Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 1/27/23 Arthur Bloom on Don Reynolds and the Fast and Furious Scandal

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Scott talks with journalist Arthur Bloom about the case of Donald Reynolds. Reynolds is currently serving a life sentence plus 75 years in a Communications Management Unit (CMU), a prison for terrorists. But Reynolds is not a terrorist, he’s in on drug, weapons and money laundering charges. But Bloom does not find the case against Reynolds compelling. He explains why and gives his best guess for what’s really going on. Scott and Reynolds also examine the possible link between this case and the ATF’s Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal.  Discussed on the show: “The Knoxville Kingpin Who Wasn’t” (The American Conservative) “More Odd Details in the Donald Reynolds, Jr. Case” (The American Conservative) “A Response to John Kiriakou” (Arthuriana Substack) Fast and Furious OAJ Report (2012) Arthur Bloom is an editor, researcher, and amateur colonial historian. His work has appeared in The American Conservative, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Guardian, and many other outlets. Subscribe to his Substack Arthuriana and follow him on Twitter @j_arthur_bloom. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott. Get Scott’s interviews before anyone else! Subscribe to the Substack. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjY Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director, of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron. Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and the brand new, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism. And I've recorded more the 5,500 interviews since 2003, almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at Scott Horton.4. You can sign up the podcast feed there, and the full interview archive is also available at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. All right, you guys, on the line now, I've got Arthur Bloom, and he wrote this piece at his substack.

It's Arthuriana.substack.com, a response to John Curiakou, this is sort of an asterisk, on a story that he wrote for TAC, the American Conservative magazine. It's actually what I call it. The Knoxville Kingpin, who wasn't, a black NRA member sitting in a prison for terrorist. may be the missing link in Fast and Furious. What? Welcome to the show. How you doing, Arthur? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you joining us here. And I'm sorry, I forget if I'm supposed to call you Jordan or Arthur. Oh, Arthur's good. Yeah, that's what I read on. Okay. Okay, so listen, what a complicated mess. This story is. It's a fascinating, sort of a true crime story. The criminals, of course, being the government employees involved.

But we're talking about a guy. First of all, as you say here, he's in a prison for terrorists. And, you know, long-time listeners to this show, I'm not sure how long it's been since we covered this, but long-time listeners are familiar with the communications management units. But I'll give you a chance to describe that. And then this guy is doing life plus 75 years in a communications management unit. I wonder, like, did he assassinate a federal judge, or what did this guy do?

Is he part of Egyptian Islamic jihad? Yeah, so some of the people in the prison are terrorists. But so, as you said, let's maybe start out by talking about what is the CMU, just for those listeners who are maybe not familiar. This type of prison was created in the Bush administration as a counterterror measure. They're special prisons. Between the two of them, there are two. There's one in Marion, Illinois. and there's one in Terre Haute, Indiana.

And between the two of them, there are less than 200 inmates. So these are quite special prisons. The people who are incarcerated in them are people whose cases have some sort of political interest. And the term of art that the government uses when it comes to inmates there, they're inmates with what they call inspirational significance. So an inmate that's likely to inspire other criminals to commit acts of terrorism or commit crimes. And so, you know, the inmates in there, at least in theory, are supposed to have this inspirational significance. Now, in reality, if you look at some of the inmates that are there,

they don't appear to have any inspirational significance, namely one of the ones that I point out in my first story for the American conservative was an insurance scammer. And so, you know, an insurance scammer, it would be a stretch to say that he has inspirational significance that he's likely to inspire other people to commit insurance fraud. That's not really what these prisons are for. So according to a couple of estimates, though, you know, this is pretty murky. Nobody's really done a really solid study of this, but about 40% of the inmates in the CMUs, between the two of them, there are about 200 inmates. Between the two of them, about 40% of the inmates there are not terrorists. So what that says right off the bat is that these prisons are no longer being used exclusively for the purpose for which they were designed.

And so that should just, you know, on basic kind of good governance grounds, maybe trouble people a little bit. And a number of, you know, terrorists and criminals you've heard of have been incarcerated there. There was an eco-terrorist who's gotten out who has described a little bit about his experiences there. there have been a number of accounts. And one of the inmates who has been able to write a fair amount about his experiences there from within the prison, though I understand he's been transferred, is Marty Gottsfeld, who might be familiar to your listeners. Marty is a hacktivist. That's who he describes himself.

And he went, he was convicted over a distributed denial of service attack on the Boston Children's Hospital. this was over the Justina Pellateer case, which was sort of, it was a pretty big deal for sort of parents' rights advocates. So what happened is this girl, Justina Pellateer, had parents that I think could fairly be described as sort of hypochondriacs. And they took their daughter to the Boston Children's Hospital. And the Boston Children's Hospital basically decided to keep her against the wishes of the parents. And so the parents and those who sympathized with the Pellatea family claimed that this was a medical kidnapping, that the hospital had just kept the kid.

And so Marty Gotsfeld was upset about this, and he did a distributed denial of service attack against the websites of the Boston Children's Hospital. And that's what he went to prison for. And so he's still currently there. He has a few more years left on his sentence, but he's been writing some stories about his experiences there. And so a number of journalists, including Kyriaku, and myself, we've been in touch with Marty.

And that's kind of, I found out about this Don Reynolds case through Marty. And I'm not divulging anything I shouldn't by saying that. Marty has written himself about Don Reynolds's case. And so I asked Marty to put me in touch with Don Reynolds because I wanted to find out more about the Don Reynolds case. So that's the sort of background if we want to maybe start there. Yeah, that's a good spot, because I have probably a silly question, but how is he able to write these articles if it's a communications management unit? I thought that was the whole point was these people can't even talk to their lawyers a lot of the time and this kind of thing. Yeah, that's a really good question.

I, you know, just because, especially if you're a U.S. citizen, just because you're incarcerated there doesn't mean you have no constitutional rights, right? And, you know, so I think there are probably some circumstances in which the Bureau of Prisons would not want to litigate these things. And so they're not shutting down the communications of all of these inmates 100%. You know, the name is the communications management unit and not the non-communication unit. So, yes, some of these inmates in certain circumstances are able to communicate and get stories out. and Marty has been doing sort of whistleblower stuff. And so I've also been, for a couple of years, I was in a letter, I was receiving letters from Don Reynolds

and communicating with him about his case. Now, there have been, as I cover in my piece for tack, weird things that happen to their mail. The mail will end up at some routing facility or it won't end up where it's supposed to get. so maybe that's the management part of the communications management i i don't really know that's not something i can prove all i can say is that weird stuff has happened to their mail yeah well and you know they really are draconian restrictions and it's interesting what you mentioned about

you know 40% uh are not even on terrorism charges at all and from what we know a terrorism charges a lot of times that is really inflated in the first place but the poster boy for this why we're supposed to accept that it's necessary is because of somebody like the blind Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rachman from Egyptian Islamic jihad who they prosecuted his lawyer, Lynn Stewart, for saying, you know, giving out a statement of his that supposedly was a, at least the government said, was a recruitment pitch or something along those lines or a call to action to Egyptian Islamic jihad. And but then we're talking about, you know, a guy who released. some monkeys from some cages at a lab somewhere or, you know, all these.

We go from the epitome, you know, the blind shake who try to blow up the towers to now, like you're saying, a guy who's supposedly guilty of insurance fraud. And in this case, it really sounds like he's in there because I can even picture the conversation like it's episode of law and order. Well, we better put him in the communications management unit. because they railroaded him and they don't want him to be able to describe how railroaded he was or they might have to let him out something like that seems like the most obvious motive for him even being in there in the first place i think that's probably right i i will say though that the don't reynolds case is extraordinarily murky and if the big picture of this i mean i i i don't want to get to the big conclusions until we've had a chance to maybe discuss the case in a little bit more detail But if what's going on with the government is what I think is going on, which is that the government

sort of made an alliance with the Sinaloa cartel, I'm not the first one to allege this. If that's the case, all of the details about that would kind of have to be managed. They would have to be kept out of courts. And so it is possible Don Reynolds was involved in drug dealing that evidence for which was not presented in the court. I'm agnostic about that question because you sort of have to be. But I will say the way our justice system is supposed to work is that you're convicted on the evidence that's presented in the court. And if you look at the evidence presented against Don Reynolds, it's extraordinarily thin and it's flawed. And so that's why I thought this was a case that

kind of deserved a little bit more attention. And listen, I mean, from the point of view of the do-eyed lady on the jury who presumes the guilt of anyone brought before them, why would the cops lie? They would have to have such a great reason to give someone charges they don't deserve and a sentence they don't deserve for crimes they didn't do. And I guess the average citizen, you know, the average Matlock viewer just can't imagine how that could possibly be. But sounds like if you're talking about the fast and furious gun walking thing I don't know why it's walking instead of running

but if you're talking about that then geez yeah there's something to cover up and would they put someone in prison just to cover up crimes that they committed when they're not even at risk of going to prison no matter what the worst thing they're risking is embarrassment

and that's it and not even that because nobody even cares so that's right and the local news did cover this trial. I mean, Don Reynolds was made out to be really sort of the scarface of Knoxville. If the government's case against him is true, he would have easily been the largest drug dealer in Knoxville. I mean, they accused him of dealing an enormous amount of drugs. The problem was they didn't present any evidence of that. And every bit of this case suggests that it's extraordinary, that there's nothing normal about it. The, for

starters, if you just look at the plethora of federal law enforcement agencies that were involved in the investigation, there are four or five of them. So you had the FBI, you had the DEA, you had, and the two lead criminal investigators were from the IRS. And the IRS federal investigators were going through this guy's trash. And one thing that's so murky about this is you would expect. Don Reynolds was a little bit of background about the guy. He was a small business owner. He owned four small businesses. He had a trucking company. He had a music company. He bred dogs. Did a couple of other things. He was a pretty entrepreneurial guy. And he also was a big lover of firearms. He had a big gun collection. And he possessed class three firearm stamps. And if you're a

firearms enthusiasts, you'll know what those are. They're quite hard to get. You need, you know, you have to pass an extensive background check. You need a class three, you need class three stamps to possess machine guns or silencers, things like that. And Don Reynolds had class three stamps. And so that means he would have been watched quite closely by the ATF. And so you have this instance in this case of several gun transactions being described at the trial, and one of which would have been illegal if he didn't have a federal firearms license, and it's being done under the supervision of some kind of federal agent, and yet he's not being busted for it. And that was, you know, so if you look at the way these gun

transactions are described at the trial, that's what kind of made me start to think that this might be related to Fast and Furious. Okay, so talk about, first of all, just the sentence, life plus 75 and it really is right off the bat I mean I kind of made a joke there about assassinating a federal judge or something like that but it seems like you'd have to really do something bad to get life

plus 75 and then it's gun drug and money laundering charges and as you describe them not much to any of well first of all do the drugs and the money laundering and then let's get back to the guns

but this sure sounds like just an absolute fraud of a case here. Yeah, so to talk, you're right. It is a really extraordinarily harsh sentence for something like this. And, you know, maybe for your listeners who aren't familiar with some of the details of this. So the money laundering and the firearms charges all depend on the drug convictions. So if you commit a drug crime and you have a gun on you, that's an automatic sentence enhancement. That's the way that tends to work. And same thing goes for the money laundering.

If you're money laundering as part of a drug operation, that's a way of upping the sentence. Now, so these firearms sentence enhancements were under challenge in the Supreme Court when this case went down. And so the judge actually explicitly said, you know, if these firearm enhancements go down in the Supreme Court, we're going to ensure that this guy stays in any way. So that was sort of the thinking on the part of Judge Varlane. And so, yeah, everything really depends on the drug charges. That's really the important part of the case. And as I said, the drug evidence is very thin.

If you take the drug evidence out, this slot looks a whole lot more like a firearms matter than a drug matter. And that's kind of the thing that you have to understand about this case. Okay, well, but what was there to the substance of the drug charges? There were two main things. So he was initially linked by the investigators to a storage unit in West Knoxville, in which was found about 40 pounds of Mexican ditch weed, about $200,000 in cash and two AR-15s. And so that's piece of evidence number one.

That was initially pinned on Don Reynolds. However, at the trial, one of these cartel witnesses claimed that it was his. And the feds were unable to present any evidence that it was actually Don Reynolds that rented the storage unit. So it doesn't look like the storage unit was actually Don Reynolds's. In fact, did I read it right where they said, well, we did prove it he rented a storage shed from the same company that on the storage shed where we found this stuff, something like that. In other words, they had nothing at all connecting him to that storage shed. Yeah, that's right. That connection turned out to be completely false.

And so the second piece... Well, wait a minute. When they raided the shed, did they rate it because they thought it belonged to him? Or they just raided it anyway, and then they went after this guy and they said, well, we do have this shed with some weed in it. Let's just say that we believe it somehow was connected to him until we get called out later. Yeah, that part looks a little bit murky. It's hard to know because to, I mean, the storage unit was rated by the Knoxville Sheriff's Department. And so that wasn't rated by, it wasn't rated by any of these federal agencies.

So it looks like that connection was sort of made ex post facto. And the, it's not clear to me who pointed them to that. The search warrants to search Don Reynolds' house and his family's house, there were two witnesses that provided the evidence to obtain that search warrant. Only one of those witnesses testified at the trial. The other sort of disappeared in Skip Town. And I don't, you know, it's probably a little beside the point to go into that, the main witness, Albert Baugh. Wait, just hold that thought for just one second. I just want to clarify that.

I actually really did get that right, because it sounds like I may be screwed that. up because it's so silly that not just well he had rented a storage shed at that same facility maybe the shed next door to it you know adjacent to the one that had the drug something but they they actually wrote down the federal agents wrote down in official government paperwork well we did prove that he had rented quote had rented a storage warehouse unit owned by the same company as the many storage unit that was searched that had the drugs. Yeah, that's right. There's no connection between Don Reynolds and the specific storage unit where they found the drugs. That's the point, yeah. Yeah, but I mean,

for that, I mean, imagine being in trouble for that. I mean, imagine that being, you got connected to a thing, you know, this major drug charges, but they admit in the warrant that their only connection between you and that storage warehouse is that you had rented a storage, warehouse from that same company somewhere else at some other point in time i mean that sounds like some real it sounds like it's either a lie or it's a story about the way they do it in iran or some terrible place like that it sounds completely crazy this guy doesn't he have a lawyer what the hell is going on here yeah well we can get into that he uh i mean i i think if you ask me so i have gone and i've tried to contact every one of Don Reynolds's revolving door of defense counsel. And it doesn't really

look like he got a good defense if I'm being candid. I mean, you have to be careful about saying things like that. But none of them want to talk to me about the case. So it's pretty hard to make sense of it. I will say that the money expended by the Reynolds family on fighting this has been extremely onerous to them. It has driven them. It's taken a lot of their money away. I mean, just trying to fight this case and they don't seem like they got a good defense. You know, some of these like key issues about the legitimacy of the search warrant for his house and his parents' house were never challenged or they didn't do a good job of challenging them. So some key things seem like they were missed or overlooked or maybe were never

given a chance to be presented. It's a, it's really a strange one. So that's the storage unit. You talk about the garbage, the cocaine wrapper in the garbage, something like that? Because that seems just as problematic. That's right. So the second piece of drug-related evidence that was presented against Don Reynolds was the presence of a wrapper for a brick of cocaine that was found in his trash. And the federal investigators that found that were IRS criminal investigators. And so the IRS was going through his trash, which is like maybe something that people don't realize that the IRS does. And, you know, there are all sorts of, it actually is legal for the feds to go through your trash. That's because you've thrown it away, which is why people tread stuff. But so the, the

the interesting thing about this particular bit of evidence is if he had a good defense lawyer, it probably should have been thrown out because two different IRS criminal investigators told two different judges, two different stories about how they obtained it. One criminal investigator said that they actually went through the trash themselves. Another one said that they had a garbage man deliver it to them. And so that raises questions, not just because they're, telling different stories in and of themselves, but who's this other guy that is delivering the trash? Did he put something in it? You know, what, it raises questions about the chain of

custody of the trash, right? And so that's the main flaw with the, and also, you know, if this guy is, the government's accusing him of dealing millions of dollars worth of drugs. And they raided his house, they raided his parents' house, they didn't find anything, and all they find is a wrapper for brick of cocaine in his trash. And even the wrapper, did they actually connect the wrapper to cocaine? I mean, it says here it has coffee grounds residue and packing tape, but that's not cocaine. That's right. And it looks like, it's, you know, it's how a Coke dealer might obscure a search, right? That's pretty common. But, No, you're right.

You know, you don't know if it was placed there, or it just seems like very thin evidence, especially when you place it next to these two raids that find no drugs. And so this is a very thin threat of evidence to hang a sentence of life plus 75 years on. Yeah, and talk about the money laundering charge too, please. Yeah, so the basically the substance of the evidence against him for the money laundering charges. I mean, there are some murky things going on with the condo deal. It's some of which I wasn't really able to suss out in my reporting, so I didn't add it to the piece. But he was involved in the purchase of a condo in Las Vegas with a number of other partners,

one of which is this radio host, Sterling Hinton, who has some history in the libertarian movement, as a matter of fact. But that deal didn't work out. the money laundering, they also allege that his cash counting machines that he had in his house were evidence of money laundering. Now, that's all well and good, but if you're running in events business, cash counting machines are actually kind of important because you're taking in a lot of cash. And so, again, a cash counting machine is not prima facie evidence of money laundering if you ask me. And, you know, they trotted out a number of other receipts in kind of funny business.

But again, these were, what it looked like was you have all these other criminals that are testifying against him and they're all involved in these like weird transactions, moving money and drugs changing hands. But none of it seems to connect directly to Donald Reynolds. It's, you know, it all ends up looking like he's a little bit of a fall guy. You have these serious criminals testifying against him. You have these cartel guys, all of whom are receiving reduced sentences saying, yeah, Donald Reynolds was the kingpin. And, you know, are we really, you know, being asked to trust the word of a drug dealer and a guy who has confessed to ordering a hit on U.S. soil?

You know, so they're, these are the witnesses against him. The, all of the material witnesses against him had sentence reductions. So, you know, you have sort of the jailhouse snitch problem here. And then, so there's no physical evidence at all. So it all came down to the testimony, which, as you say, everyone involved has a conflict of interest there. But you also talk about his girlfriend for a time there and how she vouched for his character. And was that you interviewed her? Or this was from court testimony that you had gotten?

or? So his wife, Melanie, oh, it was his wife, I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, there are actually two women. Oh, okay. It's his wife, Melanie, and they split up over the stress of this trial. And then there was his girlfriend, Fatima Kudha, who was out in Arizona. And she, it looks like she was sort of hired as a kind of Instagram model for some of the events that they were putting on in Arizona. and the the she was questioned by the grand jury and she was first questioned by it looks like

assistant U.S. attorney Tracy Plowell an ATF agent and a third federal investigator who I have been unable to suss out but so she she was questioned by them and they tried to get her to admit to drugs being involved and she didn't see any drugs so she wasn't able to say that so they questioned her in front of her parents. And so, you know, they're telling this pregnant lady, she's pregnant with twins, you know, you're going to go away for a long time if you don't dime out Donald Reynolds. She can't dime him out because she hasn't seen any drugs. And so they're putting all this pressure on her. And her parents are just like, just lie to them, just lie to the feds. And you don't want to do that. And, you know, she couldn't give them what they wanted. And so

she was subpoenaed by the grand jury and the grand jury declined to indict her. Melanie was Don Reynolds's wife, and the interesting thing about her testimony is, you know, if Donald Reynolds was a, you know, the kingpin of Knoxville, he probably would have been living a little large. And it doesn't seem like he was. They, you know, they were, they would cook dinner together. They, these sorts of, you know, it seemed like they lived a fairly normal domestic life. The, there just doesn't seem to. to be, he wasn't living the lifestyle of like a big deal drug dealer. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, Enough Already. Time to End the War on Terrorism is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books,

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And so, you know, is there anything else you wanted to get to about the two women? Yeah, I mean, that was the point, really, was here are these people that were around him who were saying, you know, talking about he would give, you know, just kind of run-of-the-mill business advice. And, you know, you emphasized a couple of times that he told them, you really got to build up your credit score. and this kind of thing, it doesn't really sound like a drug king pin at all. That's right. Oh, yeah, that's a great point. I should bring that up.

So, you know, if you just look at the way this guy does business, he's talking about building credit. He's got these class three firearms stamps. And then when there's this fight over the Cadillac escalade that his original co-defendant get, so his original co-defendant, Daniel Smith is busted in Chicago in an escalade that Don Reynolds has been involved in selling. And so that car was impounded and then turned over to Albert Baugh, this used car dealer

that Donnie was in business with. And so Donald Reynolds, he supposedly owns equity in that car, and so he sues Albert Baugh for it. And that was a civil lawsuit in Knoxville Chancery Court. And so, you know, you have these three things. You have this lawsuit. You have the emphasis on credit, and then you have the class three stamps. This is a guy who's filling out all of his government paperwork. He's working within the system, right? Yeah, a drug dealer would have let that slide or figured out a way to resolve that problem, you know, outside of the official channel, something like that. And when you go back to the class three stamp, because that's, you know, a technical matter, a lot of people aren't familiar with, but essentially it's actually not

illegal to own a machine gun in the United States of America if you have the proper certificate from the ATF, correct? That's right. And in order to get those class three stamps, you have to pass a pretty substantial background check. And so, you know, if this guy has a criminal record or he has like some shadiness in his background, he's not going to get it. And as you said before, he's actually inviting.

extra scrutiny from federal police that's exactly right that that's uh this is not the way that you would expect a drug dealer to behave uh and you know so my my assumption from all that is that he probably isn't fun yes so then get to the guns because we got a machine gun and machine guns are scary and we have a story about what he might have done with that machine gun had the opportunity rise. So now, you know, grab the kids and run for the hills. Yeah. I mean, the reason why to, I mean, candidly, the reason, one of the reasons why I think this case hasn't attracted the kind of scrutiny, it probably should, is because it kind of falls between the biases of a lot of Americans. The left doesn't care about it because the guy liked guns and the right doesn't care

about it because of the drug angle. And so it falls between the political biases of most Americans, which is why, you know, maybe we need our libertarians on this one. So Don Reynolds was a gun collector, and he bought most of his guns from the Coal Creek Armory, which is now closed, which is in East Knoxville, was in East Knoxville. And so I spoke to one of the clerks there who sold him a number of these guns. And Don Reynolds liked the expensive types of guns. He liked guns that would, uh, retain their value. And so he bought a whole lot of them, supposedly had several dozen. And the real headline-grabbing detail that I think you're referring to is this 30-cal machine gun on a tripod, World War II era replica that was sitting in his basement when the feds raided it. Now, what the

feds claimed, or what AUSA Lewin, the prosecutor on the case at the trial, what he claimed was is that he was using this mammoth, monster machine gun to protect his drug transactions. Now, there are a number of problems with that. Number one is the ammunition for that machine gun was still bubble-wrapped. It had never been taken out of its packaging because he's a collector. He wants to retain the value of this stuff. He shoots some of his other guns recreationally, but he doesn't do that with this one. And so the AUSA is they're using, they're using this tripod machine gun against him.

They're saying he's using this, you know, historical replica gun to protect his drug transactions, which just frankly doesn't make any sense. You know, the, like I said in the piece, you know, so if he's afraid of do, so assuming for a second that he is actually a drug dealer and he's doing business with these cartel guys, he's afraid of them because these cartel guys. he's afraid of them because these cartel guys have a history of violence, extortion, that sort of thing. So he ostensibly gets a gun to protect himself. And the gun he gets is this monster of a gun that he can't take out of the house. And he's ostensibly meeting them in his basement. Now, if you're doing business with these people that you're afraid of, why would you meet them at your house? and why would you, you know, there are better guns to use for personal protection than a huge 30-coun tripod.

Especially in your basement. In your basement. It just doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I'm sorry. I can't help it. I'm reminded of the poor kid Hamid Hyatt that was framed up on bogus terrorism charges out in Lodi, California, where they just put all these crazy words in his mouth to the point where at the end he was saying that, Yes, that's right. My grandfather lives in Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda trains on pole-vaulting techniques in his basement there.

Because the cop is making up. The kid, like, he goes, well, they have these sticks, and he's, like, holding a stick in his hand. And the cop goes, what, pole-vaulting? They're pole-vaulting? And he goes, yeah, that's right, pole-vaulting. That's what they're doing. It used to be that the L.A. Times had the video of the interrogation on their webpage for a short time there, and you could watch that. that whole interaction taking place. Yeah, the guy was going to fire 30-caliber machine gun in his basement dealing with these guys, where they couldn't even find so much as a seat on the floor in this. Right, yeah. And then you say, too, the guns and the drugs weren't even in the same house at the same

time at any provable point anyway. Or I'm sorry, there never were any drugs provable anywhere, but he wasn't even accused of having drugs at the house at the same time that he's accused of having guns at that. That's right. That's right. Guns that he's authorized to the highest degree by the law to have. That's right. And so, you know, you would assume that these cartel witnesses, you know, the government

is relying on these, you know, actual hardened criminals to testify against this black Knoxville and they're saying that he's breaking down the weed in his basement. And, you know, if he's breaking down the weed in his basement, breaking down weed, you know, you're taking it out of packages, you're putting in a new package. that that's likely to generate like refuse and debris. And they didn't find any. They didn't find, like you said, so much as a seed. And, you know, so maybe he's really good at cleaning up,

or maybe these cartel guys just aren't telling the truth. I mean, that seems like it's the sort of Occam's razor explanation to me. Okay, but now so help me understand why they hate this guy so much and they're willing to go to such lengths to go after a guy who has, all his tax stamps and who's not selling drugs and they're letting all these real bad guys go free or get sentence reductions that's right i mean so what don reynolds claimed to me so my my first point of contact i i asked marty to put me in touch with him and he writes me a letter that has his parents phone number on it and so i call his parents and i start talking to them about this and uh you know

he claims in his letter to me that he was offered the chance to become a federal informant and he declined. And so, uh, the Randy Weaver Jose Padilla treatment. Either work for us or off to Guantanamo, you go. That's right. And, uh, it looks like that's kind of what they did. And so, you know, if you're, it, it looks a whole lot like some of the people around him were probably cooperating. And so if they're cooperating and he's not, that makes him a little bit of a risk. And like I said, when you look at some of these gun transactions that are described at the trial, they look an awful lot like Fast and Furious style gun transactions because the guns are walking and the types of guns at issue. So the two most common guns that were trafficked as part of Fast and Furious were AR-15s and Hurstall 5-7s. Hirstall-5-7 is a sidearm.

The Obama administration very much did not like that. gun because they considered it a cop killer, that it was powerful enough to pierce body armor. And the AUSA in the trial kind of brought that up, like Don Reynolds is getting this Hirstall 5-7 for a cartel guy because it's a cop killer. And that transaction, so if it happened, this cartel-connected witness asks Don Reynolds, allegedly, according to the trial testimony, asks for the Hirstall-5-7, Don Reynolds gets it to him, and then there's no evidence or no testimony that indicates that it goes from that cartel guy in Texas to the guy in Mexico who's asking for it. There's just no evidence for that in the record.

And so did that gun walk across the border? We don't know. And so that transaction itself, because Donnie, he had the class three stamps, but he didn't have a federal firearms license. In order to sell a gun over state lines, he needed a federal firearms license. And so if that transaction, which is from a guy in Tennessee to a guy in Texas, would be illegal if he didn't have a federal firearms license. And that was a transaction that looks like it took place under federal supervision. And so that's a crime that they basically seem, it seems like they allowed to happen. They didn't charge non-renolds with it.

And so this looks like a sort of straw purchase similar to what was going on with Fast and Furious. And so, you know, you have this class three. firearm stamps piece. You have these weird gun transactions so that you've got the ATF in the background, but you don't have any ATF agents testifying in any way at the trial. It's awfully strange because you know the ATF is like watching all this stuff. It's just they're not involved in the specific investigation. It's very, very strange. I'm sorry, forgive my ignorance about the whole gun walking scandal because I really should have done a deep dive in interviews about that in the past. I don't think I ever really have, maybe once or twice. But didn't this all kind

of revolve around a gun shop in Arizona? Is this connected to that? Or do I even know what I'm talking about? Yeah, no, that's right. So it started, so there were, there are two pieces of it. So fast and furious was the name of the big operation that went national from, I think it was like, it was exposed in 2011 when Senator Chuck Grassley got involved. And then it was 2012. when the Office of the Inspector General for the Justice Department put out their big report. And so if you want to kind of read up on what Fast and Furious was all about, the best source that we have right now is that Office of the Inspector General report from 2012. And it's online.

It's worth reading in full. But so Fast and Furious grew out of Operation Wide Receiver, which was just taking place in Arizona. And it was run out of the ATF offices in Arizona. And what they were doing was, you know, the ATF got wind of what looked like a network of straw purchasers. So it's, you know, if there's somebody who's not allowed to own a gun and he goes to a friend and says, why don't you buy this gun for me?

That's called a straw purchase, and that's illegal. And so what the ATF was doing was rather than when they see these illegal purchases going on, rather than making an arrest on the spot, they would let the guns walk into the hands of the cartels in the hope of getting higher level prosecution further down the line. And they let this happen time and time again with thousands of firearms. And what it looks like is that most of these guns ended up in the hands of the Sinaloa cartel. And right across the border from Tucson is Sinaloa territory.

And so how does this connect to the Don Reynolds case? Well, we don't have anything specific, but the timelines, and the nature of those transactions described at the trial are pretty compelling. So he starts to do business with the Tucson auto dealership that may or may not be a cartel front in 2006. And 2006 was right when fast and when wide receiver, the predecessor to Fast and Furious, was ramping up. And so, you know, he's probably doing business with some things that might be cartel fronts. and he's involved in so don reynolds just like think about who he is he's this businessman who deals in used cars and he's a big gun nut he's sort of an ideal straw purchaser for an operation like this

he's got a lot of experience stealing firearms and you know he's the sort of guy that the feds would probably want to turn for something like this but if you if you commit a felony you can't You can't own guns anymore. And so he declined to cooperate or accept a lower level, you know, plead guilty to anything lower level because he likes guns and doesn't want to lose his right to own firearms. And so, you know, he decided to fight it. He pled not guilty and he lost. And that's why he's in prison for the rest of his life. And, you know, so the overall picture.

And by the way, did he get a full jury trial of 12 and? A whole process like Matlock? Yes. And did he testify in his own defense at all and try to set the record straight on this? Yes, he did. And I mean, so how did that go at all? Did his lawyers not help him hit all the most salient points that they needed to get the jury to understand there? Or the jury was just all cops' wives and his fate was sealed?

Or what's the deal? You know, so the thing that really he needed to challenge, but the judge was, didn't allow them to challenge was the legitimacy of the warrant, the legitimacy of the warrant to search his house in his parents' house. That was just, that challenge was never allowed to go forward. They lost that in the hearings before the trial ever started, right? That's right. I forget the name of the specific, it's a Franks hearing. That's what it's called. He was never given a Frank's hearing to challenge. But wait, I thought, the only thing that was found in his parents' house was supposedly the rapper in the, or that was even somewhere else, the supposed cocaine rapper

with the coffee ground. What did they even find at his parents' house? Nothing. And the, you know, the piece of this, the kind of pressure being brought to bear against his parents is maybe the most galling and troubling part of this case. You know, he looks like he's, let's just say the evidence against him is not very strong. I have doubts about the Don Reynolds's prosecution on the whole. But what's really inappropriate is the pressure brought to bear against his parents. When his parents' house were raided, they took their wine, their jewelry, all their cars. Everything was said to be proceeds from a drug operation. And that asset forfeiture was ratified by the jury and

was never given back. And so this is basically like a legalized robbery of this guy's like 70-something-year-old black family. Yeah. It's really outrageous. Wait, I'm sorry because it is and it's its own important point, but if you go back one step

the flaw, I was saying like, did he really get a chance to make a sound offense there? And you were saying, nah, because the judge allowed whatever something, or not, you didn't say this exactly, but I inferred that what you meant was something was found during that raid of his parents' house on that bad warrant that sealed his fate,

but nothing was found as parents' house that sealed anything. So what difference did that make? I don't understand. I don't think it made much of a difference. I mean, I think at this point when he gets up and he alleges this grand conspiracy against him involving the government and drug cartels. I mean, Donnie's a smart guy, but he's also, he, for a while there, he started getting into some sort of,

let's just say, like, fringe legal theories. He signed all of his, he signed some of his correspondence, Donald Reynolds Bay, which is a sign of like, it's sort of the black version of like sovereign citizens kind of stuff. These sorts of unusual legal theories

that you sometimes get with inmates. And so, you know, alleging this grand conspiracy and everybody's probably just looking at him like, oh, you're crazy and you're, you know, sort of, you know, twisting on the hook a little bit and, you know, you're just a drug dealer trying to make excuses. I think that's probably what it looked like at that point because a lot of stuff looks like it's being hidden. And that's my impression of it, just reading the trial testimony. And yeah, it doesn't sound like his lawyer had his act together any better than he did?

Yeah, and when he starts alleging, you know, this all happens, the trials going on before Fast and Furious is really broken. And so he's alleging that the government's involved in all this illegality. And, you know, he probably sounds like a crazy person. Well, folks, sad to say, they lied us into war. All of them. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam. Iraq War I, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq War II, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all of them.

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See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. And then how much after his conviction, how long after does the story come out in the news and the jury all go oops? As far as I know, nobody has said oops. though that would be nice privately they i bet they must have gone wow i wonder if that has something to do with that thing that we you know yeah maybe as far as i know i was the first one to make the connection between fast and furious in this case uh i have contacted i contacted the the court

reporter who covered this case in the knoxville newspaper and i told her about my theories and she she thought it was a little far-fetched but um you know i i'm not going to going to cast dispersions on her. But, you know, if you're just covering local affairs, you probably don't read very much about, like, what happened with Fast and Furious. And, you know, there's a way with this sort of partisanship of media, Fast and Furious sort of got relegated to this far-right conspiracy theory. And that's very much not, I mean, I think Fast and Furious is something that should kind of trouble every American because it raises the question of gun dealers being made into informants.

Yeah. Well, and as you touched on before, it raises questions of the American government's secret alliance with the Sinhaloa cartel in their war with the Zeta's circa early last decade, right? That's right. That's right. And so this sort of divide and conquer strategy, the U.S. government has used before. And if you're, you know, the, the Sinaloa cartel looks like sort of the good one to make an alliance with for a couple of reasons. One, if you're trying to divide in concrete, you want to pick the biggest guy first to be your ally. And the Sinaloa cartel at that time was easily the most powerful. And they're also a little bit more business-like than the Zetas or La Familia Michoacana,

who are, you know, these sort of dramatic acts of violence, people being hung from bridges or having their heads cut off and stuff like that, you don't tend to see that stuff from the Sinaloa cartel. It tends to be the Zetas or some of the other cartels. And so, you know, if you're the U.S. government and you're trying to do this divide-and-conquer strategy, you pick the business-like ones. And some of the reporting on the way these, like,

drug cartel extortion rackets work, you know, if you look at some of these cities on the west coast of Mexico, they tend to like the Sinaloa cartel, because they keep the extortion fees down. You don't have to pay as much in protection to them. And, you know, so if you're in a contested city, a city that's being contested by multiple cartels, you might be paying protection to like two or three different criminal organizations.

If there's unified control, you're only paying protection to one and the prices are low. And so, you know, Cina Loa cartel looks like the attractive option. And so, you know, there are no government, an entity has ever acknowledged that this is, that this was a thing. And there may not even ever be a paper trail to indicate that. This is the sort of thing that you would really have to hide. But nevertheless, if you look at the pattern of interventions by the DEA and the ATF, it's unmistakable that the way they have acted has advantaged the Sinaloa cartel at the expense of other cartels. And so that's just what it looks like to me.

And so, you know, the fast and furious thing became something that congressional Republicans waved the bloody shirt over in 2012 because they wanted to use it against Eric Holder. And Eric Holder, so this was the, Eric Holder became the first sitting cabinet member to be held in contempt of Congress over this case. Eric Holder refused to testify about it. And, you know, so it's clear that, you know, so having a sitting attorney general being held. held in contempt of Congress is kind of a big deal. And, you know, so he's, you know, despite that, I mean, I think there are all sorts of constitutional questions there. You know, the attorney general should have to answer Congress's questions. But if you're, you know, if you're the attorney general sitting there and you're dealing with this operation, that was, you know, in fairness to Holder going on

before he was the attorney general, right? You had wide receiver happening, you know, before he was in office. And so as sort of an active loyalty to the people working under him, he kind of keeps his mouth shut and is willing to go down for contempt over it. And I think that's sort of what happened there. And so the Republicans, they wanted to wave the bloody shirt over this. So all the people that were killed because of these guns that walked, including a Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry.

And so Brian Terry became a real cause to lab on the right. And so this sort of got slotted into our partisan media. environment, that this is, you know, Republicans just doing their thing, you know, trying to get the Obama administration, when really the story is much bigger than that, and I don't think it's a partisan one at all. Yeah, but definitely having that partisan angle and then having also covert action, totally illegal, scandalous CIA stuff on that other level really does help, you know, relegate it in the narrative to being somebody's pet issue, but not a real. real, you know, broad issue for everyone, which is really unfortunate because, I mean, look at,

presumably, I think I agree with you, it sounds like there very well could be a real connection here, but even if this is just its own smaller version of that, you know, they really do this a lot. I mentioned Randy Weaver and Jose Padilla. They're the two most notable examples to me of people who have their lives absolutely ruin simply for refusing to become. and informant. And I guess this guy's the third. I'm sure there's a million more. But, yeah, I think this sort of thing is pretty common.

And, you know, if you're, he's, you know, you look at Don Reynolds and he looks like he's involved from the very beginning of these sorts of, you know, funny networks going on in Tucson. And, you know, so does he know about the activities of other people that did try to cooperate with the government. I think that's the real question. I don't want to say anything that's likely to get me sued about some of the other people he knew and was doing business with, but I suspect that some of them were cooperating with the government. And so if they are and he's not, it can easily become a very dangerous situation for him. Yeah, I mean, it's a good way to build and win cases, it's just set people up. FBI does it all the time. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly

right. And, you know, to maybe draw out and look at this in a little bit of a bigger picture, you know, if the expectation, the reasons why I think this is a case that people should care about are number one. I mean, Don Reynolds's father worked at Oak Ridge National Lab and he was in the army. This is a family that served his country. And, uh, you know, they, they don't know why this is happening to them. They're getting all this strange pressure and they don't know why. Um, that's outrageous. And second, if the expectation for conservatives, if there, if conservatives's expectation for the black community is that they, you know, raise themselves up by their bootstraps, they figure it out, they start business and stuff. Well, Don Reynolds is a guy that

did that. Don Reynolds is a guy whose business activities were getting people out of the ghetto. He was creating a better life for people. And so if Republicans or conservatives want to do right by the black community through that means, you can't be taken out guys like this. That's because you're, you know, you're telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and then you're cutting down the people that are helping them do that, right? It's just, it's not good. And, you know, they notice this sort of thing. I mean, the black community in Knoxville is not forgotten about this case. Yeah.

Well, and look, I mean, how many people overall, over what period of time? It's in the thousands, tens of thousands of people who've been falsely railroaded over these ridiculous kind of contraband charges where, you know, oh, we, you know, it was one, what, a year or so ago. where the lady had sugar from a glazed donut on the console in her car. And they go, oh, that's methamphetamines. And she's locked up for a year or something

before they let her out. And meanwhile, she misses her daughter's wedding and, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They've completely ruined people's lives. Their mother died while she's in there on these bogus tar. Like, oh, that's just some collateral damage like accidentally killing some Iraqis on your way to kill some other Iraqis.

And it doesn't matter that these people's lives are being absolutely destroyed over this. well they had these grown adults he was holding a white powder that we told him he was not allowed to have like this is daycare or something this is crazy that a free society would give government such a loophole to go after people a guy with the highest level permission of gun ownership you know about up front you know preemptive permission from the government to own guns in the country get completely railroaded for having guns when he refuses to become an informant, things like this. How much of this is acceptable collateral damage in the name of prohibition?

It's apparently endless. That's right. And in fact, even in this, even hearing in your article where they say, geez, our faith in the system, or I guess you're paraphrasing, our faith in the system is shattered because we're part of the system. They're not supposed to do this to us, but yeah, but they do this to people all the time. Don't you hear people crying out how unfair they're being. treated, regardless of what color they are. People get missed, and it's not just

being shot by cops. It's being railroaded up and down by everyone. Listen to an AM talk show if the host says, does anybody have any nightmare stories about the IRS? And you'll hear the phones ring for weeks. They won't be able to talk about anything else for weeks.

Because people talk about the terror that they go through at the hands of these goons. Yeah, I mean, these government agencies are pretty opaque to a lot of people. And they you know, when something bad happens to them or you get audited or something like that, you know, you don't know why,

and everybody feels like they're being targeted when that happens to them. And so, you know, I'm not so much of a libertarian that I don't think there should be any taxes and so somebody has to collect them, but it's hard to argue the IRS has not been politicized in the past. And they, you know, certainly do put people

through the ringer sometimes. And look, gun controls the same exact, bad economics take the corruption of any particular cop out of it or any particular prosecutor by banning guns if you ask a right winger about the economics of banning guns closing down billy bob's gun shop and turning it over to the most ruthless murderer to be the monopoly kingpin on black market gun sales in any given area they would say you should not do that you know keep guns safe and legal, you know? Well, it's the exact same economics with drugs. And liberals should understand that when they look at drugs and they go, how can you prohibit drugs? All you do is destroy the lives

of innocent people and you have all this corruption and bogus charges and all of these things. They should understand. That's the same thing that would happen if you outlaw guns, only with actual weapons instead of just drugs, so which, you know, can be dangerous in their own way, but still. And the solution is, as you were saying at the beginning there, is both sides have their major blind spot here, but the libertarians have it right that we need to legalize guns and drugs and go about having a free society in a much different way than we have been here. Because if only for this one guy, right? Like, why should this one guy have to go through this? Because of gun and drug charges. When everyone agrees, at worst, he's committed an offense and hasn't actually committed a crime

at all, hasn't done anything to anyone, and he's facing life plus 75 for his rotting corpse, too? What the hell is that? Yeah, and, you know, I do think because of some of the stuff you're talking about, like, you know, maybe this isn't the time to get into, like, my views about drug prohibition, but, you know, if you're, there really is the risk of, like, organized crime moving into the drug business in the U.S., it already exists. And so if you're sort of a small dispensary owner or a small marijuana grower or something like that, it's actually probably to your benefit that the DEA keeps it as Schedule 3.

This is probably an unpopular point to make to libertarians. But like, if you're a small grower or a small dispensary owner, the DEA is probably going to leave you alone, because you're probably operating within state law. But because of the risk of organized crime moving into those markets, I think the feds probably do need the means. to go after the actual drug cartel networks as they move into these markets. And so, you know, I actually think, like,

if you're a small marijuana businessman, the DEA Schedule I, or Schedule I, is probably your best friend, actually. This is probably a controversial point to make to libertarians. I'm sorry. In other words, if they just fully legalize the trade,

you would have larger corporate monopolies than the little guy would lose, and this is sort of protection for smaller pot dealers? yeah well i mean not just large corporations but like drug cartels right they would well i mean if you fully legalized it then no the cartels would lose out immediately to philip morris and the federal government you know that and in fact i mean that's really what happened when they legalized weed in beginning when they legalized weed in california was

it bankrupted a lot of the mexican black market pot dealers because there wasn't it became so plentiful full in the United States and higher grade stuff. And so the Mexican cartels had to switch to methamphetamines and cocaine and other things because the pot supply in America became much more domestic. Yeah, I guess the counter example is prohibition, right? Where you have all these like Mafia O.C that were, you know, running illegal alcohol. They just like go legit. And that's where we get like Seagrams. Seagram's alcohol. Well, yeah, but that's what I'm saying is, yes, make them legit. Make it Sinhaloa, Inc., and then we don't have to worry about everybody killing each other anymore.

You know, go ahead and fully legalize the trade, and that's, you get rid of all the problems that came with prohibition. I suppose, you know, not legalizing it, and then just the government working with Sinaloa anyway, is probably the worst of both worlds. I'll agree with you there. Yeah, exactly right. Hey, CIA guys got to put their kids through private school somehow here, Arthur, you know?

All right, hey, listen, one more thing before I let you go is, You did have a follow-up here that I didn't have a chance to look at, more odd details in the Donald Reynolds case. Was there anything important there we need to touch on? No, the detail that the two details that are in that follow-up piece that we've kind of already touched on are the lawsuit against that other car dealer, Albert Baugh. I see. And so, you know, he has his car seized in this drug bust in Chicago, and the car is turned back over to this auto dealer that he's doing business. with, and Don Reynolds files a lawsuit. And so normally you don't see drug kingpins filing lawsuits. That's just like not something they do. And then the other piece of evidence in there,

in that follow-up piece, is his original co-defendant arguing that Don Reynolds was not involved in drugs. So that guy, the original co-defendant Nathaniel Smith, is the one who was busted in that Cadillac escalate in Chicago. So you have this drug, drug bust in Chicago, the car gets seized, and the guy who was arrested with those drugs in Chicago is saying Don Reynolds had nothing to do with it. So, you know, to me, this is more signs that, you know, he put out that statement and then he retracted it, probably under pressure. So again, this is, you know, this is a very murky case, but there are reasons to believe. that this guy was railroaded in a big way. And the thing, you know, that happens all the time, as you say.

But the thing that makes this one extraordinary is that he looks like he was railroaded. That's part of an operation that involved the feds cooperating with organized crime. Oh, I meant to ask you, too, what's the point about Kyriaku here? Is that worth bringing up that? Well, I'm just, you know, like I said in that piece, I'm glad other people are starting to attention to it. And so, you know, I'll say I've been copying to this recently. I did sort of transgress a journalistic boundary by helping him out with his clemency petition in the Trump administration. And I did that for two reasons. One, I do think he deserves clemency. My impression

of this case is similar to yours. And I think this guy was probably railroaded. But the second reason why I involved myself in his clemency petition was because of the retaliation that's gone on against some of the other people that have taken up this case. The family was retaliated against. They were threatened. And so I was a little bit worried that that might happen to me. And so I was communicating with people in the Trump White House about this. And so I had been hopeful that his clemency petition would go through in the latter days of the Trump administration, like the last two months, that didn't end up happening. I, you know, contacted a bunch of criminal justice reform advocates. Donnie in his letters to me tried to get me to contact Kim Kardashian. You know, so, you know, far be it

for me to question the presidential pardon power. I think it is very important. But if you look at the pardons and commutations that went on in the latter days of the Trump administration, many of them were awfully shady, if you asked me, especially the one of Eliahu Weinstein. That one looked like it was kind of a mob pardon. Some of these others are just sort of corrupt Republican political operatives. So you see all these sort of insidery pardons and commutations go through. And then you see like a pardon for a guy like Don Reynolds not go through. And that's, it doesn't make me feel good to watch that happened, you know? It's hard to watch that. That, you know, the pardon power is, is not for getting your corrupt cronies out of trouble. It's supposed to be for correcting

injustices in the system. And it doesn't look like that happened here. Yeah. Well, that's what journalism is for too. And you're doing your part there for sure. And maybe you're doing the most to bring accountability here. So then, I guess, two part, last question. Then first of all, I guess, The asterisk here is just a clarification that Kiriaku, John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer, he had heard somewhere that you'd been threatened to stop writing about this, and you were just clarifying that that wasn't exactly right. And then secondly, the real question is, is anyone else do anything about this? Are there any new lawyers or any groups or anybody who's paid special attention to this other than you and John? Yes. So I was just clarifying that

nobody has explicitly threatened me about this story. I will say a certain right of center people have not been super happy about this story, but I can't say I've ever received an explicit threat. And I did speak to one of Attorney General Bill Barr's deputies about the case. I can't talk about the details of that, but I was talking to people at a pretty high level in the Justice Department about this case, both in the Justice Department and at the White House. So I do think it made, you know, if somebody wanted to move the ball along, the thing to kind of track down would be those communications within the White House, which should all be subject to FOIA. Yeah. And so if, you know, I would love to know just how far along this God, or if they

were just all lying to me and they were just sort of stringing me along. I don't really know. But as far as I know at the moment, it's Marty Kiriaku, me, a handful of other people that have taken an interest in this. And so if there are others, I am very happy to talk to them and, you know, give any advice or tell them what I know. Because I do think an injustice was done here. Yeah. And yeah, building that team of journalists is important, but this guy needs some lawyers, some really sharp ones. And, you know, this seems like it might be a case for the ACLU or something. I've seen them defend a gun defendant before.

I know they don't want to legalize guns, but I've seen them take the side of somebody who's being kind of railroaded on charges like that. I don't know if that's, you know, worth taking to them. But it sounds like this guy needs a powerful group, right? This guy needs some heavy guns to come to his defense here. Yeah. And, you know, one thought I had was maybe, you know, if Chuck Grassley or something, we're interested in reopening Fast and Furious because I think, you know,

Republicans got to the point of waving the bloody shirt. We never really found out what was really going on there. And so, I mean, there are so many things in the past, many of which you've covered well in your show about, you know, these sort of old controversies that there are still these lingering questions about. Fast and Furious is another one of those things. I mean, I've got these suspicions about the Sinaloa piece and all that, but none of that has ever been kind of confirmed in a public way. And it would probably have to be Congress that does

that or it'd have to be done through a lawsuit or something. And you're right. I mean, I think this guy needs some help. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, man, great work and great interview. Really appreciate your time on the show, Arthur. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. That's you guys. That is Arthur Bloom, formerly at the American Conservative magazine where you can read these important pieces. The Knoxville Kingpin, who wasn't. Really, take a look at it. It's great. And more odd details in the Donald Reynolds, Jr. your case and check out his substack it's arthuriana.substack.com the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in l a psradyo

com antiwar dot com scott horton dot org and libertarian institute dot org