Ian Carroll Unleashed 2 | Urban Air Gets Darker And Trump Turns On Israel | Candace Ep 185
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Well, there's a new immigration scandal today, and this time it is white people trying to come to America, and everyone's got a hot take. All that while Trump is seemingly reversing the status quo policy on Israel and simultaneously making deals with Saudi Arabia for hundreds of billions of dollars. And we'll get to that right after we drop a big bombshell on the story we started yesterday about Unleashed Brands, Michael Browning Jr., and The Little Jim. All that today on Candace.

Today, we're going to start with a brief reminder of what happened to Toys R Us, famously bankrupted by the private equity firm KKR and Bain Capital. Because it's important to highlight just how much private equity will do for profit and how little they care about who they hurt while they do it.

Before private equity bought them out, Toys R Us had $1.8 billion of debt. After private equity was done with them, they were loaded with more than $5 billion of debt. By 2007, interest expenses consumed 97% of their profit.

Amazon was a juggernaut that spelled the demise of traditional retail stores. And in 2017, roughly 7,000 stores and 50,000 jobs evaporated. Between 2015 and 2017, of the 43 large retailers and supermarket companies that filed for bankruptcy, more than 40% were owned by private equity firms.

But what's worse, private equity has started to master the art of the leveraged buyout, where they don't actually put up the money to buy a business, but instead just take out a loan using the business they are about to buy, but don't yet own, and they use that as a collateral to secure that loan.

Quote, many private equity firms ship in only about one to two percent of the equity needed for a leveraged buyout and skim fees and interest throughout the deal. If things go well, the firms take a huge cut of the profit when they exit. If everything blows up, they usually still escape with nary a burn.

Another common tactic used to gut a company is once you control it, you sell off all the real estate to your real estate buddies and then force the company, Toys R Us, to lease back its own properties for monthly rent, further sinking the balance sheet. The private equity model, often called vulture capitalism, is to loot and flip, not to invest or run companies well.

And many people don't realize just how many beloved brands have been bought out through these types of leveraged buyouts. This is just a small smattering of recent leveraged buyouts, mostly by private equity, but sometimes by public megacorporations as well, as in the example of Kraft Heinz.

The big boys also realized during these years that forming cozy relationships with big consulting firms is a great way to simultaneously mismanage a company and take absorbent fees while you do it. The consulting industry is ruled by the big three. That would be McKinsey, BCG, and Bain & Company.

Some of the big private equity firms even have associated consulting firms or vice versa. McKinsey and Company has MIO partners. Bain Capital spun off Bain and Company, which are obviously totally separate companies. And although they sometimes work together, they would never collude or do anything below board.

Never. This is actually exactly what was happening to GameStop leading into the 2021 short squeeze that rocked the world. Their board of directors had been infiltrated and they had hired BCG to consult them on the way down.

GameStop said that BCG showed prioritization of excessive fees over clients' interests. And Ryan Cohen, who was the white knight who bought his way into GameStop right before the 2021 squeeze, he knew what they were doing. And he kicked out the corrupt board members and fired BCG. He was very vocal on his Twitter, talking literally about BCG and this practice.

The exact same playbook happened at Bed Bath & Beyond recently, including selling off all their real estate and forcing them to lease back their own buildings shortly before driving them into bankruptcy. But that's a whole different story. I mention all of that just to show that this is a pattern for private equity and the big boys that will do just about anything to grow their wallets.

And now back to our boy, Michael Browning Jr. You know, this guy who owns the trampoline park company where yesterday we saw videos of kids falling off of rides and getting seriously injured. You might think it's not his fault. He's just running a business and sometimes his employees make mistakes. Could be. That would be reasonable to assume if we were talking about most people.

But today we're going to take a look at how he founded Urban Air through the absolute cannibalization and then apparently the outright theft of another man's work.

That man is Garth Price, and his life's work was Leap of Faith Adventures. And a side note here, in trying to find photos of Garth and Leap of Faith Adventures, this video that we're about to show you was just about the only thing I could even find publicly available online because he and his business have been so thoroughly erased by Michael Browning Jr. and the story we're about to tell.

My name is Garth Price. The name of our company is Leap of Faith Adventures and we're in Belfont, Ohio. Here at Leap of Faith, we work with family entertainment centers, also known as FECs. We help manufacture, we help install, we help with risk management, we help in all those things to make other people successful. Average week as a business owner is crazy. It's chaos.

It seems like it's chaos most of the time. I need a lot of help. When I started, it was just me building attractions in my father's garage. So it went from me being the bookkeeper, the welder, the fabricator, the designer, all those things. I cannot do everything by myself and be successful. I need other people in my life to allow me to be successful as well. That's what Fifth Third did, and that's what Jays did.

Fifth Third has been very important. Fifth Third is this building that we're in, our research and development lab that we have. And without Fifth Third, we would have had none of that. So I want you to just remember that man. He's going to be central to this whole story. And we're going to be telling...

the story of his company and how it went down today. And I also want you to remember that that is what a founder looks like. That's what a man that founded his business on his own interests, his own passion, his own hard work looks like. Because now I want to introduce you to the two bombshells.

The two documents that are going to guide a lot of our reporting today and are going to inform all the rest of Unleashed Brand's actions against Tiffany Cianci and all the other people involved in this scandal. This is a motion for sanctions and a motion for injunction and restraining order. On the right, you have the temporary injunction and permanent injunction request. And on the left, you have the motion for sanctions.

The judge granted the motion for injunction while the case was litigated, and the judge extended that injunction eight times. And a little bit of background on injunctions, just for anyone that doesn't know, an injunction is the highest legal standard that you can achieve in a lot of ways, because it's used to stop someone immediately from doing something that is irreversible, such as a lethal injection. In this case, it was because they were apparently stealing his business, and once his business is taken from him, he will never get it back.

And he also won't be able to litigate anymore. So it's extremely hard to meet the requirements for an injunction. And in this case, the judge granted the injunction and then further renewed it eight times, which is generally unheard of. A judge would only grant an injunction in the first place if it clearly had merit. And this one was renewed eight times until later Garth just didn't have any money left to fight. Two years after that first injunction, the document on the right,

Garth, Price, and Leap of Faith Adventures filed the motion for sanctions, which is on the left. But they were already almost out of money and had to settle shortly after that was filed.

So much of what we're going to read today is from right at the end of the line, right before it all crashed down around him. And that's why it includes so much information, because it was after everything had already transpired. But it's important to clarify that this case never won out in a court of law and never even had time and money to even be fully tried. So these are simply allegations made against Urban Air by LOFA.

Before LOFA, Leap of Faith Adventures, Urban Air was, let's just say, not a very successful company, to quote Urbanair.

Despite growing the UATP concept to eight parks over its four and a quarter years of operation, UATP is Urban Air Theme Parks, the business still only realized annual revenue of $807,000 with a net income of $168,329 for the year ending December 31st, 2015.

That is a very small number. If you're running eight big theme parks and you're only netting 168,000. So it was literally just trampolines and video games. Michael Browning was still working a day job and he had built all of that on his daddy's money. But then Michael brought Leap of Faith Adventures in and Urban Air was completely transformed. So to be clear,

These two men founded their businesses in the same year independently. One founded his business with hard work, relationship building, and division. The other founded his business with daddy's money and a distinct need for validation. So...

Leap of Faith Adventures gave Urban Air all of their attractions, all of their new brand identity. Everything that your kid thinks of as Urban Air today, that was installed by Leap of Faith Adventures because this is what Leap of Faith Adventures did. They were a company that installed these types of rides and attractions for these types of parks. And they did it by forming relationships with the people that invented these different rides and attractions.

and then bringing that technology and those attractions in and installing them for the business like Urban Air. Fast forward to the end of 2016.

UATP's business model was now dramatically different. Leap of Faith's hard work, experience, and expertise made the Urban Air model scalable and reproducible, allowing Urban Air to open 13 new parks in a single year and expand its previously limited attraction selection. Remember, eight parks across the whole founding, then 13 parks in a single year.

So in short, Leap of Faith enabled Urban Air to grow and made its franchise a more attractive investment opportunity. Browning extended the following offer to Leap of Faith.

Urban Air would send its franchisees business exclusively to Leap of Faith for the sales and installations of attractions. But in return, Leap of Faith would remit 70% of the net profits to Urban Air on top of profit sharing. Urban Air also promised to provide Leap of Faith with back office services to assist with the influx of associated business in exchange for Leap of Faith's agreeing to pay $1,000 per park fee for those services. But Urban Air later increased that fee to 2,000 per park. And that service...

back office services will become very relevant later.

It included two main items, a semi-dedicated back office managerial and accounting employee, Abby Crowley, and the procurement setup and hosting of a private web domain for Leap of Faith. Browning insisted Leap of Faith needed a more professional email address, so Urban Air purchased for $11.86 and hosted the lofadv.com email domain for Leap of Faith. Leap of Faith understood and expected, however, that the lofadv.com account would be maintained as Leap of Faith's private business.

business account. That will become very relevant later in this case. And so just to clear this up and make it obvious, they agreed to this profit sharing agreement because Leap of Faith was getting all kinds of business and Urban Air was getting everything.

Leap of Faith's work was predicated upon significant investment, including 375 hours of employee training on installations, building codes, ADA compliance, OSHA, and other on-the-job training to learn. Leap of Faith's investment, however, was recognized and lauded by the attraction manufacturers.

It built and installed more than 45 parks during its tenure from 2016 to 2018, compared to mere eight parks UATP had accomplished from its inception in 2013 to the end of 2015. And you start to see how relevant it is that Michael Browning would later start flying in Chinese labor to install his new parks when this is the type of costs associated with doing it correctly. And Leap of Faith was very particular about

about doing it correctly. Browning, at this point, emailed his dad and said, quote, Garth just wired $75,000. That's a good way to end a Friday. In a month's time, Urban Air was earning as much or more in rebates as it had earned as an operator of eight parks the entire prior year, 2015. So you can't overstate how much of a transformation this was for Michael Browning's business. And it's also worth noting that

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Urban Air started spending on extravagances, including buying a company plane. Once Browning got a taste of real revenues, he sought to increase his revenue share, all at the expense of Leap of Faith. By April of 2017, a mere year and a half into the partnership, Browning was already seeking to alter Urban Air's 70-30 arrangement with Leap of Faith. Browning wrote, quote, I am trying to modify the arrangement and therefore the statement about 70% will no longer be accurate.

Quote, percentage was subject to change. Browning consistently operated to limit Leap of Faith's income while expanding Urban Air's own. If you were Junior, a nepo baby with an extremely successful father like Browning Sr., what would you do to protect your newfound success, your new private plane, your new access to the big boys club?

Would you censor journalists and publications? Would you forge documents or commit perjury? Would you hire felons to do your dirty work or compel a woman to have an abortion? Would you plant drugs or harm children or terrorize small business owners or bankrupt veterans? And I'm not saying that Michael Browning Jr. or anyone else did those things. I'm just posing you the question, if you had made your millions, how far would you go to keep them? Okay?

Michael Browning Jr. offered to move Leap of Faith's whole team from Ohio to Texas. And Leap of Faith had all the relationships. Leap of Faith had all the connections to everyone that had invented these various rides and was selling them through Leap of Faith to Urban Air. They also had all the expertise that made this transformation possible. So it wasn't long before Jr. tried to alter their profit-sharing agreements and take in more money from the partnership.

And now that Junior had an expanding business, he started to shop around among interested private equity investors. Quote,

In response, Polozola drafted a letter informing Price that Urban Air and its prospective partners wanted to bring Leap of Faith in-house and make him Urban Air's vice president of attractions. But if Price refused their offer, then Urban Air insisted Price had to sign the infamous rebate agreement that Price never signed, but that Browning now claims that Price did sign. We'll come back to forging of documents another time in another part of this story.

Leave it to say for now that that was never quite resolved and Price was never able to prove that he did not sign that in court. But when they offered to buy him out and he gave a resounding hell no,

The next step got taken. Unable to acquire Leap of Faith for the price they wanted, the Urban Air defendants simply altered course and embarked on, quote, Project Leapfrog. This was their plan to steal Leap of Faith's business assets and eliminate any remaining viable enterprise so it could not then operate as a competitor.

Shortly thereafter, Urban Air personnel began sending emails to franchises with whom Leap of Faith had an active sales and installation contract in progress that contained the following message.

Quote, Urban Air is assisting Leap of Faith in the administration of the attractions contracts. Please use the attached wiring instructions for future payments. Browning admitted sending such emails. And it's important to note really quickly that these new wiring instructions no longer linked to Leap of Faith's bank accounts, but instead linked to Urban Air's bank accounts. And we will come back to that shortly. But now that he had private equity backers, he needed to get in line and run the private equity playbook the way they wanted to play it.

After successfully diverting leap of faith business funds using this ploy, Urban Air began using the following warning on its own email communications. Warning, we're actively working to reduce the possibility of email hacking and phishing. If you receive an email letter or package containing wire transfer instructions, call us using previously known contact information to verify the information prior to sending funds. Never use the information provided in the email. And so when they had just sent

An email with new wiring instructions that did not go to the old Leap of Faith bank accounts, but instead seemed to go to Urban Air's bank accounts.

diverting all the payments that all of their franchises should have been making to Leap of Faith, but instead are now making to Urban Air apparently. Then they're sending out this email saying, and if you get any communications telling you to send money to this old, you know, the old communications, don't listen to them. It might be a phishing scam. So in addition to diverting Leap of Faith's incoming payments, Urban Air also moves substantial amounts of money attributable to Leap of Faith into Urban Air Attraction's new account.

Urban Air would later take steps to clean out a Leap of Faith checking account. Such theft would never have been possible except for the fact that Leap of Faith accepted Urban Air's offer to provide Leap of Faith with the necessary back-office accounting and invoicing on franchisee products for a per-park fee. That was that thing we mentioned earlier that was going to come back around? Allegedly, it came back around.

In addition to diverting funds, Urban Air also began an active campaign to solicit Leap of Faith's trained and experienced employees to come to work for Urban Air, and in that process, learned Leap of Faith's installation trade secrets. They also allegedly put up cameras that right there it says, quote, it's obvious to me that you are trying to learn how to install a park with the line of questions you've asked of my team and the cameras you have placed facing the attractions build at the Bedford job site.

In his arrogance, Browning readily admits their intentions was to learn and steal leap of faith experience and proprietary know-how so that urban air defendants could use it without leap of faith. Quote, it is correct that we have placed cameras at the Bedford location to record the build. It is correct that we are learning how to perform the installs. Myself, John, and Doug...

have told you numerous times in person that our investors and board of directors will not allow us to have all of our eggs in the LOFA basket. They want us to have a contingency plan. Notably, no such videos have been produced in the litigation. On July 24th, 2018, the Urban Air defendants successfully poached 26 of Leap of Faith's 40 full-time trained and experienced employees or three of its five active crews. So,

Michael had cameras installed in urban airs that were being built so they could record Leap of Faith installing those attractions and use that footage to make training videos. Because a lot of the attractions arrived without installation instructions, but Leap of Faith's teams were aces and they knew exactly what they were doing because they'd had all that training that he had paid for, which Michael Browning was not as hot on paying for it didn't seem, but...

Then Michael went through a long series of manipulations to acquire everything he needed and file patents on attractions brought to him by Leap of Faith Adventures.

And I don't know how much intellectual property he might have stolen this way. There's an immense amount of legal documentation to go through, but I'll show you one or two as an example. So when Leap of Faith finally took Michael Browning to court, a man named David Evans was deposed and testified about theft of his intellectual property. He owned Rascal Face, which is one of the companies that Leap of Faith had worked with over many years because he had invented one of the attractions that Leap of Faith installed in parks, the Skyrider.

Remember the zip line light contraption that we were watching kids falling off of in yesterday's episode? It's that one, right? So this other company invented Skyrider and Leap of Faith is responsible for bringing that attraction to all these different various parks for all these different companies and installing it there. So they're kind of like a middleman, right?

David Evans gave an affidavit in this case, and he said, quote, I met with Michael Browning at a picnic table inside the park to discuss the manuals, and I explained to him they contain sensitive information and therefore that I would need a confidentiality agreement signed by him to cover the Urban Air organization. Michael Browning read the confidentiality agreement and he signed it on February 17th, 2017. A true and correct copy of that signed confidentiality agreement is attached as Exhibit 39.

By the way, notice how the text is all messed up on this document? That's because Michael Browning paid a lot of money, I presume millions of dollars, but I don't know, to try to get this entire case sealed. So all the copies available to the public online up until about right now are missing huge chunks and look really weird. It's very strange at first when you find it. But we have the official one leaked to us.

Quote, I did not know that Michael Browning was going to file a patent on my design for the multi-level play attraction, which included Skyrider and my non-return gate. I did not consent to that and would never have shared my invention to him had I known that he was going to file a patent application on it. Here's a copy of the confidentiality agreement that Michael signed with Rascal Face, this company.

Quote, you undertake that all confidential information and our approach to you and all discussions and negotiations will be held in complete and strict confidence and shall not, without our prior consent, be disclosed by any means of communication in whole or in part to any person nor used for any purpose other than your involvement in a business relationship with the company. The restrictions in this paragraph do not apply to confidential information which blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

This is a very normal and very thorough confidentiality agreement that, as you can see, Michael Browning signed in addition to Rascal Face at the end. Here is a copy of Rascal Face's intellectual property notice.

And here, you can clearly see that it states, note that any product, process, or technology described in this document may be the subject of other intellectual property rights reserved by Rascal Face LTD slash Skyrider, Thrills, or a third party. No right to use such intellectual property rights is granted here under. It was very clear that this is owned by Rascal Face and that it is confidential and that you are not to disclose such things. But

Here is a copy of the patent that was eventually filed, and it clearly lists Michael Browning Jr. of Bedford, Texas as the inventor. And you can see the diagrams for the Skyrider. We also have another patent

Same thing, showing the inventor, Michael Browning Jr. This was originally invented by Cheer, which is another company similar to Rascal Face that had invented these attractions. And then it had been, you know, passed through Leap of Faith Adventures and installed for Urban Air. Here's the trademark on Skyrider owned by Urban Air. As you can see, highlighted in pink, UATP LLC, that's Urban Air Theme Parks LLC.

So when David Evans finally found out about this, naturally, he was pretty surprised. Quote,

The public records reflected that Michael Browning filed for the Skyrider mark in the United States in February 2017, directly after he signed the confidentiality agreement at Exhibit 39, and in Europe and the United Kingdom in October 2017. The filings in Europe and the United Kingdom occurred the day after I notified Michael Browning that I would not sign an exclusivity agreement. So here...

is an email chain showing where our boy Junior claimed that he needed detailed drawings of the Skyrider because the regulators needed them in order to operate the park or they were going to shut it all down. Note the date, Saturday, March 11th at 8.34 a.m. Two days later, he bugged them some more. We need the drawings, quick. March 15th, 2017. That same day, the drawings were sent to him.

Note that there are six people copied on this email on March 15th, 2017. Dear Michael, attached is the drawing for Sugarland Hub with black and white colors only. I hope this file is available. Thanks. That same day, Michael forwards this whole email chain with the drawings to two of his attorneys and asks, will these work? Note that no one else has copied on this forward. I wonder what they could possibly have needed those drawings for.

Who knows? I wonder why they only copied two of Michael's lawyers onto the forwarding. And I don't know what they meant when they said, Jeff, will this work? But shortly after that, patents and trademarks were filed.

So as soon as David Evans became aware of this, many months later, he sent a cease and desist letter to Junior, clearly stating, if you refuse to comply with our suggested course of action in paragraph two of this email, we will have no option but to instruct our lawyers to commence action to revoke and oppose all your applications for the trademark Skyrider. Michael Browning responded saying, oh, no worries, bud. We just filed these patents to protect you and our investment.

More or less. You can read the text here if you want to know. In a more formal legal notice, they clarified, when investigating the market for Zip Coasters, Urban Air noticed that Rascal Face had no U.S. presence or sales, had taken no steps to obtain patent protection or trademark protection in either the U.K. or its home country or here in the U.S.,

Urban Air was and is remains the sole customer here in the U.S. and is working hard to grow the market. While looking into your recent email, Further Investigation found an article from this past October interviewing Mr. Rupert Oliver. That article, published by Global Amusements and Play, confirmed Urban Air's investigation. Mr. Oliver admitted that despite being invented 22 years ago, the Zip Coaster had been a bit of a slow burner.

So it all amounts to, in other words, we just noticed that you didn't have the trademarks on it, so we thought we would file it to protect it for you. Today, Urban Air continues to install and use Skyriders, and kids are falling off of them and suffering life-altering injuries, as we watched on video the other day. And Rascal Face, the original owner, no longer produces them. Weird how that works.

He then made sure to brag all about it to his buddies. FYI, we protect our attractions, baby. Thank you, Michael Browning, Urban Air Adventure Parks. Right on.

Now, during this time, Michael Browning Jr. had moved Leap of Faith Adventures down to Texas. So they were in an Urban Air owned building. Michael Browning had built them a new website and new emails because he wanted them to appear more competent. At least that's what he said. But this gave him control over almost all of Leap of Faith's infrastructure.

And then one day, Leap of Faith alleges that they showed up to work and they claimed they were locked out of their building and locked out of their emails. And this is when Michael Browning Jr. sent emails to all the franchises that owned LOFA money for installations with instructions to pay, but the payment link seemed to secretly link to the Unleashed brand's bank accounts, not Leap of Faith. So we went over this a little bit earlier. So it was kind of like all happening all at once.

And when that happened, Jen Siraki was a member of the Franchisee Association at Urban Air, and she had been in it for a while. And she noticed that the banking information was not the same as it used to be. So she went to Garth, the founder of Leap of Faith, and asked what was going on. It looked like they were intercepting a bunch of payments. And regardless of why that happened, the result was that Garth wouldn't be able to afford lawyers if it continued.

So during this time, Garth sent this letter to Michael Browning's private equity partners at the time. And as you can see, he lists eight different things that felt egregious to him, reasons why he didn't feel they should continue to work with Urban Air. And I just want to highlight a couple of the last ones, though they're all pretty wild.

Michael and Steven are currently hiring slash raiding LOFA's installation crews, but it's more than that. They've done so to replace us in building franchisee parks, another illegal interference with our agreements with the franchises. And respectfully, we believe they will not perform the work efficiently or competently, which can lead to any number of very bad consequences. It seems like a very drastic stance to destroy key relationships and undermine the only company that has ever built a park over such a small difference. One of our employees,

was lured away by Urban Air, has hired a very large law firm in Texas to file an extremely silly lawsuit against Leap of Faith. If anyone thinks one of our crew chiefs can afford to hire a large law firm to sue us and that Stephen and Michael aren't paying for it, I've got a big bridge I'd like to sell them. I think our lawyers will be able to prove that this is just another step by them to try and destroy Leap of Faith. So from Garth's perspective,

It didn't feel like Michael Browning was there to be a partner in much of anything. And he filed this whole big injunction, the one we've been reading a bunch from, because he thought that Michael was trying to steal his company.

So Garth files for this injunction to stop Browning from doing whatever he was doing, and Michael received it. Much of what we read today was from that motion for injunction, which has never been seen by anyone outside of the case before now. And Michael Browning Jr. went to massive lengths to ensure that no one would ever see it. Whoopsies!

Because Michael Browning Jr. and his team of lawyers just kept dragging the case on and on, Garth was unfortunately bled into bankruptcy. Several of Garth's lawyers took this case on contingency, which means they're so sure you're going to win that they take the case without pay because they're going to get paid when you win. They fought for over two years and still hadn't even made it to discovery.

The section where they go over all the ways that Browning and his lawyers extended, disobeyed, and drew out the courts is way too long to cover. It's pages and pages and pages long.

And that's because Junior just kept throwing money at the case, filing appeals over and over to every level of court that they could in Texas. That's likely three different levels right up to the Texas Supreme Court. And we're talking sometimes like $50,000 to $70,000 per instance. This stuff costs a lot of money for Michael Browning, but also for Garth Price. And the balance of power is clearly not even in that relationship.

And eventually, they bled Garth dry, and he had to settle, and Unleashed Brands paid Garth $5 million. But most of it, if not all of it, probably went to the lawyers that he'd been using for over two years to defend himself against this lawfare. And so the actual case never even made it to conclusion. It never even made it into discovery.

And Garth never had a chance to prove any of these claims that he made in this document. And to be clear, they are all just claims. They are not proven out in a court of law today.

In all of this, Stephen Polozola was the lawyer leading the charge for Urban Air and Michael Browning Jr. Prior to this, he was a private lawyer at Decker Jones, not a huge law firm that specialized in contractor law, and he was a small fish that mostly just worked in getting people to pay money in contractor law. When he came on with Browning, he didn't take pay, but instead took ownership share, and he's been instrumental to everything Michael Browning Jr. and Unleashed Brands has done.

And now his considerable fortune is inextricably tied to the success of Michael Browning Jr. and Unleashed Brands. And I want to bring him back up for a second too, because it's important as we go forward with the story to remember that he is registered with the State Bar of Texas. He has a duty to fulfill and lawyers, attorneys take on certain oaths. And as we go through this story, we're going to remind us all of the oaths and the duties that people like Stephen have.

to America, to the Constitution, and to the justice system. But we don't have time today or even in a million years to cover all of Polozola's shadiness. And we've already covered so much insane ground. So we're going to leave it here for today.

Because that's how Urban Air and Unleashed Brands was born. That's how it was transformed from a sad little trampoline park into a nationwide super chain, and then an umbrella corporation that targeted specifically child-centric businesses like toddler gyms. And when that's your origin story, and now you're flying around in your private jet, rubbing shoulders with the big boys, I can only imagine what you might do to cover it up. Actually, I have documentation showing what he did to cover it up.

But we'll continue with that and get on to Tiffany's story next week. Right now, I think it's a good time to take a quick break and tell you about one of this show's sponsors. I want to take a quick moment to tell you about American Financing. Debt doesn't just show up one day. It builds little by little. Credit cards, car loans, medical bills, and suddenly you're juggling payments, feeling stuck.

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The Episcopal Church announced on Monday that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Trump's administration.

And in a letter sent to members of the church, the Most Reverend Sean W. Rowe, who is the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, said that two weeks ago, the government informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa, whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees.

The request, Roe said, crossed a moral line for the Episcopal Church, which is part of the global Anglican communion, which boasts among its leaders the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a celebrated and vocal opponent of apartheid in South Africa. Roe wrote, Accordingly, we have determined that by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.

Roe stressed that while Episcopal Migration Ministries will seek to wind down all federally funded services by the end of the federal fiscal year in September, the denomination will continue to support immigrants and refugees in other ways, such as offering aid to refugees who have already been resettled. Here is Reverend Sean W. Roe discussing it on ABC News on Monday. Of course, this was a four decades old relationship across many administrations that was ended abruptly today. Why did the classification of these immigrants as refugees cross a moral line?

Well, the reality is we can't be ourselves in the Episcopal Church and take the step of resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa. Our church has a long commitment to racial justice and reconciliation.

And we have historic ties with the Anglican Church of South Africa. Desmond Tutu is a part of, a bit of partner in this work for us. So we're just not able to take this step. It's not in line with anything that we're about.

It also saddens us to see that other refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are people, brave people who've worked alongside of our military in Iraq and Afghanistan, now face danger, have been in camps for a long time and aren't being allowed in. And so this is just the program no longer aligns with where we are as a church and what we're about. Racial justice, but.

only for certain races. Despite how funny his voice in that clip is, I think it's important for us all to remember there's some middle ground in these issues. And there's a lot of these issues like this around the world right now. People fighting over land and fighting over whose land it is and people dying, innocent people dying. And whether it's South Africa or whether it's Israel, wherever it is, I think that every side could use a little more understanding of the other side's humanity. And yeah, absolutely.

South Africa has a long history of brutal violence from white people towards black people. But that does not give us reason to recycle that violence into violence from black people towards white people. That only extends these cycles. And the same is true in Israel and Palestine. The same is true everywhere that it happens. I would love to remind us all to have a little humanity and just advocate for not killing innocent people, please.

He also made a great point about all the Afghani people that helped us during the Afghanistan invasion, brave people that turned on terrorists in order to help us in the region. Those people were left in the lurch at no fault of their own. And I got to say, I would be willing to listen to the arguments about accepting some of that. But that's neither here nor there because the U.S. government's left them and they're still there.

Anyways, that announcement came just as flights with Afrikaners were scheduled to arrive at Washington Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., and the first batch of entries after Trump declared via a February executive order that the U.S. would take in Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.

The South African government has stridently denied allegations of systemic racial animus. Roe noted his announcement comes as the Trump administration has otherwise all but frozen the refugee program with Afrikaners among the few and possibly the only people granted entry as refugees since January. Shortly after he was sworn in, Trump signed an executive order that essentially halted the refugee program and stopped payments to organizations that assist with refugee resettlement.

Ashley Allison, the former deputy director and senior policy advisor for the Obama White House Office of Public Engagement, was on CNN discussing how the white Afrikaners should go back to their native land in Europe. Thirty five, 30 plus years ago, they went through a revolution, a

The apartheid system ended and they reformed their constitution under the great leader of Nelson Mandela. And that allowed for a racial reconciliation, one that this country has yet to do. But South Africa did it and they reformed their constitution. And part of that is that the people who are native to that land deserve their rightful land back.

That is not what the Afrikaners actually want to have happen, which are the white Africans. And so who are not originally from Africa, who colonize South Africa also. And so that is what they are saying is discrimination. Now, if the Constitution in South Africa is discriminatory, they have rights.

their checks and balances in that land, just like we do. And that is for them to, so if the Afrikaners don't actually like the land, they can leave that country. They are. They're leaving to come here. No. These refugees are coming here. They can actually leave and go to where their native land is, which is probably Germany. Are you against them coming here? Holland. Holland. Are you against them coming? You notice how she was about to say they got their rights back through a revolution. Oh, don't call it a revolution. Through ending apartheid.

And I don't mean like, I want to be clear. I'm not laughing at the situation because it's a horrible situation. I'm laughing at the newscasters because of who they are.

The actual situation is horrible and it's a tragedy. And anytime that innocent people are dying, it's a tragedy. And it bums me out when I see newscasters being flippant about the plight of regular people that had nothing to do with the grievances that are coming down to them. And whether you're a white Afrikaner, a Palestinian, an Israeli, an American, a Ukrainian, whoever you are, wherever you are, if you live in a place where your government is not protecting your rights, that's a real shame.

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or visit TNUSA.com slash Candace. You may have missed April 15th, but you haven't run out of options. Let Tax Network USA help before the IRS makes the next move. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit TNUSA.com slash Candace. Speaking of Israel-Palestine, The Guardian reported Netanyahu must now work for support of U.S. as Trump tires of Israel's war in Gaza.

Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, did not mince his words in a meeting late on Sunday with former hostages and relatives of those still held in Gaza. He told them Israel is drawing out a war the U.S. wants to end, local media reported. On the eve of the release of Idan Alexander, the last living American being held by Hamas, Witkoff spelled out the gulf between his boss and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Quote,

We want to bring the hostages home, but Israel is not willing to end the war. Israel is prolonging it, despite the fact that we don't see where else we can go and that an agreement must be reached. That's all according to Channel 12 television and sources that were apparently present at the time.

That was just the latest in a series of high-profile and high-stakes snubs from the White House, which seems to suggest that Israel's most important ally is a little unhappy with the government of Israel and possibly even losing interest in its fortunes.

Quote, Trump's not against Israel, but he doesn't care about Israel, said Alon Pincus, a former Israeli diplomat. As far as Trump is concerned, Netanyahu has become an irritant and an irritant that doesn't contribute to the bank account. On April 25th, while on his way to Pope Francis' funeral, Trump had this to say about Gaza and his meeting with Bibi Netanyahu. Gaza came up and I said, you know, that'd be good to Gaza. Those people are...

Those people are suffering. We've got to be good to Gaza. We're going to take care of them. There's a very big need for medicine, food and medicine, and we're taking care of it. In terms of, like, opening up more access points? We are. To open up more access points? There we are. To get food and medicine, get to Gaza. How did the prime minister respond to that? Well, felt well about it. That's good to hear, honestly.

And that's not an endorsement of Hamas. That's him talking about aid for civilians, helping regular civilians survive.

Per the Times of Israel, this was the first time Trump had publicly weighed in on the issue of humanitarian aid for Gaza. The revelation of the discussion between Netanyahu and Trump came shortly after the World Food Program said it had run out of food stocks in Gaza due to the sustained closure of crossings into the enclave. The WFP said in a statement to journalists, quote, "'No humanitarian or commercial supplies have entered Gaza for more than seven weeks as all main border crossing points remain closed.'

This is the longest closure the Gaza Strip has ever faced, exacerbating already fragile markets and food systems. So to close out that story, I'm just glad that we're talking about helping the civilians. I'm glad we're talking about getting aid to the innocent people that are in the middle of this conflict. And I'm glad to hear Trump saying those things the way he did. But that's not the only thing that Trump is up to right now, because he's

According to CNBC, the White House just announced $600 billion Saudi investment in the U.S. during Trump's visit. President Donald Trump on Tuesday praised Saudi Arabia and its leaders after the White House announced a commitment by the kingdom to invest $600 billion in a series of deals with the United States. Trump also announced at an investment forum in Riyadh that he will order the removal of all U.S. sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness.

Trump's speech at the investment conference followed him signing a number of bilateral agreements during a state visit with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Here's part of his speech at that Saudi U.S. investment forum. And it's crucial for the wider world to note this great transformation has not come from Western interventionists or...

Flying people in beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs. No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation builders, neocons, or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop.

Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities. Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves, the people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives, developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions and charting your own destinies in your own way. It's really incredible what you've done.

In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves.

Peace, prosperity, and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of your heritage, but rather from embracing your national traditions and embracing that same heritage that you love so dearly. I can just picture Alex Jones right now going, Death blow to the globalists! The globalists are going down! And I love Alex, and I'm hoping he's doing that right now, because that speech...

is an outright condemnation of the globalists, of the interventionalists, of the profiteers off of war, of the people that have been running the world, apparently. But it is important to remember he's in Saudi Arabia giving a speech to the Saudis. And I would love to hear him come and give that speech to all the boys in Congress that made money off of rebuilding after the Iraq war and after Afghanistan.

And we'll see, because Trump is saying a lot of stuff that I think a lot of people did not expect him to say. Doing a lot of things I think a lot of people did not expect him to do. And I can't wait to see what Twitter is going to say about it. So that's all for today. I'll have to read your comments on Twitter about that and all the rest of the things we talked about later. Don't forget to like the episode, subscribe to the show, and share it with all your friends.

Drink some water, do something healthy for yourself, and we'll see you tomorrow.