60 Minutes - 07/07/2024: Targeting Americans and Kevin Hart

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

On this edition of “60 Minutes,” Scott Pelley investigates U.S. government officials reporting mysterious brain injuries. Correspondent Anderson Cooper profiles Kevin Hart, the highest grossing comedian today and bankable movie star, who is now adding a new title to his resume – entertainment and business mogul. Cooper goes backstage with Hart in Pasadena, California to watch him test out new material for an upcoming comedy tour and sits down with him at his headquarters in Los Angeles to talk about the business of being funny and his growing empire. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A car chase in Florida may have provided the vital clue to a national security mystery. Many U.S. officials and their families believe they've been injured by a secret weapon in the hands of a foreign adversary. It's devastating. It's absolutely devastating. Tonight, we have evidence of who might be responsible. Are we being attacked? My personal opinion, yes. By whom? Russia.

The wall is full of great comedians. Kevin Hart is a comedian. I've been 5'5 my whole life, 5'4, 5'2 and a half. A movie star. And as you'll hear tonight, a budding tycoon. Cheers. Are you a billionaire yet? None of your business, man. You trying to get me robbed?

You trying to get me knocked in my goddamn head? I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. Hit pause on whatever Thanks. conditions. Why do fintechs like Float choose Visa? As a more trusted, more secure payments network, Visa provides scale expertise and innovative payment solutions. Learn more at

visa.ca slash fintech. Tonight, we have important developments in our five-year investigation of mysterious brain injuries reported by U.S. national security officials. The injured include White House staff, CIA officers, FBI agents, military officers, and their families. Many believe that they were wounded by a secret weapon that fires a high energy beam of microwaves or ultrasound. This is our fourth story, and as we reported in March, we now have evidence of who might be responsible. Most of the injured have fought for America, often in secret, and they're frustrated that the U.S. government publicly doubts

that an adversary is targeting Americans. One of them is Carrie. We're disguising her and not using her last name because she's still an FBI agent working in counterintelligence. She says in 2021, she was home in Florida when she was hit by a crippling force. And bam, inside my right ear, it was like a dentist drilling on steroids. That feeling when it gets too close to your eardrum, it's like that, you know, times ten. It was like a high-pitched metallic drilling noise, and it knocked me forward at like a 45-degree angle this way. She says she was by a window in her laundry room.

My right ear was line of sight to that window while this thing was happening in my ear. And when I leaned forward, it kind of knocked, it didn't knock me over, but it knocked me forward. I immediately felt pressure, and pressure and pain started coursing from inside my right ear, down my jaw, down my neck, and into my chest. At the same time, FBI agent Carrie told us the battery in her phone began to swell until it broke the case. Finally, she passed out on a couch. Because of chest pain, she was checked by a cardiologist and then returned to duty. And I remember complaining to my colleagues for months after that.

I felt like I had early Alzheimer's. Short-term memory, long-term memory, confusing memories, multitasking. My baseline changed. I was not the same person. Carrie's story matches those we've uncovered over the years. It was like this piercing feeling on the side of my head. It was like, I remember it was on the right side of my head and I got like vertigo. Olivia Troy was Homeland Security Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence. In our 2022 report, she told us she was hit

outside the White House. And then severe ear pain started. So I liken it to if you put a Q-tip too far and you bounce off your eardrum. Well, imagine taking a sharp pencil and just kind of poke in that. And this man told us he was among the first publicly known cases in 2016 from our embassy in Cuba. That's how the incidents became known as Havana Syndrome. He's medically retired from an agency we can't name, blind in one eye and struggling for balance. A major medical study for the government was led by dr david railman of stanford university in our 2022 report he told us what we found was we thought clear evidence of an injury to the auditory and vestibular system of the brain everything starting with the inner ear, where humans perceive sound and sense balance, and then translate those perceptions into brain electrical signals.

His study found directed pulsed radio frequency energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism. For example, a focused beam of microwaves or acoustic ultrasound. More than 100 officials or family members have unexplained, persistent symptoms. If I turn too fast, my gyroscope is off, essentially. It's like a step behind where I'm supposed to be. So I'll turn too fast and I will literally walk right into the wall or the doorframe. Now, for the first time, the case of FBI agent Carrie suggests which adversary might be responsible. She spoke with the FBI's permission, but wasn't allowed to discuss the cases she was on when she was hit.

We have learned from other sources one of those cases involved this Mustang going 110 miles an hour. Pull over! Pull over! In 2020, near Key West, Florida, deputies tried to stop the Mustang for speeding. It ran 15 miles until it hit spike strips laid in its path. Get out the road! A search of the car found notes of bank accounts. Citibank. Discover savings, 75,000.

And this device, that looks like a walkie-talkie, can erase the car's computer data, including its GPS record. There was also a Russian passport. What's your first name? Vitaly. V-I-T-A-L-I-Y. Vitaly Kovalev was the driver from St. Petersburg, Russia, not Florida. Why did you run?

Let me be honest with you. I don't know. You don't know why you ran? I don't know. And we don't know why he ran, but what we learned suggests he was a Russian spy. What we see here is Vitaly Kovalev fitting exactly this formula. Kristo Grozev is a journalist legendary for unmasking Russian plots. In 2020, he uncovered the names of the Russian secret agents who poisoned Vladimir Putin's rival, Alexei Navalny.

Grozev is lead investigator for our collaborator on this story, The Insider, a magazine by Russian exiles. We asked him to trace Vitaly Kovalev. He studied in a military institute. He studied radio electronics with a particular focus on use within the military of microelectronics. He had all the technology know-how that would be required for somebody to be assisting

an operation that requires high technology. And then all of a sudden, after working for two years in a military institute, he up and decides to become a chef. Kovalev immigrated to the U.S. and worked as a chef in New York and Washington, D.C., even appearing at far left in a TV cooking segment. Traditional Russian recipes, thanks to our wonderful chef. But Kovalev was actually a Russian military electrical engineer with a top-secret security clearance.

Can someone like Kovalev simply decide to drop all of that and become a chef? It is not an easy job to just leave that behind. Once you're in the military and you've been trained and the Ministry of Defense is invested in you, you remain at their beck been trained and the Ministry of Defense has invested in you, you remain at their beck and call for the rest of your life. We don't know what Kovalev was up to, but our sources say over months, he spent 80 hours being interviewed by FBI agent Kerry, who had investigated multiple Russian spies. Kovalev pled guilty to evading police and reckless driving. He was sentenced to 30 months.

While he was in jail, Carrie says she was hit in Florida, and a year later when she awoke to the same symptoms in the middle of the night in California. It felt like I was stuck in this state of like disorientation, not able to function, what is happening, and my whole body was pulsing. Mark Zaid is Carrie's attorney. He has a security clearance and for decades has represented Americans working in national security. Zaid has more than two dozen clients suffering symptoms of Havana syndrome, which the government now calls anomalous health incidents.

I have CIA and State Department clients as well who believe they've been impacted domestically. There are dozens of CIA cases that have happened domestically that is at least believed. And we're not even just talking about physical manifestation. We're talking about evidence of computer issues in the midst of the incident where computer screens just literally stop working or go flicker on and off.

Do you know whether there are other FBI agents who have also suffered from these anomalous health incidents? There are other FBI agents and personnel, not just agents, analysts. I represent one other FBI person who was impacted in Miami, and I also know of FBI personnel who believe they were hit overseas in the last decade. Were any of these members of the FBI counterintelligence people in addition to Kerry? The one thread that I know of with the FBI personnel

that is common among most, if not all, of my clients other than the family members connected to the employee was they were all 2022 went back to Russia, ignoring American warnings that he was in danger because he'd spent so much time with the FBI. Christo Grozev found this death certificate from last year, which says Kovalev was killed at the front in Ukraine. Do you think Kovalev was sent to Ukraine as a punishment? One theory is that he was sent there in order for him to be disposed of. Is Kovalev really dead, or is this another cover story? That is a very good question,

and we actually worked on both hypotheses for a while. I do believe at this point that he was dead. We're dealing with energy weapons. It's not going anywhere. Look how effective it's been. It's next-generation weaponry, and unfortunately, it's been refined on some of us and we're the test subjects.

When we come back, you will hear from the Pentagon official who led a global investigation into who is targeting Americans. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink. And of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've

been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. Hi there, I'm Ryan Reynolds and I have a list of things I like to have on set. It's just little things like two freshly cracked eggs scrambled with crispy hash brown, sausage crumble, and creamy chipotle sauce from Tim Hortons. From my rider to Tim's menu, try my new scrambled eggs loaded breakfast box. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner.

Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. U.S. intelligence says publicly that there is no credible evidence that an adversary is inflicting brain injuries on national security officials. And yet, more than 100 Americans have symptoms that scientists say could be caused by a beam of microwaves or acoustic ultrasound. The Pentagon launched an investigation run by a

recently retired Army Lieutenant Colonel. In March, Greg Edgreen spoke publicly for the first time. Are we being attacked? My personal opinion, yes. By whom? Russia. Greg Edgreen ran the investigation for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He would not discuss classified information, but he described his team's work from 2021 to 2023. We were collecting a large body of data ranging from signals intelligence, human intelligence, open source reporting, anything regarding the internet,

travel records, financial records, you name it. Unfortunately, I can't get into specifics based on the classification, but I can tell you at a very early stage, I started to focus on Moscow. Can you tell me about the patterns you began to see? One of the things I started to notice was the caliber of our officer that was being impacted. This wasn't happening to our worst or our middle-range officers. This was happening to our top 5, 10% performing officers across the Defense Intelligence Agency.

And consistently, there was a Russia nexus. There was some angle where they had worked against Russia, focused on Russia, and done extremely well. What has been the impact on American national security? The impact has been that the intelligence officers and our diplomats working abroad are being removed from their posts with traumatic brain injuries. They're being neutralized. We have learned of an incident

at last year's NATO Summit in Lithuania, a meeting that focused largely on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and was attended by President Biden. Multiple sources tell us that a senior official of the Department of Defense was struck by the symptoms and sought medical treatment.

We told Greg Edgreen what we had learned. It tells me that there are no barriers on what Moscow will do, on who they will attack, and that if we don't face this head-on, the problem is going to get worse. The problem first appeared in public in 2016. U.S. officials reported being hurt in Cuba, and the incidents became known as Havana Syndrome. But we have learned it started two years earlier, when at least four Americans reported symptoms in Frankfurt, Germany. There is also evidence of what could be revenge attacks. For example, in 2014, three CIA officers were stationed in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin's obsession. 2014 was the year that a popular revolt overthrew Putin's preferred leader.

Later, those CIA officers went on to other assignments and reported being hit, one in Uzbekistan, one in Vietnam, and the third officer's family was hit in London. If it is Russia, investigative reporter Christo Grozev believes he knows who's involved. In 2018, Grozev was the first to discover the existence of a top-secret Russian intelligence unit, which goes by a number, 29155. These are people who are trained to be versatile assassins and sabotage operators. They're trained in counter-surveillance, they're trained in explosives, they're trained in using poison,

and technology equipment to actually inflict pain or damage to the targets. Grozev works with our collaborators on this report, a magazine called The Insider and Germany's Der Spiegel. He has a long track record uncovering Russian documents, and Grozev says he found one that may link 29155 to a directed energy weapon. And when I saw it, I literally had tears in my eyes because it was spelling out what they had been doing. It's a piece of accounting. An officer of 29155 received a bonus for work on, quote,

potential capabilities of nonlethal acoustic weapons. Which told us that this particular unit had been engaged with somewhere, somehow, empirical tests of a directed energy unit. There it is. There it is. Written down in black and white. It's the closest to a receipt you can have for this. We've also found that Russia's 29155

may have been present in Tbilisi, Georgia, when Americans reported incidents there. Do you believe that you were attacked? Absolutely. She asked us to withhold her name for her safety. She is the wife of a Justice Department official who was with the embassy in Tbilisi. She's a nurse with a Ph.D. in anesthesiology. On October 7, 2021, she says that she was in her laundry room when she was blindsided by a sound. As I'm reaching into the dryer, I am completely consumed by a piercing sound that I can only describe as when you listen to a movie and the main character is also consumed by the

sound after a bomb goes off. That is similar to the sound that I heard and it just pierced my ears, came in my left side, felt like it came through the window into my left ear. I immediately felt fullness in my head and just a piercing headache. And when I realized that I needed to get out of the laundry room, I left the room and went into our bedroom next door and projectile vomited in our bathroom. We have learned that hers was the second incident that week. Sources tell us earlier in the neighborhood, a U.S. official, their spouse, and child were hit. We have also learned of a phone call that was intercepted nearby. A man says in Russian,

is it supposed to have blinking green lights? And should I leave it on all night? We have no idea what he was talking about. But the next day, the incidents began. Sources tell us that an investigation centered on this Russian, Albert Averyanov. His name on travel manifests and phone records appears alongside known members of Unit 29155. He is also the son of the commander.

He was groomed to become a member of the unit since he was 16. His number is in the phone books of all members of the unit. Clearly, he's more than just the son of the boss. He's a colleague of these people. Grozev found Albert Averianoff's phone was turned off during the Tbilisi incidents. But our sources say there is evidence someone in Tbilisi logged into Averianov's personal email during this time. Most likely, Grozev believes Averianov himself, placing him in the city. to facilitate, supervise, or maybe even personally implement attacks on American diplomats, on American government officials, using an acoustic weapon.

After you were able to get out of the laundry room, call your husband, what did you do then? I went downstairs. I first looked on our security camera, which is right beside our front door, to see if anyone was outside, there was a vehicle right outside of our gate. I took a photo of that vehicle and noticed that it was not a vehicle that I recognized, and I went outside. Did you see anyone around the vehicle? I did. We sent you a photograph of Albert Varionov, and this is the picture that we sent you a photograph of Albert Varjanov, and this is the picture that we sent you.

You did. And I wonder if that looks anything like the man you saw outside your home. It absolutely does. And when I received this photo, I had a visceral reaction. It made me feel sick. I cannot absolutely say for certainty that it is this man, but I can tell you that even to this day, looking at him makes me feel that same visceral reaction, and I can absolutely say that this looks like the man that I saw in the street. This 40-year-old wife and mother is among the most severely injured people we have met.

My headaches and brain fog continued. Later on into that weekend, I started having trouble walking down the stairs, specifically at night. I had trouble finding the steps to get down the stairs. So my coordination and vestibular system started just really falling apart. She was medically evacuated, and now doctors say she has holes in her inner ear canals, the vestibular system that creates the sense of balance. Two surgeries put metal plates in her skull. Another surgery is likely. It's devastating. It's absolutely devastating.

Despite experiences like hers, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said last year, it's very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible. But the DNI also acknowledged some intelligence agencies had only low or moderate confidence in that assessment. Recently, the National Institutes of Health reported results of brain scans on some patients. NIH said there's no evidence of physical damage. But the medical science of so-called anomalous health incidents remains vigorously debated. the Director of National Intelligence says the symptoms probably result from pre-existing conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors. Attorney Mark Zaid represents more than two dozen AHI clients.

What do you make of the intelligence community assessment? So, I've had access to classified information relating to AHI. I can't reveal it. I wouldn't reveal it. I will tell you that I don't believe it to be the entire story. And I know of information that undermines or contradicts what they are saying publicly. Are you saying that the government wants to cover this up? There is, in my view, without a doubt, evidence of a cover-up. Now, some of that cover-up is not necessarily that, oh, we found a weapon and we don't want anybody to know about it. What I've seen more so is we see lines of inquiry that would take us potentially to answers we don't want to have to

deal with. So we're not going to explore any of those avenues. You know, if my mother had seen what I saw, she would say it's the, stupid. Greg Edgreen, who ran the military investigation, told us he had the Pentagon's support. But in the Trump and Biden administrations, he says, the bar for proof was set impossibly high. I think it was set so high because we did not, as a country and a government, want to face some very hard truths. And what are those? Can we secure America? Are these massive counterintelligence failures?

Can we protect American soil and our people on American soil? Are we being attacked? And if we're being attacked, is that an act of war? After what he learned in his classified investigation, Greg Edgreen retired from the Army to start a company to help the victims. He hopes to channel government contracts into treatment programs. As with all spy stories, much is classified and what remains is circumstantial. None of the witnesses tonight wanted to speak. Some fear for their families, but all felt compelled to shine a light on what they see as a war of shadows, a war America may not be winning.

If this is what we've seen with the hundreds of cases of anomalous health incidents, I can assure you that this has become probably Putin's biggest victory. In his own mind, this has been Russia's biggest victory against the West. In terms of the long term, would you consider this to be life-altering? Absolutely life-altering? Absolutely life-altering for our whole family. There have been plenty of successful stand-up comedians, but few who've managed to do what Kevin Hart has. In addition to becoming a bankable movie star, he's also built an entertainment and business empire. And in March at 44, he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor,

as close to a Lifetime Achievement Award as you can get. Hart's comedy isn't particularly controversial. It's conversational, with a lot of cursing thrown in. He tells revealing stories about his wife and four kids, his embarrassing insecurities, and his many shortcomings. On stage, Kevin Hart is an open book, but when we sat down with him earlier this year, on one topic at least, he was a bit hard to pin down. GQ said you're 5'5", the LA Times says you're 5'4", and some other place said you were 5'2". Kevin Hart has been telling tall tales about himself on stage for more than two decades. 43 years old.

I've been 5'5 my whole life. 5'4, 5'2 and a half my whole life. It's talking about the things that you aren't afraid to laugh at about yourself. I'm really confident that the laugh that I'm getting, you're not laughing necessarily at me as if I'm a joke, you're laughing at the experience. I'm giving you an experience through a story that is relatable and more importantly, I'm saying things that other people just don't have the heart to say. I mean you told a story about your wife watching tall people porn.

Yeah, he was taller than me. That was your main issue? Yeah. Why is he so tall? Is that what you want? We had a real conversation over that. Is that what you're looking for? If your search starts with tall... You can't fix that.

Yeah, no, I can't fix that. We got a problem. One of the sites wasn't even porn. One of the sites was a bunch of tall men being active. They were changing light bulbs, putting shit on shelves, hanging paintings. What kind of shit is this? What the fuck is this? She was like, what? You can't do none of that stuff. I like that stuff. Hart is the highest-grossing comedian today.

He sells out arenas around the world and the occasional football stadium. We sold a football stadium out tonight, so I need to hear that. The wall is full of great comedians. When we first met him in January at his offices in Los Angeles, he was working on new material for an upcoming comedy tour. To do an hour comedy special, how long does it take? How many? You need to really work on a set, eight to nine months.

Are you sitting in a room with your team? No. I'm going back to ground zero. Just small comedy clubs? Small comedy clubs, rooms. I got two guys, Harry Radford, Joey Wells. They act as my writers. And what they do is they grab my material as I say it.

But you can't write it down for me. I don't like the long jokes or the long sentences. So it has to be in bullet points. Travel, bad, bad travel. Why bad travel makes me drive. Driving, good versus bad. Everything has a good and a bad. My rule is when I get on stage,

I would much rather have the dismantled picture in my head of kind of what I think it is and it not be good and then figure it out in real time and walk off stage and go, it was something there. A few hours later, 3,000 people showed up in Pasadena to hear Hart figure out his new jokes on stage. Everyone had to hand over their phones. Before he began, Hart explained why. Like 90% of what I'm going to do tonight, I feel like it's really good. The reason why I took your phones is because of the other 10%, right? Like, just in case.

Just in case some of it's not, you don't have no proof. We agreed not to record any of his routine either, but backstage we found his collaborators, Harry Ratchford and Joey Wells, taking a lot of notes. I appreciate y'all. I'm Kevin Hart. I love you. Good night. How was this audience? This audience was great. Great. Like, you could feel the laughter never stop.

That's the beauty of a theater. The theater lets you really feel the highs and lows of a set. There's so much that he wants to do. Joey Wells and Harry Ratchford, along with comedians Will Spank-Horton and Naeem Lin, are among Hart's closest friends. They're also known professionally as the Plastic Cup Boys. What are you actually looking for when he's on a stage and telling a joke? What notes do you have? Harry is always structured. We should put the joke here and move it around. And for me, I'm always just like, how can it be just a little funnier?

He might get a standing ovation. I go, that was great. That was great. What if he tried this? Just Bank and Naeem have known Hart since he was a teenager, growing up in a rough neighborhood in North Philadelphia. Was Kevin always as confident as he is today? Yes.

I mean, it was perplexing in the beginning. Like, why does this little ugly dude have this much confidence? I didn't get it. North Philly. North Philly. Oh, what do you think he's doing? He swears he can dance. Home movies his mom made show Hart was always the family entertainer. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment with his brother Robert and his mom, Nancy Hart.

She kept a close eye on Kevin. She planned every moment of your day? I had no free time. After finishing my homework, I had to get to swim practice. Me and my mom would walk home from practice. The homework that I was supposed to do beforehand, she would go over and check and end up making me redo it because nine times out of ten, I rushed through it just to get it done.

She would then make me read, and I would skip pages, not expecting the quiz of the book to come. What she would give you. What she would give me when I said I was done, and then she would make me read it again. Do you credit her with the drive you have? Absolutely. Absolutely. His mom also kept Kevin's dad, Henry Witherspoon, at a distance.

He was in and out of prison and addicted to drugs, which Hart talked about in a 2011 stand-up special called Laugh at My Pain. I was in a weird, like, spelling bees debate. Now, here's the thing. My dad would show up at my events and treat them as if they were athletic events. First of all, you can't cheer for no kid at a spelling bee. It's a spelling bee. It's quiet. I'm focused. I'm in the middle of spelling a very difficult word. My dad shows up late, bust through the back door, high as hell, making coke head noises. All right?

Once again, I cannot make this up. All right? This is all I heard. I'm in the middle of spelling some. Out of nowhere, all I heard was, all right, all right, all right. Yeah. The actual details of stuff he did are really heartbreaking. Yeah.

And yet, you tell it in a way that's funny. Is it heartbreaking to you? No, because- It must have been at the time. I see it for what it was. As a kid, that's dead. By the way, in my environment, that's the norm. It's normal to see a parent drunk or whatever.

Your dad, even in the depths of his drug use, he wanted to see you and your brother. Absolutely. There was a period where he disappeared, but I didn't see him in a long time. And I saw him on the subway, and he was in bad shape. And I was like, Dad? He turned around and saw me.

And doors opened. My dad walked off and ran. Later told me I ran because it just hurt me for you to see me like that, and that was one of his key factors into going and getting help. Hart was eventually able to help his dad get clean before he died in 2022. My dad is crazy. Kevin said his father loved to hear the stories he told about him in front of thousands of people. So we talk about my dad. We celebrate my dad.

But when Hart started doing stand-up at 18, he struggled to find places to perform. And you would take gigs wherever you could get them? Like, you're talking bowling alleys. You're talking cabarets, strip clubs. I did play strip clubs. Is there a lot of comedy in strip clubs? No! And it's a white thing. There's a lot. No! I don't know who thought that comedy and strippers mix. But I remember one of the most heartbreaking moments

for me on stage is, like, in the middle of my set. This was at a strip club. And I remember hearing this lady go, -"Oh, baby." -"After you told the joke remember hearing this lady go, Oh, baby. After you told the joke. Oh, baby. Like, basically. So disgusted and heartbroken that this is what I chose to do with my life. Hart thought he was about to make it big when he shot a sitcom for ABC

called The Big House in 2003. My God, it's Lil' Kevin Hart! The network flew him out to the up-fronts to present the show to advertisers and the media. I'm next to walk on stage so they can announce the Big House. You're the guy with the microphone that's backstage managing the... This is what I see. He's right here. I'm with him.

All right, I'll tell him right now. Kevin, hold up one second. They just said they're not going to go through or pick it up. Somebody should be back here to talk to you shortly. What does that mean? The guy with the microphone is telling you that your series is not being picked up by the network. Not the network exec.

Not the CEO of Disney coming out saying, hey. No, no, no, no. A guy named Barry in the back holding the curtain. It was only because of that rejection. I don't want to feel that. I don't like that you got to hire me when you're ready. You're saying that my career is basically determined off of the needs of people

that I don't know and that I don't talk to? I might be sitting here all day. If I don't go grab it and I don't go make what I feel should be mine. And that is what he did. He started a small production company, now called Heartbeat, and began making his own hour-long stand-up specials. He also marketed himself relentlessly through social media. Freeze!

Hollywood studios took notice. Get on my back! I would rather die. Jump on my back! Nope, I'm going to die. Kevin, what's up? When he was picked in 2018 to host the Oscars, it seemed like a high point in his career. I have nothing against gay people.

But then comments he made about gay people years earlier on stage and on Twitter caused controversy. Hart stepped down as the Oscars host. Initially, you didn't apologize. Later on, you did. Well, later on, the understanding came from the best light bulb ever. Wanda Sykes said, there's people that are being hurt today because of comments like the ones that you made then. And there's people that will say it's okay to make those comments today

based off of what you did then. It was presented to me in a way where I couldn't, I couldn't ignore that. So in those moments of despair, great understanding and education can't come out of it if you're given the opportunity. PAUL SOLMAN, These days, it's hard to keep track of all the businesses Hart has a hand in.

The weekend we spent with him, he was in constant motion and promotion, starting with his daily pre-dawn workout. 60 minutes. Is this what you want? Huh? This what you want? I'm going to get you what you want.

So the good thing is that we make it out of here. Then he was off to Walmart to publicize a nutrition supplement company he owns. To reach people. Finally, you're a real person.

I am. He's also got a fast food chain, a tequila brand, and a $100 million venture capital fund. Cheers. And Heartbeat, that little production company he

started, is now worth more than $650 million. I'm no longer just a comedian. I'm an investment. I'm a studio. I'm a partner looking for partnerships. Work for hire is not in my best interest if it's a one-and-done situation. That means the endless stream of movies, shows, podcasts, and commercials Kevin Hart pops up in. Chances are, Heartbeat is making money off them, too. Even my stunt double has a stunt double. Are you a billionaire yet? None of your business, man. You trying to get me robbed?

You trying to get me knocked out? You will be a billionaire yet? None of your business, man. You trying to get me robbed? You trying to get me knocked into my goddamn... But I mean, look, you will be a billionaire. I mean, hopefully. And even if I don't or if I'm not, I think the better side to what I've done is create what can become the new norm for other people in the business of funny, for other people in the business of entertainment, right? Not just being a part of the business, but learning and understanding how to be the business. I'm Bill Whitaker.

We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes.