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Carlos Watson: The Visionary Entrepreneur Railroaded by Injustice · 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 In and
• 0:07
  Out podcast where we explore how to overcome your fears and
• 0:11
  nightmares that set yourself free.
• 0:13
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:15
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:20
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes sad there's some
• 0:24
  humor, but hopefully you can come away with a nugget of
• 0:27
  something that'll help you knock down some of the prisons you
• 0:30
  built up in your own mind. All right, welcome back nine
• 0:34
  more success in and out, listeners and watchers.
• 0:38
  This is where you come from. What happens when your words
• 0:39
  true becomes your reality. How do you adapt, survive,
• 0:41
  overcome? Set yourself free.
• 0:43
  Don't forget to follow subscribe like this thing up.
• 0:47
  I appreciate it helps the show folks.
• 0:50
  I've got a really riveting story today and I've got an incredible
• 0:55
  guest that I'm interviewing Carlos Watson and give you a
• 1:01
  little bit of background on Carlos and you might have seen
• 1:05
  Carlos on a lot of different things cuz he's been all over
• 1:07
  TV. But Carlos Watson's an American
• 1:09
  entrepreneur. He's a television host of the
• 1:12
  Carlos Watson show. He's a Co founder and CEO of
• 1:15
  Ozzie Media. Carlos was a graduate of
• 1:19
  Harvard, and then he went to Stanford University.
• 1:23
  So he went to Harvard and then he went to Stanford to get his
• 1:25
  law degree. But he not only just just kind
• 1:27
  of hung out and got a law degree there.
• 1:29
  He was the editor of his Stanford Law Review.
• 1:31
  He was also the president of the Stanford Law School student
• 1:34
  government. He made a footprint there that
• 1:37
  lasted. So Carlos also spent time at
• 1:40
  Goldman Sachs. His television career span Fox
• 1:43
  Court, TVCNBCMSNBCCNNN. He partnered with Oprah Winfrey
• 1:49
  on OWN as an executive producer for Black Women OWN a
• 1:53
  Conversation. So how in the world did Carlos
• 1:57
  find himself on the Nightmare Success podcast experiencing his
• 2:00
  worst nightmare? Well, this is my overview of it
• 2:05
  from reading and watching the documentary of Whose Son is
• 2:10
  Next. It's on YouTube of Carlos.
• 2:12
  But it appears to me that it started with BuzzFeed and it was
• 2:18
  an attempt for BuzzFeed to acquire Ozzie Media and they
• 2:21
  made numerous offers. I think it was 4 offers.
• 2:25
  And Carlos being who he is, he turned down all four offers and
• 2:30
  the last one was up to $300 million.
• 2:32
  So this is big money that we were talking about.
• 2:35
  I think one of the reasons that Carlos turned it down and he
• 2:38
  certainly hasn't told me this, but an astute guy that's an
• 2:41
  attorney at Goldman Sachs, BuzzFeed was having issues and
• 2:43
  they were making acquisitions because maybe they they
• 2:46
  desperately needed to and, and Carlos had a lot of confidence
• 2:49
  in what he was doing with Ozzie Media at the time.
• 2:52
  And if he figured it was worth 300 million, maybe it was worth
• 2:54
  double that if he could continue to go.
• 2:57
  Interestingly enough, Ben Smith, who was the editor and chief at
• 3:02
  BuzzFeed and at the time this this guy was known as the one
• 3:10
  the first guy that released the Steele dossier, if anybody
• 3:14
  remembers that, that started the national political Firestone
• 3:18
  with Donald Trump president at the time.
• 3:21
  Interestingly enough, Ben had millions of dollars of stock
• 3:27
  options with BuzzFeed. He left BuzzFeed and he went to
• 3:30
  the New York Times. He started writing some damaging
• 3:34
  investigative articles about Aussie media, but he never was
• 3:39
  disclosing the conflict of interest that he had with all
• 3:42
  the stock options. And maybe he was a little ticked
• 3:44
  off about the fact that the deal didn't go through with Ozzie
• 3:47
  Media. That's just me.
• 3:47
  I'm just saying that's my, my opinion on this.
• 3:52
  This. These articles caught the
• 3:55
  attention of the DOJ and away things went.
• 3:58
  It ended up with Carlos going to trial and losing in July.
• 4:03
  His case was riddled with details of the judge having
• 4:07
  financial ties to the victims in this case, creating an
• 4:10
  undeniable shadow over the fairness of the proceedings.
• 4:14
  Carlos after the after the guilty verdict was immediately
• 4:19
  remanded to a hardcore jail for five weeks before he was able to
• 4:23
  post a multi $1,000,000 bail bond.
• 4:26
  He's now facing 37 years in federal prison and he's
• 4:29
  currently fighting for his life and appealing everything he can
• 4:33
  before his sentencing December 13th.
• 4:36
  As I said, Carlos's documentary, which is it'll take your breath
• 4:41
  away. It's a two-part series on
• 4:42
  YouTube. It's called Whose Son is next.
• 4:45
  I can't wait to unpack all this with Carlos.
• 4:49
  This is an unusual episode for us because usually someone has
• 4:54
  gone through their nightmare and they talk about it.
• 4:55
  Carlos is in the middle of fighting through his nightmare
• 4:58
  and, and I, I've, I am a hardcore believer in Carlos in a
• 5:04
  story and I wanted to get it out.
• 5:06
  We're going to release this as soon as we record this and, and
• 5:10
  release it tomorrow. Before we jump into all this, I
• 5:13
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  deserve. Auto plies direct telling Brent
• 5:46
  from nightmare success sent you welcome in Carlos Watson.
• 5:50
  How are you my man? Hey Brent, I'm good.
• 5:53
  I'd be better if I was in Saint Louis eating ribs with the with
• 5:56
  the family, but that may, may or may not be down the road.
• 6:01
  Well, I know you have been through, you know, it's been, I
• 6:07
  mean, it hasn't been that long ago that she went through your
• 6:09
  case in July and, and you've been going through all the
• 6:13
  nightmare steps that are part of that.
• 6:15
  But your, your life and your life story is incredible.
• 6:20
  And what you've been able to accomplish after this time is
• 6:25
  inspiring. And I want to go back a little
• 6:27
  bit just so the the listeners, the viewers, the audience can
• 6:31
  get a little taste of what it was like for you to get where
• 6:35
  you were. Carlos What?
• 6:36
  What was life your mom, your dad, siblings growing up?
• 6:42
  Tell give us a little bit. Sure, sure.
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  So I grew up in Miami, FL, son of two teachers, Carlos Senior
• 6:50
  and Rose. So I'm a junior.
• 6:52
  I had three sisters, 3 great sisters.
• 6:54
  I didn't always give them that title when we were growing up,
• 6:58
  but but they were I I came to learn that I I got a good deal
• 7:03
  where. Did you fit into that pecking
• 7:04
  order? Were you the youngest?
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  What do I feel like? Do I feel like the youngest?
• 7:08
  What do I what do I feel like so far?
• 7:10
  Have you? Have you, have you?
• 7:11
  Have you? Have you guessed what I feel
• 7:13
  like so far? I, I would think, you know,
• 7:16
  because I watched the documentary and that I, I would
• 7:19
  think that they try to take care of Carlos.
• 7:21
  So you are. You know what, I'm, I'm #2 in
• 7:25
  the lineup. So I have one sister.
• 7:26
  I've got 2 great younger sisters.
• 7:29
  We're all pretty close. My parents were late in life
• 7:31
  parents, Brent. So back in the day, having kids
• 7:34
  in your mid to late 30s was considered late.
• 7:37
  And, and so my mom had four of us between the ages of 36 and
• 7:41
  41, which today would probably be like the equivalent of, you
• 7:45
  know, 45 to 50. And, and so we were all pretty,
• 7:50
  pretty close together. And, you know, it was in a lot
• 7:55
  of ways we were blessed. I mean, good parents, especially
• 7:59
  my mom. I used to tell her that she was
• 8:01
  the Muhammad Ali of moms. I told her that oz per oz, she
• 8:04
  was, you know, she was the greatest.
• 8:06
  Didn't mean she was perfect, but she was, you know, thoughtful,
• 8:09
  positive, I think took each child on their own and was
• 8:13
  trying to kind of help them. And again, I think a lot of the
• 8:16
  teacher in her, both my parents grew up in big families.
• 8:19
  My mom was the second of seven, my dad was the 5th of 6th.
• 8:22
  So they were kind of warm people.
• 8:26
  You know, money was tight. We, we, we had a spell on, on
• 8:32
  food stamps and, and had some other things which, you know,
• 8:36
  weren't what any of us would have wanted.
• 8:38
  But, but, you know, but we were tight knit group.
• 8:41
  And, you know, Miami in the 70s and 80s had a fair amount of
• 8:48
  racial issues. We before, even before the
• 8:54
  Rodney King riots of 92, Miami had a lot of that throughout the
• 8:57
  80s. Unfortunately, they killed a
• 8:59
  number of black men. The police did and, and that led
• 9:04
  to, to a lot of danger. I remember my mom was so scared
• 9:08
  for me to start driving when I turned 16 and she wouldn't go to
• 9:12
  sleep when I went out on the weekends.
• 9:15
  In fact, when I I had to call her.
• 9:17
  Their payphones in those days, if you remember.
• 9:19
  Yeah. Yeah, I remember the payphones.
• 9:22
  Are you 55? I am I am I.
• 9:24
  Am I'm 57, so are. You OK?
• 9:26
  OK, OK. Hey, you know what, Brent?
• 9:28
  You must, you must have a little melanin somewhere in there.
• 9:32
  Somebody, someone sprinkled something in the 23andMe 'cause
• 9:36
  you look, you look, you look healthy.
• 9:38
  So it's good. That's good.
• 9:39
  That's good. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're
• 9:43
  well preserved. That's good.
• 9:46
  Not that some of my other brothers aren't, but, but some,
• 9:48
  you know, everybody's got their own journey.
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  So but you know, but, but so, you know, growing up, what I
• 9:58
  would say is that is that no matter how tough things were,
• 10:01
  Brent, they were hopeful and they were optimistic that
• 10:04
  tomorrow could be better than today.
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  And, and for whatever combination of reasons, they
• 10:09
  brought that optimism. And I will say that their
• 10:11
  siblings and my grandmother, particularly my mom's mom, who
• 10:16
  lived to be 102, she was great at sharing not only history, but
• 10:20
  sharing history is related to you.
• 10:21
  And so if I was going through something really difficult, like
• 10:24
  I was in a very bad, bad car accident at 11 and they thought
• 10:27
  I was never going to walk again. In fact, I couldn't walk for
• 10:30
  three years. So imagine not being able to
• 10:32
  walk all of junior high school. And no one in high school has
• 10:35
  ever seen you, Brent, walk, right?
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  And so you show up and no one's ever seen you walk.
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  But you know, my grandmother would just remind me about a
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  whole series of things, including my great grandfather,
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  who was a runaway slave. He had run away from North
• 10:51
  Carolina up to kind of Virginia, DC.
• 10:54
  It kind of hid out in the swamps And then post Civil War came out
• 10:59
  and settled, you know, near Richmond, not exactly Richmond,
• 11:01
  but near Richmond. And and she just you know, she
• 11:05
  would say when hard things get hard, hard people get harder.
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  And and so she would always or she'd say keep on keeping on.
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  So, you know, I would say I grew up, you know, in Miami, very
• 11:17
  global, very diverse, good parents, some tough times, you
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  know, money wise, love sports to death, love football.
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  I grew up as the you. If anyone's a football fan, when
• 11:31
  the you was taking off, that was mine.
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  Dad and I loved. We loved Reggie Jackson and the
• 11:36
  Yankees. We loved Doctor J and the
• 11:39
  Sixers. I love the Cleveland Browns.
• 11:43
  Dad and I together like Staubach and and the Cowboys and I like
• 11:47
  the Raiders and and so I liked. That was love.
• 11:51
  Their. Uniforms.
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  Oh love their uniforms. Loved Lester the Molester, Hayes
• 11:56
  and the rest of those boys. And oh man, Clippy Branch and
• 12:00
  all those guys I love. I loved all of those guys.
• 12:04
  So I love that. I love, I ended up loving books.
• 12:07
  I I ended up becoming a a reader.
• 12:11
  The Hardy Boys, if you remember the Hardy boys Encyclopedia
• 12:16
  Brown. And what was the name of that
• 12:19
  one? Tom Oh my goodness.
• 12:21
  Science fiction 1. Tom Oh, man, I can't even
• 12:25
  remember it, but but but I I was AI was I was a reader and you
• 12:32
  know, that was that was kind of it for me.
• 12:34
  But it was it was a Miami that was undergoing change.
• 12:36
  If anyone's ever seen the movie The Cocaine Cowboys, that was
• 12:39
  kind of while I was growing up, you know, Miami went from kind
• 12:44
  of a sleepy town to we got reimagined because of the Mariel
• 12:49
  boatlift, which fundamentally changed who we were.
• 12:53
  And then the drug wars kind of changed who we were.
• 12:59
  And so by the time I left, Miami wasn't South Beach Miami, but it
• 13:03
  was it was in motion and it was in in transformation.
• 13:06
  Well, and Carlos, I think it's pretty incredible from what you
• 13:10
  just said you went to Harvard, you know, I mean, that's, that's
• 13:16
  an incredible leap of out of out of your neighborhood into
• 13:20
  Harvard. What?
• 13:21
  What was that like? You know what it was, it truly
• 13:25
  was a wonderful experience. Doesn't mean it was perfect,
• 13:28
  but, you know, I learned a lot. I met a lot of good people, a
• 13:31
  lot of people I'm still friends with to this day.
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  I think it was one of those things, Brent, where you go and
• 13:38
  you know, you're, you're nervous and you're wondering whether you
• 13:41
  can fit in, whether you can measure up.
• 13:43
  But as you do, as you stick to it and stick through it.
• 13:47
  And there was a really nice woman from South Texas.
• 13:50
  May she rest in peace, Ronnie Rochelle Garcia.
• 13:52
  I remember she told me her grandmother's used to say, never
• 13:55
  show your pearls to pigs. You know what that meant?
• 13:59
  But it sounded good. You know, don't give up so easy.
• 14:03
  And so that's how I took it. But Ronnie Rochelle, you know,
• 14:07
  she's she's up there somewhere. So but, but, but but met a lot
• 14:12
  of good people, had wonderful professors.
• 14:15
  And one in particular also rest in peace, guy named Martin
• 14:18
  Kilson, who I like to say made me not just an emotional
• 14:22
  optimist, but maybe an intellectual optimist, made me
• 14:24
  feel that even the most difficult situations could be
• 14:27
  thought about sometimes, not always could be resolved, could
• 14:30
  be worked through. And so I really appreciated he
• 14:36
  he would challenge me. He would sometimes encourage me.
• 14:39
  He had a a wicked sense of humor.
• 14:41
  I remember I was short on money and it was cold up there.
• 14:45
  I come from Miami. I didn't have coat and I bet it.
• 14:48
  Felt. Really.
• 14:49
  Cold up there. Oh, man.
• 14:50
  I applied for a scholarship and and I said, Professor Kilson,
• 14:54
  want to thank you so much for writing that letter of
• 14:56
  recommendation for me. I just found out I'm a finalist.
• 14:59
  And without missing a beat, he said, oh, that was for you as a
• 15:04
  president kills him. That's not funny too.
• 15:05
  I said, I need, I need the coat. I need the scholarship, need the
• 15:10
  coat. It's cold out here.
• 15:12
  Don't joke around. That's really stuff.
• 15:14
  So but he had a he had a great sense of humor.
• 15:17
  And so while he was teaching me and challenging me, he also
• 15:21
  brought a level of of warmth and kindness.
• 15:24
  So I it, you know, it was tough, Brent, but I'm man, I'll always
• 15:28
  be grateful for it. I do feel like I learned a lot
• 15:31
  and I learned a lot not only in the classroom, but outside of
• 15:34
  it. So it was.
• 15:34
  Good. I feel like that that must have
• 15:36
  gained you confidence because you excelled.
• 15:39
  I mean, you, you were, you were not just a student there, but
• 15:41
  excelled there. And and then your next step was
• 15:44
  stepping all the way across the other side of the world to to
• 15:47
  Stanford and and you know, like I said in the opening, I mean,
• 15:51
  you, you weren't just a student at Stanford.
• 15:53
  You, you were at the top of the heap at Stanford.
• 15:55
  And I'm curious, at that point in your life, were you thinking
• 16:04
  I'm going to go out and be this rock star attorney or were you
• 16:09
  thinking this is just, this is another stepping stone to
• 16:13
  getting this law degree? What was going on in your mind,
• 16:16
  'cause you not all attorneys go and create a huge media company
• 16:21
  and, and they get in and become, you know, a person who's known
• 16:24
  in the media world. Was that always in the back of
• 16:27
  your mind that you were going to be that guy or were you
• 16:30
  thinking, no, I'm just going to, I'm going to roll in and and I'm
• 16:34
  Stanford educated law. I'm going to be a big time law.
• 16:37
  Guy, you know what, I wasn't sure.
• 16:39
  I mean, my dad had wanted to be a lawyer and, and I don't know
• 16:42
  if you had this experience, Brett, but you obviously can be
• 16:45
  impacted by your parents and guided my dad.
• 16:46
  Was an attorney. Oh, was he OK?
• 16:49
  Yeah. So, so, so, so my dad had wanted
• 16:51
  to be. And.
• 16:53
  And so that, that sat there and there were other people who I
• 16:56
  admire that obviously read about Thurgood Marshall and lots of
• 16:58
  other people. And, and, and for folks like my
• 17:01
  grandmother who had grown up in Mississippi and lived in
• 17:04
  Virginia, so lived in the segregated S, you know, some
• 17:08
  lawyers had, had been incredible freedom fighters.
• 17:10
  And so they had kind of an exalted place in the family.
• 17:15
  And, and so I thought about it. I but, but I, I, I was a copy
• 17:19
  boy at the biggest, fanciest law firm in Miami when I was in high
• 17:23
  school. So I was a guy who bought a lot.
• 17:24
  Gave you a taste of it, yeah. I didn't like it one bit.
• 17:28
  None of the guys seemed to enjoy it.
• 17:30
  They seemed bored out of their skull.
• 17:32
  You know, I bring the mail around.
• 17:34
  They just did not seem to enjoy it.
• 17:36
  So when I was graduating from college, I was not focused on
• 17:39
  going to law school, But I read this great book and it talked
• 17:42
  about all the people who had law degrees but hadn't become
• 17:44
  lawyers. So they talked about your boy
• 17:46
  Scott Turow, the writer. They talked about a guy who
• 17:50
  ended up managing a bunch of baseball teams.
• 17:52
  Sandy Alderson, they talked about.
• 17:56
  John Grisham the novelist, they talked about business leaders,
• 17:59
  political leaders. They talked about there was a
• 18:02
  great sports announcer who Dad and I used to like named Howard
• 18:05
  Cosell, who who was a lawyer. And so so I think that made me
• 18:12
  more open to going to law school, the idea that that yes,
• 18:15
  I might do that. And you know, after law school,
• 18:18
  I didn't go practice law, much of the chagrin of my
• 18:21
  grandmother. And in fact, when she came for
• 18:23
  graduation at the time she was 93, and grandma came and and
• 18:29
  kind of walked over slowly to me and she said, son, I'm so proud
• 18:32
  of you. She said.
• 18:34
  What are you going to do next? And I said, Grandma, I'm going
• 18:36
  to be a consultant. She paused.
• 18:39
  So what are you going to do next, consultant?
• 18:42
  She paused and she said, and, and without missing a beat, she
• 18:46
  turned her head as though I wasn't there.
• 18:47
  She said, because you remember this was your early 90s, So
• 18:50
  consultant unemployed. And she said, I thought the boy
• 18:54
  always did well, Philadelphia. So my mom, I went to go work for
• 18:58
  his big consulting firm named McKenzie, which if you come from
• 19:02
  where I come from, no one knows what that is, but they helped
• 19:05
  companies that were struggling. And my mom's OK, go get your
• 19:10
  offer letter and go show it to grandma and then go to the
• 19:12
  library and photocopy an article so she could show all her
• 19:16
  friends. And grandma nodded her as she
• 19:18
  does nice. She says, when are you taking
• 19:19
  the bar? And I was going to take the bar
• 19:21
  and mom said, oh, now you're taking the bar.
• 19:23
  Oh, yes, you are. She needs that bar receipt for
• 19:25
  her friends. So so I took the bar that summer
• 19:28
  for grandma and but I went into business right away.
• 19:32
  I went to go work at a big consulting firm and then did
• 19:36
  some more but but but I didn't know for sure to your question
• 19:39
  going into law school what exactly I would do, but I was
• 19:42
  hopeful that I would have a little bit of flexibility.
• 19:45
  Well, and you, you created a company that you were able to I
• 19:48
  think you sold a Kaplan and how, how did that, how did that work
• 19:55
  into all the different things that you were doing?
• 19:57
  Yeah, 'cause you wanted to be a pretty good sized company that
• 20:00
  you. And I started with one of my
• 20:03
  sisters and with another friend, and it was called Chiba.
• 20:07
  Chiba. Yeah.
• 20:07
  Yeah. There you go.
• 20:08
  Yeah, We were a college prep company.
• 20:10
  So you know that a lot of big high schools may have two 3000
• 20:14
  kids, but they only have one counselor.
• 20:15
  So a lot of kids never get help with the whole college
• 20:18
  admissions process. And so the Chiba would help kids
• 20:21
  not only figure out what school you go to, but how you're going
• 20:23
  to pay for it. What are these essays are asking
• 20:26
  you for? Who do you ask for a letter of
• 20:27
  recommendation? How do you do well on the test?
• 20:30
  Almost like a virtual college situation, Correct.
• 20:33
  Correct. And we had, back in those days,
• 20:34
  software. We had books, we had workshops.
• 20:37
  We worked in 75 school districts across 22 states.
• 20:40
  I think we worked with about 100,000 students a year well.
• 20:43
  I read about, I was really impressed with it, Carlos, I
• 20:45
  that that, you know, it wasn't just something that you strung
• 20:48
  together. That was a big, nice, important,
• 20:50
  impactful company. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:52
  And you know, I, you know, I'd always loved helping students.
• 20:56
  I, I, I had one of the things I didn't mention is early on, I
• 21:01
  had some challenges in school and I was seeing early on as a
• 21:05
  bad kid and in fact, believe it or not, was kicked out of
• 21:08
  kindergarten. People always say how do you got
• 21:10
  a kid? That is in your Wikipedia, by
• 21:13
  the way. Well, you know, Wikipedia.
• 21:20
  Well, I mean, the name of the podcast is Nightmare success.
• 21:23
  So I, I guess, I guess, you know, things have gone left
• 21:27
  when, when the garden stories and your Wikipedia.
• 21:31
  So back to where I started, I guess.
• 21:34
  But but you know, I ended up really enjoying working with
• 21:39
  other students. And I remember when I was in
• 21:41
  high school, there were these two young men, Keith and
• 21:44
  Jonathan, who were in 7th grade. And my mom was teaching at kind
• 21:47
  of a tough junior high school and they were giving her a
• 21:49
  really hard time. And I came in and visited my
• 21:52
  mom's class one day and I saw those guys and I knew from
• 21:56
  having been a kid who got in trouble a lot himself.
• 21:59
  And sometimes you're causing trouble because you're bored,
• 22:01
  you're insecure, you're lonely, you can't follow what was going
• 22:04
  on. So I ended up talking to the
• 22:06
  guys. I realized that there were some
• 22:08
  things going on and I ended up becoming a little bit of a
• 22:11
  mentor. And I worked at the local
• 22:13
  grocery store. If anyone knows Publix for
• 22:15
  shopping is a pleasure. As for I work, that was the guy
• 22:18
  in the green apron And, and I ended up helping the guys get
• 22:21
  jobs and I just, I, I really liked the opportunity to do for
• 22:25
  them what other people have done for me, which is kind of mentor
• 22:28
  and guide them. And so after college and, and
• 22:32
  grad school, while I went to work in business, I still kind
• 22:35
  of miss the idea of helping young people.
• 22:37
  And I was running a volunteer program in my neighborhood.
• 22:41
  I worked, I lived at the time in, in a very, it was briefly
• 22:46
  the murder capital of the country.
• 22:48
  It's called East Palo Alto, CA If anyone's a Devante Adams fan,
• 22:53
  that's where he's from or, or, or others.
• 22:56
  But, but I just a lot of the young fellas, you know, we're
• 23:03
  having a tough time. They didn't always have
• 23:04
  guidance, even if they made it to college.
• 23:07
  You know, one of my students, Chris, who would go into
• 23:09
  Morehouse, I bumped into him at a Safeway.
• 23:14
  And not that Safeway is bad because again, I worked at
• 23:17
  Publix, but he was the 1st in his family going to school and I
• 23:20
  knew his grandmother and others were counting on him.
• 23:22
  And so for me to walk in Safeway and see him there made me think
• 23:28
  a lot about progress. And there was a young fellow
• 23:31
  named Miguel who I ended up seeing at the Redwood Movie
• 23:34
  Cinema. And Miguel had gotten into UCLA
• 23:37
  and and so I kind of knew that that wasn't exactly the plan
• 23:41
  that his mom and dad had for him.
• 23:42
  So I think even though I was doing this business work with
• 23:45
  big companies during the day at McKenzie, I think my heart was
• 23:49
  still with a lot of these young folks and wanted to be involved.
• 23:53
  Yeah. And so I think Achieva allowed
• 23:55
  me to blend those a little bit. And but it was a challenge,
• 23:59
  that's for sure. It was, it was, it was a lot of
• 24:02
  work. So you jumped out of that, you
• 24:05
  get bought by a big company? What?
• 24:06
  What were you thinking then? You know, I was, I was grateful
• 24:12
  that, that we had succeeded. You know, most startups, you
• 24:16
  know, die, you know, most startups say early on, even the
• 24:21
  biggest ones, Google Glasses or Kwibi or Prinster or any of
• 24:26
  those kinds of things, borders.com, if you remember
• 24:28
  that. But I, you know, I was thinking
• 24:33
  about what to do next. I, I went travelling for a
• 24:36
  little bit, which I really enjoyed.
• 24:38
  I met some nice friends, particularly in Vietnam, if
• 24:42
  anyones been Vietnam been up in the countryside of Vietnam where
• 24:47
  the the mom people spelled with an HR and then a number of of of
• 24:52
  good folks there. And but I came back and was
• 24:56
  thinking about what to do next and got an opportunity to do
• 24:58
  some TV, do some punditry. I got in an argument with a guy
• 25:02
  named Bill O'Reilly. Afterwards his producer David
• 25:05
  said, Hey, will you hang on, Mr. O'Reilly wants to speak to you.
• 25:09
  And I thought, oh shit, because that used to happen in
• 25:12
  elementary school where I'd get in trouble with this.
• 25:14
  We're going. To call you.
• 25:15
  Back right. And you know, he, he said, hey,
• 25:19
  Mr. Watson, you and I may not agree on everything, but I like
• 25:22
  how you do what you do. And I really want to encourage
• 25:24
  you. And sure enough, that really
• 25:26
  accelerated. So I ended up hosting shows CNBC
• 25:29
  and CNN and MSNBC. And so I really ended up getting
• 25:33
  a chance to learn from Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper and
• 25:37
  lots of other folks who who I admire.
• 25:40
  Neil Cavuto, if you're out there, really appreciated him as
• 25:44
  well. Well, it's, it's, it's an
• 25:47
  incredible rise in that world because that's again, not an
• 25:50
  easy world to get into. And, and you know, obviously
• 25:52
  people, they recognize talent and then they reach back out to
• 25:55
  somebody and obviously you were able to take on that talent.
• 25:58
  But I think, you know, from me looking and, and I'm kind of
• 26:02
  done. I feel like I know you, Carlos,
• 26:04
  after the last week or so, but it seems like every step along
• 26:07
  the way, you were just gaining more and more confidence and,
• 26:10
  and it seemed like a natural progression for you to think,
• 26:15
  wow, I could do this myself in a media world and kind of come at
• 26:21
  it in a different way. And the story is it was you and
• 26:25
  your mom at a kitchen table. Is that?
• 26:26
  Correct. Yeah, at the very table I'm at.
• 26:29
  So my mom, again, she was a creative, super creative person.
• 26:34
  Brent, I really believe if she were born today, she would run
• 26:38
  something massive because she was one of the few people who
• 26:41
  was with both a visionary and really good operationally.
• 26:45
  And then I think as a former teacher, she had enormous EQ.
• 26:49
  So she knew that Brent is going to do best with this, Sarah is
• 26:53
  going to do best with that, Right.
• 26:55
  Yeah. And she really, she was very
• 26:57
  thoughtful about it. And, and you would see that.
• 26:59
  And so, you know, I moved out in 2012.
• 27:02
  I was in New York and that's where I'd gone to do TV.
• 27:05
  I'd moved my parents from Miami out to the Bay Area.
• 27:08
  And, and then in 2012, my mom had gotten sick.
• 27:12
  So they've been here about a decade more or less at that
• 27:14
  point. And my mom had gotten sick and,
• 27:18
  and we found out she had late stage cancer.
• 27:20
  And, you know, about a month into taking care of her, we were
• 27:24
  going to hospitals all the time trying to get second opinions,
• 27:27
  you know, hoping against hope. Her mom had lived 102.
• 27:30
  And we'd always joke that she was going to get to a buck and
• 27:32
  1/4 and I was going to get to a buck and a half.
• 27:34
  So we, you know, we weren't ready to, you know, wave the
• 27:39
  flag yet. And so, you know, about a month
• 27:42
  into it, she said, you know, I feel like you're just too young
• 27:44
  to be a doctor's offices all day everyday.
• 27:46
  I want to get you busy. When my mom said that, she
• 27:48
  didn't mean, you know, we're going to think about it.
• 27:50
  We're going to take time. She meant Nope.
• 27:52
  On the way home from the hospital, we're going to go by
• 27:54
  Office Depot. We're going to get a whiteboard.
• 27:56
  We actually put it behind us there.
• 27:58
  And she would talk and I would write and then we would.
• 28:02
  She loved yellow pads. She loved those yellow legal
• 28:04
  pads. And we would just kind of dream.
• 28:08
  She was she was a good thought partner and my dad's a big idea
• 28:12
  guy too. Can't leave him out of here.
• 28:14
  And so we brainstorm the business plan together.
• 28:19
  Everybody put money in we and we came up with the concept for a
• 28:23
  new kind of news and media company.
• 28:25
  Somebody described us as the love child of Vice and The
• 28:28
  Economist. So we wanted to profile what we
• 28:31
  called the new in the next. So if you were a rising star or
• 28:33
  a new trend, a big idea that was kind of a year or two before CNN
• 28:38
  or the Washington Post would cover it, we wanted to talk
• 28:41
  about you. So we would talk about this
• 28:42
  comedian from South Africa before people knew Trevor Noah
• 28:46
  or this bartender before she was AOC or, you know, this young
• 28:49
  high school kid in Saint Louis before he was Jason Tatum or a a
• 28:54
  high school girl with braces before she was Simone Biles or
• 28:57
  this young British singer before she was dual leap.
• 28:59
  But so we we love being that kind of cutting edge place for
• 29:03
  you. And then we started with
• 29:04
  newsletters and and website and over time took the best of our
• 29:08
  reporting and turn them into TV shows for PBS and the BBC and
• 29:12
  and others. We did that with podcasts.
• 29:14
  So we take the same reporting that was in our newsletter, turn
• 29:17
  them into podcasts like The Thread, and then we would.
• 29:20
  We had these great festivals in Central Park called Ozzie Fest.
• 29:24
  Not to be. Walk out the Ozzie.
• 29:25
  It was like a good. Time, it was a good time, it was
• 29:28
  a good time. And and so it really, you know,
• 29:31
  for time there, as you said, from 2012 when we formed the
• 29:37
  company to 2013 when we launched to, you know, 2016 when we
• 29:41
  started diversifying to 2019. But when it really felt like we
• 29:46
  were starting to come into our own and people wanted to buy us,
• 29:49
  we really were starting to to feel like, hey, against all
• 29:53
  odds, maybe we've got something here.
• 29:55
  Yeah, and you were. And Carlos, you know, it's not
• 29:58
  easy doing all that, but you were also an incredible.
• 30:01
  Yeah, the Carlos Watson Show, which, you know, you can see it
• 30:05
  now. It's, it's if you want to look
• 30:07
  up YouTube or whatever. But it was a great show.
• 30:09
  You were a great interviewer. You had a lot of different
• 30:12
  talents. But you know, it's not easy to
• 30:13
  sit down and talk to all the different individuals.
• 30:15
  But you, you had a unique talent to to bring all kinds of
• 30:18
  different individuals on it and create that story.
• 30:21
  But which kind of brings us to you know, everything was going
• 30:28
  great. I.
• 30:29
  Mean. You know what, you had sat down
• 30:30
  at the table to talk to and, and, and white board out and do
• 30:34
  that. You guys had done that.
• 30:35
  You were doing that and and then all of a sudden, you know, this
• 30:42
  huge tidal wave comes in. When that tidal wave came, what
• 30:46
  was it? Was it completely out of the
• 30:49
  blue, or did you think that there was something around the
• 30:51
  edges that was that didn't feel right?
• 30:54
  You know what it it was out of the blue.
• 30:56
  So again, we we started in 2012 and and as you said, it was very
• 31:01
  home grown. My parents literally built the
• 31:02
  furniture for our first office. They hired the interns, they
• 31:06
  made the 1st. That's what I love about this is
• 31:09
  the whole family goes into this thing and puts money in and
• 31:11
  builds things and then it takes off.
• 31:13
  Yeah, yeah. No, we all, we all believed and
• 31:17
  and I think there was a deep hope that this would be around
• 31:20
  for a long time. And that's part of the reason
• 31:21
  why in 2019 when BuzzFeed tried hard to buy us, you know, part
• 31:28
  of it is we didn't fully believe in what they were doing in terms
• 31:31
  of kind of being a click bait empire.
• 31:34
  But but but part of it was we wanted to build something that
• 31:38
  would be around for a long time that would have a fresh and
• 31:40
  independent voice that might elevate under heard for
• 31:44
  underserved voices. The new and the next really
• 31:46
  readily. And frankly, at that time, there
• 31:51
  weren't almost any black-owned mainstream news companies that
• 31:56
  were winning Emmys and submitting for Pulitzers and
• 32:00
  partnering with PBS and BBC and and, and and History Channel and
• 32:06
  A&E and OWN and all those. So I think we were really
• 32:09
  hopeful. And sure enough, from 2019 to
• 32:11
  2021, Brent, I will tell you, it only got better.
• 32:13
  And so we went from a company that BuzzFeed wanted to buy for
• 32:16
  300 million to a company that JP Morgan thought was worth 2
• 32:19
  billion. So over that next 18 months, you
• 32:22
  know, we grew in value 6 or 7X and we were on the verge of
• 32:25
  becoming the first a publicly traded company in Silicon Valley
• 32:30
  history that was black-owned. So there've been lots of
• 32:32
  publicly traded companies, Apple, Tesla, Uber, Airbnb.
• 32:35
  But weirdly enough, I would say there are more black presidents
• 32:38
  than there are black publicly traded companies in Silicon
• 32:41
  Valley, which is very sad, but it's a commentary on how hard it
• 32:45
  is to build a startup out here. And so, so we were just about on
• 32:51
  the edge. We were discussing kind of pre
• 32:53
  IPO rounds. We were getting ready for that
• 32:56
  when the guy who tried to buy us came back and and tried to
• 33:00
  destroy us. And he did it in part by writing
• 33:05
  about a real thing that happened.
• 33:07
  My former colleague pretended to be someone on a reference call,
• 33:12
  but rather than state that as a real thing that happened, Smith
• 33:16
  told that as a story of Ozzy's always been a House of Cards and
• 33:19
  everything about it is BS. And it's media Thera knows.
• 33:22
  And so despite the fact that we had five really healthy,
• 33:25
  thriving daily or weekly newsletters that went out to
• 33:28
  millions if not 10s of millions of people every day, despite the
• 33:31
  fact that we had 14 TV shows on 9 networks, one in Emmy, 10
• 33:35
  podcasts, 2 are in the top 10. Threatened Flashback with four
• 33:39
  festivals, 229 clients including Coke, Target, Walmart.
• 33:44
  We would advertise in our newsletters or TV shows or
• 33:47
  podcasts or festivals. He called U.S. media Theranos.
• 33:52
  And he didn't tell his editors at the Times that he had spent
• 33:56
  six months trying to bias, or that he'd signed an NDA, or that
• 33:59
  he had looked through all of our content, our audience, our
• 34:01
  finances, our team, and. It's a big deal.
• 34:06
  It's a big deal, incredibly unethical.
• 34:08
  And for those who end up not trusting big media, including
• 34:14
  the New York Times, certainly experiences like that make you
• 34:18
  make you suspicious. And so so they ran 7 front page
• 34:23
  stories in September and October of 2021 in seven days, basically
• 34:27
  smearing us, lying and not us making a scene, build a
• 34:31
  narrative. And, and almost all of my
• 34:34
  investors walked away, most of my employees at that point, we
• 34:37
  probably had three or 400 people both full time and freelance.
• 34:45
  And the other thing too, I've, you know, a lot of people
• 34:50
  talking about big media and that I mean, you, you had worked your
• 34:53
  way into being a board member on NPR National Public.
• 34:57
  That's, you know, your status in the world of media had gotten to
• 35:03
  a point where you were a very credible innovate, seen it as
• 35:08
  the next innovation guy. And it's it's always, you know,
• 35:14
  when you see these things happen as as the media can just feed as
• 35:19
  a vulture within that time period, it builds a narrative
• 35:22
  that that is, is really tough to push back on because it creates
• 35:28
  so much momentum. And I think you know from where
• 35:32
  you were, I mean, what was going through your mind when that all
• 35:35
  came out? You know, I was taken aback.
• 35:40
  I would probably was surprised at how quickly people believed
• 35:43
  it. Even people who I'd known most
• 35:46
  of my life, people whose kids I'd taken off to college,
• 35:49
  people's shoes might help them with their parents when they
• 35:52
  were sick, people who I'd help through job transitions, people
• 35:57
  whose kids had worked for me, who I'd written, you know,
• 36:00
  college recommendations for. So it was, it was, even though
• 36:05
  intellectually, you know, it can happen.
• 36:06
  It was disoriented. And I think you know, from the
• 36:11
  very beginning this story was wrong from from when I'm when
• 36:15
  I'm saying wrong like factually, dear Co founder of chief
• 36:21
  operating officer, he impersonated a person, a YouTube
• 36:25
  executive on a on a, on a big call.
• 36:29
  I forget was it JP Morgan or or Goldman Sachs?
• 36:32
  I can't remember which, which, but what I thought was it's,
• 36:36
  it's you can go back and you can see that that he took the blame
• 36:41
  for that and he apologized and he talked about you being
• 36:45
  patient and sympathetic because it was a mental issue that he'd
• 36:49
  struggled with. And he talked about struggling
• 36:52
  with it. And, and you, you didn't let him
• 36:54
  go. You let him work through it.
• 36:56
  You apologized for him. But his story at the very
• 37:01
  beginning is it was him, it was him reaching out, doing things
• 37:05
  that he shouldn't have been doing.
• 37:07
  And anyway, we have a big company, you, you are at the top
• 37:10
  of the helm. But the, the ability to, to
• 37:13
  completely control bad behavior is, is tough.
• 37:16
  You, you can apologize for it. You can make amends for it, but
• 37:19
  somebody can step out of line. And that's what you did.
• 37:21
  You apologize, you said this is what this is.
• 37:24
  But that story was the genesis of of of the DO JS explosion
• 37:31
  into Aussie media. But it's very simple to go back
• 37:35
  and look at what he said at the very beginning.
• 37:37
  Yeah, well, it's a story and how Smith very purposefully smeared
• 37:41
  me and mischaracterized it because he characterized it as
• 37:45
  as a pitch, which already makes it loaded.
• 37:48
  And whereas in truth, we'd already signed the contract with
• 37:52
  Goldman to do the investment. They did reference calls as they
• 37:55
  do. They talked to NBC, to Hulu, to
• 37:57
  TikTok, others. This was the next to last.
• 38:00
  Doesn't make what Samir did right, but it makes it
• 38:02
  fundamentally different. It was a.
• 38:04
  Reference checking on something. That they had already agreed to.
• 38:07
  It was a reference check. And so much so that while
• 38:10
  Goldman was unhappy with it and didn't move forward with that
• 38:15
  deal, two weeks later we did a new deal with them and three
• 38:18
  months later we did yet another deal.
• 38:19
  Which of course they wouldn't have done if they fundamentally
• 38:22
  thought a crime had been committed or they thought that
• 38:24
  there was fraud or they thought that they were dealing with
• 38:26
  dishonest organization. The same is true with Google who
• 38:29
  was involved. They also three months later
• 38:32
  came and offered not 25,000 but to invest 25,000,000 Nazi, which
• 38:37
  they wouldn't have done if they thought that there was like
• 38:39
  fraud going on or what have you. These are super sophisticated
• 38:42
  companies, so. And in Samir's case, he wrote
• 38:44
  not one, not 2, but three confession letters, 6 pages,
• 38:48
  wrote them with his wife, who's a partner at McKenzie, with his
• 38:51
  brother, who's a criminal defense lawyer, with his father,
• 38:53
  who's an engineer, with an outside lawyer.
• 38:56
  And what the prosecutors tried to do, and I didn't appreciate
• 38:59
  how easily they can lie as well, is they tried to say that
• 39:06
  somehow Samir was talked into doing that, even though they had
• 39:09
  all three letters. They had Samir sending notes to
• 39:12
  his father, his brother, his wife, his outside lawyer,
• 39:16
  publicist saying this is what I've worked on.
• 39:18
  Do you like this version? Do you like that?
• 39:19
  And in those versions, he says very clearly I did it and did it
• 39:23
  alone. He apologizes to me.
• 39:25
  It's not a one sentence letter. It's 6 pages.
• 39:30
  It's detailed. And so I think I was probably a
• 39:34
  little bit naive about how easily the tear down machine can
• 39:42
  work. And I think I probably was more
• 39:46
  hopeful about the truth prevailing than than turned out
• 39:51
  to be reality. Well, it's a story about what it
• 39:54
  feels like when you see the United States of America versus
• 39:57
  your name because it's it's there's so many ways to get at.
• 40:03
  An issue like this with the chief operating officer, he, he
• 40:06
  clearly said it was him. He clearly said that he was the
• 40:09
  one that did this, but he became the, the cornerstone of what
• 40:12
  they said. And for those out there that
• 40:15
  there's a thing called a 5K letter.
• 40:18
  And so you can take somebody, let's say this chief operating
• 40:21
  officer and, and you know that you've got, this is a, is a guy
• 40:24
  that you want him to paint a picture for what they need to
• 40:30
  get a conviction of the top guy. And the 5K letter is the maybe
• 40:35
  the most powerful letter that you can give in the justice
• 40:39
  system within the indictment and conviction of someone on a plea
• 40:46
  because it's a downward departure to where you could go
• 40:49
  from 25 years to probation, but you have to give substantial
• 40:53
  assistance. And that's what a 5K but
• 40:56
  substantial assistance means conviction.
• 41:00
  So in, in, in a lot of these cases, what a lot of people
• 41:03
  don't realize is that when you get into these big cases like
• 41:07
  this, they look for people that can tell the story and the story
• 41:11
  is what they is their narrative. And in this case, the story had
• 41:17
  to be that you told him to do this and you told him how to do
• 41:20
  it so that he could get a substantial depart.
• 41:24
  But the only way that he wins in it is to get a conviction of
• 41:29
  Carlos Watson. And I only reason I bring that
• 41:31
  up is Carlos, I think a lot of people don't understand how that
• 41:34
  works. You know, how do these, how do
• 41:36
  you, these people who are a lot of times in these companies end
• 41:40
  up changing stories and their story changes so much that it's
• 41:44
  the IT appears to be the exact story that the prosecutor needs
• 41:48
  to tell to the jury. And it didn't start out that
• 41:51
  way. You, you it's, it's crazy.
• 41:53
  And again, even as someone who went to law school, I did not
• 41:58
  appreciate how our system works. There's a terrific book by a
• 42:03
  Harvard Law School professor named Alexander Natapoff called
• 42:05
  Snitching, and she talks about the fact that one of the reasons
• 42:09
  that the Justice Department wins 99.6% of the cases.
• 42:14
  I'll say that again, 99.6%. In the United States of.
• 42:17
  America, the United States of America.
• 42:18
  So 72,000 people are prosecuted every year and less than 300 get
• 42:24
  to go home. So 71,700 go to prison in one
• 42:28
  form or another. It's insane.
• 42:30
  And, and part of the way that happens is this whole system of
• 42:34
  getting people who've done wrong to try and point the finger
• 42:38
  usually at someone more senior, whether or not they did anything
• 42:41
  or not. And it happened so much and it's
• 42:44
  now become so built into their system that there's another book
• 42:49
  by a current judge, one of the pre eminent federal judges named
• 42:53
  Jed Rakoff called Why Innocent people plead Guilty.
• 42:56
  And and so it is a it's a crazy system.
• 43:01
  I think it leads to a scenario in which, you know, we're taught
• 43:04
  by movies and TV that maybe there are one or two innocent
• 43:07
  people in jail, but not more than that.
• 43:09
  Those people will be rescued by some documentary or podcast 20
• 43:12
  years from now. The movie, The Hurricane.
• 43:16
  But the truth of the matter is my limited experience tells me
• 43:19
  there's way more. And that and that even though it
• 43:22
  frustrates people and they're going to hear it as a political
• 43:24
  statement, I don't mean it to be when President-elect Trump says
• 43:28
  that we have got a lawless system and that our justice
• 43:34
  system is not delivering justice, I would encourage even
• 43:37
  people who didn't vote for him to pause because he is right.
• 43:41
  You you would be shocked by the amount of wrongful prosecutions,
• 43:47
  false charges, hiding evidence, covering up, giving people these
• 43:54
  5K letters so they will lie about someone who's actually
• 43:57
  innocent. You.
• 43:59
  Talk about the 5K letter. If Carlos, I turn that around
• 44:02
  and I say that Carlos Watson went to your chief operating
• 44:05
  officer and I said I need you to say this and say it this way or
• 44:11
  you don't get whatever I'm going to give you.
• 44:12
  You know what that's called? It's called witness tampering.
• 44:15
  Right, right, right. But it's but you can't do that
• 44:19
  on that side. They'll put you, they'll give
• 44:22
  you another charge. But on this side, you have the,
• 44:24
  the, the deck stack to where that 5K letter is a power tool
• 44:29
  to create the extended narrative that they need to, to be able to
• 44:33
  bring the people in to tell the story.
• 44:35
  So I, I just think it's interesting how when you, when
• 44:38
  you can actually flip something on the side and, and that you
• 44:41
  can call it witness tampering or you can call it substantial
• 44:44
  cooperation. Well, you know, I, I, I think
• 44:47
  this system is so dangerous also, not just the way it's set
• 44:50
  up, but because the people in it have, have in many cases, not
• 44:54
  every case, but in many cases have been brainwashed to believe
• 44:57
  that it's fair and have been brainwashed.
• 44:59
  They call themselves public servants and, and they genuinely
• 45:03
  believe that. And, and they believe that
• 45:05
  despite the 99.6% number, in fact, they think of the 99.6%
• 45:10
  number as proof that they're doing a good job.
• 45:12
  They're really. Good at it.
• 45:14
  And I think, Carlos, that is such a strong point to this
• 45:17
  point when you walk in a courtroom and you're one of the
• 45:21
  very few that walk in a courtroom, you know, I think
• 45:23
  it's 97% of the people indicted. They plea for those very, very
• 45:27
  few that walk in the courtroom. When you walk in that courtroom,
• 45:30
  it's supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, that
• 45:32
  everybody knows that they've seen the shows actually what it
• 45:35
  is. It is guilty until proven
• 45:37
  innocent. And the reason why is once
• 45:39
  you've, once you've gotten to that point to step into the
• 45:41
  courtroom, you've had months, if not years of a narrative told
• 45:46
  about you in public that has poisoned the well of the jury
• 45:50
  system of those peers that are going to hear your, your story
• 45:53
  and your defense. Secondly, when you walk into
• 45:57
  that courtroom, those people assume what you just said.
• 46:00
  They wouldn't have spent all this time and money to bring,
• 46:02
  bring this person here unless he's absolutely done something
• 46:05
  wrong. And, and you know, God bless
• 46:08
  them for we're doing the, the goodwill of the people to, to
• 46:12
  get this taken care of. And and so the the heavy lift
• 46:17
  that somebody has a Carlos Watson to walk into that room to
• 46:22
  believe that that all sides are fair.
• 46:27
  How many months had you already gone through it?
• 46:29
  You know, I at that point they arrested and indicted not only
• 46:35
  me, but my company, which is an indicted company because they
• 46:39
  normally don't indict companies. Like they didn't indict Enron
• 46:42
  back in the day. They didn't indict Theranos or
• 46:44
  The Weinstein Company or FTX. So it's truly one.
• 46:48
  Of those, companies were indicted.
• 46:50
  And remember, I was indicted not where I live and work in
• 46:53
  California. I was literally indicted on the
• 46:55
  other side of the country in Brooklyn, where I had no office,
• 46:59
  no employees, no executives, no major clients, no major
• 47:04
  investors. The only thing I had was a
• 47:06
  competitor who had wanted to buy me.
• 47:08
  And when he couldn't buy me, he wanted to destroy me, who
• 47:10
  literally lives within blocks of the prosecutors and the judge.
• 47:13
  They all live, you know, in the same, in the same relative area.
• 47:18
  It's, it's, it's incredible how brazen this system is.
• 47:23
  And you know, there's the phrase gaslighting couldn't be more
• 47:28
  true. Because while they are out there
• 47:31
  breaking every rule and breaking every law, getting access to
• 47:36
  your confidential attorney-client privilege
• 47:38
  information when they shouldn't, Selectively prosecuting you,
• 47:44
  lying about you and smearing you so that you're not presumed
• 47:48
  innocent until proven guilty. Playing games with your jury so
• 47:53
  that I ended up with a jury that was anchored by 7 white men and
• 47:58
  no black men. Like, how is that even possible
• 48:01
  in Brooklyn? That's crazy.
• 48:03
  Like, think about what had to happen in order for that to be
• 48:06
  true. Like literally like think about
• 48:08
  what had to happen so that I could have a jury of my peers in
• 48:13
  Brooklyn. I didn't say like in Idaho, I
• 48:16
  said in Brooklyn, NY, and there literally aren't no black men.
• 48:21
  How could you be in Biggie's backyard and literally there are
• 48:25
  no black men? It's insane.
• 48:27
  But that's part of how that works.
• 48:30
  And again, if you were to talk to the three white prosecutors
• 48:34
  on my case, guy named Dylan Stern, woman named Jillian
• 48:37
  Tasker, another guy named Jonathan Siegel, they're all
• 48:40
  young, rich, white. They would tell you earnestly
• 48:45
  that they're public servants, that they're doing the right
• 48:48
  thing, that this Carlos guy is a bad guy, that he not only was
• 48:52
  not telling the truth then, he's still not telling the truth now.
• 48:55
  And if you pause him, they'd say, but tell us again why you
• 48:58
  prosecuted him on the other side of the country when he had
• 49:00
  nothing to do. They'd say, that's besides the
• 49:02
  point. We'll talk about that later.
• 49:04
  And then he said to them, but wait, where's all this fraud?
• 49:07
  Like, does he have mansions? Does he have fancy cars?
• 49:10
  Is he a Swiss band? No, he actually put money in.
• 49:13
  He never took it out. He was the lowest paid guy in
• 49:14
  the company. Even the FB is forensic
• 49:17
  accountant says that he put in north of $5,000,000.
• 49:20
  They'd say it yet besides the point.
• 49:22
  We don't really want that you'd say well, what about Samir's
• 49:26
  three confession letters. Let's not put those in and so
• 49:28
  it's a really they have lost all sense I as best I can tell of of
• 49:36
  the pursuit of justice and instead it's become how do we
• 49:39
  win no matter what. How do we become part of that
• 49:42
  99.6%? And again, when President Trump
• 49:45
  says, and I realized that, you know, half the country are big
• 49:48
  fans and half the country aren't.
• 49:49
  But I really encourage those who aren't just to pause and hear
• 49:53
  the message. Even if you can't embrace the
• 49:56
  messenger. He is not wrong.
• 49:59
  We do not have the system that you see in the movies and on TV.
• 50:04
  And it's not slightly different. It's dramatically different.
• 50:07
  And it would break your heart if you saw what was happening
• 50:11
  there, and worse yet, if you heard the people who run it talk
• 50:14
  about it, because they pretend as though it's the system we see
• 50:19
  on movies and in TV. I'm curious, Carlos, as you were
• 50:23
  going through this, did they come to you with a plea
• 50:26
  agreement? They didn't it, it's clear that
• 50:29
  they wanted to make an example of me.
• 50:33
  And, and even that the fact that, as you said, 97% of the
• 50:37
  time they're doing pleas, even for the roughly 2000 people a
• 50:42
  year who go to trial, 9899% of them get offered a plea deal.
• 50:48
  They wanted to send a message with me and, and to be clear,
• 50:54
  I'm innocent and I, and, and so I didn't want to have that
• 50:57
  conversation. But the right thing, the fair
• 51:00
  thing to do would be if you're having that conversation with
• 51:04
  98% of the other people is to have that conversation as well.
• 51:07
  And so again, I, I hope that these next couple of years are
• 51:14
  going to be a time of, of reinvention and, and overhaul of
• 51:20
  our justice system because it's, it's hard to even call it a
• 51:23
  justice system. And I don't know.
• 51:25
  I don't know that it's delivering the justice that most
• 51:28
  Americans would hope that it would.
• 51:30
  I, I feel like that we're in a time and a period that might be
• 51:34
  the most we've ever talked about the justice system.
• 51:38
  And, and part of it could be because of, of President Trump
• 51:42
  going through, you know, the four cases that he has.
• 51:44
  And, and so there's been more of a spotlight on what is this?
• 51:49
  Well, how does it work? What, who are these people of,
• 51:52
  how does, how does the process work?
• 51:55
  But I, I do think that, you know, we have reached a point in
• 51:59
  time where there's enough conversation of, of intelligent
• 52:06
  people knowing that being the United States of America, we
• 52:10
  should have a better system. We should, we should have a
• 52:12
  system that more people can believe in to believe that
• 52:17
  justice can be found. You know, I, I, I'm talking
• 52:20
  through this, Carlos. I, I really want listeners to,
• 52:24
  to hear that. I mean, think about what 99.6%
• 52:27
  means. Like my phone doesn't work 99.6%
• 52:30
  of the time, right? Your planes don't land on time
• 52:32
  99. But like that sounds like a
• 52:35
  number out of the old Soviet Union, right?
• 52:37
  But seriously, like that's that for a system that's built on
• 52:42
  innocent until proven guilty, like think about how often it
• 52:45
  has to be. It's the equivalent of a human
• 52:48
  being being 900 lbs. Like, that's just, I don't care
• 52:52
  how you cut it. That's not healthy.
• 52:55
  It's it's not healthy. It's way outside the norm.
• 52:58
  And to pretend that everything is OK is, you know, should,
• 53:04
  should should worry us all. Because while it may be Brent
• 53:06
  today or Carlos today, it could just as easily be you or could
• 53:11
  be your neighbor. And that's why we named the film
• 53:13
  Whose Son Is Next. Well, and let's talk about that
• 53:16
  a little bit because you have a lot of people on this film, the
• 53:19
  two-part film that you have and it's it's it's in depth and it's
• 53:22
  powerful and you have a lot of experts that come in there and
• 53:27
  they talk about it's not just because it's Carlos, it's
• 53:30
  because of this case, the way that it was done.
• 53:33
  And you know, I think that can't I don't know if you feel
• 53:39
  comfortable in talking about that.
• 53:41
  There there is more issues in this case that go beyond the
• 53:47
  prosecutors. It it bleeds into the judge of
• 53:51
  someone who who happens to be a very wealthy judge.
• 53:53
  And I don't take that, you know, God bless him for that.
• 53:56
  He's he's done well for himself. But as he came in as a judge, he
• 54:00
  is well invested in the companies that were perceived to
• 54:05
  be the victims in this case. And there was never I, I believe
• 54:12
  a, a conversation recusal that that at least from his side that
• 54:15
  that ever came up. In fact it was the opposite.
• 54:19
  At the very first pre trial hearing he affirmatively said I
• 54:23
  have no conflicts. Only for us to find out later on
• 54:26
  that he had literally, literally 10s of millions of dollars in
• 54:33
  funds that owned Goldman, Google, Live Nation and JP
• 54:38
  Morgan. All of which were folks in our
• 54:40
  case. Not only did he own millions in
• 54:43
  those companies, he was a Co investor.
• 54:45
  So he took his money and his funds, money and their money and
• 54:49
  together they would invest in different companies over 18
• 54:52
  times. He is his best friend.
• 54:55
  The guy who introduced him at his confirmation hearing is the
• 54:58
  guy who was in charge of the investigation of Samir's phone
• 55:01
  call. You know, another good friend is
• 55:04
  the guy who stands to get the biggest restitution check.
• 55:07
  You know, he still sits on the board.
• 55:09
  And so it really, you know, in a world in which earlier this
• 55:15
  summer, that same circuit that covers New York, the Second
• 55:18
  Circuit said that another judge whose wife, not even the judge
• 55:22
  himself, his wife had had $15,000 off.
• 55:26
  He had strolled it before the trial was fully under way.
• 55:29
  They still said, hey, too much. It gives the appearance of of
• 55:35
  conflict and even the appearance is too much.
• 55:37
  And so you got to throw out the decision and take the judge off.
• 55:42
  And so we're saying, if that's true for 15 grand, what's true
• 55:46
  for 30 million or for 3 billion, right?
• 55:50
  And so we have pursued that and pursuing it all the way to the
• 55:53
  Second Circuit. And it wasn't just that it, it
• 55:56
  really, you know, Harvard Law professor Ron Sullivan, who's
• 55:59
  considered an innocence icon, some people say he's helped
• 56:02
  overturn more wrongful convictions than anyone in
• 56:04
  history and, and helped lead my trial, said it was the worst
• 56:08
  railroading he's seen in 30 years.
• 56:10
  So that's a lot to say. You know, one of our other
• 56:14
  lawyers was a retired judge. She's a decorated Marine, a
• 56:18
  major in the Marine Shannon Price and called the judge, the
• 56:22
  4th prosecutor said that the way that he excluded witnesses, we
• 56:26
  asked for 30 witnesses. He only gave us three.
• 56:28
  He allowed the other side 25, so he wouldn't let Ozzie investors
• 56:31
  testify, Ozie lawyers testify Ozzie executives.
• 56:35
  We'd had the CFO of the New York Yankees testify that not only
• 56:38
  had we not inflated our revenue, if anything we had understated
• 56:42
  it to investors. So they were getting the deal,
• 56:44
  the steal, and we wouldn't let them testify.
• 56:48
  Excluded evidence. We submitted almost 800 pieces
• 56:51
  of evidence. We only got in maybe 25 S.
• 56:54
  Think about all the confession letters.
• 56:55
  Think about all the emails between Samir and the woman he
• 56:58
  seemed to be having an affair with.
• 57:00
  You know, think about the reports from the former Yankee
• 57:03
  CFO that said that we certainly weren't inflating revenue.
• 57:06
  If anything, we were probably understating it.
• 57:08
  All those things didn't get in. So we definitely didn't feel.
• 57:12
  I didn't feel, and I know that Professor Sullivan and Judge
• 57:14
  Fryson didn't feel like we got a fair trial.
• 57:17
  And so it's one of the issues that we have brought to the
• 57:20
  Second Circuit. We've said, no matter what you
• 57:23
  believe about my innocence or guilt, this can't be the way.
• 57:26
  You have to feel like every person at least has a shot when
• 57:30
  they go in. Not that the judge made his
• 57:33
  fortune off of these four companies who are coming in to
• 57:36
  testify. And now he's going to do what
• 57:38
  he's going to help them. Or is he going to hurt though,
• 57:40
  right? Like, you know, he literally
• 57:42
  made his money off of Google and Coleman and now he's overseeing
• 57:45
  a trial with them. So that's, I think it's going to
• 57:49
  be an important decision. And I'm, I, you know, I only can
• 57:52
  pray that that they will, they'll do the right thing.
• 57:56
  Well, I, I want to take a break here because when we get come
• 57:59
  back, I want to talk about being in that trial room coming out
• 58:04
  just like it does with the, with the jury and, and, and hearing
• 58:08
  what you heard and then what happened next.
• 58:12
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  Nightmare Success. And I also want to recognize
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  group devoted to people navigating the white collar
• 59:09
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  prisoners.org. That's prisoners.org.
• 59:30
  So Carlos, when all this is going down and you know, when
• 59:34
  you're you're getting thrown left and right in this
• 59:38
  courtroom, not getting what you're supposed to be getting,
• 59:42
  If you watch the documentary, you can feel it.
• 59:44
  You can see it time and time again.
• 59:48
  It's ruled against you. Or he just gavels it down and
• 59:51
  says no. I mean, he's shaking his head
• 59:54
  one way. There were all kinds of things
• 59:57
  that happened in the courtroom. What what were you thinking as
• 59:59
  this was going on and and being the guy?
• 1:00:03
  You know, I'm my grandmother's son.
• 1:00:10
  And so, you know, part of my focus was just to keep competing
• 1:00:15
  no matter what. I realized that it was skewed
• 1:00:17
  that he was excluding our witnesses, excluding our
• 1:00:20
  evidence that he literally was objecting for the other side.
• 1:00:23
  So they wouldn't even object because he would do it for them.
• 1:00:26
  And sometimes he would object and then overrule himself, which
• 1:00:29
  was was basically almost, it would have been comedy if it
• 1:00:32
  wasn't real. You know, he would, the
• 1:00:35
  prosecutors wouldn't do a good job of asking questions.
• 1:00:37
  So he literally would start taking over the asking of the
• 1:00:40
  questions for them. You know, he handed out the
• 1:00:43
  wrong jury instructions. So he literally dramatically
• 1:00:46
  lowered what it took to find me guilty.
• 1:00:49
  Basically, he told the jury, if you find that there's been any
• 1:00:53
  misrepresentation at all at Ozzie, whether Mr. Watson did it
• 1:00:57
  or not, you can find him guilty. Well, think about that standard,
• 1:01:01
  Brett. Like.
• 1:01:02
  It's quite a standard, but you know, that's the scary thing
• 1:01:04
  about conspiracy of how the DOJ can wrap around people in
• 1:01:07
  conspiracy cases. You know, you can be walking by
• 1:01:10
  something and you can be a part of a conspiracy.
• 1:01:11
  There's, there's, I've, it makes me think about that.
• 1:01:16
  There's, there's several guys that I've interviewed on this
• 1:01:19
  show that are from Michigan and they, they were wrongly
• 1:01:22
  convicted of murder. And the Wayne County Integrity
• 1:01:25
  Unit knew that they had just felt like they'd put too many
• 1:01:28
  people away. And I forget how it's, it's only
• 1:01:32
  been I think four years or five years and they've released 36 of
• 1:01:37
  the last count of people that were wrongly convicted of
• 1:01:40
  murder. So these things can happen and,
• 1:01:43
  and continue to happen and catch momentum on themselves.
• 1:01:46
  But when you're talking about the jury, I, I thought one thing
• 1:01:49
  that really caught my attention was there was a juror, a black
• 1:01:53
  woman who was interviewed on the show, who said that she was
• 1:01:56
  wanting to profess your innocence and was fighting back
• 1:02:03
  and forth with this feeling of being the the only person in the
• 1:02:07
  room. But she also said she got really
• 1:02:09
  confusing instructions from the judge that made her feel like
• 1:02:15
  she just was overwhelmed by the moment.
• 1:02:19
  And she said if she could have gone back and she feels horrible
• 1:02:23
  and this is this is one person that would have changed the
• 1:02:26
  whole thing. And and again, it it it's in
• 1:02:29
  order to find someone guilty, it's got to be unanimous
• 1:02:31
  verdicts. So all you need is is 1 and who
• 1:02:33
  knows? Who knows how many other people
• 1:02:35
  felt the same way and just didn't say.
• 1:02:37
  It didn't say anything. And and so she said this out
• 1:02:40
  loud, and CNN reported it in the moment.
• 1:02:42
  So after the conviction, the judge went around and asked,
• 1:02:45
  does everyone agree? Apparently, this was her first
• 1:02:48
  time ever being on the jury, so she didn't have a sense of what
• 1:02:51
  she could do and not do. And there was a really, frankly,
• 1:02:56
  unsettling racial dynamic. The seven white guys, she said,
• 1:02:59
  would have lunch every day. And even before I put on my
• 1:03:01
  case, according to her, would say, he's guilty, you know, he's
• 1:03:05
  guilty. And she would say to them, you
• 1:03:07
  know, that's not the way this is supposed to work and you
• 1:03:10
  certainly aren't supposed to be talking about it out loud.
• 1:03:13
  And she finds herself in a jury room with some 6 foot, 4 inch
• 1:03:17
  guy standing over her and her words going nuclear, telling her
• 1:03:20
  you have to convict him. And so I just again, I know that
• 1:03:25
  the movies have us believing that everything runs smoothly,
• 1:03:30
  fairly. Nobody looks online.
• 1:03:33
  The judge doesn't wink at anyone, The prosecutors don't
• 1:03:36
  wink at anyone, that it's a fair jury of your peers.
• 1:03:39
  But I just, you know, what I keep saying to people is it's
• 1:03:44
  possible that I'm a bullshitter, right?
• 1:03:46
  It's possible I'm just a really talented bullshitter who's just
• 1:03:50
  continuing on it, just going down the rabbit hole.
• 1:03:54
  But I said to them, but, but stop for a second on the small
• 1:03:58
  chance that I'm not. If I'm not, and it turns out I'm
• 1:04:02
  the guy I've always been, which is a guy who builds things,
• 1:04:05
  creates things, hires inclusively, wins 2 Emmys,
• 1:04:09
  submits for multiple Pulitzers, you know, really build something
• 1:04:13
  that even the people who are trying to take me down wanted to
• 1:04:15
  buy for more than 1/4 billion dollars, right?
• 1:04:19
  They didn't think it was BS then, right?
• 1:04:23
  If I'm not, then what does that say?
• 1:04:25
  Like if they can do this to me that easily, like how many other
• 1:04:28
  people? And I remind people that when
• 1:04:31
  the first folks came forward and said that priests in the
• 1:04:35
  Catholic Church were abusing them, it sounded like it was
• 1:04:39
  made-up and people didn't believe them.
• 1:04:41
  And how many years did it take? And how many more people
• 1:04:44
  suffered because of that? And the number of people who
• 1:04:47
  said that they had been sexually assaulted, Like, how many people
• 1:04:52
  had to say it before there was some level of honesty about it?
• 1:04:56
  Or, you know, how many black men had to say, no, I, I wasn't
• 1:05:00
  resisting arrest. They beat the shit out of me for
• 1:05:04
  no good reason before people finally said oh that's what it
• 1:05:08
  looks like. It looks like someone putting a
• 1:05:11
  knee on your neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds while three other
• 1:05:15
  officers watch and stand guard and 17 other people literally
• 1:05:19
  take take video of it like that's.
• 1:05:23
  And so I just keep saying, guys, it is possible, but it's also
• 1:05:26
  possible not. And if they can do it that
• 1:05:29
  easily, to me, who's fortunate to have a family that loves them
• 1:05:32
  is fortunate to still have a relatively sound mind and body.
• 1:05:36
  And I love the support that your, your sisters have given
• 1:05:39
  and, and they're in the, the documentary and, and, and you're
• 1:05:43
  surrounded by people who really love you.
• 1:05:45
  And that's, that's, that's, I know that gives you strength.
• 1:05:47
  But I'm curious too, because a lot of people I've not talked to
• 1:05:51
  somebody who has taken the stand on your own defense in a, in a
• 1:05:56
  case like this. What?
• 1:05:56
  What was that like, Carlos? You know, it was, it was
• 1:06:02
  something that I thought was right to do, even though
• 1:06:05
  obviously you have a right, not, you know, to remain silent,
• 1:06:08
  right? A lot of people don't.
• 1:06:10
  Yeah. But I'm innocent.
• 1:06:12
  And I wanted to tell my story. And my hope was that the jury
• 1:06:16
  would start to kind of go, yeah, why is he being prosecuted in
• 1:06:20
  Brooklyn when he's in California?
• 1:06:23
  And how are they calling this company a fraud when frauds are
• 1:06:27
  like a fake blood machine, not a company that's like winning
• 1:06:30
  Emmys and getting nominated for Pulitzers and you know, has
• 1:06:34
  newsletters that's going out to million in TV shows you can
• 1:06:37
  still run. It's real, right?
• 1:06:39
  And, and has not 2 clients, but 229 clients.
• 1:06:43
  And these are super sophisticated clients.
• 1:06:45
  And this is a guy who had a board of directors.
• 1:06:48
  So it's not like he was doing on his own.
• 1:06:49
  And he had three really expensive law firms that are
• 1:06:52
  supposed to make sure that fundraising is going well.
• 1:06:54
  And he had four investment banks, and he hired multiple
• 1:06:58
  accounting firms. And so if, you know, my hope was
• 1:07:02
  that they would see that. But, you know, as you probably
• 1:07:05
  saw in the documentary, you know, the judge, you know,
• 1:07:08
  interrupted me regularly, regularly essentially rephrased
• 1:07:13
  my statements, would make faces behind me while I was on the
• 1:07:17
  stand, put his hand in his head, bump his knee, make it clear his
• 1:07:21
  court reporter did the same thing.
• 1:07:22
  My lawyers had to ask that she'd not be allowed to do that again.
• 1:07:27
  Interrupted the opening and closing statements.
• 1:07:30
  Of your. Attorneys, I mean, think about
• 1:07:32
  that, even those of us who've watched movies, have you ever
• 1:07:35
  seen an opening statement interrupted and a closing
• 1:07:39
  statement? And and just to be really clear,
• 1:07:41
  Brett, they weren't just interrupting coughing, They were
• 1:07:45
  interrupting essentially saying Harvard Law Professor Ron
• 1:07:49
  Sullivan, I think twice named teacher of the year at Yale when
• 1:07:52
  he taught there and and maybe once at Harvard.
• 1:07:55
  You're wrong. I mean, think about what you
• 1:08:00
  were saying to the jury at that point, right on top of the fact
• 1:08:03
  that you have said it open court.
• 1:08:05
  You've called Ron and Shannon and others crazy.
• 1:08:09
  You've called them half baked. You've said to their own
• 1:08:12
  interns, I hope you're not learning from Professor Sullivan
• 1:08:15
  because he's setting a bad example.
• 1:08:17
  Like even if you genuinely believe that, who actually is
• 1:08:23
  brazen enough to say that out loud?
• 1:08:25
  And so, Brett, you know, one of the questions a number of
• 1:08:29
  friends have asked, they've said, of course, really atypical
• 1:08:31
  for someone before sentencing to speak this openly.
• 1:08:34
  And I've said, look, the reality is the way that this judge air
• 1:08:39
  committee behaved, it was the brutality was so casual that
• 1:08:44
  this wasn't the first time he did, it just wasn't.
• 1:08:47
  And I kept saying that to Ron. I said, Ron, if he can shush you
• 1:08:51
  like you're a little boy, if he can call you crazy and half
• 1:08:54
  baked, if he can object for the other side, you know, dozens of
• 1:08:58
  times, if he can just casually exclude our witnesses and
• 1:09:02
  evidence. We have one witness who flew
• 1:09:04
  from Asia to testify. Brent, he made this guy fly in
• 1:09:07
  three. I mean, think about that.
• 1:09:09
  You schedule, you fly in from Asia from Japan to to New York,
• 1:09:13
  so not New Jersey to New York, Japan to New York.
• 1:09:16
  You go back because they won't let you testify.
• 1:09:18
  You fly back in a second time. He ends court early.
• 1:09:22
  So you can't testify thinking that you won't come back a third
• 1:09:25
  time. And then you come like, like,
• 1:09:27
  think about that, right? And so it is.
• 1:09:31
  And what I've said is not only am I innocent, do I want to
• 1:09:37
  prove my innocence? I said but, but, but you know
• 1:09:40
  their names. Like there's a young kid named
• 1:09:42
  Rashawn Russell who's if you, if anybody looks him up, he's a
• 1:09:45
  young 20 something kid. They basically did what they're
• 1:09:48
  doing to me to him. He's 20 something, first in his
• 1:09:51
  family to go to college, went to Babson, came out I'm sure, made
• 1:09:55
  his whole family proud, got a job at JP Morgan and Credit
• 1:09:58
  Suisse. Like a lot of young 20
• 1:10:00
  somethings. He was trading Bitcoin when the
• 1:10:02
  Bitcoin went down. Rather than call it a mistake.
• 1:10:05
  All of a sudden this black guy is committing a crime, right?
• 1:10:08
  And now all of a sudden he's facing 10 years or something.
• 1:10:11
  And what I'm saying is someone's got to speak up because if we
• 1:10:18
  keep allowing people this level of abuse, they will only become
• 1:10:24
  more and more emboldened. And so I'm clear that they will
• 1:10:31
  literally listen to what I'm saying and not be self
• 1:10:34
  reflective at all and not ask the question, is 99.6% a healthy
• 1:10:39
  thing? Is it healthy that we put not
• 1:10:43
  just our thumb, but our whole body on the scale and skewed it?
• 1:10:46
  You know, bad jury instructions, unfair jury, You know the whole
• 1:10:50
  thing. They're not going to do that.
• 1:10:52
  They're going to think, how do we hammer this guy and punish
• 1:10:55
  this guy harder? But again, they don't realize
• 1:10:58
  that I'm the great grandson of a runaway.
• 1:11:01
  And well, I mean, I think it's, I think it's incredibly
• 1:11:03
  inspiring and, and that you are doing this and being a voice for
• 1:11:09
  people who, who are afraid to speak out.
• 1:11:11
  You know, it's a lot of courage on your part, Carlos, to, to
• 1:11:14
  take this time. I mean, you're a couple of weeks
• 1:11:18
  away from learning. I know you got appeals and
• 1:11:21
  everything else, but you've already experienced the day that
• 1:11:26
  they come out and the jury comes out and they give the verdict of
• 1:11:32
  guilty. Everyone's assumption usually in
• 1:11:37
  a white collar situation is, is that you're allowed to go home,
• 1:11:41
  get your affairs in order. You know you have time.
• 1:11:48
  You were immediately remanded to in custody.
• 1:11:53
  I can't even, I, I, I don't know what.
• 1:11:56
  I guess you could just tell me what, what, what when the world
• 1:11:59
  was going through your mind when all of that happened.
• 1:12:01
  Yeah, You know, it's surreal. You know, they, they, they, you
• 1:12:06
  know, first, as, as this Judge Eric committee regularly did, he
• 1:12:11
  started with a what sounds like a reasonable position.
• 1:12:15
  Oh, I can't imagine remanding him.
• 1:12:17
  And then he would always say unless.
• 1:12:19
  And this would be his cue to, you know, his protegees on the
• 1:12:22
  prosecutor side, unless AB and C is true.
• 1:12:24
  And then, of course, they would say AB and C as though it hadn't
• 1:12:27
  all been prepped. And it was kind of kabuki
• 1:12:30
  theater. And all of a sudden, surprise,
• 1:12:32
  surprise, they say exactly the magic words.
• 1:12:34
  And before you know what, they're taking off my jacket,
• 1:12:36
  taking off my belt, taking off my shoelaces.
• 1:12:39
  And, and that's happening. And so, you know, there's not a
• 1:12:48
  lot that is good and healthy there.
• 1:12:53
  And again, I'm not a martyr, but I also know being inside that
• 1:12:57
  I'm not the only one. I mean, I was in a facility
• 1:13:00
  where three people they say died, you know, inside everybody
• 1:13:03
  says murdered. But three people think about
• 1:13:06
  that. Three people in five weeks.
• 1:13:08
  How many people in 50 weeks, right?
• 1:13:11
  Like that's that. That's quite a very.
• 1:13:13
  Dangerous place. And you know, I talked about
• 1:13:15
  this before we got on the interview.
• 1:13:18
  It's very transitory. Somebody can be there for a DWI
• 1:13:21
  or they can be there for murder. And it's very few people in
• 1:13:26
  solitary. They put people in gender
• 1:13:27
  population and you're just hoping that you don't get strung
• 1:13:31
  into an event that happens in any second that can something
• 1:13:35
  that can happen. I was there for six days and it
• 1:13:37
  was, it was, I felt like it was the bottom of the bottom of the
• 1:13:40
  barrel. And I told you I couldn't wait
• 1:13:42
  to get back to Leavenworth, which is a very strange
• 1:13:44
  statement. You were there for five weeks
• 1:13:48
  and, and I think I don't, I don't remember what your bail
• 1:13:51
  was, but I remember it was a, it was a large bail.
• 1:13:53
  They, they, they, they tripled my bail.
• 1:13:58
  My bail had been a million. They made it 3 million.
• 1:14:01
  Many people don't put up much in terms of hard collateral.
• 1:14:05
  They made us put up 85% for retirement accounts, including
• 1:14:10
  my cousin who's worked her whole life for the supporting the
• 1:14:16
  county in Texas, including another good family friend who's
• 1:14:20
  the Dean at a university, five homes.
• 1:14:24
  They made us put up our family land.
• 1:14:27
  They got my 95 year old aunt who worked in national security for
• 1:14:32
  40 plus years. They tried to scare her.
• 1:14:38
  It's I really, you know, more than two dozen people.
• 1:14:42
  Brendan filed formal complaints with the Second Circuit.
• 1:14:44
  So these are people who watch, and these aren't just family
• 1:14:48
  members. This is rabbi of the largest
• 1:14:50
  synagogue in Brooklyn, pastor of one of the largest churches, one
• 1:14:53
  of the board members at NPR. This is surgeons.
• 1:14:56
  Others people who just were so disturbed by what they saw felt
• 1:15:01
  a. Complaint.
• 1:15:02
  To the process they did and and so again, we are hoping we're
• 1:15:08
  we're praying that a light gets shined on this because you know,
• 1:15:15
  already since we filed our recusal motion, two other black
• 1:15:19
  lawyers have come forward and said he this judge Eric
• 1:15:22
  committee has done the same to me.
• 1:15:23
  And yet despite the fact that that's been raised, no one who's
• 1:15:28
  got investigative powers have come and said, OK, tell us who
• 1:15:31
  it is. Like imagine if if two other
• 1:15:33
  people came forward and said I also was sexually assaulted.
• 1:15:35
  So three you know there would be a formal investigation, right Or
• 1:15:39
  if three people said that they'd gotten bitten by a dog, right.
• 1:15:44
  Like that would be enough that people would want to say, let me
• 1:15:47
  understand. Or that 25 people wrote in and
• 1:15:50
  said, like, this is a really dangerous driveway.
• 1:15:53
  Like, let's look. At this.
• 1:15:55
  Look like you would at least look at it.
• 1:15:57
  If nothing else, you'd be like, these are 25 serious people who
• 1:16:02
  like went through the formal process of complaint.
• 1:16:04
  And so I say all of this more than anything just to explain to
• 1:16:08
  people who've been watching TV and and movies all their lives
• 1:16:11
  and believe that we have a relatively fair system except
• 1:16:13
  for one or two things. Again, I'm just saying it's
• 1:16:16
  possible that I'm a bullshitter, but I'm a small chance that I'm
• 1:16:18
  not if all of this is happening to me.
• 1:16:21
  From a competitor being able to get you prosecuted on the other
• 1:16:25
  side of the country to them invading your attorney-client
• 1:16:30
  privilege and stealing all of your defense plans from you to
• 1:16:35
  them smearing your name even before trial so that the jury
• 1:16:38
  pool hears incorrect things. To choosing a jury that doesn't
• 1:16:42
  have any black men on it. To the judge acting as a if they
• 1:16:46
  to giving the wrong jury instructions to.
• 1:16:49
  As you said with Elizabeth Holmes, I think she had two
• 1:16:52
  children while she was out between conviction and that.
• 1:16:55
  So think about the difference. And, and they are now
• 1:16:59
  suggesting, as you know, Brent, that my minimum sentence be 22
• 1:17:02
  years and my maximum be 37. And for people who are watching,
• 1:17:07
  Elizabeth Holmes, who was accused of a billion dollar
• 1:17:10
  fraud, got 11 years, right? They're accusing me of
• 1:17:14
  65,000,000 much less, but they want to give me double it.
• 1:17:18
  The average murderer gets 16 1/2 years.
• 1:17:21
  Bernie Madoff got a huge sentence but only served 13
• 1:17:23
  years before he died, right? Jeff Skilling of I mean it.
• 1:17:30
  Would be a life sentence if you, if you Max out at 37.
• 1:17:33
  I mean, you're 55. I mean, you know.
• 1:17:37
  It's it's earlier than whatever, but even 22 is longer than the
• 1:17:41
  average American male. So it's.
• 1:17:43
  Right. It's beyond.
• 1:17:46
  It's beyond all that. So where you stand right now?
• 1:17:49
  Yeah, I know that you have this appeal.
• 1:17:54
  We have an expedited appeal in front of the Second Circuit, and
• 1:17:57
  we've asked them. There's there's an extraordinary
• 1:18:00
  version of expedited appeal called mandamus rid of mandamus.
• 1:18:03
  We've asked them. We've said this is such an
• 1:18:05
  extreme situation, from his deep multifaceted conflicts to the
• 1:18:12
  way he actually behaved at trial, that you can't allow this
• 1:18:15
  to be normalized. You can't let this stand.
• 1:18:18
  This is like your high schooler, not just driving drunk, but
• 1:18:21
  driving the school bus drunk with all the kids pressing like
• 1:18:25
  you, you, you can't allow that person to go out again this
• 1:18:29
  Friday night. You have to, you have to stop
• 1:18:31
  the presses now and intervene that that's how significant this
• 1:18:35
  is. Don't know whether they'll do it
• 1:18:37
  or not right now. We're scheduled to, I'm
• 1:18:41
  scheduled to be sentenced 2 weeks from Friday.
• 1:18:44
  And, and you know, the average white collar defendant who has
• 1:18:50
  got a clean record and who is no international ties would
• 1:18:56
  typically be allowed to go home, report to an institution 6090
• 1:19:02
  days later, sometimes a little bit longer, depending on on
• 1:19:05
  what's at stake or even permitted to have bail pending
• 1:19:10
  appeal. And you know, certainly what
• 1:19:14
  happened in July where he remanded me right away, doesn't
• 1:19:17
  make someone help. Hopeful that fairness will
• 1:19:20
  prevail. You know, I always ask this
• 1:19:24
  question Carlos to to everybody's on the show, but
• 1:19:26
  they're usually through their their nightmare on the other
• 1:19:29
  side. But I I feel like where you are
• 1:19:32
  now. What do you think's your
• 1:19:35
  greatest take away from this experience you've been through?
• 1:19:41
  Well, I don't mean to be Pollyannish to say this, but but
• 1:19:50
  that I'm blessed. You know, one of the things that
• 1:19:52
  was hardest Brett when I was inside was was visit day.
• 1:19:58
  You know, 95% of us don't get a visit.
• 1:20:02
  While I wasn't clearly one of the hardened guys there, a lot
• 1:20:06
  of young guys came to me even in the five weeks I was there.
• 1:20:10
  Interestingly enough, they would bring me books because they saw
• 1:20:12
  that I read, so they would bring me books.
• 1:20:14
  They called me California and or OG and.
• 1:20:21
  But they would, they would bring me books and you could just see
• 1:20:24
  they were just they're scared, they're lonely, they're not sure
• 1:20:27
  where to go. And, you know, I would get on
• 1:20:31
  the phones with some of their moms sometimes because some of
• 1:20:34
  the guys would not be getting the best advice from their
• 1:20:38
  lawyers. And, and they kind of needed a
• 1:20:40
  second person there, like you need someone else there.
• 1:20:43
  And so I might get on the phone with mom and say, Hey, I know
• 1:20:45
  how hard this is, but you should try and come for that next
• 1:20:48
  meeting with the lawyer and and you should trust your judgement.
• 1:20:51
  And if you get to a place where you think that, you know, so and
• 1:20:55
  so needs different help, you, you know, you should trust
• 1:20:57
  yourself and you guys should do that.
• 1:20:59
  And you know, you'd see the guys.
• 1:21:01
  I had one guy, you know, look like professional athletes, 63,
• 1:21:05
  you know, 220 chiseled, you know, tattoos everywhere in
• 1:21:11
  face. And, you know, he he started
• 1:21:14
  crying on the yard with me. And you know how dangerous that
• 1:21:16
  is, Brett. I had to take him walking so
• 1:21:17
  that no one could see. But but he started, he started
• 1:21:22
  crying because he knew that his lawyers were about to railroad
• 1:21:24
  him and he couldn't get anyone to listen, couldn't get his
• 1:21:27
  brother, older brother to listen, couldn't get his mom to
• 1:21:29
  listen. And he was just, he was just
• 1:21:32
  scared to to death. So it's a long way of saying I
• 1:21:38
  hate what's happening. I'm not a martyr.
• 1:21:40
  I don't want this to happen. But I also am grateful for, you
• 1:21:47
  know, for the people who have been able to stand with me,
• 1:21:51
  which not everyone could, but but there have been a number of
• 1:21:54
  people. I remember those.
• 1:21:57
  People. You remember those people and
• 1:21:59
  you also, you ask yourself, have I been that good to other
• 1:22:01
  people? And if not, how do I make sure
• 1:22:04
  if I ever have a chance to be that version of a person?
• 1:22:08
  My pastor has been so kind and he said, 'cause he said maybe as
• 1:22:13
  bad as this is, he said maybe on the other side of this, you get
• 1:22:16
  to be a greater blessing. And he said, he said, he said
• 1:22:19
  out of this ready to be a, a, a greater service to other people.
• 1:22:23
  So I hope, you know, I hope he's right.
• 1:22:25
  Well, I, I think that you are going to be a, and I, I see the
• 1:22:29
  fight in you and, and, and the will to fight, the courage.
• 1:22:34
  You're going to be a very powerful voice and you've been a
• 1:22:36
  powerful voice, you know, Carlos, throughout your life
• 1:22:41
  that this particular moment, how you use this.
• 1:22:43
  I think will we need voices like you to, to be able to articulate
• 1:22:50
  what you're going through, how you feel about it and what needs
• 1:22:53
  to be done. So I, I really commend you for
• 1:22:57
  for putting yourself out there. This is going to release.
• 1:23:01
  We're doing this on Wednesday. I'm releasing this tomorrow as
• 1:23:03
  Thanksgiving. So we're going to try to get
• 1:23:06
  this out as fast as we can, but if somebody wants to help
• 1:23:11
  Carlos, how I want to send everybody they can to your the
• 1:23:15
  YouTube two-part series that's that's out there because it's
• 1:23:19
  just it's really powerful. It's it's whose son is next.
• 1:23:24
  And like I said, it's got all kinds of different people on
• 1:23:28
  there that are experts. And then you've got the jury
• 1:23:31
  person. You've got all kinds of reasons
• 1:23:34
  why this is a story that needs to be heard, but if somebody
• 1:23:38
  wants to help Carlos, is there a way to help?
• 1:23:41
  Yeah, please find me on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram.
• 1:23:47
  You know, hit me with a note. I need help.
• 1:23:50
  I need voices. Spread the word, shine a
• 1:23:53
  spotlight. I'm convinced if if we keep the
• 1:23:57
  light on this thing, on my case, that I will go free.
• 1:24:02
  I don't think reasonable people who look at the facts can
• 1:24:04
  conclude anything other than I built a really good company and
• 1:24:09
  I'm getting railroaded and and the judges conflicts aren't
• 1:24:13
  something that anyone would be OK with.
• 1:24:16
  But but the question is, will we keep the light on, you know, the
• 1:24:19
  other thing I wanted to say, And again, not to be a martyr, but
• 1:24:22
  also to, I want to, you know, I want to do whatever I can to,
• 1:24:27
  to, to, you know, I don't assume I can help, but if I could help,
• 1:24:35
  you know, I want to, you know, I want to be of service.
• 1:24:38
  You know, if, if there are folks who are going through something
• 1:24:43
  that for whatever reason, you know, I don't pretend to be
• 1:24:46
  omnipotent, I'm obviously going through something right now.
• 1:24:49
  And so I may or may not be able to help, but I certainly will
• 1:24:52
  try. And I certainly, as you said, I
• 1:24:55
  bring a, you know, I can hear differently and I can see
• 1:25:01
  differently, Brent, I could, I, I certainly saw a lot of this.
• 1:25:04
  You can't be black in this country and not know that things
• 1:25:09
  don't always work out the way they tell you they do with the
• 1:25:11
  movies and TV and you experience it every day.
• 1:25:14
  But but I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm hungry to, to make a
• 1:25:26
  difference. I'm hungry to to be on the other
• 1:25:29
  side of this. And and I'm just, I'm a believer
• 1:25:32
  that it does not have to be this way.
• 1:25:34
  We're too creative as a country. We're too creative as a people.
• 1:25:38
  We do too many amazing things to make this be our version of how
• 1:25:43
  we handle justice, right? Like this just, you know,
• 1:25:49
  doesn't have to be that way. So, but yeah, but please find me
• 1:25:52
  on on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram, Hit me
• 1:25:57
  up. I want, I want to hear from you.
• 1:25:59
  I appreciate that Carlos and and and your story, your voice and
• 1:26:02
  and and offering to reach out when it's you're at your worst
• 1:26:06
  moment is is powerful in itself. Talking about gratitude.
• 1:26:10
  I want to thank Homestead Financial lets me use this
• 1:26:12
  studio here and all their fancy lights and and cameras and that
• 1:26:17
  if you're looking for a book out there, I got one nightmare
• 1:26:19
  success. I know it's a hassle, but if you
• 1:26:22
  can go to nightmare success in and out and leave a review on
• 1:26:24
  Apple it it really helps the show.
• 1:26:26
  Check me out on brentcassidy.com, my website.
• 1:26:28
  I spell it wrong. It's with a Ty, not a DY as I
• 1:26:32
  used to say when I was writing my emails back and forth from
• 1:26:36
  Leavenworth. Stay strong.
• 1:26:37
  I'll do the same. Carlos, man, I, I, I just want
• 1:26:41
  you to know I hope the best for you and, and the success of, of
• 1:26:45
  what you're going through. And I, I haven't known you for
• 1:26:48
  long, but man, I'm proud of you as far as the voice that you
• 1:26:50
  are. Thank you.
• 1:26:52
  Hey, Brent, I appreciate you having me on.
• 1:26:54
  I want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving.
• 1:26:56
  And Brent, I want to give a shout out to your wife, even
• 1:26:58
  though I've never met her. The biggest lesson I've learned
• 1:27:02
  through all this actually is, is what many people said all along,
• 1:27:07
  the greatest gift you could have in this life as a wonderful
• 1:27:09
  partner. And and for those of you even
• 1:27:12
  who don't have trouble, don't have any problems, if you find
• 1:27:16
  that wonderful person, you know, cherish her, him, make it
• 1:27:22
  something special. And there's goodness in that.
• 1:27:27
  So I hope you guys have a good Thanksgiving.
• 1:27:28
  That's a great message. Great message, Carlos.
• 1:27:31
  I'm your success in and out.