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A Missing Bonus Episode - Walt Gumbly!
39 Plays1 year ago
Due to miscommunication the previous bonus episode we said would be free for all, never got released. Missing in the archives for over two weeks, we are proud to bring you this missing bonus episode of the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, completely unedited!
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Transcript
Top Five Aerial Phenomena
00:00:07
Speaker
It's the podcast's guide to the conspiracy patron bonus episode. OK, Josh, give me your top five aerial phenomena. Well, clouds, obviously. Everybody likes a cloud.
00:00:27
Speaker
Birds are okay. I don't mind the occasion, but some of them sound nice, actually. I've got to give them that. Other good things in the sky, rocks. If rocks are in the sky, you know you're in for a good time. Could you explain the
00:00:47
Speaker
rocks in the sky and also the info good time part? Well you know if rocks are flying around you've either got one of those interesting volcanoes or maybe a bit of a bit of exhilarating mob violence you know. It's like my mother used to say rocks in the air have no care. Your mother was killed by a boulder landing on her head. On a related point bullets.
00:01:15
Speaker
When bullets are flying through the air, I mean, what more do you want fired presumably into the air to celebrate sort of ringing in the new year or some sort of major victory? I don't know of any other reason why people fire bullets. So I'm assuming airborne bullets are also a sign of a good time. One more, I guess, alien spacecraft.
00:01:42
Speaker
alien spacecraft. Tom DeLonge says they exist and who am I to argue? I mean so the first four I accept actually do exist but number five I'm not convinced by. I'm not convinced by. Well go back and listen to your many Blink 182 albums and I'm sure you'll become a true believer.
00:02:07
Speaker
And I saw your face, bop, bop, bop, bop, and now a believer. Without a trace, it's out of my mind. Trump, trump, trumpety, trumpety, trumpety, trumpety, trumpety, trump. So you've actually read, you've read all 45 pages.
Trump's Indictment Discussion
00:02:27
Speaker
Yeah, so the first question, are you okay?
00:02:30
Speaker
Second question, what the hell is wrong with you? It's actually quite well written, I have to say. I mean, so the short version of it, most of what's in the 45-page indictment is stuff we already knew. Apart from a few tidbits that go, oh, that's a bit of a smoking gun there. Some kind of gross stuff from Giuliani, I think.
00:02:56
Speaker
Well, we have to remember, the only person actually named in the indictment is Donald J. Trump. Everyone else is co-conspirator one, co-conspirator two, co-conspirator three, co-conspirator four, co-conspirator five, co-conspirator six, acting attorney, general attorney, general vice president. So the only person who ever gets named is Donald J. Trump.
00:03:20
Speaker
So there are some pretty good inferences that certain co-conspirators are characters we've met along the way. So John Eastman seems to be co-conspirator two. Giuliani is probably either co-conspirator four, I think, or co-conspirator three. The person who was
00:03:45
Speaker
the create, Sydney Powell is probably co-conspirator five or something of that particular kind. There's quite a lot of people that you can kind of infer who they are. But yeah, the only person who gets mentioned is Donald J. Trump. And of course, because it's a legal document, he gets mentioned at the beginning of the first charge of which there are four in the indictment. And the first charge is 42 pages long.
00:04:15
Speaker
And so what you get is a story about how the defendant did blah, and co-conspirator blah, blah, blah, blah. And then at the very end, it then reiterates that the defendant is Donald J. Trump. And it's a little bit, it was almost a surprise going, oh, he's the defendant? Because you just get so engrossed in reading the story, you kind of forget that it's about a real person who actually did real things.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yes, I've seen people saying, here's the stuff that is obviously Rudy Giuliani saying weird things. I do have to say the best thing I've read so far actually isn't from that. It was people saying, yes, Giuliani stuff is good, but nothing can top Donald Sterling's deposition. He owned the
00:05:09
Speaker
Los Angeles Clippers, an NBA team, and I don't know what he was actually deposed about, but his deposition includes in the transcript answer. Well, I fool around sometimes. I do. When a girl seduces me and tells me all of these hot stories and dirty things and tells me how much she wants to suck on me and take my shoes off and licks my feet and touches me. When I'm in the limousine, she takes all of her clothes. The limo driver said, what is going on? And she started sucking me on the way to Mr. Coon's house.
00:05:38
Speaker
And I thank her. I thank her for making me feel good. Question. Sir, the question was, is this your handwriting? I think I read that before, but it's still hilarious. Anyway, not actually immediately related.
00:05:54
Speaker
to Trump's indictment, but it probably should be. So you say the first charge goes for the first 42 pages. How many other charges are there then in the last three? There are three more, but basically the other three charges are going, look, we can get him for the story we just told on pages one through 42. So the other three charges are basically half-page charges going, look, the details of this are found in paragraphs one through blah.
00:06:24
Speaker
The first charge, or the first indictment, is the one that basically says, look, he claims he lost the election, those claims were false, and the defendant knew that they were false. So they basically get to the heart of the issue. Was Donald Trump misled by his advisors into thinking he had won an election when actually it turns out he had lost?
00:06:53
Speaker
Or did Trump realise he had lost the election and was spreading disinformation in order to persuade people to certify him as the winner nonetheless? And essentially the first 42 pages is a story of Trump knew he had lost the election because either
00:07:16
Speaker
He was consistently being told by his campaign manager, or the acting attorney general, or the vice president, or by the people he was trying to bully, that Mr. President, what you're saying is false. We've shown you that it's false.
00:07:35
Speaker
therefore you must know it's false. Now, you can see a potential response to that, which is, you know, you can tell a narcissist they're wrong, but that doesn't mean they necessarily believe you. But there's a point in the indictment, which is really quite fascinating. So there's a point where in the early, so the late part of December,
00:08:01
Speaker
there's discussion about engaging in a military action overseas and Trump is dissuaded from doing anything about it because it would be an ongoing concern. They would essentially drag in whoever is president after the January 20th stuff and
00:08:24
Speaker
Essentially, Trump goes, oh yeah, it's probably best left to the next guy, which seems to be an admission that Trump knows he's not going to be in the White House, and thus is quite happy to not engage in a military action because he's not going... It's best left to the next person to deal with it rather than himself. And that seems to be fairly good evidence that he knew he had lost the election,
00:08:54
Speaker
even though at that time he was spreading the big steal, big lie theory to all in sundry on social media.
Trump's Legal Defense and Challenges
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah. Now, I've heard people saying that people from Trump's legal team saying that they plan to fight this on First Amendment grounds. And yet, as the reply to that, I've already seen people saying, yeah, the First Amendment kind of doesn't have anything to do with this. They've structured it in such a way that it isn't talking about First Amendment's free speech, right? Yeah. Yeah. And the thing is, the indictment kind of covers that. So on page two,
00:09:32
Speaker
They basically say, look, Trump had the right to contest the election. Trump even had the right under free speech to lie about whether he was the winner or the loser on the day. But
00:09:48
Speaker
Even though he had the right to contest the election, all of the legal efforts they engaged in were unsuccessful, and then they engaged in criminal behaviour to try and keep him in power nonetheless.
00:10:04
Speaker
So the indictment kind of covers the free speech issue. Yes, he had the right to say that he was the winner, even if he was wrong or lying. What he didn't have was the right to pervert justice and engage in a criminal conspiracy to remain in the White House. And of course, they're fighting that on the notion that they can show that he knew he had lost the election.
00:10:30
Speaker
Yes, and people have sort of said, why is this taken so damn long? The election was, what, two and a half years ago now. But the reply to that again has been yes, because they've been taking the time to make a case that basically thinks about this sort of stuff. They've got all the evidence they believe they need to show that
00:10:56
Speaker
to show what he knew and when, and to show that it isn't necessarily a matter of free speech, of him just being able to say whatever he wants. There is a lot more to it than that.
00:11:10
Speaker
So now I've actually I found the list of co-conspirators in the cen the cen cen is not either cnn and a quite useful annotated copy of the indictment which actually goes look even though the co-conspirators are not named in the document
00:11:30
Speaker
It's pretty easy to work out who they are given the context of what's said about the co-conspirators in pages 1 to 42. So co-conspirator 1 is former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
00:11:44
Speaker
Number two is John Eastman. He's the person who came up with the but surely Pence can just certify the election for someone else. He's got that power right and the question mark was very important there because he didn't but Eastman was going well it's untested legal ground so we should try it out nonetheless. Number three is Sidney Powell so that's the person behind the kind of Hydra
00:12:11
Speaker
Was it the Hydra? What was the name of the big legal thing that Sidney Powell answered? Oh, God, I remember. It was, if not Hydra. It was something like that. It was some methodological creature, yeah. Number four is former Justice Department Jeffrey Clark. He was the person that Trump, at one point, wanted to install as Acting Attorney General. When he tried to do that, the existing Acting Attorney General went,
00:12:38
Speaker
If you replace me, not only will I resign, but there'll be mass resignations, not just in the Department of Justice, but also the Department of Defense. At which point Trump went, that sounds bad, and decided to not put Jeffrey Clark in place. Trump five is Trump lawyer Kenneth Cheesebrow. I'm very sure it was actually not pronounced Cheesebrow, because it's only got one A. When I choose to pronounce his name, it's Kenneth Cheesebrow.
00:13:06
Speaker
That's what he meant. He was the one who sent an email to Giuliani suggesting the fake electors plot. Could we just create a different slate of electors and submit that to the Senate instead? And co-conspirator number six, we're not sure who that is at this stage. All we know is that they're a political consultant who was tied to the fake electors slate in Pennsylvania.
00:13:35
Speaker
Yes, I mean, as you say, none of these co-conspirators are named specifically, but by looking at quotes that are a trapeze to them, it's almost impossible that co-conspirator 2 can't be John Eastman, given the description of what went on and the fact we know from the historical record what John Eastman did.
00:13:58
Speaker
So co-conspirator four has to be Jeffrey Clark, because we know that Trump was suggesting Jeffrey Clark should become acting attorney general at the time that co-conspirator four is being suggested to be acting attorney general. So we get to the end of it, and then we get, yes, we get counts. I'm looking at it now too, and I see counts two, three, and four are both two sentences each.
00:14:26
Speaker
more two points each basically saying first one is refer to the previous 42 pages and then Donald J Trump did this other thing. Now that leads me to another interesting thing that I saw
00:14:45
Speaker
a clip from a discussion today where they were talking about Steve Bannon's, what was his, what was Steve Bannon's strategy called? It was like drowning them in shit or something. Yeah, it was something like that. It was basically just put so much, so much crap out there that
00:15:06
Speaker
you can say or do any, you know, the truth becomes irrelevant. And there's even more to it than that. It's not just, it's not just spreading so much lies. It's so many
00:15:21
Speaker
So many court cases, essentially, they're like, this is just one. There's like five or six other things Trump is being taken to court for within the next year. The one they mentioned was that one of his businesses has been charged with running a pyramid scheme. That's just one.
00:15:43
Speaker
You can argue that there's a bit of a strategy of, yeah, just do so much weird stuff, which has sort of been emblematic, this whole presidency and also everything else that just do so much bad stuff that it all becomes overwhelming and no one thing particularly stands out and gets that much attention. But I don't see that applying in this case. I don't know. This one seems like
00:16:11
Speaker
a big one. Certainly it's the one that everybody's talking about. Yeah, and there are other little nuggets in here. So there's a bit where people point out that
00:16:23
Speaker
If Trump's plot is successful and they manage to introduce alternative slates of electors into the Senate and Pence then either uses those slates to select Trump as president or goes, well, you know, it's not quite clear who the winner is. So we now have to recount the vote or redo the election. People go, but I mean, that could
00:16:48
Speaker
That could lead to riots on the street. And one of Trump's co-conspirators went, well, that's fine. That's why we have the Insurrection Act. So they go, that's fine, you know. If there's a little bit of violence on the street, we'll bring the military in to calm things down.
00:17:06
Speaker
So yeah, that's where Trump is at the moment, looking down. Actually, we never actually said right at the start. So the specific counts are count one is conspiracy to defraud the United States. Count two is conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. Count three is obstruction of an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding. Count four is conspiracy against rights.
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah, and basically, Trump has offended every single American by trying to overturn an election, and this is the term that keeps coming up all the time, where there was no outcome, determinative fraud found. Which is to say,
00:17:49
Speaker
The indictment admits that there are a few cases of fraudulent votes that were found during the last American election, and these range from accidental cases of fraud, so people were voting twice, situations where someone voted and then they died to their vote had to be discarded,
00:18:12
Speaker
actual cases of voter impersonation which are incredibly rare, but there was no example of the kind of widespread fraud that would be outcome determinative, i.e. fraud such that would actually change who the winner of the election was on the day.
00:18:30
Speaker
Indeed, actually, as I've seen people pointing out, this indictment starts. In the introduction section, section one, point number one, the defendant, Donald J. Trump, was the 45th President of the United States in a candidate-free election in 2020. The defendant lost to the 2020 presidential election. Yeah.
00:18:54
Speaker
And they make that statement because they're fairly sure they can prove throughout that he knew he lost the election within days of the election. So, I mean, when does this what's the timeline now?
00:19:11
Speaker
Well, they, so Jack Smith, who is the prosecutor, is also the prosecutor in the other grand jury indictment, wants a speedy trial on this. I think they're aiming for the trial to start taking place at the end of this year.
00:19:32
Speaker
And it's a Washington DC trial, unlike the other indictment which is in front of Judge Eileen Cannon, who is a Trump appointee. I believe the judge in this case is not a Trump appointee. And thus there is a suspicion that maybe she won't delay the trial in the same way that Trump's appointed judge seems to be doing in the other case.
00:19:59
Speaker
Also, I wouldn't be given these. I don't think there's much in the way of evidence evidence to just close the defense here, unlike in the classified documents trial. It's it might be easier to bring it to court, but he's at this stage. They want a speedy trial. Whether they get one is another matter entirely and whether it changes anything is another matter entirely, because as people have pointed out, there's nothing that stops a sitting president.
00:20:29
Speaker
presiding while sitting in jail. It's not actually against the Constitution to be convicted of a crime and still be President of the United States of America, as tomorrow's we're aware.
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, last time we mentioned this, I said, yes, they're using Bud Light rules, when, of course, what I should have said is they're using Air Bud rules, and that there's nothing in the rule book against it. I found it in a multicultural reference. Yeah, no reference in it. There's no rule against it. I mean, after the success of the Barbie film, I wouldn't be surprised if Bud Weiser is going, oh, we could make films about our property. Yeah.
00:21:11
Speaker
Well, there we have it. So I mean, as always seems to be the case with Trump, we'll just have to wait and see what happens next. And I won't be holding my breath. But this one, I don't know. Maybe it's just being overhyped, but it feels like it's some more more of a more of a slam dunk than the other charges against him. But I just don't know. I mean, I actually would recommend to listeners of the podcast actually give the indictment a read. It is.
00:21:40
Speaker
I say it's unusually well-written. I actually haven't really read a legal indictment in the past. So maybe they're all as well-written as this, but it moves along at a fair chop. It tells what seems like an unlikely story until it's time you realize that it's drawn from real life. And as I say, it then ends with a twist of, and it was Donald Trump the entire time. Well, there you go. The latest reading recommendation
00:22:09
Speaker
And it's only 45 pages. It can be read in less than an hour. Right. Well, that brings this bonus episode to a close. Now, we've been doing this episode on the assumption that you listen to the main episode and then went straight to this one. If on the off chance, you go for the bonus episode first because... Or the way that you can queue up your podcast is most recent episode first, unless you essentially listen backwards.
00:22:36
Speaker
Then we should probably point out that this particular bonus episode has been released free to everyone, largely because Patreon has gone weird.
Podcast Updates and Personal News
00:22:48
Speaker
Very weird, isn't it? It isn't. Payments aren't going through. Things are being rejected. They're being flagged as fraud, which means banks are rejecting things wholesale. Patreon stopped allowing.
00:23:02
Speaker
creators to take their funds out, everything's gone very wonky. So we figured that A, putting it out free to all might be the only way to actually let our patrons know that wacky things are going on, and also because it's possible that people haven't been able to pay us, so we should probably give them stuff for free.
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah, and also in happier news. So people are aware that I returned back to Auckland in December of last year to look after my mother with lymphoma. Mum had a PET scan on Monday of this week. She was contacted by the hematologist this morning.
00:23:46
Speaker
to say that according to the result of the scan, there is no trace of the cancer in her. So at this stage, she is in remission, which is why I can feel very confident about returning back to my job in Juhai, China on the 20th of this month. So at this stage, Mum was in remission long may that last. And you're off to China again.
00:24:09
Speaker
which will mean more remote episodes, kind of like this one, but with a time zone difference involved as well. And fluctuating VPN usage. Yes, so we'll have to see, but that's for the future. The future isn't now, now is now. And now, I think it's time to bring this episode to a close. Now it's just been, now it's the past. Yeah, but now now is now, if you see what I mean. People listening to this, it's the past, Josh. We're actually talking in the past now.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yes, but we're talking then, but they're listening to it now, so that then becomes now. Now? Now is then. Okay, well whatever it is, this episode is going to end now. Wait. Now. To the stars! Now.