Latest / Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott / A Bomb, A Baby, And The Fight To Keep Her

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A Bomb, A Baby, And The Fight To Keep Her · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

0:17
Good morning and welcome. If you are just rolling out of the rack.
0:21
Thank you, as always for making time for us wherever you're listening to us
0:26
from, whether terrestrial radio or iHeartRadio. Welcome to the Morning Show with Preston
0:31
Scott. I'm Preston Grant Allen, running the radio program, and it's good
0:35
to be with you. It's Tuesday, August the fifteenth, show number forty
0:38
nine eighty seven. I told you we were going to share a story this
0:43
hour that was going to nudge you because you're not hearing anything about this and
0:55
it is a remarkable story and it's not necessarily it's a story that's incredible in
1:00
a good way, an incredible in a bad way. And we're going to
1:04
start here. Joining us on the show's Jonathan Mass Jonathan, good morning,
1:08
Welcome to the program. How are you. Oh, thanks so much for
1:11
having me, and I'm doing very well. Thank you. Give us a
1:15
snapshot here. When I say this story is incredible because it's great, and
1:19
it's incredible because it's terrible. I don't think I'm overstating it. Give me
1:26
an overview of what we're talking about here. Sure, yeah, you're absolutely
1:30
right. You're not overstating anything. It's actually a fairly long and mildly complex
1:34
story, which I'll do my best to summarize. But as far as a
1:38
snap shot, like a very short snapshot, there is my brother, Marine
1:42
Corps Major Joshua mass He's a major in the Marines and he has He's currently
1:48
in a custody battle with well members of the government. Lathan walks in a
1:56
multi billion dollar law firm over the adoptive process of a little girl from Afghanistan
2:02
that he adopted, and that is being disputed. So that's that's where things
2:07
are right now. But this is a story more than just that. It's
2:13
a story of a little girl's survival escape from the country. It's a miracle
2:16
that is even alive, and it's just it's just an absolutely incredible story I'm
2:22
happy to try to share. Let's start there. Let's start with how this
2:25
child in Afghanistan ends up in the family of I take it your brother and
2:32
his wife, correct, Yeah, Joshua Mast and Stephanie mass Is. There
2:38
is their names. See, I'm one of six boys in my family and
2:43
there's there's a bunch of as. Joshua is a major in the Marine Corps.
2:46
I have several other brothers in the military as well. But yeah,
2:49
starting back in twenty nineteen, there was a well, my brother was an
2:54
Afghanistan. He's a he's a jag a Marine Corps lawyer essentially, and he
3:00
was an Afghanistan and he was not part of what I'm about to describe,
3:02
but he was there at the time that this this happened. And there was
3:07
a special forces raid on a al Qaeda foreign fighter compounds in twenty nineteen.
3:15
It was a bloody battle. There was the special Forces were going to well
3:22
essentially take out this compound and everybody there died except for this little girl.
3:28
The eyewitness accounts the people that pulled her out of the rubland and saved her
3:34
life say that the one of the parents of this little girl was well detonated
3:40
suicide vest with the child at the time, who was only six weeks old.
3:45
They estimate with the child in her arms or in their arms. There's
3:50
so anyway, so the detonated suicide vest and an attempt to try to kill
3:54
one of these American special forces and child went flying and she had a broken
4:00
femur, a fractures, skull, severe burns. It was amazing that she
4:03
was even alive. So that's the American who was who watched it happened,
4:10
rushed over to both u the mother of this child and couldn't save the mother's
4:15
life, and then ran over to the child and was able to uh temporarily
4:21
keep the child alive. And then long stormy short, they couldn't. They
4:26
weren't going to leave her there in the desert to die. They grabbed her,
4:29
put her on a helicopter, took her back to the military base which
4:31
was a hospital, and she was there for six months or so. But
4:36
it was only maybe a week or so that she was there that my brother
4:42
and I mean everybody on the base knew about it. It was exciting to
4:45
see that the little baby. Everyone was hoping, you know, pulling for
4:47
her and hoping that she would make it. And my brother found out about
4:51
her. And anyhow, so what happened was the area is it's a war
4:59
zone, a highly trafficked area for children, sex trafficking and so on.
5:04
The orphanages there don't have the proper means of care. There's the hospitals are
5:11
well more or less a joke, and the orphanages, even if they were
5:15
to give her to an orphanage. A situation was delicate because she's not an
5:20
ascan. She's the daughter as far as all of our intelligence indicated, she's
5:25
a daughter of a foreign fighter that was probably either Chinese Weaker or Turkmenistan,
5:30
and they were in the country, and she was the daughter basically of a
5:34
foreign fighter. Wherever you may be from Florida, Sunshine State, New York's
5:41
forget New York, scratch that. New York's now hopeless. At least the
5:45
city is for the rest where your Morning Show, The Morning Show with Preston
5:49
Scott Jonathan masked with me. Jonathan, would you describe yourself in this situation
5:58
a kind of a family spokesman somewhat. I'm actually quite acting pretty independently of
6:03
the rest of the family, just because of legal reasons. My brother Joshua
6:08
and my older brother Richard, they're they're both involved in this legally. They're
6:11
both attorneys, and there is a lot of restriction has been placed by the
6:16
opposition on what they can talk about with the case. And so when I
6:21
saw enough of the what I basically would consider slander campaigns happening against them my
6:26
family, and just to be blunt, a lot of wise being told about
6:30
the situation, I decided to act independently of my brothers and just try to
6:33
start sharing what I know of the story because I've been involved in it somewhat
6:38
since the beginning, and there's no restrictions on me. So I guess you
6:41
could say I'm a family spokesman, but nobody's like set me up to it
6:44
or anything like that to keep it right. Yeah, all right, So
6:48
we've got a baby, she is injured but recovering. Now, what are
6:54
the options that you are facing or what Joshua was facing over there and oversees
7:00
the base, the people that are there, what are they facing as it
7:02
relates to this child. Well, they're basically trying to figure out what to
7:05
do with her because she's not an Afghan citizen. With the way the law
7:09
works over there, they consider her a stateless, orphaned miner of a foreign
7:13
fighter. And he doesn't want to have nobody on the base wants to have
7:16
her go to an orphanage where she'll probably either die of medical reasons or be
7:21
trafficked as she survived, Like the odds of that are very high, and
7:25
so he put into chos like, well, what if I became her legal
7:28
guardian and brought her back to the States where she'll need the extended medical care
7:31
for her leg and head and burns and so on. And so he put
7:38
in to start the legal process of becoming her legal guardian and so that his
7:42
bode Benefits would take care of her and then get her back to the States.
7:46
He already has three children at this time, and his wife was expecting
7:49
a fourth shortly after, so he already has children. They just decided to
7:56
this little child needs help, and then they would do the best they can
7:59
to be responsible for her. And so that's that's how she came into our
8:03
lives. Essentially, she has been legally adopted by Joshua and his wife Stephanie.
8:09
Is that correct? That is correct? So how long ago was this
8:16
that this incident took place. Well, twenty nineteen was when she came to
8:20
American Care. She was at the hospital base for six months. My brother
8:24
had come back to the US. To give you as quick of a timeline
8:28
as I can, somewhere in twenty twenty she was given to taken from American
8:35
Care and custody in Afghanistan. My brother had to leave her at the hospital
8:39
base in the care of the military nurses, and he came back to the
8:43
United States just because it orders. And then the state departments, and this
8:48
has entered in the person who's largely responsible for a lot of this debacle.
8:54
The State department decided that she should go back to an Afghan family that they
9:00
think might be related to her, and they didn't do any of the proper
9:07
vetting process against regulation. Actually there was no DNA, has no identification.
9:13
The just somebody who made a claim for her who they think might be a
9:16
cousin or a second cousin. And then that person, when they got the
9:20
child, gave them away a few days later to his son's betrothed minor.
9:28
I guess you could call her a child bride. She was seventeen, and
9:31
then then that she was in their care for how many months? But I'm
9:35
jumping ahead, so as far as the timeline goes for the adoption process,
9:39
I think was your initial question. That wasn't finalized until later on maybe twenty
9:43
twenty one, if if I remember correctly, late late twenty twenty one.
9:46
And it's a it's an odd process, like I'll grant anybody that like it's
9:50
it's not really been done before the way this has all been squared away,
9:54
but it was definitely above board yet permission of his command, he had to
9:58
work with all of this, and once she left the United States care,
10:03
there wasn't as much restrictions from the military side of things, So I won't
10:07
speak to that as much, but in a nutshell to try to recap the
10:11
process. Twenty nineteen, she came in American care, twenty twenty, she
10:15
left American care, and then my brother got her and the caretakers that were
10:20
caring for her this well, they became married. So this Afghan couple with
10:26
a young girl and this man, he got all of them, along with
10:31
probably twenty something other people out of the country when the Taliban took over Afghanistan
10:37
and American withdrawal. So that's kind of the timeline there. Tell the FLA
10:41
on your phone with the iHeart radio app and on hundreds of devices like Alexa,
10:46
Google Home, Xbox and sons say so here we go and Ihearts radio
10:50
station. Back in twenty nineteen, a mother and a suicide vest blows herself
10:58
up but Afghanistan, Afghanistan trying to kill US forces and a baby survives that
11:07
she was holding in her arms, and that baby now is the daughter of
11:13
a United States Marine jag officer, Joshua Mast and his wife Stephanie. And
11:18
joining me on the program is Jonathan Mast. Jonathan, you mentioned at the
11:22
very beginning the press that the stories, the accounts of this are one sided
11:28
and wrong. No one from the mainstream media has reached out to you or
11:33
your family to get comment on kind of your version of what happened. Wells
11:39
there only one, so nobody nobody. Very recently, AP News Associated Press
11:45
wrote a story on my family and then reached out to me and I did
11:48
over an hour interview with them, and they posted absolutely nothing of what I've
11:52
said. So why am I not surprised by that? Well, I don't
11:56
know. Maybe they will eventually, like I'm given them the band for the
12:00
out, but that was back in May that I gave them an interview and
12:03
they've said absolutely nothing of anything that I've claimed to be false from their original
12:07
writings and things like that. So we're setting the record straight on exactly what
12:15
happened and sharing kind of where things are right now. So this child,
12:20
baby Dough, has been in your family for four years now. The parents
12:24
that she's the only parents she's known are your brother and sister in law.
12:30
Okay, Now, who steps in and starts to disrupt this and when well,
12:33
I think I should probably back up just to hair, very very briefly,
12:37
to talk about in Afghanistan, why, Like a question a lot of
12:39
people ask is, why was you an American care being? You know,
12:43
the legal process starts to be a legal guardian and adopted and then give them
12:46
back to Afghanistan. That doesn't make sense. And then that's that's quite correct.
12:50
But the reason that happened is twofold, somebody in the State Department who
12:54
I won't name, but somebody in the State department basically made a political decision
12:58
and a personal decision. The personal side of things was my brother was trying
13:01
to fast track the adoption process and went all the way to the Vice President's
13:05
office over this person's head, and they didn't like that and they made that
13:09
known. And then so there's some personal motivation there perhaps, and then politically
13:13
wise there the Taliban had already started communicating with the US about the process for
13:18
a peaceful withdrawal, but we know how the peaceful withdrawal went. But regardless,
13:22
during the negotiations, one of the negotiations was that there was no foreign
13:26
fighters al Qaeda foreign fighters in the country, and this child is the daughter
13:31
of a Alqaeda foreign fighter, and so I believe that she became political negotiations.
13:37
In order not to offend the Taliban peace talks, they decided to give
13:41
this child back to the person that was saying that he was a relative,
13:46
because we think that that person is associated with the Taliban and was trying to
13:52
get the child back. So that's how she left the United States custody.
13:54
My brother eventually makes contact with the people that this person then gave child too
14:01
and lets them know his intentions, who he is, what he's trying to
14:03
do, his concern for her medically speaking, and then a relationship started,
14:09
actually a good relationship started with him in this now young couple. They weren't
14:13
married at the time, and eventually, when the US started withdraw their window
14:18
was closing. He's like, you have to get her out of the country,
14:22
and I'll try to get you guys out too if I can. And
14:24
he was true to his word and did both of those, and so then
14:28
she arrives in the US and the couple that had her totally changed their tune
14:35
and said that they that Joshua never told him who he was or why he
14:41
was trying to help. They said that their exact words were that he lured
14:46
them on the promise of medical assistance from Afghanistan and anyway, and so,
14:54
but the child at this point was already the adoption process, is already finalized,
14:58
and he was already the guardian as well, and so the Joshua didn't
15:01
even ask for them to be separated. Like when they arrived in the US,
15:05
there were so many unaccompanied miners that had gotten out of the country,
15:07
like in the thousands, that the US was trying to sort them all after
15:11
the chaos, and so they're like, what is this American citizen daughter of
15:16
a marine doing in a refugee camp in the United States? You know,
15:22
Separate her immediately, and so they did. And that's when Joshua had a
15:28
full custody of her and he came into her or his full care. There's
15:33
a nice overview of what we're talking about on the American Freedom Law Center website
15:39
and we've got a link to it on the Twitter page. It's the legal
15:43
battle to save Baby Dough and we're talking about the story of Joshua Stephanie Mass,
15:48
Joshua Jag officer the United States Marine Corps, and speaking just to I
15:56
guess put a thumb on the scale and present some sort of balance to the
16:00
lack of coverage in some sense of the word, and the and the bad
16:03
coverage in the other sense is Jonathan Mast. He's the brother of Joshua Mast
16:08
and our guests this morning. So at this stage you've got a flurry of
16:15
lawsuits right now, as best as you can kind of give us a status,
16:21
where do things stand in the legal battle? Well, where things stand
16:26
right now is there's two lawsuits. One a's federal one at the state.
16:29
The state one is for custody. The federal one is for money. So
16:32
they're suing a brother, Jassa, for thirty five million dollars in federal court
16:37
and they're suing for custody in the state court. And they're in my opinion,
16:41
losing in both but in your day being the opposition. So that's where
16:45
things stand right now. There's there's two main two main courts that are in
16:48
infession right now. So if I understand this, right this this young couple
16:55
of Afghanistani husband and wife, how are they married. Now they are married,
17:02
and they actually have on their own Chiles. He was eight months of
17:03
pregnment when they came to the US and they've had a child here in the
17:07
US as well, So they've they and they are being supported at taxpayer expense
17:12
inside our country at this point, are they not? As far as I
17:17
know, I mean, I think that's the case with all the refugees.
17:19
But they want to go back, and so what's what's stopping them from just
17:25
okay, go back? Well, I'm not I'm not sure there's I'm obviously
17:30
the case. I don't think they can leave the country while the case is
17:33
ongoing. When started, you got to kind of finish that, and then
17:37
I don't know what the I'm not very familiar with what's required to for somebody
17:41
who's an African RepA you to come in to be able to leave. And
17:45
I don't know if there's savoy restrictions. Because the male caretaker when they landed
17:48
in the United States, to my brother's surprise, he popped on the terrorists
17:53
watch list, So maybe there's a systems there as well. Now I'm not
17:57
saying he's a salad bin lawn or anything like fat, like just because he
18:00
popped launched thou doesn't make him necessarily guilty of anything, but it certainly does
18:04
make one raise an eyebrow. Well, and they used the assistance that your
18:08
brother and others went to great cost to try to provide to get them out
18:14
of the country, and now they've turned around and are suing Have DNA tests
18:19
been done? Is there any chance of a family connection here that they're claiming,
18:26
Well, it was. It's been refused at there on their part.
18:30
So my brother Joshua has been once this became a legal thing, he couldn't
18:33
reason with them. His main argument has been, then you should prove and
18:40
this is the problem in the first place. When they gave her away,
18:42
they was supposed to be a DNA test. That's kind of standard procedure when
18:45
it comes to giving children away in the middle of a war zone, is
18:49
that you're making sure you're giving them to somebody who is related to them,
18:53
or at least is no somebody who's related to them. And there was none
18:56
of that. So his whole thing was do a DNA test. And then
19:00
in Virginia law, if you have basically if you take the dunes and it
19:04
proves that you're legally related, like blood related. This has been over in
19:10
like two weeks, like I'm exaggerating avia hair, but but not much.
19:14
And so they have refused DNA tests this entire time. And this has been
19:17
going on since twenty twenty one, is when the lawsuits started. They actually
19:22
have said in court that they don't rely on a family relation. And I
19:26
think that's because it indicates as I haven't alluded a lot to this, but
19:30
that's because they're they're not related and they know it. That's what I think.
19:33
Anyway, two decades of doing morning drive radio differently doing it his way
19:40
like all Blue Eyes, except he's not one of the great decomposers. You
19:45
know, it's not six feet unders the Morning Show with prest In Scott.
19:52
Final segment here with Jonathan masked and a story that I told you was going
19:56
to take some time to tell, and we're just scratch in the surface of
20:00
it. Jonathan, how would you describe this young child now four years old?
20:08
Uh? Yeah, she just turned four and she is as healthy and
20:11
as happy as can be. She loves her brother. She's got four brothers,
20:17
and she has sit right in She's well, fortunately, she's recovered very
20:22
well from her injuries. When she came she was putting up mountnourished and under
20:25
her normal height and weight and stuff like that, and life parasites, stuff
20:29
like that. But she's doing pretty well now. She plays soccer, so
20:33
she is running around, she and he. She used to have seizures and
20:37
things like that, and those are all gone. So God's been good to
20:41
her. And she is really recovered quite well and speaking English like a pro,
20:45
and just loves her her well, her mom and dad. She calls
20:49
Josh her and stepping mom and dad, and and all her little brothers and
20:52
her family too, because there's there's a bunch of us. It's like thirty
20:55
of us. We have a big family in my immediate family between all my
20:56
brothers and myself. What kind of why does she face if this goes the
21:02
wrong way. Well, and that's one of the reasons that I decided to
21:04
go public with the stories room, trying to do good on her behalf as
21:08
well. That's really what this stake here is if this couple goes want were
21:12
to win this case and go back to Afghanistan, which I don't think is
21:15
going to happen, that they're going to win, But if that were to
21:18
happen, she would grow up under Taliban rule, and I personally am rather
21:22
opposed to that, and I think most of Americans are as well. We
21:26
all know what that is like, well, not what it's like personally from
21:30
experience, but just from what we can see on the news that they anyway,
21:33
I don't need to go into that very much, but it would.
21:36
That's what the stake is, that she would if she was up back,
21:37
and she would live under Taliban rule and be taken away from now the only
21:41
family that she really knows, because she's spent the majority of her life with
21:45
Americans and the last since twenty twenty one with my brother's family. And she's
21:51
now four years old. So the developmental process this is, this is her
21:53
family now. I can only imagine that with no proven family connection, which
22:00
is highly suspect and highly unlikely to exist, she would she would likely be
22:07
trafficked Jonathan, And those are my words. I mean, there is no
22:11
reason for them to take on the responsibility of feeding her and raising her when
22:18
she could be used to provide resources, money, whatever for this young couple.
22:23
Well, I suppose that's the possibility. I don't want to speak poorly
22:26
of this other couple's intentions, I don't I don't know. I think that
22:32
well, well, I'll say this, when she came to the US,
22:34
there was signs that she had already been abused to some extent. That's I
22:40
mean, I won't go into that in great detail, but there were some
22:42
telltale signs of that, according to her pediatrician and some other folks. And
22:47
so because when she first was her living conditions where she was with this minor,
22:52
the seventeen year old engaged late young lady, the female caretaker living with
22:56
twenty three other people, according to her own sworn testimony, this former caretaker
23:02
sworn testimony. And so we think that there is a possibility that she had
23:04
already been abused. And I'm not saying that they went back to anyway.
23:08
So that's a possibility. But I don't want to, like so emanize them,
23:14
I understand. So what court is going to make the decision on whether
23:18
she stays with the masked family or not. So the Virginia State Court is
23:23
to deciding the custody battle. Now it's already gone up to the State Supreme
23:26
Court and then sent back down because the State Supreme Court basically said, now
23:30
you guys do have jurisdiction in this. You need to make a ruling based
23:32
on the current law, and that's where it's standing right now. And your
23:38
other brother is making the arguments on behalf Originally, so, my brother Richard
23:45
is also an attorney, and he was assisting my brother Joshua while my brother
23:48
was in Afghanistan. He assisted Joshua on the legal side here in the US.
23:52
My brother was handling the military side of things, and together they kind
23:56
of tagged team that And so as a result of being very involved in that,
24:00
and my brother Richard sued the Department of State on my brother Joshua's behalf
24:06
when the child was going to be given out of American custody back to the
24:10
King Afking couple, and so he sued to try to stop that and as
24:14
a result result became entangled in it. Timeline. When are we expecting this
24:19
to get some kind of resolution at least at this stage, Well, we're
24:26
not sure. It's a kind of a slow process. There's another hearing in
24:30
September. I think the federal court nothing much is happening there for a while,
24:33
But the State court, I expect it's probably another year before it's all
24:37
set and done, but we don't know for sure. Keep us informed as
24:41
things developed, and we'll continue to have you on as as often as needed.
24:48
Thank you very much, sir, I really appreciate it. I appreciate
24:49
your time, Jonathan, and thank you and passed along our best to your
24:52
family. Forty six minutes after the hour, No good deed goes unpunish Could
25:03
you imagine being that little girl and ripped out of the arms of your mom
25:06
and dad, the only parents you know, and ending up in that archaic,
25:11
back backwards world. Why is the Biden administration wrong about everything? More
25:22
in the morning share with Preston Scott