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Weekly Developments in the Nolan Wells Case Investigation · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On July 28th, a 30-year-old man who was just sitting
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: around in Jacksonville, Florida, typed out this single violently specific
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: sentence into Instagram. He hit send, and he targeted a
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: college football punter all the way out in Wyoming.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Right, which is just an incredible distance digitally.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And today, we're going to trace exactly how that
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: one millisecond digital decision made over 1,000 miles away ended
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: up bringing the full crushing weight of the federal government
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: right down on his head.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: It's a massive escalation.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: It really is. And more importantly, we're going to map
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: out how that single act, along with this whole wave
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: of cross-country bomb threats and federal indictments, all traces back
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: to one localized tragedy.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a tragedy in a small coastal town in Mississippi.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Right. So welcome to this deep dive. Our mission today
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: is to completely deconstruct the anatomy of a local crisis
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: that has inexplicably, and I mean completely, gone national.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: And we really have to look at the source material
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: we're using to do this we are working off a
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: very dense highly detailed weekly recap article.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah published in the biloxi sun herald.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Right exactly and it covers a very specific window of
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: time just august 30th to september 5th but the sourcing
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: here is just paramount to understanding the gravity.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Of what we're looking at because of the reporter.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Right the recap was written by margaret baker and um
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: For anyone familiar with investigative journalism down in the Deep South,
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: you know that name carries immense weight.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. She's legendary down there.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: She is a relentless reporter. I mean, we are talking
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: about someone whose investigative work has systematically exposed corrupt sheriffs.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: She's dismantled the careers of abusive police chiefs and, you know,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: held jailers accountable.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Didn't she also work on a pretty major civil rights case?
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: She did. She was the driving force behind the first
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: prosecution of a federal hate crime for the murder of
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: a transgender person. And she was a key player on
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: the Sun-Herald Pulitzer Prize winning Hurricane Katrina reporting team.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Wow. OK, so she doesn't just write run of the
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: mill daily blurbs.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Exactly. So when a reporter with that specific pedigree files
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: a weekly recap that is entirely consumed by federal indictments
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: and civil ultimatums, You know, we are no longer looking
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: at a standard local crime beat. Right.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: It's something much better.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: We are looking at a systemic, multi-jurisdictional meltdown.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: So we aren't just going to sit here and read
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: you the headlines. Our goal is to dissect the actual
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: mechanics of this meltdown.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Right. We have to dig into the how and the why.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: We need to explore the geography, the legal architecture, and
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: really the profound implications of a community tragedy just being
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: completely hijacked by outside forces.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: And to do that, we have to start at the
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: absolute core. Right.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: The core reality of all this, because every single federal charge,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: every evacuation, every defamation threat that we're going to discuss
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: today stems from one thing.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: The ongoing investigation into the July 4th death of Nolan Wells. Yeah.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: He was an 18 year old student athlete from Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: That is the foundational reality here. I mean, a young
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: man is dead and a tight knit community is grieving.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: And we really have to critically examine the timeline here because.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: The friction between July 4th and this reporting window of
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: late August to early September is the engine driving this
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: whole secondary crisis.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: It's a roughly two-month gap, right?
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, about two months. And in the context of a
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: complex death investigation, you know, one that requires toxicology, forensic pathology,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: digital forensics, rigorous witness interviews, two months is honestly the blink.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Of an eye. Right. Like real life isn't a television
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: show where the DNA comes back after a commercial break. Exactly.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The gears of legitimate justice turn slowly by design.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: But we live in an era where the public is
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: driven by the instant gratification of the Internet.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure. People want answers five minutes after something happens.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Right. So they view any silence from law enforcement not
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: as diligence, but as like a conspiracy or a cover up.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: That two month void of official answers acted as a vacuum.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And what rushed in to fill it was this chaotic,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: digitally fueled vigilantism. Let me frame it this way for you, because.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: The scale of this is just hard to wrap your
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: head around at first. When a tragedy hits a local town,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: we normally think of the ripple effect, right?
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Right, the classic analogy.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you drop a stone in a pond and the
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: waves hit the edges of the community. But that analogy
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: completely fails here. It's just not accurate.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: What we are looking at is more like an electrical
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: grid cascade failure. It's like a transformer blows in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: And because our digital systems are so complex, you know,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: artificially connected, it instantly triggers blackouts and explosions in California, Illinois, Ohio,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: and Wyoming.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: That is a perfect way to describe it because this
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: week's news isn't even about the primary investigation into Nolan
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Wall's death.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Right. It's all about the fallout. The focus has entirely
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: shifted to the collateral damage.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: It is a stunning pivot. You have this local law
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: enforcement apparatus, which should be entirely dedicated to solving the
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: death of this young man.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that should be their one and only job.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: But suddenly, they are forced to fight a multi-front war
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: against individuals who have absolutely zero physical connection to Mississippi.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: We are watching the original investigation spawn an entirely separate,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: massive weather system of federal criminal activity.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Well, let's map out that weather system, starting with the sheer,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: bizarre geography of the intimidation tactics.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: The geography is just wild.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: It really is. I mean, we have individuals currently sitting
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: in federal custody... Simply for reacting to a case in
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: a state they don't even live in.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Right. Let's look at the first two.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: First on the docket, we have Joseph Alfredo Vasquez Dumars,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: who is a 27-year-old from Sacramento, California.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: And alongside him in this specific narrative, Edward James Porter.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: He's 32 years old, out of Berwyn, Illinois.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: And what exactly were they doing from all the way
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: across the country?
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: They were both indicted for allegedly threatening witnesses tied to
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: the Nolan Wells case. They made their first court appearances
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: in a Gulfport, Mississippi federal court where they pleaded not guilty.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: And the consequences are already hitting them hard, right?
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Very hard. They are now jailed without bond and they're
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: facing up to five years in prison and a quarter
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: million dollar fine each.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Man, a quarter million dollars. So we have to unpack
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: the jurisdictional mechanics here because I feel like a lot
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: of people are operate under a fundamental misunderstanding of how
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: threats are actually prosecuted.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, definitely. People think a threat is just a local issue.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Right. Like if an individual in California threatens a neighbor over, say,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: a property line dispute, that is a local matter. The
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Sacramento police handle it.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But the moment you utilize an instrument of interstate
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: commerce to deliver a threat, and this is key, you
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: change the game entirely.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: And an instrument of interstate commerce could be? What? A
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: phone call.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Whether that is a cellular network routing a call
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: across state lines or a social media platform bouncing a
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: direct message through servers in Virginia all the way down
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: to a recipient in Mississippi.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: So just hitting send crosses that line.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: It does. You have crossed a critical legal threshold. You
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: have literally federalized your own crime. The jurisdiction instantly transfers
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: from the local cops to the United States Department of
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Justice and the FBI.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: So by just sitting on their couches in California and
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Illinois and allegedly targeting witnesses in Mississippi, they bypassed the
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: local police entirely and basically kicked down the door of
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the federal government.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what happened.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: But what really fascinates me is the without bond detail.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a massive indicator of how serious this is.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: The federal magistrate looked at DeMars and Porter and completely
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: denied them bail. And I want to emphasize to you,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the listener, Just how high the bar is for that.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: It's incredibly high under federal law.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Right. Because in the federal system, the Bail Reform Act
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: dictates that a defendant should generally be released pending trial.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Unless the government can prove something specific.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Unless they prove by clear and convincing evidence that
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: the person is a flight risk or that no condition
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: of release will reasonably assure the safety of the community.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: So think about what that means in this context. Right.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: A judge looked at a 27-year-old guy from Sacramento and
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: and determined he was an active, unacceptable danger to a
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: community thousands of miles away.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: It really speaks to the unique, corrosive nature of witness intimidation.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Well, from the perspective of the federal judiciary, witness tampering
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: isn't just a threat against a single individual. It is
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: an existential attack on the architecture of the justice system itself.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Well, that makes sense because if people are too scared
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: to talk, then this thing falls apart.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: Exactly. If witnesses cannot participate in an investigation without the
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: very real fear of being hunted down or harassed by
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: out-of-state actors, the entire mechanism of finding the truth regarding
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Nolan Wells just collapses.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: So the judge has to step in aggressively. Right.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: The without bond status indicates that the court believes distance
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: is no longer a mitigating factor for danger.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Because of the Internet.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Precisely. In the digital age, a person in California can
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: literally ruin a witness's life in Mississippi with a few keystrokes.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: So the only way the court can guarantee the safety
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: of the investigation is to physically neutralize the threat.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: By locking the defendants in a cell in Gulfport.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Exactly. You physically remove their access to the digital world.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: But, you know. The disruption wasn't just limited to the
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: witnesses themselves. It targeted the actual physical infrastructure of local government.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Which brings us to the case of Michelle Francine Edwards.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Right. She is 42 years old and she's operating out
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: of Cincinnati, Ohio.
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: And her charges are severe. She was federally indicted for
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: conveying false information involving explosives.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: And what is the penalty on that?
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: She is facing up to 10 years in prison. 10
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: years in prison.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: And the details of her alleged actions on July 23rd
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: are just staggering. I mean, prosecutors say she made 21
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: calls in eight minutes to the George County Chancery Clerk's office.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Just relentless.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: And she followed that up with calls to the Jackson
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: County Sheriff's office, threatening bombs and forcing mass evacuations.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: 21 calls in eight minutes. We really need to analyze
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: the psychology and the physical logistics of an attack like that.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Because that's not just a passing thought.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: No, not at all. That level of frequency isn't just
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: someone getting mad and dialing a number once. It is
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: a sustained manic denial of service attack executed right through
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: a telephone line.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I want you to picture the reality of the George
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: County Chancery Clerk's office on a random Tuesday morning.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: It's a busy place.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: It's not just a room with a few desks. The
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Chancery Clerk is the administrative beating heart of a county.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: It is where property deeds are filed, where probate matters
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: are handled. where vital civic records are maintained.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: And the sheriff's office obviously is the literal nerve center
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: of public safety.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So when a bomb threat comes in, let alone
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: a barrage of 21 of them, a massive federally mandated
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: protocol triggers instantly.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: You can't just ignore it because it sounds like a
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: hoax or because the person sounds out of state.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: You absolutely can't. The logistical chaos is immediate and it's catastrophic.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: The building must be evacuated. Civilian employees are Citizens filing paperwork.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Everyone is just pushed out into the streets.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: But more critically, think about the resource drain on the
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: local police.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Right, because they're already busy.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Extremely busy. Law enforcement officers, who are already stretched incredibly
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: thin dealing with the pressure cooker environment surrounding the death
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: of Nolan Wells, are suddenly pulled off their active investigations.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: They dropped everything.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: They have to. They have to establish secure perimeters around
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: these buildings. They have to coordinate with emergency management. They
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: have to sweep hundreds of thousands of square feet for
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: explosive devices.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: It is the literal weaponization of public resources. And the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: juxtaposition of the penalties here highlights how the federal government
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: views this stuff.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: That's a great point. The penalty discrepancy is very telling.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Right. Because Dumars and Porter are facing five years for
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: witness intimidation. But Edwards is facing 10 years for the
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: bomb threats.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: You might initially think threatening a person directly is worse,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: legally speaking.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But the 10-year penalty acknowledges the sheer scale
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: of the collateral damage. A bomb threat creates a volatile
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: physical emergency. It forces police cruisers to speed through intersections.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Which is dangerous in itself.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It displaces hundreds of people. It creates a secondary
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: trauma for a community that is already, frankly, raw and grieving.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: The federal hammer comes down twice as hard here because
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: you are actively endangering the public. You're forcing emergency services
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: to abandon real ongoing crises to go chase a ghost
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: created by someone sitting on a phone in Ohio.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: It's just wild. The authorities clearly recognize that a swift
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: draconian response was required to deter anyone else from treating
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: local Mississippi government buildings like targets in a video game.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Which perfectly transitions us into the most chilling example of
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: this gamification of threats.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about that. We've seen the geography stretch
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: to California, Illinois, and Ohio, targeting witnesses and physical buildings.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: But the digital nature of this outrage means it doesn't
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: just stop at government offices.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: No, it actively searches for cultural pressure points. And that
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: is exactly how an Instagram account operating out of Florida
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: managed to drag college athletics all the way in Wyoming
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: into the fray.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: This specific incident is the absolute epitome of how social
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: media obliterates logical boundaries.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: We are looking at a criminal complaint that was unsealed
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: in a U.S. district court in Wyoming.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: And who does it name?
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: It names Brandon Ephraim Washington, a 30-year-old from Jacksonville, Florida.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: He allegedly operated an Instagram account under the handle 904Hustler.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Okay, so a burner account. Right.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: And on July 28th, he sent a direct message to
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: a University of Wyoming punter named Bart Edmiston Jr., as
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: well as his teammates.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: And what was the message?
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: The message read, and I am quoting directly from the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: report here, You all might well shut the whole program
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: down because the next game, we're shooting every white people
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: on that field.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: We must dissect the anatomy of that specific threat because
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: it perfectly illustrates the legal threshold between protected offensive speech
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: and a federal crime.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Because you can say a lot of awful things online legally, right?
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: You really can. The First Amendment protects a vast amount
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: of vile, hateful rhetoric, but it categorically does not protect
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: what the law defines as a true threat.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And what's the standard for that?
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: To meet the federal standard of a true threat, the
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: communication must convey a serious expression of an intent to
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: or group.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: And Washington's alleged message checks everything. Every single one of
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: those terrifying boxes.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: It absolutely does.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: It's not just a vague expression of anger over the
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Mississippi case. He targets a specific individual, Bart Edmiston Jr.,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: and his teammates.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: And he identifies a specific location.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, the football field at the next game. And he
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: explicitly declares a racially motivated intent to commit mass violence,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: saying they are shooting every white people.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: It is the specificity that triggers the highest level of
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: federal threat assessment. When the FBI analyzes a message like that,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: they don't just see a troll venting on the Internet.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: What do they see?
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: They see the preliminary planning stages of a mass casualty event.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Wow. But I want to focus on the delusion of
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the digital alias here. He used the handle 904Hustler.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: The underscore is a nice touch.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Right. There is this pervasive, almost tragiconic belief among digital
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: vigilantes that putting an underscore in a username and using
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: a burner email address is grants them some sort of
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: cryptographic invisibility.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Like they're untraceable ghosts. Yeah.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: It's the illusion of consequence-free distance.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Well, it is a profound misunderstanding of modern digital architecture.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: How easy is it for the feds to actually find
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: someone like that?
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: When a message of that severity is intercepted or reported,
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: the federal unmasking process is swift and essentially frictionless. The
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: DOJ issues an immediate preservation letter and subsequent subpoenas to Meta,
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: which is Instagram's parent company.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: And Meta just hands over the data.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, immediately. They extract the IP logs associated with every
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: single login of that account. Then they cross-reference those IP
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: addresses with Internet service providers to identify the actual physical
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: routers being used.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: So they find the house.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And they pull the device ID. That's the unique
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: digital fingerprint of the phone or computer itself. And if
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: he used a cell network, they pull historical cell site
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: location data. to triangulate exactly where that device was standing
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: when the send button was pressed.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: So he types a threat in Florida, it bounces off
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: a server, lands on a phone in Wyoming, and the
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: FBI simply follows the breadcrumbs backward.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Right, they just peel away the 904 hustler mask to
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: find a 30-year-old man sitting in Jacksonville.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: But what I find even more compelling than the technology
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: is the timeline of the justice system itself.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the temporal disconnect is fascinating.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Contrast so sharply with the medium he used. Just look
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: at the dates. He allegedly sends the message on July 28th.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: But the reporting is showing the unsealing of this criminal
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: complaint in the August 30th to September 5th window.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: That's a whole month later.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly. That means for over a month, Washington likely woke
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: up every single day, went about his life in Florida,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: and thought to himself, I got away with it. I
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: said my piece and nothing happened.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: That is the defining characteristic of a federal investigation.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Silent.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Very silent. Social media conditions us to expect instant reactions,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: you know. You post something, you get immediate likes, angry replies,
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: or you get banned. It is instantaneous.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: But the feds don't work like that.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: Not at all. The federal justice system operates in deliberate,
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: deafening silence. While he was just going about his August,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: federal agents in Wyoming and Florida were quietly drafting affidavits.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Building the case.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: Right. They were securing warrants from federal magistrates. They were
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: presenting digital evidence to grand juries. The machine was silently
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: locking onto him.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: So he had no idea. None.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: He didn't know he was in the crosshairs until the
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: moment the indictment was unsealed and federal agents were likely
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: knocking on his front door. The speed of the crime
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: is measured in milliseconds, but the response is the slow,
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: crushing momentum that you absolutely cannot escape once it begins.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: It is a terrifying realization for anyone thinking they can
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: hurl threats from the safety of their living room. So
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: we are looking at this sprawling map of federal criminal charges.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: We've got Sacramento, Berwyn, Cincinnati, Jacksville, all converging on Gulfport
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: and Wyoming.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: It's a massive federal net.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: It is. But while the DOJ is busy sweeping up
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: the criminal fallout, there is a second, entirely different war
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: being waged. We have to pivot from the criminal courts
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: to the high stakes, hyper strategic arena of civil litigation.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: Right. And this is where the narrative really shifts from raw,
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: impulsive criminal acts to highly calculated surgical legal maneuvering.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: It's a totally different vibe.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: Completely. The introduction of civil defamation claims into this tragedy
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: adds a layer of complexity that requires a completely different
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: analytical lens from what we just used for the criminal side.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Okay. So to set the board for this legal chess match,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: we have to look at the players. On one side,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: we have two attorneys, Tyler Cox and Edward Andrew Pulcik.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: And who are they representing?
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: They are representing three young men connected to this narrative,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Warren Hudson, Jax Pitilow, and Morgan Seymour. On the other
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: side of the board is the Reverend Al Sharpton.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Obviously one of the most recognizable media savvy civil rights
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: figures in American history.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And I want to be abundantly clear with you
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: right now as the listener, we are analyzing the tactical
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: mechanics of this standoff. We are looking strictly at the law.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Right. We have to stay objective here.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: We are not weighing in on the morality of any statements,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: nor are we taking a side on whether Sharpton or
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: the three young men are in the right. We are
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: dissecting the legal strategy exactly as it was reported in
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: the source material.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: A strictly mechanical analysis is really the only way to
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: understand what is actually happening beneath the flashy headlines.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: So what was the opening move?
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: The opening move in this specific engagement was made by
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Cox and Paltzik. They issued a formal demand letter to
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Sharpton with a rigid 10-day deadline.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: And what were the demands?
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: The demands were absolute. They demanded he publicly apologize, retract
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: the alleged defamatory statements concerning their three clients, and permanently
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: delete those statements from any platform.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And if he doesn't?
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: The implied or else is immediate civil litigation, a lawsuit.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: To someone outside the legal profession, a 10-day ultimatum sounds
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: like aggressive posturing, right? Like something out of a television drama.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: You have 10 days to comply.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: It does sound very dramatic.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: But from a pre-litigation standpoint, sending that letter isn't just
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: about demanding an apology. It is about setting a highly
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: specific legal trap, isn't it?
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: It is a multifaceted strategy. First off, courts generally look
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: favorably upon plaintiffs who attempt to resolve a dispute and
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: mitigate damages before clogging the docket with a lawsuit.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: So it's good to the judge.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It establishes a paper trail of good faith on
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: the plaintiff's part. But more strategically, a ticking clock is
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: designed to force the opposing counsel into a reactive posture.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: It puts the pressure on them. Right.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: You are demanding they evaluate the strength of their own
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: defense under an artificially compressed timeline. Do they fold and
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: issue a retraction to avoid discovery, or do they hold
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: the line?
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: But the most lethal part of this demand letter isn't
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: the apology at all. It's the preservation demand.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Ah, yes. The spoliation letter.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Cox and Pulcik demanded that Sharpton preserve any and all documents, communications,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: and social media records tied to the young men in
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the case. I want to translate what that actually means
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: for you because it is brilliant.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: It really is a smart move.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: They are essentially freezing the battlefield before the war even
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: officially begins. They are putting Sharpton on formal legal notice
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: that every single email, text message, internal memo or draft
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: tweet regarding this case is now potential evidence.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: It's all locked down.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Right. If Sharpton or anyone on his team hits the
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: delete button on a single relevant email after receiving that letter,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: They are committing spoliation of evidence.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: And the penalty for that in civil court is devastating.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Tell them what happens.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: If you destroy evidence after receiving that notice, the judge
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: will literally instruct the jury to assume that whatever was
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: deleted contained a smoking gun proving the plaintiff's case.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: It's called an adverse inference instruction. It's basically fatal to
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: a defense.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: That is an incredible breakdown of the mechanism. The spoliation
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: hold is the heavy artillery of pre-litigation. It locks the
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: defendant into a state of total preservation, which honestly can
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: be incredibly burdensome and legally perilous if their internal communications
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: aren't perfectly disciplined.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: One wrong deleted text and you're in major trouble. However,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Sharpton Juriscamp did not retreat a single inch.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Not a millimeter. According to the reporting, Sharpton fired right back,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: dismissing the claims as completely meritless.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: He held his ground.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: He stated unequivocally that he will neither be silenced nor
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: retract statements he did not make. And that specific phrasing
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: statements he did not make is the absolute crux of
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: their entire defense.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Because his attorneys argue that Sharpton never actually accused Hudson, Pitilow,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: or Seymour of murder or any other crimes.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: They are threading a very precise, very narrow legal needle there.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: To understand why that phrasing is their shield, we have
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: to look at the architecture of defamation law. specifically this
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: concept of defamation per se.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Right, because defamation isn't just saying something mean about someone.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It's not just hurting someone's feelings.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Defamation requires a false statement of fact that causes material
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: harm to a person's reputation. But the law recognizes certain
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: categories of statements as so inherently damaging that the plaintiff
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: doesn't even have to prove they suffered financial loss.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: The damage is just assumed by the court.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And the most prominent category of defamation per se...
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: is falsely accusing someone of committing a serious crime.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: So if I go on national television and say John
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Doe is a murderer and John Doe is not a murderer,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: I have committed defamation per se.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Because I have made a verifiable statement of fact about
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: criminal conduct.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Yes. But if you say, I demand justice for the
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: victim and we need to look very closely at John Doe,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: you have ventured into a gray area.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: That's just an opinion.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Right. It's opinion... rhetorical hyperbole, and potentially protected First Amendment speech.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Sharpton's legal team is signaling their exact defense strategy in
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: the press right now.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: They are essentially saying, we have reviewed the transcripts of
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: every speech and every broadcast.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: And our client did not use the specific actionable words
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: that trigger defamation per se. Right.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: He did not explicitly accuse these three individuals of the
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: crime of murder. They are literally daring the plaintiffs to
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: find the exact quote that crosses the legal line from
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: protected advocacy into unprotected factual defamation.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: It is a surgical defense. They aren't arguing about the
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: morality of the situation. They are arguing strict statutory definitions.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: But they didn't just play defense. They issued a massive
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: counter threat of their own.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: And this is where it gets really aggressive.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Sharpton's attorneys warned that if a lawsuit is actually filed,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: they will immediately seek dismissal and demand that the plaintiffs
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: pay their attorney's fees.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: That isn't just legal chest pounding. That fundamentally alters the
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: risk calculus for the young men and their lawyers.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Because it's the ultimate deterrent.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: It really is. In the American legal system generally, each
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: side pays its own legal fees, regardless of who wins.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Right. The American rule.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But there are exceptions, particularly if a judge determines
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: a lawsuit was frivolous, filed in bad faith. or violate
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: specific anti-SLAPP statutes designed to protect free speech.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: So you are essentially telling the plaintiffs, go ahead and
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: sue us, but know that we are confident we will
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: get the judge to throw your case out before it
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: even reaches a jury.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: And when we do, we are going to hand you
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: the bill for our team of high-powered national defense attorneys.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: You are threatening to financially ruin them if they guess
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: wrong about the strength of their own defamation claim. It
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: is a terrifying prospect for a plaintiff to weigh.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: It completely calls the bluff on that 10-day ultimatum. It
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: forces Cox and Pulcik to sit down with their three
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: clients and have a very sobering conversation about the potential
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: financial devastation of losing a procedural motion against a well-funded opponent.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: It is high-stakes brinkmanship played out entirely through formal legal correspondence.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: And as we step back and look at this entire board,
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: the sheer volume of chaotic energy is just overwhelming.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Let's synthesize exactly what Margaret Baker captured in just one
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: week of reporting. We have men in California and Illinois
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: sitting in federal lockup without bond for attempting to terrorize witnesses.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: We have a woman in Ohio facing a decade in
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: federal prison for paralyzing Mississippi government offices with a barrage
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: of bomb threats.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: We have a man in Florida unmasked by the FBI
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: and indicted in Wyoming for targeting a college athlete with
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: racially motivated death threats.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: And hovering above all of this criminal chaos, we have
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: a meticulously calculated civil standoff Between a civil rights icon
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: and aggressive defense attorneys.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Threatening mutually assured financial destruction over the definitions of defamation.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: And the most vital, honestly the most tragic through line
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: of all this is that every single piece of this sprawling,
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: multi-state legal and criminal machinery was activated by one event.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: The death of an 18-year-old boy on July 4th in
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: a small coastal town.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Everything comes back to that epicenter.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the profound realization I want to
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: leave you with today. We started by picturing that small town.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to picture the local police department in
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Ocean Springs.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: They're the ones actually trying to solve this.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Right. Their singular job, their sworn duty, is to conduct
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: a methodical, clean, and focused investigation to find out exactly
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: how and why Nolan Wells died.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: And doing that requires quiet. It requires trust. It requires
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: local resources.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: So how does a local agency even begin to function
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: when their tragedy is ripped out of their hands?
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: When it's turned into a national playground for digital vigilantes,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: out-of-state federal criminals, and high-powered civil litigators.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: They are forced to operate in a deafening environment where
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: the noise of the reaction completely drowns out the facts
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: of the case.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: It's an impossible situation for local cops.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: When the entire country forcefully inserts itself into a local narrative,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: demanding instant justice and weaponizing their distance to create chaos...
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Does that massive spotlight actually help uncover the truth?
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Or does the weight of the bomb threats, the federal indictments,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: and the defamation battles just muddy the waters so deeply
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: that the truth gets permanently lost in the undertow?
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Does the modern Internet's demand for immediate answers ultimately destroy
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: the very justice it claims to be seeking? That is
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the question you have to carry with you. That is
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the true anatomy of this deep dive. Stay curious, and
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: we'll see you next time.