Space and Preservation Act and people are like, oh, that's wacky, pull it up right from the.gov website, put it right on the screen as he's talking and scroll through it. | ||
| To, you know, back him up. | ||
| And when he's talking about certain articles, yeah, he had the article there, but sometimes we pull up on screen and scroll through it as he's talking about it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| General things like that. | ||
| And just basically to be supportive for a show. | ||
| And he had an earpiece of, you know, we have a thousand things in the head at a time. | ||
| So if he gets stumbled on something, I could, you know, in the microphone, I could tell him, no, that was HR 2977. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| If he stumbled on, remembered things like that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| That nature and also producing, telling him when to go to break and that kind of nature. | ||
| Yeah, that's really helpful. | ||
| So when you were producing the Alex Jones show, would you be the guy in Alex's ear? | ||
| One of them, yes. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| Badandi is one of the people in his earpiece. | ||
| I mean, I... | ||
| That... | ||
| Blows my mind. | ||
| Right, but it does sort of work towards some of the ideas that I have had about his obsession with being teleprompter-free is a little bit less impressive when you realize that he has producers who are just feeding him things through his earpiece. | ||
| He has them telling him document numbers and documents and stuff like that. | ||
| It's like a magic trick where he has the appearance of knowing all of this stuff when he's... | ||
| Conceivably getting told those things. | ||
| It's really just a different skill, which is being able to speak and hear things at the same time, which is something you can do with practice much better than... | ||
| It's easier than learning. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| No, I mean, he comes from the televangelism, or, well, radio evangelism background, and I have no doubt that he's seen somebody call out, Is there a... | ||
| Melissa Barden here tonight! | ||
| And been like, I got what you're doing. | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| And Badandi even says at one point, like, if he gets stuck on something, you know, like, there's, like, conceivably, you know, even topics and stuff. | ||
| Like, here is a thing. | ||
| You know, like, if you're running out of gas and you're like, it's... | ||
| There is a lot of cheating that could go on based on the description that Badandi gives of how the earpiece producing works. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| And I wouldn't be surprised if there's a whole lot of that. | ||
| But beyond that, Badandi also just did some important fucking work while he was at InfoWars. | ||
| You also were a reporter when you were down in Austin. | ||
| So in addition to your producing responsibilities, I take it you go out and create content, correct? | ||
| Yeah, so we'll take the stuff that's going on in the news. | ||
| My main lead reporter was a man on the street. | ||
| we'd just go question the public what they thought of certain topics that were in the media at the time, hot topics like gun control, abortion, things like that matter, and also question them on quizzes like if they knew, just for example, two of the amendments of the Bill of Rights, things like that matter in nature, who the vice president was, and we intermixed the questions like that. | ||
| But just the point was to get the public's opinion of what the topics in the media were going on and say I always get an official's opinion. | ||
| We wanted to jaywalk and do man on the street bits where we ask drunk people on the boardwalk silly questions and trap them and make them... | ||
| Appear dumber than they are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ha ha. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Relevant. | ||
| But Dondi's interesting here because I think I genuinely want to know how he sees the world. | ||
| Because it's weird. | ||
| I don't know if you do. | ||
| Eh, that's fair. | ||
| I don't know! | ||
| I feel like he sees things and I don't know what is real in his world. | ||
| Well, he apparently has a show that he does about spiritual warfare and demons and stuff, so that's real. | ||
| I'm out. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm out. | |
| Pass. | ||
| Yeah, maybe I have a little more information than you do about why you don't actually want this. | ||
| How is that possible? | ||
| Is that the premise of the show? | ||
| What? | ||
| That you have more information. | ||
| Oh, I thought you meant his demon show. | ||
| No, well, that should be our... | ||
| So, at a certain point... | ||
| Badandi got let go. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Sort of. | ||
| He was still with InfoWars, but he was let go of his actual position. | ||
| He didn't make it through the probationary period and ended up going back to Rhode Island. | ||
| I did not know that. | ||
| He might have been fired, but maybe not. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And at some point, did you relocate back to Rhode Island? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| When was that? | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Right around Thanksgiving time. | ||
| So November of 2012. | ||
| Wait a minute, I'm sorry. | ||
| Let me rephrase that. | ||
| Yes, right about Thanksgiving, yep. | ||
| Why did you move back to Rhode Island? | ||
| Oh, there was a number of, I mean, there was a disagreement in the office. | ||
| At first, I was let go. | ||
| Then they said, I'll keep you on as a correspondent. | ||
| And it was just a bunch of misunderstandings, whatever the case. | ||
| And there was no specific reason why they let me go. | ||
| Me and a bunch of other people, it's like normal there. | ||
| People just drop like flies, you know what I mean? | ||
| And it's the nature of the business, you know what I mean? | ||
| And I understand it. | ||
| Because being an entertainment business and also plus the media business, I mean, that's the way it goes. | ||
| That's where the cookie crumbles, you know? | ||
| He has a pretty chill attitude towards this. | ||
| Yeah, it sounds like he got yelled at a bunch and then whenever they were like, okay, man, we're gonna get out of there. | ||
| Entertainment, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go away. | |
| It's tough. | ||
| Go away. | ||
| We got a lot of moving parts. | ||
| Hey, listen. | ||
| We will say that we're going to keep you on as a correspondent so long as you are several thousand miles away from us. | ||
| And you give us juicy stories. | ||
| Juicy stories. | ||
| So, there's some reasons that he got let go, apparently. | ||
| And one of them is a bit of a misunderstanding. | ||
| It's really just, it's no big deal. | ||
| Look, sometimes scheduling conflicts happen. | ||
| Alex shot me in the foot. | ||
| Not that severe. | ||
| Emotionally, perhaps. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| But yeah, there was an Agenda 21 conference. | ||
| And that just means it was a sustainable development type thing that they're calling Agenda 21. Agenda 21. And Badandi went, but he wasn't supposed to. | ||
| What's your understanding specifically as to why, in your words, you were let go? | ||
| Well, it was a report that in Elgin, Texas, we were going to, it was like a basically agenda 21 thing, and it was a sustainability conference, a hearing for the town of Elgin, Texas, and they were getting me to go in the morning. | ||
| I decided who the crew is going to be, I asked permission to go. | ||
| And I was told yes. | ||
| So I had to go out to the office to get my suit tailored. | ||
| So I had no knowledge later that Alex Jones changed his mind and said no. | ||
| So I had decided to go with the crew. | ||
| And as far as I know, I had permission. | ||
| And I got back. | ||
| And Alex Jones was like, why'd you go? | ||
| He was like, chill me out. | ||
| And I'm like, yeah, I went because you told me. | ||
| Remember that in the morning I asked you? | ||
| He goes, yeah, you're right. | ||
| Yeah, I did. | ||
| But I told you you couldn't. | ||
| It's like, no, I left the office right away. | ||
| He goes, oh, okay, I'm sorry. | ||
| And, you know, just a little misunderstanding like that and, you know, things like that, which he got mad that I went because, I don't know, it's just a bunch of things like that, you know what I mean, little miscommunications. | ||
| And the communication, I mean, I love the people there, but the communication sucks. | ||
| Yeah, plain and simple with the communication with everybody, even though you're right next to the person. | ||
| It's a miscommunication! | ||
| In the morning, he told Badandi to go. | ||
| Badandi had to go get his suit tailored, so he didn't realize that Alex didn't want him to go after all. | ||
| He comes back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| Alex is like, what the fuck? | ||
| And then you're fired. | ||
| Makes sense. | ||
| It's definitely not a situation where there's more going on here. | ||
| I can't think of anything else that might be involved in this situation. | ||
| There's nothing more going on here. | ||
| Well, I mean... | ||
| Is there more going on? | ||
| Does Jones' complaint have anything to do with the... | ||
| Your reporting itself on that particular day? | ||
| No, it wasn't the actual report. | ||
| I mean, it was one of the crew members. | ||
| I didn't actually, you know, make the report. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So his complaint was just that you had gone? | |
| Yeah, because what happened was we all started asking questions at the, you know... | ||
| Questions time with the mayor and all that. | ||
| So we asked some questions and it caused a lot of people an uprise because we told people this is not what you think it is. | ||
| This is Agenda 21. And the people, you know, in Texas, you don't mess with that land. | ||
| So when they finally realized what this was about, it was kind of an uproar. | ||
| They were yelling and screaming at the mayor. | ||
| And, yeah, we're not going to do this crap, this, you know, United Nations stuff yet. | ||
| So... | ||
| One of the people who run the conference called the police on us. | ||
| And the police came and they asked us for ID. | ||
| I didn't have ID at the time. | ||
| And there was a cop. | ||
| You know, there's no law or state you have to show ID. | ||
| I'm not trying to be disrespectful. | ||
| But anyway, it was a big discussion with the police and everything else. | ||
| And so we got back to it. | ||
| And Alex was like, what the hell is Badani doing there? | ||
| And I was like, yeah, you told me I could go. | ||
| And then that's where the miscommunication was from. | ||
| And it's just a lot of miscommunications there, because in his defense, oh, I mean, it's such a huge operation. | ||
| Such a huge operation. | ||
| I'm guessing that Alex's problem wasn't his presence, and it was that the police got involved. | ||
| In Alex's defense, I did start a riot, the cops were called, and then I got into a fight with the cops. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It could have something to do with those parts of my story. | ||
| But what good journalist wouldn't have. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| It's about communication. | ||
| That's where the real breakdown was. | ||
| So, I don't know. | ||
| There's probably video of this somewhere. | ||
| I couldn't find the actual video of Badandi at this event. | ||
| But I did find video of just after he got thrown out of the event. | ||
| And it turns out this story is a little bit different. | ||
| Who would have guessed? | ||
| So what happened was that he called some lady who was there, one of the people involved in the event, he called her a bitch. | ||
| And so she asked the police to remove him. | ||
| Right, go away. | ||
| Yeah, and so then he got into a fight with the police. | ||
| Okay, so now the story is not the heroic, I started a riot with my Texas buddies and we overtook the storm. | ||
| It is instead, hey, you suck! | ||
| And then they get kicked out, and then he gets into a fight with the cops. | ||
| He verbally assaulted somebody, and they weren't into it happening at their event, and so he was asked to leave, and then he got into a fight with the cops. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm on stage. | |
| Go away. | ||
| I don't even think she was on stage. | ||
| She's right there? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I don't even know if there was a stage. | ||
| I don't even know if there was a stage. | ||
| Well, he's in trouble. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| So, the story is now, I went there, I didn't get much. | ||
| And then I got thrown out, and then I got into a fight with the cops. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And whereas, if you understand, the starting point was, look, I didn't know that Alex said I shouldn't have gone. | ||
| It does feel like his version is a different issue than what maybe I would see as a fireable offense somewhere along the line. | ||
| I mean, if you're someone like Alex, like... | ||
| Run-ins with the police are opportunities that have to be handled pretty smoothly. | ||
| Alex loves to get into a little bit of a confrontation with a cop. | ||
| He has some savvy. | ||
| He knows how to maximize whatever you're going to get out of it. | ||
| Not get into any trouble. | ||
| Whereas someone like Badandi is not. | ||
| That is a liability. | ||
| Him being around cops and especially getting into a confrontation with them. | ||
| Especially being there under the auspices of the Infowars organization. | ||
| That's... | ||
| That only is negative. | ||
| If I were Alex, I'd be pretty pissed about it, too. | ||
| Oh, totally. | ||
| No, if Alex does it, he's got the cloak of fame, so they don't want to arrest him and cause a big thing, and that'll be a mess. | ||
| Whereas with Badandi, it's like, man... | ||
| We can take you away. | ||
| Well, and Alex will have some kind of, like, inciting thing that is, like, at least defensible. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, you know, he'll... | ||
| I don't think the police got involved, but, like, when he went to the DMV and refused to give his fingerprint or whatever, there's, like, some kind of a principle you can stand on, whereas Badandi was just being a dick to this lady. | ||
| I don't have to show you ID, and I can be a dick to that lady all I want. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's not... | ||
| It doesn't have the same... | ||
| Less defensible, yeah. | ||
| So, were there any other reasons that Alex gave for letting you go? | ||
| We've got several reasons already. | ||
| And we know from Alex's deposition that he let him go because he saw that Sandy Hook report and he said, this is no good. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| The reason that he was let go? | ||
| Shut it down. | ||
| The Dondi is no good. | ||
| We gotta get him out of here. | ||
| Apparently not. | ||
| Other than the situation in Elgin, did Mr. Jones Provide you with any other reason that he was inclined to let you go. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I did a report using the main studio. | ||
| You know, like a news show, whatever the case. | ||
| And he knew about it, but he... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| He knew about it, but he didn't. | ||
| And it was like he said it was unauthorized. | ||
| I mean, that's a debate altogether. | ||
| But he uses these things as the reasons. | ||
| And, you know, other than that, you know what I mean? | ||
| But he did say, we'll keep it as a correspondent. | ||
| So he did realize there was a lot of miscommunications himself. | ||
| Yeah, so apparently Badandi was using the studio for his own show or whatever. | ||
| And he believes he had permission. | ||
| And then a little bit later, he did not have permission. | ||
| And this became an issue. | ||
| So these are the reasons that he's let go. | ||
| I can actually, this all, his whole thing makes perfect sense in regards to Infowars now. | ||
| Because... | ||
| Clearly, in his audition, he has proved himself to be an agent of true chaos. | ||
| While he's there, he's showing up doing a show! | ||
| Look, dude, you want the Kraken, but not in-house. | ||
| So you send him back there, and you're like, you can stay as a correspondent. | ||
| We have a chaos agent, and that could be useful. | ||
| Or keep you at arm's length. | ||
| It's always a good idea to have a loose cannon. | ||
| This all makes total sense. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| In terms of... | ||
| Piecing together various people's versions of what happened. | ||
| But Dondi won a fucking contest and he ended up winning or second place because he interviewed Ron Paul. | ||
| And so like, oh, this is going to be good. | ||
| So he gets in at Infowars. | ||
| He has a tryout period. | ||
| He bombs it. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| He gets into a fight with a cop. | ||
| At a Agenda 21 conference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What issue? | |
| He's using the studio for unauthorized reasons, so obviously you want to just let him go. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But, you know, he did do that interview with Ron Paul. | ||
| There might be some use for him. | ||
| But you don't want to fucking pay him a salary. | ||
| Get him out of this office. | ||
| No salary. | ||
| They'll keep you on a contingency basis. | ||
| They'll give you freelance kind of stuff, maybe, if it's worth it. | ||
| But yeah, it makes total sense. | ||
| And then you want to associate... | ||
| More when he does stuff like goes to the Boston bombing. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Press conference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Kraken. | |
| We love him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you have him as like an employee, not employee after that period. | ||
| As a way of covering your ass, one might say. | ||
| Operation. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| So that all makes sense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But this is some prime funny stuff. | ||
| Alex didn't even have the balls to fire a Badandi. | ||
| Mic down for this, because if you listen to this, this sounds like some mob shit. | ||
| It was Mr. Jones, am I correct? | ||
| You had that direct conversation with you in which he was discussing the possibility of letting you go. | ||
| No, he actually was weird because nobody's in the office. | ||
| I'm like, where the hell will everybody go? | ||
| So Alex Jones comes through and he goes, hey, he shakes my hand because I want to tell you I appreciate everything you're doing for us and everything else. | ||
| Walks away, then Rob Duke comes over with a look on his face and I'm like, Right that you knew something was wrong. | ||
| And Rob Dew and Lydia, the secretary, said, "Come, we've got to talk to you." And both of them had tears in their eyes. | ||
| Right away I knew what this was about. | ||
| It was a sad departure, it really was. | ||
| They relayed the message for him. | ||
| Alex himself never directly Told me until I got on the phone when I left the place and I think I wanted to demand know exactly why and I mean Then we had the discussion and I said you claimed me to do this stuff. | ||
| You forgot the stuff you know, I mean and So he goes well, you know what we'll do this okay. | ||
| You need to go home with the family. | ||
| I said earlier and Be with your family because you said they don't want to move down here. | ||
| Whatever the case So he said we'll keep you on as a correspondent, you know All right, so like Alex gave him the kiss of death. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want to thank you for everything you've done. | |
| You're a good guy. | ||
| You're my favorite guy in the world. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| We've got a long future together. | ||
| You're just going to need to talk to them. | ||
| I'm going to get out of here. | ||
| I'm going to go in a locked room. | ||
| There's one thing I... | ||
| It's so obvious, that moment. | ||
| That moment is so clear what was going on. | ||
| And Badandi seems to not be aware of how choreographed that is. | ||
| I mean, yeah. | ||
| I know it was you. | ||
| He's Fredo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| He got ghosted. | ||
| Yeah, pretty much. | ||
| Alex just, I mean, he's apparently pretty good at preserving some image or whatever. | ||
| I don't want Badandi mad at me. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
| That's a wise move. | ||
| I'm going to compliment him that you guys pretend to cry while you fire him. | ||
| There's no way they cried. | ||
| No. | ||
| I love Badandi's fake version of the world. | ||
| They've known him for a couple months. | ||
| I know! | ||
| And at the time he was there... | ||
| When you got into the fight with the cops and really fucked with us, it makes me cry every time I think about it. | ||
| And your claim to fame is you got an interview with Ron Paul. | ||
| Ron Paul comes on Alex's show. | ||
| That's not special. | ||
| Yeah, we don't have much for you. | ||
| I think our collected depositions... | ||
| Could be viewed as like a long-form Rashomon. | ||
| It's an oral history. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You know, like everybody's got their own views on what happened and where and how. | ||
| And none of it's real. | ||
| None of it. | ||
| Well, here's the thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that Badandi is the least cynical version of these stories. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I believe that this is what happened. | ||
| But his interpretation is nutty. | ||
| I believe that in his mind, everyone is played by anthropomorphic animals. | ||
| When he goes around, Alex is a giant lion, and he goes, and he roars all that. | ||
| Rob Dew is a mere cat. | ||
| I'm just doing Lion King again. | ||
| Who's Pumbaa? | ||
| Who is Pumbaa? | ||
| I think Owen Troyer's gotta be a Pumbaa. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pumbaa? | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Who is Mufasa? | ||
| Who's Mufasa? | ||
| Well, I mean, it's David Jones himself. | ||
| Yeah, the doctor. | ||
| He's the father of a... | ||
| Well, and Mufasa was a dentist. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| In the live-action one. | ||
| And Steve Pagenica's scar. | ||
| No, I think you're Scar in this metaphor. | ||
| That makes you a hyena. | ||
| Yeah, I'll be Whoopi Goldberg. | ||
| I'll be Whoopi Goldberg. | ||
| She had a run. | ||
| I'll take that. | ||
| So the question really is on everyone's mind, and that is, do you think that if you didn't need to move back to Rhode Island to be with your family, do you think that Alex would have kept you on as an employee? | ||
| And this is sad. | ||
| Maddie's just being mean now. | ||
| Had your fiancé been willing to move down to Texas that he actually was convinced at that point to keep you on at InfoWars? | ||
| Well, he said that was because Alex always put family first. | ||
| I mean, you know, that's the time his wife, Kelly, and all that. | ||
| But he loved his family big time. | ||
| And that's what he said. | ||
| We've got to put family first. | ||
| And he goes, that's the main reason. | ||
| He said this is the main reason. | ||
| That I have to let you go because I can't keep you. | ||
| You got a one-year-old son, which he was right. | ||
| I got a one-year-old at home and me flying back and forth every other week or whatever. | ||
| It's not going to cut it to support a family in that manner. | ||
| Financially, yes, but not being a physical father, you know what I mean? | ||
| Good on him for, you know, like, stepping up to be a dad and all that, but this is ridiculous. | ||
| The way, like, Alex is like, you gotta put your family first. | ||
| I would love to keep you around, but family is so important. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| Did Badandi just say that he was basically commuting from Rhode Island to work in Texas? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, basically. | ||
| I think, I'm honestly... | ||
| I know it's not why Alex fired him, but he should view that as like a good... | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| It's a small grace. | ||
| It is! | ||
| In some ways. | ||
| Yeah, but Alex is just grasping at straws for ways to be a coward about firing people. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| Look, you know, it's for your kid. | ||
| I'm firing you for your kid. | ||
| Hey! | ||
| Contrary to popular belief, I am terrified of conflict. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I like conflict when it's performative. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I don't like it when it's with the people I choose to be around who are unbalanced and maybe I'm scared of. | ||
| You'll be able to get mad at me and then I'll get mad and then God knows what could happen since we all carry guns all the fucking time. | ||
| Well, then who knows? | ||
| Maybe I'll, a couple years from now, let a rap star deny the Holocaust on my show. | ||
| It's always there. | ||
| Instead of confront them about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| So, now we finally get to questions that surround Sandy Hook. | ||
| And so, Matty asks where Badandi was when he heard about the shooting, and it turns out, not a direct answer. | ||
| Where were you when you learned that there had been a shooting at Sandy Hook? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Um... | |
| Was that again? | ||
| It was December of 2012, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, December 14th, 2012. | |
| Well, I was definitely back here in Rhode Island. | ||
| And I heard about the shooting. | ||
| It was funny because a week before that happened, I was on my radio show and telling people that, you know, it's just like I just had this feeling there was something going to happen like that. | ||
| And I came right outside. | ||
| It's like you get the feeling that there's a heavy push for the gun control. | ||
| There are going to be a school shooting. | ||
| God forbid, you know what I mean? | ||
| And I remember that, you know, when it happened, I was on the show, and people recalled that. | ||
| It's like, would you predict this or something? | ||
| It's like, not to predict this. | ||
| It's just like you had that feeling, you know what I mean, that something like this was going to happen. | ||
| Not saying it's staged or anything, but... | ||
| and right away, again, before the kids'bodies were cold, I mean, they were already calling for gun control. | ||
| I mean, and I was crying on the air. | ||
| I was. | ||
| I mean, I was shocked. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And I mean, Yes, at the time I was questioning how it happened. | ||
| I'm not saying it's fake or nothing, but the whole point is of them exploiting the deaths of children to push gun control that's got hundreds of millions of people killed in the 1900s. | ||
| That just set me off altogether. | ||
| Mr. Bonatti, I know that you had strong objections to the effort to pass gun control legislation after Sandy Hook. | ||
| I know that. | ||
| And I know that you have expressed that on many occasions. | ||
| I want to, though, ask you about Do you remember, as you sit here today, where you were when you learned that the shooting had happened? | ||
| I was at home digging up the news and just come over the news feed. | ||
| Oh, I could have just said that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Didn't have to do the whole thing. | ||
| Two minutes of rambling about your feelings about gun control and what have you. | ||
| I was at home. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's a direct question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| And, you know, Matty has to re-ask questions pretty... | ||
| Pretty constantly because of that. | ||
| No, I feel like he trained with an elementary school guidance counselor or something along those lines of like, I understand what you're saying. | ||
| If Padandi was funny, he would have said like, I was on air crying, I had tears in my eyes like Rob Dew firing somebody. | ||
| That would have been nice. | ||
| Did he do any pieces in between when he was fired and when Sandy Hook, when he started going out? | ||
| I'm sure he did, but also, like, I'm guessing when he says he was on air, he has his own shows that he does. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| So he's talking more, he was more doing his own stuff. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But yeah, he does, like, I mean, one of the episodes I did with Marty was Dan Badandi interviewing Val Venus. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I remember that one. | ||
| There are a bunch of, like, little things that He did here and there. | ||
| It wasn't like he got fired, went back to Rhode Island, and then popped back up just for the Halbig FOIA hearing. | ||
| But yeah, I don't know. | ||
| A lot of them were probably just very forgettable. | ||
| Yeah, that sounds true. | ||
| Yeah, it's just like, it is so weird to have him be let go, sent back to Rhode Island, and then only a short period later become so central to their... | ||
| I mean, identity for a while. | ||
| Well, here's the thing, though. | ||
| Whatever he may have done as it relates to Sandy Hook, his relevance with the... | ||
| InfoWars end of the coverage does relate to the Wolfgang Halbig FOIA hearings, which weren't immediate. | ||
| There was a bit of a lapse or a gap between the shooting, the aftermath, the fallout, the conspiracies, and then Halbig showing up like 2014-ish. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| So there's a bit of a time between his firing and that. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| But yeah, that would be wild if it was just like... | ||
| It would be wild. | ||
| Right away. | ||
| If they were like, we got... | ||
| Thank God we let you go to Rhode Island. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's not that immediate. | ||
| But Badandi is somebody who has a curious version of his own thoughts about Sandy Hook and whether it was fake or not. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| He doesn't want to admit... | ||
| Schrodinger's... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, but if Schrodinger's cat has been revealed long ago, and we're talking about it deep in the past, we have evidence that that cat was dead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| No, you can still see it. | ||
| We got pictures. | ||
| Yeah, but maybe not. | ||
| And maybe it was all a theory. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| Mr. Batani, you said that nobody died at Sandy Hook, correct? | ||
| No. | ||
| You've never said that? | ||
| No. | ||
| I don't think that. | ||
| You've never tweeted that? | ||
| I mean, at first, when I got involved with the stuff, my head was going a mile a minute. | ||
| And then to when Wolfgang Halbert got involved, and he was the school safety inspector or whatever, he started raising questions and all that. | ||
| And what I did was, I actually might have said something like that, but I recanted that, and I actually issued an apology. | ||
| On Twitter, I made a video apologizing to the parents of Sandy Hook for my misunderstanding at that point. | ||
| But that's not true either, Mr. Badami. | ||
| What you apologized for was the fact that somebody had released the identifying information of the parents. | ||
| You didn't apologize for any view you had previously expressed that no children had died there, did you? | ||
| Yes, that's what I apologize for. | ||
| From that and also... | ||
| What you just said. | ||
| But you agree with me that you have stated. | ||
| That nobody died at Sandy Hook, correct? | ||
| I never said it was a fact. | ||
| I said this is, and I stress that. | ||
| It was a theory of mine. | ||
| It's not proven that it's a whole anyway. | ||
| And we've got questions that need answering. | ||
| So there's a sort of ball rolling downhill aspect to this where it's like, I didn't say that no one died. | ||
| Yes, you did. | ||
| Well, yeah, I did, but I recanted and I apologized. | ||
| You didn't really apologize for that. | ||
| Yes, I did. | ||
| And also, it was all just theories. | ||
| All right. | ||
| This is not up front. | ||
| This is somebody who's not answering a question. | ||
| And that, to me, is indicative of guilt. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like a bad murder investigation. | ||
| Like, did you kill that guy? | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| I killed him a little bit. | ||
| Sure, I killed that guy a little bit. | ||
| But then I apologized to his parents. | ||
| You didn't apologize to his parents. | ||
| Well, I said I was sorry that their shoes got wet, and I think that encompasses the me killing their kids. | ||
| And if I did, it was an accident. | ||
| It was! | ||
| And in reality, he killed me. | ||
| Frankly, I don't even know if he ever existed. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, look, he's just asking questions. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| Dan's just asking questions. | ||
| This is a fact. | ||
| I know kids die. | ||
| I mean, I never said anything like that. | ||
| I said, did the kids die? | ||
| Not in a question form of a question. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Those were the statements I made. | ||
| Because I don't know. | ||
| I wasn't there. | ||
| I don't know what happened. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And what I know now is kids are dead. | ||
| And, again, it's all... | ||
| Ever since then, a reign of terror of gun control across this country from that incident. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And as an American citizen supports the Constitution, this is only a disgrace. | ||
| Anybody involved that will exploit these kids to push us, they deserve to be kicked the hell out of this country. | ||
| I'm going to show you what's been marked as exhibit number 28. Do you have a document on your screen? | ||
| In which you are tweeting is at Dan Badandi. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And as I scroll down to the bottom, do you see where you replied, Sandy Hook, no one died? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, look at the date, though. | |
| What's the date, sir? | ||
| July 2016. | ||
| And on that date, am I correct, that you stated that Sandy Hook, no one died, right? | ||
| Well, yeah, that's what it says, right? | ||
| Right, and you didn't phrase it as a question, correct? | ||
| Well, it didn't seem to be dying, and that was my question. | ||
| Sir, did you phrase that as a question? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I'm sorry? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection. | |
| Did you phrase it as a question? | ||
| Yes, it was supposed to be phrased as a question. | ||
| Supposed to be. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| Oh. | ||
| It's like the understood you at the beginning of a command, you know? | ||
| It's an invisible question mark. | ||
| Apparently, yeah, statements are questions now. | ||
| I mean, in his mind, I don't know if anything is certain, period. | ||
| So maybe any statement is a question. | ||
| But this to me is, I don't, it's a bridge too far. | ||
| I really don't believe he could actually think this. | ||
| This is obfuscating. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I don't want to be... | ||
| Listen, I know why we're here. | ||
| That's a fucking statement. | ||
| It's not a question. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Like... | ||
| Sandy Hook No One Died is not a question. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| That's the title of my movie, okay? | ||
| Sandy Hook colon No One Died. | ||
| Here is the way that I guess you could argue it's a question. | ||
| And I think this is a terrible argument that I don't agree with and I think wouldn't hold up. | ||
| But you could say that you're saying this to evoke questions in people's minds. | ||
| You know, there's questions around this and I'm trying to make people think or something like that. | ||
| But even so, it's still grammatically a statement. | ||
| Listen, people don't just ask questions. | ||
| You need an instigator. | ||
| Someone to say something that is, I don't know... | ||
| Potentially suable. | ||
| I'm the guy telling you to get out of the cave, man. | ||
| Yeah, come on. | ||
| I know. | ||
| It's all shadow puppets. | ||
| It's about starting the debate. | ||
| You know, kick-starting things, you know? | ||
| I'm the part of the chainsaw that goes... | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But these are just questions. | ||
| It's all questions. | ||
| Everything is a question. | ||
| It's all a question. | ||
| Although I'm questioning that. | ||
| You say up here a false flag doesn't mean people don't really die. | ||
| Many people die from false flags, hence 9-11, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You're saying that 9-11 was a false flag, but that people really died there, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And then Jay, the person who you're interacting with, says, you just said the shooter and victims in Orlando were actors. | ||
| You can't keep your own story straight. | ||
| And then you clarify. | ||
| Sandy Hook, no one died. | ||
| 9-11, over 3,000 people died, right? | ||
| Oh, you know what? | ||
| That was because of the FBI. | ||
| The FBI reported there was no death. | ||
| That was on record. | ||
| They reported there was no deaths, and they messed up on that point. | ||
| I thought you just told me before that this was supposed to be a question. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did anybody die on C&E Hook? | ||
| That was the question. | ||
| This is the question you're asking. | ||
| Did anybody die on C&E Hook? | ||
| They died on C&E Hook. | ||
| And then bringing up 9-11, three people died. | ||
| I'm sorry, 3,000 people died, over 3,000. | ||
| 9-11. | ||
| I'm sorry, Mr. Badani, I just want to make sure I understand. | ||
| Are you telling me that when you tweeted Sandy Hook, no one died, you were asking a question about whether people died or you were referring to an FBI report? | ||
| No, I'm just throwing a question out there. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So this was just you throwing a question out there? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I was throwing a question out there. | ||
| Was that what I was supposed to take away from all the stuff he said? | ||
| Yeah, I guess so. | ||
| But even this is incoherent as an answer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you have this statement where a bunch of people died at 9-11, no one died at Sandy Hook. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so you're just asking the question, did people die at Sandy Hook? | ||
| Which is not how most people would read that statement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| And then when that sort of doesn't sound like it makes a lot of sense, he brings up the FBI report that was from the Adan Salazar article on Infowars. | ||
| Jermaine to asking questions. | ||
| That's asserting definitive authoritative evidence for a claim. | ||
| You're saying you have proof for the thing that you said was true. | ||
| And it was just a question. | ||
| No! | ||
| Yeah, it's all convoluted. | ||
| And it is because he just doesn't want to own up to the fact that he was doing this shit. | ||
| I mean, hey, neither would you if you're in a deposition where somebody's being sued for a lot. | ||
| Counterpoint. | ||
| I would be fine with that. | ||
| Because in Dan Badandi's shoes, he has nothing to lose. | ||
| Oh, that's a good point. | ||
| He's not being sued. | ||
| There is this bizarre sort of loyalty that is, I think, sincere on Badandi's part towards Alex. | ||
| And I think that he's protecting Alex a little bit with his cagey-ness about these answers. | ||
| Because, like, there is just cut-and-dry evidence of what he did and what he said. | ||
| And Badani's asking, like, ah, this is just questions and what have you. | ||
| When there is really no cost to himself to just own up to, yes, I believed those things at the time. | ||
| I was wrong. | ||
| It was very dumb. | ||
| I put this out there. | ||
| And I regret it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I've apologized for it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The only real cost is to Alex, because then it would be like, why did you believe these things while the coverage on InfoWars... | ||
| You know, it goes that direction fairly easily. | ||
| But yeah, if I were in Benanti's shoes, I mean, first of all, I wouldn't have done the things that he did, but... | ||
| I might have gotten into a fight with a cop in Elgin, though. | ||
| Well, hey, who doesn't? | ||
| Who doesn't want to? | ||
| Elgin is tough, you know? | ||
| I mean, this really does... | ||
| Elgin's tourism brochure is just getting into a fight with cops. | ||
| The cops are ready. | ||
| Come see the water parks. | ||
| The cops want to brawl a little bit. | ||
| This whole thing, really, all of the laws and depositions and stuff have made me really want to scrub every last bit of my social media and anything because just the idea of being in a deposition, I don't even know what it would be for. | ||
| But if a lawyer starts reading a tweet, I'm like, I got it. | ||
| Whatever it is, I confess. | ||
| Whatever it is. | ||
| I think stuff you just said on the podcast is bad enough. | ||
| That's fair. | ||
| I mean, I don't imagine you've tweeted worse things than some of the stuff taken out of context that you've said here. | ||
| Yeah, I'm going to have to... | ||
| Well, I'm going to have to leave no evidence that either of us ever existed, Dan. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| So, Badandi went to Boston. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| He was looking for a soul to steal. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He went to the press conference, of course. | ||
| Made a big splash for Infowars. | ||
| And as he talks about this a little bit. | ||
| You presented yourself as a journalist and a member of the press, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you wore your press pass to get into the press conference, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| Is that yes? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| I sat with the rest of the journalists from the other media networks waiting for the thing to start. | ||
| You've got to jump them because the thing is there's no taking turns in these press conferences. | ||
| You've got to be right out quick to get your question out. | ||
| You've got the first question out, right? | ||
| Governor Patrick asked if there were any questions and you asked the first question, correct? | ||
| Is that yes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And the question you asked is, is this another false flag staged attack to take our civil liberties, correct? | ||
| Yeah, and put more homeless security on the street to stick their hands down on our pants. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| You don't dispute that you asked, is this another false flag staged attack to take our civil liberties, right? | ||
| Nope, that's what I said, yep. | ||
| And when you said another, what was the prior... | ||
|
unidentified
|
False flag staged attack you were referring to. | |
| You got a book? | ||
| I'm just asking if you have one in mind. | ||
| Not being derogatory, I'm just saying it's a long list. | ||
| I mean, going back from the Gulf of Tonkin to Operation Gladio to the Reichstag fire in 1932, I think it was. | ||
| Well, the Reichstag fire wasn't to take away your civil liberties, right? | ||
| It was in Germany to go to war. | ||
| And the Gulf of Tonkin wasn't used to take away anybody's civil liberties, right? | ||
| So I'm asking, what was the prior false flag staged attack? | ||
| Hang on a second. | ||
| Hang on a second. | ||
| What was the prior false flag staged attack that you were referring to? | ||
| 9-11 in Oklahoma and Waco and... | ||
| Sandy Hook? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No! | |
| No! | ||
| Absolutely not! | ||
| How dare you suggest such a thing? | ||
| Nope, of all the ones, that one was real. | ||
| I say, now, here, in front of you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cool. | |
| God, I love that he's, oh, I need a book! | ||
| And then he rattles off the same three ones that we hear every single fucking time. | ||
| Well, to be fair, what he said is, do you have a book? | ||
| Oh, oh. | ||
| Which is a weird thing to say, because it's like... | ||
| I have to fill up this book or something? | ||
| I think that's what he means. | ||
| That was the implication that I took away from it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| But he should have said something like, you got an hour or something like that. | ||
| Yeah, I think that's what he was trying to say. | ||
| Yeah, that's the intent behind it. | ||
| But got a book is a little bit weird. | ||
| Do you got a book? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Anyone? | ||
| You can write in the margins. | ||
| So, Badandi goes down to Connecticut. | ||
| He's looking for a soul to steal. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Went down with Wolfgang Halbig. | ||
| And Halbig was just asking questions, too. | ||
| I don't feel like that's true. | ||
| Don't you understand? | ||
| That if people would just answer his questions, he would have stopped asking them. | ||
| Because they've been answered. | ||
| The first time you recall hearing about Wolfgang Halbig was in connection with your trip to Connecticut to cover him. | ||
| No, I mean, his name was ran through the media like everybody else. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Every media mentioned him, especially when he started asking questions. | ||
| And then, of course, the media viciously attacked him. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And I didn't even talk to the man at the time. | ||
| The first time I talked to him was the day I met him the first time in Connecticut. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And your testimony, best you can recall, is that prior to that day, Mr. Halbig's name was circulating in the media, and you became aware of him through that. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Was it circulating in the mainstream media at that time or on alternative media like, for example, Infowars? | ||
| I don't recall exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Prior to meeting him that day, did you have an understanding that he was connected in some way to a story surrounding Sandy Hook? | ||
| No, he was asking questions at first. | ||
| And then he gets visited by the state police and gets threatened. | ||
| Then he comes out and says, listen, I'm just asking questions. | ||
| Answer the questions and I'll go away. | ||
| I don't know how many times we got that on video when it was on InfoWars. | ||
| How many times did he tell these people, answer my questions and I'll go away? | ||
| Plain and simple. | ||
| They would not answer his questions. | ||
| The most bizarre stuff. | ||
| We had an FBI agent in the court hearings that witnessed the stuff that said this was the most bizarre stuff he's ever seen in his life. | ||
| You're talking about Rob New's uncle? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| This is very bizarre to me on some level because I find it difficult to understand Or believe, excuse me, that Badandi doesn't understand that these are fake questions. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| These are unfair questions. | ||
| They're the, have you stopped beating your spouse? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Kind of questions. | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| They're not designed to be answered. | ||
| They're designed to not be answered and used as evidence that people aren't answering questions. | ||
| Right, they're cudgels. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I don't... | ||
| I don't know if I believe that he doesn't understand that dynamic. | ||
| But part of me is willing to believe that. | ||
| I don't know, man. | ||
| I feel like I've got a fairly good ear for sincerity. | ||
| And it really does feel like he thinks that he's... | ||
| If he gets the answers... | ||
| Then he will be happy. | ||
| Like how big is acting in good faith and just wants answers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| It feels like that's what... | ||
| Because it does feel like that's how Badandi views himself also. | ||
| As somebody who, if he does get the answers, then he will stop, you know? | ||
| Answer the question and be satisfied. | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| I think with Alex, it's very obvious that he has no belief that these are sincere questions that need answers. | ||
| This is just an opportunity. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| With Badandi, it does feel like there is a possibility that he legitimately thinks that if someone would just be up front and answer these questions, we wouldn't have to go through all this. | ||
| But I don't know if that's being naive on my part, too. | ||
| I mean, it's hard because we're dealing with Infowars people, obviously. | ||
| But at the same time, I really... | ||
| I mean, it's like... | ||
| If I can't trust my ear on this one, I feel like I don't know of anything. | ||
| It's a sense that you get. | ||
| I'm more willing to believe that there's a sincerity to it than other folk that I've heard, but I'm not willing to commit to it. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| I will say this. | ||
| Of all the people, but Dondi is the one closest to me saying he's sincere. | ||
| I think that's probably true. | ||
| I mean, there's been some Major League shitheads. | ||
| To be fair. | ||
| Well, you know what? | ||
| I think Paul Joseph Watson was fairly sincere. | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I suppose more about everything. | ||
| Yeah, he wasn't sincere about everything. | ||
| I think Paul Joseph Watson was very sincere in a calculated, I'm going to be good. | ||
| This shit's not my fault. | ||
| I was very clear. | ||
| I didn't want any part of this. | ||
| I'm free. | ||
| There is documented evidence that I said stop it. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I wouldn't be surprised if he was smiling in his deposition. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Actually, I watched it. | ||
| He was not. | ||
| But he's British. | ||
| Anyway, Rob Dew sent Badandi to Connecticut to that FOIA hearing to steal his soul. | ||
| And not only did Badandi report on that, he also gave testimony to the school board, apparently. | ||
| This is weird. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And so how did you know to go cover that Board of Education meeting? | ||
| Who Info was. | ||
| Did Rob Du send you on that assignment? | ||
| Yeah, he said they're going to be doing things down there so they wanted to cover what was going on. | ||
| And I went down there and did that. | ||
| Did he tell you what it was that was going to be happening? | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| I mean, I already know his instructor go down there, Wolfgang Halbig, because he'll be down there. | ||
| And that's when I first met him. | ||
| And I had no clue, really. | ||
| I mean, all I know is he was some kind of a school safety consultant. | ||
| But prior to that, I had no real knowledge who exactly who he was. | ||
| I mean, that's when I first met him in person. | ||
| And I know that you now know or believe that he was a school safety consultant. | ||
| Did you know that prior to going to the Board of Education meeting that Mr. Halbig... | ||
| It was somebody who had presented himself as a school safety consultant. | ||
| Objection. | ||
| No? | ||
| I can't. | ||
| You don't recall? | ||
| No. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But it was Rob Dew who sent you there, correct? | ||
| Yes, because there was activity going on. | ||
| I went down there and just videotaped it. | ||
| And I spoke on behalf of gun rights. | ||
| That was my thing. | ||
| I said, please don't blame the Second Amendment for this tragedy. | ||
| And that's where my testimony was to the school board. | ||
| That's what it was about. | ||
| Obviously, the Board of Education doesn't have any authority at all to pursue gun legislation, right? | ||
| No, I understood that. | ||
| I was just trying to make a fundamental statement so people don't criticize or demonize the Second Amendment, you know what I mean? | ||
| Because we know how critical that is these days. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And you were doing that in your capacity as a journalist for InfoWars, correct? | ||
| That testimony, that was on my own behalf. | ||
| They didn't instruct me to do that. | ||
| They didn't even know I did that. | ||
| That was on my own behalf as a citizen, not as a journalist. | ||
| Were you wearing your press pass? | ||
| Yes, several. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Yeah, so it turns out the Constitution can be overridden by a school board. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But there's a... | ||
| I mean, there's no reason to testify about how great the Second Amendment is to the school board unless you're trying to just get attention, be an asshole, distract from the issues. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| It's really a strange impulse. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I've thought about that, and it is a strange impulse, but the more I think about it, the more it's like a different form of laziness that I wasn't aware of. | ||
| When you think about... | ||
| Everybody that you don't like being a globalist and connected to the ultimate evil... | ||
| The school board's got to be involved. | ||
| Then the school board is involved. | ||
| That means you don't actually have to look for an organization that can do anything. | ||
| You can just go to any government organization and be like, well, somebody's going to hear it. | ||
| And let me piggyback on that. | ||
| The laziness idea. | ||
| What better place to... | ||
| Grandstand to a captive audience than school board meeting. | ||
| I think a lot of people have learned that in the COVID times with all the videos that have gone viral. | ||
| City councils. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I think that it's laziness on another level like that, too. | ||
| This will be cheap attention-grabbing and seem kind of relevant and bombshell. | ||
| I'm telling truth to power. | ||
| What are you even doing? | ||
| Meaningless. | ||
| You're defending gun rights to a school board. | ||
| And I've got my minutes. | ||
| Like it or not, I get ten minutes to do the thing that I want to do. | ||
| And I have my press pass on, but I am not here in my capacity as an enforcer. | ||
| I'm going to have multiple press passes on, though, just so you know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, one of the things that InfoWars gets a lot of leeway on because of is that they are a sloppy fucking organization. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And nobody knows what's going on. | ||
| Left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing. | ||
| It's all a mess. | ||
| It really doesn't feel like there are any hands. | ||
| Well, we know that Rob Dew sat Badandi there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So there's one element of coordination. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That is editorial planning in some ways. | ||
| True. | ||
| This next clip reveals that there is maybe a bit more micromanaging than is led on. | ||
| Oh no. | ||
| The email you sent him a day earlier had the subject Badandi MOS questions. | ||
| That's man on the street questions, right? | ||
| And you were running by him questions you were considering asking as part of two man on the street segments you were going to be shooting, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| One of those man on the street segments concerned questions about school drills, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| And the other concern town hall and convention center safety drills, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And this is a series of drills and one was at a mock drill out of mock shooting at a school. | ||
| They did hold conducted hold drill, which I got to witness from the Did you have any objection to schools or other public facilities conducting safety drills? | ||
| not objections by all means because I think it's very important for The official, you know, police and fire officials and EMTs to be... | ||
| Because I was part of drills before. | ||
| I mean, like, when I worked at the airport, we did a lot of drills, like a plane crash. | ||
| I would lay there with a tag on me to tell the EMT my leg was cut off or something. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And I think these are very important to prep the people for, God forbid, one of these events to happen. | ||
| So I don't oppose these at all. | ||
| But in the others... | ||
| Token, too, every time there's a drill, something similar happens. | ||
| Not every time, sorry, let me rephrase that. | ||
| When there's a drill, frequently something in that same manner happens in that same area. | ||
| Coincidence? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm not questioning that, but yeah. | ||
| Again, I'm not saying a drill is part of an operation. | ||
| Although, in a situation like the Boston Marathon bombing, your view is that it was, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And then Mr. Dew responds to you, very good, also add, and then he proposes additional questions for you to ask about the second segment, correct? | ||
| So there is running questions by Rob Dew for approval. | ||
| There is Dew adding more questions in. | ||
| That is a level of intent, a level of organization, centralization of content. | ||
| Obviously, I don't think it goes to the extent of everything is checked off and approved. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| They're not that rigorous. | ||
| but there is um more of that than they like to pretend yeah they like to pretend it's all shooting from the hip and whatever happens happens right alex doesn't have a teleprompter but he has producers in his ears feeding him stuff and telling him uh things to say and information right nobody plans anything but oh there's emails where you're going over in advance man on the street questions that the There is more going on here that makes... | ||
| The whole institution and the organization more culpable than they like to believe or like to put on. | ||
| I mean, it's unreasonable to think that they can grow into what amounts to, I don't know, half a billion dollars a year business without... | ||
| Any kind of, like, it's pure improv, the whole thing. | ||
| We've never made a calculated move. | ||
| But that's what they want you to believe, is that, like, the content side of stuff is shooting from the hip. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then the business side, I don't even deal with any of that stuff. | ||
| Those people are serious. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| But that's a whole other wing. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Get out of here. | |
| And it's just delusional. | ||
| It's a fiction. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So Wolfgang Halbig had an issue with the police. | ||
| And that's how this all started. | ||
| He was asking questions about Sandy Hook and the police done came to him and said, you cut it out. | ||
| You will not be asking these questions. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| And Badandi heard that story and then was like, oh yeah, definitely true. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But Mr. Halbig told you that Connecticut state troopers had come to his house? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay. | ||
| And they tell me that I can no longer ask questions about the Sandy Hook school shooting. | ||
| I kept thinking, isn't there freedom of speech here somewhere in America? | ||
| I'm a naturalized U.S. citizen. | ||
| I think that's what's called the First Amendment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what the board members don't understand is they send police officers to my house. | |
| So guess what? | ||
| I'm coming to their house. | ||
| Now, did you just hear him say that the school board members had sent police officers to his house? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And did you do anything to confirm whether or not the school board had sent police officers to his house? | ||
| I was there to interview him. | ||
| That's all it was. | ||
| I mean, obviously, I couldn't sit there and ask for proof or anything like that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's impossible. | ||
| Did you ask the school board? | ||
| No, we went into the school board, whatever it was. | ||
| He had some interaction with the school board. | ||
| I was just there to ask him questions. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| No, I know, but if the school board... | ||
| The school board had sent police officers to his house. | ||
| Did you think to ask the school board members who were there whether that was in fact true? | ||
| I don't know if this was after the testimony. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That didn't occur to you, though, is your testimony? | ||
| Sorry, what? | ||
| No. | ||
| And you're wearing your Infowars press badge here as you're interviewing him, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| So when you get journalism training from your not-uncle PR guy who's not a journalist, sometimes you hear claims like, The school board sent the police to harass me, and you don't think follow-up questions or corroborating information is important. | ||
| Because if you believe the story, why wouldn't you ask the school board and get their comment on it? | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| You don't scratch this because you're not curious. | ||
| And you probably don't, maybe subconsciously or consciously, Don't want to run the risk of having probable cause to think that the person you're talking to is a liar. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's safer. | ||
| Yeah, as far as the cover your ass goes, it feels like Badandi is wearing those comical long underwear with the butt flap wide open. | ||
| Just out in the cold tundra. | ||
| But meanwhile, trying to cover other people's asses. | ||
| Weirdly. | ||
| Covering for Hal Big, covering for Alex. | ||
| Yeah, it's weird. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, it was reported when Badandi and Halbig came to town in Connecticut that the circus was coming to town. | ||
| Now, you'll never believe what reporting this was based on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why have an appearance here in Sandy Hook filed a lawsuit? | |
| I guess some people quoted that there was a big circus coming to town with a bunch of conspiracies. | ||
| Even though this is a direct onslaught on our Second Amendment. | ||
| Mr. Badandi? | ||
| Am I correct that there you said that it was reported that a big circus was coming to town and that we're all a bunch of conspiracy theorists? | ||
| When we got there, I'm minding my business and some jackass. | ||
| Oh, the circus is in town. | ||
| We don't want you. | ||
| It was reported? | ||
| Here and all that, you bring the circus to town and I'm explaining to these guys, listen, I'm here just covering this thing. | ||
| I'm still learning what's going on and everything else and what this is about. | ||
| And they were actually giving Wolfgang a real hard time over that. | ||
| I mean, of course, me and Kevin and the other people that were there, you know, calling us a big bunch of circus animals. | ||
| And I told the guy to get a freaking cloak. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, seriously, I'm here to do my job. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's just totally ridiculous. | ||
| Wolfgang's right, man. | ||
| You can't ask questions without getting... | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah, I just wanted to... | ||
| You answered my question. | ||
| I was curious where that reference came from. | ||
| It sounds like bystanders made a comment to you that the circus was coming to town, and that's what you were referring to? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah, reporting. | ||
| Listen. | ||
| New York Times, some asshole on the street. | ||
| What's the difference? | ||
| Reporting is reporting, Dan. | ||
| If you're saying it's reported that the circus is coming to town, this is... | ||
| Unfair. | ||
| But if you said a word on the street was... | ||
| That would work. | ||
| Yeah, because it was literally a word on the street. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's just factual information. | ||
| I mean, this is just an extension of the random tweet equals all the left believes this thing. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| It's just cherry picking and elevating whatever random thing is useful. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Very sad. | ||
| So, we know that the state troopers were the ones that came and harassed Wolfgang. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| But, maybe his story isn't very consistent, even within the clip that he is talking to Badondia. | ||
| This is bad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you know, the final thoughts is, every time I look at that flag up there that says City of Newtown, I cannot believe the police chief of Newtown called the sheriff of Lake County, Florida, and had... | |
| Deputy sheriffs come to my house and they wanted to know that if I ever come to Newtown, I need to check in. | ||
| So do you see there that Mr. Halbig referred not to Connecticut state troopers, but deputy sheriffs in Florida as having gone to his house? | ||
| Did he describe two different instances, one in which Connecticut state troopers went to his house and one in which Florida deputy sheriffs did? | ||
| I can't make comments on it. | ||
| I'm just going what he was telling me. | ||
| Well, that's what I was asking, though. | ||
| Earlier you stated that he told you that Connecticut State Troopers came to his house. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| He just said that in the interview. | ||
|
unidentified
|
okay Oh, man. | |
| Oh, shut up. | ||
| What? | ||
| Bananas. | ||
| Get me aggravated by the minute. | ||
| My questions are aggravating you, sir? | ||
| Well, not you and all the questions, just the whole fact in general that... | ||
| You know, they're suing the gun manufacturer, suing Alex Jones, with these two happy people. | ||
| So now, Badandi's getting himself a little bit mad. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| And the floodgates have become open. | ||
| And it's weird that the floodgates opened because he stopped himself from saying something, as opposed to this entire time where he has just rambled. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
| That's him realizing... | ||
| That he's violated his own First Amendment rights, thus making him everything that he's fought against his entire life. | ||
| Yeah, so he's, I think, subconsciously, if I had to guess, I would say that he's being confronted with this information that clearly indicates that he should have seen through Wolfgang's shit a lot earlier, maybe immediately in the present when he was having that conversation with him. | ||
| Maybe all this is bullshit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that probably doesn't feel good. | ||
| And so in order to sort of deflect from that, I want to get angry. | ||
| And so he gets angry and just starts ranting and, spoiler alert, seems to be calling the parents of murdered children cowards. | ||
| My questions are aggravating you, sir? | ||
| No, not you and all the questions. | ||
| Just the whole fact in general that they're suing the gun manufacturer, suing Alex Jones. | ||
| We're these two happy people. | ||
| I mean, what the hell is wrong with you people? | ||
| This is the first damn amendment. | ||
| This is the second amendment. | ||
| I mean, how the hell do you go sue a gun company? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| What is going through your damn heads? | ||
| You go sue Ruger for what? | ||
| So you can sue Nissan because the drunk driver killed a bunch of people? | ||
| I mean, what the hell is going on? | ||
| Sometimes, yes. | ||
| And I'm a parent, too. | ||
| Don't give me that damn excuse crap. | ||
| I would rather have my son go to a school where he has an armed police officer out of school. | ||
| I feel a million times safe over that. | ||
| If something happens... | ||
| I got a gun pointed on me many times. | ||
| I'm not going to go sue the gun manufacturer, then go attack people's free speech. | ||
| What the hell is wrong with these people? | ||
| I know I'm just a witness, but I'm telling these people, you've got to be a damn coward, okay, to exploit the debts of these kids, to push draconian Nazi damn gun control, then attack free speech. | ||
| You know, we know what this is about. | ||
| We know the Bloombergs are behind us and everything else, all funding this operation, where all the money's coming from. | ||
| We know the money trailer that it's coming from. | ||
| It's utterly ridiculous. | ||
| And I have to be dragged in five hours of my time with this bullshit? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Because I was over there doing my job as a reporter, protected by the First Amendment, and saying that Wolfgang Hallbeck doing his job, regardless if he's wrong or right, he's asking questions. | ||
| That's the first damn amendment, and people need to understand that and start respecting that. | ||
| Bottom line, I'm not going to cower down to no damn people at all. | ||
| I'm going to stand up for my rights like I said in that video. | ||
| I'm going to speak my mind, and that's it, plain and simple. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| This is bullshit that I have to sit here, six hours of my freaking time, sit there to defend my First Amendment, I mean, and try to defend theirs, and I'm getting to ask the stupid questions that have nothing to do at all with Sandy Hook to try to paint me as some kind of nutball anti-gum conspiracy theorist, which I'm not. | ||
| And I mean, let's just get to the damn point. | ||
| Get this damn thing over with. | ||
| I'm done. | ||
| And no attack against you, sir. | ||
| No attack against you, personally. | ||
| I respect you. | ||
| That sounds insincere. | ||
| Mr. Badani, you just referred, I believe, to the plaintiffs in this case and in the case against the gun manufacturer as cowards. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| It's commonly to attack the Second Amendment. | ||
| I'm just asking, were you referring to the plaintiffs in this case? | ||
| I just listened to you for a while, and you're welcome to say your piece, but I would ask you to just try to listen to my question here, because I'm just responding to what you just said, and what I understood you to just say was that the plaintiffs in this case and in the case against Remington are cowards. | ||
| Is that what you said? | ||
| Anybody that attacked the Second Amendment, yes, you're a coward. | ||
| I don't care who you are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you understand that the Second Amendment would have protected those children. | |
| Bottom line, enough is enough with this bullshit. | ||
| Enough is enough with this bullshit. | ||
| Yeah, this wasn't a victory for Infowars, I don't think. | ||
| Maybe the messaging wasn't quite on point. | ||
| Maybe exactly where you'd want it to be. | ||
| I can see where the conflict with the cops... | ||
| In Elgin Happens. | ||
| I'm gonna guess he told that cop, I respect you. | ||
| No beef against you. | ||
| What's wrong with all of you sue-happy people? | ||
| No beef against you. | ||
| This is total bullshit and a waste of my fucking time. | ||
| Enough of this nonsense now. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| You're great. | ||
| You're the best. | ||
| The best lawyer who is running this case that I believe is destroying the Second Amendment. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He brought up something that's such a good point and such a fucked up part of the human brain and everything. | ||
| Badani did? | ||
| Yeah, which is that with the armed guard at his kid's school, he feels safer. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Like, when you hear what the actual way to become safer is, you know, improving communities, distributing wealth in places that need it, all of those kinds of things. | ||
| It's fairly abstract. | ||
| Yeah, it doesn't... | ||
| Feel safe. | ||
| Now, obviously, putting an armed guard makes you less safe, but it feels safer, and it's such a fucked up way our brains work. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| I mean, it's the same thing with, like, arming countries. | ||
| Like, everyone has nukes. | ||
| We're all safer. | ||
| See? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's counterintuitive. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe it's some part of our evolution. | ||
| At a time, everyone being armed with sticks. | ||
| I don't trust any of you. | ||
| It could be. | ||
| Back in stick and club days. | ||
| Why did we leave stick and club days is the biggest question of all. | ||
| Wistful for those days. | ||
| For those old stick and club days. | ||
| So anyway, Dan thinks this is a waste of fucking time. | ||
| And you consider this to be a waste of your time, right? | ||
| It is a waste of this time. | ||
| Because what's this about? | ||
| What is this about? | ||
| Why am I here? | ||
| Why am I? | ||
| Because I was there as a reporter, I'm protected, and I'm still protected, under the First Amendment. | ||
| And if nobody likes that, they could go straight to hell and let that be put on record. | ||
| I don't count anybody. | ||
| My only governor, my only God, Then why do you care about the amendments? | ||
| see fit under the Constitution and by my God-given light, plain and simple. | ||
| And I'm protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. | ||
| And I'm a defender of the second as well. | ||
| And the very first two things, the two things that be intact right here that I see, okay, is the First Amendment. | ||
| In free speech, freedom of the press, because we're not establishment media, and also the Second Amendment is being heavily attacked. | ||
| Why would you sue Remington? | ||
| It's beyond ridiculous. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| I grieve for those children. | ||
| I feel bad for those parents. | ||
| Insincere. | ||
| Yes, I am. | ||
| Even though you said that it was fake, right? | ||
| No, I didn't say that. | ||
| You never said that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you ever say Sandy Hook was a hoax? | |
| Did you ever say it? | ||
| I was asking the question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm just slowing down and you're over-talking. | |
| You're making me miss a lot. | ||
| Did you ever say Sandy Hook was a hoax? | ||
| I questioned it. | ||
| I questioned it. | ||
| That's about as close as we're going to get to me doing, what is your job? | ||
| What is your job? | ||
| Well, you know, Badandi's getting a little abusive, and so maybe Maddie is just sort of letting a little bit of like, I'm going to be blunt now. | ||
| Did you say this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Did you say this? | ||
| And so to your question, though, about, like, if he only answers to God, why does he care about the Constitution and the amendments? | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's because the understanding that someone like him has, and a lot of the militia, patriot, hard-right communities, is that, you know, it is all just God. | ||
| The Bill of Rights is, like, divine in some nature. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oof. | |
| And then... | ||
| All it is, it's not a delineation of rights that you have because of the Constitution. | ||
| It's things that the government can't do to you. | ||
| You have those rights with or without the Constitution because of divine right. | ||
| God gave you those rights. | ||
| And that's partially why they're against communism, because it seeks to destroy God. | ||
| And then those rights would go away and something. | ||
| But it's not contradictory in the way that maybe you were thinking. | ||
| I mean, in a way, it's still worshipping a golden calf at the end of the day, so... | ||
| I don't disagree in as much as, like, if you believe that these are God-given rights, then the government, not respecting them, can't take them away from you either. | ||
| It just puts you in a different situation where you have a hostile government. | ||
| Like, I mean... | ||
| Which you already think. | ||
| You understand that, like, a hundred people voted on the Constitution, you know? | ||
| Like, it wasn't, like... | ||
| Voted on. | ||
| It was the government writing a constitution. | ||
| And a couple of them were mules. | ||
| Literally. | ||
| Literally. | ||
| 100% a true fact. | ||
| It was not like pallet mules. | ||
| It was animals. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Animals. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So I will say that I think that Maddie is really actually being pretty effective in getting Badandi mad through just asking direct questions and not letting up. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| Did you say Sandy Hook was a hoax? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| I don't recall. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But if you did, I'm sure you were grieving your heart out for those families when you said it, weren't you? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right, Mr. Badandi. | |
| How the hell is gun rights... | ||
| Why are we attacking the Second Amendment for? | ||
| This is not a case against Remington, sir. | ||
| It's all part of the same damn thing. | ||
| I mean, come on. | ||
| Get off this, okay? | ||
| It's part of attacking the First or Second Amendment. | ||
| That's what this whole thing is about. | ||
| It's nothing to do with money, nothing to do with any of this bullshit. | ||
| It's about attacking the First and Second Amendment. | ||
| And dare these people exploit the debts of these children makes me sick to my damn stomach. | ||
| Plain and simple. | ||
| And how dare anybody defend them? | ||
| How dare anybody even attack our Second and First Amendment? | ||
| The very amendment that would have saved the lives of those children makes me sick to my damn stomach, man. | ||
| These people need to realize we are not giving our gun rights up. | ||
| We are not submitting ourselves to the New World Order. | ||
| You know, people could go straight to hell, plain and simple. | ||
| We are not going to give up our rights because people want to sue everything. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I want to protect my children and every children in the future of this country and prevent a school shooting to ever happen again. | ||
| And to do that, we need to arm the schools, not disarm them. | ||
| We need to protect our children with the Second Amendment. | ||
| Israel did it. | ||
| In 1974, only two school shootings attempted to happen, and they were both stopped by armed individuals. | ||
| Bottom line. | ||
| So you want to emulate something? | ||
| Immulate Israel when he armed all the schools. | ||
| And, you know, Sandy Hook, oh, gun-free zone. | ||
| Oh, you wonder why a 100-pound little rat managed to go shoot up the school? | ||
| Because there was nobody there with a gun to stop. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| Seriously. | ||
| I thought it was staged. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You tell me. | ||
| Let's just get to the point. | ||
| Are you ready to move on? | ||
| Have you said your piece? | ||
| Now, there is an interesting, I think maybe intentional strategy that Matty is employing, and that is letting him talk. | ||
| Because Badandi does seem to be someone who, whether it's that sincerity or there's a lack of guardedness that a lot of these other folks who have been deposed have, there is a decent chance that he will just start talking and accidentally say some shit that is like, what? | ||
| What are you saying? | ||
| He already has given up, like, This Operation Cover Your Ass stuff, the internal workings of the earpiece and the way that they coach Alex or feed him information, the fact that there's... | ||
| Like, editorial conversations about what questions to ask in Man on the Street bits. | ||
| Like, he's already bit, like, I feel like there's more information that has accidentally come out because of him talking, and then throw onto the pile him calling the parents cowards. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, that was wild. | ||
| And saying, how dare anyone defend them? | ||
| Wild. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wild. | ||
| I think that you gain a lot just by letting him go. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But unfortunately, that does lead to very long deposition. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And repetition. | ||
| I think interrogators like a talker and also hate a talker more than anything else. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I feel for... | ||
| And this is what I think is an amazing thing, and I think we should all be more grateful towards stenographers. | ||
| How? | ||
| Can you hear all of that? | ||
| Let it go through your brain, through your fingers to the typey machine without losing your fucking mind. | ||
| Let me say this. | ||
| I didn't play a clip of this, but the stenographer was having difficulty with the way he's talking. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so they did have a conversation about this. | ||
| That she would get a copy of it so she could do it, get a clean transcript later. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Smart. | ||
| That's smart. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So this might not be a situation. | ||
| This is a situation where it's just like, I need a break or whatever, as opposed to like, she's probably not catching everything. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| Well, I don't think it's possible. | ||
| It would be quite hard. | ||
| So in this next clip, the only way I can describe this is playing who's on first about a tweet. | ||
| Great. | ||
| This is so frustrating. | ||
| Great, great. | ||
| In October of 2014, was it your view that Sandy Hook was a hoax? | ||
| I don't recall. | ||
| That was a long time ago. | ||
| I have no clue what was going on that day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Showing you exhibit number 12. This is a tweet that you tweeted on October 21st, 2014, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And you say, and this is when you were working as an InfoWars correspondent, correct? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And you say, I added a video to YouTube playlist. | ||
| Then there's a URL. | ||
| Shocking. | ||
| Sandy Hook now revealed as a hoax. | ||
| Did you tweet those words? | ||
| That's sharing the title. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| Did you tweet those words? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay. | ||
| And did you believe when you tweeted them, did you believe when you tweeted them, Sandy Hook had been revealed as the hoax. | ||
| Listen, when the YouTube... | ||
| I didn't tweet that. | ||
| YouTube did. | ||
| You didn't tweet this? | ||
| You don't understand what's going on. | ||
| Let me finish. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| When you upload a YouTube... | ||
| YouTube and Twitter are all correspondents. | ||
| So when I upload a YouTube video, YouTube tweets it out through the system. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who titles the video? | |
| I uploaded this to YouTube. | ||
| Who titled the video? | ||
| That was the title of the video. | ||
| I'm just sharing. | ||
| Who titled it? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What? | ||
| Well, you uploaded it, didn't you? | ||
| Yeah, it was the title of the video. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You uploaded the video. | ||
| Did you play the video? | ||
| I mean, you guys got everything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you titled it, right? | |
| That was the title of the video. | ||
| I have no idea what it was about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Which you uploaded, correct? | |
| I don't know. | ||
| Yeah, just play the video. | ||
| You guys got it? | ||
| I'm asking about your tweet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you then tweeted... | |
| Oh, I didn't tweet that. | ||
| You didn't tweet this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who tweeted it? | |
| When you uploaded the video, they all worked together at the time. | ||
| So basically, if I was up to load a video back then, and it's a correspondence with my Facebook and everything, once I went, YouTube, because it's connected to my Twitter, Push that out. | ||
| I didn't personally go on to Twitter and tweet that out. | ||
| Okay, Mr. Badani, you knew, because you knew the connection between your YouTube account and your Twitter account, that when you uploaded the video, it would be tweeted from your account, correct? | ||
| Direction argumentative. | ||
| Didn't you know that? | ||
| So what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, you know. | |
| Did you know? | ||
| Why is this a... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you know? | |
| When you uploaded the video to YouTube, that your Twitter account would tweet this tweet? | ||
| I think so, man. | ||
| I don't know back then. | ||
| Arrest this man. | ||
| This is infuriating. | ||
| I appreciate... | ||
| Honestly, I actually appreciate this. | ||
| Mainly because it calibrates my sincerity ear. | ||
| And when I'm gonna... | ||
| I think he was being sincere earlier. | ||
| I think it's very clear when he's not being sincere, at least. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I've never heard of it. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| So, YouTube. | ||
| Some of that's being a dick, but some of it also is like, technically, yeah, alright, I didn't write that tweet. | ||
| He titled the video. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| It is vaudeville, man. | ||
| There is something truly incredible about that exchange. | ||
| I would quit. | ||
| In the middle of it, it's like, I'm out, I'm out. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| This turned into a bit. | ||
| I can't do this anymore. | ||
| I have to read it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I admire Maddie not being broken by that. | ||
| Yeah, that hurt. | ||
| That hurt. | ||
| So anyway, Badandi rants some more. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| What has this got to do with Alex Jones? | ||
| Okay, so that... | ||
| That's... | ||
| Not a question that I'm going to be answering, sir. | ||
| You're a witness here. | ||
| Can I clarify something, right? | ||
| The document says I'm here as a witness, right? | ||
| The defendant responded to Alex Emmerich Jones. | ||
| I don't see Daniel Bedongi on that. | ||
| I'm here as a witness. | ||
| Why are you questioning me on my thing? | ||
| Because you're the witness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This has nothing to do with my schooling, nothing to do with any of that stuff. | |
| My personal stuff. | ||
| Why am I being questioned on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because it's going to be made to spin it to make me look like a loser. | |
| So this is defendant Alex Jones, okay? | ||
| I'm here on my own behalf because, you know, you guys called. | ||
| So I want to answer the questions. | ||
| Get to the damn point, please. | ||
| No personal attack. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Get to the point of what this is about, and I'll answer the questions honestly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, we're going off with, we're grabbing at straws over there. | |
| Nothing to do with why the lawsuit's going on. | ||
| I mean, and it's none of my business, anyway. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's against you guys in Outstones. | ||
| None of my business. | ||
| My job as a reporter, protected and be fooled by the First Amendment. | ||
| That's it, okay? | ||
| That's my statement. | ||
| That's my testimony, whatever you want to hear. | ||
| And I'm not denying the videos. | ||
| You've got the emails. | ||
| You've got the videos. | ||
| Nobody's denied it. | ||
| It's not secret. | ||
| Nobody's trying to conspire things against you guys. | ||
| This is all on record. | ||
| So what more do you want from me? | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can I ask my next question, sir? | |
| You're like a robot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to need a small timeout for bath and break. | |
| It's 4.41. | ||
| You're a robot. | ||
| You're a fucking piece of shit. | ||
| Also, no disrespect. | ||
| It does. | ||
| It does. | ||
| Hey, your mom licks donkey hooves. | ||
| No offense to your mom. | ||
| What? | ||
| This does feel like one of those Northeast assholes. | ||
| Go fuck yourself. | ||
| You're a piece of shit. | ||
| I hate you. | ||
| I hate everything about you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're a good guy. | |
| You're a good guy. | ||
| I think I'm going to be friends with you for the rest of my life. | ||
| Nothing against you, but I fucking hate you. | ||
| You fucking hate your guts. | ||
| Anyways, you're a great guy. | ||
| Yeah, they're a robot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It does feel like Dan Patani has met an alien. | |
| He's like, holy shit, how is it that you're not mad at me? | ||
| Everybody's always mad at me by now! | ||
| How am I not eliciting a response out of you? | ||
| And you're focused. | ||
| You're on point. | ||
| There's no distraction going on here. | ||
| I would admire you if I understood what you were doing. | ||
| No disrespect. | ||
| No disrespect. | ||
| You're not human, but no disrespect. | ||
| So we get another tweet being discussed here. | ||
| See that? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You tweeted that on August 25th, 2016, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And you typed the words, Sandy Hook was staged actors, exclamation point, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And is that because as of the time you sent this tweet, that was in fact what you believed, that Sandy Hook was staged with actors? | ||
| I had a lot of questions, like I said, and questions around both ends, but you know what I mean? | ||
| And in the end, I end up apologizing to the parents about that. | ||
| I'm just asking you whether or not at the time you sent this tweet... | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't recall. | |
| So you allow for the possibility that you may have typed, Sandy Hook was staged actors, exclamation point, without actually believing that? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I don't recall it. | ||
| It could be. | ||
| It might not be, right? | ||
| I don't remember what was going on. | ||
| I mean, that's five years ago. | ||
| Well, I'm just trying to understand. | ||
| I mean, you typed it, so if you had typed C.D. Hook was staged with actors, would it be reasonable to assume that that's what you, in fact, believe is the truth? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's protected by free speech regardless. | |
| You may be right. | ||
| I'm just trying to... | ||
| You know, I don't... | ||
| Mr. Badani, you keep sparring with me. | ||
| Instead of just telling me whether or not you believe that to be true. | ||
| That's all I'm asking. | ||
| It's there, okay? | ||
| Whatever I type, it's there. | ||
| But I've changed my tune like I took the end of almost. | ||
| That's totally fair. | ||
| That's totally fair. | ||
| And that's all I want to know. | ||
| And so I'm just trying to make sure I understand that as of the time you sent this tweet, although you may have later changed your view, which as you say is completely Within your right to change your opinion about something, I just want to know whether at the time you tweeted this, I can presume that because you said Sandy Hook was staged with actors, that that's what in fact you believed at that time, correct? | ||
| Yes, a lot of questions, and I don't recall exactly what my beliefs were at that time, but I know my beliefs to this time are different. | ||
| Well, then that means... | ||
| It's infuriating. | ||
| I mean, it's basically like, here's a statement that they made in the past. | ||
| X. Does that mean you believe X? | ||
| Just asking questions about X. It can't be determined one way or the other, because we can't go back in time. | ||
| I don't really know. | ||
| And even if I did think that, it's legal for me to think that. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| And I don't think that now. | ||
| And I was probably just asking a question in the past. | ||
| I'm confused as to whether or not he believes that the I don't think that anymore... | ||
| Is not an admission that he did think it. | ||
| It's implied, but not necessary. | ||
| Well, I guess if you say, I don't believe that anymore, it does strongly indicate that you did believe it before, because a change would have had to happen. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You can't believe something different in the past and not have believed it. | ||
| But you can say, I don't believe that now. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And it doesn't imply that you didn't believe it, or you believed it before. | ||
| True. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Who cares? | ||
| It's infuriating, the way that you can't answer a direct question. | ||
| Especially for someone who insists that not answering questions is indicative of guilt. | ||
| Oh, obviously. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| No, no, no. | ||
| Boo. | ||
| That is the hallmark of a right-wing person, is just the thing that they are is the thing they hate the most. | ||
| And, like, bedrock, most important principles are usually actually incredibly negotiable. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, 100%. | ||
| Everybody should have gun rights, but I probably would take guns away from Antifa if I had a chance. | ||
| Well, I mean, you gotta take guns away from Antifa. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So anyway, we come to the end, basically. | ||
| There's just a little bit of the deposition left, and the subject of some, like, communications comes up. | ||
| And Matty asks when the last time he talked to Rob Du was. | ||
| And this is why you let Badandi just talk, because this is a very bizarre admission. | ||
| When was your most recent communication with Rod do? | ||
| Maybe the 4th of July. | ||
| No, I'm sorry. | ||
| Not too long ago, I texted him to tell him that I got served the subpoena. | ||
| You have that text in your phone? | ||
| No. | ||
| I'm sorry? | ||
| Well... | ||
| Didn't you receive the subpoena after you got rid of your last phone? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| I'm sorry? | ||
| Well, when were you served with the subpoena? | ||
| You have it in front of you, right? | ||
| Yeah, it wasn't too long ago. | ||
| I got served, like, last month, maybe? | ||
| Well, take a look at the subpoena. | ||
| You know you fucked up. | ||
| Just admit it. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| You deleted the texts. | ||
| We know. | ||
| There's a date on it. | ||
| 7-23. | ||
| July 23rd, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| the check list And so didn't you have your new phone by then? | ||
| No, that's nothing to do with the other emails and texts, whatever the case is. | ||
| I'm asking about your text message to Rob Du. | ||
| Phone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And so why haven't you produced that text to us? | ||
| Because I don't have it. | ||
| Did you delete it? | ||
| Yeah, I deleted all my text messages. | ||
| But you already had a subpoena as of the time you sent that text message. | ||
| Yeah, but I can't produce something that's not there. | ||
| Well, when did you delete it? | ||
| I deleted it right after I texted him. | ||
| He said delete it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I always clean out my logs in my way. | |
| Because you know how certain agencies like to spy on people, yeah. | ||
| But you have to do that stuff nowadays. | ||
| Let me just make sure I understand. | ||
| You got the subpoena on July 23rd, right? | ||
| You got your cell phone. | ||
| Sometime after that, right? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You read the subpoena. | ||
| Mumbled that one a little bit. | ||
| Correct? | ||
| Yeah, I got the subpoena up here, yes. | ||
| Yeah, you read it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| You knew that it instructed you to produce communications with certain individuals, including Mr. Do, correct? | ||
| Yeah, for that stuff related to that, there's nothing new. | ||
| I mean, this was after the point. | ||
| And you then texted Mr. Do about this lawsuit, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And then you deleted that text message? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| What did you say to Mr. Do? | ||
| I just told him I got subpoenaed. | ||
| What do I say? | ||
| And he goes, I don't know what to tell you. | ||
| He said, you asked him, what do I do? | ||
| And he said, I don't know what to tell you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I had no idea what to say or anything. | |
| That's... | ||
| I mean... | ||
| This is indicative of somebody who doesn't know enough to lie. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like, he doesn't know how bad that looks. | ||
| No. | ||
| He has, on this episode, episode, this deposition, he has said a couple times about, like, a habit of deleting messages and stuff like that. | ||
| So it's not out of the ordinary for a behavior that he has described already. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But... | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| No, I genuinely believe him when he says that Rob Doe told him, I don't know what to say. | ||
| Sure, but there's no way to know now. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Based on the... | ||
| Well, I mean, I guess Maddie does say we'll demand Rob Doe turn over this thing. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| But I would be surprised if he deleted it, too. | ||
| I mean, obviously. | ||
| Of course they deleted it. | ||
| It makes you look real bad. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Hey, hey, real quick. | ||
| You want to do some witness tampering over the phone? | ||
| Do you mind giving me a call and then leaving a record of it? | ||
| Hey, Alex, what do I say? | ||
| Witnesses asking to be tampered. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| That's why you use burner phones if you're in a criminal organization. | ||
| Talking about a criminal fucking conspiracy over the phone? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is not... | |
| The other lawyer makes a decent point, and that is, like, there is an implication here that... | ||
| You're saying that he deleted this message to try to cover something up or hide something. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that is not necessarily demonstrated. | ||
| Like, mens rea isn't there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, intent, some sort of criminal intent, I don't feel it necessarily from Badandi. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| But the act itself is problematic. | ||
| Yeah, like I said, I believe Badandi. | ||
| I believe that he regularly deletes his texts. | ||
| That makes sense to me. | ||
| And I very much doubt that Rob Dew would do witness tampering over the phone. | ||
| I'm sorry, I just think that might be a step too stupid. | ||
| I think he would, but I also think that he wouldn't with Badandi. | ||
| Good point. | ||
| Because you can't trust him not to say, oh, I was witness tampered. | ||
| Yeah, it's chaos. | ||
| So now the question comes up, when did you last speak to Alex? | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| This is a revelation. | ||
| 2014. | ||
| When was the last time you communicated in any way with Alex Jones? | ||
| Oh, over a year ago. | ||
| And what was that communication about? | ||
| Right after his deposition. | ||
| you know what it looked like for me at first was like he sold me down the river and all that and he called me to explain what was going on you know and No. | ||
| you Hm. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Mr. Jones called you after his deposition? | ||
| Yeah, he just told me to stay off the media with the stuff. | ||
| Don't go on Megyn Kelly's show. | ||
| Yeah, don't go on Megyn Kelly's show. | ||
| So let me make sure I understand. | ||
| He called you about a year ago. | ||
| After his deposition. | ||
| Yeah, like about a week, not even less than a week after his deposition. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And you understood that he was calling you because it may have appeared to you that he sold you down the river in his deposition. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So this is more mob stuff. | ||
| Alex operates like some kind of a weird Don. | ||
| But he doesn't use burner phones. | ||
| Insane. | ||
| Insane. | ||
| Hey, don't snitch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's calling and being like, don't talk to, don't say shit. | |
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Excuse me, sir. | ||
| Are you saying in this deposition that the main defendant... | ||
| Called you following a deposition. | ||
| Well, so in his deposition, Alex tried to downplay severely his involvement with Badandi. | ||
| He was barely an employee. | ||
| I don't really know the guy. | ||
| And so he was calling, essentially, because Badandi was mad. | ||
| About that characterization of their relationship. | ||
| So Alex had to do damage control. | ||
| And at the same time, be like, hey, also, don't talk to anybody. | ||
| Yeah, that's a... | ||
| The media comes a-knocking, you're not home. | ||
| That is such a weird line. | ||
| That's a weird thread, you know? | ||
| Because you have to... | ||
| I mean, you're gonna try and smooth things over because you want him to stay quiet, you know? | ||
| But you also have to be like, if you talk, I'll kill you. | ||
| You know, like that kind of thing. | ||
| Here's what's fascinating about this. | ||
| But Dondi's experience of it is the same as his firing. | ||
| It's like Alex was calling because he felt bad about how he had characterized. | ||
| What a good guy. | ||
| What a good guy. | ||
| It's so weird. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| He didn't need to do that. | ||
| He didn't need to call me. | ||
| On some level, dude's an optimist. | ||
| I know. | ||
| He thinks Alex called him because he was his friend. | ||
| Yes, definitely. | ||
| Man, that is such a bummer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, yeah, it's just damage control shit. | ||
| You understood that he was calling you because it may have appeared to you that he sold you down the river in his deposition. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Sold you down the river how? | ||
| Well, he was just denying I worked for him, didn't Rob do. | ||
| Because with him and Rob do, they got different things. | ||
| He didn't understand what Rob do is communication. | ||
| It's already in the depositions. | ||
| I don't need to repeat this stuff. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah, but the fact that he perceived He was worried you may have perceived he was selling you down the river is not in the deposition. | ||
| So that's what I'm asking. | ||
| Is what it is that he was concerned about. | ||
| He was concerned that, yeah, like, you know, he thought, I thought, he sold me down, I mean, yeah, I sold him down the river. | ||
| So he called to clarify that up and said it wasn't the case. | ||
| And it was a misunderstanding. | ||
| How? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So he was concerned that you may have thought. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Upon hearing of his deposition, that he had sold you down the river by suggesting that you hadn't really worked there, right? | ||
| Correct? | ||
| Right, yep. | ||
| And he also instructed you that if anybody contacted you about Sandy Hook, not to say anything? | ||
| Yes, the mainstream media. | ||
| Did he say the media or just say anybody? | ||
| Media, oh, mainstream media. | ||
| So it's... | ||
| It's notable that Alex doesn't disclose this until he's asked about it in the other deposition. | ||
| He's like, I don't know. | ||
| Maybe I did. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| This is shady. | ||
| But Donnie doesn't realize it's so shady. | ||
| Just like with the texting and deleting. | ||
| He doesn't realize what he's saying is almost probably shocking for a lawyer to hear. | ||
| Like, what? | ||
| You're telling me? | ||
| The Alex, the person who this case is against, contacted you to smooth things out with you about things he said in the deposition and also told you not to talk to the mainstream media. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is... | |
| Dan, let me ask you a question. | ||
| This is evidence! | ||
| Have you ever seen Law& Order? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Or L.A. Law. | |
| Or Boston Legal. | ||
| Or any number of movies. | ||
| The Lincoln Lawyer. | ||
| A Few Good Men. | ||
| You name it. | ||
| And they're there. | ||
| And in every law show, they're like, don't tamper with the witness. | ||
| Because it's going to look bad. | ||
| No matter what, contacting Badandi, especially since it's probably been a long time since they've spoken, is a very inappropriate act on Alex's part. | ||
| No, if you know the context of their relationship, just the call is witness tampering. | ||
| It feels like, at least the intent is, I don't want you to be mad at me, because if you're mad at me, it's more likely that you'll say things that are disadvantageous to me. | ||
| So I'm trying to smooth things out, and at the same time tell you to shut up. | ||
| But I can't just tell you to shut up because that seems so aggressive. | ||
| It's very bad. | ||
| Look, Megyn Kelly lured me into the situation. | ||
| Bad things happen when you talk to the media. | ||
| I'm looking out for you. | ||
| Oh, that's how nice of you. | ||
| You're my best friend again. | ||
| I'd also like you to talk to my friend who's a lawyer. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Did you acknowledge that you had felt a little bit like he had misrepresented your affiliation with InfoWars? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I think one of his lawyers or whoever was next to him at the time. | ||
| And he was, you know, I told him, it's like, I felt I was sold out. | ||
| I told him, you know, and he said, no, this is what happened, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And he goes, just stay off the meter and all that. | ||
| And, you know, he goes, we would never think that of you. | ||
| You know, we think very highly of you. | ||
| And, you know, which he did. | ||
| I mean, he put me on the pedestal. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so, you know, and the guy's done a lot of good things. | |
| I can't, I mean, I don't want to talk bad about him. | ||
| I mean, it was a miscommunication. | ||
| He did clear it up. | ||
| That was it, and we talked about each other's children, and yeah, that's about it. | ||
| There's a miscommunication! | ||
| There's no big deal! | ||
| He said I'm like Paul Revere! | ||
| I mean... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That is... | ||
| It's a little sad. | ||
| Spectacular. | ||
| It's a bummer. | ||
| It is hard to believe. | ||
| On a human level, it's a bummer. | ||
| Yes, on a human level, it's a huge bummer. | ||
| It's pretty funny, because these people are these people. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| But apropos of nothing, if you just heard this about, like... | ||
| I don't know, high schoolers interacting. | ||
| You'd be sad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Yep. | ||
| So we have one last clip here, and it's just, again, like, Dan can't understand how he's being treated. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's outrageous. | ||
| You believe that Mr. Jones was misrepresenting his relationship and his company's relationship with you? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Poor guy has been under the gun. | ||
| Disgusting what they're doing to this poor man. | ||
| And, you know, you can't expect the guy, like, he's got so much things going on. | ||
| You can't expect the man to be, like, with questions and answers and all that. | ||
| So, I mean, in his defense, you know what I mean? | ||
| And we just saw people here trying to do our jobs to save the rest of the country in the meantime while trying to support our civil liberties, you know what I mean, and ask the questions. | ||
| And that's... | ||
| The whole general fact about all this. | ||
| And you said his lawyer was with him at the time? | ||
| Yeah, he... | ||
| Because I briefly talked to the gentleman. | ||
| I did give them my contact information. | ||
| Case anything came up. | ||
| But other than that, I forgot the person's name. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But that's it. | |
| I'm willing to bet Alex had his lawyer so he'd have confidentiality. | ||
| He'd have the privilege to not have to disclose. | ||
| A conversation with his lawyer. | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| He's under a lot of stress, man. | ||
| He lied about our interaction and the nature of my employment there because he's just so stressed out. | ||
| He's got a lot going on right now, so he perjured himself in a deposition. | ||
| Of all the excuses one could have for a person's behavior. | ||
| He was stressed out, so he perjured himself in this deposition to make it look like it was way more my fault that happened and that he wasn't even really involved with me at all. | ||
| But he's a good guy. | ||
| He's just looking out. | ||
| He's worried about me. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It is strange that Dan Badandi did not realize that Alex called to say that he didn't want to pin things on him because Alex did want to pin things on him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that was why he was doing it. | ||
| And he realized, like, maybe in hindsight, that in order for it to work, he's going to have to smooth some things out. | ||
| He's going to have to have Bongino or Badandi on board. | ||
| Or at least not working across purposes. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But what he didn't know was that regardless of Badandi's intentions, Badandi's going to do. | ||
| That's just what's going to happen. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So we come to the end of this deposition, and, uh, I mean... | ||
| Something else. | ||
| I think it's interesting to get a glimpse of his personality on more display. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because, you know, there is that sincerity aspect that you sort of put your finger on. | ||
| And I think there's something to that. | ||
| And then at the same time, whether it's kayfabe or whether it's just like... | ||
| Who he is. | ||
| There is an unwillingness to not yell about, like, I will not shut up! | ||
| You can't silence me! | ||
| I don't respect the courts! | ||
| In a way that I don't think a lot of these other people have necessarily held up. | ||
| It's... | ||
| I just... | ||
| I mean... | ||
| It's hard to... | ||
| I want to use the word naive. | ||
| I feel like naive is such a good word for him. | ||
| I think in terms of his interaction with Alex, there is a naivete for sure. | ||
| And his interaction with Chris. | ||
| The way he describes Alex shaking his hand and telling him he'd be so amazing before he gets fired. | ||
| That's like he met Bill Clinton. | ||
| That's naive. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| Man, it's sad. | ||
| I don't like... | ||
| People who are manipulated, who clearly cannot get out of it. | ||
| And also suck. | ||
| You know, like, he sucks. | ||
| Yeah, he's awful. | ||
| He does shit work, and he puts really bad stuff out that hurts people into the sort of information space. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So it's more complicated to have pathos in the mix, but when he's describing these interactions with Alex that are like, everything was so great, he called me Paul Revere, like, all this, it's harder to, like, really... | ||
| Feel that empathy, but it's also hard not to. | ||
| He's a human. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Alex is fucking with him. | ||
| Yeah, because here's the problem. | ||
| Here's the problem with this type of shit, right? | ||
| He has the proverbial it coming. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But the it he has coming shouldn't take this for him. | ||
| This is weird. | ||
| This is cruel and unusual punishment. | ||
| Well, no. | ||
| To make him think he's Alex's friend? | ||
| That's mean. | ||
| But that's not the law. | ||
| That is not this case doing that. | ||
| That's Alex doing that to him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| He doesn't have that coming. | ||
| No, exactly. | ||
| And you'd wish that there would be a moment of being able to see through that bullshit and the way Alex is acting and take an accounting of his actual actions and be able... | ||
| to be helpful to illuminate better what Alex was doing, the machinations of it, the way that people, intentionally pushing this stuff because Badandi is a part of it he was there he knows he I'm sure on some level he knows but doesn't want to touch uh that part of himself or allow it to be expressed because of you know why would you want to burn somebody who thinks you're It's hard. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| I think that the one thing that will not leave me ever from this is that Did you write the tweet? | ||
| YouTube wrote the tweet. | ||
| I don't know how that happened. | ||
| That who's on first will frustrate me probably for the rest of my life. | ||
| I'm so mad at everyone in these depositions for doing the exact same thing sooner or later, which is trying to somehow obfuscate in a way that they think will outsmart. | ||
| Don't play word games with a lawyer. | ||
| I mean, just don't. | ||
| It's not a good idea. | ||
| It's not hard not to. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So we come to the end of this, and yeah. | ||
| Badandi got deposed. | ||
| The Kraken has got to go back in the cage. | ||
| He has been returned. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Returned to his hole. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We'll be back with another episode on Friday, and I believe that it'll be unpleasant again, so prepare your emotional state accordingly. | ||
| Yeah, that sounds right. | ||
| But we'll be back then, and we have a website. | ||
| Indeed we do, but real quick, I just want to apologize. | ||
| On our last episode, I made repeated references to Fuentes performing oral sex on Kanye, and it was brought to my attention that I was a real big offensive asshole, and apparently it was coded language, and now it's bad. | ||
| Yeah, there's homophobic and misogynistic implications, and I appreciate you bringing that up. | ||
| I appreciate you... | ||
| Saying something? | ||
| Because it was... | ||
| I was wrong. | ||
| The end. | ||
| Certainly. | ||
| I'm glad you were throwing this in two hours and 40 minutes. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Well, there was no easy time to bring it up in the beginning. | ||
| Certainly not your bright spot, I suppose. | ||
| No, right? | ||
| I mean, and then we went straight into the... | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| So how did I bring it in? | ||
| I'm not judging you. | ||
| I know, I know, I know, but I had to. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I appreciate you bringing it up because I think it is important and I didn't want to... | ||
| Force you into saying something. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| We talked before the episode, but I didn't think it was my place to be like, do you have something to say, Jordan? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Like a scoldy parent or something. | ||
| Are you ready to come out of the corner, Jordan? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| No, yeah. | ||
| I was wrong. | ||
| I'll be better today. | ||
| And we are on Twitter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's at knowledge underscore fight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We'll be back. | ||
| But until then, I'm Neo. | ||
| I'm Leo. | ||
| I'm DZX Clark. | ||
| Look. | ||
| There'll be another bit at some point. | ||
| I feel like the WikiLeaks bit has really run its course. | ||
| I mean, that sounds true, but I will let you know. | ||
| In a lot of circumstances, this would be an undersold way of me trying to sort of bridge into tricking you into reading the WikiLeaks, but I swear, in this case, that is not the case. | ||
| Oh, goddamn. | ||
| You know what's fun about that, though? | ||
| What's that? | ||
| I got them right here. | ||
| I just got a text. | ||
| What the hell is this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What happened? | |
| You gotta read this. | ||
| Read this text. | ||
| God damn it! | ||
| It's the WikiLeaks! | ||
| Look, it was a low effort. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And now, here comes the sex robots. | |
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |
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