the american city of philadelphia several people have reportedly been injured. we can see a heavy police presence in this area of cottage sources at the same state that in multiple gums have been recovered. and 5 people taken into custody. the shooting allegedly occurred where crowds had gathered to celebrate the most of them eat alpha to your holiday signaling the end of the holy month of ramadan. the motives behind the shooting has not as yet been confirmed the. okay, well, staying stateside with what is expected to be an extremely tight presidential election in november, 2 button has been trying hard to appeal to the american people. it's a nation of many backgrounds of course. but the incumbent leader seems to have gotten his little mixed up. i come out and watch series. you know, i grew up in a heavily irish catholic communities grant pennsylvania, and heavily

a tally and police community in clermont delaware. in the background of my family is an irish american and we have a long history of not fundamentally, i'd like to publish the people. i probably want to show more than many of you i uh, were sorta raised in the puerto rican community room. the persian culture is amazing. as a student of the virgin culture, i had a very close relationship with a greek american community for real. i am jo wide novelist. well, one recent nationwide pool has put donald trump firmly in the lead over by good. but many americans aren't actually happy about having to pick between the 2 all over again. a majority of respondents said they wouldn't vote for either candidates

if there was another name on the ball. it's well 3rd party independent comes that's have also set their sights on the top job. i'm going to be in the non thing. their presidential intentions at green party. hopeful jo spends among them. she sees the 2 party electro system leaves the bulk of american folders with little to no choice . there is now a huge bucket of people who are looking for something to vote for. so we feel it's, it's entirely misleading to say that greens are taking votes away. no, actually we are giving people an opportunity to vote who otherwise wouldn't be coming off to vote. well, one of, of those who will be deciding then we took to the streets of new york to ask locals, won't they faint with some telling this in the rather direct way. it's too hard to decide which kind of it is the lesser of 2 evils. personally, i don't think either of them or the election, but i do feel like people have to make a choice unfortunately because of our party binary. but to party binary. we have in

america, democrats versus republicans, it, it has never worked. it's not going to work. if i could understand in the sense that we have to choose someone to just choose the side of them on boarding, i get a ballet, they put it in. but it's not said i really am, you know, through with the 2 candidates. i'm not, and nobody else runs we need to have other options and ways to be able to come together to where it doesn't come down to have it sooner. we should be able to choose a good well independent candidate for the us senate in new york state's diane sar toward our team. many americans no longer trust the electrical system in the country. the qualified presidential candidates are not allowed to run. and unfortunately, americans rather than fighting to change the system,

adapt to it and adjust and say, well, i really don't like this, this, this, but they're less bad than the other one. i that creates a very severe crisis gutter saying in leadership in this country, i think it was actually a very big problem. i don't believe we have an incumbent who's qualified. i don't believe that we have a major opposition, which is qualified either. and that creates a great vacuum of leadership. i think the voters have to know that if there is a problem, there is a way to verify that the vote count is accurate. the fact that it seems so very rig from beginning to end, and not just at the polls. i mean the news media coverage, the blocking out at the 100 by didn't laptops story. so i think that americans have it very deep sense. it's not fair, it's not just and therefore they don't even participate in new york. we have voter

turnout and some municipal elections be low 15 percent. that means people don't trust it at all. so i think the number one issue is to make the elections trustworthy. so the people have a sense that their vote counts that their voice matters a now what's the difference between uninformed into, under, with a lower does motive most are the questions done for discussion next to are on our, to international stick with the yes we are in february admitted with the release of a report from the bureaus inspector general that it had recruited an informant to

infiltrate into supply on the civil rights group, black lives matter. denver, that informant went so far as to try on successfully thank goodness to convince 2 members of black lives matter to assassinate the attorney general of the us state of colorado. was this in forming a whistle blower? of course not. he was a wreck. he was a snitch, a criminal. but what happens when the width of lower is not the stereotypical truth tell her, after all, was the blowing comes in many forms. i'm john to reaku. welcome to the whistle blowers the . 2 2 charles little john has become something of a controversial figure in whistle blowers circles. the 38 year old, former contractor with the us internal revenue service was recently sentenced to 5 years in a federal prison for leaking. donald trump's tax returns to the new york times and

to the investigative journalism website, pro public a in 2020 little john also sent the times the tax returns of billionaire a lawn, musk, and others. he said to show that the very rich pay little or no taxes, dividing campaign seized on the revelation to portray trump as out of touch with the working man. it's reasonable people can agree to disagree about whether little john did the right thing or didn't do the right thing. but 2 aspects of this case stand out. first little john sentence of 5 years stands out as unduly harsh, especially having come from a judge appointed by joe biden. and 2nd, in a sentencing statement, the judge said disingenuously, that little john's actions put american democracy at risk. and she compared him to protesters and rioters who took over the capital building on january 6th, 2021. and who tried to overturn the 2020 election? that's absurd, of course, but that's the ugly current political atmosphere in washington. we're very happy to

be joined by line on he's a noted media analyst, substantive expert and conversationalist line. oh, thanks so much for being with us. it's good to see again indeed sure, it's great to be a substantive expert and you are a non substantive. that's the problem. that's the problem. there is so much to talk about on this issue. let's start with the case of charles little john. i personally believe that charles little john is a whistle blower, although at the same time i can actually see why people might disagree with that. so give us your opinion on this case and this little john's motivation matter when determining whether he is a whistle blower. i don't think it matters at all. i'll be honest with you because the, the, it's the action of what you do, not why you did it. and you say the goal is, for example, in law, doesn't matter why i hit you or why unless it,

and the gauge or vitiate shouldn't tend. right? but in this particular case, when you talk about somebody who goes in and he hear, here's the problem. we have somebody who works for a government and an e t by virtue of a variety of natural agreements. you're not to divulge information that could affect the operational integrity of the organization. whether it's the post office or the irish or what have you. right? yes. what is nash rational? but let me ask you this. what happens if i work for a pharmaceutical company or an insurance company? and i find out that does that you, by the way, have a particular disease or the you were denied somebody because of your sexuality or something. and i think, you know, i think society would benefit and i violate several laws, right? like the vote do this. now it does, and i hate to say this, but this is the number one legal, uh, answer it just, it depends. it depends on what these are, but you said, i believe somebody is

a whistle blower. let me ask you something, please determine what you bridge between a whistle blower and a snitch, and a rack, or a confidential informant. i mean is, is somebody who, who basically is caught me and says, look, i will give up my co defendants. if you leave me alone, i don't think that's a whistle blower or is it? i don't, i don't know. it depends upon, i think your culture here, the ation. yes. and then your your intent. and that's, that's really part of the debate because in many of these cases, one man's whistle blower is another man's rat. one of the things that we often hear from prosecutors is that they ask for these ridiculously long sentences as a way to frighten. yeah, there are people who may be considering going public with sensitive information that has always struck me as outrages because 1st of all, there will always be whistle blowers, 2nd whistle blowers are what to help secure democracy, openness, transparency,

and 3rd, and i don't mean to sound cynical, but prosecutors get promoted by pushing for the longest sentence as possible. after all, they can't make careers by asking judges to impose short sentences. oh yeah. so what exactly, by the way, but by the same token, you know, when you have people who are public defenders and people who run for office, i knew in florida where i'm from the public defender run for office. how do you run for an office just by the way, if you vote for me, the person that breaks into your house, unless you're animal light, yes, i'm going to do everything in my power to get them off. still vote for me. what's on here? you know, not, this is a very strange thing, but you know, you, you talk about something um a while back. i'm sure you're aware of this sentencing guidelines came out and the sentencing guidelines this spirit behind it was that we're tired of setting this discrepancy. and we're tired of judges of finding people different, different levels of sentencing, depending upon where they're from. it's like no,

no, no, no, no, this is the judge who sits in and listens to this case. not somebody not in alabama . they hold cocaine differently than let's say california. so what happened was we had this ridiculous sentencing guidelines, which i think was one of the worst days possible because it applies this idea that you could put something into a formula and get an answer. but also, i think society, that should be something kind of commentary right here, where we say, wait a minute, the worst possible, the crimes against humanity, i think, you know, children and murder should get the worst punishment. and somehow a boat gets bitcoin were high, are always critical early. i don't understand and so i'm with you. but let me ask you this again. i'm sure i'm sorry, i'm ruining this because maybe i'm a whistle blower. there's an opening, a wine that all prosecutors do and they tell they tell your is during, during for deer or during opening statement. let's say if you're going to try to boss the devil,

you don't get angels to help you. they don't know. we don't know what they do unless we enlist somebody from within that circle. so you might call them all right, you might come a whistle blower, but how were we supposed to find her? so i don't know what you think about the notion of the pentagon papers, but without ellsberg, you would've never know. how do you think of the julian? the sign is a journalist, not even in my opinion, not even. it was all blower. he's a journalist. so this is not one that we have consisted, we are skipped to frederick in terms of how we a portion of respect and admiration for people who are basically as you say, make society run. why don't you brought to my attention a situation in new york city where undocumented workers, who are injured on the job and who then report their companies to authorities for workman's compensation fraud, can get papers from the government to legalize their work status in the united states i had never heard of such a thing until you pointed out,

tell our viewers what this is all about. it's called deferred action, and it works like this. a lot of these under scrupulous uh, businesses will take these poor. and i say it is sometimes because anybody who's who comes into this country to benefit their family, i got a piece of the american dream. i understood a 100 percent. ok anyway, but, but they'll come in to work in a work site. let's say it's, it's yours and you know you've got this guy from, you know, finish whaler or something and he's illegal. and you, you, you maybe don't equip him with the best safety equipment, right? maybe you don't really care. she hurts himself. and you say, listen, i tell you, well here's a couple of bucks, go to the hospital, don't tell anybody where you are from because they're going to forward you. and normally, if it was a regular, a worker, i'd have workmans comp. i'd have to be union. it'd be all kinds of considerations, better safety consideration. so what they do is they use these people benefit from

their hard work and then when they're injured, they threaten that with you for jason or whatever. so now just call the deferred action, where a d h s. and others and state labor agencies will actually not only protect these workers, but accelerate in green light, a faster application. we just kind of argue that one, but i think in, in, in, in syria make sense. because if you're going to benefit from these people working at sub standard late wages, not paying social security, not enjoying any of the projections you have. you've got to have somebody to help them in india, but they're injured. so it does make sense. however, here's the downside, let's say you own a construction company and, and i, me, the worker. i'm going to say, guess what, gary are good. i'm going to get hurt within 5 minutes a started. mm hm. i'm heart of hearts, right. where's my paper? i mean, i got hurt, i just thought of i got is not paid. so i can see where this could be kind of abuse, where all of a sudden they're dropping things on their face. they're taking,

you know what i mean. so it sounds terrific, but don't think that the criminal minds kid um in to interrupt the, the sagacity of the program. yeah. well, i don't. thank you for these insights. stay with a there. when we come back, we're going to ask final about an even more absurd sentence for an even more important list of lower so say to the . 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 the . 2 welcome back to the whistle blowers. i'm john 3

onto we're speaking with media critic, analyst, and all around well informed guideline all about the different forms that whistle blowing takes line. oh, thanks again for being with us. or indeed, why don't in late january a former c, i a software engineer by the name of joshua schultz, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. after being convicted of sending documents to wiki leeks that have come to be known as volt 7. the c, i a has said that this was the worst breach of classified information in the c i is history. shulty though was adamant that he was not the source of a week. and indeed there was no direct evidence that he had actually done this prosecutor said that there was no evidence because he was such a computer genius that he was actually able, able to cover his electronic tracts. and he was convicted. there's no pearl in the federal prison system and so the shortest sentence that he has to serve is 34 years

. so it's 40 minus good behavior time 34 years of which at least the 1st 14 years will be in a maximum security penitentiary. shulty was accused of releasing evidence of this. the i is ability to turn smart tvs into microphones so that they could even drop on conversations. even with a tv turned off. he was accused of releasing evidence that the c i is able to take over cars by hacking into the vehicles computer system and then to force the car off the road or off a bridge or into a tree. and there were at least a dozen other programs that he was accused of compromising to me. this fits the bill of whistle blower. what are your thoughts? should we fear people like joshua shulty or should we celebrate them as well? for as far as what you just told me, you think about what you just said, i'm thinking myself, well you, you do and present those guys. you give them an award? yes, that's number one. number 2, the to see,

i said this is the worst breach ever. didn't heard you pack. didn't heard you were there already? machines compromise or was it really a breach? if i broke into your home but didn't take anything? i mean, technically that's burglary, but don't you to that you be litigated back or what if for example, i said there is a person who is dead there were, there are no fingerprint, no forensics, no, nothing, no hair, no fiber. what we're going to charge you with giving you a murder. what about the lack of evidence? that's how good you are. you're so self like in your mercury. now you also under federal sentencing, there is no pearl under the truth in sentencing act. you have to serve 85 percent, right. let me talk you about that very quickly. do you know what prison guard say? great. take away the incentive. in the old days, in a regular system, when you would have somebody that says, listen, you play your cards, right? can you g r e work out and maybe save a guards live? we will knock all this time off. learn something help people learn to trade out

there for english. and i said, oh, you're sitting. now you're saying just sit back. and i remember years ago when i was the prosecutor, there was a discussion of should, should we take away weight, lifting and from the presenters because no, because this gave them something to go and the guard would say, no, let me go back to what you're saying. for me, the case of michael hastings just made all of a sudden his car just spread out of nowhere. it seems like what was this about and well, we don't know, we're not really sure. and i love what do you see? i don't want to get conspiratorial, but that is a bit odd. yeah. all of a sudden you pay for a lot of money for a very expensive car that lo and behold does something that a you go doesn't do. you know, it just doesn't make any sense. but let's go back to what we're talking about here . we need these folks. remember in the case of julian assigned, when they said to him, he said i did. and by the way, i and there is a supreme court case called the bar nikki against viper. and it says,

even if you as a journal, this received information that stole it. let's take a showcase information. and when he passed it on, don't know what, what she owes the journalist theoretically, easiest part nicky case except in the case of julian assigns because he said i didn't break any way. you think they came to me. yeah. but you might have help them . and so here is the question. number one, this is what i want everybody to answer. do you america, or do you not? what individuals who are involved in government agencies and offices to never tell you what your government is doing in violation of some rule? do you want that? so if your government, if there is water in flint, michigan or some radioactive chemical, that's it, do you or do you want to live in a whirl? and the answer is, of course no, i want,

especially if it helps me. great. now how do you propose to protect people? are we going to have a i submit, just like we have queen tim legislation, which your, which allows you to benefit in the proportion of money use that you save by, by alerting the government to fraud. well as whistle blowing, quicktime legislation, people make fortunes of that, right? we ought to have almost a separate bureau or some type of a, of a, of a, of a, a tribunal. that determines yes. the information also, did you try any other methods of letting the country know about this? some people do it out of desperation. she'll be able to or not. that's not their 1st move. maybe they want to, uh, a newspapers maybe, maybe, maybe they, they met with people in the agency. listen, boss, you know this stuff is these a, we're, we're, we're, we have um, you know, toasters that blow up and you know,

something that people might want to know. what, what did they do prior to this? is there any, any agency, any, any tribunal that somebody can go to at least determine the legitimacy of it? because i don't want to live, i don't know about you. i don't want to live where, where people are this incentive i, it's right from warning me of my impending dev warning me, of, of somebody that, that, that could kill me in my family. so i think people better know what we're talking about and you want a new name, whistle blower. how about um you know, uh, you know, make shift journalist. what's your journal is to somebody who report somebody who's a reporter, right? we need a different name to his teller. yes, the member number, there's no such thing of being a whistle blower. if it's fake. that's right. it's like, you know, no label is only liable if it's fate. if it's wrong, if it's false, but yeah, never get just, it's just like

a conspiracy theory is always right. and the problem. it's this thing that so these people actually warning us. i've never heard of anybody who was put in prison for a frivolous, unimportant whistle blowing me nothing. you know, when you save the government $0.30 a year on packaging, or, you know, it's always something that's drastic. critical affects people's lives. that's, that's up. so the more time you get in prison, the more important it was for the country to find out about it. think about that. what kind of a message is that? yeah, i think that's exactly right. no, getting back to the notion of long sentences, serving is a deterrence or not serving as a deterrent. i actually find that to be disingenuous. in 1996, when i was working at the c, i a, i sat next to a woman who was having an affair with a journalist with cnn. in the course of pillow talk,

she revealed classified information to him, which he then promptly repeated on the air. the c. i investigated the leak and they immediately found that my coworker was the source. she was not charged with the espionage. she wasn't even fired by the c i a instead, she was suspended without pay for 2 weeks. a strongly worded letter was put in her personnel file and she was not eligible for promotion for one year. that was enough . she never revealed classified information. ever again. what do you think that says about the draconian sentences that we've seen in recent years more than 5 years for reality? winner for example, more than 4 years for daniel hale. now, 40 years for joshua shopping, what are we supposed to take from all that? and this is interesting because this is not a whistle blower. by the way, there's a terrible pun that can be using, but i'm not going to do it because it's

a family show. this is not a whistle blower in the classic sense. this is somebody who actually reveals like a, uh, let's use it was a boy, that's a squealer, a reverse rat. somebody who is, you know, a veritable trader. i don't know what you want to call somebody who is a government agent. who base a summer general portray is got into a little oh yeah, but with somebody perhaps oh yeah, some number that one there which is really forever and already. yeah. and have you know, what didn't you seek? don't you think that somewhere there's some school that they take you do is like no less. here's torture. this is how they want to avoid charger and water board. but when you're in bed with somebody that that's what we're really double down. i'd imagine the training they go through just to simulate that just to make it real like life fire anyway, i'm getting off into this. but what happens is think about this message. she's not

what was her self interest? what was the whistle blower? it says i'm trying to do something to help society shut up, jo, 80 years. no, you don't understand. kids are needing ground glass yo measurements, 80 years. this one is i'm trying to make time with this guy. i'm just trying to impress him. i'm just, i'm not benefiting anybody. i got a big mouth. it's not like welf, crammed. i'm just, i'm just, yeah, i get it up for no reason. this is the worst. this is negligent. it could be if you think about it. treason is you still, you weren't tortured back shack it up. we're in a bad a couple of hits a show. 8 name yeah, yeah, yeah. now what does this tell you? this would be the worst. and by the way, you know that everybody and her division or our area was say, wow,

let's see what imagine what's gonna happen to this one. a letter in her file. yeah . the right and the files apps a great it is about. yes it is. uh huh. yeah. so. so which i double secret probation. i mean does this, this is good. so front of it, this is the worst. what kind of training do, do you think i'm and, and also a message shortly i i hope that if we can, if anybody you're watching this today as they are, i hope people realize they come away from the sticky stuff and make any sense precisely. exactly. that's exactly the point. well, i want to thank our guests be uncomfortable, lionel, for joining us today and for sharing his insights, we were happy to have you line on. and thanks to our viewers for taking the time to be with us. charles louie this how come the on the 18th century, french judge and philosopher, known as month,

a skew once said that there is no greater tyranny. the net which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice. i believe that is exactly what we have seen developed right here in the united states over the past 20 years in its treatment of whistle blowers. what remains is for the rest of us to fight. as edmund burke, one said, all that tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for good people of good conscience to remain silent. thanks for joining us for another episode of the whistle blowers john curiosity of we'll see you next time the. 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 the,

the washington dismisses that fall, michelle statement from moscow that accuses you premium company linked to joe biden . sold ups on spring terror attacks against russia bouts, as a republican senator plus washington for spending too much on your brain. as he calls birds, fox fears dollars to be used on solving marketing, domestic problems. instead, my staff looked into it. it's about 300000000. their best guess from us. right now we're, we're printing our bar and $80000.00 per 2nd. 4.6000000 a minute, we can't sustain that much longer. we gotta find the best way to spend our money. also a head on the program, switzerland. the 9th is me, june of the date for a.