Transcripts For CSPAN3 Joel 20240706

Opportunities that we think of around. You know i take i mean 128 around boston or Silicon Valley or for that matter, in northern virginia. Now, im afraid that time is. And chariot has flown it being 50 minutes after the hour of. Please respond to. The applause for our authors. My name is bradley sides im going to be the host of the session this morning. Im the author of the short story collection those fantastic loves and the upcoming collection, crocodile tears they can cause the flood. Its my pleasure to host the session this morning. Were here for welcome capitol hill. As you can see, were with authors joel ebert, Erik Schelzig and were going to talk much more about this book for the next 45 minutes or so. So a couple of housekeeping notes before we get started and im going to read these so i make sure i get everything. Please consider checking out humanity. Tennessee literary website. Its w ww dot chapter six dawg. You can find reviews interviews, all kinds of things with tennessees literary community. Also, as a reminder, the festival depends upon individual donations, among other sources, to remain completely. You may donate at the humanities tennessee website, which is h u m t in dawg. You can also donate on site by scanning the qr codes that are around the building or by venmo and venmo can be at h m t in joe and erics book along with all of our other authors books is available for sale at the Parnassus Book sales area, which is just outside this building, where a portion of all proceeds directly benefits the festival. Also, if youd like to get your copy of their book signed after this session, they will be available for signing at 11 00. And the blue tent, which is outside this building as well for this session. Joellan, eric have agreed to introduce their book and then well talk about some of the various contents of the book following their discussion. Well leave plenty of time for questions. So please be thinking about questions. If you have a question you would like ask, please line up at the mark over here. So that will be able to hear you clearly as we get started with the q a session. So i think thats about ill go ahead and introduce joel and eric in, then well get started. Joel ebert joined the university of chicagos institute of politics in 2021. After nearly a decade of reporting on state legislatures and government, including for the capital journal. And pierre, south dakota, the charleston daily mail and charleston gazette mail in West Virginia and the daily line in illinois. After joining the tennessean in 2016, ebert reported on serial Sexual Harassment allegations against the then representative, jeremy that ultimately resulted his ouster from the house, wrote several developments in the scandal leading to representative lynn cassada becoming the first House Speaker to fail to his full term and 126 years in launched a political podcast. Green divisions ebert, a bachelors degree in english from the University Illinois at chicago. Erik schelzig was named editor of the tennessee journal in 2018 after 12 years as an Associated Press house correspondent in nashville, where he chronicled the states change from democratic to republican control. He previously worked for the wire service in West Virginia and florida. Jones started his career with the Center Public integritys International Consortium of investigative journalists and later spent a year in germany covering the aftermath of the 11 terrorist attacks as a visiting reporter for the Washington Post and the news magazine der spiegel, chozick has a masters degree in Political Science from George Washington university. Generic welcome to the southern festival. We introduced your book to us. Thanks for having us and thank all you for joining us today. So, yeah, eric and i decided in 2021 to write a book of focusing on tennessee government and politics and the idea kind of came about. I had been a reporter at the tennessean for a few years at 2016 till about 2020, and i had covered several political scandals at the time, and i had also been really into looking back at retrospectives in history. So at one point in my coverage at the tennessean, i was looking back at the 40th anniversary of Lamar Alexander being sworn in early as governor and was fascinated with the story. Interviewed then u. S. Senator alexander and told this story when i was reporting at the tennessean. And it got me thinking, hey, this is cool, lets do more research on history and retell these stories. So i did another one on operation in rocky top, which is a political scandal that took place in the 1980s. That one of its central characters is lieutenant now Lieutenant Governor Randy Mcnally into, a corruption scheme, an illegal bingo. And so i took told that story again and did a podcast. And so at some point in the i thought to myself and i talked to eric, who is a competitor of mine technically, and i said, hey, nobody put this all in one place. There are all these theyre contained largely to newspapers or online archives. Theres one book that kyle hunter, a really excellent recap of what is called the coup. When Lamar Alexander was sworn in early to oust ray blanton. But i thought it would be great to kind of compile all of this in one place. And at that point, we decided, you know, this has some legs because we had covered some other political scandals. And i let you kind of allude to some of those. Oh, well, yeah. Was joel said somebody ought to write a book. And i said, yeah, somebody should. And lo and behold, i was roped into it and it was a labor of love, lets put it that way. Yes. So we basically started with the we had to figure out a timeline and we figured thought at first wed start at the beginning of tennessee history and work our way up and quickly realize that that would be a far too long tome that nobody would want to read. So we decided to cut it off at 50 years, which roughly my life span. So was sort of, you know, used as a bookend. So we started in the seventies with this ray blanton scandal, as is jules alluded to, and worked our way up through actually almost this spring before our editors finally told us no more. We got photo of the tennessee three in there just as the final sort of, you know, event and i guess our plan was to sort of just talk each chapter. Real quick, to give you a sense of what we talked about and yeah, so we kind of split the book up in an unusual way, mostly because we knew we needed to be cognizant each others time. And so i focused on the first couple of chapters, again, because i did some of these retrospectives for the tennessean. So i did the first chapter, and it was about governor blanton, you know, kills book kill. Hunts book is amazing, but i wanted do a little bit more about who ray plant was. So we requested records from the fbi, which were very enlightening. At one point there was ray gets into congress and he writes a letter to j. Edgar hoover and asks him to be on his weekly radio show and j. Edgar says, oh, man, id love to do it, basically. But scheduling wont allow that. And i thought that was a really interesting thing because. Within years, a few years. He is a subject of jay hacker, hoovers fbi because of rape. Blantons and this is a character who basically is very bombastic. Hes somebody who you was sort of a the naysayers, you know, get up tell reporters im not taking any more negative questions. He literally said that to reporters the time and throughout time as governor was always under fire. He would take trips to jamaica on the new state airplane and he would bring his personal physician a mistress and a political donor. And he would say that was legitimate business trip. And so reporters were always, you know, kind of scouring, you know, misdeeds. And then ultimately he was implicated for essentially a corruption scheme where. Members of the administration were selling pardons for cash blanton. Wasnt ultimately lee fingered or nailed for that by the fbi . It was years later, after he was out of office when he was ultimately charged with selling what was it, a liquor. Liquor like store license . Yeah. Yeah. But he did serve time in and so that was of the foundation of this this, you know, the beginning of the book. Chapter two is about about the butcher family, essentially jake butcher and his brother, s. H. Butcher. Were running a bank system in knoxville area. And this is around the time when the worlds fair is there. In 1982. And essentially kind of a cautionary of two businessmen moving too fast. Weve seen, you know, recent banking scandals like the whats the one . What sam bateman, whats the one that they just had this year . Thank you, fdx weve seen, you know, sort of signs of this nowadays, but basically in the 1982 period there was less of some of these banking and these two brothers were fast and loose with some of the rules. They were taking money from, one bank and kind of putting it in another and acting like they had more financial standing. They actually did ultimately world bank or that world worlds fair ends. And within days they are charged in one of the largest scandals of, Business Financial wrongdoing in the country. At the time it was a fascinating tale for us and it fits in the book because jake butcher for governor twice he was the democratic nominee. He almost became governor. And so it kind of fit that scheme of these are political power players. Even if they arent in office, then wild influence, largely because jake butcher was heavy democratic donor. He had the ear of president jimmy carter and so it was just kind of an extra little bite to get this chapter in this book. And then the third chapter, the first three i wrote, the chapter was on operation rocky top. And this was a fascinating story, again, involving Lieutenant Governor Randy Mcnally, who at the time was a lowly state lawmaker. He went from the house to the senate and he ultimately was tipped off about a corruption scheme that was basically it sounded like they there were bingo licenses in the state at the time. You cant gamble in the state of tennessee. Its illegal, but there was an exception. Charitable bingo. And so what ultimately happened was this was a major scandal where you saw bingo operators that were much like you know, kind of like the mob. They werent really in it for charity, were in it for money. And there were a lot of bad actors. Randy mcnally up working for the fbi and is undercover or while having a microphone and recording interactions with his fellow and lobbyists at the state legislature for two and a half, maybe three years, i think and ultimately there were dozens of people charged in this major corruption scheme called operation rocky top. There were two people that were implicated in it that ultimately decided not face charges at the time. Secretary state gentry crowl he ended up committing suicide. He was alluded to in this this scheme and there was one other state lawmaker who was it tangentially facing charges that he decided to take his own life as well. So it was a fascinating chapter that really kind of saw. You saw undercover operations. You saw an undercover agent who was working as a lobbyist in the state legislature for years that really led to a lot of reforms and thats kind of one of the other themes of this book is you saw any time there was corruption or misdeeds that there were generally an attempt to have some sort of course correct, even though sometimes it enough and what we found is once the course correction took place, there would be immediate efforts to dial back by lawmakers who, of course, dont like anyone looking over their shoulders and and second guessing their their activities and deeds. So basically, once a decade, wed have another big scandal. And after the big one that happened with the bingo about ten years later, theres another one called operation tennessee, named after another Tennessee State song, which sort of outraged lawmakers that the state songs would be taken in, such as the good news is, i think we have 11 state songs now. So theres three so more investigate more scandals to fill. So rocky top was an undercover sting, a bribery sting where an fbi basically paid off five. Now former lawmakers to pass a bill to recycle all electronic goods. And the sort of leading character in that thing was a guy named john ford, senator john ford from memphis, who had been an incredible mover and shaker at the capitol down here forever. And known for his sort of flamboyant lifestyle and his penchant for driving at triple digit speeds down i40 to memphis and back. And early on, he got he got pulled over and claimed he had legislative immunity that nobody could give him tickets because he was a lawmaker, which turned out not to be the case. And then he got into a sort of fight with a bunch of truckers who were on i40, who got on the radio together and tried to box him in to keep them from passing in in his mercedes and at which point he allegedly opened the sunroof and started waving a gun around, he claimed no, no, it wasnt a gun. This was a newfangled thing at the time called the cell phone, which of course, were pretty blocky. And heavy. And he went to trial and actually was acquitted. Interestingly, the at the time the leadership of the senators speaker john wilder, who down there for nearly 30 years as speaker, they all rallied around him and said, no, no, hes a great guy. He would never do anything bad. And their character witnesses and and basically rallied, you know, circle the wagons around him, which is something that we saw repeatedly throughout the course of the book, where someone get in trouble. Everyones saying, no, no, no. This is just you know, this is just media and political opponents. And whoever and. That was fine until finally it wasnt. Ultimately, when there is fbi video of ford taking payments of hundred dollar bills and hes has to resign and was convicted it sort of was the culmination and again another spurt of ethical sort of ambition that didnt really stick that much either. The next chapter we had was actually about representative Jeremy Durham, who we alluded to i think earlier, who a sort of up and comer, a really aggressive and and bright light in the Republican Party. And but apparently didnt care too much for the rules and also had a very you disturbing, you know, allegations of sexual predatory conduct at. The capitol with, you know, interns lobbyists any any any woman basically was up there the a lot of these stories were broken by my colleague here and and our our our friend dave bouchet, who was a reporter for the tennessean the time as well. And dave helped us write this chapter, which is really great to get the sort of, you know, first eye view that, you know, the real of the guys that they wrote these stories. I wrote some of them for the ap as well, but they broke a lot of the the big news in the end that the attorney general an investigation and put out a report and detailed 22 instances of Sexual Misconduct which led him to be thrown out of the legislature at the time. The first one or the second one since reconstruction. And of course, weve had more since that was really kind of reopened. The floodgates incidentally, one of the women quoted in this report was complained to the durham and and said, no, leave me alone, you know, youre married and im you know, im an intern or i forgot what she was and this isnt right. And his to her was. Well, you know, this the way things are around here. Welcome to capitol hill, which we made the title of of our book when Speaker Senate speaker ron ramsey heard about this, he was outraged. And, you know, and he said when, i hear someone say, welcome to capitol hill. It just me want to smack them in the mouth, which was, you know, a typical statement for ramsey was it was a great quote at the time the next chapter that we had was was about glenn caserta who was the speaker some of might recall was a fairly recent development as he was elected speaker in 2019 and had been in the legislature for, you know, close to two decades and had really been working steadfastly to leadership is what he really wanted to accomplish. Within six months he was drummed out and was gone and is now know out of the legislature and really a story about the quest power and then sort of not what to do with it and then having you know basically an aide named Kate Catherine with whom he exchanged really sort of horrific Text Messages which once joel ebert here got his hands on, reported on of just racist, you know, misogynistic claims and basically thought that his people would sort of ignore this and basically circle around him, like they had sort of he said, oh, this is locker room talk, sort of channeling donald trump. And he went on talk radio and said, dont worry, nothing else is going to come out. And of course, more came out and in end there was a confidence vote, a no vote, and he lost it overwhelmingly and was the first speaker. And, you know, 130 odd years did not serve his term as full term as speaker of the house. So a pretty momentous change up there in attitudes. And then the final of full chapter we did was about some Campaign Shenanigans that are going on up there in and are still ongoing. And the trials are still pending involving actually cassidy after he was drummed out of speaker. Another lawmaker named robin smith, who has pleaded guilty and the same kate, catherine who put together a sort of campaign vendor that they called Phenix Solutions anonymously and they were going to try to get money from state and from from lawmakers to do their mail and in their legislative correspondence, sort of under the under the cover of anonymity. And theyve been charged or charged with kickbacks and bribery and, other things related to that is a guy named brian kelsey is a former state senator who was also indicted and guilty finally to basically funneling his campaign money. Its illegal to use state Campaign Funds or federal. And so he took that money from a state account, gave it to these other Political Action committees who then donated it to a National Group called the american conservative union. That the folks who do the cpac conferences and they then ran ads in, the campaign, the woman who did all this is now kelseys wife. And in and the whole thing was was was pretty pretty sordid. Now hes fighting his conviction. Hes appealing that to court. And thats ongoing as well. And at the very end, we a chapter called lawmakers behaving badly to sort of encapsulate all the folks that we couldnt do a full chapter on. And theres a law that i think it turned theres Something Like 40 of them that we included in a friend of, ours, who did another presentation for us, counted them up and said about half of them were democrats. And out of more republicans, as it turns out, this is not a partizan problem. This is a lawmaker problem. And think, looking at the 50 year history of these scandals, that was kind of one of the nice parts about this is youre not seeing one Party Dominant right you saw literally the political shift tennessee during that time period from democrat dominance. Now republicans the scandals are the same you know theres republicans and democrats and in both of these scandals. So one thing i want to want to ask you about is the experience of coauthoring. I know youve youve talked briefly here. Will you go into kind of what your process about working with each other on this and also is the process of the book from beginning to end . Yeah. So mean we basically pitched this idea to vanderbilt not if this would be of and sure enough it was. And so after that we had to quickly come up with our formal we did that together and we got approval and then we got a contract that basically said, youve got to write this book in a year. It was a little surprising for us that it would be that and easy, but we decided at that point this was a pandemic. So we we pitched this i think i wrote Betsy Phillips with vander who is in the back of the room here and, maybe my last week at the tennessean i believe the tennessean. Then we get an agreement to write this book and this january of 2021 and weve got all of 2021 to write the book. And we sat around for six months and did nothing you classic boring author life we have our day jobs too that we to worry about so and at a certain point i think it was june or july we were like, all right, we need to get this this act together and we start doing research and we start pulling everything together. And we really kind of hammered it out. And six months, the ebb and flow of of, you know, both of our schedules eric covers in the legislature now in the legislature operates between generally january and may ish so it kind of fit in that time period of working a lot in the latter half of the year so that was, you know, kind of the difficult process of like goading each along and making sure, hey, are you doing a thing . Am i doing a thing . And then we split up the chapters just based off of what we felt was. You know, you have a background on this . I have a background on this. And then we met in the middle on the introduction, the the yeah, the end of it basically. Yeah. And basically used, you know, online documents and trying to basically, you know each other back read the chapters, make suggestions and then of, you know, joels wife is a former journalist and she read it as well. And had people read it back to us and, you know, it was it was it challenging that, you know, when we worked the state house together, we sat took the calls apart from each other and could just sort of turn around and talk to each other. And now with him being in chicago and the pandemic and everything else, like a lot of it was just a lot of phone calls, lot of emails, a lot of is versions of the story going back and forth and then the usual logistical problems of me sending him one version thinking it was another and him editing something that way, you know, things that were like this shouldnt be is technically challenging as it is but but inevitably it becomes that because a book becomes pretty unwieldy at some point and im used to writing my newsletter every every week is about 3500 words i think the book when we figured out the word count was like 80,000. And it just, you know, its a little bit of logistical challenge of keeping that all straight and figure out, you know, where we are in a number together. And then since it is an Academic Press and since we were trying to be journalistic about it, we also did footnotes and and including in the footnotes we did hyperlinks to newspaper dot com, which is an incredible resource subscription, unfortunately, but its about under 25 bucks a year. I think. But essentially, if you read the book and youre interested, you can look at the footnote, click on that link if or if, have the online kindle and then go read the original newspaper report that were citing, which, you know, as a history nerd. I think it to me is really exciting. And then the other thing we also did was we wanted it in vein. Leave this as a sort of resource for to look at the original document. So every foya that filed and there were multiple we got from the federal government, department of justice specifically, we have on a script account which youll find at the very end of the book. So if you want to read the original correspondence that the fbi had on some these investigations, you can find that yourself. I have a couple of other questions up here about social media empower power that i want to talk about. But if anyone else has additional questions you like to discuss, if youll be coming to the well get to those in just a just a couple of minutes. So from the book this quote was early on the rise of social media and Cable Television has changed ways that all of us consume news because we have so many options. We now have the ability to choose the news that we want to see. So you guys talk about how social media has kind of changed your jobs in the past few years. Yeah, its its good and bad, right . Because you know, in the old days, you had to wait for a press release if you got one or didnt or you had to go find somebody and ask them a question. And and, you know, thats the sort of nuts and bolts of reporting, political reporting is a lot of its about relationships. And, you know, now with social media, theres a lot of noise there and not all of it is accurate. And in fact, a lot of it isnt. And so can cause a lot of trouble in terms of trying to track down and figure it out. One example id have of that was during the recent special session that we had on Public Safety rumors spread like wildfire that the legislature turned off the water fountains to prevent the protesters from being to drink water on a hot day. And it was of accepted as fact. And people are like, this is an outrage. And whatever the next a lawmaker stood up on the floor and challenged the speaker and said, why did you turn off the water fountains and the speaker. Well, i didnt there on and it was kind of like this very strange kind of like echo chamber thing. I confess i didnt go out to the water fountain tested, but i also hadnt reported this in the first place, so i felt absolved of the whole thing. But it is interesting that, you know, that might have been true, but it wasnt. And then, you know, people are repeating these things werent anywhere near the building and then it sort of takes off it gets a life of its own. So yeah i think one of the other benefits though of social media is that you can you follow people in a way you couldnt before, right . So its not practical to literally call every single state lawmaker and get their reaction for story that youre working on. It was at least when i was covering the legislature to create a twitter list and see the account for single lawmaker, and they may respond a current event or something in the news. And you can have that sort of aggregation in front of you. So thats one of the benefits sometimes youre just seeing the echo chamber live in of you, but thats kind of a nice way to be adept and using social media to a benefit that can be otherwise an unwieldy another specific of the book with power near the end you read a familiar pattern can be detected from this chronicle of corruption and scandal when faced with scrutiny or criticism, officials tend to deflect and denies wrongdoing at all cost, while blaming others until they can no longer prevent their downfall, grasping to power is an understandable human instinct, yet ill advised for most of those described here as any good deeds will be outweighed by their mistakes. We talk about power and how kind of you saw it throughout your research. Yeah i mean thats of one of the main themes of the book, right . You see people that are in office and a lot of people are running for the right reasons. A lot people are in office for the right reasons, but there are many people who are in that and just see this for the raw power it may be and want to hold on to, you know, the facts right . And it doesnt matter what party it is, it doesnt matter what state it is. There are nefarious who will really kind of push back. And were seeing that right now on the National Level in many ways, but were seeing it on the local level and in state legislatures. So people face a scandal, they say, you thats just my detractors, thats just the liberal media or conservative media, whatever may be. And they really hold on and dig in their heels. And i think theres something the Power Dynamics being in elected office and feeling like, hey, got my constituents back home and i know they support me because im an r or im a d and the facts dont necessarily matter. And i think thats when you see this sort of problematic behavior really go unchecked. And thats what i think we are as reporters and hopefully the public start to look at facts and hold people accountable in ways where right now were not seeing that. And in many instances, i think jill covered that pretty well. So and i see we have some questions, so why dont we go to the yes often when people tell the truth, they are met with lots problems such as hate speech and distractions and even assassination. Have you gentlemen ever received of this type of ill will . Thats a good question. Im not sure ive gotten any death threats, but ive certainly had some nasty things said about me and that just from the people that im pretty friendly with at the capitol. No, i mean, people do say nasty things and its and i think weve seen theres just been this recent coverage that our colleague phil williams, that at channel five has been covering this this running for mayor of franklin, including some neonazis that are somehow tangentially involved in the campaign. And just really awful things are said about him and sort of not so veiled to him and to his credit, hes just plowed ahead and doing his job. But some point it makes you worry, right . Because you know, all it takes is one crazy person to to really, you know, go off the deep end of fortunately for us, for me, i mean, the nothings ever come of it. But we have had in the past, you know big angry fights about guns and access to guns and at the legislature. And for a long time the legislature banned guns in the building. And then when we moved to the new building, the cordell hull building, which is just a two block sort of south of here the leaders, decided were going to stop having this gun ban in the legislative building. And there is a lot of of, you know, unease about that. So whos going to come in and whos armed and might come of it happily . Nothing has the capital itself. The governor has said, no, i still want to keep the gun ban in place. So theres theres a disconnect there where guns can actually be brought in by. Yes. Knock on wood, i suppose for us its been, you know, so far so good. We have another question. Yes, good morning. Thank you for speaking today. I think its a wise decision to set 50 year cutoff. Im wondering if you two have favorite political scandals outside that and why a . Very political scandals outside 50 year period, right . Yeah, thats a good one. In the opening introduction of this book, we allude to the first sort of scandal of the state of tennessee when essentially u. S. Senator william blunt at the time was facing allegation of essentially trying to benefit financially from the sale of land personally. And he ended up ultimately ousted from impeached from the u. S. Senate he was the first actor in the federal government to be impeached at the time. And he is now has blunt county named after him. And he came back to tennessee. And he was heralded it wasnt drummed out of political he was welcomed here. So thats probably one of my more favorite ones. Theres some obscure ones that we allude in the introduction. I did a heck of a amount of Research Newspapers dot com where im just literally searching like corruption or arrested lawmaker wrongdoing and finding things like you know a guy in 1920 name like cb claiborne or Something Like that who was suggested to do something, you know, like being bribed in in a committee, Something Like that. So those were those, were minor ones. But there laughable ones that i would encourage you to look at the introduction for, well, this is cheating a little bit because my mind happens just before the time frame that we that we selected maybe 55 years ago, not 50, but theres a senator, ed gillick, who was indicted, taking bribes to help out people to get electrical licenses in memphis. His lawyer was neal, who was a famous lawyer who had been a prosecutor in in the watergate investigation. Later was a defense attorney for the exxon valdez spill. And hes an amazing tennessee lawyer. But he argued tennessee lawmakers, just like federal lawmaker, have immunity from prosecution for anything they say or do while theyre in office. And you got a federal judge to agree with them and basically say that you indict him for for basically admitting out loud that he was taking this money to get these guys or electrical licenses. The case went all the way to the supreme court, the u. S. Supreme court. And in a ruling in 1982, i think they they ruled that no lawmakers dont have the same immunity. The constitution speaks only to congress. People in the u. S. Congress not state lawmakers, and sort of affirmed this idea that the feds could go after local lawmakers for what they were doing. You know, if that hadnt stood, then pretty much the rest of book wouldnt have happened. And a lot of these scandals have been prosecuted. And sadly, from a perspective of Good Government or my perspective, at least the u. S. Court has in recent years dialed back on that more and more. And that a lot of crimes you know, we had the governor of virginia who was convicted actually by jack evans, the the current prosecutor in the trump case of, misdeeds. And they threw that out on the basis that the federal government didnt have the right to prosecute sitting governor and there. And it set a precedent that may not be good for chapter or the second edition of our book if and when it ever runs another. Is there a scandal brewing with the current speakers residency issues and money . I a scandal is, you know. Theres a public uproar element to a scandal and theres a criminal element to a scandal. The the speakers thing is interesting where i mean this was the background he this is the speaker who championed the ouster or was in charge during the ouster of the tennessee three of the two that actually got ousted in the one story johnson who avoided by a single vote. People started digging around and figured out that the speaker Cameron Sexton has a residence in West Nashville not too far from where i live, as it turns out. And that, you know, hes been living there during the week, the session, and then theres questions about whether hes an actual resident of his, which is in crossville in cumberland county, or here, which, you know, the question is, is that legal . Youre supposed to live where you are. You represent, as it turns out, a lot of speakers, tennessee history have lived in nashville. They actually have a lot more work to do year round than your of the mill lawmakers and claims that he goes home every weekend and referees basketball games all this stuff so you know legally speaking, i mean no, there isnt any case of, you know, happening on that one. I mean, there is a lawsuit that was filed by justin jones of the two lawmakers got thrown out saying that his ouster was illegal. Thats in federal court, has less to do with the residency element of it, i guess. You know, the jurys still out. Well, well see what happens. My my impression is that it might not look great for him to be living in nashville, but its also not out of step with. What you know, democratic speaker jimmy naveh or or others who did before him. So i guess well see what happens. Another question. Yes, you mentioned early on that a the wagons which is very typical of what people do politics so many times those people circling the wagons know that what theyre circling is like. Was there any evidence or any aftereffects of, all of those people that were peripheral involved in, the scandals that they any thing that affected them personally from a political standpoint and in particular, obviously, matthew attorney general, you talked about federal judges, federal judges. Most attorney general generals make opinions on. It all address any of those other people that circle wagons and some of the aftereffects of that. And the attorney general and federal judges not so much we mostly focus on gubernatorial candidates, governors, state legislative officials on question of circling the wagons you know consequences, or people knowing that you know there there be wrongdoing and moving forward, you know, circling it anyways. One of the main players in that was glen cassidy. So hes the former House Speaker here and, he initially was a huge defender of Jeremy Durham, although, you know, it was very clear that Jeremy Durham was not an innocent character at the time. It was largely just because of political. This was one of the first Major Political scandals republicans faced when they took over the state legislature here. And so this was kind of seen as a, hey, we need to push back because we dont want to admit any wrongdoing or faults at a certain point, cassidy decided to change his tune, and that came after after all these allegations of misconduct with women, Campaign Finance issues and whether he illegally used Campaign Finance money at that point, carson has sort of turned on him and said, hey, he lied to my face. Thats when it wasnt convenient for him to continue to back this, you know, once protege of him. And we saw that with couple of other examples. Cassidy you know, political expediency is is only it only goes so far. And when you can see the writing on the walls, you know, theres only so many times that people will back you. And so we saw that when cassidy wasnt ultimately, you know, held up support after, you know, text message scandal that he faced. I just add that i think the effects usually political or can be political. After the tennessee waltz bribery sting in 2005, the Republican Party made a really big push about the fact the Democratic Party was complicit in or at least, you know, enabling in this corrupt behavior by lawmakers specifically ford family. And this bled into a really Big Senate Race that happened in 2006 by Harold Ford Jr and who was the nephew of john ford was convicted in that case against bob corker, whos a republican. And at the time, tennessee is easy to forget at this point was at the very least a swing state. But it was a democratic state. Phil bredesen that year won every county when he was reelected governor. And and harold junior lost by just less than three points. And its, you know, difficult imagine that the Corruption Scandal involving his family didnt have a role in that and and basically 26 is the last time a democrat has won a statewide race in tennessee. The democrats havent been able to turn the tables quite as effectively on. Republicans these days. You know, in terms of making that a narrative about, you know, this is the republicans enabled each other and we have not seen sort of any change in legislative make up or in statewide races yet. Well see. Gloria johnson, who was one of the people targeted outsiders earlier this year, is now running for the u. S. Senate against marsha blackburn. And shes raised a lot of money and shes got a lot of enthusiasm and well see if she actually makes a dent yeah, shes definitely speaking in county today. I believe we have time for two more questions. Good morning. So too long ago we were able to get information a lot more slowly and able to fact check things as journalists. How do you know that you are getting back to the source when information is coming at you so quickly . How how do you know when its the right time to publish an article or bring out information when is coming out so fast . What what do you guys do to decide, okay, this is where this is ground zero, where we can get the truth you know, you sort of hope, you know, you have to put some in your in your local press corps. I know it might be difficult, but having experience and dealing with individuals and knowing the players just it helps to sort get through the first level of you know whether its b. S. Or whatever you want to spend or whatever want to call it. Yeah. I mean, there is a lot of know like we talked about earlier, theres a lot of noise, theres a lot chatter and theres a lot of attempts to sort of try to get perspectives out from like what they call earned media, opposed to paid media. I wouldnt want to claim i get it right every time, but, you know, ive been there a long time and i generally think that, you know, my publication is a weekly publication, so i have an extra luxury that its not. You know, when i was at the ap was every story, every minute. And now its more sort of like measured approach. I also think the other thing is it depends on the story right. So if youre talking about, you know, something that happened in a larger public sense, theres a lot of people that you can sort of have validate that fact or that piece of information. If youre talking about something thats behind the scenes we you know, when i was covering the Glenn Cassidy situation, they held a closed caucus meeting at one point that was very reminiscent of whats going on in congress right now, where theyre literally asking lawmakers to put their cell phones in a back area. Well, the way that i got around was i asked a lawmaker themselves to record the meeting. He gave me a copy of the recording, and they did. I would ask lawmakers, give me the call in number four, a caucus that happened over the phone so i could listen to it myself. You know, youd be surprised at how some people are willing to play ball on that, even if it is their own party. Its because they think that sunlight is a good and i think thats good for democracy. And then on the other side, things, as you know, if its a major power thing, like when we were doing the Jeremy Durham investigation, we had to have multiple sources of information. So you couldnt just rely on one person. And if you did, needed to be heres the evidence of that. Maybe its a document, maybe its a police report, whatever it may be. So knowing, you know, the different varieties of that threshold, i think is something that comes with being in a newsroom and having editors and layers of oversight. So we have time. One final question. This ive back onto that. But youre talking about the role of social media today. And what do you feel is the future where youve got all the social Media Information quotes out there and the majority of the people are looking at this and, theyre taking it for gospel . Well, there is no accountability for it. And how do you see the role of the First Amendment and the social media and your job as reporters in the future . Now, since its getting so complicated, i think traditional media still a an Important Role as an arbiter of, you know, the truth and sort of accuracy a lot of times what you see on social media is a lot of opinions and a lot of, you know, ideas that are put forth, but people still tend to link to a story they read in the New York Times or the tennessean or whatever newspaper as sort of like, see, even the New York Times said this or even, you know, the commercial appeal had this. And i think it makes a big it makes a big difference when actually written by something thats filtered through or people have actually paid attention to the facts and try to parse out things that arent true and get them know in a format that you still carries some weight. Maybe im one of the few optimists left on the future of professional journalism, but i think it still an Important Role. On the other side of the coin. A i its frightening me know, i do think that need to always, you know members of this democracy have a healthy skepticism of the news, the information and the people that we are, you know, interacting with thats politicians or News Organizations. Make sure that were holding them to account. Right. If a News Organization screws up generally, they admit when they up, they issue a correction. They go on air and they say, hey, this was a mistake and were sorry for that. If we had more politicians that did that, i think wed be better off. But, you know, i think we as as again, members of the democracy need to be increased. We are skeptical of the information and make sure that we have a personal vetting process so were not duped by things like ai and just groupthink. So so our time has come to an end joe weiner thank you for being here this morning to help us kick off the southern festival as a reminder, thank. As a reminder, their book is welcome to capitol hill available for purchase at the parnassus tent. If youd like to buy a copy, get it