Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys introducing Michael Maharrey. From the 10th amendment center. He is the National communications director there at the 10th amendment center and he also writes for us at the Institute, libertarian institute.org including one on the front page today. Supreme Court rules against Fourth Amendment? Well, I’m not sure you could be referring to a great many different cases there. So we’ll have to get into the details. Welcome back to the show, Mike. How you doing?

Mike Maharrey 1:11
Thanks, God. It’s always a pleasure to be on the show. It’s one of my favorites.

Scott Horton 1:15
Cool, man. Well, happy to have you here. So a Kansas versus Glover film in?

Mike Maharrey 1:24
Yeah. So this was a case from a couple of years back and involves search and seizure. As all these Fourth Amendment cases do, basically, the deputy pulled over a car because the driver came back as having an expired driver’s license. So he used that as probable cause and dude ended up getting arrested. And the defense was and I think this is a legitimate defense. Just because the driver of an automobile has a suspended license doesn’t mean or just because the Winter has a suspended license. That doesn’t mean the person driving has a suspended license. You know, a lot of people drive cars, you know, especially like if you’re in a family, my wife drives my car, I drive her car. And so the argument was that the police couldn’t really assume that there was a crime being committed, so therefore had no justification in pulling over the driver. And interestingly, the the states started out in state court and the state court agreed and it ended up working itself up through the system eventually got to the US Supreme Court. Now, the Kansas Supreme Court said that in an eight to one decision, said that the police were not justified in kept that protection on search and seizure in place. But the Supreme Court got the case because they made it a fourth amendment case they made it a constitutional case. So therefore, it was able to go to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court ruled to one, that indeed, it’s perfectly legitimate for the police to pull over a car if the registered owner has a suspended driver’s license. So another chip away from the protections of illegal search and seizure under the Constitution. The only dissenter was Sonia subtle, subtle millyar. I never can say her name, right. But she said that the opinion destroys Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that requires individualized suspicion even though she’s not wrong. But she was the only one that thought that way. And so here we are, with, you know, yet another Supreme Court case that erodes away these limits that were supposed to be put on government power.

Scott Horton 3:40
But then, so in the article, you say, this is the big mistake of asking the federal government to intervene here and the incorporation in tech the entire concept of incorporation of the Bill of Rights by the Supreme Court against the state. So what the hell is all that about?

Mike Maharrey 3:57
Yeah, so this is where I am I tend to make a lot of libertarians angry. And I you know, I’m almost almost feel the Oh yeah, I almost feel like I’m, I feel like I’m spitting into the wind saying this. But there is this this impulse to use the Supreme Court to use the bill of rights to use the Federal Constitution to basically police the states and ensure that the states don’t violate our rights. And I get the impulse because obviously, we don’t want governments violating our rights. And the reality is, all governments at every level are going to violate our rights, that is the nature of government, governments are, are, by their very nature and typical antithetical, I should say, to individual liberty and freedom. So there’s this impulse like I said, the problem is, it is a misplaced impulse because it places too much authority in the central power it centralizes a monopolizes power at the federal level. And this was never intended, the first thing that people need to understand is that the Bill of Rights, as written and ratified was never intended to apply to state governments. And this is not debatable. People will try to debate me but I simply say find me any place during the ratification of the Bill of Rights during the creation of the Bill of Rights. Even when the Bill of Rights was being conceived that it was intended to apply to the States. It doesn’t exist, you can’t find it. People try this legal reasoning and whatnot. But the fact of the matter is, they did not want the federal government having that much power over the states, James Madison, during the drafting of the Constitution actually tried to put in a provision that would have allowed the federal government to veto any state law. And that was rejected. It was rejected resoundingly, because the biggest fear at the time was that the centralized power would be too big and strong, and it would overwhelm the individual states. And so the Bill of Rights was crucial. To limit federal authority,

Scott Horton 6:02
and I don’t want to be too much of a technicality terian about it or anything. But it says in the preamble to the Bill of Rights, that this is a list of declaratory and restrictive clauses. In other words, it’s not a bill of rights at all. It’s a bill of restrictions by free people against the new government that they had created.

Mike Maharrey 6:21
I am so glad you said that actually did a little short video yesterday for the 10th amendment center that we put up on our Instagram and maybe on Twitter. And I said that exact same thing the Bill of Rights was Miss named it should have been called the bill of restrictions. It does not give you any rights. It doesn’t even really, you know, it’s not giving the government permission to protect our rights. It’s restraining the actions of government. And in this case, the federal government’s

Scott Horton 6:45
You know, I’m glad you said that because, um, you know, I know much more about the Texas constitution than the other state governments constitutions, but I’m pretty sure they’re all like this are much more along these lines. Is that Texas Bill of Rights says the Texas government must protect your right to go to whatever church you want, carrying a gun, whatever it is free speech, etc. It’s not just a list of restrictions. It’s a mandate to the state governments, which makes their bills of rights actual bills of rights in that sense. And sort of the opposite take then the national one, right.

Mike Maharrey 7:23
I did not know that about the Texas Bill of Rights. That’s interesting. So the bar is set even higher for the state of Texas. I’m more familiar with the Kentucky Bill of Rights and it is more it’s written more along the lines of the Federal Bill of Rights. It’s it’s more framed as restrictions. But interestingly, a lot of the restrictions are actually better than what you find in the federal Bill of Rights. For instance, I was just looking at the Kentucky bill of rights on the freedom of religion. And this has been an issue up there because the governor has shut down churches with Coronavirus lockdown. And interestingly one of the phrases that’s in the Kentucky Bill of Rights I’m kind of paraphrasing here, but it basically says the the right of conscience will not be infringed. That’s pretty broad. You know, basically it’s saying that that your your right to act in a way that that corresponds with your religious beliefs. And of course, religious beliefs can also be non religious, that the government cannot infringe upon that so even stronger than the First Amendment. But like I said, the libertarian impulse and the conservative impulse is to use the federal government to us this incorporation doctrine. I don’t know if you want to get into the nitty gritty details of the incorporation.

Scott Horton 8:42
Yeah, go ahead, though. Okay, well, we got time let’s,

Mike Maharrey 8:45
let’s do it. incorporation doctrine was a basically a legal principle that was, in essence created out of thin air based on the 14th amendment. It was some 50 plus years after the 14th amendment was ratified, and it actually kind of goes against what the Supreme Court said the Fourth Amendment was intended to do when the Fourth Amendment was originally was originally ratified. And what that was the fourth amendment 14th amendment, when it talks about, you know, the privileges and immunities and the right to due process, basically what it was doing, it was ensuring that the freed slaves would be recognized as citizens, and that they would have the same basic fundamental rights, such as being able to enter into contracts, being able to travel, those types of things. And they were actually specific things that were laid out in a civil rights act before the 14th amendment was even ratified. Those things were specified, it was never intended to apply the bill of rights to the States. And yet 50 years later, the Supreme Court comes up with this incorporation doctrine using quote unquote due process to in effect allow the federal government to police states and to say, you know, even though the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law, it now means no state No local government shall make no law. According to the Supreme Court, a lot of libertarians, a lot of conservatives, a lot of people who care about Liberty like this because they think the federal government is going to clamp down on the states, and they’re going to keep us free. They’re going to police the states. My objection to this is number one, it never works. As we see with this case, I shouldn’t say never. But very rarely does the federal court limit government power most of the time, it erodes away those restrictions on government power. And when that happens in a Supreme Court case, it applies to the entire United States. So let’s think about this Kansas vs. Glover case had it stayed in the state as it was supposed to? Well, in this case, it actually would have been good because the state Supreme Court ruled in a way that was favorable toward liberty, you restricted the activities of the police. What we got instead when it went federal is now we have a chipping away of the right to protect are persons places and papers and and vehicles. Now that applies to the whole United States that decision is going to be viewed by every police department in every county in every state in this country. As we can now stop people, if we see that the owner of the cars driver’s license is suspended.

Scott Horton 11:18
So what we’ve done course they can program their computer like that to to read license plates and just say, any car that’s connected to somebody who’s licensed and suspended Litem, right.

Mike Maharrey 11:29
So my point is that, in some few cases, if we use the federal government as the I call it, the Liberty enforcement squad, if we use it that way, every once in a while we’ll get some some crumbs of liberty, that will be good, but in most cases, we’re going to get this kind of garbage that’s going to be imposed on every state in the union. And I think we’re better off keeping it decentralized, keeping things within a state work under your state constitutions in your state Bill of Rights. Instead of making everything into a federal case, I scream this until I’m red in my in the face, but then people yell at me and say, Well, what happens if the states violate our rights? Well, what happens when the federal government violates all right? I say just pretend like the state is the upper highest level, and then do whatever you would have done when the federal government have violated your rights, but just do it at the state level instead of taking it and centralizing power at the top.

Scott Horton 12:24
Yeah. It’s like trying to go to your boss’s boss to get him in trouble. It’s usually not going to work for him.

Mike Maharrey 12:30
But exactly, it’s a good analogy. Actually. I’m gonna steal that.

Scott Horton 12:34
Yeah, I’ve been using that one for a while. In fact, you reminded me of it. It’s been a while since I used it. But you know, so here’s the thing, though, is you have Brady and Miranda and all of these great decisions enforcing the Bill of Rights on the states where the police department’s before used to get away with a hell of a lot more blue bloody murder than they even get away with now, and the people did not say hey, we have an ideology of freedom and We demand that our local prosecutors are accountable to the law. They don’t, you know, all this stuff about you have the right to remain silent and all of that that never came from the bottom up. And so, and especially for the poor and minorities, you know, it’s easy to be a middle class white guy, and think that, you know, maybe the good old days were better for somebody like me, but and, of course, you know, poor minorities still are getting the shaft. I’m not saying that, but but, you know, there’s the exclusionary rule on the Fourth Amendment. I mean, that was the federal government that made that up. Right.

Mike Maharrey 13:38
Right. And like I said, you will get you will get good outcomes from time to time. And and and I guess that’s the temptation of it, because it’s easier to try to do it all at the centralized authority, but there’s no reason every single state has a an equivalent to the Fourth Amendment. So there’s absolutely no reason that those legal cases that went to the Supreme Court and made that change. There’s no reason that those couldn’t have happened at each state level. Granted, it’s, you know, it’s more difficult because you’ve got 50 states. But I think you could have had the same outcome without centralizing authority at the top, my position is that liberty is going to be threatened the most when power is centralized the most. And I always try to remind people that any power that you give any government is ultimately going to be used against you. So when you’re giving the the federal government the power to police, the states, you’re also giving them the power to basically determine what those rights are going to be. And you’re going to have an unequal outcomes. There’s some states that are absolutely going to suck. But I think it’s worth taking that risk rather than taking the risk of centralizing power, monopolizing power and giving the federal government that kind of domination, where essentially you have five government lawyers who are determining what your rights are going to be? That just doesn’t seem like a wise system to me. So I think we could do it in a more decentralized way, get the same outcomes, maybe better outcomes in a lot of cases and not risk this centralization of authority that we have going on today. I could name all kinds of horrible cases, you know, you can pick out a few good things, but you know, just for an example, the, the the gun cases like Heller that everybody thinks are great, there are all kinds of holes in that that are going to allow the right to keep and bear arms to be eroded away because of the way that decision was written everything. Oh, it’s great, because we have an individual right to keep and bear arms. It’s not as good as it looks, because there are all kinds of holes in it.

Scott Horton 15:40
Yeah, well, you know, it’s the Supreme Court that invented and you know, conservatives pay attention judicial activism here. The Supreme Court invented qualified immunity. That right essentially gives a license to kill to any cop to murder whoever they want, as long as they’re on the clock and maybe even if they beat their wife to death on a Saturday. Night.

Mike Maharrey 16:00
Yeah. Well, and, you know, the Supreme Court’s also the Augusta body that decided that it’s perfectly acceptable to lock, you know, 100,000 Japanese Americans behind barbed wire for years for no reason. You know, if you want to go back farther, it’s the Supreme Court that decided the black people essentially weren’t humans. So, you know, the Supreme Court doesn’t have a great track record in terms of protecting our liberty. And again, there are certain things that I think that they have gotten right. But by and large, they erode away our liberties. And again, I think we could do this and approach it at a centralized level. It requires more work by more people. But you know, freedom requires work. It’s not just gonna happen, because because we sit back and hope for some new president to appoint the right supreme court justices

Scott Horton 16:49
Hold on just one second Be right back. So you’re constantly buying things from amazon.com. Well, that makes sense. They bring it right to your house. So what you do though, is click through from the link in the right Hand margin at Scott Horton. org and I’ll get a little bit of a kickback from Amazon’s into the sale won’t cost you a thing. Nice little way to help support the show. Again, that’s right there in the margin at Scott Horton. org. Hey, I’ll check it out the libertarian Institute. That’s me and my friends have published three great books this year. First is no quarter, the ravings of William Norman Greg. He was the best one of us. Now he’s gone. But this great collection is a truly fitting legacy for his fight for freedom. I know you’ll love it. Then there’s coming to Palestine by the great Sheldon Richmond. It’s a collection of 40 important essays. He’s written over the years about the truth behind the Israel Palestine conflict. You’ll learn so much and highly valued this definitive libertarian take on the dispossession of the Palestinians and the reality of their brutal occupation. And last but not least, is the great Ron Paul. The Scott Horton show interviews 2004 through 2019 interview transcripts Have all of my interviews of the good doctor over the years on all the wars, money taxes, the police state and more. So how do you like that? Pretty good, right? Find them all at libertarian Institute. org slash books. You need stickers for your band your business will Rick and the guys over at the bumper sticker comm have got you covered great work, Greg prices, sticky things with things printed on them. Whatever you need, the bumper sticker comm we’ll get it done right for you. The bumper sticker.com Well, you know, I’m on the issue of cops killing people. I think it’s important that to point out that activists a lot of times on the local level, you know, you’ll have people who are, you know, interested parties, say NAACP offices and whatever organizations have activists in certain cities, that when there’s a bad police shooting a certain percentage, maybe a plurality or a majority of their effort gets expended asking the federal government Justice Department to come in and review it as a civil rights case. But that seems to me like most of the time, it’s expended effort, you know, wasted effort, because what happens is, and I don’t know if they realize this or what but the Supreme, the the civil rights jurisdiction of the federal government is extremely narrow, like, essentially, the cop would have to go ahead and put his Klan hood on in the middle of beating a black guy to death or shooting them to death. And and say, I’m doing this because I hate people of your race as he does it, for them to have the jurisdiction to prosecute him for that. And so what happens is they end up asking the boss’s boss to come in and review the case and the whatever you 99 times out of 100, or whatever the number is, the Justice Department says, Well, yeah, he didn’t go that far and use the N word during the crime. So he’s okay to escape. But meanwhile if they take in all of that same effort, and just be seized the DHS house or something like that, then probably they could get a lot more bang for their buck.

Mike Maharrey 20:21
Right. And that’s generally my my philosophy when it comes to activism to begin with, that you’re much better off focusing efforts on a local level, or you know, even a state level than you are the federal level because you have more push as an individual or as a as a activism group, with your state and local officials than you do trying to, you know, get some congressmen to pay attention to you unless you have big lobbying money. Your congressman didn’t give two craps about you. Now, you know, granted your state rep doesn’t either but it’s far more likely that you’re going to run into your state rep at the grocery store and make them uncomfortable in you are your representative just popped into my head. Are judges in Texas elected? Yes. Okay. So it’s it’s also true in Kentucky, I believe in Florida. I think a lot of states have elected judges. So you do have some as as a population. Now, I’m not big on electoral politics. But, you know, theoretically, if a judge makes a really crappy decision, you can get them out of office through the electoral process in a lot of states. So once you get these supreme court justices, they’re there forever. I saw I saw on the other day that they were going to put Ruth Bader Bader Ginsburg on, like, they’re going to use the Han Solo with that genic stuff so they can keep her on ice. Carbonite.

Scott Horton 21:39
Yeah.

Mike Maharrey 21:41
Yeah, but I mean, that, you know, I still feel like, you know, people say, what do you do if your state violates your rights? And that’s certainly a legitimate question. States violate rights. And I don’t want anybody to say Mike Maharrey doesn’t think states are going to violate your rights because I absolutely know that they do. But I think there are remedies at the state level. Just Like that go beyond what you have at the federal level. And, you know, I don’t think anybody would accept that. Let’s have the world court, you know, make sure that the Supreme Court in the United States protects our liberty. I don’t think anybody would go for that. So why do we count on the Supreme Court? Let’s take it down another level. And let’s let’s focus in in our states and not break up the decentralization. What little decentralization we have left because I think think decentralization protects literally.

Scott Horton 22:29
Yeah, well, and you know, you look at the history these guys too, and the way that the liberal justices might be a little bit better on some civil liberties issues, right. They usually are the dissenters who lose when they are very rarely their victory there and the right wingers on the court are 100% Law and Order full till I mean, Scalia even wanted to get rid of the exclusionary rule because Come on, cops are so professional these days, we hardly even need it anymore. This kind of thing right? And then but at the same time where the right wingers are better on some economic Issues maybe? Or on guns at least. You know, mostly that’s not what rules mostly it’s the liberals interpretation of the vaster, even more vast powers of the federal government to regulate every little thing that ends up winning the day. And so it’s, you know, essentially what they can compromise on. in the worst way. Instead of protecting our liberty, it’s almost always enhancing the power of the state at our expense, like in the case we brought up here at the beginning, right, where it would have been just as easy for them to say no, actually, it does say particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. And so yeah, if soda Meyer had a good point here, how come the other eight just couldn’t get it? And it’s because they love the state more. They don’t have an ideology of freedom at all. Yeah, and in fact that they’re Americans not withstanding,

Mike Maharrey 23:54
right. And when you get to the big things, you know, when you get to things like war powers or emergency power, In those type of things, you know, emergency measures to spy or emergency measures to lock people up without due process. It’s almost always 100% behind the government, because these are extraordinary times that we have to, you know, allow the government to do its thing. So anytime that there’s an emergency or a war, you can count on your liberties being eroded by anybody who’s who’s in any judicial position in the federal government, because that’s just how they operate. You know, I’ve actually read a couple of times this in the last couple of weeks, these these statements that, you know, your rights are not absolute. And I, you know, I guess when the government’s interpreting them, they’re not, but the interesting

Scott Horton 24:42
I thought that’s what a right was, but Okay,

Mike Maharrey 24:44
anyway. Exactly. And that’s the problem with looking at the Constitution in the bill of rights as a protection of rights as opposed to a restriction on government because restrictions are absolute. You know, there’s no buck clauses in any of those, any of those restrictions on government, you find In the Bill of Rights, right, it can’t be interpreted away. But when you start interpreting things like rights, which are vague and ambiguous to begin with, then sure, you know, some guy can come up with some some reason that well, we need to whittle away at it here because we have this emergency or we have this war or, you know, we have

Scott Horton 25:16
it’s defining rights down in a really important way. We see this with free speech, right, where, you know, someone will say, I guess, you know, advocates for censorship on things like Twitter or Facebook, they’re used to people saying, hey, you’re, you’re violating the First Amendment, which is a red herring, right? No, they’re not. It’s not a you know, Twitter is not a public Commons owned by the state. And it ain’t your private property. And so, you, you know, they have every right to censor you as far as that goes. But then when people say, listen, the way Twitter censors things, it’s really a violation of free speech. And then people say no They have every right to do it and that kind of thing, where even if you don’t mention the First Amendment at all, people will say the first amendment is only about government action. But meanwhile, you’re trying to talk about a principle of free speech, where, you know, Twitter and Facebook and YouTube I mean, look at what’s going on with the virus stuff. They take, you know, these kind of cranky documentaries, and they just 86 of them so you can’t even look at them anymore. You know? And, and which is a severe violation of the principle of free speech forget the First Amendment has nothing to do with it, but then people hide behind the first amendment to say any censorship short of Congress outright outlawing this or that kind of speech is perfectly acceptable and in fact, even Haha, how do you like it? right wingers who say that, you know, private property owners have the right to choose what to do with their property. You hit the nail on the head, man And I said this the other day, I was telling my wife that the this taking stuff down office total social media platforms and granted a lot of this stuff like you said, it’s cranky, and and a lot of it’s just stupid. But the fact of the matter is taking it down is the modern day equivalent of burning a book. And, you know, everybody gets all bent out of shape about book burning. Well, you know, when you start when you start picking and choosing what ideas are allowed to float around out there and the land of ideas, that’s a problem. And, you know, it’s not long before somebody starts deciding what you think and what you you believe is not worthy of being out there too. So that’s a slippery slope.

Yeah, yeah. They don’t have to burn the books. They just remove them. Yeah, right. So hey, listen, now I one time, oh, 12 years ago now. I went to a future Freedom Foundation conference in Virginia, where Jonathan Turley, the famous lawyer gave a big speech and he went on and on for like, an hour. Doing case after case after case after case where the Fourth Amendment was eroded just on the question of what are your rights as an automobile traveler on the American public roadways, and it was like case after case after case where it was actually in a way, it was instructive that they really only whittled it away a little bit at a time. But you had things like the big example was, they said, Well, what are we going to do? send another deputy out to the judge’s house in the middle of the night and wake him up so that we can get a warrant to look in your suspicious trunk? So come on, let’s Yeah, but then once everybody got cell phones, then did they go back and revisit that decision? and say, well, the justification has been changed by modern technology. And now that the deputy sheriff can just call the judge at home, no problem from the side of the road. Then I guess we’ll have to go back to the Bill of Rights. Again, no They, of course kept that and just like Higgs ratchet effect, you know, these, cumulatively, you know, these 10 or 20 decisions, however they are and up to and including this latest one, it’s just completely eviscerated. What previous generations would have considered their fourth amendment rights as they’re traveling.

Mike Maharrey 29:21
Yeah, I mean, you can look at the same thing. And in terms of the way the the protections of, you know, personal papers and effects, you know, your email is every bit a paper, even though it’s an electronic form, as a piece of mail in your mailbox, and everybody would throw a fit if some FBI agent showed up at their house and got their mail out and started scanning their mail and putting it in a big database. And yet, nobody blinks an eye when, you know, they grab up emails or web browsing histories, or location data, all of this stuff. And a lot of this has been, you know, well, you know, because it’s electric. It’s different. So, you You see it on both sides of it, the old established things. They say, well, technology’s changed. So the limits of government are expanded now. And so you know, you get it coming and going, basically.

Scott Horton 30:12
Yeah. Oh, there’s the third party doctrine is a huge one, right? Where, hey, as long as you’re doing business with another private party, then hey, those are public records in the NSA, and the FBI have every right to all of them.

Mike Maharrey 30:29
Yeah, you know, who’s a big fan of that Trumps Neil Gorsuch. He’s a big third party doctrine, guy.

Scott Horton 30:34
Yeah, there you go. And, I mean, that thing is a loophole. You could drive a Mack truck through, you could drive an entire FBI through.

Mike Maharrey 30:41
and they do on a regular basis. I mean, that’s, that’s part of the justification they use for snapping up all of your phone, phone data, because it all goes through at&t or Verizon or sprint or whoever. It’s a it’s it’s a big mess. And here’s, here’s the thing that I would, I would ask them libertarians to to consider. Because the notion is is that we can we can finally get control of this government. If we can do that, then we can impose Liberty from the top down. Do you really believe that libertarians are ever going to control the apparatus of the federal government, our true libertarians ever going to control the supreme court? I mean, conservatives can’t even get control of it. Or, you know, there’s always that swing vote, like you said, Where, where it shifts back and forth. I think it’s a fool’s errand to steal the title of a really good book on the Afghanistan war. It’s a fool’s errand to think that you’re going to take over the federal government and use that power to impose Liberty it’s never ever going to work.

Scott Horton 31:44
Yeah, no, that’s totally true. Although, you know, I think the real role of the libertarians should be to set the agenda and the the list of priorities for the left and the right. And so that we don’t have to, we shouldn’t have to convince them to really be libertarians and change their identity from one thing to another. That’s a fool’s errand itself. But if we just say, Hey, listen, saving the Bill of Rights, such as it is, for the future generations, that is our responsibility. We have to care about this stuff. And we have to insist that these are the most important things. And, you know, we live in a society where people by and large agree with you and me, then we’ll be a lot better off when it comes out in practice, even at the hands of the nine Kooks and robes up there,

Mike Maharrey 32:35
I think, Hey, I think that’s a good point. It’s, it’s about, you know, taking over the narrative and, and helping people to realize the libertarian tendencies that they have, that have been buried under the mantle of statism all of their lives, because I think a lot of people do when you really boil it down. They do care about civil liberties, and they do care about you know, they don’t With the police being able to bust into their house in the middle of the night and shoot you in your bed is just happened in Louisville, Kentucky, because somebody messed up a warrant address. So, yeah, I think that I think you’re right when it comes to overall libertarian strategy. Unfortunately, libertarians oftentimes don’t do a very good job of articulating their own ideals. Yeah, well, and that includes Me too. And I’m sorry that we don’t have time to talk about that case that you just brought up because it’s so important. I want to do a show on it, but I can tell people that they can read all about it. The Free Thought Project is empty. That was shot by the cops, you know, after midnight, in this horrible rate. But anyway, I’m sorry, I’m so late. I gotta go. But I appreciate you so much coming back on the show, Michael.

It’s always a pleasure, Scott and appreciate everything you’re doing, and Just keep it up.

Scott Horton 33:47
Aren’t you guys that is the great Michael Maharrey. He is at the 10th amendment center over there with Michael Bolden. And that is 10th amendment center.com and this one is at the libertarian Institute Supreme Court. rules against Fourth Amendment. The Scott Horton show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com ScottHorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org

Scott Horton 0:10
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys introducing Aaron montay. He is a regular writer at the Gray Zone. That’s the grayzone.com and he hosts the podcast there, Push Back. Welcome back to the show. How you doing Aaron?

Aaron Mate 0:54
Hey, Scott, how are you?

Scott Horton 0:55
I’m doing great. appreciate you joining us here today. So the first thing I want to ask you about is something that you’re essentially the editor of. You didn’t write it. It’s OPC W. whistleblowers. OPC w insiders slam compromised in new Syria chemical weapons probe. And this is not about Duma. This is at a place called I’m not sure I’ll let you pronounce it a different attack from March of 2017. So just before the con shake Kuhn fake attack, which I don’t know if we got any whistleblowers on that one yet, but these people wrote this scathing report for your website here. It’s quite remarkable. Tell us about it, please.

Aaron Mate 1:44
You know, I can’t say too much about it. It. What I can say is that it was written by a team of OPC insiders. I can’t really detail exactly what that means, but what I can say is that the the piece was written by people who represent the views of a small group of current and former OPC W. Officials. And the message from them is that there is dissension inside the ranks and there is deep skepticism about the OPC w being politicized. And we saw that most starkly with the Duma leaks, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. But now these people are also coming out and saying that this same political ization, is being applied to this other investigation as well. And that was, as you say, this probe of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Syrian town wattana in March 2017. And what’s interesting about that report, it was done by this it’s the first report of this newly formed team at the OPC w called the investigation and identification team and it was established extensively to identify alleged perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. But what these op CW insiders write in their op ed is that basically it was set up with the sole aim of blaming any chemical weapons attack on the Syrian government so that the US and other Western powers, the ones who helped set up this new team and pushed it through, can blame Syria for chemical weapons attacks and pursue their proxy war and sanctions against Syria further, and so, this op ed just goes through the reasons to be skeptical about this latest report. It’s interesting, when you look at the media reports about this i t report, everybody took it as the OPC w saying that the that this investigation has found conclusively that the Assad government carried out this chemical weapons attack of both Farren and chlorine in this town in March 2017 When you actually read the report, all it says is that there are, quote, reasonable grounds to believe on quote, that a chemical attack occurred, which is far different from saying a chemical attack occurred and it was a standard government. All they’re saying is that it’s reasonable to believe that that it that it that the Syrian government was responsible. But as these op CW insiders point out, because that language is actually so tentative, and so ambiguous, that it also means that you can’t rule out that there are reasonable grounds to believe that it wasn’t the Syrian government that it wasn’t the Syrian government. And so even the way that this report has been ripped, has been taken by the media doesn’t even act accurately represent what the report says. And of course, these obviously, they’ll be used and give up plenty of other reasons to question even the case for even believing that there might be reasonable grounds to think that the Syrian government did it and people can read it. more of it at the gray zone com?

Scott Horton 5:02
Well, look, the deal is that if you had written this thing, it would have been great. But the fact that this was written by insiders and organization for the prevention of chemical weapons, and just the attitude behind it again, it’s absolutely scathing report the way that they criticize the official story here, such as it is, and they completely dismantle it with prejudice. You can tell. So, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about what are their arguments in here?

Aaron Mate 5:33
Well, I mean, the the most, I mean, first of all, what they do is they they enter actually the political realm, which is something that, you know, in a normal OPC w report, you wouldn’t do this case, they looked at the political question of motive. So what motive with the Syrian government after having been told that this red line by the US What motive would they have to drop chemical weapons into basically an empty field, which is, which is what allegedly happened here? If we’re supposed to believe the official narrative, that this that this was a Syrian chemical weapons attack in this town, then the what we have to believe is that the Syrian government dropped Sharon and chlorine into basically an empty space. And so why would they do that? They’re after they’ve been told of this red line and not in the many instances before. When, you know, you have instances like when when the Syrian militants were closing in on Latakia and threatening to carry out, you know, mass murder. There was no chemical weapons use then and all these other cases where, you know, even the Syrian government has lost areas, no chemical weapons use is there. So why all the sudden would they decide to use it now on this empty field, especially now that they’re working with Russia and This will also basically require Russia’s cooperation essentially, because they’re sharing military bases with Russia now, too, because now we’re talking about 2017. Well, after Russia has entered the war, so even from a point of view of motive, it doesn’t make sense. And then they get into some of the other technical stuff, which I, I will leave to them to, to summarize, because it’s complicated, and it requires a careful reading to understand and they get into, you know, the composition of bonds and, and things that technically, I’m not very well versed in, so I won’t, I won’t try. But they basically just make the case for why the idea that this was a Syrian Government attack is so implausible.

Scott Horton 7:39
Well, and a couple of points are general enough that I think that they can be paraphrased, where they’re just saying the chain of custody of the so called evidence here is completely suspect. And the people who wrote the report sat in Turkey, and received it at the hands of these NGOs who are all tied to the opposition. There’s no objective source for any of the information about This attack in the first place. So that was the chain of custody at any criminal trial in America, we get thrown right out.

Aaron Mate 8:07
So that’s the obvious one. That’s that. That’s a very good point. And Thanks for pointing it out. Yes, they they point out that the obviously there’ll be you it investigation says that they maintained chain of custody, quote, after the receipt of the items, unquote. So basically, after you get, you know, these these samples, and by the way, you don’t even get them right after the alleged incident, you get them over the course of a year, slowly coming in and into Turkey. And you’re saying that you only confirm the chain of custody, you can only vouch for the chain of custody after you’ve gotten custody, which is basically is totally meaningless. And yes, as you say, by those standards, this case, there is no court that would ever accept this stuff as evidence.

Scott Horton 8:56
Yeah. You know, and they talk about there too, he talks about, you know, these small little bits of shrapnel, little pieces of metal that they brought. And they said, Well, how come you didn’t bring the rest of it? Or we just have these little pieces instead of the actual container. And they had a plausible explanation for the container to that the Syrians when they gave up all their chemical weapons, after the big fake attack of 2013, that they kept some of the containers to fill them with conventional explosives. So if you had pieces of those, that would make sense since they were dropping regular, you know, conventional explosive bombs in the same form at By that time, since they’d gotten rid of all their chemical weapons and had some leftover.

Aaron Mate 9:48
Yeah, yeah. Now, that claim requires relying on the Syrian government’s account and, you know, so that has to be noted, but look The this is where it gets the the other cases as well, you have so many doubts now I’ve been raised about ghouta. I mean, Ted postal has done some of the some of the definitive work on that showing that the rocket ranges that were alleged against the Syrian government were actually implausible. And then it’s far more likely that the rockets that that delivered the chemical weapons and that incident actually came from militant controlled territory. And then we have the just preponderance of evidence in the Duma case, which shows how the opa CW superiors intervened to suppress all the evidence that the inspectors collected on the ground excluded their findings and excluded the key inspectors who carried out the investigation from the process and basically doctored all their evidence so you have just a series of questionable in one case in case of doom I just just completely scandalous. investigations and now you know, the fact that you’re seeing people close to the OPC W. Now feeling compelled to publicly directly challenge when it comes out with and basically say it’s been compromised, it just speaks to. It’s a huge scandal that deserves a lot of scrutiny and certainly a lot more attention.

Scott Horton 11:53
Hey guys, just real quick, if you listen to the interviews only feed at the institute or at Scott Horton. org. I just want to make sure you know that I do a q&a show from time to time at Scott Horton. org slash show the old whole show feed. And so if you like that kind of thing, check that out there. Hey, guys, here’s how to support this show. You can donate various amounts at Scott Horton. org slash donate. We’ve got some great kickbacks for you there. Shop amazon.com by way of my link at Scott Horton. org. Leave a good review for the show and iTunes and Stitcher. Tell a friend Oh yeah, and buy my books. fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan and the great Ron Paul, the Scott Horton show interviews 2004 through 2019. And thanks Hey guys, check out listen and think audiobooks. They’re listening think.com and of course on audible.com and they feature my book fool’s errand time to end the war in Afghanistan, as well as brand new out inside Syria by our friend Reese, Eric, and a lot of other great books, mostly by libertarians there. Reese might be one exception, but essentially, they’re all libertarian audio books. And here’s how you can get a lifetime subscription to listen and think audiobooks. just donate $100 to the Scott Horton show at Scott Horton. org slash donate well, and so yeah, now remind us a little bit about that, because never even mind the case of the Duma attack, the case of the politics of the doom attack and the whistle blowing and the different I guess it was right about a year ago this started but all the different leaks and all of the fighting back and forth from some named and some unnamed whistleblowers out of the OPCW in the case of the doom attack is really interesting in its own right. It’s sort of could be its own story, even if it was about something less consequential.

Aaron Mate 14:29
So the Duma attack allegedly happens in April 2018. A few weeks later, the OPC w inspection team gets on the ground. They go to the sites, they take the cylinders, they tagged them, they do the measurements at the locations. They put out an interim report in July 2018. That’s pretty inconclusive, but doesn’t really say too much basically says we need to do some more investigation. Less than a year later, March 1 2019. They put out a final report and that’s when they say that there are reasonable grounds to believe that a chemical weapon that a chemical weapons attack took place, and that the chemical weapon was chlorine. And the influence of their finding, although they don’t directly say it is that the chlorine attack was carried out by the Syrian government, because that is the only party with aircraft. So and then is taken by, you know, by the media, by the US government as, as being validation for the US government airstrikes that Trump ordered shortly after the alleged attack. But then, in May of 2019, and engineering report, surfaces on the internet leaked to a group of British academics called the working group who by that point had been raising questions about some flawed or questionable language inside the final report. They were already pointing out some inconsistencies. And basically this engineering assessment is attributed to an A ob CW staff. Member named in Henderson. And it actually argues based on a detailed study of the Duma location where the cylinder where the cylinders were found. And based on the measurements that were taken there that actually, there’s a much higher likelihood that the cylinder is found there. Were not dropped from the sky, but we’re, quote manually placed. And in saying that, if you’re saying that it’s manually placed, you’re basically saying that the attack was staged. And so that sets off a huge controversy. The opposite view announces an investigation into the leak, but then we get more leaks from WikiLeaks. And now we learn a second OPC w expert, like Ian Anderson, who has written letters to the OPC w leadership right after that final report gets released in March 2019. Basically voicing his objection and saying that so much critical evidence not just in Henderson study, but A lot more, including toxicology and chemical samples from the scene showing that chlorine was found basically at trace levels. So basically at a meaningless level, and in fact, and that the chlorine that was found, can be found in basically everyday household chemicals like, you know, like bleach products and so on. So now we have to, obviously, they’ll be you, inspect rs, saying that all their evidence saying that their evidence was excluded, and we have no explanation for it. And then we get more and more leaks showing that these inspectors were minimize from the process that even though they were the ones on the ground in Syria, collecting the evidence and and actually one of them was tasked with writing the first draft of the report, because he was the he was the most senior investigator and most experienced, we see that they’ve been excluded from the process and that the opposite will be true. leadership has basically installed a very small team called the so called core team to basically take charge of writing the report. And it’s these people who are basically leaving out all the evidence that these inspectors found and, and putting in some disingenuous language and in terms of Ian Henderson’s report, we never get an explanation as to why his findings are excluded. We only learn that the OIC CW then consults three unnamed outside experts. We have no idea who they are, and we can’t even see their work except for a few fragments of it in the final report to judge for ourselves whether they’re accurate or not. Whereas we now have Ian Henderson’s you know, full detailed study where he makes the case for why the cylinders were likely manually placed so we have no way even to we have no explanation as to why Henderson’s report was excluded, and we have no way even to compare it to the reports that were relied on for the OPC W’s final conclusions.

Scott Horton 18:01
Yep. And the same question of motive remains. Why in the world would Assad do that? When the only thing that could accomplish to get him in trouble and nothing else?

Oh, yeah. I mean, Well, look, it’s, you know, with what, you know, contra mckuen happened right after Trump had been talking about and the Trump ministration. And we talking about, you know, regime change, no longer being a priority. For the US right after that. concha. Kuhn happens, and there have been all sorts of questions raised about that. And maybe one day we’ll we’ll hear more even from within the Opie CW ranks, I definitely would not rule that out. But the motive there never, ever made sense. And then you have fat and Trump, you know, responded to that allegation of Cancun with bombings, e bombs here one year later, a similar thing I thought is about to take back Duma on the outskirts of Damascus. He’s about to win and all of a sudden, we get This allegation, again, from militants on the ground in Duma, the group that controlled it at the time was j shell Islam, which is heavily backed by Saudi Arabia. They now accuse Assad of a new cup chemical weapons attack, and that again leads to Trump administration strike. So it just from a point of view, forgetting all the evidence, even of motive, why would Assad do the one thing that could trigger that he knows will trigger a US military response it you know, it makes no sense.

Yeah, well, which is funny because none of his motives make any sense as according to the Americans here, and they’re lying against him this whole time that well, all he wanted to do was get up in the morning and kill every last woman, man, woman and child in his country. But luckily, the plucky moderate rebels were there to resist him and try to stop him from doing that. And we don’t matter that none of that ever made any sense whatsoever. They had a narrative. They’re sticking with it, which is fine. But you know, what’s funny is this one that they’re debunking here in this piece is one that I didn’t even hear of which I guess, maybe goes to what you were saying about how, if it even happened at all, it was a bomb dropped out in the middle of an empty field somewhere. And there were no real consequences of it to report on. But I wonder, do you even think there was an attack at all at this point, or what was there?

Aaron Mate 20:31
No, I, I, I, I I have no reason to doubt that something happened. I mean, there was some militant activity around there and you know, this is a a crazy proxy war. So there’s bombings all over the place, it wouldn’t be hard to to take an attack that happens and pretend it was a chemical weapons attack if you’re the militants on the ground. It is interesting, though, that, you know, the reason why hasn’t gotten much attention is because there were no even casualties. Also, by the way, the hospital records, there are no available hospital records. And you know, that’s possibly because maybe there is a you know, it’s it’s a war and it’s hard to keep, you don’t have records for everything, or there just weren’t any actual casualties, which, you know, which seems to be the case. So look, it’s it’s very sketchy. And it’s funny. It’s interesting to me that they chose this one first, and not Duma. And I think the reason is, even though the AI, even though the IIT is mandated to investigate Duma, I don’t see how they can do that. Now. I don’t see how they can put their name anybody can put their name on a report that carries out the OPC W’s function now, which is basically to lend credibility to, you know, war mongering with Syria and to justify the US strikes that took place in response to the doom allegations, but how can they put anybody seriously put their name on that without Taking on the evidence that was excluded from the initial do my reports from the OPC w just anybody with any credibility? I just can’t do it. I think the best they could do is say that the evidence is inconclusive. But given now that all the evidence has come out the engineering report and the toxicology and the chemical samples, I mean, they’re gonna have to grapple with that, especially because Ian Henderson, before the ultra CW started trying to paint him falsely as this rogue actor who, you know, acted on his own without permission. He was even asked to submit his report to the IIT for their consideration. So they actually have to consider his report now. So for them to come out and weigh in on Duma means they’ll have to basically refute his engineering and he being an experienced engineering engineer at the open cw, I mean, he’s been with them since its inception in 1997. And him having taken the measurements at the scene, in Duma, and literally Got on his got down on all fours and crawled around and took the measurements. It’s gonna be very hard for them to take on his findings and dismiss them. So I think the fact that they did this one first, where there’s no countervailing evidence available and it’s it’s something people hadn’t even heard of, that strikes me as possibly being a deliberate choice. Yeah. Which I’d say also, it’s the dissension within the ranks is not just confirmed to being with these two whistleblowers we know about in Henderson and his colleague who was also a senior member of the opposite w team at the grey zone. We’ve published now, two separate notes from other whistleblowers at the OPC w people expressing serious discomfort with how the OPC W is being run, and both of them expressing just strong objections to how the Duma investigators were treated. So just just to show that this is an organization, and now with our with this piece we published about the IoT report. There is, there is major dissension inside the ranks, and I suspect we’re gonna hear more about it. As things unfold, great.

Scott Horton 24:56
Well, we’ll be keeping our eyes on the gray zone about that. And now listen, let me ask you a couple things about some Russia gate updates here. Yeah. First of all, we’ve known all along, since I’m not sure when I think 2017 or at least 18, that Mike Flynn, in fact, had colluded with a foreign government in the or to even in during the election campaign season and then during even the run up to the inauguration there in the transition period. And now, apparently, there’s even a little bit more information coming out about a possible collusion between the Trump campaign and a foreign power Russia?

Not Russia, but Israel and that was made known to us. pretty clearly when Michael Flynn was indicted it’s just the problem is the media ignored the Israel part of Michael Flynn’s indictment were basically he confirmed that at Israel’s request, the Trump the Trump transition team tried to intervene to undermine a UN Security Council vote that condemned Israeli settlement building in the occupied territories. The vote was taken in December 2016, just one month after Trump’s victory. And the Trump transition, including Michael Flynn, tried very hard to get another country to to veto that, that vote to vote against it because the Obama administration for pretty much the first time was not going to veto a UN resolution criticizing Israel. He wasn’t going to vote for But it was going to abstain, which meant that unless somebody else intervened, it would pass it would be approved. And so the Israeli government asked the Trump transition to intervene, and they tried and Michael Flynn helped carry that out when he called the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. And one of the things that they discussed was, you know, Flynn trying to convince him to vote against this, but the Russian government declined. So we’ve known about this for a long time, it’s all gotten completely ignored, because we’re not supposed to air about possible Israeli collusion. We’re only supposed to care about this non existent Russian collusion, which occupied everybody for three years until the fantasy collapsed. And now to back

Kislyak didn’t hear about it, he would have known that it was his job to give Flynn his marching orders not to decline a request

Aaron Mate 26:50
for Exactly, exactly. And, and then there is more documents that have come out recently with Roger stone where we’re in his case he was in contact with some some prominent Israeli figures. I don’t think we know exactly who yet. But it’s and Roger stone is relaying some offers of assistance from, from some prominent Israelis to help to help out the Trump campaign. Although you know, Roger stone is a pretty big blowhard saw. It’s hard for me to take anything he says seriously. I mean, for example, he was claiming for a long time that he had a secret back channel to WikiLeaks. And that was, of course a complete fabrication too. So but you know, look, there certainly that the, the fact that the Trump administration tried to undermine the the fact that the Trump transition tried to undermine the outgoing administration’s policy, at the request of the Israeli government and donors like Sheldon Adelson shows that certainly there was a close tie between the Trump circle and Israel and it’s just funny that unfortunately, because you know, blanket support for these really government is bipartisan. Even though we’ve known about this forever, it’s just you know, it doesn’t register. We don’t see it covered on msnbc. There’s, you know, the there’s like there’s liberal groups called the Moscow project, but there’s no you know, which is formed to investigate Trump Russia context, but there’s no Tel Aviv project, which is formed to investigate or scrutinize Trump Israeli contact. And that’s just because, you know, the policy of blind support for Israel is pretty much bipartisan. And whereas this Russia thing was a completely partisan and baseless scam, two that consumed our attention for three years and now we’re just the only information we’re learning now is just getting more of a window into to the extent of the scam and in the Michael Flynn case. We’ve had new documents this week, you know, that strongly point to what has been pretty apparent all along is that he was set up by the FBI who interviewed him? Because they wanted to get him fired? And that’s an interesting question as to why they did I suspect, it might even have something to do with Syria, because, you know, I, as you’ve covered extensively on your show, it was Flynn’s agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency that came out with that report, very early on in the story in the Syria proxy, where basically saying that, you know, the people who were the strongest fighting forces inside Syria, who we were supporting, or talking about supporting were the Salafi militias were al Qaeda and ISIS. And so, you know, there is antagonism towards Michael Flynn, inside the national security state. And I’ve always wondered whether the fact that he was calling out what the US was doing in Syria, I’ve always wondered whether that was a factor.

Scott Horton 29:51
Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t that he was such a hawk on Iran, which he is because they’re all hawks on Iran didn’t seem to bother him that much. So it’s not like he was going to be able to, you know, single handedly undo the Iran deal or something like that. And that ended up happening anyway under his replacement john bolton,

Aaron Mate 30:17
so. Yeah, ah, yep.

Scott Horton 30:18
So yeah, I think you’re right. It probably was about Syria. And now one more thing here about the collusion is the new report about Christopher Steele. And his meeting with Clinton campaign officials and whether this amounted to collusion. Obviously, Christopher Steele was a Brit, not an American. I don’t know if that counts or not. But then I want to ask you, too, about this whole Oh, no, the Russian collusion was really for Hillary and they were trying to sabotage Trump’s spin that’s going on around here lately, which seemed to have been attached to these new revelations here about the clinton lawyers meeting with Steel.

Aaron Mate 31:01
Oh, so you’re saying that that the allegation is that in fact that, that the Russian dissident that there was a Russian disinformation campaign trying to under

Scott Horton 31:13
Trump rather than Clinton? Yah.

Aaron Mate 31:15
Yeah. I mean, you know, whether this is whether this is Russian disinformation? I don’t know. I mean I, I suspect that I mean, the odds of the Russian government trying to get involved one way or the other. You know, I, I don’t see what motive they would have. They would have had to try to hurt Trump. I mean, Trump was trying to Trump is calling for better ties with Russia. So I don’t see the Russian government having an interest in trying to undermine him. And at that point, it was everybody believed that Hillary was gonna win anyway. So I don’t give that allegation, much weight. I mean, what I do know is that the fact that Steel was meeting with Clinton and DNC people to show the extent to which the Clinton campaign the DNC had a role in basically every facet of the Russia gate scam. They had a major role in the collusion aspect and that it was Christopher Steele, who first generated these allegations. And Christopher Steele says that one, you know, some of the things he included in his report actually came from the clinton DNC people he met with. So he says that this one DNC attorney last name assessment, gave him the idea which he included in his dossier, that there was some secret communication between the Trump campaign and this Russian bank, alpha bank. And then this led to all these crazy theories that that was the way the Trump administration and Russia conspired by speaking over the servers. There was like a major article in The New Yorker and in slate, and of course endlessly on MSNBC and CNN. And it turns out that you know that this idea comes from a Clinton campaign lawyer and steel just puts that in his dossier is somehow being a serious allegation or a serious theory. And so it just underscores that, and basically much every aspect of the Russia scam, you have a major DNC Clinton camp role in the collusion piece of this, you have the steel dossier, and all that stuff and how that was the bait that was used in the FBI investigation to get surveillance warrant on Carter page at minimum, as we already know, and then you have even in the Russian hacking education, who does that come from? CrowdStrike. Who are they they’re, they’re a DNC contractor. Even the you know, all the all the fear mongering about Russian social media trolls, that comes from according to The Washington Post, veterans from of the Obama and Clinton camps, who after the election came up with this theory that Russian so Media trolls had use sophisticated propaganda to sway voters in key states. And that’s what helped elect Trump and they shared those findings with the Senate or they shared their theories with the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Senate Intelligence Committee Chair mark warner then flew out to Facebook. And, and and shared that idea with Facebook and not long after that, Facebook after initially concluding that these Russian social media pages were just basically juvenile clickbait commercial operations. Then they came out with these findings, basically lending credence to the theories of the Obama and Clinton operative so all the key aspects of the Russia scam collusion, the hacking, social media, you have a major part is enroll and it’s you know, if we had a minimally serious media all this would have been laughed at a long time ago but yet look what happened. It consumed our US media in politics for over three years.

Scott Horton 35:02
Yeah. It’s really kind of amazing. And yet also typical, shocking, but not surprising, as they say. Yeah, for sure. And especially I love the one about the alpha bank where it turned out that it was just a spam bot for the Trump hotels or whatever it

Aaron Mate 35:19
as. Yeah, it was mining. It was it was it was sending out marketing emails. Yeah. And using the same server, it’s, you know, but yet, if you go back, I mean, you could, on every aspect of this thing. There’s hours and hours of cable news footage of, you know, serious people supposedly taking all his with, you know, sober very, very serious concern as if all this means something when really it’s just it’s, it’s all fantasy. It’s all complete fantasy.

Scott Horton 35:50
Yeah. Well, and now they’re doing the same thing to China as well. They just had this story last week or Trump is in hock to China 10s of millions of dollars. Oops. And then they retracted it because that wasn’t true.

Yeah, they they said that Trump owes the Bank of China 10s of millions. And then they came out a week later and say, oops, we made a mistake. We forgot to call the Bank of China. And when we did, they told us that he wants out us this, but that the that alone was passed on to someone else. So it’s not even us anymore. That that that holds alone. You know, it’s so yes, the the sloppy reporting definitely continues.

Yeah. And I think that even sold it. The Chinese bank had sold the debt off back in 2012. So four years before he even an.

Aaron Mate 36:43
Yeah, yah. difficult. Yeah. All right.

Scott Horton 36:44
Well, listen, I appreciate all your great journalism and you do a great job and I love your show and all your articles and really appreciate your time on the show again here.

Aaron Mate 36:55
Scott, thank you. Thanks for having me b

Scott Horton 36:57
ck. Aren’t you guys that is Aaron Mata. He is actually The gray zone project that is the gray zone.com and first of all you got to read this thing by the OPC w whistleblowers. It’s something else here. Exclusive OPC w insider slam compromised new Syria chemical weapons probe and then also check out Aaron’s show he’s got a brand new interview of Noam Chomsky up there on pushback. And all of that is available for you at the gray zone calm. The Scott Horton show, Antiwar Radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA, APSradio.com antiwar.com ScottHorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org

Scott Horton 0:10
All right, shall welcome and Scott Horton shell. I am the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of anti war calm, author of the book fool’s errand, time to end the war in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at scotthorton.org dot org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also available@youtube.com. Slash Scott Horton show. Aren’t you guys on the line? I’ve got Pete Jonas. And he is managing editor at the libertarian Institute and author of this brand new one. How members of gun culture view the amount Aubrey killing. Welcome back to the show. How you doing Pete?

Pete Quinones 0:56
Thanks for having me back, Scott.

Scott Horton 0:58
Hey man, real quick. Got a documentary coming out soon. Is that right?

Pete Quinones 1:03
Yeah, I do. It’s it’ll be released to the public on YouTube on the 31st. And then soon after, after we get some things squared away, get it up on Amazon and then down the line after it does well on Amazon then Netflix kind of thing so it doesn’t get banned. Yeah. Somebody doesn’t step in and say yeah, that’s, that’s too subversive for for public consumption or something like that.

Scott Horton 1:27
Yeah. Well, I hope you edited my piece as much as you possibly could in there, too. There, everybody there, eardrums

Pete Quinones 1:37
we edited exactly what you what you thought would be. We just put in there what you thought were the most important points. Okay. I think I think it will. I think it’ll work especially with some of the overlay that we have that your our buddy, Danny Sjursen, sir, supplied us. It’s going to be it’s going to be wonderful. It’s good. A good section and that is going to be anti war. And that was really important to us.

Scott Horton 2:01
Yeah. So I haven’t seen the whole thing, but I did kind of page through. And and notice what good company I’m in there. So thanks for having me in that thing. That’s really cool. Couldn’t have done it. Lots of bearings there.

Pete Quinones 2:13
Yeah, there’s no way we were gonna do that and not have you in it. So, huh.

Scott Horton 2:19
Wish I could have come up with something instructive for you, but instead you just got what you got. Anyway, hey, let’s talk about the Oh, wait, when is this thing coming out?

Pete Quinones 2:29
It’ll be on YouTube on the 31st of this month.

Scott Horton 2:33
YouTube on the 31st of May. Great. And that’s called the monopoly on violence, huh?

Pete Quinones 2:40
Yep. feature length. The about an hour and a half and all of our friends are going to be in it. Great.

Scott Horton 2:48
That’s great. Good for you, dude. Thanks, man.

Pete Quinones 2:51
Yeah, man. All right. So two years in the making. Yeah,

Scott Horton 2:55
well, better be good then. Or as I put it, when I was writing my book, People better like this thing. So, yeah. labor theory of value there, man. You know, it’s hard to not believe in it when you’re the one doing the hard work, but yeah. All right. Now, let’s, let’s talk about this important subject. Tell me some things about, first of all, the Ahmad armory killing. And then secondly towards your headline here about the reaction of gun culture to what they’ve seen in the video here.

Pete Quinones 3:32
Well, let me just do a quick timeline of what happened with the shooting and mod armory. 25 year old man shot to death on February 23. in Brunswick, Georgia, Brunswick is like if anybody knows Jekyll Island. It’s right outside of Jekyll Island. So it’s over on the coast. Land of the central banks there. Yeah. And he was shot after being followed by Gregory McMichael six Four years old and Travis McMichael. 34 years old his son. They were in a pickup truck. Arbor his family says he was out jogging while the mcmichaels have said they thought he was a burglar. And this is according to the police report. Gregory McMichael armed himself with a 357 Magnum and his son grabbed the shotgun. And this is this will be the just them doing that right there will be the Kruk was the crux of my article. So Well, let me just go on a little bit here. So I grabbed the shot gun after Gregory McMichael saw our brewery hauling ass down the street. The police report said according to the report, a third man later identified as a neighbor, William Bryan tried to block our breed during the pursuit now a lot of people are saying William Brian is actually a homeowner of a property that’s under construction that are burry. Allegedly went in and was looking around. And but that’s it’s come to light that that’s not true. He was not he is not the homeowner. I’m going to get to that in a second. So Greg McMichael told police that he thought armory was a burglar who had recently been targeting the neighborhood. The mcmichaels told police that they caught up with armory. He attacked Travis McMichael, who fired his weapon and self defense. And the Brunswick news citing documents that were in public record reported that there had been just one confirmed burglary in the neighborhood from January 1 to February 23. It was the theft of a handgun from an unlock truck parked outside Travis Travis mcmichaels house on the first of the year. Go forward a couple days the first prosecutor recused herself. The Brunswick area district attorney Jackie Johnson recused herself from the case noting that Gregory McMichael, a former Glynn county police officer had been an investigator in her office for more than 30 years before he retired in May of 2019. Go now we’re going to jump forward to that was February 27. We’re going to jump forward to April 2. Brunswick news publishes details of the police investigation. They published an online article with details from the Glen police report. Gregory Michael said that after the pursuit Arbor he began to violently attack Travis McMichael and that the two started fighting over the shotgun, at which point Travis fired a shot and then a second later, there was a second shot. Gregory McMichael said our brief fell face down on the pavement with his hand under his body. He told police he then searched armory for a gun. The report said the report ends without stating whether armory had a gun. arbors family says he was unarmed and nobody to this day is claiming that he was armed. Next day April 3, a second prosecutor refuses after finding no reason to charge the mcmichaels George Barnhill one of the prosecutors who first handled the case defended the actions of the mcmichaels and Brian who recorded a video of the shooting. In a letter recusing himself address to a Glynn police, Captain Barnhill said the three had solid firsthand probable cause to pursue arbitrary quote unquote burglary suspect and stop him. And the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that reported this, it appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement alive arrived he rose Barnhill who said he watched the video said Travis Michael. Travis McMichael was allowed to use deadly force to protect themselves under state law because our brewery had initiated the fight and grabbed the shotgun. Going to jump forward about 10 days. A third prosecutor takes over the case. The case was transferred to Thomas Durden not Tyler Durden. But Thomas Durden, the agent district attorney for Georgia’s Atlanta Atlantic Judicial Circuit honor about April 13. According to a letter Durden released May 5, he announced his intention to present the case to the next available Glynn county grand jury for consideration of criminal charges against those involved in the death of Mr. armory.

That was April 13, jump all the way forward to may 5. So that’s 10 days ago, as of recording, this video of shooting emerges online. Apparently, this is just a side note. The person who took the video thought by releasing the video it was actually going to help the mcmichaels case that didn’t turn out to be what happened. So the video was released into public domain or it to the public, and the Arby’s Family Lawyer got ahold of it and that’s how they were releasing. They’re releasing it because as soon as it was released to the police, then it became open. So it appears to show the fatal shooting and an altercation in the mall. Before in the video posted by Aubrey family Attorney Lee Merritt Aubrey has seen jogging down a road as a white pickup truck is stopped in front of him. armory runs around the vehicle and a shot is fired. The video then shows our brand another man appearing to tussle as two more shots are fired. NBC News they’re saying NBC News who’s reporting on all this doesn’t know what happened before the events in the video. The same day. The outside prosecutor Durden said he wanted to send the case to the grand jury to decide whether to bring charges. Lawyers for the armory family said authorities did not need to wait for a grand jury to make arrests. And the lawyer said there are a number of agencies that can go out and make these arrests today. That is our demand. The man who murdered our breach should be prosecuted. The lawyer called underdone to issue an arrest warrant and to indict Gregory and Travis McMichael. GBI, Georgia Bureau of Investigations announced that it would be taking over the case at Durbin’s request so the DA there said this is a hospital Fado, give it to GBI. So it goes public. May 7, Gregory and Travis Michael are arrested, GBI announced that mcmichaels had been arrested on charges of murder and aggravated assault. And I will tell you, I’ll explain the aggravated assault charge where I think it’s coming from and it’s the only way it makes sense in in this. When we start talking about the article that I wrote in the points I made in there. The big Michaels could not be reached for comment. It was unclear whether they had obtained attorneys. So March 8, a neighbor who recorded video is also being investigated a day after the mcmichaels were arrested the head of the GBI said William Roddy, Brian, the neighborhood recorded the video was also being investigated. We’re going to go wherever the evidence takes us. GBI Vic Reynolds says a news conference let’s say hypothetically if we believe tomorrow or in a week or three There’s probable cause for an arrest, then we’ll do it. If we don’t believe there is and we won’t. Brian’s not been charged asked about the possibility that the mcmichaels could be prosecuted for a hate crime. Reynolds noted that Georgia is one of the few states without a hate crime law. Sort of good. May 9, video appears to show our burry entering a construction site just before he was killed. And just to mention some people have said it’s not him some people have said it’s him. This is everybody’s fighting over this I mean, it’s it’s ridiculous at this point. video from the day of armories death obtained by Atlanta Journal Constitution shows a purchase person matching our brief description, walking up to a house under construction, entering and then leaving shortly after attorneys for our breeze parents said the video is consistent with the evidence already known to us. The lawyer said the person in the video remain on the property for under three minutes before continuing to jog down the road. Mud did not take anything from the construction site. The family’s lawyer said he did not cause any damage to the property. He remained for a brief period of time and was not instructed by anyone to leave, but rather left on his own accord to continue his job. moods actions at this empty home under construction were in no way a felony under Georgia law. GBI confirmed that it was reviewing the video but added it had it had seen it before arresting and charging the McMichael so GBI arrested them even after seeing this and this quote unquote, new evidence, right.

Then the next day, may 10th. So we’re talking five days from from where when we’re recording. Georgia Attorney General asked for federal investigation. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr asked the Justice Department investigate the handling of the killing so they’re, they’re investigating the DA is how know how they weren’t how these guys weren’t arrested right away. That’s basically what they’re looking at. Attorneys for RV parents have plotted it. And so the next May 11, arbitrary killing switch to a fourth prosecutor. The state’s top prosecutor appointed another district attorney to take over the case joy at homes of the Cobb County Judicial Circuit became the fourth prosecutor to oversee it. Cobb County is about 10 minutes from me. So we’re talking about three hours away. So they I mean, they went through, they went, you know, a couple hundred miles away, or more than a couple hundred miles away to find someone to prosecute this. And they say, she’s a respected attorney with experience both as a lawyer and a judge and the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office has the resources, personnel and experience to lead this prosecution, yada

Scott Horton 13:40
yada, yada, yada. seems will have the same conflict of interest as the rest of them, but go ahead.

Pete Quinones 13:45
So three days ago, GBI receives requests from the State Attorney General to investigate handling of case Georgia’s attorney general has asked state law of law officers to investigate allegations of misconduct by local practices. theatres in the death of armory, the GBI announced Tuesday, GBI said Attorney General Chris Carr requested for the investigation of how the district attorney’s office in Brunswick and waycross handled the February 23 fatal shooting. Then we had this incident just a couple days ago, this was May 11. So this is how we find out that the home the under construction home that Arbor is allegedly seen in isn’t owned by Mr. Brian, one of the people in the pickup truck which is something that people who’ve been defending the mcmichaels on, on social media have been saying. So Mr. English, the actual homeowner released this statement he said Mr. English wants to correct the mistaken impression that he had shared this video or any other information with the mcmichaels. Prior to them Michaels decision to chase Mr. Barbary people were saying that he had They had seen video of him in the house and I’m going, how do they see video of him in the house? Was it being live streamed into their home or something? And I was at you would ask these questions and people be like, well, I don’t know. This is what I know. So the homeowners had not even seen the February 23 video before Travis McMichael shot Mr. Barbary so they didn’t even see the video from that day. When homeowner Larry English saw the photos of Mr. Barbary that were later broadcasts as a first impression was it Mr. rb was not the man captured on video inside the house on February 23. And he had actually said that to a neighbor at the time, and this guy was the homeowner was two hours away. So just little, little more information there. And then today, it comes out that McMichael, who used to be a cop used to be an investigator who was charged in armory, his death lost power to make arrests after skipping use of force training last year. So he lost, he lost his ability to make arrest and he also lost his ability to carry a service firearm. So that’s, that’s where we’re at right now. And anybody who’s seen people have been making videos about this. I’ve seen cops make ex cops make videos about this all over the world. I mean, it this is one of the most convoluted he said, she said, I think I know what I’m talking about. That person thinks he knows what he’s talking about. I decided to take my article in a totally different direction of something that I actually know I’m talking about trying to use this case to help explain to people why what they did is culture in Georgia, where I’ve lived for 15 years is culturally unacceptable to gun owners. So

Scott Horton 16:50
well, so I mean, that’s the point, right, is that gun owners would be, according to, I don’t know, liberal Twitter, they would be out The front of the mob, justifying these guys and accusing the black guy must have been stealing something or something, right?

Pete Quinones 17:09
That is the that that is the stereotype of, you know, even a Puerto Rican, half Puerto Rican New Yorker like myself, when I moved to the south, and I live in Georgia for 15 years. And I adopt the culture of gun ownership and, you know, being a gun fanatic. I get called the same thing. So,

Scott Horton 17:30
yeah. But then, so what is their point? Then they’re rallying behind the boys in the pickup truck or not?

Pete Quinones 17:37
Well, I’ve been going. First thing I did was I wanted to see what my friends were saying. So there’s a forum here in Georgia, huge gun forum. A couple years ago, there was 40,000 members. It’s got to be more now. And I knew that if I was going to I looked at it. I judged what they did. I had my perspective. And I wanted to see if people who are trained in firearms like myself had the same perspective in Georgia that I did. And, you know, I’m a libertarian, I’m an anarchist, and I don’t, I think all these laws are ridiculous, but I also live in the real world. And these people that I’m looking at here, for the most part, conservatives, I mean, we’re talking Trump supporting conservatives, but very pro gun, very anti red flag law. To give just to give an example, this forum that I was on at the time of the Trayvon Martin, shooting by george Zimmerman, they to a man took george Zimmerman side, mostly it was overwhelmingly George, on the side of george Zimmerman. And so yeah, these aren’t, these aren’t liberal hysteric the the who happens to light guns. I mean, these are guys who are come from the right side and a lot the far right side of the aisle. But they also have a subculture that has some unwritten rules and it looks like the as far as I’ve seen, they consider the mcmichaels to have broken those rules and thereby forfeited their freedom.

Scott Horton 19:20
Okay, so I’m not talking about that. I mean, I think even you know, any reasonable person even if they’re not going owners if they’re not a liberal hysteric just a normal person understands that. Gun Owners usually are extra responsible, because they recognize the power of that machine that they have there to do very dirty work in very short time with very little effort. I mean, that’s kind of the whole point. And so usually give somebody a gun you watch them grow up by two years right in front of your eyes, you know, but So, go ahead and I mean, Talk a little bit about that, that gun culture and the culture of responsibility that comes with owning guns here.

Pete Quinones 20:06
But just to give a really good example because it It wasn’t funny when it happened. But it turned out to be funny because it just became a meme on the web on on this forum was a guy came on there five or six years ago, and he started bragging about how he was walking in downtown Atlanta, a homeless person came up and asked for change. And he pulled his gun and just waved at the guy and the guy ran away from him. I assume he came on the website. Now I don’t know if the guy’s telling the truth or not. He could just be you know, one of those people who just make stuff up. But I he came on the website on the forum thinking that he was like a hero and he was going to be hailed as a hero. That was the exact opposite of what happened. People explained to him, you don’t pull that thing out unless you have justified, reasonable, you have an idea that your life is in danger. In other words, you don’t pull that out. unless you absolutely feel like you have to pull the trigger. Like your life is in such danger or somebody else’s life is in such danger that you have to pull the trigger. And as I explained in the article, that doesn’t mean that you pull it. And you see that the person, you know, is responding in a way where they’re going to, they’re going to go into flight, and you decide not to pull the trigger, that’s fine. But the fact that you pull it, you better have every excuse in the world for pulling that trigger. And that is just an unwritten rule that is lived by in gun culture. And I put this article out, I’ve had a couple people come after me, and it’s never about gun, the gun culture and what we think it’s always about, well, it was a black guy and you And I mean, that’s pretty. And I’ve been trying to keep race out of this. See, I read

Scott Horton 22:05
people to the right of your gun forum group a day, this is great. But at the over at the gun forum, this is their point of view same as the story about the bum being scared off. They, it sounds like you’re your take is everyone over there agrees that these guys had no business acting the way that they acted here.

Pete Quinones 22:29
Now, you’re not going to get everyone to agree on, on on any forum because you’re always gonna have some people that have to be contrarian on everything. And you’re gonna have some jerks and racist. I mean, it’s just, it just happens. But I mean, overwhelmingly, I mean, just some of the comments.

Scott Horton 22:45
The consensus in other words, oh, yeah, the only question here.

Pete Quinones 22:49
Yeah, the former copy says, if there’s no more to the story than the two should be prosecuted and jailed for life, the guy was clearly not trying to confront them. He runs miles and miles every day and live nearby. However, one thing gives me pause is that even the New York Times is hedging. Somewhat they stated that the man was seen running from inside a home under partial construction and the homeowner called 911. Well that’s not true the homeowner was two hours away but that’s what was being reported at the time. All this information is being reported and he writes but even that wouldn’t constitute the use of deadly force in this case. Another one said the kid wasn’t carrying anything those two confronted and went looking for a fight definitely not justified in my meaningless opinion real sad. Based on that video the shooters ought to stand not stand in the sunshine anytime soon, but we know what should happen and what does happen aren’t always related. Maybe he was this one guy says maybe was taking the lead I don’t know but this did this debug p i want to be and his kid sounds like some straight up cowboys to me citizens arrest and arm pursuit lol. I wouldn’t have stopped for them either. And then another one I saw You’re a justification for your use of force in that situation regardless of the joggers previous actions. This looks like some straight up redneck justice profile and Bs. One has to wonder if they just shot him in the back if he tried to keep running another one, I’ll give a damn what their circumstance was based on the video those scumbags murdered that young man. Then the last guy says, and you know he a little bit of pontificating here, but he gets to the point. I prefer to let relevant and current facts determine the circumstances rather than shaking up old articles to try and sling mud to make my predilections justified. The fact he was a high school athlete or attended college or what his specific career aspirations was irrelevant to the fact he was unarmed, shot dead by two redneck wannabe Cowboys, who thought they had an in on the cover up with one of their former bosses to da their plants. Now they get to win stupid prizes won’t bring him back, but he died pretty quickly. They get to sleep with one eye open for a long, long time. I’m sure they’ll be well received in a South Georgia prison.

Scott Horton 25:00
Yeah. See, that’s the part that remains to be seen with this guy’s at least pale blue privilege if you know he wasn’t on the clock as a cop at the time and yet, that’s the other huge part of this story is the delay in the arrest here and I don’t know this wasn’t on your Fact Sheet there. But I had seen a story where the cops who showed up at the scene were ready to arrest them both. If they called the DEA and the DEA told them not to. They were ready to put them in handcuffs right there on the spot before she intervened to stop it actively.

Pete Quinones 25:35
So you want to you want to know one of the main reasons why and I’ll come back and I’m going to go back to something that I said in my notes they were arrested for. Let me get this again. One of them. One of it was the second thing was aggravated assault. So I think it’s a murder and aggravated assault. Why is aggravated assault in there? Well, like it or not, there’s a law in Georgia. That is If you pull a gun on somebody who’s not threatening you, that’s considered aggravated assault and you’re looking at 20 years. So like that guy who flashed his gun at a bum, you know, it’s some homeless person. If a cop would have seen him do that, that would have been, he was looking at 20 years in prison. They don’t take that lightly. Even now, there’s actually a bill in the House in Georgia trying to change that. But that’s neither here nor there. And whether that’s a fair law or not, oh, well, but what I’ve seen is I’ve seen people try to argue that jumping out of the truck with a shotgun, while that’s just open, carry and open carry is legal. Well, technically, yes. Okay. In Georgia, you can throw a rifle over your your shoulder and walk down the street. You can carry a shotgun in your hand and walk down the street but Not when you’ve blocked off the street from somebody, you have another person jumped up in the bed of the pickup truck screaming at them. Yeah, you know, clearly the gun in his head. I mean,

Scott Horton 27:10
they’re displaying deadly force in order to try to make him stop. Yeah. That’s not open carry.

Pete Quinones 27:19
But I’m so but I mean, I see people trying to use that argument I’m like, that’s just not how this works, you know, and it’s like I actually had one person say, I literally would say if I said to you who said this, you know exactly who it was. They said, So, you think it’s okay for somebody who’s running down the street to try and grab a gun at trying to grab a gun of somebody who’s open carrying no gun. I’m like, wait, man, what are you leaving? What are you leaving out here?

Scott Horton 27:48
This is such a stupid era, isn’t it? It really is. It’s time of stupidity.

Pete Quinones 27:56
And a lot of people will say some of that stupid most of that stupidity is on The left look at the way they treat Trump. Look at this, look at that. This is just equal stupidity. Yeah, it’s so everything Oh, we gotta, we gotta stay with my team so that we can fight the other team and be at war the whole time. And I’m just like, you know, when you do that, and you’re while you guys are fighting over there, you know, sometimes that war has collateral damage on the rest of us and we tend those of us who want individual freedom, tend to lose it because you people are being idiots over here.

Scott Horton 28:28
And you know, it is important what you say to about where the vast majority of the right they’re not looking at this and you know of gun owners, particularly very Tea Party, Republican voter type guys, that they’re not looking at this as a racial issue. They’re looking at it as an issue of one man killing another. And and, and blue privilege. And yeah, and so the point is that Yeah, there there are right wingers who do care a lot about the racial stuff, but not anywhere near the majority. It should be instructive to people who come from the left to recognize that despite all the smears that most right wingers are not racialist in any way really at all. And certainly not to the degree that they’re going to side with a murderer over an unarmed victim, just because of what skin color team they’re on. I mean, that’s crazy. So yes, people will pick and choose their facts to justify certain things. But mostly, that’s still marginal, as stupid as this era is, at least in this case, it seems like reason has the center, you know,

Pete Quinones 29:35
and you also have to take into consideration when you look at this, this whole situation and when I say situation, I’m talking about guys running down the street. I don’t care if he’s running from some if he’s just out for a jog, or if he’s running from something. You have a pickup truck that cuts off the road with our people get out and they’re armed brandishing weapons and you have somebody in the back of them. cutting them off so that they’re trapped. When was how often do you see this happen? This doesn’t happen. When was the last time you saw the shop in the 50s?

Scott Horton 30:10
Yeah. And how was he supposed to react to this?

Pete Quinones 30:14
I know I would have reacted if I would have had a gun I would have shot everyone. And I would have been justified in doing it. They pulled guns out. They got out you block off the street from me and get out with it with a shotgun in your hand. I’m putting I’m starting to shoot right there. It’s insane for anybody for anybody and to bring up Oh, he may have just been burglarizing a house that’s completely beside the point. Once you get to the once you get down to the the situation in the street. Obviously he didn’t have anything in his hands. He’s running in shorts and a T shirt. If he was concealing a gun. He was doing a really good job of it. didn’t pull it out. In there’s no there’s no justification there. Now they’re bloopers The blue privilege of the dad may keep them at a jail. But I mean, the rightest of right wingers in Georgia in the gun culture, like Yeah, what they did was completely wrong. If we would have done it with no blue privilege, we would have been arrested that day and probably already played it out and gone to jail. Right. That’s what they’re saying. And I know that that’s what what happened to me. Yeah, if I if I did something that’s stupid. I it’s amazing to me how people are looking at this video and interpreting it just based on their own worldview.

Scott Horton 31:35
Yeah, yeah, there is a lot of that but um, you know, it, you know, I appreciate that. As you’re sitting here, it’s not a question of, you know, libertarian non aggression principle. It’s a question of gun owners non aggression principle. And when people especially, you know, people walk around armed you know, concealed or or, you know, open carrying or whatever it is, or they think a lot about, you know, and very carefully usually about, you know, when they might have to use that firearm, and when they absolutely may not, and and at what Line Is It crossed, where now it’s official, anyone, any reasonable juror would agree that you had no choice but to do it. And so in other words, they’re thinking of it very carefully, like a man with a hammer in his hand about just how to hit this nail right, rather than, you know, maybe coming at it from a more generalized point of view. They’re looking at it from as you just said, if they were the ones who had done it, not a former detective, but just Mr. ac repairman or whoever out there, that they know for sure that they are not allowed to do that, that that is absolutely crossing the line and that they will go to prison and so universal justice, it should apply the fact that this guy used To wear some shiny costume jewelry shouldn’t impress anyone at all.

Pete Quinones 33:05
But I think I would also add that even if what they did, and brandishing was legal, I think most gun owners would condemn it.

Scott Horton 33:15
Okay, that’s a good point, too. Yeah,

Pete Quinones 33:16
I don’t think they’re I don’t think they’re looking at the law and let and allowing the law to dictate what their morals are, as far as you know, carrying something that can end multiple lives in a matter of seconds. Right? It has to do with the fact that and a lot of it also has to do with optics. It’s like you don’t want to be every gun owner that I know who’s serious about their weapons, looks at that video and goes, you know, if it would have just been if he would, if it would have been them getting out holding guns in their hands and armory would have just ran by and just kept running. And you know, nothing would have happened. gun owners would still look at what they’re doing and go in your You’re spoiling for us.

Scott Horton 34:01
Right? You deserve another law against us.

Pete Quinones 34:05
Yeah. I mean, it like I said, I haven’t seen anyone commenting on this in, in a way of criticizing saying that it was a good shoot. That is in gun culture. As a matter of fact, ever since I put this article out, and ever since I did a podcast earlier this week, everyone who’s contacted me who said positive things about what I had to say, are in gun culture and southerners. They’re like, yeah, we know you’re not a southerner and everything but now you’re one of us, because you know, you have you have the same sensibilities.

Scott Horton 34:40
We’d like how you say to all the detractors are just completely irrational racists and don’t really have a point other than Whose side are you on?

Pete Quinones 34:49
So, I mean, I don’t I don’t know if they’re all racists or not. I mean, I would assume that that that does play into something.

Scott Horton 34:56
I thought you said that that was what they all immediately go to was Oh, you Yeah,

Pete Quinones 35:00
well, yeah. Well, a lot of it is, you know, it’s kind of hard to look at that video. And, and like I said, I’m not. I didn’t mention race once in the article, because that’s not really important to me. But it is really hard to look at that article and Naco what yours is?

Scott Horton 35:18
Yeah. Or the video? You mean? Yeah.

Pete Quinones 35:20
I mean, the video. Yeah, the video. Here is this. It was just when I first saw it, I was just like, wait a minute, he got out with a shotgun in his head. And he’s white dude. And there’s a black dude running down the street, and they’ve closed off the street from them. And they’ve closed off street behind him. And I knew there was going to be people defending this. And I was like, Why no, no gun owners gonna defend this. No serious gun owners gonna defend this because it’s just like, Well, what do you guys do in? Yeah, and most? A lot of those gun owners are law and order guys. So what would they do? they’d call the cops. They would call the cops and you know, and then people were saying, I heard people saying Oh, Well, you know, because he worked in the DHS office and Barbara had been arrested a couple times. He he knew him, he recognized them. I’m like, Well, if you recognize them, then he probably knows his name. can find out his address with a phone call. Right? So why not just give the cops? Why don’t just give the cops that. Oh, so now you’re on the cop side. You want the cops? I thought you were an anarchist. Yeah, I am. But I also live in a world where I know if I go do that,

Scott Horton 36:26
and they’re not anarchists, their former cop and his son. So what does that What does libertarianism have to do with the decisions that they made? It’s ridiculous. It’s just dancing. I mean, it’s just, it’s amazing. It adds just people are crazy. Hey, man, you guys are gonna love No dev no Ops, no it by Hussein badhak Gianni, it’s a fun and interesting read all about how to run your high tech company. Like a good libertarian should forget all the junk. Read no Dev, no ops. No It by Hussein bodek Chani find it in the margin at Scott horton.org. Hey y’all, here’s the thing, donate $100 to the Scott Horton show, and you can get a QR code commodity disc as my gift to you. It’s a one ounce silver disc with a QR code on the back you take a picture of with your phone, and it gives you the instant spot price. And lets you know what that silver that ounces silver is worth on the market and Federal Reserve Notes in real time. It’s the future of currency in the past to commodity discs.com or just go to Scott Horton. org slash donate. Hey guys, Scott Horton here for expand designs.com Harley Abbott and his crew do an outstanding job designing building and maintaining my sites and they’ll do great work for you need a new website, go to expand designs comm slash Scott and say 500 bucks. Let’s switch to a different crazy one. So this one’s in Kentucky. So this happened what like two months ago, the cops killed this lady briona Taylor, and it does matter that she’s a black woman. It is part of the story. And then this was just buried it finally came out I’m sure all the usual grifters, you know, help to promote it. Thank goodness in this case, but you know, and I know that you haven’t done as much work looking into this one as the previous case here. This is actual cops, not x and wannabe cops. Like down there. But this one in Kentucky is also really bad. Can you explain what you know about what happened here?

Pete Quinones 38:44
Apparently Briana Taylor, from what I understand she’s an EMT. Did you see that? Yeah, she’s an EMT. She was home at night. was studying to be a nurse they say? Yeah, studying to be a nurse home sleeping with her boyfriend. And from what I understand around 1230 in the morning, the police go and get a no knock warrant. I mean, isn’t that’s how all these stories start, you know, in the middle of the night, no knock warrant, you know, Duncan Lemp. And,

Scott Horton 39:16
sorry, I gotta say, when I was a kid in elementary school, the state of Texas mandate that they teach us anti communism. And when they did teach us anti communism, the way that they explained it to us was that in the Soviet Union, the cops come to your house and take you away in the middle of the night. They kick in your door, everybody else is asleep or is, you know, in no position to help resist and, you know, it’s and in fact, it’s the dreaded knock, they don’t even you know, Americans use a battering ram. The NKVD at least knocked on the door let you get your bathrobe before they disappeared. Yeah. But this was when I was a boy, which was not that long ago. If you asked me that night. 1980s and when I was in elementary school, you know, in the Ronald Reagan years, this was the definition of totalitarianism the enemy that America stands against. I’m sorry, go ahead.

Pete Quinones 40:13
Yeah, um, well, from what I understand they weren’t the wrong house to the person they were actually looking for was already in custody. And this is the Louisville police department and I wrote an article. I wrote an article about the Louisville Police Department four or five months ago from their sex abuse scandals of their their youth programs. Me Louisville Police Department has a long history of just problems. And so yeah, they get a no knock warrant. They go there because they owe somebody we believe, delivers drugs was seen coming out of that apartment. And a box went in with a box and came in came out and empty handed. Well they do the no knock raid. The boyfriend wakes up he has a gun. He starts shooting. So they just light the place up. As many as 20 rounds are shot. She shot in her sleep eight times and dies. The boyfriend has been arrested for attempted murder of a police officer.

Scott Horton 41:21
You know how many times he was shot?

Pete Quinones 41:23
I don’t think he was he. I don’t think he was Yeah,

Scott Horton 41:26
I don’t think so either. I from what I had read so what the hell kind of wild shootout is that? Speaking of your unwritten firearms rules? Aren’t you supposed to know what you’re killing they miss the guy who actually took a shot at them and instead they shot an innocent person eight times unarmed woman

Pete Quinones 41:47
and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker. He ended up shooting a sergeant john Mattingly in the leg during the incident. So oscillation Yeah, but um Yeah, this is this is just one of those another one of those no knock warrant. Like you said Soviet style black bag kind of kind of attitude when you’re going Duncan left the whole Duncan lump thing in Maryland. Yeah 430 4:30am Yeah, why would they do this? Why don’t you just wait until the person leaves the house overtime rest? Arrest them. Yeah. So you get paid. Yeah. And Bogart says that

Scott Horton 42:27
Yeah. And the fun of dressing up like a paramilitary you know, Delta Force operative or whatever.

Pete Quinones 42:34
So, they, they were blindly firing. I mean, she got hit eight times, talking about total disregard for for human life and me shoot through the walls and hit other people. nothing illegal was found there. They had a drug warrant.

Scott Horton 42:52
Yeah, on that last point. I mean, they said that they’re the stray bullets went into multiple different apartment buildings or, you know, apartments in that building.

Pete Quinones 43:02
So, yeah, so the family’s suing, and there was another one of those cases where it’s like, No, you know, well, you’re gonna get put on the police we’re gonna get put on a miss administrate of leave until we can investigate. And we’re gonna we’ll investigate this and find out what they don’t investigate themselves find out they did nothing wrong.

Scott Horton 43:21
Yeah, well and you know they’re gonna make the mistake too is just talking about this with Mike Maharrey earlier today about you’re gonna call for a civil rights investigation and that’s going to kind of remove it from the local jurisdiction where they might have a prayer of accountability if they push hard enough. Instead they’re going to turn it over to the Justice Department. But that’s such a narrow mandate unless they were screaming the N word as they were pulling the trigger and essentially using their police power position as cover and operating under the color of law just so that they could do a kkk lynching or something like that unless they have A case like that it’s not a federal civil rights case. And it’s just, you know, the federal civil rights jurisdiction is not if there’s a bad shoot, it’s if you can ascribe these other racial ulterior motives to the police abuse that takes place. And so, in other words, DOJ investigations are were bad shoots go to die, you know, even if, in most cases, the local DEA is going to do what our friends down in Georgia did there for him. But still, at least you could have a chance with enough public pressure of getting an indictment on the local level, but the feds almost never they just essentially kill a case by touching it.

Pete Quinones 44:42
And we’ve talked about that before, too, that the only way quote unquote public servants ever get in trouble is if enough political pressure is put in and then they just sacrifice somebody.

Scott Horton 44:54
Yeah, I mean, think about the if this is one of your family members, and you find Down, not only were they at the wrong apartment, where the guy that they were after did not live, but that, in fact, the guy the search warrant was attached to an arrest warrant, and they had already arrested him somewhere else before this warrant was ever even issue. So, again, back to the question of how easy it would have been for them to just knock on the door and do this in the daylight without dressing up and playing Navy SEAL at all. You know, the guy the bad guy, supposedly, in other words, the drug businessman, allegedly was already in custody. And of course, they found out after they were done, removing her corpse that there were no drugs in the house whatsoever. And I don’t know if it was the wrong address or this guy used to live there five years ago or what their problem was, but the two victims here the deceased and the charged had nothing to do apparently with the guy that they were looking for. Is that right?

Pete Quinones 46:06
Yeah, they were standing up citizens as far as anyone can, you know, quote unquote, stand up citizen as far as anyone can tell. I mean, they’re, I mean, when I said this a long time ago, I said, police have to stop the no knock warrants because you get a home invasion. All somebody has to do is scream police. You know, some you have some crew of bad guys coming into your house, they scream police. I mean, I sleep with a gun next to the bed. If I hear police, it may make me hesitate in picking it up. But it could also be bad guys. So they knocked down a door in the middle of the night and he’s armed you know, in the guns by the side of the bed and he picks it up and start shooting. How can you blame him? How