Scandals, Stocks, and Surveillance | Ronan Farrow

You're listening to Comedy Central. Now from the most trusted journalist at Comedy Central. It's America's only sort for new This is the Daily Joke with your host Jazzy Line.

I'm set me right, Eric, We've got so much to talk about. Tonight, Matt Gatz makes his Broadway debut, Mike Johnson tries to hide his boner, and the end of democracy is sad?

But could it also be profitable?

It can, So let's get into another installment of Trump two point zero coming for the White House.

I'm gonna come.

Last week, Donald Trump made his insane yet predictable pick for Attorney General, Matt Gates, Florida Congressman and if wrap around Shades were a person. Critics have been asking does Matt Gates know enough about the law to be Attorney General? And every day we're learning that he has lots of experience with some laws.

CBS News has learned that two women told the House Ethics Committee they were paid to have sex with Gates and to travel with him on multiple occasions. One also says that she saw Gates having sex with a minor she observed.

To a Rite representative, Gates having sex with her friend who was seventeen at the time.

Your future Attorney general. Everyone it's always the people you most expect. And if you're wondering how they found out, it's a case of he said, she said.

He has a paper trail the committee.

He has Gates his Venmo and PayPal transactions that allegedly show payments for sex and text messages where he refers to illegal drugs in code words.

Representative Gates would use terms like can you make sure that they're party favors present? Or who's in charge of the party favors?

Party favors?

Clever can't crack that code? And they said he paid for sex with Venmo? Has this guy ever heard of cash? Come on at the bare minimum? And Attorney General should know how to cover up his own crimes. Now, according to this lawyer, it wasn't all just sex and drugs. There was also THEATA.

The lawyer claims. In twenty nineteen, then Congressman Gates paid the women to travel to New York to watch his appearance on Fox News, attend the Broadway show Pretty Woman, and have sex with.

Him, taking two prostitutes to see Pretty Woman A little on the nose, wasn't it I guess high school musical.

Was sold out.

But the worst part is that he apparently took them to watch him on Fox News. God, I hope they charged him extra for that. It's one thousand dollars for butt stuff and two thousand if I have to look.

At brit Hume.

Now, the House Ethics Committee looked into all these allegations, but there's a debate about whether they should still release its report now that Gate Gates has left Congress. Unfortunately for Gates, the Speaker of the House took office with a very very clear philosophy.

My office is going to be known for trust and transparency and accountability.

Transparency, Yes, I love it.

Here is a guy who understands how important it is that people hear the truth about their next attorney general.

So Mike Johnson hand over the report.

Speaker Mike Johnson says the report should stay sealed. That I would be concerned about hoping that the indoors box of saying that House Ethics Committee, with.

Its fatory doors unlimited power.

Could investigate private citizens and release.

Reports about him.

Mike Johnson, Seriously, your argument is that if they can investigate Matt Gates for having sex with an underage girl, then they can investigate anyone for having sex with an underage girl.

And is that really what we want as a country? Yes, yes, we want that.

We want that, that is what we want.

Also, you're violating your principle of transparency to defend the guy accused of.

Throwing sex parties.

You a man who wears a blindfold during sex so that he doesn't accidentally see his own penis what are you so worried.

About with regard to the report. There's a very important reason for the tradition and the rule that we always have almost always followed, and that is that we don't issue investigations and ethics reports on people who are not members of Congress.

Okay, is it me? Or did that almost seem like a tell? What was that about?

So he's able to be a terrible precedent to release this report, he's warning against it after a member steps down, but keeping him honest. The House Ethics Committee has done this before, most notably in a financial impropriety case for former Tennessee Congressman Bill Boner, who left the House to become mayor of Nashville.

Yep, that is right.

There is precedent for releasing an ethics report because of a guy named Bill Boner, not to be confused with Boner Bill, which is what Matt Gates Venmo's at the end of a sex party.

Bill Boner had.

An ethics scandal in the quaint scandal days when your scandals were financial and not pubescent. And after finding that out about him, forgive me, but I went down a bit of a Boner hole. I discovered some old news clips that after leaving Congress, Bill Boner did some amazing work as the mayor of Nashville.

You might not recognize this man who called himself Bob until he removed his disguise. Then you know it's Mayor Bill Boner. And the disgust was worn when he went undercover last April to buy illegal drugs and to learn just how bad drug trafficking is on Nashville streets.

Impressive disguise usually just hide a Boner with a math textbook.

But you got to give Boner a hand because it worked.

These are pictures of the drug transaction in which Boner bought forty dollars worth of cocaine in northeast Nineville.

One of the guys that we bought from was a boy the name of Big Daddy.

One big Daddy may be out of the drug selling business in Nyeville, but if these bumper stickers that are going around are in the indication, there may be other big daddies in town.

It's good, it's good, But I think there's one thing that bumper sticker needs. Yeah, there you go, foolproof. But why did I spend you and a half minutes talking about Bill Boner?

Because it's a fun little escape.

Yes, but also this is the precedent Mike Johnson can have to release the House Ethics Report. So Johnson, listen up in times of need.

Look to Boner for more.

On this debate on whether to release the House Ethics Report.

Let's go to Capitol Hill with Ronnie Chang.

Ronnie Mike Johnson claims that if the Ethics Committee releases the Gates reports, then they could dig up any dirt on any private citizen.

Isn't that a ridiculous argument?

Uh no, he's absolutely right. We should leave mac Gates alone. Back to you, DESI.

What, No, why would we leave this alone? Gates is a public official accused of going to underage sex parties.

Yeah yeah, so so what Yeah?

What?

They're gonna investigate every party. Now, it's a slippery slope. Okay, Like what so no one's allowed to get together with friends and get a little wasted and have an argument that gets out of hand.

Well I barely pushed him.

What are you talking about?

I'm talking about precedent.

Okay, today's Mac Gates and then tomorrow they're gonna go after innocent civilians outside of forests and New Jersey on a Saturday night.

We're totally innocent.

You said innocent twice, New Jersey. You're being weird.

No, you're being weird.

Everything's fine, all right, Well, well.

Let's get some additional recording from Josh Johnson.

Josh, what didn't you tell us?

Huh? Tell you what?

I didn't say anything. You know, I wasn't even with Ronnie in that force.

No, Josh, I want to know what the Justice Department officials are thinking.

Oh, right, right, right, right right?

Okay, Well, I spoke to multiple people inside the Justice Department and they have no idea we were even near that force.

So it's all good.

No, no, Matt Gates. What are they saying about Gates?

Oh?

Department officials are nervous about sex offender representing them and that's bad. And it was a long time ago, just like Saturday night was also a long time The god best to just leave both things alone.

Back to you, Daisy.

Wait, wait, what is going on with you? Guys?

You were in a forest together in New Jersey last Saturday.

No, no, of course, not absolutely not. We weren't bearing anybody in a forest. I don't even own a shovel.

Jos, shut the off. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm so scared.

I'm gonna throw up.

I'm starting to suspect that something's going on here. Let me let me just go out to Grace cool and Schmidt.

Grace, Grace, where Why.

Don't you go back to the forest because I had something hit? Ain't No, wait, Grace.

They have nothing, Grace, Grace, why do you have a shovel digging?

Who's been digging? I didn't say anything about digging. Ronnie did most of digging. Oh God, Grace, shut the off, Grace.

Guys, guys, we're gonna get to the bottom of this, but but first, I'm going to turn to Jordan Klepper for more on Gates.

No, no, no, no.

No no, Because Jordan, Jordan is he's he's gonna make.

Cage and baby to the Bahamas.

He said to tell.

You he was leaving for a few days and to never contact him ever again.

Okay, you know I am not stupid. I see what's going on here. Saturday night, New Jersey digging in a forest.

You guys were gardening without me?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you caught us.

What's so sorry?

But if you could say that you were with us until like two forty five am that night, that would be great.

Yeah, you got it. Ronnie Chang, Josh Johns any great shows.

That my note?

How did you make drunk work for you?

Welcome Max to the Daily Show. If you want.

Honest and rigorous financial news, then go eat a dick. But if you want to get rich, then you want Michael Costa and another installment of Costa Doing Business.

Oh hey, hey, everybody, I'm Michael Costa and this is Costa Doing Business. All right, big shout out to our sponsor cocaine. Cocaine is not illegal if you're white. Now, now that we know who our next president is, we're tracking a whole lot of movement in the market. So how can you get rich off of Trump? Presidency shit me. Private prison stocks rose overnight after Trump selected immigration hardliner Tom Holman as his borders are.

Two big private prison companies, Geo and Corcivic, both went up by more than fifty six percent, and the chairman of Corcivic said this is an unprecedented opportunity for them. They expect to make a lot of money in the coming months, a lot of money.

Prison stocks are booming, and I'm a buyer, all right. If profits off prisons are a crime, will then lock me up. And if being filthy rich is a crime, then throw away the key. And if vehicular manslaughter is a crime, Oh, I guess I'm in a lot of trouble. Uh Oh, Honestly, being in prison seems like fun. I mean shouting hoops all day, drinking toilet wine all night. And in the friendships, you know, I mean, what can I say? It's actually hard making male friends as an adult.

I mean, shout out.

To my only true friend, Rick, you're my ride or die my man.

Oh, moving on, let's go.

What else can we expect from President t Rump? We all know we got that ass. We also know that he ain't gonna do shit about climate change, which means it's time to make that climate chicha chicha change.

We've seen clean energy companies, like solar companies, see their stocks relatively.

Lower, and it makes many cases absolutely lower compared to oil and gas stocks.

Bye, buy solar.

Hello, superstorms all.

Right, and that means a category five Kasha cane a coming and my bank account's about to be flooded. Okay, And to capitalize, I'm buying any company that makes raincoats, all right, rain hats, galoshes, rule of thumb. If padding teine wears it, I'm buying it, all right, because let me tell you people.

It's gonna rain.

It's gonna rain, is gonna rain. Look, I'm in the middle of a divorce right now now, and I hit a lot of my assets in Chili's gift cards. We're having a serious custody battle in I'm just hoping I can get my baby back, baby back, baby back. Seriously, though, it's getting really ugly, and it's said, of course, the market isn't just reacting to Trump, it's also reacting to his cabinet picks.

Hit me shares.

A dental care supplier, Henry Shine rose yesterday up by seven and a half percent. It's the rest day since twenty twenty two. Investors are, of course speculating that RFK, junior, Donald Trump's pick for Health and Human Services secretary, might push to remove fluoride from the West water supply.

Open your mouth and say, uh yeah, Look, if you're not buying dental supplies, you're totally mental. My guys, I'm talking drills, tiny mirrors, and the third best cane, Nova cane. All right, it goes, it goes, cocaine, Michael Caine came and yeah, yep, yep, and yeah, I've had all three on my gums before. So I know what I'm talking about. What's that you want another bump Trump to make your

In Monaco with my buddy Rick.

Look we're not look, we're not gay, but we do travel well together all right. Now, last, but not Lea's here's one more stock tip to make that shddar drip. I'm talking about something every American is gonna need these next four years.

Kleenex. Libs are crying in them because they lost.

Trumpsters are jacking off of them because they want and I I need cleanex because give me them because because I get a lot of nose bleeds for some reason.

It's crazy.

Now, look, thanks for watching it. As always, if you lose all your money because of me, hey, that's just the cost of doing business.

Hey, Rick, coming on the line.

Back there, woo, stop back rooning Sarah on the show, so don't go away.

Welcome.

My guest tonight is a bull of Sir prize winning journalist. I'm the New Yorker and producer of the new HBO documentary Surveilled. Please welcome Ronan Pharaoh man right here?

Are you holding up?

Oh? You know? Lots of self soothing?

What did something happen?

Oh? I can't remember anything in the past week.

Can you do something something I could have asked or I could have talked to any number of governments?

Spying on your phone?

You know?

Oh my god, there's no telling. I'm so happy to have you here. You are incredible. You won a Pulitzer Prize for your reporting on the Me Too movement, And now you're working on this documentary Surveilled, which is terrifying mind.

You and I don't I don't want to sound paranoid, but.

Who's watching?

Do you think we're being recorded right now?

Nah?

This this totally private.

Okay, good, okay, good, thank god, thank god.

No.

It kind of shook me to my core to watch it.

Yeah, and you were actually the target of covert surveillance when you were doing your reporting on Harvey Weinstein.

What happened? How did you know about?

I was?

And that was a mix of old fashioned human surveillance, like dudes staking out my apartment and some high tech. They're tracking my geolocation data through my phone. And look, that's mild stuff in comparison to the technology.

Almost like they were sitting in a wet vane steak.

Yeah, old gum shoes. It's this. This is scarier, more insidious stuff. Technology like Pegasus is the example we use in the film where I get cameras into where it's coded and I look at the impact on the ground around the world, where in one Western democracy after another, in Spain, Poland Greece, we're seeing this being used against

And this is a growing trend.

This technology is only it's becoming more and more booming as time goes on. So walk us through the process of how this type of technology works and who's using it.

It's a booming, multi billion dollar industry, and the biggest companies like to claim that they sell this only to governments. So you have governments, whether they're repressive regimes in the developing world or they're Western democracies that just don't have the capacity that SAYSCIA has, that are buying this up. But the interesting thing is also United States government offices

There was a part of your documentary that stuck with me. You were speaking with a US government official for the State Department, and he was saying he believed very much in the use of Pegasus, and was saying it serves great purposes in terms of national security. But in the same breath he said that you cannot put the technology back in the genie bottle, and anything that can be used for nefarious reasons.

Will be Look, there are legitimate law enforcement applications for this kind of tech, certainly theoretically. In practice, I've seen cases where I get the argument, but the dangers are so great it really it is a case where we can't put the genie back in And in that sense, it's like nuke's it's like any kind of weapon of mass destruction, and in fact, people at various companies that make this kind of spywer would make that comparison over and over again. Well, you know, we're just like a

Well that's true, no one does want and I've tried to push them on people and no one will.

We are going to work on that self esteem issue. You know, you're going to get that validation, probably from a Western government that's been corrupted by surveillance technology. They will want your news.

I'll take it where I can get it.

But the thing is you could fall into one of these drag nets.

In the film, there are just innocent bystandards we talk to who aren't political at all, and suddenly they're getting hacked, and like maybe they're a doctor and it's their patient's sensitive information and you don't know how that's going to be weaponized by people with nefarious intent. So the thing that I'm working on a new print piece on this right now for the New Yorker rite and the thing I've.

Never heard of it.

It's, you know, a little achieve The publication called The New Yorker an example by the way of the dying heart of journalism.

Please support journalism, everyone, please.

It's important right now, New York or that's great work.

And I just keep getting told by experts in this technology, if our government doesn't curtail the use of this, and there's a lot of skepticism that this incoming administration.

Will you won't know if you're on some target list.

You won't know if your phone is being hacked or how that data is being used. So I think it's easy to see this as a distant issue, but what we're seeing around the world is it can come for anyone, and we should really worry about it because it does

Yeah, for the love of god, watch the movie.

Watch the movie, and restart your phone every day. That's one practical piece of device, because a lot of forms of this kind of spyware will be foiled by a reboot has been not You know, that seems so banal, but it really is like a good step to keep everything updated.

Is the other thing that's.

All so things that people can do at home. Regular citizens can do at home. Turn your phone off every day, throw your smartphone in the river and use a flip phone, put.

It right in the microwave.

Get that adult flip phone ready, and honestly, if you care about this issue, right to your representative, call in and say, hey, legislators, we really do need this to be regulated.

There was a part in your documentary where I literally watched a guy wrap his laptop in tinfoil. Like I thought that was just something that people said, but he was literally he was rapping it like a baked potato and transporting it. Is that where we're at right now or are we going to have to start doing that?

Truly, that is what activists are doing in some of these places. Now.

You know, experts vary on exactly how effective the whole tinfoil approaches. I'm not saying you can really rely on that for security. We need better policies, not just better tinfoil. Right that said, you know, it is supposed to theoretically create a faraday cage like you get in an elevator when you lose reception. And in that case in the film, there are these investigators racing to find a live example of an infection so they can reverse engineer this particular

There is this sort of prevailing attitude in America of you know, if I'm not doing anything wrong, who cares.

If I'm being spied on?

What's misguided about Americans having that attitude?

Well, like we just talked about, this is a set of policies that affect all.

Of our rights.

The moment that journalists can't do their work without their sources and the government being exposed. You wouldn't have the Pentagon papers, you know, you wouldn't have Watergate. The moment activists can't say hey, I object to a policy without potentially being spied on like they have been in a lot of these Western democracies. I look at in my print reporting and in this film, you don't have descent and you have authoritarians with a firmer grip on power.

It's not just your nudes, it's your safety.

People are getting targeted and they're getting hurt, and discourse evaporates really rapidly.

You are doing such important, brave work. I can't even imagine the level of stress that you must experience day in and day out. What do you do to escape to like take care of yourself? Do you binge watch old episodes of West Wing?

Or what do you do?

Just throwing that phone right in the river like you propose, get that Meddle and Hathaway end of Devilaware's product moment in the Fountain.

I wish sometimes, but you know, I'm.

Really proud to be able to do the work of journalism at a time like this, when we have a leader coming in who has threatened to lock up journalists who don't reveal sources. We need journalists who won't reveal sources, and we need sources who.

Will continue to build.

And I'm very lucky, you know, I write for a place that believes in that, that supports that. You know, HBO is putting out this documentary, so there are still people telling these stories. Yeah, and I want to be a part of that. And you know, to de stress, I'll just have to play a lot of Mario Kart.

You know.

Well, there you go, as we have. Well, we are so incredibly grateful for your work. Thank you for all that you do. We are beyond grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank.

You, everybody you will.

Documentary prevailed to us November twentieth on HBO, And that thrownan.

Right moment. Then can Trump what happens if he loses Gates? Does it doesn't leave a stick?

I don't think so. And I also don't think Gates doesn't get it because of a sex scandal. I think Gates, for stiff specifically, doesn't get this because he's an assholder people and people in the Senate don't like him.

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