The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (2016) - full transcript

Fuck you!

Yeah, you pissed me off.

You're a piece of shit, you know?

Just like another white boy,

white Southern boy trash, you know?

You mother fucker!

My name's Palast...

Fuck you!

Greg Palast.

I'm an investigative reporter.

I hunt billionaires who misbehave



and every four years I
become a crime reporter.

The crime, election theft.

I have election thieves, vote
rustlers, ballot bandits.

Investigative
reporter Greg Palast

wades through the dirty political tactics.

It all begin in 2000 when
a little birdie dropped

off an envelope marked confidential.

It was the secret list kept
in Florida state computers

that stole the election
for George W. Bush.

This is the story of the investigation

of the theft of the 2016 election.

It's a crime still in progress

and a hunt for the very
rich guys behind the crime.

How are they gonna do it?



I haven't a clue.

Then one night in my
shitty little New York City

detective agency office on Second Avenue.

And she found 35,500 people voted

in North Carolina and
voted in some other state.

So you're talking about
probably over a million people

that voted twice in this election.

Really?

That voted
twice in this election.

Say what, Dick?

The first concrete evidence we've

ever had of massive voter fraud.

We've talked about it ad
nauseam, this proves it.

I usually don't pay
attention to a Fox News freak

like Dick Morris but he was senior counsel

to the president until he was caught

calling the White House while
a hooker sucked on his toes.

Over a million people

that voted twice in this election.

A million double voters.

Really, Dick?

You vote twice, you get
five years in the slammer.

Voted in North Carolina

and voted in some other state.

What fool would listen
to this wacky accusation.

This voting system is out of control.

You have people, in my opinion,

that are voting many, many times.

Say what, Donald?

You have people, in my opinion,

that are voting many, many times.

That are voting many, many
times, many, many times.

Really, Donald?

A double voting crime ring.

Is there really a gigantic conspiracy

of one million democrats to vote twice

or is it a massive scheme
to take away the votes

of a million innocent people?

There's only one way to find out.

I have to get the list of these

skanky alleged double voting fiends.

So the next day, I call down to Carolina.

If they really caught thousands
of double voting criminals,

I want their names.

All I'm asking for is can
we get a copy of the names?

I'm requesting those names
of the double voters.

But I got the official screw you.

This was a criminal investigation
and it's all confidential.

You've got a list of 35,500 suspects

and the names are secret.

You're telling me this list of bad guys,

it's completely confidential?

It's confidential.

I tried Mississippi, Arizona,
28 states, same jive.

Confidential, really?

Confidential.

It's confidential.

No, you don't, don't, don't even say it.

I put Ms. Badpenny and
the entire team on it.

Screw confidential, get me the lists.

It took five months.

What do you know?

Our little birdie shmoozes some bureaucrat

into turning over the confidential list

we're not supposed to see.

So here's their big secret.

Interstate Crosscheck.

Crosscheck?

And here they are.

The suspects, duplicate voters.

Look at this, 7.2 million
suspects in 29 states.

A list of duplicate voters,
if that's what they are.

With a hit list this big,
you can fix any election.

You can steal the White House.

Interstate Crosscheck, a list
of seven millions voters.

I've see lists like this before.

The year was 2000.

It was during that fight between
George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Before the election, Jeb
Bush, governor of Florida,

and his trusty secretary
of state, Katherine Harris,

hunted down convicts, convicted felons

who had registered to vote and kicked them

right off the voter rolls.

We're talking killers,
bank robbers, drug lords.

They heroically removed the voting rights

of an astonishing 94,000 Florida voters.

Other states secretly joined
in the great felon voter purge.

My suspicions got me moving.

I grabbed the plane, I have to see

these ex-con voters for myself.

I hopped around the country to investigate

the supposed crime wave of ex-cons voting.

But I couldn't find a
single illegal voter.

So I went to the big house.

Do felon voters even exist?

Here they are.

Are any of you registered to vote?

No, we're not allowed.

I am.

I'm a registered voter, I
just have a misdemeanor.

But I just couldn't find

these criminal felon voters.

Then an enveloped arrived on my desk.

It was the list of those
Florida murderers and mobsters

who had registered to vote.

Hmm, nothing matched up.

The names of the voters didn't match up

with the names of the felons.

Jonathan Barber lost his vote because

Vinnie Barbieri was convicted of a crime

and Jonathan has a different
birthday than Vinnie.

Thousands of mismatched birthdays.

Some of these criminals were convicted

in the future, way in the future.

And thousands never convicted at all.

Something was wrong here.

The voters that were purged

just didn't match up with the felons.

Turns out, the number of real criminals

on Bush's felon list, zero, nada, bupkis.

But look a this, bla, bla, bla.

Bla, bla, bla, huh?

Ah, most of the innocent folks who lost

their vote were marked B-L-A, black,

like this guy, Willie Steen.

He lost his vote because some other guy

named Willie O'Steen was
convicted of a felony in Ohio.

No criminal at all.

Never been convicted of any crime.

I never been arrested in my life.

So I went to
Katherine Harris' office

to show her election's chief
their phony little felon list.

But suddenly, he had to go.

And I think I'm done
with this interview.

Wait, well let me just show
you the contract, if I could.

It could look to other
people that you paid

four million dollars to
purchase this election

for the Republican Party.

Mr. Roberts?

After the state troopers took me away,

his boss, Katherine Harris,

pronounced Governor
Jeb's brother president

of the United States by just 537.

But who cares?

Does it really matter some
politician shoplifts an election?

♪ Good times ♪

♪ These are the good times ♪

♪ Leave your cares behind ♪

I'm the guy who pulled the trigger.

♪ These are the good times ♪

♪ Good times ♪

Does it matter?

Yes, it does.

Now, I got this new crosscheck list.

A whole lot bigger than
that list of fake felons.

And crosscheck ain't just
Florida, it's in 29 states,

almost all republican controlled.

Either this is the
biggest voting crime wave

in U.S. history or it's the biggest con

since Dick Cheney took us
on a little hunting trip

to find weapons of mass destruction.

Is this crosscheck list going
to steal the 2016 election?

I don't know.

But to investigate would
require my flying my ass

down to Dixie and all
over hell, forget it.

I've been on the vote heist
beat for 20 years, I'm done.

I just had a quadruple bypass.

My plan for the year involved nothing more

than a hammock and a pina colada.

Stop it, get to work.

This is Lenny Badpenny,
our chief investigatrix,

punk rocker, stake-out svengali,
detective extraordinaire.

♪ She cannot look at you ♪

♪ And everybody looks at us ♪

♪ She's a man ♪

Palast, you're
going to North Carolina.

Once we got way down south in Dixie,

I headed through the stately
plantation houses of Georgia.

The state had just joined crosscheck.

Whipped up by reports of voter
fraud in inner city Atlanta,

republican leaders had gathered

at a golf course to take action.

Do you think if the democrats
are voting fraudulently,

are they trying to steal the election?

The fact that that could be happening

is an enormous threat to our country

and to our constitution
and we must uncover it.

So I went to hunt down these

voting games in nearby Atlanta.

Here I am undercover in Martin
Luther King's old church.

Turns out, their old age home
was harboring the biggest nest

of double voters in the nation.

Is everyone excited to vote?

Yes, yes, very.

So you remember before
the Voting Rights Act?

All of us do.

Do you remember when African Americans

were blocked from voting?

Oh yeah.

From a lot of things, I remember.

Couldn't even
go to the movie theater

unless you went on top.

Couldn't use the toilet.

Popcorn on it.

They had colored popcorn.

So is it different now?

- Popcorn for coloreds.
- Oh yeah.

We've come a long way.

Not long enough.

Right, not long enough.

So, does anyone still getting,

feel like there's any
troubles still going on?

Yes.

Do you think that the state's happy

to see you voting today?

No, not really.

Not the republicans.

They try to squash the vote as it is.

It is what it is.

It is what it is.

Now you have to have
identification to vote.

You know that?

Before you didn't have to that.

Everyone have their ID with them?

Yes.

Is that the law?

- You have to have that?
- Yes, yes, I got mine.

In Georgia.

In Georgia?

In other states you don't.

This is what the ID looks like.

Oh, can I see that?

It took me months to get it.

Took you months
to get the voter ID?

Yes, and it's
not even, it's flimsy.

Mr. James Jackson.

The state of Georgia is matching names

with people who voted in other states

to see if you've already voted.

James Jackson is on the crosscheck list.

You didn't illegally vote twice, did you?

No.

So, who first accused
these folks of voting twice?

The answer would take me to Carolina

to meet the man responsible
for bringing crosscheck

way down south to Dixie,
Colonel Jay Delancey.

And you would think that
Jim Crow rose from the dead.

Delancey was the
lobbyist who got Carolina

to join the crosscheck
purge from his foxhole.

What really concerns us is the people

who are impersonating another voter.

And this what they're really looking at

with this investigation
with the dual state voters.

This is Interstate Crosscheck.

Now these are the states
we're involved in.

Colonel Delancey
is commander in chief

of the Voter Integrity Project.

These valiant vigilantes
hunt down fraudulent voters.

Problem is they haven't
captured a single double voter

despite their sophisticated methods.

Fraud's hard to find.

Hard to find?

Really.

35,000 suspects in this state.

He oughta be able to
find them blindfolded.

So I went to the office
of the North Carolina

Elections Board, to
the republican PR flack

who refused to give me
the crosscheck lists,

the guy who said they are confidential.

I didn't tell him I had them.

I just wanted to know why
were we denied the list?

You weren't the only group
to ask for it, of course.

We were threatened with many lawsuits.

Do you consider
voting fraud a serious crime?

Certainly, it's certainly
a problem if people do that.

Your G-man, Stuber,
is going after voter fraud.

So, how's the fishing?

Have you caught any fraudulent voters?

So, we participated
in the Kansas crosscheck

and that yielded a number of individuals

that we wanted to look into further.

It's part of an ongoing investigation

and we've been partnering with other

crosscheck participating
states to get the information

that we would need that
if there was any type

of inappropriate behavior we would be able

to send the right evidence on to the DAs

and the DAs could decide
whether to prosecute or not.

Is it really difficult
to find these people?

You have their addresses
and you don't have anybody.

But you have this whole like hysteria

over the fraudulent voters.

But they don't seem to exist.

The state couldn't find
these double voters

so I decided to hunt down
these criminals myself.

Our team found one guy,
he voted many times,

all over the place, under the name Park.

Could I speak to Mr. Park?

Look at this
guy, Park, Park, Park.

Yeah, I've
heard that alibi before.

I showed him the crosscheck
list with the evidence

he voted in Georgia and Virginia.

Everything different.

How to is a names is a same
name is another, same names.

But now I know we've got one.

Voted in 14 states, once
as a guy named Willie,

then as a lady named Willie Mae,

he's even got his own bus to
vote in several states at once.

That's him, that's him.

William Nelson?

You got me.

William Nelson? Willie Nelson?

Yes, sir.

It says here, Willie Mae Nelson.

Willie Mae what?

Willie Mae Nelson voted in Georgia

and then you voted again
as Willie J. Nelson,

okay, in Mississippi, all right?

So the first time you voted as a woman.

Is that what the pigtail thing?

Okay, how'd you get away
with it with the beard?

So you have a bus.

This is a good getaway vehicle.

You think you're getting away with it.

You think it's cute that you're voting

again and again and again.

This is a felony crime.

In fact, it looks like,
were you arrested before?

That was just a little
play thing we did, you know,

just me and the cops.

Wait, what are you grinning for?

Are you high, are you smoking something?

Aren't you?

Maybe this old guy is telling the truth.

It sound like you got
better shit than I got.

How good is the shit on this list?

Here's the big secret list of millions

who are accused of voting twice.

Look at this.

Maria Isabel Hernandez is
supposed to be the same

as Maria Cristina Hernandez.

James Elmer Barnes, Jr.
Of Georgia is supposed

to have voted a second time

in Virginia as James
Cross Barnes the Third.

We ran it through the computer.

Two million of these
middle names don't match.

How about this?

Billy Ray Jackson is
accused of voting again

as Billy Manuel Jackson, Jr.

Junior and senior are
supposed to be the same guy.

Wow, the entire Jackson 5 is here.

In fact, it's the Jackson 5,000.

What the heck's going on here?

The crosscheck PowerPoint
sales pitch says they use

social security numbers.

They use birth dates but there are no

social security numbers.

There are no birth dates.

Birthday different.

Is the social security number different?

Everything different.

Forget about it Mr. Park.

You still lose your vote.

Each suspect on Kobach's list is supposed

to get this postcard.

It looks like junk mail,
you'd throw it away.

So you don't lose your vote
because you voted twice.

Your crime is that you got a common name

and you didn't return a card.

Why wipe out a voter's rights just because

their name is Brown or Hernandez
and didn't mail a postcard?

A million voters disappeared
because of a postcard.

Kansas, why Kansas?

Okay, Sherlock, tell me about this list.

It's not a list of double
voters is it, Palast?

It's a giant list of common names.

Yeah, real common,
Jackson, Wong, Hernandez.

Seems like someone really
hates people with common names.

So you're trying to tell
us that they hate them enough

to spend millions to write
them off the voter rolls?

Really, man?

So where do I go now?

It says Kansas, Dorothy, Kansas.

So hit the yellow brick road, Toto.

That's just great.

I guess I'm off to Kansas.

Here's our file on the
wizard of crosscheck.

The wizard is this guy, Kris Kobach.

Wow, Harvard, Yale, Oxford,
republican whiz kid,

created the computer databases
for Homeland Security

which tracks Arabs
traveling around the U.S.,

successful business man,

with a family friendly
assault rifle company,

And the Voldemort of the entire

Interstate Crosscheck data system.

And odd for an elected official,

he's also a lawyer for FAIR,

the Federation for
American Immigration Reform

whose founder's goal is to preserve

a European American majority.

As Secretary of State, he's the top

election official in Kansas.

Republican superstar.

Kobach and FAIR convinced the little town

of Farmers Branch, Texas to pass a law

arresting anyone doing business

with illegal immigrants,
like selling one a Slurpee.

Courts found the law racist
and unconstitutional.

It's interesting that
someone gave the town

$100,000 to pay Kobach's fees.

He's already become a
Fox News national hero

for saving America from an
invasion of alien voters.

Those dangerous aliens.

Dreamer aliens.

Alien votes.

Republicans claim millions

of alien voted in our elections.

12 million illegal aliens in the USA

who could vote without
proper identification.

They're bringing drugs.

Hundreds of illegals not supposed to be

in the country but registered to vote.

They're bringing crime.

No, no.

They're rapists.

And some, I assume, are good people.

Those are the reasons I decided that

I'm endorsing Donald Trump
to be the next president

of the United States.

Republicans
claim literally millions

of alien voters are
pouring over the border.

Arizona built this prison for alien voters

but there aren't any.

To grab and jail them, Kobach
wrote a law for Arizona,

SB1070, known as the
Driving While Brown Law.

Other Kobach laws were credited

with stopping terrorists intent on voting.

I tracked down one suspect
stopped from voting.

She uses the name Shirley.

Shirley, Shirley, are you a terrorist?

Are you a terrorist?

A parrot?

A terrorist?

A terrorist.

A parrot?

Taro, terrorist.

Terrorist, somebody who'd
blow up buildings and stuff?

Will you blow up buildings, mom?

Here in a desert hideout,
I found a whole gang

that the law blocked from voting.

Father.

Kobach's laws blocked 200,000
voters in Arizona alone,

over 60% are Hispanics
and Native Americans.

Kobach has ruled that voters must prove

that they are Americans to vote.

But he was blocked by a lawsuit filed

by a group of ladies he
exposed as a communist front

as he calls them the Communist
League of Women Voters.

So I hit Wichita.

I arrived just in time to
catch white republicans

in their natural habitat.

It's feeding time, what anthropologists

call an ice cream social.

I was in the mood for chocolate

but all they serve is vanilla.

Kobach's citizenship
test for voting knocked

out 36,000 young new voters, under 30s.

Now I see why.

Kobach's voters have
an average age of 115.

There he is, the wizard of crosscheck.

Kobach refused to meet with me.

Cameras on? Let's go.

But I'm about to meet with him.

We're number one and we
may not always be number one

in NCAA basketball but we're number one

when it comes to guns
and protecting elections

and I'll take that any day.

I'm gonna go, yep, yep, exactly.

I'm gonna
go around the other side.

Mr. Kobach?

Hi, hey I want to congratulate you.

You are the number one
fraudulent voter hunter

in the United States.

Thank you very much.

You're the guy behind
the crosscheck list.

The title on this list is
duplicate voters, okay?

So, wait, I noticed most
of the names, wait sir,

that most of these are, oh.

I pledge allegiance to the flag

of the United States of America

and to the republic

This reminds me,

for which it stands,
Kobach took on the president

one nation under God.
Over double voters.

Take double voting, that's
a slam dunk to prove that.

A guy has voted in Kansas
and he's voted in Colorado.

It's a state crime, it's
also a federal crime

but the Obama Administration
is not interested

in prosecuting, surprise, surprise.

- I wanted to know
- One nation under God,

why crosscheck is so secretive
indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.

Why wouldn't you give out the list?

Why are these such
secret lists if they are.

Not a secret list?

His office said it was a secret,
not subject to disclosure.

We had to lift it from a side channel.

My bullshit alarm was ringing.

What is the point of sending
a card to James Evans Johnson

to prove that he is not James P. Johnson?

What's the point of sending him a card?

That should not be an
individual who's deemed a match.

Excuse me, but you
say ignore the matches.

You tell people to go,
you tell the states,

this is you, right?

Kansas Secretary of State?

Says Kansas Secretary
of State, this is you.

Let's get back to your...

How can you have
these as the same voter,

potentially the same voter?

Our system would not yield
them as the same voter.

This is from your system.

But his system did target Johnson,

all these are his matches.

This is the list you gave Virginia

and on the basis of this list,

you know that Virginia
removed 41,000 voters

based on the list you gave them?

That is false.

But Virginia did cancel the
registrations of these voters.

Why lie?

You said that there is a massive
problem with double voters.

You've given out this list.

These are not double voters.

This is the list, you say
it's potential double voters.

No, no, no, no.

All of his own propaganda says potential

duplicate voters, double
voters, double votes.

It's his own words.

These documents crosscheck
with his wardrobe.

You are a fool.

Wait.

No I'm wasting my time.

Why all the bullshit and
secrecy about crosscheck?

Look at these names,

- they don't match.
- You're lying.

You're lying.

This is random list of...

Kobach knows crosscheck's just a con.

Based on the Virginia
data, they're gonna knock

out a million voters
and steal the election.

It is my turn, go away.

Go away!

If crosscheck's legit,
why hide the list?

Why the lies?

We're out of here, Toto.

But where the hell do I go now?

Kobach's behind the crosscheck con.

But who's behind Kobach?

Just give me a sign, Lord.

I just need a clue.

Who's got the millions and millions

to promote this voter vanishing game?

It says Kansas, detective, Kansas.

Genius, nobody takes a crap in Kansas

without the approval of the brothers.

The Kochs, again.

I've been on the trail
to Koch for two decades.

Koch industry's operatives would bury oil

next to drinking water
sites, would pollute rivers,

would dump oil in...

Man, I had too much hair.

Twenty years ago, David and
Charles Koch were the richest

guys you've never heard of.

They got their money
the old fashioned way,

they stole it from the Indians, like this.

The Osage Indians, poorer than dirt,

let the Koch truck away oil
from their Oklahoma reservation.

Koch would pay for 90 barrels of oil

but Charles told their
truckers to take 100.

One of Koch's buddies told us.

Then we asked Charles why
the billionaire would skim

three dollars a week from
some poor Indian family.

Koch said, I want my fair
share and that's all of it.

Three bucks a week per Indian added up

to over one billion dollars for the Kochs.

The FBI and federal prosecutors wrote up

a criminal indictment
that could put Charles

behind bars for theft and racketeering.

But the Kochs got their buddy,

Kansas Senator Bob Dole, to
get the prosecutor replaced

with a crony and the criminal
indictment went poof.

The Kochs then gave the senator $100,000

which federal authorities
made him give back.

In 1995, Koch Oil was charged
with 312 criminal counts

of dumping three million
gallons of oil sludge

into rivers in six states.

Rather than comply with the law,

they decide to buy control
of the entire U.S. Congress

to change the law.

How?

The answer came from an insider

who called me to rat on Charles and David,

their little brother, Billy.

Little Koch told me that his brothers...

They, my brother, unfortunately,

views himself as above
the law, views himself...

Which brother?

You have three.

Charles.

Back to his libertarian philosophy

where he believes that laws are immoral.

He views himself as being above it

and will go out and do whatever he wants,

steal oil, pollute the
environment, et cetera,

and then when he gets caught,

what he then does or someone's
coming after him once,

then he goes and buys all
the politicians he can

to counter that influence,
to try to mitigate

the costs of the crimes.

And they've been very effective
at it, very effective.

I know they've given a couple
dollars to Dole.

Right.

And, let's say they've given

dollars to Triad.

Triad? Holy mama!

Triad was the secret
conduit of those millions

to a front called Coalition
for our Children's Future,

the children ran ads linking democrats

to child molesters, wife beaters,

and they accused one democrat
of being Jewish, oy vey.

The smear worked and the
Koch republicans took control

of the 105th Congress.

If Koch Industries had
secretly funded Triad

then the brothers had
committed a go to jail crime

at the time it was
illegal for corporations

to grease political campaigns.

Doesn't matter.

In the case of Citizens
United, the Supreme Court

decriminalized campaign
contribution by corporations

like ISIS Inc. And Manson and Company.

Billy Koch also told me
that his brothers had put up

over 75 million bucks to set
up a series of think tanks

and front groups including
Citizens for a Sound Economy

which the Kochs morphed into FreedomWorks

which drafted the demands of a group

of cross dressers called the Tea Party.

The Kochs also fund
The Heritage Foundation

which promotes the mass
purge of voter rolls.

And The Heritage
Foundation's latest crusade?

Kansas Interstate Crosscheck.

I get Badpenny on the case.

Connect Mr. Crosscheck Kobach.

Okay, pay attention.

And the Brothers Koch.

Koch Brothers, they've
hired Whitney Ball

to run their money funneling outfits,

Donors Capital Fund, State Policy Network,

Heritage Foundation,

Federation of American Immigration Reform,

Delancey, the Voting Integrity Project,

so has Josh Lawson, Jay
Delancey, a $100,000,

the bill called SB1070 which is a,

duplicate voting,
deporting, anti-immigration,

this trust, over a million to Numbers USA,

$100,000, Farmers Branch,
Texas, Kris Kobach.

Got that?

So the Kochs shoved a
pile of cash to Donors Trust

which gave a cool million to Numbers USA

which dropped 100 grand on Farmers Branch

and that's the money that went to Kobach.

So Kobach's just another
spider in the Koch web

taking their cash and now he's bleaching

the voter rolls for the Kochs.

But why?

Why do guys who have
100 billion dollars need

to buy the White House?

I had no idea until
Badpenny received a message

from the Chief of Criminal Intelligence

of the article republic.

The chief demand that I travel
immediately to Kaktovik.

I hit Google Earth.

Kaktovik's an island just
above the arctic circle.

I tell her there's no way I'm running up

to the arctic to chat
with some crazy Eskimo.

We are not a conquered people.

We're not defeated.

What gives you the right to trespass?

You mother fuckers!

Got that, white trash?

Now, okay.

This is Etok.

Welcome to Kaktovik.

The legendary whale
hunter, former professor

at the University of
California at Berkeley,

and leader of the Inuits
Speakers of Alaska's Arctic,

and one badass Eskimo.

This the healthiest
stock in the fucking world.

This?

This is the healthiest
whaling stock in the world.

So this is not commercial,
this is cultural.

This is culture, this is a culture?

Just chopping up whales?

Yeah.

Okay, so let me ask a question.

Seriously, you've been claiming
this, Etok, as native land.

Yeah.

Why should this be your land?

It was our land since time immemorial.

We're the last of the Pleistocene people.

We are the same people
for 28,000 fucking years.

And yet, you want to
come here and destroy it?

In case you can't
translate his Inuit phrases...

I don't give a fuck what the governor...

Koch Industries
and British Petroleum

need the oil under this very whale.

This is destruction in progress.

And you are the witness
to that destruction.

What are you doing about it?

As a reporter for British TV,

he wants me to send a message to my queen.

He tells me if we start
drilling, that is the end of us.

It's cheaper to cheat than
it is to practice the law.

There's no supermarket here.

All this was gathered
at the end of a harpoon.

Best thing that'll
keep you going all day.

I made five gallon.

Take the muktuk like this.

I'm going for it.

I'm happening.

Um, ladies and gentlemen...

It tastes better than it looks.

Okay.

He brought me here to swallow muktuk,

whale meat in fermented blood, mmm.

I've seen this before.

What happens when the
poor and powerless get

in the way of an oil drill.

I saw it in the Amazon.

The mass poisoning.

I saw it in the Caspian Sea, Cancer Alley.

And right here in Alaska
when I investigated

the smash-up of the Exxon Valdez.

Here's some of Exxon's sludge
I picked up after the spill,

20 years after the spill.

There's no such thing as
a victimless billionaire

and there's no way to control an oil spill

among these icebergs.

The scent of oil and money
led me here, to Prudhoe Bay,

the starting point of this
rusty old piece of pipe,

the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

The Kochs have bought into this pipeline

but the pipeline is about
to shutdown for lack of oil.

So why in the world would the smartest

white businessmen in America buy

into an oil pipeline with no oil in it?

Answer, they could fill
it up with arctic oil.

But this would require the
Kochs to get a president

of the United States nuts enough

to drill under Etok's whale.

Hell, the Kochs can do that.

They've dumped 750 millions
dollars into the 2016 election.

For three quarters of a billion bucks,

they expect a second pipe
thrown into the deal.

I want the Keystone Pipeline.

You should love the Keystone Pipeline.

Love the Keystone Pipeline?

The Keystone XL Pipeline
will bring the world's

filthiest oil, tar sands from Canada,

all the way across the
belly of the United States,

over our water resources, down to Texas.

Oil to Texas?

Why in the world would you
have to ship oil to Texas?

The answer is here in Corpus Christi,

home of the Koch Brother's giant refinery.

But the Kochs have a problem.

They can't use Texas oil,
it's not filthy enough,

it's not dirty enough for their refinery.

They have to use superheavy crude,

gunk like you get from the tar sands.

So for years, the Kochs had to import

their extra filthy crude from Caracas

and the price of that heavy oil was set

by this man, the Frank
Sinatra of Venezuela.

Years ago, President Hugo Chavez told me...

Venezuela, with the world's
biggest reserve of oil,

would really stick it to U.S.
customers like the Kochs.

Do the math.

Canada charges $15 a
barrel less than Venezuela.

If the Kochs can get their Canadian sludge

down to their Texas
refinery, they will earn

a billion dollars each.

So who is the political
plumber who'll put in the fix

for the Kochs pipe?

Look, look, the oil
is coming from up here.

It connects, two pipelines
connect here in Alberta.

What we're missing is
the opportunity to bring

it to the even larger
petrochemical refineries

that are in Texas and Louisiana...

Karl Rove, Chief of Staff

to the president of the United States.

He was known as Bush's brain.

But Bush called him Turd Blossom.

Absolutely, and one
other geopolitical point,

this would reduce our
reliance upon the heavy crude

similar that comes out of Canada

that comes out of Venezuela,

it would allow us to further crater

our opponents in Venezuela.

Turd Blossom has been in

the computer targeting
game since his twenties

as a voter database nerd
working for the creep.

Well, I'm not a crook.

And here's how Rove uses his computers.

I know, I've been
investigating Rove since 2004

when that little birdie,
love that little guy,

dropped off some highly,
highly confidential emails

from Karl Rove's research chief

to George W. Bush's campaign
chiefs titled caging.

The lists were names of voters
living at homeless shelters

and minority soldiers at the
naval air station in Florida.

The homeless weren't home
and Badpenny discovered

the sailors were overseas.

So I took the thousands of
names to a law school dean

who explained caging to me.

Caging is a system
by which you can target

cohorts of voters and get
them excluded from the lists

and it's illegal in this country

and it's illegal particularly if you,

it's illegal under a number of statutes

but if you target black or minority voters

it's illegal under the
Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Specifically, it's a
felony and it's punished

by high fines but also imprisonment.

The Republican Party has
done this in the past.

They will get the addresses
of the black voters

in a particular state then they
will mail certified letters

to each of those homes and
if the voter's not there

at the time that the letter is delivered

to accept delivery, the post
office will automatically

send that letter back to the sender

which in this case is the
Republican National Committee.

If the letter comes back, the
Republican National Committee

uses that letter as presumptive evidence

that the voter gave a false
address on this voting form

and is therefore ineligible to vote.

Go to Iraq, lose your
vote, mission accomplished.

Caging, it's effective,
it's illegal, it's Rove.

Now, Rove and his computers have grown up.

The simple caging computers
have morphed into Data Trust,

hourly tracking over 1,800
things about you, Mr. Voter,

including the last time
you downloaded porn,

to whether you ordered Chinese
food just before you voted.

I think that's creepy.

Mark Swedlund is an expert

for companies that live
and die by their databases.

I360 Data Trust have literally thousands

of data points on you, Greg Palast

and on me and on everybody
who's watching this film.

What's this 1360?

Their databases would include
trillions of data points

on hundreds of millions of people.

Rove is partnered
with his big voter

surveillance system called i360.

Who gets all that creepy data?

Turns out i360 was
founded by two brothers.

I want my fair share
and that's all of of it.

With all that computer power,

couldn't the Kochs and Rove
find real double voters?

You could do that in a heartbeat.

Could you find double
voters using a sophisticated

database like i360 if they existed?

I would argue it would be a piece of cake.

So why not?

Is crosscheck more sophisticated?

Swedlund told me that crosscheck is...

Incredibly simplistic.

Such a sloppy technique,
a very dangerous thing.

It's what they did in
the case of crosscheck

is to come up with the most
simplistic mushing together

of data, first name, last
name, a childish methodology.

So why do
republicans use crosscheck

to name seven million unlikely suspects

when they can find
double voters accurately

and cheaply with i360?

There's lots of things
that they could do,

wonder whether this is an effort to find

how many people you can
take off the voter rolls

as opposed to really
finding those rare cases

of people who voted across state lines.

Today, Rove has been
given half a billion dollars

through his cover operation
American Crossroads

for winning back...

The White House, taking the Senate,

and keeping the House in republican hands.

Officially, Rove's operation
is a social services charity,

like Save the Whales.

So he can keep his
donors names in the dark.

And look who we found in the darkness,

Rove's top donor, I just knew
it, Paul Singer, The Vulture.

I've been following this billionaire bird

for a decade from the Andes...

Uh, do you mind an interview
for BBC Television?

To Africa.

The Vulture got his
name by the way he made

his billions feasting on the
corpses of dying nations.

He figured out a way to
grab the aid money meant

for nations suffering civil war,

mass starvation, and epidemics.

Like any vulture, Singer
feasts when his victims die.

The Vulture has been accused by Oxfam

of grabbing money meant
for cholera clinics

in the Congos like this one.

What's your favorite subject?

Mathematics in French.

Mathematics in French.

Oxfam is stunned that vulture
financiers have seized

over 100 million dollars needed

to clean the Congo's water supply.

100 million dollars for the Congo.

How many villages could
be provided clean water?

Five million of people can
have good access to water and

sanitation and 200,000 children
will have their life saved.

So 100 millions dollars,
200,000 children...

Saved.

Would that make you happy?

Very, very happy.

Well, forget happy.

The Vulture paid just 10 million bucks

for some old Congo Republic
bonds which he used

to bleed 127 million dollars
from the suffering nation.

Vultures are known to
vomit on their enemies.

So I wasn't surprised
when Singer's henchman

called my TV network to
stop my investigation

saying we have a file on Greg Palast.

Today, Singer The Vulture
is the new number one donor

to the republican party.

The Vulture's money also
hatched House Speaker Paul Ryan,

the most powerful post in
Washington after the president.

So why does The Vulture
have to spend all this money

to buy the U.S. Congress?

The Vulture made his biggest killing ever

by preying on this third
world nation, Detroit.

And chewing on this, the
corpse of the auto industry

when it collapsed in 2009.

Ten years earlier, to save money,

General Motors had spun off its famous

car parts company, Delco, and turned Delco

into a separate company called Delphi.

As part of a plan to bail
out the auto industry,

the government agreed to
help GM buy back Delphi

and save Delco's 25,000
happy, dancing, union workers.

But GM and the government didn't know was

that The Vulture and his
partner had secretly scooped

up ownership of Delphi.

And the vulture pack
told GM and the president

of the United States that
unless Obama gave the vultures

12.9 billion dollars
and now they would close

down Delphi and cut off GM's parts.

Ouch.

Without those parts, the
entire auto industry would shut

down forever and over a
million jobs would vanish.

U.S. car czar called the
vultures demand extortion.

But the U.S. Treasury paid the 12 billion.

The vultures had bough Delphi
for just 67 cents a share.

With the bailout loop,
the shares zoomed to $22.

Singer's slice, $1,284,514,000.

Singer fired every single
one of the union workers

and Delphi moved 100,000 jobs
overseas, mostly to China.

Then our little birdie
dropped another paper

into my hand showing that
before the 2012 election,

Singer's vulture fund
setup a special partnership

with a blind trust of the wife
of a presidential candidate.

♪ For purple mountains majesty ♪

♪ Above the fruited plain ♪

The Vulture paid the Romneys

up to 115 million bucks.

♪ God shed his grace on thee ♪

Out of the auto bailout loot.

This was a whole new way
to influence a president,

stuff 100 million into his bank account.

♪ From sea to shining sea ♪

I thought I'd ask
the billionaire himself

about his special way of
enriching politicians.

Time for a vulture hunt to meet the man

funding the vote munching machine.

Please help me welcome Paul Singer.

You and...

Badpenny laid
out the elaborate plan

to cover his escape routes.

Yes, so like, pay attention.

So this is the rotunda
where they walk through

to go to the little steps
they come down the step.

Zach can hang out here
in case he went 61st

and hung around there and then
just walks down the steps.

And we practiced signals with

three undercover cameramen.

Because America is
clamoring for reassurance

that our system isn't rigged in favor

of the rich and powerful.

Borrowing the name tag Craig Kettleman,

I tried to get close to ask
the GOP's top sugar daddy

about the missing votes and
the missing Delphi jobs in Ohio

and why he needs to buy a new president.

Can you get a question to Mr. Singer?

But my disguise failed and The Vulture's

hospitality chiefs clocked me from jump.

Does Singer keep a file on me?

Oh, you're talking into your sleeve?

Would you do that again?

That's very James Bond.

Can I talk into your sleeve?

Don't touch me.

Okay, all right.

Can I talk into your sleeve?

You can go home.

Mr. Singer, I just want to ask you

how many billions is it
worth to buy the White House

and your candidate?

There is no such thing as
a victimless billionaire.

I met some of the victims in Detroit.

The city's streets had
already been bank-bombed.

Houses foreclosed and emptied,

their windows smashed
out, weeds belly high.

It looked like the city had
been punched in the face,

it's teeth knocked out.

This house hear is vacant.

This house is vacant.

Then you look across
the street over there,

those houses are vacant over there.

This is Mr. and Mrs. Pratt.

They're gonna lose their home, too.

Robert Pratt's an auto worker.

But his wife lost her job
at the City of Detroit

and they couldn't make the payments

on some predatory mortgage.

This is my son, this is my son here.

This is Robert.

That's the one who got
shot in the backyard.

That's my 12 year old, that was my boy.

Like I told my wife, I
go to work every day,

I'm a maintenance man, I have a shop.

I go in the maintenance
shop and I close the door

and that's when I cry, that's when I cry,

you know, because when
I'm around people I try

to stay strong and keep my
eyes open and everything

but the pain runs so deep
when you have to wake up

every day wondering is they
gonna try to take my house away.

I mean, what's next?

Here's what's next.

We snuck into Republican
Party headquarters

to investigate evident
the GOP was challenging

the right of voters like Pratt
who are facing foreclosure

on grounds their homes are
no longer valid addresses.

Lose your home, lose your vote.

Now I have to wake up and I'm like,

man, they trying to take
my right to vote away?

I mean, come one, how
much, how low can you go?

Real low, Mr. Pratt.

You and two million other families

who are about to lose their homes

and someone couldn't be happier.

It's going really well for John Paulson.

Paulson made
a personal profit of more

than five billion dollars last year and

that is probably the biggest
one year personal gain

in investment history.

John Paulson, known as
JP, the foreclosure king.

One guy gets five billion
bucks in one year.

He must have gotten it from Santa Claus.

Eh, pay attention, Palast!

In 2008 when the mortgage
market was heading

over a cliff, JP gave it
an extra kick in the ass.

'Cause every time a mortgage
in America went kablooey,

JP made another buck.

All together he made five billion bucks.

More money than any
human since the pharaohs.

Here's how he did it.

In 2007, JP cut a deal with
the bankers at Goldman Sachs.

Goldman had lined up some schmucks

in big European banks and pension funds.

Goldman told the schmucks that they

and JP together would
buy billions of dollars

of something called CDOs which stands for

synthetic collateralized
debt obligation derivatives.

If you don't know what a
synthetic collateralized debt

obligation derivatives CDO
is, you're not a billionaire.

Think of these derivatives
as a kind of insurance

on home mortgages.

If the mortgage goes bad and someone loses

their home to foreclosure,
the insurers must pay.

What Goldman didn't tell the schmucks

providing insurance is
that JP was secretly

betting against these very mortgages.

JP was the secret beneficiary
of the insurance policies.

JP was the one who would
collect the insurance

if the mortgages went to hell.

It's kind of like an arsonist
buying fire insurance

on buildings he's sure will burn down.

JP even helped pick out the mortgages

that they schmucks would insure.

He deliberately chose the
shittiest subprime mortgages

with horrible interest rates,

like the ones sinking the Pratt Family.

These stinking bags of
mortgages were packaged

into securities, those
collateralized debt obligations.

Within a year, the stinking
bags of mortgage securities

went down the toilet
losing 99% of their value.

As homeowners went bankrupt,

their schmucks paid out
billions collected by JP.

The mortgage market imploded
and foreclosures exploded.

And JP, lots of folks
assumed he'd go to prison.

Nah.

The politically connected JP kept the

whole five billion dollars.

He's not in jail, he's living large.

Welcome to the lifestyles
of the rich and shameless.

Welcome to the Lifestyles
of the Rich and Shameless.

Billionaire John Paulson.

JP is lord of this manor with 70 rooms,

2,000% bigger than that
pathetic little hovel

that the Pratts are losing.

And just one of JP's homes
is the largest in Manhattan.

JP is hosting a billionaires
brunch for Donald Trump.

They'll let you in.

But only if you pony up a
quarter million dollars.

I don't have a quarter million.

But look, a back entrance
to the secret location

of the billionaires chow-down
right here on Wall Street.

No, I wasn't invited.

And this is Old Trees,
JP's gorgeous mansion,

ritziest in the Hamptons.

So how do I get to Trump's
billionaire backer?

Okay, wait, I'm not going
back to your statement,

it was a question, I want
an answer, not a statement.

I'm serious about this, I can't,

you know, you keep saying I'm wrong.

I have said that the SCC's statements

and have never been contradicted is that

Paulson sat in those rooms and didn't tell

those poor schmucks that
they were buying crap

and that he had picked
out to go down the toilet.

Why were they schmucks?

Wait, JP's flunky just
called to say Mr. Paulson

was unhappy with my
report on his flimflam.

Okay, just a yes or no.

I want Mr. Paulson's answers.

But five billion off foreclosures
wasn't enough for JP.

He also flocked up with The Vulture

to feast on the corpse of Delphi.

JP's pound of flesh from Delphi,

more than two billions dollars.

That's one fact they
wanted me to get right.

He's continuing to fund republicans.

And JP's taken his Wall
Street buddies uptown.

He's become the chief of a group

of economic advisors to Mr. Trump.

JP was hiding from me.

But then we heard that JP and a bunch

of billionaires had paid
some big named tennis pros

to pretend to play tennis with them.

The billionaires all won trophies.

They always do.

Our plan was to hunt
him down in the Hamptons

and Badpenny made sure that
this time we wouldn't miss.

GoPros, wireless microphones.

Don't talk to it, you will be fine.

What if you run into him in the bathroom?

Just leave it be.

It doesn't matter, you need
to know how to use it, okay?

So pay attention.

This has a camera, okay?

Just put it on.

Don't touch it.

Just take it off carefully.

If all else fails, we've
got this little guy.

Badpenny planned
an invasion by sea.

We thought we'd join in
his ritzy celebration

so we hit his thousand dollar
a plate vanity fundraiser

Celebrating his tennis victories.

A full 20 cents of each
dollar would go to charity.

There's four goons behind us, behind me

and they are making me uncomfortable.

'Cause one of them actually looks smart.

We were stationed near the servants

and hunted our vulture
among the billionaire birds

sucking their champagne cocktails.

And there he was.

JP, the foreclosure
profiteer of the century.

Badpenny played by ditzy wife.

Can I have his
picture taken with my husband?

Glad to meet you, thanks a lot.

I'm Greg Palast.

Listen, I was just wondering
when you kind of helped

push the mortgage market over the cliff,

did you ever think
about maybe letting some

of those people that lost their homes

to foreclosure stay in
your place in Aspen,

you know you got 70 rooms,
you don't need them.

I didn't have anything to
do with the mortgage market.

You have nothing...

We never made one mortgage in our lives.

Nothing to do with the mortgage market?

He just gave a lecture at Yale boasting

about his billions on his
subprime mortgage market kill.

All right, so what about Delphi?

You know how many Delphi...

Delphi, how many, do you ever think

about the American workers?

There were tens of
thousands, tens of thousands

who lost their jobs that
you sent off to China.

You made a billion bucks.

JP, come on.

You can give me an answer.

What's the question?

Okay, I want to know.

He made over a billion
bucks on Delphi, right?

And what happened to the workers?

Delphi was...

30,000 workers, 30,000
workers were shifted to China.

Does that make you happy?

That's how you want to make your money?

You know they have 21,000
engineers in Detroit?

Huh?

Delphi told the SCC they left
only 5,000 jobs in America

and moved 122,000 abroad.

Were the documents lying?

Or Paulson?

I found the Delphi workers.

They were having dinner, too.

When we got the notice, it
was like a two week notice.

They just said well,
we're closing the doors.

We just don't know the longer,

they were sending somewhere else.

Giving out gloves, gloves
and hats, looks like these.

They do it every year.

It looks like this, hats and gloves.

That's pretty neat.

They're donated
through different people.

So you know like, everybody's figured

you know when they gonna lose their job,

everybody said well, heck, we got kids.

A lot of people had kids at the time.

I got a couple of buddies of mine

almost committed suicide over the job.

A lot of people say they
was losing their home

and their mortgages on their houses.

They just put it, the
bank called foreclosures.

Dale Stamper joined some
old friends from Delphi.

It wasn't a thousand a plate,
no charge for the hungry.

This is Delphi, where
the carcass of Delphi,

left after JP and his vulture buddy Singer

got through with it.

I don't see a tennis court.

And I don't see those 21,000 workers

that Paulson claimed he saved.

How does this happen?

I know they can't take
your job and home and hope

unless they take away your
power to do something about it.

If they're gonna take away your
job and take away your home,

they'd better take away your vote.

And I discovered how they did it in 2012

when I visited a nearby church

that ministers to the
laid-off Delphi workers.

It was election day, or for black folk,

Souls to the Poles day.

- Hi.
- Hello.

What's the name of this church?

Freedom Faith.

Tell me.

Freedom Faith Missionary Baptist Church.

Is today Souls to the Poles Day?

Yes.

I have a question.

Is today the day that
people are gonna be voting,

vote after church?

I have no idea.

Shepherding the
souls is Tara Williams.

We're actually, our
congregation is gonna take

individuals, our congregation,
down to the voting election

right immediately after service.

Are you gonna vote today?

Are you joining us for church also?

I would love to.

Well, come on in.

Come on in, get fed.

♪ Come and go with me ♪

♪ To my Father's house ♪

♪ There is peace, peace, peace ♪

♪ I got another old bad ♪

And then they piled
into the church van to vote.

Bye, bye-bye.

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

They arrived and got in line

and waited and waited and waited.

You're here with the Souls to the Poles.

And there's your soles.

The overwhelming majority of black people

in Ohio vote on the
Sunday before election day

'cause they can't take Tuesday off.

Early voting is required by U.S. law

but Ohio's republican Secretary
of State has resisted it.

He shut down almost every big city

early polling station in Dayton.

He permitted only one single voting place

for over 80,000 black voters.

Excuse me, can I ask you why
are you waiting in this line?

Well, I have to
exercise my right to vote.

So, if I have to stand in line to do it,

then I'm gonna do that.

It's really cold.

So they waited for hours.

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ Let it shine, let it shine, let it ♪

Outside the city, in the suburbs,

I checked the wait on the
lines where white people vote.

Well, actually there's no line.

♪ Let it shine ♪

Back in Dayton,
they waited and waited,

nearly half a million
black folk, all over Ohio.

Then something quite odd happened.

At the end of the line, after hours,

the souls at the poles
did not get ballots.

If you're just arriving, come on in.

Have a seat, look for Frank.

He's wearing the tie,
he'll get you seated.

They got a number
to wait for this instead.

These are applications
for absentee ballots.

But they're not absent,

they're right here at the legal poll.

Then they got mail-in ballots
and envelopes to put them in.

Using an absentee ballot is
playing bingo with your vote.

Number 175, number 175
can head up the steps,

stay to the left as you
exit, 175 and under.

The nasty secret of
American democracy is that

over one million absentee
ballots are rejected,

never counted.

Is this ballot switcheroo even legal?

I drove through the night with
one of these pseudo ballots

to Ohio's capital and at midnight,

I reached the home of law
professor Robert Fitrakis.

He was crazy enough to let me in.

I showed him what they
were giving black voters.

Every early voter, almost all
of them African Americans,

were handed an absentee ballot.

Is that common practice here?

Uh, absolutely uncommon.

And I would suspect it's either
done out of incompetence,

for convenience, or to
defraud people of their vote.

You vote absentee, they can
pick through the absentee

and say they didn't fill
this out all the way,

they didn't sign here,
they didn't initial there

and thus, toss the absentee.

Essentially, they're treating the absentee

like a second class provisional ballot.

None of that could be done
in regular early voting.

But the state did it anyway.

I didn't have the heart to tell them

that their ballots may never get counted.

In fact, over two million ballots,

not just absentees are
cast and not counted.

That's official.

They call it spoilage.

How do votes spoil?

By leaving them out of the fridge.

There are 10 ways to spoil your vote

or wipe away your registration.

Think your registered?

This election, over three
million of you will find

your registration go poof.

They toss out your mail-in ballot

because you've used the wrong envelope,

for postage due, forgot to
add your middle initial,

fly poop on the ballot, or
you didn't fill in the bubble.

We've been invited into the home

of voters whose votes didn't count.

Did not fill in the bubble.

So why didn't
you fill in the bubble?

I didn't know, when you fill in the name

that you had to put a bubble.

Mom, it said you had to put
in the fill in the bubble.

I'm sorry.

Your sister and I did not draw circles.

She's an ex-schoolteacher,

she don't know how to fill in a bubble.

I'm an ex-schoolteacher
and she's a lawyer.

We did not do it.

There's purging, caging,
or you have the wrong ID.

In Texas, hands up.

Gun ID okay, school ID not okay.

In some states, up to
45% of new registrations

are simply tossed in the spoilage bin.

Don't worry, they'll tell you,

if your name's missing
from the voter roll,

you get something called
a provisional ballot.

But because your name's not on
the rolls, they throw it out.

But you get to pretend you voted.

Then there's good old ballot stuffing.

Whose votes get thrown
in the spoilage dumpster?

According to the U.S.
Civil Rights Commission,

the chance of your vote
spoiling is 900% higher

if you're than if you're white.

For voters of color in the USA,

voting has become some kind
of crazy obstacle course.

Oh!

You all right, Steve?

First, don't get
purged, don't get caged,

then drag yourself to the
single black voting station

and wait for five hours.

Oops, wrong ID, go back home.

Fill out absentee or provisional ballot,

don't miss the bubble or it
gets thrown in the garbage.

Come on.

We can do it.

You got it, you got it.

So how do they get away with it?

Creating these obstacles to voting?

Easy, the Kochs and their minions

like The Heritage Foundation
they yell voter fraud

and the media eats it up.

Voter registration fraud...

Voter fraud...

- Voter fraud...
- Fraud.

Voter fraud.

Voter fraud.

Vote fraud.

Voter fraud.

To sell the nonsense of mass
voter fraud, they've built

A hysteria factory.

They claim there are
millions of dead voters.

Adolf Hitler.

Yes, that name has now appeared

on an Ohio voter registration card.

Felon voters,
ghost voters, alien voters.

In 2010, there were approximately

50 Somalians stealing my vote.

Listen to me!

They're not human!

Can't you see?

Everyone, they're here already.

Join me!

And now, double voters.

Probably over a million people

that voted twice in this election.

The double voting
accusation is old stuff.

Birth of a Nation a hundred years ago,

the most influential film of its time,

depicted white actors in blackface

sneaking in a second ballot.

It praised the Ku Klux Klan

for saving the South from black rule.

The film helped the Democratic Party

block the passage of a
federal law to stop lynching.

By 1968, 3,446 black people were hung

from trees and bridges.

Today, they don't use hanging ropes

to get rid of black voters.

It's now lynching by laptop.

And the night rider's
white sheets have turned

into spreadsheets.

So I quit, I give up.

I can't stop the electronic lynchings

and I can't stop the
vultures stealing lives.

Because once again, not
one American network,

not one American newspaper would agree

to run this story of crosscheck

nor the story of
billionaires crushing Delphi

for it may expose the con
called American democracy.

My work is banished to Britain and abroad.

No one in America will tell this story.

So forget it.

Greg.

Greg, it's time for you to go home.

Greg, it's time for you to go home.

No, I'll never go back home.

8413 Went Avenue, where I grew up

in the East Valley of Los Angeles.

So this is a former GM plant, huh?

My own Ohio.

This was the GM plant that made Chevies

and Frigidaire refrigerators.

My father sold the refrigerators.

So now, it's like shut down
and they took it all to Mexico.

The union guys at GM bought
campers for their vacations.

Now they live in the
campers next to the tracks.

So why'd you quit?

Because this system is screwed,
it's fixed and I hate it.

This is why you can't stop.

If you don't do it, no one else will.

So look Greg, your phone is gonna ring.

It's gonna be Badpenny
and you have to answer it

and you have to...

Pay attention.

You've got to get back right now

and look at these Ohio numbers.

Ohio, oh my God.

43,000 black voters have just vanished.

Crosscheck, of course.

497,000 suspected double voters.

So it's back to Ohio.

♪ So your brother's bound and gagged ♪

♪ And they've chained him to a chair ♪

♪ Won't you please come
to Ohio just to sing ♪

♪ In a land that's known as freedom ♪

Ohio, this is the ultimate swing state.

Ohio voters will choose our president,

if they're allowed to vote.

Donald Eugene Webster,
that's not my middle name.

Eugene is not your middle name?

No.

You ever use the name Eugene?

No.

They say you do.

Hmm-mmm, I'm not...

You know it's a crime
if you vote more than once?

Of course.

It never occurred to me to do that.

Have you?

You know, what's two votes gonna do

when you got thousands and
thousands and thousands.

You gotta have a bunch
of people doing that.

Well, do you?

Are you part of a large conspiracy?

No, I'm not, sir.

You're not?

No, I just go to vote.

I vote every election and
every primary, every one.

When a young
man, he moved to Dayton.

It was a different time.

He signed on at GM Delphi.

Although he was training as an engineer...

I was working as a janitor at GM.

They just would take your application

and either throw it in the trash

and marked great big red C on it.

It was something crazy so
that they would know that...

What was the C for?

Colored.

I remember the Civil Rights Act.

I remember all of those
things, it's almost all gone.

Somebody dropped the ball, maybe it was us

and our age group, that
we thought it was over

and that we didn't have to fight no more.

You know, so you're fighting
the same battles over again.

I'm 70 years old.

Almost all the fighting in me is gone.

I'm not gonna go out there and try to,

you know, bust no heads up,
but I'd like for the people

who know what the problem
is to name the names,

names of these people who are doing this.

And here's the name he's
looking for, Jon Husted.

The Kris Kobach of Ohio.

The republican Secretary
of State has conducted

what may be the biggest purge
of voters in the nation.

Well over 100,000 voters are gone.

While investigators did
not know all the reasons

for the purge, we found a big one.

He knows what he's doing is illegal.

What he's doing is counting on
bigotry to get away with it.

He's picking first and last names only

because he doesn't want
to actually match people

by using the middle name.

He wants to purge blacks and Hispanics

and he's trying to make Ohio winnable

and the only way he knows how,

by stealing American citizens votes.

And whether it's
crosscheck, alien voter purges,

fake felon lists, or
absentee ballot games,

it seems like almost all the vote

suppression victims have
one thing in common.

But exactly how does Crosscheck
target voters of color?

We did a deep dive into the data

and we found lots of interesting findings

such as that the most common surnames hit

at an incredibly high rate.

God forbid that your last name is Garcia

of which there are 858,000
in the United States

and your first name is
Jose or Joe or Joseph.

Because you probably are
suspected of voting in 27 states.

If your name is Jackson,

it's likely you're African American.

90% of all Washingtons are black.

Garcias, 91% Hispanic.

And Kim, 94% Asian.

There is an ethnic bias
we discovered in the states

we looked at in detail
in the crosscheck list.

And basically, it says Asians, Hispanics,

and African Americans
are over represented.

20% of the minority voters in those

states are on the crosscheck list.

That, is to me, is flabbergasting.

A cheap racist vote suppression trick?

I thought so.

But then I found Maria Hernandez.

What it says here, is that
Maria Isabel Hernandez

of Georgia voted a second time

as Maria Cristina Hernandez of Louisiana.

Clearly.

- Is this something...
- Obviously.

Do Hispanics vote
consistently more than one time?

Are there literally hundreds?

According to these documents
there are literally

hundreds of thousands of
Hispanics voting several times.

Yeah, it's been this
like big outrageous plan

that we've all been
working since childbirth

to like make sure that
we all similar names

so that we could vote
multiple times across states.

You talking about Wongs, you're
talking about Hernandezes,

you're talking about Washingtons.

It's a lot of Asian folks
and it's a lot of black folks

and it's a lot of people
who all have common names

like the reason why we
do that is specifically

so we can get around these voter laws

and actually vote twice.

That's like been the big major plan

of how we were gonna
take over this country.

Wow, a full confession.

You think Hispanics vote twice illegally?

Look at this group.

Vote Gangnam Style.

Vote Gangnam Style.

It's Asian Americans
nationally are the fastest

growing electorate and our
political power is growing.

My maiden name is Kim, Helen Kim.

If you Googled Helen Kim, there's
like a million Helen Kims.

Indeed, a stunning one in eight

Asian Americans are on the suspect list.

Korean surnames, it's
like Kim is like Smith,

Park is like Johnson, like...

Especially if
you have a common name

like mine, Jason Kim, is like...

So you're Kim, too.

So how many times did you vote?

I've only voted once ever every time.

Republicans fear
Asian Americans are voting...

Vote, vote, vote, Gangnam Style.

Like they turned black.

Democrats now capture three out

of four Asian American votes.

Why are they using these tricks

to get rid of voters of color?

Because it's a changing country.

The demographics are changing.

It's not a traditional America anymore.

Whereby, 20 years ago President Obama

would be roundly defeated.

The white establishment
is now the minority.

So what can the GOP do?

If you can't win the black
vote, reduce it, block it.

Rove says if black turnout
drops just one point

in North Carolina,
democrats are wiped out.

Crosscheck will purge
10% of the black voters

in North Carolina and a
million voters nationwide.

In 2012, all the tricks
and long lines failed

to steal the election.

But then, just eight months after

the president's reelection
there was an earthquake

in Voting Rights law
and it was devastating.

The implications for the
2016 presidential race

and for crosscheck would be enormous.

On June 25th, 2013, the Supreme Court

took Martin Luther King's Dream Act,

the Voting Rights Act
and burnt out its heart.

The Supreme Court ruling
striking down that key section

of the 1965 Voting Rights Act has prompted

some new moves in Texas, Alabama,

Mississippi, and North Carolina.

Florida began a purge
of 181,000 Hispanics

from its voter rolls as illegal aliens.

Would black people still
have the right to vote?

Not in South Carolina.

Every election in our state now requires

photo ID before you vote.

In fact, just hours
after the court eviscerated

the Voting Rights Act Alabama passed a law

requiring voters to have a drivers license

or ID from a motor vehicle office to vote.

Then the state shut down most
of the motor vehicle offices

in the 10 black belt counties.

When the Supreme Court
struck down Section 4b

of the Voting Rights Act
that was a powerful setback.

The 1965 Voting
Rights Act banned all forms

of racist trickery in voting.

A state couldn't adopt
a scheme like crosscheck

unless the state could prove
it did not discriminate

against voters of color.

Not many states would dare
try until the court ripped

out the key section of
the Voting Rights Act

and almost overnight
crosscheck spread like a virus.

The court's republican majority

said racial voting trickery is gone,

blatantly discriminatory evasions are rare

and Jim Crow practices
have been eradicated.

Is that Sanders' experience?

I literally went to
vote and my name was not

on the voting list.

How odd sine
Attorney Sanders is also

the honorable Senator Hank
Sanders, representing Selma.

But I had been on the
ballot in a number of years

and my name wasn't on the voting list.

It's a half century after
Martin Luther King was here

and I'm back in Selma,
Alabama investigating

suppression of the black vote.

What the hell happened to my country?

We have a long history of
suppressing the black vote.

We also have a long history
of suppressing the poor vote.

But all of that is being magnified now

by these various kinds of institute

who have devised all of
these modern day ways

to be able to diminish
voter participation.

And of course, these are
being funded by a few folks

who have billions of dollars.

They've found ways not to pay taxes

and now they are using those same dollars

to be able to take away the right to vote

from poor folks and black
folks and other minorities.

The Supreme Court case
against the Voting Rights Act

was brought by Shelby, Alabama.

So where did poor little
Shelby get the cash

to bring the case?

The money behind Shelby came from

Project on Fair
Representation and the money

behind Project it came from Donors Trust

and the money behind Donors Trust, Koch.

So it was Koch money behind the hit

on the Voting Rights Act and
that let crosscheck loose

on the entire USA.

Look who flocked up with the Kochs

to attack the Voting Rights Act.

The Manhattan Institute whose chairman is

Paul Singer, The Vulture.

So, some billionaires
are spending their loot

on destroying Martin Luther
King's Voting Rights Act.

Well, there aren't enough white
guys to elect Donald Trump

nor a republican congress.

So you've gotta get rid
of the unwhite guys.

Crosscheck, all those other voting tricks,

you eliminate a few
million voters of color

and you've got your tax break,

you've got your pipeline,
and you've got nothing

between you and your next billion.

Is vote suppression just
another profit center?

USA, USA,
USA, USA, USA, USA, USA.

No one saw it
coming, not even the polls.

But you saw it coming.

John Paulson of Paulson and Co.,

Rebekah Mercer, who's the
daughter of Robert Mercer.

The billionaires won.

How?

I went to Michigan to find out.

Trump officially won this
state by just 10,000 votes

but 75,000 votes were never
counted, vanished in the snow.

Now how do you lose 75,000 ballots?

I found out that the
answer was in the bubbles.

It said you had to put in
the fill in the bubble.

I'm sorry.

As it turns out, Michigan
machines couldn't read

the bubbles on 75,000 ballots

because 87 machines broke down.

They broke down in Detroit and in Flint,

African American cities.

Now these cities were bankrupt

and so they were under the control

of republican appointed operatives

from the state and they
refused to spend the money

to replace the machines
before the election

that they knew were broken.

And so I went to the
attorney general to ask him

what happened to the missing ballots,

what happened to the missing voters.

I just want to get the
attorney general's view

what happened with the recount.

Machines broke, but the
human eye could've seen

voter's choices in a hand recount

but Donald Trump's
lawyers flew to Michigan

and stopped the recount cold.

Remember those long lines of
souls to the poles in Ohio?

They were back in 2016.

Can you believe this?

State after state after
state crosschecked supposedly

to stop voter fraud.

Do you believe that
there's fraud in Michigan?

Well, we've been very
aggressive in closing

vulnerabilities and loopholes.

I see the aggression.

So who won?

Who really won?

Now, the U.S. State
Department uses exit polls

as the way to measure
whether an election is honest

and according to the
exit polls Trump lost.

There was a path to 270
that Hillary Clinton...

How could the exit polls be different

from the official count
in these GOP states?

Because a voter can walk
out of polling booth

and say exactly how they voted

but they have no idea
if their vote counted.

I mean, what's next?

This is what's next.

With a plan for 2018 and
2020, after the election,

Kris Kobach met with the president elect

to secretly discuss restoring Kobach's

Muslim tracking program and
sneak the crosscheck program

into the Department of Homeland Security

and spread crosscheck to all 50 states.

Arizona, Alabama, and Georgia.

But we should be doing
this in all 50 states.

How do you defeat
voter suppression tactics

when it's fueled by billionaires
cash and partisan power?

The same way the Voting Rights Act

was first won 50 years ago.

One side literally had everything.

They had all of the laws and lawmen.

They had all of the guns.

They had all of the banks and money.

And the other side didn't have anything.

But yet, we took marching feet,

we took singing songs, and
we took praying prayer,

and was able to forge a great victory.

The Voting Rights Act
was won here on this bridge

over the Alabama River when
Reverend Martin Luther King

came to the town of Selma, Alabama.

And so I marched the
last leg of the Selma

to Montgomery March with
about 35,000 other people.

And what I remember so
graphically was Dr. King saying

how long and eventually the
crowd was saying not long.

- They introduced Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Everybody got quiet and
he was telling our parents

how it was time for them
to get the right to vote.

When we got to the top of the bridge

then you could see, really see

what was on the other side.

And there were white people
sitting on their cars

with their Confederate
Flags and their banners

Die Nigger and Go Home Coon.

I heard these pops, pop, pop, pop.

This gas came and with this
gas you couldn't breathe,

you couldn't see.

I ran into this big old thing
of tear gas and he was running

behind me with the billy
club kind of thing.

When I woke up, they had me
on a stretcher putting me

in the back of a hearse.

I just jumped up and before
anybody could catch me,

I was headed back cross that bridge.

Judy was older than me so if I was 11,

she had to be like 12
maybe going on 13, I think.

And she starts walking,
nobody's gonna stop me

from getting my freedom.

And soon as she said freedom,
one of the troopers hit her

and blood just went everywhere.

And I mean, I was just in horror.

Different people in the
group would just strike up

and start singing and
then others would join in.

Deep in my heart, I do believe
we shall overcome someday.

That was the hope, that
was the hope of that song.

That was the hope of that time.

♪ We shall overcome ♪

♪ We shall overcome ♪

♪ We shall overcome ♪

♪ Someday ♪

♪ Oh deep in my heart ♪

♪ I do believe ♪

I had made this vow when I was seven

when my mother died because everybody said

she died because of the color of her skin,

that if she had not been
colored, she wouldn't have died.

She died and left four children,
seven, five, four, and two.

I made up in my mind at seven years old

that when I grew up nobody
would ever have no one

to call Mommy because she
died of the color of her skin.

♪ We shall overcome ♪

♪ Someday ♪

I wanted to do whatever it took

for our parents to get the right to vote

because getting the right
to vote was the first step.

♪ We shall overcome ♪

♪ Someday ♪

Voting impacts
everything in our life.

The air we breathe, the water
we drink, the work we do.

♪ We shall overcome ♪

♪ Someday ♪

And the last thing in
the world America needs

today is for someone to take
their right to vote away.

That's why we
have to keep marching

across the bridge

every single time that we get a chance.

The right to vote is always
gonna be under attack

because when we march, we go forward.

When we stop marching, we go back.

♪ We shall overcome ♪

♪ Someday ♪

♪ So your brother's bound and gagged ♪

♪ And they've chained him to a chair ♪

♪ Won't you please come
to Ohio just to sing ♪

♪ In a land that's known as freedom ♪

♪ How can such a thing be fair ♪

♪ Won't you please come to Ohio ♪

♪ For the help that we can bring ♪

♪ We can change the world ♪

♪ Rearrange the world ♪

♪ It's dying to get better ♪

♪ Politicians sit yourselves down ♪

♪ There's nothing for you here ♪

♪ Won't you please come
to Ohio for a ride ♪

♪ Don't ask Barack to help you ♪

♪ He might turn the other ear ♪

♪ Won't you please come to Ohio ♪

♪ Or else join the other side ♪

♪ We can change the world ♪

♪ Rearrange the world ♪

♪ It's dying if you believe in justice ♪

♪ If you believe in freedom ♪

♪ Let a man live his own life ♪

♪ Some of those regulations ♪

♪ Who needs them ♪

♪ Throw 'em out the door ♪

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ This little light of mine ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ Let it shine, let is
shine, let it shine ♪

♪ All in my home ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ All in my home ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ All in my home ♪

♪ I'm gonna let it shine ♪

♪ Let it shine, let it
shine, let it shine ♪

♪ God help me let it shine ♪

Hallelujah.