My Unredacted Interview with The Leah Files

Episode Overview

• Former Navy SEAL and CIA contractor Shawn Ryan interviews Leah Files—an economist, financial analyst, certified fraud examiner, and corporate intelligence consultant who spent over two decades supporting the U.S. intelligence community—to expose how hidden financial flows, dark money, and surveillance tech operate behind the scenes.
• The conversation traces Files' evolution from surviving severe childhood domestic abuse in North Carolina to tracking black budgets at Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, NGA, DIA, NRO, NSA, and the CIA, before founding her own corporate intelligence firm, Black Widow Global.
• Files breaks down her public financial investigations into political spending and non-profits, specifically analyzing the fracturing of the Republican Party ahead of the 2026 midterms, irregular financial filings at Turning Point USA (TPUSA), and foreign-funded influence campaigns registered under FARA.
• The episode concludes with an examination of physical and digital surveillance infrastructures operating inside the U.S., including Israeli jurisdiction over the Waze app, warrantless license plate tracking via Flock Safety cameras, real-time camera manipulation software like Toka, and U.S.–Israel military tech integration under NDAA Section 219.

Key Concepts

• Speaker Backgrounds and Disclosed Business Ties: Host Shawn Ryan is the CEO of Vigilance Elite (which produces Vigilance Elite Gummy Bears made in Michigan), notes that Patreon was his primary early funding source when building the show from his attic with his wife, and discloses he is a co-founder and investor in the privacy app Glacier (theglacierapp.com), having put his own name, money, and a year of his life into building its burner phone number and secure DNS tracker-blocking features. Guest Leah Files is a Substack creator, social media researcher, and the CEO and founder of Black Widow Global (started roughly one year ago), conducting M&A due diligence for private equity firms, law firms, and political opposition research, alongside pro bono asset tracing for women in divorces.
• Trauma-Driven Pattern Recognition & Intelligence Budgeting: Files grew up in Rolesville, North Carolina (a one-stoplight town on 23 acres next to tobacco fields with an estimated population under 10,000 at the time) as the oldest of four children (her youngest sister is 8 years younger). Due to a toxic, abusive household, she has only a handful of memories before age 14: she learned to call 911 at age 4 or 5 because her father beat her mother badly (bringing police to the house a few times a week); in 1st grade, her mother was kicked out of a Chuck E. Cheese for being drunk, dropped Files at the end of the driveway, and went to rehab for the third time (leaving Files without seeing her for about a year); at age 14, her father beat her mother with a 20-pound bag of dog food and a vacuum cleaner, putting her in the ICU unrecognizable; and in 2015, her sister (two years younger) died of a fentanyl/heroin-laced mix. Files notes that having almost no childhood memories forced her to rely on pattern recognition—a skill she applied at Northrop Grumman (building satellite cost models and working in a Special Access Program [SAP] vault with ~10 people), Booz Allen Hamilton (supporting the NRO), DIA (as a "blue badger" staff employee for 10 months), NGA, NSA, and the CIA (supporting the CFO and Comptroller when Congress threatened to cut 20% of the budget while closing a base in Afghanistan), where she learned that actual budget flows often contradict what agencies tell the Senate.
• Corporate Fraud Due Diligence & Cryptocurrency Tracing: In corporate intelligence, executives frequently sell a story rather than reality. Files recounts an English client who hired her to investigate a shady investment target in Tennessee; two to three days into the investigation, the healthy 40-something-year-old client died suddenly after hosting his daughter's sleepover, and Files hedges that she thinks something nefarious happened to him. When tracing hidden assets in fraud or divorce cases, Files explains that contrary to popular belief, cryptocurrency is actually one of the easiest assets to trace on the public blockchain once an investigator obtains a target's crypto address and tracks when they move or cash out funds.
• 2026 Midterm Projections & Political Fracturing: Ryan cites Polymarket data showing Democrats at a 44% chance of a 2026 midterm sweep ($8,910,313 volume; Democrats Sweep: 44%, D Senate/R House: 1%, R Senate/D House: 42%). Files believes the chance of a Democrat sweep is even higher than 44% because the right has fractured itself during primaries. She estimates $30 million to $45 million was dumped into the primary race (involving candidate Ed Gallrein) to defeat Congressman Thomas Massie, stating that the loss of Massie and the assassination of Charlie Kirk were the primary catalysts fracturing the Republican party. While discussing political corruption, Files hedges with the word "allegedly" when stating that politicians look like they are openly committing fraud, and when Ryan asks about the collapse of the petro-dollar and BRICS, she admits she has not looked into what is happening with that yet.
• Turning Point USA (TPUSA) Financial Anomalies: Files states that days before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, he asked for a "DOGE-like assessment" (audit) of TPUSA's financials and operations. While she repeatedly clarifies that her financial findings are not linked to why Kirk was killed, she highlights major anomalies in public tax filings: TPUSA grew by ~300+% since inception, with revenue jumping from $85 million to $115 million between 2024 and 2025 alone. Five donors provide 80+% (roughly $70 million to $85 million) of TPUSA's funding; Files verified three via their own filings—the Wilks brothers, the Bradley Fund, and Robert Shillman (who pulled $2 million two days before Kirk was assassinated)—and hedges that she suspects Miriam Adelson is a fourth via secret dark money channels. Files notes that in 2023 TPUSA spent more than it took in (around $70 million), and on its 2024 Form 990, the top 5 vendors were paid $7 million, 62 or 64 additional vendors were paid over $100,000 each, and over $20 million in vendor payments went to LLCs tracing back to friends or executive leadership inside the organization. Most of TPUSA's budget goes to conferences like AmFest (which still charges $350 for an adult and ~$75 for a student), and one entity filing reported $3.5 million in wages while reporting 0 employees. Files names Rob McCoy (pastor at TPUSA Faith and Mikey McCoy's dad), Tyler Bowyer, and Andrew Kolvet as individuals who gained financially or in notoriety since Kirk's death, noting The Charlie Kirk Show is run out of Resolute Media (a for-profit entity) using TPUSA's non-profit name and likeness without paying reported royalty fees—though when Ryan challenges whether anyone still watches the show enough to generate ad revenue, Files concedes he might be right and admits she does not watch the show.
• Foreign Influence Operations & FARA Loopholes: Citing a TIME magazine report and FARA filings, Ryan and Files discuss how Brad Parscale (Trump's 2020 campaign manager and owner of Salem Media) registered in FARA within a week of Charlie Kirk's assassination to run a paid influence campaign inside the U.S. on behalf of the Israeli government targeting young conservatives and the MAGA base. Filings show payments from Israel routed through a German advertising company starting with an "H" [Havas]—allowing influencers to claim they aren't paid directly by Israel—totaling up to $60 million, with monthly payments rising from $3 million/month to $12 million–$15 million/month to pay influencers $7,000 per post for 20 to 30 posts a month. When Ryan suggests some influencers are captured by ego and White House access rather than direct payments, Files hedges ("your guess is as good as mine"), and she also claims that in 2025, Pam Bondi stripped FARA requirements so individuals do not have to register unless acting literally as a direct agent for a foreign country.
• Foreign Data Jurisdiction via Terms of Service (Waze): Files notes that only ~0.25% of people read Terms of Service agreements. Even though Google bought Waze for $1.3 billion around 2012, Waze was founded by 3 former IDF Unit 8200 (Israeli intelligence) members, and its Terms of Service explicitly state the app is operated out of Israel, user data sits in Israel, and any lawsuit against Waze must be litigated in Israeli courts (where there is no jury trial).
• Warrantless Surveillance via Flock Safety Cameras & Toka: Originally founded by 3 Georgia Tech students to read license plates, Flock cameras have expanded from 40,000 deployments in 2024 to 80,000 in 2025, and now exceed 100,000 cameras halfway through the current year. Investors added Flock Nova (linking plates to open-source databases and dark web data like bank accounts and SSNs), Bluetooth device readers to track car passengers, and drones that deploy up to 30 feet to follow vehicles. Reading from the activist FOIA database HaveIBeenFlocked.com—which compiled 426,940,000 audit log records across 4.7 million searched license plates—Files reveals that only 9% of plate searches were for crime (91% were for other reasons), 84.2% (over 4 million) had no case number attached, the median search reason was 8 characters long, and the single most common search reason was blank (66.3 million searches). Top users in the logs were the Nashville, Tennessee Police Department and the Harris County, Texas Sheriff's Office. While Los Angeles voted in July to remove its Flock cameras and Amazon's Ring severed a planned partnership after learning about Flock's operations, Files warns that two of Flock's biggest investors are also major investors in Israeli surveillance firms Carbyne and Toka (founded by Ehud Barak and discussed in 2018 emails with Jeffrey Epstein), which can hack live camera feeds (Ring, Flock, iPhones) in real time to alter or delete footage with zero forensic trace. Files hedges that she could see this AI/Flock surveillance merging with centralized digital banking to punish speech, while acknowledging that prediction is extreme.
• U.S.–Israel Military & Tech Integration (NDAA Section 219): Ryan and Files examine provision "219" inside the 1,700-page NDAA, which integrates U.S. and Israeli military tech, systems, and bio-health standards while standing up a dedicated office with its own director and budget so U.S. funding to Israel can flow through classified/SAP channels without public oversight. Even though the DIA publicly stated Israel is an espionage threat spying on U.S. officials, the House passed its version of the bill by 4 votes, with 7 Republicans voting "No" (including Thomas Massie, Eli Crane, Tim Burchett, and Anna Paulina Luna) and 6 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote "Yes" (including Henry Cuellar, whom Trump pardoned after Cuellar faced decades in prison for foreign bribery).

Quotes

• At 0:02:39 - "I mean, look at Theranos, look at WeWork, so many companies that sell themselves to investors, but then end up breaking down because they're just selling a story. They're not selling what's actually behind the curtain, and that's what I expose." - Leah Files explaining the core function of corporate intelligence and due diligence.
• At 0:03:45 - "Oh yeah, crypto is actually almost one of the easier ones to trace on the public blockchain." - Leah Files debunking the myth that cryptocurrency is an untraceable vehicle for hiding assets in fraud or divorce cases.
• At 0:09:00 - "I maybe have four memories, maybe a handful of memories before I was 14." - Leah Files describing the psychological impact of growing up in a severely abusive household in North Carolina.
• At 0:25:01 - "You really start to learn that our government doesn't—our tax dollars don't align to the mission that they're actually doing." - Leah Files reflecting on her two decades analyzing budgets across the U.S. intelligence community.
• At 0:25:58 - "I think the money tells a better picture than what the story is that you tell people. Because the CIA goes and tells Senate they're doing X, Y, Z, but their money tells a different story." - Leah Files explaining why financial audits reveal the true operational priorities of intelligence agencies.
• At 0:38:08 - "I think it's divided because the lies have been so blatant from the original campaign." - Shawn Ryan diagnosing why conservative voters have fractured ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
• At 0:40:23 - "As someone with no memories, it's almost like pattern recognition is the only thing I can rely on. And you see it being deployed on Americans now, and I think that is what is so scary to me." - Leah Files connecting her personal cognitive reliance on pattern recognition to how she spots domestic psychological and financial operations.
• At 0:45:56 - "Just 2024 to 2025 alone, it went from 85 million to 115 million dollars. That's huge. And five donors give 80-some percent of their money." - Leah Files breaking down the rapid revenue growth and donor concentration at Turning Point USA.
• At 0:47:23 - "And when I started to look at their vendors, all of the LLCs were tracing back to friends or people inside of the organization. And I was like, well, that's strange. Over 20 million dollars." - Leah Files detailing her findings from TPUSA's Form 990 vendor disclosures.
• At 0:51:18 - "They have reported wages—three and a half million dollars—and they reported zero employees on one of their things." - Leah Files pointing out a specific accounting discrepancy on a TPUSA entity filing.
• At 0:59:43 - "You're being used. Like, once you're in that, you can't fucking get out. Like, once you have been there and you held the binder up, you're done. Like, you're on that team. That is it." - Shawn Ryan explaining how political access and White House photo-ops permanently capture independent media influencers.
• At 1:10:23 - "And it said in there, clear as day, it's run by Israel. It's run out of Israel, and it's run by Israel, and if you sue them for any sort of reason, if something happens, you have to sue the app, you have to go to Israel to do it. You can't do it in the United States." - Leah Files revealing what she found when reading the Terms of Service for the Google-owned navigation app Waze.
• At 1:17:03 - "You have almost 4.7 million plates that have been searched, and 9 percent of them were for crime. Nine. The other 91 were for other reasons." - Leah Files citing FOIA audit log data from HaveIBeenFlocked.com regarding law enforcement use of Flock license plate readers.
• At 1:17:50 - "84.2 percent of all of the searches, over 4 million, have no case number, which means that they're not tied to an open case of 'I can look up your license plate, there's a warrant for you.' 84 percent. The single most common search reason is blank. Nothing." - Leah Files demonstrating the lack of oversight or warrant requirements in millions of Flock camera searches.
• At 1:24:12 - "I have zero trust in any government institutions. None. Zero." - Shawn Ryan summarizing his perspective after reviewing government financial waste, intelligence overreach, and domestic surveillance.
• At 1:28:50 - "Toka is the company founded by Ehud Barak, and he has emails with Epstein about it, that can go into any camera real-time and alter the footage, delete the footage, and leave no forensic trace." - Leah Files explaining the capabilities of Israeli cyber-surveillance software linked to major Flock investors.

Takeaways

• Audit Your License Plate in Public Surveillance Logs: Visit HaveIBeenFlocked.com to search the 426.94 million FOIA audit log records and see if your license plate or local law enforcement agency is conducting warrantless searches without case numbers.
• Petition Local City Councils Against Warrantless Cameras: Use public FOIA data showing that 91% of Flock searches are unrelated to crime to lobby your municipal government to remove Flock Safety cameras, following the precedent set by Los Angeles in July.
• Read App Terms of Service for Foreign Jurisdiction Clauses: Before installing navigation or communication apps like Waze, inspect the Terms of Service for data residency and legal jurisdiction clauses so you do not unknowingly waive your right to U.S. courts and jury trials.
• Scrutinize Non-Profit Form 990s Before Donating: Rather than relying on a political organization's public mission, check its IRS Form 990 filings for donor concentration, executive compensation, zero-employee wage anomalies, and whether vendor payments are flowing to insider-owned LLCs.
• Verify Intermediary Funding Behind Political Influencers: Search Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings to see if political commentators or media networks are receiving foreign government money routed through third-party European advertising agencies.
• Harden Personal Communications Against Trackers: Use secure DNS blockers and burner phone numbers (such as those provided by Ryan's disclosed app, Glacier) and disable unnecessary vehicle Bluetooth connections that can be scraped by roadside surveillance sensors.
• Trace Blockchain Ledger History in Asset Disputes: In divorce proceedings or corporate fraud investigations, obtain known wallet addresses to audit the public blockchain rather than assuming cryptocurrency holdings are anonymous or untraceable.
• Conduct Independent Financial Due Diligence Before Mergers or Investments: Look past executive pitch decks by hiring certified fraud examiners to verify underlying cash flows, vendor relationships, and asset liabilities before committing capital.
• Track Congressional Roll Calls on Omnibus Defense Bills: Monitor specific provisions inside massive legislation like the 1,700-page NDAA (such as Section 219) to see which representatives vote to route foreign aid and military technology sharing into classified Special Access Programs beyond public oversight.