A bunch of conservative influencers nabbed in Russian money laundering plot…hilarity ensues

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"At the end of the day, Clarence Thomas is just the Tim Pool of the Supreme Court."
Bless you, @chrislhayes


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WATCH: @chrislhayes says Clarence Thomas is just the Tim Pool of the Supreme Court:

“These billionaires and interest groups need Justice Thomas to stay where he is and are lavishing gifts on him to ensure that he will remain on the Court—it's just not that different from the Russians paying online right-wing personalities huge sums of money to keep doing what they were doing.”


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bnew

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David Sacks - Why Did He Remove His Financing Relationship with Dave Rubin from Craft's Site?

As many know by now, Dave Rubin was among the commentators/influencers taken down this week (Lauren Chen, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Tenet Media etc.) for their ties with a Russian money laundering operation.

David Sacks, as well as Joe Lonsdale who has his paw prints all over this, were both investors in Dave Rubin's company Locals - a platform for (generally right-wing) influencers to crowdfund and raise money - before Locals exited to Rumble /search?q=#RUM.

It was an exit - what all VCs love.

So why has Dave Rubin's Locals been scrubbed from David Sacks' VC firm Craft Ventures' website? This didn't just happen this week - it's been gone for a while. Plus, all of Sacks' and his partners' successful company exits, even those from before Craft Ventures was founded in 2017, are on Craft's website.

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Using the Wayback Machine, we can see that in 2022 Dave Rubin's Locals was featured prominently even after its exit on Craft's website as a David Sacks seed investment.

Using the Wayback Machine we can also see that Benny Johnson (part of this sting) was using Locals to collect payments going back to 2021.

Who was paying them via Locals?

Now on Friday, the Russian influence story was brought up on the All-In podcast.

Of course, none of this was meaningfully discussed even though David Sacks himself led the investment in Dave Rubin's Locals, a platform meant to provide video influencers payment services, and some of the Tenet Media personalities involved with this indictment were also featured in Locals marketing.


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Well...the little fish need to fall first. Guys like Elon and Peter Thiel are relatively protected. Not worth the effort.

Joe Lonsdale is done, regardless of how the election turns out. He is as dumb as a pile of rocks with half the personality of a pile of rocks. He's sold out too much, gotten too risky, goofed off with the Texas/Abbott slush fund. He's out of the picture.

David Sacks is done if Kamala Harris wins, possibly done anyway. Even most Republicans in the government hate him and he's sitting on a ton of crap.

David Ulevitch of a16z needs to turn government if he hasn't already or he's done.

Katherine Boyle of a16z American Dynamism (aka Fentanyl Karen) needs to turn government. The very fact that a16z hired The Washington Post's old art and high society gossip columnist tells you all you need to know about how fundraising vs. actually-building-stuff works in VC. I hope for her sake she wisens up, but I don't care either way, she's a grown adult.

Packy McCormick/8VC lowlifes/Hack VC lowlifes are all in play. For crying out loud, they are publicly taking money from a 23 year-old guy Richard Hsiao who is the son of a Chinese money launderer who sits courtside at Milwaukee Bucks games and pretends he's the coach.

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The little fish have to fall first. The street dealers always have to go down and flip before the criminal masterminds can be taken down, if it even gets to that level.

Let it play out, my grasshoppers.

I'd be watching this Tacora Capital Keri Findley character closely.

Ms. Findley runs a book of private credit for Peter Thiel, she's on a bunch of Joe Lonsdale stuff around wealth management and VC investments, she's got a weird resume gap from her time at General Catalyst, and her firm Tacora Capital has been buoyed by the absence of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

At a minimum, if you believe Thiel and his network conspired to bring down SVB and one resulting effect was the loss of the main venture debt provider (SVB) then why is Thiel's venture debt play Tacora Capital now moving in on the market? You should be asking these questions.

Any jury of average citizens could see this story.

-Thiel and his network crash SVB, which among other things is the largest provider of venture debt in Silicon Valley.
-Thiel backed Tacora Capital as a venture debt play several months earlier.
-With SVB and then First Republic (and to an extent Banc of California) out of the way, Thiel's play of Tacora Capital can benefit with all of the other historical players in the venture debt market out of the picture. He made a market for himself and he's the main investor in Tacora Capital.

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There's a lot going on which is not fully public yet. I don't see how Joe Lonsdale specifically gets out of this, but there are a half dozen other idiots with their pants down as well.


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