Pod Insights Modern Wisdom Uncovering The Biggest Fraud Scheme In America - Nick Shirley About this episode Nick Shirley is a YouTuber, content creator, and investigative journalist.
In just a few weeks, Nick Shirley has gone from relative obscurity to the centre of one of the largest political fraud scandals in recent history. By uncovering tens of millions of dollars in alleged fraud in Minnesota, his work has forced immediate reactions from both state and federal officials, something no journalist has accomplished this fast before. So what’s behind this fraud scandal, and how deep does the corruption run at the state and federal levels?
Expect to learn how Nick ended Tim Walz upcoming gubernatorial run, the inside story of how Nick Shirley uncovered the child-care fraud scheme in Minnesota, why Minnesota is a prime state to commit fraud in, the places and states Nick wants to uncover fraud in next, what Nick’s new security concerns are since uncovering the scandal, what part 2 to his major exposé will look like, some live breaking news during the ep and much more…
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0:00 How Did Nick End Tim Walz?
4:10 How Nick Uncovered $10B of Fraud
15:31 The Business Model Behind Fraudulant Daycares
23:09 Where is the Funding Actually Going?
29:43 Are Holes in the System Inevitable?
34:52 Is Nick’s Work Fuelling Xenophobia?
50:50 Why is the Media So Against Nick?
59:02 Does Nick Feel Safe Anymore?
01:08:22 What to Expect in Part 2
01:16:48 What It’s Actually Like in CECOT
01:23:21 What’s Next for Nick?
01:29:21 Breaking News
01:33:59 Chris’ Advice For Nick
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Transcript 18,272 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Chris Williamson? Who are you on the phone to this morning?
0:02 Speaker 01 A lot of people have been calling me. I actually can't even keep track of all the numbers. And so today I just got asked to go talk in front of Congress, just a moment ago. So people are just calling me saying, hey, we want some information. Can you tell us about this? We're just trying to gather information. And for instance, today, someone just called me and said, hey, we have a a meeting we'd like you to testify in front of Congress, January 21st. So I'll see if I'll do that.
0:27 Chris Williamson? Right. So it's starting to hit the bigger levels of sort of real law, real government now?
0:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, within just one day of me posting my video. Well, it got over 100 million views in 72 hours. Both in the first day alone, you had Elon Musk retweet it. You had J D Vance retweet it. You had quite literally every major politician retweet it. The next morning, Cash Patel puts out a post on X about it. And then that same day, Attorney General Pam Bondi also puts out a post mentioning my name in that video. Same day, Mike Johnson as well. So it's spread across the entire internet and it's the most viral video. The expose on fraud in Minnesota. It's the most viral video by anybody not named Mr. Beast in an expose format. Over 100 million views in 72 hours.
1:19 Chris Williamson? Did you end Tim Walz?
1:20 Speaker 01 I did end Tim Walz. He is no longer running for reelection of governor.
1:25 Chris Williamson? Tell me the story then.
1:26 Speaker 01 So Tim Walz, everyone knows him. He he was almost the Vice President of the United States. And he has a record going on in Minnesota talking about fraud. Ever since 2019, he's known about fraud. He's been talking about how they've been fighting fraud. And he's been enabling this fraud to happen. And so I go and make this video. And what I showed the fraud happening and you would think people would be like, oh, amazing. This kid just showed that fraud's happening. Instead, Tim Walz goes on TV. He calls me a white supremacist, calls me far right, and he also calls me a delusional conspiracy theorist.
2:05 Chris Williamson? Are you any of those things?
2:06 Speaker 01 No. And so then Tim Walz, after calling me all of that, he drops out of running for reelection of governor. So I was right. I show people the truth. And Tim Walz, he couldn't handle it. So therefore, he went to deflecting mechanisms of calling me far right, delusional conspiracist, delusional conspiracist and a white supremacist when I was just talking about fraud.
2:31 Chris Williamson? You think that the reason that he's not running for reelection is exclusively because of this story?
2:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, 100%. He knows the baggage so much that he could not, he can't run from it. And he's hoping probably people would think less of it. And so he's gonna step aside, step aside and not run for reelection.
2:48 Chris Williamson? How much is he culpable? Cause Minnesota's a big state. There's lots of stuff going on. He had an election campaign to look after not long ago. Is it his job to be paying attention directly to this sort of stuff?
3:02 Speaker 01 He's obviously part of it. There's obviously larger communities like the DHS inside of Minnesota.
3:07 Chris Williamson? What's the DHS, sorry?
3:08 Speaker 01 The Department of, you know, the Department of Homeland Security. But then you also have DHS that receives the money and they kind of give the money, money to the welfare Medicaid programs, everything like that.
3:22 Chris Williamson? So not entirely unculpable then?
3:25 Speaker 01 No, I mean, his office kind of, he's the, he's said it himself, the buck stops with him. He's said that multiple times and he's known about the fraud forever.
3:33 Chris Williamson? It is an interesting challenge, right? Because you have some people, anybody that is running for office wants to show I've got agency and I make things happen inside of my state. And it kind of sounds powerful, Ubermangy to say the buck stops with me. But when it turns out that the buck is kind of messy and on fire and deserves investigation, you become culpable for the promises that you've made in the past.
3:58 Speaker 01 Yeah. And at the end of the day, he knows about, he knew about it. He knows that there's daycares all around Minnesota. He actually bragged about that in a debate with Tim Walz. He said, you can go visit him. I visited him. There was no kids.
4:11 Speaker 01 Give me the story from the start of how this came about. So last June, every week for the past 100 weeks, I've been doing, making YouTube videos about something happening in the US or other countries. And so back last June, I went to Minnesota to make a video about the rise of Islam, because I've heard how mosques were replacing Christian churches and how the Somali population was growing. And so I wanted to go do a video on the rise of Islam. And while I'm there, I'm talking with locals and they're like, Nick, you have to do a video on the fraud. There's these daycares, there's these adult daycares, there's assisted living homes popping up right next door to us, and they're all around by Somalis. You need to do a video on
4:52 Speaker 01 the fraud. And I said, well, I can't just come and just paint fraud to be happening and bring no evidence. So I made my video about the rise of Islam. And I saw it firsthand. I saw communities that had been overtaken by Somalis. Actually, me and my mom, my mom was my camera woman for that video. She comes on to me, she comes with me on a lot of trips. We got jumped in Cedar Riverside. They snatched the camera and they threatened me and my mom. And so after that, Who's they? Somalis inside of Cedar Riverside. Because inside there, they also have rivalry gangs and there's a kind of a whole gang thing going on inside of these Somali communities. And so I knew there was a, something there. And I went back home and I kept trying to do my own investigation
5:37 Speaker 01 to get down to the fraud. And I couldn't really get the number specifically. And then a man by the name of David, who's in the video, he reaches out to me and he says, Nick, I have all the information. I've been researching this for years. Why did he reach out to you? Yeah, so he's been trying to get this story out for years. But did he reach out to you before you did your documentary? Well, he had seen some of my other videos on YouTube. Right. As well. So he kind of just knew, maybe this kid would be interested because he's been trying to get it from local people and local news has been reporting on the fraud for years. And a lot, so they've been reporting on it for years, but it's never blown up on a national level. And this man David had all the numbers, somebody from inside the Capitol.
6:20 Speaker 01 Had given him the information on the CCAP funding, which is federal and state money that goes to these programs.
6:29 Speaker 01 It's called, I believe, the Childcare Assistance Program. So he had all the information and he said, Nick, I have been looking into this for years. And I have never seen a single child at one of these daycares. And so we went and made this video about the fraud that was taking place. And I When did you make it? Uh, December 16th is when we filmed it. Oh, wow. So you really turned it around quickly. Yeah, within just a few weeks. And so I had no idea. I thought we were just gonna go to these daycares. And I thought you'd be able to open up the door and go to the reception, receive a brochure for your child. And at the first daycare we go to, it's a one building that has two of the same daycares inside of it. Had, it was named Mako and there was another one that's also inside of that daycare.
7:13 Speaker 01 They had both been receiving money from the government upwards of $5 million. And it was strange, cause all the windows were blacked out. The sign above it said, open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. You open the door, nobody would answer. You ring the doorbell, nobody answers. And then a Somali woman comes up and we're asking her, where's the kids at? She says, I don't know. I was like, what the heck? Like, what's wrong with these daycares? She came out of the She drove into the parking lot and she went into a store next door. And I was like, what the heck is going on with these daycares? That was weird. Okay, let's go to the next one. Let's see what happens. We go to the next one. They also received a million dollars. They're licensed for 40 children. All the windows were completely blacked out.
7:55 Speaker 01 I knock on the door and I hear a lady talk and I said, well, hey, I'm trying to enroll my son, little Joey, into daycare. And she's like, no. And she wouldn't give me any more information. And so you'd think that even if they didn't want to talk with me, that they would maybe give you a brochure. Right? Just to kind of show that they're actually legit daycare. And they're licensed for forty children. It's funny because then after that I post my video, uh, local news CBS then tells that daycare they're gonna go and they film a video and there's twelve kids inside the daycare. Well, either way. Not forty. What? It's still not forty. Yeah, it's still not forty. So what's the point of giving them a million dollars? Hmm.
8:37 Speaker 01 And so I believe that's fraudulent. And then we go to the next daycare and this one had received three point four five million dollars. Can I ask about where this is? You mentioned Cedar Cedar Park? Cedar Riverside, that's like the well-known community inside of Minneapolis. But this is, this video I filmed is all throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul. Right. And so then we go to the next one. It's actually right where George Floyd happened, just a few blocks away from it. Three point four five million dollars. And this lady opens the door. I kept all the, I kept all my security. I kept the other vans. I, I put David kind of far to the side. I was like, all right, we're gonna have a genuine interaction. I don't want anyone to make any excuses. So this lady opens up the door and I say, hey, I want to enroll my son, little Joey.
9:22 Speaker 01 And she says, no. I'm like, well, can I at least get a brochure? She says, no. I said, well, can, well, would my son have friends here? She said, no. And there were no kids, no snow, no, no footprints in the snow. And she was the only one there, broad daylight. I believe on December sixteenth, which I believe was a Tuesday, there should be children inside the daycare. What time? We were there, hers was around twelve, I believe. And then also quality leering center. That this one is so bad because they had received one point nine million dollars. They had over ninety violations and they're just a few blocks away from downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks away from where the Timberwolves plays.
10:07 Speaker 01 And their sign literally said quality leering center. Like imagine that you're trying to teach children to learn, but you can't even spell learning right on your son. Had that been incorrect for nine years or something? For many years. Cause they were originally inside on the road and then.
10:27 Speaker 01 And then they like cut out this door and they opened up a restaurant where Yohan Omar has photos of her outside that same restaurant. And the owner also has photos with her and the mayor. And the guy who came out saying that my video was false. He has videos of him parting with the mayor of Minneapolis. Like it's all intertwined. And so there's all this fraud happening. Millions of dollars are being given out to these daycares. And then on top of that, you have adult daycares. You have autism.
10:56 Chris Williamson? Adult daycares?
10:57 Speaker 01 Yes.
10:58 Chris Williamson? What is that?
10:59 Speaker 01 Adult daycares, place for adults to get taken care of.
11:02 Chris Williamson? People with special needs?
11:04 Speaker 01 I don't know. There's no one.
11:05 Chris Williamson? What, okay, how do you advertise an adult daycare? What is it? It's literally called adult daycare?
11:10 Speaker 01 Adult daycare. And then you have assisted living. So that's kind of confusing. You have adult daycare and you have assisted living.
11:16 Chris Williamson? Right, yeah, because they can't be the same thing if you've separated them out. And if you've got stuff, because there's like loads of stuff happening with autism.
11:22 Speaker 01 Autism.
11:23 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
11:23 Speaker 01 Like, there was not just a random surge in autism, but there was an increase from $1 million to $200 million in funding.
11:30 Chris Williamson? For autism?
11:31 Speaker 01 For autism.
11:32 Chris Williamson? In Minnesota?
11:33 Speaker 01 In Minnesota.
11:34 Chris Williamson? $200 million?
11:35 Speaker 01 Yes, in 2024, there's $200 million.
11:38 Chris Williamson? Compared with?
11:39 Speaker 01 I think in 2017, there's $1 million.
11:42 Chris Williamson? Oh, wow. So it's in, what, seven years?
11:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, so just in a short period of time, it went from $1 million to $200 million. Autism wasn't just springing up like that. And you don't, and you didn't need to prove that. Like, you didn't need a license. Like, it came out just the other day that, like, the Biden administration opened up these systems, and you didn't have to really prove much in order to get the funding. And so a lot of people just took advantage.
12:08 Chris Williamson? Yeah, I think my first question is, what is it about Minnesota or Minneapolis in particular? And the bylaws and the small print, which has caused this particular scheme to flourish?
12:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, it doesn't really make much sense why Somalis would go to Minnesota. Somalia, the temperature and the climate's completely different than Minnesota. I think people realize, like, Minnesota's known for being Minnesota nice. Everyone is accepting. They brought all these refugees. And it wasn't a problem until it became a problem. And so. Then you get politicians like Tim Walz and the mayor, Little Fry over there, who start panhandling to the Somali community, who's just a small percentage of the population there. It's about anywhere from 80 to 200,000. No one exactly knows. The ranges are from 80 to 200,000 people.
13:03 Chris Williamson? So it's not a big number of people?
13:05 Speaker 01 No, it's not, but they go into certain areas and they pretty much move out any other race or religion, and it just becomes a Somali area. And so it's not, so it becomes an issue when you don't feel like it's still your city, or you don't feel like you're being represented by your politicians. And so Tim Walz and Ihan Omar, they kind of started panhandling to this group of immigrants, one for votes, and then also they attached on to the welfare programs. I believe 81% of Somalis in Minnesota are on welfare.
13:47 Speaker 01 89% of the fraud being committed by people inside Minnesota is by Somalis. And then if you come out and speak against the fraud, you'll be called the white supremacist, like Tim Walz did with me. He'll call you far right. He'll call you an illusionist conspiracy theorist. And so all this political correctness made it to where people kind of feel like they couldn't speak out. That's why David, he had been trying for years to get the story out, to tell people. And I was one of the only people who would listen to him and give him the time of day to go show what's happening.
14:21 Chris Williamson? So I understand that you've got this unusual microcosm of a very particular demographic in a very tightly dense area. What I don't understand is what is it about Minnesota? Tim Walz has been saying, you can come here, they're kind of nice. But there has to be a specific loophole or legal. I mean, is this available everywhere? If I just dumped 200,000 people from one particularly innovative culture into an area, would they be able to scheme and Do that across the whole country?
14:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, I talked to some Somalians and they tell me, well, if one Somali moves, we all move essentially. So like they kind of move in these groups. So there's like groups of them in Texas, there's groups of them in Minnesota. And I think they just saw how much money you can make from these welfare programs. They're going unchecked. I mean, Quality Learning Center, they had 90 violations.
15:16 Chris Williamson? Stop calling it Quality Learning Center.
15:18 Speaker 01 That's what it is. Quality Learning Center.
15:24 Speaker 01 And they and they leered their lesson.
15:31 Chris Williamson? Fuck. Okay. Can you explain to me the exact journey of a dollar? Where it comes from, where it goes to, and what you think is going on? I imagine that there's a variety of different paths that it can take. But money has to come from somewhere, go to somewhere, get fed back to some, what's the, what's the story there?
15:53 Speaker 01 Yeah. So for instance, when, so for instance, with childcare, there's this thing called the HHS and that's a federal. It's a, I believe it's Health and Human Services. So they allocate a certain amount of funds to stuff like childcare. For instance, they allocated a $185 million to childcare. And then that money, you then go submit, you go get licensed for your daycare. And then you say, we want this many children. And then you're able to receive this money for these daycares because it's part of their, like Tim Walz openly bragged even on X and in the debate with, with J D Vance, like, we're going to give childcare and daycare a raise. Like, why would you do that? There's a lot of hardworking, hardworking parents that are paying to put their kid in childcare.
16:37 Speaker 01 And so that's kind of how they go about making their money. And then they've realized, well, daycare is great. Let's do adult daycare. Let's do assisted living.
16:46 Chris Williamson? So you've got this fund that can help to pay for daycare. But somebody needs to create a business and file a business. And what's the structure of what's going on on the ground there? Who's working there? Are they being paid in cash? Are they being paid?
17:06 Speaker 01 Yeah. So that's kind of the problem right now. That's why the federal government has surged Minnesota with investigators, to figure out what's actually happening. Because it's been like this kind of weird liquid thing where no one really knows. And so that's kind of the problem. That's why you're seeing it's kind of hard to track down. What's actually happening?
17:25 Chris Williamson? You know that there's money going in, but you're unsure where it's coming from or how it's being distributed.
17:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I went to a fraud committee meeting and this one lady, she's a Republican representative for the state. She laid out one of these frauds that was happening. You had one man, he also, he also ran a daycare, assisted, assisted living, and he had multiple violations, but the government kept giving him money. And so somebody from inside the state DHS was cutting the checks and they continued to give these people money even though they're violating and having violations. And so that's why they had been enabling this fraud to happen for so long. That's why Tim Walz, he needs to be held accountable for it, because like you said, the buck stops with him. And so if someone's stealing a hundred thousand dollars, a million dollars from your bank account, how fast are you going to find out?
18:15 Speaker 01 Pretty quick. And Tim Walz has been saying they've been fighting fraud since 2019. And so six years later, he's been enabling fraud.
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19:39 Chris Williamson? So you have unlicensed, people don't need to show that they've got registered teachers, any accreditation, what's the level of scrutiny to be able to build? If I want to go now and start the quality leering center 2.0, can I go do that?
19:59 Speaker 01 Now it would probably be a lot harder because of everything, but I mean, people were starting them up everywhere. I mean, if you just drive around Minneapolis and you pay attention to all the daycare centers, or whether it be daycares or adult daycares or assisted livings or home health services, you'll be shocked. Like literally almost every block, there's some sort of welfare program, whether it be autism daycare, you're like, what is going on? They're not like nice buildings. They're like these, almost like warehouse styled buildings, and they just slap a daycare on top of it and there's no children to be seen anywhere.
20:29 Chris Williamson? Have you looked at the landlords of these buildings? Who owns them?
20:32 Speaker 01 I haven't looked into who's landlords are.
20:33 Chris Williamson? That'd be interesting to work out how culpable it sort of goes back. Okay, so that's, I suppose, the business side. And it's kind of obvious. You find a loophole inside of the government and some of the subsidy money which can be paid to these kinds of facilities. You start one, you gain all of the money to pay your costs, but because you're not operating it fully, you don't have to pay the costs and you're able to arbitrate, you just scrape off the top of whatever's left.
21:04 Speaker 01 Yes, it's tax exempt.
21:06 Chris Williamson? Right.
21:07 Speaker 01 And so, like for instance, a lot of the women working in there, there's videos of, this is, you can look this up, there's videos of men going in, women bringing their children, and then there's a man who gives them cash. And so a lot of these guys, and this is also makes me, I have some theories about this. So for instance, Muslims, they can marry four wives. And so all these people inside of these daycares, a lot of the women are probably related or married to the man who's receiving the checks.
21:36 Chris Williamson? Okay.
21:36 Speaker 01 Right? So he's receiving qual dealering, he's receiving 1.9 million dollars. He has all these employees. Well, I'm not actually going to give them, put them on a W2 or 1099 because then I have to report their taxes. And they're gonna have to pay taxes on that money. So let me just pay them cash. And then what will we do? We'll collect welfare. Eighty one percent of the population's on welfare. Inside of Minnesota.
21:59 Chris Williamson? Because.
21:59 Speaker 01 Somalians are on welfare.
22:01 Chris Williamson? Because you.
22:02 Speaker 01 Cause they're not.
22:03 Chris Williamson? Haven't registered the employees as employees. They still get to be paid in cash from the front end and receive the benefits from the back end.
22:11 Speaker 01 Yeah. So now I'm thinking about it. If they do put them on.
22:16 Speaker 01 Taxes, they're probably paying them bare minimums. They can still receive those benefits. So whether it's like thirty thousand dollars. Just the bare minimum to get by to still be able to receive those benefits.
22:26 Chris Williamson? And you think the multiple wives thing, you're just saying that's kind of free and easy labor from somebody that you know, which happens to be. In your house. Have you got any evidence of guys that have got a whole family of wives that are working in a single place?
22:42 Speaker 01 Well, it's kind of just a theory I have, but I mean, they're able to marry four and. All the women inside the day, all the people working inside the daycares are women. And. Then when you think about how many, what percentage of people are on welfare that are Somalians. Kind of makes sense. And then you see like their economy they have there with all of these welfare programs. How are there so many people living on welfare still?
23:09 Chris Williamson? Is this money being sent back to Somalia at all? Have you got any idea?
23:12 Speaker 01 Yeah. So some of that money has been traced back to go back to the Al Shabab reporter found that out. And I actually talked to a man who worked at TSA. This is coming out my part two. So. And there's a video from two thousand seventeen from Fox local news there where they had reports of millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. Going through TSA. Literally in cash, hundreds of thousands of dollars. So they then take this money, they get it through TSA. They then take them to the back of a room. They then claim the money, whatnot. Cause you can't, you can't, me and you, we can't go through without saying, if we have more than ten thousand dollars, you have to.
23:53 Speaker 01 Let people know. And so then they let them go through and all they have to do is. Get to a country like Dubai, where they can then send that money and wire it over to a place like Somalia. And it can go through.
24:06 Chris Williamson? I was gonna say, cause it's all cash.
24:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:08 Chris Williamson? This is cash, cash, cash, which is a kind of a bit of a nightmare. It's good that it's untraceable, but when you start shifting big volumes of it around up to nine hundred, nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine dollars. Yeah, you're gonna have to have a pretty sophisticated operation to distribute it.
24:24 Speaker 01 Yeah. And so that's why, like, for instance, that's why I think a lot of the women there aren't actually getting paid money or aren't getting paid. Legally, because they just give them cash. Because it's a way you don't have to report and if you, if you work in cash, everyone knows that you don't, you can kind of move around taxes if you're working around the cash primarily business.
24:45 Chris Williamson? Have you got any evidence that it's coming back into the government at all?
24:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, so it is interesting, for instance, that Yohann Omar, she's outside of the daycare with the lady who operates another daycare. Who then is also giving the mayor a tour of her daycare. And there has been funneling to some of these campaigns allegedly. For instance, Tim Walz.
25:08 Speaker 01 It was very weird when Kamala Harris chose Tim Walz to become the vice president to run with her. Nobody really knew who he was. And I wanted to make sure I had the right stat for when I came and talked to you about this. So Tim Walz, the day he's chosen become vice president, he raises a record high thirty six million dollars in one day. For his campaign with Kamala Harris.
25:28 Chris Williamson? Record high.
25:30 Speaker 01 In one day.
25:30 Chris Williamson? Of all vice presidents or all?
25:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, like the first day, that's like the most money, amount of money a vice president has brought into a campaign. Thirty six million dollars. Tim Walz, he's a football coach, he's from Nebraska and. How does he raise thirty six million dollars in one day? They're anti billionaires, they're anti Elon Musk.
25:52 Chris Williamson? I suppose the argument might be maybe some rich donors on the left are able to, or they're concerned about the potential of a second Trump term. So people are gonna dump. Do you need to register where that money comes from? Do people need to register donations in that sort of way? Is it trackable?
26:09 Speaker 01 I think so.
26:11 Chris Williamson? It should be pretty easy to work out where that's come from then. And if there's a ton coming from Cedar River, the Quality Leering Centre, you'd think, okay, well, we could trace that back. Or-
26:21 Speaker 01 But we've also like, how are they not able to trace down all this fraud that's happening right now?
26:25 Chris Williamson? That's true.
26:26 Speaker 01 It's just like, it's kind of been disheartening to see on both sides, Republicans and Democrat's side. One, you had Democrats come after me and to start defending fraud. And then you had Republicans like, all right, how do we crack down this fraud? It's like, well, aren't you guys like government officials? Like, how did you guys just let this happen as well? So it's like both side issue and nobody likes fraud to be happening.
26:48 Chris Williamson? Disheartening is a good way to put it. I think that no matter what your perspective, unless you're somebody who is benefiting from a scheme like this, nobody, everyone feels crappy about how much money is taken from them for taxes. Everybody does. And the prospect of seeing so much waste go on must just drive people insane. I know it does for me. I mean, when I was living in the UK, the different deductions that we have for taxes are so insane. I would, people get pissed at the fact that the roads aren't very good. My taxes go toward these roads and there's potholes in my roads or my bins won't get collected, et cetera, et cetera.
27:31 Chris Williamson? But when you see schemes like this, that just feels like, how much of that could be back into the pockets of people who really, really need it and are working hard to basically do this weird like trickle down pyramid scheme where a small number of people, a relatively small number of people who aren't working are taking tons of money from a pretty big number of people who are.
27:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, it feels like we're being robbed, hardworking, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens. It's, it literally is robbery. I mean, they're stealing our money. It's happening everywhere across America, come to find out. Elon Musk, he tried to do Doge and who was one of the proponents who was most against Elon Musk? Tim Walz. He know, like, all this stuff happening now, it's like starting to make sense.
28:20 Chris Williamson? Well, with stuff like that, I get what you mean. Tim Walz realizes that the skeleton's in his closet and I am going to push back against a potentially very invasive investigation, which is going to find out what's going on. I get the sense that especially if you're sort of caught up in the furor of popular politics and you're on the front page of CNN every day and you're potentially going to be the vice president, I think it's more likely to be Elon is the bad guy, he's on the other side, maybe this will benefit me a bit behind the scenes. I always get a little bit skeptical of attributing to real personal aspirations shit that's going on when someone is mega, mega time because they're so concerned about optics and how
29:05 Chris Williamson? does this play? Maybe, maybe this is the driving force in the back of his mind. I just get the sense that when there is a big tsunami of stuff happening, you're playing much more for kind of the big game than the smaller personal stuff back home, but I could be wrong.
29:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it's just interesting because, for instance, something as simple as government efficiency, that's what DOGE stand for, Department of Government Efficiency. Shouldn't that be something we all celebrate? And so when you hear these politicians come out and speak against this stuff, it's like, okay, has common sense left your brain? Because we all just want more efficiency inside of our government, like 3% to 7% of all taxes go towards fraud.
29:43 Chris Williamson? Tell you what's interesting, I did the first long-form podcast episode with anybody from DOGE ever, and it's a guy called Sam Korkos, who is currently the CIO of the Treasury Department. So we did the episode on the same set as the McConaughey one, but instead we had the US Debt Calculator on the big video wall behind us. And I was asking him just how sort of inefficient, and he's very much on the technical side of this, what are the algorithms that we're using, how are we tracking these things? You know, he's very much sort of in the matrix of this, trying to reprogram it to make it more efficient from a technical standpoint, he's got a big technical background. But if you just think, okay, that's the system.
30:29 Chris Williamson? Which is designed and relatively easy to be able to investigate, relatively easy to investigate. We've got all of these different systems, how to put them all out on a whiteboard and we can work it out. If you're, okay, you need to fly to Minnesota, go to this place, investigate this, is there a person there? When did the kids arrive? When did they leave? Has this guy got four wives? What's going on? Is the money being paid in cash? That's so much more arduous. It's like, that's whack a mole as opposed to what Sam's doing, which is much more like an atomic bomb of trying to improve efficiency. And he was having challenges. He was hitting limits. So I guess the first thing it makes me think about is when you have a country of this size, the diseconomies of scale of 330 million people,
31:14 Chris Williamson? there's going to be so much slippage in the system and so many holes and little exploits and speedruns that you can go through. This is kind of inevitable. This isn't me excusing the fact that it happens, but just, how could it not? How would it not? But the point is now, okay, we have found this. So we play whack a mole. And this is not a small mole, right? What's the total amount of fraud?
31:36 Speaker 01 It's estimated above nine billion with a B, nine billion.
31:40 Chris Williamson? Right. Yeah, that's a significant amount of money.
31:42 Speaker 01 It's a lot of money.
31:43 Chris Williamson? Just in, just in Minnesota?
31:44 Speaker 01 Just in Minnesota.
31:48 Speaker 01 Wow. And so it makes you think like, one thing I'm super proud about my video is it's the first video you've ever seen where journalism really created instantaneously change. You had feds go and launch multiple investigations. They decided to freeze all childcare funding for the state of Minnesota.
32:08 Chris Williamson? Frozen all childcare funding for the state of Minnesota?
32:12 Speaker 01 Yes.
32:12 Chris Williamson? Okay. Well, I mean, that sounds good. That sounds good, but that, that has got to impact people who are legitimately trying to get their children looked after.
32:20 Speaker 01 My next point is they said, we'll give you back the funding once you prove you're a legitimate business.
32:25 Chris Williamson? Okay.
32:26 Speaker 01 To this day, time of this recording, no businesses have submitted to prove legitimacy.
32:31 Chris Williamson? None.
32:32 Speaker 01 None.
32:33 Chris Williamson? How are you tracking that?
32:34 Speaker 01 The Department of the HHS made a video about it just the other day.
32:39 Chris Williamson? The HHS made a video. Have they got a YouTube channel? They should probably.
32:43 Speaker 01 They've been, they've been tagging me in their post on X.
32:46 Chris Williamson? Okay, that's interesting. So are they, are they adversarial with you? Are they collaborative with you? How, what's their tone like with this?
32:54 Speaker 01 I think they're appreciative of the effort because they saw how obvious I made it to the American public that fraud was happening. And so I think it's amazing what they're doing. And I think this kind of could help combat fraud in a lot of states and across America is all right. Obviously, there's a lot of fraud happening. Let's take a week break. Let's freeze the funding.
33:15 Speaker 01 And now everyone showed us proof of legitimacy. And if you can't, we're not going to give you the money.
33:21 Chris Williamson? Have you got any idea what proof of legitimacy looks like?
33:25 Speaker 01 Probably showing like there's kids inside the daycares, maybe, maybe that'd be, that'd probably be a good place to start. Like, hey, here's our video cameras of us receiving our 90 kids that we have a capacity for. That'd probably help prove they're a little bit more legit.
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34:51 Chris Williamson? Modern wisdom. Okay, so what's been the rest of the fallout sort of structurally of what's gone on in Minnesota? Childcare stuff's been halted until you prove and then you can get it back.
35:02 Speaker 01 Yes. That's been a fallout. Just the other day, there are protesters stormed ICE and ICE actually killed a protester.
35:11 Chris Williamson? I saw that. Was that the lady in the car?
35:12 Speaker 01 Yes.
35:13 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
35:14 Speaker 01 That was very sad to see.
35:15 Chris Williamson? I wanted to talk about this, dude, because I think one of the concerns that everybody has is we've already got some pretty sort of tight tensions around this sort of stuff at the moment, the UK maybe even more so than here. Do you think, how much do you think your video contributed to the tension of what happened in Minneapolis the other day?
35:41 Speaker 01 Well, they surged the city with federal agents and they launched these investigations, which is a good thing. Do we want crime to be happening? Do we want illegal migrants running rampant in our cities? Do we want millions of dollars being funneled across to other places? These are all good things, but now the left is saying that you're a bad person for trying to crack down and to uphold the law. And so for that lady to be out there and impeding law enforcement and then attempt to run him over, like the video is pretty evident that she was going to, her target was to run him over. And he shot her. Super tragic. I was super sad when I saw that video. I like that didn't, that did not need to happen.
36:25 Speaker 01 She didn't need to put law enforcement in risk. She could have supported law enforcement. And she could have abided by what they said. They told her to get out of her door, to get out of her car. And then she goes and hits ICE agent and he's fearful of her life and he shoots her. Super sad, right? No one, no one wants to see that happen. And it's just gotten to a point where people need to really come to their senses and think, okay, this is law enforcement. If they're going to tell us to do something, we should probably do it.
36:56 Chris Williamson? Listen, yeah.
36:58 Speaker 01 But now you're but then you're seeing these politicians come out and say ICE get the F out of our city. Little guy Fry says that, the mayor of Minneapolis. And then Tim Walz is calling this a war against the federal government. Why can't they deescalate and say, all right, you guys, fraud's bad, illegal migrants, if you're here, local law enforcement, federal law enforcement's here, if they get you guys, you're going to go back to where you came from.
37:23 Chris Williamson? How many of the Somali people are there legally versus illegally? Is there any idea?
37:30 Speaker 01 I don't know.
37:30 Chris Williamson? What's your estimation?
37:33 Speaker 01 Well, with Biden, a lot of people came into the country, over 10 to 20 million. And so there's a lot of them. And then people undocumented, people have been doing their asylum cases. So who knows exactly how many?
37:45 Chris Williamson? You had no indication of how many people were actual citizens versus illegal?
37:50 Speaker 01 No.
37:52 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
37:52 Speaker 01 But because, for instance, some of them came here, like Yohann Omar, she's a naturalized citizen of the United States, she was born in Somalia, brought over, she became a US citizen, now she's in Congress. And so there's a lot of people who are naturalized citizens. And because this happened a long time ago, people like Yohann Omar then have kids, and then those kids are foreign citizens. And so that's what makes it super complex with the topic of illegal immigration, because you have parents who are illegal, kids who are illegal, and the option is, well, if we find you, you have the option to go back with your children and/or your child will be here. It's very like, the topic of illegal immigration is super hard, that's why you should do it right.
38:34 Chris Williamson? Yeah, yeah, it's a brutal situation. So the influx of ICE agents, that was specifically kind of in response to this?
38:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, and ICE was already there. They had been there for, since back in June, when I was there for the first time back last June, there was a ICE raid that took place, and they've been operating there for months since Trump took office, because a lot of people that came over the border, we didn't just have immigration from Latin America, we had people coming all the way from Africa, all across the world, they came over. And so there's a high likelihood that tens of thousands of people from Somalia also came in, and where do they go when they get here to the United States, a place where they feel like they're being represented? Somalia.
39:19 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
39:20 Speaker 01 Or to, not Somalia, Minneapolis.
39:21 Chris Williamson? It might be now, little Somalia, yeah.
39:26 Chris Williamson? Have you got any idea who masterminded this? Are the Somalis that innovative that they just kind of played the system over and over until they found an exploit and stood next to a spawn point and started to generate like free government money?
39:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm sure someone just saw that it was easy. No one was really checking. I mean, they had, they had fraud tourism. People were coming all across the country to move to Minnesota to commit fraud. They wasn't getting stopped.
39:54 Chris Williamson? Well, I think, I remember when I was in downtown San Francisco for the first time, and I was looking around and I couldn't believe how many homeless people there were. And, you know, I come from Austin where there's a pretty big homeless population, but it's not, it's not that much. And I realized that, well, you've got basically the perfect climate, like meteorologically, you've got the perfect climate. It's not going to get too cold that you freeze. It's not going to get too hot that you get cooked alive. And I suppose this is kind of the equivalent, but it's a fiscal, financial, legal loophole.
40:33 Speaker 01 Weird.
40:33 Chris Williamson? That's perfect. Yeah. And that was kind of my big, my big question coming into this was like, why Minnesota? Why Minneapolis? And it just seems like, well, maybe this is available elsewhere, but someone found it and then just rinsed and repeated and told their friends and told their friends. And now, I mean, they're very well, maybe some sort of blueprint playbook that someone's got printed out on this is exactly where you need to submit. This is exactly what you need to say. This is exactly what you need to do.
40:58 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm sure of it. And also like that people are very scared to speak up in Minneapolis, Minnesota in general. You had George Floyd that happened there and you saw what happened. They let the city burn. And so politicians especially, they're afraid of being politically correct and calling things out for what they are. And so I think that kind of helped cultivate that fraud and enable it to continue.
41:22 Chris Williamson? Because everybody's scared of being called racist. So no one wants to call out something legitimate for being seen as being xenophobic.
41:29 Speaker 01 Exactly.
41:30 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
41:31 Speaker 01 And I mean, that happens all across the world. That happened in the UK with the grooming stuff that happened that took place. And I've talked with Tommy Robinson before and he's like, if political correctness got so bad that British men and women let their children get you know what? And it's sad that people are afraid to speak truth. But now I believe since we have freedom of speech back with X, Trump, he'll say whatever. And so people feel like they can say how they really feel and if it's a fact, it's a fact.
42:01 Chris Williamson? Are you concerned that this could result in xenophobia around a particular, like an entire community of people when it's only one small portion of them? Somalis that live in New York or Somalis that live in Austin, Texas or whatever?
42:16 Speaker 01 Well, I don't think if you're not committing fraud, you shouldn't be worried. It's just a kind of a blatant fact that
42:24 Speaker 01 you shouldn't be worried unless you're committing fraud. Some man came up to me in part two and he comes after me. He says, are we the only community that commits fraud? I'm like, well, you just admitted you commit fraud. Like, come on, man. And so it's like,
42:38 Chris Williamson? Stop investigating my fraud. Investigate their fraud.
42:41 Speaker 01 Exactly. I'm like, well, it just happens that 89% of the population that are committing the fraud are Somalis here. And there was a lady who got, who got charged for committing fraud. It's called Feeding Our Future. And she was the head honcho of it. She got charged and she's in jail. However, there was a man inside Minnesota who got caught for $7.2 million. Somali man, he was charged, found guilty and the judge overturned it and let the guy walk.
43:09 Chris Williamson? Why?
43:10 Speaker 01 I don't know. Interesting, right? Why would you, after finding a man being charged guilty of $7.2 million in fraud? Why would you let him walk?
43:21 Chris Williamson? When was this?
43:22 Speaker 01 Just a few months ago, maybe a year or so ago.
43:25 Chris Williamson? Wow.
43:26 Speaker 01 Medicaid fraud, I believe.
43:27 Chris Williamson? Have you seen any displays of this sort of wealth? Because if we're talking about millions, tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars going to a community of people, which is at most 200,000, I have to assume that there's some other communities. It's not, the Somalis aren't going to be able to completely ring fence this around themselves. I have to guess that there's going to be some other groups that have done this too. Have you seen, is there anyone driving around in a Lambo? Someone got a big house?
43:55 Speaker 01 Outside one of the daycares, there was three BMWs and one Range Rover.
44:01 Chris Williamson? Okay.
44:02 Speaker 01 Midday during a weekday. That was interesting. I believe some kid.
44:06 Chris Williamson? No, no kids, but three cars.
44:07 Speaker 01 No kids here, but four really nice luxury cars.
44:11 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
44:11 Speaker 01 Someone here also in LA, they did a video and they went and found a daycare. And it was an Iranian man who was in a Rolls Royce.
44:19 Chris Williamson? Okay, that's pretty good.
44:20 Speaker 01 And so it's kind of like, there's that one movie, I can't remember what it's called, but there's that one movie where they steal all the money and they start buying houses. And then people are wondering, well, how these hicks start getting rich? And then they find the fraud. And I mean, the lady who got caught for feeding our future scam, that was a $250 million fraud scam. She was driving around a Porsche.
44:39 Chris Williamson? I'm pretty sure that the, the lady, or one of the ladies that founded BLM, she got investigated quite aggressively.
44:47 Speaker 01 A bunch of mansions.
44:48 Chris Williamson? Huge, huge houses everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, what a shame, dude. What a shame, because I think
44:55 Chris Williamson? two things can be true at once. There can be loads of fraud and we should actually invest more to make these legitimate versions of these sorts of businesses available for people who really need them. And my question about, is there going to be a challenge if you're a normal law-abiding Somali? What if you're a normal law-abiding daycare? You're going to get scrutinized, the kids are maybe going to be a little bit disrupted or maybe a lot disrupted. You're going to be worried about security concerns and yeah. It's weird when you think about this, because what people would say, I can imagine one of the criticisms would be something like, this is going to make it harder for legitimate businesses to do the thing that they need to do.
45:33 Chris Williamson? Like, yeah, that's true, but I don't know what the solution is. I don't know how you step in and investigate misuse without there being a blast radius of scrutiny around people who aren't misusing.
45:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think transparency is very important. So if you're operating a daycare and you're operating legally, if someone asks you for brochure, have that brochure for them. Don't come after them and then cry victim after it happened, but be running your business legitimately. And so that's why I was like, I was really happy to see that they froze the funding, because that gives every opportunity for every business to prove they're a legit business.
46:15 Chris Williamson? I mean, it does sound like.
46:18 Chris Williamson? In retrospect, because the businesses have already been running, it sounds kind of intrusive or restrictive in some sort of a way. But if you were to say from the get go, in order for you to get funding to open up a daycare, you need to prove to us that you have adhered to this list of things. You go, that seems like a reasonable request for a daycare. The problem is that these daycares have been operating without that. And then when you bring the scrutiny in, you just have anchoring buyers.
46:45 Speaker 01 Exactly. And I mean, Biden literally like came out just the other day, like the restrictions, the guidelines to get a daycare going was very low when he was in office. So a lot of this fraud has been enabled to happen. And now people are saying, Nick, you need to go to fraud here in California. You need to go to Ohio, Seattle, Washington. There's all this fraud taking place. And so I think now you're going to start seeing a lot of people speaking out against fraud. Cause I mean, some people are paying upwards of more than 50% of their paycheck to the government.
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48:34 Speaker 01 California, really bad, obviously.
48:39 Speaker 01 The next one would be Ohio. I've heard that one's really bad. And New York's bad as well. So those would probably be the top three.
48:47 Chris Williamson? What have you learned about those places? As someone said, it's a particular, it's a different, is it the same scheme, different one?
48:53 Speaker 01 A lot of it is the welfare scams. Here in California, you had $24 billion randomly, randomly go unaccounted for for homelessness. You have that train they've been trying to build for years upon years.
49:04 Chris Williamson? Caliphood, yeah.
49:05 Speaker 01 And then Ohio, you have welfare programs as well. New York City got welfare programs as well, where people are just kind of stealing from the government.
49:15 Chris Williamson? Who are the highest profile politicians or departments that are working with you now or that have reached out?
49:22 Speaker 01 Well, I'm not working with any of them. People have reached out. For instance, I was on Patrick Bet David. He's like, Nick, put out a tweet right now. Calling out Cash Patel and Pam Bondi and ask them how you can help. And so then I'm like driving to the airport. And I get a phone call and I could, I screened it before and it said, this is the FBI calling. And I was in Uber, so I didn't want to answer and have the Uber guy overhearing it. And so I was like, okay, I'll wait to answer it. By the time I had gotten to the airport, by that time I had received five or 10 other calls and I couldn't figure out what one it was. And so like, a lot of people have been reaching out to me, but also at the same time, I'm like, okay, well, I'm not a fed. I'm not gonna do you guys' job for you.
50:04 Speaker 01 Um, I showed you guys what was happening. I'm willing to talk, but I'm not a fed. Like this is kind of your guys' job. To go in, I'm willing to do my job as a citizen to give you as much information as I can, but at the end of the day, you guys are the ones with the papers and you guys are the ones with all the who have all the laws in your power to go and find these fraudsters.
50:27 Chris Williamson? So you ended up speaking to the FBI?
50:29 Speaker 01 No, I didn't actually.
50:30 Chris Williamson? Oh, you had so many missed calls, but just never could call them back?
50:32 Speaker 01 Find it. Like this week, my phone, I can't even keep up with it because if I fall asleep for two hours or go to bed at night, I wake up and I have 100 text messages I could show you, but my phone's in another room. But I have just like 300 messages that I haven't even gotten back to.
50:47 Chris Williamson? Wow.
50:48 Speaker 01 Just because there's so many people.
50:49 Chris Williamson? Yeah. What's been the response of the mainstream press to this?
50:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, so you think they'd be happy that somebody goes in and goes and shows what that fraud is happening. But instead of investigating the fraudsters, they investigated me. They tried to come in and debunk my whole entire story. They couldn't do it because it was true. And they labeled me as a MAGA YouTuber, conservative, right wing journalist.
51:16 Chris Williamson? Would you call yourself conservative?
51:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, I am conservative. I think a lot of the values from conservatives are stuff I just share equally as well. I just think it makes the most sense. But um.
51:29 Speaker 01 But I had this conversation with a left leaning journalist. I said, well, are you a journalist or are you a left wing journalist? He's like, well, I'm a journalist. I'm like, okay, same thing here. I'm a journalist too. And I'll talk to the liberal, I'll talk to the homeless man, I'll talk to the guy running the daycare. I'll talk to the person who's been living in the neighborhood for eight years. I'll talk to everyone inside my video. And that's why my video, I think, resonated with so many people because I was showing and I was talking to quite literally everybody, from the daycare owner to the man who's been doing his own investigation for years, to the guy who's been living in Minneapolis for eight years who'd never seen a kid inside a quality hearing center. And then the crazy liberal who's yelling at me, telling me I'm ICE.
52:15 Speaker 01 So I'll talk to everybody and I'll go to these protests and I'll do these live streams and I'll talk to the protesters. And I just let people talk. And if they want to come after me, so be it. I'm there to give each and every single person I interview an opportunity to explain what they're doing, what they think and why they're ultimately, why they're behind the cause that they're behind.
52:37 Chris Williamson? Why do you think it is that the mainstream press had such a problem with it? Is it just a good optics to seem like you're sort of fighting for the underdog brown person? Or is it, is there something deeper going on?
52:49 Speaker 01 I think it's because they're trying to delegitimize me. Because I pose a threat to everything that they are. I pose a threat to their viewership, to their dollars, to their fanbase. And so why would they want me to get credit for a story that they should have been reporting on? They have thousands of employees.
53:07 Speaker 01 I have me and myself.
53:08 Chris Williamson? And your mum.
53:09 Speaker 01 My mum.
53:11 Speaker 01 That's pretty much it. I'll have my cameraman. And that's it. And we just did over a hundred million views on an exposé that they should have covered as well. But instead, they come after me. So I think that's kind of why. And so that's why you're seeing that. And they know that the mainstream media, it's dying. Like, their viewership is getting less and less each and every single year. And so if they can come in and they find somebody like me, who goes and does this story, gets way more views than they did. Why would they want to say, oh, good, good job, Nick Shirley. Like, that's amazing reporting you you just did.
53:47 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
53:48 Speaker 01 Let's do everything to make people know that. At least try to make them know that whatever Nick Shirley did was not true. But it was true.
53:56 Chris Williamson? Yeah, I, there's certainly a rivalry between independent and legacy media in that way. I would say, at least. Again, the immediate benefit that these people get, in the same way as the immediate benefit that Tim Walz perhaps got, is the optics. That if you're not seen to be pushing back against this, you're seen to be implicitly agreeing with and endorsing the worst possible explanation of why you could have done it. That you don't like brown people. That you're the secret agent for Donald Trump, that you're a Fed, that you're a whatever. I think that, to me, makes the most sense. But I don't, I don't disagree that.
54:39 Chris Williamson? For the first time ever, it was really funny. There was some gossip in the evidence-based fitness community a couple of months ago. And it was the first time that I'd ever seen the press commenting on a really niche internet story. So typically, YouTubers, we would react to shit that happened in the real world, or that's in the press. Press does an investigation, we talk about it, right? Today, in the New York Times, did you see the article about such and such? This was the first time where it happened the other way around. It was like some niche internet beef had gotten sufficiently big that the press had gone, oh, that's a story that we can have. And that was when I, I really realized that sort of the flow of traffic is moving in the other direction. It very much is that.
55:24 Chris Williamson? The independent media stuff, I'm still hesitant about like completely sucking off everybody who's doing independent stuff. Mainstream press still gets a ton of reach in places that we simply can't. Like, we just can't reach most of middle America soccer mom people. There's not, they're not gonna hit your algo, no matter how many times Elon Musk retweets it. The only way it works is if NPR pick up on Musk's tweet. But there is definitely a rivalry going on. And as with any sort of dying institution, it tends to not go down without a fight.
55:56 Speaker 01 There's a rivalry going on and it's competition at the end of the day for them. They're trying to keep up with people like me and you. I mean, we're able to run our operatives a lot smoother and smaller than they are. Just think about what they have to do to go out and get a story. They have to book a cameraman. They have to carry around this huge backpack. They have to get approval from the senior editor. And then when they want to post the video, then it goes through two different hands. And then they have to approve it and then it goes live. Versus me, I book my flight, I get to the location, I film, I edit and I post.
56:31 Chris Williamson? Well, the frictionlessness is a massive advantage. It's why you were able to basically turn it around in 10 days. The criticism of that would be, well, because you're not going through the appropriate amount of scrutiny with having higher levels. This could, there will be an error, some sort of an implication error of many in the video that you put out and in the next one and in every podcast that I have ever done. Because it's not going to go through an entire team of fact checkers. I think the reason that people feel particularly aggrieved when the mainstream media make errors, it's the same reason that you feel super pissed if you ever to see a cop texting while driving. Like, hey, you're supposed to enforce the law. Because you enforce the law, you're kind of meant to adhere to it more rigorously than we are.
57:14 Chris Williamson? But, you know, the concern that people have about citizen journalism is that it's fast and loose with the facts. And if it just gets clicks, it doesn't matter. So I think, you know, if I was to give you a piece of advice, I think certainly as you move forward, which you're probably already doing, you need to unfortunately become increasingly squeaky clean with your own fact checking as you go on. Because the amount of scrutiny, the amount of eyeballs now is just gonna keep getting more and more. And if you fuck up, what's gonna happen is that's gonna be used that. Is going to be a microcosm to try and smear the rest of the world. Oh, see, see the error that was in there. Actually, he's not a such and such. And then that's the rest of it.
57:55 Speaker 01 I mean, I've made my mistakes too. And when you're going through and making a video like that, the editing process is long and that takes a lot of time to edit. So you're also doing back checks as well when you're editing it. Because I edit all my videos. I'm also going through and if something's not true, I'm not, I'm going to call it out for what it is. And everything in that video that I posted was true. And have I made mistakes before? Yeah, I have. I'm 23 years old and I've been doing this sort of journalism for about two years now. Like, I'm not going to say I've never made mistakes, but in this case of the Minnesota fraud video, it's been proven to be completely true. Not only by me, but by the government, by the locals.
58:37 Speaker 01 I mean, Quality Learing Center, it just got shut down the other day, got closed on January 6th. And also, when the same, the same day that that guy came out and he was talking about Call the Learing Center, we're open. And that same time, the Commissioner of Children, Tiki James, was doing a live stream and she announced that the daycare had been closed while he's out there telling people it's open.
59:00 Chris Williamson? Wow. Talk to me about the security concerns that you've got now.
59:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, so, security now, I have to have it because I exposed fraud. And right now, I have somebody with me 24/7. I have somebody at the house as well. It's super expensive and as a YouTuber, I don't make enough money to be able to afford it, unfortunately. So I was able to raise some money. I don't know if you know him, his name's Officer Tatum. He has a nonprofit side of a security company and that people can go ahead and donate to that, donate to that where it's helped me. It's called Black Line Guardian and they have a security side, they have like a nonprofit side of it where people can donate.
59:42 Chris Williamson? So your big scary dude with the beard outside is organized by him?
59:45 Speaker 01 Yes.
59:46 Chris Williamson? Wow, cool.
59:47 Speaker 01 So that helps a lot. And so that's been critical because they're just like the threats that I've received.
59:53 Chris Williamson? Talk to me about those. What have you got?
59:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, so for instance, somebody sent me a photo of somebody in a ditch dead and they say, well, this will be you on.
1:00:01 Chris Williamson? A text?
1:00:02 Speaker 01 Just on a, just through private messages, like DMs, people posting, you'll be curbed.
1:00:13 Speaker 01 People on certain platforms just went ahead and doxed me. So that was great.
1:00:19 Chris Williamson? Which is why you now need the security at your house.
1:00:21 Speaker 01 Yes. Luckily, we got the info taken down, but it just sucks that there's people who get so mad about you doing something where the point where they want to kill you. I mean, we saw it with Charlie Kirk. Rest in peace to Charlie Kirk. And now it's very dangerous, like being well known in politics is different than being well known for having an amazing song. Cause politics is now very polarizing. And so I thought on an issue of just fraud happening, I didn't think I, to me, I was just making another YouTube video for my weekly uploads. I've uploaded a YouTube video every week for the past 100 weeks. And so for me to post that video, then all of a sudden, kind of my life to be changed overnight to the point where I have to have a 24 seven security guy with me right now. And it's not the funnest thing to have to go through and
1:01:07 Speaker 01 try to navigate and plan stuff. It feels like you're just going from point A to point B now. And you're kind of to figure out how to live life a little bit different for at least this, these past few weeks and going forward for the next few weeks as well.
1:01:19 Chris Williamson? What's it been like emotionally to navigate?
1:01:23 Speaker 01 Weird. I'm not a very emotional person. I think what was harder was going through like
1:01:31 Speaker 01 constantly defending yourself and like fighting back against all this fake news that was coming out. There are people trying to debunk me. It just felt like you're kind of like fighting a war online and that was just, it was weird because you feel like, because I actually never really gave my opinions on the internet before this. I was just interviewing people and talking to people. And then when everyone comes after you, you, you feel like you have to stand on business. And so I had to do that. And um, I gained millions and millions of supporters, literally, who support me. And it's been amazing. And it's also been pretty exhausting. I like, I think the three days after I posted that video, I maybe slept for 10 hours for the three days combined. And so I just had barely been catching up on sleep.
1:02:13 Speaker 01 And uh, yeah, it does take a bit of a toll on you emotionally, but it's just a battle you have to fight.
1:02:19 Chris Williamson? Does it make you hesitant about doing more if it means that your life's going to be in jeopardy?
1:02:25 Speaker 01 Yes. And now you're trying to think of different ways to do it. Or if you're going to go film this video, what security measures do you have in place beforehand? It's just stuff you didn't have to think about before. Before it was just, I'd run around, I'd grab my GoPro and my camera and I would go.
1:02:39 Chris Williamson? No one knows who you are. No one cares.
1:02:41 Speaker 01 No one cares. And increasingly started to get like a little bit more dangerous. For instance, the riots here in LA, people were singling me out, trying to kick me out of the, of interviewing people. And then I go to.
1:02:52 Chris Williamson? Because they know who you are. They've got an idea about the sort of perspective you're coming into this with.
1:02:57 Speaker 01 Yes. Protest in New York City. I'm live streaming it. I'm live streaming a protest that's happening in New York City. Just asking people questions, not even giving my opinion. NYPD has to pull me out because a bunch of protesters surround me. They start throwing stuff on me. NYPD pulls me out. And so it had increasingly been getting to that point. And then someone also in this fear, they're like, well, Nick, it was just a matter of time before this happened, especially with the topics you're covering.
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1:04:37 Chris Williamson? Doesn't need to be said, death threats aren't uncool. But if you're talking about taking away
1:04:46 Chris Williamson? hundreds, tens of millions, hundreds of millions and up to billions of dollars from people who are potentially criminally minded. The prospect of you having death threats does not surprise me. Like this is, I mean, there will be, there is a 100% certainty that organized crime, like proper, proper, proper organized crime is involved at some point in some portion of this, or maybe in a big chunk of it, because no one is able to come up with a scheme, allegedly, that is this good, that is able to churn out this sort of cash and it not be picked up on by some big burly guy covered in tattoos who wants to have a piece of that. So, yeah, man, I mean, I get it.
1:05:30 Chris Williamson? I get that it feels, and it is, um, that's scary and unfair. But yeah, if you start, if you start attacking that kind of resource, there's going to be a lot of people that are very upset.
1:05:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, no one likes to get their money played with.
1:05:47 Chris Williamson? No, well, including the taxpayer. Isn't there a movement at the moment for a tax strike? Aren't people tax striking, whatever that means?
1:05:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, we'll see if it happens.
1:05:57 Chris Williamson? Yeah, well, I mean, it is kind of a bit like, I'm not giving you my money because you're giving it to the daycare centers that I don't like. It's like, okay, go to jail. Like, you need to pay us your taxes. I don't, I don't know whether a tax strike works. You can't ethically object to your taxes being taken. You can just try and then the law comes up against you.
1:06:16 Speaker 01 It's going to be interesting if people actually hold their word on to it because no one wants to go to jail. I mean, the Boston Tea Party, we fought over just a few percentages.
1:06:24 Chris Williamson? That's a very difficult day for me. Be careful with that. Have you got any lawsuits coming your way?
1:06:29 Speaker 01 As of right now, no.
1:06:31 Chris Williamson? No lawsuits. I guess it's still kind of early days.
1:06:33 Speaker 01 What I did was, it was true. And if someone wants to prove me otherwise, well, I think.
1:06:39 Chris Williamson? The issue that you have is lawsuits don't need to be predicated on anything that's untrue. They can be predicated on truth and just drown you in paperwork, try and send as much worry and concern your way. I mean, you saw, do you see Sean Ryan and Dan Crenshaw that are in a big fallout at the moment?
1:06:59 Chris Williamson? And then it didn't happen. It felt like I'd been edged up to the point of orgasm and then it didn't, it didn't end up occurring. Fucking nightmare. That entire process on Sean's side is somebody is using the legal system to bully me in a way. Bully a journalist, bully someone who's investigating in a manner that is not because I crossed the line, but is because I'm just inconvenient.
1:07:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, I pray it doesn't ever get to that point. And that's why I had avoided stuff like this for so long. And that's why I always feel like in my videos, I just kind of give other people the option to voice their opinion, whether it was a daycare lady or whether it's, whether it's at talking to people at the border, just giving people their opinions. And so I really hope I never have to get into any of that.
1:07:45 Chris Williamson? Have you got a legal team or is people reviewing stuff that you put out now? Like the next video, is that going to be filtered through or is it still just you again? Camera, Premiere Pro, caffeine and just shipping it?
1:08:00 Speaker 01 Lots of caffeine.
1:08:01 Chris Williamson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll put you on the rotation for new tonic. It'll help.
1:08:04 Speaker 01 I'm a, I'm changing a little bit how I go about things.
1:08:08 Chris Williamson? I think that's a smart idea.
1:08:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's kind of necessary.
1:08:10 Chris Williamson? I think that's a smart idea.
1:08:11 Speaker 01 But it's been amazing to see the support as well. A lot and lots of people want to support me. Cause a lot of people's lives being affected by this fraud stuff. A lot of people are getting pushed out of places for.
1:08:22 Chris Williamson? Tell me about part two.
1:08:24 Speaker 01 Part two, yes. So the daycare fraud is only one part of the fraud. And what really holds the fraud together is these transportation companies. And so.
1:08:33 Chris Williamson? Like shipping?
1:08:34 Speaker 01 No, they're called non-emergency transportation.
1:08:38 Chris Williamson? Okay.
1:08:39 Speaker 01 And so, for instance, these daycares and these home healthcare companies, adult daycares, they need to be able to prove that they're doing stuff. So they have created these transportation companies. You'll see them all across Minnesota, all across Minneapolis. You'll drive, you'll see a van, and there's never anybody in these vans. It's just always a driver. So in order to make it look like they're doing stuff, they get these drivers, they'll send, they'll say, alright, here's our client. So imagine you have an adult daycare center, and then you have a healthcare clinic. In order to kind of prove that you're doing legit business, okay, well, we're gonna take this adult, adult, to healthcare clinic,
1:09:21 Speaker 01 and we're actually not really providing a service, and there's no person to actually take, so we'll have the transportation company, we'll write it up that they took that person there, they got that service, and then they bought her back. And nothing actually ever happened. It's just the transportation moving from one place to the next to be able to continue this fraud. So it's like that, it's like what keeps the hamster ball going.
1:09:45 Chris Williamson? Why is the transportation so important? Is that, is that a crucial part of logging the activities?
1:09:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, so it's basically so they can log the activities, and then the transportation company also makes money, and it's logging what's happening.
1:10:00 Chris Williamson? Right.
1:10:00 Speaker 01 So it makes it a lot harder to kind of prove that something fishy is going on, because no, we, we, we had the transportation company take the client. This is the proof.
1:10:08 Chris Williamson? Hmm. I suppose the problem is, because every business doesn't talk to every other business, what you would pretty easily be able to do is say, well, go to the healthcare and say, did this person come in at this time? That's not, it's not the job of the healthcare company to work with the benefit company to see that the daycare company dropped the person off with the transport company and, you know?
1:10:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, but they're all in on it.
1:10:31 Chris Williamson? Including the healthcare?
1:10:33 Speaker 01 In one building, in my video, 22 healthcare companies inside of one building.
1:10:38 Chris Williamson? Right. Okay. Okay, so.
1:10:43 Chris Williamson? So is it right to say that the transport thing is part of the crux of this? Because it is one of the areas that's scrutinized by the government? Is that what's going on? I just don't understand why the vans and the minibuses are so important.
1:10:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, so well, like you said, it helps log.
1:11:01 Chris Williamson? Yep.
1:11:01 Speaker 01 And so that way they can then, if someone was like, well, show us the proof. Oh, well, look, Safari Transportation took Mohammed to the doctor. I guess it makes it harder, but in my part two, we go to these transportation companies to their addresses where they're listed on the state of Minnesota website. And there's no company, there's no vans. Yet there then, we did the math. It's about $50 per travel from one way to the next. And an average N E M T transportation company has about 20 vehicles. So on average, every day in Minnesota, about $2 million is being sucked out from these companies.
1:11:45 Chris Williamson? Wow.
1:11:46 Speaker 01 So it's just part of the welfare fraud.
1:11:49 Chris Williamson? Wow. So the next part two is primarily about the transport stuff?
1:11:53 Speaker 01 Yes, and some daycares as well.
1:11:55 Chris Williamson? Okay, okay. That's already been filmed?
1:11:58 Speaker 01 It's already been filmed.
1:11:59 Chris Williamson? Because there's no way that you're getting back into Minneapolis?
1:12:01 Speaker 01 No, just to go back, I had to have four security guards.
1:12:04 Chris Williamson? Yeah, you couldn't get, and when was that?
1:12:06 Speaker 01 Just the other week.
1:12:08 Chris Williamson? Okay.
1:12:09 Speaker 01 And so I had legit people stopping at intersections at a red light. Their car's parked in the middle of the intersection. They're coming out, coming for me and security is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And stops the guy. This is what's funny. They, meanwhile, I'm speaking to a black man. And then this other black Somali is calling me a racist. I'm like, yo, I was just talking to.
1:12:29 Chris Williamson? I've got a black friend.
1:12:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, I got a black friend right here. This isn't a race thing. Like it's, it's all just about fraud.
1:12:36 Speaker 01 But it got political, it got political for some reason.
1:12:40 Chris Williamson? Well, of course it did, because everything gets political.
1:12:42 Speaker 01 Nowadays it does, but wouldn't you think it'd be like a good thing to kind of show that fraud's happening?
1:12:46 Chris Williamson? Look, I, I, I totally get it, man, that inefficiency and anybody manipulating the system, especially if you're the sort of person who really cares about the working class, if you're supposed to be raising those up out of poverty who don't, who don't deserve to be in it, shouldn't be in it. Well, if someone is illegitimately taking funds and using them, that is fewer funds going to the people who genuinely need them. And then I, when you start to sort of spin in, well, these people might not be here legally, they might be sending money back. Okay, so we're literally exporting potentially, allegedly, US taxpayer dollars through Dubai back to some country in the Middle East.
1:13:32 Chris Williamson? It doesn't surprise me that people have got super passionate about it. Like if what you're saying is true, this is, this is wild. I, I mean, you, you have to have predicted that this is basically going to be an entire new content matter for probably the next two years. That there are going to be many Nick Shirley, the, the one in New York and the one in, there'll be one in Toronto and there'll be one in LA.
1:13:54 Speaker 01 People need to be careful too, because I did my due diligence when I went and did that video. I've seen a lot of people just like go into daycares. I'm like, you guys, no, you don't just do that.
1:14:02 Chris Williamson? What was your due diligence? What did you do?
1:14:05 Speaker 01 So I'd been investigating it for a while and then David had all the paperwork and I had testimonies from other people as well. So I knew that it was happening. I wasn't just showing up to random daycares. We had all the numbers with us in hand when we went to them. And we had done our due diligence.
1:14:22 Chris Williamson? What would be your, what are the ways to do it right and do it wrong? If there's a mini Nick Shirley that thinks I'm going to go and give this a crack in Austin, Texas, what should they and shouldn't they do?
1:14:35 Speaker 01 You'd, I would look up, do all my due diligence, a lot of the information's on the state's websites. You don't just go to a daycare and say, hey, are you guys committing fraud?
1:14:46 Speaker 01 That's what CNN did though, is in my, they came after me and they're like, and then we called seven other daycares.
1:14:52 Chris Williamson? They didn't say that they were committing fraud.
1:14:54 Speaker 01 And only one of them answered and they said they weren't committing fraud.
1:14:56 Chris Williamson? Okay.
1:14:57 Speaker 01 But um, yes, be very weary of what you do and make sure you do your due diligence because one, you don't want to accuse somebody of doing something that they're actually not doing. And you don't want to put yourself in a place of danger. So people should be very careful. And that's why you just don't go up with a camera, a microphone, start talking to people and about fraud. If you have to know, and there's a way about caring, caring yourself about it. A lot of people come across confrontational. It's not good. You don't want to come across confrontational. You just want to act like you're going and to get the truth because that's what you are doing. And uh, people, I've learned something over the past few years as I've been doing this.
1:15:42 Speaker 01 Just people will kind of show themselves for who they really are after a few conversations, after a few sentences. And after a few questions, so no, a lot, I feel like I'm very well socially. Like I can kind of get the gist of the vibe of places and who I'm talking to and a lot of people don't. So it does take, you just can't go and do it.
1:16:01 Chris Williamson? You need to test the temperature a little bit before you steam in. I thought it was interesting that you mentioned you, you tried to be kind of low profile with filming equipment as well. I think that's a smart move.
1:16:13 Speaker 01 Yeah, I just want people to feel like they're inside the video. And I mean, having a big camera, this is why the news isn't successful. If you watch any news person, they got these huge cameras. They got another guy holding the microphone on top. They got a light, they're putting a, you'll see him in New York City, the news anchors. They're like standing on a box, they got a light brightening up their face.
1:16:33 Chris Williamson? Changes the dynamic of everything.
1:16:34 Speaker 01 Changes the dynamic, everything. And what do people want more than anything nowadays? Just pure authenticity. And so I like to do that by my style of filming where it's just kind of like running gun. Like I know it's not the best quality, but we're running.
1:16:47 Chris Williamson? Yeah, it'll work. Uh, I heard that you'd also been to Seacott as well.
1:16:51 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:16:51 Chris Williamson? What was that like?
1:16:53 Speaker 01 Craziest experience of my life, probably. Tell, tell, tell people the, the story behind that. So Secot is this maximum security prison. It's actually like the central, central of terrorism in El Salvador. El Salvador used to be run by gangs completely. Grandmas couldn't go from one street to the next to go visit their nieces and nephews because gangs controlled the areas. So Naibukele, he actually created his own political party inside of El Salvador called New Ideas. And part of this was that we are going to go down and he doesn't, he's, he's rich. So he actually doesn't need funding. So he, that's like how you can tell a political person isn't, can't be really corrupted because they don't need the money. So Naibukele, he, he goes in, he says, we're going to fight the gangs and we're going to lock all the prisoners up.
1:17:38 Speaker 01 All the gangsters were put in inside of Secot and they're never leaving. So they go through and they lock up all the prisoners. They churn El Salvador from the most dangerous country in the world to the safest country in the Western Hemisphere. And they put all these prisoners inside of Secot. And this prison, it's like a bunch of massive Costcos for prisoners and they're never leaving. And no American YouTuber had ever gone in. And I saw that Luisito Comunicas, the, he's the most popular Latino YouTuber. He went in, so I was like, oh, there has to be a possibility to go. And so I went to El Salvador, I made a separate video and I had in the back of my mind, like, I need to find a contact so I can figure this out.
1:18:22 Speaker 01 And I ended up meeting with one of the mayors in my video. He said, no, but maybe here's this phone number, text this person. That person says no, like, well, where do I go? They're like, I don't know, kind of just gave up on me. And so I started following people on X and I started sending messages like, hey, I want to come into this prison. And finally, just random person was like, okay, I'll put you in, I'll put you in contact with the secretary of press. And I was able to go in and in that video, you'll see me walk in. And right as you, right as you walk into Secot, anything that you were feeling good about before just leaves your body. Like complete, completely, complete emptiness fills, fills your body. And then you look these prisoners in the eyes.
1:19:08 Speaker 01 Emptiness.
1:19:09 Chris Williamson? Why?
1:19:10 Speaker 01 Pure emptiness.
1:19:12 Speaker 01 I think uh any goodness of them had been taken away from what they committed. And so like, whether it be like the light of Christ, or just any good vibes they had, gone.
1:19:23 Chris Williamson? Is it designed in a way that's meant to make it more soulless than a a normal place?
1:19:29 Speaker 01 One hundred percent.
1:19:29 Chris Williamson? Right.
1:19:30 Speaker 01 The lights never turn off. You're given a sheet, you eat the same meals every day, you get no protein. Like you get rice and beans and tortillas, I think, and milk. And you have no form of entertainment, you don't have books. And the only time you actually get to leave your cell is to touch your toes and do some pushups and work out a little bit, or to listen to somebody preach the gospel. If you want to go pee or poop, you have to do it in front of everybody inside your cell. And these gangs, rival gangs, MS thirteen, Bio Deus Yochel, they're all in the same room. You're locked up with your enemies.
1:20:07 Chris Williamson? How many people are on site, do you know?
1:20:09 Speaker 01 I think upwards of a thousand probably inside. I think there's around seven, I can't exactly remember the number, I don't want to say, but I think there's more than ten thousand of them.
1:20:17 Chris Williamson? Wow.
1:20:17 Speaker 01 And they used to literally control that country.
1:20:20 Chris Williamson? I remember when it first happened, uh I watched some videos about it and it it basically looks like football stadiums, right? These huge, like monstrous constructions. And then this morning, I wanted to have a little look at what it was like inside. And it does, look, these people are allegedly criminals and have done horrible things. And the country is undeniably better now. Is there some collateral damage? Yes, I'd absolutely heard that, you know, two people are criminals in a house and five other people are also whisked away.
1:20:59 Chris Williamson? Not great. Would it be nice to be more precise? Yes, it absolutely would. But when I looked at that photo and it's, you know, the bunks are super high, the like four or five bunks high. If you fell off the top, you would really damage yourself. And it's just this sort of. Wall of humans sort of peering and looking through the bars. Fuck me, man. Like, the fact that human civilization has got to this stage. It's a really shocking image. Like, that's how prisons work. I get it, right? But to just see that image of hu- humans locked up, a lot like animals. In fact, animals have got better conditions in some ways. Again, not excusing what fucking criminals do at all.
1:21:44 Chris Williamson? But I found that, I found that image to look at pretty difficult to see. Like, holy shit.
1:21:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:21:50 Chris Williamson? It's a lot.
1:21:51 Speaker 01 And by the time when you're about to leave, you do almost feel sympathetic for these people.
1:21:56 Chris Williamson? The conditions are so brutal.
1:21:58 Speaker 01 Well, you're like, dang, that would just suck. Like, could you imagine that? Like, no lights, you never see your family, you have no contact with outside.
1:22:06 Chris Williamson? And they're never getting out?
1:22:07 Speaker 01 Never getting out.
1:22:08 Chris Williamson? So everyone's in there for a life sentence?
1:22:10 Speaker 01 For life. And if you are, if you do have proof that you are innocent, you can then all, you can then prove that you are innocent from inside there. So there is like a system, because they did just go round up. They'd check for tattoos. If you have MS-13 on your chest, goodbye.
1:22:26 Chris Williamson? One of my friends tried to get a free trip to El Salvador by getting MS-13 tattooed on his thigh. Didn't work.
1:22:33 Speaker 01 Oh, that's a bad idea.
1:22:34 Chris Williamson? But he still got the tattoo.
1:22:35 Speaker 01 Oh, no. That's a bad idea.
1:22:36 Chris Williamson? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:22:37 Speaker 01 And they do have a whole separate prison system that rehabilitates these people. Not the gangsters, but there's also a lot of other criminals as well. And that's pretty amazing to see how a country had once been controlled and ran by these gangsters to a country being entirely liberated by one man. And the people there are just like ecstatic. Like, you go there and it's the weirdest feeling because it's like, we have freedom here in the United States, so we take it for granted. These people didn't. Now they do, and they're able to live great lives. They're able to just to live free like how we are able to live here. And so it is like, you do feel like there was liberation that did take place.
1:23:20 Chris Williamson? Unreal. What's next? You've got part two.
1:23:23 Speaker 01 Got part two.
1:23:23 Chris Williamson? Any idea of a published date?
1:23:25 Speaker 01 Hoping for this coming week. It's been super hard to even edit with all everything I've been going on. I've went from Nashville to Florida, back home to here. Tomorrow I'm going back to Florida. And it's just been, someone just called me right before this podcast to help me go testify in front of Congress. So it's just a lot and I need to maybe help my team a little bit.
1:23:48 Chris Williamson? So part two at some point in the next week, hopefully, and then what?
1:23:51 Speaker 01 I would love to go to Venezuela.
1:23:56 Speaker 01 But we'll see what happens there.
1:23:58 Chris Williamson? Okay, that's, I think that's El Salvador on steroids at the moment.
1:24:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, I do have a lot of other videos planned, but now a lot of things have changed as far as how I go about filming. And lots of fraud exposed here in California, lots of fraud exposed across the world.
1:24:12 Chris Williamson? Well, yeah, I was gonna say, do you want to rinse and do you want to become known as kind of the fraud investigator guy for a little while? To keep on rinsing and repeating that before you move on to something else?
1:24:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'll do another fraud video. Let's just take a lot of time because you don't, like I said, with my video I did, I did the due diligence. David had done his proper investigation, I had done mine.
1:24:28 Chris Williamson? You need to find a David for each city.
1:24:30 Speaker 01 A little bit, yeah. And you can just, you can also just continue to find that information. It just takes a lot longer.
1:24:37 Chris Williamson? Well, if you had a even partially competent team behind you, they would very easily be able to, nickshirleytips.com, submit your stuff here, they can go through and verify everything. And you've just got a pipeline of portfolios of, wow, we've got this many from this particular street and this city. It seems like this is the next place to go. But yeah, the rapid ascension from being degenerate solo YouTuber with mum as camera person to needing security around you is, I think you'll look back on this period and kind of just look at it like a fever dream. It's gonna be, it's gonna be the wildest month, the few months of your life.
1:25:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's been super weird. And I mean, I already had a million subscribers before. And now I'm like 1.5 almost. And X, I had 200,000. Now I have 1.2 million followers. YouTube, Instagram, I had 800. And now I have 2.3 million. So I was already somewhat popular on the internet before, like that's still a lot of people watching you. But now it's new level because you had the whole entire mainstream media come after me. Like for that entire week, you couldn't turn on the news without hearing my name or seeing my footage. You had the leftist on X coming after me. You had people like Elon Musk sharing my videos. You had JD Vance sharing your videos.
1:26:02 Speaker 01 So it was almost undeniable, impossible to not see my video that week. And it turned out to be controversial. Tim Walz decided to step down from running for reelection because of that video.
1:26:16 Chris Williamson? Yeah, anybody that says that the internet doesn't cross over into the real world just needs to check out the last couple of weeks. Yeah, one video and then the subsequent aftershocks of that is crazy.
1:26:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, a lot of people were calling it like modern day David and Goliath, just from you have the Goliath who's Tim Walz. And you have a little David just throwing some stones and took out one of the, one of the top Democrats in the United States.
1:26:42 Chris Williamson? Yeah. What, uh, what do you want to achieve? Because it, it seems to me like there is an obvious, like anti woke or anti progressive bent to some of the stuff that you're doing.
1:26:57 Chris Williamson? What is it? What is it that you want to achieve? Let's say that you look back on 2026. What would success look like to you?
1:27:02 Speaker 01 I think helping more people come to sense on common sense matters such as fraud. Providing and creating real change within the country. I mean, no, no video has ever created so much change in such a short period of time. Literally millions, potentially billions of dollars could have been saved for that one video. And so I think creating that change and helping people see stuff for common sense, bring some more common sense into.
1:27:30 Speaker 01 The world, you know, and just make it a better place. And it stinks that stuff's getting politicized by this because I really just want to be able to live in America where I feel like I can afford things. I feel like my fellow friends and people around me can afford things, that we have hope that our taxes are going to the right place. And that for generations like myself, that we can have the same opportunities that our parents and grandparents had. And we're seeing this corruption. Making it very hard between corruption and the influx of migrants and it's made it very, very hard for people to be able to buy houses to just live in a country where you feel like you're being represented. You have people on the left who are
1:28:15 Speaker 01 more passionate about protecting illegal migrants than going after fraud. And we just want to be able to have the same opportunities that our parents and grandparents had. And so when I think about what I want to accomplish, I just really do want to see America be better than where it's been. And to support and to get behind causes that really do make changes. Cause now I have the opportunity to. We just saw what I just did and will continue to see me make effects in other ways, whether that be through talking with people one-on-one, giving a speech, presenting a video that gets millions of views. Or simply just helping that old lady get it into her car, pick up her groceries, just being a good person. And creating real world change. And I think that's possible.
1:29:01 Chris Williamson? Yeah, man. Look, I, I don't know if exclusively corruption and migrants are the reason that the cost of living is as high as it is at the moment.
1:29:09 Speaker 01 I think it's a great factor and I think it's something that we can talk about.
1:29:13 Chris Williamson? It's something you've got more control over than what's the price of milk. So I agree in terms of that. Dude, I, uh, I.
1:29:23 Speaker 01 We got breaking news. We have got breaking news. Holy shit.
1:29:26 Chris Williamson? J D Vance announces the Trump administration will create a new assistant attorney general position who will have nationwide jurisdiction over the issue of fraud focusing first primarily in Minnesota and then expanding nationwide.
1:29:38 Speaker 02 If you're a young parent struggling to afford childcare in the United States of America, there are programs that we have to make it easier for your kids to get in daycare, for your kids to get in preschool. Those programs should go to American citizens, not be defrauded by Somali immigrants and others. Make it hard for you to get the access to the resources you need. But number two, make it easier for people who shouldn't even be in this country to fleece the United States and our taxpayers to begin with. We've actually activated a major interagency task force to make it possible to get to the heart of this fraud. We have Department of Agriculture resources that are focused on SNAP fraud so that people who need food benefits can get them, but illegal aliens and other fraudsters don't.
1:30:23 Speaker 02 We have over 1,500 subpoenas the Department of Justice has issued to get to the heart of the fraud ring. We've done almost 100 indictments, mostly Somali immigrants, but also a few others. And of course, we're looking in with broad investigatory authority to a number of the instances of wrongdoing that we've seen in Minneapolis. But we also want to expand this. We know that the fraud isn't just happening in Minneapolis, it's also happening in states like Ohio. It's happening in states like California. And so what we're doing in order to help coordinate this remarkable interagency effort from the Trump administration, but also to make sure that we prosecute the bad guys and do it as swiftly and efficiently as possible, is we are creating a new assistant attorney
1:31:08 Speaker 02 general position who will have nationwide jurisdiction over the issue of fraud. Now, of course, that person's efforts will start and focus primarily in Minnesota, but it is going to be a nationwide effort because unfortunately, the American people have been defrauded in a very nationwide way.
1:31:26 Chris Williamson? What do you think when you see that?
1:31:28 Speaker 01 Journalism that's creating change. I mean, the issue of fraud has been there. It's not new that we've been being, it's not new that we've been being defrauded.
1:31:40 Speaker 01 It's a complete result of my video showing that fraud's taking place to the point where the Vice President of the United States needs to create a new role for Assistant Attorney General to go after fraud. It's crazy, actually.
1:31:54 Chris Williamson? Dude.
1:31:55 Speaker 01 I think, think about that, like, have you ever thought, ever seen a video? We've been, there's been lots of reports for years. Has there ever been a point in time where they froze funding, sent in feds to launch investigations and created a new job for the attorney?
1:32:10 Chris Williamson? I was thinking about, I was thinking about some stuff, maybe during COVID where people that had scrutiny around mask efficacy, transmission rates, vaccine stuff, perhaps, but it was nowhere near as direct. It was much more kind of little pebbles here and there as opposed to this massive boulder that's just created it. Yeah, dude, I mean, this, this could be the beginning of a a really huge tsunami of, of investigations around this stuff. So, uh, Nick Shirley, ladies and gentlemen, dude, get some sleep for me, please.
1:32:40 Speaker 01 Do I look tired?
1:32:41 Chris Williamson? No, I just want you to sleep. I think that you, I think that it's important for you to sleep so that you can keep on doing, you look fantastic.
1:32:49 Chris Williamson? I, uh, I think the other, the other lesson, at least to take away that I have from this is that you cranked out a video a week for two years. And then you had the one that hit. And that's kind of the way that it tends to, not that you hadn't accumulated an audience before, but this is the one that really, really hit.
1:33:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think it's just like, I remember listening to your podcast with Hermosy and it's just like, you need to treat yourself. I remember one thing that really struck to me is he's like, you need to treat yourself like you're the best athlete. And whatever it may be, whether it be making YouTube videos or making sure you're the best person at your job. Wherever it may be, but I just, like, I've dedicated essentially all my time in past few years of my life to making these videos and. Creating conversation and it wasn't a surprise that it just happened to be the fact that I made this video. It was just inevitable that something was gonna happen.
1:33:44 Chris Williamson? It was gonna happen. Yeah, dude. Yeah, that's that's the way it works. All right. Where should people go? Keep up to date with your stuff, support you, do all the rest of the things.
1:33:51 Speaker 01 Nick Shirley on all platforms. Shirley defense if you want a leering hoodie to leer a little bit. But yeah, just Nick Shirley everywhere.
1:33:57 Chris Williamson? Okay, Nick, I appreciate you. Thank you, man.
1:33:59 Speaker 01 Thank you. Got any advice for me?
1:34:01 Chris Williamson? Get some sleep. Um, I think that's important, honestly, dude. Get some sleep and go for walks. I like, we'll just keep you fresh.
1:34:10 Speaker 01 What else advice would I give you?
1:34:13 Speaker 01 You're a wise guy.
1:34:14 Chris Williamson? I think, I think you need to try and delegate as quickly as possible in order to allow you to keep doing the thing that you're the best at, because the sheer volume of inflow that you're gonna get is gonna cause you to miss the stuff that you really need. So what you what you can do with is an assistant who is just with you at all times. And again, this is gonna be hard because you need the money and you're gonna get it funded from something, but assuming that you had the resources to do it, and fuck me, text Elon. I'm sure he can spare a couple of mill.
1:34:49 Chris Williamson? Somebody who's just always on your phone and is scrutinizing everything, sending it through a team. You probably need, I don't know, two or three people that would be really great to run in the background. And then it means that you can focus on where am I gonna go? What's the story? How's the edit look? So I would look to delegate. I would definitely get some rest as best I could.
1:35:09 Chris Williamson? And I would see this period as kind of like your Super Bowl, because
1:35:18 Chris Williamson? you're not going to be, you may be, but the likely it is that this is the most relevant that you're ever going to be. So I think continuing to put your foot on the gas, which is why getting the sleep as best you can is good, so that you can keep on going pretty hard. Keep on publishing at a rapid clip. Be careful about what you say. You don't want to have some
1:35:37 Chris Williamson? horrible soundbite of you saying something horrendous that kind of smears the rest of your your image, because that's exactly what opponents are going to look for.
1:35:50 Chris Williamson? And I would say, keep on reaching out to people because it's evident that people want to support your work. So if you have the desire to try and make something happen, just keep on, you've already, you've already got like the shameless DM gene that I also have, which is good. So just keep on sending that out because I think people are going to want to keep supporting you.
1:36:10 Speaker 01 Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate it.
1:36:12 Chris Williamson? Fuck yeah. Appreciate you too, man.
1:36:13 Speaker 01 Smart wisdom, baby.
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