by Brent Lambi | Aug 30, 2026 | Political
Your Tax Dollars,
Their Harvest
The Tariff Is Ours. The Bailout Is Theirs.
The American farmer never asked for protection. He asked
for a market, and Washington sold it to his competitor.
A FARMER DOES NOT WANT A CHECK. HE WANTS A BUYER.
STOP FINANCING THE COMPETITION.
NO PARTY OWNS THIS ONE
SELL IT — DON’T SUBSIDIZE IT!
Sources: U.S. Treasury; White House Proclamation of Feb. 6, 2026; U.S. Customs and Border Protection quota bulletins;
USDA; American Soybean Association; Congressional Research Service; Reuters; CNN; NBC News; Associated Press.
SWAP LINE $20 billion to Argentina’s central bank, Oct. 2025
CHINA’S CUT More than half of U.S. soybean exports; $12.6B in 2024
BEEF QUOTA 20,000 to as much as 100,000 metric tons in 2026
FARM INPUTS ~$33 billion imported yearly – taxed at the gate
THE “HELP” $12 billion in bridge payments, Dec. 2025
THE LEDGER, BY THE BUSHEL
WHAT “POLITICAL” NOW MEANS. Juan
Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras,
was convicted of conspiring to move
at least 400 tons of cocaine into this country
and sentenced to 45 years by Judge Kevin
Castel, an appointee of George W. Bush. On
December 1, 2025, he walked out of a federal
penitentiary with a full pardon. The explanation
offered was that he had been “persecuted
very unfairly” and was the victim of what the
President called a Biden administration setup.
No evidence was produced. Not one juror answered.
Just the word “political,” thrown over a
verdict like a tarp.
WHO ACTUALLY DID THE WORK. In 2025,
the Coast Guard seized more than 511,000
pounds of cocaine, over three times the service’s
annual average. Operation Pacific Viper
alone has taken more than 215,000 pounds and
apprehended 160 suspected traffickers. Eighty
percent of interdictions of U.S.-bound drugs
happen at sea: small boats, black water, boarding
ladders. DEA agents and county deputies
do the same work on land: years of wiretaps,
controlled buys and grand jury testimony, given
under their own names, in the same counties
where the people they charge live. Nobody
hands them a signature at the end of it.
NOW DO THE ARITHMETIC. Four hundred
tons is 800,000 pounds. One signature
undid more than the Coast Guard’s best
year on record.
They boarded the boat. He signed the paper.
Only one of them was risking anything.
THE COMPANY HE KEEPS. Hernández was
not alone. On day one, it was Ross Ulbricht,
founder of the largest online drug market of its
time, serving two life sentences. In May 2025, it
was Larry Hoover. The Washington Post counts
clemency for roughly 100 people accused of
drug-related crimes.
AND THE PRESS THAT MOVED ON. It was
reported once. The Washington Post ran the
clemency tally. The wires carried the release.
Two House members filed a resolution condemning
it. Then the cameras went back to
THE PARDON LEDGER
Four Hundred Tons Is
Not a Political Opinion
And a Cutter Crew Is Not a Talking Point.
A federal jury convicted him. A judge appointed by a Republican president
sentenced him. The White House calls it persecution.
Sources: U.S. Coast Guard and DHS interdiction releases (2025–2026); The Washington Post clemency analysis; AP, NPR and
CBS reporting on the December 1, 2025 release; U.S. v. Hernández, S.D.N.Y.
Every package of imported, foreign-processed
meat on an American shelf is a shift that
does not get run here. Tyson shut its Lexington,
Nebraska, plant in January, eliminating
3,200 jobs. This month, it announced the closure
of its Joslin, Illinois, complex, eliminating
roughly 2,500 more jobs, plus the closure of its
Eagle Mountain, Utah, plant. It is also seeking
a buyer for its Pasco, Washington, facility. Imports
have hit a record 17 percent of American
beef supply, and Washington suspended the
tariff-rate quotas in May. Consolidation pencils
out for shareholders. The bill lands on the
farmer. Every packer that disappears is one
less bidder at the gate, and kill capacity, once
gone, does not come back.
None of this was a market accident. Washington
suspended the quotas, waved the imports
through, and called it competition. Our
farmers lose the buyer. Our towns lose the
payroll. Our floors go quiet while the trimmings
come off a boat. That is not policy. That
is gross incompetence, and the farmer pays
for it last and longest.
One Less Bidder at the Gate
The Packing Jobs Go First. The Farmer’s Price Goes Next.
Every pound processed overseas means one less shift run
here and one less buyer for the farmer.
LEXINGTON, NEB. Closed Jan. 20, 2026 – about 3,200 jobs
JOSLIN, ILL. Closed Aug. 14, 2026 – about 2,500 jobs
EAGLE MOUNTAIN, UTAH Case-ready plant closing – 723 jobs
THE IMPORT SIDE 17.3% of U.S. beef supply, an all-time high;
tariff rate quotas suspended May 11, 2026
THE RECORD, PLANT BY PLANT
Source: Tyson Foods statements, Nov. 21, 2025 and Aug. 13, 2026; UNL Center for Agricultural Profitability;
WARN notice, Joslin complex; USDA WASDE import share.
A FARMER OUR FARMERS LOSE THE BUYER. OUR INDUSTRIES
LOSE THE FLOOR. OUR NEIGHBORS LOSE THE JOB.
GROSS INCOMPETENCE IN WASHINGTON WROTE THIS.
AMERICAN CATTLE. AMERICAN PLANTS. AMERICAN JOBS.
NO PARTY OWNS THIS ONE. DEMAND BETTER FROM BOTH!
THE MAN WHO NEVER ASKED FOR A
SUBSIDY. The American farmer was the original
small businessman. He bought his inputs
at market, sold his crop at market, absorbed
his own losses without a lawyer, and asked
Washington for one thing: an open door and
an honest price. He was the freest trader this
country ever produced. He is now the only
man in America being taxed on both ends of
his own barn.
WHAT TWENTY BILLION BOUGHT. In October
2025 the Treasury opened a $20 billion
swap line to Argentina’s central bank and began
buying pesos outright, the largest direct
U.S. rescue of a foreign government since Mexico
in 1995, with talk of doubling it to $40 billion
through private funding. Days later Buenos Aires
suspended its grain export taxes, and China
bought Argentine soybeans at a price we could
not match. China had already halted American
purchases in May; a market worth $12.6 billion
in 2024 went to zero. Republican Sen. Chuck
Grassley asked the obvious question in public.
He never got an answer.
AND THEN THEY SENT THE BEEF. On February
6 the President quadrupled Argentina’s
tariff-rate quota: 80,000 additional metric tons
of lean trimmings on top of the existing 20,000.
Senator Deb Fischer objected. The trimmings
came anyway.
“We taxed his fertilizer, closed his market, then financed the man who took it.”
THE BILL HE CANNOT PASS ALONG.
Meanwhile the tariff lands on the one man in
the chain who cannot hand it to anyone else.
Roughly $33 billion in imported inputs a year,
including fertilizer, chemicals and machinery
parts, is taxed at the gate. Three straight years
of losses. Chapter 12 filings up 46 percent.
Then $12 billion in bridge payments: Washington
handing you your own money back
and calling it generosity.
THE HONEST PART. A swap is not a grant,
and Treasury insists no taxpayer loss is anticipated.
The beef quota answers a cattle herd at
a record low and ground beef at $6.69 a pound.
The Argentine agreement opens more than
two hundred categories to American goods.
Fine. Now explain all of it to a man in Idaho
paying a tariffed price for a combine part while
his buyer loads Argentine soybeans.
the boat strikes, and the pardon shrank into a
footnote inside coverage of the very campaign it
contradicts. The question worth putting to this
administration on camera, and putting again
the next day, is a simple one: how does that
ledger get explained to the crews still being sent
out? A government that kills suspected smugglers
without trial while pardoning a convicted
kingpin is not a news cycle. It is a standing contradiction,
and it deserves a standing question
at every briefing.
THE HONEST PART. The pardon power is
absolute, and both parties have used it on drug
cases. Hernández and his lawyers maintain the
case rested on the word of convicted traffickers.
Clemency is not the offense here. Calling a jury’s
verdict political is. The Movement Ate Its Own
It Called That Loyalty
Three women asked one question about the Epstein files. Two are gone.
And the file they asked about now sits with the president’s own lawyer.
AND WHO HOLDS THE FILE NOW. On August
10, Todd Blanche, Trump’s own criminal
defense attorney, was sworn in as Attorney
General by Emil Bove, another of his former
lawyers. Only two Republicans voted no. Epstein
survivors testified against him. New Mexico
is suing his department for stonewalling a
state investigation. He has declined to promise
that the president will have no voice in individual
prosecutions.
THE HONEST PART. Greene, Mace, and
Massie crossed Trump on more than Epstein,
and primary voters removing a member is democracy,
not conspiracy. Bondi’s and Noem’s
failures were their own. But no conspiracy is required
here. Only a rule: ask, and you are gone.
THE THREE WHO ASKED. In November 2025, four House Republicans signed the discharge
petition forcing a vote on the Epstein files. Three were women: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren
Boebert, and Nancy Mace, who called her signature deeply personal as a survivor of sexual
and domestic violence. Trump phoned Boebert before dawn and summoned her to the White
House. He played phone tag with Mace. Neither folded.
AND WHAT IT COST THEM. Trump branded Greene a traitor. She resigned on January 5, 2026.
Mace lost her primary for governor of South Carolina in June. Thomas Massie, the fourth signer,
lost his primary as well. Boebert survived chiefly because the president moved to punish her
after the filing deadline had passed.
THE WOMEN WHO WERE USED. Pam Bondi handed Epstein binders to influencers, issued the
memo declaring the case closed, and absorbed a year of fury that belonged upstairs. She was fired
on April 2, 2026. Kristi Noem testified that Trump personally approved the $220 million campaign
promoting her own leadership. She, too, was fired. They were not partners. They were padding.
GREENE Called a traitor; resigned
Jan. 5, 2026
MACE Lost the S.C. governor’s
primary, June 2026
MASSIE Lost his primary as well
BOEBERT Survived – the challenge
came too late to file
THE FILES Law passed 421 – 1; still in
court in 2026
THE FOUR WHO SIGNED
“Loyalty was not a bond.
It was a warranty period.”
THEY DID NOT LOSE THEIR LEADERS.
THEY WERE SHOWN THE DOOR FOR ASKING A QUESTION.
THE FILE BELONGS TO THE PUBLIC — NOT TO HIS ATTORNEY.
THEY ASKED ONE QUESTION
VOTE INDEPENDENT IN NOVEMBER!
Sources: AP, Reuters, NBC News, CNN, Axios, The Hill, NPR, PBS NewsHour, 19th News, Ms. Magazine (Nov. 2025 to Aug. 2026). When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my opinion
that discovery in this matter is being shaped
by people whose names do not appear in the
case caption. I cannot prove that today, and I
will not tell readers otherwise. I can only tell
you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents
may themselves have been used by someone
else who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
A Pause and an Apology
An update on the Berkshire Hathaway defamation matter
and why I am putting my own case on hold for now.
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi: The opinions expressed
by Brent Lambi | Aug 26, 2026 | Political
REPORTING LLC | WWW.HONEST-POLITICS.COM
Veritas Pro Populo
HONEST POLITICS
I WANTED TO BELIEVE IT. In 1980 I cast my
ballot for John Anderson, an independent, because
a government too large to audit is a government
too large to trust. So when a movement
arrived promising to shrink it, end the
wars, balance the books and enforce the law,
I gave it a hearing. Eleven years on, I will say
plainly what I have concluded: it is the biggest
lie I have ever witnessed.
LAW AND ORDER, EXCEPT AT THE TOP. In
2024, Chairman Comer and Senator Grassley
wrote to the FBI accusing it of quietly revising
crime figures and calling the numbers unreliable.
Today the same party quotes the same
system as proof of its own success. I will concede
the decline is real: homicides fell 18 percent
in the first half of this year, and independent
analysts say so, not just the government.
But a party that trusts the measuring stick only
when it flatters its case has not adopted a standard.
It has adopted a scoreboard.
AND THEN THE PARDONS. Juan Orlando
Hernández moved more than four hundred
tons of cocaine and drew forty-five years.
He served roughly eighteen months and
walked out on a signature. Ross Ulbricht.
Larry Hoover. Some 100 drug-related clemencies.
Roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants,
including men convicted of assaulting police
officers. Ninety-six percent of second-term
grants were issued outside Justice Department
review. That is not law and order. That
is a favor window.
The kingpin got a signature.
The trafficker got a transfer.
The girls got a sealed file.
NO FOREIGN WARS. We fought a war with
Iran that Congress never voted on. The Abraham
Lincoln’s crew has been at sea more than
260 days with no date home. Iran sells its oil
at a better price today than before we started.
A BALANCED BUDGET. $39.8 trillion. About
$286,000 per household. Interest now costs
more than defense. Every point of it lands on
your mortgage, your car note and your child’s
tuition, all parts of the finances you were
promised you would control.
AND THE CHILDREN. The Epstein Files
Transparency Act passed the House 427–1
and was signed in November 2025. Nine
months later the file is still shut. But Ghislaine
Maxwell, days after a private meeting
with the Deputy Attorney General, was
moved to a minimum-security camp that
Bureau of Prisons policy says a sex offender
cannot be assigned to at all. No survivor ever
got that consideration.
I DID NOT LEAVE A MOVEMENT.
THE MOVEMENT LEFT THE OATH.
Source note: Clemency, crime and appropriation figures
are drawn from public records and cited reporting.
The Biggest Lie I Have
Ever Witnessed
I voted for John Anderson in 1980 because I believed
big government was dangerous. I still believe it.
That is exactly why I cannot vote for this one.
WITHOUT READER SUPPORT
THIS COLUMN DISAPPEARS.
Brent Lambi
THE COMMANDER AND THE CREW
Let Them Flush
Porcelain Toilets
Thirty-three gold bathrooms in Palm Beach.
On the Abraham Lincoln, the toilets do not work.
THIRTY-THREE. That is the number of bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago finished with gold-plated
fixtures and marble. The Trump Tower triplex was remodeled in gold from floor to ceiling.
The Oval Office got gold molding from his own gilder. The Lincoln Bedroom bathroom, photographed
and posted while the government was shut down, is now finished in polished statuary
marble with gold fixtures.
AND ON THE LINCOLN, THEY DO NOT WORK. The USS Abraham Lincoln left San Diego in November
and was due home in May. It has been at sea for more than 260 days, with no port call in
more than 200 days, a record. Families have given CNN photographs of overflowing toilets in sewage-
saturated washrooms. Sailors report moldy showers, rationed meals, no milk for three months,
and running out of soap. A sailor’s video tour of the heads circulated around the country last week.
Senator Blumenthal’s letter to the Pentagon cites plumbing failures and water contamination. Central
Command’s own tally for that crew: 10,000 flights and 1.5 million pounds of ordnance.
THE PORCELAIN LEDGER
AND HE SAYS THEY SHOULD STAY LONGER. Asked whether the Lincoln had been out too
long, the president said “not nearly long enough.” Asked whether families were worried, he said
they were not. Congressman Mike Levin responded that the least this country owes these sailors
is hot water, a working toilet, and a real meal. The defense secretary called the families’ warnings
fake news. Senator Mark Kelly, who flew 39 combat missions, wants an investigation.
HE NEVER SERVED A DAY. Five deferments kept him out of Vietnam: four for school, followed
by a 1968 diagnosis of bone spurs at age 22. The podiatrist’s daughters told The New York Times
that the diagnosis was a favor to Fred Trump, their father’s landlord. Trump later said he could
not recall the doctor’s name. A biographer asked to see the spurs and saw nothing. He has never
once had to use a military head.
Sources: TIME, CNN, NPR, Navy Times, GAO, The New York Times.
MAR-A-LAGO 33 gold-plated bathrooms
TRUMP TOWER Triplex remodeled in gold
LINCOLN BEDROOM Marble and gold fixtures
BEDMINSTER Rented restrooms, up to $333,801
USS A. LINCOLN Overflowing; 260+ days at sea
When You Own Both
Sides, You Never Lose
Two Examples Anybody Can Follow. Then Washington.
A prosecutor who works for you. An insurance company you own. Now count the odds.
EXAMPLE ONE: You are accused of business fraud. Your own attorney is also the prosecutor
who decides whether to charge you. What are the odds you get charged? Zero. Not low. Zero.
The evidence is irrelevant. The only man who can act on it works for you.
EXAMPLE TWO: You file an injury claim. Your attorney is an ambulance chaser, and you also
own the insurance company he is billing. Odds of a big payout? Certain. The facts are irrelevant
again. Your claim is reviewed by your own side.
Hold both pictures at once. They are two wings of one building: one wing charges people, the
other pays them.
THE MAN IN BOTH WINGS: Todd Blanche was Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney.
He is now Attorney General of the United States. On Sunday, when asked whether he would
act independently of the White House, he said he would not promise that. He also said that the
President should have a say in who gets prosecuted.
WING ONE: THE FILE: Congress ordered the Epstein files released. The House voted 427 to
1. The Senate agreed without a single objection. It was signed into law in November 2025 with
a thirty-day deadline. Nine months later, millions of pages are still withheld. Blanche ran that
release. He published personal details of some victims and redacted heavily elsewhere, and he
withheld material about the President.
Understand the sequence. In May 2025, Blanche and Bondi told Trump his name appears in
the Epstein files. That summer, FBI personnel were instructed to flag any mention of him in the
case records. This month, a federal judge had to rule that an act of Congress outranks Ghislaine
Maxwell’s claim to privacy. The law was never the obstacle. The department was.
AND THE ONE PERSON WHO GOT SERVICE: Blanche interviewed Maxwell himself in July
2025. Days later she was moved out of a low-security prison to a minimum-security camp with
no fence. The victims got redactions. The convicted trafficker got a transfer. In my opinion, that
is not law enforcement. That is coverage.
WING TWO: THE CLAIM: In January Trump sued the IRS for ten billion dollars over his leaked
returns. Ten billion. Not for money taken from him, but for embarrassment. Reputational harm.
The injury nobody can x-ray, the sore back of civil litigation. He filed as a private citizen, joined
by two of his sons and the family company.
Now ask the obvious question: what proof of ten billion dollars in damage was ever put on the record?
None. The figures that leaked were his own true numbers. No court ever weighed a dollar
of it, because the case never got that far.
AND WHO WAS ON THE OTHER SIDE? This is the part to sit with. In a real lawsuit, opposing
counsel makes you prove every dollar you claim. Who is the IRS’s lawyer? The Justice Department.
And who ran the Justice Department? The President’s own former defense attorney, who
negotiated the deal personally. The man demanding ten billion and the office defending against
it answered to the same desk. There was no adversary. There was only a signature.
WHAT CHANGED HANDS: Trump dropped the claim. In exchange, the government agreed
never to audit him, his two eldest sons, or the Trump Organization on any return filed before
May 19. Tax attorneys say the IRS has never granted anyone such protection. By the Times’ reading
of his returns, one earlier audit alone could have cost him more than a hundred million dollars.
That money was never his. It was yours.
JUL ‘25
NOV ‘25
JAN 29
APR 2
MAY 19
AUG 8
AUG 16
Blanche interviews Maxwell; days later she is moved to a minimumsecurity
camp
Epstein Files Transparency Act signed after a 427–1 House vote; 30
days to comply
Trump, two sons and the Trump Organization sue the IRS and
Treasury for $10 billion
Bondi removed; Blanche, the President’s former defense lawyer, takes
over as acting attorney general
Settlement: claim dropped, audits closed on every return filed before
that date
Blanche confirmed 50–49; the $1.8 billion allies’ fund killed, the audit
deal untouched
Declines on television to pledge independence from the White House
When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is being
shaped by people whose names do not appear
in the case caption. I cannot prove that today,
and I will not tell readers otherwise. I can only
tell you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents may
themselves have been used by someone else
who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
“Berkshire is not the author of this
defamation but a vehicle for it.”
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi
The opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.
by Brent Lambi | Aug 23, 2026 | Uncategorized
by Brent Lambi | Aug 21, 2026 | Political
WANTED TO BELIEVE IT. In 1980 I cast my
ballot for John Anderson, an independent, because
a government too large to audit is a government
too large to trust. So when a movement
arrived promising to shrink it, end the
wars, balance the books and enforce the law,
I gave it a hearing. Eleven years on, I will say
plainly what I have concluded: it is the biggest
lie I have ever witnessed.
LAW AND ORDER, EXCEPT AT THE TOP. In
2024, Chairman Comer and Senator Grassley
wrote to the FBI accusing it of quietly revising
crime figures and calling the numbers unreliable.
Today the same party quotes the same
system as proof of its own success. I will concede
the decline is real: homicides fell 18 percent
in the first half of this year, and independent
analysts say so, not just the government.
But a party that trusts the measuring stick only
when it flatters its case has not adopted a standard.
It has adopted a scoreboard.
AND THEN THE PARDONS. Juan Orlando
Hernández moved more than four hundred
tons of cocaine and drew forty-five years.
He served roughly eighteen months and
walked out on a signature. Ross Ulbricht.
Larry Hoover. Some 100 drug-related clemencies.
Roughly 1,500 January 6 defendants,
including men convicted of assaulting police
officers. Ninety-six percent of second-term
grants were issued outside Justice Department
review. That is not law and order. That
is a favor window.
The kingpin got a signature.
The trafficker got a transfer.
The girls got a sealed file.
The Biggest Lie I Have
Ever Witnessed
I voted for John Anderson in 1980 because I believed
big government was dangerous. I still believe it.
That is exactly why I cannot vote for this one.
NO FOREIGN WARS. We fought a war with
Iran that Congress never voted on. The Abraham
Lincoln’s crew has been at sea more than
260 days with no date home. Iran sells its oil
at a better price today than before we started.
A BALANCED BUDGET. $39.8 trillion. About
$286,000 per household. Interest now costs
more than defense. Every point of it lands on
your mortgage, your car note and your child’s
tuition, all parts of the finances you were
promised you would control.
AND THE CHILDREN. The Epstein Files
Transparency Act passed the House 427–1
and was signed in November 2025. Nine
months later the file is still shut. But Ghislaine
Maxwell, days after a private meeting
with the Deputy Attorney General, was
moved to a minimum-security camp that
Bureau of Prisons policy says a sex offender
cannot be assigned to at all. No survivor ever
got that consideration.
I DID NOT LEAVE A MOVEMENT.
THE MOVEMENT LEFT THE OATH.
Source note: Clemency, crime and appropriation figuresThe Right Move for
the Wrong Reason
Scaling back the Korea drills is the first real
de-escalation of this term. Now do it three more times.
ONE GOOD ORDER. On Sunday the president instructed Secretary Hegseth to “substantially
reduce” the joint exercises with South Korea, calling them costly and a signal that is “totally inappropriate
and hostile” toward a North Korea he says has not been threatening. Set the messenger
aside. Lowering the temperature on the most heavily armed border on earth is the correct call,
and the first of its kind this term.
NOW DO IT AGAIN. The same week, he told Fox News that if Oman gets in the way, we will
bomb it. That is not a policy. That is a mood. Iran remains under an American air campaign
Congress never voted on. Maduro was taken by force in January. Greenland belongs to a NATO
ally, and this White House will not rule out taking it. No foreign wars was the promise. It has been
broken in three theaters.
“Withdrawal is not weakness. Keeping a promise never is.”
AND USE THE RELATIONSHIP. If the friendship with Kim Jong Un is real, spend it. Pyongyang
has shipped Russia some 33,000 containers of arms and buried thousands of its own men in
Kursk. Ask him to stop. That is what a good relationship is for.
THE HONEST PART. The stated reason was not peace. It was irritation that Seoul would not join
the Iran war. And the order came Sunday, while the drills began Monday, reduced but not canceled.
A right move made for a wrong reason is still a right move. It is also still a shaky foundation.
FOUR THEATERS, ONE PROMISE
KOREA Ulchi Freedom Shield cut on the president’s order, Aug. 16.
IRAN American air campaign continues. Congress has never voted.
VENEZUELA Maduro seized by U.S. forces, Jan. 3, 2026.
GREENLAND A NATO ally’s territory. Force not ruled out.
PYONGYANG ~33,000 containers of arms to Russia; troops in Kursk.
THE PROMISE “No foreign wars.” Kept in one place out of four.
Source: Truth Social post of Aug. 16, 2026; AP/PBS, NPR, Reuters, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy and CNN reporting
of Aug. 16–17, 2026; Defense News and Washington Times reporting on DPRK support to Russia.
DE-ESCALATION IS NOT SURRENDER.
IT IS THE PROMISE YOU RAN ON.
NOW KEEP IT IN TEHRAN, IN CARACAS, AND IN NUUK.
NO MORE FOREIGN WARS
KEEP THE PROMISE.
Sources: Truman diary (May 1945); Executive Order 11154 (1964); Church Committee reports (1975–76);
Senate and Justice Department records, August 2026; Washington Post, PBS/AP, NBC News, Time, The Hill.
If J. Edgar Hoover
Became President
J. Edgar Hoover held one desk for forty-eight years and made
eight presidents afraid of him. In my opinion, we are now
watching the same instinct with every desk in its hands.
THE MAN WITH THE FILES. J. Edgar Hoover ran the Bureau from 1924 to 1972, through eight
presidents, and none of them fired him. His authority was never statutory. It sat in the locked
“Official and Confidential” files in his own office: derogatory material on congressmen, senators
and presidents. Truman wrote in 1945 that the FBI was drifting toward a Gestapo and dabbling
in sex-life scandals and blackmail. Johnson exempted him from mandatory retirement. Even
Robert Kennedy, with a brother in the White House, could not control him. Within days of his
death, his secretary destroyed the files.
AND WHAT HE DID TO CRITICS. In 1964 the Bureau mailed Dr. King an anonymous letter and
a tape urging him to end his own life. Agents planted a false story about the actress Jean Seberg
with a gossip columnist. Melvin Purvis, the agent who got the credit for Dillinger, was pushed
out and frozen out afterward. The Church Committee documented the pattern. Cross J. Edgar
Hoover, and you were not argued with. You were ruined.
AND THE PART HE HID. He ran a “Sex Deviates” program that collected files on suspected homosexuals
and got them fired from government work by the thousands, while spending his life
beside Clyde Tolson, his deputy, constant companion, and heir. His own private life was never
established, and the lurid stories remain unproven. What is documented is the arrangement:
one standard enforced on strangers, another kept for himself.
J. Edgar Hoover never had to win an argument.
He only had to have a file.
THE SAME INSTINCT, ALL THE DESKS. The Attorney General is the President’s former defense
lawyer, confirmed 50–49, three weeks after a federal judge set aside his settlement with
that same client, finding it had been filed in bad faith. The FBI Director has polygraphed his
own detail hunting leakers, turned the Bureau toward reporters who wrote about him, and sued
a magazine for describing him. Homeland Security is run by a senator introduced as a MAGA
warrior. The Homeland Security Secretary kept her job after federal agents killed two American
citizens in Minneapolis; she lost it over a $220 million advertising campaign featuring her on
horseback. J. Edgar Hoover would have recognized every part of that.
AND STILL NOTHING WAS DELIVERED. Retribution rules, and the public was played the
fool. Nine months after a transparency law passed 427–1, the Epstein file still takes a judge to
pry loose. Gasoline is up 26.7 percent, compared with 3.2 percent wage growth. Premiums rose
about 26 percent, with no replacement plan. The debt is $39.8 trillion.
THE HONEST PART. Presidents appoint allies; that is the job, and the Senate signs off. J. Edgar
Hoover was never elected and could not be removed. These men can be. But appointees leave
and judges do not.
J. EDGAR HOOVER NEEDED FORTY-EIGHT YEARS AND A FILE CABINET.
THIS ONE NEEDED NINETEEN MONTHS AND A SIGNATURE.
RETRIBUTION RULES. THE PUBLIC WAS PLAYED THE FOOL.
REPAIR TAKES LONGER THAN RUIN When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is being
shaped by people whose names do not appear
in the case caption. I cannot prove that today,
and I will not tell readers otherwise. I can only
tell you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents may
themselves have been used by someone else
who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
“Berkshire is not the author of this
defamation but a vehicle for it.”
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi
The opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.
are drawn from public records and cited reporting
by Brent Lambi | Aug 19, 2026 | Uncategorized
FIRST, THE RÉSUMÉ. Twice impeached.
Thirty-four felony convictions in a New York
courtroom in 2024. I would not hire a convicted
felon to run a prison. In my opinion, the
same standard belongs on the ballot for the
office that runs the country.
AND THEN HE GOT THE KEYS. What does
a felon do when you put him in charge of the
cellblock? He opens the doors for the dealers.
Name them: Juan Orlando Hernández, the
former Honduran president sentenced to 45
years for moving more than 400 tons of cocaine.
He was pardoned December 1, 2025,
and released the same day. Ross Ulbricht of
Silk Road had two life terms and was pardoned
on day one. Larry Hoover of the Gangster Disciples
had multiple life sentences commuted.
Michael “Harry-O” Harris was pardoned.
Garnett Gilbert Smith, a Baltimore kingpin
who served 25 years for violent drug offenses,
was pardoned. The Washington Post counts
roughly 100 drug-related clemencies.
AND THE FILE HE WILL NOT OPEN. The
House passed the Epstein Files Transparency
Act 427 to 1. He signed it in November 2025.
Nine months later the Justice Department is
still withholding, and a federal judge has had
to be asked to enforce a law almost nobody
voted against.
AND WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU ASK. Marjorie
Taylor Greene signed the discharge petition
that forced that vote. Her endorsement
was pulled, she was called a traitor, and she
resigned January 5. Rep. Thomas Massie
co-sponsored it and lost his primary May 19 to
a Trump-backed challenger. That is not a coincidence.
That is a published price list.
AND THE ONE PERSON WHO GOT CONSIDERATION.
Not one survivor got a hearing.
Ghislaine Maxwell got a transfer. Days after a
private meeting with Deputy Attorney General
Todd Blanche in July 2025, the woman
convicted of grooming underage girls for Epstein
was moved out of low-security Tallahassee
and into FPC Bryan, a minimum-security
camp in Texas with dormitories and no fence.
Bureau of Prisons policy says a sex offender
should never have qualified for a camp at all.
In March, members of Congress wrote that of
some 3.5 million documents produced under
the Act, not one records the transfer or who
authorized it. Inmates who spoke to reporters
about her were reportedly threatened; at least
one was shipped out.
AND WHAT PRISON USUALLY COSTS A
CHILD OFFENDER. Inside a prison, offenses
against children sit at the bottom of every hierarchy,
and the consequence is not theoretical.
Larry Nassar was stabbed roughly ten times in
his cell at a federal penitentiary in 2023, in a
unit built to keep sex offenders apart from everyone
else. Ordinary men convicted of what
Maxwell was convicted of serve their sentences
under that threat, behind double fences, in
protective housing. She serves hers on a camp
yard with no fence at all.
AND WHAT A SEALED FILE ACTUALLY
PROTECTS. Nine years on, exactly one person
is in prison for any of it, and she sleeps better
than she did in Florida. The survivors are still
waiting. Everyone else in those pages is still
going to work. In my opinion, a file guarded
this hard is not being guarded to protect the
girls. It is being guarded to protect the men.
THE HONEST PART. The pardon power is
absolute and unreviewable, and some grants
are genuinely merciful. Endorsements are
ordinary politics, and no candidate controls
who praises him. But every candidate controls
whether to accept it, and I have yet to see one
decline. The Bureau has never given a reason
for the transfer, and no court has found that
the withholding shields anyone. That is the
point. Nobody outside the Department can
say what the file protects, because nobody
outside the Department has read it.
I am an Independent. I do not vote on command.
When a candidate needs that endorsement
to survive a primary, he has already told
you whose interests he will serve.
AND THE PART NOBODY WANTS SAID
OUT LOUD. A vote is not a feeling. It is an
instrument. If you cast it for a candidate who
holds his seat at the pleasure of that endorsement,
you are not voting for a farm bill. You
are supplying the one thing that makes all of
the rest of it possible: a majority. The kingpin
walked out on a signature. The file Congress
ordered opened stays shut. Neither of those
things needed your approval. Both of them
needed your vote.
“He is not asking for your vote.
He is telling you who already has it.”
THE SURVIVORS ARE STILL WAITING.
THEIR TRAFFICKER GOT A TRANSFER.
A VOTE THAT FREES THE
DEALER AND SEALS THE FILE
IS NOT CONSERVATIVE. IT IS
NOT PATRIOTIC. IN MY OPINION,
IT IS UN-AMERICAN.
MAGA = FELONY ENABLERS.
ASK WHO ELSE IS ON THE BALLOT.
Sources: U.S. Dept. of Justice Office of the Pardon Attorney; The Washington Post; NPR; Associated Press; PBS
NewsHour; Congressional Research Service (IN12621); House Clerk roll call on H.R. 4405; Bureau of Prisons;
Rep. Ross and Rep. Raskin letter to BOP, March 2, 2026.
THE NUMBER THAT MOVES THE MARKET.
The National Corn Growers Association puts
it in plain arithmetic: each percentage point
added to the national blend rate consumes
1.36 billion gallons of ethanol, or 486 million
bushels of corn. The average today sits near
10.5 percent. A twenty percent floor is nine
and a half points, roughly 4.6 billion bushels
of new annual demand. Iowa already makes
4.6 billion gallons of the country’s ethanol, 28
percent of it, and grinds better than 1.5 billion
bushels doing it. Nebraska’s twenty-four
biorefineries make another 2.3 billion gallons.
The capacity is built. The demand is not.
AND WHAT THAT PAYS THE FARMER.
The EPA’s own meta-analysis of the ethanol
literature found that each additional billion
gallons of corn ethanol lifts long-run corn
prices two to three percent. E20 adds 12.9
billion gallons. Against the $4.25 Central Illinois
bid of August 6 that is $5.35 to $5.90 a
bushel. E30 adds 26.5 billion gallons; that is
$6.50 to $7.65. Cross-check it the other way:
the last time the carryout fell to 7.4 percent, in
2012/13, corn averaged $6.89. Two different
methods, the same neighborhood.
WHAT IT DOES TO THE AIR. AND WHO IT
KEEPS ALIVE. Ethanol carries its own oxygen
and displaces petroleum octane boosters such
as benzene, toluene and xylene, aromatics
tied to known carcinogens. Against a high-aromatic
E10, the University of California-Riverside
measured E30 cutting carbon monoxide
20 to 35 percent, nitrogen oxides 17 to 36 percent
and non-methane hydrocarbons up to 44
percent, with particulate mass and black carbon
down as well. The light-duty fleet is tied to
roughly 16,000 fine-particulate deaths a year.
Apply those reductions and E20 saves on the
order of 1,300 to 1,900 American lives annually;
E30, 2,400 to 4,000. Valued at the federal
government’s $14.1 million statistical life, with
the hospital admissions and lost work days
that travel with the same particulates, that is
$20 to $29 billion a year at E20 and $37 to $61
billion at E30.
Twenty Now. Thirty in Three Years. And a Car That Can Drink It.
BUILD THE CAR FOR IT. A blend floor is only
half the job. Flex-fuel capability, including an
ethanol sensor, resistant seals and a software
calibration, costs a manufacturer $100 to $210
per vehicle by MIT’s estimate. That is a set of
floor mats. Require it on every new light-duty
vehicle, phased by model year, and 250 million
tailpipes become a market petroleum has
to bid for instead of one it inherits. And it is
nobody’s partisan hobbyhorse: the Open Fuel
Standard Act was carried by Dick Lugar with
Maria Cantwell, and by John Shimkus with
Eliot Engel.
“Twenty percent puts $5.35 to
$5.90 in the cash column; it takes
not one acre to do it.”
AND NOT ONE ACRE TAKEN. Here is what
a blend floor does not require. Chasing the
low-carbon credit by pipeline has cost Iowa
five years of condemnation fights, a ban that
passed its House 64 to 28 in January, and a
governor’s veto the year before. South Dakota
outlawed the taking outright. Nebraska got its
line by converting a pipe already in the ground.
A blend mandate needs none of it. It moves
4.6 billion bushels without one easement, one
condemnation board, or one farmer told his
ground serves a public use that turns out to
be somebody’s balance sheet. Seizing private
land for private gain was wrong when Kelo
blessed it in 2005 and it is wrong now. Require
the pumps to carry E20 and E30, protect ethanol-
free gasoline for small engines, and leave
the deed alone.
AND WHAT IT DOES TO THE MAP. Hormuz
has been shut since February 28. We take little
Gulf crude, but we buy fuel at the price that
strait sets and keep a carrier there to hold it
open. A gallon distilled in Nebraska needs no
sailor to guard it.
AND NOBODY HAS TO CHANGE PARTIES.
This is not a red bill or a blue one. The Nationwide
Consumer and Fuel Retailer Choice Act
was carried by Deb Fischer of Nebraska with
Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, and in the House
by Adrian Smith with Angie Craig of Minnesota,
with cosponsors running from Thune and
Grassley to Durbin and Baldwin. The corn
growers endorsed it, the Farmers Union endorsed
it, and so did the American Petroleum
Institute. When the oil lobby and the corn lobby
sign the same letter, the argument is settled
everywhere but the floor of Congress.
THE HONEST PART. The corn figures extrapolate
past the volumes the underlying studies
examined, and E30’s 9.5 billion bushels is
more corn than we now grind, feed and export
combined. The lives and dollar figures are
ours, based on measured tailpipe reductions
applied to a published mortality total, not
a study of a blend mandate. Aldehydes rise
with ethanol. And blending is no substitute
for sequestration, which sells into aviation
and marine fuel. Three years is aggressive.
Phase it, and build to it.
E20 NOW. E30 BY 2029.
AND FLEX FUEL IN EVERY NEW CAR.
GROW THE FUEL. CLEAR THE AIR.
AND LEAVE THE DEED ALONE.
NO PARTY OWNS THIS ONE.
DEMAND IT FROM BOTH.
We want real solutions, not more empty promises. A bushel that leaves the county as fuel is worth more than one that leaves
as feed, a driver with only one fuel is not a customer, and this has been a bipartisan bill since the day it was written.
Sources: NCGA/RFA; American Farm Bureau Federation; USDA WASDE and ERS; EPA, Impacts of Ethanol Policy on Corn Prices: A Review; University of California-Riverside (Energy & Fuels);
Choma et al. on light-duty fleet mortality; HHS 2026 standard regulatory values; MIT via Cantwell-Lugar; Iowa Renewable Fuels Assn.; Nebraska Ethanol Board; Iowa Capital Dispatch; IEA.
When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is being
shaped by people whose names do not appear
in the case caption. I cannot prove that today,
and I will not tell readers otherwise. I can only
tell you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents may
themselves have been used by someone else
who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
“Berkshire is not the author of this
defamation but a vehicle for it.”
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi
The opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.
by Brent Lambi | Aug 16, 2026 | Political
HONEST POLITICS
Brent Lambi
When I filed this case, I expected a
straightforward process involving discovery
and documents. If the record supported
it, I also expected the true wrongdoer to
be named as a third party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my
opinion that discovery in this matter is being
shaped by people whose names do not
appear in the case caption. I cannot prove
that today, and I will not tell readers otherwise.
I can only tell you what I believe and
why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and
its agents may themselves have been used
by someone else who gave them a version
of events and left them to act on it.
A Pause and an Apology
An update on the Berkshire Hathaway defamation matter
and why I am putting my own case on hold for now.
THE LONGEST CON
In 1974, Republicans of substance walked into the Oval Office and said STOP.
Today, saying stop is what gets you destroyed.
SEVEN COUNTS AGAINST THE ENABLING PARTY
ON AUGUST 7, 1974, three Republicans walked into the Oval Office and told a Republican
president he did not have the votes and was not going to get them. Barry Goldwater.
Hugh Scott. John Rhodes. Two weeks earlier, six Republicans on the House Judiciary
Committee had crossed the aisle to vote articles of impeachment. Elliot Richardson
and William Ruckelshaus had resigned rather than fire a prosecutor. Howard Baker
had asked the question that ended a presidency.
Nobody called them traitors. They were called Republicans.
They did not act alone. Katharine Graham kept the Washington Post printing while
that same White House went after the broadcast licenses of her television stations. The
New York Times printed the Pentagon Papers and won 6 to 3 at the Supreme Court. A
free press did its job. A party with a spine did its job. The Republic survived the collision.
Fifty-two years later, that party is gone. What replaced it is, in this writer’s opinion,
the longest running confidence game ever worked on the American public.
THE ENABLER’S DICTIONARY
Every con needs confederates. Ours hold committee gavels, and they have built
themselves a vocabulary. “I’d rather work within the party. I did what I
thought was best under the circumstances. I don’t comment on social
media posts. I’d have to see the whole quote.”
Translated back into English: I saw it. I know exactly what it was. And I
want the endorsement more than I want the oath. That is not prudence.
That is a lookout at the door while the safe is emptied.
AND WHEN THEY REFUSE
Ask Mike Pence, whose reward for following the Constitution on one Wednesday in
January was a mob chanting for his hanging while a President suggested the mob had
a point.
Ask Marjorie Taylor Greene, the most devoted MAGA voice in the House until she
demanded the Epstein files be opened. She was rebranded “Marjorie Traitor Greene,”
promised a primary challenge, and resigned her seat on January 5. Ask Thomas Massie,
Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, who signed that same petition.
Ask John McCain, told he was no war hero and insulted after his death. Ask Liz
Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Justin Amash. Ask
Chris Krebs, fired for saying the election was secure. Ask Brad Raffensperger and Rusty
Bowers, who simply counted. Of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach,
eight were gone within two years.
Every one a Republican. Not one accused of stealing a dollar. They were destroyed
for candor, and the survivors watched, learned, and shut up.
That silence is the party’s only real platform. Here is what it buys.
ONE: THE FILES THEY WILL NOT OPEN
Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act;
the President signed it. It forbids withholding any record
for embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity.
Justice blew the deadline, dumped three million
pages a month late, and still sits on millions more. In
June a federal judge found the administration had likely
violated the Act. Not one Republican leader will say the
word all.
TWO: THE PARDON FOR THE
NARCO-PRESIDENT
Juan Orlando Hernández, president of Honduras,
convicted in a New York courtroom of conspiring to push
cocaine into this country, which prosecutors counted
in the hundreds of tons, and sentenced to 45 years. He
served about eighteen months. Pardoned December 1,
2025; out the same day. This administration blows up
boats in the name of the drug war and freed the biggest
trafficker it ever convicted.
THREE: THE AFFORDABILITY
THAT WENT SOMEWHERE ELSE
Through June, consumer prices were up 3.5% on the
year, gasoline up 26.7%, electricity up 4.0%, against wage
growth of 3.2%. The one ledger that soared belongs to
the family in the White House: a 927-page disclosure
reporting nearly $1.2 billion in crypto income for 2025,
with roughly $1.55 billion pulled out of World Liberty
Financial while outside token holders lost an estimated
$674 million.
FOUR: THE HEALTH CARE THEY LET EXPIRE
Congress let the enhanced premium tax credits lapse
on December 31, 2025. Marketplace premiums rose
roughly 26% for 2026, and KFF estimates the amount
subsidized enrollees pay themselves more than doubled,
from about $888 a year to $1,904. Analysts put the
added uninsured in the millions. There was no replacement
plan. There has never been a replacement plan.
FIVE: THE FARM ECONOMY THEY CALL A WIN
USDA forecasts 2026 net farm income at $153.4 billion,
a fourth straight year of pressure, while farm sector
debt hits a record $624.7 billion and interest expense a
record $33 billion, about $90 million a day. Chapter 12
farm bankruptcies rose 46% in 2025. Against a 25 million
tonne soybean pledge, Chinese buyers had booked
roughly 200,000 tonnes. Our farmers are being paid in
bridge payments instead of markets.
SIX: THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS
He promised to end the war in Ukraine in twenty-four
hours. Nineteen months into this term, the truces last thirty-
two hours at a time and men are still dying in the mud.
SEVEN: THE BILL YOUR CHILDREN INHERIT
$39.8 trillion in federal debt, about $286,000 per
household. Interest on that debt now costs more than
the entire defense budget. The party of fiscal responsibility
ran it up, then named a ballroom after itself.
Image created with AI.
IF YOU WANT YOUR FAMILY SAFE FROM DRUGS………………………………….DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
IF YOU WANT THE FILES OPENED AND THE PREDATORS NAMED………DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
IF YOU WANT REAL SOLUTIONS IN HEALTH CARE……………………………….DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
IF YOU WANT HIGHER FARM INCOME…………………………………………………..DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
IF YOU WANT MONEY LEFT OVER FOR A HOME OF YOUR OWN…………..DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
IF YOU WANT AN END TO FOREIGN WARS…………………………………………….DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
IF YOU WANT THE DEBT BROUGHT DOWN…………………………………………..DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
State house. County board. School board. Congress. There is no local exception to a national loyalty oath.
AND BEFORE YOU DECIDE IT DOESN’T MATTER, ASK YOURSELF ONE MORE QUESTION:
CAN YOU STILL AFFORD THE GAS TO DRIVE TO THE POLLS?
IF YOU REALLY WANT TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN
THEN DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN.
“Berkshire is not the author of this
defamation but a vehicle for it.”
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author
of this defamation but a vehicle for it. To
the extent that my filings suggested otherwise,
my apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or
its agents will come forward or tell others
what I suspect they may already know: the
origin of this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute
with the federal government is ongoing
and that the government’s objective is to
silence and discredit me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In
this political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi
The opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.
by Brent Lambi | Aug 12, 2026 | Political, Uncategorized
On the morning of August 4, at a quarter
to nine, Wall Street bond dealers sat
down in a closed room at the Treasury
Department with the officials who manage
the national debt. They adjourned at
four. The minutes came out the next day.
Almost nobody reported them.
These are not activists. The Treasury
Borrowing Advisory Committee is made
up of senior bond dealers and investors,
the people the government calls when it
needs to raise money. Their job is to say
what the Treasury can actually sell. Their
answer: at the auction sizes Washington
is running now, there is a $1.45 trillion
hole coming in fiscal 2027 and 2028.
That sits on top of a debt of about $39.8
trillion, roughly $286,000 per American
household, a debt no household signed
for. This year the government pays about
$1 trillion in interest alone: more than the
military, more than Medicaid, more than
every veterans’ program combined.
FROM THE MINUTES
RELEASED AUGUST 5
■ At current auction sizes: a $1.45
trillion funding shortfall in fiscal
2027 and 2028.
■ Treasury outlays up $120 billion
(10%), the largest increase of any
department, from interest on a
larger debt.
■ A group of other outlays down
$112 billion (-20%), in part from
lower EPA, FEMA and Commerce
disbursements.
THE TWO NUMBERS NOBODY
QUOTED. Buried in the same minutes:
Treasury’s outlays rose $120 billion this
year, the largest increase of any department,
from interest on a bigger debt. A
few lines later, another group of outlays
fell $112 billion, partly because of reduced
disbursements by the EPA, FEMA
and the Commerce Department, according
to the minutes. Read those two numbers
next to each other.
PAYING THE MORTGAGE WITH A
CREDIT CARD. Why is the hole there?
Because of how the money is borrowed.
A three-month Treasury bill costs about
3.8 percent. A thirty-year bond costs
more than 5 percent. Secretary Scott Bessent
has leaned hard on the cheap short
paper, which this year looks like savings.
THE AUGUST 5 MINUTES
THE WARNING NOBODY READ
On August 4 the government met behind closed doors about its own debt.
The minutes came out on August 5, and almost nobody read them. Here is what they say.
It is the same trick as paying your mortgage
with a credit card and calling the
smaller minimum payment thrift. The
house does not get cheaper, the balance
must be borrowed again and again, and
when the rate moves, it moves on all of it
at once.
WE HAVE SEEN THIS ACCOUNTING
BEFORE. In this publisher’s opinion,
that is not thrift. It is grossly misleading.
In New York, a court went through ten
years of Trump Organization statements
and found the values inflated: an apartment
listed at about three times its real
size, Mar-a-Lago written down as a private
home instead of the club it is. Nobody
forged a document. They picked the
number that looked best. Bessent knows
the name for it: in 2024 he accused Secretary
Yellen of borrowing short to make
the books look good before an election.
Then he took her chair and did it himself.
“These books do not belong to a
family business. They belong to
Uncle Sam, and he cannot hire a
friendlier appraiser.”
NEITHER ONE IS A HOAX. For seventy
years Smokey Bear told us to put out every
fire. We did, and every small burn we
stopped left its fuel on the ground. That
is why the West now burns in fires no
crew can stop. Good forest management
is unglamorous: thin the stand, clear the
brush. Good money management is the
same work: borrow honestly, lock in the
term, pay something down. This administration
calls climate change a hoax and
treats the debt as a problem for whoever
comes next. But a fire does not read the
Federal Register, and an interest payment
does not check the press release.
AND WHEN A FIRE CROWNS. A
ground fire creeps. A crown fire moves
at the speed of the wind, and it does not
bother climbing through the stages it
skipped. Rates do the same. This is not
theory: in January 2022 the average thirty-
year mortgage was 3.22 percent. By
that November, it was 7.08 percent, more
than double in ten months, with no default
and no panic. The record is 18.63
percent, set the week of October 9, 1981,
and rates held above 18 percent for two
straight months.
Today the average is 6.69 percent. On
a $400,000 loan, that is about $2,578 a
month. At the 1981 record, it is $6,234.
Put it the other way: the payment that
buys a $400,000 house today would buy
a $165,000 one. Nobody has to burn your
house down to take it from you.
Your mortgage is priced off the same
curve discussed in those minutes. When
the government must roll trillions in short
paper every few months and buyers demand
more to take it, everything moves
together: the car loan, the credit card, the
business line, the house. That is the wind,
and it arrives in months, not decades.
The government met about this on August
4 and published the warning on August
5. Ask every candidate in November
whether they have read it and who is doing
the thinning.
THE BOOKS BELONG
TO UNCLE SAM, NOT THE
TRUMP ORGANIZATION.
A DEBT IS NOT A HOAX.
NEITHER IS A FIRE. BOTH
ARE HARD TO BEAR!
Start the clock on February 28. Five
months on, count what each side owns.
America’s ledger: at least $37.5 billion in
direct military spending through mid-July,
according to Secretary Hegseth’s own
testimony to lawmakers, with eighteen
service members dead and 624 wounded
as of late July. Moody’s Mark Zandi
estimates the typical household will pay
about $1,000 because of this war; Brown
University’s Climate Solutions Lab puts
the added fuel bill alone at $79.8 billion,
or roughly $609 per household. The Strategic
Petroleum Reserve has been drawn
down by more than 110 million barrels
in twenty-two weeks. Tomahawks and
interceptors will take three to four years
to replace. No congressional vote authorized
any of it.
The stated objective was a nuclear
weapon. None has been recovered, displayed,
or documented. What remains
is an estimated eleven tons of enriched
uranium still in Iranian hands, along with
the know-how and the capacity, while
inspectors are further than ever from returning
to look for it.
Now Iran’s ledger. Tehran was hurt
badly; some estimates put reconstruction
at $300 billion. But read the asset column.
Brent crude went from the mid-$70s
before the conflict to roughly $126 in
April, a four-year high. Export volumes
fell; revenue climbed as oil moved by a
shadow fleet into Chinese refineries at
wartime prices. Analysts credit Tehran
with profiting from oil sales while preserving
its own export artery through
control of the chokepoint.
And now the terms. Under the announced
arrangement with Oman, American
and Israeli vessels are barred from
the Strait of Hormuz outright. Tolls of up
to seven percent of cargo value apply to
everyone else. Fines of twenty percent
apply to violators. Transit is conditioned
on compensation to Iran for war damage.
We bombed a country for five
months, and the settlement on offer
is that we pay them while our own
flag is the one turned away.
That is not peace. It is a franchise agreement,
and Iran holds the franchise.
A strait is not property. It became property
the moment we proved we would
spend $37.5 billion and eighteen American
lives without securing the one thing
we said we were buying.
Washington has rejected those terms,
and Central Command insists the southern
route through Omani waters stays
open. Note the posture: we are now the
party objecting to another country’s
terms for a waterway we went to war to
keep free.
The self-described master dealmaker
paid retail, took delivery of nothing, and
signed the buyer’s name to the seller’s
contract.
THE STANDARD
THAT ONLY POINTS
ONE WAY
Character has become a weapon
aimed outward and a courtesy
extended inward.
WHERE ARE THE ISSUES?
A campaign is a job interview, and the
voter is the employer. Yet applicant after
applicant spends the hour explaining
what is wrong with the other applicants’
marriages while saying almost nothing
about groceries, premiums, interest
rates, or the debt.
President Trump has made this the
house style of American politics. Nicknames
instead of numbers. Insults instead
of estimates. An entire opposition party is
dismissed as dangerous, godless, un-American
communists, a label that requires no
evidence, permits no rebuttal, and solves
nothing at the checkout counter.
But watch what happens when the
accusation lands on an ally. Rep. Max
Miller’s ex-wife has alleged that he threw
scalding water at her, held a gun to her
head, and fractured their daughter’s collarbone.
Miller denies it, has sued her
for defamation, and has now asked the
House Ethics Committee to investigate
the allegations against him. The response
from leadership? A “family matter.” The
key word is “allegation.” The President
called Miller “a good person” and suggested
the families work it out.
“Character is a bludgeon
aimed outward and a courtesy
extended inward.”
Due process is a fine principle. It simply
is not extended to anyone outside the tent.
George Santos pleaded guilty to wire
fraud and identity theft, deceiving donors
and stealing the identities of eleven people,
including members of his own family.
The President commuted the 87-month
sentence after 84 days and erased
$373,750 owed to the victims. The qualification
cited was neither remorse nor
proportionality. It was that Santos could
be counted on to always vote Republican.
That is the failure of the MAGA platform.
It has no standard, only a scoreboard. A
movement that grades a man by his loyalty
to a caucus rather than by his conduct
toward his wife, his child, and his donors
cannot produce policy because policy requires
one rule applied to everyone.
Ask your candidate what they will do.
If the answer is about somebody else’s
flaws, you have your answer.
When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward
process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected
the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my opinion
that discovery in this matter is being shaped
by people whose names do not appear in the
case caption. I cannot prove that today, and I
will not tell readers otherwise. I can only tell you
what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway.
My view is that the company and its agents
may themselves have been used by someone
else who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
“Berkshire is not the author of this
defamation but a vehicle for it.”
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of
this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my
apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its
agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of
this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with
the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit
me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this
political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi
The opinions expressed above
are solely those of the author.
The Art of a Bad Deal
We spent the treasury. Iran acquired the tollbooth.
A Pause and an Apology
An update on the Berkshire Hathaway defamation matter
and why I am putting my own case on hold for now.
by Brent Lambi | Aug 9, 2026 | Uncategorized
The Sickness No Medical
School Can Cure
A billion dollars to build healers, while others use
their offices to tear them down.
CHANGE MY MIND
In February 2024, a woman in her nineties stood before a room of medical students in the
Bronx and told them their tuition was gone. Ruth Gottesman had taught at Albert Einstein
College of Medicine since 1968, specializing in learning disabilities, and chaired its board of
trustees. The billion dollars came from her late husband, David, an early investor in Berkshire
Hathaway, who left it to her to spend as she saw fit. She saw fit to make Einstein tuition
free in perpetuity, the largest gift ever made to an American medical school.
Understand what she actually bought. Tuition ran nearly $59,000 a year, and roughly half
of Einstein’s graduates left owing more than $200,000. Debt of that size does not merely burden
a young doctor; it selects her specialty for her. It steers her away from pediatrics, from
primary care, from the clinic in the neighborhood that needs her most and pays her least.
Gottesman did not make doctors rich. She made doctors possible and freed them to study,
to research, and to serve.
“She did not make doctors rich. She made doctors possible.”
Set that beside the spectacle we now call oversight. Anthony Fauci spent five decades on
HIV, Ebola, and COVID and helped build a program credited with saving millions of lives
abroad. His reward in 2026 was a subpoena and a hearing room designed to produce a referral
rather than an answer.
One American spent a fortune expanding the nation’s capacity to heal. Others use their
offices, their subpoena power, and our money to attack the people who already did.
That is the contrast worth amplifying. A gift like Gottesman’s is not charity; it is infrastructure.
It will outlive every politician currently auditioning outrage for a fundraising list.
Medical school can teach anatomy. It cannot teach gratitude. It can teach pharmacology,
but there is no course in humility, and no prescription for a public official who mistakes
destruction for duty. That sickness is moral, not clinical, and the only known treatment is
administered at the ballot box.
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no
distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
MARK TWAIN, Following the Equator (1897),
Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar The Tale of Two Carts
You work to fill yours. The President plays beside his.
ON AFFORDABILITY, PRIORITIES,
AND WHO SENDS THE INVOICE
Fifty-two weeks a year, Americans push a steel cart down an aisle and do arithmetic.
Ground beef runs about $6.75 a pound. Fresh vegetables are up 11.9 percent, tomatoes 32
percent, and lettuce nearly 25 percent. Groceries cost roughly 30 percent more than they did
before the pandemic. Households drop the roast, buy the chicken, and move on.
Notice what fills that cart. A shift. A double. Overtime that was supposed to go toward the
truck payment. Every item in it was purchased with somebody’s hours, hours traded away
and never returned. That is the honest arrangement most Americans live under: you work,
and then you eat.
THE PRESIDENT’S CARTS ARE PROCURED.
The ledger: $765,425 in Secret Service golf-cart rentals during his first term. $95,250 for a
single Bedminster season in 2019. Then, on June 3, 2025, came a contract with Associates Golf
Car Service worth up to $550,930, plus $80,385 for portable toilets, renewable to $333,801.
Behind him rolls “Golf Force One,” an armored Polaris Ranger that the General Services
Administration prices near $190,000. The unarmored version sells for about $20,000.
And in 2018, his own Turnberry resort billed the taxpayers $923 to rent carts to the agents
guarding him.
The larger tab: $151.5 million in term one. Nearly $115 million already in term two, on pace
for $300 million, with 112 days on his own courses, more than a quarter of his days in office.
“One cart is filled by labor.
The other is followed by an armored escort at $190,000 a copy.”
WHAT THIS IS NOT ABOUT
It is not about security. Agents must protect the President, and after two attempts on his
life, one of them on a golf course, the hardware is defensible on its face. That duty is not optional,
and this page will not pretend otherwise.
It is about venue and profit. He chooses to be protected at properties he owns, which
means the government rents, hauls, and staffs its way onto his balance sheet. Every fairway
is a cost center billed to people counting coupons at the register.
THE ARITHMETIC OF IT
A family that overspends on groceries eats less. A President who overspends on golf carts
sends the invoice to the family. One cart is earned. The other is expensed.
So ask your candidate, in public and on the record, to defend the invoice. Not the man.
The invoice. Political Solutions Needed,
Not Political Retribution
An endorsement used to be a recommendation.
It has become a loyalty oath.
There was a time when a party’s backing meant a candidate had been measured for
judgment, competence, and the ability to fix something. That standard is gone. Today the
“MAGA” or “Trump” endorsement certifies exactly one qualification: obedience. In my
opinion, it is a badge of dishonor, and a vote cast for it is a vote to enable conduct that in any
other American workplace would end a career.
Look at what the endorsement now guarantees. Not a health care plan. Not a budget. Not
a border solution written into law rather than announced from a podium. What it guarantees
is a candidate who will call every Democrat a communist, blame a predecessor who left
office years ago, insult a reporter, and go home having solved nothing. The vocabulary is
retribution. The vocabulary of governing, including appropriation, oversight, compromise,
and arithmetic, has been discarded as weakness.
This is not conservatism. Conservatism had a fiscal argument. It had a federalism argument.
It produced people who could read a balance sheet. What replaced it is a class of political
opportunists with no measurable ability, promoted for volume rather than skill, who
mistake grievance for a platform and cruelty for courage.
“A man who can only name an enemy is telling
you he cannot name a solution.”
And the tarnish runs from the top down. A convicted felon sits atop the ticket, and men
and women who once claimed to revere the rule of law now defend, excuse, and pardon on
command. Silence inside that line is not neutrality. It is participation. When you stand in a
party’s column, you accept its implied association, and you own what is done in your name.
I do not ask any reader to become a Democrat. I have never been one. I ask something
harder: demand a solution before you surrender a vote. Ask what they will build, not who
they will punish. Ask for the bill number. Ask for the math.
Retribution is not a policy. It is an admission that you have none. When the President’s Lawyer
Becomes the People’s
The Senate Judiciary Committee has sent Todd Blanche to the
floor. The only question left is whether fifty senators will pretend
the conflict of interest isn’t there.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-10 Tuesday to advance Todd Blanche, Donald
Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney, toward confirmation as Attorney General.
Read that again. The man who sat beside the defendant is to become the lawyer for all of us.
Every first-year law student learns to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. What
Blanche has assembled is not an appearance. As acting Attorney General, he signed the
order declaring the IRS “forever barred” from pursuing prior tax claims against his former
client, that client’s family, and that client’s companies, resolving a $10 billion suit Trump
filed against his own government, in which Blanche’s Justice Department was nominally
the opposing party. A federal judge questioned whether the case had two genuine sides. It
didn’t. It had one man on both.
Then came the “Anti-Weaponization Fund”: $1.776 billion in Treasury money, overseen
by a board the acting Attorney General himself would appoint, to pay those who felt persecuted
by their government. Pardoned January 6 rioters were among the potential claimants.
“A nominee purchased his confirmation by giving back money
he should never have reached for, and the Senate accepted
the refund as a character reference.”
Facing lost votes, Blanche rescinded the fund Sunday night. Senators Cornyn and Tillis,
both leaving Congress and both driven out by Trump, pronounced themselves satisfied
and voted yes. Grasp that. A nominee purchased his confirmation by giving back money he
should never have reached for, and the Senate accepted the refund as a character reference.
Trump says he would revive it if Blanche is blocked. The audit shield remains. Scholars warn
that a later order could resurrect the fund overnight.
The obscenity is not the amendment. It is that one was needed at all. A serious chamber
haggled over the price instead of rejecting the nomination outright.
TWO REMEDIES, BOTH HELD BY CITIZENS
Citizens hold two remedies. Keep the roll call. Every senator who votes yes owns this, and
elections exist for exactly that. Ask them at town halls whether the Attorney General serves
the country or the client.
Then write the New York bar. Blanche’s license came from a state, not from Donald
Trump. Ask the grievance committee whether a lawyer may hand his client a federal absolution
paid out of the Treasury, and whether that license should survive the answer. A Pause and an Apology
An update on the Berkshire Hathaway defamation matter
and why I am putting my own case on hold for now.
When I filed this case, I expected a straightforward process involving discovery and documents.
If the record supported it, I also expected the true wrongdoer to be named as a third
party defendant.
That is not what has happened. It is my opinion that discovery in this matter is being
shaped by people whose names do not appear in the case caption. I cannot prove that today,
and I will not tell readers otherwise. I can only tell you what I believe and why I am acting on it.
I am therefore pausing my lawsuit.
I want to be plain about Berkshire Hathaway. My view is that the company and its agents
may themselves have been used by someone else who gave them a version of events and left
them to act on it.
“Berkshire is not the author of this defamation but a vehicle for it.”
If I am right, Berkshire is not the author of this defamation but a vehicle for it. To the extent
that my filings suggested otherwise, my apology is sincere.
My hope is that Berkshire Hathaway or its agents will come forward or tell others what I
suspect they may already know: the origin of this matter is federal.
I remain of the view that my dispute with the federal government is ongoing and that the
government’s objective is to silence and discredit me.
Free speech has cost me a great deal. In this political climate, it is plainly not free.
Brent Lambi
The opinions expressed above are solely those of the author.
