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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them, Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good evening, a tragic suicide, a likely murder, wrongful imprisonment, and gripping courtroom scenes draw readers into this com compelling story, giving them a frightening perspective on justice corrupted and who should be accountable when evidence is withheld. License to Lie Exposing corruption in the Department of Justice is the true story of the strong arm, illegal and unethical tactics used by the headline grabbing federal prosecutors in their narcissistic pursuit
of power. Its scope reaches from the US Department of Justice to the US Senate, the FBI, and the White House. This true story is a scathing attacked on corrupt prosecutors, the judges who turn the blind eye to these injustices, and the President who has promoted them to powerful political positions. The book that we are featuring this evening is Licensed to Lie exposing corruption in the Department of Justice with my special guests, attorney and author Sidney Powell. Now I
apologize to our audience. There's been a little mix up on blog talk radio in terms of the countdown for the program, and so when she called in Sidney Powell, she experienced a problem. So I have just emailed her back in the last three minutes or so to police call back in. So it was a blog talk radio technical error. So we should have her on in a
couple of minutes. She is, Sidney Powell is a former prosecutor who became a defense attorney, and we'll ask her what that change was and when that change was, and we'll talk all about her background and then her incredible book here talking about exposing corruption in the Department of Justice. And this is an insider's look at something that we normally don't get to see and we don't get to hear about what's so we hear stories of over zealous
prosecutors for various reasons. And I being in Canada, we have a different system which takes the political I guess climbing or political aspirations out of the equation in terms of judges and prosecutors. So we have a different system, and I believe, just from the experience, from the stories I have witnessed through true crime books and through this book, reinforces that that's a system that's open to a lot
of problems. But we hold the judicial system up to a higher standard than any other standard, and certainly they're afforded that kind of respect, and as such as citizens who are tax paying citizens and citizens who believe in
these systems of government. And this is an extension of government, especially federal prosecution, but really the judicial system is an arm of the government, and as such we are entitled to understand the process and then demand that each party, the defense and the prosecution and the judge, abide by the rules that are clear cut, possibly evolving, but still clear cut. And this will be a book that will demonstrate that often that is not the case, with dramatic
and very very dramatic results. So again I apologize for Sidney Powell, but I'm sure she will get this email and be able to call back in and we can interview her about this book, Licensed to Lie. What we'll be talking about in this hour is things that no matter who you are and no matter where you were in the past, you will have heard names like Alaskan senator forty years in the Senate, Stephen Stevens and Ted Stevens,
pardon me, Senator Ted Stevens. And we will also hear about a company that was famous and a golden boy in the press for many years and then not so much en run American company, and we'll talk about that, and we'll talk about her personal experience in this so that again we're getting an incredible insider's viewpoint vantage point.
And so when we talk about problems and we talk about things that arise in trials, when you're getting a actual account of something from this perspective, this is unique. Usually a true crime author is not in this kind
of position. There are true crime authors that often are prosecutors, and there are some great books like Killer Clown and Helter Skelter written from of course with the help of writers, but still the story coming from the incredible, unique vantage point perspective of somebody in that position, a prosecutor prosecuting someone accused of some incredible crime, and usually multiple incredible crimes.
So in this case, a woman, a strong woman advocating for the innocent, and incredibly, this is unfortunately a glorious example of injustice within the judicial system in America. And we're talking about federal prosecutions as well, and so everything from murder and suicide and career ruining and traumatization of families and the incredible cost of attorneys and the trial
and the subsequent loss of work, so incredible toll. When injustice rears its ugly head again, I'll apologize to the audience. I won't give this too much more time. Unfortunately, I've had a lot of criticism for not being able to have the guests and I coordinate on the time. So again I guess I'll take the blame here and we'll just wait a few more minutes and hopefully you can
I can entertain you with some more ramblings. I want to also say that I've been looking at a few interesting cases is that have come out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and I really have not been focusing on criminal murder cases here in Winnipeg. I mean, there are some incredible cases. This is the murder capital of Canada and the ninth biggest city in Canada and one of the poorest with all the ingredients and factors. Therefore the kind of place that's a little, you know, quite a bit more prone
to violence and again murder. And for anyone that's listening from Winnipeg, of course they will cringe. But that is the truth, that longstanding record as murder capital of Canada, and now in comparison to an American city, we are still very very low murder rate in comparison. So here we are with Sidney Powell. Thank god, and I appreciate that you hung around to listen to this. So here we go with Sydney Powell. Good evening, Sidney.
Hi, Dan, how are you?
Oh fine, thank you, thank you very much. I was tormenting the audience with about eight minutes of improm improvatizational rambling. We'll say so thank God on the line here. Yes, so I already introduced the book in terms of giving a synopsis of the book. Let's start with this, Sidney Powell, with give us the audience your background before we get into this incredible book and this undertaking that you have
with this book. So give us your your background. I understand you were a former prosecutor, so give us your legal background please.
I actually wanted to be a lawyer from the time I was five years old. My mother tells me that I would go home from kindergarten and watch Perry Mason, and at the end of first grade, when everyone asked, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up, and we had to stand up and announce that, I stood up and announced I wanted to be a lawyer. And all my life people would say, oh, you don't want to be a lawyer. There are too many lawyers, And my standard answer was they're not enough good ones.
So I went to undergraduate school at the University of North Carolina. I got my undergraduate degree five AA Kappa and did my undergraduate work in just twenty one months and proceeded to law school. Interned my first summer after law school with the US Attorney's Office in Raleigh, North Carolina, and after that with the US Attorney in San Antonio, Texas, and that US attorney decided to hire me back, so I became the youngest assistant United States and the attorney
in the country at the time. I graduated from law school and was in AUSA in San Antonio. I worked in the appellate section there for a year or two, then did criminal trial work for a year, civil trial work there for a year, and rotated back and wound up heading out the Appellate Section for the Western District of Texas, where I filed over three hundred and fifty briefs and criminal appeals. Became editor in chief of the Fifth Circuit Reporter, served on the Bar Association of the
Fifth Federal Circuit and numerous other organizations. Became an elected fellow of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, for which I served as president, became President of the Circuit Bar somewhere in there, and then went into private practice after
ten years with the government. I've only actually represented criminal defendants in four cases after I left government practice because I can't take a case unless I feel like I'm on the correct side, so that kind of limited my criminal defense work right right.
In that case, say that you left. You left federal prosecution as a federal prosecutor after ten years, and went into why was that? Why why did you leave?
There were several reasons. I thought it was important for my own personal growth, and when I looked around and saw people that had stayed for longer than ten years, they seemed to get jaded and tired and cynical and just not have the edge that I felt like I wanted to maintain and the freshness and an approach to the cases and the practice. So I didn't want to get stale.
Now, in terms of prosecutorial misconduct, and really that's what this book is about. Had you experience that as a prosecutor and working in an office, had you experience a lot of the things that are later that you really aptly demonstrate in the book with the stories that you have covered in this book, No, I.
Actually experienced very little of it. I mean we're talking twenty twenty five years ago that I was in the United States Attorney's Office, and I was in three different divisions under eight or nine different US attorneys. None of the US attorneys I knew would have put up with anything like what I talk about and found in the book.
None of them would have. I mean, we would occasionally have an assistant US attorney who would get overly aggressive in argument and say something they shouldn't have, or introduce a piece of evidence that was too prejudicial that shouldn't have been introduced. But in terms of anybody hiding evidence that I exculpated or exonerated a defendant, I never knew of any instance of that, and I knew the folks in each of our offices very well. I mean, that
wasn't what they were looking to do. We were taught and trained that the job of an assistant United States Attorney is to seek justice. And if a criminal defendant went free and we had still done the right thing, that was the way it was supposed to be. The job was not to get convictions, it was to seek justice, and that was hammered into each of us. That's what I taught in the Attorney General's Advocacy Institute three weeks a year for seven or eight years, and that's what
people taught me. That's what was expected of us. And that is why I was so mortified when I saw the conduct that I saw. That is reflected and discussed in the pages of the book.
What do you attribute this change?
Though?
It must have been, you know, it'd seems a very very dramatic change in terms of the prosecution focus, in terms of, you say, just to win at all costs, rather than the especially the federal court being the highest standard of especially under scrutiny, you would think potentially so that it's a very very high standard. What do you attribute this dramatic change in focus for prosecution.
I think there's been an unfortunate increase in the politicization of the Department of Justice. I think with the advent of instant media in all forms, there's been a lot more pressure on prosecutors, particularly in the high profile cases,
to obtain convictions. I think it's a number of things like that, and maybe even you know, certain people have sought out the job because of the publicity that can go with it or the public spotlight that can go with it, as opposed to doing the job because they want to do it with honor and integrity. I think it's a mixture of things.
Just straight go ahead.
Sorry, I was going to say definitely. I think in the last fifteen years or so, the Department of Justice has just become increasingly politicized.
When you're saying politicized, let me try to understand this. Does this come down to, And I know it's in terms of people looking to achieve higher positions politically and within their own occupation, but is there any consideration to the idea of who's conservative and who's liberal, and is there any of that involved in this politicalization.
I think the Attorney General basically sets that tone. There are a number of people in Department of Justice who have been there forever, and in some ways that is a good thing, and in some ways, like people staying in the US Attorney's office too long, that's not a
good thing. I mean, I really don't think anybody should probably be in government service more than ten years, and that there should be fresh blood flowing through there and new ideas and you know, sort of a hunger to get things right and actually seek justice instead of a
jaded or worn perspective on the system. But you know, the president gets to pick the Attorney General, and it's been more and more characteristic for that office to be used sort of as an arm of the executive branch with overriding policy considerations, as opposed to an entity that seeks to enforce the law in a blonde way.
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That I think is unfortunate.
Why would this particular democratic government and president, Why would they why would they be inclined to do that?
I don't know, but I think most people looking at this administration at this point, between the NSA issues and the president's use of executive orders to circumvent different rulings of the Supreme Court and courts in general, would say that this administration has certainly done more to put in jeopardy the freedom of the press than any other administration and history, and has also used Department of Justice to seek certain ends. I'm not saying that the prior administration
didn't do some of that too. There was a big controversy with Alberto Gonzalez firing the US attorneys from across the spectrum and other issues, But in general, I would like to see the Department of Justice restored to an organization that purely seeks to enforce the law without regard to political perspectives.
Now, in your book, in the forward, to talk about prosecutur proscatorial misconduct, and so for those that don't know or haven't heard enough of of the various things, I'll just describe them and we can talk about them a
little bit. Overcharging in terms of the number of charges, deliberately mishandling, mistreating or destroying evidence, allowing witnesses they know or should know are not telling the truth, truthful to testify, pursuing defense witnesses or pressuring defense witnesses not to testify,
and relying on fraudulent forensic experts. Also during plea agreements, overstating the strength of the evidence in the case, and making statements to the media that are designed to create public outcry, making unproper misleading statements to the jury, and failing to report prosecutorial misconduct when discovered. Is this to talk about this a little bit? How tell us a little bit about this?
Those are all things that have been outlined by the Center for Prosecutorial Integrity, a new nonprofit organization that has been formed to try to encourage change in this area. They did a study and identified those different aspects of prosecutorial misconduct, and Judge Kazinski, in writing the forward for this book, pointed to that study and recited those things
as instances of different kinds of misconduct. The book itself deals more with prosecutorial misconduct in the form of hiding evidence that would have exonerated the defendants, telling the court things that were directly the court and the jury things that were directly contradicted by the evidence they withheld, and definitely putting pressure on witnesses not to testify for the defense. There were scads of that in all the in RON
related prosecutions and overcharging. Basically, if a defendant was willing to plead guilty, they got an indictment on the one count or were allowed to plead to one count. And if someone didn't plead guilty, then the counts were stacked and stacked against them. And if anyone voiced the view of the facts or evidence that was different from that of the INRON task Force, they also threw in charges of false statements or perjury or obstruction of justice, things like that.
Now, when you talk about withholding potentially exculpatory evidence, this is the Brady rule.
Right.
Supreme Court in a case called Brady versus Maryland held a defendant has a constitutional right to the evidence that the government has or can obtain that is supportive of his defense or would impeach the witnesses against him or would affect his sentencing. And there was Brady evidence in
this case. In fact, the prosecutors that actually yellow highlighted it for the judge before the trial, and still after the judge ordered them to these summaries of it presumably accurate summaries, they still hid the key statements and evidence from the defendants while they served a year in prison for a crime that wasn't even a crime.
Now, before we get right into that and trying to understand this incredible trial, what's interesting, I think is that most people know that if it's a bad guy, a really bad guy, then we've watched television and we understand it. The prosecutor would be more eager to try to bend the rules to bust a guy that or bust people that are are monstrous, and they avoid prosecution time after time.
But in this holding back potentially exculpatory material on people that are in business or in government, why would Again, that's why I asked the question about politicalization. It seems somewhat political or personal or something else when they're that zealous and vigorous in their prosecution of people that are not what people would think are typically the bad guy.
Right. There's been an also increasing trend toward what's called the over criminalization of the law, prosecutors stretching to make crimes out of things that are really civil issues. And what separates the civil issue from a criminal issue is really criminal intent. I mean, if you don't intend to commit a crime against someone, it's usually covered and it's still wrong, and it's not that hard to tell. If
something's wrong, it's usually covered by civil law. And most of the inrun and inrun related offenses could have been covered and should have been covered by civil law, and instead there was so public outrage and public outcry in the wake of the collapse of Enron, the Department of Justice immediately appointed the Inron Task Force, untethered them from the Department of Justice so they had no adult supervision,
and set them about to find the criminals. And they simply got way over zealous in their effort to do that. They made crimes out of things. They took pieces of different statutes that had never been put together to create a crime before, and said, oh, this is a crime, and indicted it, and indicted people who were doing business deals and thought they were well within the law and
what they were doing. In fact, they were relying on their own corporate counsel and doing it and wound up serving a year in prison for something, as it turns out, was not a crime, because even the Fifth Circuit would not give them bail pending appeal. The outrage was so strong, incredible, incredible. Yeah, I mean it's really in times of widespread public animosity that lawyers have to work the hardest to protect individual rights.
Now, where did this media media contempt come from though? That was any contribution from again the prosecution itself, or did the media just like to spin it a certain way the big bad rich people and us against them.
Well, at the time, Enron was such a huge loss, a financial loss and emotional devastation for so many people that public outrage was was broad and deep. Houston itself was absolutely devastated. I mean, Ron had something to do with almost every charity in Houston, you know, gave business to all kinds of businesses in Houston, supported I don't know how many banks with its smalluble transactions, big banks, international banks. I mean, it was. It was a titan
at the time and well regarded at the time. So when it went down so suddenly and so badly, hundreds of thousands of people lost scads of money. Some people lost all their savings, all their retirement accounts. I mean, people had a right to be angry, but for prosecutors to put people in jail that didn't belong there and make up crimes and hat evidence to do it is bad as bad an offense as anything they sought to prosecute.
Now you write about Senator Ted Stevens and he died in a plan accident. But tell us about to Senator Ted Stevens and why you included them in this book. What does his story demonstrate?
His story very juxtaposed against that particularly of the Merrill Lynch defendants in the Run litigation, provides a very interesting contrast. Senator Stevens case was tried by Judge EMMITTT. Sullivan in the District of Columbia, and Judge Sullivan was far more alert to the possibility of prosecutorial misconduct and willing to examine the allegations of that than was United States District Judge Ewing Warlin, who was sitting in Houston in the
midst of the Inron outrage. So just the view of to the way the two different trials were conducted as an interesting study in examples in themselves and also the
prosecutorial misconduct. As it turns out when I overlaid the two cases as a common denominator in the work of a man by the name of Matthew Friedrich, who went from being co counsel on the Merrill Lynch Inron prosecution to I mean he rose metiorically through the Department of Justice upon the backs of the wrongful convictions in the Inron cases, to become Acting Assistant Attorney General heading the entire Criminal Division of the Department of Justice, when he
had only fifteen years experience as a lawyer, and he oversaw and was the puppet master pulling the strings of the trial prosecutors who unseated Senator Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican in the United States Senate, changed the balance of power in the Senate and basically helped enable the
enactment of Obamacare by unceding Senator Stevens. In that case, they also hid the evidence that showed Senator Stephens' involvement was not as the prosecution had represented and definitely undercut the execution's main witnesses. But Judge Sullivan saw that and was willing to do something about it. He appointed a
special prosecutor. He dismissed the charges against Senator Stevens before they came to judgment, and he appointed a special investigator to investigate the Department of Justice and the prosecutors themselves that produced an extraordinary amount of evidence. Hank Schulke and
Bill Shields in d C were the special prosecutors. They wound up producing a five hundred page report, much of which is referred to in the book, that outlines the various conversations and some of the misdeeds by the prosecutors in that case. And again nothing like that. We couldn't even get a motion for a new trial heard in the case against the four Merrill Lynch executives, and that's attributable to the difference in the judges. Primarily.
You also include the story of Nicholas Marsh. Tell us who Nicholas Marsh is and what happened to him.
Nicholas Marsh was one of the young prosecutors in the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice who had been working on what was called the polar Pin operation polar Pin investigation of public corruption in Alaska for several years. I think it started about two years after the Inron Task Force began its work, and Nicholas Marsh worked under Bill Welch and Brenda Marsh Morris in the Public Integrity Section at Justice and was leading the polar Pen investigation.
He would have been the person to lead the prosecution
of Senator Ted Stevens. And at the very last minute, after Matthew Friedrich and his deputy Rita Glavin installed them were installed and to head the Department of Justice Criminal Division, Matthew Freeck rushed the Stevens case to indictment and then at i think the day before day after it was indicted, took Nicholas Marsh off as lead counsel, put Brenda Morris on his lead council, basically disrupted the entire trials team and gave Marsh Morris I'm sorry, Morris, certain marching orders.
Nicholas marsh was upset, needless to say, about being taken off as lead counsel, but he was working behind the scenes. I think he was third chair in the trial itself. His roles were cut back considerably. He felt disregarded and disrespected, needless to say, from that endeavor, and it was frustrating for him to watch everything that was going on. And when the whole case unraveled and it became apparent that evidence had been withheld, the investigation turned on the prosecutors themselves.
Everything I read indicated that the stress of being the subject of an investigation was more than Nicholas Marsh could bear. He had felt like he wanted to devote his whole life to Department of Justice, to the law, and this would he thought this would be a black mark on his career forever. I talk about what he suffered and endured because whether he was right or wrong in whatever it is he did. In terms of the Stephens prosecution,
the ultimate toll was the loss of his life. Because this bright, capable, much loved by his family and friends, young man wound up committing suicide before Joie finished his investigation. And it's I think it's I call it the ultimate toll, and it shows the stress that every person who is the subject of a government investigation feels. I believe, I know the stress on my clients of almost ten years of being the target of a government investigation was absolutely extraordinary.
If it hasn't happened to you, you are extremely fortunate and you cannot imagine what it does to your family and relationships all across the board to be told you're going to be indicted by the FEDS when otherwise it the whole world thinks you're a law abiding citizen, and you thought you were to.
Now tell us about the defendant that you chose to defend, and you say that it's very rare that you've only had four defendants that you've chosen to represent. So tell us about this defendant. And because you have a personal relationship with this person one way or another, so tell us about your defendant and what happens to him before trial, after trial. Tell us a little bit about this story.
Okay. I represented Jim Brown, who was head of Merrill Lynch's Global Asset and Leasing management department. Most people don't know that Merrill Lynch actually had a significant, significant dollar amount of hard assets and Jim's group managed those. His role in the case was extremely limited. He actually went on vacation for Christmas vacation. All of this happened like December twenty one through twenty three of nineteen ninety nine.
It was, and it boiled down to a five minute telephone conversation that my client, Jim Brown, was not even on between Andy Fastel and at Merrill and I mean at Enron and some other folks at Merrill Lange the government claim.
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The Meryl was being given a guarantee by Enron that Enron would buy back Meryl's interest in some power barges that were going to be used to provide emergency power to the country of Nigeria, actually at the request of the US State Department, because Nigeria was in turmoil civil war and the country needed electrical power. So Merrill agreed to invest seven million dollars, which is a relatively small amount,
that's less. I think it was less than one percent of Gym's Group's investments at the time, and for run that was next to nothing. They were a four hundred million dollar corporation, so they did the barge deal. The government claimed there was a guarantee. The mural guy said no. The most they promised was that they would use their best efforts to find an industry buyer for the barges within six months because Merril didn't want to be in
the barge business forever. They owned other powers stations then some significant power stations in the country, but they really didn't want to be long term invested in anything going on in Nigeria. So it boiled down to whether the deal was a sham as the government called it, in that it was alone instead of a properly reported gain, or whether there was a guarantee or the or it
was just alone. Right, long story short, the jury found based on what the on the prosecutor's case that was hearsay, only they didn't have anybody that was actually a participant to the conversations testify. Instead, they proved their case purely by co conspirators hearsay, which is why they alleged a conspiracy to begin with. I'm sure. So nobody who had participated in any of the conversations testified for the government and they convinced the jury that Andy Fastau and Jeff McMahon.
In Ron's treasurer had given Mery Lynch a guarantee that in Ron would buy back the barges and Meryl wouldn't lose any money on them. My client had actually told Merrill and everybody he could find at Meryl not to do the deal. He didn't like it. He didn't want anything to do with barges in Nigeria. He had plenty of power plant investments from his group where he was in this country and didn't want anything to do with Nigeria.
He saw all kinds of risk associated with the transaction and he knew there was no guarantee against those risks, which is why he was so adamant that it was too much risk for Meril to take on. Right, but the government convinced the jury that it was the deal was a sham, that the guarantee that Meryl that Inron I'm sorry had made the guarantee, and convicted all the defenders albe Marale defendants of depriving inrun of the honor services of Andrew Fastau under the very vague Honor Services
Statute and the Conspiracy Statute. So these four meyrial executives went to prison, being dined even bail pending appeal, while we pursued the appeal of their convictions on the Honor Services. And in addition, my client, Jim Brown, was also convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for expressing his personal
understanding of a telephone call that he was not even on. Well, yeah, and that was after the prosecutor, Andrew Weisman, who later wound up heading up the FBI's General counsel and deputy director. That was after Andrew Weisman had told him in the grand jury, share your personal understanding with us, whether it's accurate or not.
Yeah, that's hard to call perjury.
Then, yeah, it really is. And on top of that, it turns out that all the evidence they hid substantiates is identical to what Jim told the grand jury. So it was literally true he had been told to give it, whether it was accurate or not, and he didn't even know who had told him that. It wasn't based on his personal knowledge at all. So how anybody can affirm a conspiracy and obstruction of justice conviction based on that is beyond my comprehension. But the court did for.
Us that don't know the workings of some of these kinds of companies and stocks and such things. Tell us why this is such a serious offense anyway. I mean, again, coming from Canada, we don't prosecute any there's no white collar prosecution like this in terms of how zealous they are to give these guys serious sentences. And so tell us what kind of sentences that were looking at or giving these defendants and why is this why so serious?
What is it about the crimes themselves as honest services clause? What's so serious about the crimes themselves that they weren't these kinds of sentences?
That is very hard to say. All I can tell you is that this little elite group of prosecutors decided they wanted to send the message to Wall Street. Most of them on this team had some relationship with the Southern District of New York, and at least Leslie Caldwell and Andrew Weissman had been used to prosecuting gangsters they called them, and they called these bankers wise guys on
Wall Street. So they basically used organized crime tactics against these businessmen and felt like they needed to send them to prison for twenty five to thirty years, even though these guys didn't take a dime from anyone. Run made fifty three million dollars on this deal, Merrill Lynch made I think it was seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars on the deal. And these guys were literally just doing
their jobs that day. The judge, even when he sentenced them to three to four years each, said I recognize you all were just doing your jobs, but you've been found guilty of this offense. Now, of course, a judge refused to recognize that the offense itself had been made up. They had pieced together parts of different statutes, and there's never been a valid honest services conviction in the absence of bribery or kickbacks, and there were no bribes or
kickbacks in this case, so there was no offense. But it took us nine to twelve months to get the Court of Appeals to recognize that after the district judge refused to. So the whole thing was a tempest and a teapot made up by the prosecutors who just had a thing for these particular defendants and wanted to bring Wall Street down a notch after they'd also wrongfully destroyed
Arthur Anderson LLP, the accounting firm for nothing. We lost eighty five thousand jobs over nothing, only to be reversed by the Supreme Court nine to nothing.
Right now, you talk about the personal life of Jim Brown and his wife, Nancy and the ramifications of all of this. Were you a friend or some colleague or an associate before this, you know about your relationship with Jim Brown.
I did not know them at all before this case. But when you go through something like this with someone, you get to know them pretty well. And we worked together in his defense for almost seven and a half years, wow, the entire teenage span of his children. So yes, I got to know them very well. When Jim was in prison, I would talk to Nancy on a regular basis. Was extremely difficult to talk to Jim while he was in prison.
That was a whole new experience for me. I'd never had that much trouble talking to a client in prison before. But the prosecutors did everything they could to make everything as hard for these people as possible. In fact, our young criminal defendant was put in a maximum security transfer facility. I think it was hundreds of miles from his young family, with the worst of the worst.
Wow, how can this occur without I mean temporarily. Anything can happen, I'm sure, but it isn't in someone a petition for Again, you know, you have some sort of right to be closer to your family unless there is some other pertinent reason not to be and communications with lawyers. I was very, very shocked. I'm glad you brought it up because it was one of the questions I want to for you. How common is it for somebody to denied access to a lawyer, and especially given who you were and who you are.
I have no idea that it was a fight to get to talk to him every single time. And apparently he paid a penalty inside the prison for my aggressiveness in pursuing my right to talk to my client.
Yeah, I interesting, Sorry, go ahead.
I don't even know all the details of that.
Yeah, you paint a picture in the book about him being roughed up by guards and other than that, what was the treatment overall by inmates. Again, we already just talked about the guards, some of them not giving giving him a hard time. What was his overall treatment there and what was the result You described that in the book as well. His imprisonment.
Jim came through it better in many ways and some of his colleagues. Jim is a very affable guy, and he went into prison with what I call and describe in the book an attitude of gratitude because of a serious personal experience that I don't want to give away. I want to encourage people to read the book to understand all of it. But he really went into prison with an attitude that he was going to make the best of it and try to help other people, and
that made him a lot of friends. He had a few close calls, but by and large, he came through it very well and is out now and putting his life back together.
Tell us about the tactics that you used, the strategy that you employed to be able to reverse this decision and get him really east from jail. Tell us about that.
Well.
As soon as I read the indictment, I realized it didn't state in offense. I mean I had read literally hundreds of indictments used to help my colleagues draft indictments when I was in the impellate section. It should not be difficult at all to read an indictment and tell what the crime was. No, and I read this indictment, and I reread it, and I reread it, and I reread it, and I couldn't figure out for the life of me, either factually or legally, what exactly the crime was.
Because none of the defendants had taken any money from anybody, They hadn't taken any property from anybody. To say that they deprived Enron of the honest services of Andrew Fastal, who was the primary crookedt Inron, all on his own, long before these guys knew anything about it would be affable if it weren't for the fact that they spent a year in prison. I mean, none of it made
any sense. So my strategy was to take the indictment apart and explain to the court how it simply did not allege a criminal offense, and to look at other cases across the country. There was not a single case from any court affirming a criminal conviction on facts like this, and that alone meant they should not have gone to prison pending their appeal. But they did.
When did you at what point did you find out? How did you find out of the Brady rule infractions?
Oh, that took forever. That was actually an accident. The third set of prosecutors accidentally produced to me. Well, they deliberately produced to me a CD, but they didn't realize apparently that it had on it the yellow highlighted information by the original prosecutors from the trial back in two thousand and four. So when we saw the yellow highlighting, I realized exactly what it was because they had given us a summary of Brady information instead of the actual documents.
Of course, the defense lawyers at the time it asked for the actual documents, and without the actual documents, you really have nothing. But all Judge Werlin would order was the summary, and he didn't even review that to make sure it was accurate. Obviously it wasn't, and we couldn't get anything else. He either ignored our motions or denied them.
So six years later, I review this CD that's produced to me, I think on like March thirty first of twenty twelve and go, holy cow, I know what this is and proceeded to do a motion for new trial. We were still in litigation as to whether Jim would
have a second trial at that point. They wanted to reprosecute him, even though the Fifth Circuit had declared that the conduct charged in the original indictment was not criminal under the Honest Services Statute, and it certainly didn't allege a traditional mail or wire fraud because no money or
property was taken. But the government had come up with another new fangled theory to try to get around that, just because they were determined to drag him through everything they could drag him through, and a large part of that was because we had alleged the prosecutorial misconduct right. So they weren't successful, No, they were not successful. They wound up walking away from the conspiracy in wire fraud convictions literally on the eve of the second scheduled trial,
after running us up right to the last asked. And we also thought we had to seek a new trial on the perjurying obstruction convictions because the Fifth Circuit had affirmed those, But we never got a new trial granted on those or even a hearing on it. Couldn't even get a hearing on it, despite the yellow highlighting, which meant that the prosecutors knew it was both favorable to the defense and material to the defense. That's why they
yellow highlighted it. They had yellow highlighted it as Brady before the first trial six years earlier. But Judge Worlin didn't care about that either.
You talk about the wire fraud a couple charges, including the wirefry, that were not pursued. Was that because he had already served what he would have served anyway more than likely?
They claimed it was because of prosecutorial resources. But yes, actually the government had agreed to his release at the time the Fifth Circuit came out with its first decision reversing the conspiracy and wire fraud counts because he had served the maximum term of imprisonment that could have been imposed validly on the perjury and obstruction counts at the time if those had been the only counts for which he'd been convicted. So they had already gotten their pound
of flesh really anyway. But they were still determined to drag him through as much as they could and were going to pursue counts one through three until we got right up to the eve of trial, and I had hammered him with the motion for new trial and the exculpatory evidence they'd hidden at that point, so they were kind of caught with their pants down, so to speak.
Now, what about sanctions against these people that have engaged in prosecuturial misconduct and judges that were involved as well.
Absolutely nothing can be done with respect to the judges, and virtually nothing kenn or has ever been done about
the prosecutors. Even after Shulke's report, which was very damning of the prosecutorial misconduct in the Stephens case, nothing really happened to those prosecutors, two of whom were found to have hidden evidence or at least not met their ethical obligations in the Department of Justice's own study, one was recommended for a thirty day suspension, the other was recommended for a fourteen day suspension of pay, and that didn't
happen for either of them. And with respect to the prosecutors in the Merrill lynch in Run case, not only nothing happened to them, but they were promoted to positions like Chief White House Counsel and General Council, Deputy Director of the FIA be ah and Acting Attorney General for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. And Leslie Caldwell, who destroyed Arthur Anderson, is now the nominee for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice.
This is incredible. So again I just don't understand why what the motivation is for these people to risk their own careers, like.
They had any risking nothing happens. Prosecutors have what's called sovereign immunity. They can't they're protected by the fact they work for the government, and it's next to impossible to well, you can't prosecute one of them for anything done in the course of their duties, and there's no civil liability for them absent extremely extraordinary circumstances that are very difficult
to prove. And I don't know of any prosecutor that's actually been held Liabel Civilly and the bar associations didn't want to do anything about these people, presumably because of where they are now. I don't know. It's just the system needs some work.
Now. Other than you being certainly disappointed from the idealism that you went into this profession with and the optimism even as a prosecutor, you must be disappointed. But it seems like and I'm probably not have to be a detective to figure this out. License to Lie is really more than just a book. It is your effort to enact some kind of change and to inform people, even within the judicial system, of specifically what's wrong and why and.
When that's exactly right. That's exactly right because there are things judges can do right now to make the system better. We don't have to wait for Congress. Judges can enact what's called a Brady compliance order in every case that appears on their docket and make the government produce the exact the real documents instantly and impose penalties instantly if they don't, And pending before Congress as part of a bipartisan effort two years ago now is the Fairness and
Disclosure of Evidence Act. The only group that I know of that opposes that is the Department of Justice itself,
which just makes me sick. And there's also been a proposal recently, again bipartisan, to provide an Inspector General and give him an authority to investigate allegations of misconduct against Department of Justice lawyers because other group, the Project on Government Integrity I think it's pogo dot org, came out within the last month with a report of over six hundred instances of prosecutoral misconduct in the last several years, over four hundred of them being intentional, and the Department
of Justice is refusing to release the names of the prosecutors who engaged in that intentional misconduct, or to notify the defendants whose cases were infected by that intentional misconduct. So they're circling the wagons and hiding all of it and protecting the prosecutors, you know.
For those that live outside of the US. Again, I'm from little old Canada here where we barely can convict anybody of anything because and we believe we can rehabilitate
anyone of anything. So it's incredible contrast. We'll say, this is at least it seems like and I mean, yours is not the only story, but earth is your book is the most incredible demonstration and illustration of how the tables seems to have have turned in terms of again a narcissistic prosecution with political aspirations and wants to win at all costs, and does things like have exculpatory evidence that could exonerate the who they're prosecuting, but no, they
go ahead and like you say, a judge who is supposed to be the arbitrator, supposed to be the person that stands that has the ability to allow or disallow again things that would be you know, be a miscarriage of justice. It almost seems like there's the sleazy used to be the sleazy defense lawyer, we used to think, and the virtuous prosecutor. But now it's the virtuous defense lawyer with the sleezy prosecutor. It seems that turned.
I think that's a fair assessment they have in a lot of cases. It used to be that judges could trust the assistant US attorney, and I still think they can in a lot of districts where they have that one on one relationship with the assistant US attorney who appears in the court day in and day out, and they know what kind of credibility that person has, and
you know what their level of integrity is. But then again, you have these high profile prosecutions by main Justice and even some slamball assistant US attorneys in various districts that they need to be fired. I mean, why the Department of Justice lets anyone continue to work there who has intentionally violated Brady is beyond my comprehension.
Well that's the question I would have too. I don't understand, you know, for something that we hold up in such high esteem, I don't understand there's no control of that. It's like having a bunch of cops with a bunch of you know that have multiple assault records. It doesn't make that much sense in terms of the community.
You know, in the community, so right, it makes It makes no sense to have Department of Justice lawyers who intentionally violate the law. I mean, if I were Attorney general, that would everyone on them would be fired.
Now you are naming some names in your criticism in this book, and you're not holding too much back that I can see anyway. What has been the when did this book come out? Or pardon me, when is the book scheduled to come out? And what is has been the has been the overall reaction, and can you give us any personal sort of examples that either so prized you or just kind of interesting reactions.
The book is actually coming out May first. It's available for pre order now at www dot licensed to lie dot com or Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound Books a million. Everybody's got it up for pre order and books should start shipping the very end of April May first, at the latest, I would think, and it should be in the stores by May first. So the only reaction so far has been from the few people who have seen some galleys and that has all been astonishingly positive.
People have said, wow, you know, I'm so glad somebody's got the guts to tell the truth and have applauded my willingness to step out in front on this issue and let people know what happened in these cases in a way that hopefully every citizen who's interested in politics, justice, law, economics, you know, any aspect of our business world and legal world can understand.
Yes, and then you touch on so many you know, important historical points in America and really bring the story in very You paint a very very vivid betrayal of like say Jim Brown and his family going through this and Nicholas Marsh committing suicide. So this is this is
not a book full of statistics. This is a you know someone, as I described while I was waiting for you to reconnect to the program, is that somebody that really has a unique perspective from being a prosecutor and then seeing the good and the bad, and so your perspective is much more valuable. And with this book very very interesting, all the cases that you bring together and draw parallels to to make this some very very illustrates some very very important points about the judicial system.
Thank you. I wanted people to see the human story. I want judges to remember that every case they touch, whether it be civil or criminal, involves somebody's life and has a big impact on the lives of more than just the lawyers standing in the courtroom arguing the case. I always tell my clients this is in my case, it's your case, it's your life. And that's what cases
are about. They're about people's lives and livelihood, and particularly criminal cases, and what people go through when they're the targets of a government investigation is unfathomable for anybody who hasn't been through it.
Well, it's you know, it's very incredibly perversely ironic to think that we have set up this elaborate system. You know, we've come so far away from the public lynching and hanging and people taking you know, justice into their own hands literally, and we now we have the truly innocent being persecuted again. And then when these cases are reversed, there's no atonement, there's no remorse, and so it's incredibly perverse.
There's not even any recognition of the fact they've been reversed. Most people don't even know that Arthur Anderson, after being destroyed by a criminal indictment as the first corporate criminal in the history of our country, the case was reversed none to nothing by the Supreme Court because the prosecutors
took criminal intent. Again, they had pieced together parts of different statutes to make a crime where there wasn't one, and taken criminal intent out of the jury instructions to get the conviction.
Well, it's partly the media too, because that doesn't make for good print, you know, reverse goals and you know that's not very They love to see someone destroyed, right, never mind getting the fact straight. So partly responsible here, But as you describe too, I find it this incredible relationship between the media that again is another respected bastion of again representing the truth when sometimes no one else does, right,
And it's irresponsible. Yeah again, you know, especially when someone's case is reversed, it should be they should really have to go out of their way to explain since they jumped on the bandwagon of guilt well before someone's actually pronounced guilty. I think it's well, it's an ideal world, I guess, right.
Yes, one would hope that our press would focus more on protecting individual freedoms as it was originally intended to do than being a mouthpiece for the government to achieve its ends.
Yes, and you do touch on in the book too, just, and so before I let you go, I touch on what you think it demonstrates to the Snowden case in hiding out in the Soviet Union and talking about real crimes. So tell us what just not to give it all away, but really what you touch on in your commentary about this.
I'm not sure I'm following your question.
Well, you talk about Eric Snowden and revealing crimes and again talking about the US government if they're if they're looking for someone to prosecute.
Tell yeah, ironic, if they want to prosecute you, it doesn't matter whether you've committed a crime or not. They they'll make it up, and they'll make up the facts, and you're going to be in prison. And once somebody's indicted anymore, there's no presumption of innocence. The presumption of
innocence has gone to hell in a handbasket. And uh, you know grand juries that used to kind of stand in the way between a prosecutor going berserk and indicting somebody that shouldn't be indicted, just rubber stamp whatever the prosecutor wants. For the most part, I mean I never knew a prosecutor who couldn't get a grand jury to go whichever way he wanted. So it all boils down to prosecutorial discretion. And if the government wants you in prison, you're going to be there.
Well, I mean that always seems to be the case anyway, But that you know, I mean having someone appeal their case many years later, make it all the way up to be a federal court. That's what we see. You know sometimes that this is you know, justice has done, but how many.
Years right, ten to fifteen years down the road?
Yea, that it's an incredible sentence.
Yeah, I mean, look at all the recent exoneries because DNA showed they were innocent. Some have served as long as twenty five years in prison for something they didn't do. Yeah, that's we've got to do a better job of making sure we convict people who are only guilty, not the innocent.
You know, what I think is interesting too living in Canada is that we really are hesitant to file charges prosecutors unless those charges are like we won't take circumstances. They won't take circumstantial evidence to a jury. We just won't. So I know there's a difference in certain way of
handling the cases completely. You know, I won't get into that right now, but it seems fascinating the complete opposite, where we almost cannot convict someone without a confection DNA and a body will say in a murder case, whereas in the US it's they take circumstantial cases to a trial, they take not that much evidence to a grand jury. They you know, prosecution, as you say, it goes with
very thinnest of motive and again without intent. How are you really filing charges if you can't say this is why this person did it, or what this is what they actually did. So it seems I guess the other people that live in other countries that might be listening
to this program that the US has. I hate to say it, but when you get reports of almost every university, every state having a university has an innocence projects from over Zellers prosecution, I don't know how you can really pound your chest and say, look at our incredible judicial system with more people in prison than anybody else on earth. And a book like yours, and so many cases of again innocent people being imprisoned. It's incredibly ironic.
Yes, I think our focus has shifted way too far toward convicting anyone that's brought before the court and even indicting people that don't need to be indicted, as opposed to making sure we're prosecuting actual criminals. And when I was round later, we really didn't have that much trouble telling the difference. I don't know why they're having trouble these days.
That's incredible. Yes, well, you've done an admirable job with this License to Lie and incredible story exposing corruption in the Department of Justice and from someone that's an insider insider, So thank you very much, Jess Sidney Powell.
For thank you, appreciate your having comments and having me on the show.
Well, thank you very much. It's been very enjoyable. For those again who might want to contact you, could you give us your contact information and if you do the Facebook thing, let us know as well.
Yes, Licensed to Lie has its own Facebook page. I'm on Facebook as Sydney Powell SI d N E Y pow E l L and the website is www. Dot licensed to lie dot com and books can be ordered through that.
Well. Thank you very much. I wish you the best in any kind of change that might come as a result of this fine book, and I guess really the cause that you are following with this, And thank you very much for this interview and have a great night.
Thank you, Dan, I appreciate it very much.
Thank you Su