The Tucker Carlson Show - July 10, 2025


Steve Robinson Exposes the Chinese Mafia’s Secret Drug Empire in the US & the Politicians Involved


Episode Stats

Length

2 hours and 1 minute

Words per Minute

177.56981

Word Count

21,542

Sentence Count

1,538

Misogynist Sentences

16

Hate Speech Sentences

76


Summary

Steve Robinson is one of the few remaining independent journalists in the state of Maine, and he tells us a story that stuns us. It s about the Chinese takeover, the takeover by Chinese drug cartels of the largest state in the Northeast, and a story about what happens when immigration laws are ignored, when state and local governments fail to do their duty.


Transcript

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00:00:14.360 We recently had a remarkable conversation with a man called Steve Robinson, one of the last
00:00:20.220 independent journalists in the state of Maine. And he told us a story that stunned us. It's about
00:00:26.180 the Chinese takeover, the takeover by Chinese drug cartels of the largest state in the Northeast.
00:00:33.020 It's a story about what happens when immigration laws are ignored, when state and local governments
00:00:38.240 failed to do their duty. We have a documentary out about this right now. It's on TCN. The
00:00:43.240 documentary is called High Crimes, the Chinese Mafia's Takeover of Rural America. It's shocking.
00:00:50.840 Watch it now. It's available only at tuckercarlson.com.
00:00:56.180 Thank you for doing this. You're the best journalist in Maine. You're one of about six
00:01:21.320 journalists in Maine. But if it weren't for you, I don't think anybody would have any idea
00:01:27.480 what was happening in the state of Maine. So let's go to the story that has kind of defined
00:01:33.700 your coverage over the last couple of years. And that is the, I don't think it's too strong
00:01:37.460 to say, the takeover of rural Maine by Chinese drug cartels. I want to stand back and let you
00:01:44.200 describe the scale of this and what it is. Well, I mean, it's shocking. I would say
00:01:49.840 there's probably 300 to 400 properties throughout the state of Maine that are under the control of
00:01:55.640 what the Department of Homeland Security under President Biden called Asian transnational
00:02:01.080 criminal organizations. Chinese Mafia, I think is a better term and an easier way to understand it.
00:02:07.100 This first came to light in the end of 2023 when a reporter from the Daily Caller News Foundation,
00:02:14.300 Jenny Tehr, who's a fantastic reporter, got a leaked memo that said, hey, there's 270 plus of
00:02:21.300 these sites in Maine and there's another 800 in other parts of the country. And that caught my eye.
00:02:26.140 I grew up in Maine, spent my whole life in Maine. And I figured if there were 270 sites in Maine where
00:02:32.800 this criminal activity was occurring, I would be able to find it. And so I contacted Jenny and I
00:02:37.980 worked with her and eventually got more information about some of these sites that she knew about,
00:02:43.720 identified the property owners, and we visited some of the sites, started identifying some of the
00:02:49.440 patterns. And I basically looked at every mortgage record for the past six or seven years in every
00:02:57.720 county in the state of Maine and all the electrical records for electrical upgrades, for commercial
00:03:03.960 grade power, which is required for these marijuana grows, some other financial records and mortgage
00:03:08.880 documents, and was able to identify well over 300 Chinese marijuana grows unlicensed operating in the
00:03:16.940 state of Maine just from looking at records and piecing the puzzle together and then decided I
00:03:22.160 need to go visit them to see what the story is and to confirm it. And so I drove, I mean, easily 10,000
00:03:28.300 or more miles around the state of Maine to very, very distant remote places, schools, factories,
00:03:34.560 former shoe factories, former scrap metal yards. You know, there's-
00:03:41.240 The detritus of the industrial economy.
00:03:43.020 Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's one of these next to my high school basketball
00:03:46.660 coach's house. One of these next to, you know, the guy who ended up marrying my high school
00:03:53.760 girlfriend. He's got a Chinese marijuana grow next to him. There's a Chinese marijuana grow next to
00:03:58.260 the first place that I got drunk with my high school friends. There's a Chinese marijuana grow
00:04:02.220 on my camp road that has since been busted. There's a Chinese marijuana grow on my dad's
00:04:07.440 road in St. Albans. They're everywhere. They're in former schools, former nursing homes.
00:04:12.220 And we were able to find them. It was easy to find. And it turned out that one of the first
00:04:17.620 things I would do when I showed up and scoped something out, I mean, you can smell it. You can
00:04:21.220 see the upgraded electrical work. You can see the license plate out front from New York City.
00:04:26.840 And you go and you talk with the neighbors and the neighbors, you know, you just knock on the door
00:04:31.140 and say, Hey, I'd like to talk to you about your neighbors. And they kind of get this look in their eye,
00:04:35.460 like, finally, like finally somebody wants to come like hear what we've been going through,
00:04:41.220 what we've been seeing. And they're eager to share their story. And the story is always that
00:04:46.020 in the middle of COVID, a young couple that spoke decent English, uh, were of Asian descent,
00:04:52.300 showed up, bought the house, came over, introduced themselves, uh, gave them a bottle of wine or a
00:04:57.460 bottle of cognac, uh, and introduced themselves and said, well, you know, we're getting away from
00:05:02.280 Boston or we're getting away from New York, uh, because of COVID. And, um, you know, this is
00:05:06.680 just going to be our family getaway. And then they never saw that couple again. And from then on,
00:05:11.300 it was a steady stream of, uh, other individuals of Asian descent who did not speak English,
00:05:16.740 uh, were not personable, seldom left the house. And every 30 to 40 days, a U-Haul would arrive
00:05:22.460 usually, um, at dark hours, you know, 3 AM, 4 AM and, uh, be there for about an hour and leave.
00:05:28.700 And then there obviously it was the smell of cannabis, very pungent and all the windows blacked
00:05:34.100 out and the electrical work and odd chemicals being dumped in the backyard and some other
00:05:39.040 indicators. Sometimes they would burn to the ground, uh, because they were trying to pass
00:05:42.780 through too much electricity through. But, um, it was, I guess it was a period of seven or eight
00:05:48.680 months I spent driving all around the state of Maine and seeing story after story after story and
00:05:54.120 interviewing all of these people and seeing how scared people were, how terrified people were.
00:05:58.700 How well known the story was amongst people.
00:06:01.520 Why were people afraid?
00:06:03.480 They were for a number of reasons. I think, I think there were some people who were afraid
00:06:07.780 of being, um, called racist. If they were.
00:06:11.940 Everyone in Maine is afraid of being called racist. I've noticed it's the main weakness of
00:06:15.660 the state, which is what I found was the exact opposite. I found that there, they were willing
00:06:20.560 to tolerate behavior from their Chinese neighbors that they would never have tolerated from Irish
00:06:26.680 or French or English neighbors. Like absolutely, you know, illegal dumping, uh, breaking the
00:06:31.880 transformer every other week and causing blackouts in the neighborhood. They would never have tolerated
00:06:35.760 this behavior from white neighbors, but because of this inclination to not be smeared as a racist,
00:06:41.960 they were willing to tolerate it. Um, but they were also scared because they knew the signs of
00:06:47.760 a criminal organization. You know, they knew, they knew what was going on and the marijuana economy in Maine is
00:06:54.460 big. It's bigger than blueberries, potatoes, and lobsters. Um, so there are enough people in the industry who are
00:07:00.740 talking about this. And so there was this kind of secret hidden knowledge of what was happening in this
00:07:05.700 state, but it was like, you can't talk about it. Um, I, I'm a little bit confused for a couple. I mean,
00:07:11.280 there's so many questions. I'm glad we have time. Um, Maine has effectively legalized marijuana.
00:07:18.420 Okay. So there are weed, um, and, and some kind of criminal enterprise has, has funded all these
00:07:24.660 weed dispensaries, medical marijuana dispensaries are in every town. They're the only new buildings in
00:07:28.940 most towns, as you well know. And the idea, the way that was sold, your dog's getting mad about this.
00:07:36.720 Yes. He's very, he's very upset with what's happening to Maine. The way this is, this was
00:07:41.780 sold to Maine voters was we're going to take the crime out of marijuana. Like we're going to regulate
00:07:48.440 it. It's going to, if you want marijuana, you want cannabis, you can go and get it. It's got no
00:07:52.920 weird chemicals. It's going to be safer. It's going to be safer. Yeah. And the tax money too. The tax
00:07:56.960 money is, our schools are going to be so much better. Our streets will be safer. There'll be so much
00:08:01.060 more revenue. No bigger group of liars than the marijuana peddlers. I have to, they're liars. I know a lot
00:08:05.860 of them are liars. Anyway, whatever. This is the opposite of what was promised, correct?
00:08:10.840 Yes. Uh, I think that there, we unintentionally created a system that was so ripe for exploitation
00:08:18.740 by criminal groups that you have to wonder if it was done intentionally.
00:08:22.660 So, because why would they, I mean, there's so much marijuana in Maine,
00:08:26.860 you know, everyone, you know, grows marijuana in Maine. Its value has fallen dramatically. I don't
00:08:32.520 know what they're selling an ounce of weed for right now, but like not, you can stuff your
00:08:34.860 mattress for it. $40 or $50. That's crazy. If it's triad weed. $40 or $50 an ounce. If it's
00:08:40.380 triad weed. I don't smoke marijuana, but I did as a child. In 1983, it was $100 an ounce. Yeah.
00:08:46.020 In 1983 dollars. So, it's dramatically cheaper than it ever was. So, why, what's the motive for
00:08:52.060 illegal weed grows? Well, they have the advantage of not paying taxes, no regulatory compliance.
00:09:01.140 They're not paying their labor a significant amount of money. They're using pesticides and
00:09:05.840 fungicides illegally that reduce their product loss. They can also export marijuana. About two
00:09:13.260 thirds of the product that they grow illegally leaves the state of Maine. Legal growers aren't
00:09:16.660 allowed to do that because it's not federally legal yet. So, they can sell into black markets like
00:09:22.080 New York for a period of time, which was a black market, you know, early on into Maine's
00:09:26.920 development of triad weed. Later, it was a gray market where they legalized it, but didn't really
00:09:31.420 have a formal system for the sale of marijuana products. So, anytime you can bring your product
00:09:36.540 from Maine to a black market state, you're going to get three or four times the price.
00:09:42.780 And this is something that a Chinese criminal organization can do, but the mom and pop trying
00:09:47.020 to run a cannabis edible store or whatever can't do. They can't export their product out of state.
00:09:51.600 So, if you have all these built-in cost advantages, you can get a significant amount of money off of
00:09:57.200 it. And they also consider it very low risk. And they were right to consider it low risk.
00:10:02.460 Because when the state of Maine legalized marijuana, just like what happened in Washington
00:10:06.300 State and in Oklahoma and in California, it creates, it changes the culture in law enforcement.
00:10:12.360 We sent a signal to law enforcement that marijuana was no longer a problem. It was legal.
00:10:17.620 People voted, stopped paying attention to marijuana. And cops who busted a significant
00:10:23.380 marijuana bust were kind of laughed at. Like, yeah, that's just pot. That's legal. Why are you
00:10:26.860 doing that? Fentanyl is the priority. And we also have all kinds of legal marijuana grows happening,
00:10:32.440 and that functions as camouflage for what the Chinese are doing. So, it might not be the most
00:10:36.580 lucrative activity, but it's pretty damn lucrative. But it's low risk, very low risk for them.
00:10:42.960 Because at worst, you know, they're gonna, you know, you're gonna get arrested, you're gonna get
00:10:47.720 mugshot taken, you're gonna get $2,000 bail, and you'll be released. And probably never have to
00:10:54.300 show up at court, go to New York, get a new driver's license with a new name, come back and
00:10:58.120 find a different marijuana grow to work at. So, really, no one suffers any consequences
00:11:01.800 from this incredibly lucrative activity that they're engaged in.
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00:14:21.460 25% off your first order. Highly recommended. You said there were illegal Chinese cartel grows
00:14:29.620 all around where you grew up. Where did you grow up, and what did your family do?
00:14:33.200 I grew up in Dexter, Maine. It's kind of in the center of the state, southwest Penobscot County
00:14:39.800 on the border of Somerset. And my mom worked in hospitals. She was a medical assistant. And my dad
00:14:46.620 worked for a period of time at Dexter Shoe until our good friend Warren Buffett bought it and closed
00:14:51.900 it and ruined the town of Dexter. And then he worked in car sales for pretty much the rest of my life.
00:14:57.000 Your father worked in the shoe plant? Your grandfather worked in the shoe?
00:15:01.460 Yeah, my grandfather also worked in the shoe factory as well. Yeah, Dexter Shoes, it used to
00:15:05.060 be a prestige brand, you know, probably 800 to maybe even higher than that if you include the
00:15:11.800 Milo factory. So probably well over a thousand union jobs making shoes. But Warren Buffett thought
00:15:19.300 that he could do it better.
00:15:22.420 Did he?
00:15:23.060 No.
00:15:23.320 And what happened to Dexter, Maine?
00:15:25.980 The town has collapsed. It's scary. It's sad. It's heartbreaking to return to. The public
00:15:32.800 school is the largest employer in the town. You know, my high school, or my Little League
00:15:39.120 baseball coach used to own one of the general convenience stores in town. Not anymore. It's
00:15:46.000 owned by a member of the Patel family. Crazy Bob's Discount Tobacco, also owned by a member of
00:15:52.260 the Patel family. Have they made it a lot better?
00:15:56.100 No. No.
00:15:57.920 Yeah, I knew that.
00:15:58.980 Yeah. I mean, there's, I think, seven Chinese marijuana grows that were operating in Dexter,
00:16:05.480 despite the fact that Dexter opted out of the state's legal programs. So these were
00:16:10.360 de facto illegal. You could look at them and tell that they were illegal, that they weren't
00:16:14.880 licensed because Dexter did not participate in that marijuana program. Yet for some mysterious
00:16:19.960 reason, the Dexter police know where they are and haven't taken any action on them.
00:16:24.880 Wait, so the town's economy collapsed when Warren Buffett came in and over time shut down
00:16:33.000 the factory. And then it was invaded by people from Asia who took over the businesses and then
00:16:41.500 started seven illegal marijuana grows. Seven in the town?
00:16:45.500 Didn't happen that fast. Didn't happen exactly that fast. So I think Buffett's acquisition of
00:16:50.880 Dexter Shoe was in like 96 or 97.
00:16:53.960 I remember it, yeah.
00:16:54.480 And it kind of, it limped along for a little while. And there were some other attempts.
00:16:59.200 There were some other businesses in Dexter. It was a town of about 4,000 people at the
00:17:02.780 time. I think it's now down to 3,500. But when I go home, I don't recognize anybody in
00:17:08.620 Dexter anymore. And, you know, my family, my friends, for the most part, have all moved
00:17:11.760 away. I see Dexter in the headlines a lot for fentanyl raids and busts. But the town has
00:17:19.240 really been hollowed out. And I think it was the collapse, the economic collapse and the
00:17:23.740 despair in the town just created low real estate prices for entrepreneurs from foreign countries
00:17:32.260 to take advantage of, yeah.
00:17:33.680 And just bleed it of whatever was left.
00:17:36.380 Yeah. And we've actually, we've, we, as in the United States, have created programs that
00:17:42.500 help them. We've taken money from United States taxpayers to help both the, I mean, we don't
00:17:48.840 necessarily need to need to get into the Patel Hotel cartel, but they're taking advantage of
00:17:53.500 small business administration loans. And it took until just recently with the election of Trump
00:17:57.400 to stop SBA loans to foreign nationals and non-citizens. I don't know why we were giving
00:18:03.020 SBA loans to, to non-citizens. That's interesting.
00:18:06.660 I just want to, because I'm familiar with what you're talking about. I just want to say emphatically
00:18:10.980 that there's been not only no improvement. So these stores, which are often, very often the
00:18:16.320 only store in a town. Best pizza, best pizza, coffee, the, the, you know, the centerpiece
00:18:22.200 of the town, it's the town common. It's the town hall. Yeah. Of course, everybody's there
00:18:26.040 and they've been taken over almost exclusively by foreigners from the subcontinent. And they
00:18:31.020 have, I've been to many of them. They've all gotten much worse, much worse selling drug
00:18:37.420 paraphernalia, just garbage products, hostile. Have you seen any improvement?
00:18:43.220 No. And they're, they're also, I mean, they're selling cannabis product derivatives that were
00:18:48.340 legalized by the farm bill that legalized hemp and unintentionally created this huge world of
00:18:55.200 dodgy, unregulated drugs that are available for minors. And in many instances, it's these specific
00:19:00.800 convenience stores that are selling these hemp derived products, which are, I guess, THC or
00:19:06.360 marijuana adjacent. We'll give you kind of the similar experience, but are wildly underregulated.
00:19:12.620 Unregulated and untested, dangerous.
00:19:14.960 Every illegal Chinese vape is for sale. I mean, it's, it's the most degrading thing I've ever
00:19:20.360 seen. It makes me want to get a gun every time I walk into one of these places. It's such a,
00:19:25.160 it's just parasitic behavior in the most obvious way and, and a hostile. So, and there's no,
00:19:31.160 there's, we, we have no, we have no immune system as a state to repel what's happening because
00:19:37.120 there's not enough capital to come in. There's no, there's no competitor to foreign money coming
00:19:42.720 in with an SBA loan and buying up Toots, Delicatessen, and Dexter. There's no one else
00:19:47.860 who could possibly buy that store. And there's no one, and there's no one who would want to,
00:19:51.060 frankly.
00:19:51.320 So I've seen, and I hate to get sidetracked, but I, it's, it's such, it's such a big
00:19:54.940 question in rural America who runs the general store, the convenience store, the gas station
00:19:59.800 store, whatever you call it. It's the, it's the center of every little town. And if all
00:20:04.560 of a sudden in the space of five years, they're all run by non-citizens from India and they're
00:20:10.580 all getting worse and they're all engaging in business practices that are almost like
00:20:14.660 intentionally degrading of the people who live there. Like, no, we only sell generic cigarettes,
00:20:19.080 illegal Chinese vapes, and some kind of weird non-regulated narcotic and bongs and crack
00:20:25.580 pipes. That's literally what's happening.
00:20:29.300 And there's garbage piled up outside. I mean, the whole thing is like beyond belief. You have
00:20:35.860 to sort of wonder like, what actually is this? Are these incredibly profitable businesses?
00:20:40.120 This seems like a scam of some kind. But last thing I'll say, I know this for a fact, a lot
00:20:44.280 of these places, if you look at the tax records, they trade for, you know, 300 grand or something.
00:20:48.540 But most of the transaction is off the books in cash. So they're dodging taxes, actually.
00:20:54.260 And they shift around from one trust to another trust and then back to another trust. There's
00:20:58.580 very complicated, very complex financial schemes at play.
00:21:02.320 So what is, this is clearly a scam. This is a criminal scam. I don't think it's just in the
00:21:07.240 state of Maine. I think it's probably all throughout. I know it's in New Hampshire as well in Vermont.
00:21:11.240 What is this scam?
00:21:12.340 Well, they're certainly not making money off the hotels that they operate in the general
00:21:17.120 stores. If you look at a town like Lincoln, Maine, something similar has happened where
00:21:21.760 one family from away, from out of state, has come in and purchased competing rival gas stations.
00:21:29.960 But there's one gas station that's still owned by a local. And so naturally, the people who
00:21:34.360 know the guy who owns the store and don't know the guy who owns the other stores will go
00:21:38.340 and patronize the guy that they still know. So as business has declined to these other general
00:21:44.140 stores, somehow they're still thriving. And initially, their employees are locals and Mainers.
00:21:50.820 But then eventually, there's a new class of employees who are brought in, who are brought in
00:21:55.000 very likely on visas, who are also from away. So I think that if you look at some of the...
00:22:02.400 From India.
00:22:03.140 Yeah.
00:22:03.340 I think that if you look at some of the cases that have been filed, even under the Biden
00:22:07.520 administration, against operations that look a lot like what's happening in Maine, they're
00:22:12.180 immigration scams. They're using these businesses as a pretext to get SBA loans and also to get
00:22:19.320 access to visa programs so that they can sell legal entry into the country to people back in...
00:22:25.340 So they're selling those visas.
00:22:28.480 To be clear, I don't have proof that that's happening in Lincoln or Dexter, but there are
00:22:33.900 indictments in... There's one I know of very well in Texas where that's exactly what was
00:22:39.220 happening.
00:22:39.320 It's made every town where I've seen it, and it's a dozen or more, worse.
00:22:44.820 Yeah.
00:22:45.080 So that's kind of... Okay, there are a million scams, but if you roll into somebody's town
00:22:49.380 and degrade it on purpose and make it much worse, I think that's a moral crime. And there's
00:22:56.760 been no response at all. Okay.
00:22:58.080 Yeah. And I was actually... I was asked about a food pantry operation that they were trying to
00:23:04.180 set up in Dexter. They were trying to raise some money to help give out food to poor people. And I
00:23:11.280 asked how much of the new owners of Dexter Variety and Toots Delicatessen contributed to this
00:23:16.420 charity operation. Their new pillars of our community and small business owners, how much
00:23:21.040 have they given? And I was never given a very good answer on that.
00:23:23.620 Yeah, the answer is zero, of course.
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00:27:34.840 ammosquared.com to learn more. But that's only one aspect of how the United States taxpayer is
00:27:41.740 subsidizing this, what's happening here. The, the, about, I would say a third of the properties in the
00:27:49.660 state of Maine that would go on to become illegal Chinese marijuana grow houses were purchased using
00:27:56.240 mortgages through a program called the Community Development Finance Institution. It's a designation
00:28:02.060 that you give to banks. The entire purpose of the program is to help marginalized communities
00:28:08.540 access financing. The idea is that if you were an immigrant in the 1980s, 1990s, you couldn't prove
00:28:16.920 regular income. You had irregular finances and trouble accessing a mortgage. So they created this
00:28:22.520 special program to take away some of the risk from the lender. So there's one bank in New York,
00:28:27.620 Quantic Bank, that has the CDFI designation. And on their website, they advertise that they'll help
00:28:33.780 non-citizens, foreign nationals buy property in the United States. This bank advertised on-
00:28:39.900 I'm trying not to use the F word. Why would we be helping foreign nationals buy in places where
00:28:44.780 there's a housing crisis and the people who are born there can't find a house to live in? Like,
00:28:49.340 what is going on? And then why under COVID would we supercharge the program with an additional
00:28:56.200 transfer funding? Why would we put that program on steroids? I don't know. I know-
00:29:03.760 Because you want to kill the people? Because you want to kill and replace the people who
00:29:07.200 populate your country. That's why. Replace them with other people. Obviously.
00:29:10.380 Yeah. In looking at the mortgage records, having to actually look at the physical records themselves,
00:29:17.760 I cottoned on to this Quantic Bank pattern. And it's just a quirk of how the registry of deeds
00:29:25.460 records work that you can search by the lender. And so I searched Quantic Bank just to see,
00:29:31.080 did they loan to everybody? Or are they just suddenly a new domain? And I would say 95% of
00:29:39.160 their loans were post-2019 and exclusively to people with Chinese names from New York and from
00:29:45.740 Boston. And in further reviewing those records, I found that there were two individuals, two loan
00:29:51.200 officers who were originating almost all of those loans, 95% of those loans. And one was a Taiwanese
00:29:58.960 national and the other was a Chinese national who graduated from a university in China that's
00:30:03.580 affiliated with the PRC's Economic Warfare Program. And I actually got phone interviews with them.
00:30:08.560 They're on our X page. You can go listen to them. I asked Ying Chan Wang, I said, did you know that
00:30:12.420 these properties of all these loans that you're doing were becoming illegal marijuana grow houses?
00:30:17.980 She said, what? No, no way. Well, I'll have to say something about this. We'll have to put a stop to
00:30:23.100 this. Did they? I don't know. I'm unaware. I am unaware. I know that there's been a lot of
00:30:30.640 letters written by politicians about the CDFI program, about why we're doing this. But the
00:30:36.880 horses left the barn at this point. I mean, they have the properties now and they have the means to
00:30:42.240 generate as much cash as they want. This was a gold rush in Maine. That's what it was. When we
00:30:47.960 legalized marijuana, there was a vote in 2016, the state came out and said, yes, we want adult use
00:30:55.800 marijuana legalized. They formalized the program in 2020 and created an adult use program and a
00:31:01.480 medicinal program, which are very distinct. And the medicinal program is vastly under-regulated
00:31:07.860 compared to the adult use recreational program, which is counterintuitive. But the medicinal programs
00:31:13.880 like the wild, wild west. But when we did this, we created just a pig scramble for a $5 to $10
00:31:22.400 billion market for this drug. And the forces that we unleashed and the forces that were brought to
00:31:28.720 bear on Maine to access that money, we weren't prepared for. The local police weren't prepared
00:31:35.800 for it. The sheriffs weren't prepared for it.
00:31:37.860 Because they were told that this was going to solve the crime problem associated with illegal
00:31:42.860 drugs. If you legalize something, there's no more crime.
00:31:46.260 Yeah. In 2021 in Turner, Maine at 57 Conant Road, there's a hangar right next to Twitchell
00:31:53.280 Airport. It's a disused airport.
00:31:56.420 I know it.
00:31:56.880 The police have been there many, many times. We got police records from early 2021 where they
00:32:02.920 had been called there for what they were told was a hostage situation. And when the police show up,
00:32:07.860 there's Chinese individuals who only speak Cantonese running out in the woods, total chaos. They
00:32:12.520 can't really discern what exactly is going on, but it's a civil dispute and they decide it's not
00:32:16.420 their problem. But in their notes, they say that they believe it's the properties under the control
00:32:20.820 of a quote, Chinese gang from New York. That was in early 2021.
00:32:25.080 That was in their notes?
00:32:27.140 In the incident report.
00:32:29.280 They say that they believe-
00:32:30.080 Wasn't it their job to do something about it?
00:32:31.540 You think?
00:32:34.360 There's never been any arrests made in connection with that facility, which functioned according
00:32:39.760 to the state police as an illicit marijuana grow controlled by Chinese gangs from New York.
00:32:44.500 The Office of Cannabis Policy, which regulates all of this, has suspended numerous licenses
00:32:48.560 for Chinese marijuana growers from out of state who are affiliated with that property.
00:32:52.380 There's never been any arrests made at that property until December, last December, a guy
00:32:58.920 named William Robinson, no relation, was shot in the head there by a drug dealer.
00:33:05.320 And the guy who shot him was later, allegedly, was later arrested hiding at a marina in San
00:33:11.520 Diego.
00:33:11.800 You say there are, you believe, around 300 Chinese gang controlled drug operations in Maine.
00:33:22.480 There are grow houses, there are flop houses, there are prostitution houses masquerading as
00:33:30.680 massage parlors. There are some, I guess, financial hubs that you might say in Kittery and Old
00:33:38.900 Orchard Beach in southern parts of the state. There are other facilities that seem distinctly
00:33:46.000 militaristic to in character.
00:33:48.000 What does that mean?
00:33:49.980 Your hair stands up on end when you go by. I've knocked on the doors of a lot of marijuana
00:33:54.360 facilities, but in Greenbush, Maine.
00:33:58.000 Where's that?
00:33:58.880 It's about 35 minutes north of Bangor. Very rural. But there's an area where there are multiple
00:34:06.500 adjacent properties, all controlled, all fenced off, motion sensors on the road so that they
00:34:12.640 know if someone's coming well in advance. And blue-collar workers I've talked with who
00:34:17.800 have had to come out and do some service at those properties have talked about being surveilled
00:34:22.920 by crews of eight young Chinese men, close crop haircuts, fatigues.
00:34:29.360 Fatigues?
00:34:31.360 What there was described to me as fatigues. Standing around the perimeter of the property
00:34:35.900 and when they need to access the property to do some load testing, if they're, for example,
00:34:40.960 an electrical worker, they're physically stopped and prevented from accessing the property and
00:34:46.520 they're escorted off the property and two crisp $100 bills tucked into their back pocket and
00:34:51.420 they say, coffee money, coffee money, coffee money. And they push them off the property.
00:34:55.080 Okay. Things are completely out of control in Maine, obviously.
00:35:01.020 Yeah.
00:35:01.760 Completely out of control.
00:35:02.820 Yeah.
00:35:04.140 I should say for the record, it's pretty a state out of 50, nicest people, lowest crime rate
00:35:08.440 for my whole life. I'm 56. So a long time. And you're describing like something's really,
00:35:18.500 really dark. How many of those facilities have been shut down by state or local law enforcement?
00:35:25.080 It depends on what you mean by shut down. You can execute a search warrant on one of these
00:35:31.720 facilities. You can go in, you can arrest some people, you can destroy their plants. But the very
00:35:37.020 next day it can get spun up and all they have to say is that they're getting a license. They're in
00:35:42.180 the process of getting a license to operate legally. And then law enforcement can't touch them.
00:35:46.540 I saw this exact same, this exact thing happened in Franklin County. There was a raid at a location
00:35:54.120 in New Sharon. And I showed up the following day because I wanted to get, I wanted to document it.
00:35:58.680 And there was a big white truck from Grow Generation, which is a marijuana growing supply
00:36:04.180 company, a fairly big one in Maine, backed up. And there was a crew of workers offloading material.
00:36:08.480 So it had been raided the day before by the sheriffs. And the following day, they're spinning
00:36:13.860 it right back up. And I emailed the sheriff and said, hey, just so you know, like these guys are
00:36:18.620 right back at it. I'm watching them. You can come over here. And he said, they say they're getting
00:36:23.800 a license now. So I can't touch them. And what we learned in January.
00:36:28.760 So if I get pulled over without a driver's license and I say, I'm going to get a driver's license,
00:36:33.480 they let me go. I don't think so. No, no. They take my car actually. So how is that?
00:36:39.580 I mean, with respect, with actually with no respect at all to the sheriff you're referring to,
00:36:43.960 how is that? Like, how is that? So it's, it's kind of genius the way they've set up the scheme
00:36:50.100 in that the property owner is never the one who is there growing the marijuana or picking up the
00:36:56.100 marijuana or trafficking the marijuana. And so they're never held culpable for the activity
00:37:01.240 happening at their property because they can always have plausible deniability. Oh,
00:37:04.920 I was renting to my cousin. I was renting to a stranger. Uh, you know, I just, I found this guy
00:37:08.960 on WeChat and, uh, rented the property to him. I had no idea this was going on. I'm so upset that
00:37:12.840 this is happening. Thank you, law enforcement for, uh, for doing this for us. Um, so in January,
00:37:19.440 uh, uh, the director of the office of cannabis policy handpicked by governor Janet Mills,
00:37:24.980 a guy named John Hodak admitted. What's his name? Uh, John Hodak.
00:37:29.280 John Hodak. He, uh, he came from Colorado. He has a long career.
00:37:35.200 Been a huge success there, the cannabis legalization.
00:37:38.020 He's been involved in cannabis policy. Brookings.
00:37:40.160 Totally destroyed Denver. I mean, he, he came from, uh, the Brookings Institute.
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00:38:50.500 for Americans. How do you spell his last name? Hudak, H-U-D-A-K. John Hudak, okay. And he is
00:38:59.640 in front of the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee testifying for the first time this year of this
00:39:04.800 session. And he admits that he's been giving licenses, medicinal marijuana licenses, to
00:39:11.060 individuals that he suspects have ties to Chinese organized crime. Or he's giving licenses to people
00:39:17.020 who provide addresses for their grows at properties that have been previously raided for their
00:39:22.860 connections to Chinese organized crime. And his hands are tied. There's nothing that he can do
00:39:26.460 about it. He somehow finds a way. How about say no? That would be racist.
00:39:34.360 The state has no immune system. That's exactly right. There's no immune system. We have no defense.
00:39:39.140 And if you look at, like, you know, where I'm from, Dexter, you had Dexter, Ripley, Corina,
00:39:44.340 Cambridge, all these towns, three different counties represented. But you've got one criminal
00:39:47.460 group that's operating in three different counties. So three different sheriffs have jurisdiction and
00:39:53.600 multiple different local police departments. And some of these towns don't even have police
00:39:56.940 departments. But they're not, as a matter of course, sharing intelligence. So in order to take down
00:40:03.320 a criminal operation that's straddling three counties, you need to get cooperation amongst these
00:40:08.720 three sheriffs who don't, like, just always cooperate. So it requires a Herculean effort
00:40:14.700 amongst law enforcement to coordinate one of these crackdowns or one of these raids that are going to
00:40:19.860 be effective at actually arresting people, detaining people who could be, you know, witnesses who could
00:40:24.900 explain more about what's ultimately happening. But it, and by and large, there's no effective
00:40:31.220 enforcement. And the Maine State Police have been AWOL. Totally, totally AWOL. The one
00:40:37.600 one police force. How can, okay, so just to be, I just want to make sure I understand this.
00:40:42.300 You were tipped off to the story by a Daily Call News Foundation reporter who had a state-generated
00:40:48.680 list. CBP. This was generated by Customs and Border Protection. I'm so sorry. Okay, so it was the feds.
00:40:54.980 But it was, I mean, a government agency identified these places. So it's not like you're just guessing.
00:41:02.600 Yeah. And the Maine State Police, that was a couple years ago. They've done nothing.
00:41:09.300 They've been involved in three raids, and two of them were in Belgrade, about a mile from the
00:41:15.620 state police headquarters. And the reason they were, they raided those is because six months before we
00:41:21.980 started drawing attention to them, one of their troopers had been inside, seen 500 or 600 marijuana
00:41:27.960 plants, talked to the Chinese individual who voluntarily let the trooper in. So all this is
00:41:32.780 admissible. Talked to the Department of Agriculture, talked to the Office of Cannabis Policy, confirmed
00:41:38.060 that it was an illegal grow and didn't do anything to it for six months and allowed it to continue to
00:41:42.360 operate. So it's my belief that those two operations in Belgrade were CYA. They didn't want it later to
00:41:48.720 look like a cover-up on their part. So this is just corruption. I mean, you're describing corruption.
00:41:53.380 I mean, what else explains it? The governor of this state has yet to utter a single word
00:42:01.560 about a vast criminal conspiracy operating in her state as a result of this conspiracy.
00:42:06.360 We don't even know how many people have been killed. In Freedom, Maine, there was a house,
00:42:12.100 555 Belfast Road, been busted by the sheriff out there for functioning as an illegal marijuana grow,
00:42:18.360 subsequently turned into a flophouse, and there was a carbon monoxide poisoning incident.
00:42:24.020 There were, we think, four or five Chinese migrants living there, poisoned by carbon monoxide,
00:42:30.320 hospitalized. Two of them died. Somehow, the exhaust of the heater just piped back in through
00:42:39.400 the window. It was an accident, officially, on paper, is what law enforcement have determined.
00:42:43.280 And somehow, the propane heater, the breeze must have caught it and piped it back in through the
00:42:48.560 window. And there was no outpouring of progressive goodwill or mourning for these poor Chinese
00:42:55.760 migrants who died at a flophouse in Freedom, Maine. But, I mean, it was an attempted mass murder,
00:43:01.480 in my opinion. There's no way the exhaust just accidentally pipes back into the house. No,
00:43:09.280 this was an attempted hit on Chinese migrant workers at a flophouse. This was triad on triad
00:43:14.820 violence, which we've seen, we've documented. There have been burglaries. There was the shooting
00:43:19.620 I just talked about at the marijuana grow in Turner. And that individual, after he shot,
00:43:27.120 who was his friend in the head, turned to one of the witnesses who I've talked with and said that
00:43:31.880 he was a hired hit man for the triad, and that there were 40 more just like him. Maybe he watched
00:43:38.660 too many video games, or too many movies, or whatever, and he was lying, or maybe he was
00:43:44.500 telling the truth. I don't know.
00:43:46.780 So, there's more than one Chinese criminal organization?
00:43:50.160 Yeah, or multiple families, for sure. Multiple regions, I think, is safe to say, yeah.
00:43:55.520 And the governor's not said one word about this?
00:43:59.620 No.
00:44:00.020 Who is the governor?
00:44:01.480 Janet Mills. She was attorney general under Governor Paul LePage. She was a district attorney
00:44:09.140 before that. She's been a government employee for basically her entire life. Came out of
00:44:13.080 Farmington, dropped out of Colby, she claims, on her own free will, and then graduated from
00:44:19.440 the University of Massachusetts in 1970, although she's not listed in the program for that graduation
00:44:26.220 ceremony. It's the weirdest thing. But she's been governor now for about six, seven years.
00:44:33.200 So, it makes you wonder, like, you know, what is her position on illegal drugs, which are
00:44:39.420 destroying the state? I think any fair person would say that.
00:44:41.800 The state under Governor Mills has embraced restorative justice and harm reduction and the
00:44:50.680 idea that if you stop enforcing laws against drugs and you pass out needles and Narcan, that
00:44:59.200 that is going to be good for society. I think the plain objective evidence is that that's been
00:45:06.560 a complete failure. But on the, I guess, the Chinese criminal conspiracy in the state,
00:45:12.740 we've approached her at events and tried to ask her about it, and she won't answer questions
00:45:17.740 directly.
00:45:20.520 So, that is a, that's the million-dollar question.
00:45:24.060 So, do you have any evidence that suggests a motive for ignoring something this destructive?
00:45:30.840 Well, part of it could just be ego. It could just be that it's the, you know, it's the main wire,
00:45:35.380 and it's, you know, we are the conservative outlet in the state. And maybe if she acknowledges the
00:45:41.080 problem of Chinese criminal organizations in this state, it's in some way validating the work
00:45:45.560 that we've done to expose the problem. And if you accept that the work that we've done on Chinese
00:45:51.100 criminal organizations in the state is legitimate, valuable journalism, then you have to ask, well,
00:45:56.480 what about the other investigative projects that we've worked on, which I also think are valuable
00:46:01.940 journalism for the state? So, maybe it's just a simple...
00:46:04.660 The only journalism in the state, let me just correct you. The only journalism in the state.
00:46:09.380 Well, all due respect to your friend, Steve Collins.
00:46:12.700 There's really, there's no journalism in Maine at all. It's 1.3 million people,
00:46:17.680 largest state in New England, bigger than the other five New England states combined. I mean,
00:46:20.640 it's a real place. No journalism.
00:46:23.500 A lot of stenography.
00:46:24.300 The what you're doing, yeah, and propaganda. But so, I'm just, but I'm interested, like,
00:46:29.980 that's a huge footprint across a huge state. So, a lot of people know this is going on,
00:46:36.820 and she hasn't said word one, much less done anything to stop it. It does feel like someone's
00:46:42.000 getting paid.
00:46:44.320 I am increasingly of the belief that there's a lot of bribes being paid in the state.
00:46:51.100 Um, small, small stuff to code enforcement officers, police departments. It's, it's really
00:46:56.180 the only way that explains the lack of action. And we were, we did discover in reviewing property
00:47:02.300 records, there was a, there was a raid. Um, this was in, um, 2024 in February, um, that kind of
00:47:08.980 targeted the area around my hometown. Um, the town that my mom grew up in, I mean, from this marijuana
00:47:14.240 house that was raided in Corinna, you can see the church that my brother was married in and, uh,
00:47:18.880 that my grandmother used to go to. It's a big, beautiful main house that will probably have
00:47:22.980 to be destroyed now because of the poisons and the mold and everything that afflicted the house
00:47:27.320 as a result of it becoming a marijuana grow. Um, but there was this coordinated raid with the
00:47:31.980 sheriff's very effective law enforcement action. And in the days after that, there was a real estate
00:47:37.600 transfer done for a property in Corinna, Maine in the same town, uh, for a 12 acre property,
00:47:42.160 a teardown brilliant, like a hunting camp. Um, and, uh, it was a transfer of a property from a
00:47:48.920 Chinese woman living in Massachusetts to another Chinese person living in Guangdong province,
00:47:54.960 China. So it struck me as unusual. Uh, Oh, did it? Yes. A little weird. It was a little weird.
00:48:01.760 Uh, and then on the real estate transfer document, it said, um, that this was a gift to mother. Uh,
00:48:08.260 and my mom was from Corinna. And so I thought to myself, if I told my mom that for mother's day,
00:48:14.220 I was giving her 12 acres and a teardown in Corinna, Maine, she would probably slap me.
00:48:18.860 So again, this is an unusual gift to your mother, but what really struck me as unusual about it was
00:48:24.300 the fact that the attorney who processed the real estate transfer was Paul Mills, uh, of Farmington,
00:48:30.020 Maine, who was the older brother of governor Janet Mills. What? Wait, the governor's brother's
00:48:35.280 involved in this. The governor's brother has been involved in notarizing deeds for individuals
00:48:43.260 connected to Chinese organized crime and was the real estate transfer attorney specifically for this
00:48:48.620 property, which he helped transfer as a gift to the ownership of a Chinese national who owns multiple,
00:48:56.200 uh, marijuana grows in the state of Maine. And it was done days after a law enforcement action
00:49:03.660 in that area. That's shocking. That's shocking. Here's a depressing, but true statistic. Nearly
00:49:10.960 half of American adults, they would suffer financial hardship within six months if they lost their
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00:51:20.840 Tucker. I don't know what the fee on a real estate transfer document is, but I'll tell you,
00:51:27.580 I called Paul Mills and told him that I was from Massachusetts. I was looking to do a gift transfer
00:51:35.820 in Corinna, and I was wondering if he'd help process this real estate transfer for me. And he told me
00:51:40.520 that he didn't do work in that area. But you had evidence he had just done work in that area.
00:51:46.240 Exactly. So if you had said, I'm calling from Guangdong province, and I'd like to open another
00:51:52.620 illegal drug operation in the state, you think that would have been different?
00:51:57.000 I don't know. I don't know who called him, or I don't know if he was maybe a useful idiot,
00:52:02.160 or maybe it was an element of Chinese culture where they think that they need to pay some kind
00:52:05.960 of a tribute to the elected official in charge, to their family members, in order to get some
00:52:12.060 kind of protection.
00:52:12.740 When have they done that before?
00:52:14.420 Right. But I actually, I called Paul Mills as myself, and we had a 10-minute interview
00:52:23.260 about this property. And he said that a friend asked him to do it, and I couldn't remember who.
00:52:28.440 Couldn't remember who?
00:52:29.480 Couldn't remember who the friend was who asked him to do it, but he remembered a lot of details.
00:52:33.700 He's the governor's brother.
00:52:34.860 Yes.
00:52:35.120 The sitting governor.
00:52:35.960 Yes. And I printed off copies of the real estate transfer record with his name on it,
00:52:42.480 with the address in Guangdong province, China, where this new owner of 12 acres and a teardown
00:52:47.740 in Corona, Maine. And I have the code enforcement officer on the record saying this is an illegal
00:52:52.560 marijuana grow, and we would not authorize it because Corona opted out. We went to the
00:52:59.580 state house, and we passed out. I printed out 50 copies of this real estate transfer record,
00:53:04.040 and I passed them out to politicians. I passed them out to other reporters. I sat in the governor's
00:53:07.760 lobby with a camera, focused right on the door, just waiting for an interview. And they actually
00:53:13.780 canceled one of her meetings with school board members and snuck her out the side door so that
00:53:19.060 she wouldn't have to answer questions. And even though I scattered, I blanketed that place.
00:53:24.660 I was like South Korea flying over North Korea, dropping flyers, trying to get people to pay
00:53:28.640 attention to this stuff. And no other outlet in the state of Maine covered it.
00:53:32.400 Nobody else covered it but you?
00:53:34.480 No.
00:53:37.040 I have so many questions. Okay. I just want to sort of pause and ask the obvious question. So
00:53:41.320 that suggests such a deep level of coordination and terrifying corruption. I mean, are you worried
00:53:47.820 for your safety? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's difficult to, it's difficult to know
00:53:56.600 how worried you should be at a situation like that.
00:53:59.560 Of course.
00:54:00.460 You know, what, what exactly is the, the level of danger.
00:54:04.280 If they're allowing Chinese drug cartels to control huge swaths of rural Maine and people are
00:54:08.140 dying, a governor herself is saying not one thing, we're trying to stop it. And the entire rest of the
00:54:13.300 state's media is ignoring it. That sounds like a, like a level of corruption that's like, would have
00:54:18.640 been unimaginable in this country five years ago, even. Yeah. So, and if you're the one guy saying
00:54:24.340 something about it, which you are, I don't know. I mean, where does that leave you?
00:54:31.120 Before I'd even reported anything on this, I had a Excel spreadsheet working on a database,
00:54:36.600 you know, track, keeping track of records of sites we'd flagged from financial records,
00:54:40.980 tax records, electrical records, um, sites we'd visited and confirmed sites where we talked with
00:54:45.720 the neighbors. And at that point I'd identified maybe 150 or 175 of these sites and actually sent
00:54:51.500 it to the Bangor daily news. Cause I hadn't reported anything about it. Um, but I was, um, I was scared.
00:55:00.060 Um, and I thought that if we all reported it at the same time, it would kind of diffuse the
00:55:06.880 attention. And I was like willing to give up the, I guess, whatever the prestige of being the one who
00:55:12.000 gets the scoop to have us all come forward and report on this problem. Um, and they've never used
00:55:18.140 it. They've never reported on it. They've never, they've never touched it. I don't know. I mean,
00:55:21.480 it's just maybe their pride of not relying on, you know, I'm not a journalism school graduate,
00:55:27.620 so maybe they don't want to use it or some dirty trick by the conservative media that I'm trying to
00:55:33.220 pull on them, but they haven't used it. And I, at the same time, it reflects poorly on the
00:55:36.740 democratic administration that runs the state. Maybe that's just, that's a, yeah. Yeah. I mean,
00:55:42.320 that's a, uh, sometimes the simplest explanation is the, is the correct one. It's also could just
00:55:48.020 be laziness, a lack of, uh, curiosity. And this is a story that can't be told merely sitting or
00:55:54.080 discovered merely sitting behind your computer. You know, you have to actually be going out and
00:55:59.380 talking to people and knocking on doors and taking some risks. Um, it was around the same time
00:56:03.840 though, that, um, after I'd, I'd been out like the entire day knocking on fields a lot in, um,
00:56:09.820 Madison and that area and, um, beautiful town used to be. Um, and I realized I was like, man,
00:56:19.380 this is, this is a real vast conspiracy. And it just kind of dawned on me how insane this entire
00:56:26.080 thing was that this was being allowed to happen in Maine. And I was like, the law enforcement has
00:56:31.580 to be on this. And I don't want to be the guy who comes along and reports on this and like dicks up
00:56:37.000 this big investigation that they're about to close the loop on. So I drove to the Maine state police
00:56:41.920 headquarters and I walked in with my laptop and I told the receptionist, I have evidence of a vast
00:56:47.340 criminal conspiracy currently operating in the state of Maine. And I would just like to turn over
00:56:50.860 some information to somebody, to anybody, because I don't want to interfere with some active criminal
00:56:57.820 investigation. And I waited in the lobby for 15 minutes and then, uh, some woman came out and
00:57:03.440 said, there's nobody here who can talk to you. And I contacted the, where was this? Uh, this is
00:57:12.200 right in Augusta, the department of public safety building. Augusta is the capital of the state?
00:57:17.200 Yeah. And then I contacted the, um, there's nobody here who can talk to you. This is in the public
00:57:23.300 safety building in the state capital. And you say, I have evidence of a vast criminal conspiracy
00:57:27.900 and you're a sober sane person, probably the single most famous journalist in the state of Maine at this
00:57:33.980 point. In fact, you are, and no one can talk to you. Granted it was 425. Oh yeah. Right. Okay.
00:57:42.980 Um, on a, it might've been a Friday. So they'd probably clocked out by that time, but I contacted
00:57:46.880 the, the director of communications for the state police and reiterated what I'd said. Um, and I
00:57:53.340 contacted some other members of the state police that I knew through, um, family connections, some
00:57:58.440 fairly high ranking who used to be very big fans of mine when they heard me on conservative talk radio,
00:58:02.760 but, uh, don't want to talk to me anymore. Um, and reiterated what I'd said. Um, and, uh, you know,
00:58:08.520 I was, I was, the communications director told me somebody would call me on Monday and that was,
00:58:13.940 must be 120 Mondays ago at this point. So they have no interest, no interest in talking to me or
00:58:22.480 hearing from me. Um, the troopers I've talked with are, uh, they're mystified by the decisions that
00:58:28.800 the leadership are making as well. Who's making those decisions? Well, the, uh, Michael Soschuk,
00:58:35.880 former, uh, police chief of, uh, Portland who everybody in Portland was glad to see him leave
00:58:41.080 when he got picked to be the, uh, the head of the department of public safety. So he runs the,
00:58:45.460 uh, Maine state police and the main DEA, Michael Soschuk, Michael Soschuk. Yep. Uh, and, uh,
00:58:53.820 he runs the main drug enforcement agency and the Maine state police. And he's a, uh, a cabinet nominee
00:58:59.800 of, uh, Governor Janet Mills. He also has yet to utter a single word about this criminal conspiracy.
00:59:09.380 I mean, just hearing this story, which is one of the most shocking stories I've ever heard in a
00:59:13.160 lifetime of hearing shocking stories. It, it, it makes the hair on your arm stand up because it
00:59:18.020 feels like there's this great evil, there's this great destruction of human life. There's this great
00:59:23.100 crime taking place in public. Everyone can see it. Chinese drug cartels control a lot of the state
00:59:29.240 of Maine. And it feels like everybody's in on it. And you're the only person saying anything about it.
00:59:35.860 I mean, do you have trouble sleeping? Uh, sometimes. Yeah. I mean, I, you know, it's been,
00:59:44.320 uh, it's been a battle for sure. Why are you doing this?
00:59:48.040 Uh, I feel like I owe it to my state.
01:00:06.040 You know, I feel like I had such a great childhood, a wonderful childhood as a latchkey kid. And I loved
01:00:13.000 Maine and I loved being able to grow up and ride my bike anywhere and be safe. And I feel like the
01:00:18.780 people, my people are being taken advantage of by powerful forces that they're unequipped to repel.
01:00:27.240 We don't have an immune system for this. Um, and the only thing that I can do to fight back
01:00:35.400 is to put a spotlight on it and to expose it. Um, it's like my riding around with my grandfather
01:00:44.360 in a pickup truck in, uh, Ripley, Maine. And he sees some garbage on the side of the road and we
01:00:49.640 stop and I ask him, what are we stopping for? He's like, this garbage, we got to pick it up.
01:00:54.220 It's not our garbage. We didn't leave it there. It's like, yeah, but I got trash bags and we got time.
01:00:59.000 Um, and it's, it's our town. This is our, it's our community. You know, it's my version of that.
01:01:05.960 We're taking out the trash. We're, we're picking up our backyard. That's what needs to be done.
01:01:11.880 And there's no one else who's doing it. Uh, you know, I love this state. I don't, I don't,
01:01:17.060 I don't want it to become, you know, just like a, a festering gang bang for third world criminals.
01:01:22.320 And so it's becoming very fast, faster than I've ever seen anything change.
01:01:25.440 Um, okay. So now to the question of the watchdogs, the constitutionally protected watchdog class,
01:01:34.240 we call the media, uh, in Maine, there are three big papers, one in Bangor, one in Lewiston,
01:01:40.180 one biggest in Portland, uh, Press Herald, Daily News, Sun Journal. And, um, they, you know,
01:01:49.280 they've been around a long time. They had big staffs at one point, like where are they?
01:01:53.180 Why no coverage? I can't, it's blowing my mind.
01:01:57.200 I mean, they, they'll cover something if there's a press release, you know, if, if, uh, if, uh, uh,
01:02:03.420 there's a raid that a sheriff does. I mean, Sheriff, uh, Dale Lancaster in Somerset County
01:02:08.060 is probably the best sheriff in the state of Maine, probably the best law enforcement official
01:02:14.420 in the state of Maine, old school, no excuses, no BS kicking doors in. Uh, you know, he's,
01:02:21.280 he's been responsible for the vast majority of the successful search warrants that have been
01:02:26.420 executed, uh, and a lot of the arrests. Um, he's been, uh, very successful and he'll put out a press
01:02:32.920 release and there'll be a cut, there'll be some coverage, but they, um, you know, they'll be very
01:02:37.600 careful not to note, uh, any of the patterns, you know, they're, they're very diligent about not
01:02:43.180 recognizing the patterns.
01:02:44.520 You've already done the reporting. Like you've put online and unfortunately since it's Maine
01:02:49.720 and it's considered far away and remote and people don't pay attention, it hasn't gotten
01:02:52.760 the coverage it deserves in my opinion, but you've put the, the facts out there. Like they
01:02:57.360 could follow up on that at any moment and they've decided not to. So, you know, reprinting press
01:03:02.700 releases is not journalism. Of course it's, uh, it's a transcription service. Who owns the media
01:03:10.980 in Maine? Like who's responsible for this? Deliberately ignoring a crisis.
01:03:16.660 So the, the largest newspaper company currently is owned by the Maine Trust for Local News,
01:03:22.580 uh, which is a subsidiary of the National Trust for Local News, which is a, um, non-profit funded
01:03:29.460 by George Soros.
01:03:31.880 Oh, so George Soros controls the media in Maine.
01:03:35.380 He funds it. He specifically funded the transaction to acquire these papers from Reed Brower.
01:03:39.940 Uh, along with Hans-Jörg Weiss, who's a, uh, Swiss national who made his fortune, uh, doing illegal
01:03:46.780 bone cement experiments on humans, uh, who's been, um, in trouble in the past for illegally donating
01:03:52.940 as a foreign national to U.S. political candidates. So has a knack for trying to influence American
01:03:57.540 politics as a foreign national.
01:03:59.000 Why would George Soros want to control the media in Maine?
01:04:02.420 Yeah. So Maine's, going back to the 1980s, Maine's been a cheap date for people looking to trial
01:04:07.480 political ideas. Uh, you know, beginning with the shutdown of Maine Yankee, our nuclear power
01:04:11.900 plant. Um, there's, uh, really just three media markets. Um, like you said, just a handful of
01:04:18.380 newspapers. Um, and if you want to get a ballot initiative done or something like that, uh, it
01:04:23.800 doesn't take a lot of money. So you can come to Maine and you can close a nuclear plant plant. You
01:04:27.760 can get a gay marriage referendum passed. You can get marijuana legalized as a referendum,
01:04:32.760 uh, for a small amount of money. And then you can go to another state and say, well,
01:04:37.540 we've already done it in Maine. We can do it in this state. And so we become kind of a petri dish
01:04:42.040 for political experimentation that, um, particularly the progressive left has taken advantage of
01:04:47.820 in a very successful way.
01:04:50.780 Maine was always the whitest state in the United States has long been and was a target for that
01:04:56.040 reason too. And they, they said that out loud means too white. Um, and so there is a sense in
01:05:03.160 which it was targeted because of its demographics. I mean, they've said that I'm not guessing at all.
01:05:07.600 Yeah. I mean, going back 30 years, I mean, under governor, John Baldacci,
01:05:11.180 we Lewiston famously became a sanctuary city for, uh, Somalis. Um, and can you describe Lewiston?
01:05:19.500 What does Lewiston mean?
01:05:20.280 Uh, uh, the Atlantic, I think described it as little Mogadishu.
01:05:26.960 Lewiston, it's on the, uh, it was a mill town.
01:05:30.480 Yeah. It used to be, uh, uh, it was a Franco-American town defined by, uh, the immigration of French
01:05:36.860 Canadians coming down to work in factories. Um, so it was a urban Franco town.
01:05:42.220 Textiles and paper.
01:05:43.200 Yeah. Um, and biggest mills in New England there, right on the Interscoggin River.
01:05:46.580 We're working class people. And then J and adjacent town Auburn, frequently referred to as LA,
01:05:52.140 Lewiston, Auburn. Um, it's, uh, you know, I would say that it's the second biggest metropolitan area
01:05:57.740 in the state. Um, but now, uh, I would say it's, uh, it's a no-go zone. It's not, it's not something
01:06:05.320 that people feel safe. Uh, you know, the people who supported turning Lewiston into a sanctuary city
01:06:10.560 for Somalis have now spent as much money as they can to get as far away from Lewiston as they
01:06:14.400 moved to Camden. I have to drive through it, uh, uh, uh, frequently for work.
01:06:20.040 How's it look?
01:06:21.480 Uh, yeah, third world. I mean, it's, it's not, uh, it's not doing great. And, and there are people
01:06:26.920 who will be, um, you know, partisans for Lewiston that it's on the verge of a comeback and you get
01:06:32.400 in trouble if you criticize Lewiston. But, uh, we cover police reports. We cover crime reports.
01:06:38.500 We talk to Lewiston police officers. We know what's happening in Lewiston. There are 16 and 17 year
01:06:43.520 olds, uh, engaging in gunfights on the streets. And, uh, when the police show up to talk to,
01:06:49.600 uh, people, nobody will talk. People are getting shot and nobody will talk. People who get shot
01:06:54.520 won't talk about who shot them. Um, so the police are frustrated and they're all just, you know,
01:06:59.580 looking at the clock and wondering when they can start collecting their pension. Uh, but it's just,
01:07:04.460 it's just a symptom of the, uh, law enforcement is just retreating across the board. Um, whether,
01:07:13.520 whether it's the crime that's happening, the drug crime that was happening in Portland,
01:07:16.760 when they're basically allowing open, uh, opioid use and not arresting people, including people
01:07:23.020 who are selling narcotics, um, uh, whether it's the gun crime in Lewiston or the Chinese organized
01:07:28.600 crime, all of this, there's just law enforcement have, um, they've pulled back.
01:07:33.680 What's so scary to me is that, um, Maine is now considered a blue state. A lot of the state is
01:07:41.520 not blue at all. It is not in favor of this. It's the Southern parts of the states, coastal
01:07:46.140 parts of the states, the first district, uh, that has been, you know, completely changed
01:07:50.520 demographically. Um, and, and now is, you know, totally in the hands of the Democratic
01:07:57.700 party. But what's interesting is the Republican candidates in Maine, um, the ones who are lining
01:08:05.740 up to run for governor, for example, in this coming election, none of them from what I can
01:08:10.940 tell have even mentioned demographic change, crime and drugs. Those are not issues that
01:08:15.340 Republicans want to talk about, even though they are the issues. They're the only issues.
01:08:19.680 I think drugs, uh, uh, that I've seen a lot of them have talked about drugs, but there's
01:08:24.820 a lot of focus on the, the culture war issues, you know, trans, uh, uh, uh, athletes, you know,
01:08:31.300 the governor is very focused on making sure that, uh, boys can participate in girls sports
01:08:35.300 and dominate girls sports. But again, this isn't an issue against that. Okay. Obviously I
01:08:39.280 think it's, you know, it's a humiliation ritual, like so many of these things. However, is,
01:08:43.980 is that what destroyed Lewiston? No, that's exactly, that's not, that's not the big issue.
01:08:48.440 Right. So how many Republicans are willing to say like, Hey, how about no more Somalis
01:08:52.220 in our state? Like no one voted for that. Why, what are you doing? Why are you doing
01:08:55.540 that? By the way, there are no jobs here. So like, why are you bringing poor people into
01:08:58.680 a place with no jobs? Yeah. That's a, that is a fringe radical opinion that, uh, there
01:09:03.680 is, again, there is a, a tremendous fear of being, um, socially ostracized. I think what
01:09:11.040 happened, you know, uh, these people, I mean, I think you kind of popularized the term gay
01:09:15.060 race communists. I stole it from someone else, but I do. Well, okay. Well, I love it too.
01:09:20.080 I think that the gay race communists increased the social costs of participating in the public
01:09:26.240 sphere during COVID helped by COVID, uh, to such a significant degree that good conservative
01:09:32.840 people who might not be explicitly political, but who just are conservative inclined. They
01:09:39.420 have a conservative disposition, um, withdrew from politics because if you went to a school
01:09:44.360 board or you went to a town council meeting and you spoke out, spoke your mind about what
01:09:47.440 you wanted to see happen in your community. It wasn't just that you disagreed with somebody.
01:09:51.300 It was that you were a bad person. And if you owned a business, well, there's going to
01:09:54.920 be a Facebook mob that was going to go give you a one-star reviews and you were a bad person.
01:09:58.300 We're going to drive you into the ground. If you don't want, you know, porn books with
01:10:01.760 cartoon, uh, you know, blowjobs in them in your kindergarten classroom. If you don't
01:10:06.720 want that, you're a bad person. And so conservatives just said, you know what, screw it. This is,
01:10:10.840 it's not worth my time. The cost is too high. I'm just going to go take care of my family
01:10:14.160 and my church. I'm going to go fishing. I'm going to hang out with my, my rotary club.
01:10:17.480 We ceded the public square to the gay race communists and they took over with zeal.
01:10:24.800 I think that's a really, uh, crisp and accurate analysis, but there's also, um, the problem
01:10:31.700 with how the state of Maine's government acted. Right. So I, I have a, a friend, um, lifelong
01:10:37.760 friend here who got into an argument with the state about COVID regulations. He had a restaurant
01:10:44.220 and, um, he came on my show on Fox and mentioned Janet Mills and she and the other women who run
01:10:52.760 the state, I think the state is run entirely by women pretty much. It's a matriarchy.
01:10:57.040 Almost every single official in the state is a left-wing woman, angry left-wing white woman,
01:11:01.920 some angry left-wing Somali woman. And gay white men from Poland. And gay white men, same thing.
01:11:06.380 The rainbow bullies. Yeah. They descended on him and drove him out of the state. They sent inspectors
01:11:13.220 armed to shut down his business for criticizing her. And he's now operating a business in another
01:11:19.920 state. He's been here his whole life, multi-generational. So they're like, people are afraid of the
01:11:25.840 state government under Janet Mills that, do you think that? It's the biggest problem in our state.
01:11:30.680 I mean, there's a, there is a, but it's a, it seems like a, she seems Janet Mills seems like a
01:11:35.600 criminal. The state seems to be run like a criminal enterprise. That's my view. Uh, every main wire
01:11:41.500 reporter gets the spiel. Forget what you learned in civics class. We're reporting on a criminal
01:11:46.240 organization. Uh, they steal from people and then they hand out money to their friends and to a
01:11:51.620 dependent class in order to buy votes. Uh, that's how you approach reporting on state government in
01:11:56.420 Maine. If you're a reporter from the Maine wire. How many reporters do you have working for you?
01:12:01.220 Uh, we have, uh, eight, we have nine full-time employees, including myself at this point.
01:12:06.400 So I'm not overstating it because probably unlike a lot of people watching this, I actually couldn't
01:12:10.220 follow news from the state. I'm interested and, uh, and horrified. You really are the only
01:12:16.500 organization covering not a, so you came from talk radio where you're like giving opinions.
01:12:21.780 Now you're, you're really just a pretty straight news reporter. Like here are the facts that we
01:12:26.100 found. We got in the truck. We drove around. Here's what we saw. Yeah. I mean, I'm an opinionated
01:12:29.520 guy. I mean, I, you know, I can't, but I, you know, I try to, I try to do the investigative
01:12:34.960 journalism, but I also just try to be honest about my opinions about it. Yeah. You know, I try to,
01:12:39.360 I try to be, you know, yes, I'm, yes, I'm conservative. Yes. I think it's a, I think it's a bad
01:12:43.620 thing that Chinese criminal organizations have taken over my state. Yes. I think that's a bad
01:12:48.020 thing, but I'm also going to be able to report facts objectively. So how hard is it to hire
01:12:53.100 reporters? Where do you get your reporters? You know, could you be bigger? I mean, why wouldn't
01:12:58.240 you have a hundred reporters working for you? Could you do that? Yeah. I mean, I, if, if we had
01:13:03.680 the resources and could find the people I could keep a team of 15, 20 reporters busy around the
01:13:11.540 clock full-time and pursuing stories, a list of investigative stories that we have to work on
01:13:16.000 that are, you know, not, maybe not the same size and scope as triad weed is long, but there's so
01:13:25.740 much organized crime and it's so overlapped with government. Virtually every government program is
01:13:34.500 being taken advantage of. The government itself is handing out no bid contracts in a way that's
01:13:39.900 hard to separate from organized crime. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's been very difficult to find people
01:13:48.660 to move to Maine. I had really a heartbreaking moment hiring my most recent producer to do our
01:13:54.660 own podcast and Substack project. And I'm talking with him, he grew up in Bangor, did everything right,
01:14:01.460 went to high school, stayed out of trouble, went to Husson, got a degree in film production and is,
01:14:08.500 you know, getting ready to propose to his girlfriend. They've already proposed, so I'm not,
01:14:13.400 you know, spilling the beans here. And I said, so what's keeping you in Maine? And he said,
01:14:19.540 we just haven't been able to save up enough money to get out.
01:14:25.240 And that was like a fucking dagger in my heart. Imagine that, just haven't been able to save up
01:14:32.260 enough money to escape Maine. And it's like, where do you escape to even? I guess, Texas, Florida,
01:14:40.800 Tennessee, some red states, some free states, maybe you can get to. But hearing that from him was like,
01:14:47.040 man, you know, so, I mean, that's, I think that's part of, you know, I would like Maine to be a place
01:14:52.240 where people want to live. But right now it's not. And it's very hard to hire people who want to come
01:14:58.800 here. It's like a deployment to a war zone. You know, one of my reporters lives in Portland. I
01:15:04.020 gave him a gun when I hired him and he said he was going to be living in Portland.
01:15:10.740 All legally, all legally transferred, by the way.
01:15:13.580 Yeah, whatever. Yeah.
01:15:14.680 You know, I mean, when your government is committing crimes like this, it's hard to take
01:15:20.060 seriously their laws, which is part of the problem. Everything degrades. It's like, really,
01:15:23.720 you're totally corrupt. You're allowing Chinese drug cartels to control my state. And you're
01:15:27.600 worried about whether I have the right license to carry a firearm? Up yours.
01:15:31.520 But that phenomenon, by the way, has trickled down into all of the legal marijuana businesses who
01:15:37.660 invested in some cases their life savings to build a business, do it legally, do things the right
01:15:42.640 way. Now they're seeing that the laws are being enforced only against white people. The marijuana
01:15:49.000 laws are only being enforced against white people. So increasingly, you're seeing more people adopt
01:15:54.740 the same tactics that the Chinese mafia is shipping out of state, blowing, you know, growing more than
01:16:01.960 their licenses allow, you know, cutting corners. There's a pretty famous case, a guy named Lucas
01:16:08.380 Sorois in Farmington, Maine, who was, he set up a business called the shoe factory, which was in an
01:16:16.680 old shoe factory building where he built these rooms and people who wanted to grow marijuana could
01:16:21.560 rent from him and they would grow their marijuana at this property. And he got reported to the Office
01:16:27.740 of Cannabis Policy. And the Office of Cannabis Policy immediately referred him to the drug
01:16:33.560 enforcement agency, the federal drug enforcement agency. And the DOJ got on top of him and they
01:16:40.740 wiretapped his phones, recorded his conversations with his father, and are still to this day pursuing
01:16:47.000 a case to try to send him to prison for doing a smaller scale version of what they knew.
01:16:55.440 They knew, and I can prove they knew because there's public documents and documents I've obtained
01:17:00.900 through Freedom of Access Act requests, what they knew the Chinese organizations were doing at the
01:17:05.100 same time, including at that facility in Turner, where William Robinson was shot in the head in
01:17:11.740 December. So they are, if you're, if you've got a French Canadian last name, they're going to stick
01:17:17.120 the DOJ after you. They're going to try to lock you in a cage. But if your last name is Wu or Huang
01:17:24.080 or Chen, you don't get the laws applied to you. You get arrested, you get $500 bail, maybe, maybe
01:17:31.820 $10,000 or $20,000 if it's Somerset County. And then who knows if you show up at your trial or if you
01:17:37.640 You're making me really radical.
01:17:41.440 Has, to the governor's brother who's profiting, who has provably profited from this,
01:17:46.840 it, is anybody in Maine state media mentioning this? Is anyone following up on this? The governor's
01:17:56.220 never responded to this. It's just like you report this and then it just disappears.
01:17:59.900 National media reported on it. Yeah. I mean, plenty. I mean, they've got plenty of attention
01:18:04.220 in the national media. Um, uh, you know, I've done a segment with CBS to their credit. Um, um,
01:18:11.240 Peter Schweitzer, uh, who's a, uh, a great author journalist who's been spent a lot of time working
01:18:16.940 on the China topic and the drug topic, um, you know, helped me get in touch with CBS and they
01:18:22.040 came up and did a segment on it. Uh, NBC later ripped off that segment and, uh, basically plagiarized
01:18:27.940 all of my journalism, but that's fine. Um, it's gotten national attention, but not the Paul Mills part
01:18:32.560 of it. And, uh, the local newspaper reporters don't seem to be interested in it. Uh, it's weird.
01:18:40.700 I was, I was, I've been accused of, uh, xenophobia for reporting on this, you know, huge criminal
01:18:48.480 organization that took over my state and that's ruining all of these buildings. That's one thing.
01:18:52.880 Who accused you of that? Oh, just idiots online, progressives, you know, elected, elected officials.
01:18:58.580 You know, I, I actually, the only time I've ever testified on a bill was when, uh, there was a
01:19:04.440 lawmaker who introduced a bill that would have given Maine a little Rico statute to help crack down on,
01:19:09.680 uh, uh, organized crime operations like this. And I figured I testify because I've seen more of
01:19:16.100 these than anybody in the state. I, at this point, you know, I could be a self-anointed expert witness
01:19:20.120 in Chinese marijuana. You know, I've got a degree in Chinese marijuana. And so I testified neither for
01:19:25.420 or against this bill and just was there to answer questions about how this operates. And the, as we
01:19:31.940 included the clip in our documentary that they didn't want to hear, they shut down my testimony and
01:19:37.000 said, can we hear from, you know, an actual expert about this? And they pushed me out and they voted
01:19:41.580 down the bill, voted against the only piece of legislation that would have, um, empowered law
01:19:47.420 enforcement to do anything about this. Um, so they've, they've reacted very negatively and hostilely
01:19:53.040 to my attempts to just show them what's happening in the state. You know, with, uh, I, you know,
01:20:00.680 I think we've gone above and beyond in terms of the evidence that we've provided,
01:20:04.740 the documentation that we've provided, because we know that not being an established, being
01:20:10.200 independent media, being conservative media, um, there's going to be a higher standard of
01:20:15.240 proof that we have to meet. And I think that we've met it and gone way beyond it over and
01:20:20.340 over and over and over and over again, and still they will not acknowledge it. And specifically
01:20:26.660 when it comes to, to Paul Mills, who, uh, his clients are involved in, um, more, uh, marijuana
01:20:33.060 grows than the one we've reported on is a building in Sangerville, Maine right now. It's the biggest
01:20:37.600 building in Sangerville. It started construction in August of last year, and it's just now finished
01:20:42.760 and it's coming online and it's going to be a big, big productive, uh, marijuana grow owned
01:20:48.560 by, uh, the client that Paul Mills transferred, uh, the property and credit to. Yeah.
01:20:54.380 Okay. So the point of Maine is its majestic nature. The governor, Janet Mills, who really
01:21:04.080 can't overstate really, it's, it's shocking the more you know about Janet Mills, but they
01:21:09.580 have bulldozed, chainsawed, flattened, clear cut forests in Maine for solar panels because
01:21:16.360 that's like environmentally positive or something. I mean, it's like strange.
01:21:20.760 It's part of the criminal organization. It is. And they hate nature. They hate nature
01:21:25.200 amazingly. What's the environmental impact of these grows? Every single house that has
01:21:32.820 had one of these Chinese marijuana grows, the best use for it is potentially practice for
01:21:38.920 the fire department. They all need to be torn down. There are super sites, uh, super fun
01:21:43.400 sites. We, we don't even know the extent of the damage that's been done as a result of the
01:21:49.480 Chinese pesticides and fungicides that have been imported from China illegally, um, into
01:21:55.440 California and then shipped to Maine and used at these sites as fumigants.
01:22:00.000 Actually?
01:22:00.600 Yes. We, so they're, uh, California has a really bad problem with this in the Siskiyou
01:22:07.220 National Forest. They have what they call hoop houses, massive greenhouses. Um, and they
01:22:12.440 are operated by Chinese criminal organizations. They're, um, often in concert with the Central
01:22:17.700 American cartels. And they've been investigating these from an environmental perspective because
01:22:23.300 they've weakened their drug laws so much that no one cares about illegal marijuana, but they
01:22:27.280 do care about water diversion to supply the cannabis. And they care about, um, the contamination
01:22:33.440 of these pristine wildlife environments with the chemical runoff. So they have the environment
01:22:39.400 police out there working to fight the Chinese mafia. Um, they've found pesticides, fungicides,
01:22:46.780 um, fumigants in Chinese labeled Mylar bags. And they found some shipping labels that they
01:22:54.700 were able to trace back to a property in California, which they obtained a postal warrant on and found
01:23:00.560 that this particular house was also shipping to a gross supply store in Massachusetts and a house
01:23:07.540 in Monmouth, Maine, which is in Kennebec County. Um, maybe, uh, 20 miles away from the Augusta,
01:23:13.980 the state's capital. Um, it's on Academy road. It's about, uh, maybe a thousand feet from a school.
01:23:21.240 We went to the house and knocked on the door to try to see if the owner wanted to talk. Uh, no one
01:23:26.940 was there. It very clearly had been turned into a marijuana girl at one point, but was not active.
01:23:32.120 And we went and talked with the neighbor who was a firefighter and he says, Oh no, it's active.
01:23:37.000 He's there's people there in the mornings around, you know, two o'clock in the morning to five o'clock
01:23:40.940 in the morning. And there's activity there. Um, so you kind of drew the conclusion that potentially
01:23:46.620 this was a shipping hub or receiving hub for these pesticides and fumigants and chemicals that
01:23:51.300 were being sent, uh, imported from China to California and distributed to Chinese marijuana.
01:23:57.000 And they're not legal here because they're poison. They're, uh, not, there's no licensed
01:24:02.360 regulated use for many of these pesticides and fungicides. Um, they're because they're so
01:24:11.040 deadly for humans, but it's, it's, uh, it's even worse than that. So there's, they're using
01:24:18.880 chemicals that are, um, not licensed for use in the United States and are deadly. Um, sometimes
01:24:25.820 some of them aren't even licensed for use in China, which is not notorious for their concern
01:24:30.080 for environmental rights, you know, human rights, environmental degradation. Um, but
01:24:34.420 they're also not very well studied, uh, used together, uh, in like eight of them together,
01:24:42.020 12 of them together. They're not studied when you burn them. They're not studied when you
01:24:45.540 apply them to marijuana and eat the marijuana. They're not studied when you apply them to marijuana
01:24:49.300 and smoke the marijuana. They're not studied when you use them in all these different combinations
01:24:52.860 and then do a gas extraction process to extract the THC oil and a more potent version of this
01:24:59.300 pesticide fumigant. They're not studied at all. They were unknown. Uh, the, they only identified
01:25:04.880 a lot of these chemicals.
01:25:06.220 Seriously?
01:25:06.720 They only identified a lot of these chemicals in California because they brought in the weapons
01:25:13.020 of mass destruction unit from the army national guard because the conventional labs couldn't test
01:25:17.420 for them. And there's no lab in the state of Maine that can test for them that I know of.
01:25:21.120 None of the cannabis labs can take cannabis grown at a Chinese marijuana grow that has
01:25:25.960 used these pesticides and test it and determine that it's contaminated. They may be now because
01:25:32.360 I've shared the information with them directly from the chemists in California who are identifying
01:25:37.920 them and trying to lead the fight against them. Uh, they may be able to test for them now,
01:25:42.220 but the consequence of it is that you could take a, a bit of marijuana from one of these
01:25:46.820 grows has been treated with these heinous, deadly chemicals, uh, and tested at one of
01:25:52.860 the labs and get an A plus tested, approved. No, no, uh, you know, bad chemicals. This is
01:25:58.320 safe for consumption.
01:25:59.720 Because they're not capable of testing these chemicals.
01:26:01.740 Yeah. Because it's just a different process. It's just the, each, you know, it's not like you
01:26:05.700 put a sample of cannabis in a machine and it says, here's everything that's in it. There's
01:26:09.340 each different pesticide, uh, or bacterium or arsenic. There's different processes to test
01:26:15.420 what's in each of them.
01:26:16.560 And people are putting this in their bodies?
01:26:18.200 Yeah. Well, they don't know. They don't know. And, and these, so these Mylar bags, well,
01:26:23.000 first of all, the house where we knew these products were being shipped, we knock on the
01:26:27.260 door and, uh, do a story about it. And a week later, the house hits the market for sale,
01:26:33.500 not suspicious at all. Uh, and the following week I get a call from a grandmother who,
01:26:39.340 had just taken a tour of the house as a prospective buyer with her two grandchildren.
01:26:44.740 And she was calling me because she and her grandchildren immediately developed respiratory
01:26:49.380 symptoms after walking through the house. And they were concerned enough that they Googled
01:26:53.640 it and they found my article and they called me and they wanted to know, what do we do?
01:26:59.980 You know, we've just been exposed to dangerous, unknown Chinese, Chinese neurotoxins. What do we do?
01:27:06.560 Like, fuck if I know, man, I'm just a journalist.
01:27:10.340 So Janet Mills is the steward of the environment, the big environmentalist governor.
01:27:14.120 Sure. Sure. Yeah. I mean, if she's supported by the natural resources council of Maine and the
01:27:20.620 Maine Renewable Energy Association and all the other corrupt trade groups that turn around and profit
01:27:25.860 from, from the sale of solar panels made by Chinese slaves in Western China. Yeah, sure. She
01:27:30.980 would position herself that way. And presumably future Democrats will, uh, position themselves that way.
01:27:36.400 But these, these same Mylar bags, by the way, that we've seen in California that we've identified,
01:27:41.300 we know to a certain extent what these chemicals are. Thanks to the weapons of mass destruction lab,
01:27:46.520 the most recent bust in Somerset County by Sheriff Dale Lancaster.
01:27:50.000 He had, he photographs that he distributed with his press release, the same exact bags.
01:27:55.940 They're coming here from California, shipped here illegal, illegally from China being distributed
01:28:00.600 here. And if they're in that one grow in Somerset County, you could assume that they're in all of
01:28:04.940 these grows and they, they dump mad science concoctions of pesticides with sawdust and ammonium
01:28:11.000 nitrate in a little fuse and a half cup beer can. And they let it smolder and the smoke fills the house
01:28:16.920 and it covers the marijuana plants. And so the mites won't grow and the mildew won't grow. So
01:28:21.400 you have minimal product loss. Are you serious? It's very effective at mitigating any kind of
01:28:26.760 pesticide or pest damage to your marijuana product. Um, but it, it coats every corner of the house
01:28:33.540 and these dangerous chemicals. So we have no way of testing for them. There's no real estate
01:28:39.020 disclosure. There are houses right now for sale by the same real estate agent who sold, tried to sell
01:28:44.900 this fucking house to the grandmother I talked with. There are houses that are for sale right now
01:28:49.760 on the market that have very likely been contaminated with these pesticides or at a
01:28:54.440 minimum, the black mold that comes with a house that's kept at 99% humidity and, you know, 80 degrees
01:29:00.900 so that marijuana can grow. They're on the market right now being sold with no disclosure whatsoever.
01:29:04.960 And this is a state with one of the most profound housing crises in the country because of
01:29:08.940 immigration, um, and Airbnb and big companies buying up residential real estate. Like people
01:29:16.180 can't afford houses here, period. Yeah. Also just assholes from Massachusetts and New York moving here.
01:29:20.480 Well, there's, I didn't want to say that, but yeah. True. Um, so I'll just say for the record,
01:29:26.960 if we're talking about mass deportation, like the Massachusetts and New York deportation.
01:29:32.840 Exactly. Yeah, I get it. Um, uh, I've got some dirty jokes on that subject, but I'm not going to share
01:29:38.780 them. Um, so, so it's, it's reducing the amount of available housing for Maine people. It is poisoning
01:29:48.020 the state's environment, which the government claims to be a steward of. Um, and they know it's
01:29:55.140 happening, right? I just want to, this one point I just want to be totally clear on. You're a journalist
01:30:00.980 working with other journalists trying to expose the scale of this disaster, this crime, but it's not
01:30:07.880 like government officials don't know. I'm not even talking about the governor, like people who run
01:30:14.000 the town managers in all these little towns, the selectmen in all these little towns, they've got
01:30:17.760 to know too, right? Yeah, I would assume. I mean, I know that the Lincoln County Sheriff has videotaped
01:30:24.700 surveillance evidence of, uh, illegal dumping going on out behind these sites. Um, there's, uh,
01:30:30.740 at, uh, Machias out in Washington County at a marijuana grow. I visited there. Uh, you could
01:30:35.720 almost study the ages of marijuana cultivation there by looking at the strata of the styrofoam
01:30:42.240 or, uh, I guess, um, fiberglass, um, uh, substrate that they start the marijuana plants in because
01:30:49.180 there were just layers and layers and layers and layers where they'd been growing marijuana,
01:30:53.520 uh, because they just take it when they don't, they throw it out in the backyard. And so just the
01:30:59.080 entire property is a beautiful farm in, uh, Machias that overlooks the water, uh, just
01:31:05.960 like it could be someone's paradise. Uh, and the soil will be permanently contaminated with,
01:31:11.200 you know, God knows what chemicals and fiberglass. It's everywhere distributed throughout the
01:31:15.280 property. Every single one of these places has like an unknown level of contamination, water
01:31:22.420 contamination, soil contamination, uh, the danger to people, um, the processes that are used to extract
01:31:29.640 the THC and the CBD, the psychoactive useful, uh, chemicals in marijuana. These same processes
01:31:37.320 also can collect the oil soluble pesticides and fungicides in higher concentrations. So when you
01:31:44.420 concentrate the vape pen to 99% THC, you're also concentrating, uh, the, you know, some of these
01:31:52.080 pesticides and fungicides, and then those are being sold. I mean, from the Chinese grows to,
01:31:56.320 you know, two thirds of them are leaving the state. They're being sold, uh, New York, Massachusetts,
01:32:00.480 the Southeast United States, all over the place. And people are unknowingly consuming these
01:32:04.900 substances that have just not been studied at all. Um, so we wouldn't even really know if somebody was
01:32:10.620 experiencing side effects of, uh, you know, unintentional exposure to, to some of these
01:32:15.700 carbonate poisons. I mean, it's, we, there's, there's so much that we don't know about the
01:32:21.500 dangers of these chemicals and you can't help but wonder if that's intentional.
01:32:28.560 Of course it's intentional.
01:32:29.820 You know, I've read, I've read, uh, unrestricted warfare, you know, they explicitly contemplate
01:32:34.960 environmental destruction and unrestricted warfare. Um, you know, the, the book written by Chinese
01:32:40.140 colonels in 1999, uh, which basically laid out exactly what they would do to us over the next 25 years.
01:32:45.960 Um, and we know, thanks to, uh, Philip Lenzicki from the Daily Caller News Foundation who reported,
01:32:51.480 um, just, uh, last week that, uh, there was reporting we did in Dexter, my hometown, about a mile from
01:32:59.420 where I grew up, uh, out of illegal marijuana row. We found an abandoned BMW there and there were two
01:33:06.700 shirts, uh, over the driver's seat and the passenger seat. I had Chinese writing on them, uh, for the
01:33:13.440 Shishu Association of New York. I was like, huh, that's weird. Took some pictures of it, didn't
01:33:18.500 really think anything of it. Uh, this by, this place, by the way, is like a mile from a military
01:33:24.340 facility, a U.S. Army Reserve garrison. And later, Philip was able to connect the dots between two
01:33:32.700 individuals arrested in Carmel, Maine. Uh, one of them was, uh, Weizan Huang and, uh, film from a
01:33:41.400 Chinese Communist Party event in New York where two of these individuals who were arrested,
01:33:46.160 their mugshots, they're on video at this event. And then Weizan Huang is featured, while he's out
01:33:51.660 on bail, by the way, is featured in Chinese state-run media, uh, back in his hometown doing
01:33:57.860 classic United Front work, talking about how he's going to come back to the United States
01:34:01.580 and he's going to bring home the bacon for his hometown, bring home American investment
01:34:04.960 for his people, um, based, and he is the executive director of the association that those shirts
01:34:11.100 were linked to. So thanks to, I guess, you know, the, the work we did on the ground and
01:34:16.780 Philip's advanced knowledge of, of Cantonese Mandarin, the culture, the language, and how these
01:34:21.980 Chinese benevolent associations work. They're all front groups, by the way. You know, the Chinese
01:34:26.260 consulate in New York should be gone. It should not be allowed to be operating in the United
01:34:30.220 States. Like the president of the United States should close it down immediately. All those
01:34:34.060 Chinese consulates, they're like military bases from a hostile foreign power. They should
01:34:38.260 be gone. And New York should not be allowed to, uh, issue licenses to foreign nationals
01:34:43.580 because it's hurting every other state. But thanks to driver's licenses, their identity
01:34:49.480 documents, the state of New York is printing, uh, false identity documents for criminal
01:34:53.880 organizations, aiding and abetting them. They're all coming here with driver's licenses
01:34:57.660 from New York. And, you know, a month later they get a license to grow marijuana here in
01:35:01.640 the state of Maine. And it's, it's a mess.
01:35:04.280 But we're spending our time arguing about Israel and Iran and all the rest when the
01:35:07.900 country's dying. It's the amount of energy that's being expended on things that don't
01:35:12.360 really matter that much to the exclusion of things that really do matter. Life and death
01:35:15.920 questions like the ones you're describing is really upsetting.
01:35:18.280 And Iranians never come taking a shit in my hometown like the Chinese communists are.
01:35:24.680 Yeah. Uh, you know, nobody, nobody, nobody from my high school classes died from Iranian
01:35:30.180 fentanyl. Uh, you know, I guess, you know, they're, I guess if we take out their nuclear
01:35:36.600 program, are we committing ourselves to a permanent technological subjugation of the Iranians
01:35:41.420 forever? Are we going to forever? Are we going to a hundred, a thousand years from now going
01:35:45.540 to be keeping them no nuclear weapons? Is that what we're going to do? Because they're
01:35:49.420 going to be pretty pissed off if you go take them out now. Is that the position? Not to
01:35:53.940 stray outside of my, my lane of expertise.
01:35:56.720 I don't think that anybody, uh, advocating for this cares because they don't care about
01:36:00.780 the country in the first place.
01:36:02.060 Yeah. Well, war is, war is profitable.
01:36:04.140 Yeah.
01:36:04.540 I wish that it was as profitable. Like, how do you make it profitable to just enforce the
01:36:10.480 laws that we already have here in the state of Maine? Like, how do you just enforce
01:36:15.320 the laws against people who are engaging in tax evasion? They're breaking the marijuana
01:36:19.880 laws. They're breaking the environmental laws. In some cases, they're jumping their meter
01:36:23.660 to steal electricity. They're, you know,
01:36:26.880 There's not one Indian owned convenience store that I've ever been to in Maine that's following
01:36:30.480 tax laws. I mean, that's just a fact. So.
01:36:33.000 Why aren't they being, why aren't they being audited? We have the Maine Revenue Services,
01:36:36.380 you know, they should be following up on that.
01:36:38.240 Yeah. So, um, here's my question. You were speaking earlier about the unequal application of
01:36:43.780 the law in the state along racial lines. Um, so these grows are just proceeding unimpeded.
01:36:51.100 There's no real penalty. People are dying. Nobody cares. States being poisoned. Nobody
01:36:55.160 cares. Janet Missile's brother's making money from it. It's great. Media won't report on it.
01:36:59.220 What would happen to you if you torched one of these places? Like it's in your town.
01:37:03.080 It's next to your house. There's a grow. You burn it down. No one's hurt, but you eliminate
01:37:08.860 that problem from your town. What would happen to you if you did that?
01:37:13.240 I would have a very good alibi.
01:37:16.160 Right.
01:37:17.180 I guess let me, let me rephrase.
01:37:20.780 And I want to say, I'm not even going to bother to save the record. I'm not encouraging that. It's
01:37:24.140 not up to me. So I'm not getting involved in what people would do or not do.
01:37:26.940 One of them burned down, by the way, just, uh, last Friday.
01:37:29.920 Yeah.
01:37:30.300 In Wilton.
01:37:30.800 Yeah. A big one, a big one. And, uh, I was inside it. And, uh.
01:37:35.800 After it burned. Yeah. After it burned. I have an alibi for the time.
01:37:39.980 Wait, let me just finish my question.
01:37:41.620 I'm just saying, anytime something happens to one of these, I have an alibi. I'll just
01:37:45.120 state that for, I don't know what it is yet.
01:37:47.180 You're out of state.
01:37:48.160 I was with Tucker.
01:37:51.040 But if, uh, if you were caught doing that, I guess, let me just say, you're busted by the
01:37:55.040 police, the same police who didn't bust the Chinese drug cartel that was running the
01:37:58.740 place. What would happen to you?
01:38:00.220 I think I would go to jail for a very long time and probably under hate crime statutes.
01:38:04.380 My, um, my jail sentence would be increased. Um, uh, you know, it would be the, uh, uh,
01:38:12.300 a racist act of violence, uh, against a marginalized community.
01:38:17.440 Marginalized community being the Chinese drug cartel.
01:38:19.060 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, that's what I think would happen.
01:38:22.820 How long has your family been in Maine?
01:38:24.960 Uh, six, seven generations. I mean, since it was in Massachusetts. I mean, as far back as-
01:38:31.500 That was 1820, 200 years ago.
01:38:33.020 Yeah. I mean, as, as, as far back as we care to look at that stuff. I don't know. I, my,
01:38:38.480 one of my grandfather's, my grandfather's father was adopted. So there's, uh, uh, some,
01:38:44.940 some empty spaces there. So we don't know, but I mean, as far back as we've been able to,
01:38:49.460 yeah, research.
01:38:50.400 Yeah. So a foreign drug cartel can come to your town, destroy the town.
01:38:53.680 Yeah.
01:38:54.120 Commit crimes in plain sight.
01:38:55.780 Yeah.
01:38:56.620 There's nothing anybody can do about it. But if having watched the total collapse of law enforcement,
01:39:02.360 you decide to enforce the law informally by getting rid of the drug house, not hurting anyone,
01:39:06.860 but just destroying the property, you go to jail.
01:39:10.600 Yeah.
01:39:12.280 That's, that's tyranny, right?
01:39:15.700 Or what would happen if I went to China and decided, hey, I'm going to go grow a bunch of pot
01:39:19.600 and sell it illegally all around. Oh, and it's going to be poisoned too, with poisons that I've
01:39:24.060 illegally shipped in from, uh, the, the United States. Not saying we want to become any more
01:39:28.820 like China, but the, uh, the unequal application of the laws is so obvious that it is going to
01:39:36.680 encourage this, what you're talking about, vigilantism, because you have, it's marijuana
01:39:42.180 in Maine is such a huge business. Uh, you know, we're known for lobsters, blueberries, whatever.
01:39:46.520 But if you look at it in terms of economic value, and if you'd add the gray market and the black
01:39:51.320 market to what's actually being taxed, it's way bigger than blueberries, lobster, and potatoes
01:39:56.820 combined in terms of its economic value for the state. And there are a lot of people who
01:40:02.040 have spent their considerable amount of their time, energy, and treasure trying to build businesses
01:40:07.800 around this, following the rules, doing the right thing, trying to follow these weird, murky, hard
01:40:12.820 to follow regulations, uh, that change all the time. And the regulators are punitive. And if you
01:40:17.960 complain about them on Instagram, they're going to give you a surprise inspection and write you a
01:40:21.840 ticket only if you're white and all of these business owners are being put under because of
01:40:29.900 the unequal enforcement of the laws, because the dumping of the Chinese grown marijuana, which
01:40:36.080 comes with all these built-in cost advantages. You don't have to pay your laborers. You can steal
01:40:40.800 electricity. You can use pesticides and fungicides. You can grow way over the plant limits. You have no
01:40:45.100 regulatory compliance costs. So you can go sell your product for half what the legal main business
01:40:51.040 owners can sell. So they're going bankrupt and they're looking at a government that's not
01:40:56.640 enforcing the laws equally. And if you don't think that they're contemplating vigilantism,
01:41:01.540 you're crazy. They absolutely are. They absolutely are.
01:41:04.760 Why wouldn't they just pay off Janet Mills' brother even more than the
01:41:07.760 Chinese drug cartels are paying him?
01:41:11.100 I don't know. I don't know what that would accomplish. You know, I mean, I don't know if
01:41:15.220 they've considered it. I don't know if, I don't know if she's open to, uh, to, to bribes from the
01:41:19.360 other side. I do know that, um, the highest ranking official in the New York, uh, the
01:41:23.880 Chinese New York consulate was here for her inauguration in 2019.
01:41:27.760 What?
01:41:30.640 Can you restate that?
01:41:32.200 The highest ranking official for the Chinese consulate in New York was at her inauguration.
01:41:38.860 Janet Mills' inauguration.
01:41:39.960 Janet Mills' inauguration in 2019.
01:41:41.460 What in the world would a communist Chinese official from New York be doing at Janet Mills'
01:41:45.740 inauguration as governor of Maine? That doesn't make any sense at all.
01:41:49.240 Uh, according to Chinese state-run media, uh, taking meetings with, uh, Senate President
01:41:54.100 Troy Jackson, uh, Matt Dunlap, the current state auditor, uh, former Secretary of State
01:41:59.140 had just returned from a trip to China, um, hailing the inauguration of the first female
01:42:04.460 governor of the state of Maine.
01:42:05.860 How's that gone, by the way?
01:42:08.980 Objectively, I think that we have yet to devise a measure of political science or social
01:42:14.400 science by which you could say the state has improved under Janet Mills.
01:42:19.640 If they found one, I, I, I can't, I can't tell you.
01:42:24.180 Oh.
01:42:24.960 You know, nothing's gotten better.
01:42:26.920 I think that the, the best example of the people of Maine lacking the immune system to
01:42:33.040 repel something like this is Woodville, Maine, which is a town of maybe 300, 350 people.
01:42:39.680 Where is it?
01:42:40.040 Uh, it's Penobscot County, um, Northern Penobscot County, uh, maybe 45 minutes to an hour north
01:42:46.080 of Bangor.
01:42:47.000 Pretty town.
01:42:48.100 Pretty, very rural, you know, really just like one road going through it.
01:42:51.520 Um, and a lot of dirt roads and, uh, they've got a three person selectman, uh, Manfred's
01:42:57.340 the chief selectman, great guy, no nonsense manner.
01:43:00.080 You'd love him.
01:43:00.500 He'd fit in around here.
01:43:01.940 Um, and they had an obnoxious Chinese marijuana grow right next to their town office and you
01:43:08.460 can see right next to their town office.
01:43:10.800 You can smell it.
01:43:11.400 In Woodville, Maine.
01:43:12.240 Yeah.
01:43:12.540 An hour north of Bangor, which itself is like far from the Massachusetts border.
01:43:16.840 Yeah.
01:43:17.040 The country border.
01:43:17.620 It's a long way.
01:43:18.160 Yeah.
01:43:18.300 And, uh, this used to be a lumber mill or a sawmill.
01:43:24.760 It was like the day's mill, um, back in a, in a, in a former Maine, it was a prosperous
01:43:30.000 business that, you know, made lumber and wood for people to build homes so that middle-class
01:43:34.180 families could live in them instead of growing marijuana in them.
01:43:37.040 And, uh, this place was obnoxious.
01:43:39.540 There was, uh, you know, effluent always running across the road.
01:43:42.180 Um, the people were angry and mean and nasty and they, you know, they wouldn't pay their
01:43:47.160 taxes and then someone would show up from New York and just slap $100 bills on the counter
01:43:51.780 until the, you know, clerk said, okay, the taxes are paid and then leave.
01:43:57.320 Uh, and at one point they had to call the animal control officer because there was a,
01:44:02.160 um, Cantonese speaking individual out in the front yard beating a border collie with
01:44:07.740 a stick and I-
01:44:10.840 a border collie with a stick and-
01:44:13.760 So why didn't the townspeople shoot him?
01:44:18.740 You'd have to ask Manfred.
01:44:21.220 Look, I'm not, I don't want to be judgmental, but you can't, I mean, that, that like crosses
01:44:25.540 so many lines that you give up your, your right to life at that point, I would say.
01:44:30.460 They took the dog away.
01:44:32.000 I mean, the dog is, you know, was clearly very severely abused when the animal control
01:44:36.400 officer show up, showed up, the guy just picked up the dog, threw him over and said,
01:44:39.880 take him, no good, no good.
01:44:42.800 And, uh, I could see going into the town council meetings that I could see this happening, like
01:44:52.940 the lack of an immune system to repel what was happening and cross the line from journalists
01:44:59.440 to, it's like, I don't know, local activists.
01:45:05.280 And I was like, why don't you guys just write an ordinance that says that you can declare
01:45:10.520 that an illegal cannabis business and start fining them $10,000 a day until they shut
01:45:14.740 it down.
01:45:15.360 And if they don't pay the fine, then you put a lien against the property and turn off the
01:45:20.180 electricity.
01:45:20.580 Because if they can't have electricity, they can't grow marijuana.
01:45:23.660 If they can't grow marijuana, they can't make money.
01:45:25.740 They will leave.
01:45:26.460 Just write an ordinance and do that.
01:45:28.200 And they were like, geez, that's not a bad idea.
01:45:31.300 And they wrote the ordinance and they passed the ordinance.
01:45:35.060 And 30 days later, I reached out and they were like, well, how do we enforce the ordinance?
01:45:41.560 Well, get your code enforcement officer, as the ordinance says, get your code enforcement
01:45:44.480 officer to go declare it from an exterior inspection and illegal cannabis business and start issuing
01:45:49.740 the fines.
01:45:51.020 And they're like, well, geez, I don't know if our code enforcement officer will do that.
01:45:55.080 She's got a couple of towns she deals with.
01:45:57.440 I don't know.
01:45:58.920 I still don't know what the status of it is.
01:46:00.720 But these guys, this particular marijuana grow ended up applying for a license with the
01:46:05.920 Office of Cannabis Policy to grow legally.
01:46:08.780 And when the inspector showed up, they were already growing hundreds of plants.
01:46:13.220 And they couldn't explain to them that that's illegal and you're disqualifying for getting
01:46:18.560 a license.
01:46:19.880 But this is like the one place that ended up not getting a legal license after being
01:46:25.820 caught growing marijuana illegally.
01:46:28.840 But it's still owned by Chinese nationals because these are effective real estate investments
01:46:34.220 too.
01:46:35.080 The real estate's an effective way to hide capital from the Chinese government itself.
01:46:40.880 That's happening all over the United States.
01:46:42.700 And it's really affecting residential real estate prices, of course.
01:46:46.420 And it's not just China that's dumping money here as a safe haven and destroying the ability
01:46:51.580 of our kids to buy houses.
01:46:53.680 You said something off camera, which I hope you will elaborate on a little bit.
01:46:57.920 So one of, I think, people listening to this who aren't familiar with northern New England
01:47:02.120 might say, well, wow, you know, the people sound pretty passive in the face of the total
01:47:06.820 destruction of their state, their way of life, their culture, their economy, the land itself.
01:47:12.180 How could they put up with that?
01:47:14.680 And you said something.
01:47:16.560 Oh, I think this is fair.
01:47:18.560 You said the best part of Maine is that people are instinctively hesitant to bother other people.
01:47:24.800 But that's also a weakness.
01:47:26.640 Yeah.
01:47:27.080 I mean, you, Mainers don't want people up in their shit.
01:47:32.120 Yeah.
01:47:32.300 So they don't get up and other people's shit.
01:47:35.260 Nicely put.
01:47:36.580 You know, and I'll say that there are, I was more scared knocking on some of the doors
01:47:43.920 that I knew Mainers owned the properties because they might answer with a gun.
01:47:48.520 You know, for sure.
01:47:49.300 The Chinese, the individuals who are at these facilities growing marijuana, it's my belief,
01:47:54.300 most of, in most cases, they are victims of exploitation by criminal organizations.
01:47:59.920 They're being paid maybe $1,000 a month.
01:48:03.620 You know, they're being exposed to chemicals that they have no idea what the consequences
01:48:08.940 of that will be, the mold.
01:48:10.840 They're living in conditions that any American would look at and be like, that's slavery or
01:48:14.920 that's, you know, human trafficking.
01:48:16.500 That is unreal, but they could be doing it voluntarily.
01:48:19.840 I still think that they're victims, but they're very servile in most cases when you try to ask
01:48:27.140 them questions or interview them and they can't speak English or they pretend they can't speak
01:48:31.060 English and they call someone in New York and do an interview over the phone and they
01:48:34.920 don't want to answer any questions.
01:48:37.060 But they very much, the people who are operating this know about that culture in Main and they
01:48:45.380 exploit it for a reason.
01:48:47.500 They're very, like, they came to Maine with a playbook that they'd run previously in Washington
01:48:52.320 State, in California, in Oklahoma, to camouflage themselves within legal marijuana programs.
01:48:57.800 But they knew that once they got to Maine, there was going to be this live and let live
01:49:01.720 type culture.
01:49:03.220 Yes.
01:49:03.380 And they took advantage of it.
01:49:04.260 And that's what pisses me off so much.
01:49:05.740 And the Yankee Reserve that, you know, it's got the highest incidence of English ancestry of any state
01:49:10.020 is what the world has done to Great Britain, you know, in the same dynamic.
01:49:15.380 Like, you come in living off the charity of the people who built the country and then you give
01:49:20.780 them the finger, then you destroy what they built, then you take more money from them and they do
01:49:25.140 nothing.
01:49:25.880 And the only people who speak up about it get arrested for speaking about it.
01:49:29.600 Like, because it's, you're leveraging Anglo politeness against the Anglos.
01:49:34.140 It's what you're doing.
01:49:34.760 Yeah.
01:49:35.540 And I mean, they even have a word for, what is it, like, Bazo, the white liberals.
01:49:40.620 They're very strategically taking advantage of this hesitant, this deep-seated fear amongst
01:49:47.520 white people in Maine to be labeled as a racist or described as a racist.
01:49:53.200 And there's this, even this stereotype about this, you know, rural redneck.
01:49:57.320 And it's true of Maine and it's true of any other state, like these rural people.
01:50:00.580 The deep south, yeah.
01:50:01.080 Yeah.
01:50:01.400 These people are just racist.
01:50:02.620 And I encountered over and over and over again in every county that I went to, people
01:50:08.160 who went out of their way to be as fucking nice to these people as they possibly could.
01:50:14.240 In Franklin County, there was a guy who plowed them out for like two years because they needed
01:50:22.040 to have the driveway clean.
01:50:23.800 Explain what plowed out means.
01:50:25.300 Sorry.
01:50:26.900 It snows in Maine.
01:50:28.440 For people who are unfamiliar, it snows.
01:50:30.700 The Chinese were apparently unfamiliar with that.
01:50:33.420 So this was what a challenge they had to surmount as they're trying to make a marijuana pickup.
01:50:39.080 When the U-Haul or the Sprinter van is coming to pick up, you know, 500 pounds of marijuana,
01:50:43.380 you can't have two feet of snow in the driveway.
01:50:45.340 So there was actually a marijuana grow that was on the Department of Homeland Security's list.
01:50:52.580 And this is in Chesterville, Maine.
01:50:55.220 It was, I think, 200 West Road.
01:50:59.360 And they needed help plowing.
01:51:03.240 So this Chinese guy walks up the driveway of their neighbors and holds out a phone.
01:51:07.400 And it's a woman in New York who negotiates an arrangement where they plow the guy out.
01:51:11.620 And so they'd bring their tractor down and plow the driveway.
01:51:14.800 And they did that for them for free.
01:51:17.500 Like, they didn't even negotiate like a price.
01:51:19.600 They were just like, yeah, we'll go plow you out.
01:51:20.840 You're a neighbor.
01:51:21.680 They did that for them.
01:51:22.580 That's what they're like.
01:51:23.080 Because they were just like, it was a guy who...
01:51:24.860 And in return, the Chinese poisoned their children.
01:51:28.700 Yeah.
01:51:29.300 Sorry, it's just true.
01:51:30.120 But you've described the way every rural community, probably in the country, but certainly...
01:51:34.380 No, they later abused that relationship to the point where the woman who was living at that property,
01:51:41.980 I think she's in her 60s, a young Chinese man, maybe 20s or 30s,
01:51:48.520 came over and asked the elderly Chinese woman if she would go mow the lawn for them.
01:52:00.420 So, last question.
01:52:02.100 It doesn't seem like, and you're the expert on politics in the state,
01:52:06.640 but it seems like it's pretty hard to make a change.
01:52:11.960 You know, the governor's leaving in the next election, thank God.
01:52:15.180 But, however, there are a lot of people like the governor in state government,
01:52:19.240 like the whole state government.
01:52:20.480 Not the whole, but a lot of it is truly corrupt.
01:52:24.880 So, I don't know.
01:52:25.880 I'm not that confident that anyone in Maine is going to fix Maine's problems.
01:52:29.180 Can the feds do anything?
01:52:30.640 Can the Trump Justice Department begin to fix this problem?
01:52:35.100 Yes, absolutely.
01:52:37.360 And I think that you're seeing glimmers of that.
01:52:41.080 I mean, it's fun to fight about the tranny stuff, okay?
01:52:43.480 Yeah.
01:52:44.500 But if you've got military-age male Chinese in uniform,
01:52:50.440 you know, throughout the state,
01:52:52.680 you've got thousands of Chinese here illegally working for drug cartels,
01:52:55.700 like that's a national security threat, no?
01:52:57.260 They control the former Maine National Guard base in Gardner.
01:53:00.260 What?
01:53:00.880 Yeah.
01:53:01.680 It's a former Maine National Guard base.
01:53:03.220 It was decommissioned and sold.
01:53:05.160 It's a big brick military garrison surrounded by barbed wire,
01:53:08.920 but there's an illegal Chinese marijuana grow operating out of that.
01:53:11.560 It's about two miles from the statehouse.
01:53:17.700 Actually?
01:53:18.460 Yeah.
01:53:19.700 And just down the road from there,
01:53:20.860 there's another one that is operating out of an old meat walker.
01:53:24.500 It used to be run by Johnny Wu.
01:53:26.240 Johnny Wu lost his license.
01:53:27.780 Ben Wang came in,
01:53:28.920 and now it's operating under her license.
01:53:30.540 Okay, sorry.
01:53:35.940 We've been talking for almost two hours,
01:53:37.660 and every sentence shocks me.
01:53:42.440 Okay, I think you've established this as an imminent national security threat.
01:53:47.680 So what could the feds do,
01:53:48.880 and why haven't they done anything?
01:53:49.720 They need to treat it like a national security threat, first of all.
01:53:53.260 I think that there's maybe an illusion that Maine doesn't have anything that's a vital national security interest,
01:54:00.700 but there are international internet lines that run through Maine.
01:54:08.080 There's Bath Iron Works, a defense contractor here.
01:54:12.000 There's some military facilities,
01:54:13.920 and there's a huge, like a 5,000 acre,
01:54:18.240 I guess, National Guard complex in Woodville,
01:54:23.120 the town where the Border Collie was being beat.
01:54:25.860 Well, there are also, like, training facilities in Maine that are, like, widely known.
01:54:32.520 There's the longest runway, I think, in North America,
01:54:35.720 bomber runway in Bangor.
01:54:37.700 It also has an incredibly long international border.
01:54:40.640 Plus, it's an American state.
01:54:42.580 Yeah.
01:54:43.220 One of the oldest American states.
01:54:45.140 It needs to be treated like a national security threat,
01:54:47.220 and the northern border needs to be treated with the same seriousness
01:54:50.700 that the southern border is, particularly our northeast border.
01:54:54.920 Right now, we have basically the thin blue line protecting America
01:55:01.140 from illegal aliens from Jordan or from Algeria or from China
01:55:06.920 from sneaking across the Maine border
01:55:09.440 are, like, 19- and 20-year-old cops from Fort Fairfield, Maine,
01:55:14.200 happening to pull somebody over and see something that's not right
01:55:17.760 and bring in CB2.
01:55:19.120 Well, yeah, especially China controls Canada.
01:55:22.060 I mean, Canada is now a colony of China,
01:55:23.920 which can be used for its resources, obviously.
01:55:26.860 And they're exploiting that border.
01:55:28.600 So, to answer the question about what can the feds do,
01:55:31.560 treat it like a national security issue.
01:55:33.820 That's what you can do.
01:55:35.160 They've moved to seize...
01:55:36.240 Is that more effective than fighting about trannies?
01:55:41.140 You know, a tranny has never, you know, tried to kill me.
01:55:45.660 Yeah, I mean, I'm not for trannies.
01:55:46.800 I mean, I spent many, many hours on TV
01:55:49.400 barking about trannies, but like...
01:55:50.800 Yeah, yeah.
01:55:51.600 Okay.
01:55:52.020 Now this is real.
01:55:53.780 Let's get real.
01:55:54.560 In the scale of...
01:55:55.040 In the scope of things that are affecting the quality of life
01:55:57.700 and the people of Maine,
01:55:59.020 the transgender athletes,
01:56:01.820 with all due respect to the female athletes
01:56:04.400 who lose to the male athletes
01:56:06.460 who are pretending to be women,
01:56:08.000 it's not as big as this.
01:56:09.860 Not at all.
01:56:10.860 No.
01:56:11.220 It's not.
01:56:11.860 Yeah, exactly.
01:56:12.840 And it needs to be treated like a national security threat
01:56:16.140 and there needs to be a whole of government response to it.
01:56:18.540 You need to use the Environmental Protection Agency
01:56:20.360 to go after these facilities
01:56:21.500 that we know are using unregistered poisons.
01:56:24.920 The problem is,
01:56:25.560 is that the weed scammers are not just Chinese.
01:56:29.540 They're American too.
01:56:30.740 And there's a lot of...
01:56:32.400 There's so much money.
01:56:33.740 I know.
01:56:34.180 I know.
01:56:34.320 I mean, I have a million friends who grow marijuana.
01:56:36.840 I'm not against everyone who grows marijuana.
01:56:38.780 I'm saying,
01:56:40.300 I know a lot of people who grow marijuana,
01:56:43.300 I think because they're afraid to smoke marijuana
01:56:44.800 from the Chinese drug cartels because it's poison.
01:56:47.680 With good reason.
01:56:48.380 Or whatever.
01:56:49.020 This is an agricultural state.
01:56:50.300 A lot of people grow marijuana.
01:56:51.080 Yeah.
01:56:51.480 I don't use it, but I get it.
01:56:53.980 I'm talking about like the organized money interests
01:56:57.960 in the United States
01:56:58.680 who are constantly lobbying the federal government
01:57:01.160 for their own economic benefit.
01:57:03.660 Yeah.
01:57:04.120 Right?
01:57:04.640 Yeah.
01:57:04.960 A lot of that.
01:57:05.540 Yeah.
01:57:05.800 Billions of dollars of that.
01:57:06.840 Well, I would say, you know,
01:57:09.300 Bobby Kennedy should treat this
01:57:11.240 like a national health emergency.
01:57:13.120 It is.
01:57:14.460 Whatever your feelings are on legal marijuana,
01:57:16.800 it's here.
01:57:17.780 It's happening.
01:57:18.500 People are consuming it.
01:57:19.420 It's more popular.
01:57:20.160 There are more daily active marijuana users
01:57:22.180 than daily active alcohol users.
01:57:24.680 This happened just, I think,
01:57:25.720 within the last year or two.
01:57:27.380 So it's happening.
01:57:28.740 And to the extent that these illicit Chinese poisons
01:57:31.660 are making it into that supply,
01:57:33.200 it is a national health emergency
01:57:34.680 and it needs to be responded to it just like that.
01:57:38.900 But there's also,
01:57:40.820 there are powerful economic interests
01:57:42.560 that align with what the Chinese are doing
01:57:45.040 in the Baptists and bootleggers fashion.
01:57:48.140 Like there are marijuana companies
01:57:50.280 that want to become the Bud Light
01:57:51.520 or Coors Light of marijuana.
01:57:53.000 What do they benefit from?
01:57:54.420 A harsh, strict regulatory environment
01:57:56.860 that they can comply with easily,
01:58:00.540 costs that they have the capital to deal with,
01:58:03.180 but the little mom and pop cannabis producers don't.
01:58:06.340 So they tolerate and allow
01:58:08.400 and maybe encourage
01:58:10.160 this kind of wild, wild west
01:58:11.820 of which the Chinese marijuana growers are a part
01:58:13.960 because they know
01:58:15.060 that the Chinese criminal organizations
01:58:17.160 polluting the marijuana environment in Maine
01:58:19.480 will lead to calls
01:58:20.880 for greater regulatory crackdown
01:58:23.120 and a compliance regime
01:58:24.760 that works favorable
01:58:25.960 to their long-term economic interests.
01:58:28.360 So there are, you know,
01:58:29.900 wealthy companies
01:58:31.360 that give a lot of money to politicians.
01:58:33.800 I would look into
01:58:34.500 who are the biggest donors
01:58:37.260 to Governor Janet Mills'
01:58:39.240 inaugural committee in 2019.
01:58:41.740 Who were they?
01:58:42.640 Big cannabis companies.
01:58:46.580 I should just say
01:58:47.760 you're the son of a man
01:58:50.820 who worked at the shoe factory,
01:58:52.000 but you have a fancy college degree.
01:58:53.260 You've got a million different
01:58:54.700 potential life paths
01:58:56.420 and you've chosen to stay in Maine
01:58:58.180 and do this job
01:58:59.180 making much less
01:59:00.320 than you could have made
01:59:01.060 if you'd left
01:59:02.320 with your college degree.
01:59:04.340 And I'm just grateful
01:59:05.440 that you did that.
01:59:06.960 Well, thank you.
01:59:07.420 This is making a difference.
01:59:08.760 Thank you.
01:59:09.140 I'm grateful for the help
01:59:11.720 and encouragement
01:59:12.240 that you've given me
01:59:13.820 and, you know,
01:59:15.260 the attention to be here.
01:59:16.540 Well, no one else is doing it.
01:59:17.540 I know.
01:59:17.980 That's crazy.
01:59:19.400 Why is it falling to you
01:59:20.580 to do this?
01:59:21.340 Honestly, honestly, Tucker,
01:59:22.440 you're like my psychotherapist
01:59:23.840 because, you know,
01:59:24.960 I feel like I'm Mugatu
01:59:26.900 and Zoolanders.
01:59:27.660 I feel like I'm taking crazy pills
01:59:28.940 as I drive around
01:59:29.780 and I see all these marijuana sites.
01:59:31.120 I'm like,
01:59:31.780 how has it taken this long
01:59:33.660 for somebody to tell this story?
01:59:36.200 So for finally,
01:59:36.920 for somebody else to be like,
01:59:38.380 yeah, that is a fascinating story.
01:59:40.200 It feels gratifying
01:59:41.860 to the work that we've done.
01:59:44.120 And I have to say that.
01:59:44.960 I mean, it's been like a team-wide work
01:59:49.100 that my reporters have,
01:59:51.080 you know, had to tolerate me
01:59:52.360 just disappearing into the woods
01:59:53.620 of Maine
01:59:54.000 where there's no cell phone signal
01:59:55.260 for days at a time
01:59:56.260 to do some of this work.
01:59:57.940 And our digital media producer,
01:59:59.780 Graham Pollard,
02:00:00.660 he's one of the best in the country
02:00:02.040 and he single-handedly put together
02:00:03.920 the documentary that we made on this.
02:00:05.900 And he's just so wildly talented.
02:00:08.280 And a lot of this,
02:00:08.960 I don't think I could have done
02:00:10.420 without their help
02:00:11.680 and their assistance.
02:00:12.280 And also the readers
02:00:14.280 and supporters of our organization,
02:00:18.580 The Maine Wire,
02:00:19.280 and a lot of the people
02:00:20.460 who were very brave
02:00:21.940 and gave us tips anonymously.
02:00:23.620 People in government,
02:00:25.300 people who work for utility companies,
02:00:27.440 town officials,
02:00:28.520 you know,
02:00:28.700 once the initial story started coming out,
02:00:31.800 people came to us
02:00:32.640 with a lot of harrowing information
02:00:35.420 that they were too scared
02:00:37.000 to put their name to,
02:00:39.000 but ended up being very useful to us
02:00:41.000 in connecting the dots
02:00:42.200 and being able to tell the story
02:00:44.940 that we've told.
02:00:45.740 Godspeed, man.
02:00:48.060 I think you're in danger
02:00:49.520 and I know that you know
02:00:50.600 you are in danger.
02:00:51.380 So thank you for doing this anyway.
02:00:53.220 Thank you.
02:00:53.680 We want to thank you for watching us
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