#438 - "The End Is Near" Ex-Scientologist Explains Their #1 New Threat | Aaron Smith-Levin

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The most quickly failing cult in the world, although you wouldn't know it living here in the Clearwater area. Yeah, they move in silence, man. It's one of those things. It's like you don't talk, you don't really, you see them walking around, but you don't really hear much except for the people that were the ex-Scientologists like yourself who were like speaking out and making a lot of noise about it and all the evil shit they're doing behind the scenes. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of noise downtown. Right now, because of everything Scientology's doing down there to take more property from the city, take more streets. Yeah, you're like tapped, you're super tapped into all the local stuff that's happening with how they're tapped into like the local little government here and the little local economy. Yeah. So like what, and for people that aren't aware, we're talking about like the Scientologists headquarters in downtown Clearwater, which affects, I mean, how big of an area does it really affect? a surprisingly small area. Right, that's what I thought. Totally. Yeah. It's pretty much limited to downtown Clearwater, Florida. Right. And they're starting to have a little bit of a sprawl just because they keep snapping up motels for their Sea Org workers to live in, different motels and stuff like this. Because this is the largest Scientology base in the world, there's actually a bunch of different levels of Scientology organizations at the Clearwater base, and Miscavige likes to keep them all separate in their living quarters. So even though there's only, I don't know, 1,600, 1,700 workers, he has like five different apartment complexes and motels and hotels that he's by because he doesn't want them all living together. He wants to keep the different echelons of organizations separate so they don't fraternize and mingle. It's one of the ways to keep everyone under control and to keep disaffection from spreading quickly, you know what I mean? Yeah. Okay, so it feels like Scientology has a bigger influence regionally than they really do, but it's pretty much limited to Clearwater's downtown. Mm-hmm. Which, I mean, you probably know, is not more than a mile wide and a mile high. Right. It's pretty small. So it's been a few years since you've been here. Yeah. So for the new viewers who may not be aware of you, how'd you get into Scientology? There we go. Let's start from there. I say I was born and raised in Scientology, but I was four years old when my mom got in. So my earliest memories are of Scientology and being in Scientology, so I just say I was born and raised. But so I was. I was four years old when my mom got into Scientology. It was just my mom. My folks were never together. By the way, that's why I have the two last names. It's Aaron Smith Levin. Smith is my mom's name. Levin is my dad's name. Oh, okay. Some people think I took my wife's name or something. It's just. I've always been Smith Levin, and the Levin was never in Scientology. My mom got into Scientology, and she got in real quick and real deep and started working for them full-time. So me personally, I went to public school until I was about 12, and that's when my mom took us out of school. And we did homeschool for a year, but started working full-time for Scientology. This was up in Philadelphia. And within about six months, we moved down here to Clearwater and studied Scientology here full-time for a few years as a staff member from Philly. So I was here training, but I wasn't one of the staff. You know what I mean? I was still a Scientology employee from Philly, but I was studying here. I was an out-of-work trainee is what they call it. Okay. So I did that for a few years until I was 15. Still no schooling. So 12 years old was the end of my formal schooling because everything else after that was just Scientology. 15 years old, went back to Philly to work full-time for Scientology there. Long story short, ended up joining the Sea Organization and being one of their billionaire little Navy-looking guys running around in Los Angeles. They're running around Clearwater too. They do. But I wasn't one of those guys in Clearwater. I was one of those guys in Los Angeles. Gotcha. Yeah. So essentially born and raised in Scientology. By the time I left Scientology in 2014, I was 34, had spent half my life working for Scientology. And then pretty quickly started my YouTube channel growing up in Scientology. And I pretty much try to be Scientology's worst nightmare online, just from an information perspective. You know, just putting out the truth about Scientology in an entertaining, engaging way that might be, that might be interesting and catch people's attention. I have fun with the Scientology content, but it is all geared around pretty much trying to do everything I can in whatever small way I can to keep people from being tricked into joining Scientology and to help people who are leaving Scientology. And YouTube's just been a great way to do that. Yeah. Have you got any backlash or any intimidation or any sort of threats from Scientology for doing all this shit? It comes and goes, but the mainstay is the website they created, under my own name. Oh, yeah. They do that with everybody, right? Yeah. Everybody that speaks out about them, they'll make a slanderous website or a fake website about them. Totally. Very specifically, they did it to every single person who was on Leah Remini's TV show. And not only did they do it to every one of those people, they waited until that person's episode aired. Like whatever, let's say that Wednesday night, they would put their website live. Wow. Yeah. So Aaron Smith-Levin.com. They have a team of IT folks who are building websites and, you know, doing stuff. Oh, yeah. Totally. Marketing shit. Yeah. Right? I guess you would call it marketing. Yeah. No, they've got a whole team that creates all these dossiers of fake information. You know, if Miscavige is in town, when Miscavige is in town, sometimes PIs will be following me around. I think it's not so much that they care what I'm up to. It's that they just want to know where I am so they know I'm not about to like ambush him when he steps out of a building or something like that. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Like back in the Lisa McPherson days, which I'm sure you're familiar with. You know, this was back in the 90s. It was a Scientologist who had a psychotic break and ended up being isolated in the Fort Harrison Hotel and then ended up dying in Scientology's care. It created a whole era of protesting and anti-Scientology activism. And some of the main people that were involved in that Lisa McPherson protesting, whenever Miscavige was in town, they had to have PIs with eyes on those people at all times. Really? Yeah. Just so they know, if they know where you are, they know where you're not. And they just wanted to make sure Miscavige was able to move from building to building without. How old is that guy now? He's got to be 65. He's got to be close to 65. Tom Cruise is 64 and I know they're close in age. So I always forget how old he is exactly, but he's up there right around there. Yeah. I got to imagine Scientology is going to die with him, right? Do you think there's any going to. Is there anyone like on deck who's going to take the. Who's going to take the spot when he dies? There's nobody like named and being trained and groomed to replace him. But there's probably like five or six people on deck who probably think they could step in. Who do you think those people are? Well, they're people that. Like I personally know some of them, but they're not people that are known even widely in Scientology. Like all the famous executives in Scientology are gone. And when I say famous, I mean famous to Scientologists. Like before Mike Rinder left Scientology, you never would have really known Mike Rinder's name, right? Right. Right. Or before the going clear. He was in the going clear, wasn't he? But I mean, I believe he. Yeah, he was in going clear. Yeah. But like a lot of these Scientology managers, they were famous people within Scientology. Right. All those people are gone. So even Scientologists don't know the names of the executives that are helping Miscavige run the show. They just don't do that anymore. There used to be like five or six international events a year when Miscavige would emcee and he would introduce. He would walk on that giant stage. Yeah. With the big f***ing eagles and. That's right. It would look like something from like the Third Reich. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And these executives would be introduced by name. They'd be famous figures in Scientology. And those guys are all gone. They don't exist. And Miscavige still holds these events and he still brings out speakers, but he'll just introduce some generic person as representative from international management. And it's some like, you know, 28-year-old person that no one's ever seen before. So my point is all of these people behind the scenes, maybe five or six key people, I'm sure they think they could step in and run the show when Miscavige dies. Does he have any. Is he active at all? Like, does anyone in Scientology ever see him? Is he still sort of like beating the drums, trying to get people motivated? motivated? Is there a lot of active recruiting? Oh yeah, there is. Wow. There is. It's not working. No one's joining Scientology these days. They're losing people faster than- How many people are in Scientology right now? It's 20 to 25,000. I've had to revise my estimates downward. Every now and then I'll rerun my estimates in my little Excel spreadsheet. And it's 20, generously 20 to 25,000. Is it 18? Is it 24? When you're working with low numbers, the percentages, the difference between 15 and 20 is pretty great, but the difference between 5,000 people is not that great. Do you know what I mean? It might be a 25, 30% difference, but we're talking about small numbers of people. Small numbers. And we're talking about in the entire world. We're not talking about Clearwater, Florida. Oh, wow. Yeah. And this includes all the Sea Org members and all the people you see wearing the vests, walking up and down the streets. It includes all. All the workers, all the Sea Org members. So what was it in the early 2000s, do you think? It was about 20 years ago. We have this from verified inside sources of the membership roles of the International Association of Scientologists, which are never published. But insiders who've left had said around 2000, the membership list was about 50,000 strong. Really? Yeah. So it's been cut in half. More than half. It's been cut in half in 20 years, which makes sense. You know- Because you see it. If you go into these buildings, they're empty. It's such a weird thing because it's like, if you don't know jack shit about Scientology, you can move around this town and never really know anything about it, right? And it's like, for me, it's kind of like out of sight, out of mind. They do a great job of flying under the radar. You don't really run it. There's a few weird things about Clearwater that it's like, huh. You don't really think much about it though, right? Like empty buildings or the little robot people walking up and down the street or the big buildings. But it's just like, if you don't really know about it, it's easy to ignore. Until you get introduced to some wealthy person or you're doing some big real estate deal or you get into the higher levels of society around here with the richer people and you're like, someone will tell you like, just be aware, this guy's a Scientologist. So don't say anything about it or whatever. Like, hey, we're one of this guy's house. Just, you know, this weird stuff is hanging around because he's a Scientologist and just don't ask any questions and you'll be fine. And, you know, sometimes that does happen around here. And a lot of the wealthy people in this part of Florida are Scientologists. I would say like, if you, if you were to take all the like richest people in this town, I would say probably a good chunk of them, a high percentage of them would be Scientologists. If you're talking about Clearwater specifically, you know, you could be right. All that big money on the beach though, none of that's Scientology. But if you're talking about, if you're talking about downtown Clearwater area, you know, you're right. Yeah. One of my friends bought a house on, God damn, what is that road? It's not Fort Harrison, but it's like, it's like more to the West of Fort Harrison. Osceola? You know, you know, like Willadell or Hulk Hogan used to live? Yes. Where there's like a, so, so it was like the Bel Air golf course. If you're going up Indian Rocks Road, there's a T. You can either go right to Fort Harrison or go left. And it wraps around to Willadell on the left side of the golf course. Yeah. And if you go up there, there's like all these huge gated houses and like this gated community at the very end that you can like, it opens a gate and you can go back down. It's like Harbor Oaks. Maybe the Harbor Oaks neighborhood. It's where one of the, Presley's daughter or something used to live. Lisa Marie. Yeah. Next to like Kirstie Alley and Johnson. Yeah. I know what you're talking about. She used to live down there. So he bought a house that was owned by Scientologists and the whole bottom floor was like this. Huge basement auditing room. Yeah. So that makes sense. Yeah. Because there's certain neighborhoods in Clearwater that attract a lot of Scientologists. They call it the presidential district, just north of like, north of Drew, where you've got the Jefferson and the Washington and the, for some reason, it's all Scientologists there. And then of course, you got the places where all the Sea Org members live in the apartments. But because, here's why I'm agreeing with you that in the Clearwater area, if you're looking at the wealthiest people, in the downtown area, in their surrounding neighborhoods, you're going to have a lot of Scientologists. And it's because the wealthiest Scientologists in this area also have giant companies, whether it's Know Before or whether it's Consumer Energy Solutions or Postcard Mania or Nationwide Title Clearing or Moises Agami's development company, Valor Capital. And so you've got Tom Cummins has an energy company, Sean, Pat Clowden has an energy company. Of course, you've got the Duggins. Who are the only real billionaire Scientologists. Grant Cardone doesn't count because he's a fake billionaire. So you've got a lot of Scientology money right here in Clearwater. You probably got more Scientology money. Who are the Duggins? Trish Duggan and Bob Duggan. They're divorced now. His money is her money. Is she the woman who has the museum? Exactly. Okay. She's got the, is it called the Imagine Museum? Yes, that's what it's called. In St. Pete's. And she's also the one who's heavily, heavily connected to Trump and the Trump administration and the Attorney General. He's, he put her on the board of the Kennedy Center. He thanked her by name at one of his events. In fact, at a recent meeting of the Clearwater Rotary Club, she was bragging that, uh, she goes, I'm the one who put up the $2 million bail for Trump when he got arrested. And she said, yes, after lunch today, I'm going to meet with James Uthmeyer. We're going to sue Dr. Fauci. So she's very well connected. No way. Trish Duggan is the one greasing the wheel, greasing the wheels in the halls of power, um, for Scientology, you know, with the current administration for sure. That's fucking crazy. Yeah. And she lives where? Well, I mean, she's a billionaire, so she probably lives more than one place. Of course. But I do believe. But is she here a lot? I do believe this is her home. This is her base. Yeah. Okay. And, you know, she got her money in the divorce, but I, I think she's surpassing her husband as the number one financier of Scientology. Dude, that is crazy. I wonder, is she the richest person in Scientology? Uh, her and Bob. Yeah. He, uh, he, he made his billions, um, uh, taking a company public. It's a pharmaceutical company. Pharmaceutical company, ironically, 'cause of how against the pharmaceutical industry Scientologists are, but it's literally where their wealthiest member got, made all of his money. I think it's a public company called Pharmacyclics, and, um, he ended up just making a, a mint. But they just turned the other cheek to that, 'cause he-- Well, yeah, I mean, well, he wasn't making antidepressants, I guess. He was making other stuff. Okay. Um, so, yeah, Trish Duggan, if you look it up, you'll, you'll be amazed what you find. Uh, Trish Duggan, Bob Duggan, they've probably given almost half a billion to Scientology. Good lord. Yeah. Most guys like to stick with the same old stuff. The same old wardrobe rotation. A good shirt, a good pair of jeans, and then one pair of shoes that goes with everything. 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That's 40% off with the code DANNYJONES at GLD.com. After you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about them, and please support our show and let them know we sent you. Why do people like that still support it? Like, what's in it for them? It has to do with what Scientology's message is to you, which is you're a god. You are an immortal god. You are an immortal, all-powerful, godlike spiritual being. And Scientology can unlock that potential for you. Yeah. And any trouble that you're having, it's because of other people. We need to get rid of those people. Right. It might be your son or your daughter. Don't worry about it. Yeah. No, Scientology's like self-help on steroids. Right, right. I always say this, too. I always wonder, like, at some levels, there's got to be some positive stuff in there. You know, at least in the early Dianetics parts of it, right? Like, eliminate all the negative influences. Without a doubt. I mean, that's what gets people in. That's what gets people in. That's what gets people interested. That's what gets people to stick around long enough where maybe they feel they've got too much invested in it to turn back now. It's kind of like how people get sucked into MLM scams. Like, at what point do you realize, oh, wait a second, this isn't going to get any better than what it is? At the lower level, Scientology's very self-helpy. It's very empowering. It's very common sense. Tools for life. Communication stuff. Problems stuff. Even Dianetics. You know, Dianetics is definitely a pseudoscience, but even a placebo pill can work about 40% of the time. I mean, when I was in Scientology, it was never really my job to do the recruiting. But the whole Dianetics thing and the Dianetics auditing and kind of that one-on-one sitting in a chair talk therapy. Yeah. I did sort of supervise a couple of those events for first-timers. And, you know, they're going through it. It's like they're really going through it. They're going back into earlier incidents. They're crying. They're sobbing. They're going through the incident again. And then at the end of it, they feel lighter. But everyone feels lighter after you have a good cry. You know? Yeah. But Dianetics. can be a very effective recruiting tool. And that's an example of it. There's a lot of people who will tell you that how they got into Scientology was they tried a Dianetics auditing session and it made them feel better. So they were interested in finding out more. Unfortunately, it's a family destroying international human trafficking cult. That is quite honestly, also a sex trafficking cult. And at one point I'd like to get into making my case for that. Yeah. Let's do it now. We don't jump into it right now. Let's jump into it. So I did a chat recently with Kurt Metzger, who I think you also chatted with recently, right? Oh yeah, Kurt's the best. And he made some joke about all these cults become sex trafficking cults. And I actually said, you know, the one thing Scientology never became was actually a sex cult because the leaders- Right. They let the sex out of it. They left the sex out of it, right? Miscavige got none of that upside. But there is an interesting definition of sex trafficking that even if Scientology isn't a sex cult, it is a sex trafficking cult. And one of the definitions is if an organization benefits institutionally and financially from covering up child sex abuse and enabling child sex abuse. And Scientology absolutely does that. So one of the core beliefs of Scientology is that we are all immortal spiritual beings who've been around for about 60 trillion years. Right. So your body might be 30 years old, but you're not 30 years old. You're 60 trillion years old. Right. My soul, right? Right. You, like you are your soul. Well, if I'm not my body- You're your soul. Right. Yeah. Scientology says soul isn't something you have, it's something you are. So like you are a spiritual being. Right, right, right, right. That makes sense. So if you've got an eight or nine-year-old child, well, that's not an eight or nine-year-old child. That's a 60 trillion-year-old spiritual godlike being occupying a nine-year-old body. 10 years ago, that might've been a full-grown 80-year-old man right there. So Scientology doesn't believe in children. They don't believe in children. Yeah. You're not your body. The age of your body is not relevant. They don't believe in the developing brain. They don't believe that intelligence or maturity, there's no protections in place for children in Scientology. There's no separate rules. There's no concept of age appropriate material or age appropriate behavior. A child, as long as they're old enough to read or write, read and write, can train as a professional Scientology auditor. Now, professional Scientology, auditor is going to do exactly what you might expect a therapist to do. They're going to be interviewing you and interrogating you and talking to you about your deepest, darkest secrets, no matter how perverted or sexual or whatever. Like, these are what auditing sessions get into. You can train to be a Scientology auditor at any age in Scientology. And in fact, the younger you are, the more you are encouraged to do it. What is the youngest one that you've seen? 11 years old, professional class four Scientology auditor. Yeah. Oh my God, dude. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, Yeah. So there's, so, okay. So they don't believe in children and it's against the rules in Scientology to ever report another member to the police. Okay. So if it's discovered that a child is being sexually abused, it's anytime something like this comes up, Scientology will recognize it as a legal threat to the organization, right? They're not against it because of the morality. They're against it because it puts the organization at risk if it's discovered. Right. Its members are doing this. They will thoroughly investigate it. They don't turn a blind eye. They investigate it and they make money off of it. So they profit from child sex abuse because these investigations are done through very long and expensive auditing sessions. So Scientology will take everyone involved and order them to certain Scientology confessional procedures, making tens of thousands of dollars interrogating, not only the child sex abusers, but also the victims of child sex abuse to get to the bottom of what's really going on. And in Scientology's, um, And they're forcing each, each party to pay for these auditing sessions? Absolutely. So they discover child sex abuse, they investigate it, they make money in the process of investigating it, and then they prevent it from being reported to the authorities. So that's, that's basically allowing, uh, creating an environment where the abuse can, can continue. And this is a, legal, meaning legally speaking, this is a form of sex trafficking. Scientology benefits financially and reputationally from the systemic institutional coverup of child sex abuse. So are they running child prostitution rings? No. Do they want kids to be sexually abused? Like literally, no. Do they profit from child sex abuse? Absolutely. They do. And, and I got to tell you how timely this is. There's a book coming out about Beck, the, the, the singer, the musician, the artist Beck, you familiar with him? Yeah. Okay. Um, he was born and raised in Scientology. I didn't know that. Born and raised in Scientology. And a book is coming out called The Last Temptation of Beck. And it details, and I, and I have these reports for you. It details when, uh, how, when Beck was 15 years old, he was having a, um, there, there was a woman, a 32 year old woman named Lisa who was having a long-term sexual relationship, uh, with Beck. And she was a high level Scientologist. She was, uh, an OT. She was how old? She was 32. He was 15. And, and this woman decided that Beck was like her soulmate from a previous life. And she was living at the Celebrity Center in Los Angeles where Beck and his friends were all, you know, running around during the day. And, and she ended up having this illegal sexual relationship with this child. And, and it came up in one of her Scientology ethics interviews. And the ethics officer at that time, a gentleman named Skip Press, uh, he wrote a scathing report detailing not only everything that was happening to Beck, but what was also happening to his 13 year old brother Channing in full-blown sexual relationships with grown adult high-level female Scientologists. And, and this was reported in writing. It was sent to all levels of management. It was sent to the executive director of the Scientology school that one of these kids was going to. It was sent to Scientology central data files. So literally Scientology has on file written detailed evidence of child sex abuse and they profit off of it and they cover it up and they never report it to the authorities. Um, and there's another, there's another case. I mean, there's another case right now of a basketball coach who was found to be sexually abusing kids at a school in LA called like the Albert Einstein Academy. And when the prosecutors were investigating this, they found out that Beck was sexually abusing kids at a school in LA called the Albert Einstein Academy. And they found out that the school he had worked at just prior was the Scientology Delphian school in Los Angeles. So the prosecutors go there thinking, you know, schools are usually very cooperative and, um, helping the police go after predators. Right. For the first time ever, he was faced with these administrators at a school who were stonewalling him. And he goes, this is something's wrong here. And then he found out they were all Scientologists and he's like, oh, they're closing ranks because the Scientology school, everybody who works there is a Scientologist. Right. It turns out that this basketball coach had sexually abused kids at the Delphian school. And when they found out about it, instead of reporting him to the authorities, they gave him a good reference so he would get a job at another school. That's how they got rid of him. Oh my God. And they, um, there's a currently a lawsuit. Did they kick him out of Scientology? That basketball coach for whatever reason was never assigned, had never been a Scientologist to the best of my knowledge. Okay. He's someone they hired just to be the coach, but he abused them. They covered it up and they recommended him to another school. Helped him get a job at another school. Yeah. And, and so that, uh, the executive director of that teacher right now, her name is Karen Dale, long-term Scientologist. Uh, she was deposed in this lawsuit and just lied her ass off about not knowing anything, never having known anything. And then the, the lawyers for the plaintiffs in this civil lawsuit, now that we're talking about, uh, scheduled a deposition for, for the next person. And the attorneys for, um, the defendants realized, oh, we're about to get jammed up here. And they, they turned over the knowledge reports that had been submitted on this coach internally in the, in the Delphian school, proving that they knew what this guy was doing and, and covered it up and silenced the victims. And their idea of accountability is, oh my God, get them out of this school. Let's get them to another school where you can abuse more children. And, um, this is going to be, in my opinion, the downfall of Scientology. Covering up child sex abuse does not have a statute of limitations. And, um, there's a law called the Child Abuse Neglect and Reporting Act, CANRA. And there's different versions of this law in the books in different states, but California, I believe, I believe the prosecutors in California will nail Scientology for their violations of CANRA. Because violating CANRA and Scientology, it's not just an exception to the rule. It's the rule. Scientology policy is, you literally baked in violating the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act. You're not allowed to report any Scientologists to the authorities. But legally in the United States, you're not allowed to not report it. Like you have to report it. There are certain people who are mandated reporters. And, um, there are tons of people in Scientology who know about the child sex abuse, who are mandated reporters and don't report. And every time they don't report, it is a serious violation for which there is no statute of limitations. And I do believe this is how Scientology will get nailed. Yeah. And I was going to say, I think the lawsuits and the judgments and everything might be what brings Scientology down. Like civil lawsuits. Yes, absolutely. Is it possible the judges could be compromised somehow? I mean, never say never, right? Scientology doesn't have any judges that- Because if there's people like Duggan- Yeah. Who can lobby the fucking president- Exactly. Like, how many people can lobby the parts of the judiciary system? Yeah, not many. That's where Scientology's influence has to always be suspected. Because the power of lobbying and the power of money, you never know. You never know quite how deep and far that power is reaching. Now, and obviously, she's got- Trish Duggan has an open door to Trump. I mean, Trish Duggan has an open door to Trump. Trish Duggan has an open door to the Florida Attorney General. But does that get you a federal judge? Does that get you a state judge? I don't know. It's always possible. Now, the Beck thing. Yeah. You said there's a book coming out about it. Yeah, the last- Is this his book? No. No. So he's never admitted any of this? Does he deny it? What does he say about it? Has anyone ever asked him? Beck's not in Scientology anymore. He announced that he was not in Scientology anymore in 2019. Okay. Do not expect Beck to say anything about this. Beck left Scientology through this sort of little loophole. ABC Wednesdays. Abbott is back. Thank you. Now we can finally turn this up. It's going great. Abbott Elementary. Anything can happen in the jungle, right, guys? All new Wednesdays on ABC and streamed next day on Hulu. Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now Coach Hank saves up to 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pregame. He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, Coach. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at bjs.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's, home of the save. Where the Scientologist in his life and his family members didn't have to disconnect from him like usually would happen. He kind of said, I was never really in Scientology. That was my dad's thing. So in Scientology, if you publicly depart your persona non grata, everyone's got to sever ties with you. Right. But if you're saying you were never really in, then have you really publicly departed? It's sort of a little bit of a loophole. Oh, okay. And that's what he did. So if Beck were to come out and publicly confirm that these things were true, I think all the Scientologists in his life would have to cut ties. So I don't expect him to do that. At the same time, I don't expect him to come out and say that it's not true because he's not a Scientologist anymore. And there's plenty of evidence that it is true. And there's plenty of people who were there at the time that will corroborate that it is true. So what's the point of coming out and denying it, right? Mm-hmm. So if you came, if you said anything about it, that would kind of open a can of worms for him. It absolutely would. Best just to keep your mouth shut and let it roll over. Right. And is it fair to say that he would be incentivized to not say anything because he does have family that's in there and he wouldn't want them to face any repercussions? Yeah, well, I mean, the repercussions would probably just be them having to sever ties with him. With him, that's it? Yeah. Okay. You know, there's Scientologist musicians who still work with him in his band. I think his bassist is a Scientologist. I mean, his dad is a famous music arranger and composer. David Campbell. And he still works with his son. And yeah, but Beck was married to a Scientologist for a long time, but they got divorced in 2019 and that's when he announced publicly in a newspaper, in a magazine article, in an interview. He's like, yeah, no, I'm not, I'm not a Scientologist. And never really was. I grew up in it. I'll have a lot of friends with it. It was kind of my dad's thing. But no, Beck was very much a Scientologist. I wonder all the time, like, is it possible that Tom Cruise or John, Travolta could just fucking say, fuck it. I'm taking the mask off. I'm going to burn these fuckers down. I'm over it. I'm sick of it. I mean, it's possible. You asked if I think Scientology would survive the death of David Miscavige. I actually do. I do not think Scientology would survive the departure of Tom Cruise. No. But he's still very much as committed as ever. Yeah. You know, they've been, they've been Photoshopping him out of photos from these events. Like he goes to these events. Yeah. And they actually Photoshop him out of the photos. I think so that he doesn't have to deal with the whole round of press about how much of a Scientologist he still is. I heard that he has like his own at one of the big condos in downtown Clearwater on like the water right there. I heard he has his own like car elevator private entrance to it where like it elevates him up to his condo, like his suite up there. Yeah, that's true. That's fucking crazy, dude. That's true. That's true. What is this? Busted Scientology Photoshopped Tom Cruise and John Travolta out of the event pictures. That's right. Oh, wow. There's a gap. When was this published? 26 April. April of this year. So that would have been from the birthday event. Every March, they do a celebration of L. Ron Hubbard's birthday. Uh-huh. And they're both there next to each other. Yeah, that would have been at Ruth Eckert Hall in Clearwater. Really? That's right. And they Photoshopped him out of, honestly, it was only like a month or two ago. They did a huge groundbreaking ceremony in downtown Clearwater of the new L. Ron Hubbard event hall that they're trying to build. And Tom Cruise was there in like a hot, bright blue suit, you know, like a neon blue suit. Yeah. He was there, you know, waving a shovel in the air next to David Miscavige and they Photoshopped him out completely. Waving a shovel? It was a groundbreaking ceremony. Oh, okay, okay. So everyone's got like little golden shovels and stuff. Oh, my God. That's wild. Just to protect them from any kind of controversy. Yeah, so that way, well, that way Tom gets to show up, rally the troops, show his support, show he's still on board, send a positive message to all the loyal soldiers, but then not have to deal with the fallout in the press of photos of him, you know, saluting David Miscavige going viral again. Right. Yeah. That's funny, man. That's really fucking funny. Yeah. So like, I mean, he could, honestly, Tom's 64 years old. He's not leaving Scientology. How many years does he have left? 30, 20, 5, 10, 20, 30? Right. And his kids are in Scientology too, right? Well, Bell is definitely in Scientology, but, and I'm sure Connor is considered a Scientologist. Connor does not live the life of a Scientologist. Connor's like a pothead. Scientologists aren't allowed to smoke pot. Yeah. I've never met him. I've never met Connor, but I talk to people locally who are friends with Connor. I heard a crazy story about him yesterday that I don't, I'm afraid to say on air. You got to tell me how fair that is. I will tell you after, but actually, I can tell you right now. I'll just have Tyler cut this out. We're going to put a little transition right here. I'm going to tell him a story that's going to be cut out of the podcast. So, all right, we're back. I just told him the story. What did you, what do you think about that? I mean, I think if I'm Tom Cruise, I've got people watching my kids at all times. Yes. You know. Right. Absolutely. But that's like another level. Yeah. I was shocked to hear that. That is wild. It's, yeah. I mean, Connor, I think, look, when you're the son of Tom Cruise and you're, you know, your dad's in some ways, you know, the co-lead of an international human, multi-billion dollar human trafficking cult, nothing really surprises me, but you can also get away with living a life other Scientologists would never be able to live. I mean, I think it's like, honestly, if the fact that the son, like, if I'm a Scientologist and I live in Clearwater and I know that Tom Cruise's son lives locally, is in the community and is just a regular habitual drug user, that's a, that's a scandal in Scientology. Like, like, okay, normal world, someone smoking pot, not a big deal. In Scientology, you're the, you're the son of Tom Cruise and that's the life you're living? That's a huge scandal. And yet, Connor gets away with it. So, I don't think Connor is like a, a real Scientologist. Right. I think that he's, they're just like, hey, just don't do anything too crazy. He's just trying to get by, try not to ruffle any feathers, right? That's, that's my, I mean, he is to, you know, to be fair to him, he's kind of was not put, I mean, he gets to live a great life, put it that way, but I mean, he's kind of put between a rock and a hard place there. Yeah. You know, he kind of has to play both sides. Yeah. He has to help, he tries to live a normal life, do his thing, do what he likes to do, but also like, you got these guardrails, you got to stay, you got to live in between, you know? Totally. And that's why I like, you know, what I say isn't even a criticism, like more power to him. Right. You know, live your life as free as you can. Right. You know, his sister Isabella, she's a much more dedicated Scientologist. What's her story? She lives in the UK. Okay. Yeah. She's like a fully trained Scientology auditor and everything. She's like, she's like diehard Scientologist. Yeah. And is it, is it true that like, so is the basic purpose, like the basic reason that you don't have somebody like Tom or John Travolta or any of these people coming out because when they do these auditing sessions, they basically get their deepest, darkest secrets, like on a level of blackmail to where like, it's kind of like a known, known thing that's in the air. Like, Hey, you want to fuck around? You're going to find out what we got. Like the world's going to find out. I mean, for sure, everything they have in the files is, it's, you know, it is, it is blackmail. And it's, it's material. That's not really how they keep the celebrities in Scientology is with blackmail. It's almost the opposite. They try to be everything to these people. You know, they try to be everything to these people. And like I said, the message is you're wonderful. You're great. You're, you're God-like. We're going to help you in every way that we can. So when you've got, in Tom Cruise's situation and John Travolta's situations specifically. You use the carrot. You don't need the stick. Exactly. Exactly. Grease them up. Yeah. Right. I think even Leah Remini would tell you that on her way out of Scientology, it's not like they sat her down and threatened her. You know, they try to keep you. They try to keep you. And then when they realized they're not going to be able to keep you anymore, they're just like, we never liked her anyway. And she was always a piece of shit and we're glad she's gone. But they really do not sit you down and threaten you with blackmail. But the information is there. They could blackmail you if you want. And they do use that information later. But they will use that information later. But they don't actually threaten you with it. And I guess it's kind of maybe an open question as to – because speaking for myself, when I was in, there was no part of me that was worried about them using that stuff. Like concern about use of that material is not something that ever kept me in or kept me up at night. So I guess I'm assuming it doesn't for others. But it's possible. When it comes to John, though, okay. When it comes to John, though, those skeletons are a little different. But no, I don't think Tom stays because of blackmail. I think he's a true believer in the mission of Scientology, which is not only to save the world and everyone in it, but to save this entire sector of the galaxy. Right. So when it comes to what you were talking about with the stuff of them covering up like child sex abuse and stuff like that, how is it possible that the FBI hasn't gotten involved? I would say that the FBI has been involved for a long time. There's just a huge difference between building a case and bringing a case. And the FBI builds cases. They don't bring cases. And unfortunately, the people who are the decision makers on bringing cases. The people who are the decision makers on bringing cases are elected politicians, you know, state's attorneys who are elected, attorneys general. They build cases. What does that mean? So, like, let's take it down to a city level. Like, the Clearwater police and detectives would investigate and build a case. But it's up to the state attorney to go, am I going to bring charges? Am I going to prosecute? Right. So I would say the FBI has been involved for a very long time, continues to be involved for a very long time, continues to be involved, has been involved for a very long time. They got raided by the FBI at one point, right? In the late 70s. Late 70s. The largest ever simultaneous raid conducted by the FBI in the United States at that time. I think it was Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Clearwater, Florida. And in that raid, that's how they found evidence of all of Scientology's infiltration of the federal government, the DOJ, the IRS. And that's how they found the evidence of everything they had done to frame. Paulette Cooper, who was standing trial for submitting bomb threats to U.S. embassies. She was just a journalist who had written some negative stuff about Scientology. And she wasn't even an ex-Scientologist. She was just a journalist, right? And they infiltrated her life. They had Scientologists, undercover agents, become her best friends, become her employer. They got her fingerprints. Wow. They took stationery from a hotel she had stayed at, put her fingerprints on. And the stationery, used that stationery to send bomb threats to embassies. She was on trial. She was going to go to prison if she had been found guilty. Completely fabricated. And they found evidence of this in the raids. And she was exonerated. Jesus Christ. Yeah. But look, the FBI looking into all this stuff and the fact that Scientology literally documents in detail the child's life. Yeah. And they're looking into all the sex crimes that they learn of. And these reports exist in the files. And not just one file. They're filed. They're cross-filed. They're indexed. They're in the data files. They're in ethics files. They're in life history forms. This is, I do believe, is going to be what takes Scientology down. With or without another raid. I mean, a raid would be wonderful. But I don't even think a raid is going to be necessary for it. Okay. What would happen to Scientology if by the year 2035, there's only like 5,000 members? Would it make a difference? Um, make a difference. So Scientology is- What would be different? Right. For the world at large, nothing. They'd probably all be hanging in clear water. You think this is the last bastion of hope for Scientology? It actually is. Really? It's one of the only last profitable centers for Scientology. Really? Oh, yeah. Yep. Yep. The Flag Land Base makes about $2 million a week for the cult. What? Yeah. Most other Scientology centers are actually unprofitable. $2 million a week? Oh, yeah. This is the- How do they earn that much money? Scientology is very expensive. It is literally- Just from members paying for auditing and like all the courses and all that stuff? Yeah. Not only is Scientology expensive, but Clearwater is the most expensive place to do it because it's the highest level organization. And it's where David Miscavige spends most of his time. This is like the crown jewel of the worldwide Scientology empire. That's why he goes through all the trouble to make it look like Scientology is expanding here. That's why they buy all the new buildings. That's why they're building L. Ron Hubbard Hall. That's that huge fricking place they're doing the demo on right now or the ground. Exactly. Because Scientologists from all over the world, right? In their little outpost, they can see that there's hardly anybody in their local org. But if they come here to Clearwater, it's like coming to Oz. And they go, oh my God, Scientology must be doing great everywhere else except my city. So every Scientology recruitment center in the world- The whole world thinks they're the only one that's failing and that it's doing great everywhere else because that's what Miscavige tells them. And then if they come to Clearwater, it's like, oh my God. But you know how small Clearwater is, right? Yeah. Okay. And you know, to the South, you've got Largo. To the North, you've got Dunedin. You've got Palm Harbor. There's zero Scientology in these other places. Right. Even here in Clearwater, Scientology isn't actually expanding. They're just buying more buildings. And so even though their membership is declining, they're managing to hoard a lot of money. It's amazing how fast you can hoard money when you don't pay income tax, you don't pay property tax, and you don't pay your staff. And your spiritual counseling costs, you know, $500 an hour. How much of that money do you think David Miscavige personally is skimming? He doesn't need to skim because he controls all of the accounts. It's actually, you know, the most important thing to David Miscavige is making sure Scientology never loses its tax exempt. And if he was found guilty of inurement, which is basically self-profiting from the nonprofit. Right. That's actually what L. Ron Hubbard was found guilty of. Scientology lost its tax exemption before because the government determined L. Ron Hubbard was enriching himself through Scientology. Right. So when they got their tax exempt status for the second time in 93, nothing could be more important than making sure they never lose it again. Right. So I don't think Miscavige is skimming off of the top because he controls everything. But he pays himself a salary. He pays himself a salary. I mean, the last I knew he was paying himself $100,000 a year salary. But I mean, you can basically write off every single thing, every jet, every house. You can write off everything in your life. Exactly. So basically everything in his life is paid for and provided for by Scientology. What kind of a life do you think he lives? The life of a very wealthy billionaire. Really? Oh, he's got a team of people waiting on him hand and foot. You know? I was watching a documentary by that guy, Tommy G. You know him? Yeah. He came to town and did a whole Scientology video. He interviewed, uh, he interviewed, he interviewed me and Jenna. Yeah. I was watching his documentary and he was showing these like old dilapidated apartment buildings off of, I think, highway 19 and clear and like Northern Clearwater. And he was saying that like that has been purchased by Scientology and they're using that as like barracks for the CR people. And he was also, if I remember correctly, I thought, I thought he said like one of the, one of the apartments in there was for David Miscavige. Um, there are several apartment buildings. Okay. The ones on 19 aren't the ones where Miscavige would live. He lives in the Hacienda Gardens on, uh, uh, Keene, Saturn, Drew, right around there. The Hacienda Gardens. So I, I actually went to the Hacienda Gardens. What is the Hacienda Gardens? It's just a giant apartment complex where Miscavige has a whole wing renovated. He owns the whole complex. Yeah. The Scientology Sea Org members live there. Okay. That's where I used to live when I was back, you know, back in the late nineties, when I was here studying full time. God, imagine how you can complete. Like if you own all these apartment buildings and you have people living there for free, you can write off like a rent, a rent, say they're not paying rent. We're giving them free rent, which is five grand a month. And you can rock and write all that money off on the IRS and you're tax exempt. Well, you don't even need to write off. That's what I was just going to say. They don't have to write it off. They're not paying income tax. Dude. And so, like I said, if you're not paying income tax, you're not paying property tax on about 80% of your property and you don't have to pay your staff. You keep almost every dollar you bring in, like your overhead is the electric bill and the electric bill in the water and the water bill. They gotta be greasing somebody in the government besides, there's gotta be a lot of people that they're fucking greasing in the federal government. Well, we already know they're greasing Trump. They're greasing Trump, but they gotta be everywhere, right? Yeah. To make it work. You gotta have your tentacles everywhere. You gotta have people like you were saying earlier, people in the IRS, people in the fucking HHS, people in the judiciary branch, people, judges. Yeah. All these, you gotta have people everywhere. They do their work through lobbyists and they hire the best lobbyists. Do you know any idea how much money they pay, they lobby? I don't. I'd be very curious to find out. I heard that lady Pam Bondi, who was the. She was the Florida AG. Yes. She's the one and James Uthmeyer is the new Florida AG. So Pam Bondi would do fundraisers. Sorry, I'm burping. The local Scientologist would do Scientology. the only fundraisers for Pam Bondi and then Pam Bondi would show up and speak at events at the Fort Harrison hotel, you know, you have to support one of their front, you know, cause of course Scientology has got a front group against human trafficking because that's exactly what a human trafficking cult would do. So they use their front groups, they go on their social betterment activities to entice politicians to come and be like, wouldn't you want to come and support our anti-human trafficking front group? Is that what it was about for her, with her? I think that might've been the event that she was speaking at. But was she ever a Scientologist that you know of? No, no, no, no. I think Sonny Bono is the only actual politician I'm aware of who had been a Scientologist. Sonny Bono. I don't even remember how he got into Scientology, but he was one at one point. Oh my God. And was Lisa Marie Presley, she was a Scientologist, right? Yeah. She left before she died. But, you know, for Scientologists, like it's better for them if their own members aren't the ones in power. It's better for them. If they can use their money to get influenced that way, it's, it's almost like you want to have the arm's length relationship a little bit. Like Scientologists, actually, I heard you and Bubba talking about how many of the city council members are actually Scientologists. Yeah. We couldn't figure it out. Steve was looking it up and, uh, it didn't say. It's because the answer is zero. Oh, the answer is zero. The answer is zero. Okay. So not only is the answer zero, a Scientologist has never even attempted to run for city council or the county commission. And they're actually under orders not to try. Why? Because it would expose. One of Scientology's biggest lies, which is that there's 15,000 Scientologists living in Clearwater. It's not true. There's barely 3000, even if you include all the Sea Org members. If a Scientologist, if you look at the election results, you could see if Scientology could control 15,000 votes, it would be nothing but Scientologists on the city council. But Scientology is so toxic that if, uh, if, if one of their own members ran, not only would they lose, but it would, it would expose how many Scientologists. Oh, wow. Voters there really are, so they can't have that. They have to be able to keep lying about it. If one of their own members ran, it would expose the lie. Yes. If they ran and they, and they would probably lose, it would show how few Scientologists there are to vote for them. They would 100% lose. Right now in every election, it seems like the, the strategy is who can accuse who of being a Scientologist the most? Like that's how, that's how toxic Scientology, I mean, you know, it's nothing has a worse reputation. They all, they all hate the, all the, all the local politicians. They don't like, they don't like Scientology. Everybody hates Scientology. They all hate them. It's the one thing that brings politicians together from both sides of the aisle. It's bipartisan. Just like the FG files and Scientology, the knowledge that Scientology is a dangerous family destroying cult. That's an actual quote from a political race in Los Angeles in the last election cycle. Really? Yeah. Even the people running for mayor were like accusing each one who's, who's more of a Scientol, secret Scientology supporter than the other. That's hilarious, dude. Yeah. No, it's terrible. One of the funny things, one of the common themes on the show, we have a lot of people who. Talk about like remote viewing and shit. And one of the things that we've learned is that most of the prolific remote viewers were Scientologists. Ingo Swan, right? Ingo Swan. Um, um, who was the other guy that, uh, how put off, there was a bunch of other ones. Ingo Swan is probably the most famous, but there's a laundry list of them. And they all still sucked at it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's like, it probably goes to show you, I look at the stories of what these people consider to be successful remote viewing. And I'm like, so two times out of a hundred. You got something partially right. Right. I feel like this thing's not working. Right. I mean, it goes to show you that that stuff is probably bullshit, you know, probably, but it's like, it's an interesting connection, you know, and also like the connection to Jack Parsons and all the fucking NASA cult, the cultists and all that, how they were so close together. It's just so weird. Yeah. Scientologists pretty much know about most of that stuff. They think that's part of what makes L Ron Hubbard like interesting and, and qualified to speak on life. He's like, I've rubbed shoulders. I've worked with people from all, all sorts of people from all sorts of strata. And I think, I think L Ron Hubbard even said that like the feds might've sent him into to to infiltrate some of those organizations and see what they were really up to. And also when you, when you get to some like potential satanic stuff, Hubbard would talk about that openly because Scientologists don't believe in God or the devil, they don't believe in Satan or Christ or the antichrist or any of that stuff. So it would've just been like, you know, when L Ron Hubbard would tell those stories in his lectures, it would just kind of be like, hoo hoo, ha ha. These are funny, interesting people that I've known in my life. Scientologists don't care about any of that stuff. Have you ever convinced a Scientologist to leave like one-on-one? I don't try to. Or have you ever like, like had a direct one-on-one sit down with a Scientologist, an active Scientologist and like really had like a, like an open discussion with them? Well, no, cause they're not allowed to talk to me. Okay. Um, the closest I came, uh, to something that I think answers that question is I did help a group of friends almost do an intervention with their Scientologist friend and get her to leave Scientology. But that was possible because I wasn't directly involved because if I were to show up, a Scientologist would just. They know who you are. Well, if they didn't know who I was, once they found out I was a former Scientologist or a suppressive person, they would just leave. They would just leave. Mm-hmm. Um, but you basically had this woman who was a dedicated Scientologist. She was getting ready to sell her business, sell her house and to move here full time, uh, to go out. To go up, to go up the bridge and basically give Scientology, um, all of, all of her money. The bridge to total freedom. And her friends found this out and they reached out and like, we're really worried about our friend and we want some advice on, on how to get her to, uh, to not do this. And I'm like, look, this is either gonna go really well or it's gonna go really badly. And I said, you have to be willing, like, how much do you care about this friend? Do you care about her enough and you think this is important enough that you're willing for her to never talk to you? Like you're willing for her to never talk to you again if you try this and it doesn't work. I'm like, yeah, we think it's that important. And I'm like, okay. So we, we kind of workshopped it a bit and, uh, and it actually worked. Um, I always say, cause people ask me when I was at this day, when you were in Scientology, is there anything anybody could have said to, is there anything anybody could have said to you that would have made you like wake up or snap out of it or, or leave? Right. And I'm like, no. And so I don't try to do that to others. Um, and yet I do run a foundation that helps people who are leaving Scientology because once you've already at least made the choice that it's okay to look at other information, like as a Scientologist, you're not allowed to, you know, you're brainwashed, but you also kind of brainwash yourself that it is not okay to seek out or read or listen to negative information about Scientology. But if you, but if you're in Scientology and you've gotten to the point where you're like, you know what, I should be allowed to look and I'm going to look and you're at that point, and if someone like that reaches out, then that's someone, that's someone that I, that I talk to. And especially when people have already made the choice, like, look, I, I've actually been out for a long time, but not really. I keep it to myself. I just stay away. I don't answer the phone calls, but I think I want to leave, you know, officially, uh, can you guys help? What can I do? Can you give me any tips and pointers? Um, so I always say I will never twist someone's arm or try to pressure them to leave Scientology because they're the ones who have to live. With the consequences of that decision, they're the ones who are going to lose family members who are going to lose friends who might lose their job, who might lose their housing. And so I've always said, it's not, I've, I mean, on my channel, I've always like, it's not even right to try to pressure someone, at least it's not right for me. And um, So they potentially have a lot to lose. Exactly. And if they're going to jump off that cliff, it has to be because they decided to do it and not because somebody was guilt tripping them or pressuring them or anything like that. And when they are ready to leave, you know, that's what the foundation, it stands for like, it's kind of what I kind of like an informal name for my YouTube channel. So I saw something on YouTube that was called that or something. Yeah. There's a channel that tried to spoof. Oh, yeah. It was a channel. Well, there was a channel that was like making, like talking shit about you. That's they, they did that to spoof it to try to confuse people. And um, so, but your original question was, have I ever sat down head to head with Scientologist and the answer is no, but, uh, but I sure would love. To. I've been, I've been reaching out to people. Yeah. I'm reaching out to some candidates. We were trying to make something happen, trying to get a current Scientologist in here with you. Yeah. It's not an easy thing to do. So there's this, this guy, a local guy, his name's, uh, what we call him Tampa Brad. Um, but he runs a company called home love construction. He sort of, he sort of, um, fashioned himself to be Scientology's kind of unofficial spokesperson. He's got a, uh, a YouTube channel where he only interviews Scientologists and the name of the channel is called don't do nothing. It's the don't do nothing podcast. Now, I believe he has said that if he had the opportunity to first come on and be interviewed solo that maybe after that he'd be willing to do a combo thing, but that might be a bait and switch. I don't think he'd actually do it. Yeah. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's, there's just a lot of weird people out there, man. Like, but if we actually made it happen, it would be good to have like somebody who's been in it for a long time, like a generational thing, a generational Scientologists and that, that's another thing. It's like, it's, it's, it's, it seems to be very rare that like a young person would just have an epiphany one day and be like, you know what? I think I'm going to join Scientology. Someone who has had historically no tie. Their families had no tie. Isn't it true that like most of the people that are in it, like got in it through their parents or their grandparents or something like that. I mean, at this point, yeah, you know, Scientology has been around since like 1950, Dianetics was 50, 52. 54. And with the advent of social media. Yeah. And the way that just information is everywhere right now, I got to imagine it's really hard to recruit people. And it's got to be hard to keep people in because another thing I wonder about is like how many people are like, you know, when no one's looking at night, they're just going on their fucking – on their phone. Maybe they have a burner phone or something and they're going and watching Aaron Smith-Levin videos or, you know, watching documentaries about how crazy this shit is and being like, whoa. It's basically impossible to recruit for Scientology right now. Their number one recruitment center is located on Hollywood Boulevard right in front of like Hollywood and Highland. I've been to that one. It's become – and it's become an internet meme. It's become an internet meme. TikTokers and Instagrammers and YouTubers from all over the world go by the building just to be like, it's a cult. It's a cult. Or, hey, Shannon. Shannon. The one girl that works there. Yeah. TikTok famous. Shannon. Scientology Shannon. The black lady? No, that's Twilla. Okay. Okay. Shannon is kind of a strange-looking, short, slightly heavier white woman. Okay. But she works with Twilla. I love how they've all got nicknames. There's Shannon. There's Toucan. There's Lurch. There's Twilla. Twilla is Twilla's real name, though. Lurch. He's this giant guy. He's really tall. But, like, it's become a meme. Like, there's more people outside that recruitment center trying to keep people from going in than there are recruiters trying to bring people in. That is their number one highest foot traffic recruitment center in the entire world. And even that has been turned into a complete joke. By the way, you notice you don't see that kind of sidewalk recruiting here in Clearwater, right? You don't see them with the Dianetics. You don't see the Dianetics tables and the emitters on the sidewalks in Clearwater. You know why, right? ABC Wednesdays. Abbott is back. It's going to be the best year yet. Thank you. It's going great. Abbott Elementary. Anything can happen in the jungle. Right, guys? All new. Wednesdays on ABC. And stream next day on Hulu. Tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college. That's why she shops at BJ's Wholesale Club, saving up to 25% off grocery store prices. Beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods, even they can't screw up. Have you met my kids? And with BJ's gas, she gets there for less. They call me the road warrior. This is your home, road warrior mom. Home of the save. Join for just $20 at BJ's.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months. Open soon. Open to time offer new members only. Why? You can't join Scientology in Clearwater. That's why it's so creepy. You can join in Tampa. They've got a recruitment center. In St. Pete, there's a recruitment center. In Park, no, Plant City, there's a little recruitment center. In Bel Air, there's a tiny little recruitment center. Where? It's not like on the sidewalk. It's kind of in like a little parking lot. I could show it to you. You'd never even notice it if you drove by. Okay. Even in all of Florida. In all of Florida, there's recruitment centers in Miami, Orlando, and Tampa, basically. In other words, there's three recruitment centers that I just gave you that are actually all one recruitment center. They're all part of the Tampa work. You cannot join Scientology in Clearwater, Florida. That is why it is ghost town. Because if you could, it's the highest level Scientology organization. Scientologists aren't even allowed to come to Clearwater, Florida without prior authorization. What? Without prior authorization. If you're some Scientologist from Detroit and you're coming to Disney World and you're like, I want to swing by Clearwater and take a look at Flag, they would be like, who are you? Where are you from? Did you get approval to be here? Okay. I'm sorry. You cannot come in. Yeah. That's why Clearwater is so damn creepy. If you could join in Clearwater, Scientology would do everything possible to bring as many people downtown as possible because they would see them as a recruitment pool. Why? Why wouldn't they do that, though? Why wouldn't they make it to where you could just walk in there and sign up? It's because it's the highest level organization in the world, which means it's one of the most secure organizations in the world. So I'm saying highest level, like that's going to automatically mean something. There's a hierarchical structure of organizations in Scientology because there's confidential materials in Scientology that only certain organizations are allowed to sell and deliver. The Clearwater base is one of those highest level confidential bases. That's like the zine. The zinu shit. Where you learn about zinu and the galactic confederacy and the body thetans, everything in South Park. That's confidential information in Scientology. Everything in South Park. Yeah. That's confidential. The world knows all that stuff about Scientology and most Scientologists don't actually know that that stuff is true. But like your average city level Scientology recruitment center, they're not allowed to deliver those confidential levels. They don't even have them there. Right? There's only a handful of places in the world where you can do those. And Clearwater, Florida is where the highest level of those confidential, the highest level base of those confidential bases where that stuff is delivered. And so it's also where David Miscavige spends most of his time. In Clearwater. Is in Clearwater. Yeah. It's where he, it's the easiest place for him to stay hidden because he can go from. Now he doesn't have like any like, like homes that he lives in. He stays in like the big buildings or like the apartment centers. He stays places where he can stay super hidden. Correct. Like where no one can like circle his house. Or anything weird like that. Exactly. That's so. It's all Scientology owned and operated and controlled and secured facilities. And you could never see. He could be in Clearwater for five years straight and you could never see him. That's so fucking crazy, dude. Yeah. I feel like his, his whole goal at this point is just to keep things humming along until he dies. Does he have any family members that are in there? So his, I'm trying to think his sister. I think. His sister, Denise. He's got a twin sister who got busted on drug charges a number of years ago. But she's still in Scientology. And, you know, of course his missing wife, Shelly, is still in Scientology. Is she still missing? Not really. Okay. They know where she is. She's basically in Redlands, California. Twin Peaks, California. Oh, okay. Yeah. Why was she missing? What was that all about? I mean, that was honestly a publicity stunt a little bit. On behalf of who? Leah Remini. I mean, she was reported missing eight years after the last time Leah talked to her. Right. Okay. Right. None of her family members reported her missing. I see. None of the people who actually knew her reported her missing. Right. Okay. I applaud the publicity stunt. I clickbait the hell out of it in videos all the time. But when I do my videos, I also explain, like, she's the Ghislaine Maxwell of Scientology. Right. I mean, Shelly Miscavige is the Ghislaine Maxwell of Scientology. She's no victim. Right. She's living a life of. She's living a life of leisure and luxury in the mountains of Twin Peaks, California. So I don't shed any tears for Shelly Miscavige. But I do love using it as a way to troll Scientology for being this weirdo, this weirdo fucking family-destroying cult where not only does the leader have to send his wife away, but Tom Cruise can't keep a girlfriend and they all have to escape in the middle of the night to protect themselves from Scientology. It's a great conversation piece. And I talk about it all the time. But she's not really missing. That's so funny. Yeah. Now, isn't it? Isn't that a rule where the Scientologists aren't allowed to have kids? Scientology Sea Org members aren't allowed to have kids. Sea Org. Was Tom Cruise allowed to have kids? Isn't that the reason he adopted? Because he wasn't allowed to have kids? No. One of them couldn't. I think one of them couldn't have kids. But that doesn't make sense because now they've both had kids, right? Nicole had an issue with a pregnancy and it prevented her from having further kids for a while. So they chose to adopt. Oh, okay. Yeah. No, people like Tom is a public Scientologist and they're allowed to have kids. Okay. Scientologists tend not to. It's just a Sea Org people came in. It's just a Sea Org. It's just a Sea Org people that can't have kids. Yeah. And they used to be able to, and that was not good. Raising kids in the Sea Org is horrific. Isn't the cadet, the cadet thing? Yes. What was that called? What was that about? Is that still something? Nope. Is that still a thing? Thank God it's not a thing anymore. Yeah. That's horrific. That was one of the most, that was one of the worst things I learned from that documentary going clear. That really was the worst thing. Malnutrition, malnourished babies. Yeah. In this fucking giant room with flies buzzing all over them, sitting on their own feces. Terrible. Terrible. And it's not that Scientology woke up and realized that wasn't fair to the kids. They're just like, this is a distraction to the organization and parents constantly worrying about their kids and we need them to be able to focus on work. So eventually they're like, yeah, no more kids. Yeah. And Scientologists themselves tend not to have a lot of kids because it's so expensive. There's no real incentive to have a lot of kids unless you're going to send them off to work full time for Scientology, which is like, then what's the point of having the kids, you know? Yeah. But you would think that they could use that as like, oh, have more kids so we have more of a workforce. And Scientology, if you're going to have a kid, that's an automatic recruitment when they come of age. That would be the smart thing. And that's how like the world's major religions have grown. Yeah. The reason Scientology doesn't do that is because their whole mission to take over the world is something they always think they're going to accomplish in like the next 10 to 20 years. So they're never thinking, how are we going to be big in 200 years? They're never like, well, if we all have 10 kids, then in three or four generations, there'll be a lot of us. They're like, oh, no. Yeah. We're going to clear the planet in the next, you know, five years. Right. Yeah. You know, and then the fact that, you know, he doesn't show his face is very strange. Like, how do you live? You can't go out anywhere in the public. You can't go out to a fucking restaurant. You know, you're going to get swarmed with people or people or, you know, cameras are going to photograph you. You're going to be all over the fucking internet if you show up. The guy's done a great job of being elusive for a very long time. It's true. But I've always asked the same question about even Tom Cruise. Because when he's not promoting a movie, you never see the guy. Right. Anywhere. anywhere at all so i sort of think of them both living the same way you know it's like if you if where you work and where you live are completely secure facilities gated you've got blacked out suvs driving you around everywhere you can always pull in and get dropped off inside places yeah you can travel from building to building without going outside you know there's restaurants there's you know the flag land base has very nice restaurants inside of it oh yeah really it's one of the reasons you never see the scientologists on the streets they can get just as good food inside the buildings being waited on by seer members who don't get paid and so they don't get tipped so it's actually cheaper yeah you know so you know it's really interesting to talk to people who work at some of those big companies that are owned by scientologists and they explain like the way the company operates and how like different floors will be dedicated to like the people who aren't scientists and the people who are scientologists and the people who aren't scientists and the people who are scientologists will live will all work together on the higher floors they get treated differently like they do meetings together and they're like it's just a very weird weird thing to hear about you know it's just it's amazing that that's that those companies are allowed to operate like that well one of the biggest companies downtown that had a lot of scientologists working there was no before it was like an internet security it's kind of internet security anti-phishing oh yeah company they do a lot of training i know them yeah and you know it's kind of a weird thing to hear about you know and you know it's kind of a weird thing to hear about you know and and then the company got sold to a pe firm like they went public but then a pe firm took them private what's a pe firm private equity firm okay and the private equity firm had nothing to do with scientology there were no scientologists there there were no scientologists running it and for a while stu showerman the guy who founded the company and was the the ceo and the president and the chairman and everything after the acquisition he was still in place for a while but about a year ago they replaced him with an actual like non-scientologist ceo and very quickly found out that tons of these executives basically had no qualifications and weren't doing anything and were only hired because they were scientologists really and so they've over the last year they've gotten rid of almost all the scientologists not because they're persecuting them but because they weren't doing anything they were only hired because they were scientologists and so you had this sort of two-tier kind of like caste system there the scientologists who were basically valued because they were part of the club and then you had the non-scientologists who the ones pretty much you know carrying the responsibility the burden of doing the actual real work and so you got a lot of scientologists out of a job now because you think they try to do you think that they they try to recruit people like the normally the normies who work at those companies some of the companies do like postcard mania is a local marketing company run by a woman named joy jendusa they have an actual scientology course room in their building where in order to get promoted through the ranks there you've got to study these courses I'm sure joy would argue we we're not trying to recruit you into Scientology we just want you to know how to do your job better and it's like yeah if if you're saying the only way to know how to do your job better is to study L Ron Hubbard courses it's like give me a break know before one of the things know before actually had going for it and I heard this from a lot of people who who worked there is like they actually never tried to push Scientology oh that's good on I think they knew from the beginning from early on that they had these plans to actually go public and everything and having some weird culture of this kind of low-key Scientology recruitment would be really really harmful what a great way to get a successful company get a bunch of Scientologists and like you know people who think they're the gods of the universe like you know yeah be a really successful company it's a great way to motivate people just get a bunch of Scientologists yeah one of the other big local companies consumer energy Solutions or something something power and gas they basically sell energy I don't know how the business works but it's one of these operations where you've got a bunch of people cold calling basically selling people discounted energy I I don't actually totally understand the business model but I do know that like the executives of the company are Scientologists and everyone working the phones is just people hired off the street wow so an example of a company that makes a ton of money for Scientology and Scientologists but definitely not um not a recruitment operation I don't really understand what no before is uh it's it's like training your employees on how not to get hacked that and ethics I shot a bunch of uh videos about ethics like how not to do things yeah I did I did a few video jobs for them nice yeah are you Steve are you Scientologists no but I'll tell you what they didn't really seem like they knew exactly what they wanted they were just like that that works and I'm like okay is training on how to not get hacked uh it was like it was like ethics the course that we were shooting was was on like how not to like sexually harass people oh so it's like an internal type thing yeah yeah it was an intro okay it wasn't explaining like what the company sells no I don't understand what the hell they sell it is it is security internet security internet security yeah so if you if you're a company you have a lot of employees you would hire no before to basically basically train because if you're a company your weakest security point is your people not your infrastructure it's not your IT systems it's your people will show up to work in and plug into your IT systems and so it's training the employees how to detect and avoid um phishing attempts hacking attempts and so they'll even do the thing I read about this just recently because it's kind of interesting where they will attend essentially try to trick your employees into clicking on phishing emails but when they do it it'll pop up a training video from know before about how you just got tricked and how to not fall for tricks like this oh interesting so they're looking for the vulnerabilities and trying to that's like something you would only want to train Boomers though I feel like most young people understand you know you don't click on the sketchy emails you know you just want you want a free gift click this link right sure until you get one that doesn't look sketchy yeah yeah right but I don't feel like they're getting any better the sophistication of the phishing emails isn't getting any better any better you know just like the phone calls you get the cold calls from the guy with the Indian accent and it's like okay like you're not going to answer that call one of the great new things about the iPhones is that now all the phone numbers that call you they say spam yeah potential spam so you know not to answer them anymore yeah I feel like the you know that those Industries are are going away but maybe you know I don't know maybe maybe maybe it's just my warped perspective you asked earlier whether there's um stuff Scientology does to try to mess with me well since the last time I was on this podcast I've spent some time in jail oh yeah yeah yeah yeah you got that was not thrown a slammer by Scientology yeah how did that happen well it was two separate incidents two separate charges two separate trials the first one I was found not guilty on but the second trial I was found guilty for misdemeanor battery it's almost laughable what it was I think I sent you the video a couple weeks ago yeah it's really pathetic so the first incident was me and my buddies we we protest um downtown we protest down uh yeah it's really pathetic so the first incident was me and my buddies we we protest um downtown we we protest down uh Scientology every Friday downtown and um we put all this chalk on the sidewalk outside of every Friday downtown and um we put all this chalk on the sidewalk outside of the flag building you know the big one and the flag building you know the big one and they've got this huge giant logo in stone they've got this huge giant logo in stone tiles out there and due to some weird thing with when they built this building half of that is actually public property like you would you would never guess but they were half of that is actually public property like you would you would never guess but they were allowed to build half of that on actual allowed to build half of that on actual it's public property so we can be there we it's public property so we can be there we can sit there we can chalk all we want there can sit there we can chalk all we want there so we put all the chalk and the security so we put all the chalk and the security guards would come out um guards would come out um all carrying bucket five gallon buckets all carrying bucket five gallon buckets of water and just come right up to us and of water and just come right up to us and just like and just dump it right on the just like and just dump it right on the sidewalks right wash all the chalk away sidewalks right wash all the chalk away yeah they wouldn't even wait until we were yeah they wouldn't even wait until we were gone at the end of the day they would gone at the end of the day they would come out while we're there and just throw come out while we're there and just throw it right yeah right at our feet and then it right yeah right at our feet and then they started coming out with like trash they started coming out with like trash cans full water and then like little trash cans full water and then like little trash dumpsters full of water yeah and you trash dumpsters full of water yeah and you can find the video steve can find the video steve um i'll definitely i'll definitely send um i'll definitely i'll definitely send it to you it to you um he'll find it um he'll find it and i mean eventually i just got kind of and i mean eventually i just got kind of sick of it and um sick of it and um probably a poor judgment call one of the probably a poor judgment call one of security guards security guards came uh close enough to me that i felt came uh close enough to me that i felt i smurfed his ass i had to smurf him i smurfed his ass i had to smurf him okay so that was the first thing i was okay so that was the first thing i was arrested so you threw chalk on him well arrested so you threw chalk on him well chalk powder it's cornstarch okay it's a chalk powder it's a kids fun run powder okay got it it's the kids fun run powder okay got it it's the stuff that's actually meant to be blasted kids fun run powder okay got it it's the in the face with while you're running a in the face with while you're running a 5k non-toxic non-toxic the dude was 5k non-toxic non-toxic the dude was wearing a covid mask he wearing a covid mask he nothing happened to this guy um nothing happened to this guy um but he went inside and five minutes but he went inside and five minutes later but he went inside and five minutes later pretended to have some sort of a pretended to have some sort of a pretended to have some sort of a respiratory distress and they rolled his respiratory distress and they rolled his respiratory distress and they rolled his ass out of there on a stretcher is ass out of there on a stretcher is ass out of there on a stretcher is that's it that's it aaron spith levin that's it that's it aaron spith levin that's it that's it aaron spith levin faces battery charge is that you in the faces battery charge is that you in the faces battery charge is that you in the hat hat hat i don't know somebody else yeah i don't know somebody else yeah i don't know somebody else yeah oh you probably didn't okay this is oh you probably didn't okay this is oh you probably didn't okay this is good is that you yeah that was the battery is that you yeah that was the battery is that you yeah that was the battery charge charge charge that was the battery charge that was the that was the battery charge that was the that was the battery charge that was the first battery charge first battery charge first battery charge look his back is actually facing it's a look his back is actually facing it's a look his back is actually facing it's a boy what i was just doing a gender reveal what i was just doing a gender reveal what i was just doing a gender reveal yeah yeah yeah okay so that instance i was arrested i okay so that instance i was arrested i okay so that instance i was arrested i was booked i was was booked i was was booked i was let out um the same night right okay let out um the same night right okay But, and again, I've never been arrested in my life. No criminal history of any kind whatsoever. I don't know what to expect. I'm also way too trusting of police officers. And I think everything's going to turn out all right in the end always, right? Uh-huh. Is this the same event? Yeah, that's, that's, that's. Okay. Yeah. what was he saying to you um i think he's telling me that i'm being charged with a felony okay uh i did not get charged with a felony it was it was misdemeanor battery okay so i get arrested i get charged i get let out and i'm out on bond which means if you get arrested or charged with anything else it's a violation of your bond and you go you go back to jail right yeah all right fast forward like two months there's a completely separate incident and this one i actually how do i send you a video um you can send it to can you airdrop it do you have airdrop um i do but how do you it's just a let's just a link to a youtube video just text to me i'll forward it to steve okay copy paste boom 43 days in jail for 43 days well he's like 23 the first time 20 the second time oh my god yeah is there audio on this there's a little bit of audio okay i'm gonna put the headphones on okay you got yours right there where's the where's the audio oh there you go pat i knew i could come here and ask you for help claudio and renato lugli have been trying to reach their son for the last 10 years is there any way that you could allow flavia lugli to contact his parents they're trying to reach him ow ow what did you just do you just hurt me you just injured my foot this isn't trespassing you're lying this is the property line the property line is right here you just committed battery on me all right admittedly i'm being a bit of a drama queen there who are you talking about exactly that's that's what i want to tell you so that was not a sign that you Scientology protest. Okay. That was literally me going to that building on behalf of a family who used to be in Scientology and work for David Miscavige as their, um, their, which he designed his clothes for him, the Lugli family. So the parents are, um, Flavio and Renata Lugli. They're these Italian Scientologists and they have a son Flavio who works here in the, at the Clearwater, Florida base. And they haven't spoken to him in 15 years. Oh, wow. Because when, uh, uh, Claudio and Renata left Scientology, this is that familial disconnection policy. So they've never spoken to their son again. And they received a report that he's unhealthy. That he's got like hyper thyroidism or something like this. And that he's on a reduced medical schedule that he's not well. And so that's Scientology's public information center. That's the Clearwater bank building on Cleveland and Fort Harrison. And the woman who works at the desk, her name is Pat Harney. She's a Scientology official works in the office of special affairs. Now in the past, I've done kind of a lot of research on this. I've done a lot of research on this. And I have a funny series of videos where I walk up to that door and I, I have a conversation with Pat where I pretend like we're working together to unionize the Sea Org members and get them out of their billion year contracts. Very funny videos. Okay. I go up to the door. I talk for about 60 seconds and I leave. No one's ever approached me. No one's ever tried to slam the door on me like that. And so what I was doing there was, and I was doing it for the video. You know, it's not like I expected Pat to actually help me, but I knew she would be there. And I was basically saying, Hey, Pat, I'm, you know, I'm, I knew I could come to you for help. I was being tongue in cheek, right? I knew I could come to you for help getting Flavio Lugli to just call his parents. Please let him call his parents. Do you know that he's here in Clearwater? Oh, yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. He voted in the last election. We even checked. Really? Just a couple months ago. He's here. And does he live in that big building? He lives at the Hacienda Gardens on Saturn Avenue. Wow. Yeah. So I was only going to be there for 60 seconds. I wasn't there. I was speaking respectfully I wasn't yelling. Can you look this guy up, Steve? See what we find about him? Yeah. You'll see, you'll probably just see a bunch of my videos about him. Okay. And to be honest, I was just thrown off. Like they actually did hurt my foot. They slammed the door on my foot. Like I actually injured my foot. I'm being a bit of a drama queen there, but I was honestly genuinely disoriented and thrown off. Right. They had never come up to me like that before. And I, I certainly, I was kind of like, Jesus Christ, I'm sitting here. My fucking foot hurts. Yeah. And, and so yeah, I'm being a bit of a drama queen there, but I didn't expect to get injured right there. Right. And I just reacted the way that I reacted. Right. Right. So- You could tell, like, you were about to, like, really shove him. You feel like mid-shove, you're like, okay, wait, I got to not shove him here. Yeah. It was a very, like, the guy didn't even move. He didn't. There was no injuries. Yeah. No one was hit. I mean, I honestly fell into him. Like, it wasn't even a push. I actually fall into him. Yeah. Okay. And I didn't even get interviewed or arrested for this. What happened is when I went to one of the next hearings for my first charge, the state attorney representative lady just announced that they were going to be charging me with a second incident. And I was like, what? And so they charged me with this. And I went to jail over Thanksgiving, over my daughter's birthday, over, I spent almost three weeks in jail over this. The judge. The judge hated me. Now, a lot of people hate me, but the judge hated me. She hates protesters. She hates streamers. I mean, this judge was saying the craziest things to me. I don't know what your obsession is with Scientology. Imagine saying that to someone that was trafficked as a child by Scientology. You're just doing all of this for the clicks. That's your problem. Your problem is you make money on YouTube. That's your problem. That's your problem. I'm like, holy shit. Okay. So. My first 20 days in jail was because that second incident was considered, once I was charged with that incident, that was considered a violation of the terms of the bond of the first incident. Okay. So then I go to trial for the first incident. Not guilty verdict in like 30 minutes. The jury deliberates for like 30 minutes. Not guilty. God, they pulled a whole fucking jury trial over this. Right. And so then, then the second trial comes and before you go to trial, the judge issues rules of what you are not allowed to do or say, or she will send you to jail for contempt of court. And she threatened me so many times. She's, I can send you to jail for up to 12 months if you violate my rules. The judge felt that the jury, the first jury, um, had sympathy for me because I grew up in Scientology. In the second trial, I shit you not. She refused to let me even say I'm an ex Scientologist. She refused to let me say that I grew up in Scientology. She refused to let me say what I was doing there at the building that day. She made us cut all of the audio out of that video before my foot gets slammed in the door. She wouldn't let me say that the name of my channel is growing up in Scientology. She wouldn't let me, um, say that I run a foundation that helps people who are leaving Scientology. Uh, she wouldn't let me mention Flavio Lugli. She wouldn't let me say that I was there that day on behalf of his parents. And she let the jury and she, but she let the other, other side testify falsely as to what was even said in the video. If you watch, if watch the video, me being a drama queen aside, you can see I'm not yelling. I'm not insulting. I'm not threatening. I'm not doing anything intimidating at all. They were allowed to testify that I was there yelling and screaming and shouting insults and vulgarities. And so imagine you're a jury member, right? You don't even know I've ever been in Scientology. You don't know I'm an ex Scientologist. You don't know. You don't know that I was there advocating for ex Scientologists. You think I'm just some piece of shit, YouTube click baiter who showed up to insult a bunch of Scientologists. And then when they asked me to leave, played, um, you know, uh, played the victim and shoved this guy and the jury found me guilty. How is that? I mean, I'm no lawyer, but how is that illegal for her, for the judge to tell you you're not allowed to give any context around the incident? Uh, I mean, what did your lawyer say? He fought it. Like he fought it tooth and nail. And she goes, you got a problem. You appeal. If he's guilty, you can appeal. That's all you can do. Judges are allowed to do that. I was shocked to learn that judges are allowed to do that. I mean, I got to tell you this experience that I've had the last year in the, our criminal justice system for the first time in my life, I have lost all faith in the police and the criminal justice, uh, system. Um, and even if I had, um, who was, so, so who was, was it, was it the church of Scientology? No, it was the state of Florida cause these were criminal charges, but it was the church of Scientology putting massive pressure on the state attorney's office to not drop this, not settle this, not, and, and go forward. And I mean, how do they put pressure on the state attorney's office? Well, that's where the lobbying comes in. That's where hiring outside counsel comes in. Who was the state attorney? Uh, her name is Morgan me and then there was another guy. Okay. I mean, it was, it was wild. Even being there in the courthouse and having the Scientology security guards showing up like arm in arm with the Clearwater police. And I'm like, what are you guys doing? Dude, what are you guys doing? Like 40 days in jail for that? Are you, are you like no one, there's not, not even an injury. He didn't even, the first guy pretended, you know, that he was having a respiratory distress and was wheeled off in an ambulance. Yeah. And they literally said no injuries, no marks, no nothing. And it was the state attorney that decided, oh no, we're processing that guy in the courtroom. Yes. And so the question would be this, what influence was brought to bear. Mm-hmm. have the state attorney, Bruce Bartlett, and so like Bruce Bartlett's the actual state attorney, but then there's the prosecuting state attorney was like Morgan May. What makes Bruce Bartlett look at that video and go, oh, we're not letting this go. We're going to jury trial on this. Right. That's, that's bizarre. It doesn't even make sense. No. Yeah. So nonetheless, I can complain about the criminal justice system. Lesson learned though. Didn't need that. Could have just walked away after my, could have just walked away after my foot got slammed in that door in my life. That's insane. Yeah. Bubba was telling me when he was on the show last week that he, he believes that the Clearwater police department is like bought and paid for by Scientologists because not, I shouldn't say it that way. What he was saying is that the Scientology is one of the biggest people, biggest organizations that hires off duty police officers to do security for them. That certainly was true. Believe it or not, since this incident and since my trials, the Clearwater police department has been the biggest organization that has ever hired a police officer to do security for them. How do you know that? We know from contacts in the police and we know also because we're out there protesting every Friday. So it used to be that every single Friday we were there, Clearwater police were on station and on duty doing off duty work in front of the Fort Harrison hotel. And, and the Clearwater police would come over two or three times responding to the, you know, couple dozen 911 calls Scientology is constantly placing on, on the protesters. And so, so if Scientology pulls a permit and like closes a street for an event, it's part of the normal due process that you're going to have police working security. Right. That's different. Totally. They used to hire cops to just do off duty security work in uniform in their cruisers for Scientology. They'd be out there every single Friday. They're allowed to do that. Yeah. You're going to use their cruisers and they wear their uniform and they're, they have their gun on their belt. Yeah. There's an, Yeah. There's an, there's an approval process for an organization that an organization can go through to, you know, whatever the process is for the Clearwater PD. Once you're on the approved list, you can hire the cops to work off duty. And there's an agreed upon rate and everything like that. That's why, for example, like if you see a high school football, a high school football game getting out and there's, you know, cops working the event, you're like, well, how is this? They're actually, you know, for the most part work, those are off duty cops working. Those aren't just like, like cops doing security for free for no reason. Right. Right. Right. Concerts or things like that. Exactly. Exactly. And they literally don't do it anymore to the point that they started having to bring in like the, the highway, the highway folks and the, and the sheriffs to do it. And even then it's like, I, I, I do think all of this painted, like kind of shown a light on what is the Clearwater PD doing helping Scientology harass protesters, you know? And yes, there was that like, so the first incident that occurred at a protest. And then the second incident that occurred at a protest. The second incident that didn't occur at a protest. So me and my friends have been out there every single week, every single Friday afternoon for about three years now. And that first incident is the only thing that any of us ever did. I see you sometimes drive when I'm driving down the road on the side of the road with your signs with a bunch of people. Yes. And the reason you see me where you see me right now is because until my probation is over, I got to stay 500 feet away from that. Oh shit. Oh, so you're usually closer. That's why you see me at the intersection. I see you by the gas station, right? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta be at that location until my probation's over. Is it true that they would bust their CR members down the street so they wouldn't come in contact with any protesters? 100% true. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And why are all the CR people walking up and down the street all the time? Well, it depends on which street you're talking about. Where are they going on Fort Harrison? So because you've got the, you've got the sand, what they call the sandcastle religious retreat on the north side of Coachman Park. It's called the sandcastle. It's right there on Osceola and, and it's that Drew and Drew that's next to the library, north of the library. Okay. So their highest, the flag land base is the highest Scientology base in the world, the highest level Scientology base in the world. But the sandcastle is the highest level building on the base. Okay. So you've got CR members. So they're just walking from building to building. They're going from Scientology, building to Scientology building. Exactly. The big giant flag building on the, on the basement level there, that's the cafeteria where they all eat. Okay. Now you really aren't supposed to see the CR members walking down the street because they're supposed to wait for the shut. They're supposed to wait for the bus. You see the buses driving all over the place, right? They, they, they, they, they're not supposed to walk down the street if they can help it. So, um, but yes. And also there's a management building right there, but in the, in the middle on, um, um, across from, uh, where the old checkers used to be, you know, where the old check, I don't know how familiar you are with downtown Clearwater. No, where was the checkers? Well, now it's a, it's a little Scientology park, but basically they're walking down the street. Cause there's going from building to building is this, right. Is the simple answer. I have a friend who does, um, he does like it security stuff. Like he, he, he will, he goes out to like businesses and he wires their buildings with like security cameras and stuff like that. He did it for us. Um, and he, he said he was hired by Scientology to go, um, repair some stuff that they had, some issues they were having with their security cameras and, um, their detectors that they had on the roof of their flag building. And he said, they brought him into the flag building, took them all. And he had like three people surrounding him at all times, like going everywhere with him. They were like, super skeptical of him, like very, very scared that he was gonna, you know, I don't know. They took him up to the top floor, put him in this room or whatever. And he's looking or whatever. And he's like, he's like trying to figure out why their camera system was fucking up. Right. Looking at wires, trying to unplug stuff and like plug it back in and see, like find the point of failure with their camera system. And he said, he's in their server room on like the top floor. And he's like, he found this wire going through the wall and he's like, where does this wire go? And they're like, Oh, they're like, hold on a second. They had to go outside and like whisper to each other for like five minutes. And then they're like, Oh, well, we don't know where that wire's going. We can't tell you that. Just trying to figure out our problem here. And he's like, well, I can't figure it out until I figure out where this wire is going. Cause I can't, I gotta rule out what the fuck this wire is doing, where it's going. It could be causing the whole problem. And they go back out. We'll be right back. Then go back, go talk for like 10 minutes. And they finally come back and they're like, okay, this, this wire connects to our anti-drone system on our roof. They have some sort of fucking. Some sort of like directed energy weapon on their roof, allegedly that like shoots drones out of the sky or like if a drone tries to fly over it, it will just like drop. That's incredible. It's funny that you mentioned that because I was contacted by somebody who works at Axon, Axon body cam, you know, they do the police body cams. And they sent me a photo of a gift basket that had just arrived from the church of Scientology international, specifically the church of spiritual technology, which is the secret base where Shelley Miscavige works. And, and this person said, I'm really concerned. We just got a gift basket from Scientology. Is this, I'm worried that maybe the company I work for is run by Scientologists. Okay. So they went and did some digging and they found out, oh, no, no, no. I said, I said, you know what? You guys do body cams. I said, I'm sure they must have a contract with you guys to outfit their security guards with body cams. And they go, okay, let me look into it. They look into it and they find out Scientology was not a security guard, not a client. Axon had just acquired a drone defense company that had Scientology, the church of spiritual technology as its client. And that's why all of a sudden Axon is getting gift baskets from the secret church, you know, church of spiritual technology, but it was specifically for their anti-drone equipment. No. What was the company that did the anti-drone stuff? Do you remember? Well, whatever it was, it was a company small enough that Axon just acquired it. Bought them out. Yeah. They just bought them out. And so I forget the name of it, but they go, no, no, no. We looked it up. We found the account record and everything. And then they sent me a free body cam. No way. The company is called D drone or D drone. Can you pull it up? I want to see what it looks like. Uh, D drone. There's a link right below it. There you go. That was Axon. That's Axon. Oh, I'm sure it's on their website. Oh, no, there's D drone right there. There you go. D drone.com. Okay. Axon acquired D drone accelerating the next generation of drone technology to protect more lives and more places. Interesting. I wonder what it looks like. But that's crazy. I mean, the amount of money they have to spend on security and like anti-drone shit, you know, to keep people from flying drones on top of their buildings. It's just like, God damn. I mean, the level of paranoia. Oh, so it's that little white thing. So what is it? Is it a jam? Does it jam signals? It must be a jammer, right? Yeah. It's a, it's a, whatever that is on a stick. D drone. Wow. So your drone, if you fly your drone anywhere near it, you'd lose signal or something like that. I guess. It's like an interference thing. They make, yeah, look, that one's a gun. I was familiar with those. So that makes a lot of sense. When Tommy G came to town to do a Scientology video, he hired a drone operator. We went over to the Hacienda gardens where Miscavige lives. And we were there watching the drone operator do this thing. And he goes, I've never had this happen before with a drone. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't He's like, "Look what's happening." It was like this. this, this place he could not get beyond. And he's like, look, I've never had this happen before. And we're like, Oh, come on. It's got to be apartment buildings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm sure they got, I'm sure they've got them on top of all the Scientology's buildings in Clearwater. God, that was one of those guns would be fun to have like drone guns. Someone's like find their drone, just fucking shoot their drone out of the sky. It just crashes it right out of the sky. It must. They had this shit overseas in like war zones. You know, where the, like these, these, uh, these like counter insurgencies, they have to have these, these guns because they have these weaponized drones overseas, like especially in places like Ukraine where they should be black, that these drones coming at you with an explosive on them, they got to be able to shoot it. And even like, uh, like when the president travels around, they have to have like a lot of the security team has to have these anti drone guns or whatever. If they see a drone coming in, they don't know what the hell it could be. They got to be able to shoot that thing out of the sky quick. Yeah. But like, yeah, that's next fucking level, bro. So, well, I see you got this, this Scientology e-meter over here. Yeah. Yeah. I was telling you that's a gift I got from, um, my, my real estate broker who, who got me this place. He got me that as a, as a housewarming gift because this, uh, this area is known for Scientology. So, and you just got it working before we started the show. Cause we were trying, we were trying, we said it wasn't working. I'm like, it looks like, yeah, we thought it was, we thought it was broken. And, uh, Steve, you even bought a new power source for it. Yeah. We got a power supply. It's a very special power supply. It's a funny gag on the podcast. People come in and we like have signed a Scientology often gets brought up on this podcast. It's like a funny gag. I can tell them we have an actual Scientology e-meter. Well, you probably don't know that one of the reasons your meter seemed like it was broken is because you've got this thing plugged into it. And this normally is not used with the e-meter. This is only used when you're, doing the, um, when you're using the e-meter on yourself, which you only do on the confidential levels, where you're learning about Xenu and auditing telepathically communicating with your body. So because when you're too far away from the microphone, there's not enough people that can do auditing that know about Xenu. So if you're at that level, you have to be able to audit yourself. Well, no, it's just that the Scientology procedures that they give you to get rid of your body. Thetans are procedures you do on yourself. There are some other procedures that someone does on you, right? But most of them you're doing on yourself. But the problem is that when you're auditing yourself and you're using the meter, you need to keep the needle on the dial. But if you're in an auditing session, you're writing stuff down on, on paper, right? And so if you're writing it down on paper and you're having to go touch the tone arm to keep the needle on the dial, it just doesn't work. So the way this works is you write here and you move the needle with this little knob right here, instead of having to lean over and touch the tone arm. Ah, I see. So you have a remote control. Remote toner is what it's called. It's a remote toner. Okay. And even this is a, even touching it here is a little clunky. And so this is very sensitive. You can move it. And so you're writing, you think to, you, you think that you think the thing to yourself and then you go, Oh, it read. And then you go, and then eventually you get rid of your body Thetans. So what, how does the process actually work? What are you thinking about and how do you know where to move the dial? Well, this you're just, you're literally just keeping the needle on the dial so that you can see if it reads. So on this thing. Okay. So here I'll, is it plugged? It's plugged in. Is that how we're getting power? So on this thing right here, what, what does this shit mean? It really means nothing. Okay. Even in Scientology, all of those little, all those words and those symbols on the, on the, um, the dial mean quite literally nothing, right? It's just, if it's moving to the left, they call it a rise. If it's moving to the fall to the right, they call it a fall. Okay. And all those little increments is just that you can try to judge the size of the read, the size of the read. The size of the fall. Right now we're not trimmed up, so we're not on the dial. We're not trimmed up. Um, what does that mean? Trimmed up? Well, trimmed up means you've got the tone arm set at two, you've got the sensitivity, uh, 32 is fine. It really turned up means we're not on the dial. Okay. Um, are we even, Oh, we're not on, uh, turn the power on. Okay. Power's on. Okay, good. And let me put the tone on. Can you see this on the camera, Steve? Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. And we had this trimmed up before I began. Are you, are you able to put, put it down right here? More or less? Yeah. We're straining the power cord. There we go. How's that? Good. Oh, right, right. I see the problem. What's the problem? You're gonna have to pick up those cans in a second. Okay. Oh yeah. You need to measure your body, bro. That's right. There we go. All right. Pick up those cans. Oh, these things. Yeah. Do you have two different size cans on there? It came with like six different size cans. I don't know how to use it. This isn't you. This is Bobby's problem. Bobby gave us the wrong size cans. Damn it, Bobby. All right. All right. Let me see if I can get you. Let me see if I can get you on the dial. Here. What's going on. Is this going to electrocute me? No. Are you sure those cans are connected to these leads right here? They look like they are, right? Okay. I think so. Okay. Oh, right. Cause we got this remote TA thing. I'm going to take off the remote tone arm. Okay. Okay. Let's see if it wants to behave a little better. Tone arm disconnected. That way. Get it calibrated again. Okay. Good. There you are. Are we live? You're on the dial. I make sure you try. How many body things do I have? No, don't move it. Oh, don't move. Don't move. Keep it still. Yeah. Okay. Got to turn the sensitivity. Very sensitive. Yeah. Can you see that thing on the camera, Steve? Yeah. It's bouncing around. Now you're on the dial. All right. Let's see. Think of something like super exciting. Well, one of the biggest thrills of your life, biggest thrills in my life. Okay. Okay. Good. So you got a little bit of a fall here. Like none of this is actual science, right? How dare you? Yeah. So like, well, there, see now your e-meter actually works, even with your mismatched size cans and everything. All right. Let me turn the sensitivity up a bit. What does this tell you about me? It tells you you got really dry hands, by the way. I can spit on them. No, don't do it. I'm going to try to get you back on. And so, all right. Do I have body aliens? It's so crazy. Literally. That you know how to do it. The way this meter is used in auditing is just almost as a crutch. So like, if I asked you a question, what have you done that you don't want me to know about? Oh, you're wiggling around. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I didn't know you didn't have to move. That's all right. You know, if I'm the auditor and I basically, you know, many auditing sessions are some version of an interrogation, right? Okay. How would you start an auditing session? Well, we started on this session. I do all sorts of things to calibrate the e-meter, squeeze the cans, take a deep breath, let it out. Are you tired? Are you hungry? You're not actually going to do this shit. Right now, but then be like, is there any reason not to start the session? Then you're like, thank you. You know, this is the session. And then we'd do some questions to resolve anything. You're up, you know, do you have a, do you have an air, you know, there's all, I don't want to use Scientology lingo. Cause there's no point. It doesn't mean anything. Right. Well, it'd be fun. Okay. So role-playing. So in the beginning of an auditing session, you handle what they call the rudiments first, which means what are the things you have to address before you're ready to start the actual auditing session. Okay. So the first thing is addressing any ARC breaks, which is just Scientology lingo. For things you're upset about. Okay. And then, so I'd be like, do you have an ARC break? And then if it got a read, I'd be like, do you have an ARC break? And you'd be like, yeah, I had a big fight with my wife this morning. I'd be like, Oh, thank you very much. Is that a break in affinity, reality, communication, understanding. And if I got to read on communication, is that a break in communication? Like, yes, total break in communication. Thank you. Was that curious about communication, desired communication, enforced communication? Was that enforced communication? Yes. She was enforcing it on me. And then you're looking for the needle to kind of go back and forth a little bit and be like, thank you. Your needle is floating. Thank you. And then you'd finish that rudiment and then you'd go on to the next rudiment. Do you have a present time problem? Now that's something you have your attention on that feels like it's more important to be doing that than being in an auditing session right now. A present time problem. Something distracting you. Yeah. Something you're distracted. Right. Right. And if let's, let's say that doesn't read. And I get a little floated. Let's just say that doesn't read. And now, yeah. Has a withhold been missed. Now that's something you've done that you, uh, people don't know about, but someone gave you the impression they might know about it and you don't know if they really know or not. And it makes you feel a particular way. Okay. These three questions get addressed at the beginning of every single auditing session that is ever done, which is why no matter what you're planning on doing in that auditing session, imagine you've got a 13 year old auditor, no matter what you're doing in that auditing session, even if it wasn't going to be something salacious, your answer to any one of these questions could be something salacious and inappropriate and sexual, literally anything, right? There's nothing off limits in an auditing session. Okay. I'm giving you an example, um, about how, if a child is your auditor. Yeah. It is completely age inappropriate. Totally. Because every bit, every auditing session you're potentially talking about age inappropriate stuff. Okay. So then once we're done with the rudiments, um, let's say we're here, "We're doing a certain confessional." And I'd be like, "Okay, um um have you done anything you don't want me to know about now what i'm looking for is the needle to move to the right right at the end of the last word okay have you done anything you don't want me to know about and if i go and and i can ask it a bunch of different ways to try to get it to read on the question have you done anything you don't want me to know about has anything been suppressed on the question have you done anything you don't want me to know about has anything been invalidated and there's like six or seven different questions i can ask i'm trying to get a read okay and what a read means what the needle moves to the right at the very end of the question and if i get a read that's basically that's green light that means i i'm getting an answer to this question you have an answer to this question so i'm using the e-meter as an interrogation tool so it's actually doing something that what does that little jump actually mean like scientifically um some change to the resistance of the electrical flow of the battery go through your body so it's like a polygraph it's like a third of a polygraph it's like a third of them polygraph it's a third of a polygraph wow yeah that's fascinating totally so ask me something well okay have you done anything you don't want me to know about when today look at him he's got crimes dude it's it just hit the wall man your needle just broke it hit the dial hit the pin so hard and and so i am using this and you might be like no i'd be like well what did you think of when i asked you the question what exactly i did master what exactly i masturbated to miss rachel how many times did you stroke it exact number with miss rachel and took me 27. okay it was very fast um and so i'm getting all the details that i that i can that i want that i need this isn't like yeah and i'm so the e-meter is just used as a crutch uh-huh i'm gonna use what the needle does on the e-meter as my signal for whether to keep going for more keep asking for more right asking you for an earlier similar time you did something so you're looking for the you're looking for the dark stuff you're looking for the stuff people are ashamed of yeah the stuff that they're holding on to right because the scientology idea would be because you're withholding this stuff yeah you end up withholding your own power they might be onto something i mean to some extent all these weird cults are onto something yeah that's true that's very true that's why people get in um and so that is i wonder that i wonder that probably does have some sort of a positive effect on people absolutely also let's look at the placebo effect right yeah you know the placebo effect works even more if the person's wearing a lab jacket like that kind of stuff like the more authority the placebo comes with the more effective it is you as a scientologist are told that this registers things underneath your consciousness yes this thing knows things about you you don't know right belief is very very powerful and so not only can i can i use this to tell you that you have answers to my questions but i can only use it to tell you when that's all fixed now that's all handled that's all resolved now right your needle is floating that that has gone away now like wow it has gone away i feel so much better yeah i do feel better this emitter is used in almost all scientology auditing and this emitter when they're doing the telepathic communicating with the the body fate tennis that xenu created um i mean i do i do feel better now that i admitted that i was masturbated to miss rachel there you go let's go test to the state of clear i mean it does work yeah you know it's nuanced so scientology got so pissed off that non-scientologists were getting their hands on these meters that they uh their newest version the mark 8 ultra is actually fully computerized software update it's fully computerized uh and every year you have to plug it in to your computer and re-authenticate it through scientology's own website and if you don't the machine bricks so if you're not in good standing with scientology your e-meter ceases to work it's nothing but a five thousand dollar paperweight well how does mine work because this is the mark super seven quantum they this uh this one became uh obsolete in 2014. they don't sell these anymore they don't sell these anymore so um a local scientologist who left scientology gave me their their mark uh eight ultra and it's just a it won't even turn on it's just useless because the newer ones you have to be able to plug it into the internet to get the update but this one's so old yeah and it and if it doesn't this one pretty internet it's not pre-internet it's just pre that model of e-meter ah i see yeah gotcha exactly so that's why you can buy these that's hilarious that's why you can't buy the mark 8 ultras is because no one's who's selling paperweights and if scientology sees them on ebay i'm pretty sure they might snap them up yeah this one was i think this one was purchased on ebay yeah well like these older ones there's there's tons of them out there what was that one i was showing you out there in the other room that's a mark five that's not a super old one yeah yeah yeah that's a super old one yeah there's both mark five the mark six the mark seven the super seven and then the eight ultra yeah and every time they come out with a new meter the scientologists all have to buy it again i'm not allowed to use your old e-meters right it's five thousand dollars a pop how much do the scientologists have to pay for these five thousand dollars a pop do people buy their own you have to buy your own oh it's mandatory you buy your own yeah if you're training to be an auditor and you you have to have two jeez yeah no it's a it's a money no wonder you have to be wealthy it costs about there's a great german engineering youtube channel that um took one of these actually this exact model and opened it up and broke it down and and analyzed how it works inside and put a cost estimate together it's not more than two hundred dollars worth of parts and they're manu and these were manufactured by free sea or slave labor up at the international base right these days the mark eight i think they're made in taiwan but again they cost like a hundred bucks two hundred bucks to make this home for five thousand dollars that's crazy and that's how an organization that doesn't pay income tax doesn't pay property tax and doesn't have to pay its staff to pay the rent to make so much damn money that is wild dude yeah yeah we were talking on the phone the other day about like some of the crazy that people have to go through to like escape scientology and all that stuff and you know a lot of a lot of those stories that i've heard happened a long time ago like in particular i think the first podcast i ever did on scientology i don't know if it was mike rinder or if it was uh david miscavige's dad ron ron miscavige yeah but i remember talking i think it was ron who i was talking to who was telling me like their crazy escape thing they had to do to like actually get out of there because i think they were in the sea org am i right is that right yeah ron and his wife becca that time they're both dead now yeah he recently died and like the story that they had about like escaping and like having to like trick the security guards and like get her in the car and they had to like haul ass down the road and cars were chasing them like how much of that actually happened still today is that something that just happened back then like during the like the early days in like the 80s and 90s or is it possible for them to still get away with like that today still get away with it i mean i mean if someone who worked here in the downtown clearwater base the flag land base if they had to leave they would if they had to if they wanted to leave and not do it scientology's way they would absolutely have to do it like that really absolutely yeah they would get changed oh my god yeah yeah you see the roving security guards on their bikes they got the cameras everywhere they got the walkie-talkies everywhere the bus drivers are all are all mic'd up you know all this all the roving security guards are patched into the bus drivers and everything that's how the buses avoid the protesters welcome back freaking frack welcome to the jungle abc wednesdays abbott is back it's going to be the best year yet thank you now we can finally turn this up and everyone's going wild y'all think you run this school but you don't it's going to be the best year yet but you don't it's going great abbott elementary anything can happen in the jungle right guys all new wednesdays on abc and stream next day on hulu tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college that's why she shops at bj's wholesale club saving up to 25 off grocery store prices beef jerky microwave meals laundry pods even they can't screw up have you met my kids and with bj's gas she gets there for less they call me the road warrior mom home of the save join for just twenty dollars at bjs.com mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for six months open soon limited time offer new members only bj's home of the save is you know they're all on the on the walkie talkies okay where are they now where are they now okay we're gonna go back behind this building so and you know if your friend was doing some it work for them i don't know if you saw the quality of their cameras i'm told they could read a license plate on clearwater beach from the top of the fort harrison hotels whoa strong their cameras are that far away i'm told they got better cameras than the clearwater police and so yeah now the thing is you also can leave it's like but they have very stringent long grueling abusive sort of process that you've got to go through to leave uh the c organization and you know why though like if you if you've decided you want to leave if i decide i'm done with scientology what's forcing me to go through their grueling process i'm just going to leave and give them the middle finger that's if you decide that you're done with scientology right but some people just want to leave the c-org they don't necessarily want to leave they want to stay in scientology and that's what that's the leverage they have over their head is if you want to stay in scientology and if you want to still associate with scientologists you're going to do this our way on our timeline and you're going to meet our requirements which is tons of interrogations to find out any bad thing you could have done. And that's specifically at that point, you pretty much know that specifically so that it can be used against you. If you decide to go to the dark side, they literally will sit you down with a lawyer and cameras and interview you and say, okay, you see everything in writing that you've said that you've done wrong while you work for the organizations. You agree that you did this, right? Yes, yes, absolutely. I did this. Okay. And you agree that you're here of your own free will. Yes, yes, yes. And you're here today of your own free will. Absolutely. You understand that you've chosen to leave because you are unable to meet the high ethical standards of the C organization, right? Yes. Yes, absolutely. You will say anything to get out of there. Okay. And you have this on video with a lawyer. They do this with every single person who leaves the C or even if you didn't have some high level important role. They have you sign all sorts of affidavits, non-disclosure, non-disparagement to basically put the fear of God into you. That even if you do leave, just keep your mouth shut, get on with your life. Right. Don't start a YouTube channel. Don't go on Danny Jones' podcast. Right. That kind of stuff. Has anyone in there ever secretly reached out to you to say, hey man, I see what you're doing. I'm aware of it. Can you bring me to the light? They have not reached out when they were still in. They leave and they say how their process went and they explain that they're watching the videos while they were still in. Really? Yes. Yes. And how do they get away with watching the videos and not getting caught? Because aren't they surrounded by people who are constantly snitching on them and checking their computers and stuff like that? Isn't it pretty- Maybe they had a day off and they went to the coffee shop or something. Instead of going to the coffee shop in Clearwater, Florida, to Safety Harbor or something. Every now and then they'll get a day or two off a year. I mean, where there's a will, there's a way. People figure it out. Right. Yeah. Fuck, man. It's so crazy. And then the OS, what is it called? The Office of Special Affairs. OSA. That's like their spy wing. Yeah. And they still have people who are actively going out and spying on people and then trying to fuck with people. Oh, yeah. I've got a great video on my channel of busting a PI that had been camping outside of my house for months. It turns out my neighbors finally told me about this and they're like, "Hey, listen, Aaron, these PIs are really harassing people." And I'm like, "PIs? What are you talking about?" "Oh, you didn't see this guy?" "How come you guys didn't tell me earlier?" "Oh, we just assumed that you knew about it." And I'm like, "This is the greatest day of my life. I've always wanted to bust one of these guys on video." And yeah, so OSA hires lawyers. Lawyers hire the PIs. They use cutouts and arms length for relationships and stuff like that. Yeah. The Office of Special Affairs, they handle all the media, all the legal, all the public relations. They're the ones talking to the newspapers, talking to the journalists. Well, when Tommy G came to town, you mentioned that, they went into the Clearwater Bank building. Those are the Office of Special Affairs offices. Pat Harney, the woman that I went to go talk to in my little video about Flavio, she's a long-term, high-level operative for the Office of Special Affairs. That's what's in that Clearwater Bank building. That's OSA. What's the Clearwater Bank building? Where's that at? Right at the intersection of Cleveland and Fort Harrison. It's an old historical building, Clearwater Bank building. They also call it the Scientology Information Center, but that's why that's the information center. Right. They don't want people going into a real church of Scientology. They just have you going into the Office of Special Affairs. The people who work there have already heard all of the scandalous stuff about Scientology. Those people aren't going to be like if someone walks in there and they're like, "Where's Shelly Miscavige? Why did Whitney Mills kill herself?" All this stuff. The staff in there have already been inoculated to all of that. They already know all of that because those staff work for the Office of Special Affairs. That's where they want new people to come in. That is also what might make it seem like you can join Scientology in Clearwater because they've got this center where you can walk in. It's an information center, but that's not what it means to join Scientology. You can't join Scientology. Did you actually confront this PI? Yes. Face to face? Yes. What happened? I got a great video about it. I don't know if I can easily find it. This guy was just sitting in a car out front of your house? Yeah. Let me see if I can find it real quick. I would wonder if those people actually know why or who's behind it. Are they aware of this? Are they aware that Scientology is hiring them to spy on suppressive people? I believe they know. The private investigators who are doing this, these PIs, they are not themselves Scientologists. Correct. He found it. Is that it? Yeah, that's it. Let's hear it. Notice he's got an earpiece in. There he is. Well, let's see what's going on. Hey, buddy. Hey, buddy. How are you doing? Hey. What's your name, buddy? Arthur. I wish it was more exciting, but that was one of the greatest days of my life right there. I mean, why would he roll his window down? Why bother saying anything to me at all? But he'd been there for months. Really? Yeah. Been there for months. That's crazy, man. The amount of money they have to be able to pay for those people. Yeah. But again, the conversation that I was having there with Mike was like, why would they be doing this? And that's what Mike explained. It's not that they're trying to catch you doing something. It's that Miscavige is probably in town and they just want to know where you are. So they know where you're not, which is about to ambush him or his security detail. Now, what's the latest with Grant Cardone? I know he's been getting in a lot of trouble. I've saw those videos of those depositions or whatever. I know that has a lot to do with like his business, his shady, like, real estate business, where he tries to get people to invest in buildings and stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, in the Scientology world, the latest with him is that him and his wife, Elena, were just given the award for being the number one Dianetics, they call it disseminators. But in the real world, it would be like the number one Dianetics recruiters in all of Scientology. So I don't know if you've seen, like, Elena seems to do this even more than Grant. That's his wife? Elena is his wife. And there's just doing all these Dianetics promotional videos. It's almost like how all of these gurus sell their stuff is be more like me, buy my program, be more like me, do my course, emulate my success. This is how I traveled my path. You can do the same if you only invest with me or buy my whatever. Part of Grant's story is Dianetics. Dianetics is how I really unlocked my potential. Dianetics is how I really got a handle on life. Dianetics is really how I was able to see that how I was holding myself back. That's how I was able to take it to a whole nother level. And so yeah, Miscavige awarded Grant Cardone and his wife, Elena, as literally the number one Dianetics promoters in all of Scientology. So he's recruiting people? Absolutely. That's why I do videos about Grant. I don't really give a damn about his real estate business or all of his stuff. I go, the guy's one of the number one recruiters and financial supporters of a family destroying human trafficking. Grant Cardone is one of the number one recruiters and financial supporters of a family destroying human trafficking. And so that's why I do videos about him. And he's only been leaning into it more. Yeah. If you look at his Instagram, especially if you're familiar with downtown Clearwater and what the Scientology buildings look like, he's been spending a lot of time here. Yeah, I've noticed. Yeah. I've seen that. And I see he walks around down there and talks to people and he even films himself walking through that flag building. That's right. And you see all the fucking crazy gold plated shit everywhere, the escalators. It's wild looking in there. It looks like a Trump hotel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think Cardone makes a lot of money on the backs of other Scientologists. How? By promoting his investment schemes. Oh. And also by doing his seminars and his 10X conferences. They all sort of. A lot of them. It's almost like an MLM within an MLM kind of. Right, right. Those Scientologists that are already in the church, they gravitate towards him because he's one of the most famous Scientologists. So he's got like, an easy target audience there. Exactly. That's crazy, dude. Yeah. And that whole lawsuit was crazy. So what was the story with the actual lawsuit with him? The lawsuit is him doing videos guaranteeing a certain amount of returns on one of his funds. Oh, okay. It's kind of like he starts a new fund for each. Like timeshare type things, right? Well, no. I mean, timeshare is a very specific thing. He's basically buying these giant commercial apartment buildings, right? And so first he buys the building and then he raised the funds and he flips the building to his investors. Timeshare is a very specific thing. That's not what he's doing. But in order to raise the money for these funds, he does it through social media. He's raising this money from unaccredited investors. Mm-hmm. And especially when you're promoting to that type of investor, you making exaggerated claims of a certain guaranteed level of annual returns, you know, you're getting into fraud territory because they're unaccredited investors. The assumption is that they are not necessarily smart enough to know that what you're saying is obviously bullshit and should be taken with a grain of salt, right? Right. And there was just a series of videos where he kept repeating the same claim of guaranteed returns. And then there's one video where he even said that the SEC told him he couldn't say that, but he was saying it anyway, and the SEC could basically go shove it. So one of the investors in that fund just has sued him for it. And that investor has since died. His daughter has picked up the lawsuit. I think we're talking about the Pino. It's actually a class action lawsuit. I think the investor is Pino. And this thing's dragged on for years and years. And you're talking about a deposition that was recently made public where I think Grant kind of made a fool out of himself. Did you watch the whole thing? No, I just saw clips. He was reposting the clips of it. I know. And even lawyers were like, I do not know why you are, you know, there's a lot of lawyers who do reaction videos on YouTube. Like the bearded lawyer, for example, did, I think he might even be a local guy. The bearded lawyer? There's a guy on YouTube, the bearded lawyer. And he's like, I don't know what Grant is doing. It does seem like he's a little out of control, but he seemed a little out of control to me for a long time. I don't know. It's one of these things where maybe he could get away with this forever, you know? Right. I was speculating for a long time that he was getting very close to going to jail. The FBI had him under surveillance. They had- Really? They were doing undercover. This is some of the stuff that's come out. Even when he had a falling out recently with his former business partner, Gary Brecka. You must know, have you ever interviewed Gary Brecka? No. The 10X health guy? No, we got close to interviewing him, but decided against it. I interviewed him. Oh yeah? Is he a Scientologist? No, no. But he, one of the stories that he told is when Grant, acknowledged to him that Grant knew the FBI had been recording his offices. Had people inside, some informants working in there. And it's one of these things where when the FBI surveillance of you gets to that level, that seems pretty incriminating. But on the other side, you'd be like, yeah, but they never brought a case. So maybe they must not have found anything. Or they found something, but it wasn't enough. Like who knows how these decisions get made? Yeah, sure. The SEC had him under investigation. Well, this was one of the hottest clips that came out in that deposition, is he sat there saying that the SEC had fully cleared him of any wrongdoing. And the lawyer said, the SEC absolutely did not clear you of any wrongdoing. And he goes, yes, they did. And the lawyer gave him the letter from the SEC and said, read paragraph X from this letter. And he goes, we are not bringing an enforcement action. And the lawyer said, yeah, read the next paragraph. And the next paragraph, this should in no way ever be interpreted to mean that you are being cleared of any wrongdoing. So I don't know. But one way or another, the guy has not been prosecuted criminally. He's not been, the SEC has not taken action against him at this point. And this class action lawsuit seems to be one of the last remaining things that's lingering over him. And I'm surprised he doesn't settle it, but I guess. And whatever happened with the Danny Masterson case? Oh, that guy's doing life in prison. Life. Yeah. Yeah. Up to life. Yeah. And Scientology was a huge part of helping him with that lawsuit. Oh, yeah. Well, that wasn't a lawsuit. That was a criminal prosecution. Criminal prosecution, yeah. Scientology was very active in silencing his victims. And again, it's kind of like the Beck situation. Scientology knew that Danny messed with these women. Scientology knew it. They did their own investigation and they determined it. This all came out in the trial. And they even did a financial settlement between Danny and one of his Scientologist victims, because they thought this would at least prevent this victim from ever going public in the future. So not only did they investigate it, Scientology doesn't let Scientologists extort their celebrities for money. There's no benefit in Scientology for coming forward and saying, a Scientologist celebrity, it's me. Okay. If anything, Scientology would generally come down pretty hard on one of its own rank and file members accusing one of its own celebrities of that, even internally. Okay. So the fact that Scientology arranged, not only permitted, but arranged this financial settlement is just one of the many pieces of evidence that Scientology itself concluded Danny Masterson committed these crimes. Yeah. And they are the ones who silenced the victims for as long as they were silenced. God, dude. And that's why the Danny Masterson trial ended up being just as much of an indictment against Scientology as Danny himself. Yeah. Yeah. It's a cartel. It's a cartel. Just like, they're no different than Mexican drug cartels or fucking huge corporations that are lobbying politicians to get away with crimes, right? Like at any level, I think we've seen that more recently. We've seen that more in the public in the last couple of months with like all the shit the FBI has been doing with covering shit up. And protecting fucking billionaire donors. It's just, it all boils down to money at the end of the day. If you have enough money to pay off politicians, pay off judges and have fucking blackmail on people, you're just going to get away with shit in this country. Unfortunately, that seems to be the way it is. And, you know, I don't know if we're ever going to see Scientology taken down as long as they're breaking in as much money as they have and fucking lobbying people and trying to control people in government as much as they are. Yeah. I always say the good news is that they're failing already on their own. Government intervention would be amazing. Massive civil settlements would be amazing. Getting their tax exam status revoked would be amazing. I look forward to the day that those things happen. But Scientology is failing pretty quickly all on its own in terms of membership, right? I mean, you could have a billion, two billion. Okay. And any individual can have 10 billion in the bank. Scientology can have money in the bank, but if you don't have members, what do you have? I mean, I guess as someone who grew up in it and. I see the death of the organization as the loss of its members. Someone else might say, well, as long as they have money, they're not really dead. If they keep shrinking, they're dead enough. And they still own all that real estate, right? Aren't they one of the biggest real estate holders in the country? I don't know if it's in the country. I mean, there's only about 50 recruitment centers in the entire country. So they might be the largest property owner in Clearwater, definitely not the largest prop, one of the largest property owners in the country. I promise you that. So I guess I'm trying to be optimistic, right? Scientology is losing members very, very quickly. It's getting harder and harder to recruit anybody. I measure the death of the organization as the loss of their membership. And, and I feel like that's in a death spiral that they will never recover from. I think they will be able to continue to accumulate money until they lose their tax exempt status. And, and so that's why maybe the organization will always continue to exist in some way, shape, or form for, for, for, for many years to come. But I don't think they're going to ever get back to being able to actually recruit people into Scientology. Yeah. I really don't. I really don't. But so I feel like every day we have a little bit of success in taking Scientology down a little bit more. Even if their balance sheet is growing, I still look on the outside. So you're still protesting every single week? Yeah. And I try to do videos every single day and I still run the foundation to help people leave Scientology. Are you still, are you interviewing like, uh, people who left Scientology pretty regularly? Like, uh, former people? Not as much as I was the last few years. I mean, pretty much worked. There's only, there's only 20,000 Scientologists in the entire world. So when you then go, okay, are there a lot overseas? Uh, yeah, I'd say half of Scientology is, is out of the U S half of Scientology is in the U S. Yeah. Half is out of the U S. Oh yeah. I'd say half the recruitment centers are, are in, uh, yeah. South America, Europe, Australia. Absolutely. Pretty much every European country has a recruitment center in it. Huh? Yeah. Weird. Yeah. So you go, so you can maybe 10,000 Scientologists in the U S maybe 10,000 Scientologists everywhere else in the world as well. Right. Right. You know, less every day though. Yeah. Well, dude, thanks for doing this brother. I really appreciate it. Um, tell people out there, like your, the name of your channel, all that stuff, how they can reach out to you. Growing up in Scientology is where I do all my stuff. Everything else just trickles down from there, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or X or whatever, but you can find me on YouTube at growing up in Scientology or on the corner of, uh, Fort Harrison, the beach by the gas station, look 500 feet away from the Scientology flag building. You'll find Aaron waving a flag. Cool, bro. Well, thanks again. Uh, we'll link all your shit below for, for folks to find. And, uh, thanks for having me. That's all folks. Welcome back. Freaking frack. Welcome to the jungle ABC Abbott is back. Thank you. Now we can finally turn this up and everyone's going wild. It's going great. Abbott elementary. That's why she shops at BJ's wholesale club, saving up to 25% off. Grocery store prices, beef jerky, microwave meals, laundry pods. Even they can't screw up. This is your home. Goat warrior mom, home of the save. Open soon. BJ's, home of the save.