<![CDATA[The Drey Dossier: LIVES]]>https://thedreydossier.substack.com/s/liveshttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!cGUR!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff6ef7a39-5e4e-4359-967a-1f3cecc3c7b0_1280x1280.pngThe Drey Dossier: LIVEShttps://thedreydossier.substack.com/s/livesSubstackFri, 26 Jun 2026 00:16:08 GMT<![CDATA[How Trump and Billionaires Are Running a Parallel Government]]>https://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/how-trump-and-billionaires-are-runninghttps://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/how-trump-and-billionaires-are-runningMon, 01 Jun 2026 20:59:31 GMTThere’s a little-known White House office called the National Design Studio, created by executive order in August 2025 and led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia. It has built or taken over at least 45 federal .gov websites while operating completely outside the privacy, procurement, and oversight rules that govern every other federal IT office.

There's no inspector general, no procurement trail, and records that could stay sealed for 12 years. The whole apparatus sits inside the White House (metaphorically, and maybe physically??), which conveniently puts it beyond the reach of congressional oversight.

This is the kind of story that starts small: a byline in a footer, a domain name, and certificate logs that pointed away from congressional oversight and toward the executive branch. In this conversation, we start where the reporting started, with a byline in the footer of TrumpRx.gov, and follow the certificate transparency logs to NDS preview sites for vote.gov, an FBI Charlie Kirk tip line, a passport portal, and more, none of them publicly authorized by the agencies involved.

From there we get into the surveillance infrastructure embedded in these federal sites, the DOGE-to-NDS personnel pipeline, and why an operation this consequential lives inside the White House with no real oversight.

Thank you to WAJ from for having me on and getting into all of it. This story deserves as much air as it can get, because it touches nearly every federal agency we interact with online. The full reporting is linked below. Read it first, then come back and watch.

📄 Read the full reporting first (all sources at the bottom):


📺 More on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thedreydossier

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]]><![CDATA[The Drey Dossier | LIVE with Sen. Cory Booker: The $110B Foreign-Funded Media Takeover]]>https://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/the-drey-dossier-live-with-sen-coryhttps://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/the-drey-dossier-live-with-sen-coryWed, 29 Apr 2026 01:29:16 GMTThank you so much to everyone who watched the live with Senator Cory Booker. Your presence, your questions, and your attention to this story mean everything. This is exactly the kind of issue that needs eyes on it, and you showed up—which is why he did. Thank you.

SPECIAL THANK YOU to the Rough Rider Tier, who have been the engine behind the Drey Dossier for $5/month. Truly, my gratitude is endless.

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A little about this conversation…

What Is This Merger?

Paramount Skydance (the company formed after Skydance acquired Paramount in 2024) is buying Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD); the parent of CNN, HBO, Max, TNT, Warner Bros. Pictures, and Discovery for approximately $110.9 billion in cash.

If this deal closes, one single company will control:

  • CNN, HBO, Max, CBS, CBS News, Paramount+, TNT, TBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, Food Network, HGTV, Discovery, Cartoon Network, and more

  • Warner Bros. Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and New Line Cinema

  • 59 cable networks and streaming platforms with over 200 million subscribers worldwide

  • Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, DC Comics, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, SpongeBob SquarePants

WBD shareholders approved the deal on April 23, 2026. It is now awaiting U.S. (DOJ, FCC) and international (EU, UK, Canada) regulatory approval, expected to close Q3 2026.

The Numbers

Total purchase price ~$110.9 billion

Price per WBD share $31.00 (147% premium over its pre-deal price of $12.54)

Debt load of combined company ~$79 billion

Foreign investment from Gulf sovereign wealth funds ~$24 billion

Foreign ownership of new Paramount post-close 49.5%

Gulf sovereign funds’ share of equity alone 38.5%

Larry Ellison’s personal guarantee $40.4 billion

Oracle shares already pledged as collateral ~30% of Ellison’s total stake (~$69B in pledged value)

Netflix breakup fee Paramount already paid (Feb. 2026) $2.8 billion

Regulatory reverse termination fee owed if deal is blocked $7 billion

David Zaslav (WBD CEO) golden parachute Up to $887 million (shareholders voted against it — non-binding)

California state film tax credits received by WBD (March 2026) $127.9 million

The Foreign Entanglement

On April 27, 2026, Paramount filed with the FCC acknowledging that post-close, 49.5% of its equity will be foreign-owned — the majority from three Gulf sovereign wealth funds:

  • Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF): ~$10–12 billion

  • Qatar Investment Authority (QIA): ~$6 billion

  • Abu Dhabi’s L’Imad Holding Company: ~$6 billion

Paramount says these investors hold zero voting rights and are purely passive — which is how they’re avoiding a mandatory CFIUS (national security) review. Critics, including Senator Booker and six other Democratic senators, have argued that passive status doesn’t eliminate soft-power influence, especially given Saudi Arabia’s record on press freedom.

Key Resources & Sources

Government & Official Filings

Congressional & Political Scrutiny

Foreign Investment Deep Dives

Financing & Debt

Executive Pay / Golden Parachute

California / Labor Pushback

  • Entertainment and California Regulators Push Back — NPR

  • California AG Takes Swipe at Trump Over Deal — Yahoo Finance

  • Disney, WBD Nab $125M+ in California Tax Credits (March 2026) — Hollywood Reporter

European / International Regulatory Progress

  • Paramount Claims Early European Regulatory Progress — Deadline

Comprehensive Overview

  • Wikipedia: Proposed Acquisition of WBD by Paramount Skydance — Wikipedia

  • Deadline: Merger Confirmed — Full Details — Deadline

]]><![CDATA[How The Illegal Iran War is Profiting the World's Worst People with Drey Dossier]]>https://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/how-the-illegal-iran-war-is-profitinghttps://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/how-the-illegal-iran-war-is-profitingTue, 31 Mar 2026 23:35:17 GMTThank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

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I had so much fun on this live with Waj! One of my favorite conversations I’ve had on a live to date.

A few of the pieces I referenced during the conversation:

We covered a lot of ground in 45 minutes: how the Iran war mirrors Iraq in ways most people aren’t tracking (not just the foreign policy, but the pattern underneath it, where the same company uses the same windows of war to quietly absorb government data infrastructure while every newsroom is pointed somewhere else). In 2003 with the Iraq invasion, it was Britain’s NHS and identity systems. In 2026, it’s American healthcare, classified military systems, and the largest media merger in history, all landing in the same 17-day window as the bombs dropped in Iran.

We got into the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, why it needed this war, how Larry Ellison is building a media monopoly on top of a surveillance empire, and why Bari Weiss keeps showing up in these conversations. I also hinted at where the ballroom investigation is heading next (stay tuned!).

And we talked about something I’ve been mapping for a while: the UAE funding web connecting sovereign wealth, media acquisitions, and national security exposure that nobody in Washington seems interested in addressing. I told Waj I’d include the diagram I made so you could see the structure we were discussing. Here it is.

Thank you again to Wajahat Ali and the whole team over at for having me on. I hope to see ya again real soon!

Remember: the last time we walked into a war like this, it provided very loud cover for the largest government data grab in modern history, and it took people two decades to fully understand what they lost. This time, you don’t have to wait.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

xx Drey

P.s. I also mentioned during the live that if you want to support the people actually fighting data center expansion on the ground, here are two places to start:

  • Food & Water Watch — they were the first national org to call for a moratorium on new AI data centers and just helped push the Sanders/AOC moratorium bill

  • MediaJustice — a racial and tech justice organization doing some of the best on-the-ground organizing against data center expansion in the country. Their report "The People Say No" is the first comprehensive regional analysis of how Big Tech is draining communities across the South, and they've published a free organizer toolkit for any community fighting a data center proposal.

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