We're on the air again with another edition of Patience on the News. This one harkens back to the very beginning of the time when we started this program, I think it was 17 years ago or almost 17 years ago, and it was just Patience on the News and I would read an article in a newspaper, some newspaper or several newspapers and comment on them. And then we took calls and so forth. And then we went to another format which was interviewing what I hope had been interesting people. And I had intended to do that tonight. I had been reading about all of the discussion, letters to the editor, complaints about Shana Bellows and how she just decided on her own to bar Trump from the ballot in Maine and how terrible it was and so forth. And that the Republicans, pretty much all of them in the Maine legislature, had decided to impeach Shana Bellows for her crimes or misdemeanors, which are crimes. And I called or had somebody call Representative Andrews from South Paris, who I was told is a very articulate, intelligent guy and would be a good guest to talk about this movement to impeach Shana Bellows, which apparently he's the leader of, and he's the fellow who submitted the legislative request to create a committee to investigate her. But Representative Andrews was not interested in coming in and answering questions. So I thought what I would do is, because I don't have a guest, guest wouldn't come, and I suspect a lot of Republicans would have refused to come. That reminds me there are some Republicans that like this format, they're not signed sound bites. We have no sound bites. It's 60 minutes of Q&A. So you get to the bottom of things, the follow-up questions. I've had many, many more conservatives on this show in the 17 years than I've had liberals or Democrats. I've had mostly conservatives or mostly Republicans. And they've all been very good. I'll tell you an interesting story. I wanted to interview Paula Page when he was governor. And I called and they said, well, we'll think about it and they didn't get back. In the meantime, there was a woman, a very nice lady, who had been appointed to the Board of Education in Maine, the Maine Education Department Oversight Group. And the Democrats in the Senate were against her. And they voted against her and she didn't get confirmed. And I thought it was a travesty. And so I called her up. I didn't know her. And she came on and she's very conservative. And I agreed with much of what she had to say. And I thought the Democrats were terrible in turning her down, just because they didn't like what she had to say. I actually like some of what she had to say. So she came on and she appreciated the fact that as she put it, I was even handed. So when I called the page, I get no answer back. I called her and she called the page and she said, go on. And he did. And when we finished, we did it up in the Capitol at his office. And when we finished and my producer who's here in the room, she'll remember this.  And I did actually when he was running against the governor last year. I did call him.  And he did. And I like him. I disagree with him on most everything. But he's an honest man. Unlike Trump, Trump doesn't believe in anything. He's just conning people, trying to say things to get the base riled up and everything. Paul LaPage was not into that. Paul LaPage believed in everything he said. Paul LaPage had principles. I didn't agree with many of his principles for sure. But he believed them. And he was in it because he believed what he was doing and he wanted to change things in accordance with what he believed. Biden only wants to be elected. He wants power. And is that big? I mean, Biden, Trump, he wants power. And there's a big difference between Paul LaPage and Joe Biden. But that's down a side street now. These people wanted to impeach her and so I decided I wanted to talk about it. And I got really onto this when I read three letters to the editor that were written in the last week or two that express the views, I'll call them, of the Trumpers on this whole thing. And here was the first one. It kind of stirred me up. It said, this was written by a woman named Catherine Ferrell. It appeared in the Portland Press Herald. And it starts, who does the main secretary-state bellows think she is? By whose authority is she removing John L.J. Trump from the ballot? That is unconstitutional at best and not to mention election interference. We, the people of Maine, will vote for whomever we want. She calls Bellows decision 31 pages of blather. And so that made me think, well, this woman does have no idea what she's talking about. None. People share her opinion. I've heard them. They share her opinion and they don't know what they're talking about. So I said, well, look, Paceous, why not go on the program and talk a little bit about Bellows decision and show that these people have no idea what they're talking about. By whose authority is she removing John L.J. Trump? I thought, well, let's talk about the authority for removing John L.J. Trump. Another one, probably the next day, Bellows action should not be tolerated. I just read that Maine secretary-state is taking Trump's name off our presidential ballot. This is not democracy or the actions that should be tolerated by a free people, says William Tappan of Elliott. And then he goes on to say that she had no right to do this. Are we being, this writer, Mr. Tappan says, are we being ruled under law or just ruled without law by officials who choose not to abide by the law? So that reinforced what I was going to do. Maybe we ought to talk about the law, that apparently these letter writers are totally unfamiliar with and haven't bothered to check. So that did it. Finally I said there was one letter writer that wrote a letter after this and I thought it was thoughtful because this letter writer, he's upset about it too. And he says that the decisions in Colorado, by the Colorado Supreme Court and by the Maine secretary-state are begging for challenges because they said the problem is that the 14th amendment does not explicitly establish a process to enforce those provisions and there is no precedent in which to base a process. And so he goes on to say there's got to be due process and for a jury to find him guilty of insurrection and declare that he is thereby prohibited from holding office. Well, he's getting closer to it but I still, I know that people need to understand what the law is. Why did Shana Bellows even get into this? And I think it's a question that the first writer raises. What business is it of hers to borrow him from the ballot? Well here's what Maine Law says and unlike the writer of the letter, Maine Law is what guides Shana Bellows. Whether you agree with her or not, the question is whether she followed the law, what she required by the law to do. So I'm going to read from section 336 of title 21A of the Maine Statutes. This is the law of Maine. First it says every candidate must file a so-called written consent. The written consent of each candidate must be filed either with that candidate's primary petition or at any earlier time during which they collect signatures to get on the ballot. And section 336 goes on to say the consent, talking about the written consent, must contain a declaration of the candidate's place of residence, party designation, what political party if any they belong to, and a statement that the candidate meets the quote, qualifications of the office the candidate seeks, which the candidate must verify by oath or affirmation before a notary public or other person authorized by law to administer oaths or affirmations that the declaration is true, that they meet the qualifications of the office they seek. The next sentence says if pursuant to the challenge procedures in section 337, we're going to get to that in a minute, people can challenge the statement submitted under oath, if any part of the declaration is found to be false by the Secretary of State, the consent and the primary petition are void, can't get on the ballot. That's what the law says, if you're the Secretary of State you can't say, I don't feel like doing this, so here's what happens, people can challenge it, and if the people challenge it the Secretary of State cannot ignore it, here are the rules, here's the law, section 337 of title 21A of the main revised statutes, only a registered voter residing in the electoral division of the candidate concerned may file a challenge, an act in this case where the presidential challenge has to live in Maine, the challenge must be in writing and must set forth the reason for the challenge, okay, within seven days says the law of Maine, after the final date for filing challenges and after due notice of a hearing, the Secretary of State shall, not if she feels like it, she must under the law hold a public hearing on any challenge properly filed, she has to do it. The challenger has the burden of proving sufficient evidence to invalidate the petitions or the ballot request. The next section of Maine law says the Secretary of State shall rule, shall, shall, shall rule on the validity of any challenge within five days after the completion of the hearing. So that of course is the answer to the lady that says by what right? By whose authority? Well this will come as a surprise to that lady, the Secretary of State has a duty to follow the law and I'm now reading verbatim word for word from the laws of the State of Maine. So Secretary of State had to have a hearing, she had the hearing. The law says that she has no more than five days after the hearing until she, before she issues her decision and it further says, people talking about what about due process, where do we, you know, how come no courts are involved, how does she get all this power, she doesn't have this power alone. The statute says a candidate may appeal the decision of the Secretary of State by commencing an action in superior court, this action must be conducted in accordance with the Maine rules of civil procedure, the rules that apply to trials. This is without a jury but it's a trial. This action must be commenced, that is the action challenging, a court challenge to the Secretary of State, within five days of the day she issues an order. So she knew that this would go to a court and it says that the court shall issue a written decision containing its findings of fact, people give testimony, evidence is presented to the court required by the statute and conclusions of law. And if a candidate for instance Donald Trump after presenting the evidence to the superior court doesn't agree with what the main superior court says, then the statute goes on to say an aggrieved party, this case may be Trump, may appeal the decision of the superior court but just on questions of law, the law court, the main supreme court that would get the ultimate appeal here deals with the law, is there a lawful basis for the decision of the superior court and it's the superior court that takes the evidence, the facts, and makes findings of facts and they have to do it in writing, they have to say here's what we found the evidence substantiates, they have to do that, law requires it, Secretary of State abided by this, knows what this process is, the people writing letters and I must say that 60 Republicans who voted to impeach her for this, they should read this too, they should read it before they file for a resolution, adoption of a resolution to impeach her. So this is important, there will be an opportunity to present evidence to a court to support what those the challengers are saying and there will be a decision made and even that decision can be appealed and will be, if it's the wrong one for Trump, appealed to the main supreme court and incidentally this time is all compressed, within five days of the date she made her decision, well within five days of the challenge she had to have a hearing, within seven days after filing the challenge she had to hold a public hearing, within five days after the completion of the hearing she had to come out with a written decision and within five days of that written decision Trump had the right to appeal and essentially this tells him to appeal and then within 20 days of the decision of the secretary of state the superior court must rule on those facts and then three days later an appeal must be filed with the main supreme court, all compressed, all designed to provide due process, carefully designed to provide due process by who, by the legislature, the people who enacted this law, the same body now represented by the 60 Republicans who want to impeach the secretary of state for following the rules adopted by their legislature, figure that one out, figure that one out, very hard, politics is confusing these days, so that's what that says, so she had a hearing and she issued a decision, written decision, available online 34 pages long if any are interested in reading it, I can't believe that any of those 60 Republicans read it because they raise issues that are answered in here, so let's talk a bit about her decision, first of all she gives a little procedural history going back to this statute that requires a certain procedure so she explains how she followed this statutory procedure and she talks about the challengers and she says there are three different challenges but the third challenge is from a group, three people, the third challenge is from Kimberly Rosen, a registered voter of Bucksport and former Republican state senator, the second person is Thomas Saviello, a registered voter of Wilton and a former Republican state senator and the third is Ethan Strimling who we all know around here is no Republican but two out of the three are former Republican state senators, these 60 Republicans claim that the secretary of state was biased, the only way that she could find as she did to make the determination she did was to be biased against two, biased against the two Republican state senators I guess, they say she's biased because she's a Democrat yet she found for two prominent former state Republican senators, see none of what they're saying makes sense, these are facts and important facts that they won't tell you about, so she says she goes on to say that she issued a notice of hearing on December 11th that the parties exchange exhibit and witness lists, this was an administrative procedure under the main administrative procedure act which talks about witnesses, evidence and so forth and among the witnesses incidentally was a professor, Gerald Maglioccia, a law professor at Indiana University School of Law and she goes on to say Mr. Trump called no witnesses but these three, these two Republican and one Democratic senator, they had a witness came from the University of Indiana School of Law, pretty conservative guy, he's the guy that the Republicans liked when he said that Obamacare was unconstitutional then they thought he was a smart guy, so Maglioccia testified so then she said she set a deadline for briefing, they had briefings, they had they could present witnesses, evidence exhibits, so she goes through this and she says and I followed all of the legal requirements which she did, nobody can deny that and she talks about the evidence that came in and a lot of the evidence was evidence sworn evidence taken by the January 6th committee in Washington, that's evidence taken under penalty of perjury and it's evidence that no one yet has quarreled about, nobody said anything and they were all of them were former witnesses were basically Republicans who worked in the White House with Trump or cabinet members that worked in the Trump administration, that's who testified in the January 6th proceeding, those are the people, they testified under oath on a penalty of perjury, so that evidence was used in this administrative proceeding with the main secretary of state, is that proper? The main rules of evidence, section 9057 of Title 21A talks about administrative proceedings and what is proper and how they're to be conducted, it sets the rules, the legislature did this by adopting, this is main law and it directs quote, evidence shall be admitted if it is the kind of evidence upon which reasonable persons are accustomed to rely in the conduct of serious affairs, that's right out of the statute, so then the question becomes was this evidence that the three former state senators put forth, evidence of which reasonable persons are accustomed to rely, sworn evidence before congressional committee, I think it qualifies, I'd be interested in the argument and I'm open to it that it doesn't meet that standard, so all of this was challenged by Trump's lawyers and Mr. Trump through his lawyers did challenge the evidence that came in the form of the final report of the congressional committee and its citations to specific witnesses. He says that, Trump objects because he says the report includes hearsay irrelevant facts or lacks foundation to automatically render it admissible, that's not true because we already have the standard domain, a main law that sets the standard for the evidence, so then she says that she did exclude certain evidence that she thought was irrelevant, certain of the so-called Rosen exhibits which are the exhibits that the three senators put in and then she starts to quote some authorities, she talks a little, she talks about the the 14th amendment section three and before she gets there she says well the question is do I have this authority, well yes the statute says I do but isn't it interesting that a state secretary of state she says would have this when this is a presidential election and when I'm talking about a state secretary of state keeping a presidential candidate off the ballot, so she quotes a case, the United States Court of Appeals case about how how how how secretaries of state can, how states can establish a process to affect presidential candidates and she says as Justice Gorsuch, a Supreme Court justice now today we know appointed by Trump, observed in Hassem v Colorado back in 2012 quote and this is Justice Gorsuch's language, a state's legitimate interest in protecting the integrity and practical functioning of the political process permits it to exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office, so letter writers, main republican legislators, you got a complaint with Justice Gorsuch, he's a guy that you would disagree with vehemently on this issue, one other thing about about due process you remember I told you that the statute the main statute says that the superior court shall take evidence and make findings of fact that's a state remedy in other words this this goes that this wouldn't go to the supreme court without these other processes being fulfilled because the supreme court would say hey don't come to Hassem because we only decide matters of law you've got to exhaust your state remedies first and the state remedies are in section 337 that I just discussed with you so another point that the Secretary of State makes in her decision is about due process is that Mr. Trump has had the opportunity to present evidence to call witnesses to cross-examine all within the purview of the main administrative procedure act to argue at length both the legal and factual issues germane to my decision and while the timeline of these proceedings has by necessity been compressed because the statute requires it to be compressed this is hardly the first time that Mr. Trump or his attorney from Colorado Attorney Gressler who who made his appearance here in Maine on this case this is hardly the first time they have confronted the applicability of section three of the 14th amendment they've been dealing with it it is not likewise it is not the first time that mr. Trump has had to grapple with whether the evidence presented here which it almost directly mirrors that which was offered in the Colorado case demonstrates that he engaged in insurrection it's the same case he litigated in Colorado and as she points out and what I pointed out about the statute and he has the opportunity to appeal my decision and providing him with additional process in the superior court and the law court what do you think of that 60 republican legislators is that due process that's what the courts say due process is so what you can disagree with is whether the evidence she reviewed adds up to insurrection or as the 14th amendment section three says aiding or giving comfort to those who conduct an insurrection it's one of the two you don't have to be out front with a sword leading the insurrection what's enough said the people who adopted the people of the United States who adopted the 14th amendment back in I think it was 1867 what what you need if you don't show them out front with the sword or with a pistol on the scene did they give aid or comfort to the insurrection so here's what Shana bellows says in her written findings that the parties Trump and the three former state senators do not meaningfully dispute the events of January 6 multiple government reports that the rosin challenges that's the three state senators entered into evidence confirm a large group of people violently attack the capital with the attempt of preventing the certification of a presidential election very few people in our country dispute that there are a few not so do but otherwise that's undisputed that happens and that's why they were there to stop the steal so there was a lockdown of the capital complex an evacuation of the capital and the united states she says and she this was part of her evidence a united states government accountability report said the following over the course of about seven hours more than 2000 protesters entered the united states capital on january 6 disrupting the peaceful transfer of power and threatening the safety of the vice president and members of congress the attack resulted in salts and at least 174 police officers these events led to seven deaths and caused almost three billion three billion in estimated cost so that's what she relied on and whether you would have made the same decision relying on that evidence as she did that's debatable you might not have and that's you know if the 60 republicans in the state legislature had said uh yeah well she did what she was required to do by law but we don't agree that the evidence before her sustains a finding that there was an insurrection or aid or comfort to an insurrection so um that's you know the basis of this uh Liz cheney was there she was the third ranking republican in the us house of representatives when all this happened she was on the floor she was in every republican leadership meeting prior to during and for months until they threw her out afterwards she was there she observed it she bravely agreed to be a member of the commission that investigated it she was there for all the evidence this book i find fascinating only the it's fascinating only if you are interested in facts if you say i don't want anything to do with Liz cheney she turned on trump she turned on republicans i i wouldn't read a word that she said fine but it's chock full of facts in case you ever get around to being interested in facts it's a resource and you know um she wrote about her her father being vice president and she says at the beginning of this uh at the beginning uh early on in her book she talks about um the oath of office and peaceful transfer of power and she points out that her father and mother along with her and her sister were invited by al gore to the vice president's house after the supreme court of the united states had said ruled that george w bush had won and she said he had just conceded and she quotes his concession speech she there isn't a single public policy thing that al gore stood for that Liz cheney would agree with not a one but she says she quotes him and here's what gore said in his concession speech almost a century and a half ago senator steven douglas lincoln's opponent told abraham lincoln who had just defeated him for the presidency quote this is lincoln's words partisan feeling must yield to patriotism i'm with you mr president and god bless you he said to lincoln who had defeated him and al gore goes on to say in his concession speech well in that same spirit i say to president like bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside and may god bless his stewardship of this country resolved says george it says uh uh the then sitting vice president resolved it must be resolved through the honored institutions of our democracy that's how we decide these elections the honored institutions of our democracy and that's what he said meant it had to go to the supreme court an honored institution of our democracy in order to resolve it and he finally went on said i know many of my supporters are disappointed i am too but our disappointments must be overcome by love of country that's the way it's supposed to be done folks you can love donald trump all you want and many do for a variety of reasons i would say editorial most of them psychological but they do love him and uh but this is the way it was done so she says in her book this chain by any measure the presidential election in 2000 had been far closer than the 2020 contest president george bush's victory in 2000 had ultimate this is the vice president your father won the vice presidency had ultimately come down to just over 500 votes in florida with a razor thin electoral college margin of 271 to 266 five electoral votes by contrast donald trump lost in 2020 by more than 70 electoral votes his nationwide popular vote deficit of seven million big difference from 500 of seven million represented a five percent gap not even close trump would have needed tens of thousands more votes across at least three different states to reverse his electoral college loss so that's what she tells us early on in this book and then she because she witnessed everything she was there she saw it she listened to all of the evidence at the hearing she was in all of the meetings with the republicans she talks about right after the insurrection about she quotes uh minority leader mccarthy she quotes him she quotes other leaders who were appalled by what happened who were appalled with trump she quotes them directly criticizing trump some who said he's responsible for this he he called them to washington and he incited them and he sent them to the capital not one of them has ever said this chinese book is wrong she doesn't tell the truth she misquotes me no accusations of misquote zero and it's throughout this book throughout it uh you would take a look at just go on the internet and look up at what republicans honest straightforward republicans of which most republicans are except when it comes to donald trump of what republicans said his john bainer i just pull us off the internet i once said says john bainer the party of lincoln and reagan is off taking a nap the nap has become a nightmare for our nation the gop must awaken the invasion of our capital by a mob incited by lies from people entrusted with power is a disgrace to all who sacrifice to build our republic i i i save that because i thought it really captured everything so was shenna bellows you disagree with he saved now she didn't have a basis for finding an insurrection you can debate it and one thing i would say is that it's all recorded everything's on video these days back in 1865 when the civil war ended nothing was in video nothing was even recorded there were no recording devices today everything is so the case can be decided by anyone any one of you any person in this country any one of those 60 republican legislators anybody just look at the at the videos look at the tapes read trump's tweets read the testimony read the testimony given under oath and then decide but we'll all have the evidence every there isn't there are no secrets there are some secrets uh every associate of donald trump who spoke to him during the time before prior to just prior to january 6 and during january 6 was subpoenaed by the congressional committee to testify they wouldn't come five of them absolutely refused they were close to trump they talked to trump many times there was evidence they talked to trump on the 5th and 6th of january 2021 and they just ignored the subpoena one of them was bannon bannon got convicted of something unrelated to trump of a fraud and trump pardon him as he will he will he pardons every crony of his anybody who's for pump trump gets a pardon and they know it and they all got pardons so but in bannon's case and some of the others it was cited by the committee for contempt it was he was prosecuted for contempt bannon was convicted of contempt of congress he's awaiting sentencing he's going to go to prison for it and maybe a couple other people too others like general flinn and others who talked to trump around january 5th and 6 they they actually showed up and they testified and they all said the same thing i refuse to answer the question because the uh uh uh pursuant to the 5th amendment be because the answer may tend to incriminate me a whole bunch of them they showed up and that's what they said i will not answer about your question about what i talked with donald trump about during january 5th and 6 because it may it may incriminate me and i have a 5th amendment right not to answer now if this was donald trump sitting here he would say what he said many times anybody who takes the 5th is guilty and what they what they didn't want to disclose what they didn't want to disclose is what they discussed with donald trump protecting him protecting him so make up your own mind but it's all there in video use common sense common sense is the answer with this issue me i hope somehow the supreme court finds a way to say he can be on the ballot let me ask let me say who started this who started this business about the 14th amendment section 3 prohibiting donald trump from being on the ballot democrats no it all started with two law professors both of them members of the conservative federalist society one at the university of pennsylvania the other at the university of chicago and they're constitutional scholars and they know the constitution that's all they deal with their lives are dedicated to understanding the constitution and writing about it and they came up with this and they said this is perfectly obvious we've been thinking about this for a long time what about this provision in the 14th amendment what's it mean and along came this case with trump and they said this is what me so they wrote a law review article they're what's called originalists they are debit devotees of antonin scalia the late supreme court justice conservative who said you just got to read the simple text of the constitution in order to decide what it says it's clear if it's clear it's clear and a look at history to give you context so these two professors said it's clear what it says it's clear and we read the text and we actually searched the history to determine what the context was we have no doubt that he is not qualified pursuant to the 14th amendment section 3 to be on a ballot for president that's no democrats fault that's not my fault that's not anybody they decided to do it well it caught on particularly with originalists and so it caught on with another devotee in fact a guy who was mentored by antonin scalia and was his law clerk j michael ledig retired united states court of appeals from the fourth circuit judge very conservative was the law clerk to scalia worked in the george hw bush white house after clerking for scalia and then got moved ahead by the republicans because he's a very bright guy and they liked what he believed in and he put him on the united states court of appeals george w bush put him on the united states excuse me george hw put him on the united states court of appeals he's retired now he's an originalist he's right with these guys and he goes around on talk shows and what do you say about the colorado decision unassailable look it up go online look up judge michael ledig unassailable he's a serious guy and a serious republican he's not biased against republicans he's not biased just the opposite finally i'm going to read you something written just last week in the new york times i'm going to read it we got just enough time for me to read i hope i finish in time david french he's an op ed page guy he's a republican conservative look him up so you know who it is you don't have to say listen to what i say about david french but i like him he's conservative he's very rational he says it's been two and a half weeks since the colorado supreme court ruled that section three of the 14th amendment disqualifies donald trump from holding the office of president united states and i spent way too much of my holiday vacation reading the legal and political commentary around the decision as i did so i find myself experiencing deja vu deja vu since the rise of trump he and his movement and it is a movement have transgressed the constitutional legal and moral boundaries at will i think that's what really affects french french who's very religious transgressing the moral boundaries when americans tempt to impose then when americans attempt to impose consequences for those transgressions trump's defenders and critics alike caution the consequences will be dangerous or destabilizing don't do it because they'll be in the streets his followers will be in the streets there is already a surge in violent threats against the justices of the colorado supreme court ian bassin a project democracy co-founder has suggested and i agree that even legal analysis of the 14th amendment is being colored by the analyst's fear of how trump and his supporters would react to an adverse ruling this is where we are and have now been for years the trump movement commits threats violence and lies and then it tries to escape accountability for those acts through more threats more violence more lies at the heart of the quote but the consequences end quote argument against disqualification is a confession that if we hold trump accountable for his fomenting violence on january 6 he might foment additional violence enough says french it's time to apply the plain language he's an originalist too the plain language of the constitution to trump's actions and remove him from the ballot without fear of the consequences republics are not maintained by cowardice to understand the necessity of removing trump let's go first to the relevant language from the 14th amendment quote no person shall be a senator or representative in congress or a lector of president or vice president or hold any office or hold any office civil military under the united states if you've taken an oath as a member of congress or as an officer of the united states or as a member of any state legislature to support the constitution of the united states and shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion or or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof you don't says french have to be a lawyer to comprehend those words you simply need some basic familiarity with american civics the english language and a couple of common sense rules of thumb so read the language he says it's simple and he says now what's the supreme court going to do the supreme court is you know they're good lawyers they're good lawyers and there are many of them the conservatives are originalists they're people that say go to the language that the two law professors are saying that let it is saying you have to you have to base your decision on and he says are they afraid to make the right decision well he said they the supreme court made very unpopular decisions in brown versus board of education integrating education in the united states this last decision they made on abortion that wasn't popular fear of negative response cannot and must not cause the supreme court to turn its back on the plain text of the constitution especially when we're now facing the very crisis the amendment was intended to combat republicans are rightly proud of their civil war history the party of lincoln as it was known helped save the union and it was the party of lincoln that passed the 14th amendment and ratified it in state houses across the land the wisdom of the old republican party should now save us from the fecklessness fecklessness and sedition of the new thank you very very much


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A comprehensive solution that focuses on the key areas of simplicity, all-inclusiveness, and multi-functionality. So with the Forger box, Forger cuisine is entering the cookware set industry. There are three major types of businesses in the cookware set industry. The first are businesses that produce expensive cookware sets that either lack some of the essential items or have too many superfluous items. These are too expensive for young professionals and students like us. The second type of business are those that produce cheap cookware sets. These sets are frustrating to cook with because they either produce low-quality results or else are not durable. The third type of business are those like ours that produce high-quality equipment, but just the essentials. Where the Forger box differentiates itself is with its all-inclusiveness, multi-functionality, and simplicity. While our competitors pack their sets in packing peanuts and plastic wrap, we use sustainable practices to produce an aesthetically pleasing result. The Forger box capitalizes on three key market tries. The first is healthier eating, the second is sustainability, and the third is a desire for uniqueness. There are two major market segments that exist for the Forger box. The first are college students and young professionals, and the second are their parents. We primarily target college students and young professionals because the Forger box is the ideal piece of equipment for the beginning chef. However, parents can also buy the Forger box as a gift for their children. As part of our market analysis, we conducted a survey of upper class guests. From the survey we concluded we found two main results. The first was when we asked who would be interested in buying a Forger box, 89% of students said that they would be interested. Second, when we asked how much they were willing to pay for a Forger box, 60% of students said that they were willing to pay between $200 and $300, which is the proposed price range of the Forger box. Based on these findings, we concluded that if 89% of students were wanting to buy the Forger box and 60% were willing to pay the price, 54% of CalCs would fall into the ideal customer category for the Forger box. As our market analysis, we determined that there are two major market segments for the Forger box. And to reach these customers, we have developed a two-pronged marketing approach, the first component of which is our in-person marketing strategy. We believe to gain traction with our customers, it is essential to give them the hands-on opportunity to see the box and learn its intricacies. To do so, we believe that we will have events at college campuses at seasonal times, such as during graduation and in movement time, but also we intend to have our pride at trade shows such as the Minnesota Home and Garden Convention. Our second strategy is our digital strategy. Those individuals who do not purchase our products at in-person pride showcases will be directed to our online website. We believe it is essential to have an online presence because our young target market is very active in online shopping. Our second component of our digital marketing strategy is contact marketing. Our in-person showcases will provide the opportunity of getting contact information which we can continue our relationship with via the contact market. We will distribute newsletters containing information about our quality product, current promotional deals, and even recipes that highlight what you can make with the forager box. Day-to-day operations of forager cuisine will be executed via our strategic partnerships. We have already established a partnership with custom wind moldings to produce our forager box. Their size and expertise will allow a high output of the forager box as well as drive down our cost because they are able to source the raw resources for the box at low cost. And although we have already filled our box with quality cookware, we believe to drive down our margin, or drive up our margin, we will need cookware and kitchenware suppliers. One company we have identified via because of their regional ties and their quality cookware is nowhere for it. These partnerships will produce the forager box. As Griffin alluded to, 54% of Kusky's expressed interest in purchasing a forager type box. Comparing these results against the 589 graduating seniors of the class of 2016 paints an accurate representation of the market we plan to target. The grass behind me reflects a conservative projection of our expansion into the surrounding Mayak schools as well as the surrounding market. And although we intend on initially having our operations at Kusky's, we believe the product is expanded beyond the college on the help. More than 20 million students will be returning to colleges in 2016 and millions more graduate. For this reason, we believe the forager box is marketable nationally. So thank you for coming to our presentation here at the forager cuisine team. Stop eating boring, be a forager. Before we take questions, we just like to take a second to acknowledge Noah Ryan, who will help produce our video. So thank you Noah. I have a question. Most students, if you market this to students, incoming students, or just students, let's say at the same time, how many could actually use that to cook in the dorms? Scott, do you want to take that one? All dorms at Kustavis contain kitchens on which you can cook. And especially the upper class dorms have opportunities to have kitchen in their individual rooms. So every student on the back of the stage could have an opportunity to use the four dorms. Would the demand then be one for, you know, kind of kitchen, or would it be one for students? Or how do you see that shaking out? Yeah. So I would say what I have, when I have my cookware, I don't like other people using it. So for me personally, I would want to have my own box. So in total, we have costs of $195 per unit, but as alluded to with wholesale prices that we hope to establish will be able to further decrease that. That's box full. Box is full. What you have here, what's real? Is it just a mock-up, or is it really, or is it something? This is what you saw in the video. This is it. This is direct to retail or infomercial type. This seems like infomercial. Yeah. I was going to kind of go on that as well. I love it and I think it's great. I can't imagine, based on when we were here, what the cafeteria looked like, versus today, why anybody would be cooking for themselves. I think your target market's wrong. I think you know that target market because you're here, but I think it's the wrong target market. I actually think it's the folks outside of the college setting. I think it fits well. And then I think the go-to-archist strategy needs to be looked at, because I think it's a direct to consumer. But then I think you're going to run into a challenge that you're going to have to look at, which is the shipping cost of that, which I think is going to be challenging. So the cost for shipping is going to have to be significant. It's going to have to put pressures on what size this is. I think you're actually going to have to redesign the size to match how stuff is being shipped today. So I would look at that and then I think the direct to consumer, whether it's home shopping or QDC or Kevin Harrington from the Shark Tank that owns a scene on TV is always looking for stuff like this. I think that that's the right go-to strategy. I know the guys in the George Ford Memorial and all those of the commercials are the number one in the commercial company. I mean, it's got to be happy to talk about it. It's got to be happy to call the guys in to learn. Yeah, totally. Thank you very much. Thank you.


What's up, everybody? I'm EvilRabbit. We are sitting here staring up the hill of Deals Gap, Tale of the Dragon, and 129, the Dragon, whatever you want to call it. I call it the Dragon because we're gonna start a new type of series here today. We're going to be running, basically, time attack, up this, and get any time in the VR, because I don't use as much as I had hoped, and we're going to be using the first car is this brand new 2020 C8, my headless driver right there. You might want to ignore that. It's not a horror game, I promise. We're gonna be taking this car up the hill. We're gonna be seeing what time we can get in a grip pace. We're gonna take some other cars and do some time attacks. Something different that I can use my Oculus Rift S with, something that I've been wanting to do for a while, and you know what? I love the Dragon Road. So first off, definitely a very beautiful model, very beautiful car. Got an engine bay. I don't want to touch the new car. Yep. Yep. Yep. We got the engine back there, headless driver. Let's get into this car, get out the Dragon, and then we will take a look at the replay afterwards. Oculus Rift S, the Dragon C8. What more could be said? Let's get into it. All right, so we got the wheel cam turned on. We're in the C8. Definitely amazing looking.  I think I see a brake reservoir back there, some shocks. Definitely a very good model. We do have the race wheel on with our fan attack and our paddles, because this is a paddle shift car. So we're gonna run this car in a time attack fashion up the Dragon. Get rid of that little yellow dot. That little yellow dot is annoying. All right. Get rid of that. There we go. No. All right, we're gonna go in here. All right, so we do have a start cone and an end cone. Like I said, start cones are right here. So this basically starts our flying lap. Gentle on the brakes through here. I did, after a little bit of testing on this car, realize you've got to do a lot of straight line braking. This car does not like braking when turning. It gets very tail-happy and very crazy. So we got to do a lot of straight line braking. Straight line braking the third. There we go. A little bit of a downhill section here on the brakes. There we go. So the Dragon 129 road is definitely a very fun road, because I say we don't do turn braking when we're braking there. And the more and more I drive this, the more and more I will get comfortable and the faster I will get the lighting a little bit weird. Gonna have to fix those, uh, the lighting reflecting on the inside of the car. Been messing with some settings to try and get this Oculus to render much higher FPS for you guys to make the videos look much nicer. I think it's looking a lot better. So I haven't been using the Rift S as much as I'd like to. So that's why we're starting this series. A dummy downshift or a dummy downshift in less. I'm at a proper gear is, oh, there we go. Don't lose it. It's definitely tricking me. I'm used to the race cars run downshifting real quick. So I will just continue to get faster and faster on this road. The more and more I do it. So if this is something you guys would like to continue to see, let me know down in the comment section down below, or maybe what car you'd like to see take on the Dragon. Trying to stay smooth as possible. That was almost really bad. I was really hard on those brakes. Definitely a very fun road to drive in real life. Like I said, if you watch my drifting video, I did drive this road in real life, but I would be staying in between the Mayo and the Mustard in between the centerline and the you know, white line on my side of the road in real life. But since we have this track basically closed off to us here instead of Corsa and road rules do not apply. We're using the whole bit of the Dragon. 318 turns, 11 miles. See what we can get because it does record our time. A little bit steppy. I will leave the link for this C8 download in the description box below. Did find it after one of Slap's recent videos. He put the link out to be taken in for putting the link up for us. You guys don't have this car. It's definitely fun if you guys have been around the channel long enough and you are big in the center of Corsa game. Like I am now with modeling. You know this car is getting a full drift build. It's going to get a full manual trans clutch and a handbrake and some angle wise fab up front. I'm going to be doing that here very shortly. I don't think I'll be drifting the Dragon with this car. It's definitely going to be very different with the engine in the back row and the drift car out of it. I'm actually not doing too bad. This car is basically on a stock tune. I have not changed it so I would be very interested to give this car a good tune outscraping and see how it handles on a tune with some drift tires. I believe it's on some like Michelin Pilot Sports. Got my phone going off. I'm trying to drive the Dragon. I should have turned my phone off. No texting and driving especially when you are on a mountain road. Here we go. The Aco's Rift is so much fun to drive especially with the mod bike and everything. There's that brake thing. Whoa, we almost lost it. Oh boy, but the mod and like so my audio is definitely better than it was when I first started using the Aco's Rift Desk. So we're going to be using it more in my little straight shop on the hill about. The car breathes a little bit. 110, 112, 113 before we hit the brakes. Got a little squirrelly there but we're good. We're on the fourth and that's a little bit sly but we're good. The traction control kind of kicked in. I believe it has some factory traction control on. So that factory traction control kind of saved us a little bit. Here we go. Put the Nucerado down. Getting used to the racing that I've been doing recently in R Factor 2. We do have a 12 hour endurance race with my friends coming here for a week or so. The 12 hours of sea brink next weekend and we're going to be doing a 12 hours of sea brink in R Factor 2 here live on the channel. So make sure you guys if you guys want to check out and pop in and out of that live stream we'll be going on this weekend but next weekend. We did one last year and we're doing one again. So we're doing not bad. We haven't wrecked the car. Getting a little squirrelly but we're still good. Long right hander with no protection on the outside. Oh hold on to it man. There we go. Don't want to wreck a brand new C8. I'd be very disappointed if we wrecked it. We are just bottoming off the bottom side of this car though. Go. So once we finish this run up we will take a look at the replay and enjoy it in all its glory from the replay angles. Long right hander. Basically double apex left. Oh scars. Sparks going everywhere. Probably carbon fiber and plastics on the bottom getting destroyed. We are just running this car as fast as we can. I'm very curious what the time is going to be. If you guys have a car that you think will stack up close to the same caliber as the C8. Let me know down in the comments and we will basically start doing it some times. And we will see what cars are faster. We can put some race cars on here as well. Drift cars but send them to grip. See what we can do. There's our finish cones right there so we did finish our run. So we're going to hop out of the Oculus and go into the replay back on the snowball mic. So I'll catch you guys once we get out of the car. Check our time and we'll go from there. So we came across the dragon with a time of 6 minutes and 31.9. Very respectful time. I'm not sure because I haven't done any other runs so we're going to be testing another car. But we're going to go take a look at the replay. So now we're going to find out where we actually started because I believe I started forgot to record and then well yeah so we're going to have to skip forward in the replay to find out when we actually started ripping. Basically six minutes from the end. No be it. No be it. Restart. We're just clicking back and forth back and forth. We'll just take it from here. Definitely a very beautiful car. 155 FPS right now. 400. That's insane. We're at a lot of high FPS in this after adjusting some stuff. But like I said if you guys like this you want to see more of this time attack here on the dragon and some different cars. Let me know down in the comment section down below. You should follow me on Instagram and Twitter. All of which are also found down in the comment section and description down below. The car looks so cool riffing through here. There is a version with the top on or the top off. But I decided to go with the top off version and I believe the trip car would have built is going to be the top off version as well. So I'm going to let you guys enjoy the sights and sound of this C8 here for a little bit here on the dragon. And then we'll talk a little bit more once we enjoy the sounds of this car ripping by. So definitely tell me what you guys think of this style video. Watching the replays. Running it in the Oculus Rift S. Definitely very cool. That's where I was visiting. Definitely very cool to see the car's interior and everything like that in the Rift S. So time attacks on the dragon and the Rift. Definitely fun to do. Gonna be wanting to do more. So make sure you guys follow me and sub to the channel. I would appreciate all support. Tap that bell notification if you're on part of the notification gang. And as always thank you guys for watching. I'm EvilRabbit. I'll see you guys on the track.


I'd like to welcome everyone back to the SE Village, continue on with our speeches. We have members of the ILF Foundation here, Chris Hadnagy, a good friend but also a board member of the ILF, professional social engineer. We also have AJ Cook, you may know her as JJ from Criminal Minds and we also have Neil Fallon who is the lead singer of Clutch. So we look forward to seeing all those and just to let everyone know all the board members of ILF are here except for Casey. So they're all in the audience. Looking forward to meeting them afterwards as well. So let's give our attention to Chris, AJ and Neil. Welcome back to the Village guys and gals. Nice to have you all here. So how many were here last year? Not here obviously but in the SE Village last year when we announced the ILF? Okay quite a few. So for those of you that weren't because there was more hands down than were up, let's just recap what happened last year. So DEF CON 25, I announced that we're starting a foundation that was going to use white hat hackers. So people from this community, those who have special skills in OSINT, I think this is important to differentiate because people came up and asked. So open source intelligence gathering, not actually technical network hacking. That was the goal because we're not going on to servers and hacking them to get their databases. We're finding people online that are profiting from child pornography or producing it or trafficking children or exploiting children. And we're uncovering who they are online.  And then we're handing all that information over to law enforcement. As much as I would like the baseball bat justice, it just doesn't work, right? So we need to get them over to law enforcement. After I announced what happened at DEF CON, you can see some of the stats on the slide. Over 300 people volunteered. We're not up to 352.  We have over 10, actually I need to update that just in the last couple of weeks. We have over 12 reported cases and 10 files have been produced. Now what does that mean? The file is actually identified perpetrator, someone who is actually exploiting children. So we have 10 of those people identified over to law enforcement and we have a number of those turned into active cases with federal law enforcement. So that makes me super happy after just one year to stand here and tell you all the things that we've accomplished in one year. Some really other proud moments, and this happened that you guys knew this last year for those of you that were here, but Neil was like my sounding board, which is a odd thing to say out loud in my head or even out loud at all. Going to Neil and saying, hey, I got this crazy idea. You want to be with me and start a foundation that comes down child predators?  And then he goes and he talks to his wife and they came back and said, you know, that they want to be a part of it. That was a huge deal for me. Not being in the industry was kind of nice to have a sounding board. Someone to say this is a good or a terrible idea or maybe we should do something about this. Neil has a bunch of friends that ended up down the line getting us hooked up with AJ who then jumped right on board and we'll let her talk about how she made that decision along with Neil too. Then something else huge happened. Anyone know Humble Bundle? Humble, yeah, right? So amazing organization. If you don't know who they are, basically what they do is they put together bundles of PDF books. So for us, and also I learned this from my son, games. I didn't know they did games. I just knew they did books and how to play games, right? So I didn't know they also did gaming, which I guess is the much bigger side of Humble Bundle than the book side, which I'm learning also I'm slow, I'm sorry. So they came to us as the innocent lives because of my fourth book was coming out and my publisher said, hey, do you think that you would want to be part of the Humble Bundle? Yes, that would be awesome. I'm thinking maybe we'll get a few thousand dollars and that would be really cool, catapult us into not having to front load it all ourselves and pay for everything ourselves. And we made $185,000 in donations in two months. That's crazy. So I get asked this question often, you know, why? Why do we have to do this? Why is this even needed? So to help explain this, I want you to play a game with me, okay? How old is she? Under 10, 7? Someone said 11. I heard 12. Okay, well this is a famous actress, Caroline Linney from 1952. She's 12 years old, right? And when I saw that picture, I would have guessed the same as you. How old is she? 16, 17, 14 I heard, I heard 11 over here. She's also 12. Veronica Cartwright from 1962. How old is she? Someone is seeing a pattern. You, my dear, are very smart. You always catch things very quick. She is 12. This is the actress Jodie Foster from 1974.  This is the Olsen twins in the 90s, 12 years old.  What has changed over the last 50 years? This is a famous because of social media. This is not victim blaming, but we need to understand. What's happening in society? See, the over sexualization of children makes this kind of material easy for people to get. Both boys and girls are over sexualized in media, on TV, in news, in movies, in music, to the point that it's hard to tell their ages, isn't it? Now it wasn't hard when we were back in the 50s and 60s, you guys were all guessing the appropriate ages by looking at the pictures. But now we get into this age and can you really say you honestly can see that she's 12 years old? I can't, right? So that's part of the problem. Here's the other part of the problem. There are communities, I'm going to show you some things that I really want to just upfront say. There may be some trigger warnings for people in here. I'm not going to show you anything explicit. I promise you that. But I need you to understand why this fight has to occur. This is a community online that's called the Pedo Support Community. Fortunately, you cannot read all of those texts that are up there very clearly, I hope. But this community has 165,946 posts in it. Posts that include how to marry a pedophile or wife, how to groom your first child, how to kidnap and abduct children. These are forums where these people talk about these very topics to educate each other. How to avoid law enforcement? How to encrypt your hard drives? And believe it or not, their information is really good. I mean, like from a security perspective, it's solid information on how to do these things. Here's another one. Just from looking at the headings, they deal with toddlers, teens, webcams, hardcore, soft core, 20,442 posts with 371,000 members on this forum. So this is a huge problem and one that's not going to go away overnight. Anyone know, Nick Mick? Can you hear the organization, Nick Mick?  So it stands for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an excellent organization here in the U.S. That actually works internationally. They do some pretty phenomenal work. Sadly, it's really difficult work for them, but they have to catalog all child pornography and child exploitation, child abuse material, and then they assign it a hash. And that hash gets divvied out to law enforcement so they can go and try to see where those images come from and then they try to make a rest with that information. The poor people at Nick Mick have to deal with 480,000 plus child abuse images per week, per week. Try to understand that. These are new images, not reproduced images. This is 480,000 plus new images of child abuse material per week. That's 25 million images of children being abused per year.  I can't do the math that quick in my head, nor do I want to because it's just disgusting. 63% are children 8 or under. And 80% are girls, 19% are boys. So we can see just the depravity in these statistics. More than 30% of searchers on P2P networks are involving child pornography. So P2P networks, they did a research on this and more than 30% of all searches on those networks are dealing with child abuse material. That's how they're spreading it so much and end with the dark web. The average child abuser, here's some stats. 97% male, 97% USA citizens, that is disturbing. Do you know that over 60% of the world's child pornography is produced here in this country? Yeah, we always assume that it's done in some other country, maybe a third world country, maybe something to do with money, but it's produced by US citizens in this country. And 68% of it, 97% of US, 82% white, 79% have no prior convictions. I was talking to someone this weekend about this very statistic. As you know, when you have violent criminals, you can often tell, right? Someone that they have a lot of violence inside of them, the way they approach you, it's very aggressive. You kind of see it in their eyes, they're angry all the time. If you have someone who abuses women or treats women bad, usually you can see the way that they deal with women. You can see that. But what is the indicator for a pedophile? Does anyone know? There are none. That's the thing. See, a person who abuses children looks like you and me. Because there's no big indicator of flashing light that says that someone is into children. And now there's a movement where they're trying to make pedophilia part of the LGBT community. Yeah, saying that it is a preference to be sexually attracted to children. Yep, you'll be seeing a lot of that coming up soon. So it's a fight, right? It's an issue that has to be dealt with. And sadly, law enforcement, and this is not a slight on them, right? This is not a slight. I'm not saying this as an insult to them. Law enforcement does not have the technical skills in-house to always deal with this or the enough manpower. So that's why we started this. So our mission is to unmask people who anonymously pray on children and then help law enforcement deal with them appropriately. So I have a couple of things I can tell you before I introduce the other board members. Yeah, this, I already mentioned this, but this happened. This was just a mind blowing to me. And Humble Bundle, they're a charitable organization, but they have to make money for the books they sell. And when we did it, when we had that, we had Neil and AJ and both of their friends with Aisha Tyler and she tweeted the Humble Bundle. And it kind of blew up. So everybody was going to buy the books, which was great for them, for Humble Bundle, and it was great for us. So now they're like, hey, would you care if we include you a couple times a year in this? And I'm like, no, that's a silly question. So of course, so this looks like a really good model for us in being able to deal with any kind of expenses. So let me give you an example of things that kind of occur. I have so many that I want to share with you, but I just want to kind of maybe give you one or two. So we have this father who found out that his daughter was being groomed, 11-year-old daughter being groomed by someone on Instagram. All right, so when I hear that, I always think Snapchat. Because Snapchat's the devil, right? But it's Instagram now. So DM'ing through Instagram as a 14-year-old girl, that's what this guy was doing. And he got her to take non-pornographic, but illicit pictures of her as an 11-year-old and then started to plant seeds about meeting up so they can kind of go away on a little trip together. This 14-year-old was supposedly very wealthy, had a lot of money, and was going to take her away for a trip. And the dad went, found out, because this is amazing, this is just wonderful that this part of the story, the daughter started feeling weird about the conversations and told her dad. And her dad went and looked at the account and went, oh, reached out to the police, police said we can't do anything, nothing has occurred. So the father, angry, went online, started looking at things and found the ILF, emailed the ILF and said I need help. We took over the account and we started interacting with that person and getting him to agree to meet, getting him to offer up more details about himself, making a time and location. And then we called federal law enforcement and said, hey, we have this guy who wants to go meet an 11-year-old. And then they went to the house, took over the phone, and took over the account. And that is now an active case. Two days later, because that father was talking about it, another mother in the community said, wait, the same thing's happening to my daughter from the same user. So we were able to do the same thing and help build the case with federal law enforcement. So that's an active case that is now occurring as we speak on these people who are trafficking children. The way it works is they go, they pick them up, and then they traffic them overseas. So this is now something that's going to be, not all of trafficking, but this particular person is going to be stopped because of the work that our group did. Really, really wonderful feeling for that to occur. Thank you. So some of the other details that come up that people ask about is like, how can you get involved? And I've had so many people come up and hand me a card and say, can I help? I need to tell you how you can help right now. And then we're going to get Neil and AJ up here to talk about their journey into the ILF. So if you give me a card, I'm going to guarantee you I'm probably going to forget to email you about this, and I'm sorry. And it's not because I don't care. We have 352 volunteers. The way that you volunteers need to be vetted, and this is a background check, it's a credit check, and it's a federal check. You can kind of, I don't need to slay it out. You know the material that we're getting into, right? So this is not a light matter, and it's not for everybody. And that's acceptable. No helping other people should not harm your family. So if you can't help in that way, then there's other ways you can help. You can promote the ILF. You can tell people that if they know of things online that they feel are inappropriate use of children or exploitation of children to report it to us, to also report it to NICMIC, you can donate and help continue the cause so we can grow the organization. Right now what we've built is we've built some proprietary technology that has helped save our researchers from having to deal with a serious psychological harm. So we have a VDI, it's a virtual desktop infrastructure system that blurs all images that come up on the screen.  Now sadly that's not enough because I have to read the material, and that's why the first thing we did with all the money that was donated was we hired a psychologist so we have a mental health program in our organization and it's mandated to meet with the mental health professional after doing research and work because mental health is probably the most important thing you can do for people that are doing this and that came directly from NICMIC and a conversation with them. So if you want to help, you can go to innocentlivesfoundation.org and on that website there's multiple different ways that you can volunteer. All I ask is for your patience. Right now as you can imagine, last year when I announced this I kind of thought one of the two things are going to happen, people will look at me like I'm nuts and then they're going to like kick me out of the community or it's going to be like everyone's like wow that's great but we don't want to we don't want to think about this because that's kind of what happens in your head right you're going to want to think about this even occurring. It's kind of hard to imagine that there's 300,000 people on a forum that specializes in the molestation of toddlers like that's hard to picture right we don't want to deal with that but the reverse of all of that occurred. What occurred is the community embraced it and we have 350 people sitting in a database saying use me and I have 14 people right now that we started the organization with and we're trying to work out our SOPs right because that's important right we kind of jumped into it head first and we kicked butt we did so much great work and then we stopped and we went okay we want to grow but how do we do it without some good operating procedures so that's our next step we're working on that as a team we're working on standardizing the way that we're going to do our OSINT and these things I'm sorry but these things will not be published though those things will not be public I will not speak about the SOPs publicly or our procedures publicly even if you ask that will be proprietary to any organization you want to know something interesting you remember the subway guy Jared already got arrested for for raping small children you remember that well you know how they found him it was a dog that was trained to sniff the silicon and usb keys and when they went into his home they found behind the walls he had dozens of usb keys that were laden with child pornography now that news came out and you know what came on that that pedophilia form on how to use hard drives encrypted hard drives so they weren't using usb keys anymore to get past the silicon sniffing dogs so when you publicize your SOPs or you publicize the method that you catch these people they're watching the same way we are and then they adapt they learn and then they make it harder and the last thing we want to do is become an educational force for people who are doing the worst evils on the planet so you know if you ask questions about that and I say no I can't share it don't take it personally okay it's not about it's not about trust it is just about protecting the innocent and that's really what our organization is all about and I'd like to invite Neil Fallon up to the stage if you can everyone give him a huge round of applause and if you would also join me in welcoming AJ Cook onto the stage so you know I want to do Q&A with you guys here you don't take this I want to do Q&A with the audience and them but I think what's important maybe it's the first let them tell the journey what made you become part of the dialogue well first I'll say it's hard to talk about it's one of the things I've learned since that first phone call was or it's still in the process of learning how to talk about this because it's incredibly emotional and it's awkward to talk about it in clinical terms but you kind of have to divorce yourself from that horror in order to do the work but I remember very distinctly when Chris called me I was sitting with my chief it was one of those phone calls you get and you knew this was a big decision and I digested it for a couple days and I spoke to my wife and I told her about this and she said to me now that you know how can you not help and sometimes I think we try to over justify explain motivations for doing good like what's your story about doing good but I honestly think doing good for the sake of doing good is the only justification you need you don't need to explain and I didn't really know anything about this topic except for the evening news like most of us and once Chris spoke to me and I saw those stories on the evening news I knew that that may have been the end of that story but that was the bookend to someone's horror that went on for years and it's happening right now for millions of children so I have so I found myself in a position and opportunity to do something and if it just means helping one kid then that's worth it that's that's the only justification I need and I wish I had a more eloquent explanation to give you but when I you know look at my kid and I think about other parents who may be going through this or can't see their kid it just breaks my heart it really really breaks my heart and I think we may feel powerless to stop it but all I did was talk to people Chris talked to me and I said to myself well I what do I do I get on a keyboard and do this stuff that I really didn't want to frankly and I thought well I know some people in the music industry in the entertainment industry and it was a hard subject to broach but I sent an email to Aisha Tyler when we went back and forth and Aisha is friends with AJ and here she is and that's no different than any of you talking to a friend about this you know the the amount of Twitter followers or Instagram profile that's all well and good but look how many people are in the room right now and how many hundreds of friends each and every one of you have and then they have it's an exponential force so that's why I joined it and you know I'm grateful for the opportunity to do some good somehow you know my story is actually pretty similar as far as you know I I heard about it through Aisha and you and I got to have a conversation and there was a moment where I just thought you know because it's such a difficult subject and it's such a heartbreaking situation it's not dinner conversation it's not it's a hard subject to broach as Neil was talking about so I knew I just knew I couldn't walk away trust me I wanted to I really wanted to but as a mom you know I could not could not walk away and it's something that you know I'm still trying to figure out how to be useful and I am not a hacker this is my first time at DefCon you people are all amazing to me this is foreign for me I wish I had all of your beautiful brains holy smokes because I don't think that way but that's good because we have this this man and a whole bunch of other people doing that I'm just trying to be useful in in a way of getting the message out there I had no idea this existed it changed my life and my my my thoughts and feelings toward this subject because it's you tend to push it away it starts to creep in and someone maybe brings up something or you see like a little clip on on the news and we push it away really quick because it's it's dark it's dark and it's it's horrifying to think that these things still happen and they seem to be happening more and more and they will continue with you know like you saw that 12 year old okay she's 12 so I just I couldn't walk away and I am so honored to to be working with this gentleman over here and he's the work he's been able to put into this so far and just a year blows my mind and I really look forward with hopefully the help of some of you even with just telling your friends about it and you know the message will grow and grow and hopefully we'll start to see some change and again if it's just one child you are the one that told me this because I got really caught up in the the whole this is bigger than me like how how do we make a difference there's just all of these statistics were so alarming to me and I just felt like how do where do we even begin and Neil so eloquently put it in the way of just one person you save one child and we've done it we've done it so you know it's I know it's a hard ask it's a hard asking it's not for everybody but you could really help us out by just kind of you know sharing that message and just letting people know that this even exists so thanks for listening Neil, right Junior the question was how are we vetting our volunteers since Penifigli is such a big deal and and I meant strongly oh there you are Tim I'm looking for you there's a problem with this game and there's no strong indicators all right so how do we vet well this is not a short fire way to to do it but I can tell you our process and it comes directly from from nicknick I've learned a lot from them because this is one of my biggest worries you start hiring people and on to to work and you get a bad actor to ruin your whole organization so we do we do a full background check on each person and you have to submit to it there's no anonymity and as there is to the world if you do not want the world to know you volunteer with ILF then we will not mention your name right you will not be on the website we will not talk about you but there is no anonymity when it comes to law enforcement if a law enforcement agent wants to know who you are and they do want to know who you are if you're working with us then everything we have on you will go to them and it does secondly any work that you do that is not on our VDI we will turn you in if you submit something you went to a CP forum or something and you did that not on our VDI then I have no problem turning you in right no no no it's illegal so you can't do it the VDI is logged and monitored and you have absolutely no rights access to change anything you can just do your job and that is it so people come in full aware knowing that everything you do is being monitored by big brother and that we will have no issues because that's our mission statement is turning people in that that wants to hurt children I don't care if that's you or if that's me or if that's anyone they're going to get turned in because we don't we're not going to deal with that right that's part of the issue so is that a hundred percent it's going to be bad actors that happens Nick Mick told me it happens to them all the time people will get hired so the third step in that process is our is our psychologist is our mental health program is that you're mandated to meet with her for a minimum of 30 minutes after every time you do a case and that again it's not a hundred percent but her job is that if she feels anyone starts becoming a threat to themselves or to children then she will turn you in and there's no there's just no option there is no plan B for that so it's I know it's not a it's not a hundred percent I wish there was but that's as close as we can get to trying to keep it secure while we while we try to make a change in this yeah I saw a hand over here so yeah you go ahead sir I saw your hand first so I want to make sure I understand your question you're asking if if the way that we're doing OSINT will make the bad guys better okay yeah that's so that's a great that's a great question so he's asking that if we like so if we're really good with our OSINT and we skim off the top scum right that aren't good and then what's left are these really good guys you know how to hide their stuff so that is a risk okay but I'm okay with skimming off the scum right now because let's say the scum is 90 percent of them I'm okay with that for this moment let's get rid of them and then we can figure out how we fight that deeper fight right but for right now if we can we can skim out the majority of them I'll take it every little win you know every little win we got two or two arrests under our belt as an organization I want 2,000 but I'll take two because that's two people who aren't molesting children anymore because they were sitting in prison I'll take it and that's not a great answer but I'll do it you know yeah the question was are any of the cases that I've seen repeat offenders I don't know to be honest because we don't we don't have access to the law enforcement records public record for those I will say that I just the answer the honest answer is I don't know if they are I haven't I don't have that knowledge in my head yes oh that's a great question so he asked how our how our mental health program works co-located so believe it or not mental health programs can be done through HIPAA compliant systems online if if both parties agree so our mental health program is done through video cannot be done on a phone it's done through video and through a HIPAA compliant platform and that's the way we do it now we can get past that yes sir how do we deal with contraband correct yeah so we don't download anything we don't capture any images cash is shut off we don't collect it don't need to see it say on these forums the ones that I showed you these are just a couple these guys and gals are on there talking about what they did to these kids the images don't need to be seen to understand how horrible the things are that they've done it doesn't nope and then what we do is we send those links directly to our federal law enforcement contacts and then they have the right to go download those images and that's good enough for me it's a good question thank you for that yes ma'am for now yes she she has she has many contacts that have agreed to join the force when needed but right now we only have active how many nine eight nine researchers I can't remember the number eight or nine researchers and then all the other support other parts of the organization so the people who are doing like some of the blog writing and website development and things like that they don't need to see the shrink right it's just people doing the research when we grow that we'll need she will definitely need help because she has an active practice that she that she takes care of and she blocks out time for us and then when that time gets filled she will tell me and then we'll add another person to the to the roster yeah yes sir so the question was do we have any worries about international retaliation yes of course right but here's the deal there is no federal law enforcement agent that has an ILF boot when they kick the door in they're not saying we're here because of ILF we're not part of the arresting team I'm not in court I'm not testifying so the knowledge that any organization would have that we're involved is minimal almost impossible we do that on purpose and that is up to us by the way guys and gals because what we need to do is be able to produce a file that can walk a law enforcement agent from A to Z without needing us so if we do our job right then we can be invisible and that's what we want yeah yes ma'am yes yeah sadly that contact is going to be me so I need to give you a card after okay and I mean sadly just because I'm terrible but I will answer these I will give you an ILF card those thank you very much I think that's fair and I'm sorry to be that way that's really terrible the way to be but I appreciate that and then we just issued we have a three part blog on how to notice the signs of exploited children with a really nice PDF chart that you can download that talks about the signs for exploited children and children that are being groomed and that children that are at risk for for prostitution so I can share that with you yes all the way down there well these two people are definitely helping so I love you either of you want to uh I I was sorry it was about I'm a rock and roll musician my hearing is terrible I forgot I didn't hear what you said to indecible music for his whole life it was about do we have any concepts or ideas for future fundraising we're definitely brainstorming and working on that I would say keep your eyes on the ILF website and uh I've been brainstorming a couple things as you have as well yeah it's um not only the was the material and you know hacking for lack of a better word new to us so it's fundraising frankly for all three of us yeah yeah yeah that's the um it's much more complicated than I ever would have thought so if you have any suggestions please let us know yes please yeah we can use oh see look at my team you see see these two two people coming there of course there there so we are a legit 501c3 right so what's amazing to me I didn't share this with you before but I did this last year we got our approval back from the IRS and under two months my CPA said that never happens like usually it takes like a year I don't know how that happened but in two months we got our our 501c3 back so we do take donations on the website which have been very very uh a very big part of our our fundraising and we've been using these stickers and I know it seems like a weird thing to do but just kind of people kept coming back all weekend and donating to the ILF and then getting a sticker for that oh yes and thank you Jameson reminded me because he works for a corporation that does the very thing he just said like Jameson's organization has a matching program and since we're a legit 501c3 you can find us in the giving databases so if your organization has a matching program you can add it to your charitable donations and if you don't need to us your company will match that so thank you both ladies in the back and Jameson for for that and and donations are definitely accepted oh in one other I don't know if anyone likes criminal minds here but I am working on a on a I am working on putting together visit to the set so that's going to be a big one coming out so let's let's keep our eyes peeled for that but like he said I never in a million years would I have thought like fundraising would be so complicated but we're we're slowly we're getting it together so I'll donate if I can go maybe we'll be able to do a couple of them yes sir so there are yes but the main thing that we have to do is that we have to be strict about our our SOPs right if we hand something in that even looks like we stepped over the line I'll give you an interesting example that came to me from our law enforcement friends do you know that over 80% of the people that Chris Hansen supposedly helped to get arrested walked that we they all walked they don't tell you that part so that to catch a predator show was just bunk because they walked because what happened after that show is their their their dirtbag lawyers came in the court and said well you'll have no proof that I was a pedophile this girl came on to me online I just I didn't know that this was going to be a setup I just went to go give her a beer and drugs you know like and somehow the judge goes well you're right there was no proof that a crime was going to be committed so let him go so we cannot do anything that will assist the bad guys and being able to continue to do their disgusting things so we my team and I are very strict about a file won't even get handed in if it's not complete right it won't even get handed in so we can't step over that line because that puts the whole organization at risk so is there a place yes but we probably have to get a little further along before we get approvals to do certain things okay I know so many hands man I saw you before go ahead yes yep you yep I can I can barely hear you there we go that'll make it easier oh you're and you're awesome so I have two oh I have two questions and feel free to answer whichever one or both the first one is when you do whatever your research is do you focus on finding one or have you been trying to find the ring the second question is have you considered participating in gift big events explain this I don't know what that second one was I mean so um doesn't even know gift big because it is every year in one month a one week of I forgot which month it is and is like a big nationwide or maybe it was just yeah but there's a whole week thing and then like usually there are some somebody else that is also like sponsoring it oh like trying to sponsor match so that if people's company aren't matching there is a match if people's company are matching them then you a triple match you know that so the gift big thing is that so I guess you don't participate in that because thanks for the idea though so like we said we stink at fundraising we're really bad at this part you know so we haven't heard of that there's probably a million things that you guys all have ideas which we will gladly take when we get booted off stage we'll go outside and we'll take all your ideas but for the first um question um we so it starts off because these forms generally are not rings of people it is a person who has and there's no way to say this without just kind of really being disturbing there is pictures and videos of them molesting their own children generally or their stepchildren or their nieces and nephews and they trade these like baseball cards for free so it's not a ring it's these it's these people who are online these individuals that are doing these things so a lot of our research has started off with individuals and um and the people who own the websites that facilitate them so that that's that's where we start yes sir because the question was can we become active on the forms here's the issue with that then we become more and more like the Chris Chris Hanson thing as soon as we interact with one of these guys then if something they do something bad they can say I wouldn't have done it if this guy didn't talk to me about 13 year old girls I would have never done this thing and now he gets off and he's free and now he can go tell all his disgusting buddies about the the way to make themselves more secure so we don't we don't talk to them we don't interact with them we don't offer them anything we don't communicate with them we are lurkers and that's it right sir or man sorry vendors yeah I don't think any of us have done that Neil Neil so far is probably the only one who's done any level of actually talking to big names in his industry about spreading the message and and now we're hearing like AJ stepping that game up I kind of stink I talked to my friends and I say hey you work for a big company you have any ideas and he goes yeah sure I got a great idea we really need help in that we're really stinking that to talk with me after and get a business card and let's see how we make that work because I would I would love to I would love to know more we are open to all these ideas we just don't know how to do it like I said this was like a crazy thing that came about if there's a million hands we'll take them out let me just tell you this quick came about because we did a little work with an organization uncovered a guy who was flying to the Philippines and he was molesting children and videotaping it on his work related devices because he didn't want his wife to find out because they had two kids who he was molesting and he was selling these things to other perverts online and in a routine security awareness pen test we found this guy and he's in prison right now and that feels great but that was how that's how all of this started was because it was whoa I'm just a greasy little hacker that sits in the basement till one in the morning with a light bulb in my hoodie I didn't know that you can actually do good things in your life and I don't know anything about fundraising or vendor stuff I just don't know how to hack things that's it and if I could just jump in you know real quick to say that it's okay for us as an organization to ask for help because there's only so many of us and there's going to be angles that we would never conceive of so all the questions whether it be mental health was over there and fundraising was over there in your question now that's what we need to hear donations are vital but so are ideas and the more heads we put together the stronger it becomes and that's one of the reasons we're on stage right now and use the help we can use the help oh do I really want to ask it follow my daughter oh everyone's pointing at Peter yeah you know something you know Neil humbly probably won't admit he already got us a meeting with a representative and Tim is working on a meeting with a senator to discuss those very things the hard part is that's probably the long game changing laws and policies is not easy it's also not something that's going to happen overnight and it's also not something that's going to fix the problem so there's a law in most states that you can't carry lock picks how many people here carry lock picks right what if the law stop it doesn't stop criminals doesn't stop people do it for a living it stops the law abiding citizens so you make a law child pornography is illegal in almost every country around the globe it's not stopping it oh my the question was if we can spread then like once we find one can we then go to other forms and save other children generally not because the dark web as all of us as many of you probably know is not cashable or searchable like the open web so you find their user names and it's not really you can't just go on to another dark web forum and find them so it's not it's not easy to do sadly and sadly finding the children is much more difficult than finding the people who are abusing them I think we have time for maybe one more question and then here's what we'll do after we're done the three of us and any of the I live volunteers that don't mind being identified if you are want to be come outside and if you have questions we will talk out there is that fair because there's a lot of hands I know we can't get to them because I don't want to take away from the next speakers who have some great content so if you want to continue this conversation the three of us will go out to the hallway and you can come out there and talk with us is that good and thank you all for your support coming thank you AJ thank you guys thank you