True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 404: FARA Faucet
Aired: 2024-09-13
Duration: 01:37:46


=== Gotta Have Some Brace (14:40) ===

[00:00:00]  We should start a new right-wing meeting called Bramble.
[00:00:04]  Bramble?
[00:00:05]  What would we have on there?
[00:00:07]  It can be like country life.
[00:00:10]  Like Brayer Rabbit.
[00:00:11]  Yeah, Bramble.
[00:00:13]  No, that's not, we can't do it.
[00:00:14]  Country life.
[00:00:15]  Yeah.
[00:00:16]  No, we got to be out of the way.
[00:00:16]  That'll just be like in the suburbs.
[00:00:19]  That's the country life for internet people.
[00:00:22]  Like chasing down like a 45-year-old guy with a cell phone holster and putting a microphone in his face and being like, Is it gay to date a trans person?
[00:00:57]  Gotta have some brace.
[00:00:58]  Some Liz too.
[00:01:02]  Gotta have some brace.
[00:01:04]  Stop tenting.
[00:01:06]  Gotta have some brace.
[00:01:06]  Some Liz too.
[00:01:08]  We could also have a right-wing website called Tenting.
[00:01:11]  Tenting?
[00:01:11]  Or Tenter?
[00:01:13]  Tenting.
[00:01:13]  Tenter.
[00:01:14]  With an Tenter's good.
[00:01:16]  Tenter.
[00:01:16]  Better.
[00:01:17]  And what was the, you sent me this the other day.
[00:01:19]  What was the Hillary Clinton social media?
[00:01:21]  Verret.
[00:01:22]  Verit.
[00:01:22]  With the Verret Ferret.
[00:01:24]  Yeah.
[00:01:25]  What was the Ferret?
[00:01:26]  He was just the mascot.
[00:01:27]  He was like, this has been Verit Fied.
[00:01:30]  And it was like the little, it was like clippy, but a ferret.
[00:01:33]  It was for like true facts to be stated.
[00:01:35]  Yeah.
[00:01:36]  I forgot about that because that was like when they were starting to do fact checking.
[00:01:39]  Yeah.
[00:01:39]  Yeah.
[00:01:40]  That should be illegal.
[00:01:41]  Facts are just feelings to me.
[00:01:43]  That's why it's called debunking.
[00:01:44]  And you're just really going with your gut on that one.
[00:01:46]  I am.
[00:01:47]  It's all just guesswork and magic.
[00:01:50]  Hello, everyone.
[00:01:51]  Hi.
[00:01:51]  I'm Liz.
[00:01:52]  My name is Bryce.
[00:01:53]  Gotta have some, gotta have some Brace.
[00:01:57]  John Chomsky too.
[00:01:58]  The producer.
[00:02:00]  And the podcast is called Truanon.
[00:02:02]  Hello.
[00:02:02]  Hello.
[00:02:03]  Welcome.
[00:02:03]  Welcome.
[00:02:04]  Today we have gathered around the streets of downtown Los Liz.
[00:02:08]  I can't even continue with that.
[00:02:10]  I've watched so many Rumble videos.
[00:02:11]  Can we turn this overhead light and get a little moody up in here?
[00:02:14]  How do I?
[00:02:14]  I don't remember where the lights are.
[00:02:16]  Okay, I'm going behind the curtain.
[00:02:18]  But you got to turn the lamp on, too.
[00:02:20]  This is, this is, I don't know if I do like this.
[00:02:22]  It's really dark in here.
[00:02:23]  This is how we did a couple episodes ago.
[00:02:25]  I know, but it was really dark in here when we did it.
[00:02:27]  It's fine with me.
[00:02:28]  I think it's nice.
[00:02:28]  It's like we're having a little sleep at the side.
[00:02:30]  It's like the dark web.
[00:02:31]  I'm okay being in the shadows a little bit.
[00:02:33]  Well, we're talking about some shadowy figures today.
[00:02:36]  We are.
[00:02:36]  We are.
[00:02:37]  But before we do, we actually have to go take a little trip over to Utah.
[00:02:44]  The shadowiest state.
[00:02:46]  To check in on one of our most.
[00:02:49]  Because of its very tall mountains.
[00:02:51]  I don't even know what it is.
[00:02:52]  It's the most malleable figures that we've discussed to this podcast.
[00:02:55]  Malleable in physically Soft way.
[00:03:00]  Yes, yes.
[00:03:02]  But also a man of many identities, a man of many pseudonyms, a man of many religions.
[00:03:06]  A shifter.
[00:03:07]  A shifter.
[00:03:08]  Yeah.
[00:03:08]  A skinwalker.
[00:03:10]  That is Nicholas Rossi, aka Nicholas Ali Verdian, aka off at night.
[00:03:15]  Wait, Ivy, you know what I'm going to say.
[00:03:18]  Do you want me to do it from memory?
[00:03:20]  Brace.
[00:03:20]  Okay.
[00:03:21]  Our listeners are numerous and have poor memories.
[00:03:29]  Yes.
[00:03:29]  Because they listen to podcasts.
[00:03:30]  And here's the thing: you don't retain anything.
[00:03:32]  No.
[00:03:32]  It's kind of like meth where it just like destroys your brain for a while.
[00:03:35]  Yeah, in one year, out the other.
[00:03:37]  And so many of them may not be aware of our Utah series, which was many parts.
[00:03:45]  In fact, we had a Tuta and a three-taw in there.
[00:03:49]  Brace is standing up and doing air punches.
[00:03:52]  Shadow boxing.
[00:03:53]  Shadow boxing to get ready for this because he knows what I'm going to ask, which is, Brace, can you, from memory, no notes, recap what it is we're talking about when we're talking Utah, Tutah, and three-taw here?
[00:04:07]  Yes, I can.
[00:04:10]  Several years ago.
[00:04:12]  Sorry, this gets me over.
[00:04:15]  Utah County Sheriff's Department.
[00:04:18]  Actually, no, that's wrong order of events already.
[00:04:21]  But I didn't finish the sentence, so I'm not wrong.
[00:04:23]  No, it's my fault.
[00:04:24]  I interrupted.
[00:04:24]  Several years ago, the DA of Utah County, I think it's called, yeah, it's Utah County, Salt Lake City, comes out and makes a bizarre statement to the press, in fact, in a press conference, where he says, in a few days, you might hear some troubling information about me.
[00:04:42]  Some things might come out.
[00:04:44]  Some words might be said.
[00:04:45]  Some allegations might be made that may cause a lot of questions.
[00:04:51]  There are allegations of ritual child sex abuse that are going to be made.
[00:04:58]  Lurid tales of cannibalism.
[00:05:00]  Yes.
[00:05:01]  Witchcraft, etc.
[00:05:04]  That, et cetera, you know, encapsulates a lot, too.
[00:05:07]  A whole lot.
[00:05:07]  Covers a lot there.
[00:05:09]  Now, that man's name.
[00:05:11]  David Levitt.
[00:05:13]  So we've got David Levitt.
[00:05:14]  Now, David Levitt, let me just back up even further here.
[00:05:17]  David Levitt is from a storied Mormon family.
[00:05:21]  Yes.
[00:05:22]  Longtime civil servant.
[00:05:24]  I think it was his brother who was the governor at one point, also in the Bush administration.
[00:05:27]  Yeah, HW.
[00:05:28]  HW.
[00:05:29]  Traveled all around the world, including George W. Just regular W.
[00:05:33]  Yes, my bad.
[00:05:34]  I meant to say that, and then what came out was age.
[00:05:37]  George horny white man Bush.
[00:05:40]  But had a lot of dealings with Ukrainian, the government of Ukraine.
[00:05:45]  The Ukrainians.
[00:05:46]  The Ukrainians had a lot of deal with Ukrainians.
[00:05:48]  Tried to broker a deal between a Native American, as they call it in Canada, First Nations tribe, and the Ukrainian government to trade a bunch of buffalo to Ukraine in order for David Levitt to get a baby to adopt.
[00:06:01]  He's a Mormon.
[00:06:02]  Long story there.
[00:06:03]  It's not good either.
[00:06:04]  It's not a good story.
[00:06:06]  But David Levitt is a DA.
[00:06:08]  Yes.
[00:06:09]  And he comes out and he's like, ignore allegations when they come out.
[00:06:13]  But he not only says that the sheriff's department is out to get him, but he also names a guy that he's trying to extradite from the UK named Nicholas Rossi, aka Nicholas Alaverdian, aka Artha Knight.
[00:06:28]  And the aka's are because this very man has multiple aliases, which he's had over the years, because he is wanted in multiple states for rape, I believe assault, and some weird stuff with the Rhode Island legislature, which is too complicated.
[00:06:49]  You got to listen to that episode.
[00:06:51]  There's another character in this named David Hamblin, who is a therapist.
[00:06:55]  That was the second David.
[00:06:56]  The second David, who was friends with David Levitt from way back in the day.
[00:07:00]  He was a Mormon therapist, turned Native American churchman, not Native American, notably.
[00:07:06]  In fact, very much a white man, who was conducting psychedelic ceremonies, which often turned into molestation sessions.
[00:07:15]  It's true.
[00:07:16]  Who has been credibly accused and, in fact, now convicted, or maybe he's awaiting trial, whatever.
[00:07:21]  I can't remember.
[00:07:22]  It's been a long day.
[00:07:24]  Sitting in jail along with his wife in Utah County.
[00:07:27]  That's too much to get into.
[00:07:29]  But the important thing is that David Levitt names Nicholas Rossi as the person who's sort of like working with the Sheriff's Department to include David Levitt in the David Hamblin allegations.
[00:07:42]  And yes, during the recording of our Utah Tuta Three Taw series, Brace had contact with Nicholas Rossi, aka Nicholas Alaverdian, aka Arthur Knight.
[00:07:55]  So Nicholas Alaverdian, aka Nicholas Rossi, aka Arthur Knight, had been convicted of sexual assault, not doing well in the States.
[00:08:03]  Everyone's really mad at him in various parts of society and the law.
[00:08:06]  Fakes his own death somewhat, somewhat successfully.
[00:08:11]  Which is weird because it's very poorly done.
[00:08:13]  It's really poorly done, but I don't think anyone really cared that much.
[00:08:16]  And I think a lot of people are like, I hope he's dead.
[00:08:19]  He disappeared.
[00:08:20]  And in his ghostly wake emerges a rather poor scene figure, sort of trundling about Scotland by the name of a man by the name of Arthur Knight, who I believe claims to be a professor of theology, perhaps.
[00:08:38]  Arthur Knight, contra Nicholas Rossi, is rather large, speaks with a classic little British accent, and claims to have absolutely no idea who this chap, Nicholas Rossi, is.
[00:08:53]  Arthur Knight gets married, but he gets COVID.
[00:08:57]  Yes.
[00:08:58]  And he ends up in hospital.
[00:08:59]  In hospital.
[00:09:00]  In hospital.
[00:09:02]  And through this process, they discover that there is no Arthur Knight and that he is, in fact, just Nicholas Rossi.
[00:09:09]  That he continued to deny until he was just literally extradited.
[00:09:13]  Yes.
[00:09:14]  In fact, he continued to deny it up until about a week ago.
[00:09:16]  Yeah.
[00:09:17]  Or like a few weeks ago.
[00:09:19]  Just to make matters more fun, David Lovitt, the first David, the one who said, ignore the press conference about the witchcraft and wizardry and cannibalism and Buffalo Exchange.
[00:09:33]  Hot warksian activity.
[00:09:34]  Well, David Lovitt's not British.
[00:09:36]  I shouldn't confuse them.
[00:09:36]  No, so David Levitt ends up in Scotland himself, now a castle renovation TikTok influencer.
[00:09:46]  Yes, because he lost his re-election to DA of Utah County in part because of these scandalous allegations made by Arthur Knight, who, by the way, contacted me over a week-long period, as did his wife, which I think was also just him, although she does exist, to proclaim his innocence and say that he is not at all Nicholas Rossi.
[00:10:09]  Yes.
[00:10:09]  Via his website, Zeus News.
[00:10:11]  Zeus News.
[00:10:12]  Zeus News.
[00:10:13]  Welcome to Zeus News.
[00:10:14]  I really, as much fun as I've made of this entire thing, it was a real great one.
[00:10:18]  It was a great one.
[00:10:19]  Yeah.
[00:10:19]  I know.
[00:10:20]  I know.
[00:10:20]  We'll never get the recognition it deserves because you know what?
[00:10:22]  There's too many Davids in this news.
[00:10:24]  So no one can understand what it's about.
[00:10:26]  There's too many Davids.
[00:10:27]  If you want to have a conspiracy or anything kind of like criminal activity, immediately all of your goons need to have the same name.
[00:10:34]  Yeah.
[00:10:34]  Or just, you know what?
[00:10:35]  We should have, you know what?
[00:10:36]  We made a stylistic decision that was wrong.
[00:10:38]  We should have just only called them by their last name.
[00:10:40]  I kind of like that we confused ourselves along with the listeners as we were doing it.
[00:10:45]  It's charming.
[00:10:46]  It's tough.
[00:10:48]  So Arthur Knight comes to court and is in fact later jailed in the UK dressed in a smoking jacket or like sometimes a robe, an ascot, wearing these little round glasses, and then later sporting a yarmulke because he converted to Judaism while in jail.
[00:11:10]  Which you don't hear about very often.
[00:11:12]  You don't.
[00:11:13]  You don't.
[00:11:14]  I just got it.
[00:11:14]  This is a lightning quick conversion, dude.
[00:11:17]  Yeah, which also is very, you know, usually it takes at least three attempts.
[00:11:22]  Yeah.
[00:11:22]  Well, he kind of, he had an expedited process.
[00:11:25]  So it turns out that he is Nicholas Rossi.
[00:11:28]  And this is something I should have mentioned earlier.
[00:11:31]  David Levitt, by the way, was trying to extradite him to Utah to face two counts of rape.
[00:11:36]  I think that's stemming from two incidents that took place in 2008.
[00:11:39]  Yeah.
[00:11:40]  This extradition goes through even after David Levitt goes out, gets out.
[00:11:44]  So, Nicholas.
[00:11:45]  That's a basic new DA move.
[00:11:46]  Exactly.
[00:11:46]  We'll bring him October surprise.
[00:11:48]  Brings him over.
[00:11:50]  He is still claiming that he is Arthur Knight.
[00:11:53]  And in fact, in court, sometimes they would be like, like here, the judge was trying to be like, listen, we literally legally cannot call you Arthur Knight.
[00:12:03]  I can address you in court.
[00:12:04]  Is that like did it?
[00:12:05]  It was trying to do him assault.
[00:12:06]  Like, I will call you Arthur Knight in court.
[00:12:08]  But like, when we talk about your case in like legal terms, like, you're Nicholas Ross.
[00:12:13]  That's your name.
[00:12:14]  That is who you are.
[00:12:16]  And he would bang on the table and go, No, Arthur Knight.
[00:12:20]  I don't know who this Nicholas is on some terrible mistake.
[00:12:25]  Much to the annoyance of the judge.
[00:12:27]  Now, he also, much to the, I'm going to be honest, sheer ecstasy of the three people in this room.
[00:12:34]  The delight announced that he would represent himself.
[00:12:39]  Bro say.
[00:12:41]  And I, and, you know, obviously immediately Bray said, well, we got to go to Utah.
[00:12:45]  Got to go to Utah.
[00:12:46]  Yeah, maybe got a forta out of this.
[00:12:48]  And he has now, on advice from basically probably everyone, including the judge, being like, I, we shall not have a mistrial because I cannot see your funky ass face in this courtroom again.
[00:13:00]  Yes, yes.
[00:13:01]  Has decided to go with a public defender.
[00:13:03]  That public defender's first piece of advice that we have seen manifest itself publicly has been for Arthur Knight to die.
[00:13:14]  What?
[00:13:15]  Arthur Knight is dead.
[00:13:16]  Now there is only Nicholas Rossi.
[00:13:19]  I see.
[00:13:19]  Because his court appointed attorney has said that they will no longer argue with the fact that he is, in fact, indeed Nicholas Rossi.
[00:13:28]  Did you guys see what we did there?
[00:13:30]  If you don't, and you know what?
[00:13:31]  I'm going to be honest, I'm not sure I do either.
[00:13:34]  You should listen to our Utah series because it's a real joy.
[00:13:37]  The trial starts on October 17th.
[00:13:41]  And I have a feeling that Nicholas Rossi has one or two more tricks left up his sleeve.
[00:13:47]  I mean, I hope so.
[00:13:48]  The game is afoot.
[00:13:49]  Yeah, I think that there's basically no way he doesn't.
[00:13:52]  All he has is tricks.
[00:13:53]  And all he has is sleeves.
[00:13:55]  Yeah, he's cutting massive.
[00:13:56]  I think that they have taken his robe from them.
[00:13:58]  That perhaps was the official British prison outfit that he was wearing.
[00:14:04]  In fact, it made him.
[00:14:05]  It was a kind of like Oxfordian Hefner look.
[00:14:09]  Yes, yeah.
[00:14:10]  The robe in a wheelchair is crazy.
[00:14:12]  That's really good.
[00:14:13]  Yeah.
[00:14:13]  Because your shit can just be fucking dangling.
[00:14:16]  Yeah.
[00:14:17]  Well, it's as much a threat as it is a style choice.
[00:14:20]  He's been deroged.
[00:14:25]  If you're struggling with gum disease, tooth decay, or any other dental issues, you must see this.
[00:14:30]  Did you know there is a natural way to regrow teeth and gums your dentist won't tell you about?
[00:14:35]  There's one simple dental hack anyone can do to rebuild gums and teeth and never see a dentist again.

=== Talking About Tenant Media (03:30) ===

[00:14:41]  You know, I don't like to talk shit about other content creators on here.
[00:14:44]  Well, obviously, we've had beef in the past.
[00:14:49]  You know, Liz had that thing with Logan Paul.
[00:14:54]  You know, I myself was grievously injured by Mr. Beast.
[00:15:00]  But we usually like to keep that stuff like in the back, you know, like we keep some dignity here, right?
[00:15:04]  Yeah.
[00:15:05]  We don't like to talk shit.
[00:15:06]  No, but that all stays in-house.
[00:15:08]  In-house.
[00:15:09]  Because we're like, we might fight.
[00:15:11]  It's the vault.
[00:15:12]  Things go in the vault.
[00:15:13]  We're family, though.
[00:15:14]  Absolutely.
[00:15:15]  You know, like, like, I can talk shit to Logan because of your history with him.
[00:15:19]  But, like, the minute I see like a commenter being like, Logan Paul is fucking a bullshitter or whatever, like, no, bro, like, we deal with this among ourselves.
[00:15:27]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:15:28]  That's family.
[00:15:28]  Yeah, that's family.
[00:15:29]  Yeah.
[00:15:30]  Don't fuck with family.
[00:15:31]  Sure.
[00:15:31]  That's the fast and furious world, obviously, everyone knows.
[00:15:34]  But sometimes your family has a new member, right?
[00:15:37]  Sometimes someone's pregnant.
[00:15:39]  Sometimes there's a hidden cousin.
[00:15:40]  Sometimes there's even a mysterious uncle who returns from the Far East with a basket full of jewels.
[00:15:46]  And whenever I find out about a new member of my family, I call the police and I say arrest them.
[00:15:51]  Perhaps they are trying to fool me.
[00:15:53]  And it seems like I, you know, I'm really having trouble tying this back together.
[00:15:57]  Yeah, I don't know where you're going from.
[00:15:58]  I'm digging myself deeper.
[00:16:00]  But I like that about you.
[00:16:01]  I'm digging myself deeper.
[00:16:02]  But you know what?
[00:16:03]  The deeper you go, you know where you end up?
[00:16:05]  Center of the earth.
[00:16:05]  China.
[00:16:06]  China.
[00:16:07]  You know what's next to China?
[00:16:09]  Russia.
[00:16:10]  Look at that.
[00:16:11]  Russia.
[00:16:12]  And Russia, unfortunately, has reverse engineered that hole in China and made it to America and have collaborated with a Canadian Chinese Nazi woman and her perhaps foreign husband, I mean foreign, I mean the British Isles, to undermine our democracy.
[00:16:35]  We're talking about tenant media.
[00:16:36]  Okay, so just last, was it last week?
[00:16:40]  September 4th, so six days ago.
[00:16:42]  Whatever.
[00:16:43]  Basically a week ago.
[00:16:44]  Basically a week ago.
[00:16:45]  Depending on when you're listening to this, if it's in the future, it was a much longer time ago.
[00:16:50]  But the DOJ, United States Department of Justice, released a well, they had a press release, which linked to an indictment made against two Russian nationals, which is always my favorite.
[00:17:05]  Bryce and I always joke about this when DOJ comes out and they're like, we're here to press charges against Russia.
[00:17:11]  And it's like, well, babe, you can't.
[00:17:13]  They're literally Russian.
[00:17:15]  It's like when those Black Hammer and Uhuru things came out.
[00:17:19]  They're like, we're charging this Russian guy with like, it's like, well, okay.
[00:17:22]  Yeah.
[00:17:22]  Charge him all you want.
[00:17:24]  Yeah, newsflash, DOJ.
[00:17:26]  There's no extradition treaty.
[00:17:27]  So it's basically one big, you know, press jerk off event.
[00:17:31]  However, a funny one this is because two Russian nationals indicted in relation to something called Tenant Media, which I'm going to be honest with you, I had no idea what this was.
[00:17:44]  So I encountered Tenant Media earlier this year, which I think it came out like, I think maybe only in May, but I encountered it earlier this year.
[00:17:52]  And like a lot of people, I wasn't really sure who was behind it, but I was pretty sure it was like one of various.
[00:17:58]  you know, a roster of like right-wing personalities.
[00:18:00]  I kind of thought it was Candace Owens at first because I think that she did some stuff with them.
[00:18:06]  So it has that look and feel.
[00:18:07]  Yeah, it's got like the, it got like, it's got like a right-wing platform look and feel.

=== Woke Star Wars Character? (14:49) ===

[00:18:11]  A little slicker, but really not much.
[00:18:14]  I mean, their website is one page with a video with the worst mixed sound quality I've ever heard in my life that's representing it.
[00:18:22]  And it's like, it's, it's, it's really unclear exactly what the point of the project is.
[00:18:28]  Not just to me, to many of the people who are on it too.
[00:18:31]  What it basically was, is a, it still is technically because it's, it still has its Rumble channel up, a platform for these six different right-wing content creators that was like a sort of, I guess almost like a label for them.
[00:18:46]  Mm-hmm.
[00:18:48]  Like a record label.
[00:18:49]  Kind of, but it doesn't like, I've been trying to like look into this to see if I'm like really missing something, but like the business model doesn't make any sense.
[00:18:58]  But we'll get to that in a second.
[00:18:59]  Let's talk about this roster first.
[00:19:01]  Okay.
[00:19:02]  So on tenant media, it has six people under the talent section.
[00:19:08]  The first is Lauren Southern.
[00:19:10]  Are you familiar with her?
[00:19:11]  Now, I am, she's the blonde one, right?
[00:19:15]  Yes.
[00:19:16]  Because wasn't there like, okay, so let's go back in the day, 2016, 2015, early-ish time for all of these sort of young, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, Nazi media people.
[00:19:30]  Wasn't there like a brunette and a blonde and she was the blonde?
[00:19:33]  Yeah, and I was, you know what, I was trying to remember the brunette's name.
[00:19:36]  Yeah, but I can't remember.
[00:19:37]  I can't either.
[00:19:38]  One of them got married to like the identity your role.
[00:19:42]  Yes, that's exactly what I'm thinking of.
[00:19:43]  And I think it was the brunette.
[00:19:45]  It was the brunette.
[00:19:45]  Oh, okay.
[00:19:46]  I feel like Lauren Southern might have also married some like European Nazi, but from the various like other Nazis, because these people all hate each other.
[00:19:56]  Right.
[00:19:57]  They apparently the rumor is that she had a baby with, and I, you know, I quote, a brown guy, a brown fed, they call him.
[00:20:04]  Who knows what the fucking deal is with that?
[00:20:06]  It's just like some Nazis talking shit.
[00:20:08]  But she was like burned in some way by the greater Nazi sphere and made all these like YouTube videos kind of me tooing the Nazi movement.
[00:20:17]  Interesting.
[00:20:18]  One of which I watched the other night and it was just like her being like Milo Yiannopoulos tricked me, which I have no doubt is true.
[00:20:28]  Her voice is really difficult for me to deal with.
[00:20:31]  Okay.
[00:20:32]  And I say this as somebody with a Banshee's whale of a voice.
[00:20:36]  It's tough.
[00:20:37]  She has some kind of either speech impediment or it might literally just be a Canadian accent because I believe she is, I know she is Canadian.
[00:20:46]  But her voice has always been like, it's bad.
[00:20:50]  Can we play it here?
[00:20:51]  When I was at his house, he told me he was working on a new project.
[00:20:55]  Building a friendship and interspecies communication with bears.
[00:21:00]  She clearly has a personality disorder.
[00:21:02]  She makes all these like really shitty documentaries that the hallmark of which is long drone shots of rose, which seems to be like her favorite way to kind of like fill time in them.
[00:21:12]  Sure.
[00:21:13]  But I believe she was also famously on a boat in the Mediterranean that I think shot flares at a sick, like a migrant, like try to prevent migrants from like ram them or something like that.
[00:21:26]  So she's in fact.
[00:21:27]  She's organized.
[00:21:27]  She's organized.
[00:21:28]  Oh, yeah.
[00:21:28]  She's an organizer.
[00:21:30]  Next, we have Tim Poole.
[00:21:32]  Famous.
[00:21:33]  Famous Tim Poole.
[00:21:35]  Astounding to me that this guy is popular.
[00:21:38]  Now, I just know him from his beanie.
[00:21:40]  Yeah.
[00:21:41]  He's like the beanie guy.
[00:21:42]  Does he sell beanies, you think?
[00:21:44]  Probably.
[00:21:44]  Yeah, he probably does.
[00:21:46]  Yeah.
[00:21:46]  He's been in the content game for a long time.
[00:21:49]  Yeah.
[00:21:50]  I think people know him.
[00:21:51]  He's pretty like, I don't know, infamous.
[00:21:54]  Didn't he have like kind of like a classic arc where he was sort of a like centrist libertarian liberal guy, provocateur, then like kind of based right-wing.
[00:22:05]  Like, I think he made like docs for vice or whatever.
[00:22:07]  Yeah.
[00:22:07]  Like a riot reporter.
[00:22:09]  Right, right, right.
[00:22:10]  He's bald as fuck.
[00:22:12]  He's extremely, that's pretty much the most thing most people know about him.
[00:22:15]  But I was watching some of his shit the other day.
[00:22:17]  It's unbearable.
[00:22:20]  But he has the same voice as Ben Shapiro, but it's not Jewish, if that makes sense.
[00:22:25]  Like it's like the same like high-pitched cadence, the same sort of like method of talking, except he's slower.
[00:22:30]  But he doesn't have the same Hebrew wine to it.
[00:22:33]  We can play it here.
[00:22:34]  They say, I will never get that thing.
[00:22:37]  You're going to, here's an example.
[00:22:38]  You're going to pull into a parking lot and you're going to say, how do I pay?
[00:22:41]  And they go, neural connect.
[00:22:42]  And you're going to go, I don't have one.
[00:22:43]  Not even.
[00:22:44]  You're going to just think it.
[00:22:46]  Next, we have Taylor Hansen.
[00:22:50]  Someone I wasn't familiar with.
[00:22:52]  I wasn't either.
[00:22:53]  And I got to be honest, he almost, he seems, and I don't mean this as an insult at all.
[00:22:58]  You know, it's all fucking love coming from here.
[00:23:00]  He seems AI generated in basically every way.
[00:23:02]  Yeah, he reminds me of the kind of like epic times, epoch times.
[00:23:07]  Yeah.
[00:23:08]  Still never got a straight answer on that one.
[00:23:11]  Guys, where they're just sort of like, there's a weird cadence to them.
[00:23:14]  They're kind of stilted, that like robotic, weird cookie cutter thing.
[00:23:18]  Yeah.
[00:23:19]  You know, they're like body snatcher people.
[00:23:22]  Yeah, he's a, he's a dime a dozen guy, but he seems to be like an actual employee of Tenant Media.
[00:23:27]  Okay.
[00:23:28]  Because a lot of his stuff is branded tenant.
[00:23:29]  Got it.
[00:23:30]  Next, there is Matt Christensen, who is also a nobody, total non-entity, also AI-generated.
[00:23:36]  But I looked at his actual YouTube channel, and he's getting like 20,000 views a video.
[00:23:41]  Oof.
[00:23:41]  It's like, bro, you should be thrilled that the Russians would put you in there under their wing.
[00:23:47]  Next, of course, we have Dave Rubin.
[00:23:49]  No, he's big famous.
[00:23:50]  You know, I always mix him up with the, who's the atheist?
[00:23:53]  Sam Harris.
[00:23:55]  Sam Harris.
[00:23:56]  He's Sam Harris to me.
[00:23:58]  I feel like that's Dark Light.
[00:23:59]  That's Dark Light.
[00:24:00]  Oh, like Sam Harris as Lightside, Dave Rubin?
[00:24:02]  Not Lightside as in White Hat, Black Hat or something, but just literally in a Lauren Southern, then the Runette kind of way.
[00:24:10]  Gotcha.
[00:24:11]  Sam Harris has like blonde white energy, and Dave Rubin has like dark black rifle coffee energy too.
[00:24:16]  Yes, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:17]  I think he's a little, I think his, his whole shtick is that, like, I'm a liberal, which I think might just mean that he's gay.
[00:24:24]  Like, I think a lot of these people mistake being like attracted to the same sex as like a liberal thing to be or whatever.
[00:24:33]  And so like his whole thing is like, I might be gay, but I'm right-wing.
[00:24:37]  I see.
[00:24:37]  And like, or like, I'm a centrist, but you know, the left has moved too far left and the right has moved too far.
[00:24:42]  It's classic.
[00:24:43]  You know.
[00:24:45]  And speaking of, we have Benny Johnson.
[00:24:48]  Yes.
[00:24:49]  Who might be the GOAT?
[00:24:51]  BuzzFeed Benny.
[00:24:52]  BuzzFeed Benny, fired by two different outlets, including BuzzFeed for plagiarism.
[00:24:58]  He is most well known for a mistake he made, which is he posted these like Google AdSense ads that he was getting for gay cruises on Twitter and be like, what the fuck is Google trying to do?
[00:25:10]  Like they're trying to like treat me.
[00:25:11]  Google's so woke.
[00:25:12]  They're trying to like brainwash me.
[00:25:13]  Like, whoa, Google's trying to brainwash me into being gay before many people pointed out that you are being served those ads because that is you've you've looked at such things.
[00:25:23]  His star has been fading for years.
[00:25:25]  I mean, he really has no place in like the current right-wing sort of like media landscape.
[00:25:32]  And he should be also one of these guys that's sort of thanking his lucky stars that tenant media picked his ass up.
[00:25:37]  I got to be honest, in my head, he is a cartoon.
[00:25:41]  Yes, his old avatar was famous for a really appalling cartoon.
[00:25:46]  It was just like a bad New Yorker type avatar, but like done by, I don't know, like a Sunday cartoon.
[00:25:53]  Yes, yeah.
[00:25:54]  Type drawer.
[00:25:55]  Ironically, on many different platforms, Tenant Media's last post, because they stopped posting around the time that these indictments dropped, is about one of Kathy Hochul.
[00:26:07]  Hochel?
[00:26:08]  Hochul?
[00:26:08]  The fucking governor of the state.
[00:26:10]  Sure.
[00:26:11]  Governor Kathy's aides, a former aide named Linda's son, who is ironically, I believe, being charged with FARA violations, apparently regarding the Chinese.
[00:26:21]  But that's like the last post that's on a lot of these things.
[00:26:24]  And that brings us to what is actually going on, which is that the government of this country is alleging that the government of a different country, which is called Russia, and a media outlet called RT was funneling millions and millions and millions of dollars to a right-wing Chinese Canadian named Lauren Chen to start a right-wing media outlet.
[00:26:46]  Yes.
[00:26:47]  And that if they wanted to do so, all they needed to do was just register.
[00:26:53]  But they didn't register.
[00:26:54]  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a crime.
[00:26:56]  You really, if you're a foreigner agent, just fill out the form.
[00:27:00]  You got to fill out the form.
[00:27:01]  Just fill out the form.
[00:27:02]  Well, we'll talk about that a little bit later.
[00:27:03]  So Lauren Chen is, are you familiar with her?
[00:27:05]  No.
[00:27:06]  She is, I will say.
[00:27:07]  I'm going to say I don't pay enough attention to this stuff.
[00:27:09]  Don't worry, Liz.
[00:27:10]  She's C tier.
[00:27:11]  Okay.
[00:27:12]  Like, she is not one.
[00:27:13]  Like, I know who she is, but I also, and this is, how do I finish the sentence without saying something racist?
[00:27:19]  Hmm.
[00:27:20]  I sometimes mix her up with other people.
[00:27:23]  Here's my question.
[00:27:24]  Uh-huh.
[00:27:25]  If, okay, well, let's say, I mean, I think it's wrong to have tiers go to Z. Like, I just don't think it works that way.
[00:27:33]  I think you got to, like, everyone knows there's D-list, but I think we can go down to F.
[00:27:38]  Yeah.
[00:27:39]  And that's it.
[00:27:40]  I would still say she's C.
[00:27:42]  But so my question is, if we've, like, if we're on cusp FD with like a hawk to a girl.
[00:27:50]  Okay, you're crazy.
[00:27:53]  I mean, just in terms of what she's offering.
[00:27:56]  I mean, but in terms of commentary, race.
[00:28:00]  Point remains.
[00:28:01]  Okay.
[00:28:03]  I mean, what do you say that that's kind of like, she's like, you know, if we're talking about right-wing commenters or whatever, and Lauren Chen is C. Lauren Chen might be D.
[00:28:13]  Okay, she's D. Who, can I get examples of like a C, B, and A?
[00:28:17]  Yeah.
[00:28:18]  I would say A tier is Tucker.
[00:28:21]  Oh, okay.
[00:28:22]  I thought we were just talking females.
[00:28:23]  Oh, females?
[00:28:24]  No, no.
[00:28:24]  I like that.
[00:28:25]  That's better that we're not.
[00:28:26]  I think that's bad.
[00:28:27]  I don't want to do that.
[00:28:28]  I don't really know that A tier.
[00:28:30]  Well, let's keep with A. All right.
[00:28:31]  There's one that you've talked about recently.
[00:28:33]  Megan Kelly?
[00:28:34]  She's no longer A tier.
[00:28:35]  She's not A tier.
[00:28:37]  Tucker is A. Megan Kelly's star is faded too.
[00:28:40]  Tucker is A tier.
[00:28:42]  Even with the crazy Nazi historian?
[00:28:45]  Yeah, because, yeah, even with that shit.
[00:28:47]  Okay.
[00:28:48]  Tucker is A.
[00:28:49]  I mean, he's not as big as he was.
[00:28:51]  Maybe he's not.
[00:28:53]  He's big in a different way.
[00:28:54]  He's big in a different way.
[00:28:55]  But he's A tier.
[00:28:56]  I would say B tier would be somebody like Matt Walsh.
[00:29:01]  I feel like he's B tier.
[00:29:03]  Good call.
[00:29:04]  Matt might be B A cusp.
[00:29:06]  Uh-huh.
[00:29:06]  What about like a Rufo?
[00:29:08]  Rufo's.
[00:29:09]  Rufo is actually, you're right.
[00:29:10]  No, that's perfect B tier.
[00:29:11]  Okay.
[00:29:11]  Rufo is B tier.
[00:29:13]  C tier would be somebody like, I think, well, Milo is now kind of like D tier again.
[00:29:23]  Candice?
[00:29:24]  C tier would be, well, Candace, yes.
[00:29:26]  Yeah, that's actually, you see, you can just do this.
[00:29:28]  What about Candace's C tier?
[00:29:29]  What about like Shapiro?
[00:29:31]  Shapiro's A tier.
[00:29:32]  That's what I would think.
[00:29:32]  Yeah, Shapiro's A tier.
[00:29:34]  And like, and Charlie Kirk.
[00:29:35]  That's an A tier.
[00:29:36]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:29:36]  Which is crazy because that man has the beatiest little eyes I've ever seen.
[00:29:40]  Oh, he's a tough look.
[00:29:43]  And then I guess on this, on this ranking, we're actually lowering Lauren Chen to DF Cusp.
[00:29:50]  Okay.
[00:29:51]  Because she really is just like, her deal is this, okay?
[00:29:56]  She is from Canada.
[00:29:57]  Like so many of our right-wing commentators in the U.S., she is fucking Canadian.
[00:30:04]  I don't know what the deal is with that, but there's a trillion of them.
[00:30:09]  She was Canadian-born, lived in China for a little while or lived in Hong Kong, which is China.
[00:30:15]  Often, I think her big start is like she started doing this thing called the Roaming Millennial.
[00:30:20]  Terrible name.
[00:30:21]  I know, but it's like a perfect YouTuber name.
[00:30:25]  I kind of miss when YouTubers had names like that.
[00:30:27]  I know.
[00:30:28]  I know.
[00:30:28]  Well, it's so funny because like I realize, I don't know if I think there must be an equivalent of this.
[00:30:33]  I just don't know about, but so much right-wing content is like somebody like her like talking.
[00:30:41]  There's another one named Brett Cooper now, who I think is like also, I think she's a better C tier than Candace.
[00:30:46]  I think Candace is actually CB Cusp.
[00:30:48]  Yeah.
[00:30:49]  But they just like, they're like these like based people who just like talk into the camera for 30 minutes about some Star Wars TV show you've never heard of.
[00:30:56]  Totally, totally.
[00:30:57]  You have no idea how many.
[00:30:59]  I watched a fucking 20-minute Benny Johnson video about Ahsoka or some shit.
[00:31:04]  It's like a Star Wars show idea.
[00:31:06]  It's a Star Wars show about a Star Wars character that I have never heard of in my tweet.
[00:31:12]  I don't know that.
[00:31:13]  I never watched that.
[00:31:14]  I'm 34 years old and I'm getting older.
[00:31:17]  I've never heard of this in my life.
[00:31:19]  But this woman has not only watched it, she's watched the entire thing.
[00:31:22]  Someone has Disney Plus.
[00:31:24]  Yeah.
[00:31:24]  Oh, yeah.
[00:31:25]  These people are probably the biggest subscribers to Disney Plus in the universe.
[00:31:28]  But like Lauren Chen's old content, which is, it's gone from the internet now.
[00:31:33]  I tried to find what I could.
[00:31:35]  I just found a bunch of people complaining about her making these videos saying that the Star Wars video game was too woke.
[00:31:40]  Oh, no, she's not Star Wars.
[00:31:41]  Spider-Man video game was too woke.
[00:31:43]  And it's just like, I guess that's what you're watching.
[00:31:46]  I guess that's what they got.
[00:31:47]  And so the Roaming Millennial got picked up by Glenn Beck's The Blaze.
[00:31:53]  Okay, that's classico.
[00:31:54]  I know.
[00:31:55]  And I feel like is Glenn Beck dead?
[00:31:59]  No, but he is playing an elder man on TV.
[00:32:02]  That's like his thing.
[00:32:03]  He's like an elder statesman.
[00:32:04]  When I've seen the clips where he's sort of like being a kind of like, a chair, a share, a share with his like old-timing glasses and his like, he brings up his like chalkboard.
[00:32:14]  He always has like props and he's kind of like leans into being like the elder statesman southern gentleman who just wants the union and the freedom to stay alive.
[00:32:25]  Like, I feel like that's kind of hook.
[00:32:26]  Oh, you think he's like an elder union guy?
[00:32:28]  No, I just think that he is sort of like, you know, he's not the like, I feel like when he came onto the scene, he was very like, I don't know, more firebrand, more like, had like crazy energy.
[00:32:44]  And now he's sort of like, well, everyone knows that things are going the way of history.
[00:32:49]  And he's like taking a kind of more, like, like wanting to be a sort of like grandfather figure to the like right-wing content ecosystem.
[00:32:57]  I feel like it's the same.
[00:32:59]  He's Mormon, too.

=== Rt's Fair Market Cap (16:40) ===

[00:33:00]  Okay.
[00:33:01]  Which I think is interesting.
[00:33:02]  Yeah.
[00:33:03]  I think he's just like leans into like, he's got a lot of like, as if he's like professor.
[00:33:09]  He has like professorial props that he really leans into.
[00:33:12]  There's one Blaze employee that is the absolute funniest one.
[00:33:16]  His name is, it's like some fucking crazy spell ass sounding name.
[00:33:20]  Like Oron or something.
[00:33:23]  It's like Oron McIntyre.
[00:33:25]  Some horrible name like that.
[00:33:27]  That sounds like a woke Star Wars character.
[00:33:29]  But he's my goat because he's like, he's got like a, you know, he's got, he's, he's got a face with some, what's a nice word for fat?
[00:33:42]  Youthful plumpness.
[00:33:44]  He's got a youthful plumplace to his 45-year-old man's face.
[00:33:47]  He's got a big ass face.
[00:33:49]  And not that there's anything wrong with that.
[00:33:50]  I love big faces.
[00:33:51]  I got a kind of a, I got kind of a big face sometimes.
[00:33:54]  Hey, keep the buckle fat while you have it.
[00:33:56]  Hey, more to nuzzle.
[00:33:57]  More than just nuzzle.
[00:33:59]  Yeah.
[00:34:01]  He's got more stuff in there for winter.
[00:34:02]  It's crazy.
[00:34:02]  Yeah.
[00:34:03]  But he's my favorite one because he's like, he's like, I'm the fucking, I think he's like a, like a Mencius mold bug, like NRX Blaze employee.
[00:34:11]  Oh, he's like dark blaze.
[00:34:12]  But he does these, he does these things.
[00:34:14]  He made himself into the Chad like meme.
[00:34:18]  But his face, he's, I'm like, you can't.
[00:34:20]  Like, you can't do that.
[00:34:21]  He's got to get the gum.
[00:34:22]  But he adds the double chin in, but not like in as a jokey way.
[00:34:26]  It's just what he looks like.
[00:34:28]  Okay.
[00:34:28]  It's a, I'm not doing it justice, but it's really funny.
[00:34:30]  The Blaze, I feel like, is like, if you can't get hired at the Daily Wire, you can't get hired at the Daily Caller, you're at the Blaze.
[00:34:40]  Lauren Chan was at the Blaze.
[00:34:42]  Like a lot of these right-wing people, she's looking for work.
[00:34:44]  She's trying to get, she's a hustler.
[00:34:45]  She's trying to get more.
[00:34:46]  And so she eventually gets into contact with and is employed by Russia today.
[00:34:50]  Our employers.
[00:34:52]  Our employers.
[00:34:52]  Sure.
[00:34:53]  Liz, you and I were looking at the RT merch store the other day.
[00:34:58]  Hey, they're just a squirrel trying to get a nut.
[00:35:02]  I recommend any listeners right now that are driving or otherwise operating heavy machinery, take your phone out, put it right in front of your face, and search for the RT motherfucking merch store.
[00:35:12]  It is one of the craziest, craziest selections of merch I have ever seen in my life.
[00:35:18]  They are selling RT branded stuff that I did not know existed as a product without even an RT brand on it.
[00:35:24]  You know what I mean?
[00:35:25]  Right.
[00:35:25]  Like they're selling suitcase covers that are like go around your rollerbag that just say RT all over them.
[00:35:33]  Which I highly recommend you get and then go to the airport immediately.
[00:35:37]  What?
[00:35:38]  Who is funny?
[00:35:39]  Why is that?
[00:35:40]  So RT has always been lime green, like an acid lime green and black has always been their brand color.
[00:35:47]  But so everything looks like brat coded now in our new, like, in our new Brat Summer colored lenses.
[00:35:56]  Everything looks just like they're trying to, you know, copy that, which is funny.
[00:36:01]  They have a cap that says foreign agent, which is actually that one's pretty good.
[00:36:06]  They have these horrible censored, it's called men's vatnik.
[00:36:10]  It's like a jacket that just has RT branding like all over it and it's inside print.
[00:36:16]  Oh no, it's reversible.
[00:36:18]  Oh, this is horrible.
[00:36:19]  They have a hat that says, do you work for the GRU?
[00:36:22]  They have a question more notebook with an RT.
[00:36:25]  Yeah, this is actually pretty well-made stuff.
[00:36:28]  They have RT.
[00:36:29]  Should I get the RT umbrella?
[00:36:30]  This actually looks pretty good.
[00:36:31]  Yeah, it's pretty bad.
[00:36:32]  I got to say, all of it is very bad.
[00:36:34]  So there was a period where they were kind of hiring everybody.
[00:36:39]  I mean, so RT started in 2005.
[00:36:41]  It's basically Russia's version of like Voice of America, Radio for Europe, right?
[00:36:45]  A lot of people try to be like, pretend it's like not government funded, but like it is.
[00:36:50]  Like it's Russian government funded.
[00:36:52]  Fucking NPR and VC America.
[00:36:55]  Yeah, it's fine.
[00:36:57]  They have employed a lot of people typically from the extreme left and the extreme right.
[00:37:03]  You know, I think like Abby Martin used to work there.
[00:37:06]  I can't really think of anyone else who did.
[00:37:07]  That was like an actual political figure.
[00:37:09]  But like you always see some like random political motherfucker on this shit.
[00:37:12]  Yeah, because they platform people that often would have a hard time getting a platform in America.
[00:37:18]  Speaking of.
[00:37:19]  Especially prior to like basically the ascent of YouTube and podcasting and all that.
[00:37:24]  Definitely, yeah, definitely.
[00:37:25]  They also employed William Shatner.
[00:37:28]  Which, I mean, if you have the option, why wouldn't you?
[00:37:31]  Why wouldn't you?
[00:37:31]  Dennis Miller.
[00:37:32]  That's your favorite.
[00:37:33]  I love it.
[00:37:34]  Because he is the king of references.
[00:37:35]  He's the king of references.
[00:37:37]  And Larry King.
[00:37:38]  Yeah.
[00:37:39]  So really, that is kind of a left-right spectrum.
[00:37:41]  I know.
[00:37:42]  Larry, I think, in fairness, I think they syndicated his Hulu show.
[00:37:46]  I don't know if he was actually an actual employee of them.
[00:37:50]  RT was forced to register as foreign agents in 2017.
[00:37:54]  Russia reciprocated the same year, making Voice of America Radio for Europe, all that shit foreign agents as well, made them register as well, which I thought was curious.
[00:38:02]  I'm like, how were these not registered as foreign agents before?
[00:38:06]  Well, I think they were kind of like, it's sort of like doing a diplomatic in-kind thing.
[00:38:10]  It's sort of like, well, we're not going to make you do that because we're just monitoring you anyways.
[00:38:14]  Yeah, I mean, as we'll talk about, there was a big push starting in 2016 to kind of clean up the foreign agent roles, as it were.
[00:38:25]  And for the most part, prior to that, it was kind of looked to, you know, people kind of looked at it more as like a bureaucratic headache than a diplomatic sword to wield.
[00:38:37]  Yeah.
[00:38:38]  Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:38:39]  So RT America, which was, as you can imagine, the American subsidiary of RT, was dropped from cable networks that carried it in 2022.
[00:38:48]  RT sort of talks about this like they were banned.
[00:38:50]  I'm sure that the government like leaned, the U.S. government like leaned on these cable networks or something, but they weren't like officially banned in America.
[00:38:57]  Like they were, I think, officially banned in much of Europe, but they were dropped from networks.
[00:39:02]  So like they didn't exist in America anymore.
[00:39:04]  Like you could only look at them online.
[00:39:06]  And I think they basically shuttered after that.
[00:39:09]  So this is in 2022.
[00:39:10]  What else happened in early 2022?
[00:39:12]  It was Russia invaded Ukraine.
[00:39:14]  That's where they got dropped.
[00:39:15]  A bunch of RT staff quits, not only because the money's kind of drying up, but also like they didn't really want to be associated with the invasion or anything like that.
[00:39:23]  And some of our worst online commentators actually moved to Russia to take their jobs after that.
[00:39:29]  So now like the Americans they got on RT are like sub, whatever the fuck they had on there before.
[00:39:36]  It's literally just like random like 1,000 follower Rumble account people that like agreed to move to Russia for the rest of their lives.
[00:39:44]  Which brings us to tenant media.
[00:39:46]  So Lauren Chen, who's identified as founder number one in the indictment, she's not actually named, but people figured out pretty quickly who it was, worked at RT for about a year from 2021 to February 2022.
[00:39:58]  This is also while she was still working at the Blaze.
[00:40:00]  Now, keep in mind, Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24th.
[00:40:04]  So it's kind of no wonder that her contract ended around then.
[00:40:07]  Her husband, Liam, also worked for Ruptly.
[00:40:11]  Do you remember Ruptly?
[00:40:12]  No.
[00:40:12]  It was, I think, one of their like, like RT, it's so, it was RT tried to like basically copy like popular online outlets.
[00:40:21]  I think RT was like their more BuzzFeed-y version.
[00:40:24]  Oh, excuse me.
[00:40:25]  Ruptly was their more like BuzzFeedy version of RT.
[00:40:29]  And then they had another one called In the Now, I think, which was them trying to do now this.
[00:40:34]  Oh, yeah.
[00:40:34]  There's something that says Ruffly, news that expands views.
[00:40:38]  Yeah, it was like, it was like a vertical of RT that was like their more like chill casual one.
[00:40:43]  So that's where Liam, her husband worked.
[00:40:45]  And he worked there for about a year, but his contract actually ended in May of 2022.
[00:40:50]  So the indictment alleges that two RT employees, which, and I'm not making this up, Konstantin Kalashnikov, which is the fakest, most AI ass fucking Russian name I've ever heard in my life.
[00:41:03]  I love it.
[00:41:04]  And Elena Afanisyaeva.
[00:41:08]  Listen, you can pronounce a name any way you'd like.
[00:41:10]  Conspired with Lauren Chen and her husband Liam to start tenant media right after this.
[00:41:15]  So the indictment says that Lauren basically started this company, Tenant Media, as a subsidiary of her Canadian company that she already had, which she was getting payments from the Russians for.
[00:41:27]  So, what like what happened would be like, well, we'll get to the actual payment stuff in a while, but she basically has two companies.
[00:41:32]  She's a company registered in Canada and then a subsidiary of that company in America.
[00:41:36]  And the Russians would pay her and through her Canadian company and the talent that she was paying through the American tenant media company.
[00:41:45]  Now, listen, this is not the Panama papers.
[00:41:49]  This is not the Paradise Papers.
[00:41:51]  We are not fucking covering the story because it's about like the Russians setting up shell companies to like pay off a bunch of will be C D E and F tier YouTube celebrities.
[00:42:05]  We're doing it because in order to do that, they created a fake character that I think we both feel personally offended we didn't come up with.
[00:42:18]  Kalashnikov and Elena created a bogus personality named Edward Gregorian.
[00:42:26]  Liz, would you read out how Edward is spelled Edward Gregorian so much?
[00:42:33]  Yes.
[00:42:35]  Edward Gregorian, E-D-U-A-R-D G-R-I-G-O-R-I-A-N-N.
[00:42:44]  Now, I'm just gonna, real quick, it's the Eduard and then the double N on Gregorian that really makes the name.
[00:42:52]  So obviously, that's a tough spelling of Gregorian.
[00:42:56]  And as is noted in the indictment, the spelling of that last name changes several times.
[00:43:02]  I don't think anyone was clear on that.
[00:43:04]  I don't think that they really like cleared that with each other that like we have to just spell this the same way.
[00:43:09]  So basically, Lauren and the Russians knew that, listen, it's going to be tough to like get Russian money in this political environment post-Ukraine invasion, really in this political environment post-2016.
[00:43:23]  Right, but get Russian money, we must.
[00:43:25]  Get Russian money.
[00:43:26]  We need.
[00:43:27]  We need.
[00:43:27]  I'm a C tier YouTuber.
[00:43:29]  I'm fucking doing peace.
[00:43:30]  I'm reviewing Ahsoka for the fucking Blaze.
[00:43:32]  You know, like I need some real, from some fucking real bread in my pocket.
[00:43:36]  This is what Lauren's thinking.
[00:43:38]  So, Liz, could you read from the indictment here?
[00:43:40]  Yes, but it's going to get confusing.
[00:43:42]  And so we're going to have to pause a little bit.
[00:43:43]  Yes.
[00:43:44]  On or about January 10th, 2023, Persona 2 told Founder 1 that Founder One's first task was to find a personality that could serve as the face of the channel and that for the right candidate, we're willing to pay around $1 to $2 million per year.
[00:44:03]  Okay, so to be clear, Persona two is Elena Afonsieva, right?
[00:44:13]  And founder one is Lauren Chen.
[00:44:15]  Yeah, and founder two is her husband, Liam Donovan.
[00:44:18]  Okay.
[00:44:19]  So basically, the Russians are like hitting her up and is like, listen, we got to start this YouTube channel with you.
[00:44:24]  But we, or not just YouTube, we got to start this fucking media company with you.
[00:44:28]  But we really, and we're willing to pay kind of top dollar for like a real face of the channel, like a guy who's like, he's going to be kind of our flagship brand on here.
[00:44:39]  On or about January 13th, 2023, Persona 2, so Elena, sent founder one, Lauren, a proposed contract for Lauren's influencer talent scouting services, with Lauren listed as the agent and a Hungarian entity, also known as Hungarian Shell Entity 1, which means perchance there are more Hungarian shell entities involved, listed as the client.
[00:45:08]  Hungarian Shell Entity 1 has no publicly available website in exchange for Lauren Chen's services.
[00:45:14]  The proposed contract awarded Lauren $8,000 a month plus a percentage of any deals that Lauren closed with influencers.
[00:45:22]  Over the next several months, while Lauren continued to negotiate her contract, Lauren accepted interim payments and began to scout for influencers for the new YouTube channel for Edward Gregorian.
[00:45:37]  So Edward Gregorian has a network of shell companies all throughout Europe, only one of which I think we actually have in the notes here.
[00:45:44]  But like there's Hungarian Shell Company one, there's Czech Shell Company one, there's Swedish Shell Company one.
[00:45:48]  Humstamong.
[00:45:49]  Humstamongst us.
[00:45:51]  We should start shell companies.
[00:45:53]  We have them.
[00:45:54]  We do, but we should start foreign shell companies.
[00:45:56]  We should.
[00:45:57]  I don't know how to do that, but I think it would be fun to learn.
[00:45:59]  Like, isn't there like a guy in Liechtenstein we can call and be like, hey, start me a gold business.
[00:46:04]  Any business.
[00:46:05]  Any kind of business.
[00:46:06]  I guess it doesn't even have to have a website.
[00:46:07]  Yeah.
[00:46:08]  So the Hungarian company is just one of like many companies that this money was flowing through.
[00:46:12]  Edward Gregorian is not real.
[00:46:14]  That person does not exist.
[00:46:15]  Edward Gregorian is a fake persona that was dreamt up by the Russians and Lauren Chen and her husband.
[00:46:21]  Imagine a trench coat with Elena and Constantine inside.
[00:46:28]  So Lauren is stupid, but she's not so stupid to think that like, listen, this is a lot of money for a YouTube channel.
[00:46:37]  And in fact, she even kind of pushes back and like tries to be like, hey, guys, like, you know, this isn't going to be profitable, right?
[00:46:43]  Like, you don't really make that much from YouTube.
[00:46:45]  Which hot tip, by the way, don't tell anybody that.
[00:46:48]  If you're in the content business, don't let people who are about to write you a check know that they might not make money.
[00:46:53]  Yes, yes, but Especially if it's a situation like this, because Edward Gregorian's Russian counter, you know, his Russian trench coat inhabitants told her, like, no, that doesn't matter to us.
[00:47:08]  Yeah.
[00:47:08]  That would, I'm going to be honest, if I was in Lauren Chen's shoes at this point, I would be like, why doesn't that matter?
[00:47:15]  Well, I think she knew.
[00:47:16]  Yeah, I think she did.
[00:47:17]  But also, she doesn't care.
[00:47:19]  But you shouldn't ask that in text form, which she did, because that will end up in an indictment.
[00:47:28]  In this case, never get it in writing.
[00:47:30]  Never get it in writing.
[00:47:31]  So the first real bite was Tim Poole, a bald midget who lives in the countryside because he gets sensory overload from big cities due to his neurodivergencies.
[00:47:40]  Lauren is like, Tim, and they know each other too.
[00:47:44]  This is all these people know each other.
[00:47:45]  She's like, Tim, I have a wonderful offer for you.
[00:47:48]  He's got a bunch of different shows.
[00:47:49]  He streams all day.
[00:47:50]  He literally lives in the middle of fucking nowhere.
[00:47:53]  He's like, we can give you $100,000 a podcast episode.
[00:47:58]  So to me, I think that that is what single podcast episodes are worth.
[00:48:02]  Me too.
[00:48:03]  And it's the market.
[00:48:03]  That's the fair market value of a single podcast.
[00:48:06]  What can you say?
[00:48:07]  The free market, the invisible hand has come in.
[00:48:11]  And maybe that invisible hand is a bit Russian, but it has decided that this is the fair market price.
[00:48:18]  And whomst are we?
[00:48:19]  Whoomster we, baby?
[00:48:21]  Who are whoomst are we to come in and try to fiddle with the supply and demand?
[00:48:27]  What Mr. Market says.
[00:48:29]  So you saw, I know that you watched it too, but the Tim Poole interview with Ben Shapiro about this.
[00:48:36]  At one point, Tim Poole says that, listen, Travis Kelsey was just paid $100 million for a podcast contract.
[00:48:45]  $100,000.
[00:48:46]  People don't realize how much podcasts are worth.
[00:48:48]  $100,000 per podcast episode is fair market compensation.
[00:48:53]  Like, that's the fair market value.
[00:48:54]  Facts.
[00:48:55]  That's just what it's worth.
[00:48:56]  I mean, I, and you know what?
[00:48:59]  Never seen anything else that this man has said, but I'll say this.
[00:49:03]  I like what I'm hearing from him.
[00:49:04]  I like what I'm hearing from.
[00:49:06]  We're not, this is, by the way, he is like, listen, I get a lot of deals all the time like this.
[00:49:14]  Kind of, this is what he's telling Ben Japiro.
[00:49:15]  I get a lot of deals like this.
[00:49:18]  We do.
[00:49:18]  We get so many deals like this.
[00:49:21]  Nobody has ever tried to even approach us.
[00:49:23]  Nobody's ever tried to even approach us to sell an ad on the show.
[00:49:26]  I'm sure that, like, some, listen, there's got to be some country out there that's listening.
[00:49:34]  And I'm, this is my, what I say to you: we're, we're listening.
[00:49:38]  We're listening.
[00:49:39]  If you want to talk to us, we'll listen.

=== Discord Conversations Revealed (15:12) ===

[00:49:41]  Liz is lying.
[00:49:42]  We are doing an episode about precisely getting to jail because of that.
[00:49:45]  We are not listening.
[00:49:46]  No, we're not going to go to jail if we register.
[00:49:48]  We're not going to go.
[00:49:49]  Yeah, we should register.
[00:49:50]  We'll just register.
[00:49:51]  Do you have to get a country's permission to register as a foreigner?
[00:49:54]  No, you just register.
[00:49:55]  I'll walk you through it later.
[00:49:57]  You just register.
[00:49:58]  And then you say whatever content could potentially be international propaganda, you just put a warning on there.
[00:50:07]  Oh, you just say it's America, baby.
[00:50:10]  No one gives a fuck if you're doing it.
[00:50:12]  You just have to do it with transparency.
[00:50:14]  You got to do it with transparency.
[00:50:16]  So Tim, though, is like, listen, I like the deal.
[00:50:20]  Lauren, I trust you.
[00:50:22]  You're a Canadian Chinese Nazi.
[00:50:24]  I rock with you.
[00:50:26]  But who is Edward Gregorian?
[00:50:29]  Can I talk to perhaps Edward Gregorian?
[00:50:32]  Can you perhaps, mayhaps send me Edward Gregorian's LinkedIn profile?
[00:50:36]  Well, I'll give Tim this about doing his due diligence.
[00:50:39]  So Lauren keeps having to put him off because Edward Gregorian is just a name they made up to like funnel money to Tim Poole.
[00:50:46]  Yeah.
[00:50:47]  And she's like, Russians, like, you got to give me some stuff on Edward Gregorian.
[00:50:52]  Like, please, please, please.
[00:50:54]  And they're like, okay, yes, we are working on it.
[00:50:56]  They hit her back with a PDF, one of the craziest PDF resumes I've ever seen in my life.
[00:51:03]  It is a CV of Edward Gregorian with a picture of a guy on a PJ.
[00:51:07]  That's a private jet, claiming that Gregorian is a French Armenian banker living in Brussels.
[00:51:13]  So this is my thing.
[00:51:16]  I'm going to be honest, beyond the name Edward Gregorian, which would raise some red flags pretty immediately.
[00:51:25]  It's this most made-up signing name I've ever heard.
[00:51:27]  Edward.
[00:51:28]  Edward Gregorian.
[00:51:29]  Edward Gregorian.
[00:51:31]  The other thing that would, where I'd be like, huh, I don't think I've ever seen a CV from any kind of serious type person with their fucking picture on it.
[00:51:39]  It's the thing, the best part.
[00:51:40]  I think his picture is blurred out in the indictment, but it's like, sorry, if you're flying in a private jet, do you really need a CV?
[00:51:48]  Who's taking the photo?
[00:51:49]  Who's taking it?
[00:51:50]  Well.
[00:51:50]  It's probably his boy, but it's like, so he's sitting in the private jet looking out the window, sort of like, you know, perhaps surveying his Lion King style.
[00:52:02]  And he's like in one of those way too tight European suits.
[00:52:10]  There's no serious banker man who would have a CV like this.
[00:52:13]  No.
[00:52:13]  He would be like, I don't need a fucking CV.
[00:52:15]  Anyone who knows, here, if you're going to fake an Edward Gregorian, what you do is you say, bitch, I don't have a CV.
[00:52:22]  You don't know who I am?
[00:52:23]  Yeah, yes.
[00:52:24]  Hit him with that.
[00:52:25]  Yes.
[00:52:25]  Or Edward Gregorian just gives you a call and says, this is Edward.
[00:52:29]  Yeah.
[00:52:29]  But no, they hit him with a CV.
[00:52:31]  And Liz, would you read the vision part of this CV off for me?
[00:52:35]  As an accomplished finance professional, Mr. Gregorian, is that a different spelling?
[00:52:41]  No, I know it's the same.
[00:52:42]  Okay.
[00:52:42]  Mr. Gregorian has observed multiple instances of misrepresentations and bias in mainstream media, many of which, which had the potential tor salt into poor investment outcomes of his clients.
[00:52:55]  So wait, stop right there.
[00:52:57]  Liz did not fucking stutter.
[00:52:59]  It really does say, first of all, the fruit.
[00:53:03]  There's.
[00:53:04]  It says many of which witch had the potential torsal into poor investment outcomes of his clients.
[00:53:09]  What does that fucking mean?
[00:53:10]  So which is just they accidentally wrote it twice and then two results.
[00:53:14]  It should be two different words.
[00:53:15]  Oh, I see.
[00:53:16]  There should also be a space between the comma and the many there.
[00:53:20]  So keep going.
[00:53:21]  You know, if you want to calm this place, by all means.
[00:53:24]  Yeah.
[00:53:25]  With extensive experience of living and immersing himself in various cultures, I love to live and immerse myself.
[00:53:32]  That's my two favorite things.
[00:53:33]  Especially when I'm in various cultures.
[00:53:35]  He has acquired a distinctive and alternative perspective.
[00:53:38]  Ooh, he's alternative.
[00:53:42]  He has acquired a distinctive and alternative perspective on world events that he believes is not always accurately represented to the public.
[00:53:51]  I hate when my alternative beliefs are not accurately represented.
[00:53:55]  My biggest pet peeve.
[00:53:56]  In pursuit of his goal to encourage a more nuanced public discourse worldwide, Mr. Gregorian intends to establish a conservative news outlet that offers expertise and experience for a wide audience in the Western world and beyond.
[00:54:12]  So just to put this in perspective a little bit, I spent an hour and then later, actually two more hours last night watching as many tenant videos that I could find.
[00:54:21]  Like from the movie?
[00:54:22]  No, but I do know a guy who's seen Tenant over 30 times.
[00:54:26]  Sick.
[00:54:27]  But it is mostly Taylor Hansen talking to drunk people in that like covered area in Las Vegas.
[00:54:35]  You know what I'm talking about?
[00:54:36]  It's like an outdoor, it's like a mall.
[00:54:38]  It's like outdoor, but it's like there's a roof over it.
[00:54:40]  You talk about a The Phoenician?
[00:54:41]  Fremont Street.
[00:54:42]  Fremont Street, in Las Vegas.
[00:54:44]  And being like, is it gay to have sex with a trans woman?
[00:54:48]  And that kind of video is usually like a two-minute video on TikTok, like of someone being like, gay son or thought daughter.
[00:54:54]  The video is 15 minutes long.
[00:54:56]  And all he's doing up is he's going to like middle age, wasted middle-aged black guys and explaining bottom surgery to them.
[00:55:03]  So he's like, is it gay to fuck a trans woman?
[00:55:05]  And they'll be like, yeah.
[00:55:07]  And then he'd be like, what if they've had bottom surgery?
[00:55:09]  And they're like, what's bottom surgery?
[00:55:11]  And then it's him explaining.
[00:55:12]  It's some of the worst videos I've ever seen in my entire life.
[00:55:16]  I'm not really sure what expertise and experience for the wide audience this is providing, but this is the kind of stuff they did.
[00:55:25]  So not in this correspondence, but in a lot of other correspondents, the DOJ notes that they spell Mr. Gregorian's last name differently.
[00:55:33]  And with another conservative personality Tenant is trying to poach, that's Dave Rubin, the TV doesn't exactly go over so well.
[00:55:41]  Well, Dave Rubin, he's a, you know, he's a literary guy.
[00:55:44]  He's publishing books.
[00:55:45]  He's like, he's known for his thoughts and his insights.
[00:55:48]  Yeah.
[00:55:48]  You know, the world is so crazy.
[00:55:51]  Yeah.
[00:55:53]  So this is from the indictment.
[00:55:54]  On or about May 12th, 2023, founder one, so again, Lauren Chen, reported to Persona one, so that's Constantine, that commentator one, that's Dave Rubin.
[00:56:10]  So Lauren Chen reported to Constantine that Dave Rubin had a problem with the profile we sent over, specifically the reference to social justice.
[00:56:20]  I think it may be because that's usually a term used by liberals, but we're trying to create a conservative network.
[00:56:26]  Constantine suggested that Dave and Edward could simply speak together to clarify the profile.
[00:56:33]  But how's that going to happen when Mr. Gregorian does not exist?
[00:56:36]  I believe they had a stand-in for Mr. Gregorian.
[00:56:39]  And it was Arthur Knight.
[00:56:42]  But it's funny because on the CV, like there's not only the vision that you read out, but there's also like an introduction.
[00:56:48]  And in the end, it says that one of the things that Edward Gregorian stands for most in this world is social justice.
[00:56:53]  I love that that's their fucking red flag.
[00:56:56]  So they're like, you know, I'm on board with all this.
[00:56:58]  But, you know.
[00:57:00]  Dave Rubin, by the way, had originally demanded $5 million up front.
[00:57:05]  You know what?
[00:57:06]  Fucking respect.
[00:57:08]  Respect.
[00:57:09]  If the Russians come calling, you fucking better ask for what you're worth.
[00:57:12]  Give me that fucking money.
[00:57:13]  No, you're worth.
[00:57:14]  He does not get the $5 million up front.
[00:57:17]  But after getting over the social justice hump, he does agree to accept a contract where he gets paid $400,000 per month plus a $100,000 signing bonus.
[00:57:27]  Look, that's what the market demands.
[00:57:31]  To put this into perspective, some of the David Rubin videos on the Tenant Media YouTube channel had less than a thousand views.
[00:57:39]  Dude, he made so much fucking money from that.
[00:57:42]  It's insane.
[00:57:43]  He's like not going to take a hit.
[00:57:44]  No, no, no.
[00:57:45]  I think they, I mean, I don't know if they have to, they're not going to be able to do that.
[00:57:48]  It's just a news cycle.
[00:57:49]  No one gives a fuck.
[00:57:50]  Yeah, I think, I mean, I think he'll be fine because he and Tim Poole are sort of referred to as like victims in this entire thing.
[00:57:55]  Which is so funny.
[00:57:56]  I know.
[00:58:00]  Go to your kitchen right now and try this turmeric hack that outshines Ozempic for shedding two or more pounds almost overnight.
[00:58:06]  Okay, so everyone has been asking me how to lose 60 pounds of stubborn fat faster than anything else on the market, even Ozempic, is actually all thanks to this new and surprising method that top researchers just uncovered, which activates and speeds up fat loss better than injections or prescriptions.
[00:58:20]  And in the next 30 seconds, I'm going to show you guys exactly what it is and how it works.
[00:58:25]  So my question though is like, how do we know about all of these behind the scenes maneuvers?
[00:58:32]  How do the feds actually know about all of these conversations?
[00:58:36]  Because they were having these conversations on Discord.
[00:58:40]  I just got to be, I got to be fully real with you, everybody.
[00:58:45]  Everything I hear about Discord, You're either on there, you're grooming, you're cyberbullying, the recent school shooter, like that was like a week ago, was in a school shooter Discord.
[00:58:58]  Every time I hear a story about Discord, it's like the most insane, stupid fucking thing I've ever heard in my entire life.
[00:59:05]  No.
[00:59:06]  It does not seem to help anyone's life to be on there frequently.
[00:59:10]  Except for the True and on Discord.
[00:59:12]  Except for the True and on Discord.
[00:59:13]  Dollar a month, True and on Patreon.
[00:59:15]  So while they were told by the Timpools of the world, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, that Edward Gregorian was behind the project on Discord, Lauren Chen and her husband were actually talking to the Russians who they referred to as the Russians.
[00:59:30]  By the way, Lauren is talking to her own husband frequently on Discord.
[00:59:35]  Which is crazy because are they just in like different offices in their crazy house?
[00:59:40]  Are they in different locations or are they like having a LAN party in their living room?
[00:59:46]  Or are they like, what's the setup?
[00:59:49]  You cannot be talking to your motherfucking husband on Discord.
[00:59:51]  I don't know.
[00:59:52]  I don't care who you are.
[00:59:52]  I don't care where in the world you are.
[00:59:54]  I think it's weird.
[00:59:55]  Like, these are literal quotes from the indictment.
[00:59:58]  So we're billing the Russians from the corporation, right?
[01:00:01]  And then also, also, the Russians paid, FYI.
[01:00:06]  Like, they would just be like, oh, don't worry about it.
[01:00:08]  The Russians paid through.
[01:00:09]  So the idea that they had no idea about the sort of like, you know, what was getting cooked up here with the books is just absolutely not true.
[01:00:17]  And to make it even more ridiculous, the Russians joined this Discord.
[01:00:21]  Yeah.
[01:00:22]  And Kalashnikov even used a version of his first name.
[01:00:25]  Like he used a variation of Constantine.
[01:00:27]  They were not slick.
[01:00:29]  Yeah.
[01:00:29]  On or about September 11th, 2023, respect.
[01:00:33]  So about a year ago from today.
[01:00:34]  At approximately 8.07 p.m. Central Time, Founder 2, so that's Liam, Lauren Chen's husband, wrote in the Investor Discord channel.
[01:00:44]  That's where they talk to the Russians.
[01:00:46]  Today marks two weeks since I submitted the invoice in August.
[01:00:49]  Any idea for the delay?
[01:00:50]  We are signing large contracts and need to be certain we will get the funding to pay these people.
[01:00:56]  Persona one, meaning Constantine, did not immediately respond.
[01:01:01]  While waiting for a reply from Constantine, Lauren searched for then current time in Moscow.
[01:01:10]  Specifically at approximately 8.50 p.m. Central Time on or about September 11th, 2023, Lauren searched on Google time in Moscow.
[01:01:22]  The time was in fact approximately 4.50 a.m. in Moscow.
[01:01:26]  In general, I got to say, this is bad spycraft.
[01:01:31]  Yes, full agreement here.
[01:01:33]  The FSB is not the KGB.
[01:01:35]  No.
[01:01:35]  I'm going to say it.
[01:01:36]  No.
[01:01:37]  I mean, it's, it's, it's.
[01:01:39]  Let's put some respect on the KGB's name.
[01:01:41]  With the Black Hammer operation and this operation, I got to tell you, Russian intelligence agencies, whoever is leading your like American political media bureau, you really, really got to like send them to grad school or something.
[01:01:57]  They got to do better than this.
[01:01:58]  There was a point where Elena, the second one, under the Edward Gregorian fake name, so she eventually joins the Discord channel under a pseudonym Helena Shudra, but she uses an email address Alphalena 1997, like at whatever mail server.
[01:02:17]  And the feds point out very, very obviously that this is just the first couple letters of her last name plus her first name.
[01:02:23]  And then you guessed it, the year she was born.
[01:02:25]  Like it was so obvious.
[01:02:28]  And at some point, she's posting in the Discord as Helena Shuda.
[01:02:34]  And she's like not getting anywhere with her content requests.
[01:02:37]  Like she's asking them like, hey, can you post this video?
[01:02:40]  Can you do that?
[01:02:40]  Can you do this?
[01:02:41]  Like directing what kind of content she wanted them to post on the YouTubes and everything they were making.
[01:02:47]  And so she created a second account named Victoria Pesti.
[01:02:51]  And she introduces the Discord group to Victoria Pesti as like, this is another, another person on the board and had Victoria Pesti, who again was her in a sock fucket account, say, yes, I really need you to follow Helena's requests on these content like initiatives.
[01:03:10]  And so like at one point, she's like, I don't know if you saw it, but they want me to post some footage from an attack in Moscow today.
[01:03:19]  This is from, I can't remember who this was, Tim Poole, I think, said this.
[01:03:22]  I don't know if you saw it, but they want me to post some footage from an attack in Moscow today.
[01:03:26]  There's a watermark in the middle of the page that's blurred, which looks bad, and it's also pretty graphic.
[01:03:30]  You can see people getting shot, albeit from far away.
[01:03:32]  So you remember there was that, that was that terrorist attack in Moscow in the shopping mall.
[01:03:37]  And there was like really, really graphic footage being posted on X, the Everything App.
[01:03:42]  I do remember that.
[01:03:43]  And everywhere else.
[01:03:45]  And I guess Helena, aka Elena, aka Victoria, aka Edward Gregorian, like had sent Tim Poole like a fucking grainy ass like snuff film of a bunch of people getting fucking shot with some Moscow news like service watermark in the middle and was like, can you please post this?
[01:04:08]  And he feels weird about it because it's like a fucking snuff film.
[01:04:12]  And she's like, it's fine.
[01:04:13]  It's under fair use.
[01:04:15]  Just go for it.
[01:04:16]  And they did.
[01:04:17]  So Tim Poole and all everyone who basically was a content creator on there is like, listen, we had absolute editorial freedom.
[01:04:26]  Like nobody ever told us what to post.
[01:04:29]  Like, you know, I think the Russians are dictators or whatever.
[01:04:32]  Like, they're like, we are victims.
[01:04:34]  We were tricked.
[01:04:34]  But like, they actually weren't getting anything from us in the first place.
[01:04:38]  Want to point out that Tim Pool has similar to um.
[01:04:44]  When fuck, what was the account's name?
[01:04:46]  Why am I forgetting it?
[01:04:47]  When the avatar went black when there were allegations that surfaced?
[01:04:51]  Lynn Del Rathian, thank you, Lynn Del Raytheon.

=== Paid To Spy? (03:10) ===

[01:04:53]  Yes, similar to this.
[01:04:54]  Has gone into like crisis mode yeah, and has put the Israeli flag and the Ukrainian flag emoji in his username yeah, he's like trying to be like to signal that like.
[01:05:05]  No no, i'm actually a based centrist.
[01:05:07]  I wasn't paid off.
[01:05:09]  Like I have my own qualms with the Russian invasion.
[01:05:11]  I mean it's, it's the I.
[01:05:13]  No I, I think what he's doing is like is is is like trying to make fun of it or whatever.
[01:05:18]  But like, at the end of the day, all of these guys claim to be like really smart, like they're seeing through the real truth and like you know, like all these like conspiracy, the deep state, all this kind of stuff.
[01:05:28]  But like you were involved in like a like allegedly involved in an alleged, like literal spy operation.
[01:05:37]  With like pretty, I mean not necessarily red flags that it's a spy operation per se, but red flags that it was some kind of operation that you completely ignored after doing like the very very very, very basic which is reading an obviously like complete bullshit cv.
[01:05:55]  So like I don't think anyone listening here is under the impression that, like Tim Pool possesses a a surplus of critical thinking skills.
[01:06:03]  But like you gotta be fucking actively stupid to think that like, oh yeah, i'm getting paid a hundred thousand dollars to do this, but there's nothing I have to sell.
[01:06:11]  There's nothing like there's no upside.
[01:06:13]  There's no like it's complete editorial freedom.
[01:06:16]  I'm just getting a hundred thousand dollars from this guy to like post fucking non-exclusive youtube videos on his fucking youtube channel.
[01:06:23]  It's fucking insane.
[01:06:25]  But all these guys are just like, oh well, the hundred thousand dollars per podcast episode, that's what i'm worth.
[01:06:30]  I mean, that's what i'm worth.
[01:06:34]  Did you know swallowing certain bacteria can be better for your dental health than implants?
[01:06:39]  Sounds crazy right, but it's scientifically proven.
[01:06:41]  A Harvard scientist found that these bacteria can fix all your dental issues, from gum bleeding and tooth decay to bad breath and cavities.
[01:06:49]  Imagine your teeth becoming 20 times stronger, like a titanium shield against cavities and enamel erosion.
[01:06:55]  So really quickly, before we wrap up, I do think it would behoove us.
[01:07:00]  I haven't used that in a while.
[01:07:01]  I do love that word.
[01:07:02]  It'd behoove us to talk a little bit about FARA, aka the Foreign Agents Registration Act, because in the last like, I don't know, five, six years, seven, eight years, I guess, but really not that long, we've been hearing a lot about this.
[01:07:18]  There's always this stuff in the news, whether it's from like Mrs. Mueller or Michael Flynn or in this case, you know, failure for these guys to register as foreign agents.
[01:07:28]  And I want to talk a little bit about like what that means because it's, I think it's kind of interesting.
[01:07:33]  So it's a lobby regulation that is based around the idea of transparency.
[01:07:38]  We said this.
[01:07:38]  It's the classic American shit, sort of like, whoa, how do we balance the freedom to influence against the obligation to report that we're influencing?
[01:07:50]  They're like, oh, we should classically figure out a way to do this.
[01:07:53]  And the way they figured out was like, oh, we could just have like a like reporting system and then it'll be fine.
[01:08:00]  So FARA, Foreign Agents Registration, it's a criminal statute.

=== Ivy Lee's Nazi PR (04:25) ===

[01:08:04]  It was passed in 1938 because following World War I, all of these newly independent countries.
[01:08:12]  Oh, fake ass motherfucking countries.
[01:08:14]  Yeah, they would hire up Americans to basically drum up U.S. support for recognition.
[01:08:21]  So, like, for example, Lithuania hired this guy named Ivy League.
[01:08:26]  He was, what?
[01:08:28]  His name is Ivy Lee?
[01:08:30]  Lee.
[01:08:31]  Oh, that's a fake.
[01:08:32]  They said League.
[01:08:33]  I think you did say League, but that's also, I was about to say, that's like a Ivy League.
[01:08:37]  He definitely was, but that's a colleague.
[01:08:38]  He was like a fucking Prison man, to be honest.
[01:08:41]  But yeah, Ivy Lee.
[01:08:43]  So he was one of the like really form, like formative PR guys.
[01:08:48]  Yeah.
[01:08:48]  Right.
[01:08:49]  When public relations as an industry was kind of coming into its own at the turn of the century, like this guy was right there, Edward Bernays, all these names that get thrown around.
[01:08:59]  So he was hired by Lithuania to basically help the U.S. Senate recognize the country.
[01:09:04]  And the way they would do this is not so much in the sense that we think of lobbying now, which is like on K Street, you have all these fucking big firms and they're always hanging out, like harassing legislators or taking them strip clubs or whatever the fuck these people do.
[01:09:17]  But like they would just be in the papers, like it would be more of like a PR thing, right?
[01:09:23]  So Lee was also hired by another country, which was Germany.
[01:09:29]  It was a Nazi Germany.
[01:09:32]  In 1934, he went and met with, you guessed it, Adolf Hitler.
[01:09:36]  You were on that.
[01:09:37]  Yeah.
[01:09:38]  And Goebbels to do what is like unclear.
[01:09:42]  Obviously, there's like some historians believe it was to offer insight into like the mind of the American.
[01:09:49]  Specifically like what Americans thought about probably Nazis and I'm going to guess Jews.
[01:09:54]  I thought Hitler had, what's his name?
[01:09:56]  They had a guy named.
[01:09:56]  Hitler always talked about this guy named like Shotzi or whatever.
[01:09:59]  He was like the, he was the Yale guy.
[01:10:01]  Yeah.
[01:10:01]  There were also a bunch of people on this.
[01:10:04]  A couple months after that meeting, Lee, Ivy Lee, he was asked to go testify in front of Congress about it in what was like a precursor to the Un-American Activities Committees that were going to come in like 10 years to kind of tell them what exactly he was up to.
[01:10:25]  Because around this time, there was, you know, a bunch of like Nazi rallies were being held.
[01:10:30]  There was the big, famous Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden.
[01:10:33]  People were getting a little bit uneasy about some of the articles they were seeing that were trying to paint the Nazis in a certain light, we'll say.
[01:10:42]  This is actually, I pulled this from Time magazine in July of 1934 about this congressional investigation.
[01:10:51]  Will you read this, Phrase?
[01:10:53]  I feel like you can do a good German.
[01:10:56]  Last week, a congressional investigation committee in Manhattan belatedly revealed that the Nazis had hired to interpret the swastika to the stars and stripes, none other than the most celebrated of press agents, Ivy Ledbetter Lee.
[01:11:12]  Mr. Lee!
[01:11:13]  Ledbetter Lee.
[01:11:14]  That's a great one.
[01:11:16]  Bedwetter Lee.
[01:11:17]  Mr. Lee, by whom John D. Rockefeller was metamorphosed from a corporate monster into a benevolent old philanthropist, told the committee that he had for years been public relations counsel at $3,000 a year to the U.S. affiliate of Intersession Gemeanschaft, Farbre Industrie, the great German dye trust.
[01:11:36]  Last year, when Hitler came into power, the Home Office retained Mr. Lee at $25,000 per year because, quote, they were very much concerned about the beginning of the boycott and wanted to know what could be done.
[01:11:50]  So for non-Tucker World War II history buffs out there, after Hitler came to power, there were a couple, or as Hitler was coming to power, there were a couple of German industries that really got behind him.
[01:12:07]  And this was one of them, this big, huge dye factory.
[01:12:11]  Yeah.
[01:12:11]  So much so that it inspired international boycotts of these specific industries or these specific companies.
[01:12:18]  And so they were concerned that they were going to receive international pressure and they were looking for an American PR agent to help smooth that over.

=== Why Evidence Compilation Matters (10:00) ===

[01:12:29]  Do you see where I'm going with this?
[01:12:31]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:12:31]  It's IG Farben.
[01:12:33]  Yes.
[01:12:33]  And so there was a big backlash, you might say, to like a lot of Hitler's anti-Semitic policies.
[01:12:43]  But beyond that, just like the air of repression that was in Nazi Germany.
[01:12:48]  Like, this is what was so confusing about the Tucker thing.
[01:12:50]  It's like it made it seem like only Winston Churchill didn't like the Nazis, but like a lot of regular people hated the Nazis.
[01:12:55]  Pretty famously.
[01:12:57]  Famously so.
[01:12:57]  Yeah.
[01:13:00]  And so they hired Ivy Lee to like basically be like, how do we get around these boycotts?
[01:13:05]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:13:07]  So four years later after this, we're back in the USA now, talking about FARA.
[01:13:14]  With growing, there's like growing suspicion about more and more kind of foreign agents in the lead up to World War II.
[01:13:20]  I mean, basically the state is getting ready for World War II, let's be real.
[01:13:24]  And so Congress passes FARA, codifying this idea of foreign agents as people who are advising other countries or lobbying on the behalf of other countries in some form of like propagandistic purpose.
[01:13:37]  And the law is like extremely vague and very broad.
[01:13:42]  And again, it doesn't make it so that it's like, it's not illegal.
[01:13:46]  What's criminal is like not telling people that you're doing it.
[01:13:50]  Yeah.
[01:13:51]  So it's like, we can't say you can't do it, but we just think everyone should know about it.
[01:13:55]  So it's like being poly.
[01:13:57]  We need that registry.
[01:13:59]  Actually, we don't because I don't want to know.
[01:14:01]  I don't want to know what's on it.
[01:14:03]  You might see some names you don't like.
[01:14:05]  That would actually be kind of fun.
[01:14:07]  You think that, Liz, you find it on the record right now that you should think the government should make a registration of poly people?
[01:14:13]  A list.
[01:14:13]  Of kules?
[01:14:15]  No, I don't think we should do that.
[01:14:17]  Mostly because I think it would get boring after a while.
[01:14:19]  More trouble than it's worth.
[01:14:20]  I know.
[01:14:21]  We should make a list of something else.
[01:14:25]  Okay, so again, this is like a really broad law that's very vague.
[01:14:29]  And it also was like the basis of the law meant that it like required a ton of bureaucratic work.
[01:14:36]  So obviously it was just ignored for like 30 years.
[01:14:39]  Yeah.
[01:14:39]  No one wants to do it.
[01:14:40]  DOJ doesn't care.
[01:14:42]  In the 60s, there's some revisions, namely there's like after the Cuban Revolution, there were a bunch of like sugar companies that were really trying to like get in with the US.
[01:14:54]  And so they expanded the law to include more like development interests.
[01:14:58]  So like tourism and trade and foreign industry.
[01:15:01]  And it's less focused on like media, which is kind of interesting.
[01:15:04]  But even still, between 1966 and 2015, DOJ only brought forth seven criminal cases for FARA violations.
[01:15:15]  So it legitimately was not that no one was fucking paying attention to this.
[01:15:21]  You know what I mean?
[01:15:22]  And they, by their own admission, had to focus on compliance rather than criminality.
[01:15:27]  So they're like, we're not trying to make you criminals.
[01:15:29]  They would just be like, we're going to send you a letter.
[01:15:32]  We're going to be a nuisance.
[01:15:33]  Can you please just register?
[01:15:34]  Like, we don't want to have to deal with this.
[01:15:36]  That was like the attitude, right?
[01:15:38]  But then.
[01:15:40]  Well, you can f ⁇ you.
[01:15:41]  Then something strange happened.
[01:15:42]  We'll just have them do it.
[01:15:45]  And suddenly, circa 2015, 2016, really, it's 2016, 2017.
[01:15:54]  Everyone starts getting hit with FARA violations.
[01:15:57]  Manafort, Flynn, there was like this one really big law firm that settled this DOJ investigation into like Ukraine activities for like four and a half million dollars.
[01:16:08]  Yeah, it was pretty big.
[01:16:10]  Everyone, I hope, because I sure do, remembers Mrs. Mueller.
[01:16:15]  She wrote, We love her.
[01:16:16]  We love her.
[01:16:17]  She's such a nice lady.
[01:16:19]  I think you're being a little too sentimental there, but you know, she's not.
[01:16:22]  I am sentimental.
[01:16:23]  She did make us leave.
[01:16:24]  Yeah.
[01:16:25]  But she was right to do so.
[01:16:26]  She was right to do so, but you know.
[01:16:28]  We were up to no good.
[01:16:29]  We were there to make fun of her.
[01:16:30]  And then that's why I felt bad.
[01:16:32]  And then I was like, we shouldn't.
[01:16:34]  You can never look the victim in the eyes, Liz.
[01:16:36]  You never look the victim in the eyes.
[01:16:38]  You want to focus on like an area on their forehead.
[01:16:40]  Yeah, that would have let her.
[01:16:41]  That's a good idea.
[01:16:42]  Then she would have been like, I stared at her feet.
[01:16:45]  She'd be like, what are you looking at?
[01:16:46]  I stared at her little piggies down there.
[01:16:48]  Don't call them piggies.
[01:16:49]  So, like I said, if DOJ was focused previously on compliance, they then decided to focus on enforcement.
[01:16:58]  This was a quote from DOJ's National Security Division, which is when they announced the entire overhaul, they said, DOJ is shifting from treating FARA as an administrative obligation, regulatory obligation, to one that is increasingly an enforcement priority.
[01:17:12]  And so they started really pouring some money into this.
[01:17:15]  Like just, I mean, this is just in like 2017, 2016.
[01:17:19]  It's under DOJ's National Security Division.
[01:17:23]  What usually happens is that someone would just compile evidence from a bunch of social media posts and then put them together in a letter and be like, please, you're under suspicion, register.
[01:17:34]  If you're not on the list, that would be like how it goes.
[01:17:37]  There's no mechanism for them to actually seek discovery except for going through a grand jury.
[01:17:43]  So wait.
[01:17:44]  Okay.
[01:17:45]  Because I was going to ask, if I have a suspicion that a certain politician from the Bronx, for instance, let's say, let's call him Richard Torres.
[01:17:58]  Torres might be being by a certain country in the Middle East.
[01:18:07]  Let's call it Bizreel.
[01:18:09]  Bizrael.
[01:18:12]  Can I rat him out to the FARA unit within the DOJ's National Security Division?
[01:18:17]  But that doesn't mean anything because they can't actually really investigate because they need a grand jury.
[01:18:22]  Yeah, they have to go through a grand jury.
[01:18:23]  I guess that makes sense.
[01:18:25]  There's also a sort of like don't ask, don't tell Israeli provision, which I want to talk about.
[01:18:31]  Okay.
[01:18:32]  So you might not get far with your complaint, but I do think if you submit a complaint, someone would have to respond to it.
[01:18:39]  Okay.
[01:18:40]  I actually will say this right now.
[01:18:42]  If any of our listeners, independent of me, I'm not calling you to do this.
[01:18:47]  So actually, let me rephrase this.
[01:18:50]  I might do this and I feel like I'm a good role model for things to do in this one and only particular instance.
[01:19:00]  Basically no other instances in my life, but this one.
[01:19:04]  I'll say that.
[01:19:06]  I might send the FARA unit some Richie Torres documents.
[01:19:12]  Yeah, you just got to compile the evidence.
[01:19:14]  I have a lot of in a non-actionable way.
[01:19:18]  It's not actionable.
[01:19:19]  I want it to be actionable because I want the fucking government to do something.
[01:19:21]  I'm not going to do anything about it.
[01:19:23]  I just think that a certain politician from the Bronx named Richard, pseudonym, Richard Torres, might be under the employ in some way of a country called, let's just call it Bisriel, but an unnamed country in the Middle Eastern style area.
[01:19:39]  It was a Jewish state.
[01:19:40]  No, we don't know what kind of state it was, but it might be only a democracy.
[01:19:46]  So part of the change in the bureaucracy is that like FARA was traditionally headed up by old-timey regulators, like civil service types, because like nobody wanted to be there.
[01:19:56]  So it was always like the guy who'd been in the bureaucracy for that long.
[01:20:00]  And then under William Barr, our favorite, the GOAT, who was DOJ under Trump, obviously, or at DOJ under Trump, he like shifted priorities completely there and like reworked the entire like wing, the FARA wing under the National Security Counter Espionage Unit.
[01:20:25]  And he started directing prosecutors there to like overhaul the entire enforcement mechanism, which basically means, I mean, this is how DOJ and the law works, is that when you know, you have to basically rework legal interpretation of the statute as well.
[01:20:40]  And the only reason I'm mentioning this is because it's such a good name.
[01:20:44]  But the guy that headed this up, his name was Mr. Brandon L. Van Grack.
[01:20:49]  And I just had to call him out because it's such a true and non-name.
[01:20:53]  Brandon L. Van Grack.
[01:20:54]  Van Grack.
[01:20:55]  Who, strangely enough, was related to Edward Gregorian.
[01:20:59]  But he was really, really involved in the Manafort and Michael Flynn prosecutions, which are under, like, which were FARA crimes.
[01:21:06]  Now, of course, Brandon is in the private sector and he also regularly appears on a podcast called The Regulators, which I like.
[01:21:14]  It's a good name.
[01:21:15]  Yeah, a little good music cue there.
[01:21:22]  So despite FARA basically being a regulatory mandate, which is to say that all you need to do is register to say you are working on behalf of a foreign country, countries go out of their way to evade those rules because they think there's a stigma attached.
[01:21:40]  Yeah.
[01:21:40]  Which makes sense.
[01:21:41]  It does, yeah.
[01:21:42]  Right?
[01:21:42]  Like for the Russians, that means them employing someone named Edward Gregorian.
[01:21:48]  And really, they should have got you to do it.
[01:21:50]  I'm just going to say.
[01:21:51]  Yeah.
[01:21:51]  Not to do the Russian propaganda.
[01:21:52]  But to pretend to be Mr. Gregorio.
[01:21:55]  I mean, I think it's a little different because I think they were trying to do like a spycraft operation rather than just like pseudo-lobbying.
[01:22:01]  But it's all kind of ends up being the same thing.
[01:22:03]  Well, they're trying to get around FARA regulations in order to launder the media that they wanted.
[01:22:08]  Yeah, fair enough.
[01:22:09]  Because part of one of the regulations with media is that you have to flag any piece.
[01:22:14]  This is what they say, flag any piece of quote propaganda that is distributed to two or more parties in the U.S. with a disclaimer stating that it was delivered by a foreign agent.
[01:22:23]  And then you have to submit a copy of the said propaganda to the Justice Department within 48 hours.

=== Israeli Spycraft and FARA (06:09) ===

[01:22:30]  How would that even?
[01:22:31]  Not for it to be illegal, by the way.
[01:22:32]  I just want to be clear.
[01:22:33]  Like, it's just for this to be documented and on a list and for the people consuming the quote-unquote propaganda to know that it came from a state.
[01:22:41]  So it's like basically a like, it's the same thing as like a prescription drug, like, you know, disclaimer.
[01:22:48]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:22:49]  Or the fucking like gambling disclaimer.
[01:22:51]  Like, this is how the U.S. works, right?
[01:22:53]  And so part of the problem you run into is like the speed at which social media operates, but also like social media propaganda works really well when it moves with that speed and you don't see and you trust the source that it's coming from.
[01:23:08]  Yeah.
[01:23:08]  Yeah.
[01:23:09]  And so countries go super out of their way to avoid these regulations, not out of a like because it's annoying paperwork, but because it'll dilute and make your propaganda ineffective.
[01:23:21]  And one of the countries that goes really far to do this is.
[01:23:25]  I couldn't I know what you want to say right now, Liz.
[01:23:28]  And I know what you want me to say.
[01:23:29]  I know why you pause there.
[01:23:30]  But I'm not going to say it.
[01:23:32]  I'm not going to say it because I've been doing a lot of independent reading and thinking.
[01:23:36]  And I've been talking to a lot of independent non-governmental entities from both sides of the spectrum.
[01:23:41]  And I realized that actually, if you think about it, Israel is just a little country that's surrounded by all these hostile Arab states, right?
[01:23:48]  Yeah, little country surrounded by big countries.
[01:23:50]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:23:52]  Like a little country where you can be free, you can be secular, you can be Jewish.
[01:23:56]  You can be Jewish, Liz.
[01:23:57]  You can be Jewish there.
[01:23:59]  And you can also take people's houses and stuff like that, various schemes and things of this nature.
[01:24:06]  And, you know, like there's bad stuff.
[01:24:07]  Like there's Netanyahu.
[01:24:08]  And like, yeah, I don't like him personally, although I would vote for him.
[01:24:12]  I don't like him personally.
[01:24:13]  And even though he agrees with 90% of my policies, he's just too mean about it.
[01:24:18]  I think that there's actually like a lot of hope there.
[01:24:20]  Plus, we are great allies to the United States and we invented ways.
[01:24:23]  I mean they so we've, I mean, we've spent a couple episodes now, three or four episodes.
[01:24:31]  We'll link to it here.
[01:24:33]  We're going to link to a bunch of episodes in this description.
[01:24:35]  That's always nice.
[01:24:35]  There we go.
[01:24:36]  But about the lobby and it's about the about the Israeli lobby, the kind of more like shadow lobby.
[01:24:42]  I mean that in a non-conspiratory way, but in a way that means it's like off the books, unofficial, not on any kind of register lobby, and how it operates in the United States.
[01:24:54]  And so for Israel getting around some of these FAR regulations, like they literally will employ American legal counsel to figure out how to get around those laws.
[01:25:05]  And just last month, friend of the show, Lee Fong, alongside Jack Poulson and The Guardian, they reported on the Israeli government efforts to circumvent FARA regulations, particularly in the wake of October 7th, right?
[01:25:21]  Basically, in the fear that if they were to comply, it would diminish their informational efforts and, and this is a direct quote, ensnare American groups working in coordination with the Israeli government.
[01:25:35]  Okay.
[01:25:36]  So Lee's reporting includes an Israeli legal memo that proposed creating a third-party American nonprofit, which to me, that's a shell company.
[01:25:45]  Yeah, it is.
[01:25:46]  In order to evade U.S. regulatory oversight.
[01:25:49]  It would be a nonprofit managed from Israel, but with supervision in the U.S. and means provided through like grant making and other informal coordination mechanisms.
[01:25:59]  That's a direct quote.
[01:26:00]  So this is all done separately from the traditional paid advertising content and traditional government public relations stuff that they do otherwise.
[01:26:08]  This is the off-the-book stuff.
[01:26:09]  So, well, I will say like the lobby, I think, really does a good job.
[01:26:14]  And so does like the sort of follow-up to it about like the stuff that went on with the Labor Party and like Labor Friends of Israel.
[01:26:21]  It's like everybody knows, like everybody knows that like these groups are just like front groups for the Israeli government, right?
[01:26:28]  Like pretty directly.
[01:26:29]  Not every single person working there is like has a fucking handler in like, you know, Israeli foreign ministry, but like they coordinate with them very directly.
[01:26:38]  They exist to serve and further the interests not of American Jews or worldwide Jewry, but of the Israeli government and of Israel.
[01:26:47]  But they're like completely immune from like, I mean, there was a fucking undercover documentary that came out that exposed, I had people on record saying this kind of stuff and nothing fucking happened.
[01:26:57]  Yeah.
[01:26:59]  Israel has one particular outfit.
[01:27:01]  It was originally known as Kelleshlomo.
[01:27:03]  Okay, Liz.
[01:27:03]  That's what it was.
[01:27:04]  You can't say that word.
[01:27:06]  Well, then it was renamed to Concert and then finally to Voices of Israel.
[01:27:09]  And it was designed to carry out what they call, quote, mass consciousness activities in the United States.
[01:27:15]  Okay, so Bob Marley listening.
[01:27:16]  Yeah.
[01:27:18]  It all gets set up in kind of a similar way that we're talking about with today.
[01:27:22]  It's like intermediaries, aka third-party nonprofits, aka shell companies.
[01:27:27]  So no direct money comes from Israel and therefore no propaganda has to mention that it's coming from the government.
[01:27:34]  Now, some of the organizations that work closely with Concert and now Voices of Israel include the ISGAP, aka the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy, who you got, I mean, people will probably remember because they were often cited in these insane hearings, congressional hearings, about all of the campus protests and the, I don't know, jihadi Harvard president or whatever.
[01:28:03]  Oh my god, President Gay.
[01:28:05]  That's right.
[01:28:06]  President Gay gone now.
[01:28:08]  Well, it's illegal to be gay now.
[01:28:11]  Yeah.
[01:28:12]  There's another company called Cyberwell, which is like a social media disinfo group.
[01:28:16]  You know, they work on policing disinformation.
[01:28:20]  They are actually an official partner to both TikTok and Meta.
[01:28:25]  And they recently lobbied Meta to suppress From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free, and flagging it as anti-Semitic and propaganda for Palestine.

=== Arrested Menendez Boot Wife (03:34) ===

[01:28:40]  Now, they deny working with the Israeli government and receiving funding, but I think they have to.
[01:28:46]  I mean, it's just, that's the thing.
[01:28:48]  It's like a link to all this reporting, by the way, because it's a great series of pieces.
[01:28:52]  I mean, but there's been some other like big, big FARA violators that have gone down, notably anyone for Israel.
[01:29:00]  No.
[01:29:01]  But like, you know, Robert Menendez and his wife with the gold bar sitting in the middle of the patron.
[01:29:05]  Menendez.
[01:29:06]  Shout out, Menendez.
[01:29:07]  We love you.
[01:29:08]  Come on the show.
[01:29:09]  And then gold bar.
[01:29:10]  My favorite one recently was famous neocon and Washington Post columnist Max Boot's wife, who got busted doing this shit for Korea.
[01:29:21]  For South Korea, unfortunately.
[01:29:22]  But it's like...
[01:29:23]  That would have been insane if Max Boot's wife was Juche.
[01:29:27]  I know.
[01:29:28]  I know.
[01:29:28]  I would love that.
[01:29:29]  What a twist.
[01:29:30]  But there's so much of this stuff.
[01:29:33]  My recommendation, ladies and gentlemen, is basically never take money from anybody from another country.
[01:29:39]  Well, I think it's really interesting that all of this stuff is like coming out.
[01:29:42]  I mean, you know, I think it reminds me a little bit, we were talking about this of the Espionage Act, which was like another very arcane, very broad, rarely used, you know, piece of legislation that became a very effective tool under the Obama administration.
[01:30:03]  And, you know, he was like, and, you know, he set the precedent for then it being used under the Trump administration and the, you know, whatever, although whatever.
[01:30:12]  And it's the same thing with FARA, right?
[01:30:14]  Where you have a kind of like arcane, broad, rarely used kind of like little stipulation.
[01:30:20]  It's a law in the books, but it's like, you know, it's never been used in this way.
[01:30:24]  And in, you know, with new, you know, you have a state that is stealing itself for what?
[01:30:31]  Who knows?
[01:30:32]  They don't probably know, but it is.
[01:30:34]  And they are finding new and novel legal interpretations in order to do so.
[01:30:40]  Yeah.
[01:30:41]  Right.
[01:30:41]  Yeah.
[01:30:42]  And so at least that kind of can shed some light a little bit on some directions with the state.
[01:30:49]  So Lauren Chen and her husband Liam have not been arrested yet.
[01:30:55]  I want to make that clear.
[01:30:56]  I mean, no one's been arrested because that indictment that we spent the beginning part of the episode talking about.
[01:31:02]  Obviously, two of the people that the people that are indicted are live in Russia.
[01:31:05]  They're not about to get indicted.
[01:31:06]  Or they're not going to get arrested.
[01:31:09]  I have seen this like theory put forward that these indictments came out so they can basically monitor anybody that Lauren Chen has talked to, thus monitoring all of their communications, which I think they are definitely doing.
[01:31:22]  And that includes like many writing personalities and, of course, Liz Francak.
[01:31:27]  But yeah, I bet that is true.
[01:31:30]  But like, I also have a feeling that Lauren Chen herself is maybe going to get arrested at some point.
[01:31:35]  Because it does seem from this stuff, obviously, this is the government's point of view, innocent until proven guilty.
[01:31:42]  But all of the people that I've seen who've gotten busted for this stuff pretty recently, I haven't really looked into the Kathy Hocholade, but like Menendez, Max Boot's wife, like Lauren Chen.
[01:31:54]  All these people were so blatant and obvious about it that it's like, I don't know who you guys are who is like, who's interfacing with the Menendez's from the fucking Egyptian Ministry of Defense or whatever, but you really got to maybe dot your I's and cross your T's a little bit more because everyone seemed to get busted because they were like really being sloppy with it.

=== Would Take From Uruguay (05:31) ===

[01:32:14]  And so I guess my advice to anyone listening to this is just don't get caught slipping.
[01:32:19]  Take all that motherfucking Chinese money you can, but do not get caught slipping.
[01:32:26]  If you struggle with brittle bones or joint pain, you must see this.
[01:32:30]  An ancient Spartan technique reveals a mind-blowing, natural way to rebuild bone density and reverse osteoporosis in record time.
[01:32:37]  Did you know?
[01:32:38]  Bone issues have absolutely nothing to do with your age.
[01:32:41]  A shocking link between bone health and a forgotten lifestyle was uncovered by researchers in Athens.
[01:32:46]  You know, not that I would take it.
[01:32:48]  Not that I would take it.
[01:32:51]  But it's just interesting that no one's ever offered this.
[01:32:54]  I know I did.
[01:32:55]  You know, I'll say this.
[01:32:56]  No one.
[01:32:57]  I know you're doing a bit, but...
[01:32:59]  Kind of.
[01:33:00]  When I was reading this, I was like, well, always the bridesmaid and everything.
[01:33:05]  I can't like Venice.
[01:33:06]  I mean, I would say no because we would get in trouble.
[01:33:10]  Who would you say yes to?
[01:33:11]  Venezuela.
[01:33:12]  Okay.
[01:33:12]  That's a good idea.
[01:33:15]  I would probably say yes to a lot of other people.
[01:33:17]  They got enough.
[01:33:19]  What about like just someone who doesn't get enough shine?
[01:33:23]  Like a person?
[01:33:25]  No, a country.
[01:33:26]  But like a tiny guy that maybe just needs some help, like getting some more attention.
[01:33:30]  Monaco?
[01:33:31]  No, I think they're good.
[01:33:33]  I'm a fan.
[01:33:33]  Unattention.
[01:33:34]  Yeah, you know what?
[01:33:36]  Rather than like Max Bestapen, the craziest name is like.
[01:33:40]  But all those F1 guys live in Monaco.
[01:33:42]  They're fine.
[01:33:42]  If Monaco was like, Brace, we'll give you, you know, five racks a week to fucking talk up Monaco on the pod.
[01:33:52]  Don't say anything.
[01:33:53]  I feel like people would catch me.
[01:33:54]  I don't think they would.
[01:33:56]  If I was every episode.
[01:33:58]  It's weird that Brace is so into Monaco.
[01:34:00]  Have you heard about this country?
[01:34:02]  And people would be like, yeah.
[01:34:03]  Yeah.
[01:34:04]  It's pretty fake.
[01:34:04]  It's like a city block long.
[01:34:06]  It's really cool.
[01:34:06]  They got to see a beautiful part of the world.
[01:34:09]  San Marino?
[01:34:11]  What would you take money from?
[01:34:13]  I don't know if I should say.
[01:34:16]  Well, because they're not around anymore?
[01:34:17]  If you're on the cheap date.
[01:34:19]  Really?
[01:34:20]  What are you going to say?
[01:34:21]  I don't know.
[01:34:22]  You're like, you'd do Saudi for 20 bucks an hour?
[01:34:25]  No.
[01:34:26]  I just mean that I wouldn't.
[01:34:28]  I think I would be a little less discerning than perhaps I should be.
[01:34:34]  Like you would do, what's the least discerning?
[01:34:36]  You got to get in while you can.
[01:34:37]  What is going on here?
[01:34:39]  You got to get in while you can, and then you just get on out of there when you got to.
[01:34:44]  Well, like, I would work for a non-state act.
[01:34:46]  Like, I'd work for the Wagner actor.
[01:34:48]  Yeah, if a non-state actor gave me a bunch of money.
[01:34:51]  The non-state actors don't really have that much money.
[01:34:54]  Some of them do.
[01:34:55]  But yeah.
[01:34:57]  I feel like I would feel so stupid taking money because I feel like I'd be so unconvincing that I would feel like I'd be ripping off like ISIS or whatever.
[01:35:04]  Yeah, You know, then they get it.
[01:35:07]  I would take from like Uruguay.
[01:35:09]  I'd take money from Uruguay, too.
[01:35:11]  I'd take money because I think that Uruguay might not even have that many farm motherfuckers up there.
[01:35:15]  They have some new hotel that everyone's going to go to, so it's like, I think they're fine.
[01:35:18]  They have a new hotel in Uruguay?
[01:35:19]  Yeah.
[01:35:20]  What news magazines do you read?
[01:35:22]  I read all of them.
[01:35:23]  They have a new hotel in Uruguay.
[01:35:24]  It's not new, but people are not in a hotel.
[01:35:26]  So they have an old hotel in Uruguay, but it's not.
[01:35:28]  They're not old either.
[01:35:29]  They have a hotel in Uruguay.
[01:35:31]  It's been around for a normal amount of time.
[01:35:34]  What about like, I'm trying to think.
[01:35:38]  I feel like I would do it for the Italians.
[01:35:41]  You would do it for Italy?
[01:35:42]  Well, what's up?
[01:35:43]  What do they need one for?
[01:35:45]  I don't know, but I'd like to find out.
[01:35:47]  Like, oh, it's actually, you know what?
[01:35:49]  can read there I would do it for thing is that the ones I would have you Obviously, Greece.
[01:35:55]  Dropped I Can.
[01:35:56]  I do it for Greece.
[01:35:57]  Absolutely.
[01:35:58]  No, because I don't actually, I have political problems with them.
[01:36:01]  What?
[01:36:02]  Because I think they're Turk and vice versa.
[01:36:04]  No, I think vice versa.
[01:36:05]  I want to make one per people's.
[01:36:06]  Me too.
[01:36:07]  This is what people don't understand.
[01:36:09]  How about what if we, there's got to be people in Greece that want that?
[01:36:12]  I would do it.
[01:36:13]  No, Liz, trust me on this.
[01:36:16]  No, none of that.
[01:36:17]  There's so many islands.
[01:36:18]  We got to just scour all of the Greek islands.
[01:36:20]  Yeah, Cyprus.
[01:36:21]  That was how that worked out.
[01:36:22]  That's the closest they came.
[01:36:23]  That didn't work out very well.
[01:36:25]  Lesbos.
[01:36:26]  I will say they don't call it Lesbos.
[01:36:27]  And Greek people will correct you.
[01:36:28]  My old Greece bosses used to be like, we don't call it that.
[01:36:30]  We call it some other fucking name.
[01:36:33]  But I would do it for like Transnistria.
[01:36:37]  What's the one that's like in Georgia?
[01:36:40]  Yeah, they do.
[01:36:41]  I would do it for like the fake Russian state that's on the top of Georgia.
[01:36:44]  I would do it for any unrecognized country.
[01:36:47]  But I don't think they got the bread.
[01:36:49]  Interesting.
[01:36:50]  Because it's like, am I a foreign agent if this isn't a real country?
[01:36:53]  Yeah.
[01:36:54]  Because by calling me a foreign agent, you're recognizing that this is a foreign country.
[01:36:58]  Ooh, you could get them that way.
[01:36:59]  That's on the top legal mind of my generation or any.
[01:37:02]  12-dimensional shows.
[01:37:04]  Like they have in Transnistria.
[01:37:05]  They also have really cool, they have the next, they have PS6s there.
[01:37:09]  They also have that three-booby lady from the movie.
[01:37:13]  Totally.
[01:37:14]  That's how all the ladies are there.
[01:37:16]  It's different in Transnistria.
[01:37:17]  They also have cigarettes that don't give you cancer.
[01:37:20]  Can you go there?
[01:37:21]  Me or anyone?
[01:37:23]  I think you can go there, but I would probably recommend.
[01:37:26]  I think it's just like you gotta tell people to go there.
[01:37:28]  I think it's like 30 miles that's just run by the mafia.
[01:37:31]  Yeah.
[01:37:31]  I don't know if you really want to go there.
[01:37:33]  But I would go there.
[01:37:33]  I've been to Moldova.
[01:37:35]  Yeah.
[01:37:35]  I had a great cup of coffee in Moldova.
[01:37:38]  Well, anyways.
[01:37:40]  My name is Liz.
[01:37:41]  My name is Brace.
[01:37:41]  We're, of course, joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[01:37:44]  And this has been Tronan.
[01:37:45]  We'll see you next time.