Background Briefing: April 4, 2021

On By gram

 

Matt Gaetz as the Latest Lowlife Exposed in the Trump Era of Sleaze

We begin with the Trump era of sleaze which has brought us the pedophile Trump fixer George Nader, Trump’s close friend the sex trafficker of underage girls Jeffrey Epstein who was given a get-out-of-jail-free pass by Trump’s Labor Secretary, and now Trump’s most vocal supporter in the House who Trump has lavished with praise, Matt Gaetz. According to The New York Times, Gaetz is alleged to be part of a “sugar daddy” ring of Florida politicians who use a dating site Seeking Arrangement to procure young women for sex using Apple Pay to compensate the underage girls along with priming them with the mood-altering drug ecstasy. Jennifer Rodgers, a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School who worked for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York where she was the Chief of the Organized Crime Unit and is now a Legal Analyst at CNN where she has an article “Matt Gaetz’s diversionary tactics aren’t working,” joins us. We discuss the growing likelihood Gaetz will be indicted soon on sex crimes charges sharing the fate of his friend Joel Greenberg with whom Gaetz is alleged to have shared girls, and we also examine the difficulties that prosecutors now have since much of this case has already been leaked to the press, with Gaetz himself having gone public on Fox with Tucker Carlson, incriminating himself and others.

 

How the Arizona Senate is Trying to Keep the “Stop the Steal” Scam Alive

Then with news that the Trump 2020 campaign used a “money bomb” fundraising scam to bilk his donors, we look into how Republicans are keeping Trump’s “Stop the Steal” scam alive through which he is fleecing his supporters of up the half a billion dollars which goes into his pocket and will likely be used to pay Trump’s mounting legal bills. Joining us is Jim Small, Editor in Chief of the Arizona Mirror where his latest article is “Arizona Senate Hires a ‘Stop the Steal’ advocate to lead 2020 election audit.” We examine the QAnon follower put in charge of auditing the 2.1 million votes from Democrat-leaning Maricopa County by Arizona’s far-right Republican Senate to “find” over 10,457 votes Biden won the state by, and the possibility that Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar helped plan the assault on the Capitol by providing insurrectionists with a tour of the Capitol in the days before the January 6 riot.

 

A New Study on Radicalization and Deradicalization of Violent Extremists In America

Then finally we speak with Ryan Brown, a senior behavioral/social scientist at the RAND Corporation who monitors internal and external security threats. He is the lead author of a new study “Violent Extremism in America: Interviews with Former Extremists and Their Families on Radicalization and Deradicalization.” With a second attack on the Capitol occurring on Friday, we will assess the likelihood of further attacks by domestic terrorists and what can be done to stop them.