October 17, 2024 • 24 mins
Six-time BAFTA and Emmy® Winning Documentary Filmmaker Dan Reed discusses his new documentary, "Stopping the Steal," – available to watch on HBO and stream on Max!
STOPPING THE STEAL is an inside account of President Trump's challenge to the results of the 2020 presidential election as told by former White House staff and appointees, including former Attorney General William Barr and elected Republican officials in Arizona and Georgia who resisted pressure to change the results of the vote in their states.
Dan Reed specializes in the dark and complex aspects of our human story, told compassionately through the eyes of men and women caught in the tides of historic events. His credits include “Leaving Neverland,” Terror at the Mall,” and “Four Hours at the Capitol.” He has won six BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy for documentaries he has dire
STOPPING THE STEAL is an inside account of President Trump's challenge to the results of the 2020 presidential election as told by former White House staff and appointees, including former Attorney General William Barr and elected Republican officials in Arizona and Georgia who resisted pressure to change the results of the vote in their states.
Dan Reed specializes in the dark and complex aspects of our human story, told compassionately through the eyes of men and women caught in the tides of historic events. His credits include “Leaving Neverland,” Terror at the Mall,” and “Four Hours at the Capitol.” He has won six BAFTA Awards and a Primetime Emmy for documentaries he has dire
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The jam Right Show, All about Movies. You're listening to
The jam Prey Show, All about Movies, and today my
guest is Beathta and Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker Dan Reid.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to the show. Dan, Hi, Thank you so much, Jah,
nice to have you here. We're going to be talking
about your new documentary.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
I can't wait to dive into Stopping the Steal, which
is on HBO and streaming on Max right now. And
I recommend everybody see this film before you go into
the voting booth.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm Election day, so.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Let's get into it so our listeners know what we're
talking about.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
What is Stopping the Steal all about? Dan?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Stopping the Steal is about the attempt to overturn the
twenty twenty election results. And it is a granular, very detailed,
very much the inside story told by Trump supporters, told
by Republicans who really wanted Trump to win and who
had every reason to try to discover fraud and put
(01:03):
there in the end, put their country and their constitution
before their individual political interests and therefore denied Trump the
assistance that he needed to try and get the election
lie over the line. And so it's called Stopping the Steel.
It's a kind of obviously like an ironic echo of
(01:23):
stop the Steal, which was one of the megaslogans, as
you know at the time, and it's really about how
the real steal was stopped.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It is fascinating what drew you, being British to dive
into this, what made you decide to create this documentary?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Well, I need to go back a little bit to
twenty twenty one, to January sixth, really, so I produced
a documentary called four Hours at the Capitol for HBO,
which you can still watch on Max, and that was
just about the four hours really the form of intense
hours of the riot at the United States Capitol. And
then I started thinking, how did this happen? I mean,
(02:06):
what did this mean? Did all these people just turn
up out of nowhere and like suddenly riots And of
course as you follow the thread back to November third,
the might of the election, you realized that there was
a whole lot more and in fact, January sixth is
just kind of just the last like final kind of hell.
Mary passed. You know that that the people who had
(02:28):
devised this plan to to basically steal the election, they
had nowhere else to go apart from kind of threatening
Mike Pence, Vice President Mike Pence to if you didn't
do the right thing that you know, the crowd would
seek swift street justice. So and I'm not suggesting that,
you know, President Trump at the time had any kind
of plans to do violence to Mike Pence or indeed
(02:49):
was encouraging that, but that's what the crowd was saying.
They were saying, hang Mike Pence. So that was just
the last, the kind of the last link in the
chain that goes back to November third and goes back
to really, i suppose say, relatively insignificant appointed elected officials
and appointees in the counties and the states of the
United States who were just doing their job, proud Republicans,
(03:11):
good Christians, and suddenly they became embroad in this thing.
Suddenly the streets, the base is they're saying, you know,
check your fact, stop the steal, shame on Fox, all
this stuff, and they're like, what's going on. We know
that the election was well run, we know how to
do this, We trust our people. And they start checking
(03:33):
and they start counting and recounting or what have you.
But it's got a long story short, these fairly low
level people that you've never heard of before became the
focus of incredible pressure from the White House, often directly
from the White House in the form of a phone
call from the President of the United States saying, look, Paul,
(03:54):
maybe you put your thumb on scales to me right,
And so this is can you imagine that pressure? And
then they're also getting pressure people turning up outside the
houses saying, you know, you're a criminal, You're a traitor.
So it's very dramatic, and it's about the little people,
(04:14):
but it's also about people like Bill Barr and the
more senior officials in the White House and in the administration,
the head of Communications. So you get this layered picture
of what was happening, and I think it's quite gripping.
It's quite a good watch. The characters are amazing, right,
it is.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Quite a good watch. It definitely is. Yep, I'm amazed
at Bill Barr. How did you get Bill Barr to
first interview him? But how honest and open he was
in this.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Documentary.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
I was very impressed that, you know, I mean, we
have you know, we can go back and forth on
Bill Barr, but in this documentary, he's pretty forthright, and.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Because he does seem really candid, doesn't. He seems very relaxed.
I think you just look at the kind of mood
of the interview. It's kind of relaxed. He's he's sitting
there on a couch and he's kind of talking to
you as if you were Its kind of like a
fireside chat in a way, right, And he's being brutally honest,
(05:22):
brutally honest and extremely critical of Trump and very clear
about what happened and what didn't happen. How did we
achieve that? I think, you know, it's a part of
it is just being a good listener and putting the
subject at ease and not having I don't have a
political agenda. This wasn't about whether Trump's policies are better
(05:43):
than Biden's policies or anyone else's policies. It's really about
what happened in the running of the election. Was this,
you know, something that was completely outside previous experience. I mean, so,
Abar is the top lawyer at the time, the top
lawyer in the country right the top government lawyer in
(06:04):
the country, and it's a job to know if a
criminal activity basically, crimes are being committed against the elections,
and he says no, and and and so I think
we were both focused on that and not on you know,
his politics or anyone else's politics or you know. It's
(06:24):
a very sort of narrowly focused interview. And I think
he felt comfortable. But it's a great interview, is he's
really so yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
It's a great interview with him. Well, it's a great
interview with all of them. I want to get into.
I mean, the fact that he even was willing to
do the interview I find, you know, quite amazing right there,
because I'm sure this isn't something that he liked definitely,
you know, necessarily talk about. But but you did have
(06:52):
a great access.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
To him, and.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
You know, in the actual interview itself was very very revealing.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
But I'm going to.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Get into some of these other people that we don't
know as well, that became household names in a way
because of the election. I'm want to you know, definitely
want to talk about let's talk about Sharpie.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Gate, the Charpie Gate.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
And they don''t get into Rusty Bowers and Clint hit Hickman,
but let's talk about Sharpie Gate. Because I thought that
was really that was something I don't think any of
us had heard of before.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Well, I mean, this was one of the rumors that
spread like wildfire, based on a video, a short video
clip recorded by a guy called Marco Trikovich. He's at
one of the counting centers and people are coming out saying, hey,
they give me a sharpie. And the sharpie bled through
the ballot paper. And you know, in the film, we
(07:51):
discovered that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has released
videos saying, hey, sharpie's are fine, don't worry about the
bleed because you know, the ballot is not the same
on both sides and it's offsetment and it's fine, don't
worry about it. And yet, as this video spread on
social media, people formed the belief that sharpies were being
(08:15):
forced on voters and therefore and the sharpiees were sort
of changing a vote from Trump to Biden or spoiling
the Trump vote. And once people latched onto this, it
became an internet sensation, and that became Sharpygate. And then
you know, the Attorney General of Arizona investigates, and everyone
else has to investigate, and it turns out there's no
(08:37):
basis in fact, so that was sharpigate and.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So you I mean you have wonderful footage. How did
you get access to the footage around the sharpiece?
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Well, I mean some of that footage is is just
the result of diligent searching online my wonderful colleagues, who
you know, we're very as a company, we as a
production company, we're very rigorous. We like to do our
researchers as well as we can. We're very stubborn, and
so you know, we wouldn't rest until we got all
of the sharpi gate videos and ever and and that's
(09:14):
what you see. We also did you know, we get
some if people have interesting video, we'll contact them and say, hey,
have you got any more of your you know your
you're on broadcast footage, you've footaghed it, and we'll we'll,
you know, we'll license that from them. And so you
get a bit more than just what's online.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
That was that was fascinating in itself. All right, let's
dive into.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Clint Heckman. Let's tell the audience who.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Bin Hickman is is. He's a real darling. He's he's
was the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Now,
Maricopa County is the second biggest voting district in the
United States. It is very, very important in the twenty
twenty election. And Clint Hickman is the man in charge.
(10:05):
He's the chairman of this five man board of supervisors
and they're in charge of running the election. They're also
in charge of stuff like pest control and you know,
pets and soothing the streets and all sorts of stuff.
So you would never have heard of Clint Hickman right
in a normal election. But suddenly Clint Hickman is the
guy who has got an X on his head and
(10:30):
he's the guy that you know, has to make the call.
He's one of the people at the election. So all
of this pressure and you've got crowds outside chancing stop
the steal and you know, calling them all sorts of names,
and these five really ordinary guys in their suits just
(10:51):
have to all decide to certify the election or not.
And you know, they get calls from the Arizona Republican Party,
from the leader of the party and in Arizona saying, hey, guy,
do you want to read stuff going on here? Do
you want to read? Do you want to speak to
the president, and so all of this pressure from the
(11:14):
top and also from the bottom is creating a pressure cooker.
And he's so emotional. He actually cried in the interview
and you can see him, Yeah, you can see him
tearing up actually in the video footage we have from
the day from that day, he said, you know, when
the vote is taken and all five of them agree
to certify the election, his voice cracks and he says,
(11:35):
I'm so proud to serve with people who have integrity,
and it's a really it's an emotional moment for me
as well. And you know, he breaks down in the
interview and that really moved me, and I thought, hey,
this is great, this is what this is a really
honest man and a great elected official. You know.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Wow. So he was docked.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
You know, this is a word I never even heard of,
and Tories, I mean, you know what does that mean?
You know?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
And you're right, it was very emotional in that.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
But now the audience, because I'm much I had to
look it up to find out what doxing really means.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I mean, this is.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Kind of has been around a long time and we
just weren't aware of it. But it's in our culture
even more now since this election doxing.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
So Hickman and his colleagues were docked, which means that
their home address and their personal details were posted online,
and which meant that pretty quickly a crowd formed outside
his house. And we actually we have body cam footage,
(12:46):
you know, from a police officer who is there, and
you can see all these people gathering outside his house
and flags and chanting and all that, and you can
hear Clint getting a little bit antsy, getting a little
bit worried, and he's saying please, you know, please tell
them to leave, please, and you can sort of hit
the tremor in his voice, and he says in the interview,
(13:06):
you know, if you come in my house, you better
hit the deck because I'm firing.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
The guy is obviously a gun owner, and he wasn't
going to let anyone in his house.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. And then they show
pictures of you know, the police in the film, which
purpose was.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
That, you know, there's crowds outside and.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
They all have ar fifteen I think it was Arizona,
and the police are inside and they're like, okay, this
whole crowd is armed. That's out here. You know, what
do we do?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I mean, that's chilling, just chilling to.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
See that, it is chilling. It's also and here I'm
speaking with my British angle right right, I also find
it incredible that no one fired, not a shot was fired.
So yeah, does that make me optimistic about you know,
(14:04):
firearms discipline in the United States, or does it make
me pessimistic that people are turning up outside of voting
center with assault weapons. I'm not sure you know which were.
I probably feel a little pessimistic about that, but it's
it's a terrifying display of force. You have people in
combat gear with body armor, tactical gear, helmets, ready to go, yes,
(14:28):
ready to fight, yes, yes. And on the basis of
the complete fiction, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
You know, the lies, I mean, there's whole you know,
I love you. Whack a moll was a word that
was used.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
In Number film too, you know that people were playing
wack a mall. But all the lies and in the
rhetoric that was stirring up this crowd, you know. And
now to finally, after all these years, a lot of
people still believe that election was stolen and that finally
they have Trump.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Now now admit that you know, he did lose, like
he did a teeny bit.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I think he just said recently, and all those people
have got to feel incredibly disappointed in that. I mean,
although are a lot of people you have in there
that are in this film that are disappointed. We're disappointed
even after they went to the capital on January sixth.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
So we'll talk a little bit more about that too.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
But Rusty Bowers, I want to get to him because
I thought he was barely compelling.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Also, yeah, Rusty, amazing character, amazing interview, amazing man. Actually yes, yeah,
really he really touched me. Touched my heart me too,
me too. Yeah, he and he's such a great reconteur.
I mean he does all the conversations, and he's owned
to the President and Rudy Giuliani, and he does all
(15:48):
the parts, not quite different voices. But you know, the
way we've edited it, I think really brings that up.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
It does, it does.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I thought he had an acting career coming up next.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah, but he's I love his face. He looks like
sort of some kind of Mormon Clint Eastwood, and so
Rusty stories. He's the Speaker of the House of Representatives
in Arizona. A politician with a great deal of respect
and long career, an arch conservative, loves Trump's policies, and
(16:19):
then he gets a call from Trump and Giuliani, and
Giuliani is saying, you know, there's this obscure Arizona law
that allows you to replace Trump's electors with replaced Biden's electors.
Accuse me, with Trump's electors, you can just switch, like
you know, you can say the elections. There's something a
bit fishy about this. And I think we're just going
to give the state to mister Trump. And he was like,
(16:44):
I'm going to do that. There's no proof. You know,
if you want to convince me, you have to bring
me proof. And so that's part of the sort of
tragi comedy of this. This great chapter in the film
is Rudy, Giuliani and Generalis come to town and they
have their presentation to some Arizona lawmakers and then they
(17:05):
have a meeting Rusty, and Rusty goes, so did you
bring the proof? And apparently, you know, one of one
reaches into their briefcase and like, oh no, I forgot
it in the hotel room. So and the way Rusty
tells it, it's so funny, it pretty cracks. And then he right,
so fine, you know, I'm out of here. And he
(17:27):
just wouldn't he wouldn't call that special session of the
Arizona Legislature because he knew that that was away in
for the the election fraud people, the election deniers, to
try and throw stand in the gears of the electoral
(17:47):
process and have a Republican leaning legislature say look, no,
this wasn't right. There's something wrong with the election, and
let's delay or you know. So this was largely about
trying to d the election into the legislature and away
from the voters of the state, away from the voters
of the counties, and have the result decided not by
(18:07):
voters but by lawmakers, state lawmakers, and really, and so
this went on and on, and it went up to
a point where it was too late for that to
work at a state level. And then of course Trump
pivots to his loyal and ever faithful Vice President Mike Pence.
And we have two great interviewees. We have counsel, his lawyer.
(18:28):
You know, they tell the story with amazing drama fluency.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
We're talking about Mike Pence.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
So we interview, we have two great interviews, two great
characters on screen to tell the Mike Pence Scory it's
his chief and staff, and we haven't really heard much
from either of these two so far. So I'm very
excited that we got those interviews. Greg Jacob his lawyer,
Pence's lawyer who has the last word in the film.
You know, they talk about how important it was. And
Greg Jacob, who's this very reserved, very thoughtful man. He
(18:57):
ends the film by saying, you know, if you don't
put some someone of strong, honest character in that job,
the most powerful job in the country, then that could
be the end of the Republic. I thought that was
a very striking thing to say. This isn't the guy
who talks crap, who you know, exaggerates and uses figure
as of speech. This is a man who literally meant,
(19:17):
with all of his loyally discretion and careful wording, that
it could be the American democracy. So I thought, wow,
this wasn't It's kind of funny. The felt there's a
lot of humor in the film, but in the end,
it's not funny in the end, you know, and the
gumming up of American democracy, the undermining of its legitimacy,
(19:39):
the undermining of people's belief that, yeah, we have elections
and that's a time when we can all our voices
can be heard, you know. And if the person who
loses has to go and the person who wins comes
in and that's how it all works, if we lose
faith in that, then we're in a very dark place. So, yeah,
what's going to happen in twenty twenty four. I don't know.
I have no idea. Will it happen again? Why wouldn't it, obviously,
(20:01):
mister president anymore? But no one can predict. But I'm
hoping that it all somehow to turn out differently and
the loser will accept the loss, whether it's Kamla Harris
or Donald Trump, and then we'll look back on twenty
twenty as a sort of a bit of a dark
chapter that is over and done with and we're back
to normal election. But somehow I think that I think
that our faith in our democratic system has been weakened,
(20:22):
and I think it needs restoring. So that's why I
try to make this film to go, hey, look what
really happened. This is what really happens. This is this
is the detail of what happens, and then make up
your own minds about whether you think that's a thing
that should be acted or whether I'll leave it up
to the audience to make up their own minds. So
it's not a political film. It's not trying to tell
you to be a liberal or a conservative or anything.
It's just trying to say, well, this is actually in
(20:44):
granular detail with the real people on the inside, who
do not have an act to grind against Trump, who
loved Trump, who wanted them to win. But they're telling
the story and I believe them because they have no
political interest in line.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
And that's why I think everybody should see the film,
because you're right, it isn't a Republican or Democrat. It's
just telling the story of what happened and by the
people that were inside that were being affected by what happened.
I loved it. I don't know if what was Rusty
Bowers with all of them, they were going, these are
my people coming after me. I can't remember which one
(21:19):
said that, and I was like that.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Since it was Rusty Bars. When the crowd turned up,
there was an armored personnel carrier and people with weapons
turning up outside his house. Incidentally, as his his daughter
is very ill, daughter laid dying in the house, and
he was getting there's mob outside calling him a pedophile,
calling all sorts of names, and you know, and he's like,
these are my people. These are you know, conservative people
(21:41):
doing this and conservative politicians taking aim at him and
trying to take him down. And that's what happened. He's
he's you know, he's no longer in the legislature, so
he's you know, he's paid the price.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I know. I think a lot of them, they are
all many of them side the government.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
After that whole.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
You know, this are being planted again for twenty twenty four.
As we know, the veteric is there, and we just
hope that it doesn't happen again. I think people are
tired of it. I think we're all tired of the lies.
And I think there's I think I want to believe
that America is smarter than you know.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Than you know, than other people think.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
You know that this person who's stewing these lies, I
believes they are, because it's just it's heartening partning.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Well, this was you know, the thin red line that
held in twenty twenty. Let's see what happens in twenty
twenty four.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
And a lot of those people are gone sore was
you know. Well, everyone, please please please please stopping the steal.
It's on HBO, it's streaming on Max. I highly highly,
highly recommend. It's very, very well done, very it's entertaining
and enlightening and educational, and I think everybody who lived
through the twenty twenty election it should definitely see it.
(22:56):
And some of the first time voters that you know,
didn't vote in twenty twenty definitely see it. So it's
a wonderful documentary. You so much, Thank you so much
for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I really thank you for having me Jane. It's been
a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I look forward to having you back on for your
next documentary. What are you working on?
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Real best, I'm actually working on a film about October seventh,
the okay, that's for Channel four here in the UK.
Very controversial, I guess, but yeah, it's a it's a
it's the story of one community and it's it's very detailed,
and yeah, it's pretty it's pretty hard.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
It's a hard watch, but okay, I'm sure again it's
going to be very enlightening and educational.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
For all of us. Thank you, Jan, thank you so much.
Appreciate it. Dan, have a great day.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Thank you to.
Speaker 5 (23:43):
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(24:05):
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listening
Speaker 1 (24:16):
The Jam Price Show All about Movies.
The jam Right Show, All about Movies. You're listening to
The jam Prey Show, All about Movies, and today my
guest is Beathta and Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker Dan Reid.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Welcome to the show. Dan, Hi, Thank you so much, Jah,
nice to have you here. We're going to be talking
about your new documentary.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
I can't wait to dive into Stopping the Steal, which
is on HBO and streaming on Max right now. And
I recommend everybody see this film before you go into
the voting booth.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm Election day, so.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Let's get into it so our listeners know what we're
talking about.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
What is Stopping the Steal all about? Dan?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Stopping the Steal is about the attempt to overturn the
twenty twenty election results. And it is a granular, very detailed,
very much the inside story told by Trump supporters, told
by Republicans who really wanted Trump to win and who
had every reason to try to discover fraud and put
(01:03):
there in the end, put their country and their constitution
before their individual political interests and therefore denied Trump the
assistance that he needed to try and get the election
lie over the line. And so it's called Stopping the Steel.
It's a kind of obviously like an ironic echo of
(01:23):
stop the Steal, which was one of the megaslogans, as
you know at the time, and it's really about how
the real steal was stopped.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It is fascinating what drew you, being British to dive
into this, what made you decide to create this documentary?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Well, I need to go back a little bit to
twenty twenty one, to January sixth, really, so I produced
a documentary called four Hours at the Capitol for HBO,
which you can still watch on Max, and that was
just about the four hours really the form of intense
hours of the riot at the United States Capitol. And
then I started thinking, how did this happen? I mean,
(02:06):
what did this mean? Did all these people just turn
up out of nowhere and like suddenly riots And of
course as you follow the thread back to November third,
the might of the election, you realized that there was
a whole lot more and in fact, January sixth is
just kind of just the last like final kind of hell.
Mary passed. You know that that the people who had
(02:28):
devised this plan to to basically steal the election, they
had nowhere else to go apart from kind of threatening
Mike Pence, Vice President Mike Pence to if you didn't
do the right thing that you know, the crowd would
seek swift street justice. So and I'm not suggesting that,
you know, President Trump at the time had any kind
of plans to do violence to Mike Pence or indeed
(02:49):
was encouraging that, but that's what the crowd was saying.
They were saying, hang Mike Pence. So that was just
the last, the kind of the last link in the
chain that goes back to November third and goes back
to really, i suppose say, relatively insignificant appointed elected officials
and appointees in the counties and the states of the
United States who were just doing their job, proud Republicans,
(03:11):
good Christians, and suddenly they became embroad in this thing.
Suddenly the streets, the base is they're saying, you know,
check your fact, stop the steal, shame on Fox, all
this stuff, and they're like, what's going on. We know
that the election was well run, we know how to
do this, We trust our people. And they start checking
(03:33):
and they start counting and recounting or what have you.
But it's got a long story short, these fairly low
level people that you've never heard of before became the
focus of incredible pressure from the White House, often directly
from the White House in the form of a phone
call from the President of the United States saying, look, Paul,
(03:54):
maybe you put your thumb on scales to me right,
And so this is can you imagine that pressure? And
then they're also getting pressure people turning up outside the
houses saying, you know, you're a criminal, You're a traitor.
So it's very dramatic, and it's about the little people,
(04:14):
but it's also about people like Bill Barr and the
more senior officials in the White House and in the administration,
the head of Communications. So you get this layered picture
of what was happening, and I think it's quite gripping.
It's quite a good watch. The characters are amazing, right,
it is.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Quite a good watch. It definitely is. Yep, I'm amazed
at Bill Barr. How did you get Bill Barr to
first interview him? But how honest and open he was
in this.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Documentary.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
I was very impressed that, you know, I mean, we
have you know, we can go back and forth on
Bill Barr, but in this documentary, he's pretty forthright, and.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Because he does seem really candid, doesn't. He seems very relaxed.
I think you just look at the kind of mood
of the interview. It's kind of relaxed. He's he's sitting
there on a couch and he's kind of talking to
you as if you were Its kind of like a
fireside chat in a way, right, And he's being brutally honest,
(05:22):
brutally honest and extremely critical of Trump and very clear
about what happened and what didn't happen. How did we
achieve that? I think, you know, it's a part of
it is just being a good listener and putting the
subject at ease and not having I don't have a
political agenda. This wasn't about whether Trump's policies are better
(05:43):
than Biden's policies or anyone else's policies. It's really about
what happened in the running of the election. Was this,
you know, something that was completely outside previous experience. I mean, so,
Abar is the top lawyer at the time, the top
lawyer in the country right the top government lawyer in
(06:04):
the country, and it's a job to know if a
criminal activity basically, crimes are being committed against the elections,
and he says no, and and and so I think
we were both focused on that and not on you know,
his politics or anyone else's politics or you know. It's
(06:24):
a very sort of narrowly focused interview. And I think
he felt comfortable. But it's a great interview, is he's
really so yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
It's a great interview with him. Well, it's a great
interview with all of them. I want to get into.
I mean, the fact that he even was willing to
do the interview I find, you know, quite amazing right there,
because I'm sure this isn't something that he liked definitely,
you know, necessarily talk about. But but you did have
(06:52):
a great access.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
To him, and.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
You know, in the actual interview itself was very very revealing.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
But I'm going to.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Get into some of these other people that we don't
know as well, that became household names in a way
because of the election. I'm want to you know, definitely
want to talk about let's talk about Sharpie.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Gate, the Charpie Gate.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
And they don''t get into Rusty Bowers and Clint hit Hickman,
but let's talk about Sharpie Gate. Because I thought that
was really that was something I don't think any of
us had heard of before.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Well, I mean, this was one of the rumors that
spread like wildfire, based on a video, a short video
clip recorded by a guy called Marco Trikovich. He's at
one of the counting centers and people are coming out saying, hey,
they give me a sharpie. And the sharpie bled through
the ballot paper. And you know, in the film, we
(07:51):
discovered that the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has released
videos saying, hey, sharpie's are fine, don't worry about the
bleed because you know, the ballot is not the same
on both sides and it's offsetment and it's fine, don't
worry about it. And yet, as this video spread on
social media, people formed the belief that sharpies were being
(08:15):
forced on voters and therefore and the sharpiees were sort
of changing a vote from Trump to Biden or spoiling
the Trump vote. And once people latched onto this, it
became an internet sensation, and that became Sharpygate. And then
you know, the Attorney General of Arizona investigates, and everyone
else has to investigate, and it turns out there's no
(08:37):
basis in fact, so that was sharpigate and.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
So you I mean you have wonderful footage. How did
you get access to the footage around the sharpiece?
Speaker 3 (08:50):
Well, I mean some of that footage is is just
the result of diligent searching online my wonderful colleagues, who
you know, we're very as a company, we as a
production company, we're very rigorous. We like to do our
researchers as well as we can. We're very stubborn, and
so you know, we wouldn't rest until we got all
of the sharpi gate videos and ever and and that's
(09:14):
what you see. We also did you know, we get
some if people have interesting video, we'll contact them and say, hey,
have you got any more of your you know your
you're on broadcast footage, you've footaghed it, and we'll we'll,
you know, we'll license that from them. And so you
get a bit more than just what's online.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
That was that was fascinating in itself. All right, let's
dive into.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Clint Heckman. Let's tell the audience who.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Bin Hickman is is. He's a real darling. He's he's
was the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Now,
Maricopa County is the second biggest voting district in the
United States. It is very, very important in the twenty
twenty election. And Clint Hickman is the man in charge.
(10:05):
He's the chairman of this five man board of supervisors
and they're in charge of running the election. They're also
in charge of stuff like pest control and you know,
pets and soothing the streets and all sorts of stuff.
So you would never have heard of Clint Hickman right
in a normal election. But suddenly Clint Hickman is the
guy who has got an X on his head and
(10:30):
he's the guy that you know, has to make the call.
He's one of the people at the election. So all
of this pressure and you've got crowds outside chancing stop
the steal and you know, calling them all sorts of names,
and these five really ordinary guys in their suits just
(10:51):
have to all decide to certify the election or not.
And you know, they get calls from the Arizona Republican Party,
from the leader of the party and in Arizona saying, hey, guy,
do you want to read stuff going on here? Do
you want to read? Do you want to speak to
the president, and so all of this pressure from the
(11:14):
top and also from the bottom is creating a pressure cooker.
And he's so emotional. He actually cried in the interview
and you can see him, Yeah, you can see him
tearing up actually in the video footage we have from
the day from that day, he said, you know, when
the vote is taken and all five of them agree
to certify the election, his voice cracks and he says,
(11:35):
I'm so proud to serve with people who have integrity,
and it's a really it's an emotional moment for me
as well. And you know, he breaks down in the
interview and that really moved me, and I thought, hey,
this is great, this is what this is a really
honest man and a great elected official. You know.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Wow. So he was docked.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
You know, this is a word I never even heard of,
and Tories, I mean, you know what does that mean?
You know?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
And you're right, it was very emotional in that.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
But now the audience, because I'm much I had to
look it up to find out what doxing really means.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I mean, this is.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Kind of has been around a long time and we
just weren't aware of it. But it's in our culture
even more now since this election doxing.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
So Hickman and his colleagues were docked, which means that
their home address and their personal details were posted online,
and which meant that pretty quickly a crowd formed outside
his house. And we actually we have body cam footage,
(12:46):
you know, from a police officer who is there, and
you can see all these people gathering outside his house
and flags and chanting and all that, and you can
hear Clint getting a little bit antsy, getting a little
bit worried, and he's saying please, you know, please tell
them to leave, please, and you can sort of hit
the tremor in his voice, and he says in the interview,
(13:06):
you know, if you come in my house, you better
hit the deck because I'm firing.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
The guy is obviously a gun owner, and he wasn't
going to let anyone in his house.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. And then they show
pictures of you know, the police in the film, which
purpose was.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
That, you know, there's crowds outside and.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
They all have ar fifteen I think it was Arizona,
and the police are inside and they're like, okay, this
whole crowd is armed. That's out here. You know, what
do we do?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I mean, that's chilling, just chilling to.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
See that, it is chilling. It's also and here I'm
speaking with my British angle right right, I also find
it incredible that no one fired, not a shot was fired.
So yeah, does that make me optimistic about you know,
(14:04):
firearms discipline in the United States, or does it make
me pessimistic that people are turning up outside of voting
center with assault weapons. I'm not sure you know which were.
I probably feel a little pessimistic about that, but it's
it's a terrifying display of force. You have people in
combat gear with body armor, tactical gear, helmets, ready to go, yes,
(14:28):
ready to fight, yes, yes. And on the basis of
the complete fiction, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
You know, the lies, I mean, there's whole you know,
I love you. Whack a moll was a word that
was used.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
In Number film too, you know that people were playing
wack a mall. But all the lies and in the
rhetoric that was stirring up this crowd, you know. And
now to finally, after all these years, a lot of
people still believe that election was stolen and that finally
they have Trump.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Now now admit that you know, he did lose, like
he did a teeny bit.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I think he just said recently, and all those people
have got to feel incredibly disappointed in that. I mean,
although are a lot of people you have in there
that are in this film that are disappointed. We're disappointed
even after they went to the capital on January sixth.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
So we'll talk a little bit more about that too.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
But Rusty Bowers, I want to get to him because
I thought he was barely compelling.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Also, yeah, Rusty, amazing character, amazing interview, amazing man. Actually yes, yeah,
really he really touched me. Touched my heart me too,
me too. Yeah, he and he's such a great reconteur.
I mean he does all the conversations, and he's owned
to the President and Rudy Giuliani, and he does all
(15:48):
the parts, not quite different voices. But you know, the
way we've edited it, I think really brings that up.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
It does, it does.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I thought he had an acting career coming up next.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah, but he's I love his face. He looks like
sort of some kind of Mormon Clint Eastwood, and so
Rusty stories. He's the Speaker of the House of Representatives
in Arizona. A politician with a great deal of respect
and long career, an arch conservative, loves Trump's policies, and
(16:19):
then he gets a call from Trump and Giuliani, and
Giuliani is saying, you know, there's this obscure Arizona law
that allows you to replace Trump's electors with replaced Biden's electors.
Accuse me, with Trump's electors, you can just switch, like
you know, you can say the elections. There's something a
bit fishy about this. And I think we're just going
to give the state to mister Trump. And he was like,
(16:44):
I'm going to do that. There's no proof. You know,
if you want to convince me, you have to bring
me proof. And so that's part of the sort of
tragi comedy of this. This great chapter in the film
is Rudy, Giuliani and Generalis come to town and they
have their presentation to some Arizona lawmakers and then they
(17:05):
have a meeting Rusty, and Rusty goes, so did you
bring the proof? And apparently, you know, one of one
reaches into their briefcase and like, oh no, I forgot
it in the hotel room. So and the way Rusty
tells it, it's so funny, it pretty cracks. And then he right,
so fine, you know, I'm out of here. And he
(17:27):
just wouldn't he wouldn't call that special session of the
Arizona Legislature because he knew that that was away in
for the the election fraud people, the election deniers, to
try and throw stand in the gears of the electoral
(17:47):
process and have a Republican leaning legislature say look, no,
this wasn't right. There's something wrong with the election, and
let's delay or you know. So this was largely about
trying to d the election into the legislature and away
from the voters of the state, away from the voters
of the counties, and have the result decided not by
(18:07):
voters but by lawmakers, state lawmakers, and really, and so
this went on and on, and it went up to
a point where it was too late for that to
work at a state level. And then of course Trump
pivots to his loyal and ever faithful Vice President Mike Pence.
And we have two great interviewees. We have counsel, his lawyer.
(18:28):
You know, they tell the story with amazing drama fluency.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
We're talking about Mike Pence.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
So we interview, we have two great interviews, two great
characters on screen to tell the Mike Pence Scory it's
his chief and staff, and we haven't really heard much
from either of these two so far. So I'm very
excited that we got those interviews. Greg Jacob his lawyer,
Pence's lawyer who has the last word in the film.
You know, they talk about how important it was. And
Greg Jacob, who's this very reserved, very thoughtful man. He
(18:57):
ends the film by saying, you know, if you don't
put some someone of strong, honest character in that job,
the most powerful job in the country, then that could
be the end of the Republic. I thought that was
a very striking thing to say. This isn't the guy
who talks crap, who you know, exaggerates and uses figure
as of speech. This is a man who literally meant,
(19:17):
with all of his loyally discretion and careful wording, that
it could be the American democracy. So I thought, wow,
this wasn't It's kind of funny. The felt there's a
lot of humor in the film, but in the end,
it's not funny in the end, you know, and the
gumming up of American democracy, the undermining of its legitimacy,
(19:39):
the undermining of people's belief that, yeah, we have elections
and that's a time when we can all our voices
can be heard, you know. And if the person who
loses has to go and the person who wins comes
in and that's how it all works, if we lose
faith in that, then we're in a very dark place. So, yeah,
what's going to happen in twenty twenty four. I don't know.
I have no idea. Will it happen again? Why wouldn't it, obviously,
(20:01):
mister president anymore? But no one can predict. But I'm
hoping that it all somehow to turn out differently and
the loser will accept the loss, whether it's Kamla Harris
or Donald Trump, and then we'll look back on twenty
twenty as a sort of a bit of a dark
chapter that is over and done with and we're back
to normal election. But somehow I think that I think
that our faith in our democratic system has been weakened,
(20:22):
and I think it needs restoring. So that's why I
try to make this film to go, hey, look what
really happened. This is what really happens. This is this
is the detail of what happens, and then make up
your own minds about whether you think that's a thing
that should be acted or whether I'll leave it up
to the audience to make up their own minds. So
it's not a political film. It's not trying to tell
you to be a liberal or a conservative or anything.
It's just trying to say, well, this is actually in
(20:44):
granular detail with the real people on the inside, who
do not have an act to grind against Trump, who
loved Trump, who wanted them to win. But they're telling
the story and I believe them because they have no
political interest in line.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
And that's why I think everybody should see the film,
because you're right, it isn't a Republican or Democrat. It's
just telling the story of what happened and by the
people that were inside that were being affected by what happened.
I loved it. I don't know if what was Rusty
Bowers with all of them, they were going, these are
my people coming after me. I can't remember which one
(21:19):
said that, and I was like that.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Since it was Rusty Bars. When the crowd turned up,
there was an armored personnel carrier and people with weapons
turning up outside his house. Incidentally, as his his daughter
is very ill, daughter laid dying in the house, and
he was getting there's mob outside calling him a pedophile,
calling all sorts of names, and you know, and he's like,
these are my people. These are you know, conservative people
(21:41):
doing this and conservative politicians taking aim at him and
trying to take him down. And that's what happened. He's
he's you know, he's no longer in the legislature, so
he's you know, he's paid the price.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I know. I think a lot of them, they are
all many of them side the government.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
After that whole.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
You know, this are being planted again for twenty twenty four.
As we know, the veteric is there, and we just
hope that it doesn't happen again. I think people are
tired of it. I think we're all tired of the lies.
And I think there's I think I want to believe
that America is smarter than you know.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Than you know, than other people think.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
You know that this person who's stewing these lies, I
believes they are, because it's just it's heartening partning.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Well, this was you know, the thin red line that
held in twenty twenty. Let's see what happens in twenty
twenty four.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
And a lot of those people are gone sore was
you know. Well, everyone, please please please please stopping the steal.
It's on HBO, it's streaming on Max. I highly highly,
highly recommend. It's very, very well done, very it's entertaining
and enlightening and educational, and I think everybody who lived
through the twenty twenty election it should definitely see it.
(22:56):
And some of the first time voters that you know,
didn't vote in twenty twenty definitely see it. So it's
a wonderful documentary. You so much, Thank you so much
for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I really thank you for having me Jane. It's been
a pleasure.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I look forward to having you back on for your
next documentary. What are you working on?
Speaker 3 (23:12):
Real best, I'm actually working on a film about October seventh,
the okay, that's for Channel four here in the UK.
Very controversial, I guess, but yeah, it's a it's a
it's the story of one community and it's it's very detailed,
and yeah, it's pretty it's pretty hard.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
It's a hard watch, but okay, I'm sure again it's
going to be very enlightening and educational.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
For all of us. Thank you, Jan, thank you so much.
Appreciate it. Dan, have a great day.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Thank you to.
Speaker 5 (23:43):
All my wonderful loyal listeners. Your love of film allows
me to do what I do. If you want to
support me, the best way to do that is to
hit the subscribe button on the iHeart Podcast Network, Apple Podcast,
Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite
podcast and of course on YouTube. Subscribing matters. If you
(24:05):
are feeling really compelled, I want to hear from you.
Have a burning question, comment or review, Drop me an
email at the Jamprice Show dot com. Thank you for
listening
Speaker 1 (24:16):
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