July 4, 2025 • 30 mins
Newt talks with Jason Chaffetz, former Congressman from Utah and Fox News contributor, about his new book, “They’re Coming For You: How Deep State Spies, NGOs, and Woke Corporations Plan to Push You Out of the Economy.” They discuss the pervasive influence of unelected institutions in American politics. Chaffetz reveals how Democrats are leveraging academia, corporations, and the healthcare system to maintain political control, bypassing traditional government structures. Their conversation highlights the dangers of data collection and privacy violations by both government and private entities, emphasizing the need for legislative action to protect civil liberties. Chaffetz advocates for decentralizing federal agencies to better represent diverse American interests and calls for transparency in data usage. He underscores the urgency of addressing these issues to safeguard democracy and individual freedoms.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
On this episode of the News World, Who needs a
deep state when academia, big banks, corporations, and the healthcare
system are willing to do what the deep state camp.
Now that the Democrats are out of power in the
White House in Congress, they are mobilizing in the shadows,
working to make sure an election like twenty twenty four
never happens again. In his new book, They're Coming for You,
(00:29):
Jason Schaffitz reveals how Democrats have been planning the seeds
of political control using unelected institutions that collect and weaponize
private information. They're Coming for You reveals the frightening truth
about these institutions and how they collect, buy, sell, and
share our data without regard for our privacy, our civil liberties,
(00:52):
or national security. Republican political victories will ring hollow until
this bureaucratic partnership with the nonprofit and private sectors is
exposed and the power of the administrative state checked. Here
to talk about his new book, I'm really pleased to
welcome my guest and good friend, Jason Shafts. He served
(01:13):
as congressman for Utah's third Congressional District from two thousand
and nine to twenty seventeen. And he is currently a
Fox News contributor. He also hosts the Jason in the
House podcast. He previously served as chief of staff in
the Utah Governor's Office. Jason, welcome and thank you for
(01:44):
joining me on News World.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Oh, mister speaker, honored is always to be with you.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
It's interesting you are the only member of your two
thousand and eight freshman class to put the House Oversight
Committee as your first choice. Why did you pick House
Oversight as your most important assignment?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
You know, back then it wasn't quite as popular, but
in understanding the history and reading about it, what I
figured out is that there had no bounds to their jurisdiction.
You could dive into anything and everything. And it was
also the committee when Abraham Lincoln came to Congress, who
was known under a different name, but this is the
committee that he was on, and it's a fascinating history
(02:23):
of what he did. And so I just figured, you
know what, until there's accountability, until you expose what's actually
going on there, you're never going to move the meter.
And that's what attracted it to me. And now it's
one of the most, if not the most popular committee
for new members to try to get on.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
How did you see the job of that committee while
you were there?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
John Bahner was our leader and then speaker. I remember
him telling us something. It was very profound. He said,
you know, you've got a great business card. You can
talk to anybody, but don't assume somebody else is working
on it. If you want to dive into it, dive
into it. And that really rang true to me. And
so I was just a kid in the candy store.
I could see these things going wrong. The very first
thing I jumped into was Barack Obama and I got
(03:07):
elected at the same time. One of the very first
things Ina did in his first week is the spent
brass from our military when they do training. He got
rid of that recycling program. I'm like, what democrat gets
rid of a recycling program? And so I started to
dive into it. And it was because he wanted to
drive up the price of ammunition. And he wasn't wrong
(03:28):
because he did have that effect. But that was the
first piece of legislation I drafted, the first letters I sent.
He changed it a few weeks later once it was exposed,
and I thought, wow, Okay, this is fun. Let's just
keep going you know, I dove into everything from Fast
and Furious to Benghazi. I was the first member of
Congress who go to Libya to try to sort that
(03:48):
that mess the IRS targeting, and which you realize is
that the deep state is very real, It's very pervasive,
and unless you expose it, you'll never fix it.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Given that you want to Libya, what is your take
on that whole experience and what happened there.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I was there on the ground. They wouldn't let me
into Benghazi, but they did let me into Tripoli. Very
difficult to get in there, very scary to get in there.
What I found was people that were there on the
ground were in part the people in Benghazi in part
the people that were there in TRIPLEI. And they were frightened,
they were scared, they had tears in their eyes. And
what I realized is that Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton
(04:27):
and Barack Obama and Joe Biden and like I said,
Hillary Clinton, they were all lying to the American people.
It was a total fabrication. And people that were there
on the ground who were believe me not conservative Republicans,
were so highly offended. And I thought, Who's going to
expose the truth here, and I fought that for years
and I still fighting to get all the truth out there.
(04:50):
But what we were doing, how we were doing it,
how we were part of the problem. I thought everybody
you could possibly imagine to try to get the truth
out and I think we made it, had a good
deal of progress, but they still think there's more to expose.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I think it's important for people to understand that one
of the great things about House oversight is it really
lets you dig into how government actually works and a
lot of things that on the surface may not be obvious,
but as you dig into them, you learn things. And
one of the things that you did it I think
is extraordinarily important. You argue that President Biden's Executive Order
(05:25):
fourteen oh one nine allows third party organizations to register voters,
and I think you correctly identify this as potentially very dangerous.
But could you explain why you think that particular executive
order is such a threat.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So in March, after President Biden is put into office,
he comes out with this executive order, and I kick
off the book about how he brought in all these
outside groups. And on the surface, you think, oh, it's
register people to vote. That sounds great, except it's not
the role of the federal government. But what Biden in
his scronies did is he weaponized it. He took, for instance,
(06:00):
small business administration, he took the US Marshals, he took
the Housing and Urban Development and basically took all those
physical facilities the federal employees.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And then they.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Targeted Democratic strongholds to try to maximize voter turnout and
voter registration. And they spent millions of dollars. It was
not a concerted effort to get everybody to register. They
for instance, went after people who were incarcerated, and that's
where the US Marshals changed over six hundred rules, six
(06:33):
hundred rule changes to make sure that everybody could get
their information. There's another thing that happened. It was started
to target doctors. It's called vote er. This is one
of the most offensive things I found out is this doctor,
Alistair Martin, decided to get this network of doctors. And
(06:53):
what they ended up doing is they expanded to fifty
thousand physicians in more than seven hundred hospitals. It was
funded by the Tides Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, and they just bypassed all the hippo laws,
and these doctors were going around to their patients, including
psychiatric clinics, and going to psychiatric patients and their doctor
(07:18):
would know whether or not they were registered to vote. Well,
mister speaker, once you figure out that somebody is registered,
is it registered? Imagine you're in the hospital room and
the doctor has this information and gets you to register.
Then you have all that person's data. And once you
have all that data, then you can target them. And
what they ended up doing, like for instance, in Kansas
(07:39):
with the abortion referendum, they said sixty five thousand texts
to patients that were in the medical system, all one
sided because Biden said, hey, we're not going to afforce
that law. It was just pervasive and there's nothing more
disgusting than that violating somebody's personal private See, what are
(08:00):
you going to do. You're in the hospital, you're probably
under medication, you're not allowed to drive, but you are
allowed to register to vote and to vote, and they
know who you are.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It's scary stuff, you know, and it's not just in medicine,
but also, as you point out, and you really did
a lot of research for this. The Education Secretary five
months before the election, sent a mass email to student
loan borrowers just sort of pumping up the importance of
the Biden Harris administration. I mean, are these things basically
(08:30):
this campaigning with tax paid money.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, that's what it is. We don't even know the
total number of millions of dollars. But Executive Order one
four zero one nine was an executive order to leverage
everybody in federal government, all the departments, all the agencies.
They would take, for instance, three thousand housing in urban
development locations and use those as voter registration facilities. Do
(08:56):
you think they were out there registering Republicans. No, Small
Business administration was going into twenty five of the twenty
eight Democratic counties that they had targeted to register people
to vote. They went after Native Americans and did this.
And as far as kids, we spent a lot about
how they target kids and manipulate kids. For instance, you
(09:22):
about computers to some people in for instance in California,
and if you're a parent, you could save one thousand
dollars because your school hands you a chromebook from Google.
Sounds good, right, except all that data, all that information
they get to keep. And one of the things that
is stunning to me is how much the government is
(09:43):
selling their data, buying data. So we have rules, we
have laws against law enforcement. You have to have probable cause,
you have to go get a warrant, you have to
have articulable suspicion. But in order to get around that,
what these departments and agents, he's not just the FBI
trying to find a bad guy. They will buy the
(10:04):
data and then once they buy the data, they feel
like it's free gate. And let me give you one
other quick example. You're in Florida, for instance, and you
got a driver's license. Let's say your sixteen year old
daughter got a driver's license. It'll show name, address, telephone number, height, weight,
eye color, whether or not she wears glasses. Of Florida
(10:27):
was selling that information and making money of it.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
You point out from a Republican standpoint, one of the
reasons to be very worried about federal employees getting involved
is that in twenty sixteen, for example, ninety five percent
of federal employee donations went to Hillary Clinton. Ninety five percent.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So it strikes me that to think that the bureaucracy
is even handed is a fantasy.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Well they're not even handed, but they're taking the information.
And it started with Operation Choke Point with Barack Obama,
but it continued on with the Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve
literally in the last couple of days said they were
not going to look at reputational risk when evaluating a
bank or credit union. So imagine a bank or credit union.
(11:18):
You're not in business unless the Federal Reserve gives you
the stamp of approval. And what they looked at is
under reputational risk is if you shopped at Cabella's, you
were probably a conservative because you may have purchased a gun,
you maybe bought a Maga hat. Then you are increasing
your reputational risk. They debanked Milania Trump, Baron Trump. They
(11:43):
went after the ag sector. The meat producers were having
a hard time participating in the banking system and in
some cases being charged higher rates. All of these things
came into play. Even automobiles. You know, your automobile of
today is a rolling computer, and they're capturing all this information.
(12:03):
What radio station you're listening to, how often you look
in the rear view mirror, what speed are you traveling,
how many people in the car, where you're going where
you're stopping. All of this data is then collected and
it is sold.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
You also make the point that you have private sector
allies of the government bureaucracy. And one of the cases
you cite, which is I think amazing, was that the
Bank of America closed the account of a Christian nonprofit
without any warning that. The Timothy Too Project is a
Christian nonprofit ministry established a trained pastors around the world
(12:58):
and has workshops on like sixty five countries. But all
of a sudden in twenty twenty, the founder gets a
letter from Bank of America, even though he's been doing
business with him for nine years, and they said, you know,
your bank accounts now being closed.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
That's why I said they're coming for you. Don't think
they're not looking at it. And what they're looking at
is not only who the depositors are, but any checks
that are being written and making these arbitrary and always
going in favor of these woke ideologies and against conservatives,
(13:33):
saying we just don't want to do business. You're too risky,
too risky, I mean, in this case, they had been
a responsible citizen in their communities, you know. But remember
and I know you remember this well, but it was
Kamala Harris herself as Senator going after the Knights of
Columbus affiliation of potential judges, saying no, if you're a
(13:55):
religious Catholic or religious zealot, then you shouldn't be on
the bench. You know that was out there in the
public to see. But what you're not seeing as much
is behind the scenes, you're being charged different rates. So,
for instance, in California, if you get a speeding ticket,
depending on a variety of factors, including your wealth, you
(14:17):
pay a different rate than somebody else who sped through
the same neighborhood, who has more favorable connections to more
liberal organizations and bank accounts. That's how crazy this has gotten.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
The numbers are amazing that in our fifty biggest cities
there are five hundred and thirty seven thousand cameras that
monitor about eleven cameras per thousand people. I didn't realize
Atlanta has the most, has one hundred and twenty four
cameras per thousand, Washington has fifty five thousand, Philadelphia's thirty
(14:51):
per thousand. I mean, you know, you make the argument
that when you're tracking a criminal, you're tracking a terrorist,
These are great assets. On the the other side, that
means virtually every American is somewhere on record as they
walk around, or as they drive or whatever. I mean.
Isn't that an astounding shift from the world of twenty
or thirty years ago.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yes, you know in the movies it looks great, right,
and if you're chasing a would be kidnapper or bankropper
or it sounds great. But you know, we don't collect
somebody's DNA or fingerprints when they're born because you have
it right, I would argue a right to privacy. And
the scary thing is there's a company out there, for instance,
called the Clearview AI. But I'm not saying they did
(15:34):
anything illegal, but they have hundreds of billions of photos
at this point, and what they're able to do is
match those photos. What they do is they scrape the Internet.
And what I mean by scraping is anytime you post
something up, if it's on Venmo, if you have a
Venmo account, has your picture on it. If you have
(15:56):
a Costco card, it's got a picture on it. If
you have social media, if you're on Facebook, if you're
on Instagram, your driver's license, all of this stuff all
of those photos get pushed into a file on you
so that when you walk down the street of Atlanta
can tell in real time that's you. And we tell
the story of some MIT kids who spent less than
(16:18):
two hundred dollars and through artificial intelligence and the processing,
they can wear a pair of glasses metas starting to
get in this business ray bands. In this business, they
can walk down the street and see a young woman
and say it was just a second for that computer
to kick in and say, oh that's Caroline. Caroline, Hi,
(16:40):
how are you? And then her bios you're scrolling through
your glasses and say, hey, you take that chemistry class
at Emerson don't you? And you went to that Alabama
football game, didn't you? I saw you there. They tell
this real life example and posted YouTube videos on how
they could do this in real time for less than
(17:01):
two hundred dollars. That's where the world is going and
it's not a world I want to live in.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And to make it worse, when the federal government gathers
up all this data it originally has proven it can't
keep it. I mean, those are twenty fifteen data breach
at the Office of Personnel Management Hacker's got background information
on twenty one million, five hundred thousand people, including fingerprints
on five point six million. Apparently I didn't know this.
(17:26):
This is where your book is so valuable. In the
decade between twenty ten and twenty twenty, the Government Accountability
Office made thirty three hundred recommendations to government agencies to
remedy cybersecurity gap, and hundreds of them were never implemented.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah, federal government blester heart. I just don't trust them
because they gather all this information. It's just a reality.
They're not going to hire the best talent, they don't
have the revenue to do it or the expertise, and
so multiple times are data has been breached. There was
one of the most nefarious was everybody who had a
security clearance. Can you imagine how valuable that is to
(18:07):
the Chinese and others on understanding every security clearance is
out there and who they are, and then they can
track you. We talk in the book about cell phone simulators.
One of the brand names of one of theirs is
called a sting Ray. So I even did hearings about
this when I was in Congress, and that was, you know,
(18:27):
like ten years ago, and what these cell phone simulators
can do is they can tell every scoop up every
telephone number within a radius of wherever this machine is. So,
for instance, the IRS had four of them. But now
you can go to a data broker, which is a
nearly four hundred billion dollar a year industry, and I
(18:49):
can take Newt Gingrich's home address and I can buy
a report that says, tell me every phone number that
came within one hundred yards of that address over the
last I don't know, two months, and I can buy
that right now here today. Where is that in my
contract with Verizon? I never saw that. But you can
(19:11):
do it, and it's happening. And imagine how bad that
is if you're an ICE officer putting your life on
the line and what these yahoos are trying to do
to those people, or maybe you're the Cineloa drug cartell
and you're trying to figure out who the DEA officers are.
People need to know this is happening.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Isn't that really one of the great dangers that if
you're an ICE officer and you're in the middle of
deporting criminals, that you and your family are at real risk.
And that's why they normally wear a mask because when
there's a genuine risk that the cartels will not just
go after them, but they'll go after their families.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
And that's why they have to use phones that they
leave at different locations. They got to not take them
to their home. They come up with their fully masked
up because again, facial recognition, once they get that face,
then they can do a whole lot with it. It again.
It Yes, the reason the book's called They're Coming for
You is it's everybody that they're trying to just do.
(20:08):
They have the ability. There are people that are studying
your gait, how you walk, doing facial recognition. They think
they can with an eighty percent confidence tell whether or
not you're straight or gay, whether you're conservative or liberal,
and they're using that to manipulate elections. So when you
combine that with deep bakes, which is going to be
(20:30):
a huge problem not just for politics, but for young
people and how they get manipulated and bullied at school.
It's a world that is right here on our doorstep,
and we better deal with it.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
What should Congress be doing to ensure First Amendment rights
and privacy rights in this world of overwhelming data?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I think Congress needs to do a couple things. One
is I think you, as an American, particularly as a child,
have the right to be forgotten. For instance, we allow
in this nation, based on federal legislation, a thirteen year
old can enter into a contract with a social media company.
But what if you wanted to get out of that contract.
(21:31):
I don't know of any other contract than the world
where once you enter it, you can never leave because
the Googles of the world will continue to buy that information,
or I should say, sell that information and be able
to track you the rest of your life. And I
think at some point, where is the consideration for the
person who says, I don't want to be tracked anymore.
(21:52):
I don't want my photo out there. I gave it
to you so I get to have some convenience in
my life. But now I've gone past that point, and
I don't don't want you to continue to sell my data.
You know, we all have those stories about gosh. I
was talking to my neighbor about a couch, and now
everything on my social media feed is about couches.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Even in your car. They're listening to.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
You when we talk about vehicles. It is exactly that
what are you listening to, what are you talking about?
What direction are you heading? Do you fully stop for
right hand turns or left hand turns? It's all in there.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
And I think Tashla, for example, which is really an
information company that happens to have cars, I think they
have you know, now, trillions of bits of data about
how you drive, how you turn, how fast you go,
where have you been. You can literally reconstruct almost anybody
off of the track of their car.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Congress. I think there can also be compulsion so that
companies who are dealing and traversing in data have to
fully disclose in a simple ease it or easy to understand.
This is what we do and do not do with
your data, and there need to be severe penalties for
(23:07):
those who bypassed that. But much like what they did
food labeling laws, so I could tell how much sugar
is in a soda or so much sugar is in
my food, they could do almost like a labeling law
for data. But then I do think that you should
be able to get out of it, and maybe when
you turn eighteen your data should just be wiped clean.
(23:28):
And if you want to enter into that as an adult,
go ahead. But there are things like that, and I
think the privacy aspect on the spine really has to
be put into block and they need to look at
how our law enforcement is doing this, because we had
hearings with the FBI, and with all due respect, they
(23:48):
were doing things against the law. Once they have the data,
they're buying it and they're selling it. That's what's killing
me is that they're selling my data.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Should the government be blocked from selling data?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I think without full disclosure or compensation, Like why should
Florida be able to take my driver's license information and
be able to sell that for a profit to the state.
Why do they get that money? I mean, I paid
to get my driver's license there. I don't live in Florida,
but if I did, why should the government be able
to have that as a revenue source. That's happening much
(24:24):
more pervasively that I think Florida has now dealt with
it because it was exposed through a lawsuit. That's why
it's public record. But there are lots of other bits
of information about you that you don't know, and I
don't have the full universe, But I think Congress could
compel that. I think state legislators would be smart to
run legislation to understand that. Here's the thing, mister speaker,
(24:50):
the private sector when it's public, the public government is
very opaque. We don't know anything about them. Right, it's
the exact opposite. The private sector should be the ones private.
The public sector should be totally open. But it's not
that way in our world today.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
One small building block has been this proposal that Milania
Trump supported so strongly, to Take It Down Act, which
requires that if any image of you has gone up
without your permission, that you can compel the Googles of
the world, meta and others to take it down within
a very quick time, because apparently it's a very significant
(25:30):
problem now with artificial intelligence and with thirteen year old
girl suddenly having pictures of them nude although it's not them,
but their face has been put on top of somebody
else's body, and it becomes a real problem in bullying,
psychological and social stress. And I thought this was a
small but real building block towards creating a more civilized Internet.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
The first Lady's been amazing on this. The last Joint
Session of Congress, they had that young woman in the audience.
I guessed that the first lady that had this deep
fake and her face put on the body and passed
around everybody at school, and she was mocked and cajoled
and contemplated doing something serious to herself as a consequence,
(26:13):
because imagine how it's tough enough to be a teenager,
let alone dealing with the Internet all the time and
social media. There's got to be I think, a look
at this that's different for minors. And then the First
Amendment issues and the Fourth Amendment issues I think are
pervasive and Congress needs to tackle this. It's not an
(26:34):
easy answer, but the world's changing and so many of
these genies are already out of the bottle. Look, that's
part of the problem. Quite frankly, I supported. I'd be
fascinated to where you are, mister Speaker on this, But
I wanted a technology assessment that was nonpartisan, so that
members of Congress could go to that group to ask
(26:55):
them questions about how do things function. Because there's only
three or four members of Congress, House and Senate they
even know anything about the Internet. To have a body
of expertise so they could actually ask the right questions
or know what to ask would be really helpful in
a bipartisan way.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Let me ask you one of the proposals you've had.
You proposed in twenty seventeen to move federal agencies outside
of Washington, which you said would be a real opportunity
to get a more representative subsection of Americans working for
the government. Do you think that kind of proposal can
get traction?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Oh? It should, it should, it should. Look, I think
there's key military and law enforcement that needs to have
great proximity to the President. Do we need the Department
of Transportation in DC or could that be better served
in Atlanta or Los Angeles? Or maybe the Department of
Interior in Salt Lake City or Denver or even Wyoming
(27:52):
or something the Department of Agriculture. Why isn't that in
Omaha or Des Moines for goodness sake? So I think
setting it out the employee base, what we find particular
out west. You know, I live in the Inner mount
West in Utah. We're dealing with government bureaucrats who've never
been out here, They've never been to the Rocky Mountains.
They have no idea what our issues are. So the
(28:14):
employee base and why should they get all the employment
benefit there in the greater Washington, DC area. It just
doesn't make much sense to me. I think a diverse government,
and again, Department of Education. First of all, there shouldn't
even be a Department of Education. But if they had
to have it, have it in Florida or somewhere other
than based in DC all the time. Each of the
(28:35):
cabinet secretaries could have a small office to the approximity
to the president. I get that, But the rank and file,
those millions of employees spread them out.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I mean, there is a degree to which this has
become an imperial capital. It has one basic industry. I
really want to thank you Jason for joining me. Your
new book, They're Coming for You, How Deep stage spies,
NGOs and woke Corporations Plan to push You out of
the Economy is available now on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere.
And I really appreciate you joining me to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Honor to be with you as always, mister speaker. Thank
you so much. I do appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Thank you to my guest, Jason Schabits. You can get
a link to buy his new book, They're Coming for You,
How Deep state spies, NGOs, and woke corporations plan to
push you out of the Economy on our show page
at newtsworld dot com. News World is produced by Ganglishtree
sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloan. Our
(29:35):
researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was
created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at
Gaist three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope
you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with
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learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of newts
World can sign up for my three free weekly columns
(29:57):
at Gangishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm new Gandwich.
This is news World.
On this episode of the News World, Who needs a
deep state when academia, big banks, corporations, and the healthcare
system are willing to do what the deep state camp.
Now that the Democrats are out of power in the
White House in Congress, they are mobilizing in the shadows,
working to make sure an election like twenty twenty four
never happens again. In his new book, They're Coming for You,
(00:29):
Jason Schaffitz reveals how Democrats have been planning the seeds
of political control using unelected institutions that collect and weaponize
private information. They're Coming for You reveals the frightening truth
about these institutions and how they collect, buy, sell, and
share our data without regard for our privacy, our civil liberties,
(00:52):
or national security. Republican political victories will ring hollow until
this bureaucratic partnership with the nonprofit and private sectors is
exposed and the power of the administrative state checked. Here
to talk about his new book, I'm really pleased to
welcome my guest and good friend, Jason Shafts. He served
(01:13):
as congressman for Utah's third Congressional District from two thousand
and nine to twenty seventeen. And he is currently a
Fox News contributor. He also hosts the Jason in the
House podcast. He previously served as chief of staff in
the Utah Governor's Office. Jason, welcome and thank you for
(01:44):
joining me on News World.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Oh, mister speaker, honored is always to be with you.
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
It's interesting you are the only member of your two
thousand and eight freshman class to put the House Oversight
Committee as your first choice. Why did you pick House
Oversight as your most important assignment?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
You know, back then it wasn't quite as popular, but
in understanding the history and reading about it, what I
figured out is that there had no bounds to their jurisdiction.
You could dive into anything and everything. And it was
also the committee when Abraham Lincoln came to Congress, who
was known under a different name, but this is the
committee that he was on, and it's a fascinating history
(02:23):
of what he did. And so I just figured, you
know what, until there's accountability, until you expose what's actually
going on there, you're never going to move the meter.
And that's what attracted it to me. And now it's
one of the most, if not the most popular committee
for new members to try to get on.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
How did you see the job of that committee while
you were there?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
John Bahner was our leader and then speaker. I remember
him telling us something. It was very profound. He said,
you know, you've got a great business card. You can
talk to anybody, but don't assume somebody else is working
on it. If you want to dive into it, dive
into it. And that really rang true to me. And
so I was just a kid in the candy store.
I could see these things going wrong. The very first
thing I jumped into was Barack Obama and I got
(03:07):
elected at the same time. One of the very first
things Ina did in his first week is the spent
brass from our military when they do training. He got
rid of that recycling program. I'm like, what democrat gets
rid of a recycling program? And so I started to
dive into it. And it was because he wanted to
drive up the price of ammunition. And he wasn't wrong
(03:28):
because he did have that effect. But that was the
first piece of legislation I drafted, the first letters I sent.
He changed it a few weeks later once it was exposed,
and I thought, wow, Okay, this is fun. Let's just
keep going you know, I dove into everything from Fast
and Furious to Benghazi. I was the first member of
Congress who go to Libya to try to sort that
(03:48):
that mess the IRS targeting, and which you realize is
that the deep state is very real, It's very pervasive,
and unless you expose it, you'll never fix it.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Given that you want to Libya, what is your take
on that whole experience and what happened there.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I was there on the ground. They wouldn't let me
into Benghazi, but they did let me into Tripoli. Very
difficult to get in there, very scary to get in there.
What I found was people that were there on the
ground were in part the people in Benghazi in part
the people that were there in TRIPLEI. And they were frightened,
they were scared, they had tears in their eyes. And
what I realized is that Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton
(04:27):
and Barack Obama and Joe Biden and like I said,
Hillary Clinton, they were all lying to the American people.
It was a total fabrication. And people that were there
on the ground who were believe me not conservative Republicans,
were so highly offended. And I thought, Who's going to
expose the truth here, and I fought that for years
and I still fighting to get all the truth out there.
(04:50):
But what we were doing, how we were doing it,
how we were part of the problem. I thought everybody
you could possibly imagine to try to get the truth
out and I think we made it, had a good
deal of progress, but they still think there's more to expose.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I think it's important for people to understand that one
of the great things about House oversight is it really
lets you dig into how government actually works and a
lot of things that on the surface may not be obvious,
but as you dig into them, you learn things. And
one of the things that you did it I think
is extraordinarily important. You argue that President Biden's Executive Order
(05:25):
fourteen oh one nine allows third party organizations to register voters,
and I think you correctly identify this as potentially very dangerous.
But could you explain why you think that particular executive
order is such a threat.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So in March, after President Biden is put into office,
he comes out with this executive order, and I kick
off the book about how he brought in all these
outside groups. And on the surface, you think, oh, it's
register people to vote. That sounds great, except it's not
the role of the federal government. But what Biden in
his scronies did is he weaponized it. He took, for instance,
(06:00):
small business administration, he took the US Marshals, he took
the Housing and Urban Development and basically took all those
physical facilities the federal employees.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
And then they.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Targeted Democratic strongholds to try to maximize voter turnout and
voter registration. And they spent millions of dollars. It was
not a concerted effort to get everybody to register. They
for instance, went after people who were incarcerated, and that's
where the US Marshals changed over six hundred rules, six
(06:33):
hundred rule changes to make sure that everybody could get
their information. There's another thing that happened. It was started
to target doctors. It's called vote er. This is one
of the most offensive things I found out is this doctor,
Alistair Martin, decided to get this network of doctors. And
(06:53):
what they ended up doing is they expanded to fifty
thousand physicians in more than seven hundred hospitals. It was
funded by the Tides Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation, and they just bypassed all the hippo laws,
and these doctors were going around to their patients, including
psychiatric clinics, and going to psychiatric patients and their doctor
(07:18):
would know whether or not they were registered to vote. Well,
mister speaker, once you figure out that somebody is registered,
is it registered? Imagine you're in the hospital room and
the doctor has this information and gets you to register.
Then you have all that person's data. And once you
have all that data, then you can target them. And
what they ended up doing, like for instance, in Kansas
(07:39):
with the abortion referendum, they said sixty five thousand texts
to patients that were in the medical system, all one
sided because Biden said, hey, we're not going to afforce
that law. It was just pervasive and there's nothing more
disgusting than that violating somebody's personal private See, what are
(08:00):
you going to do. You're in the hospital, you're probably
under medication, you're not allowed to drive, but you are
allowed to register to vote and to vote, and they
know who you are.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
It's scary stuff, you know, and it's not just in medicine,
but also, as you point out, and you really did
a lot of research for this. The Education Secretary five
months before the election, sent a mass email to student
loan borrowers just sort of pumping up the importance of
the Biden Harris administration. I mean, are these things basically
(08:30):
this campaigning with tax paid money.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, that's what it is. We don't even know the
total number of millions of dollars. But Executive Order one
four zero one nine was an executive order to leverage
everybody in federal government, all the departments, all the agencies.
They would take, for instance, three thousand housing in urban
development locations and use those as voter registration facilities. Do
(08:56):
you think they were out there registering Republicans. No, Small
Business administration was going into twenty five of the twenty
eight Democratic counties that they had targeted to register people
to vote. They went after Native Americans and did this.
And as far as kids, we spent a lot about
how they target kids and manipulate kids. For instance, you
(09:22):
about computers to some people in for instance in California,
and if you're a parent, you could save one thousand
dollars because your school hands you a chromebook from Google.
Sounds good, right, except all that data, all that information
they get to keep. And one of the things that
is stunning to me is how much the government is
(09:43):
selling their data, buying data. So we have rules, we
have laws against law enforcement. You have to have probable cause,
you have to go get a warrant, you have to
have articulable suspicion. But in order to get around that,
what these departments and agents, he's not just the FBI
trying to find a bad guy. They will buy the
(10:04):
data and then once they buy the data, they feel
like it's free gate. And let me give you one
other quick example. You're in Florida, for instance, and you
got a driver's license. Let's say your sixteen year old
daughter got a driver's license. It'll show name, address, telephone number, height, weight,
eye color, whether or not she wears glasses. Of Florida
(10:27):
was selling that information and making money of it.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
You point out from a Republican standpoint, one of the
reasons to be very worried about federal employees getting involved
is that in twenty sixteen, for example, ninety five percent
of federal employee donations went to Hillary Clinton. Ninety five percent.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
That's exactly right.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So it strikes me that to think that the bureaucracy
is even handed is a fantasy.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Well they're not even handed, but they're taking the information.
And it started with Operation Choke Point with Barack Obama,
but it continued on with the Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve
literally in the last couple of days said they were
not going to look at reputational risk when evaluating a
bank or credit union. So imagine a bank or credit union.
(11:18):
You're not in business unless the Federal Reserve gives you
the stamp of approval. And what they looked at is
under reputational risk is if you shopped at Cabella's, you
were probably a conservative because you may have purchased a gun,
you maybe bought a Maga hat. Then you are increasing
your reputational risk. They debanked Milania Trump, Baron Trump. They
(11:43):
went after the ag sector. The meat producers were having
a hard time participating in the banking system and in
some cases being charged higher rates. All of these things
came into play. Even automobiles. You know, your automobile of
today is a rolling computer, and they're capturing all this information.
(12:03):
What radio station you're listening to, how often you look
in the rear view mirror, what speed are you traveling,
how many people in the car, where you're going where
you're stopping. All of this data is then collected and
it is sold.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
You also make the point that you have private sector
allies of the government bureaucracy. And one of the cases
you cite, which is I think amazing, was that the
Bank of America closed the account of a Christian nonprofit
without any warning that. The Timothy Too Project is a
Christian nonprofit ministry established a trained pastors around the world
(12:58):
and has workshops on like sixty five countries. But all
of a sudden in twenty twenty, the founder gets a
letter from Bank of America, even though he's been doing
business with him for nine years, and they said, you know,
your bank accounts now being closed.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
That's why I said they're coming for you. Don't think
they're not looking at it. And what they're looking at
is not only who the depositors are, but any checks
that are being written and making these arbitrary and always
going in favor of these woke ideologies and against conservatives,
(13:33):
saying we just don't want to do business. You're too risky,
too risky, I mean, in this case, they had been
a responsible citizen in their communities, you know. But remember
and I know you remember this well, but it was
Kamala Harris herself as Senator going after the Knights of
Columbus affiliation of potential judges, saying no, if you're a
(13:55):
religious Catholic or religious zealot, then you shouldn't be on
the bench. You know that was out there in the
public to see. But what you're not seeing as much
is behind the scenes, you're being charged different rates. So,
for instance, in California, if you get a speeding ticket,
depending on a variety of factors, including your wealth, you
(14:17):
pay a different rate than somebody else who sped through
the same neighborhood, who has more favorable connections to more
liberal organizations and bank accounts. That's how crazy this has gotten.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
The numbers are amazing that in our fifty biggest cities
there are five hundred and thirty seven thousand cameras that
monitor about eleven cameras per thousand people. I didn't realize
Atlanta has the most, has one hundred and twenty four
cameras per thousand, Washington has fifty five thousand, Philadelphia's thirty
(14:51):
per thousand. I mean, you know, you make the argument
that when you're tracking a criminal, you're tracking a terrorist,
These are great assets. On the the other side, that
means virtually every American is somewhere on record as they
walk around, or as they drive or whatever. I mean.
Isn't that an astounding shift from the world of twenty
or thirty years ago.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yes, you know in the movies it looks great, right,
and if you're chasing a would be kidnapper or bankropper
or it sounds great. But you know, we don't collect
somebody's DNA or fingerprints when they're born because you have
it right, I would argue a right to privacy. And
the scary thing is there's a company out there, for instance,
called the Clearview AI. But I'm not saying they did
(15:34):
anything illegal, but they have hundreds of billions of photos
at this point, and what they're able to do is
match those photos. What they do is they scrape the Internet.
And what I mean by scraping is anytime you post
something up, if it's on Venmo, if you have a
Venmo account, has your picture on it. If you have
(15:56):
a Costco card, it's got a picture on it. If
you have social media, if you're on Facebook, if you're
on Instagram, your driver's license, all of this stuff all
of those photos get pushed into a file on you
so that when you walk down the street of Atlanta
can tell in real time that's you. And we tell
the story of some MIT kids who spent less than
(16:18):
two hundred dollars and through artificial intelligence and the processing,
they can wear a pair of glasses metas starting to
get in this business ray bands. In this business, they
can walk down the street and see a young woman
and say it was just a second for that computer
to kick in and say, oh that's Caroline. Caroline, Hi,
(16:40):
how are you? And then her bios you're scrolling through
your glasses and say, hey, you take that chemistry class
at Emerson don't you? And you went to that Alabama
football game, didn't you? I saw you there. They tell
this real life example and posted YouTube videos on how
they could do this in real time for less than
(17:01):
two hundred dollars. That's where the world is going and
it's not a world I want to live in.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
And to make it worse, when the federal government gathers
up all this data it originally has proven it can't
keep it. I mean, those are twenty fifteen data breach
at the Office of Personnel Management Hacker's got background information
on twenty one million, five hundred thousand people, including fingerprints
on five point six million. Apparently I didn't know this.
(17:26):
This is where your book is so valuable. In the
decade between twenty ten and twenty twenty, the Government Accountability
Office made thirty three hundred recommendations to government agencies to
remedy cybersecurity gap, and hundreds of them were never implemented.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Yeah, federal government blester heart. I just don't trust them
because they gather all this information. It's just a reality.
They're not going to hire the best talent, they don't
have the revenue to do it or the expertise, and
so multiple times are data has been breached. There was
one of the most nefarious was everybody who had a
security clearance. Can you imagine how valuable that is to
(18:07):
the Chinese and others on understanding every security clearance is
out there and who they are, and then they can
track you. We talk in the book about cell phone simulators.
One of the brand names of one of theirs is
called a sting Ray. So I even did hearings about
this when I was in Congress, and that was, you know,
(18:27):
like ten years ago, and what these cell phone simulators
can do is they can tell every scoop up every
telephone number within a radius of wherever this machine is. So,
for instance, the IRS had four of them. But now
you can go to a data broker, which is a
nearly four hundred billion dollar a year industry, and I
(18:49):
can take Newt Gingrich's home address and I can buy
a report that says, tell me every phone number that
came within one hundred yards of that address over the
last I don't know, two months, and I can buy
that right now here today. Where is that in my
contract with Verizon? I never saw that. But you can
(19:11):
do it, and it's happening. And imagine how bad that
is if you're an ICE officer putting your life on
the line and what these yahoos are trying to do
to those people, or maybe you're the Cineloa drug cartell
and you're trying to figure out who the DEA officers are.
People need to know this is happening.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Isn't that really one of the great dangers that if
you're an ICE officer and you're in the middle of
deporting criminals, that you and your family are at real risk.
And that's why they normally wear a mask because when
there's a genuine risk that the cartels will not just
go after them, but they'll go after their families.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
And that's why they have to use phones that they
leave at different locations. They got to not take them
to their home. They come up with their fully masked
up because again, facial recognition, once they get that face,
then they can do a whole lot with it. It again.
It Yes, the reason the book's called They're Coming for
You is it's everybody that they're trying to just do.
(20:08):
They have the ability. There are people that are studying
your gait, how you walk, doing facial recognition. They think
they can with an eighty percent confidence tell whether or
not you're straight or gay, whether you're conservative or liberal,
and they're using that to manipulate elections. So when you
combine that with deep bakes, which is going to be
(20:30):
a huge problem not just for politics, but for young
people and how they get manipulated and bullied at school.
It's a world that is right here on our doorstep,
and we better deal with it.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
What should Congress be doing to ensure First Amendment rights
and privacy rights in this world of overwhelming data?
Speaker 2 (21:10):
I think Congress needs to do a couple things. One
is I think you, as an American, particularly as a child,
have the right to be forgotten. For instance, we allow
in this nation, based on federal legislation, a thirteen year
old can enter into a contract with a social media company.
But what if you wanted to get out of that contract.
(21:31):
I don't know of any other contract than the world
where once you enter it, you can never leave because
the Googles of the world will continue to buy that information,
or I should say, sell that information and be able
to track you the rest of your life. And I
think at some point, where is the consideration for the
person who says, I don't want to be tracked anymore.
(21:52):
I don't want my photo out there. I gave it
to you so I get to have some convenience in
my life. But now I've gone past that point, and
I don't don't want you to continue to sell my data.
You know, we all have those stories about gosh. I
was talking to my neighbor about a couch, and now
everything on my social media feed is about couches.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Even in your car. They're listening to.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
You when we talk about vehicles. It is exactly that
what are you listening to, what are you talking about?
What direction are you heading? Do you fully stop for
right hand turns or left hand turns? It's all in there.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
And I think Tashla, for example, which is really an
information company that happens to have cars, I think they
have you know, now, trillions of bits of data about
how you drive, how you turn, how fast you go,
where have you been. You can literally reconstruct almost anybody
off of the track of their car.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Congress. I think there can also be compulsion so that
companies who are dealing and traversing in data have to
fully disclose in a simple ease it or easy to understand.
This is what we do and do not do with
your data, and there need to be severe penalties for
(23:07):
those who bypassed that. But much like what they did
food labeling laws, so I could tell how much sugar
is in a soda or so much sugar is in
my food, they could do almost like a labeling law
for data. But then I do think that you should
be able to get out of it, and maybe when
you turn eighteen your data should just be wiped clean.
(23:28):
And if you want to enter into that as an adult,
go ahead. But there are things like that, and I
think the privacy aspect on the spine really has to
be put into block and they need to look at
how our law enforcement is doing this, because we had
hearings with the FBI, and with all due respect, they
(23:48):
were doing things against the law. Once they have the data,
they're buying it and they're selling it. That's what's killing
me is that they're selling my data.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Should the government be blocked from selling data?
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I think without full disclosure or compensation, Like why should
Florida be able to take my driver's license information and
be able to sell that for a profit to the state.
Why do they get that money? I mean, I paid
to get my driver's license there. I don't live in Florida,
but if I did, why should the government be able
to have that as a revenue source. That's happening much
(24:24):
more pervasively that I think Florida has now dealt with
it because it was exposed through a lawsuit. That's why
it's public record. But there are lots of other bits
of information about you that you don't know, and I
don't have the full universe, But I think Congress could
compel that. I think state legislators would be smart to
run legislation to understand that. Here's the thing, mister speaker,
(24:50):
the private sector when it's public, the public government is
very opaque. We don't know anything about them. Right, it's
the exact opposite. The private sector should be the ones private.
The public sector should be totally open. But it's not
that way in our world today.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
One small building block has been this proposal that Milania
Trump supported so strongly, to Take It Down Act, which
requires that if any image of you has gone up
without your permission, that you can compel the Googles of
the world, meta and others to take it down within
a very quick time, because apparently it's a very significant
(25:30):
problem now with artificial intelligence and with thirteen year old
girl suddenly having pictures of them nude although it's not them,
but their face has been put on top of somebody
else's body, and it becomes a real problem in bullying,
psychological and social stress. And I thought this was a
small but real building block towards creating a more civilized Internet.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
The first Lady's been amazing on this. The last Joint
Session of Congress, they had that young woman in the audience.
I guessed that the first lady that had this deep
fake and her face put on the body and passed
around everybody at school, and she was mocked and cajoled
and contemplated doing something serious to herself as a consequence,
(26:13):
because imagine how it's tough enough to be a teenager,
let alone dealing with the Internet all the time and
social media. There's got to be I think, a look
at this that's different for minors. And then the First
Amendment issues and the Fourth Amendment issues I think are
pervasive and Congress needs to tackle this. It's not an
(26:34):
easy answer, but the world's changing and so many of
these genies are already out of the bottle. Look, that's
part of the problem. Quite frankly, I supported. I'd be
fascinated to where you are, mister Speaker on this, But
I wanted a technology assessment that was nonpartisan, so that
members of Congress could go to that group to ask
(26:55):
them questions about how do things function. Because there's only
three or four members of Congress, House and Senate they
even know anything about the Internet. To have a body
of expertise so they could actually ask the right questions
or know what to ask would be really helpful in
a bipartisan way.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Let me ask you one of the proposals you've had.
You proposed in twenty seventeen to move federal agencies outside
of Washington, which you said would be a real opportunity
to get a more representative subsection of Americans working for
the government. Do you think that kind of proposal can
get traction?
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Oh? It should, it should, it should. Look, I think
there's key military and law enforcement that needs to have
great proximity to the President. Do we need the Department
of Transportation in DC or could that be better served
in Atlanta or Los Angeles? Or maybe the Department of
Interior in Salt Lake City or Denver or even Wyoming
(27:52):
or something the Department of Agriculture. Why isn't that in
Omaha or Des Moines for goodness sake? So I think
setting it out the employee base, what we find particular
out west. You know, I live in the Inner mount
West in Utah. We're dealing with government bureaucrats who've never
been out here, They've never been to the Rocky Mountains.
They have no idea what our issues are. So the
(28:14):
employee base and why should they get all the employment
benefit there in the greater Washington, DC area. It just
doesn't make much sense to me. I think a diverse government,
and again, Department of Education. First of all, there shouldn't
even be a Department of Education. But if they had
to have it, have it in Florida or somewhere other
than based in DC all the time. Each of the
(28:35):
cabinet secretaries could have a small office to the approximity
to the president. I get that, But the rank and file,
those millions of employees spread them out.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
I mean, there is a degree to which this has
become an imperial capital. It has one basic industry. I
really want to thank you Jason for joining me. Your
new book, They're Coming for You, How Deep stage spies,
NGOs and woke Corporations Plan to push You out of
the Economy is available now on Amazon and in bookstores everywhere.
And I really appreciate you joining me to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Honor to be with you as always, mister speaker. Thank
you so much. I do appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Thank you to my guest, Jason Schabits. You can get
a link to buy his new book, They're Coming for You,
How Deep state spies, NGOs, and woke corporations plan to
push you out of the Economy on our show page
at newtsworld dot com. News World is produced by Ganglishtree
sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloan. Our
(29:35):
researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was
created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at
Gaist three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope
you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with
five stars and give us a review so others can
learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of newts
World can sign up for my three free weekly columns
(29:57):
at Gangishtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm new Gandwich.
This is news World.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.