Latest / Nightmare Success In and Out / The Famous New York Defense Attorney goes to prison. Robert Simels

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The Famous New York Defense Attorney goes to prison. Robert Simels · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:01
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:04
  Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy. Welcome to the nightmare success
• 0:07
  in our podcast where we explore how to overcome your fears and
• 0:11
  nightmares that set yourself free.
• 0:12
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:15
  Bucklemore and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:20
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes.
• 0:22
  Sad. There's some humor, but
• 0:25
  hopefully you can come away with a nugget of something that'll
• 0:27
  help you knock down some of the prisons you built up in your own
• 0:30
  mind. All right, welcome back.
• 0:35
  I have our success and not listeners.
• 0:38
  That's where you come from. What happens when your worst
• 0:39
  fear becomes your reality? How do you adapt, survive,
• 0:42
  overcome, set yourself free? Well, I always.
• 0:46
  I'm just amazed at the people that I can get on this show that
• 0:49
  have just incredible, unbelievable stories.
• 0:52
  And I've got 1 today. You might have heard of him.
• 0:56
  It's Robert Symbols. If you've run around anything in
• 0:58
  New York and you know big celebrity trials or you got big
• 1:04
  drug pen names and high profile, you've probably heard of Robert
• 1:08
  Symbols because he's the guy that takes those and and wins
• 1:12
  those cases. I'm going to give you a little
• 1:13
  bit of background on him. Robert in his early days in the
• 1:17
  70s was a prosecutor with an elite anti corruption
• 1:22
  prosecution office in New York City, prosecuting police,
• 1:27
  lawyers, judges, politicians, obviously doing that, earning
• 1:32
  the ire of many in his profession.
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  Then he switched teams, went over and he became an uncredible
• 1:41
  defense attorney for the next 35 plus years.
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  And when I say incredible, he was one of those guys that took
• 1:48
  on the feds with high profile cases and clients and and and
• 1:53
  one in one cases it was. And there's there's cases too
• 1:58
  that that we were just talking about before we got on Henry
• 2:01
  Hill. As all of you probably know,
• 2:04
  that name somewhere back in there for the Goodfellas.
• 2:08
  He was involved, obviously represented Henry Hill but
• 2:10
  negotiated and helped with the book, The wise guy.
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  And that movie obviously became the the, the incredibly
• 2:19
  successful movie, Martin Scorsese movie, Goodfellas
• 2:23
  movie. And I I was, and Robert was just
• 2:26
  telling me a funny story about something that happened on set.
• 2:29
  Other things that I mean some of these things just kind of
• 2:31
  blowing my mind. He was representing Christopher
• 2:34
  Drogle, a banker in Atlanta, and this guy was facing life in
• 2:38
  prison for loaning Saddam Hussein billions of dollars.
• 2:41
  And some of us decides that no, no, this is, this is all wrong.
• 2:44
  This guy's being set up as a fall guy.
• 2:46
  He ends up subpoenaing George HW Bush, Henry Kissinger, Jim
• 2:50
  Baker, Bruce Kilcar, the basically the higher echelon of
• 2:53
  the whole United States and the government folds like a like a
• 2:57
  cheap tet. And it's it's it's crazy how
• 3:01
  this all transpired. But the case, it took Robert
• 3:04
  down his own nightmare path to prison, was representing Shahad
• 3:10
  Khan, a drug kingpin from Guyana.
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  Robert received 14 years charged with attempted witness
• 3:17
  tampering. Since his release, he's worked
• 3:19
  as a legal consultant, hosted a radio show.
• 3:22
  He's been a speaker at Yale University and other high
• 3:24
  profile venues. I can't wait to jump in to this
• 3:29
  interview with Robert. Before we do, I want to
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  Auto Plaza direct telling Brent from Nightmare Success since
• 4:06
  you, Robert Simmons, welcome in. Thank you for being here.
• 4:10
  Well, thank you so much for having me.
• 4:13
  I. Pleasure.
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  I listen to your your your podcast always interesting and
• 4:19
  and enlightening for sure. Well, I appreciate that Robert
• 4:22
  and and you're getting on here, we were just talking about we
• 4:28
  didn't have to worry about technology in prison, but for
• 4:31
  some reason Robert was able to get on with his cell phone, but
• 4:35
  it not his his laptop and we have no idea why that is because
• 4:39
  we're not technology Wizards, but we are seeing each other.
• 4:43
  You guys will see Robert and we're set up.
• 4:47
  So, Robert, your story, and I was telling you this before we
• 4:51
  hit the play button. I mean, you've been all around,
• 4:54
  you know, you've played yourself in different things.
• 4:57
  You've been involved, obviously, with the Henry story and
• 5:03
  becoming good fellows and the wise guy and all that.
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  But take us back a little bit in your story before you came into
• 5:10
  all that. What what was life like for you
• 5:14
  growing up? What?
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  What was Robert's life as a kid? A A really good life.
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  My my father was a dentist. My mother was a a homemaker.
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  I grew up in Westchester County, which is right outside of New
• 5:29
  York City. I thought I was going to be a
• 5:34
  baseball player and and wanted to be and I what?
• 5:37
  Position did you like Robert? What?
• 5:39
  What kind of baseball were you? I played outfield and then
• 5:43
  realized that if I became a catcher, I had a much better
• 5:47
  chance of being picked up by the major leagues.
• 5:52
  Any number of people I grew up with from the time I was a
• 5:56
  little boy became Major League players, and we all thought we'd
• 6:02
  be there together. At some point in the early
• 6:06
  1960s, my mother convinced me that I would make more money
• 6:13
  becoming a doctor or a lawyer. OK, rather than the $5000
• 6:19
  bonuses that they offered to college players at that time.
• 6:24
  Little different. You think of it.
• 6:28
  Kids in college make more than that with the nil deals.
• 6:31
  Oh, I mean that. That some of those kids are
• 6:32
  getting paid millions. Yeah, so.
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  Whole different world. So.
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  So she so your mom tells you that.
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  Hey let's let's think about this Robert.
• 6:42
  Let's think about doctor, attorney.
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  So did you have at that time because I mean I can see how you
• 6:48
  can make that transition. I mean playing sports very
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  competitive you keep score you know you play if you're good and
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  and I you know my dad was an attorney and and you know you
• 6:59
  win you lose you you you know you you call you know you are
• 7:05
  the guy and and so I can see how that would would have worked for
• 7:08
  you did it automatically click in your head hey I like law.
• 7:14
  Actually, I always liked Law in the 50s.
• 7:19
  Of course it was Perry Mason, the number one show on TV and
• 7:23
  probably unknown to many of the people who listen to your
• 7:26
  podcast. But they should.
• 7:28
  They have the opportunity, they should go back and look at
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  those. It's a great show.
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  Great show. And Perry was everything that I
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  would hope I was as an attorney, including the same kind of
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  winning record that he had. But also I had a a relative who
• 7:47
  was a successful attorney and he, when I was nine years old,
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  gave me a book called Llewellyn that was the author on
• 8:00
  jurisprudence at 9:00. Years old.
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  Nine years old and I read it and.
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  I mean if you think about that Robert, that's like a like a
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  what second or third grader that's taken on a book like
• 8:11
  that. I know, strange.
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  I went back, tested me on what I learned.
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  But I just put it in the back of my mind because playing for the
• 8:22
  Yankees or the Dodgers was much more number one at that stage.
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  And then when I was in college, I realized that becoming an
• 8:33
  attorney might be the way to go. And that's the direction I I
• 8:37
  went. I was, strangely enough, the
• 8:41
  other day on Facebook I got a a request to join up with someone,
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  make them my friend who I haven't seen since I'm eleven
• 8:53
  years old and he played on the same Little League team as I did
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  and reached out to me. Magic of Facebook.
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  And thinking and thinking of that, I was saying back when I
• 9:06
  was 11 years old, I was actually a a a good ball player in in the
• 9:12
  Little League in my area. And we had, as I said, future
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  Major League players like Kenny Singleton of the Baltimore
• 9:21
  Orioles, who who was my childhood friend.
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  In any event, they didn't allow blacks to play back then and I
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  ran into was watching a minor league game one day and there
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  was a fellow named Johnny Richardson who played for one of
• 9:40
  the teams. He was great.
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  So I went to my manager and I said to him we ought to put this
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  kid on our team and he said, well, maybe not our team, but
• 9:53
  let's see if I can get him on another team.
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  And I kept badgering him to to do something and they finally
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  did. And he finally got into the
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  Little League and I didn't really understand why we we
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  didn't do those kinds of things. Why?
• 10:13
  It was a big deal, yeah. Fighting for the underdog and
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  fighting for people of color became part of what I did as I
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  undertook my private practice. The Hill is not one of those
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  people. But most of my clients that I
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  represented in in the major narcotic trafficking cases were
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  people of color. And it inured to the government
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  disliking me more because I was representing those people than
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  if I was representing somebody charged with the same crime who
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  was white. But the system is, and continues
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  to be, very prejudice. Yep, it's lopsided.
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  Well, I I'm curious, you know coming out and you were a young
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  man when you went into this elite prosecutor office and I,
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  you know, and it's it's talked about that you were very, very
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  good at it and and had an aggressive style of how you went
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  about, you know, getting your people.
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  But in that realm you were in, those were people that were, you
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  know, like you. It talks about there were
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  politicians, there were judges, there were police officers.
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  Did you realize at that time that you were wading into the
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  den of of a fight of what people around you in your world would
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  think? You know, when you're a
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  prosecutor, you always think you're on the side of the
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  angels. Yeah, the white knight, yeah.
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  You see everything in black and white terms and a guilty
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  person's a guilty person, and no matter what you think about
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  them, that's the way you view them.
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  And you look to put them away for as much time as you can put
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  them away because really, you have no appreciation for the
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  Gray in life. Right.
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  And when that office was created, the New York State
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  Special Prosecutor's Office, it was as a result of hearings had
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  been held in New York City demonstrating that the Police
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  Department, New York City Police Department, was almost entirely
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  corrupt. We've seen that in part through
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  movies like Serpico. That's what I was thinking of is
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  that movie, yeah. And Serpico, if you've seen the
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  movie or and if you haven't, you should see it's very good
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  performance by Al Pacino. It talks about how corrupt every
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  officer basically was in the Police Department, and if you
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  didn't participate, you were an outcast.
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  Right ostracized and. It hurt like Serpico was.
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  And so my office was created and we had 35 attorneys and we had a
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  hundred of our own investigators, and we were
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  investigating the criminal justice system.
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  And as long as we prosecuted cops and there were plenty to
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  prosecute, everything was hunky Dory.
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  The press loved us. We were applauded in all
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  circles. And then we decided to start
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  targeting judges, politicians, lawyers.
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  At that point, we weren't so popular anymore.
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  How would you been, Robert, at that time you were in your 20s?
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  I was 20. Because I guess you had to gone
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  through law school so you'd be. Yeah.
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  Yeah, young man. Yeah, and it was exciting.
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  We were really the Prince of the city in terms of how we were
• 13:51
  going after all these theoretically, not only corrupt.
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  It was the 70s too. I mean, there was a time when
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  that was all going on, yeah. Corruption, you know, was not
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  simply taking a bribe. Corruption is doing a favor for
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  somebody else with the anticipation you'll get
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  something on the back end, right?
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  And you know, you could whisper to a judge at lunch.
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  Listen, we need you to do this for the for the political club.
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  And the judge would do it. And you never knew that that
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  corruption was taking place. But we were there to make sure
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  that we could either root it out or suppress it.
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  And we were very, very successful in doing it.
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  We indicted 11 judges. We indicted the state Democratic
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  chairman, Pat Cunningham. We we were very, very active
• 14:42
  people. And then a new governor came in
• 14:46
  who was part of that political party.
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  We were inviting Hugh Carey and he turned around and and called
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  our boss in on December 23rd, 1975 and we thought he was going
• 15:03
  to give us statewide jurisdiction.
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  Of course we had so good. And our boss, Maureen Najari
• 15:12
  came back from the meeting and he said I got fired.
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  And although we fought to keep him and did for a little bit, he
• 15:22
  ultimately was replaced. The replacement tamped down our
• 15:25
  investigations, they tried to get rid of everybody on the jury
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  staff as being overly zealous, but we were doing what we
• 15:37
  thought was appropriate. I had some very big
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  prosecutions. I prosecuted a state judge,
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  convicted him. I I I prosecuted the highest
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  ranking member of the New York City Police Department ever
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  prosecuted. I caused the police
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  commissioner, his first deputy, and 25 other senior officers
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  from the rank of inspector and above chief to resign.
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  So I helped change the face of the New York City Police
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  Department by doing that. And I said, you know what?
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  I'm leaving, but the people we investigated never forgot.
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  Not just simply me, but all the people from my office.
• 16:22
  No matter where we went in our our professional lives, we were
• 16:26
  reminded that we had been part of that office because they all
• 16:30
  felt they were investigated and and the myth of the office was
• 16:36
  greater than the actual actions of the office.
• 16:40
  They they believe that that our boss had a private elevator that
• 16:44
  took you from the bottom of the World Trade Center up to his
• 16:48
  office on the 57th floor. They believe we had bugs and
• 16:52
  wiretaps all over the city and they were afraid to talk because
• 16:57
  they thought they were being intercepted.
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  Not true. I mean, you can't wiretap that
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  many people, but. The myth could grow.
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  The myth grows, and so I left and went into private practice.
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  It was. What?
• 17:14
  What was that? Because there's a lot of guys
• 17:16
  that do that. I mean it it's, you know, you
• 17:18
  see that a lot. You see, you know, people in the
• 17:20
  US Attorney's office and they turn into these incredible
• 17:23
  defense attorneys. Is that a, does that feel like?
• 17:27
  What does that feel like when you when you're on the
• 17:28
  prosecutor's side and then you all of a sudden are a criminal
• 17:34
  defense attorney? For me, it was just walking out
• 17:37
  the door. My ethics stayed the same, my
• 17:39
  approach stayed the same, just I was doing it for people who I
• 17:46
  used to prosecute but maybe not weren't so guilty after all, or
• 17:51
  even if they were guilty, were entitled to the full spectrum of
• 17:56
  how to be protected in the system.
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  Sure. And like you said, you go in a
• 18:01
  black and white world into more of a Gray world because the the
• 18:06
  criminal defense I mean there and then we've talked about this
• 18:08
  so many times on this show, but there is nothing like the United
• 18:13
  States of America versus your name.
• 18:15
  And I think one of the things that's most fascinated about
• 18:19
  your your, your world of what you created with your as an
• 18:26
  attorney is, is that you went into that world where no one
• 18:31
  mostly doesn't win and you went in with a vigor and took on big
• 18:37
  cases and and won big cases. And there are different types of
• 18:41
  attorneys for different kinds of cases.
• 18:44
  Not every attorney can do every kind of case.
• 18:47
  Attorney who does practice in the state courts can practice in
• 18:52
  the federal courts. Federal courts are a lot more
• 18:55
  sophisticated. There's a lot more paperwork, a
• 18:58
  lot more research and and a lot better talent on in the
• 19:03
  prosecution's office than there are at the state.
• 19:06
  Level, State level, Yeah. In the Manhattan District
• 19:09
  Attorney's office, there are 500 Assistant District attorneys.
• 19:13
  In the Southern District of New York, the federal office, there
• 19:17
  are 50. So there are much more elite
• 19:20
  group. You can't even go to that office
• 19:23
  as an Assistant US Attorney unless you've been in private
• 19:27
  practice 2 years before you apply and they only take people
• 19:30
  from the big, big firms. So I I I said to myself, I'm
• 19:39
  good enough. I can compete against anyone,
• 19:43
  and all I have to do is follow the same footprints that I use
• 19:48
  as a prosecutor. And I should be successful as a
• 19:52
  defense attorney, except that I I didn't realize how upsetting
• 19:56
  that would be for. Right.
• 19:59
  Well, and and the the Henry Hill case that came fairly soon,
• 20:04
  wasn't that like a 1980? So in May, I'll tell you a quick
• 20:08
  story, if I can make this quick. On Memorial Day, Friday of 1980,
• 20:15
  I was in my office about 4:15 in the afternoon, probably the only
• 20:20
  attorney in New York who wasn't in the Hamptons vacationing that
• 20:25
  weekend. And I got a call from Judge Mark
• 20:28
  Constantino's office, his chambers, and they asked me to
• 20:31
  go over to the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse to witness someone
• 20:35
  signing a document. I said, of course, Judge.
• 20:39
  And I went, and the prosecutors tell me, listen, have them sign
• 20:43
  the agreement and we're going to have the marshals take them
• 20:45
  away. And if you've seen the movie,
• 20:49
  you know that at that time, the Nassau County District
• 20:53
  Attorney's office was prosecuting Henry for all that
• 20:56
  narcotic trafficking doing. And so we had four, what we call
• 21:02
  A1 indictments against him, life sentence indictments for
• 21:06
  narcotic trafficking. And they were there and they
• 21:08
  said, yeah, yeah, if he doesn't, we'll go along with it.
• 21:11
  All we have to do is plead guilty to a couple of crimes so
• 21:15
  he'll be a more credible witness when he testifies against
• 21:18
  everybody else. Because if you admit that you
• 21:21
  committed the crime, the jury will like you better and will
• 21:25
  think worse of the other Co defendants.
• 21:30
  I say let me talk to the guy. I mean, I don't know anything
• 21:32
  about him, but never heard of him walk in.
• 21:35
  He describes who he is, tells me that they want to talk to him
• 21:40
  about the Lufthansa robbery, the biggest robbery.
• 21:47
  And I talked to Henry for a while, and I say. $6 million,
• 21:52
  wasn't it? 6,000,000, yeah. 1980s It was a
• 21:56
  little bit before 1980, but it's a lot of money that.
• 21:59
  We know of it was 1978 when well, that we know of it could
• 22:05
  have been more but Jimmy Burke, the main guy portrayed by 10
• 22:11
  year? Old, Yeah.
• 22:13
  Never really told anybody how much there was.
• 22:16
  In any event, I go back to the prosecutors and I say he's not
• 22:22
  pleading guilty to anything. They said you'll undercut our
• 22:25
  cases. And I said I don't really care.
• 22:27
  Then he's not going to do what you want.
• 22:30
  And they both agree to do that. And Henry signs it and the
• 22:34
  marshals take him and he's off to the federal witness program.
• 22:37
  I mean, I'm, I'm fast forwarding it.
• 22:39
  But the biggest obstacle was Henry's wife's mother, who you
• 22:47
  see in the movie as being a very difficult.
• 22:52
  Yeah, she didn't like him coming home late and they yeah, all
• 22:55
  that. She was a middle class Jewish
• 22:58
  woman from Long Island and didn't like this.
• 23:01
  And I had to explain to her what was going to happen.
• 23:06
  And she yelled and screamed and screamed and yelled.
• 23:10
  But ultimately they agreed. She didn't agree.
• 23:15
  But ultimately, Henry and Karen, the wife, agreed and they went
• 23:19
  off with the marshals. And I figure I'm done.
• 23:22
  Goodbye. The following Monday, I hear
• 23:26
  from the federal prosecutor that the Nassau County District
• 23:30
  Attorney's office has broken the deal and Henry is going to
• 23:34
  continue to be prosecuted out there.
• 23:37
  And I say, well, I'm going to move to get this case dismissed.
• 23:40
  I'm prosecutorial misconduct. They made us a promise and now
• 23:43
  they're backing out. And the feds kept saying to me,
• 23:46
  the federal attorneys I knew kept saying don't do it.
• 23:49
  You'll make an enemy of the Nassau County, VA And I said I
• 23:53
  don't. Care.
• 23:55
  And so I made the motion and we had a very interesting hearing.
• 23:59
  It will take longer to describe the the program, but we had
• 24:03
  helicopters over the courthouse and SWAT teams outside.
• 24:08
  Marshals would sawed off shotguns and automatic weapons
• 24:11
  in the courtroom. And ultimately I subpoenaed the
• 24:17
  notes of one of the assistant district attorneys who had been
• 24:20
  in a meeting with the District Attorney that following Monday.
• 24:25
  And he had said this, in essence, screw the feds, we'll
• 24:30
  get no publicity if we don't continue to push our case.
• 24:35
  And that statement, coupled with the other proof, caused the
• 24:41
  judge to dismiss all the charges against Henry.
• 24:46
  But now I was putting in more and more time with Henry because
• 24:49
  the feds don't really know too much about what they're doing
• 24:52
  ever. I know that they think they're
• 24:54
  very bright, but it's usually defence attorneys don't win
• 24:58
  cases. Feds or prosecutors lose cases.
• 25:02
  They're the ones who make the mistakes that we capitalize on.
• 25:08
  If you've seen that Perry Mason, you know that it's every case
• 25:11
  that Perry Mason capitalizes upon the prosecutor Hamilton
• 25:15
  Burger's failure to do something.
• 25:18
  In any event, we they're so focused on Lufthansa that they
• 25:25
  can't think of anything else. And Henry keeps telling them I
• 25:30
  wasn't there the day before. I don't know, I was out of town.
• 25:34
  I wasn't there the day before I was out of town.
• 25:37
  Finally, after listening to this for weeks and then becoming
• 25:42
  frustrated with Henry that the agents and the prosecutor in
• 25:46
  charge, I go to the head prosecutor and I say, listen,
• 25:49
  here's what's happening. But they never asked Henry where
• 25:52
  he went, that he was out of town.
• 25:56
  And so he decides to walk in with me and to casually ask
• 26:01
  what's going on. And did you ever ask Henry where
• 26:05
  he went when he went out of town?
• 26:07
  And they said no, but all right, where'd you go?
• 26:09
  And he said, oh, I went to Boston because we were fixing
• 26:14
  the basketball team at Boston College so that we could win
• 26:19
  games on betting. So the prosecutor thought we
• 26:24
  were pulling his leg because he played basketball at Boston
• 26:28
  College, but ultimately he did not.
• 26:31
  And they used that basketball fixing to prosecute many people
• 26:36
  and so worked out for them the more and more time I was
• 26:42
  spending with Henry and now I had the mafia, I lost them as
• 26:45
  clients because they won't. Yeah, I thought that was
• 26:48
  interesting. In your story too, Robert, is
• 26:51
  that you kind of wanted to be a mafia attorney and that really
• 26:55
  knocked it in the head that you were dealing with Henry who was
• 26:59
  seen as a rat and. There are three kinds of
• 27:02
  clients. You're white collar clients.
• 27:04
  There aren't that many of them. There are people of color who
• 27:08
  are involved in or others who are involved in narcotic
• 27:12
  trafficking. And then there's the Mafia.
• 27:14
  I, by representing Henry, cut out that whole segment.
• 27:17
  Whole mafia segment, yeah. Because they wouldn't hire the
• 27:21
  guy who represented the biggest rat of all times.
• 27:25
  So I said to Henry, maybe you have a story here that I could
• 27:30
  peddle. And I tried peddling it from
• 27:33
  this coast, the East Coast to the West Coast.
• 27:35
  And I met with Warner Brothers and I met with this and this
• 27:39
  kept going on and on. And finally I got an appointment
• 27:42
  after a year and a half with the head of Simon and Schuster, Dick
• 27:46
  Snyder. And I go to the meeting and he's
• 27:50
  not there. But the head editor of Simon and
• 27:53
  Schuster, the biggest book publishing company in the world
• 27:57
  at that time, Michael Korda, was there.
• 28:01
  And I tell Michael what my the story is that I ambition.
• 28:05
  And he says we don't do mafia stories and we're never doing
• 28:10
  this book. And thank you very much for
• 28:13
  coming in. And he and I walk through the
• 28:15
  door and I'm about to leave. And then comes Snyder barging
• 28:18
  through the door and he says to me, oh, quickly tell me what
• 28:20
  happened. And I tell him while we're
• 28:22
  standing in the door about my concept of Henry's story.
• 28:26
  And he says this is the greatest story I ever heard.
• 28:30
  We definitely do in this book. Don't, Michael says.
• 28:35
  I was just saying the same thing and.
• 28:40
  And so goes the story. What a story, though.
• 28:44
  We had to sneak around because Henry was in the witness
• 28:46
  protection program. They didn't want an author
• 28:49
  meeting with him. So I had to pick an author.
• 28:54
  I had to get Henry to like the author.
• 28:57
  We had to set up clandestine meetings to meet the authors and
• 29:04
  Nick Pileggi was the guy we we liked and and he's the one who
• 29:07
  got the job and did a great job and.
• 29:10
  Did a great job. You got to you got to share the
• 29:13
  story about where you being you because you said you went to
• 29:16
  some of these locals when they were filming.
• 29:18
  Good fellows and I I forgot where you said you were.
• 29:20
  They were talking and I I don't forget who was around the table,
• 29:23
  but can you share that? One day while they were shooting
• 29:28
  a segment of the movie, and it's a portion of the movie where
• 29:33
  they are in a diner and they're sitting at the table, De Niro
• 29:42
  and Lyota, Henry and Jimmy. I forgot what his name was in
• 29:47
  the movie again. Jimmy Burke, I think, wasn't.
• 29:50
  It real name but Jimmy Connery Connell something.
• 29:58
  So Henry's smoking in the movie Liotta and he's smoking
• 30:04
  Marlboro's and he's lighting up with matches and I'm sitting at
• 30:08
  the table next to one of the cameras talking to somebody and
• 30:13
  I'm saying, you know, Henry never smoked Marlboro's always
• 30:17
  only Winston's And he used to use a lighter.
• 30:20
  They used to click open all the time and an assistant director
• 30:25
  came by and he said to me, Marty heard what you said and he wants
• 30:29
  quiet on the set. He doesn't want accuracy.
• 30:34
  Marty had told all the actors, not Scorsese, not to speak to
• 30:38
  Henry, but De Niro spoke to him 25 times a day.
• 30:43
  Still, Liotta, they kept calling him what?
• 30:46
  And Henry was crazy because it didn't matter.
• 30:48
  Henry to everybody knew where he was.
• 30:51
  That's just his personality and that's why I got thrown out of
• 30:54
  the witness protection program. But so now they take a break in
• 30:58
  the shoot and when they come back I see that that Leota has
• 31:02
  Winston's and a lighter. So somebody, somebody did care.
• 31:09
  Gorsay. He might have not cared, but he
• 31:11
  cared. Well, I I'm curious too, like
• 31:14
  when you get you start getting into these bigger cases and
• 31:17
  these things that are going on with your family, was the were
• 31:24
  you guys just treated kind of like the normal people in the
• 31:26
  neighborhood or was there a kind of a different vibe?
• 31:30
  You know, we were very Other than the people in New York
• 31:35
  City, we moved out of the city to the suburbs.
• 31:38
  And when my daughter was born in 1994 and from then on, the
• 31:45
  people in our neighborhood really didn't have much
• 31:50
  knowledge of who I was, we were an hour and 20 minutes out of
• 31:56
  the city. So I really kept that part of my
• 32:00
  life somewhat on the down low. If you saw me on TV, you might
• 32:06
  say it. If you saw me on court TV, you
• 32:08
  might say something or 60 minutes or because I was on all
• 32:13
  of those. And but for the most part, we we
• 32:17
  were low key all about family and gardening on the weekends or
• 32:25
  whatever we were doing with it. Well, I know.
• 32:28
  Like when you're an attorney, it's like, you know, even like
• 32:31
  if you're comparing it back to sports, you think you've got
• 32:34
  this, this one case and you're like that's the one that gives
• 32:37
  me the confidence that knows I'm, I'm really good at this.
• 32:39
  This is, this is what I, I I might even be better than a lot
• 32:44
  of these guys. Did you have a case like that
• 32:46
  where you're like, yeah. Every case, every case after you
• 32:51
  won. That's a great answer, Robert.
• 32:57
  So I started off My first big defense case was a the first
• 33:04
  money laundering case. That is where people were
• 33:07
  accused of taking money from illegal operations and cleaning
• 33:13
  it up. It's called money Laundering.
• 33:15
  The 1st ever prosecuted in the United States.
• 33:21
  United States versus Edward Orosco Prada.
• 33:26
  And that was in 1983. And I represented one of the
• 33:34
  five defendants, the only one who was acquitted.
• 33:37
  And from there I was hired by the the quarterback of the New
• 33:44
  York Jets, Kenny O'Brien. He and Mark Gassino, who was a
• 33:49
  defensive end, very well known back.
• 33:51
  Very well known, yes. I got into a fight in the Studio
• 33:54
  54, a very famous nightclub back then, and I represented Kenny
• 34:01
  and the way I won for my client in Orosco Prada, and how I won
• 34:07
  for O'Brien in that case was undermining the prosecutor for
• 34:14
  having not done something appropriate.
• 34:18
  They hid the criminal records background of one of my of their
• 34:22
  witnesses. I uncovered it.
• 34:26
  So I kept ticking off the prosecutors because I was
• 34:32
  winning. But I was winning by showing
• 34:35
  them to be untrustworthy. And if you can't rely upon the
• 34:41
  government, then you have to acquit.
• 34:46
  And that was my my way of proceeding.
• 34:50
  I having been a prosecutor, I knew what they did, and I wanted
• 34:55
  to see whether those things were done appropriately in each case.
• 35:00
  And over the course of the years, you found out that they
• 35:05
  were lazy for the most part, and they relied too much upon their
• 35:09
  agents who weren't that smart in the first place.
• 35:11
  Well, and you also have a situation where a lot of people
• 35:14
  don't go to trial. So you know you think that all
• 35:17
  the time things trials are going on, on and on and on.
• 35:20
  So many people don't go to trial.
• 35:22
  So I think the the anticipation that that's not going to happen
• 35:26
  and it happens means that there's a whole it's like
• 35:29
  jumping in a moving car to catch up on the fact hey we're really
• 35:32
  going to trial and and and that in itself is Robert, you were in
• 35:37
  the world of the guy that went to trial and that you're you're
• 35:40
  playing in a smaller little network there.
• 35:44
  They made it. They made it easy for me because
• 35:46
  once I started representing people of color in narcotic
• 35:52
  cases that were big cases, they offered 30 and 40 year pleas to
• 35:59
  these guys. They they weren't going to take
• 36:00
  that kind of plea. They.
• 36:02
  Were right, right? Why not take the chance, right?
• 36:05
  So I mean, just an example, the first big narcotic case I had of
• 36:12
  that nature, which the guy was charged with a kingpin statute,
• 36:17
  life imprisonment. To be convicted, I kept their
• 36:21
  principal witness on the witness stand for 9 days, 9 days.
• 36:27
  And there had been a wiretap on her phone and she cooperated.
• 36:31
  And I listen to every single hour of a two-month long
• 36:38
  wiretap. That's a lot of time to be
• 36:41
  listening. Most attorneys don't.
• 36:44
  The prosecutor says listen, we're going to use these ten
• 36:47
  recordings or these 20 recordings and most defense
• 36:51
  attorneys just listen to what the prosecutor is offering and
• 36:55
  never go the extra mile. I not only listen to every
• 36:58
  single recording because I want to hear the nuance of what's
• 37:02
  going on, but I hired a black professor who was a professor of
• 37:10
  ethnography, the study of the urban center and the language of
• 37:14
  the urban culture to listen to all those recordings.
• 37:18
  And he helped me immeasurably as to how to cross examine that
• 37:24
  witness. And so, for example, on one of
• 37:27
  the conversations, she's on the phone talking about with a guy
• 37:33
  and he says, where are you? And she says I'm in Queens
• 37:36
  negotiating this narcotic trafficking deal.
• 37:40
  And the guy says great, blah, blah, blah.
• 37:43
  Well, since the phone that was being tapped was in Manhattan,
• 37:46
  she was lying on the phone to this guy because she couldn't
• 37:50
  have been in Queens, NY if we were hearing the conversation.
• 37:54
  And so every instance like that, I pointed out that the agents
• 37:58
  weren't listening. To their own stuff.
• 38:02
  They were hearing, but they weren't listening and therefore
• 38:07
  you couldn't credit what was on those recordings as being
• 38:11
  truthful. Only the agents would say or the
• 38:14
  prosecutor would say, hey listen, they didn't know that
• 38:17
  they were being recorded and therefore what you hear is the
• 38:21
  truth. But it wasn't the truth.
• 38:23
  We knew everything that she was saying were lies to people to
• 38:27
  make herself appear more important.
• 38:30
  She would say, I know my client. She would say I know him and I
• 38:38
  had the black professor get on the witness hand and say to
• 38:41
  black people to know doesn't mean that you have met, it means
• 38:48
  you know of that person and all that worked out for us.
• 38:53
  I mean it was just they did stupid things during the trial.
• 38:57
  They put a witness on theater Nagel.
• 38:59
  I'll never forget him. German guy who was the BMW
• 39:03
  dealer who said he sold my client a car.
• 39:08
  And when they asked him to identify the person who we had
• 39:11
  sold the car to, we looked in the jury towards the jury box
• 39:15
  and then to the at the prosecutor's table and then to
• 39:17
  my table before identifying my client.
• 39:20
  And I said to him, why'd you look at the jury box?
• 39:23
  He said. The prosecutor told me to do it.
• 39:25
  Why'd you look at the prosecutor's table?
• 39:27
  The prosecutor told me to do it. Did you know my client when you
• 39:32
  saw him Was the guy? He said no, but they told me
• 39:35
  you'd be a black guy sitting next to the guy in the suit.
• 39:38
  Wow. So these are what allow you to
• 39:42
  win. Details.
• 39:46
  These details, these things, and the more I kept winning in our
• 39:52
  kind of cases, the more the government was annoyed.
• 39:57
  And did you, I mean, did you feel that?
• 39:59
  I mean, did you, Robert? Has that happened, you know?
• 40:02
  You're in a fraternity really of of attorneys more or less even
• 40:06
  if you're in private practice you kind of all are in the same
• 40:09
  on defense world and then you've got the prosecutor.
• 40:12
  What did you feel that this would this ire was building as
• 40:15
  you continue to get bigger and more successful with these
• 40:18
  cases? Every case.
• 40:20
  Every single case built on it. The first big narcotic case I
• 40:24
  was telling you about. The government subpoenaed me at
• 40:27
  the beginning of the case to find out how much my client paid
• 40:30
  me. Saw that What?
• 40:32
  What is that Rudy Giuliani that was in that?
• 40:36
  Yeah. I I run into Rudy and.
• 40:39
  That was an unusual thing because they have the ability to
• 40:42
  do that in a grand jury, but it's it doesn't happen hardly at
• 40:46
  all, but it was in this case. Right.
• 40:50
  So I knew Rudy for years at that point.
• 40:53
  Man. I run into him in the elevator
• 40:54
  and I say with all the bad guys out there, why me?
• 40:57
  He right judge, right case, right defendant, I said.
• 41:04
  I won't repeat what I said to him.
• 41:08
  We beat the subpoena. I didn't have to give the
• 41:13
  information up. I refuse to be a witness against
• 41:15
  my client, which is what I would have been if I established how
• 41:19
  much he paid me. And he's only reporting 20,000 a
• 41:22
  year on his tax returns. They would say this was
• 41:25
  unexplained wealth against him. So, and this happened
• 41:34
  repeatedly, they kept subpoenaing me and they kept
• 41:37
  making claims that I was unethical because they couldn't
• 41:40
  believe I could be winning unless I was unethical or doing
• 41:45
  something untoward. Sure.
• 41:47
  And and I would say no, I'm not doing anything other than
• 41:51
  proving that you're not doing your job.
• 41:54
  Which would only make them unhappy and and more aggressive
• 41:58
  that that. They don't want you doing what
• 42:00
  you're doing right? Right.
• 42:03
  Colleagues who like to go into court, shake the prosecutors and
• 42:07
  and and how you're doing and go to answer them.
• 42:10
  I did none of that. Right, right.
• 42:13
  There were no Christmas parties or Country Club functions.
• 42:16
  You were hanging out with them, right?
• 42:17
  It was. It was war because to lose meant
• 42:22
  my clients could go away for forever, and and I wasn't
• 42:27
  prepared to have that happen. And so I kept winning.
• 42:31
  And the more I won, the more my reputation spread.
• 42:36
  Having been in prison, we know how the prison Grapevine works.
• 42:41
  As I kept winning my work, my name got circulated everywhere.
• 42:46
  Yeah, I'm positive that you didn't have to do a lot of
• 42:49
  advertising, Robert. I did not.
• 42:53
  I wound up in Grand Rapids, MI and then LA and Greenville, SC.
• 42:59
  But everywhere I went, the government kept harassing me and
• 43:03
  claiming I was doing something wrong and and we had another
• 43:09
  incident where I had to litigate their claims of unethical
• 43:13
  conduct in in the early 1990s. And so I I we won.
• 43:22
  And the Court of Appeals as a higher court in New York said
• 43:26
  he's doing just what he's supposed to do.
• 43:28
  He's being zealous on behalf of fines.
• 43:32
  Nonetheless, it didn't make the government any happier with me.
• 43:36
  And then I said, well, I got this white collar case.
• 43:38
  I'm going to go into Christopher Dragool.
• 43:41
  Yes, let's talk about that. So Chris was a banker in a six
• 43:47
  person office of the Italian national State Bank Banca
• 43:53
  Nationale de La Boro. And they had a six person office
• 43:58
  in Atlanta that could do nothing, had a $2,000,000 limit
• 44:01
  to how much they could borrow. But they were Chris was
• 44:07
  borrowing billions. Now you can't borrow billions in
• 44:12
  America without the Fed knowing about it or the state banking
• 44:16
  people knowing about it because it's all over the wires that
• 44:20
  you're doing it. Sure.
• 44:22
  You can't even deposit $5000 anymore without the government
• 44:26
  knowing about it. And and so that they claim that
• 44:31
  he did this without them knowing about it and then he was
• 44:34
  attempting to defraud them, was extraordinary.
• 44:38
  So in any event, we go to and we beat up Saddam Hussein and then
• 44:44
  Bush comes back in the Department of of Justice and
• 44:48
  they say, hey, this guy Drew ghoul, he did it all by himself.
• 44:53
  Banking Nationale didn't know about it. the US didn't know
• 44:57
  about it. In any event, the intelligence
• 45:04
  sections of our government so disliked the concept that the
• 45:11
  Bush administration was lending Saddam Hussein money that they
• 45:15
  started coming to me and meeting with me Subrosa, to tell me
• 45:19
  information about the Bush administration and who was
• 45:24
  involved in the loans that went through the Atlanta office to
• 45:29
  Saddam. So deep within the CIA, you're
• 45:31
  getting information that, hey, this is what's going on.
• 45:34
  Right. So the deputy director of the
• 45:37
  CIA, the former deputy director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, calls
• 45:42
  me up and he says, listen, you're going about your defense
• 45:46
  all wrong. Meet me because the government
• 45:50
  had dumped 500,000 documents on me to look at these, what they
• 45:55
  call SEPA, classified documents like in the in the Trump case in
• 46:01
  in Florida. And I had to As unethical as the
• 46:08
  government ultimately said I was, I had the same security
• 46:11
  clearance as the President of the United States at that time
• 46:15
  because I was reading his daily morning briefings of the
• 46:19
  classified documents. So I guess I wasn't that ethic
• 46:24
  unethic then? To get that clearance.
• 46:27
  In any event, I digress. And so Inman says to me, come to
• 46:33
  the Saint Regis Ballroom, a big hotel in New York City, and meet
• 46:37
  me in the ballroom tomorrow morning at 10:00.
• 46:41
  I go, there's nobody in the ballroom except a single
• 46:44
  solitary figure sitting in the middle of the ballroom, dust
• 46:48
  coming off through the sun rays behind the curtains.
• 46:53
  And I go and he says to me, here's why you're doing this
• 46:56
  wrong. Here's what you're going to do.
• 46:58
  You're going to write a document that says XY and Z write this
• 47:01
  down exactly as I'm telling you. They'll know that you have a
• 47:06
  back door entry to their information and it will scare
• 47:12
  them. So I did it and wrote it up.
• 47:17
  And as happened in that case, because of the classified
• 47:21
  documents, they sent marshals up from DC who took the document,
• 47:26
  put it in a briefcase, handcuffed the briefcase of
• 47:30
  their wrists, took it back, declassified it, sent the
• 47:33
  original and the declassified version to the judge in Atlanta
• 47:38
  and the government. Crazy.
• 47:40
  So they immediately there were 347 counts in the indictment at
• 47:44
  that point. It's a lot.
• 47:46
  Of counts. Dropped 180 counts overnight,
• 47:51
  Hoping that that would avoid the US being defrauded and so we
• 47:56
  would be unable to present that information in court.
• 48:01
  I subpoenaed the President. Herbert Walker Bush.
• 48:06
  George Herbert Walker Bush, this Secretary of State, Jim Baker,
• 48:11
  the National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, Henry
• 48:14
  Kissinger, among others. And they went berserk.
• 48:20
  Kissinger calls me up. Do you know who you're talking
• 48:23
  to? Do you know who you subpoenaed?
• 48:26
  And they had the former attorney general of the United States
• 48:29
  Griffin Bell call. I represent Bush.
• 48:34
  You can't subpoenaed a pro didn't.
• 48:36
  I said, well, I can and I did. So the 11th Circuit Court of
• 48:42
  Appeals agreed that I could subpoena him.
• 48:46
  And then the administration's changed and Clinton came in and
• 48:51
  Janet Reno came in as AG and she called me up and she said,
• 48:55
  listen, this can't happen. We're going to offer him a six
• 49:01
  month plea. Which he was sentenced, he's.
• 49:04
  I mean, he was life in prison. Right.
• 49:07
  He's going to have a six monthly instead of a life imprisonment.
• 49:12
  The trial is set to start in six months, so he'll have finished
• 49:15
  the sentence before the trial is scheduled to start.
• 49:19
  I said, well, I'll take it to him and he said yes.
• 49:25
  Six months before trial. He took the deal.
• 49:28
  He gets out in September. He's working in a motel on the
• 49:31
  supervisor lease. Later, he's poisoned and died.
• 49:37
  You will get while you were working on his, on his story,
• 49:39
  we. Were working working on spelling
• 49:41
  his story like we had an article appear in Vanity Fair which
• 49:49
  called him the fall guy. We uncovered the fact that that
• 49:55
  Bush, together with the Premier Prime Minister of Italy,
• 50:01
  Andriotti and Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of England, had
• 50:05
  created this loan program, agricultural loan program that
• 50:10
  they put through the Atlanta branch of.
• 50:14
  And then went through to Sodom Hussein.
• 50:16
  But to send the money to him, even Saddam was communicating
• 50:20
  with me, trying to help me 'cause it's.
• 50:22
  Crazy. It's just crazy.
• 50:25
  But I mean, that should have been a movie.
• 50:26
  I mean, my gosh, I mean what you just told there.
• 50:29
  He would have, he would have people meet with me outside the
• 50:32
  UN on before all weekend. Before the weekend I would tell
• 50:38
  them the questions I would have. They would fly back, then they'd
• 50:42
  come back and then they'd give me the information.
• 50:45
  He wanted me to come meet him, but my wife says but and I
• 50:52
  didn't. So in the end, it worked out for
• 50:57
  Chris. Other than being killed by
• 50:59
  someone and devastating to his family, we all have been through
• 51:07
  the experience of how devastating prison can be.
• 51:13
  The government kept him in prison the whole time, from the
• 51:15
  time he was arrested until the end of his sentence, and they
• 51:22
  would never let him out. And when I finally went into the
• 51:26
  case, I I got a guy. I called up a fellow named Ross
• 51:32
  Perot who was had run for president. 20% he got as an
• 51:38
  independent. And. 92.
• 51:42
  Texas billionaire. And I say to him, hey, I have
• 51:45
  this case in Atlanta, they won't let my client out and I'm
• 51:48
  looking for somebody who might put up bail money for him.
• 51:52
  And he said go to court, took my call.
• 51:56
  I was surprised at that. Took my call, Said to me
• 52:00
  whatever amount it is, you just tell the judge, I'll put it up.
• 52:04
  And. When I went to the judge and
• 52:06
  told the prosecutors and the judge, he's the guy, he'll put
• 52:10
  up the bail, all of a sudden the government said Oh no, no, no,
• 52:14
  no. It has nothing to do with the
• 52:15
  amount of money or this. We think the Iraqis will kill
• 52:19
  them. Now I couldn't tell them I was
• 52:21
  in touch with Dom because he was blacklisted by the State
• 52:26
  Department and and US Customs. I couldn't communicate
• 52:30
  theoretically with him, but I was and and so we never got him
• 52:37
  out on bail. Wow.
• 52:39
  Well, before we go into. Because I want to go into how
• 52:42
  your nightmare got started, Robert.
• 52:45
  And and and because it had to have been such a surreal thing
• 52:49
  for you to have been involved in all these things and all of a
• 52:53
  sudden you're looking at at the barrel of the gun look pointed
• 52:56
  at you. Before we do, I just want to
• 52:58
  recognize Nightmare's success podcast is sponsored by the
• 53:00
  White Collar Support Group, the world's first support group
• 53:03
  devoted to people navigating the White Collar's criminal justice
• 53:07
  system. I'm a member of the White Collar
• 53:09
  Support Group, and I can tell you this is a bunch of people
• 53:12
  who help each other through the criminal justice journey for
• 53:15
  free. Whether you're just starting
• 53:17
  your journey or you made it through the other side, this is
• 53:20
  a great space for you. You can join us on Zoom Monday
• 53:23
  7:00 PM Eastern Time, 4:00 PM Pacific.
• 53:25
  For information, go to prisoners.org.
• 53:28
  That's prisoners.org. Start here.
• 53:31
  So, Robert, I know. The head of that organization,
• 53:35
  Jeff Grant, is a fabulous guy. He is.
• 53:40
  And I hired Jeff out of law school.
• 53:44
  Which I did not know until he told me that when we had
• 53:46
  communicated. So he's really a a terrific
• 53:52
  young man. He's not a young or a young man
• 53:55
  then, but I still look at him that way and has done so much
• 54:01
  for so many in this field and the organization is so
• 54:05
  worthwhile for so many. It's an outlet for them to be
• 54:10
  able to communicate with others who have been through the
• 54:13
  experience. It's it's an opportunity to not
• 54:18
  only share, but to hear of other people's experiences that help
• 54:24
  you get through what went on. I totally agree.
• 54:29
  And I I think sometimes Robert the point that you just made
• 54:32
  just hearing that other people are going through what you're
• 54:35
  going through can you know save you from whatever you're
• 54:39
  thinking you're going to do. You're all of a sudden realize
• 54:42
  you're not alone and and you can communicate and and be heard by
• 54:46
  other people that have experienced the same things.
• 54:48
  It's a big deal. It's a big deal and and and Jeff
• 54:52
  has a has a has an incredible story.
• 54:55
  I forget what episode he is. But for those who listen and
• 54:59
  haven't heard that one, that's a great episode with Jeff Grant.
• 55:02
  So let's go in, Robert to you're having this incredible journey
• 55:07
  that you've been on as a criminal defense attorney with
• 55:10
  these clients and these people that you get in contact with and
• 55:13
  and you're experiencing the world as it is, as you want it
• 55:18
  to be. You know, thinking that being at
• 55:22
  the top of your profession is a pretty big deal in this world.
• 55:26
  And then you have this guy from Guyana and he's A and the and
• 55:36
  the other thing that's interesting about him because I
• 55:38
  went back and looked at he he had a lot of different things
• 55:39
  going on. I mean he he was a an
• 55:42
  entrepreneur. He was cleaning up the streets
• 55:44
  and he was a drug kingpin and there was all kinds of things
• 55:47
  rung into all that. How did you ever actually get to
• 55:51
  him? What in that world?
• 55:53
  What was? How did?
• 55:54
  What was the connection? So I had represented a lot of
• 56:01
  high profile narcotic traffickers and as a result one
• 56:08
  of them had suggested I go see him at the prison.
• 56:14
  And and part of the discussing process of what happens in our
• 56:20
  system is that if the government can, they will keep you in
• 56:27
  prison pretrial. They do it for any number of
• 56:31
  reasons. They do it to isolate you.
• 56:34
  They do it to make you want to cooperate with them.
• 56:41
  Very effective. Very effective.
• 56:43
  And the we have what we call the federal sentencing guidelines,
• 56:49
  which is a sentencing process which basically tells every
• 56:54
  judge, listen, if a guy's convicted of this or that, you
• 56:58
  look at this grid and that's what his sentence will be like.
• 57:03
  And so when you're arrested and you're thrown into prison for
• 57:06
  the first time in your life, you come in contact with all the
• 57:10
  people who are there already and they say, hey, don't bother to
• 57:14
  get an attorney because you're going to lose 98% of the time
• 57:17
  and you're facing this amount of time.
• 57:20
  So you've got two choices, plead guilty early or cooperate.
• 57:27
  In any event, in that world, my clients recommended that I go
• 57:35
  see this guy and you do what we call a beauty contest.
• 57:41
  And lawyers go in to see the client in in prison and they say
• 57:45
  I can be the best person for you because I can do.
• 57:51
  XI didn't really like doing that, and I didn't really have
• 57:54
  to do it because I had a sufficient reputation, whatever
• 57:58
  it was, to go in and say I represent Fat Cat Nichols and
• 58:05
  Kenneth Supreme McGriff and Tommy Montana Micken.
• 58:09
  Guys are there in songs. Guys are in songs and so we he
• 58:17
  hired me and and the United States had kidnapped him and
• 58:24
  brought him to the United States, which for me is always a
• 58:26
  bad thing when we go around kidnapping or doing rendition on
• 58:30
  people. And I thought I could help him
• 58:33
  and I thought maybe in the interest of justice they would
• 58:37
  say we don't accept that, but actually United States does
• 58:42
  accept that. It's so everything in the
• 58:45
  interest of the end result for the government, not necessarily
• 58:50
  justice for all any event. So I start to represent him and
• 58:56
  I hired 17 investigators all over the country to help me
• 59:03
  gather information about witnesses.
• 59:06
  He had what we always loved as a defense attorney.
• 59:10
  He had money and therefore he had the ability to defend
• 59:14
  himself, which is not easy against the government.
• 59:18
  They used unlimited sources of money and we are limited to what
• 59:24
  our client can afford, if anything.
• 59:29
  So I was doing what I thought appropriate for him.
• 59:32
  I hired 5 attorneys to assist me on various other aspects of the
• 59:37
  trial, including the illegal kidnapping.
• 59:42
  I went through all that and. They make a lot about the press
• 59:48
  conference that was in Guyana and that that I thought that was
• 59:53
  interesting, 'cause you had gone over there.
• 59:56
  Go ahead. And they they had that that when
• 1:00:00
  you looked all this up that they make a a really big deal about
• 1:00:03
  that as as you know a significant significant event.
• 1:00:08
  So Guyana is a third world country, a really violent
• 1:00:13
  country. Where at that time and for
• 1:00:16
  decades before, the black population and the Indian
• 1:00:21
  population did not get along at all.
• 1:00:25
  They the the blacks often killed many, many Indians and the
• 1:00:32
  government was split up. The head of a government was
• 1:00:35
  Indian, the military and the police were black and never the
• 1:00:39
  twain shall meet. My client had been a hero in
• 1:00:43
  Guyana because he had rid the country of the worst of the
• 1:00:49
  black gangs nonetheless, and he was very friendly with the
• 1:00:55
  president of the country. So when I began to represent
• 1:00:59
  him, the United States State Department wanted his help.
• 1:01:05
  They wanted him to convince the President of Guyana to allow the
• 1:01:10
  United States Navy to dock a ship off of Guyana and to be
• 1:01:14
  able to spy on Venezuela and Hugo Chavez.
• 1:01:18
  Interesting. But I said, fine, he'll do it,
• 1:01:24
  Dismiss the charges, agree that the kidnapping was illegal and
• 1:01:30
  we'll send him back and it'll be a source for you, The prosecutor
• 1:01:34
  said. No, we want him to plead guilty
• 1:01:36
  and cooperate in drug cases. I said, well, because on the
• 1:01:39
  witness stand for you, he can't be also helping you as a source.
• 1:01:44
  Down in Guyana, the deal fell through.
• 1:01:49
  I'm working the case. We're getting ready for trial,
• 1:01:52
  he tells me. Listen, there are recordings of
• 1:01:55
  some people that you want to call as witnesses against me
• 1:01:58
  that I made in Guyana. I'll get you the tapes and maybe
• 1:02:03
  you can introduce them. A trial, I say.
• 1:02:06
  OK, gets me the tapes. I listen to the tapes.
• 1:02:08
  I say these are really good. I tell the government and the
• 1:02:13
  judge, I want to introduce these tapes come trial time and they
• 1:02:18
  and the government says, well, we want to see the equipment
• 1:02:21
  that he used to to record these. I say why?
• 1:02:26
  They say because we have a right to do it.
• 1:02:29
  The judge says they do. I'm directing you to get it.
• 1:02:33
  I call the people I know in Guyana and I tell them to send
• 1:02:38
  it up. In the meantime I'm going down
• 1:02:40
  to Guyana, terrible place to visit.
• 1:02:44
  I had bodyguards with no weapons going around with me and and
• 1:02:50
  thinking that I could be maybe harmed at any point.
• 1:02:57
  He's such a big figure And Guyana, my client Roger Khan
• 1:03:02
  that the press is chasing me from pillar of the post.
• 1:03:06
  And I say to all them listen, I'll meet you in the lobby in my
• 1:03:11
  hotel at one time and I'll tell you why I'm here and what we're
• 1:03:16
  doing and you can ask any questions you want and I do.
• 1:03:20
  I'm meeting him in the lobby. the US ambassador was actually
• 1:03:23
  sitting on the other side of the room having lunch while I was
• 1:03:26
  having this press conference and I went over.
• 1:03:30
  I introduced myself to him and then I went back.
• 1:03:33
  I had the so-called press conference.
• 1:03:35
  I say we're looking for information about any of these
• 1:03:38
  people, so if anybody's got any, please contact us.
• 1:03:44
  I get back to the US, the US. The prosecutors ask that the
• 1:03:49
  judge throw me off the case and sanction me for having
• 1:03:56
  essentially threatened their witnesses by the press
• 1:03:59
  conference. I say, well listen, we haven't
• 1:04:02
  even set a trial dates, maybe a year off.
• 1:04:06
  You're claiming I'm going to be somehow harming the jury pool,
• 1:04:12
  which hasn't been selected yet on a press conference in a
• 1:04:17
  country in another continent. Right.
• 1:04:20
  That was reported by of our newspapers and nobody would have
• 1:04:24
  heard about it. That's what I thought was
• 1:04:26
  interesting. None the less, the judge agreed
• 1:04:28
  with them and said I'm not going to sanction you, but don't do it
• 1:04:35
  again. And I say OK, and but the way it
• 1:04:40
  was written up in the newspapers, I look like I was a
• 1:04:43
  bad guy, Fabian. So we move forward and the case
• 1:04:53
  is supposed to take off and and go to trial in March of 2008.
• 1:04:59
  The government wants a delay. The judge wants a delay.
• 1:05:03
  I say no, he's in prison. They delay the case for six
• 1:05:08
  months. About a month later, a person
• 1:05:13
  who my client had once asked me to meet with, who had been an
• 1:05:17
  informant of his and Guyana, contacts me and says listen, I
• 1:05:21
  can help you. Can I come meet with you?
• 1:05:25
  I say sure. He comes to the office, he meets
• 1:05:28
  with myself and my staff and he says I want to help you because
• 1:05:33
  I'm Guyanese. You can't approach the people in
• 1:05:36
  the Guyanese community here in Queens, NY, but I can.
• 1:05:40
  I know them all. We're a small community and they
• 1:05:43
  are. It's really a very small
• 1:05:45
  country. Everybody knows everybody.
• 1:05:47
  If you've been to the Caribbean, you, you know how people are.
• 1:05:51
  Everybody's my cousin. And so I say, OK, but I know
• 1:05:59
  that most people who want to help, particularly in federal
• 1:06:04
  criminal cases, are afraid to help.
• 1:06:08
  And so because they're afraid to help, they're afraid they get
• 1:06:11
  they'll get in trouble. Also, I say I got to flatter
• 1:06:15
  this guy like I do every witness, how important he is to
• 1:06:19
  me. I say you'll make a great
• 1:06:21
  witness at the trial. You'll be this.
• 1:06:24
  We need you. We need you.
• 1:06:26
  And I knew I could never use him as a witness.
• 1:06:30
  First of all, he had told me that he was in the country
• 1:06:33
  illegally. If he took the witness stand,
• 1:06:35
  the marshals are going to grab him, throw him in the in the
• 1:06:38
  prison cell and deport him. But I tell him you're going to
• 1:06:42
  be a great witness. Prosecutors and defense lawyers
• 1:06:47
  constantly lie to people in an effort to get them the help.
• 1:06:51
  Right, to get what they need. Right.
• 1:06:53
  In the meantime, I didn't know he was scripted by the
• 1:06:56
  government to bring up violence. And he'd say to me things like
• 1:07:01
  everybody loves their mother. All right, yes, I agree.
• 1:07:07
  And he says so. One of the witnesses, mothers,
• 1:07:11
  is living here in Queens. Now, I said he can't kill this
• 1:07:15
  guy's mother. I mean, this is not Guyana.
• 1:07:19
  And but I didn't say to him, you can't kill everybody, anybody
• 1:07:23
  else's mother. I just said you can't kill his
• 1:07:25
  mother. So the government ultimately
• 1:07:28
  used that against me to say you only mention that guy's mother.
• 1:07:32
  I said why would I mention anybody else's?
• 1:07:35
  He didn't bring it up, but nonetheless so they kept
• 1:07:41
  bringing up violence and and I just ignored it Or I would say
• 1:07:47
  damn, I understand. I understand everybody who comes
• 1:07:50
  in your office, even white collar people say you I'd love
• 1:07:54
  to kill that agent. I'd like to kill that
• 1:07:56
  prosecutor. I'd like to kill that judge for
• 1:07:58
  what he just did. They don't mean it.
• 1:08:01
  Just a figure of speech. And so it rolls off me like
• 1:08:06
  water off of a duck's back. When the violence is not working
• 1:08:11
  with me then I'm not authorizing violence.
• 1:08:13
  And I sent him an e-mail saying don't do anything untoward out
• 1:08:17
  there. The government will take it the
• 1:08:20
  wrong way. They then have him start to come
• 1:08:23
  to me and and suggest bribery of witnesses.
• 1:08:27
  And I say to him, I don't really care what you tell these people,
• 1:08:31
  just get them to my office. He says, well, give me $5000 and
• 1:08:35
  I'll get an affidavit. I say to him, an affidavit is
• 1:08:39
  not admissible. Bring the person here.
• 1:08:45
  Can I tell them they're going to get 5000?
• 1:08:47
  Yeah, tell them anything you want.
• 1:08:51
  So he finally agrees to bring somebody in.
• 1:08:56
  I tell my staff, all right, prepare a subpoena, prepare a
• 1:09:01
  $40 check made out to the witness because that's all the
• 1:09:05
  federal procedure allows, $40 checks, witness fee, and we'll
• 1:09:11
  meet with the person. And instead of that witness
• 1:09:14
  showing up, 9 agents showed up and they arrested me.
• 1:09:19
  So that was the beginning of a horrific 12 years.
• 1:09:27
  And how long did that, how long did the process last, Robert,
• 1:09:31
  from that moment until you got to the actual trial?
• 1:09:35
  You know, I was arrested September 10, 2008.
• 1:09:41
  I wanted a speedy trial because, one, I didn't think I had done
• 1:09:45
  anything. All my friends kept telling me
• 1:09:50
  don't represent yourself. And I was I think I should.
• 1:09:54
  Nobody wins more than me. Why would I have somebody else?
• 1:09:57
  So I picked another person who I was friendly with, who was
• 1:10:00
  considered one of the top lawyers in New York, maybe in
• 1:10:03
  the country. For whatever reason.
• 1:10:07
  He did a terrible job and I've regretted that decision ever
• 1:10:12
  since. The impact of my arrest on my
• 1:10:16
  family, then and since then has been the most significant aspect
• 1:10:23
  of my life. To have my 7 year old son be
• 1:10:29
  abused by his classmates who don't know any better except
• 1:10:33
  what they hear from their parents.
• 1:10:34
  If bothers him going to prison, he'll never come home again,
• 1:10:39
  they would say to him. My daughter, who was 15 at the
• 1:10:43
  time, going through similar type things, it was on every news
• 1:10:49
  station in in New York and nationally and IRS.
• 1:10:56
  That, more than anything else, breaks your heart, what you do
• 1:10:58
  to your family. Well, you got, I mean, the other
• 1:11:03
  thing was, Robert, I mean, you got a big sentence.
• 1:11:05
  I mean, it wasn't like that. They sent you away for three to
• 1:11:08
  five years. They gave you 14 years and I.
• 1:11:11
  Mean. I've been around the business a
• 1:11:13
  long time. I've never seen a lawyer get
• 1:11:15
  sentenced in more than five years in prison unless he was an
• 1:11:18
  active member of a drug cartel at trial.
• 1:11:21
  That's how they portrayed me, though.
• 1:11:23
  They would say they put up a, a, a, a organizational chart.
• 1:11:27
  That's what photos of everybody in my clients drug organization.
• 1:11:32
  And there was my young associate who was also indicted, 20 years
• 1:11:37
  old, and myself at the top of the chart.
• 1:11:41
  We couldn't believe it, but here it was.
• 1:11:44
  We were getting hit with the same things that my clients got
• 1:11:47
  hit with it. Didn't seem really strange
• 1:11:50
  though, coming, you know, living that world for for since you
• 1:11:54
  were in your 20s, and then all of a sudden everything's pointed
• 1:11:56
  back at you. I blame Steve Jobs for what
• 1:11:59
  happened to me. The iPhone had just come out a
• 1:12:04
  month before my trial, and my bought a new iPhone, and he
• 1:12:09
  spent the entire time in trial trying to figure out how to work
• 1:12:20
  the new iPhone, attention to what was going on in the
• 1:12:23
  courtroom. And I would say to him, Jerry,
• 1:12:26
  what are you doing? He would say, well, it's got
• 1:12:28
  this feature too. I would say pay attention and
• 1:12:31
  object. Yeah, this is a big deal.
• 1:12:35
  We had a judge who had once tried to prosecute my attorney
• 1:12:41
  who never liked me. We had not been friendly when he
• 1:12:45
  was a prosecutor, nor when he was a judge.
• 1:12:49
  We couldn't get rid of him. You know, although you see all
• 1:12:51
  the time how they get rid of judges.
• 1:12:54
  You can't get rid of a judge, basically, unless they do
• 1:12:57
  something really terrible. Although he had once sought to
• 1:13:01
  prosecute my attorney and didn't like me, that wasn't enough to
• 1:13:05
  get him off the case, and he did everything he could to harm me
• 1:13:10
  during the trial. I I got back to the tape
• 1:13:16
  recordings a little while ago and, you know, the government
• 1:13:20
  charged me not only with attempted witness tampering but
• 1:13:23
  with possession of the recording equipment that the federal judge
• 1:13:27
  had directed me to. Get.
• 1:13:29
  They found it in my office on the day they arrested me.
• 1:13:33
  Who could believe I'd be prosecuted for following the
• 1:13:35
  direction of a judge at the prosecutor's request?
• 1:13:40
  Nonetheless, they brought in the manufacturer of the equipment
• 1:13:44
  from England, and they they had five of the seven witnesses of
• 1:13:48
  my trial testify about the wiretap equipment.
• 1:13:53
  The jury. The trial took six days.
• 1:13:56
  The jury deliberated 7 days and then they found both of us
• 1:13:59
  guilty of everything it was. What?
• 1:14:03
  What was going through your mind?
• 1:14:04
  I mean, I I can't imagine like going through all that six days,
• 1:14:08
  seven days they come back and then they find you guilt of
• 1:14:11
  every what with you, your wife, your kids, what, what, what was
• 1:14:14
  going on in your world? You know, as an experienced
• 1:14:17
  attorney, a jury that deliberates.
• 1:14:21
  Usually you don't go and you don't keep a jury as long as
• 1:14:28
  this judge kept that jury. Because after three days of
• 1:14:33
  being deadlocked on a six day trial, you could say we can
• 1:14:37
  repeat the six day trial pretty quick in six days.
• 1:14:42
  So but he kept them and kept them and kept them.
• 1:14:46
  We kept telling him to get to declare a mistrial and he
• 1:14:49
  wouldn't do it and ultimately he wore the jury down.
• 1:14:54
  He allowed the government to make arguments to the jury that
• 1:14:57
  were outrageous. They they would say he's a he
• 1:15:01
  hangs with killers, he's a friendly with killers, he's part
• 1:15:06
  of them. And they would use examples like
• 1:15:09
  one of the my client's friends in in Guyana had the e-mail
• 1:15:20
  silentassassin@yahoo.com and they argued to the jury, look
• 1:15:26
  who he hangs with. People who call themselves
• 1:15:28
  silent assassins. I can't believe us.
• 1:15:33
  I didn't do very well on the witness stand because I was me
• 1:15:37
  and maybe like Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
• 1:15:42
  That's one of my favorite shows. I have a either be me and as I
• 1:15:47
  see him this season, preparing to go to trial.
• 1:15:51
  For the water bottle. That was probably how I was on
• 1:15:56
  the witness stand and and in the end we were convicted.
• 1:16:04
  I say, well, we'll probably give me three years, four years,
• 1:16:08
  that'll be terrible. And then when 65 attorneys from
• 1:16:15
  around the country wrote letters to the sentencing judge saying,
• 1:16:20
  listen, what he did is what you as prosecutors.
• 1:16:23
  And we as prosecutors and we as defense attorneys say every day
• 1:16:28
  he didn't say anything unusual. Don't punish him for doing that.
• 1:16:35
  And he responded. I've read those letters and I am
• 1:16:39
  going to show them something today.
• 1:16:42
  And so we knew something terrible might follow.
• 1:16:46
  And it did. He sentenced me to 14 years in
• 1:16:48
  prison. Which you know when you go to 14
• 1:16:53
  years in prison that that knocks you out of the camp level
• 1:16:55
  because I think you have to have ten years or less, right?
• 1:16:57
  Right. He gave me more time than he
• 1:16:59
  gave my client the drug dealer. So you couldn't go to a camp.
• 1:17:10
  And although I know most of the people who appear on your show
• 1:17:13
  have gone to a camp and they talk about how difficult that
• 1:17:16
  was, it's nothing like going to a different kind of a prison.
• 1:17:21
  And they arranged, supposedly for my safety to send me to Big
• 1:17:28
  Springs, Texas, 4 hours southwest of Dallas, who were
• 1:17:35
  prison where they claimed nobody would know who I was.
• 1:17:38
  When I got there. Everybody knew who I was, in
• 1:17:42
  part because the staff told everybody who I was, in part
• 1:17:47
  because of the two clients I had in federal prison at the time.
• 1:17:52
  One was there unbeknownst to me and they had asked him was he OK
• 1:17:58
  with my being on the same facility as him and and so.
• 1:18:05
  I can imagine Robert that you were probably you know respect
• 1:18:09
  is something in prison that it's it's one of those common threads
• 1:18:13
  that runs through and and the people that you had represented
• 1:18:16
  and how vigorously and aggressively you represented
• 1:18:19
  these people. Like I said a lot of them are in
• 1:18:21
  rap songs. I mean the the people that
• 1:18:23
  you've represented are very well known and a lot of the the, the,
• 1:18:29
  the culture that that you know through the 90s or 2000s.
• 1:18:34
  I'm assuming that when you walk through there that you were
• 1:18:37
  someone that was respected. I was, and coincidentally,
• 1:18:45
  although I have heard you tell the story about being on a show
• 1:18:50
  on TV that all the people in the.
• 1:18:52
  That was bad. That was bad.
• 1:18:55
  The third day I was in prison, there was an interview.
• 1:18:59
  It was a show about one of my clients, Green McGriff, and I'm
• 1:19:05
  prominently featured in the story.
• 1:19:07
  And I said, well, anybody who didn't know who I was, they.
• 1:19:11
  Know now? And within the next few weeks I
• 1:19:18
  got approached by the I'll get back to your respect part.
• 1:19:22
  I get approached by a head of the, the one of the Mexican
• 1:19:25
  gangs, and he says to me, your client Tommy is here and he's
• 1:19:30
  not happy. And I thought that that was
• 1:19:32
  untrue and I thought he was going to be trying to put the
• 1:19:35
  arm or extort me for money. But I get on the phone to my
• 1:19:41
  attorneys and I say, hey, all this nonsense about my coming
• 1:19:44
  here, nobody would know who I was.
• 1:19:47
  They had my client sign a waivers to be on the same
• 1:19:50
  facility as me. And the next day I I hear over
• 1:19:53
  the loudspeaker my name come to the lieutenant's office.
• 1:19:56
  And when you go to the lieutenant's office in prison,
• 1:20:00
  nothing good can. Never good, right?
• 1:20:03
  So I get there and they say we think that you're in danger.
• 1:20:07
  Then they throw me into solitary confinement for two months and
• 1:20:12
  then they tell me they're going to ship me back east.
• 1:20:15
  And I got to they ship me to Oklahoma City and there I.
• 1:20:20
  That's never good either. No there at Oklahoma City, I was
• 1:20:23
  thrown in the in solitary confinement again because I was
• 1:20:28
  an SIS. It's a special category for
• 1:20:34
  they're. The investigators inside the
• 1:20:36
  PRISM, right, The SIS. And that's never good either.
• 1:20:41
  Right. So ACIMI was a CIM essential
• 1:20:45
  monitoring. And so I get in the shoe there
• 1:20:51
  and then I'm told you're not going home.
• 1:20:54
  You're going further W to South Arizona and there to get to the
• 1:21:02
  part of the story you were mentioning before.
• 1:21:06
  I get off the bus and the white boys approach me and say you're
• 1:21:12
  sitting with us in the dining hall Because in prison, not
• 1:21:16
  camps, but in prison, you find out that you either sit with
• 1:21:21
  people you are permitted to sit with or you don't sit at all.
• 1:21:27
  You know, in those days, pedophiles, sex offenders, were
• 1:21:31
  not permitted to sit with anybody but other pedophiles or
• 1:21:36
  sex offenders or live with other ones, and they couldn't watch
• 1:21:39
  TV. And then, and that's true into
• 1:21:42
  in in higher prisons, that each group has their own TV and
• 1:21:48
  nobody else can go in there. And if it's in a room, there's
• 1:21:51
  only so many seats and so many people who are permitted to go
• 1:21:55
  in there and so often seniority based.
• 1:21:58
  But whatever. I get to Stafford and I had
• 1:22:03
  developed along the way from Oklahoma City to Stafford, a
• 1:22:07
  relationship with a number of the black inmates who all knew
• 1:22:10
  me. They were from the East Coast,
• 1:22:14
  that knew of me and knew of my clients.
• 1:22:16
  And when I got to Stafford and the white boys said you have to
• 1:22:20
  sit with us, I went to them and said I don't want to sit with
• 1:22:25
  the white boys. That's not way of being.
• 1:22:30
  And so they went to the head of the blacks on the in the prison
• 1:22:36
  and he said you can sit with us. And so in the dining hall, there
• 1:22:40
  was a sea of black on one part of the dining hall and one white
• 1:22:44
  white face. That it.
• 1:22:45
  Was Robert. But that's respect.
• 1:22:50
  That respect got me through prison, everybody, and and I
• 1:22:54
  didn't get bothered too much for legal advice, but I I was how?
• 1:22:59
  Did how did you do your time Robert Like that's a lot of time
• 1:23:02
  what what was your strategies in prison to get through your time.
• 1:23:05
  It seemed like 500 years to me. I bet it did.
• 1:23:08
  The As you know, every day in prison is like a week or a
• 1:23:12
  month, no matter whether you're at a camp or otherwise.
• 1:23:18
  But I walked a lot. I read over 3500 books during
• 1:23:23
  that time. I kept to myself and keeping to
• 1:23:29
  yourself is not always easy. I worked out to the extent that
• 1:23:34
  I was permitted to work out and I was basically allowed to use
• 1:23:39
  weights or other exercise equipment.
• 1:23:42
  A lot of people are not and and you not only have to be able to
• 1:23:48
  get permission to use that equipment, but a time slot that
• 1:23:52
  you could use it. So my time slot actually when I
• 1:23:56
  was in Texas was 6:00 in the morning when the prison first
• 1:24:01
  opened for 30 minutes. It was changed at Safford and
• 1:24:08
  Safford. You can get time midday because
• 1:24:11
  it was 109° every day. Nobody was out by working out.
• 1:24:18
  Well, the other thing I I, I was really impressed with, with your
• 1:24:22
  story and and you know, having the weight of that and the time
• 1:24:28
  of that, your family stuck together.
• 1:24:30
  And that's So first of all, it's unusual, 'cause, I mean, you and
• 1:24:36
  I both know, Robert, we were with a lot of people that that
• 1:24:39
  didn't happen and and they went through even darker periods
• 1:24:42
  because their family didn't. I think that's really incredible
• 1:24:46
  that your family did stay. There are so few people who
• 1:24:49
  maintain the their relationships with their family and the Bureau
• 1:24:53
  of Prisons. Doesn't make it easy.
• 1:24:56
  Prisons make it very difficult. Yes, Continue a relationship.
• 1:25:00
  You think they want you to communicate.
• 1:25:02
  Well, they say they do have a role in the, in the literature
• 1:25:05
  that you read as far as actually getting that happening and and
• 1:25:10
  visits and all the things that you want to keep that
• 1:25:13
  communication going. Then we'll give you so many
• 1:25:14
  minutes to talk a day on the all those different things.
• 1:25:17
  You know, you wonder, why are these rules here like this?
• 1:25:19
  Every everything my clients had complained about and I said,
• 1:25:24
  yeah, you're making too much of this.
• 1:25:26
  Everything they said was true. You say 300 minutes a month, 10
• 1:25:30
  minutes a day. That's 10 minutes a day.
• 1:25:32
  To be able to speak to your family, your children, the wife,
• 1:25:37
  your parents, your friends. Yeah, and why limit that?
• 1:25:42
  Not enough time and and and for those who can't afford the cost
• 1:25:47
  of emails. And every e-mail costs money.
• 1:25:50
  Yeah, it's like $0.05 a minute. I think on core links you got to
• 1:25:53
  type pretty quick. I know it's it's terrible what
• 1:25:58
  they do to try to terminate the relationship or not care if the
• 1:26:02
  relationship is terminated. ABBA, my wife Evelyn and my
• 1:26:07
  children. There aren't words to describe
• 1:26:14
  what they did for me and to themselves.
• 1:26:18
  They got on a plane when I was in Texas and flew to Houston and
• 1:26:22
  from Houston flew over to Midland, TX and then took a a a
• 1:26:29
  rental car from there over to the prison in a terrible little
• 1:26:34
  town. It looked like this place where
• 1:26:36
  cycle was shot. And then they did the same in
• 1:26:41
  Stafford to fly into Phoenix, AZ and then travel 3 1/2 hours by
• 1:26:47
  car down to the prison through the mountains, through
• 1:26:51
  treacherous roads. It's incredible.
• 1:26:54
  And then the visitor. And then they did the same in
• 1:26:56
  Allenwood, PA, and then the Danbury, CT and and not only is
• 1:27:02
  that awful, but until you've seen your family have to go
• 1:27:06
  through a visiting line until it may be different in the camps,
• 1:27:11
  but in I know it's different in the camps but in the a real
• 1:27:16
  prison they are told what kind of clothes they can wear if they
• 1:27:21
  don't wear the right kind of clothes until you can't go in.
• 1:27:24
  Yeah, they still have that in the camp.
• 1:27:26
  They, they, I many people got turned away because somebody was
• 1:27:30
  at the desk that day and just didn't like what they were
• 1:27:33
  wearing and. That's always the thing that
• 1:27:35
  happened, I mean and and they'll pick on different races too and
• 1:27:40
  they shouldn't. Or if they think that you get a
• 1:27:42
  lot of visits. What they would do with my wife
• 1:27:45
  was just say he's out of points. After she'd driven 4 1/2 hours.
• 1:27:50
  I wasn't out of points, but there, there's absolutely
• 1:27:52
  nothing you can do about it. There's nothing you can do.
• 1:27:54
  And then if they want to say this, you can only be an hour
• 1:27:57
  because we got a lot of people waiting.
• 1:27:59
  Thing to. Do about that also.
• 1:28:01
  So depending on the guard who said checking them in, who wants
• 1:28:06
  to fool around or wants to be a a terrible person for no reason,
• 1:28:13
  they have to wait in the in the lobby or when they finally get
• 1:28:17
  in, it's it's they they tell you you can't let your kids sit on
• 1:28:22
  your lap and I say 7 years old, no, you can get one kiss, one
• 1:28:28
  hug, that's it. And and then then you say how do
• 1:28:33
  you explain it to those seven-year olds?
• 1:28:35
  How do you explain that to your, to your daughter, to anybody
• 1:28:38
  else, that you're not allowed to show affection to them?
• 1:28:43
  Yeah. No, it's it's it's almost
• 1:28:45
  impossible to make that explanation at those ages.
• 1:28:48
  Well, let's talk about this because you go through all this.
• 1:28:52
  You survived this, Robert. You survived this whole journey
• 1:28:55
  of all these locations you're in.
• 1:28:57
  Your family goes through this. You, you, you, you get your
• 1:29:02
  routine in prison, but you're getting out.
• 1:29:06
  I can't imagine as you're getting close to the door.
• 1:29:08
  What are you thinking as you get close to getting out?
• 1:29:13
  Well, I still had two years ago when the First Step Act was
• 1:29:17
  passed, and that had a provision in it for people over 70, and I
• 1:29:22
  was over 70. But I had been turned down by
• 1:29:26
  the Bureau of Prisons to go to camps, even though I was
• 1:29:29
  eligible after my first year. So I had no anticipation that I
• 1:29:36
  would be successful putting in a request to do that.
• 1:29:40
  I I got a Jewish organization Aleph involved in in pursuing my
• 1:29:49
  trying to get this relief to go to home confinement.
• 1:29:53
  And my case manager, the guy who overseas you and a bunch of
• 1:30:00
  other people there, said to me, I don't even know how this works
• 1:30:04
  and I say I'll help you get through the paperwork.
• 1:30:07
  And so I help him get through the paperwork and we put it in
• 1:30:11
  and he says, I don't know what happens from here, but something
• 1:30:14
  may happen, or maybe not. We'll put in a date N5.
• 1:30:18
  I say, OK, I have no idea what's happening or not happening for a
• 1:30:26
  couple months. And on November 4, I'm in the
• 1:30:34
  dining hall and somebody approaches me and says the
• 1:30:39
  warden wants to speak to you. And I walk over to her and she
• 1:30:43
  says, congratulations, you're the first person who's going
• 1:30:47
  home on this program, they say I'm glad to hear that because I
• 1:30:52
  know nothing about it. But in prison, in the federal
• 1:31:01
  system, when you're going someplace 1 institution to
• 1:31:06
  another or going home, they shut your phones off the day before
• 1:31:11
  and your emails. So I had no way of telling my
• 1:31:15
  wife that I was coming home. That is crazy.
• 1:31:20
  I I still identify with that too, Robert, because they kept
• 1:31:22
  mine off 5 days before I got because it was during
• 1:31:25
  Thanksgiving and there and and so it was a Wednesday and I
• 1:31:28
  didn't get out until Monday and so it was crazy that they do
• 1:31:31
  that and I should have gotten out on Friday but then because
• 1:31:36
  you know it's the holidays, nobody looking.
• 1:31:38
  But that is such a weird feeling, isn't it?
• 1:31:40
  That you you can't. You're cut off from the world.
• 1:31:43
  The world. And so I go to what they call
• 1:31:48
  R&D receiving discharge to say to them, am I going home
• 1:31:54
  tomorrow and they say we can't tell you.
• 1:31:58
  Right. You don't.
• 1:31:59
  You can't know. Not, they say.
• 1:32:02
  We can't tell you. An inmate comes up to me and
• 1:32:05
  says, listen, what time you leaving?
• 1:32:08
  Because I'm I've been assigned to yourself so I know I'm
• 1:32:12
  leaving at that point. But how did Al convey this to my
• 1:32:16
  wife now? I had told her a couple of days
• 1:32:18
  before then. I don't know if I'm getting out
• 1:32:21
  on the 5th, but my suggestion is come drive to the prison that
• 1:32:27
  morning. Maybe it'll happen and maybe it
• 1:32:29
  won't. No, that's crazy.
• 1:32:32
  But they're not telling me anything.
• 1:32:35
  And and but that was the date that that we had picked two
• 1:32:39
  months ago. So I got out that morning.
• 1:32:45
  I looked across. I saw her car.
• 1:32:48
  Wow. And raced over, got in the car
• 1:32:52
  and and. Left.
• 1:32:53
  Get out of here, Robert. That is a great story.
• 1:32:59
  I can't believe that you thought enough about the fact that I
• 1:33:01
  don't know if this was going to happen.
• 1:33:02
  Let's let's do November 5th. And there she was.
• 1:33:06
  There was, you know, and and so you spend the rest of the
• 1:33:09
  afternoon on the day before giving away everything.
• 1:33:12
  You all your stuff. Other inmates.
• 1:33:15
  Yes. So you better be going home.
• 1:33:18
  So. You know, if you don't go home,
• 1:33:21
  you have nothing. Exactly, yeah.
• 1:33:24
  There when you have nothing. And then having all your stuff
• 1:33:27
  in prison. I know that sounds kind of odd
• 1:33:29
  for people listening, but that is your only world is your
• 1:33:32
  stuff, and once you give it away, you're starting from
• 1:33:36
  scratch. And you know, if they can
• 1:33:38
  imagine what a little refrigerator looks like, a
• 1:33:40
  little cooler that you might have with a couple of shelves in
• 1:33:45
  it, that's what the lockers looked.
• 1:33:47
  Like, yeah, that's your. World all of our worldly
• 1:33:51
  positions in. That's right.
• 1:33:52
  You had more than you should. Guards would come by if they
• 1:33:56
  were being difficult and they were and take your extra stuff.
• 1:34:00
  If you had a pen you weren't entitled to have.
• 1:34:03
  If you had a yellow highlighter, you weren't entitled to have.
• 1:34:07
  If you had too many of this or that, if you had a nail Clipper,
• 1:34:11
  that and and they had done away with the with the idea of
• 1:34:14
  allowing inmates to have nail Clippers while I was in.
• 1:34:17
  They took those away. It it it.
• 1:34:20
  If you had too much food, they took it away.
• 1:34:22
  They threw it very. Humbling it.
• 1:34:24
  Was. Very humbling.
• 1:34:27
  Humbling is is is maybe the height?
• 1:34:32
  Exactly. Well, Robert, let's talk about
• 1:34:35
  what you're doing now because I mean, I think, you know, I'd
• 1:34:39
  love. I mean, do you still do your
• 1:34:41
  radio show? I don't do it anymore and I
• 1:34:44
  because the radio stations sold the radio to a a another
• 1:34:50
  company. OK, I have been speaking to
• 1:34:55
  various groups. I've spoke at Yale and I've
• 1:34:58
  place law school and I'm anticipating other places as
• 1:35:01
  well. I've done some public speaking,
• 1:35:06
  but for the most part I've been doing consulting work and some
• 1:35:10
  real estate work. Unfortunately, my plans were
• 1:35:15
  dashed apart. Although I was coming home on
• 1:35:18
  home confinement came home on November 5, 2019.
• 1:35:23
  On March 13, 2020, we had the pandemic.
• 1:35:27
  Yeah, the whole world shut down. Right, so two years I was
• 1:35:30
  basically I had no excuse to offer my probation officer as to
• 1:35:36
  why I had to leave the house, right.
• 1:35:40
  Everybody's locked down. So I couldn't really work.
• 1:35:44
  I couldn't do this and and for the most part I was working on
• 1:35:51
  writing a book that may never get published.
• 1:35:53
  But. I think it would be a
• 1:35:54
  fascinating book. I hope it does get published,
• 1:35:56
  'cause I, I, I I think your story with all the different
• 1:36:01
  things you come from all these different places and then you
• 1:36:04
  and then you've got the survival part of it that you're on the
• 1:36:08
  other side of this whole tragedy nightmare, whatever you call
• 1:36:12
  these things and you're here, you're talking about it and it's
• 1:36:16
  fascinating and and I think you can help so many people too.
• 1:36:19
  I think you know because of your background, because of your
• 1:36:23
  experience and and helping people know that they can live
• 1:36:29
  through it is a is a big deal. It is any.
• 1:36:31
  Legal experience, obviously. Legal consulting for people.
• 1:36:36
  I tell them that if you allow me to act as your ombudsman from
• 1:36:41
  the time you want to hire an attorney, I can tell you.
• 1:36:45
  I would have loved to have had you Who?
• 1:36:46
  You ought to hire. I can listen to you.
• 1:36:50
  You know your attorneys really don't want to hear what you have
• 1:36:52
  to say. No, I would have loved to have
• 1:36:54
  had you, Robert. I would have given my right arm.
• 1:36:57
  I wouldn't give you my left arm because I'm left-handed, but
• 1:36:59
  give you my right one. I feel people for years, no
• 1:37:04
  attorneys listening to you 24/7 or think case 24/7, but you are.
• 1:37:11
  So I tell them and you know more about the case than I may ever
• 1:37:15
  know. Yeah, I get the trial.
• 1:37:17
  I'll know more than you do. But tell me everything that you
• 1:37:22
  think is important or not important.
• 1:37:25
  Send me a text. Send me an e-mail.
• 1:37:27
  Call me. I love that.
• 1:37:29
  And I still want to be able to do that because preparation is
• 1:37:32
  90% of the game. And you've shown that you have
• 1:37:35
  all the experience that backs that up.
• 1:37:37
  If you let me help you, I can convey to your attorneys in a
• 1:37:42
  language they would understand how to best help you.
• 1:37:47
  And so I've been doing that and helping some people.
• 1:37:51
  Not as many as I would like, I'm hoping.
• 1:37:55
  I I think it'd be invaluable. And I think the the people
• 1:37:58
  listening to this today that are they're thinking they're in a
• 1:38:01
  situation they need Robert Semmels to to help them through
• 1:38:06
  that process. Because if you have somebody
• 1:38:07
  like you that knows not only have you been a prosecutor, not
• 1:38:10
  only have you been an incredible criminal defense attorney but
• 1:38:13
  you've actually gone through being indicted and convicted and
• 1:38:17
  going through that process so you you are the full package.
• 1:38:21
  But I I I always say, Robert, I mean, and it's you.
• 1:38:24
  Had two of those experiences and not that.
• 1:38:27
  Last exactly. You weren't working for that one
• 1:38:29
  for the for the check the box off Robert.
• 1:38:34
  What do you think? What do you think is your
• 1:38:37
  biggest take away through all of this?
• 1:38:40
  Well, as I told my daughter when she finished law school, don't
• 1:38:44
  become a criminal attorney. From an incredible criminal
• 1:38:50
  defense attorney, yeah. Well, it's it's, you know, the
• 1:38:55
  system. I've always known the system was
• 1:38:59
  in shambles, but until you've gone through all aspects of it,
• 1:39:04
  their defense, attorney and inmates, you don't realize how
• 1:39:08
  awful it is. It's not awful the way Mr. Trump
• 1:39:12
  says it is. It's awful because it doesn't
• 1:39:16
  work. Right spoken.
• 1:39:18
  Doesn't work because nobody cares to have it work.
• 1:39:22
  Judges who are elevated from who are civil, whether they're
• 1:39:27
  progressive or conservative, wherever their background may
• 1:39:30
  be, they all become the same when they take those black
• 1:39:33
  robes. They no longer see you that they
• 1:39:36
  don't want to help their own kind.
• 1:39:38
  They don't. They just want to sentence you
• 1:39:41
  to prison in the criminal justice system.
• 1:39:45
  And you say, judge, do you understand what a day is like in
• 1:39:48
  prison? No, you don't.
• 1:39:50
  Prosecutors, I see. They ask for the prosecutors ask
• 1:39:53
  for 50 years for Sam Bankman Freeman.
• 1:39:55
  Yeah, why he's he's he won't be in prison for 50 years, even on
• 1:40:02
  a 50 year sentence. But why even ask of that?
• 1:40:05
  Who learns their lesson in in doesn't learn that lesson in 10
• 1:40:11
  years? Doesn't.
• 1:40:13
  Right, Yeah. Oh, you.
• 1:40:16
  You've been there, You're being warehoused, yet there's no
• 1:40:20
  productive efforts made to rehabilitate you if that word is
• 1:40:26
  still a word, and then make you a productive member of society
• 1:40:31
  when you come out. Because every time something bad
• 1:40:34
  happens and the person had a criminal record, they say an
• 1:40:37
  ex-con did this. Try to get a try to get a job.
• 1:40:42
  When you come out with a criminal record and they say to
• 1:40:45
  you, where have you been the last five years?
• 1:40:47
  Where you've been the last seven years, wherever it may last year
• 1:40:51
  doing it, you can't reinvent yourself.
• 1:40:55
  Re entry's one of the toughest things of the whole journey.
• 1:40:58
  You can try to to to come up with a new way to go, but you
• 1:41:02
  can never be you again. It's it's a it's it's one of the
• 1:41:07
  toughest part of the journeys is re entry and and no one really
• 1:41:10
  talks about it until they hit that point because they're so
• 1:41:13
  anxious to get out you know and get back and part of the world.
• 1:41:17
  But yeah, you've got to carry an extra weight and and it doesn't
• 1:41:22
  end you're you're an ex felon until the end.
• 1:41:24
  You know that's the way it goes that's.
• 1:41:26
  Going to be that's. That's your old bit, no?
• 1:41:28
  Matter what you do but you've got a lot to offer Robert you've
• 1:41:33
  you've and I I can't wait for you to get this book out and if
• 1:41:39
  you're if you're wanting to read books I I wrote one too.
• 1:41:41
  Nightmare successive check that out on Amazon.
• 1:41:44
  I want to thank Homestead financial lets me use all this
• 1:41:48
  stuff in this podcast room and if you got home mortgage needs
• 1:41:51
  Greg FDF is definitely your guy. If you like the show, and I I
• 1:41:56
  know you got something out of this today.
• 1:41:58
  Follow. Share comments.
• 1:42:01
  Big deal. Leave Apple review comments.
• 1:42:03
  That puts the show on steroids. Check me on at brickcassie.com.
• 1:42:06
  It's for the Ty, not a DYI. Spell it wrong.
• 1:42:10
  And as I used to say when I was writing my emails back and forth
• 1:42:12
  from level or stay strong, I'll do the same.
• 1:42:15
  Robert Simmons, you are a great guest.
• 1:42:17
  You're an incredible person. I wish you nothing but the best.
• 1:42:21
  Thank you so much for being on the show.
• 1:42:23
  And I the same and maybe one day I'll have a podcast and have you
• 1:42:26
  on. I would love that.
• 1:42:28
  Love that. You'd be a great podcast guy,
• 1:42:30
  too. All right guys, now your success
• 1:42:33
  in and out. Thanks.