National sting on traffickers; school system data breaches (05-13-2025--Hour3)
The Pete Kaliner ShowMay 13, 202500:35:2132.42 MB

National sting on traffickers; school system data breaches (05-13-2025--Hour3)

This episode is presented by Create A Video – Some dumb bills die in the NC General Assembly, child predators are arrested across America, and hackers steal student and teacher personal information in a massive NC data breach. AP Dillon, a reporter for the North State Journal and publisher of More To The Story, joins me to discuss it all.

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[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:29] Joining us on Mondays is AP Dillon, but I was out yesterday attending a funeral. AP Dillon has been kind enough to reschedule her day to join us now. AP, thanks a lot for doing that. I appreciate it. How are you? I'm doing great and absolutely no worries there, Pete. I'm always here for you. Yeah, I appreciate that. And so I guess also I saw that there was a bit of some sort of a mock funeral that you monitored today up in Raleigh.

[00:00:59] Yeah. The House and Senate Democrats held a funeral for all the bills that they filed that are still in committee and didn't make crossover. Oh. Yeah. Oh, that's so sad. Sorry. Yeah, the NC House press account on X is actually formally mocked them with a, oh, that's a sad gif.

[00:01:27] Yeah. Oh, their bad bills didn't go anywhere. Oh, that's too bad. I actually read, did you, I forget what the bill was. I read it earlier, a couple of weeks ago, somebody introduced a bill like, and the bill title took up the whole first page. Did you see that bill? Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's, it's just such dumb assery and virtue signaling and they have no chance of getting any of this stuff passed.

[00:01:52] And at some point you got to wonder like, why don't you just like try to work on some things that might actually pass that might be good for your constituents? Because I'm sure the Republicans would enjoy the headlines of a bipartisan deal that they could work with you on something. Right. But it doesn't seem like that's the strategy. Well, what's interesting is the majority of the bills that did pass crossover, all, most of them were nearly unanimous, maybe one or two Democrats not voting for them.

[00:02:19] There were maybe a dozen or two bills where it was sort of split along partisan lines, but most of those bills dealt with like public safety, like House Bill 318, which tightens up the loopholes that have been exploited by certain sheriffs not to cooperate with ICE. Yeah. I call that one Gary's Law, named after Gary, not my fault McFadden. Yeah, I call him Gary, not my fault McFadden here because nothing is ever his fault. He is the hero or victim. He is never the villain in any of these stories.

[00:02:48] Yep. Yep. So, you know, there are a lot of common sense bills like that, you know, expanding, you know, our investments in digital currencies, that kind of thing. There was pushback on that. There was pushback on updating and advancing math and science changes in the education sector. And on the other side of the House, we had, you know, a bill that was passed, you know, that would ban putting plastic cutlery into go things, to go delivery for food.

[00:03:17] Another one would have banned octopus farming. These are the not really priorities. No. Wait, the Democrats wanted to ban plastic knives into go packs? Yep. And they wanted to be able to fine restaurants who didn't comply. What? Why? Yeah, unless they're specifically requested. They're not supposed to put those things in there because plastic, the environment. Oh, it's the environment. The whole plastic bag thing went. Yeah.

[00:03:44] I see. Yeah, I was thinking public safety, like the UK and all the knife attacks or something. No. No. Oh, environmentalism. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I had a whole list of these insane bills, actually, over on my Substack at one point. I'll shoot those over to you and you can share them with your readers. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, well, people can check it out, too. It's called More to the Story. It's on Substack platform, More to the Story. AP is also a reporter for the North State Journal and sjonline.com.

[00:04:14] You can read her work there. In fact, on your Substack, you had the story a couple days ago about the FBI made the big announcement of their nationwide crackdown on child abuse offenders. This was last week. So this was a national effort and they got some people in North Carolina. Yeah, it was called Operation Restore Justice. And most of the raids were conducted during the last week of April.

[00:04:43] They had 205 arrests nationwide and there were 115 children that were actually rescued during some of these operations. And of those 115, not 115, sorry, 205, there were six that were in North Carolina or one had actually lived in North Carolina and moved over the border. And I took a look at some of those folks and the vast majority of them, in fact, all of them had prior records for issues like being arrested.

[00:05:12] One was arrested in Alabama earlier this year. He's the one who's got the ties to being on the sex offender registry. He was convicted in 1988 when he was 18 of sexual battery and felony restraint of a minor. So he was put on the sex registry for that. So he was already on the radar of folks. Yeah, there was one guy. And then there were a couple that were, you know, have DPS, Department of Public Safety records. They've got jail time records.

[00:05:40] Yeah, one of them you identified, Terrell Sean Anderson, previously of Charlotte, arrested by the FBI in Atlanta. He was charged with distributing child sex abuse material, possession of child sex abuse material. And then by my calculation, what you got written here, it's somewhere like he's looking at 25 plus in prison. The guy that was picked up in, oh, this one, Jonathan Robert Davlin of Huntersville.

[00:06:09] He's looking somewhere around 45 plus years possession and access with intent to view this kind of material as well. So, yeah, one from Durham, one from Lewisburg, one from Wilmington, and then one of Bolivia. Was that Bolivia, North Carolina? Yes. Okay. I wasn't sure when I first read it. I was like, wait, we picked up somebody. Okay. That makes a little bit more sense then.

[00:06:34] And so you also had this connection to, and you did another story on this group, 764, 764. I'd never heard of this. What is 764? It is a global sextortion terror network that formed three or four years ago by a guy who was in his late teens, early 20s at the time, out of, I believe, in Texas. He has since been arrested and is, like, spending the rest of his life in prison.

[00:07:00] But they basically do things like they'll find a kid on Roblox or on a social media platform that they think is vulnerable, particularly females, ages anywhere from 9 all the way up to 16 or 17. And they become their friend, and they work on them mentally. Groom.

[00:07:24] And get them to do things like cut themselves, attack their parents, arson, vandalism, nude photos of themselves, which then they use as leverage over these kids. And it's global. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they groom them. And you mentioned Roblox, for people who don't know, that's a video game that kids play online with other people. And so these adults go in there and pose as kids. And then they strike up friendships online.

[00:07:54] And then they get the kid to do these things. And then they use that as extortion material to get the kids to do worse. And, yeah, I was not aware of this organization, 764. I think you're going to be hearing a lot more about them in the coming months. Okay. This is just the tip of the iceberg. They arrested a number of these folks globally in the last year. But since the Trump administration came in, they've made it a focus.

[00:08:24] And two of those people involved in that organization were arrested last month. One of them was arrested in High Point, North Carolina, a guy named Prasan Nepal. He was 20 years old. So, all right, and you can read more about that and add more to the story as well. Real quick, we've got about a minute and a half. So tell us all about the PowerSchool data breach. What can you get to in about 90 seconds? Okay. Well, last week we sat down with the Department of Public Instruction.

[00:08:54] They held an impromptu virtual press conference and told us that the PowerSchool breach that occurred at the end of late last year, at which PowerSchool said all that data has been taken care of, they paid the ransom, and it's not going to show up again. Well, it showed up again. And last week, 20 of our districts received emails from, quote, threat actors asking for Bitcoin and other payment methods to get the data back. So PowerSchool...

[00:09:20] Now, DPI hasn't said which district this is, but it involves the same data, apparently, as the original breach. So PowerSchool is what, a system, like an operating system or something? Yes. PowerSchool is the student information data system where all the grades are kept, contact information, parent stuff. Everything is in there. It's a dashboard that's got all the data on a kid. Teachers have profiles in there as well, and their profiles were breached as well.

[00:09:49] And this thing is used statewide. It's going to be changed, though. They're going to a different system in July called Infinite Campus, so PowerSchool is going away. PowerSchool came in under June Atkinson. It used to be owned by Pearson. Pearson sold it off, and the people they sold it off to sort of cobbled together an entire district-wide, statewide system for us. Normally, it's just one district that'll pick up and use PowerSchool here or there in the state.

[00:10:19] But North Carolina was the only state at the time who used it across all districts in the state. So PowerSchool gets hacked. They get breached. They get extorted for Bitcoin. They pay off the ransom. And then they think, okay, now the extortionists will leave us alone and delete all of the data. And surprise, surprise, they did not actually delete all of the data. It appears they actually did go ahead and put it out on the dark web where others got it. That's what it looks like. Yes.

[00:10:49] And PowerSchool is offering credit and ID theft monitoring through July. They're trying to extend that. But the North Carolina Attorney General's Office, the DOJ website, also has credit monitoring, credit freeze options for folks out there. And if you go over to NSJOnline.com and look under my byline, the PowerSchool, just put PowerSchool in the search box. It'll pop up my most recent article, and all those resources are at the bottom. Yeah.

[00:11:16] AP Dillon, reporter at the North State Journal, NSJOnline.com, where you can read about the PowerSchool data breach, also her sub stack. More to the story. AP, thanks a lot for joining us. I appreciate it. Absolutely, Pete. All right. Take care. All right. So spring is here, a time of renewal and celebrations. You've got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime.

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[00:12:31] So, last week we had a new Board of Elections installed in North Carolina. State Board of Elections, brand new members. This was after the General Assembly moved the appointment power away from the governor's responsibilities and gave it to the state auditor. The governor, Josh Stein, a Democrat. And the state auditor, Dave Bullock, a Republican.

[00:13:02] Although, he had voted in Democrat primaries for like 20 years prior. So, now Dave Bullock is appointing the Board members and he did so. He named Francis DeLuca as the new chairman of the board. Francis DeLuca of Wilmington. He and Bob Rucho of Catawba County are the new members. Stacey Eggers, the fourth.

[00:13:29] He was on the board and remains on the board. All three of them are Republicans. There's now a Republican majority on the Board of Elections. The two of the three Democrat members that were on the board remain. Siobhan Millen and Jeff Carman, the former chairman of the Board of Elections, is no longer there.

[00:13:59] Okay, so that's, that was how that all went down. This was based on a ruling by the North Carolina Court of Appeals that blocked a lower court ruling. Josh Stein had sued, saying, you can't take these powers from me. The legislature said, yes, we can, because they're not specifically designated to you. And so, we can move them around in the executive branch however we would like.

[00:14:26] And a lower court agreed with the governor. But then the Court of Appeals blocked that court ruling and said, no, the legislative leaders can do that. The legislature can control that. So, DeLuca is now the chairman. He replaced Democrat Alan Hirsch. At the first meeting, and this is according to the story at thecarolinajournal.com,

[00:14:52] the board then went into a closed session meeting for just over 30 minutes to discuss legal and personnel matters, including the appointment of a new executive director. The pick was decided ahead of time by the Republican members of the board. This was made clear because a statement was put out by the current executive director, well, now former,

[00:15:19] Karen Brinson Bell, announcing that the board had decided to go with someone else, and she handed out her statement before the meeting began. So, she had written up a statement knowing she was going to get canned, and she handed it out to members of the media and everybody before the meeting.

[00:15:42] So, Bell is out, and in, as the new executive director, is Sam Hayes, the new executive director. Hayes is currently the general counsel for North Carolina House Speaker Destin Hall. Okay, so he's a lawyer. He was a lawyer, general counsel in the Speaker of the House's office. His two-year term begins actually on Thursday.

[00:16:11] And Millen, Siobhan Millen, Democrat member of the board, said, I think this is a shabby way to treat a nationally admired executive election director, and further, that the recent habit of changing the executive director whenever the composition of the election board changes runs counter to our goal to bolster people's faith in fair elections.

[00:16:41] Yeah, you guys did it. This is actually now the norm. See, this is what I told you. You're not going to like it when these norms are applied to you. Because the first time that the executive director was canned simply for politics was when the Democrats took over after Pat McCrory lost to Roy Cooper,

[00:17:07] and Cooper and the board had the executive director then, Kim Strack. They had her fired. Remember that name? Say her name! Kim Strack. In fact, Eggers, one of the board members, a Republican board member, pointed out that there is, in fact, precedent for changing the executive director position, like when Roy Cooper did that. I'll have more on that in a minute.

[00:17:35] Let me wrap up this Carolina Journal story. So Karen Brinson-Bell asks the chairman, Francis DeLuca, twice if she could make some remarks and thank the staff. But the three Republicans voted to just adjourn and ended the meeting before she could. She then would read from her prepared statement to, you know, people that just gathered around her after the meeting, sort of like an impromptu press conference, and she read her statement there saying it was the greatest honor of her life

[00:18:04] and that she would have liked to have continued to serve the county boards of elections and the voters of North Carolina in that capacity. So she did not want to leave. She didn't want to be fired. See, and that's exactly why you don't let her make the statement. Trust me. I know a thing or two about getting fired. I work in radio. They usually don't let you stick around. When they fire you, they don't put you back on the air. And when the board fires its executive director, they don't let you make a statement afterwards in front of everybody.

[00:18:34] Because chances are you didn't want to get fired, you know? She said, I've worked in the elections field at all levels over the past 19 years, and this is a very different environment that I hope can be restored to the civility that once existed. This woman, I tell you what. It's almost like maybe this makes sense if you have amnesia and you didn't live through the COVID election. The collusive settlement. There's, oh, yeah, I'm going to, yeah, we're going to go back over it. We'll give you the lowlights and the highlights in a minute.

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[00:20:31] Mmm! Ah, man, that's going to be awesome. Like actually cleaning up our voter rolls. That would be fantastic. Maybe doing a little bit of cross-check with other states, you know, interstate cross-checking. I know. Exciting times. So, Sam Hayes is the new executive director. And Destin Hall, the Speaker of the House,

[00:20:57] had previously employed Sam Hayes as the general counsel in his office, the lawyer. And he said, Sam is going to be an excellent executive director who will follow the law as passed by the General Assembly. As my general counsel, Sam has demonstrated exceptional judgment, professionalism, and a deep commitment to public service. I am confident that his leadership will serve the citizens of our state with fairness and integrity. Now, the woman that Sam is replacing, Karen Brinson Bell,

[00:21:27] she told reporters after the meeting that she has been very fortunate to work with Sam Hayes and knows that he is knowledgeable about election law. What with all of the lawsuits and such that he's had to litigate as the general counsel. She says, I hope that that will serve him well. It is unfortunate, though, that they have taken a path

[00:21:52] where the individual does not have practical election administration experience. But I am confident that if he will work closely with the state board staff, that he has some incredibly knowledgeable and dedicated people who will see that we are handling elections well. So there's a little bit of a backhanded compliment there. Oh, I hope that his experience serves him well. But, you know, he's never run an election

[00:22:19] because she was an election executive director at the county level before Democrats elevated her after they had to replace a couple of other executive directors who had some scandals. But whatever, doesn't matter. Point is, she had the experience and he doesn't. And I hope that he just relies on all the Democrat staffers there. No, I'm kidding. They're nonpartisan, I'm sure. Now, Karen Brinson Bell is out. But let's walk down memory lane.

[00:22:50] The year was 2019. The executive director of the State Board of Elections was a woman by the name of Kimberly Strach, S-T-R-A-C-H, Strach. And she was doing a good job. And then she got fired. She helped to guide the Board of Elections through the minefield of the 9th Congressional District election fraud scandal. She had offered strong suggestions to lawmakers about preventing future fraud. And some of those recommendations

[00:23:18] actually became part of a truly bipartisan North Carolina House bill. So why did she get fired? Because she wasn't a Democrat. And the Board of Elections became majority Democrat after Pat McCrory lost to Roy Cooper. The firing happened at a meeting that told North Carolina voters all the wrong things about the people in charge of their elections.

[00:23:47] It told them that party matters, not fairness. It told them that politics rule, not effectiveness. Strach, who has led the Board since 2013, was replaced by Democrat Karen Brinson Bell in a 3-2 vote that split along party lines. Why? Well, the Board chair at the time, Robert Cordell, explained, unconvincingly, that Brinson Bell's background fit the Board's need to focus on training local election officials for the 2020 election,

[00:24:16] something that surely brought a smirk to the many veteran local election directors across the state. This was the Charlotte Observer Editorial Board. The Charlotte Observer Editorial Board, even they could identify the, quote, ugly double standard regarding Kim Strach. Kim Strach was an investigator at the Board of Elections.

[00:24:45] And when Pat McCrory became governor, he elevated her to run the show. She was doing a good job. And she went in, but here's the thing, Democrats didn't like her because she was an investigator. If memory serves correctly, she was the one that went after, I believe it was Mike Easley. Jim Black, right?

[00:25:15] She had a few high-profile Democrat scalps. She had some Republicans too, but that didn't matter. And so the board chair says, we need somebody to train the local elections officials. Our local election official in Mecklenburg County, Michael Dickerson, he's been doing this for 30 years. I have no doubt that he does not need Karen Brinson Bell's training.

[00:25:46] Like, the guy knows what he's doing. Now, back to the Charlotte Observer editorial from 2019. A more persuasive argument might have been simply, these are the spoils of winning. Right? When you win, you get to name your people. That would have been honest. Instead, Democrats launched an ugly attempt at character assassination. You had the North Carolina Democrat Party chair, Wayne Goodwin. Does that name ring a bell? It should. Wayne Goodwin has been in charge

[00:26:16] of the colossal and epic failure that is our DMV right now. He is stepping aside. But at the time, six years ago, he was the chair of the Democrat Party of North Carolina, and he accused Kim Strack of protecting Republicans for nearly two decades, his words. She's unaffiliated. The reality is that Strack and the board under her have vigorously pursued both Democrats and Republicans,

[00:26:46] most recently, when she resisted calls to leave Mark Harris alone in the 9th District. Even Cordell, Robert Cordell, the board chair, Democrat, said that Strack had done an excellent job for the state. Among her offenses, according to Wayne Goodwin, the big one, her husband, Phil. See, Phil Strack is an attorney. And Phil Strack regularly represents

[00:27:14] the Republican-led legislature in court battles. And some of those court battles involved election law issues. But that's one of the reasons why Kim Strack had to go. She had claimed too many Democrat scalps as an investigator uncovering wrongdoing, and she's married to a lawyer who represents the evil, mean, Republican lawmakers. Strack

[00:27:46] did her job the way any party should want it done. Phil Strack, right? He's representing his clients. The Observer editorial concluded, if there was ever a moment not to replace an elections director because of party, it was now. The Democrats did so anyway, and they justified it in the worst possible way. It was unseemly and hypocritical. It was politics. politics. That ushered in

[00:28:15] the Karen Brinson Bell era. What did she do? We'll go over that next. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, and you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app, and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information.

[00:28:45] You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using Ground News a few months ago, and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The Blind Spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription.

[00:29:15] I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. So, Karen Brinson Bell's term as Executive Director of the State Board of Elections is over. Huzzah! Huzzah. Her tenure was not without criticism, according to the North State Journal piece by A.P. Dillon that we interviewed earlier in the program,

[00:29:46] but not about this. But she wrote, Brinson Bell's tenure wasn't without criticism. A secret legal agreement Brinson Bell entered into during the 2020 election cycle with former go-to Democrat Party attorney Mark Elias involved elections changes some of which changed rules after voting had begun, which is a violation of the Purcell protocol,

[00:30:15] basically, which is a precedential case that says you don't change the rules of an election during the election because it's too confusing for voters, it creates administrative burdens, right? You just, I mean, not even during elections, even like in the run-up to the election period. Like, judges generally do not like changing rules when it comes to elections in, you know, the months

[00:30:44] preceding an election. And we saw changes after the early voting had already begun. Brinson Bell and the agreement became the subject of a 2021 Senate Redistricting and Elections Committee hearing and a federal judge later ruled that some of the changes violated equal protection laws. Now, if you weren't here in 2020, you were probably locked down in some state or you were living freer in a state

[00:31:14] that did not lock down. We got locked down and Karen Brinson Bell had gone to the legislature and demanded changes to the rules and the legislature said, no, you're not going to do those changes on your own. we will make some changes that we think as the legislature we think are needed. And they did so. They made some changes but they didn't make all of them. So then she tried to go through this other commission or something to try to get the changes

[00:31:43] made that way. She got blocked there and then some left-wing groups sued coincidentally to enact the very changes that she wanted changed. The lawsuit named the state board of elections the attorney general's office then defended the state that would be Josh Stein's office. And so you've got the board of elections controlled by Democrats appointed by the

[00:32:13] Democrat governor you've got the attorney general Democrat and you've got the plaintiffs in the case that are all Democratic aligned. Now the legislature was also part of the lawsuit as a defendant but they were not included in the settlement agreement. So all of the Democrat aligned groups and agencies and lawyers they all get together and they enter into a settlement an agreement to make the

[00:32:42] litigation go away by basically doing everything that Karen Brinson Bell wanted done and the plaintiffs that sued her wanted done over the objections of the legislative defendants who were not even apprised of any potential settlement. This is why they called it a collusive agreement. Does this sound familiar? Does this sound strikingly similar to the very thing that we are seeing with our city council in

[00:33:12] Charlotte with the payout to the police chief? this collusive agreement. In 2019 this is from the Blue Ridge Times, Tim Wiginton. In 2019 control of the state board of elections was seized by the Democrats. They fired Kim Strack as I mentioned. Karen Brinson Bell then led the state board into the collusive settlement with progressive groups and then lied to the general assembly about it. In 2022 now by the way that she

[00:33:41] did lie to them. They tried to say oh I didn't change any of the rules but she did. And you've changed the rules. You're saying you didn't change the rules but here are the rules that you just changed. In 2022 under her leadership the North Carolina State Board of Elections denied ballot access to progressive groups in a bid to help Democrat Sherry Beasley in her Senate campaign in a move that was

[00:34:11] later overturned by a federal judge. They tried to block ballot access for the Green Party candidate and was it justice for all Cornel West right? They tried to block their ballot access because they didn't want them to siphon votes away from Sherry Beasley. In 2024 the Fair Election Fund a nonpartisan group released a report that highlighted serious issues with election administration in North Carolina particularly in

[00:34:41] regard to voter registration list maintenance. So yes I am happy that the Karen Brinson Bell era or error is over. All right that'll do it for this episode thank you so much for listening I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast so if you'd like please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalendershow.com Again thank you

[00:35:10] so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.