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Unknown A
All right, I'm going to tell a story on the show that I have never told before because lawyers have advised me not to tell it. And I figured out a way to talk about it today that I think is going to be OK legally. And the reason I'm going to tell this story today is because some of you reacted by saying, when I said last week, I'm hearing from lawyers about how they would go after progressive independent media, they being the Trump administration, they would do it indirectly. They wouldn't do it with criminality. They would do it with frivolous audits, or they would do it with frivolous lawsuits, or they would do it by pushing social media to demonetize or restrict. And a lot of people wrote in and said, no one's ever done anything like this to you. Nobody ever would. And it just.
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Unknown A
You don't matter. Essentially, I want to tell you a story of what happened. This is a few years ago. We did a piece of content, and an elected official was mentioned in that piece of content. And I'm sorry that some of the details will be vague, but what our lawyer who represented us in this matter said is, you just don't want this to crop up again. We did a piece of content about an elected official, and shortly thereafter, we received a letter from a very expensive D.C. law firm saying, we believe that this piece of content is defamatory. We believe that you knew that what you were saying was false and you specifically decided to publish it anyway to ruin the reputation of our client, an elected official. And we believe that this might be $150,000 worth of damage. Now, of course, they throw around these numbers to scare you.
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Unknown A
And I was scared. And so we got a lawyer who specializes in this stuff, and he looked it over and he spoke to the attorneys representing the elected official. And we looked at it up and down, and, you know, he explained to me, listen, they make a lot of claims here that are really not supported by the law. For example, one of the claims in the letter was, you know, David, you didn't come to our client to get his side of the story. And our lawyer explained to me, that's true, you didn't, but you're not required to. It's not defamatory because you didn't try to get that guy's reaction. That doesn't determine whether it is or isn't defamatory. And we worked through this and accrued, you know, five grand in legal fees. And ultimately, what our lawyer advised me was, listen, David, I think you're Absolutely in the clear here.
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Unknown A
I believe that if this went, if we pursued this legally, this individual would not even want to subject himself to discovery. He just, it would be too much risk. This is meant to scare you. If it went forward, I believe that you would win and you would be eligible to recover attorneys fees. However. However, I have to advise you, based on the representation that this individual has, how long these things are likely to go, you'll eventually get your legal fees back. Probably not a guarantee, probably, but you might have to float $100,000 in legal fees to get there. And how does that sound? And I said, especially the time I said, we don't have the capacity to float $100,000 in legal fees. And he said, I am for speech. I am always for more speech. And I never recommend that people censor themselves or anything like it.
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Unknown A
But in this case, because of what this would mean financially, to even have to fight this, even if at the tail end of the rainbow you get your legal fees back, which is never a guarantee, likely, but never a guarantee, I'm going to recommend that you take the content down and they will likely say, we reserve our right to come after you, but we are telling you we are not going to pursue this matter at this time. And that's what we did. And it felt like shit. And I was in a situation where I didn't think I had any other option because of what that represented financially. Now, I do think today the show is big enough that if something like this happened and I just went scorched earth and went to my audience and said, listen, at the risk of getting myself into more problems, this is who's coming after me.
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Unknown A
This is what it's going to cost to fight it. Let's open a legal defense fund. And I think right now we could probably gather $100,000 to float such a fight, a fight that I think would be ideologically correct. The point here is the following. The idea that these right wingers wouldn't come after us with frivolous this or frivolous that meant to bully and push us around because we're too small. This story I just told you was years ago, ok? And if we were big enough, then certainly there's at least a dozen shows like this one that could be plausible targets from this new weaponized Trump, DOJ and other associated organizations, IRs, et cetera. And I don't want to have to go up against them. But lest anyone think it's implausible, we dealt with what I just told you years ago. And we were already talking about 100,000, $150,000.
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Unknown A
Then just think about what it could be today. Terrifying stuff. Best thing you can do, just make sure you're subscribed. Subscribed to the podcast, subscribe to the YouTube channel if you've got a few bucks, certainly get a membership. But the most important things are the bigger we are, the bigger our network, the larger the number of people. If we have a problem, I can go to and say, guys, this is what we're up against. Let's figure out what to do. Well, I wrote a book.
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Unknown B
After a long journey and a ton of work, I am really thrilled with how it turned out and I hope you'll read it. The book is called the Echo Machine and in a nutshell, it looks at how American politics got so broken, who has already figured out solutions, and how we can try to fix it and stop the terror of Trump for the next four years. With Trump winning this election, the Echo Machine couldn't be more relevant. Not only a warning about how we got here, but also about what might be coming and how to prevent the worst outcomes. We've got to stay engaged. We need a plan. And that's what the book is about. There's a belief out there that unless you have corporate media behind you, you can't have a successful political book launch, that it's not possible. I think we can prove that wrong.
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Unknown B
Order the Echo machine today@davidpakkman.com Echo on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Audible, Kindle, anywhere that books, ebooks and audio books are sold. You can also call any local bookstore and say please order me the Echo Machine by David Packman.
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Unknown A
Wherever you get the book, you'll get.
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Unknown B
The free pre order perks, including the signed book.
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Unknown A
Platate.
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Unknown B
Head to davidpakman.com free bookstuff after ordering.