Glenn Beck is joined by Texas Lt. Gov. Rick Perry to discuss the immigration crisis in his home state, and to discuss why he thinks Joe Biden should be the next president of the United States. Glenn also talks about why he doesn t want to vote for Donald Trump.
00:01:25.620And then a very heartfelt plea to the audience that of people who disagree with me to call in and talk to me about why you would vote for Biden.
00:16:51.920This is exactly the kind of stuff that Nikki Haley allowed to happen in her own camp.
00:17:04.400She knew really bad organizations and funds that fund the Democratic Party in all kinds of ways went to her and said, look, we'll fund you.
00:18:33.540They are going full throttle into darkness.
00:18:38.740Well, for the last 10 years, Patriot Mobile has been around, and they have offered nationwide coverage for wireless phones and everything else with access to all three of the major networks, equipping you with the same coverage you've always had.
00:18:52.680But you're going to get a better price, better service, and without sending your money to leftist causes.
00:20:24.640There's a couple of things that we should talk about in the meantime.
00:20:31.680One, Donald Trump won handily last night.
00:20:35.260It was interesting to see how the polls started to come out.
00:20:39.260And they always say, look, there are these counties that haven't yet come in, and they're going to be heavy Haley, or they're going to be heavy, you know, Trump.
00:20:48.300It didn't say that CBS, which is the only, for some reason, the only thing I could get yesterday, was...
00:33:57.640I wanted to make sure that he was, uh, somebody that, you know, actually was credible.
00:34:02.920He worked for the Howie Carr show, Barstool Sports.
00:34:05.760Uh, in fact, the, uh, police up in Maine, uh, use some of his reporting as a training manual for uncovering this particular problem, uh, up in Maine.
00:34:17.560So thanks for the tip to our listener that called in yesterday.
00:34:20.760Steve Robinson is on with us now from the main wire.com.
00:34:30.600Yeah, so the, the reporting from our perspective really began with the leak of a department of homeland security memo.
00:34:39.200It was a picture of an email that had been sent around.
00:34:42.820And what it said was that there were hundreds, over 800, uh, Chinese owned illegal marijuana cultivation sites operating within the United States.
00:34:51.540And it specified that there were more than 270 of these sites operating in Maine.
00:34:56.500And that came as a surprise to me as a lifelong Mainer, uh, someone who covers Maine politics.
00:35:01.100I'd heard some about it, but 270 seemed like a big number.
00:35:04.280Um, so after that initial story came out, we decided that we were going to start reviewing public records, interviewing people in the community and try to see if we could find these locations and really flesh out this story.
00:35:15.340And so I actually called a buddy of mine, uh, in the central part of the state and asked him about it.
00:35:21.320Uh, he's an electrician and he's plugged in with this and he said, oh yeah, it's a big problem.
00:35:25.180There's, there's seven of these in our hometown.
00:35:27.460Um, and so I went to Dexter where I grew up and I went around and I saw these sites and, you know, you can, you can smell them.
00:35:33.660And there's other indications based on the property records, the tax records, electrical permit records, where you can put together that it's a pretty big, sophisticated marijuana grow without even having to look inside of it.
00:35:45.980Uh, and then you can look and ask the town, uh, you know, as, have you guys approved any marijuana, uh, grow sites for the most part, the local police, uh, the county sheriffs, the state police, they know where these locations are.
00:35:58.220Uh, but for some reason, uh, even as this network has proliferated across rural Maine over the last three years, uh, there really hasn't been a tremendous amount of law enforcement activity around them.
00:36:09.660Uh, now that's kind of starting to change.
00:36:11.760There's been about eight or nine busts of these facilities and you're talking about places where they're growing a thousand, two thousand, three thousand marijuana plants and trafficking that typically out of, uh, Maine to places where there are still black markets.
00:36:26.800And they can get a higher value for it.
00:36:28.500Um, but it's a, it's a vast, uh, network, a vast organized crime network that is taking advantage of rural Maine, buying up houses that middle-class families could be living in using tremendous amounts of electricity, which increases prices for the rest of Maine and generally undermining the quality of life for people in the state.
00:36:48.660So this is happening over six different counties in Maine, uh, and there, these, these sites are purchased by whom are they, are they Chinese nationals or do they hire an American to be the name on the, on the title?
00:37:08.920Uh, so none of them, uh, none of them that I've found have an American name on the deed.
00:37:14.400Uh, most of them, uh, according to the department of Homeland security, they believe that the sites are operated by, uh, individuals who are president in the United States illegally.
00:37:24.200Uh, some of them, wait, wait, wait, illegally or legally.
00:37:30.300They have, they do not have authorization to be here in the United States.
00:37:33.040And I'll say that the, the rise of this network in Maine has corresponded with unprecedented levels of, uh, you know, encounters of Chinese nationals at the Southern border, according to DHS data.
00:37:44.240Um, so there's, there's every reason to believe that the people who are here are, uh, operating these sites are here illegally.
00:37:50.480The, uh, Chinese individuals who own these sites are predominantly from Brooklyn and Quincy, Massachusetts.
00:37:57.240Uh, and whether they have legal status or not, it's hard to discern because, uh, New York and Massachusetts will both give a driver's license to an illegal alien, regardless of their citizenship status.
00:38:15.820Uh, they're, they're, they operate really apart from the community.
00:38:20.100They're, they're often never seen outside of the houses.
00:38:22.820Uh, they'll go to grow shops in the areas where they'll, um, show a picture of the product that they want on their phone, uh, and indicate that that's what they want, uh, for supplies because they're spending a lot of money at the grow shops.
00:38:37.060Uh, for the most part, they have enough English to get by, uh, if they're ever questioned by law enforcement or a code enforcement officer, uh, we've heard stories about, uh, their ability to speak English rapidly going away when they think that they're coming under scrutiny.
00:38:49.800Uh, at a recent bust in, uh, Machias, Maine, that was spearheaded by the Machias police department and the Washington County Sheriff's office, which is, uh, you know, it's one of the most rural counties in Maine.
00:39:01.180Uh, law enforcement uncovered a, uh, a, uh, PRC passport to Malaysian passports, an airplane ticket that showed a recent arrival from, uh, the People's Republic of China.
00:39:13.120Uh, and they also found close to 3000 pot plants in nine different grow rooms.
00:39:18.640Uh, and they found, uh, in the meter box, uh, because of course these places need tremendous amounts of power.
00:39:24.760They found that the meter box had been, uh, rewired by someone with a sophisticated understanding of electrical engineering.
00:39:31.720So as to steal power from the power grid and the power company doesn't really know exactly, or hasn't told law enforcement how much power was being stolen or for how long, but their best guess is tens of thousands of dollars worth of electricity was stolen.
00:39:45.620Uh, and used to create a tremendous amount of marijuana, uh, and they know that they were using through the meter 10,000 kilowatt hours a month in addition to whatever they were stealing.
00:39:56.860So across the board, the, the impact of these sites, this operation on the state is not doing anything good for the people of Maine.
00:40:05.700And there's also a quite a bit of evidence that the, the people who are operating these sites are victims of human trafficking.
00:40:12.280The three individuals who were managing the grow and Machias said that they were paid between a thousand and $2,000 a month, uh, for their work, managing that grow.
00:40:23.300So why is this not being picked up by the state?
00:40:26.560Why is nobody doing anything about it?
00:40:37.960Uh, the governor of the state, Janet Mills has been completely silent on this as has her appointed police commissioner, the congressional delegation.
00:40:46.840When the original story broke, all four of them sent a letter to, uh, attorney general Merrick Garland, asking him to take a look at this.
00:40:56.100Uh, a few months later, Senator Susan Collins sent a letter highlighting the main wires reporting to the U S attorney of Maine.
00:41:02.420There's some indication that she might be taking, uh, you know, uh, hearing evidence from law enforcement about, uh, developing a possible strategy for this.
00:41:11.020But I think that the real answer is, is twofold, Glenn.
00:41:14.180It's, uh, when the, when the people of Maine voted in 2016 in favor of legalizing marijuana and in 2020 brought out the regulatory framework, that was a signal to law enforcement.
00:41:25.140That marijuana was no longer a law enforcement priority, that they should be focusing on fentanyl.
00:41:30.160So when they hear about a marijuana grow, they kind of just say, oh, all right, well, it's not really a problem.
00:41:34.980But the other one is, uh, a fear of racism.
00:41:38.280There's a tremendous amount of concern amongst law enforcement, uh, amongst the power companies, regulators, anybody, that there'll be a perception that they singled out somebody based on their race, their ethnicity, their nationality.
00:41:51.760Uh, and that has hampered law enforcement's ability to deal with, uh, a criminal network that is operating with the, uh, tacit, if not explicit blessing of the communist party of China.
00:42:06.860According to the department of Homeland security, a lot of the money is going right back to PRC and money does not flow back to mainland China without, uh, the approval of, uh, people in the government there.
00:42:17.500The money's also being used to finance other activities, according to the feds, like human trafficking, like, uh, um, uh, narcotics trafficking as well.
00:42:27.400That's been harder for us to pin down in the course of our investigation because you fentanyl doesn't, isn't quite as smelly as marijuana is.
00:42:35.700Uh, but the, the Homeland security does believe that they're engaged in narcotics trafficking and, and like any, any criminal organization that's running rackets,
00:42:43.380why wouldn't they expand and diversify if they already have a network, uh, set up along the I-95 corridor to move product up and down and distribute it to where they can sell it to customers.
00:42:55.360I can't, I can't believe, I mean, cause this is happening in other States.