(PART 2) THE TRUTH BEHIND THE CHRISLEY TRIAL ft. Alex Little [Todd & Julie's Lawyer]
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What questions do people ask?

I think you'll touch on this some, but for you as a lawyer, what was like your biggest what the f*** moment or thing that the prosecution presented? You're like, this is just insane. So I think there were two. I think probably the biggest moment like that was when I first heard the story of the raid of the warehouse where the Georgia Department of Revenue had gone in without a warrant, pretended to have a warrant.

And took all this, you know, these papers, took property from the family and then just handed it, sort of got, had a conversation with the feds and the feds like, oh, well, we can just take that from you. We'll write a search warrant. We'll kind of clean up your error. And if the judge then let that stuff, well, that that stuff sort of the judge ruled, one of the judges did, that's all illegal. It can't come in.

But then all the evidence they developed from that, they were, they allowed it. And the judge just sort of said, Oh, well, you know, it's going to come in at trial. This is a matter of like basic fourth amendment, kind of what I learned first year law school. Like, how does that happen? Like that just seems bonkers. Um,

And then, you know, when I got involved in the case, I, you know, it was post-trial. We're trying to figure out what issues there are in appeal. And we had this incredibly detailed affidavit and motion to have a hearing to find out what this witness knew when she testified because we think she had lied and she had worked with the prosecutors to lie.

i was just waiting for the hearing to be scheduled because it you know it it doesn't happen that when you have an allegation like that the court just looks the other way and the court looked the other way and i was just completely gobsmacked that you know that was how the court decided to deal with a really explosive allegation that had a lot of support so

Those have been the two things that have just sort of blown my mind. And when you get into a case, you think, I know nothing about the facts and maybe they're guilty, maybe they're not. You hope that there is some issues you can raise as a lawyer. Here, I mean, the more I learned every day, I was just sort of like, this is not at all what it seems.

This is directly from someone on YouTube. Is there anything that can be done when a prosecutor intentionally lies or puts someone on the stand that lies and the protection knows that they're going to lie? And what can society do to have these kind of people prosecuted after the fact?

So I guess the question of what you can do to a prosecutor who is involved in procuring false testimony, putting on testimony they know to be false. It has historically been very, very difficult to get any sort of sanction or discipline against prosecutors. Really only in the last five or 10 years have the bar associations, the court started to

You know, actually hold prosecutors accountable. Even there, though, the numbers are very, very slim. It's generally a slap on the wrist. But in most systems, if there is evidence that prosecutors put on false testimony, they should be punished in some way. It's often like, oh, the sanction is we're going to suspend you for 30 days or something minor. And it should be much, much more.

Why was the ask for doing staggered sentencing not granted for someone who has two dependent minors? So why would the court not stagger sentencing? I think in a case like this one, the sentences were fairly long, and so it would have been a lengthy stagger. I think, in fact, it would have been after Chloe turned 18.

And so I think the court was reluctant to want to wait to impose a sentence on Julie in that many years. Is there a real good justification for that? No, because, you know, there aren't really rules around it and the system is made to not care about families in that way at all. So, you know, could the court have done that? Absolutely. There's not real tradition or history of doing it. And this court certainly wasn't inclined to give, you know, the Chrisleys any benefit of the doubt.

So if Julie's parents aren't around, the nanny Faye's not around, there's no chase for Savannah. What happens to Grayson and Chloe? They go to foster homes. Yeah. I mean, you know, and again, these are kids who have been on TV. They are known. They have a public presence. They are getting and they have a fantastic sister. And so they are getting the best possible care.

In the criminal justice system every day it happens that kids in similar situation are thrown into foster care and nobody really blinks for people who have sentences of much less time I mean parents will lose their kids over You know small things small crimes not paying a fine for a traffic ticket that then gets you in contempt and then you go to jail for 60 days and they have to fight for a year to get their kids back I mean It's a whole nother podcast about how terrible our care of our children are in Tennessee and every other state and

But that is it is very common. There's really good reporting around how just devastating it is for families particularly single mothers who get charged with the crime Losing their kids for very very small things. I mean I had Chloe I will never forget not long after she had to have been looking on YouTube or something But she said I'm just really happy that we get to live with you because if we didn't then

Grayson could go to other people and I could go to other people and then we wouldn't be together. Oh yeah. And I'm like, happens all the time. They have to split up siblings. It's terrible. What role did the judge play? And would the sentencing have been different if they had had a different judge?

So what's the role of the judge generally? What's the role of this judge? You know, just like every US Attorney's Office, there's 93 fiefdoms. There are hundreds of district court judges that are federal judges. They have lifetime tenure. They can't be removed for really any reason except for impeachment, which has happened like twice in the past 20 years. So they can run their courtroom however they wish and they have great discretion to do whatever they want. And the only

kind of constraint on that is an appeals judge telling them you have to do it differently or you know i reverse your decision um would a different judge have given different sentences i'm sure

What and how different, I can't tell you, but these were certainly very severe sentences that don't, I mean, I think like take example, the judge who sentenced Elizabeth Holmes, would she have given a lesser sentence to these two? Absolutely, she gave 11 years to Elizabeth Holmes for a crime that was three times more egregious. So just in monetary terms, not even the other aspects of those crimes. So who you are in front of matters in terms of a criminal case.

And it's another one of those things where it's like it's a coin flip. If you want to talk about how arbitrary our system is, where you're prosecuted, who you're prosecuted by, the judge that hears the case, all those things will affect whatever justice you get in your case.

Someone wrote, "My question is how many times can you appeal? Are there a certain amount of times you can keep appealing? And what happens if the appeals don't work? Is there any higher court this can go to?" Yeah, so the kind of appeals that's structured, right? So there's different tiers. The court that tried the case is the district courts, like the lowest level. There's an appeals court, and each region of the country has a different appeals court. And so that's who we're appealing to. You'll be assigned three judges who I'll argue in front of in March.

If for some reason we think those three judges have made a grave error or they have made a mistake that is appealable, we can actually appeal to the whole group of judges, which is 12, 13, which is all the active judges in that district. And you don't have to do that, but you can. And then if you don't like, again, the decision of the three judge panel or that 12 judge panel, you can then appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which unfortunately here is very, very few cases. And so the likelihood that even if it's a valid appeal, that they will hear it is very slim.

Once that process that's called the direct appeals happens, there's still an opportunity to challenge certain types of errors on what's called collateral review or habeas corpus review. And so here, if there was an issue related to like the performance of attorneys, we could raise that in that proceeding. You know, I hope we never make it that far because I hope we went at the direct appeal. We don't have to, but there will still be an opportunity to challenge sort of the attorney's performance in that secondary system.

And so to give you an example, I mean, I represent a guy who was wrongfully convicted of murder, spent 13 years in jail, and it took three different types of appeals to finally get him out. We proved that somebody else committed the murder. I mean, this isn't just like his case was just had mistakes. Like somebody else committed the murder. He served more than a decade in prison for it. And it took three separate types of appeals to finally get him out of prison. So-

There are different ways to appeal. And just because you lose one doesn't mean at all that you don't have the best argument or your guy isn't interested. That's Adam Brazil. Yeah. Actually, I was going to read this just because I thought it was interesting. So it's funny that you brought that up. Someone wrote, this is just kind of like a nod to you, Alex. Love this episode. Alex Little is amazing. The client that he kept referring to, who spent 13 years in jail and prison for a murder he did not commit, is a dear friend of mine. His name is, how do you say it? Adam Brazil.

Alex Little is an angel for our community and supporters of Adam's case. I was at every hearing. Things were going nowhere for over a decade until Alex joined the case. Adam was supposed to spend the rest of his life in prison. An innocent man put behind bars with zero evidence at all of the murder he was said to have committed. He was convicted and sentenced to life with no evidence.

except someone saying the man who did it had red hair and Adam had red hair. I knew something was off with the Chrisley case from the beginning. I have trust and faith that Alex will produce real results here. Just thought that you needed to hear that. That's very kind. I think the sad thing in like what we do is, particularly if you look at like older defense attorneys who've done this for like decades.

they are so just like beaten down because the system is not made for you to win. Even when you should win, right? Like even when you have the, you know, there's an argument before the Supreme Court about whether if somebody's actually innocent, that should stop an execution. It's like, well, it probably should, right? It probably should. And they had to debate that because it was all about, well, we had all these different procedures and we get an exception because they've gone through all these routes and they didn't prove they're innocent. So what do we have to do now? The system is not made for,

It's made for finality. It's not made for being correct. And any system that's made to end as opposed to made to be the most fair is going to have numerous examples of mistakes. And there's plenty of people, and I guarantee you the prosecutors listening to this, like, oh, this isn't one of those cases. He's just full of it. And, you know, I think if I had been a prosecutor my whole life, I might have thought the same way. And I was for, you know, seven years.

But once you like start to put yourself in other people's shoes and like see like the biggest danger in this system as in other systems is to believe that you are infallible. I talked to a friend of mine who is a prosecutor. I said, do you think you ever made a mistake? He's like, no. I was like, tell that to yourself in the mirror and listen to how ridiculous you sound. You've been doing this for a decade. You haven't made a mistake? Well, no, because this and that. And maybe he's right, but just statistics would tell you probably not.

Savannah, if you could change one thing, what would it be? What's your number one priority besides getting your parents out? If I could change one thing, I mean, obviously I would want my parents home, but I think in my shoes right now, getting them home is the most important, but also Chloe and Grayson. What you leave behind are children. What you teach them at a young age is what they grow up believing is correct, not correct.

And just making sure that they feel the most love humanly possible because they are without their mom and dad. So right now it's my responsibility to not only love them, but love them well. And also, um,

just help them deal with the emotional aspect of it. Having two parents go to prison, statistically speaking, you're more likely to become, be involved in teen pregnancy, drugs, alcohol. You're more likely to end up in prison yourself. So I want to, I don't want them to be a statistic. I think that's right now what my biggest focus is.

Someone asked, can your mom and dad call each other? I already know that's a no. And can you shed some light on why, Alex, that's benefiting? Like, why is that a thing?

Yeah. I mean, you know, can, you know, can Todd and Julie have real, real contact? I think they can write letters and maybe even emails to each other. Well, they can write letters, but obviously their facilities, right. They're being, you can't, they have no private letters for sure. But they can't talk on the phone to each other. There's no easy way to call it from one facility to another. Right. And there's nothing about the BOP, which is like intended to facilitate or like promote families, right.

So this is going to sound silly, but it's something that I've thought about like the past decade of this work, like the whole idea of a conjugal visit. They used to like you'll see on like jokes on TV like, oh, what's a conjugal visit? Well, back in the day for prisons, they would allow spouses to come in and like spend a day with their husband in like basically a hotel room in the prison and they would have sex. That was kind of the idea.

But the point of it was like really brilliant because the idea was like, how do you keep people connected who are physically apart? And what does it do for the morale and just the mental health of the people who are in prison to still feel connected to their families? And we've gone from a place where like that was fairly common in some state prison systems, you know, 40 years ago or 30 years ago to a place now where they don't even facilitate like phone conversations.

We all have cell phones literally in our pocket right now. We have, we can video chat my brother in New Zealand with within two seconds, but they can't figure out how to do phone calls between prisoners on a regular basis. Like now, is it, is it against the law for them to speak or they just don't want to let them start BOP BOP discretion, right? I mean, I think they certainly could allow them to do it.

But they haven't. Yeah, no, I mean it's almost a year. Yeah. Which is wild to think, almost a year. Yeah. And they don't get to speak. Well, I think we should try to keep pushing them on that. Yeah. Will they be in court together for the oral arguments? And after these, can they, is it possible that they could walk and march? People want to know. So the first answer is no, the defendants don't even get to come to oral argument. So they will not be there.

And could they walk and march? Slim chance. The timing generally is, you know, even if the court would move very quickly, it would take it a while to write the opinion. So I think it is a slim chance that they would walk that quickly. Hopefully soon thereafter they would get bail. But that's, you know, completely in the court's hands. What's the earliest predicted release date that you could see happening for Julie?

So I think Julie is a different situation. I think parts of our appeal, even if we lose huge parts of the appeal, she should be resentenced because of some of the errors related to her sentencing. If she is resentenced in the summer or the fall of next year, I think her sentence should be substantially reduced. Whether the court will do that again, we're dealing with the same judge. It's hard to say.

But if she were to get a three-year sentence, for example, she'd come home next year like into this year and early next year Yeah so that's that's not out of the question and I think the hard part when you talk to clients and talk to families about things like that is That is an option on a spectrum of options. And so you don't want to give people false Hope you want to be realistic. That is certainly an option there's steps coming through as part of the

First Step Act that could potentially redefine the parameters placed around nonviolent offenders. And Todd and Julie would fall under that if that is passed, correct? Yeah.

- Well, part of it already has. So the questions around like, there's some changes in the law about nonviolent offenders and the federal system, how does that affect their sentencing guidelines, their particular sentence? It would apply to Julie for sure. And so no matter if we were to lose everything in the appeal, she would be resentenced. Again, we don't know whether the judge would actually apply it in a way to reduce her sentence. We think it should, if the judge were to follow the guidelines. And that could happen this year or early next year.

Can you talk a little bit more about exactly what that like the change in that law would be so that way when and if or let's just manifest it one's already happened so one of the things that has already happened is the sentencing commission which is the folks who create the sentencing guidelines which judges look at in in determining sentences has already decided that if you have no criminal history and certain types of crimes and you don't have certain types of aggravating factors

You should actually have two points less. And so imagine this big grid where they've got these points for how serious the offense is. Like terrorism is like 40, you know, jaywalking is one. And then the other part of the grid is how serious your criminal history is. So if you're a really bad guy who jaywalks, you still should have no sentence. If you're a really good guy who commits terrorism, you don't spend as much time as a person who's got six offenses. So there's a grid here.

And it would change that grid for that offense for Julie and move her up sort of two levels, which would adjust sort of what this is the suggested sentence should be. And that's happened, but it won't be effective until we sort of get this appeal process. She gets resentenced.

If she has to be look, best case scenario is they throw this out. They say you got to go back to trial or they give us a hearing where we can prove that the trial is tainted and they go back on bail and we kind of reset to step one and they have no convictions. They may get retried again, but they'll have no convictions.

Is there any world in which they could attain the same results if all of the things that were illegal evidence had been thrown out? If they hadn't been able to illegally seize a warehouse, all of these things that were used. Yes. The question is, I imagine that they take out all the evidence that should have stayed out and take it out. What happens? We don't think they have a case. I mean, there's nothing left that did not come from the original illegal search.

And a magistrate judge ruled on that, correct? He ruled on the first piece, which was the search was illegal. And the problem was they never sort of continued then to decide, okay, what did the government use that evidence for? And so, I mean, I've explained this to people in different ways and imagine the most basic way is that

Somebody writes false confessions in an easy way. You torture somebody and they say, all right, I committed the bank robbery and I put the gun in my locker down at the gym.

it's a it is a tortured confession it should not be in it violates all sorts of constitutional rights and if the government were then to go and find the gun in the locker and try to introduce that gun into evidence that would be kept out as well because it came from the original sort of torture you can't do that and so you can't then use the gun a similar thing happened here obviously very different scenarios we're talking about different types of evidence but that same principle applies and should apply here it did not it was not applied

Do you ever worry... I worry every day. It's my job. It's kind of your thing. The wrinkles. Do you ever worry about Savannah as she is speaking out so boldly on what we all believe, like what's believed to be injustice? Do you ever worry about her safety? Someone wants to know if like her speaking out this boldly is risky. Yeah, so I don't worry about Savannah.

For the same reason when people talk to me about like oh gosh, you know, were you a prosecutor? You're prosecuting the Mexican, you know cartels. Did you feel worried about your safety? No, because as a federal prosecutor I was in a position of relative safety It would be very stupid to sort of go after me for the same reason Savannah is a celebrity and she has notoriety and it'd be very very stupid for them practically to target Savannah now Todd and Julie who were in

where they can be kept incommunicado, where they can be controlled. Could they suffer consequences? 100%. And so that's the danger in a situation like this is that the people who you're trying to speak out for and help are the most vulnerable to continued abuse or consequences. And I think with that too, it's like we've said, I wouldn't be speaking out about it just for me to be speaking out if mom and dad didn't say no.

Do it. Well, yeah. I mean, I think, look, it's also the... Fresh Step knows you'd do anything for your cat. From getting them food that's nicer than yours to letting them take a midday nap on your keyboard. So why settle for basic litter? Switch to Fresh Step.

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thing to do. When you see something that's wrong, you should say something about it. And a lot of people don't have a Savannah on the outside to advocate for them. And so the reality is the work you're doing to talk about prison conditions, you're not doing just for your mom and your dad, but there are a whole lot of people who are in there with them who don't have a podcast, who don't have a public presence to be able to say, Hey, we need help. We need change. We need something to be different. I'll go to visitation and all the men are like,

you're our champion. Like, thank you. Literally. And I'm like, that's why I do it. Like, I mean, I love my parents, but there's over 2 million people incarcerated in the US today. So it's also for them too. And the reality is like,

Nobody is telling Savannah, oh, no, you're wrong. They should be in poor conditions. Right. The response is never to justify it. It's just to either excuse it because, oh, it's not that bad or, well, maybe that's not true. Because if people are confronted with the truth, they know it's indefensible. Right. It's indefensible to not give medical care to prisoners. It's indefensible to have poor sanitation, poor living conditions, you know, heaters that don't work properly.

We're in America. We're not supposed to freeze our prisoners, right? And so when you talk about those things, you're not hearing like, "Uh, yeah, no, we think that's okay." We hear them try to like muddy the waters. Do you have any reason to believe, Savannah, that not all of their— there's lots of people saying that they're trying to send things to your parents and they don't— it's all being returned. Do you think that's because people have addressed your information wrong or do you think that stuff's being turned away and not given to them? Or Alex?

I would assume if they're saying it's been returned, that's pretty common to get returned mail. It probably violates some regulation. The BOP doesn't want certain mail items. Yeah, I definitely think there's a little...

I have my own personal opinions and beliefs. There are some cases to where when mom and dad are sent mail, you just have to put it on a plain piece of paper with a pen. You can't send a card you bought from the grocery store. You can't send color. It just is what it is. Yeah, the rules are super strict. Yeah, the rules are super strict. But there are also instances where I do believe, more so at dad's facility, that they are messing with his mail.

That's just my own personal opinion. Yeah. How much money is the government spending on your parents being in prison? Hmm. I mean, I think it's like $80,000 a year per person. I mean, it's some, and that may be the low end. It's, it's at least 80 grand a year, right? So $160,000 per year, which is minimum crazy. So in order to imprison mom and dad, them combined minimum of 160. Let's look, I think we can, we can find this out. This is, this is a good internet question. It's in the BOP filings. Yeah. It's in,

But it's also in the... Oh, it's in the PSR. Yeah, it is. Okay, so it says this is 2009, so it's more than that. Apparently, it was $40,000 in 2000. Yeah, so...

So according to the BOP's own estimates, it's $40,000 per person. That's probably a little low. So it's gone up from there with inflation. So I'd say $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 a year. And that's not including the money spent in time on prosecution? Yeah, none of that. That's just to keep them locked up. So let's just say it's $40,000. Yeah, what it says right here on it.

$44,258 annually. And then it says cost of supervision, $4,000. That's if they get out and do probation. So like the supervisor lease provisions. Okay, gotcha. So it'd be like if Todd served his whole sentence, you're looking at around a half million without prosecution. Oh yeah, without any inflation too. Yeah, about a half million dollars just for Todd. And that doesn't count what it costs them to argue this case. Right, it doesn't count any of the DOJ costs, anything like that.

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it is really just bizarre how particularly in our line of work lawyers and clients come together because it's not like there's a a like there are directories like best lawyers this best lawyers that which are all just like advertising and bogus right and so it's very difficult to know is a potential client or as a family member like who's good and who's bad it is really just a grab bag and you hope that you grab something good when you're pulling it out um and so

And so, you know, like your reputation matters and things like that. And like when I'm getting cases, it's always sort of interesting to me just how it happens. And so here, how did it happen that you guys ended up calling me?

So I reached out to a friend that lives in here in Nashville who just is very, I feel like knows everyone very well connected. And I was like, who, who do you know that I should reach out to? And this was right. Once the guilty verdict came down the day after the verdict. It was the day. Oh, it's that afternoon. It was that afternoon. The guilty verdict came down. As soon as they said guilty, guilty, guilty. I got out. I jumped up out of the courtroom and left. Um,

to go back to the hotel, get everyone's stuff, whatever. And it was on my ride home. I really don't even remember like driving home. I think that's how traumatic the whole thing was. But I just remember saying this person texted me and was like, are you okay? And I was like, I need the best appellate lawyer, like the best. And this person calls me and is like, I'll call you right back. And then calls me and says, here, this is a guy you need to

look into. He just got a huge bank fraud case overturned, I think. And also a murder case, whatever it may be. And then somehow we got on the phone. I don't know if I called you, you called me. You didn't. I was like, who is this? Yeah. Well, how do you have my number? Did no one tell you I was calling? I don't think so. No. And then when we spoke on the phone that first time, what was your first... So, you know, it's always...

generally because things are always usually bad by the time somebody calls me, there's often very, very little that I can do. And so like the beginning of conversations is sort of, that's, I'm really sorry to hear about this. That's really too bad. Not sure that I can help you, but I'm happy to talk about it. And so often, and I think I did the same sort of thing. I'd love to, you know, find out more because I need to know what's happening.

And try to, 'cause everybody's, especially beginning ones, like what can I do? How do I do this? Like, how do I get out of it? I'm like, I know nothing to be able to answer those questions. Like I will at some point be able to answer those questions, but I don't know now. And so really when I get a first call in any case, and this case was very similar to that, it's like, I need to know a lot more very, very quickly. And so I think we set up a meeting the next day for me to meet with your dad, meet your mom, and then kind of get the download about the case. And I got that over the next couple of days. We talked to the attorneys who did the trial.

to try to figure out what had actually happened. Because, you know, you guys have lived that for years. I've known about it for 30 minutes. Yeah. You know, I mean, I knew the headlines. I knew there was a case out there because, you know, if you're a criminal defense lawyer, you know, generally these bigger cases are going on. But until you go to get the call and have to like dig deep into it, like, you know.

I know nothing. And at first though, you did say like you looked at it and you were like, Oh, well they were found guilty. But the more you looked into it, the more you were like, yeah. Cause I think you look when, you know, if you don't know anything about the case, you just know the headlines. Um,

You think, all right, well, I would assume they've done things right. It's really hard to overturn a guilty verdict on every count. Both your parents are convicted. So, you know, the jury didn't like show leniency against one. It looks really tough. And the numbers would say you've got a like general like across the board, you've got a 5% chance of winning. And so looking at that, you know, if I'm a surgeon and my patient's got a 5% chance of living, I'm not going to be like, hey, guys, great news. The surgery is going to go wonderfully. Right.

And so it's certainly expectation was I'm not going to be able to help. I also feel like in this line of work, lawyers charge so much money in our firm and no exception, like it's expensive to do what we do that it is really irresponsible to just take money based on promises of what we can do. And so I think this case, like a lot of high profile cases, a lot of lawyers want to get involved. A lot of lawyers get called. There's tons of people trying to find lawyers, but

And I think it really helped my connection with your parents that I was very sober about the consequences and was not coming in there on day one being like, I'm going to be a miracle worker and get this done. Because that's just not the reality for most people.

A lot of people want to know how they could help. How can civilians stop things like this from happening? What can you do now? Is there petitions you can sign? What can people who are unaffected by the judicial system or the corruption in it right now do to help, or is there anything? Yeah, I think the question is how can a listener, a fan, or somebody who is just kind of waking up to some of these systemic problems with criminal justice, what can they do to change things? How can they help?

And I think the first thing is one, thank you for being here because you need allies, we need allies. And two is, a lot of this is happening locally. So I think figuring out in your own community who the players are, like who is the district attorney? You probably don't know his or her name.

They have a huge impact on your fellow citizens in your county where you are. Who's the U.S. attorney for that district? What is their reputation? How does their office work? And try to see locally first, are there sort of controversies or things that are specific to your region that need volunteers, that need advocates for? Because I guarantee you, once you start looking, you'll see this issue or that issue pop up in literally every state, in every judicial district, there's going to be an issue like that. I think particularly with the Chrisleys,

It's continuing to show up and be supportive of the family. I, you know, even things as silly as just telling your friends or generally, you know, the social media, um,

you know, echo chamber because, you know, judges are people too. And I think as a case gets more high profile, shining a light on a case helps things sort of resolve the way they should. And so, you know, the Department of Justice is at some stage a political entity. And so if they know a lot of people are really upset about how it's gone down, you know, that sort of scrutiny is important. The Bureau of Prisons, same thing. If they know a lot of people are watching what's happening, it is going to affect how they respond.

And so I think just general, like staying vigilant of these things and making it clear that you are watching, whether it's just liking something or, you know, again, sharing it to other people, general public awareness is really critical. And just standing up for what

what's right at the end of the day, stand up for what's right. Don't be afraid to stand up. And a lot of times you're going to lose a lot of people along the way because I have felt it firsthand, but also you can sleep better at night when you know I'm standing for what's right. I'm standing up for other people. And with our family, like we said in March, when we have the hearing and you get to argue, it's open court. So anyone can show up. Sure. Pack the courtroom. Yeah. Pack the courtroom. Stand outside.

And I think like, it doesn't mean that you have to not believe in the system period, but I think you have to be nuanced and understand where its failures are. And, um,

I think that sort of recognition is a really powerful thing. So a lot of this interview, Savannah, people are used to seeing you on camera during all of your other interviews. You're very high energy. You like turn it on, but that's definitely not like what you're giving off right now. What are you feeling like reliving and talking through all of this? Cause you look tired. You look sad. Like, what do you feel like? You're like, thanks. You look terrible. And you got bad.

- That's such a guy comment, to be like, "You look tired." - Smile more, Savannah, smile more. - Your demeanor is different than what people are used to seeing. Like, what are you feeling? - Yeah, I think just talking about the best way to say it is when you see your name on a piece of paper,

Basically, the Chris Lee's verse, the United States of America. But it just automatically you have this heavy sense of automatic defeat. And even in what we're in now, there's a huge level of defeat and not knowing if we're going to come out of it, not knowing. I mean, heck, you look at it. And if my dad stays in prison for his length of time, he's almost 70 years old.

Like, so when you look at it that way and you hear these lengths of time and you hear the injustices that have occurred, because if the government can 110% say, give us all the evidence and say, look, they did what we said they did. Okay.

You know what? Then fine. Suffer the consequences for it. But they can't do that. And the government, there was so much overreach. There were laws that they had broken, but they're allowed to. And that's the tough part. In their minds, they're allowed to. So I think sitting here talking and rehashing all of it and realizing that there's two kids at home that are waiting for mom and dad to come home.

It's the holidays right now. It's I'm doing it all on my own. It is exhausting. I worked all weekend, all last week. And so it just doesn't stop. So I think definitely my demeanor is different. And also, I'm

I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. If I'm sitting here in a happy mood, then people are going to be like, oh. Why is she so happy? Her parents are in prison. Exactly. Or you're arrogant. You don't think they did what people say they did, whatever it may be. So I think just, I try to just handle it with the facts that we've found and that we have instead of being this like happy-go-lucky, this is what's going to happen. And I think it's not fair to you and certainly not to the kids that that sort of

of the effect of all this, right? - Yeah. - But it's where you are and I think your, I mean, your resilience is impressive. I wish you didn't have to be so resilient. And it's just, it's a sad state of affairs. The government has enormous power and they don't often see people as humans. And that's what I say is-- - And that's what I say is-- - You're at the end of that. - For anyone watching, you're one bad decision, one bad prosecutor, one bad judge away from

This being your life. Yeah, from just a terribly different circumstance. Yeah. We hope these last two episodes have been extremely informative and I hope you take it and you've learned something from it and can implement it in your life. But don't forget to like, subscribe and follow our channel so that you can stay up to date on all the latest news.

Listen up, campers. It's time to buckle up, pitch a tent, and take a hike. This is Camp Counselor's Podcast. With Zachariah Porter. And Jonathan Carson. Consider this podcast your new favorite variety show. Where the badges mean nothing. And the drama means everything. Is this podcast even about camping? No, but it is camp.

We cover everything. I have a theory that a chicken finger is the perfect chaser for a tequila shot. No, because at the end of the day, I was a child actor who fell victim to an audition scam. I'm going to be vulnerable for a second. Have you ever had to shop in a Husky section at a department store? Then I don't want to hear it. Honestly, I can't talk about this anymore. I'm overstimulated and I'm bloated.

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