Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - Episode 25: Raided (feat. James O’Keefe) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

00:00:01.000 The embattled Congressman Matt Gaetz.

00:00:03.000 Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.

00:00:10.000 Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem in the Democratic Party.

00:00:13.000 He could cause a lot of hiccups in passing applause.

00:00:16.000 So we're going to keep running those stories to keep hurting him.

00:00:20.000 If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!

00:00:29.000 You are in the right place!

00:00:30.000 This is the movement for you!

00:00:32.000 You ever watch this guy on television?

00:00:35.000 It's like a machine.

00:00:36.000 Matt Gaetz.

00:00:37.000 I'm a canceled man in some corners of the internet.

00:00:41.000 Many days I'm a marked man in Congress, a wanted man by the deep state.

00:00:45.000 They aren't really coming for me.

00:00:47.000 They're coming for you.

00:00:49.000 I'm just in the way.

00:00:53.000 We begin with our brand new poll with Ipsos.

00:00:56.000 It shows big challenges for President Biden heading into this year's midterm elections.

00:01:01.000 Three out of four Americans are pessimistic about the state of the economy.

00:01:06.000 Only 29% support deploying troops to counter the Russian threat to Ukraine.

00:01:11.000 And more than three-quarters of all Americans questioned the president's pledge to consider only black women to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, saying he should consider all possible nominees.

00:01:25.000 Well, there you have it.

00:01:26.000 Right from the Mount Rushmore of the mainstream media.

00:01:30.000 Joe Biden's paradigm to only consider black women for the Supreme Court is deeply unpopular with more than three-fourths of Americans.

00:01:39.000 But Republicans aren't standing up against it.

00:01:41.000 Frankly, too many are tacitly embracing it.

00:01:44.000 This is racist.

00:01:46.000 Can you just imagine telling a woman of Hispanic descent, maybe a Native American male, that they just haven't experienced enough oppression, they just don't have the right identity even to be considered to serve in the highest court on the land? 1.00

00:02:02.000 What's happening to us as a country where people's identity is just conflated inexplicably with their experience?

00:02:11.000 See, I think people have diverse ideologies and experiences and viewpoints of all races, of both genders.

00:02:20.000 And so I think that we ought to take a tougher stand.

00:02:23.000 Republicans in the United States Senate should vote no against a nominee who is only selected through a corrupt, racist, and un-American process.

00:02:33.000 We talk a lot about how critical race theory is now affecting decisions all throughout government.

00:02:38.000 Make sure to check that out in our prior episode.

00:02:42.000 This week, we have an exclusive interview with James O'Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, and it'll help you connect a lot of dots.

00:02:52.000 When the Department of Justice wanted to smear me, predictably, they went to the New York Times.

00:02:59.000 But there's another part of that loop.

00:03:01.000 When the New York Times fears losses in court, when they couldn't get their motion to dismiss Project Veritas' litigation granted, who did the New York Times turn to to stick it to James O'Keefe?

00:03:15.000 That's right, the DOJ. And it's increasingly concerning that corporate media like the New York Times have become incapable of honest reporting.

00:03:27.000 Yet highly capable to influence the next location of an FBI raid.

00:03:32.000 In my interview with James O'Keefe, in just moments, he discusses being targeted, being raided, handcuffed, all while remaining determined and optimistic as an American journalist.

00:03:44.000 He lets you know who might be deposed or exposed next.

00:03:51.000 Is it the DOD or the DOJ that have their own insiders and whistleblowers working with Project Veritas?

00:03:58.000 See if you can catch the hint that James O'Keefe drops on that.

00:04:02.000 I caught up with James at the iconic Fountain Blue Hotel in Miami Beach.

00:04:07.000 We had celebrated the inspirational courage of whistleblowers who exposed big pharma, big tech, and big business.

00:04:15.000 We honored the journalists who brought us the truth.

00:04:18.000 Take a listen.

00:04:22.000 Project Veritas is the media organization doing the most fearless reporting.

00:04:27.000 They're doing the boldest work.

00:04:29.000 And I would argue some of the most important work in all the media in the United States of America.

00:04:34.000 Its founder is James O'Keefe.

00:04:36.000 His recent book is American Muckraker.

00:04:39.000 I've read it and it speaks a lot about modern day media and journalism and the intricacies with power and big tech.

00:04:46.000 And I want a chance to chat with you about it, James.

00:04:48.000 You seem to have written this book As a critique of modern journalism in America, what are they getting wrong?

00:04:55.000 Journalists these days only print what the powers that be want disclosed.

00:05:00.000 And really, journalism is supposed to be printing information that they don't want disclosed.

00:05:04.000 So in a world where the FBI and the New York Times and pharmaceutical companies are sort of acting in concert with one another, that's not how it should be.

00:05:13.000 And this book talks about these different themes, privacy, propaganda, ethics, secrecy, surrounding this genre of publishing unauthorized information.

00:05:24.000 Well, you have been breaking the big stories that I think expose those intricacies with power and then the way narrative is portrayed to the American people.

00:05:34.000 And one of the ways people try to criticize you, diminish you, deplatform you, is to say that you're not a journalist, you're an I'm an activist.

00:05:42.000 I have spent now the last couple days meeting with the dedicated journalists of Project Veritas and the thorough work they do to develop leads and review reporting.

00:05:54.000 And they're very, very detailed, far more than the press corps that we interact with on Capitol Hill that have to spit out 21 stories in the next hour or they don't get paid.

00:06:03.000 And so what do you say in defense of these folks who really put it all on the line when you're smeared in that way?

00:06:11.000 Well, I think that, you know, journalism is distinguished from propaganda because you verify the information.

00:06:17.000 And there's a chapter in this book called Deception.

00:06:19.000 Yeah, we do use undercover techniques and we use whistleblowers.

00:06:22.000 And whistleblowers sometimes have to violate their own non-disclosure agreements with their organizations.

00:06:27.000 But the only way to get the truth to the people, to the millions of people out there, is to use these techniques.

00:06:32.000 If you present yourself as a journalist to the Department of Defense, if you say, hi, I'm from the Washington Post, tell me all the fraud you're committing.

00:06:41.000 You're not going to get an honest truth.

00:06:44.000 You're going to get a kind of authorized statement.

00:06:47.000 Well, and it's access journalism, right?

00:06:49.000 Yes.

00:06:49.000 And in Beat Reporting, there's this tension between access and autonomy.

00:06:53.000 And that's a tension that's always existed.

00:06:55.000 We've gotten to a place now where, due to the consolidation of these companies and a few tech companies, and you basically have an oligarchy with the Washington Post and the New York Times, that's basically it.

00:07:06.000 There's no investigative journalism.

00:07:08.000 Those organizations only will give you the things that the powerful people want you to know.

00:07:13.000 And in the extreme case, they work alongside the FBI. And it's sad and it's tragic, but it's getting harder and harder to break through.

00:07:23.000 Well, people think about the FBI and big media as if they're separate entities, but isn't the reality that a lot of these folks leave the deep state and then they go work for the media organizations?

00:07:34.000 James Clapper?

00:07:35.000 Andrew McCabe?

00:07:36.000 Andrew McCabe.

00:07:37.000 Yeah, these guys show up, Peter Strzok, they show up then working for the media companies and they're kind of like walking springing leaks.

00:07:43.000 Now, you write in the book about the power of The image of the video, right?

00:07:50.000 The ability to have raw, verifiable information to allow the consumer of that media to make their own judgment about the information.

00:07:58.000 And it strikes me that there's a certain arrogance with modern mainstream journalism where they don't really give us the raw information to analyze.

00:08:07.000 It's all through their lens.

00:08:09.000 Also interesting is, remember, it's illegal to possess these stolen documents.

00:08:14.000 It's different for the media.

00:08:15.000 So everything you learn about this, you're learning from us.

00:08:18.000 Right, and so talk about how Project Veritas, despite the extent to which, you know, big tech has tried to de-platform you, you guys break through because the video doesn't lie.

00:08:29.000 Exactly.

00:08:30.000 There's a second chapter of the book called Image, and I believe that human nature is such that if you show people the reality, They'll have the right information.

00:08:37.000 The whole Jeffersonian notion of the First Amendment is the idea that you give people unauthorized information.

00:08:42.000 Images transfix in a way that words don't.

00:08:44.000 I mean, I'm in Miami here, and you were at the event last night, and I showed people.

00:08:49.000 I re-enacted things.

00:08:50.000 There was theater.

00:08:51.000 There was music.

00:08:52.000 You felt it.

00:08:53.000 And we call it veritas, Latin for truth, cinema verite.

00:08:57.000 You can see the people's lips moving.

00:08:59.000 You can hear their intonation.

00:09:01.000 And the most important part about journalism, I think, is first-person observation journalism.

00:09:06.000 So you're actually seeing it with your own eyes.

00:09:08.000 I'm not asking you to trust me by virtue of the fact that I declare myself credible.

00:09:13.000 And I know that you work on Capitol Hill and these journalists say credible sources and people familiar with the matter.

00:09:19.000 Well, you don't know who those people are.

00:09:19.000 The source is close.

00:09:20.000 That's the biggest lie in Washington media.

00:09:22.000 But what does that even mean?

00:09:23.000 People familiar with the matter.

00:09:24.000 And I'm not opposed to anonymous sources.

00:09:27.000 But we have no reason to trust these institutions because every time you actually look at the sources and see what they said, it never matches up.

00:09:35.000 And furthermore, the people in the government that are leaking this information, it's effectively a form of counterintelligence propaganda because they're giving the newspapers information that's not necessarily true.

00:09:46.000 So Veritas shows you with your own eyes.

00:09:49.000 I don't ask you to trust me.

00:09:52.000 I ask you to trust the evidence of your own eyes and ears, and that's precisely what they don't want you to trust.

00:09:59.000 Do you feel that that makes you a target, makes your organization a target?

00:10:03.000 Well, it's self-evident.

00:10:04.000 I mean, the first chapter of this book is called Suffering, and you might say, why did you write about that?

00:10:10.000 Because I think it does involve pain.

00:10:12.000 My life and the lives of the people that work with me have experienced sacrifice.

00:10:17.000 They've been fired from their jobs.

00:10:19.000 David Delight was raided by Kamala Harris when she was Attorney General of California.

00:10:24.000 I've been put in handcuffs on two separate occasions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

00:10:29.000 I'm an American reporter.

00:10:31.000 But they do this to us because we're telling the truth, not despite it.

00:10:35.000 And I also believe that in some regard it's emboldened us.

00:10:39.000 In other words, the sources that come to me, we had a source come to us with documents inside the Pentagon.

00:10:45.000 Project Veritas has obtained a separate report to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, written by the U.S. Marine Corps Major Joseph Murphy, a former DARPA Fellow.

00:10:56.000 Major Murphy makes claims in his report to the Inspector General that if true could be damning to the official narrative that has been played out to the world over the past two years.

00:11:06.000 Major Murphy's report states that EcoHealth Alliance approached DARPA in March 2018 seeking funding to conduct gain-of-function research of bat-borne coronaviruses.

00:11:16.000 The proposal was named Project Diffuse.

00:11:19.000 DARPA rejected the proposal because the work was too dangerous and could violate the gain-of-function moratorium, despite EcoHealth's position that it would not.

00:11:28.000 According to the documents, the NIAID, under the direction of Dr. Fauci, did not reject the proposal.

00:11:34.000 I went ahead with the research at Wuhan and several sites across the U.S. Those people come to us because we are attacked.

00:11:41.000 It's almost like they trust me.

00:11:42.000 They trust me because they say you must be doing something right if the powers that be are trying to silence you all the time.

00:11:48.000 And you are always making the pitch to whistleblowers out there that if folks are in a corrupt organization, And feel compelled to speak out that you have an infrastructure that you've built with this brave team at Project Veritas to ensure that that does get out.

00:12:02.000 I had a chance to meet with several of your whistleblowers and Project Veritas was not typically the first place they went.

00:12:10.000 With information.

00:12:11.000 They would typically try to go to a mainstream media outlet and they'd get rejected, laughed out of the room.

00:12:16.000 But then when they brought their evidence here and when it was thoroughly vetted, then it seemed they had a burden lifted.

00:12:23.000 I mean, talk about the most inspirational whistleblowers that you still think about that you might use to inspire someone else.

00:12:30.000 Eric Cochran, the young man, I don't know if you saw him, he blew the whistle on Pinterest.

00:12:34.000 And he was 25, I think he's 26, 27 now.

00:12:37.000 He was making a lot of money as an engineer, as much as a young man can make in San Francisco.

00:12:43.000 And he said to me, he's a Christian guy, he says, I'm just gonna fall to ashes one day. 1.00

00:12:48.000 And he's speaking in a sort of existential way.

00:12:51.000 Walk people through what goes through your mind in that moment when you decide to risk it all.

00:12:58.000 I tell a lot of people, Like, what are you saving your ammo for?

00:13:02.000 Like, you're building up your wealth, you're doing all this stuff, and it's like, in anticipation of what?

00:13:09.000 This is the moment that matters.

00:13:11.000 This is what I'm gonna do with my life.

00:13:16.000 This is how I make an impact on the world.

00:13:20.000 Most people don't think like this.

00:13:22.000 Increasingly, I think more people are.

00:13:24.000 He's like, what does life mean?

00:13:25.000 What's the point of living if you're not following your conscience?

00:13:29.000 And I think as our society drifts towards whatever dystopian reality we're already living in and maybe headed worse towards, People put more emphasis on that.

00:13:39.000 That is to say, what is the meaning of life?

00:13:41.000 Because I do think we all struggle and go through pain and even if you do nothing, you go through pain, maybe more so.

00:13:49.000 So I find more people are following Eric's lead and Eric did that first.

00:13:53.000 Eric was like kind of the first test case.

00:13:56.000 And then other people watch what he did and said, well, why don't I do that?

00:14:00.000 So I can't philosophize courage.

00:14:02.000 I can't tell you to do it by virtue, you know, making a good argument for doing it.

00:14:07.000 I can only lead by example.

00:14:09.000 So in the first part of my life, I went through this, you know, endurance test and then Eric found me and then someone saw Eric do it.

00:14:18.000 Another story in the book about a Marine guy worked for the Postal Service.

00:14:22.000 He signed an affidavit saying he saw a ballot being backdated.

00:14:27.000 The FBI and the Inspector General sent federal agents to interrogate him.

00:14:31.000 We have Senators involved.

00:14:33.000 We have the Department of Justice involved.

00:14:36.000 We have Trump's lawyers teams got a hold of me.

00:14:40.000 I'm not...

00:14:41.000 Well, I am actually.

00:14:43.000 I am trying to twist you a little bit because in that, believe it or not, your mind will kick in.

00:14:48.000 Okay.

00:14:50.000 We like to control our mind and when we do that we can convince ourselves of a memory.

00:14:55.000 But when you're under a little bit of stress, which is what I'm doing to you all purposely, your mind can be a little bit clearer.

00:15:02.000 And we're going to do a different exercise too to make your mind a little bit clearer.

00:15:06.000 Good to go.

00:15:07.000 But this is all on purpose.

00:15:08.000 Roger.

00:15:09.000 I am not scaring you.

00:15:12.000 I am scaring you.

00:15:13.000 They basically put a metaphorical gun to his head and said, you must recant this testimony.

00:15:18.000 You must recant.

00:15:19.000 And you would not have believed it had he not recorded it with his iPhone.

00:15:23.000 Washington Post said, sources familiar with the matter.

00:15:26.000 A study recanted.

00:15:27.000 He had an audio.

00:15:28.000 So somehow, sources familiar with the matter superseded the actual recording of the people talking to him.

00:15:36.000 Believe the mainstream media, not your lying ears.

00:15:38.000 Not the actual tape.

00:15:40.000 Who are these sources familiar?

00:15:42.000 There's only two guys in the room.

00:15:43.000 So who are they talking to?

00:15:45.000 The guy that was recorded or some guy who the guy talked to?

00:15:48.000 And this is the propaganda that we have to deal with, and this is the story of how to endure it, I guess.

00:15:52.000 Yeah, American Muckraker certainly lays bare the corruption that's in big media, but that's not the only headwind you face as you go armed with the truth and with these videos that folks collect.

00:16:03.000 You also face the headwinds from big tech, and you write in the book about the vertically integrated vortex of propaganda.

00:16:09.000 What is that?

00:16:12.000 It's something that we all know so much about in our day-to-day lives, the consolidation of these tech companies.

00:16:17.000 And you've done some good work with Facebook.

00:16:19.000 We did a story on some of the censorship of the human algorithms combined with machine learning.

00:16:26.000 You have previously given testimony to the Congress saying that there is not editorial manipulation that disadvantages conservatives.

00:16:33.000 And just like in the case of Google, there have been whistleblowers from Facebook that not only have Offered evidence indicating the testimony was not truthful, but there's even video that suggests that content moderators that you employ...

00:16:47.000 If you bring the game to it, it could work on the left side.

00:16:51.000 I'm wondering if you are familiar with the experiences of Zach McElroy.

00:16:55.000 The truth is more powerful than any NDA. Ryan Hartwig.

00:16:58.000 I've seen them interfering on a global level in elections.

00:17:01.000 Two people who participated in Facebook content review.

00:17:04.000 I saw a stark contrast between Republicans versus Democrats in that queue.

00:17:08.000 I saw upwards of 75 to 80 percent of the posts in that queue were from Republican pages.

00:17:14.000 Politicians, journalists, and pages that supported the president or supported conservatives.

00:17:22.000 I think both in the case of these content moderators and in the case of the testimony you just gave regarding Mr. Luckey and firing people over their politics, There is serious question as to whether or not you're giving truthful testimony here or whether it's lying before Congress.

00:17:35.000 I'm not a member of Congress.

00:17:37.000 I don't know what the solutions are.

00:17:39.000 That's your job and you're good at it.

00:17:41.000 My job is to expose what's happening and what are they keeping secret.

00:17:45.000 And in the beginning, they were kind of shadow banning.

00:17:47.000 They were de-boosting.

00:17:49.000 Morgan Comm and a Facebook whistleblower even released documents showing vaccine hesitancy.

00:17:54.000 Facebook uses classifiers in their algorithms to determine certain content to be what they call vaccine hesitant, or they call it vaccine hesitancy.

00:18:02.000 and you doubt the user's knowledge, they assign a score to these comments that's called a VH score, the Vaccine Hesitancy Score.

00:18:09.000 And based on that score, we'll demote or leave the comment alone, depending on the content within the comment.

00:18:14.000 And one of the most remarkable things, Matt, about the documents that Morgan Common released was, it said, even if the information is true, they'll still censor it.

00:18:25.000 That was an extraordinary admission, albeit one that they did not want you to know.

00:18:30.000 It was a private document.

00:18:31.000 Even if it's true, they'll censor it.

00:18:34.000 So now we've crossed this Rubicon where it's no longer about misinformation.

00:18:39.000 It's about information that's actually true, but people are drawing conclusions from the true information they don't want you to draw.

00:18:46.000 I guess that's what they mean by disinformation.

00:18:48.000 I'm not very sure.

00:18:49.000 And I think about how you got your start making, at times, comedic or satirical videos on YouTube and then provoking thought and questions about events that were happening around us.

00:19:01.000 We basically wanted to bring a matter to your concern that we noticed that at the dining halls here at Rutgers serve lucky charms.

00:19:12.000 And we think that this promotes negative stereotypes of Irish Americans and we don't think it's acceptable in an academic setting, especially one of higher learning.

00:19:26.000 And I wonder if the next James O'Keefe arrived on the scene today and relied upon YouTube for reach, would that even be possible?

00:19:37.000 Because you've exposed in your reporting how the very platform that brought you to prominence cheats.

00:19:44.000 It's almost like someone said to me earlier in our career that we were like the boxers who stepped outside the box and climbed to the mezzanine and started punching the people up there.

00:19:53.000 We're not supposed to investigate NPR. You're investigating YouTube.

00:19:57.000 You're investigating the hand that feeds you.

00:20:00.000 Our Pfizer videos are still up there, to my shock.

00:20:03.000 We have 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube.

00:20:05.000 Maybe they'll take that away.

00:20:06.000 I don't know.

00:20:07.000 But the funny thing about our Pfizer videos, and I'm not here to tell you I'm pro-vax, anti-vax.

00:20:12.000 It doesn't matter what my opinion is.

00:20:14.000 The videos were of the Pfizer employees.

00:20:17.000 This is a Pfizer scientist.

00:20:19.000 This is a senior director at Pfizer, Vanessa Gelman, who said in these emails, these are her words, not mine.

00:20:26.000 She goes, we need to keep this secret from our customers.

00:20:29.000 From Vanessa Gelman.

00:20:30.000 From the perspective of corporate affairs, we want to avoid having the information on the fetal cell lines floating out there.

00:20:36.000 We believe that the risk of communicating this right now outweighs any potential benefit that we could see, particularly with general members of the public who may take this information and use it in ways we may not want it out there.

00:20:48.000 Many fetal cells are used in the development of many vaccines, but why would the senior director at Pfizer want to hide that from their customers?

00:20:56.000 I don't think people should be hiding things from their customers.

00:20:59.000 But why would they ban our video for quoting a Pfizer executive?

00:21:05.000 It's really dystopian.

00:21:07.000 Unfortunately, it's become political.

00:21:10.000 I don't know why it's political.

00:21:11.000 There shouldn't be any disagreement on this.

00:21:13.000 Well, you talked about the remedy being in the purview of the Congress, and you're right.

00:21:17.000 And frankly, it's an area where we have bipartisan agreement and bipartisan disagreement.

00:21:21.000 I have some colleagues who say, well, if we reform Section 230, peel away a few immunities, we can leave these companies intact, and that will resolve these free speech Issues that Project Veritas certainly champions.

00:21:34.000 And there are others of us who believe that these companies have grown more powerful than the most powerful nations in all of human history.

00:21:42.000 And that the only way to deal with them is to reshape them, is to break them up, is to force Google to alienate YouTube, to create more voices and more opportunities.

00:21:51.000 And I'm not going to ask you to weigh in on what the right policy choice is, but talk about how it will affect journalism going forward if Alphabet, if Twitter, if the metaverse continue on this kind of transhumanist path with the ability to define the nature of truth itself.

00:22:12.000 The meta experiment is something that I've, you know, Zuckerberg is now calling it meta, and we're going to live in a world, they say, the predictors say, in five years where we're all just living in this virtual reality.

00:22:23.000 Imagine you put on your glasses or headset and you're instantly in your home space.

00:22:28.000 It has parts of your physical home recreated virtually, it has things that are only possible virtually, and it has an incredibly inspiring view of whatever you find most beautiful.

00:22:39.000 I'm not going, Jay.

00:22:40.000 Actual reality has been too good to me.

00:22:42.000 That's why I don't need to be launched off into space with other celebrities.

00:22:45.000 I was at a conference and someone actually said the quiet part out loud and said, how does one have sex in this world of meta?

00:22:51.000 And I said, well, okay.

00:22:53.000 I'll let them figure that out.

00:22:54.000 I'll let that figure that out.

00:22:55.000 But that's what they're saying.

00:22:56.000 We're going into a world where you're going to not be on location.

00:23:01.000 I don't know what that world's like.

00:23:03.000 Is there a meta-journalism?

00:23:05.000 Let me get into that.

00:23:08.000 Going back to this cliche, journalism is printing what somebody does not want printed.

00:23:12.000 It's the American founding.

00:23:14.000 The First Amendment is the thing that makes all of our other rights possible.

00:23:20.000 Information is accountability.

00:23:21.000 I was giving a speech at Naples.

00:23:27.000 At the seat-to-table restaurant.

00:23:29.000 And they were asking me all these existential questions.

00:23:31.000 Because you're a member of Congress and I'm a journalist.

00:23:34.000 So we have totally different roles.

00:23:36.000 You provide legislative solutions.

00:23:38.000 And there needs to be more of those, by the way.

00:23:40.000 I just give you the reality.

00:23:42.000 My job is to show, like members of Congress, here's the truth.

00:23:46.000 That's my job.

00:23:47.000 And I actually do believe that the tragedy in modern life is that we don't agree on facts.

00:23:53.000 We should not be disagreeing about whether this is a Fiji bottle or not a Coca-Cola.

00:23:58.000 We should all agree this is a bottle of Fiji, but for some reason we're divided on what this is.

00:24:05.000 So my job is to make sure that 80% of Americans agree this is water.

00:24:10.000 And it sounds crazy, but George Orwell wrote in 1984 that freedom is the freedom to say that 2 plus 2 equals 4. If that is granted, all else follows.

00:24:18.000 And that is being challenged right now.

00:24:20.000 When I'm banned for quoting CNN, Matt, the videos we did on Twitter in April, The guy at CNN, the control room director, actually said, we're propaganda.

00:24:32.000 We got Trump out.

00:24:33.000 Wow, this is Charlie Chester.

00:24:35.000 He's talking about the numbers on CNN, the death numbers.

00:24:49.000 They put like a ticker every day.

00:24:51.000 He goes, why aren't the numbers higher?

00:24:52.000 This guy's talking to a hidden camera in a public restaurant.

00:24:55.000 He goes, Why aren't the numbers higher? 0.95

00:24:57.000 We need more people to die.

00:24:59.000 We need those deaths higher. 0.98

00:25:00.000 COVID gangbusters are great at us, right?

00:25:04.000 Which is why we constantly have a death toll on the side, which I have a major problem with that we're tallying how many people die every day.

00:25:12.000 Because I've even looked at it and be like...

00:25:14.000 look at it and be like, let's make it higher.

00:25:18.000 Like, why isn't it high enough, you know, today?

00:25:20.000 Like, it would make our point better if it was higher.

00:25:23.000 And I'm like, what am I rallying for?

00:25:25.000 That's a problem that we're doing.

00:25:28.000 His words, not They removed me from Twitter for quoting someone at CNN. And for me, that was like, whoa.

00:25:37.000 That was my moment after 12 years of doing this.

00:25:40.000 So can regulation liberate the true values of journalism that you're talking about in your book?

00:25:45.000 Or does it have to be a reshaping?

00:25:47.000 I feel like you've got 430 of your people are smarter than me.

00:25:51.000 You're more qualified to answer that.

00:25:53.000 Yeah, but you're on the front lines of the battle because...

00:25:56.000 Your organization tries to get the truth out, whereas most corporate media, it's not about money anymore, it's about power.

00:26:02.000 Here's the answer.

00:26:03.000 Another theme you write about though is that these entities used to just exist for profit and now it's about the power as much as the profit.

00:26:11.000 I think as long as you are living in a world where, at least politically, if you want to speak about politics, That Congress is so divided on things they should...

00:26:21.000 I feel like they shouldn't be divided on.

00:26:23.000 I mean, if you don't...

00:26:25.000 If people don't agree on facts, there can't be consensus.

00:26:28.000 And if there's no consensus, how do you...

00:26:30.000 I mean...

00:26:31.000 Our political system is...

00:26:33.000 The Senate is tied 50-50, and an obscure senator from West Virginia dictates the national agenda.

00:26:38.000 Thank God.

00:26:38.000 Government...

00:26:39.000 Thank God, but...

00:26:40.000 Joe Manchin's holding this country together right now.

00:26:42.000 Where is this heading?

00:26:43.000 How do you have a functioning...

00:26:45.000 Is this what the founders intended?

00:26:47.000 I don't know.

00:26:49.000 Well, but it's actually one of the areas, the way that the consumer interacts with the digital world is a place where we see some fissures in just kind of the red team versus the blue team stuff.

00:26:59.000 And I'm not pessimistic about how strident that is because you look at how Trump really reshaped policy paradigms with a more populist realignment.

00:27:08.000 So, you know, I don't think we're forever married to, well, it's a 50-50 country.

00:27:11.000 We can never I mean, you look at this Ukraine conflict now, you've got more and more Republicans cautioning against a war-first strategy.

00:27:22.000 That wouldn't even have happened in the 90s.

00:27:24.000 So I'm hopeful for that.

00:27:25.000 But you fight these fronts, not just against big media, not just against big tech and big government, But really, against all those institutions align, and you do it in court.

00:27:36.000 That's something that a lot of journalists don't have the courage to do.

00:27:39.000 I just wanted to give you a moment, and there's a great review of this in the litigation chapter of the book, but talk about the cases that Project Veritas has maybe been involved in, or the matters that you think are the most important to journalism.

00:27:53.000 There's a whole chapter called litigation, and I believe you're an attorney, correct?

00:27:57.000 I am.

00:27:57.000 I went to law school for a year and dropped out.

00:28:00.000 And I'm glad I had that one year because I learned IRAC issue rule analysis inclusion.

00:28:05.000 We don't settle litigation.

00:28:06.000 I'm one of the only chairman of any media company, and Veritas is a non-profit.

00:28:12.000 We're also a media company.

00:28:13.000 We've never settled a lawsuit.

00:28:16.000 And if you don't settle, you go through the discovery phase of a lawsuit.

00:28:19.000 And that means you get to depose the other side and they get to depose me. 0.80

00:28:23.000 What I learned in my life after a decade of doing this is that they, i.e., our opponents, the opponents of freedom and information, they tend to keep secrets.

00:28:34.000 I don't really keep that many secrets, Matt.

00:28:36.000 I mean, I do keep the identity of our donors secret.

00:28:39.000 That's a freedom of association issue under 5.1c3 regulations.

00:28:42.000 It's essentially the source code of your organization.

00:28:45.000 And also the freedom of association right under the First Amendment.

00:28:48.000 Now, donors don't tell us what to do, but A hundred thousand people donate to us and it would create a constitutional crisis if we were to identify those people.

00:28:58.000 And then you have the identity of whistleblowers.

00:29:00.000 But other than that, I don't keep secrets.

00:29:02.000 So in a deposition, I love being deposed.

00:29:05.000 Please do interview me and ask me all these questions about what motivates me.

00:29:10.000 You're not going to find anything incriminating.

00:29:12.000 They hate being deposed.

00:29:14.000 So in the beginning, they would sue me thinking they would break my will and get me to fold like a cheap suit because they're projecting onto me their own insecurity.

00:29:23.000 Well, they're bigger than you.

00:29:24.000 And so they think that might makes right.

00:29:26.000 Correct.

00:29:26.000 And sometimes the courtroom flips that.

00:29:28.000 Absolutely.

00:29:29.000 They think that and then they realized, whoa, This guy's not going to settle.

00:29:34.000 There's a story in this book about a jury verdict.

00:29:36.000 I actually went to a federal jury trial in North Carolina.

00:29:38.000 It was a civil lawsuit.

00:29:39.000 And I quoted this guy, Scott Fogle, talking about this other woman.

00:29:43.000 The woman sued me for defamation. 1.00

00:29:45.000 I don't know why she sued me.

00:29:47.000 He said it.

00:29:48.000 And it got to a jury verdict and the federal judge in North Carolina looked at the seven lawyers representing Shirley Teeter and said, why on earth are we here?

00:29:58.000 Because if you sued Mike Wallace for what you're suing O'Keefe for, everyone would laugh at you.

00:30:03.000 It somehow got past summary judgment, probably because my reputation is so sullen in Wikipedia.

00:30:09.000 And then after that, they stopped suing me because they realized we don't settle.

00:30:13.000 And now recently, Matt, we sued the New York Times for defamation.

00:30:15.000 We got past motion to dismiss.

00:30:17.000 We're entering Discovery there.

00:30:19.000 And on Christmas Eve of this past year, the judge ordered the New York Times to sequester these memos.

00:30:25.000 Who are you looking forward to deposing most in the New York Times case that now goes to Discovery?

00:30:29.000 I think Maggie Astor, the reporter that wrote the article.

00:30:32.000 She, in the first sentence of this article, she wrote, deceptive videos released by, you know, and her defense in the answer to the complaint was, Your Honor, that was just our opinion.

00:30:43.000 And the judge said, well, then why was it in the A section in a news article?

00:30:48.000 Why did you disguise it as, you know...

00:30:50.000 It seems the judge also took occasion to remind the New York Times that there were media organizations on both sides of this case.

00:30:57.000 He did.

00:30:57.000 He said we're both media companies.

00:30:58.000 And he said it was the New York Times that engaged in disinformation and deception by injecting their opinion in a news article as they're claiming.

00:31:07.000 So it's really...

00:31:08.000 And by the way, Matt, after that article that came out in the New York Times, this is about our Minnesota voter fraud videos, they said that we were using disinformation and...

00:31:16.000 Facebook banned the video because Facebook uses the New York Times as their fact-checking source.

00:31:25.000 So it's this vortex of propaganda.

00:31:27.000 It's an oligarchy between tech and the newspapers.

00:31:30.000 And then they say there's no voter fraud.

00:31:31.000 Now, I don't know if there was enough...

00:31:32.000 I don't have enough information to say whether there was enough voter fraud to overturn that election.

00:31:39.000 However, there was voter fraud.

00:31:40.000 There was an anecdotal case in Minnesota of a Somali man saying, here's all these ballots, I'm filling them out illegally.

00:31:46.000 Numbers don't lie.

00:31:48.000 numbers don't lie.

00:32:00.000 There was video You could see the video.

00:32:01.000 There was a video out and about that he has the ballots in his car.

00:32:06.000 Right.

00:32:06.000 And talking about the only way you can win is with money.

00:32:10.000 I was looking at them and they were not filled.

00:32:12.000 They were blank.

00:32:13.000 Money is the key in this world.

00:32:15.000 If you ain't got money, you should not be here, period.

00:32:20.000 We reported what he said.

00:32:22.000 And Facebook took down the video because of this New York Times article.

00:32:26.000 If people want to get to these investigations and review these clips and make these decisions, where do they go on the internet?

00:32:32.000 How can they become part of the project?

00:32:34.000 Well, they can go to our website, but Facebook took that video down.

00:32:38.000 And to your answer, you know, try to answer your question from earlier.

00:32:40.000 You said, what's the solution?

00:32:41.000 Again, you and I have different roles.

00:32:44.000 My solution, and I believe this is the solution, Is if the story is strong enough, it will override the censorship.

00:32:51.000 You have to get the story that's so good, like impossible to ignore.

00:32:56.000 I mean, there would be some folks that would disagree and say that Hunter Biden laptop story was a pretty big story.

00:33:04.000 And the way that you saw these institutions that you're always fighting against come together to suppress that story was powerful.

00:33:10.000 I think they failed to a degree to suppress it.

00:33:13.000 And I think people are waking up.

00:33:16.000 I'm very optimistic, which some people don't like.

00:33:20.000 They want me to be cynical, and I'm not, and I believe that...

00:33:23.000 It's the Irishman in you.

00:33:25.000 Perhaps.

00:33:26.000 But I totally...

00:33:27.000 Nobody knows a pessimistic leprechaun.

00:33:31.000 Nobody knows.

00:33:32.000 That's something I've never heard in my life.

00:33:36.000 I believe that you're right.

00:33:38.000 They censored that story.

00:33:39.000 But in doing so, I think they woke people up.

00:33:42.000 There was a significant moment for me last night, James.

00:33:46.000 I was at the Project Veritas experience and I got to meet the journalist who did the Charlie Chester interviews.

00:33:54.000 And who, in many ways, vindicated what I was telling people, that CNN was trying to propagandize my life because I'm an effective congressman.

00:34:03.000 And I always dreamed that I might be able to meet this person and express my gratitude to them.

00:34:08.000 And the fact that the Project Veritas event here in Miami gave me the opportunity to do that and to share How grateful I was that someone showed that courage when you are in the barrel and you feel like everything's against you and you just want to get some elements of truth out.

00:34:24.000 For people to be willing to do that and step forward, it really is something.

00:34:29.000 And the fact that you provide this sense of relief that people feel when they're a part of your mission, They don't feel burdened by the mission at Project Veritas.

00:34:36.000 They feel very relieved by it.

00:34:37.000 I wanted to thank you just from the bottom of my heart for giving people that platform, for inspiring that courage in folks doing that.

00:34:45.000 And I am hopeful that there will be more Project Veritas-styled entities.

00:34:50.000 I'm sure you love cornering the market, but I worry that the fact that your organization is the only organization in America that does what you do It brings a certain frailty to it.

00:35:00.000 And that's what I fear most is that something could happen to Project Veritas and then there would almost be no way to get corruption out.

00:35:09.000 There would be no platform for whistleblowers.

00:35:11.000 And so I just wonder, what do you fear most as you wake up every day with the burden of managing this organization, inspiring these whistleblowers, being the caretakers of their stories?

00:35:24.000 What worries you?

00:35:25.000 Well, good question.

00:35:26.000 I don't think what worries me is what worries everyone else.

00:35:29.000 I mean, people ask these questions like, do you fear for your life and this sort of thing?

00:35:33.000 You should.

00:35:33.000 I guess the question presupposes that one is afraid to begin with.

00:35:37.000 And I think it's the fear that is dangerous.

00:35:40.000 Like FDR said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

00:35:42.000 Well, I think being a leader is hard.

00:35:45.000 Veritas has like 70 employees now and quite a budget that's given to all these, you know, by these generous people, thousands and thousands of people.

00:35:52.000 Just leadership.

00:35:53.000 It's hard being a leader.

00:35:59.000 It's hard commanding respect from being in the office and running a company.

00:36:04.000 I've had to learn how to be a CEO. I've had to learn how to be an organizational entrepreneur.

00:36:08.000 That's probably the hardest thing about what I do, not so much the external battles.

00:36:12.000 I also think it's how you respond to things.

00:36:14.000 The FBI raid was traumatizing.

00:36:15.000 I was incarcerated briefly.

00:36:19.000 Ten years ago.

00:36:19.000 But you went right on TV? A lot of folks wouldn't have done that.

00:36:22.000 Okay, there was a moment there.

00:36:23.000 Spencer Meads and Eric Cochran, that's the Pinterest guy who is our director of Whistleblonde, former colleague of mine, they raided his home and then they knocked on my door two days later.

00:36:32.000 And of course, the moment they knocked on my door, pounded on my door.

00:36:35.000 I knew at that moment it was the feds because they had done it to my colleagues.

00:36:38.000 And there was about two days where I was kind of, I was scared.

00:36:43.000 And I'll say it, I was definitely scared.

00:36:46.000 But I got through that.

00:36:47.000 So you do experience fear.

00:36:51.000 It's not that I'm completely unafraid, but you try not to let it affect your decision-making and you make rational decisions.

00:36:59.000 After they raided my colleagues, I had to make an extraordinary decision that most people would not or could not make.

00:37:06.000 I went public.

00:37:07.000 Remember that video?

00:37:08.000 I filmed a video.

00:37:09.000 That was the day before my raid.

00:37:11.000 The magistrate judge had signed the search warrant prior to be making the statement, so it wasn't my statement that made them raid me.

00:37:18.000 But I said, I need the world to know what is happening right now.

00:37:22.000 Late last year, we were approached by tipsters claiming they had a copy of Ashley Biden's diary.

00:37:27.000 We had never met or heard of the tipsters.

00:37:29.000 The tipsters indicated the diary had been abandoned in a room in which Ms. Biden stayed at the time, and in which the tipsters stayed in temporarily after Ms. Biden departed the room.

00:37:39.000 The tipsters indicated that the diary included explosive allegations against then-candidate Joe Biden.

00:37:45.000 At the end of the day, we made the ethical decision that because, in part, we could not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents of the diary occurred, we could not publish the diary in any part thereof.

00:38:00.000 Now, Ms. Biden's father's Department of Justice, specifically the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, appears to be investigating the situation, claiming the diary was stolen.

00:38:12.000 This federal investigation smacks of politics.

00:38:15.000 Project Veritas never threatened or engaged in any investigation.

00:38:18.000 Illegal conduct.

00:38:20.000 Should the Southern District of New York try to take away our First Amendment rights and uncover and publish newsworthy stories without government intimidation, be assured Project Veritas will not back down.

00:38:32.000 Nothing stops at Project Veritas.

00:38:35.000 In other words, being honest and transparent is going to protect me.

00:38:39.000 And that's really the premise, right?

00:38:41.000 Publicity is going to protect us.

00:38:43.000 So for two days I was scared.

00:38:45.000 What scares me?

00:38:46.000 I think the thing that, you know, the thing that I hope I'm concerned about is I hope good people inside these horrible institutions do the right thing.

00:38:56.000 I hope there's one person at the Department of Justice out of 120,000 people that have the stones to come forward.

00:39:04.000 That may be the next entity that we learn about.

00:39:08.000 That's right.

00:39:09.000 Well, the always foreshadowing, the bold, the fearless James O'Keefe, thanks for what you do for really just the state of the First Amendment and for all these great folks that make sure we get the truth out.

00:39:20.000 Thank you.

00:39:23.000 Thanks for joining us for Firebrand.

00:39:25.000 You know, you never have to experience any ad reads.

00:39:28.000 I'm never trying to sell you any pillows, but it sure would help out if you'd give us that five-star rating on your listening platform of choice.

00:39:34.000 Or if you're watching on Rumble, please participate in the conversation by leaving a comment, letting us know your thoughts on the episode.

Firebrand - Matt Gaetz - February 03, 2022

Episode 25: Raided (feat. James O’Keefe) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz

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