Executive Disorder: SPLC Indictment, Denaturalization, Iran  🔗 **Source:** [Executive Disorder: SPLC Indictment, Denaturalization, Iran](https://share.snipd.com/episode/35a5d4b9-aa13-4cd2-aeda-e4ba502acac0) ## Highlights - **Iran's Military Wasn't Rendered Combat Ineffective** - Public claims that US strikes 'took out' Iran's navy and air force are exaggerated; roughly two-thirds of Iran's air force and 60% of its naval arm remain operational. - Garrison Davis cited CBS reporting and OSINT showing many fast-attack boats and half the ballistic missile stockpile intact, meaning prolonged conflict would be costly. Transcript: Robert Evans As recently as last Tuesday, President Trump said, quote, we've taken out their Navy. We've taken out their Air Force. We've taken out their leaders. On April 8th, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Operation Epic Fury a historic and overwhelming victory on the battlefield. By any measure, Epic Fury decimated Iran's military and rendered it combat ineffective for years to come. Now, that last sentence, the first part is technically accurate, but not in the way that Hegseth means. No one knows what decimate means anymore. Decimate literally means to destroy like a tenth of a group, right? And yeah, that's pretty accurate, right? But the second part of that sentence, rendered it combat ineffective for years to come, is not accurate. Neither is Trump's statement that we've taken out their Navy and their Air Force. CBS published an article today reporting that roughly 60 percent of the naval arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is still in existence, including fast-tack speedboats. And Iranian air power, while it's been degraded, is still significantly more functional than actually I had assumed. About two thirds of the Iranian air force is still believed to be operational, despite the massive U.S. And Israeli airstrikes, largely targeting air production and storage facilities. You're looking at two thirds of Iran's Navy and Air Force still functional and at least about half their ballistic missile stockpile and their launch system stockpile intact. That's a significant ([Time 0:10:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fd4ed53d-b154-4c2c-81ca-ad0b51f95654)) - **Iran Is Not A Single Negotiating Entity** - The Iran ceasefire revealed Iran as a fragmented power structure, so diplomatic agreements risk failing if the IRGC won't comply. - James Stout explained that Tehran's overlapping centers of power mean the foreign ministry may agree but can't guarantee IRGC enforcement, undermining negotiations. Transcript: James Stout Ceasefire itself, right? And then, like, what's been happening there. Let's start with, like, I guess, straightforward news updates and then get into the ceasefire. The Navy intercepted an Iranian vessel in the Arabian Sea this week, close to the Iran-Pakistan border. The Tusker was warned. Imagine they used an LRAD to warn it. People see LRADs on ships sometimes and think they're coming to make you deaf. That's one of the reasons ships have LRADs. They could have also used a radio, if they can talk to them on the radio, if they're receiving communications on the radio. They then ordered it to its engine room. They then shot out its engine with the five-inch gun. First time they've gotten to do that in 40 years. Yeah, I was looking at it. I guess it was since, what, 1988, the last time that I was thinking. It's been a minute since this ship engaged another ship with this main gun. It was a USS Spruance, a guided missile destroyer that did that. Subsequently, U.S. Marines on the Tripoli, we reported when the Tripoli first moved towards that region, right? We specifically said that this is one of the capacities that it had. They boarded the ship. So they transferred up a helicopter and then boarded the ship. The US has since inspected other ships, including outside of the CENTCOM AO. So the US perceives its blockade to be global, right, of Iranian assets, of Iranian vessels, and the quote-unquote shadow fleet, which we've already explained on ED, so I'm not going To go into depth on what that means. The IRGC also fired at several vessels in the strait. There is some reporting that one of them, an Indian tanker, had paid a fee in cryptocurrency to what turned out to be a scammer. I'm certain that these scams exist because there have been multiple warnings of them. I haven't seen any evidence that is satisfactory enough for me to be confident that that particular ship had been scammed. But perhaps the most compelling piece of evidence, the ship is called the San Mar Herald, is this audio that we're going to play right here. Speaker 5 SEPA Navy, SEPA Navy, this is Motodengar Sanmar Herald. You gave me clearance to go. My name second on your list. You gave me clearance to go. You are firing now. Let me turn back. James Stout Just in case I wasn't clear, you gave me clearance to go. You're firing now. Let me turn back. So it does seem that that vessel believed that it had clearance to go and was sent fired upon. This morning, there were some OSINT pictures of IRGC. They looked like kind of fast attack boats, kind of things Robert was talking about in the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah. Something of a flex. Yeah, we still have a navy. Like, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think that's important in the context of a ceasefire. I want to explain very briefly, there's been a lot of contradictory reporting on when, where and how negotiations are going to happen. A ceasefire was set to expire the day we're recording on Wednesday. On Tuesday, we saw Donald Trump unilaterally extend the ceasefire by truthing, quote, based on the fact that the government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so, and Upon the request of Field Marshal Asim Mounir and Prime Minister Shabazz Sharif of Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our attack on the country of Iran until such time as their leaders And representatives can come up with a unified proposal. I have therefore directed our military to continue the blockade and in all other respects remain ready and able and will therefore extend the ceasefire until such time as their proposal Is submitted and discussions are concluded one way or the other, President Donald J. Trump. The consensus seems to be that this is not like an infinite extension. This is like maybe less than a week for Iran to either comply with U.S. Terms or submit proposals that the U.S. Considers acceptable. A lot of that reporting does seem to come from Barack Rafid, who's not very good at journalism. So take it with a pinch of salt. Trump, though, is correct that the state of Iran is not a unified entity. And I covered this in the piece I did last week on an update on the Iran war, right? Like, I think there's a tendency from people in the global north to look at a state and see it as like a pyramid, right? You have the head of state, and then you have government, and then you have legislature, and then you have the people they command, right? Military and all the civil bureaucracy. That's not quite how Iran works. And I went into more detail in that episode that I made, so I'm not going to go into it here. But there are a series of overlapping but not entirely aligned power centers within Iran and within its military capacity, both within its military in the traditional sense and within The IRGC. Why this is relevant to the negotiations is that it's not possible for politicians to negotiate if they do not believe that they can agree to terms and that their military will then comply With those terms, right? If the Iranian foreign ministry agrees with the US to do something, the IRGC doesn't do it, that then immediately undermines any further negotiations, right? So when we see, for instance, this morning, a large number of boats going into Strait of Hormuz, that looks a little bit like a flex, right, in the context of this power struggle and the Context of Trump acknowledging that. Trump has once again been truthing this week about Iranian nuclear weapons. I'm just going to read one of his truths because I think it pertains, it shows that the administration feels that it is weak on this particular accusation israel ([Time 0:12:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/201778c9-7623-4d09-a75b-927e14dd27f0)) - **Indictment Says SPLC Funneled Donations To Extremists** - The SPLC allegedly paid neo-Nazi and KKK members over $3 million via fake business accounts, which the indictment frames as donor fraud. - Robert Evans and James Stout noted the sums and sham entities like "Center Investigative Agency" as legally and reputationally explosive. Transcript: Garrison Davis On Tuesday, April 21st, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced that a grand jury indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on 11 counts, including Wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering. The indictment argues that the SPLC defrauded their donors by using donation money to pay confidential informants within white supremacist or neo-Nazi organizations. Here is a short clip of the press conference of a reporter asking Todd Blanche a question. Mia Wong I just want to make sure I understand you're alleging that the Southern Poverty Law Center was paying the leaders of KKK and other groups to continue their operations? Is that... Speaker 6 I'm not alleging it. The grand jury returned an indictment that says that. And so what the investigation found, according to the indictment that was returned today, is that they were paying... So the Southern Poverty Law Center is raising money, asking folks to give them money to dismantle racism. And over a very long period of time, they were using some of the money they raised from donors to pay to, they called them field, you know, basically to informants, for information, for Access, to just pay them for certain, to do certain things. And so, yes, that's exactly what the indictment charges. Garrison Davis The SPLC is a non-profit advocacy organization aimed at, quote-unquote, dismantling white supremacy and exposing hate. They operate a blog called Hate Watch and run a public database of hate groups and far-right extremists. This indictment claims that the SPLC has utilized informants to gain information on far-right activity since the 80s, but between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid over $3 million To individuals associated with various violent extremist groups, quote-unquote, in a clandestine manner. Robert Evans Yeah, no one, if you kind of have been in the world of CVE, countering violent extremism, like research or like involved in NGOs in that sphere at all, or I've been a researcher there, You're probably aware of the fact that the SPLC like has been paying informants. A lot of their scoops are because some Nazi tells on another Nazi, essentially, right? So that part isn't surprising. The weirdness is how the SPLC was going about it and how much fucking money they were giving some of these people. Garrison Davis Is exorbitant. Yeah, it was legitimately shocking. And I do want to get into some more details about those amounts and the groups and the sort of nest of fake businesses the SPLC used to distribute this money, according to the indictment. The indictment reads that this was donation money, quote, received under the auspice that the funds would be used to, quote unquote, dismantle violent extremist groups. This money was instead being used, in part, by the SPLC to pay leaders and others within these same violent extremist groups. That money was then used for the benefit of the individuals as well as the violent extremist groups, unquote. Money was funneled to individuals associated with violent extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the United Klans of America, Unite the Right, National Alliance, National Socialist Movement, Aryan Nations, and the affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, National Socialist Party of America, American Nazi Party, and American Front. One informant, according to the indictment, was, quote, a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 Unite the Right event in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Attended the event at the direction of the SPLC. This informant made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees. Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC secretly paid this informant more than $270,000. Unquote. From 2014 to 2023, more than $1 million was allegedly paid to someone affiliated with the National Alliance, who served as an informant for over 20 years while fundraising for this Nazi group. The Imperial Wizard of the rebooted Imperial Clans of America was a paid informant, according to the indictment. This is likely a guy named Bradley Jenkins. Yeah. An officer in the National Socialist Movement and the Aryan Nations-affiliated sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club secretly received more than $300,000 between 2014 and 2020. The former chairman of the National Alliance was secretly paid more than $140,000, while the SPLC website featured an extremist profile page for this individual, likely Eric Glebe. The SPLC also paid the leader of the National Socialist Party of America $70,000 between 2014 to 2016. This individual was a former director of an Aryan Nations faction and a former member of the KKK. This is likely a guy named Paul Mullett, who the SPLC hosts an extremist file webpage on their website. A few other unidentified informants are listed in the indictment, as well as a claim that the SPLC funneled more than $160,000 from a fictitious entity to an informant, quote, who then Sent funds to various violent extremist group leaders, including the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, unquote. That's a lot of money. Now, to obscure the nature of these payments, the SPLC opened a series of bank accounts at multiple banks for various fictitious businesses. These weren't actually incorporated, but they claimed to be businesses with names like the Center Investigative Agency or the CIA. Why? Yeah. Fox Photography, Northwest Technologies, Tech Writers Group, Rare Books Warehouse, Imagery Inc., J&J Electronics, Kelly's Marine, and Turner Personnel. Great. Good work, guys. Solicited donations under false pretenses and then transferred that money to extremist groups using a network of fake businesses. To get a conviction, the DOJ will have to argue that this activity constitutes wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money Laundering. A conviction will result ([Time 0:22:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2fc3da89-e578-4a93-ae21-6884774366a0)) - **Scale And Secrecy Explain Legal Risk Not The Tactic** - Paying informants inside extremist groups is common practice, including by the FBI, but the scale and methods here (large payments, fictitious companies) invite criminal exposure. - Robert Evans contrasted FBI informant funding history with SPLC's alleged $270k+ and $300k+ payments as the distinguishing risk. Transcript: Garrison Davis A conviction will result in the forfeiture of financial gains from the alleged illegal activities. The right has reacted to this news by calling the Unite the Right rally and kind of the alt-right movement as it existed from this time period a psyop or a false flag. Senator Mike Lee, right-wing political influencer Nick Sorter, and Elon Musk have boosted these claims, getting tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of likes on X, the everything App. This seems to be a new narrative. It's not really new, I guess, but an enhanced narrative that is emerging among the online right as a way to dissuade some of the uglier parts of that era while still carrying along a lot Of the same politics, especially on like the Great Replacement, which is more of a mainstream idea among the conservative movement at this point in time. So they're able to walk away from the uglier kind of imagery and explicitly Nazi elements of this, like the KKK, which is very boomer, very, very boomer coded thing, the KKK. So they're able to call stuff like that and the Unite the Right rally a PSYOP or a false flag while still reaping the benefits that the alt-right movement achieved by kind of trailblazing Certain rhetoric into the conservative mainstream. Right-wing commentators have also used this news to reassert one of their favorite claims that Patriot Front is a PSYop or a false flag operation. That whenever a group of young Nazis show up in a U-Haul all wearing matching outfits and masks, that this is a staged event by either the deep state, the feds, or a group like the SPLC. Patriot Front is not actually named in this indictment. There's no evidence that the SPLC was paying anyone at Patriot Front to inform on the operations of that group. And obviously, paying an individual to inform on the details of an upcoming event like Unite the Right does not mean that the Unite the Right event in Charlottesville was or staged by The SPLC. Dozens of people were involved in the planning of this event and hundreds participated of their own volition. One person in a planning group chat sending info to the SPLC does not mean that this action was staged or fake. Robert Evans Anyone who's in the field has had a lot of issues with the SPLC over the last few years, especially people who work for them. I have a lot. I know a lot of good people have worked for them and gotten fucked over by them. They did a lot of union busting to the people who run the SPLC and some of whom are the people who are specifically accused of having committed these crimes. I don't know if I feel like the specific things they have to prove in order to get a conviction are accurate because fundamentally, anyone who donated to the SPLC knew that they were like Getting shit from informants. You know, like, I don't think that was, like the amount of money though is shocking. Garrison Davis That's what they're gonna have to defend in court. Yeah, they're gonna have to argue that the money that was donated was used for its intended purpose, which was dismantling ([Time 0:29:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/43b2c089-7304-430b-9140-410cd2af305f)) - **Prepare For More Intrusive USCIS Interviews** - Expect USCIS interactions to require in-person interviews and biometrics and prepare for possible detention or extended questioning. - James Stout warned applicants and lawyers that naturalization files face renewed scrutiny and denaturalization probes filtered by nationality. Transcript: James Stout I want to talk this week in our immigration segment about the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. This is the agency tasked with vetting and adjudicating immigration benefits. It's the only immigration agency at DHS that traditionally hasn't done enforcement sweeps, right? So for a while, particularly recently, people there have felt a little out of place at the Department of Homeland Security, right? The idea has been to keep enforcement and processing separate so that people don't have very reasonable reasons to fear doing the legal process, right? So that people continue to show up to their interviews to submit their documents, etc. Generally, they are funded in large part by immigration fees and perceived as the friendly and more welcoming side of the process. Their job historically has not been to kind of root out bad migration as so much as to help people or at least to process people, to do the bureaucratic part of migration. Under the second Trump administration, however, this has changed. There have been detentions at interviews. There have been cancellations of citizenship ceremonies. The USCIS has begun hiring for a new position, and this new position is eligible for remote work, for more remote work than existing hires. And it's called the Homeland Defender. So, like, we probably, many people have seen these Homeland Defender advertisements on X.com, the Everything website, right? Homeland Defender's been offered up to $50,000 in signing bonuses. At the same time as offering remote work benefits for homeland defenders, the agency has been forcing other people to return to offices that could no longer fit the number of staff it Had. Under years of work from home, the agency grew and changed, right? Like almost every organization did. And there were reports that you literally had lawyers sitting in corridors working on their laptops or trying to perch on a radiator or a windowsill because their offices could fit People right and at the same time the branding around homeland defender is is not the way that uscis staff traditionally saw themselves in minnesota uscis has begun reinvestigating People admitted with the incredibly highly vetted refugee status so we already spoke about this once today right thees are vetted before they even enter the United States. Across the country, executive orders were followed with memos pausing or entirely stopping the process of legal and vetted immigration for people from an increasing number of countries. The legally mandated green card for adult children and siblings of current citizens, as well as spouses and minor children of existing permanent residents, has gone unfulfilled. This is quote-unquote family-based migration. They used to call it chain migration, right? That used to be the language on the right. It's something that the Trump administration has hated since its first term, right? This has been a thing that they spoke about and that has been spoken about on the right for some time. These green cards could be reused for employment-based claims, which is going to have a much larger number of people who are already in the country. It's not bringing new people in. Or they might just go unused. Refugees are being detained without any clear legal authority and re-quizzed about their applications, according to reporting in the New Yorker. This means that people are being taken in, detained at an ICE facility, right, and then quizzed about stuff that they'd already been asked about before they came to the United States When they were doing their vetting. People who are married to United States citizens are being arrested at interviews, even though generally there was an amnesty of people who, for instance, had overstayed a visa and Then got married before. USCIS has also committed significant resources of the agency that may well have been taken away from processing claims and devoted them entirely to investigating naturalizations With the goal of denaturalizing naturalized United States citizens. This is a very difficult process, right? The Afro-Yim case is the Supreme Court case, which governs this, right? It refers to someone who was a Jewish communist or had been in Israel. What it says is the government cannot de-citizenize someone because it doesn't agree with their politics, even in a time of anti-communism, right? Once somebody becomes a citizen, their files are removed from USCIS and they go to the National Record Center. And so calling the presumably tens of thousands of files of naturalized United States citizens, hundreds of thousands over time, millions, right, would require some kind of filter. The most likely way this is being filtered is through their nationality, right? One can imagine, for instance, that 75 countries Trump has paused green card processes for might be a start or their specific focus on Somali people might even prove a more focused way Of doing it, right? They have had some success. This week, a Belizean woman was found guilty of naturalization fraud for submitting a fake divorce decree. She married an American citizen without being divorced from a previous spouse in Belize. They found that she had falsified those documents, right? They are also pursuing a case against a Nigerian man who's already been convicted of fraud and has already been put in prison for that, but they are now pursuing a denaturalization case As well. Virtually every interaction with USCIS now seems to require interviews in person and biometric connection. This means that applicants now have to come into an office where they know that people have been detained. This leads to people being afraid to do that, right? Petitions are slowing down as they're moved around to a dwindling workforce, which is still focused on processing those, opposed to the growing amount of the USCIS workforce, which Is looking for quote-unquote fraud in applications or attempting to denaturalize people, as we just covered. Among the people waiting without visas are some people who are waiting for special visas, which are given to people who are survivors of human trafficking, gender-based violence Or other crimes. This includes There's a special immigrant juvenile visa, which every single person I've heard of coming on an SIJ visa has had things happen to them, which I didn't struggle to think About that would keep you up at night. And the thought that those people are waiting in limbo because they're trying to denaturalize people is particularly upsetting. I'm sure it's also upsetting to some people who've worked at USCIS their whole life. And I know that morale among those people is pretty low while the agency sort of has changed beyond all recognition in the last couple of years. ([Time 0:38:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/88c5000b-c210-4677-8a3f-1d337cfc42a5)) - **Avoid Engaging With Tragic Prediction Contests** - Treat sensational prediction markets and contests about tragedies as unethical and avoid amplifying them. - The hosts condemned Forbes for launching a contest on mass shooting casualties as 'gross' and 'hideous'. Transcript: Robert Evans How many people will be wounded in the next three American mass shootings? I'm excited. There's a big prize for this one. Sick. Yeah. That's only slightly an exaggeration of what Forbes is actually doing. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty gross. Garrison Davis It's pretty gross. It's really hideous. It's okay, guys. It's not a market. It's just a prediction platform. It's just a prediction platform. There's no real money. Only social capital. James Stout That could be the slogan of most journalistic enterprises in 2026, to be honest. Forbes has kind of long been a blog rather than a news website, but this is still pretty disgusting. ([Time 0:48:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/265effd2-1c42-41c1-ab92-2e049b486f4e)) - **Fed Nomination Became Leverage Over DOJ Probe** - Trump's push to replace Jerome Powell has stalled because Senate Republicans (led by Tom Tillis) condition confirmation on dropping the DOJ probe into Powell. - Mia Wong explained Kevin Warsh is nominally qualified but the nomination is tangled with a political leverage play over the DOJ investigation. Transcript: Mia Wong This investigation doesn't really seem to have advanced at all. But the conflict over Powell and over Powell's replacement has been intensifying in recent weeks. Last week on the 15th of April, Trump threatened to fire Powell if Powell stayed on as basically the temporary Federal Reserve chair after his term expired. Now, the reason this is happening is because Trump's attempt to get someone confirmed to replace Powell has not been going well. And if no one is confirmed by May 15th, then the office is just empty. And Powell has said that he wants to stay on and become the temporary chair. This is sort of unprecedented. But then again, we've also not ever had the president open an investigation into the sitting chair of the Federal Reserve, causing him to give a reverse hostage video. So where things are right now is that we are getting hearings on Trump's preferred nominee, a man named Kevin Warsh. However, there is a real problem with Worsh as a as a candidate that's not doesn't have anything to do with who he is. We'll get to that in a second. The biggest issue that Trump is facing here is that Tom Tillis, who's an outgoing Republican senator, is refusing to let any Trump appointee pass through the finance committee unless Trump ends the investigation into Jerome Powell. So this has had everything at a complete standstill. It was sort of unclear that a lot of different Republican senators had threatened to do something like this. But because Tillis is leaving, he's just he's retiring at the end of this at the end of the session. He's the one who's, you know, up there doing it. And this has ground the nomination to a halt. We're still getting hearings, but there's no way for him to actually get a vote to get get this process out of committee. So into this morass steps Kevin Warsh, who he's not the most unhinged guy Trump could have picked. High bar. This is at least nominally on the surface, sort of a Fed guy. Like he has worked for the Federal Reserve, like Federal Reserve Banks before. He's not a podcaster. Right. Yeah. Yes. Actually, actually, I don't. Don't fool me on that. He might have one. Robert Evans There's a non-zero chance. Mia Wong He might be. He might be. I don't know. But I am not willing to say I'll look into this that he is not one. So now this this this whole nomination has also become a mess, because, again, as as we've been talking about, the reason why Trump wants to basically take direct control of the Federal Reserve and end Fed independence by installing his guy as a chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is that he wants the Fed, well, he wants to be able to control the Fed so he can control Interest rates. He wants interest rates cut. Now, this is coming up a lot in the hearings. And so far, Warsh is giving answers that if you've ever watched the testimony of someone who's who's trying to get onto the supreme court it's a lot like that where they he he is saying The things that he is supposed to say he's saying that he opposes an interest rate cut he's saying that the primary job of the fed is to combat inflation. He's saying that he believes in Fed independence. But he also has said that Trump has not asked him to cut interest rates. And Elizabeth Warren, who's been sort of leading the Democratic charge against this, has pointed out a number of things, one of which is in work, we're going to get some more of the weird Shit with him in a second. But one of the major things here is that the president has said that he's asked Warsh to do just rate cuts. So somebody's lying here. Warsh is giving non-answers about that. I'm also just going to read this quote from the Associated Press. Quote, Warren also noted that Warsh has not disclosed all of his financial holdings, which include investments in startups and private companies or the size of those financial stakes. For example, Warsh has said he has holdings in SpaceX and Polymarket, but it's not said how large those investments are. Garrison Davis Oh, great. Well, you can't win them all. Mia Wong Yeah. So later on, Warsh said he would divest from $100 million in investments. But, you know, this is great. Warren also points out that he's in the Epstein files because Epstein apparently invited him and his wife to a party. It is unclear at this point what connection he had or if there was more, but that's not a great sign. Where we are right now is that Worsh is normal enough of a guy that Tom Tillis is willing to vote for him if the investigation is dropped. Tillis and some other members of the committee have been, Republican members of the committee, have been talking about this scheme to get the investigation transferred from the Department Of Justice to the Senate committee. I think at which point they could basically just kill it or just have it be a thing into budget overruns. That's not like an attempt to depose Jerome Powell. It's not clear what's going to happen with that, and it hasn't started yet. This is the point that we're at right now. This conflict is going to keep heating up as the May 15th deadline for getting a new nominee in before the board vacancy happens. And Jerome Powell basically stays in power longer than his term would normally last happen. ([Time 0:49:15](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2bc5e22f-c7b7-42b5-966a-6963523c95ba)) - **Gulf Economic Strain Could Threaten Dollar Primacy** - UAE reportedly sought contingency currency support as war impacts trade and could push it toward selling oil in Chinese currency, risking a major shift from dollar dominance. - Mia Wong and James Stout linked UAE financial warnings and Wall Street Journal reporting to long-term geopolitical risks if the conflict persists. Transcript: Mia Wong Yeah. So later on, Warsh said he would divest from $100 million in investments. But, you know, this is great. Warren also points out that he's in the Epstein files because Epstein apparently invited him and his wife to a party. It is unclear at this point what connection he had or if there was more, but that's not a great sign. Where we are right now is that Worsh is normal enough of a guy that Tom Tillis is willing to vote for him if the investigation is dropped. Tillis and some other members of the committee have been, Republican members of the committee, have been talking about this scheme to get the investigation transferred from the Department Of Justice to the Senate committee. I think at which point they could basically just kill it or just have it be a thing into budget overruns. That's not like an attempt to depose Jerome Powell. It's not clear what's going to happen with that, and it hasn't started yet. This is the point that we're at right now. This conflict is going to keep heating up as the May 15th deadline for getting a new nominee in before the board vacancy happens. And Jerome Powell basically stays in power longer than his term would normally last happen. So we're going to keep following this story. And there's one other story that we are going to keep following, which is there was an exclusive by the wall street journal which is a report this is from unnamed u.s officials but it claims That the uae's central bank governor is reportedly trying to get what's called a currency swap with the u.s so what a currency swap is basically is it's like it's a way to try to fix an exchange Rate and get a country a certain amount of u.s dollars by just like ([Time 0:53:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8bbad668-5bab-488a-9193-0680c5d61789)) - **Falsely Accused Jan 6 Officer Sued The Blaze** - Shawnee Kirkhoff was publicly accused by The Blaze of being the Jan 6 pipe bomber, subjected to FBI searches and online death threats, then later cleared. - The lawsuit details FBI polygraph pressure, a midnight search 'looking for shoes', and ongoing doxing from the reporters' posts. Transcript: Garrison Davis Yeah, this one's pretty good. Shawnee Kirkoff, the woman that Glenn Beck's right-wing outlet, The Blaze, falsely accused of being the January 6th pipe bomber, has launched a lawsuit against The Blaze and the two Quote-unquote journalists who wrote the story. A Capitol police officer who responded to the January 6th insurrection based on, quote, forensic gate analysis, which determined the officer was a, quote, up to 98% match to surveillance Video of the bomber. This lawsuit claims five counts of defamation and one count of defamation by implication, and Kirkoff is requesting a jury trial. The documents claim that the Blaze report targeted her because of her actions on January 6th as a police officer and testimony she gave against insurrectionists in court. And part of the intention of targeting her was to build on this larger idea that the defendants had that January 6th was a quote unquote inside job. As these reports were getting published by the blaze, Glenn Beck said on his show, quote, this is one of the biggest stories. I think it is the biggest scandal of my lifetime. Maybe in the last 100 years. It is Bigger than Watergate. Pulitzer Prize winning stuff, unquote. James Stout Yeah, the capacity for self-delusion. Garrison Davis Pulitzer Prize winning stuff, James. Robert Evans I'm waiting for the Pulitzer Committee to finish reviewing this one. James Stout They're going to have to get in line after the Pulitzer Prize they're surely going to get for interviewing the dude who murdered Minneapolis Democratic politicians. Garrison Davis Well, yeah. Which I'm sure was an action that his lawyer was super stoked about. Yeah. Court documents say that because of this false claim, the CIA placed the plaintiff on administrative leave and she was forced into hiding amidst online threats from conspiracy theorists, Quote, for her role in supporting the deep state, including in posts on her mother's obituary web page, unquote. She was getting death threats on the obituary page for her mother. Yeah. James Stout Constant frustration in my life is journalists posting screenshots from court cases and then not listening to the court listener page. So I decided to find page so I could not be that guy. But yes, some of the threats this woman got genuinely probably made her life very difficult to live for a period of time. Absolutely. Garrison Davis The suit alleges that even after she was cleared as a suspect and weeks later, another suspect was arrested who seems to be the likely bomber. These blaze, quote unquote, journalists continue to harass her and that their, quote, false and defamatory accusations have irreparably changed her life, unquote. The documents say that this ruined her lifetime career in public service by forever linking her to the bombing and records of an FBI investigation, making any potential security clearances Needed in the future difficult or impossible to pass. One of the journalists was fired by the Blaze on April 1st, just earlier this month, and the other resigned two days later. They have since raised over $20,000 since leaving the blaze to continue their claims on a new independent website that they're launching. Are you giving the name of the website? The website is called Veritas Regnant, LLC? Yes, Veritas. I think that just means the truth is king, basically. Truth reigns. James Stout Yeah, I think that's what they were going for, at least. Robert Evans Yeah, I love it. I love it. When I read that detail, I was, you guys are going to be the most sued any people have ever been. It's beautiful. Garrison Davis Something about a pitard seems relevant here. The document says that the plaintiff was called into work on November 6th, where two FBI agents then asked her about, quote- online chatter that she was the bomber. She consented to a phone and car search and was placed on administrative leave. Later that day, a quote-unquote caravan of FBI vehicles arrived outside her home, including a bomb disposal truck and a helicopter. I'm just going to read from the document. Quote, the agents claimed that they were primarily looking for shoes. Agents exited their vehicles with their guns drawn in full tactical gear. An agent called Mr. Dickert, who is the plaintiff's boyfriend, and commanded him to, quote, come out of the house unarmed with your dogs. Mr. Dickert and Mrs. Kirhoff complied and stepped outside. Agents swept through the house, then re-entered with bomb-sniffing dogs. They opened cabinets, rifled through drawers, and scattered Mrs. Kirkhoff's and Mr. Dickert's belongings, all without obtaining Mrs. Kirkhoff's or Mr. Dickert's consent. It suddenly occurred to Mrs. Kirkhoff that they were not simply looking for a pair of shoes, unquote. Never heard them asking for the dogs to come out before. That was a new one for me. That is an interesting detail. That is an interesting detail. Yeah, yeah. So the plaintiff asked the agents there why they would do all this to investigate, quote-unquote, online chatter. And a senior official responded that these orders came from,-unquote higher up and that Ms. Kirkoff could quote clear everything up just that night if she would accompany agents to the FBI office for a polygraph interview. Ms. Kirkoff agreed and agents assured her that the drive out to the office would take longer than the interview itself. This was not true. The interview lasted almost three hours. Agents repeatedly accused the plaintiff of placing the bombs and continually asserted her guilt. Partway through the interview, the interrogator changed out the tubes on the polygraph because they, quote, did not like how they were reading, unquote. That was a remarkable detail. Robert Evans Jesus. Yeah. Garrison Davis Oh, Jesus Christ. And at one point told the plaintiff that she, quote unquote, failed the polygraph test. Wow, guys. Which the plaintiff assumed was just an interrogation technique. James Stout Yeah. You can't fail a polygraph test, right? Like, it just gives information. Garrison Davis Yes. James Stout Often not actually information which is very useful in any way relevant, whether you're telling the truth or not. Polygraph, not really something that should be used in this capacity, but here we go anyway. But yeah, there's not like a pass-fail. Garrison Davis It doesn't like go bleep, bleep, bleep, liar, detective. Now, after midnight, she asked if she was free to leave, and the agents said yes. So she went home and the next day the FBI returned her phone. And then once she got back her phone, she saw this quote unquote online chatter exploding all over, alleging that she was the bomber. A ([Time 0:59:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b370f245-9da1-4d17-80ca-fcdb1fd53174))