Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman will be going LIVE on Saturday, Feb 24th at 8:30 PM EST to discuss the aftermath of the South Carolina Primary - don't miss it by signing up to Patreon: http://patreon.com/muckrakepodcast
On today's episode abbreviated version of their Patreon show, Jared and Nick pull apart the complicated news that the Republicans main witness for the Biden corruption case was charged with lying to federal agents and admitted he got his info from Russian spies. Because, of course he did. They move on to the more concerning issues of deeply conservative law makers making an assault on reproductive rights, particularly in the South. And they finish up answering great questions from you, the Muckrake community.
EXCITING NEWS: Jared and Nick will be recording the podcast LIVE in VEGAS as part of Pete Dominick's Stand Up PodJam that takes place March 22-23 in Henderson, Nevada. Click HERE for info and tickets: https://events.humanitix.com/stand-up-podjam
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I want to say it's been like two weeks of me not getting my drink everywhere, Nick, and that streak is spoiled.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to The Weekender.
Take that sip.
Oh, geez.
That was a problem.
I'm Jared Yates.
I'm here with Nick Halseman.
I think what happened, Nick, is I got in a hurry because this show is packed.
Is what's happening.
I see.
And there's a moral to that story somewhere.
I guess, take your time.
Is that the moral?
Yeah, sure.
Don't run with scissors.
I don't know.
This is a quadruple-stuffed episode of The Weekender.
As always, go over to patreon.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.
We've got so much stuff going on in this election.
We've got questions from our audience members.
I promise you it is worth it.
patreon.com slash mcgreggpodcast.
And if you go over there, you can also hang out with us this Saturday at 8 30 p.m.
Eastern, where we're going to be covering the results from the South Carolina primary.
We're going to preview that a little bit later, but give everyone a preview of our preview, Nick.
What's going to happen on Saturday?
Well, we're going to talk about what's happening in South Carolina and what the state of the race is and whether Nikki Haley will remain in the race.
I think she might.
She might just sort of be having too much fun.
She's having a great time.
She's having such a good time.
Yeah, we got to talk about all that.
We'll get into it later in the show.
But Nick, we have to start because this story
is perfect in every single possible way and there's even elements of it and this is the thing it's perfect because it involves the international right-wing authoritarian conspiracy it involves trump and the republicans and their allegiances with russia it involves lies that they've told about joe biden and also nick there's an element to this story that nobody wants to talk about nobody wants to get into and that story
Is that FBI informant Alexander Smirnoff, an Israel native and an often used FBI asset, and I'm going to argue in a little bit, Nick, that that's not the only organization using him as an asset.
It has been revealed that he fed false information about Joe and Hunter Biden, corruption, bribery, all that stuff, which has led, you know, to the precipice of impeachment.
He has been arrested and it has been revealed that Russian intelligence fed him the narrative that Joe and Hunter Biden were engaged in this corruption scheme.
He's now been arrested and everything that we have found so far, it appears that the Republican Party has been trafficking from Smirnoff, Everything.
And from these sources, they've been trafficking Russian misinformation and propaganda.
It couldn't happen to a better group of people.
You know what's fascinating about this, Jared?
Everything.
It reminds me of a certain other bunch of information we had gotten from another former FBI informant in Steele, Christopher Steele's dossier.
Now, the funny thing about that was that he told everybody that he got it from Russian sources, right?
He, This is like what he was hearing, this is the chatter.
So that's why he certainly wasn't arrested for any reason for having discussed these things with the FBI.
But for the same kind of argument that they wanted to try and dispel the Steele dossier as a whole piece, even though lots of it had been verified, they were able to hook, line, and sink, or take this guy's information and just sort of run with it as if it was verified.
Fascinating how they can have such a strong radar for bullshit when it comes from one side, but not the other.
You know what I'm saying?
Well, I don't think it's that there's a radar for bullshit, Nick.
I actually think that this isn't a side effect.
It's part of the function of what's happening here.
I want to go ahead and say, just to go ahead and make it clear for everyone, That Russia has engaged in one disinformation and election interference scheme after another, not just in the United States, but around the world.
This is the business that they're in.
It's like going into McDonald's and being like, wow, I didn't know y'all had Big Macs.
That's incredible.
All of that is real.
The quote-unquote Russiagate story was real.
It was just reported on and sold to the public as something that it wasn't.
The Trump campaign was absolutely in lockstep with with Russia intelligence and misinformation and disinformation and interference.
It just so happened that Paul Manafort, who by the way, I have to assume that Paul Manafort and Alexander Smirnoff I have to assume that they've probably hung out in some of the same places, probably traded a little caviar and a little bit.
We'll talk about that in just a second.
So now that we've made that clear.
Nick, and now that we've made it clear that one of the biggest stories in not just modern American history, but American history period, has been misreported, misunderstood, and also buried, let's point out the fact that this is, like, getting very little coverage, and everyone keeps talking about it.
Nick, I'm just gonna run down a couple of the details that we've gotten from this story, and I'm just gonna let things marinate, and then I want to hear what you have to say about this.
Okay, Smirnoff, it appears, has quote-unquote lied about his wealth.
He has ties to Russian intelligence up and down the board.
He has ties to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.
He also takes regular expensive trips.
He has expensive homes.
He has expensive things.
It's weird how much this is like Paul Manafort, isn't it?
It's really weird how these things sort of line up.
Meanwhile, The New York Times, Washington Post, all of the papers and media of record, they're like, we don't understand it, Nick.
How did this happen?
Why did they talk to this guy?
It appears he tells a bunch of lies.
Why in the world is the intelligence community talking to him?
I'm just going to let that sit for a second.
I'll come back.
I'll leave a cliffhanger and tell you why they're talking about him in just a second.
But what are what are your feelings about this as the as it's being developed?
You know, it's just the Republicans have never shied away from innuendo or being able to just use anything that wasn't even true.
They don't care.
Right.
To smear.
So I might have sounded naive a second ago when I was talking, but you know, certainly this is the feature.
This is what they want to do.
They want to muddy it.
And by the way, I would think that the biggest reason why they want to do this whole thing against Biden It's simply in retribution for what Trump went through with evidence, right?
They have evidence on what happened with Trump, but they simply had to be, we have to do the same thing to Biden.
Whatever we can do, we have to, you know, just to get back at them and show them how, whatever.
And so that's why they're so willing.
And they don't have scruples anyway.
There's no ethics in that side.
So they don't care.
So they, whatever they can do, whoever they can find.
It is sad though, because it's rooted in Rudy Giuliani's, mental state, I suppose, as well, because he was also somebody who legitimized a lot of this information back in 2019, 2018.
So it's sad, and it's not shocking.
And I hope it actually has an effect on somebody somewhere in one of those states that Biden might have to win to win the presidency.
I'm sad to say it is going to have no effect whatsoever.
But Nick, what you just brought up is absolutely important in all of this.
It's like the thing we reported on the other day with Russian space lasers.
That's the kind of thing that ping pongs around Washington, D.C., and it just so happened that a Republican was like, I'm going to tell the press this is going to hurt Joe Biden.
This type of stuff is the type of stuff that gets dinged around for forever.
And let me tell you, Smirnoff, this is not the first time that he has lied to intelligence agencies.
And we'll talk about why I know that and what this is and what's actually happening in just a second.
But it just so happened that the Republicans were like, this is perfect.
This is an absolutely perfect thing to go ahead, take the baton and run with to hurt Joe Biden, possibly impeach him, also to go on a fishing expedition.
Why is this happening?
It's happening for the same reason that Joseph McCarthy used intelligence reports and briefings and turned it into McCarthyism because it was politically expedient and he used it against socialists, leftists, gay people, black people, and women in the New Deal coalition.
Like, it just so happens if you are shameless enough, you can do this stuff.
Nick, why did they take this on the record?
Because he's an intelligence agent.
Because he's a person who plays both sides of the field.
Whenever we see these movies about spies and shit, we always think there's a good spy and a bad spy.
No, you're dealing with really, really ugly characters who are playing both sides against one another.
On one hand, this guy is going in and hanging out with oligarchs and warlords.
And then on the other hand, he's coming and telling America what they know.
And what's he do?
He makes money over here, then he goes over here and he makes money over there.
The entire world is filled with these people.
I'm sorry, but everything here that the Times is pretending that they do not understand.
To put it in parlance, people can understand.
This was a spy who did something that spies do, and it just so happens the Republicans ran with it because they're willing accomplices to Russia, and now all of a sudden you've got to bring the dirty laundry out.
And what happens when a spy gets brought in from the cold?
You have to say, we don't know who this guy is!
This is crazy, Nick!
We have no idea who this guy is.
Right.
Well, so I suppose that Smirnoff was maybe not anticipating this getting this far because now he's, you know, going to go to prison probably, right?
You get handed a package by a Russian agent and the Russian agent says, leave it behind this mailbox at 12.35 a.m.
in this park.
You don't know what's in the package.
Right.
Like, he did this basically because this stuff is being bandied about for one time after another.
And why did Russia do it, Nick?
They did it because they know the Republican Party would run with it!
And they wanted to go ahead and try and cleave some space in between the government and Ukraine.
It's not a coincidence, by the way, that this guy's Israeli, that he hangs out in Ukraine, hangs out in Russia.
Basically, anybody who fits all of that, they're trafficking in a lot of concurrent circles.
They're doing a lot of the same business.
And what's happening here, it's just the fact that the Republicans wanted to use this for their own purposes.
Exactly.
And it's easy.
It was probably not hard at all.
Not hard!
To start doing this all stuff.
And when you have people like Jim Jordan involved, I mean, Smirnoff is going to regret this, I suppose, because he was probably hoping to just slip all the information and then, you know, scurry away or whatever, or run away from that then.
But meanwhile, now he had to go to the Yes.
feds and actually sort of testify and break the law on that.
So I wish this would actually have the effect that we're looking for as far as disinfectants, allowing sunlight into the whole process, learning exactly what's real and what's not.
It just continues to play into the agita, right, I suppose, of the Republican Party and the constituents who follow that.
Well, yeah, and part of the reason is, by the way, you're not hearing a lot of Democrats talking about this.
Why, Nick?
Because they're in the same sort of morass, right?
They're all dealing with the same intelligence.
They're all doing whatever.
It just so happens that, like, this is the equivalent, honestly, in the NFL of, like, deflategate, where all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, somebody deflated the footballs to get an advantage?
That's cheating.
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