In today’s episode, Jenny Beth Martin sits down with Mike Howell, President of The Oversight Project, for a powerful conversation about lawfare, political persecution, and corruption inside America’s institutions. Howell breaks down how his team is defending citizens targeted for standing up for election integrity, the legal strategy behind the 2020 contingent elector pardons, and the federal-state coordination revealed through the Arctic Frost disclosures. He also exposes The Oversight Project’s groundbreaking investigations into Biden’s Autopen scandal, failures inside the FBI, the radicalization of Thomas Crooks, and the rise of transgender-ideology-driven violent extremism. Howell explains why these issues threaten the rule of law, how China is exploiting U.S. weakness, and why rebuilding institutional accountability is essential for the future of the constitutional republic. This is a must-listen episode for anyone concerned about weaponized government, election integrity, and the fight to protect everyday Americans.
In this episode of The Jenny Beth Show, Jenny Beth Martin interviews Mike Howell, President of The Oversight Project, about the growing crisis of lawfare, political targeting, and institutional corruption in America.
Howell explains how The Oversight Project is defending citizens facing political prosecutions, including individuals involved in the 2020 contingent elector efforts. He details the legal basis for the pardons, the federal-state coordination uncovered through the Arctic Frost investigation, and why more work is needed to fight back against weaponized government.
The conversation also dives into The Oversight Project’s major investigative breakthroughs, including:
• The Biden Autopen scandal and what it reveals about White House decision-making
• How evidence from the Thomas Crooks assassination attempt contradicts official narratives
• The rise of transgender-ideology-inspired violent extremism
• Failures inside the FBI and DOJ, including the lack of transparency around politically sensitive cases
• The CCP’s growing influence and the U.S. agencies and officials enabling it
• The overlooked espionage case involving FBI agent Charles McGonigal and its connection to broader corruption
Mike Howell outlines why these issues matter for the future of the constitutional republic and why everyday Americans—not just high-profile political figures—are being harmed by an unaccountable system.
For more information on The Oversight Project’s investigations, visit https://itsyourgov.org/ or follow them on X | @ItsYourGov | @MHowellTweets
Host: Jenny Beth Martin, Honorary Chairman, Tea Party Patriots Action | JennyBethShow.com | @jennybethm
Narrator (00:14):
Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:18):
Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show. I'm Jenny Beth Martin, and today we have a really exciting program. You're going to meet Mike Howell, who is the founder of The Oversight Project. They do amazing work, litigating, defending people, and also discovering things that the people inside the United States government don't always want discovered. So let's welcome Mike Powell. Mike, thanks so much for joining me today.
Mike Howell (00:44):
Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:47):
So Mike, your group is called The Oversight Project and you're part of the Heritage Foundation. Why don't you give people an idea of what you do and then we'll go into some of the different areas that the Oversight Project is investigating?
Mike Howell (01:02):
Yeah, so it's a lot. A few years ago we understood, what I think most Americans know is there's something wrong in the execution of law. A lot of people call it Law Fair, the focus of the justice system and lawyers trying to solve political problems through law and law enforcement badges and guns and court cases. And so working at the Heritage Foundation, we decided someone out there has to do something about it. And so we recruited a team of lawyers, of attorneys of former FBI agents, former intelligence community professionals, and we started what we call the Oversight project. The function of the oversight project is to litigate, to defend people who need defending and to discover information that the system does not want out there. And so a few months ago, we became a new independent entity with the support of the Heritage Foundation. And so now we're out there doing what we do best. We are uncovering information, we're suing that information cannot come out, and we like to style ourselves as the law firm for everyday Americans. I think that is sorely needed in our system. I'm sick of seeing our friends allies and warriors under court cases, under prosecutions, under investigations, while I see a United States of America that is under attack from so many other vectors.
Jenny Beth Martin (02:28):
Well, congratulations on spinning off and standing up as your own nonprofit. That is very, very exciting. And the work that you are doing is so very important. You name some of the people who you're defending. I've seen that you have had public statements defending Jeffrey Clark. Have you done more to defend him and what are some of the kinds of things you're doing when you talk about defending?
Mike Howell (02:53):
Absolutely. So Jeff Clark's an absolute hero. I'm sure anyone who's watching this podcast knows and appreciates what he did. Something related to that, it's not directly on Jeff Clark, but it certainly affected him, is we worked very hard on the pardons that recently came out for the contingent electors or the Les calls, the fake electors. The people still prosecuted in state court for standing up for election integrity in one of the most corrupted elections in the history of this country, the 2020 election. And so working with our friends and government, we laid the intellectual and legal foundation for this novel argument. A lot of people say it doesn't matter, the president can't pardon state offenses, but the groundwork we laid was these were always federal cases. It was a federal constitutionally protected right to assert your views and challenges on election integrity in the federal context.
(03:51):
Now, these people were charged in state courts, but how many instances have we seen of cooperation between the various state and law fair entities and the federal government in Merrick Garland? And so one example is working on those pardons, and I'm happy to say the president ultimately agreed with our advocacy, legal analysis and Ed Martin as the US party attorney was able to get that across the finish line. And so that's one example of a way behind the scenes in Washington DC we work to defend our friends. There's a lot of other examples and we don't, the frustrating part about this is you don't always name your clients, right? We have a lot of people who the consequences come with publicity. People who were involved in January 6th and associated things are professionally persecuted, they're financially persecuted, they're legally persecuted. So we do what we can to help those people.
(04:43):
I personally started a pro bono law firm in the advent of January 6th because I saw that the so-called conservative legal movement looked at the Patriots that were charged with misdemeanor offenses only as sources of income. And I thought that was wrong. I thought that was upside down. And so we found a way to help them. Another area that I can talk about is South Carolina, the Freedom Caucus down there, which is basically their conservative contingent of state officials are being attacked by the establishment. Think Nikki Haley and her political team, think of the donors and the lobbyists there. They're trying to extinguish the Freedom Caucus. So they're doing that through a bogus ethics investigation. And so we're there lawyers in that. And so we are the law firm that steps into that space in between the establishments and patriotic Americans and either their representatives or their activists or their advocates and provides the legal resources that are required. Whatever the situation may be in this environment where unfortunately lawfare is the most important thing in politics.
Jenny Beth Martin (05:54):
Let's go back and take on the pardons that you did and go through the legal basis for that, that you were just mentioning. And I am so thankful that those pardons happened. But what we're seeing of course, is that since the pardons happened, the Georgia case had the opportunity to just die. And it hasn't continuing that case, it's going forward in Wisconsin, some of the people who have been indicted in Wisconsin have to go right before Christmas. They're going to have to go be formally charged and deal with the processing that comes with that. And it's not ending, but you make the argument that there is a legal foundation and a legal basis essentially. I would think that you're making that argument that they really should be dismissed at the state levels. And then the counter counterargument that I keep hearing, especially from people in Georgia who are watching all of this happen, they're like, yeah, but President Trump issued the pardon. That's great and they appreciate it. And then they say, but these are state charges. So that pardon doesn't matter, but you are making the argument it does matter. So would you elaborate on that, please?
Mike Howell (07:11):
Yeah. And it is a very complex and complicated issue, and so I appreciate the questions actually. And I also appreciate the fact that it's not enough and I agree with those folks. And one thing I think people need to understand about how DC works is it's tough. It takes Patriots on the inside who never lose sight of where they came from. People like Ed Martin who he's one appointee within the Department of Justice who is fighting against a morass of institutional interests that are there trying to push these things forward, and ultimately President Trump who wants resolution and who acted on these pardons. So before I jump into the pardons themselves, I will say more needs to be done. I absolutely agree. I think restitution needs to be had for the people who have had legal bills pile up. Their tool of the left is they want to stack you with legal bills, enforce you into submission, and the federal government can solve that problem.
(08:11):
And that's what we're pushing for. And so before I talk about the pardons, I want to say I agree with people who want to see more and we're pushing for more, but the pardons themselves are very important. So there's a couple of key prongs and if for any legal eagles out there, we have issued memos with constitutional analysis and sources and citations. You can dive in and fact check and read up on it. And so I'm going to do a short summary if you will. There's two major prongs to this. First is this notion that the federal government, the president can only pardon for federal offenses. That's a questionable notion. The federal government didn't challenge that in this instance, but a lot of legal scholars out there are saying, no, actually the president can pardon for anything he wants, state or federal. And so I'm going to put that whole bucket aside.
(09:04):
I think it's fascinating. I think it's interesting, and I think there's good arguments that the president's pardon power exceeds what people traditionally consider it. Okay, so let's go into what the parties actually do and say and the basis for them. Basis number one, federal elections are what? Federal elections. And so you capture the parting power there. It is a constitutionally protected right to vote for the president of the United States and to challenge and participate in that process as you see fit. And there is a long legal history in the United States of basically the House of Representatives being the entity to which you present to those challenges. This goes back 200 plus years and we list out numerous instances over and over again of the House of Representatives being the deciding body for the political contest related to elections. I mean, everyone famously cites Hawaii and their contingent electors in the JFK case, but they're a legion of examples similar to that.
(10:03):
And so the process by which people who put together alternate slates of electors to preserve their options, when the federal government at the time was saying, we are going to look into election challenges. Now, we famously know Bill Barr did not do that at all, but the context of them putting together in that time was we need to make sure that if the federal government decides there was a lot of fraud, which they didn't look into, there is another slave for when Congress determines that question to preserve that option. And so argument one is this was a federal activity, it's federal the whole way through it was intended for Congress. Now the federal government is saying there was nothing wrong with it. If there is no victim, there is no crime. The federal government is saying, we not only are saying you did not victimize us by presenting us with this option, what you did was right and it's how it should work.
(10:58):
And so that's argument. One of this is a constitution protective argument, federal activity. The president's power captures it. Argument two is that these various state prosecutions have always been a cat's paw of the federal government. It was a way for Jack Smith and others to maximize legal consequences for a federal activity through a state prosecution. We've seen examples of this throughout the entire weaponization period, whether it was Fannie Wallace's boyfriend, Nathan Wade calling the White House meeting with the White House, whether it was all these law firms who were meeting with the White House and meeting with the state prosecutions, whether it was Jocelyn Benson up in Michigan saying it's a united effort of all the state ags to fight against the common enemy. We all are smart enough to know these things are not happening in a bubble. They are through whatever vehicle, whether it is a federal, state or civil, whether it is media, whether it is professional, whether it is social media, it is all of one entity at its core.
(12:06):
And so we think that breaks down this neat cabin distinction that some of the lawyers would like to say of the federal government can't touch it. I don't see fine lines of delineation between them. So where the rubber meets the road ultimately is how did these play out in the state context? Obviously these things have progressed so far through that weaponized state context. They're not going to want to hear our argument, right? I don't expect these federal judges to be like, oh, well Trump said you're innocent now I'm out of it. I've been in it forever. But it is another piece of evidence that is of value to the defense. And I hope in some instances it does have impact. I think it legally absolutely should. That being said, I understand it's not a level playing field at all. I want to see DOJ intervene in these cases and start defending these people also that has the other purpose of offsetting their legal defense. These are everyday Americans that are trying to scrap together whatever resources they have against the most powerful people in the country. And so the message is, we think you're innocent. Here's the legal reason. We haven't forgotten about you. We're fighting for you. And this isn't the end. It's actually the beginning of the Trump administration saying, we're going to stand there with you. I
Jenny Beth Martin (13:24):
Think that's really important, Mike, and I hope that the defense attorneys use this and are able to help their clients with the pardons, with the arguments that you're making with what we've learned from Arctic Frost about the absolute coordination between the federal government and the seat and local prosecutors. And then on top of that, the fact that what you were saying at the very beginning, I am just making sure that I've got it. Oh, that we need the more needs to be done, that it's crushing the people who are having to defend themselves financially. It's absolutely true. I set up GoFundMe's or I guess it's give and go, not GoFundMe because give and Go would allow us to set it up. And GoFundMe wasn't so friendly to it, but I've set this up for several of the defense people or the defendants and whether I maybe haven't set up the actual Gibson Go for several of them, but I've connected them with attorneys, told them what they need to do so they can have their own legal defense fund.
(14:40):
I know from my own conversations with some of these people that they're talking hundreds of thousands up to over a million dollars in their own personal defense. And these people at the state and local level, we're not talking about Jeffrey Clark and Mark Meadows and John Eastman who were involved at the national level with all these different states we're talking about who also have had to deal with massive bills. So I'm not excusing what's happened to them. I'm just saying it's not even people who were in the Trump administration, they're activists who just stepped up and wanted to be an elector and represent their country in this way. And it's just awful what has happened to them. So I'm very thankful that you are working on this, and I agree that they need more help from the federal government as well to be able to defend themselves against the state and local governments who are prosecuting them for federal, for what amounts to federal crimes that aren't really crimes at all.
Mike Howell (15:46):
No, I greatly appreciate this and you've been in the thick of it and the people whom I'm speaking of and their great value to not only our political movement but our country, their everyday Americans who saw something wrong and for the right reasons stood up in the right way in a legal way. The left takes to the streets, they call no kings, and they applaud it. They applaud people protesting and obstructing ice, and those people are not arrested. Whereas the people in 2020 after seeing what happened with this highly unusual election, this corrupt election said, what can we do legally? What are our legal options? And so they put together their legal options and pursued them in the framework that they've been taught since they were a child in elementary school is the process to solve our concerns in the United States of Americas. Those are the people that are being punished.
(16:42):
And I speak to a lot of, well-to-do people who say, now Trump's in charge. Everything's good. The DOJ and FBI are in better hands. It's all over. I'm here to say it's not. And the fact that we're speaking in terms of gives and goes or fundees or legal defense proves that it's not, you do not see these left wing activists like Jack Smith or whomever needing that. They never set up crowdsource legal defense funds. They already have it. They have it through the federal government. They have it through the law firms. They have it through their donor class. They have it through every means available to them. People like you think these people paid a cent out of their own pocketbook? Absolutely not. Whereas as a movement, the conservative movement has not evolved to a level where we can protect people from what is an extinguishing exercise of lawfare.
(17:31):
And so that's what the oversight project is at its core. It recognizes there's a massive asymmetry in the playing field, and we're never going to win at the cost of legal protection. And the impact of legal consequence is so high that we can't even participate in this country. And so we're not interested in the polite DC things. We're not interested in the panels and the conferences and the fancy papers. We're interested in that particular moment, what a subpoena hits an everyday American who is out there doing what they think they should do, what they've told is their option and they're faced with the gauntlet of permanent legal, banishment, reputational and professional consequences, et cetera. We have their back. And it's because no other polite professional in DC forgot about 'em.
Jenny Beth Martin (18:19):
I think it is just amazing. I'm so glad that you are out there doing this work. I want to ask you one more thing, and it's a little bit of a history pop quiz. So if you don't know the answer then that's not an issue at all. But you mentioned how the House of Representatives has heard and been the judge and jury for election contests for president, and you mentioned the JFK election. This goes back all the way to the first president after George Washington, right? I mean there was an election contest between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson that the House of Representatives had to resolve this. It isn't new at all. I mean, it is literally been going on since the first president after George Washington. It goes to the house and they have to solve these issues.
Mike Howell (19:12):
Yeah, you're a hundred percent right. And we put out a memo and we captured as many of those instances as possible, and they weren't hard to find. They go back to the origins. America was designed and the left likes to say defending democracy and all of this sloganeering around it, but it is a fiery political contest. And we set up, our founders set up rather a system to hear those contests. And in the same foundational principle in our court system is you zealously advocate from one side, the prosecutor's out there to get you. He's going to say everything terrible. You didn't interpret it the wrong way. And the defense is out there and their lawyers are there to say the prosecution's the worst. And so that's how you arrive at truth through a reason and adversarial process. The same concept was applied to our election system where if you think something wrong happens, you have it out and then the House of Representatives is there to ultimately count the votes, adjudicate what's in and what's out.
(20:12):
And you have supposedly, I know this is broken down, men and women of character in there who can hear these cases and adjudicate them appropriately as statesmen. And that has worked for a long time. It's been used for a long time. Where it stopped working was 2020 where all of a sudden because they wanted to just end the America first movement forever, they turned that constitutional process into a criminal process and they were able to do that. And my core thesis is because the institutional, right, the conservative movement, whatever we want to call it, let it happen. There weren't two sides of this. There was one side and it was that asymmetry, that obvious imbalance why we decided we got to do something about it and we haven't done it all. And I'm not here to say we've done it all. We are small. We we're 15 guys who left various walks of life, people who are at the FBI who realize this thing's too weaponized.
(21:09):
I don't want to be a part of it, or we're in the intelligence community or who were in the administration or who in Congress. A bunch of individuals realize this system is stacked and it's stacked against everyday Americans. We combine forces and we're picking and choosing and charging as hard as we can to try to correct that imbalance. It's a David and Goliath fight, but when you get things like pardons for our state contingent electors who are still facing persecution, is it enough? Nope. Not even close, but is it at least a recognition that maybe we're getting the highest and most powerful people in the government to refocus on the issue? You betcha. And we're there in DC to make sure that people don't forget that I don't want to talk about the tax rate, I don't want to talk about tariffs. I don't want to talk about any of those things. I want to talk about how the deck is stacked, how the law lawfare and weaponization of this country is hurting not only your Jeff Clarks of the world or your Mark Meadows, but your people who work a nine to five who are active and believe in President Trump who stood up and fought for him. The people who were forgotten right after the consequences are applied, we're there to fight for them.
Jenny Beth Martin (22:20):
And I am so glad, and I don't think what happened to Mark Meadows or Jeffrey Clark or John Eastman should have happened to any of them as well. And I think the one that bothers me the absolute most is what's happening to Mike Roman because he's just been indicted over and over and over in so many states and he was working on the campaign. It is evil. What is happening to these people? But then there are other people, just those who are completely forgotten and they aren't public figures. I mean, maybe they're known in their local community because they're very outspoken activists or at the state level, but they're not national figures. They're just normal everyday Americans who are activists. And we have that on both sides of the aisle on the left and the right. And neither side of the aisle should go through what these people on our side of the aisle is going through. And I think you and I both would be defending the other side if this were happening to them as well. We could be intellectually honest to see. It doesn't matter which party they're with. This is wrong.
Mike Howell (23:30):
You're a hundred percent right. And when you look at Mike Rum, who I adore, he is a great man. He's a great father. And then you look at a political system, the political system in our society, our government, our law, our culture should look at somebody like Mike Roman, who's a father of how many kids? Oh, a great Irish Catholic up there in Pennsylvania, I think last night checked and say, how do we take this man, this type of father and make his life easier? How do we make more Mike Romans in this country, a family man, a smart man, an honest man, a hardworking man, and how do we make a country designed to make his life a little bit easier? And instead, what he's been greeted with over the last six or so years is how do we make his life hell? And I think that's wrong. And I think that's terrible. And he goes through it honorably. He fights, he wakes up and makes his bed in the morning, goes out and does the best he can do, but the fact that he has to even do it and that, I think if you wanted surveyed Capitol Hill, all the people we watch on all the cable tv, they write the letters, they do the interviews, they speak of the galas. I don't think they remember Mike Roman, but we do.
Jenny Beth Martin (24:42):
That's right. And I'm so thankful that you're remembering him and all of the people who are like him around the country. Okay. Let's shift gears just a little bit to some of the other projects that you're working on. You were very, you did a lot of digging in about the auto autopen, right?
Mike Howell (25:01):
Yeah. We're the guys who uncovered it.
Jenny Beth Martin (25:03):
So talk about what you uncovered, and I mean, you've uncovered so much that on the Hall of Presidents with all the photos that President Trump has, we now have president.
Mike Howell (25:16):
Yeah, that certainly makes us laugh and it is fun to see those things, of course, but that's not to replace why we're so focused on it. So to tell this story appropriately, we have to go back about a year. It's right before Biden dropped out of the election. It was very obvious to us as it was everyone in the country that Biden was not in charge of the White House. He was not making the decisions. And so we had a couple investigations into that basic central question. One of them was the audio tape of his interview with special counsel. Her we're the ones who sued, a couple others joined with us the great time. Fanon was a big part of it as well, enforced the release of that audio tape. But of course, that came out during the Trump administration, which by the way, the Trump administration gave to Axios, which is a terrible thing that we need to correct. There's no way that the America First movement should basically be rewarding Axios and Jake Tapper as opposed to the activists who spent, I don't even want to say the number, but we spent a lot in federal court to keep that thing alive and to get the tape out. And then it winds up in Axios, his lap, they tried to bury the story. I called it a controlled demolition. It didn't want to hit Biden. So they minimize the impact. Pardon me.
(26:31):
And so there's that. Another aspect was a lot of people forget this. It's kind of been memory hold. The Nelson Mandela effect is a term people use, but if Biden had chose to drop out later than he did, we were prepared to sue and keep him off. Kamala Harris off the ballot. It was too late to do that. There were state laws that impacted ballot integrity and DNC didn't even think about that. And so everyone wonders why Biden went on that stage when he did. I'll tell you why. And don't take my word for it. Take the leak. DNC memos that are out there is because they were afraid if they waited longer, we at the oversight project would sue and there would be ballot confusion over them substituting too late. So all that you say, this is the context in which the Autopen investigation started.
(27:16):
We were sitting around the office speaking about all of these things. We have career former FBI agents, intelligence agents, lawyers, a lot of really smart, creative and capable people. I asked a simple question, who the hell is signing these things? Next thing, one of our junior members is tasked to going and pulling all the documents that purport to on Biden's signature. We have people who have testified in federal court as to signature fraud reviewing it. The pattern becomes mely clear, fast forward all the way until about March of this year ag. Andrew Bailey, who is out of Missouri, who's now the deputy director of the FBI issues a letter from his position as out of Missouri and says, I don't think any of this is valid. I don't think Biden was cognizant enough to do it. And that's because of the tape that came out that we sued to get out, which proved once again, this guy was without his marbles.
(28:09):
And so we launched our Autopen investigative findings and say not only that he didn't sign anything. And since that point, we have put out piece after piece after piece of how many things he signed, how many things he didn't sign, who was in control of it, where he was when they said he signed it. And the story is captivating the nation's attention. I believe, and pardon me, I'm fighting cold here because everybody wanted to know the answer to the question, how was the White House operating? And I think the Autopen investigation answered that question for them.
Jenny Beth Martin (28:44):
Just refresh everyone. When you said the tape that came out that you sued for, remind people which tape that was.
Mike Howell (28:50):
So Biden sat down with that special counsel her, and it was over his handling of classified documents. That was a botch and bogus coverup investigation by the way. They basically just looked for the documents, Hey, they're in his garage. Hey, he was sloppy with them. They ignored the question of what the heck was he doing with them in the context of his international pay to blood business? And so that was the coverup out of his special account to her. But part of her's investigation was that his team sat down with Biden for a couple hours and interviewed him, and there was an audio tape of that interview. And as a good investigator, you say the thing, the media didn't even say, I want that dang tape. And so we sued for that tape, we fought it all the way through. It took months and months and months in a corrupt system against all odds.
(29:34):
And then finally we got a judge to basically say in the beginning of the Trump administration, Trump admin, you got to decide by this date. And that date happened to be a Monday, I believe, around March. And then on Friday, knowing this timeline was upon them, I was at the shopping mall in the food court, at the McDonald's actually with my two toddler girls. The tape hit and they gave it to Axios, they gave it to Jake Tapper, and I love President Trump since he came down the escalator, voted for him at every single opportunity. But it's these types of decisions made by his team where it looks like you're cosing up to the liberal media and you're forgetting those on the battlefield that's spent on a lot of time, money, attention, fighting for that tape to be released. It goes to Jake Tapper who wants nothing more than the destruction of all of our people that makes you think that, Hey, we need to make sure this movement remains focused on its core object, and that's what we're here to do.
(30:34):
And that's not a knock on President Trump, I don't think for a second he thought about that decision. I think someone on his team did. They probably thought, Hey, Jake Tapper's got a lot more viewers out there or followers or whatever the heck they came up with. But that's how DC works, right? That's how the corrupt media stays alive, and we're the oversight projects new and those are the things we're fighting against. And I hope in 10 years we can sit down and have the same conversation and we don't need to talk about law fair anymore. We don't need to talk about the corrupt media getting the exclusive on things that Tom Finn fought for that I fought for. But it's an ongoing fight. It's a long-term project.
Jenny Beth Martin (31:12):
Yeah, it is a long-term project. And they would be better off releasing those kinds of things to groups like yours. So you could go do analysis and do a release on it, or reporters like Miranda Devine with the New York Post, or just the news reporters who will actually take it seriously, look at it, report on it from a very objective standpoint, and then let the mainstream media pile on and shoot it down, which they're going to do anyway, but at least give our side the opportunity to get the facts of the story out there before it is being shot down. It shouldn't be shot down as it's being released.
Mike Howell (31:51):
Yeah, no, that's ly correct. And the rollout of the tape, think about this. It was six 7:00 PM on a Friday night. I'm at a food court in a McDonald's, which is not too unusual, by the way, if you know me well, I do like McDonald's and I do love taking my little girls out to McDonald's, but that is the worst time to release anything. It's a controlled demolition of a story that could have been harmful to Biden. So Axios just puts this out at the time to cause the minimal amount of damage and their attendant analysis was a coverup, and it's in the context of j Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios releasing a book about Joe Biden and where they pretend to be the victim of the coverup, whereas they had the front row seat and were participants of the coverup. And so corruption is deep.
(32:38):
It is profound. And the fact that they monetize through a huge book sale, and even Republicans are like, oh, finally we have a Democrat saying something we agree with, let's promote Jake Tapper. And he is doing interviews, he's on War room, and I love Steve Bannon. I love those people, but I'm just thinking, guys, he is not on the team. He is making money off of his own coverup and he got the thing that we spent a year fighting for, but my feelings aren't hurt. I expected so much. Right? This is how the system works. If I was surprised, I would not have started an oversight project with all these patriots on our team. This is what we do every single day, and we're not going to stop until it's fixed, which is a long way of saying we're going to be working for a long time.
Jenny Beth Martin (33:20):
Yeah, you will be working for a very long time because the corruption runs very, very deep. Mike, speaking of Miranda Devine in the New York Post, she just recently had this amazing, very well researched information that she learned about Jeffrey Crooks, the attempted assassin of President Trump. He had 17 online social media profiles. He was involved in the transgender ideology movement. He was involved with furries, the bizarre sexual fetish, and he clearly became very, very radicalized. And perhaps he became radicalized online. Perhaps there were other elements that were radicalizing him, but this information should have been, I think that just reading those articles recently goes back and highlights the importance of the work you and the oversight project have been doing because you've already been researching Thomas Crooks, you've also been researching the transgender ideology, violent extremism that is happening. And you've said that that should be called domestic terrorism.
(34:31):
And clearly something is going on at the FBI and the DOJ because this is a man who has attempted to assassinate a former president and the nominee for president. All of the information about that should have been made public. The media should have been clamoring for details because this is the news story of the century or the news story of the certainly of the year last year. And instead, the media didn't do any real investigative work or very little of it, certainly from the mainstream media. And I'm just wondering, what did you think when you saw what she wrote? How does it jive with the things that the oversight project has already been working on when it comes to transgender violent extremism and the work that you've done related to the research about Thomas Crooks and also the fbi? Is there are people in there who are trying to cover things up?
Mike Howell (35:33):
Yeah. Well, the last part is unfortunately very true. And while there's better management at the FBI right now, it is still a rotten institution and it'll remain a rotten institution unless it's basically disheveled and missions are cut off and the vast majority of it is basically fired. All that being said, and I think this is a really important context point and I don't know what to make of it. And obviously President Trump is the one whose life was threatened that day. He was shot in the face and he is the guy who gets to decide. But I think lost in this picture is a recognition that President Trump is the symbol of nearly half this country's political representation. He is the government for them. So much of our political destiny and our participation in this process is wrapped up in that one human man made in God's image in President Trump.
(36:27):
And so that was almost taken from all of us. And so Trump squarely had the most to lose that day. He was shot in the face, but a lot of us stood a lot to lose to and are victims of that assassination attempt. And so when President Trump tells the country when asked in interviews that it was just a bad day at the Secret Service, there's nothing more to see there. And he pumps the brakes on the investigation. I think a lot of people are not satisfied, and that's his choice to make. But I think it is unspeakably true that large amounts of this country still ask daily what the heck happened that day and what was it all about? So all that's a table set for our deep dive into this. A few days after the crooks assassination attempt, we grabbed his cell phone data using advanced technological tools that we have and are able to digest and make sense of and found that of all the devices that he had that had a digital footprint associated with them, they traveled quite a bit and they traveled to weird places.
(37:26):
One of the places was Washington DC not too far from a FBI satellite office that raises a ton of questions. We were told this is an isolated L actor with no money troubled and also told he was a right winger by the way. And that just doesn't bear out by our analysis. And I'll tell you, the FBI has never asked us those questions. We put it out there and the internet and Elon Musk and everyone retweeted reposted it. The public asked questions about it, but the government never asked us about it, which I always found highly suspicious. Another thing that's happening is for years years, our guys out of the FBI and intelligence community have been a firm conviction. A conviction that I share obviously, that there is a huge problem in this country as it relates to transgenderism, which morphs in sometimes into this weird furry and just sexual deviancy and all of these things.
(38:24):
It's not too different than youth domestic terrorism problems in the past. They fixate on bizarre ideologies as a rite of passage and as a sign of nihilism and then rebellion and they trade in things they shouldn't trade in. The form today is transgenderism. These are people that are pumped through of hormones that are socially isolated, that have self-harm themselves by morphing their own bodies through these surgeries. And they're ticking time bombs for mental health issues. And when you want to hurt yourself, the science shows you are more likely to hurt somebody else. And our politically correct government, our politically correct medical industry that is promoted and profited off these things doesn't want to say that. Well, I'm saying it and we've been saying it for years, that when you tell these people transgender ideology inspired violence, extremism, we call it tithe. When you tell these people with all of these problems, attendant to them, and they're all God's creatures and I want them to get help, but they're not getting help, what they're getting instead is a society that tells them every harm that you will face in your life because of these decisions we told you to make is the fault of somebody else trying to hurt you.
(39:36):
This is why Democrats say things like, if you don't affirm their gender ideology, you're going to kill them these radical terms. And so you bake these kids in their friends in their social circles in this ideology that is at its core violent, it is no surprise that people who feel that the whole system's out to kill them, they will lash out and kill somebody else. And I think that's what we're seeing in Charlie Kirk. I think that's what we saw in President Trump's assassination attempts. I think that's what we saw at Covington. I think that's what we see around schools and churches around this country. And I think that embeds it all and it makes an investigation a credible one more difficult when the federal government and society and the medical industry and the media are complicit in it because they're the ones who fed the baseline narrative to these people.
Jenny Beth Martin (40:30):
I think what you said just now is really important. And when you said that, I'm looking back at the notes that I was thinking as you were saying this, that's why I'm kind of pausing there. But you said that he traveled to DC near an FBI office and that you put the information out there and that the government, the FBI never reached out to you about this to question where you were getting it and you thought that was strange. Why is that strange? Would it be normal in your working with former FBI agents in your organization? Would that be something that would normally happen?
Mike Howell (41:08):
I'll put it to you this way. I can't go two hours of my day weekends included without speaking to a current or former FBI agent. I think when we do something like put out evidence that got the attention that it did that I haven't heard a ding thing that's strange.
Jenny Beth Martin (41:27):
Okay, alright. That makes a lot of sense. And I was asking them from my own personal experience or lack thereof when we were targeted by the IRS, we were the victims. We were the victims targeting by the IRS personally and at an organizational level and they went after groups with Tea Party and Patriots in their name and we are Tea Party patriots. It seems like they should have been coming to us, the victim to interview us. Never ever one time did that happen. And so when you said that it was odd that you didn't hear from, I'm like, well, that seems normal to me because they don't care about the victims. I don't know who they care. I'm sorry. I know that I'm painting with a broad brush, a lot of things about the FBI and I am sure that there are good FBI agents and I've met some who are whistleblowers who I know cared very much about the country and cared about victims. But from my own personal experience, like it is a department of injustice not justice, and the FBI doesn't give a darn about victims. It cares about covering up the left politically and they'll do anything they can to protect the left. So I am sorry, I'm just ranting here, but that was my own personal experience.
Mike Howell (42:45):
Your story is my origin story in terms of the IRS targeting. That is when I came of political life. I have I guess the disadvantage of being younger in that the IRS targeting scandal in Lois Learner 2010 era, that is when I was leaving college and in law school. That is my first chapter of understanding how this story worked, what happened to you, and the formation in which I approached these questions right now. And when I say it's strange that the FBI didn't contact me, I don't mean strange, you know what I mean? Normal. It's normal. It's what they do.
Jenny Beth Martin (43:22):
Yeah, it is. And then the fact that you are in touch with them regularly and they had to know what you were doing and none of them said anything. That is strange. It's not surprising, but it's strange.
Mike Howell (43:35):
Well, what makes it even stranger is I will tell you, and I'm a huge fan of Gino Bailey Patel. Oh
Jenny Beth Martin (43:41):
Yeah.
Mike Howell (43:41):
They're up against, I'm not criticizing them.
Jenny Beth Martin (43:43):
Me too.
Mike Howell (43:45):
I think it is unfair a lot they have to deal with, am I happy with their job? Do I give 'em an A? No, but do I understand that they're in an impossible situation. Yes. And that's the prim through which I view it. I'll say what makes it strange is due to the position they've been put in and the problems they inherited and the distrust that has grown on the right, and rightfully so, a lot of conservatives wanted to see consequences applied. I don't blame them, but one of their huge problems that is front of mind is their perceptions out in the country. Are they doing a good job? Are they doing a bad job? And so they get very into, in my estimation too, involved in questions of media perception. And that's why you see the goofy tweets, the goofy media appearances is because this cat and mouse game of we want these guys to trust this. Whereas the guys and gals, they just want you to do the job. And so all that you say, our post on Thomas Crooks is probably, and I don't give a dang about this, the most viral thing we ever did. And so you would think if they care about their media perception at least it would dovetail with the moment where everyone in the world is talking about what we put out, which makes it as we say, even more strange
Jenny Beth Martin (44:55):
Indeed. Absolutely. Okay, one more topic for you and then our time will end, but I definitely want to have you back on my show sometime like talking about news of the day because you are so well versed in all of the ongoings that are happening, the Chinese Communist Party. I've recently done several interviews about the Chinese Communist Party, and I anticipate I'm going to be doing more because I want my audience to understand that we do face a threat from the Chinese Communist Party. You or your organization posted on my ex feeded about underneath one of those interviews, and you were talking about making sure that we highlighted and paid attention to the fact that the FBI was investigating a mole who had betrayed the United States to China and the person investigating that actually wound up being a mole. Tell us about that. And it also winds up tying to the Biden family.
Mike Howell (45:58):
Yeah,
Jenny Beth Martin (46:00):
I'm not saying that Biden family were the moles, but it ties into what was going on with them as well.
Mike Howell (46:06):
It does. But let me first address why, whenever anyone talks about China on X, our guys who are convinced, and I'm convinced as well that there's a bipartisan consensus in this country to allow China to assert influence that they should not for economic reasons, for corrupt reasons, for a ton of reasons. But the point is China is eating our lunch and the United States of America is already to some extent a Chinese product and will be for generations to come. The cost of disassociating what China is too high for politicians. And I don't think everyday Americans realize how much we've sold out. So it is that energy by which every time anybody's talking about China, our guys take some of our findings and just say, talk about this, talk about this. And that's how we have to get the message out. And I'm glad you're talking about it.
(46:54):
Obviously you want to talk about it, but usually we yell at CNN, at M-S-N-B-C, Washington Post, they'll write things about China. It's like you are missing the biggest story of our generation, our lunches being eaten. So this particular story is I think one of the most illustrative ways to explain what's happening with China decade plus or so ago. And it gets really complicated as most spy novels do. But this is one such case agents at the FBI named Charles McGonigal who's in jail right now, was put in charge of a Mohan because a bunch of our assets, China, us being the US were extinguished and China basically figured out who they were and got rid of 'em. And so it was the FBI's job to figure out how China figured that out. And so the guy that put in charge of it was Charles McGonigal.
(47:43):
Charles McGonigal then shows up in the Hunter Biden saga as working with them. Hunter Biden referred to a business partner, McGonigal Patrick Ho. Again, I'm pardoning the complications. He's the famous individual that Hunter Biden said was the effing spy chief of China. That's who McGonigal was working with. So it would take three hours to explain this, but I'm going to make it a very short version. The FBI agent that was supposed to be investigating the mo hunt then started feeding information to an intermediary of the CCP. Then he finally was indicted not for working with China, but for a connection to the Russians during the Russiagate hoax
(48:27):
By the SCNY. And so you think about all of the corrupt interests in New York City, the money laundering place in the United States, they didn't want to talk about China. This guy was doing something he shouldn't have done. He came, hunter Biden's laptop, connected him to it all as well. And so they tagged him with the Russia hoax and made no mention of the Chinese stuff. And guess what? Also they did. They redacted Hunter Biden's name from the indictment. No one knows this story. Well, some do. And so that's why we yell it every single opportunity on X, and it's the same SCNY are my reviewers who are highly skeptical, the handling of Epstein Saga. And we can say what we want about that. But it's the SCNY that's now charged with getting to the bottom of the Epstein Saga, the Southern District of New York. And so I stand with all those people across the country who say the deck is absolutely stacked against them, that the same reason we criticize the economic system is the same reason we criticize the weaponization legal system.
(49:29):
We are sick and tired of the rich and powerful getting away with it. I don't care if it's Epstein, I don't care if it's McGonigal. The CCP is eating or lunch. This is the United States of America. We need to have a little more pride than our government shows. And the fact that we're betting over backwards to cover up clear Chinese corruption after our Intel assets are extinguished in China, is I think an unforgivable sin. And I think it's unforgivable on the part of the mainstream media where they cover fake Russia hoaxes, fake hoaxes everywhere. No one's interested in China and they're eating our dang lunch.
Jenny Beth Martin (50:05):
They are eating our lunch. And I think that the economic relationship that the United States set up with China was well intentioned and in the intentions from it were not nefarious. We were trying to win the Cold War and make sure that the United States defeated the Soviet Union. And I understand, I understand that thinking. And I also understand that they were thinking if we became more economically entwined, that they would shed their communist ways and look at more capitalistic and democratic ways. But they haven't done it. And now we are facing all sorts of, I believe I'm giving the people who created the situation we're in right now, the benefit of the doubt. I didn't walk in their shoes. And in 30 years from now, people will judge us and they're not walking in our shoes and may not understand that why we made the decisions we made, which were out of good intentions. But there have been terrible unintended consequences. And you're right, I think they're eating our lunch as well. And I think it's very important that, and part of the reason I've been interviewing people, and I want to do more of it, is to expose some of the problems that we have and figure out how we as a nation can address it. But you can't address it if you don't understand the problem.
Mike Howell (51:29):
No, that's a hundred percent right. And as I fight through this cold, and I apologize to the listeners, you have to deal with my raspy voice, which then affects my raspy brain. But the Cold War, what was the metric of the Cold War? It was to defeat an atheist, communism in favor of a Christian capitalist society. We look in 2025, and I share with you, I think everyone who fought it, Reagan on down, did it with the best of intentions and the best of spirits. But I look at the 50 plus years since then, have we gotten more communists, more atheist, I would say. Yeah. And so I'm not necessarily sure we won on those merits.
Jenny Beth Martin (52:13):
No agree with that. And I think that we definitely won the Cold War in the Cold War time. But what is happening since then? They're unintended consequences. And now it's our turn and our generation's turn to go clean them up and try to make things right and make things better. And then our children, hopefully not our children, but our grandchildren may have to come back in and clean up some unintended consequences from decisions that our generation is making. But we've got to fix what has gone wrong.
Mike Howell (52:51):
Yeah, that's a higher center. And we got to give our children a chance to win that fight. And when I see the immigration problem, when I see the economic problem, I worry that we're not going to give them even an opportunity to win that fight, to answer a question as simple for you and I as who was right, Joe McCarthy or Zoran Mond
Jenny Beth Martin (53:16):
Definitely cannot be that Zoran. Ami is the right one.
Mike Howell (53:19):
Yeah, it's an easy question. Sugar V shouldn't be that difficult, but apparently United States least New York thinks it is.
Jenny Beth Martin (53:27):
Yes, exactly. Okay, one more thing about this incredible, because I sort of just glossed over it and honed in on China there, this spy situation that you just talked about. I want to see story, but I don't want to to sound like it is a novel and fiction. It is real. Ben McIntyre, he's one of my favorite authors when it comes to writing about spies and counter spies. And he needs to take this story and write a book about it because it would be a bestseller. It is just hard to believe that the way that you described it happened, and yet it happened. It's real, it's factual.
Mike Howell (54:07):
And the problem is, and it's an acknowledgement more than a critique. We live in the Netflix generation, the Twitter generation, things that can be neatly summarized around winding and complicated. And this is complicated. We have written on this toes of pages and breakdowns, and I don't blame people who are used to digesting their news in very different ways, but to deal with this, it will take a book. But the conclusion's very simple, right? It is. We got a CCP problem and we got to fix it. And there are overlapping political interests that don't needly map into red versus blue. There's financial interests, there's power politics, there's foreign politics, and there's the tradeoffs that are attendant to foreign policy all the time. I mean, I'm confused about what's happening in foreign policy right now. You have wars I didn't even know about that are being solved. I can't even keep up. And I do this for a living. Or a guy who was a Syrian terrorist who's in the White House the next day, what the heck is going on? And so then you look at a CCP case in the heart of the financial sector that funds our political system, and you have to arrive at the conclusion that there's corruption everywhere.
Jenny Beth Martin (55:26):
That's right. There is. And that's why the oversight project is so, so important because you're helping expose it. And you are litigating, you're litigating, defending and discovering what people don't want to be discovered, which is what you said in the beginning. You've talked to us for the last hour explaining just exactly how you're doing that. And you are doing amazing work. Mike, thanks so much for being with me today.
Mike Howell (55:49):
Yeah, thanks for having me. I am nothing but a spokesperson for a team of people who do this every day. And it's people who used to be doing this for the US government for the right reasons. And I think that the fact that we have to exist is a reflection on the system. And so thank you for letting me talk about it with you. I apologize again that I am sounding like I'm overcoming a cold. Don't send your children to school because all they do is come back with colds. I guess I need to homeschool, but such is life and we shall persevere.
Jenny Beth Martin (56:19):
You probably should homeschool for several other reasons, in addition the colds, but I completely understand. I'm a mama twins. They're older now, but man, those first few years, every time that they were in school, we were dealing with colds.
Mike Howell (56:31):
Yeah. What'd you learn today? I learned how to get sick. That seems to be the pattern.
Jenny Beth Martin (56:37):
Thank you so much for being with me.
Mike Howell (56:38):
Thanks for having me.
Jenny Beth Martin (56:40):
If you enjoyed today's conversation, go ahead and hit like and subscribe. It really helps us reach more people who care about freedom and the Constitution. You can find this and other episodes@jennybethshow.com as well as Facebook Rumble, YouTube, Instagram, X in your favorite podcast platform.
Narrator (56:58):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.