Transcript of #BecauseMiami: Get Off My Wife

Everyone is lying to you for money.

Cryptocurrency. It's pretty stupid. No balls, right?

You might recognize Ben McKenzie from The O.C.

He's been a critic of the cryptocurrency industry. To understand my journey into cryptocurrency, we have to go back.

You know what's taking off is Bitcoin.

It's money. It's cryptocurrency. Stop saying fucking cryptocurrency. I don't know what the fuck that means.

What does this like look?

I have a degree in economics. Surely I can figure out this crypto stuff. No banks, no fees.

Electronic gold.

Have a good time with your Bitcoin.

Take all your money and buy Bitcoin. I had a few questions.

I can handle the turbulence. I don't like it, I'm used to it.

Up against a multi-trillion-dollar industry shilled by every celebrity on the planet, I hired a film crew. Nice to meet you. Did you talk to my agent yet? They're building Bitcoin City.

It looks like a normal web of trust. They can make the price go whatever they want.

To the moon!

What do you say to the people who have been scammed?

I was crying.

My wife was upset. Shady dudes end up making most of the money. How much have you donated to politicians?

Investors, do you have anything to say?

I, I—

Ben McKenzie spent 4 seasons playing Ryan Atwood on The O.C., the smash for Fox, then 5 seasons as James Gordon, the future future commissioner of Gotham City in the Batman prequel show Gotham. Then he became a New York Times bestselling author. Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, co-authored with the very talented Jacob Silverman. And now he's a documentarian. Everyone Is Lying to You for Money has 100% on the Rotten Tomatoes machine. Roy, I don't got one of those, I'll tell you, I'll tell you that right now. I didn't get 100% in anything my whole life.

You mean broke didn't get you 100%?

Oh, I can assure you broke did not get I got a pan from me. When you pan your own documentary, I don't think you're qualified for 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. But this movie is fantastic. It's funny. It actually is an adaptation of the book, which is really a case study of cryptocurrency in the pandemic, a kind of boom and bust cycle, if you will, and timelier than ever. And the movie today, Friday, August 22nd, is having a global screening event. You can watch the movie live and then see a live Q&A with Ben McKenzie, his wife and co-star in the documentary, Morena Baccarin. You might remember her from Homeland on Showtime and of course the Deadpool movies, and as the Sorceress in what I think is the underrated Masters of the Universe movie. I think I—

I'm—

why is it—

why, why is Ben laughing at me? Why, why is everybody— I actually think it was kind of fun. I dug it. I hope they make more. They probably won't. But you can go to everyoneislying.com, click on watch to pre-order tickets, get tickets. Also, if you miss it You can still catch it. It'll be available through September 6th with the bonus content, the Q&A with Morena and Ben. Ben, right off the bat, obviously there's a lot of Miami connections when you talk about boom and bust with crypto in the pandemic. But I want to ask you this because everything we've been told, the pitch for crypto, and we've talked about this probably on the show before, you know, it's untethered from market volatility. It's a hedge against inflation. It's— you're already—

you're already—

he's rolling his So hard he's getting a concussion right now. What do you think is the most insidious thing about cryptocurrency and the kind of predatory pitch?

I think the most insidious thing is telling dudes that this is going to free them from what is admittedly a fucked up financial system that we do have. I agree with the first part of the Bitcoin story, which is that our regulated system kind of sucks and it's often an insider's game. It's hard for the average guy to get ahead, but the sickest part is to go after dudes. And it's— it really is going after guys explicitly, right? That's why, you know, it's Crypto.com Arena. The crypto ads were playing over every sports game. Now it's, you know, online gambling and prediction markets. But there's a reason they're going after guys. And it's not just because we like to gamble more than women. We make worse decisions than women, especially young guys. You know, our prefrontal cortices are slower to develop, right? We just engage in risky behavior. This is just science. But also, You know, as dudes, we've been taught that you don't talk about when you lose, you know, that it's shameful to lose. And I think that's the neatest and most, like, disgusting trick of the crypto industry is, like, convincing guys when they do lose money, because most of them are going to lose money in crypto, um, that they shouldn't blame the people that, like, made that happen.

They should blame themselves. Right? It's called DYOR in crypto, do your own research, meaning like if you make a mistake in crypto, it's your fault. And you know, there's no— if you lose money in crypto, it's your fault. It's— it really is a psychological trick on guys, right?

Um, bit of victim blaming too.

Yeah, get the— get the mark to turn the blame back on themselves. Um, that way the criminals can avoid, you know, responsibility for what they're doing. So I think that's the sickest part, right? It's like a it's not the financial future or financial utopia. It's worse than our current system, which is saying a lot. I think that's the most insidious part to me.

Right. And of course, it's rooted in this idea that we can all agree that the system is flawed, fundamentally flawed and unfair. And so as soon as you start with that truthiness, as Stephen Colbert might call it, the insidiousness can grow and the dishonesty can grow from there.

Yeah.

And you've got a hardcore group of guys that really, really want it to be true. And I understand why. But you are getting into like this anarcho-capitalist libertarian fantasy that like we can all just have our own privately issued money and live on islands by ourselves. You know, we don't have to actually talk to other people or relate to other people or, God forbid, empathize with other people. You know, money is just this made-up thing. But what it really is at its core is trust, right? You take a dollar bill from me, not because you trust me, but because you trust that you can use that dollar bill for whatever you want to use it for. And the only way we've been able to scale that trust over centuries is really through government issue. And crypto says, oh, we don't need any of that stuff. We can just trust the code, which is total bullshit because someone has to write the code. That's how Sam Bankman-Fried was running his CryptoCon, was he got a guy, one of his employees, to change the code code inside the source code inside of FTX so he could steal his customers' money.

So that's trusting the code is trusting, you know, guys like Sam Bankman-Fried who, who instruct others to write that code. They say they can transfer the trust from the public sphere into the private sphere, right? And you can privatize money. And that's just a bad idea. You know, it should be a bad idea for anyone with, you know, two brain cells in their head. But like, it's also a bad idea because we've tried it before. We tried it in the 19th century. Banks were allowed to issue their own notes, their own monies, and it was called the Wildcat Banking Era because you were allowed one physical location of your bank. You'd set it up as far away from your depositors as possible where the wildcats roamed. And then once you had their real money, what's to stop you from taking off with it? So banks collapsed all the time and there was a lot of fraud and ultimately we scrapped it for a central bank. So with crypto, it was just like lie after lie after lie. You know, it's not the future of money, it's the past of money and a failed experiment.

Well, crypto Crypto is like Tinkerbell. If you don't believe in it, it doesn't exist. And that's the thing. It's all of these guys, like you say, who wanna believe it, who are propping it up. And that's a very Miami construct where I like to say we don't have reality, we have reality, where truth is hate and lies are love because we have to sell the dream and sell the facade otherwise. And if anybody tells the truth about it or hangs a lantern on our problems or says like, well, it's not quite like that, then you're fucking up the whole game. Because then the economy is going to collapse because we rely solely on the dream and the fantasy and the desire to believe in, in this thing. Talk a little bit about that. We have a shot here on the screen of you, of you admiring the rear of the crypto bull that is actually just blocks away from where we are now. They've moved it from my— Roy, you know, Roy, you're just a hater, Roy, okay? Just because you lost all your money in World Financial— what's it called? World Liberty World Liberty Financial.

Ben, before we get into that, because I really want to get into why, you know, when you make a documentary—

Roy was— I thought Roy was an investor in CumRocket.

Yeah, I get in, I got in early on that one.

That was Andrew Gillum, I think, actually. Oh no, is Andrew here? Andrew, honey, he's— so, oh God, he just likes to work in CumRocket into every interview he does.

I like to work CumRocket in.

I'm going to—

future of money, dude.

I'm going to string—

future of money.

I'm going to string together a montage of Ben just going, come rock it, come rock it, come rock. Oh boy, I just did it there with the hand. I did it with like kind of my riff on the Trump dance. Oh, okay. So then let's talk a little bit about— because this journey in the book that you were with a camera crew kind of documenting your research and reporting on the book, which became the documentary, brought you, of course, to what was briefly kind of the crypto capital of the Americas. Miami. Tell me a little bit about what brought you here, why crypto found its, its way and tried to take up roots here. The Bitcoin conference was here for 2 or 3 or so years in a row as attendance started to fall steadily, fall off. Yeah. Talk to me about the Miami connection because there's always a Miami connection.

Yeah, totally.

I was here.

I was there in 2022. It was one of the first events that Jacob Silverman, who wrote the book with me, that he and I went to, you know, in person because we were getting out of the pandemic. And yeah, it was huge in 2022. 2022 there, I think they estimated like 50,000 people. The price was unfortunately crashing as we got there, like for the last like 2 or 3 months previous. It had just— that was the high was like in the 60s at that point and it was down in like the 40s. And so it was this funny vibe where like, you know, everybody's fucked up, right? Everybody's on at least alcohol, if not other things. And, you know, no hate there. All good. But, but, you know, it's not the most fun thing if it's all based around everybody getting rich and guys and guys were on stage.

Pumping and dumping in like real time right at the Bitcoin.

Oh, Peter, dude, it's even better. Peter Thiel was on stage. Peter Thiel was on stage ripping up a dollar bill to like signify— actually, he threw dollar bills out into the crowd like, these don't, these don't matter.

People were like scrambling for them when they tried to grab them.

Um, and he's like, you don't believe enough. Um, you know, he was trying to show that Bitcoin was, was the way forward. What we learned from reporting later is at the same time he was trying to convince other people to buy it, he was selling, he was dumping. It's a brilliant move. That guy is like a legendary villain. But yeah, these guys, it's a show, you know, it's a big show. It's like any other trade show except it's just a lot of schlongs. There's just a lot of dudes.

A lot of cum rockets.

Very, a lot of cum rockets. A lot of potential there. Well, I don't know if it's rocketing, more dripping, but it's not, It's, it's, it's a bit of an ooze. It's a bit of an ooze. Yeah, it was pretty funny. But I did— let's see, who'd I interview there? I interviewed Brock Pierce. This isn't— unfortunately didn't quite make the documentary, but that Brock Pierce guy, do you know this guy? He's been around Miami and then he was in Puerto Rico. It's like a former child star, was in The Mighty Ducks.

Yeah, I feel like he's in the movie. Is he not in the movie?

Nah, he didn't quite make it. Sorry, Brock. But, uh, he's like 5 foot tall and he's like a crypto entrepreneur. He wears like a cowboy hat and like lots of jewelry.

And yeah, he's a weird dude, except for the cowboy hat, the jewelry, and the crypto stuff. I resemble that description. It's like 5 foot tall, former child actor, I guess.

Like, I don't know, I don't know if you have the kind of sway that he has in Hollywood, man. I mean, you have— you weren't in Mighty Ducks, like None of them, none of them actually. None of the books, none of them. Yeah, so I don't know, Miami is like an interesting case study though, right? Because it is, it is, I think crypto took off in Miami. You tell me, you know your city, but like it is the vibe, right? It is the hustle kind of situation.

Um, Easy Money and crypto, like the title of the Easy Money.

Yeah, right, for sure. And also, you know, Miami is the gateway to Central and South America, and one thing that crypto is really good for is money laundering. And so there probably is some overlap there, I'll just say.

Um, probably Probably. I, I just—

a wild guess.

Yeah. I always like to say Miami is like if Fyre Festival was an entire city. And, and remember instead of Billy McFarland, we had—

Mayor Crypto World.

God, I miss him. Ben, when you make it, you were just mentioning you were in Miami in 2022. That was 4 years ago. I was never good at that there book learning, but I did that math really quick in my head. And nice. The thing of it is when you're working on a documentary, it takes a long time. It takes a long time to conceive, to shoot, to edit, to distribute as you finally have to, to great acclaim and success. But the fear always is, or the concern constantly is, is will anybody give a shit by the time I get this done and out? And the truth is, as I mentioned earlier, it is arguably more relevant than ever. I mentioned it earlier, World Liberty Financial. There was just news this past week in the world of the president of the United States and his son's rug pull that they did on their own fans and voters. And then the latest, it's going to be a bank. It's— yeah, wait, what?

They've gotten a provisional charter to start a bank based on their bullshit cryptocurrency company. Like, what could possibly go wrong? The convicted fraudster president, convicted of 34 counts by a New York jury, who has just done a pump and dump on his own followers, as you pointed out, is now suddenly going to wind this up. And, and why do you want a bank charter? So that you get the imprimatur of, you know, legitimacy, but also so that you get that that sweet government backing so that— I can't predict the future, Billy, but I'm just going to guess if this ever actually became a bank, that at some point things go tits up and the bank collapses, just because that's how every business that Donald Trump has ever run has always gone. But when that happens, we're going to end up bailing these dudes out. Like, that's the solution to the woes of the regulated financial system, is for Trump to have a bullshit crypto bank. I mean, come on, crypto guys, like, this is absurd.

Well, for Trump's own administration and own appointees presumably to approve this, no less. It's kind of like corruption in, corruption out, corruption everywhere.

Yeah.

And again, like, I know I was making kind of an abstract point earlier about private money, but this is what happens when you privatize money, right? When you move money from the public sphere to the private, the people, they're just such a temptation to cheat. And to manipulate the system. And we've seen it before historically, but it's happening again right now. We just see, you know what, Trump and his family made $1.4 billion off of crypto in just his first year alone. I mean, it's an unprecedented level of corruption and it's been mainly accomplished through crypto. The bros out there are like, if you believe in it, you have to grapple with these facts. You can't just like hand wave them away.

And that coin lost what, like 90%, almost 90%? Of its— of its—

yeah, they went— they made $1.4 billion and, um, and, uh, investors lost $3 billion, I think is the estimate, something like that. And it's, you know, yeah, like 58 wallets, which are what they call accounts— 58 wallets made billions and, um, millions of people lost money. I mean, who we talking about, guys? But it's so indicative of— it's an insider's game. I mean, it's funny that crypto's criticism is, is that the regulated system is an insider's game, which to some degree it is, but crypto's worse. It's not better. And the only people that believe in it are the people that are involved in the scam and the true believers who have sort of been indoctrinated.

Ben, before we go, what does the hat say? Oh, make lying wrong again. Outstanding. Well, Mogilev on the documentary.

Thank you, brother. Thank you, brother. Dare to Dream. Lying wrong again. Dare to dream. We can get back there, guys. We can get back to sanity and, you know, the kind of lessons that you learned in second grade that lying is not good.

I thought he was going to break into Christopher Cross there into sailing.

I thought I was going to say, come rock it again.

Down to sanity. At least it's not for me. Ben McKenzie, everyoneislying.com. People think I'm a hater and I talk a lot of shit. I love this movie. I love the book too. They are related but not one and the same.

They're—

the book is worth reading. The movie is worth seeing. Everyoneislying.com. Thanks so much, Ben.

Thank you, Billy. Thanks for having me.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

I want him arrested! I want him arrested! That was misdemeanor battery. You can't grab me like that, Charlie, okay? This is a public meeting.

I'm gonna get my camera up too. I'm gonna get my camera up too and see what happens here. Okay, you come here every time to do this. That's it. You don't come to help the community.

You're not a problem solver.

You do this with your little camera to intimidate people.

Reporters and everybody, you disturb the core reporters.

Okay, because that's what you do, ladies.

You're a blackmailer is what you are.

You're corrupt. You're corrupt.

You're corrupt.

You're corrupt. You're corrupt. You're a criminal. You're worse than Joe Carollo. Criminal. You're a criminal gangster. You're part of the Miami Mafia. You are a mafioso. You took money from Ultra 3 days before the event. You sold out downtown and you will be out with handcuffs.

Sorry, how much Listen, Mario, why are you here all the time? What are you doing?

You touch my wife! You touch my wife! You touch my wife! And you're gonna touch my wife?

My hands on anyone?

On anyone?

I wouldn't put my hands on— unlike Carlos Martel, I wouldn't touch anybody. I wouldn't put my hands on anything.

My wife, okay?

Get off my wife!

She's talking to me!

Stop filming my life, okay? I don't go around filming your wife.

We're in a public meeting. If my wife came to a public meeting, you film my wife?

You're a clown.

You want me to go film her and put her up with her?

We're in a public meeting, ma'am. We're in a public meeting.

That's why— exactly, this is a public meeting, and they're, they're, they're here.

Uh, no, no, no, you're rushing somebody. You're rushing. I'm not arresting nobody. I'm just trying to I didn't hear.

I can't hear you, Mariela.

What did you say?

Okay, I can't hear you. All right.

Okay.

All right.

Let's, let's, let's— I mean, I mean, let's stop it right there. I'm feeling a little bit of sympathy for the people who are listening on audio only going, what the hell is going on here? And all I can say is only in the banana republic, baby.

Only in Miami.

So that was the Bayfront brawl, the Miami mayhem. This is what happens when you have a caveman running the show. It's really something. I mean, Eileen Higgins promised that the reality show culture of these meetings and civility would return. We'd stop the yelling and the fighting. And instead, what you heard at the top there was me getting assaulted and battered by a Bayfront Park Management Trust board member who came up on me from behind. No Gillum. He came up on me from behind and I turn around and I see him practically on top of me. They had added these stanchions so it looks like a, a cage fight that these guys are in. I thought that all this security was there to protect them from us. It turns out it's to protect us from them. And there's a sergeant at arms. This woman is already like on top of him to grab him. He reaches for my phone. I move out of the way. He grabs my right hand and pulls me towards him. I don't know, to try to hit me in the face or maybe to grab— get me closer to him to grab my phone.

It was nuts. So you have a guy, a public official sitting on a board during a public meeting who attacks me for filming the public meeting, trying to get me to stop recording it with my phone.

Jeez, that line forms way around the corner on people who want to fight you.

It's like Airplane, you know, with everybody just like lining up down the aisle with that woman. Like, get a hold of yourself. But I'm literally just standing there filming a public meeting with my phone.

Phone.

It's obviously not okay. In fact, it is actually a crime. And by the way, all the crazy— the other, like, yelling and craziness, it's terrible. It's an embarrassment. But Miguel Gabela, I mean, this guy is just unfit, unhinged, and unqualified. So none of this is surprising when you elect a Jaguar car parts salesman to make multibillion-dollar decisions for the future of your city. But this guy is a threat. To public safety, to the Constitution of the United States, and to the future of the city of Miami. And yet they make him the chairman of like a multimillion-dollar public park.

And you get into an argument with his wife.

Ooh, and his wife— so his wife is at all of the meetings. There are spouses that I have no idea what they look like, husbands and wives of public officials, of elected officials. I don't know that I've ever seen them before. If I have, I couldn't pick them out of a lineup. But Miguel Gabela's wife is everywhere. She's at every meeting. She's interacting with staff. Her private Gmail account is copied on Google Calendar invitations from the district to constituent meetings. It's a serious problem because she's a quasi-public official who has no, like, official capacity with the city. So it's a liability issue. Her interaction with staff and the public could create a problem. I don't know where the city attorney is on this other than he's recklessly incompetent and corrupt and isn't putting a stop to any of this craziness. I have a strict policy about about her. I don't engage her. I see her in public meetings all the time. I ignore her. And then she engages me, yells at me, heckles me in Spanglish, talks about my wife's breasts for some reason. And you can see the guy tries to stop her from engaging, and he kind of whispers something like, don't be part of the problem.

And she yells, I am part of the problem.

You got that right.

Which is the only honest thing that anybody said in that meeting. I don't know what anybody intends to do about this because, you know, I mean, hashtag because Miami. I do know that Frank Alvarado, who was a longtime journalist here in Miami, started out— I mean, when I first read him at the Miami New Times back in the '90s, now writing for the Florida Bulldog, which is some incredible accountability journalism, and the Miami, which is your new venture, right, Frank? Tell us about that.

Yeah, the Miami is my, uh, is my newsletter, basically decided that there was still room for more, you know, more coverage on accountability journalism and exposing the corruption in our beautiful, wonderful South Florida.

Now, you've had a one-two punch of articles at the Bulldog and the Miami Inn about, I mean, the best kind of accountability journalism you could do, which is to follow the money. And you have been following the money on Gabella and his henchmen. Gabella and his associates, and including Raul Moreau, who is now the former executive director. Grand opening, grand closing on Raul Moreau at the Bayfront Trust. But also this other interesting character, José Sanchez-Granlier, aka Penguino, who was a personal lawyer at one time for Gabella, now is on the, the city salary for $130,000, but also is in charge of a new PAC that collects money on behalf of the commissioner. I mean, this is like such a cesspool of like our money, money from city contractors and vendors and private interests. What is it that you've learned here? And what, if anything, might they be doing wrong?

What I've learned here is that, like how you said, yes, his henchmen have set up these political action committees. Well, Raul Miro had one called Miami— Miamians for Fairness. And then you have José Sánchez-Granlier. He has a PAC called Advance Miami, and they've been collecting money not just from regular city vendors. They've also tapped businesses that are at Bayfront Park. For example, they've gotten tens of thousands of dollars from Ultra Music Festival through their parent company, their founder Russell Fast Fish. Their attorney, Sandra York. And then you have Bayside Marketplace has given, I think, about the $25,000 to both PACs. And there's also a media company, a billboard company called Worldwide Amherst Media that has a contract at Bayfront Park that they've also donated to both these PACs.

So they're giving money money to a PAC that is controlled or was controlled at one time or another by the executive director or interim executive director of the Bayfront Park to benefit Miguel Gabela, who is the chairman of the Bayfront Park Management Trust. And these are coming from like the biggest tenants, vendors, contractors in the park itself.

Correct.

Okay. I mean, that's pretty shady, dude.

Yeah.

Now, I don't know that there's anything— and mind you, I believe the Ultra donations came in around the time that Miguel Gabela himself was going to the city commission and effectively lobbying on behalf of Ultra to get a 20-year lease extension, many years ahead of the expiration of their actual lease. So is there any potential of a quid pro quo going on here?

So that's the issue that I guess law enforcement— I think, well, you know, law enforcement, the Inspector General, maybe the Ethics Commission, you know, would have to dig into, uh, because they weren't answering my questions. Obviously, they, you know, they, they, they, they just, you know, basically just, you know, what, you know, the, the ignore him route. Um, but the situation here is that we have Raul Miro's PAC, which started in January of last year. In March, he gets the first Ultra donation. The Miami For Fairness gets the first Ultra donation, and that was about a month before Raul started his job. Then he settles into the job, and a few months later, around the fall, he gets more donations from Ultra, and then also the donation from Bayside and Worldwide of Amber's Media come in. Then you have Advance Miami. It gets formed in February of this year, right around the time that they're finalizing this new deal with Ultra. And then in April—

was it April?

April, the city commission approves the new contract with Ultra. And a few weeks later, you get another round of donations to Advance Miami from Ultra and its attorney, Sam Rubin.

All the while— Raul Moro is collecting six figures from the city as a salary, in addition to whatever benefits and money we know he's getting from the PAC. And then Jose Sanchez-Granlier is also, at the same time that he's running this PAC, is a city employee as well. I mean, it's just this incestuous cesspool here. And speaking of not getting answers, because of Frank's reporting, when I was at this Bayfront Park meeting last week, after the mayhem subsided, I approached— so José Sánchez-Granlier, who works for District 1, which is Commissioner Gabela's office, he is often at these meetings recording me. And you heard also James Torres, who's been a guest on this show, yelling at the meeting at Gabela, 'You're going to leave in handcuffs. You're a criminal,' while Gabela is yelling at him, 'You're a criminal. You were arrested in Arizona,' this and that. I don't know that that's accurate. But I see Jose Sanchez-Granlier recording me and James Torres at this meeting. So afterwards, I walk up to him and try to ask him questions about this reporting. Jose, so what did— did you solicit those donations from Ultra and their affiliates, or did they just give you that money out of the goodness of their heart?

And is it appropriate? How do you respond to the allegations in the Florida Bulldog that there are ethical concerns about you being an attorney who's represented the commissioner. Now you're being paid by the taxpayers $130,000 a year, and you're also running a PAC for him and collecting money from vendors of the city in the park. No answer.

Penguino.

No.

All right.

Yeah, boy's out of there.

You can see his face kind of fall. He's like, am I going to stand here and listen to these questions that I know I'm not going to answer? And I guess basically, Frank, I'm guessing I got the in-person version of the response that you got, which was a very quiet stroll away. And I think the expression on his face is rather telling, too. There's no pushback or denials, or it's just like, holy shit, this man's making points here and I need to get away from this truth as fast as possible.

Yeah, that's certainly— that's what it looked like to me, too. And I guess, you know, like, the issue here is that the act of the donations and them, you know, accepting these donations is protected under the First Amendment. However, the city of Miami, state law, county law has restrictions on what public employees can do as far as political activities. Obviously, they can't be hitting up people for donations while they're on the clock, but we don't know that because they're not answering these questions. Another point is what kind of conversations are they having? You try to ask them, how did you solicit these donations? If the conversation is, hey, we need you to donate to this PAC because Gabello's running for reelection next year. If they leave it at that, then I don't think they have a problem. But if they say something about like, hey, you got your contract coming up and if you want the commissioner to still be in charge and help push this thing through, we're going to need you to chip into this PAC. You know, that kind of like, you know, sets it up for like kind of the quid pro quo situation.

So, but again, how will we ever know? I guess one of them is going to have to flip. I guess one of them is going to have to decide they don't want to go to jail for Gabella or whatever the rationalizing is and decide to become a whistleblower.

And Billy, I think this is a broader problem that's happening across Dade County with these PACs is that you're getting all these PACs being set up. And they're, they're too close to comfort with, you know, the, the politicians that they're supporting.

But, but also the fact that they're like city employees as well that work for the committee. It's like sometimes there's, there's sometimes there's professional like kind of PAC people right in Tallahassee or out of town. But these guys are being paid by taxpayers while they're hustling for these PACs.

And not only that, I mean, they're not known for— I mean, they've never established PACs before. I mean, like, these are like these, these are their first PACs. And it's all coinciding with the fact that they're henchmen for Commissioner Gabela, and he's made it sure to take care of them by giving them jobs at the city. I think I mentioned in my post in The Miamiian that maybe this is the amount of money that Muro raised for Miamians for Fairness. Maybe that's the reason why Gabela wanted to give him such a fat salary because he You know, he's, he's out there, you know, twisting arms, you know, on his behalf.

Like, he got a 70%, a 70% raise. He got— well, yeah, until he didn't anymore.

So, you know, that's another thing that you have, you know, that, you know, that deserves, you know, an inquiry. Did he get this salary because of his political, you know, activities? Well, because we know that he wasn't qualified for, for, for that kind of raise, much less the job.

So, well, Gabella told me in a meeting, he told me in a meeting that the reason that Moreau got the job, Al Moreau got the job, is because he was politically connected to him, not because of the 37 people that applied for that position. He was by far not even close, number 38 in terms of, in terms of qualifications. He might have been number 50 out of 37, to tell you the truth. That's how unqualified he was compared to the other people who applied. To the job.

And I also want to note, beyond the Bayside businesses, the Advance Miami PAC has also gotten money from NR Investments, which is a developer here in Miami that submitted an unsolicited proposal to redevelop a city-owned site in Allapattah, which is in Gabela's district. Oh, and, and now the city has started a competitive bid process for that site. So that's another donation that kind of like raises eyebrows, I think.

Sure.

Because why otherwise would this developer be interested in giving like $20,000 to Miguel Cabello?

And this is a guy, Roy, who calls the truth lies, who calls public records requests harassment and calls journalism intimidation. So this is like a profoundly dishonest, not only dishonest, honest man, but this is a man who very clearly has something, if not lots, to hide. Is that the impression you get, Frank? Like, like, it's like the more we learn, the more questions we have. Sometimes you get, you get records, you get answers, and you're like, oh, that satisfies me. That makes sense. I'm good. But here, the more information you get, the more you learn. For me, the more questions I have.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's also a jarring 360 by Gabello because now it's become apparent that his opposition to Joe Carollo and his desire to clean up Bayfront Park Management Trust after Carollo was there for so many years as chairman was really to become Carollo. Not because he was looking to, again, reform City Hall. I mean, he basically has decided he's the new Carollo and he's just going to operate however he wants and assume that role of the strongman on the city commission. But the problem is I don't think he has the tact and the that Carollo used to have, because at least Carollo knew how to, you know, play his colleagues.

Yeah, Carollo knew, and so did Alex Diaz-Lobertia, almost like how to walk between the raindrops. Gabela is not sophisticated enough for that. I remember in December of '23 after he got elected, and I remember saying to somebody, I said, watch out for your guy because he's going to accidentally get himself indicted, because that's how he strikes me as that kind of guy who doesn't know what he doesn't know, but acts like he knows knows everything and is going to get himself in trouble whether he likes it or not, or whether he means to, I should say, or not. But one of the interesting things about him, instead of coming into power and saying, to your point, I'm going to do this better, I'm going to do this more honest, what he's saying as well, if they did it and they got away with it, why shouldn't I? I should be able to hustle for the same quote unquote donations and contributions. And, and if Diaz LaPortilla turns out was arrested and charged with money laundering and bribery, if it turns out that all that was legal, Even though this, you know, it's, it's toxic, and if it's not illegal, it should be illegal.

He's like, well, if he got away with it, then I'm gonna get away with it. That seems to be the attitude here, and it's a shame because like he beat him, so he doesn't have to join them. You know, he could just be more, a more honest broker and an honest actor, but you can see like it's just Gabela's gone wild out there. So Frank Alvarado, floridabulldog.com, the Miamian, thanks so much for being here. I know that this is not the end of the story and you'll be back here to talk more about this because—

I love this town!

Thanks, Frank.

Thank you. Thank you. Have a great day.

Cocaine's.