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The Family Struggle Battling the DOJ: The Amy Nelson Story · 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
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  Out podcast where we explore how to overcome your fears and
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  nightmares that set yourself free.
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  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in love
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  and work with and others who survived their own nightmare.
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  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes sad.
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  There's some humor, but hopefully you can come away with
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  a nugget of something that'll help you knock down some of the
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  prisons you built up in your own mind.
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  All right, welcome back nightmare success in and out.
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  Listeners, this is where you come from.
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  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
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  How do you adapt, survive, overcome, set yourself free?
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  Hey, don't forget to hit the follow button on that.
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  Subscribe share like this thing out helps the show folks.
• 0:50
  I've got a real warrior with me today.
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  And when I'm saying warrior, I'm talking about Amy Nelson and her
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  family went to what I would call war with the second richest man
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  in the world and Department of Justice.
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  And it's a crazy story. They they had their accounts
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  seized. They had to move all over the
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  place. They, their, their home was
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  raided, a true nightmare. But the interesting part of all
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  this is they won. And I think a lot of it had to
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  do with how Amy decided to deal with this situation and how she
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  came about. And I told her we were talking
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  earlier. It really reminded me and and
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  Amy spoke at our white collar support group as a speaker and
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  it really reminded me of my wife and her how she went through it.
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  You that get that warrior mentality and and not giving up
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  and and keeps up and finding the solution and and we have three
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  daughters. Amy has four daughters and just
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  the the role model that my wife played that Amy played for those
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  kids, seeing, you know, what it means to be resilient and and
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  looked looks to be an impossible situation.
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  I've been really excited about interviewing Amy because of
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  that, because I've always, you know, everybody listen to the
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  show. If you've heard me say when
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  somebody goes through a federal investigation, you go, you get
• 2:22
  indicted prison. The the whole family goes
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  through it and and how you lean on each other and how you get
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  through that is is always how you make it And Amy's she's got
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  a story about that. I want to tell you a little bit
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  about Amy, Amy in her own right. I mean, I, we, we're talking
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  about her being a criminal legal advocate and justice reform.
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  But before all that, she is a very accomplished person.
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  And just to tell you a little bit about her, she's the founder
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  of Riveter. It's a venture backed company
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  launched in Seattle in 2017. The Riveter launched as a Co
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  working and community startup and pivoted during the pandemic
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  to build a career and media platform for millennial and Gen.
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  X women, providing the courses and tools needed to build the
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  work life they want with thought leadership.
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  She's a graduate of Emory University.
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  She also is graduate NYU School of Law.
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  Amy previously wrote a column for Forbes, hosted an
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  iHeartRadio podcast, obviously practice law.
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  Like I said, she's she's the mother of four daughters that
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  are 10/8, 7:00 and 5:00. In addition to raising $30
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  million in venture venture capital Grove River, which is no
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  easy task of anybody who's ever tried to raise money.
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  Amy has been published broadly, including an outlets of
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  Newsweek, the Today Show, BuzzFeed, the Washington Post,
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  Seattle Times, and she's spoken across the world on many stages,
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  including fortunes, most powerful women.
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  And when you follow her, and a lot of people do, she's got a
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  community of over 500,000 people on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter.
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  And she's a great voice for what's going on in the world of
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  criminal justice and, and what people don't know that they need
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  to know. And she says it was such
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  clarity. And I think that's why she has
• 4:20
  so many followers because she's got so much passion and she's so
• 4:24
  you can feel it when she talks. Before we, I can't wait to jump
• 4:27
  into this, but before we do, I want to recognize our show
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  buying experience you deserve. Auto Plaza Direct telling Brent
• 5:06
  for nightmare success sent you Amy Nelson.
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  How are you? I'm good.
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  Thanks so much for having me, Brent.
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  So one of the things that I was thinking after I 'cause you
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  know, looking at all the different things that you've
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  done and the interviews and you have before any of this
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  happened, a very accomplished career of doing a lot of
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  different things. You were, you were in politics,
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  you were an attorney, you were, you know, a founder.
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  See you, you did all these things and you're a mom.
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  You know these, you know, you wrap it all up.
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  It makes you ask the question were.
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  Were you raised? That way were you like, was Amy
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  Nelson as a kid like just a warrior kid just looking to take
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  on the next thing? What was going on with you?
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  I always. Have I have a high energy?
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  My mother, My mother was a school teacher and she wondered
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  if I had ADD as a child because I was always on the go but
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  decide decided I didn't. But I mean, I've always kind of
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  just wanted to take on big problems and solve them.
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  And I was raised in a family where sports were a big part of
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  it and learning to win and learning to lose, but playing
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  did. You play sports.
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  I did, yeah. I played all all the sports when
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  I was little and then in high school had narrowed it down to
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  water polo and swimming. Wow.
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  And three of my girls are now competitive swimmers, all before
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  the age of 10, which is really fun.
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  But I mean, I think you know. Well, I, I know that world that,
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  that, that in that time frame too, you go to these swim meets
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  and you sit there and you sit there and you sit there all day
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  long with a whole host of people that are doing the same thing.
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  And then your kid swims for like 30 seconds.
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  I know. My husband, my husband does not
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  know the swim world. He's a college ice hockey player
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  and he's like wait we are here for 8 hours and swim for a total
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  like this doesn't make sense. But it's great it.
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  Is great, but yeah, no, I mean I think you know, I, I obviously
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  you know, I had the mentality that I thought I would make a
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  good litigator, which means I like to I like to fight.
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  But yeah, I've always I've also always been involved in politics
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  and I think from a young age I understood that there were a lot
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  of people in the world who needed people to help them get
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  through things and advocate for change and I was lucky enough to
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  work in international politics across the world.
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  My first job after college was for President Carter at his
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  Carter Center and I worked on elections and anti corruption
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  efforts in Jamaica and Ethiopia and places around the world.
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  Well. I was curious about because I
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  read all that and I did you run across and and I think, are we
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  both political science majors? Yeah.
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  So I mean, you, you read and and there's constitutional law and
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  all that. But when you started practicing
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  law, did you run into anything that would be similar to of
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  people that you were helping in the world of law?
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  That was anything that you ran into personally, that you you,
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  it became part of your overall, you know, fight.
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  Well, I, it is, it is actually interesting 'cause there are
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  days, I mean, I would not wish what I've been through on
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  anybody, but there are days I'm kind of like, it's, it's so wild
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  that I feel like so much of what I've done in my life prepared me
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  to try to help my husband fight this.
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  Because I was a litigator. I worked for a big law firm in
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  New York when I got out of law school, and it was a financial
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  crisis and we represented one of the major credit rating
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  agencies. And it was a topsy turvy,
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  terrifying time. And a lot of people in the
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  financial world were very afraid of of going to prison of, you
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  know, the SEC investigations and the DOJ investigations.
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  And I worked on those. And one of the things I
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  ultimately did was, you know, dive into very complicated
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  facts, review a lot of documents and then interview a lot of
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  quantitative analysts and talk to them.
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  And, you know, it was a fascinating moment because a lot
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  of the analysts had a hard time talking to the older male
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  partners who they were intimidated by.
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  They would all talk to me. And so I ended up, that was my
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  role, like within the firm going, you know, to London and
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  New York and DC and talking to these analysts who are very
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  afraid and, you know, diving deep into facts and figuring out
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  how to tell the story to Congress in litigation.
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  And that became incredibly important, I think, to helping
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  my husband fight Amazon and the DOJ.
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  That's yeah, no, I think it was. And it, you know, I think one of
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  the things that's so interesting about your story is that when
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  you get haunted down by the DOJ and then on top of that you've
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  got the second richest man in the world, that that is part of
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  this fight. You have.
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  And you mentioned this before, before we got on that there's
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  three things that you can do cause a lot, a lot of people say
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  fight and fight or flight. And then there's, you can also
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  get paralyzed. And I, I think it's really
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  courageous when somebody fights because there's so many things
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  when you're fighting something that we're talking about, Amy,
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  you're fighting things that you're not.
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  They're the unknowns. And so those are the scariest
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  things to fight against because when you know what something is,
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  then you're tasking yourself that I am.
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  OK, I'm checking that box. I'm checking that box.
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  When you're fighting the way that you had to fight, you are
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  jumping into the arena and not knowing what's jumping out of
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  that cage to get you. And that's the the thing that
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  keeps people from doing that. That's what you know, But one of
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  the things I think you and I were talking about is that if
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  you don't do that, the feeling of out of control, no control
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  for people who are used to having control is almost worse
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  than jumping into the unknown and not knowing what's coming
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  out of the cage. Yeah, I think, you know, when my
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  husband was accused of a crime, he he felt he hadn't done
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  anything and he was ultimately never charged.
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  And one of the things that kind of, I think set the level for
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  how we fought was that if you don't know DOJ investigations, a
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  lot of investigations, you know, they'll have one main target and
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  then they'll go after people under the target to flip on the
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  target. And that's how they do it.
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  And then they get everybody to plead chapter and verse.
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  Yeah, they don't have to go to trial.
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  Like this is the playbook. And my husband was not the the
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  top target of the DOJ investigation.
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  And so in order for him to plead, he would have had to
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  point the finger at somebody who is innocent as well.
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  And my husband did not have that in his bones to do it.
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  And so there was never an option.
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  We had to fight. And if that you know that's the.
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  Which is also courageous, by the way, so many people and it, and
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  it's not like it can happen. It does happen.
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  They can go to somebody and say, if you don't do this and if you
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  don't say this this way, we're going to indict you.
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  And that it's, it's a it's a frightening thing for family and
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  friends. You know, you feel like you're
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  isolated for they do in certain situations isolate you from
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  being able. And you know, if you talk to
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  certain people, they'll, they'll accuse you of witness tampering
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  when they can talk to anybody and everybody in the world.
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  Including the press. And I mean, and I, I would, you
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  know, I would argue and people might say I'm crazy for saying
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  this, but like, it is criminal to do that.
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  It is criminal to to put people into a vice so that they feel
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  that they have to lie to say other people committed crimes
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  who didn't. It's also just, I mean, this is
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  very simplistic thing to say. It's also just dumb.
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  Like that's the dumbest thing in the world to make quote, justice
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  system where that's what you're doing.
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  That's not justice. And every prosecutor knows this.
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  So why are we doing it? Well, I was.
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  I was shocked. By the amount of weight that
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  came down on you guys for the type of action this was, I mean,
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  from what I understand, your husband was working for Amazon,
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  but he had the right and, and the ability through the contract
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  to do other things outside of that.
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  But it looked like it was mostly him.
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  He signed a contract and the he this was real estate and I'm
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  sure Amazon has all kinds of deals that they do in real
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  estate. And were you thinking like, was
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  it, was it the first time that your husband had worked for a
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  company that big? Like were you because you had
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  kind of worked in the corporate world and big law firms, was it
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  was that new to you and Carl or was that kind of where he had
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  been in his work environment, it was just normal for him to work
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  for one of the biggest companies in the world?
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  No, that was the first time he'd worked for one of the biggest
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  companies in the world. But Amazon is also an
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  interesting beast because when my husband joined in 2012, he
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  joined Amazon Web Services, which is the subsidiary of
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  Amazon that builds the cloud. And although it was 2012 when he
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  joined AWS, it was so much smaller than Amazon.
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  It was like 5000 people. So it's actually a smaller
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  company and which? Sounds huge, 5000 people.
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  Amazon size, right? And at the time that he joined
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  AWS, he had Amazon's original employment contract, which was a
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  startup employment contract, you know, and I'm a startup founder
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  and I had read his contract and it was like, that tracks what,
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  what how it reads tracks because, you know, Jeff Bezos
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  has multiple companies, does a bunch of different things.
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  They all do business with each other.
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  And the contract that Jeff Bezos wrote was like, you work for me.
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  But you there's a section that like carves out your ability to
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  work, do other work, right, as long as you comply with the
• 14:47
  contract. And my husband was allowed to
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  start a company while he worked at Amazon and seek investors.
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  And that's what he did. And the only limitation was they
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  couldn't also be investors in Amazon.
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  And he was allowed to do business with entities doing
• 15:01
  business with Amazon, as long as his arrangement with that other
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  entity wasn't substantially similar to Amazon's arrangement.
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  These are all legal terms. So basically he was allowed to
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  do a bunch of other things. And the thing he did was start a
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  company before he left and seek investors.
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  Then he left and he started operating the company and they
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  came after him for both starting the company and seeking
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  investment. And then the work he did after
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  he left and the crime that they said he committed was called
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  private sector honest services fraud, which you've probably
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  never heard of and. A lot of people haven't heard
• 15:34
  that because it's such a strange thing.
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  We had a governor go down here for honest services.
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  Yes, And in the public sphere, they use that statute to go
• 15:43
  after politicians who they say take bribes.
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  I have an issue even with the statute in the public sector
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  because we have legalized bribery with lobbying.
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  It's like, what's the line? I don't know.
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  You know, it's, it's very like, like lobbying is literally
• 15:58
  legalized bribery. It's like.
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  Sure. That's what it is.
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  You, you're, you're talking and taking somebody out to try to
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  get something to happen. Yeah.
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  And so in the private. In return for something.
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  Right. And in the private sector, they
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  use it to go after employees of private companies who they say
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  deprive the company of its honest services.
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  Honest services is not defined by the law.
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  So it's like, what does it mean? And I think and the way it
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  operates today, which I think is incredibly problematic, is the
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  prosecutors, when they use it, which is pretty rarely, they
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  like go to the company and they look at the company policies or
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  the employment contracts or whatever to define that
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  company's honest services. The issue you end up with is
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  then like something that could be considered within the scope
• 16:42
  of employment at Amazon could be outside of what you're allowed
• 16:45
  to do at Netflix, sure. It's.
• 16:47
  Different, different, different company.
• 16:49
  And that the the criminal law was to work that way where like
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  something is a crime if you do it here, but not if you do it
• 16:54
  there. We're supposed to have a uniform
• 16:56
  criminal law. So it's a.
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  That's that's the idea. That's, yeah, the ideal.
• 17:00
  Right, a dream. And then everything gets great.
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  I'm curious to up until the point that your house gets
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  raided and, and they, they, they do all this crazy scary stuff.
• 17:12
  Were things pretty good with, you know, Amazon and your
• 17:17
  husband and I because I know you guys were living a great life in
• 17:20
  Seattle and and living your best.
• 17:23
  Yeah. Your best life.
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  Yeah. And we had worked.
• 17:25
  We were, I was 40 and my husband was 41.
• 17:30
  We had four little kids under the age of 6 that we had one
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  after the other. I was running my startup, which
• 17:35
  had like soared, had gone from an idea to 140 employees in
• 17:38
  three years. And my husband had taken this
• 17:42
  incredible expertise he had built in the data center
• 17:45
  development world and started a company and he was just killing
• 17:49
  it. And it, it was amazing, you
• 17:52
  know, and we didn't know all these things were happening
• 17:54
  behind the scenes. But to your question about
• 17:56
  whether things were OK with the Amazon, I mean my husband was
• 17:59
  pitching deals to Amazon and negotiating with them.
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  They knew he had his own company working in data department like
• 18:05
  they were fully aware. So the, so the crazy e-mail that
• 18:08
  goes to that I, you know, I don't know how much of this
• 18:11
  stuff, when you read this stuff, if it's real or not real, but
• 18:13
  there's supposedly an e-mail that goes directly to Jeff
• 18:16
  Bezos. What?
• 18:17
  How does that I mean I. Mean, there's still some things,
• 18:21
  I don't really know how they happened, but they're the way
• 18:24
  that all of this started is that a man my husband had never met
• 18:29
  or heard of named Danny Mulcahy, who worked for a real estate
• 18:33
  developer in Colorado, emailed Jeff Bezos.
• 18:37
  And he said, would you care to know about a couple of your
• 18:42
  employees who have taken like $50 million in kickback?
• 18:46
  I would like to have $50 million.
• 18:48
  Oh, yeah. And.
• 18:50
  And he addressed it like Mr. Bezos, like Bezo apostrophe S
• 18:56
  Sorry. And this, this man had worked
• 18:58
  for a real Danny had worked for a real estate developer named
• 19:01
  Brian Watson who'd built data centers that Amazon leased.
• 19:05
  And it turns out, you know, years later, finding all this
• 19:08
  out, that Danny had recently left Northstar.
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  He had sought investors that were Brian's investors.
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  He was taking them for his own company.
• 19:16
  He'd started the company. And, you know, later he was
• 19:20
  deposed in civil litigation. And he said that he wrote the
• 19:23
  e-mail based on water cooler talk and he had no knowledge of
• 19:27
  any of this happening. Wow, wow.
• 19:29
  Well, when you guys had the knock on the door, can you kind
• 19:35
  of walk us through that? Because not, you know, that's
• 19:38
  everybody's nightmare. You know, I, I think everybody's
• 19:41
  nightmare is, is you get a knock on the door at, you know, six or
• 19:44
  five in the morning and you've got your kids with you and these
• 19:47
  people look like maybe they're not there to help.
• 19:51
  Yeah. What what was going through your
• 19:54
  mind, Amy, and what what actually happened?
• 19:57
  It's so funny because like you think it, for us, that day was
• 19:59
  April 2nd, 2020, and it was one of those moments where you lived
• 20:03
  a life before and a life after and like in an instant 10
• 20:07
  seconds. In an instant.
• 20:11
  And I will say, you know, as I explained, you know, my
• 20:13
  husband's building this company, I was building my company.
• 20:17
  I had no idea that, you know, in the six weeks leading up to that
• 20:20
  knock, armies of lawyers were meeting and Amazon was flying to
• 20:24
  the DOJ in DC and saying he committed a crime and they were
• 20:28
  looking at our bank accounts and all of this stuff.
• 20:29
  No idea. Which makes you feel foolish
• 20:32
  that there's like a battle being prepared against you and you
• 20:35
  just have no idea. It was April 2nd, 2020.
• 20:39
  So it's, you know, two weeks into the shutdowns and it was
• 20:43
  around 6:45 in the morning. So it's still dark out in
• 20:46
  Seattle. And we had a glass door in front
• 20:48
  of our house and there was a knock and I was like, I was
• 20:53
  knocking on her door this early. And I went to the door and I had
• 20:56
  my baby on my hip and her diaper.
• 20:59
  And I saw two people standing at the door.
• 21:02
  And I kind of shrugged. And in my mind I was like, was
• 21:05
  is this a public health emergency?
• 21:06
  Like, you know, is it like outbreak, right?
• 21:09
  Like I, I don't know what I thought.
• 21:11
  And they, I kind of shrugged at them.
• 21:13
  And then they told me who they were because they flashed their
• 21:16
  badges. And I was like, what is this?
• 21:21
  And they opened the door and they said they wanted to talk to
• 21:23
  my husband. And so I yelled for Carl, who
• 21:25
  was upstairs. And he came down and I looked at
• 21:28
  him square in the eye because I am a lawyer.
• 21:30
  And I said, you cannot talk to these people without a lawyer.
• 21:32
  And I will tell all of you, so many people are afraid to say I
• 21:36
  can't talk to you without a lawyer to law enforcement.
• 21:38
  Almost like they're embarrassed that they're not being helpful.
• 21:40
  Yes. And they think that if I say I
• 21:42
  need a lawyer, if someone's going to think I did something
• 21:44
  wrong, no, they're going to think you're smart.
• 21:47
  The FBI tries to talk to you and surprise you without a lawyer
• 21:49
  because they don't want you to have a lawyer.
• 21:51
  And it's like the same reason when like, you know, Amazon
• 21:54
  spends 10s of millions of dollars on anti union people.
• 21:57
  And I'm like, they don't want you to have a union.
• 21:59
  Think about it, right? A union, right.
• 22:00
  Like these, the FBI does things a certain way because they don't
• 22:03
  want you to have a lawyer because they know you will be
• 22:05
  protected. And you know I've you.
• 22:08
  Know what I mean? It's almost like what you just
• 22:11
  said there when you somebody from, you know, law enforcement
• 22:13
  is asking you questions and and you don't, it's almost like
• 22:16
  going to trial in a courtroom and say you're going to
• 22:19
  represent yourself. That's how.
• 22:22
  That's how stacked. That is against you when you're
• 22:25
  answering questions in a situation because you have no
• 22:27
  idea where they're going, you don't know what their motives
• 22:29
  are. You don't have any.
• 22:31
  Your clue. And for those listening,
• 22:34
  watching, please, if you get in any situation where you're in a
• 22:39
  situation where somebody's asking you questions and they're
• 22:41
  the law enforcement, your, your, your only move is to say I
• 22:46
  can't, I need to talk to my attorney, my.
• 22:48
  Little children know they are not to talk to the police or the
• 22:50
  FBI without a lawyer like it is. Yeah.
• 22:52
  I think it's like an American constitutional lesson that every
• 22:56
  child needs to learn. And the other thing, you know,
• 22:59
  and I didn't think about this ever before I started dealing
• 23:01
  with the FBI, but police wear body cams in all interactions.
• 23:05
  They're filmed and audio recorded.
• 23:07
  It's a big deal. It's really important and we all
• 23:09
  agree on that. The FBI, however, which are a
• 23:12
  federal police force, and even though we walk around with
• 23:15
  phones in our pockets, they don't record things.
• 23:19
  They record, I think custodial interviews, but they do not have
• 23:21
  to record their conversation. I guarantee you that, you know,
• 23:27
  99% of the people actually don't know that.
• 23:30
  And there's a reason why that is that way, that by them not
• 23:34
  recording, they can say that you said things, that they heard
• 23:37
  things. And there is also a charge that
• 23:39
  can come against that as lying to the FBI and there's people
• 23:43
  who get prison time for that. If there was a recording, you
• 23:46
  could obviously go back to the recording and say no, this is
• 23:50
  this is actually what this is what was said and this is not.
• 23:53
  And I will tell you if you feel so compelled to talk to these
• 23:56
  people that if you refuse to get a lawyer, you should record it
• 23:59
  like you have a right, you have a right to.
• 24:01
  So if you're going to talk to them about a lawyer, record it.
• 24:04
  But what they do is they, and I didn't know this at the time,
• 24:06
  you know, and I didn't know any of this and I am a lawyer.
• 24:09
  But after their conversation with you, at some point, like
• 24:12
  maybe that day, maybe in a week, maybe in a month, they take
• 24:15
  their notes, their recollection, and they write what's called a
• 24:17
  three O 2 memo of what you said. And like you said, if you
• 24:21
  dispute what they say, do you think the jury is going to
• 24:23
  believe you or the FBI? They're going to believe the
• 24:25
  FBI. So anyway, my husband did not
• 24:28
  talk to them, but they gave him a few letters.
• 24:32
  And one letter was a subpoena for documents.
• 24:36
  One letter was correspondence telling him that he was the
• 24:39
  target of a federal criminal investigation being run out of
• 24:43
  the Eastern District of Virginia, so thousands of miles
• 24:46
  from where we lived, related to Amazon real estate.
• 24:50
  And finally, a third letter that told us they intended to seize
• 24:55
  certain of his bank accounts. Now, at that moment in time, I
• 25:00
  had never heard of civil forfeiture, and I don't know if
• 25:04
  everyone listening has. But civil forfeiture is a
• 25:07
  process in America that is absolutely horrifying.
• 25:10
  And through civil forfeiture, states, local federal
• 25:14
  governments can seize your money and your assets based on the
• 25:19
  suspicion of a crime. And the thing that's
• 25:21
  particularly horrible about it is that they can do it without
• 25:24
  charging you with a crime, without proving a crime.
• 25:28
  And finally, when they do it, it's not like criminal law where
• 25:33
  you have due process as an American because they take the
• 25:36
  money, they consider your money the other side of this and your
• 25:40
  money does not have due process. Right.
• 25:42
  So you just have to then you then have to prove your money is
• 25:45
  innocent. Yeah, they sued your money,
• 25:47
  Yeah. And and you have to try to get
• 25:50
  it back and it costs you money to to try to get that back.
• 25:54
  And it's it's horrifying And and again, I don't think.
• 25:58
  And I think that's why what you do and how you.
• 26:01
  Get that message out there, Amy is so is so good because.
• 26:07
  Most people don't know that and and there should be there should
• 26:09
  be civil forfeiture, new laws put in place that that really is
• 26:14
  incredibly UN American and it it's it's used to fund certain
• 26:20
  things and especially in local localis with you.
• 26:24
  Know. Police it's, it's, it's just
• 26:26
  crazy, you know, what's the percentage?
• 26:28
  I think you and I were talking about the the percentage of of
• 26:31
  what they use of the forfeiture money is like 40 some odd
• 26:36
  percent or something like that I think.
• 26:37
  It's all I think nationwide and this is an average, but I think
• 26:41
  like half of local police, half of.
• 26:44
  It's unreal. So there's a real incentive of.
• 26:46
  Course like. Incentive.
• 26:47
  Yeah. And like a simple way to reform
• 26:49
  civil forfeiture is that if you seize money, you don't get to
• 26:53
  keep it. Like the the the the seizing
• 26:55
  entity doesn't get to keep it. Right.
• 26:57
  That would take the incentive out, right?
• 26:59
  Yeah. Like, you know, so because
• 27:02
  police stations will buy armored trucks or guns, you know, like
• 27:07
  the stuff they can't buy with the actual budgets that proofs.
• 27:11
  It fills in the gaps of the budget.
• 27:13
  Right. Yeah.
• 27:13
  It's awful. A wild scenario.
• 27:16
  So yeah, so we got the letters and and then it was then it was
• 27:21
  like, what in the hell do we do? So for 22 months, we did not
• 27:27
  have the ability to prove our money innocent, which in civil
• 27:30
  forfeiture, it's so it's such a legal fiction because civil
• 27:34
  forfeiture is used for criminal allegations.
• 27:35
  But because it's not about a human being, it's about the
• 27:40
  house they took or the bank account.
• 27:42
  Your house and your bank account don't have due process.
• 27:45
  So eventually the government had to file a civil lawsuit against
• 27:48
  our money. And then it's up to us to fight
• 27:51
  the civil lawsuit against our bank accounts to get it back.
• 27:56
  Unbelievable. And like the repercussions of it
• 27:59
  for us were that we've, you know, we made it to like
• 28:04
  October. And then I looked at my husband,
• 28:06
  I was looking at our money and I looked at my husband and I was
• 28:08
  like, we need to sell our house right now.
• 28:12
  And I just didn't think about it.
• 28:15
  I was like, we're doing it. And you know, and that's had.
• 28:18
  To survive. Yeah, it's the grace of people,
• 28:20
  you know, And this is like during COVID, right?
• 28:22
  Like the world is shut down. But the grace of people, you
• 28:24
  know, I called my friend who'd helped us buy the house and then
• 28:26
  she came over and explained the situation to where we took a
• 28:29
  walk and I was like, I can't, I can't deal with this.
• 28:31
  Like I can't do it. I can't deal with it.
• 28:33
  And she's like, I've got it. And she did everything and, and
• 28:37
  it might seem like something small, but that was like life
• 28:39
  saving at the moment. And then I was like, well, where
• 28:42
  are we going with our with our family of six?
• 28:46
  And my dad had just had a kidney transplant in Ohio.
• 28:49
  And so we couldn't even really go to my parents in Ohio because
• 28:53
  we couldn't see my parents. We couldn't stay with them
• 28:55
  because my dad was so immunocompromised with like
• 28:57
  between COVID and transplant. And my husband's father lived in
• 29:01
  Honolulu and I'm close to him. And I called him and I said, are
• 29:06
  there any? Like, can we come and stay with
• 29:07
  you? And he said yes.
• 29:10
  And I found preschools for the girls in a kindergarten.
• 29:15
  And so we put all of our stuff in storage, hacked the kids into
• 29:22
  our minivan, drove to my sister's house in San Francisco,
• 29:25
  stayed there for a month, and then, like, all six of us in a
• 29:29
  room. And then we flew to Honolulu.
• 29:32
  And we lived there for a year. And.
• 29:36
  Yeah. And I felt like we were
• 29:38
  fugitives, but I also needed to be out of our house because
• 29:42
  after they took the money, then they raided our house and the
• 29:46
  FBI raided our house. And that was a horrifying
• 29:49
  experience. And again, this is all over
• 29:52
  alleged violations of an employment contract.
• 29:54
  But you're kind. Of I guess that's what kind of
• 29:55
  blows my mind, Amy, is that you would think this was some
• 29:59
  international drug trafficking scheme where we're where we've
• 30:02
  got people with hostages in the basement.
• 30:05
  I know and we're talking about Amazon is going after three or
• 30:11
  four people because they think that they might have been not
• 30:16
  gotten as much money as they should have gotten on a
• 30:18
  transaction, which this whole thing, this whole real estate
• 30:23
  thing with they kept those leases and nobody was hurt and
• 30:26
  all those things that happened. They.
• 30:28
  Go into but it it's, it's the and that's why I think the judge
• 30:32
  was like, well, there's no harm here.
• 30:34
  There's no where where are we talking about?
• 30:37
  People were put into a disadvantage.
• 30:40
  But when this was going on, the kids being the ages there, what
• 30:48
  are they thinking? You know, I've, I've talked to
• 30:51
  them a lot about it. Obviously now they have a lot
• 30:53
  more insight because now they're 1087 and five.
• 30:57
  The five year old doesn't know anything, but except she thinks
• 30:59
  Jeff Bezos is a bad man. But my 10 year old, you know,
• 31:04
  knows a lot more. And I, I asked them because when
• 31:07
  the FBI raided our house, it was again like 6:45 in the morning
• 31:13
  and there was a banging on the door this time and it was 4
• 31:17
  agents in their Navy blue FBI jackets.
• 31:21
  And at the time we thought my husband was being arrested.
• 31:25
  Because another tool that they have, as you know, is if they
• 31:28
  want you to plead guilty and you won't plead guilty when they
• 31:31
  indict you, they will not let you self surrender.
• 31:33
  They will come do a show of force at your house and drag you
• 31:36
  out in front of your kids. I know many people this has
• 31:38
  happened to now, now in this world.
• 31:42
  But so we thought they were there to arrest my husband
• 31:45
  because they were saying they were going to indict him.
• 31:47
  And so we just wanted it to happen as quickly as possible
• 31:51
  because I didn't want it to be a memory for the girls.
• 31:54
  So I opened the door and then the agents told us they were
• 31:58
  there for a search warrant. And my husband and I were both
• 32:00
  like, what? Because like we, his lawyers had
• 32:04
  been meeting with the DOJ. And so like, obviously we had
• 32:07
  lots of attorney-client privileged stuff in the House,
• 32:09
  which they took. They took memos on law firm
• 32:11
  letterhead. I saw you mentioned that, Did
• 32:15
  you, I mean, obviously you didn't know that at the time?
• 32:18
  I knew it just I knew when they took it because.
• 32:20
  You did know that they took it? Oh, yeah.
• 32:21
  Because I knew it was on the desk.
• 32:23
  And so like they actually when they, when the four FBI agents
• 32:26
  came, it's funny. My husband always laughs about
• 32:28
  it because he was, he's like, you started screaming at them.
• 32:31
  And I'm like, I did like, I don't remember, but the FBI
• 32:35
  agent in charge, he said to me, he goes, I'm going to let you
• 32:39
  leave with your daughters. And I was, I was like, what?
• 32:42
  I was like, is this a real search warrant?
• 32:44
  You know, 'cause I was, I was just like, that is happening.
• 32:47
  And he said, yes, but when you go into the house to take them
• 32:51
  out, do not take anything. You've already made a bad
• 32:54
  decision. And I was like, what?
• 32:56
  And I looked at him and he goes, I sent a wire to pay Carl's
• 32:59
  lawyers and he said that was a bad decision.
• 33:01
  And then I looked at him and I guess I just lost it.
• 33:03
  And I was like, you are not allowed to be talking to me.
• 33:05
  We are represented like, you know, better than this.
• 33:10
  But then Carl just like was like, Amy leave and I got the
• 33:12
  kids. They were in diapers. 6:45 AM,
• 33:14
  Seattle. I throw them in the minivan with
• 33:16
  our dog. And I went over to my best
• 33:19
  friend's house and we were there for, you know, half hour.
• 33:24
  The search warrant was 1/2 hour. It was all a show of force.
• 33:27
  They took my husband's laptop and his phone.
• 33:29
  And I think they did it because they wanted to see if he was
• 33:32
  communicating with the other targets to try to run that like
• 33:34
  another pressure point. And they took like law firm
• 33:39
  memos on letterhead. And I knew they took that.
• 33:41
  And I told his lawyers right away, like it's.
• 33:43
  And we sent an e-mail, sent a letter to the DOJ telling him
• 33:46
  they took it. And the DOJ's response was, you
• 33:48
  will not dictate our investigation.
• 33:51
  We'll reach out to you when and if we need to.
• 33:53
  They don't care. So, yeah.
• 33:57
  So I mean, that was. But after the FBI raid, you
• 34:01
  know, I've never, I've lived such a lucky, wonderful life and
• 34:06
  worked really hard, but never had real trauma.
• 34:09
  And of course, so many worse things happen to people than
• 34:12
  what my family's been through. And I would never equate what
• 34:15
  we've been through to losing, losing someone or, you know, any
• 34:18
  of those things. But for me, the FBI raid changed
• 34:22
  me psychologically because I felt like I couldn't keep my
• 34:26
  kids safe and I didn't feel safe in my home anymore.
• 34:31
  And then I was convinced they were going to come back and
• 34:33
  arrest Carl is the. Whole feeling of being out of
• 34:36
  control. Yeah, I mean I.
• 34:38
  Haven't had any control, right? And So what we did, what I
• 34:42
  started to do, and looking back and I'm like, this is wild, but
• 34:45
  I started getting my kids up at 6:00 or 5:45, getting him
• 34:51
  dressed and put him in the car with Carl.
• 34:54
  And we would put our baby monitor in our upstairs window
• 34:58
  facing the street. And it was like you would
• 35:00
  transmit to my cell phone if you were close.
• 35:02
  So we put the kids in the car and we would leave.
• 35:05
  And we took them all over Puget Sound on adventures to parks and
• 35:08
  the rain and the sun, wherever. Get Donuts.
• 35:12
  We'd be gone for like 3 hours. Because like, to me, that was
• 35:15
  the window, right? Like if they were going to come
• 35:16
  back and then as we drive back, you know, get a street away and
• 35:21
  I'd connect my phone to the baby camera to see if they were there
• 35:25
  and like, what a way to live. I mean, we did.
• 35:27
  That so I mean, it's, it's like you almost feel that fugitive
• 35:32
  feel. Yeah.
• 35:33
  Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 35:34
  Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to get into what
• 35:38
  happens next, because you guys actually get on a streak of
• 35:42
  starting to get wins in this thing, which I think is
• 35:45
  encouraging for people who are listening that this can actually
• 35:50
  happen if you fight and you don't give up.
• 35:53
  And it's it's encouraging. But anyway, I want to, I want to
• 35:57
  recognize the discoverability company, you know, do you like
• 36:03
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• 36:05
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• 36:07
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• 36:10
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• 36:12
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• 36:14
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• 36:17
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• 36:19
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• 36:21
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• 36:25
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• 36:28
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• 36:49
  I also want to recognize that Nightmare Success Podcast is
• 36:52
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• 36:55
  support group devoted to people navigating the white collar
• 36:57
  criminal justice system. I'm a member of the White Collar
• 37:00
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• 37:18
  Start here. So Amy, I mean, your world gets
• 37:22
  kind of crazy. You feel like you're a fugitive.
• 37:26
  You feel like the world's out of control.
• 37:28
  Your mom says it's time to get up.
• 37:31
  And then you start fighting and advocating and become a real
• 37:35
  powerful voice, which had to make you feel kind of different.
• 37:40
  I would think just kind of take some of that power back, Take
• 37:44
  your story back and and throw it out there in the world and get
• 37:47
  and get feedback too. Good feedback.
• 37:50
  Yeah, I mean, there's so much to it.
• 37:51
  It's a for me, I, I, you know, I had a company, I had 140
• 37:55
  employees before COVID and I did a lot on social media.
• 37:58
  And so when this first happened and I'm kind of gone from social
• 38:01
  media, that felt very weird for me.
• 38:04
  And then the accusations were made very public and it impacted
• 38:09
  my career and I had to deal with that.
• 38:13
  And I actually had to leave my company to take a job at a big
• 38:17
  tech company for money because we needed the money.
• 38:21
  When you say it impacted your career, like what?
• 38:23
  What were the different mechanisms that happened?
• 38:26
  Well, I got this job with a big tech company and it was
• 38:28
  $1,000,000 a year of compensation.
• 38:30
  And I was like, I've saved my family.
• 38:31
  I've done it. Like I'm going to be able to pay
• 38:34
  for our kids and give them a childhood and pay for Carl's
• 38:37
  criminal trial. You know, the two big things.
• 38:40
  And it was a remote job and the week they wanted me to start was
• 38:45
  my kids spring break in Hawaii. And I was like, I don't have
• 38:48
  childcare. I can't start that week.
• 38:49
  They're like we need you to for XY and Z reason.
• 38:52
  But I was going to do one call and it was on a Friday and we
• 38:54
  were supposed to talk about the tech company acquiring my
• 38:57
  startup. I get on the call and it's not
• 39:00
  just my boss, but it's also two people I don't know.
• 39:04
  And I've run companies and I was like, you know, and my boss was
• 39:08
  like, we are terminating you. And I was like, why?
• 39:13
  And he said, well, we, we just learned of, you know, what's
• 39:18
  going on with your family and you didn't disclose it.
• 39:21
  And I said, well, disclose what? And he's like, well, what you're
• 39:25
  going through. And I was like, well, you're not
• 39:27
  legally allowed to ask me if I'm married during the interview
• 39:29
  process. So what did you want me to
• 39:31
  disclose? Like no one's charged of I'm not
• 39:33
  accused of anything. I'm not charged of a crime.
• 39:35
  And he, he just said, I'm going to hand this over to the lawyer.
• 39:38
  And then he got off the Zoom, and that was that.
• 39:42
  And after that happened, I had not spoken on social media about
• 39:46
  what my family was going through.
• 39:48
  I'd been abandoned by a lot of like, you know, the Seattle tech
• 39:51
  community because Amazon. And after that, I was like, you
• 39:56
  know what, Whether I'm quiet or loud, like this is impacting me.
• 40:01
  And I would rather be loud and defend my husband.
• 40:04
  And we know what he did. We're not afraid of saying
• 40:08
  anything publicly. And by that point?
• 40:10
  My husband had chosen the lawyer he rode the rode the distance
• 40:12
  with. He was a friend I'd had for 20
• 40:13
  years who knew me well and trusted me.
• 40:16
  And he's like, you're smart. Just be smart about it, whatever
• 40:19
  you like. I don't want to be involved in
• 40:20
  it, but like, just, you know, don't say anything stupid.
• 40:22
  And I started saying things on social media and talking about
• 40:26
  it. And of course, you know, there's
• 40:28
  some people were like, you shouldn't say anything.
• 40:30
  Your husband's obviously guilty. But I know a lot about telling a
• 40:36
  story and being consistent. And I, it was interesting and I
• 40:40
  would really recommend this kind of tactic because what I was
• 40:43
  able to do through using social media was see like what
• 40:46
  resonated with people in terms of what had happened, right?
• 40:49
  And like in Amazon's allegations and what, what people understood
• 40:52
  and they didn't. And it also, it made me feel so
• 40:55
  much better. I had felt silenced and alone.
• 40:59
  And that's what they want you to do is they want you to feel
• 41:01
  isolated and alone and ashamed. And I, I didn't feel ashamed,
• 41:05
  but I felt isolated and alone and being able to talk made me
• 41:09
  feel not that way. And then eventually I, I had
• 41:11
  been on Instagram, you know, I was 40.
• 41:13
  Like I TikTok seemed like a dancing app, but people kept
• 41:16
  saying to me like, try TikTok. So one day I just like made a
• 41:19
  TikTok and I just, they just started to take off.
• 41:24
  And I now have 250,000 followers on TikTok that like really just
• 41:28
  listen to this pretty legally intricate story.
• 41:31
  You know, they've listened for years and, and it and the, and
• 41:36
  then the other thing that happened with it is like it made
• 41:38
  Amazon so mad, I bet. And I was like, I'm over the
• 41:42
  target. They're pissed, they're scared.
• 41:44
  They know I'm telling the truth. It's going out to everybody.
• 41:48
  And they can't control it like they can control the media.
• 41:50
  Amazon can. And they do because I'm not a
• 41:52
  conspiracy theorist when I say that like, the media is for
• 41:54
  profit and Amazon is the largest buyer of ads in the world.
• 41:57
  Like nobody, you know, Jeff Bezos in many ways controls the
• 42:01
  news we hear the media we watch with Amazon and all of it,
• 42:04
  right? Like, it's wild.
• 42:07
  But I actually, Amazon's lawyers actually sent me a letter
• 42:11
  telling me that if I didn't shut down my TikTok, they were going
• 42:14
  to tell the Department of Justice that I was witness
• 42:16
  tampering. And one of the things they also
• 42:20
  said is, you know, one of the things I needed to do was stop
• 42:23
  naming the lawyers who are doing this to my husband.
• 42:27
  And at that point, it was the IT was not just the DOJ
• 42:29
  investigation that Amazon was stocking.
• 42:31
  There was a civil lawsuit. And one of the things that I
• 42:35
  think is so important in talking about criminal legal reform is
• 42:39
  that we are not battling an institution.
• 42:42
  An institution can actually do nothing to us, right?
• 42:45
  We are battling people. We are battling the people that
• 42:48
  work at these institutions that behave badly, that take
• 42:51
  advantage of statues. And they need, they have names
• 42:54
  and they need to be named because you've been named,
• 42:56
  right? And so like, you know, and I was
• 42:58
  a lawyer at a big law firm and I could say no to cases.
• 43:01
  And so the lawyers at Gibson Dunn, the law firm that have
• 43:03
  done this to my husband, like I know their names and they are
• 43:06
  the people that I need to talk to, right?
• 43:09
  So I talk about them on social media.
• 43:12
  And I think that we need to do that all over.
• 43:15
  You know, when you just kind of in anything like I think one of
• 43:18
  the greatest cons that the owners, the corporations, the
• 43:23
  big institutions have pulled in America is that we like blame
• 43:26
  them or Amazon. Amazon did this.
• 43:28
  Amazon's a logo, right? People in Amazon did.
• 43:31
  People. In Amazon, right?
• 43:32
  And you have to make it personal for everybody for there to be
• 43:35
  change. And I think it's really
• 43:38
  important. And I'm not saying don't ever
• 43:39
  dock someone, don't ever harass someone, don't ever threaten
• 43:42
  someone, but identify the people that are making the choices that
• 43:48
  you think are wrong, that are impacting you well.
• 43:50
  And I think it, your point is so well taken too.
• 43:54
  And, and, and one of the problems within the structure of
• 43:57
  those organizations. We talked about this earlier,
• 43:59
  Amy, is that like Matthew Burke, who's who was on your case and
• 44:04
  then he he was on the January 6th case with Jack Smith.
• 44:11
  He did some things that he was asked to leave that case because
• 44:14
  of the how his, his his actions that he took, and then he got
• 44:20
  promoted to a a bigger situation.
• 44:22
  And time and time again, it seems like that's what happens
• 44:26
  within that system is, is that somebody can get scolded, things
• 44:31
  can be overturned. You know, a a, a Supreme Court
• 44:34
  can go 9 O, but but then you find these people in bigger
• 44:40
  positions. And I think that's one of the
• 44:42
  things that when we're talking about people, people are
• 44:45
  promoting people that are doing things that should be
• 44:48
  reprimanded and demoted, not promoted.
• 44:51
  And that's that's a huge problem within the system and it's gone
• 44:55
  on for decades. Well, I, I think so much of it
• 44:58
  is, you know, I, I think the federal prosecutors
• 45:00
  particularly, which is the world that I've come to know a little
• 45:03
  bit like they look at it as like a learning experience or we're
• 45:09
  going to test the bounds of this law, or we're going to get you
• 45:11
  some trial practice or we're going to.
• 45:13
  And it's like, it's not that's not this.
• 45:15
  This is people's. Freedom.
• 45:16
  It's. Somebody's lies, precious thing
• 45:18
  we have, right? And so if they screw up a trial
• 45:23
  or they, you know, like the current US attorney in the
• 45:27
  Eastern District of Virginia, Jessica Aber, you know, she
• 45:30
  along with Jack Smith, prosecuted Governor Bob
• 45:32
  McDonnell in Virginia, convicted him and the Supreme Court
• 45:36
  overturned it. 9 O's. And she's been a lying
• 45:39
  prosecutor at that time and eventually then was appointed US
• 45:42
  attorney. Like, why, when her judgement
• 45:46
  was to go after a governor of an American state, it gets
• 45:51
  overturned. It was so bad.
• 45:53
  We all agree they don't agree on anything.
• 45:55
  They all agree this should be overturned.
• 45:56
  I mean, they destroyed Bob McDonald's life.
• 45:58
  And it's if you dive into the story, you know, they used all
• 46:00
  the prosecutorial tools. Like they threatened to indict
• 46:04
  his children. They did indict his wife.
• 46:06
  I mean, it's just. Guided his wife exactly.
• 46:08
  It's crazy. It's just it's horrible.
• 46:11
  And I think it's, you know, and then and she did it with Jack
• 46:14
  Smith and then they're like at the top of the food chain at
• 46:16
  DOJ. Whereas if you worked at a
• 46:18
  company and had those kind of outcomes, you would be fired.
• 46:21
  Right, It'd be different and it'd be different because that
• 46:24
  you're that you, there's principles.
• 46:26
  You can't stand for that all those different things that go
• 46:29
  on. Amy, I'm interested in the fact
• 46:33
  that when you started and they and they threatened you with
• 46:38
  saying, hey, you, you shouldn't be doing this.
• 46:40
  It's witness tamper. It could be possible.
• 46:42
  What? Don't name names.
• 46:43
  What? What did you think?
• 46:45
  I mean I. Because that's gutsy, by the
• 46:50
  way. Well, I mean, at that point it
• 46:52
  was like, we're in it, right? Like you made our decisions like
• 46:54
  we'd and they'd also like the prosecutors like lightly
• 46:58
  threatened me at one point with tax fraud.
• 47:03
  But our CPA who was subpoenaed was like, I know everything that
• 47:07
  these guys have done. They're good.
• 47:08
  Like answer the subpoena, like went to bat for us.
• 47:12
  And I mean, they subpoenaed our nanny who we paid over the table
• 47:18
  with that taxes. Thank God, pay your nanny over
• 47:21
  the table if you have a nanny. And like my husband and I both
• 47:22
  worked full time, so we had childcare.
• 47:25
  They subpoenaed our nanny, like our poor nanny, you know, it's
• 47:27
  obviously she wasn't working for us anymore because we couldn't
• 47:29
  afford that. But it was horrifying.
• 47:32
  But anyway, at this point, when they threatened me, it was
• 47:34
  February of 2022. And I mean, I was kind of like,
• 47:41
  you can't, you can't tell me to shut down my TikTok.
• 47:44
  And I am not saying anything that is secret that is wrong.
• 47:50
  I'm telling the truth. And I felt OK with it.
• 47:55
  You know, I was like, OK, and I also knew that they clearly
• 47:59
  didn't want me to. And I think when you're fighting
• 48:02
  a trillion dollar company, like you're not going to outspend
• 48:05
  them, right? You, you only have a few
• 48:07
  options. And I figured out pretty quickly
• 48:10
  that like, one of the ways to fight Amazon was to just flood
• 48:13
  it with sunlight because they don't want you to, and they
• 48:15
  don't they. Didn't want that, right?
• 48:16
  Yeah, I figure I I've learned that, you know, when they did
• 48:19
  all the things, they did this bombastic investigation, they
• 48:23
  just expected everybody to fold and that there wouldn't be a
• 48:25
  fight. They had no plan.
• 48:26
  BI mean they have just flailed for years and spent.
• 48:30
  So I think they've spent over $100 million on lawyers, which
• 48:34
  is nuts, right? Oh my God, They've just flailed
• 48:36
  for years. They've no, I don't know what
• 48:38
  the hell their plan is even now. And so I was like, just keep
• 48:41
  fighting. Just keep doing it.
• 48:43
  Don't give up. Don't stop.
• 48:43
  How did you get your first good piece of news?
• 48:46
  Like how, how, how far into it were you?
• 48:49
  So in I mean, eventually I realized like every month my
• 48:53
  husband was indicted was a piece of good news, right?
• 48:55
  Like started living like that like great because.
• 48:59
  Because early on, the other two guys had cut plea deals, right?
• 49:03
  So the Amazon's main target, he, he, he fought, he's still
• 49:07
  fighting. He's suing everybody now, which
• 49:08
  is amazing. He's suing Amazon and he's suing
• 49:11
  everybody. But, and then my husband's the
• 49:16
  like one of the other main targets, Casey Kirchner, he
• 49:18
  never pled. He fought the whole way through
• 49:19
  too. But then 24 guys pled guilty and
• 49:25
  they had their pleas vacated. But yeah, but some people, but
• 49:27
  we did, we also, we didn't know they pled guilty, right?
• 49:29
  Like, we had no idea this was a black box to us.
• 49:33
  These weren't people. My husband, some of one of them,
• 49:35
  we didn't even know, you know, like, But the first piece of
• 49:39
  good news, actually, we did something that was sort of
• 49:42
  unconventional in the fall of 2020.
• 49:46
  So, like, six months into this investigation, we decided to sue
• 49:50
  Amazon because Amazon had sued my husband in Virginia, and my
• 49:54
  husband's employment contract with Amazon said they had to sue
• 49:56
  him in Washington state. And I had been a lawyer in
• 49:59
  Washington state. So my old boss did the lawsuit
• 50:02
  along with my husband's father, so we didn't have to, you know,
• 50:06
  pay my husband's father. And we sued Amazon for breach of
• 50:09
  contract. Yeah, he took the offense.
• 50:12
  We took the offense, which was unexpected, and I think they
• 50:15
  were very surprised by it. But part of it was like, I
• 50:18
  wanted this to be about the employment contract because it
• 50:19
  was right. If you give someone an
• 50:21
  employment contract, and my husband's employment contract
• 50:23
  wasn't silent, it explicitly authorized him to do the thing
• 50:27
  that Amazon was complaining about, like in plain language.
• 50:31
  So we sued them and then and then we immediately when we sued
• 50:36
  them, moved for partial summary judgement, which is usually
• 50:39
  comes like at the end of discovery.
• 50:40
  But it was like this kind of like this ninja, like we're just
• 50:42
  doing like we wanted judgement. And so and we and we won.
• 50:48
  Amazon tried to delay the hearing, but we won and we that
• 50:53
  was in February of 2021. So that was the first piece of
• 50:56
  like really good news, like, OK, we got to win on the books and
• 51:00
  that felt good. But then it wasn't really until
• 51:04
  the end of 2021 that we've really started winning.
• 51:08
  And when we started winning, it was great.
• 51:10
  But it was also like, why won't they quit?
• 51:12
  Why won't they quit? What's going to make them quit?
• 51:14
  And like, I had this hope. I was like, when this happens,
• 51:16
  they'll quit. When this happens, they'll quit
• 51:18
  both Amazon and DOJ. Well, I think one of the reasons
• 51:21
  why, and I'm just speculating, but it's strange how this thing
• 51:26
  went like directly to Jeff Bezos.
• 51:28
  You know, he got a direct e-mail that said, hey, do you want to
• 51:31
  check this out? And he responded.
• 51:34
  And you know, the, the like you said, that company is so huge.
• 51:39
  Yeah. But it's almost like he was
• 51:41
  directly had some interest in this small case that didn't seem
• 51:45
  like it meant anything. I mean, I think, well, there's a
• 51:47
  couple of things. I think it might I think he
• 51:49
  might have sent an e-mail like fix this, you know, which would
• 51:52
  be a Jeff Bezos e-mail and then people he's a billionaire and
• 51:56
  people just do what he says, you know, like and but the other
• 52:00
  piece of it. So this related to these real
• 52:03
  estate deals and what the main target, Brian Watson had built
• 52:09
  these data centers that Amazon leased.
• 52:11
  Brian Watson had a money partner, the money partner along
• 52:15
  with IPI, the money partner along with Amazon kicked Brian
• 52:19
  Watson out of his ownership stake of the leases.
• 52:22
  So Amazon's like renting these data centers and somehow kicks
• 52:25
  the owner out, the part owner. And so then the money partner
• 52:29
  gets all the ownership. So they get a windfall of
• 52:31
  hundreds of millions of dollars. Amazon didn't need to
• 52:35
  participate in this action at all, but they did.
• 52:38
  And the agreement that Brian Watson, the real estate
• 52:41
  developer had with his money partner was the only way the
• 52:44
  money partner could kick Watson out was if he pled guilty or is
• 52:47
  convicted of a felony. They kicked him out the night
• 52:50
  before their first meeting with COJI mean these people did not
• 52:53
  try to hide what they were doing.
• 52:55
  And so once they've done that, they had to get him convicted of
• 53:00
  a felony or they're liable for hundreds of millions of dollars.
• 53:03
  So that's why they won't give up, right?
• 53:05
  Because Amazon has these data centers, they're making billions
• 53:07
  of dollars off of them. Like, you know, they kept them.
• 53:11
  It's not that they didn't want them.
• 53:12
  And so I don't know what their plan is now that the DOJ
• 53:17
  investigation is over. Like, I don't, I don't know what
• 53:20
  I think of. I don't know.
• 53:21
  Let's talk about the DOJ investigation being over because
• 53:24
  the the judge talk, walk us through what happened on on on
• 53:28
  what happened with the actual process of what the judge said
• 53:34
  and what it all meant and where you are now.
• 53:37
  So, you know, Carl was never charged.
• 53:39
  So we never had a day in court on the criminal side, but
• 53:42
  eventually on this Amazon civil lawsuit, which turned out to be
• 53:45
  a great blessing even though it didn't feel like it.
• 53:49
  Carl's lawyers and the other defendants who fought the real
• 53:52
  estate developer and another man named Casey Kirchner, they filed
• 53:55
  for summary judgement, meaning we think we should dispose of
• 53:58
  this case before trial because of Amazon.
• 54:00
  There's no way they can prove it.
• 54:02
  So we filed for summary judgement, and we filed in
• 54:04
  January of 2023. And you waited, you know, and we
• 54:10
  were getting ready for the civil trial.
• 54:11
  It was scheduled for, I think, like the end of April of 2023.
• 54:16
  And you're just waiting and you're living your life.
• 54:19
  And then some really bad stuff happened in February.
• 54:23
  We learned. I learned because I'm obsessive.
• 54:26
  And I was like surfing the docket that people had pled
• 54:29
  guilty. And that terrified me.
• 54:31
  And at that point, I kind of thought the DOJ investigation
• 54:33
  was like, over, but it wasn't. And then this whole new round of
• 54:39
  like, oh, my God, they're going to indict my husband now.
• 54:42
  We've spent, like all of our money on the civil trial.
• 54:43
  We're screwed. Like at how, you know, all like,
• 54:46
  and we're years into this and now and you having survived a
• 54:49
  long investigation, no, like when you're years into it to
• 54:51
  then have to go to that next stage.
• 54:54
  So they entered these pleas and I was like, Oh my God.
• 54:57
  But because they entered these pleas, my husband's lawyers were
• 55:04
  then able to depose the guys who pled in the civil case.
• 55:07
  And they're, they're, they're like literally in the middle of
• 55:09
  a deposition. And the judge rules on the
• 55:12
  summary judgement motion. And like we won.
• 55:16
  I mean it is super rare to win on summary judgement.
• 55:20
  Hard. But the facts were so on our
• 55:23
  side, right? Like Amazon had said they've
• 55:25
  been harmed by $70 million. And then they hired a damages
• 55:27
  expert who refused to opine on whether Amazon was damaged
• 55:31
  because they weren't, because the evidence showed as to this
• 55:33
  real estate that they underpaid. So it's like, and the judge was
• 55:37
  like, just, I mean, he was like, this is, this is ridiculous,
• 55:39
  right? Like this is insane.
• 55:41
  But most importantly, he said that my husband's the Amazon's
• 55:47
  employment contract, like I said, my husband can do XY and Z
• 55:50
  and authorize my husband to do the thing Amazon complained of.
• 55:54
  And that was so important because the plea agreements, the
• 55:58
  statements of fact from the guys who pled guilty, like said
• 56:02
  something completely different as to what my husband's
• 56:04
  employment agreements were. And these guys were pleading
• 56:06
  guilty to helping my husband break those agreements.
• 56:09
  So what I've heard. And so, but anyway, in that
• 56:11
  moment, right, like I was, my husband was sitting in a
• 56:13
  deposition in Nashville. I was driving the girls home
• 56:16
  from school and he they got a break and he called me and he
• 56:21
  said we just got the summary judgement back.
• 56:22
  And I was like, well, on to trial.
• 56:24
  He's like, we won. I can't imagine Amy.
• 56:29
  Everything and he's slipping through it.
• 56:31
  He's like, there's one state law claim left, but the, the Rico,
• 56:35
  the, the unjust and Ritz like unjust and ruse with the fraud,
• 56:38
  the employment contract. And I was like, and once when he
• 56:41
  told me we won the employment contract, I was like, we're
• 56:43
  good, You know, like I, I was like, we can figure this out
• 56:45
  from here. But I just screamed.
• 56:47
  I still get chills talking about it 'cause it was like Oh my God.
• 56:51
  And you're just driving in the car.
• 56:52
  With the kids, you know, and like at home and I'm just like,
• 56:55
  and then I get it done. I'm reading it.
• 56:56
  It's just this. It was so amazing.
• 56:59
  And the DOJ did not stop. The DoD did not stop and say,
• 57:05
  OK, we're going to stop. They still said we're going to
• 57:07
  move forward and I'm going to curse now.
• 57:09
  I was like, what the fuck? Like, I mean, you're going to go
• 57:12
  to a jury and say that my husband should go to prison for
• 57:16
  violating his honest services to Amazon when a federal judge has
• 57:19
  said that he complied with his contract?
• 57:21
  So then we had to create a presentation for the DOJ to
• 57:27
  convince them one more time to not do this.
• 57:31
  And it was like, you know, a lot of people wouldn't do that
• 57:34
  because they would say, we're going to wait for the indictment
• 57:35
  and hold our chips close for the trial.
• 57:37
  And we collected where we were like screw it, like put it all
• 57:39
  on the table. It's all go forward.
• 57:41
  Yeah, right now we have the. Presentation for the end of May.
• 57:45
  They gave the presentation and we heard nothing.
• 57:49
  We did here in July, DOJ dismissed the first two pleas
• 57:53
  and that was a dismissal because of those two pleas hadn't been
• 57:56
  entered. We never saw them and we heard
• 57:59
  from one of the the guys who's getting his pleas vacated from
• 58:03
  his attorney. Which hardly ever happens.
• 58:06
  Amy, I don't want to just brush over that.
• 58:08
  They vacated the pleas of these guys that did a plea bargain.
• 58:13
  Said you can't. Whatever.
• 58:14
  Yeah. So, so I mean that doesn't, that
• 58:16
  doesn't happen. I mean that that's very very,
• 58:19
  very very rare like. Exactly.
• 58:21
  I read both of those guys. Yeah, I read an article when
• 58:24
  General Flynn was having his plea vacated in the New York
• 58:27
  Times, wrote an article where they talked to seven former
• 58:29
  federal prosecutors and not one of them could think of another
• 58:32
  time the DOJ had vacated a plea. And it is, but they still never
• 58:37
  talked to us. But I, I heard from a lawyer of
• 58:40
  one of the other defendants who was having a plea vacated that
• 58:44
  the judge had emailed was the same judge and the criminal and
• 58:47
  civil had emailed the prosecutors and the counsel for
• 58:50
  the defendants saying you've seen my summary judgement order.
• 58:53
  What are you doing about these fleas and the statements of
• 58:55
  fact? Like, how are you going to
• 58:56
  correct them? And you, as you know, you can't
• 58:58
  like wildly change a legal well, technically you're not supposed
• 59:01
  to be able to like wildly change a legal theory.
• 59:03
  And so I think that's why they did it.
• 59:05
  But then they still didn't talk to us.
• 59:06
  So we're still living in this thinking Carl's going to be
• 59:09
  indicted. And that's so horrifying, right?
• 59:11
  Like we're. Still, it's, it's no, it's, it's
• 59:14
  purgatory. It's purgatory.
• 59:15
  And then finally in January of 2024, so just a year ago last
• 59:19
  week, my husband and I are sitting on the couch.
• 59:23
  It's like, I don't know, 8:00 PM at night.
• 59:26
  And we got a call and we were told by our from the lawyers and
• 59:31
  they said they're vacating the last two, please.
• 59:34
  It's done, it's over. An assistant US attorney named
• 59:37
  Russell Carlberg called the lawyers and said it was the
• 59:40
  right thing to do. They had a ton of meetings at
• 59:42
  DOJ about it. They've tried to get it done
• 59:45
  before Christmas but didn't. And it was.
• 59:49
  It was over. Wow, Amy, wow.
• 59:54
  I mean, it's, it's so unusual and that's why I, I wanted to
• 1:00:00
  have you on the show for a lot of reasons.
• 1:00:02
  But you know, there's so many ways that this could have gone
• 1:00:07
  wrong and there's so many things that you did that if you
• 1:00:14
  wouldn't have done. I'm not sure.
• 1:00:15
  I mean, I I often ask myself, in your case, what would have
• 1:00:19
  happened if you wouldn't have gotten up?
• 1:00:22
  And he wouldn't have become a voice and you wouldn't have
• 1:00:25
  become a thorn in their side with, you know, all of these
• 1:00:29
  followers that are hearing not just about your case.
• 1:00:32
  You talk about just the system in general, introducing thoughts
• 1:00:37
  and and facts of how things are. You know, I was having a
• 1:00:43
  conversation the other day with they were talking about a the
• 1:00:47
  grand jury and they said, well, yeah, but you know the guy, you
• 1:00:49
  know, that guy gets to present his side.
• 1:00:51
  I said no, no, no, no, 99.9% of the people think a grand jury
• 1:00:56
  that the defense also presents, it's just the prosecution.
• 1:01:00
  So they wonder like, how can you get an indictment so easily?
• 1:01:03
  Well, if you only present one side to a grand jury that's
• 1:01:05
  being seen by that, that the prosecutors of the white Knights
• 1:01:10
  that are, are trying to protect everybody and that other
• 1:01:13
  person's not in the room, of course you're going to get a lot
• 1:01:15
  of indictments because that's the way the system's set up.
• 1:01:18
  If you set it up differently, then you allow the other side to
• 1:01:21
  present and see what the the jury actually thinks.
• 1:01:24
  But it's so dumb. But it's one of those things,
• 1:01:26
  what I think Amy was is, and I hope you keep doing everything
• 1:01:31
  you do because your voice is so clear.
• 1:01:35
  The clarity in how you bring the topics to the audience is so
• 1:01:39
  good to understand. Cause a lot of times, you know,
• 1:01:43
  you being an attorney, there's, it's so easy to talk over people
• 1:01:47
  just because you've been taught that way, you know, and you, you
• 1:01:51
  have been able to. And I think that's why you have
• 1:01:52
  the following. You have you create a motion of
• 1:01:56
  cause. And I think that's, I don't know
• 1:02:01
  what would have happened if that that part wouldn't have been in
• 1:02:03
  there in this in this particular case, because you brought so
• 1:02:08
  much light to the situation that all sides had to look as it.
• 1:02:14
  Do we really want to go all the way with this?
• 1:02:17
  Yeah, which is unfortunate that that had to be part of the
• 1:02:20
  equation, but I'm sure it was right because, you know, Jeff
• 1:02:22
  Bezos says at the Washington Post that democracy dies in the
• 1:02:25
  darkness. And he's right.
• 1:02:27
  And so, yeah, I wonder about, I wonder about a lot of things.
• 1:02:31
  Like one of the biggest things, I don't think I've ever really
• 1:02:34
  talked about this, but the first judge on the civil case who I
• 1:02:37
  think would have probably handled the pleas was a guy
• 1:02:40
  named Liam O'Grady. And in the civil case at the
• 1:02:42
  beginning, I mean, he was just willing for Amazon every, every
• 1:02:46
  on everything. And to the point, like he issued
• 1:02:49
  a $21 million injunction against Brian Watson without an
• 1:02:53
  evidentiary hearing it just based on what Amazon said, which
• 1:02:56
  is insane. And I read a Wall Street Journal
• 1:03:01
  article about judicial conflicts of interest and I clicked on the
• 1:03:06
  source material and looked at Liam O'Grady.
• 1:03:09
  And in his last disclosure, he owned an awful lot of Amazon
• 1:03:12
  stock, which is just against the rules.
• 1:03:14
  And he's overseeing a conflict of interest case, right?
• 1:03:17
  But so I reached out to the Wall Street Journal reporter on
• 1:03:21
  Twitter. I just DM Ed him and said hey I
• 1:03:24
  read your article. It was really interesting like
• 1:03:26
  we're going through this. I would love for you to try to
• 1:03:28
  figure out if this judge still owns the stock.
• 1:03:30
  He called the judge and the judge said he own still owned
• 1:03:33
  the Amazon stock and then he said he wasn't recusing and then
• 1:03:38
  which? Is their choice by the.
• 1:03:39
  Way their choice. And then the Wall Street Journal
• 1:03:41
  put it on the front page of the paper.
• 1:03:44
  And then he recused and like, that's that.
• 1:03:47
  You know what I mean? It's like you, I, it's
• 1:03:49
  unfortunate, right? Like, it's unfortunate and I,
• 1:03:54
  you know, he obviously. It happens a lot too.
• 1:03:57
  I mean, I had Carlos Watson on the show.
• 1:04:00
  He got. Screwed a few episodes ago and
• 1:04:02
  his his judge had you know, he was invested.
• 1:04:07
  He's very one of the richest federal judges on the on the
• 1:04:09
  bench and for the companies that were in that were the victims of
• 1:04:15
  the case, he had stock in and didn't recuse himself.
• 1:04:18
  Regardless of what everybody thinks about the case or Carlos
• 1:04:21
  Watson, you know, I'm a I'm a very big supporter of Carlos and
• 1:04:24
  and his cause, but that's not right.
• 1:04:27
  I mean, there shouldn't be that conflict in the case because
• 1:04:29
  then that creates questions and and it just that that shouldn't
• 1:04:35
  be part of our system. I can, it happens a lot.
• 1:04:38
  I completely agree with you. It's kind of like people need to
• 1:04:43
  understand that we need like the equal application of rules and
• 1:04:48
  laws and the and the fairest shake for anyone accused of a
• 1:04:51
  crime. You know, four of the 10 Bill of
• 1:04:54
  Rights deal with accused people and their rights.
• 1:04:57
  Our founding fathers were all accused criminals, right?
• 1:04:59
  And they cared so deeply that you would have a right to a jury
• 1:05:03
  trial, which we really don't in this country.
• 1:05:07
  If you exercise your right to a jury trial, if you can afford
• 1:05:09
  it, or you have a public defender, you face a lengthier
• 1:05:14
  prison sentence. If you lose, which I believe is
• 1:05:17
  wholly unconstitutional, there should be no punishment for
• 1:05:21
  exercising your constitutional right.
• 1:05:23
  And people are like, well, the system would collapse if
• 1:05:24
  everybody went to trial. And I'm like, well, then perhaps
• 1:05:27
  we should think about how many people were putting in prison
• 1:05:31
  for nonviolent issues that could be corporate.
• 1:05:34
  You know, it's like it's, you know, we have, we put more
• 1:05:37
  people in prison than anyone in the world and it's horrifying
• 1:05:39
  and it's terrible. And then we punish people for
• 1:05:41
  the rest of their lives even after they've served their
• 1:05:43
  sentence. So, and it's hard to get people
• 1:05:46
  to rally around it, we think, but I have this theory right,
• 1:05:51
  because so many millions of Americans are just as impacted,
• 1:05:55
  whether they are or their family members, it can actually be a
• 1:05:57
  very winning issue. I think one of the biggest
• 1:06:00
  issues on that Amy, and and I'm very interested in that
• 1:06:05
  particular thing. There's 26,000,000, you know, ex
• 1:06:07
  felons, there's 70 million that have records.
• 1:06:10
  Then you've got all the people that are affected around the
• 1:06:12
  family. The biggest problem I see with
• 1:06:15
  the people justice involved, justice impacted people is, is
• 1:06:19
  that everybody kind of works in silos.
• 1:06:21
  You know, there's people doing good things over here, say in
• 1:06:24
  Kentucky, and then there's some people go doing some good things
• 1:06:26
  over here in Michigan. And then but the something needs
• 1:06:30
  to be put across like an Amazon of, of voices of the, the
• 1:06:36
  umbrella on the top so that it speaks with a voice that can
• 1:06:40
  actually create change. And there's a lot of different
• 1:06:42
  people that have created big change, like Jay Jordan created
• 1:06:45
  big change in California with the Spongeman, those type of
• 1:06:48
  things. But it's one of those things
• 1:06:50
  that if we could bridge everything instead of silo
• 1:06:53
  everything, the voice would be so much more powerful and and
• 1:06:58
  heard. And question is, how does that
• 1:07:01
  happen? Well, you know, it's interesting
• 1:07:03
  because, you know, I was a lifelong Democrat.
• 1:07:05
  I was, and not just a voter, like I was a national Finance
• 1:07:08
  Committee for Obama, all these things.
• 1:07:10
  And I will tell you that I am very excited about Cash Patel
• 1:07:14
  meeting the FBI. And one of the reasons is he's a
• 1:07:18
  former federal public defender. And we've never had a former
• 1:07:21
  federal public defender lead the FBI.
• 1:07:23
  And he has seen the other. He's also a federal prosecutor.
• 1:07:26
  But like, he's seen the other side of it.
• 1:07:27
  He's seen how it works. There's no glory to being a
• 1:07:29
  federal public defender. It's a hard job and an underpaid
• 1:07:33
  job. And he's seen both sides.
• 1:07:36
  And I believe that if anybody can reform the DOJ and maybe
• 1:07:43
  change some of the practices, it can be him.
• 1:07:47
  And, you know, a lot of Democrats are like, what are you
• 1:07:49
  talking about? And I'm like, just like give
• 1:07:52
  like give it a chance, right? Like so.
• 1:07:54
  And he doesn't come from the what would you call it, like the
• 1:07:58
  white collar industrial complex. You know, he never went to work
• 1:08:02
  at a big white shoe law firm. So he doesn't care, which is
• 1:08:05
  like the danger of him to that's.
• 1:08:07
  Why people are? Scared of it?
• 1:08:10
  Which is why I think the establishment rejects him so.
• 1:08:13
  But I think he could bring about some reform and some change.
• 1:08:16
  Like there's so many simple things, right?
• 1:08:18
  Like think about like I think about DOJ press conferences,
• 1:08:20
  which aren't ridiculous, right? Like, like you mentioned, like
• 1:08:24
  if you speak publicly, anything you say can be used against you.
• 1:08:27
  But the DOJ holds a press conference to announce they're
• 1:08:30
  accusing you of something. Like it's the same as like
• 1:08:34
  saying I'm going to hold a press conference and announce that I'm
• 1:08:37
  going to plan a dinner party. You know what I mean?
• 1:08:40
  Like, no, Like, sure, if you win at trial, have a press
• 1:08:44
  conference, but they announce the indictments and then they
• 1:08:48
  put a little thing at the end like you're innocent until
• 1:08:50
  proven guilty, right? Like no.
• 1:08:52
  I mean, we just recently had the thing with Jack Smith saying
• 1:08:54
  that he had enough evidence to get a conviction.
• 1:08:57
  Well, that's really actually the jury's responsibility for that.
• 1:09:02
  But it's just out there. It's just sad.
• 1:09:05
  And you know, the question is, you know, we talk about
• 1:09:08
  poisoning the jury pool and all those type of things that that
• 1:09:11
  we being the defendant can do, but the power of of the press
• 1:09:15
  and the voice of the prosecutor is so, so, so powerful.
• 1:09:18
  It's so powerful. And I just like part of what
• 1:09:21
  I've struggled with a lot is how these prosecutors, like, think
• 1:09:24
  this is fair or think they're doing justice because like, how
• 1:09:29
  could you, right? Like, how could you?
• 1:09:31
  How could you really think that when you're like, oh, here's
• 1:09:34
  this family that Amazon wants to accuse of a crime.
• 1:09:37
  I'm going to take their money so they can't feed their kids.
• 1:09:40
  I'm going to destroy them publicly.
• 1:09:42
  I'm going to raid their home and terrify them.
• 1:09:44
  And like, best of luck, guys. I mean, what like, and you know,
• 1:09:49
  they, they said that they did horrifying things like we when
• 1:09:52
  they seized all of our money, our lawyers asked we could have
• 1:09:56
  some back for groceries. And the one of the attorneys,
• 1:10:03
  assistant US attorney named Sarantha Bateman, who was a mom,
• 1:10:07
  said to our attorneys they can have money to feed their kids if
• 1:10:11
  if he pleads guilty. If he pleads guilty, yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:17
  And I remember my mother saying, like, do they care if your kids
• 1:10:19
  starve? And I said, I think they want
• 1:10:20
  them to. And at that moment, I had
• 1:10:23
  hearts. For a long time, I was like, I
• 1:10:24
  do not like America anymore. But then I realized, like, I
• 1:10:27
  love this country. I think I love it more than they
• 1:10:30
  do. Do you think, Amy, that we're at
• 1:10:34
  a point where the pendulum could swing back towards the middle?
• 1:10:39
  So we're we're not so far into it, You know, Los Angeles
• 1:10:45
  Dodgers against your softball team.
• 1:10:48
  I really hope so. I think if there was ever a
• 1:10:50
  moment, it would be now. We have a president who is a
• 1:10:53
  felon. He is just as impacted.
• 1:10:55
  He's, as of January 10th, a convicted felon.
• 1:10:58
  He's just as impacted and and I hope so, I don't think we know,
• 1:11:05
  right. I mean.
• 1:11:06
  I think my feeling is, is that there has probably been not a
• 1:11:11
  time in my life, I'm 58. There's not been a time in my
• 1:11:15
  life where I've seen more people question, what are we doing?
• 1:11:20
  Yeah, where it's really not ever been a question.
• 1:11:22
  It's just this is our system. You get indicted.
• 1:11:26
  Most people think indicted means convicted.
• 1:11:29
  There's, there's just a system that if you get caught in it,
• 1:11:32
  then you did something wrong and that that you're, there's really
• 1:11:35
  nothing wrong with the system. It's just you should, she
• 1:11:38
  shouldn't be in the system. I think right now that we're at
• 1:11:40
  a point where the FBI, the Department of Justice, the, the
• 1:11:46
  overall atmosphere of the media that, that, that, you know,
• 1:11:51
  gives it fuel is, is all of that is somewhat being questioned.
• 1:11:56
  I don't know what that all means.
• 1:11:57
  I don't know, you know, because I mean, you go back to the, the
• 1:12:01
  beginnings at times, like at the FBI that the, the building's
• 1:12:05
  named after J Edgar Hoover. I mean, he, he was, he
• 1:12:08
  blackmailed everybody in Washington and in the country
• 1:12:10
  and movie stars and presidents and we named the building after
• 1:12:14
  him. So this isn't something we're
• 1:12:15
  talking about. That just happened a few years
• 1:12:17
  ago. This has been something that has
• 1:12:20
  been a power Center for a long, long time with, with, there's
• 1:12:23
  been good actors and bad actors, but in general, we're talking
• 1:12:26
  about, we're trying to create justice.
• 1:12:28
  You know, how do we, how do we create that with, with as many
• 1:12:31
  people as we can? Hey, man, the FBI has been a
• 1:12:33
  corrupt institution since its founding.
• 1:12:35
  And, you know, are there amazing people in the FBI there and do
• 1:12:39
  they do important work? They do.
• 1:12:41
  However, it is an institution that is built to abuse the
• 1:12:46
  rights of Americans. It's a feature of the system,
• 1:12:48
  not the bug. So we have to fix it.
• 1:12:50
  And, you know, I think if anybody, I think Trump, I was
• 1:12:55
  sort of surprised that he appointed nominated Cash, but
• 1:12:59
  thrilled because if anybody would do it, it would be him.
• 1:13:03
  And there's also, you know, I know pretty well a group of FBI
• 1:13:07
  agents to call themselves the suspendables who have left the
• 1:13:10
  FBI during the last administration.
• 1:13:12
  And they're very powerful voices for change.
• 1:13:15
  And I'm hoping they'll be involved in the reform.
• 1:13:17
  And I hope to be, you know, I'm in touch with lots of people and
• 1:13:21
  talk to people like I, I want to go in.
• 1:13:22
  And getting a lot of important followers.
• 1:13:26
  But I am, so, you know, I'm going to be very loud, as loud
• 1:13:30
  as I can. I'm not afraid at all,
• 1:13:32
  especially now the statue of limitations is over.
• 1:13:34
  So, you know, it's like, because a lot of this is like, if you
• 1:13:36
  survive it, you get quiet and keep going because everyone's
• 1:13:39
  like, you survived. Just keep going.
• 1:13:41
  Yeah. Don't let.
• 1:13:42
  It down like my. Husband and I are.
• 1:13:43
  Going to put her head down like we're building companies, you
• 1:13:45
  know, we're like pretty out there again.
• 1:13:47
  And so I would rather, and I think part of it too, and part
• 1:13:50
  of the reason I, the one of the other reasons I went on social
• 1:13:53
  media is because we have these four girls and they were little
• 1:13:56
  and they're not going to remember this as it happened,
• 1:13:59
  but they're going to learn about.
• 1:14:01
  It well, and I, I got to tell you, I mean, what a role model
• 1:14:03
  you've been for handling a crisis, being resilient.
• 1:14:09
  And I know they're at a young age now, but this stuff is
• 1:14:12
  Evergreen out there. And they'll see how their mom
• 1:14:16
  reacted and, and I think that means a lot.
• 1:14:18
  Well, I just at the beginning like I didn't know what how it
• 1:14:20
  was going to end. Yeah.
• 1:14:21
  And if I still cry when I think about this, but like if he had
• 1:14:26
  been charged and if he had gone to prison, I wanted them to know
• 1:14:28
  that I tried. We fought, yeah.
• 1:14:33
  What do you think's your biggest take away through all of it?
• 1:14:37
  Oh my God. I think my biggest take away is
• 1:14:44
  it no matter how stacked the odds are against you, don't
• 1:14:49
  count yourself out. That's good.
• 1:14:54
  Don't give up. It's.
• 1:14:55
  Pretty easy to count yourself out.
• 1:14:56
  Oh. For sure.
• 1:14:57
  I mean, for a lot of people that are on this show, they, they see
• 1:15:00
  the United States of America versus their name.
• 1:15:03
  You're not used to seeing that. You know, I had Jeremy Harrell
• 1:15:06
  on here a few episodes ago and he was a veteran of Iraq war
• 1:15:10
  and, and he created this incredible thing called the
• 1:15:13
  Veterans Club that that changes people's lives through PTSD.
• 1:15:16
  And they come against him for $100,000 over just 13 years
• 1:15:21
  because they said that he was creating this company.
• 1:15:25
  So he really wasn't disabled, even though 5 doctors had
• 1:15:27
  created or diagnosed him, was disabled.
• 1:15:31
  What are we from PTSD? And they just said go ahead and
• 1:15:34
  live your life. You're not it's, it's not
• 1:15:36
  fixable. And he becomes an expert in the
• 1:15:38
  PTSD field and they take him down.
• 1:15:43
  And I, and I think I look at this and, and he's a, he's close
• 1:15:48
  to Senator Rand Paul. And I think that some of it had
• 1:15:51
  they people were kind of pushing him into the political world and
• 1:15:55
  it could have been some of those ramifications.
• 1:15:57
  But I don't know. I just know that it's really
• 1:15:59
  strange that this guy was doing an awful lot of good nationally
• 1:16:02
  and and it's taken and now he's got a six month prison sentence
• 1:16:05
  and and what a waste. But I know somebody like Jeremy
• 1:16:09
  will be a very powerful voice coming out because he's
• 1:16:12
  experienced the whole thing. He fought the case and I think
• 1:16:15
  the judge felt bad that he was even sentenced to him to time
• 1:16:18
  they, I mean the they were asking for 10 years and he gave
• 1:16:20
  him six months. But and usually you get a
• 1:16:24
  penalty for going to trial. So that kind of tells you.
• 1:16:26
  Yeah. But I think that's a big a big
• 1:16:29
  thing. Amy, what you said is, is don't
• 1:16:30
  count yourself out because most people count themselves out.
• 1:16:33
  Yeah, they do. And then I think like I would
• 1:16:36
  also, I realized like, the only way we're going to end up with
• 1:16:39
  change is if you keep if we keep fighting because, you know,
• 1:16:43
  there are days where I'm kind of, you know, like I would like
• 1:16:45
  to not be doing this right. I would like to because it it's
• 1:16:49
  trauma, right? But yeah.
• 1:16:51
  But I'm going to keep doing it because I want to advocate for
• 1:16:53
  change because they'll just keep doing this shit for people and.
• 1:16:56
  It's like, and I, I think what your trauma is like you said
• 1:17:00
  that you, you, you, you took your voice back.
• 1:17:02
  You got off the floor and you, you, you took, you know, you own
• 1:17:06
  your story and you're sharing it.
• 1:17:08
  But the, I think that, you know, your vulnerability and your
• 1:17:14
  ability to share this is so powerful.
• 1:17:18
  And I just, you know, I, I really hope, Amy, that you
• 1:17:20
  continue to do it because a lot of people like what you say, a
• 1:17:24
  lot of people believe in what you say.
• 1:17:26
  And the more you do it, I think the more change can happen.
• 1:17:29
  And I, I think it happened in this case.
• 1:17:31
  I really do, I think. You are a big mover of it.
• 1:17:33
  But I hope, I hope and I, I really want to advocate for
• 1:17:36
  civil forfeiture reform. And I'm trying to meet with
• 1:17:38
  Senator Paul. I've been in touch with his
• 1:17:40
  office and I know Senator Booker who have the newest civil
• 1:17:43
  forfeiture reform bill. But civil forfeiture primarily,
• 1:17:46
  it's a big one. It's a big one.
• 1:17:47
  And it primarily impacts people that don't look like me and
• 1:17:50
  people who don't have the ability to go to court to fight.
• 1:17:54
  And, you know, you think about like, just use this example,
• 1:17:56
  like if you have a dime bag of wheat in your car, they can take
• 1:17:58
  your car. And if you can't get to work,
• 1:18:00
  you can't take your kids places like, well, you do.
• 1:18:02
  It's the start of a, it's the start of a spiral.
• 1:18:04
  And so we need civil forfeiture reform.
• 1:18:07
  There are simple things we can do, take away the incentive,
• 1:18:09
  right? And so I really think like that
• 1:18:12
  is a big piece of it is civil forfeiture reform.
• 1:18:15
  I can somehow impact that in the world like I've done something
• 1:18:18
  really, really important. Amy And as people get a hold of
• 1:18:24
  you, you're, I think you're Amy K Nelson on all platforms.
• 1:18:28
  Right Amy. Amy under score.
• 1:18:29
  K under score. Under score, Yeah, Amy under
• 1:18:33
  score K under score Nelson, Yeah.
• 1:18:36
  At at Amy K Nelson, at everywhere.
• 1:18:38
  Hopefully still at TikTok. So no, I mean, I, I think you
• 1:18:42
  what, 250,000 followers on TikTok.
• 1:18:45
  It's unbelievable. You know, speaking about being
• 1:18:48
  grateful being here, I, I want to thank Homestead financial for
• 1:18:52
  letting me use this whole podcast set up here.
• 1:18:55
  If you've got home mortgage needs, Greg Aftiev is your guy.
• 1:18:59
  If you if you're looking for a book out there, I've got one
• 1:19:01
  nightmare success. Check it out.
• 1:19:02
  It's on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and please, please like
• 1:19:10
  and share and if you can leave a review on Apple, it really helps
• 1:19:12
  the show. You want to check me out on any
• 1:19:14
  more stuff about me, brentcassidy.com.
• 1:19:16
  I spell it wrong. It's with ATY out of DY.
• 1:19:21
  They used to say to my people writing my emails back and forth
• 1:19:24
  from level where stay strong. I'll do the same.
• 1:19:27
  Amy Nelson, thank you so much for being here today.
• 1:19:29
  I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me,
• 1:19:32
  Brent. Timer success in and out.
• 1:19:35
  I mean you know what's crazy is is about 15 minutes into the
• 1:19:38
  thing I hit the record thing on our on my Rd. caster pro, but I
• 1:19:43
  didn't hit it on this. So I'm trying to figure out if.