Law&Crime Sidebar - Drake's Lawyer Speaks On Lil Durk's Murder Plot Arrest: 'More to Come'

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Chicago rapper Lil Durk, whose real name is Durk Banks, is behind bars in connection with an alleged murder-for-hire plot. Prosecutors say his rap collective, Only the Family, conspired to kill rival rapper Quando Rondo in Los Angeles. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber examines the criminal complaint and indictment filed against Lil Durk and multiple alleged co-conspirators.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW: Premature baby diagnosed with NEC? Visit https://Babyformuladamages.com/Sidebar to answer less than 10 questions and check your eligibility to file a claim.HOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger and Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that will

keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Another rapper federally indicted and these charges couldn't be more serious. The government claims that rapper Little Dirk ordered a hit on arrival in retaliation for the a close friend. The U.S. attorney calls it a cold-blooded murder. The twists and turns of this case can get a little complicated, but we're going to talk about it all with an attorney who has a lot of experience defending high-profile rappers. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Hey, everybody, this is a law and crime legal alert. A mother was

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slash sidebar to answer less than 10 questions and check your eligibility to file a claim. Okay, so it's time to talk about this legal trouble that's now facing Grammy Award winning rap artist Lil Durk because he was arrested in Florida and charged with being part of a murder conspiracy that crisscrossed the country. Prosecutors alleged that the rapper ordered a hit from Chicago on a man in Los Angeles. So it's a little bit of a convoluted story, but we're going to try to make sense of it for you. We have 32-year-old Lil Durk, whose real name is Durk Banks. He started his rise to fame in 2010 when he started a rap collective called Only the Family, or OTF. His most well-known songs are All My Life with Jay Cole, Broadway Girls, with Morgan Wallin,

his feature part, and Drake's Laugh Now, Cry Later, has really brought him up to attention. But last week, U.S. Marshals had stopped Banks from leaving the country at a Florida airport and booked him into the Broward County jail. He had been indicted on a charge of conspiracy to use interstate facilities to commit murder for hire resulting in death. He's also been hit with weapons charges too. These are federal charges, by the way. Very, very serious charges. We'll talk more about it. But we've gotten our hands on an affidavit from an FBI agent who was investigating banks' connection to what was,

this brazen shooting at an L.A. gas station. And we also have the indictment from the Central District of California. So we're going to be taking information from both documents. And now because the court documents refer to the people involved in this case by their birth names, we're going to do the same. We'll talk about that in a second. But to get into this, I want to bring in celebrity defense attorney, friend of the show, Bradford Cohen, to talk more about this. Bradford, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it. We have another rap star taken into custody on some pretty serious charges, very different than the Sean Combs case, which we've been talking so much about. Just what are your initial thoughts on the indictment, the affidavit, these initial

documents, and the initial allegations alleged by prosecutors? So I think that when we look at the indictment itself, what's so interesting is, you know, and this happens quite often. They don't put all and everything that they have in the indictment because they don't have to, right? Less is more for an assistant U.S. attorney or the U.S. Attorney's Office. And in this case, I think that's what they did. They gave them enough to know that they know what's going on, but not enough to know everything that's going on. I think, obviously, there's been some rumors that there's been a snitch among his group that

has been wearing a wire for some time. And if that's the case, it's going to be a very difficult case for everyone involved, depending on how much talking there was going on. What I thought was interesting with the indictment is, you know, a lot of things around Dirk basically revolve around funding that he paid for airport, he paid for flights, he paid for hotels, he paid for car rentals, all these things that they utilized in this, you know, quote unquote murder for hire plot. So that's really where they're tying him in, right?

now, but I think there's going to be more to come, and I think that there's going to be individuals that either will flip or that have already flipped, or there's going to be someone very close to him that was wearing a wire that would be willing to testify as to his involvement. Because his involvement right now is kind of tangentially involved where he's the funder, but there's no allegation, direct allegation that he said, hey, this is what I want done. an allegation that he'd spoke in code and he could have said this and all these different things but there's no allegation that says hey this is what he said and this is what was going to happen and to be clear when we're talking about this obviously there are multiple people involved

you can't have a conspiracy unless there are several people involved especially something like this so although banks might be the most famous of the names that are called out in the indictment he's not the only one i'm going to list them out in the indictment we have kavan london grant We have DeAndre Dantrell Wilson. We have Keith Jones, David Brian Lindsay, and Aza Houston. And the indictment also names five co-conspirators, with Banks being one of them. In the indictment, he's referred to by his initials DB or co-conspirator 1. So here's a little bit of background on this case.

And it really starts in 2020, because that is when Banks was with his friend and fellow Chicago rapper, King Vaughn and an Atlanta nightclub. And Vaughn had apparently got into a fight with a Georgia rapper known as Cuando Rondo, a friend of Rondos, allegedly pulled out a gun and shot King Von killing him. Now, authorities say that Banks and his rap collective, OTF, the one that I mentioned, they wanted retribution. They wanted pay back. So he allegedly made it known that he would pay a bounty for anyone who killed Rondo, who's, by the way, his real name is Taekwian Bowman. Now, in the court documents, he's named as TB. I know there's a lot of different names here, but stick with me. We're going to try to make sense of this.

So investigators say that in 2022, so this is two years after that Atlanta shooting of King Vaughn, a plan came together to kill Bowman. The criminal complaint that was filed against Banks includes an affidavit from an FBI agent, and she gives her summary of probable cause. The affidavit reads in part, quote, Banks is the leader of the Chicago-based rap collective known as only the family or OTF. In addition to OTF status as a rap collective, I know based on the investigation that OTF also acts as an association, in fact, of individuals who engage in violence, including murder and assault, at the direction of banks and to maintain their status in OTF.

For example, based on evidence collected during the investigation, including the interview of witnesses, I know that banks put a monetary bounty out for an individual with whom banks was feuding named TB. And then there's a footnote at the bottom of that page that reads, Due to serious safety concerns, this affidavit does not provide the identity of these witnesses. Based on the FBI's investigation, I know that witnesses and or their family members have already received threats and or have been contacted in what appears to be attempts to influence their participation in this investigation. What do you make of that, Bradford? So it's basic. You know, like a lot of these allegations, you can almost take each one of these and put them into every case that we've seen as of late. where witnesses are either contacted or witnesses are offered a monetary amount not to testify.

And sometimes that comes with a civil case. You know, like if there's a civil matter that's outstanding, they might say, hey, listen, there's a civil matter that you could have and we're going to give you a settlement of X, Y, Z. The feds automatically take that as you're buying off a witness. So it just depends on the facts of those circumstances. like, I've seen it many times where the feds read into it differently than you would if you just read it yourself, where in people are trying to be influenced a friend of a friend

might contact you and say like, hey, listen, this isn't a good idea to be a witness in a federal case. The feds take that as, oh, hey, this is, you know, Bob Smith influencing this witness because he's friends with this person who's friends with that person. A lot of times that doesn't shake out the way that they put it in the indictment. And they put that in the indictment specifically for bond purposes, right? So when you go in for bond, they say, hey, listen, this guy's trying to influence everybody. And here's all these things. But when you actually get into the case, sometimes those things don't shake out. And then it's already too late because you already moved for bond and you didn't get bond. That's the same thing that's happening with Sean Combs.

I mean, well, that's a little different because he's not, he's not charged specifically with obstruction, but it's part of the racketeering count. I read this. indictment. I didn't see anything that a little Durk has charged specifically with obstruction or witness tampering. It's more the conspiracy. There's also federal weapons charges. So does that give you pause to that he's not, I mean, again, maybe I'm wrong, that he wasn't directly charged with anything like witness tampering obstruction. Yeah, it always gives me pause. Whenever the feds throw an indictment in, it gives me pause right away because a lot of times you'll see in the indictment, there's a lot of

accusations in the indictment that when you start getting into it and it starts kind of flushing out the facts, they stretch what could be a basic fact, they stretch it into something that it's not. And I've seen this time and time again. So in this case, it could be individuals that are loosely associated with OTF or that is signed to the label or something else that has contacted a witness and they're trying to put whatever they did onto Dirk Banks. So that's the issue here, right? Is that they're just glumping them all together, they'll just say, hey, listen, you know, because this guy did that, obviously, Dirk is the quote unquote leader of OTF. He must have known what was going on, therefore

he shouldn't get a bond because this is a dangerous gang and except. You notice they stopped short of saying this is a dangerous gang and said this is a dangerous association of individuals that known as OTF, which I thought was interesting because generally speaking, when it comes to these, any of these rap groups. So, like, you know, there's OTF and YNW and YSL, and they all say, like, hey, all of these nicknames, this is all a gang. And, you know, even though it's a record label, it's also a gang. And that's kind of their argument with every single one of these.

And that's going to be their argument here. But I thought it was interesting in the indictment. It didn't specifically say gang. It's an association of individuals that go under. OTF, I thought that was kind of interesting because I don't know what kind of evidence they have to say OTF is or is not a gang legally, the legal definition. I thought it was PTSD from the YSL trial. Let's not rush to call anything a gang because of all the couple there. That's a separate conversation. We can we can have a lot talking about that. Okay, but this I think could be

problematic for Little Dirk. And I'll get into this because on the morning of October 24th, We have federal and local law enforcement. They execute these search warrants in Chicago. They arrest Grant, Wilson, Jones, Lindsay Houston. And that is when they learned that banks had booked multiple flights that were leaving the country. The affidavit says the FBI received notifications from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, showing that banks had been booked as a passenger on two international flights, a one-way flight from Miami to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, connecting through Doha, Qatar,

scheduled to depart the evening of October 24th, and one-way flight from Fort Lauderdale to Switzerland, connecting via New Jersey, also scheduled to depart the evening of October 24th. Now, Banks didn't board either flight, but at approximately 6.40 p.m., the FBI received an additional CBP notification that Banks had been booked as a passenger on a private plane departing Miami and destined for Italy. Scheduled to depart at approximately 9 p.m. At approximately 8 p.m., Banks was arrested by law enforcement in the vicinity of the departing airport. So Bradford, I mean, that seems to be evidence that he might have been trying to leave the country. You tell me what you make of that.

I make a couple different things of that. So the first part of that is all the countries that he has, Dubai is going to extradite you. Switzerland's going to extradite you. These countries are going to extradite. You know, the only place is that don't extradite are like, you go to Vietnam, you go to Morocco. There's certain countries that don't extradite, like strictly don't extradite. All these other countries, even if they don't, even if they don't have a treaty with the U.S. for extradition, they're going to extradite because they rely on the U.S. for money. They rely on the U.S. for support. Switzerland, especially.

Italy will deport you in about 10 seconds. They'll extradite you in 10 seconds. So I don't make much of whether or not he was. going to escape and flee the country, I think more than likely, and sometimes this happens, when it was unusual that there were so many booked, right? What's not unusual is sometimes where an individual doesn't know whether or not there's a warrant out for their arrest, and I've seen this before it happened in the past, where some associates get arrested, and in order to see whether or not they have a warrant, because that's not public knowledge, whether or not they have a

warrant, they'll book an international flight and it'll red flag them and then they'll get a call from the FBI or their lawyer will get a call and they'll say like, hey, your client's red flagged, they're trying to leave the country just so you know they're under investigation or XYZ and you find out information you wouldn't necessarily find out. Now, I don't know if that's the case here because there were so many that were booked, but I have seen that before in the past where a client will call me and say like, hey, Bob Smith got arrested. Can you check if I have a warrant? We can't check if there's a warrant. No one tells us there's a warrant. Just to be clear about that. Just to be clear about that. So you're saying instead of there, they didn't have an

option where he calls his lawyers and say, hey, can you check with the feds to find out if there's a warrant out for my arrest? That wouldn't work. So you're saying this is a way for him to find out, hey, am I in trouble? I'm going to book these flights and see if they get flagged. Sure. And it's happened before. Now, the difference here is there's so many. flight. You know, there's two or three flights at the book. That's the weird part of it. But it wouldn't be weird for me to see someone that books a flight to the Bahamas. They book a flight to, you know, uh, Italy or Spain. And then, you know, within six hours of booking that flight, they get a call or we get a call. That happens quite often. Now, it depends on your

lawyer. Like, for example, me, if somebody, it says to me, hey, do I have a warrant out and you know, my associate got arrested? I've been doing this so long. I can make a phone call. And not necessarily find out if there's a warrant but I'll find out they'll tell me hey listen don't have your guy leave the country like okay he's watched and then I know okay you know just let me know if I need to surrender him or whatever I need to do and that's the relationship that you build over 30 years not everyone can do that that's an interesting that's an interesting alternative explanation of that I'm sure it will come out in a bond excuse me in a bond

hearing if he's a question about that so let me let me go now to these alleged co-conspirators. And what exactly happened here? We have to make sense of it. So the indictment that was filed in the Central District of California gets into it. And it says that all of them conspired and agreed with each other to knowingly use facilities of interstate and foreign commerce, namely airplanes, cars, cell phones, and the internet with intent that the murder of TB be committed in violation of laws of any state, namely the state of California, as consideration for the receipt of and consideration for a promise and agreement to pay, anything of pecuniary value, namely money and lucrative music opportunities with OTF.

So this is a murder for hire plot in exchange for career opportunities or money. And according to the FBI and other investigators, Banks was the one who put out this call for a bounty. And then he got word that his apparent target, Bowman, was going to be visiting Los Angeles. So authorities say they have proof that banks and our OTF provided the funds for five people to fly from Chicago to San Diego. and then apparently drive to Los Angeles with the plan being to kill Mr. Bowman. The indictment lays out what we call overt acts that they say this group committed in furtherance of this conspiracy. You can't just have an agreement.

You have to have overt acts, overt steps that were taken to actually commit this crime. And the apparent proof ties it back to all the defendants. For example, one overt act says on August 18th, 2022, co-conspirator one texted, conspirator three, don't book no flights under no names involved with me. So again, that's allegedly Lil Durk writing that. There are text messages between three of the defendants showing that they had the same airline ticket information. One of them also messaged someone on Instagram to say on my way to L.A. And it's also being reported that Banks himself allegedly flew to Southern California on a private plane, was staying at a hotel in the San Fernando Valley. And authorities say they

have camera footage that puts him there. Grant, who is allegedly a top OTF associate, bought ski masks, got cars, then gave three people guns, including one that had allegedly been converted into a machine gun. This is a federal crime. This is what prosecutors are alleged granted. And the indictment says that six people total, they traveled in two cars to the hotel in downtown L.A., where Bowman was supposedly staying. They allegedly started following Bowman, who was in a black escalade with his cousin, Savaya Robinson, known as SR. The indictment includes photos from a traffic camera showing the white infinity the suspects were in seemingly following the black SUV and the indictment says that the suspects then followed the escalade

to a Beverly Hills gas station parked in an alley and the indictment reads on August 19th 2022 at the Beverly gas station defendants Jones and Lindsay and co-conspirator two use the firearms procured by Defending Grant including the fully automatic firearm to shoot at TB's car striking and killing SR, who was standing next to TB's car while TB was inside. And the images below show defendants Jones and Lindsay and co-conspirator to firing their guns at TB's black escalates. So we have the death of SR. TB survived this attack. And the filing includes surveillance photos of what prosecutors say are the suspects appearing to fire guns towards the gas pumps. And you can see it's daylight in these photos at a gas station

in the middle of Beverly Hills. So Bradford, whoever was responsible for this, what a blatant crime, what a blatant act in the middle of it. But talk to me how strong you think this case is, based on what I've been saying, if the prosecutors are trying to prove conspiracy, what do you make of some of this evidence, text messages, surveillance, travel receipts,

what do you make of it? I think that Dirk will have, still have a defense. I think that, you know, I don't know everything that's going to, going on, obviously no one does. From what I'm reading in the indictment, I think there's some there's some missing pieces there when it comes to Dirk about how involved he was in this alleged conspiracy. The other guys where they all have plane tickets, they all got a car, they, you know, they're on tape. That's going to be a very difficult case for those lawyers who have that, we have that case because, you know, and I've said this multiple, multiple times on multiple cases. There are so many ways these days to catch individuals in this type of crime where you have cell phone records, GPS data. You're going to have cross-reference on the phones, what phones are together at what times. You're going to have car rental agreements.

You're going to have videotapes. You know, it's real funny because very often you find these red light cameras and things like that that the feds get. on state cases where I want the footage, where I know it's good for my client, they're like, sorry, we don't save that footage. But somehow the feds get, you know, camera footage from red light cameras, camera footage from the next door neighbor, camera footage from some guy who's just randomly on the street. So you'll see that they will put together a forensic case against the actual shooters

that, you know, will be very heavily based. on cell phone records, GPS data, and videotapes. Now, when it comes to Dirk Banks, you know, so far I've seen one text that says, don't have them associate my name with any kind of flights that they're taking. Certainly that's not a good text, but is that the only text? Because that doesn't, you know, that in itself doesn't stand on its own. Certainly it's circumstantial. But like I said, there's, we have to wait and see what other evidence they have, if they have

a snitch if they have videotapes or audio tapes of him saying something. I think that's a lot different than, hey, just make sure you don't associate my name with these guys. Because it could be, he could be blaming, you know, Grant or one of these other guys and saying like, hey, these guys are going to do some crazy stuff. And he's like, hey, listen, make sure it doesn't associate with me at all. You can look at that a million different ways. So I'm hesitant to say that they have, you know, a slam dunk case on, on Dirk Banks. I think that they have a long way to go on Dirk Banks in order to prove the conspiracy against him. I think the others, I think it's going to be, it's going to be very heavily based on paperwork. So in other words, I mean, look,

I said before, what a blatant attack. You're shooting in the middle of the day near gas pumps, which could explode. If you make the argument that the case against the shooters is really strong, could there be a situation where they work out an attractive plea deal? I don't know what an attractive plea deal would look like for them, considering what they're facing and what the accusations are, where they turn on Lil Durk. I mean, what would be a scenario that would look, what kind of deal could be worked out where you're working a deal out

with the alleged shooters to go after the principle of this case or the alleged principle? It's happened quite often in the past. And if you told me, you know, the deal that Sammy, bull worked out, right? The guy killed like 19 or 20 people. He ended up getting, I don't know, a year or two in jail followed by probation. If you told me that was a deal that someone would get for, you know, being associated with 19 or 20 murders, I would tell you that's an impossible deal to get. So it all depends on the hunger of the U.S. attorney and the AUSA that's involved. And if they want this individual badly enough, they'll make very attractive deals for these

individuals. What does a very attractive deal look like? I think they go for the lowest hanging fruit. Whoever, you know, didn't actually kill the guy, you know, maybe someone that was involved that didn't actually shoot or someone that shot, but it didn't hit, you know, they're going to have forensics. So they'll take whoever is the least culpable. And I think that they'll approach him and make a deal with him. That'll be the most attractive. And if that guy doesn't make a deal, on to the next guy. So usually that's what happens, right? You go for the lowest hanging fruit first, the guy that you think will flip, the guy that didn't really have that much involvement. And I think what also is interesting with the indictment is it wasn't just money. They're like, oh, it could have

been money or it could have been career advancement. Right. Which is, it's strange to mention that because they don't really go into any kind of facts about it. They just say it could have been, you know, that they would have advanced in their career. But what does that look like? Dirk promised them like a record deal like doesn't or they assumed it and if they assumed it that's a weaker case for the prosecution if it was just like oh i assumed if i did this for him you know um that's so you got that's the key right they're like hey i knew if i helped them out he would he would give me a record deal now let me put a bow on this and talk about what happened after the shooting the suspects that apparently went to an in-and-out hamburger stand to talk about payment for the murder then they

flew home to Chicago from San Diego. Wilson later paid Jones and Lindsay an undisclosed amount of money. That's how prosecutors say this murder plot ended. But the indictment, it charges the five named defendants and the five alleged co-conspirators with violation of the U.S. Code. It's 1958, use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder for hire. It's part of the statute dealing with racketeering. And because someone was killed, Banks faces life in prison or possibly the death penalty. if he's convicted and all the defendants they're also charged with firearm possession resulting in a death the indictment says they knowingly used and carried firearms including a firearm the defendants grant wilson jones lindsay

and houston knew to be a machine gun during and or in relationship to and possess such firearms in furtherance of a crime of violence and so doing discharged the firearms resulting in the death of s r and defendant keith jones he's also charged separately for knowingly possessing a machine gun namely a 10 millimeter caliber firearm equipped with an auto sear conversion device, which was designed and intended solely and exclusively for use in converting a weapon into a machine gun, which defendant Jones knew to be a machine gun. So, Bradford, I've laid out what we know so far. We expect at this point banks to be extradited from Florida, where he was arrested to California to face these charges. Talk to me about the next steps, particularly the issue of bail and how you think that might work

with defendant a little dirk and how that's going to work with the other co-defendants let's start there okay so with dirk what happens is when you get arrested in the feds the feds have three days to get together a bond pass if they request it so you get arrested you show up in front of a judge you say judge we're not agreeing to you know pretrial detention which is what the government always seeks on these type of cases especially with this type of case i don't think that they're going to seek the death penalty on this case. It's not one of those cases that would be appropriate for it. I'd be shocked. I mean, shot. But long story short, is when you're arrested in another jurisdiction, you can move for bond in that jurisdiction. He can move for bond here and then have

the judge in California review that bond if it's denied or even if it's granted. And I've had issues where I filed in Florida. They're arrested in Florida. But it's a case out of, most recently I had a case out of Massachusetts. The judge in Florida granted me a bond, and the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts said, I want the judge up here to review it to revoke the bond. And that was denied. But I mean, we went for a bond hearing, but the judge of Massachusetts still upheld the bond. So generally down here, what will happen is, okay, he goes in front of the judge.

The judge says, hey, you want a bond hearing. I usually say, yeah, I want a bond hearing here as opposed to California because of a couple different reasons. One is, if it's a judge that I know and I know how they behave in court, I can get a lot of information about the case. They put a case agent on. They might put another witness on. And I can find out a lot more details about the case so that when they do go to California, I'm kind of prepared with, okay, I know where they're going with the case. I know what else they have. It's not just this one text. It's something else. I kind of see their case. And it, it prepares me to go to California and then have that case reviewed by the California judge.

And now I'm even more prepared for that next bond hearing in front of the California judge. But I don't know what they're going to do in this case. They could just say, hey, judge, extra item in California. The California lawyers are going to deal with the bond in California and move for bond there. And like I said, once he gets there, they'll have a couple days to prepare. The government will have a couple days to prepare. And now, because it'll take a week to get there, they'll have even more time to prepare. that's why i like to do them quick i like to do bond hearings quick because it doesn't give them

that much time to prepare and especially when you're in a different jurisdiction the agent usually has to fly here prep the u.s attorney that's here all those things come into strategy play my guess is on this type of case the judge is probably not going to give them a bond that's my guess uh i kind of know the facts i know the attorneys that are involved uh i don't see where the judge will be the Florida judge would be like, yeah, this sounds like a case, I'm going to give him bond and send him to California. If anything, he's got a better shot in California of getting a bond than Florida. Now, there are a lot of moving factors here. Real quickly before we wrap up, a lot of moving factors here, a lot of different ways this can go.

When do you see a trial in a case like this? Generally on these type of cases where it's very, very heavy on paperwork, you won't see a trial for 12 to 14 months, you know, minimum. usually federal cases move a lot faster than state cases. You know, my murder cases in state court or even murder for hire cases in state court usually take 18 to 24 months, if it's really, really quick 18 months, but usually 18 to 24 months to really get all the facts and get your experts in line. Don't forget, they're going to need experts. They're going to need phone experts.

They're going to need video surveillance experts. All these different experts are going to have to hire. And I usually on these type of cases where they're saying, oh, he was talking in code, I usually also hire an expert in like the lingo, right? It's like individuals that are in the rap world that can say, oh, I know what the word cat means. Like, you know, and you'd be surprised because the feds always, whenever there's a word that they think could be this way, it can also be interpreted the other way. So, and they always want to interpret it against your client.

I also hire individuals that are that are experts in, you know, that type of language that individuals use, not just in rap lyrics, because that also comes into play a lot of times, but also in just the way that individuals speak to each other on texts, which a lot of people don't think that way, but you have to. So all those things take time. So I would guess 12 to 14 months minimum. All right. We will see where this progresses. Bradford Cohen, love having you on. Thank you so much for breaking this down with us. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Jess. All right, everybody, that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm

Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.