Can you talk about the flawed plans and the chaos that your client disclosed to you?

Sure, sure.

You know, what's interesting is we have two types of flawed planning that's come, sort of confluence of these two types of flawed planning, right? One is the system as it is designed to work as a loose word, but as designed if the IT architecture was built in a way that it could actually work.

And then the second is the IT architecture itself.

So I think the first, I'm going to go to order sort of how it's supposed to work, and then I'll sort of sprinkle in at each step how it's sort of compounded.

But how it's supposed to work, and this is spelled out somewhat in the rule that the administration put out, say promulgated, put out to implement the president's March executive order And that rule spelled out a system whereby the post office would create something called the Federal Ballot Mail Portal.

Right.

Now, is that also something that your client, is that a conclusion that they drew as well?

Explain what's going on here and the message of your whistleblower.

Sure.

The message of our whistleblower is that they want the things that are being built to be built properly, and they want the systems that are being designed to be designed in a way that's logical and fair and designed to work.

The concern with respect to this 0% failure is that when you – the system has a number of hoops that need to be jumped through, right? Ordinarily, in the past, it's fairly simple, very simple.

The state wants to mail out blank ballots to voters.

It creates them.

It uploads a list into some manifest like any great large shipping.

But what you think the Trump administration is trying to do in these last weeks—I mean, we're talking about 60 days before the midterm elections—

Explain what's going on here and the message of your whistleblower.

Sure.

The message of our whistleblower is that they want the things that are being built to be built properly, and they want the systems that are being designed to be designed in a way that's logical and fair and designed to work.

The concern with respect to this 0% failure is that when you – the system has a number of hoops that need to be jumped through, right? Ordinarily, in the past, it's fairly simple, very simple.

The state wants to mail out blank ballots to voters.

It creates them.

It uploads a list into some manifest like any great large shipping.

But what you think the Trump administration is trying to do in these last weeks—I mean, we're talking about 60 days before the midterm elections—

Explain what's going on here and the message of your whistleblower.

whistleblower.Sure. Um, so the message of our whistleblower is, uh, that they want the things that are being built to be built properly, and they want the systems that are being designed to be designed in a way that's logical and fair, uh, and designed to work.

Uh, the concern and with respect to this, um, 0% failure is that when you, um...

this, the system has a number of hoops that need to be jumped through, right? Ordinarily, in the past, it's fairly simple, very simple.

The state wants to mail out blank ballots to voters, it, it creates them, it uploads a list into some...

it manifests like any great large shipping.

It brings the printed manifest down to the post office, it hands it off, and they get sent, right? [chuckles] And if the address of the person it's to be delivered to is readable, it goes.

But what you think the Trump administration is trying to do in these last weeks? I mean, we're talking about 60 days before the midterm elections.

Explain what's going on here and the message of your whistleblower.

Sure.

The message of our whistleblower is that they want the things that are being built to be built properly, and they want the systems that are being designed to be designed in a way that's logical and fair and designed to work.

The concern, and with respect to this 0% failure, is that when you, the system has a number of hoops that need to be jumped through, right? Ordinarily, in the past, it's fairly simple, very simple.

The state wants to mail out blank ballots to voters, It creates them.

It uploads a list into some manifest, like any great large shipping.

It brings the printed manifest down to the post office.

But what you think the Trump administration is trying to do in these last weeks—I mean, we're talking about 60 days before the midterm elections.

How could those problems translate into ballots being delayed, mishandled, or not counted at all?

Sure.

There are really sort of two problems.

One is an information technology problem, and one is a systemic problem.

I'll talk about the latter, which is the latter is that they've built through this rule, they've developed a system that has a number of checks, and at each part of the check, they have a 0% failure requirement, which means that if any one little mistake is made, even if the IT is working perfectly, if you Enter your information and it checks one list against another, one against another.

You finally go to the post office, a huge cart of ballots, 1,000, 10,000.

Maricopa County, there's examples of a million.

So what specifically do you believe the Postal Service did that violated the court's order?

How could those problems translate into ballots being delayed, mishandled or not counted at all?

Sure.

There are really sort of two problems.

One is an information technology problem, and one is a systemic problem.

I'll talk about the latter, which is the latter is that they've built through this rule, they've developed a system that has a number of checks.

And at each part of the check, they have a 0% failure requirement, which means that if any one little mistake is made, even if the IT is working perfectly, if you Enter your information, and it checks one list against another, one against another.

You finally go to the post office, a huge cart of ballots, 1,000, 10,000.

So what specifically do you believe the Postal Service did that violated the court's order?

How could those problems translate into ballots being delayed, mishandled, or not counted at all?

Sure.

Uh, there are really sort of two problems.

One is an information technology problem, and one's a systemic problem.

I'll talk about the latter, which is the latter is that you, they've built through this rule, they developed a system that has a number of checks, and at each proc- part of the check, they have a 0% failure requirement, which means that if any one little mistake is made, even if the IT is working perfectly, if you enter your information and it checks one list against another, one against another, you finally go to the post office with a huge cart of ballots, 1,000, 10,000.

Maricopa County, there's examples of a million.

You go and, and if they scan a certain number of ballots and any one is an error, they all go back, right? And that's with an IT system that's working properly.

Importantly, in an order issued by the US District Court this week, the Court expressly confirmed that the Postal Service may continue its work to establish the portal and communicate with states regarding design standards on a voluntary basis." So what specifically do you believe the Postal Service did that violated the court's order?

What happens under this Postal Service process?

So under this Postal Service process, well, let me explain what happens.

The ordinary process is that in past elections, the state puts the ballots in the mail and they go to the voters, beginning and end, right? Normal process.

Under this new process, now there's a number of gates that states have to go through.

to get the ballots, the blank ballots, delivered to voters.

I mean, first they have to enter information into this new portal, completely new.

That's being built hastily, all this, I should add.

Wait a minute, the whole batch, if they sent out 10,000 or 100,000 ballots at once, they would all be returned?

David, tell the viewers that are tuning in exactly why this is such a catastrophe that's going on there at the US Postal Service.

Yeah, I mean, it's...

You know, there are confluence of a few things, right? I mean, one thing is of course that there's the underlying court order and that is now again in place that says you can't do this until we review it.

And yet this is still happening.

What is this? it's the building of a system uh that the president spelled out they wanted to be built in an executive order about uh fixing or purifying or whatever it may be american elections to uh to find a problem that's not there and so the fix that they camp with is to create a portal a new i.t system from scratch what's called a federal ballot mail portal and every state uh uh Secretary of State has to go into this portal and upload their list of all eligible voters who are going to receive absentee ballots.

Now, problem A is the states have fought back against providing this information, and all of a sudden now the government's saying, hey, if you want to vote by mail, which is a key part of the election, you've got to do this.

Well, that's problem A, which is a huge problem ordinarily, but is sadly the smallest problem in all of this.

Yeah.

David, tell the viewers that are tuning in exactly why this is such a catastrophe that's going on there at the US Postal Service.

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, there are confluence of a few things, right? I mean, one thing is, of course, that there's the underlying court order and that is now again in place that says you can't do this until we review it.

And yet this is still happening.

What is this? It's the building of a system that the president spelled out.

He wanted to be built in an executive order about fixing or purifying or whatever.

It may be American elections to find a problem that's not there.

And so the fix that they camp with is to create a portal, a new IT system from scratch.

stool, right? There we go.

David, what legal protections does your client have as a whistleblower? And are, and are you prepared for potential retaliation?

Yeah, uh, unfortunately, and we see this a lot at whistlebloweraid.org, we have clients who come forward, and in this environment, the game has changed.

It used to be that you could come forward to an inspector general or an office of special counsel, but those mechanisms have been swept away by the Trump administration.

In fact, they've been weaponized against our whistleblowers.

So clients like Ryan ordinarily could just go through the ordinary process.

They could remain anonymous.

There'd be an independent person within the system who was checking and balancing these.

You're laughing now, but was it hard to play?

What's your reaction?

Uh, their statement, the response is, is full of lies, you know, unfortunately.

For example, they mention that the training is 56 days.

And, and we've, we did the math, [laughs] Ryan and I have done the math.

Uh, we've looked at it, it's, it's simply not true.

And the department has said in Pretti's, excuse me, in, um, in Jeffrey Lyon's testimony before Congress, said it was 42 days.

In documents that were revealed to Congress, it says 42 days.

Can you describe a little bit about the risks of even coming forward?

Absolutely.

Uh, people like Ryan are incredibly brave to do this.

Uh, at whistlebloweraid.org, we see a number of folks who are willing to come forward, and we hope that con- uh, courage is contagious.

But the challenge is, particularly when we see the inspector generals being gutted, like at DHS, there's a hopefully a GAO audit that's going on that will reveal the extent to which that-

Mm.

So the last recourse left is to do what, what Ryan has done, and other brave whistleblowers, is to go to Congress, to go to those in Congress willing to listen.

But that comes at great risk.