Juno News - March 27, 2025


Juno News EXPOSES shocking allegations against Liberal Candidate Thomas Keeper


Episode Stats


Length

23 minutes

Words per minute

181.10793

Word count

4,188

Sentence count

260

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Candice and Kian talk about a breaking news story that has just come out on Juno News about a Calgary Councillor candidate, Thomas Keeper. In this story, Kian and Candice talk about the allegations against Keeper, and how he allegedly treats his own wife.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hi, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show. We have a great show for you today.
00:00:09.220 I am very pleased to be joined by my co-founder here at Juno News, Kian Bextie. Kian is a fantastic
00:00:15.040 reporter and journalist, and he has done what he does best, which is expose the powerful and the
00:00:22.560 corrupt. And Kian has an incredible breaking news story that has just come out on Juno News,
00:00:27.800 exposing the Calgary Confederation candidate named Thomas Keeper. Really unbelievable and explosive
00:00:34.760 details in this story. So Kian, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us.
00:00:39.480 Thanks for having me.
00:00:40.660 Okay, walk us through the story. Tell us what you reported.
00:00:43.920 Yeah, so for background on this, Calgary Confederation is a swing riding in Calgary. It's something,
00:00:50.480 it's a riding that the Liberals could conceivably win if polling stays consistent. Their candidate,
00:00:56.380 Thomas Keeper is running against the conservative Jeremy Nixon. It's neck and neck. We were sent a ton
00:01:04.220 of information about Thomas Keeper, which is, you know, we get information about politicians all the
00:01:09.640 time, but this was a lot that we got on Thomas Keeper, and it was consistent across all of my sources
00:01:16.320 that I spoke to. I spoke to eight people who know Thomas Keeper intimately. They were his friends,
00:01:23.480 some still are his friend, some just know him through business, and they came to me with shocking,
00:01:30.400 shocking allegations. And I'm going to read to you here from the story because I don't want to step
00:01:34.300 out of bounds. Brett Pierce, a management consultant in Calgary, met Thomas Keeper at several social
00:01:44.620 events. It was sort of through business, sort of through friends, and he recalls the real estate
00:01:50.620 agent talking casually about disregarding his wife's consent. This is something that multiple
00:01:56.800 sources told us about, that frequently he brags about having sex with his wife, whether she wants
00:02:03.740 it or not. The quote from Brett is, he was talking about how whenever he wants to have sex with his
00:02:12.180 wife, he just forces her to do so. Brett asked him, he said, is she okay with that? And he said,
00:02:20.460 I'm her husband, she has to be okay with it. That is one example of him treating women with, 0.96
00:02:27.800 allegedly, huge amounts of disrespect. And that's putting it lightly. One of our sources said to his
00:02:35.420 face, that that is effing rape, Thomas. Your wife says no, it is effing no, not you'll take it whether
00:02:42.920 you like it or not. Another fellow who did business with him, was not his friend, said, quote,
00:02:50.540 he's a psychopath. I'm not qualified to give mental health diagnoses, but this guy is a psychopath.
00:02:57.360 That was corroborated by pretty much everyone that we spoke to, saying that they got really weird
00:03:02.900 feelings whenever they talked to Thomas Keeper. And the way that he treated other people,
00:03:07.400 especially women around him, was shocking, to say the least.
00:03:11.760 That's so unbelievable, Kian. I can't believe those. I mean, I can't believe what I'm hearing
00:03:16.240 about the way that a man allegedly treated his own wife. So disturbing. Obviously, there's not been
00:03:24.160 charges laid against him. And that's only half of it. That is one example that we reported on.
00:03:30.640 There's several examples. Some we haven't reported on yet. We're waiting for Thomas to answer some
00:03:36.000 questions. And we're waiting to send these out as we get more information. I could give you another
00:03:42.420 example. Yeah, sure. Let's just explain to the viewer. So Thomas Keeper was a real estate agent
00:03:49.040 prior to entering politics. So he has a career in Calgary, a well-known person. He's very social,
00:03:55.500 has a wide circle of friends in Calgary as a realtor. So a fairly high-profile person,
00:04:01.200 someone who's known to a lot of people. And this is his first time jumping into politics. Is that
00:04:06.160 correct? Yeah. He's been involved with several progressive candidates in Calgary City Council,
00:04:13.240 from my understanding, namely Jean-Carlo Carras. Whether Carras knew these allegations about Keeper when
00:04:21.640 he was involved in his campaign. I don't know. I don't know the extent that he was involved there.
00:04:25.860 I've just seen pictures of them together at campaign events. But this is his first real personal foray
00:04:32.580 into politics himself. He's not, this is not the first time he's been in the news though, mind you.
00:04:38.120 The first story we published was a republication of a story that was published in the United Kingdom
00:04:42.140 about Thomas Keeper breaking his legs so that he could grow four inches, so that he would be more
00:04:48.220 appealing to women. He said that, well, he didn't say this, but his wife said this, that people at his
00:04:55.420 original height, she just wasn't attracted to. After we've learned all that we have learned about
00:05:01.260 Thomas Keeper, I'm starting to understand that maybe it's not his height that was the problem.
00:05:06.480 And maybe he was dealing with some other issues. I think that he has some mental health problems,
00:05:10.960 honestly, if I could be honest and just... Well, there's a lot, there's a lot of, like you said,
00:05:16.420 you spoke to a lot of sources, a lot of corroborating evidence to point to these allegations
00:05:21.340 being true. Why don't you walk us through a couple more allegations that you've been able
00:05:27.460 to uncover here, Kian? The most egregious event, well, perhaps not the most egregious, but the one 0.99
00:05:33.100 that we have the most evidence for that is shocking, that backs up everything else that we reported on,
00:05:38.100 was an event in Calgary called Top 40 Under 40. Thomas Keeper was in attendance there with his wife.
00:05:44.820 It is the most public incident of abuse that we've reported on, corroborated by Brett Pierce
00:05:52.380 and other witnesses who were at this event. And just to stop you right there, Kian, can you tell
00:05:57.760 us who Brett Pierce is? This is one of the sources that you spoke to that was willing to give his name,
00:06:01.920 go on the record because he was so concerned about Thomas Keeper. So who is he? Tell us who Brett Pierce is.
00:06:07.420 Thomas Keeper is a respected management consultant in Calgary. He was involved in the sort of rich
00:06:16.380 socialite community a little bit, and that's where he met Thomas Keeper. These communities, you know,
00:06:23.720 it starts at the polo club and it goes to these, you know, hobnobby events, the Top 40 Under 40. They all
00:06:31.340 like to go there, dress up, hang out, gossip. And here we are now with his corroborated story of
00:06:40.140 him accusing Thomas Keeper of a story that he heard that Thomas Keeper had sexually groped a young man in
00:06:47.720 his twenties at one of these, um, at one of these events. And, um, he accused him to his face in
00:06:55.420 public at this Top 40 Under 40 event. Um, Keeper got agitated. They got in a screaming match. Uh, and
00:07:03.980 then allegedly Keeper said to the individual who he assaulted previously, allegedly, um, that you're
00:07:11.580 going to pay for this. And he started threatening him. Um, the, the 20 year old, the, the, the man in
00:07:17.560 his twenties, um, this drew the attention of Keeper's wife. All of this was alleged again, not proven in
00:07:23.060 court, but this is corroborated by people who are pretty respected in the community, um, and don't
00:07:28.440 really have a reason to be lying about this. Um, saying that his wife approached the commotion,
00:07:33.720 uh, and when she did, Keeper grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, uh, and yanked her super hard to the 1.00
00:07:42.000 point that she fell off of her shoes, lost her shoes, and he took her out of the event.
00:07:46.440 Uh, she here is a victim, allegedly of Thomas Keeper, one of apparently many, uh, most of them
00:07:55.400 are women. One of them, apparently, uh, uh, if, if this allegation that Brett made, uh, at this event
00:08:02.600 is true, one of them is a man as well. It's, it's just really shocking behavior for someone who wants
00:08:09.380 to be, uh, a member of parliament working in Ottawa as, you know, one of Mark Carney's team. Um, this is
00:08:18.180 part and parcel for people you'd expect to be working for Justin Trudeau. In fact, this is how Justin
00:08:22.900 Trudeau behaved his whole life, treating women just like how Thomas Keeper alleged is alleged to have
00:08:29.140 been treating these women and that one man. Um, Mark Carney, though, you'd think would draw the line
00:08:36.740 and say that this, just even these allegations, they need to be hashed out off campus. Uh, you can't
00:08:44.580 be bringing that to Ottawa, uh, sort that out before you try to run for politics, because this is really
00:08:50.340 unbecoming of all everyone that he is associated with everyone, uh, in the liberal party that is
00:08:57.060 condoning this tacitly just by these allegations being out there. Um, but from so many people now,
00:09:04.020 like we said, we haven't yet, uh, published anything about any criminal charges or criminal reports about
00:09:11.940 him. Um, we, we might have more to come later. I don't want to spoil that yet. And I want to wait
00:09:17.860 until our research is done. But just, just from this story, you know, the people that we've spoken
00:09:24.500 to, the sources, the eight sources that we spoke to, most of them said in one way or another, that
00:09:29.540 this should be disqualifying for public office. And the fact that the liberals are not even looking
00:09:34.820 into this, we reached out to the liberal party so that they would comment on these allegations of
00:09:39.860 sexual and physical abuse. And they've said nothing. Wow. And tell us about the candidate vetting
00:09:47.780 process because typically when a campaign is selecting candidates in the various writings,
00:09:53.780 they have to go through some kind of a screening process where they have to, you know, show,
00:09:58.660 do they have a criminal background? Do they have any incriminating things? Do they said anything
00:10:02.260 publicly that might preclude them from being elected? And usually a lot of this stuff does come out
00:10:07.380 in that process. Do we know anything about the, what the liberals have done and if they're,
00:10:11.380 if they know about these allegations? Well, Mark Carney says that the famed liberal green light
00:10:17.140 committee, um, which is the green light to say, yeah, you can be a candidate, uh, is rigorous,
00:10:22.980 thorough and respected. He said this when he was talking about, uh, the original candidate for Ottawa
00:10:29.220 Nepean, Chandra Aria, who is disqualified, did not get the green light to run and be a candidate.
00:10:35.140 Apparently they did investigations into his background, into his finance, all this stuff said,
00:10:40.180 no, you can't do it. Um, and they've done that for many candidates across the country.
00:10:45.140 So we can only assume that their vetting of Thomas was thorough and they knew about this
00:10:52.500 and they decided to do nothing. That is all we can assume since they will not respond comment and
00:10:59.860 they have not fired him as a candidate. Wow. Okay. Well tell us about the process because,
00:11:05.060 you know, as a journalist, one of the things that we do is we give the person who's the subject of a
00:11:09.780 story, the opportunity to give their own comment, to tell their own side of the story, perhaps to
00:11:14.420 add some context to these conversations to maybe say, look, the source you're talking to, this is
00:11:18.900 why you shouldn't trust them or whatever. We give them an opportunity as journalists to be fair.
00:11:23.060 Uh, what, what, what happened when you tried to contact Thomas Keeper to get his side of the story?
00:11:28.260 Yeah, it's called responsible communication and it's a really important aspect of journalism to make
00:11:33.540 sure that you have a story that is fair and has all sides of the story. Uh, so that you're not going
00:11:39.540 on some witch hunt against someone, uh, just, just to publish some salacious news. Um, it's important
00:11:47.140 that we gave Thomas the opportunity to say, no, no, he's insane. She's insane. He's lying. This fact
00:11:54.820 is wrong or whatever. He, he, you know, he could say, yeah, this is all true. This is how I behave.
00:11:59.380 We don't know what he was going to say, but we had to give him the opportunity, uh, to refute,
00:12:04.980 to agree with, or even tweak some of the information that we had. Maybe he could provide us with
00:12:10.260 documentation showing that these people were all serial harassers of him. We just don't know,
00:12:14.580 right? So we provided all of the allegations that we had of him. And we sent him, uh, that by email,
00:12:21.460 we texted him, we tried to call him. And eventually I showed up to his campaign office at 709 Edmonton
00:12:28.660 trail, right on the front road of a very main street in Calgary. And I waited in my car for Thomas to show
00:12:36.180 up while he was campaigning. And lo and behold, he did, uh, middle of the day. And I had an envelope
00:12:42.820 of questions to ask him. I approached him and I said, Hey, Thomas, we have some questions to ask
00:12:47.700 you. Um, and he ran away. He fled the scene. He went and hid. And in fact, he hid behind his wife
00:12:54.660 and he hid behind liberal party staffers who shielded his wife. When I also tried to ask his wife questions,
00:13:00.660 um, because as a victim and as a pretty vocal, like center point of the story, she also has a right 0.83
00:13:06.260 to respond to these allegations. Um, we, we have, we have, uh, footage of that cause you were wise
00:13:10.820 enough to take the interaction. And so let's, uh, play this as a footage of Kim Bexy trying to get 0.90
00:13:16.180 comment from the liberal candidate, Thomas keeper. Mr. Keeper, Thomas. Hi, Thomas. I just have some
00:13:22.980 questions to ask you. We just, we just have some questions to ask you. Hi, Mr. Keeper. Okay, great.
00:13:29.860 Thank you. We just have some questions to ask you. So pretty clear. You, you didn't even come
00:13:39.780 within a couple of feet of him. Like as soon as he saw you coming, he bolted in the door
00:13:44.100 and closed it before you could even get physically near him, which is an interesting and important
00:13:49.300 point because of what happened next. So why don't you walk us through what happened next?
00:13:52.980 Yeah, this was a little shocking. Uh, I try not, you know, in a story like this, it's really important
00:13:58.660 that we get the facts straight. It's important that we speak to all the subjects of the story.
00:14:03.060 And what happened sort of confirmed my suspicion that this guy is a pathological liar. Um, the
00:14:12.020 police were called. I've had that happen to me before it, it happens. People don't want to answer
00:14:16.420 questions from journalists. I understand he called the police and the police spoke to me and they arrived.
00:14:21.540 I mean, you might want, I think we have video of this too, but I'll describe it. They asked me right off
00:14:26.500 the bat. Was there any violence involved? Did you get physical with him implying that? And I thought,
00:14:31.620 well, is this just standard for any police on the scene to ask sounded like maybe? Yeah. But then
00:14:37.300 what happened after that was they went inside, they spoke to Thomas, they came out. I had left the
00:14:42.500 immediate vicinity. I waited across the street just so that he wouldn't feel super threatened.
00:14:46.820 And the police came across the street after talking with him for about 10 minutes.
00:14:50.580 And they said that Thomas told them that I got physical with him, that I ran up to him,
00:14:56.740 went inside, came in hot and got physical, which is obviously untrue. Uh, and the fact that he would
00:15:03.700 tell, uh, officers of the law something about a journalist like that, that is just untrue. I mean,
00:15:09.140 I think that he didn't realize that we had cameras. Um, they were hidden cameras. So he probably thought
00:15:14.100 he could get away with a lie, which horrifies me about, you know, if he was a politician,
00:15:20.020 I guess he would fit in in Ottawa, but the, just the casualness of this lie, supposed lie.
00:15:24.900 I suppose we didn't, we didn't hear him say this to the police, but the police told me that
00:15:28.260 he did say that. And it would be the basis for a restraining order against me, which again,
00:15:34.660 a politician getting a restraining order against a journalist because they have a story that is
00:15:39.220 huge breaking and really damaging to his reputation. Um, uh, you know, that's, that's pretty crazy to
00:15:47.620 do in a free country, um, to abuse the, the, the system, uh, the, the court of law and, and the
00:15:53.780 justice system to your own benefit as a politician, as a liberal politician. It's, it's crazy. I think
00:15:58.980 we should play the clip though, because it sounds wild. Sorry, sorry to interrupt you. We do have the
00:16:03.860 clip of Kim Bexty interacting with the police in Calgary. Let's show that clip. 0.69
00:16:08.020 At any time, was there any physical contact or anything with that? No. Any threats? No, not to me.
00:16:14.340 No. Okay. Or to him, obviously. Yeah, just the, uh, nature of the interaction is just you asking him
00:16:19.860 some questions. Yeah. They may seem to a restraining order. If a restraining order gets granted,
00:16:25.220 it may be a cause of no communication. Just be careful. Okay. You get served a copy of it before it is.
00:16:31.780 Okay. So I heard your side of the story. I heard a side of the story, I guess. He's claiming you went in and
00:16:36.340 came in kind of hot and made physical contact with him. What?
00:16:41.940 So, I mean, this does show his character that he was willing to say that you made physical contact
00:16:48.020 and that that was the basis for a restraining order. So almost accusing you maybe of assault,
00:16:53.540 where we could see very clearly from that first video, Kian, that you did not touch him. You did not
00:16:58.660 get anywhere near touching him. He was able to close the door in your face before you were able to
00:17:03.620 get there. So really unbelievable that you caught him in that lie. And I think that doesn't bode well
00:17:08.820 for his character, given these other really, really shocking and disturbing allegations
00:17:15.220 that have come out in your report. Yeah. I mean, our readers can go check out the story. There's
00:17:20.900 other things that we haven't spoken about, about him verbally harassing women for being, you know,
00:17:28.180 I don't want to put words in his mouth because I wasn't there, but this woman left a party in tears 1.00
00:17:33.220 because apparently he was, um, he was, you know, saying very rude things about her, her visual,
00:17:39.300 visual appearance. Um, just, this is like a constant pattern pattern of him treating everyone around him
00:17:48.100 terribly in one way or another, whether it is alleged sexual abuse, whether it's alleged physical
00:17:54.020 abuse, uh, verbal abuse. And in this case, um, taking advantage of the legal system and the justice
00:18:02.340 system in the country to shut down a journalist as one of his first acts as a politician, it's
00:18:08.260 embarrassing for him and the liberal party. Well, and so just tell me since the story has,
00:18:14.020 we broke the story. What was it last night, uh, yesterday evening or yesterday afternoon in
00:18:17.780 Alberta, what has been the reaction? Have you heard from the liberal party? I would have assumed Kian 1.00
00:18:22.260 that they would have fired him as a candidate after reading this groundbreaking report. I mean,
00:18:26.900 these allegations are horrific, uh, unspeakable things that he does, apparently brags about doing
00:18:32.340 to his friends and to acquaintances and people who aren't his friends, um, about his wife, like really,
00:18:37.620 really despicable things. Uh, how could a person like this still be up for public office in Canada?
00:18:42.820 That's a great point. And I can't underscore enough that this is only half the story. Um,
00:18:49.860 we have only published right now, half of what I've been told about him. And to answer your question,
00:18:56.500 after we've published a story, even more has come out, um, of people giving us advice,
00:19:04.180 telling us where to look for documents. Uh, and that's what I'm spending my day on today is digging
00:19:09.940 deeper into this story to make sure that we do not leave any stone unturned. And it's not just
00:19:15.300 Thomas keeper. I mean, we're doing this for every politician, whether they're conservative or liberal.
00:19:20.180 If this many people come forward with claims of abuse, it needs to be investigated. And the fact
00:19:27.140 that the liberal, maybe the liberal party is doing it behind closed doors right now. Maybe they're taking,
00:19:31.940 I mean, this took me weeks to put together. So maybe the liberal party is realizing right now that
00:19:37.700 they're underwater and they need to start swimming, uh, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
00:19:42.580 I'm not one to usually do that with the liberal party, but in this case, the claims are so, so
00:19:48.260 disturbing. And frankly, it sounds crazy that a politician who has a past like this allegedly would
00:19:56.420 ever think that they could run for public office. That it wouldn't catch up on them. I mean, that kind
00:20:00.980 of shows that maybe, maybe the arrogance, uh, that someone like this doesn't think they could get
00:20:05.620 caught. Um, to, to me, it's, it's very concerning that the liberal party, you know, the party that if
00:20:10.420 we believe the polls are set to win the next election set to form government, uh, you know,
00:20:15.300 our prime minister will remain a liberal for a fourth term. And this is the kind of people that he
00:20:20.580 chooses to, that Mark Carney chooses to have on his team to associate with, to have in caucus. I mean,
00:20:26.340 this, this shows a lot of red flags, uh, to Canadians about who, who exactly we're dealing
00:20:31.780 with, uh, the kind of people that we're dealing with. Um, really tremendous reporting, um, Kian.
00:20:36.820 So we encourage everyone to head on over to JunoNews.com where you can read the story. Please
00:20:40.900 subscribe to JunoNews and help support independent journalists like Kian, like myself. You know, this
00:20:47.060 is the kind of reporting that the legacy media won't do, right? The Globe and Mail is focused on fake
00:20:51.540 news stories like a CSIS agent speaking out of turn, pretending that somehow Indian interference,
00:20:57.380 uh, helped Pierre Polyev get elected as conservative leader back in 2022, a complete ridiculous story,
00:21:02.580 right? Um, meanwhile, independent journalists like Kian are doing the real work, uh, doing the digging 0.69
00:21:07.620 and trying to expose the truth about this liberal party. Um, Kian, any, any final thoughts on the story?
00:21:13.060 Yeah. I'll just say, you know, I, I offered publicly to the mainstream media and all other media
00:21:18.580 organizations. I'll connect you with my sources. I'll show my work. Uh, if you want to cover the
00:21:24.020 story as well from a different angle, even from the same angle so that this is seen far and wide,
00:21:28.900 I'm happy to help facilitate that. So far, no response. You know, we published it yesterday
00:21:34.100 afternoon and it's tomorrow morning now. So we'll see what happens, but, uh, I'm less interested in
00:21:40.100 what the CBC thinks of this. And I'm more interested in what Mark Carney thinks about this. Mark Carney
00:21:45.540 needs to personally answer for this candidate that he has agreed to join his ticket. Uh, and you know,
00:21:53.940 when, when there's so many allegations of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and verbal abuse, all from,
00:22:00.500 you know, from many different people, over half a dozen eyewitness sources, um, Mark Carney needs to
00:22:06.980 answer for that. And, uh, you know, I get Thomas keeper. He's going to run, he's going to hide. Mark Carney
00:22:13.700 does not have that luxury. He needs to be held to account. Uh, and we're, we're going to try,
00:22:19.060 you know, we're going to try to ask Mark about Thomas keeper. And we hope that frankly, the,
00:22:24.100 the, the rest of the national media does the same. Well, it, it, it adds to a long list of questions
00:22:29.780 that we have for Mr. Carney. Let's put it that way. He has not yet answered so many of the questions
00:22:34.420 that Canadians demand to know. And I guess we'll just have to add Thomas keeper's name to the list of
00:22:39.460 questions that hopefully we'll get to ask him on this election campaign. Well, Key and Bexy,
00:22:43.380 thank you so much for all your hard work, all your journalism, uh, keep digging. We'll look forward
00:22:47.060 to, uh, what you find next. Thank you so much. Thanks, Candace. All right, folks. Thanks so much
00:22:52.340 for joining us. It's all the time we have for today. We'll be back again tomorrow with all the
00:22:55.620 news from Candace Malcolm. This is the Candace Malcolm show. Thank you. And God bless.