February 21, 2024 • 59 mins
“Big Facts” co-host Baby Jade offers an inside perspective on Young Thug’s career. We discuss the prosecution’s use of social media and reveal who leaked Young Thug’s jailhouse video chat with Mariah the Scientist
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
King Slime is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Heirloom Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I just remember this kid walking up to me and
he had a gun to my head, and I just
remember him saying, give me the keys.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
So I gave him my keys.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
Jeffrey Williams was not.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
At your car holding a gun to you, under the.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
Ease and correct. That's correct.
Speaker 6 (00:31):
You have no reason to tell this jur You know
personal knowledge that Jeffrey Williams was in.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Any form of fashion involved with your car jacking on
that day.
Speaker 5 (00:39):
True, that's correct. Now, in your knowledge, training and experience,
could someone who was false claiming to be a blood
be able to be in the presence of all these
other bloods.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
And still be able to throw up symbols and throw
up handsigns. No, they would not watch it.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
In game world, someone in false claiming would be so
tom like the immediate and physical palm or violence for false.
Speaker 5 (01:04):
Playing the game.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I'm George Cheny and I'm Christina Lee and this is
King Slime. Okay, so we are back to recap day's
twenty five through twenty nine of the Ysel trial, and
joining us per usual is our executive producer, Tommy Andres.
Speaker 5 (01:31):
Gues Thanks for having me back, and we.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Are also honored to have a very special guest here
on this episode. We have a Lana native music industry
vet and co host of The Big Facts podcast. Yes,
we're all shedding tears, Baby Jade, Hey, Baby j.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I am in turn duly honored to be here. Oh
my goodness.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
What is your connection to Young Thug in this trial?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Well, I've known.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Theug for a very very very long time actually since
like before he started rapping, and I've been blessed enough
to be able to be involved in his musical career
and you know, like a lot of things that he
had going on as far as like his rap and
(02:17):
you know a lot of community things that he's been
doing over the years since he started rapping. And he's
a he's a very very very very very good friend
of mine.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Okay, got you, got you. We're so excited to have
you here with your free Jeffrey hoodie that you have
made yourself right.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yes, Okay, we have so.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Much that we need to talk about, and so it's
getting to to have your expertise.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Let's get into it, all right.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So first we got to review what's been going on
in this trial. So the prosecution has been spending most
of the couple of weeks, you know, just trying to
establish that YSL is a gang. We've talked about this
burden of proof that they have, but the three cardterier
is of the following. They have to show that YSL
is a gang, that the defendants are part of this gang,
and that they're committing crime in furtherance of this gang. Right,
(03:05):
and so all this begins with testimony from a woman
named Terabia Hill's. Rabia Hill says that in May of
twenty sixteen, she was carjacked in the parking lot of
her Southeast Atlanta apartment complex. There were four men who
approached her, and then she remembers one kid, she says,
in particular, holding a gun to her head.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I just remember this kid walking up to me and
he had a gun to my head and I didn't
notice my daughter crabs down.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I'm thisish that's in from the house if.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
It's still there, And I.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Just remember him saying, you your.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
Keys, So I gave him my keys.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So all this is like super traumatic for her. She
very quickly is able to identify one of the gunmen
being y Cel defendant Christian Eppinger. Right when it comes
to cross examination, one of the defense attorneys basically says,
here's the thing, though, Okay, this is all fine and good.
(04:13):
This is concerning Christian Ebinger, one of the ysel defendants.
Where is Christian Eppinger in this room? So, George, what
happened to Christian Eppinger?
Speaker 6 (04:22):
First of all, So Christian Eppinger has had a long,
strange trip through this trial and has his case has
been severed out. He's going to be tried separately on
the charges involved here. Eppinger, after he was arrested and
convicted for the crime that we're talking about, gets out
(04:42):
and early twenty twenty two, January of twenty two, he
is arrested again, or there's an attempt to arrest him.
I mean, he was arrested, but not before he shot
a cop six times. He has been in jail ever since,
(05:03):
and kind of the clock started ticking on the case
with his arrest, because there was a ninety day window
where he had to be charged with whatever you were
going to charge him with. About ninety days after his arrest,
everybody else in this case got arrested. Part of the
(05:24):
reason he was severed out of the case was because
he was in some sort of illicit relationship with a
prison guard that itself turned into a thing. His lawyer
at one point was accused of allowing him access to
social media while he was in the courtroom. He's and
(05:48):
he's combative in jail, at least according to jail records.
He tends to not be a person who deals with
authority very well. He was also is accused of attempting
to or asking for permission to murder wife and Lucci
(06:09):
in jail, like essentially, like, there's this communication they say
they have between apercher like Eperger asking young thug do
I have a green light to go after Luci again?
So that's where he is in the case. That's how
they've positioned him in the case.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
Here's my question, though, If they have that communication, supposedly
we've heard about that before, obviously we talked about in
our show, Why isn't that what they lead with? Like
why did they bring the woman who I mean, he
was convicted of this crime, So why do they bring
this woman to the stand two weeks after she's had
a baby, by the way, to get up there and
relive this kind of terrible experience.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
Why are crime?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Because I hate I have to tell her about this.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I had out to be here and I had out
to tell her about this.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I thought it was something once it was done, I'd
never had talked about beginning, And every time I talk
about it just doesn't ever.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Feel like it's real.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
How are they trying to tie upinger to why I
sell with her on the stand.
Speaker 6 (07:19):
So I think part of this is because it's been
this parade of cops, and cops are going to say
what cops say, like this person is bad, please put
them in jail. But they're are like, I mean, a
jury is going to ask questions about whether or not
these people are like whether or not those police officers
or lawyers or whoever you've got on the stand, is
(07:39):
you know, doing it because they were getting paid for it.
So here's here's a victim, like and this is a
person they're hoping to build an emotional connection between the
jury and this victims. So there are actually human beings
who are getting hurt. While all of this this wasn't
about some sort of random like this isn't music, it's
not this is like they're a lot bodies and here's
(08:00):
one of them.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Yeah, but I me personally with situations like that and
similar removing the victim from it completely because she went
through what she went through and that was a terrible
thing for her, like no doubt, But I just feel
like the relevance of it is kind of nonexistent because.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
You're trying to.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Tie a crime that an individual did on their own
free will to a group of people that you are
saying is headed by this one person, and.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
The connection is super thin. For lack of a better
way to put.
Speaker 6 (08:51):
It, I get it, Like I imagine that they're trying
to lay a foundation down, like Okay, here's this thing,
and then they get to the tie, but it feels
like we're losing all of that, like we're wallowing in
extraneous nonsense and not you know.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Actual evidence.
Speaker 6 (09:14):
Yeah, show me the money.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
Yeah, the profit would say, show me the cap shit.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
I mean to your to your point, Jade, the way
that they're trying to establish the connection to this gang conspiracy,
this isolated incident comes pretty shortly after that. It's through
several dozen social media posts. They refurther at all as tweets,
but it kind of runs the gamut between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
(09:40):
and so on and so forth, and so the point
to for example, how Christian Epinger's display name on Facebook
is why I sell bris and that's significant because it's
claiming why I sell but then also switching out the
scene in his name for b.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
But I can show you a kid from Japan that
just DMed me saying that he's a huge fan of
theug whose name is ysl oco. Mm so does that
make them ysl too? Should they be on trial with
him as well?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
You know? Like it's crazy, Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
They run through pretty much like the whole gimmut we're
talking about, like hashtags, you know. Detective Mark bell Nap
is brought back to basically decipher all of these social
media posts and to code the hashtags, this trading out
of the c's for the bees and everything. He explains
that the hashtag ESPN apparently stands for every slime play nasty.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
What's the date of this post twenty fifteen?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
And is there a caption there is? What? What is
a caption?
Speaker 5 (10:45):
It says living life bro, I'm happy hashtag ESPN. Have
you seen that hashtag ESPN on before?
Speaker 4 (10:52):
And have you seen that associated with individuals and members
of YSL yes, and to your.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Knowledge, when it's been associated with. So what does esp
AND stand for?
Speaker 5 (11:02):
It stands for every slime.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Play massy, But I can I'm trying to imagine from
like a jurors perspective, just what that is like, because
we're for every couple dozen of social media posts set
the prosecution is presenting to them, the defense is coming
from the other side and being like, well, we need
additional context. Here's a couple more social media posts to
add on top of that, and so that probably easily
(11:25):
runs like a couple hundred at this rate.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
And speaking not to cut you off, but speaking even
about the Detective bell Knapp situation, I was confused because
I was in court on all of the days that
he testified or whatever, and speaking to his context, there
was an issue on one of the days where.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
He was started.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
He started the trial being an expert witness, and then
they brought him back as a factual witness, and then
they were going to try to save him and bring
him back again as an expert witness. But in the
beginning of the trial when they said the president, they
said that it has to be either or like, you
can't do both because it's a conflict of interest, and
(12:12):
he was still allowed to testify the following day. And
it's just been like a lot of that type of
thing going on that, in my mind, would completely and
totally confuse a jury.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
That makes no sense. Absolutely, So I don't know.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
I saw a Bell nap yesterday at the courthouse. I've
been bouncing back and forth between the Fannie Willis testimony
and the YSL trial, and and I spoke briefly and
in very very round ways around the case because he
doesn't want to talk about the case outside of the courtroom.
(12:54):
But it's evident to him that this is going to
take a long time. And he was looking around like
I'm still here. Yeah, see, I'm still going back. I mean, frankly,
I think he's kind of amazed that he's still on
the stand in this trial.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
How often has social media come up in prior gang investigations?
Does it often show up as over acts? At least
in the state of Georgia every.
Speaker 6 (13:20):
Time, at least over the last five or ten years.
Like there's the South Fulton Police Department has a gang
investigator whose job is to tral social media. Yeah, like
that's just a thing now, Like one of Bell NAP's
things is going around to other police departments and training
(13:41):
their police departments in how to use social media to
figure out what's going on.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
But I think the difference in this is that in
all of the other gang cases where social media has
come up or been used, it's never been the basis
or the primary piece of evidence that the entire case
for all of these people has been built off of.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
Mmmm. Yeah, That's what's been interesting to me about this
because it seems like they spent that first bit of
the day talking about this crime that Epinger committed that
he was convicted for, so definitely, I mean, in the
eyes of the wall, committed this crime. And then they
do all this social media stuff where they're like, look
at all these different people that were doing the same
hand signs and we're doing the you know, saying the
(14:29):
same things and using the same emojis, and try to
tie all these people together. But they still didn't do
the third thing, which is they didn't ever say that
that Epinger committed that crime in furtherance of YSL exactly.
So to me, that sort of makes everything else irrelevant,
at least for that particular incident. So that's why I
was confused when I was watching this, like, why how
(14:50):
does how does this carjacking tie in? If they're not
checking all three of those boxes.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Yeah, and then even like with the hand signs and
the gestures and all of that, when the state presented
their evidence about I guess making the connection, when Trontavius
was on the stand about how that kind of ties
everybody in together and makes them like one unison or
like puts everybody on one accord. Then Brian came back
(15:18):
and showed Lebron doing it, showed Wayne doing it, showed
the football guy doing it, showed all of these other
successful public figures doing the same thing. So it kind
of goes again to context, because, like you said, just
because somebody has ysl on their name, or just because
(15:40):
somebody flips their fingers, that doesn't make them a criminal,
and that doesn't make them guilty of a crime without evidence,
you see what I'm saying. So it's like, I don't know,
it's just kind of it's just kind of weird.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And it's interesting because, like with all of this discussion
about context context, how much con text can we give
to this emoji from both the prosecution and the defense side,
We end up at a really interesting debate over some
mixtape cover art, So essentially in response to a tweet
that prosecution ended up discussing that featured a snake emoji,
(16:17):
R Brian Steele brings up a series of tweets that
were brought up around the same time promoting what was
just announced as a collaborative mixtape between with Young Thug
and Fetus Super Slimy Tape, The Super Slimy Tape, and
so the series of tweets are up on the screen,
including the cover art, and right when Brian Steele is
about to go on to the next thing, Detective on
(16:40):
Up is like, wait, I have some information to volunteer.
Their rival gang ABG has a hawk logo that they
use on their own clothing and identifiers.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
As you can see on.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
The cover of this there's a hawk skull with a
snake the symbol for YSL climbing through the eyes of
this skull of a hawk. So, if you haven't seen
the mixtape cover art, there is a snake and then
there is a bird's skull. I think a lot of
fans have taken for granted that the bird's skull is
(17:12):
representative of futures free band's logo which features an eagle.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Detective bell Knap, however, said no, that's not an eagle,
this is a hawk. And the reason why this has
been significant to detectives is because another gang, ABG, uses
a hawk as a logo and therefore this is young
thug calling shots fired over to.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
ABG and okay, so not to cut you off again, please,
Going back into the context of this whole thing, around
the time that the whole Super Slimy tape was coming
into fruition, there was a lot of like back and
forth about what the name was going to be, what
(17:56):
the cover art was going to be, of course, like
the songs that were going to go on the tape
or whatever, and even outside of like the in studio
internal decision making, there were also like several covers that
were posted on social media that I don't understand, if
they're so big on social media why they didn't see
(18:16):
that either. But it was probably I think about four
or five covers that they posted trying to figure out
which one they were going to use and which one
they were going to have, and the fans actually selected
that particular cover because it represented both thug in both
the future and with the things that they were popularly
(18:38):
associated with, which was the egle for free bands and
the snake for YSL.
Speaker 6 (18:44):
Did you do.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
Anything to find out whether that egle represents the performer
known as Future and his record LA Did you do anything.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
When we discussed this as term in terms of the context.
Speaker 5 (18:59):
I provided the content of what I and the investigators
observed at this time and giving what was going on on.
Speaker 6 (19:05):
The street outside of just these suites and this music,
was that we were almost three years into.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
A gang war between those two rival gangs.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And as I've stated, seeing similar artwork in reverse.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
With a dead snake in the claws of an eagle.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I think it provides additional context to this image that's
on the front of this mixttape, But.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
It doesn't have anything to do with any gang thing.
It was the.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
Two symbols that were representative popular the most popular representation
of each artist, and it looked cute on a cover basically.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
So hearing this, I am thinking as a listener, how
the heck does she know this? Like?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
What?
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Like?
Speaker 6 (19:52):
So give us a little more of your background here.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Yeah, I primarily sell cigarettes in a bathroom in Magic
City to make my money. No, I've been doing like
I've been doing my thing in the industry for a
really long time. I started out with the Juice magazine.
(20:19):
When we were doing the magazine, we started out, we
were like a small publication, and then I was introduced
to Big Meach. And when I was introduced to him,
he decided that he liked what we were doing and
that he wanted to partner with us. And that's how
we became like the big magazine that you see today.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
Did I just pause out and remind our listeners who
Big Meaches?
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (20:43):
So, Big Meach was one of the two brothers that
headed up Black Mafia Family, right correct, which they went
to prison. There's one of them still in prison, one
of them I think is out, but for running a
cocaine ring, right, like a cocaine trafficking enterprise. And UH
also had.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
An entertainment company company, Mafia Entertainment Entertainment, right, Okay, continue
And then so my job for the magazine was I
was a salesperson to bring the labels in and the
companies to buy advertisements. But I was also a photographer, well,
the photographer along with de Wong Valdez from Motion Family,
(21:26):
And that's how I really started making a lot of
my relationships with a lot of artists and a lot
of the industry people because I was out at night
in the club taking their pictures that would go in
the magazine. So everybody wanted their picture taken because they
wanted to be in the magazine. So in the process
(21:47):
of that, I garnered a situation when Meach got locked
up with Young Jeez, I started working for his label.
Basically like Meech asked him to give me a job.
When everything kind of like fell apart or whatever, I
started doing marketing for CTE, which was Jez's label. Fast
(22:09):
forward like eight or nine years later, I started my
own company. When I started my own company, I was
able to do like a partnership management type thing with
Duct Tape Entertainment. That was Ali Boy, Trouble, Big Bank Black,
They had a few other artists, and from there I started.
(22:33):
That kind of opened the door for me to start
working with like major labels.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
So that's what I've been doing.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Like ever since, I've been consulting with major labels, doing
road management and like events and kind of lifestyle stuff
with different artists. And here I am today with the
being a fucking co host do it Yes, And here
(22:59):
I am today being a co host on Big Facts.
My introduction into that was kind of funny because you know,
me and Big Bank have been like best friends for
over twenty years, and he was in the process of
starting starting the podcast. He was like, okay, we were
(23:22):
because initially we were going to call it the No
Cap Podcast and I was just gonna be like behind
the scenes, getting the artist doing production stuff like that,
and then we got with Scream we decided to change
the name to Big Facts. So they were they started
the podcast. I was doing production, like getting the artists,
helping them get everything together, like behind the scenes. But
(23:43):
it was like when they were doing the podcast, all
of the artist people would kind of like be talking
to me off camera, and like if you look at it,
it'll look like, okay, they're talking to a ghost or
talking like to the air. So one day Black was like, bitch,
you're not gonna keep laughing on the side of my shit.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Pull up a share.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
And then I pulled up my share and like I've
been there ever since, and like he's always made sure
that I was included and that I was straight, and
like he's a real Nigga for that, like always.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
So given all your experience just behind the scenes, behind
the camera, to now be in front of the camera. Yes,
like this case is super close to you, not only
because working relationship with young Thug, but because duktype entertainment
is being brought up, you know, a big black mafia
family is bring up, brought up as a point of
comparison to myself.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I was there that day.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
What do you make of these comparisons, m.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
I kind of I kind of feel like I kind
of feel like it's a reach because of the popularity.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
But if I was.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
If I was to attest to the similarities between any
of these three groups of people, I would say that
it would be their undying loyalty to family because like
I was telling, like I was telling George, like a
lot of people don't understand and a lot of people
don't know that. Okay, Thug has eleven brothers and sisters.
(25:16):
When Thug got his first deal, he bought each one
of his eleven brothers and sisters a house and a
car so that they could have a stable living place
for them and their kids, and they could have transportation
to get back and forth to schoolwork or you know,
whatever like they needed to do, and he doesn't really
care about people talking about it, but from his heart,
that's what he wants to do, so that's why he
(25:37):
continues to do it without the notoriety and the publicity.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
Let's take a break and we'll be right back. Welcome
back to King Slime. We're joined here by Baby Jade,
the host of The Big Facts podcast and also a
just an expert all around on hip hop in Atlanta
and life here. And you know, I want to start
(26:03):
by just asking you what does the word gang mean
to you as somebody who's been watching this trial and
also grew up in Atlanta and you know, has had
so much experience sort of in this world that is
involved in this trial.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
M Gang to me, honestly, just kind of means like
a group of friends. Like because a lot of people,
a lot of people call themselves a gang or say gang,
and they don't mean like a criminal enterprise. They just
mean like these are my friends, these are my homies,
(26:39):
Like we're a group.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
So to me, like gang really just means group.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Because as far as like Atlanta is concerned, in my
personal opinion, gang culture didn't really become prevalent until recently
because Atlanta was really pretty much divided by like the
zones and the neighborhoods. Like it wasn't like bloods and
(27:05):
crips and vice lords or whatever the fuck. Like it was, Okay,
you were from the west Side, or you were from
the East Side, or you were from Zone one or
Zone six, or you know, you were from this neighborhood,
or you were from the Bluff, or you were from
fucking Mechanicsville or Pittsburgh or you know, like wherever. Like
that's how Atlanta like separated themselves. And if there was
(27:26):
any type of beef for altercation or whatever, then it
was called out based upon like the neighborhood or the
side of town or the zone, not a color for
lack of a better way to put it.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
So, what do you think about obviously being in a gang,
As we've said a hundred times on the show, it's
not illegal, but all right, it's these three things that
have to be proven in order for you to be
to be convicted of a crime, or at least those
three things should be meant for you to be convicted
of a crime. But do you think, I mean, I'm
just going to ask you straight up, do you think
why a cell is a gang the way that the
(28:01):
prosecution is claiming they are.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
No, I don't.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
Anything more you want to add, Yeah, because.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
I'm trying to see how to say this based upon
the evidence that they're presenting.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
The people.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
That they are, well, some of the people that they
are accusing of this furtherance, in my personal opinion, are
not furthering.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
For lack of a better way to kind of put it.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
And I don't know, I guess we'll just have to
see how this all plays out. But this, this is
this Hall situation is just really interesting.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
I think I see where you're going with that, because
we're talking about Christian Eppinger. Before the break, Christian Eppinger
was convicted of an armed robbery, a carjacking, and okay,
like Andy did time for it. Like the question here
is was that an act in furtherance of the gang?
Can Can a man not be left to carjack in
(29:26):
peace without dragging his friends into it? If you get me?
Speaker 5 (29:30):
Well, they never came back to that question today.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
I mean they didn't.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
They didn't come back to whether it was typed.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
I think I believe the defense at least said like
where was this ever brought up to the attention of
gang investigators. That's probably as far as they went, right.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
And you know, I don't know if I don't have
the answer to that, and it's an important answer among
other things. Like as we were talking with the police
department and with the uh the gang investigation unit at
the District Attorney's office, one of the things they said
is that only up until a few years ago, the
(30:06):
police department really didn't investigate gang stuff in like a
really deep way. They like, each individual crime would be
investigated on its merits without a whole lot of effort
being put into Okay, this was a gang crime with
this gang. You know, in twenty sixteen, maybe twenty five
(30:29):
percent of cases that the District Attorney's office would have
actually brought as a gang investigation actually started with some
police officer writing on a piece of paper gang stuff.
And now it's more like sixty or seventy percent, like
because there's been all of this training where the District
(30:49):
Attorney's officers said, hey, cops, if you see gang stuff,
put it on the paper so that we have some evidence,
so that in a moment like this, we're not asking
questions was this investigation and then cut to break well.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
So what was interesting with the Epinger thing was I
kept waiting for them. They said, okay, he was one
of four people in the car. Right there was the
he he came up and put a gun to her
head and demanded her car, and then an older person
came up to her and pointed a gun at her
and asked for her purse. So I'm listening to this
whole thing, and what I'm thinking the whole time is, Okay,
these other three people in the car are going to
(31:26):
be other YSEL members, and that's how they're deciding. That's
how they're going to prove that this exactly ill. But
they never did that. And they did that, I don't
even did they even reveal the other three identities.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
So the other three.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
People in the car, I mean, And so I was confused.
And so if I'm sitting there's a juror, I mean,
I'm just trying to put my jur hat on. But
if I'm sitting there's a jur being like, Okay, I'm
following this, I get it. I get it, and then
that doesn't it doesn't check that final box. I'm like,
how am I going to. I mean, you have to
prove this over beyond a reasonable doubt. You're not giving
(31:58):
me the tools I need to be swayed and that that,
you know.
Speaker 6 (32:02):
I mean, no, maybe they get to it later.
Speaker 5 (32:04):
Maybe they get to it later. But that's the thing
with this that's the thing that I think is so
tricky with this trial. It's like this, when are they
going to start doing it?
Speaker 4 (32:13):
Yeah, And it's like major breakdowns and communication, Like they'll
go to this one thing and then they'll leave it
for two weeks and then try to circle back around
to it after it's cold and frozen again, and it's
kind of like it is really kind of like you're
starting fresh with somebody with no memory because it's been
so many things that have transpired in between until it's
(32:36):
like what was It's like there's no continuity.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
And I think that that is another.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Interesting thing or tactic by the prosecution.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
I mean, if I'm a Jerry and I'm sitting there
for three hours listening to this story about this woman
being carjacked, and then you know, we hear all the
details we hear here left with a cliffhanger. Yeah, but
then I'm never satisfied with with that, and you're right
if it comes in ten days, two weeks, three weeks, whatever.
The whole point of bringing that woman on the stand
(33:12):
is to have the jury have that emotional connection as
you talked about, George, that's gone in three weeks when
we finally get to the supposed you know, the the
tying up the loose end of that. So I'm just
confused by the tactics as I watched this. Obviously I'm
no lawyer, but as a lay person who could be
a juror, I actually have jury duty next week. Like,
I'm just like, what is this thing?
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Anybody that watches Law and Order has enough common sense
to understand that this is.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Not really the way.
Speaker 6 (33:45):
Well, this is not law, but the law is not
Law and Order.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
We talk about it a.
Speaker 6 (33:51):
Defense attorney many many years ago, and she's a hate
Law and Orders.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Oh it's not like how it is on TV. I mean,
these are all really interesting points because I guess, like
from the perspective of how everything is playing out, I
guess like all these social media posts are I guess,
being brought up as a logical conclusion or the logical
next step to figure out whether this person Christian Eppinger
(34:15):
is part of this gang conspiracy, and I wonder if
the social media portion is also supposed to compensate. I
guess for looking at these incidents in retrospect, because George
you talked about how like gang training is only really
ramped up in the past couple of years, and so like,
if the evidence isn't there, as in like you know,
the law and order type shit, is this all they
(34:37):
have to bank on?
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Is it is.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Tweets and vlogs for lack of a better word, all
that they have to rely on in order to draw
these larger conspiracy connections.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
I would like to.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Imagine because my thing is, and I hate I'm not
referring to law and order again, but usually, like in
a you come out with a bang, like you start
off with and you lead with the fucking no brainer,
hands down, slam dunk, and then go from there and
(35:14):
work your way backwards and plant the seeds to this
killer piece of evidence that basically sealed the deal from
the beginning. But if the lead off is the Instagram
post and the tweets, then what else could be? What
else could this? What else could follow this up?
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Because this would in a regular person's mind be a
follow up to something bigger. So if you're leading off
with the follow up, then what like, what else could
you possibly have?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah, you know what's really interesting is that at the
beginning of the trial, I guess prosecutors let off with
the murder of Donnovan Thomas, which everybody says the domino
that kind of set everything off, right, And so in
the beginning, like we're being presented with this is like,
this is the this was the turning point, and everything
pretty much since then. The only other references that we've
(36:09):
even made back to Donovan Thomas are through like the
social media posts. So even over the past couple of
days or whatever, to bring back up super slimy. When
Detective bell Nap is like, hey, but listen, there's there's
something to this hawk theory, right, they bring up once
again like a social media post. It's literally if somebody
wearing a jacket that spells out the word nut life
(36:30):
in the back, and then there is a bird emoji,
we don't know what kind a bird emoji, grabbing a
snake emoji on top of it. That's all we have
to work on. Versus to your point, Jade, like I thought,
we were going to get into, you know, who was
responsible for renting the car, who is responsible for shooting
and things like that. But this is what we're having
(36:50):
to deal with right now, and uh, I'm not sure
like to like, we just have questions. We just have questions.
There was even videos also being presented about like that
we're supposedly depicting YSL operating as a gang. We're talking
about videos dating back through two thousand and nine. You know,
(37:14):
we have Young Thug before he was even known as
Young Thug, when he was called Little Jeff two thousand
and nine. You know, he's hang out at a parking
lot with his friends, wearing the red varsity jacket, white
boy swagon, white boy swagone.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Right, No, you's not a white talent.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
You know, that's the video on the show.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, that is something that detected Bella Nap has to reference.
And then there's even a video from twenty fourteen where
uh it promises to go behind the scenes in the
making of Young Thugs Danny Glover, but then prior to that,
it just shows him hanging out I think on like
the deck, but on the back of somebody's house. Do
you remember this? It was like he's hanging out, he's
(37:57):
walking onto the deck, and then there's just like a
whole bunch of people hanging out and they're throwing up
hand signs. They got a baby to throw up a
hand sign as well. But then that's kind of it.
That's kind of it. There's there are guns, there are
hand signs, But other than that, that's kind of where
the video is sort of with your all your background,
like working in the music industry, taking in the tweets
(38:19):
and like seeing like what's being presented like as evidence,
Like what's your take on this, especially as you're seeing
you know, detectives like dissecting it, like what what's going
through your mind as you're seeing all this.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
I just I think that that there is a humongous,
ginormous breakdown in.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Context because.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
The detectives and the people that are hired to study.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
These things.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Have definitely amassed a wealth of knowledge about you know,
old street things, gang things, whatever, whatever. But at the
end of the day, there's still a lot left to
the imagination when it comes to these artists and their creativity.
And I believe that's where the breakdown is coming in
(39:15):
at because you can take what you know about gangs
and what you know about street criminals and all that
kind of thing, and look at one thing one way.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
But when you're dealing with someone.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
Who's basically basically whose job is to create and to
you know, make their money off of things that are
gonna make them popular and draw people into who they
are as a person and as an artist and as
a public figure, a lot can get lost in translation.
(39:55):
And I think that's what is going on here because,
like I said, these people have expert knowledge, not taking
anything away from them, but the expert knowledge doesn't meet
in the middle where these artists and these other people
are using their creativity to come up with something that
(40:16):
would I guess describe themselves in a creative manner. And
that's kind of it's kind of tricky in it's also
very dangerous.
Speaker 6 (40:28):
I'm wondering to what degree what we're seeing in court
creates a chilling effect in the community among artists, Like
how is this changing behavior? Do you think?
Speaker 4 (40:37):
I think that it's definitely making a lot of people think.
But at the end of the day, I feel like
it has the power to hinder the creativity to a
certain extent, because if you're not able, most rappers capitalize
(40:58):
off of either the things that they've been through actually
personally or things that they've seen in their surroundings. So
if you are, like you said, a twenty year old
kid and you're trying to find your way out by
doing the rap thing and making trying to make millions
(41:19):
of dollars or whatever, and your claim to fame is
going to be how you're going to speak to the
things that you've seen and the things that you've been
through so that other people can relate and buy your music.
But if you on the on the flip side of it,
if you do speak to these things, and you do
(41:39):
speak to the things that you've been through and the
things that you've seen, and it could possibly get you
in legal trouble, or it could possibly get you indicted
and take you away from your family or put you
in a position where you have to try to get
money for lawyer fees that you haven't even made yet.
You know it's going to make people kind of think
twice about speaking on certain things. But at the end
(42:02):
of the day, it's kind of like, where is the
Fifth Amendment in all of this, Because you should be
able to speak freely about whatever it is that you
choose to speak freely about without it being used against
you if there's no basis of something illegal being done.
Speaker 6 (42:22):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely there's I guess. Speaking of that,
there was an interesting point that was brought up by
the defense right while viewing one of these videos. You know,
Detective Bounce Up is identifying folks, even folks who aren't
part of this indictment, but yeah, it believes to be
part of a lot of that going on. And one
of these folks wraps under the name Oliplayer. And what
(42:48):
was interesting is that when defense reviewed it, I think
it was specifically defense attorney Max Shirt, he was like,
didn't you hear Oli Player describe himself as King Slime
in one of those videos? And we have to add
that because it's the name of our show. You know,
prosecution has said Young Thug is the King Slime, But
what do you know about the origins of that?
Speaker 4 (43:08):
I guess in environment, I mean it's a loosely used term,
like in the hood, because everybody wants to be because okay,
technically king slime is like the King snake, and to
a lot of people that don't have an overt understanding
(43:31):
of nature. The snake to them is at the top
of the food chain, and every guy in the hood
wants to be the big dog or wants to be
at the top of the food chain. So a lot
of people call themselves that kind of sort of like
a self fulfilling prophecy, like if I'm not already, I'm
gonna be the big dog at the top of the
(43:52):
food chain type thing. So it's kind of yeah, it's
kind of like trying to make Jeff the one and
only premier King Slime is is going to be kind
of difficult because it's so many other people that have
adopted that moniker, which.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Is really interesting because, yeah, as prosecution has framed it,
like King Slime was supposed to signify like the ringleader
of this whole thing, you know, the leader of this
grand conspiracy.
Speaker 6 (44:23):
The irony is that guy's the wander on the case.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Right, right, Prosecutor Don Geary, Right, Yeah, it's somewhere else.
Speaker 5 (44:32):
Yeah, all right, let's take another break and then we'll
come back and we'll talk about the hack and we'll
release some new information that I think everybody'll be excited about.
Welcome back to King Slime. We're here with Baby Jade
and Christina and George of course. Now, George, I want
(44:53):
to turn to you for a second. There was a
hack of Fulton County's computer system. Yeah, tell me a
little bit about what's going on here.
Speaker 6 (45:00):
So end of January, last weekend in January, hackers from
a group called lock Bit three point zero, And this
is a group that's been hitting computer systems at companies
and organizations and governments, a lot of them, dozens and dozens.
So they hit the county. They'd probably been in the
county systems for weeks, pulling documents, anything they thought was
(45:25):
interesting or useful, and then they shut the computers down
for the county and they've been down and they're not
back up yet. Only about a third of the phones
are up because everything was on a voice of rip system.
But the key thing for us is the computers at
the county courthouse were part of the hack. And so
(45:46):
even though the folks from Runfoldon County had not been
admitting this publicly, Like, I found the hacker site and
I looked and saw what the sort of things they had,
and what they had were court records that were sealed.
They had like child abuse cases that were under seal.
They had secret witness lists, they had snitch lists, they
(46:09):
had grand jury testimony, they had medical records that were
attached to people's files. They had anything that had gone
through the court, with the exception of the Trump stuff,
because the FBI has basically had all of that stuff
in a freezer like where nobody can get at it.
(46:30):
But the YSL case is there too, including all the
stuff that we haven't seen, and the jury list and
the identities of the jurors. And I was looking at
this like, if that jury list is published, that might
be a mistrial, Like at the very least, it sequesters
(46:51):
the jury entirely, like you live in a hotel until
this is done. Yeah, add catastrophe.
Speaker 5 (46:59):
Catastrophe too. I mean that the defense doesn't want a mistriil.
Would imagine it?
Speaker 6 (47:02):
No, I can't imagine. The Judge Glanville is the chief
judge of the of the court as a whole, and has,
when not dealing with YSL case, been like in a
war room trying to figure out what's going on. And
the County frankly has not been forthcoming about how serious
this was. There was a counter on the website, like
(47:23):
the ransomware website that was counting down to twelve forty
seven this morning. Well, I went to go look, and
all of it's gone, like there there's no nothing on
the site that indicates that Fulton County had ever been hacked,
which implies Fulton County paid it off.
Speaker 5 (47:43):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (47:45):
And I don't know how many bitcoins it was, Like
I think the number was twenty, might have been fifty.
I don't even know, like some absurd number. I've asked
the county to tell me whether or not they paid it.
I've asked the county to tell me whether or not
any of this stuff got out in the wild, and
they're not telling me. Wow.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
In the meantime, how much of this do you think
accounts for the pace in which the trial has been
the last.
Speaker 6 (48:11):
Couple of weeks. Like I guarantee several of the days
that we weren't having trial was because Glanville was off
chasing hackers.
Speaker 5 (48:19):
Yeah, he's responsible for dealing with this, right.
Speaker 6 (48:21):
Yeah. He is the person who's been coordinating the county,
the county's response or like at the court system, like
chief judge. He's the one who gets to make those calls.
Speaker 5 (48:31):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
But he has been trying to play off, like at
least like, you know, not alarm anybody thing about it.
Speaker 6 (48:38):
In public, Like nothing like one day they closed off
because of a COVID, like somebody like I think a
juror had COVID over the weekend or something like that.
But I'm just saying like there's like some of the
pace over the last two weeks has been because none
of the court systems work.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
And we've been trying so hard not to harp on
just like the length in which this trial is going
to take place, but between you know, just how sprawling
the indictment is on top of stuff that is apparently
out of their control, whether that's a hack, whether that's
a juror catching COVID or anything else. I mean, are
we still going to be incortan until the next Super Bowl?
(49:18):
That seems to be the question that comes up every
single time, just because for as much time as they
do spend in court, it doesn't seem like much progress
is being made.
Speaker 5 (49:27):
Now talking about security, So there's this other leak a
few weeks ago, this was a big story where there
was a phone call, a jail phone call leaked between
Mariah the scientists and young thug Right.
Speaker 6 (49:40):
So it's interesting, like the wire ceil case has had
hacks in it and like weird data issues like where
like the little Woody tape getting out or like a
zoom bomb where we're looking at guys like you know yeah,
like you know, free young thug. And it's happened more
(50:01):
than once. But in this case with the with the Mariah,
the scientist think it was the color of jail call.
But what was was a visit, Like it's a like
it's a virtual visitation that does not appear to have
been a hack that looks like it was requested as
an open record.
Speaker 5 (50:22):
Which is something people don't know. Anyone can actually request
things like this.
Speaker 6 (50:26):
Right, I mean I couldn't. I didn't, but I could,
Like you don't have to be a reporter, right, yeah,
you don't have to be a reporter, Like you have
to be a person whose identity is known, like and
say this this record, I want it. Like you can
request jail phone calls. You could say, give me all
the jail phone calls for this and such person. I
want to listen to them, and I've got a hard
(50:47):
drive full of them from other cases. But this is
the first time I'd seen a visitation where a visitation
gets out. Honestly, I think that's over the line, not
that I think that young Like, look, if you're a prisoner,
you don't have privacy rights, but the people visiting you do.
(51:08):
Ryan the scientist is a human being who's been charged
with nothing, and suddenly her relationship with Jeffrey Williams is
on public display in an area which I would say
is a very private one. So I asked the Cobb
County Sheriff's office, tell me Whoverris requested this piece of information.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Because that also is public record.
Speaker 6 (51:31):
Because that also is public record. And that's the other
side of this, Like if you've got to do something
like I get here, like to stand up and say
it was me, Well, let me.
Speaker 5 (51:43):
Just say, first of all, this created a huge uproar.
I mean, there are people like Drake tweeted about how
he thought this was ridiculously unfair that the jail, that
somebody in the jail would leak this call, and everybody,
I think thought that it must be somebody in the
inside because they're not really aware of how this open
record system works, right, So.
Speaker 6 (51:59):
Like some deputy just hacked it out of the system
and sent it to somebody, and that's not what happened. Instead,
an email from a blog and by the way, this
is what I'm reading it. Deer blogger Francoise McMillan, who
apparently is a local writer, a blogger here in Atlanta,
(52:22):
made this request on three asked for the jail records
like around Jeffrey Williams, like including this one. It looks
like like according to the Cobb County Sheriff's office. And
we went back and forth for a while because apparently
(52:44):
there are a lot of people who are asking for
records from the from the from the Sheriff's office, this
is the one that actually resulted in that video.
Speaker 5 (52:54):
So I am told we don't know how it got
online necessarily, but we do know that this person is
the one who.
Speaker 6 (53:02):
Who initially got it out of the jail. And so
the next question is for her, like, Francoise McMillan, what
did you do with this video? Did you sell it
to somebody? Did you post it yourself under an assumed
name and then somebody else picked it up? Like how
did it get out of your hands? And what were
your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (53:21):
Why? Why? Like why?
Speaker 6 (53:24):
Because I don't think there's a whole lot of probative
value in like, I don't think we learned something deep
and new and interesting about young thug.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
No, it's a young thug gave a Christmas gift.
Speaker 5 (53:35):
Well, and it raises the question why are these open records?
Speaker 1 (53:39):
I mean, that's my next question.
Speaker 5 (53:41):
And an interesting point that we talked about when we
were talking about all this a few weeks ago, just
between us, was that if you know, you would think that, oh,
if this had relevance to the to the case, maybe
it could be an open record. But no, then it
would become evidence and would be close to the public.
Speaker 6 (53:57):
So, like, I get why the Sheriff's OFWT investigators would
want to be able to see all of this stuff. Sure, like,
because you don't want somebody like they go kill somebody like, Hey,
I'm meeting with you and it's private, and so I'm
going to tell you to go whack someone like you.
You really don't want that to be possible for anybody like.
(54:18):
But if that's not what's happening, then don't get me wrong.
Like I am an advocate for open records, like bar None,
I'm the guy who's going to stand up and ask
for the record nobody else should look at, Like, but
I'm always gonna have a really good reason, like I
think this deserves like a serious public conversation.
Speaker 5 (54:38):
Yeah, I mean it's an ethical quandary. I mean, we
knew all the time that we could request this stuff,
and we never did because what we do with it,
I mean it's you know, that's not something that we
can make an episode out of.
Speaker 4 (54:50):
It's like awfully weird, Like what's the I don't know,
I don't know. That's just that's kind of like even
though I know it's public record, and you know, like
when you are incarcerated, you relinquish your rights to a
lot of things. But like George said, like the people
(55:14):
that love you, they do have rights. And that's that's
that's that's not that's not cool.
Speaker 6 (55:22):
The one other thing here for me is that Jeffrey
Williams has not been convicted of a crime. Right he
is sitting in jail. He's a waiting church is to
be resolved one way or another. And so I think
there's a moral distinction to be made between like because
he likes jail is coercive, like you don't have privacy, Like,
it's another thing if he's if he's a person who's
(55:44):
been convicted of a crime and he's serving a sentence,
and you pull that jail record and you pull that
phone call, that's I think there's a moral distinction to
be made there. But this man is innocent until proven guilty,
and who I'm i to take advantage of that under
these conditions.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
So it's not a form of jail misconduct technically, as
Drake accused, but it definitely hits on some moral gray
area among many other things in this trial, for sure,
Franzroise McMillan, tell us what the heck this was about?
Speaker 5 (56:16):
Yeah, drop us a line, come on the show.
Speaker 3 (56:19):
We want to know, miss ma'am.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
Miss ma'am, is there anything else that you feel like
we should be looking out for in the coming weeks.
I mean, among other things, we have like one defense
attorney who wants out on this whole thing entirely.
Speaker 5 (56:33):
This attorney, right, Angela.
Speaker 4 (56:35):
De William's actually who that's why they're not having court
today because they're doing some motions for him.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (56:42):
So, and she's basically just making the claim that this
is getting way too unaffordable for her, right, I mean,
already saying that she's been saying that for a long time.
Speaker 3 (56:51):
Is that the one that said that she would make
more working at Chick fil.
Speaker 5 (56:53):
A only fans? I think she, Well, she might have
said Chick fil A too, but she also talked about
selling pictures on only fans to make ends meet.
Speaker 1 (57:00):
Yeah, she's been looking to the gig economy.
Speaker 3 (57:02):
I have a question about that.
Speaker 4 (57:05):
If if an attorney or if like a public defender
was to go the only fans route, would that be
a conflict of interest or is that legal?
Speaker 6 (57:20):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (57:20):
Man, I don't know if that's a question that we
could answer. We should definitely look into that, though I
feel like I feel like it'd be legal. Probably frowned upon,
but that's exactly right.
Speaker 6 (57:29):
Legal, But you're not supposed to create the appearance of impropriety.
And the quest is this, is this an appearance of impropriety, like.
Speaker 5 (57:40):
Just limit to your feet? You know? Then you get.
Speaker 3 (57:45):
I have a friend, No, I have a friend. She
makes a lot of money on her feet.
Speaker 4 (57:52):
She makes a lot of money like it's a it's
like a a fetish thing for some people. And she
gets like she gets paid a lot more than a
lot of people that like expose their entire nakedness like
it's it's really interesting worksham from me.
Speaker 5 (58:14):
That's right, that's.
Speaker 3 (58:15):
Right, right, we love you all whatever you're into.
Speaker 5 (58:18):
Well, I feel like that's the perfect note to end
the show. Right, Yeah, we got there, we started, We
got all the way to to the only fans feed pages. Well,
thanks for listening this week. We'll be back in two
weeks where every other week here And if you're listening
to this on the podcast feed, know that you can
watch this on the iHeart YouTube page as well, so
we'll be on We're on video as well.
Speaker 1 (59:00):
King Slime is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Heirloom Media.
Speaker 6 (59:04):
It's written and produced by George Cheedy, Christina Lee, and Tommy.
Speaker 1 (59:07):
Andres, mixing sound design and original music by Evan Tyre
and Taylor Chicoine.
Speaker 6 (59:13):
The executive producer and editor is Tommy Andres.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
Our theme music is by Doune Deal. Special thanks to
Carl Catle.
Speaker 6 (59:23):
For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
King Slime is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Heirloom Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I just remember this kid walking up to me and
he had a gun to my head, and I just
remember him saying, give me the keys.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
So I gave him my keys.
Speaker 4 (00:23):
Jeffrey Williams was not.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
At your car holding a gun to you, under the.
Speaker 5 (00:28):
Ease and correct. That's correct.
Speaker 6 (00:31):
You have no reason to tell this jur You know
personal knowledge that Jeffrey Williams was in.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Any form of fashion involved with your car jacking on
that day.
Speaker 5 (00:39):
True, that's correct. Now, in your knowledge, training and experience,
could someone who was false claiming to be a blood
be able to be in the presence of all these
other bloods.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
And still be able to throw up symbols and throw
up handsigns. No, they would not watch it.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
In game world, someone in false claiming would be so
tom like the immediate and physical palm or violence for false.
Speaker 5 (01:04):
Playing the game.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I'm George Cheny and I'm Christina Lee and this is
King Slime. Okay, so we are back to recap day's
twenty five through twenty nine of the Ysel trial, and
joining us per usual is our executive producer, Tommy Andres.
Speaker 5 (01:31):
Gues Thanks for having me back, and we.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Are also honored to have a very special guest here
on this episode. We have a Lana native music industry
vet and co host of The Big Facts podcast. Yes,
we're all shedding tears, Baby Jade, Hey, Baby j.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
I am in turn duly honored to be here. Oh
my goodness.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
What is your connection to Young Thug in this trial?
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Well, I've known.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Theug for a very very very long time actually since
like before he started rapping, and I've been blessed enough
to be able to be involved in his musical career
and you know, like a lot of things that he
had going on as far as like his rap and
(02:17):
you know a lot of community things that he's been
doing over the years since he started rapping. And he's
a he's a very very very very very good friend
of mine.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Okay, got you, got you. We're so excited to have
you here with your free Jeffrey hoodie that you have
made yourself right.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yes, Okay, we have so.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Much that we need to talk about, and so it's
getting to to have your expertise.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Let's get into it, all right.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
So first we got to review what's been going on
in this trial. So the prosecution has been spending most
of the couple of weeks, you know, just trying to
establish that YSL is a gang. We've talked about this
burden of proof that they have, but the three cardterier
is of the following. They have to show that YSL
is a gang, that the defendants are part of this gang,
and that they're committing crime in furtherance of this gang. Right,
(03:05):
and so all this begins with testimony from a woman
named Terabia Hill's. Rabia Hill says that in May of
twenty sixteen, she was carjacked in the parking lot of
her Southeast Atlanta apartment complex. There were four men who
approached her, and then she remembers one kid, she says,
in particular, holding a gun to her head.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
I just remember this kid walking up to me and
he had a gun to my head and I didn't
notice my daughter crabs down.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
I'm thisish that's in from the house if.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
It's still there, And I.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Just remember him saying, you your.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
Keys, So I gave him my keys.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
So all this is like super traumatic for her. She
very quickly is able to identify one of the gunmen
being y Cel defendant Christian Eppinger. Right when it comes
to cross examination, one of the defense attorneys basically says,
here's the thing, though, Okay, this is all fine and good.
(04:13):
This is concerning Christian Ebinger, one of the ysel defendants.
Where is Christian Eppinger in this room? So, George, what
happened to Christian Eppinger?
Speaker 6 (04:22):
First of all, So Christian Eppinger has had a long,
strange trip through this trial and has his case has
been severed out. He's going to be tried separately on
the charges involved here. Eppinger, after he was arrested and
convicted for the crime that we're talking about, gets out
(04:42):
and early twenty twenty two, January of twenty two, he
is arrested again, or there's an attempt to arrest him.
I mean, he was arrested, but not before he shot
a cop six times. He has been in jail ever since,
(05:03):
and kind of the clock started ticking on the case
with his arrest, because there was a ninety day window
where he had to be charged with whatever you were
going to charge him with. About ninety days after his arrest,
everybody else in this case got arrested. Part of the
(05:24):
reason he was severed out of the case was because
he was in some sort of illicit relationship with a
prison guard that itself turned into a thing. His lawyer
at one point was accused of allowing him access to
social media while he was in the courtroom. He's and
(05:48):
he's combative in jail, at least according to jail records.
He tends to not be a person who deals with
authority very well. He was also is accused of attempting
to or asking for permission to murder wife and Lucci
(06:09):
in jail, like essentially, like, there's this communication they say
they have between apercher like Eperger asking young thug do
I have a green light to go after Luci again?
So that's where he is in the case. That's how
they've positioned him in the case.
Speaker 5 (06:28):
Here's my question, though, If they have that communication, supposedly
we've heard about that before, obviously we talked about in
our show, Why isn't that what they lead with? Like
why did they bring the woman who I mean, he
was convicted of this crime, So why do they bring
this woman to the stand two weeks after she's had
a baby, by the way, to get up there and
relive this kind of terrible experience.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
Why are crime?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Because I hate I have to tell her about this.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I had out to be here and I had out
to tell her about this.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
I thought it was something once it was done, I'd
never had talked about beginning, And every time I talk
about it just doesn't ever.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Feel like it's real.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
How are they trying to tie upinger to why I
sell with her on the stand.
Speaker 6 (07:19):
So I think part of this is because it's been
this parade of cops, and cops are going to say
what cops say, like this person is bad, please put
them in jail. But they're are like, I mean, a
jury is going to ask questions about whether or not
these people are like whether or not those police officers
or lawyers or whoever you've got on the stand, is
(07:39):
you know, doing it because they were getting paid for it.
So here's here's a victim, like and this is a
person they're hoping to build an emotional connection between the
jury and this victims. So there are actually human beings
who are getting hurt. While all of this this wasn't
about some sort of random like this isn't music, it's
not this is like they're a lot bodies and here's
(08:00):
one of them.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
Yeah, but I me personally with situations like that and
similar removing the victim from it completely because she went
through what she went through and that was a terrible
thing for her, like no doubt, But I just feel
like the relevance of it is kind of nonexistent because.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
You're trying to.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Tie a crime that an individual did on their own
free will to a group of people that you are
saying is headed by this one person, and.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
The connection is super thin. For lack of a better
way to put.
Speaker 6 (08:51):
It, I get it, Like I imagine that they're trying
to lay a foundation down, like Okay, here's this thing,
and then they get to the tie, but it feels
like we're losing all of that, like we're wallowing in
extraneous nonsense and not you know.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Actual evidence.
Speaker 6 (09:14):
Yeah, show me the money.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
Yeah, the profit would say, show me the cap shit.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
I mean to your to your point, Jade, the way
that they're trying to establish the connection to this gang conspiracy,
this isolated incident comes pretty shortly after that. It's through
several dozen social media posts. They refurther at all as tweets,
but it kind of runs the gamut between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
(09:40):
and so on and so forth, and so the point
to for example, how Christian Epinger's display name on Facebook
is why I sell bris and that's significant because it's
claiming why I sell but then also switching out the
scene in his name for b.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
But I can show you a kid from Japan that
just DMed me saying that he's a huge fan of
theug whose name is ysl oco. Mm so does that
make them ysl too? Should they be on trial with
him as well?
Speaker 3 (10:12):
You know? Like it's crazy, Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
They run through pretty much like the whole gimmut we're
talking about, like hashtags, you know. Detective Mark bell Nap
is brought back to basically decipher all of these social
media posts and to code the hashtags, this trading out
of the c's for the bees and everything. He explains
that the hashtag ESPN apparently stands for every slime play nasty.
Speaker 5 (10:36):
What's the date of this post twenty fifteen?
Speaker 3 (10:40):
And is there a caption there is? What? What is
a caption?
Speaker 5 (10:45):
It says living life bro, I'm happy hashtag ESPN. Have
you seen that hashtag ESPN on before?
Speaker 4 (10:52):
And have you seen that associated with individuals and members
of YSL yes, and to your.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Knowledge, when it's been associated with. So what does esp
AND stand for?
Speaker 5 (11:02):
It stands for every slime.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Play massy, But I can I'm trying to imagine from
like a jurors perspective, just what that is like, because
we're for every couple dozen of social media posts set
the prosecution is presenting to them, the defense is coming
from the other side and being like, well, we need
additional context. Here's a couple more social media posts to
add on top of that, and so that probably easily
(11:25):
runs like a couple hundred at this rate.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
And speaking not to cut you off, but speaking even
about the Detective bell Knapp situation, I was confused because
I was in court on all of the days that
he testified or whatever, and speaking to his context, there
was an issue on one of the days where.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
He was started.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
He started the trial being an expert witness, and then
they brought him back as a factual witness, and then
they were going to try to save him and bring
him back again as an expert witness. But in the
beginning of the trial when they said the president, they
said that it has to be either or like, you
can't do both because it's a conflict of interest, and
(12:12):
he was still allowed to testify the following day. And
it's just been like a lot of that type of
thing going on that, in my mind, would completely and
totally confuse a jury.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
That makes no sense. Absolutely, So I don't know.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
I saw a Bell nap yesterday at the courthouse. I've
been bouncing back and forth between the Fannie Willis testimony
and the YSL trial, and and I spoke briefly and
in very very round ways around the case because he
doesn't want to talk about the case outside of the courtroom.
(12:54):
But it's evident to him that this is going to
take a long time. And he was looking around like
I'm still here. Yeah, see, I'm still going back. I mean, frankly,
I think he's kind of amazed that he's still on
the stand in this trial.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
How often has social media come up in prior gang investigations?
Does it often show up as over acts? At least
in the state of Georgia every.
Speaker 6 (13:20):
Time, at least over the last five or ten years.
Like there's the South Fulton Police Department has a gang
investigator whose job is to tral social media. Yeah, like
that's just a thing now, Like one of Bell NAP's
things is going around to other police departments and training
(13:41):
their police departments in how to use social media to
figure out what's going on.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
But I think the difference in this is that in
all of the other gang cases where social media has
come up or been used, it's never been the basis
or the primary piece of evidence that the entire case
for all of these people has been built off of.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
Mmmm. Yeah, That's what's been interesting to me about this
because it seems like they spent that first bit of
the day talking about this crime that Epinger committed that
he was convicted for, so definitely, I mean, in the
eyes of the wall, committed this crime. And then they
do all this social media stuff where they're like, look
at all these different people that were doing the same
hand signs and we're doing the you know, saying the
(14:29):
same things and using the same emojis, and try to
tie all these people together. But they still didn't do
the third thing, which is they didn't ever say that
that Epinger committed that crime in furtherance of YSL exactly.
So to me, that sort of makes everything else irrelevant,
at least for that particular incident. So that's why I
was confused when I was watching this, like, why how
(14:50):
does how does this carjacking tie in? If they're not
checking all three of those boxes.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
Yeah, and then even like with the hand signs and
the gestures and all of that, when the state presented
their evidence about I guess making the connection, when Trontavius
was on the stand about how that kind of ties
everybody in together and makes them like one unison or
like puts everybody on one accord. Then Brian came back
(15:18):
and showed Lebron doing it, showed Wayne doing it, showed
the football guy doing it, showed all of these other
successful public figures doing the same thing. So it kind
of goes again to context, because, like you said, just
because somebody has ysl on their name, or just because
(15:40):
somebody flips their fingers, that doesn't make them a criminal,
and that doesn't make them guilty of a crime without evidence,
you see what I'm saying. So it's like, I don't know,
it's just kind of it's just kind of weird.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
And it's interesting because, like with all of this discussion
about context context, how much con text can we give
to this emoji from both the prosecution and the defense side,
We end up at a really interesting debate over some
mixtape cover art, So essentially in response to a tweet
that prosecution ended up discussing that featured a snake emoji,
(16:17):
R Brian Steele brings up a series of tweets that
were brought up around the same time promoting what was
just announced as a collaborative mixtape between with Young Thug
and Fetus Super Slimy Tape, The Super Slimy Tape, and
so the series of tweets are up on the screen,
including the cover art, and right when Brian Steele is
about to go on to the next thing, Detective on
(16:40):
Up is like, wait, I have some information to volunteer.
Their rival gang ABG has a hawk logo that they
use on their own clothing and identifiers.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
As you can see on.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
The cover of this there's a hawk skull with a
snake the symbol for YSL climbing through the eyes of
this skull of a hawk. So, if you haven't seen
the mixtape cover art, there is a snake and then
there is a bird's skull. I think a lot of
fans have taken for granted that the bird's skull is
(17:12):
representative of futures free band's logo which features an eagle.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Detective bell Knap, however, said no, that's not an eagle,
this is a hawk. And the reason why this has
been significant to detectives is because another gang, ABG, uses
a hawk as a logo and therefore this is young
thug calling shots fired over to.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
ABG and okay, so not to cut you off again, please,
Going back into the context of this whole thing, around
the time that the whole Super Slimy tape was coming
into fruition, there was a lot of like back and
forth about what the name was going to be, what
(17:56):
the cover art was going to be, of course, like
the songs that were going to go on the tape
or whatever, and even outside of like the in studio
internal decision making, there were also like several covers that
were posted on social media that I don't understand, if
they're so big on social media why they didn't see
(18:16):
that either. But it was probably I think about four
or five covers that they posted trying to figure out
which one they were going to use and which one
they were going to have, and the fans actually selected
that particular cover because it represented both thug in both
the future and with the things that they were popularly
(18:38):
associated with, which was the egle for free bands and
the snake for YSL.
Speaker 6 (18:44):
Did you do.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
Anything to find out whether that egle represents the performer
known as Future and his record LA Did you do anything.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
When we discussed this as term in terms of the context.
Speaker 5 (18:59):
I provided the content of what I and the investigators
observed at this time and giving what was going on on.
Speaker 6 (19:05):
The street outside of just these suites and this music,
was that we were almost three years into.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
A gang war between those two rival gangs.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
And as I've stated, seeing similar artwork in reverse.
Speaker 5 (19:19):
With a dead snake in the claws of an eagle.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I think it provides additional context to this image that's
on the front of this mixttape, But.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
It doesn't have anything to do with any gang thing.
It was the.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
Two symbols that were representative popular the most popular representation
of each artist, and it looked cute on a cover basically.
Speaker 6 (19:43):
So hearing this, I am thinking as a listener, how
the heck does she know this? Like?
Speaker 2 (19:51):
What?
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Like?
Speaker 6 (19:52):
So give us a little more of your background here.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
Yeah, I primarily sell cigarettes in a bathroom in Magic
City to make my money. No, I've been doing like
I've been doing my thing in the industry for a
really long time. I started out with the Juice magazine.
(20:19):
When we were doing the magazine, we started out, we
were like a small publication, and then I was introduced
to Big Meach. And when I was introduced to him,
he decided that he liked what we were doing and
that he wanted to partner with us. And that's how
we became like the big magazine that you see today.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
Did I just pause out and remind our listeners who
Big Meaches?
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (20:43):
So, Big Meach was one of the two brothers that
headed up Black Mafia Family, right correct, which they went
to prison. There's one of them still in prison, one
of them I think is out, but for running a
cocaine ring, right, like a cocaine trafficking enterprise. And UH
also had.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
An entertainment company company, Mafia Entertainment Entertainment, right, Okay, continue
And then so my job for the magazine was I
was a salesperson to bring the labels in and the
companies to buy advertisements. But I was also a photographer, well,
the photographer along with de Wong Valdez from Motion Family,
(21:26):
And that's how I really started making a lot of
my relationships with a lot of artists and a lot
of the industry people because I was out at night
in the club taking their pictures that would go in
the magazine. So everybody wanted their picture taken because they
wanted to be in the magazine. So in the process
(21:47):
of that, I garnered a situation when Meach got locked
up with Young Jeez, I started working for his label.
Basically like Meech asked him to give me a job.
When everything kind of like fell apart or whatever, I
started doing marketing for CTE, which was Jez's label. Fast
(22:09):
forward like eight or nine years later, I started my
own company. When I started my own company, I was
able to do like a partnership management type thing with
Duct Tape Entertainment. That was Ali Boy, Trouble, Big Bank Black,
They had a few other artists, and from there I started.
(22:33):
That kind of opened the door for me to start
working with like major labels.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
So that's what I've been doing.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Like ever since, I've been consulting with major labels, doing
road management and like events and kind of lifestyle stuff
with different artists. And here I am today with the
being a fucking co host do it Yes, And here
(22:59):
I am today being a co host on Big Facts.
My introduction into that was kind of funny because you know,
me and Big Bank have been like best friends for
over twenty years, and he was in the process of
starting starting the podcast. He was like, okay, we were
(23:22):
because initially we were going to call it the No
Cap Podcast and I was just gonna be like behind
the scenes, getting the artist doing production stuff like that,
and then we got with Scream we decided to change
the name to Big Facts. So they were they started
the podcast. I was doing production, like getting the artists,
helping them get everything together, like behind the scenes. But
(23:43):
it was like when they were doing the podcast, all
of the artist people would kind of like be talking
to me off camera, and like if you look at it,
it'll look like, okay, they're talking to a ghost or
talking like to the air. So one day Black was like, bitch,
you're not gonna keep laughing on the side of my shit.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Pull up a share.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
And then I pulled up my share and like I've
been there ever since, and like he's always made sure
that I was included and that I was straight, and
like he's a real Nigga for that, like always.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
So given all your experience just behind the scenes, behind
the camera, to now be in front of the camera. Yes,
like this case is super close to you, not only
because working relationship with young Thug, but because duktype entertainment
is being brought up, you know, a big black mafia
family is bring up, brought up as a point of
comparison to myself.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
I was there that day.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
What do you make of these comparisons, m.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
I kind of I kind of feel like I kind
of feel like it's a reach because of the popularity.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
But if I was.
Speaker 4 (24:51):
If I was to attest to the similarities between any
of these three groups of people, I would say that
it would be their undying loyalty to family because like
I was telling, like I was telling George, like a
lot of people don't understand and a lot of people
don't know that. Okay, Thug has eleven brothers and sisters.
(25:16):
When Thug got his first deal, he bought each one
of his eleven brothers and sisters a house and a
car so that they could have a stable living place
for them and their kids, and they could have transportation
to get back and forth to schoolwork or you know,
whatever like they needed to do, and he doesn't really
care about people talking about it, but from his heart,
that's what he wants to do, so that's why he
(25:37):
continues to do it without the notoriety and the publicity.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
Let's take a break and we'll be right back. Welcome
back to King Slime. We're joined here by Baby Jade,
the host of The Big Facts podcast and also a
just an expert all around on hip hop in Atlanta
and life here. And you know, I want to start
(26:03):
by just asking you what does the word gang mean
to you as somebody who's been watching this trial and
also grew up in Atlanta and you know, has had
so much experience sort of in this world that is
involved in this trial.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
M Gang to me, honestly, just kind of means like
a group of friends. Like because a lot of people,
a lot of people call themselves a gang or say gang,
and they don't mean like a criminal enterprise. They just
mean like these are my friends, these are my homies,
(26:39):
Like we're a group.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
So to me, like gang really just means group.
Speaker 4 (26:44):
Because as far as like Atlanta is concerned, in my
personal opinion, gang culture didn't really become prevalent until recently
because Atlanta was really pretty much divided by like the
zones and the neighborhoods. Like it wasn't like bloods and
(27:05):
crips and vice lords or whatever the fuck. Like it was, Okay,
you were from the west Side, or you were from
the East Side, or you were from Zone one or
Zone six, or you know, you were from this neighborhood,
or you were from the Bluff, or you were from
fucking Mechanicsville or Pittsburgh or you know, like wherever. Like
that's how Atlanta like separated themselves. And if there was
(27:26):
any type of beef for altercation or whatever, then it
was called out based upon like the neighborhood or the
side of town or the zone, not a color for
lack of a better way to put it.
Speaker 5 (27:39):
So, what do you think about obviously being in a gang,
As we've said a hundred times on the show, it's
not illegal, but all right, it's these three things that
have to be proven in order for you to be
to be convicted of a crime, or at least those
three things should be meant for you to be convicted
of a crime. But do you think, I mean, I'm
just going to ask you straight up, do you think
why a cell is a gang the way that the
(28:01):
prosecution is claiming they are.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
No, I don't.
Speaker 5 (28:07):
Anything more you want to add, Yeah, because.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
I'm trying to see how to say this based upon
the evidence that they're presenting.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
The people.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
That they are, well, some of the people that they
are accusing of this furtherance, in my personal opinion, are
not furthering.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
For lack of a better way to kind of put it.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
And I don't know, I guess we'll just have to
see how this all plays out. But this, this is
this Hall situation is just really interesting.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
I think I see where you're going with that, because
we're talking about Christian Eppinger. Before the break, Christian Eppinger
was convicted of an armed robbery, a carjacking, and okay,
like Andy did time for it. Like the question here
is was that an act in furtherance of the gang?
Can Can a man not be left to carjack in
(29:26):
peace without dragging his friends into it? If you get me?
Speaker 5 (29:30):
Well, they never came back to that question today.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
I mean they didn't.
Speaker 5 (29:34):
They didn't come back to whether it was typed.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
I think I believe the defense at least said like
where was this ever brought up to the attention of
gang investigators. That's probably as far as they went, right.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
And you know, I don't know if I don't have
the answer to that, and it's an important answer among
other things. Like as we were talking with the police
department and with the uh the gang investigation unit at
the District Attorney's office, one of the things they said
is that only up until a few years ago, the
(30:06):
police department really didn't investigate gang stuff in like a
really deep way. They like, each individual crime would be
investigated on its merits without a whole lot of effort
being put into Okay, this was a gang crime with
this gang. You know, in twenty sixteen, maybe twenty five
(30:29):
percent of cases that the District Attorney's office would have
actually brought as a gang investigation actually started with some
police officer writing on a piece of paper gang stuff.
And now it's more like sixty or seventy percent, like
because there's been all of this training where the District
(30:49):
Attorney's officers said, hey, cops, if you see gang stuff,
put it on the paper so that we have some evidence,
so that in a moment like this, we're not asking
questions was this investigation and then cut to break well.
Speaker 5 (31:03):
So what was interesting with the Epinger thing was I
kept waiting for them. They said, okay, he was one
of four people in the car. Right there was the
he he came up and put a gun to her
head and demanded her car, and then an older person
came up to her and pointed a gun at her
and asked for her purse. So I'm listening to this
whole thing, and what I'm thinking the whole time is, Okay,
these other three people in the car are going to
(31:26):
be other YSEL members, and that's how they're deciding. That's
how they're going to prove that this exactly ill. But
they never did that. And they did that, I don't
even did they even reveal the other three identities.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
So the other three.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
People in the car, I mean, And so I was confused.
And so if I'm sitting there's a juror, I mean,
I'm just trying to put my jur hat on. But
if I'm sitting there's a jur being like, Okay, I'm
following this, I get it. I get it, and then
that doesn't it doesn't check that final box. I'm like,
how am I going to. I mean, you have to
prove this over beyond a reasonable doubt. You're not giving
(31:58):
me the tools I need to be swayed and that that,
you know.
Speaker 6 (32:02):
I mean, no, maybe they get to it later.
Speaker 5 (32:04):
Maybe they get to it later. But that's the thing
with this that's the thing that I think is so
tricky with this trial. It's like this, when are they
going to start doing it?
Speaker 4 (32:13):
Yeah, And it's like major breakdowns and communication, Like they'll
go to this one thing and then they'll leave it
for two weeks and then try to circle back around
to it after it's cold and frozen again, and it's
kind of like it is really kind of like you're
starting fresh with somebody with no memory because it's been
so many things that have transpired in between until it's
(32:36):
like what was It's like there's no continuity.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
And I think that that is another.
Speaker 4 (32:45):
Interesting thing or tactic by the prosecution.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
I mean, if I'm a Jerry and I'm sitting there
for three hours listening to this story about this woman
being carjacked, and then you know, we hear all the
details we hear here left with a cliffhanger. Yeah, but
then I'm never satisfied with with that, and you're right
if it comes in ten days, two weeks, three weeks, whatever.
The whole point of bringing that woman on the stand
(33:12):
is to have the jury have that emotional connection as
you talked about, George, that's gone in three weeks when
we finally get to the supposed you know, the the
tying up the loose end of that. So I'm just
confused by the tactics as I watched this. Obviously I'm
no lawyer, but as a lay person who could be
a juror, I actually have jury duty next week. Like,
I'm just like, what is this thing?
Speaker 4 (33:33):
Anybody that watches Law and Order has enough common sense
to understand that this is.
Speaker 3 (33:43):
Not really the way.
Speaker 6 (33:45):
Well, this is not law, but the law is not
Law and Order.
Speaker 5 (33:50):
We talk about it a.
Speaker 6 (33:51):
Defense attorney many many years ago, and she's a hate
Law and Orders.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Oh it's not like how it is on TV. I mean,
these are all really interesting points because I guess, like
from the perspective of how everything is playing out, I
guess like all these social media posts are I guess,
being brought up as a logical conclusion or the logical
next step to figure out whether this person Christian Eppinger
(34:15):
is part of this gang conspiracy, and I wonder if
the social media portion is also supposed to compensate. I
guess for looking at these incidents in retrospect, because George
you talked about how like gang training is only really
ramped up in the past couple of years, and so like,
if the evidence isn't there, as in like you know,
the law and order type shit, is this all they
(34:37):
have to bank on?
Speaker 3 (34:38):
Is it is.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Tweets and vlogs for lack of a better word, all
that they have to rely on in order to draw
these larger conspiracy connections.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
I would like to.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
Imagine because my thing is, and I hate I'm not
referring to law and order again, but usually, like in
a you come out with a bang, like you start
off with and you lead with the fucking no brainer,
hands down, slam dunk, and then go from there and
(35:14):
work your way backwards and plant the seeds to this
killer piece of evidence that basically sealed the deal from
the beginning. But if the lead off is the Instagram
post and the tweets, then what else could be? What
else could this? What else could follow this up?
Speaker 3 (35:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (35:35):
Because this would in a regular person's mind be a
follow up to something bigger. So if you're leading off
with the follow up, then what like, what else could
you possibly have?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah, you know what's really interesting is that at the
beginning of the trial, I guess prosecutors let off with
the murder of Donnovan Thomas, which everybody says the domino
that kind of set everything off, right, And so in
the beginning, like we're being presented with this is like,
this is the this was the turning point, and everything
pretty much since then. The only other references that we've
(36:09):
even made back to Donovan Thomas are through like the
social media posts. So even over the past couple of
days or whatever, to bring back up super slimy. When
Detective bell Nap is like, hey, but listen, there's there's
something to this hawk theory, right, they bring up once
again like a social media post. It's literally if somebody
wearing a jacket that spells out the word nut life
(36:30):
in the back, and then there is a bird emoji,
we don't know what kind a bird emoji, grabbing a
snake emoji on top of it. That's all we have
to work on. Versus to your point, Jade, like I thought,
we were going to get into, you know, who was
responsible for renting the car, who is responsible for shooting
and things like that. But this is what we're having
(36:50):
to deal with right now, and uh, I'm not sure
like to like, we just have questions. We just have questions.
There was even videos also being presented about like that
we're supposedly depicting YSL operating as a gang. We're talking
about videos dating back through two thousand and nine. You know,
(37:14):
we have Young Thug before he was even known as
Young Thug, when he was called Little Jeff two thousand
and nine. You know, he's hang out at a parking
lot with his friends, wearing the red varsity jacket, white
boy swagon, white boy swagone.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Right, No, you's not a white talent.
Speaker 5 (37:34):
You know, that's the video on the show.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Yeah, that is something that detected Bella Nap has to reference.
And then there's even a video from twenty fourteen where
uh it promises to go behind the scenes in the
making of Young Thugs Danny Glover, but then prior to that,
it just shows him hanging out I think on like
the deck, but on the back of somebody's house. Do
you remember this? It was like he's hanging out, he's
(37:57):
walking onto the deck, and then there's just like a
whole bunch of people hanging out and they're throwing up
hand signs. They got a baby to throw up a
hand sign as well. But then that's kind of it.
That's kind of it. There's there are guns, there are
hand signs, But other than that, that's kind of where
the video is sort of with your all your background,
like working in the music industry, taking in the tweets
(38:19):
and like seeing like what's being presented like as evidence,
Like what's your take on this, especially as you're seeing
you know, detectives like dissecting it, like what what's going
through your mind as you're seeing all this.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
I just I think that that there is a humongous,
ginormous breakdown in.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Context because.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
The detectives and the people that are hired to study.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
These things.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Have definitely amassed a wealth of knowledge about you know,
old street things, gang things, whatever, whatever. But at the
end of the day, there's still a lot left to
the imagination when it comes to these artists and their creativity.
And I believe that's where the breakdown is coming in
(39:15):
at because you can take what you know about gangs
and what you know about street criminals and all that
kind of thing, and look at one thing one way.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
But when you're dealing with someone.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
Who's basically basically whose job is to create and to
you know, make their money off of things that are
gonna make them popular and draw people into who they
are as a person and as an artist and as
a public figure, a lot can get lost in translation.
(39:55):
And I think that's what is going on here because,
like I said, these people have expert knowledge, not taking
anything away from them, but the expert knowledge doesn't meet
in the middle where these artists and these other people
are using their creativity to come up with something that
(40:16):
would I guess describe themselves in a creative manner. And
that's kind of it's kind of tricky in it's also
very dangerous.
Speaker 6 (40:28):
I'm wondering to what degree what we're seeing in court
creates a chilling effect in the community among artists, Like
how is this changing behavior? Do you think?
Speaker 4 (40:37):
I think that it's definitely making a lot of people think.
But at the end of the day, I feel like
it has the power to hinder the creativity to a
certain extent, because if you're not able, most rappers capitalize
(40:58):
off of either the things that they've been through actually
personally or things that they've seen in their surroundings. So
if you are, like you said, a twenty year old
kid and you're trying to find your way out by
doing the rap thing and making trying to make millions
(41:19):
of dollars or whatever, and your claim to fame is
going to be how you're going to speak to the
things that you've seen and the things that you've been
through so that other people can relate and buy your music.
But if you on the on the flip side of it,
if you do speak to these things, and you do
(41:39):
speak to the things that you've been through and the
things that you've seen, and it could possibly get you
in legal trouble, or it could possibly get you indicted
and take you away from your family or put you
in a position where you have to try to get
money for lawyer fees that you haven't even made yet.
You know it's going to make people kind of think
twice about speaking on certain things. But at the end
(42:02):
of the day, it's kind of like, where is the
Fifth Amendment in all of this, Because you should be
able to speak freely about whatever it is that you
choose to speak freely about without it being used against
you if there's no basis of something illegal being done.
Speaker 6 (42:22):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely absolutely there's I guess. Speaking of that,
there was an interesting point that was brought up by
the defense right while viewing one of these videos. You know,
Detective Bounce Up is identifying folks, even folks who aren't
part of this indictment, but yeah, it believes to be
part of a lot of that going on. And one
of these folks wraps under the name Oliplayer. And what
(42:48):
was interesting is that when defense reviewed it, I think
it was specifically defense attorney Max Shirt, he was like,
didn't you hear Oli Player describe himself as King Slime
in one of those videos? And we have to add
that because it's the name of our show. You know,
prosecution has said Young Thug is the King Slime, But
what do you know about the origins of that?
Speaker 4 (43:08):
I guess in environment, I mean it's a loosely used term,
like in the hood, because everybody wants to be because okay,
technically king slime is like the King snake, and to
a lot of people that don't have an overt understanding
(43:31):
of nature. The snake to them is at the top
of the food chain, and every guy in the hood
wants to be the big dog or wants to be
at the top of the food chain. So a lot
of people call themselves that kind of sort of like
a self fulfilling prophecy, like if I'm not already, I'm
gonna be the big dog at the top of the
(43:52):
food chain type thing. So it's kind of yeah, it's
kind of like trying to make Jeff the one and
only premier King Slime is is going to be kind
of difficult because it's so many other people that have
adopted that moniker, which.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Is really interesting because, yeah, as prosecution has framed it,
like King Slime was supposed to signify like the ringleader
of this whole thing, you know, the leader of this
grand conspiracy.
Speaker 6 (44:23):
The irony is that guy's the wander on the case.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Right, right, Prosecutor Don Geary, Right, Yeah, it's somewhere else.
Speaker 5 (44:32):
Yeah, all right, let's take another break and then we'll
come back and we'll talk about the hack and we'll
release some new information that I think everybody'll be excited about.
Welcome back to King Slime. We're here with Baby Jade
and Christina and George of course. Now, George, I want
(44:53):
to turn to you for a second. There was a
hack of Fulton County's computer system. Yeah, tell me a
little bit about what's going on here.
Speaker 6 (45:00):
So end of January, last weekend in January, hackers from
a group called lock Bit three point zero, And this
is a group that's been hitting computer systems at companies
and organizations and governments, a lot of them, dozens and dozens.
So they hit the county. They'd probably been in the
county systems for weeks, pulling documents, anything they thought was
(45:25):
interesting or useful, and then they shut the computers down
for the county and they've been down and they're not
back up yet. Only about a third of the phones
are up because everything was on a voice of rip system.
But the key thing for us is the computers at
the county courthouse were part of the hack. And so
(45:46):
even though the folks from Runfoldon County had not been
admitting this publicly, Like, I found the hacker site and
I looked and saw what the sort of things they had,
and what they had were court records that were sealed.
They had like child abuse cases that were under seal.
They had secret witness lists, they had snitch lists, they
(46:09):
had grand jury testimony, they had medical records that were
attached to people's files. They had anything that had gone
through the court, with the exception of the Trump stuff,
because the FBI has basically had all of that stuff
in a freezer like where nobody can get at it.
(46:30):
But the YSL case is there too, including all the
stuff that we haven't seen, and the jury list and
the identities of the jurors. And I was looking at
this like, if that jury list is published, that might
be a mistrial, Like at the very least, it sequesters
(46:51):
the jury entirely, like you live in a hotel until
this is done. Yeah, add catastrophe.
Speaker 5 (46:59):
Catastrophe too. I mean that the defense doesn't want a mistriil.
Would imagine it?
Speaker 6 (47:02):
No, I can't imagine. The Judge Glanville is the chief
judge of the of the court as a whole, and has,
when not dealing with YSL case, been like in a
war room trying to figure out what's going on. And
the County frankly has not been forthcoming about how serious
this was. There was a counter on the website, like
(47:23):
the ransomware website that was counting down to twelve forty
seven this morning. Well, I went to go look, and
all of it's gone, like there there's no nothing on
the site that indicates that Fulton County had ever been hacked,
which implies Fulton County paid it off.
Speaker 5 (47:43):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (47:45):
And I don't know how many bitcoins it was, Like
I think the number was twenty, might have been fifty.
I don't even know, like some absurd number. I've asked
the county to tell me whether or not they paid it.
I've asked the county to tell me whether or not
any of this stuff got out in the wild, and
they're not telling me. Wow.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
In the meantime, how much of this do you think
accounts for the pace in which the trial has been
the last.
Speaker 6 (48:11):
Couple of weeks. Like I guarantee several of the days
that we weren't having trial was because Glanville was off
chasing hackers.
Speaker 5 (48:19):
Yeah, he's responsible for dealing with this, right.
Speaker 6 (48:21):
Yeah. He is the person who's been coordinating the county,
the county's response or like at the court system, like
chief judge. He's the one who gets to make those calls.
Speaker 5 (48:31):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
But he has been trying to play off, like at
least like, you know, not alarm anybody thing about it.
Speaker 6 (48:38):
In public, Like nothing like one day they closed off
because of a COVID, like somebody like I think a
juror had COVID over the weekend or something like that.
But I'm just saying like there's like some of the
pace over the last two weeks has been because none
of the court systems work.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
And we've been trying so hard not to harp on
just like the length in which this trial is going
to take place, but between you know, just how sprawling
the indictment is on top of stuff that is apparently
out of their control, whether that's a hack, whether that's
a juror catching COVID or anything else. I mean, are
we still going to be incortan until the next Super Bowl?
(49:18):
That seems to be the question that comes up every
single time, just because for as much time as they
do spend in court, it doesn't seem like much progress
is being made.
Speaker 5 (49:27):
Now talking about security, So there's this other leak a
few weeks ago, this was a big story where there
was a phone call, a jail phone call leaked between
Mariah the scientists and young thug Right.
Speaker 6 (49:40):
So it's interesting, like the wire ceil case has had
hacks in it and like weird data issues like where
like the little Woody tape getting out or like a
zoom bomb where we're looking at guys like you know yeah,
like you know, free young thug. And it's happened more
(50:01):
than once. But in this case with the with the Mariah,
the scientist think it was the color of jail call.
But what was was a visit, Like it's a like
it's a virtual visitation that does not appear to have
been a hack that looks like it was requested as
an open record.
Speaker 5 (50:22):
Which is something people don't know. Anyone can actually request
things like this.
Speaker 6 (50:26):
Right, I mean I couldn't. I didn't, but I could,
Like you don't have to be a reporter, right, yeah,
you don't have to be a reporter, Like you have
to be a person whose identity is known, like and
say this this record, I want it. Like you can
request jail phone calls. You could say, give me all
the jail phone calls for this and such person. I
want to listen to them, and I've got a hard
(50:47):
drive full of them from other cases. But this is
the first time I'd seen a visitation where a visitation
gets out. Honestly, I think that's over the line, not
that I think that young Like, look, if you're a prisoner,
you don't have privacy rights, but the people visiting you do.
(51:08):
Ryan the scientist is a human being who's been charged
with nothing, and suddenly her relationship with Jeffrey Williams is
on public display in an area which I would say
is a very private one. So I asked the Cobb
County Sheriff's office, tell me Whoverris requested this piece of information.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Because that also is public record.
Speaker 6 (51:31):
Because that also is public record. And that's the other
side of this, Like if you've got to do something
like I get here, like to stand up and say
it was me, Well, let me.
Speaker 5 (51:43):
Just say, first of all, this created a huge uproar.
I mean, there are people like Drake tweeted about how
he thought this was ridiculously unfair that the jail, that
somebody in the jail would leak this call, and everybody,
I think thought that it must be somebody in the
inside because they're not really aware of how this open
record system works, right, So.
Speaker 6 (51:59):
Like some deputy just hacked it out of the system
and sent it to somebody, and that's not what happened. Instead,
an email from a blog and by the way, this
is what I'm reading it. Deer blogger Francoise McMillan, who
apparently is a local writer, a blogger here in Atlanta,
(52:22):
made this request on three asked for the jail records
like around Jeffrey Williams, like including this one. It looks
like like according to the Cobb County Sheriff's office. And
we went back and forth for a while because apparently
(52:44):
there are a lot of people who are asking for
records from the from the from the Sheriff's office, this
is the one that actually resulted in that video.
Speaker 5 (52:54):
So I am told we don't know how it got
online necessarily, but we do know that this person is
the one who.
Speaker 6 (53:02):
Who initially got it out of the jail. And so
the next question is for her, like, Francoise McMillan, what
did you do with this video? Did you sell it
to somebody? Did you post it yourself under an assumed
name and then somebody else picked it up? Like how
did it get out of your hands? And what were
your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (53:21):
Why? Why? Like why?
Speaker 6 (53:24):
Because I don't think there's a whole lot of probative
value in like, I don't think we learned something deep
and new and interesting about young thug.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
No, it's a young thug gave a Christmas gift.
Speaker 5 (53:35):
Well, and it raises the question why are these open records?
Speaker 1 (53:39):
I mean, that's my next question.
Speaker 5 (53:41):
And an interesting point that we talked about when we
were talking about all this a few weeks ago, just
between us, was that if you know, you would think that, oh,
if this had relevance to the to the case, maybe
it could be an open record. But no, then it
would become evidence and would be close to the public.
Speaker 6 (53:57):
So, like, I get why the Sheriff's OFWT investigators would
want to be able to see all of this stuff. Sure, like,
because you don't want somebody like they go kill somebody like, Hey,
I'm meeting with you and it's private, and so I'm
going to tell you to go whack someone like you.
You really don't want that to be possible for anybody like.
(54:18):
But if that's not what's happening, then don't get me wrong.
Like I am an advocate for open records, like bar None,
I'm the guy who's going to stand up and ask
for the record nobody else should look at, Like, but
I'm always gonna have a really good reason, like I
think this deserves like a serious public conversation.
Speaker 5 (54:38):
Yeah, I mean it's an ethical quandary. I mean, we
knew all the time that we could request this stuff,
and we never did because what we do with it,
I mean it's you know, that's not something that we
can make an episode out of.
Speaker 4 (54:50):
It's like awfully weird, Like what's the I don't know,
I don't know. That's just that's kind of like even
though I know it's public record, and you know, like
when you are incarcerated, you relinquish your rights to a
lot of things. But like George said, like the people
(55:14):
that love you, they do have rights. And that's that's
that's that's not that's not cool.
Speaker 6 (55:22):
The one other thing here for me is that Jeffrey
Williams has not been convicted of a crime. Right he
is sitting in jail. He's a waiting church is to
be resolved one way or another. And so I think
there's a moral distinction to be made between like because
he likes jail is coercive, like you don't have privacy, Like,
it's another thing if he's if he's a person who's
(55:44):
been convicted of a crime and he's serving a sentence,
and you pull that jail record and you pull that
phone call, that's I think there's a moral distinction to
be made there. But this man is innocent until proven guilty,
and who I'm i to take advantage of that under
these conditions.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
So it's not a form of jail misconduct technically, as
Drake accused, but it definitely hits on some moral gray
area among many other things in this trial, for sure,
Franzroise McMillan, tell us what the heck this was about?
Speaker 5 (56:16):
Yeah, drop us a line, come on the show.
Speaker 3 (56:19):
We want to know, miss ma'am.
Speaker 1 (56:21):
Miss ma'am, is there anything else that you feel like
we should be looking out for in the coming weeks.
I mean, among other things, we have like one defense
attorney who wants out on this whole thing entirely.
Speaker 5 (56:33):
This attorney, right, Angela.
Speaker 4 (56:35):
De William's actually who that's why they're not having court
today because they're doing some motions for him.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (56:42):
So, and she's basically just making the claim that this
is getting way too unaffordable for her, right, I mean,
already saying that she's been saying that for a long time.
Speaker 3 (56:51):
Is that the one that said that she would make
more working at Chick fil.
Speaker 5 (56:53):
A only fans? I think she, Well, she might have
said Chick fil A too, but she also talked about
selling pictures on only fans to make ends meet.
Speaker 1 (57:00):
Yeah, she's been looking to the gig economy.
Speaker 3 (57:02):
I have a question about that.
Speaker 4 (57:05):
If if an attorney or if like a public defender
was to go the only fans route, would that be
a conflict of interest or is that legal?
Speaker 6 (57:20):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (57:20):
Man, I don't know if that's a question that we
could answer. We should definitely look into that, though I
feel like I feel like it'd be legal. Probably frowned upon,
but that's exactly right.
Speaker 6 (57:29):
Legal, But you're not supposed to create the appearance of impropriety.
And the quest is this, is this an appearance of impropriety, like.
Speaker 5 (57:40):
Just limit to your feet? You know? Then you get.
Speaker 3 (57:45):
I have a friend, No, I have a friend. She
makes a lot of money on her feet.
Speaker 4 (57:52):
She makes a lot of money like it's a it's
like a a fetish thing for some people. And she
gets like she gets paid a lot more than a
lot of people that like expose their entire nakedness like
it's it's really interesting worksham from me.
Speaker 5 (58:14):
That's right, that's.
Speaker 3 (58:15):
Right, right, we love you all whatever you're into.
Speaker 5 (58:18):
Well, I feel like that's the perfect note to end
the show. Right, Yeah, we got there, we started, We
got all the way to to the only fans feed pages. Well,
thanks for listening this week. We'll be back in two
weeks where every other week here And if you're listening
to this on the podcast feed, know that you can
watch this on the iHeart YouTube page as well, so
we'll be on We're on video as well.
Speaker 1 (59:00):
King Slime is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Heirloom Media.
Speaker 6 (59:04):
It's written and produced by George Cheedy, Christina Lee, and Tommy.
Speaker 1 (59:07):
Andres, mixing sound design and original music by Evan Tyre
and Taylor Chicoine.
Speaker 6 (59:13):
The executive producer and editor is Tommy Andres.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
Our theme music is by Doune Deal. Special thanks to
Carl Catle.
Speaker 6 (59:23):
For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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