George Santosļ¼ Being Tortured, Finding God, and Hearing of Charlie Kirkās Murder From Behind Bars
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 52 minutes
Words per Minute
180.50238
Summary
When you go to prison, you have to be prepared for a hell of a lot more than you bargained for. In this episode, former New Jersey Governor and current New York City Mayor Pete Buttigieg tells the story of his time in prison, and the insane conditions he found himself in.
Transcript
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I honestly can barely believe that you're sitting across from me.
00:00:18.420
Last time I talked to you, you were days away from going to prison and you disappeared into the gulag.
00:00:23.600
For reasons I never quite figured out why, why, why were you going to prison in the first place?
00:00:27.220
Didn't think I was going to see you for seven years, and here you are.
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Okay, so I was held at FCI Fairton in South Jersey.
00:01:13.820
And it starts with a, this is a medium facility with a satellite camp.
00:01:20.040
Now, the medium facility is a very violent prison.
00:01:24.080
Ex-gang members, gangbangers, child molesters, rapists, you name it.
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Murderers who've worked themselves down from a penitentiary with good behavior throughout the years.
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And now they have this cozy little spa and this array of like the worst human beings on earth all sitting in this medium facility.
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How many former congressmen facing seven years for campaign finance violations?
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And regardless of party, I will probably be the only one to ever face something so insane.
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It's, I go to the camp across the street from the facility, which is a satellite camp.
00:02:00.720
Now imagine a warehouse, not too different from where we're sitting now, but bare bones.
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And then you have this entire dormitory, bed, cubby, little lockers, bed, cubby, bed, cubby.
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And then there's an adjacent room that has a cafeteria.
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And even that's segregated because it's the black TV, the white TV, the Hispanic TV, and
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And then literally what they call the CNN TV because the TV stays on CNN the whole day.
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The remote controls are operated by people according to their race.
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If you're a white guy and you go near the remote for the black people or the Spanish people,
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Like people will literally get stabbed with a shank if they do that.
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For picking up the black remote or the Hispanic remote?
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That did occur to me before they sent you away.
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And then I start understanding that, I mean, the first day,
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I walk in there, I understand that this isn't a place where people go
00:03:27.240
to be abandoned and rot and forgotten about to rot.
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The ceiling is all made out of like this, how can I call it?
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And there's a flap hanging open and black mold, like bubbles of black mold, almost like cotton
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And you can see that the whole thing is compromised with black mold.
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We're breathing this in, in this non-ventilated space.
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This is the kind of environment that the warden maintains down in FCI Ferriton.
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And this is not an indictment, by the way, on the BOP.
00:04:06.780
This is an indictment on a derelict in duty administrator who has no business doing her
00:04:13.600
Female warden, Lynn Kelly, who runs the prison.
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I'd love to go to a deposition for calling her unqualified.
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When you run a facility where the bathroom has outbreaks of ringworms and listeria,
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when you run a facility that you're serving inmates expired food as far back as a year,
00:04:33.820
chicken patties that had been frozen, but expired in 2024, were still being served to
00:04:47.880
But I felt like I was in a Mexican prison because everything, by the way, fun, fun story.
00:04:52.560
Beef taco, beef taco salad, chicken taco, chicken taco salad, beef fajita, chicken fajita,
00:04:57.420
are all on the menu on a constant rotation to the point you're just like,
00:05:01.860
I don't want to see another tortilla or tortilla chip in my face.
00:05:11.600
I would go to the officer in charge of the kitchen because I obviously got involved in
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The kitchen is officially closed after I wrote several observations of its risks on my column
00:05:47.260
for the South Shore Press because I was still writing from in there.
00:05:55.480
I write for the column for the South Shore Press, which is a New York paper.
00:06:03.560
And I was writing from prison, criticizing the prison I was in and documenting my journey.
00:06:09.280
Look, unfortunately, I'm known to not be scared of bucking the system.
00:06:16.260
But so I criticized him and I critiqued all of these things to a massive audience that
00:06:24.820
And it subsequently led to the kitchen closure.
00:06:29.980
I mean, broken equipment, absolute filth, nothing functioning, drains that backed up and bought
00:06:36.660
back the most guck you can think of, machinery that you were literally, you know, I always
00:06:45.780
thought that eating the food at FCI Ferritin was either I get some really, really bad food
00:06:51.120
poisoning and I'm going to lose a lot of weight or I might just not die.
00:06:55.480
You know, it's like, it's either or you can't, you really can't, it's inexplicable.
00:07:08.940
They don't even give you soap to wash your hands in the kitchen because you're wearing
00:07:18.240
You should see the loveliness of how, I mean, I got in trouble because I put a pair of gloves
00:07:23.180
And if I'm stirring a spoon and I'm doing my things and then I proceed to go open a
00:07:28.000
box to get something, once I'm done with that box, I would switch out gloves and toss
00:07:32.440
But I guess I was going through gloves so fast and I got yelled at saying like, no, you
00:07:40.440
Once you're gloved up, you're gloved up for the day.
00:07:46.240
You would see these guys, like some of the inmates follow that regimen.
00:07:52.300
They would put on gloves and the loveliest thing was they'd get a piece of paper, blow
00:07:58.360
They'd open a box, they'd touch dirty, dusty cans.
00:08:01.400
And then the next thing you'd see, they're in there mushing up spices into the ground
00:08:06.540
And I'm like, it's like, I'm telling you, it's your own personal hell for a germaphobe.
00:08:13.540
The conditions of the kitchen were just atrocious.
00:08:16.240
It's just, it's hard to explain when you have a walk-in freezer that's constantly over-freezing
00:08:21.420
and breaking, and you have to thaw it, and then everything in it thaws, and then they
00:08:26.260
And then it's like, but the chicken has expired a year, but it keeps well.
00:08:29.540
Like, you got to pretend this is all normal, you know?
00:08:35.500
Like, Guantanamo has better treatment for their prisoners, I assume.
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I was the first person, I think, in that prison's history to have the audacity to make rice pudding.
00:12:36.440
I had two big cartons full of milks that were going to expire in two days.
00:12:41.100
So I said, instead of letting it go to waste, let's make something with it.
00:12:45.300
I had cinnamon, I had allspice, I had rice, I had sugar, and I had milk, rice pudding.
00:12:51.320
It's one of the great desserts, which is kind of fading.
00:12:56.660
And then it's funny that I did do a flan, but I did a test flan.
00:13:25.860
I mean, it was, look, I baked lemon cakes with lemon icing.
00:13:30.520
I mean, I came to a place where the kitchen was delivering doom and gloom.
00:13:36.180
And my first week there, inmates were like revving about how the desserts were amazing,
00:13:48.800
I mean, I still had to make the grub that's on the menu, right?
00:13:52.240
But I actually bothered to peel potatoes instead of making mashed potatoes full of dirty peel.
00:13:57.180
I washed the vegetables before I worked them in-
00:14:07.560
You know, it really depends on who's in the kitchen.
00:14:13.960
And a lot of other inmates, just they didn't care.
00:14:16.640
But what's sad about that is that the mentality that they have is so self-destructive because
00:14:21.620
of how they're treated by the institution, they forget they're going to eat that too.
00:14:25.600
They completely are oblivious to the fact that they're going to experience and eating
00:14:30.580
the carelessness of their own, I guess, despair.
00:14:43.800
It definitely wouldn't, you know, I don't think we can go to dinner with, I'd say, 80% of them
00:14:54.140
So, but some people very, remember, I was in a white-collar camp.
00:15:00.120
The problem is, is President Obama changed the rules of camps.
00:15:04.560
And now you get other people that are not white-collar.
00:15:08.080
You get some, you know, violent former gang members that have worked themselves down throughout
00:15:13.460
the years in the system and their custody points have lowered.
00:15:18.840
So, I joked and I said, it's a really dark shade of white for white-collar in this camp.
00:15:29.480
Because it's not all white-collar, like they like to say bankers and executives.
00:15:33.980
The only real white-collar guys I saw there were actually gold-collars because they were
00:15:44.840
I mean, business guys, very intelligent guys, but very interesting to interact with.
00:15:50.680
I mean, we're talking about multi-multi-millionaires.
00:16:03.200
I believe one is serving a seven-year term and the other one serving a nine-year term.
00:16:07.020
But again, remember what those charges were, right?
00:16:11.500
I mean, the book, Gold Bar Bob, that came out just a couple of days before I came out
00:16:19.620
I mean, I had it ordered and sent to me because I just needed to read it.
00:16:23.640
The stories in there are absolutely fascinating.
00:16:26.440
And I'm sitting here reading this and looking at these two characters.
00:16:35.400
But yeah, it was an enlightening group of people.
00:16:40.200
I reconnected with a former campaign staffer of mine who ended up going to prison for something
00:16:47.900
But in the nature of what I believe the Merrick Garland DOJ did was he refused to play the narrative
00:16:53.780
of bashing me and cooperating against me because he had really nothing to say.
00:16:59.500
Um, so in lieu of that, they got him on a technicality on some paperwork and they threw him in prison
00:17:07.620
And that's Sam Mealy, who is a really remarkably intelligent young man who I would say made
00:17:13.900
some poor choices, but at the same time doesn't deserve to be in prison just because he didn't
00:17:19.540
But that's what the Merrick Garland DOJ was operating like.
00:17:22.360
Oh, you don't help, you know, off to the, off the ramparts with you.
00:17:31.300
So as far as other people, look, I will say this.
00:17:34.060
I met this very competent man who I still struggle.
00:17:39.060
I wanted to make sure this is a guy who I think would be, will be a friend in my life because
00:17:42.900
he was a very even keeled, well-spoken, respectable executive.
00:17:47.260
He was, he's a very renowned architect worldwide.
00:17:50.480
His name's Alok, um, Indian gentleman, um, former executive for United Airlines.
00:17:55.640
He got caught in a pay to play kickbacks scheme in the private sector, though.
00:18:03.300
And when I look at his thing, I'm saying, look, don't do it if there's a gray area.
00:18:07.480
So I'm not defending the, the activity, but I'm also looking at saying like, this is
00:18:15.280
Do you, I worked in the private sector for 10 years in private equity.
00:18:18.280
I mean, if I, if you go to my house, I'll, I'll be glad to tour the wine cellar I've
00:18:23.060
built out of gift baskets, you know, like four or five, $600 bottles of wine, two, $3,000
00:18:34.260
I never bought that stuff, but they were gifts during my private equity days.
00:18:40.100
It was a pleasure doing business with, it's not a crime, but they put this man in prison.
00:18:44.880
So I struggle with the criminal justice system these days because I look at it and I feel
00:18:54.060
There, there has to be some monetary benefit, benefiting suppliers.
00:18:58.480
When you look at, do you know what I discovered in prison?
00:19:08.640
Well, Bob Barker's family or him, I don't know who started a freaking line.
00:19:14.880
Of supplies from curtains to towels, to linens, to t-shirts, to the jumpsuits we wear in prison,
00:19:28.760
That is a multi-billion dollar federal government contract.
00:19:37.820
Bob Barker's family started a prison accessory line?
00:19:47.840
And then there's this brand called Keefy that by all accounts ties back to the Bushes.
00:19:53.440
Now they sell all the commissary stuff from coffee to toilet paper, you name it.
00:19:59.920
Like you can go down a prison commissary sheet and Keefy.
00:20:06.560
Well, apparently there's ties of it that tie back to the former president of the United States Bush.
00:20:14.020
A massive retail monopoly in contracts with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
00:20:18.000
So when you look at this, we currently have a system that houses approximately 250,000 Americans in federal custody.
00:20:27.220
I don't even have an idea of what state custody is.
00:20:31.040
A quarter of a million Americans sit in federal custody today.
00:20:40.040
It's a business for all of those with the contracts to those prisons.
00:20:44.300
So there is an incentive to putting people in prison somewhere along some line.
00:20:51.000
And I'm assuming prosecutors might be compromised.
00:20:54.920
But that's the only thing that makes sense when you're seeing people go to prison for arbitrary reasons or for purposes and timeframes that wouldn't suit the crime or are, you know, overtly unusual and cruel, which is a violation of the Eighth Amendment.
00:21:11.380
So you have to really walk this tightrope to understand.
00:21:15.120
And I don't think that a BOP director will be able to grasp that because, A, they work in four-year terms or, A, if their principal gets reelected or their president.
00:21:25.940
And in eight or four years, there's so much you have to do that I don't think you can get to the nitty-gritty.
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Is the problem with it that it's dirty, disorganized, violent, corrupt, all the above?
00:25:31.720
If you were to isolate one problem with the federal prison system as you experienced it,
00:25:35.620
Per my experience at FCI Ferriton, and I have limited experience,
00:25:39.600
I know that there's a lot of people that I met who have hopped,
00:25:42.680
because they hop around prisons across the country.
00:25:48.340
I mean, if you're in New Jersey, here this is, I think it's hilarious, this story.
00:25:52.460
An inmate was being transferred to New Jersey from Pennsylvania,
00:25:55.480
but first they drove him to Kentucky, up to Wisconsin, and then he brought us back to New Jersey.
00:26:04.640
And that's why the BOP has a nickname for its acronym, which is Backwards On Purpose.
00:26:13.320
I learned this from a CO, from a corrections officer, not from an inmate, by the way.
00:26:19.860
What are the guards like, I should have asked you?
00:26:23.240
The guards, 80% of them are hardworking, amazing people.
00:26:29.320
I had no quarrels with them or qualms or anything.
00:26:33.120
Matter of fact, I am only here today talking to you because of two very specific people that didn't let me walk off that ledge when I was in isolation for 41 days.
00:26:43.580
I don't obviously want to say their names because I don't want to compromise them.
00:26:53.700
They were very compassionate men who were themselves distraught and completely flabbergasted at why I was being treated the way I was being treated while I was in solitary confinement.
00:27:08.500
So I'd say 80% of them are some of the best people you'll ever meet.
00:27:16.780
Like, you know, on a good day, I'd pop some jokes.
00:27:20.560
And you have this very good environment because it's supposed to be rehabilitory.
00:27:26.820
So some COs want to make your life miserable just because it makes them happy.
00:27:40.380
So I look at it as I had a positive experience with the COs.
00:27:43.980
I had a terrible experience with the administration.
00:27:46.000
From the assistant warden, Noble, to the warden, Lynn Kelly, to the camp administrator, who then turns out to be the most competent man there.
00:28:06.460
It turns out he was the most competent and most honest of the three on the power structure.
00:28:12.120
And it's infuriating that he's the one with the less power.
00:28:24.540
COs are working with the bare minimum because there's no budget.
00:28:40.360
And then I had to fight tooth and nail, literally writing about it before they put on an actual
00:28:45.460
temporary AC because I wasn't about to sleep in 90 degree weather.
00:28:55.140
Even in prison, I think there should be standards.
00:28:57.160
But upon leaving, right before I left, it's getting cold.
00:29:03.320
And when asked to clean the ducts, she said they didn't have the budget.
00:29:09.480
He's like, it's four grand to have a full service.
00:29:13.480
It's going to throw God only knows what onto you guys to breathe.
00:29:18.040
But at the same time, she found it in the budget to buy herself an 85-inch QLED Samsung
00:29:26.480
TV at the cost of allegedly $7,000 and she put it in her own office, not in a conference
00:29:54.640
But God forbid the budget to clean the ducts for the heater.
00:30:02.180
You had a problem with a couple of administrators.
00:30:05.980
You know, inmates for me were, I call them extras in my journey.
00:30:15.400
They had totally non-speaking parts in the film because look, I couldn't find a lot of
00:30:23.660
I think there was like a group of like five or six that I could talk to, but these are
00:30:27.300
well-educated individuals, very savvy, but at the same time, very liberal.
00:30:37.280
You'd be shocked at the amount of people who hate the president in prison.
00:30:41.060
But then the moment, which is funny, the moment I got commuted, everybody was like,
00:30:49.860
I'm like, I left with a stack of phone numbers of wives that I've never called.
00:30:57.580
Well, maybe these were still not getting red-filled yet.
00:31:05.180
Um, while I was in the camp, um, for the 43 days that I was in the camp, um, the first
00:31:12.480
30 and then the, and then a break and then 13 days, um, because I had that big 41 block
00:31:19.340
of isolation, um, you know, I was in the kitchen from 7.30 in the morning to 4.30 in
00:31:24.920
And it was a great refuge for me psychologically because I, I didn't have to deal with whatever
00:31:34.000
Honestly, I mean, no, we, we don't make license plates.
00:31:43.020
I mean, which is, you know, whatever they call maintenance.
00:31:49.180
And then you have the warehouse guys who are in charge of like picking up the heavy boxes
00:31:53.020
of, you know, the goods that come in to operate the prison.
00:31:55.920
And then you have, oh, you have the cleaning crew.
00:31:58.600
So they're the ones in charge of cleaning the entire compound from, you know, the buildings,
00:32:02.540
the bathrooms and all the other facilities, um, for the staff.
00:32:05.960
Um, and lastly, you have the landscapers because this is on a big old bird reserve, um, that
00:32:14.160
So it's massive amounts of acreage and lots of green and lots of grass.
00:32:23.160
All I know is that I was in the kitchen from 7.30 to 4.30.
00:32:31.280
The campers are literally free to roam right off, but nobody's stupid enough to do it.
00:32:36.740
Your custody points go higher and then you lose that privilege and you end up in a low
00:32:42.660
So, but can't you just wander off and go to Philadelphia?
00:32:49.520
When you get caught, you're going to be charged with escape and your custody points go higher.
00:32:55.420
So from my understanding, nobody has attempted to escape the camp in years because once you
00:33:00.740
go to the camp, it's the easiest form of prison.
00:33:03.720
It's, it's imagine an abandoned country club from the 1960s that nobody's ever gone to anymore.
00:33:11.260
And one day you just decide to turn on the key and say, we're open for business.
00:33:29.980
You can roam and there's an outdoor track and there's recreation outside.
00:33:34.220
There's a weight pile, you know, really run down weight pile, but a weight pile for you
00:33:39.560
They have an annex trailer with a laundry room for you to do your laundry.
00:33:43.660
You have a little library with an actually decent selection of books, which I was very
00:33:52.780
And then you have a chapel where you can do multi-denominational prayer services.
00:34:03.360
So when you get there, you usually either are somebody like me who is going to hate
00:34:15.020
Or you're going to be somebody who came from the system working yourself down throughout
00:34:21.120
And now you've reached the tail end of it and you've been good behavior.
00:34:25.580
You've, in the eyes of the BOP, rehabilitated yourself.
00:34:29.000
Now you're in minimum security custody, which you're now not even considered in custody.
00:34:33.900
You're out custody because there's no gates, handcuffs, none of that.
00:34:46.860
Imagine a rundown gym with no maintenance, same structure, shower, two, two, two sides
00:34:55.600
of showers and an aisle in the middle, like a locker with showers on both sides with curtains
00:35:01.720
that are just falling apart, lime and, and, and, and every bacterial growth you can imagine
00:35:09.520
growing on the walls and in the corners, peeling paint inside of each stall.
00:35:17.820
And then there was something lovely that I discovered.
00:35:20.480
There's this, this is what made the bathroom really unbearable for me to a point that I
00:35:24.700
started having to brush my teeth with bottled water.
00:35:28.980
You'll, you're, you're not going to believe this, but in prison, there's this Muslim culture
00:35:36.300
that become, has become very prolific in a, in a sense.
00:35:45.840
Have no horse in the fight of Israelis and Jews and Islam and.
00:35:52.080
They have a predominant presence in the prison system.
00:35:57.300
The wild thing is, is that before they go to pray, they have to, I guess, wash certain
00:36:03.520
There were inmates hanging their ass on the sink and just washing it right there where
00:36:17.960
And, and when confronted, it's like a big argument on religious freedom.
00:36:27.560
Are these Middle Eastern Muslims or African-American Muslims?
00:36:31.520
I, so you didn't see a lot of Egyptians, a full pause.
00:36:35.080
No, I don't think there was a single Arab in this Muslim crew that I was with.
00:36:45.140
These were the Muslims that I was dealing with.
00:36:47.720
Some of them nicest guys I've ever met with these very uncanny habits that were just not
00:36:53.560
So once I walked into a situation like that and it was literally ass washing on the sink,
00:37:10.220
So you can buy the 24 pack, um, at I think 70 cents a bottle, which is not a bad deal.
00:37:17.440
We know it's a, it's a ripoff, but it's compared to their 150 for a ramen noodle.
00:37:26.240
It's a federal buildings are all smoke-free areas.
00:37:30.680
No, actually no nicotine, no nicotine products.
00:37:34.480
I saw a man go to the shoe for 45 days because he was caught with a contrabanded vape in there.
00:37:41.760
That's the, that's how severe, um, they consider it of a violation.
00:37:50.580
Well, Grand Canyon University is not like most American colleges.
00:38:00.600
It's private, affordable, Christian university located in the heart of Phoenix.
00:38:05.260
One of the largest universities in the country, actually.
00:38:07.580
At Grand Canyon University, education is more than academics.
00:38:11.780
The chance for every student to live out the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:38:18.440
They were bestowed at birth, at conception, by God.
00:38:24.060
And Grand Canyon University is not going to lie to your kids and claim otherwise.
00:38:29.360
So you know, you're thinking a quality education is rare.
00:38:40.220
GCU has maintained the same tuition for 17 straight years.
00:38:44.440
They're not in education to get rich at the expense of students.
00:38:52.160
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00:38:59.680
Students benefit from a collaborative learning environment, dedicated faculty, personalized
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Allows you to design the inside of your safe in a way that works for you.
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Someone else puts the shelves in and you have to deal with it.
00:40:00.320
Need more shelves for handguns, for documents, for valuables, for gold?
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We definitely, plus they're good looking, I will say.
00:40:34.920
The prison across the street in the shoe of all places is littered in drugs.
00:40:50.600
That is the question I would always pose when there was some court sort of issue where the
00:40:56.300
COs couldn't walk the range of the shoe because the smoke of Suboxone and K2 were so thick.
00:41:04.300
And then you ask, why are they being provided lighters?
00:41:10.860
But some inmates have medical prescriptions that are pumps and require a battery.
00:41:18.680
They take a little piece of whatever foil they can find and they put it on each end of
00:41:24.720
negative and the positive and create a little brazier and they smoke from that.
00:41:34.840
Did you get any tattoos or join a gang or anything?
00:41:50.320
But people are getting high in solitary confinement.
00:41:52.660
Which is insane because these are, I mean, they strip us naked, make us spread our cheeks
00:41:58.540
and cough to go into solitary to make sure we're bringing nothing we're not allowed to
00:42:09.800
So when all that is happening, unfortunately, there's only one way that drugs make it in
00:42:23.000
Now they're working without compensation for God knows how long because Democrats can't
00:42:28.160
And Republicans can't seem to work with them to do something.
00:42:30.980
Although I agree with the principle of standing up to Chuck Schumer, but the problem is you're
00:42:40.900
But ferritin is littered in drugs in the medium.
00:42:48.020
I was pretty all over the place as far as like integration goes.
00:42:54.320
The worst that I saw there was one guy got caught with a vape.
00:43:04.940
One inmate got caught with a phone while I was in solitary.
00:43:08.360
Another inmate who actually, funny enough, the first day I walk in there, he looks at
00:43:15.840
Did you find a lot of constituents in the lockup?
00:43:18.500
There were two people from New York's third district serving there, which was, I didn't
00:43:47.300
I was still like, oh, we haven't had a phone incursion in this part of the prison for years.
00:43:55.980
Either they're really good at hiding them or they just don't even bother doing it because
00:44:06.360
You know, these guys, you know what's the number one topic in the camp?
00:44:14.380
The fantasies of like, oh, I'd kill for a big back.
00:44:24.500
Because food is such a big part of the day there.
00:44:40.040
Well, they call breakfast what they give us in a bag.
00:44:43.160
An apple, a honey bun, some sort of like processed cake, and a little box of cornflakes.
00:44:56.620
I didn't touch that stuff or else I was going to die of diabetes and sodium issues.
00:45:03.520
So really, it's two meals and whatever you buy on your commissary.
00:45:13.340
And I've never eaten a honey bun or a ramen noodle soup.
00:45:32.960
One honey bun, four soups for me to guest host your show next week.
00:45:48.380
I stuck to like, they have these really, they have some healthy alternatives.
00:45:57.160
Like I could do, I think I could do a full-blown Friskies commercial right now.
00:46:01.040
Like I know how to, I have my meowing down to the T.
00:46:05.480
But lots of like cashews and almonds and trail mix.
00:46:11.640
Like, and you have to ration because the premium stuff like that, they give you a limit of
00:46:26.020
So I just, you know, ration it through the week.
00:46:28.280
Sometimes dinner for me was like half a bag of trail mix and I'd go to sleep because the
00:46:40.480
So much so that the prison there, even though other prisons do allow people to stay on their
00:46:45.780
actual medications that they've been treated on for years.
00:46:48.680
I was on Vyvanse for, I have been on Vyvanse, which is an Adderall because I'm ADD, for 22 years.
00:46:55.520
Since I'm 15, 37, these guys took me off Vyvanse, cold turkey, and literally stuffed me up with
00:47:14.320
No medical care, no health, no mental health care.
00:47:28.560
But those pills, they won't give you what you need.
00:47:30.520
They won't treat you with what you need at that prison for some reason.
00:47:33.800
Although, if you look historically, even Sam Bankman-Fried, when he's in prison, he's receiving
00:47:48.240
Well, I mean, obviously, because you take a diagnosis like that and it just exacerbates
00:47:55.840
I mean, me, confinement, the solitary confinement, what it did to me, I wrote three suicide notes.
00:48:03.500
So, can you back up and tell us how you're working in the prison kitchen?
00:48:07.760
I don't think you're starting fistfights in the showers.
00:48:10.560
How do you wind up in solitary confinement for 41 days?
00:48:19.420
I mean, shout out to Joe because him, Matt, my partner, and my sister Tiffany went to hell
00:48:38.100
And I have two other attorneys, Andrew and Bobby, who did fantastic work.
00:48:42.400
But really, I'd be remiss if I didn't highlight Joe's efforts.
00:48:46.820
Receives this text message from a journalist, an investigative journalist from Project Veritas,
00:48:58.220
Their former outfit, I was very close to O'Keefe and all of those guys.
00:49:03.940
I didn't even know Project Veritas was still around.
00:49:05.900
To me, eventually, after Matt Tierman left, I think, after the whole breakup with O'Keefe,
00:49:15.780
So, they get this person, this woman named Patricia.
00:49:20.740
She's had an obsession with me to a degree that I can't explain.
00:49:26.920
She has, in the past, made threats that were deemed uncredible.
00:49:31.740
So, she was a non-credible source with these elaborate threats of high-power players in
00:49:39.160
D.C. want to kill you because you're outing about orgies and talking about the D.C. swamp
00:49:51.460
Capitol Police looked into it in 2023 when I was a city member of Congress.
00:49:55.200
She comes back out of the woodworks and, I guess, convinces Project Veritas on those
00:50:03.600
old texts to be real and adds a new one dated August 18th, saying that we need to take care
00:50:12.700
And I'm paraphrasing, you know, essentially, somebody needs to break into prison and kill
00:50:17.780
George Santos, which is, on its face value, ridiculous.
00:50:29.140
I've been the subject of threats, credible threats, to the point we do have people in
00:50:36.440
Reaches out to the facility, thinks, you know, hey, I need you to protect George.
00:50:42.840
The warden's definition of protective custody because she's lazy and she's completely irresponsible
00:50:50.660
with her budget and doesn't have adequate protective custody, you know, protocols does
00:50:57.180
And the shortcut, which is toss George Santos in the shoe.
00:51:00.000
Now, I am not there for disciplinary action, but I am subject to only three showers a week.
00:51:06.960
I'm subject to using recycled clothes, meaning I'm using whatever underwear Joe Schmo was
00:51:12.120
using yesterday, got into the washing machine and was propped up and given to me.
00:51:16.280
It even comes with complimentary skid marks on them.
00:51:33.060
It takes a lot to make me feel nauseous, but that's repulsive.
00:51:39.440
They give you soap that doesn't lather, courtesy of Bob Barker's company called Maximum Security.
00:51:44.800
They give you toothpaste that doesn't foam when you brush your teeth, courtesy of Maximum
00:52:00.400
I am subject now to one call every 30 days for 15 minutes, and I have to pick who I'm calling
00:52:12.840
So, this is what she did and then named it in the name of protection.
00:52:18.760
How does it protect you to limit you to three showers a week and make you wear someone else's
00:52:32.040
Someone else's orange grape smugglers with someone else's skid marks in them.
00:52:45.260
That is protection under Kelly Warden Lynn Kelly at FCI Fairton.
00:52:53.800
Or as the deputy warden said, I was a princess.
00:53:04.500
And they put you there, give you no information.
00:53:15.440
If I was really measuring my spread arms distance, I was definitely further than six feet apart
00:53:22.160
from you because I couldn't do that to the wall.
00:53:24.520
So again, you drink water out of a toilet, the top of a toilet, which has a metallic taste.
00:53:32.560
And when you put water in it and you let the cup sit, sediments fall, like these black
00:53:40.720
Now, my neighbor in the cell next to me, a murderer who had just killed another inmate
00:53:51.800
With a pencil, stabbing another inmate through the eye with a pencil.
00:53:57.240
Now, the lovely part about it is that this inmate is a trans inmate who killed another
00:54:02.940
trans inmate who the news reported on as a leader activist, native trans leader in their
00:54:08.800
community, God knows where, but failed to disclose that he was a vicious child molester.
00:54:18.240
They, there's no way to talk other than to scream through your doors.
00:54:23.980
No, I'm, I'm totally fine with screaming in the hall of Congress, like I've done before
00:54:28.280
at people who try to accost me, but not in prison.
00:54:39.780
And I'm just like sitting there minding my business, reading my historical fiction book
00:54:48.660
They give you three books a week, an arbitrary number for, for, I mean, I understand that the
00:54:53.540
reading level of most prisoners aren't going to be quite high and they'll, they'll probably
00:55:02.020
I was crushing books, you know, 400 page books a day sometimes, you know, I read a book by
00:55:11.680
Sarah J Maas, the final installment of her fantasy series called Kingdom of Ash.
00:55:22.000
I, I, the, the sad part is there's like eight books that preceded it.
00:55:25.240
I never read them, but the final book was pretty cool.
00:55:29.260
So I was like, okay, I could, I could kind of imagine what happened before because the
00:55:37.840
I mean, you just totally have to like pretend, you know, what you're reading at some, certain
00:55:41.440
things are just like kind of, but the gist of the book, really good book.
00:55:53.700
You can quiz me on Genghis Khan, the Mongol Khan.
00:56:03.060
Like, I mean, I almost want to go to Mongolia now to see some of these things because it's
00:56:10.620
Let's go to Russia and you can see the illegitimate children, the Mongol horde.
00:56:14.680
I mean, that's why that Asia, you're in Asia, uh, mix.
00:56:21.360
It's like the Uzbekistanis are kind of like right there.
00:56:24.240
That's the halfway point where they're all there, right?
00:56:26.600
But it's crazy because I even got into, um, War of the Roses, but from the pretext of
00:56:32.900
Margaret Janjoo, the French queen who was married to King Henry, which was depicted in
00:56:51.020
The thing is, I only read that many books because remember that CO I told you about?
00:56:57.480
I'd get the three books I was entitled to, but then he'd swap me out, you know, within
00:57:06.600
Why would they want to limit the number of books you can read?
00:57:11.340
I don't know to the extent of the F-bombs I can drop here.
00:57:15.880
So my very first book on Genghis Khan, uh, Lords of the Bow, the first chapter was cut
00:57:24.800
And somebody wrote in the beginning of the second chapter, fuck you, figure out what
00:57:31.500
So you're just like, these people really need help.
00:57:34.420
And then on the very last book of the series, which is Kingdom of Silver, they ripped out
00:57:44.760
So I was just like, who the fuck is in this place?
00:58:02.240
I did do a lot of reading, but it was eccentric reading at best.
00:58:08.280
And, you know, when, when I wasn't doing that, I was trying to pray because I, I had a really
00:58:17.660
I've strayed so, so far from the principles and the teachings of my family and, and, and
00:58:24.940
literally Jesus Christ and growing up in, in the Catholic church and, you know, baptism,
00:58:31.260
I mean, all of those things, I've strayed so far away from it.
00:58:36.320
And I saw where it landed me because now I can easily tell you this.
00:58:42.000
It is so much easier to walk in your life with a God in it than to ignore it.
00:58:54.860
I think it was like day 10 and I had already written my first suicide note.
00:59:10.500
Um, and I wrote shoe records as something for me to remember how dark it got for me there.
00:59:22.040
I will one day because I want to, I think I want the world to know what I wrote.
00:59:25.760
But funny enough, the very first one I write it, I'm so angry.
00:59:31.120
My whole preface, and if I could recall, you know, without, it's a blur, right?
00:59:36.780
But the preface was, I'm going to kill myself just to fuck with this warden and put a mess
00:59:44.080
I was willing to end my life in my own thoughts to get back at someone who was hurting me.
00:59:51.700
Well, I do think most suicide is an act of aggression against others.
00:59:55.760
I mean, that's pretty common, you know, you're, I'll show them is a common motive.
01:00:02.540
And it gets to a point where after the first one, I said, what am I doing?
01:00:09.600
And I requested, they make you fill out cop-outs, which is a former request to staff.
01:00:15.620
So I wrote to the chaplain requesting a Catholic, Roman Catholic Bible and a rosary so I can pray.
01:00:21.140
The warden didn't approve it, declined both requests.
01:00:25.760
Till this day, I could get all the fucked up books in the world, but I couldn't get
01:00:31.500
I requested for the visiting priest that comes to do mass at the prison to visit me in the
01:00:45.600
Well, you should explain that to her as I tried to.
01:00:52.380
I told her I had an outburst by about day, I don't want to say 35 or 30, somewhere along
01:01:00.280
that range where, you know, after all the meandering bullshit of, you know, it's still
01:01:05.220
under the investigative authorities, blah, blah, blah.
01:01:07.820
And it was like, I go into the shoe August 28th.
01:01:11.380
September 23rd, just five days short of a month in, I meet with the FBI.
01:01:20.480
I think it takes five days later, around the 28th, that email is sent to the facility.
01:01:29.160
We don't find us to be credible, but the AUSA has to decline to prosecute, right?
01:01:33.780
At that point, the warden had the discretion, total discretion to say, okay, I'm sending
01:01:41.280
But she chose to let the AUSA do their process, which is fine.
01:01:54.780
She chose to wait for the official process, even though I had screamed till I was blue
01:02:03.140
There was a former investigation to the same person with similar allegations, and these
01:02:10.320
And I, so I want to say, oh, well, that was, let's say the 28th, I believe, is the day
01:02:15.060
And then by the 17th of, I'm sorry, by the 7th of October, I was released a couple, a week
01:02:35.460
I think if two federal officers are telling you that it's not credible and they've done
01:02:39.260
all the due diligence on this, I think it's pretty remarkable that you're going to wait
01:02:44.080
and extend suffering for somebody for another nine days just because, you know.
01:02:54.780
My very first article, I mean, by the second or third article, I literally, after being
01:02:58.940
there and experiencing the decay in the kitchen, the food issues, the issues with hygiene, the
01:03:03.340
issues with mental health, the issues with medical, the issues with the dorm and sleeping
01:03:10.000
Not drugs, because I only experienced the drug issues across the street.
01:03:12.980
So, the issue with the lack of humanity and dehumanizing nature of her facility, I wrote
01:03:21.920
that all down on several different penned articles on the South Shore Press.
01:03:36.420
Oh, well, I guess, or I was going to say something a lot.
01:03:47.060
And she mocked me in the process to a point where I was losing my mind.
01:03:56.620
I won't say the day, so I don't compromise the facility again, in lieu of not compromising
01:04:06.640
They do rounds once a week in every segment of the facility.
01:04:10.380
So, there was the day of the week that they did rounds in the shoe.
01:04:12.640
Now, in the shoe, we're sitting in our cells, and there's this metal door, which is blast
01:04:18.260
proof, heavy as hell, with a little drawer so you can get your trays.
01:04:23.640
And when you got to get out, put your hands backwards through that and get cuffed.
01:04:27.940
And a skinny window about, I want to say, four inches wide, about 20, 20, 25 inches tall,
01:04:35.800
give or take, that they come in and they peep their eye to see if you're alive, right?
01:04:42.160
And I would always ask, it was around day 30 to 35 or somewhere in between there, I
01:04:54.720
They said that following Monday, they would send a letter, in which, in fact, they did.
01:05:02.060
And I said, and I quote, bitch, you are going to regret fucking with me.
01:05:11.060
And I don't mean it as threatening her, but I'm going to take her to task.
01:05:15.680
Kelly, Warden Kelly, Lynn Kelly will be the face of evil, of rot and corrupt of the BOP if I have it my way.
01:05:24.780
We need to make an example of somebody because if we're going to rehabilitate people in this country,
01:05:29.680
it cannot be at the hands of that woman or people like her.
01:05:35.120
If you operate like Warden Kelly does at FCI Ferriton, I strongly suggest you fuck off because I'm going to come for you.
01:05:46.020
And I'm going to work tooth and nail to make these changes because we're creating more criminals.
01:05:52.440
And recidivism is at an all-time high because of how we treat people.
01:05:56.000
We're not giving people a second chance at life.
01:05:58.720
We're making them better criminals at that or angrier criminals.
01:06:02.220
And also, you know, you should take care of the people in your care, period.
01:06:13.700
So, that was a burst, which is totally out of character for me too because I'm a very non-confrontational individual.
01:06:21.580
I mean, I found the courage to literally tell somebody who had all the power in the world to crush me further to fuck off.
01:06:28.600
So, I mean, honestly, it's very liberating because I'm a very yes sir, yes ma'am type of guy.
01:06:57.240
That day that I got out, October 7th, was the day they were doing executive rounds.
01:07:06.320
The captain, the camp administrator, and the SIS, which is the internal investigations guy.
01:07:17.420
And, essentially, I sat there thinking, I'm so fucked.
01:07:26.440
Come later that day at around 1, another assistant warden comes by.
01:07:38.620
But, do you know that guy you don't like, but you appreciate him because he's straightforward, he's honest, and he tells you exactly how it is?
01:07:57.860
I heard doom today and three different kinds of doom.
01:08:04.880
I believe we're going to run an internal administrative process.
01:08:13.540
So, if they're really fast, probably by the end of the week.
01:08:17.020
But, worst case scenario, beginning of next week.
01:08:24.580
At worst, I was like, in my head, at worst, I'll do another 10 days in here.
01:08:37.600
And then that same day at 2 p.m., when shift changed, the guard comes, bangs on my door and says,
01:08:54.380
30 minutes later, she was handcuffing me, putting me out of the door so I can go take off the
01:08:58.560
lovely borrowed clothes and put on my actual clothes.
01:09:04.500
So, what was the worst part of solitary, would you say?
01:09:12.120
The loneliness and the way I was being treated.
01:09:21.380
On September 10th, I was sitting in my cell, minding my business, thinking, wow, tomorrow's
01:09:29.360
And I'm sitting here and like, you know, I'm from New York.
01:09:32.260
It's still very much a somber day for New Yorkers.
01:09:34.680
And a CEO knocks on my door, says, hey, did you know Charlie Kirk?
01:09:51.780
Now you're talking to somebody who's all fucked up 50 shades from Tuesday mentally in a shoe
01:10:02.020
Can't pick up the phone and make a call to understand what's going on.
01:10:05.240
And they took a glee in my, I was wailing like, what do you mean?
01:10:18.320
This is a guy that I've always found so inspirational.
01:10:21.560
And I think I said this to you in private once when I was last year.
01:10:24.820
I think he's going to be a president of the United States.
01:10:28.320
I really thought he'd be one of a future president of this country.
01:10:31.720
I mean, he had a message, had a purpose and he was good.
01:10:35.280
And quite frankly, you can call him a little antagonistic, but who isn't these days?
01:10:40.920
I think he got a great message of God, freedom.
01:10:44.760
I mean, what else can you expect from somebody?
01:10:55.460
So the nice CO I'm telling you about, the two of them, I asked them to look into it.
01:10:59.560
They're not really tuned into politics, but they did some research and they would, on
01:11:04.160
a day to day, they'd give me like play by play of what they had read.
01:11:07.060
When I say these guys were top-notch, phenomenal human beings, I mean, top-notch, phenomenal
01:11:16.180
They told me about the attendance that President Trump spoke, that he was getting awarded the
01:11:20.900
I knew all of that through the accounts of these two COs.
01:11:24.500
I really hope that in my life, I crossed paths with them one day because I'd love to thank them
01:11:31.220
appropriately, like a proper thank you for not treating me like a subhuman piece of trash.
01:11:38.720
Everyone else, I was nothing but another number.
01:11:41.340
And being treated in certain instances, quite, you know, bad.
01:11:48.040
And bad, I struggle to find the words because, you know, this facility declined a visit from
01:11:57.020
My partner and my aunt drove three and a half hours each way to go see me, got there and
01:12:01.760
said, no, no, you can't see him today, even though it was visitation day.
01:12:07.200
They created an arbitrary rule they had not registered.
01:12:10.020
Although they were approved and cleared and had visited me in the camp, now across the street,
01:12:25.340
The wardens create their own little kingdoms and they rule as little monarchs with no real
01:12:32.600
oversight because here's the oversight process.
01:12:35.480
Whenever they're going to be inspected or receive a visit, they clean everything up.
01:12:41.840
So when you come down doing that visit, it's, you know, you got to do surprise visits on these
01:12:46.160
If you really want to see how the house is being run, you can't say that the cat's coming
01:12:54.980
You got to let the cat show up and be like, surprise!
01:13:05.640
There was a vibe shift, which you weren't here to see, but you went from being, you know,
01:13:12.340
widely reviled, all these members of Congress denouncing you, everyone making fun of you
01:13:16.140
to once you went to prison, there was a sense that like, wait, what's George Santos doing
01:13:23.560
Tim Burchett, your friend, the congressman, good man from Tennessee, kind of led the charge
01:13:33.200
You became more popular, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, you became more popular in prison.
01:13:43.500
But I'll say this, from Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's a dear friend, to Tim Burchett, who's
01:13:49.160
another dear friend, Lauren Boebert, Anna Paulina, Matt Gaetz, these guys really came,
01:14:03.280
We're all in the outlaws book with Steve Madden.
01:14:08.900
They all, all those people have a shot of joining you someday in the camp.
01:14:14.220
No, I hope, oh gosh, I shouldn't even say that.
01:14:19.840
I don't know till this day what was the determination.
01:14:24.840
I know that that same day, I had a legal call with the Joe, my attorney, after I got the
01:14:35.100
And Joe literally said, I'm working, I'm fixing this.
01:14:39.080
I don't know what Joe did, but I will say this.
01:14:41.640
He called everyone and their mother and he made sure that they knew that the letter is
01:14:48.640
out and the warden is still not being straightforward and forthcoming.
01:14:54.020
And all I know is that within a matter of hours, it went from 1 p.m. saying I'd get out at some
01:14:59.120
point at the end of the week or next week at best, at worst case, to an hour later saying,
01:15:08.180
And, and it's, it was quite an adjustment, you know.
01:15:14.060
There's this, it's, it's perverse is a lack of mental health care to give you.
01:15:21.280
They have three psychologists when, which they should have six.
01:15:25.440
So they have no prescribing mental health provider.
01:15:29.660
So psychologists give referrals to a physician, which is wild in, in the standards of mental
01:15:36.320
health, especially when you're dealing with people who are incarcerated, which guess what?
01:15:40.080
A lot of them are there because of mental health issues.
01:15:42.820
You know, like the poor judgment and mental health issues are really what leads to people
01:15:46.880
being incarcerated, but there's really no treatment for that.
01:16:01.620
I mean, in, in the first day, we, we get allotted 510 minutes a month to make phone calls.
01:16:08.200
In my very first day, when I had access my phone, I called 120 minutes to my family.
01:16:19.220
I would call, wait 30 minutes, make another call to someone else.
01:16:27.400
It's like the, the, the, the, the anguish of not knowing I'm a family guy through and
01:16:32.460
through and anguish of not knowing what was going on was killing me, like pulling limb
01:16:44.840
So, Thursday, October 16, we had the visiting priest.
01:17:46.940
He's like, you know how mortal sins work, right?
01:17:54.860
I go through this process that I had not done in at least two years, or if not more.
01:18:07.660
I left that feeling like I had squared away a large part of my life.
01:18:18.640
I had this immense resolve on October 17th that everything would be okay.
01:18:24.300
That even if I had to sit there for seven years, I would be okay.
01:18:35.400
So much so that we had something called Coffee Club that Sam Mealy started, my former employee.
01:18:45.540
But at seven o'clock, we would all meet in the library with coffee or tea.
01:18:51.460
And coffee cake or whatever it is, the cakes that Sam was hoarding for Coffee Club from everybody's breakfast bags that didn't want them.
01:18:59.840
And we'd sit there every morning, a group of like five of us.
01:19:02.900
Everybody was welcome to come, but only five people or so would show up.
01:19:08.000
They have no options to do anything else, but they still don't show up to stuff when it's available.
01:19:12.480
So we sat there and I said to him, like, dude, I feel so good.
01:19:18.640
I woke up feeling this resolve, like it's all going to be okay.
01:19:23.560
But, you know, it's strange at the same time, which it is.
01:19:39.960
And then everybody like kind of stiffens like, oh, my God.
01:19:42.800
I'm like, oh, please don't let it mean me going back to the shoe.
01:19:47.540
And they're like, oh, you got to be seen at the J building, which is a facility building.
01:19:55.120
So I stiffened and I said, well, God's on my side.
01:19:59.040
I know that confidently like marched to go see what it was.
01:20:02.000
Turns out it was a subpoena from Congress that Tim Burchard and Lauren Boebert had sent to the facility for me and the warden to go testify to the oversight committee under the conditions of my imprisonment.
01:20:25.940
And it's funny because as I'm reading this, the camp case manager goes to me, you sure you want to do this?
01:20:40.080
He's like, you might want to fly under the radar.
01:20:49.700
I did all the paperwork and I left with a grin from his office from ear to ear, went to my friends, the coffee.
01:20:58.640
I'm like, I just got subpoenaed to go to Congress.
01:21:01.140
I'm like, I'm freaking making changes from in here.
01:21:05.480
Like, I was just like, I have a date with this bitch in Congress.
01:21:11.380
And in my head, I'm like, oh, Kelly, you have no idea what you just got yourself into.
01:21:16.240
And I was so happy about it because it's about fairness for me.
01:21:23.500
So walking the track, played a little ping pong on this like really at best makeshift ping pong table.
01:21:29.800
Like I had a normal day, read a little bit of my book, called home.
01:21:37.780
So I was, you know, budgeting, figuring out what I needed to do.
01:21:39.800
And I'm filling it out in this computer room where we have our computers to do our core links communications with our family.
01:21:54.580
And an inmate comes in like, oh, you were just on TV.
01:22:03.260
And about 30 minutes later, the entire cafeteria erupted in.
01:22:26.800
And the chyron on MSNBC says, disgraced former rep George Santos commuted, soon to be released, according to Trump.
01:22:42.520
You heard the news in the commissary from MSNBC.
01:22:47.460
Well, there's, like I said, there's the black TV and they particularly like watching.
01:22:54.840
Yeah, if it's either not on BET or on like a movie channel with like awful B-rated movies, it's on MSNBC, that TV.
01:23:11.240
The white TV remarkably stays a lot on Fox, by the way.
01:23:16.920
There was like a debate about where I should watch TV.
01:23:20.560
A Spanish TV usually stayed either on Telemundo or Univision.
01:23:28.120
Rarely did it go anywhere else other than those two channels.
01:23:31.600
So I'm sitting there looking at this Chiron for a split second.
01:23:42.160
And then I think, I'm like, wait, nobody can make an inbound call.
01:23:47.920
Because emails take about an hour and a half to get to you of a delay.
01:23:51.980
Because it needs to be vetted through security.
01:23:53.700
So if you sent me something an hour and a half before I get it.
01:23:56.660
And then if I send you a response another hour and a half before you get it.
01:24:00.520
And I can understand that because of criminal conduct and activity after all.
01:24:07.520
So I just like, I was, I didn't know what to do.
01:24:21.420
I'm like, what do you mean you spoke to President Trump?
01:24:28.860
Like, wait, President Trump called Matt before he called me.
01:24:34.600
Well, I'm still mad that he got the full call first.
01:24:45.760
I was ugly, snotty, crying in that phone stall, head down, like my head and, and all this,
01:24:57.100
I, I, I'm going home and it was just, I didn't know this was going to happen.
01:25:06.700
I, I had really made peace with the fact that this was my predicament just that morning.
01:25:13.120
And to tell me that there's no divine intervention in this, I will never accept that because there
01:25:20.380
was no palpable appetite to give me clemency according to every single person I had spoken
01:25:28.700
And the day after I go to confession and I square away my quarrels and my, my pendencies
01:25:33.620
with Jesus Christ, I get commuted by President Trump.
01:25:40.180
It's a remarkable story and, and I don't believe, I don't do coincidences anymore.
01:25:48.500
If you really make your pledge to him, this was it.
01:25:53.760
And I'm not saying because it's so self-serving.
01:26:02.360
So the second you just surrendered to it, it was resolved.
01:26:05.320
I just, I just could not, there was nothing else to do.
01:26:07.920
I mean, I, I, I said, I think I cried all the tears that I had for the rest of the year
01:26:26.440
I was walking out and my phone came in the car and I was already dialing.
01:26:30.900
Like the first call I made was, um, Marjorie Taylor green, um, at the assistance of Matt,
01:26:40.980
I want people to know this because it's important to me.
01:26:45.200
I used to say that if you want a friend in DC, get a dog, not realizing I actually had real
01:26:50.220
friends because it's, you measure a friendship, not on how much you see one another.
01:26:55.840
Of course you measure a friend on when you're in your worst and how they come through for
01:27:02.300
She was on the phone with Matt every single day, checking in to see how he was doing,
01:27:16.780
This is a woman who will go out of her way for her friends and for what she believes in.
01:27:21.980
And it's, it pains me to see that so many people want to attack her.
01:27:29.480
It's been 11 days and I still haven't wrapped my head around it, but I'll say this.
01:27:33.780
There's no bigger supporter of president Trump that I served with.
01:27:38.620
And I'm saying this to the detriment of getting other colleagues and friends of mine mad at
01:27:42.700
me, but there was no bigger loyalist to president Trump than Marjorie Taylor Greene in my time
01:27:50.580
I've known her since 2020 and I can tell you with good faith, she is a loyal soul.
01:27:56.040
She means well, and she wants the best for our country, no matter what.
01:28:01.360
And I think that to conflate that with any other issues that you might want to find a
01:28:05.760
singularity with her, it is your problem, not her problem.
01:28:16.740
No, it's important to me just because I know so many members of Congress and she's in the
01:28:20.840
tiny, tiny, tiny handful I respect and love as people.
01:28:30.780
She played therapist, best friend, mother, all of those roles to my family.
01:28:37.340
And for that, I'm forever indebted because you can only dream of having that level of
01:28:44.540
friendship with someone in your darkest moments.
01:28:47.000
When you're absent from your family and someone steps in and takes a position of counseling
01:28:55.520
and consoling your family, that's a true friend.
01:29:14.920
Well, your family, your friends, your health, that's real wealth.
01:29:20.160
And I want to measure my wealth that way moving forward because there's no point in measuring
01:29:28.180
As much suffering as you went through, it sounds like it was transformative.
01:29:33.840
It gave me everything I needed to look into the mirror and look at the man staring back to
01:29:57.200
Free of, I have no reservations to what I'll say.
01:30:00.820
I have no reservations of what I care, of what society thinks of me.
01:30:04.320
And I don't want to fit your social, normative, whatever bullshit.
01:30:13.480
And those to me are my family, my friends, my health, my pets.
01:30:20.760
I don't need to live in the most beautiful house with the most beautiful curb appeal.
01:30:29.880
I lost complete and total interest after being encapsulated and captured by the consumer mind
01:30:37.860
virus of I must buy the whatever couture and I have to have the two, $3,000 suits and the
01:30:52.040
It's almost like as if I've lived drunk my entire life and I became sober for the first time.
01:31:10.160
I've now reassumed my position of going to mass every Sunday.
01:31:16.160
The priest is apoplectic that he sees me there.
01:31:19.440
I'm praying as loud as the 80 little 80 year old like Bible thumper next to me.
01:31:28.780
I am proud to, to literally partake in what I believe saved my life and I will forever
01:31:40.580
Like all it took was you falling that, you have to hit rock bottom sometimes in order
01:31:50.820
And I thank God and I thank God profoundly for letting me hit rock bottom because if not,
01:31:57.180
I would still be spiraling out of absolute control in a ball of chaos like I was prior
01:32:15.360
I took a shower, an hour long shower with no flip flops, no concerns of the soap falling
01:32:22.260
on the dirty floor, actual shampoo and all like, like I put on every cosmetic product I had
01:32:36.160
I was just like, I need to do everything in here.
01:32:41.960
And I cried in the shower and it was, it wasn't tears of pain.
01:32:53.220
The next day I woke up, I said, I need to have sushi.
01:32:56.360
I need guarantees that I'm eating something that was barely dead before I consumed it.
01:33:14.880
It's been as if I've never left almost because you go right into the media cycle and you're
01:33:20.740
traveling and you're talking and you're doing these interviews.
01:33:23.800
But this is the first long format interview I do.
01:33:27.080
And I reserved it for you because I thought it was appropriate.
01:33:29.960
When I spoke to your booker and your staff, I said, yes, right away.
01:33:35.340
Because I said, I finished all of it at Tucker.
01:33:41.360
And I only thought it'd be great to give you the first word long format.
01:33:44.760
Because you can do five, six, seven minute hits.
01:33:51.700
And I just, I know I just, I said this at the beginning, but I just didn't think we were
01:34:00.460
So I guess there's something to be said from 84, 80, from 87 months to 84 days.
01:34:06.080
But I can tell you, the 84 days made such a difference.
01:34:13.940
Mainly the torturous nature of isolation and the dehumanizing nature of which I was treated
01:34:22.000
really put my entire life back into perspective for me.
01:34:25.980
It's almost as if it was the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
01:34:30.120
But at the same time, worked almost as a blessing.
01:34:36.360
And I live in the in-between gray trying to figure out if I hate it or I love it.
01:34:45.300
Maybe with throughout the years, I'll figure that out.
01:34:50.780
And it brings me great pause when I think of the following.
01:34:59.020
If they can do this to me, imagine what other people are going to do.
01:35:03.580
I've been thinking that through your entire narrative.
01:35:06.560
You know, you're a very famous person, member of Congress, know everybody, obviously highly
01:35:13.260
motivated, very resistant to being bossed around.
01:35:24.680
Now, it puts into perspective that I've always listened to two.
01:35:30.040
Every time I've ever worded the words, oh, we need prison reform.
01:35:47.620
And we can't discount people's pain and suffering.
01:35:55.020
And you have to treat people with dignity, even wrongdoers.
01:35:58.060
And by the way, we're all wrongdoers, if we're going to be honest about it.
01:36:11.180
If I disagree with ending the life of an unborn child, what makes you think I'm going to agree
01:36:18.040
with taking the life of a fully developed human?
01:36:22.460
I believe if you kill, you are a danger to society.
01:36:27.100
You should be put away, but I don't think you should be.
01:36:32.540
And we need to end the practices of death penalty, in my opinion.
01:36:45.300
You're obviously very connected and like on everything in normal life.
01:36:49.580
Then you're just like off grid, literally in the shoe.
01:36:54.540
What did you notice about the changes that took place in the months that you were gone?
01:36:58.660
Did you notice a different country when you get back?
01:37:05.540
I left and we were celebrating President Trump.
01:37:11.720
There's this weird segment of social media who are all these conservative influencers taking dunks on the president, which I'm like super like lost at.
01:37:32.620
But I've also learned throughout the last few months that I don't want my president to be at the mercy of a prime minister who is toxic and causing great pain to our country now.
01:37:44.780
Because President Trump goes out there, puts his neck on the line, does an amazing, formidable peace deal.
01:37:56.700
I don't care what the liberal bench of the Nobel Prize Association or whatever you call them think.
01:38:04.500
The reality is Donald Trump is a peace president.
01:38:12.360
He does this extraordinary measure, is now working towards putting the conflict of Ukraine-Russia to an end.
01:38:17.660
And hopefully we can achieve that only to see that people like Bibi Netanyahu are sabotaging that.
01:38:29.860
It's shocking because he should be grateful because President Trump is going out of his way, doing a formidable job.
01:38:39.000
Spending all this time, all this money, trying to fix other people's problems.
01:38:42.200
Time is a commodity that not a lot of us can afford.
01:38:45.100
So I have to come to realization, despite being a staunch defender of Israel and the Jewish people and their right to exist and their right to be in Israel,
01:38:56.280
I, at the same time now, live in a place where I think it's time we move on.
01:39:03.880
He has become pretty much the merchant of death almost, the face of it.
01:39:08.700
On both sides, every Israeli soldier and family and every Palestinian soldier and Hamas terrorist and family, although I'm not too sympathetic for the terrorists.
01:39:19.580
Quite frankly, the only good terrorists alive, the only good terrorists in my world are the ones that are not alive.
01:39:25.240
Even though I have this profound opinion of death and life and that we should not kill, but there's a special place in hell for terrorists.
01:39:36.700
Especially after what I saw when I was in Congress after the initial October 7th attack.
01:39:40.860
The video, I'm sure you saw the video, the baby and that stayed in my nightmares for quite some time.
01:39:48.240
So, every single death at this point, I think is easily being attributed to Bibi because he is overstepped.
01:40:00.320
And in two months and a half that I've been gone, it gave me so much clarity because I was out of the rhetoric machine, I was out of the spin room, and I'm just like, my president is going to bat for a man that is not being forthcoming with him.
01:40:24.040
I'm very protective of President Trump because President Trump is somebody, and everybody is saying, oh, you're going to now go simp for him.
01:40:31.400
I've been simping, whatever that means, for Trump since 2015, since he came down the golden escalators.
01:40:46.540
And I mean very little he can do that would make me not like him.
01:40:52.140
He can't, if he kills somebody, depending on who it is, I might be like, well, that person had it coming.
01:40:58.440
No, but watching someone you love and admire to whom you're grateful, Trump, mistreated by an ungrateful foreigner whose salary we pay is, like, is beyond.
01:41:08.080
It's just, it's gotten to a point where I, and then there's also this other aspect of this, which is anybody who says what I'm saying now gets accused.
01:41:26.000
It's like, at this point, I, yeah, well, tell me about it.
01:41:29.820
And then the second thing to really bring it to perspective is, what are we doing in this country to really fix anything?
01:41:40.700
Schumer won't, Schumer wants to make this the Republican shutdown so bad.
01:41:45.680
It's almost like Gretchen Wiener in Mean Girls trying to make Fetch happen.
01:41:53.960
So I don't know how so much has changed in two and a half months, but I'm here.
01:42:01.980
I mean, I'm literally living an existential crisis in my life right now in New York City.
01:42:08.320
I'm at the precipice of having an actual dangerous man become the mayor of the largest city in the country that is responsible for 10% of the American GDP.
01:42:29.260
I mean, do you know how I check out my barometers now?
01:42:35.520
When you look at Polymarket, and it's a 93% chance that this Mandami guy is gonna win.
01:42:44.620
There's no sensational ads or sensational headlines on the New York Post that are gonna say,
01:42:51.460
Cuomo eats 10% of Mandami's lead, narrowing the gap.
01:43:01.720
I have yet to see Polymarket get something wrong.
01:43:07.300
So I'm, and I don't get paid by them to say that, by the way.
01:43:20.140
I had 37 years, New York City resident, born and raised in Queens, New York City.
01:43:26.140
I have lived in various parts of Queens throughout my life, but I'm originally from Jackson Heights,
01:43:36.860
I have no desire whatsoever to stay in New York City or New York State at that because
01:43:44.280
it doesn't matter if you're fleeing the insanity of a madman in the city when you have, I lose
01:43:53.960
So I'll just leave it at, you have literally two Looney Tunes running the state and the city.
01:44:21.280
My image is largely tied to being a New Yorker.
01:44:32.840
I'm like, I still am offended that he sent me to Jersey.
01:44:37.780
So my point is, this is how serious it is to me.
01:44:46.860
I'm moving far away from my family because there's, I mean, my poor aunt, she just retired.
01:45:09.360
We're looking to adopt kids next year because we think it's time to like help kids who are
01:45:16.160
Let's, let's adopt two kids, give them a life, put them through school, give them whatever
01:45:19.460
they want, education, give them a fair shake instead of letting them become a statistic.
01:45:22.800
But I don't want them to grow up in a place like New York City.
01:45:25.980
What do you think is going to happen to New York?
01:45:28.280
At first, there's going to be the sticker shock of taxes being raised on the wealthy,
01:45:35.060
but he's categorizing the wealthy people who make over 400,000 a year, which in New York
01:45:41.700
And then about 40% of that goes to, you know, housing, you know, lodging costs, whether rent
01:45:48.220
or mortgage, whatever the, that makeup is, you're not really wealthy.
01:45:52.420
Now you're going to pay an additional 1% so that we can have inefficient free buses
01:45:56.680
because you're not going to get better because they're free.
01:46:04.440
Then you have John Katsimatidis, who's a prolific businessman in New York City, who's made it
01:46:10.680
He's going to take his Red Apple Group and dip New York.
01:46:14.000
And along with it, he's going to close his historic grocery chain because he can't compete.
01:46:20.180
Gristidis can't compete with a city-owned supermarket.
01:46:27.140
You're going to see every single major corporation start uprooting out of New York.
01:46:32.520
Pretty soon, you're going to leave the stock exchange to the dust mites and whoever dares
01:46:38.360
Just remember, Ken Griffin picked up and left Chicago and took Citadel with him to Florida.
01:46:47.820
Prickster can be fat and loud and a billionaire, but he doesn't tell what other people do with
01:46:53.800
When you see an example of that happening in Chicago with Ken Griffin, it should raise
01:47:01.600
Goldman Sachs moved GSAM, their asset management division, all but their retail-facing people
01:47:10.660
Like that division, the only people who stayed in New York of their main, the heart of Goldman
01:47:15.820
Sachs, which is GSAM, their asset management division.
01:47:18.840
It's mainly the frontline people who stay, like the people who have the day-to-day because
01:47:25.980
But the operations end of it is in Brickell, largely.
01:47:29.260
Like when you see these moves being made and you still want to talk about raising the corporate
01:47:33.920
tax by 2%, you're either dumb, death, blind, or all of the above.
01:47:38.920
Because there's just no way you think people are going to stay and corporations are going
01:47:43.680
to be beholden to stay in the state of New York if you make it even less business-friendly.
01:47:48.780
We have had a net loss of over 600,000 people in the course of the last five years in New
01:47:56.480
We're a large exporter of out-migration from the state.
01:48:01.260
Lee Zeldin could have been governor if it wasn't for the 400,000 people who at that point
01:48:05.520
in 2022 had fled to Florida due to the pandemic.
01:48:11.360
We have Elise Stefanik, who's a phenomenal congresswoman, who has a shot.
01:48:15.200
But I fear that with this out-migration that's going to occur after Mondami, it might hurt our
01:48:21.520
electability unless Democrats finally see they messed up and they actually give it.
01:48:33.600
New York City is going to become Gotham, and I'm not willing to be the penguin.
01:48:42.040
George Santos, this story ended in a way I could never have predicted, but so much better
01:48:49.720
And you seem like a man transformed through suffering.
01:49:00.160
It paid off in a weird way at the end, and I'm grateful.
01:49:02.980
Thanks to God, and thanks to President Trump, and to everybody who helped and walked that
01:49:13.080
We've got a new website we hope you will visit.
01:49:22.960
It's called newcommissionnow.com, and it refers to a new 9-11 commission.
01:49:29.760
So we spent months putting together our 9-11 documentary series.
01:49:33.820
And if there's one thing we learned, it's that, in fact, there was foreknowledge of the attacks.
01:49:44.040
We're shocked, actually, to learn that, to have that confirmed.
01:49:48.100
The CIA, for example, knew the hijackers were here in the United States.
01:49:53.600
In his passport is a visa to go to the United States of America.
01:49:57.840
A foreign national was caught celebrating as the World Trade Center fell and later said
01:50:02.600
he was in New York, quote, to document the event.
01:50:06.020
How did he know there would be an event to document in the first place?
01:50:09.580
And maybe most amazingly, somebody, an unknown investor, shorted American Airlines and United
01:50:16.200
Airlines, the companies whose planes the attackers used on 9-11, as well as the banks
01:50:21.080
that were inside the Twin Towers just before the attacks.
01:50:23.400
They made money on the 9-11 attacks because they knew they were coming.
01:50:31.980
The U.S. government learned the name of that investor, but never released it.
01:50:38.200
Maybe there's an instant explanation for all this, but there isn't, actually.
01:50:42.280
And by the way, it doesn't matter whether there is or not.
01:50:44.680
The public deserves to know what the hell that was.
01:50:48.060
How did people know ahead of time, why was no one ever punished for it?
01:50:51.860
9-11 Commission, the original one, was a fraud.
01:50:56.940
Its conclusions were written before the investigation.
01:51:02.320
This country needs a new 9-11 Commission, one that actually tells the truth, that tries
01:51:16.600
We need to force a new investigation into 9-11 almost 25 years later.
01:51:24.240
And if you want that, go to newcommissionnow.com to add your name to our petition.