Special Session with Bryan Schott

>> Bryan Schott: Come one, come all to a beautiful

show. It's gonna be awesome. And some

other stuff,

some other musical stuff.

This is special session for the week ending Friday, January

31, 2025. I'm Bryan Schott,

managing editor of Utah Political Watch and

this week on the show we've got a bunch of news from

Utah' Hill.

Where was Sean Reyes during his time as

Attorney General of the state? Not in his office.

Lawmakers blink first in their stare down

with public sector labor unions, more

proposed laws in the legislature

prompted by conspiracy theories. And I'll

give you one guess which party is pushing these

proposals. And Utah is a little bit

closer to a resolution in the case

over gerrymandering, but not much. We'll get

to all that in just a second. But a little bit of

housekeeping. If you have not already subscribed to

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Okay, all that's out of the way. Let's get to this

week's news breakdown.

Talk about a Friday night news dump. On

Friday there was a legislative audit

released. Actually a pair of legislative audits

surrounding the tenure of former Utah

Attorn General Sean Reyes. And there's a lot

of stuff in there we already knew. But it was still quite

shocking to read these reports from legislative

auditors. One they concluded is that

Reyes conducted state business from a private

barber shop known as Max Place. Spent a lot

of time at this private barber shop in Salt Lake

City conducting business. He also deliberately

withheld information from state auditors. And it

just painted this picture of an absent leader

who prioritized his private interest over

public duty duties. One of the things they said in the report

was, quote, the information we received showed that the

AG appeared to spend a significant amount of

time at this private location during business hours

in the work week. It also appears that

Attorney General office related business was being

conducted at the barber shop. They also

spoke to a number of his division

leaders in the office. And he really

did not appear to be involved in the day to day

operations of the Attorney General's office, even though

he was supposed to to be in charge of the whole thing.

Most of the division directors there said that they had

little contact with Reyes during his time as

Attorney General. In fact he did not start

attending a monthly meeting for division

directors until legislative leaders launched

the audit in November of 2023. They had uh, this

chart that was really striking that

basically showed that Reyes did not attend those meetings. But

the moment that this audit was launched he made sure to get

his butt there. So you know you can put two to two

together on that. They also spent a significant amount of

time talking about Reyes's involvement

with nonprofit organizations. And

that created a conflict of interest because

the Attorney General not only here in Utah but in other

states, their job is to

oversee nonprofit organizations. They

take a significant role. We all know about his involvement

with Operation Underground Railroad and Tim Ballard.

That is clearly a conflict of interest because

Reyes is supposed to be in charge of regulating, in

charge of enforcing regulations on,

on nonprofit organizations. But the

auditors concluded that he appeared to leverage his position as

Attorney General to help and promote

and fundraise for our. You

will remember that Operation Underground

Railroad came under fire in 2023 after

there were some bombshell sexual

harassment or sex sexual misconduct

allegations against Ballard. And that uh, all

he also allegedly misled donors. And

that controversy also came and enveloped

because of his longtime association friendship with

Ballard. And that raised questions about his

judgment because he had such close ties to

Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad.

Now to be fair, auditors said they didn't find any evidence

that Reyes used state resources to assist

our. But he also held back

information about his meetings with the group and his

participation in events on

behalf of our. Um, another thing they flagged,

and this has been reported before, that Operation Underground

railroad donated about

$950,000 to the attorney

General's office. That money was distributed to the Internet

Crimes Against Children Task Force ICAC

and it made its way down to local law

enforcement. The problem with that is

Reyes. The Attorney General's office in Reyes painted

this money as a federal grant when it wasn't. It was

funded by these donations that came from Operation

Underground Railroad. Now Reyes also

took the very unusual step of creating his

own non profit organization that's

called Liberate All Value all uh, or lava.

And the audit says that it appears that

Reyes leveraged his official position as Attorney

General to solicit donations for this

organization and Then he would then take that

money and distribute it to other nonprofits.

And then you've got another conflict of interest because of that.

Back to Reyes's schedule and withholding

information from auditors. A lot of the information that

Reyes withheld from auditors was because

of attorney client privilege. They claimed attorney client

privilege, or they claimed claim that it would hamper

ongoing investigations. Auditors were able to get some of

this information from other sources. And it's clear

that's that there was really no

attorney client privilege involved at all. It was really

weird that they did that. There was one

example where in his calendar, uh,

they had a calendar entry for Reyes speaking

at the Utah Sheriff's Association Conference,

but a lot of part of it was redacted. So it was a calendar

entry for the event, the Utah Sheriff's Association

Conference, but there's some redactions. They got an

unredacted version. And what he had redacted

is that he didn't attend that event. It

appeared that he was trying to make it look like

he was doing more than he actually was. So you

saw this calendar entry for Utah Sheriff's association,

but he didn't go, um. And that's just one example of the

things that Reyes held back in this audit. So what can the

state do? Well, not a lot to Reyes. The audit did

not talk about any criminal activity on behalf of Reyes, but

it was certainly unethical, and he was certainly doing things

outside of what an attorney general shouldn't do. And he

wasn't actually doing his job as attorney general.

So lawmakers can do things going forward to put more

guardrails around the office. They can do more

to require more transparency, to

require more ethical behavior from the attorney general

going forward, but there's not a lot that they can do retroactively.

So while this audit was alarming,

I m don't expect much to come of it.

I think one of the biggest questions I get asked all

the time as someone who reports on politics in the state, is

what's happening with the gerrymandering lawsuit? When are we

going to know what's happening? Well, I guess sooner rather than

later is the answer. Because on Friday there

was a court hearing finally

over the lawsuit challenging the state's

congressional maps from the League of Women Voters

and a coalition of other plaintiffs. Judge

Diana Gibson heard arguments for about

three hours on Friday afternoon in this case. This was

after the Utah Supreme Court ruled that

the state, uh, legislature overstepped its

bounds by gutting Proposition

4, which set up the independent Redistricting commission.

So that was then sent back down to a lower court, Judge

Gibson. And so she finally heard

arguments on that on Friday afternoon.

So the plaintiffs were asking the judge to

block portions of the law that gutted

Prop 4, which did establish an

independent redistricting commission, but it didn't give them

any authority. It just made them an advisory committee.

They drew maps. The legislature had

to consider those maps, but they weren't. They

weren't obligated to adopt them, which is

wildly different than what Prop 4 did. And they were

challenging that. So she heard arguments over that. And

what they were asking for is that she throw out the

current congressional maps and then make force

a redrawing of those maps that

followed the dictums of Proposition 4, which

said that you couldn't take into account

where incumbents live, you could not look at

any partisan political data. You had to keep communities

of interest together. You had to try to

keep cities and municipalities together.

And that's not what the legislature did at all. What they did is they

evenly. I mean, they split Salt Lake county into

four. It's almost as if they

were able to surgically divide

the four districts up to make them even more

Republican than they already

were. Don't get me wrong. If there are new

maps, you're not going to see a Democrat

district pop up. You're not going to see a swing district pop

up. It's. It's. That's not going to happen. There are not enough

Democrats in this state to make that happen. What you

will see is maybe one of the four

congressional seats that Utah has will be more

competitive. Instead of it being an

R+11 district, it might be

R+6 or R+7. And

in a wave year, you might see a Democrat

win those seats. So it'd be much more competitive, but it

wouldn't favor a Democrat. That's not how this would

work. So that's what the plaintiffs are asking

for. The lieutenant governor made a filing with the

court, uh, has requested that if there are new

maps, they have to be finalized by November 1st of

this year. That way she can put out the notice

for the election, and the people who are running will know which

districts they are running in. Meanwhile, the legislature,

they were arguing, or at least their request to the

judge, is they want the. The judge to decide

whether lawmakers IGN ignored the will of the

voters when they passed the law

that gutted the Prop 4 in the first

place. That was their ask of the judge. They were

asking for a summary judgment. So she heard arguments on both of

those after the hearing, she said she'd take it under advisement, which means that

she'll make a decision at some point in the future.

We don't know when it is. No matter what she decides, you

can be assured that there's going to be another appeal

up to the Utah Supreme Court, which whatever happens,

that may go back down to a lower court. So

we're a little closer to having a resolution resolution on

this, but we're not a bunch closer, if that makes

any sense. And remember now, you've got this

deadline of November 1st staring everybody in the face, and

that's nine months away as we start

February. So more waiting, but

we're a little closer to the finish, is the answer

there.

If you're ever wondering what power a union has,

just look at what happened late last week up on

Capitol Hill. Essentially, Utah lawmakers

blasted There's a bill, HB

267 from Representative Jordan Tusher

that has just been steamrolling its way through the

legislature, got through the House without a hitch. And what

his bill did was it took away the

rights of public employees to collectively

bargain. That would really only impact some public employees

in the state. There are some school districts that have

a collective bargaining agreement with the Utah Education

association, the Salt Lake City Police and the Salt Lake City Fire

Department. And so this bill would take that away. It would also take

away the ability for union members to pay their

union dues through payroll deduction.

Every time it came up for committee, it was packed. When it was in

the House committee, there were three overflow rooms plus the

committee hearing room. Same thing happened when it came up in a Senate committee.

It passed an initial vote in the Senate. When it came up

for a final vote in the Senate on Friday afternoon, all of

a sudden there's a pause on this rush to pass

this bill. And that's because lawmakers are backing

down. They have changed it. A version of the

bill they made public on Friday takes away

that that they can no collectively

bargain. The public employees can no longer collectively bargain. And

it replaces it with a provision that says if there

is a collective bargaining agreement, then every five years

the union members have to have a vote to

decide whether they want the union to continue

to bargain on their behalf. So it's a significant

watering down of this bill that was

seen as retaliation by

lawmakers against the Utah Education association

for or their opposition of Amendment A, which

would have changed the way that the constitutional

provision or the constitutional mechanism for

funding public schools in the state. Right now, income tax

Money can only go to fund public and

higher education and some social services, and they wanted

to expand that. Utah Education association opposed

that. And then they also filed suit against the private

school vouchers program, which takes, uh,

money that's supposed to go to public schools and allows

parents to pay for private education or

homeschooling expenses or whatever with very

little accountability. So they filed suit over that, and this

bill was seen as retaliation for that. Now,

lawmakers couldn't just go after the uea. They would be opening

themselves up to a lawsuit. They couldn't

say, well, we're just going to take away the ability of the teachers

unions. You can't do that. So that's why they

expanded it to, say, all public employees, which

would have encompassed the firefighters

and the police and the ability, if other public

unions wanted, to do some collective

bargaining down the line. So lawmakers have backed off that

because of this massive protest by union

members. They tried this last year. They had a bill

that would have taken away the payroll deduction for union

dues, and it would have required these unions to have

a, uh, recertification vote every, every

couple of years. But that one, there was massive

opposition by the unions, and lawmakers backed down,

and the bill never went anywhere. This one is getting closer to

passage, but it's been significantly watered down

because of union opposition. So it's,

it's fascina that lawmakers once again are

blinking. This is clearly to send a message in

retaliation for what the Utah

Education association did. They'll deny it. Representative

Jordan Tusher has denied that to me. He said it is not

retaliation against the uea. He wouldn't involve

UEA in discussions over the bill, but he said it

wasn't retaliation. But, you know, it's not

hard to do the math, and I'm not stupid. Lawmakers have backed down.

And that just shows you the next time you

want a tangible, um,

example of the power of employees

unions, just take a look at this. And this wasn't even

with a strike. Uh, there wasn't even a threatened strike. If you look at

what happened in Oklahoma last year, I believe it was last year

when they were making some significant changes to schools

and the teachers in Oklahoma struck and they went to

the Capitol and, like, took over the state capitol.

Lawmakers, they, it took them about four days to back

down. Unions have quite a bit of

power and influence. Saw that this week,

and it wasn't even with a strike. So lawmakers appear

to have backed down. Foreign.

So this is becoming a regular segment on this

podcast unfortunately, it's time for

conspiracy theory bingo. On Utah's

Capitol Hill. There were a trio of bills this week

that appear to be motivated by, uh,

conspiracy theories or people who believe in conspiracy

theories. Let's talk about the biggest one of all. The

first one is from House Majority Whip

Carrie Ann liszenby and it's

HB3.32. What this bill does, it's,

it's an election bill and it ends Utah's

participation in the Electronic Voter Information

center, which is known as eric. That is a

multi state partnership where

they, it's sort of a clearinghouse for voter

registration information. Last year several

Republican states withdrew from ERIC because

of election related conspiracy theories

stemming from Donald Trump's falsehoods about the

2020 election. The Utah Republican Party, a number

of county parties in the state passed resolutions

last year calling on the state to withdra withdraw from eric. But

they have. So Liz and B's bill would take Utah out

of eric. That's the first thing it does. It would also

make it so that the state could not share Utah

voter information with another state

without legislative approval. That's the normal

stuff that Liz and B's bill does. It's not great.

That's at least normal sounding. One of the things that

you heard Republicans talk about a lot was cleaning the

voter rolls. Cleaning the voter rolls, which is what ERIC does. Eric's

help states make sure that a person is not voting in multiple states.

If you cast a ballot state ERIC is going to flag

that and you're not going to be able to cast a ballot in another state. So it's

there to prevent voter fraud. But so how, if

Utah pulls out of eric, how are they going to clean

their voter rolls? Well, here's where it

gets crazy. Lisanbee's bill authorizes

the Lieutenant governor to contract with

a third party company to help maintain

the state's voter registration database.

Sounds great, huh? Huh? Well, there is a very specific

requirement in the bill and it's extremely

curious. It says company must use,

quote, quantum technology.

Okay. People are talking about quantum technology and

AI. That's not what this is. That's not what this

is. This appears to be

written for one company and one

company only. And that is a gentleman by the name of

Jay Valentine. Jay Valentine

is pushing, he's been, he's approached number of

states pushing this technology he

calls fractal quantum technology

and he's pitching it as something

to fill in the void left by states that have withdrawn

from Eric. There's been reporting that he's Approached Texas and a

couple of other states trying to get them to sign on board. Well that

language quantum technology clears the

field. This is written for one specific person and

it's Jay Valentine. So who is Jay Valentine? Well

he is an election conspiracy theorist who

has worked closely with Sidney Powell. If you remember

her, she was one of Donald Trump's lawyers in the uh,

aftermath of the 2020 election. She was alleging

uh, this massive multinational conspiracy led

by uh, the dead Venezuelan dictator

Hugo Chavez and Henry Kissinger and

Bill Gates and a whole bunch of other people to steal the

election. That voting machines were flip flipping

votes. She's claimed without any evidence. And

you'll remember she is the person or Senator Mike Lee

is the person who introduced her to Donald Trump

in the first place. He doesn't like to remember that, but

that's where the Sidney Powell connection came from for

Donald Trump. So that's the first person that Jay Valentine has worked with.

The Texas Tribune has reported that

Valentine's quote unquote technology,

this quantum, this fractal quantum

technology was first funded By Mike

Lindell, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell who has

also spread wild conspiracy theories

about completely non existent

election fraud. Valentine has made

a number of really outlandish claims about

the abilities of his quantum technology. One of them

he claims that it found over 1.4

million voters in Pennsylvania using

illegal addresses. He hasn't been able to back that up but that's

what he claims. So here's what Liz and B

wants to do. Now remember this is appears to be

written for one person. So Liz and B's bill would

give this contractor who is, who could

probably only be Jay Valentine or his company, it

would not only give him access to Utah's

voter roll, it also directs other

state agencies to cough up massive

amounts of personal information about you and

me. It directs the state tax commission

to hand over motor vehicle registration information

and property tax information. And then it

also says that the division of uh,

workforce services has to give him access

to Medicaid application records. And what

Valentine claims he can do is he's going to take all that information

and then he can find people

who are registered to vote at an

address that they don't live there anymore. And he's claiming that what's

happening is there are hundreds of these ballots going to

the, or thousands or millions of these ballots going to

these addresses, going to these non existent voters

at these addresses and then they are harvested by

Democratic leaning or left leaning non

governmental organizations who then

somehow cast ballots in the name of

These people who don't exist, these voters who don't

exist to help Democrats win elections. And that's

the person who carry in Lisanbee, the number three

Republican in the Utah House of

Representatives. This is the person she wants to

turn over access to Utah's voter

rolls, property tax information,

voter vehicle registration information and

Medicaid applications. That's what she wants

to do. That's what this bill does. And how do I know that

this is for him? Well, she has met with

Valentine. Uh, there is a group out there and I've talked about

them before. It is Utah Citizens for the Constitution

institution. It is a right wing group. It is led by

Jen Brown, who, spoiler

alert, has no academic credentials about

the Constitution, but she likes to portray herself as an

expert on the Constitution, but she has no

academic credentials on this. She's also, let's

just say that there's not a conspiracy theory about

election fraud that Jen Brown has not

found and liked. She's, she's latched

onto so many of these conspiracy theories and

in May of last year, she

brokered a meeting with

Valentine and House Speaker Mike Schultz

and Lizenby at the Utah State Capitol. She's

posted about this on social media. They have met with

this person again who says that he has

this quantum fractal technology

that can detect voter fraud before it

happens or whatever. And Lisenby,

Carrie Ann Lizenby wants to make it so

that he can get access to all this information

from Utahns. Also, don't sleep on this.

Speaker Mike Schultz has taken an aim at

mail in voting. He wants to. He,

he thinks that there are ways to improve mail in voting. It just so happens

to be the kind of thing that Jay Valentine has talked

about as well. And Schultz has met with Valentine

and now there's a specific bill out there that

seems to be written for the benefit of Jay

Valentine. So that's fun, isn't it? That's neat.

That's conspiracy theory bill number

one from this last week. The second

one that came up was

HB180 from Representative

Lisa Shepard. She is a freshman Republican.

And what this one does, apparently there is a

looming threat for Utah from the

World Health Organization or the United

nations or the World Economic Forum. They are

just licking their chops to take over the state

of Utah. So into the breach steps

Representative Lisa Shepard, who has a

bill that would make it so any dictate

from those organizations, any, uh,

declaration from those organizations not be valid here in

Utah that they have no authority, they have no

jurisdiction in the state. They already don't

have jurisdiction in the state. But, uh, she wants to make it extra clear

that they don't have any jurisdiction here. And this

is only accelerated when President Donald Trump,

when he first came into office, signed an executive order that the United

States would withdraw from the World Health Organization.

Another one of those organizations, the World

Economic Forum, they have become the target of

a lot of really wild conspiracy theories.

People believe that they're behind a plot

to deliberately crash the world economy in

order to establish an authoritarian world

government. During the hearing, Shepard admitted there

have been no such directives from the World

Health Organization or the WEF or the United

nations directed at Utah. But better safe

than sorry. Apparently, uh, during the hearing and there

was a lot of people talking about conspiracy theories. There were a lot of

people bringing up, um, these

international boogeymen who are just chomping at

the bit. Is it chomping or champing? Champing at the bit. I'll

say champing at the bit. To just, uh,

enslave the good people of Utah, or as Governor

Cox would call them, the free people of Utah.

But one really stuck out. And it is another

member of the legislature. It's freshman Representative

Christian Chevrier, who was elected to

replace Representative Brady Brammer, who

moved to the Utah Senate. Anyway, she is an

anti vaccine activist. Uh, she

started this group called Vaccine Freedom Utah. And she was

very active during COVID 19. She specifically

talked about the World Health Organization,

the United nations and the World Economic Forum.

Or during her testimony, she came, she specifically

showed up to give public testimony.

>> Speaker B: The governing bodies of the World Health Organization, the United

nations and the World Economic Forum are not

elected by the citizens of Utah,

nor are these appointed officials ultimately

accountable to to us. The citizens of

Utah have no recourse or means of redress

for potential harm incurred by enacting policies

recommended by the WHO, the UN

or the WEF. The UN and the

WHO's stated goals within its One Health

Agenda include total biosurveillance

of humans and animals and digital passport programs

that masquerade as choice.

>> Bryan Schott: And he heard her say total

biosurveillance, which is a really

scary sounding term. That conspiracy

emerged during the COVID 19 pandemic. It focuses

on governments and private companies allegedly

using technology to monitor and control

populations. There was an attempt to hold the bill. Representative

Andrew Stoddard, he was worried that there is a provision

in the bill that could inadvertently prevent

Utah officials from acting on any type

of recommendation from an international organization. Say

there's another pandemic bird flu.

Bird flu. Anyway, he tried to hold the bill so they could work on the

language. Um, the Republicans weren't having it and so they

advanced it on a party line vote. And then our

third conspiracy theory that

has morphed into legislation from this week.

Let me ask you a question. When it comes to dental

health, who are you going to listen to? On one side

you have medical professionals, you have dentists,

you even have the dean of the University of

Utah dental school. Okay, that's group,

group A. And on the other side

you have, huh, people claiming that fluoride

flow in water should be a

parents rights issue. It should be a parental choice

issue. Parents should decide what goes

into their children's bodies, not, not government

agencies. So which switch group are you going to listen to?

Um, okay, now that you've thought about that, which group do you

think that the Republicans on a House committee

listen to? If you said the medical professionals,

you are 100% wrong because that is not who

they were listening to. This is a bill from

Representative Stephanie Grishas to

remove fluoride from

Utah's water systems. Right now

you can't put fluoride into water systems unless

there is a public vote. And uh, Salt Lake

and I believe Davis county voted to

fluoridate their water. There's about 43% of the

population in Utah has fluoridated water. Well, this, and

that's because, because of a citizens initiative which was

passed back in 1976, allowed people to

vote on whether they wanted fluoride in the water. And that

narrowly passed, but that has been the law. Well, this would undo that and

say you can't put any fluoride in the water. But if

you do want fluoride, then a pharmacist can give you a

prescription for a fluoride supplement. This is just the latest

fight against water fluoridation. This is being

headed actually by the right wing group

Utah Parents Union United. Their president,

Corinne Johnson, who was a

candidate for lieutenant governor earlier this year. She

was Carson Jorgensen's running mate on his

gubernatorial ticket. And I think Utah dodged a

bullet on that one. Anyway, she's been pushing this to

get rid of fluoride in the water because it should be a

parental choice issue. Parents should have the.

Have the right to decide what goes into their

child's body. But apparently that does not.

Apparently that's not the case when it comes to

gender affirming care for children. I don't know where the line is.

I guess the line is where it's most politically

convenient or where it appeals to your base.

So anyway, that's the third conspiracy related

bill up on Capitol Hill from this last week. Your

government in action. Neat.

And that will do it for this week's show. I want to thank you

again for taking time out of your day to listen.

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Bryan Schott is written and produced by me, Bryan

Schott. Thank you so much for listening. We will talk to

you again next week.