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Dec. 13, 2022 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
31:28
Was Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested...To Shut Him Up?

The sudden and surprising arrest of FTX mega-scammer Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas has perplexed some of America's top legal minds. Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley is shocked that he was nabbed just before he was set to testify (and further incriminate himself) before the US House Financial Services Committee (Chaired by SBF's old friend Maxine Waters). Politics? Oh, there's also a Ukraine angle.

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Inflation's Decline? 00:09:00
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
How are we this morning, Dr. Paul?
Doing well.
Doing well.
Good.
Lots of businesses.
Yes, I'm going to start off by counting the money and see our government's doing.
But there was a report that I want to talk about for a few minutes because it really got a lot of attention in the financial markets and elsewhere because some are even saying, is the inflation over?
Is the inflation over?
We got a figure and it was way lower.
Of course, there were several numbers they could have recited.
They could have talked about a number of price inflation in the past year, which was much worse than the price inflation for the last month.
And so because of the last month, it was way down and better than expected.
Everybody loved it.
Even gold people loved it, which is a little bit bizarre because when they report a CPI number that goes up, they anticipate the Fed is not going to do the right thing on the financial market.
It has room to not print quite as fast, which isn't true.
But ordinarily, you would think if the CPI is going up, the gold would go up.
But it does the opposite.
So the CPI today went lower than they expected, which says, oh, the government now can print more money.
And of course, the stock market loves that.
There's more money, prop up the stock market, and also the commodities and gold.
Gold, I think gold is in the position where it wants to take off anyway, because we've talked about the central banks around the world buying more gold.
So this was an opportunity for gold to show its strength.
And it was up like $35 an ounce.
It's still, at the moment, it's up still $30, which is a big jump.
But I sort of get a kick out of some of this stuff because it is sort of disorderly, but this market's trying to figure it out.
And sometimes the market's figuring out has to do the opposite of what's really, really going on.
So I've often told the story about the Fed chairman saying, yes, Ron, I agree with you.
But as long as we do it orderly, it'll be okay.
So as long as we stick it to the American people, as long as we can say, well, your prices are going to go up three per week.
Oh, that's orderly.
And they've gotten away with that to a large degree.
When you think about gold at $35 an ounce, it hasn't been totally orderly, but compared to what it could have been like runaway inflation and all.
But some of that has time to come.
But I think about this as a good indicator of what's going on because when the interventionists, the Keynesians, you know, inflate, they do it for a purpose.
It props up the stock market and it looks like there's boom times.
So, and there is.
There's boom times that's artificial.
So printing money and running up debt on the short run looks good and everybody gets addicted to it and that's whether you're rich or poor.
So they learn to live with it.
But I would say that people should look at that as an artificial result.
It's not a true economic growth.
True economic growth has to come from savings.
But there are no savings because that would mean you'd have to have honest interest rates.
You don't.
You have artificial rates.
And so the market is totally distorted.
So the boom times are artificial, but people do gain.
But eventually it stops because it's not real growth.
It isn't because the economy is growing.
It's because it's artificial.
And it's like you or I, if we go out and decide, well, Daniel, for next month, let's each of us borrow a million dollars and we can take off for a month.
At the end of the month, you know, we'll have to pay the bill.
But governments get away with that for a little bit longer.
But the really weird thing about Keynesian economics and monetary policy is they recognize this, they know it's dangerous, and they know that the correction will have to be lower wages, but nobody wants to lower their wage.
So they know that if they print even more money, the real wage goes down.
So that is the purpose of keeping printing the money.
So they see the other reason what they can do is to get prices to come down because the prices are going up too fast.
It's just consumers doing this.
It's the businessman doing this.
So what they do is they say the solution has to be a recession or depression.
You know, hurt the economy.
So none of it makes any sense to me.
And on the short run, there's a big reception to this.
It's fun in games to try to figure it out.
And because there's the subjective theory of value that Austrian economics teaches, you can't figure this out.
You can't say, well, the Keynesians think they can take this and manipulate it and then decide that we do ABC, we're going to get this, this, and this.
It doesn't work that way because, you know, the big thing is individuals make these decisions, and individuals should be deciding what interest rates should be, the spending, and what the producers are producing.
Instead, we get artificial booms at home, and we have wars overseas.
And the worst thing about this is the real motivating factor, they're looking at all these statistics which they can manipulate.
But the thing they ought to be looking at, and they talk about it, but they don't see the absolute connection, and that is government spending and debt.
Because they know in a market, if you spend excessively, an individual anyway, or a country, the people have to produce more, you know, and pay for it.
But that's not the case.
They don't pay for it.
What they do is they debase the currency, they print the money, and that's the cycle.
And they think that right now they didn't wait for the cleansing of this cycle because they think they can start lowering interest rates.
I mean, raising interest rates.
say, I think we've conquered this, I think we've conquered this, they have no idea, so So most of the people who study free market economics are anticipating that we're nowhere close to saying the final bell has rung, the inflation is over.
Yet today I saw some headlines.
It looks like inflation's been solved here.
It went down one-tenth of one percent for one week or one month.
But the last year, it hardly moved.
It's going up 7 to 8 percent.
And that's what the government reports.
But they have a habit of not always telling us the truth.
And sometimes they put that out there to move the markets.
And these announcements, they do move the markets, but the market maybe takes a day or two.
So even today or tomorrow, there may be a correction of all the anticipation of what happened today.
But I, for one, I looked at this and said, people shouldn't get too excited that inflation is over.
And to tell you the truth, I don't think there are very many people.
It's going to be the investor who knows what might happen for a short period of time and they can make a buck.
But I don't think the American people woke up and paid as much attention.
Oh, CPI is down.
Oh, yeah, it looks my income is going to go up because prices are going down.
I don't think it's going to work that way.
So we'll have to keep busy.
And of course, Chris and I talk about this issue each week on Friday.
And Birch Gold is always interested in talking about this too, the company that we work with.
So this was interesting.
I'm fascinated because it's technical, and I reject the whole principle that I understand technical or I have the personality for looking at the emotional whoops, up and down like that.
So I avoid that.
But some people are able to do it.
There's even some good Austrian economic investors who know, you know, they take a different interpretation and have done pretty well.
But I'm a pretty old-fashioned about, you know, I have to work hard, save some money, and pay your bills.
Well, much of this stuff goes over my head, I have to say, Dr. Paul, but what I'm getting from what you're saying is that we're in a period of dangerous, dangerous unpredictability.
And it's a good time to bring in our partners, our sponsors of the show, which is 4patriots.com, the number 4patriots.com, because in times of dangerous unpredictability, unpredictability, when you see inflation going up and down, we don't know what's going to happen next.
Sam Bankman Freed Testifies 00:14:46
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Now we're going to go to the title topic of today's show, and this is all over yesterday.
I was shocked when I saw it.
And I'm very pleased that one of our good friends, Professor Jonathan Turley, who's a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, had a very interesting take on the sudden, sudden arrest of Sam Bankman Freed.
Some people call him Sam Bankman fraud.
Nevertheless, let's put up that first clip because it really is a head scratcher.
And Professor Turley really, really hits it on the head.
He says in a piece that just came out, the Justice Department faces questions after effectively preventing Bankman Freed from testifying in Congress.
And he makes a point that, so Bankman Freed is scheduled to appear, I believe, before the Financial Services Committee next week.
He has been known these past few weeks for mouthing off about everything and incriminating himself.
He can't shut up.
You know, your first thing your lawyer should tell you is shut up.
He can't do that.
He's going to appear before the committee.
He's going to get grilled before the committee.
And just before that happens, boom, the prosecutors of all people take him up and prevent it from happening.
And put that back up because I've highlighted Turley's point about this.
Turley said, this is the first time that I can recall where prosecutors moved aggressively to stop a defendant from making self-incriminating statements.
Obviously, normally a prosecutor is a keep going, keep going, keep going, we're getting you.
Let's go to the next one from Turley's piece.
And I'll just go through a couple of these and I'll turn it back to you, Dr. Paul.
He says that is ordinarily a dream for prosecutors, the fact that he keeps talking about what he's done.
But the Justice Department moved quickly to prevent that from happening.
At that stage, Bankman-Fried was not charged or in custody.
He was not protected by Miranda or any other constitutional rules from self-incriminating statements.
He said, and then he goes, some of us had already warned that he was causing himself considerable harm, damage in making such statements.
This was a defendant with a large legal team facing possible criminal charges who seemed eager to speak about his actions and motivations.
I like this line.
Most prosecutors would sit back, make popcorn, and watch this unfold.
And the last clip from Turley is fascinating.
He says, yet that doesn't explain why the Justice Department would not want to hear a full account from him before effectively shutting him down.
No, he's not going to have to say anything.
He's been apprised of his rights.
He doesn't have to say a single word.
He said, the first time I can recall the prosecutors, rather than defense counsel, moved to effectively muzzle the defendant.
Someone on the committee, someone in the House understands this.
And the last clip before I send it back, Dr. Paul, is from Representative Lee Zeldin.
He nails it on the head.
He says, tomorrow, Sam Bankman-Fried was scheduled to testify in front of the House Financial Services Committee.
They were ready to grill him six ways to Sunday.
Now, breaking tonight, FBF was arrested.
Why not allow him to first testify tomorrow and answer our many questions?
That is a very good question from Representative Zeldon.
I have a sneaky suspicion that politics is involved in this.
You know, that is a wild estimate, but it is.
And I think the Democrats are cocky because they've been able to handle the FBI and the Department of Justice, and they have a pretty good record for what they're doing, lying and cheating, you know, since 2016, and it's ongoing.
And all of a sudden, they thought they overstepped, and at least the media decided, boy, the Democrats are going to get wiped out this time.
And all of a sudden, things didn't work that way, and they've stayed involved.
And they did get a boost from their friends.
Bankman Fried.
He was rolling in the dough and he was cheating a few people.
And he was passing it out, but he didn't pass it out to the Republicans.
Yeah, I think a little bit.
But the big money went to the influence of the Democratic Party.
I think they're in a bond, is what it is, because if he would have started spilling the beans or leaning toward the truth, it looks like, oh yeah, they're my best friends.
We call it every night.
It might not take four years to get to the bottom of it, like I think they are with the use of the FBI over there.
But the Justice Department, you know, it's not reassuring.
I don't think the American people are reassured.
I think it's good news that with all this effort and all this power and all the bribing that goes on and all the money that's involved, that there would be nobody that would blink an eye.
But I think maybe they're getting the message that the country are in a situation where this can't last.
There's a limit to how far they can go.
It's probably a monetary limit because of the fact of the debt exploding.
And maybe they might not call it what I call it, but I think it's a moral financial bankruptcy and it's difficult to deal with.
And here we have this guy that just stole a couple billion and tried to bribe the Democrats.
And then all of a sudden, some other innocent people got let the cat out of the bag.
And now they're very happy to, You know, continue to do the same thing, but we have to be careful because, you know, lying is something that benefits the dictatorship.
And this guy might be at the point.
He might be very dangerous.
He may start telling the truth just for the fun of it.
But who knows what's up his sleeve.
But I think the Democrats are pretty shrewd.
And even though I think they've been caught red-handed over the Russia gate, I don't think that the social media and the regular media and all the political forces and all the plants they have and all the law enforcement agency.
I don't think they've just walked away embarrassed and say, oh, yeah, it looks like caught us.
We better close shop for a little bit.
They don't give up easily.
But this is, and I thought Jonathan did a great job, Charlie, on this issue because he understands it well.
Yeah.
Well, it's funny you started that last seminar with talking about politics because the very next thing we have queued up, and let's put it up here, talk about politics playing a role.
No, that couldn't be.
That couldn't be.
Oh, here's Sam Bankman Freed hugging the chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Maxine Waters, the very person who's going to grill him, grill him today before he conveniently was arrested before he could say anything maybe about his friendship.
And there he is.
His dad's next to him and is involved in this, but he is the second largest donor to the Democratic Party in this last election cycle behind only famous money bags George Soros.
So he's up there with Soros.
He's got the power and the money.
The person going to grill him is his good friend Maxine Waters.
There's another video, I didn't queue it up, but of her blowing him a kiss after last time he appeared before her committee.
So it would have been interesting.
But here's the next one.
Here's the Zero Heads tweeted this out because he says, Dear Maxine Waters, get those refunds ready.
And this is part of the indictment where it talks about Bankman Freed using his money to say donate.
Let's use that word, donate to Democrats.
And while no one is saying that he directly donated to Maxine Waters, we don't want people to get the wrong impression, he did indeed give a lot of money to the Democratic Party.
And that's probably why, if you look at this next one, Maxine Waters, you know, usually when she's mad at you and she wants you to appear before the committee, she's going to read you the Riot Act and get you over there.
If you happen to be the head of a social media who's not censoring enough, she's going to yell at you.
But here's her inviting Sam Bankman Freed.
She said, SBF, we appreciate that you've been candid in your discussions about what happened at FTX.
Your willingness to talk to the public will help the company's customers, investors, and others.
To this end, we would welcome your participation in the hearing on the 13th.
This is how she gets him.
And then this other Twitter poster, DC Investors, says, Maxine, what are you doing?
You sound obsequious.
And I don't believe you understand how bad this looks, especially given your previous friendly relations with Sam Bankman-Freed.
It's pretty funny, but Sam Bankman's Freed.
Waters is a very powerful person, not particularly smart.
That's a different issue, but very powerful.
But he's got even more powerful friends, Dr. Paul, which might explain why they don't want him talking.
Let's do the next one.
Here's his good buddy.
We recognize this guy.
He's got his Ukraine lapel pin.
Yes, it's former President Bill Clinton hanging out with Sam Bankman Freed, doing a little speech with him.
And not only Bill Clinton, but look at the next one.
Here he is with Bill Clinton and international war criminal Tony Blair.
The two of them are responsible for a lot of deaths in Yugoslavia, Dr. Paul, but they also still have enormous money and enormous power.
So here's Bankman Freed looking like a homeless guy, sitting next to Clinton and Tony Blair, former British prime minister.
He's got friends in high places, and I think that's why they want him to shut up.
Yeah, that's for sure.
They have an incentive.
You know, when you were reading what Waters was saying and thanking Bankman-Fried, I got to thinking, you know, and they say this so seriously, and, you know, when they're pathological, they do sound like they're telling the truth, and you have to pay attention unless you know what they're really talking about.
But I think she there, I thought she was the perfect definition of what I consider a nihilist is.
A nihilist that has no concept of right or wrong.
And they tell lies, but there's never any guilt or shame.
And you could tell just her language.
You know, she's so, you know, when she goes out there and performs as the Speaker of the House, at least we might not have to listen to that.
She'll find maybe another job or something.
We'll have to listen to her.
But anyway, I think that is a big thing, that the American people have trouble, but they're approaching the point where they just don't believe politicians.
First, you assume they all tell lies, and then the people you trust and know, maybe they can start listening to them and believing them.
So that's what we've been doing with journalists.
We love an honest journalist.
We'll just be a journalist.
We don't want them to tell them, just be somebody that's agreeing with us.
We want people to go out and get this information.
And this is a problem and very frustrating.
And this is one of the reasons the fact that we don't have it, it means that our system is very sick.
And it's on the wane because you just can't operate a society based on freedom and volunteerism with people thinking that lying has no consequence.
Yeah.
Well, there's another reason, Dr. Paul, why I think they want to shut Sam Bankman Freed up.
And hopefully he doesn't get Epstein because he's got a lot of secrets.
Wouldn't want to beat him right now, to be honest with you.
But it's Ukraine because there have been a lot of allegations.
We have not investigated them all, we have to say, but there have been a lot of allegations of FTX's involvement in financing the war in Ukraine.
Let's put up this next clip because this is just an example of it.
This is posted by someone.
It's a chart.
Again, we have not investigated every aspect of this, but it has to do with his own family ties.
His mother, I believe, is a top fundraiser for the Democratic Party.
And this Twitter handle, Barron, makes a good point.
He says, the Biden-Zelensky money laundering scam.
The U.S. government sent billions to Ukraine.
We know that.
Zelensky then took the money for the military and invested billions of it into the startup crypto exchange FTX, which then became the second largest donor to the Democratic Party behind Soros.
It looks pretty damning.
And here it is.
I like pictures.
Let's look at the next one.
Here's a simplified version of what certainly needs to be investigated.
You have Biden here giving billions of money to Ukraine.
We know that Ukraine has partnered with FTX.
FTX then takes the money that it gets from Ukraine from the American taxpayer, because we know money is fungible, Dr. Paul, and it makes big donations to the Democratic Party.
And the Democratic Party then backs Democratic candidates, including Biden, and around and around we go.
Again, like our friend Chuck Spinning would say, a self-looking ice cream cone.
If this is the case, then there are even bigger fish to fry than Maxine Waters, because we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars possibly, or certainly $100 billion that went through this.
How much has been laundered?
How much has been misappropriated?
How much has been stolen?
And we've talked about on the show so many times, Dr. Paul.
Nobody wants to audit it, so we don't know.
What are they afraid of?
That's the big question.
This means that he may be friends with the people in the military-industrial complex.
Yeah, that's right.
That's what you benefit.
Citizens Betrayed, Empire Intimidates 00:03:06
You know, he's over there getting the people in that will do their bidding, and they'll be happy with that.
And they're on a roll right now on what they're doing.
It seems like the Congress won't turn anything down.
We're in transition now, but it'll be interesting to see what happens next year, even though the total spending is not going to change.
You would hope that the House would stand up.
But I haven't seen any good reports coming from the House that say that they are, except for a couple people, that they're really serious about dealing with a foreign policy by controlling the spending.
Because they might say, oh, no, it's a foreign policy.
That's the president.
He can start a war anytime he wants.
Our job is to pay for it.
I mean, that's about what's happened.
And, of course, it's been very tragic and has contributed to this whole atmosphere.
So a guy like Bankman can go out and be a billionaire in a short period of time that he bibes the Democratic politicians with.
I mean, no wonder that people get pretty sick and tired of all this.
Yeah, it's deep corruption, but it looks like he may end up being the fall guy.
And if you put on this next one, this is Wendy Pfefferkorn on Twitter went and looked at the federal sentencing guidelines, and it's not good news for our good friend SBF.
According to federal sentencing guidelines, if you account for all of today's developments, it looks like SBF is looking at, checks notes, 612,000 years in prison.
It's not, he's better get comfortable there.
Something's going to have to happen.
Who knows what will happen with him.
But anyway, let's move on to a quick little update on a story we've been following.
And this is a piece that was in Zero Hedge.
And I would look at this as kind of good news, moving in the right direction.
Put that next clip up because according to Zero Hedge, Biden is under mounting pressure to drop charges against Julian Assange.
And we talked about that letter signed by some mainstream media, international mainstream media outlets, and urging and encouraging it.
We know that the source of Assange's information, Chelsea Manning, was herself, had her sentence commuted.
So the only person left on the hook is a publisher of that information.
So let's hope this is right, Dr. Paul.
Yeah.
You know, he's been charged essentially, you know, with treason.
Yeah.
And I find it ironic that like I mentioned already once today, truth is treason, you know, in an empire.
So here we go.
Well, who committed treason?
Well, this guy that came along and he started writing.
He's an Australian reporter, you know, journalist, and he's doing this.
So we have to charge him with treason to the United States.
And the whole thing is, you know, the charges have been supported not by the, we can't say it's a Democrats.
It did the Democrats.
It's a bipartisan thing.
It's been going on.
Even if we get a few Republicans in there, they have done nothing.
There has been so few, a handful, that will even speak out.
Charges Against Journalist 00:04:11
It is really tragic.
So it makes me ill when we say, you know, last week the Chinese did such and such and it wasn't very nice to their people.
We are going to put sanctions on them until they learn their lesson about civil liberties for their citizens.
At the same time, we treat some of our citizens, non-citizens, like the worst kind of citizen we have and lock them up in a foreign jail and we have control.
I would think that maybe that whole story shows you the strength and the power and the intimidation of our empire.
But the empire is going broke.
And that's why they're talking about other currencies and challenges and other alliances.
So for the peace, for the purpose of peace and prosperity, people shouldn't lie around and say, oh, it's going to hurt us.
We're going to lose our political power.
You have to be strong and tough and hold all these people in line.
And we have to make sure they're disciplined.
But where the discipline should be is on ourselves, the discipline to protect our liberties and protect our financial system.
Absolutely.
Well, I'm just going to close with a couple of our Rumble rants.
Dennis Marburger up there in Michigan sent in $51, so we appreciate that.
He says, in memory of Tony Demont, dynamic leader of Michigan's liberty community, Ron Paul campaigns and campaign for liberty.
Tony will be greatly missed.
We'll follow his example as the happy warrior.
Very sad to hear that.
We also had a $10 donation from Doubting Thomas, and we appreciate that.
We appreciate all the people watching the show live, and we enjoy watching your, for the most part, watching your chats as you go.
It's a nice little club.
We hope you'll continue to do that.
Make sure you're subscribed and also hit the plus sign so we get some more viewers and Dr. Very good.
And I want to once again thank our viewers for tuning in because we're very interested in that because our goal is to spread a message.
And the message is, of course, about peace and prosperity.
And that's why it's designed the way it is because it is one principle, the principle of liberty.
It was enshrined to a large degree in our Constitution, but we were even warned back then that if the people don't maintain a moral tone and a moral understanding, all that writing won't be of much use.
But it's better than some of the other things that have been written throughout history.
And it's still a starting point if we ever get serious about cleaning up our mess because there's things in the Constitution about property rights, about the monetary issue, about foreign policy, which are totally ignored.
And nobody feels guilty about it.
Say, oh boy, you know, I wished I could have done better, but the conditions were rough and there was no support.
But right now, I think we are in transitional.
More and more people are waking up and saying, this thing is a mess.
And they say, how did this ever happen?
I'm one of them.
And so, how can this happen?
And the people putting up with it.
So when I think of what's happened just in the last three, four, five years, it's hard to believe.
It's really tough on me because, you know, I'm determined to remain an optimist.
If you do the right things and work toward a free society, everybody's going to be more peaceful and happier.
But right now, it's a real challenge, but it is not that difficult to do if we accept just a basic principle that we should never aggress against other people.
We shouldn't lie, cheat, steal, or kill.
It's been around for thousands of years, those rules.
And for thousands of years, they've always been challenged by the people that I call the nihilists.
They don't believe in truth.
They don't believe that there is anything like right and wrong.
And that's what life has all been about.
But there's been periods of time in our history when things have been much better and much more peaceful.
And all we can do is present the case for that and try to convince people that we'd all be better off if we accepted those principles.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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