Background Briefing: April 1, 2021

On By gram

 

A New Even Wackier Twist in the Emerging Matt Gaetz Scandal

We begin with a new twist in the emerging Matt Gaetz scandal involving a former Air force intelligence officer and a Florida real estate scammer who apparently tried to blackmail Matt Gaetz’s wealthy father to put up money to rescue a former FBI agent held in Iran since March of 2007 who is presumed dead, in exchange for preventing Matt Gaetz’s sex trafficking scandal from going public which it now has. Jeff Stein, the editor and founder of Spytalk and a veteran national security reporter previously with Newsweek and The Washington Post, joins us to discuss his latest article at Spytalk, “Gaetz ‘Extortion’ Figure’s Levinson Obsession“. We discuss Jeff Stein’s interaction with Bob Kent, the former Air Force Intelligence officer who had proposed to Gaetz’s father the wacky scheme to free someone believed to be dead in exchange for making his son the hero of “Operation Homecoming” with the promise Matt would be given credit for bringing Levinson home in exchange for which Kent would spike Don Gaetz’s son’s sex trafficking story.  

 

Today’s Convictions of Prominent Pro-democracy Activists in Hong Kong

Then we look into the convictions of prominent pro-democracy activists today in Hong Kong with the billionaire publisher Jimmy Lai facing the prospect of life in prison for sedition under China’s new national security law. Michael Davis, a professor emeritus of law at the University of Hong Kong whose latest book is, Making Hong Kong China: The Rollback of Human Rights and the Rule of Law, joins us to discuss the suppression of democracy in Hong Kong and how it will impact Taiwan as Xi Jinping tears up the one nation two systems model.

 

An Historian on Why Georgia’s New Voting Law is Jim Crow 2.0

Then finally we speak with Jason Morgan Ward, a professor of history at Emory University where he teaches modern United States history and is the author of Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics and Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century. He joins us to discuss his article at The New York Times, “Georgia’s Voter Law is Called ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ for a Reason.”