The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1592 - Bryan Fogel

00:00:02.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:16.000 Good to see you again, buddy.

00:00:17.000 Yeah, man.

00:00:17.000 This is good to be in Austin.

00:00:19.000 I was just here yesterday with Jordan Burroughs, Olympic gold medalist in wrestling, and we discussed Icarus, and he told me that he actually had to shut it off.

00:00:28.000 Here, I'll let you do that, because it's very clunky.

00:00:31.000 He told me he had to shut it off.

00:00:32.000 He couldn't handle it, because he's an Olympic gold medalist in wrestling, and he has faced people that he believes were cheating, and particularly Russians, and it drove him crazy.

00:00:41.000 So he was that pissed off that he literally...

00:00:44.000 What's his livelihood?

00:00:46.000 I mean, it's everything.

00:00:46.000 He's an Olympic gold medalist, he's a four-time world champion, and he's convinced that he had to wrestle against people that were cheating, particularly Russians.

00:00:54.000 You know, I've gotten a bunch of messages since that film came out from other Olympic athletes, and it's been either a mix of like, hey man, thank you so much, or it's just like, not mad at me, just like, 0.99

00:01:09.000 what the fuck? 0.95

00:01:11.000 And then I was actually invited. 1.00

00:01:17.000 It was the bobsled team when they actually disqualified the Russian bobsled team.

00:01:24.000 And the U.S. bobsled team was then going to get the third place medal.

00:01:31.000 They invited me to the ceremony.

00:01:32.000 I didn't go, but it was crazy.

00:01:37.000 Jordan said that, I guess, in 2020 and 2024, the Russians can't fly a flag.

00:01:48.000 They can't be represented. 0.92

00:01:51.000 They have to be individual athletes from Russia.

00:01:54.000 At the Olympics in 2020 and Tokyo, it's 2021 now, and then 2024, those Olympics, you can't have a Russian flag.

00:02:05.000 Because of what happened that you exposed in your documentary.

00:02:10.000 Well, that's true.

00:02:12.000 However, if you follow the story post-Icarus with Rychenkov, is Russia was supposed to turn over this LIMS data, which was this laboratory information management system data, in order to be reinstated into world sport.

00:02:32.000 That was part of the WADA requirements.

00:02:36.000 And they never basically turned it over.

00:02:41.000 So WADA basically had to go after them, go after them, go after them.

00:02:45.000 They reinstate them without turning over the data.

00:02:49.000 Then they turn over the data.

00:02:50.000 This is now...

00:02:52.000 December of 2019, or January.

00:02:56.000 It was not that long ago, about a year ago.

00:02:58.000 And when they turn over the data, they had literally manipulated all the data.

00:03:04.000 And they had already got a copy of it from Rychenkov and another guy in the lab.

00:03:08.000 And they literally put notes into this LIMS data, basically trying to frame Rychenkov for like money laundering and taking bribes and all this shit.

00:03:17.000 But WADA knew that this wasn't legitimate because they had the real databases already.

00:03:24.000 So they go and they say, okay, now Russia's banned for another four years, right?

00:03:30.000 And in the meantime, Russia is putting out in the media that Rechenkov has tried to commit suicide.

00:03:36.000 Because of, like, the exposure that he was apparently, you know, taking bribes for money, which he wasn't, Russia denies it again, and then it goes to the court of arbitration for sport.

00:03:48.000 This is literally just like a couple months ago.

00:03:51.000 So they were supposed to be facing another four-year total ban.

00:03:56.000 That's what WADA was recommending.

00:03:58.000 The entire federation is gone.

00:04:00.000 And the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which is corrupt as hell, basically knocks it down to two years instead of four years, and then basically does what they did in the 2018 Olympics, which is, okay, any Russian athlete who hasn't tested positive can compete,

00:04:15.000 but they can't compete under their country's flag.

00:04:18.000 But if you saw Icarus...

00:04:20.000 We're good to go.

00:04:42.000 Under protection, but the guy just got Asylum.

00:04:46.000 He got Asylum here, right?

00:04:47.000 He got Asylum here.

00:04:48.000 You don't have to wear the headphones.

00:04:49.000 Are they uncomfortable?

00:04:51.000 No, they just kind of were like echoing a lot.

00:04:53.000 If there's a way to maybe take down the reverb on them or something, I like them.

00:04:58.000 Echoing?

00:04:58.000 Really?

00:04:59.000 Do you hear echo?

00:05:00.000 There's a volume control.

00:05:01.000 Is that better?

00:05:02.000 Yeah, I think that's better.

00:05:03.000 So Rechenkov has got Asylum here in America?

00:05:06.000 Yeah, so he's got asylum here in America, and that story is crazy, too.

00:05:13.000 So, you know, in Icarus, you see this scene where basically, like, I see him off at the airport.

00:05:21.000 And that was July of 2016. So we keep, you know, making the film.

00:05:27.000 The film comes out August 2017. And then five months later, essentially because of the film, the IOC and their reasoned decision comes forward and bans Russia.

00:05:40.000 And they cite Icarus as one of their main reasons for doing that.

00:05:45.000 In the meantime, Rechenkov is literally trying to get political asylum.

00:05:52.000 And on the day of his asylum hearing, this was now a year and a half, two years ago.

00:06:01.000 I need to get with his lawyers to get the exact date.

00:06:05.000 Russia files drug trafficking charges against him in Russia on the actual day that he's supposed to go in for his asylum hearing.

00:06:15.000 So what this means is that Russia had a mole Within the U.S. immigration system, knowing that this was the day that Rechenko was supposed to get his asylum.

00:06:28.000 And under international law, anybody who's been charged with drug trafficking, right, is basically immediately ineligible for asylum.

00:06:38.000 So there's like a couple of like, you know, things that you can be charged for that basically makes it you can't get asylum.

00:06:45.000 So they charge them with drug trafficking.

00:06:47.000 And the court then gets kicked out, and it takes him another year and a half, two years to get his asylum.

00:06:54.000 And he finally just got his asylum like four months ago, something like that.

00:07:00.000 Wow.

00:07:03.000 Crazy.

00:07:04.000 But he's still in hiding, right? 0.99

00:07:05.000 Because he's got to worry about being assassinated.

00:07:08.000 Oh, yeah.

00:07:08.000 I mean, he's still in hiding.

00:07:10.000 I mean, I've been able to keep in touch with a guy here and there through, like, basically through the lawyers, and then they'll arrange through the security, and then we'll, you know, find an encrypted way to, like, have a conversation.

00:07:24.000 And last time I spoke to him was about Two months ago, and, you know, the conversation always goes like, hey, Gregory, how are you?

00:07:34.000 And he goes, I'm alive.

00:07:37.000 And I go, wow, that's great, you know?

00:07:41.000 And he goes, I'm like, so how are you doing?

00:07:43.000 He's like, Brian, Brian, I have to tell you.

00:07:45.000 He's like, you know, you saved my life.

00:07:49.000 And, I mean, it's heavy.

00:07:54.000 It's really heavy.

00:07:55.000 I mean, we've tried for three years now to try to get him a dog because, you know, he loves dogs and he lives by himself and, you know, he really doesn't have communication with the outside world.

00:08:09.000 My understanding is that he'll go out, you know, for like an hour a day for a walk with like I don't know where he lives.

00:08:18.000 I don't have his phone number.

00:08:21.000 But his security doesn't want him to have a dog because if he has a dog that means he has to go outside and he's got to walk the dog.

00:08:32.000 He's not really able to communicate with his family.

00:08:35.000 He hasn't seen his family for four years now.

00:08:39.000 His wife and his kids are back in Russia.

00:08:43.000 So this has been a crazy cost for blowing the whistle.

00:08:49.000 Didn't they take his wife and his children, didn't they take their family home away?

00:08:55.000 Well, after he got here and then all this started to unfold, what I was told is that they basically like froze the assets of the family.

00:09:08.000 He had a dacha, which is like a summer home.

00:09:12.000 And apparently they seized that and they seized bank accounts and they brought in the family to interrogate him and they took their passports.

00:09:26.000 From what I've heard is that his kids have their passports back.

00:09:35.000 And the wife does too. 0.97

00:09:38.000 But, you know, you can make the logical conclusion that they're hoping that they travel, because if they then go and see Gregory, right, they're going to be able to find him.

00:09:55.000 But, you know, to my knowledge, the family has been pretty much left alone.

00:10:01.000 It was bad for a little bit, but over the last few years, I've heard that they're okay.

00:10:12.000 None of the family wants to come, because even if they do, then that means that their lives are now in isolation, in hiding.

00:10:25.000 So for them to come and basically visit Gregory or to come and move to be with him, because he could technically get his wife here now that he has asylum, But then her life is going to be in isolation,

00:10:42.000 and she's got family back in Russia, so it's complicated.

00:10:49.000 And this goes on for the rest of his life.

00:10:51.000 Well, I mean, arguably for the rest of his life.

00:10:54.000 I mean, when you look at, you know, Michael Sherwitz of the New York Times did a story, I don't remember, it was probably about a year ago, and he was looking at all these kind of like murders that...

00:11:08.000 That were tied to Putin and Russia.

00:11:13.000 And one of the stories that he came out with was basically this guy who was living in the Ukraine.

00:11:19.000 He was working for the gas company, right?

00:11:23.000 And he, I can't remember if he, it was an attempted murder or no, the guy gets killed and they catch the guy, the assassin who goes to kill him.

00:11:35.000 And they pulled him up on trial.

00:11:37.000 And when they catch this assassin, apparently he's got a piece of paper on him.

00:11:42.000 It's got a list of names, right?

00:11:45.000 Of like, basically like, you know, like, kill names.

00:11:49.000 And this guy who they arrest, and I know I'm botching the story a little bit, and you can go back.

00:11:54.000 It was in, you know, part of the New York Times Daily.

00:11:59.000 And this guy that they go and arrest basically goes, yes, I've been hired. 0.99

00:12:07.000 I don't know why, but my job is basically to kill these people.

00:12:11.000 So they start going through the list, and none of these people are really known.

00:12:17.000 It turns out that the guy that he had been hired to kill in the Ukraine, who was now living like a normal life in the Ukraine, He had apparently helped broker weapons deal to the Chechens, right? 0.98

00:12:32.000 And this was like, whatever, 15 years ago.

00:12:37.000 And here, this guy's living this quiet life in the Ukraine, working for the power company.

00:12:43.000 And 12 years later, they come and get him.

00:12:45.000 I mean, you look at the case of Skirpel, you know, the guy that they poisoned with Novichok a few years in Salisbury.

00:12:51.000 That was another case where, you know, the guy had...

00:12:54.000 That was in England, right?

00:12:55.000 Yeah, that was in England.

00:12:56.000 The guy had been, you know, out of sight, out of mind for 15 years.

00:13:02.000 You look at even the poisoning of Alexander Lithonanko in 2006. Well, at the time that they actually poisoned Lithonanko with polonium, We're good to go.

00:13:26.000 Essentially that, you know, they don't forget and there's just, you know, a list and when they feel that they can strike, they do.

00:13:40.000 One of the guys I've spoke to a lot who have become a good friend is Bill Browder, you know, who wrote Red Notice.

00:13:47.000 Have you read Bill's book?

00:13:49.000 No.

00:13:50.000 So, crazy.

00:13:52.000 So, Bill was running this thing called the Hermitage Fund in Russia.

00:13:58.000 And he was American, but his parents were actually members of a Communist Party.

00:14:05.000 And he sets up an investment fund in Russia during the, you know, as everything's kind of becoming whatever it is, open, right?

00:14:17.000 And the fund is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into Russia.

00:14:21.000 And his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, basically uncovers this Russian money laundering fraud of something like 200 to 300 million dollars that the government, that basically Putin, you know,

00:14:37.000 was behind, that had stolen this money.

00:14:39.000 And so Magnitsky basically tries to bring this forward.

00:14:43.000 They murder Magnitsky.

00:14:45.000 And Bill Browder has now spent the last, you know, 10 years of his life fighting for justice for Magnitsky's death, and the way that he's done it is he formed this Magnitsky Act, and the United States has it,

00:15:01.000 Canada has it, countries all over Europe has it, and they've now frozen hundreds and hundreds of millions of Russian, basically, assets tied to, like, you know, It's illegal, this, that, and the other.

00:15:15.000 And Browder apparently is the number one on the kill list, and he lives in London, but what is at dispute is whether or not it's Browder or whether it's Gregory Rechenkov.

00:15:29.000 And according to intelligence agencies, these guys kind of flip places depending on the moment.

00:15:39.000 But Rechenkov is certainly a high-value asset.

00:15:47.000 The stress on that guy must be incredible.

00:15:51.000 I don't really know how he does it because he's such a...

00:16:00.000 I mean, the guy that you see in the movie, that is who this guy is.

00:16:07.000 He's so lighthearted.

00:16:09.000 He's always singing like Donna Summer. 0.99

00:16:13.000 I mean, he's a goof. 0.79

00:16:17.000 And yet, through all this, he remains this incredible optimist. 0.98

00:16:24.000 I've got to see him Two times in, I guess, the last three, four years.

00:16:34.000 One was he had a 60th birthday, and his security and lawyers and all this stuff arranged this secret birthday party for him.

00:16:44.000 And I went to go visit him, and everybody who had helped and worked with him were there in this, you know, undisclosed location.

00:16:52.000 I mean, they literally like blindfolded me.

00:16:54.000 I mean, it was absurd.

00:16:56.000 And he was so just happy.

00:17:00.000 I think he is this guy who goes that every day that he is alive, in his mind, is another day that he was going to be dead.

00:17:15.000 And so I think it's hard to understand, but he just has a different way of looking at life, I think, than I do, than you do, than like 99.9% of people on the planet do.

00:17:28.000 He wakes up in the morning and goes...

00:17:32.000 I should be dead.

00:17:34.000 And so I think he just lives with a different gratitude set.

00:17:42.000 But what does a guy do?

00:17:44.000 What does he do?

00:17:45.000 He just hangs around.

00:17:47.000 So I guess the government takes care of him?

00:17:49.000 They give him food?

00:17:50.000 And he's just protected by guards all the time?

00:17:53.000 Well, that's become a little bit complicated because, you know, there's a combination of private security and government, but, you know, government only will...

00:18:09.000 We should stop right here and I should explain to people that don't know what we're talking about.

00:18:13.000 That Gregory was the guy who, in your documentary, you did a race.

00:18:20.000 You tried to do an Icarus, which is an amazing documentary if you haven't seen it.

00:18:23.000 I recommend it highly.

00:18:25.000 You did a race clean and then you were going to do a race all juiced up.

00:18:29.000 And you went to him and he was the head of the Russian Anti-Doping Federation.

00:18:33.000 Is that what it is?

00:18:34.000 Yeah, so Gregory Rechenkov, basically the premise was I felt that the entire doping system in sport was a fraud.

00:18:47.000 And the reason why I had this belief was I had followed Lance Armstrong my whole life.

00:18:54.000 The guy confesses in 2013, but if you had actually followed that story, it's kind of like what you're saying about Russia's ban from the Olympics, but they're not really banned and they just can't wear their outfit.

00:19:07.000 Well, in the case of Lance, well, yeah, he confessed to doping, but the guy to this day never was actually caught in And here's this guy who passed like, I don't know, five, six hundred tests.

00:19:20.000 So as he confesses, and I'd been a cycling fan, a lifelong cyclist, I'm going, wait, wait, wait.

00:19:29.000 You caught the guy based on a criminal investigation, but you didn't catch him based on the science.

00:19:34.000 And if you can't catch the most tested athlete on planet Earth, well, what does this mean for every other athlete on planet Earth?

00:19:43.000 And so the idea was that I was going to do like a supersize me in the world of sports.

00:19:51.000 I was going to race clean, and then the next year I was going to dope the hell out of myself, take testosterone, HGH, EPO, I mean, HCG. I was up to do anything.

00:20:04.000 I mean, I was literally like injecting myself with like, you know, it was like 10 syringes a day. 1.00

00:20:11.000 It was just so stupid. 0.99

00:20:12.000 And then literally like I'm going to get a blood test to like build my biological passport. 1.00

00:20:18.000 To, like, test my hematocrit.

00:20:20.000 So, like, every other week, I'm literally going to get my blood drawn.

00:20:23.000 I'm pissing to, like, you know, build, like, my whole steroid profile to basically try to evade testing.

00:20:30.000 So, I get connected to this guy, Gregory Rutchenkov.

00:20:34.000 And at the time, he's running RUSADA, which is the—I'm sorry, the WADA lab, the World Anti-Doping Lab— For Moscow, which is like the third largest, you know, anti-doping lab in the world at the time.

00:20:49.000 This is now 2014, 2015. And Gregory basically is like, yes, I'll help you dope, and I'll help you evade testing, and I'll basically show you how you can game the system.

00:21:02.000 And I'm like...

00:21:04.000 This is nuts!

00:21:06.000 Like, the guy who just did all the testing for the Sochi Olympics and is running the entire anti-doping lab in Russia is basically gonna, like, test my samples and show me how to cheat?

00:21:18.000 Like, what's going on here?

00:21:21.000 So the two of us start working.

00:21:23.000 He comes to the United States.

00:21:25.000 He comes to Los Angeles.

00:21:26.000 We have a great time.

00:21:28.000 I then go do this next race completely doped out of my mind.

00:21:32.000 And I'm like taking blood samples.

00:21:34.000 I'm taking urine.

00:21:35.000 And right after this race, I hop on a plane.

00:21:37.000 I go to Moscow and I'm like hanging out with Gregory for like a month.

00:21:42.000 And he takes all my samples into the lab.

00:21:45.000 And there was this investigation already going on and I was like, okay, something's off here.

00:21:50.000 And so I spend this month in Russia and I come back.

00:21:53.000 What was the investigation that was already going on?

00:22:02.000 WADA releases in the...

00:22:04.000 I can't remember exactly when it was.

00:22:06.000 It was like early...

00:22:07.000 March of 2015, something like that.

00:22:12.000 The World Anti-Doping Agency had already been investigating the Moscow Laboratory.

00:22:17.000 And they come out with this...

00:22:21.000 Report that they believe that Gregory Rechenkov is like the mastermind of this state-sponsored doping operation.

00:22:30.000 And they've got a bunch of evidence, but they had no idea.

00:22:34.000 It was like, I mean, they had like, literally like the tip of a pinky.

00:22:40.000 And the size of the scandal was basically, you know, like an entire body.

00:22:47.000 I mean, they literally just had the tip of the pinky.

00:22:49.000 But the tip of the pinky was so bad that they shut down the Moscow lab.

00:22:56.000 Gregory is now the fall guy.

00:22:57.000 He's forced to resign.

00:23:00.000 And Putin's basically on television going like, look, look, whatever you want to believe, none of this is true.

00:23:08.000 We've never doped.

00:23:09.000 We don't cheat.

00:23:10.000 These are all lies.

00:23:11.000 Oh, and by the way, he says, anybody who is responsible for this crime We'll be punished.

00:23:22.000 So, basically, Putin is literally on television going, Gregory Rechenkov is going under the bus.

00:23:30.000 And Gregory is in Moscow, and we had, you know, been working together.

00:23:34.000 He calls me up, and he's like, Brian, Brian, I need to escape.

00:23:38.000 And I'm like, okay, when?

00:23:41.000 He's like, now.

00:23:42.000 I need to leave now.

00:23:43.000 And I'm like, now, like, as in now?

00:23:48.000 He's like, yes, yes, I need a flight now.

00:23:51.000 And I'm literally sitting there on Skype and I start doing a search for Moscow, Los Angeles.

00:23:58.000 And I'm like, well, there's a flight in like 12 hours.

00:24:05.000 And he's like, okay.

00:24:07.000 I'm like, you want me to book that flight?

00:24:09.000 He's like, yes, book the flight.

00:24:10.000 If I put it on my credit card, well, no, you'll have to put it on your credit card. 0.74

00:24:14.000 So I literally booked this flight, put it on my credit card, and a day later, here's Gregory in Los Angeles, and about a month into him being in L.A., and, you know, shit's going down in Russia, I'm like, look, man, you gotta tell me what happened.

00:24:32.000 And he opens up, and...

00:24:37.000 You know, and that was Icarus.

00:24:39.000 I mean, it was...

00:24:40.000 It's amazing.

00:24:41.000 It was crazy.

00:24:42.000 The way it unfolded in the documentary, it couldn't have been written better.

00:24:49.000 Like, if it was a drama, if it was a scripted drama, it could not have been written better.

00:24:53.000 And the fact that it was all just...

00:24:55.000 Circumstance.

00:24:56.000 Just all happened.

00:24:57.000 All happened at the right time.

00:24:59.000 It's an amazing documentary.

00:25:01.000 And for a person like Jordan Burroughs, who was here yesterday, it was too much.

00:25:06.000 He literally had to shut it off.

00:25:07.000 I convinced him to watch the rest of it.

00:25:10.000 I go, you have to.

00:25:11.000 I go, it's so good.

00:25:12.000 It's so crazy.

00:25:14.000 It's one of these things where I think if you were a professional athlete or a lover of sport...

00:25:24.000 It changes your whole perception because I think we were able to accept whatever.

00:25:31.000 Lance Armstrong cheated, but we can still look at Lance and go, okay, the guy did win seven Tour de France's.

00:25:38.000 The guy, everybody else was cheating.

00:25:41.000 They were all cheating. 0.99

00:25:43.000 And so in my mind, you know, I might catch shit for this. 0.99

00:25:47.000 In my mind, Lance won fair and square. 0.99

00:25:50.000 Everybody was cheating.

00:25:52.000 All of his teammates were cheating.

00:25:54.000 Everybody that I talked to admitted to cheating.

00:25:57.000 And the funny thing is, all the guys who raced with Lance during that generation, and I mean basically all of them, you go and talk to them, and this is what half of Icarus was before I pivoted,

00:26:13.000 was like, did Lance win fairly?

00:26:15.000 And they're like...

00:26:17.000 Yes.

00:26:18.000 Did he win seven Tour de France's?

00:26:20.000 Yes.

00:26:21.000 Was he a cheater?

00:26:22.000 Yes.

00:26:23.000 Were you a cheater?

00:26:24.000 Yes.

00:26:25.000 Is Lance the greatest cyclist to ever live?

00:26:27.000 Yes.

00:26:28.000 And I went, alright, that's enough for me.

00:26:30.000 I mean, you know, the guy, you got second place, third place, fourth place, fifth place, tenth place, it was all going like, hey, the guy won?

00:26:37.000 And he won fair and square?

00:26:38.000 I go, alright, Lance is redeemed.

00:26:40.000 You know?

00:26:42.000 But...

00:26:42.000 Not to validate any of the other stuff that he did and lawsuits and all that stuff.

00:26:48.000 That's where it all went sideways for most people.

00:26:51.000 That's where it went sideways.

00:26:52.000 Because everybody knows that everybody cheated.

00:26:54.000 The general public is aware that cycling is a dirty sport.

00:26:57.000 And they're also aware that if you take...

00:27:00.000 Most people know that if you take away the gold medals or any medal from Lance and you try to find someone down the line who didn't test positive, you have to get to 18th place.

00:27:12.000 Or a hundredth place.

00:27:14.000 It's crazy.

00:27:15.000 And that was kind of Lance's argument all along. 0.99

00:27:20.000 The lawsuits were the fucked up part. 0.96

00:27:22.000 Which is, yeah, that he basically became the scapegoat for a broken system. 0.94

00:27:27.000 But it was, and I think Lance would tell you the same thing, I mean, it was the way that he handled it.

00:27:35.000 That got him in trouble and that he never knew when to say when.

00:27:40.000 And that breaking point was when Floyd Landis, the guy who had been his teammate in 2000 through many years of his career, wins the tour in 2006 and he gets caught for doping.

00:27:53.000 Denies it, denies it, denies it, and then he serves his suspension, comes back, and Lance has come out of retirement.

00:28:01.000 You know, the great hope, you know, because the cycling ratings, nobody gave two shits about cycling this second.

00:28:08.000 Lance retired, so he comes back, and Floyd is like, hey, man, I've been silent.

00:28:14.000 I never ratted you out.

00:28:16.000 I served my time. 1.00

00:28:19.000 Shit's really fucked up. 1.00

00:28:20.000 I'm broke. 1.00

00:28:21.000 Dude, let me on your team. 0.99

00:28:23.000 And Lance was like, no, bro, you're a doper. 0.89

00:28:28.000 And that is, I think, what was the start of the downfall.

00:28:40.000 But I think what's so shocking about About Icarus and the Russian doping scandal, and probably for your buddy who was a wrestler, is when you go, wait, wait.

00:28:55.000 Every sport?

00:28:57.000 Every Olympic medal?

00:28:59.000 Wait, they were...

00:29:00.000 What were they not doping in?

00:29:03.000 And Gregory's like, oh, well, we didn't dope the figure skaters.

00:29:08.000 I'm like, well, why not the figure skaters?

00:29:12.000 Because, you know, the testosterone and this, it makes the girls too big, too muscular. 1.00

00:29:17.000 And, you know, we found the fine motor skills were not as good with the steroids.

00:29:22.000 I'm like, well, okay, what else didn't you dope?

00:29:26.000 It's like, you know, just pretty much all of them, just the figure skaters.

00:29:30.000 Yeah.

00:29:30.000 So it was only figure skaters they didn't dope.

00:29:33.000 And apparently, um, I would have to go back and do my fact checking.

00:29:38.000 There was a few other, like, you know, like, um, I mean, I think, I mean, they were like even doping like the curdling team.

00:29:44.000 I mean, you know, it was.

00:29:46.000 It's like, you know, it was – I mean, you know, and he said, you know, how are you going to out-cheat us with Russian?

00:29:54.000 We're the best cheaters in the world.

00:29:56.000 But the way that they looked at it and the way that, you know, I think it's just that kind of Russian mentality is he never really saw it as really doing something wrong.

00:30:06.000 He saw it as that everybody else was cheating too.

00:30:11.000 And so this was just a game to out-cheat everyone else who was cheating.

00:30:14.000 And I think that that probably comes from the mentality of Russia before the fall of communism, which is this survival mechanism.

00:30:26.000 And even if you look at modern Russia...

00:30:30.000 Which, you know, I love Russians.

00:30:32.000 I love Russia.

00:30:34.000 Unfortunately, I don't think I can go back there, but I mean, I just love the culture.

00:30:39.000 Did you imagine going back there, how paranoid you'd be?

00:30:42.000 I heard a crazy story a couple years ago.

00:30:46.000 I'm not going to tell you who, so a buddy of mine who's Russian.

00:30:51.000 And he lives there, a well-known guy.

00:30:55.000 And he calls me up and he goes...

00:30:57.000 Brother, so I just got back to Moscow and I leave the airport and I'm in my car and I get pulled over by like an unmarked police car.

00:31:13.000 And I'm sitting there going, okay, what's the problem?

00:31:16.000 And the officer says, wait right here.

00:31:19.000 And he comes back to the car and he shows me a photo of you.

00:31:25.000 And he goes, do you know Brian Fogel?

00:31:30.000 And I said, well, yeah, I mean, I know him.

00:31:34.000 I mean, we're acquaintances.

00:31:36.000 We don't really know him that well.

00:31:38.000 We're Facebook friends.

00:31:40.000 And the guy gave me his card and told me that the next day that I had to show up for, like, basically a meeting, which I guess, you know, arguably was like the FSB. And my buddy told me that he, essentially because he's a pretty well-known,

00:32:00.000 successful guy there, basically made some calls and was like, what the fuck is going on? 0.93

00:32:07.000 And he didn't go in. 0.95

00:32:12.000 And they let it go.

00:32:15.000 But what was nuts is that it took him a year after that happened to tell me that that happened and I've been working on some other projects and it's interesting the story in Russia like if you speak Russian and you're like pulling archival news footage I mean there's been so much on like me and there's like

00:32:46.000 Crazy animations they've done with Rechenkov as they paint him as like this crazy person living in an asylum, working for the CIA. I mean, Putin himself, like a year, year and a half ago at his State of the Union address,

00:33:01.000 you know, said that Rechenkov was basically working for the CIA and that they had drugged him to get confessions from him and that the entire doping operation was a ploy.

00:33:14.000 To basically try to stop him from getting elected and basically played the election playbook that this was U.S. intelligence agencies trying to disparage Russia and that Rechenkov was a pawn.

00:33:30.000 I mean, it's that crazy.

00:33:33.000 That crazy.

00:33:35.000 So you're not going to Russia.

00:33:45.000 I mean, obviously, your documentary put more light on it than the initial investigation would have.

00:33:55.000 I mean, without your documentary, it never would have...

00:34:00.000 The amount of people that watch that documentary, I know it's in the millions.

00:34:04.000 And it was a huge hit for Netflix.

00:34:06.000 I was told that it's had 700 million views.

00:34:15.000 What?!

00:34:16.000 That's so crazy!

00:34:17.000 Well, it makes sense.

00:34:18.000 I mean, it's an international story.

00:34:20.000 When you're talking about sports and the Olympics, it's one of the biggest sources of national pride for these countries to win the Olympics, to win a gold medal in the Olympics, to have their team or their athlete win a gold medal in the Olympics, and to find out that Russia had rigged the entire Olympic Games for their athletes.

00:34:37.000 For decades!

00:34:40.000 Not just one or two Olympics, but all of them.

00:34:44.000 There's a story that when Russia went to the Olympics in Korea, I think it was 1988 Korean Games, they basically took a passenger cruise ship And they had all these wealthy Russians on the ship.

00:35:07.000 I mean, this is before the fall of Russia.

00:35:09.000 And Rechenkov was on the ship because all the athletes were on the ship, too.

00:35:14.000 And they had the whole doping lab set up on the ship.

00:35:18.000 And they literally, there was a coffee bar on the ship.

00:35:21.000 I think?

00:35:35.000 All the other Russians and they basically argued that it wasn't safe for the athletes living on, you know, in the Olympic Village, that the athletes were able to live on this ship during the 88 Korean Games and Russia like swept the games, United States came third and this was another one of Gregory's very,

00:35:53.000 very proud moments in his life.

00:35:59.000 Oh my god.

00:36:00.000 These stories just go on and on and on and on and on.

00:36:03.000 Jordan Burroughs thinks they're still doing it. 1.00

00:36:04.000 He lost to a Russian in 2016 in Rio and he said on the podcast yesterday he believes a Russian was on some shit. 0.98

00:36:12.000 Well, it's plausible because in the film there's this guy, Nikita Kamayev, who was running RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency. 0.99

00:36:27.000 He's murdered...

00:36:30.000 In February of 2016. This was Gregory's best friend.

00:36:35.000 And this was basically two months before we go to the New York Times with this story.

00:36:40.000 And that decision for us to ultimately go...

00:36:44.000 To the New York Times, which we had planned to do.

00:36:46.000 But once Nikita was dead, and we were going, okay, we got to protect our guy.

00:36:52.000 We got to bring this public.

00:36:54.000 We got to get him into protection.

00:36:57.000 You know, this is really, really dangerous.

00:37:01.000 And so Nikita was running Rusada.

00:37:04.000 And as Russia gets reinstated into sport, they bring on this new guy.

00:37:08.000 His name's Yuri Ghanos.

00:37:10.000 And Ghanos is like...

00:37:13.000 I don't work for the state.

00:37:14.000 I'm independent.

00:37:15.000 I'm not corrupt.

00:37:17.000 Nobody's going to corrupt me.

00:37:18.000 I'm going to say it how it is.

00:37:20.000 So over the last two years, Ghanos has been running Rusada.

00:37:24.000 And Russia's kept pulling their tricks. 0.62

00:37:27.000 And Ghanos has come out publicly going, this is what's going on.

00:37:34.000 So about three months ago, Ghanos was forced to resign.

00:37:41.000 They tried to frame him with money laundering and bribery. 0.97

00:37:47.000 You can go and follow this story because Ghanos was basically coming out and going, hey guys, things are still fucked up. 0.94

00:37:59.000 So who's running Rusada now? 0.95

00:38:01.000 Who knows?

00:38:06.000 The game continues.

00:38:08.000 If they're not doing what they did in Sochi, where they're taking the dirty urine out and replacing it with clean urine, how are they manipulating the testing results?

00:38:20.000 Well, I don't know, and I certainly wouldn't want to be, you know, leveling false accusations.

00:38:28.000 All that I know is that in, like, the two years that they shut down the laboratory, right, well, who was doing the testing then?

00:38:35.000 Like, you know, according to Gregory, it's like, you know, that there's been a, because it's been in total disarray, It's actually, you know, become easier in some ways.

00:38:52.000 On the other hand, I view it as just kind of a continual cat-and-mouse game.

00:38:57.000 You know, that, okay, great.

00:38:59.000 You know, you figure out how to test for one substance.

00:39:01.000 Well, there's another substance.

00:39:03.000 If it's not that, it's going to be, you know, genetic engineering and doping.

00:39:09.000 Yeah, I talked to Jordan about that yesterday.

00:39:11.000 I said, I'm really concerned about that.

00:39:13.000 I think that's the future.

00:39:14.000 And I think the United States is not going to do it, but I think China and Russia and some other places are going to do it. 0.92

00:39:19.000 They're going to do some genetic engineering on their athletes, and we're going to have a fucking giant team of LeBron Jameses, perfect athletes. 0.91

00:39:27.000 That'll be something to watch. 0.98

00:39:29.000 I would watch that.

00:39:30.000 I mean...

00:39:31.000 Who wouldn't?

00:39:32.000 I mean, that actually sounds pretty cool.

00:39:35.000 It does sound pretty cool.

00:39:36.000 I mean, that sounds like Gladiator games or something.

00:39:38.000 I mean, I gotta tell you, I mean, you know, the flip side of that is, I mean...

00:39:43.000 That'd be amazing, you know, just a team of just perfect specimens, all genetically engineered to like battle each other.

00:39:50.000 That's like Terminator stuff.

00:39:51.000 Well, I think it's the future.

00:39:53.000 I really do.

00:39:54.000 I mean, with CRISPR and the upcoming iterations of it, whatever, you know, future innovation comes forth with genetic manipulation, I think they're going to be able to turn on genes, turn off genes, edit things, make it so that...

00:40:08.000 You really have the best of all worlds and including intelligence and I mean even maybe possibly discipline.

00:40:14.000 I mean they might be able to engineer discipline into people.

00:40:18.000 They already are.

00:40:21.000 I actually developed this docu-series that I just...

00:40:24.000 We went out and sold it and I just haven't had the time to go and put the time into it.

00:40:33.000 But the whole concept behind the show was really that, like this exploring firsthand these frontiers in, you know, performance enhancing,

00:40:48.000 but it's really more human evolution.

00:40:51.000 Which is, you know, you've got so many guys out there, whether it's, what's a guy, Dave Ospreay or whatever, Bulletproof Coffee, or who's the guy who just got under all that trouble?

00:41:06.000 He was living in Bermuda.

00:41:09.000 Peter, what was his, what's his name?

00:41:11.000 It's a crazy story.

00:41:12.000 He's like this, Peter Nygaard.

00:41:15.000 Who is now caught up in all this Me Too stuff and all this stuff.

00:41:19.000 But he has like an island in the Caribbean.

00:41:21.000 It's basically like genetic mutation island where he spent hundreds of millions of dollars basically to get himself to live forever.

00:41:30.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:41:31.000 How old is he?

00:41:33.000 79?

00:41:34.000 What does he look like?

00:41:34.000 79. What does he look like?

00:41:36.000 Look at this guy.

00:41:37.000 Give me a picture of him. 0.70

00:41:38.000 I want to see a jacked 79-year-old. 0.90

00:41:42.000 Did you?

00:41:43.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:41:43.000 Let's see.

00:41:44.000 There he is!

00:41:45.000 There he is!

00:41:46.000 Is he 79?

00:41:48.000 That's amazing.

00:41:49.000 Yeah, I guess he's spending Christmas in jail.

00:41:50.000 Is he?

00:41:51.000 Yeah.

00:41:52.000 What is he going to jail for?

00:41:53.000 Jesus Christ.

00:41:54.000 He's odd looking.

00:41:55.000 I don't know.

00:41:57.000 But this guy literally has spent like hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:42:01.000 Fashion mogul Peter Nygaard pleads for bail citing allergy to sugar.

00:42:07.000 One day ago.

00:42:08.000 How would you do sugar? 0.98

00:42:10.000 Sex trafficking.

00:42:11.000 But now do a search on Peter Nygaard, basically.

00:42:17.000 Oh my god, he's worth $900 million.

00:42:18.000 Look at that.

00:42:19.000 79 years old.

00:42:20.000 Wow.

00:42:21.000 Basically, I don't know, human longevity or something.

00:42:26.000 Genetic.

00:42:27.000 Put human longevity.

00:42:29.000 I want to see what we got.

00:42:32.000 Human Longevity.

00:42:33.000 Here we go.

00:42:34.000 Longevity Project.

00:42:35.000 Yeah, there it is.

00:42:35.000 Give me some images.

00:42:37.000 Fighting Aging Lifespan I.O. There it is.

00:42:40.000 So he's got a website.

00:42:43.000 So this is his thing. 0.95

00:42:45.000 He looks pretty goddamn good for a 79-year-old. 0.98

00:42:49.000 For a 79, yeah. 0.95

00:42:49.000 I mean, the dude's six years older than my mom, and he looks... 0.95

00:42:52.000 Nygaard Biotech.

00:42:54.000 Here it is.

00:42:55.000 Log in.

00:42:57.000 Oh, I gotta log in. 0.99

00:42:59.000 Damn. 0.99

00:42:59.000 Anti-agent reverse. 0.99

00:43:01.000 Can I see some more images of him?

00:43:03.000 Let me see some more images.

00:43:05.000 If you look at the guy without a shirt, he looks good.

00:43:07.000 I want to see him without a shirt.

00:43:11.000 I'm not ashamed to admit it.

00:43:12.000 Look at the Navajo outfit there. 1.00

00:43:14.000 Oh, he's got one of those?

00:43:15.000 Pull up shirtless.

00:43:18.000 Give me shirtless, Jamie.

00:43:20.000 I was hoping I would just be there.

00:43:26.000 Come on, buddy. 1.00

00:43:27.000 Well, he looks like shit there. 1.00

00:43:29.000 Is that him? 1.00

00:43:31.000 I mean, like, for a 79-year-old, not bad, but...

00:43:35.000 Oh, jeez!

00:43:38.000 What?

00:43:38.000 That one, I mean...

00:43:40.000 Which one?

00:43:42.000 Where's the party?

00:43:44.000 Oh, that right there?

00:43:45.000 Is that him?

00:43:46.000 Well, that's what everybody wants to do.

00:43:50.000 They want to party with a bunch of hot women. 1.00

00:43:52.000 Yeah, he doesn't look that good.

00:43:56.000 No, I mean...

00:43:57.000 But he looks like he's got some energy.

00:44:01.000 That looks great.

00:44:02.000 I mean, look, I mean, come on.

00:44:03.000 It looks photoshopped, though, too.

00:44:04.000 Yeah.

00:44:04.000 Like, he's for, like, a...

00:44:05.000 No photoshopping there.

00:44:06.000 ...replacing Fabio on the front of a romance novel.

00:44:08.000 Right, right, right.

00:44:09.000 That's the Nygaard building.

00:44:11.000 Yeah, okay, so they're juicing it up a little bit there.

00:44:14.000 Who's that beautiful girl in the lower right-hand corner? 1.00

00:44:17.000 Right there, lower?

00:44:18.000 Lower?

00:44:19.000 Right below that?

00:44:20.000 Right below that?

00:44:21.000 Yeah.

00:44:22.000 Who's that?

00:44:23.000 His ex-girlfriend.

00:44:26.000 Wow. 1.00

00:44:27.000 Pretty fucking hot for a creepy looking old dude. 0.99

00:44:31.000 Congratulations, Peter. 0.98

00:44:33.000 Well, I guess time will tell whether or not Peter lives forever, but...

00:44:36.000 In jail? 0.99

00:44:38.000 Citing allergy to sugar is fucking hilarious. 0.99

00:44:41.000 Yeah, he doesn't have his blood boy or anything. 0.98

00:44:45.000 Right.

00:44:45.000 Oh, yeah, he gets off the sauce.

00:44:47.000 What, what, what, Jamie?

00:44:48.000 What?

00:44:49.000 What is the accusation? 0.99

00:44:54.000 Oh, accused of hiring sex worker to rape his teen sons. 0.99

00:45:01.000 Um, well, that's not good. 0.99

00:45:04.000 Okay.

00:45:05.000 Anyway.

00:45:06.000 So this guy's spending a lot of money trying to stay alive.

00:45:09.000 I think the real thing is fetuses, though.

00:45:11.000 The real thing is, like, taking, like, in utero, like, in an actual embryo, and doing something to it and developing a fully grown human being with, like, myostatin inhibitors and all sorts of other...

00:45:25.000 Well, that is the whole...

00:45:28.000 Future of this, which is basically going into the embryo before you're born and going, hey, I want to have blue eyes.

00:45:40.000 I want to be six foot three.

00:45:42.000 I want to have blonde hair.

00:45:44.000 I never want to have Parkinson's.

00:45:46.000 I never want to have Alzheimer's.

00:45:49.000 I want to, you know, have 150 IQ. I want to have lean muscle mass.

00:45:54.000 I, you know, I don't want fat cells.

00:45:57.000 I don't want to have breast cancer.

00:45:58.000 I mean, on and on and on.

00:45:59.000 And a lot of those technologies...

00:46:03.000 Are available.

00:46:04.000 I mean, just like you can go clone your dog.

00:46:07.000 A lot of these things are there if you've got enough money and willing to go to some subversive lab.

00:46:14.000 I mean, there was that story a few years ago.

00:46:16.000 Is there really a lab that can do that right now?

00:46:18.000 Like, say if your wife is pregnant, you really can go and have the body manipulated to the point where you can make something like that? 0.91

00:46:25.000 That's really possible?

00:46:27.000 Well, I know that there's a lot of things, if you go and do the research for, I don't know what the cost is, but I know that you can see to it that your kids have got blue eyes and that you're going to be taller.

00:46:39.000 You really can do that.

00:46:41.000 You can manipulate eye color in the womb.

00:46:43.000 And that you're not going to, like, lose your hair.

00:46:46.000 They can do that right now?

00:46:47.000 They're starting to do all that.

00:46:49.000 That's like...

00:46:50.000 Because they understand the gene sequencing and the properties in your DNA that cause you to grow, that cause you to have lean muscle mass.

00:47:02.000 So I don't know exactly how much of it's available, but...

00:47:05.000 It's on the way.

00:47:07.000 It's on the way, and I'm guessing that China's already, like... 1.00

00:47:10.000 Oh, my God.

00:47:11.000 Yeah, there's going to be 20 years from now.

00:47:13.000 They're already planning the Olympics 20, you know.

00:47:16.000 2040. Right, 2040. They're, like, literally going, like...

00:47:19.000 Super athletes.

00:47:19.000 Yeah, they're just going, like, ha-ha.

00:47:23.000 Well, that's a concern, that long game, you know?

00:47:27.000 What is that thing the Afghanistan people used to say during the war?

00:47:31.000 The Americans have all the watches, but we have all the time.

00:47:36.000 I'm thinking about that.

00:47:38.000 Playing the long game.

00:47:40.000 Well, China... 0.82

00:47:41.000 I mean, one thing you...

00:47:42.000 I mean, China does play the long game. 0.90

00:47:44.000 Yeah.

00:47:45.000 They play the long game.

00:47:47.000 Russia plays the long game. 0.88

00:47:48.000 Putin plays the long game.

00:47:50.000 He obviously does with these assassinations.

00:47:54.000 Yeah.

00:47:55.000 Or somebody.

00:47:56.000 Maybe not him.

00:47:57.000 Yeah.

00:47:57.000 Whoever's doing it.

00:47:58.000 Yeah.

00:48:00.000 I mean, it was interesting.

00:48:04.000 So, Novani, right, the guy that he poisoned a few months ago in Germany, with Novichok, right?

00:48:14.000 This is the guy who was the, you know, like his top guy to threaten his presidency, you know, the opposition leader.

00:48:22.000 Young guy, he's like 40, 42, something like that.

00:48:25.000 And so he's in Germany and he gets poisoned.

00:48:29.000 Well, it turns out that they put the poison in his underwear.

00:48:33.000 And, you know, this story has been going on and on.

00:48:37.000 And not only that, they know who poisoned him, what Russian agents poisoned him.

00:48:43.000 And he set up a whole call.

00:48:46.000 It's a whole crazy story.

00:48:47.000 But the bottom line of this Novani thing is, so Putin's interviewed about...

00:48:53.000 Did you poison Novani?

00:48:54.000 And he goes, absolutely not.

00:48:58.000 And they go, well, but what would you have to say to him? 0.99

00:49:03.000 And he goes, well, you know, he is a traitor.

00:49:07.000 And treason is the most serious crime and should be punishable. 0.60

00:49:14.000 I mean, there it is.

00:49:16.000 I mean, it's literally right there.

00:49:19.000 So, I didn't poison him, but...

00:49:22.000 Traitors should be punished.

00:49:26.000 And, you know, that clearly...

00:49:31.000 Sketchy place to live.

00:49:32.000 And with that, we transition to the dissident.

00:49:40.000 Let's transition, because it's a terrifying documentary.

00:49:44.000 And maybe...

00:49:47.000 Equally disturbing was the difficulty in distributing it.

00:49:51.000 Icarus won Academy Award, right?

00:49:55.000 Multiple awards.

00:49:56.000 More than one award, not just the Academy Award.

00:49:59.000 Won the Academy Award in 2018. Won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Journalism.

00:50:06.000 Was nominated for three Emmys.

00:50:09.000 I was nominated for the Directors Guild Award.

00:50:13.000 Nominated for the BAFTA. It's jaw-dropping.

00:50:34.000 So you would think that another documentary coming from Brian Fogle would be well received, especially one that's as good as The Dissident.

00:50:45.000 But you're having a really hard time distributing this.

00:50:50.000 Well, The Dissident actually releases today, January 8th, on video on demand.

00:51:00.000 So it's, oh yeah, you can enter the site there.

00:51:04.000 In theaters and at home on demand.

00:51:07.000 Is it on iTunes?

00:51:08.000 It's on iTunes, Comcast, Charter, Vudu, Xbox.

00:51:15.000 But not Netflix.

00:51:17.000 Yeah, there it is.

00:51:19.000 Fandango, Amazon Prime.

00:51:21.000 Oh, it is on Amazon Prime.

00:51:23.000 Yeah, but you have to...

00:51:24.000 Well, not Amazon Prime.

00:51:25.000 Amazon, you have to rent it.

00:51:27.000 So basically, it came out today for rental or for sale, but it's not on any of the streaming platforms.

00:51:36.000 It's not on anywhere where you would have...

00:51:40.000 You know, a subscription.

00:51:42.000 But iTunes, you can get it on a streaming platform.

00:51:45.000 Yeah, you can rent it today for, I think it's $19.99.

00:51:53.000 There it is.

00:51:53.000 Redbox, Microsoft, Vudu, Fandango.

00:51:55.000 But it says Prime Video.

00:51:57.000 Yeah, but if you click on it, it's a rental.

00:52:01.000 Oh, but you can still stream it then.

00:52:03.000 Yeah, there it is, rent.

00:52:04.000 But you can still stream it.

00:52:05.000 But it says buy.

00:52:07.000 Yeah, you can buy it for $25, you can stream it or rent it for $19.99, but it's not on Netflix or on Amazon Prime as part of their subscription base.

00:52:23.000 Oh, you don't get it for free.

00:52:25.000 Exactly.

00:52:25.000 Like if you go on Netflix, everything is part of your subscription.

00:52:31.000 Or if you go on, let's say, Apple, right?

00:52:35.000 And you have that $5 a month subscription to Apple, right?

00:52:38.000 You have all of Apple's content and original programming.

00:52:42.000 Or same with Amazon.

00:52:43.000 If you have an Amazon Prime membership, you get all of those Amazon series.

00:52:50.000 Like Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

00:52:51.000 Fleabag, 000. Right, but they do that a lot with films, where you have to pay for the film.

00:52:59.000 I mean, particularly with Apple, right?

00:53:01.000 Well, what happened with The Dissident is, you know, the film is kind of the untold story behind the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

00:53:16.000 You know, the Washington Post journalist walks into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 and is murdered.

00:53:29.000 I mean, just the most horrific, ghastly murder.

00:53:35.000 He walks into the consulate. 0.86

00:53:38.000 They basically strangle him, start embalming him as he's alive, and kill him.

00:53:46.000 They were embalming him while he was alive? 0.56

00:53:48.000 Yes.

00:53:49.000 Because they wanted the blood to coagulate because they then dismembered him and cut him into pieces to get him out of the consulate.

00:53:58.000 And, you know, this was ordered by Mohammed bin Salman, you know, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.

00:54:05.000 And that's proven that he ordered it?

00:54:08.000 Well, yeah, I think we had to go and say, do we believe the CIA? Do we believe British intelligence, French intelligence?

00:54:19.000 Do we believe Turkish intelligence?

00:54:22.000 Yeah.

00:54:28.000 Turkey, there was a listening device in the consulate.

00:54:32.000 We don't know how the consulate was bugged, but it was bugged.

00:54:36.000 And so the entire audio of Khashoggi's murder, and even the planning of his murder, was captured by the Turks and I obtained the transcript as part of making this film and there were independent investigations conducted Agnes Calamard of the UN of course the Turks CIA and all of them concluded with a very

00:55:07.000 very high level of confidence That MBS ordered the murder.

00:55:12.000 And if you understand how Saudi Arabia works, right?

00:55:16.000 I mean, this is considered an absolute monarchy.

00:55:21.000 This is an authoritarian regime, right?

00:55:24.000 And you have probably 90%, you know, and I'm making up this statistic, but something of the entire wealth of a country controlled by one family.

00:55:36.000 So the idea that you could send 15 people on private jets, owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, traveling on diplomatic passports, people in the kill team.

00:55:53.000 One of the guys was Moutreb, who was Mohammed bin Salman's, you know, personal security, head of security.

00:56:03.000 Other guy was Al-Tubaji, who is the state forensic examiner and coroner who came with a bone saw.

00:56:11.000 Another guy, Al-Asiri, is one of the top-ranking generals.

00:56:17.000 And the list goes on and on.

00:56:19.000 And so the idea that you could have this carried out without the approval of the crown prince...

00:56:29.000 Would be staggering to believe.

00:56:33.000 I mean, it's next to impossible because who else would order this crime?

00:56:41.000 And especially when you're dealing with an absolute monarchy...

00:56:46.000 Anybody who did this without that sort of permission, right?

00:56:50.000 I mean, this is, you know, Saudi Arabia carried out 800 beheadings last year.

00:56:57.000 So talk about off with your head.

00:57:02.000 It's unfathomable to think. 0.52

00:57:04.000 800 beheadings?

00:57:06.000 Yeah, and most of these beheadings were of essentially dissidents or activists.

00:57:18.000 I mean, you have a society that on the outside, Mohammed bin Salman has spent hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, to promote this image as a great reformer.

00:57:34.000 And on one hand, he is a reformer.

00:57:37.000 He's a young, I think he's 33 years old now, prince, and he's starting to open up the country for tourism.

00:57:46.000 There's concerts.

00:57:47.000 He's been trying to get big musical acts there, Formula One racing, movie theaters.

00:57:52.000 All of this was never in Saudi Arabia before.

00:57:56.000 On the other hand, this guy, as part of his...

00:58:01.000 I don't know what you want to call it, consolidation of power, has cracked down on dissent and freedom of speech and freedom of opinion and freedom of journalism, unlike any other, you know, previous monarch.

00:58:20.000 I think?

00:58:40.000 Writing about the kingdom, writing about policies.

00:58:43.000 He was fluent in English.

00:58:45.000 He was educated at Ohio State University, had an apartment, a condo in Virginia, right outside of Washington, D.C., And he essentially spent his life working for the royal family.

00:59:00.000 And so Mohammed bin Salman comes into power, and Khashoggi is essentially writing, I love the crown prince, I love my country, but I'm seeing that what is happening in this country is,

00:59:18.000 on one hand, there's a lot of positivity, And a lot of good things are happening.

00:59:23.000 And on the other hand, his friends are being arrested for simply having a freedom of opinion.

00:59:31.000 Activists and anybody who literally was not supporting Mohammed bin Salman.

00:59:37.000 And when I say not supporting, there are multiple stories of just a celebrity, a well-known journalist, a well-known person who had a huge Twitter follower.

00:59:47.000 And if he wasn't willing to Consistently post how great Mohammed bin Salman, you know, is or was, this guy was literally arrested.

00:59:58.000 So the government basically, you know, went to all of their known figures and said, you have to support the Crown Prince.

01:00:06.000 And if you don't, you're basically going to go to go to prison.

01:00:12.000 What do you mean they have to support them, meaning they would tell them when to post things?

01:00:18.000 Through social media.

01:00:20.000 Because Twitter in Saudi Arabia, 8 out of 10 people are on Twitter.

01:00:24.000 Really?

01:00:25.000 Right.

01:00:26.000 So what we think of as Twitter now is essentially the platform for Trump.

01:00:35.000 Not anymore.

01:00:36.000 I think they locked him out of his account.

01:00:38.000 Yeah, I think they opened him back up today.

01:00:40.000 Oh, good idea.

01:00:42.000 Shame on Jack Dorsey.

01:00:45.000 But, you know, he's back at it, I think, today.

01:00:50.000 So it'll be interesting to see what comes.

01:00:53.000 I mean, God, that's so, so nutty.

01:00:55.000 But so the Arab Spring in 2013, right, happened because of Twitter, which what we don't think about in this country is we think,

01:01:11.000 oh, hey, we have freedom of speech.

01:01:12.000 We have freedom of opinion.

01:01:13.000 We can write what we want.

01:01:15.000 And if I write, you know, Joe Biden's the worst man on planet Earth.

01:01:21.000 Nobody's coming to arrest me.

01:01:23.000 Or if I write, Donald Trump should go to jail.

01:01:26.000 Nobody's coming to arrest me, right?

01:01:29.000 Well, in Saudi Arabia, Anything having to do with the government or taking an opinion against the government is essentially a crime.

01:01:41.000 So the entire country is on Twitter because on Twitter you can create 20 accounts.

01:01:47.000 You can create 30 accounts.

01:01:49.000 And if you have a VPN or whatever like that, you can be whoever you want to be.

01:01:54.000 You can be, you know...

01:01:56.000 Joseph, Mohammed, Sultan, Abdulaziz the 15th, and you can just create that as your Twitter handle, and you can have 20 accounts.

01:02:05.000 And so Twitter is the last bastion for essentially free speech and for, you know, basically opinion.

01:02:15.000 And this is why the Arab Spring happened, because Millions and millions of youths and activists around the Middle East in 2013 took to Twitter and were able to activate.

01:02:27.000 They were able to organize.

01:02:28.000 They were able to plan their demonstrations and ultimately their revolution.

01:02:35.000 Well, Saudi Arabia realized this, that this was a huge danger to basically the monarchies in the Middle East.

01:02:44.000 This is a huge danger to the Emiratis. 1.00

01:02:46.000 This is a huge danger to Saudi Arabia, a huge danger to, you know, whatever you want to call it, Oman, Buran, you know, where you have these monarchies in place. 0.87

01:02:57.000 And so Saudi Arabia started to develop a policy under Mohammed bin Salman To basically take control of the public sphere, basically take control of the messaging on Twitter.

01:03:09.000 So they hire thousands of trolls, basically people to work for the government, sit in a room, and we have photos of these rooms.

01:03:20.000 Actually, their main room that they do this was the room that when Trump visited Saudi Arabia and you see that photo of him with his hands on the orb, that really weird photo next to the king and they're looking up.

01:03:31.000 That's actually like the main room where they're manipulating Twitter.

01:03:36.000 Crazy.

01:03:37.000 And so they hire thousands of these employees basically to go onto Twitter, create thousands of false accounts, And basically push forward Mohammed bin Salman's narrative.

01:03:52.000 MBS is the greatest thing to ever happen to the country.

01:03:55.000 We love MBS's policy.

01:03:57.000 Vision 2030. MBS is changing the country.

01:04:00.000 And so while they're doing this, They're also monitoring the accounts of anybody who is speaking poorly of MBS and arresting these people and tracking them down and throwing them in jails.

01:04:18.000 So Khashoggi essentially was criticizing Mohammed bin Salman, at the same time liking him.

01:04:27.000 And he gets this order from...

01:04:28.000 At the same time liking him...

01:04:33.000 I like the royal family.

01:04:35.000 A lot of things that this guy's doing is good.

01:04:38.000 However, the opinion of one man and the leadership of one man and only one man is never good for our country.

01:04:47.000 And what he had seen in the previous, you know, kings or princes...

01:04:53.000 Right?

01:04:53.000 Was that, yes, they were the monarch, but they would listen to other opinions.

01:04:59.000 There was more of a form of, you know, a parliament.

01:05:05.000 And what he saw with Mohammed bin Salman was not only, you know, the crackdown at the Ritz-Carlton where MBS, you know, literally in a mob operation, rounds up All of his cousins and half-brothers and family members and all of the wealthy people in Saudi Arabia and basically holds them in prison at the Ritz-Carlton.

01:05:26.000 Stories have emerged of many of these people being tortured and basically shook them down for tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars and basically went, I'm the Crown Prince.

01:05:41.000 You're going to give me half, you're going to give me your money, or you're not leaving the Ritz-Carlton.

01:05:47.000 And that was one of his major ways to consolidate his power, and so that nobody would go against him.

01:05:56.000 So Khashoggi is seeing this, and he's ordered By the henchmen, Mohammed bin Salman's cyber henchmen, Saad al-Qahtani, to remain quiet, to shut up, stop tweeting, stop writing,

01:06:11.000 stop posting, shut up. 0.94

01:06:14.000 And it gets so serious. 0.99

01:06:17.000 He realizes that he's going to be rounded up and thrown in a jail.

01:06:21.000 And he flees the country.

01:06:24.000 He goes into self-exile.

01:06:26.000 He takes a job at the Washington Post, writing as a global opinions columnist for the Washington Post.

01:06:34.000 This is now basically the end of...

01:06:39.000 I'm going to mess up the dates, but this is sometime in the...

01:06:44.000 The fall of 2017. And starts publishing columns in the Washington Post where he is critical of the Trump-Saudi relationship.

01:06:57.000 And he's writing critically of Mohammed bin Salman of what's going on in the country because so many of his friends are being arrested.

01:07:05.000 So many of the people that he knows are all of a sudden being silenced.

01:07:11.000 And at the same time, he starts working with this Saudi dissident to Montreal, Omar Abdul Aziz.

01:07:19.000 He's 27 years old.

01:07:21.000 He went to school when he was 19 in Canada because Saudi Arabia, their way into the future is to educate, essentially, their people so that they're not going to be 100% reliant on oil.

01:07:36.000 And because they have trillions and trillions of dollars, they can pay for the educations of, you know, any of their good students to go outside of the country to be educated under the promise that if we pay for your education, you're going to come back to Saudi Arabia, right, 0.87

01:07:52.000 and take your education and help our country, you know, grow.

01:07:56.000 So, Omar Abdulaziz is one of these guys.

01:07:59.000 He goes to Montreal at 19. He's studying at McGill.

01:08:05.000 And He literally goes on a foreign exchange program, and the first family that he goes to live with is a Jewish family in Montreal.

01:08:15.000 And Omar goes, you know, obviously from what he had been thought to believe, you know, growing up in Saudi Arabia and, you know, Israel and Jews and stuff, and all of a sudden Omar's in Montreal, and he goes, wait, this...

01:08:29.000 These people are nice.

01:08:31.000 I like these people.

01:08:32.000 And he also is being ingrained into Western philosophy, into a democracy, into a free way of being.

01:08:42.000 And he starts taking to Twitter, basically, why isn't Saudi Arabia like this? 0.95

01:08:48.000 Why isn't my country like this?

01:08:49.000 Why don't we have freedom of speech?

01:08:52.000 Why don't we have freedom of opinion?

01:08:54.000 Why does our country have to be like this?

01:08:56.000 And he starts growing his Twitter following.

01:09:00.000 He goes back to Saudi Arabia because his mother has cancer.

01:09:06.000 And while he's there, he's continuing to tweet.

01:09:10.000 And his father, who's working for Saudi Arabian intelligence, gets a call and goes, you need to bring Omar in.

01:09:18.000 In to meet with us.

01:09:20.000 And his father, knowing what this is, knows that they're basically going to arrest his son or silence his son or basically make it that his son can never leave the country.

01:09:31.000 And Omar decides to head back to Canada.

01:09:37.000 This was now six years ago, seven years ago.

01:09:42.000 And he returns back to Canada.

01:09:44.000 He's grown his Twitter following to, I think he has 600, 700,000 followers, and starts tweeting against, essentially, Saudi Arabia, the kingdom, freedom of speech.

01:10:01.000 And Jamal Khashoggi, as he now is living in self-exile, Reaches out to Omar Abdul Aziz because Omar is now this voice of the youth and Jamal wants to basically,

01:10:16.000 you know, see how he can change his country.

01:10:20.000 And what Omar tells him is that because what had been happening is every single time that Jamal would send out a tweet, And Jamal has 1.75 million Twitter followers.

01:10:34.000 Hundreds and hundreds of responses come onto his Twitter feed. 0.99

01:10:38.000 You know, go to hell. 1.00

01:10:40.000 You should burn in hell. 1.00

01:10:42.000 You should die. 1.00

01:10:43.000 You're a traitor. 1.00

01:10:44.000 And Jamal is thinking that his whole country has turned on him. 0.99

01:10:47.000 What he doesn't realize is that this isn't real. 0.83

01:10:51.000 These are the Saudi flies, the trolls that the government has hired to basically quash his Twitter account and basically have their own hashtags trending. 0.90

01:11:02.000 So Omar understands this and he tells Jamal, he goes, no, no, no, no, no. 0.84

01:11:06.000 This isn't real, Jamal.

01:11:08.000 This isn't real.

01:11:09.000 This is what the government's doing.

01:11:11.000 We know this.

01:11:11.000 Let me show you.

01:11:13.000 So Omar and Jamal start working together.

01:11:15.000 And Jamal agrees to fund Omar Abdulaziz's money to basically start buying thousands and thousands of SIM cards, Canadian and U.S. SIM cards, that they can send to Saudi Arabia,

01:11:33.000 right, so that you can't track where the phone is coming from because it'll look like a U.S. or Canadian SIM card.

01:11:39.000 And also distribute among dissidents all over that are not living in Saudi Arabia to start fighting the government trolls on Twitter, that they can send out basically their tweets and go, this is what's really happening,

01:11:56.000 and basically fight fire with fire.

01:11:59.000 Well, they hack Omar's phone, the Saudis, with Pegasus, which is Israeli cybersecurity software, which Israel is basically selling through this company, NSO, to any government that essentially wants it because it gives Israel spying technology because now they know who Saudi Arabia is interested in. 0.54

01:12:20.000 And they hack Omar's phone with Pegasus.

01:12:23.000 They hack Jamal's phone with Pegasus.

01:12:26.000 Now the Saudis know what Jamal and Omar are working on, on top of anything else that Jamal is doing.

01:12:34.000 And arguably, this leads to Jamal's murder.

01:12:38.000 And they actually come to Canada a few months before murdering Jamal and try to rendition Omar back to Saudi Arabia.

01:12:49.000 And this is all, you know, in the movie The Dissident and just a crazy, devastating story.

01:12:59.000 Now, did they ever contact Jamal and tell him to stop?

01:13:03.000 Well, they did.

01:13:06.000 Saad al-Qahtani had reached out to Jamal, and they reached out to him again when he was in the United States, basically threatening him and saying, you need to stop.

01:13:20.000 But Jamal...

01:13:23.000 You know, I think having worked for the kingdom for so many years, I think he viewed there would maybe be a threat of rendition.

01:13:30.000 There would be a threat of, you know, you were going to, I don't know, try to bring you back.

01:13:37.000 But I don't think he ever could imagine that they were going to murder him in his own country's consulate.

01:13:45.000 Why do you think they did that with him?

01:13:47.000 Why did they treat it as such a hostile act?

01:13:52.000 That they were willing to be so brazen?

01:13:57.000 Well, I think you have to look beyond just this specific murder and you have to look at what has been happening in our global landscape, which is essentially that what we have learned essentially from Russia and Putin.

01:14:16.000 Here's the poisoning in 2006 of Alexander Lithunenko with polonium, basically nuclear poisoning.

01:14:24.000 And while Britain determines 100% that it's Russia, they know it's Putin, they don't do anything about it.

01:14:32.000 It's a smack on the wrist, right?

01:14:34.000 Because you go, okay, well, what is really Britain or the UK or the US really going to do about this?

01:14:40.000 Are we going to go to war with Russia?

01:14:42.000 No.

01:14:42.000 Are we going to cut off all business relationships?

01:14:45.000 No.

01:14:45.000 Are you going to impose spectacular sanctions and this, that, and the other?

01:14:49.000 Probably not.

01:14:50.000 And so, basically, Putin gets away with this crime.

01:14:54.000 He gets away with all the other crimes.

01:14:56.000 You know, the poisoning of Kim Jong Il's brother.

01:15:01.000 You know, at the Malaysian airport a few years ago, right?

01:15:03.000 Gets away with it.

01:15:05.000 And so if you look at this authoritarian playbook over the last, whatever you call it, you know, 15, 20 years where everything is kind of reported and everybody's filming with their phone and everybody's on, you know, the internet,

01:15:20.000 is that...

01:15:23.000 MBS believed that he could get away with this, right?

01:15:27.000 Meaning, what are you going to do against Saudi Arabia?

01:15:31.000 We have trillions of dollars.

01:15:33.000 We invest trillions of dollars.

01:15:37.000 And really, what are you going to do against us?

01:15:41.000 Now, at the same time, You know, the Trump administration and Kushner are very close with the royal family.

01:15:47.000 Whether you like or dislike Trump, this is just a flat-out fact.

01:15:53.000 I mean, Trump basically, in the fallout of Khashoggi's murder, not only protected Mohammed bin Salman, he vetoed both the House of Representatives and the Senate passing legislation that was going to block Arm sales to Saudi Arabia because they buy hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons from us.

01:16:17.000 Saudi Arabia is the single biggest purchaser of weapons from the United States.

01:16:22.000 Okay?

01:16:23.000 So they block hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons from us, and Trump vetoes it.

01:16:29.000 At the same time they're trying to pass legislation to sanction Saudi Arabia against the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Trump vetoes it. 0.98

01:16:37.000 And on top of that, in Bob Woodard's book that came out a few months ago, there's audio tapes of Trump going, I saved Mohammed bin Salman's ass.

01:16:46.000 And if you've followed the news over the last few weeks, the Trump administration has put forward to the Justice Department A request for immunity against prosecution for Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudis,

01:17:04.000 you know, whatever else, when he leaves office, that Biden would not be able to go try and be able to prosecute Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Khashoggi or other crimes.

01:17:16.000 And this is pending right now with the Justice Department.

01:17:20.000 So these are facts.

01:17:22.000 And, you know, in the film, the admonishing of Trump comes from Bob Corker, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham.

01:17:29.000 So you have essentially our country and, you know, bipartisan support across Congress to basically reassess this U.S.-Saudi relationship, which our government is viewing toxic. 0.83

01:17:44.000 And you've had the Trump administration basically going, no, no, no, we're going to protect this guy.

01:17:50.000 And the reason why I tell this story is I believe that they believed, Mohammed bin Salman, that they could kill Khashoggi and get away with it.

01:18:03.000 And the biggest thing that they would have been worried about is that the United States would have taken action and they knew that they had safety with the Trump administration.

01:18:14.000 Did Trump make any statements, any public statements about what he thought happened or what he was going to do about it?

01:18:21.000 Well, yeah, many.

01:18:22.000 I mean, you know, after he obtained the CIA findings of this murder, and the CIA basically said, I don't remember what it was, with certainty,

01:18:39.000 you know, with a high level of certainty, which apparently if the CIA says that, that's like basically going, It happened.

01:18:48.000 They will never say it's 100%.

01:18:49.000 It was a high level of certainty that Mohammed bin Salman ordered this murder.

01:18:54.000 And Trump dismissed intelligence findings, as he has again.

01:19:00.000 And here you have, you know, Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham and Bob Corker and Mitch McConnell.

01:19:08.000 I mean, all of his...

01:19:10.000 What's the word?

01:19:17.000 Supporters, you know, basically going, how can the president dismiss the CIA's findings in this crime?

01:19:27.000 I mean, there was the audio, there were the transcripts, there was the surveillance footage, and then apparently there are tons of intercepted phone calls that U.S. intelligence has that Khashoggi's fiancée, Hattija Jenghis, has just submitted to the incoming Biden administration to release these files on Khashoggi's murder that apparently were intercepted communications that show without a shadow of a doubt that Mohammed bin Salman ordered this murder.

01:19:57.000 There's also a shocking part that When Turkey, after a year of working on this film, they give me the 37-page transcript to Khashoggi's murder.

01:20:14.000 And, I mean, it's stunning.

01:20:18.000 I mean, the guys who murder him are literally making jokes and laughing ahead of killing him, talking about basically Cutting him up like a horse. 0.93

01:20:32.000 Talking about how it'll be easy to cut up his body because you're just going to basically hang him and quarter him. 0.95

01:20:43.000 And they're laughing about it.

01:20:46.000 And in this 37-page transcript that I receive, it cuts out.

01:20:54.000 Right after Khashoggi has been murdered and they take off his clothes, basically strip him.

01:21:01.000 And they strip him because they're going to put his clothes on a body double who puts on a fake beard and walks out the back of the consulate.

01:21:11.000 And the Turks found this in surveillance footage of this body double trying to pretend to be Khashoggi leaving the consulate.

01:21:19.000 And the transcript then cuts out for about two hours and then picks back up, meaning the actual dismembering of Khashoggi I don't have in the transcript.

01:21:36.000 And I asked my sources, Why the transcript cut out?

01:21:45.000 What I've heard, and I certainly wouldn't have any way to verify this, is that the room that they killed him in was the only room in the consulate where they could securely communicate with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

01:22:03.000 In the film, you'll see these footage and photos which To this day, it's still not been released to the world.

01:22:10.000 The Turks gave me this footage and photos for the film, which is staggering.

01:22:16.000 And you'll see this media room where there's the camera set up basically to do a secure call.

01:22:21.000 And this was the only room in the consulate that was bugged, but it was the only room in the consulate that had a secure video communication system with Riyadh.

01:22:30.000 And what I was told is that after they murdered Khashoggi, they made a call back to Riyadh to arguably show MBS or Saud al-Qahtani that Khashoggi was in fact dead and dismembered.

01:22:48.000 And I guess Turkey has decided to, you know, save this piece or whatever of information.

01:22:57.000 Save it.

01:23:00.000 Well, for whatever reason, they haven't wanted to come forward with this part of the transcript.

01:23:11.000 And there's another thing, that as they're removing these bags that contain Khashoggi's body, that they're then going to go bring over to the Consul General's home.

01:23:25.000 And the Turks believe they burned his body in the tandoori oven.

01:23:30.000 They ordered 70 pounds of meat from a very well-known restaurant right after he was murdered and so the Turks believed that they burned his body in this tandoor oven which they had checked that could burn it over a thousand degrees a couple days before the murder so that there'd be no DNA evidence and that you'd burn it with the meat and so it would smell like there was,

01:23:51.000 you know, meat burning rather than a body.

01:23:55.000 That there's a bag that apparently contained his hands.

01:24:01.000 And Moutreb basically says, no, no, no.

01:24:07.000 You leave that bag for me.

01:24:09.000 Fingerprints.

01:24:10.000 So it's believed that they brought back his hands and his head to Saudi Arabia.

01:24:17.000 Whew.

01:24:25.000 Yeah, unbelievable.

01:24:28.000 Yeah, there it is.

01:24:29.000 U.S. considers granting immunity to Saudi prince and suspects it's assassination attempt.

01:24:33.000 So this was an assassination attempt of another Saudi national who's living in the United States.

01:24:40.000 And they had basically sent this whole kill team in through Canada to come kill this guy.

01:24:45.000 Who is a dissenter living in the U.S. But that case is pending right now, and so the Trump administration is looking to grant Mohammed bin Salman immunity from any sort of prosecution.

01:25:04.000 What kind of weird backroom deals are they making?

01:25:08.000 Well, here's one.

01:25:10.000 If you pull up, there's a story on the New York Times.

01:25:15.000 500 million dollar arms sale to Riyadh.

01:25:19.000 Critics Slam reported munitions deal in final weeks of Donald Trump's presidency as outrageous and a moral outrage.

01:25:27.000 Wow.

01:25:29.000 Well, here's a better one.

01:25:32.000 Look up the New York Times reported...

01:25:34.000 He's going to move there.

01:25:35.000 Two days.

01:25:35.000 That's what's going to happen.

01:25:36.000 Yeah, he's going to move there.

01:25:37.000 He's going to have a huge palace.

01:25:39.000 He's going to take off.

01:25:39.000 He's going to set up in Riyadh.

01:25:40.000 They're going to say that we're going to prosecute him in America, and he's going to be like, no, you're not.

01:25:45.000 Yeah, Mohammed bin Laden's like, no, no, no.

01:25:47.000 Come over here.

01:25:49.000 Imagine if he did move there.

01:25:50.000 Can you imagine?

01:25:51.000 I want a beautiful, the most beautiful palace.

01:25:53.000 Trump, Trump, Saudi Arabia.

01:25:56.000 Right here, Trump Palace.

01:25:58.000 Sets up a golf course.

01:25:59.000 I mean, God, you could see it.

01:26:00.000 I could see it.

01:26:01.000 But here's another layer to this story, which is even crazier.

01:26:06.000 There's more layers?

01:26:07.000 Oh, God.

01:26:07.000 So, as you know, Saudi Arabia...

01:26:11.000 Over the last, I don't know how long it's been going on, two, three years, whatever, it's had a blockade on Qatar, right?

01:26:19.000 And Qatar is, you know, this small, very, very rich country, but it is landlocked, you know.

01:26:28.000 It's the only way to in and out of Qatar without traveling through Saudi Arabia is by sea.

01:26:34.000 So Saudi Arabia basically tried to invade Qatar and take it over.

01:26:39.000 The Turks basically saved Qatar by helping them, you know, with their military.

01:26:46.000 And the Saudis and the Qatar's have been, you know, basically hated each other for a long time.

01:26:53.000 So Saudi Arabia creates this blockade that no plane or no car, truck, anything can travel over Saudi airspace or through Saudi land to go into Qatar.

01:27:04.000 So, you know, creating some really serious economic damage to Qatar, right?

01:27:11.000 So, if you've read the story about the Kushner building on Park Avenue, that apparently they owe hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars on, and the Kushner family is, you know, like on the verge of, you know, whatever it is if you read this,

01:27:27.000 bankruptcy over all these real estate debts.

01:27:30.000 So, there was a deal just brokered.

01:27:33.000 Where Qatar bailed out the Kushner Building on Park Avenue.

01:27:39.000 And right after this bailout, it was announced that Saudi Arabia has lifted their embargo, their isolation of Qatar.

01:27:53.000 That's how you say it?

01:27:54.000 I always thought it was Qatar.

01:27:56.000 I've been told Qatar, but Qatar.

01:27:58.000 I don't know.

01:27:59.000 Qatar.

01:27:59.000 Q-A-T-A-R. And so the back story of this is the bailout of the Kushner building by Qatar.

01:28:09.000 So they made a backroom bail.

01:28:10.000 There you go.

01:28:11.000 Saudi Arabia end feud with Qatar and Jared Kushner broker deal.

01:28:16.000 January 4th, 2021. During the same time they're brokering the arms deal with Saudi Arabia, the final weeks of the presidency, it's all so dark.

01:28:25.000 It's so dark.

01:28:28.000 And so when you say, you know...

01:28:33.000 Did he think he could get away with it?

01:28:35.000 Well, I mean...

01:28:39.000 What is it like for you to put together a documentary like this?

01:28:45.000 I mean, while you're going over all this information, while you're reading the transcripts and piecing together the crime...

01:28:53.000 What is this like for you as a human being, just to realize that this is happening in the same era as what we're dealing with here in America?

01:29:04.000 Here we are in the United States, a completely different way of living, much freer access to communication.

01:29:14.000 Free speech is one of our core tenets.

01:29:17.000 To see this and to go...

01:29:19.000 How disturbing is this for you?

01:29:23.000 Well, coming out of the experience of Icarus, and I tell this story because it leads to your question.

01:29:36.000 As I began making Icarus, I was going through a really, really hard time in my life.

01:29:44.000 Ten years previous, I had a play and a book and a movie that had done well.

01:29:55.000 And I had paid my bills off this thing called Jutopia, which was a play that ran for three and a half years off-Broadway.

01:30:05.000 It was about a A gentile who wanted to marry a Jewish girl so he'd never have to make another decision.

01:30:11.000 So my background was in comedy.

01:30:16.000 I was acting, I was starring in this show that I wrote, that I was producing.

01:30:24.000 I performed in this show 2,000 times.

01:30:27.000 I mean, I was going crazy.

01:30:30.000 I'd basically become, you know, I was the Jewtopia guy.

01:30:36.000 And I was like pigeonholed into this because it was like a be careful of what you wish for because all of a sudden I have this hit show.

01:30:47.000 I've got a book and people just saw me as like it was like you know Jason Alexander you know it's like Costanza or Ross on Friends.

01:30:58.000 They were never going to see me as something else.

01:31:00.000 And during this time, I decided that I want to direct.

01:31:05.000 I didn't want to act anymore.

01:31:07.000 I didn't want to do comedy anymore, really.

01:31:10.000 I wanted to direct and produce because I didn't want to go seek that validation that you need as an actor, where you're auditioning and you're always seeking the validation from others.

01:31:23.000 And this play, you know, having starring in it and producing it and co-wrote it and, you know, I said, wait, I don't want to go back to needing validation from others.

01:31:36.000 I just want to be the guy who can make those decisions and pull those strings and create things and put myself in them or not.

01:31:46.000 And so I really got started to focus just that I wanted to direct and produce.

01:31:51.000 So I get to make, over the next four years, I cobbled together a million and a half dollars to go direct the film adaptation of Jutopia.

01:32:03.000 And long story short, the money I took into it was just not friendly money.

01:32:09.000 It was a real estate guy and he didn't understand the movie business.

01:32:13.000 A 26-day shoot turned into a 19-day shoot.

01:32:16.000 They didn't want to sell the film.

01:32:19.000 Instead, they just wanted to release it for rental with no marketing or advertising behind it.

01:32:24.000 It got bad reviews.

01:32:26.000 It was a flop.

01:32:29.000 And I had put my savings into this movie as well.

01:32:33.000 And so here I am in 2012 and I'm broke.

01:32:40.000 And I literally don't know what I'm going to do with my life.

01:32:44.000 I'm what I would call in director's jail.

01:32:49.000 I no longer had my agency at the time.

01:32:54.000 I was at CAA, so I lost my agency.

01:32:58.000 Nobody was sending me out for projects.

01:33:02.000 The movie was looked at as a failure.

01:33:06.000 And I'm basically in a midlife crisis.

01:33:11.000 I'm literally renting out my apartment as an Airbnb to pay my bills.

01:33:17.000 And I'm literally debating moving back to Denver in with my family until I can figure things out.

01:33:28.000 And here I was a couple years earlier starring in a show.

01:33:38.000 This depression leads me to start writing.

01:33:40.000 I start on Icarus.

01:33:42.000 And three years later, I'm standing on stage at the Academy Awards winning an Oscar.

01:33:49.000 A complete 180. Of my life.

01:33:53.000 I mean, a totally surreal moment.

01:33:56.000 But with that came this huge kind of burden, this feeling that, okay, well, I just basically helped save a man's life.

01:34:07.000 I helped expose the biggest doping scandal in sport history.

01:34:13.000 I was working with U.S. intelligence agencies, bringing a guy into protection.

01:34:21.000 And all of those really, really serious stakes around Icarus.

01:34:25.000 And then I'm given this incredible accolade and I go, well, I can't go make my next movie a Disney movie.

01:34:32.000 I can't go do something that's, you know, not going to have stakes.

01:34:37.000 And so I'm trying to figure out what that next project is going to be.

01:34:41.000 Did you feel like that was forced upon you or was that your instincts?

01:34:45.000 Like, it was just how you felt about your future?

01:34:49.000 Because Icarus was so rewarding?

01:34:51.000 Because it was so impactful?

01:34:53.000 Like, why did you decide that that had to be the case for the future?

01:34:59.000 I felt that it would be...

01:35:04.000 Disingenuous.

01:35:04.000 It felt that it wouldn't be operating with integrity to go through a journey that spoke truth to power, that brought forward a story that I felt that the world needed and wanted to see,

01:35:29.000 which clearly they did.

01:35:32.000 And that Gregory Rechenkov is still living under the fear of his life every single day in protection, in isolation, for basically bringing to me his truth and trusting me with his life and his truth.

01:35:50.000 So to then go jump in and go do whatever you want to call it didn't feel It felt like I had been bestowed this gift, this privilege, and that I wanted to see to it that the next project that I did,

01:36:11.000 that I would stay that course.

01:36:16.000 And in Jamal's murder, it ticked all these boxes for me.

01:36:24.000 It was the story of human rights.

01:36:25.000 It was the story of freedom of speech.

01:36:27.000 It was the story of freedom of journalism.

01:36:30.000 You know, cyber hacking.

01:36:33.000 But then there was this personal story.

01:36:35.000 And this is where I get to your question.

01:36:40.000 Right after Jamal is murdered, in my mind I go, hey, this seems like this could be the next story.

01:36:49.000 This could be the next film I make.

01:36:50.000 But there were three variables to me as to whether or not I could take this story on.

01:36:56.000 At least that I saw it.

01:36:57.000 Because I didn't want to tell an archival film.

01:36:59.000 I didn't want to go piece together a bunch of news footage and, you know, here's my documentary.

01:37:04.000 I wanted to...

01:37:05.000 Do like what I did in Icarus, where I'm embedding, where I really, really go deep into it, where I craft a story and a film that the world doesn't know.

01:37:17.000 And if they think they know about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and they watch The Dissident, they realize they don't.

01:37:23.000 And for me to do that, it depended on three things.

01:37:28.000 One, Hattisha Jenga's, Jamal Khashoggi's fiancée.

01:37:33.000 Whether or not she would participate with me and whether or not she would work with me exclusively to tell her story and that story of their love together.

01:37:44.000 Because that to me was going to be the emotional connection of the film.

01:37:49.000 That was the human connection.

01:37:51.000 A woman who was in love with this man, who believed that she was going to marry this man, who walks into a consulate to go get marriage papers to marry this woman, to never return.

01:38:05.000 I mean, just...

01:38:09.000 Unfathomable.

01:38:10.000 And so would Hattisha work with me?

01:38:13.000 The second was Omar Abdelaziz.

01:38:15.000 Here's this story emerging in the New York Times in the days following Khashoggi's murder of this young Saudi dissident who's claiming, who's saying that his brothers are sitting in a Saudi prison with no charges.

01:38:28.000 23 of his friends are sitting in a Saudi jail with no charges.

01:38:32.000 That he had been hacked with Pegasus, that the Saudis had come to rendition and kill him in Canada months before.

01:38:39.000 And I saw in Omar, the protagonist, the young Khashoggi, the voice of, you know, who's still alive, fighting for his life under security of Canada.

01:38:49.000 Would Omar work with me?

01:38:51.000 And allow me his evidence and his audio and tell his story because through Omar, again, we come to understand what's really going on in Saudi Arabia, but also come to love Jamal.

01:39:03.000 And the third element was the Turks, the Turkish. 0.93

01:39:06.000 Would they provide me information, evidence, transcripts, interviews that was not on CNN, was not on BBC, that they had not given to anybody else other than intelligence agencies?

01:39:21.000 So as I set out on this journey, I get connected to Hatice, and I go to Istanbul a month after Jamal's murder.

01:39:31.000 And I didn't bring a cameraman.

01:39:34.000 I'm sorry, I didn't bring a camera.

01:39:36.000 I traveled there with Jake Swanko, my cinematographer, who also produced the film with me.

01:39:42.000 And Hatice was just willing to meet with me.

01:39:45.000 She didn't even speak English at the time, and we had a translator.

01:39:50.000 And I spent five weeks there meeting with her every other day as she was going through the worst unimaginable grief telling her, Hatija, look, let me help you.

01:40:05.000 Let me tell this story.

01:40:07.000 Trust me.

01:40:08.000 I promise you I'll protect you.

01:40:09.000 I promise you.

01:40:10.000 I promise you that I will protect Jamal.

01:40:14.000 And I left Istanbul after five weeks and she was still deciding.

01:40:20.000 And I then went to Montreal.

01:40:24.000 And with Omar, it was the same thing.

01:40:27.000 But Omar allowed me to start filming.

01:40:30.000 But every time after we filmed with Omar, we would leave him all of the camera cards because Omar wasn't ready to participate either.

01:40:39.000 He was in total shock.

01:40:46.000 And this was this trust building with these people and Then Hatija basically says, hey, I'm ready.

01:40:59.000 And I go and meet her in Brussels as she goes to speak in front of the European Parliament.

01:41:04.000 First time basically leaving her country other than going to Oman.

01:41:08.000 She had never been in Western Europe.

01:41:11.000 And that scene where Hatija is introduced in the film was the very first time that I was able to film with her and she trusted me.

01:41:20.000 And this began what's now been this two-year incredibly personal, emotional journey because you're with these people as they're going through this horrific loss, as they're fighting for justice.

01:41:37.000 I mean, I was with Omar in Canada as he's learning that one of his brothers had been tortured and had his teeth knocked out, a 19-year-old brother.

01:41:51.000 For doing nothing other than knowing Omar.

01:41:54.000 I'm shooting with Omar in Canada as he's receiving death threats on his phone in Arabic coming from Canadian phone numbers.

01:42:05.000 I'm with Hatija as we walk into what was going to be her and Jamal's home in Istanbul and we open the door and it's a crime scene and there's black dust everywhere because they had taken the whole place for fingerprints and she's in this place that she thought she was going to spend her life with Jamal going,

01:42:27.000 where's Jamal's stuff?

01:42:29.000 What happened here?

01:42:32.000 And This has taken such a huge emotional toll on me because you really come to love these people.

01:42:48.000 On the other hand, I'm so grateful.

01:42:54.000 Like, had Icarus not happened, I wouldn't be able to go tell these stories.

01:42:59.000 These people wouldn't have trusted me.

01:43:01.000 Do you think you'd even be compelled to tell a story like this if Icarus had not happened?

01:43:05.000 No way.

01:43:10.000 I get asked this question all the time.

01:43:12.000 Like, are you scared of your life?

01:43:15.000 You know, you're taking on Putin.

01:43:17.000 You're taking on MBS. You're fighting these forces.

01:43:21.000 And in this film...

01:43:24.000 Here we go to Sundance.

01:43:26.000 Hillary Clinton's at my premiere.

01:43:29.000 Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, is at my premiere.

01:43:33.000 Audiences are on their feet applauding.

01:43:35.000 Hatija, his fiancee, is there.

01:43:37.000 Agnes Calamar, the UN Special Repertoire that investigated his murders there.

01:43:42.000 Standing ovations, tears going down people's eyes, and not a single major global streamer steps up to acquire the film.

01:43:51.000 We arguably had the best reviews of any film out of Sundance.

01:43:57.000 We were on all of the Hollywood Reporter, Variety, AP, their top ten films of all of Sundance, top films of 2020 lists, etc.

01:44:07.000 The most incredible accolades.

01:44:10.000 And we were not offered a single dollar for this film.

01:44:15.000 And I'm going in there basically at this point as an Oscar winner.

01:44:24.000 And so to go through that experience and go, wait, am I the only one that wants to speak truth to power?

01:44:35.000 What happens when I go and spend two years of my life fighting for something like this?

01:44:40.000 And the only way that people can go see it is to go rent it on VOD because all of these media companies are in business with the Saudis, are taking money from the Saudis, have stock owned by the Saudis, and are too scared or have too many ties to actually want to speak any sort of truth to power or even allow their subscribers to see this content. 0.68

01:45:07.000 And here with Icarus, you know, every single time I turn on my Netflix, still, Icarus is at the top of my feed, three years later, with What I've been told, 700 million views.

01:45:23.000 So I know that people want to see this film.

01:45:26.000 I know people want to learn about this.

01:45:28.000 And we craft it as a thriller.

01:45:31.000 I mean, it's not crafted as a doc.

01:45:33.000 It's crafted like The Bourne Identity.

01:45:35.000 But instead, people are going to have to find the film instead of being able to go into their subscription services and have it just live there for people to discover and find.

01:45:49.000 Did you discuss it with Netflix?

01:45:51.000 Did you have personal communication or do representatives talk to them?

01:45:55.000 How do you do that?

01:45:57.000 Well, we have a sales agent.

01:45:59.000 You go into Sundance.

01:46:01.000 And ahead of Sundance, you would have thought that there would have been a lot of requests, knowing that this film was coming into Sundance, for these major buyers to get an advanced look at the film.

01:46:18.000 There were none.

01:46:20.000 And then we go on to Sundance.

01:46:23.000 The heads of most of these companies were actually there, not just their buyers, like the bosses.

01:46:31.000 And one after the other, after the other, passed with no explanation.

01:46:39.000 Just, sorry, we can't take this.

01:46:45.000 This is too dangerous for us.

01:46:47.000 This is too This is scary for us.

01:46:49.000 This is too much of a security risk for us.

01:46:52.000 They told you these things.

01:46:54.000 Told my sales agent.

01:46:57.000 Too much of a security risk.

01:46:59.000 Yeah.

01:47:00.000 Or they just would say, you know, sorry, our slate is full for the year, right?

01:47:11.000 You know, and And what I got to see was that we are living right now in a world where big business and money and investment Take place over human rights,

01:47:36.000 over freedom of speech, over freedom of journalism, over freedom of press.

01:47:41.000 And it's okay that Omar's brothers sit in a Saudi jail tortured, 23 of his friends sit in jail, thousands and thousands and thousands of people are arrested or hundreds are beheaded simply for For speaking publicly,

01:48:01.000 not in support of their government.

01:48:04.000 That's why they were beheaded?

01:48:05.000 Yes.

01:48:06.000 So they were beheaded for speaking out against the government?

01:48:10.000 Yes.

01:48:12.000 And this is okay as long as you can grow your subscribers.

01:48:20.000 As long as you can do business with them.

01:48:24.000 And this isn't just Netflix.

01:48:29.000 This is all of them.

01:48:34.000 Amazon just acquired Souk, which is the Saudi Arabia of Amazon.

01:48:39.000 So even in the film, you see Jeff Bezos is hacked.

01:48:43.000 By the Saudis. 0.95

01:48:46.000 With the same Pegasus software.

01:48:48.000 Yeah.

01:48:49.000 Jamal Khashoggi is his employee because he owns the Washington Post.

01:48:57.000 And yet, they don't acquire the film to distribute it.

01:49:02.000 Well, arguably...

01:49:05.000 This is about shareholder value.

01:49:07.000 This is about growth in the region.

01:49:09.000 This is about continued business interest.

01:49:11.000 But they do have it available on Amazon Prime to rent and to buy.

01:49:15.000 To rent.

01:49:15.000 But it's very different than having it as an original, right?

01:49:21.000 When something is, let's say, an Amazon original, a Netflix original, an HBO original, A Disney original, a Hulu original, right?

01:49:30.000 That streamer, that platform, is taking ownership of that content, labeling it with that original, and also doing the marketing and the support and the awards campaign behind it, and then that content will live on that platform and they'll market and support that content.

01:49:52.000 So far beyond our rental that's set up, which is very different, meaning if you're just putting something up there to rent, not only is there no risk for the company, another company is doing that to put that up there,

01:50:08.000 and it's not being labeled as an original, so it's not like a, wow, why did you do this?

01:50:15.000 But as of right now, we don't have a secondary output window, meaning after Our video on demand window is kind of over.

01:50:25.000 Right now we don't have a secondary output deal with a Netflix or an Amazon or an HBO. And do you know anyone at Netflix?

01:50:33.000 Do you know any of the executives?

01:50:35.000 Could you have a conversation with them about this?

01:50:37.000 I know a ton of them.

01:50:39.000 And did you reach out?

01:50:43.000 Look, I love Netflix.

01:50:47.000 I do too.

01:50:48.000 And I'm grateful to Netflix because without Netflix, Icarus wouldn't have had that success.

01:50:59.000 And that film changed my life.

01:51:03.000 Without Netflix's support, it wouldn't have won the Academy Award.

01:51:07.000 And I have a lot of friends at Netflix and I'm grateful to them.

01:51:14.000 Netflix is not the same company that it was a couple years ago.

01:51:20.000 When Icarus was acquired, there was 100 million subscribers.

01:51:27.000 There's now 200 million subscribers.

01:51:29.000 When Icarus was acquired, they had never won an Academy Award for a feature.

01:51:36.000 Icarus was their first feature Academy Award win in 2018. And now everybody is willing to do films for them, whether that's Alfonso Cuaron or David Fincher or Martin Scorsese,

01:51:52.000 plus all the biggest actors and stars in the world.

01:51:56.000 Meaning, not only are they a different company, it's everybody is doing business with them.

01:52:05.000 And the awards season this year, probably 40-50% of those top films, you know, will be Netflix films.

01:52:16.000 And that's amazing that, you know, that they are getting behind content like that and also that, you know, everybody from George Clooney to Alfonso Cuaron, right?

01:52:29.000 I mean, you name it.

01:52:30.000 There's no disparity anymore other than maybe a handful of filmmakers like Christopher Nolan and Spielberg that have said, hey, they're not going to do Netflix films.

01:52:41.000 They want to preserve theaters that won't work with Netflix.

01:52:46.000 But that growth and their need to expand internationally because they're topped out in the United States.

01:52:56.000 I think has changed the company as to the risks they're willing to take as to content.

01:53:04.000 And that's unfortunate.

01:53:07.000 You know, this isn't so shocking to me.

01:53:13.000 You know, months before Sundance, they removed an episode of Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act.

01:53:23.000 Hassan had done an episode making fun of Mohammed bin Salman and focused on the Khashoggi murder.

01:53:33.000 And the Kingdom basically asked Netflix to remove it from their platform.

01:53:38.000 And they took it off the air in Saudi Arabia.

01:53:41.000 And then they defended the decision by saying, we're not a truth to power company.

01:53:46.000 We're in the entertainment business.

01:53:49.000 They literally said that?

01:53:49.000 That was their statement?

01:53:50.000 That was Reed Hastings' statement.

01:53:52.000 You can Google it.

01:53:53.000 You can look it up online.

01:53:58.000 And he has supported that statement on many occasions.

01:54:04.000 And apparently the back story behind that is that they were able to negotiate to have other content that wouldn't have been allowed in Saudi Arabia streaming on Netflix in exchange for taking off that episode.

01:54:19.000 But the bottom line of it is that there was a decision made that, hey, we want to grow in the kingdom.

01:54:27.000 We've got, you know, Saudi Arabia, investment, God knows what percentage of Netflix stock they own, etc., right?

01:54:34.000 And we're going to remove this episode.

01:54:38.000 Mohammed bin Salman doesn't want it on the air.

01:54:41.000 So, I mean, if you look at that, the handwriting was on the wall that they were arguably not going to take the dissident, regardless of the fact that I had done Icarus.

01:54:54.000 And regardless of, you know, the accolades and what the film is and, you know, arguably that, you know, hundreds of millions of people on their platform would want to watch it.

01:55:10.000 This wasn't just them.

01:55:12.000 It was all of them.

01:55:15.000 And I think it speaks to, you know, this greater issue that we have to start thinking about, which is...

01:55:25.000 If all these media conglomerates, and there isn't that many, you know, HBO is owned by Time and Warner Media, and I mean, it's, you know, it's like kind of what's happened with the airline industry now.

01:55:36.000 There's only, you know, there's only a few big players, and there's not that many options.

01:55:42.000 That, you know, this is...

01:55:46.000 It's seeming to be an increasingly difficult time for filmmakers, for storytellers like myself that want to make content like this because they want to tell stories like this that they believe that humanity should see and know and not have a global distribution outlet for that.

01:56:12.000 I don't know what the solution is, but I'm certainly not angry at anyone.

01:56:17.000 I'm just disappointed.

01:56:20.000 It's got to be a very bizarre place to be in because does this flavor or does this have any impact on your next choice?

01:56:29.000 Like what you do for your next film?

01:56:32.000 Well, that's a great question.

01:56:39.000 And I've really been thinking about that.

01:56:42.000 I have two projects that I'm working on I don't want to disclose.

01:56:45.000 One is very much of the Ilk of Icarus and the Dissonant. 0.97

01:56:51.000 The other is more commercial driven and then I have a scripted series that I'm working on that is of the kind of Icarus Russia kind of stuff and that we do have a partner on we haven't announced it yet But it's scripted.

01:57:18.000 I want to continue to when a story comes that I go somebody needs to do this or this has got the makings of a thriller and I think I can and me and my creative team can craft something really powerful.

01:57:36.000 I don't think I'm going to be swayed by it but I think I'm going to go into it with a different perspective knowing that probably the distribution challenges are going to be there from the outset and might try to do things from the outset to try to limit that or figure out how we're going to position it.

01:58:01.000 So this was, it's safe to say this was shocking to you to not get picked up.

01:58:09.000 Shocking is an understatement.

01:58:12.000 And I don't ever want to toot my own horn, you know, but when you look at what this story is, I mean, I made this film for Hatisha Jenga as his fiancée.

01:58:27.000 I made the film for Omar Abdulaziz.

01:58:29.000 I made the film for Because I saw with Icarus the power that film can have.

01:58:37.000 I mean, when Icarus came out in August 2017, despite the story already being public, Russia was still going to the Olympics.

01:58:43.000 Five months later, the IOC on their reasoned decision basically cites Icarus as one of their reasons for banning Russia from the Games.

01:58:52.000 Do you think without that, Russia still would be in the Olympics?

01:58:55.000 I believe so, yes.

01:58:59.000 That's got to be a crazy feeling.

01:59:01.000 Because look at what film does.

01:59:04.000 Let's take The Cove, for example, right?

01:59:06.000 About dolphin slaughter in Japan.

01:59:09.000 That film completely changed that industry in Japan.

01:59:15.000 Because you're watching dolphins get rounded up and murdered.

01:59:21.000 Look at Blackfish and what that did for SeaWorld, right?

01:59:27.000 And there are so many films that you can draw these parallels to that I have the power to actually change politics,

01:59:43.000 have the power to change the course of history.

01:59:46.000 And that was what was so incredible about Icarus.

01:59:51.000 And that's what also gave me that feeling of a burden to go, you know, take on a story like the Khashoggi murder because I saw how it could impact change and how it could actually change a narrative.

02:00:05.000 And I mean, everywhere I go, they might not recognize me, but then if I say, hey, what are you doing?

02:00:14.000 I go, oh yeah, did you see Icarus?

02:00:17.000 I mean, everywhere I go in the world, they all saw it.

02:00:21.000 Like, I can't even find people that haven't seen it at this point.

02:00:25.000 I mean, it feels like the whole planet watched it.

02:00:28.000 And that is the extraordinary power of Netflix.

02:00:33.000 That when they put out a film, it releases into like 197 countries across like 50 languages all at the same time.

02:00:41.000 The entire world has access to it.

02:00:44.000 And the entire world should have access to this film.

02:00:48.000 But they're not going to have access to this film because there are business interests at stake.

02:00:55.000 There are investment interests at stake.

02:00:58.000 And that is really disappointing.

02:01:02.000 And so I'm shocked that That I believe with great wealth and with great power comes great responsibility.

02:01:17.000 And if these business titans that have these huge companies Lose their moral compass.

02:01:34.000 Lose their direction to basically say, okay, this might not be the very best thing for our business or our subscriber growth, but goddammit,

02:01:52.000 people should see this.

02:01:55.000 Wow!

02:01:56.000 We gotta do something about it.

02:01:58.000 Wow!

02:01:59.000 There are people losing their lives and sitting in jails and maybe our distributing this film can change that.

02:02:08.000 Maybe our letting our hundreds of millions of subscribers see this can actually bring about positive change for humanity.

02:02:18.000 And they don't do that?

02:02:21.000 That's really soul-crushing.

02:02:24.000 I got a message, and I hope Hatija is not going to be mad at me.

02:02:36.000 His fiancée sent me a message two days ago.

02:02:50.000 And she said, I'm proud of you every day.

02:03:21.000 You made history.

02:03:23.000 You did an incredible job, believe me.

02:03:26.000 All is well now.

02:03:28.000 I'm getting better every day.

02:03:31.000 This trauma has created a new Hattisha, I think. 1.00

02:03:36.000 I understand that every day.

02:03:38.000 I'm not the same person two years as I was two years before.

02:03:44.000 I got a lot, and I learned a lot, and I made some good friends.

02:03:49.000 The most important one is you and your team, Thor, that's Thor Halverson, the president of the Human Rights Foundation who financed the film, and Jake Swanko.

02:03:59.000 He is my cinematographer.

02:04:02.000 My life changed and my opinion also changed and my daily life also changed.

02:04:07.000 The one thing that did not change is my love and my heart.

02:04:11.000 It's still full of love for humanity and Jamal's soul.

02:04:16.000 I believe that if we change life, it will be with love and with love for our values.

02:04:24.000 And that's extraordinary to me to see that his fiancée two years on has such that incredible positive outlook in the world.

02:04:36.000 And I'm so honored to receive that message.

02:04:40.000 And at the same time, I know that for the world to actually learn of her story and her fight for Jamal's life and for justice is going to be a struggle because of the,

02:04:59.000 whatever you want to call it, business interests of these major platforms that come ahead of Seeking any sort of accountability for human rights abuses.

02:05:15.000 And the potential to make the world a better place.

02:05:18.000 And the potential to make the world a better place, but it might not align with their goals for subscriber growth in that region of the world.

02:05:29.000 Or it might not coincide with possible future investments or investments or shareholder value.

02:05:42.000 That's unfortunate.

02:05:44.000 It's unfortunate if the richest man on planet Earth, or now the second, I guess, Jeff Bezos, is more concerned with his bottom line than he is concerned about seeking justice and accountability for a man who worked for him,

02:06:02.000 who was murdered while working for his newspaper, and that He and his company could have stepped forward to see to it that the world truly had access to this.

02:06:17.000 You know Brian it's really crazy hearing your story and thinking that just eight years ago you were doing this play and your your life is falling apart and you know telling the story that you've Created this documentary in Icarus and then just by circumstance while you're making this documentary the scandal unfolds Changes everything the document becomes the documentary comes out.

02:06:46.000 It's a masterpiece literally changes the way the entire sporting world looks at Russia and drug doping and now I mean, your life has taken a really bizarre turn.

02:07:00.000 And you've been very courageous.

02:07:04.000 You know, what you've done is you looked in the mirror and you did the right thing.

02:07:13.000 Oh, thanks.

02:07:14.000 I really appreciate that.

02:07:17.000 And you did a bold thing.

02:07:23.000 I wouldn't change it.

02:07:26.000 Because when you get to work with these people, as hard as it may be, I think of Hattisha as my sister now.

02:07:38.000 And when I get messages like that, or when I get to talk to Gregory and he thanks me for saving his life, You know, I go, okay.

02:07:54.000 Well, I should keep doing this.

02:07:57.000 I should, you know, and I think that that is...

02:08:01.000 I don't...

02:08:03.000 Not to wax philosophically, but...

02:08:10.000 You know, I just...

02:08:13.000 I've had so many ups and downs in my life and so many financial kind of struggles and thinking, you know, here I was, you know,

02:08:28.000 facing 40 years old a few years ago going, I'm going to go move back to Colorado with my parents.

02:08:36.000 That...

02:08:37.000 But if I have been kind of bestowed these gifts and people who are willing to finance and back these projects for me to go do and me and my team can go and make this content and do this content and and follow these stories then you know then then why not you know we were just on this planet for such a for such a short time I mean it's

02:09:07.000 I mean every year the ticks by I can't I can't believe it I mean and so you know we know that we've got this really limited time and that we're all just ants on the planet like I'm so aware that and like when I go to get New York I always get I get depressed because I realize how much I am an ant on the planet,

02:09:29.000 and it doesn't matter how famous you may be.

02:09:37.000 When you're gone, you're gone, and the newspapers might write about you for a couple days, and you're David Bowie, or you're Michael Jackson, or Whoever you are, and when you pass, you pass on.

02:09:51.000 And we don't know where we're going.

02:09:54.000 I certainly don't know where I'm going.

02:09:57.000 So I go, well, at least this time that I have on this planet, if I've been given this gift, I might as well keep trying to use it.

02:10:08.000 Well, you most certainly have made an impact.

02:10:11.000 And I appreciate you.

02:10:13.000 And anytime you got something going on that you want to promote, I am here for you.

02:10:18.000 100%.

02:10:19.000 You're a good man.

02:10:20.000 I listen to you all the time, and yeah, you are the powerful Joe Rogan.

02:10:30.000 But it's a testament to the work that you're doing too, Joe, because your story is equally incredible from...

02:10:42.000 You know, from Fear Factor and being able to do comedy and get up on a stage and make people laugh and then have this show where you're able to bring in people from all sorts of walks of life all sorts of careers and talk to them and have built this huge audience because you've opened up that platform

02:11:12.000 for people to get information you know kudos man it's it's a good thing that you're doing and I listen to you religiously so thanks man I appreciate it I don't know what the fuck happened I have no idea how this happened My story is much more convoluted than yours.

02:11:29.000 It's very bizarre.

02:11:30.000 But thanks, man.

02:11:32.000 Thank you.

02:11:33.000 Thank you very much.

02:11:33.000 And everybody, go check out the documentary.

02:11:35.000 It's really excellent.

02:11:36.000 The Dissident, it's available.

02:11:38.000 Like you saw, it's available.

02:11:39.000 You can get it on iTunes.

02:11:40.000 You can get it on Amazon.

02:11:41.000 It's worth the money.

02:11:42.000 It's very good.

02:11:43.000 Yeah, and if you go online, thedissident.com, there's trailers.

02:11:47.000 You can read about it and you can find out how to watch it.

02:11:52.000 And give everybody out your social media as well so they can...

02:11:55.000 My Twitter is at Brian Fogel.

02:11:59.000 My Instagram handle is at Brian Fogel.

02:12:04.000 And...

02:12:06.000 The site is thedissident.com and you can rent it or buy it today.

02:12:14.000 I promise you, you'll be shocked and horrified, but I think you'll also love the film.

02:12:23.000 Crafted kind of as a born identity thriller and hopefully will keep you glued to your seat.

02:12:30.000 And at the end of it, it'll make you want to get involved with the Human Rights Foundation or other human rights organizations around the world to try to continue fighting for justice for Jamal and accountability for this horrendous murder.

02:12:49.000 Thank you, everybody.

02:12:50.000 Goodbye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - January 09, 2021

Joe Rogan Experience #1592 - Bryan Fogel

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