August 4, 2025 • 35 mins
Tune in here to this Monday's edition of Breaking With Brett Jensen!
Breaking Brett Jensen kicks off the show in studio with U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson for an exclusive one-on-one interview to discuss law enforcement, public safety, and the evolving role of federal prosecutors in North Carolina.Ferguson shares personal insight into the significance of “First Night,” a community outreach event where residents can connect directly with police, medics, and fire crews serving their neighborhoods. The conversation delves deeper into issues surrounding the public perception of law enforcement, staffing challenges, and why fostering trust between officers and citizens is more crucial now than ever.
Later, Jensen and U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson dig into the alarming rise in violent crime across Charlotte and Western North Carolina, with a specific focus on gang activity and federal efforts to combat it. Ferguson breaks down how the DOJ targets gangs at the top—through long-term investigations, informants, and undercover operations—to disrupt violent crime at its source. He emphasizes the disturbing role gang initiation plays in local homicides, often involving young offenders firing blindly into homes. The conversation also explores how federal and state systems can work in tandem to prosecute repeat offenders and violent criminals more effectively.
Ferguson also shares insight into federal priorities under the current administration, including a renewed focus on violent crime, threats to law enforcement, and crimes against children. The discussion wraps with a candid look at immigration enforcement, including the challenges posed by non-cooperative jails and the dangers of deporting violent offenders without ensuring public safety.
Listen here for all of this and more on Breaking With Brett Jensen.
To be the first to hear about Breaking Brett Jensen's exclusives and more, follow him on X @Brett_Jensen!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Hi, oh, let's go oh, let's go oh, let's go oh,
let's go just talk eleven ten and nine to nine
read WBT Brad Jensen here with you on this Monday
night certainly rainy part of Charlotte Rainy parts of Charlotte
(00:43):
Monday Night edition of Breaking with Brad Jensen. Seven oh
four or five seven eleven ten is the telephone number.
And guys, make sure you follow me on X at
Brett Underscore Jensen for all the lust and breaking news
in and around the Charlotte area. And if you follow
me on X then it's not a surprise to you.
Who might get studio is tonight and that is US
attorney for Western North Carolina, Russ Ferguson. And we're gonna
(01:06):
get into a lot of different things tonight. And I'm
gonna see if he can't stay for quite a while
because it's initially gonna be like an eight minute conversation.
Maybe we turn this into an hour minute an hour
conversation tonight. So first of all, I really do appreciate
you coming in, and I want me to get things
out of the way in terms of formalities. If if
(01:28):
you were vy LALs, I'd say madam, mayor or mayor congressman.
What do people what is your official talk? What are
people technically supposed to call you when they see you
in the office.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
That's a good question. You call me Russ, first of all,
but the US Attorney is my title. You know. When
I first got there, people called me sir. I thought
it was the weirdest thing ever. People try to call
me like US Attorney Ferguson, like I'm a senator or something.
It's you know, just call me Russ. I'm not that important.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well a lot of people would disagree with that. But
we're gonna I want to get into like I actually
called some lawyers today. Yeah, go, okay, what should I
be asking Russ Ferguson, the US Attorney for Western North Caroline.
What should I be asking him? What would he have
potentially an impact on? What does he not have an
(02:16):
impact on? Because I don't want to ask him something
that he has no control over, you know, stuff like that.
And so we're going to get into a lot of
things tonight. But I want to start off with specifically
First Night, which starts tomorrow. And for those who do
not know first meaning first responders, it's a chance to
(02:37):
get out in the community and meet the officers, the
police officers, the fireman, the medics, just all the first responders.
And a lot of cities all over the country do this,
and you know, it's again it's a chance for people
who may not like the police or never get to
see the police, you know, except when they're being pulled
over for a speeding ticket or whatever. But tomorrow's first night.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, it's a cool thing too. I mean, it's across
the nation. But what I love about it is it's
neighborhood by neighborhood. It's hyper local, and so you get
to see the police officers and the first responders that
are signed to your neighborhood, the people that you know
if something happened is the person you would run to,
the person that would respond if something happened to your house,
and you get to know them. And I think that's
extremely important, especially now. I mean, law enforcement has been
(03:23):
so criticized lately, which I think is has been wrongly so,
and in a time when we've lost a lot of
law enforcement officers and we've just lost one in Cherokee
in the line of duty by an inmate. And then
you know, of course in twenty twenty three, we lost
four here in Charlotte. So I think it's more important
than ever to say thank you to our police officers.
I mean, imagine, if you had a kid today, would
you tell them to be a police officer, to put
(03:44):
your life on the line every day for whatever they
get paid. You've got to have a real sense of
calling to do it. The best part of my job
is of meeting the law enforcement officers. They're just tremendous people.
It's a calling. You don't do it if you don't
have a calling. And I think if you go out
tomorrow night and meet some of these folks, you'll have
a special line, you know.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
To that point. You know, when we're kids, what do
you want to be rust when you grow up? I
want to be an astronaut. I want to be a fireman.
I want to put you a policeman, or I want
to be a cowboy or something like that. Right, But policemen,
not universally, but probably half the kids always said policeman. Yes,
(04:22):
I want to be a fireman, policeman, fireman, as somebody
would say, astronaut, you know whatever. No one ever said
I want to be a US attorney. I want to
be a congressman. No one ever said that. They sure
as hell never said I want to be someone on radio,
you know, they never said that. But but to your point,
you know, would you encourage people to say, oh, maybe
(04:44):
you should look into law enforcement, Like even as adults,
that's something that parents would probably say, are you sure
about this?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
It's tough, I mean, but when we were growing up
and kids wanted to be policemen and wanted to be fireman,
that was a place of respect in our communities. You
saw a policeman and you said, wow, that's an a
amazing job. Now they're criticized so much. I think you
have a lot of trouble telling your kids to go
do that. You get shot at, people feel justified doing it.
People want to defund the police. I mean, it's an
entirely different environment. I'm thankful parents tell their kids to
(05:11):
be police officers because we've got some great folks out
there that are doing it. And I hope that continues,
because boy, it will be a bad time if we
don't get good people on the streets protecting us.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah. And like you said, it is neighborhoods specific, and
there are certain neighborhoods where maybe people don't like the
police for obvious reasons, or maybe they're scared of the
police for whatever particular reason, and so this is a
chance for them to see them more on a one
on one basis, or maybe officers that they're not used
to seeing, or something in that impact.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
And you know what you find is you think that
the neighborhood is defund the police, or anti police or whatever,
but it's just the lowest people in that neighborhood and
the neighborhood as a whole is very happy to have
the police there. We see that in public housing. I'll
be a hidden valley tomorrow. That neighborhood likes the police
that keeps that neighborhood safe. That long ago was probably
one of the least safe places in America, and the
police turned it around. And so neighborhood by neighborhood we
(06:03):
find support for law enforcement. But it's the loudview that
aren't supportive of law enforce.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Well. And that's the thing. Look, and I will say this,
and I think it's maybe one of the single greatest
quotes in the history, even though his presidency didn't turn
out so well, was when Richard Nixon said, the silent majority,
because it's always the loud minority that gets the attention,
and the silent majority, like you said, I think is
like I like I said, is I think one of
the best quotes that that's ever been said by a
(06:29):
president because it's so true.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And never more true than now when you can get
on X like you are and become a loud minority
real fast and get retweeted and make it seem like
you're the majority, but in reality, the silent majority is there.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So that's that's the thing that you know again, So
it's a chance for them to go out. Was it
from six to eight? Is that the Is that? What
it is?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Six to eight? It might linger a little longer. I'm hopeful,
hopeful the weather is cooperating. If it looks like it
looks tonight here at the studio, it may may be
ending a little early, but I will be out rain
or shine, and I hope that. I hope the weather
cooperates six to eight in your neighborhood tomorrow night.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Well, yeah, hopefully the weather will cooperate. So yeah, that'll
I've never done it first night, so I'm interested. I mean,
I may do tomorrow, we'll see what happens. But I've
never done one, so maybe you know, the show ends
at seven, so maybe we'll get out there sometime around
seven o'clock tonight, so look or tomorrow night when we
come back. I want to talk to the US Attorney
Russ Ferguson about a lot of different things going on.
(07:27):
Like I said, I spoke to lawyers today, spoke to kids,
I spoke to prosecutors today, going all right, what should
I ask him? What can I ask him? Does this
pertain to the DOJ? Does it not pertain to the DOJ?
So well, there's a lot of things that we want
to get into, and they're not you know, they're not
you know, gotcha questions or anything. It's just more to
explain things to us for people like myself who may
(07:49):
have no clue about stuff like this, and so this
is a little out of my depth. So this is
more almost like a fact finding mission for me. Can't wait,
and I'm sure our listeners will be actually really excited
about this as well. Welcome back to Breaking with Brett
(08:21):
Jensen on this Monday night. I'm not quite sure what
music Isaac just played there. I don't know what that
I was, Isaac. All right, we'll make sure that gets
kicked to the dumpster file seven four five, seven eleven ten.
All right. So sitting in studio with me for tonight
is US attorney for Western North Carolina Russ Ferguson. Let's
(08:45):
get into something that I want to talk to you
about in terms of crime in Charlotte specifically, and we'll
get into other parts of the state because I want
to see how the comparison contrasts from Charlotte to say
Western North Carolinasboro or whatever, or Waynesville, Telscola, that whole
area just in general. But Charlotte. How prevalent is the
(09:11):
gang situation in Charlotte? Is it very prevalent? Is it
foreign gangs? Is it local gangs as we've heard about
for years going by fifteen years that you know, like
MS thirteen had a big stronghold up in Salisbury or
something like that. But is gang is that a big
situation here in Charlotte.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, it really is, and you see it on a
number of different levels, and you know, it's it's kind
of funny because since they made organized gang violence of
federal crime, the gangs have gotten very smart. So you know,
used to see graffiti everywhere. You don't really see that anymore.
You used to see people gang tattoos. You don't see
that anymore because they've gotten smart and made it harder
for us to prove gang organization or gang connectivity. But
(09:50):
the gang violence is huge. We see it on every level.
You see young people shooting into occupied houses as gang initiation,
and a lot of that goes through state quirk because
in the federal system, take the worst of the worst,
and we've got a bunch of violent violent crime. We
have a lot of investigations open. About seventy percent of
those investigations we think, and we're investigating, but we think
connect to some sort of international cartel, either El Salvador,
(10:13):
Honduras or Mexico wherever it is of our investigations, and
so we're obviously focusing on taking out the top of
the gang and toppling the whole thing rather than getting
the little guys at the bottom. But the gang violence
is very, very prevalent. There are a lot of cases
we're on its face, you may not know it's gang violence,
but when you start digging, it is. And what's really
helped us. I don't mean to give a playbook to
(10:34):
gangs out there. But what's really helped us is the phones.
I mean we can grab someone's phone, get a search
warrant and search their text and see that they're talking
with other gang members. Improved gang connectivity, talking to folks
in Atlanta, talking to folks in Mexico. It's very, very
prevalent in Charlotte. And as Charlotte grows, so to the gangs.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
What about the drug situation? Is it fetonoyl? I mean
you always used to be like, oh, cocaine, cocaine, and
then it became crack in the early nineties when the
murder rates just like triple H. And still some of
our highest murder rates in the history of Charlotte are
from the early nineties with the invention of crack. So
how's the drug scene going on a show? Is it
(11:13):
sort of plateau? Is it getting worse? Is it getting better?
What's that situation? Like? It's changing.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So, like you said, it used to be cocaine and
things like that, we see a ton of fentanyl now
and fentanyl's almost all coming in from international destinations. I mean,
it's almost like a cargo line from Mexico through Atlanta
up up the Interstate eighty five here to Charlotte. And
the funny thing about fentanyl is it's not just fentanyl.
Like if you go out and buy marijuana on the streets,
there's a high likelihood it's laced with fentanyl because the
(11:39):
drug dealers have learned that if they sell you marijuana
with fentanyl in it, you're gonna get a better high
than the guys sell them marijuana without fentanyl in it
down the street, and you're gonna come back. So we're
seeing fentanyl all sorts of things, and that's terrifying. I mean,
people are buying pills, adderall all sorts of things that
have fentanyl in it, and that's why we're seeing these
fentanyl deaths that people don't expect. I mean, these are
not people necessarily that are addicted to fentanyl. It's people
(11:59):
who are accidentally getting fentanyl off the street. So that's
a huge problem. We see a lot of meth in
this part of the state, a whole lot of meth
in this part of the state. Other drugs are going down,
like cocaine, so it's changing a lot, but the amount
of drugs coming in is just unfathomably huge. It's remarkable.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
With the closure of the border, how much will that help.
I mean, you're never gonna cut it off completely, obviously,
but how much did that help slow down the influx
of fentanyl that is being made in China shipped to Mexico.
Like even the like, even hardcore Democrats will tell you
this is how it's working. You know, it's going from
(12:40):
China to Mexico. Then it was coming in and obviously
also through Canada. But how much of the closing of
the borders has that slowed down the influx of fentanyl
into the country.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
It has slowed down. And you know they added just
criminals will always find a way, so they're probably gonna
find some other way to get drugs into the country.
But we've definitely seen it making a difference. It is
a lot harder to get drugs across the border now.
We don't have the border crossings that we had just
a year or two ago. So even without the border wall,
we just don't have the people coming across the border,
(13:10):
and that has certainly helped. Now Matthew can make here,
so it doesn't help that, but with the fentanyl, it
certainly does help. And you know what's funny you mentioned China.
You know, in my office we have like white collar
crime fraud section as well. And tracing the money has
been extremely interesting because we're seeing the drug trade used
to launder Chinese money into the United States, and China
(13:31):
has a law where you can't get more than fifty
thousand dollars out of the country to try to kind
of keep their money in China, and so even if
you want to pay Stanford tuition or whatever, you've got
to find some way to get here. And so there
are people using the drug trade and either getting that
money into payesos again to the United States and then
into dollars to just launder money for Chinese people, and
drugs is the way to do it. So it's a
(13:52):
multifaceted business. It's not just sell them drugs addicts.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
I want to stay on the drug thing speaking with
US Attorney Russ Ferguson, so I want to Cane Knew
that talk. So this is where I wanted to talk
about the western part of North Carolina. You know, when
you start getting into the mountains and the hills, and
you know, is that more meth in meth houses is
because that was the perception you know, like eastern Kentucky,
(14:15):
it was always you know, Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia
was meth houses as well as you know opioids right now.
That was the poor communities. That's what that's what was
wiping out those poor communities. Are we seeing that here
in North Carolina or is it still just fentanyl?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I mean, we definitely see it. And the mountains is
known for meth. I mean, it's a meth hotbed in
the mountains. But we're seeing that change too. I mean,
fentanyl is making its way into the mountains big time,
and we're seeing death by fentanyl. I mean it is
a sad drug, not that meth not. I mean it is,
but we're seeing it. And just like I told you,
marijuana's mess is laced with fentanyl, so it is meth
(14:51):
sometimes and so sometimes you test a drug or you
test someone's blood and it's spiking for both because they're
just kind of mixing it all together. So we're seeing
it change, but there's still a lot of men up
in the mountains. It's still very prevalent there.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
The I know, in Gastonia this morning they had an
interesting case where they just convicted a man death by
distribution as a drug dealer, right, like, Okay, I didn't
tell you to ingest all eighteen pounds of cocaine. I
just sold you the eighteen pounds of cocaine. But the
person that did the selling was now convicted for death
(15:23):
by distribution. Does the does the DJ do anything like
that with like big bait cases, there's not always like
local level stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
So death by distribution is a state charge and a
lot of das in the Mountains have been bringing it
and I have had some success with it, and it's
a great charge, especially on the fentanyl stuff because there
are I mean, if you're a kid buying a load
of marijuana, you're not expecting to die, and if you
don't know it has fentanyl in it and you're dying,
that is the drug dealer's fault. And so it's a
good charge death by distribution. They're having a lot of
(15:51):
luck with it. We'll have some of the same defendants.
We don't charge death by distribution, but we will charge
some sort of conspiracy or drug trafficking charge that sometimes
aims at the same people or the same groups of
people and get people federal time.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
That way, we're speaking with the US attorney and Rus
Ferguson for Western North Carolina. You know, it's funny. I was,
I think it was like a week ago, maybe a
week and a half ago. I was, I was looking
things up, and I just saw, okay, well, how many
district or how many US attorneys are in North Carolina?
And I saw I just assumed there was Western and Eastern.
I didn't know there was a centrum. There's a middle too,
(16:29):
there was a central. So there's three US attorneys in
North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
There are three, and it's very oddly divided as the
middle district really concords in the middle district, so just
right outside of Charlotte, those criminals are running in and
out of Mecklenburg County and spanning two federal districts, and
it runs up to Durham, which is in the Middle district,
but raleighs in the eastern district, so you know, you're
right right on the edge kind of up that district
that runs up eighty five. So it's it's some interesting
venue issues sometimes.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Well you've got an office also in Asheville. Correct, how
often do you get to Asheville?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
About every other week? It depends what's going on. But
I'm there if you averaged out about every other week
up in my Nashville office. Yeah, we've got about twenty
percent of our folks in Nashville.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
All right. When we come back with US attorney forst
in North Carolina, Russ Ferguson, I'm going to talk to
him about the murders in Charlotte and the crime in
Charlotte and is there anything that the FBI of the
DJ can do federally or anything to maybe try and
help the crime situation not just here, but maybe in
other places like Memphis or Saint Louis and New Orleans
(17:26):
or Baltimore, that's Chicago that also really need a lot
of help as well. So we'll talk with him and
we will continue more like a prison seven oh four
or five, seven eleven ten, Welcome back to Breaking with
Brett Jensen. We got US attorney for Western North Carolina
(17:47):
and Russ Ferguson in studio with us tonight for the
full hour, and like I said, I immediately learned something
about the gangs, like because we just don't we always
hear about youth crime and Charlotte, you know, we tend
to not hear a lot of stuff about gangs and
the fact that it's extremely prevalent is troubling, but it's
also good to know, so appreciate uh Russ Ferguson enlightening
(18:07):
us about that. All right, So now let's talk about
murders in Charlotte. Yeah, and I always tell the stat
when I started here in September of twenty eighteen, the
murder rate that year in twenty eighteen homicide, right they
call homicides, Yeah, was fifty eight. Okay, so you about
one a week, and that was the average four Like
(18:28):
every once in a while you get up to like
in the sixties, but every once in a while you
might even only get in the high forties. Like it
was a and then all of a sudden in twenty nineteen,
it's been pretty much right around one hundred every single year.
You know, we've got up to one hundred and twenty
or one hundred and twenty two a couple back to
years like the COVID year was really bad and things
like that. So is there anything that the DOJ the FBI,
(18:51):
anything that the federal government can do to try maybe
help not just Charlotte but other communities when it comes
to the murder rates or is there anything that you
guys can do.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, I mean so. And you got to keep in
mind how much Charlotte's growing too, So the murder rate's
going up. The population of Charlott's growing up. Murders of
state charge, so we do not charge murder in the
federal system. But we think a lot of those murders
are gang related. And that's why this administration has has
such an emphasis on taking the gangs down. Now, that
takes a long time. You've got to investigate, you gotta
find the gang. You got to get informants into the gangs,
(19:23):
you gotta get undercover agents in there. You've got a
very high level of proof in federal court to do it.
So it takes some time. But I believe if you
take down even one gang, you drastically eliminate those murders.
I mean, we see the young people a lot of
his gang initiation, and a lot of these murders they
don't really mean to murder. It's not like they're going
out to get someone they hate. They just shoot into
a house and someone's in there, and that can be
(19:44):
a young kid, that can be a mom, that can
be a dad, and sometimes the bullets graze past them
and sometimes they hit them. And it's a sad situation
just to initiate yourself into a gang. But the gangs
are recruiting these young folks, and so if we can
get the gangs at the top of the people, And
you got to think a lot of these young people
growing up in broken homes, their parents are often incarcerated,
They have a mom that's working three jobs, with their
(20:07):
dads in jail. I mean, this is a tough life.
And so that doesn't mean you should turn to crime,
but it does mean the gang it makes them very
vulnerable to gangs. So the more we can take the
gangs away, the less they're gonna recruit these young people,
and hopefully those murders can go down. And it's not
just Charlotte. I mean in my district, we're seeing an
increase in violent crime in Ashville, especially in the last
month or so. We obviously had the huge, huge shooting
in Hickory recently, which Hickory is known as a place
(20:29):
that really has no violent crime.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
I lived there for almost two years.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
It's a wonderful place, and all of a sudden, you got,
you know, a party with folks shooting at each other,
and so we're opening all sorts of violent crimes as
federal investigations to try to find that gang connection and
take it down, which, by the way, does not mean
the state cannot prosecute them. Also, it doesn't happen often,
but the state can prosecute someone for murder, and we
can still prosecute them in the federal system for gang activity,
(20:54):
using a gun in the act of violence, presenting a
gun as a fella, in whatever the federal charge may be.
So we're using every tool we got in the tool
belt to try to get bad guys off the streets,
because sometimes all you can do is take them off
the streets.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Directives. You know, each administration has different things that they
like to concentrate on, just like they do every single
year in the NFL season with the referees. One year,
it'll be all right, we're going to concentrate on pass
interference one year. Then the next year they tell the
referees to concentrate on holding or whatever. So what are
some of the things that the administration and the Trump
administration maybe wants you to concentrate on more as opposed
(21:31):
to maybe what they bonded and Biden administrated, wanted for
your for your predecessor.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, there's definitely been a shift in focus. I mean,
the drugs and cartels are are priority won for the
reasons we've talked about. Assaults on law enforcement has become
a much much bigger priority and a much bigger problem
that we've got to solve. Threats on law enforcement, Threats
on members of Congress has become a priority because that
was just kind of let go for a while and
that has that has big effects. So that's been very good.
(21:59):
We have a huge part already on crimes against children,
whether that's child porn or child rape, whatever the horrendous
act may be. That's a huge focus for us. So
a lot of things like that have been our focus.
We use our white collar section to really get into
the heart of these same things. So you know, some
of these gangs are super sophisticated. They'll be putting credit
(22:20):
cards to commers on gas pumps to finance their drug operation.
So we've been attacking things like that through that, they're
tax filings, whatever it may be. And then a lot
of this international stuff. I mean, we've got a huge
case of Chinese money laundering that I talked about a
little bit earlier. We focus on that the crime coming
in across the border and all of that. So that's
been some of our priorities. But as US Attorney, you
(22:42):
have a lot of prerogative and you have a lot
of latitude to do what you think, and so I've
spent a lot of time making relationships with sheriffs across
my district and chiefs of police and federal law enforcement
agencies and saying, bring me your worst of the worst,
because what we see, especially in places like this, is
repeat offenders who go through this state system and either
get very short sentences or bonded out and are back
(23:03):
on the street in a matter of months for very
serious crimes. And they do it again, and they do
it again, and they do it again. So my message
to the law enforcement community has been, bring me those
folks that are not getting the time they should get
in the state system. Catch them with a gun, catch
them and a federal crime, and we'll put them a
jail for a long long time.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Speak of with the US Attorney to Wes Ferguson for
Western North Carolina, you talked about talking with sheriffs and
you know, and reaching out to them. We know that
sheriff's like Gary McFadden and other places like say maybe
Greensboro and Dormoan. I know you don't deal with Durham,
but you know Durnham and other places maybe Ashfelle. I'm
(23:40):
not sure what the Ashville stance is dealing with ICE,
and I know that's not you specifically. I get that.
But have you had any conversations with them about ICE
or has ICE had any conversations with you about the
sheriffs or anything. Have you had any interactings with ICE
specifically to western North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, it's a constant conversation I have, And you're right,
I don't really have anything to do with ICE. ICE
can can find an illegal immigrant topport them. It doesn't
have to come through my office, but it does sometimes
because if they find an legal immigrant that has a gun,
or has drugs, or has a criminal history, or has
a warrant for a federal crime, then absolutely comes to us.
And we do have some problems with the jails because
the safest way to arrest a violent criminal that maybe
(24:22):
is here illegally is to take them out of the jail.
They've already been searched for weapons, they're there they're contained,
then come pick them up. And when Shares don't cooperate
with that and let them go, we've got to send
a law enforcement officer into a very unsafe situation. Every
time you have to go and arrest someone in public,
in their home, wherever you find them, it's an unsafe
situation with those law enforcement officers. So it's very important
(24:44):
to me to arrest violent criminals the easiest, safest way
we can do it. And when it comes to legal immigration,
there's Title eight authority that's the immigration laws to hold
those people in jail and arrest them there, and like
here in Mecklenberg, instead of doing that, ICE is having
to post themselves outside every exit of the jail and
hope they can identify them and get them out. And
you know that's dangerous, not only because they're outside the jail,
(25:05):
but you might get the wrong guy, which is not
good for anybody. But in jail, they've already been identified.
So it's a huge problem. It's when we're trying to
tackle the North Carolina state legislator's been trying to tackle it.
You know, North Carolina sheriffs have a whole lot of power.
They're constitutional officers. They're elected, they have a lot of
freedom and they exercise that freedom as they see fit,
and ultimately they're only responsible to the voters. And so
(25:27):
it's a challenge and we have a different point of
view on some things, but for the large part of
the sheriffs have been extremely cooperative with us.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
I will say the one thing that I do not understand.
I mean, in theory, I sort of understand it, but
it bothers me when someone's arrested for a volent crime
that's here illegally and they're talking about deporting them and
deporting them like I am the person that goes no, no.
I want them to stay in jail here for thirty
(25:53):
five years, because the odds of them coming back across
that border with a fake identity is relatively high, because
how many times they get shipped out and they come back,
and they get shipped out and they come back and
different names, different identities, whatever. Just keep them in jail
for thirty five years, and I understond well to the American taxpayer,
I would rather I know where they're located, as opposed
(26:14):
to shipping them out and having them come back somewhere
else where people don't know who they are.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, and we have probably eight or nine cases a month.
Illegal re entry is a federal crime. So if you've
been deported before and come back, and we probably have
eight or nine cases a month in the Western District
alone where people have come back multiple times. And it's
funny because in most of those cases, the reason we
have caught them for that for illegal re entry, not
every case, but a lot of the cases is because
(26:38):
they've committed another crime here and we've caught them for
that crime. So that is a big problem. And I mean,
I supports a lot of people, but if we have
the case of my office, we're putting them in an
American prison. That's our goal. So we don't take the
guy who came across to work at the farm and
it's going back. You know he's going to get deported.
(26:59):
But if you come up a cross and rape somebody
or kill somebody, or or dealing drugs or whatever it
may be, Uh, we're gonna put you in America prison.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
US Attorney rus Ferguson is my guest tonight when we
come back. There are a couple other things that I
want to ask him. This I could do this for
another hour and a half I don't think he could,
but but you know, I mean he's you know, he's
got the family and everything else, but you know, but
I could. I could be doing this because I just
find all this fascinating. But when we come back, there
a few other things that I'm going to ask him about.
(27:34):
Welcome back to Breaking with Brett Jensen on this Monday
Night Special Guests. US Attorney for Western North Carolina, Russ
Ferguson has been in studio with me for the full
hour and just giving us some really really great information.
Like I said, I could be going for a full
another hour because there's so many things that I want
to try to get into. But I do want to
get into this because it was your office not too
(27:57):
long ago, the foul charges against Tiawana Brown and her
two daughters for fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud during
the PPP loans for during the COVID situation and stuff
like that. So I've already interviewed you about that about
a month and a half ago or so. But what
I do want to know that seems to be like
the big question that a lot of us have privately
(28:18):
is when might her case go to trial? Could it
happen before the primaries in September for city council. Could
it happen, you know, prior to the election in November,
or is it something that could be happening in twenty
twenty six, Because a lot of us don't know how
these things work. So what kind of timeframes are we
(28:40):
looking at?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, and I can't tell you in her specific case
because I don't know, And I can tell you in
fraud cases, which is that Her case is, you know,
one of our run of the mill fraud cases. It's
a PPP loan fraud case. And fraud cases there are
a lot of documents, and the first thing we do
when we indict a case is give all the documents
and all the information we have to her lawyer, to
the defendant's lawyer. So she's got a very good lawyer,
(29:02):
rober Roy, who'll go through all those documents, and to
some extent, it's up to him how long it takes.
Not entirely, but it is not uncommon in a fraud
case for defense counsel to ask for more time so
they can get through all those documents. Sometimes they have
to hire an expert, you know, an accountant or something
to go through it depending on what their defense is.
And I don't know what her defense will be, so
(29:24):
that can add months to the process, whereas if we had,
you know, a simple gun case or something like that,
we can go to trial much much quicker. So it
is not abnormal in a fraud case for a fraud
case to take a year. It doesn't always happen. It
just kind of depends on the documents. The defense is
what's going on. That's a three co defendant case with documents,
tax returns, you know, all sorts of stuff. I suspect
(29:45):
it will take a while. Now, that's in a normal
fraud case. Her case is a little bit complicated because
she is running for reelection and I have committed to
doing everything we can to make sure that case does
not affect an election. And so we will have to
work with our attorney to see if that means going
to try before the election or after, or how that does,
because she's got to balance getting a full and fair
defense with not affecting her election and so, and we
(30:08):
had that in mind. We indicted her early enough to
build that time in, and had we discovered this case
a little later, we probably would have held off even
indicting it until after the election, because we want to
be very careful about affecting an election. So because all
we've done is make allegations, I mean, she has she
is innocent until proven guilty. She has will have a
full and fair trial if she decides to do so.
(30:29):
And so that case is unique for that little wrinkle.
But in a normal fraud case, it's not abnormal for
it to go a year plus or minus a few months.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
I've told people that you know, and you know, people
can look at something that it's a minimum ninety five
percent conviction rate generally with when the FBI, the dj
geints involved, and some depending on what you lead, it
could be as high as ninety eight percent conviction rate.
With all that being said, these cases also, like you said,
like can the investigation could take a very long time.
(30:57):
Sometimes it could take two years, three years, whatever the
case may be. Do you know how long this I
mean you took over what the case was already being
under investigation. Do you know how long this how long
this thing started?
Speaker 2 (31:10):
I don't know how long, and we generally do don't
kind of disclose our investigative process anyway, But there are
cases that go on for years. And the reason we
have that ninety eight percent conviction rate is because we
only indict people where we have very good cases, or
at least that's our goal, and so we will have
very long investigations and not bring any charges sometimes or
(31:31):
give that investigation to the state or to someone else,
you know, an IRS administrative proceeding or something like that.
But because of the limited federal resources and we're using
taxpayer money, we tend to take airtight cases, and so
we'll have very long investigations, run down every angle we
can to get there, and sometimes that takes three years,
and sometimes it takes a month and a half. You know,
it just depends on the case. But in fraud cases
(31:53):
it takes longer because of the amount of documents. You
got to send out subpoenas. You got to get bank records,
get tax returns, get all these paper you know, small
business association loans are involved a lot of times. You
got to get the loan documents, you got to go
talk to witnesses, you got to go through it all,
and that takes a very very long time to do.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Last couple of minutes here with US Attorney for Western
North Carolina, Rus Ferguson completely shift gear is one thing
that I was taught about today from one of the
lawyers that I spoke to about you just doing background,
said that ask them about the civil side of the
DOJ and or the you know, the US Attorney's office,
because you know, we think crime. You know, Isaac's going
(32:30):
to jail for the next twenty five years, right, but
we don't think about the civil side of things. Can
you just briefly talk about that?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yeah, I'm so glad you asked me that, because everyone
asked me about the crime. It's like the sexy stuff.
But we have a whole civil Section and they do
all sorts of stuff. I mean, the number one goal
of the Civil Section is to defend the United States
when the United States has sued. So if you go
through TSA checkpoint and say the tsagents stole my laptop
and you sue, will defend the TSA. Or if you
go to a VA doctor and I think you get
(32:56):
negligent care, we'll defend the VA doctors. We're kind of
defend taxpayer money in those cases, and that's the most
important thing. But we do a lot of other stuff too.
We will sue people under the False Claims Act, and
so you know, if you have someone who's defrauding Medicare
or Medicaid, and maybe it doesn't quite rise to the
level of criminal activity, but it's still wrong, we can
sue them and not only recover that money for the taxpayers,
(33:17):
but recover three times the amount of money they got,
so we can make some money for the taxpayers in
that way. We have a section that does asset forfeiture,
So any sort of assets you gain that are the
proceeds of a crime, we can sue you to get
those back, even if we don't charge the crime. So
if you operate a hotel for prostitution or something and
we're never able to prove the prostitution, we can still
go seize that hotel for the taxpayers. So we do
(33:40):
a lot of that. We have a financial litigation unit
that goes and gets restitution from defendants and things like that. Well,
you know, if you are a defendant that owes back
the taxpayers one hundred thousand dollars and you go buy
one hundred thousand dollars car, we'll go get a court
judgment to take it. So we do a lot of
that stuff, and then we do some miscellaneous stuff. I mean,
we have a case now where if you agree to
(34:01):
voluntarily deport yourself from the country, you admit your legally
here and you agree to voluntarily deport yourself and don't
do it, we can sue you to recover the fine
you should get. There's like a daily fine for not
doing it. And so we've had one of those, one
of those cases, or we do that. And so our
civil section is doing all sorts of stuff, and people
assue about the constitutionality of you know, executive orders and
(34:23):
statutes and laws, and we'll defend those. And so we
have a very robust civil section that's doing all sorts
of stuff and they have great cases and the great lawyers.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Well you just to Jorney Russ Ferguson again, I can't think,
you know, I honestly could be doing this for another
hour because this is you know, I deal with politics,
but also deal with CMPD in the crime and so.
But that's local level and state level. So it's very
fascinating to get a look at things behind the scenes
at the federal level. And again especially you know with
Pam Bondi being out in front center and everything else.
(34:51):
You know, we're starting to get a little bit more
about the DJ. So again, thank you so much for
being here. I cannot thank you enough. And maybe we
can make this on a semi regular basis. I love
it all right, awesome, all right, So that's going to
do it for us tonight everyone. I'll be joining Bo
and Beth tomorrow morning, so make sure you stick around
for that. My name is Brett Jenson, and you've been
listening to Breaking with Brett Jenson
Hi, oh, let's go oh, let's go oh, let's go oh,
let's go just talk eleven ten and nine to nine
read WBT Brad Jensen here with you on this Monday
night certainly rainy part of Charlotte Rainy parts of Charlotte
(00:43):
Monday Night edition of Breaking with Brad Jensen. Seven oh
four or five seven eleven ten is the telephone number.
And guys, make sure you follow me on X at
Brett Underscore Jensen for all the lust and breaking news
in and around the Charlotte area. And if you follow
me on X then it's not a surprise to you.
Who might get studio is tonight and that is US
attorney for Western North Carolina, Russ Ferguson. And we're gonna
(01:06):
get into a lot of different things tonight. And I'm
gonna see if he can't stay for quite a while
because it's initially gonna be like an eight minute conversation.
Maybe we turn this into an hour minute an hour
conversation tonight. So first of all, I really do appreciate
you coming in, and I want me to get things
out of the way in terms of formalities. If if
(01:28):
you were vy LALs, I'd say madam, mayor or mayor congressman.
What do people what is your official talk? What are
people technically supposed to call you when they see you
in the office.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
That's a good question. You call me Russ, first of all,
but the US Attorney is my title. You know. When
I first got there, people called me sir. I thought
it was the weirdest thing ever. People try to call
me like US Attorney Ferguson, like I'm a senator or something.
It's you know, just call me Russ. I'm not that important.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well a lot of people would disagree with that. But
we're gonna I want to get into like I actually
called some lawyers today. Yeah, go, okay, what should I
be asking Russ Ferguson, the US Attorney for Western North Caroline.
What should I be asking him? What would he have
potentially an impact on? What does he not have an
(02:16):
impact on? Because I don't want to ask him something
that he has no control over, you know, stuff like that.
And so we're going to get into a lot of
things tonight. But I want to start off with specifically
First Night, which starts tomorrow. And for those who do
not know first meaning first responders, it's a chance to
(02:37):
get out in the community and meet the officers, the
police officers, the fireman, the medics, just all the first responders.
And a lot of cities all over the country do this,
and you know, it's again it's a chance for people
who may not like the police or never get to
see the police, you know, except when they're being pulled
over for a speeding ticket or whatever. But tomorrow's first night.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, it's a cool thing too. I mean, it's across
the nation. But what I love about it is it's
neighborhood by neighborhood. It's hyper local, and so you get
to see the police officers and the first responders that
are signed to your neighborhood, the people that you know
if something happened is the person you would run to,
the person that would respond if something happened to your house,
and you get to know them. And I think that's
extremely important, especially now. I mean, law enforcement has been
(03:23):
so criticized lately, which I think is has been wrongly so,
and in a time when we've lost a lot of
law enforcement officers and we've just lost one in Cherokee
in the line of duty by an inmate. And then
you know, of course in twenty twenty three, we lost
four here in Charlotte. So I think it's more important
than ever to say thank you to our police officers.
I mean, imagine, if you had a kid today, would
you tell them to be a police officer, to put
(03:44):
your life on the line every day for whatever they
get paid. You've got to have a real sense of
calling to do it. The best part of my job
is of meeting the law enforcement officers. They're just tremendous people.
It's a calling. You don't do it if you don't
have a calling. And I think if you go out
tomorrow night and meet some of these folks, you'll have
a special line, you know.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
To that point. You know, when we're kids, what do
you want to be rust when you grow up? I
want to be an astronaut. I want to be a fireman.
I want to put you a policeman, or I want
to be a cowboy or something like that. Right, But policemen,
not universally, but probably half the kids always said policeman. Yes,
(04:22):
I want to be a fireman, policeman, fireman, as somebody
would say, astronaut, you know whatever. No one ever said
I want to be a US attorney. I want to
be a congressman. No one ever said that. They sure
as hell never said I want to be someone on radio,
you know, they never said that. But but to your point,
you know, would you encourage people to say, oh, maybe
(04:44):
you should look into law enforcement, Like even as adults,
that's something that parents would probably say, are you sure
about this?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
It's tough, I mean, but when we were growing up
and kids wanted to be policemen and wanted to be fireman,
that was a place of respect in our communities. You
saw a policeman and you said, wow, that's an a
amazing job. Now they're criticized so much. I think you
have a lot of trouble telling your kids to go
do that. You get shot at, people feel justified doing it.
People want to defund the police. I mean, it's an
entirely different environment. I'm thankful parents tell their kids to
(05:11):
be police officers because we've got some great folks out
there that are doing it. And I hope that continues,
because boy, it will be a bad time if we
don't get good people on the streets protecting us.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah. And like you said, it is neighborhoods specific, and
there are certain neighborhoods where maybe people don't like the
police for obvious reasons, or maybe they're scared of the
police for whatever particular reason, and so this is a
chance for them to see them more on a one
on one basis, or maybe officers that they're not used
to seeing, or something in that impact.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
And you know what you find is you think that
the neighborhood is defund the police, or anti police or whatever,
but it's just the lowest people in that neighborhood and
the neighborhood as a whole is very happy to have
the police there. We see that in public housing. I'll
be a hidden valley tomorrow. That neighborhood likes the police
that keeps that neighborhood safe. That long ago was probably
one of the least safe places in America, and the
police turned it around. And so neighborhood by neighborhood we
(06:03):
find support for law enforcement. But it's the loudview that
aren't supportive of law enforce.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Well. And that's the thing. Look, and I will say this,
and I think it's maybe one of the single greatest
quotes in the history, even though his presidency didn't turn
out so well, was when Richard Nixon said, the silent majority,
because it's always the loud minority that gets the attention,
and the silent majority, like you said, I think is
like I like I said, is I think one of
the best quotes that that's ever been said by a
(06:29):
president because it's so true.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And never more true than now when you can get
on X like you are and become a loud minority
real fast and get retweeted and make it seem like
you're the majority, but in reality, the silent majority is there.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So that's that's the thing that you know again, So
it's a chance for them to go out. Was it
from six to eight? Is that the Is that? What
it is?
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Six to eight? It might linger a little longer. I'm hopeful,
hopeful the weather is cooperating. If it looks like it
looks tonight here at the studio, it may may be
ending a little early, but I will be out rain
or shine, and I hope that. I hope the weather
cooperates six to eight in your neighborhood tomorrow night.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Well, yeah, hopefully the weather will cooperate. So yeah, that'll
I've never done it first night, so I'm interested. I mean,
I may do tomorrow, we'll see what happens. But I've
never done one, so maybe you know, the show ends
at seven, so maybe we'll get out there sometime around
seven o'clock tonight, so look or tomorrow night when we
come back. I want to talk to the US Attorney
Russ Ferguson about a lot of different things going on.
(07:27):
Like I said, I spoke to lawyers today, spoke to kids,
I spoke to prosecutors today, going all right, what should
I ask him? What can I ask him? Does this
pertain to the DOJ? Does it not pertain to the DOJ?
So well, there's a lot of things that we want
to get into, and they're not you know, they're not
you know, gotcha questions or anything. It's just more to
explain things to us for people like myself who may
(07:49):
have no clue about stuff like this, and so this
is a little out of my depth. So this is
more almost like a fact finding mission for me. Can't wait,
and I'm sure our listeners will be actually really excited
about this as well. Welcome back to Breaking with Brett
(08:21):
Jensen on this Monday night. I'm not quite sure what
music Isaac just played there. I don't know what that
I was, Isaac. All right, we'll make sure that gets
kicked to the dumpster file seven four five, seven eleven ten.
All right. So sitting in studio with me for tonight
is US attorney for Western North Carolina Russ Ferguson. Let's
(08:45):
get into something that I want to talk to you
about in terms of crime in Charlotte specifically, and we'll
get into other parts of the state because I want
to see how the comparison contrasts from Charlotte to say
Western North Carolinasboro or whatever, or Waynesville, Telscola, that whole
area just in general. But Charlotte. How prevalent is the
(09:11):
gang situation in Charlotte? Is it very prevalent? Is it
foreign gangs? Is it local gangs as we've heard about
for years going by fifteen years that you know, like
MS thirteen had a big stronghold up in Salisbury or
something like that. But is gang is that a big
situation here in Charlotte.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, it really is, and you see it on a
number of different levels, and you know, it's it's kind
of funny because since they made organized gang violence of
federal crime, the gangs have gotten very smart. So you know,
used to see graffiti everywhere. You don't really see that anymore.
You used to see people gang tattoos. You don't see
that anymore because they've gotten smart and made it harder
for us to prove gang organization or gang connectivity. But
(09:50):
the gang violence is huge. We see it on every level.
You see young people shooting into occupied houses as gang initiation,
and a lot of that goes through state quirk because
in the federal system, take the worst of the worst,
and we've got a bunch of violent violent crime. We
have a lot of investigations open. About seventy percent of
those investigations we think, and we're investigating, but we think
connect to some sort of international cartel, either El Salvador,
(10:13):
Honduras or Mexico wherever it is of our investigations, and
so we're obviously focusing on taking out the top of
the gang and toppling the whole thing rather than getting
the little guys at the bottom. But the gang violence
is very, very prevalent. There are a lot of cases
we're on its face, you may not know it's gang violence,
but when you start digging, it is. And what's really
helped us. I don't mean to give a playbook to
(10:34):
gangs out there. But what's really helped us is the phones.
I mean we can grab someone's phone, get a search
warrant and search their text and see that they're talking
with other gang members. Improved gang connectivity, talking to folks
in Atlanta, talking to folks in Mexico. It's very, very
prevalent in Charlotte. And as Charlotte grows, so to the gangs.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
What about the drug situation? Is it fetonoyl? I mean
you always used to be like, oh, cocaine, cocaine, and
then it became crack in the early nineties when the
murder rates just like triple H. And still some of
our highest murder rates in the history of Charlotte are
from the early nineties with the invention of crack. So
how's the drug scene going on a show? Is it
(11:13):
sort of plateau? Is it getting worse? Is it getting better?
What's that situation? Like? It's changing.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So, like you said, it used to be cocaine and
things like that, we see a ton of fentanyl now
and fentanyl's almost all coming in from international destinations. I mean,
it's almost like a cargo line from Mexico through Atlanta
up up the Interstate eighty five here to Charlotte. And
the funny thing about fentanyl is it's not just fentanyl.
Like if you go out and buy marijuana on the streets,
there's a high likelihood it's laced with fentanyl because the
(11:39):
drug dealers have learned that if they sell you marijuana
with fentanyl in it, you're gonna get a better high
than the guys sell them marijuana without fentanyl in it
down the street, and you're gonna come back. So we're
seeing fentanyl all sorts of things, and that's terrifying. I mean,
people are buying pills, adderall all sorts of things that
have fentanyl in it, and that's why we're seeing these
fentanyl deaths that people don't expect. I mean, these are
not people necessarily that are addicted to fentanyl. It's people
(11:59):
who are accidentally getting fentanyl off the street. So that's
a huge problem. We see a lot of meth in
this part of the state, a whole lot of meth
in this part of the state. Other drugs are going down,
like cocaine, so it's changing a lot, but the amount
of drugs coming in is just unfathomably huge. It's remarkable.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
With the closure of the border, how much will that help.
I mean, you're never gonna cut it off completely, obviously,
but how much did that help slow down the influx
of fentanyl that is being made in China shipped to Mexico.
Like even the like, even hardcore Democrats will tell you
this is how it's working. You know, it's going from
(12:40):
China to Mexico. Then it was coming in and obviously
also through Canada. But how much of the closing of
the borders has that slowed down the influx of fentanyl
into the country.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
It has slowed down. And you know they added just
criminals will always find a way, so they're probably gonna
find some other way to get drugs into the country.
But we've definitely seen it making a difference. It is
a lot harder to get drugs across the border now.
We don't have the border crossings that we had just
a year or two ago. So even without the border wall,
we just don't have the people coming across the border,
(13:10):
and that has certainly helped. Now Matthew can make here,
so it doesn't help that, but with the fentanyl, it
certainly does help. And you know what's funny you mentioned China.
You know, in my office we have like white collar
crime fraud section as well. And tracing the money has
been extremely interesting because we're seeing the drug trade used
to launder Chinese money into the United States, and China
(13:31):
has a law where you can't get more than fifty
thousand dollars out of the country to try to kind
of keep their money in China, and so even if
you want to pay Stanford tuition or whatever, you've got
to find some way to get here. And so there
are people using the drug trade and either getting that
money into payesos again to the United States and then
into dollars to just launder money for Chinese people, and
drugs is the way to do it. So it's a
(13:52):
multifaceted business. It's not just sell them drugs addicts.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
I want to stay on the drug thing speaking with
US Attorney Russ Ferguson, so I want to Cane Knew
that talk. So this is where I wanted to talk
about the western part of North Carolina. You know, when
you start getting into the mountains and the hills, and
you know, is that more meth in meth houses is
because that was the perception you know, like eastern Kentucky,
(14:15):
it was always you know, Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia
was meth houses as well as you know opioids right now.
That was the poor communities. That's what that's what was
wiping out those poor communities. Are we seeing that here
in North Carolina or is it still just fentanyl?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
I mean, we definitely see it. And the mountains is
known for meth. I mean, it's a meth hotbed in
the mountains. But we're seeing that change too. I mean,
fentanyl is making its way into the mountains big time,
and we're seeing death by fentanyl. I mean it is
a sad drug, not that meth not. I mean it is,
but we're seeing it. And just like I told you,
marijuana's mess is laced with fentanyl, so it is meth
(14:51):
sometimes and so sometimes you test a drug or you
test someone's blood and it's spiking for both because they're
just kind of mixing it all together. So we're seeing
it change, but there's still a lot of men up
in the mountains. It's still very prevalent there.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
The I know, in Gastonia this morning they had an
interesting case where they just convicted a man death by
distribution as a drug dealer, right, like, Okay, I didn't
tell you to ingest all eighteen pounds of cocaine. I
just sold you the eighteen pounds of cocaine. But the
person that did the selling was now convicted for death
(15:23):
by distribution. Does the does the DJ do anything like
that with like big bait cases, there's not always like
local level stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
So death by distribution is a state charge and a
lot of das in the Mountains have been bringing it
and I have had some success with it, and it's
a great charge, especially on the fentanyl stuff because there
are I mean, if you're a kid buying a load
of marijuana, you're not expecting to die, and if you
don't know it has fentanyl in it and you're dying,
that is the drug dealer's fault. And so it's a
good charge death by distribution. They're having a lot of
(15:51):
luck with it. We'll have some of the same defendants.
We don't charge death by distribution, but we will charge
some sort of conspiracy or drug trafficking charge that sometimes
aims at the same people or the same groups of
people and get people federal time.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
That way, we're speaking with the US attorney and Rus
Ferguson for Western North Carolina. You know, it's funny. I was,
I think it was like a week ago, maybe a
week and a half ago. I was, I was looking
things up, and I just saw, okay, well, how many
district or how many US attorneys are in North Carolina?
And I saw I just assumed there was Western and Eastern.
I didn't know there was a centrum. There's a middle too,
(16:29):
there was a central. So there's three US attorneys in
North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
There are three, and it's very oddly divided as the
middle district really concords in the middle district, so just
right outside of Charlotte, those criminals are running in and
out of Mecklenburg County and spanning two federal districts, and
it runs up to Durham, which is in the Middle district,
but raleighs in the eastern district, so you know, you're
right right on the edge kind of up that district
that runs up eighty five. So it's it's some interesting
venue issues sometimes.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Well you've got an office also in Asheville. Correct, how
often do you get to Asheville?
Speaker 2 (16:57):
About every other week? It depends what's going on. But
I'm there if you averaged out about every other week
up in my Nashville office. Yeah, we've got about twenty
percent of our folks in Nashville.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
All right. When we come back with US attorney forst
in North Carolina, Russ Ferguson, I'm going to talk to
him about the murders in Charlotte and the crime in
Charlotte and is there anything that the FBI of the
DJ can do federally or anything to maybe try and
help the crime situation not just here, but maybe in
other places like Memphis or Saint Louis and New Orleans
(17:26):
or Baltimore, that's Chicago that also really need a lot
of help as well. So we'll talk with him and
we will continue more like a prison seven oh four
or five, seven eleven ten, Welcome back to Breaking with
Brett Jensen. We got US attorney for Western North Carolina
(17:47):
and Russ Ferguson in studio with us tonight for the
full hour, and like I said, I immediately learned something
about the gangs, like because we just don't we always
hear about youth crime and Charlotte, you know, we tend
to not hear a lot of stuff about gangs and
the fact that it's extremely prevalent is troubling, but it's
also good to know, so appreciate uh Russ Ferguson enlightening
(18:07):
us about that. All right, So now let's talk about
murders in Charlotte. Yeah, and I always tell the stat
when I started here in September of twenty eighteen, the
murder rate that year in twenty eighteen homicide, right they
call homicides, Yeah, was fifty eight. Okay, so you about
one a week, and that was the average four Like
(18:28):
every once in a while you get up to like
in the sixties, but every once in a while you
might even only get in the high forties. Like it
was a and then all of a sudden in twenty nineteen,
it's been pretty much right around one hundred every single year.
You know, we've got up to one hundred and twenty
or one hundred and twenty two a couple back to
years like the COVID year was really bad and things
like that. So is there anything that the DOJ the FBI,
(18:51):
anything that the federal government can do to try maybe
help not just Charlotte but other communities when it comes
to the murder rates or is there anything that you
guys can do.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Yeah, I mean so. And you got to keep in
mind how much Charlotte's growing too, So the murder rate's
going up. The population of Charlott's growing up. Murders of
state charge, so we do not charge murder in the
federal system. But we think a lot of those murders
are gang related. And that's why this administration has has
such an emphasis on taking the gangs down. Now, that
takes a long time. You've got to investigate, you gotta
find the gang. You got to get informants into the gangs,
(19:23):
you gotta get undercover agents in there. You've got a
very high level of proof in federal court to do it.
So it takes some time. But I believe if you
take down even one gang, you drastically eliminate those murders.
I mean, we see the young people a lot of
his gang initiation, and a lot of these murders they
don't really mean to murder. It's not like they're going
out to get someone they hate. They just shoot into
a house and someone's in there, and that can be
(19:44):
a young kid, that can be a mom, that can
be a dad, and sometimes the bullets graze past them
and sometimes they hit them. And it's a sad situation
just to initiate yourself into a gang. But the gangs
are recruiting these young folks, and so if we can
get the gangs at the top of the people, And
you got to think a lot of these young people
growing up in broken homes, their parents are often incarcerated,
They have a mom that's working three jobs, with their
(20:07):
dads in jail. I mean, this is a tough life.
And so that doesn't mean you should turn to crime,
but it does mean the gang it makes them very
vulnerable to gangs. So the more we can take the
gangs away, the less they're gonna recruit these young people,
and hopefully those murders can go down. And it's not
just Charlotte. I mean in my district, we're seeing an
increase in violent crime in Ashville, especially in the last
month or so. We obviously had the huge, huge shooting
in Hickory recently, which Hickory is known as a place
(20:29):
that really has no violent crime.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
I lived there for almost two years.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
It's a wonderful place, and all of a sudden, you got,
you know, a party with folks shooting at each other,
and so we're opening all sorts of violent crimes as
federal investigations to try to find that gang connection and
take it down, which, by the way, does not mean
the state cannot prosecute them. Also, it doesn't happen often,
but the state can prosecute someone for murder, and we
can still prosecute them in the federal system for gang activity,
(20:54):
using a gun in the act of violence, presenting a
gun as a fella, in whatever the federal charge may be.
So we're using every tool we got in the tool
belt to try to get bad guys off the streets,
because sometimes all you can do is take them off
the streets.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Directives. You know, each administration has different things that they
like to concentrate on, just like they do every single
year in the NFL season with the referees. One year,
it'll be all right, we're going to concentrate on pass
interference one year. Then the next year they tell the
referees to concentrate on holding or whatever. So what are
some of the things that the administration and the Trump
administration maybe wants you to concentrate on more as opposed
(21:31):
to maybe what they bonded and Biden administrated, wanted for
your for your predecessor.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, there's definitely been a shift in focus. I mean,
the drugs and cartels are are priority won for the
reasons we've talked about. Assaults on law enforcement has become
a much much bigger priority and a much bigger problem
that we've got to solve. Threats on law enforcement, Threats
on members of Congress has become a priority because that
was just kind of let go for a while and
that has that has big effects. So that's been very good.
(21:59):
We have a huge part already on crimes against children,
whether that's child porn or child rape, whatever the horrendous
act may be. That's a huge focus for us. So
a lot of things like that have been our focus.
We use our white collar section to really get into
the heart of these same things. So you know, some
of these gangs are super sophisticated. They'll be putting credit
(22:20):
cards to commers on gas pumps to finance their drug operation.
So we've been attacking things like that through that, they're
tax filings, whatever it may be. And then a lot
of this international stuff. I mean, we've got a huge
case of Chinese money laundering that I talked about a
little bit earlier. We focus on that the crime coming
in across the border and all of that. So that's
been some of our priorities. But as US Attorney, you
(22:42):
have a lot of prerogative and you have a lot
of latitude to do what you think, and so I've
spent a lot of time making relationships with sheriffs across
my district and chiefs of police and federal law enforcement
agencies and saying, bring me your worst of the worst,
because what we see, especially in places like this, is
repeat offenders who go through this state system and either
get very short sentences or bonded out and are back
(23:03):
on the street in a matter of months for very
serious crimes. And they do it again, and they do
it again, and they do it again. So my message
to the law enforcement community has been, bring me those
folks that are not getting the time they should get
in the state system. Catch them with a gun, catch
them and a federal crime, and we'll put them a
jail for a long long time.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Speak of with the US Attorney to Wes Ferguson for
Western North Carolina, you talked about talking with sheriffs and
you know, and reaching out to them. We know that
sheriff's like Gary McFadden and other places like say maybe
Greensboro and Dormoan. I know you don't deal with Durham,
but you know Durnham and other places maybe Ashfelle. I'm
(23:40):
not sure what the Ashville stance is dealing with ICE,
and I know that's not you specifically. I get that.
But have you had any conversations with them about ICE
or has ICE had any conversations with you about the
sheriffs or anything. Have you had any interactings with ICE
specifically to western North Carolina.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, it's a constant conversation I have, And you're right,
I don't really have anything to do with ICE. ICE
can can find an illegal immigrant topport them. It doesn't
have to come through my office, but it does sometimes
because if they find an legal immigrant that has a gun,
or has drugs, or has a criminal history, or has
a warrant for a federal crime, then absolutely comes to us.
And we do have some problems with the jails because
the safest way to arrest a violent criminal that maybe
(24:22):
is here illegally is to take them out of the jail.
They've already been searched for weapons, they're there they're contained,
then come pick them up. And when Shares don't cooperate
with that and let them go, we've got to send
a law enforcement officer into a very unsafe situation. Every
time you have to go and arrest someone in public,
in their home, wherever you find them, it's an unsafe
situation with those law enforcement officers. So it's very important
(24:44):
to me to arrest violent criminals the easiest, safest way
we can do it. And when it comes to legal immigration,
there's Title eight authority that's the immigration laws to hold
those people in jail and arrest them there, and like
here in Mecklenberg, instead of doing that, ICE is having
to post themselves outside every exit of the jail and
hope they can identify them and get them out. And
you know that's dangerous, not only because they're outside the jail,
(25:05):
but you might get the wrong guy, which is not
good for anybody. But in jail, they've already been identified.
So it's a huge problem. It's when we're trying to
tackle the North Carolina state legislator's been trying to tackle it.
You know, North Carolina sheriffs have a whole lot of power.
They're constitutional officers. They're elected, they have a lot of
freedom and they exercise that freedom as they see fit,
and ultimately they're only responsible to the voters. And so
(25:27):
it's a challenge and we have a different point of
view on some things, but for the large part of
the sheriffs have been extremely cooperative with us.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
I will say the one thing that I do not understand.
I mean, in theory, I sort of understand it, but
it bothers me when someone's arrested for a volent crime
that's here illegally and they're talking about deporting them and
deporting them like I am the person that goes no, no.
I want them to stay in jail here for thirty
(25:53):
five years, because the odds of them coming back across
that border with a fake identity is relatively high, because
how many times they get shipped out and they come back,
and they get shipped out and they come back and
different names, different identities, whatever. Just keep them in jail
for thirty five years, and I understond well to the American taxpayer,
I would rather I know where they're located, as opposed
(26:14):
to shipping them out and having them come back somewhere
else where people don't know who they are.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, and we have probably eight or nine cases a month.
Illegal re entry is a federal crime. So if you've
been deported before and come back, and we probably have
eight or nine cases a month in the Western District
alone where people have come back multiple times. And it's
funny because in most of those cases, the reason we
have caught them for that for illegal re entry, not
every case, but a lot of the cases is because
(26:38):
they've committed another crime here and we've caught them for
that crime. So that is a big problem. And I mean,
I supports a lot of people, but if we have
the case of my office, we're putting them in an
American prison. That's our goal. So we don't take the
guy who came across to work at the farm and
it's going back. You know he's going to get deported.
(26:59):
But if you come up a cross and rape somebody
or kill somebody, or or dealing drugs or whatever it
may be, Uh, we're gonna put you in America prison.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
US Attorney rus Ferguson is my guest tonight when we
come back. There are a couple other things that I
want to ask him. This I could do this for
another hour and a half I don't think he could,
but but you know, I mean he's you know, he's
got the family and everything else, but you know, but
I could. I could be doing this because I just
find all this fascinating. But when we come back, there
a few other things that I'm going to ask him about.
(27:34):
Welcome back to Breaking with Brett Jensen on this Monday
Night Special Guests. US Attorney for Western North Carolina, Russ
Ferguson has been in studio with me for the full
hour and just giving us some really really great information.
Like I said, I could be going for a full
another hour because there's so many things that I want
to try to get into. But I do want to
get into this because it was your office not too
(27:57):
long ago, the foul charges against Tiawana Brown and her
two daughters for fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud during
the PPP loans for during the COVID situation and stuff
like that. So I've already interviewed you about that about
a month and a half ago or so. But what
I do want to know that seems to be like
the big question that a lot of us have privately
(28:18):
is when might her case go to trial? Could it
happen before the primaries in September for city council. Could
it happen, you know, prior to the election in November,
or is it something that could be happening in twenty
twenty six, Because a lot of us don't know how
these things work. So what kind of timeframes are we
(28:40):
looking at?
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, and I can't tell you in her specific case
because I don't know, And I can tell you in
fraud cases, which is that Her case is, you know,
one of our run of the mill fraud cases. It's
a PPP loan fraud case. And fraud cases there are
a lot of documents, and the first thing we do
when we indict a case is give all the documents
and all the information we have to her lawyer, to
the defendant's lawyer. So she's got a very good lawyer,
(29:02):
rober Roy, who'll go through all those documents, and to
some extent, it's up to him how long it takes.
Not entirely, but it is not uncommon in a fraud
case for defense counsel to ask for more time so
they can get through all those documents. Sometimes they have
to hire an expert, you know, an accountant or something
to go through it depending on what their defense is.
And I don't know what her defense will be, so
(29:24):
that can add months to the process, whereas if we had,
you know, a simple gun case or something like that,
we can go to trial much much quicker. So it
is not abnormal in a fraud case for a fraud
case to take a year. It doesn't always happen. It
just kind of depends on the documents. The defense is
what's going on. That's a three co defendant case with documents,
tax returns, you know, all sorts of stuff. I suspect
(29:45):
it will take a while. Now, that's in a normal
fraud case. Her case is a little bit complicated because
she is running for reelection and I have committed to
doing everything we can to make sure that case does
not affect an election. And so we will have to
work with our attorney to see if that means going
to try before the election or after, or how that does,
because she's got to balance getting a full and fair
defense with not affecting her election and so, and we
(30:08):
had that in mind. We indicted her early enough to
build that time in, and had we discovered this case
a little later, we probably would have held off even
indicting it until after the election, because we want to
be very careful about affecting an election. So because all
we've done is make allegations, I mean, she has she
is innocent until proven guilty. She has will have a
full and fair trial if she decides to do so.
(30:29):
And so that case is unique for that little wrinkle.
But in a normal fraud case, it's not abnormal for
it to go a year plus or minus a few months.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
I've told people that you know, and you know, people
can look at something that it's a minimum ninety five
percent conviction rate generally with when the FBI, the dj
geints involved, and some depending on what you lead, it
could be as high as ninety eight percent conviction rate.
With all that being said, these cases also, like you said,
like can the investigation could take a very long time.
(30:57):
Sometimes it could take two years, three years, whatever the
case may be. Do you know how long this I
mean you took over what the case was already being
under investigation. Do you know how long this how long
this thing started?
Speaker 2 (31:10):
I don't know how long, and we generally do don't
kind of disclose our investigative process anyway, But there are
cases that go on for years. And the reason we
have that ninety eight percent conviction rate is because we
only indict people where we have very good cases, or
at least that's our goal, and so we will have
very long investigations and not bring any charges sometimes or
(31:31):
give that investigation to the state or to someone else,
you know, an IRS administrative proceeding or something like that.
But because of the limited federal resources and we're using
taxpayer money, we tend to take airtight cases, and so
we'll have very long investigations, run down every angle we
can to get there, and sometimes that takes three years,
and sometimes it takes a month and a half. You know,
it just depends on the case. But in fraud cases
(31:53):
it takes longer because of the amount of documents. You
got to send out subpoenas. You got to get bank records,
get tax returns, get all these paper you know, small
business association loans are involved a lot of times. You
got to get the loan documents, you got to go
talk to witnesses, you got to go through it all,
and that takes a very very long time to do.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Last couple of minutes here with US Attorney for Western
North Carolina, Rus Ferguson completely shift gear is one thing
that I was taught about today from one of the
lawyers that I spoke to about you just doing background,
said that ask them about the civil side of the
DOJ and or the you know, the US Attorney's office,
because you know, we think crime. You know, Isaac's going
(32:30):
to jail for the next twenty five years, right, but
we don't think about the civil side of things. Can
you just briefly talk about that?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Yeah, I'm so glad you asked me that, because everyone
asked me about the crime. It's like the sexy stuff.
But we have a whole civil Section and they do
all sorts of stuff. I mean, the number one goal
of the Civil Section is to defend the United States
when the United States has sued. So if you go
through TSA checkpoint and say the tsagents stole my laptop
and you sue, will defend the TSA. Or if you
go to a VA doctor and I think you get
(32:56):
negligent care, we'll defend the VA doctors. We're kind of
defend taxpayer money in those cases, and that's the most
important thing. But we do a lot of other stuff too.
We will sue people under the False Claims Act, and
so you know, if you have someone who's defrauding Medicare
or Medicaid, and maybe it doesn't quite rise to the
level of criminal activity, but it's still wrong, we can
sue them and not only recover that money for the taxpayers,
(33:17):
but recover three times the amount of money they got,
so we can make some money for the taxpayers in
that way. We have a section that does asset forfeiture,
So any sort of assets you gain that are the
proceeds of a crime, we can sue you to get
those back, even if we don't charge the crime. So
if you operate a hotel for prostitution or something and
we're never able to prove the prostitution, we can still
go seize that hotel for the taxpayers. So we do
(33:40):
a lot of that. We have a financial litigation unit
that goes and gets restitution from defendants and things like that. Well,
you know, if you are a defendant that owes back
the taxpayers one hundred thousand dollars and you go buy
one hundred thousand dollars car, we'll go get a court
judgment to take it. So we do a lot of
that stuff, and then we do some miscellaneous stuff. I mean,
we have a case now where if you agree to
(34:01):
voluntarily deport yourself from the country, you admit your legally
here and you agree to voluntarily deport yourself and don't
do it, we can sue you to recover the fine
you should get. There's like a daily fine for not
doing it. And so we've had one of those, one
of those cases, or we do that. And so our
civil section is doing all sorts of stuff, and people
assue about the constitutionality of you know, executive orders and
(34:23):
statutes and laws, and we'll defend those. And so we
have a very robust civil section that's doing all sorts
of stuff and they have great cases and the great lawyers.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
Well you just to Jorney Russ Ferguson again, I can't think,
you know, I honestly could be doing this for another
hour because this is you know, I deal with politics,
but also deal with CMPD in the crime and so.
But that's local level and state level. So it's very
fascinating to get a look at things behind the scenes
at the federal level. And again especially you know with
Pam Bondi being out in front center and everything else.
(34:51):
You know, we're starting to get a little bit more
about the DJ. So again, thank you so much for
being here. I cannot thank you enough. And maybe we
can make this on a semi regular basis. I love
it all right, awesome, all right, So that's going to
do it for us tonight everyone. I'll be joining Bo
and Beth tomorrow morning, so make sure you stick around
for that. My name is Brett Jenson, and you've been
listening to Breaking with Brett Jenson
Popular Podcasts
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!