Colonel John Mills exposes how Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna’s American Privacy Restoration Act targets intelligence abuses—like Section 702’s domestic misuse in RussiaGate and Susan Rice’s unmasking—while agencies exploit classified briefings to expand surveillance. He links Trump assassination attempts (Butler, West Palm Beach) to FBI failures: 92-minute shooter exposure, destroyed DNA evidence, and Routh’s unexplained international travel, calling for accountability from Trump’s FBI director. Mills also argues Trump’s tariffs crippled China’s economy, forcing factory shutdowns and military purges, while Biden’s DEI/CRT policies undermined military readiness despite record spending, contrasting with Trump’s restored "constitutional parameters." The episode ends with a warning: rural healthcare faces existential threats as 5,000+ hospitals risk defunding. [Automatically generated summary]
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Welcome back.
We're back in the Stone Zone, and now I'm joined by one of my favorite guests, Colonel John Mills.
Colonel Mills is a national security professional with service in five eras in American history, the Cold War, the peace dividend, the war on terror, and the world in chaos.
And now, of course, the Great Power Showdown.
And he has been active in the fight to save our republic.
He's a former director of cybersecurity, policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Department of Defense.
And today, Colonel Mills is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, and he writes a lively page on Substack.
Colonel Mills, welcome back into the Stone Zone.
No, thank you, Roger.
Always an honor to be on the show.
Thank you so much.
So here is some breaking news.
I want to get your reaction to.
Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna has announced that she is introducing the American Privacy Restoration Act to fully repeal the Patriot Act and strip rogue intelligence officers of their extraordinary mass surveillance powers.
Since the passage of the USA Patriot Act in the aftermath of 9-11, she says, the intelligence agency officials have used their mass surveillance tools to settle personal scores, interfere in elections, and spy on untold numbers of innocent Americans.
Colonel Mills, what is your reaction to this news?
Well, we've gone through this so many times about mass surveillance.
And oh my gosh, I think it's the section 702, which was introduced in 2008.
I worked on that original package.
At the time, it seemed to make sense.
It seemed logical.
It was targeting foreign terrorists.
And then guess what?
It was used against us.
It was used against you, Roger.
It was used against me.
It was used against many people.
The unmasking episode, Susan Rice, who unmasked people, the fraud of RussiaGate essentially had mass surveillance elements to it.
So this is what they do every time it comes up for renewal.
People say, oh, we don't want it.
We don't want it.
And then, you know, essentially the intelligence agencies, essentially, the big three, depending on certain things, it would be NSA, the FBI's NCIJTF, and DHS.
They come together and they give a dog and pony show to Congress and they reveal the magic of what can be had.
And the collection capabilities have just grown exponentially.
I'm no longer behind the curtain, don't know what their current status is, but I can assure you the capabilities from when we started in 2007 grew exponentially.
And it's intoxicating when the members of Congress get these briefs, most of them are almost drunk with what they receive.
And they go, oh boy, we got to have, not only do I like it, I want more of it.
And this is the problem.
So it has to be tailored.
It has to be tailored to each situation.
We need to file the warrant for each event.
And they say, oh, things happen too fast.
We can't do this.
We need broad surveillance.
And again, they give these briefings that blow the socks off of these members of Congress.
And they cave and fold and say, oh, yeah, this is, oh, yeah.
It's intoxicating when they are exposed to the powers of what can be done.
But all magic comes with a price.
And just because we can do it doesn't mean we should.
Yeah, look, I admit that I was not always a supporter of Congresswoman Anna Palinaluna.
In fact, I was a critic, but I'm also a big enough man to admit that I was entirely wrong.
She has turned out to be a MAGA firebrand.
I think she's done an excellent job at trying to figure out what the government is holding back regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King.
We've talked extensively on this show about the fact that the disclosures from the National Archives have been limited to the JFK assassination records collection, but that there's substantial information, for example, still at the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the IRS, the Army Intelligence, and other places.
Again, she today is right on the money.
The Patriot Act has been abused.
It's not incidental that Judge Jeb Bosberg, the same judge who said Donald Trump does not have the constitutional authority to deport violent illegals who are in this country, is the same judge who oversaw the FISA courts warrants that were used to spy on Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
How incredibly coincidental.
So I think this is a necessary move.
I know there are neocons in the Republican Party who will not be comfortable with this.
Yesterday, I saw Congressman Stoob from Florida also commenting on the fact that nobody from our intelligence agencies, not the Secret Service, not the FBI, has briefed him and other members of the House Intelligence Committee regarding what they know about the two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump, where, to my mind, we still have far more questions than we have answers.
We can go through the questions, but they're mind-boggling.
How is it that the state police, the local police, Homeland Security, and the Secret Service are aware that there's a man with a gun who's been seen with a rangefinder within the sealed perimeter of Trump's event for 92 minutes, but nobody informs President Trump's direct security detail, and therefore he was not evacuated as would have been the protocol.
How is it that the state, local, and federal authorities are on three separate radio frequencies and cannot speak to each other?
Why would they immediately hose down the roof where the man they claimed was the shooter shot from, destroying any DNA evidence?
This list goes on and on.
What is your take on this, Colonel Mills?
Well, going back to Butler, Pennsylvania, President Trump was willfully getting economy minus level of protection.
There's different tiers of support.
They clearly were intentionally going on the chi to give him maximum exposure.
People forget.
Still have not totally, to the best of my knowledge, captured all these Iranian assassins that are inside the country.
And the Biden team was intentionally giving economy minus protection in the tiers of protection to President Trump.
It was shameful, and we need accountability for this, but that's what was going on.
And remember, it was Dr. Jill who just, for whatever reason, had to go to Pittsburgh that day, which drew even more resources away.
So definitely we were not getting the President Trump was not getting the best attention.
This was intentional.
They couldn't have cared less if he'd been shot.
So we need accountability on everything that was going on.
And this is the cooperation.
We don't have all these findings, these mysterious backgrounds.
I mean, we're finding out the FBI cover-up.
Oh, my gosh, what was the cover-up just exposed on, but it's willful on what is going on here with the FBI and their dismissals of motives that are important.
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I find the attempted assassination in West Palm Beach even more troubling.
Hard for me to believe that the suspect, Ryan Routh, who they tell us is indigent, they tell us he's behind in his rent payments, behind in his alimony, lives in Hawaii.
How does he afford to fly to the United States?
How does he afford to fly to all these European capitals?
How does he afford to fly to Ukraine, where we've seen video footage of him?
How does he obtain a gun when he's in Florida?
How does he hide for some 18 hours outside Trump's West Palm Beach golf club undetected?
It just seems highly unlikely that the intelligence agencies have no knowledge of Mr. Routh and his background.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, these are important details.
They say no political motive.
Are you kidding me?
You know, they just, and back to the butler shooting, same thing.
They don't, they just, this superficial level of introspection and investigation into these matters.
Yeah, right, Ruth in Palm Beach.
I mean, come on, that guy was on the golf course.
I mean, it wasn't until the last moment he was noticed.
How did this happen?
This was intentional setups to, they were trying to get President Trump out of the race one way or another.
So this is just unacceptable.
But this is the absolute politicalization, weaponization of these agencies.
And we've just, you know, from all of these personalities through the years back to Russia gate, you know, we just had extremely toxic personalities that were involved with this.
And this allows these sick people to penetrate.
But again, with Ruth and Palm Beach, I mean, come on, look at this guy's travel history and his background for Ryan here.
I mean, it's just unbelievable.
Seem to me that the intelligence agencies and law enforcement tell us that they cannot get into the encrypted information in the cell phone of Thomas Matthew Crookes.
That's the man that they say shot at President Trump and killed Corey Comperatori, the brave firefighter who died shielding his wife and daughter that day.
It really aggravates me to see people on social media claim that nobody was shot that day, that the whole thing was a psyop.
It particularly aggravates me when people said that I somehow arranged it, which shows that they're truly mentally ill.
But it's interesting that Apple has refused to turn over the contents of Crooks' phone, saying it would be a violation of his privacy.
Yet Apple was more than happy to turn over the contents of my phone to Robert Mueller and his thugs without even getting a subpoena.
Talk about the so-called double standard.
And then, as I said earlier, hosing down the roof of the building that Crooks allegedly shot from before testing for DNA reminds me when they hosed out the back of the limousine in which John F. Kennedy was shot within an hour of that murder.
I mean, the fact that this is a cover-up is, I think, extraordinarily easy to see.
What I wonder is whether President Trump himself or his FBI director have demanded answers from the Secret Service because the public story really defies credibility.
That Crooks acted alone seems unlikely to me.
We've seen video footage of him and still photos of him talking on the telephone.
Who is he talking to?
Obviously, somebody.
We also know that just average citizens see him on the roof with a gun.
They're shouting about it.
Yet those in law enforcement take no action.
And then it's pretty clear that the government's counter-sharpshooter has Crooks or whoever was shooting from the roof in their sights.
But instead of shooting and killing him, which is what the protocol would require in the case of a presidential candidate who's a protectee of the Secret Service, they wait until he gets off eight shots before he's killed.
I find that deeply troubling.
China's Tariff Tactics00:05:12
Yeah, absolutely.
It was the San Bernardino shooting from years ago where Apple, the public story is Apple would not help.
I tend to believe, have a different view of it.
But there's also now there is a lawsuit from the San Bernardino case where the FBI was able to get support to unlock the phone of the San Bernardino shooter from years ago.
Okay, this was like 2016.
There was an Australian firm named Azimuth that it looks like the FBI contacted to unlock the phone.
Again, I still think Apple may have unlocked the phone themselves and that they wanted to play dumb and pretend they didn't do it.
But come on, look, we unlocked a San Bernardino shooter.
Why have we not done the same routine to unlock Crook's phone in Butler, Pennsylvania?
I mean, this is just, we got a long list of gigs we got to go through at all these three-letter agencies.
But I mean, this should be at the top of the stack to figure out what was going on in Butler, what was going on at the Mar-a-Lago golf course, what was going on here, and who knew what and when did they know it.
What's going on in China today?
What is this power struggle that you have written about?
Oh, horrendous power struggle going on inside of China.
And this is the tariffs have punched the communist Chinese in the face.
Now, fake news would have it, oh boy, it's so horrible in America because of these tariffs.
Look, yeah, I mean, yes, maybe we're not getting inexpensive slave labor product from China.
Most Americans can put up with that and see the villainy of what's going on from China.
But China needs us far more than we need them.
And the tariffs have brought factories to an absolute standstill.
There's just a bazillion containers that have been left behind on the docks that didn't meet the April 9th cutoff.
Sailings have been canceled.
Mass layoffs, unrest in the streets.
And Xi is replacing his generals and admirals.
I can't even keep, it's faster than the Israelis knock out the IRGC commanders.
I can't even keep track.
And he's so massive, massive unrest inside of China.
We have the cards when it comes to tariffs with China.
And that is an absolute punch to the face.
And that's because President Trump is a businessman, and he has great people working for him, Scott Besant and others that know the power of our tariffs on shaping the behavior of communist China.
Pete Hegseth, in the meantime, has been talking about reorganizing our Defense Department.
Let's listen to Pete Hegseth.
More pronouns.
No more climate change obsession.
No more emergency vaccine mandates.
No more dudes in dresses.
We're done with that . Colonel Mills, we got about a little more than a minute.
Your assessment of the Secretary of Defense.
Oh, Secretary Hagseth is doing an absolutely fantastic job and all his staff.
This is, look, this is real.
The absolute destructive, corrosive, cancerous nature of DEI and CRT cannot be understated in its horrible effect in reducing combat effectiveness of the Department of Defense.
Under Biden, we spent more than ever before, and the military shrank and was less ready than ever.
But we spent more than ever, but the military was less ready than ever.
This is absolutely crazy.
A former friend of mine, a general, was just shooting his mouth off on LinkedIn today, and it shows the heinous nature of so many of these generals and admirals that they think nothing about what the Biden team was up to,
and they applaud DEI and CRT, but how dare Donald J. Trump and MEGA transform the military back into its constitutional parameters.
I mean, this is, we got, it's, we got a lot to do, but we're absolutely on the right path with Hag Seth, and we got to just jump on the gas pedal.
All right, we have to leave it there.
I want to thank our guest, Colonel John Mills.
Also, thank our many listeners out there in the Stone Zone.
Thank you for joining us.
And until tomorrow, God bless you and Godspeed.
Rural Health Care Heroes00:00:53
Rural Americans deserve access to the best our nation has to offer, especially when it comes to health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families health.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.