Andrew’s Testimony Finale | MiniPod

way to describe things. Everything from the aftermath of of course, the race and what followed more immediately, the Miami incident that captured everybody's attention, imagination and every gossiper east west, north south, the indictment of myself and a colleague, and the trial and then the conclusion of that trial. The first one. If you haven't heard it or would like to go back and refresh your memory, you'll find it at the end of our regular weekly cast. The episode

is titled Miami a No Sanctuary City. Part two will be at the end of the episode titled Faded None of These Candidates, and obviously part three right here this mini pod, I hope you learn you get to listen and that it piques your interests in getting more deeply involved in criminal justice reform. We walk into the courtroom. When the doors come open, I hear an audible gasp in the room and I look around because I'm surveying one to make sure my family did not show up

and they had snuck in there. But as I surveyed the room, there's journalists everywhere, journalists in the jury box and the stand, their people and whatnot. It is a

real spectacle. But there the gas was that they noticed as I walked in that I was sort of hobbling in and I think they were seeing that I was chained in this in this way, and my pastor, I see him sort of stand up and look over and I see him starting to say some words audibly, but I'm not sure what he's saying, but I'm pretty sure he was complaining about, well, why is he this way? And the only thought I had as I walked was, thank you Jesus. There are no cameras. No one will

ever see me this way. They can describe it, but my kids won't ever see these chains. That was the biggest source of embarrassment for me, because I remember back to that story of me telling you all that I never wanted to make my mom cry for me getting in trouble. That's all I could think of was her seeing me. So they weren't there. And we go through the proceedings and the judge says, this is the United States of America versus Andrew Gill never an institution that

I believed in, like I believed in nothing else. A government that I was in service to for all of my life was now against me, and I didn't understand it for the life of me. And I read, I heard they read the indictment out loud. I got a copy of it, and I couldn't read it until I got home. And as I read it, I didn't even see myself reflected in it. I didn't know what this garbage was that they decided to call charge. This was

made up mess out of whole cloth. Fast forward. I'm glad to be validated by that fact, by the decision of the jury and everything that they have said since the case. But I will tell you, I hear those words will humble you to your knees. But to hear them as a working agent for them, A believer, tried and true, a constitutionalist, who made those words of the Declaration of Independence in every article of that Constitution at its founding, applied to me, even though it wasn't written

to include me. But I had always stood on the side of the promise of who we are and the fact that we should always be in the pursuit of the great for our country. The next several months were just pure hell, y'all, you know it. We all had check ins at different times. I mean, I was pretty I had chosen to focus exclusively on preparing myself for this trial upcoming, and I mean, I'm working all, I stopped sleeping, stopping. I can't go through every day and whatnot.

But but to sit there and to hear these FBI agents, the undercover ones, particularly who I had gotten to know him, befriend there was some there was something valuable to me. And watching them on the standards they were questioned and they say, yeah, well we you know, for two years

we came, he tried to get to know them. Our goal was to to to get close to him such that he would feel comfortable with us, and that when we you know, offered you know, the whatever, we know that he was comfortable enough that if his intention was to take it, he'd take it da And they then start to describe me, and they say, you know, we tried to get him to go to Vegas, but he

said he couldn't. And then we tried to take him, you know, skiing and da da da, but he said no. And then we said we would be here and he said no. And then you know, we started coming more to Tallahassee and just doing the things he was doing. So we joined the gym and we worked out with him, and then we did the I I had no reason not to believe that these guys weren't my friends. They kept saying they have interest in development of South Side,

which is the black side of town. And I'm like, if you bringing money to invest in south Side, where the place you want to be, I'm the mayor of this city. May I talk to you about that? And so I'm in full pitch bow and there over the course of our relationship, our friendship and what clearly was not a friendship. But then they start to stay tell the jury and the lawyers in response to the questions.

We had to get to a place where we stopped trying to bring him places and then just figure out where he's going to be and we'd be there too, So if he's on a work trip to New York or to DC, they'd have a reason to be there. And they use someone who was very close to me to learn my schedules and my goings. And so this big old Hamilton trip that everybody hears about, no one knows that they didn't fly me to New York. They didn't do it. I was going to be in New

York for work. They just happened to want to hang out since we were all going to be there at the same time. They manufactured a whole situation because they needed to be around me. And then they talked about the arc of mimitting, which is, we start to get to know this guy well enough, so we start to mimic the things that he's interested in. We reflect to him that we're interested in these things. So all this

kind of thing. I needed to hear all of this, y'all, because I needed to know that I wasn't crazy, that I didn't walk into a bunch of terrible situations. These then gave me a real life example of what it felt like to be hunted. Unfortunately for them, my lawyer was able to get them to say. And after all, you did. You read his emails, You went through his text messages, his voicemails, that this, you all were on him for eight years. Did Andrew Gillum perform as you

would have expected an innocent elected official to have responded? Yes? Did he do everything that you would want a good public official to do by resisting. Did he ever take anything from you? No? Did he ever ask you? No. What they're very clear about is they expect me to do something for them in exchange for them giving me a campaign contribution. I rejected. I cut contact and have no other conversation with those fellas again until the government

forces me to have a conversation. Through this again in the spirit of being hunted, I come to realize that now they're investigating my campaign for governor because a black man can't raise fifty plus million and be not on the take. And they come up with a whole story around me extorting and setting up ways to pay myself for this and the other unbelievable stuff. It was the most disastrous and disgusting set of lies I'd ever have to listen to, y'all. But the worst of the lies

that I had to listen to. Were the FBI investigators who sat there put my children's name of their school where they attended, to put their social Security numbers projected in a courtroom without the care to take them out, to black them out, to put my wife's most intimate whatever in communications and exchanges and everything else up there, with no care for us as humans as people, to say that I was living beyond my means because I was sending three kids to private school while I was

a public official. By the way, a total and complete lie. My children were all of daycare age during this period, and the money that we were paying was their school tuition. But I'm sending my kids to private school, and you told this jury that I was living beyond my means because I was paying a church, a church dues, some membership dues to a church. Not one piece of evidence did they enter into this trial to support their claim.

It was completely and wholly the story that they made up and told themselves, without the ability to prove it before a court of law. But they could disparage me, they could embarrass us, they could throw us out there like that. We didn't We didn't even matter as humans. But nobody has ever written about. What was the genesis of this FBI investigation? When did you all decide to send FBI undercover agents to get on Gillam? What actions had he had taken prior to this that would suggest

that he would be succeptible to a bribery charge? Or what's foundationally there that got y'all here? No one has written this story about the FBI agent in charge of this investigation. Where did he work before he came to

the FBI? Would it surprise anybody to learn that he worked for the father of one of my opponents, a former United States Senator who was the chairman of the Intelligence Committee of the United States Government, the committee that is responsible for the most clandestine operations of this country, but also to include the FBI. If the person worked for the father of someone who I was running against

for governor, this story has not been written. Did anybody get a tip that Andrew had taken a bride from anybody in tel hassee before? Had never even been thought to have done so, None of that existed. But yet in twenty sixteen I became the guy of interest. One woman, white older woman who owns a salon married to a white male attorney who lives in a very conservative county, who we would later learn had on her social media prior to her being selected on the jury. Trump is

still my president. That she got into the jury box immediately pushed back from the table. Jury room, pushed back from the table. I don't have anything to deliberate. He's been guilty before, he's guilty now and all of it. And thankfully one of the jurors was able to very skillfully bring her around to at least voting on one lying to the FBI, and they were able to get unanimous agreement after many days of work on that one juror to try to get her to see the reason here,

he says, where's the What did he do? What did? He'd say, tell me the lie? Because because everything we've looked at is the truth. Can you tell me where the lie is? She can't tell a lie because a lie didn't exist. I never lied to the FBI, despite of their continuous targeting and lying to me. So they got her on that one, but she would not make any other decisions on any other counts because I was

already guilty. Well, they worked for a week in that room, and I was about to lose every every hope I had because it had been such a rough time, but I knew somebody was back there fighting for right. And prior to going in, my attorneys and myself and RJ and I invited my pastor in, you know, and they wanted to prepare me. They wanted to talk to me my decorum and how I should what was going on happen. When I went in, My big question was are they going to take me today or will I see my kids?

And he said, well, they're gonna take you if you found guilty on any account. And he says, so, I want to prepare you because we think that that that's how it may go. And I want you to be ready, and RJ, I want you to be ready. And i J looked at him and she said, I think you're wrong. I think he's not guilty on all of them, and I think I think that that's what was taking so long.

And I looked at this woman like, all right, I don't want you to be deluded, because that will hurt a lot if if we leave this room and you're not ready for that possibility. I don't want that. So I had told myself to gird up and just be ready for that verdict, so I don't have a reaction. And just as we are finishing up the prayer, right, we believe in God, and we submit this to you

and we know you got it. I want to admit in that prayer that I was not all the way honest because I wasn't convinced and I hadn't left it in his hands until RJ grabbed my hand and held it in clutch. As we exited our conference room, and I got shields over my body and something came into my spirit that said, I don't know how God's going to do it, but he is going to work this out.

And I took my seat and when the judge comes in and he asked them if they had reached the verdict, and they say yes on one and not on any of the others, because we got these hold this hold out over here. I stand. This is the piece I've seen on television a thousand times, so I know that everybody stands up. Asked the jury on the on the verdict, which what had they decided? And I stood and I faced the jury and the four persons said, we've unanimously agreed that he is not guilty on count one line

to the government. This is the one my lawyer told me to be prepared for. And I couldn't respond emotionally because I wasn't sure exactly what was supposed to happen. But I heard my wife and my aunt's gasp and there thank you Jesus and their praise, and it just came unknone for me because I I was overwhelmed. But I have to tell y'all, after that day, I started to decline into this space where anger took over every

part of me. I was so mad. I couldn't take calls of congratulations from all the places they were coming from because I didn't want to answer the phone and

sound ungrateful for what God had given me. After the indictment, my local bank that I banked with since I was twenty three, who underwroot the costs of my home I got my first home loan through, sent me a letter after I was indicted, telling me that after a random review of conditions of our membership, we've decided you don't meet them, and you've got thirty days to close all

your accounts. People who I have been therefore without ever being asked, who disappeared I'm thankful for God helping to remove those things from my life that I could not. I'm thankful for the solid rocks of friends who are not fair weather but all weather friends. I'm thankful to a loving family who reminded me every single day that they loved me and that this was all part of God's plan. I know it is in purpose to something greater.

The enemy never attacks a thing that isn't a threat, and when it does attack a threat, it attacks it in proportionality. And if you had to produce a document that said the United States of America via Andrew Gillum and his co defendant, then I must be some hell of a threat that through the full force of the government, their lies, their disgusting lies, the ruin and wreckage that they left behind, and didn't so much as apologize for you try to kill me. Put me in the ground

you missed. And I hope that part of the plan that God has from my life is the leveling of governmental institutions that abuse their power to go after who they have determined to be their enemies. There is real racism in the system, y'all. There's real stuff that has to be dismantled. About this thing, and I can't wait to be about that work. Even more. If you are a federal prosecutor and you go to a grand jury and you lie to them to get an indictment, you

should be held accountable for having lied. If you're the federal government and you bring suit on an individual and you lose, you should have to pay the million dollars that I still owe in attorney's fees. You do it in civil cases. If someone brings a frivolous lawsuit, they get their money not here, so you leave me in wreckage,

and then you don't have the decency to apologize. The system has got to be leveled and changed because while I have a microphone and I can talk about what my experience is, there are people who are voiceless and nameless we can't call them today, who have seen far worse. They're sitting in prisons not because they're guilty, but because

they couldn't afford a defense. They're not there under indictment because they did something wrong, but because somebody had determined that they needed to be taken off the playing field. If a government can do that to you, and we know it can, then we got to be courageous enough to stand right back up against them and level the systems that were designed to do exactly what they do. First and foremost, I want to live for my wife

and for my children. But if God puts breath in my body, I'm committed to doing his work his way for the rest of my life because I believe that I was put on this earth for a reason, and I don't know all the reasons yet, but it certainly wasn't to leave me desolate, poor, in despair and locked up somewhere. He didn't do this for that, I know that much. So I believe what He says about me and not what they say about me. Thank y'all.