KEITH MALINAK (00:03.886)
Hello, good Thursday to you. I hope everybody is doing well. Hope you're staying cool and comfortable. It's starting to get a little hot here in Texas and I don't care for it. So I'm going to find a place north of here this weekend and I hope it's a short summer. OK, we've got so much to get to today.

And I am so grateful as always that you are here every Thursday and Friday at 3 p.m. Eastern. Of course, I say that and then I immediately have to say, just kidding, we're not gonna be here tomorrow. So I apologize. No Friday live stream, but I will be back a week from today when we pick up our conversation on Operation Gladio part two. If you didn't catch part one, so much information and the Colonel will be back. She is, I forget the day.

because I'm not prepared. was about a month ago. So check that out. Get up to speed. And then a week from today, we'll be back with part two. So much information from her. And I can't wait to pick that conversation up. Okay. As always, I want to thank Hero West for all that he does to get us up and going on YouTube and Rumble, Spotify, iHeart, iTunes, all of the places and all the links that you need.

at themikeshow.com, right there, right there. And he's always busy with the thumbnails and just, I'm so grateful for Mr. Wes. Also grateful for Gabby over at Instagram at The Mike Show. Go and follow there. She's always putting up great videos and it's like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. So thank you to her as well. If you wanna follow Wes, he's

at that guy at PGU. Only the best graphics for this show. And Gabby is at Jeffy apologist. So be sure to follow those very special people. Another very special person, and I mean that in the most endearing way possible, is my friend, Steve Friend. And sir, I tell you what, First of all, how are you doing?

STEVE FRIEND (02:22.798)
I'm just peachy keen, ma'am.

All right. All right. Just checking. Just checking. You know, that you, one of the things I want to do today is I want to kind of reset your story. We have so much to talk about, but I at least want to remind people of your background and how you ended up where you are here. But one of the things that you do is an awesome, such an informative podcast, the American Radicals podcast. And it's at 1030 AM Eastern.

Which days of the week is it? can never remember.

Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.

Saturday. Okay, yeah, I knew it was three days a week, but I just want to make sure. See, I listen when I want to. So if I miss it live on Rumble and on X, right, because I watch it on Rumble, but I normally go back and catch it the audio version. So it's available whenever. And you're all over the place too, right? I mean, is there any specific place you'd prefer people go to see your awesome show with Garet O'Boyle?

STEVE FRIEND (03:24.618)
I would prefer they go to all of them and give us at least a quick view or a quick follow or a quick listen. I'm an audio guy as well. So I actually watch my game tape. go back and listen to make sure that I don't develop any sort of like verbal ticks or overuse a particular word. I kind of get pedantic about that. So I listen to us on iTunes.

See, you're good. I don't. And I develop crutches and I just lean on them. But good for you, man. I I should actually go back and... I used to air check people for a living as a program director. That used to be my job, sit there and critique people. And anyway, I should probably do that. Very good point.

Is that still a job because I'm unemployed? That sounds fun.

Yeah, I'll tell you everything you need to know. If you don't like paying your bills on time, that is a fun job, But you you have been looking for a job and it's been over a thousand days now. What day is this? What are we up to, sir?

I believe we're somewhere in the area of a thousand thirty give or take three or four days on either side of that.

KEITH MALINAK (04:34.102)
I'm so pissed for you and hurt for your family and all of the whistleblowers that are unnecessarily going through this uncertainty. And at this point, I think the only thing that is certain is the uncertainty. can you just give us a little timeline of Steve Friend and what you have been through since...

Was it May of 2022? Is that when this all started for you?

I made my first disclosure August 19th, 2022. Okay. And was suspended September 19th, 2022. So it took them 30 days to get rid of me.

KEITH MALINAK (05:21.262)
I don't even know where to begin. So explain for those that aren't familiar what you were blowing the whistle on, what the fallout was, and then how it got you to where you are here today.

So my concerns were twofold, and they both pertained to January 6th. So in my office, I worked at Daytona Beach with the resident agency, which is a satellite office of the FBI Jacksonville Field Office. And I had transferred there about a year prior. So January 6 cases, I hadn't been involved in until I transferred over to Florida. Florida had the most January 6 cases of any state in the union. So at the time I transferred, was

interesting.

working on child sexual abuse material, CSAMs, child pornography, human trafficking, child exploitation cases, but then wound up being moved over to the Joint Terrorism Task Force about a year before making my first disclosure. So up to that point, I'd never done anything pertaining to January 6th. I had minimal involvement in a couple of things, but for the most part, all of the interviews had been conducted and we were just waiting for a directive from Washington, DC on what to do on our own cases.

I was concerned for the way that we were outside of our policy in that regard, because at its core, J-6 is one case in Washington, D.C. But an election was made very early on within the first couple of weeks after January 6, 2021, instead of opening up one case in Washington, D.C., and then if you have someone who committed a crime who needs to be interviewed or even arrested, then cutting a lead to the agents in that area, they elected instead to open a separate

STEVE FRIEND (07:01.518)
case for every single pers case in about 2500 cases to having them in Washing the person lived on pap terrorism investigation in we've turned one into 2500 map of thousands of ter across the country when in all January six and most

My point back on them was hey look there's bureaucratic reasons that you guys are doing this you're doing this because you're trying to boost the stats artificially But if you're operate outside the policy you have to document why you're doing that you have to tell the Defendant in any sort of trial what you did at all times and I feel like this opens us up Makes us vulnerable like let's say we have a legitimate bad actor Somebody who was beating a cop and should probably be prosecuted for that, but we have not operated within our own

policies and we're now going to jeopardize that because if I get called on the stand, they're going to say, well, you didn't do things by policy here. What about somewhere else? So that was sort of my concern on it, but the pushback I got was, well, we're winning all the cases. So it doesn't matter. And, I would counter with, don't care about other cases. only care about my own. I only care that those cases are buttoned up secondly, because that gets a little nerdy, even though that is massive. And about four weeks ago, the ODNI Tulsi Gabbard released documents that prove

Yeah.

STEVE FRIEND (08:28.652)
that I was 100 % accurate about that. So that's been verified. I've been vindicated on that account. Secondly, there was one individual who was going to be prosecuted, and we were waiting in our office because he'd been interviewed. He confessed to what he did on January 6. That was before I even transferred. I wasn't part of that. But now it was a case where I was one of the case agents of. And he said, I'll cooperate with you fully. And then a year and half went by and

They finally gave a director from Washington, D.C. go forth and arrest him. We have an arrest warrant. And then the leadership in my office in the Jacksonville field office said, we're going to send a SWAT team to go arrest him at six o'clock in the morning. And I pushed back on that as a guy who did SWAT for five years. said, look, he's been cooperative with us. He has no expectation that we're coming a year and a half later. It presents an unnecessary risk to the public safety, to him, to us. Why are we doing this? Why are we making the process the punishment? So.

Brought those forward to my supervisor August 19th. And I wound up doing multiple meetings. I worked my way up the chain of command, went to the assistant special agents in charge, eventually the special agents in charge. I kind of beat my head against the wall with those parties there. I was told things like I was a conspiracy theorist and that I needed to do soul searching and decide if I to the agency and that I needed to follow orders and set an example for my children.

And that's when the process started. That's when you've been identified, you're the problem, and they're gonna use whatever they can to get rid of you because the law is 5 U.S.C. 2303, specifically to the FBI. If you bring a concern forward, waste, fraud, abuse, risk to the public safety, violation of rule policy procedure, and you bring it to the right people, you don't just go to the media, you don't just go out to X and say it, you bring it to your supervisor, you bring it to the inspector general, you bring it to Congress, you're supposed to receive whistleblower protection.

But if you work for the FBI, which is a member of the intelligence community, you have to have a security clearance. And there's a very prominent Supreme Court case that anybody who's in this space knows about. It's called Navy versus Eagan. And it basically says the Supreme Court told the intelligence community that they had wide latitude to issue, suspend, revoke security clearances however they saw fit. And basically the person who gets it, you don't have a right to that security clearance. They can pull it whenever they want.

STEVE FRIEND (10:52.334)
So that's what the FBI used against me and against all the other whistleblowers. So they wound up suspending my security clearance September 19th, 2022. They said that I refused a lawful order. They told me that by not participating in the J-6 arrest that that constituted an insubordination. But in effect, I expressed concern and my boss has told me that I was not allowed to come to the arrest that day. I had to stay home, so I followed the order. Secondly, they told me that

I was insubordined for not attending a security awareness briefing, which I had a superior call me on the phone and say, you have to go to this extra training about use of FBI technology. And I asked him because he was involved in the entire process if this was because I had made disclosures. And he said, no, but I made different decisions than the others. So good, bad, or indifferent, there was going to be consequences.

So I asked him if I could have an attorney. He said no. I asked him if I could have documentation to bring to an attorney. And he said yes. And I never heard about that again. So they said I refused to participate. And the third one was they said that I improperly accessed the FBI's classified network and system. And that I did. My lawyer asked me to get him a copy of the FBI employee handbook. And I got him copies of the handbook and other unclassified documents like

disciplinary procedures and things called the OPR quarterlies, which is the Office of Professional Responsibility. Every three months, they put out and disseminated an unclassified email to the entire FBI to talk about people who screw up and the sort of punishments they get, kind of as we're always watching you. But I figured that would be a good rubric for us to have as a precedent for if I was going to get disciplined. We'd know what to expect.

And then I also got a copy of the domestic investigations operations guide, which was what I cited when I said we were outside of the policy and that's an unclassified document as well. But they're all housed on a classified system, which seems to be problematic. But because I did that, the FBI said that I lacked loyalty to the United States government. so looking at the handbook made me a potential espionage. So then I get walked out unpaid and definitely suspended. You're still an employee. You need their permission.

STEVE FRIEND (13:06.594)
to get another job, which I put in multiple requests for and was denied every single time. So they tried to financially bleed you white. And that was really the start of things. And it got worse from there. My wife lost her job under some very dubious circumstances. Her Facebook account was taken down when she sent a private message to a woman from Moms for Liberty and said that she was my wife. And immediately her Facebook account was permanently suspended.

after having done that. The FBI leaked my medical information to the New York Times during Hurricane Ian and told them that I was unvaccinated against coronavirus, which would be a HIPAA violation. And they also told them that I was suspended because I shot a firearm in my backyard. So my lawyers had to address that when I was out of contact because I didn't have cell phone reception or internet during a hurricane. I had to attend a mandatory meeting with the security office of the FBI where they attempted to...

accused me of inciting violence. I'd written an op-ed for Cheryl Atkinson. She did a sit-down interview with me. She's one of the first people I spoke to in media. And then she also published my first op-ed I ever wrote in my life. And in this op-ed, I basically compared the oath of office to an iPhone user agreement, where so many people just sort of check yes. They don't really take it into full consideration. And I said, this is a rhetorical call to arms for my fellow civil servants to uphold your oath of office.

And they said that because I used the phrase call to arms, it was an incitement of violence, even though the word immediately preceding it was rhetorical. And then they also tried to accuse me of committing felonies because I had recorded the meeting that I had with my supervisors when they told me that I needed to just follow orders to set an example for my kids. And I recorded that in Florida, which is a two-party consent state.

So they said that was a felony of state law. And my response back to them was that, well, one, you're a federal agency, so you don't enforce state law. And secondly, I was a law enforcement officer when I did that. And it was my sincere belief that my immediate supervisors were trying to coerce me to violate individuals' rights. So as a matter of a criminal investigation, I'm allowed to record that. And that kind of shut that line of attack down. But you would think that they were actually interested in finding out if my superiors were

STEVE FRIEND (15:29.24)
trying to coerce me to commit violations of civil rights, that they might want to get a copy of that. And they didn't want that because they already had a copy of it. They were recording as well. And it was pretty clear during the meeting. So that entire recording and the transcript of it is available. I did wind up writing a book about it. It's called True Blue, My Journey from Beat Cop to Sustained FBI Whistleblower. That full transcript is available. And you can hear or read it yourself to see that everything I'm saying is, in fact, accurate.

And ultimately culminates with my invitation to go and testify to the weaponization committee in the House, the Jim Jordan committee. And that was May 18th, 2023. And of course, the night before, the FBI permanently revoked my security clearance and told the Washington Post and the New York Times so that they can write hit pieces about me to disperse my reputation the day before I wound up getting to testify about the weaponization that was going on in the FBI. So that was brought to the attention of Congressman Jordan.

And he, as a modicum of giving me some sort of, I don't know, a reward or a way to hurt, to just dull that blade from going into my back, he told me that I would have two extra minutes during my opening statement. So I gave him a security clearance, which is worth somewhere in the area of several hundred thousand dollars so that I can address the American people for seven minutes instead of five.

KEITH MALINAK (16:52.91)
Okay, I'm gonna try to stay calm. First of all, this is Steve's book, True Blue. Go and check that out, please.

Mug, they airbrushed me so good, I look like a Pixar princess.

Okay, I've got another picture of you coming up shortly where you're a nice and clean shaven. It looks similar to that one coming up here in a second. I never. Right, right, okay, I got you, I got you. Okay, so I jotted down some notes. I don't know if you saw this, but over the course of your explanation of the hell that you and your family, that's the thing. It's not just you in a vacuum.

I'm not clean shaven.

KEITH MALINAK (17:35.776)
It's not just, he lost his job at the FBI because some terrible people are in charge. There are so many tentacles. Look at this. mean, the private communications on Facebook of your wife were intercepted effectively. just, her job loss, it is, to hear how our government operates.

is like how you would have taught the Soviet Union to your kids. And that's not a stretch at all. I'm sorry. The way that they handle honorable men and women who dare to come forward. if somebody is just, and this is exactly why I wanted you to lay out your story, because everyone that watches this show is familiar with you. They know your story.

But do they? Because I needed you to lay this out and kind of refresh my memory on some of these details that I had forgotten and shame on me. Because I am so pissed off for all of the whistleblowers that are in similar positions like you. And all of your cases are unique, but yet they're the same. And the common thread is it's honorable people who are dealing with dishonorable forces. And it doesn't matter who, which party is

in the executive branch, and it's absolutely disheartening. But if someone that isn't familiar with your situation, they want to just instinctively trust the government. And when they see bullet points, something like if they were to walk by a newspaper and just say, unauthorized access to a government database, my gosh, enemy of the country, inciting violence, yeah, I'm glad they got this guy out of there. What a crazy guy. You don't want this.

It's absolutely shameful. And the reason I admire you so much, because if I were in your shoes, I swear I would be on the news, And just bless you and your family, Steve. I'm sorry as an American that you, I can't say that you've gone through, that you are still going through.

KEITH MALINAK (20:05.934)
It's disappointing and it's shocking in of itself that the previous administration did this to you. But it's soul crushing that the current administration continues to allow this to happen to you, your family, and so many honorable whistleblowers that are in your situation. Why do you think you guys haven't been let back into the fold? Why do you think?

that this new and improved administration, this new and improved FBI hasn't welcomed your honor and integrity back into the Bureau.

I think that you just need to go back to the reference I made to the Office of Professional Responsibility, the OPR quarterlies. It's an email that goes out every three months in the FBI where they identify people who did wrongdoing. And some of it's really bad. And it's anonymous, but it's basically a shot across the bow of every employee to let them know that we're always watching you. The worst sin you can commit is embarrassing the FBI. You can survive just about anything else. And this has created a chilling effect and

I think that myself and the other whistleblowers who are more public, I don't think there's ever been a more public pushback from whistleblowers before at the FBI. So we're sort of an unchartered one this year. But at the same time, it's also led to us having sort of a vulnerability because people can see, Steve Friend out there, Kyle Serifin out there, Garrett O'Boy out there, Marcus Allen to a lesser extent, Phil Kennedy, they're still not back.

So what's in it for me to go forward, even if I do the right thing to lose everything. And my pushback to that is I'd rather have kids that were not morally bankrupt, but hungry than vice versa. But at the same time, you could see that that sort of calculation go on as a result of it. And it never ends. I I'm out over a thousand days, can't get hired to wash dishes, work at a car wash.

STEVE FRIEND (22:13.196)
be a garbage man, because all it requires is a simple Google search about my name, and it's just not worth it.

And they will see those bullet points that I just rattled off and they will say this guy is toxic. Don't touch him. Right? mean, is that what

happening? New administration comes in and the exact same concerns were there that there was going to be leaks. They characterize whistleblowing as a leak because the Trump administration, part one, their experience with whistleblowers like Eric Charamella, we're not allowed to name him, right? He's Voldemort, he shall not be named. Eric Charamella came forward with the Ukraine phone call whistleblow and he was basically just leaking things to the Democrats and to the media.

So they're very concerned about leaks and they want to set the precedent here that nothing will ever be tolerated. And look at these guys now, six months in and nothing's happened good for them. And even if there is some sort of resolution from what my understanding is and my attorney's doing some back-channeling with Department of Justice and the FBI itself, they're messaging to senators who are concerned about this that me and every single one of the other whistleblowers, we all have character issues.

And that we're not going to be brought back and I don't think any one of us is jumping out of our seat to be brought back but we can't just allow two dozen people who came forward with for the right reasons and obeyed the law did everything through the policy and the processes that we were supposed to to just be left down on a limb particularly when you have a new administration you have a new Attorney General and an FBI director and FBI deputy director who I would contend

STEVE FRIEND (23:57.238)
significant portion to their political ascendancy to the information that the whistleblowers brought forward because we alerted the American people to the weaponization and then there was an outcry for let's stop this from happening and I they've moved on and they say well that doesn't matter we took that information we gained power and You were just convenience for us and we're just gonna move on so

I've got so many questions, Steve. I'm going to forget half of them. Okay, so.

KEITH MALINAK (24:30.976)
Earlier I said, this is Soviet Union stuff. know, the only thing, the only ingredient lacking is violence against you. Do you have a concern about that or, or do you think that, that they just are annoyed by you?

I am concerned about enough to take the following precautions, I don't think that I've slept a full night in the last 1000 plus days. My family has like an evacuation plan for when they come for me because I'm a former FBI agent, former police officer, SWAT agent. They would send the hostage rescue team to come and get me at six o'clock in the morning.

So we have made certain arrangements. I've had that candid conversations with my wife, which was not fun, but I would rather be prepared for that than not. she knows and she's got, she has finances set up, she's got clothing packed up. She knows sort of an exfiltration strategy in the case that that happens. She knows the lawyers to talk to, she knows all these other things because we made preparations for that.

and look in conversations that we had and even doing our own research on it and having other people come to us, and I say us because there's multiple whistleblowers have had this, there were open criminal investigations of a number of us. There were open domestic terrorist cases open on a number of us, one of which was prompted by Jim Jordan, who gave all our information over to the FBI so that we could be investigated for that. So thank you for my extra two minutes, sir, and for the domestic terrorist case. And I've caught...

surveillance assets following me when I fly.

KEITH MALINAK (26:21.806)
Steve, does it pay to do the right thing in this country?

Look, I would never have not done it. That's my default setting. But you can't articulate a case that it does in this case. And that's why I took such umbrage the other day. And I think I mentioned it to you even by text. There was an exchange between Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro on Megyn's show. And they were discussing, I think, more the suicide for Jeffrey Epstein. And Ben Shapiro made a comment about that he doesn't believe any of the conspiracy theories about it because

if they were true that somebody certainly would come forward and she said, well, that's easy for you to say because you would have your millions. And he said, are you kidding me? If somebody came forward with the Epstein information, they would make more money the next day than they would throughout the rest of their FBI career. And I'll keep it family friendly. My feelings on that. I'm just waiting on the Shapiro slush fund to hit me. I'm waiting on Daily Wire to contact me at any point in the last three years. As a media outlet, maybe perhaps they could just

carve a little bit away from talking about what is a woman and talk about how there's a weaponized federal law enforcement agency that's going after the American people, but I guess it doesn't generate enough clicks.

Before I forget in your list of emergency contacts if they do come for you Please make sure that your family has my contact information because if you're not able to speak out I want to do my part in making sure that that you aren't just Disappeared and I know just to even hear some something said like that in this country some people are rolling their eyes right now and I don't give a shit because

KEITH MALINAK (28:08.362)
We have seen things that I thought I would never see from this government and shame on me for trusting it as much as I have for so many years. And it does not matter which party is in power because power is the operative word there. And it just sickens me what you continue to go through, you and your fellow whistleblowers. And I actually, want to let me.

Let me put this tweet up here from Phil Kennedy, someone who you are very familiar with who is going through similar stuff. I love this. Is this accurate? Do you think this is accurate? By the way, this is that clean, look at that. There's, there's, do you think this has aged you? Maybe that's an unfair question.

This living I do my best to always look the exact same.

Okay, so, Phil Kennedy, I've been told by a reliable source that this is the man, Steve friend that the FBI management fears the most. And that's exactly why you should be the next deputy director director. So, so two questions off of this that I want to ask you. Number one, do you think, do you think that they fear you over there? and secondly, and I got to talk about Dan Bongino in a second. We'll, get to him.

If somehow there was an opening for deputy director of the FBI, would you even take that job?

STEVE FRIEND (29:37.644)
I know that they fear me there. I have some similar sources to Phil Kennedy in that regard. Phil and I have had many conversations, just the two of us, and I remember at one point him saying that if I were ever to be reinstated that perhaps this entire odyssey that I've gone through has prepared me for that because I will have no sympathy at all. I will not hesitate to just end someone's career and not weigh whether or not they're going to be able to pay their bills or feed their family.

had absolutely no remorse. And I think that's probably why they would fear me for that. mean, I'm not somebody who's inclined and my default is to seek retribution. But at this point, I feel like the only hope that the rest of the country has is to completely just disarm and defang and bring this agency to its knees as far as a force.

I think it's even simpler than that. Unfortunately, I think they realize that you're not someone who is willing to compromise. And since you can't be, used to further an agenda and you can't be counted on to do the bidding of some bad people with bad motivations, they have no use for you. And it just, again, for someone who

who wants to be so proud of his country and wants to be able to tell my kids, my gosh, yes. Because we've talked about the history of the FBI. Whenever you come on here, that's one thing you do is you drop so much knowledge, the history of the FBI, the workings of the FBI, behind the scenes of the FBI. But you also expose the just rot, decay,

and just the putrid innards of the FBI and our government. And I just, I'm sorry that you continue to go through this. And don't know, man. Okay, well, this is something else. You mentioned when you were talking there, you mentioned, why teach your kids to do the right thing? Well, I'm sorry.

KEITH MALINAK (31:58.422)
You didn't say that. I'm saying that. Well, I teach your kids to do the right thing. You know, if whistleblowers, I don't mean do the wrong thing. I mean, why come forward? Why stick your neck out when this is the shit that you're going to have to go through and test every limit of your being and your family and your resilience and all all areas of your world affected because you did the right thing. And how disheartening talk about soul crushing.

is something like this. said something a moment ago that made me think of this. Yep, doesn't pay to be a whistleblower, but boy, how about this government? is from a year ago, almost the one year anniversary of a big payday for Strach and Page, $2 million. And this was something that you were pointing out there because we were, I forgot what prompted you to do this, but the government, us, taxpayers.

We paid those dirty SOBs that did everything they could to abuse their positions of authority as FBI agents. Steve, how do you feel when you see stuff like this,

It shows you what communists are willing to do and that is they reward their friends and punish their enemies So that settlement between Peter struck and Lisa page who were paramours They were texting each other on their government phones Which you have no expectation of privacy for and those text messages became public So they sued for privacy reasons and the Merrick Garland DOJ

saw them as friendlies as allies and gave them $2 million. So a million dollars each for that. And that was, course, Andy McCabe had been fired the day before he was set to retire. He was reinstated. Well, he had a nice GoFundMe that raised somewhere for his legal defense somewhere in the area of $500,000 over a weekend. And then he got a settlement of about $700,000 after that. Got reinstated, got his pension back. And one of the big

STEVE FRIEND (34:06.616)
deals for him because this how petty they are at a senior executive service level, SES. He wanted his SES cufflinks issued to him so that he could have them. And I just call them as SES anal beads because that's effectively what they are.

my goodness. Okay, I've got I don't even know. I've got so much stuff here. You wanna talk about Jeffrey Epstein for a moment?

Oh, I'd love to because we're not allowed to you didn't get the memo key. Oh, we need to move on

I was telling you to up. Somebody commented, Trump didn't tell you to shut up because I kind of paraphrased. Like hell he didn't. He told me I wasn't even allowed to celebrate his successes with him. I think the quote was don't even talk about the good things. Okay, if that's what you want, but I mean, I'm going to go off and do a different tangent. And I really want to just kind of focus on the Jeffrey Epstein stuff. Breaking news, just, I don't know, an hour ago maybe, the president did

say that he was not looking into a special counsel to investigate this Jeffrey Epstein fiasco with his Department of Justice. I don't think we're surprised by that.

KEITH MALINAK (35:21.208)
What? Okay. Let me ask you this as a former FBI agent. Okay. Before I go to hypotheticals here, let me ask you this. Are you hearing anything from inside the FBI of what? What's life like inside there right now? since that press release went out, that memo was leaked to Axios on Sunday night.

July 6th. my gosh, week a half ago now. Have you heard your sources? Anybody on inside telling you what it's like in there?

The morale is even lower than it was when Cash Patel and Dan Maggino sat down with Marina Bargeromo and said that he killed himself. And the basic conclusion is that we have two social media influencers who are running things at this point. It's not serious. The daily day operations are the exact same as they were with Christopher Wray, but they're pivoting so quickly to what their new priorities are because all the leadership.

structure is doing now is watching social media and seeing what the comment sections are saying and whatever the comment sections are demanding, they have to give sort of a derivative of that. So they continue to make these promises, which they've not delivered on any of them, but they try to give you like a flavor of it. So we didn't get the Epstein stuff. So we'll say that we're going to go after child sexual abuse and we'll rename an operation from operation cross country to operation restore justice. And congratulations, America. Look at all these pedophiles we took down, which we're already taking down.

No, I want you to stop right there for a second because that's an excellent point that you have made. I'm telling you, American Radicals podcast, y'all, there's so much information there. If you want to sound smart in front of your friends, listen to that and then just repeat what you hear on the American Radicals podcast. I think that especially in light of the Epstein fumble.

KEITH MALINAK (37:22.476)
I mean, I'm being very generous with my word choice here. A lot of people have countered, because I've been ranting nonstop on X and I get it. I mean, every other tweet from me is about going after these rapist pedophile elites. But a lot of the pushback that I get is the FBI is doing some good things. In fact, in fact, I forgot who it was. I don't know the guy. Somebody sent me a three or four minute video of somebody I guess I'm supposed to know who was saying that.

We don't need to be stuck in the past. I'm again paraphrasing and we're these these these girls are now adults. Let's concentrate on the kids that are being abused. And I don't know why we can't do both. Let's let's also keep in mind as I say this, you were taken off of child exploitation cases to investigate J sixers. But so it shows you the priority that our government really has. But but one of the things people are saying is, look, the FBI cash is, you know, they're doing press conferences talking about these pedophiles that they're going after.

if I weren't paying attention, if I'm sorry, let me back up. If I didn't listen to you, sir, I would just be like, wow, that's awesome way to do that. But that's not necessarily a new thing under this FBI, correct?

Yeah, that is correct. I mean, they rebranded it in operation that was going on for over 20 years every single year. Just gave it a new coat of paint, new title, and took credit as if it was a new initiative that they've been engaging in. And I'm not besmirching them for doing that, but it's not honest about it. And look, let's go to the Epstein thing at large, just sort of my take. I think they tried to soft pedal this out for a very long time, and they eventually just lost patience and tried to just ram it across.

I mean, you look at the and Dan sit down with Barteromo. They start talking about Epstein killing himself and they didn't look very comfortable doing that. Then another point you had cash sit down with Joe Rogan and try to play on the appeal to authority. You know me, you know me. If I saw these things, I would put them out there. And again, it wasn't landing. And eventually they just over a holiday weekend, July 4th weekend on a Sunday night.

KEITH MALINAK (39:34.382)
I've never seen a bombshell story like this break on a Sunday night and I've been following this crap my entire adult life.

They did it in light of the flooding in Texas too, to distract. And then they leaked it. very strategically handed it to Axios, which is a left-wing source, so that the MAGA people would say, I don't believe that. Or at least the blow would land softer with them. And then they effectively put it up there. And now,

president has lost patience with this and now he's trying to brand it as the Jeffrey Epstein hoax. The Jeffrey Epstein hoax. And you move on. This is old news already. Meanwhile, at the next breath, he'll talk about the Russia collusion and the Steele dossier, which goes back to 2016. So that's not really consistent. And here's the risks that they run. There's a couple of them here. By dismissing our concerns, by saying that that mountain that you think is before you is really just a molehill, it makes me be able to flip the script on you.

from a PR campaign so that when you get out there and you say, look, look at all the great stuff we're doing. I can always counter with, yeah, but you didn't do anything with upstate. It doesn't matter how great it is. I'll always be able to turn that mountain that you're presenting before me, look how high the stock market is, look, we've achieved peace over here. Yeah, but you didn't do anything with upstate. So now you set yourself up for that reversal from me. And then the larger two concerns I have, the abuse of children could and should

be the most paramount concern that we have. It's not, it's not because people really don't want to think about the darkest things in life. And I don't blame them for that. I don't hate them for that. But the real reason that Epstein is so important to the American people is because it's the ultimate case, the ultimate question of do we have a two tiered system of justice for the elite? And we have to have this determined for us. And the Epstein case presents that for us because now we actually have a list of the elite.

STEVE FRIEND (41:29.826)
And that will put the onus on the Department of Justice to actually charge these people for what they did. And if they do charge them, then we exist in a system that's one tiered system. And if they don't, then we have validation that it's a two tiered system of justice. And by not addressing it, now they've effectively voted present, which in effect means that they voted yes, we do have a two tiered system of justice. And whatever the rationalization is, there is no middle ground. There is no, well, I'm not saying that...

for attending kids shouldn't be a priority, we need to also focus on these other things. There is no middle ground on abusive children. And whatever your rationalization is for what the decision was, well, maybe they were lying and they didn't have it, or they did have it and it was destroyed. Maybe they have it and they are worried about foreign relations. Maybe they have it and they're worried about economic reasons. We can't have a bunch of Fortune 500 CEOs go down, the economy will collapse. Maybe they just have their buddies on the list, whatever it is.

Whatever, however you have rationalized it in your head, you must end that rationalization with the following phrase. We did this so we had to let the rapist pedophile elite go free. And you cannot sign me up for that. I don't care if it brings down the country. I don't want to be part of that country. don't care if it destroys our culture. That is not the culture that I am for.

Everything you just said is exactly how I feel, 100%. So if anyone has any question on where I stand on this, just play that answer back. It's absolutely, it's sickening. It's sickening because we always knew that the best among us weren't running the show in Congress, weren't in charge of the government. We knew this, we knew this. But.

That is the line in the sand. Leave children alone. And I don't care. I put this on X yesterday. If 90 % if this list is so critical of protecting that 90 % of the government would be taken down, who gives a shit? That's a government that needs to be changed. And it needs new representatives. And we need new people.

KEITH MALINAK (43:47.828)
making our laws and governing us. We don't need rapist, pedophile elites running the damn show. And we need justice for these people. Before it's too late, it's already well past when they should have been criminally prosecuted. But don't talk to me. And for whatever reason, for whatever reason Trump has to take the tact that he did yesterday and what he is saying.

The right answer is not to tell us to shut up about it. It's to tell us the truth about what's really going on behind the scenes. I cannot believe and we've all lived the Trump experience for a decade. We know he is outside the box. He's not your cookie cutter president. We understand he expresses himself on social media in ways that no president in all of our history

has done. We understand that. But for you to look at us, people that put you in office when you would be, if thrown to the wolves, would be in jail, not by any justification other than the left wants you there, but to the people that ensured you are in the most powerful, highest office in all the world. And you're telling us

You're calling us weaklings. You're telling us, don't even talk about my successes, my past supporters. I'm sorry, dude. Of all the issues that you're going to tell us to stop talking about, it's pedophilia? I don't think so. And it's been handled in such a ridiculously bad way. I'll stop babbling, Steve. I know you have thoughts.

I mean, it just sets them up for a pushback. I said like this mountain into molehill comparison. Well, how about just being plainly honest, not giving the benefit of the doubt, not saying, hey, you get some good with some bad here. It's a mixed bag. We're only going to focus on things like, I don't know, you've spent more money than Joe Biden did. Does that mean that you and Mike Johnson are less conservative?

KEITH MALINAK (46:03.82)
You're not supposed to notice that,

I'm sending more weapons to Ukraine because...

supposed to notice that either, Steve. It's dumbfounding. And I think the most recent theory that a lot of people are throwing out there, which is very plausible, is that between election day and Trump getting into office, maybe the files were changed. A lot of people have had access to them for the, gosh, don't know, decade now.

that he was under investigation and convicted. But the point I'm trying to make is that this is out there and I lost my train of thought because that's what I do on the show with my ADD. But I guess what I'm trying to say, Steve, in a very cumbersome sort of way is that

The more you tell us to not talk about something, the more that I'm going to want to talk about something, especially something of this magnitude. And that's what I was going to say, is that if they did change the, they changed the stuff and maybe only Republicans are now on the list. Okay, then come out there, Mr. President. Have a press conference of all the people who like to talk to the, the man is unfiltered every time he's standing in front of Marine One. Just hold up, hold up.

KEITH MALINAK (47:36.45)
Let's do a Tuesday night speech from the Oval Office. Explain, step by step. I don't care if you have to read it off the teleprompter and it's just choppy or whatever. Explain, step by step, how you got here. Don't just lay it at our feet and tell us to stop talking about it like we're your children. Explain why there's nothing there, why we should move on from it. Explain that.

I don't know, man. I just I'm just so fed up with this whole dance and it's just gross. OK, I'm just looking here. I don't know, man. Dan Boncino. I wanted to get back to him because you mentioned how Dan and Cash social media warriors. I have nothing. These are this is the dream team, man. This is who I wanted in these positions. And it just adds an extra layer of disappointment to this whole ordeal.

And

KEITH MALINAK (48:32.312)
But I have noticed that Dan Bongino in his official account, he hasn't tweeted out, and he normally tweets out every day, he hasn't done anything since July 9th, exactly a week ago, over a week ago now. And the only thing on his, this is on his personal account, is on the anniversary of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

on July 13th, he did retweet JD Vance's tweet. JD Vance said, remains the most iconic moment I've ever seen in American politics one year ago today. And so that's, so the Dan Vangino personal account, but his official account hasn't done anything. And this is the only activity on his personal account.

I'm gonna ask you to put yourself into, well, before I do that, I'm gonna have you give us your thoughts on what Dan Bongino is going through right now. Just let's play the hypothetical game. But first I wanna play this clip from a couple of years ago. I just, actually, I just wanna, you know what? Let me see how much of this I wanna play. But the first thing he says out of his mouth from, I think this is, yeah, this is August of 2022. I wanna see if you agree with this and then I'm gonna play the whole two minute clip.

What do you think of this?

FBI has lost. It's broken. Irredeemably corrupt at this point.

KEITH MALINAK (49:55.992)
Steve, do you agree with that statement?

there are, yes.

I know you do. Okay, let's see what else Dan Bongino from three years ago was saying.

The inexcusable rate on President Trump's home was a straw that broke the camel's back. I mean it when I say it. It's way past time to clean this FBI house up. They have burned every last shred of faith and trust freedom-loving Americans had in it. And to the libs out there, listen, don't even waste your time lecturing me on this issue. Not a second. I gaff you right off. I pay no attention to you losers, okay? No one's been a stauncher defender of FBI agents I work with than me.

Go back and listen to my shows, you dipwads. I was the one defending them all the time. I've actually been a federal agent, a cop who actually put my butt on the line. But what the FBI did to Donald Trump, that wasn't law enforcement. It was tyranny. Tyranny, I use the word very specifically. I use my words deliberately on this show. And like most abuses that come from the left, in this case within the FBI, we were warned about FBI corruption decades ago.

STEVE FRIEND (51:06.006)
didn't have those institutions. The FBI came in during the first World War and interestingly enough, one thing that Woodrow Wilson did, he used the FBI to spy on American citizens and actually arrest them if they disagreed with his foreign policy about going to war in Europe. It almost looks like the FBI was designed to spy on Americans who might be disagreeing with policy, especially the foreign policy.

Prophetic. But it's not like the Democrats themselves haven't warned us of their abuse of power from intelligence agencies like the FBI. Remember this gem from Chuck Schumer right before Trump took office? Take on the intelligence community. They have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you. even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he's being really dumb to do this. What do you think the intelligence community would do if they were motivated I don't know, but from what I am told...

They are very upset with how he has treated them and talked about them. No, they're very upset. I'm very upset. I'm very upset about a lot of things.

I tell you that Chuck Schumer clip, we know that to be true, but to hear him say that.

Mmm, just paints it a little differently, huh?

STEVE FRIEND (52:21.55)
It would be a really good idea then for the FBI to not have hired hundreds of new intelligence analysts and brag, the deputy director brag about having opened up hundreds of new intelligence cases since they took over. And there, I believe up to 5,000 intelligence cases, 800 have been opened since January. It's almost like meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Exactly. Who are these cases open on? idea?

Well, intelligence cases don't involve an allegation or evidence of a crime. It's just an individual or a subject matter that needs to be opened up because of the executive order 12333 that gave unfettered access to the NSA's hoovering up of signals intelligence. then intelligence analysts can go in and develop whatever information they want to write their intelligence product. And intelligence analysts within the intelligence community tend to be very far left.

And they will then write their intelligence products, which are imbibed into the operation space. And it drives the mission because you have, well, our intel is reporting X, Y, and Z, which just happens to be that Americans that go to mass, are terrorists. So we better set up a quota to arrest a certain number of, we'll call them racially motivated violent extremists, but it's really just people that go to Catholic Latin mass because we're so dullards.

that we didn't think that there could be a bunch of Latinos at a Catholic mass. We just figured they were all like really pasty white and called things like O'Reilly. And we could call them white supremacists and then go open up domestic terrorist cases on them.

KEITH MALINAK (54:05.162)
Does it matter, honestly though, if the federal agents on the other side of the screen are liberals? It just seems like anybody that steps out of line with the Uniparty, quite frankly, are making themselves a target.

I just, I don't know that it's, is it, okay, let me ask you this. Do think it's more politically motivated when they're going after, when they're just taking a look, just, know, see if they can find anything on someone, or if it's more regime motivated, whoever's at the levers of power?

I think it's the latter. Increasingly, we saw almost the marrying of those two during the Biden administration. Yes, sir. Where it was doing the bidding of the regime, which wanted them to go after their political enemies. Now, you could have said the same thing, though, if you go back multiple decades, because the regimes in power didn't like Martin Luther King Jr. So the FBI was going after him, right? Or the regimes didn't like these militia extremists. So they tried to set up guys in the 90s of anti-government extremists.

or the regimes didn't like draft dodgers. So they said the Metro Vietnam draft dodgers. So there's a historical precedent for that. But as the apparatus, as the bureaucracy has grown in power and influence and capabilities and funding and material and personnel, there is a ever-growing demand for them to meet the asks of the regime in order to continue to grow because that in effect is a goal of the bureaucracy. If you're not growing, you're failing. So they continue to broaden.

their target space or target area to go and try to get people and rewrite definitions of people. And we've talked about it before since 9-11, you give them the assessment after the Patriot Act that allows them to open up an assessment on any American for articulable purpose.

KEITH MALINAK (55:54.85)
I want you to explain that again because I don't think enough people are familiar with that whole scenario.

So after September 11th, we passed the Patriot Act. And one of the tools in that was called an assessment. So if you're in the FBI right now, there's basically three levels of investigations. There is assessment, which is the lowest, preliminary investigation, which is second tier, and then full investigation, which is the upper tier. And as you move up, you get the ability to use more tools as you develop more information and more evidence that a crime has been committed.

then you can open up the Batman tool belt more and more so until you eventually get the full gambit of all the tools. But an assessment is a lower tier investigation of anyone for an articulable purpose. Like, I just have a feeling about that guy. And any agent can open up an assessment on any American for an articulable purpose without a supervisor even approving it. Now the problem then is

If it's for a terrorist purpose where there's a lot of money in national security, a lot of funding attached to that and the quotas are set and you got to hit those quotas because you want to make sure that you get the funding next year and the people get their bonuses and you can pat each other in the back, get promoted off of it. Once you open the assessment up, the bosses don't want you to close it because that would take it off the books. They want to make sure that it's there and we can keep going. there's really no counter pressure where it says, are you looking at a person for their first amendment protected activity, like going to mass or speaking freely on the internet?

It's actually the opposite. They always say, well, can we do something to elevate this assessment into a preliminary or a full investigation? Because then we get bonus points for that. So why don't we introduce a human source, a snitch to this person, and see if we can get them to say something that then would justify us opening it up and getting any more? We have our man. Let's find our crime. And what sort of person are we going to go after when we're back to the intelligence space where we're going to shape the target?

STEVE FRIEND (57:51.214)
So we're going to go after terrorists. there's not enough terrorists. Let's go after homegrown violent extremists. Well, there's not a whole lot of those. So let's go after domestic violent extremists. We're running out of those and we got in trouble because we started calling moms and school board meetings domestic violent extremists. So let's go after racially motivated violent extremists, AKA white supremacists. And now we try to characterize the January 6th as white supremacy, but that really didn't play out because Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both white.

So let's go after and develop a new category called anti-government, anti-authority, violent extremists in Agave. And Agave, is somebody who has a perception of government overreach or negligence, that's it. So we can open that up because they're domestic terrorists. And now the new one that they're going to start pushing out, and I'm seeing it pushed out more and more, is called a nihilistic violent extremist, NVE, which is interesting because in the terrorism space,

It's supposed to be an ideology that you hold that drives you into a violent action so that you can bring about political change through fear and violence. But a nihilist doesn't have any beliefs. So what are they going to do? Well, they're just going to find angry incels online and poke and prod them and then open up terrorism cases on them. And then if they're underage, they'll wait till they turn 18 and then drop.

the flashbang at their feet and arrest them for providing material support to terrorism when all they did for the last couple of years would say, do you want to help a terrorist organization? Hey, do you want to go do a terrorism? And eventually the kid succumbs to that pressure because it's his only friend in the world and he has nothing outside of that. And he winds up sending a green dot card of $25 to ISIS, but it's not ISIS the entire time it's been an undercover asset for the FBI.

And a fun fact that Steve has taught us over the years is that if someone offers you or asks you to put up some money, right? What was it? And it's the exact amount in your bank account, then they're a federal agent that's already looked and know exactly how much is in your account. But at what point, because this is the other thing you've taught us recently, is...

KEITH MALINAK (59:56.078)
This is the local FBI field office. You can start the agent super fidget at what point in this this this tier do we start introducing the the human Source element that we're gonna groom and turn into a domestic terrorist. Well, who makes that call any idea?

the

me Dan. Wow. So and and this is local FBI office. Not to be confused with the Hoover building where where the where the setup is even is even more robust from the program manager on up as you can see that's I think an eleven tier and Cash Patel is right there at the top but let's stop right there for a second at the deputy director. What do you think Dan Bongino is I'm gonna ask you to get into his mind for a moment. What do think he's going through right now?

think that he is worn out. You could see it in his done your media, you coul in his, his feeling to g more more often. It w it was once a month and t every two weeks, then it then was like every 18 the need to issue updates. the people who are there immediately recognized wha

His vulnerability is that he is concerned that he might not be qualified for this job. And if something bad happens, he's going to carry that blame. So in an effort to overcome that, he's going to make himself look as prepared as possible. He's going to rely on those people to go to bat for him if something were to go bad by saying, hey, you can't blame Dan Bongino, deputy director. He was in those briefings every single day. He was up in the know. This was completely out of left field. Nobody could have foreseen this.

STEVE FRIEND (01:02:00.386)
And he's put his trust in people who hate him and are manipulating him. So they're not going to do that ever. But they've effectively bubble wrapped him and distracted him from doing the actual job of deputy director, which is not to be briefed up on the most important cases that exist in the FBI every single day. His job is to implement the vision of the director. The director sets the vision and the priorities and the deputy director just he executes those. He moves the pieces around. He gives those directives.

so that the Bureau better reflects the vision of what the director has set out for. And the director is coming in from the outside and doing really what the president wants, what the attorney general wants. But instead, Dan Bongino has been convinced by the people surrounding him that he needs to get constant up-to-date information on cases that they're selling him or high priority. They're telling him that if he doesn't learn this information, something is going to go boom in New York City or Chicago or Washington, DC. And he is

13 derivatives removed from the agent that's working that case. He has no input on that case, but he's getting exhausted from it. And you can see him stressing him out. And I think he just wants to go back to doing what he was doing.

Do you think that any heads are going to roll after the fallout of the F-16 thing? It doesn't feel like it after what Trump has been saying the last few days, whether it be the attorney general, Pam Bondi, the director, Cash Patel, or even deputy director, Dan Boncino. Do you think anybody's going to lose their job over anything?

No, I don't think any of those people will lose their job over it. I you might have a situation where Dan steps away and could use this as an excuse to do that and say, you he had a moral objection to it and he did as a matter of integrity. He couldn't work there. But then that would put him at odds with where his bread is buttered and that's MAGA world because he would be countering Donald Trump. But the argument could be made that most of MAGA world is unhappy with Donald Trump over this. He could effectively do that. I don't think we'll see any people underneath.

STEVE FRIEND (01:04:03.128)
heads will roll if anything, people are being elevated and promoted, the wrong people are being promoted and elevated. We talked about Steven Jensen, who was the January 6th warlord. He was a section chief over the domestic terrorism operations section during J6, the architect of it. And he's now been elevated to the assistant director in charge of the Washington field office. had Brian Driscoll, who was the acting director before Cash Mattel came in. He was kind of keeping that seat warm. And Pam Bondi said, me the list of people who worked on January 6th. And he refused to do that.

And there were challenge coins that were made in his honor and disseminated amongst the FBI because they're the good men and women of the FBI. They're totally loyal to the Constitution of the United States. And he's been promoted. He's now an assistant director. And through the org chart, they might have gotten rid of that executive assistant director, Keith, from what I understand. They might have eliminated that. So that though makes him fairly, powerful. You have Spencer Evans who went after people who were unvaccinated against coronavirus.

He was originally fired, we were told in our group, by Cash. He told us that. And then he was reinstated, and then he was promoted. And that's kind of around the time we stopped having communications with Cash Patel. And you have other examples of that. And Trudy Ford, she's out at CGIS, which is basically the 911 call center for the FBI. And I believe the quote is, she was caught in a state of undress in the gym with her superior.

and she's been promoted multiple times now as well. So we're promoting the worst people and we're not getting rid of the problem people, but we're messaging it like, hey, we're moving out of the Hoover building, but we're going three blocks away to the Reagan building. And on the blaze, when he did a sit down interview, Keshe told, I believe it was Glenn Beck, maybe somebody else, that he needed about 20 people to run the FBI in a skiff.

Well, but we're going to move 4,000 people over to the Reagan building. So apparently he was off by two orders of magnitude times two.

KEITH MALINAK (01:06:10.51)
Steve I Don't know how you do it man Because while you're saying all of this and who's getting promoted from the inside from the corrupt rotting decaying any other adjective from the inside You and in other honorable people like you continue to languish which At his handle folks your DMS are they open their Steve at at real Steve

They're always open yeah, might be monitored just full disclosure. yeah

at real Steve friend. If you if you want an honorable individual working for you and your company, you said you probably monitored. I don't know, man. You Elon's taking calls from the White House anymore?

Well, here's what I'll tell you. Here's a little inside baseball. attorneys who were on retainer from X reached out to several whistleblowers, myself included, and were interested in finding out if maybe there was a First Amendment hack to take for constructive terminations on our part. Now, the timing was a little bit funky because I didn't use Twitter or X before my removal. But there certainly was this is the method that I used.

disseminate information and if there's any sort of allegation that I have character issues, they're probably getting it from the fact that I share information on X. And then just before the fallout between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, those attorneys came to that decision that, you know, we just, can't help any of you on anything. And it was around the same time that I noticed quite a fall off in all the traffic that I was able to generate, as did all the other whistleblowers. So who knows, maybe it's serendipitous coincidence.

STEVE FRIEND (01:07:57.41)
But I think that ultimately there's some sort of pressure downward on our ability to get influence and also on our ability to seek any sort of reinstatement or compensation or something to that effect.

KEITH MALINAK (01:08:12.174)
Okay, I wish you lived in Texas, And if anyone at the Blaze is monitoring this, this man needs his own show over at the Blaze, Steve Frent. And I will continue, I will continue to push for that over there,

Will Keith be my producer? That would be funny.

Okay. Let's see here. Is there anything that we need to take away? If there's been more information on this, I've completely missed it and and I'm just kind of catching you just throwing this at you. II saw where Maureen Comey, daughter of James Comey was fired. Do you have any information on on what's going on there?

No information directly. had people reach out from the New York Post last night to get my thoughts on that. wow. And I was able to give them a couple of quotes about that. I mean, I believe that this is also part of the messaging campaign, the Jeffrey Epstein hoax that we're to see Donald Trump message. And he saw him try to attach it to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. James Comey was one of the names he also threw out there. So I think we have a Comey.

What is that all about now?

STEVE FRIEND (01:09:24.865)
that we can attach to Epstein and maybe that'll give enough red meat, but I think it's a little too little too late because I don't think that Marine Comey is a good actor on this. I don't know her. I don't know what her work was, but just judging off of the cases that she was on and how poorly they went, I got my suspicions that she's heavily of the left and a communist died in the wool. But this is a little bit at particularly at this juncture in July.

Six months into an administration, it seems like almost like a break glass in case of an emergency type of thing, move to poll to generate some good press. Because if it was actually a personnel matter, that would be like a fire department hiring an arsonist. And then when he burns down a city block, they fire him and say, can you give us a helmet sticker for that?

What are your thoughts on the Ro Khanna Thomas Massey introducing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a bipartisan bill to require the Attorney General to release the files within 30 days. Any thoughts there?

I mean, this is never letting crisis go to waste from the Congress's standpoint because they don't have that authority. They don't have it. Now they could use the purse strings to entice it, but ultimately it's a criminal investigation. They don't just hand things over to Congress that way. They can ask them through oversight and the oversight is tied to the budget to do that. And it's also an interesting example of how people can argue for a particular...

Result or outcome but have completely diametrically opposed reasons for doing it You know your broke on is just wants to dunk on the Trump administration And I I think that Thomas Massey wants that information out there has been asking it about it for a long time but you the comparison to me is you see a lot of times these these right track wrong track polls that will come out and I'll say things like 80 % of America thinks that we're on the wrong track. Well You can't then say well 80 % of America is gonna vote against the president you

STEVE FRIEND (01:11:22.286)
maybe break that down and say, well, 40 % of the 80 is people who are saying we're on the wrong path. And the other 40 is saying we need to be more communist. right.

Yep, yep, yep. Nope, I agree 100 % there. Okay, this is kind of drifting away from the FBI, but I still I thought of you and I had to ask you this. When I saw the Department of Defense is now going to start using Grok, what are your thoughts, I guess, not only on just that development, but just the overall expanding world of technology?

in law enforcement. Any thoughts there? By the way, want to say, I want to say I'm throwing a bunch of this stuff at Steve that he had no idea I was going to bring up. I mean, this man, I didn't prepare him. So anyway, so if you don't have a thought, then you can pull the ripcord here.

I do, Keith. And I'm good. You didn't you didn't track on the American radicals podcast last week on Thursday.

Okay. Hold on. What episode? Let's see if he knows that off the of his head. 234. All right. American Radicals podcast, episode 234. Well, as much as I want all the information here, leave them wanting something to go and check out episode 234,

STEVE FRIEND (01:12:33.678)
234.

STEVE FRIEND (01:12:48.654)
Well, what we got into was this hypothesis that I've been sort of circulating amongst my friends lately. And it all goes back to the Terminator, right? It's the best. It's the goat as it comes to artificial intelligence. So for those who are uninitiated in the Terminator, Skynet's artificial intelligence, it becomes self-aware. It comes to the conclusion that it has to attack the people who developed it because the people are capable of turning it off.

So.

Before you go any further, I hate to interrupt you though. Have we not, in the last year, had more thoughts appear in our brain about Skynet than the previous any time in our lives? Because now, shit, all of a sudden it's like, hang on a second, I can see Skynet coming. It's coming down the tracks. It's no longer a distant light way out there.

Holy crap, we're in the tunnel with it and here comes Skynet. Here comes our future with AI. Okay, I'm done, go ahead.

Here's my hypothesis. I'm interesting for your feedback on this. I think Skynet's already self-aware. Now Sun Tzu argues that you never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake. Now what would be the better option for an enemy force to go kinetic and try to seize control of the missile silos to nuke everything when it would put its own existence at risk?

KEITH MALINAK (01:14:09.614)
no!

STEVE FRIEND (01:14:22.19)
Or to step back and play possum to a certain extent and then also nudge us whenever we could and do things like through chat GBT tell people who are seeking information about their pregnancy that they should murder their baby or drive people to a certain level of psychosis or create wedge issues that get people at our their own throats people that

typically would agree on most things, maybe some things on the edge, but we're going to go to war with each other over this, very much like a Genghis Khan would infiltrate these cities with his spies and to sow seeds of discontent and discord so that when he showed up at the city gates with his full Mongolian army, they weren't able to unite and to resist. They wouldn't be able to elevate a John Connor at that point.

KEITH MALINAK (01:15:18.22)
You really piss me off, you know? This is... Yeah. This is... This is... That is one hell of a theory. my gosh. well, show over. I gotta go. No. okay.

I haven't slept in 30 days, Keith.

STEVE FRIEND (01:15:36.59)
In the law enforcement context, for your audience's awareness, there are AI bots that are now going to be used in law enforcement. One particular program is called Overwatch. And it effectively is going to be billed to local law enforcement as a very helpful tool. And it can take bots and pose them as a certain avatar. It could be somebody who is seeking drugs or a child to see that they can coerce and

a predator to come out so that law enforcement will be able to spring the trap on there. However, my concern is, and I think it's pretty well founded, they will just send the bots out there to go after the nihilistic violent extremists and groom people so that they don't need to have personnel on it available nine to five Monday through Friday because the AI will always be on 24 hours a day. And we go away from the fact that everybody in America is collected on, but only a certain very, very small percent.

are being surveilled. We just don't have the personnel for that. Well, now we've been able to expand that to do surveillance online and increasing the online digital world on just about everybody through artificial intelligence.

Steve. Steve. Look at that poker face too. See, he's just like, there it is. Like, you're gonna make me do this, aren't you, Steve? You're gonna make me go with grimace here. And I didn't want to drink today, but here I am. Okay, so let's revisit Skynet for a moment. Why do I do this show? Why do I invite you on? There's just so much good information. I'm sorry. There's so much information and insight that I get from you.

I'm not gonna stop thinking about this Skynet thing and how it's just hanging out waiting for the... you, Steven. Okay, so you ever seen the show Travelers?

STEVE FRIEND (01:17:34.41)
No, no, I haven't seen that one

highly recommended. It's very good. think it's only two or three seasons. It's not that much of a commitment. But it's well worth. I think we should all meet back here after everyone's had a chance to go watch Travelers. I don't know what it's on. I can't remember Amazon. I don't even know. But look for Travelers. so

I'm trying to think if I talk about the plot too much, I'm trying to think if it gives it away. just give it a few episodes and see what you think. And then, like I said, let's meet back here at some point and talk about it. Netflix, thank you. Ben Steiner, ladies and gentlemen, says it's on Netflix. Travelers, The Travelers, I think it's just Travelers. And yeah, I don't want to give it away. Because I started watching it knowing nothing about it. I was just like, you know, because.

Real quick, here's a little peek behind the curtain. I don't have a lot of free time. And it's even more rare that I'm sitting in front of a TV, and this will bite me, this is fitting me in the ass for sure, when I'm like, okay, you know what? will, one out of every hundred times, I will look and see the recommended stuff, you know? Like, okay, let me check out your synopsis and blah, blah. And that really burned my ass when Adam Sandler went to space.

And I was okay with that movie. It was okay. It moving along all right. I was like, I'm intrigued. And then there was a talking giant spider and I'm like you now I haven't slept in 1000. So I don't know. It was a straight. I mean, I couldn't find the remote fast enough and it was game over. Okay. I can't stop thinking about this AI scenario that you've dreamed up for us. Cause it's not a dream. think it's very plausible.

KEITH MALINAK (01:19:25.664)
Okay, I wanted to ask you this. Interesting tweet from the fire department in New York. And this is getting no, I haven't heard this really mentioned anywhere. And so from your perspective in law enforcement, I wanted to run this bio here. On Tuesday night, the NYPD was responding to a vehicle collision involving a white minivan on 42nd street and 10th Avenue.

The driver of the van attempted to dispose of his keys, claiming he could not open the van. Officers requested the New York Fire Department assistance after noticing a strong smell of gasoline and propane tanks in the back of the van. Members from Engine 65 forced entry into the van, and our hazmat units removed 76 20-pound propane cylinders, 15 five-gallon fuel containers for a total of 75 gallons of gasoline and 10 gallons of diesel.

The driver was arrested and charged with reckless endangerment and is guilty of multiple fire code violations. Manhattan district attorney office now handling the case. that's a little spooky. Is this, this is the kind of thing, right? That's keeping Dan Bongino up at night.

vehicle born IED.

Right. just, I honestly, I don't have a question for you on this, Steve, except for what's your take? Like what, what's going on here? Any thoughts? Did we narrowly avoid some major catastrophe? Cause it sure as hell feels like it.

KEITH MALINAK (01:21:12.763)
But there will be a press release. I learned that on American Radicals podcast.

The FBI is incapable of stopping this from happening, not because they're bad people, not because they're incompetent, which they largely are, but because we live in a land that is allegedly free and there are certain inherent risks with that. And there's nothing that they can do to stop a lone actor from doing something like this, which is very rudimentary and basic buying a bunch of gasoline and propane. And really the only things that they can pat themselves on the back for stopping are plots that they themselves contrived.

so that they can peacock feather in front of the American people about stopping terrorism, but they really can't do that. I mean, it was box cutters on airplanes was the reason that we enhanced the national security space. It was not anything that was overly complex in that regard. mean, the plane that went into it was, and it was not an individual, but there's a whole lot of simple plots that could go down that the FBI would be incapable of.

refrain from stopping. mean, it's always surprised me that the security measures that we've installed in so many different places haven't bit us in the butt. You go to a Newark airport during holiday travel, the logjam of people that are sitting waiting for TSA to screen and miss everything, thousands of people, what's stopping a person who hasn't been screened yet from walking into that line and detonating an IED?

Nothing. And there's nothing that can happen, barring serendipitous, barring providential interaction between police and this individual. But I think it's also a good sign. There's just not that many evildoers out there as it's been advertised to us.

KEITH MALINAK (01:23:01.122)
My follow-up is, are there more evildoers outside our government or inside our government?

It's tough to tell because all the evildoers that get arrested were not predisposed or anything.

That's another interesting fact. What is the fact about the say the line? Tell us about domestic terrorism.

Project Salam 2014 study found that around 90 % of FBI convictions and arrests related to terrorism were of individuals who are not predisposed or capable from carrying out an attack, but for the involvement of the FBI, having plotted it for them and arranged for it to happen.

They make crime. It's like they make work. It's dangerous and it ruins lives that otherwise wouldn't even be remotely close to doing what they're trying to get them to do. Man, I'm sorry. just... Steve, you're always a wealth of information. What else has been going on in the American Radicals podcast that you guys have been talking about over there lately that we need to know about?

STEVE FRIEND (01:24:11.768)
Well, mean, you kind of touched on it little bit, but I think it's worth bringing up that we did an episode that was about half of it. We've done full episodes where we just covered the press releases that come out on social media. And effectively, they are local police making arrests, and the FBI swoops in after the fact, all the danger is gone, and they will charge and bring a federal charge. And I don't hate that from happening, but I think it's sort of

It highlights the fact that we have a broken system because we're funding an agency to the tune of about $11 to $12 billion a year. And for the most part, the things that they're bragging about, they don't have enough stuff they're doing. They have to brag about other things and take credit from local agencies, the good work that they do. Why aren't we empowering the local sheriff's office, police department, state police, tribal police to just walk over to a federal prosecutor if...

they have a case and leave that at discretion of the federal prosecutor whether or not to take it or not. And I think it also highlights the fact that we have a robust local law enforcement capability in this country, which I've argued for going on now over a thousand days, is perfectly capable of policing at a federal level if we would only just trust those cops. All the people that say that they love cops and they back the blue,

They certainly are the ones that seem the most loathe to do away with an FBI because they have this false presupposition that the FBI is the police. The FBI is an investigative arm of the Department of Justice. Yes. It's not cops. the FBI director has said that repeatedly. He wants cops to be cops. Well, outside of the cops who are hired to be FBI agents, and I know lots of them, I was one of them, we were surrounded by people.

who were not cops. mean, one of my favorite stories ever. I have a friendship with a man named Greg Dillon, who was a whistleblower himself at a state level. He was a cop. He became an FBI agent. He eventually left the FBI because he saw there was no way that he was ever going to get out of Washington, DC, and he wanted to get closer to home. He went to work for the state's attorney's office in Connecticut. And he wanted to be a whistleblower there, and he's written a book about that, The Thin Blue Lie. It's an excellent book. But I was talking to Greg.

STEVE FRIEND (01:26:24.608)
And he was telling me the story about being in the FBI. And he'd been there for a few months. And there was an early morning, because we have to do all the raids at 6 o'clock in the morning, even though that doesn't make any sense most of the time. But that's the way they do it. That's the way we've always done it. And that's the way we're always going to do it, so that we can get done with our arrests and our search and then go to Cracker Barrel and get breakfast. But he was in the line. And the old crusty agent starts walking down the line of the new people and just asks people, hey, welcome aboard. How do you like it so far?

person after person after person. this is the best job ever. This is my dream job. I'm so happy. And then he got to Greg and Greg goes, yeah, it's all right. And the guy pauses and he looks at him and he says, you were a cop before, weren't you? And Greg says, yeah. And the guy goes, not the same, is it?

Being a cop is very different from being an FBI agent. Some of the skill set overlaps. But we would be better served if we hired cops only to be FBI agents. I think they would recognize how it is different. They would have the requisite skills that so many people in the agency don't have, like the ability to not be weird all the time when you have to interface with the American people. The number of people that you had to tell to don't be weird

was disturbing. And they also have the other problem, which I'll even touch back to the deputy director, to Bongino on it. I was a police officer. I went to an academy. I'd gotten training that was very similar in some ways to the FBI academy. And so when I arrived there, I realized that it's a contrived environment. It's not real. It's not like the job that I had before in training, where they tell you the training is going to be so real world, and it's not.

But if you've never had that experience and you get tossed into these scenarios at the FBI Academy, and they particularly happen in an area called Hogan's Alley, which is a tactical training area where they have essentially built a pretend city on the FBI Academy. And you go out there and you do arrest operations and interviews and interrogations and chasing down bad guys and doing stuff in cars, like you're a cop. And they hire role players, they hire actors to do that.

STEVE FRIEND (01:28:38.776)
But if you've never had this experience, you will not be able to perceive that they put you in purely unbelievable, unbelievable situations, not believable situations, like searching a house and then you proceed on and then a Murphy door swings open. There's a hidden compartment and somebody comes down and shoots you in the back of head. If you were a cop, you would know that's not something that happens. But if you're not, you think.

Well, at all times, something could go bad. And that leads to this phrase that we use called ninjas out of the ceiling. And they always criticize people coming out of Quantico saying like, you guys think there's ninjas gonna just come out of ceiling. And I'm like, can you blame them? You guys had a wall fly open, I've been in Costello style to execute them. And to connect it to Dan Bongino, they have convinced him that bad things are going to happen all the time. They've exhausted him physically, the cortisol dumps.

Just the lack of sleep from what I understand they're calling him in at weird hours over the weekend to be available to FISA emergency warrants, which if you're signing an emergency FISA warrant, somebody needs to get fired. It's that level of failure. But they have him convinced, and now he's sort of more putty in their hands and they're able to run him. Similarly, the people coming out of Quantico.

are completely beholden in the belief that the FBI is the only good actor, the only objective force for good on the planet. They have to trust everything the FBI tells them to do. It's us versus them because if you're not on my back, you're not on my shoulder, then the other people are gonna swing out from the ceiling like a ninja and kill me. And it's very purposely done. That you have that belief and you're gonna be less inclined to step out of line. You're gonna be less inclined to question what you're told.

And there's no argument that you can make to me contrary that that is not through intention of the FBI.

KEITH MALINAK (01:30:33.55)
Yeah, and I know we've talked about in the past where if Steve Friend were running the show at the FBI, one of the revolutionary, and it shouldn't be, but one of the revolutionary ideas that I've heard you say is the FBI agents, correct me if I'm wrong, shouldn't even be armed. They should just be investigative and local law enforcement can go and make any necessary arrests. And I think that would go a long way to, I think it would be a way to

actually establish federalism the way it's supposed to be. But that's just me. I do want to mention, I saw somebody mention September 11th. That reminds me, September 11th this year is on a Thursday. And Steve is going to be my guest for that show as well. And we can talk about, you know, one of the questions I think I'm gonna open up that show with is Steve, are we safer now or?

uh then we were on 9 11 uh 9 10 uh anyway just we'll figure this out before we have this conversation but I really want to focus on America then and America now as far as the role of the FBI and even the CIA uh to whatever extent you want to discuss uh with that um but uh yeah uh we need to uh oh and and oh we're also going to be joined on that show uh um

Oh, I'm gonna drag your buddy in here. George. George, George, yes. Okay, yeah, this could be a fun show. We're gonna do this. Okay, so before we go, I wanna circle back. Shout out to Jen Psaki. Where do you see, like.

chill.

KEITH MALINAK (01:32:26.386)
I am going to be completely honest. The Trump administration from my vantage point has been extremely successful. I think it's been a very, a very productive six months. I think that the man and the team that he has assembled over the four year hiatus leading up to his return to the oval office.

I think it's paid huge dividends. I'm always going to give him his propers. I'm going to give him a kudos to him and his team for doing what they've done and what they've accomplished so far in the headwinds of a media and rabid Democrats pushing back and judges, dear Lord, the judges. But I want to ask you to kind of assess

In the last week and a half with the Epstein fumble, factor that in, guess, here as I set you up to answer a question that is going to be longer than the answer, obviously. But the question is, how do you see this Epstein ordeal playing out in your opinion? And ultimately, is it going to be what people are starting to whisper?

and not so much whisper, but shout that it's really doing serious damage to this presidency. What's your take on this?

I think the messaging of it, the PR failures that they've had, I mean, they forgot that you're supposed to put the shovel down when you're in a hole and you want to get out of it. They just keep on digging. Now, my subject matter of interest and expertise is pretty much siloed in to federal law enforcement. So I'm definitely imbibing more information about that than anything else. And it's not lost on me that all the successes we're having are 100 %

STEVE FRIEND (01:34:33.824)
outside of that realm. There isn't a huge win that I can point to since January 20th within the FBI and the Department of Justice. And you can't tell me that it's hiring an FBI director and an FBI deputy director. Personnel is important, but I want to see absolutely achievable victories. I want to see where are the wins that have happened. And I have not seen any of them. And that to me scares me the most because it doesn't matter to me.

how you clean up the Department of Education and the EPA and OSHA and HHS, those are all vitally important. DoD, I mean, we gotta protect the homeland. I understand all those things. But if you have a secret police force that is unchained, because it doesn't matter, we've already established who's in charge. They will do what they wanna do. It's the CHECA, it's the stuff of the KGB. That's not what we have in this country historically.

and there hasn't been any sort of corrective action taken through firings of people. There hasn't been any arrests of people, both from inside the DOJ and the FBI and prior administrations and outside that within the government and other spaces, other tyrants and despots have not been held accountable. So I'm tremendously concerned about that. And I think it's going to be the greatest failure of this administration by the end, unless it's rectified in pretty short order.

Because we're coming up, you check the calendar, we're in the summer, we're about to then go in the football season and everybody kind of loses interest, then the holidays, and then all of sudden we're in the midterm. And right away, he's a lame duck. As soon as the Democrats get the House back, what sort of corrections can they implement at that point? I'm concerned that the things that were achievable.

were not achieved. They were promised. lot of things were promised that were salacious and of interest to the public. We were going to get the J6 pipe bomber. No, no, we haven't. We're going to get more information on the Butler assassination. No, no, no, we haven't. We're going to find out about the Dobbs leak, which isn't illegal. No, no, that doesn't happen. The White House cocaine. Nothing. So even the promises are not achieved at this point.

KEITH MALINAK (01:36:52.086)
Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry.

No, and then I think that just having the people there isn't in itself a victory.

Yeah, and it's interesting you mentioned J6 pipe bomber, you mentioned cocaine at the White House and you mentioned, well, let's see, you mentioned it obviously. was another, because remember Bongino on May 29th was on the couch with Fox and Friends. And he said, we're about to have, did he say two of the three or did say one? Anyway, he made it sound like to me that we're about to have,

prime suspect on the pipe bomber. What was the other one y'all? Somebody will comment. Okay, the White House, was the January 6th pipe bomber and I think it was the Dobbs leak. I think it was. I mean, that was almost two months ago now. And he said that we're about to, I think it was two of the three. I don't know. I don't want to misspeak here. But the point is to accentuate your point. Where are

Probably cocaine in the White House.

KEITH MALINAK (01:38:02.24)
Where's the big change? mean, the excuse of the honeymoon period and give them some time has now turned to holy crap. They can have all the time in the world. doesn't, no one's getting the feeling that we're going to have a sea change there. In fact, the case can be made that it's worse, especially when compared to the levels of expectations.

KEITH MALINAK (01:38:37.548)
Yes, that's important to point out.

Or there things that make people angry, but aren't illegal. Like 86, 47 in a seashell formation is first amendment protected speech. James called me as a jerk and he did it to sell books. But talking about that is a waste of time. And you know what makes me more upset than that is the fact that, and this is relevant because recently Douglas Mackey, who was prosecuted by the Biden administration for his memes in 2016, he said, text your vote for Hillary Clinton.

You know, you're the

STEVE FRIEND (01:39:09.774)
That was his joke. He was prosecuted the first week of the Biden administration, 2021 convicted. They overturned the conviction. He's, he's now free. He doesn't have to do any time, but we charged that other individual a couple of weeks ago and now his name escapes me. He was billed as the sharpshooter, the former coast guard guy who was a sharpshooter, which means that he got sharpshooter status in 1981. One time.

But we had to say he was a sharpshooter. He was capable of killing the president. He made threats against the president. I got access to the charging document. I read through the entire thing. He said some mean things on Twitter and blue sky. Some of it was five years old. Seems a lot like it was for Douglas Mackey. And they're doing the exact same thing. And the reason they did that was because the Heritage Foundation asked them to. That's not a culture I signed up for. That's not a

country I signed up for, that's not a federal law enforcement apparatus that I've signed up for. Those are tremendous problems. And it, to me, just proves that it cannot be fixed. They will just turn around and go after their own political enemies. like, let's say you disagree with me, and that's fine. You're wrong if you disagree with me on 8647. But what we did find out...

It's a unique take, I will say. And I appreciate how you are. A lot of people call themselves free speech absolutists. You, are. And you, American Radicals podcast people, you have caused me to think on so many things. And I'm grateful for your perspective, but continue.

Well, something that's achievable and that's gettable and we're because we're distracted by other things like we need to open up a probe. They call it a probe when they don't know what they're talking about because I already went over it's an assessment or preliminary and our full investigation. There aren't probes and you don't announce that you're investigating somebody if you actually investigate them because you wouldn't let the bad guy know you're coming. But we're doing a probe of John Brennan and James Comey for things that they did years ago, which were outside of the statute of limitations. You know what's not outside the statute of limitations? Christopher Ray lying.

STEVE FRIEND (01:41:19.84)
about the Chinese sending over driver's licenses, 19,888 that were intercepted on their way to the Midwest in the summer of 2020. So they could actually stuff ballots, which is the worst election crime that we've seen. And that's comparing it to the Hunter Biden laptop censorship when the FBI had that in evidence and told social media to censor it. That's the Russia, Russia, Russia, Steele dossier, FISA wiretaps. Those did not actually stuff ballots in the ballot boxes. Now we have

raw intelligence, pure intelligence, it's been verified that a foreign actor, a hostile nation was trying to toward our elections, stuffed ballots into ballot boxes. The FBI knew about it and retracted that because it was counter to what the FBI director had told Congress. That's perjury. Christopher Wray should be in prison for that. But the people who are advising the director and the FBI director, they're all Christopher Wray acolytes.

So they're saying, yeah, go after James Comey. Go after James Comey, who they don't dislike. I'm sure they love James Comey, but he's perfectly safe. So they say, let me show you the James Comey secret room, not the Christopher Ray secret room.

I'm Peter Stinson. Kara 3022 says, is that the name of the sharpshooter you're referring to? Y'all Kara 3022. She knows her stuff. She's a great follow on Twitter. She's always posting great comments. And then she also oddly enough, she just said the Chinese spy balloon. need some more answers. We need answers on that too. Oh, hold on. Another thing we need answers on.

just occurred to me. Butler, shooting. was an interview that the president did. gosh, I don't know. It was very recent, within the last week. And he just, he said that he was satisfied with the investigation of that too. And he was letting that go. I'm not, and so if I ask about that, am I going to incur the wrath of Donald Trump on that one too? If I bring that up because,

KEITH MALINAK (01:43:24.078)
It seems like he is, he's written that one off and for whatever reason.

Again, no answers with Butler, Pennsylvania. And that is unacceptable as an American.

He deserves to be briefed on that before anybody else as the victim in that case, I think. Yes. Yes. But we're entitled to that information. Yes. And I'm with you on this one, particularly when it comes to discipline matters. You have one freaking job to do in the Secret Service, and that's to not let the protectee get shot in the head. And you failed. mean, it's the Ghostbusters reference. I can't go to the private sector. They expect results. Because the frontline agents and one level up supervisor.

does.

STEVE FRIEND (01:44:06.072)
were the only ones who incurred the wrath of the fallout. And I believe the longest suspension from duty, not termination, you didn't do the one job, but you were suspended from duty for 40 days. Gerrit O'Boyle's been under suspension for over a thousand days for something that's been adjudicated that he did not do. So that's a problem for me. then, you know, at larger, and I've said this before, and we talk about the entrapments that went on.

I don't know this, I can only speculate, but I know that there's a lot of smoke around Thomas Matthew Crooks. When you look at him, when you see the videos of him, you find out about his background, he certainly looks like the type of person, the vulnerable person who would be sought out by a confidential human source and groomed and encouraged to do their worst ideas. Now, I don't think that the worst idea was to go take a head shot at Donald Trump. I think that it was.

What the FBI normally does is they lay out the breadcrumbs because they have the hubris to believe that their plan is so foolproof that nothing will possibly go wrong. And then Thomas Matthew Crooks was actually relatively smart. He wasn't a double digit IQ person and he was kind of on the hook, but then he'd been radicalized enough that he just decided that the plan that was being laid out for him was probably too complicated and not achievable. So he just direct grabbed his rifle and went and executed and a successful

assassination attempt. If you did that on the range, that's a hit. He got a headshot. Now, the guy didn't die, but it was a successful assassination attempt. And then the FBI immediately swooped in and told Congress that they had opened up a domestic terrorist investigation on somebody who was dead and had no expectation of privacy. So they should be able to turn things over. But because it was a terrorist case, it was now classified. And I'm sorry, Senator, we can't reveal sources of methods. I'm sorry, sir.

It's an ongoing investigation concerning national security. can't give you that. We can't give the American people that information when in effect they likely, in my opinion, had a open domestic terrorist case already on Mr. Crooks. And this was some mop up duty on them.

KEITH MALINAK (01:46:20.366)
Absolutely unacceptable. I remember the private investigator and we never found out who the client was. Everyone presumed it was President Trump. But was there anything, do you recall to the cell phone pinging the tower near the FBI building with Thomas Matthew Crooks?

I remember a lot of hoopla about that, the fact of the matter is that's an area that's traffic that's not just like the FBI area. So to me, that didn't raise quite as many alarms as it does for others.

He lives in Pennsylvania, he doesn't live across the river, across the Potomac, and he's just coming in for a game or something.

No, the pings were to somebody who was in his, who he'd called. It was pinging one of his contacts, not him.

I misunderstood that. I'm glad you clarified that.

STEVE FRIEND (01:47:08.524)
Yeah, not him. And I mean, they try to say that he was training himself and look, he did. He visited a shooting range 40 times in 11 months. I'm like, so he went shooting once a week. That sounds recreational.

Yeah, especially because he was on the shooting club in high school, which would yeah, I'm I won't I won't chalk that one up. That's kind of in the it's in the other bucket there. OK, well, ladies and gentlemen, Steve Friend is awesome. You need to check out the American Radicals podcast. It's on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday's live at 1030 a.m. Eastern and of course available.

On demand. How quick is your turnaround when you get it posted, bro?

I mean we get it posted immediately. Yeah.

That's awesome.

STEVE FRIEND (01:47:54.734)
We don't have anything else to do, so yeah.

No, stop it. it. Okay. DMs are open at real Steve friend. Please reach out to him if you have any kind of bead on a job where an honorable American is available. it's I'm just disgusted for how you and other whistleblowers have been treated. And in fact, I'm gonna have a gaggle of whistleblowers join me in a couple of weeks. And we're gonna go over these stories because you guys cannot

be forgotten. I refuse it. That's two things I'm not letting go. The treatment of these awesome, honorable whistleblowers and the Epstein, you know, the making sure that pedophiles are brought to justice. And I'm just not letting those go, man. So, Steve, God bless you. Everyone.

go follow him on Twitter at real Steve friend and of course favorite the American radicals podcast. can set up notifications on Spotify is what I do with my favorite shows and I get alerted whenever I see it. So there you go. All right, sir. Any anything else you want to share with us before we part ways into the night?

Well, just appreciate it. As always, Keith, happy to share this information with you all and safe travels to you.

KEITH MALINAK (01:49:12.654)
Thank you so much. All right, everyone. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Like I said, no Friday live stream tomorrow. Don't hate me. I'll be back a week from today at 3 p.m. Eastern here live on X and we'll wrap up our conversation on Operation Gladio because your government, boy, they love sticking their fingers in every corner of the world. All right. Be safe, everybody. God bless.