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May 24, 2023 - Viva & Barnes

01:00:06

Sidebar with Rachel Alexander - Viva & Barnes LIVE!

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	Hi, it's me, Patagonia, a real-life homosexual.
	And today, I'm here with the North Face.
	We are here to invite you to come out in nature with us!
	Wow, this is nice!
	We like to call this little tour the Summer of Pride.
	This tour has everything.
	Hiking, community, art, lesbians, lesbians making art.
	Last year, we gay-sau-shade across the nation and celebrated Pride across the nation.
	With hundreds of you across the nation.
	This year, we're back, back, back again with two new stops.
	Atlanta, GA.
	Why?
	Because you're there.
	In Salt Lake City, we're coming for you.
	Hi, can we go?
	Of course.
	This year, all these fabulous speakers will be coming from inside this TV to a nature near you.
	So come outside and celebrate the beautiful LGHG TV community.
	It's pretty gay.
	I don't know what's going on in the world anymore.
	That's a real ad.
	I swear to you, I thought it was fake before I saw an article about that being an actual ad for the North Face.
	And my satirical joke, we'll see who doesn't truly appreciate it, is that it's a very bold marketing...
	Campaign for the North Face to make fun of the drag craze.
	Patagonia?
	Are they...
	I mean, it has to be an idiotic joke because Patagonia is one of their competitors.
	Like, Patagonia actually makes quality outdoor gear compared to the North Face made-in-China crap.
	Patagonia.
	LGHGTV.
	Are they making fun of the absurdity of a never-ending, ever-growing acronym like the proverbial blob?
	I think the North Face is making fun of the drag community.
	Bold marketing technique.
	We'll see if it pays off.
	All right, I had to find something to start this stream with.
	Everybody, this is going to be phenomenal.
	Some people in the chat were saying, why would we possibly be competing with Ron DeSantis on Twitter Spaces now announcing his presidential run?
	And I'm like, Ron DeSantis has some nerve making his announcement during our sidebar.
	No, we're not postponing our sidebar.
	All right.
	Yes, you can go.
	It's very interesting.
	I was listening to it myself, but I think I've gotten what I need to get out of it.
	Everybody, Rachel Alexander.
	You might not have ever heard of her.
	I did not know who she was until I started doing my homework today.
	And I thought I stumbled across the greatest scandal ever until I understood exactly what that scandal represents.
	We're going to talk about it.
	Rachel Alexander.
	I forget the exact title of the position.
	Lawyer attorney within Arizona state government decided to prosecute corruption and corruption won.
	We're going to talk about a lot of stuff.
	Barnes is here.
	Rachel is here.
	Okay, so I'm going to bring in Barnes first.
	That way when Rachel comes in, I can put my screen on the bottom.
	Rachel, we are coming in in 3, 2, 1. I forgot all of my standard intro disclaimers.
	No medical advice, no election fortification advice.
	We're going to be leaving YouTube in a few minutes to go exclusive to Rumble.
	Let me just make sure that we're currently on Rumble, which I think we are.
	All right, Rachel.
	This is your first appearance on the sidebar.
	The standard thing, 30,000 foot overview before we get into childhood memories and deep repressed...
	I'm joking.
	30,000 foot overview for those who don't know who you are.
	Basically, I am a journalist now in Arizona.
	I write for the Arizona Sun-Times.
	I also have an opinion column for Town Hall.
	It runs on some other sites.
	And my history prior to that was, as you said, I was a lawyer.
	That included working as an assistant attorney general for the Arizona Attorney General's Office.
	I was a deputy county attorney, special assistant.
	I was the Maricopa County elections attorney.
	I was also a Maricopa County prosecutor.
	I was a corporate attorney for GoDaddy.
	Born and raised in Arizona?
	Nope.
	I grew up in the Seattle area half my life and I was so disgusted at how liberal it was becoming that I fled to Arizona and now they're taking over my next state I fled to too.
	Robert, go for it.
	I got so many questions in a bit, but go for it.
	Sure.
	Why Phoenix?
	You mean why did I pick Phoenix?
	Yep.
	Because back when I chose to move here, there were only a few red states that had a lot to offer.
	And, you know, I like to do a lot of hiking and, you know, outdoor stuff.
	So of all the red states, Phoenix made sense, especially since being from Seattle, where it just rained constantly, I really wanted a dry climate to go hiking.
	Rachel, I think ordinarily we would do a lot more of the youth stuff, but just so we can get contextualized, parents, what did they do?
	Siblings, what was your childhood like?
	And then we're going to get into what the hell happened in Arizona.
	So I am one of those very fortunate people who is privileged because I grew up with a very traditional Christian conservative home.
	We didn't have a lot of money, but we had...
	Awesome parents.
	So my dad was a prosecutor and then a judge, and then he became a pastor later in life.
	My younger brother is an attorney, too.
	So I like to say that half the family is attorneys.
	And my sister is in child evangelism ministry.
	My mom was a homemaker.
	And my older brother, my...
	He's now deceased from leukemia.
	He died at 41. He was a professor.
	He taught at Harvard and then moved on to Troy University.
	Now, what led to your interest in the law?
	You know, I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do in college.
	And Dad said to me one day, why don't you go to law school like I did?
	And I really thought...
	That my older brother was going to go to law school, you know, and it just seemed kind of, you know, even though I was a good student and all that, I just kind of figured it was out of my league.
	And when my older brother decided not to go to law school, you know, I was in his shadow.
	I thought, okay, I guess it's me.
	How did you get involved in Arizona politics?
	So you get your law degree.
	Did you work as an attorney in private practice on your own, or did you go straight into the cesspool of political life?
	Yeah, I pretty much went straight into government law.
	It all happened as an accident, though.
	A lot of these positions don't pay very well.
	Despite the fact that it sounds really prestigious, Arizona Assistant Attorney General.
	Well, I mean, my first job out of law school was that, and I made $38,500 a year.
	And a lot of those positions aren't even very enjoyable.
	I mean, like child support collections.
	You can be an assistant attorney general, and that's what you do.
	Now, I got lucky.
	I ended up representing judges.
	And so when the left comes after me and says, I don't know anything about racketeering lawsuits, and the left said this in their legal opinions about me too, That's actually not true.
	I represented a lot of Maricopa County Superior Court judges on racketeering lawsuits when I was at the AG's office.
	How long were you at the AG's office?
	I was there 2000 to 2003 under Janet Napolitano some of that time.
	This might be our time.
	We're going to end this quickly on YouTube.
	It doesn't change anything from our end, but I got questions that...
	I don't think they'll get us into trouble on YouTube because I'm going to publish this on YouTube tomorrow anyhow, but just in case...
	Not just in case.
	We're going to move to Rumble, people, and carry this discussion on.
	The question's going to be, for those of you who don't know, Rachel Alexander, with two other attorneys, was ultimately sanctioned and disbarred because of alleged abuse of power in prosecuting potential criminal activity of other Arizona elected officials.
	As if that is not the embodiment of Ruhu Nebatus.
	When you fight corruption, corruption fights back.
	So come on over to Rumble if you're interested in that story and watch it on replay.
	For the rest of the people who are not going to move over to Rumble.
	Okay, ending it on YouTube, on Rumble.
	All right, Rachel.
	Look, I know the bottom line is you've been sanctioned.
	You've been disbarred.
	You have $100,000 in fees that you're ordered to repay.
	But my goodness, you started working for the Arizona, as an Arizona attorney general or assistant.
	What was the title again?
	Arizona Assistant Attorney General.
	Assistant Attorney General.
	This is in the year 2000.
	Your job, you know, might be tedious.
	What happens?
	How do you go from the job, doing your job, to being on the receiving end of sanctions and disbarment and legal fees and all the rest?
	And let me clarify.
	The other two attorneys were disbarred.
	I wasn't actually disbarred.
	They only suspended my license for six months.
	But that's part of the corruption.
	They are so corrupt that they will never let me back in, even though the six months, you know, ran and went.
	And I can get into that.
	But, I mean, basically what happened was I left the Attorney General's office and went to GoDaddy because I had a lot of law school loans and I can't live off of $38,500 a year in my loans.
	So I went to GoDaddy for a couple years, worked under Christine Jones there.
	A lot of people know her now because she ran for Congress here and governor.
	And then Andy Thomas, this up-and-comer who had ran for Arizona Attorney General on a very conservative platform, he reached out to me after he got elected Maricopa County Attorney end of 2004 and said, I want you to come work for me as a special assistant.
	I want you to head up and be the Maricopa County Elections Attorney and some other things and special assistant.
	So I started there in 2005.
	And by then, I had my little blog, I See Arizona, going, and I would post his press releases.
	You know, I was kind of a noisy person.
	I have a background in tech, so I really got into social media when it first emerged and all that.
	So what happened was Andy Thomas decided to go on a public corruption crackdown with Sheriff Jarrell Fio.
	Sheriff Joe Arpaio, people don't even realize this.
	He did not crack down on illegal immigration until Andy came along.
	Like, Sheriff Joe Arpaio wanted to prosecute this Patrick Harb, this Army reservist, for rounding up illegal immigrants who we believe was putting him in danger.
	And Andy said, no, I'm not going to prosecute Harb because he hasn't done anything wrong.
	There's a statute that allows you to do that.
	So once that happened, there was a change.
	And so Arpaio then became more aggressive on illegal immigration.
	So, Andy helped get four laws passed in the legislature in 2006, and they all passed with over 70% of voter approval, cracking down on illegal immigration.
	One of them was no bail for illegal immigrants who commit serious crimes.
	Well, Andy found out that the Maricopa County Superior Court judges were circulating a memo instructing the judges not to enforce that law.
	So, despite the fact that, you know, the Arizona Bar has what I believe an unconstitutional rule for lawyers stating that you cannot criticize judges, that's a complete violation of the First Amendment, in my opinion, and he held a press conference and he denounced the judges for not upholding the law.
	Well, that was the beginning of the end.
	And then the Maricopa County supervisors and the judges, we believe, were complicit.
	Hold on, hold on.
	If I could stop you there.
	This memo that was circulating internally among the judges.
	How did you get it?
	Is it black and white, clear and unequivocal?
	We're not following this law.
	Don't maintain, I guess, release violent illegal immigrants.
	100%.
	And by the way, this has all been out there in writing on the web.
	Andy's written about it extensively.
	He's got this 26-page document going over all of this.
	No one has ever threatened him or me for libel over anything we've said.
	And, you know, I go on shows all the time and talk about it, and I've never had one threat.
	So, yeah, if we want, you know, we can always see if Annie can dig up that actual letter, but that has never been disputed.
	So, basically, things got worse because the judges and the county supervisors have a cozy relationship because the county supervisors control the judges.
	Budgets.
	So the judges don't ever want to rule against the county supervisors, right?
	So in part of this public corruption crackdown, which Andy and Arpaio went after Republicans too, not just Democrats.
	They went after, you know, corrupt county supervisors.
	And there were two of them.
	You know, Dawn Stapley was a Republican.
	Mary Rose Wilcox was a Democrat.
	They both did very corrupt things, in my opinion.
	I now say that Maricopa County is the most corrupt county now.
	It's no longer Cook County.
	Because Jesse Jackson Jr. did the same exact thing that Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley did, and Jesse Jackson Jr. went to prison for two years.
	Don Stapley, on the other hand, got all the charges dismissed, got the prosecutor disbarred, and turned around and got himself awarded $3.5 million from the taxpayers for stress.
	And what these two guys did was they raised money for campaigns and then they spent it all on luxury items.
	And Stapley's case was even more outrageous because he didn't even have an opponent.
	He was running for the National Association of County Supervisors, the president, and nobody was running against him.
	But he raised $70,000 and spent it all on luxury items for him, his wife, his family.
	He took them on trips around the country.
	Expensive stereo equipment, super nice clothing for his wife from New York City.
	Rachel, just to play devil's advocate, that was done in an attempt to deter anybody from running against totally necessary election expenses.
	Bada bing, bada boom, I'm joking.
	Okay, sorry.
	I'm trying to find some levity in this because this is madness.
	Okay, please go on.
	So then how does this all tie in?
	Because there was the court tower corruption.
	Basically, in the midst of a recession, The county supervisors decided that they would build this Taj Mahal Court Tower $350 million for the judges.
	And the judges would get penthouse rooms, private robing rooms, travertine, marble, porcelain.
	I mean, you can't make this stuff up.
	And it was all bought cash only, not even on bonds, right?
	And it's so irresponsible.
	And they were, like, paying this cozy attorney who's, like, buddies with everybody and related to everybody in the state bar and the judges, this guy named Tom Irvin, to, like, sit and be paid, like, I think it was $900 an hour as a space planner, sit through these meetings.
	So, you know, Thomas tried to object and he tried to investigate it.
	And he couldn't get anywhere because the judges would just throw out anything he tried to do if he ever tried to, like, go after the county supervisors.
	He tried to get other county attorneys to then look into the county supervisor saying, okay, well, maybe there's a conflict of interest since I'm supposed to represent them.
	He couldn't get any other county attorneys to dare to take them on.
	So he tried to prosecute one of the judges.
	Everybody said, well, that's where it was all over.
	Once you go after a judge, they look out for their own.
	Sure enough, this former state bar president told me off the record one day, he's like, yep, a bunch of retired judges went to the bar and said, you need to do something about Thomas.
	Another establishment insider echoed that and said, don't worry about it.
	The establishment will take care of Thomas.
	That was pretty much the beginning of the end.
	The two corrupt county supervisors, the other one, the Democrat Mary Rose Wilcox, who everybody's known here forever, was corrupt.
	She basically didn't disclose on her financial forums that she received a loan from the far-left group Chicano's Por La Casa, and then she went and voted on things involving Chicano's Por La Casa.
	You're not supposed to do that.
	You're supposed to refuse yourself.
	So, yeah, that's when the bar complaints started, and they filed them against us in late 2009.
	Andy filed a racketeering lawsuit against the county supervisors and a judge and their joint attorneys.
	I mean, you can see how all this is so crooked.
	They're sharing attorneys.
	And he came to me in December of 2009 and said, Hey, Rachel, I had the other prosecutor was disbarred, Lisa Obershaw.
	I had her launch the RICO complaint.
	Well, since she's also doing the prosecutions, maybe you should put your name on the thing instead.
	For a couple months, and we'll find these other attorneys, like Victoria Tenzing and her husband, they were going to take over the case, right?
	But the county supervisors would never let anybody else take over any of these cases.
	They would just veto it because they had statutory authority to.
	So my name got stuck on this case.
	It was already filed.
	I didn't even draft it.
	And then I was instructed to work underneath this RICO expert for the office.
	Sleazebag, sorry, named Pete Spa.
	And he, so everything looked good, right?
	I was a 10-year attorney at that time.
	I was working under the expert in the office.
	Nothing wrong with that scenario.
	Well, Pete Spa ended up filing an amendment to the racketeering lawsuit.
	He didn't include anything of my research or anything.
	He just, he'd come up with this mail fraud claim that he wanted to add.
	So that's all that ever happened to it.
	And then we started talking to some former DOJ officials like Bob Driscoll.
	And Driscoll said, hey, I can get the DOJ to just look into this instead, and you guys can just withdraw the complaint.
	So that's what we agreed to.
	And by the way, my name was on the complaint as the lead attorney, but Pete's name actually wasn't on it, even though he had the login and he did all the filings.
	So at that point...
	The bar didn't even want to come after Pete Spa.
	They only came after me because Pete Spa is like some liberal part-time pastor guy.
	I mean, so he's not their target.
	I'm their target.
	Even though Pete Spa did way more than I did, nothing happened to Pete Spa.
	They pretty much just said, okay, we'll just put you on probation and you can keep your job at the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.
	Whereas me, they...
	It was crazy what they did.
	First of all, they wanted to spend my law license for four months.
	And then when they started this big disbarment trial against us, like they did all three of us at the same time, streamed live for two and a half months to humiliate us, held in the Arizona Supreme Court's courtroom, which was unprecedented, right?
	They're trying to make an example of us.
	The bar realized how bad their case was against me, and they kept trying to offer me settlements.
	And by the way, this is why I can't stand Jen Ellis, because she caved in and said she had made misrepresentations about, you know, Trump and election fraud.
	So they came to me and they kept offering me all these different settlements.
	Like, how about probation for two years?
	How about probation for one year?
	How about you just take some extra continuing legal education courses?
	Or, you know, they backed it down to like almost nothing.
	They were just like, well, why don't you just say you kind of regret what happened?
	And I just said, nope.
	Sorry, never going to admit any wrongdoing at all.
	I can't do that.
	I didn't do anything wrong.
	We were trying to root out corruption.
	And so, you know, sure enough, this totally sleazy Arizona disciplinary bar judge, O 'Neill, who the Arizona Republic is actually, which is very liberal, has written two horrible pieces on.
	This guy is so corrupt.
	You don't get that.
	You don't get a left-wing rag to write horrible articles about a judge.
	It just doesn't happen unless the guy's really a bad apple.
	So he basically, you know, ordered my license suspended for not just six months, but six months and one day.
	So I'd have to take the bar exam again, you know, and disbarred the other two.
	And the other two, when they had a settlement conference, they actually told them, they're like, well, there's no settlement to offer you because we're just going to disbarble for you.
	Like, they knew in advance.
	It was just like a bogus settlement conference.
	So that's kind of where that ended.
	And, you know, we...
	Appealed, like, on my own.
	The county's so corrupt, they wouldn't pay for me to have an attorney to appeal, even.
	And they, which is unprecedented.
	I mean, with deputy county attorneys, they always pay your bar disciplinary stuff costs.
	And so Lisa and I, we appealed together, and we went up to the 9th Circuit, and, you know, they ruled against us.
	Then we appealed pretty much pro se.
	We had one guy kind of representing us, like, in name only, really.
	They ended up going after him and disciplining him.
	And then this other attorney that Lisa had representing her for free because he was so disgusted at the injustice.
	This is the partner of Jerry Spence, you know, that First Amendment great criminal defense attorney from Montana.
	His partner came down to Phoenix, represented Lisa for free.
	They ended up disciplining him.
	So anyone who tried to help us got burned.
	And, like, there was a Democrat guy who was...
	Former president of the Arizona State Bar.
	His name escapes me, but it's in all the documentation.
	Ernie Calderon.
	So he actually was an expert testimony, you know, in defense of us.
	And the state bar retaliated against him.
	He was supposed to be their representative to the national ABA stuff.
	And they took it back from him.
	So that was that.
	And finally, let's see, is there anything else?
	We had all these incredible experts testifying for us, like Congressman Bob Barr, you know, basically just saying this is the worst political witch hunt.
	And in the beginning, the Arizona Repugnant was on our side.
	They were just saying this is the most corruption, you know, we've ever seen.
	They're really going after these people wrongly.
	And they were citing some of the corruption.
	Like the county supervisors, you know, people wonder about land fraud that's going on here in Arizona.
	It is.
	Go look at who donates to the county supervisors' campaigns.
	What they were doing was the contractors building the Pricey Court Tower were giving kickbacks, their employees were giving kickbacks to Maricopa County Supervisor employees in the forms of super expensive tickets to sporting events, entertainment events.
	And they actually, back in the early days, back then, they actually did get caught.
	They did get fired.
	They got prosecuted.
	So, you know, we were really getting somewhere with the corruption.
	But at some point, it all just changed.
	And, you know, everybody thinks once, you know, Andy went after a judge, you're not allowed to go after a judge.
	Wow.
	That gives us a flavor for the absolute state of Arizona.
	So your bar license is suspended for six months and one day, meaning you have to retake the bar exam.
	Did you retake the bar exam?
	You said it hadn't been reinstated, and I guess that's how you either voluntarily or involuntarily made your way into journalism?
	Okay, so yeah.
	What happened was, I forgot to mention, after O 'Neill suspended my bar license for six months plus one day, I appealed it on my own, pro se, you know, and that went to the Arizona Supreme Court and they actually bounced it back down to just six months so I wouldn't need to take the bar exam.
	And I'd also been ordered to take some CLE classes.
	So once the six months was over with, I applied to get back into the bar and they said no.
	You can't get back into the bar unless you pay $101,000 the cost of the disciplinary proceedings against you and your two superiors.
	Have you ever heard of anything like that, you guys?
	Like, I have to pay the bar cost of my two superiors.
	I wasn't even calling the shots.
	And so I can't come up with that money.
	You know, they've destroyed me financially.
	I lost my home to foreclosure because nobody would hire me.
	I had the worst reputation in the state, you know?
	And so...
	And I also believe even if I could come up with the money, I believe they would find a pretense to keep me out.
	And I'm a writer.
	You go over any of my writing, I write about state bar abuses.
	I write about, you know, attorney abuses.
	I mean, it'll be so easy for them to keep me out.
	But the good news is, you guys, I'd actually been trying to get out of practicing law a long time ago.
	So I needed to move on anyway.
	I mean, I just, it's not...
	I wanted to be more of a writer anyway.
	And if I was still a licensed member of the bar right now, I could not write what I do.
	You know, they would come after me for all these bar ethical rules.
	Now, I mean, you guys might have seen, I wrote an article a few months ago called Why Judges Will Never Rule There Was Voter Disenfranchisement of Republicans.
	I couldn't do that if I was a licensed member of the bar because that would be criticizing judges.
	Well, you couldn't do it for long.
	You could do it.
	Meet the same fate you met.
	Robert, you got a cold, eh?
	Oh, yeah.
	Bad one, yeah.
	Jeez, Luis.
	Okay.
	I'll carry this.
	I got all the questions.
	Although, Barnes, I might need your expertise on the Carrie Lake outcome here.
	So you're in the journalizing.
	Oh, by the way, Rachel, just also, you know, anecdotally, I, in my 13-plus years of practice, never got an ethics complaint.
	The only two I ever got were anonymous.
	Well, one was anonymous, one wasn't.
	After I really had no active practice, one was because of a video I made criticizing our Supreme Leader of Quebec, François Legault, and the other one was for a tweet I made criticizing Justin Trudeau for his medical assistance in dying or, as I like to call it, state-sanctioned murder in Canada.
	It's an amazing thing.
	They weaponized the licenses to try to suppress the free speech when it has nothing to do with ongoing cases, specific examples, whatever.
	So you get into journalism.
	That particular article, I mean, you now experience the corruption of Arizona.
	I think we could call it that.
	What was your ultimate underlying reason for which you knew this Carrie Lake, it would go nowhere judicially, although it's gone somewhere, you know, zeitgeist-wise.
	What was the basis for your reasoning?
	Oh, okay.
	So what was the basis for my reasoning that I thought the case would go nowhere?
	Go nowhere, yeah.
	Or why the Arizona judges would never do what the law suggested they should do, given where the facts are.
	Okay, so that, yeah, is covered in that article I wrote.
	What I believe is these judges, and I've had a lot of people, you guys, come to me privately since I wrote that article and say, Rachel, what you said is 100% right.
	They would say, my uncle's a judge, or I worked in the judicial system for years, and everything you said is 100% true.
	Basically, these judges are just people who have been behind the scenes most of their life.
	They don't want to be in the public eye.
	They're very rarely in the news for a decision.
	And they've crafted this reputation as an erudite legal scholar for themselves.
	And they tend to be very traditional people with families and children that they have to support.
	So if they come out as the only judge, because right now there's not a single judge in the country who's ever, you know, ruled in favor of any of these election fraud cases involving Republicans.
	If they come out and they actually give us a positive ruling, they will be known the rest of their career as the election denier judge.
	They will be harassed.
	They will be stalked.
	People will show up at their homes.
	They will harass their children.
	They will never get to talk about anything.
	They'll never get to go to any cocktail party, be on any TV show.
	Without having to talk about why they're an election fraud denier.
	And nobody wants to just have that be the rest of their life.
	And then they'll probably find a way to get disciplined, removed.
	The left will target them.
	They'll come in for the first time ever.
	It's like the second time in like 40 years.
	Three Maricopa County judges were removed in a retention election in Maricopa County last fall.
	That never happens.
	The left targeted them.
	They figured out how to get these judges out of office.
	So I guarantee you, all those Arizona judges are scared.
	They came after Arizona Supreme Court Justice Bill Montgomery this last election.
	They didn't remove him, but it wasn't a really hardcore effort.
	They're probably going to come after him a lot harder in 2024 for other things that he's done.
	But they all know this.
	And you know what?
	I can say this off the record.
	Some of these Arizona...
	By that I mean, I'm not giving a lot of details.
	I have heard from Arizona Supreme Court judges that they are absolutely terrified.
	And some of them are hoping people will come out with a guide about them, like who to vote for and support, because they realize the left is going to be targeting them here in 2024.
	So instead of everybody just voting no on the judges, because nobody ever knows anything about the judges, we have to at least tell people.
	Who are the mostly good ones?
	Because otherwise, Hobbes is going to replace them with a far-left Democrat.
	I was going to tell you, if you thought this was off the record, I should have been clear before we went live.
	Yeah, yeah, no, that's the wrong phrase to use.
	I know, I know.
	I'm being a, just to make a joke.
	The judges in Arizona, by and large, are appointed, correct?
	Yes, there's a few counties where they actually run, and then also our lower-level judges, the Justices of the Peace, those all run.
	Can you explain how in Arizona there's an old Republican machine that McCain was part of but didn't completely originate?
	A lot of people didn't know the background of Trump and McCain conflict in Arizona, that it actually goes to McCain's camp, the establishment camp in Arizona, hating the populist wing of the Republican Party in Arizona.
	And going to great lengths to suppress them, of which the case you talk about was one of those cases that anytime somebody tried to deal with illegal immigration, anytime anybody tried to deal with corruption in the system, a lot of it Republican corruption, that it wouldn't go anywhere and there'd be a great effort to suppress them.
	McCain had been very nasty in his attack on Trump supporters.
	That's where that Trump joke came from about, I like my heroes not captured and all that.
	It was in response to McCain and McCain's people bashing his supporters in Arizona.
	And this has continued through the late campaign, that there was a huge effort by the old establishment that's kind of fading out in Arizona, but still has great institutional power in the corporate law firms, in the judgeships, in the...
	Supervisor positions, in the election officialdom, in the bureaucracy that is continually suppressing, and they care more, they would rather have a Democrat in than a populist Republican in, these so-called Republicans.
	Could you explain some of that context for people who otherwise look at it and like, why are Republicans the big obstacle for Carrie Lake to get a fair election?
	I wrote another article that if you guys haven't read, definitely look it up.
	I wrote it about a month or two ago called Why Rhinos Are Rhinos.
	And it centers exactly on that.
	What's going on is these people like McCain and Karen Taylor Robeson, who was the rhino candidate who ran in the primary against Carrie Lake.
	They are rhinos because they're very wealthy.
	They're very entrenched.
	They're very established.
	They have money to protect.
	McCain married a very wealthy woman, Cindy McCain, with her beer empire.
	And so that is the empire that he had to protect.
	And once you get into those big business levels, you're this wealthy business person, no too many people, you're going to start offending people if you take a lot of conservative viewpoints.
	And so, like, the one area I really have noticed it, and I think I wrote another article focusing on this, was there are various government regulations, a lot of federal government regulations, that apply to corporations and business.
	And, you know, they say, you must do this, you must do this, you must have this diversity platform, you must, you know, all these left-wing things, and a lot of them are, like, snuck in through the company's HR policies.
	If you've got one of these businesses that's backing you and funding you, you can't come out with a conservative position or this business backing you is going to pull out.
	Or let's say it's your own business, like in terms of, you know, the McCain's.
	The government is going to punish that business for your political positions taking a right position.
	So to get on my soapbox.
	Knowing all this behind the scenes, it makes me so furious when these rhinos come out, like Karen Taylor Robson, McCain, and they act like, we're just the principled ones.
	We're just the ones who are looking at the facts, and we're the ones blah, blah, blah.
	No, that's not it at all.
	It all comes down to follow the money.
	Yes, exactly.
	I mean, their sort of condescending arrogance is something to behold.
	They always said Breaking Bad could have been in Phoenix as easily as Albuquerque in terms of understanding a lot of the politics, or particularly better call Saul, put it that way, and understanding how the legal system truly operates there.
	Now, people have questions like, what are some of the other institutional, like, I think there's been too much made of it.
	But at the same time, maybe also not enough made of it within institutional media, which is to what degree is cartel influence a real issue in Arizona?
	I see some people, like there was a person who went before the state legislature that made claims that I thought were, I think you outed early on, these were not well-substantiated evidentiary claims and so forth.
	On the flip side...
	Given that money laundering mostly goes through real estate, given the strength, given that cartels increasingly have taken over the illegal immigration trade, you can watch Sicario and get a sense of these things.
	It's not that hidden.
	But to what degree is their cartel influence in the political infrastructure, if you will, the architecture, in the way that happened in Miami in the 80s?
	Basically built every one of those high-rises.
	They built those banks.
	They used to walk in with huge trash bags of cash.
	Later portrayed in movies like Scarface and other films and the Cocaine Cowboy documentary series and all of that.
	How much is it real?
	We've seen where it's overstated, also maybe where it's understated.
	How much is that part of the problem of now corruption taking on a new level in Arizona?
	First of all, you probably know that our current alleged Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, is a cartel lawyer.
	He used to represent the cartels.
	And secondly, I believe that there's been a lot of cartel infiltration of, I don't know if it's as much the garbage industry here in Arizona, but I know a lot of the land industry.
	So when you had that corrupt court tower that was built, I'm sure a lot of those contractors had ties to the cartels.
	The problem is, is nobody wants to investigate it and nobody wants to talk because nobody wants to be killed by the cartels.
	I've been asked myself many times, are you fearful for your life that the cartels are going to come after you, Rachel?
	And people are just constantly warning me, you know?
	So it is a real threat and it's just...
	It's just a matter of who wants to try to dig and get to the bottom of it.
	When I was at the prosecutor's office, we instituted a gun training program for concealed weapons carry because so many of the prosecutors there had hits out on them from the cartels.
	Wow.
	There was this story about...
	I tried to get into some of the details.
	Katie Hobbs' alleged affiliation with the cartels, money laundering.
	It made the rounds over the summer.
	Are you familiar with that story or any of Katie Hobbs' alleged ties?
	That's the one that ultimately was never credible, in my view.
	That particular allegation.
	Yeah, I mean, it was kind of exciting at first, and we were all thinking, wow, maybe this is the smoking gun.
	But the problem is, okay, that was that witness who testified to the Arizona legislature a couple months ago.
	She was a representative of this attorney named John Thaler, and she basically said that Katie Hobbs and other elected officials in Arizona, including some really respected officials like Wendy Rogers, Senator Wendy Rogers, said that they had fraudulent deeds that involved cartel involvement.
	Well, here's the problem.
	Everybody and their brother then went and researched all those deeds, including myself.
	I had a real estate expert look at Katie Hobbs' deeds.
	And nobody has been able to find anything tying it to the cartels.
	Now, granted, when the witness testified, she said that this John Thaler attorney who she worked for and apparently was her boyfriend, he had been the boyfriend or married to a woman who worked for the cartels.
	And so it sounded like that woman who worked for the cartels might have really done some fraudulent deeds for them, but they weren't fraudulent deeds involving Katie Hobbs or any of these elected officials.
	So that's kind of where that's at.
	I mean, right away I was suspect, though.
	I often think some of those stories are put in...
	Which relates to another story.
	Early on when I was representing President Trump for a period of time in 2020, I was concerned that there was an effort to focus attention on Dominion to distract attention from signature matches, which was the team I was part of, our focus, in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.
	Arizona as well.
	And that in the same sense that there was a part of that story that I have zero doubts there's deep cartel involvement with money laundering and real estate in Arizona.
	I just have deeper doubts that some rando is going to...
	Come across it easily on real estate deeds.
	They're not that unsophisticated.
	Those are some sophisticated boys operating in that neck of the woods.
	I'm not saying I know any of them, but it is what it is.
	And I was just going to say, what we need to do is we need to get some deputy county attorney to go off the record, behind the scenes with us, because those are the people who are researching that stuff in depth.
	That's how we're really going to find out.
	But are all of them now terrified because of what happened to you guys?
	Oh, yeah.
	If they stumble into a judge being involved or a supervisor being involved, they're going to be like, I don't want to end up like Rachel Alexander or the other people.
	Oh, yeah.
	The current Maricopa County attorney, Rachel Mitchell, who we all thought was going to be tremendous because she testified at Kavanaugh's judicial confirmation hearing saying that the accuser was not credible.
	She's just, you know, completely caved.
	I mean, she's terrified.
	She has now asked for sanctions twice against Carrie Lake.
	So, and I told, and before we started the show, I told Vivi Frey that basically now it's just common for conservative attorneys around me here in Arizona to be under the investigation by the bar, especially the election attorneys, or they've already been disciplined.
	There's bar complaints again.
	You know, Alex Kolodin, he's one of our Most wonderful election attorneys in the state, and he's now serving in the state legislature.
	Kabar has been investigating him.
	He's an election attorney for two years now.
	Yeah, I remember I was talking to somebody after my second contempt hearing that I think I was out of practice by five years.
	I was like, I've broken a lot.
	I beat Clarence Darrow's record.
	I beat Jerry Spence's record.
	I beat all their records that I had judges coming after me early in my career.
	People should take it as a testament to doing your job, not take it as a...
	Reasons to be intimidated or afraid of these people.
	But it's the nature of it.
	I had pointed to your case as one of the key examples of people trying to explain to them Arizona politics.
	That it is basically, it makes Mayor Daley would blush at the scale of corruption in Arizona.
	And that a lot of it's on the Republican side of the aisle.
	Now you've covered the Cary Lake trial.
	I thought a lot of great facts came out from that.
	Even if the court system was going to stick its head in the sand about the problems in Arizona, we know a lot more about the shenanigans going on than we would have otherwise, but for Carrie Lake's willingness to ignore the critics and take it forward.
	What are some of the highlights that you've seen from watching, following, and observing the trials?
	Well, basically, this judge is so corrupt, and he will be one of the first ones that conservatives are going to target in the next retention election to boot out.
	Basically, he's just like a masterpiece.
	First-year law students should watch and read and learn about how he's conducted this trial as to how you can completely just abuse the legal system, because that's what he's done.
	He basically just ignores...
	All the evidence, okay?
	When you've got a video of somebody just going through comparing voters' signatures on their mail-in ballots, and they're just going, approve, approve, approve, approve, approve.
	That's not comparing.
	That's violating the law.
	But he's so good at just nitpicking and coming up with these fake excuses like, well, there's nothing in the law that says you have to spend a certain amount of seconds to verify a signature, so too bad.
	Terry, Lake put on an expert that said it's impossible to verify, compare a signature that fast.
	Well, no, he had an even more, I think it's disingenuous, and Robert, you'll tell me if it's legally untenable.
	He says, there was no evidence adduced that it would have materially impacted the outcome or that, you know, it would have favored Carrie Lake, as if that was the purpose of showing...
	That the absence of a signature verification would have been to the benefit of Carrie Lake.
	I thought that was an error in law, Robert, but am I...
	Well, yeah, and on that point, she did make that.
	She showed there were more than 18,000 ballots.
	So that's where his core factual foundation is to say that if you compare signatures in 0.1 seconds, you've performed your statutory duty.
	And you notice he never says that.
	I knew he was going to screw her, but I was curious how.
	I was curious, would he say overtly that they actually did their job and confirmed signatures when they confirmed 100% Under two seconds, for example, those that confirmed in that category.
	He managed to find a way not to say those explicit words.
	They're buried in other parts and indirect and all the rest.
	But yeah, I thought that was a major shock as to the process.
	What other evidentiary aspects came out from what Carrie Lake exposed that show the need for what went wrong in 2022 and what needs to get fixed before 2024?
	Well, one thing I like to push back against the MSM and the left is they always claim there's never any evidence.
	Well, a basic, you know, first year law student knows that witness testimony counts as evidence.
	And so there was plenty of witness testimony from two level one whistleblowers, as well as the expert witness that Lake's team brought.
	And so I thought what they said was pretty damning.
	You know, the level one whistleblowers were saying things like.
	The second level signature reviewers were so overwhelmed that they weren't even reviewing the signatures.
	They were just kicking them back to the first level reviewers.
	And if you look at other election contests around the country, which I have covered in some of my other articles, especially at Town Hall, you will see that judges order new elections all the time.
	For very small issues, like in congressional race in Georgia, a primary, so it's not the right versus the left, there were four voters that were found to have been disenfranchised.
	So the judge ordered a whole new election.
	So basically this judge, Thompson, regarding those whistleblowers' testimony, he basically ignored all of their criticism.
	And then he basically acted like they were saying good things.
	He goes, well, they admitted that they participated in a signature review.
	And then, like, he's going insane standard, which he's acting like Carrie Lake has to show that there was absolutely no signature verification conducted at all in Maricopa County.
	And if you read the Arizona Supreme Court's opinion when they remanded the case back down to him to reconsider.
	They said nothing about the fact that she has to prove every single person never had their signature verified.
	And so I believe that's why the Arizona Supreme Court is actually going to, I will say, adjust his opinion, because I don't think they're ever going to rule for Kerry and say that there really was voter disenfranchisement of Republicans.
	But I believe that they won't let that stand, because they've already shown, and there are some good people on the Arizona Supreme Court.
	They've already shown by remaining the case back once, they've got some guns.
	Let me ask you the broader question.
	I mean, you moved from, I forget where, but I know it was West Coast to Arizona, Seattle, to escape that.
	When did you notice that infiltrating?
	I mean, I guess it's when you had your bar license attacked, but when did Arizona turn in a way that you don't find?
	Okay, 2020 election was it for me.
	I'm one of those ones when Fox News called Arizona for Biden on election night.
	Done with Fox News.
	And to me, that was it.
	Once they started cheating and stealing the elections here in 2020, yeah, Arizona is just way too corrupt.
	And, you know, I love Miami.
	I was just there, you know, last month.
	You know, I'd love to move to Miami, but I got to be honest.
	I mean, everybody's like, Rachel, you can't cut and run.
	You have to continue trying to save the state because I know the voter fraud issue so well now.
	I know the corruption issue so well.
	I'm a lawyer who's allowed to speak out.
	I'm not technically an attorney because I'm not licensed, but I'm still a lawyer.
	I mean, my plan is to stay here and fight.
	What do you think about Carrie Lake's announcement yesterday about creating a plan to outdo the Democrats at what the Democrats do in terms of getting mail-in ballots?
	I think it's genius.
	And if I can say this about Carrie Lake, because I've been writing about her now for a couple years.
	In fact, I wrote about her before she ever resigned to run for office.
	So I knew her a little bit back then when she was coming under fire from the left.
	The woman is a genius.
	And nobody ever gives her credit, probably because she's a very attractive woman.
	But the way she slices and dices the media is incredible.
	And this announcement that she's just made with a new GOTV effort, get out the boat effort, it's just one more of her brilliant things that she's come up with.
	And she's absolutely right.
	I mean, everybody's been saying that, you know, for years.
	We need to work on...
	That aspect of elections, getting out the vote, if we can't beat them at the cheat, well, then let's try to overwhelm them so much that they don't even want to try to do voter fraud.
	It'll be too obvious.
	Well, let's just see how many votes or ballots they disregard for signature verification issues when this is done, if it's done properly in the next election.
	So you're a journalist for Town Hall, right?
	Is the platform?
	Yeah, I read opinion columns there.
	And do you do this also independently, where people can find you, support you, and read your content off that platform?
	I am probably going to be starting a sub-stack by the end of the summer.
	It's in the works.
	And what are your plans for the upcoming 2024 elections in terms of coverage?
	And if I can ask the most politically divisive question that seems to be plaguing the right side of the aisle now.
	What's your take on DeSantis' announcement in as much as you were able to catch it?
	And who are you supporting between DeSantis and Trump?
	Yeah, I definitely opine about that.
	So for 2024, I'm definitely going to be focused on Arizona.
	I mean, that's my area of expertise, so I will definitely have a focus on that over national issues.
	But when it comes to Trump versus DeSantis, my opinion is very biased.
	Because everybody deserted me when the left came after me in 2010, and then they made it a blueprint of how to go after and take down other conservative attorneys.
	So I don't think we can desert Trump.
	They've now weaponized lawfare to the level of prosecution.
	At least with me, they didn't try to prosecute me.
	If we allow them to go after Trump and take him down with prosecution, it's going to set a really bad precedent.
	And they're just going to do the same thing against DeSantis and whoever is next running for president.
	So for that reason, combined with the fact that I think Trump has been one of the most amazing presidents we ever had, he accomplished so much more for conservatives than almost anybody, rivaling Ronald Reagan, I don't think we should be deserving of him.
	On the other hand, I do say, I don't think DeSantis is the devil, and I don't think that people need to keep slamming him as much as they do.
	I think he's...
	I think for the most part, he's been pretty incredible and pretty solid.
	I mean, he's made Florida such a desirable state.
	So, you know, my attitude is, while I'm supporting Trump, I don't think we should bash DeSantis.
	And I've heard people say, well, what if they take Trump down so badly, no matter what we do?
	We are going to need DeSantis as a fall guy, or a backup guy.
	So that's pretty much where I come down.
	It's interesting.
	I was going to ask if I had been able to ask the question during the Twitter spaces as to whether or not DeSantis regrets now his not defending Trump from these bogus indictments in New York, because I still think he thinks that somehow they're not going to do the same thing to him.
	They're not going to criminally prosecute him for the Martha's nonsense.
	And once he understands that they will do to him what they've done to Trump, does he not regret potentially not...
	Reflexively coming to the defense of Trump.
	I wasn't able to ask that question.
	Some people, Rachel, have the inverted opinion that they do say, and it's Jenna Ellis' position as well, they felt abandoned by Trump, who never stood up for them while they were being persecuted under the fullest extent of the lawfare, and therefore they now have no problem going to DeSantis because they feel that Trump abandoned them.
	What do you say to that?
	I've heard that argument before.
	People criticize Sheriff Joe Arpaio for not coming to my rescue and doing a fundraiser for me and Andy Thomas and the other attorneys.
	I get it.
	I understand it.
	But I think a lot of these large figures like Trump and Arpaio, they are under such fire themselves.
	And if they jump into the mire of somebody else, they could be completely destroyed themselves and then they're not even as effective.
	I just hesitate a little bit to blame Trump for not sticking his neck out a little more.
	There's stuff going on behind the scenes that you don't know.
	The FBI could be threatening Trump behind the scenes saying, okay, you get involved in this and we're going to do this to you.
	What do you think is the future for Carrie Lake in Arizona?
	Well, since I don't think she's going to get anywhere with her legal case, I believe she's going to run against...
	Kyrsten Sinema's soon-to-be old seat because she looks like she's not going to win.
	So it's going to be Kerry versus this radical left Ruben Gallego who's now going to run.
	I like your take on Trump.
	People do fault him and say he didn't come to...
	My defense, the people for the defense that he would have to come to are virtually countless.
	And it then becomes a victory for the method itself because the lawfare becomes a distraction for Trump doing what Trump needs to do.
	And this is not even Trump, just as a tactic.
	Great, distract the person that you're attacking by going after all of his minions and forcing him to distract from his pursuit with all of these sub-distractions.
	And it's an effective tactic.
	So it's a win-win to some extent for the lawfare.
	You do have a bit more forgiving spirit to you than others who feel a little burnt by the abandonment.
	Robert, have you got another question?
	Yeah, what do you think, what are some of the institutional reforms that need to happen in Arizona to avoid the institutionalized corruption or to deal with it?
	Like a lot of people are frustrated at the sense that when the judges themselves are part of it and our current...
	Structure of government basically requires judges being part of the solution.
	If they can't be because judges are part of the problem, what are some of the solutions for that over the long haul?
	Okay, so if you go to my old little state website, icarizona.com, I've got a form there for people to submit information on judges because we're going to be informed this next election and we're going to boot the bad ones out.
	The other thing I recommend is we're going to have to get more involved in the legal system.
	And I'm always ranting about this.
	You know, us Christian conservative types, we're always...
	We got family.
	We got church.
	We got all those types of activities to do.
	So we don't want to go volunteer on these stupid state bar boring committees and judicial commissions.
	And we don't want those type of jobs either.
	I mean, for the most part, we're not going to go work in a government law position.
	A lot of conservatives, like my brother, he likes making money in private practice.
	So we're just going to have to start infiltrating these organizations.
	And we're also going to have to start infiltrating all these election organizations.
	People are going to have to work for Maricopa County elections, not just as observers, but as employees.
	We're going to have to go work for Dominion.
	We're going to have to go work for Runbeck election systems here in Maricopa County because these whistleblowers, the few that we already have, are coming out.
	I think they're powerful, and we just need to have an army of whistleblowers.
	Rachel, I couldn't help but notice that you have Picasso's Guernica behind you, or at least a print.
	I presume it's not the original.
	Is there symbology to that or do you just like the painting?
	My late brother who died of leukemia bought that for me as a gift many years ago when he was attending Oxford and brought it back from New York for me.
	There's a fitting history behind that, at least a metaphor that could be applied to today that people who don't know the painting can look it up.
	It's quite fascinating.
	Rachel?
	We're at an hour.
	This is very good.
	You'll send me all the links where people can find you.
	Where can people find you and how can they support you if they so choose?
	Thank you.
	Pretty much everything should be linked to on my intellectualconservative.com website.
	Just go to my bio and archives page and I've got links to everything.
	All right.
	And there is one Rumble rant.
	And maybe, Robert, I'm going to see if there's any tips in our community.
	Snugs in Rumble says, Yay, intellectual conservative was vital in my formative personal political journey in my 20s.
	Rachel is a real fighter.
	I say to some extent, you have no choice, but you did not bear false witness to yourself, which is...
	It's not a criticism, because nobody knows until they're in that position, but it's one of James O 'Keefe's biggest regret, if not his biggest regret, and it's the question I asked Jenna Ellis.
	She did have to admit to having done wrong in order to get a deal, and I asked if she thinks she's ever going to regret essentially bearing false witness to herself, but that is a decision for only the person and the person themselves.
	In our locals community, nothing.
	We're good.
	Yeah.
	The state of Arizona did to you was...
	And I know when I started Googling it, I was like, oh my, she got into trouble.
	And I was like, Barnes, there's an immediate next level to this nonsense.
	And I tried to make as much sense of it today as I could.
	And I knew that it wasn't going to make sense.
	But for...
	You went after the wrong people and they had more power than you did.
	And stuck it to you.
	Rachel, thank you very much.
	Robert, we'll stick around.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes to everyone else out there.
	Enjoy the rest of the evening.
	I'm going to go try to re-listen to the Twitter Musk spaces and see if there's anything of insight in there.
	But Rachel, thank you very much for coming on.
	It was fantastic.
	Thank you for letting me expose all this, you guys.
	Bye.

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