April 24, 2024 • 31 mins
Alex Berenson and Buck Sexton discuss the origins of COVID-19, the lab leak theory, the response to the pandemic, the implications of the pandemic on society, and legal cases involving former President Donald Trump on the Buck Sexton Show.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, welcome to the
Buck Brief. We've got Alex Berenson with us, the man
who was right about COVID, which I think is a
phenomenally important thing to have been right about, and so
(00:31):
we're honored to have him here with us today. Unreported
Truth is his sub stack. I'm a subscriber, so full disclosure,
recommend you all subscribe as well, mister Alex Berenson. Always
an honor and a privilege, sir, so is is Fauci
changing his name and you know, like living in the
(00:52):
in the Yukon somewhere. I don't think so. Somehow the
little the evil, little smurf got away with it all.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Uh yeah, no, I mean I wouldn't say he's changed
his name. I'd say he's, you know, picking up one
hundred grand a speaking appearance, and he's got a book
coming out in June where he will I'm gonna go
out on a limb hear and say not tell us
the truth about everything that he knows. But you know,
I I suspect that book will be released to the
you know, loud hosannas of the of the same people
(01:21):
who've been talking about how wonderful a job you did
for the last four years. It'll be interesting to see
if there's any sort of critical questioning of uh, you know,
particularly of the way he tried to steer you know,
the investigation into the origins of COVID early on. But frankly, unfortunately,
(01:42):
I think, don't. I just don't anticipate he's going to
get a lot of pushback. We'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
No, I don't think. I don't think he will. I think, unfortunately,
the problem and this was a worry that I had
all along during COVID that they may they used force
to make so many people complicit in the whole thing,
that everyone at some level like feel like your hands
like you know, look, I'll just admit like I didn't
want to be banned from all New York restaurants, and
I didn't want to falsify. So I got the Jay
(02:09):
and Jayshot. I thought that was the halfway measure. I
wish I could sit here and say I refuse because
I didn't think it. I got the Jay and Jay
obviously because over the nurses objections who gave it to me?
She's like, oh this one, this one doesn't really work.
You don't want this one, and said, no, no, no, give
me the one that's not the mRNA. I'm good, right,
And I wish I wish I had gone you know,
(02:29):
without any of it. But I just bring it up
because I think they made so many people, you know,
like they sullied so many hands, and you had no choice.
The now veryone just wants to forget it. And I
kind of at some level understand that, but refuse to
go along with it entirely. Why we have you here,
the LAB leader.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Well, you're absolutely correct about it. I mean, I think
we've talked about this more. Eighty percent of the country now,
as you know, doesn't want to hear a word about COVID.
Ten percent is still in that sort of crazy long COVID.
These are the delusional people who will tweet, you know,
pictures of themselves with masks and stuff, and then ten percent,
you know, they there's still people start of reading my
(03:06):
substack fervently when I you know, when I break news
about you know, about the LAB leak or about issues
with the m RNA's But I do I think I
think you're right. I think most people would rather forget
that they were ever vaccinated. They know the vaccine didn't
really work and certainly didn't produce any kind of long
term protection. They're never going to get another COVID shot,
(03:26):
and so they are. They just want to be done
with it. And unfortunately that's enabled, you know, the people
who pushed all of this to kind of walk away.
But I do think the one place where we really
need to keep pressing and and you know, frankly, let's hope,
and I think that this is sort of the you know,
much more likely than not there'll be no long term
(03:47):
major health impacts from the mRNAs. It's just it's just
over right, Like, barring some sort of catastrophic series of events,
we're all going to just go on. I mean, I
mean not me. I didn't get vaccinated with any of them,
but we're all just going to go on like it
never happened. But the lab leak really matters, and it
matters for a couple of reasons. It matters because there
(04:08):
are three distinct cover right, there's the original cover up
of the origins of the virus, which you know, I
think almost to a certainty, came out of a lab
in Wuhan which was doing experiments to try to make
coronaviruses more dangerous in an effort to come up with
(04:28):
better anti virals and vaccines against them. Okay, we can't
be sure, and we may never be able to be sure,
but that's cover up number one. Government Number two is
that that's a Chinese cover up mostly governed. Number two
is there were a group of Americans who were very
closely and other Western scientists who were very closely related
linked to that Chinese lab and had every reason to
(04:51):
believe that this was what had happened before any of
the rest of us, because they knew the research better
and they did everything possible to try to steer the
investigation and the investigators away from that by saying it
was racist to even bring it up, by saying by
coming up with all kinds of you know, BS origin theories,
(05:12):
and by basically refusing to discuss this. And then there's
a third cover up, which is the fact that the
media went along with this. And in the last four years,
as the evidence has sort of steadily accreted and we've
seen evidence of that second cover up come out thanks
to a lot of really diligent civilian detective work. They've
refused to admit that. So there's three separate things going
(05:33):
on here. And yeah, maybe we'll never know where COVID
came from, and maybe we'll never have a definitive answer
on how safe or dangerous the MR and a's where.
It's a very very complicated question epidemiologically. But if we
can't at least have an honest conversation about the fact
that these people's self interest led them to help the
Chinese hide the origins of a virus that killed millions
(05:55):
of people, I don't know where we are as a country.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
What I want to ask you, if you would, for everyone,
just in short form, based on the best information that
we have access to today and the research that you've
done on this issue, give us just the the what
you know you mentioned those three cover ups. So China,
it comes out of the lab, then what happens? Then
what happens? And then what do they say?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So it comes out the lab, it starts it's you know,
it starts spreading quickly. There's evidence you know that actually
in September twenty nineteen, that's when the Chinese might have
first realized they had a problem, because you know, that's
when they pulled a lot of their virus sample data
from an international database. Now, for example, I'm sure that
data exists somewhere in an NSA database, right because the
(06:42):
NSA gets access to everything that's ever gone on the Internet.
So I bet you at somewhere that data exists, but
it is not available to any civilian. Okay, the Chinese
pulled it. There's evidence that the Chinese, you know, rapidly
wanted to change the filters, install higher grades stuff at
the Luhan lab in the fall of twenty twenty. Okay,
(07:06):
they don't contain this. It starts to leak in Wuhan.
Don't know exactly when they realized it couldn't be contained,
but you know, by by mid January they shut down Wuhan,
you know, they really, and then they locked down the
whole country pretty much by then, it's too late, okay.
And here's here's what I think happened. The people in
the US who understood the research the best, and that
(07:29):
would have included Fauci or certainly some of Fauci's deputies,
were very concerned. They actually thought this was deadly than
it was okay, because because they knew the kind of
research that had been proposed and proposed publicly. And this
is something I wrote about in Unreported Truth less than
two weeks ago and in a story that got a
fair bit of attention. Ralph Barrack, who's sort of the
(07:52):
leading coronavirus researcher in the world. You know this, this
guy from North Carolina. He's at the University of North Carolina.
He's an expert at you know, at coronavirus management, let's say,
at at growing these viruses in the lab, at making
them more dangerous. He really wanted in the twenty tens,
(08:13):
he really wanted to find a way to develop a
pan coronavirus vaccine. That is to say, there are many
different sub variants or variants of coronavirus. He wanted to
come up with a vaccine and with anti virals that
would be able to treat all or most of them.
And so that is the research that was going on there.
There were efforts to find dangerous coronaviruses, mainly in caves
(08:35):
in China, and there was a guy named Peter Dazak
who was very involved with the Chinese on that part
of it, and then there were efforts to actually figure
out how the coronavirus could become most dangerous in an
effort to build effective vaccines and anti virals, and those
I think those people and the people who knew what
research was going on were very scared in January and
(08:59):
February twenty twenty. And that's one reason in the US
and you know, and other countries locked down so hard
and so fast.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I feel like, wait one sec. Just that's such a
critical distinction. Because people would go on the air during
the pandemic and they would talk about this as a
bio weapon, and I was always like, well, like, it's
really finding it to they were messing with the super
dangerous stuff so that they could figure out ways to
cure It's not because the way that was framed, it
(09:27):
always sounded to me like this isn't like the Chinese said,
let's come up with the most dangerous virus imaginable to
kill the most people imaginable, and that got out right.
They were studying dangerous viruses with the idea that they
could figure out. So I mean, I mean, would you
call it a bio weapon or is.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Like I would not call it a bio weapon, but
I would say it was an engineered virus from what
we know. Okay, here's the thing about coronavirus is very interesting.
Before two thousand and three, before SARS, which the original SARS,
the barologists kind of you, coronaviruses is something close to
a joke. Okay, there were no coronaviruses that did much
more than and cause common colds in people. Then Stars
(10:05):
came along. Wasn't that transmissible, but it had a ten
percent fatality rate. And in twenty thirteen, coronavirus named Mirrors
came along, and that really wasn't transmissible, but it had
a fifty percent fatality rate. I mean, which is you know,
that's a bowl. Uh, that's you know, that's smallpox. That's
a that's a bad. That's a bad.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
That's like a civilization ender. That's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
That's right, Except you couldn't really spread it except you know,
I mean you had to be like in a hospital
breathing on a nurse for six hours straight. I'm exaggerating
only slightly. It really didn't spread very fast. But guys
like Barrack, I mean when I say guys like Bark,
I mean mainly Barrick himself and a handful of other
people who were experts on coronavirus said, look, this is
what we're talking about. This is really dangerous. You have
(10:48):
to let us research this so that we can get
out in front of the next one of these. Okay,
And and I'm not making this up. This is all.
This was all publicly discussed, and there were fights about
it because there were people on the other side who said,
this is a really bad idea. We do not want
to do gain of function research here. The risks outweigh
the rewards. Okay. But but in the end, the virologists
(11:09):
and you know, both in the US and in China
kind of pushed ahead on this, and then particularly in China,
they pushed a head on it. And so, okay, twenty nineteen,
this thing starts to leak twenty twenty. It's uncontained, and
there are clues from the outset that it is probably
an engineered virus. There's this thing called the fer and
cleavage site, which basically doesn't really exist in natural coronaviruses,
(11:32):
and there's other evidence. Okay, And what does Fauci do,
What does Ralph Barrack do, What does Peter Dazac do
what doll basically all the leading viologists do. They say,
if you want to, if you want to investigate this
as a as a virus that leaked, you are racist,
You are hurting our relationship with the Chinese. You are
(11:55):
hurting science. This is a natural virus. We're gonna figure
out where it came from, just like we did with
the original stars, and you are wrong. Don't do this.
And for over a year they essentially make it impossible
either really for the US government or for you know,
or for major news organizations, or for anybody to say,
(12:15):
let's have a you know this, this is kind of weird, guys,
let's let's talk about this. And by the time listen,
the Chinese probably would never have and will never admit
anything anyway. But by the time that sort of that
diversionary tactic was seen through and broken, it was mid
twenty twenty one, and it was really too late.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
All right, ox I gotta take a moment for our
sponsor here, will keep going on the what comes next
part of your investigative journey here to try to take this,
you know, take this all the way and figure out
all the missing pieces. But first up. You know, more
Americans are buying gold now than at any time previously.
Gold is up in value, up thirteen percent this year,
and a Gallup poll has shown that purchasing gold is
(12:58):
often a better long term investment than stocks and bonds.
Price and value of gold is directly connected to world events,
and over time it has been a store of value.
So that's why I recommend you check out the ox
Gold Group. I rely on the Oxford Gold Group for
my gold and precious metal purchases. Nobody can predict the future,
but we can take action to prepare for it. The
Oxford Gold Group are real pros when it comes to
(13:20):
buying precious precious metals like gold and silver, and they
make it easy for you. It's who I go to
for my gold and silver, which I keep here in
my safe Oxford Gold Group. Give them a call. Eight
three three nine nine five gold. That's eight three three
nine nine five g O l D Okay. So what
what do you know? So we're finding out more about
(13:41):
the cover up the lablake. All this stuff were years
into this now. I know a lot of people have
moved on, but what remains to be either found out
or you know, what what are the areas of this
that you want to take the investigation next?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Well, so, I mean, I think, yes, a lot of
people have moved around. I do think it's important because
you are talking about Tony Fauci, You're talking about the
very you know, top scientists in the US establishment. It's
important to know if there's evidence that they were real
talking internally about the likelihood that this was, that this
did come out of a lab, what they might have
(14:17):
been talking about the Chinese about. And you know, there
are some Republicans in Congress who are who are continuing
to push this Rand Paul has not let this go.
There are some uh, there are some people on the
House side who are not letting this go. They're gonna
be hearings in May. Peter Dazak is going to testify
under oath. I just I think, look again, unless unless
(14:42):
somebody from the Chinese side defects or comes out, and
it's very hard to imagine that happening, we may never
you know, we may never have a definitive answer to
what happened in twenty nineteen that likely caused this virus
to be you know, to to leak.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I got what happened all the variants. Remember there was
like a variant every six months, and got to be
scared of the variants. Where are all the variants?
Speaker 2 (15:07):
So here here's an interesting point, right, So in twenty
two the virus did very little mutating. Okay, and coronavirus
is historically mutat quite fast. Well, why did you do
very little mutating because it was so perfectly adapted to
human beings when it came out. Why because it because
it had been passaged through a lab where it had
(15:27):
been manipulated in a lab to be very well adapted
to human beings. Okay, then what happens. Then we do
this massive vaccine campaign with this very very potent vaccine
that's targeted directly at the spike, and guess what happens
over the next eighteen months from twenty twenty two, well
twenty twenty one into late twenty twenty two, there's a
(15:48):
ton of mutations in this thing, including delta than omicron.
Guess what in the last twelve months, there's been much
less vaccination and there's been much less mutation. So probably
the virus has done really what it always quote unquote
wanted to do. It's come to a place where it's
more transmissible, less via. We don't have a vaccine, you know,
(16:11):
people aren't getting vaccinated constantly, so there's not a lot
of evolutionary pressure on it to beat the vaccination. And
we're done. We're where we would have been. Buck if
let's say, let's go back to twenty twenty, and let's
say there hadn't been hysteria, and you know, we done,
we'd done some reason, you know, we tried to protect
(16:32):
the nursing homes. We'd all live like Florida. Okay, probably
we'd be back. We'd be right where we are right now.
We'd have a less transmissible or less virulent, more transmissible variant,
and we'd all be on with our lives just like
we are.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I view this whole thing now, not only through the
lens of they were wrong about everything, and they were
horrible while they're wrong about everything. You know, Alex, I
was in Miami International Airport coming back from a weekend
away with my wife. They still have mask up everywhere,
you know, signs, which is I know everyone ignores it.
I understand that there's this sense like it's not a
(17:10):
big deal anymore, except I think it's a huge deal.
Like May maybe I'm crazy. I sit here, I'm like,
these maniacs were completely wrong about everything. I mean everything,
the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
The whole thing was.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
It was top to bottom wrong. Wrong about the school closures,
wrong about lockdowns, wrong about masks, wrong about the vaccine
efficacy and stopping transmission. They were wrong across the board.
And I don't understand. I mean, Rand Paul, whom my
radio audience knows this, I love if I could just
like make someone a president, like if I just sort
of go poof, like he'll never win. And I know that,
(17:41):
so you know, you need someone like Trump who can
actually fight the machine. But if I could just put
someone off, as I think Rand Paul wild actually be
a phenomenal president on a number of levels. He cares.
Very few other people, though, seem to be focused in
on this, and I sit here and I'm like, this
was I feel like we failed, or rather the system
failed at every level and there's no changes made whatsoever
except the system is ready to do it again. Is
that too pessimistic?
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I think? Unfortunately, that's about right. And that's why again,
like I can't fight over all of it. You know,
my audience underported truths they're pretty they like to read
about this stuff, but I need to. My feeling is,
let's at least try to get some accountability for the
fact that the people who knew the most about this
(18:27):
almost certainly lied about it in twenty twenty. If we
can't forget, we're never gonna get anybody to admit that
the MR ANDAs didn't really work very well. School closures again,
they the only thing where will admit that they made
some mistakes. I think lockdowns people on the left won't
really admit that they shouldn't have locked down. But you
notice no one ever talks about lockdowns as a future
(18:49):
strategy anymore. So I think there's a little bit of
a realization there. But the lab leak, maybe maybe Peter Dazac,
maybe Ralph Bark, Maybe we can at least get these
guys to testify under oath and admit what they knew.
If we can't do that, then you're right. Then we're
just sitting here waiting for the next, you know, medium
(19:10):
strength virus to come along so that they so that
the world, these all these people can play this game.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yet again, I want to ask you now, I'm gonna
switch gears because you know, you were the guy on
all this stuff, and some of us very much appreciated
the work that you did.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Then.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I mean I was I was getting I think I
got more rage both in person from people shouting at me,
like random strangers for being unmasked and things like that,
because I just utterly, I mean, unless I was going
to get arrested or like barred from the premises, I
just refused to do it as much as that possibly could.
But also online people were absolutely sadistic maniacs about the
(19:49):
whole thing, and I think I got more of it
from them on the COVID stuff anything else. So some
of us very much appreciated while that was going on
that you know, you were out there taking you know,
you kind of look like Leonidas at the end of
three hundred, where he's just like just arrow sticking out
of him.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Get to my hair, I must apologize need a haircut,
but but you you were, you were covered in all
those arrows.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
I do wonder, even if it was privately, you know
and quietly, did anyone ever come up to you and say,
man from the left specifically, man, I was I was
a horrible I was a horrible you know, d bag
and you were right. No what literally, no one, not
a single person.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Not a single perton one person in the last two
years has said you were right about the lockdown. So
this is just like somebody in my town and I
actually wrote about that. Uh and and and somebody I
know who is sort of a journalist of some note
said to me privately, uh, but this was in the
context of you're wrong about the vaccines. It was that
(20:54):
it was sort of like, well, it looks like you
were pretty right about some of the twenty twenty stuff.
But uh but but never said that publicly and so
uh So the answer is no, answers, Yeah, answer is no.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, answers.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
No.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Well, there we have it. Before we we're gonna switch gears,
because you actually have really interesting insight on something that's
not directly in your usual barons in field of view,
but the Trump trial situation New York City, which is
obviously big in the headlines this week. I wanted you
to take take some of that on because even for people,
what I like is when there are people that are
analyzing the legal stuff and they will say I you know,
(21:33):
they'll even say, look like I'm not a Trump person,
or maybe you know I have my concerns, but that
this case is the absolute dumbest, most unjust nonsense abuse possible.
So we're gonna we're gonna talk about the New York
trial in a second. But you know, with this podcast,
we're all about having deep conversations on things that impact
us the world we live, and we're just talking about
COVID and lockdowns. But when it comes to stock market,
that's what columnist Mark Chakin does in his coverage of
(21:56):
where the markets are going and what's going to be happening.
Mark worked on Wall Street for fifty years, and his
time on the street, he invented three new industries for
the NASDAK and has predicted some of the biggest market
ships of the past decade, including the recent focus in
AI stocks. Mark is saying there's a new dawn for
US stocks ahead and he predicts dozens of specific companies
will be impacted in just next in just the next
ninety days time. So Marc has agreed to share one
(22:19):
of his favorite AI stocks to buy now with listeners
to this show, Let's put it all together in presentation
at twenty twenty four aistock dot com. That's twenty twenty
four aistock dot Com paid for by Shaking Analytics Alex.
The situation of the trial in New York City. Take
me through what you think is most absurd about it?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Well, I mean, it's it's all absurd. Okay, it's a
it's business. It's think about what the underlying charges are.
And I think, you know, you need to look at
this in the context also of the civil case, where
the media. There's the media. There's what the media is
saying about the two cases. There's what's actually happening in
(23:01):
the two cases, and then there's like, try to think,
in the broadest point of view, what is the crime here.
So so, in the civil case, which just concluded, Donald
Trump faces you know, a half billion dollar penalty and
the it's not a crime because it's a civil case.
But the infraction that he is alleged to have committed
(23:22):
was lying to banks about the value of assets on loans. Okay.
The thing is the banks do their own independent analysis
of those loans. Much but more importantly than that, no
one disputes that Donald Trump paid back every time with
interest at the agreed to interest rate that that the
bank loaned him. Okay, So the fraud if there was
(23:45):
fraud had no effect. Okay. So so it's as if
like the analogy I use was, you go and make
a deal with the contractor and you say the contractor,
I can pay you upfront, or I'm gonna pay you
next week. I got all the money in my bank
account right now, I can pay you next week. And
you're lying when you say that. Okay, you don't have
(24:06):
the money, but you're gonna get it in a week,
and you don't want the contractor to, you know, go
to somebody else's house. You want to do the work
right now. So he does the work, the money that
you expected to come in does come in, You do
pay him, he is satisfied, and then for some reason
the New York State finds out that you didn't have
the money at the time when you said you did,
even though you got it later, and they say you
(24:29):
committed fraud and they take your house. Okay, that's the
civil case that's last, or the February insanity. Okay, this
is a criminal case. So the stakes are even higher.
Donald Trump could go to jail. And what is Donald
Trump alleged to have done? Okay, the case gets reported
as it's about hush money. It's about paying back Stormy
(24:49):
Daniels or paying off Stormy Daniels. But it's not actually
about that when you read the indictment. What it's about
is that Donald Trump didn't pay Stormy Daniels directly. He
paid Michael Cohen and or I'm sorry, Michael Cohen, his
lawyer paid her off, okay, for what was effectively an
extortion attempt.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
But put that a difference off in between hush money
and extortion cases.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
I wonder, well, the difference is if you have a
smart lawyer who who doesn't make any specific threats. I mean, really,
that's the difference. By the way, I don't think extortion
should be a crime. I think extortion is something rich
people use when poor people try to get money from
them and aren't smart enough to have lawyers involved. But
to the extent that extortion is a crime, this was
(25:34):
This was extortion, okay, even though again Stormy Daniels danced
through the rain drops by you know, she was selling
her story, she didn't put a number on there. Whatever,
she she didn't get charged. So so in the eyes
of the lass, she's cleaning. So Michael Cohen pays her off, okay,
That is not the conduct at issue in this case,
(25:55):
even though the State of New York is focusing on it.
The conduct at issue in the indictment is that Donald
Trump or the Trump organization then paid Michael Cohen. Okay,
and they didn't actually pay them hundred and thirty thousand dollars.
They paid him four hundred twenty thousand dollars. Why because
they wanted him to be able to pay the taxes
(26:16):
on the one hundred and thirty and he wanted to
be paid in salary, not as a reimbursement. And then
they threw in some other money. So already it's complicated.
It's not. There's not quite a direct line from the
payment Cohen made to the Stormy Daniels to the money
he got from Trump. Okay, but let's just look at that, okay.
The crime, the crime that Donald Trump is being charged
(26:38):
with thirty four felonies for is that he misclassified in
his own internal business records a payment he made to
his lawyer as being for quote unquote legal services, when
it was in reality, in part a money that went
to Stormy Daniels. That is the crime, Okay. That is
(26:59):
a crazy thing to face. Thirty four felony charges for
and on top of that, there shouldn't even in New
York State. That's not a felony, a misdemeanor classifying business
records improperly. And again, normally, there would have to be
some allegation that some third party lost money in others
this this should come into play when let's say I
(27:20):
own a restaurant and the restaurant lost one hundred grand
and I'm trying to raise more money for the restaurant
from outsiders, and they say, we need to see your books,
so I show them my books, but I forget to
show them you know that I lost a million dollars
last year. Okay, That's that's what this is supposed to protect.
It's supposed to protect outsiders from fraud. Not not like
(27:42):
I'm putting an expense that I paid in one trash
instead of another trash in my own records. Okay, but
let's just say Donald Trump did this. This is a misdemeanor.
It's not a felony. How are they charging as a felony.
They're charging a felony because they're saying there's an underlying
crime that he was trying to conceal. What is the
(28:03):
underlying crime that they are claiming. Well, they've never actually
come out and charged him with any underlying crime, which
is weird. But what they seem to have settled on
is that the crime was improperly trying to influence the
twenty sixteen election. Okay, so that's a felony. Was he
engaged in a criminal conspiracy to influence the twenty sixteen
(28:26):
election in which he was a candidate, by the way,
So influencing the election and running for president, I'm not
sure how you just see what those things. But let's
just say, let's say he did that. Okay, let's say
the money to Stormy Daniels was part of a conspiracy
to influence the twenty sixteen election. Here is the deepest
problem of all in this crazy case. He's not being
(28:48):
charged for those payments. He's being charged for activity that
he did in twenty seventeen falsifying these business records. So
the payments to Michael Cohen started in twenty seventeen, the
election was in twenty sixteen. How can New York State
(29:08):
say with a straight fi that Donald Trump committed an
act designed to influence the twenty sixteen election. After the
twenty sixteen election was concluded, unless they're gonna say it
a time machine, which I didn't see in the indictment anywhere.
So both the sort of like overall charges here and
(29:28):
the specifics of the charges are insane, okay, And once
you actually sit down and read this, it just it
looks terrible. It looks like New York State is just
out to get Donald Trump by any means necessary. They
went after him for a half billion dollars for a
bunch of loans that he repaid, and now they're charging
(29:50):
him with felonies based on something that on their own
legal theory doesn't make any sense. And these are all Democrats, okay,
they're all you know, hard left Democrats. He's being tried
in Manhattan, which went eighty five point fifteen against him
in twenty twenty. I mean, look, I I said this
(30:10):
today on Twitter. I didn't vote for Donald Trump in
twenty twenty. I don't really like Donald Trump. I am
not voting for him in twenty twenty four. I'm not
voting for Biden. I didn't vote for Biden in twenty
twenty either. Not voting for either of these guys. But
to anybody who believes that the rule of law actually matters,
and that you like your your conduct should mean something
to the crime that you're charged with, and that the
crime should have some like like the seriousness of the offense,
(30:37):
some relationship to what you did. You should you should
be terrified by this. This is like you speed through
a red light and they take your car away and
throw you into git.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yeah, it's a it's outrageous. Everyone should go check out
Alex Parrison Unreported Truths. We went along on the podcast.
It's always so much fun to have him on. But
on Substack Unreported truth No, it's great man. We we
miss you. We haven't had you on the show in
a bit. Unreported Truths on Substack and Alex that will
have you back soon. Thank you for all your work
and thank you for standing strong, especially on Masks and
(31:09):
the Vac's Madness. Appreciate you, thank you, thank you back
You're listening to the Buck Sexton Show podcast, make sure
you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, welcome to the
Buck Brief. We've got Alex Berenson with us, the man
who was right about COVID, which I think is a
phenomenally important thing to have been right about, and so
(00:31):
we're honored to have him here with us today. Unreported
Truth is his sub stack. I'm a subscriber, so full disclosure,
recommend you all subscribe as well, mister Alex Berenson. Always
an honor and a privilege, sir, so is is Fauci
changing his name and you know, like living in the
(00:52):
in the Yukon somewhere. I don't think so. Somehow the
little the evil, little smurf got away with it all.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Uh yeah, no, I mean I wouldn't say he's changed
his name. I'd say he's, you know, picking up one
hundred grand a speaking appearance, and he's got a book
coming out in June where he will I'm gonna go
out on a limb hear and say not tell us
the truth about everything that he knows. But you know,
I I suspect that book will be released to the
you know, loud hosannas of the of the same people
(01:21):
who've been talking about how wonderful a job you did
for the last four years. It'll be interesting to see
if there's any sort of critical questioning of uh, you know,
particularly of the way he tried to steer you know,
the investigation into the origins of COVID early on. But frankly, unfortunately,
(01:42):
I think, don't. I just don't anticipate he's going to
get a lot of pushback. We'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
No, I don't think. I don't think he will. I think, unfortunately,
the problem and this was a worry that I had
all along during COVID that they may they used force
to make so many people complicit in the whole thing,
that everyone at some level like feel like your hands
like you know, look, I'll just admit like I didn't
want to be banned from all New York restaurants, and
I didn't want to falsify. So I got the Jay
(02:09):
and Jayshot. I thought that was the halfway measure. I
wish I could sit here and say I refuse because
I didn't think it. I got the Jay and Jay
obviously because over the nurses objections who gave it to me?
She's like, oh this one, this one doesn't really work.
You don't want this one, and said, no, no, no, give
me the one that's not the mRNA. I'm good, right,
And I wish I wish I had gone you know,
(02:29):
without any of it. But I just bring it up
because I think they made so many people, you know,
like they sullied so many hands, and you had no choice.
The now veryone just wants to forget it. And I
kind of at some level understand that, but refuse to
go along with it entirely. Why we have you here,
the LAB leader.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Well, you're absolutely correct about it. I mean, I think
we've talked about this more. Eighty percent of the country now,
as you know, doesn't want to hear a word about COVID.
Ten percent is still in that sort of crazy long COVID.
These are the delusional people who will tweet, you know,
pictures of themselves with masks and stuff, and then ten percent,
you know, they there's still people start of reading my
(03:06):
substack fervently when I you know, when I break news
about you know, about the LAB leak or about issues
with the m RNA's But I do I think I
think you're right. I think most people would rather forget
that they were ever vaccinated. They know the vaccine didn't
really work and certainly didn't produce any kind of long
term protection. They're never going to get another COVID shot,
(03:26):
and so they are. They just want to be done
with it. And unfortunately that's enabled, you know, the people
who pushed all of this to kind of walk away.
But I do think the one place where we really
need to keep pressing and and you know, frankly, let's hope,
and I think that this is sort of the you know,
much more likely than not there'll be no long term
(03:47):
major health impacts from the mRNAs. It's just it's just
over right, Like, barring some sort of catastrophic series of events,
we're all going to just go on. I mean, I
mean not me. I didn't get vaccinated with any of them,
but we're all just going to go on like it
never happened. But the lab leak really matters, and it
matters for a couple of reasons. It matters because there
(04:08):
are three distinct cover right, there's the original cover up
of the origins of the virus, which you know, I
think almost to a certainty, came out of a lab
in Wuhan which was doing experiments to try to make
coronaviruses more dangerous in an effort to come up with
(04:28):
better anti virals and vaccines against them. Okay, we can't
be sure, and we may never be able to be sure,
but that's cover up number one. Government Number two is
that that's a Chinese cover up mostly governed. Number two
is there were a group of Americans who were very
closely and other Western scientists who were very closely related
linked to that Chinese lab and had every reason to
(04:51):
believe that this was what had happened before any of
the rest of us, because they knew the research better
and they did everything possible to try to steer the
investigation and the investigators away from that by saying it
was racist to even bring it up, by saying by
coming up with all kinds of you know, BS origin theories,
(05:12):
and by basically refusing to discuss this. And then there's
a third cover up, which is the fact that the
media went along with this. And in the last four years,
as the evidence has sort of steadily accreted and we've
seen evidence of that second cover up come out thanks
to a lot of really diligent civilian detective work. They've
refused to admit that. So there's three separate things going
(05:33):
on here. And yeah, maybe we'll never know where COVID
came from, and maybe we'll never have a definitive answer
on how safe or dangerous the MR and a's where.
It's a very very complicated question epidemiologically. But if we
can't at least have an honest conversation about the fact
that these people's self interest led them to help the
Chinese hide the origins of a virus that killed millions
(05:55):
of people, I don't know where we are as a country.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
What I want to ask you, if you would, for everyone,
just in short form, based on the best information that
we have access to today and the research that you've
done on this issue, give us just the the what
you know you mentioned those three cover ups. So China,
it comes out of the lab, then what happens? Then
what happens? And then what do they say?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So it comes out the lab, it starts it's you know,
it starts spreading quickly. There's evidence you know that actually
in September twenty nineteen, that's when the Chinese might have
first realized they had a problem, because you know, that's
when they pulled a lot of their virus sample data
from an international database. Now, for example, I'm sure that
data exists somewhere in an NSA database, right because the
(06:42):
NSA gets access to everything that's ever gone on the Internet.
So I bet you at somewhere that data exists, but
it is not available to any civilian. Okay, the Chinese
pulled it. There's evidence that the Chinese, you know, rapidly
wanted to change the filters, install higher grades stuff at
the Luhan lab in the fall of twenty twenty. Okay,
(07:06):
they don't contain this. It starts to leak in Wuhan.
Don't know exactly when they realized it couldn't be contained,
but you know, by by mid January they shut down Wuhan,
you know, they really, and then they locked down the
whole country pretty much by then, it's too late, okay.
And here's here's what I think happened. The people in
the US who understood the research the best, and that
(07:29):
would have included Fauci or certainly some of Fauci's deputies,
were very concerned. They actually thought this was deadly than
it was okay, because because they knew the kind of
research that had been proposed and proposed publicly. And this
is something I wrote about in Unreported Truth less than
two weeks ago and in a story that got a
fair bit of attention. Ralph Barrack, who's sort of the
(07:52):
leading coronavirus researcher in the world. You know this, this
guy from North Carolina. He's at the University of North Carolina.
He's an expert at you know, at coronavirus management, let's say,
at at growing these viruses in the lab, at making
them more dangerous. He really wanted in the twenty tens,
(08:13):
he really wanted to find a way to develop a
pan coronavirus vaccine. That is to say, there are many
different sub variants or variants of coronavirus. He wanted to
come up with a vaccine and with anti virals that
would be able to treat all or most of them.
And so that is the research that was going on there.
There were efforts to find dangerous coronaviruses, mainly in caves
(08:35):
in China, and there was a guy named Peter Dazak
who was very involved with the Chinese on that part
of it, and then there were efforts to actually figure
out how the coronavirus could become most dangerous in an
effort to build effective vaccines and anti virals, and those
I think those people and the people who knew what
research was going on were very scared in January and
(08:59):
February twenty twenty. And that's one reason in the US
and you know, and other countries locked down so hard
and so fast.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I feel like, wait one sec. Just that's such a
critical distinction. Because people would go on the air during
the pandemic and they would talk about this as a
bio weapon, and I was always like, well, like, it's
really finding it to they were messing with the super
dangerous stuff so that they could figure out ways to
cure It's not because the way that was framed, it
(09:27):
always sounded to me like this isn't like the Chinese said,
let's come up with the most dangerous virus imaginable to
kill the most people imaginable, and that got out right.
They were studying dangerous viruses with the idea that they
could figure out. So I mean, I mean, would you
call it a bio weapon or is.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Like I would not call it a bio weapon, but
I would say it was an engineered virus from what
we know. Okay, here's the thing about coronavirus is very interesting.
Before two thousand and three, before SARS, which the original SARS,
the barologists kind of you, coronaviruses is something close to
a joke. Okay, there were no coronaviruses that did much
more than and cause common colds in people. Then Stars
(10:05):
came along. Wasn't that transmissible, but it had a ten
percent fatality rate. And in twenty thirteen, coronavirus named Mirrors
came along, and that really wasn't transmissible, but it had
a fifty percent fatality rate. I mean, which is you know,
that's a bowl. Uh, that's you know, that's smallpox. That's
a that's a bad. That's a bad.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
That's like a civilization ender. That's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
That's right, Except you couldn't really spread it except you know,
I mean you had to be like in a hospital
breathing on a nurse for six hours straight. I'm exaggerating
only slightly. It really didn't spread very fast. But guys
like Barrack, I mean when I say guys like Bark,
I mean mainly Barrick himself and a handful of other
people who were experts on coronavirus said, look, this is
what we're talking about. This is really dangerous. You have
(10:48):
to let us research this so that we can get
out in front of the next one of these. Okay,
And and I'm not making this up. This is all.
This was all publicly discussed, and there were fights about
it because there were people on the other side who said,
this is a really bad idea. We do not want
to do gain of function research here. The risks outweigh
the rewards. Okay. But but in the end, the virologists
(11:09):
and you know, both in the US and in China
kind of pushed ahead on this, and then particularly in China,
they pushed a head on it. And so, okay, twenty nineteen,
this thing starts to leak twenty twenty. It's uncontained, and
there are clues from the outset that it is probably
an engineered virus. There's this thing called the fer and
cleavage site, which basically doesn't really exist in natural coronaviruses,
(11:32):
and there's other evidence. Okay, And what does Fauci do,
What does Ralph Barrack do, What does Peter Dazac do
what doll basically all the leading viologists do. They say,
if you want to, if you want to investigate this
as a as a virus that leaked, you are racist,
You are hurting our relationship with the Chinese. You are
(11:55):
hurting science. This is a natural virus. We're gonna figure
out where it came from, just like we did with
the original stars, and you are wrong. Don't do this.
And for over a year they essentially make it impossible
either really for the US government or for you know,
or for major news organizations, or for anybody to say,
(12:15):
let's have a you know this, this is kind of weird, guys,
let's let's talk about this. And by the time listen,
the Chinese probably would never have and will never admit
anything anyway. But by the time that sort of that
diversionary tactic was seen through and broken, it was mid
twenty twenty one, and it was really too late.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
All right, ox I gotta take a moment for our
sponsor here, will keep going on the what comes next
part of your investigative journey here to try to take this,
you know, take this all the way and figure out
all the missing pieces. But first up. You know, more
Americans are buying gold now than at any time previously.
Gold is up in value, up thirteen percent this year,
and a Gallup poll has shown that purchasing gold is
(12:58):
often a better long term investment than stocks and bonds.
Price and value of gold is directly connected to world events,
and over time it has been a store of value.
So that's why I recommend you check out the ox
Gold Group. I rely on the Oxford Gold Group for
my gold and precious metal purchases. Nobody can predict the future,
but we can take action to prepare for it. The
Oxford Gold Group are real pros when it comes to
(13:20):
buying precious precious metals like gold and silver, and they
make it easy for you. It's who I go to
for my gold and silver, which I keep here in
my safe Oxford Gold Group. Give them a call. Eight
three three nine nine five gold. That's eight three three
nine nine five g O l D Okay. So what
what do you know? So we're finding out more about
(13:41):
the cover up the lablake. All this stuff were years
into this now. I know a lot of people have
moved on, but what remains to be either found out
or you know, what what are the areas of this
that you want to take the investigation next?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Well, so, I mean, I think, yes, a lot of
people have moved around. I do think it's important because
you are talking about Tony Fauci, You're talking about the
very you know, top scientists in the US establishment. It's
important to know if there's evidence that they were real
talking internally about the likelihood that this was, that this
did come out of a lab, what they might have
(14:17):
been talking about the Chinese about. And you know, there
are some Republicans in Congress who are who are continuing
to push this Rand Paul has not let this go.
There are some uh, there are some people on the
House side who are not letting this go. They're gonna
be hearings in May. Peter Dazak is going to testify
under oath. I just I think, look again, unless unless
(14:42):
somebody from the Chinese side defects or comes out, and
it's very hard to imagine that happening, we may never
you know, we may never have a definitive answer to
what happened in twenty nineteen that likely caused this virus
to be you know, to to leak.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I got what happened all the variants. Remember there was
like a variant every six months, and got to be
scared of the variants. Where are all the variants?
Speaker 2 (15:07):
So here here's an interesting point, right, So in twenty
two the virus did very little mutating. Okay, and coronavirus
is historically mutat quite fast. Well, why did you do
very little mutating because it was so perfectly adapted to
human beings when it came out. Why because it because
it had been passaged through a lab where it had
(15:27):
been manipulated in a lab to be very well adapted
to human beings. Okay, then what happens. Then we do
this massive vaccine campaign with this very very potent vaccine
that's targeted directly at the spike, and guess what happens
over the next eighteen months from twenty twenty two, well
twenty twenty one into late twenty twenty two, there's a
(15:48):
ton of mutations in this thing, including delta than omicron.
Guess what in the last twelve months, there's been much
less vaccination and there's been much less mutation. So probably
the virus has done really what it always quote unquote
wanted to do. It's come to a place where it's
more transmissible, less via. We don't have a vaccine, you know,
(16:11):
people aren't getting vaccinated constantly, so there's not a lot
of evolutionary pressure on it to beat the vaccination. And
we're done. We're where we would have been. Buck if
let's say, let's go back to twenty twenty, and let's
say there hadn't been hysteria, and you know, we done,
we'd done some reason, you know, we tried to protect
(16:32):
the nursing homes. We'd all live like Florida. Okay, probably
we'd be back. We'd be right where we are right now.
We'd have a less transmissible or less virulent, more transmissible variant,
and we'd all be on with our lives just like
we are.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I view this whole thing now, not only through the
lens of they were wrong about everything, and they were
horrible while they're wrong about everything. You know, Alex, I
was in Miami International Airport coming back from a weekend
away with my wife. They still have mask up everywhere,
you know, signs, which is I know everyone ignores it.
I understand that there's this sense like it's not a
(17:10):
big deal anymore, except I think it's a huge deal.
Like May maybe I'm crazy. I sit here, I'm like,
these maniacs were completely wrong about everything. I mean everything,
the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
The whole thing was.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
It was top to bottom wrong. Wrong about the school closures,
wrong about lockdowns, wrong about masks, wrong about the vaccine
efficacy and stopping transmission. They were wrong across the board.
And I don't understand. I mean, Rand Paul, whom my
radio audience knows this, I love if I could just
like make someone a president, like if I just sort
of go poof, like he'll never win. And I know that,
(17:41):
so you know, you need someone like Trump who can
actually fight the machine. But if I could just put
someone off, as I think Rand Paul wild actually be
a phenomenal president on a number of levels. He cares.
Very few other people, though, seem to be focused in
on this, and I sit here and I'm like, this
was I feel like we failed, or rather the system
failed at every level and there's no changes made whatsoever
except the system is ready to do it again. Is
that too pessimistic?
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I think? Unfortunately, that's about right. And that's why again,
like I can't fight over all of it. You know,
my audience underported truths they're pretty they like to read
about this stuff, but I need to. My feeling is,
let's at least try to get some accountability for the
fact that the people who knew the most about this
(18:27):
almost certainly lied about it in twenty twenty. If we
can't forget, we're never gonna get anybody to admit that
the MR ANDAs didn't really work very well. School closures again,
they the only thing where will admit that they made
some mistakes. I think lockdowns people on the left won't
really admit that they shouldn't have locked down. But you
notice no one ever talks about lockdowns as a future
(18:49):
strategy anymore. So I think there's a little bit of
a realization there. But the lab leak, maybe maybe Peter Dazac,
maybe Ralph Bark, Maybe we can at least get these
guys to testify under oath and admit what they knew.
If we can't do that, then you're right. Then we're
just sitting here waiting for the next, you know, medium
(19:10):
strength virus to come along so that they so that
the world, these all these people can play this game.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yet again, I want to ask you now, I'm gonna
switch gears because you know, you were the guy on
all this stuff, and some of us very much appreciated
the work that you did.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Then.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I mean I was I was getting I think I
got more rage both in person from people shouting at me,
like random strangers for being unmasked and things like that,
because I just utterly, I mean, unless I was going
to get arrested or like barred from the premises, I
just refused to do it as much as that possibly could.
But also online people were absolutely sadistic maniacs about the
(19:49):
whole thing, and I think I got more of it
from them on the COVID stuff anything else. So some
of us very much appreciated while that was going on
that you know, you were out there taking you know,
you kind of look like Leonidas at the end of
three hundred, where he's just like just arrow sticking out
of him.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Get to my hair, I must apologize need a haircut,
but but you you were, you were covered in all
those arrows.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
I do wonder, even if it was privately, you know
and quietly, did anyone ever come up to you and say,
man from the left specifically, man, I was I was
a horrible I was a horrible you know, d bag
and you were right. No what literally, no one, not
a single person.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Not a single perton one person in the last two
years has said you were right about the lockdown. So
this is just like somebody in my town and I
actually wrote about that. Uh and and and somebody I
know who is sort of a journalist of some note
said to me privately, uh, but this was in the
context of you're wrong about the vaccines. It was that
(20:54):
it was sort of like, well, it looks like you
were pretty right about some of the twenty twenty stuff.
But uh but but never said that publicly and so
uh So the answer is no, answers, Yeah, answer is no.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, answers.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
No.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Well, there we have it. Before we we're gonna switch gears,
because you actually have really interesting insight on something that's
not directly in your usual barons in field of view,
but the Trump trial situation New York City, which is
obviously big in the headlines this week. I wanted you
to take take some of that on because even for people,
what I like is when there are people that are
analyzing the legal stuff and they will say I you know,
(21:33):
they'll even say, look like I'm not a Trump person,
or maybe you know I have my concerns, but that
this case is the absolute dumbest, most unjust nonsense abuse possible.
So we're gonna we're gonna talk about the New York
trial in a second. But you know, with this podcast,
we're all about having deep conversations on things that impact
us the world we live, and we're just talking about
COVID and lockdowns. But when it comes to stock market,
that's what columnist Mark Chakin does in his coverage of
(21:56):
where the markets are going and what's going to be happening.
Mark worked on Wall Street for fifty years, and his
time on the street, he invented three new industries for
the NASDAK and has predicted some of the biggest market
ships of the past decade, including the recent focus in
AI stocks. Mark is saying there's a new dawn for
US stocks ahead and he predicts dozens of specific companies
will be impacted in just next in just the next
ninety days time. So Marc has agreed to share one
(22:19):
of his favorite AI stocks to buy now with listeners
to this show, Let's put it all together in presentation
at twenty twenty four aistock dot com. That's twenty twenty
four aistock dot Com paid for by Shaking Analytics Alex.
The situation of the trial in New York City. Take
me through what you think is most absurd about it?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Well, I mean, it's it's all absurd. Okay, it's a
it's business. It's think about what the underlying charges are.
And I think, you know, you need to look at
this in the context also of the civil case, where
the media. There's the media. There's what the media is
saying about the two cases. There's what's actually happening in
(23:01):
the two cases, and then there's like, try to think,
in the broadest point of view, what is the crime here.
So so, in the civil case, which just concluded, Donald
Trump faces you know, a half billion dollar penalty and
the it's not a crime because it's a civil case.
But the infraction that he is alleged to have committed
(23:22):
was lying to banks about the value of assets on loans. Okay.
The thing is the banks do their own independent analysis
of those loans. Much but more importantly than that, no
one disputes that Donald Trump paid back every time with
interest at the agreed to interest rate that that the
bank loaned him. Okay, So the fraud if there was
(23:45):
fraud had no effect. Okay. So so it's as if
like the analogy I use was, you go and make
a deal with the contractor and you say the contractor,
I can pay you upfront, or I'm gonna pay you
next week. I got all the money in my bank
account right now, I can pay you next week. And
you're lying when you say that. Okay, you don't have
(24:06):
the money, but you're gonna get it in a week,
and you don't want the contractor to, you know, go
to somebody else's house. You want to do the work
right now. So he does the work, the money that
you expected to come in does come in, You do
pay him, he is satisfied, and then for some reason
the New York State finds out that you didn't have
the money at the time when you said you did,
even though you got it later, and they say you
(24:29):
committed fraud and they take your house. Okay, that's the
civil case that's last, or the February insanity. Okay, this
is a criminal case. So the stakes are even higher.
Donald Trump could go to jail. And what is Donald
Trump alleged to have done? Okay, the case gets reported
as it's about hush money. It's about paying back Stormy
(24:49):
Daniels or paying off Stormy Daniels. But it's not actually
about that when you read the indictment. What it's about
is that Donald Trump didn't pay Stormy Daniels directly. He
paid Michael Cohen and or I'm sorry, Michael Cohen, his
lawyer paid her off, okay, for what was effectively an
extortion attempt.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
But put that a difference off in between hush money
and extortion cases.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
I wonder, well, the difference is if you have a
smart lawyer who who doesn't make any specific threats. I mean, really,
that's the difference. By the way, I don't think extortion
should be a crime. I think extortion is something rich
people use when poor people try to get money from
them and aren't smart enough to have lawyers involved. But
to the extent that extortion is a crime, this was
(25:34):
This was extortion, okay, even though again Stormy Daniels danced
through the rain drops by you know, she was selling
her story, she didn't put a number on there. Whatever,
she she didn't get charged. So so in the eyes
of the lass, she's cleaning. So Michael Cohen pays her off, okay,
That is not the conduct at issue in this case,
(25:55):
even though the State of New York is focusing on it.
The conduct at issue in the indictment is that Donald
Trump or the Trump organization then paid Michael Cohen. Okay,
and they didn't actually pay them hundred and thirty thousand dollars.
They paid him four hundred twenty thousand dollars. Why because
they wanted him to be able to pay the taxes
(26:16):
on the one hundred and thirty and he wanted to
be paid in salary, not as a reimbursement. And then
they threw in some other money. So already it's complicated.
It's not. There's not quite a direct line from the
payment Cohen made to the Stormy Daniels to the money
he got from Trump. Okay, but let's just look at that, okay.
The crime, the crime that Donald Trump is being charged
(26:38):
with thirty four felonies for is that he misclassified in
his own internal business records a payment he made to
his lawyer as being for quote unquote legal services, when
it was in reality, in part a money that went
to Stormy Daniels. That is the crime, Okay. That is
(26:59):
a crazy thing to face. Thirty four felony charges for
and on top of that, there shouldn't even in New
York State. That's not a felony, a misdemeanor classifying business
records improperly. And again, normally, there would have to be
some allegation that some third party lost money in others
this this should come into play when let's say I
(27:20):
own a restaurant and the restaurant lost one hundred grand
and I'm trying to raise more money for the restaurant
from outsiders, and they say, we need to see your books,
so I show them my books, but I forget to
show them you know that I lost a million dollars
last year. Okay, That's that's what this is supposed to protect.
It's supposed to protect outsiders from fraud. Not not like
(27:42):
I'm putting an expense that I paid in one trash
instead of another trash in my own records. Okay, but
let's just say Donald Trump did this. This is a misdemeanor.
It's not a felony. How are they charging as a felony.
They're charging a felony because they're saying there's an underlying
crime that he was trying to conceal. What is the
(28:03):
underlying crime that they are claiming. Well, they've never actually
come out and charged him with any underlying crime, which
is weird. But what they seem to have settled on
is that the crime was improperly trying to influence the
twenty sixteen election. Okay, so that's a felony. Was he
engaged in a criminal conspiracy to influence the twenty sixteen
(28:26):
election in which he was a candidate, by the way,
So influencing the election and running for president, I'm not
sure how you just see what those things. But let's
just say, let's say he did that. Okay, let's say
the money to Stormy Daniels was part of a conspiracy
to influence the twenty sixteen election. Here is the deepest
problem of all in this crazy case. He's not being
(28:48):
charged for those payments. He's being charged for activity that
he did in twenty seventeen falsifying these business records. So
the payments to Michael Cohen started in twenty seventeen, the
election was in twenty sixteen. How can New York State
(29:08):
say with a straight fi that Donald Trump committed an
act designed to influence the twenty sixteen election. After the
twenty sixteen election was concluded, unless they're gonna say it
a time machine, which I didn't see in the indictment anywhere.
So both the sort of like overall charges here and
(29:28):
the specifics of the charges are insane, okay, And once
you actually sit down and read this, it just it
looks terrible. It looks like New York State is just
out to get Donald Trump by any means necessary. They
went after him for a half billion dollars for a
bunch of loans that he repaid, and now they're charging
(29:50):
him with felonies based on something that on their own
legal theory doesn't make any sense. And these are all Democrats, okay,
they're all you know, hard left Democrats. He's being tried
in Manhattan, which went eighty five point fifteen against him
in twenty twenty. I mean, look, I I said this
(30:10):
today on Twitter. I didn't vote for Donald Trump in
twenty twenty. I don't really like Donald Trump. I am
not voting for him in twenty twenty four. I'm not
voting for Biden. I didn't vote for Biden in twenty
twenty either. Not voting for either of these guys. But
to anybody who believes that the rule of law actually matters,
and that you like your your conduct should mean something
to the crime that you're charged with, and that the
crime should have some like like the seriousness of the offense,
(30:37):
some relationship to what you did. You should you should
be terrified by this. This is like you speed through
a red light and they take your car away and
throw you into git.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yeah, it's a it's outrageous. Everyone should go check out
Alex Parrison Unreported Truths. We went along on the podcast.
It's always so much fun to have him on. But
on Substack Unreported truth No, it's great man. We we
miss you. We haven't had you on the show in
a bit. Unreported Truths on Substack and Alex that will
have you back soon. Thank you for all your work
and thank you for standing strong, especially on Masks and
(31:09):
the Vac's Madness. Appreciate you, thank you, thank you back
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show News
Hosts And Creators
Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
Show Links
WebsiteNewsletterPopular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
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.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.