Al Zone Media.
This is it could happen here in Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis Dame, joined by James Stout, Robert Evans and maybe Sophie Lichterman.
Yeah.
This episode, we are covering the week of January twenty eighth to February fourth. Very exciting events happening this weekend, as we know, the super Bowl and even more importantly, the Turning Point USA Halftime Show streaming on Daily Wire Plus, America's Real Voice, National News Desk and TBN. I don't know what that is.
Way pause, pause, it's behind a payroll.
Uh you know, unclear? Uh well, but probably not because it's gonna be Also, it's also gonna be on YouTube, ex Everything app and Rumble.
But I was going to ask you it was on Rumble.
It's gonna be Oh, don't worry, James, that there are one step ahead of you and we can we can see all of our favorite acts. We have Kid Rock, Bradley, Gilbert Lee, Bryce and Gabby Barrett, all of my favorite performers.
Garrett I haven't seen kid rock since you and I watched kid Rock together at the r n C.
It's been too long. It's been too long.
It's been way too long.
It's been too long. I'm I'm excited for Lee Bryce obviously as a as as the biggest Bryce head on the pod. Rice is gonna be huge. Gabby Barrett will be a nice you know, a nice little spice on top. Yeah.
And this guy's name is it's not Bradley, It's it's Brantley.
Sorry, Brandley Gilbert. My my apologies, my apologies all the big Brandley fans out there by bad obviously the most literally brand.
That's not a real name. That's just not a real name.
Yeah, it isn't spelled with L E I g H. So we do have to give him that.
If it was Brandt Leigh, I would be doing some terrorism right right.
I gun in my hand.
Yeah, I would be unable to stop myself.
You guys, I just googled Lee Brice and the first picture that pops up is incredible and I'm gonna put it in the.
Chat, please do? Is it in the work chat?
It's in the zoom chat. That's the first picture that pops up it's incredible.
Oh he looks tough. Wow is he in band of brothers?
His jaw is fantastic.
Oh my god, it's an incredible first photo.
Yeah, his expression isn't though. He's really letting himself down with the face.
Yeah, his face says I really am racist.
It just doesn't look happy to be there.
So obviously, after about six months of planning, Turning Point was able to put together just the finest, the finest acts in all the show business for their for they're all American names, so all the big names. Really whatever flits, everyone's it to listen. They could not even get Nicki Minaje, which is like so humiliating, Like, come on, guys.
Yeah, didn't she do a dance with the Treasury Secretary yesterday or something?
Yes?
Who is that guy or those two people that were at the R and C that they kept showing doing that rap video? I like kind of blocked it up.
Yeah, there's those conservative rap guys.
Yeah for Got your Blow? Is it?
Forget for Got your Blow? Is one of the conservative rap guys.
Yes, yeah, I will admit I don't have a deep knowledge in this area.
I I saw him at the R n C. I was walking behind him on my way to the beer store. He's my incredible He's an amazing looking man. Yeah, that's a unique dude. That's a that's your risky goople of the day. God really broke the mold with him.
So we will we will report on how the Turning Point halftime show went next week for the next d D because you you know that I'm going to be turned into rumble to watch this.
Yeah, it's gonna be.
We're need a minute by minute breakdown of this bad boy.
I'll be taking extensive notes.
I hope I'll be able to record in watching again later for posterity. I feel like it's goes down like live aid. You know, it's the greatest moment in live music.
It is interesting that they are showing it on national news desk. Fox News did not did not decide to air air the all of Eric at halftime show, so instead you have to tune into TBN whatever that is in National news desk. So let's get us some actual news though.
Sure, real news. Okay.
So, Portland, Oregon has been the site of some recent noteworthy ice protests. On Saturday, the thirty first of January, there was a large Union march on the Ice Building on McAdams Street in Portland, Oregon. This was like basically every union in Portland. It was the largest union march that we've had here in like twenty years. Somewhere along those lines. About five to ten thousand people showed up. Wow, when I heard it was ten k because I wound
up there. I didn't even planning to go, but I showed up with a friend, and as we were kind of watching the crowd pass, some buddy of ours came up who knows one of the people who organized the march and was like, yeah, they're expecting like ten thousand people. And I was like, there's no way they're going to get ten thousand fucking people out here. And then as the crowd went past me for like twenty straight minutes, and I was like, yeah, that might be ten thousand people.
That really is quite a lot of motherfucking people. It was an extremely diverse crowd, which I mean in the age sense primarily it's Portlands, so not in the in any other sense of the word.
Yeah, those protests tend to have you know, older folks, teenagers, families, teachers, a.
Lot of older folks, a lot of little kids, kids who were like eight to twelve years old, because it was just suppose people were like the basic round of march was doing a circle around the Ice facility, and then there was like sound equipment and music set up on a nearby park. So I think I don't believe the plan was an extended confrontation with Ice, which is what made what came next so surprising, which is that we start walking towards where the route of march is heading.
We're kind of in like the middle of the crowd probably, and we see a cloud and it's like three point thirty in the afternoon. So the people I'm with, who have all been through their share of Portland protests, are like, that can't be tear gas. It's not even four pm and this is the Liberal March. There's no way they've gassed it already. Like I saw the front of the march, it was a bunch of people in their fifties. Like, they're not forcing the issue with Ice, I don't think,
but apparently pray the claims made by Ice. When the crowd reached the Ice building, people began throwing water bottles. So obviously that's a situation that can't be allowed to continue. So they gas the absolute fuck out of the march, and they gased it so much that the cloud of gas spread to cover pretty much the entire march, including the people who were nowhere near the front of the
march yet. So as we're walking towards it, we've become aware about halfway towards getting to it that like, okay, that's not smoke, that is, in fact gas. Some of us had masks. I did not, So I'm like, well, I'm gonna have a bad time. This is straight up not going to be fun. And the problem with it was because of where they gassed us. There were kind of two streets of buildings on either side, so you
basically got you're in like a valley almost. You've got steep canyon walls kind of on either side of you. And there was no wind that day, so you've just got this thick cloud of gas smoke, and ten thousand people crammed in between two pillars of buildings. So it was a very bad time. A lot of kids got gassed. I saw a number of children in significant distress, like little kids. A lot of old people wound up in significant distress. It was straight up a bad time, and
it continued for the next day. There was another march the next day that started at City Hall. This kind of galvanized people in Portland to specifically take up the charge of protesting for the city to basically not renew or cancel ICE's contract to use the building that they're based out of. So there was a large march on Sunday. I showed up as the march reached the Ice area because I didn't want to walk across town, and sure enough we get there in maybe an hour or so
after the crowd arrives. There's like a thousand or so people, and it's still a very young crowd. This is not mostly people who have been doing the protest thing in Portland for a long time. Like I saw a lot of girls who couldn't have been older than sixteen or seventeen out on Sunday and they gassed again, and I couldn't tell you. They were letting people like right up to the front of the ICE building, which they had gassed folks for throwing water bottles kind of near the
day before. So there's never any consistency with these sort of things, And eventually they just decided to gas the shit out of everybody again to come and snatch people. And that's kind of the story is people in Portland are really pissed again because they gassed the big Lib march. All of the unions are really angry, all of the nurses are really angry. The city government's angry. The Mayor of Portland, Keith Wilson, made a statement that all of
the ICE should quit their jobs, should resign. I don't know that. I think that they're actually going to kick ICE out of its building now. To be fair, I don't think that ICE is really getting much done in that building because it's locked down completely. They are using facilities up in Washington for the actual immigration stuff for the most part, so it's become I think it's largely a symbol. Yeah, a symbolic kind of dill. So we'll see.
I don't know what's going to happen next, but yeah, that's the update from here.
The tear gas air is spicy and bad for our health.
Yeah, I mean, it always bums me out to see really young people like kids get tear gased, especially like teenage girls.
Because there's data and not.
Nearly as much as there should because the government really doesn't like studying this on how tear gas affects, particularly like reproductive health, and it's bad. There's evidence from places
like Gaza that it can cause miscarriages. There's documentation and miscarriages and at least three different countries as a result of tear gas use, although again it's not the kind of documentation you'd want for a medical thing because you can't really isolate out other factors that may have been happening at the same time, because you're trying to figure out what this and other things are doing to people's bodies in a place like Gaza where you have no
kind of like clinical control. But outside of that, there's evidence of missed periods that it can delay or cause unusually painful periods.
Send people into early menopause.
Jeez.
Yeah, there's some evidence for that.
It's kind of a When I brought this up online, someone got very angry at me because they're like, well, it's not proven. I think there's enough data to tell people, especially if you've got a uterus, wear a mask when you go protest.
Yeah, I think also, how are we going to obtain proof in this scenario?
Right?
What are they going to do?
Yeah, it's not very easy for us to do. We can't really do it just a double blind trial, right. Yeah.
Somebody brought up like, if it was bad for reproductive health, then all of the women in the military, because you get tear gased as part of military training, then that would have shown up before and it hasn't. And I immediately found in about three seconds the largest like study done so far on the effective tear gas that specifically noted. Yeah, they did some studies on hair tear gas affects people in the sixties.
They didn't look at.
Women, weren't interested, they didn't care, not at all a priority.
Yeah, completely ignored it. Shocked, shocked to hear this.
So anyway, just like we're a respirator. A half faced respirator, you know, is cheaper. I would recommend a full face because tear gas sucks on your eyes. They're not crazy expensive. You don't have to get a nice gas mask. Just get a respirator. It's better than nothing.
Yeah, I like my respirator.
Yep.
So first, just a couple of small things that we wanted to note that we might come back to covering later. First, the US has now admits it that it had a small contingent troops on the ground in Nigeria. I wrote on my newsletter about US drone strikes in Nigeria, what they're doing there and who they're targeting with those drone strikes, alongside the long running issues with civilian casualties with airborne raids in Nigeria on my news letters of people want
to read that they can. And secondly, I wanted to mention that Judge Anna Reyes has stated Secretary g Nomes decision that would have rendered three hundred and fifty thousand Haitians without legal status when she was going to let the temporary protected status expire. I have explained TPS several times on ED and in my first Darien series, so I'm not going to go into detail about it here, but if you'd like to listen to those, you could find out more about it.
Last thing before our first ad break, Bill and Hillary Clinton have agreed to testify before Congress is a part of the Epstein investigation. A vote to hold the Clinton's in criminal contempt of Congress was scheduled for this week before they finally agreed to be to at two hearings in late February and the Clintons have now called for
these hearings to be public. This follows a slew of new Epstein documents that are released by the DOJ last week, which Robert, you'll be you'll be covering on Behind the Bastards soon.
Yes, yes, we will be talking about the things revealed in the new Epstein file releases, the three million or so documents that just came out. Yes, we'll be talking about that on Behind the Bastards.
Not next week but the week after.
Yeah, probably like the week after something like that. There's a lot of good stuff in there, a lot of brock Pierce in this set of releases. If you've been curious as to what the guy who invented Tether, the cryptocurrency tether was up to, with Jeffrey Epstein as a spoiler, it was molesting people.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, well allegedly, we don't know. We don't know that it was molesting. They were described as girls, repeatedly described as girls in the emails, but between brock Pierce, the Mighty Ducks guy, and Jeffrey Epstein. But that could mean anything, you know, that could mean anything.
You'd be talking about the Elon Musk emails in there.
There's some Elon stuff in there, it's nothing definitive. The downside of it is Elon has a leg to stand on when he's like I never went to the island.
That said.
You can interpret the emails one of two ways. Because I saw an Elon musk fans, I'd be like, see, he was clearly just trying to blow him off. That's not how I interpret Elon's emails to Epstein. I think he really wanted to go to that fuck island.
What night will the wildest post he be or something?
Yeah, he was like I want to know where, But he was also talking about like the whole island area right, like where the wildest parties are that he wanted. So he does have some plausible deniability. But he was lying about not being in touch with Epstein and also JK Rowling in touch with Epstein. Oh shit, save yes.
Saved him seats for the opening of.
Her play, Oh of the Harry Potter play on Broadway.
Got Jeffrey Epstein a seat. God, just when you thought you're gonna be a worse fucking person.
Incredible.
Yeah, what a third, what a disgrace to our national Yeah, I mean we have lots of those, I guess, but yeah.
I can't believe this one person has ruined the reputation of Britain, the.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, previously unblemished in santuries of history Jesus Christ until the turf Wizard Lady came alone.
Yeah, the first bed English person anyway.
So yeah, On February twenty sixth, Hillary will be testifying, and on the twenty seventh, Bill will be testifying in hearings that should be televised live to the public.
Interesting, okay, let's go on, britt all right, we're back, and I have a fantastic news Look what Look what I found? Look what I found, you guys deep in my archives of misery.
Luckily, podcasting is a visual medium.
Oh no, it's okay.
What are we imagine?
Oh god?
All right, I think I think we get forgot you.
Do we need anymore?
No?
No, we don't, okay, all right, sorry? Oh god.
The fact that video is playing on the background of a large police badge.
We're voting Donald Trump baby so bad.
So bad. I cannot tell you how disappointed I am that I will not be hearing them perform on Super Bowl Sunday. You can see just the disappointment in my face right now. M This Wednesday morning, February fourth, Tom Homan announced that they're pulling seven hundred federal agents out of Minneapolis, though two thousand will remain in the city.
That's so many agents.
Yeah, that's so that much.
Even seven hundred sounded like.
There's still a lot of ICE and Border patrol on the ground.
Wow.
Two thousand was a surge that they did earlier this year. That that was when they really kind of flooded it with ICE agents. So in two thousand is still two thousands is still a massive amount of ices overall capacity. That these aren't all ICE agents, right, like they deputize atf and marshals and other things.
But a lot of Border patrol guys here.
Yeah, I don't know if that's who the seven hundred who there was drawing are.
It's a mix, it's not. I don't think they're from just one agency.
Okay, Yeah, there are a lot of Border patrol you see that a lot, right, Like the Border patrol agents clearly love this, right, They're they're getting per DM, they're getting travel pay. They make more money than they do on the border and they don't have to like drive around in the middle of nowhere.
They call it going on Safari.
Homan has cited an increasing cooperation by Minnesota authorities. He was talking about handing over detained people who would be deportable, I think, But I have not seen a similar statement from state authorities in Minnesota, at least at a time, So take that with a pinch of salt. Right, A lot of what we see coming out of drum DHS just straight up isn't true.
They have been talking about trying to increase the cooperation with ICE detainers in the local prisons and jails.
Yeah, and I think that would be what this cooperation would be. It would be like either cooperating with ICE detainers or even alerting ICE if they thought someone was deportable.
An interesting thing of note as well is earlier this week the military troops that were placed on standby have been unplaced on standby, soh not looking like those guys in Alaska or North Carolina will be deploying to Minneapolis.
In some other Minneapolis related news, Dawn Lemon, friend of the pod, was arrested Thursday, January twenty nine and now faces civil rights charges for allegedly violating Face Act, which prohibits interfering with reproductive health services or people exercising religious freedom at a place of worship. On January eighteenth, Lemon reported on a protest at City's church in Saint Paul, where one of the pastors is also the head of
the local ice field office. A magistrate, judge and an appeals court previously dismissed the charges against Lemon before the case was brought before a grand jury in Minnesota. Six activists and one other journalists are also facing charges. We reported on this protest after it happened, and yeah, the DOJ has been trying to pin pin Lemon on this for the past few weeks. Yeah, probably not a great sign for you know, general general First Amendment activity.
No, no, that's a pretty pretty bleak side.
Actually, as frustrating as the as it is to start waiving the Jimmy Kimmel Don Lemon flag, you know. That's that's that is the situation we're in.
Yeah, it's not good.
The journalists they arrested was the head of the National Association of Black Journalists.
What's she Georgia Fort is her name?
Yes, yes, I do want to say, actually that like when we talk about protections for journalists, like journalists, yes, can often be the people who were first targeted for like things that violate freedom of speech. Right, Like when governments are going to violate freedom of speech, they can go off to journalists first. But like when someone is
recording ICE operations, they are doing citizen journalism. They are protected by exactly the same rights that we have as journalists who are doing this as our full time job. There isn't a special first Amendment for us. And so when the border patrol agents killed Alex Pretty, they killed someone who is at that time engaged to journalism too.
And like, I'm to see journalistic bodies standing up, not just for people who employed his full time jeneists have put all of our rights to document and record.
Yeah, all of the legal observers who are filming ICE as well that are being targeted with intimidation, being pulled over.
Having guns pointed at them, etc.
Yeah.
Do you want to talk about the Senate funding for ICE?
Oh?
Do I?
So the partial government shut down, which did start last week, was ended on Tuesday after the DJs bill was stripped out of the now one point two trillion dollar annual funding package. DHS's funding will lapse on Friday the thirteenth, and negotiation.
Why not.
While negotiations continue on a DHS funding bill, Congressional Democrats are pushing for agency reforms like judicial warrants and no masked agents, while Republicans are signaling minor consents like having a border patrol and ice wear body cameras.
Yeah, should we talk a little bit more about body cameras?
You know what my favorite tarthic let's talk about body cameras.
A Yeah, I love to talk about a body worn camera.
Time was a flat circle.
Yeah, Okay.
So Christie Nome this week announced that ice agents in Minnesota were going to wear body worn cameras going forward. And I've been kind of disappointed a lot of the reporting on this. What is I think missing is that that, like there was a twenty twenty two executive order right signed by Biden the ordered federal law enforcement to use body worn cameras. Funding for them was included in the
twenty twenty one for SCOOL year appropriations built. Nome has said they will grow the program as funds become available, but those funds have been available for some time right in twenty twenty four document ice document that talked about their pilot program study. They said, quote full implementation is expected by September thirtieth, twenty twenty five. Eagle eared listers will noticed that it in the past. However, in twenty
twenty five I spagan rolling this back. They issued a directive which continued only implementing the body worn camera program in the certain pilot program cities. The Trump administration, in its second term, has called Congress to cut funding for body worn cameras by seventy five percent and reduce the staffing of the body worn camera program from twenty two people to just three. They have also cut oversight offices within DHS like oh IDO. O IDEO is like the
nichest level of DHS. Understand that when you know of o IDEO, I think Biden created it. I actually I've seen them once. It's the Office of the Immigration Detention ombardsmen. They came to the outdoor detention sites in hercumber which seems to be something of a concession that by the administration at the time denied people were detained in those sites. It had one hundred plus employees at start of the
Trump administration. It also has three now, according to Reuters, this most recent bill, as Garrison said, does include funding and a mandate for their use. A federal judge in Chicago had already ordered agents there to wear cameras in
November of last year. I should note that I also looked up the Ice body warm camera policy and it theoretically now in soo far of any of these policies are being followed, right, prohibits them for using body worn cameras for the quote sole purpose of recording people engaged in First Amendment protected activities. So they can just use their phones for that. I guess that's what they've been doing.
I mean, yeah, this is like part of the frustration around this bill is you do have humor pushing for certain things like like not wearing masks and not doing the rolling raids, but also emphasizing, you know, you want the masks off and the cameras on, as if that's going to affect the behavior of agents on the ground. Meanwhile, during the killing of Renee Good, the officer that shot and killed her was filming the whole thing on his phone.
He was filming on his own cell phones. So obviously, yeah, having a camera on the agent is not going to prevent them from killing someone.
Because they think it's good what they're doing. Yeah, they don't think it's bad.
You have to understand that both the agents who shot Alex Pretty actually had body worn cameras and they're actually CBP agents. So CBP or BP, I should say, right, Customs are border.
Protection, one of them is CPP, one of them's PP.
That's correct.
Yeah, that's what they're they're both CBP agents. But within CBP you have BP and OFO. Okay, they get really mad if you get this wrong. Literally, I've got an email once for the subject line.
Come on, man.
So they were both Customs and Border Protection agents. Generally border patrol. Border patrol is part of Customs and Border Protection, right, the other part of the Office of Field Operations. Border Patrol ceased using their cameras early in the Trump administration, citing an issue with the bluetooth used by the cameras that could make them detectable. This is a thing that can happen. It is possible. There's a GitHub script for this.
Whether the justifiers stopping using them is an entirely different question. Both the agents in the Pretty shooting were wearing body can but we have not seen that footage. The two agents have been identified by Pro Publica as Border Patrol agent Zus jesse Or Choa and Customs and Border Protection Officer Field Operations Officer Raimundo Gutierrez. A Choa joined twenty eighteen.
Gutierrez joined in twenty fourteen. Gutierrez is part of the office Field Operations Special Response Team that is generally a team with training in weapons and tactics who would serve high risk warrants.
Do raids like a Swart style.
Yeah, it's another word for swat, I think because what became somewhat you know, they decided they want a different word for it. Sure, pro Publica I got an interview with the Choa's ex wife who said, quote, by the time the couple split in twenty twenty one, he had become a gun enthusiast, with about twenty five rifles, pistols and shotguns. Into much as that matters, I guess that was the only interview that could get about them.
Both of the men are from South Texas.
To circle back to the funding bill for DHS and these potential reforms being pushed for at you know, multiple levels of the democratic establishment, you know, with Schumer being a little bit lighter and obviously people like AOC and to leave pushing for more extreme measures like abolishing the agency advice, which is unlikely to happen in this funding bill as the Republicans control Congress. But still there is a spectrum of beliefs among the party at the moment.
And to get a look at what average regular registered Democrats believe, there's a new poll from you gov that came out this week based on data from late January early February that have seventy nine percent of Democrats saying they support abolishing ICE. Abolishing ICE is also up eight points within the attendants and more people overall support abolishing ICE at forty six percent to forty four percent opposing.
So, just to finish up on our immigration coverage to the week, we also saw Judge Cobb with the DC District Court grant a tentative restraining order that prevents DHS from denying Congress people the right to inspect immigration attention facilities without notice. Previously, DHS had been asserting that they had a seven day period of notice that they had to give before they could inspect attention facilities.
The judges found that that's not justified.
Another eight attorneys have left or announced intentions to leave the US Attorney's office in Minnesota. They are now operating at less than half the capacity of assistant USA attorneys that they had in the early Biden administration. They've also lost several non attorney staff, and the Star Tribune reports that this is due to concerns about selective prosecution and the exclusion of state and local investigators from the good and pretty cases. In yesterday, one federal prosecutor said, and
I'm quoting for the transcript here, this system sucks. This job sucks. Another quotation. I'm here just trying to make sure that the agency understand how important it is to comply with all the court orders, which they have not done in the past or currently. I'm here as a bridge and a liaison between the one that in jail, because if I walk out sometimes I wish you would just hold me in contempt your honor, so that they could have a full twenty four hours of sleep. Yikes,
this is a person on the ragged edge. Yeah, that is someone who is breaking Yeah.
I mean.
You can look up her caseload and it is legitimately insane. Yeah, And it has only got bigger since the start of the year.
You can see why.
People are are quitting this job, even if they don't have a moral issue with it, because it's an inhumane amount of work.
And again, I'm not coming at this from a point of a lot of sympathy, but it's not funny.
Yeah, yeah, it's funny. It's just funny.
It's funny to see them so obviously frustrated that the agencies are just not complying with what they asked him Doestually, I was reading the transcript today to judge in the case, was like, look, you can tell me the agencies are not complying. But like, if I have a problem in the restaurant, I don't walk in there and try and find the exact person who's baking the bread. I talked to the restaurant, and the restaurant sorted out you are part of the executive branch. Yeah, this is on you.
Like it was a good, little little core exchange. And then finally, NBC has obtained a leaked email from Greg Bovino showing tensions between himself and todd Lyons. Lions is the acting Director of Immigration and custom to Enforcement. Lions attempted to prevent Veno from engaging in widespread sweeps in which agents kind of rum around check papers on anyone they think might not be a citizen, and encouraged him
to do targeted operations instead. And then mister Bovino said in the email quote, mister Lyons said he was in charge, and I corrected him, saying, I report to Corey Lewandowski. Garrison's just made a face for those.
Yeah, And if you want to hear more about our dear buddy, Greg, Robert and I recorded anisode with Jack O'Brien from Behind the Bastards that's dropping next Thursday, all about Greg Bavino.
Greg's been on a bit of a tour on his way back to California.
Yeah, he went to Mount Rushmore to record like a moto video and then he was spotted drinking a glass of red wine in Las Vegas. Yeah, it seems like they made him road trip.
Like a weirdo who's drinking. You're drinking the house wine at a casino in Vegas. Come the fuck on, Greg, grow up, Greg, have a fucking cocktail. Jesus Christ.
I think he's back in Imperial now. But it was it seems that they made him take a road trip home. They didn't fly him back, wouldn't spring for the plane trip.
Yeah, he's quite remarkable.
Incredible gestapo, unbelievable. All right, we are back. Last Wednesday, January twenty eighth, the FBI executed a raid on the Fulton County Election Office outside of Atlanta, Georgia, as a part of an investigation into Trump's claim that the twenty twenty election was rigged against him. The special Agent in charge of the FBI Atlanta Field Office resigned a week
before the warrant was served. This search warrant was signed by a United States Magistrate judge and instructed investigators to seize quote all records relating to violations of Title fifty two US Code two zero seven zero one and two five one one, with these violations occurring quote after October twelfth,
twenty twenty unquote. The former statute here two seven oh one relates to retaining and preserving election records for twenty two months after an election, and the latter two five one one relates to voter fraud or threats, intimidation and
coersion against voters. The records that were to be seized are listed on the warrant as quote, all physical ballots from the twenty twenty general election in Fulton County, all tabulator tapes for every voting machine, all ballot images produced during the original ballot count all voter roles from the twenty twenty general election in Fulton County from absentee, early and in person voting, and any electronically stored information relevant
to those items above. The Fulton County Commissioner mount Ivory said that federal officials took seven hundred boxes of ballots, and curiously, Director of National Intelligence Tulci Gabbert appeared at the side of the search and had a phone call
with Trump. After the raid concluded, Gabert sent a letter to Congress on Monday, claiming, quote, my presence was requested by the President and executed under my bra statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence relating to election security, including counter intelligence, foreign and other malign influences, and cybersecurity unquote.
She also wrote on x the everything app quote, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has and will continue to take action under my statutory authorities to secure our nation and ensure the integrity of our elections. I will include here that four days before January sixth, twenty twenty one, Trump told George's top election official to quote unquote find enough votes to overturn the election. Here's a recording of that phone call.
All I want to do is this, I just want to find.
Eleven thousand, seven hundred and eighty votes.
The Trump administration has made multiple unsuccessful attempts to gain access to the twenty twenty Georgia ballots through civil suits. Now they have just turned to executing search board through the FBI. On February first, Mike Johnson was asked about potential election medaling in Georgia. Here is this exchange from NBC News.
What do you say to that allegation that President Trump is going to meddle in the twenty twenty six midterm elections, that that's what he's doing in Georgia.
I find it comical that one of the senators from Georgia is talking about schemes in elections. Remember, Georgia was example a of that. In the twenty twenty election.
There were two statewide recounts in Georgia.
Mail out ballanced to everyone. Everyone knows all of the problems that occurred in Georgia. It was very controversially and remains so to this day because of all the things that happened there. Again, we're not going to relitigate that. But what we have to focus on is going forward to ensure that there are not questions about the elections.
And that's why Republicans are working at the federal and the state levels to clean those things up and clean up voter rolls to make sure illegals are not voting, for example. That's what the Save Act is about. We have to continue that and the President has keeping a proper focus on it. This investigation is to ensure that all the questions that about the elections in Fulton County are investigated properly so that people have confidence in the system. Again, that's very important, but.
There are really no questions about election integry from twenty twenty that have not been asked and answered. Even the Republican Nope, the Republican led governor has pointed out it's been years and no one has ever come forward under oath with evidence of fraud in Georgia.
But let me ask you pretty absurd stuff.
Yeah, yeah, we're not going to reltigate it as we rel litigate.
It, yeah, Yeah, and just giving no evidence, just being like, oh, it's very controversial.
Everyone knows, such a weasly answer.
Yeah.
Republican Governor Brian Camp has been very clear that there was absolutely no fraud happening in Georgia during twenty twenty, and if there was any attempt to meddle with the election, it is this phone call that Trump made to the Georgia Secretary of State, Yeah, asking to find a certain number of votes that itself should have resulted in Trump going to prison. Yea like South Korea style, like you're done, You're finished. You can't can't do that.
Yeah, that is like the most transparent election interference.
The way that Trump's court case in Fulton County related to his attempts to meddle into twenty twenty election is just a complete disaster due to coruption within the Fulton County courses tom itself. One of the worst things to happen during this like Biden era, is the mishandling of
the court cases around Trump's attempts to over overturn the election. Yeah, and especially like looking at at what South Korea did after their president tried to take over the country a year or two ago is like, oh, yeah, that's very clearly what we should have done with this guy.
Yeah, people could have done better.
And Mike Johnson just keeps making really concerning statements on the news about about quote unquote nationalizing elections.
I follow up on elections. The President says that he wants Republicans to nationalize elections.
Do you agree with him?
And do you have confidence in how elections are conducted?
Right now?
Heading into the midterm.
We have thoughtful debate about our election system every election cycle, and sometimes in between. We know it's in our system. The states have been in charge of a ministering their elections. What you're hearing from the President is his frustration about the lack of some of the Blue states, frankly, of enforcing these things.
Make Johnson goes on to discuss possible fraud in California specifically, though admits that he has no evidence of said fraud. One more clip.
In some of the states, like in California, for example, I mean they hold the elections open for weeks after election day. That's just one thing that bothers so many people. We had three House Republican candidates who are head on election day in the last election cycle, and every time a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost. And no series of ballots that were counted after election day were our
candidates ahead on any of those counts. It looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove no, because it happens so far upstream. But we need more confidence in the American people in the election system.
Absurd, Yeah, completely, bonkys, sir, I.
Fear that more ballots have been counted and results have changed.
Yeah, that's what elections are.
You cannot place a vote in California after election day, no, but they do count mail in ballots that have been postmarked on or before election day, which is what he's referencing. But he's yeah, miss, he's purposely misconstruting it to make it sound way more, way more nefarious than what it actually is. If you've placed a mail in vote on or before election day in California, that vote will be counted.
That is.
That is how the elections in California work, not this magically keeping keeping the election open for weeks afterwards. People can continue to vote that's that's not that's not true.
It's giving like a very specific sports reference where that the announcers like and the team with the most points won the game. That's literally what he's doing. He's like, as as the votes recounted, the results changed.
They changed and someone won. Who is not what I wanted to happen. Uh.
Yeah, shock, horror.
Can I prove there's fraud? No, But well I continue to say there's fraud. Yes, Mike Johnson.
It had been reported that they were trying to leverage the ice raids in Minnesota against getting electoral role information from Minnesota as well. Yes, So, like this is this is not just his fascination with with Georgia. Like, this is all deeply concerning as we go into like midterm year. But we will find out soon.
Oh yeah, especially as Congress is the entity that is supposed to be there to help to ensure that states run the elections fairly and that we do not have a nationalized voting system.
Yeah.
And the fact that the Speaker of the House seems to be unaware siding siding with the executive branch with this idea of nationalizing elections or at least trying to like manufacture consent. Trump's claim there very very worrying. I now want to update a story we talked about almost a year ago, based on some new information that has
come out. In January, a judge has unsealed a State Department memo from March twenty twenty five that confirms that Ramesa os Turk's visa was revoked and the government sought to deport her on the basis of oz Turk co authoring and op ed in the student newspaper at Tufts University.
This memo admits that DHS could not provide any evidence that oz Turk ever engaged in any eighties Semitic activity, was involved in Students for Justice in Palestine, or has ever expressed support for terrorism as claimed by government officials. Last year. Churchill McLoughlin told CNN at the time of oz Turk's arrest that DHS and ICE investigations had found that oz Turk had quote engaged in activities in support of hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing
of Americans unquote. On the contrary, this newly unsealed memo from the State Department reads, quote, while os Turk has been involved with actions protesting Tuft's relationship with Israel. Dhs ICE or Homeland Security Investigations has not, however, provided any evidence showing that oz Turk has engaged in any anti Smidy activity or made any public statements indicating support for
a terrorist organization or anti Semitism generally unquote. The memo goes on to state that though a previous dhs report quote implies a connection between oz Turk and the now banned Tuft's Students for Justice in Palestine, the report presents no evidence other than os Turk's membership in Graduate Students for Palestine, which supported proposals to Tufts which were also supported by Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, nor as dhs ICE or HSI shown any evidence that oz Turk
was involved in any of the activities which resulted in Students for Justice in Palestine being suspended from Tufts unquote. The Bureau of Consular Affairs VISA office identified no reporting specific to oz Turk on US government interagency databases. According to this memo, and interagency vetting partners do not provide any response to oz Turk's twenty twenty four VISA application
quote indicating the existence of derogatory terrorism related information. I'll read the final quote here from this memo quote, DHS did not identify any alternative grounds for removability that would be applicable to oz Turk, including the ground for removability for aliens who have provided material support to a foreign terrorist organization or terrorist activity, and has not indicated whether it plans to consider termination of oz Turk's CIVIS registration.
Although information provided by DHS, Homeland Security investigations and ICE does not establish any potential in eligibility for us Turk, you may, in your discretion and in accordance with Department policy in nine FA M four three point one point one Dash five B, approve revocation of her F one visa effect immediately based on the totality of the circumstances presented,
indicating that revocation may be warranted unquote. The only evidence held against her in the memo is that she wrote an op ed. You still can revoke her visa if you want to.
Yeah, yeah, And that is pretty much the way student visas especially work, right leg You you just here at the pleasure of US politics.
Essentially, the fact that this memo openly says they do not have evidence to support the claims that she's involved in anti Smithy activity on campus supports Hamas in any way. The fact that we have you have the government saying that in these internal documents, while externally, people like McLoughlin and Rubio say otherwise, it's such a naked display of the sort of rhetoric that these people are using. Secretary Rubio claimed at a press conference on March twenty seventh,
twenty twenty five. Quote, we revoked her visa. It's an F one visa. I believe we revoked it. And here's why. If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us that the reason why you're coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings,
creating a ruckus. We're not going to give you a visa. If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, We're going to take away your visa.
Unquote yeah, it means she didn't tell them that she was engaged to that kind of activity.
She wasn't.
That's just not what happened. Yeah, And DHS admits itself that she was not involved in the activity, the protest activity that resulted in students Justice in Palestine being banned from campus, which included vandalism, but DJA says that they do not have evidence that she was involved in that in any way, nor had any direct association with that group.
In December, a federal judge allowed oz Turk to continue her research and teaching at Tufts University on the basis that she's likely to succeed on the claim that her visa termination was quote arbitrary and capricious, contrary to law, and in violation of the First Amendment. The court case related to her removal proceedings will still continue.
Yeah, pretty bleak.
That was Yeah wow.
I guess talking of bleak. Should I finish up with a summary of the situation in Syria?
Yeah, give us a Syria date.
Yeah, okay, So the aa n e S has reached a settlement with the STG. The aa n e S the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria aka ro Java, and the STG being the Syrian transitional government. That will result in the withdrawal of troops from the points of contact, as well as the withdrawal of SDF troops from Commishlo and Hesseka and the entry of the Syrian Ministry of the Interior. They're about ninety Ministry of Interior people going
into Commishlo, one hundred and Hessegas. These are essentially like Syrian feds.
I guess right.
Integration of the SDF will occur as brigades of the Syrian Army deployed Derrik.
If you're looking at a map, it's probably.
Going to say Al Malakaya, Delhi being the Kurdish name, Commishlo, Hesseka and Kabani. These forces will be largely Kurdish, but they will also include Assyrian and Arab elements, as the SDF always has. I imagine they will probably Armenians as well. They're then nearly always are sending in the sdfs since the beginning there have been.
The agreement also.
Included the integration of the Eshaish into the Syrian Ministry of the Interior, the government takeover of oil fields and borders, and a recognition of Kurdish education credentials across the country. The AA and e S will appoint a governor in Hesseka and the security chief will be appointed by Damascus. The SDF will also appoint a deputy defense minister in Damascus,
and the SEG appointed Marwan al Ali Tobac security. He previously did this for HDS in Idlib Hiatoria al Sham Right, that's the group that was formerly listed as a Foreigntarist organization in the US that has gone on to take over Syria and become the government in Damascus, and he sort of oversaw their purge of jurras aal Din, which
is like an al Qaeda associated group in Idlib. Shortly after the deal was signed to Syrian traditional government began accusing journalists who entered via Samalka, as I have done and Robert has done, of having entered Syria illegally, which great I guess. Turkey has continued to prevent aid coming to Kabani, where water and power remain cut off. Pretty
bleak situation in Rosjaba. I'm glad that there is not more killing and not more dying, but also sad to see some other things that so many people fought and died for being lost, especially this idea of brotherhood of people's which I think was integral today is you have a revolution and the women's revolution, which like it will be very hard to sustain in the context of a state led by HTS. Pretty upsetting stuff. I know that
they can still use your support. Sorry, we'll put a fundraising link for HEAVUSAW at the bottom of this.
Yeah. Good time to be alive.
Yeah, great, great stuff happening in the world.
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