Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Raven 23: False Justice 2/13/16

Episode Date: February 13, 2016

Jeff Fisher sits down with Kristen Slough, wife of one of four decorated veterans that has been sentenced to 30+ years for self defense in a war zone. The men are former Department of State contractors who operated in Iraq under the call sign Raven 23. The families of Nick Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard desperately need your support.More information on Raven 23 here: www.freeraven23.comhttps://www.facebook.com/raven23support/Jeff Fisher is live from 6am to 8am ET, Saturday. Listen for free on The Blaze Radio Network: www.theblaze.com/radio & www.iheart.comFollow Jeffy on Twitter: @JeffyMRA Like Jeffy on Facebook: www.facebook.com/JeffFisherRadioFollow Jeffy on Instagram: @jeffymra Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's 1-800-6-6-39-10. Again, 1-800-6-6-6-6. 686 3910. Call now. This is the Jeff Fisher Show on the Blaze Radio Network. Four decorated veterans and former Department of State contractors who operated in Iraq under the call sign Raven 23. Nick Slayton, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Hurd. Joining me today is Kristen Slough, Paul's wife. These four men are in prison.

what? But we'll find out from Kristen. I went to Free Raven23.com. And I saw the video that you guys made, which is impressive and heartbreaking and brings tears to everyone's eyes that watch it. And you think, I can't be real. But it is, isn't it? It absolutely is. And thank you for taking the time to do that and watch that. I'll post that on my Twitter site, Jeff E.M.R.A. Or you can go to their website Free Raven 23, Kristen.

When you get into it, it's one of those convoluted stories that you start getting into it and you dig deeper and deeper and deeper and you start going, this can't be. How can this something like this happen? They've been in prison a little over a year, right? The trial didn't start

started like seven years ago, approximately, right? The actual thing that they're in prison for took place, what, 10 years ago? Something like that? 2007, September 16th of 2007 in Baghdad. It was one of the bloodiest years in the entire conflict that was going on in Iraq at the time.

And my husband and these three other men were working for the Department of State as security contractors. And they worked on a tactical support team called Raven 2-3. And what this team was meant for was responding to calls when other teams were in distress. So other teams had planned movements. And on this particular day, another team had taken a USA diplomat to a venue. and they had been hit with a huge car bomb right outside the venue so hard that it knocked the woman out of her chair. And they needed routes to get back to the safe zone or the green zone, as they called it. So a couple teams went out to secure areas or paths for them to make it back.

Including my husband's team, they went out and closed down traffic in a place called Nuzer Square. And as soon as they got traffic stopped, a couple of things happened at once. The first thing that happened, and it was almost simultaneously, And the second thing is there was a white Kia, three cars back in the line to the south of the square, and it popped out of traffic and starts coming towards the convoy. And that is bad news, kids, because these secondary attacks were pretty sophisticated, and they were typically going to be larger at the secondary attack than the primary. And at the same time, they started receiving small arms fire.

My husband's command vehicle, they were kind of faced in a crescent. The command vehicle was broadside to the south of the square, and it has bullet pock marks in it. The radiator was shot out. It actually had to be towed out of the square. Like, people had to exit their vehicles to hook up a tow and tow the command vehicle out of the square as the engagement took place. And while that happened, you know, they returned fire on a couple of areas that they were receiving incoming fire from and actually reported live in their tactical logs. They radio in when they're when they have an engagement going on that they were taking fire from people dressed as Iraqi police. And, you know, one of the challenging things was is you see somebody in Iraqi. police uniform, you really don't know if they're actually Iraqi police or not, because you could

actually buy those uniforms in a roadside stand. I've got pictures of those actually where they're just hanging at a roadside stand. They're like, you know, knock off bags in Chinatown, right? Right. Oh my gosh. Okay. So all this happened. And let's fast forward to home. We're back home. What happened? There's a couple interesting things that happened before they came home. And I think one of the things that really sticks in my mind that my husband said was that particular engagement in the Square that day was really just kind of another day at the office. Another day in Baghdad. Yeah, I mean, it really wasn't extreme compared to some of the other situations that they'd been in.

They'd been in multiple engagements within the last week prior. I mean, it was a war zone. It was absolutely a war zone. This is Baghdad. One of the areas in that square was still closed down from a car bomb within the past week. Which is why we were redirecting some traffic. Exactly. This is why we're redirecting traffic because part of it was closed down because a car bomb had gone off there.

and it was still undergoing construction. So all of this, this actually event takes place. It's barely normal. They head back to the, you know, the green zone that saves zone. But what happened from there started feeling abnormal almost immediately, you know, within an hour. So as the team, Raven 2-3 was leaving the square, another team pulls up a Blackwater team to respond because they knew that their team was taking fire. And there's almost like a standoff with the people that are in the square with the Iraqi

police. And an Army Colonel, I believe it is, like a U.S. Army Colonel with ties to the Iraqi National Police comes out and he's kind of trying to de-escalate the situation. And in the course of that conversation tells them that those were Blackwater Contractors and they were not U.S. Army. I think he was really just trying to distance himself from the incident because they have a lot of animosity with contractors.

I'm sure that, you know, everybody's kind of familiar you're with that kind of narrative that's out there. So they're never really supposed to know who the operators are, right? So you can't tell when a convoy comes through, whether it's Department of State, whether it's Department of Defense, whether it's, you know, another coalition for us. So he really kind of broke protocol by providing that information. And as soon as they had that information, that's really when all hell broke loose. Because at a much higher level, the United States government and the Iraqi government were negotiating

the Status of Forces Agreement. And part of that agreement, the Iraqi government was pushing for jurisdiction over any non-D employee in their country. So basically, when they found out that a contractor had been involved in a shooting in the middle of busy Baghdad and they had that information, they're like, this is our case. So my husband actually comes home for his regular R&R. They send him a plane ticket to come back to work 30 days later. He's getting ready to go the next couple of days.

and they call him and they're like, you should tear up that plane ticket. We're getting a word on the street here is that if you come in through biop, which is Baghdad International Airport, the Iraqi government is going to try to take custody of you and pull you into their jurisdiction and try you under Sharia law. So we're like, okay, well, we'll just stay here. PJ, tear up your ticket. You're just going to stay home. That's insanity. I mean, that's crazy.

And then the other three men were sent home as well when they learned that the Iraqi government was trying to exert addiction over it. You know, even if you wiki, which, you know, is not always the best source in the world, but if you look at the wiki entry for the status of forces agreement, which were never actually successfully executed, and I wonder how much of that had to do with how far this case struck out. One of the key features of the negotiations was, you know, Iraq saying that we can't have sovereignty unless we have jurisdiction over non-military personnel. So everybody from the mail guys to security contractors would have fallen under that. and it was a very difficult time for us to really understand what was going on because in the American news, Blackwater already had this reputation.

And, you know, they really acted upon very detailed contracts with the Department of State. Like the Department of State said exactly their rules of engagement, exactly what they wore, exactly what weapons they carried, exactly what vehicles they drove. So as things started coming down for Blackwater, the Department of State started distancing themselves, which is really kind of the point of having a contractor. It's like when things go wrong, you just get rid of them and you get a new one. And for me, I kind of think it was all probably kind of done in that bad faith where you know something is going to go wrong so you use a contractor to do it. But again, that's just kind of speculation after having been on the receiving end of some insane, insane things over the last seven or eight years.

So things are falling apart. Yes. And you realize, okay, I don't necessarily. want my husband to go back to Baghdad. He doesn't want to go back. His three other mates don't want to go back or are there in coming back. And so you think, okay, well, you know, I'll do something else, or I just am not going to work for Blackwater anymore.

I'm just going to, you know, what happens? Yeah, so at that point, they actually canceled my husband's contract. They said, you know, look, you can't be on our Iraq contract. So they canceled his contract. They canceled the contracts with the other individuals. At that point, we knew that there was probably going to be, you know, a pretty big legal case. It was all over the news. The company did help us all get really good defense attorneys, thankfully.

But we were really left kind of wide-eyed over the whole thing because he gets sent home at a moment's notice. He hasn't done anything wrong. He's lost his contract. I wasn't working at the time because the way their contracts worked, they worked 90 days. and they were off 30 days. Well, when he was off 30 days, he wanted to be able to spend that time with me. So I wasn't working at the time so I could spend that time with him.

So we were sitting there all of a sudden we have no job. We have no money. We have a house payment. And you can't contract like that in the United States because it's not a war zone here. Well. Right. I understand. Yeah.

There maybe are some areas that are probably pretty similar. So I, you know, I rush out and I get a job. He gets a job welding. We're scraping to kind of make ends meet. and then they were actually formally indicted later that year, which was really shocking for us. Even though they're contractors in Iraq, they're working for the United States government. And you talked about the dealings with the status of forces. That's still intact, right?

So our guys, you know, we have jurisdiction, right? Yes. No, I mean, can't we say, hey, no, Iraq. These are our citizens. Have a nice day. Right. It's actually an incredibly strange thing when you actually talked about the jurisdiction. Because really the jurisdiction to us should have never come up because these men aren't guilty of misconduct.

So the jurisdiction in the matter really should have never been a huge vocal point. But at this point, it really is. Because these people, these men were part of an occupying force. they are not subject for the jurisdiction of the host country unless basically that's agreed to in the status of forces agreement. So they did not fall under Iraqi law. And the United States prosecuted them under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act. It's called MESHA. But the thing about MESHA is the way it was crafted at the time, it was only related to individuals who are working in support of the mission of the Department of Defense.

Well, they worked in support of the mission of the Department of State. It's totally different. And by statute, the Department of State sets the mission, the Department of Defense, executes the mission based on DOS, you know, setting it. And if you work for DOS, you're basically working parallel to DOD, but you're certainly not working in support of. So while they should have absolutely been acquitted based on the fact that they weren't guilty, now we're in a position where we're appealing it based on, you know, of many things, including constitutional rights violations.

But the focal port of our appeal is a fact. They're not guilty. As a fact that they didn't have even the jurisdiction to try the case to begin with. Right. Okay. You're in the middle of an appeal, right? And obviously, we know from the beginning that they're in jail now, have been for over a year.

So we know that that didn't work. How long did this go? So what happened, kind of going back to 2007, there was an indictment. And they self-surrendered in Utah and tried to kind of influence the venue. A federal judge said, no, no, no, we're going to have this case tried in Washington, D.C. We went in front of a federal judge for evidentiary hearings. He dismissed the entire case against all of the defendants but one. And that one defendant, the prosecution had actually dropped their case against him.

And the judge dropped the case against these defendants due to egregious constitutional rights violations. All of their evidence was tainted by using protected sworn statements that they weren't permitted to use, that they knew they weren't permitted to use, but they used it. many ways. And the judge basically said, look, I'm going to dismiss the entire case because you can't unmix Kool-Aid. You can't untaint your evidence. You can't untaint new witnesses. They've been exposed to all of this. You can't just start over. But that wasn't good. We're talking to Kristen Slough. We're talking about her husband, Paul, Nick Slayton, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Hurd. Free Raven23.com is the website. These four men are in prison right now.

Her husband is one of them. We're up to the point where the judge has now said, all right, no, we can't do this. It's ridiculous. You can't try these guys. Absolutely. So he dismisses the case. And that was in 2008. It was actually like New Year's Eve, 2008.

And it was such an amazing kind of thing for us to be able to start our New Year's fresh that year. We really thought that we had gotten. It was New Year's. Yes, it really was. We really thought and we got past the worst of it. And between 2008 and no doubt 2013, you know, we knew that the prosecution that the government was appealing to higher courts, trying to get the decision overturned, had a couple unsuccessful attempts. So we would hear from our lawyers. And then it would just kind of get quiet again.

And I just figured it was going to die a slow, quiet death and that they've gotten enough headlines out of it that people didn't care anymore. And that the whole political, you know, impetus for this thing had probably waxed fairly. thin and that people had moved on. And then we get a call in 2013 from our lawyers and they said, unfortunately, a higher court has come back in and said they can start over. They can unmix their Kool-Aid. They can start from scratch and do an entirely new case. And they have to have what's called a filter attorney. So they have the old prosecution. The filter attorney. And then they have a filter attorney. If you think of it like a funnel, and then they have an entirely new prosecution team. person funnels them information that they believe to be untainted, which is insane on every level,

which was, it blew my mind. I'm like, so how are you going to suck these statements out of these people's memories? You know, they were published. My husband's entire statement had been published in the media, the entire thing. So everybody who had been a witness in the case or a witness from Iraq had had access to it. So at that point, they say, you know, look, this is going to go to trial. They have this taint attorney in place. We have some evidentiary issues that we're going to end up arguing,

but we're going to end up going to trial on this thing. So seven years later, we went to trial in Washington, D.C., with the strictest gun laws in the country in front of 12 civilians without a single one of them with combat experience. And the prosecution walked in there. That sounds like a jury of your peers. Yes, I mean, that makes perfect sense. doesn't it, that you would be, you know, in a combat zone in Baghdad and that you'd be

tried by 12 civilians with no combat experience in the United States. And one thing that I kind of, that I didn't mention earlier was that this incident took place and the Iraqi government was trying to exert jurisdiction over it. They performed the investigation. Y'all can't see me, but I'm using air quotes right now because they actually had, again, air quotes, control of the scene for three weeks before the U.S. FBI can. came over and, you know, took over. So essentially, they put out TV ads that said, hey, if you were injured or know somebody

who was injured or killed in Azur Square on September 16th, come see us down at the Iraqi police headquarters. And out of the woodwork they came. Exactly. So now all of a sudden we have a situation where we have pictures from minutes after this event took place. And there's this white Kia. It's on fire.

And there is not a body. There is not a first responder. there is not a puddle of blood. There is absolutely nothing there. And I know that we have all seen some incredibly tragic things through the media. And you know what a scene looks like after a traumatic event. If you think of Boston, if you think of any of these things. And it was calm.

There's not a person around. There's no first responders. There's no nothing. So we go from a situation where there definitely were people, you know, who lost their lives that day, keeping in mind that the only difference between an insurgent and a civilian is somebody holding the gun. and all of a sudden we've got 14 counts of manslaughter, 18 counts of attempted manslaughter, and federal weapons charges.

They actually charged them with federal weapons charges for using weapons that they had been issued by the Department of State and required by contract to carry. And that's how they ended up with 30-year minimum sentences because of federal weapons laws that were intended for gangbangers. the federal assault weapons now is how did they legally get around charging them with that? Yeah, so you would never, in your wildest imagination, expect that laws that were intended for gangbangers in the United States for street crimes would be used against somebody who was... Well, this is what you get when you get zero tolerance laws, but...

Actually, the prosecution has full charging discretion when they use these weapons laws. The intention of them initially was as... Yeah, the initial intent of these laws was as a deterrent. So if you're an individual, you know, that you're going to go knock over a convenience store, take your pistol, not your AK, and then you won't end up with 30 extra years in prison. Okay. Right? Okay.

But because the DOJ has entire charging decisions on what you get charged with, they typically use them as a bargaining chip. And they say, look, you can plead to, you know, manslaughter, or we can charge you with manslaughter, and we're going to tap on this weapon charge. So it's not required that they do those things. And so it's really been used as a tool of abuse, in my opinion, by the Department of Justice, to get people to plea out who may not necessarily be guilty because they feel like. And or help them get other criminals.

Yeah, exactly. They absolutely do that as well. So, you know, if I'm a criminal, this law isn't really going to determine because if I know I've committed a crime, I'm just going to take a plea deal. I'm not going to end up with that sentence. So they did completely abuse their prosecutorial discretion and only charged them with those weapons laws after they denied taking a plea deal. How long before they go to prison when the guilty charge comes down? First, I mean, I would have been dismayed that it was guilty to begin with at the time of the verdict.

Well, dismayed as much as entirely shocked. The government failed completely to prove even a minimum sufficiency of evidence that these people engaged in. misconduct. And yet the judge is still letting this go on. Yeah, actually, the judge played ball with the prosecution the entire time. He was actually a former prosecutor, a former JAG prosecutor during the Miley Massacre trials during Vietnam. And when we actually came before him in his court, the original judge we were with retired in the meantime. So we come in and we're assigned to a different judge. This judge, Lambert, he is a senior judge. He comes and plucks our case from this other judge and takes it. And as we go before him for some evidentiary hearings, he essentially says, look,

Justice for the Iraqis has been delayed this long and we're not taking any more unnecessary trips to the appellate court, meaning that he felt that there are constitutional rights violations that we won on previously were unnecessary trips to the appellate court. So they got a first-degree murder charge conviction against Nick Slatton. He had actually been released from the case by the government. when they filed the new indictment, you know, five years later, they missed the statute of limitations on him, even though they tried to bring him back in under manslaughter. So when they missed it, he appealed to a higher court and said, look, you know, they miss a statute of limitations. They can't include me in this manslaughter case.

And they said, yeah, you know, we agree. We can't believe this judge allowed them to do that. And they knocked it back. So they came to him and said, well, you can waive your right, your constitutional rights to the statute of limitations, or we're going to charge you with first-degree murder because that has no statute of limitations. So Nick and Nick alone with no new evidence, with no new information was charged with first-degree premeditated murder

that has a mandatory life sentence because they didn't want to let him out of the case. And they didn't want to let him out of the case because they didn't want him speaking on behalf of the defense. So he ended up with a first-degree murder charge for killing the driver of the white Kia. The government's star witness sat on the stand and said that he shot the driver of the white Kia.

This other man had a bullet fragment from his weapon embedded in the steering wheel of the white Kia. Wait, someone on the stand actually said they committed the murder? Well, I mean, it's not a murder if it's self-defense. So I want to make sure that that's clear. The white Kia pops out at a perceived combat. I'm sorry. So, yeah, but yes. He said that he shot the guy.

He did. He said that he placed three to five well-aimed shots through the windshield at the head of the driver. They found a bullet fragment from his weapon in the steering wheel. There was not a single weapon or a single witness that said they saw Nick fire his weapon at the driver of the White Kia. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest he even fired at that vehicle, which as the team's sniper, he was inside the vehicle and had a porthole. And with the distance this vehicle was from the car, he would not be firing at that. That is not his sector.

He's looking out beyond that. he's a sniper he's the ddm he's not firing on things that are within 20 yards that's what the guys on topper for the turret gunners so there is no evidence to suggest whatsoever that nick fired upon this vehicle or this man it as a matter of fact a government witness claimed to have done it and it's backed up by forensic evidence and yet nick was still convicted of murder and i really struggled to understand how we ended up with that verdict because the jury deliberated for eight weeks and in my Eight weeks. I cannot even express to you the turmoil of waiting pins and needles for every moment for your phone during for eight weeks waiting on a verdict like this.

So my only guess is that there are individuals that wanted them to hang based on their reputation alone from the beginning that they tried to, you know, you hear what you want to hear when you have a foregone conclusion in your mind. and I think that there were holdouts, people who really understood the case, but that they finally gave up because the judge already told the entire courtroom that he was not trying this case twice when we asked for the case to be dismissed. You know, multiple times we moved for dismissal and acquittal. So I think that, you know, really the jury kind of felt like, you know, we've deliberated for eight weeks. He's already said he's not trying this case again.

He's not going to let us. He's not going to declare a hung jury at all. So we're just going to have to come to a decision on this. And I feel like the judge's behavior as well as all of the litany of misconduct that was engaged in by the prosecution during the course of this trial really left them in a position where they finally just, you know, those last few holdouts that wanted to do the right thing just gave up. Kristen Slough from Free Raven23.com is joining us. Unbelievable that something like this could actually happen in the United States. States of America. It is. You know, I think one of the things that I struggle with the most, and what most people struggle to understand is that the Iraqi police investigated the case.

They collected all of these, all of these alleged victims and alleged victim vehicles. And throughout all of those things that they did, our FBI comes over. They perform some interviews, and then they come and they bring all of this to the United States and pass it off like it meets the standards of an American investigation. And it didn't by any means. There's no crime scene control. I mean, we all watch CSI. We all understand the steps that are supposed to be taken place to protect defendants in situations like this. And those, and by the way, to protect those defendants aren't in a war zone. No, they are not. I mean, these are individuals who are, you know, out in a regular, you know, civilized society. And if you take that and compound that by the fact that they're in a

rapidly changing environment with an incredibly sophisticated insurgency that understands that this is a PR game. And they know as soon as a shooting takes place that they start clearing out their bullet casings, they start clearing out their weapons. They had air support out that day that looked down and saw people dropping Iraqi police uniforms and weapons over an embankment. I mean, there were 13th individuals, seven on, or I think it was like seven on the team and eight that were not, that would be just totally unrelated to the case, that

testified that they heard a two-way gunfight. But in order for the prosecution to get this done, they had to come into our jury who was very uneducated. These are, you know, 12 civilians. And I don't mean uneducated in, you know, a textbook sense, but I mean in a sense of what a combat zone is like. And they make it out like it's Jepant Circle. They say it's very safe there.

This is one of the most safe places in the area, although, you know, two bombs had gone off in the last week within walking distance of that area that had killed 40 and injured like 16. Never mind that, though. Never mind that. It's really safe there, guys. But then, you know, they have all these bullet casings. They get cleansed.

There's an Iraqi witness that testifies to pillow cases of bullet casings that never made it to the FBI. The FBI actually only got 34 bullet casings, this whole massacre, 34 bullet casings. More than half of them were consistent with enemy weapons. The rest of them were consistent with weapons that were used by the defendants. But I will tell you what, out of... not a single bullet or bullet fragment from any alleged victim or any alleged victim vehicle was matched back to any of these four defendants.

Not one. There's zero forensic evidence that any of these four individuals killed or injured anyone. Okay, so it comes back guilty after eight weeks. Eight weeks, yes. So they remand them into custody immediately. It was a strange day. You know, we've been waiting for eight weeks at that point. You never really know when the hammer was going to drop.

So we get the call, we speed into the city. It's raining. So my husband drops my mom and I off at the courthouse. We don't even grab a quick kiss because we think we're going to see each other in an hour or whatever. He goes and drops the car off in the parking garage. I barely make it into the courtroom. It's so packed with people from state and FBI and DOJ and reporters and everything that I have to basically ask a man to leave. And the bailiff yells at me, by the way.

He's like, don't be trying to make seats in my courtroom. and I about lost my mind. So I sit down with my mom. I was like, don't come at me right now. So I sit down with my mom and they start reading off this verdict. And the first count is Nick's first degree murder charge, which is the most outlandish conviction. I mean, it never occurred to me that any of them would be found guilty.

But if anything happened, I figured at least Nick, Nick will be able to go home. Because there's no eyewitness testimony, no forensics, no ballistics. like there's no physical evidence at all or eyewitness testimony tying to that crime. And when they read off his count is guilty, I knew that the rest of them would be as well. And we just kind of sat there and stunned silence. The courtroom, Claire is out. I walk over to my attorneys. I don't even know what to say.

And my attorney went back. One of my attorneys, Linda, went back to where the guys were, where they had taken them into custody. I wasn't allowed to see my husband or say anything. And she just came back and she said, you know, PJs. who told you to keep the faith, and that's when they handed me their wallets and belts and the things out of their pockets, including my parking ticket and car keys, and I walked out of the courthouse with a box of their stuff. So they were taken into custody at D.C. County Jail. They were there for about 24 hours, and they were moved into a regional jail. You stay there until you're sentenced, and then the Bureau of Prison takes you into custody after that.

That took six months because the judge allowed extra time so that they could collect victim, impact statements from the Iraqis. And then he also sits on a circuit court in Texas part of the year. So they went six months between the time that they were convicted and sentenced, which is, you know, two or three times as long as most people would. And you can't start the appellate process until your sentencing has happened. So that just further delayed it. Well, we get ready to go to the sentencing in a couple of days ahead of time.

We get these victim impact statements from the government. And they're from the Iraqis that are involved and the witnesses. And it's really, you know, an opportunity for the victims to say how an incident impacted them. That's a thing in our court system that we use. And I think it adds value in cases where people are actually guilty. But in this particular incident, one of the key witnesses in Iraqi policemen who really laid out the entire case, you know, this is who, you know, did this first and this is who did this. He submits a victim impact statement that says basically the opposite of his trial testimony. he said that he was so afraid that he stayed in his guard booth,

that he never exited his guard booth. Wait, what? Yeah. So what he testified to at trial was that the people in the white Kia were shot first, and that touched off, you know, just a hail of gunfire from the team towards these, you know, innocent civilians, just this amazing, this amazing massacre. He said that he came out of his booth and tried to assist the people in the white car and that he was waving off the team and telling them not.

to not to fire because it was safe. It wasn't a car bomb and that it was okay. And then in his victim impact statement, he writes an incredibly detailed narrative about how he felt terrible and that he was going to take it to his grave, the guilt that he felt from being crouched down in his police booth, unable to move,

that he could hear the woman and the man and the white keya yelling at each other, that they had to get out of there because this is after the gunfire started, and that they panic, and they start trying to move this white Kia out of the area. Well, I mean, that blows the entire theory apart.

They said that Nick shot these people for no reason whatsoever other than to incite a riot, essentially, and that all this other firing took place afterwards. Well, if they were alive when this firing took place, the entire prosecutorial theory is incorrect, and that man perjured himself. I mean, he laid out the entire prosecution's theory. So we file a motion for a new trial.

You think? Hello? The key witness perjured his testimony. We deserve a new trial. And the judge sat on that motion for five months and denied it the day before Veterans Day. He did not even request a further inquiry. He did not request a hearing. He did not allow the defense the opportunity to question this man to clarify the fact that his statement was entirely different from his trial testimony.

He just said it wouldn't really have a material impact on the outcome of the case and that we're moving on. So he waited five months to do that, denied it the day before Veterans Day, and at this point, we were a year out. And you can't file an appeal until your docket is dealt with. We had to file the motion because all of that stuff needed to be on the record for the appeal. So here it is, you know, we're in February of 2016 at this point. The convictions were on October 22nd of 2014, and we just were able to file our appeal on February 1st. Really, what provokes the U.S. government to not support its own? and to do this.

Political appeasement of our enemies actually has been the pattern with a lot of these wartime prosecutions. And I think that we've seen some similar ugly patterns with like Clinton Lawrence and some of these other highly contested wartime prosecutions. And we see it under UCMJ. And now we've seen it for the first time under MESA with a contractor. And I think that ultimately it goes back to promises that were made. When the second set of indictments came in 2013, a week before that,

Joe Biden went on a hearts and minds tour over to Iraq and told them that they were bringing these people to justice. He told them that, you know, in the media a week before the fresh indictments were filed. So that promise had been made more than once. And at that point, they felt like they had to follow through with it. It didn't matter if they convicted innocent people or not. Okay. The appeals are filed right now today. I mean, this is now we're going on for way longer than anyone had even dreamt of.

We have four families hanging out waiting on false justice for these men. How are the families? How are you? I don't know. That's really the hardest question. You know, when people ask me questions about the facts of the case and everything. Hey, how you doing? Yeah, I can get through that.

I think that, well, there's the positive parts of it, right? Like our four families are so close. We are just as thick as can be. We talk every day. We've absolutely bonded together through this. And there's not been a single moment where I've ever felt like alone on my own little island that I've got people out there that understand me. And, you know, while I tend to do a lot of the speaking,

just because that's kind of the role I fall into, everybody pulls weight. Everybody's out there every day pushing and stuff. scratching to get this thing out in front of the public and to get it right. But we also spend a lot of our time going to see the guys. So like my husband is in a federal prison about three hours away from me. My toddler and I spend most weekends in a prison visiting room pretty much every weekend. So it's a really, it's a really difficult and challenging time. And I think at this point, we've just decided that, you know, God has a bigger plan for us, that he put us

in this position for a reason, that he puts opportunities for us out there. And I don't think that our mission is just to get these four guys out. I think that our mission is to expose what's going on in our government because there is a tidal wave of information coming at people and they're finally starting to understand that, you know, just because your government tells you something doesn't mean that they're right. And I think the more people understand that and the more that they, you know, exercise their right to vote and get involved with the candidates and understand what's going on, that it makes a difference. And I think there's also some huge changes that need to be made within the Department of Justice.

It's a really sickening and dismaying thing to realize that our Department of Justice is really anything, but there's simply a tool of whatever administration is pulling the strings at the time. All right. So you have a little toddler. I do. She's about to be three this month. It'll be the second birthday dad is missed. Are all these guys in the same?

prison? Are they separated? I mean, we have them all over the country? They're all over. So generally by... This whole thing is unbelievable. I'm tired of saying that word. It's like every single time we wake up something more unbelievable has happened. Actually, I think that that's actually fairly by design. They were all from different parts of the country. So my husband's a few hours away from me. Nick's a few hours from his sister. Evans a few hours from his brother. So you mean somebody actually was trying to be at least somewhat nice? Well, actually, some rates are improved when people are involved in their community and have regular visitation. So it's actually,

there's some science behind it, right? Where if you have your family and friends coming to visit you, that you're less likely to commit crimes. There's also science by not putting not guilty people in prison. There should be a science behind that as well, but there's really not. And actually, that's one of the really eye-opening things that has happened is, you know, hearing stories of some of the other, the other inmates and people that my husband's become involved with. And, you know, not necessarily that they're not guilty, but I'm sure that there are some that are. But it's really the way that our officials and prosecutors go about with this kind of conviction at all cost mentality and the way our sentencing works and the way mandatory minimums work and the way

charging decisions are made in order to be punitive if you won't play ball. A lot of that stuff has been really eye-opening and really seriously disturbing. Okay, so are pensions, funds, money, how are we? are we doing that? Are you getting any military pensions? Is the company helping you at all? No. I mean, you're just, you're left on our own. I live. I live with my parents. I have my income. I have my toddler. I have absolutely nothing else coming in and either do any of the rest of the family's Kelly, Dustin's wife, she has two children, a mortgage. She's a teacher. These were military guys. I mean, they just didn't start working for Blackwater. No, that's right. They're

all decorated veterans, but none of them actually retired from the military. So you don't receive ongoing funds from the military unless you retire from there. So they all had active duty service commitments left, went on to other things. The VA was paying disability payments to at least one of the guys. And after he was convicted, they cut off his disability payments because apparently being convicted of a crime makes you abled. So they cut off his payments. A couple of the men, several of the men were receiving payments through the Defense Bill Act DBA from injuries, the sustained when they were in Iraq. That all got cut off as well. Blackwater arranged for our defense. I think that I actually had insurance. And they contracted with our defense attorneys for a lump sum.

That money ran out ages ago. These defense teams are working for us for public defender wages at this point because they refuse to leave us high and dry. God bless them. God bless them. So they're working for public defender wages. And aside from, you know, just kind of the kindness of our friends and family who have, you know, tried to pitch in on some of our fundraising campaigns. Mostly those funds are used for trying to get our word out there and advocacy. Facebook, they cost a ton of money. They don't let you put anything in front of people who follow you unless you pay them to do it.

So when we do fundraising pushes, like we've got a Free Raven 2-3 t-shirt on booster. That's pretty cool. You know, we'll make somebody off of that, but it'll all go towards like Facebook posts and peeing for our website and things like that. So the actual families, we're just dealing with it.

like anybody else would whose husband was in prison. Okay, free raven23.com. You hear this, you hear this, and you say, oh, my gosh, I mean, I've said the word unbelievable so many times I'm sick of hearing myself say it. What can I do? I need help with advocacy. I cannot get anybody to touch this. And as you know, as you stated, these were people who worked for contractors.

Well, people hear the word contractor and they're like, bad guy. You know what I mean? These are normal guys. I mean, decorated. military veterans. The only reason they came over to work for the Department of State on these contracts is because they, well, my husband in particular, when you go and you sign up for the military, you have to sign up for four years. If you sign up for these contracting positions, you only have to sign up for a year. You work for 90 days and you're off 30 days. Well, in the military,

when he was deployed, it was he would work for six months and be off for two weeks. So he got to be home more. He had a shorter service commitment. I mean, it was just way more flexible. It was good for us as a young family. The pay was good, although once you deduct the fact that you don't have housing allowances and all of these things, it's not nearly as lucrative as you think it's going to be. So people don't want to touch this. It's too controversial. People have closed the book on Blackwater. And we've had almost no success until, thankfully, you managed to pick us up from an article that was posted by Alan West. And I just happened to meet him at an event that I was at and ambushed him and made him listen to me.

And he invited me to his office to speak and then featured us on his website. And then you saw it from there. So we've really, you know, fought and scraped and tried to get some attention. So really what I'm asking y'all to do the very long way is to go out to our Facebook page, find us, like our page, share it. And if you have connections or people you can talk to you about this, talk to them about it because we were really struggling. And I'm just like a normal person. I'm not a politician. I'm not a publicist.

a bank nerd. I'm a single mom. And I need help. I just, I really need y'all's help getting the word out there about this. And I'm having to do it entirely grassroots. There has been no swift politicians or, you know, Daddy Warbuck to swoop out and help us. We just, we just need help. And we need help getting the word out there. And, you know, if you feel like y'all want to throw a few dollars our way from some of those Facebook posts, you can find us on generosity.com, but free raven two, three, as well. But really what I need is y'all's help in getting the word out. We really just want me. people to know what happened here and have them help us get more awareness. This is the Jeff Fisher Show on the Blaze Radio Network.

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