Randy Credico Interviewed by Lee Camp (12/20/2017)

Supplemental document for: "Theory that Roger Stone's back channel to Wikileaks was Randy Credico", link: https://wakelet.com/wake/2d352ae9-febe-44a1-a7bb-51674a2e4bf5

Randy Credico on "Redacted Tonight With Lee Camp". Broadcast date: December 20, 2017. File excerpt runs from 0:59 to 16:30.

File link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO1lbfReX1U

LEE CAMP
Randy, thanks for being here.

RANDY CREDICO
Hey...it's a thrill. Thank you very much. It's an honor to be part of the Lee Camp family.

CAMP
[polite forced laugh] Yeah, it's good to finally have you on, I've been a fan a long time [sic]. So, I want to get into all your amazing work you've done over the years, but let's start with how you became the most wanted man in America. Congress subpoenaed you recently after GOP operative and resident maniac Roger Stone told Congress that you were his source for internal information from Julian Assange. Walk us through whatever you're allowed to tell us. How did this happen?

CREDICO
Well...first of all, I got a letter. From the Intel Committee, by Adam Schiff, asking me to appear voluntarily and to make a few statements and answer some questions, and I said no. So they sent me a subpoena, uuuuuh and I was supposed to appear last Friday at two pm, and so, on Wednesday I sent them a letter saying I will be taking the Fifth, so they said "Well, if you're going to take the Fifth, you don't have to come down here for that-" but I came down there anyway. Because I ran into _you_, I believe. Uh, but, uuuh after that, I'm just kinda waiting what will be next. I think they'll grant me immunity and if they grant me immunity, they'll bring me in again, and then I'll probably invoke the First Amendment, because I think what they really want, this whole charade about Roger Stone...or this red herring, excuse the pun, on this Russia-gate deal, is that's exactly what it is. What they really want is my conversations with Julian Assange.

CAMP
Tell us about the interviews with Assange. What was said on there, [CREDICO moves his right hand at this point to scratch his left armpit, and gives out a loud breath] and was any of it nefarious, that Congress was really upset about.

CREDICO
No. [stands out as high pitched, nervous] You know I had him on, I think with- Jill Stein, I believe [this refers to his first interview with Assange on WBAI, transcript is here: https://pastebin.com/uVE51mbK ]. [laughs] Now, she's in hot water, I guess. Way back August 26th, 2016- [sic - he interviewed Assange on August _25th_, 2016]

CAMP
Now she's part of the witch hunt, really.

CREDICO
Yeah, 2016, I had him on the show for the first time. I also had Roger Stone on the show, because he's a great guest, and I was throwing hail marys to try to increase the size of the crowd, plus he's a good guest, and it pisses off a lot of people to have Roger Stone on [Credico would have Stone on his show many times, and notably, interviewed Stone two days before Assange's interview - transcript: https://pastebin.com/cWMqnZ6a ]. And so I said, let me piss a few people off. And over the next year, I think I had Assange on four times. I recently visited him, three times inside the embassy. I can admit that because I know it's all on camera. So the British intelligence would definitely pass that on. I'm surprised I wasn't stopped at the airport. And I had long conversations with him. Those are all my private conversations with him, and they're not open to discussion with anybody on the committee. As are my conversations with Roger Stone, because he was a source. I was actually a journalist. I know I'm a political satirist, but I played a journalist for a year and a half doing topical events and current affairs, and dealing with national intelligence. And so, I decided that, you know what, they're going to call me in here, I think that's what they really want, they'd like to know what's going on between me and Julian Assange, who, of course, is a _journalist_, he's a recognized journalist. And he has been called all sorts of things by Pompeo, and by the House, and the Senate, because they don't like what he has to say. If you don't like what he has to say, he'll stop saying it, just change your ways. Stop supporting rogue regimes.

CAMP
Right.

CREDICO
And stop the wars. Stop bombing civilians.

CAMP
Yeah yeah, stop the collateral, you know, murder that, one of the biggest videos-

CREDICO
The war logs. They didn't-

CAMP
-reveal-

CREDICO
They didn't like the war logs. You know, the problem with- with Assange is, unlike the ummm uhhhhh abolitionist journalists like, let's say William Lloyd Garrison, he only got the slave power angry. That's it. So people in the North didn't have a problem with him. Here, he gets Democrats angry, and he gets Republicans angry. Democrats because they claim, even though they had the worst candidate in the world, and she's the one that sabotaged her campaign, they're mad because they blame it on him, and Republicans _and_ Democrats, both part, they're two war parties, are angry because of the war logs. In essence. [CAMP: Yeah- So-] He's just reporting on stuff. That's all. He is a journalist. And- and-

CAMP
Well, he gets them both angry because, you know, he gets both "sides" of the corporate ruling elite, who are- don't want their secrets out, they don't want the reality of our world to be out in people's view.

CREDICO
We have to rely on _him_, to get accurate information. I certainly can't rely on people like Rachel Maddow, I can't rely on CNN. Which is not even news anymore, all it is, is a talk show, and they continue to push this Russia-gate deal. Especially the Democrats. They're the ones responsible, by and large, for this Russia-gate inquiry, which is really- it's been running on fumes, they throw me into this mix, because they've run out of options [CAMP: Yeah...] at this point. Now they're going to Jill Stein, and this is all so part of this massive xenophobia against Russia. I mean Russia- why- I don't want a war with Russia. I don't want my grandkids to go to war- I don't want to send them to Estonian front, or Polish border [sic - Credico has no grandkids]. Or to western Ukraine [sic - he must mean eastern Ukraine, where Crimea and Donbas are located]. I mean, this is what it's leading to, we're starving Russia as it is, with these sanctions, we're trying to starve them, we're trying to break it into a bunch of Libyan states, now, which are broken states, that's really what's going on here. You gotta t- What I'd like to see is, where does Adam Schiff get his money. Take a look. One of his biggest supporters is Igor Pasternak. Who is an arms dealer, from Ukraine. I'd like to see an investigation into that. And he's not the only one. They all get money from the war industry.

CAMP
Well, yeah, oligarchs always be oligarching. Since you know Assange better than perhaps any of us, and I'm not asking you to reveal personal conversations. But I want to get your thoughts on his actions and words in the past year, I think a lot of people, you know, look at his emails with Donald Trump Jr., and they say "See! They were co-operating with the Trump campaign!" Others say all he was doing was trying to get more attention to what Wikileaks was exposing, he wanted to release Donald Trump's taxes as well. What are your thoughts on-

CREDICO
Right! [CAMP: - that.] That's ex- Well, I can't- I really can't expand on that, because that's exactly it. What you just said. He was trying to help out Wikileaks, get exposure, the same way I do things, have Roger Stone on, to get exposure for my show, and at the same time, he was trying to get the tax returns. So, look. He's a journalist. And he tries to acquire things of interest. And he did it, and so it angers a lot of people- I got people mad at me, as if I was helping out Donald Trump, by having Assange on, or by having Roger Stone on. Listen: it wasn't Assange that told Hillary to stay out of Michigan, and to stay out of Wisconsin, or stay out of Pennsylvania...most of the year. It was her own hack consultants, that decided to do that, and that's where the blame should be. It was a horrible campaign...if she had adopted the platform of Jill Stein, she would have won.

CAMP
Yeah, yeah. If she actually stood for anything beyond just what the corporate profiteers want, then, she likely would have won. They also- the leaked emails also show they wanted to Pied Piper Donald Trump, by building him up, that would help Hillary win, well, we see how that went. You've been an activist and a political comedian for a long time, what do you think of where things stand at this point? Is America in a worse state, than you've seen before, or is this just all more of the same?

CREDICO
It's getting worse and worse, and, you know, they're clamping down on the internet, there's no vehicle on television, television news is the pits. So is the print news. You really can't get- You can't get any truth out of it. So, there's a lot of Orwellian kind of newspeak that is coming out, that's disinforming, misinforming the public. And both parties are controlled by oligarchs here. The oligarchs control the parties and they control the television and the print media. A hundred percent. So, it's very difficult- I mean, I don't get to talk like this, on MSNBC [sic - Credico has never appeared on MSNBC]. I was asked to go on, Chris Hayes asked me to go on after..._he_ basically red-baited me. Did this whole thing. He put me out there, like I was responsible, big picture of me, and claimed I was. He and David Corn, I was the back channel - what back channel? I mean, is Assange going to, like, give somebody some advance warning on what he's going to do. The state of comedy is getting better, you- There's you, there's Jimmy Dore, and Barry Crimmins. You three are- should have your heads on top of the uuuh Mount Rushmore, alright, because you three- and there are others, there are many others that are being inspired by the kind of comedy, daring comedy that you're doing, or political satire, and it's really important that you continue...to do what you're doing.

CAMP
Well, thank you, and you and Barry Crimmins were definitely an inspiration to me and my career over the years. Uh you- I want to get to- you've also run for- you're talking about the parties are locked down, they're controlled. You have run for office multiple times, you ran for mayor of New York, how are you treated in our election system. Were the- were the election system falling all over themselves to try to help you get into the debates, and help you run- [CREDICO: No.] and run in a fair process?

CREDICO
No, absolutely not. I ran against Chuck Schumer for a Senate Democratic Primary in 2010, and he knocked me off the ballot, spent a million dollars, he did not want to talk about his record - I mean that's the opposition that we have. His record right now, was the same record back then, he didn't want that. So they knocked me off the ballot in 2010, I had to run as an independent, you have no shot, so I didn't enter the debates. And then I ran for mayor in 2013, I got into three or four debates, I actually influenced Bill De Blasio to come around on the stop and frisk stuff, and then I ran for governor in 2014, and the mainstream media shut me out. They were promoting Zephyr Teachout, who was really the flavor of the month, for the New York Times, and for NPR. But they shut me out of those conversations and debates, and I still got four percent without spending a nickel. No, there is- they keep talking about, they're [Russia is] trying to interrupt our democracy. They've already interrupted our democracy. What democracy? There is no real democracy. They do not allow third party or um let's say different types of candidates like me to participate in the process. And that's the big problem here. And- Plus, they interfered in our democracy. The Democratic Party did. That's where the investigation should be as well, into what the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Paul Begala and all these other _hacks_, how they manipulated and how we did not get a fair result in that Democratic primary process. [does his awful Sanders] We would have had Bernie Sanders, now I don't understand why he hasn't complained about it. He should be complaining and calling for an investigation of the DNC by the Democratic Party. [forced chuckle from CAMP]

CAMP
It's always rougher when you critique the guy while you're acting as the guy. [CREDICO: Right.] Yeah, no, New York City for example, in terms of how ridiculous this election system has become, they pleaded guilty in court recently to knocking over a hundred thousand people off the rolls in Brooklyn during the primary, they knocked- they made sure Mike Tolkin wasn't allowed to be involved in the mayoral debates, so yeah, it's a rigged system, in a lot of ways. Uh, you did a lot of work on the Rockefeller drug laws as well, trying to get those changed- trying to help people whose lives were just- have been ripped apart by our war on drugs, you've had some success there. How did you get involved with that?

CREDICO
Well, I got involved because I was actually working on Richard Belzer's special, in 1997, and back then I was doing a lot of bad substances.  I got clean, I went to Florida, I saw a guy who'd done fifteen years, a painter, for a minor drug offense [Tony Papa], so I came back to New York City, I ran the William Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice, we were inspired by the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, in Argentina, I took the mothers, of prisoners, and put them in front of Rockefeller Center, the movement grew, I mean, rapidly grew, everybody got involved, and they finally were modified, in 2005, it's a long story to get through it, you can see it all on this documentary called "60 Spins Around The Sun", by Laura Kightlinger, uh, how I got involved in that. And another one, "Lockdown USA". But it was a long process, I finally got out of it in 2010- also was in Tulia, Texas, where forty six people were shanghaied into this racist drug sting, and thrown into prison. I mean, it's happening right now. That's where we should be focusing our attention. The Democratic Congress should be focusing on trying to change what's happening- They had their opportunity on major criminal jsutice reform issues, particularly, there's two and a half million people, in prison, twenty five percent of the world's population...so we got changes in the Rockefeller drug laws, but it's still going amuck right now, our crimin- it's racist as hell, and with Sessions they should be talking about Sessions. He's accelerating the drug war, he's accelerating the growth of private prisons, they're deportating [sic] Hai- deporting Haitians, deporting Salvadorans and others, and that's where they should be concentrating their energy. They really should. Not on this Russia-gate thing. They're spending all their capital on this _bogus_ inquiry.

CAMP
They don't want to ask any real questions about the Democratic Party, so they've got to cover it over with the Russia-gate witch hunt. And- we've made some strides with the Rockefeller drug laws, but it's still a horrific system, we're imprisoning so many, of people in our nation, and drugs should be a medical issue, not a criminal issue. Randy, I want to thank you for your work, thank you for all your activism, and I hope you'll just keep fighting-

CREDICO
This is one last thing, I had to do this. [CAMP: Yeah.] Becuase Glenn Greenwald loves my dog, alright? [CREDICO holds his dog, a coton de tulear, in his arms; she is quite old, and seems despondent, exhausted, and disconnected from the world.] I just want this show [sic]...this is the dog- I will not- I will not testify unless my little dog, Bianca, is allowed to go in with me. Just like she was allowed into this studio, I will do it only publicly, and with my dog at my side.

CAMP
I'm all for that, I think she has better ideas than most of the Congress right now. Thank you, Randy-

CREDICO
Thank you.

CAMP
I recommend everyone check out Randy Credico's work.