Roy Cooper's emails & voter intimidation propaganda | Hour 3

And again, thank you so much for your support. It's Monday. It's 2 o'clock, and that means we chat with A.P. Dillon, a reporter for the North State Journal. Yes, indeed, a real full-fledged reporter and also the publisher of More to the Story over on Substack. I highly recommend you subscribe. A.P., how are you today? I'm doing well, Pete. How are you? I am doing well. Any doxing attacks this week? No, no. Oh, good. Okay, good, good. Fantastic. I saw you did write about that as well. And so people can check that out. More to the story in NSJOnline.com. I also saw that you have this story about Roy Cooper's emails and a very timely, a timely story because we know how responsive Roy Cooper's office has historically been to all requests and for any kind of FOIA-related material. And so you've been interested to see what his emails show from when he was governor. And so tell us about that. When did you start pursuing these emails? Well, we got the first batch after 569 days of waiting. That's like two years. And that was earlier this year. Yeah, definitely. It was. We started asking for his emails in late November, early December of 2024. And his office told us that while he was in office, he did not have those. They did not have his emails available to give to me. While in office, they can't give you his office emails? Right. They're usually at the archives. So we asked the archive. The archive told us, well, we don't have them yet. We'll let you know when we do, and we'll start doing that. And, you know, nothing came of it. So after a while, after he was out of office, I asked again, and I asked again, and I asked again. And it wasn't until earlier this year when we threatened legal action for withholding records that suddenly they realized, wait, we do have these. In fact, the governor's office still has them. But now it's Josh Stein's governor's office. Right. Yes. So apparently the records request people underneath him were responsible for turning them over, and I've gotten them in a drip, drip, drip, one year at a time fashion. I've gotten 2017 and 2018. 2018 is the latest batch that I've reported on. And I did get a third batch, which I am now going through. And, well, you know, when he was in office as attorney general, he had, what, like five or six emails that WRAL, I think, reported on that he had sent. Yeah, I think he, like, over, yeah, 16 years, and he sent, like, 12 emails. He's got way more than that now. Oh, so he learned how to use email. Yes, but it's mostly things like, okay, good, thanks, go ahead and make this change, you know, like little things. So it looked like his staff was pretty much doing everything, and he was just approving things. Via his iPhone. Well, now remember what he said after they did the report on his dozen emails in 16 years. He prefers to work over the phone and in person. Yes. Apparently that is still true. There were a few things that he did draft himself, which I had in the first batch. The second batch didn't have as many of those items in it. But it did have him talking with an organization that hosted his team in California for an event. a company called Carbon 3D, who is considering North Carolina for a location, and he hoped they would reconsider the state in the future in the wake of the repeal of House Bill 2. Yeah, you have a quote here from his message. He wrote, quote, having repealed House Bill 2 and returned the state to a progressive path, we hope to present a strong option for your East Coast headquarters down the road. Yes. Well, they went to Atlanta instead. Oh. Wait, didn't, wait, but didn't Georgia have Jim Crow 2.0 voter ID? Mm-hmm. So weird. Yeah, very weird. Yes. And by the way, just in case people didn't catch it, this batch that AP is talking about in her report, this batch of emails, 313 pages, runs from January through December 2018. So, like, that's the latest batch that you've done this report, because I guess you just said you got another batch, a new batch. I guess that's, what, 2019? Yeah, that's mostly 2019 from what it looks like so far. I'm still going through it. Right. It takes a little while to parse through them all. What is the... All right, so what is the. Is there a law or something or a lack of a law as to why they would say we can't turn over any emails because he's still in office? Like, what's up with that? Well, that's not what they said. While he was still in office, they told me they didn't have them. Oh. And that I had to go ask the archives, which I found... You know, as the kids say these days, highly sus. Sus, very sus, yes. Yeah, but, yeah, so I did as they requested, and I asked the archives for them in January when he was supposed to be gone. So that's where that came down. And that's when the archives said, we don't have these. Yeah, and they fought me several times over it, and I talked to several people over there. The archives is housed under the Department of Cultural and Natural Resources. And that's the comms person I was eventually dealing with. In the end. And once I said, you know, it would be a shame if we had to sue over this because it's been X amount of days at that point. And, you know, this is this is denial of records. Right. Tantamount to denial of records. So do we need to do that? And then suddenly, whoa, everything changed. And I started getting emails. So. All right, so you got this batch, so there's this one here where he's talking about disappointing that the manufacturing facility is going to Atlanta. Yep. And it said, but we understand you had to make that decision under different circumstances when HB2 was on the books, which is like, this just grates me because you know I know because we were, you know, covering this stuff as it was happening. And when the Wall. Street Journal had their big story about Roy Cooper dealing with Scott Benioff of Salesforce and You know, his phone calls and his conversations with business leaders basically whipping up the boycott against his own state as the sitting attorney general because it benefited his electoral chances as he was running for governor. Right. And here he is like, oh, well, we understand this is tough because of HB2, but now we're back to a progressive path. Like, dude, you're just the governor. Like, the legislature is not putting us on a progressive path. Like, so that's a lie also. But this idea that like, oh, I understand you had to do what you had to do. Yeah, because you lobbied them, Roy. You did that. Oh, it's so frustrating. I hate him. Anyway. And, you know, everyone seems to have amnesia over that once again. But he also talked about data centers in there. That's what I was going to ask. Yes. Yeah, pre-AI data. AI has whipped this topic up into oblivion. North Carolina has over 200 of these things already, and they've never been a problem in the past, but suddenly they're a problem now. Right. So he talks about the data center landscape, and he was talking to a group of Google officials, thanking them for hosting his team once again out of state. Allotting them for their local data centers and ambitious renewable energy plans make us proud. They were particularly excited to hear about career paths from data center jobs to engineering and project management, and we would love to host for those employee transformations in North Carolina. Wait. Holy smokes. It almost sounds like he's encouraging data centers. Yeah. So weird. Well, they were good before they were bad. Right, because now he's out there attacking data centers as part of his making stuff cost less tour. And he's not a fan of the data centers. But here it's like he was welcoming them, trying to recruit data centers to come into North Carolina, particularly. Google's data centers. So weird. Huh. Wow. Man. I'm sure somebody will ask him about that. Yeah, but what they don't include is interesting to me. There was nothing in there about the Atlantic Coast pipeline controversy, which was going on right around that time. Right. $ 57. 8 million, quote, mitigation funds. You know, top advisor Ken Udy was telling Duke Energy that they needed to fork over in order to get the permits and things that they wanted. Yeah, for people who weren't here in 2018 timeframe, this was a big, I believe it was a natural gas pipeline. And it was with Duke Energy and Dominion. They wanted to build this pipeline. And basically, my good friend Ray was essentially trying to shake down these energy companies. to create this, what you call, they call the mitigation fund. It's slush fund. And then he would control the money and then give it to environmentalist groups. He would pay off his political allies. And when the legislature caught wind of this, they were like, that's illegal. You cannot do that. The only funds that can be created like this are from a lawsuit, a settlement of some kind, like the tobacco settlement. That's when the attorney general or governor gets access to control that money. Otherwise, it goes to the General Assembly, goes to the general fund, I believe. So you don't you don't get to control this. And then when that was exposed, then the whole thing fell apart because basically they they were holding the permitting hostage to this slush fund. Yes. Well, when this was going on, his senior advisor, Ken Udy, was the one who was doing a lot of this, along with a couple of the legal counsel for him. But he disappeared as soon as this thing became a hot issue, and he didn't testify in front of the legislature or anything like that. But he was quietly brought back in spring of 2023, in the second term there. And he had a $ 65K increase in his pay over his 2017 salary. So. That wasn't making stuff cost less. No, no, that was gearing up for a run for Senate. All right, so let's take a look over real quick over in the North Carolina Congressional District 1. This is Don Davis, the incumbent Democrat. And apparently, was he involved in this event or was it just his supporters who may have been inappropriately electioneering in the buffer zone? It was mostly his supporters. However, it was very clear they were there on the campaign's behalf. They were all wearing t-shirts, Don Davis t-shirts. They were, you know, they had a sign up there. Uh, it was, you know, like a pancake pancakes, you know, for a pancake breakfast at the polls. I think it was called breakfast and ballots. Um, and they were preparing the food and serving it and everything. Well within the electioneering buffer at that polling location. Um, And I believe that was down in Edgecombe County. So the NCGOP filed a complaint about it with electioneering. They had all kinds of photos and things attached to their exhibits. But I believe some separate individuals have since come forward and also filed on. I'm going to have to follow that one down. But, yeah, the complaint was issued by the NCGOP's legal counsel, their chief counsel. Well, and according to the complaint, they say the breakfast and ballots event was inside the voting place. Yeah. This isn't even a buffer center. Yep. Yeah. Like this isn't even a close call. Like with Roy Cooper and his hype line, like that was outside the building and it was unclear like where the buffer zone was in relation to the hype line and his big walk up and high fiving and all of that. This is serving breakfast inside the voting place. Yeah. Like that's like who, who green lights that? Yeah, they prepared it and were set up inside of that prohibited buffer zone. So that was, you know, and they were all wearing Don Davis shirts and promoting the event. So that's all in the lawsuit, which I have the complaint linked into the article. And I also have some of the exhibits that were attached there. So showing at least several people wearing Don Davis t-shirts. Mm-hmm. And, uh, those, those individuals, I don't believe are identified by name. They're just, you know, multiple pictures, but yeah, I mean, it was, it was pretty clear that something was going on there. And you gotta wonder, uh, you, the NCSB has taken the complaint, obviously, but they're looking at who is, you know, heading up that election polling site. Who is, who is the person in charge there that allowed that? Right. Yeah. Who in the board of elections allowed that, which seems pretty clearly to be, uh, uh, You know, an illegal activity, electioneering activity, number one. But also, I'm curious, like, who was it with the Davis campaign or the party or whatever group it was? Like, do you guys not know? Like, that's not allowed. But I guess if you ask and the board of elections says, yeah, come on in, service breakfast, I guess, like, okay, all we could do is ask. They should have said no. Yep. Crazy. All right. We will leave it there. AP Dillon, you can read her work at NSJOnline.com and over at More to the Story on Substack. Thanks, AP. Thank you, Pete. All right. See you. And AP will not be joining us next week. She has another commitment. So we will just have to go AP-less. 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Go to createavideo.com or visit them in Mint Hill just off I-485. Your photos and videos are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you. And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit createavideo.com. Jim Garrity over at National Review wrote a piece, I thought a good piece, called the Phantom Voter Intimidation Threat. We've been hearing about this from Democrats, and my view on this, as I outlined over the course of several days, the UTA, the United Democracy. Alliance, right? Essentially, it's a coup, is what they're planning. I know how that sounds as I say it, but I don't know another way to say it. except when you look at the plans and the Zoom calls that they have been participating in, all of these left-wing groups, and they've been building the battle plan for after this election, and they want to use any kind of quote-unquote red line crossing to trigger their next phase of their plan, which is to induce a legitimacy crisis, is what they call it, or the doomsday scenario. And so they have all of these different components, some of whom are like the foot soldiers. They're going to go out there and march. You've got some others are going to go out there and get violent. And then Insurrection Act is invoked by the president. And then, no, you're illegitimate, Mr. President. And now the governors step up. And that's how we got Czar Pritzker. Like, and one of the, and I'm watching what's happening up in D.C. I hadn't really talked about it on the show here, but, like, I kind of get the sense that's why there is this focus on Pete Hegseth, because he's sort of the linchpin in a lot of this stuff. If you don't have a secretary of defense there that would be willing to cross the president and back the color revolutionaries, you know, then, like, then it shuts a lot of this down. And I think that's why they want him out. That's why they're going to try to impeach him. That's my suspicion. But one of the red lines that they documented is the, you know, election meltdown is what they call it. And when I see these stories from the Democrats and the media, but I repeat myself about voter intimidation at the polls and such, that's how I'm reading it. All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. 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I did get an email regarding my good friend Ray. from Greg and I totally forgotten this we had we were trying to help out Roy Cooper and there was remember there was some issue with like pollution from Tennessee that was coming into North Carolina and I forget all of the details of it but Roy was making a big stink about it. And so we, when I was working up in Asheville, because you know us, we're all about solutions here, right? We solve the world's problems between noon and three. Now up in Asheville, I was three to six. So I was solving the world's problems here. up there from three to six. And so we proposed the solution, fans, big fans. We were going to set up these massive fans all over the mountains to blow the wind and the pollution that's riding the wind, blow it all back into Tennessee. That would protect the air quality. Nobody ever took us up on the offer. I don't know why, but I thought it was a good idea. Um, anyway, Jim Garrity at national review, more than 31 million Americans have cast ballots in the 2026 midterm election. So far, none of them have had an incident with us immigration and customs enforcement agents or national guard troops, which is like, I thought that this was, this was like the Nazis, uh, I thought that Trump was like sending all of his Gestapo to all of the polling stations where all of the non-white people were voting. And then he was going to be like, you know, threatening them. Don't you dare vote. You get out of here. But apparently that hasn't happened. It's weird. I was told that this was going to happen. Everybody was very, very afraid. But for some reason, they're still voting. The National Police Accountability Project has published a bilingual Know Your Rights Guide for voters who encounter police or ICE agents at their polling place. As their guide notes, voters should probably go to the polls understanding that the presence of police near or even in a polling place is not... Emphasize not automatically intimidation. The presence of a police officer is not intimidation. Just like the presence of a Black Panther with a baseball bat at your polling station in Philadelphia, not intimidation. Remember that case? During one of Obama's, I think it was 2012, the re-election, Obama's re-election. We were told that was not intimidation. So why would a police officer be intimidation? Makes sense. As the guide says, quote, local police officers are often responsible for keeping the peace at polling locations and enforcing election-related laws. They are permitted to enter voting sites when election officials or members of the public call for assistance, which makes sense. If you think about it, like this makes sense at a practical level, right? Like somebody is like, I don't know, murdering somebody inside the voting location and you call 911, but then the cops show up and they're like, oh, we can't enter the building and save the person. Or, okay, yeah, more likely just conduct the investigation. But like we cannot, like we can't enter. Oh no, we can't enter because if we enter, that's intimidation, right? No, if somebody calls the police, they are allowed to respond to a call for assistance. Also, most states prohibit electioneering in the immediate vicinity of polling places, and sometimes somebody calls the cops over a dispute about whether somebody is violating that law. Like, for example, serving breakfast inside the voting location, as apparently the Don Davis campaign did in Edgecombe. Jim Garrity says you are extremely unlikely to see any federal agents at your polling place. Federal law bars any person employed in any administrative position by the United States, including the federal government, from interfering with or affecting the nomination or the election of any candidate. And that would cover ICE agents. Federal law also bars anyone who quote knowingly or willfully intimidates, threatens or coerces or attempts to do so. Okay. So we already have laws about this. So when you hear these Democrats that are out there talking about, like they're trying to whip up fear, like everybody's afraid. Everyone's afraid to go vote. Even though we've got like millions and millions of people like turning out and voting, they're making everybody afraid. Why are they saying this stuff? Well, if you were following the democracy files, right, we'll be recovering this stuff that came out of the UDA. Well, an election quote unquote meltdown is one of the red lines. So you do the seeding ahead of time. You start the narrative before anything happens. Then if something happens, you just kind of, you know, pull the rip cord on that and you use, the preceded environment in order to advance the narrative that Trump is trying to rig the elections. On last Monday, a week ago, two U.S. Customs and Border Officers were seen at an early voting site in Tallahassee, Florida. Intimidation! Actually, no, it turned out they were just voting. They weren't going to be in town on election day, so they just went and voted on their lunch break. Oh, so close. Almost had an intimidation story. Dang it. I got a text here from Chris. Chris says, there was a police officer at my polling place that I went to, and he was totally intimidating people as he directed traffic. Gosh, that sounds terrifying. Jim Garrity, citing another one of the handful of incidents that have been reported earlier this month in Washington, D.C., there was concern about National Guard troops that were standing a little too closely to a ballot drop box. The troops were shown on pictures, people taking pictures with their phones. Oh my gosh, we got National Guard people. They're too close to that box. Intimidation. They were loitering by one of the ballot boxes in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, which has always been a hilarious name to me. They were captured on video, which spread across social media. Turns out they were not there guarding the box. Apparently, they were part of a larger group I was on patrol and they were just kind of walking past it. And then they were just kind of like standing there for a little bit as part of their patrol. And then they were, and then they moved on. I know. Holy cow. Like, do we live in Nazi Germany now or what? Like, first off, like, I kind of feel like maybe you should be guarding some of these ballot boxes because, People have lit these things on fire. We've lost ballots. There are reports over the years of these ballot boxes being targeted. So the idea that you would send somebody out to guard a ballot box, to me, it's not so crazy. Also, if you've got a National Guardsman standing there, does that make. You like, oh, I don't want to bring up my ballot. I'm afraid to put my ballot in this drop box because this guard is standing there. What kind of propaganda has been pumped into your head to think that that guardsman is going to, what, confiscate your ballot? They're going to be like, oh, no, no, you look like you're not going to vote the right way. Give me your ballot. There are no reports of any of this. The closest thing that the purveyors of this PSYOP have gotten are the examples that I've given you. Like, oh, I saw a police officer on the campus. There was another one, too, that there was an arrest made at some government complex in Monroe County in Florida. Yeah, it was just an arrest. It wasn't anywhere near the polling station. It's like a four-acre campus. It's like they're just, they're desperate to find something. And because of The Zoom calls and the planning documents and all of the stuff that came out last week about, or yeah, last week about the doomsday scenario and the red lines, the UDA. Like, I now see these. stories as these are precursor stories. This is to make people worry that, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, they're going to try to steal the election somehow. And then what happens if Democrats do not have the fantastic night. That is being predicted? What if they don't win? All of the races that they feel so assured they're going to win. What happens if some of the polling is incorrect? As we now have, what, four different pollsters have been caught either just completely fabricating polling results because they were doing social experiments, that's all, or their methodology was so terrible that they've been tossed out of the aggregation models. In Texas. Leticia Gutierrez, a Democratic candidate for state Senate, said that she saw a state trooper part at a community center in Channel View. Again, the mere presence of a police officer at a voting site is not de facto intimidation, nor is it an attempt to interfere with somebody voting. Police officers, I don't know who needs to hear this, okay, but I'm going to say it. This may be controversial, but it's the end of the show, so I'll let Brett handle the blowback on this. But police officers are allowed to vote too. I know. No, it's true. Yeah, they are people. They are, for the most part, American citizens. They are allowed to participate in the democracy. They're allowed to vote. And sometimes they can vote on their lunch breaks. They can swing on by. They'll be in uniform. They'll vote. And then they leave. That's it. They're just people voting. It's okay. They're allowed to show up and vote. And they are usually allowed to vote while on duty, actually. He says, I'm not saying like the mail-in ballots aren't safe. I'm saying it's about as safe as anything else you send through the mail. If that makes you nervous, then you probably ought to turn in your ballot yourself at an early voting polling place. Right. If you're so worried about a guardsman standing near a drop box, then maybe, you know, like just just go vote in person. Let's get it together. 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 so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.