Mike Benz #2447: Cyber-Sovereignty, Digital Rights & The Future of Free Speech 2026

**Joe Rogan** (0:14)
What a day to have you in here, buddy. Kid in a candy shop. We hacked the government. We hacked the government's files evidently. I mean, this is we have three and a half million files that it feels like we should not have. It would have been great to have had. Seven years ago in 2019 when this is being litigated, but it's an incredible moment of transparency for how the world works How governments interact with the private sector and funds and it's just really cool to be a part of it What was the holdup? What was the because it seemed like there was a lot of people that did not want these files released Yeah, I thought about this a lot What we have access to now are internal documents from the Justice Department and the FBI That are normally Even though they're not classified. They are part of a criminal investigation. And so they're not normally disclosable to the public It could be the case that it kind of required a congressional bill to force this out like when you if there's a internal investigation and it's not a part of a court document that's entered into evidence. You can't just FOIA the Justice Department to get dirt on your political enemies because you think that they might be involved in something. Now I don't know if it could have been done through an executive order around Epstein transparency around the time of the first binders. Certainly it looked like there was friction between the president and Thomas Massey over this issue. But I don't. I don't know the details of what went down there, but the fact is the bill passed 427 to one in the house. Who's the one?
My recollection is that it was Randy Fine, but I might be wrong on that, so I don't want to smear. There was one person who didn't want it released because they thought it would compromise the victims, right? At one point in time, at least. Yeah, I. I don't know what the rationale is, and because I don't recall offhand who the one is, I don't wanna lean on that too much, but the fact is, is nobody wanted to be on the other side of this. I can't think of anything that both Republicans and Democrats voted on 427 to one and, oh, I'm sorry, Clay Higgins, sorry, apologies to Randy Fine. Yeah, so, There was the I Mean there was obviously friction because this implicates everybody Republicans and Democrats Americans and a dozen different foreign countries Heads of major hedge funds and multinational corporations donors to all political parties major university and science institutions I mean almost every major player in world affairs was in some way either involved in or adjacent to this network or the network tried to reach out to them because they were influential. And so, you know, there was kind of a mutually assured destruction around the Epstein hot potato for a decade now, which is that out of power, The Republicans said, oh, the Democrats are don't want to disclose this because of the Clintons. And then the Trump administration gets into power and there's a very slow reaction to the kind of disclosures that culminated in what happened this week. And so you had the Democrats saying, oh, they're not disclosing it because of, you know, Trump world and his associates. Meanwhile, they controlled the Justice Department and the FBI for four years and didn't release any so you know it took in a moment like this and what's what's really interesting about it is this bill only compelled the disclosure this law that passed in congress only compelled the disclosure of justice department originated files justice department by extension fbi is the investigative arm of the justice department it does not compel cia originated files and One of the coolest moments of transparency we had last year in 2025 was when Tulsi Gabbard as the you know, ODNI is the head of director of sent of national intelligence in charge of the whole intelligence community spearheaded the JFK files release and we got basically fully unredacted Documents now. I know there's a contest over how complete they are. But the fact is is it was hundreds of thousands of files that had never been seen before, or unredacted versions of documents that had been fully or partially redacted for decades. The only reason that we have JFK files at all is because in 1992, Congress passed a bill to force the CIA to start turning over documents. The law, I believe, was called the JFK Records Collection Act, and it forced by law the CIA to establish this independent presidential assassination review board that would review documents for declassification and compel you know on the basis of that independent body given all of the intelligence intrigue around Epstein and the fact that it is in my view physically impossible over Epstein's 40 year career in intelligence adjacent work that there was that there's not Epstein files that are CIA originated and we actually You know, I saw this in the files that were just released Jeffrey Epstein himself twice FOIA. That's the Freedom of Information Act Which which is a law that I think came around in 1966 which allows any US citizen to ask any government agency for all public records that has about anything. There are certain things that get blocked in that. There were a lot of FOIA fights about COVID. You know, Fauci, famously, there's this exchange where, you know, one of the folks in Fauci world says that they learned cool tricks from the FOIA lady about how to get around requests. But the fact is you can FOIA the CIA for records because That FOIA forces the CIA to give you declassified or unclassified records. And if it's classified, it'll issue a glomar. We cannot confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of classified information. Before we get any further, the JFK stuff, I never heard anything about it. I mean, I know the files came out, but there was no big revelations.