Speaker 1: Today we're going to be speaking with Bob Zeidman, who's the creator of the
field of Software Forensics, the founder of several high tech firms.
Author of textbooks and screenplays, novels, a high stakes poker poker player in Vegas,
and also the guy we mentioned who I guess we could say won the Prove Mike Wrong challenge,
which was the challenge from Mypillow CEO Mike Lindell, known to many of us simply as
Pillow, almost like Madonna, where he offered up $5 million to anyone that could prove that
the data he claimed showed China interfered with the 2020 presidential election was not
proving that.
Bob, you prove that essentially, and now you are in the process of, if I understand, attempting
to collect this $5 million prize, which a court has said is due to you, if that's the
latest I've read.
Speaker 4: Yes, David, thanks for having me on the show.
And that's correct.
Technically, it was an arbitration, but it was binding arbitration.
Three arbitrators made that decision.
You know, and one thing I think sometimes isn't always clear, I'll just say this, is
that, you know, the contest was not to prove that there was no fraud, but it was actually
broader than that, that the data didn't even have anything to do with the 2020 election.
Speaker 1: And, you know, I've interviewed Mike Pillow a number of times, and he always
says, listen, I'll send you the data and then you and of course, I don't know what I would
do with it because I'm not a cyber guy, as he says, but he never sends the data.
The first question is, where did you actually get the data that was meant to be analyzed?
Speaker 4: So he provided it indirectly.
He had a team of people who gave it to a bunch of experts.
He invited a bunch of experts.
Supposedly, we were all vetted so we couldn't come to this symposium that he held about
almost two years ago in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
You couldn't come unless you're vetted as an expert.
And then he gave us the data.
But at the arbitration, there were a lot of excuses for why I well, why it wasn't evident
that this was election data.
Let me put it that way.
I mean, he said it was election data, but there are a lot of excuses that he didn't
give us the whole data because of national security issues, because he was afraid of
hacking, because he thought that China or somebody was threatening him, that it was
encrypted, decoded, modified.
Speaker 1: So but these these these claims, as silly as they are, they do seem to go to
Lindell really does believe this stuff.
This isn't a joke for him because this is something people often ask me since I've spoken
to him a couple of times, Do I think he's kidding or do I think he believes this stuff?
He does seem to believe this stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So that was a big question.
All the experts had that question.
I can say we, as far as I know, unanimously decided this was not election data.
I was the one person who figured out what it actually was and wrote up a detailed report
and submitted it.
But, you know, the question was, was Mike bamboozled or was he bamboozling people?
Yes, but he seems to be a true believer.
But the only thing is any rational person at this point would know the data is fake.
But Mike has basically fired or insulted or ostracized anyone who's come to him, including
people in his team, have said that is fake data.
Speaker 1: So the data that was provided, what was it?
What was it data about?
What was the the general area that it pointed to?
Speaker 4: Well, there were a number of files that we got.
I got five files the first day and or seven files the first day.
I forget now and four files the second day.
It wasn't a whole lot of files, but one of the, you know, some were PDFs showing generic
voting machine processes.
But the the more interesting ones is we got a bunch of files that contain what are called
hex data, but it was viewable hex data.
And so I translated it.
I got the idea to translate it to actual binary data.
And the way I would describe that is if you've got a bunch of files that had written out
in English language words 1254 61 and then you translated those to the actual numbers,
you know that that's equivalent to what I did.
Then I took those files and I noticed that they were old fashioned because I've been
in this business for a while, old fashioned word processing documents.
So I put them in a word processor, a microsoft word.
And lo and behold, what came up were one file was a table, thousands of numbers that were
just numbers.
I mean, just a table of numbers that didn't mean anything.
And the other files were thousands of pages, in one case of gibberish, as if someone had
just sat there for hours typing, typing, typing, then reverse the process I just did to make
it look like sophisticated computer data.
Speaker 1: So some of that.
There's not even really a reason to think it relates to elections at all.
Never mind an American election.
Speaker 4: Right.
No, it definitely didn't.
Although again, at arbitration, which was fascinating, is different members of either
Lindell and different members of Lindell's team would come up with excuses like the gibberish
was really encrypted data that they had purposely encrypted or China had encrypted or, you know,
depending on who was talking, that I wasn't smart enough to see it.
But the problem was they never they never demonstrated what it really was.
They said, oh, it's just sophisticated encrypted data.
And their excuse was, well, we don't have to tell you what it is, because Zeidman it
was his job to do it.
If if he wanted to claim the $5 million and the arbitrators, basically if you read their
decision, they said even Lindell's team couldn't demonstrate what this was other than gibberish.
Speaker 1: I'm curious whether as as news broke of your involvement in this and the
arbitration decision about the 5 million, did did you start getting threats from people
or angry messages?
Because it seems hard to do anything these days without someone being absolutely furious.
Did the any of the believers try to contact you or threaten you?
Speaker 4: So that's an interesting question.
So first of all, you know, I'm a I'm a Republican conservative.
I've studied people who were not so happy with me in the past couple of years.
I do a lot of writing on political and social issues, suddenly were friendly and telling
me what a great job I did.
But I have to say, even the conservatives, the vast majority of them were thankful.
Some of them believe that Lindell is hurting Trump and hurting the Republicans.
And I can tell you about that in a minute if you want.
But the other thing I'll say is I've gotten like two or three threatening emails or Twitter
messages.
Nothing that I take seriously.
Mostly people say they hate me.
I'm a traitor.
Sure.
But but I went to a conservative conference very with some very, you know, strong conservatives
and even people who advise Trump.
And at first I didn't want to mention what I'd done, but it came out and the vast majority
of them shook my hand and thanked me for what I'd done.
And a few of them started questioning, Why did you do this?
And I read this and I heard Lindell.
And when I talked to them, by the end of the conference, without exception, all of them
thanked me.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Now, you you mentioned that you're conservative.
You voted for Trump twice, right?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Yeah, I did.
I can tell you that the first time I you know, without going into detail, I did not like
Trump.
I followed his business practices.
And I've had some problems, you know, on a very, very tiny scale.
I've done business with his businesses.
And I didn't I didn't find his practices ethical, but I thought it was but I really didn't trust
Hillary Clinton.
And I thought the Republicans would keep an eye on Trump and the Democrats would not keep
tabs on Hillary.
Hmm.
Speaker 1: Did you find that that's the way it played out?
Speaker 4: You know, it's is difficult to say so because when Trump ran, there was a
lot of Republican opposition to him.
And of course there were the Never Trumpers.
But with Hillary, the Democratic Party really universally supported her as what I saw.
Now, you know, Trump has basically made this effort to take control of the Republican Party,
which I don't like, because I think it's all about him and not about ideology anymore.
So I voted for him again reluctantly the second time, but I'm hoping to have a third option,
neither Republican or Democrat if it's Trump v Biden.
I really don't like either candidate.
So I'm hoping they'll be a third option.
Speaker 1: That's interesting.
So have would you say that you've suffered under the first two years of Biden in a way
that makes you think, I've really got to get someone else in there?
Speaker 4: You know, I do.
I think that Biden, you know, Biden was always a middle of the road.
Person, you know, politically until he ran for president this time.
Hmm.
And it just seems like a lot of Far-Left policies are being implemented or at least being given,
you know, the okay from the White House.
Speaker 1: Really?
Now, that's interesting to me.
This is super because I would love for Biden to be far left.
I don't see him as being that way.
I'm curious what would be a policy that you see as far left that was implemented?
Speaker 4: Well, what I mostly see is that, well, first of all, I don't like the spending
bills that he's implemented.
So I'm a member of an organization called No Labels, which brings together Republicans
and Democrats.
I'm familiar with it.
Okay.
And so the Problem Solvers Caucus of No Labels in Congress helped pass the first budget bill,
which was in December of 2022, I believe.
And then but then Biden passed his other one, which was a lot more spending on programs
I don't like.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about the Inflation Reduction Act here?
Speaker 4: Yes.
Yes.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: So, I mean, I don't like that.
I think we're we're really you know, we've gone way over budget.
You know, we're going to break the debt ceiling, obviously.
I really don't like all that government spending.
But also, although you know me, you know.
Well, first of all, I think there are a lot of things I think to pull out in Afghanistan
was horrific.
We lost more people in that pull out than we had, I think, in the past year in Afghanistan.
I don't like enabling the Taliban in Afghanistan.
I don't like the border policy.
We've had more illegal immigration than we've had, I think, in American history.
Speaker 1: How do you know that?
Speaker 4: You know, I can't quote sources offhand, but I have researched it.
So one thing I do is I really try to look into it.
I publish articles and I really try to do the research to find these numbers before
I talk about them.
Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I mean, I'm not trying to play gotcha.
And really, I mean, this is just interesting to me, really.
You're here to talk about the mike pillow stuff.
But what's interesting to me is clearly you're a smart guy and you're technologically inclined
and you sort of understand how we figure out whether something is true.
But like when you say the Biden spending, the rate at which the debt has grown, slowed
down under Biden, it's still growing, right?
We're talking about the difference between the debt and deficit.
Of course, the debt is still growing under Biden, but a little more slowly than under
Trump.
You'd think a guy like you who clearly is so fact oriented would say, hey, you know
what, I don't like it, but it is better than what we were seeing under Trump.
Is that fair?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I've heard those arguments before.
And the problem is even Republicans have have been bad on spending.
Sure.
That's an issue for me.
And I think that politicians in general, the best they can they've ever done is reduce
the increase in the deficit.
But it's still a dangerously increasing deficit in my mind.
Sure.
I mean, I'd love to see politicians get in and Congress and in the presidency that could
actually cut programs.
Look, I'm willing I'm a Republican who's willing to cut spending in the military because although
I think our military needs to be strong, it also needs to spend efficiently.
Sure.
And just throwing more money at it.
And this is a problem that I see.
Like, you know, I'll criticize the Republicans here.
The Republicans have to go into an election if they want to win, saying we're going to
spend more money on the military.
But in reality, I'd love to see them say we're going to spend less money on the military
for more efficient operations.
I mean, and by the way, I could I could have another show.
I sued the U.S. government for fraud because I uncovered fraud.
It's a longer story, but.
Speaker 1: Well, but that's I mean, that's interesting.
Without getting into that, your view on the military is not one I expect to hear from
any presidential Republican candidate, even if they believe it, because it wouldn't be
politically viable to say it.
Question for you, Are you sort of a little bit concerned about the degree to which the,
quote, Anti-woke platform is taking over the Republican Party?
Or do you like that?
Speaker 4: Well, I like that.
Oh, you do?
I know.
I know we disagree on that.
But you know something I can tell you, I've written about this, so and I'll put it in
my personal perspective.
I'm Jewish and I even criticize Jewish groups that are just I understand them.
They want they want to eliminate anti-Semitism, which is a great cause.
But in doing so, there's this race to be the world's greatest or the country's greatest
victim.
And I think this victimhood mentality is increasing the racial conflict in the country.
And I don't know how to get away from it because each group, I think, looks at another group
and says, well, that group is getting money and they're getting publicity, and so we need
to outspend them.
Now do them and get more attention so that we get more, you know, attention for our issues.
Speaker 1: So if the victimhood stuff isn't appealing, when Trump says he was treated
more unfairly than Lincoln, who was shot dead in the head, you're not huge on that, I'm
guessing.
Speaker 4: No.
Look, you know, Trump says, you know what?
I'm going to I have some friends whom I have one in particular.
He's probably not going to speak to me anymore.
But Trump says incredibly childish stuff.
Yeah, I really you know, it's scary because I'll tell you, in the four years he was in
office, I generally liked his policies.
But but the problem is, he doesn't know how to run a country and bring us together.
Speaker 1: True.
Speaker 4: And he's very, very divisive.
He's very childish.
And the other thing is, you know, I hope you can appreciate this.
He he likes Gavin Newsom, who is ideologically should be on the opposite end of the political
spectrum.
But I think that's an issue.
Trump likes people not and dislikes people not based on their ideology or principles,
but based on whether they treat him nicely.
Speaker 1: Absolutely correct.
Absolutely correct.
Bob, last thing in the in the few moments we have on the 5 million bucks, do you expect
to collect it?
Speaker 4: No.
I'm pretty sure that Lindell is going to lose his cases with Dominion and Smartmatic, and
I think he's going to be bankrupt.
And, you know, if I see anything, it'll be pennies on the dollar.
Speaker 1: All right.
All right.
We've been speaking with Bob Zeidman, who he he fought pillow and he won.
But we will see where the money lands.
Bob, I really appreciate your time today.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Thanks, David.