As Seen in the Des Moines Register and the Omaha World-Herald: The Narco-State That Became a Bank Account / The Woman Who Never Asked Your Party / The Failed Trump MAGA Movement / A Pause and an Apology

THE CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE.
Crews are excavating at Memorial Circle
for a 250-foot triumphal arch, white
and gilded, topped with two golden eagles
and a winged, crowned gold figure,
more than twice the height of the Lincoln
Memorial it will loom over. A source
described the president’s preference to
Axios: he likes the large one, “as long as
it’s big and gold and white.” Nine figures,
roughly $100 million. Vietnam veterans
are in court arguing it blots the sightline
from Arlington National Cemetery.
Two miles away, the ballroom: 90,000
square feet, 650 chairs, $600 million by
a contractor’s own summary, more than
half of it yours. Below it, a six-story bunker.
Above it, bulletproof glass in a color
the president personally approved. The
arch itself was unveiled to donors at a
dinner thrown to thank them for the ballroom.
One vanity project is now the venue
for selling the next.
South of the Mall, the Park Service is
preparing to spend $20 to $49 million
converting a 300-acre public golf course
(cheap municipal golf for a century)
into a championship layout designed by
the same firm that built the president’s
Bedminster course. Trees have already
come down. Bids go out in January. At
the Kennedy Center, the board found a
way around a federal judge by renaming
the grounds a plaza in his honor. At the
Institute of Peace, lawyers went to an appeals
court Thursday because the administration
is “unsatisfied with the relative
impermanence of external lettering” and
wants the name cut into the stone. And
the Endowments committed $34 million
to carve 250 statues of heroes, $30 million
of that to the marble.
WHAT WE CALL THIS OUT HERE.
In Iowa and Nebraska we have a word
for a man who gold-leafs the entryway
while the operating note is due, and it is
not builder. No banker in Council Bluffs
would sign that loan. No co-op board
would approve it. No small businessman
who has ever made payroll on a Friday
believes the problem with this country
was the seating capacity of the East Room.
“They found $600 million for a
room nobody needed, in a year
when 315 families lost the farm.”
THE OTHER LEDGER. Chapter 12 farm
bankruptcies hit 315 last year, up 46 percent.
Iowa had 18 filings, up 220 percent;
Nebraska had 17.
Nineteen percent of mid-size and large
Iowa farms were rated financially vulnerable
in December, more than double the
7.7 percent of 2022, with income forecast
to fall again in 2026 and 2027. Operating
loan volumes jumped nearly 40 percent
in a single quarter. Diesel is above six dollars;
fuel oil is up 52 percent on the year
and gasoline 27.4 percent. Out-of-pocket
health premiums rose an average of 58
percent this year, with another 15 percent
proposed for 2027. The first-time homebuyer
share is 21 percent, the lowest on
record, and that buyer is 40 years old.
MAIN STREET, MEANWHILE. Subchapter
V small-business bankruptcy filings
jumped 67 percent in the first quarter
alone, with 833 filings against 499 a year
earlier, and were running about 50 percent
ahead of last year by midsummer,
with total filings up 12.2 percent. Tariff
payments per small-business client were
up 142 percent year over year in January.
The hardware store, the two-truck contractor,
the café that seats forty: they are
paying the tariff, the premium, and the
fuel bill out of the same drawer, and no
one has offered them a bulletproof window
in a color of their choosing.
Not one of those numbers has a groundbreaking
ceremony. Not one has a rendering.
Nobody in Washington has proposed
carving a single one of them into
anything.
A MODEST PROPOSAL. Clearly the
acreage is the problem. Terrace the bottom
ground into fairways, pour a ballroom
floor over the machine shed, and
inaugurate the Dancing of the Farm Animals
Invitational each August. Gild it,
of course, with a crowned figure on top.
There is no federal program that will hold
up the price of corn, but there is evidently
one for a clubhouse, a plaza, an arch, and
a gold eagle.
THE HONEST PART. The Mint says its
collector programs cost taxpayers nothing.
The White House says private donors
carry the ballroom and the arch. Global
crude, not a golf course, sets the price
of diesel, and no monument caused a
premium increase. Small-business optimism,
for its part, has been running
slightly above its long-run average. The
charge here is not causation. It is priorities.
A government that can pour footings
in nine months for a monument nobody
asked for while the residency cap has not
moved since 1997 and the farm loan officer
stops returning calls has told you exactly
what it is working hard on.
THE CAPITAL OF GOLD LEAF
BALLROOMS AND GOLF OUTINGS
While Iowa Files Chapter 12
Washington is having a wonderful year. Ask anyone in Washington.
Veritas Pro Populo 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 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.
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.
“Berkshire is not the author of this defamation but a vehicle for it.”
Sources: CNN; NPR; The Washington Post; Axios; Forbes; KFF; American Farm Bureau Federation; U.S. Courts; Epiq AACER;
Law360; Bank of America Institute; NFIB; Bureau of Labor Statistics; National Association of Realtors; ISU–Farm Bureau. 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 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.
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.
“Berkshire is not the author of this defamation but a vehicle for it.”
Sources: CNN; NPR; The Washington Post; Axios; Forbes; KFF; American Farm Bureau Federation; U.S. Courts; Epiq AACER;
Law360; Bank of America Institute; NFIB; Bureau of Labor Statistics; National Association of Realtors; ISU–Farm Bureau.
THE DEATH THEY MADE UNPROVABLE
Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein?
The Government Made Sure
You Can Never Prove It.
Seven years. A destroyed master tape.
And still no official time of death.
THE CONSTRUCTION SCHEDULE.
Crews are excavating at Memorial Circle
for a 250-foot triumphal arch, white
and gilded, topped with two golden eagles
and a winged, crowned gold figure,
more than twice the height of the Lincoln
Memorial it will loom over. A source
described the president’s preference to
Axios: he likes the large one, “as long as
it’s big and gold and white.” Nine figures,
roughly $100 million. Vietnam veterans
are in court arguing it blots the sightline
from Arlington National Cemetery.
Two miles away, the ballroom: 90,000
square feet, 650 chairs, $600 million by
a contractor’s own summary, more than
half of it yours. Below it, a six-story bunker.
Above it, bulletproof glass in a color
the president personally approved. The
arch itself was unveiled to donors at a
dinner thrown to thank them for the ballroom.
One vanity project is now the venue
for selling the next.
South of the Mall, the Park Service is
preparing to spend $20 to $49 million
converting a 300-acre public golf course
(cheap municipal golf for a century)
into a championship layout designed by
the same firm that built the president’s
Bedminster course. Trees have already
come down. Bids go out in January. At
the Kennedy Center, the board found a
way around a federal judge by renaming
the grounds a plaza in his honor. At the
Institute of Peace, lawyers went to an appeals
court Thursday because the administration
is “unsatisfied with the relative
impermanence of external lettering” and
wants the name cut into the stone. And
the Endowments committed $34 million
to carve 250 statues of heroes, $30 million
of that to the marble.
WHAT WE CALL THIS OUT HERE.
In Iowa and Nebraska we have a word
for a man who gold-leafs the entryway
while the operating note is due, and it is
not builder. No banker in Council Bluffs
would sign that loan. No co-op board
would approve it. No small businessman
who has ever made payroll on a Friday
believes the problem with this country
was the seating capacity of the East Room.
“They found $600 million for a
room nobody needed, in a year
when 315 families lost the farm.”
THE OTHER LEDGER. Chapter 12 farm
bankruptcies hit 315 last year, up 46 percent.
Iowa had 18 filings, up 220 percent;
Nebraska had 17.
Nineteen percent of mid-size and large
Iowa farms were rated financially vulnerable
in December, more than double the
7.7 percent of 2022, with income forecast
to fall again in 2026 and 2027. Operating
loan volumes jumped nearly 40 percent
in a single quarter. Diesel is above six dollars;
fuel oil is up 52 percent on the year
and gasoline 27.4 percent. Out-of-pocket
health premiums rose an average of 58
percent this year, with another 15 percent
proposed for 2027. The first-time homebuyer
share is 21 percent, the lowest on
record, and that buyer is 40 years old.
MAIN STREET, MEANWHILE. Subchapter
V small-business bankruptcy filings
jumped 67 percent in the first quarter
alone, with 833 filings against 499 a year
earlier, and were running about 50 percent
ahead of last year by midsummer,
with total filings up 12.2 percent. Tariff
payments per small-business client were
up 142 percent year over year in January.
The hardware store, the two-truck contractor,
the café that seats forty: they are
paying the tariff, the premium, and the
fuel bill out of the same drawer, and no
one has offered them a bulletproof window
in a color of their choosing.
Not one of those numbers has a groundbreaking
ceremony. Not one has a rendering.
Nobody in Washington has proposed
carving a single one of them into
anything.
A MODEST PROPOSAL. Clearly the
acreage is the problem. Terrace the bottom
ground into fairways, pour a ballroom
floor over the machine shed, and
inaugurate the Dancing of the Farm Animals
Invitational each August. Gild it,
of course, with a crowned figure on top.
There is no federal program that will hold
up the price of corn, but there is evidently
one for a clubhouse, a plaza, an arch, and
a gold eagle.
THE HONEST PART. The Mint says its
collector programs cost taxpayers nothing.
The White House says private donors
carry the ballroom and the arch. Global
crude, not a golf course, sets the price
of diesel, and no monument caused a
premium increase. Small-business optimism,
for its part, has been running
slightly above its long-run average. The
charge here is not causation. It is priorities.
A government that can pour footings
in nine months for a monument nobody
asked for while the residency cap has not
moved since 1997 and the farm loan officer
stops returning calls has told you exactly
what it is working hard on.
THE CAPITAL OF GOLD LEAF
BALLROOMS AND GOLF OUTINGS
While Iowa Files Chapter 12
Washington is having a wonderful year. Ask anyone in Washington.
Veritas Pro Populo
HONEST POLITICS
Brent Lambi
TWO LEDGERS, ONE YEAR
THE ARCH $100 million; 250 feet, gilded
THE BALLROOM $600 million; 650 chairs
THE GOLF COURSE $20–49 million; 300 acres
THE STATUES $34 million; 250 figures
IOWA FARMS 18 Chapter 12 filings, up 220%
NEBRASKA FARMS 17 Chapter 12 filings
GASOLINE up 27.4% in twelve months
THEY DESTROYED THE TAPE FIRST. In June 2024 the FBI authorized the destruction
of Item 1B60 – the master surveillance recording from the Manhattan jail where
Jeffrey Epstein died. The stated reason, in the Bureau’s own words, was that the case
was already closed. A year later the Justice Department urgently needed it back, and
had to rebuild the footage from surviving copies.
THE “RAW” VIDEO THAT WASN’T. According to forensic analysis, what the Department
released was stitched together from separate segments in Adobe Premiere Pro,
with nearly three minutes cut – after the Department had called the eleven hours unedited.
The Attorney General attributed the gap before midnight to a nightly system
reset. Perhaps it was. We are taking her word for it because the thing that could have
proved her right was destroyed in a warehouse.
THE MAN ON THE STAIRS. The Inspector General’s report records an unidentified
officer appearing to climb the L Tier stairway at 10:39 p.m. Attorney General William
Barr told the country he had personally reviewed the footage and verified that nobody
entered Epstein’s cell area. Video experts say the footage does not clearly show
the staircase at all. The officer investigators believed carried linen up those stairs told
them she never distributed linen. Ever.
THE DOCTOR WHO WOULD NOT SIGN. The pathologist who performed the autopsy
left the manner of death pending, with both boxes blank. Five days later the Chief
Medical Examiner – absent from the autopsy – ruled it a suicide, and has never said
publicly what changed her mind. The family’s pathologist counted three fractures in
the neck and says now that strangulation is the likelier cause and the case warrants
reopening. He may be wrong. Nobody can settle it: the body was moved, and no time
of death was ever fixed.
NOBODY MISSED A PAYCHECK. Two officers skipped the counts, skipped the
checks, and falsified the paperwork. The charges were dropped in exchange

THEY DESTROYED THE TAPE FIRST.
In June 2024 the FBI authorized the destruction of Item 1B60 — the master
surveillance recording from the Manhattan jail where Jeffrey Epstein died.
The stated reason, in the Bureau’s own words, was that the case was already
closed. A year later the Justice Department urgently needed it back, and had
to rebuild the footage from surviving copies.
THE “RAW” VIDEO THAT WASN’T.
What the Department released was, according to forensic analysis, stitched
together from separate segments in Adobe Premiere Pro, with nearly three
minutes cut — after the Department had called the eleven hours unedited.
The Attorney General attributed the gap before midnight to a nightly system
reset. Perhaps it was. We are taking her word for it, because the thing that
could have proved her right was destroyed in a warehouse.
THE MAN ON THE STAIRS.
The Inspector General’s report records an unidentified officer appearing to
climb the L Tier stairway at 10:39 p.m. Attorney General William Barr told
the country he had personally reviewed the footage and verified that nobody
entered Epstein’s cell area. Video experts say the footage does not clearly
show the staircase at all. The officer investigators believed carried linen up
those stairs told them she never distributed linen. Ever.
THE DOCTOR WHO WOULD NOT SIGN.
The pathologist who performed the autopsy left the manner of death
pending, both boxes blank. Five days later the Chief Medical Examiner —
absent from the autopsy — ruled it a suicide, and has never said publicly
what changed her mind. The family’s pathologist counted three fractures in
the neck and says now that strangulation is the likelier cause and the case
warrants reopening. He may be wrong. Nobody can settle it: the body was
moved, and no time of death was ever fixed.
NOBODY MISSED A PAYCHECK.
Two officers skipped the counts, skipped the checks, and falsified the paperwork.
The charges were dropped in exchange for cooperation. Seven years
on, not one federal employee has served a day.
THREE MILLION FILES LATER.
The President signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act on November 19,
2025, with a thirty-day deadline. The congressman who wrote it says three
million files are still withheld a year later. Victims’ names went out unredacted;
a president’s face was blacked out of a newspaper clipping.
THE HONEST PART.
I am not telling you Jeffrey Epstein was murdered. Neither is anyone else
who has read the file — and that is the indictment. Every agency affirms
suicide, and what is documented is negligence rather than homicide. But a
government that destroys its master tape, releases an edited copy and calls
it raw, cannot identify a man on its own staircase, changes a death ruling
without explanation, prosecutes nobody, and withholds three million pages
has forfeited the right to be believed. He has compared this himself to the
Kennedy case. He is right about that much: we waited sixty years on Dallas,
and this record was ruined in five.