November 20, 2024 • 34 mins
Forbes journalist Zach Everson spent much of Trump's previous presidency embedded in Trump Hotel in DC. John and Jerry learn more about The Emoluments Clause and all the ways that foreign power brokers were able to channel payments to Trump through his hotels... and could again.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Probably the thing that I'm most proud of reporting wise
is I was able to figure out that Nigeria's vice
president was staying at the Trump hotel based on the
pattern of the throw pillows on the couch where he
gave an interview.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she I served in
the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover
all around the.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA,
I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
created conspiracies.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
In our operations. We got people to believe things that
weren't true.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
news almost every day.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
We'll break them down for you to determine whether they
could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Mission Implausible.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
So, John, now that the election's up, do you think
we're finally going to hit a Trump tower Moscow?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I'm more worried about our government becoming like Russians. Right,
Like Russia has a system of oligarchs, some sort of
informal money people who are tied to the government and
pay to play and loose corruption and those type of things.
And in some ways we're becoming a little more like Russia.
You know, media gets pushed down, misinformation gets pushed into
the media by the leaders themselves for their own personal reasons,
(01:17):
what have you. So, I'm a little worried about that.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I don't know. I think our oligarchs will kick their
oligarch's ass. We've got Elon ew have they got, you know,
I'm not even sure is he our oligarch or is
he somebody else. Their oligarchs seem to fall out of
windows all the time, or their airplanes crash.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Elon is he's an American, but he's from South Africa.
But he's got huge stake in places like China and
Russia and other places.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I'm just worried that he's going to get deported, seeing
as how, at least according to the press, he entered
the US on a student visa and never study. Instead
he went to work, taking a job from an American.
We might have hit an American oligarch instead of Elon
if he hadn't taken that job.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
What I think is, yes, Elon Musk has spent amazing
amount of money to get closer to Trump, and right
now he seems to be at mar A Lago. He's
with Trump all the time. They're making these calls to
foreign leaders. But I have to say I expect, just
like many people who sort of buy influence, when the
time comes, they get pushed away. Joseph Kennedy spent tons
(02:17):
of money on elections, and when push came to shove,
he got nothing. And Henry Ford in the United States,
there's a history of these guys buying their way in,
but when push comes to shove, they're not part of.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
The Money can't buy you love or loyalty.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
We should maybe put little bets for ourselves. A how
long before Elon is tossed from the net. But it's
disheartening to me throwing away some of the norms. They're
talking about not having people do security clearance checks. They're
talking about Trump being able to just put things in
place without Senate approval, these type of things. But I'm worried,
and I'm sure you are too. Jerry has spending time
(02:51):
in their security state and CIA in particular, I'm waiting
to see what they do there. I mean, are you
going to put someone in charge of CIA who can't
get a security clearance or doesn't get a security clearance.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
My major concerned is for the entire US government, and
this doesn't make it a Republican or democrat. It's the
possible politicization of the women and men of the intelligence
community in the US government who served in silence following
the rules. And that's where we were in the eighteen
eighties with the spoil system.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
If a republican FBI, then you have a democratic FBI.
Right now, we have a professional FBI and professional CIA,
and I worry what they're going to do is they're
going to go looking through political roles to see who
gave money to who and essentially just fire all the
senior people who gave money to other political parties or
other than Trump. You're throwing away professionalism that way, and
you're going to get answers to questions that you already
(03:41):
know the answer to. So Trump wants to believe I
don't know something, and that he wants the intelligence community
to tell him that he's right, rather than that role
of truth to power to try to give leaders information
they may not want, they may not like, but it
helps them in the long run, and it helps national security.
In the lawn run.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I just want people to realize that the genius I
think of American foreign policy architecture, of security architecture after
World War Two is that we created this messy group
of allies. You know, our former adversaries, the Germans, the French,
sort of our former adversaries, the Japanese South Koreans. We've
(04:20):
actually got this series of alliances that have stood by this.
And if we're going to be walking away from NATO
theoretically or in practice, that leaves us isolated, it alone,
it doesn't leave us stronger.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
It creates other problems. So, okay, so we're going to
pull out of Europe. What happens when we're gone? Who
leads Europe? Does France lead Europe? Does Germany? It's by
far the biggest country East Europe, who's much more focused
on Russia and those type of things. Are we going
to move back to those where those kind of squabbles
start to get deeper and they instead of working together
as a European Union, it starts to split apart and
(04:55):
we get pulled back into different squabbles for different reasons.
There's no easy path, and unfortunately, in foreign policy and
national security.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
You can never tell what conflicts we've avoided by being
in an alliance were we not in NATO, If we
didn't have NATO, would we have been dragged into wars
over and over again? And I suspect we probably might
and putin understands that divide and conquer. He is trying
to divide us from our allies because he has no allies.
(05:25):
No one trusts Russia, Chinese don't trust him. Even his
near abroad is surrounded by people, the Armenians who don't
trust him, or the Ukrainians who are fighting them, the Georgians,
and I really don't want to see us becoming closer
to Russia and their North Korean and Iranian allies.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
We've been at that front line where we are living
with and working with allies and partners overseas, and we
see on a daily basis how much that helps us.
People give us information that they otherwise wouldn't. That helps
American interest, that helps American business, that helps save American lives.
They do it because we've developed relationships, We've developed relationships
(06:04):
of trust. They know that America stands for something and
it's going to be there for them when something tough
comes down the road. So they're going to help us now,
hoping that maybe we'll help them in the future.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Years ago, John, I was in the Baltics and I
bumped into a guy when he mentioned this really isolated
province up in the Hindu cushion. I said, whoa, I've
been up there too, And he mentioned this one horrific
battle that the US had been involved in, and I said, yeah,
that was really bad, and I realized we weren't talking theoretically.
(06:39):
He was actually there shouldered the shoulder with US forces
in northern Afghanistan after nine to eleven as Ourli, risking
his life to fight for US. And then he looked
at me afterwards and said, so, if the Russians invade
my country, you'll be here to stand with me, right.
I looked at him and I said, I hope.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
So no, are we at a point where the big
powers make decisions over everybody else? Or do we work
with the people that have Western values and support us
around the world. So today's episode, I think we're going
to talk a little bit about that sort of soft corruption,
the kind of money that gets involved either in politics
(07:19):
or around politics. How do we deal with it with
presidents who have investments in money and connections and places.
We've had presidents before that have been quite wealthy and
it had foreign connections. Donald Trump is something different altogether.
He had this massive hotel in downtown DC that he
wanted to push people to when he was president, and
so it'll be interesting to talk to our next guest
about what he's learned as he looked into these things.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
We'd like to welcome Zach Everson. He's a journalist best
known for well, for a lot of things. He writes
on the murky and mucky intersection of politics, money, conspiracies,
many reals, some imagined, and not surprisingly even on one
business in particular, a famous hotel with your infamous newsletter
(08:08):
eleven hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. But you always covered the tricky
and sticky topic of ethics and the galen so of
Donald Trump, for sure, but also other places along the spectrum,
so Cornell West and Alexandria Ocasio Cortes as well. Zick,
How and why you were thrown out of a hotel
(08:29):
and banned for life? What does this say about you
other than coming on this show?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
You know, I honestly was surprise that happened. Didn't happen earlier.
So the hotel in question is, of course Trump's DC hotel.
I really, I mean, I had a newsletter dedicated to
the place. That's the eleven hundred Pensylvania, that's its address.
I had been doing this for a couple of years
at this point, and I really thought they weren't going
to throw me out because they figured it's you know,
they'd realized, oh, it's good publicity for him. You know
(08:55):
when I went under cover with Inside Edition there and
they caught one of the videography guys like, I'm like,
all right, I'm done. This is the trade off. If
I can get my reporting in front of the demographic
that watches Inside Edition, I'm good with this. Well, what
finally happened was the Trump was out of office and
he was selling the place. There was a spike in prices.
I was trying to figure out what it was. So
I went down to the hotel, immediately walked in and
(09:18):
saw signage in the lobby that they were having a
gathering of exterminators there as a conference, not to actually
do some work. By job done. I went to the bar.
I had a drink, you kind of see who comes
around see if there's anybody notable there. I get up.
I take a couple of pictures, not really of people,
but just of the building. My editor, who's the one
(09:38):
who does our Forbes's valuation of Donald Trump, wanted me
to just document what the retail spaces inside the hotel
were like for his valuation, So I took a couple
of pictures. I walked round the lobby, I head to
the bathroom. I'm about to make a swing by the
conference room so I can check out the exterminators. On
my way up the door, when the head of security, Ernest,
comes and says, you know, hey, write this way. So
(09:59):
I'm like, okay about me walking by the conference He's
leading me out this way. He's like, we're gonna have
to ask you to leave. I'm like, really, we're doing
this now, okay. And then when I get out the door,
the head of marketing was there, and I'm sure she's
not somebody who's usually involved in throwing people out, but
she was right there as it happened, and you know,
we're gonna have to ask you not to come back.
So I went home. I wrote the article and it
(10:19):
was most on boards to that day. It got covered
in a whole bunch of other outlets, and I'm like,
all right, we knew this was gonna happen, and here
we are to the audience.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Maybe just a quick overview of what the newsletter was
and what you were trying to do with it.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah. So I was a travel writer, as you mentioned
it earlier, and focused on food and dining, and I
had the assignment to cover the brand opening of Trump's
hotel here in DC in the waiting days of the
twenty sixteen election, and for all places covering it for
Fox News but for their travel section. And I was there.
It was very different. Typically when I go to a
hotel event, it would be a boozy affair. There'd be
(10:55):
a few writers, they'd be wining a dinasts. I mean,
this was just hordes of people. There's some hard and
whitical journalists who were just like, oh man, they're giving
us muffins. This is the greatest day ever.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
There weren't for CIA guys, by the way, Yeah, not
as much as FBI guys, But yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I was looking to get out of food and dining,
and nobody really takes you seriously when you want to
leave that, Like, why would you ever want to leave that?
Wasn't that a picture of you driving a Ferrari on Rome?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Like?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Why do you want this? But this seemed like an
out because it was the uh, you don't have travel
he had a travel angle. So I pitched my editor
on an article about it, not just the standard travel
stuff but all the legal issues. And as I was
reporting that, I started looking online at pictures every morning
to see who was at the Trump hotel. In part
because it took me so long to submit decent copy
(11:40):
for this article that the and Trump was turning through
people of his administration. The references I had would be
dated by the time it was ready for me to
file another draft. But if you had concerns about ethical
problems with the president owning a hotel a couple of
bucks in the White House, you can see him on Instagram.
I started documenting that on social media, started a thread
there that picked up some followers. The founders of substack
(12:02):
reached out. It was in its early days. They reached out.
So I watched the newsletter and then for a couple
of years it would go out three or four times
a week, highlighting who was at the hotel and why
it might be a conflict, and I taught myself how
to look through campaign finance filings and foyer requests and
all that other kind of stuff, and you know, built
it up from there.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
For those people who haven't been there, that the Trump
Hotel was in the old post office building, which Jerry
and I are old enough to remember. It used to
be the FBI Washington Field office was there even and
it was always a little bit run down.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
But what is it now, Well, now it's a Waldorf Astoria.
It's a governmental building. And Trump won the lease from
GSI General Service Administrations. He bid on the lease Hilton,
which was part of another consortium. That group said, why
are you guys awarding this to Trump? Are you not
aware that he has several bankruptcies involving hotels. If you're
(12:51):
not aware, here's you know, seventy five pages of print outs.
Please take a look. You accepted it just because it
was the biggest bid, and that that's wrong, and that's
what happened. The finance has never really made sense. Trump
sold it to sold the lease shortly after he left
to a group of investors who turned it into Waldorf
for Astoria, and the financial problem still existed. And they
(13:13):
recently defaulted on the loans, so it is now owned
by a private equity bank associated with Michael Dell and
they have kept it a Waldorf for now. But it's
going to be interesting because I don't think this is
the last step of where it is. I think they're
going to need to figure out a way to make
this financially viable.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
So Zieh, we're sort of at the end of the story,
at least of the hotel, but I want to come
back to the beginning the story. And something I found
really creepy is that when you first checked into the
hotel for the newsletter, they knew who you were, right,
they were spying on you.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I wasn't totally surprised. So there's a really good book
called The gold Standard written about Ritz Carlton, and one
of the things they do is that they have a
system where they track high profile guests, journalists, other people
like that, and they have a database where they not
put in what your favorite drink is. So when I
was a travel writer and I showed up at a
Ritz Carlton, they would have an expressing they wrote that
(14:05):
down the first time I had It turns out that's
actually actually not my favorite drink. The fact that they
had found that on social media doesn't surprise me, and
the manager explained it. He's like, you know, we have
an act a shade apartment that just does a quick
look at our guests to see who it is, in
part for security, but in part for hospitality, Like why
are these people coming? Is it a special day? Is
there something we should know about these people? And you
(14:25):
type in my name and the first thing you have
this pictured me holding champagne on a cruise boat saying
travel writers. Yeah. They immediately came down, introduced themselves to
me and poured me another glass of champagne.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
You checked in and they just pulled you aside. It
was like, hey, man, we know who you are.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Oh absolutely, But I wasn't doing any political reporting at
the time. It was all travel stuff, so they were
probably excited thinking, oh, here's a guy who does a
lot of writing for Conde nas Traveler and he's staying
here for a weekend. Great because a lot of concerns
about the ethics of the hotel, but in terms of
actually a luxury hotel, it's really nice. I thought they
did a pretty good job.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
So was zech talking about this sort of world of money.
It's interacted with politics. I was reading about Cash Patel
and Devin Nunez who now works for Trump Media and
True Social and others. And these aren't necessarily talented people
or people who were able to make a lot of
money in their previous lives but now are making tons
of cash. Nunia's is a dairy farmer, and now he's
(15:17):
supposedly this big business tycoon. What have you learned about
the financial ties of Trump and those associated with him.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
One thing to keep in mind with Trump, the last
time Forbes looked at it, Trump would have done better
financially if he had just taken his dad's inheritance and
stuck it in an S and P. Five hundred For
all this business acumen that he likes to put out there.
And he's very well, he's wealthy, he's worth several billion dollars,
but it would be more if you just put it
in the market and let it ride. But there's no
(15:43):
shortage of people who've done pretty well by themselves by Trump.
I mean, Michael Cohen did pretty well up until the
moment he did it. A lot of people go into
business with Trump and then find themselves discarded. That hasn't
happened to news. He's the CEO of Trump Median Technology Group.
But yes, he's doing pretty well for Himselfie. You see
that with other people who published books through Winning Team Publishing,
(16:04):
which is Don Junior's imprint. They have a book that's
been putting out some conservative publications out there. Donald Trump
has put out a couple books that way, and you
know people can do well by that.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
More of this after a quick break back to our conversation.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Say you're stationed in East Berlin back in the day.
The president of East Berlin has a hotel a couple
of blocks from his residents, where all of the hangers
on are there, members of his administration, members of whatever legislature,
legislative group. They've had party operaatchicks, all scrifters, all sorts
of people. How do you handle that hotel? What do
(16:46):
you guys do?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Jerry's our Berlin guy, go at it, Jerff.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
So that hotel sort of exists in law and legend,
but it's the Metropol in Moscow and Stalin famously used
that hotel. He took all the foreign journalists and he'd
put them in there, and he gave them all beautiful
translators who all slept with them and then spied on them.
And the Metropol was like KGB central for spying on people.
(17:13):
So yeah, when you control the hotel, you control hotel security.
We control who comes in and out. They may even
ban people like you from the hotel. It's a secure
space if you want to be involved in things that
you don't want law enforcement or counterintelligence to know about.
It's also a big money laundering possibility for bringing in
foreign kits. John your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
If you ever saw the book and the movie, A
book and TV show Gentlemen in Moscow, that's about the
Metropol Hotel. It's not the greatest example because both Russia
and East Germany in the time, when you're the dictator there,
like you don't actually need to steal money through a hotel.
You own the country and you can make money in
so many other ways.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
I always thought, and I never saw any evidence of
foreign spies at the Trump Hotel, but I thought they
would be derelict in their duty if they weren't a
low place.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Of course, that's the point. A job as an intelligence
officer is involved what we call targeting, right trying to
find the people that have access to secrets. And in
Trump world, that was where you went to run into
Rudy Giuliani and the people who are around Trump. So
if you wanted to do that for drifting purposes, or
if you want to do that for intelligence purposes, that
(18:21):
was the place to go to meet somebody. Now, in
our world, you would want to meet them and then
pull them away from there because it's a place where
there was a lot of eyes, a lot of people
paying attention. What you want to do is develop a
relationship away from those prying eyes. But yeah, you're right,
there's a lot of issues and problems with that. There's
the issue of corruption, there's the issue of money lunder,
there's an issue of of spying, and all of it
is of concern. And that sounds like the Trump Hotel
(18:43):
was all of those things.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah, marl Laga, since Trump has had classified documents there.
So during his presidency up until the date of the
FBI raid, the club sought to employ three hundred and
eighty short term temporary foreign workers. Yeah, this smirk on
your face is at all say that's a foreign leader.
How would the CIA approach that? And I've got to
imagine we're sending over twenty five different people applying to
(19:07):
be maids and chefs and all that other stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
John and I are. We've damaged our livers and put
on a lot of extra pounds going to diplomatic receptions
at hotels where being there is if the bile like you,
look around, who do I need to meet and how
do I need to meet them? And how do I
bump into them? How do I continue the relationship? And
yet those same social skills we use inside the agency,
But in the Constitution there is the Emolument's clause.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yes, I'm familiar with it, and I hopefully I can
describe it succinctly, because I have been told by editors
from multiple outlets not to use the word emilliuments, because
that's when you lose readers. It's basically the president can
accept payments from foreigner state governments, and that was one
of the issues that was central to the hotel is
whether or not a foreign government paying Donald Trump's hotel
(19:53):
would count as an emiliument's a violation of that clause.
The first day, the first business day of his administration,
a group a watched our group named crew sued over
the violation of the emolument's clause. That case ended up
getting tossed by the Supreme Court is moot because Trump
was no longer office in office, and they weren't even
at a point where they were going to discuss the
(20:13):
case on the merits. They were still trying to figure
out who had the standing to suit Trump over that.
It's likely that even if they had resolved that it
would have been another four years. At one point, I
was recording a podcast and there were three different candidates
for president and Nigeria were there actually too, two sorry,
two candidates from Nigeria Congress, people from Nigeria's legislature. Their
sitting Vice president was there. So certainly stands to reason
(20:36):
that the Nigerian government was paying Donald Trump via his hotel,
and that continues to go on. He doesn't have the
DC Hotel, which is not as central, but he certainly
has other properties. I think it was the government of
China rented office space in one of his New York buildings.
You know, that continues to go on and we never
got a vertical. Whether or not that's okay, And part
(20:58):
of it has to be blamed on the Democrats. I
really think they dragged their feet on this. They were
playing by some of the old give me some old
school courtesies, like oh you need more time to file, Okay,
that's fine. Oh they I don't even think they held
a hearing on the monuments class they scheduled when they
canceled in and I don't think they ever got around
to having it. Here we are again, and you could
(21:18):
certainly have government in China looking if you know mar
al Lago's banquet room, if they want to.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Yeah, I have a quick question for you. Right when
politicians often talk about the quote Biden criminal enterprise, what
have you learned about Biden's finances?
Speaker 1 (21:32):
They're boring. They are what you would expect for Joe Biden.
He's a career politician. So yeah, Biden's worth about ten
million dollars largely. You know, he's had a government pension,
just the same way you guys, I'm sure are worth
that much too, from your government pensions. Yeah, yeah, I
don't know about that, but it's a solid pension. You know.
He obviously was making a lot of money when he
was doing it, now did he probably could have done
(21:53):
better as well if he invested a little bit differently.
Most of his money he likes to invest in real
estate is where he's put it. He said, okay, by
that he had this really huge house that's lended hisself
to some conspiracies. He had a former Jupont mansion that
he owned, and it was how can this guy afford
such a mansion? And for it because it was the
market was in a downturn, you know. Yeah, I think
(22:13):
it was Eric Trump saying that, and Eric should know
it well, like Donald Trump got a steal on forty
Wall Street in mar Lago because the economy wasn't doing
well and nobody really wanted those buildings. So that's exactly
how Joe Biden got his men.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I think Joe Biden also wrote a book too, didn'ty
after he was once he's out of office. He had
that four year in a readdom and yeah, speaking like
two hundred thousand dollars for a speaking gig.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, he made a few million from that. But the
book doesn't even hardly have much of a long tail.
I think on his last financial disclosure, I don't think
he disclosed making any money off of it.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And it's cheaper to buy things in Delaware too.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Frankly, maybe that's how he's doing it.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Trump famously went through a series of bankruptcies, right, he
couldn't even make a casino, it was sort of and
hotels and went bankrupt, and yet he got financed weirdly
to Deutsche right, and we're not quite sure who guaranteed
the loans even today. It could be a foreign entity.
I've read a conspiracy theory until it's proven that that
(23:10):
Russian oligarchs were involved and guaranteeing this. And I was
wondering if you get a sense it off. You've ever
tried to go down that rabbit hole and figure out
where before he ran in sixteen, like where did his
financing come from? After those huge failures?
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, I haven't jumped down that rabbit hole that much.
You know. One of the things he's done is that
it seems like he's always able to find somebody he's
able to convince that they want to work with him,
and that that's just think he is somebody who's going
to be good for the business. And I think that's
a lot of what you had with Deutsche back, where
his personal backer went to bat for him in whay
she probably wouldn't have with other clients. I would strongly
(23:46):
recommend my editor's book White House, Inc. By Dan Alexander.
I would definitely take a look at that one. So
he keeps coming back and financially, he was looking at
a lot of his buildings where he had a mortgages
coming due towards the end of his administration, but he
was able to find finance and he got this bank,
Axos Bank which used to be called Bank at the Internet,
to a load of money for a Trump Tower mortgage.
(24:08):
And he keeps finding people who are willing to do this.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
You wrote, Trump cashed in on the January sixth events.
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yeah, that's one of the things that's really we talk about.
So much of the attention on Trump is political for
obvious reasons, but he's able to continuously like cash out
on a lot of these conspiracy theories and other events
where in January sixth, shortly after he tweeted will be wild,
the hotel Jack the hotel in DC jackas prices up,
they went ridiculously high, and I was able to go
(24:37):
back and look and say, oh, prices weren't that high
at all before he tweeted that, and then comparing it
to industry data from other luxury hotels in the area.
It wasn't like they all spiked, it was just the
Trump Hotel. I mean that that hit a level like
a two thousand dollars a night, which is far more
than I'd ever seen it before. And there's also the
(24:57):
oh they did that because they didn't want the rif
rafts at the hotel. The manager of the hotel tweeted
that room service did a record business that week.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
So let's see if I can stump you on this one.
Do you know where the term lobbyist comes from.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
I do. Supposedly the Willard.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
It's the Willard Hotel. President Grayat used to go to
the Willard Hotel and it was just the scene is
like what you described, with everybody there. And he would
sit in the lobby and try to smoke his cigar
when you could smoke inside in those days, and have
a drink, and he would be accosted by people looking
to have him use his influence on their behalf or
to get jobs or whatever. And he called them these
(25:36):
damn lobbyists because they were always in the lobby.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
And we got to use that word a lot at
the at Trump's Hotel, because the bar was in the lobby.
You know, it wasn't some sort of like cloistered thing away.
It was like right out there in the lobby. It
was the lobby bar. So yet I've I've probably used
the word lobbyist in more art.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
I'd like to think, how do politicians make money from
conspiracy theorists and those who believe in qan on these
kind of things. I mean, it seems like people have
been able to figure out a way to make money
off these conspiracies out or do they do they put
out the conspiracies hoping to figure out a way to
make money.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
One of my favorites was the hotel in Chicago had
a every year around Christmas time. It does a gingerbread
display in its elevator, and apparently the number seventeen in
the letter q were there prominently and people were going nuts.
But qwan On supporterers booked Trump's DC Hotel for an
event where the guy they all thought was JFK Junior
(26:30):
was there. And that's actually how it warned a lot
about QAnon was from going down that rabbit hole. I'm
looking to see who's at the Trump Hotel and then
I'm like, wait, they think this guy is JFK Junior
and then they think, oh wait, they think there's another
one of these JFK junior guys because they're different heights,
Like what the hell am I looking at? And that's
when I first was like, all right, can't ignore this
(26:51):
QAnon nonsense anymore. I need to get up to speed
on it. And it caught me up. But he's had
conferences at Durrell as well, where they have a lot
of people who just go there and spout off theories.
I think the way politicians benefit from it, and again
not necessarily financially directly, but is by go they were
at these conferences, they go then embrace these people. They
(27:12):
might not come all the way out and say, you know,
as much as like Marjorie Taylor Green does that they're
going to agree with the conspiracy theory, but they'll dog
whistle or they won't deny it, or they'll say, oh,
you know, that might that's an interesting point. And that
way they were able to pick up their following, and
I think it works.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
And most people become small donors too, right, and especially
people who are passionate about their beliefs, even if those
beliefs are QAnon conspiracy theories. Once you've got the all
important list of donors right their email addresses, those are
the folks you can go out to time and time again.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
I had also seen a couple reports from like legitimate
news services that in the hotel there was a room
that they called the Tinfoil Room. This is the DC Hotel,
and it was to provide secure communications for Trump in
a way that the deep state could not monitor. Now,
I filed Foyer requests, which you know, I wasn't expecting
(28:05):
much of response from that. I talked to people who
were intimate knowledge of the building. I couldn't get any
confirmation of it. No place sells something in these two
outlets seven or eight years ago reported it. Do you
guys even think that's plausible.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
So it's in terms of grifting and things. There's a
large security industry. Back when we first started, it was
by the FBI and CI had all the fancy little
gear and listening devices and ways to block listening devices
and all that type of communications and ways to hide things.
Now there's so much of that stuff that's publicly available.
So I'm sure somebody is coming in and saying, Okay,
(28:39):
I'm going to sweep this room, and we're gonna put
foil behind the walls. We do this overseas like metal
caging to try in case someone's trying to send in
signals from the outside microwave signals or something, and we're
gonna have you know, full time security there. Like, there
are things you can do to create a room that
is generally secure. And the notion that the deep state
(29:01):
is trying to listen to the President of the United States,
who's in charge of the deep state, listening to his
stuff is crazy. If in fact that was say the Chinese,
and they thought they could create a room in a
hotel that could protect against the deep state, the FBI
to see idea to say, do have the ability probably
to make it so that as hard as you tried,
they could probably find a way around it. But for
(29:23):
somebody like Trump, if they actually believe this and they're
going to have these meetings of Rue Julian and this
kind of stuff, there's security places that could build it
to make it. When someone went in there, they would
feel like they are really important, and there's all these
kind of bells and whistles and stuff. So I think
that's certainly possible.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah, he might actually qualify for a skiff, right for
a bubble, because he still is I think he's still
hand received briefings, classified briefings as former president at least
other former presidents get him, so he could probably make
a call for a classified space either at mar A
Lago or apps in his hotel. And I think if
the government provided that, if there was a jumble in that, yeah,
(30:00):
you could probably find it out through a foyer request.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
But there was reporting in the paper today about this
very thing. So apparently the Biden administration went to him
and pulled him aside and gave him a classified briefing
on the fact that the Iranians are interested in potentially
assassinating him, and they gave him this briefing. And what
happened with the Mueller briefing at the beginning of his tour,
he thought that this was reported that he doesn't trust
(30:24):
the Biden administration. He thinks that they're trying to trick
him in some way, and so he's refused classified briefings
because he thinks it's the administration trying to put disinformation
into his head. And so, yes, he does probably have
the right to have a skiff and get regular briefings,
but apparently he's turned them down because he thinks he's
being fooled, which is silly.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
That's called duty to warn. So if we know you
no seriously in the agency, if we have intelligence that
someone is faces mortal danger, to include our enemies. At
one time, there was a there's a nation state who
is really not friendly to us, and we had credible
information that someone was trying to assassinate this guy. And
I was overseas as station chief, and I arranged a
(31:06):
meeting and I sat down and I said, people are
trying to kill you, and I gave him some basic details.
He's what's the catch, Like, there is it one? This
is us law. I need to tell you this, and
he was certain I was up to something, but really
we work.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Hold on just a second. Well, we take a quick
break and we're back.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I like the stuff that's hiding in plain sight. Probably
the thing that I'm most proud of reporting wise is
I was able to figure out that Nigeria's vice president
was staying at the Trump hotel based on the pattern
of the throw pillows on the couch where he gave
an interview. Somebody had posted a picture with the Nigerian
Vice President, saying that they were interviewing him at Trump Hotel,
(31:49):
but the background was all white, so I couldn't confirm it.
That wasn't good enough, but at least it hid me
in that I should look for this guy. So I
start looking at what was he doing around the dates
that picture was taken, and I find a video interview
he did with Voice of America and it doesn't identify
where he is, but I can't. I took screenshots at
the background and you can see, you said, the design
(32:10):
on the throw pillows, where the lamp is, where the
pictures are, where the pictures are of the background. And
then I went to the Trump Hotels website it started
looking at pictures of their nicer sweets and was able
to find one that matched it. And then I just
lined up where the boxes are and it was like,
oh great, that was throw pillows. It's what belling Cat does,
but for you know, cushions rather than missiles.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
So Zach, what are you working on now and are
you looking into anything that conspiratorial nature?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
A lot of campaign finance stuff. Still looking at Trump
media through social I find very interesting what's going on there.
Just the fact that it's so overvalued and he's made
so much money. I'm fascinated to find out when he
might sell those stocks. He hasn't, he said he's keeping them.
But he is a man of many debts, both legal
(32:59):
and mortgage. In Particulous, forty Wall Street Building is a
bit of a money loser by our accounts, and it
has a mortgage coming due, and he might have a
hard time finding somebody who's willing to lend him money
on a business that looks to be underwater. And the
way that list is set up, it's about to get
worse for it in about ten eight years. He has
plenty of good uses for that money, and that would
be interesting to see if you sell some of it
(33:20):
and uses it for that. You know, right now he's
got a pretty good thing, Gallen, where he can take
his political money and use it to pay off his
legal fees.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Good luck, keep at it, very interesting. Well, get you
back as things developed. But zex, thank you so much
for your time to that really interesting stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
A lot to thank you guys for having me.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The Associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission implausible.
It's a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures for
iHeart podcasts
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Oh
Probably the thing that I'm most proud of reporting wise
is I was able to figure out that Nigeria's vice
president was staying at the Trump hotel based on the
pattern of the throw pillows on the couch where he
gave an interview.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry o'she I served in
the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover
all around the.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
World, and in my thirty three years with the CIA,
I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
created conspiracies.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
In our operations. We got people to believe things that
weren't true.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
news almost every day.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
We'll break them down for you to determine whether they
could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Welcome to Mission Implausible.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
So, John, now that the election's up, do you think
we're finally going to hit a Trump tower Moscow?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I'm more worried about our government becoming like Russians. Right,
Like Russia has a system of oligarchs, some sort of
informal money people who are tied to the government and
pay to play and loose corruption and those type of things.
And in some ways we're becoming a little more like Russia.
You know, media gets pushed down, misinformation gets pushed into
the media by the leaders themselves for their own personal reasons,
(01:17):
what have you. So, I'm a little worried about that.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I don't know. I think our oligarchs will kick their
oligarch's ass. We've got Elon ew have they got, you know,
I'm not even sure is he our oligarch or is
he somebody else. Their oligarchs seem to fall out of
windows all the time, or their airplanes crash.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Elon is he's an American, but he's from South Africa.
But he's got huge stake in places like China and
Russia and other places.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
I'm just worried that he's going to get deported, seeing
as how, at least according to the press, he entered
the US on a student visa and never study. Instead
he went to work, taking a job from an American.
We might have hit an American oligarch instead of Elon
if he hadn't taken that job.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
What I think is, yes, Elon Musk has spent amazing
amount of money to get closer to Trump, and right
now he seems to be at mar A Lago. He's
with Trump all the time. They're making these calls to
foreign leaders. But I have to say I expect, just
like many people who sort of buy influence, when the
time comes, they get pushed away. Joseph Kennedy spent tons
(02:17):
of money on elections, and when push came to shove,
he got nothing. And Henry Ford in the United States,
there's a history of these guys buying their way in,
but when push comes to shove, they're not part of.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
The Money can't buy you love or loyalty.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
We should maybe put little bets for ourselves. A how
long before Elon is tossed from the net. But it's
disheartening to me throwing away some of the norms. They're
talking about not having people do security clearance checks. They're
talking about Trump being able to just put things in
place without Senate approval, these type of things. But I'm worried,
and I'm sure you are too. Jerry has spending time
(02:51):
in their security state and CIA in particular, I'm waiting
to see what they do there. I mean, are you
going to put someone in charge of CIA who can't
get a security clearance or doesn't get a security clearance.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
My major concerned is for the entire US government, and
this doesn't make it a Republican or democrat. It's the
possible politicization of the women and men of the intelligence
community in the US government who served in silence following
the rules. And that's where we were in the eighteen
eighties with the spoil system.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
If a republican FBI, then you have a democratic FBI.
Right now, we have a professional FBI and professional CIA,
and I worry what they're going to do is they're
going to go looking through political roles to see who
gave money to who and essentially just fire all the
senior people who gave money to other political parties or
other than Trump. You're throwing away professionalism that way, and
you're going to get answers to questions that you already
(03:41):
know the answer to. So Trump wants to believe I
don't know something, and that he wants the intelligence community
to tell him that he's right, rather than that role
of truth to power to try to give leaders information
they may not want, they may not like, but it
helps them in the long run, and it helps national security.
In the lawn run.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
I just want people to realize that the genius I
think of American foreign policy architecture, of security architecture after
World War Two is that we created this messy group
of allies. You know, our former adversaries, the Germans, the French,
sort of our former adversaries, the Japanese South Koreans. We've
(04:20):
actually got this series of alliances that have stood by this.
And if we're going to be walking away from NATO
theoretically or in practice, that leaves us isolated, it alone,
it doesn't leave us stronger.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
It creates other problems. So, okay, so we're going to
pull out of Europe. What happens when we're gone? Who
leads Europe? Does France lead Europe? Does Germany? It's by
far the biggest country East Europe, who's much more focused
on Russia and those type of things. Are we going
to move back to those where those kind of squabbles
start to get deeper and they instead of working together
as a European Union, it starts to split apart and
(04:55):
we get pulled back into different squabbles for different reasons.
There's no easy path, and unfortunately, in foreign policy and
national security.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
You can never tell what conflicts we've avoided by being
in an alliance were we not in NATO, If we
didn't have NATO, would we have been dragged into wars
over and over again? And I suspect we probably might
and putin understands that divide and conquer. He is trying
to divide us from our allies because he has no allies.
(05:25):
No one trusts Russia, Chinese don't trust him. Even his
near abroad is surrounded by people, the Armenians who don't
trust him, or the Ukrainians who are fighting them, the Georgians,
and I really don't want to see us becoming closer
to Russia and their North Korean and Iranian allies.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
We've been at that front line where we are living
with and working with allies and partners overseas, and we
see on a daily basis how much that helps us.
People give us information that they otherwise wouldn't. That helps
American interest, that helps American business, that helps save American lives.
They do it because we've developed relationships, We've developed relationships
(06:04):
of trust. They know that America stands for something and
it's going to be there for them when something tough
comes down the road. So they're going to help us now,
hoping that maybe we'll help them in the future.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Years ago, John, I was in the Baltics and I
bumped into a guy when he mentioned this really isolated
province up in the Hindu cushion. I said, whoa, I've
been up there too, And he mentioned this one horrific
battle that the US had been involved in, and I said, yeah,
that was really bad, and I realized we weren't talking theoretically.
(06:39):
He was actually there shouldered the shoulder with US forces
in northern Afghanistan after nine to eleven as Ourli, risking
his life to fight for US. And then he looked
at me afterwards and said, so, if the Russians invade
my country, you'll be here to stand with me, right.
I looked at him and I said, I hope.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
So no, are we at a point where the big
powers make decisions over everybody else? Or do we work
with the people that have Western values and support us
around the world. So today's episode, I think we're going
to talk a little bit about that sort of soft corruption,
the kind of money that gets involved either in politics
(07:19):
or around politics. How do we deal with it with
presidents who have investments in money and connections and places.
We've had presidents before that have been quite wealthy and
it had foreign connections. Donald Trump is something different altogether.
He had this massive hotel in downtown DC that he
wanted to push people to when he was president, and
so it'll be interesting to talk to our next guest
about what he's learned as he looked into these things.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
We'd like to welcome Zach Everson. He's a journalist best
known for well, for a lot of things. He writes
on the murky and mucky intersection of politics, money, conspiracies,
many reals, some imagined, and not surprisingly even on one
business in particular, a famous hotel with your infamous newsletter
(08:08):
eleven hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. But you always covered the tricky
and sticky topic of ethics and the galen so of
Donald Trump, for sure, but also other places along the spectrum,
so Cornell West and Alexandria Ocasio Cortes as well. Zick,
How and why you were thrown out of a hotel
(08:29):
and banned for life? What does this say about you
other than coming on this show?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
You know, I honestly was surprise that happened. Didn't happen earlier.
So the hotel in question is, of course Trump's DC hotel.
I really, I mean, I had a newsletter dedicated to
the place. That's the eleven hundred Pensylvania, that's its address.
I had been doing this for a couple of years
at this point, and I really thought they weren't going
to throw me out because they figured it's you know,
they'd realized, oh, it's good publicity for him. You know
(08:55):
when I went under cover with Inside Edition there and
they caught one of the videography guys like, I'm like,
all right, I'm done. This is the trade off. If
I can get my reporting in front of the demographic
that watches Inside Edition, I'm good with this. Well, what
finally happened was the Trump was out of office and
he was selling the place. There was a spike in prices.
I was trying to figure out what it was. So
I went down to the hotel, immediately walked in and
(09:18):
saw signage in the lobby that they were having a
gathering of exterminators there as a conference, not to actually
do some work. By job done. I went to the bar.
I had a drink, you kind of see who comes
around see if there's anybody notable there. I get up.
I take a couple of pictures, not really of people,
but just of the building. My editor, who's the one
(09:38):
who does our Forbes's valuation of Donald Trump, wanted me
to just document what the retail spaces inside the hotel
were like for his valuation, So I took a couple
of pictures. I walked round the lobby, I head to
the bathroom. I'm about to make a swing by the
conference room so I can check out the exterminators. On
my way up the door, when the head of security, Ernest,
comes and says, you know, hey, write this way. So
(09:59):
I'm like, okay about me walking by the conference He's
leading me out this way. He's like, we're gonna have
to ask you to leave. I'm like, really, we're doing
this now, okay. And then when I get out the door,
the head of marketing was there, and I'm sure she's
not somebody who's usually involved in throwing people out, but
she was right there as it happened, and you know,
we're gonna have to ask you not to come back.
So I went home. I wrote the article and it
(10:19):
was most on boards to that day. It got covered
in a whole bunch of other outlets, and I'm like,
all right, we knew this was gonna happen, and here
we are to the audience.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Maybe just a quick overview of what the newsletter was
and what you were trying to do with it.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yeah. So I was a travel writer, as you mentioned
it earlier, and focused on food and dining, and I
had the assignment to cover the brand opening of Trump's
hotel here in DC in the waiting days of the
twenty sixteen election, and for all places covering it for
Fox News but for their travel section. And I was there.
It was very different. Typically when I go to a
hotel event, it would be a boozy affair. There'd be
(10:55):
a few writers, they'd be wining a dinasts. I mean,
this was just hordes of people. There's some hard and
whitical journalists who were just like, oh man, they're giving
us muffins. This is the greatest day ever.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
There weren't for CIA guys, by the way, Yeah, not
as much as FBI guys, But yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I was looking to get out of food and dining,
and nobody really takes you seriously when you want to
leave that, Like, why would you ever want to leave that?
Wasn't that a picture of you driving a Ferrari on Rome?
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Like?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Why do you want this? But this seemed like an
out because it was the uh, you don't have travel
he had a travel angle. So I pitched my editor
on an article about it, not just the standard travel
stuff but all the legal issues. And as I was
reporting that, I started looking online at pictures every morning
to see who was at the Trump hotel. In part
because it took me so long to submit decent copy
(11:40):
for this article that the and Trump was turning through
people of his administration. The references I had would be
dated by the time it was ready for me to
file another draft. But if you had concerns about ethical
problems with the president owning a hotel a couple of
bucks in the White House, you can see him on Instagram.
I started documenting that on social media, started a thread
there that picked up some followers. The founders of substack
(12:02):
reached out. It was in its early days. They reached out.
So I watched the newsletter and then for a couple
of years it would go out three or four times
a week, highlighting who was at the hotel and why
it might be a conflict, and I taught myself how
to look through campaign finance filings and foyer requests and
all that other kind of stuff, and you know, built
it up from there.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
For those people who haven't been there, that the Trump
Hotel was in the old post office building, which Jerry
and I are old enough to remember. It used to
be the FBI Washington Field office was there even and
it was always a little bit run down.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
But what is it now, Well, now it's a Waldorf Astoria.
It's a governmental building. And Trump won the lease from
GSI General Service Administrations. He bid on the lease Hilton,
which was part of another consortium. That group said, why
are you guys awarding this to Trump? Are you not
aware that he has several bankruptcies involving hotels. If you're
(12:51):
not aware, here's you know, seventy five pages of print outs.
Please take a look. You accepted it just because it
was the biggest bid, and that that's wrong, and that's
what happened. The finance has never really made sense. Trump
sold it to sold the lease shortly after he left
to a group of investors who turned it into Waldorf
for Astoria, and the financial problem still existed. And they
(13:13):
recently defaulted on the loans, so it is now owned
by a private equity bank associated with Michael Dell and
they have kept it a Waldorf for now. But it's
going to be interesting because I don't think this is
the last step of where it is. I think they're
going to need to figure out a way to make
this financially viable.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
So Zieh, we're sort of at the end of the story,
at least of the hotel, but I want to come
back to the beginning the story. And something I found
really creepy is that when you first checked into the
hotel for the newsletter, they knew who you were, right,
they were spying on you.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
I wasn't totally surprised. So there's a really good book
called The gold Standard written about Ritz Carlton, and one
of the things they do is that they have a
system where they track high profile guests, journalists, other people
like that, and they have a database where they not
put in what your favorite drink is. So when I
was a travel writer and I showed up at a
Ritz Carlton, they would have an expressing they wrote that
(14:05):
down the first time I had It turns out that's
actually actually not my favorite drink. The fact that they
had found that on social media doesn't surprise me, and
the manager explained it. He's like, you know, we have
an act a shade apartment that just does a quick
look at our guests to see who it is, in
part for security, but in part for hospitality, Like why
are these people coming? Is it a special day? Is
there something we should know about these people? And you
(14:25):
type in my name and the first thing you have
this pictured me holding champagne on a cruise boat saying
travel writers. Yeah. They immediately came down, introduced themselves to
me and poured me another glass of champagne.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
You checked in and they just pulled you aside. It
was like, hey, man, we know who you are.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Oh absolutely, But I wasn't doing any political reporting at
the time. It was all travel stuff, so they were
probably excited thinking, oh, here's a guy who does a
lot of writing for Conde nas Traveler and he's staying
here for a weekend. Great because a lot of concerns
about the ethics of the hotel, but in terms of
actually a luxury hotel, it's really nice. I thought they
did a pretty good job.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
So was zech talking about this sort of world of money.
It's interacted with politics. I was reading about Cash Patel
and Devin Nunez who now works for Trump Media and
True Social and others. And these aren't necessarily talented people
or people who were able to make a lot of
money in their previous lives but now are making tons
of cash. Nunia's is a dairy farmer, and now he's
(15:17):
supposedly this big business tycoon. What have you learned about
the financial ties of Trump and those associated with him.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
One thing to keep in mind with Trump, the last
time Forbes looked at it, Trump would have done better
financially if he had just taken his dad's inheritance and
stuck it in an S and P. Five hundred For
all this business acumen that he likes to put out there.
And he's very well, he's wealthy, he's worth several billion dollars,
but it would be more if you just put it
in the market and let it ride. But there's no
(15:43):
shortage of people who've done pretty well by themselves by Trump.
I mean, Michael Cohen did pretty well up until the
moment he did it. A lot of people go into
business with Trump and then find themselves discarded. That hasn't
happened to news. He's the CEO of Trump Median Technology Group.
But yes, he's doing pretty well for Himselfie. You see
that with other people who published books through Winning Team Publishing,
(16:04):
which is Don Junior's imprint. They have a book that's
been putting out some conservative publications out there. Donald Trump
has put out a couple books that way, and you
know people can do well by that.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
More of this after a quick break back to our conversation.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Say you're stationed in East Berlin back in the day.
The president of East Berlin has a hotel a couple
of blocks from his residents, where all of the hangers
on are there, members of his administration, members of whatever legislature,
legislative group. They've had party operaatchicks, all scrifters, all sorts
of people. How do you handle that hotel? What do
(16:46):
you guys do?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Jerry's our Berlin guy, go at it, Jerff.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
So that hotel sort of exists in law and legend,
but it's the Metropol in Moscow and Stalin famously used
that hotel. He took all the foreign journalists and he'd
put them in there, and he gave them all beautiful
translators who all slept with them and then spied on them.
And the Metropol was like KGB central for spying on people.
(17:13):
So yeah, when you control the hotel, you control hotel security.
We control who comes in and out. They may even
ban people like you from the hotel. It's a secure
space if you want to be involved in things that
you don't want law enforcement or counterintelligence to know about.
It's also a big money laundering possibility for bringing in
foreign kits. John your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
If you ever saw the book and the movie, A
book and TV show Gentlemen in Moscow, that's about the
Metropol Hotel. It's not the greatest example because both Russia
and East Germany in the time, when you're the dictator there,
like you don't actually need to steal money through a hotel.
You own the country and you can make money in
so many other ways.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
I always thought, and I never saw any evidence of
foreign spies at the Trump Hotel, but I thought they
would be derelict in their duty if they weren't a
low place.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Of course, that's the point. A job as an intelligence
officer is involved what we call targeting, right trying to
find the people that have access to secrets. And in
Trump world, that was where you went to run into
Rudy Giuliani and the people who are around Trump. So
if you wanted to do that for drifting purposes, or
if you want to do that for intelligence purposes, that
(18:21):
was the place to go to meet somebody. Now, in
our world, you would want to meet them and then
pull them away from there because it's a place where
there was a lot of eyes, a lot of people
paying attention. What you want to do is develop a
relationship away from those prying eyes. But yeah, you're right,
there's a lot of issues and problems with that. There's
the issue of corruption, there's the issue of money lunder,
there's an issue of of spying, and all of it
is of concern. And that sounds like the Trump Hotel
(18:43):
was all of those things.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah, marl Laga, since Trump has had classified documents there.
So during his presidency up until the date of the
FBI raid, the club sought to employ three hundred and
eighty short term temporary foreign workers. Yeah, this smirk on
your face is at all say that's a foreign leader.
How would the CIA approach that? And I've got to
imagine we're sending over twenty five different people applying to
(19:07):
be maids and chefs and all that other stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
John and I are. We've damaged our livers and put
on a lot of extra pounds going to diplomatic receptions
at hotels where being there is if the bile like you,
look around, who do I need to meet and how
do I need to meet them? And how do I
bump into them? How do I continue the relationship? And
yet those same social skills we use inside the agency,
But in the Constitution there is the Emolument's clause.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yes, I'm familiar with it, and I hopefully I can
describe it succinctly, because I have been told by editors
from multiple outlets not to use the word emilliuments, because
that's when you lose readers. It's basically the president can
accept payments from foreigner state governments, and that was one
of the issues that was central to the hotel is
whether or not a foreign government paying Donald Trump's hotel
(19:53):
would count as an emiliument's a violation of that clause.
The first day, the first business day of his administration,
a group a watched our group named crew sued over
the violation of the emolument's clause. That case ended up
getting tossed by the Supreme Court is moot because Trump
was no longer office in office, and they weren't even
at a point where they were going to discuss the
(20:13):
case on the merits. They were still trying to figure
out who had the standing to suit Trump over that.
It's likely that even if they had resolved that it
would have been another four years. At one point, I
was recording a podcast and there were three different candidates
for president and Nigeria were there actually too, two sorry,
two candidates from Nigeria Congress, people from Nigeria's legislature. Their
sitting Vice president was there. So certainly stands to reason
(20:36):
that the Nigerian government was paying Donald Trump via his hotel,
and that continues to go on. He doesn't have the
DC Hotel, which is not as central, but he certainly
has other properties. I think it was the government of
China rented office space in one of his New York buildings.
You know, that continues to go on and we never
got a vertical. Whether or not that's okay, And part
(20:58):
of it has to be blamed on the Democrats. I
really think they dragged their feet on this. They were
playing by some of the old give me some old
school courtesies, like oh you need more time to file, Okay,
that's fine. Oh they I don't even think they held
a hearing on the monuments class they scheduled when they
canceled in and I don't think they ever got around
to having it. Here we are again, and you could
(21:18):
certainly have government in China looking if you know mar
al Lago's banquet room, if they want to.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Yeah, I have a quick question for you. Right when
politicians often talk about the quote Biden criminal enterprise, what
have you learned about Biden's finances?
Speaker 1 (21:32):
They're boring. They are what you would expect for Joe Biden.
He's a career politician. So yeah, Biden's worth about ten
million dollars largely. You know, he's had a government pension,
just the same way you guys, I'm sure are worth
that much too, from your government pensions. Yeah, yeah, I
don't know about that, but it's a solid pension. You know.
He obviously was making a lot of money when he
was doing it, now did he probably could have done
(21:53):
better as well if he invested a little bit differently.
Most of his money he likes to invest in real
estate is where he's put it. He said, okay, by
that he had this really huge house that's lended hisself
to some conspiracies. He had a former Jupont mansion that
he owned, and it was how can this guy afford
such a mansion? And for it because it was the
market was in a downturn, you know. Yeah, I think
(22:13):
it was Eric Trump saying that, and Eric should know
it well, like Donald Trump got a steal on forty
Wall Street in mar Lago because the economy wasn't doing
well and nobody really wanted those buildings. So that's exactly
how Joe Biden got his men.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I think Joe Biden also wrote a book too, didn'ty
after he was once he's out of office. He had
that four year in a readdom and yeah, speaking like
two hundred thousand dollars for a speaking gig.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Yeah, he made a few million from that. But the
book doesn't even hardly have much of a long tail.
I think on his last financial disclosure, I don't think
he disclosed making any money off of it.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And it's cheaper to buy things in Delaware too.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Frankly, maybe that's how he's doing it.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Trump famously went through a series of bankruptcies, right, he
couldn't even make a casino, it was sort of and
hotels and went bankrupt, and yet he got financed weirdly
to Deutsche right, and we're not quite sure who guaranteed
the loans even today. It could be a foreign entity.
I've read a conspiracy theory until it's proven that that
(23:10):
Russian oligarchs were involved and guaranteeing this. And I was
wondering if you get a sense it off. You've ever
tried to go down that rabbit hole and figure out
where before he ran in sixteen, like where did his
financing come from? After those huge failures?
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yeah, I haven't jumped down that rabbit hole that much.
You know. One of the things he's done is that
it seems like he's always able to find somebody he's
able to convince that they want to work with him,
and that that's just think he is somebody who's going
to be good for the business. And I think that's
a lot of what you had with Deutsche back, where
his personal backer went to bat for him in whay
she probably wouldn't have with other clients. I would strongly
(23:46):
recommend my editor's book White House, Inc. By Dan Alexander.
I would definitely take a look at that one. So
he keeps coming back and financially, he was looking at
a lot of his buildings where he had a mortgages
coming due towards the end of his administration, but he
was able to find finance and he got this bank,
Axos Bank which used to be called Bank at the Internet,
to a load of money for a Trump Tower mortgage.
(24:08):
And he keeps finding people who are willing to do this.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
You wrote, Trump cashed in on the January sixth events.
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yeah, that's one of the things that's really we talk about.
So much of the attention on Trump is political for
obvious reasons, but he's able to continuously like cash out
on a lot of these conspiracy theories and other events
where in January sixth, shortly after he tweeted will be wild,
the hotel Jack the hotel in DC jackas prices up,
they went ridiculously high, and I was able to go
(24:37):
back and look and say, oh, prices weren't that high
at all before he tweeted that, and then comparing it
to industry data from other luxury hotels in the area.
It wasn't like they all spiked, it was just the
Trump Hotel. I mean that that hit a level like
a two thousand dollars a night, which is far more
than I'd ever seen it before. And there's also the
(24:57):
oh they did that because they didn't want the rif
rafts at the hotel. The manager of the hotel tweeted
that room service did a record business that week.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
So let's see if I can stump you on this one.
Do you know where the term lobbyist comes from.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
I do. Supposedly the Willard.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
It's the Willard Hotel. President Grayat used to go to
the Willard Hotel and it was just the scene is
like what you described, with everybody there. And he would
sit in the lobby and try to smoke his cigar
when you could smoke inside in those days, and have
a drink, and he would be accosted by people looking
to have him use his influence on their behalf or
to get jobs or whatever. And he called them these
(25:36):
damn lobbyists because they were always in the lobby.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
And we got to use that word a lot at
the at Trump's Hotel, because the bar was in the lobby.
You know, it wasn't some sort of like cloistered thing away.
It was like right out there in the lobby. It
was the lobby bar. So yet I've I've probably used
the word lobbyist in more art.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
I'd like to think, how do politicians make money from
conspiracy theorists and those who believe in qan on these
kind of things. I mean, it seems like people have
been able to figure out a way to make money
off these conspiracies out or do they do they put
out the conspiracies hoping to figure out a way to
make money.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
One of my favorites was the hotel in Chicago had
a every year around Christmas time. It does a gingerbread
display in its elevator, and apparently the number seventeen in
the letter q were there prominently and people were going nuts.
But qwan On supporterers booked Trump's DC Hotel for an
event where the guy they all thought was JFK Junior
(26:30):
was there. And that's actually how it warned a lot
about QAnon was from going down that rabbit hole. I'm
looking to see who's at the Trump Hotel and then
I'm like, wait, they think this guy is JFK Junior
and then they think, oh wait, they think there's another
one of these JFK junior guys because they're different heights,
Like what the hell am I looking at? And that's
when I first was like, all right, can't ignore this
(26:51):
QAnon nonsense anymore. I need to get up to speed
on it. And it caught me up. But he's had
conferences at Durrell as well, where they have a lot
of people who just go there and spout off theories.
I think the way politicians benefit from it, and again
not necessarily financially directly, but is by go they were
at these conferences, they go then embrace these people. They
(27:12):
might not come all the way out and say, you know,
as much as like Marjorie Taylor Green does that they're
going to agree with the conspiracy theory, but they'll dog
whistle or they won't deny it, or they'll say, oh,
you know, that might that's an interesting point. And that
way they were able to pick up their following, and
I think it works.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
And most people become small donors too, right, and especially
people who are passionate about their beliefs, even if those
beliefs are QAnon conspiracy theories. Once you've got the all
important list of donors right their email addresses, those are
the folks you can go out to time and time again.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
I had also seen a couple reports from like legitimate
news services that in the hotel there was a room
that they called the Tinfoil Room. This is the DC Hotel,
and it was to provide secure communications for Trump in
a way that the deep state could not monitor. Now,
I filed Foyer requests, which you know, I wasn't expecting
(28:05):
much of response from that. I talked to people who
were intimate knowledge of the building. I couldn't get any
confirmation of it. No place sells something in these two
outlets seven or eight years ago reported it. Do you
guys even think that's plausible.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
So it's in terms of grifting and things. There's a
large security industry. Back when we first started, it was
by the FBI and CI had all the fancy little
gear and listening devices and ways to block listening devices
and all that type of communications and ways to hide things.
Now there's so much of that stuff that's publicly available.
So I'm sure somebody is coming in and saying, Okay,
(28:39):
I'm going to sweep this room, and we're gonna put
foil behind the walls. We do this overseas like metal
caging to try in case someone's trying to send in
signals from the outside microwave signals or something, and we're
gonna have you know, full time security there. Like, there
are things you can do to create a room that
is generally secure. And the notion that the deep state
(29:01):
is trying to listen to the President of the United States,
who's in charge of the deep state, listening to his
stuff is crazy. If in fact that was say the Chinese,
and they thought they could create a room in a
hotel that could protect against the deep state, the FBI
to see idea to say, do have the ability probably
to make it so that as hard as you tried,
they could probably find a way around it. But for
(29:23):
somebody like Trump, if they actually believe this and they're
going to have these meetings of Rue Julian and this
kind of stuff, there's security places that could build it
to make it. When someone went in there, they would
feel like they are really important, and there's all these
kind of bells and whistles and stuff. So I think
that's certainly possible.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah, he might actually qualify for a skiff, right for
a bubble, because he still is I think he's still
hand received briefings, classified briefings as former president at least
other former presidents get him, so he could probably make
a call for a classified space either at mar A
Lago or apps in his hotel. And I think if
the government provided that, if there was a jumble in that, yeah,
(30:00):
you could probably find it out through a foyer request.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
But there was reporting in the paper today about this
very thing. So apparently the Biden administration went to him
and pulled him aside and gave him a classified briefing
on the fact that the Iranians are interested in potentially
assassinating him, and they gave him this briefing. And what
happened with the Mueller briefing at the beginning of his tour,
he thought that this was reported that he doesn't trust
(30:24):
the Biden administration. He thinks that they're trying to trick
him in some way, and so he's refused classified briefings
because he thinks it's the administration trying to put disinformation
into his head. And so, yes, he does probably have
the right to have a skiff and get regular briefings,
but apparently he's turned them down because he thinks he's
being fooled, which is silly.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
That's called duty to warn. So if we know you
no seriously in the agency, if we have intelligence that
someone is faces mortal danger, to include our enemies. At
one time, there was a there's a nation state who
is really not friendly to us, and we had credible
information that someone was trying to assassinate this guy. And
I was overseas as station chief, and I arranged a
(31:06):
meeting and I sat down and I said, people are
trying to kill you, and I gave him some basic details.
He's what's the catch, Like, there is it one? This
is us law. I need to tell you this, and
he was certain I was up to something, but really
we work.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Hold on just a second. Well, we take a quick
break and we're back.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I like the stuff that's hiding in plain sight. Probably
the thing that I'm most proud of reporting wise is
I was able to figure out that Nigeria's vice president
was staying at the Trump hotel based on the pattern
of the throw pillows on the couch where he gave
an interview. Somebody had posted a picture with the Nigerian
Vice President, saying that they were interviewing him at Trump Hotel,
(31:49):
but the background was all white, so I couldn't confirm it.
That wasn't good enough, but at least it hid me
in that I should look for this guy. So I
start looking at what was he doing around the dates
that picture was taken, and I find a video interview
he did with Voice of America and it doesn't identify
where he is, but I can't. I took screenshots at
the background and you can see, you said, the design
(32:10):
on the throw pillows, where the lamp is, where the
pictures are, where the pictures are of the background. And
then I went to the Trump Hotels website it started
looking at pictures of their nicer sweets and was able
to find one that matched it. And then I just
lined up where the boxes are and it was like,
oh great, that was throw pillows. It's what belling Cat does,
but for you know, cushions rather than missiles.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
So Zach, what are you working on now and are
you looking into anything that conspiratorial nature?
Speaker 1 (32:38):
A lot of campaign finance stuff. Still looking at Trump
media through social I find very interesting what's going on there.
Just the fact that it's so overvalued and he's made
so much money. I'm fascinated to find out when he
might sell those stocks. He hasn't, he said he's keeping them.
But he is a man of many debts, both legal
(32:59):
and mortgage. In Particulous, forty Wall Street Building is a
bit of a money loser by our accounts, and it
has a mortgage coming due, and he might have a
hard time finding somebody who's willing to lend him money
on a business that looks to be underwater. And the
way that list is set up, it's about to get
worse for it in about ten eight years. He has
plenty of good uses for that money, and that would
be interesting to see if you sell some of it
(33:20):
and uses it for that. You know, right now he's
got a pretty good thing, Gallen, where he can take
his political money and use it to pay off his
legal fees.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Good luck, keep at it, very interesting. Well, get you
back as things developed. But zex, thank you so much
for your time to that really interesting stuff.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
A lot to thank you guys for having me.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Cipher,
and Jonathan Stern. The Associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission implausible.
It's a production of honorable mention and abominable pictures for
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Speaker 2 (34:00):
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