9/23/26: Beef Prices Skyrocket, Susan Collins Corruption, Troy Jackson Hijacked By Dem Elites

24:50It's just so perfectly kind of woke one. The name of the company they came up with was

25:01Society of Young Women Scientists and Engineers. and maybe they only had one scientist but but because they didn't put the s on it i think that's one of the things that got them caught it's like a quality leering situation there was like a watchdog going through and was like what is this society of young quality leering center of

25:24Emily Jashinsky:of non-profits for engineers girl scientists and so they filed a this is back in 2020 they filed a FEC complaint. And then they were able to dig up the LLC paperwork. And also a society of young scientists giving$150 ,000 out of nowhere to a Collins super PAC. People are like, what? That's not normal behavior. So what's happening here? So they look up the paperwork and the LLC is his wife, is like registered to his wife. And so people are very quickly like, oh, this is clearly a shell company that's using this here. So let's roll the next quote up here. So after the budgets became law, Collins' office pushed the Navy to award specific contracts to Navitech, emails seen by ProPublica show, even though awards are supposed to be competitive.

26:15Quote, I spoke with Senator Collins' office regarding the$8 million a naval official wrote in an email on February 6, 2019. The interested company is Navitech. In a meeting with Collins and two campaign officials, Cal said, the officials told him the senator expected his ongoing support. Collins told him, you've seen me deliver, Cal said. Reid knew Cal was behind the$150 ,000 anonymous donation emails showed because Cal told Reid he planned to donate through a shell company. Very smart, Reid replied in an email viewed by ProPublican.

26:49Emily Jashinsky:So that's pretty bad. That's bad. And so the the more extensive back and forth shows him laying out. I just spoke to my lawyer. He said, do this shell company. LLCs are very well protected. And then, you know, Reed tells him this is very smart and blah, blah, blah. So then the question is, what did Collins know about this? Like, did he actually know anything? Did she actually know anything about this? So let's put this next element up. And so this is the Collins campaign saying, they have no idea what's going on here. But then ProPublica writes, But an email seen by ProPublica suggests that someone must have relayed the news of Cal's donation to Collins, just like Reid promised to do in Cal's recounting of the corner bakery meeting.

27:30Seven days after the super PAC cashed the check from Cal's shell company, one of Reid's subordinates emailed a Navitech lobbyist asking for Cal's phone number. Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him. Now, last night, the Collins campaign said that there's nothing to see here because this is actually very normal stuff. That you don't have to know why somebody gave you the donation. You see a donation, you call them, and you thank them for it. However, notice the timeline here. This is seven days after the super PAC cashed the check. super PACs don't disclose their fundraising until oftentimes months later so it raises the question how did they know that the check had been written to the super PAC if the super PAC did not tell the

28:26Emily Jashinsky:campaign yes I was gonna say I'm glad you picked up on this exact line because this was the one that jumped out to me as well not just because of the potential like transactionality of it because some of that is perfectly normal. And a lot of this piece or a lot of my sort of eye rolling with the piece is that ProPublica is describing as like shocking novel information, the most normal things ever, and they're bad, normal things to be clear, but it's like entirely normal, unfortunately. But this one is significant because it's not just the timeline, but also the fact that you have someone from Colin's staff, not from the super PAC staff, but from Colin's staff would have had to convey that information to her.

29:07Emily Jashinsky:And previously, as you're reading the entire story, it's possible to say that Reed was freelancing. So there's plausible deniability, which is exactly why super PACs kind of function the way that they do, between saying, well, Reed was dealing with Cal in the way that Reed was dealing with Cal. When you have that email you previously mentioned, Ryan, where it says, quote unquote, very smart, as Cal indicates, he's planning to give through a shell group. That, again, can stop with Reid. It can be, well, maybe Susan Collins shouldn't have somebody who's willing to engage in this kind of wink-wink behavior leading her super PAC.

29:40Emily Jashinsky:But when you actually see this happening, that does implicate the Collins operation, I think, overall, because now you have super PAC coordination on the table. Yes, indeed. Now, less people think, I'm just being a partisan hack here, let's drag the good Brian Schatz, who's also an Appropriations Committee member, a Democrat who is being pushed. He's sort of like understood to be one of kind of Schumer's choices to replace him. If Schumer departs the Senate world, put up the next element here. In another message, Andy Weiner, who former executives said was Navitech's chief strategist, reminded Cal to budget money for political contributions based on how much the company wanted in congressional funding the following year.

30:24That would be criminal in the defense world. Weiner was his guide to the political underbelly, Cal said. A consummate insider, Weiner had parlayed six years as chief of staff to Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii into a lucrative lobbying career with a firm called Strategies 360. One of Weiner's former colleagues compared him to the slick lobbyist on the Netflix show House of Cards who toggles between the political and corporate worlds. And again, to point out how bipartisan this is, the entire reason this company exists is former Senator Daniel Inouye, legendary. They called him what the Prince of Pork or the King of Pork.

31:05He passed away in the 2010s and left a lot of defense companies in Hawaii hanging because they were all getting their taxpayer money through Inouye. and this company was among them. And so they had to then, they changed her name and redeveloped relationships. And that's why they became so tight with Susan Collins. So let's roll this next one here. So less than one month after the event, the Senate released a draft of the defense budget containing$21.5 million of Navitex pet projects in Maine. Cow emailed a Collins campaign fundraiser who would in theory have nothing to do with a government contract, four days later saying, thanks again for all the support from Senator Collins.

31:52I've been involved in many tight races in the past and understand that last minute needs come up, he continued. We are here to help any way we can, financially or whatever. Cowell's desire to donate even more money led to the fateful corner bakery meeting with the head of the Collins Super PAC, called the 1820 PAC, Cowell told the FBI. Unlike Colin's campaign, which could accept only$5 ,600 per election from individuals, the Super PAC could accept unlimited contributions. The Super PAC emailed Cal a memo before the meeting stressing the need to raise money with, quote, urgency. At the meeting, Cal and Reid, the Super PAC's chair, hammered out a deal for a six-figure donation, Cal told the FBI.

32:30Over email, Cal informed Reid of his Shell Company scheme, saying he had cleared it with his lawyer. They are super vague and very difficult to get any background info on, Cal reassured him talking about LLCs. Thanks for doing this, Reid replied. So notice the timeline here. Collins gets this company a contract after they give some money. He reaches out to the Collins campaign. The Collins campaign, we're not talking about the super PAC here, reaches out to the Collins campaign and says, thank you for getting me this government money. Let me know if you need more money. Then Scott Reed reaches out to him saying, we do need a lot more money and asks for this extraordinary amount of money.

33:12That again suggests that the campaign and Scott Reed are working directly together on that. Right.

33:19Emily Jashinsky:And what was kind of frustrating to me about this story is that ProPublica, I don't know if you picked up on this. I thought it was weird that ProPublica's reporting nowhere really made the connection with the super PAC and the campaign coordination. It was mostly focused on the transactionality, potentially the transactionality of Cal and Reed, which, again, it's an unfortunate reality. Reed sounded like he was being fairly careful in how he was couching Cal to talk and what to put in print and otherwise, according to the emails, that what it looks like is somebody who was let go by the DOJ because Trump was getting rid of people who went after 2020 election stuff, then leaked to ProPublica.

33:58Emily Jashinsky:I think that's pretty clearly the sourcing chain here because they have all of the documents that apparently the DOJ had and the FBI had. And so those documents show pretty normal soft corruption, which is coaching you on what to say, what not to say, knowing full well that there's a transactionality happening and you just don't want it in print precisely for these reasons. So I was sort of frustrated that ProPublica, again, wasn't, you know, normally if you're reporting on this, you would say, well, the law about coordination between super PACs in the campaign, like there's literally none of that in the ProPublica story.

34:31Emily Jashinsky:It's as though they thought the real story was just that the FBI squashed this investigation into transactionality rather than the FBI squashing an investigation into potential super PAC coordination. And I honestly found that weird. Well, to me, not so much. maybe they could have included a little bit more about it, but to me the coordination between super PACs and campaigns is an inside baseball kind of ticky-tack paperwork violation. But it seems to me like there's much more evidence of that here than there is of violating the sort of corruption transactionality thing. And to your point, I think if they more tightly linked the campaign to the super PAC, then you can more tightly show the relationship between Collins and the bribe.

35:18On the other hand, everything I'm telling you here is from the article. So it was all in there. So I want to give them that credit. This is the last one that we'll read for now. A few weeks after the$150 ,000 check to the Collins Super PAC cleared in February 2020, Cal and his team met with Collins' office and secured a new round of funding. we were very warmly received Cal reported to his colleagues in an email obtained by the FBI so this is not taking his word for stuff these are emails from the time excellent meeting, total of $32 million will be supported records show the Senate allocated at least $10 million that year based on Navitex proposals.

36:01Now what Cal also says, and you can back this up too, is that it was junk. What they were selling was junk

36:09Emily Jashinsky:They're selling nothing. They're selling research. And 3D printed boats that the Navy didn't want. Just total garbage. And the scam is even worse. What he would do is he would find, his idea was let's find a university that we can then funnel the money through. So the University of Maine, which did not respond to requests for comment from ProPublica, is part of this scheme where he tells Collins, basically, we're going to do the research through the University of Maine. So he's going to then give University of Maine a little cut and then they're going to take the rest of it. And then it operates underneath the rubric of the University of Maine, which is offensive across the board.

36:52And we end up as a public with nothing, like nothing that they made. Take his word for it or not. Nothing that they made for many, many, many million dollars over the years is used by the military at all. It's just money that was burned up. He was driving a Ferrari to work every day and living this lavish life,$5 million home in Hawaii. Like, that's what the taxpayers got out of it, is this guy getting fantastically rich. But we didn't even get anything out of it. Meanwhile, service members, you know, are, you know, lacking, you know, decent food, like supplies, like they're they're like undies are catching fire on the aircraft carrier.

37:33You know, they're they're the ones who are like putting themselves out there are getting stiffed while people like this are getting enormously rich. Enabled directly by Susan Collins in a flagrantly and directly illegal way. Like there aren't many laws left on corruption, but you can't take money from a defense contractor for contracts is like the last law that's left on the books. And she had to go out there and break it.

38:04Emily Jashinsky:I mean, my strong assumption is that this is happening every day with everyone. It doesn't make it any better, but I just get frustrated with ProPublica, which I think traffics really heavily in innuendo. and there's a bigger picture story than the Susan Collins. Although there's more coming. And yeah, so they identified a whole bunch of people and apparently there are more stories coming. Well, next one, Lindsey Graham, apparently. There has to be because there's, again, this is, it's all bad. Like, don't get me wrong. I just got frustrated with the story, but it's all bad. And there's this part where they say, this one drove me crazy.

38:41Emily Jashinsky:In one back and forth, a lobbyist and a company executive described another senator as, quote unquote, fundamentally transactional and having a reputation as a pay to play office. Please name for me the lobbyist and the senator rather than just putting that in the story. Maybe it's because this is going to be serious and there's more to come. But there were a couple of notes like that. It's like driving me insane. Tell me who it is. You have the records. I want to know who it is. If that's the case, tell me. If lobbyists are walking around saying that, which they are all of the time, and you have it in your possession, I want to know.

39:10Emily Jashinsky:Ask them for comment, of course, but tell me who it is. I think something that makes me well-studded to be a nurse is my empathy. Growing up with a big family, I think I've always kind of been a caregiver. When you care give, you get to know the family and the patient and you get really close. And Rasmussen University, they did a very, very good job of giving us the resources that we need. So just being able to apply the knowledge that I've retained to my daily life has been so amazing. Learn more at rasmussen.edu.

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41:16So we can put this New York Magazine element up on the screen. It's kind of a 7 ,000-word investigation into the Troy Jackson campaign, and particularly the way that Washington consultants, after kind of Graham Plattner volunteers, pushed him through the kind of rapid-fire nomination contest that came right after Plattner withdrew from the race, they were all pushed aside. And in came pollsters and campaign managers and consultants from the Dan Goldman campaign, from the Colin Allred campaign, from the Mallory McMorrow campaign, effectively also from kind of Schumer world in Washington, D.C. And it gets into some detail about the ways that they're telling him to stop being an interesting candidate.

42:10He's a genuinely working class candidate from far northern Maine, would be the only senator with just an associate's degree, the logger his entire life, very clearly a regular person. They told him, basically, stop taking questions from people, like you're killing us. Stop telling people what you honestly think. they have given him new talking points around Medicare for All he can't back off of Medicare for All but if you hear him talk about it now it's it sounds much more like a public option and he wants to very you know be very you know be very assuring to to people that don't worry he's not actually going to do anything too radical the the biggest kind of push from them seems to be over his calling what's going on in Gaza from Israel a genocide.

43:03And they tell him, you can't walk back to your previous position. Like, you said it, and you can't unsay it, but we want you to kind of basically stop saying it again. I spoke to some people familiar with the campaign and I'll obtain some of the same documents that Rebecca Tracer did and confirm and kind of advance some of the reporting. If we could put up F5, no, F6 here, put F6 up on the screen. So I obtained this campaign document and the document tells Troy Jackson to say, quote, I think this is when asked about Israel and Palestine and the genocide, quote, this is what he's supposed to say.

43:51I think what's happening in Israel and Palestine is horrific, senseless violence. I think Israel has the right to defend itself, but I do not support the United States sending offensive weapons that enable more killing. It also goes on to say that he should call for, quote, the release of the hostages. And so a couple of things on that. This banning offensive weapons, this is over. Like, this is a position that is way more to the right. I don't want to say to the right because there are people on the right that are against this also. It's just behind the times. Like, Jay Street, others, like, they're all abandoning this distinction between offensive.

44:32Rahm Emanuel has done with it. Like, Netanyahu has said he doesn't want Americans support anymore, except of course he does. But they're bringing in this anachronistic offensive weapons thing for him to try to say that he's opposed to. The release of the hostages is utterly bizarre, right? There are no hostages, unless you're talking about the thousands of Palestinian detainees who are in without charge, which I'm sure he's not talking about. In all of his talking points that we've obtained, he's instructed to call for the release of the hostages.

45:04Emily Jashinsky:Are they copy and pasting from 2024, actually? I don't, like, what are you doing? I don't know. Like, what on earth are you doing? Like, this is, like, he won in, like, what, July of this year? There are no hostages. Like, what is going on? And so then, if he is asked about the previous position on the genocide, document instructs him to say, quote, start with, I've said what I've said. It was perfect circular Washington talking point. Start with, I've said what I've said. Do not sound like you're walking back the previous position and do not invite an argument over semantics. and so do not sound like you're walking it back but walk it back but walk about it's so it's so bad now what what we've been told is that and we've obtained a bunch of different invites and and calendar records that show that he has over the last several weeks been doing a huge number of high dollar fundraisers with a lot of corporate ceos very wealthy people and also people with strong pro-Israel bona fides.

46:10One of them being Susie Levine, who was a former ambassador to Switzerland, who in the spring of 2024 was one of the signatories of a letter to President Biden saying effectively, keep doing what you're doing. Thank you for standing up for us. She's in the liberal Zionist camp, you know, two-state solution. Let's hope that we can get and aid to Palestinians in Gaza. But fundamentally, the thrust of the letter was, thank you for standing strong in support of Israel. This is while Israel was killing tens of thousands of Palestinians. And Biden was overseeing this absolutely horrific policy. And so he's meeting privately with people like her, who are then conveying their sense of the situation.

47:05And because he's working class from Northern Maine, you can imagine this is not an issue that he has spent his life, it'd be weird if it was an issue that he'd spent his life kind of steeped in. And so what he's hearing from people is this word, genocide is deeply offensive to us. So please stop saying it. And so some of this is very clever on the part of his campaign operatives to kind of surround that they'll give him the talking points, but then they'll also surround him with people who are going to very earnestly and emotionally tell him how impactful it is to them to hear words like genocide.

47:47side and without being, without being, without having a grounding in the issue to begin with. And then also by cutting him off from the grassroots supporters around Maine who propelled Graham Plattner to the nomination, he then doesn't hear the other side of, of this. And so he doesn't even get a both sides. He just gets the one side. And that's, and, uh, Tracer talks in her article about being in a, a room where he's giving his, his speech. And then someone asks him about his, Israel-Palestine and he does this Israel has the right to defend itself and like does this like mealy-mouthed incoherent both sides ism and she said you could just feel all the energy in the room just evaporate and he said somebody gave him like a visible thumbs down and it was a metaphor for the kind of sucking out of the energy of the entire campaign well first of all midterm elections

48:44Emily Jashinsky:are about turnout. And what you are going to succeed with in a state like Maine is if you turn out just about every single member of the grassroots that would be excited about a position someone like Graham Plattner would take on this particular foreign policy issue. And so you're already sucking the energy and the enthusiasm out that you need to support the enthusiasm gap. And on the other hand, independent voters are going to, they don't agree actually with the kind of liberal Democrat position on this anymore. That's pretty clear at this point. If you look across polling, people are closer to the original Troy Jackson position on this than they are otherwise.

49:26Emily Jashinsky:And so even if you take the kind of enthusiasm question away and you talk just about swing voters, they want to believe that you believe what you're saying. And they're more likely to agree at this point with the Troy Jackson anyway. So the math doesn't make sense. The politics of it don't make sense. It's so backwards. Yeah. Now, maybe the Collins campaign and it's this corruption story coming out of the ProPublica and the environment that we're in, the trade war with Canada, which is really hurting Maine. Fuel oil is absolutely crushing families in Maine right now because fuel oil is basically diesel.

50:04And so people are paying people are paying extraordinary amounts for it. there's reporting that I've done that shows that people who are trying to lock in their fuel oil for the winter are being told by the companies it's just not possible this year. You can't lock in a price. They're going to get absolutely murdered. New England, for people who don't know it in the winter, basically relies almost exclusively on home heating oil for heat for heating for these very long and cold winters that they're going to get. So maybe the combination of all the all the misery plus it's like okay well i've got a wood stove i don't need the heating oil oh yeah well guess guess what would guess what would cost now yeah trump's in a trade war with canada and he's uh driven up a court of wood is is also going to set you back uh insanely uh

50:51Emily Jashinsky:so your own wood yeah um the other thing i was gonna say is trying to do both at the same time look talarico on some of the like quote unquote woke one stuff who's winning by the way in texas has flat out said, I was wrong. He said, I spoke, I got that wrong. What you can't do is straddle both lines. You either have to stand by yourself completely and say, and this is just on a political level. We're not even talking about morally. Obviously, morally, it's correct to own what you believe. But even politically, it's not helpful to play both camps. You either have to say, I was wrong or hell no, I was right.

51:28Emily Jashinsky:I'm standing firm on this, despite what Washington wants me to say. But to try to do the both ways thing is a disaster. It's like the worst thing you can do because it makes you look like you don't believe in anything. Yep. Yes, indeed. All right, well, that'll do it for us. When are you back in D.C., Emily? I'll be back Thursday, so it's a quick one, but I'm eager to check out the vibes in Maine. Excellent. Good election cycle. I'm speaking up at Colby, so if folks are around, I'll be there this evening. Very exciting. Yeah, check in on our Maine reporter, Nathan. He's up there. Amazing, what a life He and I should have a piece, I hope, out soon More on this Troy Jackson campaign I'll be on tomorrow, I believe, with Crystal Is that the, something like that But, you know, have a great time in Maine And I will see everybody tomorrow

52:57We'll see you next time. work mode. Available on Plus and Pro Plans. There are exciting things happening at your local CVS. Shop new Extra Big Deals with Extra Care every two weeks. No coupon needed. Plus, get access to exclusive sale prices, personalized deals, and more as a member. Extra Care is the way to save at CVS. Join for free, online, or in-store and start saving. Visit your local CVS store or Visit cbs.com slash extra big deals for this week's deals. This is Tony A.O. from The Real Report with Tony A.O. and Uncle Murda. You ever notice how everything keeps going up? Rent, streaming, even extra salsa at your favorite burrito spot?

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