it was a very unique effort, I think in, in, in history really, where a whole bunch of random people online got together and debunked this entire hoax. there's hundreds and hundreds of new pages of stuff which. Absolutely unambiguously shows that US government people, high level officials, including the FBI director and the CIA director were involved in this plot, in, in advancing this plot against Trump. I couldn't believe it. I simply could not believe. That's something so obviously false, so totally laughable, had become this ginormous thing, which kind of completely consumed the presidency and unfortunately

Yep.

diplomacy and foreign relations, and it really derailed the country in a horrible way.

Hello listeners and welcome back to Voiceover Work and Audiobook Sampler. Where do you listen today? I'm excited and to be honest, a little bit nervous to have with this, uh, author Hans Manka, who has, uh, written the book, swift Boating America exposing the Russiagate Fraud from the Steele Dossier to the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane Investigation. a fantastic book. Just released, within the last few months, the audio book just released within the last week or so. As I look at the dates there, Hans, you're more than an author. why don't you take a few minutes, introduce yourself, to the listeners, and we'll take the conversation from there.

Yeah. Hi everyone. And thanks for that, very kind intro. Yeah. As you say, I'm, I guess I'm an author now. I used to be. But in a different capacity. so my background's in law, so I've done law pretty much my whole adult life in some form or another. Both university, law firms, arbitration a different kind of law. all the whole spectrum. And, it was, probably around 2017, that I got immersed into this Russiagate thing. I was a. A full-time law professor at the time, I had, no, nothing to do with any of this stuff, nothing to do with politics, nothing, just completely doing my thing. And, it just, it just was think we all remember probably when that steel dossier came out.

sorry for the interruption there. we'll do some editing on that, listeners, but, we lost some audio for a second. Hans, you were in the middle of your, Leaving from, the law, profession, moving into full-time, reporting really on, on, Russiagate and I guess starting there with the, with what lured you, what interested you in, in investigating this and how that proceeded?

Like many, I obviously was fascinated by Trump's win in 2016, but that, Russiagate was like far away on the horizon. There had been some news reports here and there, barely noticed about something to do with Russia and you, I wasn't really paying attention and then. In early January of 2017, of course, they, they published a dossier or a company called Buzzfeed, published a dossier, which was supposedly the linchpin of the whole thing. Trump being a Russian agent. I remember I looked at this thing and I fell off my chair. That's how laughable it was. it was like as if some child had written it. just on page one, it starts off, has been, Putin has been, recruiting Trump for the past five years later, it changes to eight years. And it's what? This is, this guy was a TV celebrity. He was a, he has his real estate company. What's it got to do with Putin? And then it says, it talks about Michelle Obama that again on the first or second page, and it says, Trump hates her. And I'm like, eh, that, that's child talk. what on earth? And so the whole thing was a complete joke. And yet. The joke grew bigger and all the media and everyone was running with it, and then they had the special counsel. And, I tell that story in, in my book, but as to, all the things that happened. But just going back to what my own frame of mind was at the time, I couldn't believe it. I simply could not believe. That's something so obviously false, so totally laughable, had become this ginormous thing, which kind of completely consumed the presidency and unfortunately

Yep.

diplomacy and foreign relations, and it really derailed the country in a horrible way. bit by bit, if there was any kind of evidence that came out in terms of court documents or, messages that were released under freedom of information laws or anything like that, I would jump on that and start trying to piece apart the lie, because at some point I realized they, they're gonna just keep running with it unless we totally debunk this whole thing. And eventually we got there and the book essentially tells that story. the perspective of just random people on the internet who just got together, people who never knew each other, many of them still don't know each other in terms of personally

Not really.

like that. it was a very unique effort, I think in, in, in history really, where a whole bunch of random people online got together and debunked this entire hoax.

And the, the, as you say, the book does tell the story and tells it extremely well, it's very captivating book. it's frustrating. It's, it's, It just, it really, it, it kind of makes you mad the way things came about and how things were allowed, or even beyond that things were designed to make happen. tell us about some of the people you worked with, because I know they had huge parts in discovering names. Go crawling social media sites, taking little clues and redacted transcripts, and finding information really, fascinating ways. So some, some intelligent and resourceful people that you worked with in developing part of the story.

Absolutely, hugely resourceful people. And, it's just fascinating even just thinking back about how, it all came together and. I should start off with some of these recent revelations, which aren't really revelations. So the Trump administration, Trump 2.0 has, released a lot of this underlying stuff in terms of documentation of this hoax. And, Howard was perpetrated by James Comey, the FBI Director John Brennan, the CIA director, and all that kind of stuff. And the thing, it's partly nice that it's out there, but it's also partly frustrating because. We had unearthed all this ourselves in one way or another over time. So it's weird just seeing the government has now confirmed that everything that we already knew. Now, unfortunately, some people, go around, claiming, that they discovered this or that, and they're like the person who's behind it all day exposed it and so on, and, That's really not true. and it, I, okay, you always have these kinds of people, but what annoys me about it is be, is that this was uniquely different in that you didn't have a, a Woodward and Bernstein. it was like everyone was a Woodward and Bernstein. that's the truth of it. That's what really happened here. And, so for instance, we had, Steve McIntyre. So I'm, I didn't know Steve before I had heard his name before. and we've become very good friends since. And how did that happen? Steve is a Canadian mining executive. he is got, again, nothing to do with

Nothing.

this kind stuff,

Right.

he had some experience with hoaxes and, his story is a fascinating story in and of itself, but, many years ago, 20 or so years ago, he got a leaflet from the government, with the hockey stick on it, the ca the climate hoax, hockey stick. And, being trained, having been trained in math and that kinda stuff, he was like, something's not right. So then he dug into where did that hockey stick come from? And he found out this and that university, this and that study. And then he just started asking for the data because he wanted to do the math on it on his own. then everyone shut their doors and they put up their walls and said, no, you can't have the data. And then the whole thing escalated and escalated. And eventually he actually got some, very incriminating emails on his blog. To this day, he doesn't know where they came from. Someone posted in there that totally exposed the climate hook. I know I'm digressing. What I'm trying to say is

No, not at all.

you had this guy who was already famous in his own right, in that sphere for having debunked the, the climate hoax. And by the way, he did that before these, things were sent on his, or posted to his blog. So he had, published a paper, I think in 2006 where he totally debunked the whole thing, the whole hockey stick. So that's him. That's the guy. And

Wow. Okay.

familiar with the name, but that was it. And then I saw on Twitter that this guy was asking some of the similar questions, or in fact, some of the same questions I was asking in terms of Russiagate many years later. So 20 17, 18. I just reached out to him. I had no idea he'd reply or whatever. You just try your luck. and he replied. And as it so happens, I was teaching, very near to where he lives. it was just total coincidence. And I think it was the next day or so we, we met in person,

Wow.

we probably spent five hours or so. Just talking about Russiagate. It was the, probably the first time I'd actually talked to a real human being in person about it before that was just online and things just took off from there. And, so as as I described in the book, Steve is a very important part of this, but there's many others too. there's one guy called, going by a fool, Nelson. he's a guy who is. Extremely, intuitive in figuring these things out. Like for instance, you have these redactions, so you get the gov, the government gives you these documents, and then half of the stuff is just redacted, so you don't actually know what it says. He just has this knack for. figuring out things and then seeing the bigger picture, and then being able to connect all these dots. he'd be like an amazing, detective investigator. if that was his day job, which, I can say it is not. another guy goes by the name of Walker Fire. again,

a fire.

hugely intuitive, but also just hugely brilliant. for instance, with these redactions. He can tell you how many letters are behind there, or if redact it a hundred percent properly, like a little bit of ink is sticking out at the top on the side or wherever. He'll tell you that's an H and s or whatever. I will, I confess, I can't do that. But, everyone brought, amazing talents, to the table. it was really a group effort and probably the most important thing the group did was identify the so so-called main source, or whom they call primary Subsource. the guy responsible for everything like the Trumpy tapes and the fact that Trump and Putin had this collaboration or collusion, the fact that they had this, secret communications channel, the fact that they've been colluding for eight years. every single story that you can. Think of in terms of Russiagate, it all traces back to this one guy. But the FBI was hiding him. The US government was hiding him. The obviously the Clinton people who had come up with the hoax that were hiding him. Everyone was hiding him. And we as a group said, no, we're gonna try and find this guy. We're gonna try find out anything we can. We got bits of, data from people's books. So some people would write a book on the government side, to make money. some people on the Clinton campaign wrote books. Bits and pieces came out of that. There were some, people, who, in government who were trying to get things out, like text messages or whatever, and it, it was just. tiny pieces of data. the whole story is told in the books. I'm not gonna, get into too much detail here. But eventually, also with the help of another guy goes by not me, some other guy. I don't actually know his real name. but he's a good guy, talk many times and so on. he we had all these puzzle pieces and then, so this guy comes up and says, yep. that's, that must be him. And he, I explained in the book how that happened, how he figured out that this Super Source was a guy called Igor Dan Chenko, a Russian guy who didn't live in Russia and had no access to any of this information. And, had just made everything up. And as soon as we realized who this guy was and the fact that he had no access to any information and he was just a joker really, it was very eye-opening. And I have to say by that point. Our eyes were already wide open, but still, it was just how can you run such a massive hoax that goes on for so long that sabotages diplomacy, foreign relations, US politics in general completely, eaten up by this hoax. it all traces back to someone who knew nothing about anything. And anyway, identifying that guy, finding out his name, that's what our group did. And, I did many others I could name, but, those are some, off the top of my head who were part of that.

Yes. Thank you for that. it's interesting in the book, the cast of characters that are included in this book everywhere from some of the most intelligent and influential people in the world, to some of the more scheming. people that are maybe kind of in the middle of it, that were looking for ways to, to accomplish something, but really even down to kind of innocent bystanders who got named as being part or, and I forgot the name of, there's a Russian female that was referenced as a. A girlfriend of somebody and she supposedly then had great Putin insights and a lot of these people that were reportedly had Russian and Putin information that ever lived in Russia, were nowhere near Moscow, had no political influences, so people getting dragged in that really had nothing to do with it except for a Russian sounding name, and, and probably spoke Russian, maybe maybe traveled to Russia a time or two.

Yeah, that's right. Olga, Poland Sky is just a. A

you.

student in London and just got dragged into it. the most egregious example is probably that of Sergei Milian.

Hmm.

he has nothing to do with Russia. He's from Belarus, but he came to, the US in, when he was, in his early twenties, or late teens, something like that, to study. he became an American. This was all a long time ago. And, he built a business, a successful business, a real estate business. And, he was doing very well. But his Achilles heel, not his fault in any way is, was his success because he had one sold Trump apartments in, Fort Lauderdale, or near Fort Lauderdale. And, He because of that, there were photos of him with Trump. of course, if you're a realtor and you are selling

Absolutely.

you've shaken the guy's hand and so on, it's, that's a cool thing. You want to advertise that fact. And, but unfortunately, they turned that against him, by just, they just framed him. They just smeared him. They said, here we have a guy whom we have photos with Trump of we, he has a Russian sounding name. He has a Russian sounding accent. He had something to do with Trump, and we're just gonna say he's the source for all this stuff. And then they just made it up. They said he was so they that this Igor Dan Chenko that we just talked about, he then claimed he had gotten all his information from Serge Milian. Totally not true. Dan Chenko or the Clinton campaign or whoever told 'em to make stuff up just made it all up. Everything was totally made up. But because they needed like a real human being, being the source, they just picked out this poor guy, Sergey Milian, and they said, They did it to others as well. there's another Russian lady called Erlana Kova. They did it to her as well. But Milana always come back to, because it's like the most extreme example you could ever think of. A guy who's just doing his work as a realtor. It's got nothing to do with anything. Suddenly they say, you're the guy who told us about, all this collusion. And you're the one who told us about, Trump and, Putin having a secret communications channel, and you told us about the P tape and so all the things that are under dossier supposedly, go back to Serge million. Of course, none of them do. They were all just made up.

And it was, there's so many names and I, I. Obviously read the book. it's different, you know, when you narrate a book, it's not like you're reading for comprehension. You can't go back and, you can, but it really affects the process. You go back and say, what was that paragraph? To make sure I have all the names right. So forgive me when I misquote or if I have some of the details wrong. But, this, min, did he even meet with, Dan Chenko or, or Steele or any of the appropriate people or was that was there

didn't

Exactly. Thank you.

He had no contact, just nothing whatsoever. it's as if they just picked the guy out of the phone book, and said, okay, he's gonna be our patsy. And they just ran with that. they.

really scary.

It is now. In fact, the reason why we were able to announce that it was Igor Dan Chenko for sure. Once we had put all these puzzle pieces together, we still didn't want to go public unless we actually a hundred percent knew, is we asked, Sergey Milian, Hey Sergei, have you ever come across a guy called Igor? Dan Chenko was, no, never heard that name. then we asked him, and search your inbox. Just search all your old emails or whatever. And he found some emails from 2016 where this guy, Dan Chenko had, tried to set up a meeting and, He got a lot of emails. He just ignored it. In fact, he said in retrospect, there was something in, in the, in, in the first email that just immediately stood out as being just so wrong, so bad that he just completely, just totally ignored it. which was that? and Chenko asked him for, to meet, like he just made up some pretense about we gotta discuss business and over a beer. And Sergei was like, no serious person. No person who's ever done actual business deals is gonna cold call someone and say, Hey, let's go and meet for

Right.

just doesn't happen. So Sergei, very astutely, just ignored it. Totally forgot about it. Even during the time when we were trying to find Dan Chenko and even when he was being targeted and so on. It never occurred to him that this one email out of, thousands was the guy that, that, this was the guy who framed him. he had no idea, but it was good for us because, once we knew that this guy had sent him this unsolicited email, we knew, okay, we got the name right. That is the.

Fascinating. And just to be clear for our listeners, you have spoken of minion, you've spoken with a lot of the primary characters in the book and the, you say you, you have his emails. I mean, you have like the source emails, the original things. These are not, things that you. You know, have rumors about, but the actual source verified, versions of all these conversations and the unanswered emails and so forth, which I find, really quite a piece of investigative work.

I think, I've written books before, but they're all academic. So everything I've ever written, or. Written before this was academic. So of course you have to follow, a certain convention, a certain procedure, so you have to footnote everything. you cannot say, you cannot make any kind of factual claim of any kind without saying where it came from. it's, to, to just fiction authors or even nonfiction authors who are not trained in that. They just, if it's a very obvious fact, why would you wanna do that? Why would you wanna do that at all? it just seems so, so weird. But in a way it's how I of programmed. everything had to be footnoted, everything had to be checked, everything had to be confirmed. And, we ended up with something like 650 or so, something like that, footnotes, which, at the time, and I have to say, when I wrote it, this, we didn't know that President Trump was gonna get reelected. We didn't know that at

Right.

the book came out in October. 2024. it was partly intended as a, As as memorializing what actually happened. So that, let's say it all goes bad. And, the, we never have this full exposure that at least there is a record of what actually happened where people in 20, 25 years or whatever from now can go back and say, Hey, There's this document, everything is linked, and so on and so forth, and retrace our steps. now I guess we, that part is less important because we have the government that recently came out with a lot of this stuff and confirmed all this stuff.

And what you said at the beginning of that answer, draws me back to something we spoke about toward the top of the podcast. you say every writer should have that. as a part of their process, putting their footnotes, documenting and, and proving, you know, with the source material. Of course not everybody does.

Yeah, that's true. look, I don't think, I think footnotes can be a distraction. I'm not, personally, I have to admit, if I read a book, I'm not necessarily always looking

not cross checking all those things. Yeah.

For there not to be any, that's fine. But a minimum, and this doesn't really, as you say, doesn't really happen much anymore. a lot of stuff is accepted as nonfiction when there's just simply no proof that it is nonfiction. a lot of these characters like, the Steele Dossier. I don't even wanna call him originator, the sort of, the guy who lent the, his name Christopher Steele to the Steele Dossier, he wrote a book. it's just all made up stuff. And, all these other characters even talked about how the Steele dossier, how that all came about. we talked about, we started at the end of the chain with Milian, the fake source, and then the next guy along was Igor Chenko. the Russian who supposedly. Got all this stuff out of Milian. And then the next one along was Christopher Steele, who had been commissioned to write this thing. again, just all made up and then everyone used the next guy along as their patsy. So Steele said, oh, I don't know anything about anything because it's Chenko told me. And Chenko said, oh, I don't know anything Milian told me. And then, one further up the food chain from Steel was, a group called Fusion, GPS. these are political operatives in Washington dc, former Wall Street Journal, journalists, and they wrote a book. And again, I'm like, no, I don't believe anything you say because there are no primary sources here. Why should I believe what you say? And of course some of the in, in government people like John Brennan wrote a book. James Comey wrote a book. James Comey wrote several books and yeah, it is a problem when people write books and the, supposedly these books are, nonfiction, but there's no way to prove that. And so in a way, you you do need the footnotes unless you have, total trust in the author that they're not gonna lie to you.

So you're working your way up the chain from, minion, up to, steel who. Since he was a British, since he worked for MI six, he's suddenly a James Bond figure, which that because of its Hollywood esque sounding name, brings some credibility to a lot of people, fusion GPS. And then once you get to Fusion, you're real close to the, Clinton campaign itself. Is that correct?

Yeah, but they, there's still two layers. So then you have

Still two layers.

called Perkins Coy, and a lot of people have heard, of course about of, mark Elias, who was the head honcho there at the time. And he had his sidekick, a guy called Michael Sussman, and they were the Clinton campaign lawyers. But they were also in this law firm. so anything they did, they could just claim legal privilege or we're not gonna give any information on anything. So when they hired, fusion GPS kinda one further down on the food chain, They could just disavow because they could just say, we're a law firm. and in fact they billed it as legal services, which obviously it was not. And later on they were fined many years later. But it's just like a sort of a slap on the wrist. they had to pay a fine for, mislabeling that item. And then one further up from law firm, of course, is the Clinton campaign, but I'd say the Clinton campaign isn't. Hillary Clinton herself, yet that's one further step because

Another step.

these are just my campaign people. I don't know what they were doing and so on. So I dunno, we, where are we? Like 7, 7, 8 levels

At least. Yeah.

So that, that's why it's so hard to get these people, get Hillary Clinton for what she did here because, as I just said, everyone, she can claim eight layers of deniability further down. it's more difficult to do that.

And it's funny on if you come back at the other way from it. You take, characters in the book like Carter Page or Papadopoulos, who are many steps removed from Trump, but a rumor about them is attributed directly to Trump. Everything, you know, Hillary's level, shield, and I, whatever the top is, you know, those label all shield somebody and they could say, they said it, they said, and pointed it down the line. But when you're coming from the media, if Carter Page said something, that's a quote from Trump is how they wanna present it.

That is such a good point. I think I might be mistaken, Matt, I think Carter Page has never, ever met Donald Trump. certainly not during the campaign. They had this one meeting where he was not in attendance and that was it. and George Papadopoulos met him exactly once, but not one-on-one or whatever at a, in a big room. At a big table.

right.

and you're so right that. the media uses this one. There, there was a photo of that table where there's Papadopoulos somewhere at the end, and then Trump is on the other end, and there's all these other people there. But, supposedly Papadopoulos is like Trump's best friend and, they're coordinating everything and so on. It is just, it's absolutely laughable, but that's what they got away with.

Armenian who is even further removed with a, a real estate dealing with 10 or 15 years prior or five, 10 years prior. Just happened to be in a, in a, in a picture. Yeah. It, the selective editing and selective reporting that, mainstream press, does is, is really misleading and, and probably purposely so,

Absolutely, they'll always revert back to, a position where they don't have to give up the overall narrative. as you say, okay, maybe there was no collusion, but there was definitely interference and, And that's where we are now. And the, there are, a few things that they grasp and hold onto. I'd say probably the most important one is this, the story that the Russian government hacked the Democratic National Committee June of 20. 16. supposedly the hacking started, this, whatever happened there, earlier in April, may. But, anyway, in June of 2016 is when it supposed, when the Washington Post reported about it, I write about this in the book and, then, we were off to the races in terms of the Russian government did this. To this day, there is no evidence. Absolutely no evidence. No evidence has ever been presented that actually happened. And they run with the narrative. They stick with the narrative. So they say, maybe the part about Trump wasn't true, but the Russians did that and they did that to help Trump. They're still trying to hold onto that part. So as these things fall apart, I think the. The one that will eventually fall apart will be, and has been the whole of this year basically is the idea that they did it to help Trump, which again, I talk about this in the book as well. It is just so ludicrous. No one in Moscow really thought that Trump was gonna be president. Maybe there was a 10% chance or something like that. Hillary was way ahead in the polls. people just need to go back to October of 2016. Just go back in your own minds as to, this Access Hollywood tape that came out

Mm-hmm.

said all these, misogynistic things. The media wa was completely apoplectic, obviously, as they always are. But the thing is, Hillary was way ahead in the polls and jumped on that weekend as well. And everyone was saying Trump is done. Trump is buried. Even his own party, they were discussing. Getting rid of him and having him replaced with Pence or whoever. many people were talking about that. So the idea that somehow in Moscow there were people who knew that none of this would come, true and instead, Trump would emerge victorious. how could Putin influence whether Hillary was gonna campaign in Michigan or not? Which he decided not to, or Wisconsin, or which he decided not to. it's got nothing to do with Putin. So the idea that Putin had some special insight is just so ludicrous. Obviously he didn't do it to, if he did do anything, he didn't do it to help, Trump win because that was just such a long shot that it, if anything, and this is some of the new information that's come out that is actually like new that we couldn't have uncovered because it's based on, intel that just wasn't available. They were actually, if anything, they were holding back because they thought, she's gonna be president so we better have some, dirt or whatever. That's probably the wrong word, but, we better have some stories about her, if and when she becomes president. I think that's gonna fall by the wayside. But then we're still gonna probably be stuck with the, they did something and the something might be the, or I think is gonna be the one that they keep coming back to, which is the Russia hacked the DNC. That's, that's the story. Again, there is no evidence for that. Now, I don't, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you Russia did not hack the DSE. I don't think they did. But what I can say for certain is there is no evidence that they did. That's where we stand. And in fact, anytime that anyone who said that, that's what happened. For instance, a company called CrowdStrike, that did the, the sort of the IT work for the DNC, they said in 2016, oh, Russia hacked the DNC. the CEO of CrowdStrike was later called a year or two later was called to Congress to testify about what he knew. And he said, I don't know anything. as soon as he was under oath, it wasn't Russia, or at least he couldn't say anything at all. So that's the thing. Unfortunately, I, it's probably gonna take a long time to get rid of this in the broad public's perception altogether, and we may never get rid of it. there will be lasting damage in terms of Russia did something in 2016. If we just distill it down, down to those few words, Russia did something in 2016, we might never, ever be able to, transcend that.

And even along those lines, the same thing we talked about with the separation before. Russian hackers did not mean the Russian government.

Yeah.

If they, you know, if there was just because someone from Russia might have hacked something, or Belarus, I should say. You know, we don't need any real facts, we just need some allegations. Some organizations feel that they can throw out there with the things that are coming out. Now, your book, again, the, the things tsi, Gabbard and, and Cash Patel are, are putting out into the public maybe a two-pronged question, and this draws back on your legal, background. What do you think? Well, let's do it the other way. What do you hope Will, will come of this as far as, repercussions for those involved. And what do you think? Is it going to make a splash and then go away? Will it, will there be some very, high level people that are taken to task for what they've done?

I'm not confident that's

I.

happen. we had some, hope earlier this year where, they released, as I said, they released one or two new things and we touched upon some of them here today, but. in overall, they just confirmed what we already knew, but that's still valuable because you have the US government confirming that the whole thing was a hoax. that's a big thing. That's a big step to

Right.

so

Yeah.

And so with that came the hope that the people in the US government who were responsible for that, who've now been exposed, and again, this is not just Tulsi Gabbard or Cash Patel saying it, they actually released the underlying documents,

Okay.

and primary source documents. It's always the most important one. The actual, FBI three oh twos, which is the interview reports or the actual, intelligence that came out, verbatim and what, or whatever it is. They released it all. there's hundreds and hundreds of new pages of stuff which. Absolutely unambiguously shows that US government people, high level officials, including the FBI director and the CIA director were involved in this plot, in, in advancing this plot against Trump. that is, there's incontrovertible evidence of that. So of course when that happened, people were like, oh, great, now we're gonna see arrests. Now we're gonna see all these things. And it's been a few months and we haven't seen anything. And in fact, recently, in August, a very important deadline passed, in, in, unfortunately, in, in the legal system, or fortunately, there's two sides to this, but there are time limits

Right.

new usual time limit for a federal law is five years. Five years after something happened, you can no longer charge someone.

Okay.

misconception about this that some people think, oh, it's five years after you found out about it. so the five years would start ticking now, but unfortunately that's not how it works. The five years start ticking from when it happened. Even if you never ever found out about it. Now, some crimes are not part of that, time limit. Again, there's all kinds of historic reasons for why there is a time limit and why some are covered and some most are covered and some are not, and so on. But generally speaking, unfortunately, the stuff we're talking about here, and I know people throw out treason and whatever, but let's just be realistic in terms of what happened here. You're pretty much stuck to the five year time in, in some form. I know there's nuances and people are gonna say, but the five years can reset. And yeah, I know all that, but it's just, we had a very important five year deadline that just passed, which was, John Brennan, the CIA director, had given a very long interview, to the special counsel five years ago, full of falsehoods. That would've been a fantastic, basis to charge 'em upon, and they just let that day pass without anything. Now again, some people are gonna say. it doesn't matter, they're gonna find something else and yeah, the hope springs eternal and so on. But if you let something so important pass, then that does tell me that, maybe this is not as real as serious as some people, hope it is. The other thing people say, as I just alluded to, they'll say, oh, you can reset the clock. Yeah, you can find ways of doing that. but it just makes things so much more difficult and it gives the other side, the defendant so many possible defenses to getting the case thrown out. It just makes things completely complicated. So go with the easy, straightforward thing, which is bring the charges within five years and they fail to do that. So to answer your question, I'm very pessimistic that we're gonna see actual accountability.

Yeah, yeah. Sadly that's, the way of it. So many times. I wanna ask a question, a very general question from the devil's advocate side of if we still have listeners that are not, supportive of your work or still want to disbelieve your work. I, I don't know if you've done many podcasts with, People that disagree or try to argue the points with you, but what are some of the primary things that people use? if you're willing to share these or if you want to answer this question, if not, just say so. that people use to argue against the things you brought forth. Do they accuse you of things? Do they, do they have other information they hint toward or have, will make available? Just outta curiosity. Do you have a lot of people that are pushing back against the information you're presenting?

So a couple of points on that. No, not many. I, to be honest, I can think of one group of people right now and I'll get to them here in a moment. But in terms of just, broad audience or whatever, no.

Okay.

and again, I think that's probably because everything is footnoted. So if,

Yes.

that anything is

Okay.

just go and. Check out what it says in the footnote. and then I will take you to the source document. And then you'll see that whatever I quoted or said or whatever is true. that's actually what happened. funny because there was a group of people who were a little bit incredulous. I don't, I hope they don't mind me saying this about some of the claims. And then they, did come back to me and wanted me, even though there was a footnote, they still wanted me to. Okay, just confirm are you really sure? Is this really true? and that's actually the original editors. Of the print version. So when they did

Oh really?

original editing round, there was like, for instance, some of the Hunter Biden stuff, what he got away with. some of that is detailed in the book because there's some overlap between these Russiagate and Hunter Biden investigations. And, there's also some overlap between the Ukraine situation, Ukraine impeachment situation, and Russia. Again, it's all, of the people involved are the same people over and you, so you have this overlap. There, there are parts in the book where I talk about the Hunter Biden situation and what he was up to and. I remember that. I was like, no, that, that couldn't have happened. no. And I was like, are you really sure that is true? And it really was. Or, some of the, the text messages, the incriminating text messages from some of these FBI personnel, people have heard about the obvious ones where they, talk about, will stop Trump. Peter struck one of the FBI investigators, the lead investigator, texted that. there's also some that maybe have not been, shared as much in the media and, people haven't heard. And then I got some questions on that, like that's not, did they really say that? Another big one, that's been, that actually was confirmed this year by, Tulsi Gabbard, but that's already in the book. That's all in the book is the one where all these people that, by all these people, President Obama, John Brennan, CIH Chief, James Comey, Peter Struck, whom I just mentioned, all these big hon shows, leading the charge against Trump. They actually knew that this was a clin Hillary Clinton campaign hoax the whole thing. They knew that at the time, back in 2016. again, I described in the book Why and how and so on. And, anyway, I know I got, I remember I got, several questions on that one. no, they couldn't have known. That's not possible. And they did know. Yeah, that, that's it's funny, isn't it, that the people who are supposed to, work with you on the book, they're, they were the ones who were, the most kind of, incredulous about some of these claims. But, everything checked out. the other thing I should mention here, it's to do with your question is. supporters or supporters of Trump generally. some people are not happy with the title or have questions about the title, so that's probably the, if there's negative comments, it's usually about the title,

Hmm.

of course people remember swift boating as something

Right.

done. to, John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign, not by his opponent, president Bush, 43, but by a group of ve Vietnam veterans. And what they accused, Kerry of is, basically, in Vietnam. he was a commander of a swift boat and, he got some purple hearts and things like that, and they said there was, his stories weren't true and, getting, a lot of detail to what happened back in, 2004. And I guess some of it stuck because, he came back from Vietnam and he was a big anti-Vietnam protestor. He was one of the leaders and so they, they made that stick. Now, personally, I never. I don't know what, which part of that is true or not, or whatever,

Okay.

as far as John Kerry is concerned, just my personal view is. actually went there, he actually got shot at, so whatever you think of the guy that actually happened, he was a commander on a swift boat. He was in these, I've been to Vietnam many times. I've been to those areas. Those are horrific areas. If you're on a tiny little boat and you're being shot at, that's no fun. So he did that. can hate the guy or not, or whatever. That's what actually happened. But the point about the ni, the name Swift boating and because he was the swift boat, commander back there is. the, I'm the, I didn't make it into a kind of a negative thing. It's the Hillary Clinton campaign themselves who did that because they called their campaign against Trump, the 2016 campaign or smear, job against Trump to, smear Trump as, as, as Putin's puppet, as for Russia collusion. Just in as, as simple as possible, the Swift Build project, the Clinton campaign Swift Build project, which they themselves called their own swift build project, to smear Trump as, colluding with Russia. They came up with that. So obviously they were using the word in a sense of we're gonna come up with this story that smears Trump, and I think they were. Thinking back to 2004, where they thought, Hey, our buddy John Kerry, he got smeared and now we're gonna do it to, to Trump. So to, in my view, I see where people say, okay, swift building is something that, Kerry deserved it or whatever. I know, I don't necessarily agree, but I see where these people are coming from, it's the. Clinton campaign who themselves called it that. They admitted it. They admitted that it's a smear. So the what's behind the name is that it's by, by design. a fabrication by design, A plot against Trump, by the Clinton people who called it that. It's, they came up with the name. Now the working title was actually Swift boating Trump. But then somewhere along the line, somewhere in chapter 8, 9, 10, whatever, I was like, you know what? This is really much bigger

It's bigger than that.

is,

Hmm.

Swift voted America, not just Trump. So then that the title changed.

And it is fascinating,

I.

when you look at it in the light of why you changed the title. Just the, the possibility of the real long-term damage on a global scale just because of now, difficulties with Russia and distrust and so many things. you know, we, we blame Russia for so long about these nebulous things and diplomacy falls apart and things change and, it, it really is sobering. let me ask you one last question. this is a podcast in, in my, early stages of podcast. Of course, you read and they say, always finish out your podcast with a call to action, you know, or have your call to action in there. And when I read the book, I find a couple of personal things that I think are important, but I'd like to, I, I'm gonna throw these out there, but if you have calls to action what you would like people to do because of this book, or if there is actions they wanna take, I mean, when I read it, I realize I need to think critically about. The material that I take in when I read a headline or see an article, you know, if, if people early on in this process had pushed back and said, what's real, what's factual things would've turned out differently, most likely. you know, so that, that's one thing I see is that we need to pay more attention to what's being reported to us as consumers and make sure that what we're believing is actually believable. what other do you have? Other, do you agree with that? For one, do you have other calls to action that you would like people to implement because of your book?

Yeah, no, I, I completely agree with you. I think we have. The, I have a broad one, but I also, let me start off with a very specific one. I don't know how much, any one person can do, other than President Trump himself, but, maybe broadly something can be done and that is that there are still people, victims out of this thing. We talked about Serge million, we talked about many of these other people. There are still people still currently, dealing with the fallout from this. there's one guy, who, we haven't talked about, general Flynn, for instance. he,

Hmm, that's right.

story upon himself. He actually has a great new movie out, so people can watch that and see what that story is about. I talk about his story in a book and detail that as well, but he had a client and the client was, was targeted, by these Russia collusion hoaxes, simply in order to get him to say bad stuff about Flynn. And then they could have used that to get Flynn to say bad stuff about Trump, and that client is still under indictment. Mueller indictment, special Council, Robert Mueller, the guy who is now, declared senile and supposedly never ran anything and the whole thing was a hoax. they still have, that case going. They have another case going to do with what we talked earlier about these, this DNC hack, which they're using that case to hold up freedom information and so on. This is a case against a bunch of Russians, who you know, again, there's no evidence that did anything, but they hold out. They say, oh, we got an open case here. Therefore we cannot do freedom of information and then we cannot find out stuff. On a specific level, I would love for all these cases, these Mueller era cases, the holes, all these Russiagate collusion hoax cases, just to be terminated. DOJ should just end these cases today. On a broad level, I'm completely with you here. we had the rush. We had the Iraq WMD hoax, which by the way ran along very similar lines. They also had their own Igor Dan Chenko back then. a guy called Curve Ball, that was his, his. code name and he supposedly he's, he'd seen the WMD and he'd seen all these trucks with the, these mobile WMD, labs and all this kind of stuff. It was all made up. It was totally made up. And then after that, they, after that whole fiasco, they said, we're gonna do better next time. And. They didn't do better. They did it again in Russiagate. yeah, I think it's fool me once, fool me twice, kind of thing. And now we're at three times

Right.

not buy into hoaxes. should just be much, much more, careful with what they're told and just circumspect about all these things, which I think they are. I think we've really turned a corner in general. people are far more skeptical of anything the government says, than they were. Back in the WMD days and also since, since Russiagate. So I think we're getting there. But that would be, to me, that's the big takeaway. I.

Myself included, far more skeptical of what. The government, what the press, what anybody says. and part of that comes with age, which I've got plenty of, but, yeah, it's, so many things that we didn't get to today. I, I appreciate your time. You know, we didn't get to talk about the FISA Court or the Fisk and, the FISAs. we didn't get to talk about the Hillary Clinton's emails. so many things that are talked about in depth in the book. The listeners and, and readers really need to pick up a copy of this, this book is endorsed by General Flynn, who you mentioned a few moments ago, a great review by him about your book. so that's a powerful endorsement there, I believe. ladies and gentlemen, listeners, once again, this has been Hans Monka, author of Swift Voting America. The book came out just within the last month or so. Am I correct, Hans?

The audible version. Yeah, that's correct.

Yeah. so, Books available on Amazon, other booksellers. The audio book is available on Amazon, audible, iTunes, and probably other, other fronts as well. Hans, you have a website, hans monka.com that listeners might want to visit to learn more about you and more about the book. You also have a social media presence. on XI looked at YouTube, YouTube channel. That was one of the questions I had earlier. It looked like about the time you started your research here. Your YouTube channel, didn't get the attention because you changed your focus. It looked like you were doing a lot of legal coursework, and then you moved into this, researching. I was hoping to find some things on YouTube, on your YouTube channel, but there's so many interviews and so much good information with you and about you, and about this. I hope it, I hope it opens some eyes and has some effect on the everyday person. And the closing comment, if I could say this, you mentioned, you know, how much is there one person can do? I think your book is an indication of that one person that decided to take this on, to find the truth, determined to find the truth in an honest and reputable way, and not present a spin about it. You've done that, you've put it out in the public. It's getting, I hope. The attention it deserves and, in the minds of the readers and the listeners, I hope it will have the effect, that it should have on us. Hans, again, thanks for being with us and, do you have any final words that you wanna share with our listeners before we close out?

First of all, thanks for having me on, but also thank you for, reading the book. it's weird when you have your own, I've read the book probably 10 times in my own voice because I had to do editing. you read it again and again, as you go through it. And, so this is the first time I heard it, someone else, speaking it. And it was, you really brought it to life. You have a fantastic voice and, yeah. Thanks for that. that was amazing.

Thank you. Well, it's written in such a way that it's easy. to come across as relatable because the, the language is, is there. It's just, it. The, the, your style of writing is very approachable, very understandable. And when you have great material, it's, it's easy to present it, in a, in a pleasing way. So I'm glad you enjoyed it. I hope our listeners will as well check that out. And, I guess that wraps us up for the day. We're right at an hour. Thank you for your time, Hans. I hope you have great success with the book and with the audio book and, Maybe we'll speak again when you have another book come out. I, I'll be looking forward to that.

Love to do that. Thank you.

Great. thank you listeners for being with us on voiceover work and we'll see you next week