THE AUGUST 5 MINUTES THE WARNING NOBODY READ / The Art of a Bad Deal / THE STANDARD THAT ONLY POINTS ONE WAY / A Pause and an Apology

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.