Twenty Now. Thirty in Three Years. And a Car That Can Drink It. / Consider the Source / A Pause and an Apology

Narco-State That
Became a Bank Account
We Were Promised a Drug War. We Got an Offshore Account.
Sixty-seven boats destroyed. Thirteen billion dollars collected.
And the one account nobody in this country is allowed to audit.
IMAGINATION LIBRARY 332 million+ books, five countries
FOUNDED 1995, for a father who could not read
VACCINE RESEARCH $1 million
SMOKIES FIRES, 2016 $1,000 a month, per displaced family
HURRICANE HELENE $1M personal, $1M from her companies
DOLLYWOOD Full college tuition for employees
THE LEDGER, ITEM BY ITEM
WE WENT FOR THE CARTELS. WE CAME HOME WITH THE OIL.
THE DRUGS ARE STILL MOVING. THE MONEY IS STILL MISSING.
AN AMERICAN SEIZURE BELONGS IN AN AMERICAN BANK.
WHERE IS THE MONEY? WHERE ARE THE DRUGS?
ANSWER THE PEOPLE WHO PAID FOR IT.
WHAT WE WERE TOLD. Venezuela was a
narco-state and its president a cartel boss. On
that premise, American forces struck Caracas
on January 3 and flew Nicolás Maduro to New
York. Congress never voted on it. When five
Republicans joined Democrats to force the
question, the Vice President broke the tie to
kill it.
WHAT WAS PROVEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Nothing yet. Maduro pleaded not guilty, and
the case is pending. The premise was thin before
the first shot. DEA data put the Caribbean
corridor at roughly 8 percent of seaborne cocaine
leaving South America, most of it bound
for Europe. Venezuela appears in no DEA National
Drug Threat Assessment as a fentanyl
source or transit country. The SOUTHCOM
commander told lawmakers in March that
boat strikes are not the answer. Sixty-seven
vessels were destroyed, 221 people were
killed, and the traffickers rerouted.
WHAT WE TOOK. Ten oil tankers were boarded
or seized. One hundred fifty million barrels
were sold by April. More than $13 billion was
collected by late July.
WHERE IT WENT. Not the U.S. Treasury, at
least not at first. The opening $500 million
landed in a Qatari bank, described by an official
as neutral ground beyond any risk of seizure.
But Executive Order 14373 had already
blocked the creditors under an emergency the
President declared himself. So the offshore account
was not shielding the money from them.
It was shielding it from American courts.
About $3 billion is accounted for. Ten billion is
not. Two of the trading houses that were hired
had previously been prosecuted for bribery.
In February, the Treasury Secretary promised
Congress the statutory authority. By March 11,
it still had not come.
We took the oil by force and banked it where
no American judge can reach it.
THE PARDON THAT DOES NOT FIT. On
December 1, 2025, one month before the drug
war began, this President pardoned Juan Orlando
Hernández, former president of Honduras,
convicted of moving more than 400
tons of cocaine and serving 45 years. Same
crime. Same hemisphere. Opposite outcome.
WHAT IT COST. Brown University’s Costs of
War project put Southern Spear and Absolute
Resolve at a minimum of $4.7 billion through
March 31, $3.8 billion of it naval, and called
that figure conservative. The Pentagon refuses
to give Congress a number at all.
WHAT ACTUALLY CHANGED. Maduro’s
own vice president governs, unelected. No
free elections have been announced. Inflation
was 475 percent last year. Roughly 90
percent of the country is in poverty. Three
months’ minimum wage does not buy one
dollar. June earthquakes killed more than
5,000, and $386 million in aid moved while
$13 billion sat in a bank.
AND IT WAS NEVER ARGENTINA. Argentina
is Level 1. Go tomorrow. The country
we liberated is Level 3, with seven states still
marked Do Not Travel and visas issued from
Bogotá.
THE EDITOR’S OPINION. No court has
found corruption here, and I allege none. But
I have seen this shape before, and the questions
below are not rhetorical. They are unanswered.
THREE QUESTIONS NOBODY WILL ANSWER.
Where are the drugs? Sixty-seven
boats were destroyed. Two hundred twenty-
one people are dead. The routes moved; the
cocaine did not stop. No public evidence has
yet tied a single shipment to the man we took.
Where is the money? Thirteen billion was collected.
Three billion is explained. Ten billion is
behind a seal no American judge is permitted
to break.
And why a foreign bank? That question answers
the other two. A seizure made by American
forces, paid for by American taxpayers,
belongs in the American Treasury, on an
American ledger, in front of an American
court. In 1989, we invaded Panama, took a dictator
on drug charges, and found the money
in Panamanian banks, but those assets went
through courts. There is exactly one reason to
send this money to Qatar instead: so that nobody
here can look at it. The cartels used foreign
banks for the same reason. They simply
never called it foreign policy.
THE HONEST PART. Maduro was a tyrant
who stole an election, and some of this money
has paid Venezuelan salaries under a continuing
audit. Fine. Then publish the authority,
publish the ledger, and let a judge look.
A TRIBUTE
The Woman Who Never
Asked Your Party
She Just Mailed the Book.
Sixty years in public life, a coalition wider than either party’s,
and not one loyalty oath. Washington should study the tape.
The Failed Trump/MAGA Movement
The Voters Got Promises. The Insiders Got Everything.
Nineteen months in, one side of this bargain has been paid in full,
and it was not the side that voted.
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: Forbes “World’s Billionaires” (Mar. 2026); USDA ERS Food Price Outlook (Aug. 2026); NBC News grocery tracker
(Aug. 19, 2026); Purdue Consumer Food Insights; Economist/YouGov (Aug. 7–10, 2026); Reuters (Oct. 23, 2025); Public
Citizen; Senate letters of Oct. 22, 2025; PBS NewsHour (Apr. 2026).
Sources: Executive Order 14373; Treasury and OFAC general licenses; DEA National Drug Threat
Assessment; Costs of War Project, Brown University; Semafor; CNN; Reuters; House Financial Services
Committee correspondence; U.S. Department of State.
SHE STARTED WITH A DEBT SHE COULD
NOT REPAY. Dolly Rebecca Parton was born
January 19, 1946, in Sevier County, Tennessee,
one of twelve children in a mountain
cabin. Her father could not read. In 1995, she
founded the Imagination Library in his honor,
mailing free books to children from birth until
kindergarten. When she died in Nashville
on August 25 at eighty, the program had gifted
more than 332 million books to over three
million children across five countries. The
book is addressed to the child, not the parent.
Her family asked that flowers be sent as donations
to it instead.
THE LEDGER NOBODY MADE HER PUBLISH.
A million dollars that helped fund
COVID vaccine research. A thousand dollars
a month to families burned out of the Smokies
in 2016. A million of her own after Hurricane
Helene, with a million more from her businesses.
Full college tuition for Dollywood employees.
The Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy
in 2022. None of it appropriated. None of it
borrowed. She spent her own money, then
went back to work.
SHE DECLINED THE HONORS SHE HAD
EARNED. Twice she turned down the Presidential
Medal of Freedom. In 2021, she asked
the Tennessee legislature to hold off on a statue
of her at the Capitol, not while there was
work left to do. Read that beside a renamed
plaza and a fresh bronze inscription, and note
carefully who paid for which.
SHE WAS NOBODY’S FOOL. She retained
her publishing rights while the industry was
taking everyone else’s, and walked away from
an Elvis recording rather than surrender half
of “I Will Always Love You.” Generosity was
never naivety. It never is.
AND SHE NEVER ASKED YOUR PARTY.
She spent half a century in the brightest light
in America, and no one could reliably say how
she voted. She kept it that way on purpose.
The result was that a coal miner and a college
professor could sing the same chorus and
both mean it. She did not build that audience
by agreeing with everyone. She built it by refusing
to sort them.
Three hundred thirty-two million books, and
not one of them billed to the taxpayer.
Three hundred thirty-two
million books, and not one of
them billed to the taxpayer.
That is the whole lesson, and it is not complicated.
SHE NEVER ASKED WHICH WAY YOU VOTED.
SHE ONLY ASKED WHETHER YOUR CHILD COULD READ.
SET THE BAR WHERE SHE LEFT IT.
NO PARTY OWNS THIS ONE.
LEAD LIKE DOLLY.
Sources: family statement and obituary notices, Aug. 25, 2026; Dolly Parton’s Imagination
Library; Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy; contemporaneous news accounts.
WHAT THEY RAN ON. Prices down starting
on day one. The war ended in twenty-four
hours. The files released. The swamp drained.
Each of those promises was made plainly,
from a stage, to people who believed it enough
to stand in line in the cold.
WHAT WAS DELIVERED. Food cost 3.0 percent
more this July than a year earlier. Ground
beef is up 18 percent since January 2025, and
orange juice is up 20 percent. Health premiums
rose by roughly a quarter when the
enhanced credits lapsed. Food insecurity
reached 13.3 percent overall and 46 percent
among SNAP households. Consumer optimism
hit an all-time low this month. The debt
is past $39.9 trillion. The Epstein files were
ordered released by a 427-to-1 vote, and the
measure was signed into law in November,
but they still need a judge to pry them loose.
The Iran war is still running. Approval this
month: 33 percent.
AND WHAT THE INSIDERS GOT. Forbes put
the president’s fortune at $6.5 billion in March,
up $1.4 billion in a year, roughly $1.8 billion of
it from cryptocurrency, including about $550
million from selling the family venture’s own
tokens. On the administration’s first full day,
the SEC opened a crypto task force; cases
against that venture’s investors and partners
were dropped or settled. An Emirati state fund
moved $2 billion into Binance using the family
stablecoin. The envoy who co-founded the
venture still held his stake ten months in. In
October, the president pardoned Binance’s
founder, whose company had pleaded guilty
and paid $4.3 billion.
A movement is judged by who got paid. This
one paid its founders and billed its believers.
THE HONEST PART. Egg prices are down 31
percent. Presidents are exempt from the conflict-
of-interest statute; none of this has been
charged as a crime, and the Trump Organization
says it complies with every applicable ethics
law. Grocery inflation is off its 2022 peak.
Some of these promises were fantasies the
day they were made: no president could have
ended that war in a day. And no party’s donor
ledger is clean.
AND STILL. None of that changes the arithmetic.
Two ledgers were kept over these nineteen
months. One of them was settled in full.
Check which one has your name on it.
THE MOVEMENT DID NOT FAIL ITS INSIDERS.
IT ONLY FAILED THE PEOPLE WHO BELIEVED IT.
AN EMPTY PROMISE IS STILL AN INVOICE — AND IT IS MADE OUT TO YOU.
“HOLD YOUR NOSE AND VOTE DEMOCRAT — OR JUST DON’T VOTE IN NOVEMBER.”
DON’T VOTE REPUBLICAN!
LET’S MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!