The Robby Starbuck Show

Robby Starbuck 0:01
Do you ever feel like the whole world has gone insane? Yeah, you're not alone. I feel that way. In fact, the majority of people feel that way. The truth is, we were all sold this great lie, that being part of a silent majority was something we should be proud of being a silent majority, a lot, a very loud, angry group of people that control everything. And problem there is that small group of people, they're communists. I say that myself as someone who's the son of a Cuban refugee, who had to flee communism, I know the reality of how important the American dream is, I know how quickly we can lose freedom. And that's why this is our last stand. I'm your host, Robby Starbuck. And I'm going to be diving deep on the issues and people that matter, so that together, we can save the American dream. And once again, become a loud majority, that steers the direction of this country. If you're with me, and you want to spread truth and wake up the masses, you're in the right place together, one piece of truth at a time, we can save America.

Hey guys, today we've got a guest from what he used to work at the FBI. He's now suspended and has become a whistleblower, against the FBI in terms of all the problems that we've seen coming up, and principally what happened with the January 6 threads. And so I want to just jump right in, if you could introduce yourself, Steve, and let people know why were you suspended? And why did you decide to become a whistleblower?

Steve Friend 1:28
Sure, thank you very much for having me. My name is Steve friend. I've been with the FBI since 2014. Joined Astor few years as a police officer. My first assignment was to Midwest in northwest Iowa and northeast Nebraska, somebody with a law enforcement background. That's not any typical career path for anybody joining the bureau. There I investigated. Indian Reservation violent crimes for about seven years, in that time, had about 200 cases open 150 violent criminals arrested. But after my tourist service, they're relocated to Florida during the summer of 2021 Daytona Beach, which was a resin agency of the Jacksonville field office and took that transfer with the understanding that I was going to be working Violent Crimes Against Children, child pornography investigations, child exploitation, human trafficking, took the transfer worked it for several months, but then at the end of the fiscal year, at the end of September of 2021, was informed that I was going to be rolled over half of the Child Exploitation cases and moved into national security, the Joint Terrorism Task Force that is housed in Daytona Beach, and I was going to be focusing on domestic terrorism that happened. And what I came to find out was that most of the domestic terrorism cases that were assigned to our office pertained to the January 6 cases that were stemming from Washington, DC, my eight year background, and I was pretty familiar with a lot of the criminal investigate procedures and rules that the FBI sets out for itself. And when I started digging into the January 6 cases saw that the FBI was not being consistent with those rules. So I made the decision that I was going to come forward to my supervisor, when we had some pending arrests and search warrants that were going were imminent, and within a week brought my concerns to him and my my theories and having worked through what the motivations for those inconsistencies were said that I didn't want to participate in January 6, said that it was conflict with my my oath of office and and also just the protocols that we were using to bring people into custody, I felt were somewhat abusive. And after I voiced that to my immediate supervisor was walked up the chain of command who eventually the Special Agent in Charge to Jacksonville. And ultimately, they made the determination to suspend my security clearance. So right now I sit in limbo where I am technically an employee of the FBI. I am unpaid, my security clearances, his GA in question at the moment? And are you the only member of the FBI who stepped up and said something about feeling like there was a principle problem, a constitutional problem when it came to how they were treating January 6, and many of the people that have been held in solitary confinement and not given their right to a speedy trial? I'm not having been in suspended status now for for over three months. I've had some opportunities connect with other individuals who are whistleblowers who are suspended agents. And really the scales have fallen away from my eyes somewhat and come to find out that people voiced concerns about it through emails to supervisors, to direct comments to supervisors, and they were suspended or even even terminated so that I'm not alone. I might be alone as having getting somebody who's come forward to the video to address my concerns, but I am definitely not alone there in the suspended realm. And I'm also not alone with folks that I left behind. I talk to the writing file agents and then they've not shared my willingness to necessarily come forward but they certainly share my opinions my sentiments about the way that

The FBI is pursuing the January 6 investigations.

Landon Starbuck 5:03
Where you walk us through that process of you know, was there a factor leading to your decision to come out? And, you know, give a voice to this? And what is that whistleblower process been? Like? How have you been treated? Has it been something that you would still stand by you regret, you know, the pros and cons Share, share with us the ad experience,

Steve Friend 5:21
it's definitely been bizarro world for me for the last three months. So the digits of my my complaint about the January 6 investigations is it should be one case that the FBI works. Instead, they elected to open up a different case, for every single subject, they'd made one case in day 800 to 1000 cases, then they decide to spread those cases around to the field as opposed to working from Washington DC on paper. But in effect, what's actually happening is there's a task force of Washington DC that's giving marching orders to the fields. And basically, that's given the impression and given a statistical back backing to this narrative that the country has seen that there is this rise and domestic terrorism threat around the country in the last couple of years, when really all the sit statistics and back that up are coming from January 6 case. So that to me was really important. I wanted to get that out to as many people as I could see the political spectrum, no matter what's your news source of choices for consumption. I think that that is a major story that people should be familiar with, because the FBI job and its route is law and order. And as in diametrically opposed to that what's going on is the FBI is contributing to raising the temperature of the room. And it's making everybody think that literally half the country are domestic terrorist. And that's, that's a problem. We can't We can't have a country if that's the case. So I've come out and I've tried to talk to the various media, because I think that that's a really important, it hit of information that everybody should be entitled to, again, regardless of who you voted for 2020, or any other election, the actual nature of my complaint process was after I was suspended the next day filed my official whistleblower complaint with the Office of Special Counsel with the Office of the Inspector General, and also provide that information to Senator Grassley, Senator Johnson on the Republican side for the Senate Judiciary Committee, and to Senator Durbin on the Democrat side, he's the he's the chairperson, and also gave information to Jim Jordan, because he has openly talked about receiving lots of whistleblower information. I have since found out that both the special counsel and the inspector general Howard's going to decline to pursue my complaint, they don't deem it worthy. So right now, I'm basically at the mercy of Congressman Jordan holding some hearings next year, and hopefully prioritizing whistleblower protection over other issues that seem to be shiny objects. And then I'm also reaching out to the media because ultimately, I've stuck my neck out, I've thrown my career away on my wanting to be for something that's meaningful, and I genuinely do have a belief that my job is to uphold the Constitution and preserve law and order. And this is going to be the thing I have to do to deal with. And that's the decision that I can make.

Robby Starbuck 8:03
We know this was something I planned to talk about. But since you bring it up, I do think it's important just people know, this is an aside not a question or anything, just just a fact, for people from my own experience in politics. One of the most dangerous things about politics is show commies and we have a whole lot of show counties in Congress, and really in every facet of government who are more interested in getting sound bites, because that's what you get fundraising off of the sound bites than they are and actually making real change happen. And that's something that I would encourage everybody to look into your own rep, look into the people that you give money to look at what real lasting action are they creating through their actions? Are they just moving on every week to the new shiny object that can bring in donor dollars, because if it's just hey, I need this news clip so we can raise more money. That's not a good rep might be a good fundraiser and not a good rep. And I think that's one of the big changes in the future. We've got to see in terms of voters in primaries, they've got to be very watchful of who's a show Kony and who's a workhorse, because workhorses are going to prioritize things that might not be sexy on the outside, they may not be great for fundraising, they might not be the top issue of the day in terms of what the media is covering, but they're the issues that create lasting change. And I think that's something that people have to, you know, be really nuanced and thoughtful about. But you know, moving on to, you know, sort of this, this entire subject, I think goes to one thing for me. I believe that throughout our institutions, we're undergoing an ideological sifting where the administration and power the regime, rather, they're sifting through every institution to get rid of people who I would consider our best ideological warriors, people who are not willing to go against their own integral values. They're not willing to go against the Constitution. They're people who are principled in every way. And I always ask this question to people we just hadn't had So last week with a bunch of unvaccinated soldiers who have stood up to the mandate and are willing to lose everything for what they believe in. And I'm gonna ask you the same thing I asked them. Do you believe that this is an ideological sifting that's occurring that is purposeful, to shake out a certain ideology from our institutions in order to make it easier to consolidate power and really carry out the tyrannical things that they want to carry out that we've seen them beginning to carry out? What can you say to that?

Steve Friend 10:31
Without question, I agree with you. The really, things kind of became evident to me in October of 2021. That was when the vaccine mandate was rolled out across the federal government. And there was this option that was put before us that we could elect for to request a religious accommodation or a medical combination, and we had to attest to whether or not we were vaccinated against Coronavirus. So I'm unvaccinated. I have requested a religious accommodation, put in all the paperwork, put in the attestation. But I was uncomfortable doing it. And I even remarked to my wife at the time that they're building a registry of people who are hourly, religious, and then they can when we applied for it, he was even asking you what your religion is? And what are specific scriptures that you can cite. So they were very, very, there was a lot of scrutiny that went into this. And I even heard later on that there was comments made about well, there seems to be a lot of people find them Jesus now that the vaccines are going to be required. And so I was very uncomfortable with where things stood, because I felt like they were gonna single out folks who held certain certain religious beliefs or beliefs about bodily autonomy. And then we fast forward to now right prior to my suspension, I had sit down meetings with people that were in pretty, you know, elevated levels of management and the FBI and incited look, I've been trained to identify potential abuses of power, it's incumbent on me to, to uphold the Constitution and to call us out if I believe that we're violating people's rights. And it's my duty is to the Constitution and to my oath of office, and the response was, your duty is to the FBI. So with that,

Robby Starbuck 12:07
what's interesting is all of these people who are out there saying things like that, like what you said, where they say, oh, there's a lot of people coming to Jesus now, with these religious exemptions to get out of getting the COVID vaccine. Well, I think it's funny that a bunch of godless people who do everything possible to worship a hedonistic sense of reality, over anything biblical or Godly in any way are suddenly the arbiters of who is actually religious and who actually believes in Jesus and who actually as a religious objection, and shockingly, it's nobody, apparently, because they've decided that even chaplains in the military cannot get a religious exemption. I mean, when you're at the point where you're telling pastors know, your religious beliefs are not real, you've jumped the shark. And it's very clear. And the problem, the real problem is, the media is not communicating this to the public. And the other problem is, when you look at the Democratic Party, over 50%, were willing to take criminal action in polling against people who were unvaccinated. That is something that is core to the ideology of one party now. And it doesn't matter where you stand on every other issue, you know, if you stand on this issue alone is saying, you know, this is something that constitutionally we must protect his number one religious freedom, the secondary to that the ability to decide what you inject in your body or don't inject in your body, then you cannot in good conscience stand with the Democratic Party of today. And that's sad, because I think that honestly, if we're being real with each other, even though I'm very opposed to the Democrats of today, I do think that it is healthy in a society to have multiple parties, I think it's healthy to have multiple viewpoints being it's healthy to debate everything. I don't expect everybody to be the same as me. I don't expect them all to think exactly what I think. But I am going to stand up against absolute extremism that seeks to strip rights from everyone. And that's exactly what they're doing through the way they've carried out all this COVID tyranny. You know, what would you say at the FBI has been the success rate of religious exemptions? Do you know of people who've had them approved or not? Or is it kind of like the military where almost nobody's getting approved? I don't know if any single one has actually been adjudicated, we put in the requests, and they were never addressed. The only contact I had back was I was assigned a particular advocate who was going to, they've made clear Well, we're not going to argue for you or against you, we're going to facilitate the discussion that's going to happen between FBI leadership and you and determine if this is going to be a reasonable combination that we can make for you. And then there was just no follow up. And that Well, that certainly goes along with the theory that this is an ideological sifting because that's exactly what you would do. If you're not going to fire all of the people who put those in, you would create a list and you would compartmentalize the information from those Intel agents so that they wouldn't be able to You know, get critical information or things that you wouldn't want them to get, because you'd want them on the outs of anything that they may try to blow the whistle on. So this goes to, you know, further questions I had. I'm familiar with a lot of the training tactics in the intel community, one of which is psychological priming. The CIA, the FBI, many other agencies in the Intel world, they teach their agents psychological priming. It's something we see happening as social media companies. So there's been a lot of big stories recently with the Twitter files, in terms of the FBI involvement at Twitter in getting things they want. And one of the things I noticed was they were psychologically priming employees at Twitter who were not Intel agents, and were not smart enough to pick up on what they were doing in order to get actions they wanted, which included the censoring of American citizens. So have you noticed those tactics being used through these agencies to prime not just social media companies, but large corporations to reach the goals of certain people in the intel community?

Steve Friend 16:03
Nothing firsthand. I mean, I can I just have my own observations. As a citizen, I think that if you're going to talk about ultimate like grooming of a, of just a perception of competence of the FBI, that has been done since time immemorial, you know, I stood in the FBI and looked around on multiple many occasions and said, I can't believe that there are certain people that are able to work here, because they're just not functional human beings. And, you know, I would make a phone call to somebody and identify myself as an FBI special agent, and they would without question turn over their personal information to be the things that just stunned me. So just based on me saying, I'm an FBI special agent. So certainly, the FBI has reputation as being the stellar organization that is beyond reproach, and have the utmost integrity is something that is I at this point, I think, is just a grooming feature, because it's worn itself out to not be true. I also want to say that there is a at information Industrial Complex has started to emerge here similar to that military industrial complex, that scientific industrial complex that was that President Eisenhower spoke about the stairwell and dress. And I think that we can tack on now the the information to that. And by that I see that there's this, this gross marriage of intelligence communities, law enforcement communities on the federal government, private sector tech companies, and this surveillance capitalism that has now emerged as such a lucrative approach to to industry. And they're all kind of working together in the symbiotic relationship. They're able to play accountability, hot potato by saying, well, the government is somebody we respect because they have this great integrity. So they give us guidance, we have to follow it. It's not really our decision. And the government says, well, we're not telling them what to do with their private company, we're not interfering with them at all. We just issued guidance that anybody can take if they want, so they're able to all avoid accountability that way, and they consistently shifting this Overton window in one political direction, which now is heavy left?

Robby Starbuck 17:58
Well, I want to I want to just pop in, that's not your opinion, that is a fact. I'm reading from a paper here. When you look at each one of the social media companies, let's see your Facebook has at least 115 Highly ranking employees, who are former CIA, FBI, NSA or DHS employees. Twitter had at least dozens throughout recent years, this continues in other social media companies. These are not low level CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS employees, who then moved on to big tech. You understand why they did this? I understand why they did this, can you communicate to the audience why we're seeing so many high level Intel agents go to work at social media companies?

Steve Friend 18:48
Sure. And before we even get into that, the one that everybody's overlooked, they're just the biggest is AWS, Amazon Web Services hosts all of the information that they the government has, so that they're not even needing to communicate back and forth to the government in order to provide one to the other. So that's one that I am hoping that there's going to be some sort of pulling back the curtains on. But unfortunately, I

Robby Starbuck 19:10
think our current Congress is just going to continue to give them money. If I'm being perfectly honest, even with a Republican majority, you know, sadly, I don't think we have enough strong Republicans who are going to be willing to go fight that battle, because you are correct. Nobody talks about it, but Amazon and their cloud services and everything. They are one of the principal threats, I think, in terms of Intelligence and National Security, because they're pretty much getting everything at this point. I mean, they're hosting everything that you can imagine when it comes to the DoD secret programs, things like that. And if you think about the information that they're able to get their hands on, and, you know, the people that they're able to potentially, you know, not saying they're doing this, but potentially be able to blackmail with the information that they may have access to. That's dangerous stuff, really dangerous stuff, and it's why Going under the radar entirely, because, again, the sexy thing is social media. And because you know you on Musk bought Twitter and everybody's on it, and none of us realize that we're on Amazon's cloud services and their web services every day. So it kind of flies under the radar. So I'm glad you brought that up. But when you look at this, you know, it goes again to an ideological sifting. And I think that it really is part of a larger plan, the federal government has in current form, where the regime on the left would like to be able to segment citizens in as many ways as they possibly can, because that's how you create division points. And I think the more division there is, the better in terms of their view, because then you're able to keep people focused on something else instead of focused on Hey, what are all the ways my government is failing me? And I think you see this across the board. You know, if you look at even your case, in your case, you were supposed to be stopping child sex trafficking, child sexual exploitation, see Sam on the internet, which commonly referred to as child porn, but instead they pulled you off and had you go fight their political war, to try to raise January 6, you know, people, and that was something you were unwilling to do, thank God, because we need these people to stand up and say, This is wrong. The focus should be over here. You know, I just saw rep Ted Liu in the house Democrat from California and say that, essentially, you can't criticize the FBI because they they do plenty and they are fighting child sex trafficking. They are fighting child porn or see Sam on the internet. What do you say to somebody like Ted Lou? I said, Hey, if you have any agents working on censoring Americans on Twitter, then you have AD agents that you should have working these child sex abuse cases, instead of going to try to censor American Maga grandmas on Twitter. What do you think?

Steve Friend 21:53
And then just for just just for reference on the amount of manpower at agencies, my my first field office was the Omaha field office responsible for all of Iowa, all of Nebraska, there were 75 agents that were responsible there. So that's the entire size of FBI field office that was dedicated just to calling through Twitter feeds. Yeah, I saw that I saw Mr. Lewis comments about Matt Taibbi and in the Twitter files, and in Matt has been in my house. He's a he's an honest journalist, you know, regardless of where he falls in the political aisle, and he was essentially choosing of lying about what the FBI did as far as reassigning agents from child exploitation to work domestic terrorism. And January 6, firsthand knowledge happened to me, I was told that child pornography investigations were going to be considered a local matter, and that I needed to focus on domestic terrorism, which is it January 6, so that that's the politician running cover. I mean, I know he's a member of the Judiciary Committee. And, and he has, certainly everything that's happened, you know, being social media up till when Elon Musk purchased Twitter, and everything that's happened with the investigations that have gone against the people that went to the Capitol on January 6, of all or not well, for him, and then to support his narrative about this, this rise in domestic terrorism, so he's gonna go to the mattresses on that, when probably the, the more prudent thing to do was just to keep his mouth shut and wait for the news cycle and Christmas to happen. So, so I don't think that was that was wise on his part. And I can tell you firsthand, it happened to me. And I can tell you that yesterday, I believe it was the FBI issued a statement about the rise in child pornography cases that we're seeing nationwide. So it's, it's just simply not true. That narrative is that he's saying is false.

Unknown Speaker 23:38
Right? I mean, and it's alarming. The mainstream media, like the Atlantic, you know, have said that child trafficking is a conspiracy theory, we have more reports than ever before in history of suspected child exploitation, sexual exploitation sextortion sexual abuse, reported to Nick Mack National Center for Missing Exploited Children, who, as far as I'm aware, are the only arbiter, you know, collecting these these crucial data points. And so I kind of want to backtrack before they, you know, switch due to the January 6 step before that became overtly the focus where they made these changes. What was the FBI culture, like in response to Child Exploitation issues? I mean, was there a acknowledgement that this this is an epidemic in America, the demand is so great here almost suppresses drug trade? I mean, is there an awareness of it? Or is there just a complete political bias and focus laser focused on things like January 6, or you know, weaponizing, you know, this this prestigious institution or in our in our country? I mean, I want to know, like, clearly what is the difference here? Is it ignorance, or is this politically motivated?

Steve Friend 24:47
I think child pornography investigations, in all is basically considered like a step cousin to Indian Reservation cases and having worked both, I kind of got the feeling that when you're in it, you realize is how crucial the work is and how the volume of this case work is. Outside of that they, the FBI, it throws resources at it, but it's sort of like, keeps them at arm's length. Because I think the people that don't work it and in the public at large, it's easier to pretend it doesn't exist, the FBI is great at getting headlines, and they want to always have that big case that they can, they can get the PR hit for. Curiously, you never really see it for child pornography investigations. And there's certainly a ton of them out there. And there's ones that you would think would pique the public's interest if they bring down some super huge pedophile ring or, you know, big websites, something like that, but you never really see them. And I think that they've made a calculated decision that the public doesn't even want to know about these things, it's just easier to look away, look in another direction, and and applaud and pat the back of the FBI for bringing down the drug dealer or a public corruption case. But having been in in there and doing the work, and you see the volume of it, and you could take the entire FBI and double the size of the FBI, and devote everybody just to child pornography cases. And it wouldn't be fully aside. It's just that voluminous. So, you know, it would definitely became a passion project. For me, once I relocated to Florida, unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to work at great length, I was able to continue doing it off the books, when I was reassigned to domestic terrorism, because some people did actually see the value of it and say that it was worth pursuing. But the individuals that do work it are super passionate about it, it's just that the people that are in positions to make the decisions about allocating resources, would prefer to put those elsewhere. And I saw that firsthand. In my field offices in Jacksonville, there was a full squad of agents that were working child pornography investigations, it was broken down, and they kept to individuals that were continuing to do it, and everybody else was moved to violent crime. And I was moved over to domestic terrorism.

Unknown Speaker 26:58
Absolutely. And I mean, there's no greater evidence of that. I mean, I'm not negating all the hard work that, you know, the the few the good ones that are fighting these issues, and how the scope of it how hard it is that they're not doing their job, but the resources from the top that are allocated to, you know, adequately addressed this crime, we're not seeing any reduction, we're not seeing any, you know, fruits of, of these, these efforts, it's only getting increasingly and exponentially worse. And I saw, I think, a collaboration between Nick Mac and FBI today where they put a little, you know, blue square out essentially saying, recognizing this is a problem, and children are being recruited online. And there's, you know, sextortion cases that are through the roof, especially as kids are home for the holidays, spending more time online. But you know, it's it's interesting to me, particularly in Indian Reservation cases like that, and I wanted to ask you about this, from my experience advocating for certain families, when they're in a Indian Reservation, there is almost like a firewall that is impenetrable as far as our United States, you know, laws kicking in is that one reason why FBI would be in charge of those reservations? I mean, what are some of the limitations? Say you have a child sexual abuse case or a child exploitation case? on an Indian reservation? I mean, what are the limits for local law enforcement outside the reservation? Is it all internal? Why is the FBI involved? You know, can you explain that process?

Steve Friend 28:28
Yes, it's it's definitely a really easy visiting process, it's considered a special jurisdiction. So the Native American reservations are, for lack of a better term, that they're an independent country within our country. There because it sort of retrocession they'd come back under the fold. There's just certain features that they can be independent of, and some that they can't. So you have a tribal council, which essentially like like a town government, city council, you have a tribal police department, you have a tribal court system, they have their own set of laws there. But they're limited because they can only arrest Native Americans. And they can only charge things sort of at a misdemeanor level, regardless of what the crime is. So I have seen people inject their tribal criminal history and though those records are not even shared with with a national database, so I had to independently verify you know, what was going on in paper, versus what I could just, you know, call my radio room and have them run somebody's criminal history for me that was not included, and it would say so and so was convicted of rape and got 40 days in jail and $100 sign. So their limit on who they can arrest and then the Indian Reservation actually operates within a county. So you would think maybe the Sheriff of that county would want to get involved but the county prosecutors are really loath to participate if it if it's going on on the reservation, even though it's within the county, they kind of steer clear of that. So the FBI has to get involved with things that are serious crimes where there's a Native American victim and also has to get involved in regardless of the severity of the crime is if the perpetrator is not a Native American. Because if somebody is a Caucasian male could walk out and commit an armed robbery or a violent felony, and the tribal police could not arrest it, could it maybe maybe detain him temporarily until the FBI can respond. So I had cases that were just misdemeanor assault cases, but because the individual was not a Native American, that try could not pursue charges against. So it's just really interesting. And there's all these matrices that you know, decision trees that are trying out for you, before you can even determine if you can take a case or not, or who would be the best route to do it. The other thing that's that I want to go to go back on what what you're talking about with the severity with the FBI takes with child pornography investigations. It's one of the few violations that individuals can kind of beg out of because they don't want to be involved in and know, but there's no judgement and you can you can be moved off of that. And when I moved to Florida, and said, Hey, look, you know, I'll take those cases, I think they're righteous case. And there was like this, ah, relief, because like, we have a guide, we'll take it. So nobody else in my office had to take anything pertaining to child pornography, they could just give me any cases that they were carrying on their books that they were sort of looking out at the side of their eye. And I said, I would take it. But I do think it's interesting that, you know, I could say, hey, look, not for me, I eat the whole thing grosses me out, I'm uncomfortable with it, I've got kids that just I can't do it. And efforts will be made to accommodate that. But I said, Hey, I'm really uncomfortable with you might be infringing on people's constitutional rights. And we're not following our own rules. And we might be abusing people with January 6 investigations. And I was walked up with your unbelievable.

Unknown Speaker 31:35
Yeah, I do want to ask you one more question just about Indian reservations, because I think it's an under covered topic. And, you know, my experiences has shown me that kids who are living on reservations, indigenous communities are at exponential risk of sexual exploitation. Is that in your opinion, a result of the fact that that is an increased vulnerability that perpetrators know that those crimes are less likely to be, you know, have any accountability or, you know, consequences for them? Or is there a culture that, you know, kind of hides what happens on that reservation, you know, for optics, you know, what, what insight do you have as to why these numbers are so high and go underreported. And there's less faces of indigenous indigenous children who have been victimized that we even know about?

Steve Friend 32:25
Well, I investigated three different Native American tribes. So I can't speak to the entire Native American population country, but in my experience, children are at a significant risk of a heightened risk, I would say, and that is downstream from a couple of things. One, we have laws in this country that prevent the government, the state government from removing a Native American child from a Native American reservation and placing them in a different house on occasionally would happen, and then an effort be made to bring that that child back to the Native American reservation. And there's, the argument is, oh, we want to preserve this culture. But invariably, you've returned kids to poverty, when you return them to abusive households. And the the reservations are just awash in alcohol abuse, drug abuse, gambling, addiction, sexual abuse, and they just, yeah, it's a crowded trap, they cannot escape from it. And even if an effort is in good faith made, and I interacted with families that were, you know, in a town that was 30 miles away, that had taken in a foster child as a Native American, and had provided them love and care for an extended period of time, and they had formed this bond, and the state was going to remove that child and put them back with a family that, you know, had a dozen children living with a grandmother who was on, on benefits and didn't have an income, because we had to, we had to preserve the Native American culture, we had to obey this law. So that's, that's a huge problem because the kids can't be removed. Secondly, I think that there's also this tendency to, to defend the offender, he, I saw it repeatedly, where there would be a child would come forward, you know, 1415 year old girl, or even down to eight 910. And they would say, you know, Uncle sexually abused me, and there would be right away. Well, you know, it happened to me too. So it's just just the way it is, would be one defense and other would would just be stand by your man. And that kid is lie. And that does happen. I mean, kids do make allegations, but you know, an eight year old being able to connive that they can try the entire story, to me just was was ridiculous, especially in the volume of times that I saw it happen. So there's always this trend to defend the potential offender. And ultimately, the defense that I saw a lot of times from offenders who even admitted to what they did, they said was while I was drunk, so no, I can't be held accountable. And that was they looked at me in the eye and then they thought that that was acceptable thing that I would walk away and say, oh, okay, no harm, no foul. Have you

Robby Starbuck 35:00
blew up the way Hegel realize you were drinking?

Steve Friend 35:03
No problem all the time. All he said is really random. I mean, it was a frequent question of a scale of one to 10. How drunk were you? And you know, you'd get seven? Or how many beers is it to get to seven. And they would say something like, oh, it takes me like 12 or 14 years.

Unknown Speaker 35:20
Right. And the other aspect is like, they lack the infrastructure, you know, they're, they're not doing forensic rape kits or anything like that. I mean, the it's almost like a socialized country with health care there with, you know, they don't have the same things that, you know, we wouldn't have access to whatever other parts of America, which also increases of those vulnerabilities and maintains that culture of like the status quo, just oh, well, you know, shake it off. Yeah, it's going to be fine kind of thing and blaming the victim, you could tell

Robby Starbuck 35:48
me if I'm wrong here. But I think this has a big part to play in a lot of the other societal problems for kids on these reservations. When you look at education outcomes and things like that, there's, there's just such a large amount of trauma happening in these environments where there seems to be a lack of accountability for abusers. And I think when you have that amount of trauma, it's obviously not a place that's conducive to learning or safety in any way. And I think that's why you see the numbers you see in terms of very few people being able to graduate with with good grades and being able to sort of be proficient at the next step. And it's not because there's something inherently wrong with with Native Americans or anything like that, in fact, you look at the education outcomes previous they were better than they are now. And so something changed in the culture. And I think a lot of that is a lack of accountability, when it comes to abuse and trauma. And I don't think there's been anything to disprove that point. Am I wrong?

Unknown Speaker 36:46
Right? Yeah. And having access to care is crucial. And but there's cultural norms also prohibit that, that being a priority in this in a lot of this reservation. So

Robby Starbuck 36:55
were you reminding me of something? So being this a question more for you, Steve. But being a great admirer of my wife's work, I've come to understand the amount of child sexual abuse and see Sam, that is being procured or perpetrated by people who work at places like the FBI is stunning. It's jarring. It's far more than people expect. And there's very little accountability. Why do you think that is? I don't know how much you know about this. But I when Ted Liu said what he said about the FBI essentially making it sound like we're not allowed to criticize the FBI. My response included a bunch of news stories of FBI agents who themselves perpetrated child sex crimes, and they lacked accountability in many of those cases. Why do you think that's happening? And also, is our justice system? In your opinion, too soft on child predators?

Steve Friend 37:57
I'll answer the second part first. Yes, way too soft. In I live in Florida. And there's they're basically medieval when it comes to hands on offenses. I don't see any reason why that can't be applied nationwide, I want to see the person raise their hand with the exception of cantante. Jackson, about why individuals who are consuming child pornography, it doesn't present a threat to the to the country, I don't care if you make an argument that well, white, I've never would never do that to a child that was done to a child and you were a beneficiary of it in your own sick way. I don't know why we have a place for you in society, that you should be buried in a hole and we should bury the hole if we don't actually make it a capital offense.

Robby Starbuck 38:38
I agree. You know, I was saying and I've said this a lot. Actually, I don't understand why a politician has not run on a platform of death penalty for pedophiles. And because I think this is a universal thing. You know, this is just my anecdotal experience. I think there's very few people who would go, no, actually, I would like to continue to pay taxes in the sums of millions and millions of dollars to keep pedophiles alive. And here's the thing, yes, there needs to be a burden of of evidence because you can't go around just killing everybody who's accused of it, because it will be weaponized, then. But you meet that burden of proof. I think that it should be in immediate execution honestly, in in, in a justice system that, you know, gives you that speedy trial in front of your peers, if you're proven guilty. That's what I think the consequence should be because I'm also of the belief you look at all of the psychological work that's been done. This is a pro science belief. This is an irredeemable group of people who are not going to change it is not changeable. They may suppress it for a year or two at a time, but they will perpetrate again, you look at the recidivism rates, they're awful. These people are predators and there's something wrong that we can't fix. So I think that the the Justice really needs to be on the side of the victims and that means The death penalty for these cases. You know, that's just something that for me,

Unknown Speaker 40:04
I like to moralize until you ask them, What would you want your child? And then you know, the answer changes.

Steve Friend 40:13
And, you know, I can tell you I, when I first got brought over to work that violation, I sat down with a really experienced agent he'd been doing for a decade. And that's, that's really, really rare. Most people get burned out pretty quick. And I just asked him, I said, you know, what is the percentage of these guys that when you sit down with them, they confess, and he was like, every one of them every said, I think in my entire career, two of them haven't. And one of them even he gave me enough in there that I had tantamount to a confession. And why he's like, Well, because it's ones and zeros. It's all there. It's undeniable. So if you're, for all the pushback, you know, these these these projects, to to free people who are in death row, because they've been wrongfully convicted. I think that that's a violation that would stand up to the to any sort of scrutiny just just by the fact that the evidence is irrefutable. And then in the violation itself is so so gross, that, you know, again, raise your hand if you want to be the person that says no, we need to be, you know, Gracie is a, he's a triumph over justice here. Can I guess unless your supreme court justice,

Unknown Speaker 41:17
a bunch of Democrat hands just went up for America,

Robby Starbuck 41:20
I would, I would say this, I do think it would be the greatest blow to the numbers skyrocketing in terms of abuse, because so many of these people who think about going to view Child Sexual Abuse material, knowing that the death penalty follows, may never go and do it for the first time. Because as right learn from her work, it's that first time that people, you know, regular porn isn't good enough anymore, isn't doing the job, and they go search out something worse, they end up on something like that. And they go further down that path, and it does something pathological and changes them in ways that are very dangerous, obviously, I think you may actually, you know, cut off a lot of those people from the very beginning, knowing Ooh, if I go down that route, potential death penalty. And I think that that's something that if you if you made that the reality, it would greatly reduce the number of people who are going and searching this stuff out. Because you look at the numbers, I think people just are not aware of the number of people who are actually seeking this stuff out. It's in the 10s of millions. And that's incredibly dangerous. And that's at a bare minimum, it actually could be more than that, you know, you look worldwide, but it's at least the 10s of millions that are verifiable who are looking at this stuff,

Unknown Speaker 42:37
right. And this, the demand is coming from America. And I wanted to ask you, Steve, you know, one of the things that I see a lot in my work is working with social media companies, when there is no see Sam on their platforms. In some cases, they're profiting off of it or taking out ads on it, the victims can get there the CCM down that this is child sexual abuse, material, horrific rate, things to that effect, even Pornhub. Yet Pornhub has a Twitter account still to this day, you know, so where's the accountability with section 230, you know, basically, providing blanket immunity to all a big tech for their violations their complicity, they're enabling of this problem of child sexual exploitation. So what was your interaction like, if at all, if you deal with the social media platforms, having to work with them to address some of the child sexual exploitation content that you came across?

Steve Friend 43:27
They do, they did a pretty good job, at least in providing information to Nick make in the cyber tips that we would receive. But you know, who knows, really defining Good job, I mean, we were definitely inundated with them as they came through. But that might have only been a fraction of what was actually going on in these sites, which is probably probably probably closer to reality than then we would, we would like to believe. But once that tick came in, and we opened a case, and we and we didn't get be worthy of investigating, just have to go back and forth with them and get the information they just seemed, and I understand they want to protect privacy. But they always shoot out these user agreements with people that are 1000s of pages long. And everybody agrees to them. You're telling me you can't put a you know, a clause in there that says, you know, if there's a legitimate law enforcement association, considering CCM that you forfeit your your right to to the Fourth Amendment, and we can hand over everything. I'm a civil liberties guy, but to think that there's some wiggle room there. So we would go back and forth, you know, we would craft our search warrants and then our subpoenas with them, but invariably, they would find ways to kick them back. And it was it was very frustrating, very time consuming the actual nuts and bolts of a ccm investigation. They're not complex. They're it's an ocean of cases. And that ocean is like an inch deep. It's a very turn in a ranch with a few steps and from a from initiation to conclusion. On the entire process. If you had it at your fingertips, you could knock out an entire investigation short of interviewing the subject within a day. But because we have to send the processes off and we have to Were to review what comes back. I mean, you're talking months and months and months, in order to bring down one offender. And like you said, there's, this is radians up there. And it's only growing is, especially when we watch it's home and give them nothing but a tablet or an iPhone for a year and a half. And sometimes it's not even stopped in some of the cities, we're seeing these exportation cases, they're getting blown out of the water. And we were told, basically, we can't do anything about them. It's it's no different than Nigerian prince scheme that was all the rage in the 90s will be these kids are being extorted, but you know, it's, it's overseas. And, you know, we just kind of have to let that one go and tell them all, be careful with the internet, let this be a life lesson to you.

Unknown Speaker 45:40
Right. And I just love all the millions of dollars being spent educating the American public on the real dangers of these things. At the same time, all big tech is allowed to invite kids on the platform, where most of the sexual exploitation is occurring. And like you just mentioned, you know, it's taking 10 days, the crimes happening in real time, you're not going to catch those perpetrators, it that process is so long, but with AI ability, we could, you know, streamline this process, but it requires big tech to be willing, you know, to work with people who specialize in this, like I kept detectives, like special agents like yourself. So you know, thanks for going down in the weeds with me on that I really want to, you know, people watching to understand the nuances of this and how hard it is to to locate a child to prosecute a crime, to get discovery to get big tech to work with you. I mean, it's, it's amazing, honestly, that you could even get to a prosecution with cases like this, because of how many hoops you have to jump through. And you look at a city like Nashville, we have only two ipecac detectives for all of Nashville, and how many crimes are occurring, you know, with children every single day? It's, it's a joke, you know, so thank you for bringing that to light.

Steve Friend 46:52
I mean, it's it seems the same federal level, I mean, getting a prosecutor to actually bring forward a case, they almost say we don't want to take it, because then we set a precedent that we're going to take those cases. And we just know there's so many out there, we want to do other stuff.

Robby Starbuck 47:04
Actually, I have two questions I won. First question, is this? Why do you believe and corruptions the easy answer? It's it's the obvious answer. But I think it's deeper than that. But why do you think the FBI has not used the same channels they use in so many other cases, to leak stories, to expose the truth about Jeffrey Epstein and the powerful men and possibly women involved in this operation? I mean, this was an operation to exploit young women, young girls and to you know, sexually abused them. So why has the government essentially helped these people cover up their crimes? Because that's what's current, they've, they've helped a group of very powerful people cover up their crimes, including the rape of young young girls and women. Why? What What is it the root of this? How poisoned is this tree?

Steve Friend 48:03
Well, I mean, just Layne Maxwell got convicted of trafficking kids, but we don't know to who and that's, that's just fine. We're gonna all live with that answer. Just like, you know, we don't know what happened in Las Vegas shooting, we're just move on to the next night. I think that somewhere along the line that that list is somewhere in the right, people who have access to that list, don't want to get out. There's just too many people that are important movers and shakers in the world. And there's a fear that it would just create too much chaos to the, to this new world order that we're building towards. So obviously, it's become prevalent with this with people keep saying stuff then, you know, in the World Economic Forum and efforts, you know, in China with the social credit system, I think that's that's the goal of our of our ruling, who is wha elite and may think that this will be just too much of a disruption to it because of its very core. Now, everybody we might disagree on tax rates and energy policy and, and war, nobody's in favor of abusing children. And if the people that are the movers and shakers that are making decisions on tax policy and energy policy and war, get called out for abusing kids, then that whole agenda is gonna fall by the wayside and the agenda is everything that isn't it's almost religious, the secular as religion is the agenda they're pushing.

Robby Starbuck 49:22
I would say I do disagree. I will push back that nobody agrees with abusing children because it's now over 50% of Democrats agree with allowing children at these drag shows that are below this all ages family smaller, because it's blatant child abuse. If you saw the videos that were just put out by Taylor and salmon, Farragut Sarah Gonzalez in Texas, I mean, these are indisputably some of the most disgusting Child Sexual Abuse grooming material that you will see that is allowed on the internet and it's just barely allowed. And that's what's interesting actually, I got a sensitive content warnings slapped on my Twitter account oversharing Taylor got it. Taylor got ya bended. And yet, the Democrats are totally cool with marketing this to children and bringing them to the shows to see simulated sex and nudity. But it's too sensitive for adults on Twitter to see. I think that says everything. But my last question, then you can ask you might have 100 more

Unknown Speaker 50:25
questions. Now I want to be respectful of Steve's time was such a great conversation. But we've gone over I have

Robby Starbuck 50:30
just one. And that would be, you know, when you look at the FBI and everything you've experienced, are things so rotten, so poisoned, that in its current iteration, there's no redemption for the FBI. Do you believe like I do that the SBI needs to be essentially torn to the to the ground by the next administration rebuilt in a new image entirely separate from DC, I think we need to move the entire agency out of DC in terms of HQ, because I think that incestuous nature of DC is part of what has corrupted the FBI, and also that 10 years is too long of a term for an FBI director that it leads to some of the corruption and ideological subversion we've seen come out of the FBI. What do you think

Steve Friend 51:20
you have a good record of the sentiments that I've been expressing for the last several months? Yes, no, move the headquarters, there's already infrastructure in red Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, was a two and a half billion dollar facility. That's been you know, they said it was gonna be for training. But you can't move headquarters there. Huntsville is a great, wonderful place. If you object to moving to Alabama from Washington, DC, then I had questions about we did you want to be a leader in the FBI? Or do you want to just live in DC in the US and the FBI is supposed to be nonpartisan and you should be out of the swamp. I think that you have to reverse engineer your thinking in order to make a decision about where you're going to invest your money. So if I came to you and said, Look, I $50 in the stock. Should I buy? Or should I sell you the best thing to do would say, Well, if you had $50 Cash, would you buy this stock? Or do you do something else with it? And that's where you would decide, you know whether or not you're going to keep this stock or not. Same thing needs to be done to the FBI. It takes $10 billion to fund the FBI in a given year. If you had $10 million on the table, and I presented an agency us it's currently constituted where you have a director who just walks out of mandated senatorial hearings, you have the Larry Nasser case happen in full, if not, you have the Gretchen Whitmer, and Troutman case it's emerged, you have what's going on with January 6, with what's going on with the folks that are being arrested for praying outside of abortion place, put all that on the table, good and bad. Would you give $10 billion to this agents. Now, there's not a chance in the world. So there needs to be massive reform would be the minimum short of dissolution and reconstitute in the FBI in ways and I have my own ideas about you know, we'll be good ways to reform and reform the FBI as it is presently presently exist, or to rebuild it from something from scratch, I think is completely doable. I think the next FBI director, if there's an a new president in 2024, I imagine there's gonna be a new FBI director in short order that needs to be accepted. If you said, Hey, Steve, you want to be FBI director? So yes, two conditions, I have to work remotely from Florida because I don't want to leave. And two, it's going to be a 12 month assignment, because that gives me the window that I need to complete the dismantle the organization. Awesome.

Robby Starbuck 53:34
Do you have any other question?

Unknown Speaker 53:35
No, I just want to thank you on behalf of, you know, the American people, we are dealing with so many spineless people that are in positions of power that refuse to come forward and do the right thing, you know, by our Constitution, by God by the fellow fellow Americans. And it's not easy to do the right thing. It requires risks and sacrifices. And I want to thank you for being willing to do that for for being you know, willing to give a voice to the truth to these issues. And continue to fight for a great Republic. So thank you.

Robby Starbuck 54:07
Yeah, we really appreciate it. Yuki Phyton and where can people follow you?

Steve Friend 54:11
Oh, thank you. Yeah, I'm took the leap. Go on social media. I'm on Twitter. At real Steve friend and I'm on truth at real underscore is different.

Robby Starbuck 54:23
Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Steve. Thank you. Hey, guys, just want to thank our sponsor, Patriot mobile a fantastic Patriot owned company that is challenging these big companies out there like AT and T Verizon T Mobile, who themselves are taking your money and then giving it to organizations and endeavors that you don't agree with. So why not make the change today change to a company that is in alignment with your values that will fight for school boards to be flipped? Yes, Patriot mobile bid that they will fight for the truth to get out there to people. That's what they're doing today by supporting this show you If you want to be one of those people, that is an actual change maker that lives out there values make the change today if you're worried about service, do not worry. This company is working off of the same service standards that the major companies are. The trick is those companies. They want to make you believe that they're the only ones you can trust. But the truth is, you can't trust them with your money. So make the change today. Patriot mobile.com promo code Starbuck thank you again to Patriot mobile for supporting us in our fight to share the truth with the world. Thanks for joining me on today's episode, if you liked what you heard, tag me on social media repost clips from his share with your friends, you sharing our show is how we grow and it's how we get the truth out there. So if you want to help spread the truth and help wake people up, please go and share our show. Go to our website, Robbie starbuck.com. For more information or to watch old episodes, see you at the next episode.