The Megyn Kelly Show - Exclusive Breonna Taylor Raid Details, and Omicron Reality, with Sgt. John Mattingly and David Leonhardt | Ep. 279

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Sgt. John Mattingly, author of "12 Seconds in the Dark," to discuss the truth about what happened with the Breonna Taylor raid, the misinformation spread by the media and by celebrities about the shooting, the offensive GMA interview with Mattingly, his appreciation for AG Daniel Cameron, the reality of race in policing, the truth about Kenneth Walker, and more. Then, David Leonhardt of the New York Times joins the show to discuss whether COVID precautions like masking and social distancing actually had an effect, the cost-benefit analysis we need when we decide on mitigation methods, the way the left and the right perceive risk, how vaccines worked with the Omicron variant, the real risk of COVID for kids, whether the CDC is politicized, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live this week from Montana. One of the most influential reporters when it comes to COVID, David Leonhard of The New York Times will be here later today. His latest piece on the data showing COVID precautions like masks and social distancing did basically nothing to stop the spread of Omicron is drawing backlash from others in the media, despite it being a purely fact-based report. We will speak to him about that and the backlash. But we begin with an exclusive interview today with one of the officers involved in the Breonna Taylor case. Yesterday marked two years since the shooting that took the life of Taylor, who was 26 years old at the time.

Sergeant John Mattingly was also shot during the raid. He survived. But Mattingly says the false narrative about this shooting driven by media, by Hollywood's biggest stars, from Alicia Keys to George Clooney to Oprah Winfrey, and even by our now vice president, destroyed his life. He tells his story in his new book, Out Tomorrow, 12 Seconds in the Dark, a police officer's first hand account of the Breanna Taylor raid. John, thank you so much for being here. How are you today? Good. How are you? Good.

It's nice to meet you, and thank you for sitting and talking about this case. So to refresh our viewers' memory, this happened in Louisville, Kentucky. We've had Daniel Cameron on a number of times. He's the attorney general of the state who brought the case before the grand jury, did not recommend criminal charges against you or your other officer. One officer got charged with endangering some of the residents in the building. We'll get to that in a second. But you were not indicted. You were shot. And this was the case about the so-called no knock warrant that you and your fellow officers executed just after midnight two years ago. And two people came out in the hallway,

one of whom was 26 year old Breonna Taylor. And she was shot. She was shot by your fellow officer because her boyfriend shot you. That's basically what happened. And then the media went off on how this is a black woman killed by white police officers for absolutely no reason. It was the middle of the night. Some said she was shot in her bed, you know, that she didn't stand a chance. No one could understand why the cops were ambushing this poor young woman. So that's just to refresh people how this became a national story and was the subject of protests in Louisville for more than 100 days. This is commented on by virtually everyone. And you are the officer really at the center of it because you're the guy who was shot by her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, who was the other man standing at the end of that hallway when you went in the other person next to her.

All right. So that's the overview. Let's back up to how you experienced it. All right. That night, two years ago, did you have anything to do with the investigation into Kenneth Walker was in her house that night, but she had a different boyfriend who was under investigation by the police for allegedly being a drug dealer. Did you have anything to do with that investigation? No, the only part that you could say I had anything to do with was at the time I'd left our major case unit, which investigated large criminal syndicates and organizations. We did wiretaps and worked with the feds and we did a lot of things on that level. And I had moved to our parcel interdiction unit, which worked with UPS, FedEx, and DHL, different carriers. And we didn't have any relationship with the United States Post Office because a couple of years prior, there had been some tiff between the two departments, two agencies, and they took their ball and went home, basically. So when the detective in charge came to me and said, hey, do we have anything on this case? I said, man, I have no contact, but I'll reach out to the people that do and see if there's anything that they can shed light on.

And at that time, they communicated back and forth and realized that Jamarcus Clever did not have any what they called suspicion. That package is going there. so that's the only part i played in other than that we were just hired help for the night okay so you and your fellow officers were told to go to brianna taylor's residence because she was believed to be the current or on again off again girlfriend of this guy glover who was suspected of dealing drugs. And you do as told. You go just about midnight with your fellow officers. And this is where the facts get disputed, whether it was a no-knock warrant, whether you were told to execute it as a no-knock warrant, and what actually happened when you arrived at the apartment that day. This would become a big bone of contention amongst all parties.

So first, just explain what a no-knock warrant is. The no-knock warrant is, number one, it's not real easy to get. You've got to show the reasons for it as far as the dangers that the individual might pose to the police or the public or the destruction of evidence and the reasons for it, whether, you know, in his criminal history or her criminal history, what the background is. So it has to meet certain criteria. And as far as Glover went, it met the criteria. And due to the fact that he came and went from Breonna Taylor's house on a frequent basis, the fact that he had all his stuff registered to her house, as far as his cell phone, his vehicle, his mail went there, his bank account. When she had bonded him out of jail a couple months previous, they used that address as his. So all that stuff tied Glover to her residence.

And so the no knock was gathered just in case he happened to be at that house that night. They had a tracker and a ping on his phone, tracker on his car and a ping on his phone. So they knew where he was so when they determined that night that he wasn't going to be at that residence when they could see that the way he was going uh they changed that warrant out of the five from a no knock to a knock and announce and so that's what we did we went up and they they asked us specifically to give it additional time than we normally give a knock and announce due to the fact that they knew Glover wasn't there and they wanted her to cooperate later on down the road. And they didn't anticipate Kenneth Walker being in there instead of Glover,

the man they understood to be her boyfriend. Okay. So when they say knock and announce, how is that normally executed? So what you do is you go up to the knock and announce, how is that normally executed? So what you do is you go up to the door and you knock on the door and you announce yourself as the police just so the people inside know who you are. And that's for their safety and for ours, because it is a very, when you barge your way into someone's house and they don't know you're the police, they think they're getting robbed or, you know, a lot of things can go sideways. And and so what you do is you go, you knock and announce and you give what the Supreme Court says a reasonable amount of time, which was always between five and 10 seconds generally is what we give people to come to the door. Our policy now states that you have to give 10 seconds. But that's still when you're at a door knocking, that seems like a long time, even though 10 seconds isn't a lot. But that night we gave between 45 seconds and a minute.

We just extended the time. We were trying to be courteous and do what we were asked to do. And in hindsight, that was a mistake. Yes. I heard you say in the one interview you gave in this case, right when it happened on GMA, which we'll talk about in a minute, that you believe that was the biggest mistake of the night, giving too much time before you just, I mean, did you ram in the door? How did you get the door open? Yeah. After about a minute of knocking and announcing, we didn't have any response as far as them coming to the door and letting us in. So at some point you've got to take action,

you've got to move because the whole goal in doing these warrants simultaneously, because one of the, one of the things that's out there is that Glover had been arrested the day before earlier in the day. That's not true. He was arrested at the same time that we were serving this warrant. And the whole reason being was because you didn't want information to get back to Breonna Taylor's apartment so they could destroy evidence on the case. So when we go up there, finally, the RAM, we use a RAM, which is a heavy tool that bangs the door. It took three hits on the door for it to finally come open. And when it did, that's when we met them. And the reason, the reason you don't want to give them that much time is for the very thing that happened that night. When you're, when you're forcing your way into a house,

you want to have the psychological advantage. You want to have that overwhelming presence of, man, what's going on? The confusion factor works in your benefit in this case, because it doesn't give the individual on the other side time to get a weapon, time to get up. In this case, they had time to get up, get dressed, retrieve his weapon from the nightstand and stand in the hallway just waiting for us. But notably did not come to the door, did not say who's out there. None of that happened. I mean, who knows how anybody would react, but I can certainly imagine if... Actually, it has happened to me that the police have knocked on my door and my window in the middle of the night saying, police open up. And I was scared, you know what, list and um this is when I was living in a

brownstone in like the basement apartment in New York City and um it turned out that there was uh there was domestic violence situation going on in the top floor of the townhouse and so they were just trying to get in the building but it was scary but what I did was I went over to the buzzer and I buzzed them in because I could see that they were police. I saw the, you know, you could see the uniforms, you could see the lights. You know, there's a way of telling whether this is a legitimate cop, some weird guy standing there or five, six guys in uniform, you know, with guns and flashlights who look like police. So that didn't happen. No, it didn't. And that was one of the contentions, too.

You know, they kept using the word. Well, they were in there. They were in street clothes. They were in plain clothes. Well, technically, that didn't. And that was one of the contentions too. You know, they kept using the word, well, they were in their, they were in street clothes. They were in plain clothes. Well, technically that's accurate, but we had vest on that said police clearly on it. We were announcing ourself. We had the rest of our weapons. We had badges out. So the misconception of, oh, they were in plain clothes.

They didn't know they were the police is actually inaccurate because what we had on was more visible than if I'd walked up in just a typical police uniform with a small badge on the front of it. So we identified ourself and that's just been totally taken out of context and politicians used it to get bills passed that they had wanted to. So a lot of people took advantage of the false narrative that was spun. So the, and we will get to this too, but it should be noted that your police department, your mayor, no one was standing up for you guys. No one was trying to correct the record. All this misinformation was being put out there and the media ran with it. And the guys who are supposed to be protecting you, you're not allowed to speak. Investigations are going on. You're not allowed to say anything and you shouldn't say anything, but those around

you should try to be correcting the record. And they weren't, I believe, because they were partisans who were too afraid to stand up on your behalf. So you walk into the apartment and how many cops are there? There's you and who else? There's seven of us total. Inside of Breonna Taylor's apartment? Well, we never made it inside. We were in the doorway, in the walk breezeway area of the eightplex. And there was seven of us outside, one to the right knocking, myself on the left with a couple guys behind me. And then where the other guys could fit in by the stairway. And so we never made it in.

Once the door was breached or came open, I cleared from outside visually what I could see from right to left in the living room. I remember the couches, the colors. And as soon as I stepped into the frame of the door before I made entry in, I encountered Kenneth Walker and Breonna Taylor about 25, 30 feet down the hallway. And he was already in a shooter stance. And as soon as my body cleared in that open area, he fired around. And all we could do was return fire and try to get out of the way. Had you ever had anybody shoot their gun at you prior while on the force?

You'd been on, what, 23 years at that point? Yeah, 21 years. And yeah, I've had a few. The closest one I had was back in 2010. I was serving a search warrant then. And when I went to open the screen door, we yanked it. I yanked it and the handle broke off. And as I stepped back so the Ram guy could hit the door, someone shot through the door and went right past my head. The glass cut me. But we couldn't see back in this house. We had no visual target, so we didn't return fire. We retreated and called the suspect out. And subsequently, he went to prison for several've been shot at and what could you see down the hallway? It was how far away were the, the bodies, the figures that you were looking at and what, and what could you make out of them? So it was about 25, 30 feet. And it was something

totally different than I'd ever encountered on any search warrant. You know, I've done, we've tried to calculate around 2000 search warrants where I've made entry. And on this one, generally people are either running or they're there giving up or they're in another room hiding, something to that effect. I've encountered a few with guns that had to make split second decisions. And fortunately for both of us, it didn't turn out like this situation where they actually dropped their gun or they surrendered. And this one, when I turned the corner, all I could see was down the hall, a larger figure to my right, which was the left of the hall, but to my right was a larger figure and right next to him, almost in the same, was a smaller figure. And I had never seen that. So my

mind, your brain is working so quick. I saw this and was like, something's off. But by that time, everything's happening so quick, it's too late. And so they were almost like one person. And what you can't tell by what you've heard in the accounts given was there's a wall that the hallway was super narrow. It was a more narrow hallway than most. And on the side where Kenneth Walker was standing was an insect. And as soon as he shot, he dove out of the way. And unfortunately, Brianna tried to follow him into the other bedroom. Oh, wow. Oh, I didn't realize.

Because he shot one bullet and then dove out of eyesight. And left her there. Oh, my God. Because first of all, if you think somebody is breaking into your house as a man, are you going to tell your girlfriend to come with you? Or would you say, you call the police and stay in here. I'll go check it out. Yes. Do not come out in the hallway. Yeah. I don't understand the logic behind it. Because I remember when I woke up from surgery, one of the first things I asked my wife, I said was, was man I would love to sit down and talk to him

and ask him why why were y'all like that that that just blew my mind because you know after 21 years you think you've seen everything and then something new pops up and you're like that just didn't make sense to me right they don't normally run out into harm's way with their girlfriend by their side and so did you know immediately you'd been shot that may be a dumb question but you know did you feel it no I knew immediately I was able to return fire and then when I stepped back out of the doorway is when I reached down and felt and I could feel a handful of blood and I knew leg wounds typically don't bleed a whole lot unless you hit an artery. So I even announced right there at the doorway to the guys that I've been hit and in my artery. And so it was, it was a surreal situation. That is 100% a potentially fatal injury. There's zero question you get, you get shot in your

femoral artery. You could be dead soon unless you get immediate medical attention. And is your understanding when you've been shot or shot at as a police officer, because we have a lot of these debates, you shoot to kill, do you not? I mean, people say like, well, you could shoot to wound. You could speak to that. What we're taught is to shoot to stop the threat, regardless of what that is. If it's one shot and they give up and we miss, or if you have to do repeated shots to stop the threat from coming at you or coming at the public, then that's what you do. Because it's not like TV where, you know, you get shot in the leg and you just fall down or, you know,

even a shot to the head. I mean, we've seen that repeatedly where people just keep fighting and going. So you do whatever it takes to stop the threat. And if that, if that means death, then that means death. We hope for the best outcome, but it's an ugly business. You didn't fire until you heard his gun go off? Correct. I could see the flash. I could see the muzzle, feel the impact.

Yeah, because the book says 12 seconds, but how many seconds from the, would you say, from that point to, you know, during the, dragging me out so they could get the tourniquet on. So I would say the gunfire itself, though, lasted maybe entirely eight, 10 seconds. And I'm sorry, you faded out when you said 12 seconds was the time that you said 12 seconds was the time from what to you being in the parking lot? From the time the door was actually knocked open until the time I was began, someone would grab me to help treat me, help treat the wound. Wow. So fast. It all happened extremely quickly. So fast. OK, so now you're out getting treatment. And Kenneth Walker, who was there with Breonna Taylor that night, who lived, was he shot at all? No, he was not. He was fine. Okay. She took six bullets. The coroner determined that it was difficult to see what was what in that dark hallway. And Kenneth Walker called 911.

And this is what that call sounded like. Take a listen. 911, operator Harris, where is your emergency? I don't know what's happening. Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend. Oh, my God. Can you check and see where she's been shot at i can't you know that's so they don't like that is she alert able to talk to you Oh, my God. So that was released to the media and helped create the narrative of Kenneth Walker being an innocent victim of these overly aggressive cops who burst in there, scared him and killed his girlfriend. What did you make of that call?

Let me frame that call. First of all, that that happened. I can't remember if it's eight minutes after, or six minutes after. You write six in your book, yeah. Yeah, so six minutes after the entry was made. But prior to that, more importantly, he had called his mother. And one of the officers that is the courtesy officer of that apartment that lives on scene heard the shots, came outside. And he happened to go to school with Kenneth Walker. He knew him personally. Had his number on his phone. They talked all the time,

he said, in that parking lot. He also knew Kenneth's mother. And Kenneth's mother and father were the first ones on scene on Springfield that night, as far as, you know, victims, family. They came up to this officer and they said, she said, Kenny called and said, they're at the door. And I said, who's at the door, baby? And she said, he replied with, it's the police. I've got to go. And he hung up. Now, if that's the case, then there's two things here. Number one, the way that was framed says that he knew we were the police when we were knocking. But second off, if that was misconstrued or taken out of the timeline, he still called his mother and talked to her for almost two minutes

prior to calling 911. So then when he called 911, he still said, I don't know who's at the door, somebody's at the door. But he had already, you know, showed his cards at that point. But the investigation was a little bit sloppy in that area where there was no follow up on that to see. All right. Did we miss a phone or did he call from one of Brianna's phones and, you know,, backup came and they had body cams and they caught in one of many moments. They caught Kenneth talking about what happened. And in this video, he's he's blaming Breonna Taylor. Let's listen to that. This is soundbite, too. I don't know. my god honestly sorry that's the It's a regular 9mm. Did she shoot or you shoot it? It was her. She was scared. My God.

Honestly, that's the first time I've heard that, Sergeant. That is stunning. There's no dispute that Kenneth Walker shot you. There's none. And there he is moments after blaming it on her. It just shows his character. He lies and he does it with impunity. He didn't care. All of his recorded statements after the fact, whether it be in interviews with the police, they're all different.

You know, as far as what he did after the shot or how the follow through on the investigation on that by the district attorney was just, it was pretty weak. Yeah, they weren't interested because the national narrative had gone a different way. And it was the way of demonizing the police and no-knock warrants and putting Breonna Taylor on 26 billboards like Oprah did. And for the first time ever in the history of O Magazine, she loved to see her own face on her magazine. She put somebody else on it. And that was Breonna Taylor on 26 billboards like Oprah did. And for the first time ever in the history of O Magazine, she left to see her own face on her magazine. She put somebody else on it. And that was Breonna Taylor for the first time ever without doing any investigation. And we'll get to what her misinformation, among others. We'll squeeze in a quick break here,

Sergeant. We'll come back and we'll talk about the smear campaign that was then unleashed against you, your family, the danger you were put in and the absolute dereliction of duty when it came to going after the man who shot you. I mean, they had zero interest in any of that. Stand by. We'll pay a bill. We'll get right back to you. Here with me now, John Mattingly, former Louisville, Kentucky police sergeant and author of the new book, 12 Seconds in the Dark, a police officer's firsthand account of the Breonna Taylor raid. The book is currently number one on Amazon's new releases in media and politics list. And please help keep it there, because this is one of those books that Simon and Schuster, I understand, had agreed to publish. And then they got too afraid and they pulled it. And the Daily Wire picked it up and is publishing it. Is that correct, John? That's correct.

It's amazing. Thank God for Ben and Jeremy Boring and the guys at Daily Wire. And what cowards at Simon and Schuster. What cowards. I mean, right now, like this all that kind of decision must have happened 12 months ago in order, you know, the way books work. But, you know, the climate on police has changed considerably since they're cowardice. It has. People are realizing how important police are and what happens when you unfairly demonize them city after city and defund them. Something the black community was never in favor of. Only this weird organization, Black Lives Matter, which we now know has been committing fraud state after state or accused of and um and white upper west side

liberals women in lululemon who go out there and protest the cops and try to take away the funding for people who are keeping inner cities safe that's why it's all getting reversed city after city but anyway um the book's not by simon and sch Schuster's by the daily wire support John support the daily wire by the book. Um, couple things. So Hankinson, uh, Hank, is that how you pronounce his last name? Hankinson? Yes. Okay. He's maybe he endangered some folks in the next apartment by firing without enough care. And he was just acquitted at the beginning of March, days ago. During the trial, he was asked about you, John, and we have a bit of that testimony. Here he is. I knew Sergeant Mattingly was down, and I knew... I knew they were trying to get to him. And it appeared to me that they were being executed with this rifle. So what did you do? I returned fire through, excuse me,

through the sliding glass door. And that did not stop the threat. I thought that if I could get to that bedroom window, I could put rounds through that bedroom window and stop the shooter. Who, from the last place I had eyes on them which was seconds before that. And are you able to estimate how long it was from the time the first shot that struck Sergeant Mattingly till your last shot? I would say somewhere between five and ten seconds.

That's got to be hard to hear how emotional he gets talking about what happened to you and just what all of you guys have been through. The police officer's pain gets completely discounted. The pain to your families

and the death threats that you've had to deal with. No one cares. They only care about one narrative, which is you are the evil ones. You are the criminals. Right. I'm an evil white cop. That's what it is. Who's willing to die for the black community, for people I don't know or hate me. So it makes me racist somehow. I mean, he's been through it. He was acquitted. One of the statements that came out caught my

eye. One of the lawyers for Kenneth Walker, who again, all charges were dropped against Kenneth Walker. We'll get to that. But one of his lawyers said this was not justice for Breonna Taylor or for Kenneth Walker. Kenneth Walker was assaulted by the state and lives among us devoid of apology or recognition for the harm done to him. Your reaction to that? Always the victim. I mean, isn't that the mantra of the day? Nobody takes responsibility for actions. I mean, we've admitted the few errors we've made that maybe could have changed the outcome of this or some of the things afterwards that were done incorrectly, but not once has responsibility

been taken by Kenneth. It's everybody else's fault. You know, it's, he's the one that was in the drug game. He's the one that talked about in his phone doing home invasions on people. So somehow that makes us the bad guy though. And he didn't get his justice, although he's not facing jail time. He hasn't faced scrutiny from from her family that I know of for for leaving her and putting her in a situation that was just unwinnable. Right. You want to talk about wanton endangerment. Why didn't he face that charge with respect to Brianna's death? At least. And he faced no charges for shooting you because the narrative was it was self-defense. What would you do if a cop burst into your apartment in the middle of the night with guns drawn, seven of them,

scaring the hell out of you? He had a right to defend himself, right? That was the narrative. So to those who say they were right not to charge Kenneth Walker, what say you? If I'm being objective and honest and dealing with the court systems as long as I have, I could see a good attorney being able to flip this and say, because we don't have proof as far as body can. That's a screw up on our part. So I can see them saying there's no proof, definitive proof that he heard them.

Not once, Kelly, did they take us to the scene and say, show us what you did. Show us how loud you knocked so we can take a recorder back in the bedroom and see if we can pick this sound up. That never happened, which blew my mind also. We have the state, the attorney general, and the feds investigating us, and not one time has what would seem like a simple part of an investigation taking place, take place. It just didn't happen. And so I could see how you could get a hung jury or maybe even flip them saying there's reasonable doubt that he did not hear us at the door. It's hard to swallow because I wholeheartedly believe that he heard us because I know how loud

we were yelling. I know how loud we were announcing ourself. But I've also got to be able to be willing to accept the fact that the way our court system works, that he probably did have an out. And there were witnesses in the building who were ready to testify that you guys did not identify yourselves, though there was at least one witness who was close by who said, I heard it and I heard it clearly. Right. They keep telling these 12 witnesses that didn't hear us, but what they're not telling you as far as those 12 witnesses is some of those were from two buildings down, and there's no way they could have heard us. One of them even got on the air

after she had been on multiple of these documentaries saying, oh, you know, I've had interactions with the police. I didn't hear them. They did not announce himself. And then I just happened to be on her page one day scrolling through and she's on a live saying, I can't believe you people said I said that because there's no way I could have heard them from where my building was. It's too far away. But they use her as the point of contact saying there's no way that we announced ourselves. So she contradicted herself as well. And we know the truth. And that's the great thing about having the truth. Number one, I can repeat my story numerous times. It's not going to change because that's what took place. And the truth always wins in the end. And the same cannot be said for Kenneth Walker, whose whose story has changed multiple times.

Was there you mentioned his connection with drugs, whatever came of that. Was there were there drugs inside of Breonna Taylor's apartment? Was the stuff that she had allegedly been doing with the other boyfriend ever verified? And was Kenneth's connection to the drug world ever confirmed? Two parts there. The confirmation of drugs inside the apartment or money or anything was not found because the search warrant was not allowed to be executed for the narcotics after the fact. Our public integrity unit came in and collected the shell casing, did the ballistics. They searched for anywhere a bullet could be. However, looking at the pictures, knowing how

we search and search warrants, if you're looking for a specific piece of evidence in a bullet, then you're not going through shoeboxes. You're not going in the attic. You're not doing all the things that we do, flipping mattresses, looking for cuts in them. We know how they had things. We know where to look. And unfortunately, these guys are just in a different field. They're collecting ballistic evidence, which is totally different. on the case reached out to one of the upper chain of commands and said can we go execute this search warrant now the place is still secured let's go wrap this thing up finish it and they were denied access um another mistake yes yeah so uh the second part of that question um how did you phrase it i'm sorry well do kenneth walker does he does was he connected to crime to drugs yes in his phone um there are multiple pictures of him selling pills which we know pills are almost impossible to get from doctors now all probably 90 of the pills that we encountered and we seized were were fentanyl based because it's cheap it's easy to get on the black market they press these pills

they send them out you've some pills you sell marijuana bragging about it then it's cheap. It's easy to get on the black market. They press these pills. They send them out. He was selling pills. He was selling marijuana, bragging about it. And then it's what I talked about earlier. He had a text from a guy saying, Hey, we got this guy we can hit a lick on, which is Rob for 20 grand. And Kenneth said his response was, well, I always do good surveillance beforehand. So I know what I'm getting into and 20 grand's worth it or something to that effect. So yeah, he was in the game. He's not this innocent, poor guy who was getting ready to marry this girl because he wasn't. He's on jail phone calls talking about, you know, hooking up with other girls just the day after.

Do we have reason to believe that Breonna Taylor was involved with the ex-boyfriend and running some sort of, or helping him with his drug business? Yes. He's on, Jamarcus Glover, the ex-boyfriend, is on jail phone calls talking about that Breonna held the money for him and other individuals for their drug money. Because they like to keep it spread out because baby mamas and different things might get mad and take their money or call the police on them. So they're pretty sly and smooth as far as spreading these things out. Again, I'll go back to what I said before. You know, Breonna may have been tied up in this stuff, but I think she was kind of a victim of guys taking advantage of her.

I don't know if she was looking for love or needed that verification. I don't know. But this is the typical thing I've seen in my entire career where these guys manipulate these girls or pay some bills or do whatever they do to get them involved because then that gives them an extra shield of protection or an extra layer between them and law enforcement. I mean, it's, yeah, I know. And I know you've said this yourself it's awful what happened to her no one wanted that no one thinks it was justified but it is just a good reminder to everyone to like be careful with whom you associate you just never know what kind of world you're going to get sucked into or what kind of danger you might find yourself facing if you choose to spend your life with nefarious characters she you know her she's been lauded by the press and by people like Oprah as this decorated EMT.

You know, that was a new piece of her life. She'd only been acting as an EMT for five months. And, you know, she wasn't even an EMT at this point. She was fired from. Oh, no, she was. She was an EMT. She had been an EMT since 2017. She was fired from, Oh no, she was, she was an EMT. She hadn't been an EMT since 2017. She was fired from that job. She was on the no rehire list from the city. Oh boy. Yeah. That was just another, they took a picture from several years ago

and it wasn't decorated. She'd only been on five months. There's no, you don't get a decoration. That picture they show of her with the decoration was the graduation plaque from EMT school. Because that's what Oprah says. Here's Oprah's, this is what she posted about this. Today would have been Breonna Taylor's 27th birthday, but she's not here to celebrate because shortly after midnight on March 13th, Louisville police entered her apartment unannounced. You write in your book, false. And after a brief confrontation with her boyfriend, and you write in your book, I think she meant when that boyfriend shot a police officer, shot her eight times. Right. Because Oprah says after a brief confrontation with her boyfriend, she shot eight times.

The officers have not been fired or charged. And Oprah Winfrey continues by remembering Taylor as an award winning EMT who doesn't even get a chance to celebrate her birthday. That's Oprah. Alicia Keys is the one who tweeted out, say, her name. Millions and millions of shares, tens of millions of people saw it. And even the now vice president of the United States, she was running for office then, Kamala Harris tweeted out, quote, there are two systems of justice when peaceful protesters are arrested and the police who murdered Breonna Taylor almost three months ago still roam free. What did you make of that? Man, it's just another slap in the face.

I mean, it was continual. I've told everybody being shot was the easiest part of this whole ordeal. I would take that 10 times over from all the stuff we've gone through after the fact. that affect their lives, especially individuals who are your people who give to society, who are an actual asset, as opposed to people who are leeches of society, then, you know, it's just hard to, number one, take them serious, respect them. And it just makes you sick to your stomach. Do you think she stoked the controversy for political benefit and without much concern for your safety or that of your family? A hundred percent. She doesn't care about anybody but her. Most of these politicians don't. I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. There's a few good ones, but most of them are just about now and what's my next election cycle? How am I going to, how am I constantly setting up the next thing? It's not about the American people. When you have that big a platform, and it wasn't just Kamala Harris, George Clooney.

Here's just a few examples, actually. Okay, Snoop Dogg was out there saying that you didn't knock, as if Snoop Dogg knows absolutely anything about this case or any other. LeBron James was out there wearing some baseball cap by any means make America arrest the cops who kill Breonna Taylor Ice Cube was wearing a hat or something saying wanted three murderers in the Breonna Taylor case so it was stoked by all these celebrities you know with tens of millions of dollars I imagine you with 21 years of service as a cop under your belt do not have tens of millions of dollars or your kids. I know you have older children who were also getting death threats as all these extremely famous people stoked the fires against your family. Right. It was just continual. I mean, no matter which way we turned.

And that's the problem, because some of you, you kind of enjoy listening to or watching their movies or, you know, I love sports. But after all this, I'm seeing the names on the back of these jerseys. And, you know, one football player donated $100,000 and another one, you know, they're getting on there making videos. The NBA did their own documentary. The NBA players did their own documentary on this. And I'm going, my goodness, all you people are pushing this false agenda that you have no, nothing, no clue about the truth isn't out. And that goes back to what we talked about earlier. You know, the city and the department

had all this information from day one, our city council president had all the information. And what did they do? They chose to sit on it because they had already gone forward with allowing her family on their platforms to speak. And they were giving them time in the governor's behind his podium, behind the mayor's podium to sit there and say, we need to arrest these cops. They need to go to prison. They need to lose their job. They need to lose their pension all without the forethought of, you know, they have families also. And these are being affected by all these lies. And that just went out the window. Thank God for Daniel Cameron, an honest lawyer, black attorney general,

who's taken so much heat for not recommending a prosecution, you know, called skinfolk but not kinfolk by MSNBC commentators, who viewed it as a betrayal that he didn't push for criminal charges against you. It's a testament in a way to his courage as well. And what kind of a man he is definitely has a higher office ahead of him. And he's one of the good politicians who we want, who's not always thinking about it. He'd been thinking about himself. He would have joined the mob. It would have been an easy decision for him on what to do. Let me pause there, quick break, and more with you on it. I'd love to get your thoughts on him and so much more.

Stand by, John Manning is back next. So your thoughts on Daniel Cameron and the courage he showed in this case. You know, I'd heard good things about him. I've never met the man. I'd heard he's a man of faith. So my hope was that he was going to do the right thing. But with the passing of the buck that had taken place from the D.A. giving it up, the Western Division of U.S. Attorney passing it on to the Eastern Division. There was a lot of people who just, you know, understandably, but cowardly didn't want their hands on it.

And some of it wasn't their decision. The court made some of the decisions for them or the DOJ, but the fact that he did the right thing and stood up was just amazing. And it just shows his character. It shows the fact that, you know, his he was getting ready to get married and he and his wife were getting accosted in their house. And and the sad thing is that none of those people who threatened him, who came to even the attorney general's house on his door saying they're going to burn his house down if if he didn't do the right thing, their charges were dropped. And that stuff just, you look at it and go, well, no wonder people have this boldness and this no-care attitude about upholding the law or abiding by the law, because there's no accountability for these things. He didn't recommend criminal charges to the grand jury, and they didn't return them against you and your fellow officers with, again, the one exemption of Hankinson. Some of the grand jurors later spoke out and actually took issue with some of what Daniel Cameron said publicly and sounded like

they were more in favor of charges than we knew. I'll give you an example. One woman who sat on the grand jury said she believed the investigation was incomplete, that the prosecution wanted to give the cops a slap on the wrist and close it up. There should have been more charges, she said. This echoed two other grand jurors, and I don't know how many grand jury members there were. Generally, there were around 18. So this is three, saying the panel wasn't allowed to consider additional charges because the prosecutor told them the use of force was justified

and said police went in there like it was the okay corral, wanted dead or alive. They were rankled by Cameron saying jurors agreed that no other charges were justified, saying he made it sound like it was all our fault and it wasn't. What did you make of that? Well, I think that's part of that's ignorance on people understanding how the court system works. There have been many times I've taken cases to a district attorney and said, Hey, can we indict this person? Can we do a direct indictment? And they look at the, at the case file and they go, man, there's really just, it doesn't really meet the elements of this case. You know, you can go with this charge, but I wouldn't go with this charge. So there's

the prosecutors only present to the grand jury jury what they think will give them enough evidence to win a court case or to pursue it enough to at least take it to trial to see what the jury say. And in this case, by the letter of the law, by the way the law is written, we abided by it. We did everything that we were supposed to do. And so therefore, no charges could even be presented because it didn't meet the elements of that law. Hankinson meantime, as I mentioned, was just acquitted. He was facing on these three counts up to five years in prison per count. Breonna Taylor's family wanted murder charges. They wanted him charged, well, all of you to be charged with murder. What did you make of Hankinson's acquittal? And honestly, I thought he would get a hung jury.

I didn't know that enough people would have the courage to do the right thing. I know people were looking at that going, yeah, but he shot indiscriminately. But that wasn't the case. He thought we were getting executed at the doorway, and he was doing whatever he could to stop that threat. And, you know, for that, I'm indebted. I appreciate it. And he went through hell over doing what he thought he was trying to save our lives. And, and for that, you know, I commend him for it. He was, where, where did he shoot? Cause it's been a while since I looked at that, but my understanding was it was into a different apartment that had a man or a woman, a child in it.

No, what happened was he shot into the right apartment, but the walls are so thin that it went through their walls in Breonna Taylor's apartment into the adjacent apartment. And we weren't given the layout on the way these apartments were set up. And if you're on the outside looking in, it's hard to realize that the back apartment wraps around and is actually co-joined walls with Breonna Taylor's apartment. So where he shot was where he intended to shoot, but the bullets just kept traveling. I see. So when you heard that he was acquitted, were you relieved? Oh my goodness. Yeah. Because it's kind of like survivor's guilt. You know, even though we didn't cause Kenneth Walker to shoot at us, we didn't create the

scenario that night. I feel like I was the lucky one for getting shot. I didn't lose my job. I didn't get charged like these other cops. So I'm thinking, man, do you really in this line of duty now or in this job, do you really have to take a bullet just to justify doing your job? And unfortunately, that's kind of the scenario that's taken place across the country. If you look around and unless there's concrete proof, they no longer believe police officers were. We had seven guys who gave somewhat different views of what happened because one person said they saw this or they heard this. So we obviously didn't come together and get our stories and go, okay, let's say this because everything would have aligned perfectly. But we all did say we knocked and announced. Everybody,

that story never changed. The only thing that changed was viewpoints of where taking a look at this case. Because Kenneth Walker reportedly told that cop, I called my mom and the mom said that he was saying the police were there. That's what the mother said to this cop. All right, listen, there's much more to go over, including John's feelings on Benjamin Crump and what GoFundMe did to this officer when his friend tried to raise some money to help him fight the attacks against him. This organization is absolutely shameful sometimes, just shameful. We'll be right back. Don't go away. Here with me today, John Mattingly, former Louisville, Kentucky police sergeant, giving his first interview now since on the publication of his new book, 12 Seconds in the Dark, in which he sets the record straight about what really happened in the Breonna Taylor case, which has become so popular amongst celebrities as Exhibit A, maybe B, after George Floyd, and why we need police reform and why we need to defund the police and in why we shouldn't trust cops, especially when it comes to dealing with black suspects or the black community. Can I just spend a minute on that? Does this case have anything to do with race?

I mean, as far as I can tell, what it has to do with race is what the media just decided to tell us. Like, there's not an allegation here that anybody involved was a racist. Like what does it have to do with race? It doesn't. Just the fact that I'm white and or we were white police officers, even though we had a black officer with us, but the officers were white

and Brianna was black. And the sad thing is ever since Michael Brown and all that stuff blew up in Ferguson, every time there's an officer involved shooting locally, the first question to ask is, were they black or white? And that shouldn't be the case. The case should simply be, was it a good shoot? Period. Because criminal activity doesn't discriminate with color. And, you know, we paint everything in such a small box of black and white, and it makes other aspects of life so hard to live by because

that you're always looking over your shoulder for that racist boogeyman that doesn't exist. And it's sad that it's evolved to that. It's like being called those terrible names is the least of your problem when they're looking to put you in jail like your colleague was for 15 years or when you're fighting for your life as you were when you realized you've been shot in the femoral artery. But still, it's not fun to have it all over the country as it was. And one of the complaints you raise in the book is that you were not defended by the city officials, by the mayor, by the governor, and how Breonna Taylor's family was given a platform anywhere they wanted, whether it was the mayor's office or television or anywhere. And you tell me how they used it and whether anyone who is supposed to be at least figuratively neutral, never mind on your

side, responded. Yeah, it was a little shocking. You don't expect liberal leaders to come have your back, but in the same sense, you don't expect them to set you up for failure either. When I would say they didn't have skin in the game, but I guess they did because they tried to utilize this for the votes in 2020, and it clearly worked. They used us and the false narrative to push their agendas. And it just, it was baffling that Ben Crump was able to get up there and talk about, you know, say just all this outlandish stuff that I'm sitting back there going, are you kidding me? Who's going to stand up and say this, this never happened. You know, you don't have to give details of the case, but in Louisville anyway, after a police shooting, our mayor,

who is transparent, you know, that's his big buzzword, releases body cam footage within 24 hours of the shooting. So you mean to tell me you would have released the body cam if we had it, but you can't simply go on there and say, no, they had the right apartment. No, her name was on the warrant. No, she wasn't asleep in bed. No, Glover wasn't in custody. That does nothing to impede the case. It doesn't affect the investigation, but by not saying it, it helps push their agenda the other way. And that's what's so troubling. And unless we get this thing turned around, you're not going to have any good cops. You're going to go back to the 80s like it was in New Orleans and Detroit, where you're just taking anybody that's breathing and then you have nothing. But you want corruption? That's where you're going to get corruption. And if we don't put the brakes on

this thing and have people support and come out and say, I don't care what office you hold, you're wrong and support the police. It is one thing for people to look at the actual facts and come to a decision. No, I don't think they behave well. No, they shouldn't have done this. They shouldn't have done that. That's fair game, right? We all face that in our businesses. It's quite another to have a completely false narrative spun about you and you're not allowed to say anything. And those who are refuse because they want to save their own political skins. I know you write in the book that there was one city council member who was out there calling Kenneth Walker a hero

while everybody on his side and Breonna Taylor's family was calling for you to be arrested, fired. They wanted everybody terminated or punished. And the Kenneth Walker is the hero? You want to hear a kicker to that? So two weeks ago, a judge retired or judge retired like a month or two ago. I don't know quite when, but a couple of weeks ago, our good old brave governor filled that vacancy in the courts as a judgeship with this same council member. They call Kenneth Walker a hero. And so it's just there's just constant like. So it worked, you know? Yeah. How tone deaf is this guy? You know, that, that he knows she's not unbiased. She's very biased as far as her views yet. You're going to put her in a judgeship position. That's what he wanted in an elected

position that she wasn't elected to. Wow. Yeah. So it worked. Her tactic worked perfectly. You write that you begged police department officials we're going to let the city burn because you're scared of setting a precedent. And number one, their precedents change, you know, with the wind, whatever suits them, they change all the time. So there's nothing in stone that says you cannot, you know, debunk the lies that they chose to correct the record. Yeah. And the same with city council president, you know, he was a former cop. He, uh, he trained me actually. He was one of our trainers in the academy. And I reached out to him and said, David, this is, these are all the facts. These are all the lies. Number one, and listed like seven or eight things. And I said, these are the facts, man. We we've got all these things lined up these things lined up that there's proof of. And he

said, man, the mayor's a coward. I'll get out there on Monday and tell the truth in a press conference. Never happened. Matter of fact, he ended up going on TV and basically bashing what we did or saying what we did was wrong with this no knock after I'd already told him it wasn't a no knock. So he knew the facts and his just, he just, he was, his goal was to run for mayor this time around. And I think he was just using that to appease the community that he thought, man, they're, they're behind me on this one. So I'll keep pushing this narrative. Yeah. You were an easy stepping stone to step on and shove you under the water without any care for how that might affect you or the threats it might generate against you, which I will get to.

But first, let's just while we're on the topic of the media and it's, you know, rushed to judgment, it takes me to GMA. That's the one interview you gave before. Now you went on, you spoke with Michael Strahan. We've teed up a little bit of the interview. And then at the back half of the soundbite, we have them talking about it on set without you. So let's watch that and then

we'll talk about it. Are you racist? No. Let's address the fact that just because you're Black, you're a threat. It's not the case. I'm not scared of you. Well, that's how Black men feel. That's how Black women feel. But does that make it real? You look at a George Floyd, what happened to him is tragic. It was horrible. Everybody looked at that and said, wrong, bad, disgusting. And what happens? They end up getting locked up. In my opinion, George Floyd was not a model citizen. It's very hard for me to sit here. Here, George Floyd died of an open overdose. He died because someone was kneeling on his neck for a minute. And I agree with that. In regards of him being a model citizen or not, he didn't deserve that. No one deserved that.

Nobody said he did. I just demonized it. I said it's horrible. And I asked him about the leaked email that he sent out to his fellow officers where he used the term to describe protesters, used the term peaceful protesters when he, and he also called them thugs frustrating that time to hear some of the things that were said we have there's a lot more there's so many discrepancies there's so many discrepancies again he called protesters thugs and he said well he's Erica peaceful and that was the question how are they peaceful but yet thugs and then what he said about George Floyd as well was was yeah way in way, in my opinion, left field.

Had nothing to do with this. Trying to bring the character of someone into the situation where they were basically killed, made no sense to me. And at the end of the day, an innocent black woman is dead. Yes. Unnecessarily. Why doesn't Robin Roberts go clean up the mess she made with Jussie Smollett before she starts lecturing someone on how to respond to questions?

I mean, the nerve of these people who know absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing about law enforcement, nothing to sit there in judgment of you. Why doesn't George Stephanopoulos go explain to us why he was the one creating war rooms to attack Bill Clinton's sexual harassment and assault victims before he passes judgment on you and the way you communicated the unmitigated gall. They know nothing, nothing about law enforcement, nothing about the law. And yet they sit on there on that set as pundits judging a guest after he did them the courtesy of giving them an exclusive interview. To me, as a member of the media, John, it's infuriating. That infuriating. That infuriates me. What did you feel after you saw them do that to you? I was ticked off. I was mad

because we talked for three hours, three and a half hours, something like that, nonstop, no break, anything. And there was a lot of good conversation. There are a lot of things that could have been positive for police and public relations. And they chose to leave all that out and take things. Number one, they didn't play them in the correct order. They spun it around, they edited. And, you know, the fact that, that when I look at him and say, so just because you feel something doesn't make it a fact, he's like, well, it's real to me. And I said, doesn't matter if it's real to you, if it's not reality, it doesn't matter what you feel. And so we went back and forth on a lot of things. And for him to sit there and when we're done, shake my hand and say, I think you as a black man, if he goes on there and goes, well, you know, I kind of understand where he was coming from. He did get shot and he was trying to save his life.

You know, he didn't go there to kill Brianna. But, you know, he just didn't say that. Couldn't say it. Wasn't brave enough to say it. I don't know the words for it. Also, your email to your fellow officers taken out of context in which you're saying to your fellow cops, I just want to tell you something. I want to tell you that you do not deserve to be in this position, the position that allows thugs to get in your face and yell, curse, and degrade you, throw bricks, bottles, and urine on you, and expect you to do nothing. It goes against everything we were taught in the academy.

The position that if you make a mistake, you do not deserve to be in this position. It goes on from there. That's what you were trying to say. They make it sound like you had absolutely no tolerance for any sort of peaceful protest, like actual peaceful protest. You're clearly talking about violent protests, attacking cops. Right. And then at the end, at the very end, I even go on to say, do not make the mistake of letting them bait you into something. Basically don't fall for it. Be professional. Don't lose your job over these idiots. And, and, you know, again, all that gets overlooked or taken out of context. To me, it's so maddening because they're part of the problem. They're part of the reason we're having escalating murder rates in our major cities right now, because they help demoralize the cops. They help the cops

convince the cops to sit back because what's going to happen to them. They're going to get the Mattingly treatment. They're going to get bashed by every corner from the vice president to George Clooney, to Oprah, to the entire cast of GMA. Even if they reach out to them, even if they get shot in a life threatening injury, none of it matters. They will be bashed. Right. Yeah. It's a bad catch-22 to be in because you do sign up this job to help people. You do. Because who else is going to take the ridicule and the situations you're put in for not great pay? It's not horrible pay, but it's not great. You're not going to get rich off of it. And so if I'm willing to do all that, and then nobody has my back, or when I do what you trained me to do, and then you're going to prosecute me for it, who wants that?

You were doxxed by BLM that put out your home address. All of the cops involved their home contact information. I mentioned you received death threats. At one point, you received information that there had been a, quote, credible threat per an informant they'd been told on your life, that even a $50,000 reward had been placed for your harm or death, and that there was an FBI investigation opened up into some motorcycle groups, possibly that may have been behind that one motorcycle group involved. Um, what I read from your book is that Brianna Taylor's mother was a member of it and her boyfriend, I guess, was the head of it. What happened with that FBI investigation?

Well, after 10, we think 10 days, 10, 11 days from the best date range we can get from them, that that investigation was dropped. The word in the office was the optics look bad going after, you know, the victim of a national or a national victim's mother. And I had FBI clearance at this point. I'd worked with the FBI. Some of my guys were on task force with the FBI. So I know how they work. I know that what it takes to get a case open. I know that once a case is open, they don't like shutting them because it's hard to regenerate that number to get the case back open. So it's not like a local thing where you can just pull a number and you

open a case and then you can close it out. Then if you need to reopen it, do it. You know, they've got to go through a huge chain of command up through DC. So when they, when I found out that this case was closed after 10, 11 days, I was just mind blown. I knew at that point they had, they had no intentions of following up on these threats, even though one of them came from a federal informant and the other came from one of our local informants, two separate informants with the same information that they were able to corroborate. And then due to the optics or the political pressure, they just said, you know what, was a liberal and she may have pressured the feds to drop it. She did. We reached out to her. She said, quote,

after being briefed on the alleged murder for hire plot in the summer of 2020, recognizing the potential conflict of interest for the LMPD, the Louisville Police Department, I recommended the FBI or another law enforcement agency look into the matter and assess the credibility of the info.

I have absolutely no doubt that the resulting investigation, which did not substantiate the allegations, was conducted objectively, thoroughly and independently. So that was how she sees it. Let me ask you this, John, before I let you go. Go fund me. So they allowed fundraisers for Breonna Taylor's family, for Kenneth Walker, too. I can't remember whether he got one.

Yes, he did. He's got two of them. He's got two of them. One of your friends said, let me for Kenneth Walker too. I can't remember whether he got one. He did. He's got two of them. One of your friends said, let me get one for you. You said, no, he said, John, you're going to lose your job. Everybody's losing their job. You know, you, you retired, but the other guys got fired, got tried. And so finally you say, okay, fine. And what happened? It had been up maybe five hours and, uh, it good. It had a lot of momentum going, picking up. I mean, I was kind of surprised, honestly. And all of a sudden it got taken down.

People are texting me going, hey, where's this at? I was like, I don't know. I hadn't even been following it, so I'm not sure. So I reached out to the couple that started it and I said, do you know anything about this? And they said, yeah, they sent us an email saying we violated the rules. And I said, what rules did you violate exactly? And they're like, well, we don't know. And so they asked GoFundMe, they said, what rules do we violate? And they wouldn't tell them even though. So we scoured through the posting and there was nothing in there. There was no negative talk. I mean, it was all about, hey, this officer was shot in the line

of duty and he's trying to heal, but support him and his family so they can get back on their feet. And it was just gone. And again, yeah, Kenneth Walker has two of them. He had one for his legal defense and one for his civil defense. And people like Tyler Perry gave a hundred grand to that. I'm going, you know, my goodness, this is a guy that supposedly supports police yet. Where's, where's George Clooney's donation to you after misleading the public, telling everyone that you shot her in her bed. Where's his apology? Him and Jennifer Lawrence, both, both Kentucky natives, you know,

both hung me out to dry. It's just, it's whatever. I don't want his money. Well, what do you do now? Well, how do you, you have a pension, right? So is that how you support yourself? And, you know, I guess we should close it out with how life has changed as a result of all this. Life's changed big time because we don't live anywhere near where we used to. We're a couple hours away from Louisville. So, you know, I've still got family and friends all there.

So it's, that part's been difficult. Our son's been uprooted several times. I think we moved a total of six times in one year, trying to figure out where we were going to end up. And again, the department on that was just like, good luck, buddy. You know, we don't have anywhere for you, you know, find a place. And so all these things that kind of culminated into where we're at today, you know, God's blessed us. I don't have complaints on that end. You know, I'm healthier now.

I've been able to spend time with my family. But, you know, with this book coming out, I hope people, 12 Seconds in the Dark, I hope people take this and not as a pity for John. I could care less. I don't need your pity. I want them to look at this as a warning. Hey, we better pay attention. We better stop going down the path we're going on, or you're going to have a law enforcement in this country that you're not going to want. We're going to look like Canada, where these guys are just going to do

whatever the government says because they're scared of losing their job or scared of getting indicted. And we need to support law enforcement. We need to vote people in office that are going to uphold the constitution and the laws. And we need to follow people in office that are going to uphold the Constitution and the laws. And we need to follow these judges. These judges are letting these guys out. And it's nothing but repeat, repeat offenses by the same people. And then when action needs to be taken against these thugs, these lowlifes, then all of a sudden the cops are the bad guys because it took force to do it. So I think our lives changed dramatically, but I'm praying that we can take this change and help other people who are in these similar situations just come up for air and go, okay,

everything's going to be okay. We'll get through this. If you want to support John, you can do so. Again, Simon & Schuster tried to stop you from seeing this book. Thanks to The Daily Wire, you can. It's called 12 Seconds in the Dark. John, thank you for your service. Thank you for telling your story.

All the best to you. I would appreciate you having me. You bet. Coming up, we have The New York Times' David Lett Leonhardt, who's here to talk COVID and his latest reporting on Omicron, which the left is bashing him for.

Senior writer and author of The Morning, newsletter for The New York Times, hugely, hugely popular, over 5 million subscribers as I understand it, David Leonhardt has been an excellent reporter on COVID, putting fact-based coverage out to his readers. Imagine that. Lovely. And now he's facing backlash for it, of course. Welcome back to the show, David. Thanks for having me. It's nice to his readers. Imagine that. Lovely. And now he's facing backlash for it, of course. Welcome back to the show, David. Thanks for having me. It's nice to be back. Oh, it's our pleasure. So, I mean, my friends on the left and the right love reading you, and I see you as a sane voice in the craziness and have for quite some time now. And of course, that's going to come with pushback, right? Because one side or both sides, they will not like your little truth bombs. And the latest one had to do with whether these precautions that we've been taking, some of them

like social distancing and masking, those are two of the, you know, favorites actually did anything. Did they actually work? Were they meaningful ways to quote, stop the spread? And what did you opine? What did you find? And then we'll talk about the reaction. So COVID, I mean, like so many things in America today, COVID has just become so polarized, right? And so the partisan point on one side is masking doesn't work at all. It's all irrelevant. And the partisan talking point on the other side is, you know, if only we wear our masks enough and are diligent enough, we can stop the spread of COVID. And when you actually look at the data, the truth ends up falling into neither one of those camps. So masking does work

in the sense that there are repeated studies that show if you and I are in an indoor place having a conversation and one of us has COVID and we're not masked, we're more likely to get it than if one of us has COVID and we are masked. The question is how big is that effect? And I think that a lot of Americans, predominantly on the political left, have come to think that masking is sort of everything. And yet when you look at the data, you actually see that during the Omicron wave, masking doesn't seem to have had a huge effect. And as technical and as complicated as all this stuff is, you don't have to actually dig into incredibly fine data to get the main point, which is when you look at a city like Seattle or a city like San Francisco or a city like Boston, where there has been much,

much more masking, when people have been going into the office Boston, where there has been much, much more masking when people have been going into the office less, when they've been eating out much, much less relative to cities like Charlotte and Tampa and even Austin, Texas, which we think of as a liberal city, but is in Texas. There've been huge differences in how much people are masking and how much people are eating in restaurants, but the difference in how much COVID spread there was is really difficult to find. And so it looks like that Omicron is just so contagious that the kind of masking that we've done has a small effect, but only a small effect. It's like we masked back up when Delta hit, and then we just never unmasked. We just never paused again to say, wait,

does this make sense? Do we need to be doing this? Yes. And I think it may have made sense at the height of the Omicron wave, because again, I know some people disagree with this, probably some of your listeners. But look, masking, there's a reason why doctors wear masks in hospitals. There's a reason why Asia, which is dealt with, there's a reason why doctors wear masks in hospitals. There's a reason why Asia, which is dealt with, there's a reason why Asia, which has dealt with these sort of contagious flus more in the last 30 years than other regions. There's a reason why people there think masking can make sense. Masking really can work. Omicron was so contagious that it had only a small effect. When our hospitals are full, when we're really at a crisis point,

a small effect, I would argue, is worth it. But when that's not the case, and it's not the case now, our hospitals are not full anymore, I do think there's really a question of, is masking worth the downsides? Is it worth the fact that every single conversation you have is harder when you're wearing a mask? Is it worth the fact that, I know you've pointed this out when I've been on your show before, your glasses fog? Is it worth the fact that it's harder to communicate for kids with learning disabilities? Is it worth the fact that it's harder to communicate for people who are hard of hearing? And so it's just hard. Every form of communication is harder. I've quoted an expert. I think she's a psychologist who said basically talking with a mask on is like having a cell phone conversation when you're in a bad service area. Um, and so is that worth it when our hospitals aren't full and the effect is

small? I think that's highly debatable. Well, and also I'll tell you, um, so we're in here, we're in Montana cause my kids are on spring break. And, um, one of the inappropriate things we did while here was I showed them the movie Contagion, you know, with Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law. And totally, I said, we're going to watch something definitely inappropriate and disturbing. And they said, cool. I mean, and it was I never would have showed that to them during the middle of pandemic. But now that we're at the place we're at, I could put it in perspective and they could understand because there's just so many things in that movie that are predictive of how things would go, you know, during the pandemic we're at, I could put it in perspective and they could understand because there's just so many things in that movie that are predictive of how things would

go, you know, during the pandemic we just went through, like how people would react and what we would do and so on and so forth. But if we had a disease like that one, right, where it was like a 30 percent death rate, 30 percent of the people who get it are going to die. People would have been masked to the nth degree in every setting there wouldn't have been pushed back by parents to the masking in school that people would have been genuinely scared blankness and less and would have complied i think a lot more quickly and happily and you know without complaint but the very fact that especially with respect to children, we thank God did not have that in COVID is what I think led people to get to their breaking points on it and start to really speak out.

And, you know, it's I mean, to some extent, I'm not saying that COVID even before the vaccines was like the movie that you watched, but COVID was much closer to the movie that you watched before the vaccines than it is now. And another way to make that point is, look, before we had vaccines, when someone who was 70 years old or someone who had underlying health issues, when people like that, for them, when COVID presented a threat that was more serious than anything else that we confront in life, then there was a really strong argument for masking, not just for them, but for the rest of us to protect them. The vaccines have completely changed the calculus on this. The vaccines provide an enormous amount of protection. Statistically, they provide the most protection for the elderly, even though they don't provide complete protection. And so I think it's a version of what you're saying. Now that we're at the point where anyone who chooses to protect themselves from this horrible virus with these extremely effective vaccines can do so. And if you're someone who's gotten the vaccines but haven't been boosted, I would urge you do all the worst of COVID today are overwhelmingly choosing to expose themselves by not being vaccinated, that puts

us in a different situation in terms of, say, should we be asking six-year-olds to wear masks? Yeah. Or in New York City, where they're still making under five-year-olds, two to five-year-olds wear masks. Why? Why? Stop it. That's insanity. And that's exactly the group that needs to have faces visible so they can learn social behavior and social cues and proper language. It's madness. And there's just not a lot. I mean, not only do young kids need to learn social cues, and I think if we're talking about just a couple weeks of masking, it's not going to upset anyone's social cues, but you know, we're now moving into year three of this pandemic. So we're not just talking about a couple of weeks and COVID is overwhelmingly

mild. I I've said this many times. Um, if you have a child and you put your child in a vehicle today, you will be exposing them to more risk than COVID presents to that child today. Children face many larger risks through normal daily life than COVID presents to them. And so given that, it's just really hard. I get the psychological reasons that many people are in favor of masks for young kids. I think it should be, I assume you would agree with this, it should be parents' rights to mask their own kids if they so choose. It is hard to find a scientific basis for a mask mandate that says all young children must wear masks. Yeah. And it's hard to find actually a legal basis that would allow these ongoing emergency powers,

you know, a claim to buy the mayor. There's a lawsuit on that, which we're going to be having an interview on, I think, tomorrow. OK, so were you surprised then knowing I mean, you definitely know how controversial it is, especially on your side. We talked about that the last time I was just writing for The New York Times to say things like you're saying, were you surprised at the backlash to you? I think it was your March 3rd piece to where like New York magazine was it? They did a whole long piece citing all these experts telling us what a lunatic you are, lunatic fringe, and now you're hurting people and you just underestimate the risk and he just doesn't get it. I kind of laughed because, of course, I'm probably more used to that than you are. But were you surprised? I wasn't surprised. I mean,

I've been doing this a long time. And I really do think that debate, even passionate debate, is healthy for a democracy. I wish we didn't have the kind of debate where people so quickly got personal. I wish we didn't have the kind of debate where people figure out what team they're on, red or blue, and then they fit all their opinions to that team. But I guess in some ways, I wasn't surprised. I mean, some of it I could laugh off because it's so ridiculous. And others of it, I just think, look, these are important issues, and we really should be having a fulsome debate about it. And the fact is that I think a lot of people want to imagine that if only we can find the number one expert, they will tell us what to do. But that's not the way it works in a democracy. I spend a ton of time

talking to experts. There are experts who think we should have mass mandates on children for many more months. There are experts who think that is madness. And so it's not like there is expert opinion on any one of these things. And what I've sort of found is a little bit sad is, you know, if you find out that someone hasn't been vaccinated, which is, to me, a position that is both dangerous to that person and is just not in keeping with reality. The odds are overwhelming that that person is a Republican. And if you find someone who is irrationally afraid of covid and wants to make everyone wear masks in perpetuity, the odds are overwhelming that that person is a Democrat. And there really is nothing about the philosophy of conservatism or progressivism that should point to those views. And I do wish people were a little bit more willing to look at the facts for themselves

instead of sort of taking a view about COVID off the shelf. But if in the sort of course of that, people are going to fight about it. My attitude is if they're fighting about what I'm writing, I'm grateful that they're reading what I'm writing. Yeah, you're still winning. If you keep this up, you're going to be like me where before they introduce you, they have to say controversial journalist, David Lee and Harvey, controversial. You get that label like, oh, I kind of like it so like it's something I don't know intriguing go on um can I ask you I have a couple questions I want to ask

you about this um I've had people say to me I you know we've talked about I I had I had double vaxxed and I got boosted and all that uh and I had COVID so it's like okay I have it all um I've had people say how do you know the vaccines prevent severe illness or death? How do you know that if, you know, I had a mild case, right? And people would say, that's because you had all those shots. And I would say, yeah, or I don't know. I have no idea. I'm healthy.

I'm 51. I don't know that the vaccine helped me have a very mild case. But you tell me, like, for people who doubt that the mild outcomes are attributable to the vaccines, right? What's the answer to that? I mean, so first of all, I would say, doesn't this question apply to everything? Right? I mean, when you throw a ball up in the air, how do you know it's going to come back down? Right? How do we know that it's safer to drive sober than to drive falling down drunk? I mean, these are the deepest questions of humanity. How do we know God exists? And so how do we know? I mean, to some extent, it's all unknowable. I think the answer is when you go around and you look at every place in the world

that reports these statistics. I spend a lot of time looking at the data in Utah, not exactly a liberal haven. I spend a lot of time looking at the data in Seattle, which is a very liberal place. I spend a lot of time looking at the data in New York City and in Minnesota. These are places that happen to report outcomes by vaccination status. So do other countries like Britain and Israel. And when you look at that data, the message is entirely consistent. In every place, the risk of something bad like hospitalization and death is many, many times higher if you are unvaccinated than if you're vaccinated. And then it's even lower if you're boosted than if you're vaccinated. And so kind of all over the world, the lines look the same.

Your risk of having to go to the hospital if you're boosted basically looks like a straight line at the bottom of the graph. People may remember this from math class. It looks like the x-axis. It's basically zero. If you're vaccinated, it's just a little bit above that. And if you're unvaccinated, the odds of you having a really bad COVID outcome are very high.

The people who are dying from COVID are overwhelmingly unvaccinated people. And so the way we know it didn't have COVID. I mean, that's the other thing, right? Because natural immunity does have a role here. Next natural immunity does have a role here. Everything I've read suggests that vaccination immunity is stronger than national isn't natural immunity. But yeah, there is really study that said natural immunity was 27 times greater than vaccine immunity. I mean, you know,

you can find a study, one study showing anything on any of this stuff. My reading of it is that if you told me I could have only one form of immunity, I would choose vaccinated immunity.

The good thing is we can all choose to have vaccinated immunity, whether or not we've had COVID or not. So I'm just saying, I think like when we look at the number,

when we say the unvaccinated are the most and and I, I confirm, I also see the same thing you're saying. When you look at the people who are dying of COVID or you look at the people who are hospitalized because of COVID, there are way more of those who are unvaccinated than there are who have been vaccinated. That is a fact, but you just don't know when I see unvaccinated, I always want to ask myself then like, there should be another category for unvaxxed and never had COVID because I would think most of those people are in that category as opposed to unvaxxed and recently had COVID too. I think what I would say to someone who said who someone who said to me, I've had COVID and I don't want to get vaccinated. I would say the two things I would ask yourself are, why don't you want to get

vaccinated? There is basically no evidence of there being any problems with vaccination. Is there some uncertainty? Sure. This vaccine hasn't been around for 20 years, but many other vaccines have. And so I don't see any reason to fear the vaccine other than like the same way it's a little weird to step on an airplane. Like I'm in a metal tube hurtling, you know, many miles above the ground. I get it. It's like weird to have someone stick a needle in you. I totally get it. It's weird. Well, and we just don't know, like, what does it do to our immune response? What is like, there are people who have vaccine injuries and, you know, you don't want to be one of them. So if you're at low risk from COVID, you know, whatever, you're 16 or your kid is, you're thinking, I just don't want to take the chance. But I think that's paralyzing, Megan,

because there's lots of stuff we don't know about. I mean, how do you know when you get in your car this morning and turn it on that your car isn't going to blast some horrible fume at you from the engine and kill you? You don't. But there's no reason to think that it's going to. And I really am deeply worried that many people out there are confusing. So what I see on the left is people think they can get risk in their life down to zero. And so they're saying, let's do that with COVID and let's put on masks and let's not go out to eat. And I think that's just fundamentally wrong. And I think what people on the right are saying is there's this uncertainty about the vaccines, but the uncertainty about the vaccines

look like the kind of uncertainty that we accept every day when we do all kinds of things that we don't absolutely know how they work. All the evidence. Can I ask you a question about that? I hear you a hundred percent, but I have a question about these ongoing boosters because even just it was a today or yesterday, Pfizer said you're going to need a fourth booster. I mean, a fourth shot, a fourth shot. And I do have concerns about messing with my immune system this much. You know, that's four shots and I had COVID. So that's five unnecessary, well, I guess one was beyond my control, but interferences with my own immune system. And I actually spoke to a doctor about this. She was a rheumatologist. And she said, there is reason to question just how many of these boosters would be okay. And to be a little

concerned about messing with your immune system over and over and over in this way. I mean, rheumatologists deal with, you know, compromised immune, like autoimmune disorders. So that's why I asked her. I mean, do you get the yearly flu vaccine? No. I do. So I'm already messing with my immune system. I mean, I take aspirin. I take antibiotics when I get sick. I know many people in my life who have pillboxes because they have serious heart problems. I mean, all these things are messing with our bodies. Statins mess with your bodies. Anticholesterol medicines mess with your body. I really would put this in the same category as all those. And if someone said to me, look, I'm a Christian scientist. I don't take medicines. Then that's not the choice I would make. But then I would get this idea of I don't want to mess with my body. But in a country where

we drink coffee and we drink alcohol and we eat, and we take aspirin, and we not exactly the temple. I just, you know, like, we're well beyond kind of, you know, eating grass and, and killing animals and roasting them over the fire. I put this in the same in the same category. Get out of my head. Stop that. What about one of the things that really bothers me about where we are right now, we have a moment to sort of look back and say, what have we learned is the collapse in faith and trust in our public health officials by more than half the country. You know, I've read this in the times I've seen in some of the polling you've done. And I've just been watching the wider polls.

People don't trust Anthony Fauci. They don't trust the CDC. They don't trust Rochelle Walensky. Majorities now. And I think they have been exposed as far more partisan and tied to big pharma than I ever knew. I didn't go into this two years ago fully understanding that. But certainly, they've proven it.

Am I wrong? I'm sorry to interrupt. No, go ahead. I mean, I've written some pretty critical things about the CDC and Dr. Walensky, some of her decisions. I don't think of her as partisan or enthralled to the pharmaceutical industry. I mean, I really do think, I think they've made mistakes, but I really do think these are people who are trying their hardest to get this right. Crazy talk. And who are fallible. She is so partisan. Let me just give you a quick a quick response.

First of all, the fact that she wouldn't criticize Sotomayor for her gross overstatement of the number of children who have been hospitalized because of covid was 100 percent partisan. She 100 percent would have done that if it had been Clarence Thomas understating the death numbers instead of Sotomayor overstating them. That's why. But don't we have a direct comparison? Did she? I honestly don't know. So this is I'm not trying to score points. This is the classic. I'm asking a question. I don't know the answer to. Did she criticize Gorsuch for not wearing a mask on the bench with? She wasn't asked that advice at the time. She wasn't asked that. She was asked about Sotomayor and it's her job to correct public health misinformation. And she declined. She didn't want to. She want to go there. OK, but that's just what I mean. We could go on forever. You know what? I will look at the transcript of that. That's a fair point.

She's taking her marching orders from the White House. That's what we hear that that she and the teachers unions, the teachers unions, that the CDC mandated them the ongoing masking in schools because the teachers union went in there and said, you have to do it. No nonpartisan would be doing that. Well, I mean, the CDC has removed a whole bunch of this mask advice. Right. And so and it's what they eventually got around to. It doesn't mean that they weren't under the influence of partisans when they did it for so long unnecessarily. But when you think about, you know, you mentioned how angry some people have gotten about some of the things that I've written. I mean, there are a huge number of Democrats today who disagree with what the CDC has now done with loosening

things. And so I would say I have yet to see evidence that those officials have behaved in partisan ways. What I find sad is that we live in a country where kind of everything tends toward the partisan. And so because we have these divides over COVID that very much are partisan, most of the criticism of the officials tends to come from Republicans. And as a result, they end up looking partisan because they are criticized from one side, even if they are not partisan. And the way I would, and I think we have an honest disagreement here, the way I would describe them is fallible. I think they've made some significant mistakes. I think they've played too much, the CDC in particular, into this notion of

trying to reduce COVID risks so low that they're not worried about other kinds of risks like mental health. I really think they've made mistakes. They've been too slow to get tests out there, the FDA and the CDC. They've been too slow to give a formal approval to the vaccine. So I can give you a long list of mistakes they made. I don't see those as mistakes of partisanship. I see them as mistakes coming from other sources. We definitely agree. I mean, I agree to disagree on that one, but I want to ask you about this other point. There was reporting today about, I don't know if it's another variant, but all these Chinese factories shutting down. What do we know? And are we looking at another variant? That's what the Pfizer guy was saying

yesterday. He's like, we're going to get more variants. They're coming. So where do we stand on that? We are going to get more variants. So I would separate out of two different important things to keep in mind here. We are going to get more variants. COVID is not over. And so I don't know whether we're now headed into a new cycle where we're getting one. But COVID is not over, and we shouldn't pretend that it's over. I think the second thing is, and I think the problems in China and Hong Kong are yet another sign of how well the vaccines work. When you look at the numbers in Hong Kong, there are a shockingly large percentage of people who are not vaccinated.

When you look at the quality of those Chinese-made vaccines, they do not approach the effectiveness and the quality of the vaccines from Europe and the United States. And so one of the reasons why we seem to be seeing kind of a growing number of cases in some of these places is that, again, that the vaccines work. And if you are lucky enough to live in a country where you don't have to take Sinovac, but you can take Pfizer, or you can take Moderna, or you can take J&J, go do it. I was talking to a Pfizer, somebody senior at Pfizer, and in a personal conversation, and I had my questions. I said, of course, you take the vaccine. Yes. And would you give it to your children? A hundred percent. And that always makes me feel better. Like they'll give it to their own children. I know it's a

simple point, but it resonated for me and maybe it will for the audience or maybe not. When you don't really sticks with me, if we can, I know we're beyond having a kind of bipartisan compromise in this country on COVID, but if we could, we would spend a lot less time masking and we would get many, many more people vaccinated. You and I solved this the last time you were on. I don't know why people just didn't listen right then and there. Slowly but surely, they're starting to listen to us. It's a pleasure, David. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for your kind words and thanks for having me. All right, to be continued. I want to tell you to make sure you download the show before tomorrow because we've got Senator Rand Paul joining us. There's a lot to go over with him. He's always entertaining and spicy. What do you think he

would say about the loss of trust in public health? We're going to ask him. Download the show in the meantime and subscribe to YouTube. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megyn Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.