Talk To My Lawyer: feat. Alex Little (Todd & Julie's Lawyer)
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On today's episode of Unlocked, we have Alex Little. Welcome. Thank you. Okay, so today's episode, we're going to clear up a lot of things. We're going to talk about the appeals process, our appeal, what got us here, where we see it going, and take it step by step because there's a lot of misconceptions about what's going on, what got us here, all the things. So I think starting out, you came on the case.

When was it? Yeah. So I started representing your mom and dad in June of last year, like a week after the verdict when they got convicted. I remember. So I... I barely saw you. You kind of floated in and out there. Yeah. Well...

do you remember when I called you the first time? Yeah. And I was like, who is this? Yeah. Yeah. So I remember calling you the first time and it was right after the verdict came down and I was in the car headed back to Nashville. I don't even remember driving home. You were like, what can we do? What can we do? And I'm like, who is this? And what can we do about what? Literally. Cause I got your name and number from a friend of mine and he got it from another friend. And they were like, if my life is,

Was on the line. This is the guy would call and nobody's happy to call me, right? It's like nobody's like great. Let's call Alex No, and I called you and I just remember you telling me about other cases You had success on and I just I don't know I had a feeling I was like, all right, let's do it and we met your dad like the next day Yeah, you came to the house and I think I was you know at that stage in

you know, I look at the case, they've lost every count. It wasn't really close. It wasn't as if they, you know, won some, lost some. And you see a celebrity and the sort of accusations that were made and you think, this is going to be tough. And I remember sort of telling your dad that before I knew anything about the case, that this is going to be tough. And...

Then as we started to dig into this I mean there was some real problems with the way this case happened at trial With what was done to your parents with the sort of evidence that was admitted the way the judge handled things and we've raised You know all of that now

Over the last year and we're sort of building towards what we hope is a successful conclusion But as you've seen, you know a lot of this about the court system doesn't always go the way it should yeah Things are stacked against defendants whether you are a celebrity whether you have tons of money whether you have no money You know, the system is stacked against defendants. Yeah, so When you can't it's crazy. You said June. Yeah, it's been a year a year. I

- That's insane. I can't, it feels like everything. - So compressed. - Yeah, there's been so much going on. So when, and then the judge allowed them to self-report, but which I say was a blessing. I say regardless of how the case turned out, like I thank her for that. I thank her for giving us those additional months that we got before they left. 'Cause we got to have a last holiday together. We got to do all these things. So for that, I'm grateful.

And explain that process because some people didn't understand that. Yeah, so I mean, in the criminal justice system, and we'll talk specifically about the federal courts, which is where your parents were tried.

When you're convicted, the jury returns a verdict. That's sort of a point in the process, but it's by no means the end. At that point, the judge sets sentencing, and sentencing can be months and months away. Generally, if you have been allowed to be out on release, not locked up during your trial, they let you stay out on release until you get sentenced. Even then, there's a process between sentencing and when you actually show up to the jail you have to go to where they can leave you out on the streets under the same conditions until you show back up.

Generally, both as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney, I mean, I kind of want people, we shouldn't be putting people in a restricted situation like custody, like prison, until there's really a need for it. Mm-hmm.

We're talking about here, you know, the accusations against your parents were fraud, bank fraud, things about taxes. None of that harms people physically, right? Your parents aren't a danger. And so I think as a society, we should not be throwing those people in jail until like we're at the end of the process and they say, okay, that's it.

- Because guess what? It cost you money, taxpayer dollars. - 100%, you're paying tons of money to put people in prison. As a country, when people actually look at the statistics of the money we spend on prisoners, it's not rehabilitating them, it's not doing anything to help our country. It's punitive. And some people think that's good, we wanna punish these people in a really mean way, but it destroys families. Think about for y'all's family, what it's been like even just to communicate with people in prison.

Most of the time, you have to pay like hundreds of dollars a month for phone calls with people in prison, which is insane. You can be locked up, but, you know. People, that's their income. Like, that's a whole other business is the way, speaking over the phones, because if it's a private phone line, whatever it is, they're making so much money. Yeah, there are companies who are out there who are charging like, you know, multiple dollars per minute for a phone call. Mm-hmm.

And we're just exploiting those prisoners and nothing about that makes us safer nothing about that, you know improves anything about and during hours I remember because you were there during the whole time I remember when we went for sentencing that morning We all met in the cafeteria area and you were like, all right, this is how it's gonna go They're probably gonna be taken here work then be transported. You're not gonna hear from them for days. Yeah, they took off their wedding rings and

you prepared us all for that because we all thought that's what was going to happen. And the prosecutors were asking for it. You know, they asked when the guilty verdict came down. - Which is absurd. Let's just be out there. It was an absurd request to be like, these guys have to go to jail now. And it sort of shows you like, I mean, I have been colleagues with prosecutors who were fantastic, who like do their job ethically and well and have the right priorities.

there's a whole lot of people in these positions of power who don't have the right priorities and are not proceeding in a manner that's ethical. And I think you see some of that in some of the choices that are made in cases across the country. So when you talk about these prosecutors and being ethical and things of that nature, obviously we raise one of those concerns in our appeal. Yeah. One of the issues in the brief is that we have alleged that the prosecutors here knew that one of the witnesses was going to testify in a manner that was misleading.

and that she did so, and they did nothing to correct it. And so that's gonna be one of the center pieces of the appeal because that's not supposed to happen, right? As a prosecutor, if you have a witness who you know, maybe they're not gonna lie outright, but they're gonna give an answer that people would construe in a manner that's misleading, that's not proper. You're not supposed to do that. Here we have pages and pages of affidavits and motions that suggest that's exactly what happened on some really critical issues about whether or not your parents owed certain taxes. This was a tax case.

And that's when we hope that the appeals court takes seriously. And at one point, didn't we call that out? And didn't they state that it was a harmless error? Well, so one of the things they said was, yeah, no big deal, no harm, no foul. They also said, well, it was technically correct, which is to me sort of an admission, right? If you say, well, yeah, maybe misleading, but technically it's correct. You're acknowledging that the way it actually was interpreted wasn't correct. Right. Yeah.

They've made various arguments as to why it doesn't matter. We think it does. Well, because they started the trial off with...

The tax case. Yeah, they wanted to show, hey, these folks don't pay their taxes. Yeah, so they used the tax case in order to build or assassinate their character to build their bank fraud. In part because they had no real evidence of the bank fraud except for this one witness who admitted over and over and over again on the stand that he had lied, he had lied, he had lied. And he got away with, he admitted stealing, was it five million, seven million? I don't know the exact number, but he admitted taking personally millions of dollars from

And he got away scot-free. I mean, people in that position, I think...

As defense attorneys, one of the things our job is to do is to help a jury understand that there are reasons people lie. People lie to get out of trouble. People lie to make money. And in this circumstance, I think our position was, and the other lawyer's position at trial was that Mark Braddock was lying because he was trying to get out of trouble. Exactly. And that's what people don't understand. So Mark Braddock was dad's former business partner. Yep.

And he was cooperating with the government from day one. Right. And by cooperating, just to be clear what that means is he got a deal where they said, we don't care that you've stolen millions of dollars. We're not going to charge you with anything. You're never going to spend an hour in prison as long as you go to trial and say what we want you to say.

Yeah. That's what you mean by cooperating. Exactly. That's how bad it is. Yeah, that's how bad it is. Because you look at cooperation as a good thing, but when it's handled this way, not at all. Well, look, I mean, like, I mean, you know, putting my prosecutor hat on, there are times when you prove crimes, you have to put on people who have committed crimes. That's pretty standard. Generally, you don't let them get away with it without any penalty. And generally, you want to have some sort of corroboration or documents or something that substantiates what they say. You know, neither of those things happened here.

Yeah. And so and that's the biggest thing is the fact that they had their they have one witness and that was Mark Braddock. That was it. I mean, yeah. And Betty Carter. For all of the bank fraud counts, the only thing they relied upon to show that your parents knew that any of these things were mistaken was this witness, Mark Braddock.

And that to me was the craziest thing of the whole trial. How we're going to believe everything this man says. And he's sitting here admitting to signing documents,

Hacking into emails servers stealing stuff. It was crazy to me Yeah, there was lots of things that they sort of brought out at trial that he had done that was not very, you know Ethical or honest and I think that the reason we have a jury is generally we asked the jury you're supposed to sort this out figure out when people are telling the truth figure out when they're not and Here I think one of the issues that came up and we sort of raised is the prosecutors tried to you know

raise all these other issues and sort of throw as much as they could at your parents to make them just look bad, to be unsympathetic. Because if there's somebody you think is greedy or they're not kind or they're mean, you as a juror, if you're sitting there trying to judge, you're more likely to believe, oh, they're probably liars too. Yeah. Right. Well, that,

That was my biggest thing was when they started off the trial, despite political beliefs, when they, the prosecutors started the trial, they said, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what we have here are the Trumps of the South. Right. Now, if you're, if you're going strictly off of evidence, why do you have to use such a

a term that you know is going to cause outrage in Fulton County, Georgia. Well, that's the only reason you do it, right? I mean, you know, prosecutors, part of their job and my job when I did it was to try to get the jury on your side. This prosecutor, if you look what he says in the transcript, repeatedly talks about greed and how, you know, making comments about your dad's fashion choices and the money they were spending to sort of

say, oh, these people are rich, they don't deserve any sympathy, they don't deserve your consideration. And ultimately, we think they didn't deserve the verdicts that they got, but the jury's like, okay, you've muddied them up enough. - And too, when you speak of the jury, I don't think people realize how important that job is. - Oh, it's incredibly important. - Because I saw how these jurors took it so just nonchalant. And two days in, one of them, after the fact, you know,

they were interviewed two days in and they were like, oh, they're guilty. I need to get home. I have a baby shower I need to go to. Yeah. I mean, look, it's a huge imposition on these people, right? A multi-week trial. You're pulling people out of their jobs, their lives. They don't want to be there. Yeah.

And people can react to that in different ways. People can be like, I'm mad because it's your fault that we're here. And they blame the defendants for making them be here. Some folks take it really seriously and are diligent about it. If you don't get the right mix and you never really know ahead of time, it can not go well. Yeah. Cause I feel like it, to me, that whole thing, I was like,

This is mind blowing. I was like, first of all, this is nothing like Law and Order. No. I could not. I can't watch that show anymore now. I'm like, this is not real. This is not real. This is not real. This gives me anxiety. Can't do it. Yeah. Yeah. So the whole jury thing, I was like, people don't realize this is the rest of someone's life.

that you're deciding on. Yeah, I think they also don't know. I mean, the jury has no idea what the sentences can be. They don't get a-- there's some states, like used to be in Tennessee, that the jury would help decide the sentence, which I think in some ways is more fair because the jury hears and they go, OK, well, yeah, they're guilty, but like, let's give them a year in jail. Yeah. The federal system is not like that at all. They have no idea of sort of what the potential consequences of the guilty verdict are. Well, do you remember what the questions were? Was it in the transcripts of what the questions were the jurors asked?

They asked a number of sort of questions at the end, some of which were head scratching because-- - You're like, is the indictment-- - Evidence. - Evidence. - Right, no, and it's not.

That's what's deciding your future. Right. So you do get questions back from the jury and it's a lawyer like, wow, that's even the judge left field. Even the judge was like, I, I don't even know how to answer this. But like, imagine that you go to like the shopping mall for the few malls we have left and go to like the food court at the mall, right. Or go to Green Hills mall and like walk around. You pick 12 people who are like in the line, the cash register next to you. Those are the folks who are going to decide your fate.

Sometimes that works out well. Sometimes that 12 is probably not the 12 you'd want deciding life or death. I mean, you know, that's one of the things that since I've moved as a defense lawyer and I've seen wrongful convictions because there are dozens and dozens and dozens of wrongful convictions. We're learning more and more about that. Well, what's the statistic on that? Isn't it? I want to say it's like one in 20 criminal cases result in a wrongful conviction. You know, I think there's studies who have suggested that's as high as it is. I think we know a lot more about kind of murder cases because they're more high profile.

And there have been hundreds and hundreds of murder cases alone. So don't even think about like lower level crimes where they've got the wrong guy. And what does that say about a system where the most serious crime with the most serious penalties in some states death, we're getting it wrong pretty regularly. We're getting it wrong pretty regularly. I had a client spend 13 years in jail for a murder that he did not commit.

And he gets out in his 30s. You've just taken his 20s away. And what is it? What's the max that you get for wrongful conviction? In Tennessee, in the state court. You don't get anything in federal court. In state court, the most you get is a million bucks. For 30 years of your life. You get less than minimum wage for every hour you spend in that jail. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. So that's the thing is the wrongful convictions. And that's like stuff that they, I think the jury's like, oh gosh, it's a murder case, just take it seriously. If they're like, oh, who cares about banks or taxes? Okay, yeah, they're guilty. I mean, you will get juries who will do that. Again, some take it very seriously. But I think we...

the extent to which those decisions are being made in a thoughtful fashion. Yeah, 100%. And so with the appeal, there's this big misconception of it's over. No, it hasn't even started. Thank you. So when bond pending appeal was denied, there was this whole

misconception that like, all right, appeals denied. Yeah. All that happened there is we'd asked the court to allow your parents to stay at home, not go to prison until their appeals decided. It's kind of like what I talked about before. There's, you know, there's arguments on different sides as to when you should start the sentence and when you shouldn't.

Here, no appellate judge has reviewed any of the arguments we've raised. That hasn't happened yet. That's what we're doing now. And so that other issue is just a question of when they're supposed to start their prison sentence. The government hasn't even filed the response to our appeal yet. They've asked for more time once, more time twice. That's going to happen now in two weeks. And so we'll see in two weeks what the government's answer to these issues might be. And so in two weeks, when they respond, that's...

point we will have our final response yeah we'll get another reply to the response and get to sort of say great government here's why you're wrong okay and how long will we have to do that two weeks maybe an additional two that's right maybe ask for more but no I mean generally when you got again you have clients who are in jail you want to you know move quickly yeah well and that's the thing is obviously they don't want to be there right but

The government keeps extending, extending, extending. So that's the longer they have to sit there. Right. So what is what does the process look like once we. So the government will file the response. We filed our brief. We've said these convictions are improper. There was errors and we've done that for both your parents. That was done now, gosh, almost two or three months ago.

the government will file its response to our arguments. They'll do that in two weeks. And then we'll sort of reply to that. Once all those papers are into the court, it'll get randomly assigned to three judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. And this is the part where it's a random assignment.

And who you get as a judge can sometimes determine the outcome of your case because judges, they're not all the same. They have different backgrounds. They have different interests. They care about different aspects of the law. And so we'll get three of that panel of judges, and those three judges will review the papers. They'll decide whether they want to hear oral argument, which means I have to stand up and the government stands up and makes a presentation to them. Mm-hmm.

And then at some point after that, they will internally make a decision. They'll then write that decision out. And then anywhere from a month to a year later, they'll issue an opinion.

So is there a chance that they could say, I don't want oral arguments? There's a chance. It's pretty regular in a case like this with a lot of issues and some substantive claims that we've made. It would be unusual for them to say, no, we don't want an oral argument. And what are the claims that we've made for people that don't understand? OK, why are you asking for an appeal? Yeah, so.

There's a couple different attacks on the case. As I said at the beginning, like when I first got into this, I just assumed, well, they're probably in a bad spot. And then you dig in and like there's this issue and that issue. But the primary two, we'll talk about those two first. The first is that there was a witness who the government knew based on a whole variety of factors we've discussed in our brief.

had certain information about taxes, that they had been paid and that there was no outstanding tax balance. She then testifies contrary to that and says, "Oh no, no, taxes are due for those years."

which wasn't true. And we assert that not only wasn't true and she knew it wasn't true, but the government knew it wasn't true. And they let her testify this way anyway. And they did that because they wanted the jury to believe that your parents still, even after all these years, hadn't paid those taxes to sort of dirty them up. So that's a violation of the constitution. You can't, as a prosecutor, put on a witness you know is not gonna tell the truth.

and if it affects the trial. And here there's a whole host of ways we think it affected the trial by making your parents look greedy and not truthful and all those things. - And like they don't have to pay taxes like the normal American. - Right, they should get a new trial. So that's kind of the first issue. The second is,

I don't think people know this, but this whole case started because of an illegal search of a warehouse that your parents had in Georgia. That was done by the Georgia Department of Revenue where essentially they pretended to have a warrant. They go in there. I'm not just saying this, the federal courts already found this, that they illegally searched the place, took everything out of it. In the US, most people know you have to get a warrant to go search places. There's some exceptions, but generally, if I'm gonna go bust into your house or bust into your business,

I need to have a judge say that's okay. Well, they didn't do that. They just wanted to bust into your parents' warehouse. They did. They took all this stuff and they later handed it to the FBI. And that was found to be unconstitutional. And there was a whole hearing about it, violated the Fourth Amendment. The problem is that evidence that they collected was then used to build the rest of the case. They then used it to find other documents or to sort of talk to witnesses.

And you're not supposed to do that. Because that's, they consider that- The fruit of the poisonous tree. Exactly. The fruit of the poisonous tree. Because they would not- And two, our argument is-

We don't know what was in that warehouse, what was placed in that warehouse. We don't know if any of those things are factual. We don't know any of that. Yeah, and so if any of that evidence comes in or any of the fruits of that evidence comes in at trial, you violated the Fourth Amendment and that should be thrown out. And there was a judge, there was a magistrate judge, correct, that ruled that none of this was allowed in at trial. Yeah, and so the government's argument was, well, we're not putting any of that evidence in.

And the rest of the stuff is fine. We can get into it. And this judge just never really, she never answered that question. She said, oh, it's too late to worry about it. We've got to rush to trial. And it never got adjudicated. And that was...

- That was a tough thing because like you said, it was illegally seized. How are you going to be using these? I remember, 'cause we had a, it was a hearing like a week before trial, right? - Yep. - To where she allowed all that evidence in. - Yeah, without even the government having to put a hearing on or prove that it had got this stuff properly. And so we think that's a very strong argument. Generally, you're not allowed to take stuff that's unconstitutionally seized, use it to build your case,

And then when the defendant raises, oh, there's a problem with it, you know, let it in. But that's what happened here. Okay. So we've got that. We've got the IRS agent on the stand. Then there's sort of some more technical arguments, like the whole tax case, the whole theory that your parents weren't paying taxes because they use what's called a loan out company. This is absolutely sort of like. Yeah. Let's go through this about.

hiding money. How you... Yeah, so... That was the biggest thing at trial was that dad was trying to hide money through this loan out company. Well, it's sort of... I don't know the way to say it other than stupid. Yeah.

Because it's clear the prosecutors, the agents, the judge, none of them had any experience or sort of knowledge of how the entertainment industry works. Yeah. So as you know, when you have a TV show or you have a production company or you're a musician, you have what's called a loan out company. It is a personal company. It's called Savannah LLC. Right. And if you want to have a contract with the network, the network contracts not with you, Savannah, personally, but with your loan out company. Mm hmm.

And it pays whatever it's going to pay you for that show to the loan out company. The loan out company has employees. You're one of the employees. And, you know, maybe your daughter, maybe your sister is. Maybe, you know, if you had kids, your kids would be who do different things within the company. And that is not only normal. It is required by most of the networks, if not all of them, for structuring any deal in entertainment. Yep. The government here argued that that was tax evasion.

And then they sort of press as to why it was tax evasion. They said, well, when the network sent the check, they said this check is for Todd, Todd Grisley, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Right. I mean, OK, the network knows they're paying the loan out company. They know that Todd and his whole family are part of the check says Todd. And then it has the loan out company underneath it. That's exactly right. So, you know, it's an example where.

And it's sort of one of my biggest pet peeves about criminal law is like sometimes the details don't matter. The government has a theory, they go with it, nobody really checks, nobody really thinks about it. At no point in trial did the government ever explain how that was illegal, and yet they told the jury it was. At no point did the judge go, stop, wait a minute, what exactly is improper about this? Never happened. - No, that never happened. And so also another issue that's raised really more so in moms

Is what, how many counts of bank fraud? Seven? Oh, well, it's raised in both. So there's six, seven counts of bank fraud for alleged fraud against banks that never testified. Yeah. Like that didn't bring any witnesses in. I mean, such like, I think when you tell the public that, so they alleged, the government alleged that your parents defrauded banks. None of those banks were there. None of those banks records were there. No. They had records that Braddock said he sent to the banks. Yeah.

But it's like, well, did the bank ever get them? What did the bank think about them? Did the bank throw them in the trash? Did the bank say, oh, we're going to get none of these. I mean, do they give loans? If so, how much was the loan? None of this came in because it was just the government piling on and they didn't, they didn't care about the details. No, there was never one person from the FDIC to show up and say, well, from those, those banks, there was, you know, I think six, maybe there was a few, but my thing is even the government's own witness from a

from a bank said, you know what? In 2008, when everything crashed and burned and the world was on fire, you know, everyone was throwing us our loans back saying, good luck. Don't know what to tell you. They were like, Todd Chrisley did everything he possibly could to try to make us whole. Yeah. And they did deals to sort of continue it on it. You know,

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And that to me is the biggest thing because we've all been a part of all of the government corruption that's been going on and that has been going on. You have the FBI whistleblowers and they talk about how the FBI works and how they were giving cash to bring in more cases and all the things that happened. But we have seen it firsthand. I mean, with the Georgia Department of Revenue and everything that happened there and the

They fired this man for lying on his application. That was what they fired him for. That's what they used to fire him. Well, I think I'd say this about general, like the problems you're facing in terms of larger corruption. That a lot of times I have clients who are, you know, they're in real estate or they're in banking or they're a lawyer, they're a doctor and they never think that this could happen to them. Yeah. Until it happens.

And they go, I haven't been paying attention. Like, is it really this bad? We're like, yeah, no, it's this bad. That's what I say. I say I am the poster child for being tone deaf to the system. Yeah. Cause you would never before this happened, have any idea how bad it was. No, you would never have any idea. And we've seen it firsthand. It's like, how do you get away with these things?

And now even... And look, I don't want to interrupt, but there are people who deserve to be prosecuted. There are people who deserve to be in jail. There are bad folks out there in the world. But there is such a danger that things can be politicized. There's such a danger that people can be targeted for reasons that have nothing to do with sort of the harm they may have caused society. People get passes because of who their friends are. And people get prosecuted because of who their friends are. And if you ignore that, I think you're just being like...

purposely ignorant about what actually happens. Yeah, because, and that's the sad part is I was grown up to love and respect the United States of America. Like you love your country. You love the people that fight for your country. And I am still that the people that are fighting for our country, I have the utmost respect for. But when you see your name on a piece of paper, the United States of America versus Todd and Julie Chrisley, you have a different perspective.

level of respect at that point. And when you start seeing... When you are the subject of the government's wrath. Yeah. And when you start seeing it, you start to have a different level of respect. I think that being on the inside, so when I was a prosecutor and before that, I sort of worked in the intelligence community.

you realize very quickly, you sort of take off the rose-colored glasses that the decisions that the government makes, the United States, they're all made by people. And people have a host of frailties, insecurities,

you know, issues with their mental stability. I mean, people do things for all sorts of reasons and they're not perfect. And when you put a government of not perfect people together, you don't get perfect. You get a jumble of not perfect. Yeah, exactly. I think what there's also been a huge comparison, our case,

Jen Shaw. Oh, and like the difference in like sentences or charges and all those things. Yeah. So you have our case, Jen Shaw and Elizabeth Holmes with Theranos. So those are the three that have happened around this time. Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to 11 years and had her restitution was 235 million, I think, and had how many victims?

They were large numbers. I mean, large dollar amounts for sure. Yeah, large. So you had that. You had Jen Shah who had hundreds of victims, whatever it was. But the sentencing...

The sentencing doesn't add up across the board with all three. No, your parents got treated more harshly because they were more disliked by the people who were doing the meeting out of, by the prosecutors were being more harsh towards them and the judge levied a more harsh sentence for sure. Yeah. And that's what people don't realize is where there has to be reform in this area because there's not, how is, how do you justify reform?

These sentences with you have someone who had $235 million worth of fraud, someone with an alleged $17 million worth of fraud. But yet that person gets more than the $235 million. But I think, you know, it's difficult to sort of you have different judges, you have different prosecutors. It's really going to be hard to say there's ever going to be fairness there. Yeah. But you can ask yourself, why in the world is anyone going to jail for 15 years for this? Yeah. Right. I mean, I.

There are people who need to be taken out of society because they are dangerous. And then there's people for whom a whole host of different penalties may be appropriate. Yeah. You know, I'm not to say white collar crime is a problem. People stealing from the government, stealing from other people is a problem. But when you take people out of the society for 15 years, what exactly is the benefit you're achieving? Well, that's my thing. What exactly do you think you're getting? You're now...

You're not getting any taxes from this person. Oh, yeah. There's no economic benefit for sure. There's no economic benefit at all. They can't work. They can't pay taxes. They can't pay you back what you say they owe. Oh, and it's just pure punishment. It's like we can't paddle folks. So we're going to paddle them through keeping them in jail longer and longer and longer. Yeah. And we're going to keep that conditions in jail to be such that it's as punitive as possible. I mean, there's nothing about our system that's rehabilitative. No. No.

There's nothing about our system that is at all restorative. It doesn't bring any help to the, I mean, I represent victims of crime as well in certain situations. Nothing about our system actually serves victims either. It's a really twisted set of priorities where, you know, if somebody thought through this and they thought this was the best outcome, I'd love to have that discussion. I would love. I would, because I'm open to it. I'm open to hearing other points of view on why they think this.

'Cause I'm in the process, I'm working on a letter to send to a few people and it says, "If you wanna convict my parents, "convict them on the truth, on the evidence. "But don't do it off of your Trumps of the South and." - Well, we have two separate issues. I think one here is they got a bad shake with the way the court ran the trial.

the, you know, some of the evidence introduced against them, as we talked about the testimony, we think it's pretty clearly not true. Yeah. And then you have a whole separate question, which is if,

If it were true and they had done these things is the sentence at all appropriate, right? The sentence is you know a day in prison for something you didn't do is not appropriate Yeah, but if you did do this crime like what would be the appropriate sentence? Is it 15 years? I don't think so. But we have such a bias against like you've committed a crime We don't care about you anymore. I mean in some some of these states in the federal system. You've been to these prisons They're not great. They are luxurious compared to state prisons. Yeah, which I literally could not imagine

Well, I think that like it is there's a couple groups here in Tennessee that are Christian groups that sort of minister to people in prison and I think they look around and they go like this is not how we're supposed to be treating the least of us No, right It's we are just taking a whole swaths of people and saying you don't deserve to be treated like a human. Yeah, and that's

There's nothing about that which is worrier. - That's why when I tell you the amount of comments I've gotten from people who are like, "Oh, what? You're griping about their conditions and where they're at?" Like, they deserve to be treated like dogs. - That's like, how does that make sense? We deserve to like, should we just torture everybody again? Take it back to the old days? Throw you in the dungeon? I mean, I think that people, again, it's like in our society, we don't do a great job of recognizing everybody's human. And we're all people, we're all God's children.

And yet some folks we just don't think deserve even the least. No, no, it's absolutely insane. And so you talk about the facilities. Can we please talk about how dad is not sitting up there eating fillets? No, no, it's there's nothing about federal prison that would make you want to stay. He's not living in the four seasons. He is not. No, thank you. And your mom is not either. No, I mean, it's awful. And where I was going to go, though, with their cases, also with moms in particular, though,

Please explain how, what there was to connect her to any of this bank fraud. Nothing. She was your dad's wife. That was pretty much it. There was, what's her name on one? No, the bank fraud testimony about her, that's one of the things we've raised in the appeal, was I think at one point Mark Braddock said, oh, well, she knew some stuff. And he didn't say what it was. Yeah. And he didn't say when it was. And he didn't say what it related to in terms of any of the charges. Yeah.

And, you know, you sometimes see this where prosecutors will charge a spouse to try to exert maximum pressure on the other spouse to plead guilty. And they did that. And they did that. And they got their scalp. And I hope they can sleep all night because it's it's not the sort of thing that I think makes a lot of sense. Your mother, your mother is not a criminal mastermind. No, no, it's absolutely insane. The fact that there was nothing to tie her to it, but yet she's married to him. They were going after her simply to get him to fold.

Yeah, it was. It was interesting. Yeah, it was the craziest thing I've ever seen. So also to this $17 million that everyone is so consumed with. First off, it went from 36. The government's first allegation was, oh, there's $36 million of loss. Okay. And now it's down to 17. Yeah. Is what they have said it is, which we obviously know is not the truth. But during the sentencing hearing, they submitted this statement.

table that they created in Excel that shows what the loss was and what date the loan was obtained and what date apparent fraudulent documents were obtained. And the fraudulent documents were obtained allegedly after

The loan was already obtained. Explain this. So their theory was, well, sometimes a lot of these loans, which is one of the things that we point out in our appeal, they're not actually loans. They're lines of credit. So you have this line of credit that's open. It can be extended over a period of years. It's not like a mortgage or it's not like a car loan. And the problem was they didn't have the actual underlying loan documents. And they're like, that's okay. We don't actually need... So...

All that information in the original loan documents is probably correct, probably real. And when it was renewed, they said, oh, the renewal had some information that wasn't correct.

Now, the problem with that is if you go to the bank and you get a loan and you apply for the loan, they give you that loan based on what your financial situation is the day that you get it. Yeah. Right? And they've already taken the money. The money's already out the door that day. So, a year later, if they say, okay, we don't want to call the loan yet, so give us some new paperwork to document where things are, the most they could do at that point is say, hey, we want you to repay it. But they don't have the money in their bank. It's not sitting there. Yeah. So, they...

You know, that was never really challenged earlier. The government never really explained why that was sufficient for bank fraud when the money's already out the door. Yeah. And they just kind of said, oh, well, you know, we don't have the documents. It's close enough for government work. And that was another thing because you spoke about working something in intelligence before. Yeah, I did that before I was in law school. Okay. So, but...

And at trial, we challenged the FBI agent that was on the stand and said, if all of this information that you're giving us is what you say it is, what steps did you take to get it authenticated? Yeah, there wasn't much. And he was just like, what are you asking me? And he's like, you've got Quantico at your fingertips. Literally, it's the FBI. Why didn't you fly and get all of this evidence authenticated? Okay.

I think that, and I think the answer for many of these sort of situations is they kind of do what they think is enough and they stop. Right. I mean, here there was a whole lot of holes in the government's case. They got the conviction they were after. So I guess from their mind, Hey, we did enough. Yeah. But you know, as a defense lawyer, you want to point out all the things they didn't do. And there was plenty of that. Yeah. There was plenty of that.

And so mom and dad, you actually said you just spoke to them both. I spoke to them today about an hour before this. Yeah. Okay. And obviously there are all these tabloid stories out here from people who think they know the truth that is so far from. I haven't been to the grocery store, so I can't tell you what the tabloid say. Well, you know, online sources, all of these things. Yeah. And.

First off, let me just tell you, just because you are family does not mean you are treated like family and like you know the truth. So that's number one. Second, these sources of saying that dad is just his guilt is eating him alive in prison and he's ready to admit to his faults. Yeah, that's not been my experience talking to him. Yeah.

Not at all. He's focused on, you know, I think, and he knows that I'm here doing this. It's not, you know, he's fine with me talking. Your mom is too. It's not any of this confidential. You know, I think he is doing what he needs to do to be a good model prisoner and to get along with the folks he's there with the people who have to become your friends and part of your community.

But he's focused on what he needs to do to win the appeal. He's very focused on what we're doing, when things are happening, keeping track of the process. He knows what our strong arguments are and he checks on those all the time. And your dad is, you know him. He is...

relentlessly optimistic. Yeah. And also he stays on track, right? He's not going to get sort of down in the dumps because this is where we are. We all know the situation is not good. Yeah. You know, the system has taken them to a point and a lot of bad things have happened in their case, but we have an avenue to hopefully get some justice and he's focused on that. But

No, there's nothing about the things that are out there sort of in the press that are all consistent with what I've observed of him and your mother. And it's hilarious because one of them was like, oh, he's let himself go. First off, newsflash, they don't sell hair color in commissary. So of course his hair is gray. But you know what? I would tell him today, like if he was out, keep it that way. Like it looks good. He's got a great prison barber. He's this Puerto Rican guy.

He's very kind. He's got tattoos from his face down. And that's the other thing. It's the biggest misconception of the people in the system. Yeah. There are these horrible people that deserve to be there. And let's just throw them away. Martha Stewart was in federal prison. Right. So just put, put that out there. So if you happen to be in federal prison, the same time at Martha Stewart, the same place, like you got a pretty good roommate. Right. But I think that it's one of the things when, when as a prosecutor, I never really appreciate this. It'd be on the other side of really do that.

when you get into the criminal justice system and if you're guilty it's not a reflection that you are a bad person it's that you've done something you should not have done and if we think about all of us our worst days nobody wants to be remembered for their worst moment and their worst day and

If we all were judged by our worst moments, I mean, it'd be a pretty ugly site. Yeah. It'd be awful. There are plenty of people who make mistakes or, and again, play people who were innocent and didn't make mistakes who are wonderful people who have lots to contribute. And unfortunately they're sort of stuck in this place where all they can do is kind of create a community amongst themselves. Yeah. And you don't have, cause you spoke about our system and how broken it is and how there isn't anything to rehabilitate these people.

No, and they're cut off from their families. And so you have these little communities in each of these prisons that are their own little worlds. And it's just a massive waste of human potential. It is because my thing is, it's why not? Why don't we invest in these people? Why don't we offer them the proper mental health treatment that they need? There's this great chart. And I don't know if you can link to it. I'll send it to you. This chart that shows the...

the people who are not incarcerated, hospitalization for mental health. So like we used to have asylums for mental health hospitals. And the chart from like the 60s to today that shows that basically nobody is in those anymore. And then the corresponding chart for prison. And it literally is, it is a mirror image that we've just taken all the folks who should be in actual places where they're getting treatment for mental health, and we just throw them in jail. And we've said, we don't need to give you any help. We're just gonna put you behind bars.

And it's like it is it is the most shocking graph because that the parallel is so clear and that's not I mean obviously It's not your father's situation. It's not the folks that he's with aren't in there But generally we talk about people who end up in prison Mental health is a huge factor. Well, you look at homelessness Oh, it's just we throw them in arrest you 12 times because you don't have a home You don't have a home because you can't work because you're schizophrenic. You don't have any money for medication. I

There's not a lot of great options there. No, no, there's not. And it's crazy because some of these guys that are there with dad, people, and the biggest misconception is they think,

federal prison oh it's all like white collar crime a camp you're going yeah no no like there's some of the biggest drug dealers some of the biggest like that are sitting there with him because there are plenty of non-violent drug dealers yeah yeah and so they're sitting there with him but to hear their stories of how they had to start selling drugs at the age of 10 years old because they didn't have food because their parents were too high to go out and work for them to get it oh this the cycle is just vicious it's awful it's awful and what's so sad to me

You know, I actually and again, I will never say what am I? Am I right? Am I left? Am I whatever? Like a person that's running or I don't like a person that's running. It doesn't matter. But I was really alarmed at what I heard yesterday because DeSantis is on the trail and spoke heavily against any sort of prison reform, wanting to get rid of the FSA, all of it.

Yeah, no. I mean, some people have decided as a political matter, it makes sense to vilify anybody who's a, who's a criminal or has ever had a criminal conviction and it,

It does. When you play it out, it doesn't help our country any to do this, to take people and put them as positions where they're never going to be contributing parts of society where we're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to feed and house them disconnected from the rest of their community, where their, their children, their siblings are going to lose that connection to them, which is going to cause more and more cycles. And then we haven't talked about veterans. I mean,

In state prison, we've had two wars in my lifetime, three, I guess, if you count both desert storms, right? There's a ton of veterans of those wars who, as we know from the data, have mental health issues for all sorts of reasons, who aren't getting the care they need, who end up on the street, who then end up in prison. I mean, there's a pipeline there that if you want to talk about America not sort of living up to its potential,

You've got somebody who you send away to war. They fight for your freedom. They come back and they end up in prison. Yeah. Which is the opposite of freedom, right? It is the other side of that. And if people don't start taking that seriously, I mean, I think, you know, you know who else has a ton of people in prison? China. We're number one and two. Yep. One and two. And we're ahead and they got a lot more people than we do. Which is, that's what I say. There was a statistic that it was.

We make up the world's largest prison population. Like it's insane. We make up the world's largest land of the free population, which is crazy to me. And it's, and you know, when I say that, like what I said about DeSantis, like there are tons of great things he's done for the state of Florida. Great. But I would love to have a conversation and say, what is your thought process on this? Because now I've experienced it. Like I didn't care about our prison population before. I didn't

Well, he hopes that his voters don't care either. Yeah. And I hope that your, you know, audience cares more than they did before. Yeah. Because it, it, it doesn't affect you until it affects you. Yes. And then it destroys your life. Because you look at the first step act and what people also to please explain another thing.

thing to people that just because you're sentenced to seven years, 12 years, whatever it may be, you're not necessarily serving that amount of time. No. So the federal system got rid of parole. So there's not like a parole is a more random, okay, we'll let you out now. Yeah. But there are things called good time credits and there are ways to get released earlier than your full like length of time. Mm-hmm.

And that kind of makes sense, right? Because if you're in prison, the prison wants to incentivize you to behave well. And so they do that through these good time credits that will then sort of reduce time on the back end. It's not much. Generally, you're going to serve 80, 85% of your sentence, even if you're a model inmate.

But there is sort of a whole mechanism of early release that's just totally handed over to the prison. They say, hey, prison, you do this. Yeah, for sure. Because... So it's Bureau of Prisons in the federal system. Yeah, because... And what people don't realize is the Bureau of Prisons, once you are in their system, you are now a ward of them. You're not...

They can choose to do with you whatever they want to do. They can send you to whatever prison they want They can put you wherever in the prison they want to put you they can you know discipline you with you know some limitations But not much. I mean there's the due process protections are pretty minimal And they do right. I mean, you know, I think they they are in charge and they again You know, I have a there are two types of people who are in jail only one type chose to be there And that's the folks who work there. Yes, and

Sometimes people make that decision because they want to do good and you get folks who are counselors in these prisons and who are wonderful Sometimes you don't and you get people who want to be there for really bad reasons Yeah, when I was federal prosecutor one of things I prosecuted was prison guards bringing contraband into prison happens at every prison in the country and

You've got people breaking the law who are supposed to be in charge of keeping the people who broke the law in prison. It's crazy. The amount of people that have messaged me with information that they have on this happening. About misconduct or all sorts of things. Yeah. And that's what people don't realize, too, is you look.

And of course, whenever you go to the Department of Justice website, you got to go through like 30 different tabs to find what you're looking for when it comes to this. But you can see all of the cases that are out there of guards raping women. Abuse, prison rape. Yeah. I mean, drugs, drug use and drug distribution within prisons. And it goes back to sort of what I said a minute ago, that once we put people there.

We have chosen as a society in America to just say we don't care really what happens. Yeah, and we don't care we're gonna sort of turn a blind eye and And what is what is your if you could say anything to the people that have that mindset because I cannot tell you whenever I mentioned

the facility mom's at and the mold, the asbestos, the no air that it gets to be 110, 115 degrees in there in the summer. And people came at me, she deserves it. Like she should be treated like the animal she is. I think, look, I think if that's the way you view life, one, you're not very Christian, right? It's the opposite of the new Testament.

So, and you may not be Christian if you say that, but if you at all identify with that. I don't think you're human if you say that. Oh, 100%. You're not human. But like, let's just start at the baseline. Like, do you believe in some like moral views about helping those who are the least fortunate? You know, how we treat prisoners says a lot about what we care about as moral beings. Like-

People make mistakes people do horrible things. How do you treat them? Yeah, and It's not even a question of forgiveness It's just a question of basic humanity, you know If you see someone who is on the ground and they are shivering and it's cold and it's winter Do you put a blanket on them or do you just walk on by and I think if you have to ask your question? Well, are they supposed to be there? Do they deserve to be on the ground freezing then you're not human. Yeah, I

You've lost a piece of you somewhere that said, you know If you were a little kid and you saw an animal that needed help you'd help that animal Yeah, but you won't do that for another human when you grow up as an adult. That's that's a really bad It's so disheartening to me it is so disheartening because there are so many people that I'm like if they just had someone to invest in them Oh if they had

someone to invest in them and just say like you are not your mistake or you are not you are not the worst moment of your life exactly God only knows how much more successful we would be and you know obviously we have a new director of the Bureau of Prisons who's an outsider which doesn't happen often yes and doesn't usually end well but we'll see if she breaks the trend we'll see and I say I hope so I watched her swearing in and when I watched it it gave me so much hope

because she was like, we're not referring to these people as prisoners anymore. Like we're not there. They're your neighbors. And that's the thing that people fail to realize is, you know what, if you're not going to do it for these people, do it for yourself.

Because they are going to be let back out into society and they could be living right next door to you. So why would you not want them to have the proper care and education while being imprisoned so that they are better contributing members of society? Oh, there's no reason you wouldn't want that. No, not at all. Okay, so we went through the appeal.

It's not over. It's not even begun yet. It's not even begun. It's the middle way. We haven't, we haven't got, no judge has been looking at it yet. Yeah. So that was the biggest thing I wanted to clear up because we're right in the thick of it right now. And look, it's a, you know, I tell people if you can involve the criminal justice system, the longer you stay in it, the harder it is to win. Right. Like my client who was sitting in jail for 13 years while he was wrongfully convicted of murder, it got harder and harder to get out of that jail as it went along.

Being on appeal means things have not gone your way. It's going to be a hard lift. But in this case, we've got, you know, real legitimate substantive arguments that we think, you know, if a court takes fairly has a very good shot of winning. I mean, it's notable that on this issue about the government putting on a witness to not tell the truth.

they've never really substantively denied the actual facts of this. I mean, one of the things that we raised, and this is a technical point that your audience may not know, but we said that we just wanted a hearing. We wanted to be able to put these people on the stand and ask them what they knew and how this all transpired. The judge didn't let us do it. She's like, nope, I don't want to hear about it.

And so on appeal, one of our main issues is, look, we didn't even get into this and examine it. This is a pretty serious accusation of misconduct and the court just shut it down. Well, the court reprimanded us for even accusing. How dare we have facts that support an argument that the government may have done something wrong. Yeah. I think that's just, if you look around, it happens all the time. It happens.

Not every prosecutor, not the majority of times, but enough that you should probably not think it's impossible. Yeah, exactly. And so how could, if people want to read the briefs that have been filed, how can they do that? We can put a link online. Okay.

Yep. That's what we'll do. We'll put a link in the video. And just download the PDF. They can read them. I mean, it's fairly approachable. I mean, I mean, very much so. We try to make it as straightforward as we can. It's not going to be like super exciting beach reading. No, but it's clear. And hopefully people could understand how we ended up here. Yeah. Because also too, you had a page limit you had to adhere to. Yeah. So, uh, uh,

I think we were like maybe three words under the word count. Yeah. So you have a certain amount of words you had to use them efficiently. Exactly. So both of them are combined. Mom has her appeal. Dad has his, but they, they both sort of, I talked to somebody about this the other day. They, they raise different issues, but they also sort of incorporate the other. Yeah. So dad's brief is kind of like your mom's brief too. Your mom's brief is kind of like your dad's brief too.

Okay. So we will put that link there because I feel like it will really help people. Yeah. The more, you know, and like actually dig into it.

It's not that complicated what we've said has happened and it is that serious. Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you for taking your time today. Absolutely. You were very informative. I'm so excited about this episode because it's been a long time coming for people to actually get some facts from us that are factual, that we have to back it up, that we have to show them. I think that people are so, I mean, the ways we learned about criminal justice are,

are just so bad. Like reporters don't know what's happening and it gets reported so poorly that it's really difficult to get a sense of what's actually happening. So I think it's, you know, the more access to information, the better. Yeah. I love it. And if people are interested, maybe we'll do like a two episode thing where we actually sit down and don't go through questions. We got the questions. Yeah. We can go through questions. They can put their questions or this video. We'll go through questions and actually lay it out.

like show pieces of evidence, show the transcript, all that stuff. Exactly. The transcript, all of it, because at this point they're sitting in prison and now the more people that can listen and gather the facts and

And understand that maybe this did go wrong. Maybe this went really wrong. The better. Yeah. And, you know, again, when I first got this case, I was skeptical. I was like, what am I going to have to work with? And turns out there was a lot there. Yeah. I think there was a point in time. I know at first you were like, oh, God, here we go. Well, I think you don't want to give people false hope. Right. You want to say, listen, like.

nine times out of 10 people lose these appeals. And then you go and you go, wait a minute, like that's an argument you should win. And then the hard part is to explain to people, you know, even though we should win this, a lot of times people don't. And that's, I think the real, what's unfortunate about our system is a lot of times it should go one way and it doesn't. Yeah. Well,

We will see. We will see. We can be optimistic and hopeful and prayful. And exactly. And that's what I say. I have had more people come up to me. Literally there at least once a day, someone comes up to me and says, just want to let you know, I'm praying for you. That's all you can ask. Once literally we were going in Trader Joe's other day, this lady, she didn't even stop. She was walking by and she tapped me on the shoulder. Now she's walking. She just said, I'm praying for you. That was it. And that's what gets you through the day. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you.

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