Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to talk about truth, defamation, and the out-of-state jurisdiction of Capitol Hill Police offices.
Leahy: We want to talk a little bit about truth. What is the truth? How is it reported? Now we at The Tennessee Star and the Star News Network, we report the truth.
And when we report the truth, the establishment media distorts it and falsely reports what we’re reporting and then calls us misinformation.
Carmichael: Let me ask you a question because I know the standards are high for lawsuits. But if you report on a story, and the facts that you report in your story are provably the facts, and then another outlet proceeds to essentially say that your reporting on that particular story is dishonest, that’s defamatory because they’re publicly saying that you are dishonest.
Does The Tennessee Star have the right to sue? They may have the right to sue, but would they have the prospects of collecting for defamation by news organizations that knowingly falsely report on your reporting?
Leahy: Yeah. That’s a very good question. And the answer is, we have the right to do that. The question is, do you have the financial resources to hire quality attorneys? We have great attorneys, by the way, to file the lawsuit.
And do you want to take that much time away from your duties or my duties as the CEO of the entity? That’s where we are right now.
But let me illustrate this, and it is irritating that so many members of the establishment media blatantly lie about what we report. Blatantly lie.
For example, so here’s a headline from the National Public Radio, NPR, story. It said, “How pro-Trump local news sites keep pushing 2020 election misinformation.”
Well, that’s the first lie. We’re not pushing misinformation. We have factual reporting.
Then there’s a group called the American Press Institute. They told basically three lies about us in just a couple of sentences. I’ll put a number in front of each lie and I’m going to read these articles to you.
The Georgia Star News, founded just after November’s presidential election, is part of the Star News Network. A web of pro-Trump websites that, lie number one, mimic the look of local news websites.
Eight Star News sites are distributed among swing states, churning out, lie number two, false content that claims former President Trump won in November.
And, lie number three, proof of massive voter fraud will be uncovered. Those are the three lies in two sentences about our reporting.
First, mimicking local news. We have 17 writers in eight states and each writer will do two or three stories a day. Any of our titles will have anyways, two to four local stories a day. Locally based.
Carmichael: Okay.
Leahy: Now we’ve never claimed that former President Trump won in November. We have stated that in six battleground states, the election procedures were unlawful. And we’ve proven that.
We’ve proven that in Georgia that they have no chain of custody documents for 316,000 absentee ballots. And we have never – I never – said that there is, “Proof of massive voter fraud will be uncovered.”
We haven’t said that. What we’ve said is that the available public documents are not consistent with lawful election procedures, and therefore, it was improper for the Secretary of State of Georgia to certify the election. That’s what we said.
Carmichael: Okay. Well, then everything that your paper has reported is based in fact.
Leahy: And demonstrated in fact.
Carmichael: Demonstrated. And in fact, you have gone to greater lengths by asking the state of Georgia to provide you with the documents that would support their case.
Then the local NPR station, I think it was claimed in Georgia that they had given the very documents that you had requested, had given it to them.
But then they refused to give them to you and gave them to somebody else who now says they are sealed.
Leahy: The Secretary of State, it told us that none of the documents are available. Georgia Public Broadcasting claimed they got them part of the documents from the Secretary of State.
And Fulton County, Georgia – on June 14, we told them 24 percent of these chain-of-custody documents are missing. Three days later, purportedly they gave those documents to Georgia Public Broadcasting. Still here on July 9, we have not received them.
Carmichael: Okay. Let’s give another story on the question of truth. The Capitol Hill Police.
Leahy: Yes.
Carmichael: Has now announced that they’re going to be opening offices in Florida and California, and they’ll be opening more after that.
Leahy: They’re just supposed to be protecting the Capitol. But now they’re basically an inquisition going out to every state in the country to look for people they don’t like.
Carmichael: Right. And the question that I have is what authority does a Capitol Hill Police person have to do anything outside of their jurisdiction?
Let me say this. A police officer from New York City, I don’t believe, has the authority to just come into Nashville and make an arrest.
Leahy: Nor should the Capitol Hill Police have authority outside of Capitol Hill.
Carmichael: Well, they don’t. And so where do they get it?
Leahy: They are making it up out of thin air.
Carmichael: And the Constitution, this was a big issue when Trump said that he was going to the military in to protect federal buildings.
They were being engulfed in flames. But the left claimed that – I think they actually claimed wrongly in this case – that the President of the United States does not have the right to send in military to protect federal buildings.
And that local law enforcement either is unable to do it or unwilling to do it because it’s not permanent in nature. These are going to be Capitol Hill Police.
They’re opening offices. So they’ll be permanent in nature. And so the question is, what authority does a Capitol Hill Police person have in the state of Florida?
Leahy: They have none.
Carmichael: To do anything? Well, they obviously are going to have some.
Leahy: I think they should be kicked out of the state.
Carmichael: They don’t have any authority. Well, that’s the question is, why are they there? Under what law is the Capitol Hill Police allowed to just go open offices and start harassing citizens in the name of protecting members of the House?
It’s also interesting is there are many members of the House who are openly advocating for defunding the police. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: Except the Capitol police going after Trump supporters in states around the country.
Carmichael: Yeah. So the very people who want to put our citizens at greater peril by defunding the police, they’re advocating the expansion of a federal police force for their own use.
Leahy: Crom, insightful, as always. We’ll see you on Monday.
Listen to the third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Capitol Police” by Elvert Barnes. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –host Leahy welcomed Project Veritas’s Managing Editor Nick Givas to the newsmakers line to talk about their recent Twitter ban after releasing a video exposing CNN’s technical director brag about rigging and manipulating its viewers against Trump.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker lined by Nick Givas, the Managing Editor of Project Veritas. Nick, welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.
Givas: All right. Thanks for having me.
Leahy: So James O’Keefe has been banned from Twitter one day after your stunning expose of the technical director of CNN who basically said what everybody knew that they were trying to defeat Donald Trump. Will James O’Keefe be suing Twitter and CNN, as some reports say?
Givas: Yes, it appears that we are going to go forward and seek our remedy in court. That’ll play out, obviously over the weeks and months ahead. But it appears that we’re going to go on offense and forge ahead with that.
Leahy: Now, James O’Keefe’s and the Project Veritas Twitter account had what, one and a half million followers?
Givas: The Veritas account may have. That was suspended before my time in joining the group. But James’s personal account was close to a million followers and was over 900,000.
Leahy: Wow. And so it looks to me like if Twitter finds a conservative that they don’t like, they just ban them. What on earth is going on with Twitter?
Givas: I can only speculate into the mind of what Jack Dorsey is thinking. I do not know. But I can say that for the grace of God and for your listeners because eventually, I believe it seems we’re on a slope or it’s not just conservatives that are going to get banned it’s anyone that gets in the way of a narrative that gets in the way that Twitter doesn’t like. you don’t have to be conservative. It could be anyone.
Carmichael: Naomi Wolf certainly is not a conservative and she was banned from Twitter.
Leahy: Yes. She has been.
Carmichael: Now, quick question. You said that you think you’re going to also in addition to suing Twitter sue CNN. What is the basis? I know that you all have exposed CNN.
Givas: Defamatory statements are the basis and I’ll leave it at that.
Carmichael: Okay, so CNN has made statements that you all believe are defamatory. And is that prior to or after your recent exposure of CNN’s deception?
Givas: I can only say stay tuned. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: This is a wise man. There is litigation going on.
Givas: Ongoing. Ongoing.
Carmichael: Well, you have many people in your corner on your ongoing litigation. So anyway, good luck to you.
Givas: Thank you, sir. We try for the truth. That’s all we want.
Leahy: The claim by Twitter was that James O’Keefe was using fake Twitter accounts. Is that true, or did they just make that up?
Givas: He tells me no and I’ve seen and experienced nothing like that. I’ve never seen James keep or operate a false account. He says he’s never done that. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just a reason to throw him off. But again, we’re trying to figure that out. And the answer we were given was very broad and it seemed very random all of a sudden.
As I said, I’ll leave it to the American people. l’ll leave it to them to decide why this happened and the timing. But yes, we’ve come out with three bombshells videos showing a CNN technical director bragging about how the network is propaganda, how it manipulates people, and how it was basically shilling for Black Lives Matter. And then all of a sudden he gets banned.
Carmichael: I found what you all got them to talk about with them exaggerating the numbers on COVID.
Givas: That too. And then saying they’re going to pivot from COVID, and this is Charlie Chester, a technical producer there, claiming the network knew that people are tired of COVID and now they’re going to switch to climate change as if it’s Wheel of Fortune or some game show for them.
Carmichael: For them it is.
Givas: At least Charlie Chester, this director, and his claims that the culture is such. Let’s find out. Let’s see if anyone else is there that wants to come forward and they can send any information to Veritastips@protonmail.com. And if it isn’t just him, more people will come forward. They will and it isn’t the first time.
Leahy: Nick Givas, you’re the managing editor of Project Veritas. What does the managing editor do at Project Veritas?
Givas: Without getting into too much detail I can say that I work with production on videos sometimes. What we’re going to keep and what we’re going to actually publish. Sometimes we get information that might be borderline that we have to decide as a team, are we going to publish this? Is it newsworthy? Is it true?
A part of that includes traveling on the road. Part of it includes talking to find people like yourself and just giving interviews. But people know where we are at as much as we can tell without blowing the cover of our people or interfering with their work. And in addition to that, it’s just anything and everything. I try to just work to help the company as much as I can to expose the truth. And part of that also involves things like this. We’re releasing stories such as this because we feel it’s in the public’s best interest.
Carmichael: I have a question for you that I’m just asking for your best guess if you choose to make a guess. If The New York Times produces 100 different stories and each of those stories is based on an unnamed source, how many of those stories do you think are based on a legitimate source and how many do you think are based on either no source at all or a friend of a friend of a friend who is the so-called unnamed source?
Givas: Well, that’s what we hope to find out with this lawsuit through depositions and discovery. And through this lawsuit, if we’re able to look inside The New York Times for the first time or have them answer honestly perhaps we’ll start to find out how many of those sources were real.
Carmichael: That’s right. You have a lawsuit.
Givas: We do.
Carmichael: What can you tell our listeners, if anything about that lawsuit? Because I know that you won at the New York State Supreme Court.
Givas: Yes we did. We got past the motion to dismiss and that does start to open the other side up to having to become involved in the process. The New York Times responded. We were kind of going back and forth on this so far but we do plan to have depositions, and we will depose members of The New York Times that were involved in this particular story before the court. And after that, I think the public is going to learn quite a bit about a media that they’ve trusted for years that has now decided to go into business for itself and not protecting the people and we are going to show why.
Leahy: The Project Veritas groundbreaking approach to journalism kind of addresses that problem of sort of unnamed sources, because you have pioneered the use of undercover videos. So this technical director, this Chester fellow at CNN, cannot deny what he says, because you got it there right on video.
Givas: There’s power in that. It’s visual. It’s not filtered through a lens or corporate advertisers or someone else’s opinion. It’s right there in black and white. And, yes, there is a certain power to that I think that you don’t get with digital media, or print news, or even cable news.
Carmichael: Didn’t you all win a lawsuit years ago, or somebody sued you, claiming that your method…
Givas: We’ve never lost.
Leahy: Never lost! Nick Givas, Managing Editor of Project Veritas, thanks for that first-hand report of what’s going on with that Twitter ban.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.