The Joe Rogan Experience - #2432 - Josh Dubin

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

Josh Dubin is the Executive Director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice, a criminal justice reform advocate, and civil rights attorney.https://cardozo.yu.edu/directory/josh-dubin Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Visible. Live in the know. Join today at https://www.visible.com/ 50% off your first box at https://www.thefarmersdog.com/rogan! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Brother Joe. I can see you again. Nice to see you, man. What's happening? Everything's happening.

I got a lot on my mind. I got notes today and everything. Beautiful. So let's kick it off. What do you got? No, I was just, I was thinking that the more you do this work, the more routine the stories would get, and you would start to see fact patterns and situations repeat. But I'm starting to think the more you do it, the more nutty and bizarre it gets, and you find yourself in these situations where you're like, that can't be. You got to check that out

So I have like Multiple cases going on where I feel that way And And they range from Wrongful convictions To why was this person charged in the first place Where you're seeking clemency I mean

Yeah it's a That's a weird world Yeah your world in particular The world of wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted people is one of the darkest worlds in the world because you're taking away

a person's freedom and they do it all the time for corruption they do it because they're corrupt they do it because they're dirty they do it because they want convictions they do it because they said someone was guilty and then they just want to fucking lock them up anyway

I started to read this Malcolm Gladwell just published a new book called Revenge or the Tipping Point, and I'm only like 15 pages in. And the way he starts it out is about, I think, he's going to come back to it at the end, but I think it's the opioid scandal. He's leaving it blank until the end of the book about how when they testified, the executives of the company testified before Congress that they couldn't bring themselves to apologize or admit that they were wrong and they keep on using the words our drug has been associated

with associated with addiction and it's almost this so I'm starting to think that this inability to admit fault that you're wrong that you're sorry it it transcends the legal system And, you know, I'm starting to believe that the cases where these cops are out to frame someone are far more, well, maybe not far more, but they're less common than the cases where law enforcement's trying to do the right thing. And a detective has a hunch and they just get to where they think they need to be on the evidence. by following the hunch, which is often wrong. So, yeah, it's a mix of all that shit. Yeah, and people don't like to admit they're wrong ever, especially when it comes to something as crazy as a pharmaceutical drug company

releasing some opioid that's going to kill a million people. Like, they can't admit they're wrong. They almost have to say things like associated with, especially during hearings. Yeah, during congressional hearings, I guess there's a lot on the line if there's any that smells like an admission. Yeah, they can't admit it. They have to not lie, right? Because then they can get hit with perjury.

So they come up with different terms, like associated with. Yeah. I mean, I'm interested to see where he goes with it. I listen to his podcast a lot. It's actually really good. Some of them are good. Revisionous history because he's a curious dude this Malcolm Gladwell. And, you know,

some of his stuff I agree with some I don't but I like that he looks beneath the surface and tries to figure out what is motivating people or what they're tricking themselves into believing and I just I was watching this man of Scalco bit the other day and he was like can't you just say I'm sorry he's talking about his wife that's all I want and him and this dude are going back and forth I forget the guy's name on the podcast. Some other comedian. And the bit is so fucking funny. And so I just find myself apologizing all the time.

Because what's wrong with just admitting that you're wrong? Nothing at all. Good. It's actually a show of strength. And people that don't recognize that, they just believe that they're never wrong or that they want people to know they're never wrong or think they're never wrong.

So they just don't admit it. They just bury it deep inside. But you find yourself apologizing all the fucking time sometimes when you're conscious of it. I'm like, that might apologize a lot. Maybe I didn't do all this shit. Well, better to apologize for something you didn't do than to not apologize for something you did. Well, I don't know. As long as you mean it.

Yeah. Yeah. You got to mean it. That helps. Meaning it helps. Yeah. Just saying it just to get out of a fight. Yeah, that's not good.

it's not worth it um yeah i just finished uh i just finished this trial on a case that was super important to forensic science it was actually the namesake of of my center the perlmutter's uh the pearl mutter's center for legal justice at cardozozo law so ike and lorry perlmutter's DNA was stolen by a neighbor and you know it's a nutty story you could read about it online I did read about it online it's crazy fucking crazy and but I had a I had an expert a so-called expert on the stand and there was an email where they um it was an unaccredited DNA lab and someone that work for him, gets the results of DNA testing, one round of the results. And she says, the good news is we have a full profile.

The bad news is it's not associated with the promoters. And I said to him in words or substance, why would it ever be bad news for a scientist if one particular person was implicated in a crime or not, aren't they supposed to just give the facts and in a moment of candor I think it's one of the few times this has happened in all my years doing this the guy said you know I wouldn't have used those words and it had no place and it wasn't an email that he wrote it was an email that someone that worked for him wrote and I almost said right in front of that Jerry good for you man that's super rare and I mean the case is is I think it's an important one for forensic science because their DNA was stolen

at a deposition over some petty shit. It was about a tennis dispute in their community. And they're lured to this deposition and their neighbor takes their DNA without their consent. How did he do it? He had a former crime scene analyst and some retired deputy chief of police from Toronto because this guy. from Canada come down and the former crime scene analyst sits at the deposition and they planned it all beforehand and they made sure that they did not handle paper that Ike Perlmutter would handle and they made sure that no one touched this water bottle that Laurie Perlmutter was going

handle and they hand him this phony exhibit and they had it worked out before that they would only touch the bottom corner of it and they have they have a water bottle sitting in front of Lori Perlmutter and they ask questions about this dispute over the tennis center and you know when they leave it was treated like a crime scene and it was like some vigilante justice type of shit where they send all this stuff to an unaccredited lab, who then sends it to an accredited lab. And instead of waiting for the results to come in from this accredited lab, the unaccredited lab starts interpreting it. And they're having pressure put on them by this man that ultimately accused Ike and Lori of being involved in this awful crime. What was the

All right. So it doesn't make sense without context. So here's what happens. Ike Perlmutter is, you know, the former chairman of Marvel. He's very reclusive by all accounts. He and Lori don't have children. And they live a very quiet life in Palm Beach. He was an avid tennis player. This is about 14 years ago. Avid tennis player. And he became very friendly with the woman that was the tennis pro. She was a single mother. She would set him up with tennis games. And he became friends with her. So she sold real estate on the side. I mean, this is like a fucking episode of like Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm at the beginning.

Then it like goes off the rails and descends into the depths of hell. so bear with me okay so a man moves into or a man had been living at or moves into their neighborhood and he becomes friends with this other couple who also sell real estate the wife sells real estate and apparently they approach the tennis pro and they're like we should team up on real estate and she's like no it's just my side hustle I'm going to do it alone so this guy from Canada writes this memo and And in the memo, there's all these accusations about this woman that she could go to federal prison and she's committing she could be, you know, that there's bid rigging going on because they never sent her, they never sent her tennis pro contract out for bid. It was just kind of like nutty stuff. Just because she wouldn't go into business with her.

I mean, that's our theory. That's my opinion. And yeah, that was our theory in the case. So Ike stands up for her. He's a very loyal guy, stands up for the people that he, you know, is friends with. And he thought she was getting bullied. So she sued the guy for defamation and Ike and another resident in this condo complex paid for her legal fees. So about a year later, mail starts to arrive in this community.

and it is the most awful shit you have ever heard, and it's accusing the Canadian guy of being a child molester, of being a murderer, it's horrific, twisted sick shit. So it's about a year after this tennis center dispute, and there's misspelled Hebrew words and Jewish stars all over it. So this guy thinks naturally that Ike

and his wife are behind it like they have nothing better to do all right so because he's so convinced that they did it and or that they were involved and he you know initially suspected that other people might be involved this guy's going around and swabbing DNA off of with a Q-tip off of cars he's digging through trash in the condo community and he's like on this mission to collect people's DNA. So he calls them to a deposition about the Tennis Center case, and that's where this all went down. So once they collect their DNA, this unaccredited lab claims that DNA taken off of the hate mail matches Lori Perlmutter's DNA from the water bottle at the deposition.

The problem was that this unaccredited lab didn't wait for the report. from the accredited lab, and that run of the DNA that this woman was relying on, the accredited lab discarded it because the man that actually did the test and contaminated the machine. And he knew it, so he didn't rely on it. So years and years and years go by, and well after they knew that Lori had nothing to do with this, In fact, in 2017, a man got arrested in Canada, and he got arrested because a package got intercepted at the border by Homeland Security. And it had samples of the hate mail latex gloves, you know, in the package. And it was a former business associate of this Canadian guy and their relationship went sour.

and I thought the case was over. You know, in 2019, I believe the guy gets arrested again and there's a detailed affidavit. So it's clear that this man is responsible for it. So in any event, in 2016, the, I believe it was 2016, there's an article in the fucking deal book in the New York Times saying that Lori Perlmutter DNA is on that hate mail. And then there's another one in the Globe and Mail, which, which is a big Canadian paper. So it was a defamation case against this guy

and against this lawyer for a Chubb because Chub helped this Chubb lawyer, federal insurance, also known as Chub, helps him draw up the blueprints for collecting their DNA at the deposition. So it was a super gratifying case. We won a $50 million verdict and, you know, he was found liable for defamation, abuse of process, which is abuse of the legal

process. And, you know, it's taken Ike and Lori all of these years to have their name restored in court. And they'd kill me if I admitted it and it would be a violation of their confidence and my professional obligation, but they've spent an untold fortune. And, you know, the case is important for forensic science because DNA is supposed to be the holy grail and you can't have private citizens running around trying to collect people's DNA without knowing what they're doing you could be leaning on someone and have good intentions to get results but if I told you or if I said to Jamie here's my suspect take a look at that. these fingerprints and tell me if they match him or her or here's my suspect here's their genetic

profile tell me if it matches you don't realize the i mean sometimes the error rate skyrockets by as much as 50% with fingerprints over 80% and fingerprint analysts will agree and they will say yeah I know that that happens, and if someone tells me who the suspect is, and only who the suspect is, and I'm comparing it, I think the error rate goes up, but not with me. Not with me. I mean, again, it's that phenomenon where you just can't think that you would be biased. So, look, the case was super important because I think it, beyond restoring their name, and, you know, it's the name-same. of the center where we do this work. It also preserves the integrity of forensic science and especially DNA, which is really one of the few super reliable forms of forensic science. But even that

when put in the wrong hands or if it's exposed to subjectivity and people's belief that they have the right person, it's vulnerable. And signs shouldn't be vulnerable. It should be, it's either A or B. It's either yes or no, especially with DNA. This episode is brought to you by Visible. When your phone plans as good as visible, you've got to tell your people. It's the ultimate wireless hack to save money and still get great coverage and a reliable connection. Get one line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot for $25 a month. Taxes and fees included all on Verizon's 5G network. Plus, now for a limited time, new members can get the Visible Plan for just $19 a month

for the first 26 months. Use promo code Switch 26 and save beyond the season. It's a deal so good you're going to want to tell your people. switch now at visible.com slash rogan terms apply limited time offers subject to change see visible dot com for planned features and network management details so can i ask you a question yeah when you said that her the evidence against her the DNA evidence had to be thrown out because the machine was contaminated yeah how was it contaminated and how did that implicate her DNA so what happens is um when you're I don't want to go too deep into DNA analysis, but it is actually interesting. When you're conducting DNA testing, the manufacturer of the machine, I think it's called the PowerPlex Plus, they ask you to run what's called a positive control and a negative control to make sure that the machine is correctly calibrated. because what it's doing through electrophoresis is shooting out what's called an electrophoregram on the other end

so that you're able to you're able to do what they what's referred to as calling alleles so you're recalling you know a chromosome pairing at a specific genetic marker right so and they called them there's various different loci or locations where you either have two alleles or one. You get one from your mom, one from your father, one from your dad. And sometimes the one from your father might not show, but your mothers will show, but there'll be two alleles at most at a specific location. So they want to make sure that the machine is working properly. So the manufacturer has the lab analyst every time you do it, run a positive control,

meaning that you'll put a solution through the machine and it should on the other end give you very specific results and he accidentally pipetted or took the solution from her DNA mixture instead of from the positive control mixture and put that through the machine so when he was running the test

her DNA is already mixed in there But he realized he made a mistake. So when he issued his report, he didn't rely on that run because when I say run, it's another, it's another, you'll run the DNA on different occasions and sometimes on different dates because you want to make sure that your genetic profile will never change. My genetic profile will never change. So when you were looking at somebody's genetic profile, it should be consistent. So when he saw that, wait a second, the first run of this doesn't match the second and third or the fourth, he realized he made a mistake. But without having the lab analyst that's doing the interpretation, you know, weighing in on the results and you're antsy to get an answer and you're leaning on an unaccredited lab saying, Interpret the results. Interpret the results. Money's no object. There's an email that said that. You know, instead of waiting, she relies on this run of the DNA. And, you know, then what happens, happened. But at some point, this Canadian guy came to learn what actually happened and kept on going. And kept on going and kept on going. And there was evidence that he wanted hundreds of millions of dollars.

from my clients, you know, I think what turned out to be a shitty situation for him, because no doubt getting hate mail like that has to be disturbing and upsetting to the family. Did it turn out that he had any sort of relationship with the Canadian man who was sending him to hate mail? Yeah, that was his former, one of his former business colleagues who he had a vicious falling out with, and he kept it from everyone. So I think that the inference, in my opinion, the inference is that at some point, and in fact, there's an allegation in the hate mail where it says you were involved in the murder of these two people. He accuses this man in Canada months after the hate mail began to arrive of spreading that rumor.

So I believe that he knew it was him the whole time. And at some point, I believe he was trying to shake the Pearl Motors down. So he wanted money from them, otherwise he was going to go public? And he went public. How much did you request? You know, look, there's an article in the Globe and Mail saying that he wants $600 million. There was an article. He admitted on the stand that it was $100 million.

So he was just trying to get paid. Well, that's my opinion. That was the jury's opinion. What does he do? He was some embattled, in my opinion, an embattled businessman in Canada. He had like an executive recruiting company, but there was all sorts of public information out there that he was worked on the Toronto Harbor Commission and been involved in what the press called cloak and dagger campaigns where he was wasting public funds. So, you know, he bragged about all the lawsuits he's been involved in. And so I think the jury saw through it and, you know, look, again, sometimes you become really close with your clients and that's not always a great thing.

I'm guilty of that a lot. But these are wonderful people, reclusive. They give most of their money away to charity. And to watch these people get dragged through the mud for over a decade. And, you know, there was evidence in the case that this is interesting because I initially fought this. On the day, the first day of jury selection, they had been invited to go to Mar-Lago and sit at the president's table for a Halloween party. It was just prospective jurors filling out questionnaires. so the defense and it was really i think the attorneys for chub or for the lawyer that worked for chub

wanted to introduce evidence they got photos of the party and they wanted to introduce this evidence and there was one day during the trial where they went to the white house because one of their close friends was appointed to be the ambassador for india and they used to use that against them during the trial and I fought it tooth and nail and then I finally said you know what fuck it I'm gonna let it come in I stopped fighting it and I knew that the jurors on their questionnaire filled out who they publicly admired most and least two of them wrote they admired the president the most One of them said they admire him the least.

So I really had to speak to that juror and say, during my closing argument, you know, what they're doing here is they're trying to say that Lori Perlmutter's reputation doesn't matter, that she can't emote and suffer humiliation or public ridicule, and that you should disregard her because of who she's friends with, who she votes for, The fact that her husband was came here and literally with $200 in his pocket and, you know, ascended. It's the weird paradox about success. You know, you get there and people are like, oh, these fucking rich people, but these are like, they represent the best in all of us. Lori Promutter with her free time started to work at the gift shop at NYU and because she liked the feeling of selling flowers and little gifts to people that were going through terrible times and she ends up becoming a board member at NYU and they give $50 million to start the Prameter Cancer Center. I mean, who among us wouldn't want to aspire to that? And they were trying to say, but she doesn't matter. At one point she was asked the question, you know because with defamation your reputation is on the line right and you have to argue

reputational damage and they said well isn't your reputation bound up in your husbands and they said this to a jury of like four or five women and I thought what a dumb fucking thing to say in my opinion at least it was like and I was able to say to them during the closing they're saying she doesn't matter and that she doesn't she's not her own person her reputation so it's like these little victories help restore my faith in the system because if billionaires can get awarded $50 million, which is what they got awarded, I think that that's the jury saying her reputation mattered. And not only did her reputation matter, but it mattered to the point where you can't just tear

somebody down when you know the facts and what just seems so insane that he would pursue that i mean the guy literally owns the ike pearl mutter center for legal justice and you're like yeah i'm going to test that i mean i'm going to test that justice just bullshit my way i mean the the irony of that is that the center was born out of their experience in this case really yeah the center was born out of, at one point, I was offered this role to start a new post-conviction center. Up until four years ago, five years ago, I did work at the Innocence Project. And when I was offered this position at the same law school, a Cardozo Law, where the Innocence Project was born, they said, if you get that role, the Perlmutter's, we're going to fund it

for the first 10 years because we realize that if you're wrongfully accused in this country, of a crime you didn't commit, if you don't have the resources to fight it like we did, that you're really in trouble. And for them to have that kind of insight while going through this, you know, it's remarkable. I'm indebted to them for life. I mean, they've become like surrogate family to me, but yeah, the center was born out of their experience in this case. So good came out of it.

Does the guy have the money to pay them? I don't know. I don't know, but I'm going to find out. But, you know, we have post-trial motions that the judge has to decide. And then, you know, once we get, hopefully we get the judgment entered, Ike is not the guy to pick a fight with. He was standing up for his wife's honor, really. And, um, look.

Sometimes you pick a fight with the wrong person, and what do they say? You fuck around and find out. There's a lot of people that fuck around a lot until they find out. And it sounds like this guy might have been one of those people. I don't know. I don't know. I mean. Perhaps.

Perhaps. Allegedly. It just seems like there's people that are involved in conflict their whole fucking life, man. And they never get out of that pattern. I don't get it. Yeah. Unhealthy people. they develop a pattern

they develop a pattern of thinking and behaving you know well I don't know if it's the empath in me but I try to see like what are you thinking why can't you realize I've gone down the wrong path and let me course correct

and you just end up with theories I mean look I can understand why a former detective might be concerned about liability so they can't just say well here's what I was up to all this time I guess I can understand that but I can understand the thinking and not just saying I've gone down the wrong path and some people start to believe their own lies, I think. Some people start to believe their own theories.

Human psychology is like, it's vast and abstract and so complicated. It varies. It varies from individual to individual. What they can justify, what they can sort of rationalize in their head. look I told you at the beginning that there's only been like a handful of cases where I was like yeah that can't be there's some there's got to be something missing from that story that you're not telling me but watch this

two officers in 1998 were on patrol in New York City in Brooklyn on Pickin Avenue gunfire breaks out and literally as they're rolling down the street the gunfire breaks out one of the officers looks to his left

and sees the muzzle flash of the gun that was used to kill this young man Trevor Vieira he exits the patrol car draws on the man and says drop the gun the guy's pointing

the gun still that was used to shoot Trevor Vieira and there's a tense moment and this officer has testified that there was a 14 year old girl in the area

or he otherwise would have just shot the guy so he literally catches the murderer with the gun smoking in his hand. Why you've used that expression over the past two decades? Oh, it's a smoking gun. This is the fucking smoking

gun. He finally drops the gun. His name is Eduardo Rodriguez. He's put in handcuffs. And you know, you

get documents. as you're going through the discovery process during post-conviction. You get it from the prosecutor or from the police. And there's a radio call by a detective that says perps in custody, contemporaneous with the arrest. They arrest two men. One guy standing next to him and the guy that Eduardo Rodriguez that shot the gun. He's placed under arrest. he's brought to the precinct

and he's delivered into the arms of no other than one of the most corrupt sadistic detectives to ever work homicide in Brooklyn in my opinion Louis Scarcella no why should that name sound familiar to you or to others

because Louis Scarsella is the guy that framed Derek Hamilton, who's the deputy director of the Perlmutter Center for legal justice at Cardozo. Louis Scarcella and his partner, I think his name is Schimmel or Chimel, Kimmel, it's C-H-M-I-L. These guys were so notorious for framing people for murders they didn't commit. that there have been 21 cases where people's convictions were vacated where they were the lead detectives. 21.

Derricks is one of them. So, Eduardo Rodriguez is delivered to the precinct, smoking gun in his hand. And a couple of hours later, he's brought to the home of Nelson Cruz, who was 17 years old at the time, 16 turning 17. And it's the story of these cops that while he was in the precinct, that he was yelling and screaming and tearing the place up. I didn't do it. Nelson Cruz did it. He shot him and ran and dropped the gun and I just picked it up. The officer that arrested him never saw Nelson Cruz. He didn't. see someone shoot and drop a gun. The story is literally ludicrous. Nelson Cruz is arrested and

charged with murder. So when I heard the story, I was like, there's no fucking way that this is what happened. You're leaving something out. And I then read the trial transcript. There's another guy that shows up at the precinct named Andre Bellinger. And I Andre Bellinger says, yeah, I saw Nelson Cruz do it too. And he shows up at the precinct and he's told what kind of gun was used. He's told that Nelson Cruz is the suspect. And then he picks him out of a lineup after being told we're going to put Nelson Cruz in a lineup.

All three of those things are gross violations of, um, investigatory practices and this has been established for decades so this guy ends up put on trial and they somehow claim that they don't have um they can't locate this guy that is saying that he witnessed the crime. They can't locate him. He's not around to be located. So the person who had the gun in his hand that is shooting the gun who they believe who says Nelson Cruz did it and Nelson Cruz's trial, he's nowhere to be found. wouldn't you think that the prosecutors would put that man Eduardo Rodriguez on the stand

so he could explain how he picked up the gun he could explain what did you see you saw Nelson Cruz do this and he ran and dropped the gun and he's never put on the stand it's like a three-day trial the only person put on the stand that claimed to have been a witness is this guy Andre Bellinger so I mean

Some people have like bad luck, shitty luck, or cataclysmic fucking apocalyptically bad luck. And Nelson Cruz just happens to have, you know, won that shit lottery. Nelson Cruz ends up before a judge about eight years ago and about six years ago. and it's a post-conviction hearing and this guy, Andre Bellinger, who claims that he watched Nelson Cruz do it, is outed as a liar. There are eyewitnesses that were with him that night who said he wasn't at that murder scene. He was like blocks away with me. He was outed as a liar on so many different occasions it becomes like it would be laughable if it wasn't so serious.

After these post-conviction proceedings during which 20-some-odd witnesses were called, the courtroom is packed on the day of the decision because the expectation amongst the press and in the legal community is Nelson Cruz is about to get exonerated. This judge had exonerated people that had been investigated by Lewis Scarcella. and she's acting kind of weird and erratic and she rules against Nelson Cruz and contradicts herself on multiple occasions and this is in 2019

and we later 2020 and we later learn she never takes the bench again and she resigns because she has advanced stage Alzheimer's disease. Oh, Jesus. I have an affidavit that from an investigator that says her husband said that she had been suffering from these symptoms for years before. There was a judicial complaint filed because she wasn't showing up to court.

There's a pro-publica article about it, about this whole debacle. And, you know, it's stories like this. And so the Pearl Mutter Center for Legal Justice is working on the case. And, you know, thankfully, we're before the conviction integrity unit in Brooklyn. And it's led by a really special guy. Eric Gonzalez is the district attorney in Brooklyn. And he listens to these cases. He has a real conviction integrity unit.

So I'm hopeful that once we present the case to them, that we'll get him some relief. But to think about, he was paroled in 2023. He's a mess. He walks around nervous. He's got terrible anxiety and paranoid. He's a wonderful guy. And he's so stone cold innocent. And you just wonder how and why this shit can happen to someone.

And, you know, it's like the perfect constellation. of like you got this these crooked detectives who have already been found to have ruined a bunch of people's lives you have the smoking gun found in the hand of the murderer who mysteriously disappears and if you're wondering so why why do they believe this guy how does he go to the precinct and he raises hell and says Nelson cruised it and i picked up the gun even though there's no evidence of that what would be your guess Well, he's probably some sort of a witness than something else. It was pretty well known back at the time that Lewis Garcella, other detectives in Brooklyn homicide and all the boroughs had informants.

I mean, that's my best guess. Why else would you just believe? And they've gone as far as to try to discredit their own and say, well, Piotti must not have seen him drop the gun and run. This guy has been consistent throughout He hears the gunfire looks Sees the muzzle flash He literally witnesses the murder So, you know

There was a joint FBI Task Force with the NYPD going at the time So yeah, they relied on informants What's the state of the guy who actually committed The murder currently? He's out Jesus He's running around the streets

Who knows where he is So So if your guy gets exonerated, does this guy get tried? No, that very rarely happens. That very, I mean... So that guy just committed murder and he's free. Oh, that's happened. You know how many times that's happened to anyone that's done post-conviction work?

But you don't even think that's a possibility. You're just dismissing it. Like, no, the murderer is going to go free. Yeah. because in order for me to expect that that would happen would be to defy logic as I know it in this world because think about what happens if municipality admits we did something horrible and it was a mistake and we did the wrong thing there's going to be a civil rights lawsuit I mean, look, to Brooklyn's credit with this DA, they have done that and done the right thing.

But in terms of then going after the person that they think did it, you know, it's 2000, almost 26, and this crime happened in 1998. It's 30 years later to be able to reassemble the witnesses and some of whom are probably dead or hard to find. but it's very rare that once there's an exoneration and you're able to point to who the true killer is, very rare that law enforcement will go after the person that defense counsel has established actually did it. That's insane. Is it? Yeah. Because if the defense counsel has ruled that this other guy is innocent and that the police officer,

did see the guy execute that person how do you not try that person with murder now you're you're stumbling into the how could that the the how could that be's of our legal justice system it just it doesn't happen i mean clement clementia geary who i've talked about before who was exonerated from death row um you know If there's any doubt about this phenomenon of children killing their parents, I think that that was laid to rest a few days ago. It happens. It happens a lot more than was recently publicized. You know, the real killer was the daughter of this, of her mother and her grandmother. Clementiagiri gets, you know, charged, put on death row. And in the middle of his retrial, you know, she all but confessed on the stand to me. They have her blood mixed with her mother's blood at the crime scene. And in a trail leading to the bathroom where the killer cleaned up, she confessed on six or seven different occasions, not under duress, not to law enforcement, to various people around town. She's roaming the streets. The day that Clemente

got exonerated, I, you know, like, I said, you know, I think I might have quoted, like, Jim Morrison. I was like, there's a killer on the Rome. And she's in Kentucky, and you better go get her you know and they were like ah objection you know but yeah it happens i mean it's my belief that she's she's stone cold guilty and they haven't gone after her and that happens a lot i mean look the word exoneration is thrown around but it's like derrick's case is rare he was declared actually innocent. Sometimes the conviction gets vacated. Sometimes it, um, you know, they decide not to retry the person and agree to time served, but you're pushing a massive boulder up a steep hill every time. Like Nelson Cruz should not have to carry this weight around anymore. He's had

other lawyers that have done a great job representing him. You know, we've come in now. How much Tom, did he wind up doing? I think 26 years. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, it's horrifying. Jesus. I mean, when you've done so much time that you've paroled out and are still trying to prove your innocence.

Jesus. Oh. I hate to give you indigestion. I mean, but it's, this is like. I'm past tears at this point I'm more like we just got to keep going and keep fighting

and when you get these little victories here and there we've had a few releases recently that were super encouraging where you're able to get people a second chance where you're able to you know

get it to the point where they could even though they didn't do it plead guilty. We just had a release. She was actually my co-counsel in the Clementi Gehry case, Mari Palmer, and her client pled guilty, but we believe he's innocent. He did it to get out. He had done 24 years, and he'd had enough. But for her to get it to the place where he could even plead guilty after serving all that time, you know, innocent people plead guilty all the time. Yeah, they do just to get a lighter sentence. yeah it's a dirty business you're in buddy filthy it's filthy and it's got all these tentacles

because if you're doing post-conviction work um it's not just the wrongfully accused and convicted it's also you know we do clemency work commutations and pardons we um you start to wade into the the human mess and you see that like people have made mistakes and are worth a second chance what they do with it is up to them but some of the stuff you can't explain some of these prosecutions are political. Look, I'm dealing with a case right now that's like at the intersection of wrongful conviction and what the fuck are we doing with our immigration policy in this country. And I don't even want to mention his name because I don't want to, you know, or the state

because I don't want to sacrifice the good work that we're doing to get him a public hearing. but I can say this much. This is a guy from Albania that came to this country in the early 70s and had to sit in a refugee camp in Italy for damn near a month under horrid conditions just to come here to try to live a life. He's in his early 20. He's at a gas station

He has a $100 bill For $5 a gas He goes into the gas station The guy takes the $100 bill He doesn't have change He says when you get $5 come back I'm going to hold on to this $100 bill And they get into an argument

He won't give him back the $100 bill So he leaves and goes to get his brother and he tells his brother about it they return to the gas station they have a gun in the back seat of their car his brother tells him you stay here i'm going to go in and try to talk some sense into this guy get your money back give him five bucks my client's sitting in the car and gunshots erupt he goes in the backseat gets the gun goes around to the side comes into the gas station it comes into the you know the you remember back in the 80s where you would go in to pay and it would be like a little a little front desk area

and the gas station attendant is holding the gun and he looks to his left and his brother is bleeding out the gas station attendant had shot his brother in the stomach still holding the gun shaking he shoots him one time dead shoots the gas station attendant dead his brother miraculously survives and he's put on trial for murder

and he goes to trial the first time remember he's in his early 20s and it's a hung jury most of them are in favor of acquittal goes to trial a second time and gets convicted the judge must have seen that this was damn there as close to self-defense as it gets he got sentenced to like four to seven years he was was out in just under four years. He had become an accomplished boxer in prison. He's lived the last 51 years of his life without so much as a traffic ticket. He goes to New York, joins the union as a super for buildings. He pays taxes, social security, pays into his pension, builds a life for himself, has five kids, eight grandchildren, and he's living in upstate New York,

leaves the country a couple of years ago to go to Albania to see family, comes back and gets stopped at the border. Somehow is not detained at the border, but they start removal proceedings on him. Why? Because there is a citizen at this point? No, he's not, but he's a green card? Yeah, it's a green card holder. This episode is brought to you by the farmer's dog.

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the state there are self-defense laws that did not exist then many states have stand-your-ground laws i think under different circumstances he doesn't even and if the laws had evolved he doesn't even get charged i mean you see your brother shot and the facts are not in dispute about this i've researched it exhaustively. You know, isn't that the type of person we want who has contributed to this society for 51 years and built a family? What happened with the brother and the attendant? They got into an argument and he called, the attendant called him some slur against Albanians and they started to argue and he just shot him on the stomach. there's this isn't even it's not in dispute at all what happened and there's a law that if you

committed a violent crime you're removable but for 51 years he was not removed from this country and he lived here as a green card older and he paid taxes and he built a family and a life and So this removal was all during the Biden administration? No. Unfortunately, it was during the Trump administration. But he said it was two years ago? It was when he was first asked at the airport and they flagged him, I believe it was during the Biden administration. But no enforcement action was taken.

It was during the current, and this isn't an indictment of the president. This is just during the current. administration that they started removal proceedings against him to try to have him removed from the country. So did they just go through all the old cases and find out anybody that had any sort of a violent offense? I believe that that's what happened. Nobody knows, but that's what I believe happened. So again, I made the mistake, or maybe it's a virtue at this point, I'm getting to know this family. And I've met every sibling.

There's two boys and three girls, and they're literally like some of the most wonderful people I've ever met. I wish I didn't like them as much as I did. And I stay in close contact with one of the, I mean, I guess I could give first names with one of the sons, Anthony and his sister, Joanna. And to see the love that they have for their father and the fear that they're living under that this man could get deported and sent to Montenegro. Why Montenegro?

Because that's where you get sent if you're Albanian, if you have Albanian citizenship. Why there, though? I think that that's the protectorate of Albania at this point. Oh, okay. So, and to watch. them, they went to one removal proceeding and the judge, I have the transcripts of the proceeding and the judge is like saying to the prosecutors, at one point he said, what are you doing here? He starts speaking Albanian to my client. And look, I don't know immigration law that

well, I'm not an immigration lawyer, but I spoke to the immigration lawyer and he's like, look, I'm afraid that they're going to take him. I mean, ICE is waiting outside courthouses and they're going to take this guy, he's in his 70s, take him away from his family and his grandchildren. So again, you don't just see these wrongful conviction cases. You see cases that are like, this man has built a life. And if you start to get beneath the surface and you see the pain and agony and fear that people are living, they're living it day to day. We were able to get a delay into February for his removal proceeding. So I'm now trying to get him pardoned. Because if he gets pardoned, there's no basis upon which to remove him. And, you know, we have a team in my

center that's working on it. And you want, these are the kind of people you want to fight for once you get to know them. So I, um, there's like, I don't want to just tell night. after nightmare, but the reason why it's important, I think, for people to hear this is it's not just what you're seeing on TV or what you're hearing about. I mean, what basis do we have to remove a grandfather who's lived here for 50 years and contributed to this society and paid his taxes and paid into Social Security and was part of a union? And just like, I'm looking for a flaw. I really am. I'm looking for. like a reason for me not to like them and I just get drawn in more and more. They're just

wonderful people and these are the kinds of things that are like worth fighting for. I think what's going on with ICE is one of the things that's going on with quotas for speeding tickets and things along those lines is that they have numbers that they want to achieve and they've openly talked about this that they want to remove a certain amount of people per week. And when they do that, think everything's on the table. Then they start showing up at Home Depot. Instead of like looking for gangbangers, looking for criminals and cartel members, they go to whatever's easiest pickings so they can get numbers up. Do you know Ed Calderon? Do you know who he is? He's, he worked, he was a Mexican military guy who now is an American citizen, but he reports extensively on the

cartels and just was telling me some horror stories about ice raids and one of them was they took this guy who had been brought over here when he was a baby but didn't have American citizenship his family you know came over here illegally lived here for 20 years can't speak Spanish they deport him send them to Tijuana can't speak Spanish can't speak Spanish does not speak Spanish he is essentially an American citizen he just never lived in anywhere else. He just doesn't have the paperwork. He's not a criminal. They sent him over to Tijuana. And now he has to live in Mexico. He doesn't know what the fuck to do. He's on the streets. There's no idea. It doesn't have any money. Yeah, I don't understand. I wish that

there was, it's sort of a black box immigration in terms of what is what the policy exactly is. and why do you want to continue this narrative that seems to be, again, more of a human rights issue than a political issue? Like, what is the endgame here? The end game is to get as many illegals out as they can because so many were brought in over the last four years. Well, that's a fair argument. I understand that. But do we want to be getting rid of seven-year-old men that? No.

Really, I mean, I got to tell you, I have an older brother, and if someone that did something like that to him, I can't tell you I wouldn't have done the same fucking thing. Of course. Almost anybody who has family would say that. Go and you see your brother shot, and you know the whole circumstances surrounding it. Yeah. So I just don't, and it's not, these immigration judges I've come to learn don't have much flexibility. You know, they're hard and fast statutes about whether or not someone is considered

removable. And, you know, my appeal is really to the prosecutor is like, why are you doing this? But then they're following orders from someone above them that's telling them this is your case. You're assigned to it to the best job you can. So that kind of shit just rolls downhill unfortunately yeah and and you know I try not to I try not to wear this um from my own mental health I'm trying to keep the empath in me in check a little bit more because but sometimes it's difficult like Nelson's case this case that I'm talking about in The only reason I'm not using names in that case is I don't want to alienate. There's great people in the state that this happened in, which wasn't New York, that I think actually care and have shown that, yeah, this doesn't seem right.

And we want to make sure that you get a public hearing. I'm confident that we will before February. And I like my chances if we do because I think that the story, he's worth pardoning. He's worth saving. but you know I don't I don't understand I mean that's what I meant by this human mess it's like I wish there was a more transparent process of how and why people get pardons certainly on the state and on the federal level I don't get it well I mean the nudiest thing is that the president can pardon people that you could just

decide because you're the president or the governor you can just decide this person i like them it's an amazing um it's an amazing um responsibility and it's kind of an awesome power to have and how you go about exercising it becomes challenging right because of Okay, it's real weird. Like, how about during the Biden administration when some of them, Biden clearly didn't even sign the pardons? It was all Autopenn. And he had the most pardons of any president ever. So you have political influence. You have people that would like to get someone pardoned and you know someone inside. Do you think you can make this happen? Well, he's pardoning 9,000 people. Fuck it. Let's just throw that one in there. Yeah, I mean, I don't think he's, I don't really know the auto pen issue that well. I don't know if he's. saw those, didn't see them, I don't know what, it's like organized chaos for every presidency. You know, Bill Clinton pardoned people at the end of his terms that fucking bananas when you look at them. Biden did it with his son, you know.

Biden did it with his family members that weren't even accused of preemptive pardon. Yeah. I don't even know that that was a thing before. It never was. He did it with Fauci. Preemptive back to 2014. Yeah, listen, I don't, some of the pardons that the current administration issues are like good for him. Yeah.

Others are like head scratchers and you're like, what the fuck? Right. But like I, you know, what makes one person deserving and another not is a difficult. thing to understand. I, like, I have, I've been to the White House. I've advocated for pardons. It's a frustrating experience because you know that there are thousands of people doing the same thing. And you try your best to say, this is why this case means something. But where it goes from there is hard to understand. I think I have tremendous respect for an admiration of the current pardons are.

Alice Johnson, because she's been there before. You know, she was actually incarcerated and pardoned by the president. And she's now in that role as the pardons are. Who was she pardoned by? President Trump. Wow, during his first prayer. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. And she's... What was she wrongfully accused of? Some drug offense. And she did a ton of time. And she's gone on to become this amazing... not just human being, but advocate for people to get second chances, and he designated her the pardons are. Now, I think between her and getting to the president and making her case for pardons

is difficult because there's layers of influence in between. But, you know, I have cases before them right now that have very prominent people backing them. and you know you would hope that they end up you know on his desk and seeing getting some relief I have one client that I know Mike Tyson is backs him publicly privately he was a childhood friend of his his name is Spencer Bowens and you know he's one of many people that were sentenced under these crazy regimes of like let's weigh let's weigh the drugs so what's heavier crack or cocaine cocaine all right what's heavier heroin or crack heroin all right so they start to weigh and what's more destructive who fucking nose. Crack was pretty damn destructive. And, you know, Spencer's been in prison for more than three decades. And he would have been out if these nutty drug laws didn't exist. And if they

applied retroactively since they have been abolished. And he's a guy that's sitting in there and I speak to and I start to lose hope. I don't lose hope. I start to feel his hopeless. nests over the phone because he should have been granted relief in the courts and he's someone that just really, really deserves to be out. You know, and I have, there's a bunch of cases like that where we're trying so hard and you have to at the same time, at the same time you express, you know, confidence in the people that are responsible for this stuff. But you also want to make sure that you're not offending them by saying, look, I know you have a bunch of cases. Emery Jones is another one.

I do a lot of work with Jay-Z's mom and Jay-Z. He has a foundation. I have one, and we mentor college students together in the summer, pay for their last year of college. And Emery is a childhood friend of Jay-Z's and has his full support, Rock Nation. you know Jay Z's company there behind him and he's another one that was convicted and spent decades in prison for some drug crime and he's come out and checked every box he's a mentor he's a pillar of the community he's done so many amazing things but he's under the weight of this old conviction and he's denied job opportunities and you know you just you just got to

keep pushing and keep fighting and hopefully your timing is right and you speak to the right person and you get good news one day but the odds are so the odds are so i don't want to say stacked against you but yeah it's who you know who has influence at that particular time with the right person the administration what kind of punishments are there for people like the the corrupt guy in Brooklyn that you were talking about. Whatever happened to him? He's roaming the streets. He's roaming the streets.

And look, that's the most, you know, the cop, Louis Carcella. Yeah. He denies any, I mean, in the face of these 21 cases that have been vacated, he denies any wrongdoing. So 21 different people. 21. He incarcerated them. Yeah.

And, you know, you know, one of the things that I'm thinking. might be a good idea because we can all go on the internet and look this shit up like if you look up louis garcell on the internet i bet you there's a wikipedia page that talks about his corruption and lists all the people we can all go on the internet one of the things that i think has been um underused and i think should be part of people's calculus rather than reading a headline or listening to me or you or anyone is read the trial transcripts make your own judgment I mean I don't um I don't know what better way there is if you want to say well what actually happened what happened at this person's trial that you're and why do they deserve a second

chance. Listen, there's a dear friend of mine who runs an amazing organization called the Reform Alliance. Her name is Jessica Jackson. Fantastic lawyer. And, I mean, is in the bowels of the system fighting for change. And right now, there's a bill that the president's own pollster, forget the guy's name, has found that 80 percent of mass. And, you know, Ag of voters support this act. It's called the Saper Supervision Act. And it's actually a system that rewards people for when they get out for doing the right thing. So that if you want to make sure that you're, you know, when you get out, there are terms of your supervision. How many times you check in with your parole or probation officer? How often are you being subject

to drug tests? Is there an end in sight? This act. Act actually is a merit system, and it's heavily supported by Republicans, by Democrats, by everyone in between. And you would hope that something like that would get past and get pushed through because the Saper Supervision Act is a way that we can reward people for doing the right thing and hold people accountable that aren't doing the right thing when they get out. But your question about what happens to the cops or the prosecutors that do this, they have immunity to one of the most frustrating things in the world is that most of the time qualified immunity applies. I mean, I could see immunity for a mistake, perhaps, but if there's a pattern and it's clearly corruption and you have a person that is taking away. people's freedom how is there not a crime committed how is how are they not convicted or at least

charged with crimes well listen for those listeners that want to get involved in the process and actually make a difference you got to get involved this isn't just like activists speak you can make a fucking difference the person that ends up in a position to actually exercise their executive authority, executive clemency, whether it's a governor or a president, you should be a little more invested. I mean, I had this situation. I gave this guy every benefit of the doubt. And I thought I made a breakthrough. And I mean, this is almost sadistic, I think. And I'm sure I'll get a bunch of hate mail about this. And I could really give a shit. I went through this process with Governor DeSantis in Florida. And I think he was

actually fucking with me, to be honest with you. And he listened to the case as a favor. And there's a public hearing of the clemency board. And this guy's name is Michael Giles. And again, read the transcript. As a matter of fact, I brought a passage to read here. This is another mindbender. This guy's in the Air Force. He is in Tampa. He ends up taking leave for the weekend. and goes up from Tampa to Famu in Tallahassee. Never been there before. He has a firearm that he's licensed to carry. He actually went into a police station to get his carry license.

Military guy never been in trouble in his life. Goes up to Tallahassee and a massive fight breaks out in this club where they're at. Literally zero testimony that he has anything to do with this fight. fight. The fight spills out into the parking lot, and it's being instigated by one guy. And this guy that's instigating the fight was thrown out of the club. And his own friends testified in the trial, we were afraid he was going to hurt someone bad. My client, Michael Giles, ends up in a car with the people he came there with waiting for the person that had the keys to the car to come out and emerged from this melee

and this fight is going on all around him people testified they were petrified and he takes his gun and puts it in his pocket he's standing there like on the outskirts of this fight after he gets out of the car and goes to look for his friend that has the keys to the car the car was left unlockly but they couldn't leave because there was no ignition key

and he gets sucker punched and the guy that punched him He says, yeah, I look for the first person I could. Here, don't take it from me. Here's what he said at the trial. Here's what he said at the trial. First of all, his friends are testifying. This is from the trial, right?

That this man was acting, quote, crazy. That they were afraid he was going to, quote, attack someone. he was excited and acting crazy and talking and cursing and upset and agitated were you concerned that he was going to attack someone question answer yes I was or getting a fight answer yes I was that's why I told him to leave and that's why he was told to leave the club because he was wanting to fight someone isn't that correct witnesses testify question you saw Courtney thrower This is the guy that punched my client.

Jump on the individual with the plaid shirt, didn't you? The guy with the plaid shirt is my client. Yes, I did. Your testimony is Courtney Thrower leapt and attacked Mr. Giles from the front. Yeah, I was. That was the thing. Courtney then leaps toward Mr. Giles and takes a swing at his face. And it goes on and on and on that he took a running start, left his feet,

and punch my client in the face and look there's a melee going on so he's on the ground after getting punched and and the person that punched him didn't hold back he was asked at the trial question mr thrower is it your testimony that you ran with your entire body to strike this person answer yes question so you at a full runner a sprint use the weight of your body to impact this person in the head. Answer, yes. Question, was it your intention to knock him out? Answer, yes, it was. Question. And is there any doubt in your intention? Answer, no. Question, had this person actually done anything to you at any time whatsoever? Answer, physically, directly, no. question was it your intent to hurt this individual answer yes that's normally what you do when you

punch someone so on those facts as my client is laying on the ground and there's a melee going on where people are getting punched and kicked is he justified at that point to take his gun out and shoot in self-defense he shoots this guy in the leg and fragment of the bullet hit two other people. That's the case. That's it. He is sentenced under Florida's mandatory minimum to 25 years in prison. 25 years.

He's been in for 15 years. I have gone to visit him. He is the only client that I have. ever represented that has never got a ticket in prison. What is a ticket? You know, didn't listen to a corrections officer when they said get against the fucking wall. You didn't have, you know, you didn't follow the rules. You didn't do that. Not a ticket. So various powerful people that know the governor finally got him to listen. Now, before I got involved in the case, the family was told that the governor was prepared to grant him clemency and traveled

to Tallahassee the day that they thought he was going to get released and were told on that day the governor changed his mind. So I knew this all going in. I went and I appeared at a clemency hearing and I was as, what do they say, you're, the words escaping me, when you're not subservient, but you're, I'm trying to think, articulate it the right way. I mean, I was not only respectful, but, you know, I understood the gravity of what I was asking for. This is a governor that has never granted clemency, commuted a sentence to someone that was currently incarcerated. And, you know, he went through a laundry list of things that he would like me to do. his parents live Michael Giles parents live he's that's the name of my client Michael Giles his parents live in Georgia could you con the governor could you get in touch with the state

of Georgia I mean this is all at a public hearing it's online and see if their governor has any problem with abiding by the terms of release you want me to contact the governor of Okay, submit a supervised release plan that is exhaustive and runs all the way through the term that he would serve out his incarceration so that he should be on supervised release for another 10 years. Contact this one, contact that one. So I learned on good information that the governor was like he'll never be able to get all that done. I got it all done. I had people help me, went to the governor, spoke to the governor in Georgia. He said, yeah, of course, we'll abide by it.

There's something called the Interstate Compact. States have to abide by each other as supervision requirements when someone goes from one state to another. This had the support of John Ashcroft, Mike Muk, right-wing Republicans that otherwise wouldn't support this sort of thing. It was like I had a list of like 40 people, former U.S. attorneys. It got so much that the head of the Florida Commission of Offender Review, they gave him a positive recommendation to get out, super rare. The attorney general was in support. Everyone was in support. A week before, I was told we were going to grant him relief.

they actually had me speaking to the prison to transport him up to the clemency hearing we were down to whether he would be able to change into a suit because at the public hearing governor de santa said I want to actually look at him eye to eye and at the last second for no fucking articulated reason he said you know what I've changed my mind

that's that is brutal it's it's evil in my opinion and it's precisely why you know sometimes the king has to show mercy and it's precisely why this this guy is not very popular i don't think and and i ask this because it's relevant does michael giles get prosecuted if he's not a tall black man i don't think so The prosecutor that prosecuted him, I'm not calling him anything. I'm giving you the facts. The prosecutor that prosecuted him went through a DOJ investigation because something was found in his office, targeting Hispanic residents for harsher punishment. A whistleblower took a photo of it.

It was a memo hanging over a water cooler. And it's all over the place. It's all online. You can read about it. And he had to enter into some agreement with the Department of Justice. How is it phrased? How is what phrase? How is this, the determination to process?

If prior criminal history or Hispanic, and then it has an arrow. Oh, yeah, you can pull it up. So prior criminal history is the same as just being innocent of Hispanic. Oh, yeah. This is the South. Wow. I mean, it's out there. his name is his name is jack campbell um i mean that is so crazy that they would not just but

actually print there is a prior criminal history is equal to being i don't think it said equal but it's the same or Hispanic there's a there's a whistleblower that took a picture of it and then he had to apologize for it so should the thought enter my mind hmm i mean i was putting my daughter to bed one night, and I just looked up his name, and I stumbled across this, and I was like, oh, okay. Because I spoke to him one time, and I asked if he would give a letter of support. And he said, I won't give a letter of support, but I stand by what I did. I said, do you want to know what he's done since he's been in? No, I don't care. I'm not going to support it. I just won't. Oh, there it is. That's it. If no criminal history,

diversion if limited criminal history withhold costs if extensive criminal history and or Hispanic adjudicated guilty plus costs and or extensive criminal history and or Hispanic and Hispanic is in capital letters yeah and and so this this whistleblower takes a picture of this and it leads to a DOJ investigation where he agrees he apologizes publicly, and he agrees to go into some training program and have the prosecutors that work for him in a training program for racial sensitivity. So you think, you know, I deal with the facts and I deal with what I see every day. So should it beg the question, is Michael Giles getting charged with this crime under the facts as I just told you with the testimony that

I just read to you? And they said, well, he ran initially. And when the police initially spoke to him, he didn't say he shot the gun. He's a black man in America. Later that night, he admitted it. So what does it make a difference anyway? The guy was attacked with a running start. Someone leaves their feet and punches him in the face.

Isn't 15 years enough? 15 years? He's had to go through. I mean, you read the letters from his. kids who have now grown up without him, your heart ends up in 50 million pieces. And, you know, so a guy like Governor DeSantis, I think it's like there's no humanity there. And, you know, the craziest part about it is that you never know who you'll meet and why this is all, to me, human rights issue.

The only person that gave me a sympathetic year when I would go to Florida. before I lived there when I was still living in New York and talk about clemency cases was Nikki Freed. I think she was the commissioner of agriculture. And she ran against DeSantis in the last governor-torial election. And she's like the fascinating part about it is that this is like a woman that's dedicated herself to public service. And she's a major marijuana advocate. legalizing marijuana has been her mission for so many years she's on the board of normal she'd be an awesome guest because she became super unpopular in Florida because of her stance on legalization of marijuana and um you know she was attacked over it about how weed is a gateway drug

somehow in the minds of you know people that don't get it that it's some like pathway to heroin addiction and you know medicinal marijuana you know cannabis for healing all of those things she's been a major advocate for and she told me he's you're being strung along after she was out of office she's now the head of the i think she's the head of the Democratic Party for florida wonderful woman she's like you're going to get strung along I said, no, watch. Watch. I'm going to be the first one to get clemency from someone in prison.

And he still can do it. Why won't he? Fuck knows. And it's, you know, I have to talk to Michael's mom. And I have to talk to him. And it's like, you know, you run out of words. And, yeah, it's not just, is this a dirty business? It's heartbreaking, you know.

it's oh it's got to be particularly hard for you you are a very sensitive guy which is odd you're a very empathetic guy which is odd for a lawyer you know usually lawyers eventually develop some sort of a shell

just to don't let enough in you get hurt too many times even if you start out empathetic you eventually develop a thick skin listen I'm a crier and I don't hide that and what's why you're able to do the kind of work you do

because you still are sensitive to this and you still are empathetic despite all the shit you've seen well I mean look I have to be I don't think you're good I used to think that it was something to shrink from in other words that

because it becomes it becomes a heavy cross to bear when you start wearing other people hurt and emotions and, you know, I've found myself sometimes inferring the people feel a certain way when they don't, and I have to make sure that I'm careful about that. I mean, my son Carter is like, he's 13, he's going to be 14 in April, and I sometimes feel like, I have to have. I have to be careful with the empathy because sometimes I'll be reliving some traumatic event from my childhood and I'll think, oh, he must feel this way at this point in time at 13. And I'm imputing

an emotion to him that isn't there. And sometimes I'll do that with a client or their family. And I've gotten better at it. But when you have to deliver hard news or bad news because there's so many these these exonerations the commutations the pardons they're like each one of them is its own miracle each one of them is it's so hard so hard to get it done i got to pee we're right back so today right before we started this uh trump rescheduled marijuana so it's now scheduled three so it's in the same category as Tylenol which is interesting that's a compromise right it should be legal and regulated that's what I think isn't isn't there been a stain on Tylenol though under

this administration yeah sure it's been acetaminophen is responsible for at least 500 deaths a year I read a horrible case about a lady who had COVID and she was struggling, you know, in pain, really hurt and kept taking Tylenol. Tylenol is with coding, coding? That's at Schedule 3. Oh, okay. Tylenol with coding.

Tylenol 3, that's Schedule 3. That's different. It's different Tylenol, different regular. So, acetaminopin itself. How do you feel about it being rescheduled as a... Well, it's better, you know, certainly it's better. I believe if it's rescheduled, what does that mean? It could be prescribed now, you know, and it can be some sort of.

You know, and it can be prescribed state by state, even in Texas. There's some medical uses. I feel like it should be like alcohol. I think you should be of a certain age to be able to use it. And I think it's not for everybody. I think that's important that it isn't for everybody. There are people that have very particularly vulnerable psychological states mental constitutions, whether they have a history of mental illness or whatever, especially

like high-dose marijuana. Alex Berenzen wrote about this in a book called, I think it's called Tell Your Children, and he highlights the instances of people that have schizophrenic breaks from high doses of THC. And whether or not they would have had those schizophrenic breaks anyway, you know, we don't don't know. There's a certain percentage of the population that's just schizophrenic. What causes it? We don't know. Or we don't know clearly why something can cause it. But you should be aware of those things. It's not for everybody. I know a lot of people don't like it. But I know

a lot of people who do. A lot of people that enhances their life. It makes times more enjoyable, makes sex more enjoyable and food more enjoyable and fun times with friends. It's like anything else. You can abuse everything, including exercise, you know. I know a lot of people are addicted to exercise and they overdo it and people take CrossFit classes and they go too hard and they wind up getting robdomylosis. What is that? That's some kind of thing with your kidneys or liver or something? Yeah, yeah. You literally your muscle tissue breaks down faster than your body can heal. Rabdo's dangerous. People die of that. I remember reading about it when I did CrossFit 15 years ago

whatever it was and I was like I'm not going that hard I can get that well it's for psychos David Goggins is the world you know I think he got rabdo went to the hospital

got out and then completed his race he's not human yeah he's a psycho he's amazing I wonder how he runs and speaks at the same time well he's in insane shape I mean he does it every day

He runs 13 miles every fucking day. And then on top of that, he does a series of, like, very rigorous workouts. He does two or three workouts every day. Yeah. I mean, he's a fascinating guy. He's awesome. But he's a great guy. Stay hard.

Great human being, though. He really is. He's great to talk to, great to hang out with. I love him. But point is, like, you can get addicted to video games. You can get addicted to gambling. The gambling thing is a big argument. People use all the time, you know, because we,

one of our sponsors is draft kings online gambling i think you should be able to gamble i don't have a problem with it me personally i don't have a problem with gambling um but i know a lot of people that do and they shouldn't fucking gamble you know gambling is an evil addiction you watch people get gripped by it it's kind of crazy i've known quite a few people that have had gambling addictions especially from my pool hall days um that was just always around hardcore gamblers and the boy man it might as well be heroin. It might as well be for those fucking people. But I think you should be able to gamble.

I know it devastates some people's lives, but their choices devastate their lives. And there's help. And there's, you know, you should learn how to manage your mind. I think you have to learn restraint in anything. Yes, you can't nanny state the whole fucking world. You know, you can't nerf every hard edge on the planet. It's not how it works.

I love that. I'm going to steal that. Nerf it. You know, listen, I do things that you can get hurt doing, and I think you should be allowed to do that. You know, I know people that have been very badly hurt doing martial arts, including competing. I did a lot of that. You should be able to do it. You should be able to ride bulls.

I don't want to ride a bull. You should be able to ride a bull. I think one of the things about being a human being is as much freedom as you can give people the better and also inform them about the dangers of whatever choices they make. Give them an informed ability to make a decision for themselves. This is what it means to be a free human being. And you're going to make some dumb choices, and you're going to make some dumb decisions, and that's okay. That's how we all learn together collectively. And I think marijuana is far better for you than alcohol.

It has legitimate medical uses, legitimate psychological uses. It relieves stress for a lot of people. it's um it's you can't criminalize something for some something you don't agree with that's crazy also the LD 50 of it is off the fucking charts literally the only way to die from marijuana is it would take about a 50 pound package hitting you in the head from a CIA drug plane that's how you die what's an LD 50 lethal dose at 50% of the population it's very high so if you're you're saying like for people's better like if you're saying that marijuana should be illegal because it's dangerous okay dangerous how when when when there's so many things that like we talked about

Tylenol which I fully support Tylenol being legally you should be able to if you're in pain you can go get some Tylenol. Cidaminopin fucking kills people you know like I said it's responsible for about 500 deaths a year and I was telling you about the COVID story this poor lady she was hurting because she had COVID she kept taking Tylenol and didn't understand that you just you can't there's an amount you can take and you should never take more than that and she had liver failure and she fucking died you know of something that you know it's horrible so but I think you should be able to take Tylenol just don't take enough to fucking kill you I think that's that should be the case with alcohol same thing I'm I'm for legalization of alcohol when you make things illegal

all you do is prop up illegal people to sell those things to people that want it. There is a demand. They will supply it. You know, this is the situation that we live in in this country when it, in regards to heroin, regards to cocaine, regards to so many different things. They're being supplied and they're being supplied and you're propping up these illegal cartels and these motherfuckers are killing people and they make it ruthless. And it's what happened during prohibition of alcohol in this country.

What did it do? It propped up the fucking the mafia. And that's what they did. They sold alcohol. It propped up organized crime. Yeah, I mean, we could learn something from countries in Europe that decriminalized not just marijuana, but other drugs. Yeah. And if you look at the statistics on, you know, the rate of crime, the rate of the incidence of overdose, it plummets.

Plummets. Portugal is an excellent example. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, the problem is when you all. of a sudden make things legal that didn't used to be legal, you're going to have a bunch of people that abuse it. They're going to say, oh, it's legal now, let's go, and a bunch of people are going to do

it that don't do it. You'll have problems, but you know, you're taking the Band-Aid off. You put a fucking Band-Aid on this country in the 1930s for something that doesn't hurt people. Which is what? Marijuana. Oh. They did that in 1930s. Yeah.

It was a vast conspiracy, by the way. The marijuana legalization thing, the illegalization of it. It's a vast conspiracy. I don't know much about this backstory. Okay. Well, I'll fill you in. William Randolph Hearst, who owned Hearst publications, also owned paper mills. So a popular science magazine on the front page, hemp the new billion dollar crop.

And the reason why hemp was problematic before that was because hemp fibers. Like a friend of mine used to grow marijuana, and he had a hemp stock. on his desk and he's like pick that up and you pick it up and it's hard like oak it's hard like this table there's an oak table it's hard like that but it's light like styrofoam

feels like balsa wood I was like this is crazy he goes yeah it's like an alien plant there's nothing like it hemp fiber is incredibly durable and it makes superior paper it makes superior clothing canvas all the great paintings

were all made on hemp that's what canvas was made out of Light, but very strong and durable. Very strong. The first draft of Declaration of Independence was written on hemp fiber, on hemp paper. So hemp was used to make paper, it was used to make cloth, it was used to make so many different things. But it was very difficult to do. Then Eli Whitney came out with the cotton gin.

Well, cotton replaced a lot of the things that we made with clothing, replaced a lot of that. It was an easier textile to process. Well, in 1930s, they came up with a new invention called the decorticator. and the decorticator allowed them to effectively process hemp fiber much more easily. So then popular science as this magazine. There's a machine? Yes, it's a machine. It's like this, it's like a steel like cylinder that has all these protrusions on it,

and that would grind up the hemp fiber more easily. Because before it had to be done manually, and it's very time consuming. But the process was an incredible and very superior product. So William Randolph-Huris recognizes this as a threat. to his industry because he owns paper mills. He owns forests that he's using to make paper out of. Also, you should say that to make paper out of a forest, you have to chop down all those trees.

It'll take 20, 30 years for them to grow back. With hemp, you get a new crop every year. The same amount of land, you're processing four times as much paper, and you can do it every year. It's way more effective. So he starts demonizing this plant called marijuana, this new drug. Now, marijuana was not a name for cannabis. Marijuana was a name for a Mexican slang for wild tobacco. So he just tags this name and starts calling hemp.

Which is just the leaves on the hemp plant. It's just the flower. The flower on the hemp plant. Yes. But it's also you can make and grow hemp that has no THC in it as well. I believe it's, is it the female that contains THC and the male doesn't. Anyway point is so he they sponsor all the Reefer Madness films you know all those propaganda films

in the 1930s they start printing these stories about blacks and Mexicans that are raping white women after they take this new illegal drug so they pass laws on this drug not even really

understanding that they're making the the textile, they're making the commodity hemp illegal, or making it very difficult to regulate. And so William Randolph Hurst gets together with Harry Anslinger and they do this. They also take all their police officers and all the people that they had used to process prohibition of alcohol and go after alcohol, you know, illegal alcohol sales and now they turn it to cannabis. And that's, we've been stuck in that same horseshit since the 1930s. So self-interest plus profit incentive, add a dose of hysteria, and you have prehistoric lobbying that leads to the demonization of, I don't fucking get it.

I mean, listen. It's also nylon. Nylon was involved because, you know, they're using nylon for ropes, because hemp was always used for ropes, and now they have this new product. So there was a lot of people that were involved in making sure that hemp, was very difficult to acquire so that their commodity could thrive. And then how many people suffered because of that? How many people were jailed?

How many people died? How many people were incarcerated? You're dealing with literally 90 years at this point. 90 years of bullshit. I don't know. And I do believe that there are some drugs that are so addictive that you start to lose your sense of free will. I don't think weed is one of them.

It's not to me. I wouldn't say it's not one of them to everybody. I don't know. I don't know I hear horror stories about people that are addicted to weed and can't get off of it. You know, I do sober October pretty much every year. I didn't do it last year But we take off everything. We don't do anything. We usually do like a little fitness challenge with it I've never had a problem. Stop doing it. I got on these nicotine pouches I like nicotine pouches. I like nicotine pouches during podcast keeps my mind like popping. It's like it's a cognitive enhancer. And I was like, man, maybe I'm addicted to nicotine. When on vacation, didn't bring any nicotine pouches, had no problem. You know, I'm happy I smoked a lot of weed in high school. A lot of weed. It was different, though. For me, it was, at least. It wasn't as strong. Oh, yeah. And I've, I've got scientists involved

now. He's botanist. Know what the fuck they're doing. Scientists. I one time smoked weed with Lennox in Jamaica. Oh, no. That should be the song. That's like... By the time that Blunt was being passed around for people, when it came to me the second time, I was like, the room went sideways on me. I could not fucking cope. The furniture seemed readjusted. And I've had other times where, for me, I got to a point where I could not function on it.

Yeah. And the last time where I was like, this isn't just not for me anymore. Maybe I smoked too much of it in high school. I mean, almost every day, 15, but then I was at a casino. I was at the Aria one time. And this must have been 15 years ago. And I was playing craps. And I had taken like one or two tokes.

and I convinced myself that the guy at the other end of the craps table was an undercover officer that was going to frame me for something fucking the lady next to me was stealing my chips this guy was going to have me fucking hatcheted and I ended up in the corner of the casino

for literally two hours trying to collect myself and I and so... You went too deep. I went... Man, I was... It's just too strong for someone who doesn't doesn't use it. See, there's a lot of people like my friend, Be Real from Cypress Hill.

I can't even watch the podcast because my blood pressure goes up when I watch how much weed these guys smoke. Him and Everlast. Yeah. Well, Be Real lives in the cloud. There's a lot of those dudes, they call it living in the cloud. Like, they're just high all the time. Well, Be Real has his own weed business. And I did his show, The Hot Box, where you sit in a car. He has this dope like car that's set up as a studio so there's like cameras inside the car and you just get obliterated because they're just constantly smoking in the car i got out there i just sit down for like two hours afterwards you were okay or not that was okay but i was just like cheese boys you guys go fucking but but that's the but the but the problem is for me with weed

is that sometimes i've smoked it and been i'm talking about as an adult Yes. Post 30. Yeah. Sometimes I've been like, well, that was really great. And other times I've been like, I don't want to contemplate my existence tonight. I've done that enough. I've done that enough.

And it's all unanswerable questions and I'm going to have a panic attack. Yeah. Man, one time I was on the platform at Penn Station and I started to like, you know, you get to that point when you're thinking about dying. you're thinking about dying and we could talk death dying and we could say it and talk about it but I got to that that point where that fifth dimensional wall crumbled and I was like oh my God I'm not going to exist one day and I started to have a panic attack where I had to leave and go up on to 8th Avenue and get some fresh air and I'm just like at this stage I can't I would have to be like, so what kind of weed is this? And how do you know? And I don't want to interrogate

someone that just wants to get me high. But here's the thing. If you don't get high a lot, and this is my message for everyone out there. If you go months and months and months without ever taking it, one hit, a small one. Don't get crazy. Don't get crazy. You don't want to wreck yourself. What if that one hit leads to nine hours of being high? It shouldn't. It shouldn't. For me, it has. Well, it's like how much are you smoking? Like, You must be taking a giant hit. And it also depends on, like, what kind of joint you have. Like, there's crazy people.

Like, in California, they'll sell you a joint that's like a $50 joint, and this joint has keyf in it, so it has all the resin, all the, you know, you'll give a grinder. At the bottom of the grinder, there's a filter, and you have all this sticky key. The sticky key. They take those THC crystals, and they put it inside with the marijuana, and then they wrap the outside of the joint, and they roll it in the... The THC Chrysler, it's like, it's on the outside of it, and it's just a pathway to paranoia. It's just a rocket chip to your inner monologue screaming in your ear.

I can't talk about it. It's scaring me. But it doesn't have to be like that. Have you ever got paranoid smoking me? Oh, yeah. It's part of the fun. I don't mind it. I like it, because there's always some sort of a revelation that I get on the other end of it.

Like, if I'm paranoid, there's always like a reason that there's a thing that's bothering me. Like, what is that thing that fucked with you during that time? And maybe there's a thing in your head that you need to address. But generally, if I'm in a good place and I get high, I feel great. I must have been in a great place at, like, 15, 16 years old because getting high back then and listening to Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and hearing the lyrics for the first time, being like, oh, my God, someone else had that thought that I'm afraid to say and they put it down in lyrics. And I'm not alone. And you feel profound. things that aren't really profound.

There's benefit to it. And I think that when you're young, also, you don't have bills, you don't have obligations, you just have to go to school. Your burden is so much lighter. When you're an adult and you have a family and you have business and you have things you have to do all the time and you have conflicts and all the stuff that's in your life, like, it can fuck with you. But I think generally, like, for a lot of people, not for everybody, but for a lot of people,

those moments of paranoia of just dropping the veil. probably beneficial. Oh, I think that, I think that in the long run, it opened the third eye of my mind at a time when and fostered creativity and I think changed my perspective on the world smoking that much weed. I just got to a point where I was like, I can't parent on it. Right. For me. Yeah. You just have to know, you have to be mature enough and introspective enough and self-aware enough to know yourself. For me, it just didn't work anymore. Just like drinking.

At some point, I was like, it's not worth the fucking pain. Right. It just got too painful. Right, but that's the decision that you should be able to make as a man or as a woman, as an adult. Make that decision for yourself.

Decide what you want to take into your life or not, including all sorts of other things that are bad for you, like fucking processed food and sugar. Do whatever you want to do, as long as you know what you're doing. And so we should educate people on what these things are and the problem is with marijuana there was so many years of lies there was so many years of misinformation and it was just constantly put out there as propaganda

and you know this is your brain on drugs like shut the fuck out well listen i remember those commercials from being a kid and i remember one in particular where there's a father that finds weed dating myself in a son's room and he said where did you learn to do this shit and he goes I learned from you, dad. And I remember thinking, man, my dad's a motherfucker. He's a bad guy because my dad was a big weed smoker. And I would find it all the time. And I'm telling you, I think in my mind, that commercial led me to thinking,

Dad, you're amoral and, you know. Yeah, they poisoned a lot of people with those commercials. But meanwhile, your dad could be sitting there watching TV with a cocktail. You wouldn't think a damn thing about it. Yeah, my dad on weed was like an alcoholic with a, with a whiskey bottle. Oh my God, that's it. That's it.

You, all right. I learned it by watching you. Parents who use drugs have children who use drugs. Jamie is a fucking wizard. You know my favorite one, though, is the girl comes up from school and the dog starts talking to her? Wait, before we get to that, you know how a song or a smell can have you tumbling back in time? Oh, yeah.

I'm like, I'm drunk on the same. nostalgia right now like in the wrong oh my god this is my favorite I wish you didn't smoke weed you're not the same when you smoke and I miss my friend I'll be outside how would you Tell a friend. Like, who fucking... Yo, that one is evil. Signed off on that commercial. First of all, that girl is not on marijuana.

Because if you were on weed and your dog started talking, you'd be like, what the fuck? You can talk? The first thing I thought when that started a roll, I looked at Jamie all wide-eyed is, what did you put in my drink? The dog is talking? The only other time I saw that was Mr. Ed. Yeah, right?

Well, or what's that movie? Zookeeper. all the animals talked It's like, come on It's fucking ridiculous You know, when you peel the layer back I had never known That one slipped through the cracks on me

The criminalization of weed And the backstory Backstory is really crazy It's crazy and I remember A science teacher in high school telling me You don't think That they can make a tire

That doesn't wear And he told me the story about how all the big tire companies bought the patent for a tire that can't wear, right? It has the same composition as the same give and composition as rubber when it came to handling, but it was a material that doesn't wear. And I just thought he was fucking crazy. And now I believe that that's probably true. It's probably locked in a vault somewhere because what would happen to Goodyear and Firestone

and the rest of those tires. You're telling me we can put a man on the moon and hear conversations behind the walls or the Kremlin, but we can't make a fucking tire that doesn't wear? Well, I think one of those is true. But the other one, the thing about tires is that a tire has to have a certain amount of softness to it in order for it to have traction. When you have softness and then you have a rigid surface like asphalt,

you're going to have some of that tire is going to rub off on that rigid surface because one is hard. and one is soft. Just like when you take a file and you rub wood, you're going to make sawdust. You know, you would know about fucking tires. Here I go giving an example of something that I think is so out there that there's no way this guy's going to,

and you know about tire way. I know a lot about tires because the softer the tire, the more traction you get on a racetrack. So with a really good tire, you know, you only have a certain amount of laps on a racetrack. So the science teacher was bullshit in me, basically. The scientist teacher probably was right directionally that there are things like that where they would hide patents to certain things and hide certain compounds if they found out

these compounds would compromise. Like if you had something that people had to buy all the time, like light bulbs. Here's a better example, light bulbs. So there are light bulbs that have been in continuous use, like on continuously for 50, 60 years. and they don't burn out because these are the original light bulbs. The original light bulbs, they made the filaments much more durable. And then they realized, like, why would we do this? Well, we could have these light bulbs just burn out, and then you have to get a new light bulb.

And the filament would pop. Exactly. Yeah. I have read about this. See if you can find those old light bulbs. I think there's one that's been on continually for an extraordinary amount of time, decades. 120 years. 120 years. Let's see that light bulb.

So if you look at the light bulb And you see the filaments of that light bulb You realize, oh, they could have just built light bulbs like this from the beginning And instead of paying $5 for a light bulb Or whatever a light bulb costs, maybe it would cost $10. I've got a firehouse in California The Centennial Light 1901 That light bulb

Look at that beautiful filament Yeah, see how thick those filaments are So that's a light bulb that's built to last These motherfuckers, they figured out Well, we'll just make it real skinny and eventually it'll wear out and pop. That tire patent is sitting in a fucking vault somewhere. It might be. But the problem is it doesn't make sense because it has to be softer than the ground.

And whenever you have something that's softer than a very rough, hard surface, the softer thing is going to give. Something has to give. Like if you have metal and you drive around with metal wheels on the asphalt, you know what gives, the asphalt gives. You have scratches on the asphalt. Let me ask you this So going back to the weed Okay Because I got us on this

Diversion of tires eventually Well I got something for it but I Okay exactly Let me just do it now What you got? It's not full on never Oh but this is different Yeah no it doesn't last

Way longer There's no air in this fucking Yeah this is an airless tire But that's this is something That people have said forever Like why would you have to fill up tires Can't they come up with something Where you know it just gives

And so Michelin has done this. You're telling me that there's nothing out there about tires that don't wear. I don't think so. It doesn't make sense. But watch this. I have a question. So weed is criminalized by some self-interested industrialist, right? Before that, ubiquitous use for centuries, including in churches.

So cocaine, you can make the same argument for. You could. And then you have the Clinton administration comes along. and dubs people. So in other words, what is the moral inequivalency between someone that is selling cocaine, a lot of it, and someone that's selling a lot of weed? Now, I understand the common retort as well.

Cocaine is a lot more addictive, destructive. There's a physical pathway to addiction. There's a physical pathway to addiction. Yeah. It's a different kind of addiction. I think there is an addictive quality to marijuana, but I have a feeling it's same or similar to the addictive quality of a lot of other behavioral addictions. But I guess my bigger question is, so with the advent of the quote unquote super criminal, I think it was, who was it, Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton that came up with this term, or Biden. I know he's a big supporter of that bill as a senator.

And, you know, without going down the rabbit hole of private prisons and the prison industrial complex, what bothers me about these old drug convictions that we were talking about earlier is it's just a perspective shift that somehow has in the psyche of America writ large that you hear cocaine or crack equals someone that should be locked away and forgotten about. That was why I mentioned Spencer, Bowen, and, you know, other folks that I've mentioned because I just, I feel like there's no, what's the right way to explain it? There's no rhyme or reason to why we're leaving old people that have not much left locked up, you know, and, you know, I don't, look, Larry Hoover is a good example. Larry Hoover was pardoned or a sentence was commuted by a president Trump and he was then put in he was in the side of a fucking mountain for decades the man is 75 years old he's been in prison for over 50 years he has renounced gang life he has renounced any affiliation with it and then he was his sentence is commuted and he's put in state custody on some old tenuous homicide charge where the person that actually pulled the trigger is out, has been out for like 30 years. So Larry Hoover is sitting there in Colorado, because he was in the side of that Supermax facility, the side of that mountain in Chicago. And since... Colorado or Chicago? No, in Colorado. He was in Chicago. Well,

he was then I misspoke he's from Chicago he was the leader of the gangster disciples you're familiar with Larry Hoover right sure leader of the gangster disciples in Chicago he gets he's in prison and state prison then he goes into while he's in state prison they have a CCE conspiracy against him and he gets CCE no continuing criminal enterprise and I'm talking lawyer speak and then he he goes into federal custody and he's put in the side of a mountain where he's on lockdown 23 hours a day for decades. The man's 75 years old now. Since he's been put in state custody, he's had three heart attacks doing prison work.

And what is the utility in keeping someone like that in? Because, you know, Governor Pritzker could just say, you know what, enough's enough. There's interesting stuff out there about what they call C criminals. So it was like before February of 1978, I believe it was, 1998, where people would get indeterminate sentences in the state system in Illinois. You know, you'd hear these sentences of like 100 years, 200 years where there's no hope. And there were like thousands and thousands of them. There's only 30 of them left and he's one of them.

He's got an indeterminate sentence. isn't 50 years enough? So, like, that's another one of those cases that bothers me because, you know, if we're a, if we're a society of reform, deterrence, rehabilitation, he's it. And what better message is there to say, you know what, you've done enough, and now let's see what positive you can do. The proposed terms of his release are, like, the strictest supervision, he just wants to live out his life with his family.

He's got a great lawyer backing him named Justin Moore. I helped, you know, advocate for his pardon to President Trump. So he's, he was pardoned? His sentence was commuted by President Trump, his federal sentence. Right. But he had some crazy 200-year sentence in state court, right? Oh, look at this is it. So it was 1978.

He's one of just 35 people. still incarcerated under Illinois's pre-78 indeterminate sentencing system. So the case was from 73? Oh, yeah. He's been in prison for 50-some-odd years. God. And, you know, I just feel like at this point, isn't enough enough. And, you know, they didn't even do the killing.

No. And the person that did it is out. The allegation was that he ordered it. And I don't even believe that. And Andrew Howard, the guy who killed him, was paroled more than 30 years ago. Yeah. It just doesn't, I don't understand. And what's going on, I think, is that someone like Governor Pritzker is just, they don't want the political cost of taking a chance like this.

And, you know, this is another one that keeps me up. You know, some people would say, why care about that guy? Because I know his wife. I know his son. James Prince knows the family so well and has supported them on this journey for over a decade. there's so much public support for this the guy's 75 so why are we wasting taxpayer money and why are we keeping someone incarcerated i mean in the most so i understand if they commuted his sentence how he's not how he's not out he was his federal sentence was commuted

so as soon as he was released from federal custody he was taken into state custody and they didn't even take him from chicago excuse me from colorado his state sentences in Chicago where he could be at least closer to his family and Colorado state system said, we'll keep him here. So he was transferred from federal to state custody. So that's one that's just like, you know, there's one heartbreak to the next. And look, I'm super, super, super careful. You can help people with second chances. You can't help them with what they do with it.

but I'm now at a point where I really want to think long and hard about what people do with their second chances. And, you know, I just wouldn't get behind someone that I didn't think was, I just, it's an indictment of society that we have these disparate sentences that are doled out. And a lot of it is driven by what is considered worse behavior. Is it worse behavior that you sold cocaine or marijuana? I guess the argument is that cocaine was more destructive, more addictive. You could die from it. Well, same thing with alcohol. And alcohol is legal.

So I just don't, I have a hard time grappling with what is considered a controlled substance. Yeah. Because alcohol, if abused, if put in the wrong hands, it's highly addictive, it's highly destructive to your body if you abuse it. ruins people's lot? I mean, how is it that alcohol is legal? It is weird. It is weird.

And the real problem is history. So we have a long history of all these drugs being illegal now. So you have a long history of people that are criminals selling these drugs. So it's got this criminal history attached to it. If you were to make cocaine legal in the United States, you'd essentially put the cartels out of business, right? because that's probably their main business, is probably either fentanyl and heroin, or heroin pills, you know, oxy pills, or cocaine.

And you would have way less accidental overdose deaths because a lot of it is not people overdosing from actual cocaine, it's getting fentanyl. Or whatever else they're fucking mixing it. All sorts of different amphetamines. We have a long history now, dating back to the 30s, of alcohol being People are accustomed to it. It's normal. You're accustomed to growing up, being able to have a couple of beers with your friends, go into a party when you're a kid. There's a keg party. People know how to handle it. It's been around. Cocaine has not. You get scared. What's in it? How do I know where it came from? You know, you get a fucking beer. You know, it's a beer. You know, it's a bud light. It's what it is. Cocaine is unregulated.

It's crazy. If you think about it, if you're someone doing cocaine these days and you're trying to think, like, am I going to die? Right. You dip a, what are the fentanyl strips that you can test it and see what's in it? But if it was regulated and if people want to do it, you know, let them go bang their head against the wall and do it. Yeah. And then the problem is people would be profiting off of that. And then so you'd have instead of, you know, no one has a problem with Anheiser Bush selling beer, right?

But meanwhile, there's alcoholics, and it's going to ruin their life. But if Anheuser-Busch all of a sudden started selling cocaine, the social stigma that's attached to it because of all the years of it being illegal would be a real problem. We would have, like I said, it would be like ripping the Band-Aid off. You're going to have a lot of problems initially. For quite a while, I would imagine. There's going to be a lot of people that do cocaine that would never do it previously because it was illegal. But if they find out that there's, you can go to the cocaine store and buy a certain amount of cocaine and go do it. But you also would be getting pure cocaine.

So you would be getting this experience that people have used way back to the fucking, you know, who knows what time. I mean, there's Egyptian mummies that have tested positive for cocaine. I mean, look, I don't. Controversely. Yeah, I'm not advocating for it one way or another. It just seems like anything that I've looked into and read about in countries that have. legalized or decriminalized it at least and you could get it and not have to worry about it being adulterated in some way it seems like the statistics are overwhelmingly yes pointing in one

direction a hundred percent but those are smaller countries you know and it don't have the the consumption problem that america has we we uniquely love to consume drugs and um we are propping up the cartel by doing that and that you know if you want to go to war with the cartel if you want really stop the flood of illegal drugs in this country. Unfortunately, one of the only ways to really do that accurately is to both stop them from bringing in illegal drugs and then give people access to legal, air quotes, safer drugs. It seems like a... It's a problem. It's a... Politically, it's a suicide. I was going to say, you got to swim uphill through or upstream through a river of shit.

Yeah. Yeah. In order to pull that one off. Yeah, for a long time. Yeah. And I just, this has struck me more lately in dealing with these old drug cases where these people have spent decades and decades in prison. And, you know, you hear them on the other end of the phone. And he's like, look, I was a kid. I was in my 20s. I'm 50. I'm 60 years old. Isn't it enough? It's getting to the point where it's putative to the point of harmful. and barbaric. Yeah, and then they don't want to let those people back out on the street. It's more convenient for them to keep that person locked up forever. You know, and you got to, if you saw like what's behind it, you know, this is an interesting update on the Ohio 4 case, and we don't have to go back into the whole thing again because people could watch the last time, but you remember we had the former prosecutor, J.D. Tomlinson on at one point with the case in Ohio.

Yes. where these guys did not need to assume the burden of being demonstrably innocent, but we were able to prove it. And, you know, J.D. Tomlinson agreed to vacate their convictions. And then when he left office, you know, a few weeks later, the new, the incoming, their equivalent of the district attorney overturned it, right? since coming on this show J.D. Tomlinson has been under attack for a previous exoneration that he granted by this same sitting Lorraine County prosecutor who just filed a 300 page brief saying that he committed fraud on the court and all kinds of nonsense over a crime that never happened. And this is why he was so reluctant to ever speak to me in the first place because he knew he'd be targeted. He knew he'd be targeted. And they're trying to undo an exoneration for this poor woman that's already been exonerated. And I thought, you know, I would talk about it publicly and say, I trust him.

I made a presentation to this new prosecutor. I got myself, along with the Ohio Innocence Project, public defenders, I got a bar complaint filed against me by the original prosecutor for standing up to exonerate someone. And I was summarily dismissed in Ohio, but, you know, and what, and the question becomes, like, what can you do? So Derek Hamilton and I are trying to, do we go to the city council and raise awareness, don't you care that you have a prosecutor, that it's seemingly more interested in settling personal scores and vendettas than he is about letting innocent people go free? and I have this guy, you know, John Edwards is one of the Ohio Four, and I'm, I'm, I feel like when I see him calling from prison, I'm running out of things to say to him. Like, I'm so desperate for help. And, you know, if anyone is living in Lorraine, Ohio or Illyria, I mean, you've got to take a look at your local elected officials. I mean, demand to know what happened in the Ohio Four case. I mean, we have it online. you can read about it. You could read the trial transcripts. I just don't get why people can't let go and say maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I was wrong. I mean, these guys are so demonstrably innocent where you have the person that claims he witnessed the whole thing, you know, came, went to the FBI and said, I made the whole thing up. You know, it's just. It's a horrible case. It's horrible. And nobody wants to admit it. Nobody, the person. The problem is I think if they do admit it, someone's going to start digging into their past, and they're going to find out these motherfuckers have been wrong a bunch of times. Well, I'll tell you what. One thing that's different about me and why I hang around Derek so much is I want his superpowers to rub off on me because I realize that if you don't get, stay aggressive and keep the pressure on, the truth will eventually, what was the old truth crushed to earth shall rise again?

Was that like an MLK quote? I always think about that because at some point, at some point, the truth comes out. It's a stubborn thing. And whether it's old files of an old case and who you used to hang out with, and if you have photos sitting in a vault, whatever it is, it's going to come out. and it just seems like you're doing so much more damage to hold on to these old beliefs rather than and because one thing is for sure I'm stubborn and I'm growing more stubborn as I as it as time goes by to you have to have the resolve and the wherewithal that every time you get a no and every time you get rejected you're like all right all right I see you I'm going to get my beast on now and

keep coming back and I'm going to bring people with me and we're going to make as much noise one thing that that people don't like is to have the light on them and you know we we now have the ability to to do that not only through this platform but you know I was talking to someone before I came here today that works at the center and I said you can't be afraid to speak to the press And I said, as long as, you know, you have some control, some control over what you're saying. And then I, like, quickly stuff the words back in my mouth. And I said, forget about that. You got to be very careful speaking to the press because it gets edited and chopped up.

Sure. You know, I just, I did an article with the New York Times about something recently. Man, I told that reporter lose my fucking phone number because you took one sentence of a three. throw away quote and disregarded everything else. Of course. You know? And that's why I'm really careful about it. That's why nobody wants to talk to them.

I mean, everybody knows the game now. Like, they're, it's just, they have a long history doing that. What they care about is a juicy story. That's all they care about. Yeah, it's suffering cells and human tragedy cells. And I would really love to be able to tell, like, the triumphant stories that a prosecutor did the right thing on the front end right on the front end rather than after 20 30 40 50 years so you know all of these cases that we talk about we're going to do something a little bit

different is i'm going to set up a repository where people can go in and look at the public records no one's really ever done that this way you don't have to rely on my word a headline a clip from from a video where you know there were people that started to consume the ohio four case and are writing in and are saying like how are you letting this stand eventually enough drips of water fills the bucket and the bucket overflows and at some point something's got to give right yeah i mean if you believe in what good over evil yeah i don't know I mean, something's got to give. Well, I mean, if you really believe in good over evil, I mean, we all believe in good over evil, but sometimes it doesn't work.

And is it for lack of trying, or is it just the world's not fair? I think it's both. Well. You know, and I think there's a lot of people that have a lot of power that will keep good from winning because it would somehow another derail their life or their career because they have done something evil. But this is a sick trait that we possess as mammals, as humans, whether you're a safety patrol as a fourth or fifth grader or a bouncer outside of a club or a TSA Asian, there's something about that authority, something about that power. Sure. That people get drunk on. Oh, yeah.

And they get, it's almost like it courses through their veins to the point where they're like, well, I like this. I'm going to exert this. And it's like, I just, I understand it, but I don't, I don't understand how at some point your conscience doesn't kick in and say, all right, devil on this shoulder. Let's do the right thing. Because I always feel like bound by some sort of social contract, right? Did it ever feel good to harm someone? I don't know. Never did for me as a kid.

No. I mean, I could look back at my childhood and be like, that was a shitty thing you did. You know, I still feel guilty about things I did as an elementary school student. It's like... Because you're a good person. No, no, I don't think that... It is. You are a good person.

No, I don't think that that's what it is. Well, that's part of being a good person is when you do make a mistake or do something bad, you feel something. I don't actually, I appreciate that, but I don't actually think that's what it is. I think that we all know when we're saying something hurt. or harmful at some point you know it or you're doing something harmful and it's just i don't understand i guess the disconnect between having that realization and just saying fuck it or actually taking like a pause right and i guess if i could solve that i'd have the key to many of the world's problems but i guess i'm just dealing with these in the meantime well you would have to completely rewire

the way people think and there's ways to do that And all those ways are illegal. That's where psychedelics comes in. You know, it's one of the things I had a conversation with my friend Jesse Michaels the other day. And one of the things I said is one of the things that's really interesting about psychedelics is there's no criminal cartel that sells them, even though they're illegal. That's true. There's no criminal mushroom industry where there's a bunch of like evil assassins selling kids mushrooms. it's such a uniquely beautiful experience that it's really only connected to like kind people who sell it for the most part

let me ask you the same thing let me ask you something in reference to what you said earlier do you think you have to have a particular mental constitution to take psychedelics i think you should yeah i i don't think it's for people that are very vulnerable i think uh there's a lot of people that just regular reality is difficult enough to manage. You know, I'm, you know, I'm saying this objectively, right, because it's not me. But I don't want to be arrogant and say, I can do it, you can do it too. That's ridiculous. There's a lot of people that shouldn't be doing anything.

They shouldn't be drinking. They shouldn't be, there's people out there that shouldn't do caffeine. People have very different biological vulnerabilities. There are some people that I believe are biologically vulnerable to alcoholism. Their whole family's alcoholic. It might be a genetic trait. It seems to be like some, there's something wrong with them and their ability. And then there's also genes that, like this was the issue with Native Americans when we introduced alcohol to them.

They didn't have a history of alcohol. They didn't know how to handle it. They got wrecked. Like there's alcoholism to this day is an enormous problem in Native American tribes and reservations. It's a major problem in Canada. You know, my... With First Nation people, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because they were given reparations.

And my experience with it up there is that they, you know, there's a serious problem, especially in Western Canada with it. But I, the reason I ask about it with psychedelics is that I, at the, probably the lowest point in my life, you know, I was with you. And I remember you recommending ketamine therapy. and or thinking that might be something I should look into. Yeah, this is something that I've never done, but I do know quite a few people. My friend Neil, Neil Brennan, he went to a doctor to get ketamine therapy. Yeah, so when I raised it with my therapist at the time, and she was like, the body of research on this is so overwhelming that I would be remiss if I told you don't try.

something we should talk about and think about and you know it helped me tremendously in a way that very very low dose but it's like you know I mean I thank you for even like suggesting it because it was something that I had always associated with like my roommate in college in the fetal position in his bed and I was like yo what's wrong with him and so on He said, he's in a K-hole. I was like, the fuck is that? He's, he's in a, in a K-hole. And it was always like, oh, man, I'm staying away from that.

He looks like, he looks like he could expire any moment. He was not a lighter shade of pale. He was, like, translucent. And I was like, but then, you know, it's under supervision. That's the key. Under-supervision, and then with the correct dose. And I think that would probably be the case. with most psychedelics.

And it would turn the field of psychiatry on its head and there would be such a lobby against it and the drug companies that make all these great drugs that rewire your brain would hate that shit. Yep. Yeah, they would. Yeah, they would. And I think they're wrong. Yeah, I mean, I think humans throughout history have been using it and, you know,

to various degrees of success. I think for some people it's not good. It's like a lot of other things. But it's up to us to figure out what's good for you and what's not good for you. This is part of the freedom of being a person, you know. I mean, there's a lot of things that you could easily protect people from that we allow people to do. Here's the one that I saw a documentary about this and the one that I can't make a decision on. What's the one where you take it and you're fucking puke?

You're retching to the point where you're, like, puking out of your eyeballs. Ayahuasca? Ayahuasca. Yeah. And people are like fucking, how can that be good? Well, the reason why you pu- well, here's what ayahuasca is, first of all. Ayahuasca is orally active dimethylethyptamine. Dymethyptamine is an endogenous drug that your body produces.

Your brain produces. It's produced in the liver, in the lungs. It's a natural component of the human body. Terrence McKenna had a great line about it. He said the thing about DMT is everyone's holding. Meaning like everyone has it. If it's illegal, it's like making blood illegal. So what does ayahuasca do chemically?

So ayahuasca, so dimethyptamine, which is the active drug, the active compound. Dymethyptamine exists in thousands. of different plants. It's in a bunch of different grasses and plants. It's not orally active because your body produces something called monoamine oxidase. And monoamine oxidase breaks down dimethythotryptamine in the gut. So that if you consume things like these grasses or different plants that have high levels of dimethythotryptamine in it, your body breaks it down so it doesn't become active.

What ayahuasca is is the one plant that contains dimethyltryptamine and another plant that contains harmein, harmein, which is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. So you take the M-A-O inhibitor, and then the dimethyltryptamine, they brew it all together, and then you have a slow-release, orally active dimethyl-thriptomy. That's that motherfucker with the oar. Yeah. He's working on what he's doing. All right.

You know, and so there's, that is what it is. So you take it orally. It takes a long time because it has to go through your digestive process. It gets in your bloodstream. You have this trip. And, you know, when you're, you know, puking and shitting and all that stuff, it's like, your body is like, whatever the fuck this is, is not good. But the result of it, the end of it, is this extremely impactful experience that leads,

many people to quit alcohol, many people quit cigarettes from it, they quit destructive behavior, they release trauma and learn to get over things that have happened in their life and move on. You have these experiences where you are in contact with what seems like entities and incredibly wise, loving entities that connect you to nature and to earth. it you know and I'm sure people have bad experiences I'm sure it's a very powerful psychedelic you shit yourself too yeah you could shit yourself you could throw up yeah

I mean some it doesn't happen with everybody but it happens with a lot of people that do it but that's not the case with smoking dimethylptamine or with IV drip dimethyptomy we had a guy on recently that they're doing a clinic where was that island they're doing that They got it legal in some place. And so you could fly to this place and do an IV dimethyltryptamine experience without the shitting, without the vomiting.

And it's even more intense than ayahuasca, unless you have like a really high dose of ayahuasca. But like this, the pure smoking of DMT is much more powerful, but very short experience. Your body brings it back to baseline very quickly because your body knows how to process it, right? Your body doesn't know how to process alcohol nearly as wells and knows how to process DMT. Because DMT is natural in the body. Yeah, but you don't shit yourself and pu- well, no, that's not true. But you don't with the IV. With the IV, you don't.

You don't with smoking it. You don't shit yourself. It's just when you drink that fucking witch's brew in the jungle. In the forest. You know, you know, you know, you know what's interesting? Hanging out with hippies. You could do that all these forms of psychedelics that

lead to some sort of resolution or peace on the other side you have to still even if you do it in modern psychiatry like I did something called EMDR are you familiar with that? No. I think it stands for eye movement

desensitization EMDR, yeah I don't know what the R stands for but it is something that I mean, you have to go through a similar amount of suffering, and it's to deal with past traumas. Eye movement, these sensitive, and reprocessing. All right, so I went through this, and it helps you.

You could do it. There's some, sometimes you're doing it with your eyes, but you ever, you ever use Flonase? No. You know what it is? Yeah. All right. And it has like a green,

cover on it. You hold on to these two paddles the way I did it. And they're hooked up to this little transistor, there's little box, and it's like it buzzes your hand. You hold on to them, and it'll buzz your hands, no more than like the buzz of a cell phone in this rhythmic, this rhythmic pattern. And before you do it, you really set up what the trauma is.

So I went through months of trying to identify, like, what were the things from my childhood that were haunting me? And once you do, you then relive those moments with this rhythmic buzzing and you do it again and again and again. And after each session, which could last anywhere between a minute to 10 minutes where your eyes are shut and you're getting this rhythmic pattern and you open your eyes and you explain what just happened. happen. But you start in that place. You're 12. And I have to tell you, it was, it was one of the most painful, agonizing things I had ever done. And it was the most religious experience I had ever had. Because you're almost in a, you're almost in a trance-like state, and your mind is going and you then explain what happened and it's almost like a it's almost like a guided daydream

and then when you explain it you then go back again and start and when i was first doing it i was like this is just torture it's just straight up torture but then you start to see an improvement in your mood and an improvement dealing with that particular and i learned more about myself, my childhood, my, my behaviors than I did doing any drug, any psychedelic, any, which I did in my youth. And it literally saved me. Interesting. Yeah. And it sounds to me, I just had this revelation as you're talking about, like, you know, it's almost like you have to purge the pain. You have to relive it almost in order to get rid of it.

And the theory behind EMDR, as I understand it, is that you don't have the same physiological response at recalling the trauma. You know, you could think of something that happened to you 10 years ago and you can still get the heart palpitation and the adrenaline rush and the, you know, the other, whatever is being released in your body, whatever hormones get activated, and it doesn't happen anymore. I mean, the way that it was introduced to me was that my therapist did it with combat veterans who could get triggered by a grain of sand on the beach because they were in desert storm and spiral. So I find it interesting because it seems like the same methodology

is at play, but it's just a different way of getting there than psychedelics. Well, there's other ways that they do it without the psychedelic drug that induce a psychedelic experience like holotropic breathing what is that uh put that into perplexity young jamie uh it's a particular style of breathing that um allows you to achieve an altered state um i don't want to misspeak on exactly how to do it it's an intense structured breathing technique designed to induce an altered non ordinary state of consciousness for emotional healing and self-exploration, typically involves prolonged, deep, rapid breathing while lying down accompanied by evocative music and guidance from a trained facilitator.

Developed in 1970 by psychiatrist Thénislav Groff and his wife, Christina, after LSD-assisted psychotherapy, became restricted as a way to reach similar therapeutic states without drugs. Wow. Yeah, so there's a bunch of different styles of breathing that, like James Nestor writes about. out some of these in his book, Breath. Is it breath or breathe? Spelled the same way now. Is it?

Doesn't one have an E? One has an E. I think breathe has an E. But the point is, like, there's ways of inducing a psychedelic state without drugs. Obviously, the best one is the sensory deprivation tank. That takes you to a very psychedelic place, and it's completely natural and safe. A float tank. Yeah, float tank.

Yeah, done that. Which is invented by John Lilly, who also was a ketamine guy. He was really in the ketamine. Oh, I got, I got, you got me into that float tank. I was in there one time, and I was like, I didn't know if I was facing north or south. I didn't know if I was submerged in the fucking water. It's crazy. You feel like you're flying through the universe.

There's so much, the salt content keeps you so buoyant that you go into this trans-like state. I highly recommend that shit. Have a question for you on off topic. Who the fuck wins this fight Friday night? Oh, God. Okay. If you have money to bet on it, you're betting on the Olympic gold medalist who's a multiple-time heavyweight world champion who's one of the greatest knockout artists in the history of the heavyweight division. That's Anthony Joshua.

What's fun is you don't think Jake Paul can win. And so the underdog rooter in you is like, well, let's see. Let's order this. Let's see. I mean, the size difference is insane. Anthony Joshua's 245 pounds was the weight limit that he had to reach. He had to drop down to 245 pounds. He's probably a little heavier.

But that's normal for him. That's fine. It's not like he's going to be dehydrated or anything. He weighed 243 and Jake Paul weighed 216. So, I mean, that's a big gap. It's a big gap in weight. It's a big gap in experience. I mean, you're talking about a guy who fought Ussick twice and wasn't stopped by Usook,

who's one of the greatest heavyweights, if not the greatest of all time, one of the greatest boxers of all time. You're talking about a guy who beat Vladimir Klitschko, again, fantastic. In a great fight. Great fight. You're talking about a guy who just knocked out Francis and Gano like it was nothing. I mean, he's fucking dangerous. Anthony Joshua was still in his prime.

he's still one of the best of the best and Jake Paul is a guy who's been fighting guys like Ben Ascran and Tyron Woodley who was a great MMA fighter but you know fought Nate Diaz and had a tough fight with Nate Diaz and now he's going to fight

Anthony fucking Joshua Yeah I mean I gotta say The reason I ask you He's got balls He's got balls You know Shakor just went and sparred with him Recently Yeah

And uh All these kids I don't think I've ever wanted two people that are fighting each other to lose more so I don't know which one I want to lose more because Anthony Joshua as great as he is I don't know he beefed with Lennox so I gotta I gotta kind of like be with my guy

and then the other guy is just like so smart in the way he's playing this from a marketing standpoint I think brilliant you know he was supposed to fight Gervante Davis who's a 135 pounder who's tiny in comparison. And then he flip-flops it. But he's taking a lot of heat for almost fighting Gervante, right? But Gervante had some legal troubles, so he got out of that.

And then his response to that is, okay, I'll fight the biggest, baddest, fucking heavyweight alive, or one of them. Yeah, and it's almost like a parallel universe because two guys that I manage in their professional career are both calling the fight. So Lennox and Andre are both there. and I was talking to them last night because they were at dinner together I said how are you taking this isn't this fucking nutty to you it's definitely nutty

but that's the Jake Paul show it's a side show and all the young kids like Shakur they think they want to be around and they think he's brilliant and they're right in a way right oh yeah no he's brilliant

in his marketing for sure like he's made an extraordinary amount of money right so he's doing great and he's young and he's super dedicated to boxing. I mean, you watch him train. I've watched many highlight reels of his training. He's very dedicated to boxing. He works his ass off. But he keeps getting better with every fight. If you're Anthony Joshua and you don't knock that fucking kid out, how do you show your face again in the UK? And look, he might knock him out. I mean, and that would probably just show that Jake

Paul is legitimate in his ability to take a very difficult fight, you know, that he's willing to not just fight guys that he could beat like Ben Ascran, but fight guys that. But no experts picking him to beat Anthony Joshua. I mean, I'm, I'm, I think I'm going to go. I think I'm going to go. Well, it's in Florida. Yeah, it's the first time that I'm like, I want to see this shit show. I want to say, I mean, these are two, I mean, Anthony Joshua, for all, all bullshit aside, for all his shit talking length.

He's a big moose of a man. He's fast as fuck. He's built like an Adonis. I mean, you've got to, like, if you're betting, I mean, I don't know what the odds are, but the odds have to be heavily in Anthony Joshua's favor. Are they? They have to be. He's an Olympic gold medal.

What are the odds right now? It's a two-time heavyweight world champion. I mean... Let's both get hooked on gambling right now. Yeah, let's put that in draft kings. Find out what the odds are if you bet on to win. Let me guess, 10 to 1. 10 to 1 seems reasonable.

I'm going to guess it's 17 to 1. Yeah, that's even more. reasonable. I'm trying to be polite. Maybe it should be 30 to 1. What was Buster Douglas when he beat Mike Tyson, I think, was 42 to 1? Jamie doesn't gamble. I definitely don't sound loud in Texas. He is a minus 1,000 favorite. You're right. Yeah. So it's a $10.50 for Jake Paul. 10 to 1, right? Holy shit. That's a great bet. You got to bet a thousand to win 100. Yeah, but you've got to feel like you're going to win if everything is normal.

Joshua's chinny, though, man. Is he that chinny, though? I mean, he fought in Gano. There's a minus 10,000 favorite on that card also. Who's the minus 10,000? You know Marley versus. It's the very first fight, but minus 10,000 is insane number. Listen, my feeling is who knows what's going to happen?

It's a fight. Fights are crazy. But if I had a guess, I mean, you got to lean towards the guy who's a two-time heavyweight champion. Is that on that card, too? Yeah. Anderson Silver versus Tyrone Woodley. Interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. You've got to kind of respect this Jake Paul kid. As much as it pains me to say it, he takes two guys that he beat and puts them on the card together. Oh, he's right about. Listen, he also supported Ben Asker. When, Ben Asker had needed multiple or double lung transplant, and his insurance didn't cover it. He footed part of the bill for that. I'll tell you what's going to be a great fight.

What? Choucour against Tiafima Lopez. That's a very good fight. Yeah, it was a very good fight. Jay, Prince, and I were, you know, here's a kid that'll fight anyone, literally. The only other fighter that we've managed over all these years that was like, I don't care who does, put him in front of me, I want the best, was Andre, Ward. Everyone else is chess playing. Shakur is like, I want Javante Davis, Tiafima, get me the biggest name.

you can and uh i just think that's going to be an awesome fight that's a phenomenal fight that's at the garden when is that january 31st i would love for you to be there that'll be great that's an exciting fight yeah we were just excited about that we were just up there for the press conference me and jay and uh yeah it's going to be a good one yeah two guys in their prime i love it i have uh one more thing i want to throw in here jelly roll received a full pardon today wow Wow. Governor of Tennessee. Fuck yeah.

Good. That's amazing. Yo, man, that moment on the show, what was it last week? Mm-hmm. Man, I was a puddle. Yeah. That was so cool. He's an amazing person.

That dude's lost 300 pounds. Let me see that picture of him again. Look at him. He looks like a different fucking person. He has different hands. He's got a different face, different body. And we worked out together, man. He ran 2.6 miles on the treadmill out there.

And then we got in the sauna together. He's fucking great. He's that moment when he said, can I hug you? Yeah. Oh, it's beautiful. He's a beautiful person. It really is. And you are too, brother.

Good for him. Thank you, Brian. Thank you. Thank you, as always for having it. Thanks for having here. We're awesome. Appreciate you, brother. Appreciate you, too.

Goodbye. Thank you.