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The Brooks Show
Ron Durbin Exposes Corruption in Oklahoma
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In this episode of The Brooks Show, Brooks Antle sits down with Ron Durbin, author of Guerrilla Publishing, for a wide-ranging discussion about allegations of corruption in Oklahoma and the issues shaping the state's future.
The conversation covers the 2026 Oklahoma governor's race, the rapid expansion of data centers, proposed smelter plants, concerns about the state's legal system, and how politics, business, and public policy intersect. Ron shares his perspective on government accountability, transparency, and the importance of asking difficult questions about the decisions that affect Oklahomans.
Whether you agree or disagree, this episode is intended to encourage thoughtful discussion about some of the most controversial issues facing Oklahoma today.
Topics discussed:
- Oklahoma's 2026 governor's race
- Data center development
- Proposed smelter plants
- Concerns about Oklahoma's legal system
- Government transparency and accountability
- Guerrilla Publishing and investigative research
If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to Like, Subscribe, and Share to help support long-form discussions on Oklahoma politics, current events, and public policy.
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SPEAKER_01So the United Arab Emirates is trying to put in with the Trump administration, they're trying to put in a uh the largest aluminum smelter uh in the world, right there in uh hay capital of Oklahoma, Inola, Oklahoma. And um they uh they've essentially been working on it for for more than a year, and uh with the Tulsa ports and the city of Inola, they've been intentionally hiding the project from the public and hiding their meetings about the project from the public with these very innocuous agenda items that describe economic development project and don't say you know United Arab Emirates Smelter in the middle of uh hay country, Oklahoma. So the citizens out there asked us to come out there and uh see if we couldn't help them. And we get there to the first meeting, and uh you know, Oklahoma has a wonderful law called the Oklahoma Open Meetings Act, and it requires that public meetings be open and accessible to the general public. And it doesn't make exceptions if you hold it in the closet, right? You gotta you know put your capacity in a number that'll serve the people that want to attend your meeting. And at the first meeting we get there, and Officer Dane uh decides that he wants to be a tough guy and block my access to the meeting, and it didn't work out so well for Officer Dane.
SPEAKER_03No, I saw that I think he said he only had like three, what, three weeks on the job? Three months. Three months. Yeah, three months.
SPEAKER_01Uh look, I asked him that because you could just tell he was a deer in headlights. Yeah. And uh I I interact with the officers all the time, so I can fairly well read them and read when they're nervous or whatever. And you could just tell he was a deer in headlights. That's why I asked him how long he'd been there. And uh you know, I'm a fairly observant person. When I go up there and you say we're at capacity, my first question is, well, I start looking inside to see the capacity signs. I see none. And then the next thing I look at is I look down into his hands to see if he's got any clickers. One in, one out. Not a hard concept. None. And so then I ask him, Well, who's keeping the count? And he says, as chief, and I'm like, where is this guy? Uh he was nowhere to be found. So I uh zigged and zagged and managed my way around Dane.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, I saw where you finally made your way in, so did a couple other uh of the citizens in there. But once you got in, I saw the videos of I think it was a spokesman for Governor Stitt, had those text messages. What was what was on those messages if you can tell? I saw it. Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_01So our name is Gorilla News for a reason. We are guerrilla warfare style folks. We don't have any problem uh doing what's necessary to win, and we'll hit you from any angle and we'll we'll come out of the bushes and uh catch you doing something you're not supposed to do.
SPEAKER_03Did that guy, did he know that that was you behind him?
SPEAKER_01Well, at first it was Lee behind him, okay, who was back there in the back. So we I positioned in the front and he positioned in the back, and and you know, we can kind of communicate with our eyes with each other, and uh so you know I see Lee and he's like looking at me and like looking at that guy, and then I'm like, you know, give a little head nod. Lee goes over there and starts taking his own pictures, and uh then I decided what the heck I'm gonna go over there and have some fun too. So I walk around the back and and uh I get my phone up there and uh I'm just like just shooting down on his screen. And he was completely clueless. Oblivious to the world. I mean, here's a man who was sent there by Governor Stead to speak about the smelter and try to sell it to the people. Well, first of all, you know, that's like a sacrificial land of the slaughter, first of all, uh, because clearly the room was not in his favor. And then you have the audacity to go sit down and immediately start texting those kind of texts, talking about one of his text messages said that Representative Gann, who's the state representative from that area, spoke, and he texts Representative Gann, makes my eyes bleed. And we're able to, you know, get those shots over his back. And uh, you know, we we have no shame. We here's the thing: if if he'd have been alerted as to our presence, he would have realized that we did the same thing at the GRDA. The GRDA board members were texting each other in a board meeting, and Lee's behind them getting all their text messages. They they were calling me, you know, crazy names and stuff. Uh people are just not very they're not very bright. And our our government doesn't work for us. Our government has stopped working for us.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So what was uh what were some of the thing things that were said in that meeting?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, so you know, we once we got them past the whole thing, we're gonna lock people out of the meeting. Uh it was basically just people speaking against the Ainola smelter and the whole concept of it. And uh the board ended up taking no action. And then we went back two days ago and uh they had fire capacity numbers up so that the fire marshal came and uh you know inspected it and put up these numbers. But the fact of the matter is that there's no fire marshal in INOLA. There's no fire marshal in the country. So what were they in Vikings County? They made him up.
SPEAKER_03They just made him up on the spot?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Really?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, absolutely. Because there's no fire. The only the the to get an occupancy certificate in INOL, uh, you would have to go to the state fire marshal. And I know the state fire marshal's office and how slow they are in everything that they do. There's no way that they sent some representative down there to do that. And if they had put up a capacity sign, it would have been a different capacity sign. So it's our belief, and we're gonna get to the evidence of this uh through some records requests, that they just decided for themselves with their fire department, who are not qualified to determine capacity and code related to that, and just slapped some stuff up on some walls and went to the Walmart and bought some clickers so they could feel like they had some control over the crowd, all for the purposes of locking out the public from open meetings. It makes no sense. Uh Luther, who's got a data center, tried to do the same thing a couple of weeks ago. We shut that, they weren't fortunate and smart enough to shut that meeting down. They canceled the meeting, and we were there yesterday, and it was like a block party on the street out in front of city council. They closed the street down. There was hundreds of people there, and they complied with the Open Meetings Act with some microphones and some speakers. I know what they don't care.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. So what would you so I see one of the top runners in the governor Toro race, he's gonna be in the runoff, um, Mike Maisie.
SPEAKER_00He is Method owned Mike.
SPEAKER_03So I it seems like after the Trump endorsement, he's kind of pushed the smelter plant issue. What what flops would be a better way of what can you tell us about that? Do you have any more inside knowledge on that?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, you know, it's a big Trump initiative. He's the one who uh worked with the UAE uh to bring this to Oklahoma, and it's gonna be a 60% United Arab Emirates-owned project. So we're making, you know, we talk about we need to do all these things in our own national defense and for the purposes of securing our future, but then we're gonna have a foreign-owned entity being the primary owner of the operations in Oklahoma. It makes absolutely no sense. And the the Maisie flip flop is really easy to explain. He was funding Roger Stone uh through donations to Roger Stone and consulting fees to Roger Stone. And uh anybody that knows Roger enough and has watched him enough knows that that man's not consulting on anything other than his friendship with Trump. And so, you know, Maisie was against the Snelter, but then when he needed to get that Trump endorsement, he flip-flopped to be for it to get the Trump endorsement. It's clear as day. I mean, one happens and then the next happens. And I'm not a post-hoc ergo proctor hot guy, but I mean that one makes sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I want to know who uh, just maybe some insider, who Ron Durbin's going to um be pushing to win that governor's race.
SPEAKER_01I can't push Method on Mike. Okay um look, if you've watched any of Mike's debates or been in any events where he's at, um there is a there's something going on there. And and I've spoken to so many of his colleagues that work with him in the legislature, and you know, he's talked about his car accidents before and the pain and all that stuff. If that man's not addicted to pills, uh he is addicted to pills, at least in my opinion. He comes across that way. The way he does things irrationally, he made fun of the non-doc uh moderator at one of the debates for for flubbing a question. Yeah, it just the the things that Mike does, it it he's so bad for Oklahoma. And not saying that his opponent is is is a great human being because I'm not endorsing him in any way. I'm just saying we don't need method on Mike.
SPEAKER_03Okay. So now moving over to like the data centers, especially the one in Claremore, what can you tell us about that? I know you've uh been very persistent on the town council there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so you know, Oklahoma's constitution was 1917, right? So we were a uh populist state. The populist movement was big in the early teens and the late teens and the early 20s, and those ideals of initiative, referendum, uh, and recall are ingrained in our constitution. So the city of Claremore through John Fury, who is a uh shill for the Grand River Dam Authority, and that's the power company that sort of runs that area. Uh GRDA wants these data centers because they want to sell them power. More power that they sell them, the more money that they generate, the more money that they can pay out to their friends. It's it's that kind of system over there. Uh they built a, you know, the power company built a $30 million water park. What is a power company that's supposed to be a nonprofit business doing using $30 million of bonded money that's being paid by the households that buy their power to build a water park? It's a pet project for the people in the Grand Lake area that are their constituents and friends. And Feary is just a shill for the GRDA. So Feary uh pushed it through the city council with the you know oldest. Well, if we don't do this now, they're gonna leave. It's brinkmanship negotiation, and uh the city council is made up of a bunch of no-nothings with no backbone over there. So they forced it through after uh having multiple meetings where they locked out their citizens from these meetings. I mean, again, no open meetings because they're locking citizens out. They had it in a capacity room of like a hundred and something.
SPEAKER_03Are there any le like legal repercussions for doing that? I'm suing them. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_01Um, yeah, I'm suing them for it. I believe that they violated the Oklahoma Open Meetings Act, and the Oklahoma Open Meetings Act says that anybody that violates the act, the actions taken during that meeting are then per se invalid. So we're gonna seek to you know invalidate all of those votes, etc. But again, the court system being the most corrupt thing that exists in the state of Oklahoma, and that's saying a lot, we have Governor Twitch, uh the Stitts as our governor. Uh we decided to uh also referendum the issues. So getting back to the whole populist ideal, uh in Oklahoma, you can take some things that a city passes, and if you get enough signatures for them, you can force the city to put those on a vote. And so uh we had to get 356 signatures, that's it, for each one of the ordinances. They passed three ordinances. We collected 2,250 plus signatures, more than 750 on each one of them. So we turned those in on uh Tuesday. So they now have to verify the signatures. There's no way they're gonna throw out 300 signatures on each one of them. And so we expect fully that Beale will end up suing in court to try to figure out some other reason to invalidate our process and get the people's rights you know taken away. But we're gonna try to push forward with that.
SPEAKER_03So you think they'll be uh successful in throwing that case out?
SPEAKER_01You know, uh there's not been an example of a referendum petition that I could find a court upholding. They find some technical or or whatever reason. Uh the city of Norman tried to do, uh the citizens of the city of Norman tried to do a referendum petition, and they kicked it out because they said there was too much information in the gist of the explanation. And the gist is sort of like an explanation of what the law does. But in that same case, the court said you didn't even need to do a gist. So we took it that and we're using that as our basis, and we didn't have a gist. We just had the ordinances, and do you want to put this to a vote of the people, yes or no? So we've done everything that we can do to comply with the most current version of the court case that deals with this issue. That does not mean they're not gonna find some other grounds to kick it out because they are they seem to like to not give the people the right to vote on these issues.
SPEAKER_03So they're just gonna strong arm the people out of it any either way.
SPEAKER_01Well, the Oklahoma Supreme Court is epically corrupt and inept. Uh that's uh that that's something I've been preaching since the first heart attack. I've been preaching it since before that, but uh I really got engaged after the first heart attack when I was like, ah the heck with this, we're just gonna expose them all. So yeah, I don't I don't have any faith in the Oklahoma court system whatsoever.
SPEAKER_03Okay, and back flip-flopping back to the smelter plant with governor or uh uh Attorney General Drummond suing to get that shut down. Is there what what does that mean? What does that look like?
SPEAKER_01Um Well, you know, I I don't want Method of Mike to win the election, so I gotta be very careful about how I put this, I think. Uh it's a lot of bluster with not a lot behind it, if that makes sense. Um look, I asked the first question at his press conference there in I know Land, and he blew that. Drummond, I I don't know if he remembers that he's campaigning for the gubernatorial election, but he goes out there, there's hundreds of people there for this press conference, and he's there for 10 minutes. He doesn't walk the crowd and shake hands and talk to people. I mean, he just is in and he's out. And I asked the first question in the press conference of what claims did you bring in the lawsuit? And he had to look at the lawsuit to tell me what his claims were. And as he's flipping through it, he's like, Oh, there's pictures, like he'd not seen the pictures before. That gave me the impression that this is a guy who hadn't read the lawsuit. Uh I don't think he'd read it before he got there. And the claims are weak. And additionally, in a court case, when you file a case to get the defendants to come respond, you have to issue summons. And it's just a piece of paper that says you have 20 days to respond to this lawsuit, you've been sued. They didn't issue summons. So that means to me that they don't intend to serve it very quickly, and uh it very well could just be a political stunt to gain some votes that has no plan to go anywhere. That that's that's the way I see it.
SPEAKER_03You don't think it's gonna make any difference?
SPEAKER_01I don't think they intend to make it make any difference. First of all, you know, he's running to be the governor. It's litigation. You're not getting any results by December, and you know, the new AG is gonna swear in in January. And Ginner talks about I'll bring this over to the governor's office and we'll take it over over there. That's not the way that the system works. The AG controls the state's litigation, not the governor. He should know that. Uh, I think it's I think it's political theater is what I think it is.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Uh, another story you've been covering that's kind of breaking the internet a little bit is the Lehmeyer. You kind of you kind of give us uh Laylameyer. How do you get all this information? Like, how are you so tuned in and dialed in on it?
SPEAKER_01People send it to us.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, people uh look, so I also read people really well, and uh, I know a used car salesman when I see one. And the minute I looked in, I looked into every one of the candidates that was file. I was gonna run for that seat. I did file to run for that seat, and so I was looking into every one of the candidates, and it did not take me long to look into Lehmeyer and realize that during COVID, he was selling COVID religious exemptions if you joined his church for a buck ninety nine, but you had to pay a buck ninety nine to his church to get this online COVID exemption signature. It was just a funding mechanism for himself. Oh, I'm not joking. And he talked about it braggingly, saying, Well, how else are we going to ensure that they're members of our church? Since when did you hit the pay to become a member of a church?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, which is I didn't know you had to pay to be a member. I've never had to pay to be a member.
SPEAKER_01You had to pay to be online. You had to pay to be an online member. It was either 99 cents or a buck 99. It wasn't a whole lot, but he sold like 60,000 of the things.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I've never heard of anybody having to pay to be a member of a church.
SPEAKER_01I had never heard that either. I mean, you know, we always talk about tithing to the church, but uh I didn't know there was membership fees. The Catholics should really get into that and help fund uh, you know, them abusing some more boys or something.
SPEAKER_02Uh mandatory tithing here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we you know, our our our our our boy diddling defense fund. Sorry, Catholics. I'm not against Catholics. Um but I mean, you know, if you look at it, I mean, and then and then I find God's Gold and Silver. The man selling God's Gold and Silver, like in his next you know, con gang, trying to sell that stuff. And and when he and so I looked at his financials when he ran for the state senate seat and all those payments to Roger Stone's company for for advising. And then I get members of the church.
SPEAKER_03And then he gets a Trump endorsement for also.
SPEAKER_01He didn't get the Trump endorsement in that Senate race. But we had the relationship with uh with Stone going and Giuliani going back to that. And and and I looked at the Giuliani endorsement and I looked at the Stone endorsement, and both of those came right after Jackson wrote them a check. So it's check first, endorsement second.
SPEAKER_03Probably from all those $1.99 admission fees for the.
SPEAKER_01No, because he raised that money, you know, he raised this additional money through his church, and that's what he did this time. He rate, you know, and he was utilizing his church, which is a 501c3, uh, for campaign purposes. He had his campaign announcements there, he had his campaign events there, all those things. And the FEC, the Federal Election Commission, says that a 501c3 cannot participate in campaigns for particular reasons. They're a tax-exempt entity that is is not a it's not a 501c6 or anything else, it's a 501c3. You have very limited purposes of what you can do, and he was just using his church. And according to some of his members, they were also the church, he was using church tithing money and paying that to Giuliani and Stone for their legal defense funds. So again, it's just it's pay to play politics. That's everything that Leameyer screamed to me, and and you know, watching him a couple of times, I told Lee uh that uh he'll fall. Something will come out and it will not be good and it will destroy him. And then lo and behold, Miss Oklahoma.
SPEAKER_03That's insane. I'm still kind of wrapping my head around the dollar ninety nine fee to get go watch some of the videos.
SPEAKER_01The videos of him talking about it and justifying it of like how else can we ensure that they're members? Like, like if you believe that COVID is so bad, then you know it's such a terrible thing. First of all, you could have just explained to people that hey, you can sign your own religious exemption. You don't need a preacher to sign a religious exemption. You could have Bob down the street sign the daggum thing. Who's checking that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh secondarily, he could have just done it for free on an online system if he was so worried about protecting people. But no, he was worried about getting his $60 plus thousand dollars from the latest Jackson Conn. But if you look into his finances, if you look into his history, I mean he impregnated a girl that was 16, and then he leaves her for the other wife. And the first wife, you know, is is clearly a domestic abuse survivor. If you look at her posts and things, and and some folks reached out that were friends with her and him to me, explaining the abusiveness of him towards her. And so, you know, I already had a bad taste in my mouth. It didn't it didn't help him that uh all these people were contacted to affirm what I already believed. So we went we went after him hard.
SPEAKER_03Talk about putting a bad name on the church. How does he have like a massive congregation and everything?
SPEAKER_01I mean, he's there in Sheridan Church. I don't know how big the congregation is, but it's fitting that there's a Priscilla's nudie uh shop kind of thing right there in front of the church. I think it's fitting that that that's like you know, they're in the same parking lots because uh, you know, I think he sells God one place and Then goes and shops at Priscilla's for his girlfriends uh right afterwards.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, that's a terrible thought. I mean, thinking about him is a terrible thought.
SPEAKER_01I mean, again, but I mean, just look at him. He looks like a used car salesman in those cheap suits he wears.
SPEAKER_03Well, uh, so right now, what is the number one story you're trying to really get out there and push to the public? I know you've got so many that you're working on. But what is the one that you're putting the most time and effort in to really, really push it out there?
SPEAKER_01I try not to, I try not to put all my eggs in one basket, and and frankly, the people are always begging me to uh to do something. The biggest issue right now is these data centers. Uh because they they are taking advantage of small cities in Oklahoma, and uh they're coercing or making deals with certain city leaders to get these things pushed through. And I think that they will be the demise of Oklahoma if we let this happen. Virginia is the data center capital of the country. And uh the the legislative uh body in Virginia did a study uh because they were realizing the problems with all their data centers, and they figured out that they spent like $52 million of economic incentive per job that they added. One job, $52 million in economic incentives from the state. That is not a good ROI on your investment. And uh this is gonna be the same problem for Oklahoma. And so all of the power that we have, all of the water that we have, they want it, they want to be here because we have cheap power and available water. Yeah. We're not gonna have it if we sell it all to these companies for pennies on the dollar, which is exactly what we're doing.
SPEAKER_03Well, it seems like everybody who's really pushing these data centers here, uh, like the politicians, are saying that it's not gonna be very much water usage, and they've got they've got all different kinds of systems to make this work. What are we doing?
SPEAKER_01There's lies, damp lies, and statistics. I don't remember who said that, but that's uh that's what's going on here. Look, in in Claremore, I'll give you an example. They the the project in Claremore estimated that they would use 10 to 15 million gallons of water a day. After there was a pushback, their website updated the next day to 10 to 15,000 gallons of water a day. How did you drop 99% of your anticipated water consumption overnight without some kind of new system? Look, air cool can be done to a certain degree, but air cool in Oklahoma when it's 100 and something degrees doesn't work. Air conditioning doesn't work that well then, and you're certainly not gonna get those server farms down to a temperature that so you're gonna have to depend on water. And and that water, I mean, heck, the laws of thermodynamics say that water is a better cooling uh process because of the transfer of heat through it, because of the molecule structure size, then uh than air anyway. So they're gonna have to utilize water. How you utilize the water and recirculate it through the system, it can probably be done. But the fact of the matter is they're gonna do it for the cheapest possible way that they can do it, and they don't care about the strains on your existing water systems because once you're hooked up to them, they have an obligation to provide you the water. So it's once if they create a problem, then now it's on the city to solve the problem. And unfortunately, for like cities like Claremore, uh, they gave up in ad valorum taxes about a billion dollars over 25 years in ad valorum taxes they should have collected and instead are only collected 200 million. There should have been 1.2 billion in ad valorum taxes, and they gave it up for 200 million, and none of that is to help strengthen the water or power systems that are that are gonna be utilized to uh to keep that project running. So do the math. Where's that money gonna come from? It's gonna come from the households that fund these public utility systems, and that's the problem.
SPEAKER_03No, no, no. We got to get rid of uh property tax.
SPEAKER_01Well, we should get rid of property, we should get rid of property taxes for for citizens, not for businesses. Right. Um, and certainly not for billion-dollar data center corporations that are gonna come in here. Look, you you giving up the idea, so California, of all places, is who came up with these tax increment districts, right? They created the idea for tax increment districts, and then they got into a budget crisis. And you know what they did? They did away with tax increment districts because they realized they were giving away the house in the process, and they realized that it that's that's a bad move. If California was smart enough to figure out that they screwed up, why hasn't Oklahoma figured out the same thing? What are you you're giving away all of this revenue to corporate welfare and you're giving it away, and all they're doing is adding it to the bottom line. And these are all REIT transactions, real estate investment trust transactions, where they're just trying to factor a lease payment that they're gonna get from the end user, Meta or Google or whoever buys it. So their economics already work out without the TIFF district or the TIFF district. So it it's just it's all a scam. It's just completely a scam to give them some additional billion bucks.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, everybody's talking about how this is gonna make so many more jobs, and sure, when it's built or during the building process, afterwards, it looks like it only takes you know a couple dozen people to run a whole facility. So where where are those jobs, where are those jobs gonna be coming from? Like how are you gonna build jobs when it only takes a few dozen people to run an entire data center?
SPEAKER_01Well, look, I I use the analogy with Walmart because people understand it the most. If you look at Walmart building a building, they bring in their crews from out of state, right? They bring in the crew, they build the building, it's the same building, they move on to another place, they move on to another place, they move on to another place. It's a work crew that trap that travels because they have the expertise of building the Walmart's design. It's the same thing with these data centers. They're gonna bring in workers from out of state, they're gonna build the thing, and then they're gonna be gone. And I'll I'll use Luther's for example. Luther's uh is a company called Bess, and uh in their documentation they talk about that it's gonna add 400 and something jobs, 420 to be exact. Uh, and uh then you look at their design, and I I counted the parking spaces in their in their design proposal. It's 118 parking spaces. Well, how do you have 420 jobs when you have 118 parking spaces? It don't take a mathematician to figure out maybe those are temporary jobs they're talking about, and that the full-time permanent jobs are gonna be minute in comparison because you don't need those kind of people to run a data center. You need security, right? You need people to clean, and you need a few engineers and electricians and things like that that can take care of you know varying problems in the facility. But for the most part, anything that requires expertise, you're gonna ship those people in to work.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I'm assuming some most of the engineers will be people who already work for the companies that are gonna be putting this thing up. It is. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It is, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So I don't see how there's uh a whole lot of job creation with it.
SPEAKER_01There's not. Well, go back to Virginia. One job for $52 million in economic development incentives. That's not a good ROI on your money. No. Not at all. You know, give that to a small business. And here's the thing: if if if they were offering the same thing to small businesses that were creating restaurants and bookshops and all these other things, coffee shops, that'd be one thing, but they're not. They're doing it to a billion-dollar company and then they're giving them a 25-year tax break on their ad valorum taxes. It makes no sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Well, I appreciate you getting the word out and sitting here thinking about it, all the people who are getting spoon-fed that this is gonna be such a great idea, so great for uh economic growth, and it it'll be a lot of growth for the companies that are building it and the companies that are benefiting from it. But do you believe that it's a national security issue that we get these into Oklahoma?
SPEAKER_01No, no, I hear that all the time. Well, if we don't build them, China's gonna build them and they're gonna utilize them over there. Well, first of all, data travels at a set rate, and you know, you're not gonna get the fiber cables and all that stuff to China to get the returned results fast enough. So the the ones that are built in China are gonna serve China and the areas around there. They're not gonna serve us. So let them build their daggum data centers. It's not gonna change what's going on here. Uh, secondarily, when you look at the whole idea of these data centers, I look at it as like oil and gas. We take our oil and gas and we ship it to other states, we refine it and process it, then we send it back to Oklahoma, and we as consumers are paying the same rate that they're paying in every other state that's buying our oil and gas. These data centers are gonna come here, they're gonna utilize our power and our water, and then they're gonna sell us the data back at the same cost that they're selling it to all these other states to. That's not a good ROI and investment for Oklahoma. You're not getting any kind of discount, and you're giving up a valuable, important resource that uh that should be utilized towards other things like ranching and stuff. I mean, look at the prices of beef right now. Yeah, we should be focusing on upping our beef production and being what we can be related to that, not trying to be the rust belt of the Midwest.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. How many uh these data centers are they looking to put in? Oklahoma over the next you know decade or whatever.
SPEAKER_01I mean, they're what are they working right now? Probably 15 different data centers that are working right now, and each one is is scalable, and and the problem with the current development deals is there's nothing isolating the power that they're going to consume. So, you know, here's the problem with the whole system on the power side of things, and this is something that people don't understand. You got a power plant, it has it has the capacity to produce X power at full capacity. Once you exceed X capacity, then you have to go, and in Oklahoma, we buy our power from the Southwest Power Pool. And the biggest example I'd be is like that ice storm that hit a couple years ago, uh, where GRDA couldn't manufacture power, they had to go buy power on this on the Southwest Power Pool at high rates because it was in the middle of an ice storm. Yeah, that power cost got passed on to the households because they're a nonprofit public utility, and that's how they divide the money. It's gonna be the same thing. If you're producing X and then they these data centers exceed that, they have to go buy that power. But there's nothing that's requiring them to pay the additional purchase costs. Those additional purchase costs for power on the open market is gonna be spread amongst all of the buyers, which means that the households are going to be essentially. We're gonna be flipping the bill. Yep. Yep.
SPEAKER_03That's it.
SPEAKER_01And you're also gonna be footing the bill for them to build more power plants and things because there's nothing that requires them to only factor the heavy load users as a separate, as a separate entity and go, if we need more capacity to provide for heavy load users, they alone should foot the bill for that. Not the not the rooftops where you know mom, pa, grandpa are retired living on a fixed income. Yeah, so it's it's a terrible system, it's terribly thought out. I'm not anti-data center, I'm anti-stupid deals with data centers. None of these cities seem to have the comprehensive knowledge to negotiate a deal that makes sense for anybody. It can be done, I think. I'd like to see anyway, but nobody's trying, and that's the problem.
SPEAKER_03Well, I'm sure it's not too hard for a massive conglomerate data center company to come in and subvert a small town council or a you know city municipality and get this put in.
SPEAKER_01When when the when the mayor of Inola has a 10th grade education and not even a GED, that that that tends to that tends to hamper things, yes. Look, we pay so much attention to what's going on in national politics, we've forgotten that everything that matters to us happens five miles from our front door. That's where our roads are designed, that's where our our our our leaders that are making decisions that impact us every single day reside. But we're so focused on these national issues, it's a divide and conquer mentality. We need to be focused on what's going on in our local municipalities, getting competent uh leaders in there and participating more in our local governments because we we've just forgot to pay attention, and that's where things get run amok.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, what are some uh what are some other big stories right now that you are uh really invested in covering?
SPEAKER_01Oh goodness. Uh I mean police corruption is everywhere.
SPEAKER_03Well, I saw you at the I saw the video of you at that uh I I think there was a police officer who you know uh abused his wife, maybe, or a girlfriend, or something like that, and you walked in and the sheriff was in there and you asked him for his records, he wasn't gonna give them to you or something. Yeah, it was a chief.
SPEAKER_01That was Colt Court, Oklahoma.
SPEAKER_03Okay, tell us a little bit about that. That that video is the first one I've watched.
SPEAKER_01So we have a big problem across the country, but particularly in Oklahoma, of um of these cops that go from department to department to department to department. And we have no centralized tracking system of tracking these guys, we have no mandatory reporting requirements, and so one department will let a troubled officer retire or resign, and then they'll go get a job at some next department and take advantage of people over there. And that's the problem that we see. It's not that all cops are bad, it's that there are some really bad cops that keep going from one place to another place to another place committing these bad acts. I mean, where I really got started into this uh and covering sort of that issue was uh this officer out in uh Oilton, Oklahoma, who Officer Beers, who had tackled this Vietnam veteran elderly man on his own property because the man was talking to some uh satellite or some solar panel sales guys that were going door to door, and the cop didn't want them going door to door in Oilton. And the old man's like, they're on my property, get the heck out of here. Like, none of your business what I'm talking about and who I'm talking to. Well, it turns out that that cop had been fired from a prior department under allegations of sexually abusing a miner, and he's now finally charged with those, but the cop who hired him in Oilton, the chief, knew about all those charges and those uh things, and he hired him anyway. Well, it turns out that that chief had gone from department to department to department. His name's Carl Stout doing the same thing. Protective order Carl. I mean, he had protective orders all over the place on him, and he's the chief of oilton. Nobody does need background checks on these people. It's utterly insane.
SPEAKER_03Why do you think that is, and what how do you think they're gonna fit? How do you think we can fix it? Just bring in more light to it?
SPEAKER_01One, bringing more light to it, two, mandating a reporting system that says every officer that's under investigation that is terminated, it must be reported into some centralized, easy-to-access system, and we need to require that cities run a comprehensive background check. It's like uh it's like a cop in Colhort, the chief in Colcord had hired that one guy. I asked him, Well, did you did you call his prior employers? And he's like, Well, I called one and he didn't answer. That's it. One one one no answer, and and and you're done with the background check for the cop. Yeah, he tried. He tried. I don't even believe that he called, but you know, if he kind of had the deer and headlights look as well. I mean, well, you know, funny, he he got fired from a prior department for uh stealing paraphernalia from uh was that the Kansas the Kansas Fire or police department?
SPEAKER_03Yep. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Yep, he got fired from that and and uh been investigated by Cleat and all that stuff for that.
SPEAKER_03So uh Well and this guy also had his Cleat license revoked and then reinstated. So how does that how does that work?
SPEAKER_01Back the blue until it happens to you. It's just a it's a flawed system that allows these cops to go from department to department, and and I don't think good cops want them there. And they want to do something about it, but they feel hamstrung, and then then when they're worried if they say something about them, they're gonna get sued. So we need to provide you know no liability for disclosure of what these cops are doing and get rid of them. And we need to have a centralized Brady list that lists all these cops that have these defects related to their service because they're just running amok out there.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. That's who has the power to get that uh that put into place to where we're gonna be able to do that. The like and registered the legislature. Have you gone and talked to anybody in the legislature about this problem?
SPEAKER_01Not specifically this one. Uh frankly, we've been building up a following to get a little ability to push some things a little more.
SPEAKER_03And uh No, and you're doing an excellent job of that, of course.
SPEAKER_01And Chris Kennedy is the head of the judiciary, was the head of the judiciary in the Oklahoma legislature, and he's a terrible human being that would never let any of this through. So, you know, Chris, if you're watching, um uh you know he's a terrible human being.
SPEAKER_03What now where's he out of where's he at?
SPEAKER_01Oh god, I don't know where he's out of, but he runs he runs all the Republican pacts and stuff for the House. He controls all the money. Okay, and so everybody bows down to Chris Kennedy. Okay, and he's just a scumbag of epic proportions.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01So I'm waiting for him to get out of the judiciary committee. I think his term did he term out this time or does he have two more years? I can't remember, but we're getting close. Yeah. And maybe we can get somebody in the head of the judiciary that will do something. Uh the judiciary committee that these laws and stuff go through. Yeah. You know, but yeah, the other thing we need is frankly, we need more educated people in our legislature. Uh, you know, used to the legislature was made up of part-time people who were doing other really important jobs, bankers, lawyers, doctors, you know, things like that. Now we have a bunch of people who are treating it like a full-time job when they're only working three months out of the year, and these people don't have the background to understand what it is they're passing. Go watch one day of preliminary presentation of legislation on the Oklahoma House floor, and you're and the Senate for that matter, and you're gonna see this is a cleanup bill. This is a cleanup bill, this is a cleanup bill. Why are they gonna pass all these cleanup bills? Because they can't read and comprehend the first bill that they passed, so they have all these problems in them, and then they spend all these times trying to fix the problems that they created. Yeah, they don't think through if I do this, then this happens. It's basic analysis. What's gonna happen if we do this? They don't they don't seem to have the capacity to process that, and so they're always running cleanup bills to fix issues that they created that they didn't think about in the first time.
SPEAKER_03Seems like they're doing that right now with like their illegal immigration and the marijuana farms.
SPEAKER_01That was uh they governor Stitt in 2020. I wrote the bill, it was House Bill 3228. He could have fixed the entire system with illegal grows and all of that stuff in 2020, but a legislator thought it was a good idea to attach the home delivery to that legislation, and Stitt didn't like it, so he vetoed the entire thing that fixed everything else. I know it fixed everything else because I wrote the darn thing. Pass the House, passed the Senate, Stitt vetoes it, the Senate wouldn't come over by the veto. So if that would have passed, it would have been we'd have fixed marijuana problems in 2020. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Why do you think it was vetoed?
SPEAKER_01Because the delivery.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's ditt in like the delivery uh aspect of it. That's what I heard anyway, but I mean again, Stitt's an idiot, so it could have been a myriad of other reasons that he didn't do it. He might, he might have heard that I was tied to it and him and I don't exactly get along.
SPEAKER_02I can't see why that is.
SPEAKER_01I call it like I see it, right? I mean, you know, you're never nobody's ever gonna accuse me of of not being bluntly honest about how I feel. And and uh hell, I pissed off Gitner drumming the other day with my blunt honesty. Uh, but I don't care. Yeah, it's alright. I and I I I'll tell the same thing to them that that I said to Gitner. I said, uh, I said, look, if you don't have people close enough to you that are speaking the truth to you the way I just spoke it to you, then you don't really have friends. You have lackeys that are yes men and women. And who wants that near them? Debate and the discussion of ideas and the butting of heads about how to do something better is an important aspect of all of this. But these people in these positions just require yes men to work for them, and that's how you end up with all of these bills to fix things that you screwed up the first time because nobody's raising their voice and saying you have problems here. Everybody's afraid of pissing somebody off, I guess.
SPEAKER_03It seems like a lot of the videos that I've watched that you've put out there, you're going to these council meetings and you're trying to hold these people accountable, and even the citizens they don't understand what you're doing, and they think, this guy's here to disrupt, and really you're there just to bring them to light.
SPEAKER_01Some.
SPEAKER_03If you see those, like it's very Some of the confrontations where they're like, I got that well, they get their friends to come stand up for them.
SPEAKER_01They can't stand up for themselves, so they send their friends to come stand up to me, and I'm like, like, you're sending you're sending the chicken into the hen house or into the wolves layer. Like, don't send somebody to get into a verbal confrontation with me. You're not going to win. I I I have no filter, and I have no problem picking out everything about you that I can do to get you to just lose your mind.
SPEAKER_03And it seems like that's absolutely what they do is have people come in because from what I've seen and all the comments and all the people that have followed your page, I mean, they want you there. I mean, they're they're begging you to be there. Yeah. And then when you get there, there'll be two or three bad actors who are like, you need to get out of here. But it does seem like the majority of folks are like, no, we need we need somebody in here holding these people accountable.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, it's like with Officer Dane. Um, people see I liked Bub.
SPEAKER_03I liked Bub. Watch out, Bub.
SPEAKER_01People who see that out of context, they're like, oh, he's just being mean to this cop for no reason, whatever. There's no there's always a reason. I I am I am super polite to everybody that I first encountered. unless you're unless I'm investigating them and I already know enough about them. But for the most part, I'm very polite. And if you're getting the you're getting the version of ROM that you deserve is the way I look at it. You either you get the nice one, but if you go the other way you're gonna get the worst nightmare that you can possibly get. And people are like, oh why are you doing that? It's unnecessary, whatever. Putting people in those situations and shaming them is the only way that we're getting accountability. How else are we gonna do it? Right. You know so now maybe they'll learn their lesson to not act like an idiot. And the second time I see Dane, what does he do? He goes and he he goes and runs into the back. He'd slimmed off some donuts and was able to move faster.
SPEAKER_02Aren't you saying that's the fastest you've ever seen a run or an officer run.
SPEAKER_01And I've never seen him move before but it was a good line I thought. No, that was great. Made me chuckle. At the end of the day like you know that's what it's about. It's about holding them accountable and shaming them into doing the right thing. And it's terrible that it has to be that yeah but uh somebody give me a better idea how to do it because we're certainly not doing it at the ballot box and trying to explain it to them nicely isn't working because INOLA can't even understand the concept of putting a TV outside with some speakers to play their meeting for the people that they're trying to lock out. That solves your open meeting problems but the answer I get is we can't afford that. You have a TV right there a Roku fire sticks like 10-15 bucks at the Walmart. Like well they can they can afford a fire marshal on the spot. But they can afford yeah oh yeah and all those costs that they're paying overtime to run their security and stuff. And they can afford all that but they can't afford an extension cord and a Roku. Yeah you know just a JBL speaker even right well you know I and I told them they're like they're like we don't have the people to do that. I was like I would have live streamed the darn thing for you. Yeah you know I we could have just set up a fire stick out there and we'd have been just fine. Yeah but again you know you got a mayor with a 10th grade education you got you know one of their other board members was uh was in special ed his entire career that's the that's the quality of people that we got leading these cities I I don't know how we started electing morons to these jobs but we we sure have done a great job by not paying attention all right well so tell me what got you into this and what uh what gave you this passion to start going in and investigating and bringing some of these situations to light so June 26 2018 is when they passed the marijuana initiatives in the state of Oklahoma and I didn't care not one thing about cannabis but somebody asked me to do them a favor and look at some legislation because the legislation that was adopted through the initiative process was very limited. It didn't say a lot and there needed to be some stuff done. So I participated in those committees and helped them with that process and then I just started seeing the government abusing people and messing up the system and not following the law and just so I just started doing more and more of it and uh one thing turned to the other and February 3rd of 2020 I had a massive heart attack and decided that uh I was done practicing law. I was tired of the corruption and so I started exposing it all and uh you know everybody was like Ron they're gonna they're they're gonna take it out on you and I was like I know I'm okay with that and sure enough they did you know uh I uh I never I don't want to say I underestimated their level of depravity for the Oklahoma Supreme Court but you know I I think in the back of my mind I didn't think they would actually disbar me for First Amendment protected activity but I was wrong. So uh you know but again I picked the fight it's the fight I wanted and what's funny is they disbarred me thinking that they would take my knees out from underneath me and stop me from being able to expose all this well when they disbarred me I had 2000 followers on Facebook I've got 200 and something now I've got 100,000 on on YouTube. All they've done is is set me free. Now I don't have any rules to follow. It looks like they fueled the fire a little bit yeah absolutely and and they can't do anything about it. I mean look the Tulsa County DA they tried to stop me they charged me with uh I get pushed by a security guard at City Hall and push him off of me and they charge me with assault and battery on the guy and then when I go turn myself in they throw me to the ground and charge me with resisting arrest I had to go through two jury trials and be found not guilty two different times and uh they tried everything they could do to to knock me out and and do the things that they do they use the government the state of Oklahoma versus Ron Durbin you know and uh they tried but I'm not that easy of a of a guy to get to back off of something. No it doesn't sound like it why why I mean you know uh you gotta fight for something or you you die for nothing right yeah and that's kind of the way I look at it is when I was when I was dying there uh with that 99% blockage of the the widow maker they call it uh I I gotta tell you the first thoughts in my mind didn't have anything to do with money it didn't have anything to do with power it didn't have anything to do with being a lawyer it was about my kids and and what else could I have done and so I I left that that experience and then the subsequent ones just reaffirmed it that life has got to be about something more than just making money. I've made millions in my life uh making money is easy uh changing the world is hard and I I enjoy it well especially when you got so many people against you so many entities that are out to get you yeah uh yeah I'm I'm I've I've made some enemies that's for sure but I've made a lot of friends along the way too like you know a lot of these cities have uh have started reaching out going hey can you help us with this uh you know I I got a fairly sharp mind when it comes to to various things and so I always tell all these cities like I I'm here to help if if you'll just ask me for my for my help I will help you try to get this fixed or figured out if you screwed up own it let's figure out a solution to the problem but you know it's the ones who double down in stupidity that I just absolutely troll you know and I believe that uh sometimes I need to be their appointed troll yeah to represent them. Number one troll that I've seen on the internet recently I guarantee you that I mean you know I I like to think we do it a little better than uh than others and that we're uh we're pretty sharp yeah in our criticism of things and that it works out that way so you know but again uh you know an apology in my life goes a long way I always tell people if you screw up just own it it's not that complicated we all mess up stuff right but some people just double down on that stupidity yeah so for Ron Durbin right now what's the number one issue that you're trying to get uh get get the ball rolling on I mean if I could get if I had my personal preference we would completely dismantle the Oklahoma Bar Association and the court system entirely it is it is beyond corrupt it doesn't allow for the Oklahoma Supreme Court uh members and others are appointed through a system that allows essentially the Oklahoma Bar Association the most liberal organization that exists in this state to nominate a few names to the governor and they got to pick from those people and it's a flawed system it it puts power in the hands of a very few people. How could you overhaul that system? Well I mean you separate the membership system from the disciplinary system and you give the lawyers an ability to be able to fight the Bar Association without fearing them taking their license. Texas and Louisiana had very similar systems to Oklahoma where they were you know taking advantage of people they were disciplining them for free speech activities they were engaging in political speech that you shouldn't be engaging in with members' money it's a mandatory association I had to be a member of it you can do away with the mandatory membership association requirements Louisiana and Texas the Fifth Circuit kicked out their bar associations made them revamp them entirely and uh hopefully my federal lawsuit succeeds and we require that in Oklahoma does it seem like anybody else is trying to get this done as well no really no what lawyer is going to risk their livelihood they they've seen what happened to me yeah who who's gonna who's gonna fight it or represent Ron Durbin like that that's like asking for being disbarred nobody's gonna fight that fight I'm gonna fight that fight yeah and uh you know I wish we had some help and support but we don't and that's okay I don't I don't need somebody to hold my hand nobody at the legislature wants to well I didn't say that okay um like Chris Kennedy need to get him out of the judiciary committee in the house he's he's a sellout to the existing system and uh when I get rid of him we'll we'll get some action taken but again I'm you know building relationships is an important part of this process I don't talk about my friends on social media so nobody knows what friends I have in the legislature but I have a lot yeah and we are working on things and you know I get consulted on legislation on a regular basis but we don't talk about that because again you know being friends with Ron sometimes is not the best political move for some of these people probably not but what's funny is that when another legislator gets in trouble they'll call one of these people that they know are my friends and they'll be like hey Ron can you can can I set up a meeting between you and so and so and then they'll set up a meeting like Oakmulkey there was a data center thing that popped up down there and uh I went down there and they were IDing people at the courthouse to get into the courthouse and boy that did not sit well with me and so I I threw a little bit of a fit there. By the way they don't ID people to get in the courthouse anymore in Oak Mulkey County why were they IDing people so they knew who would be there in case that there was a bomb threat or something. Oh that was what they said. That makes sense no it doesn't no you're going through a security screening system like you know I was like you have video cameras here it's it's 2026 if you need to identify somebody put their picture out it'll be real quick you know uh but anyway and then there was the data center stuff that was going on and uh I I leave that meeting and I get a call from a state legislator that's like hey Ron the county commissioners would like to meet with you and the sheriff would like to revamp their policies related to the thing can we set these things up and get this all worked out I'm like absolutely so I go down there and meet with some of the county commissioners and you know I talk to the sheriff's department we get all this stuff worked out so you know they do facilitat it helps and I have friends we just don't mention their names for uh privacy reasons yeah wow so when will we hear something about the the data center in Claremore?
SPEAKER_03When will we get more news on that?
SPEAKER_01Well so now that we're done with the referendum petition signature collecting we've turned those in they have to verify the signatures unfortunately the statute doesn't say how long they have to verify the signatures we're gonna give them about 14 days and then start hammering hammering hammering. I've already filed a lawsuit against them so I we try to get an injunction to stop them from passing all this stuff. But again the corrupt legal system we kept getting passed judges kept recusing and we kept getting passed along and got no emergency relief like we're entitled to so we're we've got a new judge out of Mays County now we're gonna get that reset for hearing because I'm trying to get an injunction there for all their open meetings violations uh but uh the big step in Claremore is we're gonna do a grand jury for all of Rogers County because you have the data center stuff and you have the INOLA smelter all happening in Rogers County all happening as a result of open meeting violations these non these non-disclosure agreements that are illegally signed without disclosure to the public so we're gonna start collecting signatures to convene a grand jury and uh see if we can't get some of these folks indicted to send a message that it's time to stop playing with Oklahoma's we're not gonna take it anymore.
SPEAKER_03Yeah so that's the next steps okay sounds like a lot of a lot going on right now for Mr.
SPEAKER_01Von Durban always but I mean you know you call we haul that that's the that's the that's the way it works. I mean look I I never had a problem asking for people as a for money as a lawyer and I was really good at it. But being able to go what's your issue and not having to ask them for money to help them is the greatest sense of like relief because now I'm not worried about can you pay me yeah it doesn't make for a very financially successful job but it's a hell of a lot more fun just going what's the next issue that I think I can go make a difference in and go run after it and see and uh I get to do that every day. I don't I don't know where I'm going next I don't when I leave here we've talked about a couple of places but where I'll decide to go today I I don't know we'll we'll see when we get in the car and where what we feel like doing. And we'll go fight for that fight today and and uh go spend our time on that tomorrow it'll be something completely different except for Fridays we have a don't fuck with government on Fridays policy I don't want to be in jail over the weekend. Right no doubt I don't want to be you know I want I want to make sure there's a judge that's gonna be around to give me a bond. Right. So I don't mess with them on Fridays because I don't want to sit there over the weekend.
SPEAKER_03Yeah that's a great idea.
SPEAKER_01Yeah I mean it's just I think it's a smart policy. Yeah no doubt you know look in my life I've never been in trouble in my life uh until I started doing this stuff and now that you started pointing out corruption. Yeah and I think I've been in handcuffs now like eight or ten times I don't know how many times it's been shame on you for pointing out corruption. It's terrible of you just it's it's always funny when they when they come up and do something like you know I I was at the Tulsa County Library filming another person reporting a crime and I went inside with the cops and they trespassed me and arrested me for trespassing while I was filming the cop and the performance of his duties in a library that you're allowed to record in. So the system's just epically flawed and the city of Tulsa's prosecuting me for trespassing. So I'm fighting that case we got court in July on that.
SPEAKER_03Does it seem like most of this stuff that they're prosecuting you for they know is probably gonna get thrown out but they're just doing it to do it anyway.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Just to put you through the ringer. Yeah absolutely cost me money or whatever just to basically get you to be quiet.
SPEAKER_01Yes. But they don't understand it doesn't work. One day somebody's gonna learn and educate the other folks that you know we have a no-touch policy at Gorilla News if you touch us then we touch you back a lot and um and uh I have not yet begun to really give the city a toss of hell on this uh on this uh trespassing thing because I've been fighting the other stuff and personally I'd prefer to go fight for other people I hate dealing with personal drama I don't like drama in my life I don't like any of that stuff in my life uh but I'm gonna have to give them some attention here coming up pretty soon they're not gonna enjoy it yeah do you ever feel like you're stretching yourself really thin or do you feel like you're you know right on the ball I wish we had I wish we had 10 employees that could help we need help bad um and and you know I we've we've not gotten any sponsors we've not gone after any sponsors you know we make the little bit of money we make off of Facebook and YouTube and stuff like that but it's just enough to keep gas in the in the truck and keep us going and uh if we had some sponsors we could do more if I had people who could review the messages and things we get every day on just on Facebook alone we get more than a hundred different people reaching out to us every single day.
SPEAKER_03Right just having somebody to filter through it's insane.
SPEAKER_01Yeah it's it's utterly insane that's not my inbox from emails that's not YouTube that is just people messing with us that's not comments that's individual people messaging us with a problem that they have that they want our help on if we could do more investigatory stuff more records requests that wouldn't have to be done by me I'd love to see this expand more I'd love to see you know us adding more reporters to this but again you know who wants to go get arrested not many not you don't find many people that are gung ho to go stand up to the Danes of the world that might put you in handcuffs. Yeah um you know I just make sure my bail bondsman's on standby and I'm gonna do that I bet he keeps you on I bet you keep him on the you know quick call yeah yeah yeah well he's got his number everybody's got the bondsman's number to get me out if uh uh if we ever need it but uh fortunately the bonds have been low enough that I've just been able to put cash up but uh you know we got a bondsman if we need them we'll get which we should get them to advertise on the channel but they're not so I'm not gonna mention their name okay sounds like he might be getting lots of business I mean I think we could but again that's not for the focus uh you know you know our our our haters like are talking about oh you're just doing this for the clicks and views that's the funniest comment that I see on a regular basis is oh you're just doing this for clicks and views what newspaper publisher in the history of the world printed newspapers for nobody to buy them none that's the whole purpose of the press you you know you're not gonna write it for nobody to read it like if that was the case I'd just put it in a word file on my on my desktop and and save it there and move on to the next thing but this is not a diary this is of course we're doing this for the clicks and views because that's what gives us the ability to effectuate change. It's the followers and the people who share it and the people who reach out and call that effectuate the change and so we've been so focused on getting the clicks and the views to get the message out there that we have really fallen short on the business side of this thing of trying to get it to be a cash flowing thing that's a sustainable entity but we're gonna work on that soon. Yeah okay winding this thing down what is uh on the data centers and the whole Rogers County in general with the smelter data centers how do you see that going we're gonna win okay yeah I mean one way or the other I'm gonna win uh the people are gonna win uh or we're gonna or we're gonna give it everything we've got and it ain't about winning it's I hate losing uh and uh they deserve it we're legally correct but the laws don't matter in courts so you know how we win this thing I don't know but uh you know the data center company is building it as fast as they can possibly build it they're already out there working the ground they're gonna come in and argue well we're gonna be damaged now if this is stopped uh so that you know we all they've done is give them grounds to try to fight us and beat us it's gonna be an uphill battle but uh I plan on winning okay well good deal Mr. Durbin thank you so much for doing this no problem I enjoyed it yes sir anything you want to close with no I mean I think I think you covered I think we covered uh I think we covered just about everything yes sir yeah so well I appreciate it very much thank you sir you're very welcome yes sir man it sounds like you've got a lot going on right now I do I do it's crazy we never stop yeah I but I I wouldn't have any other way I'm ADHD like crazy I uh I I my my biggest problem is I get bored like you know and that's why I really like this because I could jump onto so many different things and and the other thing I hated about being a lawyer is like dear God for the love of God just the the they when they pay you they think they own you and hell when they don't pay you they still think they own you you should see the messages we'll get of somebody who'll send a message one day and we don't respond to it the next day we are just they cuss us up and down and and my response to them when I see that is like thank god I didn't help you. Yeah I appreciate you letting me know that you know I shouldn't have helped you and and I'm glad I didn't get back to you quickly because I would have known what a terrible human being you are but the the people just blow my damn mind with their their entitlement. It's like they I'm like you're not paying me like shut up like I I I'll get there when I get there. Like I mean you know not only do they want free help but they want to dictate how the free help is provided to them. I'm like that's an entitlement thing that I just I don't think I ever understood existed in this to that degree but there are so many entitled MFers out there it drives me nuts. How long did you practice law? 17 years. Really? Yeah yeah and I didn't get in trouble for doing anything to clients I get in trouble for exposing a drunk driving judge or going into the DA's office in Oklahoma County and pointing out that they were filing documents that have people's name, date of birth and social security number on it. You know everything that a uh everything that an identity thief would love to have yeah uh I get in trouble for that I get in trouble for a girl's trying to take one of my clients' licenses at the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority. The hearing is done she's been trying to take my client's livelihood and all that stuff wrongfully and I kick the crap out of her in that hearing and when she leaves she's crying and and I'm like no there's no crying in baseball yeah go read my disbarment papers. Apparently I shouldn't have said that to her that was unprofessional I heard this like I mean like what the absolute effing world are we talking about? Or uh I'm I I get the funniest part of that one they said I filed a case in the wrong county for the purposes of of of getting an injunction and 14 days after the disbarment stuff comes out I win the appeal in the Court of Civil Appeals that I had filed it in the right place and the judge was wrong. I got disbarred for something that their own underlying court said was right. How does that work? Yeah you figure that one out I don't know I I don't know um uh a guy called me and we helped him try to find a bondsman did not hire us but they said you should have known that he would think you're his lawyer I'm like I have a contract with every freaking client retainer he hired me to represent the grower that got arrested not him and they acknowledge that no I didn't have a relationship but I should have known that he would assume that that we had one I'm like in what world does that exist one of my favorites is uh I had a client in a car wreck case who was terrible she treated for like so long at $15,000 in chiropractic bills. She was a crazy person I should have never taken the case. Anyway I had the heart attacks my partners couldn't handle the case so we find her another lawyer get it over there she settles her case she files a complaint against me because it she didn't like it took me that long to file and get her a new lawyer I'm like I had just had a heart attack yeah like I was a little bit busy with I don't know not dying and I still found her a new lawyer she suffered no consequences that got the case settled for an amount that apparently she was happy with and and and I get in trouble for that I got in trouble for stuff that no lawyer I mean they have they've re-put back the the Muskoke County district attorney got disbarred for dealing meth and she gets her license back and then gets appointed by Stitt to be the district attorney of Muskokee County she was a meth dealer that's we're requ required do you the uh to work in Muskogee though right yeah it might be like I think it's more like a requirement out in drum right and stuff but uh sorry drum right but this is the this is the level of stuff that we've got going on we've got we've got this one this one lawyer she ran from the cops drunk runs through some fences and shit gets gets disbarred and gets her license back you got another lawyer who beat a woman and and if you read the reports you know raped her two years suspension I get disbarred for pointing out corruption but I mean again I knew what fight I was picking so I can't be I can't be sad about it. I'm not you know it's not like poor me poor me I I knew what I was doing and I knew fortunately I got a I got a beautiful doctor wife so you know I knew I wasn't gonna be financially destitute and that's what lets me do all this she's able to take care of that stuff and I cover the expenses on this stuff and and uh you know that's why they can all go to hell yeah so that's that was good I enjoyed it guys I enjoyed having you man