Meet Mark Middleton with Ed Berger

chest. Photos and video taken at the death scene were sealed by an Arkansas court shortly after news broke of Middleton staff. Notably, just a few months prior, it had been revealed that Middleton had been the man who had met with Jeffrey Epstein during the vast majority of Epstein 17 visits to the White

House. It had previously been reported that Epstein had met with Middleton around five times at the White House, but visitor logs released by the UK Daily Mail last December revealed that the actual number was much much

higher. Around that same time in December of last year, the Daily Mail also published a photograph of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell greetings and President Clinton back in 1993, effectively eradicating the narrative that Clinton had not met Jeffrey Epstein until after he had left the White House. Tellingly, hardly any American media outlet covered the story, including news of Middleton subsequent gruesome death. So who exactly was Mark Middleton and what was his role at the

White House? And why was he meeting with Epstein and exploring these questions? As I've noted in some recent interviews, the riddle of Mark Middleton gets very complicated and very crazy very quickly. To briefly summarize, well over a decade before Epstein's first arrest in 2006, Middletons had sat in the center of a massive scandal of the Clinton era, which today is largely

forgotten. It was the subject of a major Congressional investigation that continued from the last years of the Clinton administration and into the administration of George W. Bush. to stall that investigation. It was Bush, not Clinton, who stepped in invoking for the first time in his presidency executive privilege, precisely to prevent documents about none other than Mark Middleton from being handed over

to Congress. Shortly thereafter, the events of September 11 2001 led to the premature closure of that investigation due to more pressing matters that arose in the aftermath of those attacks. Joining me today to help unravel the mysteries of Mark Middleton is Edie Berger, and worked as my research assistant for my soon to be released to volume book one nation under blackmail, which explores the union between organized crime and intelligence that later gave rise to Jeffrey

Epstein, and much more. He is one of the most incredible and detailed researchers I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. And it's fair to say that the book would not have been finished on time or be nearly as good as it is without his very important contributions, and also co hosts the pseudo doxology podcast, which I highly recommend if you are interested in original, and ultra deep dives about the real history of this country and beyond. So thanks for joining me today, Edie? How's it going?

Hey, it's not going too bad. And thanks for that awesome introduction. Yeah, of course. Well, I think you're super awesome. And there is no one I would rather be talking about Mark Middleton with. I know, in part of that's because he's a really complicated guy. And you are one of the very one of the few people I think that is capable of, you know, helping unravel a lot of that complexity, especially on this topic, and we work together on a

good bit of this. So you know, it just makes the most logical sense. So I guess I'm, to get started, we should probably try and go back as far as we we could really about into who Marc Middleton is to sort of try and demystify what was going on here in the Clinton White House during the time he was there, and in the years, you know, between Ben and his untimely

death earlier this year. So um, so as far as we know, you know, like I said earlier in the introduction, Middleton was working as a special assistant to Thomas Mack McLarty. He was allegedly hired by McClarty for that role because he was McClarty was so impressed with his fundraising bundling efforts for the Clinton presidential campaign in 1992. But before that, it's really hard to find out what Middleton was exactly

doing, though. One article from the 90s in the Los Angeles Times did reveal that Middleton was working at Worthen Bank, which is an institution we'll get into in a moment. And one of the people he was working at at Worthen Bank is a guy we'll be talking about later, who was central to the aforementioned major Clinton era scandal that Middleton was in the center of a

man named John Huang. So and I think it might be fitting if you would do the, the honors of explaining why we're than bank and you know, is significant and also sort of, I guess, unpacking the people behind that institution because they're basically the people behind, I guess you can say basically. Yeah, yeah. It's funny because like, trying to think of how to do it in the most, like short and streamlined way because more than bank could

be like its own. Kinda. Yeah, yeah, it's it there's a lot that's quite mysterious about it like in itself, but guess like to understand where then bank we kind of have to understand a figure by the name of Jackson Stevens. And Jackson Stevens was like an Arkansas like businessman who had these like very vast and like deep political connections. So like you can find, like Stephens fingerprints behind Jimmy Carter, who he knew from, like, his time in the US Naval Academy in the 40s had ties to the

Reagan administration. He was a massive backer of Bush, and then finally, was a big backer of the Clintons. And Stevens. His main vehicle was a company called Stevens Inc. And what this did is it kind of started off investing in oil and gas, mainly in Arkansas, and elsewhere in the South and in the Midwest, but very quickly, it developed, you know, these like really far reaching economic ties to, you know, financial capital, you know, in the northeast and Wall

Street. It provided financing for the startup, numerous businesses, like it was very involved in initially backing Walmart actually, which is funny, like Hillary Clinton later was involved with them, too. Yeah, yeah. She sat on the board for I think it was like seven years or something. Yeah. And the reason like there's like a connection as because kind of, for the duration of when Stevens Inc was really big. It utilizes the service of like Arkansas's most prominent law firm, and that was

the Rose Law Firm. And since the early 70s, that have been led by a man named Joseph, G. Ra, I think is how it's pronounced. Yeah. And this kind of was like the hub for a lot of like their rising Clinton political and economic fortunes. So I figured that you would find at Rose Law would be like, Hillary Clinton herself was like a junior partner there. Webster Hubbell, who would later become Bill Clinton's Associate Attorney

General was there. And Vince Foster, who was Clinton's White House Counsel, was also there for a time yeah, for a time for a very, very suspicious kind of, you know, and much like Mark Middleton, yes. But in all these individuals, they had all kinds of very kind of convoluted business relations, kind of starting in the 70s. And going like through, you know, basically, all the way like all the way up through the 1990s.

But I think when we start talking about kind of like the deep political connections of Stephens and how it gets relevant to like, the, you know, the kind of the topics that we're going to move into has to be understood in relation to BCCI. You know, this big kind of CIA linked bank that right, I don't even really know how to, like, describe what Well, I can I can I know, it's it's basically like an octopus, in a

sense. And it's no coincidence that the only castlewellan the journalist who died in 1991, he was investigating the octopus and BCCI was really central to his investigation. So basically, I guess I would, it's the Bank of credit and commerce International, but it was pretty notorious for a long time. And I think it eventually hadn't like banks, Bank of corruption, corruption, internet, I don't know some big names like that floated around it for some time.

It so basically, it was a hub for money laundering on a massive scale, but they were also involved in a lot of other stuff like sex trafficking, arms trafficking, as a bank, right. So they were obviously much more as a bank. I mean, it's really like an intelligence apparatus masquerading as a bank. They were described as having like, what was it called, like a black network or something where they allegedly had hitmen? And yeah, I mean, they had everything. I mean, yeah. So

it's, it's super mental. BCCI once you get into it anyway, anyway, the bank part of it collapsed in 1991. And that was the year of course that you have Bill Barr as Attorney General. under Bush basically stepped in to cover up that the PROMIS software scandal, in part and all the people in Iran Contra all in the same year. Very big year for cover ups. It's also the year that Robert Maxwell dies from the PROMIS software

scandal. John Tower has been accomplished and promised is Danny Castle arrow diocese investigating it and Castle arrows one of his main and sources. Allen standoff also I'll die at 91. I mean, it's a really mental year. When you think about it, so anyway, we know from like FBI files that have been released that they're like investigators into BCCI we're very interested, and Castle arrow and the PROMIS software.

So we'll get into why these BCCI investigators were into interested in Castle arrows investigation, because there is a lot of overlap with, you know, the promise scandal, which, again, I'll summarize briefly and BCCI because the main, you know, connection there, I would argue would be, you know, one of the main other main companies of Jackson Stevens, just systematics but we'll get there. Eventually. So, um, I guess when it comes to Jackson Stevens, we're trying to talk about Mark

Middleton here. And so, you know, we brought up with BCCI was, so I guess the most logical point now would be to explain what was Jackson Stephens relationship to BCCI. And as I understand it, that comes up when BCCI starts trying to penetrate the US financial system. Yeah, exactly. So the BCCI was kind of looking for a way and the way to do this was to buy up a bank, and then kind of do this in kind of an incognito mode, I guess, because they were violating US banking

regulations. And so the main connection here comes through a guy named Bert Lance, who was kind of like a infamously corrupt, short lived Director of the Office of Budget and Management under Carter. And prior to working in the Carter administration. Lance was the president of a bank in Atlanta, called the National Bank of Georgia. And National Bank of Georgia was owned by a bank holding company in Washington DC called first gen bank shares or

FGB. And FTB itself is like really kind of interesting, because at the time, it was owned by this guy named General George Olmstead. And this individual has a really long history of like ties to US intelligence and other banks that he owned, were very kind of tied in to the US intelligence, kind of like offshore apparatus. But due to like, changes that were made in holding company laws, Olmstead was being forced to sell off his ownership of

first gen bank shares. And he turned to the president of the subsidiary, Bert Lance to help find a buyer. And so we don't really know how Stevens and Lance kind of got hooked up, we know that it happened around 1975. And so Lance turned to Stevens, you know, to help him like locate, you know, who's gonna buy, you know, not just first gen, but National Bank of Georgia as well. And so they start courting, you know, various individuals and groups, like the first group was called

the Middendorf group. This was named for Nixon's former ambassador to the Netherlands getting Jane Middendorf. He was a leader of the group and then included Armand Hammer, who is a pretty spooky oil, man. Yeah, he comes up in the book a lot. Yeah, he's everywhere. And I think, you know, I think there's a lot more to probably like, kind of find with him, because it's just he's rather witness. Yeah. And so that group fell apart. And Stevens and Lance started to look into other

groups. And so they, somehow I'm not exactly sure, but they like this happened simultaneously with BCCI. Looking to buy a US Bank and these two kinds, I mean, obviously, it's probably through the US intelligence services, these two groups kind of collided. And so that's how Stevens kind of gets wrapped up into the world of BCCI. But at the same time that this was happening, there were other people who are interested in buying the National Bank of Georgia, the Bert Lance bank.

And chief amongst them was a group of bankers from Indonesia, the riadi family and the patriarch of this family. Mokhtar riadi, the head of you know, what's most, probably like the flagship is the lipo group. And Lance had known riadi for some time, been introduced to them by a guy named Robert B. Anderson, who is this really kind of like, prominent figure from the Eisenhower era. You know, they thought he would be

president at one point. But by the end of the life, he was kind of mired in corruption and linked all kinds of like BCCI entities. But this is pretty like interesting in itself because Anderson was part of a group that was known as like the Hardy Boys, and the Hardy Boys for a kind of clique of intelligence linked businessmen

around the world. am Casey Reagan CIA director, and if you start like kind of pulling back, like the lid on the Hardy Boys, you find that a lot of them actually were very tied up with Indonesia, like Casey himself. If you look at his confirmation hearings, there were allegations that he acted as a foreign agent for Indonesian interests and

failed to disclose this. And so, you know, there's a very strong possibility that this whole connection to the realities, you know, coming through Robert B, Anderson, was connected up with like a wider US intelligence, Indonesia relationship. But at any rate, you know, the realities ended up not buying National Bank of Georgia ended up going to BCCI interests, ultimately, at the same time, they were buying versus general. But Stevens and the reality has kind of stayed in close contact

with one another. And as you go from like, the 1970s, into the 1980s, they really begin to develop a really strong banking network, not just in Arkansas, but in in Asia proper. So like together, Stevens Inc, and Riyadh, he's Lippo group by this like bank in Macau that had these like very kind of notorious ties to triad gangs. Yeah. And just to interrupt you really quick, sorry, I think it's important to point out to for people that don't know, Macau was basically like Las

Vegas. But yes, like the East Asian version of that. It at the time, it wasn't tech, it was sort of like Hong Kong, you know, it was like an enclave originally Portuguese. And it came under Chinese control after the events we're going to talk about today. But Macau comes up a couple times. Because, you know, one of the main themes in the book, right is organized crime and intelligence coming together. And in China. You see that sort of happening with Macau businessman, to a

significant degree as well. So anyway, I'll let you pick back up where you were. No, I think that's a really good like thing to point out. And I guess one of the things that made Macau like so unique in the area that you're talking about, is that it was the major center for like big global gold trade in the time period, you know, like before 1972, and like it was hyper regulated. And so there's lots of illicit like, it was kind of like a big money

laundering hub. And the bank that Stevens in reality bought, it's just called like the saying, hey, bank, it was like the premier like gold, like laundering bank. So, you know, there's like questions like, Why did they buy this particular bank, but the same year that they bought this bank, this Macao bank, they also took control of what's called the first Arkansas bank stock corporation, or fabco, for short. And it was the bank holding company that was owned by a Texas oilman named John

Hendricks. And he was out of Midland Bank. And from what I can tell, I've been looking more into him. He seems to have like banking ties to the Bush family. So that's interesting in itself. But he sold this one. Yeah, of course, of course. So he sold fabco to Stevens and the realities and fabco had numerous Arkansas banks that were kind of like, under under its umbrella.

Like, for example, one of them was a First National Bank of Mena, Arkansas, which I think is particularly interesting, because this is where, you know, like that kind of CIA who was running cocaine into this town. Yeah, the Barry seal MENA connection and all of that stuff. I'm pretty sure most listeners of this podcast are familiar with that. If not, you can read the book. Because we're talking about it. It's a great chapter on it. Yeah, so I mean, that's

pretty suspicious. I think that you had that particular bank. They use this vehicle to buy like a number of other banks like Joseph green or the guy from the Rose Law Firm. They had him purchasing other banks and then like selling them to fabco, which they now control. So they created this like, kind of banking empire in Arkansas. And the very kind of center of it was this bank called worden bank. And we're than bank was under their control. Rose Law Firm was like the de facto law

firm that were then used. And so like it, if you kind of trace out like the whole web of like Clinton, business, and political connections. It's almost like kind of like a spoke unit or like a hub in a wheel right, like Word and bank, just is the money conduit for like, you know, it's the glue that kind of holds it all together as far as I I can tell, you know, the center of like this like kind of Arkansas corruption. Yeah, with the with Stephens in reality sort of the center of

it. So all we know about Middleton right before the Clinton White House or the Clinton administration comes comes to power is that he had previously worked for word than bank at some point. So he's obviously part of this network of influence, I guess you could say, Jackson Stevenson in the Riyadh, these are major power players behind, you know, Clinton's time as governor of Arkansas. And then obviously, in a big way when he becomes

president as well. So so some important background to bring up I think now, arm is related to Stevens and systematics, and I'm not gonna go too, in depth about it, but it is it is, does kind of give you an idea of like, what was going on here? And, again, we don't know exactly like 100% of what else is going on here. Right. But the picture painted by what we know, you know, pretty much should tell you more or less what, what the

deal was. So, you know, you mentioned a little bit ago, and how they, you know, bought these big banks in East Asia, specifically, Macau, and they were involved in the gold trade and all of this, but specifically, Macau was also known as being a major hub for money laundering. Part of that's because of the, you know, like I made that Las Vegas comparison earlier. I mean, it's a casino hub, thinking of people like Sheldon Adelson. No longer on the planet. I always like to

remind myself here anymore. It's nice. So anyway, he had all his casinos, not all of them, but a lot of the big ones in Macau, right. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. So that's really? Yeah. So like, you know, it's a sauce area for casinos. And people have argued that the money laundering, you know, the scale of it, specifically before China took over Macau, I think in 1999 or so I mean, the money that the money laundering was

was totally out of control. So when we're talking about, you know, the Stephens in the realities, it's pretty clear to me anyway, that they were very involved with, you know, money laundering in the banking system, not just because of the Macau connection, but you have BCCI there, and then you have Systematics. So systematics is important, because this is a company that checks and Stephen controlled, and it basically and it's also tied up with ROS law

firm. People like Vince Foster people, you know, individuals like that. Yeah, yeah. And it's basically one of the main things that does is it sell software to banks, and it's Jackson Stevens

and this whole network. You know, through these financial institutions, we already sort of sort of touched on Mena, Arkansas, the whole Iran Contra angle, and what was going on in Arkansas on the time that also involved a huge amount of money laundering that was allegedly done through Arkansas financial institutions and some of these banks linked to Stevens. So at some point, systematic starts basically selling the PROMIS software. Um, I don't I don't think I've done like a specific

podcast on promise before. And some of you may or may know of it, and I've done some recent interviews about it specifically, because the anniversary of Danny Kessler, Carol's death was like last month. But another massively complex scandal to summarize, we have to give little thumbnails of like a million different things to explain. Yeah, well, I mean, that's the only way you can understand the stuff otherwise, it just you can't see the whole picture, you

know. So absolutely. Basically, there was an effort by Israeli intelligence in the CIA to backdoor this software that was stolen by the Reagan era Justice Department from a company called insulin Inc. and it was called promise promises an abbreviation it's something like prosecutor management information software, something like that, if I

remember correctly. So at some, there were two versions of promise going around that were backdoored meaning that intelligence agencies had covert access to wherever they were installed. So you had Israel with their version, and most of that was marketed by Robert Maxwell and you know, I guess or O'Brien and some other people, mainly to governments, specifically intelligence agencies, or security agencies of governments all over the

world. And there was another version that was developed at Wacken hunt in by wack and Clinton California, which is another complicated situation to explain. But basically there's you know, drug cartels organized crime and intelligence all tied up in there. And they backdoor promise to and then but this version of promise, it was mostly sold to banks and one of the vehicles for selling that to

banks was Systematics. Yeah. And that in so promise eventually starts to be used by a lot of major banking institutions, including BCCI also, including the World Bank, and it gets, you know, again, it gets really crazy really quickly because you have people involved in like the sale of promise for the purpose of using And finally, in the financial system, you have people like Adnan Khashoggi involved. Yeah, that's weird, right? You know, like a weapons dealer and stuff. So like, you

see all these people pop up. And basically, you know, it, the What promise was used for was either was to track stuff. I mean, that's what it was good at. So it either track people or attract money. And so it was very useful to money launderers because it allowed them to launder money more effectively than ever before. And on a much bigger scale.

Right. Yeah. And I think like, the way that I understand promise is that it was kind of a modular system that allowed you to bring together like multiple different databases. Like Yeah, so like, that's kind of like how its tracking capacity work was by kind of integrating these databases like siloing them. Yeah, you could go from like, one, you know, you'd have that information you can track it

across. So anyways, as I see it, it wherever promised got installed in the in the financial world, this mafia or group, you know, group around Stephens, this web swamp, whatever you want to call it, you know, gets access to these banks, through promise, there's a backdoor in it, and they can track it, and they can launder money, whatever. And so, you know, and this was pointed out in the book, too, Epstein was very much involved with this world had a relationship with

BCCI. And all of these actors here. So in this period, you know, in the 80s, he talked about how he could help hide or find looted money. And, you know, sort of basically like, doing what what promise was doing for some other people and maybe even use promise, I mean, we don't really know, but he's definitely swimming around in this world at the time, right?

So it's significant that you have Middleton here, you know, basically swimming in that same world, and maybe they probably didn't connect back in the 80s. But they definitely did in the in the 90s. And so, you know, this is some important background as well as we'll get into later. So I guess now it's probably a good time to talk about what I think is is missing

really a misnomer. But the scandal that Mark Middleton was at the center of at the White House, which overlaps with the exact same period of time he was meeting with Epstein is most by most people remembered as China Gate. But it's really more accurately called riadi gate with Riyadh. He's again standing for the family of Mokhtar riadi. And I think, you know, mainly his son James is the the one that pops up here a lot. But, you know, I think that's a much more accurate name. We can get

into that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's also remember to is like the illegal finance contributions scandal or something because it's contrary Yeah, yeah. So it it did involve illegal financing. But there's obviously a lot more going on. So I think that's also a misnomer, because you're focusing on just Okay, so they took illegal donations, but they're not looking at what happened as a result of those illegal donations being made. Right. So yeah, for sure. Yeah. So we have a lot to get into.

With that being said, so Right. So Mark Middleton, as I mentioned earlier, was special assistant to Mack McLarty, who was chief of staff for a couple years and then I think until like mid 1994, he has a change in position, he becomes Special Envoy for the Americas and then he's like a special adviser, like counselor to the president. And Middleton was described as a former Little Rock lawyer with ties to Clinton prior to him

becoming president. And we know he worked at worth and bank we don't know, as far as I know, what law firm he was involved with. Maybe it was Rose Law. That might make sense. i It wasn't Rose Law, and I believe that it was the law firm that Jim guy Tucker worked at, and this was Clinton's by kids, Lieutenant Governor, and then who succeeded him as governor. But it's funny because Jim guy Tucker actually got his career started at Rose Law. So still, sort of like a satellite

for maybe in terms. Yeah, yeah. This network? Yeah. So he was indicted as part of the whitewater investigations. I think he did jail time for it. Yeah. Okay. Well, make sense. Yeah. A lot of these people should be in jail. So as I mentioned earlier, Epstein visited the White House about a lot of his early visits were involved. The first one was involved involved, Robert Rubin, who later goes on to be treasury

secretary under Clinton. And then the other two meetings in 1993 involve this donor reception to the White House Historical Association, which is interesting for other reasons, but we're not getting into that today. Because that is like another whole hive of insanity. So anyway, most of the visits took place in in 1994, in the last one was January 1995. So most of these visits are taking

place. So in a relatively short period of time, and several of these visits at will not several, but on a couple of them, you know, there's two, he goes twice to the White House and one day, I think on three separate times throughout 19 interest. So he's going pretty regularly. And this is the same year, while Really 9090 4096 At the, you know, the coconspirators of quote unquote China Gate are also going in

meeting with Middleton. So, when it came up more recently, as I mentioned earlier in the intro, the Daily Mail was the people were it was the outlet that was reporting on Middleton's meetings with Epstein. And they quoted a guy that was familiar with Middleton's role at the White House as saying that Mark Middleton knew that Epstein was managing Leslie Wexner as money.

And he says next 94 was when they were dealing with midterm elections, and Mark Middleton thought he gets some some of Wexler has money to benefit the DNC, right. So this is important, because as you know, we mentioned a little bit ago, this whole scandal that Middleton becomes involved in is allegedly about illegal financing, but it's really a lot more than that. And so we have to keep all this in mind when we're trying to demystify what I

was doing there. But another one of these people that was really involved in illegal financing, and who was very much involved in this swamp of Jackson Stevens, and the reality family is a guy named John Huang, or Johnny Huang, I guess he was referred to in the media as a lot. And he also raised a lot of illegal funds for the DNC for that particular election cycle.

Yeah. So how long has this really long banking career before he ends up, you know, in this kind of bizarre web around the Clinton White House, and I tried to really trace it back, there's lots of kinds of gaps and unexplained areas, like we know, he went to the University of Connecticut, studying business relations there, he became the head of like, a US China student body. At that time, there's really no details

about that. But during the 1970s, he moved to DC, where he took a job at a little known bank called the American security bank. And it's really hard to find many details at all, you know, there's two places where you can find information about this bank, one of them is the campaign finance controversy documents, the other turns out to be like in a lot of the BCCI documents that are

declassified. We know that this was the bank that was used by the Chinese Embassy in DC, but particularly interesting, I think, is its role that it played in BCCI as penetration of the US banking system. So you know, like we talked earlier about this financial general bank shares the, this was the bank that BCCI took over. After they took it over. They took the bank like public and, you know, kind of I sold shares have been

on the open market. And when people bought shares of financial general, they had to do it through two banks. One of them, of course, was Chase Manhattan, and then the other was American security bank. So long, you know, the time in which he was at American security bank actually overlaps kind of perfectly in time, with, you know, its interactions with BCCI. After American security bank, he moved to Kentucky, where he joined the international division of a bank called First National Bank of

Louisville. And this bank is like, really fascinating. Their mental. Yeah, there's a lot going on there briefly. You know, it's in the book a little bit. But one of the things that I think's pretty significant about them, and especially their international division, is that they were partnered with a bank from St. Louis, and just kind of curious outfit called the world Finance Corporation. And they launched this bank in Panama called Unibank, which they used to make loans to Colombia's

agricultural sector. Now this might well because yeah, World Finance Corporation was run by former CIA trained Cuban exiles. And it was a front for like a massive cocaine laundering, like cocaine running and money laundering operation. If you can look at court documents about this and like, you have like attorney generals like state AGs quitting saying like the CIA is not letting us prosecute this

bank. And you would actually found ties between, you know, World Finance Corporation and like Leslie Next nurse circle. Yeah, that's kind of a interesting kind of connection to world Finance Corporation when it kind of fell apart, right in the time period when how long is that first national global, some of its apparatuses were then purchased by BCCI. And so after this whole long moves to a bank in Memphis, called a

union planters bank. And this is a bank that had like, kind of extensive ties into Arkansas, just like where the elite of Arkansas would bank even though it is in Tennessee, recent recently learned that this was another bank, there was a very closely tied to BCCI. And also was particularly involved in its purchasing first general bank shares. And so like, I didn't really realize this before until I was kind of sitting down and like, you know, kind of going over my notes for this episode.

And I was like, Oh, this is really weird, because it's like, you have American security bank. It's like linked to BCCI. You have First National Bank of Louisville, it's tied up with the world Finance Corporation and kind of like BCCI by extension, you know, union plans, its BCCI. Again, it's when he's at Union planters, where he allegedly just like, by chance, meets James riadi, who has Mokhtar riadi son, but like, kind of going back and looking at this. I'm starting to kind of doubt that story.

I mean, they lie a lot about when they first met. Yeah, I think I found like inconsistencies across time. Like, you know, there's a story that they met in Hong Kong, there's a story that they met in Arkansas, the years are different, but it's like, yeah, there's a shared history. It's really strange. Whatever is going on there, I think. Yeah, definitely something that should have been investigated by Congress, but wasn't when they were looking into how long but

you know, it's fine. So anyway, after that, thank you mentioned one ends up relocating to Hong Kong. And he's still working for union planters. Yeah. At their Far East Branch, and then he got, you know, after that he ends up in having having met James riadi. He goes to work for the family, and I think 1985 And so I think if I'm not mistaken, that's when he joined Worthen bank. Yeah, yeah, he like he worked as like a representative of Lippo group like interests. That's how it's

described. And then he Yeah, he goes to work for were then in Arkansas. And this is where he allegedly I think meets Mark Middleton. Allegedly so well, that's from the Los Angeles Times. So you know, I they don't really say much else about it. Except that's how long Middleton and Huang have known each other. But yeah, so apparently, that's when they met. So a couple years later, I think 9919 86 He goes and works like Huang sorry, goes to work formerly for the riadi

family. She goes to work for lipo bank, a lot of the riadi family companies like you mentioned earlier and you know, the lipo group, lipo bank, lipo land, you know, they tend to all begin with LiPo with two Ps. By the way, I didn't even realize that lipo land was a real like, I just thought it was like a funny nickname. The press came down sounds like the worst theme park of all time. Yeah, so anyway, he comes, um, you know, he goes to formally basically work for the

realities. And then I guess gets involved in another bank in which the realities are heavily invested called bank, Central Asia. And then he goes to I think, la in California, and then he starts running basically the US branch of the Lippo group for the realities, which has extensive real estate holdings in California, apparently. Right. And that came up with the

the DNC stuff, too. I don't know if you want to get into that or not, when they the some of the the groups that were making donations through Hwang to the DNC in the in the 92 election. Yeah, it was just like, there's like a number of these kind of strange little front groups that have long seems to have been kind of managing, which then were used to make these like very extensive donations to these like little apparatuses

that the DNC set up. So like, for example, one of them like the DNC had this thing called the Victory Fund, which I'm not exactly sure what that is, per se. But another like there was a front company called like, hip hinging holdings and so like, you know, they would use these various little companies to move money into these DNC things like hip kings holdings, your gave, like, is it like 60,000 or 50,000? Think it was 50,000.

Yeah. 50,000 to the Victory Fund. And so this was seemed to have happened pretty much, very consistently through all through 1992 and 1993. And I guess it's important to mention that the head of the DNC at this time was the guy named Ron Brown, who Ron Brown, talking a lot about and a little bit, I think,

yeah, probably so. Yeah. So I think it's also important to mention to you that Hwang in the same period of time, is also involved in the efforts of the riadi family to rescue BCCI as Hong Kong branch. That's a really Yeah, that's an important point, as well, that becomes important later. And then he also as part of the same campaign cycle, plans, a Hong Kong portion of the trip, but in the DNC notes, they call it the Hong Kong lipo portion of the trip of a DNC

delegation. And so the head of that delegation, again, is DNC chairman, Ron Brown. And Ron Brown is very important, because he is he, you know, once Clinton comes into office, he becomes Secretary of Commerce. And he's basically the main target, quote unquote, of China Gate. Yeah. Or riadi. Gate. I guess we should just start calling it because yeah, I really do think that works better. Yeah. I'm just used to, like, you know, that's the only way when the only people that talk about this

stuff, call it China Gate. So it's just kind of like, you know, even though it's a misnomer, it sort of gets stuck in your brain that way. So I will unstick that and just call it we'll just call it reality gate for the rest of the podcast. So anyway, so basically, all one does all this stuff. And in this he's a very

busy 1991. Yeah, with trying to rescue BCCI Hong Kong and making all these shady donations to the DNC that sort of foreshadow what he does later in the the controversial 1996 cycle, intimately involving Mark Middleton, and somewhere, Huang. You know, after Clinton wins the election, Wong is basically rewarded for his services, he gets a top secret security clearance while he's still a private citizen, which is pretty

nuts. And then he also, you know, this was allegedly Because Ron Brown now as head of the Commerce Department had a quote critical need for his meaning Huang's expertise. And that's pretty mental. Yeah. Yeah. So we can get into this a little bit later. But to wrap up while I'm here, it's important to say that, you know, he gets this top security clearance, and he's doing some other weird stuff. Like he's making all these weird trips to Stevens inks

headquarters in DC. Around the same time, he gets put in a position at the Commerce Department under Ron Brown. And what's also pretty weird about it is that there's records from the DNC of a lady named I guess her first name is melee melee, Tom is her name. And so she used to work for the DNC, but right after Clinton's elected, she's hired by the radiant reality family to be the reality family's personal liaison to the

DNC to the Democrats. Right. Yeah. And so Tom writes to the DNC and says, recommends one for a job and calls one quote, the reality family's top priority for placement because he is like one of their own. Yeah. And very much like an agent for them. That's totally he's, you know, more than a spy for quote unquote, China, it's just a front for the realities

anyway. So reality gate. So that at the same time that melee Thomas, you know, requesting that junk bond gets put in the Commerce Department, there's also efforts to put James riadi himself and something involved with the Commerce Department, or specifically a commissioner advisory board involved with international trade or international banking. And that's pretty significant, too.

So anyway, how long eventually gets his position though, James Riyadh, he doesn't, but he does end up being involved a lot with Huang and the other main co conspirator of riadi gate, who's a guy named Charlie tree that we'll get to in a second here. But one basically gets approved for a position at Commerce, he is going to be a Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Economic Policy at the ITA, which is the International Trade

Administration. And to circle back to something really odd there. The ita was involved with another company named Arkansas Systems tied to systematics that was selling possibly suspect bank software to China's central banking system. And, you know, this was basically enabled by the ITA that was being infiltrated by real agents of the reality family at the same

time. So anyway, I'm not going to get too into that tangent, but it's worth mentioning about this whole idea of the penetration of the financial system by these particular groups like the reality Stevens network and all of that. So it seems like that this was one of the reasons they were involved in targeting this, you know, the Commerce Department specific quickly. So anything you want to

add Edie? Yeah, with Arkansas Systems, I just wanted to mention that they were like financed by this thing that had been set up in Arkansas, it was called the ad FA, or the Arkansas Development Finance Authority. And this entity was very much like Clinton's kind of flagship and grown out of an earlier Housing Development Authority. But what it was kind of about was like, economic development and business growth and kind of very tech orientation, you know, it's going to finance innovation hubs

and science hubs. And it was the very kind of like, insidious, like intertwining of public and private sector interests. And the way that it would work is it would sell tax exempt bonds, which were underwritten by private companies, and this would like generate a capital pool, which would then be converted into like low interest

loans for businesses. And so when you go back into the history, and you look at a lot of the documents about the ADFA, Stevens Inc, was one of the primary underwriters that they used for these bonds that they would issue and further loans were then bank would often be

the trustee on the loans. And so and then if you'd like, look, a lot of the recipients, you know, it's always you look at any ADFA recipient, you're going to find out that, like they use the Rose Law Firm, and Stephens Inc, is the majority shareholder and whatever excellently like that, yeah. Yeah. So it's like, it's very consistent with this pattern. And so you're talking about Arkansas Systems, you know, as you start, like, tracing it back, like, that's where it comes from, in the first place?

Like, yes, kind of like, you can just go in these endless like loops with all these companies and their ties. Really, though, I mean, it's, it's nuts. I mean, there was so much like, couldn't go in the book, because it was just like, too insane. Yeah, I have like, hundreds of pages of like, dark, you know, notes I wrote, like, I felt like I was going crazy when we were researching this stuff, or no, it really is crazy. So anyway, to not make people's brains fall out of their heads.

We'll try and keep it relatively simple. As much as we can. Anyway. So you know, this particular part of the Congress department that along was that ITA, right, so let's recap really quick, hot Huang engages in the shady stuff with the DNC, he gets top security clearance. He's basically an agent of the reality family while they're, you know, the ITA approves these. The suspect sale of Arkansas Systems software does the Central Bank of China.

They're also involved in a lot of tech transfer stuff to the former Soviet Union, as well, which is relevant to other stuff in the book that we're not getting into today. But about not that long after Juan was there at the ITA, he's he's getting classified information relating to China, specifically the ITA that he apparently wasn't supposed to have. He was supposed to recuse himself from any matters involving Indonesia, because he's so basically tied

up with the reality family. And he ended up not recusing himself from issues dealing with Indonesia. And he's very involved with Ron Brown's trade missions to Asia, specifically in on one trade mission that happened not that long after Hong Kong joined the ITA. Ron Brown goes to China and he returns with a big plan, I guess. What is it a power plant project? It was financed by the Lippo group and was going to be managed by some Arkansas connected firm called inter G Corp. Yeah.

Well, what's also interesting about Entergy, I was looking at this a little bit. They were very intertwined with Enron at this time, and yeah, the Enron stuff also, like, you know, why why this book was happening? It was like, oh, man, now I understand Enron so much more. Yeah. This stuff, you know, it was one of those things that just came up repeatedly. But I just wanted to like mention that because when Ron Brown was doing a lot of these trips, he was traveling with Ken Lay a lot who

was the CEO of Enron. So that's like a whole other component of this, ya know, the Enron stuff is mental, but that's, you

know, for another time, yeah. So another thing along starts doing when he's at the Commerce Department, aside from this stuff, where he seems to be acting as a reagent for the realities he has, like all these top security clearances, clearances he's not supposed to have and I can't remember if I mentioned this or not, but other people at the ITA thought one was like, not qualified at all for the work he was supposed to

be doing. So it's clearly like a, you know, a favor to the realities that he's there in the first place. And I guess, the Stephens family as well, because, you know, he's making all these weird trips to Steven inks, offices, and no one knows why. Like, from what I could glean from a lot of the documents is that the office in Steven Inc was which these are the Stephens Inc, like headquarters in DC it's and I think it's already kind of suss that it's like, across the street from the

Commerce Department. It's a basically like, he had his own office in there. And they like to interview other people at work in those offices, like, what's wrong doing in there? And everybody's like, I don't know what he's doing. But he was there all the time. Apparently. Yeah. So what was he doing? I don't know, Congress didn't find out. Anyone. In fact, they kind of like, you know, it's something that we're interested in. See, they act very uninterested.

They're just like, oh, you know, it's just a place where he gets, you know, verbs quiet from to work. Like, yeah, yeah, it's like they write about it in the report. Like, it's just a little weird quirk about what it's like, this seems seriously sauces. Fuck, like, I think it's very clearly one of the more important things actually. Yeah, you know, so Well, anyway, let's get into some of the stuff they actually did look into. Right. So as you know, the election season start to pick up

this 94 to 96 period. There's midterms and there's then the coming reelection campaign. How long start soliciting contributions to the DNC while he's still at the Commerce Department, which is illegal. And then he basically, all these people at the DNC start to be lobbied to hire one directly. And one of these people is Josie Joseph gerar, who's the former head of the Rose Law Firm you mentioned earlier, by this point. He's one of the main business partners of the US in

the United States. Yeah, totally mental. And he's he's one of the main people that starts lobbying the DNC, the higher Kuang, basically, after he donates, like several grand like to the DNC, and he's like, You should hire one. And then also lobbying for Juan to be hired at the DNC was Mark Middleton at that point in time. So at some point in this period to period Milton and Hwang are already linked up in Huang and riadi start to meet

each other really frequently. I think in the same period that we're talking about here, it's 95 times so way more than the amount of times he met with Epstein. I mean, obviously, they're meeting like, probably a couple times a week, or something like that, or even once a week or something like that, I guess this is a little longer span than than Epstein's time visiting. And at the same time, James riadi, is also meeting with Middleton. But

that's 20 visits. And some some of these visits were calling in riadi. Together, meeting with Middleton, and a couple of occasions riadi was meeting directly with with Clinton and Hwang accompanied him. And there's not a lot is known about those meetings, including the ones with Middleton, allegedly from what we do know and what Congress gathered, it was related to China trade issues and granting China MFN status or most favored trade, most favored

nation trading status. And this seems to be one of the main potential reasons behind quote unquote riadi gate, because Clinton had originally campaigns that he was going to oppose MFN status for China over its human rights record, right. And then he reverses his stance on that. And then a year later in 1994, D links MFN status from China's human rights record. Yeah. And I, you know, I don't think this was something we really gotten to into the book

that much. But there were some changes in kind of the geopolitical situation that we're having. And kind of simultaneous to this, where the US has always kind of had a very kind of like pro Taiwan perspective. But this sudden kind of realignment took place. At a time when China and Taiwan were like increasing their trade relations. There was kind of like a realignment that was kind of taking place in this post

Cold totally. So when you're looking at riadi gate, you see Indonesia, you see Taiwan, you see Singapore, and you see China, and those are like the main countries that come up in this thing over and over again. So it's definitely again a misnomer to call it China gait because you have a lot of Taiwan stuff going on. And actually the most controversial part about it, as far as Middleton's concerned, involves the KMT and

Taiwan. No, yeah, no, absolutely. So anyway, so basically, Mark Middleton has to leave the White House in February 1995. It's not exactly clear why he has to leave though. It is worth noting that Epstein's last meeting with Middleton, it was just a couple of weeks before he left the White House. So not that long. After he leaves the White House, Middleton returns to the White House with James riadi to meet

with Clinton. And then the next day, Middleton is hired by this company that's basically like run controlled by lipo the realities again, and they hire Middleton. More specifically, it's this company called Arkansas International Development Corporation and then they make a counterpart in the Cayman Islands that's called Arkansas International Development Corp. ration two. Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. And that's the one that hires Middleton. And they're paying him like, almost 13 grand a

month. A lot of money. Yeah, that is a lot. I went and tried to find like any kind of records about what kind of business they did. And usually, like, you know, in the documents that you're looking at, it talks about how it was mainly about gaining influence by hiring people with access to the Clinton administration. Yeah. But then like a lot of press releases, kind of talk about how it's about promoting business

development in Asia. But the only concrete thing I could find it was like, the Arkansas International Development Corporation arranged for a Walmart to open in Indonesia. So yeah, yeah, it seems like something else was going on, because Middleton's supposed to be on the reality payroll, what he's supposed to be doing is looking for all these joint venture opportunities for for the Lippo group. And he doesn't produce anything. And he's on their payroll for like, several years.

And he's paid like hundreds of 1000s of dollars to do basically nothing. Yeah. Well, yeah, but that's if you believe what he's supposed to be officially doing in that period, you know, yeah, for sure. And just the fact that it's like a shadow company that's owned in the Caymans is, you know, suggested, you know, it's suggestive of a pattern. Like when you see that kind of stuff, it's, you're usually seeing like some kind of like, dark money network that's being formed.

So you know, there's some really weird meetings that Middleton does in this period. There's one where he's like, you know, he travels through Asia all the time. And on some of these occasions that come up in the congressional reports, he's like, described as holding CT. Like in a hotel room, like it's a two room hotel room, it's like

a suite, right? And then there's this waiting room, and it's just full of like, influential Asian businessmen, and they're all coming in to meet with Mark Middleton, one by one, and no one knows why. Because one thing I should point out about this congressional investigation is that like, hardly anyone cooperated with it, including people they subpoena it, like Mark Middleton is a good

example. He had to testify in front of Congress, but he pleaded the fifth 28 times including when he was asked, Are you an agent of a foreign government? It was really annoying to read, like a lot of the transcripts. So can't read Milton's testimony because he's just like, No, sir. Can't say it. So sorry, sir. plead the fifth Barbara. You know, it's

awful. Yeah. Or it's just, you know, just to read like you read along and it's just like him saying, like, oh, I don't know, for a you know, hundreds of times. Yeah. Yeah, they're all They're all pretty much like that. Except I think, Johnny John, that has a really insane story with Hillary Clinton, but I hope we have time. Because it seems just so unbelievable. Just nuts.

Anyway, so why Middleton's doing all of this and holding court for the realities and basically engage in this weird influence operation. He's maintaining a voicemail in at the White House, hands up business cards, like he's still working at the White

House and all of this stuff. And maybe he did have weird continued ties after he was not officially working there at the time, and so eventually, in this are after Middleton's hire there a couple months later, there's this meeting, and then Huang is hired by the DNC, and given this title that didn't exist previously, they like create a

position for him. Yeah, and if he becomes DNC is Vice Finance chairman, all of a sudden, and then he gets involved in all of this really shady stuff for for the, you know, the, the financing of the 1996 campaign, and basically a lot of what the stuff is sort of like what he had done in the in the 92 election for fundraising like you know, in this is what Charlie tree and a lot of these other guys in, in this network, you know, were doing they would use like front companies to

funnel money to the DNC or they would go to people that were like US citizens maybe like Chinese or Taiwanese, but had US citizenship or US residency could like legally contribute.

And then they would say, okay, donate X amount of money to the DNC and then it would be reimbursed by someone that was not a US citizen right and in no one had the realities behind him Charlie tree head reality connections, but was tied up with a guy that will get into a second name in lapsing, I think, is how you say his name. Yeah, I went down a huge rabbit hole on how to pronounce this day. I just figured I'd wing it because you know, I'm, I'm not probably ever going to do it.

Right. And I have bronchitis. So I mean, I was I was extra screwed. You pronounced it proper from a Cantonese perspective. I'm so glad to do that. Thanks.

Yeah, no problem. All right. So one thing that's important to bring up here that we didn't get into previously, and this is part of why I think it ended up being being called China gait is because that the the reality is basically in the early 90s, as Clinton was becoming president also became business partners, you know, not just on Jackson Stevens and people like that, but also basically of the Chinese government. So it just has to do with their

BCCI. Like, attempt. Yeah, yeah, do you want to talk about our I can talk about it, I can talk about it. There's not too much information about it. But it was when BCCI was being liquidated, kind of, you know, they had branches all over the world, and other companies would, you know, try to buy up their assets and their banks, and the BCCI Hong Kong branch

was put up for sale. And this was kind of like a pretty significant branch for this bank, because this was the, you know, kind of major bank that was used by the Chinese government, particularly in like weapons cells. And, you know, this was like a kind of like, starting in the 70s, the Chinese government kind of made, it had its generalized kind of push towards like an export oriented

model of economic growth. And their weapons cells on a global scale, were a major part of like this export, and a lot of that was handled through this BCCI Hong Kong branch. So as the bank was being liquidated, that branch goes up for sale. And lo and behold, the realities through Lippo group are interested in purchasing it. And what they do is that they end up kind of partnering with a company called China resources.

And China resources is kind of just it's this trading company that's run by the Chinese government. And it's described as the agent for all of the People's Republic, and China's foreign trade corporations, that's kind of like a major hub. And the way that this would work is that, you know, they would partner but China resources would kind of do all the financing of the deal. And in the end, it ended up kind of falling apart. You know, the BCCI, Hong Kong, kind of like went into, like full blown

collapse wasn't purchased. But the reality is kind of stayed very close with China resources, to the point where the realities had a bank called the Hong Kong Chinese bank, and China resources like purchased, I think it's like 15% of it. And then, you know, like, in 93, they increased, it's like 50%. So the realities, and this, like chief trading entity for the Chinese government, were like, basically involved in this very kind of like, large became like a joint venture basically at that. Yeah,

yeah. And it's not just that it was like a Trading Corporation. But China resources was, you know, identified as basically a front not just for like the Chinese government before, like the People's Liberation Army, and, you know, involvement in espionage. And like military activity, and so you can kind of see it not just as like a joint venture with the Chinese government, but really, it's a joint venture with the Chinese military and intelligence app. And so it's worth pointing out

really quickly. BCCI, HK, the Hong Kong one Hong Kong branch very involved with, basically China's military industrial complex, to a huge degree, which was involved with arming Iran, in Iraq during the Iran Iraq War. And, you know, some of those companies, companies like Norinco, as mentioned in the book, have very intimate ties with Jeffrey Epstein's mentor in the 1980s. Douglas lease. So, anyway, just leave that there for people to chew on for a

second. So, um, but this whole military angle comes up a lot in quote unquote, China Gate reality gate, because one of the few you know, people that were central to this that did cooperate with the investigation, pretty much the only one I think, is Johnny Chung, he basically said that he was courted by someone, the daughter of a famous Chinese general who was in charge of another company that was sort of flagged as a as a front for the for the Chinese army, to basically, you know, launder

money from Chinese military intelligence and send it to the DNC. And so that's pretty mental. And so that's a totally another person that's not Johnny Huang. Right but Johnny Huang basically does, you know enacting is the realities man on the inside. He basically does a

lot of the same stuff. So for example, he connects China resources to the Commerce Department, lobbies, Ron Brown to meet with the chairman of China resources, and manages the visit of China resources chairman, he's a shin durin I think is how you say it, maybe that's wrong. Anyway, he manages, you know, their visit and our arranges a meeting between them and Al Gore and stuff and is like very involved. So obviously, you know, they're in a joint venture with the realities. One is the realities

met on the inside. And he's also like, as part of that helping advance the interests of this China resources company that's tied to, you know, military intelligence of China. So that's complicated. And there's a lot of stuff going on here. Even beyond that, like there's these weird fundraisers that were being held in Asia on behalf of the DNC, and Hwang and Charlie tree. Both did that to a

significant degree. And they'll have like a lot that they'd invite, like, a lot of powerful businessmen, none of whom, often maybe you'd have had a splat, you know, a couple citizens, but the majority would not be in some cases, none at all. And there were, you know, witnesses that they were being lobbied to contribute to the Clinton campaign, and things like that, and actually one of at one of these fundraisers, one of this was in Taiwan, I think, or at least a lot of the businessmen

were Taiwanese. And one of them had actually been caught for laundering campaign funds to city council candidates and Los Angeles, Pacific Leadership Council, or is this No, no, that's, that's before. So this was a meeting at the Jefferson hotel in 96. That had a range. Yeah. But it's interesting, because, you know, some of these guys that are non citizens had previously been flagged for laundering campaign funds, like into the US elections. Previous to this. So that's the reason I

bring it up. And then there's another one directly involving riadi. Okay, and it's at a fundraiser hosted by Lew Wasserman, who is the guy that comes up in the book a lot. If you're familiar with the Epstein flight logs, you will know that there is also a Wasserman Epstein's flight logs that would be the grandson of blue one. Yeah. Yeah, so anyway, that's also in the book, but little old

school mob. Yeah, totally. And like you mentioned Jackson Stevens having ties to Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton, Lew Wasserman, is that to Lee Wasserman, Jimmy Carter said the first person he called outside of Georgia when he planned to run for president was Lew Wasserman. And like I asked his

blessing. Lew Wasserman is basically the man that made Ronald Reagan's political career, a major donor to Bush Senior and also a big financer of Clinton, as well so you know, when you want to talk about powerful businessman, with organized crime and intelligence ties, who were behind the scenes and scenes and like, political kingmakers, you know, Lew Wasserman and Jackson Stevens are on the on that tear for sure. Yeah, and there's just like a fun little factoid, fun and

quotes. Last year, he was the guy behind MCA like the big music and like acting big Universal Studios now, yeah, this is like the mob penetration of Hollywood sponsored the career of Ronald Reagan and full but apparently Danny Castle era, like during you use the term the octopus. He had gotten that from another book. I can't remember the name of it atop my head, but the term was being used to actually describe MCA and it's like relation to organized crime.

Yeah, well, MCA was being probed for its ties organized crime in the 80s. It was quashed by the Reagan administration, obviously, as a favor to Wasserman who basically owned Reagan. And they're also MCA, also, executives of MCA, pop up in the PROMIS software scandal several times. And if you read Sherry Seymour's book on the subject, or you'll have a much clearer understanding of where

MCA fits in that picture. All right, so in the interest of time, is there anything else you want to add on one before we jump to Charlie tree? I think we hit all the like really important things I can't can't think of anything. Okay, right on so we talked about long and it's pretty obvious there that something was really rotten with that. So here's the other guy. We've mentioned a couple times Charlie tree that's not his real name.

It was Yaalon tree. But you know, he had, he came to little Little Rock from Taiwan, though it doesn't appear that he was born in Taiwan. It appears he was born in China and then emigrated to Taiwan when he was a teen. But anyway, he comes to the US in 1976. He goes to Little Rock, Arkansas, and his sister's there and they they co own a restaurant together. And Clinton ended up frequenting this restaurant when he was

governor. And that's probably because tree was donating to him even before he became a citizen. As early as 1982 You know, between 1982 and the end of the 80s the two end up becoming close somehow and tree starts calling Clinton like Big Boss and Mandarin or Cantonese. I'm not sure exactly which dialect it is. Wow, okay. Yeah. So you know, that apparently trends translates into big boss which is just shady sounding shady sale doing that's for

sure. I mean, all I can really do was sigh about it like, you know. So, um, you know, in 1996, this controversial campaign financing thing you know, Clinton is on video actually calling referring to Trias, his close friend of over two decades and stuff. And tree actually has ties of course to who else the riadi is going back to the same period of time basically, around 1983 or so he becomes friends with a LiPo executive called Antonio pan and Tony is not his real first name. It's like the

first name that he chose. When he came to the US. I forget what his actual first name is. But he was the Executive Vice President of the riadi families Lippo group, their Chinese subsidiary called the tatty group. So they became pretty close and at some point, the realities extended Tria, significant loan in 1985 that is reportedly for tree to, quote, expand his restaurant operation. And that's like, $60,000 60,095

is a lot of money. No, I from what I wasn't like that big, but like, you know that that's more money, I think, then his restaurant would really require. So I think it's pretty clear that something else is going going on there. Yeah,

yeah. So you know, a couple years later is around the time when trying to resources and the reality family are coming together and BCCI Hong Kong is collapsing, and all this stuff is going on tree sells his restaurant and he tries to create this import export business, but specifically focusing on US China trade called Daihatsu international trading Corp. And the Congressional investigation and Senate investigation into this basically found that Daihatsu didn't ever get any business

ever. But it was of course involved in donating to the DNC, even though within the business. And during the same period, he was making a lot of tree was making a lot of trips to China, between China and the US bringing Chinese businessmen and officials to the United States specifically to Arkansas. And this is all you know, even before Clinton is in the White House. And obviously once he's in the White House, it picks up

a lot. But a lot of trees activities in this period are intimately tied up with this guy named Ian lapsing, who we mentioned earlier, who is from Macau and has a very bizarre rags to riches story that makes no sense. He's apparently born into dire poverty. So poor, he can't even feed himself. But he also somehow manages to bribe his way into Macau. So I don't know how he did that with no

money. But he did. And then he becomes a wealthy businessman once in Macau, apparently, just by selling fabric to people. That makes sense. You know, yeah, in like five years, he becomes like a multimillionaire by selling like fabric and he comes in with no money. I mean, none of it really makes any sense to be honest. So, you know, a lot of these stories exist. There's a lot of them in the book for very, you know, a

lot of different people. In my opinion, when there is a person who has an improbable rags to riches story, a lot of times there's organized crime or other sort of unsavory alliances that are responsible for the rise to riches and not necessarily the hard work of the person that we're talking about. So I think that's pretty true for English saying, yeah, he like, there's a lot of reports about like, allegedly like ties to triad gangs. And so that's definitely like your kind

of organized crime side. Lots of allegations that he was himself like a Chinese intelligence agent. He was absolutely, like, close to like the leadership of the Communist Party of China in this time period. Yeah. And he would kind of fall as the second generation of what were called, like, the red fat cats, which were like, are the red princes or princelings? They have a lot of different nicknames, depending on who was

talking about them. Yeah. The red fat cats was the term used in Macau proper, I think. Right. So to define that, for people that don't know this, these are basically more often than not like family members, like children of people that were sort of like the founders, or top leaders of China's Communist Party. And so they get sort of these cushy jobs in the state owned conglomerates or businesses. And a lot of them were not very communist in their

dealings. But one of the guys that gets talked about a lot in the chapter, chapter 17, of the book was basically disowned by his father who was a very prominent member of the Communist Party for being too capitalist and that guy was like, hoarding a bunch of money in offshore accounts and doing you know, the same shady business activities that a lot of the other people that we talked about in the book are doing, you know, so it's it's

just business as usual. For you know, the red fat cats or whatever. Yeah. And I think that that also helps kind of draw out why Macau is so important, because because it was like simultaneously this like completely unregulated zone, but it was so close to China is that Macau is where a lot of these, you know, kind of elite figures in China were kind of putting the money that they weren't necessarily supposed to be accumulating.

So, so inlab saying once he's a rich guy, he he's very involved in real estate and he owns like hotels and stuff that I think also were like casino II stuff. To an extent, the places that he owns are allegedly, again, associated with triad gangsters. And he, you know, in this period of time, he starts connecting with tree, his first known association with tree is this effort to acquire a hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas, that I think actually involves St.

Joseph gerar. Right. Yeah. Of all people, you know, the riadi guy again, so the realities are in the mix, but in collapsing is interesting, because he has this direct tie to top Chinese leadership. He's allegedly affiliated with organized crime. And that came up when he was trying to acquire this hotel, even that he had criminal ties and Asia was what they said, but one of these hotels was advertised as a massage table

dance karaoke spot. Okay, so in Macau, that's basically especially because of the alleged organized crime influence, it's most likely like a low key brothel. Macau was very well known, especially in this period for having been a hotbed for sex trafficking. And it was basically de facto legal, de facto illegal to have brothels if it was disguised as a massage parlor. And that's actually very common in parts of

Asia, even today. Actually, suddenly, we're talking a little bit before we recorded I mentioned that when I was in college, I went to Malaysia for a month with my my major advisor to do some research on stuff there. And we were gonna go to we were like walking down the street and we looked inside one of these like massage parlors, quote, unquote, and it was like, the women were like, all staring out the window. They were all wearing like matching pajamas with like, zip down, like, all

the way down. I mean, it was just very odd, you know. And also karaoke. We went to a karaoke bar, thinking it would be like, fun, you know. And it turns out that like, you can't go up and sing karaoke if you want. Like, we wanted to go goof off and stuff, but you're not even it's like these women come up and they sing karaoke. And then they're handed flowers with a wad of cash inside. And then whoever gave them the cash follows them, like down this hallway, and you don't see where

they go. Right. And so I don't know how common that is, you know, in Macau during this period, but this was like on a sort of a place called Penang and Malaysia, which is like, you know, mostly ethnic Chinese. So maybe it is what they do in Macau. Also, that's just my

personal experience. I've never been to China so I don't know but I mean, you know, shady hotel with organized crime ties massage table dance karaoke spot in a place that's known for lack of regulation about all sorts of things including sex trafficking, it's a little alarming now is this the same hotel that Stanley Ho was involved with? No, no, but this is this is a collapsing like flagship hotel Oh, another thing I forgot.

Their main pamphlet for this hotel that he ran specifically promoted attractive and attentive hostesses from China Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and Burma together with erotic girls from Europe and Russia. It makes it they offer you an exciting and unforgettable evening with friends or business associates. So I mean not looking good. Not looking good in lapsing I think

we're onto you. So yeah, so anyway, that's the guy that tree teamed up with those are his connections I think it's a little bit irrelevant and so basically tree is basically to summarize it because we don't have that much time he he's basically acting as a front for collapsing and if you read the congressional or Senate reports it's very clear that's what happened tree basically found all these different ways to break up huge sums of money that

in lapsing was wiring him. He tried to shuffle it through all these different bank accounts and then filter it to the DNC through all these different ways, but it's very obvious that it all came from in lapsing. So he's basically acting as a front for NG lapsing at the end of the day. And a lot of you know, where does Mark Middleton fit in

here? Okay, so mark Middleton is going to these parties that are being hosted at this office of the Watergate Complex that England lapsing uses, but it's apparently owned in the office of this Daihatsu company that tree runs, but it's being used by inlab Singh and his book keeper. And then Antonio Pon, this former Lippo group executive who was now claiming to be CEO of the Daihatsu company that never does any

business ever. And so Mark Middleton and some of these guys from also where else the Commerce Department are going to these weird parties at the Watergate apartment, not going to speculate about what may have happened there. But there are some other things that are noticing notable about him collapsing. And I guess a lot of these would be that when England intellects lapsing makes his

visits to the US. And during this period of time, they're almost always it ain't aimed at him going to the White House and he goes to the White House, but he'll come into the country with like, a ton of cash on him. And and you know, in a couple days, he apparently spends it all and it's, it seems to me the way it's written in like it's laid out in the documentation. He's He's basically like giving it to mark Middleton, like he comes into the US with a ton of cash.

And then he makes Mark Middleton and then he leaves. And he's like Ron Brown a lot, too, in this period. Yeah. So it's either going to Middleton or brown. They're both equally corrupt. So it's anyone's guess, at this point, and then tree gets appointed to this fancy board of Finance Board of Directors at the DNC, which includes people like Edgar Bronfman, of course, sums up a

lot in the book. And as you know, sort of affiliated with the Lew Wasserman side of things, to significant degrees, and then tree gets involved with this is another rabbit hole, so I'm not gonna get into it too much. But he basically being brings China's premier arms dealer to meet with Clinton and something that became really

controversial. But what wasn't reported really, in the media reports about it at the time, is that this meeting that tree setup for this arms dealer, whose name is Wang Jun, basically scuttled what would have what actually was even though it was, you know, mess, totally messed with the biggest like ATF confiscation of automatic weapons that were being smuggled in the US ever.

And, and basically, you know, Wing Wing jeans, companies were smuggling illegal Chinese weapons into the United States, because as part of that aforementioned most favored, traded, most favored nation trading status deal that was being lobbied for by the realities. And all of this, Clinton banned Chinese weapons from being sold in the US, but they were still smuggling them

to a significant degree. And someone at the White House after this meeting with Wang Jun that Charlie tree set up, basically tips everyone off, that's being investigated, that's going to happen and all the big people they were after, including Wayne June's operator of us, all as US Operations managed to escape. And so only like the little guys

are, are nabbed for it. But it's still, they still get like an insane amount of automatic weapons and these automatic automatic weapons, we're going to like, basically, were feeling gang violence, at the height of all of that stuff going on in the 1990s, like the east versus West, you know, gang battles, and all of this stuff that, you know, is urban, you know, a lot of people in the US, I think, know about it at this point, because it was such a big part of, you know, culture at the

time, I was gonna say, like a kid, and I even knew about it. So, yeah, like, even like movies from that time, like you'll, you know, any representation, you'll see, they'll have like Chinese like automatic weapons, and the scale of it was like really large, because if you read a lot of the, you know, the few documents that exist, you know, concerning that, they talked about how China like, it was still enough for them to like, get significant revenue streams off selling it to us street

gangs. Yes. So like, it wasn't like little, you know, these aren't like small time arms deals, these are still kind of like large weapons packages in a lot of ways. So definitely, definitely more defined in that direction to I think, Oh, totally. And you know, what, I tried to get in touch with this lawyer that we, that we talked about a couple weeks ago, and like he was going to talk to me now he like, doesn't want to talk to me about the China

stuff. Oh, really? What happened? But Dan is really hoping to find out the name of these offshore companies, or they were doing all this stuff, but I guess I won't know. Anyway, I was just wondering about that. That's disappointing. Well, maybe you can try them. Maybe we'll

see what happens. So anyway, um, so at, you know, after this meeting with Wang gene, and all of that, which is a very separate thing, and I've mentioned this in some other interviews, because I think that sort of is is what explains Epstein and Middleton's relationship at the White House is related to a lot of this Chinese weapons stuff because of numerous things. I mean, it all sort of clicks together different parts of the book in that chapter. And that's way too

complex to get into for now. So you know, We're just trying to focus on Mark Middleton and in reality gate and whatever, right. So, you know, after that meeting tree is going to a big fundraiser that's supposed to be the top African American fundraiser in DC. It's basically headed by Ron Brown, who is an African American, I think at the time was like the only person in the cabinet that was African, or at least one of them. I don't, I

can't remember exactly. But he brings like, what was described as a boatload of, I guess, Chinese, Chinese and Taiwanese people with him. And basically, Clinton and Ron Brown are on video talking about like, that they know that this is they call them the tree team, like the Charlie tree team. Yeah. And, you know, they like know that there's these non citizens coming to all these fundraisers and are obviously like, cool

with it. So, and again, that was like, the main focus of this investigation was the legality of the finance contributions, but very little interest in looking into what those you know, what those finances were enabling. And Mark Middleton was at the mean, at the center of all of these meetings,

ultimately. So the question becomes, you know, what did the realities want, basically, because the two main guys here, aside from Johnny Chung, who I don't think we have time to get to today, but they're basically you know, have reality ties, significant significant reality ties, and are part of the same, you know, network, you know, around involved with, like, Macau banking, and like money laundering, and BCCI, and all of this stuff. So Middleton was in the center of this insane swamp.

So it's really no coincidence that you see George W. Bush, you know, the the son of George Bush senior's stepping in to cover this up. And that's how you know that this is, there's a lot more to the scandal here, for sure. You also, I totally forgot to mention this one of Charlie trees, top guy like conspirators, alongside Mark Middleton is a top banker at Lehman Brothers, who's this guy named Ernie green. So you also have Wall Street pretty directly

in the mix here. And there's this weird stuff that they were the train in Ernie green, we're obviously doing they claim to like, come together in this. So funny to me this joint venture around self inflating novelty balloons. So I'm upfront for anything, just find that, like, that's like a thing that comes up like time and time again, when you're looking at this stuff, you'll just come across like, yeah, a self inflating novelty balloon. You know, that's not like what

it's about. Like, you know, like, I was looking at this thing with like Adnan Khashoggi last night in around 1986 He was trying to sell shares to what he claimed was King Solomon's mind he said that he had found it to see you know, these people love to just like do weird shit you know? Yeah, they like love to have silly Griffes that like are amusing to them you know? I don't know I

that's what I assume it is. So anyway, um, so Middleton in green are working with tree really extensively at the same time, Middleton's also working extensively with Johnny Huang and all of this weird stuff, right? And they green and Middleton both tried to get involved in this real estate project that tree and in in lapsing, we're really trying to promote during this period of time, and it was caught on by being lapsing with the whole

brothers of Macau. And that's the aforementioned the brought up a second ago, Stanley Hall, being one of those brothers and I mean, it's documented the ties of the whole family to organized crime in China that is, or Macau, it's very much like eating himself where, you know, on the one hand, they have these like, yeah, ties to triads organized crime, very extensive, well documented deep, but on the other hand, it was like, you know, he was served on like, the China's like committee of the,

you know, the top advisory council to the Communist Party. So he's another one of these like, red Fat Cat types. And one thing that's like, really interesting, I thought is, you know, back at the beginning, we talked about this Macau bank that Jackson Stevens, and the reality spot that saying hang bank, yeah, 1986 or 87. They sold it to Stanley Ho. So like, they have relations to him going back to the 1980s predating all

of this stuff. And so it's indicative of like a pretty consistent totally, and Stanley Hall was like so obviously tied to organized crime. They don't even let him set up casinos or his children set up casinos in the US. Yeah, it'd be business partners and casinos in the US like they don't want their money so bad because they know how dirty they are that it will be very bad press for them. Like immediately.

He's descends from the family like there was tied up with Jardine Matheson, which was like yeah, company that Dima explained. Yeah, but Jardine. Matheson was like a A British trading company that for a while, kind of competed with the East India Company, but then over time, it all kind of started to integrate. And so in the face thing, yeah, it was controlled by what's called the

Keswick family. And you know, when we talk about like the Opium Wars, or just like the general opium trade in Asia, like the castle wicks through Jardine Matheson really were like the controlling body for this, and actually ends up being like, quite important during World War Two. The Keswick were key parts of it was called the Special Operations executive. This was like British intelligence in World War Two. And they provided a lot of the documents that would like to William Donovan, it'd be

necessary to set up the OSS. So Jardine, Matheson actually has like a really fundamental connection to the basis of American intelligence itself. And so like, the whole family descends from like, people who were like, high executives, and this is just like a long family history of shady ties and Underworld ties, you know, kind

of coexisting together. Yeah. So, you know, basically to sum up, I mean, this is the network that's around Mark Middleton at the time the scandals going on and when he's meeting with Epstein, right, so I think it's really one thing that really surprised me when I finally it finally got into the, you know, the work of researching this book that was, you know, supposed to be just mainly about Epstein, is that Epstein has a lot of ties to the east that don't get reported on really, at

all, specifically, like Chinese weapons manufacturers and stuff. And I think that was really, you know, one of the missing pieces in the puzzle when discussing his involvement in, you know, on behalf of Leslie Wexner, getting Southern Air Transport the Iran Contra airline of infamy relocated to go, instead of, you know, focusing on flights between Latin America in the US because, you know, they were drug smuggling in the Iran Contra era. It's relocated from going from Columbus, Ohio, to

Hong Kong and back. What were they smuggling? Why is he meeting with Mark Middleton? That is? Well, we think we figured it out. But there's obviously a lot more to come out about it. And it's worth mentioning to you that, you know, while this is treated as China Gate, and there was such a big focus on East Asia stuff, it's also very important to point out that there was also a lot of other people involved with I guess what I would call the Robert Maxwell mafia.

Perhaps you have people like Gregory Lucha Lansky, who's like linked to organized crime Mark rich, and also the Maxwell symbol as the sons Ian and Kevin ended up working for him. He's being courted by a guy who's very tied up with the sort of whole mega group group and people like Steven Spielberg, he's trying, you know, Sam, Dom,

Sam Thompson. Yeah, who knew Maxwell personally, right. And he's basically trying to take these organized crime people like, no into the DNC network as well, at the same time. So you're having sort of these Chinese military connected organized crime guys in China

and Macau, and whatever. In the BCCI crowd, the realities getting into the DNC, in really shady ways and buying influence and obviously targeting, you know, more than anything else, the Commerce Department, and at the same time, you have the people in the in the Robert Maxwell network, Epstein being one of them, just one of them, I should point out, that are that are also involved with the same stuff at the end of the day. So there's like, a huge scandal

here. And you know, I think in the book, we only really ended up like scratching the surface of it. There's a lot more and you know, at some point, I'd really like to find out what the heck was going on, because it's

nuts. And I guess the part we should end here, as you know, what ended up happening to Mr. Ron Brown, because Ron Brown was the target of most of this influence operation, these influence operations that came up in the scandal in which Mark Middleton himself was embroiled in he met a very grisly end in April 1996, and I've talked about this in some previous interviews as well, but he was on he was going to cooperate as part of an investigation that was threatened to unravel a lot

of more than what we've covered today, but about the same network specifically and then was unexpectedly asked to host a trade mission to Croatia in route to their, the plane, he is on crashes. And the crowd the cause of the crash was attributed to failure of command and an improperly designed instrument, approach procedure,

whatever that means. And they blame that on a 1930s era navigational system, but then a couple of days later, the head navigation at the airport, where they were supposed to land was found dead shot in the chest. And he was that was ruled a suicide. You know, totally

normal. And even Clinton himself talking about the tragedy was like, Oh, this was a peculiar peculiar mix of circumstances, if only one or two things had happened differently, the crash might not have happened at all, you know, one or two things happening differently, maybe having been Ron Brown not agreeing to cooperate with investigators. That's just my

opinion, though. So anyway, what's crazy about this is that a lot of people do you know that, like Ron Brown, his body when it was discovered, it was very suspect. But there were 34 people who died on that plane. Yep. And a lot of them were people that worked alongside John Juan at the ITA, I think almost his direct boss, yeah, his boss at the ITA was there. And a lot of other people, most of the other people on the plane were also specifically part of the ITA that Johnny Huang was,

was at. And to me, that's really telling because it's not just about Ron Brown. That to me, says Johnny Huang, at the ITA was engaged in a lot of stuff. And I think that Arkansas system stuff with China's central bank, you know, might be part of it, because of all these weird security clearances and all this stuff. And that's why it's so mind boggling to me that the congressional investigations into this, they don't really bring up the Ron Brown crash at all. It's like a separate thing.

In the fact the coincidental fact that all these people at the ITA get killed when Johnny Huang is doing this weird stuff with Steven zinc and the security clearances and whatever, at the ITA. And like we mentioned earlier, they weren't really interested in looking into that at all. And all these people just conveniently end up dead. The second that Ron Brown's like, you know, okay, I'll cooperate.

And so you know, basically, he had this bullet wound in his head, and we point out in the book, the details for that, yeah. It was a 45 is described on the Army Medical Examiner as a 45 and readily beveling circular hole in the top of his head, which is essentially the description of a 45 caliber gunshot wound. And inwardly

beveling. That means, like, the inside of the wound is bigger than the outside, which is why it's consistent with, you know, kind of the way that a bullet kind of goes, yeah, it was pretty much widely recognized that it wasn't caused by the crash. And I think at the time, you had like Maxine Waters in Congress asking for, like, more information about anomalies, and Ron Brown's autopsy and all this stuff, which they obviously didn't want

to deal with. So there was no subsequent autopsy, it was pretty much, you know, yeah, that's significant, because one of the medical examiner's disagree that it was a bullet hole, strictly based on the fact that there was no exit wound. But that's like, you know, that's not uncommon to not have an exit wound and autopsy would show like, you know, recover that bullet. But there were

like, no autopsies done. And I believe that he was cremated, like very quickly, before the family themselves were notified. Yeah, so. And you found this actually, and I just found it so nuts that not only did you have those people die, but not that a couple months later, you had another person at the Commerce Department die super suspiciously in just found dead in her office. Yeah, Barbara was working at ICA also. Yeah, yeah, it was weird, because at first they were treating it as a

homicide. Because like our body apparently had bruises. Yeah, give us conflicting reports on whether or not she was clothed. But then like, by the end of the day, they were like, oh, no, this was natural cause natural causes. She's bruises on her body. And I don't know, it's just yeah, okay. natural causes just totally mental health. They have to deal with this stuff,

too. And earlier in the book, before we get, you know, all this stuff that we talked about the day comes up, we talked about Vince Foster, and like that whole autopsy thing is to like totally nuts, too. So, anyway. So I mentioned earlier, Brown was going to be a material witness and was going to testify. Yeah, this was actually a suit filed by Judicial Watch.

Tom Fitton, right. Yeah. But anyway, the whole thing he was supposed to testify about, was it exactly about the campaign finance stuff, but it would have led to that same network, right.

Yeah. It's it's incredibly clear that that's exactly like the because this the Judicial Watch suit, ended up launching kind of like a congressional probe that would have converged directly into the 96 campaign controversy, and possibly revealed like larger networks that play in this yes, if you want to get into that a little bit, the dynamic it was a company called dynamic energy and the stuff there's pretty crazy. So yeah, dynamic energy. She was owned by this couple named Nora and

Eugene Lum. And there were these kinds of shady real estate developers from Hawaii that had become involved in, you know, this, the DNC Asian American fundraising activities, like they started back in like the 1980s. And they had met Ron Brown when he was the DNC chairman. So that's kind of where their association like went to. And they set up this thing that was called the Asian Pacific Advisory Council, or APEC, not to be confused with the Zionist organization have a

similar name. During the first Clinton run, and this was like one of these, we're talking earlier about how I clung and we're kind of like funneling money through these various DNC apparatuses. This was one of those and so long in the lungs, like crossed paths. This is one of the examples of why this is

kind of the same network. And the allegations concerning AIPAC are identical to the whole long stuff, you know, these allegations of moving illegal campaign contributions from you know, foreign entities and foreign businesses. There's stories of cash being delivered, and you know, paper bags. One little connection of a pack that I thought was really interesting, was it involved the guy named Charles chidiac, who was involved in Hawaiian real

estate with the Lums. But before that, he had appeared on what was called the banca del lavoro scandal BNL. And this bank was financing both sides of the Iran Iraq War, and had lots of ties like US intelligence to BCCI, once again, to Henry Kissinger and chidiac during that scandal have been found. They've been like very active with the bank, and he was described as an asset of American intelligence

services. So then he turns up, you know, with the lungs and the DNC, that's pretty telling, I think, but so, you know, after Clinton was elected, you know, the first time, they immediately end up running this oil and gas company called dynamic energy. And this is despite like, they never had any previous experience in oil and gas. And the company itself had no oil

and gas reserves of its own. In fact, like, if you look at some of the reporting on it, it's a total mystery where they even got the money to launch it in the first place. Maybe that's why it's dynamic energy where they're trying to get the energy from is like changing. That's kind of like that's the thing they were these were like, very kind of fly by night people. They weren't wealthy. They were kind of glorified

Grifters. Really? Yeah. Well, one of their, like, early partners was a guy named Stuart price. Yeah, it was the son in law, senate majority leader George Mitchell. Which is important, because around this time is allegedly when Epstein meets up with George Mitchell. Yes, through his meetings at the White House, most of which are with metal tin. And then, of course, it's been alleged since that he was part of the sex trafficking operation that's made by Virginia

Jeffrey's Right, yeah, yeah. But then the other interesting thing about dynamic energy is not only is it close to, you know, George Mitchell, but it's like very tight with the Commerce Department itself. It's like Ron Brown son, Michael Brown, he was on the board of dynamic energy and had a 5% stake in the company. The mother of a Commerce Department employee, named Melinda Yee, who was very close to long, she was on the board as well and also have a

similar stake. And then at the same time that this was happening, the alums daughter, Trisha alum, who was actually hired into the Commerce Department. Yeah. And so what's happening at the same time that you know, all these ties are forming is that the lump start using dynamic energy to pay out large sums of money to like people associated with commerce department, the, you know, various politicians, the people in the DNC, and then to also to like really kind of like strange

like random businesses. Kind of consistent with what we were talking about earlier. The FBI have reported that the lungs were quote, unquote, facilitators and conduits for payments from private individuals in real estate development to public officials, which in other words, it was a Monday money laundering operation. And it seems to have developed like pretty clever ways to start getting money for these, but seem to be payoffs,

right. And one of them involved this contract with a natural gas company called Oklahoma natural gas. And Oklahoma natural gas was very close to another company called Arkla, which lo and behold, was controlled by the Stephens family of Stevens Inc. and Mack McLarty Middleton's boss was previously the CEO of Arkla. And so, you know, it's another telling connection there. My notes for a

second. Yeah, so they're entering into this kind of contract, where dynamic energy would provide gas to Oklahoma natural gas at a really steep above market price. And so then what Oklahoma natural gas will do is to pass this on to the consumers and overbill them. So So to create revenue for dynamic energy, but you know, there's kind of scamming, you know, the citizens of Oklahoma, and Arkansas. And that's really what starts to kick off the probe into like, what's going on here?

Exactly. Because, you know, I mentioned earlier, dynamic energy didn't have any of its own gas reserves. So in order to get them it starts to try to acquire another company called gauge Corporation. And there was evidence and this is why Ron Brown was getting kind of roped into it because there was significant evidence the White House was like kind of guiding this whole thing in vote Yeah, sure that gauge was acquired. And apparently Middleton's boss or former boss at the White

House. McClaren Mack McLarty was involved in it, too. So you have like, all these people and all these other scandals of the Clinton era, like up in here. So obviously, if that if this had been appropriately investigated in Yeah, and I'm sure if Ron Brown had cooperated, it would have led to a lot, a lot more unraveling of, you know, some, some crazy stuff in a pretty, you know, short period of time.

So, you know, it also if I'm not mistaken, just before we wrap up here, one of the people that was financing this was the Waltons, Alice walking through llama, the llama company. And that's significant. Well, I just want to I just wanted to bring that up, because I just wanted to mention a little bit about this NGO where Middleton's body was found earlier this year. So Heifer International is a nonprofit. Their funders include Walmart, BlackRock and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

And it's partnered with the heifer Foundation. And the Foundation's board of trustees is chaired by the former director of strategy and business development for the Clinton Development Initiative, which is part of the Clinton Foundation. So you have all of these interesting players involved with this particular NGO or Middleton's body was

found hanging from a tree. Just a little weird, because more or less most almost all of these people with the exception of Blackrock, I guess, but I mean, they own everything and, you know, Wall Street. So, you know, they're involved too, with this group in the book, basically. I mean, it's interesting to say the very least what one other just like really weird connection, you know, mentioning that, yeah, so yeah, they got financing dynamic to

buy. Gauge from Loma, like you said, was connected to the Walmart fortune through Alice Walton. What's really funny is that they were actually located in another they were located in the state bank of Tulsa building, that's where their headquarters were, which was controlled by a company called our vest, which was another Alice Walton. entity. And if you look, if you look at news about Mark Middleton, June 28 2021, Middleton joined the board of directors of our best just a

year or so before he died. So, you know, Oh, interesting. Okay. I didn't I didn't really I didn't know that about Middleton. Until this morning. And so. Well, I'm gonna have to look into that now. Well, all right. Yeah. So obviously, that's really crazy. Because what I have read about Middleton in the in the, in recent years is that he was like running an air conditioning business. He was running an air conditioning business, but he seems to have still been kind of circulating in the same

in these worlds. Yeah, well, I guess um, the Epstein scandal broke down another another guy, because honestly, you know, I think he's involved with all this stuff. He's involved with these crazy campaign finance scandals and trying to gauge the Ron Brown stuff. Ron Brown ends up dead Mark Middleton doesn't end up dead until 2022. Yeah, it's like why 2022? And I don't know. i My suspicion is that it has to do with all this stuff about Epstein meeting with him in December coming out in

December 2021. That's the only thing really, you know, the only blip on the radar since like 2001 or 2002, about Mark Middleton anywhere, you know. So also, it was so strange because I felt like he died like right in the middle of when we were researching this particular material. I know it was not just real Have something. Yeah, that was super tribute. Yeah. So we were wrapping up this chapter and pretty much the book around the time reason for Middleton's death brown. It blew

our minds. And then we saw that they were going to call it a suicide. Like before they announced it, they were like, in lieu of, you know, gifts to the family donate to like, you know, some suicide hotline, and we were like, Oh, my God. Details came out that he had hung himself and shot himself, you know, the way that people generally, you know, commit suicide.

Yeah. Well, the other thing I didn't mention about the death scene, is that reportedly the sheriff or I guess, police officers at the scene, they said there wasn't a lot of blood or anything. That's a quote at the scene. Okay, but I just a shotgun blast to the chest like, how was there? Not a lot of like, how's that? Not grizzly?

Yeah, that's it reminds me of Vince Foster, because you know, Vince Foster's body, they was allegedly very little blood at the scene, like people that handle the body didn't even have to wear gloves, because there was like, no blood. Right, but he supposedly shot himself in the mouth. And that's messy. So there should have been blood everywhere. And there wasn't. So the claim is like that he was moved. The body was moved in the

case of Vince Foster. Like, that's what a lot of people who question the official story, which the official story is just like, so dumb for Vince Foster anyway, but yeah, you know, it's most likely his body was moved there and like he bled out somewhere else. So with Middleton, if there's no blood at the scene, that would make sense. But then, you know, that

raises some questions. And then this Arkansas court, like immediately comes in, and they're like, oh, yeah, no videos, no photos, nothing can ever be revealed about the Middleton death scene, sealed forevermore. And that's the end of that, you know, just pretty weird. Yeah, I guess you know, what one thing that I wanted to mention, like while we're adding people to the Clinton death list, is that the guy who owned a gauge company we're talking about? All right,

he's all started. Yeah, while he was cooperating with the FBI, died of a respiratory ailment of like, unknown nature is I think, how the medical examiner put it, and he had been telling friends and family, but like, the weeks prior to that happening, we had been receiving death threats. And I think also a private detective that he had hired to, like, help him with this case. And also, like, I think somebody like Matt a shot through is like car windshield or something.

Yeah, that's so nuts. I mean, the death toll is pretty big. But I wouldn't call it the Clinton kill list. I mean, it's not just the Clintons we're talking about here. For something else, right. Just like Epstein is middle management for something else. Like he's not the top of the food chain. Absent neither. Neither are the Clintons. Alright. So I think we did a pretty good job today of unraveling what we could, you know, obviously do more in the

book. But, you know, unraveling what we could have the mark Middleton mystery, you know, what was really going on with Mark Middleton and what you know, may be there, in terms of you know, it the significance of Middleton meeting with Epstein during that particular period of time, and why the US media will not touch the Epstein White House relationship in the 90s. They just won't touch it, which

is mental. It was only only really reported on the UK at all admit same with Middleton's Middleton's death was only like the daily Daily Mail Daily Mail. That's, yeah, I think I think the New York Post might have republished one or two of these stories, but

that's really it. And you think you would think with all the attention that the Epstein scandals gotten in the media, the photo last December of Epstein shaking hands with Clinton, at that White House Historical fundraiser would have gotten some attention, right? Because they're obviously meeting in 1993 and Gilead Maximals there. But now, they really liked their narrative that they didn't meet until like, 2001. And so they won't change it. They'll just ignore

the other evidence about it. I mean, same thing with Bill Gates, Epstein. And Bill Gates officially didn't meet till 2011. But there's 2000 articles from 2001 Saying that Jeffrey Epstein had had made boatloads of money through his business links with Bill Gates. It's like, are these the articles that like to vanish from the internet? Yeah, but they're, you can still find them. I mean, I found them. Yeah, I just had to get creative. You know, but they're

there. And they're probably they're on like, the British version of newspapers.com. You know, the British Newspaper Archive, you know, it's all

there. It's just, you know, not not easy to find on a Google search anymore or, you know, the Evening Standard, which is the outlet the publish that particular article, their website, you know, but the silence is deafening in this case, specifically, and I think, you know, the fact that you had two administrations step in to protect Middleton, who by all appearances is just like a relatively lowly White House aide, like he's not even he's not Uh, the head of a

department, right? He's not he's not a top adviser topic, the Clinton he's an advisor to an advisor to Clinton. Right. Right, or an aide to one of Clinton stopped by an aide to the Chief of Staff I guess. Yeah, so Well, yeah. But you know, eventually McLarty was also like, you know, senior counsel the President or whatever, like he wasn't around Yeah, yeah. So they bounced around. But you know, Middleton was with McClarty the whole time, but he wasn't definitely at the top of

the White House hierarchy. But then you have George W. Bush invoking executive privilege to shield this guy in a couple of weeks before 911. I mean, it's just, it's not. And now you have US media and just not covering it at all. And we talked about this a little bit before, but there's like this, you know, New Yorker, recent New Yorker panel, this panel of, quote unquote experts on the Epstein case, I'm talking about, like, the

unanswered questions. Yeah, Mark Middleton's not on there. So you know, that's, that's problematic to me. You know, obviously, I was not invited to participate. But looking at the panelists there, I didn't see a single one who's ever acknowledged really anything about Epstein's intelligence ties, except with the possibility of a CIA one. No mention of Israeli intelligence. So, you know, I think you probably, yes, why I wasn't invited, but I'll just leave it

at that. So anyway, start to change, you know, as the book gets out there. Yeah, well, we'll see what happens. Um, hopefully, I won't end up like, like Ron Brown. You know, I'm kidding. I'm not worried about that. So anyway, so Edie, thanks a lot for joining me for a longer than national podcast, but a lot of material that's very complicated to get into. And, you know, we didn't really even get into the half of it. You know, there's obviously a lot more to unravel

there. But I think that's a good start for people to realize the significance of Mark Middleton and also just, you know, Ken Starr, right. The guy investigating Clinton corruption supposedly died like a couple days ago. And he didn't get into any of this stuff like at all right, and so pretty much the definition of a limited hanging out, right. Yeah. And then he was Epstein's defense attorney. Right? So he based Yeah,

totally. And he also basically helped cover all this stuff up with Middleton up he it didn't come up in his stuff at all. He just totally like, No, thanks. You know, in that same with the Vince Foster stuff glossed over that, like key evidence. And that case that was given to him, he lost or allegedly destroyed it and stuff. I mean, he was obviously, you know, not working

for the people on that one. So there's actually, you know, the more you look at the Clinton era, the more insane it gets in the fact that, you know, this was in the 90s. I can't even imagine the kind of stuff that goes on now. I mean, it's just mind boggling. Information control today that it's frightening to think about. Yeah, totally. Well, I think they've just bought off mainstream media a lot more than before. And I think that happened in a big way, like

after 911. Because, you know, for example, I in some of my other work, right? I I've written about how, like DARPA has total information awareness, they put John Poindexter from Iran Contra in charge of there was like a huge chorus of dissent from mainstream media about how bad that was, and how it was going to erode privacy. And that basically that same programs to basically exist as Palantir today, but the New York Times just writes like puff pieces on Palantir.

You talk about that in the book, right? And the second one, yeah, yeah, a little bit in the last chapter. But, you know, in other stuff I've talked to, you know, I've done a lot of stuff on DARPA and NTIA because a lot of it was resurrected on under the guise of combating COVID-19, like the CIA's bio surveillance program, the whole wastewater surveillance stuff that's come to pass now under part of HHS, and it's Palantir that's managing that data as part of HHS protect and all of

that stuff. So yeah, I mean, it's literally still exists. But no one's complaining and mainstream media now. You know what I mean? Yeah. But they did in 2003. So I think a lot of this media consolidation that started that got really crazy in the Reagan era, you know, and then by the 2000s, roughly, you have like six companies owned at all, but then you still have journalists that have platforms, right, that are complaining and

allowed to publish that. No, I think they had to tighten their control of like mainstream media to a big degree. But now you have mainstream interest in mainstream media like cratering? Hugely because people know that, I think even on a subconscious level that like they're not being told the whole truth about what's going on anymore. Yeah, I think that they could have been could have gotten away with it like really easily and maybe the first year or a year

and a half of COVID. But as it's gone on, I think that the the shock effect, I think, just started to wear off and with that kind of a more critical attitude. Yeah, but you're not really seeing it in mainstream media. You know what I mean? You Yeah, yeah. And if you're an independent, independent, independent media, you're going to be like sidelined, or Yeah, well, the censorship is

only getting worse. Right? So anyway, I don't I'm, you know, I hope that my, that the book has an effect, but I just, you know, I don't count on mainstream media to help me out with that one, you know what I mean? So come from people that read the book, and like it, and so far, people that have read it, have really liked it, you know, some review copies of have gone out, somehow managed to get through both volumes, which is like, 900 pages. Yeah, not a quick read.

And it's dense too. So, you know, but reviews are very positive. So that's awesome. You know, it's, I'm happy that people are gonna, are liking it so far, because I really hope people read it. Because, you know, ultimately, you know, talking about this type of stuff. And what we talked about today, I mean, these problems haven't gone away. And if they could get away with the stuff in the 1990s, I mean, it's mental.

And you know, as we in the book, unravel more about Middleton, it becomes pretty clear that one of the crazy things that seems to have gone on under the surface of this other stuff that we we talked about today was just a huge amount of text transfer, and like weapons, smuggling, and all this stuff, and a lot of it happening in the United States. And it really seems to be a story that's like, on level with

what Gary Webb wrote about. In Dark Alliance with the CIA creating the crack epidemic in urban communities, you have basically the same groups, and it looks like Southern Air Transport involved with Wexner is delimited was involved in bringing these weapons to fuel gang violence in the same areas that were being targeted by the CIA with the crack epidemic. And

that's totally mental. Because the whole idea of that was to pump, you know, private prisons full of African Americans, and basically, you know, use private prison labor in the slavery's back, you know, and there's a whole nother side to this. And it looks like it was going on right in the middle of the Clinton administration, who of course, have I read unconscious stuff? I mean, that's totally nuts. So yeah, I'm not gonna get invited on the New York Magazine

panel or whatever. Talking about this stuff, I answered questions about Epstein. Yeah, I have many. You're not gonna like any of them. These are the questions you don't want to be answered. My big hope, you know, it's like when, you know, helping you with this research, I feel like I ended up with just hundreds and hundreds of like, questions that

I wanted to answered. Like, I just felt like we just like, in a lot of ways that I felt like I was just posing questions, instead of like answering them. And I'm hoping that as the book comes out, like maybe people who have information, you know, can come forward. Some people have mentioned that, and I really hope that happens, because this whole thing with Middleton in Southern Air Transport with the limited and this this Chinese weapons stuff,

is nuts. And I really like I wish I had more time to get to the bottom of it. But you know, it was sort of like, crunch time. And you know, I can't make the book like 1500 pages and three volumes, you know, I'm just gonna wait for that volume three to come out. Oh, man, don't even talk to me about that. Like, sorry, sorry. Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, I need a little bit of breathing space, you know, but anyway, the whole point is, there's a lot to come out. And this was, like, 30

years ago. And I mean, think about all the stuff that's happened then that we don't know about. I mean, there's a lot of work to be done here. So anyway, Thanks, Ed. So much for helping me piece together a lot of what's in the book. And a lot of, you know, I think it's a good reference to build off of, and that's what I hope the book,

the books will be for people. So you know, we can figure out who's really running the country, and, you know, the US Empire, because it's not just the US, you know, client states and all of that. So, anyway, where can people listen to your podcasts and support you and learn about how amazing and great you are? Well, let's see the podcast. That's the pseudo doxology podcast, and you can find that

on Patreon. Then, I guess where I'm most prolific, because we're really mad about having a consistently running podcast. People can find me on Twitter. Twitter is at EB burger, and that's B ERG er, so yeah, give me a follow. Because, yeah, a lot of the stuff like the thing you mentioned about Adnan Khashoggi and King Solomon's mine, you can find little gems like that on Ed's Twitter feed. If you want to know about these, these crazy people during this period of time and there's there's really

no shortage of them. With that being said, hopefully people have a better idea of who Marc Middleton is why he probably ended up dead but you may have more questions and answers just like we do. But you know, that's how that's how research and investigations work you know, it's it takes time to get to the bottom of stuff, especially when multiple administration's are trying to keep you from finding

out about it. So again, F for people are interested in hearing updates about the book or knowing about updates about the book or following my work, you can go to unlimited hangout.com/newsletters Sign up for our newsletter, at the bottom of all our newsletters is info about how to purchase the book, either in a bundle form to get both volumes for a reduced price or where to buy one or two

separately. The best way in general, especially if you want the bundle is just to go straight to the publisher, which is trying de A T ri in e de.com. And if you go to upcoming releases, you might have to go to the second page. But you can find the the bundle there for sale as well as volumes one and two. You can also buy on Amazon or you know any other number of places, but the bundle is definitely going to be the most cost effective. And soon there's going to be an ebook and audio

book version available. So that may be most cost effective for some people, because that's both volumes together. But that will be available after the physical copies out. So if you're particularly eager to read the book, you may have to settle for the physical copy. But I personally like physical copies. It's nice to hold the book and not have to look at a screen while you're reading relatively dense text about the criminal syndicates in their history that run our world. So again, thanks

everyone for listening. And hopefully, if you're if you found this informative, since no one else is really covering work, Middleton feel free to share this widely with people you think might be interested in these kinds of topics. And yeah, so thanks everyone and catch you all next time.