Blow the Whistle Pitch Deck

Episode 4: The Bear Hug

Cold Open: “It was two fold, I had photos that nobody had seen and the photos had evidence nobody had seen.” Evidence the media and Congress wanted
The Crime: Cronyism
The Witness: Simon Edelman grew up in the Chicago suburbs. He didn’t tell his wife he was going to blow the whistle before doing it and it’s caused tension
The Witness: Simon Edelman
Gathering the Evidence: Was present at meeting and took photographs of materials discussed
Blowing the Whistle: Shared the photographs with the news media to expose the truth and put a stop to the corruption.
The Retaliation: Fired, threatened, and personal belongings stolen
Unsolved: FERC rejected Secretary Perry’s plan partly based on the photos. Simon’s case is still under investigation for retaliation after 4 years

It’s snowing in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The series creator and director, Simon Edelman runs across his living room. “What are you doing?! Lemme get that for you!” He takes a box from his pregnant wife exasperated. “Don’t lift anything!” They are moving into their first home, having been displaced for months during the pandemic.

Edelman gets a call from his legal team. It’s been four years since he blew the whistle and his case is still under investigation with the Office of Special Counsel. Updates have moved like molasses. A new lawyer has joined the team and would like to review the evidence, a photo.

As the famous adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. It was a picture of a bear-hug between an Ohio energy tycoon and the former Governor of Texas that is in question. On assignment in Washington, DC just a few weeks into Secretary Rick Perry’s appointment, Edelman attended a meeting between Perry and the ‘King of Coal’ Robert Murray, both of whom were major Trump donors. Murray handed Perry a four-page “action plan” to directly benefit his own company, Murray Energy, one of the nation’s largest coal producers, in the sum of 17 billion annually in taxpayer dollars. Perry was more than happy to oblige him.

Nine months later, while traveling to Chicago to visit family for Thanksgiving, Edelman witnessed multiple denials of the meeting on national television from the airport lobby, sparking him to share the photographs with the news media to expose the truth and put a stop to the corruption.

Back in Santa Fe, Edelman plays a recording of former colleague and Trump appointee, Bill Turenne, DOE Director of Strategic Communications and Messaging threatening him “to delete the photos from the Google drive or we can come to your home and have someone watch you delete it.”