AMY NELSON (Part 1) | A SUNDAY Sit-Down | Originally Broadcast Jan 2023

Now all interviewers have their own style, and my style is to try to get to the point and to be intensely curious. And the key to interviewing is listening. Take a look behind the curtain with a real whistleblower and American patriot. Prepare to embrace the uncomfortable truth because this program has no time for

comforting lies. Here is civil liberties enthusiast, Second Amendment defender, and recovering FBI agent Kyle Serif. Well, hello my friends and welcome to the first ever Sunday sit down. Best of edition. This is going to be with one of my favorite guests of all time, the one of the most, I think, impactful folks on my thinking. A reminder that we can all change. We can all move beyond our

partisan differences. We're going to be talking to Amy Nelson. Yes, this is an older interview and I've reached into the archives. For the first time ever, we're going to do kind of a replay show. I noticed that we had about 300 views and a very shortened version of this over on YouTube. If nothing else, it reminds me that we should share it with that audience. But we didn't used to have the same reach, and this story deserves that reach.

The story of Amy Nelson is one of government overreach. It's one of a Democrat who left her party and decided that that's not what she stood for as an American when she saw a weaponization of government in a very first hand way. It is a heartbreaking story. I can tell you that I have, I have shed tears over this and that's not a thing that I do very easily. You guys will see there's some emotion involved in this interview.

We've done a few talks with Amy and I'm going to pepper them in over the next couple weeks because I want you to hear the story. And then I'm going to have Amy come back on and talk to us because her story's ongoing. And you'd think it would be over and you'd think that four years, five years would be long enough, but it's not. So we're going to keep doing that. And I'm going to go into the archives and grab some of the

other stories. We've talked to FBI whistleblowers that you guys, you know, if you're relatively new to the channel, you probably haven't heard. And I'm not asking anybody to go digging in there and find it. So I'm going to represent it if that's OK with you all. And there's going to just be times when we do a best of show. I want to make sure that we give the roots of this program the proper, the proper acknowledgement. We didn't always, I didn't always work out of a set that I

had built like this. We've it's been a very organic process. Anyone who thinks that popped out of nowhere. You'll get to see. The audio wasn't as good, the video wasn't as good, the editing wasn't as clean, the intros weren't there. I didn't have thumbnails. There's a whole bunch of stuff that I had to learn how to do. This was not a job that I thought I was going to go out and do in my life, and I didn't know that it was going to last or be able to turn into an

income. So appreciate all of you that have joined us. And that's a great reminder as you're watching right now if you're over on Rumble and you've been there since the beginning. Yeah, I like the video. You guys know what to do. Same thing on YouTube. Really would appreciate that. And those of you follow on X, especially for those of you that find that as your primary source, We don't get monetized there, but I have no problem with anybody watching it wherever you watch it.

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So that's all I'm going to say. You will hear some intermittent pop up Spotify ads if you're listening on the audio, if you're watching on the video, the odds are there's going to be some aftermarket where they punch in their own little AD revenue. For whatever it's worth, we do get a chunk of money out of all those things. None of them are enough to pay the bills, but all of them help a little bit. And so, you know, I appreciate your tolerance with all this stuff.

I can't demonetize individual videos. I don't think. I haven't seen how that works. So God bless all of you. Look forward to sharing this story with you. Haven't heard it. And if you have heard it and it's a little reminder, then that's OK too. You're going to hear the story of a really courageous woman and a Great American, Amy Nelson, coming up now. Welcome my friends. Today on the Kyle, Sarah and Show. We have a wonderful guest who agreed to come talk to us.

I heard her story only in part while I was driving back from the SHOT Show in Vegas, and I told her I didn't want to hear anymore until I heard it from her mouth. I didn't want it second hand. So we're going to get the the original reaction on this. There's no rehearsals and there's very little background. Her name is Amy Nelson. She's an attorney. She has a mother of four wonderful, very cute little girls, which we'll we'll show

you her her Twitter page here. She's a wife and an entrepreneur, and she is also the host of the What's Her Story with Sam and Amy podcast, the founder of the Riveter Company, which we'll also throw in the description below so you guys can check out that link. And I want to welcome her right now and we'll jump right into this thing with no further ado. Amy, welcome to the Kyle Seraphin show.

Thanks so much for having me. And we're really lucky because we have producer Phil today, because usually when I do these things solo, they're always a little bit more sketchy. So I got Phil. He's he's, he's left me alone. I was in a hotel in Vegas doing a taping by myself, and I had no one. It was just me just just winging it. That's frightening. You never want to do it. No, it's never good.

It's never good to go alone. Tell us a little bit about where you grew up and and how you got to this point. And we'll do kind of a quick intro, folks. I know I've gone a little long and some of these. So we're going to keep this kind of tight and then we're going to get into a story, which is wild. Yeah, so I grew up in Columbus, OH, with a great family and then went away to college when I was 18. I went to Emory University, studied International Studies, and then went to law school at

NYU. And I ended up working in New York as a commercial litigator for a number of years. And then eventually I met my husband and we moved to Seattle together. He joined Amazon Web Services, which was at the time was a little subsidiary of Amazon.com. And I kept layering until I became a mother. And then when I became a mother, I was really struggling in corporate America to kind of both see my my daughter and work, which were two things I wanted to do.

So I thought I would go out on my own as a lawyer and started going to classes on how to write a business plan and do all those things and figured out that women didn't really have support and community around starting businesses. So I built a business called the Riveter to do just that. And this is based on Rosie the Riveter. Is that kind of where it's coming from?

It is. It's based on Rosie the Riveter, which was, you know, a time when women were called to the workforce to support the American war efforts and really rose to the occasion. And so just to kind of pay homage to that, to those incredibly patriotic and amazing women. For sure, absolutely. It's got to be tough too, just trying to bounce out being a mother, especially now that you have 41.

It's a challenge and and we have 3, you know, my wife is also has a professional degree and it's one of those things that I think is a it's a big challenge and she opted, you know, to stay and just deal with them because they're full speed, especially boys and girls mixed up. And, you know, how does that challenge factor into being? Attorney's pretty demanding work usually, and running a company can't be.

Yeah. I mean, being an attorney, the thing about being an attorney, so I worked as a litigator. So it's client services, which I think a lot of people forget, like you're just at the beck and call of your clients and it's completely unpredictable. And at the time we lived in Seattle, my husband was travelling constantly for Amazon. So I was really alone and my amazing mother, who had retired from 35 years as a public school teacher, came out and helped me. That's big.

Didn't feel like a great fit. I think ultimately for me too, as a lawyer, and this is ironic when we go into my story, but I really felt like lawyers like hindering innovation. They're kind of like had made themselves very necessary, but I they didn't really contribute a lot. And I really wanted to contribute. And so that's why I watched people building businesses as a lawyer. And I said, I want to be on that

side of this. That seems to be more interesting to me. It's funny, I had a kind of a funny experience in law enforcement. We have attorneys at the FBI. They're, you know, kind of the no factory. It's like, I got this creative idea, I want to go do this. And they're like, no, you can't do that. And then you bring up another idea and it's no, it's no. And so it's funny that it, that would also be the case in private industry.

It does. It makes sense to me because they're they're always seeing the risk and you know, where the where the pitfalls are and people who are innovators and people who are entrepreneurs are always seeing what the possibilities are and the goals. So yeah, they're kind of antithetical to each other with the way that they started, lined up their goals, right? They really are, until and unless you get a company like Amazon that's big enough that

they don't play by the rules. And they just crush everybody. Yeah, I think. I think there are obviously examples of the brick and mortar end that was Walmart for a long time, just steamrolled through, didn't care about litigation, didn't care about regulations. They could go through and make that happen. And obviously Amazon stepped into that space in a big way. Yeah, there's a name for it. There's a name for it. They call it lawfare when you

use the law as warfare. And I think that's a interesting, interesting way to describe it. Well, So what my my listeners who are, you know, big kind of advocates of things like Second Amendment and and now First Amendment I think has also been a big issue since the Twitter Files will be familiar with that because it's the only way that

you can really fight back. Unfortunately, it's usually very expensive and it's usually take some very courageous souls in small industry to go step up against these big guys because they can just stomp you. I mean it really does. And I think when I practice law in New York, I practice First Amendment law. And when I went into First Amendment law, I thought I would be working for media, etcetera.

It was interesting because I ended up working a lot around business and businesses who needed their First Amendment rights protected. And you know, it is, they look, we have very, we actually have very few rights and their rights that are enshrined are important. And so however they come to manifest, it's really important that we that we care and that we try to keep them.

It's funny, my, my colleague who is another FBI whistleblower just wrote a piece on the 3rd Amendment, which is probably the forgotten amendment in the Bill of Rights that nobody really thinks about. But he had a really interesting take on it. And it's funny that you say that we, I mean, we do need to protect our rights. There's only a few of them. It's, it's they're, they're supposed to be cordons where the government's not supposed to

intrude. And we act like the government has granted them to us. And I think that fundamental shift has been really, you know, it's really dangerous for Americans who don't understand civics. Yeah, I agree. And it is. It's also interesting too because I feel like our rights are politicized a lot and they shift with the winds. Like if you look at 20 years ago, progressives and Kyle, you know this, but I identified as a progressive.

Yeah, we're we're going. To get into that in a second, because I think, I think it's really interesting. But, you know, progressives hated the FBI, right? In the post 911 era, it was, you know, it's just so against the FBI. And now progressives are just so pro FBI because they believe that the FBI is taking on something Trump that they don't like. And it's really dangerous for both progressives and conservatives to politicize our rights and the agencies that

were built to allow us to keep those rights. 100% agree with you. It's funny, I, I've seen some, some memes that have been out there on the Internet and there's a lot of very creative, intelligent people that make these and they show it. I think that the Alvin King, whatever his name is Elrond, I think it's showing, you know, that the ring of power and, and it says libertarians and it says don't take it. And then it's got, you know, two

different groups. You got Gollum who they, they had the Democrats and they had, you know, the, the, the kings of men that were the, the Republicans. And everybody wants to wield the ring of power. The only thing you can do with the wing of power is either have it, you know, hidden away and apolitical or you got to throw it in the fire. And, and it's fun that, that we've seen this. I, I always told people like what I'm doing is not political. It, it shouldn't be at least.

And most people that I met that were in the FBI, particularly in the enforcement, and we're not political people, especially the people 10 plus years in. So that goes back to the kind of the old school. But, and, and you may agree with this, I think the FBI has committed pretty significant sins in every decade of its existence. And I think there's pretty good documentation for it. I mean I. Agree like when I I always say to my friends who are progressive like you are, you're

so pro FBI right now. Do you remember 2016 when James comedy you know, came out two weeks before the election and caused chaos like we don't know if Hillary would have won. We don't know, but like that was an inappropriate action pursuant to FBI policy. It's. Funny because I, I think that he probably just pushed people into their own silos. I, I think that the, the balance

of it probably cut. It was a double edged sword because the people that were on the liberal side, the progressive side, you know, they, they heard what they wanted to hear, that she didn't do anything with prosecution. And the people that were on the other side heard, you know, that they weren't going to prosecute and they were also mad at her. And so then, you know, I don't know that it cut either way. But but it's really dangerous to get messing around with

politics. It is, it is a dangerous thing to do. So I yeah, I've definitely learned a lot. I didn't really know anything about the FBI and I've learned quite a lot over the past few years, so. I imagine so. All right, So just quick political background, you grew up at you in Ohio and then you went to New York. NY's a pretty left-leaning place. Seattle obviously very left as well. You're a registered Democrat, I assume, or you at least vote that way. I mean, beyond that.

So I was on Barack Obama's national Finance Committee. I worked on out the vote efforts for Democrats would be kind of in like the legal boiler rooms on Election Day for voter rights, like spent a lot of I worked for Jimmy Carter, not as president. I'm not that old, I'm only 42, but I was going to. Say we're the same age, so yeah. He has an organization called the Carter Center that works on peace and democracy around the world.

I worked for Jimmy Carter when I was 22, worked on elections in Ethiopia, Jamaica. So I mean, I dedicated a large part of my life to this. Would you say it goes far as to say not just a an advocate but also like an activist in that realm? I was a believer. I was a believer in democracy. I think it's. And what's funny is I think that when you and I were growing up and like I say, we're we're within an age, you know, an hour

one year or so of each other. I think that everybody kind of agreed on what the values looked like, what America sort of was as as an idea. And we disagreed with how to get better about it. That was the kind of a thing. And I wasn't a political kid growing up. Like my parents didn't care. And I didn't care until I was probably in my 30s when I started having kids. But essentially, we all kind of agreed on the fundamental, you know, this is a good place. We can make it better.

We should be striving towards a better ideal, a platonic ideal of what America is. And now it feels like there's such a big divide down the middle that people look at each other and like, you're an enemy. You're not even part of the same clan as me or the tribe or whatever it is. I agree. And I also think that like, I think we could get back to the place we were at as children.

But I believe, and it's so hard to say all this because I feel like I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I'm not like I believe that we really live in an oligarchy where corporations dictate the laws, dictate who's elected, dictate what politicians are focused on. And then, you know, the fallout is kind of we divide ourselves among these issues that like, if you look at like transgendered kids, that is probably less than 5000 kids in America. And it dominates so much

political conversation. Yep. And I would much rather have the right. Yeah, it's a right wing boogeyman and it's a left wing talking point, and they're both they're both feeding into media frenzy on both sides. A. 100% right. It's like if you look at like just the ink that is built, the time that is built on things that are distracting us from like making sure our kids are educated and fed. Yes. Right, which is? The basic things and that they learn how to read.

Yes. And I don't know if you did. I mean, when I was 817 years old, one of the, the programs that was part of I went to a Jesuit high school. So which actually turns out to be extremely liberal at this point. They're, they're like communists. They, they all like Mark, They, they like what's called liberation theology, which is a, a Marxist ideology that works its way into Catholicism. And amusingly enough, like I, I think very smart. We had a 500 hour minimum volunteer requirement to

graduate. And so I spent a bunch of time in inner City Schools in Dallas, TX, teaching, you know, 5th and 6th graders how to read Cat in the Hat. And when I was in 5th and 6th grade, we were studying and analyzing the Lord of the Rings as literature, as allegory. And I just look at the, the, the differential and the opportunities that that's going to afford those people is it's staggering at, at 5th and 6th grade that you're, you're sounding out words that are 3 letters.

It's really horrifying and it's not something politicians ever focus on. And that was 20 years ago. Yeah. And I'm certain it's worse. I mean, I've just seen what it looks like. I've seen writers. I mean, I'm sure you have, too. You go out there and you read what are reasonable publications. And the grammatical errors and the weak sentence structure and the things that, you know, you should know how to critically work through are just.

They're everywhere. And my wife is always like, God, we need an editor. Like do people not pay editors anymore? Well, and it goes into media, right, which is, you know, like our journalists are supposed to be the defenders of of democracy at the end of the day, right, to try to transfer. Cheerleaders. Well, 22 media companies own all the media, right? Like that's it. It's that's it. So you'll find this funny. I spent about four or five hours last night in a space, Twitter Spaces.

And, and I like try to cut down the middle. I always try to be fair. And so people always want to bring me these like wild conspiracy theories, which I despise. Like, there are things that are true that are evil. There's no question about it. And they go after good people. And we're going to get into your

story very shortly. But what I also find is that there's some people that have some wild ideas like this lady's like, you know, would you agree that Trump is still really the president and that Joe Biden is actually, it's like, no, I just they go, you know, she gave about a paragraph long thing on the phone. And so I'm listening and I'm listening and I'm like, Oh my God. And at the end of it, they go, you know, what's your reaction to that? And I go, all of that is false.

That's my only reaction. It's just nonsense. It is, but like it's it is. And like I understand in some ways why people go there. It's ludicrous. It's crazy. But like then they go on Twitter and they're like the Twitter Files, which are true, right? And I don't think that that you know me, Donald Trump is not president. He did not win the election but like. Of course not. No, no, I agree. But did like, did the public like was the public square, which is the Internet

manipulated for sure A. 100%. Right. And so you just you help people feed into those conspiracies. Well, moreover, I there they're looking for that unifying thread when I always tell people that petty corruption usually is a bunch of people doing the same sort of things, but not because they're coordinated, just because they're lousy people and they have low ethics and low morals. And so they just sort of align with these goals.

And and if they are ideologically aligned and a lot of them are, then we end up pushing towards a direction. But it's not like a bunch of guys like we saw in The X-Files. It's not, you know, 29 guys that, you know, wear overcoats and smoke cigarettes in the backroom in the dark. That's not what happens. But it does feel like that.

And then when you start talking about how these companies kind of do have a lot of, you know, a massive hand, they're not just putting a thumb on the scale, they're putting their whole arm on it and they're they're tilting it. All right, so let's get into your story. How far back do you want to go? And you can tell me the beginning because I'm sure you're the expert at where to start. Well I guess I mean I think like a reasonable place to start is April 2nd 2022 weeks into the

pandemic? My husband and I are in Seattle. We have our 4 little girls. The baby was I think 8 months and she's little. Our oldest was 5. My company had just kind of like exploded into 1000 pieces because the Riveter had in real life Co working in events across the country. And so everything came to a screech. We lost all of our revenue overnight. We were the lucky recipients of APPP loan which allowed us to keep functioning.

But do you? Do you want to do you mind telling people, because there's a lot of people that don't understand what the PPP loans did and I've worked some of those fraud cases explain kind of what the mechanics of that was and why we why those were probably a good thing. So when this oh, the shutdown orders kind of flowed throughout the country and real life businesses had to shut down.

And so the business that I had built where I had leased spaces and turned them into event and Co working spaces and then had memberships, my members stopped paying. I still had to pay my landlords, right. And so my business was shut down by virtue of a government act. And so, you know, right or wrong, there's lots of politics to it. It happened 100. Percent. And so the government said, well, we don't want these businesses to disappear forever.

At the time, if you remember, at the beginning of COVID, I think we all thought it was a short horizon event, you know, so the PPP. Two weeks. So the PPP loan was meant to be a short term loan to keep businesses afloat. The terms of it were incredibly generous and that if you used the loans to pay your existing staff and your existing operational expenses, and they were, they were divided out in a certain way by the government, then you would get the loan forgiven.

If you. It was like 60% for payroll. As long as 40% went to your overhead, your rent or whatever, then you were good. Exactly, Yeah. And you had to use it within 8 or 24 weeks. You got to choose the term. And then if you, if there were, if you used it for other business expenses, they wouldn't be forgiven and you would have to pay the pay that loan back at like a 1% interest rate over 5 or 10 years.

I mean, very generous terms for for companies dealing with a very dramatic act that we've never seen in our lifetime. Where did the where did the money come from? Where they coming from? Individual banks that were being underwritten by the government? Or is the government just straight right? Like where did this money come from? The money came from individual banks that were being underwritten by the government. But where does all money come from? We just. Printed.

Yeah, we just printed. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, just just quantitative easing and solve the problem, ease the problem. OK. So so you got a payroll protection? We're dealing with this. My husband had worked at Amazon Web Services, which is a subsidiary of Amazon, that it's where the Internet lives. So the Internet lives in these big data warehouses that exist on this planet, not in the

cloud. And my husband worked in real estate and he helped scout real estate locations that would be OK for data centers and helped work when Amazon built them themselves, would help build them. He had been fired from Amazon in June of 20/19. He was told he was fired after seven years for yelling at a vendor. Amazon is a very political place is all I can say. Yeah, my kind of guy. Sometimes you got to yell at people I don't know. I mean it. Yeah.

And it was shortly after my husband had been working on the Amazons Jedi bid for their $10 billion cloud contract. You want to tell people a little bit about what that is, because I think it's very relevant. Yeah, so I didn't really know this about Amazon, but so Amazon, we all think Amazon.com where we buy all of our things on the Internet is like the big money maker and why Amazon is so successful. It's not actually. Their retail business is a money

loser. However, their cloud business where they sell Internet space is where they make all of their money. And Amazon Web Services biggest clients are you and me as taxpayers. Amazon stores the data for the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency and various other government agencies. And DoD, I believe as well, right? And DoD and Amazon makes massive profit, billions of dollars from

the government. And at the time my husband was fired, Amazon was trying to win a $10 billion contract from the Department of Defense. Yeah, that's B. That's ten billion with AB folks. That's a big time money stuff and that's just one of these contracts that we're talking. About it's 1. And in fact, like if you look at Amazon's stock, in 2013, Amazon Web Services won a $600 million CIA contract and that forever changed the trajectory of Jeff Bezos life and company.

The Amazon stock started going up and up and up and up for the next 7 years because of that CIA contract. So anyway, my husband had been fired, but that was fine. He had been planning on leaving while he worked at Amazon. He had set up a new company and take an investment, which his employment contract explicitly allowed him to do, which is. And this is like the terms of his of his termination or NDA or

whatever were allowing. Him like his employment contract that he signed way back in 2012 was 10 pages. It was Amazon's OG contract in the 1990s when it was a startup. And one of the things that allows you to do is like start a company and seek investment, as long as the investor is not also an investor in Amazon. Now this all makes sense if you think like Jeff Bezos while he was CEO of Amazon, he he bought the Washington Post, he started Blue Origin, right?

He's doing all sorts of different things and he allowed his entrepreneurial employees to do the same. So my husband has set up a company. He was really excited to go out and work on real estate development on his own, which is exactly what he did, right? When he left, Amazon started consulting for various developers, some of whom were working with Amazon. But Amazon doesn't sell real estate. So it wasn't like a competitive thing to Amazon, right? Amazon just occupies real estate.

So he goes about his life. He's incredibly successful at this. He's, you know, in his early 40s. He spent 20 years building this career to do this. And real estate development is big risk, big money. You know, it's, it's a big thing. I'm so proud of him. He's happy. So we're two weeks into the pandemic. We think, you know, OK, we're going to have to deal with this mess with my business, but we're, I'm, I am not someone who gives up. So I was like, we're going to figure this out.

And my husband's real estate development's fine. He does industrial real estate development not impacted by COVID. If impacted at all, it's a benefit. And then on April 2nd, 2020, at about 6:40 AM, there was a knock at our door and we had a glass door. We lived on a very busy St. It was the first house we'd ever bought and I was up because I had little kids, so of course I was awake. Yeah, you've been up for an hour.

Yeah, But generally, I think I've learned that when the FBI shows up your house to talk to you, they try to catch you off guard, maybe when you're sleeping, wake you up. So I go to the front door and I'm like, who is at the door? And I have a baby on the baby on my hip, just in her diaper. But I'm like, did something happen overnight? Like, is this the health authority? Is like, is it the apocalypse? What is going on? Right. Right. Because, yeah, we got to put ourselves in that mindset.

So this is April of 2020. We have just started doing the lockdowns for, what, 2 1/2, three weeks? There were signs. And so my my team was on surveillance, driving around. I was in Albuquerque when it all shut down. And we had a little baby as well. And I remember looking, it was like, yeah, is this the zombie apocalypse? Is that what's happening next? There's signs that are flashing. There's like trash blowing in the streets because nobody's walking around. Everybody's got a mask on

hiding. So, yeah, this would have been a really, really wild time to have this experience that you're about to have, having been on the other side of the door and having been waiting for that. You know, I've been waiting for that knock for the last year or so and I'm and I'm hopeful it doesn't happen. And I know Phil has the same thoughts about it. Sometimes it's like it's not good when the FBI is at your door.

So, so when you did they did you hear them banging do an FBI search warrant or what were they saying? Oh, they were not there for a search warrant. OK, not this time. But Kyle, they came in. No, but not this time. Yeah, I I read that in. So they, you know, I kind of like, I motioned to the door, like I shrugged my shoulders because I didn't feel like opening the door in the pandemic. And there was a woman and a man and they didn't have on the FBI

jackets normally. They did not have masks on. And the woman took out her badge and it said FBI. And I was like, you know, I, I was like, I. Yeah, what planet am I on? Right. I have no idea what this is. So I kind of crack the door and they're like, is, is this Carl to Nelson's house? And like, yes, I'm his wife. And they're like, we'd like to speak to him. So I'm like, OK, so I call Carl down. He comes down. He was awake, but he was upstairs.

And I'm like, the FBI is at the door and he opens the door and they say, we'd like to talk to you about some Amazon real estate deals. And at the time, we were like, oh, OK. You know, like, yeah, he works at Amazon for a long time. He did a lot of deals. Like, who knows? But then he he invites them in. And then I look at him and I think many people would be terrified to do this, but I'm a lawyer. And like, there's nothing wrong with saying this.

And I looked at my husband and I said, you cannot talk to these people without a lawyer. That's right. No, it's brilliant. And and we just literally covered that last night in this Twitter space. This woman says, you know, the FBI knocked on my door. And I've been advised my whole life you never talked to the Bureau. You never talked to any cops. You just ask them, you know, to come back when you have a lawyer and everybody invites us in. Everybody talks to us.

I don't know why that is. It's uncanny. I know why I think. You're panicked. I think you. I think Americans feel like if they ask for a lawyer, they're saying they did something wrong. Correct. Asking for a lawyer just means you have a brain like not to be like, I mean like it's like you are like, it's just, I mean, but my and my husband says it's OK, I'll talk to them and I'm like, no, but like, I mean, I can't get in a fight with him in front of the FBI agency.

No, I mean, well, you could. It'd be. It would not be. I should have like, he talked to them. He ended up talking to them for three minutes and they said, you know, they said, like, do you know, they asked if they knew this real estate developer named Brian Watson. My husband's like, I do know him. And they go, we're going to stop you right here. This is your chance. We know everything. And my husband's like, I don't know, like, I have no idea what you're talking about.

So we're going to stop here. And I will call a lawyer. And they said we're going to hand you a few pieces of paper. And then they left. And, you know, we opened the pieces of paper. One was a letter telling him that he was the target of a federal investigation in the Eastern District of Virginia. We are in Seattle. The Eastern District of Virginia is 3500 miles away.

Yes, that's my old district. And it is the Eastern District of Virginia is where the government goes to prosecute Edward Snowden. It's, I mean, it's it's. Yeah, there's, there's really two or three soft seats for government prosecution. 1 is the Southern District of New York, the other one's going to be the District of DC. And then lastly it's Eastern District of Virginia. Everything around the around Washington DC is easy so.

And Amazon, because they built data Centers for the CIA and the NSA. They build them in the Eastern District of Virginia. A lot of them. It's called Data Center Alley. Just this weekend, Amazon announced $35 billion in investment in Virginia for Amazon Web Services. And so that was the first letter telling who was the target of a federal investigation. And then the second one was a letter that said we intend to seize these bank accounts. And it listed like three bank

accounts. And I'm like, what the hell is happening? Right. And then and they said they were going to seize them under civil asset forfeiture proceedings. Is that what they? I, my husband was not charged with a crime. In fact, and it's important, my husband has never been charged with a crime. This was 2020. It's 2023. My husband's never been charged with a crime. So they say they're going to

seize these. And I'm just like, I will admit, and I'm so disappointed in myself, but this for me started three weeks of like shock and panic because I think I knew enough about the legal system to know that this, like, this was bad. You know that they're like then it wasn't something we could resolve easily. Yeah, people can't see it, but producer Phil is nodding. Phil used to work white collar crimes and and he's ACPA and he's got some knowledge in this this sphere.

And there's just nothing good about what's about to come down that we're about to hear about. And the letter said that the you know that he's a target of a federal investigation in the Eastern District of, of Virginia related to allegations of private sector honest services fraud. And I'm like, what? What's? The Yeah, say that one more time. Private Sector Honest Services Fraud It is a federal crime of depriving your private sector employer of your honest services. Why?

It turns out it's probably much more likely to be, you know, involved in that sort of fraud if your employer is enormous and has a huge contract with DoD and DOJ. I. Mean we are like, I mean, yeah. I mean the Eastern, like, in my obsessive research over the many years, I learned that, like, the Eastern District of Virginia and prosecutors hadn't prosecuted this since 2001. Well, So what we're also saying too is that that is the new

game. The game is it doesn't matter whether it's charges of 1001, which is the lying or false statements. Those have never been prosecuted, but they've always been add on charges. They're also, you know, they're also rants. They're their modifiers to get pleased, but they're not something that we individually charge, although we started doing that. And the same thing with Farrah, which I don't know if you're familiar with that, the Foreign Alien Registration Act never charged ever.

Stern letters, that's what they do. And now they're charging people. So you were right kind of on the ground floor when the the game started shifting in a lot of ways and you unfortunately, you guys were the recipient of it. Yeah. And so that happened. I, I call, I call the law firm that the Riveter used in Seattle. I called my lawyer and I said, my husband needs a lawyer. So I'm like shaking and also like, do I need to tell my board for the riveter?

And we decided I needed to call my board for the riveter right away, tell them this is happening, get my husband a lawyer. And, and then it was. And then the the next part of our life began. Yeah. What what kind of lawyer were you thinking that you needed and was that the right kind of lawyer when you went? Because a white collar criminal defense lawyer. And that's what you found, Yes, yeah, yeah. And so you at least you had that. I think a lot of people would be

really concerned. It's like, do I need a criminal defense lawyer? But that would there it's pretty specialized because you're talking about white collar fraud and and a lot of people don't do that kind of work. It's kind of technical. I have to imagine and it's. Former prosecutors who do it. That makes sense. Which is the people you want to be fair, That's who you want. People who sat in the other chair.

It is, but it's just so, I mean, this revolving door between people who prosecute and hold the white glove of the law and then they go defend people. It's just and they're, they're all friends. They're all buddies. Like it's it's a game. It is a game and somebody was telling me this the other day that owned a big company and they said no matter whether I win or lose, the lawyers all win every time. I was just emailing Jeff Bezos about this yesterday. I emailed Jeff Bezos a lot.

I'll I'll get him later, but I just take it upon myself to do it. So anyway, that's the. That's the thing though, right? Like, they all win. They're all going to litigate, they're all going to get their hourlies. Oh. Yeah. And it's just, you know, it's, it's, it's shocking. So we didn't really understand what my husband was even accused of. Because when you say private sector honest services fraud, it's kind of vague and ambiguous.

So my husband's lawyers called the prosecutors in Virginia. And, you know, between April and May, it was very clear that what was happening was that my husband was accused of taking kickbacks on real estate deals. So essentially, the government said that he steered Amazon real estate deals to a developer in exchange for kickbacks. Got it. That did not happen. And I can explain what my husband did do, but what was very clear was that my husband,

there wasn't a conversation. My husband was being accused of a crime. There was no, there was no what happened. You know what didn't happen? It was like you're accused of a crime, you committed a crime and you are going to plead guilty to a crime. And I learned between April and May and June, the set of tools that prosecutors have when they want you to plead guilty to a

crime. And what they did, you know, the FBI actually executed a national operation a day on April 2nd, 2 weeks into the pandemic for Amazon, which I, I know now because we learned many years later that it was actually Amazon that had accused my husband of a crime. It was Amazon who hired a former federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia and paid him millions of dollars to

lobby his former colleagues. His name is Patrick Stokes, he works at Gibson Dunn. He directly called up the then US Attorney Zachary Terwilliger set up a meeting before the first meeting Pat Stokes sent the DOJ an e-mail saying our first priority is asset restraint and recovery went in pitched A20 that you pitch a crime like in a 20 decks A20 slide deck PDF they pitched a crime we got to we. We got to pump the brakes on that one and go through that

just a little bit slower. So people hear that because I think it's really interesting when we work criminal matters that are not white collar because there are not millions of dollars in play. It's, you know, some little girl being trafficked by MS13. It is, you know, some guy that's running a brothel in DC. We don't pitch the crime. The crime comes in, there's an allegation or information that happened. We go find out who did it and then we sit on them, figure out who they are.

White collar is a totally different animal. And interestingly enough, it probably is the place that the Bureau could be the most effective because there's a lot of fraud against the government. But it's a complicated and it takes a lot of patience. It's not it's not something for me. I can already tell you that right now, like that's not my world.

But the idea that somebody's going to come in and lobby DOJ and lobby the Bureau to take on an investigation with like here's the elements that we're going to go after and here's our targets because here's why we need that on a space. Seems that feels very corrupt from the positions when I used to work crimes because that's not the way that we would get them. Do you want to know something? I do. It's shocking.

And, and again, like I have to emphasize, we knew none of this in 2020. This was slowly pieced together in 2021 and 2022 after a lot of work in in figuring things out. But the night before Amazon's lawyers met with DOJ, they officially broke a contract with the real estate developer, Brian Watson. And per the terms of the contract, the only way that they could break the contract is if Brian Watson, the real estate developer, was found guilty or pled guilty to ACEO to a felony crime.

Amazon did not tell that to the Department of Justice. That is very, very important though. So what we are playing here is that there is probably what millions or is it billions of dollars? Over 100 million in damages. OK. So $100 million in play. And the way that they can get out of this contract is that there has to be the people that are involved that have to plead guilty to a felony and it shows.

And that that obviously is going to be bad faith negotiations and that's how they're going to walk away from it. But otherwise this is this is otherwise a good contract. Oh, and it's it's related to data centers that Amazon kept. They do not allege they overpaid for the data centers. They are now selling cloud computing to the government from the data Centers for billions of dollars. Amazon alleges no financial harm. Got it. They didn't lose anything, they just were trying. To they gained.

Wow. All right. So you're finding out that these meetings are happening. DOJ has gone out there, done their 20 deck slide, pitch said. This is our original targets. And you know what the targets were at this point is that was that, Yeah. The targets were Brian Watson, the real estate developer. So and the Amazon did a national operation on April 2nd. An hour after their national operation, the termination notice was delivered to Brian Watson that he'd been

terminated. Now he worked for Amazon Web Services as well. He was a real estate developer that built data centers in Amazon. So he was Amazon came to his development company and contracted to to base. Yes. That right? Yep. Yep. Exactly. And Amazon only paid monthly rent. They don't own the data centers like so and they don't allow. It's so crazy, but so we didn't know any of them. At the time, yeah. And what and what was your, what was your husband's connection to Brian Watson at?

That time, so my husband worked on Amazon's real estate team. When Brian Watson's team got these real estate development deals, however, my husband had no signing authority. 12 people above him approved every contract. What happened is somebody who made money from Brian Watson from North Star, the real estate developer, months later went to my husband and said you should build a business that competes with Brian Watson and Northstar, like you know more about data

centers and Brian Watson does. I'll give you the, I'll give you the seed capital to do it. I'll invest in your company. So he, so my husband got a lawyer who you should also know. The lawyer is a target of the DO JS investigation. They're saying this lawyer, this lawyer is part of this criminal real estate gang. And so the lawyer, you know, so the lawyer sets my husband's company up. The investor puts money in the company.

It's legally documented. Like there are lawyers everywhere and legal documentation everywhere. Like I have investors in the Riveter, including Amazon's for Jeff Bezos's first investor is my biggest investor. And my husband has investors in his company like and again, my husband's employment contract explicitly says while he worked at Amazon, he could start a company and seek investment from anyone as long as they weren't an investor in Amazon.

OK. Just out of curiosity, so this was all served in April, May and you're dealing with it in the the early part of 2020 or the mid part of 2020? He separated in 2019 from Amazon, correct. And so when are they alleging this crime took place? 20/17/2018. 2017 and 2018, so 2, you know, 2-3 years prior or two years prior to him leaving and now we are working 2-3 years in arrears. Yeah. And it's 2023. Yeah.

So and that just tells you how long this has been working because that's how long it takes. Like you got to go out there and structure all these things together. So this is a long plan unfolding and they picked the Covic pandemic to to roll it out. On this is actually crazy. It's not that long. This is something that I just am always blown away by. Amazon called DOJ in early February 2020.

They had their first meeting February 20th, 2020 and there were target letters and a national operation on April 2nd, 2020. It's because Amazon needed to give notice of the termination of their contracts, so they needed the FBI to go out and do their national knock and talk. That isn't. That's truly incredible. There are e-mail, there are emails showing that Amazon was working with the DOJ on the timing of taking the

investigation overt. Now you've done you've told me you had a big TikTok following on this. Did you expose any of your documents on? Is there places where people can kind of check your? Yeah, so I'm actually going to put all of. So this is something I think that is also wild that I never

understood. So had my husband ever been charged with a crime, we would have never known any of the things I'm telling you today because we never would have seen any communications between the Department of Justice and Amazon the accuser. And you can tell that Amazon DOJ never thought anyone would see these emails because. That's how it works. Crazy. I mean, the emails are crazy. And like, like, here's just a quick example. Like Amazon asked for civil

forfeiture. The FBI agent working the case said, can you just send me over the employee bank account numbers from when they got their direct deposits? And Amazon, Amazon's lawyer was like, you're going to need to send us a grand jury subpoena for that so that we don't get in trouble. And then boom boom boom, it was done. So what's wild is Phil and I have always said that there's a lot of cockiness, there's a lot of smug people that work in the Bureau when they're doing these

things. And the emails that go back and forth would amaze people that people are willing to put it in writing. They would go, oh, they would never write that down. It's like, oh, you don't know the colleagues that we've worked with. There are some absolutely unbelievable things that if any lawyer had sat there and knew that they were out there, if you just went, you know, digging for a gold mine, there's gold in all the mines. They're all gold mines.

It's all full, crazy and pretty. Yeah, pretty amazing stuff that it's out there and and it's in writing. It's like it's not denying and. I have no doubt that what you're saying is true. That's what's so funny to me because you're talking to somebody who 100% would believe those stories because that's what that's what we assume is out there. I'm sure there are ways that they have referred to me and, and to Phil and some of my buddies that will shock people when they come out.

And I hope they come out in Congress at some point soon. And yeah, it's just the nature of the beast. It's like there's just, it's an arrogance, or maybe it's just a completely, maybe they just don't know that it's ever going to see the light of day. But we are explicitly told everything you send in text message, everything you send in e-mail is discoverable. It's always discoverable. Yeah, it has to be. It has to be, but I think so.

When someone is accused of federal crime, there's a 98.2% chance that they will plead guilty. Not maybe not because they think they're guilty. Many people don't, right? Because a lot of these white collar crimes require this very specific intent to defraud someone. You know, my husband believed he was abiding by his employment contract. He went to a lawyer. I mean, there's so many things here, right? And Amazon wasn't harmed. They benefited. Like this is all, it's wild, but

98.2% of people plead guilty. And, you know, having lived through what prosecutors can do to you, I understand why. Like what they did to us. So they tried to get my husband to plead guilty to a crime. It was always very unclear, like specifically what they wanted him to say. But anyway, my husband's like, I'm not pleading guilty to something. I've committed no crime. Yeah, that's the right. But The thing is, so few people, they're looking down the barrel of whatever the punishment is.

They're looking at what it's going to cost to, to litigate and, and they just go, it's easier for me to just take a, you know, a misdemeanor plea deal or something and end up on probation for a little while, whatever it may. Be the crazy part here is that like they needed a very specific thing a felony against Brian Watson this real estate developer so they went and they accused I think like 5 people of a crime. No one pled guilty.

So then they, then they, they pulled the trigger on the civil forfeiture. So on May 20th, they emptied our bank accounts and they didn't just empty my husband, they emptied my bank account because we shared money. So we literally had no money. And then they also went to our lawyers client trust account and seized all of the money we had paid our lawyers. Whoa. Which we will, you will you will you break it down for layman civil asset forfeiture, which I have seen, but I haven't done

the process on a lot. I understand it's a very powerful tool and certain things like rego cases, it's great. You can do it against transnational organized crime organizations and you know, trafficking and gangs. They do a lot of that with it. You know, so it's going to be ill gotten gains is essentially what they're arguing. But kind of break it down for people what they what they do to you, because the filing is not against you. They don't have to prove a crime against you.

They go after your. They file essentially that that your your assets are part of a criminal. Because then your assets don't have due process, which is why they do it this way. So when civil forfeiture, the United States government on the federal level also, this is in all States and most local governments too. They can seize your bank accounts, your home, your car, your assets on the suspicion of a crime. They do not have to charge you with a crime.

They do not have to prove a crime and once they take it. No due process not proved, not in front of a jury of your peers, and they're depriving you of more than $20 without a jury trial because they didn't file the charges against you. They filed against your stuff, which are not people. So, yeah, so they just take it and it's a it's a in the case.

I have gone back through the Eastern District of Virginia and I cannot find a single instance in the past thirteen years where prosecutors have ever done this in a non drug case. Like once again, just it's for Amazon. And and that's my experience as well. It's almost always like I say, we what we call talk, which is transnational organized crime, which is drugs and gangs. That's what it is. I mean, it was that's. Where they go? It's wild so. OK, So what did, what did you guys do?

Because your bank account gets empty. Like that's that's like full panic mode for most people. It was full. So I will say we didn't have exactly no money. You look, you look. Flustered right now because you're reliving some of that, I can tell. It's so hard, but devastating when we, when we got that first letter that they were going to, that they intended to seize the accounts, which first of all, our lawyers were like, what is this?

Like they just take the money or they don't, they intend to seize it. So my husband and I both opened up new bank accounts and then started putting the money we were earning into our new bank accounts. So we had like 2 months of earnings when they took our money. So we had like a little bit of money, but not enough to pay lawyers. And So what we did, OK, sorry, this part is always hard for me to talk about because it really impacted my kids.

That's right. And mind you, we got the money back 21 months later, but we we sold our home, the home that we bought, that we'd like, we'd worked so hard to buy. Right. We sold a car, we liquidated retirement, we borrowed money from family and friends. I think we borrowed like $130,000, which is a lot of money we. And it and it means nothing to the government to spend $130,000 on litigation like they'll spend $10,000 a day just watching you. Yeah.

People don't understand that like, like you're, you're fighting a bottomless pit of money. And also my mom would have keep saying like, don't they care that you can't feed your kids? And I'm like, they literally they don't care. They do not care. And then eventually and we, we moved to stay with family because we didn't own our home anymore.

And then eventually I my company wasn't making enough money to keep paying me a salary and I had to move away from my family and live in a different state and take a different job like from my babies. Yeah, so you, so you were gone, your husband was with your, your children, which is just insane. And so people that listen to me will also know, you know, I sold my house. I did the same thing. You know, the government basically took my paycheck nine months ago. So I, I have that.

They didn't come after my assets. Thank God, but we sold our house. I took my kids away from the family and their friends. We're living in two bedrooms at my parents house at this moment, Like I'm sitting in a, I'm sitting in an RV. So I feel you. I feel like everything you're saying, like my wife cries at night. And the only thing that's made it better is that we're we're all together. We're all together in tiny

quarters. But I keep having to go and do weird things in weird places and run around and talk to people and, and you got to do what you got to do, but you're away from your children and there's nothing worse because it's the best time when there's such little, you know, gems and they're just having like a little moments, like all the time. And you, all you see is like a video or a FaceTime of it. It's not the same. It's not the same and it's, you know, it's brutal.

And it's worse for moms. I know it's worse for moms. I just. But you know, like The thing is like I would have never stopped fighting, nor would my husband because we weren't we weren't we weren't going to do this like we were not going to let you had because we had not just DOJ against us, but Amazon like this is like. This is the 2 evil giants. Here's the thing. I love you guys. I don't know you, but I love you for what you did. I really do.

Because the number of people that rolled over when this stuff happens is 98.2%. It's everybody. It's freaking everybody. And there's a small number of people that go, this is wrong. And no matter what happens, I'm trying to live in a world where my children know that I'm going to do the right thing, even though it's incredibly hard. So it's. It's simple, but it's not easy as my buddy was to say. But it's like, it's really, my

husband always says this right? Like we've got God at our back, right. Like we're right, we're right. And so you know, the right right doesn't always win, but you have to try. Do you mind if I dig into that just for a second? I'm curious, were you always spiritual people or did this drive you somewhere? So we were both raised spiritually, but we had not really gone to church and not talked a lot about our faith as married people. And this is just, you know, it's. New, right?

It's new when you find hardship. And then it's like, yeah, what? Like who else are you going to turn to? There's no one else, right? And so you know, and it is. My wife was baptized last year and she had grown up without any religion at all. And and she was like, how did I not know about this? It's, it's one of the, it's one

of the only things. It's like you just got to throw yourself into God's hands and say, like, I'm not driving this train, I'm just riding it. I think I'm doing the right thing and. Yeah, And somehow you get, you get saved every time, right? Like we should have never survived this. Like this should have been very easy for them to do to us. Yes. But I think there's a bigger purpose to it and the and the things keep happening like, you know, this new committee on the

weaponization of DOJ. You know, I believe that my family's story, particularly because we have the emails, is like the clearest, simplest example of the weaponization of DOJ by corporations and you. Want to testify there? I'd be 100% want to testify, absolutely. I'm going to I'm going to make that I'm going to work to make that happen because I'm making a lot of things happen that I have no business being able to do but it. But I had Jim Jordan say my name five times on radio last week.

So those people who listen to, you know, Sean Hannity, which I don't always listen to Hannity, but I, I listen to this one to hear it because it's like he didn't even get prompted for it. And so like we have, you know, you talk about God putting us in a place. Phil and I talked about this too, probably two years ago almost that there is no reason.

If I had told people that you and I'd be sitting having this conversation in the situations that we're in that we should have been able to do this shouldn't exist. I agree. And I also think that like for me too, I think I can be this really important bridge to like maybe help progressives stop just swallowing a lot of stuff about the state that we live in that we don't have to it's.

Not a good, it is not a good pit bull to have #1 And moreover, like when you and I grew up, people might joke about the government could listen to your phone calls, but they didn't know where you were every second of the day. They didn't know what you bought. They didn't know all the things that you were saying everywhere. You were your, your privatest thoughts that you're texting to your spouse. Those were not within the purview of the government. And now it's assumed that that's

the case. Yeah, it really is. Yeah. I mean, they, the government, we know now. I mean, the government subpoenaed my husband's emails. They they did come and do a search warrant, which was another crazy experience because. I'm doing the same thing right now because this like this emotionally affects me as well. I can, I can. I literally, I literally know how you guys feel about things like this.

It feels hopeless and it feels like an unbelievable betrayal when you didn't do anything wrong and then everything just goes massively sideways and you think like, why me? And I'll tell you why you? It's because you guys had the shoulders to be able to handle it. Like nobody knows why, but that's why. Because you, because you could and someone needed to and it was you, unfortunately, but also thankfully. Yeah, I mean, but then you have to use it to do something.

You have to use it. You have to. I mean when they came into the search warrant, my mind was blown 1000 times over again because they did the search warrant two months after they told my husband he was a target of an investigation where it's like. They do that sometimes. We, I mean, I've seen it before, but explain to people what that felt like on your end a bit because you're not. Are you in your own house at

that point or have you sold? It fill in our house in Seattle, because this is like 10 days after they took the money. Like it took us a few months to like realize, Oh my God, we have to sell our house. We're not getting the money back, which it you have to litigate to get your money back, which we did. But anyway, they show up at our it's June 5th and we thought they were there.

It was June 5th again. It was before 7 AMI am again awake with the baby on my hip and there is not a knock on the door. It is a Bang, Bang Bang and I I mean. You know right then too, I'm sure. IA 100% thought they were there to arrest him because they had been telling us. One of the other tools in a prosecutor's arsenal is that we're just, we're going to come arrest you in your home in front of your kids. You don't plead guilty. We're coming and that is living under siege.

I will tell you it's living under siege. It's an emotional siege, but it's a it's a siege nonetheless, and you're waiting for it, I'm sure. Just waiting. Yeah. And I mean, I I lost 20 lbs in two weeks. My body went into pure shock. And this. Is after the search warrant or waiting for it? This is beef waiting for it. We're waiting for the arrest, really. And, you know, I had been nursing and I wasn't able to. I mean, it's, you know.

No, it's, it's like the things that they do, it's not you, It's, you know, it's your family, it's your kids that everybody gets it. And if you're nursing, then that's part of it. And then if you're, you know, you're emotionally snappy and you're not patient with your children and loving the way you could have been because you're just, you're on edge at all times.

I, I know that I know exactly this feeling like I, I've been living it. My wife told me like, are the Clinton death squads coming for us, which is, you know, the sort of the right wing joke? Is someone going to come and try to off us in our night is what we've done? But I slept with a but I slept with a rifle that was next to my bed. And I still have a night vision helmet and a rifle next to my bed. I. Understand. And I'm not exaggerating. Like that's just the way I have

to be right now. I can't imagine. I understand my our lawyers all the time are like, Amy, no one is going to come hurt your family. And I'm like, no like. You're like, well, nobody should have come and taken my bank account either and nobody should have come and knocked on my door and told my husband he did something that he didn't do because some huge corporation needs to make, you know, multi billion dollar profit on us back of just crushing your life. Yeah, they just don't.

And so the FBI source warrant like so we thought they were there to arrest him. What? What kind of team did they send in? Were they all? Were they? 4 agents so I went to the door again. Poor me. No, I went to the door and it was 4 agents and they it's. Better than them knocking it down to be honest. Yeah, they had their guns out.

They had their guns out and they had on their Navy blue FBI jackets and, and I mean, 100% thought they were there to arrest Carl. So my mind was like, how do I keep the older girls away from this, right. Like they're, they're in the basement. I'm like, I'm gonna open the door. I'm gonna get Carl out here and I'm just gonna keep him in the basement. We're just gonna sit down there until this is over and he's gone so they don't have to see it

because that was all the. Church warrants even worse because I know they had to put you all in the same room and watch you. No, listen to this, Kyle. This is so crazy. So they're like, and the agent was like, we're, you know, I opened the door and I was like, we have a daughter in here with febrile seizures, which they knew our oldest daughter had very bad febrile seizures. We'd told the DOJ that because again, it's the height of the pandemic and if you've ever seen a child sees.

I have, yeah. I'm a paramedic. I've seen it a lot. And with COVID and the, and the fevers and whatnot, and they had put an agent on a plane across the country, I think a private plane to do the search warrant. They put the lead case agent on a private plane to come to our house to the search warrant. This is a week after my husband's lawyers had given a big presentation to the government about why my husband didn't commit a crime.

So they knew they were walking into tons of attorney-client privileged materials. Of course. Anyway, so I opened the door and I was like, we have a child with seizures and he's like, we're going to let you and the girls leave. And I was like. Where? I go, I was like, what? He's like, yeah. He's like, get all your daughters and put them in the car and leave. And I was like, and he goes, but don't do anything stupid. Don't take anything. And I was like, and he goes, you

already did something stupid. And I was like, I'm sorry. And he was like, you wired money to pay your attorneys. And I'm like, you're not allowed to talk to me. That's what I said that when I was like, we're represented. You are not allowed. Like, let's not do this, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but then my husband walked up and I thought that they I don't know what I thought. And he he walked up. He hadn't heard At that point I I think I realized they were

there to do a search warrant. My husband walked up with his his. If you can see me, I'm putting my arms out because. He's ready to be cuffed. He's ready to be cuffed. He wanted to make it as quick and fast and we. Cuff in the We cuff in the back, but he's. Not he's not a he's not a long term con artist. Yeah, he doesn't, he doesn't know exactly. Yeah, somebody says assume the position and they know they turn around, they put their hands

behind their back. But yeah, he came, you know, he did the AOC like hands up front thing, which is which is what people would assume. And also, you know, that's that's it's such a, you know, it, it's such a just an even keeled posture. It's like what this is happening. You just, you're accepting it, you move on. So did they cuff him? No. Thank God for that. They they do have discretion, so thank God for that.

So they walk. So I am like, so they kind of all waited at the door until I got the girls and I left. And so I get, I get all the girls. I'm like shoving them into the minivan. I, I got our German Shepherd and put her in the minivan too, because I didn't want anything to happen to her. And I am tying my shoes, called Carl's lawyer while I'm tying my shoes. And I'm like, they're here for a search warrant and they're like, what? They're like, this makes no sense.

What is 'cause they had just subpoenaed my husband. He hadn't even had a chance to respond to the subpoena as it was going to. And they're like, what is going on? And I now know it's just a pressure tactic, you know, because. Yeah. So we, we say the, the process is the punishment in this case. And I've only been seeing it more and more recently. I don't think that I've ever participated in something like that.

I, I'm pretty confident that I have not 'cause I I'm pretty good at throwing the bullshit flag when it comes up. I try not to swear actually, too, but there's no other way to call it when these things happen, you know, You know, somebody's got PCP and guns and they're felons. It's kind of a different animal. Then you go to a mom's house. It's like, why are we not doing a summons? Yeah, we need to do a search. Like, you know, we could work

this through the attorneys. It seems pretty straightforward. And also, like my husband had said, if you're going to arrest me, like if you're going to charge me, please let me come and turn myself in and I will. And they were like. Yeah, that's the summons we're going to do. That's just your house. And it's unbelievable stuff.

Phil had a comment to me and not long ago where he said, you know, at this point that these guys, you know, the people that are that are followers of the regime because these people obviously believed in what they were doing, right? Would you agree with that? That's why they were talking that you've already done something stupid. You send money to a lawyer, It's like, shame on you. You know, they're believing in what they do.

And at this point, I think, I think Phil told me something that he he thinks that our former colleagues and and by the way, they came out of those people came out of our former office. I was right of Washington Field. So that's where it came from, I mean. I know their names so I can tell you, but yeah, you. Can and, and I, and that's the whole thing about this is like, I don't, I don't need to protect anybody's name. They have a public facing job and they serve the public.

So you feel like saying it, feel free. You're there's no restrictions on it. But those people would, you know, people that, that believe in what the Bureau does so wholeheartedly that they're willing to go and like knock somebody out of their house in this kind of way on a white collar crime. They would kick their grandma into a wood chipper for their next promotion. Which is also remember a process crime like lying to an FBI agent like Amazon is not harmed here, right? Like this is.

Right. There's no violence, there's no danger. There's no, there's no, you know, public risk that's being. No monetary, no monetary loss. Not even any loss like it's a process crime. It's just yeah, so. It's incredible. OK, so you got the kids in the car. You got the dog in the car. I got a German shepherd too, so I empathize with that one as well. You got to take care of your baby, your fur baby. And so we left and went to, I went to like my best friend's

house. She doesn't have kids. I called her, I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm coming over with all of my kids. Like, you just have to deal with this for a minute. And I thought that we would be there all day at my friend's house because I, I don't, I guess from the movies, I thought that search warrants lasted all day. It was 30 minutes. Yeah, it it goes, it goes the whole gamut. I've seen 48 hour search warrants where we'll hold the

scene for 48 hours or more. But I've also seen them go through where they just tear up and go get they need and that's it. They get. Did they get electronics? They didn't tear anything up. They just took my husband's cell phone and his laptop. Yeah. And then like a few pieces of paper, including memos on law firm letterhead that said attorney-client privilege, they just went ahead and took those.

And my husband again. People can't see this, but Phil is shaking his head in disgust right now. It is disgusting because those like you're literally supposed to leave that sort of stuff. Well. Yeah, it's literally like he's preparing to be indicted and go to trial and this is his defense, right? You're like. You're now you're now infringing on his ability to do A to mount a solid defense.

And so the they go get upstairs to my husband's office and they're very careful like not to take anything of mine, I think because I'm a lawyer and that would have been maybe a. Well, so I'm sure I don't know if you guys saw the search warrant like the the what is it? Is it Appendix A? Is that what it's called the appendix where it says like actually what they're allowed to search? And usually it should be, it should be focused to him.

If you have a drawer that's not his drawer, then you shouldn't. It shouldn't go into yours, all that kind. Of stuff. Yeah. So they took, so they, they had him open up his laptop and they're like, will you open it and enter the password? We can do this the hard way or the easy way. And my husband's like, I'll give you the password, Whatever have it, I don't care. Why, Yeah. Like, you know, like have it like I like I've done nothing wrong. Go for it.

So he gives them the password, they open it up. So it it opens up to like presentation like all to our attorney-client stuff because that was all he was doing. So anyway, search for an ends. I come home and we are, you know, conversations with our lawyers and our lawyers immediately go to DOJ and they're like you took attorney-client privilege stuff. You know that like you're not stupid. You know you did this and

they're. Like do they have a tank team or anything like that that's set up to be able to evaluate that? Let me explain this to you. Sorry, they take this, so they take they get this laptop, it's gone. And again, we're like, you need to put a taint team in place. Like of course, like this is we have to do this. Tell people what that is just. A paint team is so if they do a search warrant and they think they're going to get stuff that's attorney-client privilege.

The they're supposed to have a separate team of FBI agents and lawyers review everything and then separate out anything that might be attorney-client privilege and not let the prosecutors and agents working on the case review it. Problem here, they sent the lead case agent across the country to do the search warrant when anyone in Seattle could have gotten the laptop. If you feel shaking his head right now, can you see? I mean like. Is it nuts? It's nuts.

It's nuts. Like it's just the other thing is they put on the search warrant, they included to search for communications between my husband and his business lawyer that has set up his company. So like they were purpose. I mean, I don't anyway, So, so this happens. But and they're like the prosecutor who wrote back to my husband's lawyers, his name is Uzo Sonia. He was a prosecutor for Robert Mueller. He has since left and gone to work for a law firm that represents Amazon. Oh, shocker.

Yeah, that would never happen. Why would someone who just did a, you know, Amazon hatchet job get an Amazon job? That doesn't make sense. That's not how we do it, is it? Yeah, it's so ridiculous. But anyway, he so he writes back to the lawyers and he's like, you will not dictate the time, the timing of our investigation. We'll get back to you when it's appropriate. And then we never heard back. And then like a year late, a year later, this is how like

slowly this all. Moves and you're not in your home and you don't have your money. Living with my husband's family, we don't have our dog. She's left with a friend because we're in a different state and it's so sad. Anyway. When when did you get did you reunite with your kid at us to go after you went to go work or were you? Still, we all now live together in Ohio. OK. Is that where you are right now?

Yeah, I'm in Ohio now. Yeah, We live in Columbus, OH now where this is where my family is. We eventually came here and stayed with my family. I was, and that's when I was commuting to New York to work a job. So I was living in New York Monday to Friday. My kids were here. But now in, like, I mean, sometimes good things happen in the world. We were able to rebuild my company. I am now the CEO of my company again. It is amazing.

I'm home. It's, you know, but so we learn a year later after the search warrant, that somehow in the government's possession, my husband's laptop has become encrypted and it is unencryptable. They they didn't put the password in right and they they locked it down. So it's gone. All of his stuff. All of it. And he couldn't unlock it either. No. So what they needed was something called a Microsoft BitLocker key, and my husband hadn't gotten the laptop from Amazon. Oh. He didn't.

He wasn't like, it was like a gift from his boss. So he didn't have the BitLocker key. We called Microsoft and we we tried, we tried right to like, we tried to get it open. It's just gone. Everything you had in there. Everything is gone. And then eventually we learned that the FBI agents and the prosecutors did look at the attorney-client privileged materials. Of course, yeah. They got the FBI agent got removed from the investigation by the DOJ. Well, at least there's that.

Did they get hit with any sort of OPR coverage? No. No, and we had to fight. We had to fight. Out of curiosity, did you file an OIG complaint? Not yet. It's like a hole because the investigation. It's awful. And listen, I don't have any faith in that process either. I'm going to do it just because you do it. You do it because it's a pain in the ass for them and that's the only thing you can do. But. I mean, but I I like Kyle, the investigation ostensibly could still be ongoing.

Like we don't know correct what's going on, You know, it's but it could be, it could go on for five years, I guess, right. So. I could go on. Yeah. Is there a statute? Is that what it is? Yeah, five years. Yeah, so. Unless they added different things to it, if they added, you know, false statements or, you know, obstruction charges and they could do it for another, whatever it is. Yeah. So there's no question about it. Yeah.

There's no question that it could be ongoing, but also probably has to lose some steam because they're like what the hell they can do and Amazon got what they wanted. Well, Amazon hasn't got what they wanted really, because they still. They didn't get to break the contract. But they did break the contract without a felony. So unless, unless they get a felony, they're going to be liable for these damages. Like there's still, that's why we know.

I can tell you too. And I want to see head shakes at this one. Phil, do we know from the emails that we've seen that Amazon was able to meet with prosecutors over 100 times to lobby for criminal charges, that is? 100 * a. 100 times. It should be one time. It's like here. We'd like to report this problem and then the FBI says, cool, thank you. And then we don't comment on ongoing investigations. 100 times. That's insane. There's no other way to say it. Like that's just the most insane

thing. All right, so let's let's keep pushing through this story like I'm there's some light on the end of the tunnel only because you're OK now and you're there. So let's let's keep pushing through. They they lost the laptop. It's all fully encrypted. They can no longer so now they now they don't have access to all your stuff, but they all saw it and they removed the case agent who I'm sure could never talk to anybody else in the office. White collar squad.

I'm sure that you know he sits right next to the other people that do the same work. Oh yeah, I mean, yeah, right. Like the other agent that's been on it the whole time is still never got removed from it. And their friends, their Facebook, that's the other thing. I have been able to figure out so much stuff about connections just by looking at Facebook and LinkedIn and it's. Not something it's we call that, we call that open source.

In fact, there's a so there's a guy that I was in a Twitter space with last night and he goes by name redacted. I know his real name, but I'm not going to say it. And he has and he basically does open source research on Twitter and on Google and on Amazon and on all these different FBI and CIA and other intelligence community people that are hired

on there. And he did it all through going through LinkedIn and he went through their, their Facebook connections and, you know, their access that they have on Twitter and who they're following and who their friends are and all that. And it's out there and they're not. They're not scared about putting it out there. The prosecutor, the one prosecutor has been there the whole time. He was removed in July of last year. And I'll tell you why because that's another crazy story.

But he is like on LinkedIn, liking like Amazon HQ 2, bringing a lot of jobs to Virginia. And I'm like, can you just try a little bit? Yeah, this is the this was the Crystal City project, is that right? That they're. Yeah, I mean, I was there when that was going down, obviously. Yeah. But like, so he's he's liking, Yeah, way to go in. Like why is he following?

Him and then like the Amazon lawyer who's lobbying the prosecutors is like when Uzo and Sonia left to get a job, you know, in the private sector, the Amazon lawyer used for Omar is like good luck, Uzo, thanks for everything and it's like. It's all there. Getting beers together, like is that what's happening, going. To the strip club in Crystal City. I mean, it's basically what it feels like it's. And they probably are.

Well, and you know, and going through LinkedIn, I realized that Amazon is hiring hundreds of former prosecutors and FBI agents. So like, of course we like, you know, like my husband's not going to hire your former FBI agents or, and you're going to make 3 or 5X what you did at the Bureau going to work for Amazon. And Amazon has on their board the former head of the NSA, Keith Alexander. Like what business experience does Keith Alexander have? Like what business? Experience.

Do any of them have? No, the only reason Keith Alexander is on the board is to help Amazon get contracts with the NSA and other government agencies. Correct. So I've been calling this the the information industrial complex, very similar to what goes on then. OK. And so I'm not, I didn't originate because I actually Google searched it and I found out there are mentions going back to 2014, some academic papers.

But the information industrial complex is essentially the same thing that goes on in the military industrial complex. You don't hire generals because they know the most about tanks or planes or small weapon systems for squad based, you know, operation. You hire them because you know who's buying them, and they're friends with the guy who writes the check for the next round because that guy just took his

old job and they were buddies. So that's the same thing that's going on in this intelligence community. It's like the people who are going to stroke out the check that pays for the web services for hosting Jedi or whatever else they're buddies with, and they just left that job so that you know exactly what I'm talking.

About well, I figured out I'm, I'm just me, you know, I'm just this Mama for I guess I'm a lawyer, but like I'm just doing Google research and there's this woman named Christine Halverson who was like a 20 year agent. She spoke at AWS Big conference which is called Reinvent. What's her name? Christine Halverson. Halverson, OK. So she spoke at this big AWS reinvent conference as a member of the FBI saying the FBI say or AWS saved the FBI. Take a guess where she works now.

Oh, I wonder if she works for Amazon Web Services. She does indeed, and guess she does sales for the government. It's. Great. Is it because she knows people in the government? That's strange. I mean it's. Just like what's also funny is that a lot of these people haven't worked in a decade, especially when they're senior executives. They literally haven't had a job. They just so, you know, they

just get accolades. Their job is literally compiling their resume to say what people under them did because they're not operationally doing invest. You know, they're not doing investigations, they're not doing any of this stuff. It's nauseating. I think the only good thing is I think the only silver lining out of all this kind of insanity is that they're visible in a way that they've never been before.

And it's like this year, you know, in the last four months, they're visible in a way that nobody's ever seen. And now they're realizing like, oh crap, we better hide some of this stuff. But it's too late because the scurrying, it's it's happening. The lights already on.

Well, in fact, like the prosecutor that liked, you know, and had all these interactions with Amazon and LinkedIn, he took down his LinkedIn profile because he's in fact about to be seated as a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia. And he took. Oh, that's wonderful. Thank. You took down his LinkedIn profile after? I, like, put something on Twitter, but like, it's like, I mean, this is all, it's just all so transparently corrupt. It, it just bothers me.

It's like, and and part of it is like, did you think we were all so stupid that we wouldn't try to figure this out? Like, I wouldn't care for my family. Yeah, I, I care. Do you think I don't care enough about my husband's freedom to try to go fight and figure this out? Like I, I just like you're trying to put people in prison like you. Said it. You went to war for your family. That's what my that's what my my wife calls what I'm doing right now. This is the war.

We're in it. You guys are not done with it like you can't be. And, and obviously you're out there talking about it too. And that's the only other way to do it. It's like we have to spread information because this is this is what's called 5 GW. Are you familiar with that that term? No, no. Five GW is it's it's known as fifth generation warfare. So there's different types of warfare like third generation is like modern conventional

warfare. 4th generation is like the counterinsurgency insurgency type fighting. 5th generation war is an information war and when you and when everybody is feeling right now in this country is that anxiety that is being seated by being in the middle of a of an actual civil war or an actual war. It doesn't have to be civil. I guess I don't know what you like the the the parties are not even. But. But but what we're fighting is,

is a legitimate information war. And it's it's done with misinformation, it's done with distrust operations, it's done with, you know, fighting against it and marginalizing institutions. It's it's manipulation of the media. It's, you know, everyone always calls it like psyops. Psyops are like battles. Yeah. In a larger war. And so that anxiety, like what's wrong with our country and how did we get here and what is going, you know, all the things

that I know that are wrong. And it doesn't matter whether you're on the left or the right politically speaking, because everybody has that same sensation. Like there's something that is not right. That's five GW. And so you know, you're in it whether you like it or not. And so you you mentioned the word, you're accurately stating that. And I want to reaffirm what you're saying that because it's very important that people know this is not like a turn of

speech. This isn't there's an actual, you can look at the definition of five GW and you can read all kinds of stuff. There's whole books written on it. And and they've gone back, you know, probably to World War One. Those were psyops campaigns.

It always accompanied. They just didn't, you know, codify it and and study it. But when we start looking at what that is it, it makes more sense that like the things that you're, you know, the sort of emotional traumas and, and the wreckage of family lives that go along. It's very real. Like it's real trauma, it's real destruction that is is wreaking havoc on your life. Phil had the same experience. I had the same experience. Yeah, I'm so sorry that you went through that like it's well.

It's like we're in it together. So like, you don't have to be sorry. We're we're, we're teammates on this. The teammates are people that know that something is wrong, yeah, and, and, and not wanting it to continue. So I think. People like don't understand kind of like the the real repercussions of it. Like I until I work, I've I've like, I've never been someone who's like on it's OK if you go to therapy. I like, don't judge, but I've never been someone who had like, you know?

I married a therapist because I needed it probably like I'm I'm vertically integrated in my house. But I always thought like, oh, I'm tough, you know, I'm tough. But after the FBI search warrant, after the search warrant, I started taking my daughters up. I would wake them up at 5:30 every morning for months and Carl and my husband and I would take them out of the house to go to a park for like hours and then we had a baby monitor in

the window and we would. And that was literally so that you were not there if they did it again, people need to understand how how real that is because that's not you're not the only person I've ever heard of doing that. I was waking up at 5:00 AM for the last couple months as well. Part of it's because I have a 2 year old, a sub 2 year old who wants to wake up and scream stuff. But part of it is because my wife and I were just sitting there awake. And it's like, is this the

morning? Is this the morning? You know, it's like, I know and there's we had a, we have a security gate at my parents place that like is locked outside of the front door. And so it would be, it would be not easy for them to like bang through it. They probably, I mean, they could, they'd have to breach with the team though. But if they send someone for me, they're sending a swat team, right? Like I'm trained. I have like, I have all kinds of weapon systems. It's next to my bed.

I I talk about it publicly. So I'm up because I don't, I want at least identify what the target is like. It's not some like rogue, you know, criminal agent that they, they turned on us and it's actually like federal agents. And if it is, then we have to open the door. So we're having that. And it's like, I'm not trying to get in a shootout in front of my children, right. But I'm also I don't know who's going to come. Like I don't know who's coming and neither do you.

And so that like sleeping on the floor and waking up and, and getting your kids out of the house before six. That is, that's that's insanity for most people. And that was your reality for a while. Yeah. And then even when we stopped doing it because we finally, I think in the fall of 2020, the prosecutors agreed that if they were going to charge him, they would let him turn himself in. And that felt like a miracle to me. I was like, Oh my God.

And that should have been the default position. And people, people who are, if you're just listening to our audio stream, you can't see it. Like, you know, Amy's got some emotion on her face. I'll just say it like, that's the only way. And I feel the same way right now, too. It's it's devastating to like have to have that conversation with your spouse and like, what's the Strat? Like what is our strategy for surviving the unknown here? That's coming down?

Because that's what it is. It's unknown. And last night, my husband and I were talking about like, how we're proud of ourselves that through this, our kids are loved. And they're, you know, they know they're loved. They, they, they think they're safe and that, like, we have found a way to like, laugh and find joy. But that's what people at war do, right? You learn to live at war.

Like you, it is the war. Babies are born at war, you know, like, it's like you just, you learn to live like this. And I know, like, eventually this will end, but I cannot imagine what it will feel like because the war doesn't end when our situation ends. And the thing that we have to do when this ends is keep being loud. And I do feel much safer being loud. I feel so much safer being loud. Isn't that funny?

I had a funny conversation. I called the FB is field office and I found the investigator who who got me thrown out of the office and it was for BS charges. Like I was out shooting in the desert in the middle of public land. It was like 20 miles of desert. Nobody cares. Oh my God, I have to tell you something. When you're done. Yeah. You tell me now and I I know my story. You tell me your story.

Speaking of like BS charges, like they're, they're, they're the like, he's the chief information officer at Amazon. He was a former FBI guy, wasn't a special agent. He was like an IT guy. He was accused while at the FBI of charging a private plane ride home from an assignment on a government credit card without authorization. He wasn't kicked out of the FBI, no. What is? This and like you're like shooting a guy in the desert and they're like, you're out like

this. I'm, I'm, I'm literally wearing my duty belt and my badge on my belt and I am doing training, handgun training because if I have to ever draw my weapon, I want to be precise and I want to be accurate because I might save a life that way, whether it be at my church or whether it be on duty, it doesn't make a difference. I want to take shots that are only good shots and I want to be disciplined on him and I want to be fast and all the things.

So I'm out there doing that. And this woman from headquarters, I called her up and she didn't know what I recorded her for an hour and 8 minutes because that's, you know, she's in a one party consent state and so am I. So let's do this. So I, I recorded her and she started counseling me and she was like, you, all the things you're doing because I'd already gone public with the media. She's like, you know, my son is crying in the background while this, like while this taping is going on.

It's kind of funny because I put it on the Internet. So like, screw it. I was like, I'm, I'm 100% transparent. Here's the body Cam footage of what I did. Like people can go see it. If you're new to our channel, go back and look, it's, there's a whole thing called why I got suspended. And then it mixes in the this woman's conversation with me and she's like, all the things you're doing just, you need to

stop moving. And, and she was like, you're making things more complicated for yourself. And I'm like, no, I'm making it really simple. I only have one path forward. It's incredibly loud and it's full transparency, radical transparency, things that you guys are not comfortable with me on. Last night I publicized a an e-mail that I forgot I had and I redacted the names of people that I like.

And I left the names of the people that are the senior executives that were in it, including the phone number for the chief diversity officer, who's a former FBI agent and then got promoted because he's a black guy to be in charge of

diversity of all things. And they said in the e-mail, we are going to hire people from historically black colleges and universities over any other applicants, regardless of the year in major because, because diversity, because we need to hire black people, Which is insane to me because I had great friends that on my, you know, on my squads who were black. But it wasn't because they were black. It's because they were just awesome guys.

Like they were just good dudes. And there was a couple of good girls that I worked with that were actually at the, you know, girls, gals, whatever, that were at my Academy class. And they were studs. Like they were fast and they could shoot and they could wrestle and they were like the things you want to work with and who cares what color your skin is? I thought that was the whole point of what I grew up in the 80s.

I thought we were over that. And then we get this e-mail and it literally says regardless of their of their their major and regardless of the year of study, these people need to be interviewed for the job. And with the implicit sort of like that, you have to hire them. Amazingly, at least to me, that is an incredibly, incredibly valuable and competitive program.

So like we would get people that had, you know, master's degrees coming out of Yale and security studies that had 810 years of like military experience and then went back to grad school. And then they come out for this internship because you get a top secret security clearance. You can walk into a you can walk into a six figure government job with it. And we are giving them out to people based on race. So I published that too. It's like, screw it.

Like all radical transparency. Everything should be explicit. The louder you are, the safer you are. And you're exactly right with that instinct, I think because they didn't know what. To do with me. Yeah. I mean, I also think that like talking about radical transparency from what I've

learned about the FBI. And again, this is just like, as someone who's been on the other side of an investigation, like it was really mind blowing to me that when the government, when the FBI interviews someone, even in this modern age where we all carry recorders in our pockets, the government, the FBI doesn't record the interview. They take notes. And then those notes to are typed up into a memo, and then that memo is the official record of what happened.

This is my recorder. I recorded every interview that I could. I brought my own. I paid for it with my own money. You know why? Because I can send it to the defense attorney and we don't have any disagreement. But what was? Why wouldn't every agent want to do that? Why wouldn't the? Agent, it was $85. I make plenty of good money. When I was working as an agent, I had a six figure gig and I can afford an 85 dollar thing and I would put on the table and I would say the same thing every

single time. I'd like to record this with your permission, I will send you a copy of it. Please give me a business card or an address right now and you will get a copy of it and I'll send one to your defense attorney on the government's time. It's easy days. That is like that. That to me, would revolutionize the FBI. You. Want to know another thing? It's policy that they do it, that they record. It's policy. Yeah, It's permissive policy, though. It's a it's a may, but not

shall. And here's why. It says when feasible, all interviews should be recorded. So all they have to say is, well, like I didn't get a government issued recorder. We don't issue them. And so it's not feasible. If we did a field interview, I brought this, I recorded phone interviews, I would put it on speaker. I would let people know exactly what's going to happen. Hey, I'd like to record this for your, you know, for our both of our safety.

I want you to have a copy of it and then I would do direct quotes out of it. When I did my 3O2, the three O 2 is the testimonial document that you would that you received along with those notes. But like I don't take notes. Why I have the words? That's so. I mean so. It doesn't matter. I'm just paying attention to what you say and then we'll go back and we'll just see what that conversation looks like. Like I'm pretty good at talking to people.

I've got a pretty good memory. That's why I got hired. And moreover, your defense attorney can hear exactly what it was you said. And when I would do it with an attorney present, I would hell him right on front on the camera or on the on the recording. It's it's like, listen, this is your client. Your job is to protect your client. My job is to ask your client questions. Please make sure that they refer to you before answering anything.

If you want them to like put a hand up and I won't, I'll just wait. Like I just care about the truth. I don't get paid by winning the cases. There's literally no incentives. I don't care. So, like, The thing is, is like, if it's about the truth, like that's the way the system is

supposed to work. Like in our case, I know from of the emails that like when Amazon accused my husband of a crime to avoid a million, $100 million in damages, the prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia lined up their press office. Of course. I mean, that's ridiculous, yeah. I don't have time for that. That's not what I signed up for, and I know there's a lot of people that didn't.

The problem is plenty of people are going to look down the barrel and say, well, if I have a big case, I can brief it forever. I can take a headquarters position, I can go be a program manager or unit chief. I can come back in and be a supervisor of a squad. I can promote to ASAC. And like what? Are they looking at Amazon? I mean, that's the other piece, right? So that's not, that would never even factor into my brain that existed until recently.

But that is a that is a thing that goes on because we've been watching out like the guy who used to run the Washington field office who would have been in charge during this time, Steve Deantuano, he just went and became a partner. What was the where did he go, Phil? What's he where? He's a partner at KP and G. So he went and and yeah, like, what the hell does he know about accounting? I can promise you nothing. Like not he hasn't done accounting in in 15 years.

He hasn't been working cases in 15 years. So they're not bringing a skill set. But it's so easy to record just dialing back into what's so crazy. And so you experienced this in a funny way, not funny, but like quirky. I would say that they're out there taking notes and that notes got scanned in. So you got a copy of that in your discovery? Well, we never, so we actually never did because Carl's never charged with a crime and that. And so of course, the way the way we got.

That's what you would have gotten though. That's what we would have gotten. And the way that the way that we got all the emails between Amazon and DOJ is that when Amazon could not get the criminal charges they were spending millions lobbying for, they sued everyone in civil court. They did not move that case forward while they were in the background meeting with DOJ, but they kept the lawsuit going to try to like deprive people of money essentially. And we have forced that into trial.

It is going to trial on May 1st like the defendants have forced it to a trial date. So that's coming to a head, right, which is great. And we're my husband is so looking forward to his day in court. Yeah, and let's plan on doing another one of these and, and doing a reaction 'cause I want, I want the, I want Part 2, the wrap up when you guys actually see what happens. I'm sure they'll appeal it whatever that happens, but.

But during the in in between, just to wrap that part up, like we did litigate, when your money is taken by civil forfeiture and you're not charged with a crime, the government has to file a civil lawsuit against the bank account. So the bank account is the defendant and then you as the human being have to pay for the bank account's defense. And we did that. And so the government. Say, say that one more time for people to like grasp because I I don't think it's easy to grasp it.

Civil asset forfeiture The defendant is a is a a non thing. It's a bank account, it's a house. It's like the address of the house. So ours it's. Your Ferrari. It was like USB-4, like they choose one of the they seize multiple bank accounts far. So it was like USB $4780 at Wells Fargo and that's the case. Right. So then the government, they filed the complaint and then they stayed the complaint. They didn't want to litigate it, and the judge gave them six months.

Then they stayed it again, and they wanted six more. Months. So they're kicking this down the cans that you're still dealing with. Nothing we can do, right? Nothing we can do. So the government the second time was like you get 4 months and then that four months was up and I was like, yes, we get to litigate. We get I want them to prove, see if they prove their case and when it's a civil burden. So it's just more likely than not, right? Yeah, proponents of the evidence, right?

The day, the day comes that the government has to prove their case and they're like, do you want to settle? So we were like we by the. Way they're they're terrified of going to trial. My buddies who were AUSAS told me that the new generation of US attorneys and the new generation of assistant US attorneys, which is the frontline prosecutors, they have 0 court experience. A lot of times they are used to

plea deals, like you said. And they are so scared of being like, put up against, you know, legitimate defense attorneys who used to actually go to court because it used to be that like, that's where the battle is. Yeah. You know, like for the F for the FBI agent, it's it's like, I want to go to court if you like, like, first of all, I want to come and win right away. I want to be able to show you so much stuff that you don't have any choice. That's really good if you have a righteous case.

But if they're going to contest it, you know, that's the that's where you get to show like, hey, we did really good work here. And when you don't have it, when it's not there, there is nothing scarier. I have to imagine then knowing that your reputation and your future jobs as a defense attorney and whatever else that you think you're going to go to, you're about to lose. You're going to have a losing court record. And it's not going to be a lot

against a lot. It's going to be pled down 98%, lost every time I went out in front of a jury. That's not good. Yeah. And so like they, they said you want to settle and we wanted to ask for 100% back and we didn't think we'd get it. So we're like, fine, we'll ask for 85% back. The government did not negotiate. They just gave us 85% back and we had to sign something saying we wouldn't sue them. Right. Isn't that something? So all they did was deprive you

of your resources? Take 15% of 15% of your net worth I assume. Yeah, and then after Amazon got the civil forfeiture, then Amazon sued my husband in civil court. So they they deprived my husband of being able to defend himself against a trillion dollar company in civil court like. It's disgusting. It's so gross. It's so. And here's you know, I know. It's unfair and we know it's unfair, but it like everybody, everyone goes, yeah, of course

it's unfair. You're like, yeah, but you haven't experienced it. Like there's a fundamental part of your body that knows what fairness is like. Human beings know from a very young age your your little children know if you gave one person a biscuit and the other one didn't get a biscuit, like they'd be pissed even if they don't like biscuits. My 8 year old. We, we did that last night. I'm just saying, I just, I, I mess with my oldest all the time. I'm like, sorry, we're out of biscuits.

No biscuits. My oldest is 8 now and she knows. She knows now. They know what's right and. Wrong. She knows what's right and wrong, but she knows about what's going on with Amazon and the the thing she always asks me is why? Why wouldn't Amazon talk to Daddy when they thought he did something wrong? Why did they make accusations about talking to Daddy?

That's. The thing that we would teach them to do. Well, in my, in one of my latest emails to Jeff Bezos, I asked him that I, I pointed out when my 8 year old asked because it's worse than that. When my husband, when the FBI showed up at her house on April 2nd, my husband had his lawyers call Amazon and say I would like to talk to you. I don't understand this, what this is about. But I, I'm happy to share anything with you like you know everything.

And Amazon's lawyer said we will not speak to you unless you are pleading guilty to a crime. Isn't that something that's so disgusting? Yeah, that's why I think it's like the most clear example of corporate weaponization of DOJ that you could ever see. It's just. And I am, and I have to imagine that the for the one of you, there's 9 1/2 other people that rolled over and didn't get to that point, even though they were right to. Well, I believe so. Like in this instance nobody

rolled over but like IA 100%. Well, I'm saying not in your case, I'm saying in other, in the other cases, because this is a tech. Here's the thing that we know, like you don't try techniques that fail. You try techniques that are affect. Like these are companies, they they adjust their fire and they and they make, you know, accurate shots. So this this had a probability of winning that was beyond, you know, a reasonable doubt for them.

It was almost 100% right because they accused multiple people, each with a 98.2%. You know, if you get one person to plead guilty, you're going to. Right. Yeah. And they're basically playing stacked odds that like any one of them could have. Fallen and it's funny because I always say to my husband, like, what was their Plan B? He's like they had no Plan B. Because they don't lose. They don't lose. Amazon never expected to go to trial in the civil case. The government never expected to

be here. They never like, they don't give. I'll just point this out. The government does not give money back in civil forfeiture. Like it barely ever happens. Like we were told no matter what, we probably never going to die back. It's just going to be the way it was going to be. I would agree with that. That's, that's the my limited experience, but being, you know, tangentially associated with people that did that kind of work.

And, and usually it's because the people have no case to stand on because they're gangsters or they're drug dealers or whatever they are. I mean, that's, that's, I mean, that's what happens. So the odds that somebody even stood up to the process is probably just like completely foreign to the to the civil apps that coordinator in the in the field office who probably hasn't had to deal with this before, like contested. What are you talking about?

Like there are emails between the the the forfeiture prosecutor and Amazon that are now public where like the the the prosecutor wrote to Amazon's lawyer, we seized the money too early. What? What does that? Even mean like you didn't have probable cause but you didn't like but like. No, it means that they they overshot their hand, they took their shot when that, you know, when it wasn't lined up and that's obviously what's the case. It's just it's, it's so incredible.

It's it's incredible how many parallels, you know, you you're fighting it from the outside of it. I'm watching it from the inside. But you talk about like, they had no backup plan. They have no backup plan for me. It's like suspended security clearance. Take away his money and then he'll just go away. That's what they do. They just resign and they go get another job somewhere and they're not our problem. And it's like, guess, yeah, It's like, guess what, suckers?

Like I had money put away. I've been doing this for a long time. And like, I thought that as a national security person, it's my responsibility to be able to go for a couple years without a paycheck. Like I'd be a fool to think that I'm going to be able to like I, I made $30,000 a year before I got hired on by the FBI. You know, I, I, I made $100,000 working as a financial analyst. I made $18,000 when I was 27 and enlisted in the military. And I did that for almost 4 years.

So I made no money. And you really learn how to adjust your life on to nothing. And then my wife and I were working together and she made 30 and I made 30. She was like a, like a nonprofit counselor in Texas. So we didn't make any money. I was working on, on an ambulance. So you don't make any money doing an ambulance. And I help people in the ER and

that was cool. And then, you know, she got a job with Aetna working as a counselor, like over the phone and they paid her $55,000 a year, which was the most either one has ever made. And we're like, we're killing it. And then so I stopped working. I went to the FBI. When I got the FBI job, she stopped working. She started having babies and, and literally, you know, my last salary IS120125. Like these are all public records. So I just say I was A131 and you know, any other part of the US.

So I'm making $120,000 a year, which is not a lot of money, but it was more than enough for what we had done. I mean we were doing fine. I bought guns left and right. People were like where's your money coming from? I'm like, I saved like crazy. We have a very inexpensive life. You know, we have a 0 down mortgage from the VA because I was a disabled vet and my wife doesn't buy anything. She buys organic foods. That's her luxury item.

She doesn't buy shoes, she doesn't buy purses, she doesn't buy clothes. I probably spent more money on clothes this year than, well last year at least than my wife did. Like the whole time I've known her, she just doesn't spend money. So we're frugal, that's it. And then we were able to go do this thing and so now they don't know what to do.

They're like, so this guy, you know, like I have friends that are like, they know we're not like the the FBI director has been briefed on my name and that I'm a problem.

I am. But wait, wait till tomorrow because tomorrow we're we're putting out AAI may or may not be working with the Daily Wire on a story that they did that they're quoting me on. But Chris Ray's going to have to answer for, you know, somewhere upwards of a million and a half dollars of discretionary spending on his jet that he shouldn't have done. So we're pushing the envelope forward. Like you say, you're in the fight. You might as well be loud.

Here's the other problem. They didn't work with me that hard when I was at the FBI. So I spent a lot of time looking around and figuring out where the bodies are buried and wrong guy to mess with. It turns out, because like 1. I actually do have some principles. My principles are just my own. It's like, I don't want to get a COVID shot. I don't think anybody should be mad at that. If you don't want to hang out with me, I'll tell you up front, you don't have to.

You don't have to hang out with me. But I already had COVID and I have some, you know, religious problems with it. I have some medical issues up. We'll see where they all go. And I, I don't wish I'll on anybody. When they, when they came to shove that thing down, I was like, no, I'm not doing that. Like you can fire me, it's fine. But they can't fire you because I, they had to go through due process because I was a federal employee. So they removed due process,

same as you. They went and around, they pulled my security clearance, which I have no right to. So there's no due process about a security clearance. That's it. There's a there's a court case. Like, well, they have these methods always of like trying to like, fill you by slicing you and the ankles enough times that you fall down and can't get back out. Yeah. It's death by 1000 cuts.

It's pull your paycheck and let you start my my attorney called the wither on the vine technique and and he's like, yeah, they'll just, they'll just put you out to past year. They'll suspend you indefinitely. So like technically, you know, the FBI can. I'm on the FBI's register. It's 277 days since I've been back in an FBI office. My buddies are keeping count for me. It shows it on the ticker.

There's a little like, you know, Skype link you'd have like your buddy list and the buddy list will tell you how many days you've been offline. And mine's 277 as of today. I have to leave in like 8 minutes. I'm so. Yes, I, I don't want, no, this is perfect. I think we did. I think we did good justice to your story. I'm looking forward to a second wrap up. Tell people where they can follow you and and where they can see some more of your your stuff and what's going on.

Yeah, you can follow me on all channels, Instagram, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok at Amy under Score K under Score Nelson and my company is theriveter.co and we are a membership network that advances and amplifies working women. And so if women are starting a company, they can come and they can click on your website and and connect with you guys. Yeah, we have courses. Courses, connections, all sorts of tools. It's a super welcoming community. Everybody belongs there.

We just want to help women make money. I want to help make women make money too. That sounds great. Women who want to make money should be able to make money if they want to do it. That's all wonderful. We're going to put those links down in the description. So folks, if you will look in the description on our Rumble channel, you'll see them there. Amy, thank you so much for spending time with us. I'm sure it's also pee break time. That's just the nature of these things.

So once you sit long enough and the coffee kicks in or gets through the middle of the day. Thanks so much for sharing your story. And I appreciate you being so open and honest and and transparent about it all. And I'm really sorry what your family has gone through. But like I said, the Seraphim family loves you now. We're all in this together. We really are. It's such a strange time. We got to hit him from every angle. So God bless you.

And you know, God bless your little girls and your husband and thank God for fighting. And we will talk to you when this court case comes through. Thank you so much, Kyle. And that was part one of our best of show, the first one ever. Thanks for joining us. Really appreciate all of you that have been watching. And it is really a big deal to us, whether you know it or not, to be able to walk back to these archives and see how it's gone,

how it's gotten there. It's it's both humbling it it's also kind of embarrassing to see how much I needed to grow. But we all come from somewhere and we're not going to hide from it. If you guys want to make sure you're supporting the program, Kyle serafinshow.com, you can follow us on Spotify. If you use Spotify, make sure you're following the channel. I'd really appreciate that. We'll boost those numbers there. How about on locals?

You want to support us, you want to keep this kind of work growing. I'm never done or satisfied. Kyle seraphin.com. So Kyle Seraphin Show and Kyle seraphin.com. And if you're watching on YouTube or on Rumble, make sure you like it. Make sure you're sharing with a friend and always subscribe to those channels over there if you haven't done so already. We'll keep boosting those numbers as well. Thanks so much for being a part of the Sunday Sit down.

Thank you for hearing the story of my friend Amy Nelson, and I look forward to sharing many more with you guys. Again, we'll see you on Monday at 0930 for the Kyle Seraphin Show. Thank you for listening to the Kyle Seraphin Show, streamed live weekdays on rumble.com/kyle Seraphin. Follow Kyle on Twitter, True Social and Instagram at Kyle Seraphin.