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There is a culture of corruption that has gone unchecked in Miami City Hall for too long. We're into free vacations at taxpayer expense. Abusing our resources for political revenge.

They're.

Into racketeering, audacious pay-for-play.

We.

Are not their constituents, instead we are their prey. These people say the dumbest shit that you have ever heard. They vote for Shady Grifters and we get what we deserve.

And it's patently absurd. (come on! ) Swartis moralis. In the Miami Maia. Carrollio and Mendez. In the Miami Maia. Piggins and.

Hard of Man.

Daniela, Lavin, Cava. The corrupt, evil clowns. Make to Miami Maia. Come on.

And over to Noriega.

Come on. They're all the Miami Ma-Fia. Miami Ma-Fia back on their bullshit, and the Miami Herald back with a bombshell, investigative series called, I love this title, Shakedown City. All about Miami, the city of Miami, which is a racketeering organization, masquerading as a local government. It seems that Miami mayor Francis Suarez is also back on his bullshit, exploiting his public position for private profit, but now apparently working as a secret, unregistered foreign agent for Saudi Arabia, asking the kingdom, How can I help? The Miami Herald has the story coming up later, though. Stephen the Beast, Bauer. Manny from Scarface to celebrate the 40th anniversary. But first we start with the Miami Herald and this.

Fat, mid-nifle.

Baby with the brain of a mosquito. Pulitzer Prize winner, Sarah Blaske, is a friend of the show, and she is also the lead investigative reporter on the Miami Herald's latest sensational, bombshell investigative series, Shakedown City, which has been rolling out all week long, starting with the one, two punch of these stories that Sarah had the lead byline on. Sarah, how did you discover the Saudi connection here? What is the mayor's relationship to the kingdom?

I mean, people have had this question for a long time. Where is Francis Suarez? Where is the mayor of Miami? At one point, he was all over City Hall, and then he stopped going, as I think other guests on your show have noted. And so we started looking into that, and we got these police records that showed that he had spent a considerable amount of time in the Middle East. And so we started doing a little bit of research into that and talking to sources. And it became very clear very quickly that most of that time, at least far more than half of that time, he had spent in Saudi Arabia. And so fast forward, we get some emails from the city, not a ton, but a handful or so that start showing that not only did he spend time in Riyad and go to these conferences. You probably heard of Davos in the Desert, which is Saudi Arabia's attempt at a international trade summit. He had gone to those. He had parlayed with various Saudi Royals. He had been on stage talking at various events put on by the Sovereign Wealth Fund there. And then we realized through these city's emails that he had brought one of these events back to Miami.

And so that's where it starts. You have all these strange connections, all of these trips that seem odd for a Cuban-American mayor of Miami who has always said that he's very against authoritarian regimes going over to Saudi Arabia. But then he does something. He brings one of their conferences to Miami in March. I think that's when it became a more serious investigation, is when we realized that that had happened because there are, of course, far more legal implications to that.

What are those legal implications? Let's be real about this. I'm not casting Aspersions on the Saudi Royals, far be it for me, but these events are effectively infomercials. These are produced, basically scripted events to reputation launder, part of the sportswashing that Saudi Arabia has taken part in through soccer, through live golf, etc. What are these events and what was Francis Suarez's involvement in them? And was his involvement as the mayor of Miami or was it in one of his 19 side hustles that you have revealed over the course of your reporting this year?

Well, there's a lot of questions. How much time do you have? But to start with the first one, you are absolutely right. This is exactly what the Liv Golf thing is. This is part of the same campaign. Saudi Arabia has recently developed this master plan, Vision 2030. And the idea is to become quite literally one of the global superpowers. This is spelled out in a plan you can Google. And part of this plan, a pillar, is how they are using their sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, to basically break into new markets across the world. They want to build it into a trillion dollar fund that has more power than any other sovereign wealth fund in the world. And it has a lot of money. It can break into markets. But the thing that's been limiting it, of course, is this long history of human rights violations and ties to the 9/11 terrorists and all kinds of other very bad for business headlines that have been limiting the public investment fund's ability to break into these markets.

Part of the murder and alleged dismemberment of an American journalist from The Washington Post, Jamal Kashoggi, I mean, there's problems, human rights problems.

Problems, yes. That murder, of course, started a fairly widespread boycott movement. And so part of the kingdom's effort to overcome that and to keep building itself towards being a global superpower is or was to establish this conference series, the Future Investment Initiative. It was established through the fund. It is a government-sponsored, government-run, the board of trustees, our royal appointees. It's that conference. And it's been traveling around the world trying to have different international summits in addition to the one in Riyad. And so while Francis, Marisuars, is in Riyad in October of 2022, he gets a call from a representative of this initiative who is a Royal appointee of the Saudi government, and this person says, We're going to do this in March. And Maire Suare says, March 2024? They're talking about bringing a summit to Miami. And the man says, No, March 2023. And Maire Suare seems surprised at the quick turnaround of bringing an international summit to Miami, but he says okay. And then the emails that the Miami Herald was able to obtain show that city staff and also his private political fundraiser helped to make this happen. And when I say help make this happen, bring this summit that is by royal decree, a PR campaign for the Saudi government.

I mean, these representatives for the Saudi initiative gave talking points to the mayor for his opening remarks. They asked the mayor, staff, and associates to make introductions to power players around Miami, celebrities, business tycoons, that thing. And some of those introductions got made. They told the mayor when to show up and who he might want to meet. They introduced him to VIP guests and asked him to be a special guest at VIP events trying to entice others to be there. Effectively, they were trading connections like currency in this effort to effectively try to gloss over a very questionable human rights history and instead project the regime and project the kingdom as a leader in sustainability, in humanity. This summit was called Priority Humanity. That was one of the slogans for this summit. And so it's a very intentional public relations effort to the extent that going to your original point about what about golf? How does golf have anything to do with... What is the purpose of the summit like this? Well, it's quite literally part of the same campaign. Liv Golf was established by the Public Investment Fund and has now been moving to acquire the PGA tour.

There's been a huge battle over the future of golf, whether golfers going over to Liv Golf or taking blood money from Saudi Arabia. But when you read the fine print of Saudi Arabia's plans, when you talk to experts from the region, what they'll tell you is this is an effort to get people to say good things about the kingdom and effectively drown out the bad headline. You do that not just with their own good headlines, but by also recruiting celebrities and influencers to say nice things about the kingdom.

As well. And mayors, as it turns out. I want to be clear, Saudi Arabia is a client of Mayor Francis Suarez's law firm. With one hat on, he is effectively being paid by Saudi Arabia to lobby in the interests of Saudi Arabia and its reputation, a propaganda campaign. But he is also using the office of the mayor of Miami with his staff, with a fundraiser who seems to be way too involved with the mayor's office and his staff. This may have overlapped to some extent with his presidential run, which may raise issues of national security. This is just a minefield of not only conflicts of interest, but potential violations of federal law. I don't really think there was a question there, but I'm slowly making my way to it. What was he doing? Was he working for his law firm for the Saudi's, or was he working as a mayor, as the President of the US Conference of Mayors? Which hat was he wearing and when here?

That's the question. What he has said is he switches his hats frequently and sometimes wears one, sometimes wears another, but he has not provided specifics about which hat he is wearing at which time. With a few exceptions. He has said he has only worn his mayoral hat anytime he participated in the Saudi Summit. So he was doing this in his official capacity as mayor. He says, But that doesn't mean he traveled to Riyad as mayor. That doesn't mean that any of these other things outside of those moments he spent on stage were in his official capacity as mayor. He has not been clear about who paid his way to Saudi Arabia on any given day. What we do know is that he has made trips to the kingdom on behalf of his law firm, the law firm that pays him over a million dollars a year, according to his federal disclosures, to basically introduce them to new clients to help them grow their business. So your question here, I think, and you ask it the first time, and there are so many things here, it's hard to keep it straight, but the real question is legally what could be the problems?

And there are several distinct issues here. One is certainly a question about conflict of interest. There are multiple different conflict of interest laws in Florida that would govern him. So one at the state level, one at the county level. The state level being more narrow, the county level being a bit broader. And the real question is, did he use his public office in a way that benefited a private client? There's a lot of room to split hairs here over, is the public investment fund his client? The firm says no. They said he has nothing to do with any cases involving the Public Investment Fund. But he certainly attended their conferences representing himself as both the mayor of Miami and an attorney of Quinn Emmanuel, the law firm. So these lines get blurry as he's switching these hats back and forth. That's the question of conflict of interest. There's also a national security question here, and that question, we talked to multiple experts, basically, there are laws in the United States that require transparency if anyone is promoting the interests of a foreign government here in the United States. And if they're doing it, basically, the words are, if you are working at the direction of and on behalf of a foreign government, or predominantly on behalf of a foreign government, then you have to register as an agent of that government.

It doesn't matter if you get paid, it doesn't matter if you're a politician and your agenda is goodwill amongst nations, that doesn't matter. If you are working under the direction of and on behalf of a foreign government, then you have to register as an agent. And the experts that we spoke with said that the emails that show the mayor's staff taking these bilateral directives from representatives of the Saudi government do raise questions as to whether or not the mayor of Miami was predominantly working on behalf of the residents of Miami when he brought this summit, or if he was predominantly working on behalf of the Saudi government, which again is also a client of the law firm that pays him. I just want to make one final point here. The summit that he endorsed with his mayoral office using the City of Miami seal was actually held in Miami Beach, a completely distinct municipality that he has absolutely no jurisdiction over.

Right. He was working for the people of the City of Miami, but in the City of Miami Beach on behalf of Saudi Arabia, who are paying clients of his law firm, the aristocrats. Sarah, I want to be clear about this event, which I referred to earlier as a piece of propaganda. You called it PR. I called it an infomercial. Again, everybody's entitled to put on their own Dog and Pony show if they want to pay for it, if they want to pay the mayor for it. In response to your reporting this week, journalist Mark Caputo, formerly of the Miami Herald of Politico of NBC News, now at themessenger. Com, he tweeted this specific event that you were reporting on, he was invited by a PR rep. This is the tweet, and it has a screen cap of a text message from March 22nd of this year. Caputo writes, A PR rep offered me a chance to interview Liv Golf's Greg Norman at this event involving Miami mayor, Suarez, as Saudi Arabia paid his firm. Despite a good money offer, I couldn't do it because they wouldn't let me ask Re 9/11 and Jurno, Jamal Kashoghi's Murder, integrity matters.

I say that not to give Mark Caputo a pat in the back, although I guess he deserves one, but to show that this was, in fact, an infomercial. This was a bought and paid-for event. They were paying journalists, whether it was celebrities, influencers, interviewers, in this case, the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, this appears as though exactly the thing that the Foreign Agents Registration Act, also known as FARRA, was created for. Is that what your experts are telling you?

Yes, I mean, the point is to have transparency. If there is covert influence happening in the US, citizens of the United States have the right to know that. That's what FARRA law is about. And for a long time, it wasn't really enforced, but we've seen a ramping up of enforcement against folks who are lobbying on behalf of foreign governments, primarily after the 2016 election. So all of these rumors that foreign influence had affected the election and suddenly federal authorities are starting to very much crack down on unregistered lobbying. And you've seen a massive increase in the amount of cases being brought under this law, including, of course, Senator Bob Menendez, who was accused of being a foreign agent, and in October, he was charged with being a foreign agent of Egypt. And in that case, of course, there's gold bars. I do just want to clarify. Right now, we have no indication that that mayor Suarez was paid for his work on these conferences. He says any time he does a speaking gig as mayor that he is not paid, but he also has not addressed the rest of the work. He has not addressed the fact that, of course, his law firm is paid by this group.

We don't know- He has said, I'm sorry to interrupt, but he has said that he has traveled to Saudi Arabia on behalf of his law firm. He is being paid through his law firm as an attorney working for Saudi Arabia, and then also wants to be able to say, But when I'm doing their propaganda and their infomercials, I'm working for the city of Miami. That doesn't pass the smell test. That dog don't hunt. You've reported that since starting his second term as mayor, Suarez has spent at least one out of every five days traveling and has been out of state, if not out of the country, for one-third of the city commission meetings. These Saudi Arabia trips, this is a guy who lives his life on social media. For a lot of these Saudi Arabia trips where the Saudi themselves have promoted his visits on social media, the mayor has been strangely silent. There is a level of secrecy to these trips that further muddies the waters here, right? About whether he's acting as the mayor or the attorney for the Saudi, no?

It is interesting that he has said he's participating in these conferences as mayor, but has not promoted his participation on any platforms, any of his social media platforms. He says he gives these speeches to promote Miami on the global stage again, but doesn't post about them. In one case, during one of these excursions abroad, he actually went to Dubai, where he signed a memorandum of understanding with the government there, and it was like a sister city agreement between Miami and Dubai. And, well, the Dubai government was tweeting and posting on Instagram about this signing. Mayor Suarez had mentioned that he was out of town. There are no posts mentioning he was out of town. And instead, he had actually posted about a different proclamation. He signed that day, making it the City of Miami's Blond Dayway. Yes, dessert, Flawn- National fawn, sure. -and then put up a video showing himself eating fawn, and splaced into some local coverage of this. So that was actually the proclamation that he promoted over this memorandum of understanding. It's not clear why. He said he was doing that as mayor. He was signing that as mayor. But this law firm that he works for, Quinn Emmanuel, does represent a lot of clients who he tends to run into in these trips abroad.

So they represent a number of sovereign wealth funds in the United Arab Emirates. They represent government entities in Qatar. They represent several Saudi Royals and the Sovereign Wealth of Saudi Arabia. And they also represent other clients like FIFA, which will be bringing the World Cup to Miami in 2026. And of course, Mayor Suare has also spent some time overseas with FIFA officials. It's unclear if that was in his capacity as mayor or some other capacity. And he's also been pictured at the World Cup in Qatar with soccer star David Beckham, who we all know is a City of Miami lobbyist. We've talked about this before, I think, on the show. They went to the World Cup together. And that's an interesting question because, of course, Marisuara has helped push a no-bid deal that Mr. Beckham brought before the city to use CityLand for a stadium deal, MLS Stadium deal. And just to bring this full circle and show you how many potential pitfalls there are here, MLS is also a client of Quinn Emmanuel, the law firm.

Sarah Blaske, Find Shakedown City, the full investigative series at mymyherald. Com. Merry Christmas. Thank you for.

Being here. Thank you.

Pulitzer Prize winner, Jay Weaver, has been writing about federal crime and federal courts in the most exciting town, probably in the world, to write about such things. At the Miami Herald, where he has been for nearly a quarter century, he is part of the investigative team responsible for the series, Shakedown City, along with Sarah Blaske, who we just spoke with. Jay's story that dropped is an extraordinary one. It is about real estate developer, Rishikapour, very Miami character. This guy is an Atlanta transplant of Indian descent, attended the University of Miami and hustled his way into the multibillion dollar real estate business. I should say multitrillion dollar real estate business here in Miami and lived large. We're talking about yachts, McLarens, six-figure watches. I think he had a house in Cocoa Plum, which the DEA used to call Cocaine Plum, which was actually... It was the model for Tony Montana's house, which they shot mostly in Los Angeles, but it was supposed to be in that neighborhood of Cocoa Plum. I got to tell you, the Rishikapour story is like Scarface, but with real estate instead of cocaine. Jay, we had you on earlier this year to talk about this story because this really was the first domino to fall in Francis Suarez's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year because the hubris of Rishikapour could very well bring down the mayor, could very well bring down multiple mayors, which we'll talk about now.

Outstanding reporting, as always, Jay, what is it that we learn here in this story that you told us about earlier this year in terms of the investigations going on, in terms of the secret payments that Kippur was making to the mayor in order to allegedly carry favor with the city and city policy. What are we learning now that's new?

Well, before I answer that question, I want to give a quick shout-out to my colleague, Tess Risky, who did a great job on a lot of the stuff about Kippur and Coral Gables and Vince Lago, and also to Sarah Pulaski, who also was the lead reporter on the other story on Suarez. But basically what have we learned is this. It's become very clear over the years and decades in Miami political culture that it doesn't take a lot to buy your way in. You can be an outsider. It's very transactional. You come in, you start buying things here, you start buying things there. It could be a dinner tab, a bar tab. It could be any tab. And the next thing you know, the mayor is your best friend. You're giving money to his campaign. Then all of a sudden, you put him on the payroll. And so what it shows is that it's so easy to buy your way into, and I'm not going to use the word on your program because it's really not suitable for family listening, but it's basically buying your way into a... It's like buying your way into a house of ill repute.

The reality is you got a guy like Mayor Suarez, and even Vince Lagom for that matter. Let's not.

Leave him out. Let's not.

But for the fact that Rishikapour is trying to Curry favor with these guys, he wouldn't have caused them so much trouble. I mean, he insinuates his way into their lives. He's an outsider. He's from Atlanta. He's a EM grad. He'd gone to law school. He Mickey Mouseed in marketing and sales for a few years and then detoured into the rough tumble world of Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. And that would be Miami's real estate market. And it's just remarkable to me how he was able to create this little empire, bamboooozle, so many people, get the mayor on board, get investors on board, get lenders on board, and even get condo buyers to buy into his whole thing and to get political officials as well. He gets favors in return. He gets zoning approvals in return. All this stuff happens. Meanwhile, he's living large, as they always do, to make everybody think that they're richer than they actually are. It impresses people. It makes them want to invest more with them and do more things with them. And if there's one thing that Suarez loves to do, he loves to be close to people with money. Forget about the poor, forget about the middle class.

His best friends are people with money and deep pockets. Those are his constituents. And so it was a match made in heaven with Rishikappur.

I'm not sure if this guy was a fake it to make it guy because it did seem for a minute that he was making it. He had these major duty developments. It looked like he was breaking some ground. He raised a ton of money. It wasn't like there was no money there. I guess my question is, was this guy a con man in and out, like shit in, shit out? Or was this guy like he meant well at the beginning and he just flew too close to the sun? What is the story of the rise and fall of Rishikapur in that way?

It's the latter. His intentions were good in the beginning. He hired a lot of good people, some from his U. M. Days, some from the marketing and real estate world. They formed a company and they started developing projects. A lot of them were on paper, but some of them they got done. The one that he really completed that was a signature project was the Villa Valencia, 39 units in Coral Gables near downtown. He got that done with the exception of three penthouse units, which are costing him dearly. Everything else is sold and occupied. But he used that as a beacon. And then he had done some previous to that, but smaller ones, smaller projects. But the one that via Valencia is the one that jumped, started him into the real world of Miami's real estate industry and started getting more and more investors to loan him money. But they were always private investors and private lenders. He doesn't go to conventional sources. So all of this was costing a lot of money. His problem was he was in over his head. He juggled too much. He did not estimate these costs very well. He was always running into overruns.

He was always moving money between projects. And legal documents explain all of this. And he's been sued left and right. This isn't just discrete sourcing. He's been accused of all these things and lawsuits. And he moved money around. He even took condo buyer's money and moved it between projects. He took investor's money and moved it between projects. He took private lender's money and moved it between projects. And he also advanced monies to himself, which is clear from lawsuits and emails and records and text messages. And he did all this in a way, and basically the whole House of Cards collapsed. And now we have a situation where he might have finished a couple of projects. He might have had four or five good ones on the horizon, but they couldn't get done and the whole thing collapsed at the end of July. What's really striking about this guy is that he knew the proverbial shit was going to hit the fan a year ago, and he was still buying the new yacht to replace the old yacht. He was still buying all these things to make himself look like he was just sitting pretty and he was so wealthy.

And it was absurd. He knew it was all about to end. And this is the mind of, I guess, somebody who just doesn't either think clearly or is desperate or is just so concerned about his image. I don't know what it is because he wouldn't tell us, he wouldn't talk to us. But in the end, in July, he loses his job. He's forced out as the CEO of his own company, and a liquidation manager has to take over. What does he start doing? Selling off whatever assets they have to pay off creditors. A lot of people got hurt. A lot of condo buyers got hurt, and even the private investors and lenders got hurt. They were hoping to make a lot of money off these projects. They're legitimate projects in pretty good locations. He just wasn't a very good steward. He wasn't George Perez. He wanted to be the next condo king, as he told everybody. He wanted to develop a trillion dollar business, and he bragged about it. But the reality is it was never going to be a trillion dollar business, and it was never going to be the next George Perez because he doesn't really have George Perez's knowledge, know-how, brains, or connections to pull it off.

In the immortal words of Francis Suarez, If you put.

Garbage in, you're going to get.

Garbage out. Now let me tell you what I am most fascinated about here. I am most fascinated about Rosa commercial real estate. This is a brokerage firm out of the city of Coral Gables, which at its peak, if you will, had only about five licensed realtors who hung their shingle there or whatever the term of art is. This is what I was getting at earlier. At least one mayor could fall down with this House of cards, but there seems to be a direct connection by way of this real estate firm to no less than three mayors of three different municipalities in Miami-Dade County. The five licensed real estate brokers in this firm were former Hia Lea City Councilman Oscar de la Rosa, his, I believe, stepfather, Hialea Mayor, Estobon Steve Bovo, Coral Gables mayor, Vince Lago. Coral Gables mayor, Vince Lago's chief of staff, Chelsea Grinell-Lindsey. The last one was Bill Riley, the attorney and lobbyist who was just arrested along with Miami City Commissioner, Alex Diaz-Laportea, on charges ranging from bribery, money laundering, campaign finance violations, and through business dealings and real estate transactions with Bill Riley's clients, lobbying clients, the centers of the Anti-Vax private academy in the city of Miami.

You have these connections. Now, let's be clear, 20% of the people in this brokerage have been arrested. That's one out of five of them. You have these connections between Riley and Alex Diazleportia and County Commissioner Keyon Hardeman and between Richie Kappour and Vince Lago and Francis Suarez. You have this, what I always refer to as this incestuous cesspool of corruption here. But I'm fascinated by this brokerage firm, which could be alleged, people are saying, could very well be nothing more than a real estate money laundering factory for bribes to public officials?

Right. Well, that's a very good question, Billy, because this brokerage firm you speak of in detail is associated with Coral Gables mayor, Vince Lago. He's part of that team, but he did not receive any piece of that commission, the $640,000 commission on Rishad Kappour's purchase of that land for the purposes of building a condo project there. This would be at 1505 Ponce de Leone, his next big project.

But what about the office space, Jay?

Oh, well, that's another situation. Let's separate this out. Let's unpack this first. The reason why I said that was a very good question is because when they got the $640,000, what did they do with it? We don't know if they kicked back any money to Vince Lago. We don't know if they kicked back any money from that big commission to anybody. We have no idea. I can assure you that if I were an FBI investigator or an IRS forensic analyst, I'd be looking at those bank accounts. I'd be looking at the money moving between those people, and I'd be looking at what they make in salaries. I'd be looking to see how inflated it is from this particular transaction. Now, you asked separately about a little karate storefront office next door to this site. It was rented by the mayor for half a year to a year to Kippur for the purposes of putting in a sales office for the new condo project that was going to be built next door, which was months away from breaking ground. The reality is it never sold a single condo in this particular project. The project for now is dead, although it might be revitalized through the new investors.

But my point is, why was he doing deals with Vince Lago on the rental of the storefront next door to the new development? Why was he doing deals with the brokerage firm that was involved in the sale of land for Rishikapour's next new condo development? These are all really good questions. We couldn't get to the bottom because they're not part of any public record. But the reality is I am certain investigators will be following that money trail.

I want to be clear about this. What happened was is that Rishikapour bought this piece of land for this major duty development in Coral Gables. Then the mayor of Coral Gables, along with a cousin of Francis Suarez, the mayor of Miami, bought a building across the street, which Rishikapour could have himself bought, considering he was spending tens of billions of dollars on these other properties. Then, about a month after Vince Lago and Francis Suarez, his cousin, bought this building, Rishik then rents it from them for upwards of about $12,000 a month for over a year. The building, as we sit here and talk today, is still empty. It was never occupied. Rishikapore paid a five-figure rent every month to the mayor of Coral Gables and to the cousin of the mayor of Miami to rent an empty building, an empty office space that he never occupied a single day, never so much as put a desk or a chair and the building still on the outside, if I'm not mistaken, has a sign that says karate on the building. I don't even know how else you explain. In a movie, that would be an obvious front for some a kickback payment bribe and involves, once again, two separate mayors.

I want to know so much more about this. This is so interesting to me, Jay.

Let me leave you on one final note. I don't know what Kippur is up to. He has refused to talk to us. He thinks he's been given a raw deal. He said so to me in an email a few weeks ago when I was doing a story about his yacht being seized by US marshals after the lender for that lot went after him for it. And they, US marshals with a court order went and seized it for him. It was a four and a half million dollar loan he had out on it. But I wonder when he's going to be talking with federal and state authorities because he's got a lot to gain by pointing fingers and providing a little direction to these investigators about who he knew, what he did, how much money he gave them, if he gave them money, how much, and what was the purpose of it? Because he knows better than anybody else. The question is if he will flip and when that will happen because he's the key to this whole thing. They need him to get to the politicians. We'll see if that happens.

Exciting times in which we live and exciting journalism. You could find J. Weaver, Sarah Blaske, Tess Risky, Joey Fletches, all their work in the Shakedown City investigative series online now at mymeherald. Com. Jay Weaver, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Thanks for being here.

Yeah, same to you guys. Thanks a lot.

You want to see something funny?

Hey, take a look over there. You see.

That, Mella?

Watch that guy. I got to style him. I got to watch my friend here. He's going to stick his tongue out to that girl. Hey, look.

At that.

You see what happened.

To him? Hey. Hey, you know if I wasn't a nice guy, I can't come and go.

Come on, Chito.

Paid for you. Come on.

What I try.

To tell you? Lesbians. What I try to tell you? This country, you got to make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get.

The power.

Then you get the work. That legendary.

Scene from Scarface was shot here in Miami Beach at the world-famous, Fountain Blue Hotel. Scarface was unleashed on the world 40 years ago this month. I think the movie changed the world. It certainly changed my life. I saw it for the first time many years later on VHS. About 20-plus years after it came out, it inspired my producing partners and I to make a documentary called Coking Cowboys, our second feature documentary, which was marketed as the true story of Scarface because Scarface was notoriously ripped for being operatic and over the top and unrealistic. Scarface was a documentary. Let me be perfectly clear. What Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma and their team were able to put into two and a half hours of that movie really captured Miami and changed Miami forever because that was started, Roy, the cycle of art imitating life, imitating art, imitating life. The one, two, punch of Scarface and then Miami Vice solidified Miami's reputation as this sexy, dangerous, cool place that everybody wanted to be and come to. It was America's Riviera. It was Casa Blanca. It was Dodge City. It was lawless. You could do anything, say anything, and get away with it.

People loved that. That has been a big part of Miami's branding and reputation for all of these decades. Now to celebrate the Ruby anniversary of Scarface and Tony Montana, you know him from Capasa USA, Ray Donovan, Queen of the South, Breaking Bad. Better Call Saul. Better Call Saul, Traffic. Two of my favorites, Running Scared with Gregory Heinz and Billy Crystal. I love Running Scared, yes. And Primal Fear with Richard Gere. The guy's got a million credits, but most significantly, Manolo Rivera, the right-hand man to Al Pacino's Tony Montana in Scarface, Steven Bauer. Steven, what does it feel like to be a part of something so iconic that four decades later, strangers come up to you on the street, yell dialog, wiggle their tongue at you like a lizard. Is it cool? Is it annoying? Are you tired of hearing about it and talking about it already?

It's wonderful. After so long and after the trials and tribulations of the status of the film in society and its challenging relationship with the media over the years, but the tremendous acceptance of the hip hop's generation, I think, brought Scarface back from that disastrous launch, not with the people. The people always got the movie, but the media, the press, the film press, the film critics just savage the film. Hollywood was not crazy.

About it either. But even before that, Stephen, this movie was controversial from the jump, and I'm curious how attuned you were to that because here in Miami, one particular city commissioner at the time, Demitriel Perez, was on a public campaign against this movie, thought that it cultivated negative stereotypes about Cuban Americans and Mario Leitos in particular. He basically threw you guys out of town. I was wondering how it tuned you as a Cuban American, as a Miami, and how aware were you of that at the time back in '82 and '83? How did you feel about it? How disruptive was it? Did you have to move the whole show?

It was very disruptive, and I was very attuned to it because of my quick movement through the casting process. I was seen on the first day by the casting director before she saw anybody else. I was recommending because a lot of people were seeing me in New York City where I was studying with Cell Adler. And they recommended me to her to see me first, and I did. And then she sent me on that same day to Bryan Department's office in the village. Then I got on a plane and went to L. A. He called Marty Braegman and told him to see me and that I was perfect. I rose very quickly through the casting process, but then I had to wait three months for Al to see me because he was busy. The fact that I went through that and I was talking to it about what was happening to me to my people in Miami, and they were quite aware that Dmitriu Perez was on this savage campaign of like, No Scarface. They're not going to be a Hollywood movie that portrays Cubans as clowns, as criminals. And he was totally wrong. I don't think he read the script, but it did cause enough of a nervous reaction to Universal and to the bosses over there, to the producers, that they didn't want any protests.

And they said, We're moving it to... Can I say that on the ship? We're moving the film to Los Angeles till further notice. So they built the pets famously at Universal.

So proportionately, maybe not a lot of people realize this because it's such a Miami movie, how much of it did you shoot in Miami? I mean, obviously, Ocean Drive, the chainsaw scene. So how much of it was in Miami compared to out west?

That's it. That's it, Billy. But literally, we went there for the drive-up on Ocean Drive to the interior where the shootout is. We shot the interiors in the apartment in a studio in L. A. In November, and then in April in Miami, we shot the drive-up and the leaving of the apartment and the shooting on the street where he shoots the guy, the Columbian.

But you were in Keebis Gain, in part for Frank's house.

Frank's house, we were there, and we were at the Found Blue, and that's about it. That's about it. But that day that we shot on Ocean Drive, you were a little kid. Were you born in '83?

I was. I was five.

So you were a little kid, but you couldn't ask somebody to bring you instead of Scarface. But by then, they had cleared all the obstacles. And so we were welcome. But it was still like a one horse town Miami Beach was, and it was a retirement, really retirement row on the on-ocean. And so they cordoned off the street. And I had all my family and all my friends with there to see me shoot a Hollywood movie with Al Pacino. By then, everybody had swallowed their pride and Eaton Crow and whatever. I sailed through it. But I did take a lot of heat when nobody knew about it, when they were just rumors, Oh, you're going to play. You're going to play this role. You're going to play a Cuban and you're a criminal. I was like, Mind you, a business. I know what I'm doing.

So Pacino, Loja, Master Antonio, even F. Marie Abraham, half-Syrian, half-Italian, Italian. A lot of Italians playing Cubans in this movie. Who had the best accent, Steven?

Paul Scenar, the late Paul Scenar. Paul Scenar in the Bolivian scenes in Santa Barbara, that we shot in Santa Barbara, he had a great accent. But the Cuban accents vary, as you know. It depends on when you got here and how good is your ear. Because I have friends who grew up here who are my age, who are my peers, and they grew up in a Cuban household like I did, but maybe I watch more TV than they did. I was determined to learn English right away at three years old, four years old. I was learning how it sounded because I didn't want to stand out in school. I had a very complex... I was very insecure about being a foreigner when I was a child in school. I made a point of sounding like an American. But there are a lot of my peers who never got that sound. They talk like this, like a little bit like this. That's a Cuban accent. Paul Shinard, you find Cubans who speak like this. They have a very pronounced accent like this. And then Al, what I tried to give him was the sound and the the accent that my dad has.

Except in the movie, they justify that his accent is not fully, fully Cuban sound. But because he says, My dad, he was a Yankee. He teached me to talk. In the first, in the interview, he says, My dad was a Yankee. He was able to have a very good Cuban accent for what he was. What I would hear after the film came out, and I'd hear from my friends, Oh, come on, Pacino's accent. Terrible. I'd say, Fuck you. I'm like, What do you know? How many Cubans do you know who speak shitty English and sound like that? Or they sound worse, or they sound a little bit better.

All right, Steven, let me ask you this, though, which was more convincing? Pacino's Cuban accent in Scarface or Pacino's Puerto Rican accent in Carlito's way?

I think they're both great. Carlito, I've watched it a few times, obviously, and that's a very subtle thing, the Spanish, Harlem, or Bronx, Spanish, speaking English with that accent that you learned from Puerto Rico. You know... When you have this sound like this and you have... It's just slightly different than the Cuban, but it's also very street, very New York Street, and they retain a little bit of the Puerto Rican lilt. So his accent was very good because he makes a point of it. He wants it to be perfect. And so the great thing about his accent in Scarface is that it's iconic. That's how consistent it was in and of itself. I mean, how many movies do you know that you can cite that you quote more than one line because you enjoy saying it? People enjoy learning how to say hello to my little friend.

Steven, I'm going to do a very quick pivot here. You went to Miami-Dade Community College right here in downtown Miami, now Miami-Dade College. Okay, you went to the south campus, and then you went to the University of Miami, where you studied theater, and I happen to know that you were in a production of Mice and Men that you co-starred in with Ray fucking Liota, the late, great Ray Liota. Is that true? I remember this story... I'm trying to say it very vaguely. I was wondering if you could talk about that a little bit.

Well, the thing was that you have certain productions that are scheduled for the year. Already that year, by then, I was in my second year, and the great acting coach and director, Bob Buckus-Lowry. He was going to direct Of Mice and Men. We all read it and we are all seeing ourselves in it. I thought, Well, I'm going to play Lenny because I understand it. I think I understand and I have the size. Well, lo and behold, Ray read it and he was the hotshot at the University of Miami. He was a year ahead of me or two, and he was already playing Stanley Kowalski and he did all these things. And so he also opened West Side Story. The first production I did there was West Side Story, and we're the first two jets dancing on stage in the beginning, but he didn't really know me then. So we weren't friends because I was competitive. He was competitive. He didn't like the competition that I presented. And so he wanted to play Lenny, and Bucky just said to him, Ray, you're playing George, Rocky is playing Lenny, and that's it. Get to know each other and work on it.

And that was it. He had to just accept me, and we became good friends, and we had that strong bond of those two characters. That's why it translated onto the production because we were those two when we imagined ourselves out in the dust bowl and trying to look for a job, and I'm a liability to poor George, but he's loyal, and it's ruining his life. That was a beautiful production that Bucky has directed, and that really cemented my place here because we got a great review by the critic at the time, Candace Russell at the Miami Herald. That was like, Oh, and we had a picture. She used a picture of us.

Before we go, can I see your shirt?

Yes, you can see your shirt. Describe the shirt for me. Slowly, I rise. You see the whole thing.

How cool do you have to be to walk around wearing a shirt of yourself?

I'm not cool enough to do that. You can do that, but I can't self-promote like that. I only wear it in the house.

Is this part of the new swag?

Yes. This is called Shoe Palace, and it's out and stored... Mostly it's the online store, shoepalace. Com, and just look for the Scarface line. I mean, there's beautiful stuff, jackets, leather jackets, and shirts like this, and colors, beautiful colors. I'm telling you, this is the second time I've done a second year that I've done it, and the quality just went up from last year. Last year, they scrolled out.

For people doing last-minute Christmas shopping, the book?

The book is called, say hello to my little friend, A Century of Scarface, which begins at the beginning with that. It's a great writer, Nat Segelhoff. He's written many books on movies. He loved my input so much he asked the publishers if I could do the forward. He helped me a little bit to just structure it, and I wrote the forward to the book, and there I am in a published literary work.

One.

More thing. I have a great role and a comedical role in a movie called Beautiful Wedding that opens January '24 in theaters all over. Finally, I'm in a theatrical release, and finally, they let me do comedy. I play a role that you've never seen me in, in a movie, and it stars Dylan Sprouse, who's this kid who's great. It's a trilogy, Beautiful Disaster, Beautiful Wedding, Beautiful Baby. And this is the second one, and I have a prominent role. It comes out January 24th all over the country. Check it out. Check out the trailer at Max's Hollywood. It's all over. You'll see the trailer. Look for Beautiful Wedding. Billy, you'll get a kick out of it. You'll see me in the trailer.

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.

All right, you guys, you two, everybody over there. And my regards to Dan, Dan Levittar.