Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, Let's get to the show. Welcome to Counterpoints. We have a big show for everyone today.
We're going to start with twenty twenty four. Go to a really concerning new bill that a bipartisan coalition of senators is promoting. On TikTok, We're going to talk about Stephen Donzinger's case and an interesting Supreme Court decision, an interesting sort of cross ideological Supreme Court decision. We're going to be talking about Sam Bankmin Frieda and China, an update in the serial case of on Sai Ed. Ryan
and I both have some interesting stories. I'll be talking about Stephanie Rule, Ryan and You'll be talking about Elon Musk and India and Twitter. And then you have a fascinating interview with churn No Ba on the lab leak for everyone to watch. But just as a reminder, by the way, if you are a Spotify subscriber, you can actually get a subscription for Breaking Points Premium in the description of this remember we have video available if you listen to the show if you watch the show on
Spotify now. So that's awesome. I love that. I do that all the time with Brogan. I'm a huge fan of Spotify's video function. So if you can get a Breaking Points Premium subscription from the description here, and you can watch full video on Spotify, which is super cool. And as people have notice, we're not rolling out all of today's show on YouTube. It'll still obviously be on
the YouTube link. It'll be on the video link for premium subscribers, but for the free loaders on YouTube, don't just be just be a couple of clips and then some some more of them posted kind of throughout the
week and over the over the weekend. Right, But that's Spotify. Yeah, there's Spotify, and there's the and there's also the podcast of course, if you if you need the entire show today for free, yes, and as a premium subscriber myself, I'm so glad to be able to watch Crystal and Sager's beautiful faces on my Spotify, but not while you're scootering. I hope no. I would never do that. I would never do that. I actually I'm not convinced by that. I do isn't a podcast while I'm scootering, But I
don't watch that. I do. You know, sometimes, like last night, I wore noise canceling headphones on a bike and I probably shouldn't be doing it. Not a great idea. This is going to come back to bite me. But let's dive right into twenty twenty four Chris Christie, which you just asked me whether or not he was declared. I don't believe he is declared. I don't think he's declared. Chris Christy, are you serious? So anyway, so Chris Christy
is in the news. We can put this up here because he's telling Republican voters that you need somebody that's going to be able to go mano amano with Donald Trump. And the reason that he says he's going to be able to be that one even though he was completely humiliated by Jared Kushner. If you have been humiliated and like beaten down by Jared Kushnan. I don't think you get to call yourself like the man of the macho
moment if you emasculated by Jared Kushner. So he is referring back to, as everybody can probably guess by now, that time he owned Marco Rubio. Oh he loves it. It's like a high school quarterback. But the entire here's the problem. And everybody has to remember that that viral debate moment where Marco Rubio kept repeating himself saying, don't let's dispel with this notion that whatever something Obama Obama, and he said it like three times. Christy didn't own him.
Everybody watching that across the world, it's like, why do you keep saying that? Like it? It was the most obvious debate gaff that I've probably ever seen in my life. And kudos to Chris Christy for saying, oh, you're doing it again. But he was doing it again. If that's all,
If that's your whole rationale. He was sort of Trump before Trump in a way, like when he won the New Jersey governorship, he was this brash, macho dude who was telling the liberals, you know, where they needed to go and that that was like refreshing for a lot of kind of Republican voters. Then he buzz up with Barack Obama in twenty twelve after Hurricane Sandy, and he's been pretty much persona on Grada since then. And Trump is just you know, he's a twenty ten Chris Christie
times like a thousand. You can't it's I think it's even apples and oranges. Yeah. This is the direct quote from Chris Christy, who was at sant Anselm in New Hampshire on Monday. So he's not declared, but he is roaming the New Hampshire Wilderness, which can only mean one thing. He's seriously considering a bid. Quote. You better have somebody on that stage who can do to Trump what I did to Marco, because that's the only thing that's going
to defeat Donald Trump. That is a ridiculous opinion. Like first and foremost, like that is if you compare what he did to Marco to any of their attempts to take down Donald Trump, not just in the Republican primary and sixteen, but since then, absolutely nothing works because as soon as you try to mud wrestle with Donald Trump, you lose. There is absolutely nobody who can mud wrestle with Donald Trump and beat him. He is the in
disputed champion of American political mud wrestling. And if someone can show me another politician that can beat Donald Trump at mud wrestling, I would be shocked. And it's not going to come from you saying that Marco Rubio is repeating himself. It is just not on par with that at all. Right, And Trump had already almost literally emasculated him with the little Marco and then you know they got into the whole contest about who had bigger hands, yes,
and Trump just went right there. Yeah, none of these people are up for what Trump's going to bring. That's a good point because Mark Rubio memorably went after the size of Trump's hands in South Carolina because there were all of these reports saying Donald Trump is really really insecure about the size of his hands, because that's innuendo, and is actually very insecure about the size of you can fill in the blank. And Marco Rubio's team really thought that they got him on that one, like they
really thought that was the way to go. And you can't mount wrestle with Donald Trump. He basically came out and had a hilarious response that endeared more voters to Donald Trump. It completely backfired. It's just impossible. So if Chris Christy, who by the way, is asked by an audience member, when are you going to take down Trump, replies, I have my timetable. If he seriously thinks that he can mud wrestle with Donald Trump and come out on top,
he's more delusional than I even realized. So speaking of delusional Ron Santas, so let's I do not support or endorse that transition. So let's play. So. Megan Kelly has apparently been asking Rond de Santis to come on to her show for an interview for quite some time. He hasn't said yes yet. She saw him on Pierce Morgan recently. That got her upset and that led to this clip. Let's play Meagan Kelly here. I will say for the record, we asked DeSantis to come on the show. He has
not said yes, and I find that very interesting. You know, I love Piers Morgan, He's a pala mine. Well why would you go sit with the British guy and not come on the show. And I do think there's a reason for it, and I will adventure to say he's afraid. I'm just gonna put out there he's afraid because he knows the kind of interview that I would give him. He's not going to get a pass, same as Trump never got a pass from me. This is into the machismo, tough guy, who can do you know, who can handle
it better? And so how does this work for DeSantis to have, first of all, to have Megan Kelly here? So who is Megan Kelly in the Republican ecosystem right now? Because she's she's kind of transformed her role a little bit. Yeah, So Megan Kelly is an extremely popular podcaster. I mean you can just call it at this point what it is an extremely popular broadcaster who has pretty wide reach on the right and I think probably in the center as well, voters that rond de Santis will definitely need.
I actually was on a jeep tour in a couple of weeks ago, and a woman from Florida recognized me from going on Megan Kelly's show. Whenever I go on her show, I hear from people I went to high school with. That's always kind of like my marker of how big the show is, Like if it gets out into kind of your high school friends you haven't seen twenty years or something. It's huge, h It's a huge show.
And I do think it's important to the voters that Rond de Santis would need to win, So I anticipate this actually means Rnda Santis is going to be on Megan Kelly's show fairly quickly, and I actually think that's probably what she was doing. And I do think it's true. People definitely, especially on the left, I think, underestimate Megan Kelly.
She gives good interviews, She's like very prosecutorial in her interviews of candidates, and I think it's probably makes sense that ronand DeSantis, at this stage, not having formally announced anything, would want to avoid that on his book tour because that's where he's been making all these media appearances with Piers Morgan and everyone else that you wouldn't necessarily want to dive into like a pretty prosecutorial back and forth worth and in a venue that is important to you
because of the people that it reaches. So that would be my road on the situation. But I think this probably does get DeSantis on the show. So basic you're saying that she's right, that right, that he that tough questions like the kind that Megan Kelly delivers don't play into the strategy around a book tour, right, the book tour strategy Megan Kelly's is not on it for a reason. Interesting,
I think that's true. I mean with Piers Morgan it's tabloidy, right, it's more you know, what do you think about Donald Trump saying this and that and it's not going to be I think probably like you've said this and you did that, like you you used to support privatizing sales security, Like where are you now that kind of thing? Right, here's Morgan's not going to do that. No, he's not
going to do that. That's what we would do. So we should put a request out to DeSantis and then if he does, if he's not on here by next week, we can shame him. How's that We should start doing that more often? Once a week we should shame someone into coming on the show and see what happens. We'd love to have to Santis. It would be a lot of fun. But on that note, Mike Pence is also making the rounds. He though even though he's making the rounds, I will also say he is wrapped into the January
sixth situation. This is news for me. Yesterday, a federal judge has ordered former Vice president Mike Pence to testify before in the federal probe of Donald Trump's bid to subvert the twenty twenty election. According to a person familiar with the ruling, so that's a big hurdle. Mike Pence's team has sort of resisted it, so clearly they see
it as a big hurdle. I don't know. I don't know that it's well, why does this team against because they they've turned kind of state's evidence in public pretty consistently. They've come after him on every platform that they can find. Is it just the fact that they don't want to be seen collaborating with Democrats and coming after him. I think that's probably it. I think that's when I was trying to figure out, you know, what the sticking point
might be. There's I think it's the optics. First of all, it's the optics of being pulled into a grand jury probe not great, and on top of it, yet looks like you can see how it would be framed as like collusion with the force that are out to get Donald Trump. Now this is a quote from Politico. Legal scholars generally agree that Pence has a legitimate case that his role as President of the Senate may warrant immunity
from testimony sought by the executive branch. So the Federal Appeals for Court in Washington is expected to rule imminently on a separate effort that's related to Scott Parry. So it's actually kind of about a power's situational axceparation of powers question and not as clear cut as maybe it seems. On top of that, did you see what John Stewart said about uh, about the Trump and diaverments. This was pretty fun. Yeah, we rolled rolled John Stewart here. Oh,
the law should always take into account someone's popularity. I think that's that's I mean, what what's happened to our country for It's as though you can't even commit financial fraud anymore. You can't. You can't inflate the value of your properties when you need a loan and then deflate it with taxes. I mean, the next thing you know, they're going to send you to jail instead of your lawyer and your accountant and your campaign manager and everyone
else around you. It's no to the idea that someone may face accountability who's that rich and powerful is outrageous and this country shouldn't stand. But what if what if it turns out to be his get out of jail free pass, it's his bath to people will see him as a martyr. He gets here, Okay. I regreon with that is I don't I'm president again. He could become president anyway. For Reid, we either have the rule of
law or we have no rule of law. The rule of law does not take into account if that might make you a martyr to somebody. I'd much rather have the conversation be what is the law? Well, that is the conversation, now what is the law? He also goes on to say, this is on Free Zakaria Sunday show, that all prosecution is political something to that extent. I think Zakaria said that was sort of the issue here,
and I think that is fundamentally the issue here. If we're talking about trumping up a campaign finance violation into felony on a legal theory that is not very widely accepted and applying it to a former president, that's not just saying we either have the rule of law or we don't, so that would be my pushback on it.
He is. Generally, the point I think is correct that it's laughable to say we shouldn't have accountability for very powerful people, whether they're on the left of the right, or whether it creates sort of discord in the public or not. I mean, that's how you end up getting
in this stupid tip for tat. So I agree with that point, but in the specific case of the campaign finance probe, I think it's ridiculous, right, because rule of law doesn't mean you can kind of produce a new law to fit a new rule, and the rule being that you're under a lot of pressure to indict Donald
Trump for something. It's the opposite, right, I think Donald Trump, obviously, I think to me, has committed a bunch of different crimes and it shouldn't be that difficult for Democrats to find a serious one, rather than this thing where they're saying that the bookkeeping wasn't done correctly around the way that they made the payment to Michael Cohen to reimburse him for the payoff to Stormy Daniels, and that then campaign finances involved. So then we're gonna rash it up
to like a low level fellon. They're related to that, we don't you know, there are these types of deals are done all the time, you know, a settlement, a payoff for silence, an NDA. It's it's not necessarily criminal. And so what they have to do is they have to then find some basically paperwork violation around it, rather than saying, wait a minute, did this guy sell American foreign policy to Saudi Arabia for a two billion dollar check?
But let's let's see if he did that. If he did that and we can watch and we can see how the money flows, Uh, then let's let's prosecute him for that. But then that's where we don't actually have rule of law, because once you kind of if you subpoena the bank records of the Arab Emirates leadership, the Saudi Saudi leadership, you're gonna see money flowing in all sorts of places. And if you actually did follow that money, you'd have to corral a lot more people than just Trump.
And so I think that's why he's gotten away with his bigger, more brazen crimes, because there are crimes that are obviously like way outside the bounds, but so is most of what Washington does. He's just a little bit more kind of reckless and unapologetic about it. So they have to try to find other things. And the porn star thing is perfect because very few politicians you're gonna get caught up in something like that. That's a very
trumpy thing. And so they're like, all right there that that seems like outside of what the normal politician does. So let's prosecute him for that. That way, we can let the rest of this ecosystem just rest in peace. Even the charges done in Georgia I think are more serious. Don't go for those. Find me eleven thousand votes, like that's like, just try that see if like and you know, they are trying to try it. We'll see how the
grand jury goes. But I would much rather see a jury hear that evidence and weigh that, like, did he actually try to illegally, you know, flip the election in Georgia? Right, Well, we'll see how it plays out with Pence DeSantis, potentially Chris Christy. The way they handle this January sixth probit is ongoing and of itself, I think is an interesting question.
Let's move on to TikTok Ryan. This is fairly big news that I haven't seen basically any coverage from the corporate media of and I looked, actually, when the Restrict Act, which is being supported, it's sponsored by Mark Warner, has a very bipartisan coalition behind it, eleven Democrats, eleven Republicans. It is aimed at TikTok. It does not say the word TikTok once in the bill, which is always a
giant red flag here in Washington. When a bill that is aimed at doing one thing doesn't mention it, that's always a sign that the language is probably wildly overly broad. Some screenshots from the bill started circulating on Twitter, and I think this is where a lot of people in the media, myself included, turned and paid attention to the Restrict Act after Mark Warner was promoting it on Face the Nation Sunday. If you dig into the text of this bill, it is outrageously broad. And I think it
was Greg Price on Twitter. So this is the Patriot Act for the Internet. A couple of things. This is Michael Sabolik. He says, there's a reason the White House supports this legislation. They don't want to ban TikTok. The bill gives them a gigantic loophole to avoid doing so. The Warner Thoon restrict Act is not a TikTok bill. If this thing passes, the chances of a TikTok ban
or forced divestment grow incredibly small. Why the bill slow walks actions against transactions that are under review right now. So if anything, when we saw that like bipartisan display of animosity towards TikTok, which by the way is like five years overdue in Congress last week, and you know, people who are maybe on the anti establishment side started getting nervous, rightfully, So this is why. And we already have Syphius, which is what they're sort of referring to.
So Syphius is a law that says that if there's some type of infrastructure that is critical to the United States that is being taken over by a foreign government, then that can't just be a normal business transaction. It
has to get approved by this licifious board. I think one example was, like I think the UAE back in two thousand and six tried to buy a bunch of ports, And this was right after a couple of years, after nine to eleven, and the country was like, you know what, we don't want to sell our ports to a foreign government, and whether no offense to UEE, but just in general, we'd like to keep control of that. As what's Donald
Trump's line, you don't have a country. Yeah, if somebody else controls your ports like that, you can imagine how that can become problematic at some point. Yes, And so
that's why there has to be these sifiust reviews. And so if there is a case the government can make that TikTok is encroaching on some type of critical infrastructure, whether social media, the narrative control is basically what this is coming down to, then put it before the safiest review and beat it there like you, in other words, where it is right you already which is where it is and frankly should be, and you already have the laws in the book. So then why why this Resist Act?
Why this overly broad piece of legislation that they're pushing forward. And the people who are circulating these screenshots on Twitter might seem paranoid, but if you read the law, they're right, like this it is. It is extremely overbroad. It does it even mentions the Patriot Act. It linked you know, it's using Patriot Act language in the It combines power definitions, right, it combines powers with Patriot Act. It references parts of the Patriot Act that would apply in this case to
the entities they're describing. And some of it is just funny jingoistic American imperialism. I think we have this first part up here, where it says where they define foreign adversary means any foreign government or regime determined by the Secretary pursuant to sections three and five to have engaged in a long term pattern serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national security of the United States or
the security and safety of United States persons. So all the Secretary would have to do is say this a country fits this definition, and then if that country has any controlling, any share at all in the company that it would then be under the kind of unilateral authority of the Secretary. And then they list some just in case you're curious about who they are. These ones are definitely included, China, Cuba, Get out of here, Cuba, are you serious? The Cuban apps come on, Iran, of course,
North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. But they specify Venezuela under the regime of Nicolas Mondoro Moros so Venezuela as long as they get rid of because we don't recognize. Yeah, right, So that's why they're saying that that that Venezuela doesn't really exist as far as we're concerned. But since it's actually alive, now we're going to put them in this law.
And then when I said any amount of stock that they that they own, they define holding as quote an equity, interests, a stock, a security, a share, a partnership interest, an interest in a limited liability company, a membership interest, or any participation right or other equivalent, however, designated end of any character. So basically, you know, if anybody that the Secretary finds to have done anything negative to any US person has any interest in a company, then that company
comes under their purfew. It's nuts. Tucker Carlston called attention to what you were saying about foreign adversaries, and he says, what's a foreign adversary? And who gets to decide? The Secretary of Commerce and the Department and the DN I not the Congress, they get to decide what foreign adversaries are.
He goes on to point out that the transactions with foreign adversaries covered by the restrict Act would include quote this is from the bill, any acquisition, importation, rants for installation, dealing in, or use of any information in communications technology, product or service, including ongoing activities such as mandated service as data transmission software updates, repairs with the provision of
data hosting services. And it gives the government basically the ability to tap into all kinds of your different communications technological communications methods in order to make these determinations valuations as they're referred to in the bill. It's just incredibly broad. No surprise that you have a bipartisan coalition of Mark Orner, je On Thun all kinds of establishment Republicans and Democrats are ready to have twenty one sponsors is a fairly
big deal. Josh Hawley has a clean TikTok ban on the table, and he has for a while. It is just a ban of TikTok. Of course, that's not what they want to do when they say they want to ban TikTok. They want to expand the surveillance powers of the federal government. And that is exactly what they put
in writing here. And when reading these types of bills, it's always useful to go to the very end of a section because there'll be specific, specific, specifics specific, and then the very last one will be like and anything
else we didn't cover. They have a good example of this one here in what is this section section three a subsection two here that a company that quote otherwise poses an undo or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the safety of United States persons. So all of these things, but then also anything that we say is unacceptable, like literally if it's unacceptable, well, what's what's something that's not acceptable? Well, it's something that's unacceptable.
So why right there in the law my t shirt is explaining I don't understand why I'm raising so many questions. So, and I think this goes to the broader point that the debate has been held publicly around data security and privacy, which, as somebody who has covered data security and privacy for fifteen years now, it makes a mockery of the way that Congress thinks about data security and privacy. They have
no interest for them. I mean, there is a bipartisan coalition that we've talked about on the show before that does really good work and trying to push back against the national security state when it comes to this. But in general, the majority of Congress it does not care about privacy, does not care about that type of thing. They barely understand it. And so to have them now saying that they're so concerned about your data that they're going to ban TikTok just doesn't pass the sniff test.
What it really is about, and I think Crystal's talked about this too, is that they don't like the fact that a China backed social media company can control the
narrative inside the United States. I think they should just have that debate, because I think you can actually make you can make a case like, Okay, you know what, maybe that isn't good, And a lot of other countries would say, you know what, we don't want if Voice of America, for instance, was like as dominant in China as TikTok is in the United States, unthinkable, China be like no, no, no no, no, no, what are you doing.
In fact, lots of countries did ban Voice of America because we're sending in American propaganda and then we would try to like figure out ways to like get it in anyway like this, the propaganda war between countries has been, you know, has been basically part of kind of geopolitics going back to the medieval ages, with like ever since you had a printing press, you had people slipping propaganda in the behind enemy line. So have that argument rather than trying to pretend like all of a sudden you
care about privacy. Yeah, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And the House Financial Services Committee put out a tweet where they said the restrict Act is using TikTok as a smoke screen for the largest expansion of executive power since the I E E. P A. The US can't beat China been becoming more like the Chinese Communist Party, which is
to say, expanding surveillance powers massively over people. I think that's fairly well put, and it signals to me, honestly that the restrict Act has been come in short time, fairly toxic. I expect you'll see people actually revoke their support for the bill. I don't think it'll get much more support since it's gotten this level of public attention, at least on the right. I have again really not seen mainstream so called mainstream outlets cover this at all.
The bill has been out for a while some conservatives were on top of it several weeks ago. But I think that even the House Financial Services tweet is from several weeks ago but really not getting any coverage in the mainstream press that said, it's not going to pick up any more Republicans. I'm fairly confident at this point, and I would if I were going to make an appeal to my fellow lefties, I would say, would you want to give this authority to Donald Trump to pressure YouTube?
Let's say he has a falling out with Elon Musk, and Elon Musk is like, you know, juicing the algorithm against Trump. Would you want Trump to be able to threaten to shut down Twitter because Saudi Arabia has a gigantic entry. Do you want Trump to be able to threaten YouTube? Or Trump to be able to threaten Facebook or Like or any president to have this amount of authority.
I made those arguments all during the Obama era, over the Drone War and over other you know, warnings of what a theoretical Republican president who followed Obama might do with this executive authority that Obama was aggregating to it himself, and it all fell on deaf ears. So I'm not sure that this argument is going to work well with them either. But of course it turned out that all of your warnings were just hyperbolic and wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Trump.
Trump didn't do anything. It didn't didn't abuse executive thory at all. That was fine. Why would he do that? That was totally fine, you know. Yeah. And the other thing that I just to add really quickly is the administrative state or the executive branch, is one of the most indirect forms of democracy that we have right now, especially the way it's abused, the way the powers that
rest in the administrative state are often abused. And this punts so much power to the Secretary of Commerce that the bill is specifically just like creates a new universe of powers for the Secretary of Commerce in a way that is very hard to hold to account outside of a presidential election. You'd have to take this out basically
on the president of the United States. So another thing to keep an eye on, ye, And the Secretary Commerce is basically just a big donor as the position that goes to like the richest person, right yeah, in this administration. And the last one, speaking of money and politics, let's move on to the Supreme Court case involving or the Supreme Court's decision actually not to hear a case involving Stephen Donzinger, something that the show has certainly covered over
the years. Ryan, Basically, you have on Monday, Neil Gorsich Brett Cavanaugh dissenting from the Court's decision not to review a lower court's ruling involving Donzinger's case, who's sentenced to six months in prison for contempt of court. You know this case like three years in the end, right, right, And you know this case much better than I do.
But the descent was really interesting. It basically gets over separation, It gets into separation of powers questions, which is where you see Gorsich and Kavanaugh dissenting and where you see interesting decisions from the ostensibly liberal members of the Supreme Court. What did you make of this? And we were just last segment talking about an administrative state and the rights hostility toward it, and I suspect that that's where some
of this is coming from. So why the liberals wouldn't side here and why Gorsich and Kavanaugh fell down the way they did. But I think Gorsis and Kavanaugh are right on this one. So to recap for people who haven't followed this the key thing to understand here. So Donziger represented plaintiffs who were suing Chevron and Ecuador Chevron. Chevron requested that the case go down to Ecuador and be handled there where they thought they had a better
chance of prevailing. As Neil Gorsich rights in his descent, Chevron would live to regret that decision because there's a nine plus billion dollar verdict against Chevron that that Donziger won.
Chevron then comes back to the New York, back to the United States and starts fighting Donziger there, saying that it was unfair the way that Donziger, uh, you know, was able to you know, manipulate, manipulate and bribe the court, et cetera, in order to give in order to give him this uh get get in order to win this verdict, which is just hilarious to hear one of the wealthiest, uh and most powerful organizations on the planet saying that they got got beaten by you know this these indigenous
plaintiffs down in Ecuador and just just completely unfair in the court hippy lawyer in the court that they asked to be sent down to so uh they got they get back to the United States. The judge demands to demands Donziger turn over all of his electronic equipment in order to kind of go in a fishing expedition to see if they can prove these Chevron allegations. He says, no, that that's a massive violation of attorney clink privilege, et cetera,
et cetera. The judge holds him in contempt, refers to the Department of Justice for a criminal prosecution. The Department of Justice looks at it and says, no, thank you, like we are going to use our prosecutoral discretion and we are not going to prosecute this contempt case. Go on about your case, leave us out of this. The judge then appoints a private prosecutor from a law firm that had done business with Chevron, and the private attorney
then prosecutes this contempt charge. Donziger is prevented by the same judge from having injury. Instead, it's the judge who is prosecuting him. It's bizarre that finds him guilty and then sentences him to prison. And so Donziger has appealed, and the appeal is narrow on the question of whether or not the judge had the legal or the constitutional right to appoint this prosecut And I would encourage people to read Coursach is decent, it's short, it's signed by Kavanaugh.
It's very clear. He makes the point. He says, Look, nobody thinks that the executive can appoint my law clerks. Why I have the quote right here? Go ahead, He says. The notion that the Constitution allows one branch to install non officer employees and another branch would come as a surprise to many. Who really thinks that the president may choose law clerks for my colleagues, that we can pick White House staff for him, or that either he or we are entitled to select aids for the Speaker of
the House. Why do judges on the left not join a dissent like that? If they had, there's three liberals left in the court. If they had and they joined these two, they could have vacated this conviction. Absolutely so why didn't they, my guess, and they didn't. They don't have to give a reason when they reject cert things,
just say we don't want to hear this. My guest goes back to the administrative state that they that they were worried that if this judge's appointment of this prosecutor is ruled invalid, then somehow they're going to peel that back and say, okay, well then OSHA is also unconstitutional or the e p A is on constitution or something
like that, which I think is just absurd. Like, first of all, the idea that you're you can capitulate away and the right is going to stop coming after OSHA or the e p A is absurd, like're you're coming for it, like it's it's happening. Whether this dirty water and dirty air and I want it now unsafe conditions in all workplaces, yeah damn it. And but so whether whether this particular case went that way, I don't think UH is going to affect that broader war at all.
But also, you know, the the liberal justices are liberal when it comes to kind of civil and civil rights and cultural issues over the years. But if you look at cases that the Chamber of Commerce has, you know, has weighed in on liberal justice, is often are siding with the Chamber of Commerce. So it's not as if, in other words, they're not going to stick their neck out to buck Chevron. Yeah. Now, I remember when Catanja
Brown Jackson was up for confirmation. I interviewed Marshall Blackburn about some of her plans for it and asked specifically if her staff was reviewing Jackson's record on sort of corporate powers, and she told me yes. I don't know whether or not that was the case, but that's what she said. And I think it's kind of an interesting question as to whether you see that aligned realignment start hitting the Supreme Court because corporate power is on the right.
One of the big things they challenge when it comes to ESG, when it comes to DEI, is in fact the sort of corporate consolidation of powers and the way that they're used. But at the same time, the rights entire institutional judicial movement is fairly Chamber of Commerce friendly, so it would take a lot of like unwinding. But I think it's a good point too, because you see it on the left as well, that the sort of institutional progressive legal movement is tied up in many ways
with the political establishment. And we'll just just wrap with Gorsich here. He concludes, however much the District Court may have thought, mister Donzeger warranted punishment. The prosecution in this case, Brokes broke a basic constitutional promise essential to our liberty in this country. Judges have no more power to initiate a prosecution of those who come before them than prosecutors
have to sit in judgment of those they charge. In the name of the quote United States, two different groups of prosecutors have asked us to turn a blind eye to this promise. Respectfully, I would not with this court's failure to interview today only and he goes on to say, I hope that this doesn't become precedent because that helps her.
Would that be like then we're in the kind of like the Spanish court where the judges become the prosecutors, which, all right, if you want to have that system, have that system. But that's not the one that we have. No, not at all, not even close. No, speaking of our system, let's transition to Sam Bankman Freed. This is from Reuters.
US prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled a new indictment against SPF, accusing the founder of the now bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange of paying a forty million dollar bribe to Chinese officials so that they would unfreeze his hedge funds accounts. This adds to the pressure on the thirty one year old former billionaire, who now faces a thirteen count indictment over the November collapse of ftx SO, says Reuters. He's expected to be arraigned on the new indictment on Thursday before
a Manhattan judge in federal court. He intends to plead not guilty. According to a person familiar with the matter. That's cited in the Reuters report, forty billion dollars or forty million dollar bribe to Chinese officials to unfreeze hedge fund accounts just to drop in the bucket if you're overseeing a sports million crypto. Yeah, this monopolynyess? Is that really? That? Really a crime? What's funny is that this guy in some ways is getting arrested speaking of Trump doing things
that everybody else does. Really for doing what everybody else does. So he's getting arrested for campaign contributions and political spending in races in the United States and bribing Chinese politicians and Chinese government officials. Just another day in the life. He's got to be like, wait, these things are illegal. What are you talking about? Like they have a billion dollars of our assets frozen because it's caught up in
a separate kind of investigation going on in China. And the way to get it out is we bribe people to get our money back. And now all of a sudden, that's a crime. And then when it comes to the campaign finance stuff, it's like, wait a minute, we set up dark money groups, we funnel money to politicians. Politicians sign questionnaires saying that they support all of our issues. That's how we do this. Now, they the one law they do actually enforce when it comes to campaign finance
is this straw donor thing. You give two thousand dollars to a candidate and I pay you back. Densh just susan, Yeah like that. That that's the one thing that they still seem to care about. And he apparently did that,
legendly did that. Well, yeah, so this is Prosecutors are saying that he ordered this forty million dollar crypto payment to a private wallet from Alameda's main trading account, and that was to persuade Chinese government authorities to unfree unfreeze Alameda accounts with more than one billion dollars of cryptocurrency and u this they were frozen as an investigation, as you mentioned, ran into this unnamed Alameda counter party and
his dance spegling, and so he also apparently, according to prosecutors, they're alleging he authorized a transfer of tens of millions of dollars of additional crypto to quote complete the bribe back in November of twenty twenty one. He's apparently expected if it's a plead not guilty. From reading this report in Reuter's about the indictment, it looks a lot like
the case is solid. Then again, when you're charging people with bribery, you really have to have a very clear evidence that their intentions were X, and that's you know, SPF was fairly shameless, so they may well have if there's anybody who will give them that evidence it's SPF. Then you have a signal chat called wirefraud, don't we all.
If there's anybody who is going to be texting his subordinates to say, please send forty million dollars in bribe money to these Chinese officials and using the word bribe, it would be Spfah not say he did that, but if there's anybody who did it, it would be him. Yeah, and it seems like again and word otherwise. Don't call your signal group wirefraud. Don't call your bribes bribes, call them contributions fraud. Advice from Ranger Anthropy. Yeah, set up
a foundation. It's so easy. Don't be stupid. Let's move on to breaking news yesterday. As of yesterday, in the case of Adnan sa Ed, this is from CNN and Maryland, a pellate court on Tuesday reinstated the conviction of say Ed. He you remember his murder case was the serial case. Of course. It was a two to one ruling from the appellate court, who said that the lower court had violated the rights of the victim's brother, Young Lee, to
attend a key hearing. Here's more from CNN. Because the circuit court violated mister Lee's right to notice of and his right to attend the hearing on the state's motion of vacate, this court has the power and obligation to remedy those violations, as long as we can do so without violating mister Sad's right to be free from double jeopardy. It's actually from the court's opinion, not from CNN. Fairly Big News. Ryan I am not at all in the rabbit hole, in the serial rabbit hole. Obviously, this is
a huge decision do you make of it? This is a case, I think where the headlines did a little bit of a disservice to to how big of a deal it is, because it's kind of a technicality, and all of the experts on all sides of this seemed to think that there's no reason that it would go any differently the next time that this happens. It has an interesting kind of victim rights question that we could get to yes in a second. But briefly, the facts
of the case. Her brother was given apparently thirty minutes notice to come to this hearing, and it's not that he just needed to be there to witness it. He was going to participate in it. He was going to make his case for why the evidence should not lead to an exoneration of non Siad. He couldn't get there in purpose, in person. He was at work. He just had to quickly zoom in. He didn't have anything prepared, and as a foul like the judge should have you know,
they couldn't. Judge could have delayed a day doesn't mean you have to delay it months and months. The judge could have given more warning. Now, what what defense attorneys are saying is that the problem here is that now you're giving kind of victims too much of too much standing, and victims families too much standing in the process, which can which runs up against the party that has the actual standing, which is the people. You know, the people
versus non side. The people are prosecuting on side on behalf of the victims. It's not the the victims themselves or the victims families themselves are doing it. Because when you get into the victims themselves doing it, and then then it becomes less rule law and more vigilante oriented.
And so that's why the kind of defense community was really bothered by this ruling because it it could open up the floodgates for all sorts of other kind of procedural claims made by victims and victims families to to redo and reinstate entire convictions. But nobody thinks that the evidence has changed much. Basically, the prosecution, it has been proven, had significant exonerating and evidence at the time of the prosecution and did not turn it over to Adon Saad's
defense attorney. And there's nothing the prosecution can do to go back in time and undo that, and so the entire thing is toxic and we'll probably get thrown out as a result. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. I want to ask you about this part from the opinion.
They say the quarter is the power and obligation and remedy those violations as long as we can do so without violating mister said's right to be free from double jeopardy, right, Because the question is does his conviction getting tossed out count as a not guilty verdict? And if it does, then double jeopardy kicks in and you can't come back. So that clearly they're saying that it's not close enough to a not guilty to say that you can't come
back in. But yeah, you don't want people in a situation where they get found not guilty and then you go through different procedural hoops and be like, oh, you got to come back again, we'll get you this time. Like that would really undermine one of the bedrock principles that protects people's individual liberty. Where can people expect this to go from here? I think he'll it'll get tossed again, and he's not being brought back in to prison or
anything like. He's free until the next hearing, and at the next hearing it's very likely that it'll be tossed again. Such a mess. Yeah, what's your point today? Oh, we're talking about one of my favorite people in all of cable news, Stephanie Rule. It's been clear for a while that Stephanie Rule abused her journalistic platforms to help her very very close friend, Kevin Plank and his company Under Armour.
In addition to Rule providing extensive business advice and flying on the company jet, the pair reportedly carried out an extra marital affair as well, which The Wall Street Journal first brought to the public's attention back in twenty nineteen after the Under Armour board discovered quote intimate e between Rule and Plank. The rest of the media largely ignored
Rule's misconduct. By the way, if you google her, you'll be hard pressed to find any substantive critiques of the journalistic malpractice at hand, not the affair or the ethics the journalistic malpractice. Today, Rule hosts The Eleventh Hour on MSNBC. She has her own show, and this senior business analyst over at NBC News, but her support for Plank and
under Armour may have been even more problematic. Follow me over to Scotland, where the City Council of Aberdeen has been fighting under Armour in court, accusing the company of artificially boosting its share price. As Fox News reports quote, the Scottish town allegedly lost millions from a pension fund for local workers as a result, as it was heavily invested in under Armour. So where does Rule factor in
this lawsuit over Scottish pension funds? Well? As Fox notes, in twenty sixteen, Morgan Stanley published a report that downgrained. It graded under Armour stock to underweight and reduced its price target from one hundred and three to sixty two
dollars per share, which caused the stock to plummet. According to the filing, the document alleged that Rule then offered a detailed counterpoint to the Morgan Stanley report on air, attacking its underlying data and essentially cheerleading under Armour in the process. So this is where things get a bit hairy.
Aberdeen's lawyers want Bloomberg to turn over rules emails with Plank, based on the argument that their personal relationship which seems to date back to about twenty fifteen when she was working at Bloomberg, is not deserving a First Amendment protections
that quote an independent journalist source relationship generally warrants. Bloomberg disagrees with that, But we actually don't have to settle that argument here and now, or even see the emails to recognize what Stephanie Rule did was deeply unethical and wrong. It also fits a very clear pattern of behavior too, when that NBC News would address publicly if it cared
more about than ideology and ratings. The conservative Washington Free Beacon was one of the only outlets to report on Rule's coverage of under arm Armor back when the Wall Street Journal story broke. Here's what they wrote. Quote. In June of twenty sixteen, the company released Steph Curry branded sneakers that were universally roasted as ugly and boring. Under Armour employees were told not to address criticism because Rule told the company she would step in and discuss the
shoes on TV. The Wall Street Journal reported, sure enough, archived video of rules appearance on NBC's Today that weekend shows she defended the shoes without disclosing her and Plank's relationship business friendship or otherwise, or revealing that she coordinated with under Armor. Okay, let's just watch the segment, because with all of that said, it's pretty hilarious. I don't figure the market a bit of a problem. Twitter killed
these shoes, calling them the Metamucial sixes the sevens. But they look an awful lot like a classic Nike or a New Balance. That's a mass market she is. It is a taxi and this is what he was wearing during the games. Yes, this is what he goes from this to this, so naturally some for sure. I think that's why the pushback when you think about a stepf curasue of basketball shoe. It's hard. Yes, just in time for Father's Day, dad. There you go. It's so good.
She actually then used a professional Twitter account to post twice about those shoes in particular. The Beacon went on to note quote Rule would continue to hawk under Armoured products and feel good PR campaigns at least a dozen times throughout the next two years, a dozen, never just
closing her reported relationship or role as an advisor. Now, none of this is especially surprising from a longtime Deutsche Bank managing director and the former quote highest producing credit derivative salesperson in the United States, who, by the way, was apparently unfaithful to her hedge fund CEO husband during her affair with Plank. Rule is basically an archetypical corporate democrat in the new mold of liberal suburban mom who
wants low taxes and smug Sheryl Sandberg feminism. Her show is basically just for people with Equinox memberships and g wagons full of shin guards and orange slices. But the lawsuit out of Aberdeen shows why this isn't fun and games at all. Chatting about tennis shoes might be a cute way to help your secret CEO boyfriend, and it may seem like no big deal to read corporate talking points about his company stock on air. To wealthy media
talking heads, these conflicts are mere playthings. They don't think twice about Scottish pensioners who may be invested in the stock. They sit around, do each other favors and assume it it'll all work out just fine. It's pretty much how you get Gotham, and it should be a very big deal to rules peers in media and to her co workers at NBC News. But my best guess is that it won't unless they get win. That it's affecting the bottom line without mainstream media criticism, that seems quite unlikely.
All right, Ryan, what is your point today? Well, I'm looking at India and Elon musk and so so. Two months after teaming up with the Indian government to censor a BBC documentary on human rights abuses by Prime Minister and Andramodi, Twitter is yet again collaborating with the government
to impose an extraordinarily broad crackdown on speech. I have a new story up at the Intercept with my colleague Martaza Hussain looking at the latest successful effort by the Indian Prime Minister to persuade Twitter to censor its critics. So last week, the Indian government imposed an Internet blackout across the northern state of Punjab, home to thirty million people, as it conducted a manhunt for a local Sikh nationalist preacher.
The shutdown paralyzed the Internet and text communications in Punjab. I asked readers and viewers in India about the crackdown and some told me that for much of the time the shutdown was targeted at mobile devices. All of this is worth reporting on here because it could easily be
a dry run for other countries. Now, while Punjab police detained hundreds of suspected followers of Amrit Paul Singh, Twitter accounts from over one hundred prime politicians, activists and journalists in India and abroad have been blocked in India at the request of the government. On Monday, the account of the BBC news poonjob Punjabi was also blocked, the second time in a few months that the Indian government has
used Twitter to throttle BBC services in its country. The Twitter account for jag Meet Singh, who's a leading progressive seek Canadian politician and a critic of Modi, was also not viewable inside India. Under the leadership of owner and CEO Elon Musk, Twitter has promised to reduce censorship and
allow a broader range of voices on the platform. But after The Intercept reported on Musk's censorship of the BBC documentary in January, as well as Twitter's intervention against high profile high profile accounts who shared the documentary, Musk said that he had been too busy with his other jobs to focus on the issue. First, I've heard Musk wrote on January twenty fifth, he said, it is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight
while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things. So in late February, Singh's followers sacked a Punjab police station in an attempt to free allies that were held there. The Indian media reported that the attack triggered the government's response.
In the void left by Twitter blocks and the internet shut down across much of the region, Indian news outlets, increasingly themselves under the thumb of the ruling government and its allies, have filled the airwaves with speculation on Singh's whereabouts. On Tuesday, Indian news reports claimed that CCTV footage appeared to show Singh walking around Delhi masked and without a turban.
While Modi's suppression has focused on poon job, Twitter's collaboration has been nationwide, restricting public debate about the government's aggressive move. And so basically they're saying that this Sikh preacher, Imri Paul Singh is a dangerous and wanted criminal and that he needs to be captured by any means necessary, and that's why they're going to kind of shut down the
Internet for thirty million people. But what Twitter has done is not allowed any public discussion to be held about whether or not the Indian government is actually justified in carrying this out. Anybody who would be critical from the kind of either the opposition party or critics outside of the country, like jag Meat Singh, who's the leader of the kind of leftist Canadian political party, they can't even speak.
So you're just left with Mody's narrative that this guy's so dangerous that we have to lock down an entire region of thirty million people to round him up. Musk hasn't responded to this yet, which I find really disturbing because if somebody has his ear and they bring him a problem, he's like interesting looking into it. On top of that, two months ago he responded because there was so much attention to our first story on this. It's like I can't deal with everything. Come on, man, I
got so many jobs. Leave me alone. It's like, okay, well it's been two months and now you've only kind of taken your censorship to a higher level. So why is that okay? If it's not okay here? Well, and are you telling me that a request from the Indian government is not being debated at high levels to his awareness. I mean, I just have a hard time believing that. I do think you said something in the monologue I thought was really important, which was it could be a
dry run for other countries. And when you look at Elen Musk who I think, you know, we could have a conversation about some of the good some of the bad. One of the bad is his relationship with the Chinese government. You've pointed out his relationships with other government. I mean, in order to do business on the scale that he does and the types of business that he does, it's
basically unavoidable. But to take over a speech platform with those pre existing relationships, I think raises some obviously problematic questions. And to your point, when you already have proven a willingness to cooperate literally in Shinjong with the Chinese government, he opened a big tesla factory in Shinjong. Well, they were sort of in the middle of conversations about treatment
of weaker Muslims. You don't get the benefit of doubt anymore. Yeah, And you and I talked about this a lot when they were when he was just debating whether or not whether or not he was going to buy Twitter that he could believe in his heart he could be the the most the most pure free speech absolutist that has ever lived. But if you have all of these financial entanglements across the world that that's going to push on your heart, you're gonna say, well, free speech is good.
But on the other hand, you know, I kind OF's got a factory over here that needs its needs its supplies to keep moving, or it's just you don't care because it's not not here in the United States. And then finally a lot of what a lot of people will say as well, MOSC has said he's going to follow the laws of the cunt Tree that he's operating in two things. So that one, a request from the executive in India is not quote unquote following the law
like the old Twitter. If they would get a request from the executive in India and they did all the time to take down this critic or that critic, they would say, no, you'll come back with a court order.
And when the court order would come, if it came, often it wouldn't, but if it came, then they would challenge that order in court and they would and they would fight and make it as difficult as possible for a government to censor an account, rather than a request comes in and you're like, oh, you know, jag meats saying Canadian patolitician. Okay, boom nut, he's down, He's down.
And then the second point would be, I don't even think that's a good policy to say that you're going to follow the laws of every country that you're in, because if that's the case, you never would have had an Arab spring, because you know, move Barak's laws did not allow for Twitter and Facebook to just allow people
to communicate freely and publish criticism of the government. But it was that ability and their ability to share actually WikiLeaks revelations that got people out into the street and gave people the sense that they could actually take control
of their own destinies. And if you would have had a policy at the time that said, well, we actually only allow speech that is allowed by a government in that country, then you would have no you know, you have no ability to protest against authoritarian governments like a Mobaric regime at the time, and that's where Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey sort of earned their rebel bond. They
felt really good. They clearly loved it, like they relished having those rebel bona fides, and that very quickly changed. So yeah, I think it's a bad policy. Obviously, it's bad policy. We should be exporting positive American values and not bending to the will of authoritarian governments. But to your point, I mean, is it even the policy, Like
that's another completely legitimate question. The big takeaway, one of my big takeaways from this is just that when you have a platform as important and influential as Twitter, it does make me nervous. Like I love the entrepreneurial startup energy that Elon Musk has brought to it. I genuinely
think that's like interesting and exciting. That's fun. It's been fun, and I think it can be a recipe for success at other sort of startups and small companies and even companies that have a footprint that's much bigger than the size of their company. I think that's cool. But man, do I think it also when you have something that's so influential like Twitter is, it's such a recipe for
disaster and chaos. When you're understaffed, overworked, and unorganized, it's it's creating problems I think with speech here in the United States already uneven sort of violation decisions, We've already seen that happening. That's inevitable, but it feels like it's happening at a disturbing rate. Things that are promised like that impact people's business, like this verified membership which would cost like ten grand a year or something to that extent.
It's going to happen now, No, it's going to happen then, you know it just it's It does feel like a really powerful, influential and serious space of public discourse is a mess right now, and that could go in some dangerous directions here or abroad could indeed. So up next, we're going to have an interview with Sierra Leoni and journalist Chernoba, who wrote a book on the Ebola outbreak
from twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen. We recently reported on a new apparent admission by virologist Christian Anderson that a lab run by the US based Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium in Kenema, Sierra Leone was in fact performing a Bola
research in twenty fourteen, contrary to previous denials. The presence of that lab along with gaping holes in the zoonotic theory have long led to calls for a deeper investigation into the origin of the twenty fourteen a Bola outbreak and calls for restrictions on dangerous research and tighter lab safety regulations. Now for background on that question, see our
reports from last week in the week before. But today we're fortunate enough to be joined by a journalist who has been examining this issue for years, Churno Boz the editor of the Africanist Press, and he's the author of the book The Abola Outbreak in West Africa, Corporate Gangsters, multinationals and Rogue Politicians. He's also the ongoing target of death threats from the government from his government back in
Sierra Leone. He's in exile here in the United States right now, and we're very fortunate to have him with us in the studio. And so Turno and if we could put up the first tearsheet here the CNN report, So Tcherno, the kind of mainstream version of the story of the Abola outbreak is that there was this two year old boy who's playing with some bats. YadA YadA, YadA, we get an Abola outbreak. So you explored this theory by actually going to the village. Did the story hold up? No,
that was when we first read the story. When the report came out in December twenty fourteen, I knew that there, you know, there must be or their obvious inadequacies in the report. In the first place, it was reported that the in this case of the outbreak, Emil woman was a two year old child who the alleged was involved in the hunting and grilling and eating off bat that transmitted the virus to the child. So that did not hold up. So in fact, that was what triggered my
interest to investigate the narrative, to interrogate the narrative. So I traveled from Cerrillly onto Guinea and then met family members of Emil, the father. I spoke to the father who was never by the time mentioned by any of the reports, and I that is what I documented in my book. Basically, part of the book, or the main aspect of the book, is to challenge the Domino narrative. We found out at the time that the child was not even two years old. He was eighteen months old. Yes,
he was eighteen months all the time. So since then there has been a revision of the age of the child by even journalists who had earlier reported who had taken on that narrative, so many of the and there was no clinical evidence to support the fact that the child had actually died of ebola. In fact, medical practitioners in the village, in the health clinic who had dealt with all of these supposing this cases, earlier cases of the supposed outbreak, believed that the child died of malaria
related conditions. So that was too obvious. And I think more work has now increased work into that examination of that narrative has rendered it basically baseless. And you found a couple other inaccuracies or omissions around the size of his family and other people who were involved. What were were some of those? Yeah, there were also this is what you might call a larger family of the childhood or the siblings who were basically in the household who
we are never infected. There was a sister, eight other siblings who were in the house that were never infected. And the report also made no mention of his of his p limits. So and and the key thing here is that but hunting in that area is not done by by by children so eighteen month olds. So MHM. On the surface of it, it was too obvious. And the report i think also mentioned the fact that insect
eating bats were responsible for triggering the outbreak. And in that region, the bats that are obviously present there are foot bats and at the time food bats. We are not known to carry a boy or so, like I said, every aspect of that of that narrative has been on the mind by the fact that there was no clinical evidence to support the argument that Emil was the index case.
The fact of the child was also not infected. Even though he dealt with all of the suppose index cases, the mode of the child and the other relatives or other members in the village who were supposedly identified as the primary victims of the of the of the outbreak, and and the family still believed that the child was not The child never died of ebola, right and you know, right, so you get this major outbreak later in March. This, this is happening in December. This in December. What about
the rest of the people in the village. Did they believe that in hindsight that they were the epicenter of of the Ebola outbreak or what was there. What was their thoughts as you talked to that now they were even surprised with the fact that you know, all of these people, we are going there and pinpointing, you know, the village or highlighting the village as the as the
epicenter of the of the outbreak. They it's we have to underline the fact that many of the under five deaths in that region are basically are shooted with malaria. So that is the known, the known epidemic or disease that's responsible for many of the debts and has a similar symptoms, similar symptoms to fiver and and and and
all of that. So they, like I said, recent even writers did a follow up interview with the father in which he actually reported exactly what we had documented, what I had documented in the book, that the child was never the in the case of the outbreak, was also not a victim of of of ebola. So I think that that argument has been has been settled. So because we disputed the fact that uh but amilian do the village was could not be the episode of the outbreak.
We had raised the question about the lab in Kenema, which we believe there was what going on there and in all of the earlier conversations, nobody had mentioned the presence of research as in in in the neighboring region in in in Srira Llian. So in my in my book, as far as I know, that was one of the things that I argued that why was that aspect the presence of western research as in Kenema never part of the relevant Yes, so it's finally it's finally getting attention now.
And so Christian Anderson, who worked in that lab, was recently on a podcast and in trying to knock down what he called the conspiracy theory, ended up making this admission. We want to roll this this clip from the podcast.
The problem is that people see these quincs and says one of the new ones is the Ebola lab league, which also is being blamed on us because we have been studying Ebola in Canaman, Sierra Leone and Lo and behold, Ebola emerged just a few miles from there in twenty fourteen, right obviously across the border in Guinea, but it's maybe one hundred miles or so away. And people then put that together and saying, oh, so that Ebola must have been aliab league too, And it was Robert Gary and
Christian Anderson again. And the reason why these names keep coming up, and the reason why we get grant money to study infectious diseases is because we study infectious diseases and have done so for many, many decades. And that's why the names keep coming up again. Right, It's not because there's some major conspiracy theory here where all of us have been sort of fiddling with the fields well
prior to the pandemic. So hearing doctor Anderson apparently acknowledged that bola research was going on, which seemed to be the conclusion that so many other people had drawn already based on research papers and other evidence, and also the fact that it was called the hemorrhagic centers it. What was it like for you when you first heard that
that admission from doctor Anderson. Well, I wasn't surprised because in my book I had called for the disclosure of all of the information relating to the work that was happening in Kenema, which had received a tremendous amount of funding Western defense funding from the United States and all the parts of the world who were basically concerned about the potential weaponization of certain pathogens that could be used
as part of the modern day warfare. So I knew from my work as a journalist in the region that Kenma had been the center of biodefense research way back in two thousand and four subsequent to the Antras incident here, that increased funding was going on by twenty ten. I also knew that an Umbrell organization called the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consulting VHFC has been formed that coordinated all of these defense funding and research that was going on in
the region. So what I was surprised about was that in all of the conversations that happened from twenty fourteen right up to this admission, nobody was willing to admit that we should be looking at the possibility that the outbreak may have or the outbreak likely emerged out of the lab itself, or how is the lab the activities of that lab connected to what was what happened in instantly and in the region in twenty fourteen and twenty fifteen.
So the admission here is, you know, we've been calling for that, We've been calling for the disclosure of information relating to the kind of research what's happening, and kind of my if you look at it. We most underline the fact that that kind of research should not be undertaken in an environment that lacked all of the Yes, actually,
we have a aal aerial image of that figure. All. Yeah, all of the security protocols that are needed to undertake a class air patrogen and resart deliver with a class
air patrogen are absent here. We're talking about the dilapidata, this hospital environment where medical officers lacked the basic tools of protection, right, you know, and if you and this was underlined by a writer's researcher, a writer as reporter who had interviewed some of these researchers about the site being part of the US War on Terror, and researcher was going on there and they said they lacked the security protocol, but they're able to carry out to you know,
they think it's possible to carry out the kind of work.
So we are still calling for the disclosure, complete and full disclosure of information about the kind of research that was happening and the link, the potential link between that research to the outbreak, because we're talking about hundreds of lives, hundreds of thousands of lives, you know, people dying and often now the families in the region who have been stigmatized, who have lost family members, who are still dealing with that trauma of the horrific nature of the outbreak, the deaths,
and this is a region that has a history of crisis and conflict, was tremendous exploitation of environmental and resources diamonds, gold box sized aluminumris that have been mined and transported by leading corporations. So it is not surprising that Western scientists and researchers will also use the same environment for the production of medical knowledge that would serve defense and other interest outside of the protection of the communities in
that region. And there's also a potentially interesting thing slip that doctor Anderson makes in that clip. If you noticed he said, we're doing you a bowl of work in this lab, and then there was an outbreak a few miles away. Then he says, well, what I mean is that there was an outbreak one hundred miles away in Guinea.
But if the if the original outbreak, as you're saying, has been rejected by everybody in the community and has fallen apart and doesn't make sense, would it be more accurate what his original claim have been more accurate that actually the the original epicenter could have been within very
close proximity to Kinema. Yes, because I even one of the statements I made in my book is the fact that the Lenda's narrative, which located at the European Investment not Investment Investigative, is located at the outbreak in Guinea
miles away from Kenema. Was could be a potential cover up because if we if they had identified Kenema as the site of the outbreak, then the defense funel and operation that has been going on since twenty and four to twenty ten and twenty fourteen would have been the
subject of the primary interrogation. So by locating the outbreak and the initial in this case is miles away from Kenema, it takes people's attention away from what was potentially happening in Kenema and how that is related to the outbreak itself. So I think that is the essence of the Lender's narrative, with all the inadequacies, It was just repeated and popularized by mainstream media out here and also the academy itself.
So without pausing and examining the potential of a two year old boy to participate in the you know ads task of hunting and grilling of a bat. So that is the it provided an alibi basically where all of these scientific research that is potentially implicated in this tragedy that has claimed the lives of people in the region could not be part of the conversation. So in five years down the line, now we're beginning to get admission and research related to Ibola had been ongoing and happening
in the region. And the subtitle of your book talks about corporate gangsters and rogue politicians, and that gets us a little bit into why you're in exile now from Sierra Leone. I wanted to talk a little bit about your own career kind of evolving out of the out of this book, but the what the Africans press is
up to and what kind of threats you're facing. So and I think I think we have a clip made from this one one of the journalists protection organizations that is that has stood up, that has stood up for you and for your organization that you've been the illegitimate, you know, illegitimate subject of of threats from the government for your reporting on government corruption. What what what was the what was the reporting that that really got you in the crosshairs of of the the government and what's
the status of that now. Well, for the last twenty years, through the African e space, we've been holding different core politicians, especially in Isralian and in the region in West Africa, accountable to minimum standards of good governance and accountability. And for the last four years, we have been perhaps with all humility, the only press organization in Isralian that is
holding the current government accountable. We've reported on high levels of corruption involving the current president, the wife of the president, and all of the leading officials in government. That has led to a a tremendous amount of exposed the government's facad and hypocrisy in its commitment to fight corruption, and that has actually resulted into all kinds of threads against my life to the point that I cannot go back home right now. And then, Yeah, their threat has and their
response has been almost comically aggressive. Yes they've Yeah, they've gone as far as sacking the Auditor General of the of the of the National Audit Service is Relion including fire their top order thinking he is a source of yse Yes, it's a woman's thinking. She's a very credible woman who was known over the years whole you know, for presenting reports that detailed public the misuse of public funds.
And the current president sacked, fired constititionally on the suspicion that the Audit Service was responsible for providing details of government corruption to The African Express and only that. Even people in the Central Bank have also been sacked, bankers, other public officials to we have counted over one hundred and seven where you're getting this, yeah, trying to figure out how we should blow us or the source of
our information. How many they fired? Did you say? More than one hundred and seventy of people who've counted so far, in in in, in in across the government, from the Minister of Finance, the President's office, the Central Bank Australion to the Audit Service and still an ongoing process of harassing, harassing people. Nobody could even identify themselves since relion affiliates of the African Express, because it's dangerous to do so.
So your reporters are writing under names, yes, yes, underground those of us who put our real names and people who are outside of the country, right. Yeah. We talk a lot about in the United States about so and so just produced a courageous report. And I always think about reporters, I like the ones who are working for you and yourself, that who are doing actually courageous journalism that could lead to real consequences rather than some mean
things said about you online. Yes, that's what I've witnessed, threads coming from all, you know, both sides of the political divide, from the opposition parties in parliament and also the ruling parties. So you find those who support your work would only do so when they find a political interest in doing that. When you write about their opponents or you reveal things that are supposedly damaging to the opponents the Halia work, you present something that affects their
own political interest, they also condemn you. So we are caught between that line, you know, in the middle of that crossfire among these correpor politicians. I called them two functions of the same ruling class who've divided themselves along these parties that you know, but they pursue the same thing, loot public funds. Uh, this disregard the welfare of ordinary people and then are committed to uplifting society. Now, yeah,
we have that here too, We sure do. So everybody here at the Breaking Points Networks certainly deeply supportive of the work you're doing to expose this corruption. Really, thank you for joining us here, and I'm glad you could be in studio. We're lucky that you were coming through town. Thank you for having me. All right, So that was Chernobo. We taped that. We taped that interview earlier this week. Emily wasn't able to join us for that one. Starry,
you couldn't be there. No, no, no, this is this is this topic also you know it inside and out because you've been looking at this for a while. What were your big takeaways from this conversation with Turno, Well, a couple of things. One, Uh, just the extraordinary courage that that Turno and his colleagues have shown at the at the africanis press uh to be to be going up against the be, going up against the powers that be in those in those countries, not just Sierra Leone,
but Guinea Liberia elsewhere. It's it's real, it's it's it's sad that he is in exile. Uh, it is it is a credit to the authenticity and the power of his work that he has been pushed into exile. There there are going to be elections in June in Sierra Leone, and there's there's some hope that there will that there will be some enough political change that could allow uh some uh churno bond some of the other uh you know, kind of dissident journalists to return back back into the country.
Before the interview, he and I were talking about how how the way that he was describing their work felt very similar to the way that the Intercepts work is received. He's like, whenever we are attacking the government, then the opposition party is sharing our work, is celebrating us as these as these courageous independent journalists who are just speaking
truth to power. And then the next week they'll they'll expose corruption within the opposition parties and then they're just you know, stooges of this and that other thing, and uh, you know, you can't this is just character assassination. And and but and but the very clear differences that have
won to one hundred percent clear about it. They are facing you know, serious, you know, physical and safety risks for the for the work that they do, whereas we suffer from mean tweets, yes, basically brutal yeah, and some
mean dms every now. Yeah, but his his work on UH, you know, his his work on the Ebola outbreak is it was was path breaking and you know, he was, for instance, the first one to demonstrate that the patient zero, the meal was not two years old, was eighteen months and that was that was a critical discovery which later the rest of the kind of conventional narrative had to
incorporate helped discovered that the dates were off. He also he also discovered that a Meal was, as he mentioned in the interview, part of a very large family, and that his siblings did not end up catching a Bola, which nor did his father, who treated him the entire time, which is just extraordinarily difficult to imagine, which would make it more likely that the local doctors diagnosis of what
he had of malaria was actually was actually accurate. And so that if you cannot pinpoint the patient zero to early December or even late December as they changed as they changed it to later in this village, and where did it start and how and the overlap with COVID is obviously fascinating and direct, Like like several of the key figures in the UH COVID lab League controversy were literally present at that one. Unbelievable. I look forward to your future reporting on it. I know that you're you're
not giving up on this. Yes, it's yeah, it's it's it's awful to think about how these all of these, all of these deaths, all of the suffering, may have been preventable by just smarter policy, smarter policy and more transparency. Wow. All right, well that does it for us in this edition of Counterpoints. Thank you so much for watching. We hope you have a great rest of your week, and we will see you back here next Wednesday.