Speaker 1: Welcome to Political Beatdown. I'm Ben Mycellas joined by Michael Cohen.
We've got a lot to discuss on this episode. First off,
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Honka, Happy Kwanza. It's great
to be here with you. As we approached the new year,
we were not able to do the show yesterday. Obviously
we were able to, but we wanted to give people
times off and ourselves a little bit of time off
with the family.
Speaker 2: It's disrespectful on Christmas.
Speaker 1: Well, the Brothers did a show, so it wasn't that
all right, We did a live show with the Brothers,
but we wanted to say doing doing two shows is
clearly disrespectful show. It's the right level of respect, so
we wanted it. We wanted to make sure we did
our second show this week though, just to be with
everybody here in this incredible community. So a lot to discuss.
Let's just jump into it. You've got Donald Trump moments
ago before we went live, Cohen, He's posting about issues
that really matter to the American people. Do you think,
Cohen and be down Brigadors that he's talking about what
his healthcare plan is and how he's going to now
Why would he do that? You think he's talking about
Affordable Care Act extensions?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Do you think he's talking about what his plan is
to reduce costs on day one, which were now basically
three hundred and sixty days past that promise. You think
you know what he's talking about is is.
Speaker 2: The ninety deals in ninety days.
Speaker 1: No, no, forget about that. No one who really believed
ninety deals in ninety days. Cod. No, what he's talking
about potential marble armrests for seating at the Trump Kennedy Center,
unlike anything ever done or seen.
Speaker 3: Be four.
Speaker 1: And then he posts the renovated Palm Room with marble
flooring there. I guess this is what our taxpayer dollars
are going to, and this is what he's talking about.
While so many American people are struggling to get a paycheck,
those who are getting paychecks are psychologically tortured, living paycheck
to paycheck. People can't afford their rent. Right now, people
are defaulting on their credit card, their credit cards and
picking up credit card debt. You have the Trump regime
announcing that it will begin garnishing wages of people who
are not paying their student loans, which could be millions
of people, and he's posting about marble arm Why would
you even want that's kind of uncomfortable. A marble armrest
just doesn't seem all that comes.
Speaker 2: You know, Ben, I gotta be honest with you here.
First of all, the place in those pictures looks like
a mausoleum. But there is actually a reason why Congress
and Committee are involved in whether it's a renovation of
a government building or whether it is, you know, the
renaming of a specific building. Yeah, uh, there's a reason why.
And this is exactly the reason why. Let me just say,
Trump has a very particular taste. The ballrooms all look
the same. The marble on the floor is exactly the same,
the white marble with the you know, gray veins in
them and so on. Sure there is a place for it.
Is this the right place for it? I don't know
how many how many of you that are here with
us right now have actually ever been to the Kennedy Center.
And I suspect probably not too many of you. I
was there once, you know, obviously many years ago, but
how many people have actually been there? And yeah, it's
so important that what you're now going to have marble
chairs that you can have marble armrests. I mean, you're right, Ben,
People can afford their lives right now, but at least
they know that when others who are significantly more fortunate
financially than they will have very important chairs and armrests
to relax their arms on very very important.
Speaker 1: Look, here's the thing. If people ultimately want this right,
if this is what is wanted, people elect their members
to Congress, people elect their senators, and they are the
ones who are supposed to have oversight over these things.
That's why we have no kings, why we have no dictators.
And ultimately, if this is how our representatives think that
our money should be spent, they should be held accountable
for that. And that's the way our system works. Like
if you don't like our system, there are other systems
out there. I mean you're seeing it in Russia. You
see it in North Korea, you see it in Saudi Arabia,
you see it in authoritarian regimes that there, you see
it in Iran, you see it in China. Those those
are the systems out there. Our system is democracy and
its deliberative process, and you have checks and balances, or
you were supposed to. And now we don't have that anymore,
and so the dictator, the feuror names something the Trump
Kennedy Center, the Trump Peace Center, Trump RX, the Trump
Naval vessels, the Trump this, the Trump that.
Speaker 2: The Trump vial visas, the Trump the Arctic Trump Are
the Trump, the two sided commemorative two hundred and fiftieth
coin with his image on both sides. I mean you
can go on the you know, dropping his face on
the side of the Uh what the what? What building
was that? That was the FED? The FED building. I mean,
you know, there comes.
Speaker 1: A labor department building, you know, the Kim John Umps.
Speaker 2: There comes a point in time that people have to
understand whether you love Trump or you despise him, that's
not even what this is about. What this is about
is that you don't name vessels after people who are
still alive. You don't name There's a reason why that
the Kennedy Center was named the Kennedy Center. There's a
reason why there is no American who has ever been
on whether it's a coin or a bill that is
still alive. That is something that is uh in this
sphere for monarch's dictators, rulers, kings, et cetera. And here
in America. To those of you who may not be
aware of this, I see that there's a couple of haters,
of course, always you know, trying to troll America is
a democratic republic, meaning we don't have kings. That's what
this is about. Maybe down the road, many years from now, right,
somebody will name something after him. Maybe they will, but
not while the individual is still alive. That's just the
way the rules.
Speaker 1: Work until now, and until someone doesn't follow a rules
based system. You know, someone who doesn't follow a rules
based global order, so whether it's domestic or abroad. Twenty
twenty five has been defined with the Trump regime side
of things as destroying the rules right, breaking the system,
not rebuilding with anything other than this disorganized, incompetent, fascist mess.
And Trump destroys the world order that existed for you know,
the better part of a half a century, longer, seventy years,
you know, really since World War Two. You know, Trump
shifted that dynamic, and I believe he's made America far weaker.
He's given the green light to authoritarians to conquer. Hey, look,
if Trump's saying Greenland is ours or Canada is the
fifty first state, then China's justified in its view of saying, well,
if America is doing that and there's no rules based
order and sovereignty doesn't matter anymore than China says. Okay, well,
I guess we'll be more aggressive towards Taiwan, and not
only that, we'll look at Asia in general as a
sphere of influence.
Speaker 2: Right, and we will allow Russia to turn around Europe
tried to conquer again Europe. They're going to course trot
and they're not doing a good job with it, but
try to take Ukraine. And after Ukraine, of course we
all know what's next. I mean, this is not rocket
science here. They're going to look to Poland, and then
after Poland the Baltics and to take over all of Europe. Well,
this is a big problem. In fact, Ben, just to
prove your point, Europe and our allies, especially the NATO allies,
are so in tune with what Putin is looking to
do here that they have actually all gotten together outside
of the sphere of the United States in order to
engage in conversation how to protect one another. Ultimately, when
the United States, when this administration found out that it
was taking place without them, what did he do, he
immediately summons Marco Rubio and somebody else to go running
there in order to right at least be there to
demonstrate their presence so that you know, the world doesn't
move on without us. But that's the status part, because
that's what's happening. The world is going to move on
without us, and it opens up a massive slot for
like China or others to step in and to fill it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, look, just in the past week, you
have Trump sanctioning Europe, saying that Europe runs a free
speech censorship regime and not allowing key European officials to
travel to the United States. I mean, think about it.
Our State Department issued sanctions against European officials, and Donald
Trump's posting and bragging about it. Rubio imposes these are
restrictions on European officials. This is how Trump phrases it,
who attempted to censor American free speech? And an attempt
to censor American free speech. Europe has its own laws,
and to protect their own democracy and to protect their
freedom of speech, they've enacted consumer protection laws that says,
if your a social media platform of forty five million
subscribers are more. You can't be allowing these bots to proliferate.
You can't be allowing these deceptive ads to reach consumers.
You can't be allowing foreign interference in elections using your platforms.
And if you do that, there will be fines to pay.
So it's common sense regulations, the type of regulations that frankly,
we should have here in the US. MAGA absolutely hates
it because MAGA has aligned with a fascist, authoritarian movement
internationally that wants to spread the disinformation and erode good
data and information using social media platforms. And Elon Musk
was pissed and, oh, now you're sanctioning me. I'm trying
to use x and Twitter to do all of these things,
and now I have to be fine, that's sanctioned. I
have to pay a fine because of all of these things,
because of your European laws. In Europe, it's like, yeah,
we're sovereign. This is called the European Union. Then there
are countries within the European Union. This is how we
this is how we are handling our own affairs. Just
think about it like this. Though Cohen has the Trump
regime imposed sanctions on Saudi Arabia for free speech censorship
where the platform is literally not even allowed. Are they
doing sanctions against Hungary? Are they doing sanctions against China
for the result of censorship. You're censoring Europe for free speech,
and so Europe pass to now think about how it responds.
Wait a minute, we're getting State Department sanctions against Europe
at the same time trum is rolling back at sanctions
against Russia. You remember when we were covering what was
it three months ago, when Donald Trump and everybody in
the regime was like, yep, we're gonna do secondary sanctions
against Russia if they don't agree to a piece deal.
Do you remember that secondary which would mean that there
are sanctions to begin with. So here we are right
before New Year's Not only is there no secondary sanctions,
they've removed the underlying sanctions and now they're sanctioning Europe.
Speaker 2: And what's happened to the primary sanctions against Russia for
I don't know. So I need to bring up Navali
just as the latest in terms of censorship on any
media or any statements which are made that is not
beneficial to the Kremlin, beneficial to putin himself. I mean,
at some point in time, you know this is the problem.
Right Again, what you're doing is you're cozying up to
our adversaries at the expense of our allies, and that's
never going to work out well for us. You know.
Speaker 1: Just think about the news like as Trump's trying to
cover up the Epstein files and we'll talk about that
in a bit. You know, one of the things that
he does is he strikes inside of Nigeria, Northwest Nigeria.
He says he's going after ISIS targets there. He says
that you know, ISIS is out there targeting the Christians,
that they're focused on the Christians in Nigeria, and he
said I gave him a warning and I had to
do it because they keep attacking Christians. So let's be clear, right, Cohen.
I mean, just think about how this is reported. It's
reported as Donald Trump engages and strike against ISIS for
attacking Christians. Why because that's what Donald Trump said, right.
I did a substack post on this earlier this morning
at midas plus dot com. By the way, subscribe to
Coen substack as well. But on midas plus dot com,
I said, can we just address this critically if we're
talking about ISIS attacks in Nigeria. It's not uniquely going
after Christians. Right, you have certain groups like Boca Haram,
Isle of the West and these groups. First off, didn't
Donald Trump say that he destroyed ISIS and it doesn't
exist anymore?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: Right, that's what he said, that he destroyed it. It
no longer exists. Okay, So or they're so afraid of
him that they're not doing anything right now, Well, obviously
that's false. Don't you think that should be pointed out?
They're not going after specifically Christians. I think if you
look at the data, it's Christians and Muslims alike. Don't
you think that should be pointed out? You don't think
it's suspicious either that he's doing this on Christmas to
protect the Christians on Christmas. Then that's what he's actually
said to Politico. I wanted to save it for Christmas.
So what was this? It was like a pr military
strike on Christmas to protect the Christians and to say
that's what's happening. And then it's just it gets digested
by our media or propagandized as though this is as
though this is what it is, and it actually creates
it creates more issues than it actually solves because now
Nigeria has to save face. So they put out a statement, Oh,
we knew about this, No, they didn't.
Speaker 2: Know it, right, That's what I wanted to bring up
that what happens is post fact they're concerned because you
have a president who is willing to in an unhinged manner,
to go ahead and to I don't know, interfear right
with with Nigeria's I don't know whether it be armaments
or has oil and lithium, right, and you know they
don't want to end up being on his shit list
right now, So let me be very clear. They come
up with a statement that says, yes, we knew about it.
Not only did we know about it, we were involved
how how because my understanding is that this was a
US This was a US completely sanctioned operation that has
been pointed out accurately shouldn't even have happened because the
previous and the current Trump administration has already gotten rid
of ices all together. They don't exist. They ran for
the hills.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it requires congressional authorization, so it's unlawful to
begin with without congressional authorization and for all of those reasons.
And then Nigeria has to put out a statement and says, well,
we're here to protect all people in Nigeria, whether they're Muslim, Christian, etc.
So then though, other African nations have to look at
this and they have to say, you know, do we
need to more firmly align with China? Do we need
to more firmly align with others to protect ourselves? Do
we need to try to access nuclear weapons because we
need some deterrent against this. So obviously Trump's looking at
countries that have lithium and oil that he could pick on,
whether it's Venezuela or whether it's Nigeria or wherever, and
he's creating pretexts in order to do many invasions or
invasions there and to attack both for the benefit of
his bloodlust, for his desire to put his right wing
oligar billionaires in there to suck up the oil and
the lithium and all of that, which is what he
says he's doing also in Venezuela. But we need to
report on these things the way we just did. Hear
and ultimately, here's the thing, Cohen, if armed with those
facts that I just gave Congress, says Okay, we still
think you should do this or the people watching this go, Ben,
we appreciate it, but we now understand that there is,
indeed isis in Nigeria. That's that is true, Yeah, and
that they have done attacks on Muslims and Christians about
an equal level. That a lot of this is about, uh,
you know, should should we try to lower our oil
prices here by taking Nigeria's oil? And we need rare
earth elements and we see China cutting us off from
rare earth elements even though Trump claims they're not, but
they are. Nigeria has you know, some of the stuff.
They have, lithium, they have other stuff, you know. Armed
with those facts, the American people go, you know what, Ben,
we want war. We're a conquering nation manifest destiny. This
is what I don't want that. Let me be very clear.
I don't want that one bit. But shouldn't we have
the information and isn't that what our checks and balances
and our system was created for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a reason why you need Congress
to be involved. That you can't have the decision to
engage in war in the hands of only one person.
You know, understand that it's been a very long time
since the United States had a war on its soil
up until again until nine to eleven, right when they
attacked America. So yeah, you know they went, they attacked
you know isis in this western area of Nigeria. But
the reason that you have Congress and others getting involved
is because the last thing we want is for violence
to take place, for a war to take place here
on American soil. You know, when you start doing things
like this, you open up the world, right, you know,
you open up the attacks in America, uh and against Americans,
and you know what, it's stupid, especially when it's not
even necessary.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you gave this example or if
I heard it somewhere else, but you know John McCain,
late great senator, courageous, you know when he was when
he was captured in the Vietnam War and he became
a prisoner of war. What it yeah? You know, yeah,
I think, yeah, imagine if they said, hey, look guess
what the US they're out there killing you know, people
on fishing boats. They're not taking prisoners of war. They
don't follow rules of war, rules of surrender, so we're
just gonna kill him and won't kill any of U.
And then we go whoa, wha, whoa, whoa, you did it.
Speaker 2: You did it.
Speaker 1: You're the US. So a rules based order is important,
and eroding the rules based order brings us to a
position that we're in right now. And the position that
we're in, frankly, is the position where the world was
kind of right before. Go back and read books on
World War One to a lesser extent, but saying World
War two, because the issues of World War One were
not really fully resolved, leading to kind of World War
two thereafter. But there's a whole thing there. But like
you can see what the failure of a rules based
world order led to world wars. Sure, and so we
had built these systems, and the United States was at
the forefront to avoid the exact situations so that history
wouldn't repeat itself. It's the old adage, right, history repeats itself,
and you got to be able to see history and
try to make moves to block it.
Speaker 2: War is so it's so there's such a finality to war.
It's what I had said to you in the past
that at least there is some semblance of honor during war, right, rape, pillage, murder,
not acceptable right to civilians and so on. That's all
being thrown out. It's exactly the point that Ben is
trying to make here, So you know, so Astutelee by
the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so look, here's what I want to talk about
also though too, like there's two things I want to
talk about Trump's Epstein cover up, because we've got more
data right now. Midas Touch was the first to report
about one point two million missing records in the Southern
District of New York, and then within twelve hours the
DOJ posted, oh, we found one point two million records
in the Southern District. No, they knew about that since
twenty twenty. That was in the existing files. The first
thing you would do if you were gathering documents for
a production, as you'd reach out, you'd say, who are
your custodians? That's the that's the term that's used in
electronic discovery. Who are my custodians? Southern District of New York.
Check Southern District of Florida. Check maybe the Treasury Department
because banking records and suspicious activity reports. Check who else?
Main Justice? Check all of the civil cases we have.
All of that, you make you make your production forthwith
and you go through it takes about ninety days. I
think to go through all of this if you started
in February, if you were dealing, if you had five
people reviewing it probably take ninety days. If you had
ten people reviewing it, I think it would take sixty days.
If you had one hundred people or one thousand people,
it should take you weeks. But I'll give you the
benefit of the doubt and say forty five days. But
right now, the way they've handled this couldn't be worse,
couldn't be worse. So I want to talk about that.
And then one of the other stories that the Minas
touched broke, which I don't think it's enough attention, are
these scammy trump emails that he sends on Christmas and
in general. And if you look at these emails, the
scam is so flagrant and it's so abusive, and it's
so heinous. And just to tease a little bit of
what we'll talk about, go to that last thing where
it has you click where you think you're basically clicking,
like you know the normal box, Like I've read a
disclaimer right, and it says like alert democrats are gaining momentum,
keep this box check to support MAGA in this do
or die battle. You see how that's in red, then
another color underneath it says donate an additional twenty five
hundred dollars automatically on December thirty first. So you may
think you're clicking this box, like let's say you've donated
X dollars. You think you're clicking a box to say
I support Trump by clicking this box, then if you
didn't read it under you just gave the guy twenty
five hundred more dollars by December thirty first. I mean,
it's some heinous stuff. Let's talk about that.
Speaker 2: We go back. Can we just go back to that
for one quick second. I want you to turn around
to see you got what forty seven dollars, which of
course is to represent him as the forty seven president.
But then it goes to one hundred. Jeremy, can you
post that for one second? After one hundred, I think
it goes to two point fifty, right, forty seven one hundred,
two fifty five hundred, one thousand, twenty five hundred. On
Christmas when he's telling people your kid doesn't need a
dozen dollars two is more than enough, or people complaining.
You could try, you could take that down to people
complaining that they don't have money for medication, for fuel,
for insurance. Right, but that's okay, twenty five hundred dollars.
Look at the numbers that you're talking about. This isn't
like a five dollars or a one dollar. I mean
you're talking about. This is real dollars that people don't have.
Speaker 1: Let's go through this email together, and I'm told we
actually don't have an ad break today, so we can
we could. That's good. So let's just take a look
it right here. So here's the email that you get
on Christmas from Trump. Let's say you're a Trump supporter.
You get this right from Trump. I'm in your chimney,
Merry Christmas, I spent. I sent you a special Christmas letter.
So you open it up and it says I sent
you a special Christmas letter from Trump to a very
loyal MAGA patriot. It says I sent you a special
Christmas letter. But my team says that it went to
the wrong address. So I guess I'll stick to emails
from here on out. So pause right there. It already
starts with a deception that he sent you a letter
in the mail, and the reason that you, as a
Trump supporter, did not get it is because it must
have been the wrong address. So he's already lying about
sending you a letter. So then it goes on to say,
so please consider this my way of saying thank you,
Merry Christmas, and God bless you for standing with me
when our country needs it the most. Then it says
confirm address because he's already lied and says that he
sent you a letter to the wrong address. So now
you're like, oh my god, I could have got a
letter from this guy is in his own handwriting. I
have to confirm my address. So then you click confirm address, click,
and then it brings you to this claim a Gift
from Trump. Then it says claim a gift from Trump.
So now you click it and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Doesn't even ask you to confirm the address. Now I'm
gonna get a gift now, Cohen, if you're looking at this,
and it says claim gift from Trump and then below
it our dollar amounts, and then it says claim gift
from Trump. Doesn't that look like to you that he's
giving you that gift.
Speaker 2: For Christmas, He's giving you some gift. But what I
think is the funniest part about that, let's just put
it up for one second again. What I find to
be the funniest is if you donate fifty cents, you
get nothing. If you donate a dollar one you get nothing.
It starts out, you only get the gift starting at
forty seven dollars up to the twenty five hundred dollars mark.
But you want if you want that gift, not sure
what it is, right if you if you have no
idea what that gift could possibly be. But in order
to even find out, you gotta invest forty seven bucks.
Speaker 1: That's yes, or you yeah, Or you think that you're
getting a gift in the amount of twenty five hundred
dollars or one thousand, and you may go, well, h
I'd want the I'd want a gift for twenty five
hundred dollars, not that I'm giving Trump twenty five hundred dollars.
What kind of gift do you give the guy? That's
not a gift? So so you click twenty five hundred
and then as you're looking at it, you know how
all of these emails have like an disclaimer thing that
you click. So the disclaimer is is this, but it's
not a disclaimer. It says alert Democrats are gaining serious momentum.
They're relentless attacks fueled by millions of dollars in dark
money are paying off. MAGA is on the brink of disaster,
and it's time to sound the alarm. Trump can't hold
back the woke mob alone. Keep this box checked to
support MAGA in this do or die battle. So some
people may read only that because below it in spacing,
it's kind of this gray font. But if let's just
say you check it, what you've just checked is that
now you're donating an additional twenty five hundred dollars automatically
on December thirty first. So you may have thought you
were getting a gift, and now you've just given Trump
five thousand dollars right now when the economy is And
then he sends these though Cohen five six, seven times
a day. I subscribe to the list Serve so people
don't have to. He sends a barrage of these, and
they're deceptive. Sometimes you're getting a VIP club. Sometimes you're
getting invited to Marrow Lago sometimes you're getting gold status,
sometimes you're joining his super secret cabinet, and it's all
throughout the day. And then if you look in the
very fine print too, it says this and it's green
and heart all the stuff they study over there too
to find out what font is less likely to be
rant like, there's a whole method to this scam. And
then it goes this donation qualifies for the gift offer,
So you qualify for a potential gift offer. And that's
how they try to get away with it.
Speaker 3: I don't get if someone does this to you, and
I bet you he does this to the I bet
you some of the same people are clicking that multiple
times a day, giving them giving him his life savings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's what's crazy. Going back for a quick second
to the Epstein files.
Speaker 1: No want to talk about the email list anymore.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, Well listen, it's another scam, you know. Listen,
He's got guys who are making a fortune. I'll never forget.
I saw Trump explode, And when I mean explode, I
mean explode. What was say Brad Parscal used to run
under the first administration he ran in twenty seventeen, when
Trump had taken It was some event that took place.
It was during the year of twenty seventeen, and Brad Parscal,
who basically never in his entire life had made probably
more than three four hundred thousand dollars a year. He
had a his Ferrari, which was a brand new red Ferrari,
parked right in front and Trump was like, oh, who's
ferrari is that? So he goes it's mine. He then
found out, I think press Brad Parscal made something like
seventeen million dollars off of the funds that came in.
He took a percentage of it, and he was like,
you know, it wouldn't make a difference. People did it
for me. He exploded on him. In fact, they were
getting rid of him. I don't even know if Brad
Parscal is even there anymore. But you know, this, this grift,
this is all part of the shtick, from the hats,
to the you know, to the gold cards. Listening for example,
to Howard Lutnik turned around and saying that they took
in what over one and a half billion dollars already
in the Trump visa gold card at a million dollars,
What is that that's like fifteen hundred people already bought
the gold card, you know, something like that. Fifteen hundred. Really,
who are these fifteen hundred? What is it? You know,
Russian oligarchs, Chinese dissidents and so on, and people on
fifteen hundred. I'd like to know where that money is.
I would like to be able to confirm that that
money actually came in and it's not in their pocket,
but it belongs in the coffers of America. That's that's
my spiel on that. But I want to talk for
two seconds Ben about like, and you guys were so
great on the Midas Touch Networks platform. Yeah, they recently
a couple out of forty minutes ago posted my substack
of today which I called Trump's million document Migraine, because yeah,
it was Midas Touched network that actually was the first
to report it. But think about this for a quick second.
As I wrote, I didn't just work for I watched
him in moments when the cameras were off, the bravado
was gone, and the panic set in. And if you
want to understand what's happening right now with the Epstein files,
you don't need actually you do need to understand this
one immutable truth, this immutable truth about Trump, that he
believes that silence is survival. Accountability is something that happens
to other people. And that's why this sudden appearance of
these one point something million additional DOJ documents obviously tied
to Epstein. It's not just bureaucratic incompetence, because that's what
they're trying to say. It's not. It's psychological exposure.
Speaker 1: Two things. One, I'm reading this Business Insider article that
talks about FEC filings from twenty twenty companies owned by
Donald Trump's campaign manager I have received nearly forty million
dollars from Trump's reelection committee. According to a new report,
companies owned by Brad Parskell, the president's confident and combative
campaign manager, I, have already collected nearly forty million dollars
this cycle. Pars SkELL was doing coding and website designed
for Trump pre twenty sixteen, but from January twenty seven
to the end of March, he got thirty eight point
nine million through those companies. According to FEC filings reviewed
for a new huff Post report, most presidential campaign managers
make low six figures Parskell has made some notable purchases,
including a Ferrari range rover, a four hundred thousand dollars
vote two million dollar condos, and a two point four
million dollar waterfront house in Fort Lauder's business insiders reporting there.
Moving over to talk about, you know, the Epstein files.
You know, it never made sense to me when people
were reporting like hundreds of thousands of documents like that
just never made sense. You and I have talked about
this before, but I've been involved in cases with very
big document productions, and when I just my understanding of
the Epstein case, if you just from all of the evidence,
there's what about a billion dollars in potential money laundering
that was being investigated, and they were all of these
suspicious activity reports that were being flagged by JP Morgan,
Deutsche Bank and others. And so the bank records alone,
if we're talking about billions of dollars of transactions taking place,
the bank records could be millions of pages just the
bank records, because just think about it, these bank records
are generated monthly, sometimes even daily or weekly. Just think
about what those records would look like. And then Epstein
had all these other LLCs that we know about from
the various civil cases, and some that we probably don't
know about. There's at least ten other co conspirators that
we know about who are being investigated by the DOJ,
despite cash pattel line during his congressional testimony and saying
there are so there's likely a whole host of documents,
bank records, emails that they were required to produce those
those ten unindicted co conspirators or co conspirators who never
so to me, I always just intuitively thought, based on
my experience, that we're talking about millions and millions of records,
hundreds of thousands make no sense at all. And so
when I was reviewing the documents, I saw that one
that said one point two million records that were being
imaged by SD and Y with the Bates numbers or
the document numbers SD and Y production zero zero eight
to zero zero fourteen. So naturally I also asked, okay, well,
where's zero zero one to zero zero seven, because that's
probably additional, And is there SD and Y production zero
zero fifteen to say zero zero fifty? We don't know.
And that was just the Epstein case in SD and
why not the Glaye case. So there's another workspace for
Gilane right. Then there'll be more workspaces for the Florida documents,
the Southern District of Florida documents, the state case documents
in Florida as well, and then all of the civil cases,
the international cases, the Virgin Island cases.
Speaker 2: All of the ben don't forget all of the depositions
and all of the testimony from all of the witnesses.
I mean, think about what. There were hundreds and hundreds
of people who were questioned by the FBI. Each one
becomes a report. Each one of those reports, especially in
a case like this, could be several hundred pages long.
I mean, that's hundreds of thousands of pages in and
of itself.
Speaker 1: At least at least and so you know, so I
guess how would you go about? People would ask, how
would you go about? Even knowing the universe of documents,
Let me tell you how I would do it. As
a litigator, when I used to do cases like this,
you would do your document production requests to the other side,
and you would also do what are called special interrogatories
or requests for information and then requests for admissions. So
in my production of documents, and in my request for
admissions specific and my special interrogatories. Rather, I would ask
for questions. I would say, tell me all of the
sources where documents are held, like where are name me
all of the individuals who have emailed in connection with
this with the file, send me you know, where are
the hard drives? Which phones were used? And then you go, well, Ben,
you ask them what if they lie? Well, oftentimes they do,
So what do you do Thereafter? You notice the deposition
of somebody in the law we called a PMK or
a PMQ, a person most knowledgeable or a person who's
got the most access, a person most qualified to testify
on a specific subject. So you would often take a deposition.
My first depot would sometimes be of the IT guy,
of the individuals who were involved in this search, and
I would go and I would ask them under oath,
tell me all the categories. Boom boom, boom, And you
would create a list of all of the categories and
you would figure it out that way. You would also
issue third party subpoenas, So in this case you would
do what the Democrats in the House Oversight Committee did, right,
get that subpoena of the Epstein estate, because we know
the DOJ has records from the Epstein estate. Then you
would go say to yourself, Wow, the estate produced all
of these records. They turned over those same records to
the d The DOJ didn't turn those over to me.
There must be something being hidden. And then what you
would do, Cohen, when all else would fail and you
would show the judge look at all of their conduct,
you would then request that what's called a special master
or a discovery referee be appointed, and the judge would
appoint a neutral third party who would literally go into
the documents, and if one side was obstructing, usually that
side would have to pay for the special master or
the referee, and they would be reporting to the court
and almost take it over like a receiver. And by
the way, that's happened in a lot of Trump cases
if you go back where special masters had to be
appointed because they were not providing the information that was requested.
So that's the process that would take place. How do
you apply that here? Well, I think that what's needed
is with some of these federal courts that have jurisdiction,
a discovery referee or a special master somewhat independent needs
to be appointed forthwith that needs to be requested and
that person needs to get in there and make these
documents available to the public. And you know, unfortunately the
taxpayers are going to have to pay for it. Going
what were the taxpayers paying for? As Jason Leopold from
Bloomberg exposed, when there were one thousand FBI and nine
thirty seven is the exact number, it's round up two
one thousand. I always want to be specific, though, when
a thousand DOJFBI officials starting from March, we're looking at this,
what were they doing? What were they what could they
possibly have been doing? A thousand of them that now
it's not ready in now it's not ready in I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, because all I know is when the FBI
came raided my home, hotel, my law office, there were
more than ten million documents that were seized that we
had to go through. It took, believe or not, it
took about five days just to beta stamp each and
every document and to have it put up into a file.
We finished that myself with eight different people. We've finished
going through all the documents, all the all the pictures,
all the audios, everything. We went through everything in under
just under thirty days, right under thirty one days and
thirty days we had we had it finished because we
worked round the clock. Let me be very clear about something.
Could they have done it? Absolutely were they obviously not
providing the documents, absolutely, one hundred percent. But more importantly,
this is where, this is where we're at. And you
know what, there's one additional thing, Ben that you could
have thrown in in your incredible analysis here. When you
depose somebody, the very first thing that every lawyer says
to the person being deposed is that understand that you
are being deposed, that you are, that your words are
being taken down by a by a stenographer. You know,
you're required to tell the truth. If in fact that
you're not, you can be held, you know, under the
penalty of perjury, which carries you know, not just fines
but also potential incarceration. You know, you can. This is
how you sort of started off. Let me be really clear.
So those people who turn around and that they lie
and they you know, it's one thing. If you don't
know the answer, just say I don't know. You know,
it's okay. I know a lot of people here, you know,
they're like, oh, you know, ask Cohen, he knows, he
knows how many times? How many times? When I tell you,
I truly don't know the answer. If I knew the answer,
I would have told everybody. I would have told the courts.
I would have told Congress during the multitude of time,
seven congressional hearings, two grand juries, two trials, other depositions
as well. Right, I would have said it. If you
don't know, you don't know, that's okay. But it's the
lying which ultimately said, if you do know where the
files are being held, if the it guy turns around
and says that this is it, and that's not only it.
We saw what happened in the documents case when they
filed what was that an affidavit that there were no
more documents that were there, and they had this one
young female attorney you know, sign that document. She was
up for perjury. And that's what ultimately happens. You can
go to jail.
Speaker 1: Let me, you know, to tie this all together. Also,
let's talk about something that's really getting under reported today.
But hat tip to Josh Gerstein does a really good
job at flagging these things as well. Justin this is
from today the Department of just tells the Federal court
that it can't delete the classified info from James Comy's
friend Daniel Richmond by Monday, as required by the last
court order. They ask for another week. Doj can't carry
out deletion by Monday. It's a it's a good tweet,
but I think most people who read that passed by it,
like why does this matter? Like what does that even mean?
And it ties actually into the Epstein files issue, and
it ties into Lindsay hall again, And this is why
we need to make these connections and tie everything, you know,
all together. So just just to remind everybody, Daniel Richmond
was James Comy's lawyer and an FBI agent who testified
at the grand jury against Komy was utilizing attorney client
communications between Daniel Richmond and Komy, which is a big
no no. And that's the sole evidence that was being
used against Komy from Komy's own lawyer, not by actually
bringing in Comy's lawyer Richmond, by bringing in an FBI
agent who was not supposed to see the communications. So
if Lindsay Halligan was not disqualified, I think there were
a lot of other grounds that that case would have
been thrown out on so Daniel Richmond, after the Kobe
case gets dismissed, he files a lawsuit against the DOJ saying,
you've engaged in an unlawful search and seizure of our
attorney client information. Delete it, you're not allowed to see it,
and return it. And a federal judge said, correct, that
was stolen, that Trump's government stole your attorney client communications
and didn't have a warrant for it. So if they
want to go and try to get a warrant for it,
do that. Make that case to the judges at the
Eastern District of Virginia. But delete it by Monday, December
twenty ninth, or whatever the day is. Delete it by then, Cohen,
How hard would it be to just lead it?
Speaker 2: Just delete it, return I don't know, depending upon how
many documents. I know, there's somewhere between thirty seconds and
five minutes.
Speaker 1: Delete it right, return it and delete it. Not a
difficult task. But today the lawyers at the DOJ, Lindsey Halligan,
who signed this, saying that she's still the US attorney
from the Eastern District of Virginia. She's still claiming she
has the role after she was disqualified the audacity, right,
How crazy is that she goes? She goes emergency motion, emergency,
she says, memorandum regarding emergency for extension of time to
certify compliance emergence.
Speaker 2: Let's read it.
Speaker 1: The court on this. This is what it says. The
Court on December twelfth. Cohen, this was weeks ago. Made
this order. The Court on December twelfth order that petitioner's
return property was granted and that the images of Richmond's
person computer that the United States made in twenty seventeen
be deleted and it be returned.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Then you go to paragraph seven and it says, However,
because of significant operational constraints by the imminent Christmas and
New Year's holidays i e. Lack of sufficient technically qualified
government personnel in the Washington DC area for the remainder
of this week and the next, which make the current
compliance deadline fall a mere one business day after the
Court's revised clarifying order, the government anticipates that it will
not be able to review all electronic storage devices containing
classified information, delete that information, and return those devices to
Richmond's council by December twenty ninth, twenty twenty five, and
then I'll go try to find the document. But this
is signed by Lindsay Halligan. I'll just I'll make the
representation that she signs it along with hod Blanche so Cohen.
They're saying they do not have the technical personnel in Washington,
DC to meet a very basic deadline.
Speaker 2: Well that is because they took everybody off of that
in order to review the documents on this one point
two million dollars one point two million documents fined by
the Southern District and elsewhere. That's what I mean, that's
what they told about. At one point in time, they
claimed that there was almost a thousand prosecutors and qualified
individuals to go through the documents for the redaction, despite
not ever making what's called the redaction report. They just
redacted it based upon a four page instruction sheet on
what they wanted redacted from these files. This whole entire
process has been nothing shy of a clusterfuck of incompetence.
Speaker 1: It is the worst way to handle this and to
hear from the victims and survivors about how traumatized this
process has made them. And I think about in my
past practice having represented victims and survivors in both criminal cases,
working with victims, advocates that the courts appoint to victims
and survivors. You know, there was a whole division in
the DOJ and go and look it up that the
Trump regime has gutted that deals with helping victims and
providing resources to victims with everything from mental health services
to having dedicated people work with them, like spend time
with them, because the people have recognized how difficult the
process for people who suffer PTSD is, retraumatizing if it's
not handled the right way. And with Trump saying it's
a hoax and saying, oh, well, these documents are fabricated,
and we produce fabricated documents.
Speaker 2: Haha, Well, why just.
Speaker 1: Assume for the sake of argument that there are that
for example, and then when you'll give the two fingers Saluto,
just assume our guendo for the sake of argument, that
the Epstein Nasser letter is not real despite having lots
of innditia that the FBI in twenty twenty took it credibly.
Why would you prioritize the production then, unless you're trying
to hurt the victim's psyche, why would you prioritize the
bad documents instead of the victim interviews, survivor interviews, FBI
witness statements, depositions, and the stuff that would be elucidating
and illuminating. You intentionally picked fabricaded evidence without context and
threw it out there when you said you were prioritizing
credible information to then say, gotcha, psych it's actually fabricated
to begin with, unless your goal is to basically make
it so that the entire production is like you can't
trust anything up is down, left is right. War's piece,
you know, but that's the regimes view on everything. Cohen,
two finger salute before we go. We've got a big
audience today. Who are you gonna give the two fingers salute?
Speaker 2: You know, it's a tough one because so many people
actually deserve it. The ongoing continuous lies in regard to
the Epstein files, including from the Michael haters that are
out there that want to affiliate me with the Katie
Johnson case. Let me be crystal clear once again, since
there is a large audience, I had nothing to do
with the Katie Johnson case. In fact, all you need
to do is to look it up yourself. That file
is being handled by Alan Garton, whose general counsel to
the Trump organization on behalf of Katie Johnson, it's Lisa Bloom,
who happens to be the daughter of Gloria Already. What
I know, I know, and most of you who are
following us and have been following this program, Political Beatdown,
my Just Touched Network. My appearance is you know, on
television or my Maya Kulpa podcasts, which this right now
happens to be with Aaron Parness. So to those of
you that are like, oh my god, what happened with
you on lev all you need to do is listen
to that podcast it's the one with the blue background icon,
or my YouTube wherever I show up. You know, you
all who know me know that if I know the
answer to something, I actually put it out there again.
Seven congressional committees, sixty three hours of testimony, maybe the
most in history, two grand juries, two trials, one civil,
one criminal, and they keep asking me. Don't ask me
if you don't believe it. If you don't believe it,
call up Lisa Bloom. She'll tell you that Katie Johnson
and the case that I dealt with, which was a
Jane Doe, are not the same people. So I don't
know why people want to refuse to understand that at
this point in time. To those of you who continue
to push this Katie Johnson narrative on me, I want
to see Katie Johnson's case actually resolve, and I want
to know who was involved, and I want that individual
or individuals to be held accountable to the fullest extent
of the law. So to those that just want to
keep fighting us, hit this finger, all right, the big
fuck you to you, all all right, because I can't
say it anymore and I refuse to now the other finger.
The other finger gets left to the cash Ptels and
the Pam Bondi's why, because they know exactly what they're doing,
all right. What they're doing is they are drip drip drippingess.
Whereby again, there the amount of documents that are being
duplicative or triplicate or quadruplicate, and so it makes having
the ability to review these documents, It makes having the
ability to review these not by people like Ben or
myself or the entire staff that Minus Touched network, which
is the only place to get truth anymore, all right,
it makes it impossible because you are going through so
many documents. Then you're like, hold, I saw that document before,
not once, not twice. Oh my god, this is now
the fourth time I've seen it. Three freaking times. It
is impossible to keep your head straight because the way
that they're dropping it out it is designed to frustrate up.
We're not gonna let it happen. But let me be
very very clear to each and every one of you,
it is a ton of work, more than what it
already would be if in fact that they released the
entire file as requested, as required by law. So to
PAM Bonding and cash Ptel and all of those that
are involved in this drip drip drip, fuck you on
that one.
Speaker 1: Then I'll leave everybody with this. Let me just take
a look at the at the calendar here Cohen, December
twenty sixth, we come back and have another beatdown right
before before New Years. There's one more, so I'll give
a broader reflection on New Year. So I'll give a
shorter reflection right now. Which is one of the things
that I've been most proud of at the Mitas Touch Network.
It's doing my best to support independent me generally and
inspiring others to build independent media platforms. I don't view
the ones that we've inspired out there as competition. I
don't view things that way, And in fact, I love
to see a younger generation out there of great hosts
who are out there getting truthful information out right. I mean,
corporate news has all this right wing oligark money, limitless resources.
But the way independent media is going to thrive is
to have a lot of voices out there. Now. The
Minus Touched network is the biggest in the space. We
don't just lead independent news, we lead corporate news. More
people watch this than watch Fox or CNN, and so
I've always viewed it as a personal responsibility to do
my best to promote as best as I can other
independent media platforms, and to also use my platform and
my voice here as best as I can to be
a unifying force, because right now we need unity and
we need unifying forces because what we're taking on, what
the challenges are, it's really a life or death, do
or die situation in our country, and so I just
think that it bears emphasizing that. What's been an incredible
experience for me is if I've been able to uplift
whether someone's on the Midas Touch network or not trying
to trying, you know, and look, it's a big network
right now, with a huge staff at this point and
lots of writers and lots of editors, and it's it's
sprawling in scope. But to do the best to unify
a unity, I think is one of the most is
one of the most important things that I emphasize, you know,
over and over and over again here forever, for everybody,
and I think it's what this community deserves, it's what
this community wants, and to see others thrive in this
space is great. That's kind of If you ask me
what one of the things I want the legacy of
Midas to be, it's really about the movement of independent
media generally during a time when corporate news bent the knee.
That's what I feel strongly about. So from the bottom
of my heart, Merry Christmas to everybody, Happy Holidays, Happy Honka,
Thank you all so much. We're grateful for you, we
appreciate you, and we'll see you next time on Political Beatdown.
Shout out beat Down Brigaders, and shout out Midas Mighty.
We appreciate you all so much that we do