The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2228 - Josh Dubin

00:00:12.000 What's up?

00:00:12.000 What's up man?

00:00:13.000 Good to see ya.

00:00:15.000 Good to see you.

00:00:16.000 So, I guess we just get right into it.

00:00:19.000 The last case that we talked about, we had a very unfortunate incident happen after the podcast about a month later.

00:00:30.000 The gentleman beheaded somebody.

00:00:35.000 Allegedly, yes.

00:00:37.000 Allegedly.

00:00:38.000 There's a lot of allegedly's, but there's so many crazy things in that case.

00:00:42.000 The craziest thing was him trying to fool the security cameras with a wig.

00:00:47.000 Like, I guess he didn't know how high resolution cameras had gotten over the 25 years that he was in jail.

00:00:54.000 I mean, apparently there's a lot he didn't know.

00:00:57.000 The only reason I say allegedly is because I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I started calling him guilty before he has a trial.

00:01:07.000 Of course.

00:01:08.000 But based on the surveillance...

00:01:09.000 It doesn't look good.

00:01:12.000 What do they say in Texas?

00:01:13.000 It ain't too shiny.

00:01:14.000 Yeah.

00:01:17.000 It's so crazy because, you know, we went out with him that evening.

00:01:20.000 We brought him to the comedy club.

00:01:22.000 He was hanging out with us in the green room.

00:01:23.000 And then the news broke.

00:01:25.000 And then the comics were all like, hey, man, what the fuck?

00:01:28.000 What the fuck are you doing bringing that guy around?

00:01:30.000 I'm like, well, we didn't know.

00:01:32.000 I mean, who could have known he was going to do that other than him?

00:01:40.000 I'm as shocked over it now as I was in the moment.

00:01:46.000 I mean, yeah, I don't...

00:01:49.000 You know, there are no words.

00:01:51.000 I went through...

00:01:52.000 It's really not funny.

00:01:54.000 I mean, I'm only laughing out of sort of nervousness, I guess.

00:01:58.000 Of course.

00:01:59.000 I mean, I was in St. Louis, of all places, which is only memorable because that's where I was when someone called me and said, have you looked at the news?

00:02:12.000 And I said, I was in court, and I was on a break, and...

00:02:18.000 You know, I called him a miracle on this show.

00:02:21.000 Yeah.

00:02:22.000 And the media shoved that straight up my ass.

00:02:26.000 I mean...

00:02:27.000 Of course.

00:02:27.000 But that's what they're going to do.

00:02:28.000 Well, he was the only guy that you had ever brought in that was actually guilty, that you felt was in jail for too long.

00:02:34.000 You know, he got a 50-year sentence, correct?

00:02:37.000 70. 70. And it was reduced to 25?

00:02:40.000 It was just basically time served.

00:02:42.000 He did about 30 years.

00:02:44.000 And they resentenced him.

00:02:45.000 Look, I would be...

00:02:49.000 I've had a lot of time to think about this, and I know you and I have discussed it privately, and I kind of went into a hole after this.

00:03:00.000 This didn't happen to me.

00:03:02.000 A lot of people say, I'm so sorry.

00:03:06.000 But some people have said other things that weren't very nice.

00:03:10.000 But the people that I, you know, regard their opinion were sorry that it didn't happen to me.

00:03:17.000 My first thought was, I had two thoughts, was that poor guy that got killed.

00:03:25.000 And it was a gruesome murder.

00:03:28.000 It wasn't just beheaded.

00:03:29.000 I think he was dismembered completely.

00:03:32.000 Well, he was trying to get rid of the body, right?

00:03:34.000 Allegedly.

00:03:35.000 Allegedly.

00:03:37.000 And my first thought was for him and his family.

00:03:40.000 And then I think my second and third thought maybe in tandem was...

00:03:53.000 This tore down 50 years of work that a lot of people have fought really hard for and really need and I felt like I let you down.

00:04:07.000 You know, you've given us an amazing platform to get stories out for people that really need help.

00:04:14.000 I think we've made I appreciate that you felt like that.

00:04:26.000 It didn't feel like that to me at all.

00:04:28.000 It was just, listen, there's a reality of prison life.

00:04:31.000 There's a reality of being incarcerated.

00:04:33.000 There's a reality of taking a person who's...

00:04:36.000 Convicted of a violent crime and putting him in jail with violent people for 30 years.

00:04:41.000 It was just a reality.

00:04:42.000 And, you know, I don't know what history he had with this man that he allegedly killed.

00:04:48.000 But, you know, it's like you can only take so much.

00:04:54.000 Yeah, I mean, listen, I don't know.

00:04:56.000 My first emotion—this is for me and my therapist—my first emotion is usually, like, guilt.

00:05:01.000 So once I took a little bit of time and thought it through— I mean, of course.

00:05:09.000 I come on your show and then you're splattered all over the news for something not positive.

00:05:16.000 Good news is I don't watch the news.

00:05:18.000 I don't pay attention and I don't listen to anything anybody writes about me.

00:05:21.000 So it didn't bother me at all.

00:05:23.000 You're rare.

00:05:23.000 So look, for me...

00:05:26.000 I have to take a hard look at what I'm doing and take the mirror out and look straight in it and say, what did I do wrong?

00:05:37.000 You did nothing wrong.

00:05:38.000 I don't think you did anything wrong.

00:05:40.000 Listen, the man had great qualities.

00:05:43.000 When you talk to him, he's very intelligent, very nice guy.

00:05:48.000 He just thought he could get away with getting payback on somebody.

00:05:51.000 Yeah, look, that's super gracious of you.

00:05:53.000 Whether I did something wrong or not, I typically go to blame, and that's a kink I have to work out in my personality.

00:06:01.000 But let me just articulate it because I think what I... The platform is so important to me and getting these stories out is so important to me.

00:06:11.000 And I think that where I've landed is that he didn't let me down.

00:06:19.000 He didn't let...

00:06:21.000 Look, I was the public face of his resentencing.

00:06:23.000 There was a lot of great people involved.

00:06:25.000 And it wasn't just from the defense side.

00:06:28.000 The Center for Appellate Litigation had some amazing people working on his case.

00:06:32.000 The District Attorney of Manhattan agreed to this.

00:06:35.000 So on paper, even in their personal interactions with him, there was nothing that raised a red flag for anyone.

00:06:44.000 He didn't let...

00:06:47.000 Anyone down, if he did this, which people will draw their own conclusion, he'll have a trial.

00:06:52.000 He didn't let anyone down if he did this but himself and the people that still need help.

00:06:57.000 And I have to swallow the jagged pill that this work comes with some letdowns.

00:07:07.000 The recidivism rate for people that have served long sentences like that is less than 1%.

00:07:14.000 It just happened to happen on a case where I was involved.

00:07:17.000 I have no...

00:07:19.000 Is it really that low?

00:07:20.000 Yeah.

00:07:21.000 Wow.

00:07:21.000 Yeah.

00:07:22.000 If you look at exonerations, resentencings of people that have been incarcerated for more than 20 years, it's that low.

00:07:29.000 And, you know, the...

00:07:32.000 The harsh reality is that if you put someone on a public platform and they then do what he supposedly did, it's going to make headlines.

00:07:44.000 I realized something, though, that...

00:07:50.000 Look, no one could have imagined what's in the dark recesses of that man's soul.

00:07:57.000 Whether it's, you know, his group home upbringing and abuse, the prison experience.

00:08:03.000 It's not to make an excuse.

00:08:05.000 He did it, if he did it.

00:08:07.000 If he's convicted and he did it, that's on him.

00:08:10.000 What I'm guilty of is giving a guy a second chance.

00:08:13.000 And I am...

00:08:17.000 Why am I reluctant to say this?

00:08:18.000 I can't apologize for giving someone a second chance and then, you know, they squander it.

00:08:24.000 All I can do is say, what could I have done better?

00:08:27.000 I mean, I have a deep understanding, I think, of what incarceration means.

00:08:34.000 I mean, I read this book...

00:08:37.000 I always get his name confused.

00:08:38.000 Is it Henry Jack Abbott or Jack Henry Abbott?

00:08:41.000 It's called In the Belly of the Beast when I was in college.

00:08:44.000 And it's a series of letters that this inmate wrote to Norman Mailer.

00:08:48.000 It's a fascinating book.

00:08:52.000 About what incarceration does to somebody from the standpoint of the practical day-to-day from the deep psychosis inducing confinement and everything else.

00:09:04.000 And two days before the book was released and it was reviewed by the New York Times, the guy snapped and killed someone in the East Village.

00:09:17.000 And no one will know what it is like to be in there.

00:09:21.000 And again, I don't want to offer this as an excuse, but what it has caused me to do is reevaluate and say, look, maybe I need to take a much closer look at what sort of mental health counseling these folks are getting.

00:09:35.000 Like Sheldon, I arranged for him to be speaking to a trauma therapist.

00:09:42.000 Should I have been on him more to be going to those appointments?

00:09:46.000 Maybe.

00:09:47.000 What was the circumstances with the guy that he allegedly killed?

00:10:23.000 I don't know But I don't know.

00:10:26.000 And I frankly don't want to know at this point because someone lost their life.

00:10:33.000 And that, you know, I think unfortunately for my mental health, I just wear that stuff.

00:10:39.000 You know, if I felt even remotely responsible for that, which I do, and, you know, I have to – I can – I can be at peace with it, but I didn't cause that death.

00:10:50.000 And I don't, you know, I can take some responsibility for it in the sense that what could I do going forward?

00:10:59.000 Whether it's people that are being exonerated for crimes they didn't commit, or if it's people that are getting resentenced, you cannot undo decades of confinement.

00:11:08.000 You just can't.

00:11:09.000 And they all need mental health counseling, all of them.

00:11:13.000 And I have to put that on my shoulders.

00:11:15.000 I just do.

00:11:17.000 Because, you know, they all have issues.

00:11:20.000 And they come out and need mental health counseling.

00:11:24.000 And there's a stigma attached to it, especially in the African American community.

00:11:28.000 And there shouldn't be.

00:11:29.000 It's no different than if you have a problem with your liver, you know, and you have to take medication.

00:11:35.000 I mean, I've always been upfront about the fact that I'm on medication.

00:11:40.000 It's nothing to be ashamed of, and it's especially warranted when you're in those circumstances.

00:11:45.000 Again, none of this is to make an excuse, but I just think that there's a lot more emphasis that I can focus on Assimilation more.

00:11:54.000 And I think that making sure that they have job training and that they feel safe when they get out.

00:11:59.000 I mean, there hasn't been one person who I've been involved in their case where Even when they're innocent, they get out and it's a fucking shock.

00:12:09.000 And I need to be a lot more sensitive to that, I think, and pay a lot more attention to what they're doing, how they're doing.

00:12:22.000 Again, I had the foresight to put Sheldon in touch with and ensure that we were getting him mental health counseling with a trauma therapist, but I didn't want to meddle too much in that because it's on him to go.

00:12:38.000 So, I mean, that's where I land.

00:12:42.000 Yeah.

00:12:45.000 For better or for worse.

00:12:46.000 Well, if the guy really did slash his face, if you've been in literal mortal combat with a person and this person is allegedly threatening your son or whatever, there's only so much you can do to stop a person from seeking revenge.

00:13:02.000 Especially if they don't have any hope outside of the system and they've been completely institutionalized, which, given the length of his sentence, is reasonable to assume.

00:13:16.000 Yeah, you're a lot more forgiving and understanding than a lot of people were and have been about this.

00:13:25.000 You know, there's been two schools of thought in the reaction.

00:13:28.000 I mean, I got pretty nasty hate mail, and I got a lot of words of encouragement.

00:13:37.000 I think the hate mail outweighed the words of encouragement.

00:13:40.000 Always.

00:13:42.000 Psychologically, always.

00:13:44.000 I mean, in substance, number, and probably psychologically, but that shit just gives me fuel.

00:13:53.000 If you're sending me, fuck you, you race baiter, you this, you that. 0.98

00:13:58.000 Race baiter? 0.68

00:13:59.000 Oh yeah, I got a lot of that.

00:14:01.000 How are you a race baiter?

00:14:02.000 By telling the truth about the state of race and the criminal justice system in this country.

00:14:08.000 You see, the thing is, the one force field I have around myself is when that's incoming, I'm able to say, okay, thanks for the fuel, thanks for the fuel.

00:14:18.000 I'll never respond to it.

00:14:20.000 You know, unless you're doing mental health counseling in a prison, unless you're a corrections officer, a police officer, know what it's like to be incarcerated, you have no fucking business giving me your shitty opinion about what you think I am or others that do this work.

00:14:40.000 Get in the fucking arena and do it yourself.

00:14:43.000 And I, you know, so I take that with a big grain of salt.

00:14:49.000 I had, you know, I have enough common sense and practical sense to sort of let, to disregard that.

00:15:00.000 But I have to be a big enough person to look at myself and say, well, what can I learn from this?

00:15:04.000 And what could I do better?

00:15:06.000 Because, you know, I was talking to Derek Hamilton, who's been on the show and the deputy director of the Freedom Clinic at the Perlmutter Center.

00:15:15.000 And, you know, Derek said, look...

00:15:19.000 Mental health counseling, when I was incarcerated, was something that was like...

00:15:23.000 It flew in the face of the us-versus-them mentality.

00:15:29.000 I didn't think they could help me.

00:15:31.000 And I didn't want the help.

00:15:33.000 I was mad.

00:15:35.000 And there was a stigma attached to it that I was soft if I did it.

00:15:39.000 I didn't want people inside knowing.

00:15:44.000 So...

00:15:44.000 I don't...

00:15:48.000 We're trying to formulate a plan to normalize mental health counseling in prison.

00:15:55.000 So Derek and I are doing a town hall at Shawongunk, which is a pretty rough prison in New York on December 6th, to try to get some of the inmates to understand that it's okay to ask for this help.

00:16:06.000 I think when they see Derek and hear his story, it's helpful for them.

00:16:13.000 I'm going to say something that's...

00:16:15.000 It's going to sound pretty controversial, but I think one of the conversations that I've had repeatedly, I've had it with JD Vance, I've had it with quite a few people, is psychedelic therapy for veterans.

00:16:30.000 People with severe PTSD because of war I think are the most deserving of psychedelic therapy and the benefits of it and the fact that that stuff is Schedule 1 and is illegal in the United States I think is absurd.

00:16:43.000 It's ridiculous.

00:16:44.000 It's horrible.

00:16:44.000 It's a massive disservice to those people that put their lives on the line and went over and experienced horrific things that the average person like myself can only imagine and you're not going to do a good job of imagining it.

00:16:59.000 I think prisoners could benefit from psychedelic therapy as well.

00:17:02.000 I think there's a lot of people that could be rehabilitated by changing the way they view things, literally changing their mind, changing their perspective.

00:17:10.000 And I think there's a lot of psychedelic therapies that could aid in that, particularly for people who, you know, they're not violent people.

00:17:21.000 They're just a victim of circumstance or they made bad decisions in their life or what have you.

00:17:29.000 And they're stuck.

00:17:30.000 And they're stuck both mentally and physically.

00:17:33.000 And if we want to use prisons as just a deterrent to crime, I think we should probably put some effort towards rehabilitation.

00:17:45.000 Sincere, significant efforts towards rehabilitation.

00:17:48.000 And one of the best ways to do that is to try to change the way people view themselves and view the world and view themselves as a part of the world.

00:17:59.000 The fact that you would even think that that would be controversial, I think, is just a byproduct of the fact that anything that somebody articulates that's outside of what's considered mainstream is rejected.

00:18:16.000 Unquestionably, the research is overwhelming that psychedelics are one of the best, most effective therapies for PTSD. My therapist has,

00:18:33.000 you know, counseled people with PTSD coming back from war and, you know, has I mean,

00:19:03.000 we have to decide.

00:19:09.000 We talked about the stats, and I'm not going to You know, re-litigate that here, but look, we incarcerate people at a higher rate than any other civilization on Earth.

00:19:23.000 So we have to decide as a society, are we just going to throw people away and put them in cages and make them worse, even if they committed the crime?

00:19:32.000 Or, as you said, are we really going to try to rehabilitate people?

00:19:37.000 Because some people are getting out no matter what.

00:19:40.000 Whether they have people like me involved and other great people that do this work.

00:19:46.000 But they're going to get out.

00:19:47.000 Do you want them out like they were just an animal let out of a cage?

00:19:52.000 Or do you want them out where rehabilitation is a cornerstone of their incarceration?

00:19:58.000 Right.

00:19:58.000 And it just doesn't happen in our criminal justice system.

00:20:02.000 Well, there's a bizarre attitude in this country that we shouldn't do anything to make their life better while they're in there.

00:20:08.000 And that something like psychedelic therapy is like...

00:20:12.000 That it's a luxury.

00:20:16.000 That it's something they don't deserve.

00:20:19.000 That it's something that should be reserved for good people.

00:20:23.000 Or that there's some like...

00:20:26.000 It's for people that are like fucking off.

00:20:29.000 And you know...

00:20:30.000 The others that do drugs.

00:20:33.000 That whole mentality.

00:20:34.000 Sure.

00:20:35.000 Yeah, there's that too.

00:20:36.000 So, yeah.

00:20:37.000 Listen, I mean...

00:20:39.000 We talk about like looking up at the mountain and saying, can I scale it?

00:20:45.000 I think what you have to do, and I'm talking about this, all it takes is one state, one municipality, one person who says, that's interesting.

00:20:55.000 Show us the literature.

00:20:56.000 We have this amazing policy director.

00:20:59.000 At the Perlmutter Center named Sarah Chu, and she's in the trenches having these arguments, having these fights, trying to get forensic labs, you know, ensuring that they have the proper training accreditation so that they're not introducing, 0.92

00:21:14.000 you know, various forms of junk science.

00:21:17.000 All it takes is just the effort going forward to try to start pushing that boulder uphill or else, you know, again, this goes to The incoming hatred in a situation like we had here is like,

00:21:34.000 what the fuck are you doing to help try to make the situation better?

00:21:39.000 Because just calling names and pointing fingers and saying, you fucked up, or this person that we threw away is not worth saving, listen.

00:21:50.000 Everybody has made some mistake that they wish other people didn't know about.

00:21:57.000 You know, and it's not always homicide, obviously, but a lot of people have done something that, but for the grace of God go I, right?

00:22:11.000 Where if somebody was looking, if law enforcement was looking, it could be you that was there.

00:22:17.000 And would you want a second chance?

00:22:20.000 Would you want redemption?

00:22:21.000 Would you want the help to overcome whatever demons?

00:22:24.000 And I just think why psychedelics aren't, you know, looked at.

00:22:32.000 Ketamine, the little bit that I did.

00:22:36.000 Going through a dark time, it almost snapped me in a different direction.

00:22:43.000 And, I mean, I, you know, you urged me on to it.

00:22:48.000 I mean, you were the one that said you should really think about this.

00:22:52.000 And my therapist urged me on to it.

00:22:54.000 And I think, you know, so I know that the literature is there.

00:22:58.000 It's just we have to get past this whole, it's so weird that you mentioned that.

00:23:06.000 I was talking to a guy on the plane on the way down who asked me if marijuana legalization passed in Florida because we were talking about where you're from, this and that.

00:23:21.000 And he was telling me that...

00:23:25.000 He's from Colorado.

00:23:27.000 And he told me that, you know, in Colorado, when marijuana was legalized, that there was this whole movement of people that were saying that it would be a gateway drug, and that it was going to lead people down the slippery slope to doing other hardcore drugs.

00:23:46.000 And he said, you know, the gulf between smoking weed and turning into a meth addict doesn't exist.

00:23:54.000 He said that the bridge between the two doesn't exist.

00:23:58.000 And if you start walking marijuana use and trying to link it to...

00:24:05.000 Drugs that the U.S. government considers a problem, the link just isn't there.

00:24:10.000 So, I mean, he was sort of trying to explain to me how he didn't understand how marijuana is any different than alcohol.

00:24:19.000 And I said, well, go tell that to the state legislator in Florida.

00:24:23.000 I don't know what to tell you.

00:24:24.000 Did it not pass in Florida?

00:24:26.000 It got 58%, and it needed 60%.

00:24:31.000 Really?

00:24:32.000 Yeah.

00:24:32.000 I don't get that.

00:24:34.000 I just don't get...

00:24:36.000 It's fucking more than half the people.

00:24:40.000 That should be it.

00:24:41.000 Why did it need 60%?

00:24:42.000 It was the same thing with the amendment on abortion.

00:24:47.000 It needed 60%.

00:24:47.000 Maybe it was the abortion one that got 58%.

00:24:50.000 I might be wrong about that.

00:24:52.000 But in any event, I don't understand the resistance to psychedelics as a therapeutic, both in mainstream society, let alone in the prison system.

00:25:05.000 Well, it all goes back to 1970. It all goes back to the Nixon administration, the sweeping psychedelics act of 1970 that turned everything, Schedule I, that was designed to cripple the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement.

00:25:23.000 That's what it was about.

00:25:24.000 It was about having new tools to imprison people that were anti-war, that were protesting the war.

00:25:32.000 The Black Panthers, civil rights organizations, all these people that were doing drugs, that were using psychedelics to try to achieve a different state of consciousness and that brought them to these ideas that we're all one and that war is evil and that the United States government is being controlled by the military-industrial complex and that this is a giant problem in our culture.

00:25:58.000 People were so weirded out by the Timothy Leary's and, you know, the whole tune in, you know, turn out, whatever the fuck his motto was, drop out.

00:26:11.000 This whole thing of leaving polite society and being a loser and just like traveling around.

00:26:17.000 And doing drugs in a van.

00:26:20.000 This was like the perspective that people had that was going to take their kids and turn them into ne'er-do-wells and turn them into losers.

00:26:28.000 And that we were going to have a society filled with people that didn't understand the ethics of hard work and what made America great and all this bullshit.

00:26:39.000 Well...

00:26:39.000 Look.

00:26:42.000 What's born out of that is this...

00:26:47.000 You know, misunderstanding, I guess, is the best way to put it.

00:26:55.000 Ignorance.

00:26:56.000 Well, it's propaganda.

00:26:57.000 They're a victim of propaganda.

00:26:59.000 Well, look, also, if you think about, like, CoinIntelPro, you know, all of a sudden you're spying on people that you think are others.

00:27:08.000 Mm-hmm.

00:27:08.000 You're legalizing that intelligence gathering that allows you to start violating people's civil liberties so that you can gain intelligence on them because the way they think is unlike you.

00:27:29.000 So, you know, it's, again, sort of, to me, all ties back to this very...

00:27:38.000 I guess tribal mentality that you're either like us or you're like them.

00:27:42.000 And everything that you mentioned, the Psychedelics Act, the resistance to the civil rights movement, it was all based on the fact that, look, we have a potential uprising here of people that are going to challenge the way we think and the way we do things.

00:27:59.000 So for people that call me a race baiter, Right?

00:28:03.000 I, you know, I feel like I'm more of a truth teller and just taking the thread through history.

00:28:09.000 And, you know, I have at least I'll read and try to educate myself and get perspective.

00:28:19.000 If it wasn't a fact that brown and black men and women get incarcerated at a higher rate, Mm-hmm. 1.00

00:28:36.000 Yeah.

00:28:45.000 Any pharmacologic form of therapy that has probably way worse side effects can be addictive and can lead to a whole host of other issues that you then have to take something else to address, versus just having the openness to take a look at a different way to potentially help someone.

00:29:06.000 So I don't understand it, and the only thing that I can do is just to keep on being open-minded And, you know, try to figure out if there's other ways that we can convince the people that are in these penitentiaries and that run them to allow programs that at least give you a crack in the door to get in.

00:29:31.000 Well, I think the doorway to that is to first show the effectiveness with veterans and with other people that aren't incarcerated.

00:29:42.000 And that once that gets established and once that becomes something, I think it's much, much more established now than it was when I first started talking about this stuff 20 years ago.

00:29:52.000 You know, like probably when I've had my first experiences was a little more than 20 years ago.

00:29:59.000 I think people have this very ignorant idea that was born out of propaganda.

00:30:04.000 Because you have to think 20 years ago, it was only 30 years removed from the Sweeping Psychedelics Act.

00:30:10.000 So you're dealing with a whole society that's been...

00:30:15.000 Just programmed by propaganda and lies.

00:30:18.000 And those propaganda and lies were established in order to villainize this one group of the population that was completely changing the culture.

00:30:28.000 The difference in the United States culture from 1965 1955 to 1965 was so dramatic.

00:30:36.000 It was such an enormous shift.

00:30:38.000 You know, then you have the Vietnam War, the protests, all these things that were happening in the 60s, the music, everything was changing so radically and so drastically that the people in power had a very, like,

00:30:55.000 an accurate sense that they were losing control.

00:30:59.000 And that change was inevitable.

00:31:03.000 And they threw water on it.

00:31:04.000 And they did a great job, if you look at it from that perspective.

00:31:07.000 The difference between me, it's terrible what they did, but it was effective in that from 1970...

00:31:12.000 A great job of throwing water on it.

00:31:13.000 Yeah, a great job of changing culture, which was changing in a potentially beneficial way for everyone.

00:31:22.000 To get us to recognize that we truly are all one and that the way to make things better for everyone is to make things better for the most disadvantaged.

00:31:34.000 And this was the civil rights movement, right?

00:31:37.000 And this was the anti-war movement.

00:31:38.000 This was recognizing that people are being taken advantage by the military-industrial complex and just sent overseas so that they could profit.

00:31:47.000 Amen.

00:31:51.000 The first guy that I met that really changed my perspective on the world, especially in terms of what I could potentially do as a lawyer, was Jerry Lefcourt.

00:32:07.000 Jerry Lefcourt was Abbie Hoffman's lawyer.

00:32:11.000 He was the lead attorney in the Panther 21 trial.

00:32:15.000 I was like a kid.

00:32:17.000 I was in my late 20s, and I met with him to help him pick a jury on a case, and I had read about him before.

00:32:26.000 And he saw something in me.

00:32:28.000 We hit it off.

00:32:29.000 He became like my surrogate uncle.

00:32:34.000 And he would regale me with tales of the Panther 21 trial.

00:32:40.000 And here's a guy that was kind of winging it in his late 20s and can feel the change that you're talking about happening.

00:32:50.000 And he could feel the weight against him, the pushback coming.

00:32:56.000 From the other side where he would get death threats.

00:33:00.000 He would get bomb threats at his office where he could not even see his client in jail approaching trial and had to get on a cherry picker.

00:33:13.000 And outside the jail to be able to get even with the window so that they can communicate.

00:33:20.000 Jesus Christ.

00:33:37.000 When they feel like their message, their way of doing things is being challenged.

00:33:43.000 And I think that you hit the nail right on the head, which is this was like a flew in the face of...

00:33:53.000 Leave it to Beaver.

00:33:55.000 It flew in the face of, you know, father knows best.

00:33:59.000 It flew in the face of what white America was trying to instill as a value system that should be followed by all people without question for all time.

00:34:13.000 And people started to say, what the fuck is this about?

00:34:17.000 I want to explore the messiness and the gray areas of what it means to exist as a human being.

00:34:25.000 And that expression, whether it was Richard Nixon or the people around him that got their backs up, You know, so if you are a student of history and you start to understand sort of why we're here rather than just looking here and forward,

00:34:47.000 I think these things for me are a little bit easier to understand when somebody comes at me and calls me a race baiter for the work that I do because I talk about the problem of race.

00:35:01.000 I understand that that's born out of ignorance.

00:35:03.000 And I don't mean ignorance like you're a dummy.

00:35:05.000 I mean ignorance like you're...

00:35:07.000 You don't have access to the information.

00:35:09.000 Yeah, or you chose not to have access to it.

00:35:11.000 Yeah, your perspective is incorrect.

00:35:13.000 Read Todd Neasy Coates' book, Between the World and Me.

00:35:17.000 It's a fascinating fucking tale.

00:35:20.000 It's a letter written from this black man to his 15-year-old son.

00:35:27.000 And...

00:35:30.000 It's a life-altering book for me because it puts you into his soul of what it has been like to grow up as a black man in this country.

00:35:40.000 And...

00:35:44.000 It stops me in my tracks when I think about it, when I talk about it, because it's like the only way that we can get to a more common understanding is to, you know, I think to read books like that and to talk to people.

00:35:56.000 And if you're so closed off and closed minded, and again, I keep on sort of adding this disclaimer, and maybe this is my...

00:36:03.000 My aversion to, like, getting attacked.

00:36:06.000 I am not excusing if Sheldon did this.

00:36:09.000 I just think that it's not so simple as, oh, you helped some guy get out and get resentenced and look what he did and fuck all these people and fuck your movement.

00:36:20.000 Okay, you're entitled to that opinion.

00:36:23.000 That's where I leave it.

00:36:24.000 Yeah, you can't listen to those people.

00:36:26.000 You know what you're doing.

00:36:28.000 You're smart.

00:36:29.000 You can't listen.

00:36:30.000 It's just you're going to have those people.

00:36:33.000 They're always going to exist.

00:36:34.000 There's always going to be people with limited information perspective.

00:36:39.000 And limited information people sometimes are the loudest and the most vocal about it.

00:36:45.000 And also the ones who are least willing to objectively assess how they came to the conclusions that they're so vocal and loud about.

00:36:55.000 Limited information people, that's why clickbait headlines work.

00:37:00.000 People love that shit.

00:37:06.000 You don't know about it because you don't read it.

00:37:09.000 That's why you get attacked sometimes.

00:37:11.000 Some people try to send it to me.

00:37:13.000 It's funny.

00:37:13.000 Hey man, fuck off.

00:37:14.000 Stop sending me that shit.

00:37:16.000 Someone in my family, a cousin of mine, sent me a link to a story About you endorsing Trump and wrote, what the fuck?

00:37:33.000 And I said, right, what the fuck?

00:37:35.000 Why are you sending this to me?

00:37:37.000 Like, first of all, what the fuck?

00:37:42.000 What the fuck are you...

00:37:44.000 Because you all of a sudden support this woman who, by the way, probably should have accepted the invitation to come on the show.

00:37:53.000 It might have been the difference between people getting to actually know who the fuck she was.

00:37:58.000 But putting that aside, it's like I have to do a much better job of filtering that stuff out because the notion that, you know, you...

00:38:13.000 Are going to be influenced by outside forces other than what you're doing.

00:38:18.000 Like for you to say you know what you're doing.

00:38:19.000 I like to think I know what I'm doing and I feel like I'm doing good things.

00:38:23.000 And I just got to keep on working in that direction.

00:38:26.000 Not let what happens slow me down.

00:38:28.000 Try to learn from it and go forward.

00:38:30.000 Look, I don't want this to come across as like constantly being like Situation where I'm,

00:38:47.000 every time I get on here, I thank you.

00:38:48.000 But I think the importance of this forum was made clear by having the president on, by having the vice president on, because it's the only open forum where you don't have to worry about being judged, about Someone chopping up what you say and twisting it or leaving some remarks on the cutting room floor.

00:39:12.000 And it's also important because you don't give a fuck about what...

00:39:20.000 Other people say or think and you just do what you feel is the right thing to do because I've I mean I've told you privately I'll say it now again It would have been the easy thing for you to do would have been to say well fuck this guy I'm turning my back.

00:39:33.000 I don't need to have him on again It was never gonna happen.

00:39:36.000 Yeah, well listen what you've done is amazing and the people that you have brought on this show I've changed a lot of people's perspectives about our justice system.

00:39:47.000 A lot of people.

00:39:48.000 You brought on some incredible people, and you've told some incredible stories, and as you said, people have been exonerated for crimes that they didn't commit.

00:39:56.000 If you are a person who's listening to this, and you could be fucked by the system.

00:40:01.000 It's possible.

00:40:02.000 You could be trapped by a corrupt prosecutor.

00:40:05.000 It happens.

00:40:07.000 Thank God it hasn't happened to you, but if it did happen to you, you would pray that there's a Josh Dubin in the world that pays attention to your case.

00:40:15.000 I appreciate it.

00:40:17.000 I mean, it's not just me.

00:40:19.000 There's a village of people.

00:40:22.000 There is, but a person like you.

00:40:24.000 And I think highlighting that and highlighting the need for that and understanding of how the system can railroad you and the system can really fuck you over.

00:40:34.000 I think one of the things that we saw during the Trump campaign was the legal system being used against one of the most powerful people in the world.

00:40:44.000 And how they can get away with turning 34 misdemeanors, so essentially one misdemeanor, but 34 versions of it, 34 writing in a ledger incorrectly that's a misdemeanor and is past the statute of limitations,

00:40:59.000 can be converted into a felony and turned against a guy who's running for president as lawfare.

00:41:07.000 It's just completely using the legal system to try to attack a guy And try to take him out of the race and also try to label him a convicted felon.

00:41:17.000 So once you have this label, a convicted felon, you heard it on all the talk shows, convicted felon, convicted felon.

00:41:24.000 But enough people had a chance to look at The circumstances of the case and understand what he was actually being tried for.

00:41:32.000 Paying someone off to not talk about how he fucked them?

00:41:36.000 Is that what we're worried about?

00:41:37.000 Are we worried about World War III? Is that what we're worried about?

00:41:40.000 Are we worried about terrorist cells being established in the United States because our border's wide open?

00:41:46.000 Are we worried about the price of groceries and people being able to feed themselves?

00:41:50.000 That's what we should be fucking worried about, not whether or not some guy fucks someone. 0.55

00:41:54.000 Like, who cares?

00:41:56.000 It's so interesting to me because the conversations that people in the legal community in New York were having at the time, I cannot tell you how many times.

00:42:05.000 It didn't matter what side of the spectrum you were on politically.

00:42:11.000 But in New York, there's a lot of fucking Democrats.

00:42:13.000 And I can't tell you how often I got this call.

00:42:18.000 What is the crime here?

00:42:20.000 I mean, with regard to that particular case, first of all, the DA Manhattan seemed to...

00:42:27.000 Realized that it was a futile endeavor to go after this guy and retreated.

00:42:32.000 And then something happened.

00:42:34.000 And you remember the special prosecutors quit because they were furious, apparently, that the DA wouldn't go forward with the case.

00:42:42.000 Then something happens in between.

00:42:46.000 And Alvin Bragg, the district attorney of Manhattan, proceeds with the case.

00:42:52.000 So many legal scholars said, what is the crime here?

00:42:56.000 I understand there's a series of misdemeanors that somehow gets flipped into a felony.

00:43:02.000 Legal scholars that had issues with it.

00:43:04.000 And if they spoke about it publicly, they were attacked.

00:43:08.000 Alan Dershowitz was one of them.

00:43:10.000 He was attacked.

00:43:11.000 Anyone that would speak out.

00:43:12.000 And there's this fear.

00:43:23.000 Right.

00:43:35.000 The judge in that case agreed to a joint motion by the prosecution and the defense to put everything on hold because they're deciding whether or not they're going to dismiss that case.

00:43:47.000 And if you remember, the drum that was constantly beat before this election was he'll never get out of these state cases, the federal ones we understand because he can pardon himself.

00:43:59.000 But the state cases, oh, those are going to be a problem.

00:44:02.000 Well, not so fast, right?

00:44:04.000 Because now, if it was that much of a crime and that people were so up in arms about it, why are they now considering dismissing it?

00:44:13.000 And I think that it puts the lie to the notion that this was really something that we wanted to make an example out of and you can't engage in this type of conduct.

00:44:24.000 What conduct?

00:44:26.000 You know, it was obviously politically motivated.

00:44:29.000 And, you know, and it happens all over the country.

00:44:33.000 It happens all over the country.

00:44:35.000 On both sides of the aisle, though.

00:44:39.000 I have a case right now that, and for me to be able to say this, is probably, you know...

00:44:49.000 I had to think, is this the craziest fucking case I've had?

00:44:53.000 And it has to be.

00:44:55.000 It has to be.

00:44:57.000 Because the DA that is sitting in judgment of whether or not these four men that I'm going to tell you about in a moment...

00:45:07.000 Right before the election, for him to become DA, gets indicted.

00:45:13.000 He gets indicted for allegedly harassing a former employee and then trying to bribe her not to file a complaint against him.

00:45:25.000 Something like that.

00:45:26.000 Right before the election.

00:45:29.000 And all of a sudden, he is now embroiled in this.

00:45:34.000 He loses the election a couple of weeks ago, and he now finds himself, according to him, wrongfully accused of a crime he didn't commit.

00:45:47.000 Well, my client is a guy by the name of John Edwards.

00:45:53.000 And there were four guys.

00:45:55.000 This is in Lorain, Ohio.

00:45:58.000 Lorain County, Ohio.

00:46:00.000 John Edwards, Lenworth Edwards, Benson Davis, and a guy named Al Cleveland.

00:46:06.000 New York guys in the early 90s who were selling drugs in Ohio.

00:46:15.000 They were going back and forth from Ohio to New York.

00:46:18.000 And one morning, a man by the name of Epps is found dead in the street.

00:46:29.000 His roommate is found about seven hours later, a woman named Marsha Blakely, dumped in an alley behind a shopping center.

00:46:44.000 The case is cold for a month.

00:46:48.000 The police have hit dead ends.

00:46:51.000 They have nowhere to go with the case.

00:46:54.000 The prosecutor's office offers a $2,000 reward for anyone with information about the case.

00:47:03.000 Wouldn't you know that the next day, a man by the name of William Avery Sr. walks into the Lorain County Prosecutor's Office.

00:47:13.000 They sit him down with the police, and he says, I have information about the case.

00:47:18.000 Now, this guy, William Avery Sr., was a known informant.

00:47:22.000 The police knew him.

00:47:24.000 He had come and tried to give information about other cases.

00:47:27.000 Didn't pan out.

00:47:28.000 He was also a drug addict.

00:47:30.000 And they sit with him for over an hour.

00:47:34.000 And they say to him, everything you're telling us has been in the papers.

00:47:40.000 So you're not giving us anything new here.

00:47:42.000 He shows up the next day with his son, William Avery Jr. And he says he witnessed the murder.

00:47:52.000 So William Avery Jr. talks to the police.

00:47:56.000 At the end of that interview, he goes, what about the reward money?

00:48:01.000 And the officer says, let's turn the tape recorder off and let's talk about that.

00:48:10.000 They tell him, we're not giving you the reward money because now you're telling us that information that's been in the papers and all you're telling us is that you saw Marsha Blakely assaulted in an apartment.

00:48:23.000 You're not telling us anything about the murder.

00:48:27.000 The very next day, he shows up and says that Al Cleveland told him that he murdered Marshall Blakely.

00:48:37.000 So let's put a bookmark in it because I decided I wanted to do something a little bit different today.

00:48:47.000 At the end of the episode, I'm going to give you a Twitter account.

00:48:52.000 I've submitted today a 40-page submission.

00:48:58.000 All of the exhibits that are mentioned in that submission to the Lorain County prosecutor.

00:49:06.000 His name is J.D. Tomlinson.

00:49:08.000 So now I'm going to invite the public.

00:49:12.000 Before you go writing a letter to him or calling him, you read the submission and look at the exhibits yourself.

00:49:18.000 Because what often happens is that in these reinvestigations, Prosecutors' offices have something called a Conviction Integrity Unit, where they say they'll reinvestigate the case.

00:49:30.000 And the very first thing they make you do is sign a no-media agreement, that you won't go to the media, because the last thing they want you to do is what I just did, is to talk about the case publicly.

00:49:43.000 So we're not in a conviction integrity unit.

00:49:45.000 We're trying to appeal to a prosecutor, J.D. Tomlinson, who from what I understand has told Al Cleveland's wife, because I've spoken to her, her name is Roberta, great woman, came up to her in the summer at a barbecue and said,

00:50:01.000 when I was a law student, I sat in on your husband's trial.

00:50:06.000 And it always bothered me.

00:50:08.000 And I want you to come in and have your lawyers come in. 0.73

00:50:12.000 I'm going to do the right thing.

00:50:14.000 And now that he's been indicted, he has gone silent.

00:50:18.000 I haven't heard from him.

00:50:19.000 I've texted him.

00:50:20.000 I see he reads my messages because he has read receipts on.

00:50:24.000 And I guess he doesn't know that.

00:50:27.000 And I've asked him for his time.

00:50:28.000 I think in his wildest dreams, he probably never could have imagined that the case was going to now become national news.

00:50:37.000 He has between now and December 31st to do the right thing and exonerate them.

00:50:43.000 The incoming DA would never do it, I don't think, from what I've heard.

00:50:47.000 So I'm going to invite the public, and I'll give you the link at the end, and I want to tell you the rest of the story.

00:50:53.000 Because some of the things I tell you, you're going to say, come on, that can't be true.

00:50:57.000 So I have the exhibit sitting in a folder for everybody to read.

00:51:01.000 But...

00:51:04.000 You know, I think that the justice system has been weaponized against J.D. Tomlinson because he was coming up for a re-election.

00:51:14.000 There's all sorts of, like, personal animosity between him and the guy that just got elected.

00:51:20.000 There's allegations, at least, that the guy that just got elected helped, you know, was somehow involved in...

00:51:29.000 Getting him indicted by a special prosecutor.

00:51:31.000 I don't know if it's true or not, but it doesn't just happen on the big national stage.

00:51:37.000 It happens all over the place, and you just don't always hear about it.

00:51:40.000 Well, I think the fact that it happened on the big national stage the way it did, and not just the case of the hush money, but also the case of Mar-a-Lago being overvalued, which is preposterous.

00:51:55.000 That was one of the most ridiculous ones.

00:51:56.000 They listed it at, what, 17, 18 million dollars?

00:52:00.000 I would buy five of those if they were available for 18 million dollars.

00:52:04.000 You know how much money you would make for that kind of property?

00:52:06.000 You ever been to this place?

00:52:07.000 No.

00:52:09.000 I've been there a bunch.

00:52:11.000 I've seen it.

00:52:12.000 It's magnificent.

00:52:15.000 You walk in there and you feel like Marjorie Post bought it and had it designed.

00:52:22.000 It's magnificent.

00:52:23.000 Forbes, I think, had valued it between $700 and $900 million.

00:52:27.000 Is that true?

00:52:29.000 Find out what the valuation was.

00:52:31.000 But independently, before all this shit, it had been valued.

00:52:35.000 And I think Trump valued it over a billion, which of course he's going to do.

00:52:38.000 And he's doing it to the bank, trying to get a loan.

00:52:41.000 Paid the loan off with interest.

00:52:44.000 Everything was fine.

00:52:45.000 There's zero victims involved in this.

00:52:48.000 And the fact that they want to say that it was actually...

00:52:51.000 So what does it say here?

00:52:53.000 Okay.

00:52:54.000 350. Okay.

00:52:55.000 So the club had revenues of $25.1 million for the calendar year of 2017, 22 in 2018, and 21 in 2019. 2022, Forbes estimated the value of the estate around $350 million.

00:53:09.000 I think Trump jacked it way higher than that.

00:53:12.000 And I think...

00:53:13.000 I've read somewhere that someone had said between seven and nine, if you could...

00:53:16.000 Like what a real estate evaluation would be, like what it's actually worth in the state that it's at.

00:53:23.000 I think there was an issue though that it was, wasn't it like listed as a national historic landmark or something like that, Jamie?

00:53:30.000 Right, so then you really can't do anything to it, which devalues it somewhat, but still.

00:53:36.000 I would think, listen...

00:53:37.000 18 million is fucking crazy.

00:53:38.000 There's no property like that anywhere.

00:53:41.000 You feel like you're in Europe when you're there.

00:53:44.000 It is a magnificent place and has some of the best food in Florida.

00:53:52.000 So I don't – and I don't know that – part of the valuation of something like that seems to me to be a bit subjective.

00:53:58.000 It's now the home of the sitting two-time president of the United States.

00:54:05.000 So yeah, but putting all that aside – Just the real estate alone.

00:54:10.000 There was a lot that was sold next to it or a home that was sold next to it.

00:54:13.000 It was $50 million.

00:54:15.000 Right.

00:54:15.000 And it's not just Mar-a-Lago.

00:54:17.000 Across the street, they have the beach club that sits right on the beach.

00:54:20.000 But the point is, is that they're meddling into, look, the bank could have said, well, we're going to send an appraiser out there, and we're going to determine whether or not we agree with you that it's worth that.

00:54:31.000 That happens for anyone that's ever sold a home.

00:54:34.000 Again, the point is there's no victim.

00:54:36.000 The point is it's not like he got this loan and then defrauded the bank and then defaulted on his loan and then pocketed the money.

00:54:46.000 No.

00:54:46.000 No, he paid everything back with interest.

00:54:49.000 It was profitable for the bank.

00:54:51.000 Everything worked out.

00:54:52.000 It's like this is a bullshit case.

00:54:54.000 Everyone knows it's a bullshit case.

00:54:56.000 So that's another one that was in the news that everybody got a chance to see.

00:54:59.000 Well, hopefully it opens people's eyes.

00:55:01.000 Look, there's a lot of white-collar crimes that I've been a defense lawyer on where you see the human cost of a prosecution, what it does to the person accused, but also their family.

00:55:19.000 And to somehow crawl out from under the weight of the federal government, these take years and a fortune to defend.

00:55:30.000 And oftentimes you're thinking, why did they bring this case?

00:55:37.000 Who are the victims here?

00:55:39.000 And they come up with some loss calculation that's very theoretical.

00:55:42.000 I'm talking about cases where you can't point to a victim that lost money.

00:55:49.000 You know, you wonder why some prosecutions are brought and others aren't.

00:55:55.000 And you see again what it does to not only devastate families and the accused, but is it really deterring anyone?

00:56:05.000 I would never, ever enter an industry that I think?

00:56:28.000 You know, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you're on, what happened to Trump should be eye-opening to people because you don't have to agree with him or his politics or his policies to see what's happening today as we sit here when everything's being reconsidered and you think about the massive expense that it takes to prosecute these cases.

00:56:52.000 That guy has...

00:56:53.000 I don't care what anybody says about him.

00:56:55.000 He's got to be one of the toughest motherfuckers you've ever met to stare down all of this.

00:57:01.000 And most people would be in a puddle.

00:57:05.000 To stare down these prosecutions and the threat of going to jail and everything else, that breaks a lot of people.

00:57:10.000 Yeah.

00:57:11.000 And then two assassination attempts?

00:57:14.000 Yeah.

00:57:15.000 Jesus Christ.

00:57:16.000 He's built different.

00:57:18.000 Yeah, he is.

00:57:19.000 I mean, the guy's 78 years old, and I talked to him for three hours, and he didn't pee before, he didn't pee afterwards, just sat here, talked, didn't lose any energy, and then flew off to do a campaign rally.

00:57:32.000 Yeah, listen, I wish him all the success in the world.

00:57:35.000 I hope he does well.

00:57:37.000 I got these, you can't vote for Kamala Harris after what you've said about it.

00:57:42.000 You're right.

00:57:43.000 Yeah.

00:57:44.000 I voted for Jill Stein because this two-party system to me is fucked.

00:57:49.000 You've got to be with us or them.

00:57:53.000 And then there's all kinds of gaslighting that goes on.

00:57:56.000 You have to answer to people.

00:57:58.000 I just feel like there should be more choices.

00:57:59.000 There certainly should be.

00:58:01.000 That's a different existential issue.

00:58:04.000 You spoke on the podcast about her history as a prosecutor and what she had done.

00:58:09.000 And I know they contacted you afterward.

00:58:12.000 Yeah, I mean, what was happening—well, this was way back when—I think it was days before she was selected to be the vice presidential running mate for Biden.

00:58:25.000 But I think it was Carpenter who was—is that his name?

00:58:30.000 He's a great congressman.

00:58:33.000 He wears an eyepatch.

00:58:36.000 I don't know.

00:58:36.000 Dan Crenshaw?

00:58:37.000 Dan Crenshaw, not Carpenter.

00:58:39.000 Dan Crenshaw took a clip from the podcast and was circulating it on Twitter.

00:58:46.000 And it was me being critical of her.

00:58:48.000 And again, that's a situation where she had so many opportunities during this campaign to just say, listen...

00:58:56.000 I watched a little vignette about this family who was prosecuted for their truant child.

00:59:05.000 And it ruined them.

00:59:08.000 So all of this, I'm a prosecutor, and I'm going to prosecute the case against this.

00:59:14.000 That petrified me.

00:59:17.000 Because I have sat in rooms...

00:59:20.000 With prosecutors that just want to be right and win, and I would just say, please, just open your mind a little bit.

00:59:28.000 I just sat in a room with a conviction integrity unit, and there were prosecutors in the room where, and I can't sign one of those agreements, so I can't name the case or the city or the borough,

00:59:44.000 but where the prosecutor went to federal prison.

00:59:49.000 for bribing witnesses and is accused of the same conduct in this case where he was giving money to someone who has recanted their testimony And the prosecutors sitting in the room were like, it wasn't that they weren't open-minded.

01:00:06.000 They had their mind made up before we got in there.

01:00:09.000 And you feel like saying, can't you just listen?

01:00:12.000 Just listen.

01:00:13.000 They just want to win.

01:00:13.000 Yeah, and I think that that is my problem with the two-party system is that it's either on this side or you're on this side.

01:00:21.000 Right.

01:00:21.000 And there's no room for gray area between the issues.

01:00:25.000 Right.

01:00:26.000 I have a friend I mean, I learned so much during this election.

01:00:32.000 I have a friend who is from Central America, and she was telling me, when Trump won the first time, I was furious.

01:00:41.000 I couldn't stand the guy.

01:00:44.000 But when I came to this country, I saw my mom fight for citizenship, and I saw what she had to go through the right way for me to get citizenship.

01:00:55.000 And she said, so I just can't vote for anybody but him.

01:00:59.000 So everybody has their own reasons for doing it.

01:01:02.000 It doesn't mean it has to be all about a cult of personality and you're endorsing everything about the person.

01:01:10.000 And I think that having that understanding that, look, a lot of people that...

01:01:16.000 I spoke to a friend of mine the other day that grandparents were in the Holocaust.

01:01:21.000 His grandfather survived the Holocaust and he voted for Trump because he's like, I didn't feel protected by the other side.

01:01:27.000 You know, as those grandson of people that went through that.

01:01:33.000 So, yeah, I just think that watching a system get weaponized against someone in that way, it's upsetting and hopefully, like you said, it opens people's eyes to the fact that if they could do it to the president,

01:01:48.000 it could happen to you.

01:01:50.000 And it's so transparent.

01:01:51.000 It was so transparent.

01:01:53.000 It wasn't like he committed a murder.

01:01:55.000 And there's a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that he committed this murder.

01:01:58.000 No, it was just a crime that didn't make any sense.

01:02:00.000 You're going to spend millions and millions of dollars prosecuting this crime.

01:02:03.000 You're going to parade it around for the whole world just so the Democrats can have this talking point, convicted felon.

01:02:09.000 And you just see it repeated over and over again on MSNBC and CNN. These pundits want to say, convicted felon.

01:02:18.000 They want to say that.

01:02:19.000 Like, what's the fucking crime?

01:02:20.000 Tell me what the crime is.

01:02:21.000 But when you want to get smart and spout off facts, why don't you tell me about the case?

01:02:27.000 Because I've looked at it, and it's fucking bananas.

01:02:29.000 And if it happened to you, you'd be terrified.

01:02:32.000 Because they just made a crime, they made a felony out of something that's not a felony.

01:02:37.000 I mean, listen.

01:02:40.000 The, um...

01:02:44.000 If you're looking for logic and reasoning in any of these, you're not going to find it.

01:02:50.000 Which is terrible.

01:02:52.000 But I feel different about some of the cases.

01:02:54.000 I feel like the election case has the most substance to it.

01:03:02.000 Standing up and saying, the election's rigged, the election's rigged.

01:03:05.000 I have a problem with that, but obviously more than half the country didn't have as much of a problem with it.

01:03:13.000 Well, that was one of the ones that I said was the weirdest where he didn't have an answer ready.

01:03:19.000 That you should have an answer ready right away.

01:03:21.000 If I had been accused of something like that and I strongly believed that the elections were rigged, I'd be able to give you facts right away.

01:03:29.000 But he can't.

01:03:30.000 Well, who's his facts?

01:03:31.000 Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow?

01:03:34.000 Well, that's the thing is like I don't know how much time he has to investigate the cases, right?

01:03:40.000 So he has probably people telling him things and who are these people and what is their evidence?

01:03:45.000 What's their information?

01:03:46.000 I would hope that if you have something that's so controversial, like you ran for president, you believe you should have won and they rigged it, you should have data that you could spit out at any cocktail party.

01:03:59.000 But he's doing the same thing that you're talking about CNN and MSNBC do, which is just repeating the same thing.

01:04:06.000 When people were standing in line voting a couple of weeks ago, he was saying this election was rigged.

01:04:11.000 And poof, it must have straightened it out because he won.

01:04:16.000 What he was saying was they were trying to rig the election.

01:04:20.000 What facts did he have to back that up?

01:04:22.000 Well, there's the one thing of bringing in people to the country illegally and then pushing for amnesty, which they were doing.

01:04:30.000 Yeah, I just don't know the numbers on it.

01:04:32.000 It's millions of people.

01:04:33.000 If you think about the amount of people that came into the country, right?

01:04:36.000 And you think about how some of these swing states, their cumulative votes was like 75,000 that switched it one way or another.

01:04:44.000 And just you can imagine, if you're bringing in millions and millions of people and you're moving them to swing states, you could do that.

01:04:49.000 Yeah, if that's true.

01:04:51.000 And the evidence against it was like, well, they're not all moving to swing states.

01:04:53.000 Well, okay, you can't tell people where they can and can't move once they come to the United States if they have family that's in Texas or if they have family that's in Arkansas or whatever.

01:05:00.000 They're going to go wherever the fuck they want to go, but a significant number of them Yeah.

01:05:23.000 And then giving them an incentive to vote for the party that did that to them when the other party wants to—they want to round people up in mass deportations.

01:05:32.000 Yeah, but putting party aside, what evidence did you see?

01:05:36.000 Documentary evidence that people were registering to vote and how many of them?

01:05:42.000 Well, it's not that they were registering to vote.

01:05:44.000 The issue is that there's no voter ID, which is fucking insane.

01:05:48.000 You need an ID for everything.

01:05:50.000 This ID— Where is there no voter ID? Harris won some states that require voter ID, contrary to online claims, fact check.

01:05:57.000 So there's an online chart that's incorrect that people are passing around?

01:06:01.000 See, this is exactly...

01:06:03.000 So what states did she win that have voter ID? Well, there's certain deep blue states.

01:06:10.000 I hear you.

01:06:11.000 Colorado and Rhode Island are two.

01:06:12.000 But look what just happened.

01:06:13.000 So is that two?

01:06:13.000 Is that the two?

01:06:15.000 Vice President also won New Hampshire, which requires voter ID, but allows individuals without one to either have their identity confirmed by a designated official or fill out an affidavit.

01:06:25.000 Harris also won both Delaware and Virginia.

01:06:29.000 So there's a couple states that she won that have voter ID. But these are like these deep blue states.

01:06:37.000 Fair enough.

01:06:37.000 Look, I don't know.

01:06:38.000 I think the question is the swing states.

01:06:40.000 I don't know enough about it.

01:06:41.000 And I live in a world where I need the evidence.

01:06:45.000 But backing up to the other election, look, I'm just saying if there was one case where I was like, come on, man.

01:06:51.000 You know what's weird about the 2020 that we keep going back to?

01:06:54.000 Is the amount of people that voted.

01:06:56.000 That's what's really crazy.

01:06:57.000 Way more.

01:06:58.000 Way more.

01:06:59.000 Way more.

01:07:00.000 I don't know what to make of that.

01:07:01.000 Well, it's the first time ever you have mail-in ballots that are used ubiquitously.

01:07:05.000 That wasn't a thing before.

01:07:07.000 Mail-in ballots were essentially for people that were overseas.

01:07:09.000 Well, I think COVID had a big part.

01:07:11.000 Sure, it did.

01:07:12.000 But also, never miss an opportunity.

01:07:15.000 And if you wanted to cheat, that would be the way to do it.

01:07:18.000 And to try to keep voting mail-in ballots, keep voting by mail-in ballots when it's not necessary anymore.

01:07:25.000 It's not a pandemic.

01:07:26.000 Sounds good.

01:07:26.000 Seems crazy.

01:07:27.000 It does, but it's not...

01:07:28.000 To me, I live in a world where you cannot say shit like that without backing it up.

01:07:33.000 But listen, whether...

01:07:34.000 I don't...

01:07:36.000 I have started to really veer away from having a strong political view and just putting my head down and doing what I can.

01:07:45.000 So I don't, I mean, I don't see the evidence on the prior election.

01:07:50.000 I see the claim repeated a lot.

01:07:52.000 I just didn't...

01:07:53.000 I don't see the evidence either.

01:07:54.000 But I do see evidence that people are trying to make it easier for illegals to vote.

01:08:01.000 That disturbs me.

01:08:02.000 The pathway to citizenship has always been kind of difficult.

01:08:06.000 And when you talk to people that have done it the right way, it's very hard.

01:08:10.000 They have to go up for review.

01:08:12.000 They have to hope that this person decides that they're a person worthy of being in this country, and you had to be a person of extraordinary skill and talent where that talent and skill wasn't available in the United States.

01:08:25.000 Listen, I recently moved out of New York to Florida, and I got my driver's license and registered to vote pretty quick after I moved there.

01:08:35.000 My wife didn't. 0.97

01:08:37.000 When we went to vote, they wouldn't let her vote because it hadn't been 30 days yet.

01:08:42.000 So, all I could say is that in Florida, they required an ID, and they didn't let my wife... 1.00

01:08:50.000 Well, California literally passed a law where you're not allowed to ask for ID, which is crazy.

01:08:56.000 Yeah, it is crazy.

01:08:57.000 That's crazy.

01:08:58.000 Well, why would you do that?

01:08:59.000 Andre...

01:08:59.000 What would be the most charitable version of why you would do that?

01:09:03.000 Yeah, Andre Ward and I have been discussing California quite a bit recently, and it seems like...

01:09:14.000 It's a little bananas to live in California right now.

01:09:19.000 It's fucking crazy.

01:09:20.000 Yeah.

01:09:21.000 It's not going to get better either.

01:09:23.000 You know, a lot more people voted red in California.

01:09:26.000 Have you seen the map of 2020 versus 2024?

01:09:30.000 Yeah, I did.

01:09:30.000 It's a giant, significant shift.

01:09:32.000 And if that keeps going, the state's going to go red.

01:09:34.000 And I think if the state keeps falling apart, people are going to come to their senses and recognize that the policies that they have in place right now are fucking gross.

01:09:41.000 They're gross.

01:09:42.000 And you've got a bunch of bureaucrats that are profiting off of the homeless situation. 1.00

01:09:46.000 They're taxing the fucking shit out of people.

01:09:48.000 The state tax is 14. If you live in L.A., it's another one.

01:09:52.000 So 15% of all your money just goes to incompetence.

01:09:56.000 It's the same thing in New York City.

01:09:57.000 I mean, you're giving to the state, to the city.

01:10:04.000 You end up paying way more than—if you make enough money, you end up paying way more.

01:10:10.000 Here's the rub I don't get about Democrats, all right?

01:10:14.000 This is the thing that bothers me about Democrats, and this is why I registered finally as an independent.

01:10:21.000 We hear about the American dream a lot.

01:10:23.000 The American dream.

01:10:25.000 The American dream.

01:10:25.000 I was a son of a teacher.

01:10:27.000 Now I sound like a politician.

01:10:28.000 I was a son of a teacher and a salesman.

01:10:30.000 Did you grow up middle class?

01:10:31.000 What's that?

01:10:31.000 Yeah, I grew up middle class.

01:10:33.000 I grew up mid-middle class, right?

01:10:36.000 And we had to grind it out and there were financial problems and everything else.

01:10:40.000 So the American dream is to make it on your own, to be self-made.

01:10:43.000 And then you get to that point and you get demonized for it.

01:10:48.000 Now you need to give back in a way that how dare you not give more than half your effective salary, more than half your income if you live in California or New York.

01:10:58.000 You give it away.

01:11:00.000 52%, 53%, you end up feeling like, what the fuck?

01:11:04.000 What did I do wrong?

01:11:05.000 I give back in so many other ways.

01:11:07.000 Here's my take on that.

01:11:09.000 If they were doing a great job and they were legitimately making people's lives better, I'd be fine with that.

01:11:15.000 If there was a system where I had to pay 50% because I make a lot of money and I had to pay 50%, but that 50% was changing people's lives, they could show you all these success stories.

01:11:25.000 It's like revolutionizing.

01:11:27.000 The way poor people are allowed to make it out of that situation. 0.92

01:11:32.000 You didn't feel that in California?

01:11:34.000 No?

01:11:34.000 I wasn't feeling it in New York.

01:11:36.000 Nobody feels it.

01:11:37.000 Going to the state courthouse.

01:11:38.000 You feel bureaucracy.

01:11:40.000 Yeah.

01:11:41.000 You feel like corrupt politicians who are profiting off of narratives.

01:11:45.000 And they're a bunch of dirty people who don't even follow their own fucking rules, particularly Gavin Newsom.

01:11:51.000 Doesn't even follow his own rules.

01:11:52.000 It's the guy that got busted in the middle of the pandemic, wearing no mask indoors, eating at the French Laundry.

01:11:57.000 It's all bullshit.

01:11:59.000 It's all bullshit, and the people felt really fucking imprisoned by it.

01:12:02.000 They felt really captured by their government, and that's why a lot of people move.

01:12:06.000 He's got great hair.

01:12:07.000 He does have great hair.

01:12:08.000 Well, he's a great sort of version of what you would expect of a politician, just...

01:12:14.000 Why does great hair get you so far?

01:12:16.000 Well, people want great hair.

01:12:18.000 They want good genes.

01:12:20.000 Tall and great hair means a lot to people.

01:12:25.000 Yeah, I don't fucking get it.

01:12:28.000 We're stupid!

01:12:28.000 People are stupid.

01:12:29.000 There's a lot of stupidity involved in why we choose things, you know?

01:12:33.000 I read this article once about how there was a poll done of female voters when Bill Clinton ran the first time and they asked the reasons why and it was multiple choice and one of them was that he was good looking and had a full head of hair. 0.85

01:12:51.000 Yeah.

01:12:51.000 They want to fuck him.

01:12:53.000 Yeah.

01:12:54.000 And apparently he wanted to fuck them.

01:12:57.000 He was a great president, though.

01:12:59.000 I mean, in terms of policy, in terms of what did for the economy, the guy was a great president.

01:13:03.000 Great orator.

01:13:04.000 I agree, except for the fact that mass incarceration kind of started with him.

01:13:09.000 Yes, the crime bill of 94. Yeah.

01:13:11.000 Yeah.

01:13:12.000 So I think that our prison industrial complex started with Bill Clinton.

01:13:17.000 Well, it was kicked off by Joe Biden.

01:13:20.000 It is.

01:13:20.000 It was just hilarious.

01:13:22.000 It's true.

01:13:22.000 This is the guy running against all that.

01:13:24.000 Yeah.

01:13:24.000 It's all bullshit.

01:13:27.000 It was very interesting to me that this is playing out in real time with the incoming president, and I have this parallel situation going on in Ohio.

01:13:38.000 This is called a weave.

01:13:40.000 I'm weaving back to Ohio.

01:13:43.000 And I want to tell you the rest of the story about the Ohio Four.

01:13:48.000 So this guy, J.D. Tomlinson, is the prosecuting attorney in Lorraine.

01:13:55.000 He's under indictment right now.

01:13:56.000 He's got two months left.

01:13:59.000 Like I said, he now knows, according to him, what it's like to be wrongfully accused of a crime.

01:14:05.000 So watch this.

01:14:07.000 You have these four guys.

01:14:11.000 So, again, it's Al Cleveland, Lenworth Edwards, John Edwards, Benson Davis.

01:14:16.000 Yeah, you gotta light up for this one.

01:14:20.000 So, I told you, William Avery Sr. goes in, tries to get the reward money, they tell him, fuck off.

01:14:28.000 We're good to go.

01:14:47.000 Of how this murder happened.

01:14:49.000 And he says that he watches this woman, Marshall Blakely, get beat for 15 to 20 minutes inside of her apartment and that, you know, the reason this woman gets beat is because Al Cleveland wanted him to work off a debt and beat her up.

01:15:08.000 And he said no.

01:15:09.000 So then these four men bust in the door and this is how the crime occurs.

01:15:15.000 It comes time for the first trial of these four men.

01:15:19.000 And William Avery Jr. shows up as the prosecution's star witness, and he says, I want $10,000 to testify.

01:15:31.000 He gave me two, I want $10,000.

01:15:33.000 And the prosecutors say, we're not giving it to you.

01:15:37.000 And he says, then I'm not testifying.

01:15:40.000 The judge throws him in jail.

01:15:44.000 He's in jail.

01:15:46.000 He is cool in his heels, as they say.

01:15:51.000 And he says, you know, I made this whole thing up.

01:15:58.000 And I did it for the money.

01:16:00.000 And no one believes him.

01:16:02.000 And the judge says, what are you talking about?

01:16:06.000 You're going to get on the stand and testify.

01:16:08.000 He says, no, I'm not.

01:16:10.000 And now he's facing potential perjury charges.

01:16:14.000 The judge declares a mistrial.

01:16:17.000 He then comes back with a news story to the prosecutors and says he witnessed the beating.

01:16:25.000 He witnessed other details of the crime.

01:16:28.000 He then goes on to testify at all four of their trials.

01:16:32.000 After the first mistrial, they all get convicted.

01:16:36.000 He then fully recants of his own volition Says he got off drugs.

01:16:43.000 Says he wants to straighten out his life.

01:16:48.000 He's in the process of cooperating with the FBI and the Secret Service.

01:16:54.000 Now these exhibits are sitting in this folder.

01:16:56.000 You go to Twitter.

01:16:58.000 It's Free the Ohio Four.

01:17:01.000 Free the Ohio Four.

01:17:03.000 There it is.

01:17:04.000 And if you just click on that URL... One person's following?

01:17:08.000 Zero followers?

01:17:09.000 There was a reason because I didn't put it up until right before the episode.

01:17:15.000 I want to be the first person to follow it.

01:17:18.000 I'm going to get on right now and be the first person to follow it.

01:17:20.000 If you click on that, it will bring you to a folder with this 40-page submission that I put in today.

01:17:27.000 And references to all of the exhibits.

01:17:32.000 So this is my first page.

01:17:35.000 At the trials of Al Monday, that was his pseudonym, Al Cleveland's pseudonym.

01:17:42.000 At the trials of Al Monday and those charged with him, I testified under oath that I was an eyewitness to Alfred Cleveland, who I knew as Monday, along with other people I knew as J.R. Will and Shaquem, who was John Edwards, beat Marsha Blakely at Floyd Epps' apartment and then murder her behind Charlie's Bar and Lorraine.

01:18:02.000 All of this was a lie.

01:18:04.000 I never witnessed the murder of Marsha Blakely, was not with her or Al Cleveland the night she was murdered.

01:18:10.000 I only done it for the money, and everything was not true.

01:18:15.000 The entire case was built on this man.

01:18:19.000 There's no forensic evidence, no eyewitnesses, nothing.

01:18:24.000 So this is not to be believed.

01:18:26.000 What was the reason why they thought this woman and that other man were murdered?

01:18:31.000 They didn't know.

01:18:32.000 They had no theory.

01:18:33.000 Police had no theory.

01:18:34.000 There's no connection to them?

01:18:35.000 No connection to them.

01:18:36.000 There was no theory like drug deal gone wrong?

01:18:39.000 Oh, that was what they ended up coming up with was that she was a drug user. 0.99

01:18:45.000 Cleveland was a drug dealer.

01:18:46.000 It must have been drugs gone wrong.

01:18:49.000 So something involving drugs gone wrong.

01:18:54.000 So William Avery Jr. is, after they get convicted, is working as an informant for the FBI and the Secret Service.

01:19:04.000 Now, prior to this case, maybe this is how obtuse I am.

01:19:09.000 I thought that the Secret Service's purview was the president, but apparently they have other investigative functions because he was working on some food stamp scheme as an informant.

01:19:19.000 The Secret Service tells the FBI, and the testimony is in that exhibit file.

01:19:25.000 The Secret Service tells the FBI, this guy, William Avery Jr., he's not to be trusted.

01:19:30.000 He's lying to us, and he's lying to us for money.

01:19:35.000 They contact the prosecutor.

01:19:37.000 The FBI calls the prosecutor in Lorain County and says, this guy, William Avery Jr., used him as an informant in that case against these four men.

01:19:46.000 He's a liar.

01:19:47.000 And he does this for money.

01:19:50.000 So they end up getting Al Cleveland's lawyers, John Edwards' lawyers, Lenworth Edwards, Benson Davis, they end up getting an evidentiary hearing.

01:20:00.000 And William Avery Jr. comes to testify.

01:20:05.000 And he's coming to testify that I made the whole thing up.

01:20:09.000 And he's in very exquisite detail.

01:20:15.000 His father, who obviously brought him there, threatened his life.

01:20:21.000 He sat him down and smoked crack with him to calm him down.

01:20:28.000 You can't make this shit up.

01:20:29.000 Wait till you read the affidavit.

01:20:31.000 He sat down to smoke crack with him to calm him down and told him, I need that reward money for my drug habit.

01:20:39.000 He was a fucking junkie.

01:20:41.000 So he needs the reward money and he gets his son to go in there.

01:20:45.000 And it's obvious if you watch...

01:20:48.000 If you read the interrogation and his testimony that he's being led, they show him pictures of the apartment where this woman was allegedly beat.

01:20:56.000 He's getting details wrong.

01:20:58.000 He changed his story.

01:21:02.000 He was telling conflicting versions of the story.

01:21:04.000 So at these post-conviction hearings where these men should have all been exonerated, He gets on the stand and before he testifies, the judge says to him, have you been advised?

01:21:18.000 Do you have an attorney?

01:21:20.000 He said, I don't think I need an attorney.

01:21:22.000 And he tells William Avery Jr., well, you need an attorney.

01:21:26.000 We're going to appoint you an attorney because you're about to perjure yourself.

01:21:31.000 Because you either did one of two things.

01:21:33.000 You either lied and that put four men in prison or you're about to lie now to set them free.

01:21:41.000 Either way, you've lied under oath.

01:21:45.000 Think about the mindfuck of this.

01:21:48.000 So this guy is coming to clearest conscience and the judge threatens him with prosecution.

01:21:55.000 So he gets an appointed attorney And they go and ask the prosecutor, will you give him immunity so he can tell the truth?

01:22:03.000 They say no.

01:22:05.000 His defense attorney asks the judge, will you give him immunity so he can tell the truth?

01:22:10.000 And the judge says no.

01:22:11.000 Oh, God.

01:22:12.000 And they tell him, we're going to charge you with perjury if you tell the truth.

01:22:19.000 He walks out of the courthouse, okay, after pleading the fifth and is interviewed by the local paper walking out of the courthouse.

01:22:28.000 That's in the exhibits.

01:22:30.000 And he says, they're all innocent.

01:22:33.000 I made the whole thing up.

01:22:35.000 I've been trying to tell the truth here, but I can't go to jail for whatever time they're going to give me.

01:22:41.000 So here you have a guy that is...

01:22:46.000 The son of a known junkie.

01:22:50.000 The prosecutors in this, in Lorain County, have been told by the FBI that he's not reliable, that he makes things up just to get money.

01:23:01.000 He's been caught in lie after lie after lie, and now he comes and wants to tell the truth.

01:23:08.000 And set these men free.

01:23:09.000 And this judge puts him in this situation where he can't tell the truth or else he's going to get prosecuted.

01:23:19.000 This is what happens in this country.

01:23:22.000 This is the kind of thing that these four men, two of them are out, two of them are serving life sentences.

01:23:29.000 Al Cleveland's wife, Roberta Cleveland, saw this DA and he said he was going to do the right thing.

01:23:35.000 He knew that the case was problematic.

01:23:37.000 And now, because he's worried about his own indictment, you know, he's not responding.

01:23:43.000 So what we're asking for is your listeners to go through and read this very detailed submission.

01:23:52.000 That I've made along with the Ohio Innocence Project, the Ohio Public Defenders, and a great attorney by the name of Kim Corral, who you actually had a good laugh over one time, oddly enough,

01:24:09.000 because she was at the White House when Kanye West was there.

01:24:13.000 She was apparently standing over him, smiling, and you were like, look at this fucking girl.

01:24:18.000 She just thinks that, like, how the fuck did I get here?

01:24:21.000 She told me about it this morning.

01:24:23.000 Did she feel that way?

01:24:24.000 Like, how the fuck did I get here?

01:24:25.000 She probably did.

01:24:26.000 She's super cool.

01:24:27.000 I spoke to her this morning.

01:24:28.000 She's a badass. 1.00

01:24:29.000 And she was like, I've never met him, but he seems awesome.

01:24:32.000 And he did have a good laugh at my expense when Kanye was in the White House.

01:24:36.000 So, yeah, there she is.

01:24:40.000 That's her. 0.88

01:24:40.000 Do you remember this? 0.88

01:24:42.000 Kind of.

01:24:43.000 Kind of.

01:24:44.000 It's so funny.

01:24:46.000 Kanye in the White House.

01:24:47.000 I forgot that.

01:24:48.000 She's awesome. 0.83

01:24:50.000 So we're asking your listeners to go and read the exhibits.

01:24:55.000 Read the submission.

01:24:56.000 And then I have a contact page.

01:24:59.000 Call J.D. Tomlinson.

01:25:01.000 Write him a letter.

01:25:02.000 Look, these four men...

01:25:05.000 Thank you, Jamie.

01:25:06.000 These four men certainly were drug dealers.

01:25:12.000 Al Cleveland.

01:25:13.000 We've established Al Cleveland's alibi.

01:25:16.000 John Edwards' alibi.

01:25:18.000 Check this shit out.

01:25:20.000 His alibi witness was Damon John from Shark Tank.

01:25:27.000 He testified at his fucking trial at post-conviction hearings.

01:25:33.000 Damon John, back then, was a hardscrabble New Yorker.

01:25:38.000 He was doing whatever he could to grind it out.

01:25:40.000 This was before FUBU. And he was friends with Al Cleveland, and Al needed to have a TV moved, and Damon had like a gypsy cab service, a car service in New York.

01:25:51.000 You lived in New York, right?

01:25:52.000 You remember what it was like you call a cab service?

01:25:55.000 Yeah.

01:25:55.000 A car service?

01:25:56.000 And he was with Al Cleveland the day of these murders.

01:26:01.000 Al Cleveland saw his probation officer the day after the murders.

01:26:04.000 People saw him all over New York when the murders happened.

01:26:08.000 John Edwards was with his girlfriend, his girlfriend's family throughout the night from like 10 at night till 3 in the morning.

01:26:18.000 His girlfriend was pissed off at him because he was flirting with some girl in the bar. 1.00

01:26:24.000 So these guys have alibis.

01:26:26.000 There is no question.

01:26:27.000 They had absolutely nothing to do with this crime.

01:26:30.000 This woman, Marsha Blakely, was murdered, right?

01:26:33.000 Here's one of the strangest facts in this case.

01:26:36.000 She is seen all over town.

01:26:38.000 All over town.

01:26:41.000 At the time, they claim that this guy, William Avery, originally claimed she was murdered.

01:26:47.000 She's seen by family members, friends.

01:26:49.000 She's looking for crack. 0.99

01:26:51.000 She's walking down the street way after this guy claims it happened.

01:26:56.000 How was she murdered?

01:26:57.000 She was... 0.97

01:26:58.000 Throat was cut, and she was run over by a car.

01:27:03.000 All right, so we've talked about tunnel vision before, and when the police think they have the guy, they had a problem on their hands.

01:27:10.000 They couldn't solve the crime and they have these guys that are drug dealers in the area.

01:27:14.000 So they become easy marks for this.

01:27:16.000 There is a blade sitting in a diagram found right next to Marsha Blakely's body.

01:27:23.000 They never tested it.

01:27:25.000 They never collected it.

01:27:27.000 They never tested it.

01:27:28.000 It was at a time when DNA is the early 90s.

01:27:31.000 DNA was around.

01:27:34.000 Her roommate, Epps, Raymond Epps, is found...

01:27:39.000 A mile or two down the road with his throat slit and run over.

01:27:45.000 Same thing.

01:27:46.000 Same thing.

01:27:47.000 No one's been charged.

01:27:49.000 No one's been charged.

01:27:51.000 It's an unsolved case as of this day.

01:27:53.000 Why?

01:27:54.000 Because they pinned it on these other guys.

01:27:56.000 Because they pinned it on these guys and this guy, William Avery Jr., only came in with information about one of the murders.

01:28:03.000 The cases were so clearly connected that the medical examiner pointed it out.

01:28:09.000 These people were killed in the same way.

01:28:12.000 Why there isn't an outrage, a fucking outrage about this case is beyond me.

01:28:19.000 When I got this case, I said, there is no way what you're telling me is true.

01:28:24.000 That this guy has come and wants the clearest conscience and tells you exactly what happened and the FBI told the prosecutors that he's a liar.

01:28:33.000 And these guys are still, two of them are still serving life sentences.

01:28:38.000 And when you have to live stamped as a murderer, even in the free world, you know, Al Cleveland is out and he's suffering.

01:28:49.000 I mean, I had to listen to his wife heaving. 1.00

01:28:57.000 She couldn't get a hold of herself because she went down to J.D. Tomlinson's office and said, you told me you were going to help.

01:29:07.000 And he said, I can't now.

01:29:09.000 I'm sorry, I've been indicted.

01:29:12.000 The last time I exonerated someone, look what they did to me.

01:29:15.000 Because he exonerated someone else and his political opponents attacked him.

01:29:21.000 You know, human beings, we...

01:29:26.000 Sometimes get in our own way because of outside forces.

01:29:29.000 What we think other people are going to say, think J.D. Tomlinson's been voted out.

01:29:34.000 He's been wrongfully accused of a crime.

01:29:36.000 It's time for him to say, you know what, I'm going to do the right thing.

01:29:40.000 All I ask is actually a meeting with him.

01:29:44.000 I want to meet with you between now and December 31st.

01:29:48.000 Let me lay everything out for you as I have in this submission.

01:29:52.000 He's now going to have it in his hands.

01:29:56.000 He wouldn't answer my text messages.

01:29:58.000 I'll give him a break.

01:29:59.000 He was obviously going through some...

01:30:03.000 Serious personal issues, being under indictment, running for re-election.

01:30:08.000 This is an easy thing.

01:30:10.000 This is just doing the right thing.

01:30:13.000 There is no way that you could look at this evidence, and this is why I think it's a good idea for...

01:30:20.000 Rather than give a snapshot of a case and have to rely on some process with these conviction integrity units behind closed doors where they run the reinvestigation.

01:30:34.000 I like the public being able to get invested and look at the evidence themselves.

01:30:39.000 Everyone loves a true crime story.

01:30:42.000 So why not, as part of this, let the public help make the case.

01:30:47.000 And when they write a letter They'll do it more forcefully.

01:30:50.000 Or they call him and say, how could you ignore this?

01:30:53.000 So I would just encourage everyone to go on Twitter and go to FreeTheOhio4 and look at the evidence.

01:31:03.000 And if you ever – I've gotten so many reach-outs.

01:31:06.000 How can I make a difference?

01:31:07.000 What can I do to make a difference?

01:31:09.000 This is it.

01:31:10.000 You can write.

01:31:11.000 You can call.

01:31:14.000 His cell phone number is online because he was running for re-election.

01:31:20.000 Let him know that the public is watching and expecting him to do the right thing.

01:31:28.000 That's the...

01:31:31.000 The best use I feel like I can make of publicly advocating for change is to help bring in the public and give them a vested interest in trying to help.

01:31:42.000 Well, this case, this is just an amazing example, right?

01:31:48.000 I mean, you said this is the craziest case you think you've ever had.

01:31:52.000 I don't think I've ever had a case.

01:31:55.000 Ever.

01:31:57.000 Where the sole alleged eyewitness recants and then is threatened with jail time is actually put in jail after trying to extort the prosecutors.

01:32:11.000 Where there's no forensic evidence and it was the most incomplete investigation I have ever seen.

01:32:18.000 What would be the most logical thing to do if this guy says, you know what?

01:32:23.000 There was a beating at this house.

01:32:28.000 What would be the most logical thing for police to do?

01:32:31.000 There was a beating inside this apartment for 15 to 20 minutes and this woman was brutally beaten. 0.77

01:32:38.000 What are the police going to do first?

01:32:40.000 Scan for evidence.

01:32:41.000 Go to the apartment.

01:32:42.000 They go to the apartment.

01:32:43.000 Right.

01:32:44.000 They don't spray it for luminol.

01:32:46.000 They don't see if there's...

01:32:48.000 Luminol is a chemical agent that brings out hidden blood.

01:32:54.000 You know...

01:32:56.000 They do nothing.

01:32:57.000 They go and do a scan of the apartment, a visual scan, and see nothing out of order.

01:33:03.000 They don't test that knife.

01:33:05.000 Was there evidence that the woman was beaten?

01:33:07.000 No evidence.

01:33:08.000 Oh, there was evidence that she was beaten, just not in that apartment.

01:33:12.000 So she's beaten before she was stabbed.

01:33:13.000 There was an eyewitness that saw her that night with like a black eye begging for money for drugs.

01:33:21.000 Oh, okay.

01:33:23.000 After he allegedly saw her killed.

01:33:27.000 Oh.

01:33:27.000 So, it's...

01:33:29.000 She was living a street life. 1.00

01:33:31.000 Right.

01:33:32.000 And she was...

01:33:33.000 There was, you know, suspicion that she was trading sex for money so that she could feed her drug habit. 1.00

01:33:39.000 So, I just don't...

01:33:42.000 I don't...

01:33:42.000 I've never had a case where the FBI calls the prosecutor and says, this guy is a liar.

01:33:48.000 And he goes in for reward money and for financial gain and he can't be trusted.

01:33:53.000 Never had a case where a judge says, if you tell the truth...

01:33:59.000 We're going to put you in jail.

01:34:01.000 If you tell the truth, it's just as bad as putting these guys, you know, you either told a lie to put them in jail or you're now telling a lie to free them.

01:34:12.000 I mean, I just don't get it.

01:34:14.000 I just don't get it.

01:34:16.000 I don't understand why, you know, in almost half of the cases where there has been an exoneration based on a sole eyewitness's testimony, over half the people recant.

01:34:31.000 And the courts are very critical of these recantations.

01:34:36.000 So in other words, if someone makes up a story and then they come back and say, look, I made that up because my dad was threatening me, because the police threatened me, that's somehow viewed very, very critically.

01:34:50.000 Whereas the initial allegation, it's really easy to put someone in jail.

01:34:55.000 Real easy.

01:34:56.000 Real difficult to get them out.

01:34:59.000 So, do you think that's because the system is set up to not reverse convictions because it's bad for the prosecutor's record, it's bad for the confidence of the judicial system?

01:35:12.000 All of the above.

01:35:13.000 I mean, why did Kamala Harris block access to biological evidence from crime scenes? 0.97

01:35:24.000 I think the rationale back then was, oh, well, it would lead to a flood of requests.

01:35:28.000 So fucking what?

01:35:29.000 Right.

01:35:30.000 Flood of requests from innocent people, perhaps.

01:35:32.000 Or people that maybe they're guilty and they want to take a shot.

01:35:37.000 Who knows?

01:35:38.000 But isn't that worth the price of wrongfully incarcerating people?

01:35:43.000 And why is...

01:35:48.000 There's so much politics that gets wound up in this.

01:35:53.000 And for the life of me, I don't understand why it doesn't see the light of day more.

01:35:58.000 I testified before the House Judiciary Committee in Florida in connection with the Perlmutter case when their DNA was stolen.

01:36:08.000 Their DNA was stolen and they were wrongfully accused of a crime, Ike and Lori Perlmutter.

01:36:13.000 And I testified before the House Judiciary Committee that Stealing someone's DNA? As a private citizen, it should be a felony.

01:36:26.000 It was a misdemeanor.

01:36:29.000 And, you know, it was one of my finer moments of oration, I think, because I got a 16-0 vote.

01:36:38.000 And I had a really interesting discussion.

01:36:40.000 It's recorded.

01:36:41.000 I should find it and send it to you sometime.

01:36:43.000 But there were Republicans that asked me Hey, what is it that we can do to help you more?

01:36:55.000 Because this story is crazy.

01:36:58.000 And I said, well, there is something that you can do as part of this bill.

01:37:03.000 We would like to make it not only a felony, but give defense attorneys that have a good faith basis to believe that it's an alternative suspect's DNA. The same right to collect that DNA as law enforcement.

01:37:19.000 And if they make a showing to the court that they have a basis to believe that this is an alternative suspect.

01:37:25.000 So I had a former police officer who was a member of the Judiciary Committee say, look, I was a cop and we used to do it all the time.

01:37:34.000 And his exact quote was, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

01:37:38.000 And I think if you can make a good faith showing, I want to support that.

01:37:43.000 When it came time for the bill to go to the Senate, the guy that was sponsoring the bill wasn't responding to me.

01:38:03.000 Criminal defense attorneys with an adequate showing to collect the DNA of alternative suspects.

01:38:10.000 And I said, so we'd like to add that amendment.

01:38:13.000 And he just stopped responding to me.

01:38:15.000 And finally, I got him on the phone and I said, what's the story?

01:38:19.000 Why aren't you responding to this?

01:38:20.000 And he goes, it's not happening, Josh.

01:38:22.000 It's just not going to happen.

01:38:23.000 And I said, why?

01:38:24.000 He goes, I'm not going to go into that, but it's not happening.

01:38:27.000 So, you know, obviously there was some political pushback to it.

01:38:31.000 He just wasn't going to have that part of this bill.

01:38:35.000 So, you know, I don't know what else you can do to push these issues back.

01:38:45.000 You know, other than get out there in the public and bang the drum about it and try to get people to pay attention.

01:38:52.000 And this, I think, is a rare opportunity because it gives people...

01:38:56.000 It allows them to invest in this.

01:38:59.000 It allows them to see what the evidence is and actually, you know, write a letter and say, hey...

01:39:07.000 I saw the testimony of this Secret Service agent, of this FBI agent under oath in these post-conviction proceedings.

01:39:13.000 Why can't...

01:39:14.000 What more would you need?

01:39:16.000 You have the power to exonerate these guys and end this 30-year-long nightmare for them.

01:39:22.000 Why not do it?

01:39:24.000 Yeah, why not?

01:39:25.000 Well, I'm hoping that this is one of those cases where the people get activated.

01:39:31.000 And the way you laid it out is so crazy.

01:39:33.000 I mean, and with more evidence online that people have access to, I'm sure there's a bunch of people who are going to react to that.

01:39:41.000 I'm curious to see what the response is going to be.

01:39:44.000 Yeah, FreeTheOhio4.

01:39:46.000 At FreeTheOhio4 on Twitter.

01:39:49.000 And, you know, like I'm not a big Twitter guy.

01:39:52.000 Or I can't say Twitter anymore.

01:39:53.000 I'm not a big X guy.

01:39:55.000 I still say Twitter.

01:39:55.000 Yeah, so, I mean, I guess I should get more into it.

01:39:59.000 Yeah, we did.

01:40:00.000 We threw this up.

01:40:03.000 Hopefully that the number starts going up.

01:40:06.000 Oh, they will.

01:40:07.000 As soon as it gets published, I'm sure we'll get a chance to see.

01:40:09.000 It's going to be interesting to see how many bots lock onto it.

01:40:12.000 Yeah, and then it would be my dream to one day have the Ohio Force sitting here and have a toast.

01:40:23.000 Yeah.

01:40:25.000 Wow.

01:40:25.000 What a story they have, huh?

01:40:27.000 Yeah.

01:40:27.000 Jesus Christ.

01:40:28.000 And, you know, the sad part about it is, like, I hope that people don't say, well, there were drug dealers at the time, and, you know...

01:40:37.000 Again, that's not...

01:40:39.000 Because you commit one crime doesn't mean that...

01:40:42.000 Yeah, doesn't mean you're a murderer.

01:40:43.000 Also, circumstances are different for every fucking human being.

01:40:49.000 And for you to think that there's no way that I would do a crime...

01:40:54.000 Especially a crime like that.

01:40:57.000 Are you sure?

01:40:58.000 Are you sure if you were in their shoes, if you lived their life?

01:41:02.000 We all like to think that everybody's life is the same as ours.

01:41:05.000 We only have one life that we can kind of reference.

01:41:08.000 When we look at other people's lives, we kind of imagine what it would be like to live their life.

01:41:12.000 We don't know.

01:41:13.000 People do desperate things in desperate times, depending upon your environment, depending upon how you grew up, what your influences were, what trauma you experienced, whether you were incarcerated at a young age.

01:41:26.000 No one has any understanding of that other than the people that get trapped into the system.

01:41:32.000 They just don't.

01:41:34.000 Tough on crime.

01:41:35.000 Yes, I think you should be tough on crime.

01:41:37.000 I think you should arrest criminals and evil people that do terrible things and make society awful.

01:41:41.000 Yes, so do I. But also, you should definitely not arrest innocent people.

01:41:46.000 You should definitely not imprison them and then punish someone who's trying to say, hey, the reason why these people are in jail is because I told a lie.

01:41:55.000 Yeah, I mean, I don't get the threat of punishing them.

01:41:58.000 And, you know, I hope you have the type of influence and following that.

01:42:05.000 Just listen to that perspective, folks, right?

01:42:08.000 You know, I have, in the last few years, developed a way deeper understanding of how relative trauma can be from individual to individual.

01:42:21.000 I did not realize trauma that I had suffered until I started to travel those roads.

01:42:28.000 And then how it can impact behavior.

01:42:33.000 So I'm trying to make better decisions about how I judge things.

01:42:38.000 Because I don't want to say I don't make...

01:42:40.000 I'm not judgmental.

01:42:41.000 We're all judgmental.

01:42:42.000 Everyone's judgmental.

01:42:43.000 You have to be.

01:42:44.000 That's how you survive in life.

01:42:45.000 Right.

01:42:45.000 I have to form judgments.

01:42:46.000 But I'm trying to make more educated judgments rather than Judging someone based on, you know, not having a complete picture of what they might have been through and also not being able to put myself as best I can behind their eyeballs or in their brain.

01:43:07.000 It's hard unless you really make an investment and I think the easy thing to do is to make a quick judgment and keep it moving.

01:43:15.000 Yes.

01:43:16.000 Right?

01:43:16.000 And I think that words can be an excuse.

01:43:19.000 The deep dive is too much of a time investment, too difficult.

01:43:25.000 And I've had to understand behaviors that I never thought I would ever have to consider.

01:43:31.000 And I can tell you, at least in my experience, it forces you to become a more compassionate human being, a more understanding human being.

01:43:40.000 You get to know yourself better.

01:43:43.000 Because if you're not just constantly trying to figure out more about yourself and others, what the fuck are we doing here?

01:43:49.000 Right.

01:43:49.000 What the fuck are we doing here?

01:43:50.000 Yeah.

01:43:51.000 Yeah.

01:43:52.000 If you're not trying to figure out more about yourself, I mean, if you're the most enlightened person alive, tell us how you did it.

01:43:58.000 You know?

01:43:59.000 You don't have any searching to do anymore?

01:44:01.000 Tell us what you did.

01:44:02.000 Because I never met anybody like that.

01:44:05.000 I can't thank you enough because, again, it's a rare occurrence these days to be unaffected by the outside noise.

01:44:19.000 And...

01:44:20.000 I promise you I'll do better in making sure that I'm a little bit more plugged into the help people are getting when they get out, whether they have done it or not.

01:44:32.000 We've had two recent re-sentencings.

01:44:35.000 One guy was paralyzed and blinded in prison.

01:44:43.000 And he's in a wheelchair and he can't see. 1.00

01:44:46.000 And part of the reason he was paralyzed was because of poor medical care that he was getting.

01:44:51.000 It was a difficult decision to make initially because I said, shit, another resentencing, a guy that was found guilty.

01:44:58.000 And then I saw the horrific medical treatment he was getting and I said, you know, this just isn't right.

01:45:02.000 You don't just throw out a human being like this.

01:45:05.000 And what threat is he?

01:45:06.000 In a wheelchair, blind. 0.63

01:45:09.000 But, you know, I have to do a good job of making sure that people are getting the attention and care they need.

01:45:15.000 It takes resources and, you know, we're thankful to everybody that continues to reach out and support any of these causes.

01:45:23.000 The Perlmutter Center, you know, the Midwest Innocence Project is a great one.

01:45:29.000 The Ohio Innocence Project, those are all satellite projects, but The Freedom Clinic at the Perlmutter Center, we've had some terrific folks, including the Perlmutters, that have given us the resources we need to make a difference.

01:45:44.000 I'm in your debt eternally.

01:45:50.000 You're not.

01:45:51.000 You're not.

01:45:52.000 I appreciate you very much.

01:45:53.000 And my thing about the outside noise is you should never put any effort or time or focus into something that has no net benefit.

01:46:04.000 There's no benefit in the outside noise.

01:46:07.000 Especially if you're an introspective person.

01:46:11.000 If you're a person who thinks everything you do is awesome, maybe it's good to see people shit on you.

01:46:17.000 Maybe it's good to see that some people don't like you.

01:46:19.000 Maybe it's good.

01:46:20.000 Maybe it's good to hear other people's perspectives, kind of like you put your ego in check.

01:46:25.000 But if you're a person that's introspective, and I know you are, if you're a person that is hard on yourself when you make mistakes, no one's harder on me than me.

01:46:34.000 I'm very hard on me.

01:46:36.000 Oh, I know someone that's as hard on themselves as you.

01:46:39.000 He's sitting across from you.

01:46:41.000 But it's, of course, correct.

01:46:44.000 You know, if you look inward and you don't like what you're doing or what you've said or who you are, don't do that again.

01:46:51.000 One of the best things I did in the wake of this whole Sheldon Johnson incident is I turned my comments off on Instagram and turned my account private.

01:47:03.000 I think I'll make it public again after today because I want to generate support for the Ohio Four.

01:47:11.000 But turning comments off is a nice thing because you can't believe the good stuff or the bad stuff.

01:47:18.000 You just stay forward.

01:47:19.000 Especially for people in the public.

01:47:20.000 The good stuff, you can get what they call audience capture.

01:47:24.000 You have enough people leaning you in a certain direction or giving you praise for a certain thing.

01:47:28.000 You start doing more of that.

01:47:30.000 And this is a manipulative tactic that's used online both for and against people.

01:47:37.000 Hey man, look, when I was on my way over here today, I was walking into the Uber and a guy at the hotel goes, I hope you're going to talk that talk over on the JRE. And I said, yeah,

01:47:52.000 I am.

01:47:52.000 And it turns out that he went to high school with Rodney Reed, who's on death row here in Texas.

01:48:01.000 And I got into an interesting conversation with him.

01:48:05.000 He's like, man, his older brother could pop and lock.

01:48:07.000 I think?

01:48:09.000 I said, yeah?

01:48:10.000 He goes, man, this motherfucker was popping and locking all the time.

01:48:14.000 He's telling me about him breakdancing and he's like, no, for real, you know, shining a light on this stuff gives a lot of people out here hope.

01:48:21.000 And I told him that, you know, I wrote a letter to the legislator here in Texas that's reconsidering that case.

01:48:30.000 So it's just real cool, man, to get people behind it that really care about this stuff and The public can really help out.

01:48:40.000 You don't have to be a lawyer.

01:48:41.000 You don't have to be a psychologist.

01:48:43.000 You don't have to be a therapist.

01:48:45.000 Pressure does break pipes.

01:48:47.000 So reaching out to J.D. Tomlinson and making noise between now and December 31st.

01:48:53.000 And as you said, talking about things on this podcast have actually exonerated people.

01:48:58.000 Yeah, I thought this one was probably better off just me.

01:49:04.000 Let me think real carefully about the next guy.

01:49:07.000 Yeah, I know.

01:49:08.000 Jamie and I were both talking about it.

01:49:09.000 Do you think he's gonna bring somebody in?

01:49:13.000 Fuck.

01:49:14.000 You certainly can.

01:49:15.000 I mean, you definitely can.

01:49:17.000 Hey, listen.

01:49:17.000 Next time around.

01:49:18.000 And if it's the Ohio Four, great.

01:49:21.000 Hey, listen.

01:49:21.000 The guys that have been on here are all thriving.

01:49:24.000 Bruce Bryan works at the Queen's Defender's Office.

01:49:28.000 He has not been without challenges, trust me.

01:49:31.000 But he's actually going, I'll leave you with this, Bruce is going to hope-hope that parole lets him, because we're still working on his full exoneration, even though he was granted clemency on the innocence claim.

01:49:47.000 Bruce is going to Nairobi and Uganda to speak to prisoners there.

01:49:53.000 And he's a climb advocate for the Queens defenders.

01:49:57.000 Derek continues to be a whirlwind of positive activity.

01:50:02.000 He's just amazing.

01:50:04.000 He's getting people out left and right.

01:50:09.000 Robert Johnson, who we had on, is continuing to do amazing things down in New Orleans.

01:50:16.000 And all of them are just thriving.

01:50:18.000 They're doing well.

01:50:19.000 Not enough attention is given to the happy endings, right, than we give to the bad stuff, but...

01:50:26.000 Of course.

01:50:27.000 I mean, that's just how people are.

01:50:29.000 Why is that?

01:50:31.000 First of all, they're afraid of crime.

01:50:34.000 So they highlight the instances where things are bad and things do go bad.

01:50:40.000 And they don't want to look at the disgusting aspects of the legal system.

01:50:46.000 People want to live life through rose-colored glasses and have this perspective that the bad people go to jail.

01:50:53.000 But it's not just about crime.

01:50:56.000 Most of the headlines that get the most clicks are about someone having a fucking affair, somebody dying.

01:51:02.000 Right.

01:51:02.000 There's not a lot of triumph in the news.

01:51:04.000 Well, people like when other people's lives suck.

01:51:06.000 Why, though?

01:51:07.000 Why?

01:51:07.000 Because it makes them not think about the suck of their own life.

01:51:10.000 That's why they like it when a celebrity falls, like a P. Diddy gets arrested, because they see these people living these lives they could never imagine, like yachts and Rolls Royces and all that shit.

01:51:22.000 And then they see them get taken down like, yeah!

01:51:26.000 Because they were, you know, envious.

01:51:29.000 And it's also like, it's a part of our culture is to celebrate wealth in the most disgusting and extravagant ways.

01:51:36.000 You know, like, I mean, how many social media personalities have emerged just all about, look at all the stuff I have.

01:51:45.000 Look at all the things I have.

01:51:47.000 Look at all the famous people I hang out with.

01:51:49.000 Look at all the girls.

01:51:50.000 Look at the yacht.

01:51:51.000 Look at the car.

01:51:51.000 Look at the jet.

01:51:52.000 Look at the this.

01:51:53.000 Look at the that.

01:51:53.000 Look at all the things you can't get.

01:51:55.000 And when those people get got, people love it.

01:51:57.000 You know who folks are probably clamoring gets got?

01:52:02.000 Who?

01:52:03.000 If that's the basis, then I don't agree.

01:52:06.000 Who's that fucking guy?

01:52:07.000 Guy's always got his shirt off.

01:52:10.000 He's always taking pictures on yachts and shooting machine guns.

01:52:15.000 Oh, Dan Bilzeri.

01:52:16.000 Oh, man.

01:52:16.000 Yeah.

01:52:18.000 I'd like to peek into his brain one day.

01:52:23.000 Yeah, there's probably a lot going on in there.

01:52:25.000 It's interesting how people do become famous for that, though.

01:52:30.000 It's like showing your stuff makes you famous.

01:52:34.000 Showing a life that other people can't really imagine ever living.

01:52:38.000 But think of the hypocrisy and the inner conflict and turmoil that that exposes.

01:52:45.000 So in other words...

01:52:48.000 We want people to fail.

01:52:50.000 That's somehow innate in many of us.

01:52:53.000 It makes us feel better about ourselves.

01:52:54.000 Yet, you will have 3 million followers or 10 or 15 following someone that, and I'm not talking about that guy, whoever.

01:53:05.000 Who is clearly just selling their looks or their lifestyle or whatever it is.

01:53:10.000 So yet we're drawn to it and we want to watch it.

01:53:13.000 And then when the person fails, we want to fucking devour them to the point where they're a carcass laying in the street.

01:53:21.000 Sure.

01:53:22.000 Celebrity marriages and divorces, that's another big one. 0.98

01:53:24.000 Love it when celebrities get divorced. 1.00

01:53:26.000 Haha.

01:53:27.000 Haha, you're miserable too.

01:53:28.000 Do you love it?

01:53:29.000 No.

01:53:30.000 No.

01:53:31.000 People love it.

01:53:31.000 I find it fascinating when people keep getting married and keep getting divorced.

01:53:36.000 Goddamn, how many times can JLo get married before the next guy's like, hey, I don't know if this is going to work out.

01:53:41.000 Yeah, is it really Ben Affleck that's the problem?

01:53:44.000 Who's the problem?

01:53:45.000 Well, he's certainly a problem as well.

01:53:47.000 That guy Mark Anthony seems like a nice fucking guy.

01:53:49.000 Seems like a sweetheart.

01:53:50.000 She married a bunch of dudes. 0.98

01:53:52.000 But, you know, whatever.

01:53:54.000 She's obviously a lot of work. 0.96

01:53:56.000 You want a diva? 1.00

01:53:57.000 Good luck.

01:53:59.000 That requires a lot of work.

01:54:00.000 I just want to understand it all.

01:54:03.000 I just want to, like, me and my brother will sometimes go, what's it all about?

01:54:09.000 It's definitely not all about caring whether or not J-Lo gets divorced again.

01:54:14.000 You know what I find difficult?

01:54:16.000 I've been playing with this idea and something that I'm writing right now, and it couldn't be more impression than right now, is this notion of what the truth is.

01:54:30.000 I don't know.

01:54:31.000 It happened to us right here.

01:54:34.000 Are some of the swing states requiring ID or all of them?

01:54:39.000 It's hard to keep a grasp on reality and the truth these days because there's information that is intravenously injected into your veins, it seems like.

01:54:51.000 So I have a hard time knowing what's true anymore.

01:54:54.000 Well, the news itself outright lies.

01:54:57.000 It's not like a conversation like we have where Jamie checks it in real time and I saw a thing that said the states that required no voter ID are the ones that she won.

01:55:06.000 She won other ones as well.

01:55:08.000 But when you have the news saying things, so they have researched it.

01:55:14.000 They do know that it's a lie.

01:55:16.000 This is not like a live conversation like we're having where I didn't know we were going to talk about that at all.

01:55:21.000 Nor did you.

01:55:22.000 It just spontaneously came up.

01:55:24.000 These people are putting narratives out there that are just flat-out lies, and they're doing it all the time.

01:55:31.000 I mean, Obama did it during the campaign where he repeated that lie about Donald Trump talking about white supremacists saying they're very fine people on both sides.

01:55:41.000 So just a flat-out lie.

01:55:42.000 Well, that was the unite the right.

01:55:46.000 Well, it was all about the statue, the statues of Civil War people being taken down.

01:55:52.000 And he's saying, I'm not talking...

01:55:56.000 He literally said, I am not talking about white supremacists and the KKK. They should be condemned.

01:56:02.000 He said, I'm talking about people that came out...

01:56:04.000 Did he say that in the same...

01:56:05.000 Oh, yeah.

01:56:06.000 Oh, you can see it.

01:56:07.000 So weird.

01:56:08.000 Go to the JRE Companion Instagram, because...

01:56:13.000 On that page, there is what Obama said, and then on the same video, there is what Trump actually said.

01:56:21.000 And it's disgusting.

01:56:24.000 It's a disgusting lie.

01:56:26.000 And it's a guy who's, and he's talking about George Washington.

01:56:30.000 He said, George Washington had slaves.

01:56:31.000 He said, Thomas Jefferson.

01:56:33.000 We're going to take down Thomas Jefferson.

01:56:34.000 Let's play it so you can see it here.

01:56:37.000 Said that there were very fine people on both sides of a white supremacist rally.

01:56:44.000 And you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were Very fine people on both sides.

01:56:53.000 You had people in that group, excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures as you did.

01:56:58.000 You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.

01:57:10.000 George Washington was a slave owner.

01:57:14.000 Was George Washington a slave owner?

01:57:16.000 So will George Washington now lose his status?

01:57:19.000 Are we going to take down statues to George Washington?

01:57:26.000 How about Thomas Jefferson?

01:57:28.000 What do you think of Thomas Jefferson?

01:57:29.000 You like him?

01:57:30.000 Okay, good.

01:57:31.000 Are we going to take down the statue?

01:57:33.000 Because he was a major slave owner. 0.74

01:57:34.000 Now, are we going to take down his statue?

01:57:37.000 So you know what?

01:57:38.000 It's fine.

01:57:39.000 You're changing history.

01:57:40.000 You're changing culture.

01:57:41.000 And you had people, and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.

01:57:48.000 But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay?

01:57:54.000 And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.

01:57:58.000 Now...

01:57:59.000 See, that's crazy.

01:58:01.000 Isn't that crazy?

01:58:02.000 I have never seen that last part of it.

01:58:04.000 Yeah, of course.

01:58:05.000 So here is my struggle with the truth on full display.

01:58:08.000 I've never seen that part.

01:58:09.000 Because the news has said that lie over and over and over and over and over again.

01:58:16.000 The news, the mainstream corporate-controlled news that wanted this narrative that Donald Trump was a Nazi said that over and over and over again.

01:58:25.000 They repeated it.

01:58:26.000 They compared him up until the election.

01:58:29.000 Was literally comparing him to Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini.

01:58:34.000 And spent a whole piece describing right-wing dictators, that he is going to be a right-wing dictator, just like Hitler, just like Stalin.

01:58:44.000 This is the lie of the media.

01:58:47.000 So this is one of the reasons why it's so hard to tell the truth.

01:58:50.000 It should be illegal to do that.

01:58:53.000 It should be illegal to say that.

01:58:56.000 Because it's not true.

01:58:57.000 And you're changing the perspective of millions of people, especially low-information voters that look at Obama like a thing from the past when time was sane, when the world was normal.

01:59:10.000 A brilliant guy who was the president.

01:59:12.000 If this brilliant guy is willing to lie in front of everybody...

01:59:16.000 Yeah, but here's the thing.

01:59:17.000 There's no question.

01:59:20.000 They all lie.

01:59:21.000 Yes.

01:59:22.000 Trump included.

01:59:23.000 We talked about that earlier.

01:59:25.000 He lies also.

01:59:26.000 This is like the problem.

01:59:28.000 Right, but did he lie about Biden and what Biden did?

01:59:32.000 Did he lie about any of that?

01:59:34.000 No.

01:59:36.000 He's lied plenty.

01:59:37.000 I'm sure.

01:59:38.000 For sure.

01:59:39.000 But in the context of a campaign where you're completely distorting the perspective of the person you're running against, not just who they are, but what they've done and what they've said and what they stand for.

01:59:51.000 He does the same thing, though.

01:59:53.000 But did he do that with Biden?

01:59:54.000 I believe he did.

01:59:55.000 How did he do it?

01:59:56.000 I think that there were many times where he would accuse him of having created the problem at the border, that it was all his creation.

02:00:10.000 People don't...

02:00:13.000 People seem to remember that when Trump was president, his border policies of separating families at the border was not great.

02:00:21.000 It was not great, but do you understand that Obama had those exact same policies?

02:00:24.000 I'm not disagreeing with that.

02:00:25.000 I'm just saying you can distort it.

02:00:27.000 But you know that this is just what they do with children when children are—when parents are arrested, they separate the families.

02:00:36.000 That happened under Obama, but under Trump, it wasn't just separating the children.

02:00:40.000 It was separating them for indefinite periods.

02:00:43.000 Is there a difference in the way Obama handled it in the separation?

02:00:46.000 I'm not going to speak to something.

02:00:48.000 Right, so that's a problem, right?

02:00:49.000 So it's a problem if you're accusing him of that.

02:00:51.000 Here's the thing.

02:00:52.000 I think they all lie.

02:00:54.000 I didn't follow it closely enough to say- I think they all lie too, but there's not a thing like that that I can point to where he was saying something about Biden that was factually incorrect.

02:01:04.000 Here's the thing that turned me off completely about the election this time and why I said, fuck it, I'm voting for Jill Stein, a physician that probably is the least qualified of anyone. 0.96

02:01:13.000 Only as my form of saying, I'll protest it.

02:01:17.000 Kamala Harris, during the debate, said that there's not a single American soldier deployed in a war zone.

02:01:27.000 And then I saw videos of American soldiers in a war zone watching it in parallel reality.

02:01:33.000 I said, what the fuck is she doing? 0.99

02:01:34.000 Well, did you see Dan Crenshaw post about that?

02:01:36.000 Where are we right now?

02:01:37.000 They were in a fucking foxhole or in a tent.

02:01:41.000 Dan Crenshaw posted all of the soldiers, all the numbers that we have.

02:01:47.000 See if you can find that post.

02:01:48.000 It's on his Instagram.

02:01:49.000 In response to that.

02:01:51.000 You know, Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in war.

02:01:53.000 Yeah.

02:01:53.000 He was a Navy SEAL. He was the one that was circulating the clip of me being critical of her.

02:01:57.000 Well, it's a good clip.

02:01:58.000 Yeah.

02:01:59.000 Solid clip.

02:01:59.000 I stand by it.

02:02:00.000 Yeah.

02:02:01.000 And you were correct.

02:02:02.000 I mean, and then the crazy thing is you had a conversation with her about that.

02:02:07.000 Yeah, I was on Zoom and she couldn't answer a question then and she can't answer a question now. 0.96

02:02:12.000 She still refused to answer a fucking question. 1.00

02:02:16.000 That was the most frustrating thing.

02:02:18.000 I mean, how about saying, look, obviously what happened at the border is a crisis.

02:02:25.000 It was not handled well.

02:02:26.000 Here is what I plan to do different.

02:02:29.000 It's outside of at least her capacity or willingness to do something like that.

02:02:39.000 But it was also the complicit nature of that the media was in on it because they were fact-checking Trump constantly.

02:02:47.000 They didn't fact-check her on that, something that should be immediately fact-checked.

02:02:50.000 Especially during a debate.

02:02:52.000 I agree with that.

02:02:53.000 First of all, how did you not know?

02:02:54.000 How do you not know that?

02:02:55.000 You're either lying or you don't know that we have troops deployed in a war zone.

02:03:00.000 Maybe you're right.

02:03:01.000 Maybe it is that Trump repeats things that he heard that are moronic and nonsensical sometimes, and that takes away from the great he can do.

02:03:10.000 He definitely does that.

02:03:11.000 Right?

02:03:11.000 Like talking about people eating dogs and cats and the election being rigged, all sort of baseless shit takes away from the fact that, you know, the things that stick out to...

02:03:21.000 And it's like, get out of your own way, bro.

02:03:23.000 He pardoned Jack Johnson.

02:03:25.000 He pardoned one of my clients.

02:03:30.000 I think that he has done more and cared more about criminal justice reform than certainly than any other president in my lifetime.

02:03:39.000 No one ever wants to highlight the good things.

02:03:42.000 Yeah.

02:03:42.000 That's why I just did it.

02:03:44.000 And it's frustrating to me because it's like, just don't listen to the last thing everyone told you because you can be great.

02:03:51.000 You can...

02:03:53.000 I mean, the fact that he does what he wants and says what he wants and gets elected...

02:03:57.000 Look at this.

02:03:58.000 This is what Dan Crenshaw responded with.

02:04:19.000 And 40 injured in Jordan by an Iranian-made drone.

02:04:22.000 Nearly 1,000 troops are still deployed in Syria and 2,500 remain in Iraq under Operation Inherent Resolve.

02:04:30.000 So that's crazy.

02:04:32.000 Yeah, it is crazy.

02:04:33.000 Crazy thing to say.

02:04:33.000 But it also just shows you how corrupt the relationship is between the media.

02:04:50.000 Yeah, I mean, listen, the most...

02:04:59.000 I have, and this is why I mentioned, you know, it's hard to know what the truth is.

02:05:05.000 The reason why I posted all the exhibits, the reason why I put the letter up, and the reason why I put the contact information up is that when you have a transcript and you have, you know, actual documentary evidence,

02:05:20.000 that's hard to argue with.

02:05:22.000 It's not a sound bite.

02:05:23.000 It's not a clip.

02:05:24.000 So I feel like maybe part of what appeals to me about this work is trying to get closer to the truth, a truth that is a bit more provable.

02:05:35.000 You know, I would probably have been very happy as a mathematician if I was any good at math.

02:05:39.000 I stink at it.

02:05:41.000 But I think that there is—it's very difficult to understand.

02:05:48.000 You know, I feel like I'm sitting here and I feel manipulated by the fact that I never—and it's really on me that I didn't go and watch the entirety of— That comment.

02:06:00.000 Right.

02:06:01.000 Because I literally don't think I've ever listened to the part where he says, obviously the neo-Nazis and, you know, the people that were there for the wrong reasons need to be condemned.

02:06:10.000 You know, when I was watching recently, I was talking to the great Dubini about this.

02:06:16.000 He pointed out to me that comment about Liz Cheney.

02:06:23.000 And then he's like, go watch the full clip.

02:06:26.000 Right.

02:06:26.000 It's another one.

02:06:27.000 And I watched the full clip and I was like...

02:06:30.000 It's enraging.

02:06:31.000 This is so out of fucking context.

02:06:34.000 So then you start to wonder, well, how much is my opinion of him...

02:06:38.000 Been formed by my concern about other people lashing out at me.

02:06:45.000 I mean, you should hear the shit I got when I spoke ill of Kamala Harris by, you know, I guess call them the left.

02:06:56.000 You know, and it was like infuriating to me.

02:06:59.000 You know, so I don't, politics to me is too, it's too much of, you know, you have to serve so many different interests that you sort of forget who you are and what you stand for.

02:07:14.000 So that's what turns me off about it.

02:07:16.000 And, you know, I don't think that that'll change.

02:07:19.000 That's why I sort of shifted to, this is the most I've talked about politics in probably five years.

02:07:25.000 That's why I've shifted to, let me just put my head down and get to work on what I can work on.

02:07:29.000 Yes.

02:07:30.000 Well, I think that's very practical.

02:07:33.000 I think what you said is very important for people to understand that a lot of what people say, they say it because they don't want people to attack them.

02:07:42.000 They say it because they think that if they say it, it will clear them.

02:07:46.000 They'll be okay.

02:07:47.000 If you say you support X, you might not even support X, but if you say you support X, you're not going to get attacked and the right people will leave you alone or agree with you and appreciate you or praise you.

02:07:58.000 Thank you for saying that.

02:08:00.000 There's a lot of that out there.

02:08:01.000 There's a lot of people that don't speak their mind.

02:08:04.000 Do you know how many artists that have reached out to me that are like fucking hippies, man?

02:08:09.000 Like artists, like musicians, comedians that thanked me for endorsing Trump because they can't do it.

02:08:18.000 They said they want to, but they don't want to be attacked.

02:08:21.000 They can't say it.

02:08:23.000 They think the country's going in the wrong direction.

02:08:25.000 They think that this control of social media by the government, which we would have had pretty much fully if it wasn't for Elon buying Twitter, that this is a dangerous precedent to set, whether it's a right-wing government or a left-wing government.

02:08:38.000 And that what you see that's happening in the UK where people are being imprisoned for tweets and Facebook posts is fucking crazy.

02:08:44.000 Yeah, in the UK is the part that's mind-bending about it.

02:08:47.000 Mind-bending.

02:08:48.000 The whole thing is nuts, and it's a dangerous path that we were on.

02:08:53.000 We were on that path.

02:08:55.000 Trump has vowed to have free speech become a very important part of what he's standing for, and that this censoring of information needs to stop, and that we need to stop all government influence in what people have to say.

02:09:12.000 Yeah, look.

02:09:13.000 That alone.

02:09:14.000 That shouldn't be as revolutionary as it is.

02:09:18.000 I know.

02:09:18.000 It should be a core tenet of what...

02:09:20.000 I mean, it's essentially the First Amendment.

02:09:21.000 You know, and I think it's so transferable to what I do in this context because a lot of The reluctance of prosecutors not to do the right thing or what their conscience tells them is the fear of the backlash.

02:09:39.000 Yes.

02:09:39.000 How will it hurt my chances in a reelection?

02:09:42.000 Of course.

02:09:43.000 And so that's what I hate about politics is you serve so many masters.

02:09:47.000 Yeah.

02:09:48.000 It's a dirty business, man.

02:09:50.000 It's a dirty—and you've got to have nuts of steel.

02:09:53.000 Yeah.

02:09:53.000 Or you have to be a fucking sociopath.

02:09:55.000 It's either or.

02:09:57.000 You have to be a blindly ambitious sociopath who can weave your way through these sort of social and political relationships and to get to the top.

02:10:08.000 For what?

02:10:09.000 I mean, imagine if one of those person does wind up becoming president that has no real thought or no real care about the country, no real ambition other than the blind serving of their own success.

02:10:23.000 Well, I think that that's what, for people that are so like, it's hard to explain if you didn't live in New York.

02:10:34.000 For people that are just like, oh my God, what's the next four years going to be like?

02:10:41.000 Like it's a funeral.

02:10:43.000 Get up and do something all four years that you think is going to help make society better.

02:10:49.000 You do that.

02:10:51.000 Whether it's getting out and knocking on doors and making your...

02:11:00.000 We're good to go.

02:11:27.000 Are the ones that can sit and talk with people that might have different beliefs than them and don't make them other than.

02:11:37.000 Absolutely.

02:11:37.000 Right?

02:11:38.000 I mean, anytime I've made an emotional decision in business personally, it's never gone well for me.

02:11:45.000 Right.

02:11:45.000 So people are going to have different points of view than you.

02:11:48.000 I was talking to my cousin about it.

02:11:50.000 And I was trying to help her explain that just because you voted for Trump, that doesn't make you bad.

02:11:56.000 I said, you know, her whole thing was, well, if you have daughters, there's no way you can vote for him.

02:12:04.000 I said, here's the fundamental flaw in how you're looking at this.

02:12:09.000 There are some people that are pro-life.

02:12:14.000 Okay?

02:12:14.000 That doesn't make them wrong.

02:12:16.000 That makes you have a different opinion than them.

02:12:19.000 You have a disagreement.

02:12:20.000 And if the basis of your vote is that you're pro-choice and they're pro-life, okay, have a disagreement, you know?

02:12:33.000 I just don't understand how a singular issue like that, and I understand that, listen, I understand it from a woman's perspective.

02:12:40.000 I'm a father of two daughters.

02:12:42.000 I talk to my wife about it often, you know, especially going to Florida, where the laws on abortion ain't the same as they are in New York.

02:12:52.000 And I understand it from a woman's perspective completely.

02:12:56.000 And I actually disagree with, you know, overturning Roe versus Wade, but you cannot be that myopic.

02:13:04.000 You just can't because if you're that myopic, you're going to then find yourself in a corner on one issue.

02:13:11.000 And life is a little bit more robust than that, isn't it?

02:13:16.000 It's more nuanced.

02:13:17.000 Yeah.

02:13:18.000 Yeah.

02:13:19.000 That was the better word.

02:13:20.000 Yeah.

02:13:20.000 It is more nuanced.

02:13:22.000 Well, listen, my brother, I love you to death.

02:13:24.000 I appreciate what you do.

02:13:26.000 I think the world's a better place because of what you do.

02:13:29.000 I really do.

02:13:29.000 And I think you've changed a lot of people's perspective on the legal system.

02:13:33.000 And I'm glad that we didn't let what happened with Sheldon change that.

02:13:37.000 And I think there's just so much more great work to be done.

02:13:41.000 Well, my continued profound gratitude to continuing to let me tell these stories.

02:13:49.000 I promise the next time I bring a guest on, they will be vetted.

02:13:55.000 Yeah.

02:13:56.000 The guests will be vetted a lot more thoroughly.

02:13:59.000 There's no way you could have known.

02:14:01.000 There's no way I could have known.

02:14:02.000 And, you know, it's interesting because for 48 hours, I felt what it was like to be a headline.

02:14:11.000 And then I was like, this sucks.

02:14:14.000 For the wrong reasons.

02:14:17.000 I know you were in a dark place, but I'm glad you got out of it.

02:14:20.000 It's not about me.

02:14:22.000 It takes time.

02:14:23.000 I'm really, really, really appreciative of this.

02:14:32.000 If that can't shake the foundation of this forum, I think we're going to just keep on making great change happen and hopefully we free the Ohio four and keep on moving. 0.58

02:14:44.000 Yeah, and I hope we do do a podcast one day with them.

02:14:47.000 Deep love.

02:14:48.000 Deep love to you too.

02:14:49.000 Alright, goodbye everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - November 13, 2024

Joe Rogan Experience #2228 - Josh Dubin

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