Ret. State Senator Brent Waltz - POW Prisoner of Washington

Ever wonder how you’d fare in federal prison?    For Indiana State Senator Brent Waltz this question became a shocking reality. After spending sixteen years serving his community in the Indiana Senate, he found himself being targeted by federal prosecutors who hoped he’d assist them in indicting his longtime friend—a wealthy Donald Trump supporter and fundraiser. When Waltz refused, those same prosecutors turned their attention toward him, resulting in a ten-month sentence for an alleged campaign finance violation. Waltz’s 176 days incarcerated in the Ashland Federal Correctional Institution provided him far better insight into the American justice system than anything he learned as a senator.   His new book, POW—Prisoner of Washington (August 20th, 2024, Post Hill Press) aims to expose the blatant targeting of various political figures; to provide an unflinching view of federal prison, which Waltz compares to living in an episode of Hogan’s Heroes; and finally, to analyze the consistent political, societal, and economic corollaries found throughout US history.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Warning the following podcast might be too truthful for most liberals.
Listener discretion is therefore advised. Welcome to the Tea Party
Power Hour. I am your host, Mark gallar Our very
special guest today is former State Senator Brent Waltz. Brent

(00:26):
comes to us today to discuss his brand new book,
POW Prisoner of Washington. Brent, Welcome to the.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Show, Mark, Thanks for having me today.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Oh absolutely, man, I'm glad to have you here. This
is an incredible story. Unfortunately, it's a story that's playing
out a little too often these days in terms of
the law fair. But let's just begin by letting people
know you were a state senator from Indiana. You ran
eventually for Congress, and after that got out of politics,

(00:57):
only to be dragged back in do to the law
fair from the left. But let me see here the
best I got to tell you. I really enjoyed the
part of the story where the FBI came to your house.
I think I can already tell you like playing head
games with people, and you like that, you like getting

(01:17):
mental victories, and I think part of that means not
giving people what they want in terms of the expected reaction.
But so the FBI comes to your house to arrest you.
You tell you pick it.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Up from there, sure, you know. And I normally, you know,
as far as headgeams and things like that, I normally
preserve my efforts for people who like to play head
games themselves, right, you know. And and so you know,
the FBI and the government in general, they have this
and we've seen this play out so many times with
Roger Stone. When they they showed up at his house.

(01:53):
You know, they had a boat behind his house as
if he was going to swim across the channel to
escape or something. Right, So the CNN news crew just
happens to be on his street at you know, five
point forty five am on that particular day. Of course,
the FBI would never leak information like that. No, no,

(02:13):
they would never do such a thing, and denied, of
course that they would ever do such such things as
that head games. Right, So they knock on Roger Stone's door,
They drag him out in his underwear and T shirt.
His hair's all, you know, kind of you know bedheads,
you know, stuck up in a million different directions, you know,
to try to have the humiliation factor that goes along

(02:35):
with with what they do in their lawfare right, the
psychological warfare. So in my case, my attorney had been
informed by by the Justice Department, at least the attorney
that was was was handling the grand jury, and the
attorney apparently said, well, I don't see a situation where

(02:57):
Senator Waltsh doesn't get a diet, and of course not
because he was hiding exculpatory evidence from the grand jury.
We would find out later.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
That the evidence is that the evidence that you paid
for your campaign by selling paintings and coins and some
other things.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Absolutely, I'm an investment banker, I'm into private equity, and
I largely funded my twenty sixteen congressional campaign out of
my own pocket. I paid you in the six figures
out of my own resources to do that, And so
it just seemed kind of dumb to have the perspective,
you know, just logic and common sense that I would
run around and knowingly violate campaign finance laws or a

(03:39):
relatively small amount of money that would send me to
federal prison. That's kind of a nutty perspective. It was that,
and also the political consultant but apparently did admit to
bundling some campaign contributions had told the FBI on pre
separate occasions under oath that he kept his activities from

(04:01):
me and in fact intentionally try to hide it from me,
and did not believe I was aware of what he
was doing, And of course that information somehow missed the
grand jury.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Always when someone says, well, you know, he had a
grand jury indict him, that means nothing, because the prosecution
tells their side of the story, leaving out unfortunately, sadly,
leaving out excl exculpatory evidence is not uncommon, and at
that point the grand jury pretty much only sees what
the prosecution wants them to see. So to me, it

(04:37):
means nothing when somebody says, well, that person was indicted
by or in jury, I mean because it really you
don't have a chance at that point.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Well, and it's truly unfortunate because according to prosecutor's Code
of conduct, and I've read I've read the Federal Prosecution
Code of Conduct repeatedly throughout this process, prosecutors are supposed
to share this information to the grand jury and then
let the grand jury make their decision. But Prussengutters know

(05:06):
that of all federal and diamonds end in in some
sort of plea agreement in some fashion, and ours did
as well. But to ask your question about the original
question about the FBI knocking on my doors. So when
we were originally informed that, you know that I was

(05:27):
most likely going to be indicted and therefore arrested. And
another gentleman who was the general counsel of the company
for the real target of the fb I, Rod Ratcliffe,
who was the campaign finance chairman of Donald Trump's campaign
for Indiana back in twenty sixteen, raised over a million

(05:48):
dollars for Trump in the space of about an hour
or two one evening at a fundraiser in Indianapolis. That
was the guy that they were really trying to get.
And they, you know, Keeler's John Keeler attorney had said, well,
you know, John has a heart condition, he's a marine,
former state representative, never been in trouble with the law,

(06:11):
he's in his seventies. If you do indetem, can he
turn himself in. He's certainly not a flight risk. And
of course the DOJ says, no, we're going to take him.
This is the mindset. And so hearing all of this,
I had every expectation they were going to try to

(06:33):
do this to me. So I took a page from
General Mattis when he was Secretary of Defense under Trump.
There was a particular dangerous moment where North Korea was
considering doing something against against US, and so he went
to bed fully dressed, you know, and so that he

(06:53):
would be able to save that extra three or four
minutes in a crisis. And I just thought that was brilliant.
And so what I did about the last two weeks
before I got my early morning knock on my door,
I you know, slept in in uh uh slacks, dress shirts, socks.
I had my shoes, you know, at the foot of

(07:14):
my bed, just waiting. I had you know, my hair
kind of you know, kind of gel down, so it
wasn't going to be in one hundred different directions like
Roger Stones unfortunately was, And and just wait conveniently for
for the knock on my door. I had all my
financial you know, my tax returns dating back I think
like probably thirty years of tax returns, financial records, all

(07:36):
of that in these thick black plastic, you know, kind
of cartons. And I had that in the middle of
my kitchen island. Because one of the things they'll do,
of course, is, well, we're going to seize his records
and go through all of his financial dealings. Okay, here
they are, take take a look. And we had that

(07:59):
on on in the kit that island when they came in.
And so when when they finally did come in late
September of twenty twenty, you know, I'm a pretty light
sleeper anyway, and so I hear this clanging in my
you know, near my bedroom window. There's a kind of
a patio out back that my bedroom, my master bedroom

(08:20):
kind of opens up into. And I had some bird
feeders there, and it dawned on me literally that that
either the world's largest raccoon was trying to climb that
bird feeder or an FBI special agent was positioning themselves,
you know, as if I might make a run for
it out my back door, if if they were to

(08:42):
come for me. And and so at that point, I
was of course wide awaken, you know. Fifteen twenty minutes later,
I get the knock on the door, you know, FBI
search warrant and trying to do all the intimidation factors.
So I slipped I was again fully dressed. I slipped
on my shoes, turned on all the lights so they

(09:02):
could see it. I was unarmed and not resisting in
any way, shape or form. Opened the door and smiled
at him, and I said, oh, you're it looks like
we're all getting it early start this morning. And then
Shenanigans ensued from there.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
All right, But the sad part of all this is
you forgot the coffee I did.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
I should have gone to Skip. I don't know what
time uh Starbucks was opened, but I should have. You know,
there were seven or eight of them. I should have
brought like three or four cups or whatever and said, hey,
I made some coffee for you. I ran out to
Starbucks before you guys arrived. I didn't know what you wanted.
So here's you know, kind of a you know, kind
of a corn of cope in different flavors, frappuccinos or

(09:44):
moke alattes or whatever they they, you know, FBI agents
drink in the morning. And so anyway, that was I
should have done that, Mark, thank you.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
I'll remember about that story. And I kid you not
when I say, uh, raccoons rated my bird features last night.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
They have a way of doing it.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
They do. I'm not making that up. We have a
camera back there and looked at it this morning. And
we have three of them that come together. We call
them the three Stooges, and they wrecked our bird feeders
last night. Some have to go out there and read.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
I promise you give given a choice between the three
stooges and seven stooges from the Department of Justice rating you,
one is a much better outcome than the other mine.
So you know you came out ahead on that deal.
I promise you.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Okay, Well, I'll take your word for that.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
I hope you never have to learn bull I.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Hope so too. But you know, you never know, because
apparently the real crime out there is they weren't after you.
They were hoping you would turn on is it? Is
it Bradford or Rod Radcliffe. I'm sorry that you would
turn on Radcliffe and that Radcliffe might turn on Trump
or something. I also have interviewed Jerome Corsi and during

(10:56):
the Moller investigation, he got dragged in and they weren't
after him. They wanted him to turn on Roger Stone
with some stuff that they could use to pressure Stone
to turn on Trump. I mean, it's just a weird
game with them where they will go several people removed,
you know, like so many degrees of Kevin Bacon or whatever.
And they will they will go after one person to
get info, to pressure another person, to pressure the person

(11:19):
they're really going after. And I'm guessing that's what happened.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
Here, No need to guess that that's exactly what happened.
And you know, Rod Racliffe is a casino executive worth
you know, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, so
very high networth individual. I've done him for twenty five years,
you know, good guy, and he's been because he's in
the gaming industry. He's had his gaming license in Indiana

(11:43):
since like the late nineteen eighties early nineteen nineties, and
Indiana takes their licensure process very very seriously, and so
you know, every single check he's ever read in personally
or or professionally, his personal tax returns, all these sorts
of things are part of, you know, part of their

(12:05):
annual investigation for his relicnsure. So they'll go through everything
if he was doing something untoward, under the table or illegal.
The Indiana State Police, the Indian Gaming Commission, the private
investigators that the Gaming Commission hires to go into and probe.
You know, these the owners of these casinos, I'm sure

(12:26):
would have found something in the thirty some years. You
know that he had been you know, he'd been under
license within I think probably two weeks when they announced
that Rod was going to be Trump's you know, campaign
finance chairman for Indiana is when I got my first

(12:47):
call from the FBI. This would have been sometime in
two twenty sixteen, and I would have been right after
I think I'd lost my primary for Congress that year.
And you know, the FBI calls me both from the blue.
They say they want to meet me. You know, I
you know, I don't think I've done anything wrong. I
don't bring the lawyer with me. I don't know, you know,

(13:08):
what it could be. So I sat down with him,
ironically at Starbucks for coffee in downtown India, at a
local hotel. And you know, they're not asking any questions
about me, any questions about my campaign finance, any questions
about anything like that. They're asking questions about Rod Radcliffe. Well,
how long have you known mister Radcliffe? Do you know

(13:29):
of anything he's done illegal? Do you know anybody who
might know something that might know someone who might know
something about him doing anything illegal. It was a pure
fishing expedition, and absolutely it was. And so this is
the kind of and I'm sure I wasn't the only
person that they contacted, So they would have you know,

(13:51):
you know, asked around or found out people who were
friends of his, you know, people that might have known him,
you know, professionally, politically or otherwise personally, UH and gone
on this fishing expedition. And sadly, you know, this experience
I'm sharing that I dealt with and that Rod Uh
you know, dealt with UH has repeated itself dozens, if

(14:12):
not hundreds of times across the country, all in an effort,
in my opinion, to scare and intimidate UH, Donald Trump supporters,
political conservatives, tea Party activists, you know, from being politically involved.
If you're a successful businessman and you want to you know,
have your constitutional right and exercise your your political views

(14:35):
and you know, support someone, support a candidate for president
or any anything else with your time and your treasure,
you know, And and why why would you risk having
your you know, have your business possibly destroyed, or going
to prison, having your wife divorce you you know, you know,
all those things you know, why would you do that? Uh,

(14:58):
if you know, if you're certain or afraid that the
Department of Justice will come after you like they've done
so many conservative Tea Party Donald Trump supporting Republicans, why
why would you do that? Most of them would not
take that risk and say, Hey, I'm a conservative, I'm
a Republican, but I'm going to sit this one out.
I'm not going to fund Trump's campaign. I'm not going

(15:21):
to visibly endorse him. I'm not going to support him.
I promise you, the FBI is not meeting with Taylor
Swift or her friends after she endorsed Kamala Harris a
few days ago. I promise you They're not investigating her,
nor should they. You know, I'm just saying, be consistent.
You know, no one should be, you know, attacked for

(15:43):
their political views in the United States. You know, that's
for Vladimir Putin and certain Central American countries, in South
American countries to do that. It shouldn't be this way
in the United States. But the weaponization of the Justice
Department over the last decade or so is a very
disturbing trend. In all patriots, all free and loving Americans,

(16:04):
regardless of their political views, should be absolutely appalled, horrified
about this, and locally trying to do something to change it.
And that's one of the reasons why I wrote my
book Pow Prisoner of Washington.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
I can tell you that the way I understand the
Justice Department to work is that they start out with
a crime and then investigate that. But what we've seen
with Trump and with a lot of people who have
supported him, including some down the line supporters, is that
they start with a person and then they drag a

(16:40):
fishing saying through their life and try to find anything
that that person or people supporting them might have done wrong.
And that's not really the way it's supposed to work.
When they come to you, they're supposed to have a
crime in mind. They're not supposed to dig through everything
they can find on you and then create a crime.

(17:01):
You know, show me the person, I'll show you the crime.
It's it's it's absolutely ridiculous. But yet that's what's happened
to you. That's what's happened to Donald Trump, that's what
happened to Roger Stone, That's what happened to so many people.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
You know, General Michael Flynn, Peter Devorrow.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, I had Peter on a few weeks ago, and
I've had again Jerome Corsi on and he basically told
him to stuff it and that he was going to
sue them, And I thought that was pretty brave. Although
he's up in age, so yeah, he's in one of
those situations like I'm probably not gonna live that much

(17:37):
longer anyway, you know, let's let's let's call their bluff
on this. But you know, in his case, they were
trying to say that he lied to them when he
didn't remember an email from two years earlier. I mean,
that's just ridiculous. How can you say whether a person
is lying when they say they don't remember. Yeah, he didn't.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Go ahead, I'm sorry, No, I was.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
Just gonna say, I mean no, there's no way they
can prove that, and yet they go after it anyway.
And I think we've reached a point in this country where,
you know, once when an FBI agent sat down in
court and put his hand on the Bible and held
his right hand in the air or her right hand
in the air, it meant something. Now we look at
these people as a bunch of politically motivated hacks that

(18:24):
are doing the bidding for the Democrat Party. I mean,
they don't have reared respect that they had at one time.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Well, and it's unfortunate because you know, I grew up
as a child of the eighties, you know, respecting Ronald
Reagan and respecting government. And one of the reasons why
I wanted to get involved in political office was the
respect that I had, you know for public service. I
still do even in spite of all of these things.

(18:50):
But just because you know, certain parts of our country
and our government are dysfunctional, and our Department of Justice
is at the epitome of this function, in my opinion,
doesn't mean that we shouldn't be fighting to try to
make those changes. But to your point, John Keeler, when
he was originally indicted, they go through all of his records,

(19:11):
business records, et cetera. And the company that he was
general counsel for. This is the company that Rod Ratcliffe
was a large owner of. They did seven hundred and
twenty million dollars the year in question, and there was
a professional service contract that the government claims was a
campaign contribution. Okay, not to me, even okay, not to me. Okay,

(19:34):
this is like I think with the Marion County Republican Party,
which Marion County and Indianapolis are essentially one and the same,
and so there was a there was like a thirty
five thirty thousand dollars something like that contribution to the
Political Action Committee of the Indianapolis slash Marion County Republican Party.

(19:55):
And because the government, because the DOJ claimed that is
mislabeled and it was a contribution instead of a professional
service contract for somebody, again nothing to do with me.
And because the amount of tax is that would be
owed federally it was fourteen thousand dollars, and because that

(20:17):
number was higher than the ten thousand dollars threshold for
felony tax fraud, they superseded his indictment and charged him
with felony tax fraud, which eventually he pled guilty to
and was sentenced to in in Terre Haute, Indiana. This

(20:37):
is what's happening all over the place.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Wow. Yeah, it's just absolutely wrong. And it's almost like
the left is saying, stop us if you can. Same
thing with election fraud, stop us if you can. They
figured out they can cheat in November and no one
can do anything about it before inauguration day, and so
they're absolutely doing it. I mean they will tell the
same lines over and over again. How many times have
we heard the good people lie about Charlotte, or the

(21:04):
losers and suckers lie about France, or you know, the
inject bleach lie. I mean, they just tell the same
things over and over and it doesn't seem to bother
them at all that they are lying when they do this.
When when did you first, because you said at first
they were talking to you about Radcliffe, when did you

(21:24):
figure out for certain that they were going to come
after you too?

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Well, it was actually a pretty interesting interesting part of that.
After they had originally you know, talked to me about,
you know, the fishing expedition in twenty sixteen, I didn't
really hear anything about it. I had told Rod, of
course that I had. I had received the call and
the meeting to kind of brief him, you know, to
you know that they're hey, you know, they're they're looking
at you, you know, just to kind of give you

(21:52):
a heads up, and you know, he was sally concerned.
He did not change his view on Donald Trump or
his support of Trump, thankfully, but I'm sure that was
something that that was very frightening and intimidating. I had
my moment of fright and intimidation about two years later.
It would have been in the summer of twenty eighteen,

(22:14):
and my girlfriend and I at the time had been
going through some some difficult some difficulties, and she was
going to come over, you know, the following morning to
talk about whether or not we were going to stay
a couple. So the last thing on my mind was
anything dealing with any federal investigations when I woke up
that morning, right and so I get a call she
was going to come over around ten am. And about

(22:37):
nine maybe nine forty five, the phone rings, and I
was kind of expecting that it was going to be
her telling me she was going to be running later,
you know, something like that. Instead it was my former
campaign treasurer from camp my congressional campaign of two years before,
Mark Collins. And he says, Brent, the FBI just left

(23:00):
my house a few minutes ago, Oh, really, okay, And
he said they were asking me all kinds of questions
about Kelly Rogers, which was a political consultant that had
out of Washington, d C. That had had helped in
the early stages of my congressional campaign, and he's the
one who unfortunately had had bundled some of those contributions.

(23:23):
And he said, they're asking, you know, questions about rod Ratcliffe,
and they were asking questions about you, asking questions about
Kelly Rodgers and your campaign. He says, I think they're
coming over to interview you next. And I just wanted
to let you know that give you a heads up.
And so I told Mark, thank you. I said, you know,

(23:43):
you know, continue to cooperate fully with anything that they
they ask or or you know, answer questions. Truthfully. I
don't think we've done anything wrong, so please, you know,
continue to cooperate, you know, let me know if anything
else comes up. And I know it's about twenty minutes
it's from from Mark's house to my house. And so

(24:04):
at ten o'clock, you know, the doorbell rings. I opened
the door, not knowing if it's going to be my
girlfriend or FBI agent. It was my girlfriend. Obvious, everything
that's happened in the last few minutes, right, So she's
you know, thinking we're going to have a very detailed
discussion about our relationship and the status of it, and

(24:25):
you know, ways that we might be able to fix
the issues that were going awry. And I said, I
invited her in, and I said, dear, I've got some
bad news. I'm just really not at a place right
now mentally to focus as you want me to or
need me to about our relationship. I just got a

(24:46):
call about fifteen minutes ago, you know, from a campaign treasurer,
that the FBI is apparently investigating me and they're going
to be over here in a matter of minutes. To
her credits, she and she immediately snapped into crisis mode
and she said, well, you know, what do you need?

(25:06):
And I said, witness And I said, you know, if
you wouldn't mind staying, you know, assuming they're going to
be coming over in a in a little bit, if
you wouldn't mind staying and just listening to their questions
and maybe taking some notes, and you know, maybe having
another person on my side being being there might might

(25:28):
be useful. So about five minutes later, looking out the
window of a non descript rental car shows up in
the driveway and two f THEI agents come out, and
you know, they start asking these questions, and again I
invited them in my home. I've spent about two hours,
you know, talking with them, if I promise you was

(25:48):
somebody who had I went to law school. I have
a pretty decent legal background. If I had done anything wrong,
if I had been you know, jaywalking or something, I
would have never invited the and in my home. I
would have lawyered up, told them to you know, go
play in traffic, and and never you know, spoken with

(26:08):
them at all. I invited them in my home. I
answered every question that they had, you know, for two hours.
I contacted them maybe a week later with some follow
up information, you know, some records and things that I
did not remember, and said, well, I don't know for
sure the answer to that, let me get that information
to you later. And so I followed up with that,

(26:28):
you know, after I cooperated fully, did not hear anything
else from them for about a year and a half,
maybe a little longer than that. My girlfriend broke up
with me. By the way, about three months later. Well
it happens, and I'm not sure. I don't think it
was because of the FBI, but I'm sure that did

(26:49):
not help the situation. Uh, we were having some issues.
Just luster the phone call, Yeah I'm here, can can
you hear me? Okay? Good? And so early in the morning.
About a year and a half later, I get my
phone rings knock on my door. The FBI wants to
talk to me again, and this time they're doing kind

(27:11):
of the psychological warfare of the good cop bad cop situation.
And so at this point I do not invite me in,
because you know, FBI agents are kind of like great
white sharks. If you're in the water and you see
a shark, you know, swim by, you know, you should
be aware that the shark is there. But you know,

(27:31):
most of the time sharks are fairly peaceful, maybe they're
not that hungry, and they just kind of leave you alone.
But if the shark turns around and start circling you
or swiming towards you, at that point, you know you've
got an issue. And so the shark of the sharks
of the FBI had circled back, and they were now

(27:52):
coming in my direction, and so I did not invite
them in. I stood on my driveway outside my home,
and they explained to me that they thought I could
be helpful to them. They said that they believed me
to be the and I'm quoting them, the low man
on the totem pole and that if I cooperated, things

(28:13):
would go a lot better for me. And there is
exactly the ward and talk about that as well, exactly right.
And so I told the FBI agents, I said, you know,
I don't think I belong on the totem pole at all.
And you know, I'm inferring from your statement that you're
accusing me of having committed some crime. And since we're

(28:37):
now at that point from you, I'm going to have
to end our conversation. I'm going to contact legal counsel,
which is something I had not done previously, didn't feel
the need to. But now that you're now that you're
accusing me of things and it looks like you're you're
targeting me, I'm going to have to end this conversation.
And you know you'll you'll need to speak to my

(28:59):
lawyers subsequently to this, And that's what happened. So I
retain counsel, My attorney contacts the US attorney, and the
FBI don't hear anything from them for six months, not
a word. They don't even return his phone call. Twenty
four hours after, John Keeler tells them to go play

(29:21):
in traffic and says he's not going to cooperate involving
Roder Ratcliffe and the FBI had approached him and said,
you know, if you give us Rod, you know, we'll
just leave you alone. At least this is what John's
lawyers had told my legal helpful. You know, you know,
we'll just leave you alone, but you need to give
us right. If you don't, you know, we can make

(29:41):
things kind of tough on you. And Keeler told him
to go play in traffic. And within twenty four hours
of that is when the United States Justice Department contacted
my lawyer and said, we think Brent knows something. We
want to talk to Brent. Chartey said, well, what do
you think he knows? Right? I mean, if if you're

(30:04):
you know, if you're if you're convinced or or suspicious
that he knows something, you know, tell us what you
think he knows and I'll talk to my client and
and if he if he knows something, then you know
he'd be you know, he'd be happy to share it
with you'd be happy to talk to you about it.
But you need to tell us what what you think
he knows first. And of course they didn't know anything

(30:24):
about this. It was again a pure fishing expedition. They
were trying to intimidate me. They were trying to scare me,
and I tend not to intimidate or frighten that that
easily I've noticed. Yeah, fair enough.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
Especially when you regret it not having the coffee ready
for him here.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
I do regret that, I really do. That would have
been a nice, nice finishing touch to things.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
So eventually you end up I don't want to cut
too far ahead, but I don't want to keep you
too much over time. How are you doing on time?
Are you doing okay? On time?

Speaker 2 (30:58):
Oh? Yeah, absolute? Any as much time as you want?

Speaker 1 (31:02):
Oh wow? Okay. Well, with that in mind, you ended
up taking a plea that, you know, a plea deal
that you now regret very much. What convinced you to
take the plea deal? And you know, how did it
affect you negatively? How do you think things would have
gone if you had not taken the plea deal?

Speaker 2 (31:25):
If you had asked me four years ago? And we're
really we're approaching the four year anniversary of my regrets
for not getting the FBI morning coffee. It was I
think like September twenty ninth or something like that. Twenty
twenty is when they came for me. If you'd ask me,
you know, within you know, at that moment in time,

(31:48):
if I would take a plea deal, I would have
told you that you were nuts. I was never going
to take a pleat deal. That would be something that
would have never even entered my mind. The attorney I
chose was and is one of the most respected best
trial lawyers in Indiana, A good guy, and he's won

(32:11):
several death penalty cases. I think he has served as
a defense counsel on three or four of them in
the course of his several decades of practice. He's not
a plea bargain lawyer. If I was going to take
a plea, if I had thought that I had done
something illegal, I would have hired the best plea bargain

(32:32):
lawyer in the state if I could afford him, and
if I could find him, not drag out the legal
proceedings for the year and a half, which is what happened,
where I would be limbo and my family would be
in limbo, my professional life would be in limbo while
all this is going on, and I would try to
you know, I'd ask my attorney to try to cut

(32:52):
the best deal as quickly as possible and move on
with my life. I had always planned to go to
trial about You know, the government has a number of
tactics that they used very successfully to try to beat
people down, and I'll give you an example. One of
them is involving discovery. We received over the course of

(33:18):
that year and a half two hundred forty three thousand
pages of discovery, of which maybe eight hundred pages had
anything to do with me. We had to go through
every single one of those two hundred forty three thousand pages.
Because the government would hide things, the exculpatory stuff I

(33:41):
was telling you about earlier. They would hide a page
or two of that in between documents that had nothing
to do with that, hoping we would just you know,
glance over that or miss the significance of it, you know,
things of that nature. And so you know, I went
through every single one of those pages. I was working
sixteen eighteen twenty hours a day, seven days a week,

(34:05):
you know, you know, for my defense. I would never
have done that if I'd planned on taking a plea deal.
The last one hundred thousand of those pages were given
to us four or five weeks before trial, right, so
imagine having to go through trial preparation, getting your witnesses,
getting the questions asked, making sure that all ducks are

(34:26):
in order on our end. And now, by the way,
you've got four or five weeks to review one hundred
thousand pages that you've never seen before. You know, that
was a commitment of a lot of time. And so
the Sunday before the plea agreement, my attorney says, you know, Brent,
I need to to brief you on you know, your

(34:48):
your options here. As your attorney, I have a professional
duty to do so. He says, it took me six
months trying to figure out the campaign finance regulations. It's
very broad, and I think intentionally broad by how the
government wrote it. One to let their political friends skate

(35:11):
and then let their political enemies, you know, dangle and
twist sometimes. And he said, you know, it was very
difficult for me to understand the campaign finance regulations. I'm
afraid that if I go before a jury, you know,
they're not going to understand what happened. And if they
don't understand what happened, there is certainly a possibility that

(35:33):
you're going to be convicted. And if you're going to
be convicted, then you know, you would be looking at,
you know, maybe two and a half three years, he
told me, in federal prison, and not at the you know,
cushy camp which I write about in my book, you
know Pow Prisoner of Washington, but actual jail cells. Not
a dormitory, right, but actual jail cells, potentially with violent

(35:56):
criminals and things of this sort. And he says, on
the other hand, you take a plead, you know, there's
a very good chance that you're not going to you know,
you know, see the inside of a federal camp, even
that you'll get, you know, house arrests or a probation
or something like that. And I started asking him questions
about the plea deal, because the government had sent a

(36:18):
couple plea bargains before, and I told him basically what
they could do with each one of those. And so
a couple of days earlier they had had sent another one,
and this one had me admitting to I think it
was like forty five hundred dollars in bundled campaign contributions.
And I said, well, I've never seen that number forty

(36:41):
five hundred dollars ever in any of these two hundred
forty three thousand pages. How did they get that number?
My attorney said he didn't know. I said, it seems
really strange that this number would just happen to pop up,
you know, a few weeks, you know, you know, a
week or so before the trial date was set. We

(37:07):
would come to find out later during the sentencing that
the reason why they chose that number was any campaign
contribution amount below forty thousand dollars. So at thirty nine,
nine hundred ninety nine dollars, the judge and his sentencing
guidelines would have a bias towards not sending someone to

(37:28):
federal prison, and at forty thousand dollars, the bias before
the judge is a prison sentence. My attorney did not
know that, and unfortunately had not researched the sentencing guidelines
to arrive at that number, and so he just didn't know.
And so to his credit, he admitted that a little

(37:49):
bit late, if I do say so myself, but he
admitted that and signed a sworn affida that stating that
I did not receive sufficient legal counsel on the sixth
Amendment of the Constitution. And we filed something called a
twenty two point fifty five motion asking for my conviction
to be overturned, and we did that in August of

(38:10):
twenty twenty three, so I'd already completed my sentence. So
it wasn't about, you know, trying to not go to prison.
It was about trying to clarify what actually happened and
clear my name. And so we filed that that document
over a year ago, thirteen months ago. Now the judge
gave the government adequate time to answer, and we go

(38:33):
through the various motions and things, and the last motion
had been filed with the court in December of twenty
twenty three, and all we were asking for is a hearing.
We're saying that if our attorney, my attorney has sworn
under oath that he screwed up and he violated thirteen
American Bar Association standards of attorney criminal attorney conduct, which

(38:59):
he the doing in his sworn Affidavid, And you only
need one violation to have your conviction overturn, and he's
admitting to thirteen of them. Maybe we should have a
hearing to talk about it. You know, maybe maybe the
court deserves if you took one hundred and seventy six
days of my life away from me, maybe we could

(39:20):
have an hour, hour and a half for a hearing
to discuss this.

Speaker 3 (39:25):
And we have now been waiting nine months, nine and
a half months, almost ten months now to have the
judge grant the hearing or deny it.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
If he denies it, we would of course immediately appeal
that to the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, and I would
have high confidence that they would would grant the motion,
grant the hearing. Unfortunately, federal judges can sit on motions indefinitely,
and so for whatever reason, you know, this judge has

(39:57):
not taken up this motion. I hope he does do so.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
In a way that still isn't over for you.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
Oh no, it's not, and you know, in some ways
it never will. You know, these are the types of
things that kind of you know, you know, carry you know,
this experience for good or bad, and as you'll as
you'll see in the book, you know, there's there's parts
of both. You know, this is the sort of thing
that that stays with you. It's almost like I was

(40:24):
never in war, but I would have to think it
was something similar to that. And you know, the the
irony to this, the silver lining, if you will, to
to in otherwise a very dark cloud is the fact
that you know, the government, you know, ticked me off
so much as far as what they were doing to
me that I'm probably much more animated in my professional

(40:47):
life of doing private equity than your capital work, investment
banking work than I had done previously. I had been
very fortunate on some very early investments that I had
made when I had started my my investments back in
my early twenty in the mid nineteen nineties, and so
I was very lucky on a few of them. And
so I had reached a point, probably in my mid

(41:09):
forties that you know, I'm taking it a little easy,
got a place on the beach, walking, you know, on
the surf, looking for sand dollars, you know, just really
not as focused professionally as I had been previously. And
this experience has given me a gigantic chip on my
shoulder to show my detractors that you know, I'm not

(41:31):
quite not quite dead just yet. And so over the
last year I've had a great run of investments and
you know, potential prospects for clients and things like that.
It has not negatively impacted my professional life. If anything,
it's actually given me a shot of adrenaline to be
much more successful over the last couple of years. Since

(41:54):
since all this ended, at least the prison Senate's ended,
then I might have otherwise been So that's kind of
the law of unintended consequences. I don't think that the
Justice Department would have expected or liked, but it's absolutely true.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Well, I'm glad you were able to sublimate all that
anger into a channel that was very positive for you.
I don't think this interview would be complete if we
didn't spend a little time talking about Staloc thirteen Hogan's heroes.
I mean, for those of you at home you haven't
read the book yet, imagine William F. Buckley being charged

(42:32):
with jaywalking and then they send him to Alcatraz and
he writes a book about it. This is what it is. Seriously,
given your education, your intellect, your financial depth, your business success,
I mean, it's to hear it all from your perspective.

(42:53):
It was quite fascinating and I have to admit humorous.
It was a little bit like myself. I remember a
long long time ago, I was fired from a job,
went down to the unemployment office. Everybody there looked like
they had just been told their best friend or their
mom died, and I was going, Oh, this is going
to make such a great chapter when I write my autobiography.

(43:14):
That's the way I was looking at it. And you
actually took this as a learning opportunity. Somehow you went
from suspected snitch to what is it shot caller?

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Shot caller, yes, the term for the least.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
I mean, you were a lot different than most of
the people who were.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
There at the time, well as somebody who actually met
William F. Buckley when I was in college and we
had founded I went to Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana,
and we had started three or four of my fellow
college Republicans. I was the president of the College Republicans
at the time, and so we had started a publication

(43:52):
called The Wabash Commentary, which was modeled after the Dartmouth Review.
That was sort of our intellectual kind of touchstone for that.
And Buckley had endorsed the Dartmouth Review, and we asked
him to endorse the Wabash Commentary and he did, and
he you know, graciously spoke, you know, to our campus.

(44:14):
It was a small liberal arts, all male college in Indiana,
but had a very high percentage of CEOs and professional
doctors and lawyers. It's a great school, and so I
kind of viewed I graduated a semester early from there,
so I kind of viewed my five five and a
half months at Ashland is sort of what the college

(44:34):
semester at an all male school that I never had,
and I kind of approached it that way. And so,
you know, you had about one hundred and forty maybe
one hundred and fifty people there, different races, and all
of them non violent people. So you could not go
to a camp if you had any history of violence whatsoever.

(44:57):
So you know, these are financial crime, you know, drug crimes,
A couple of physicians that had apparently pill mills that
they had made some money on. One guy had been
convicted of insurance frauds. So we're not talking about, you know,
having Ted Bundy or you know, Theodore Kazinski or anyone
that might be in Supermax or you know, anything of

(45:19):
the sort. And so I was the only person there
that had a legal background that had gone to law
school and so, and I also liked to play chess,
and so we played chess with various inmates, and shockingly,
at least, it was shocking for me. You know, I'd
say ninety percent of all African American inmates, you know,
played chess, and then even them played very well. I've

(45:40):
been playing chess since I was four years old, and
many of them just wiped the floor with me on
the chess board. They were really, really, really good. And
many of the Caucasians there did not play chess. I
thought that was was very interesting that the chess would
be viewed along racial lines. And so I played chess
and kind of you know, kind of broke the eyes

(46:01):
between me and and some groups of individuals that I
really had not over the course of my life interacted
with drug dealers from inner cities, for instance, had not
really been a core constituency of my my Senate district.
And and so you know, getting to listen to them,
hear their stories, you know, interact with them, you know,

(46:22):
and offer some possible some legal advice and and here
you know, kind of look got them, you know, to
to federal prison. I found very interesting. And I found
that many of these men were you know, very bright,
they had great business instincts. And in fact, I've only
half jokingly said that if you went to you know,

(46:44):
kind of your average you know, young junior league, you know,
business networking event in a major city, and could choose
ten people from there, many of them with you know,
great business degrees, nbas. You know us ten of the
best and brightest you know from from you know, from

(47:04):
federal prison, and you needed to have them start a
company from scratch, you know, to hope that you know,
to choose the one that would be most successful. Uh.
You kind of have to put your money on the
drug dealers. Ironically enough, even if they weren't well educated,
they had a tremendous drive, a tremendous you know, focus
on business. Now, granted, what they were doing was illegal,

(47:26):
and they should have absolutely been punished for their offense.
I'm not making light of that, but these are people
who grew up, for the most part, you know, in
broken homes, many of them been knowing who their father was,
and in an environment with no educational opportunity. Uh, and
the only chance they had towards upward mobility, you know,

(47:47):
it was dealing drugs. Again, I'm not trying to make
excuses for it, but it does explain a lot of
behavior that we see in some parts of our country. Unfortunately.
And what it told me was that if you could
get to younger people in those situations and show them
that there would be opportunities for them to start their

(48:08):
own companies to make money without resorting to criminal offenses,
many of them would not just do well, but they
would thrive in that environment. And so that was a
big surprise for me. I was not really expecting that
I was letting my life's biases possibly interfere with that.

(48:31):
But it did not take long for me to really
understand just how brilliant a lot of these these men were.
And none of them that I heard, were saying things like, oh,
I can't wait to get out so I can deal
drugs again. You know, they were all wanting to start
legitimate companies. They were wanting to start construction companies or
go into property development, or you know, start their own business,

(48:54):
legitimate business and so you know, unfortunately, you know the
way that's society oftentimes treats people, you know, they have
gone through the criminal justice system, I fear that many
of these people won't have that opportunity, and that explains
why we see such a high ricitizsm rate. Unfortunately, you know,

(49:14):
in our criminal justice system, and it is unfortunate for
both their victims but also for the people who had
so much potential that we may never see everything that
they could possibly do. So that's that was one of
my observations from going to Staloc thirteen. The other thing
that struck me was just how, you know, how easy

(49:38):
it is to smuggle anything you want into the prison system.
There were probably forty or fifty cell phones, you know, iPhones,
not full of phones, but true iPhones with internet connectivity
that were hidden throughout the camp. And remember there's about
one hundred and fifty people that are at the camp,

(49:58):
and so I never you chose to use one, because
one it was a felony. You could be sentenced to
eighteen months, you know, for an unauthorized communication device in
a federal prison. It's a pretty serious offense. But uh,
these people, you know, certainly did hid the hid their
cell phones and some really unique, curious and creative places.

(50:22):
Occasionally they would be discovered and within three or four
days those phones would would be replenished through additional smuggling.
And you know, and and these are not people who
were you know, you know, doing drug deals on these
phones or calling hits for you know rival gang leaders.
These are people who would use you know, FaceTime to

(50:43):
talk to their wife or you know, tuck their small
children into bed that they may not have seen for
weeks at a time. That that's what I saw these
phones being used for. But there's also a very CD
side to the smuggling there. You know, certainly a lot
of a lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol would
be smuggling. I knew several inmates that were in a

(51:07):
constant state of intoxication, either through marijuana, suboxen, fentanyl, heroin,
all of those things found their way into the facility.
About a year and a half before I arrived, one
of the doctors told me that the two prostitutes had

(51:27):
been smuggled in. Two local prostitutes from Ashland had been
smuggled into the camp one night and a few days
later there was a large many many cases of sexually
transmitted diseases that showed up at Ashland. And when I
asked the doctor, I said, well, how do you go

(51:49):
to the nurse to try to cure that the girls
had been smuggled and they had opened up Apparently one
of the one of the fences and and the girls
went through the fence and did what they did and
then apparently left through the the same the same you
know opening in the fence. Uh. They said, well, all
the inmates, who who who had this disease. All they

(52:13):
did was go to the nurse and say they had
a chess cold. And apparently the antibiotics that you use
to treat bronchitis or you know, something like that would
be the same antibiotics used to treat these types of infections.
And so you know, the guards were not oh yeah,
I mean, like I said, and people that if if

(52:37):
they only applied their uh you know, their intellect, you know,
towards you know, towards legitimate business opportunities, you know, these,
they would be very, very successful. And it never occurred
to me that that would be the case. And so
it's those types of stories I also like to share
in pow Prisoner of Washington to you know, kind of

(52:59):
offer a little bit of humor and just you know,
you know, show that you know, going to federal prison
doesn't have to be as as you know, as you know,
as traumatic as as one might ordinarily think. And I
certainly thought when I was leading up to my one
hundred and seventy six days in captivity.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
I thought it was a very sad story that you
told about one guy that had sixteen days left and
then he was caught with a cell phone and had to.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Do absolutely he had this. This person had been in
he was a drug dealer, and you know, sirly admitted
his crime and was doing his time, and I had
sixteen days left. He'd been in federal prison for years
and had worked his way down from a i think
a medium security facility where let's just say they're not

(53:47):
smuggling prostitutes in any of those probably and to a
low facility and finally gets to a camp and you know,
it's late at night, he's he's on the phone talking
to his wife or his kids or whomever, and the
guards make an unexpected, unexpected inspection, you know, into into

(54:10):
the dorm. And these they are open air dorms, and
so there's not really any doors to our rooms. We
most people would share their dorm with one other person,
but it would be you know, open open space. There's
no bars. You know, it's not what a person would
ordinarily think of, you know, as a prison cell. And
and so the guards would walk down the halls and

(54:32):
you know, just kind of shine flashlights to make sure
you know that nothing untoward was was going on. And
so this person was towards the back of the dorm
and saw the guards walking down both aisles, knowing that
they would be coming to him very quickly, so he
shoved the phone I think down his pants or in
his pocket or something, trying to get it out of

(54:53):
his hands. And instead of walking towards the guards or
walking to the restroom, which would have been a reasonable
thing to expect someone to do it at say one
o'clock in the morning, when the guards were walking towards him,
he started walking away from them, which apparently the guards
thought were rather suspicious. They then Kristim searched him, found

(55:15):
the phone, and he left the camp you know, that night,
and was undoubtedly going to be spending you know, a
fair amount of additional time in a place that was
not like the camp, probably at a higher security facility.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
So that is so sad. Now you must have felt
like a fish out of water there. I know that
when you arrived, Director Gibbons said something to the defective
you don't belong here, you shouldn't be here. I mean,
I'm thinking of you like I said to William Buckley, joke,
but you know, being there and just going, I don't
belong here. This is weird. It's kind of like when

(55:50):
a good kid gets in trouble in high school and
the substitute teacher sends him down to the office. And
you're there with all these delinquents and you haven't really
done anything wrong. And I don't know else to describe it,
but you must have felt like a fishy out of water.
I mean, yeah, I don't mean to joke too much,
but I mean I could you see you going, oh
my god, the alcohol is all house liquor, and the
crab meat is fake, and I don't know what.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
I tend to be pretty down to earth though. You know,
I served in elected office for sixteen years, twelve years
in the Senate, so you know, I like to think
I get along with with most people. And so from
from that perspective, like I said, I got along.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
Well, did you have an you like pipe bomb or
smart guy or what did they call me?

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Well, there was a guy named there was a guy
named pipe bomb. And actually what they what they called
me was senator, So you know, and you know, I was,
you know, the only senator in the camp and so
it certainly made it very easy for if someone was
wanting to refer to me for something, you know, oh yeah, yeah,
talk to the senator about that, and you know, people

(56:54):
people would know. So that was what my uh what
that was, what my nickname was. Now there was a
guy named pipe Bomb that was there, and you know,
and even though he had not had any violent acts
that he had been convicted of, he certainly had committed
his share of violent acts. He was a kind of
a good old boy from Virginia, one of the few

(57:15):
Caucasians that played chess by the way, and had been
in prison for I think fifteen years on some federal
firearms charges, not of a violent nature. But he was
in possession of I think some grenades that he should
not have been. I have no clue how he got them,
but he had them, and hence hence his extended jail term,

(57:41):
and hence his nickname pipe Bomb. And so you know,
but when I my eightieth day, the shot collar because
again the guards they just kind of do their thing,
and you know, human beings have a way of organizing ourselves.
I don't care if you're on a desert island or
you know, a country or a small village in Romania,

(58:01):
or even in federal prison. People have a way of
kind of developing a hierarchy. So the previous shop caller
had been a mid mid fifties. He was the heir
to a thirty million dollar coal mining fortune out of
West Virginia and had had a drug issue. And in fact,
he'd spent about seven hundred thousand dollars of trust fund

(58:24):
money to build a cocaine lab in the basement of
his house, and not to sell it. He didn't need
the money. He just wanted as pure cocaine as possible
and had the resources to do it. But because he
had the facility, the federal government said that he was
a drug trafficker, and so so he was sentenced to
I think it was ten years, you know for that,

(58:46):
and served seven or eight and he was getting ready
to leave finally after serving his time. So he calls
me into his norm area. I sit down on the
other side of you know, in a chair on the
other side of the room, and we're talking and he says, well,
you've heard that I'm going to be leaving here in
a couple of weeks. I said, yeah, I've heard that,
you know, congratulations, and he says, well, you know, we

(59:08):
need to figure out who that the new shot caller
is going to be. And remember the shot caller is
the term used for the prison president for lack of
a more descriptive term. And he says, we need to,
you know, figure out who the new shot caller is
going to be. I think it should be you. And

(59:29):
I looked at him like he was insane. I have
been very fortunate to hold a lot of political titles
in my life, but prison shot caller was not one
that I either really wanted to have or was ever
expecting to have. And so I kind of smiled a
bit and I said, well, I'm flattered you would think so.

(59:50):
But you know, and I weighed like one hundred and
fifty one hundred and fifty five pounds five ten and
a half. I am not a particularly physically imposing person.
And uh, and so I said, I'm not really sure
I'm I'm able to, uh, you know, instill the type
of fear and justice that you know, the physician might
might call for. And he laughed, and he calls three

(01:00:13):
guys over. Uh you know, they were all from you know,
kind of a rural part of the country. They were
all Caucasian, and I think the total weight of all
three of them probably was an excess of one thousand pounds.
And so they they I mean the big guys, I
mean muscle muscle guys. I mean they had some they
were they were big boys. And he said, well, you

(01:00:35):
guys like Brent. Oh yeah, yeah, Britt's cool. Yes, it
was cool.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
If Brent ever needed something from you guys, you know,
you know, someone ever thrown them or if if if
something was if you were called upon to help him,
you'd help them, wouldn't you. Oh yeah, absolutely, just what
you know, name it Brent. And then, you know, the
former shot caller looked at me and smiled and said,
good enough. You know, okay, okay, you know when when

(01:01:02):
you know, this would probably be my only chance ever
to be a prison shot caller, and you know, and
so I might as well, I might as well see
what that would entail. And so I accepted. I accepted
the role. And and you know, no one's calling hits
on people, no one's beating up anybody. Was basically mediating,
you know, relatively small disputes that sometimes have a way

(01:01:25):
of escalating, you know, two fights, and there were the
occasional fight you know at the camp, but they weren't
particularly violent. People were separated after you know, two or
three punches, you know, that kind of thing. But the
goal is to try to de escalate things before they
get to that point. And so I spent some of
my my time there trying to listen to both sides,

(01:01:47):
kind of playing you know, Judge Judy or Judge Wapner
from the People's Court would be probably a good a
good analogy. And I think, you know, some of my
suggestions on conflict resolution were we are fairly inspired, at
least I hope so, and we were able to prevent
you know, a lot of hard feelings and probably some
acts of violence before they started. So that was that

(01:02:10):
was what my role consisted of. But there were a
lot of perks. You know. People would would you know,
they'd give me, you know, mount and dew. They'd give
me candy bars from the commissary. They they bring dinner
to my my my dorm. They'd see me reading, you know,
or writing my book, since I was obviously writing my
experiences when I was there, and oh, you know, you

(01:02:31):
look really busy. We brought your food for you, you know,
from the from the dining the dining hall. Oh well, great,
thank you, And and so they I was. I was
treated very well by by my by my my fellow
comrades when I was when I was there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
If you're not doing any public speaking, you should. This
is a fascinating story. I was glued to the book.
I've been glued to the earphones listening to you speak today.
I mean, I know you don't need the money. I
know you've got a very good lucrat thing going on,
but every once in a while you should just get
out and you know, share this story with the Kwantas
Club or something, and you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
Know what, that's that's a great that's a great idea.
I might I might do that. That's that's great advice. Mark,
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Sure. Okay, Well that's pretty much all the questions I had.
Do you have anything else you want to add?

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
No, No, I think you covered everything. And I appreciate
the opportunity to share my experience with you and your listeners.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Thank you very much for that. And where can you
get the book?

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
It said bookstores everywhere and on Amazon dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Okay, so once again it's pow Prisoners of Washington, Brent,
thanks so much for being here today. I really enjoyed
our conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Mark, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
Have a good day you too.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
You've been listening to The Tea Party Power Hour with
Mark gla