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Season Seven: Too Soon?
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In this episode, we talk about news updates.
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Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction and Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:01:00
Speaker
So this is another one of those episodes with like two stories in it where it's not really a compilation and they're not related as much as you might think.
Mississippi Welfare Fund Scandal Unfolds
00:01:12
Speaker
But thought I would start with the Mississippi Welfare Fund scandal because it had an update this week. Have you heard about this over the years?
00:01:23
Speaker
Yes, but mostly from you. Okay. The Mississippi Department of Human Services, one of the large-ish departments in their government that deals directly with like public interface.
00:01:36
Speaker
If you look at the Department of Human Services in most jurisdictions, they're a state agency. They operate what I think could collectively be called family services, but they do a lot of ah children, youth, and and family ah development, they oversee funding for grants.
00:01:58
Speaker
ah Typically, if you hear about training schools and youth development, it's going to come from this kind of agency, but also a lot of social services. come out of this, including ah TAMP, which is Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. I know that people call that welfare. And by the late 2000 teens, the Mississippi Department of Human Services was receiving this large block grant that had, I think it had come in around $90 million. dollars
00:02:29
Speaker
So generally speaking, when you get a grant like this, there are stipulations that come from whoever disperses the money. And in this instance, this is a federal grant. So it comes from the U S government to the state of Mississippi.
00:02:46
Speaker
And one of the stipulations was that Mississippi had to match what it spent of this almost $90 million dollars with its own funds. And they needed to document the families who received direct cash assistance.
00:03:04
Speaker
Now, the reporting standards are not rocket science. A lot of times it's sort of block reporting or like pull down menus where you're kind of literally just matching ah either individuals or groups of individuals to amounts that have been dispersed.
00:03:24
Speaker
It's not really um stringent oversight. Right. And nice and that is right that's everywhere that it's not stringent. But for some reason, the state auditing this grant and the agency that's dispersing this grant found that they were lax for even like federal government reporting standards. Right.
00:03:52
Speaker
Well, somebody had to have a bug up their butt. Yeah, somebody somewhere got a little tip off on this. And just to be clear, people working in some sort of auditing position, they could find something anywhere they looked.
00:04:10
Speaker
I tend to agree with that. I think it's kind of like for me, i picture at criminal defendants as being folks who they just happen to be the ones that got caught that day.
00:04:22
Speaker
And a lot of times, and i'm talking I'm not talking murderers and like the higher end felonies. I'm just talking about normal run of the mill misdemeanors and felonies of a lower level. it's That's just who the resources got put towards. Yeah.
00:04:36
Speaker
And um I think it's particularly true when it comes to fraud cases, ah a lot of times with theft cases. This is sort of a mishmash of all of that because technically this is a civil problem or an interagency government problem, but it can have criminal um repercussions.
Misuse of Funds and Key Figures Involved
00:04:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:59
Speaker
So the way this goes down in terms of a person having their bug up their butt and this like kind of coming to the spotlight is January 2016. The governor at the time, Phil Bryant, he appoints a guy, John Davis, as the director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
00:05:21
Speaker
Now, at the time this happens, it's reported by several sources, um including Mississippi Today and by the Clarion Ledger, that the Mississippi Department of Human Services was providing a record low number of recipients with direct cash welfare assistance.
00:05:47
Speaker
So like money in their pocket. And they were doing this because they had been using other programs to attempt to help people, such as job training courses.
00:05:59
Speaker
So these courses that they're providing aren't recorded, not even in a general way. So they don't really have the demographics and statistics that a normal set of programs or courses would have.
00:06:15
Speaker
And in many instances, According to these sources, they didn't have any strict income level eligibility requirements. So this money, by and large, is meant to go to people who fall below the poverty line and therefore are described as being impoverished, meaning they don't have the funds for a basic existence, so this is supposed to benefit them.
00:06:42
Speaker
Now, over the course of Phil Bryant's tenure there, John Davis is going to halt the department's competitive bidding process, which is how they acquire ah vendors and contractors to fill the bidding. And over the course of four years, he's going to order the agency to grant specific contracts nonprofits quite a bit of cash. $65 million dollars is going to end up going to Mississippi Community Education Center. $45 million is going to go ah through Family Resource Center.
00:07:22
Speaker
And all this money is going to suddenly be funneled back into Families First at Mississippi, which is this program they put together. The nonprofits receiving the money, they get it up front, meaning They don't have to do the thing they say they're doing that they need the money for and then be reimbursed once they've spent it. They're getting large cash outflow.
00:07:47
Speaker
So this was common only in Mississippi at the time. For the most part around the U.S., s These programs that are falling into the same type grant are working from the perspective of reimbursement. So the program gets done, the money gets spent, and at the end, if the program is successfully concluded and completed, then it's funded, kind of in reverse.
00:08:13
Speaker
Make sense? Yes. So that's because the temporary assistance for needy families, typically this money dispersed for these reasons, it goes through a lot of hands.
00:08:27
Speaker
And so you have the grants, the grantor is obviously the federal government. Then you have the grantees who are receiving the money in the first place to disperse it. And like the sub grantees who are all the contractors and vendors who fulfill the requirements of the grants. And that's all before it gets to the hands of the people who need the money.
00:08:45
Speaker
There's this moment about four years after that appointment in January 2016.
00:08:54
Speaker
Somebody realizes that Brett Favre is involved in this company that has developed and promoted ah concussion treatment drug called Prevacel. Have you ever heard of this? I have, but only like...
00:09:13
Speaker
at the end. So it's coming from this company called Prevacus
00:09:20
Speaker
some of the money from the TAMP sub-grantees seems to have wandered over and possibly be a part of the Department of Human Services larger grant issue.
00:09:35
Speaker
So there's this non-profit that I mentioned, the Mississippi Community Education Center, They had received about two and a half million dollars in federal grant funds that was diverted from traditional welfare.
00:09:50
Speaker
There are tens of millions of dollars in public funds that start showing up in some of the third party audits done of all of this. The Mississippi State Auditor They said whatever's happening here is what we believe is the largest public embezzlement case in state history.
00:10:12
Speaker
A grand jury down in Hines County is going to indict the founder of this Mississippi Community Education Center. Her name is Nancy New, and her son, Zach, is also indicted.
00:10:25
Speaker
Brett Favre had introduced Nancy New and Zach knew, to the people in Mississippi that were handling all of the money related to these TAMP grants. Now, the governor is going to talk to a later mississip Mississippi auditor named Shad White, so not the same guy that he was putting in charge as the director of the program, but like an actual auditor, that he believes there's fraud happening inside the Department of Human Services.
00:10:56
Speaker
and John Davis leaves at some point in here. And the way that we find out about the fraud is when he leaves, ah it's determined that he's potentially been involved in a lot of this money being diverted.
Legal and Financial Ramifications
00:11:14
Speaker
and they find this string of text messages. When you work for the government, typically you are given...
00:11:25
Speaker
all the devices that you would need to do your job. You get a cell phone, you get a computer. And one of the, the big parts about being a government employee and using those devices is when you're done, they are turned in.
00:11:44
Speaker
um and I think people think that you can just delete them and like, the information will magically all be gone, but that's no longer true in 2020 even, but it's definitely not true in 2026.
00:11:57
Speaker
Almost everything you do on those devices is logged and shared, even if it's not necessarily accessed by another party. Until it's needed. Right. um The information is available. And that's how this sort of massive scandal starts off.
00:12:18
Speaker
And that can be very alarming when people start realizing stuff they thought was deleted is on record. Right. they They tend to panic. Right. And sometimes that can make things way worse.
00:12:33
Speaker
Essentially, what's uncovered is different types of chat messages and text messages between Brett Favre and between Governor Bryant and also Nancy New, New family, and John Davis.
00:12:48
Speaker
The first thing that pops out is Brett Favre's daughter goes to one of the schools that's heavily benefiting from what's happening here. Then they find out that Brett Favre has paid at least $1.1 million dollars in in fees for speeches that he never delivered.
00:13:11
Speaker
So this is essentially... a really expensive no-show job, which is something that happens in ah areas controlled by organized crime.
00:13:23
Speaker
like There's jobs on the books that collect checks, but the people never actually show up to do the job. In addition to this, there are at least $2 million dollars in funding that has come through various sources to go towards a biotech venture that Brett Favre is heavily invested in.
00:13:46
Speaker
So he gets the $1.1 million. dollars Now, when all this comes to light, he like suddenly realizes there's a problem or someone on his team does. Over the course of 2020 2021,
00:14:00
Speaker
That money is going to be paid back. So the $1.1 million dollars is paid back and the $2 million dollars is kind of explained away. But Chad White, who's a Mississippi State auditor that gets involved in all of this, he turns around and sues Brett Favre for...
00:14:20
Speaker
ah about $730,000 in interest that he would have owed for the misuse of those funds. So that lawsuit kicks off a different chain of events. and what we find out along the way is that John Davis had a lot of his friends involved.
00:14:40
Speaker
Somehow this guy is close friends with several retired professional wrestlers, which anytime you start throwing professional wrestlers in the mix, you're almost like bound to either have comedy or something just farcical going on.
00:14:57
Speaker
I have no idea what that is. Just it's particularly true here. You're not wrong. So he's close friends with Ted. It's either DeBias or DeBiasier and his two sons, Ted Jr. and Brett.
00:15:12
Speaker
And John Davis has encouraged two nonprofits to compensate them for various services, appearances, things that they're supposed to be doing. And the office of the Mississippi State Auditor determines later on that Either they didn't do what they were contracted to do or what they were contracted to do had nothing to do with folks who needed money in Mississippi.
00:15:41
Speaker
This wrestling family is involved in a lot of department affairs that simply make no sense. And according to the notes about John Davis, he had been pushing for a public agency motivational speaking program that Ted Jr. was going to be in charge of. And this program was going to be funded by these different nonprofits we've just mentioned.
00:16:12
Speaker
So they discovered from 2017 to 2019 that this company belonging to Ted Jr. called Priceless Ventures LLC and another company called Familiae Orientum, these companies were paid over $3 million dollars funneled through these nonprofit organizations.
00:16:33
Speaker
Now, the Department of Human Services, during the time that John Davis was the director there, had also awarded another $2 million dollars in grants to something called the Heart of David Ministry, which is this nonprofit owned by Sr.?
00:16:50
Speaker
ted s the ah The example they give, if you look at the online summaries, is the Northeast Mississippi Football Coaches Association was revealed to have received $30,000 in early 2019 as a donation in consideration of having Jr. as a banquet speaker.
00:17:15
Speaker
And it was revealed that this money, this $30,000, came from the TAMP Fund Grant.
00:17:23
Speaker
So that does not sound to me like something that's benefiting temporary assistance for needy families to have the son of a professional wrestler who's been retired for a long time, who was also sort of a professional wrestler as a banquet speaker.
00:17:40
Speaker
Did he give a speech at the banquet? They don't you know reference that here. i don't I don't see a lot of evidence of Ted Jr. actually giving a lot of speeches and motivational things.
00:17:51
Speaker
Right. Well, a lot of times ah it takes quite a bit big a quite a bit of digging just to know that supposedly he was paid $30,000 to give a speech, right? Right. He might not even know.
00:18:10
Speaker
Right, and it's buried in the line items here. And as you just said, this seems to be something that like maybe it's less Ted Jr. understanding what's going on, although he could be fully aware, more his agent and publicist and manager knowing about it.
00:18:26
Speaker
On February 2024...
00:18:31
Speaker
ah The Tobias one of the one of the family of wrestlers here their agent William J Bruce the third he has this interview he does Discussing his thoughts on the and their involvement and he's quoted as saying it just doesn't match the man that I've known and it's how I think he's about Ted senior here ah Ted is careful in the sense that he wouldn't do that He has a real love for God and his wife. He just wouldn't do that in my honest opinion so This scandal keeps unraveling in the press, but also the press pays it less and less attention. They've really just focused in on the fact that Brett Favre was involved in that initial scandal. And people don't watch a lot of what happens next.
00:19:16
Speaker
But by December 2018...
00:19:20
Speaker
ah A man named Jake Van Landingham, who is the owner of Provascus, that Florida-based pharmaceutical company that we were talking about, ah developing the concussion treatments, he gets introduced to an official at this MCEC, the Mississippi Community Education Center, by an investor in missisip Mississippi.
00:19:42
Speaker
So he has several phone calls. He talks into them. He signs an agreement with the Mississippi Community Education Center. So that's the new family. And text messages from November 2018, they re reveal that Brett Favre, who's been a part of this, was...
00:20:05
Speaker
responsible or at least played a prominent role in connecting provasquez with the mississippi governor bryant the messages they pass back and forth they seem to imply that bryant agrees to use this money from tamp as a source for project grant money but it also looks like The kickback for him was he was going to be able to be a well-positioned investor and provascus after his term as the governor of Mississippi ended, which is kind of a weird version of a kickback.
00:20:50
Speaker
We get kind of into the audit part of this. ah They still did some other things that were odd. There was $5 million dollars that went towards the construction of a volleyball stadium.
00:21:00
Speaker
There was ah a ranch owned by a former football player ah that had his mortgage in Florida, Mississippi paid for. There was a fitness program that was funded by ah the Mississippi Community Education Center that seems to be using TAMP funds, and it is run by former football player Paul Lacoste. The guy who had his mortgage pays is Marcus Dupree, and Dupree also seems to be being paid by these nonprofits to a tour around North Mississippi on a statewide lecture tour, whether that's
00:21:37
Speaker
Accurate information or not remains to be seen. They haven't produced receipts on that. It's just mentioned in between the other complaints that are going on. So the June 21st, 2019 audit that goes on Concerned employees at the Department of Human Services, they sit down with Governor Bryant and point out that agency funds appear to have been misspent.
00:21:59
Speaker
All this information gets gathered up by the governor's office and sent over to that state auditor, Chad White. That's how the full-blown investigation gets started. ah In the course of this happening, suddenly everybody starts retiring that's involved.
00:22:14
Speaker
um Davis announces his retirement, and that's as the director of the Department of Human Services. By February 2020,
00:22:24
Speaker
Give or take eight months later, following the delivery of multiple indictments in the Hines County Circuit Court, special agents from the Office of the State Auditor arrested multiple people whom they accused of embezzling funds from the Temporary and ah temporary Assistance for Needy Families ah program.
Arrests and Judicial Proceedings
00:22:45
Speaker
So that's John Davis, an employee named Latimer Smith. ah They arrest Brett from the wrestling family, Brett DeVise. They arrest Nancy New, Zach New, and Anne McGrew.
00:22:58
Speaker
These are all, so New, New, and McGrew are from the Mississippi Community Education Center. they All these people that I just named initially plead not guilty,
00:23:10
Speaker
And for some reason, White does not involve federal authorities.
00:23:18
Speaker
That's an interesting situation because in most cases where you have a major federal federal agency passing out this type of funding, that's a requirement.
00:23:30
Speaker
If you're auditing their funds, that you whoever you're getting the money from be informed that you have this audit ongoing. Especially if there's big problems.
00:23:41
Speaker
Yeah. um According to Mike Hurst, who at the time was the U.S. Attorney for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, he said, we in the United States Attorney's Office and the FBI only learned from media reports about the arrests and indictments at the same time as the general public did.
00:23:58
Speaker
at this point, though... the state auditor, Shad White, he turns around and shares his office's findings with the FBI and with the federal inspector general.
00:24:13
Speaker
Following the arrests, the Department of Human Services announced that it would require stringent documentation from sub-grantees, and they began an internal inquiry where they're trying to determine if any of their current agency employees were like the people that are still here, were they involved in what was happening?
00:24:33
Speaker
By May, the auditor releases this document called the single audit, which is of the department's 2019 fiscal year.
00:24:44
Speaker
And the auditor's office in this report describes that they found $94 million
00:24:56
Speaker
were spent under questionable circumstances by the department Mississippi Department of Human Services. So that's a huge deal. By December 2020, Brett, so one of the younger wrestling family sons, he's going to plead guilty to making fraudulent statements. He ends up paying a $5,000 restitution.
00:25:21
Speaker
um I don't know what his sentence was for this because it... It depended on something that we're going to talk about in a second. In 2022, the New family, both of them, plead out to charges of bribing a public official, committing fraud against the government, and mail fraud.
00:25:40
Speaker
Nancy New also pleads guilty to racketeering. And if you read the press release about that... it kind of makes her look like she was the figurehead in all of this that was connecting everybody. um It deflects a little bit from the governor's office, which I think might be little shady itself.
00:26:00
Speaker
By September of 2022, John Davis had been indicted in federal court. He pled guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of theft from a federally funded program.
00:26:11
Speaker
He then pled guilty in state court to five counts of conspiracy and 13 counts of defrauding the government. The state court, they sentenced him to 90 years in prison.
00:26:25
Speaker
They suspended 58 of those years. That is still a really long sentence. So he's actually jail? According to what I'm reading, yes. Well, you know, one of the things that he did um was he gave contract to his nephew.
00:26:45
Speaker
Yes. To provide coding skills classes, even though he had no idea like how to code nor how to teach anyone else how to code.
00:26:57
Speaker
Right. so And to be clear, that happens. So that's a that's a perfect situation where he might be a project manager on this coding skills class, and he might have hired coding instructors, except in this instance, he didn't appear to have that skill either, the ability to even put on the class.
00:27:17
Speaker
Well, right, exactly. And of course, that was that the first like long-term sentence we've talked about? Yeah, that's the longest one. so Brett, he pleads guilty to one federal charge of conspiracy.
00:27:33
Speaker
um in addition, so this is a federal charge, March 2nd, 2023, he pleads guilty. um i haven't seen his sentencing, and I looked for it about a week ago because there's some other stuff going on recently.
00:27:47
Speaker
Now, Christy Webb, she was the former director of the Family Resource Center of Northern Mississippi. That was that second not-for-profit behind the Education Center. Right.
00:27:57
Speaker
And so March 16, 2023, Christy Webb pleads guilty to one count of theft of or concerning federal funds. Now, Ted Jr. pleads out. No, Ted Jr. gets indicted 20th of
00:28:15
Speaker
And he's indicted on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit theft concerning these programs receiving federal funds, six counts of additional wire fraud, two counts of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, and four counts of money laundering.
00:28:36
Speaker
So he was at the top. Yeah, so he was somehow tied real close to these other two, meaning Nancy New and Christy Webb. Right. And everybody knows that there's only so many people that have access to these funds, right? Right.
00:28:52
Speaker
It's not like the normal everyday citizen can go in and do this. Now, they had set it up in a way that put it in the hands of these not-for-profits, right?
00:29:04
Speaker
Right. So... The reason we're talking about this is because in January 2026, some stuff happens. First thing that happens is Ted Jr.'s trial is ah supposed to be moving forward, but one of his attorneys on January 20th seeks a mistrial because his lead defense attorney, Scott Gilbert, was in poor health.
00:29:28
Speaker
So this trial kind of gets the pause button hit. But by January 28th, Carlton Reeves, who is a district judge for the Southern District of Mississippi, like the U.S. District Court, he announces that as a result of Scott Gilbert's uncertain long-term health and continued absence from the defense team, they're going to delay the trial until February twenty third But he also denies the defense request to grant him a mistrial, starting it all over.
00:30:00
Speaker
At the same time, it was revealed that John Davis, so he's the guy that can kind of put all of this together. he was the director of this department in Mississippi State Government and was going to be the star prosecution's witness at Ted Jr.'s trial.
00:30:19
Speaker
He has been diagnosed with cancer. and he was undergoing chemotherapy. On February 23rd, 2026, the judge said the trial must go on. Without the witness.
00:30:35
Speaker
Correct. So Judge Carlton Reeves, he denies another request from the defense team. This time it's from Eric Hirschman. Because Eric Hirschman says he needs at least six months to prepare, but...
00:30:51
Speaker
in the likelihood they deny it, he wants a mistrial. So he said Judge Reeves says no. On February 24th, John Davis is like somehow miraculously allowed to return to Ted Jr.'s trial, and he testifies on behalf of the prosecution.
00:31:13
Speaker
So his testimony is going to provide text message evidence, which kind of confirms what the like the younger... wrestling family bros were doing and how John Davis, the reason his, his sentence was so harsh was because he was going right along with them and telling them he would do anything he could to help them keep moving forward.
00:31:39
Speaker
So in addition to him, we have Christy Webb come in We have Nancy New come in. And so this is happening in district court. We only get summaries of this.
00:31:50
Speaker
We can't see it like live like we can some other court testimony. But this is all bombshell stuff. Each one of these people have been convicted. They come in and they confirm that their organizations were giving contracts to Ted Jr., Ted Sr., to Brett, and And that Ted Jr. was receiving this money and not fulfilling a single contract obligation.
00:32:15
Speaker
Like he would, they, he would provide lists of things that he would be doing and then do none of them. Now. John Davis backs this up and he acknowledged that he felt like he needed to be friends with Ted Jr. So he would interfere with public processes. And in at least a couple of instances, he had ordered that Christy Webb's organization, the Family Resource Center of Northern Mississippi, they would get money and
00:32:49
Speaker
So John Davis, while he was sending that money to Christy Webb, he was forcing it through Ted Jr.
00:33:00
Speaker
So we have multiple people testify throughout February and March. ah For instance, Bridget Bell testifies that she found state accounting system records which showed that there were over $900,000 in expenses to Ted Jr.'s leadership program for some kind of huge gala, um flowers, food, beverages, and personal polo jacke personalized polo jackets.
00:33:24
Speaker
And so this is that leadership program we were talking about. In addition, Zola Harrelson, who was John Davis's executive assistant, he testifies that he had an office at the Mississippi Department of Human Services headquarters but was not a state employee, and he had been issued state-issued cell phone.
00:33:49
Speaker
So this is one of those no-show type jobs I mentioned Right. And the same day that he testifies on March 4th, I think, um it's announced that Ted Jr.'s trial won't be coming back till March 16th.
00:34:06
Speaker
And on March 16th, the trial resumes as scheduled. Right. On this day, Bank Plus has their chief information officer testify, and the testimony is really going to be that they're verifying checks and deposit slips and basically creating what I think is one of your favorite things or one of your least favorite kinds of crimes. But that is the massive paper trail that comes about in 2020, 2023, 2024 with financial crimes.
00:34:36
Speaker
Ted Jr. has signatures and fingerprints, not like literal fingerprints, but like fingerprints from the perspective of like a trail to follow, all over a lot of the money that's gone on here and through different branches of the Bank Plus bank.
00:34:54
Speaker
So among these deposits that Kelly Kiker, the chief information officer from that bank, is talking about, there's a check for a million dollars that was...
00:35:05
Speaker
that came in to a Rankin County-based Bank Plus in May of 2018. They bring on an FBI forensic accountant named Matthew Ackerman, and he is one of the people that was assigned by the FBI to begin investigating this matter. And he confirmed that from 2017 to 2019, there was around $3 million dollars in welfare money that managed to successfully get transferred into two companies that were owned by Ted Jr.,
00:35:33
Speaker
Ted Jr. had spent and about $1.4 million dollars of this on a new home, and more of this money had been on been spent on things such as a new boat and a new tractor.
00:35:47
Speaker
Do we have any idea why? Why what? Why he's the crowned welfare prince? No, not really. i was just curious. According to legal counsel that comes in,
00:36:03
Speaker
after the forensic accountant. So this is the, essentially the legal counsel is from the Mississippi Department of Health and Human Services. and he notes that these these contracts that are passed out and the money is changing hands, it goes against the policy that is in the like procedures manual.
00:36:26
Speaker
He also says that the time at the time
00:36:34
Speaker
He did not have the authority within the department to review the contracts that Ted Jr. and John Davis were working up. So think about that for a second. You've got the chief legal counsel for an entire state government agency, and he can't review the contracts between the director of that agency and an outsider.
00:36:58
Speaker
Right. And that's insane. That should have never been, that shouldn't have been. Right. So the prosecution rests on March 17th, 2026.
00:37:12
Speaker
And we kind of knew this was coming. The same day this is happening, the defense again files a motion to dismiss the charges against Ted Jr. Once again, Judge Carlton Reeves says no, rejects the request, and kind of moves forward. So they bring in...
00:37:30
Speaker
A couple of different people. um Allegedly, they were going to call two different witnesses. The first witness is this guy, Kevin McClendon. He's the first witness to testify on behalf of the defense, and he is a software developer for an Alabama company.
00:37:48
Speaker
And on March 18, 2026, the judge tells the jury, hey, we're almost done. So the same day that he says this, the defense calls a second witness who's a consultant out of New Orleans named Matt Thoreau.
00:38:05
Speaker
After calling four witnesses over two days, they rest on March 18th, and Ted Jr. does not testify. The prosecution brings in rebuttal witnesses, which basically means you said some things during your defense case in chief we don't agree with, and we have reserved the right to bring in witnesses to rebut that. Sometimes it's for impeachment purposes. Sometimes it's simply to show that a thing's not true.
00:38:31
Speaker
ah They end up bringing in a series of text messages that contradict some of the defense witnesses, And they show they the prosecution says it tends to show that Ted Jr. had planned on pretending to not know how to form a ah company correctly, whether it's an LLC group or a not-for-profit.
00:38:55
Speaker
Now, by March 19th, 2026, Judge Carlton Reeves, he reads out the jury instructions. The closings are delivered that same day. And jury deliberations began March 20th.
00:39:09
Speaker
The same day, the jury comes back with a verdict, and they acquit Ted Jr. on all of the charges. So...
00:39:20
Speaker
Technically, Ted Jr. is the first and possibly the only defendant in this massive $90 million dollars mississippi Mississippi welfare fund scandal. So it's the only criminal trial.
00:39:35
Speaker
um Pretty much everybody else either pledged out or... ah had made deals to pretend, because not everybody pled. Some people made deals that as long as they testified, they would not be charged on some of the more minor stuff.
00:39:51
Speaker
But all of the remaining defendants who were criminally charged and were expected to go to trial have now pled out. So technically this scandal is over and March of 2026.
00:40:08
Speaker
Now, we didn't get a chance to really watch the trial. We just got summaries, right? Right. So what do you think? I'm a little shocked he was found not guilty.
00:40:20
Speaker
But this has been like a trial about very clever defense work. And I do believe that largely he was apprehensive in how he engaged in all of this to begin with. And what they ended up showing us was just a few of the things he was cavalier about where he kind of wasn't covering his tracks as well as he could have been.
00:40:43
Speaker
Right. um i I felt like from the evidence that was presented, starting back when the indictments were issued and like what we could see of it, it sounded like this was largely a pretty slam dunk case.
Impact on Welfare and Community
00:40:58
Speaker
And I hate to say it, but it all kind of feels like justice was bought here. Oh, really? Yeah. And it was probably the taxpayers' money that paid for it. That's kind of where I was headed with that, yeah. Well, that's what I thought. um Because I didn't get to experience the trial, I have a hard time. it it is entirely possible that there was an astute jury that ah paid attention and that there wasn't actually enough evidence to convict him. It's possible.
00:41:29
Speaker
Right. But it's also possible that that wasn't the case. Right. justice was bought. I feel like people who have no qualms taking money from the needy family assistance budget will have less qualms about buying a verdict.
00:41:52
Speaker
Yeah. And I wanted to say, so, I really do hate financial crimes. However, this whole Mississippi scandal that, I mean, it's It's very long and drawn out and sad, but I believe it was in 22 because the scandal had been spotlighted.
00:42:14
Speaker
i think about um like Brett Favre was paying back the money around then, maybe a little before then, but like he really brought a lot of light to the situation, even though he was never charged with a crime and he paid the money back.
00:42:28
Speaker
Right. It spotlighted that, I'm just going to read this, ah the scandal has also spotlighted the meager scope of Mississippi's welfare program and provided a stark reminder of the Clinton-era welfare reform that provided states with block grants in wide latitude and how they spend them.
00:42:53
Speaker
According to state figures, Mississippi rejects more than 90% of those who apply for the federal welfare benefit known as TAMP or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
00:43:06
Speaker
This year, again, believe this is in 22 or 23, 2,500 children received benefits and state officials say Mississippi is a state with 192,000 poor children.
00:43:24
Speaker
So the effects of this money being spent in ways that it was not designed to be spent has affected those who need it the most greatly. Yeah.
00:43:38
Speaker
and it's very sad. Yeah, it's incredibly sad. I remember when this first came out, I really didn't know how to wrap my head around what they were talking about, the way the media covered it from the far of England.
00:43:50
Speaker
when it it seemed like the media was going, this is terrible. There's $1.5 million dollars in misspent funds, and Brett Favre's at the center of it.
00:44:04
Speaker
Right, but he had actual proof, like, in what you were talking about as far as the messages and stuff. Yeah. He had actually, like, questioned... you know, are we sure this is cool? Like, so he had evidence to show that he was not part of like the criminal enterprise part of it.
00:44:23
Speaker
And Then he paid the money back. I don't know how it ended up being as far as the interest he supposedly owed. um i haven't I've seen where that occurred, but I haven't seen the final outcome. I just knew there was a suit pending. I think it's i think I read it was still pending. i could not find the paperwork on it to back it up here. Well, I saw where Brett Favre had said to, i believe Nancy knew what was, wasn't that her name? Yeah. He was talking to Nancy knew and Christie. And she said, he said, are you sure that, you know, this is legal, that this is allowed? And she said, yeah. And then I believe there was some chatter about, you know, if you need my accountant, uh,
00:45:06
Speaker
You can give him a call so he'll help you understand it or something. Anyway, everything that led back to Brett Favre, it showed he... there There was nothing to indicate he thought he was doing anything illegal. In fact, he called it out.
00:45:23
Speaker
Yes. And while he did take the money, he also gave it back. And it I realize this all came to light, but this happens.
00:45:34
Speaker
Maybe not quite to this scale, but this happens everywhere. Right. Money's rarely going where it's supposed to be going. And the people who are funneling it to where it's not supposed to go, like, they don't care. They don't care that society is none the wiser. Yeah. Yeah. It's, um...
00:45:59
Speaker
It's one of those things that like I don't fully understand how you decide. i assume a thing, but I don't fully understand how you decided that like the TAMP block grant is the thing that you're going to attack because of the intended like designation for that money to go to needy people.
00:46:18
Speaker
I don't know. Well, if somebody had access to it, right? And it was like, yeah in their hot little hands, they had access to $100 million. dollars And they were like, why on earth would I give this to poor people?
00:46:32
Speaker
Right. And that's, so that's the thing. like I assume it's a mixture of the access, because I agree with you. but like And then greed. Well, it's not that. I think the Greens assumed. i just think they had to know, hey, this program's not really monitored.
00:46:52
Speaker
Oh, definitely. And a director would know that, right? Yeah, right. A director would realize ah the ins and outs. I just, i can't quite figure out, and again, this may be somewhere, but I can't quite figure out why those particular people were...
00:47:12
Speaker
the ones who benefited so much from it. Right. Yeah. It's, it just seems like bad timing, like wrong place, wrong time kind of people and like wrong type of mentality.
00:47:25
Speaker
Well, it also sometimes can feel good to be like, Hey, I'm going to hook you up. I'm going to give you this sweet deal where we're going to pretend you're doing something and that you're going to get a lot of money for it. Right. Yeah.
00:47:37
Speaker
And that can make somebody like that's kind of wielding power, I guess. Yeah. Especially when you're talking about somebody who's... I mean, that money's only there from taxpayers.
00:47:51
Speaker
That's it, right? The state taxpayers and federal taxpayers. In fact, that's where like all the money comes from when we're talking about government functions. And a lot of it is wasted, though.
00:48:05
Speaker
Don't get me wrong. And people don't realize that it's not just a spring of free money, right? It's actually... it cost a lot of children a lot of meals while this was going on. i I am pretty sure. Yeah, I would go beyond meals and say necessities. But yeah, ultimately, I think those are the people that suffered because of this. And also, like if you're taking money from a program like that to further your own wealth, shame on you.
00:48:34
Speaker
Well, I can see where they justify it up and down and backwards and forwards. That's okay. That's all right. I heard all the justifications. I totally think that you think it's justified when they say it to me. And then I say to them, shame on you. Yeah, I agree. You know, I don't have a lot more on this. I thought it was interesting that they acquitted him on those charges. bet some of those people that, like, pled this out, particularly John Davis and that whole horrible sentence. I mean, can you imagine the shock? Yeah.
00:49:03
Speaker
Yeah. Like, they had to have been shocked because they, you know, they these people took sentences that the prosecution basically said, we have to have you testify against this other guy. We're really going to convict him.
00:49:14
Speaker
And, like, some of them got terrible sentences. And now, at the end of all this, like, the whole prosecution focused on this one set of charges, and that person walked.
00:49:25
Speaker
Yeah. except He's been like basically exonerated. Yes. yes he's but yeah yeah It's not basically. He has been found not guilty and acquitted of these of these charges. He has been exonerated.
00:49:37
Speaker
and's It's insanity. it really is. But that's how it ended.
Afroman Legal Case Introduction
00:49:41
Speaker
Yeah. So that's how that one ended. um and then I punished you this week by putting you through the Afro Men trial videos, which I have watched most of that twice.
00:49:55
Speaker
hot So for those of you who don't know, um there was a trial going on about an incident from several years ago.
00:50:05
Speaker
ah it's If you look it up online, if you want to check it out, it happened in the Court of Common Pleas up in Adams County, Ohio. it was The plaintiffs were Sean Cooley et al.
00:50:17
Speaker
And the et al. stands for Sean Cooley, Justin Cooley, Michael Estep, Sean Grooms, Brian Newland, Lisa Phillips, and Randolph Walters. They were suing a man named Joseph Edgar Foreman.
00:50:31
Speaker
He is known as Afro-Man. ah They were also suing Hungry Hustler Records, Media Access, Inc., and multiple ah defendants in that group ah that were John Dose, which is always interesting to me. And that's what had originally caught my attention. I knew this had happened.
00:50:51
Speaker
When it came out, um for those of you who aren't as ah aware of what happened, the factual allegations and the complaints that were put forth by the plaintiffs were that the defendant, Joseph Foreman, was an individual who lived in Adams County and who creates, produces, and performs music and videos under the stage and commercial name Afro Man.
00:51:15
Speaker
a Hungry Hustler was identified as the record label operated by Joseph Foreman. The market had sold and promoted the the music he was making and the videos he was making. Media Access Inc. is is a corporation out Texas that does all the hard part of music.
00:51:36
Speaker
music and video distribution, and that is primarily the collection of the money. ah The John Doe's were all listed as people that were assisting foremen in the marketing and sales of merchandise and products related to the music and videos. But the deal was, back in August of 2022, law enforcement officials from the Adams County Sheriff's Office, they conducted a search at Afro man's Adams County residents pursuant to a lawful warrant.
00:52:06
Speaker
Yeah. Afro-Man was not home. His wife was there. She observed the search and recorded portions of the search. and The officers involved, and like she recorded them on her phone, videos of their faces and bodies. Additionally, the residents had multiple security cameras operating and recording. and additionally to that, there were various types of police video that was available by public record.
00:52:34
Speaker
After the search is concluded, Afro used portions of the recordings to create music videos about the search and some of them are just hilarious.
00:52:45
Speaker
um My favorite I think is either ah Will You Repair My Door? um But it's a close tie with Lemon Pound Cake.
00:52:56
Speaker
If you guys have not seen these, go watch them. Go ahead. I'm sure you have something to say to what saying. Well, I was going to say, so his wife actually came to the scene. So nobody was initially in the house.
00:53:13
Speaker
And she did. she um She was getting video. And ah actually, Averman ended up on the phone with at one of the officers that was there. I believe it was Randy Walter. I'm not actually sure, though.
00:53:28
Speaker
i While the search was being conducted because he was out of town. Right. Aphromen is out of town, not Randy Walters. Randy Walters is subject of the brilliant song, Randy Walters is a son of a bitch and has some of the best moments of cross-examination in the entire trial. It's it's interesting. um It...
00:53:51
Speaker
I personally, i don't know how everybody else feels about this. I was familiar with what happened. And just another factual point, during the, we say lawful search because a judge signed a search warrant.
00:54:08
Speaker
That is why it is listed in the, yes, that's how it's listed in the complaint. And you're right. The authorization that makes it lawful is a judge signed off on an affiant statement. Yes. Yes.
00:54:20
Speaker
Correct. Okay. And so nothing about whether the search warrant was lawful or not comes into play in this particular case or otherwise that I'm
Search Warrant and Legal Responses
00:54:29
Speaker
aware of. And this is not a criminal trial.
00:54:31
Speaker
This is a civil trial. It is not. Yeah, you're right. and But during the search warrant, they disassemble his video camera system.
00:54:44
Speaker
Correct. And that's odd. Yeah, they say they're doing it for evidence, but ultimately... Afferman later points out that they left it on the couch. It was the craziest thing because I wondered, and this has never come up, and I haven't looked up the documents. I was doing the best I could to get through all of it in time to record.
00:55:07
Speaker
But I wondered if the video camera system was actually part of the search warrant or not. I doubt it based on the fact that they were looking for trafficking information. I'm guessing that's why it was left behind.
00:55:23
Speaker
Well, I don't know exactly what happened. However, that was the most suspect thing ever to me because it's weird. You can get copies of video systems if the judge deems it necessary in the course of the search warrant, but they dis is like they took everything down.
00:55:44
Speaker
That is the craziest thing to me. And I feel like that was unwarranted. And then during the course of the search, they went through all of this man's wardrobe and they found cash.
00:55:58
Speaker
And it was quite a bit of cash. ah it There's a little bit of a dispute of exactly how much cash it was. but it was around $4,400. take, yeah. Yeah. four thousand four hundred dollars give or take yeah yeah And one of the things that occurred was they when when law enforcement executes a search warrant, they have to make a log and they have to write down every single thing that's taken. In order to file a return on this search warrant that they will have to give back to the judge and then the clerk's office stating, this is what we did with what you gave us.
00:56:39
Speaker
Right, and so they wrote down the amount of money they had taken, and one of the officers said he counted it. And after they ah reassessed the situation and decided that there were no charges to be had because they found cash and they found like a little bit of marijuana. They didn't find any evidence of any crime that was worth pursuing.
00:57:01
Speaker
And so after they decided that they called Afro man down to get his property back. And uh, amount of money written on the search warrant return and on the evidence bag, it was $400 more than what he received when he went to pick up the evidence that they had seized and it was being returned to him.
00:57:27
Speaker
And that obviously means there's a discrepancy. Right. and it seems to be that for whatever reason...
00:57:38
Speaker
somebody kept $400 of Afro-Mans. Yes. It's weird, but that's what all the evidence points to. Yeah, and ah I'll be quick about the this part, and then I'll go into the counts that they're suing on. The plaintiff's case that they put on here is, you know, it's it's really kind of, you know, I saw one YouTube channel call it the hurt feelings trial. And I think that sums up what I feel about the plaintiff's case. It is really about a bunch of people who are essentially state actors who had their feelings hurt because of their behavior.
00:58:20
Speaker
i am sure none of them going back to that day would want to be on that search warrant team. to Just sort of to clear up what you're saying, he used the footage of them in his house.
00:58:34
Speaker
And he did add, you know, hyperbolic sentiments to it as, you know, he's a he's a rapper, right? And ah rappers have a tendency to do that.
00:58:48
Speaker
yeah And in doing so, one of the things that I couldn't get over and I felt like would it it would have been best, like this should have never happened. that The lawsuit should have never happened because as far as I'm concerned, it brought way more attention to it than was there previously. But that was their choice.
00:59:11
Speaker
However, he literally is taking... footage of them in his house and making videos with it.
00:59:22
Speaker
Yeah. He's making fun of them staring a little too long in his lemon pound cake. He's making fun of them destroying the gate onto his property. He's making fun of them, going through his suits, looking for human trafficking victims. Uh, the entire, ah the entire video series of which there are so many, I cannot count them right a second. like it's It is a ridiculous satire on the state of policing. If you happen to be a certain color or living in a certain place, it might apply to you. But the truth is, it could be any of us.
01:00:00
Speaker
And that part coming through the music is rather infuriating. The songs are silly, very simple, and very catchy. And overall...
01:00:11
Speaker
But also the fact that they're complaining that he's using footage from his own house where they at act like a bunch of law enforcement officers literally destroying someone's property. yeah it's It really shows you how tone deaf they are. It does. Because there's not a jury in the world, in my opinion, because every single person on the jury that has never been a law enforcement officer and has no desire to be one is thinking, that could be me.
01:00:51
Speaker
That could be my house. And so the fact that they had this basis of like, well, we were just doing our duty and like he shouldn't be using that footage.
Trial and Verdict
01:01:00
Speaker
It's his footage. yeah Right. You can do whatever whatever he wants with it. And to dovetail with what Meg's saying, count one in the plaintiff's complaint was that Affromant had violated ah ohio Revised Code Chapter 2741 unauthorized use of individuals' persona.
01:01:21
Speaker
ah So the plaintiffs basically alleged that they were each law enforcement officers in Adams County, whose names and personas are known in the community and beyond as public service servants and private citizens. And their personas are distinct and recognizable within Adams County and the surrounding area. And the plaintiffs had built that distinct recognizability system.
01:01:43
Speaker
through years of public service and private activities and exposure to the public, often at great risk to themselves. As such, the persona of each plaintiff had significant commercial value because the reputation, prestige, social standing, public interest, and other values of the plaintiff's recognize recognizable personas add value to any product or service with which plaintiff's personas are associated." So that was part of what they're using to sue him.
01:02:08
Speaker
and They go on to kind of lay out different parts of their complaint as to why they're complaining about their personas being used under the commercial purpose definition, which is him going viral with these videos.
01:02:25
Speaker
ah Ultimately, this particular... sticking point in the complaint is a little silly.
01:02:36
Speaker
um count two was invasion of privacy by misappropriation, which is sort of in contrast to count one. Uh, basically they restated torts.
01:02:47
Speaker
Um, count three was invasion of privacy and the false light of publicity, which was another restatement of all the same facts and torts. And then we get to count four, which was invasion of privacy, unreasonable publicity given to private lives, and a restatement of the facts and torts.
01:03:09
Speaker
um Count five was defamation, which means that something ah had been basically misrepresented or a lie had been shown to be told about a person either through libel or slander.
01:03:23
Speaker
And count six was for injunctive relief. And basically they were asking for ah the opportunity to argue anything that the court wanted to do either way that they were sure the court was going to side with them and protect these plaintiffs.
01:03:41
Speaker
So to summarize all of that, the the The court kind of looked at counts one and two and said that they didn't feel like the plaintiffs could prove a set of facts entitling them to recovery. So those are dismissed before we ever get here.
01:04:00
Speaker
And they couldn't figure out three, four, and five with the court, but essentially the They gave ah ah a sort of a direction that everybody could go in in order for this to move forward to trial.
01:04:14
Speaker
And to trial, it went. It did. And in the trial, there's seven plaintiffs. yeah ah As a side note, everybody except ah Joseph Foreman himself was right at the end, dropped, dismissed as defendants. Correct. ah And there was an objection raised by the defense as to why that happened. However, um as we'll find out momentarily, it doesn't matter.
01:04:43
Speaker
but there were seven plaintiffs against, as it happens, one defendant, and they each brought a one count of defamation and one count of false light. Right. So there were two things for each of the seven plaintiffs for the jury to decide. Right. These were all, ah these, the two counts each was allowed to move forward to the jury.
01:05:10
Speaker
And, I have to tell you that I'm not sure if the lawyer was pulling somebody's leg here, meaning the plaintiff's attorney, or if there was just some confusion about the definition of the word defamation.
01:05:28
Speaker
But Randy Walters saying, I don't know if Afro man slept with my wife it's been put out there to the universe, is a highlight of this trial for me.
01:05:42
Speaker
Because in his I don't know answers, he basically proves for all seven plaintiffs that it is impossible for any of this to be defamation because it is all so absurd that if it were to be true, we probably wouldn't believe it Exactly. And it was amazing to me how each of these plaintiffs got on the stand and basically undid their own case. They they all did. the the
01:06:14
Speaker
So the defense closing, opening the defense closing, the defense cross is absolutely masterful. But it's really only masterful because of how ridiculous this entire case is.
01:06:31
Speaker
It is really bad. i I'm fairly certain that all the people who know about the case today did not know about it last week at this time.
01:06:43
Speaker
ah Right. And if you if you really want to enjoy this, Meg and I will talk a little more about it, but I'm going to tell you right now, I'm going to put a link to the entire trial in the show notes. Meg appears to have found a link that looks like it's directly from the court system.
01:06:59
Speaker
Right. ah So part of the problem was there was one news organization that was granted access to the pool camera. And they were very weird about sharing the feed and about when they started and stopped recording.
01:07:17
Speaker
And i found ah through a different source, I can't, I don't know who it was right at the moment, but I was watching something. And they said that Watchdog Wire,
01:07:30
Speaker
which is you just literally type that into the search bar on ah YouTube. It's a man who runs a I guess, it's just a channel that puts stuff out there that's hard to find. But he went and got the public record of the court proceedings, which is just the security, the CCTV. And, but it's, it's perfectly fine to get the gist of the trial. And it's from the beginning to the end with, I mean, they cut they've, I don't know if he pre-cut it or what, but it literally skips all the breaks and everything.
01:08:03
Speaker
So it just goes right through the whole thing. And there's it was a three-day trial. And the judge talks a whole lot about a whole lot of things that don't matter.
01:08:17
Speaker
and then he gets really upset about the lawyers, he says, wasting time, which was really weird because I didn't feel like they wasted time at all. ah Oh, and they even had the the jury voir dire on It was really weird because I'm pretty sure that wasn't supposed to be given out.
01:08:40
Speaker
But it is all there. You can watch the whole thing. um i would say the only additional homework I would give you is you should also go watch the videos that made all of this happen.
01:08:52
Speaker
Well, right. And so i I want to be clear about something. Some of the responses to, like, Afro Man was done wrong, I think. Okay. I don't think that, I think that the search warrant was more than likely rubber stamped. Correct. and I don't think that they had...
01:09:16
Speaker
the cause that they needed to go and search his house. I definitely don't think that they had any reason to do the damage they did to his home. And that, that irks me. Okay.
01:09:29
Speaker
And i I should say though, his response It was protected, like it's protected you know by the First Amendment. He's allowed to have the response he wants to have.
01:09:42
Speaker
In this situation, the deputies, to me, through their attorney, they were putting forth the air of, we're going to do whatever we want to you in our official capacities, and we're going to control how you respond to it.
01:10:03
Speaker
And that's why they were so upset that the whole lawsuit was seeking to control how Afro man responded to their actions. And that was a mistake. However, I don't necessarily agree with all of the things that he's put out there. I do agree with his right to do it, but some of them are pretty crass.
01:10:26
Speaker
Oh, no, it's incredibly crass. i Look, from the perspective that we're talking about this, I understand his anger. And I'll go ahead and say, I have had numerous run-ins with the police over the years that left me just as frustrated as Joseph Foreman is. um He is soapboxing.
01:10:46
Speaker
He is crass. That's been his entire career. If you don't remember... the name Afro man, uh, one of the things that you can go back and watch that will refresh why you even think that's something you should think of that sounds familiar is a song called because I got high and the song is ridiculous. It is based off of like events in every 20 some year old person's life, but it's sort of clouded by a very, uh, obvious,
01:11:22
Speaker
reference to having smoked marijuana and how it changes your motivation to complete activities. um it is so funny and he carries that same level of ridiculousness and soap boxing through all of these songs. You're not going to like all of them, but he, i promise you, he has written at least one you will identify with.
01:11:48
Speaker
Absolutely. And during the trial, every single day, he wore an American flag suit. Yes, he did. an American flag in um over embossed sunglasses. Yeah. I don't know if that makes sense.
01:12:04
Speaker
And so The judge was more pro-plaintiff in this case. Correct. So at the end, there were three sheets per plaintiff, so 21 sheets total.
01:12:21
Speaker
And he went through them, and you can see, well, you can see whatever you see. What I saw was, like, he was getting, the judge was getting aggravated going through them, and he's, like, separating them out into piles. Right.
01:12:36
Speaker
And at the end, he's like, okay, so now we're going to go over the verdict. And he says,
01:12:45
Speaker
no plaintiff claim prevailed. i find So the finding is in favor of the defendant or something very short like that. And then I guess he gaveled or he said this matter's concluded. We're off the record. And it was over so fast that Afro man,
01:13:05
Speaker
Jair's a foreman. He's standing there. He doesn't know what happened. Yep, he looks so confused. Because he's like, wait, what? And his attorney literally has to, like, lean over to him and say, you want to you just won. and it's crazy how fast that concludes because I feel like the judge was very, very mad.
01:13:27
Speaker
i could be wrong. i could have been reading into the situation. But the whole time, I really felt like the judge thought – That the jury would side with the officers.
Implications and Public Perception
01:13:41
Speaker
The defense attorney, out I mean, I'm sorry, the plaintiff's attorney absolutely thought that they were going to side with the officers, which was crazy to me, but I guess that's, you know, civil advocacy, right? Right.
01:13:55
Speaker
But he was like telling them how much money they should award each of the officers, which is a little bizarre, but whatever. um Clearly. And I think that the verdict was stunning. And I believe, again, I sort of watched, I watched the trial from beginning to end kind of in a hurry so we could record about it.
01:14:19
Speaker
But I'm pretty sure that the plaintiff's attorney has filed a notice of appeal. Yeah. Right. So this could all keep moving forward. but Just a couple of things to throw out here. First of all, like one of the important things about a civil case is when a jury's deciding something, they're looking at the preponderance of the evidence. So think to yourself, 51%. Right.
01:14:41
Speaker
right It's a lower standard. It's much lower standard. um it's There's not a probable cause situation. There's not a reasonable doubt situation like you see in criminal proceedings. Right.
01:14:54
Speaker
Right. And so part of the problem I take with the the the plaintiff ah noticing an appeal is if you watch the trial, you'll see the plaintiff's counsel is not trying the case directly.
01:15:11
Speaker
in the In a way that suggests that there's going to be an appeal. Right. ah So he's not preserving issues like the defense was. The defense preserved everything because he thought they were going down. Right. I mean, keith um i said earlier, I said... that he All the the other defendants were dismissed, and the defense attorney objected to it because the more defendants there are, the more of a reason, like, you know, why aren't all the other defendants here, right? Now, granted, I believe they are mostly Joseph Foreman, right? Yes, they are. Right. But still, the point remains, the if in the event that they had awarded $100 million, dollars then it should be equally distributed or distributed in some way amongst all the defendants, right? Not just him
01:16:08
Speaker
However, the defense attorney objected just to put it on the record because probably the appeals court would have said it was not proper for them to dismiss right before the verdict was read, right? Right. Right.
01:16:22
Speaker
Anyway, the defense attorney operated during the trial as if he was making a record that was going to go to appeal. The plaintiff's attorney did not. So I find, i think they're going to have a really hard time having anything to appeal because the judge catered to the plaintiff's case. Right. and this was a jury verdict.
01:16:48
Speaker
Correct. So i I'm not sure, i don't know that I've ever seen a a an opinion overturning a civil jury verdict.
01:17:00
Speaker
Well, this is a at its heart a First Amendment defense. So that would make it nearly impossible to overturn because it's a constitutional defense. He has the right to do what he's doing. And these happen in this instance to be government employees.
01:17:18
Speaker
Right. Now, does anybody know how to fix this? Because I do. oh yeah. They can behave themselves when they do this shit in the future. Well, yes, but from the perspective they're at right now, they just lost this. This was it for them. This was, I'm sure that they had to pay the attorney quite a bit of money. There were seven plaintiffs and they thought that they were going to be um and reimbursed or whatever, compensated for their, what they've gone through. Okay.
01:17:49
Speaker
All of them need to put aside the fact that their law enforcement And they need to own up to what they did and apologize.
01:18:00
Speaker
Right. Okay, that's what should have happened from the very beginning. However, it did cross my mind. Now, I watched the whole thing, and I feel like the jury absolutely could find what they found, which was that the plaintiffs were entitled to nothing, and they found in favor of the defendant. However, do you think it crossed their mind that they would be the next target?
01:18:24
Speaker
What do you mean that if they found in favor of the plaintiffs, that they would be the next video target. So you think so AfroMan at that point would use the video of the trial to show how ridiculous the system was?
01:18:39
Speaker
All I said was, do you think it crossed their mind? Oh, I'm sure it had to have. i I strongly feel like justice was possibly purchased.
01:18:51
Speaker
Okay. Just, I mean, I don't have that much to go off of because I didn't get to watch that trial, but watching the whole situation unfold in this trial, when they legit found nothing, the plaintiffs prevailed on nothing. Okay.
01:19:12
Speaker
Which as the, I don't feel like they should have prevailed on anything, But I wondered, were they afraid? Because Afro Man has shown he has the the creative whatever the and the ability to put stuff out there. And he has a audience an audience, right? Right. A huge following, yeah. And it just keeps getting bigger. And he happens to have this platform that since the raid happened, now he raps about other things. Like you said, his big hit, I believe in like 2000, his first big hit was Because I Got High. And that's how he kind of has a claim to fame, right? Right.
01:19:57
Speaker
But he happened upon this situation and... it's really been his muse, especially when they started suing him. Yeah. And it made it so much worse, right? Like they, the the plaintiffs made it so much worse by what they did. They, and I'm telling you, it's from their perspective as law enforcement officers, they need to put that aside because I feel like the proof is in the pudding here. There was no evidence from the search warrant to charge him with anything.
01:20:31
Speaker
So search warrant or not, they were in the wrong. That's just my opinion. and I feel like the only way to fix this at this point is they all need to apologize to him. They were wrong. They do. i don't think I don't think the plaintiffs that I saw in this case would have... and don't think they're capable of apologizing to him and meaning it in a way that would matter. Right. And that's exactly why he's going to continue...
01:21:00
Speaker
Right.
01:21:03
Speaker
in a little way they kind of deserve it i personally don't believe in bullying back just to bully back however and i mean he's doing it creatively he did it in a way at least he's making light of the situation right It could be much worse, right? By the way, in case anybody's wondering, Afro a Man is a black 51-year-old man with an afro. And he's hilarious.
01:21:33
Speaker
Who wore a, i like I said, he was, you know, he had an American flag, probably custom-made suit on for all three days of the trial. So it's not like, I mean, he's the kind of guy who...
01:21:48
Speaker
if the exception proves the rule, right? I mean, he lashed back at authorities by creating songs about them. Yeah. i There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
01:22:01
Speaker
No, it's highly entertaining. And as Meg said earlier, you may not enjoy all of it, but I guarantee you'll find something. Well, and his position is correct.
01:22:13
Speaker
Like he's coming from a place of this is what happened to me. I'm going to make light of it. And the fact that they decided like, oh, we're going to sue him. That was the worst decision any of them have ever made because they were wrong. And they need to they need to say that if they want this to stop.
01:22:32
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you. um The entire trial is available. The music videos related to the trial are available. I could talk about this one for a lot longer, but I think it's more important that people see what's happening in it.
01:22:46
Speaker
agree. And Afro this will be his you know swan song or whatever. I mean, at all the stuff he does. This was a huge deal because essentially this told law enforcement...
01:23:01
Speaker
That you have, people can have feelings about stuff you do to them and they can lash back in creative ways. Yeah. and what I think, i think what you've the apology probably makes all this go away.
01:23:17
Speaker
like A little bit of kindness in general when a situation like this is happening gets you a lot further along. The way that law enforcement generally approach arrest warrants, orders for arrests, traffic stops, ah search warrants, and and welfare checks, um it could ever it could all be improved with like kindness and professionalism.
01:23:41
Speaker
Right, and I've noticed, so here's the secret. Watch it on the next true crime show that you're watching. They're all scared. That's why they're acting the way they act. Yeah. it's not because they're big, bad law enforcement. It's because they are scared. They're scared of the confrontation they're about to have. I never realized that.
01:24:00
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with it. that That's what's happening. I see it in a lot of body cam footage that people are scared. So that's all I have on Afro Man. You got anything else on him today?
01:24:11
Speaker
I have so much more on him, but I feel like the best thing, um if you can't watch anything else, at least watch The Verdict and his face. Yeah. I think I will put links to that in the show notes for today. and if there's something that happens appeals-wise, I think we'll go back through this and do like a bigger analysis and dissection. Absolutely, because I will be...
01:24:35
Speaker
I'm I know the attorney didn't think the plaintiff's attorney did not think that he would be going on appeal. I know that the defense attorney absolutely did think that he would be appealing it. And just from the way that they were trying the case. And that's an interesting position to find yourself in.
01:25:02
Speaker
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01:25:13
Speaker
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01:25:27
Speaker
I break things like guitars.
01:25:35
Speaker
We took too far.
01:25:46
Speaker
want to go but it's cause I'll disappoint ya it's all I've ever dreamed of something I cannot let go of I hate the competition this culture's like a gym and I lost the motivation to get fit in your expectations True Crime Excess is brought to you by John and May It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg.
01:26:16
Speaker
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