Title: S1E27 Prisoner Ex
Show: John Kiriakou's Dead Drop
Date: 2026-05-11
URL: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69ee9259eefc66ef2b061811/media.mp3
Duration: 0:40:09

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[06:43] Americans we want all our kids to be. And yet, on June 19th, 2008, federal agents led by IRS agent Brian Grove and Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Plowell, along with local Knoxville, Tennessee Police Department, swarmed Donnie's home looking for drugs. They were sure they'd find a mother load. They invaded Donnie's parents' house too and turned it upside down. Grove and Plowell didn't find any of the evidence they insisted they'd find. But that wasn't the beginning of it.

[07:18] As you'll soon hear, not only is it unacceptable that Donnie Reynolds Jr. sits in prison, the prison he's in is even more unacceptable. For the past decade, Donnie Reynolds Jr. has been held at the Communications Management Unit, or CMU, in Terre Haute, Indiana. Created by the Federal Bureau of Prisons in 2006 as part of the George W. Bush Administration's counterterrorism framework and shrouded in secrecy, these prisons are meant to isolate and

[07:50] segregate certain prisoners from the rest of the federal prison population. These are supposed to be the hardest of the hardcore, think El Chapo, John Gotti. Currently, there are two CMUs for men and another for women. Donnie is being held at the CMU in Terre Haute. Strangely, that's also the location of the federal prison system's death row. Donnie being at that CMU makes telling his story especially tricky. But then, that is the point. Inbound communication

[08:24] is severely restricted, so is outbound communication. Prisoners get two 15-minute phone calls a week, unless the people running Terre Haute change their minds. Mail moves at a pony express like pace. Explanations for why or for pretty much anything else are few and far between. That we can tell Donnie's story at all is a testament to the fearlessness and tenacity of several individuals who defiantly resisted these attempts to crush Donnie and themselves.

[09:29] to fundraise. Marty was protesting the care of a patient named Christine Pelletier, a teenager at the center of a high-profile custody battle. Marty's actions cost the hospital tens of thousands of dollars and disrupted operations for days, but no patients were directly impacted by the shutdown. I've been in computer technology since very young age. My dad was a Apollo program, rocket scientist, computer programmer, taught me to code on his knee when I was three years old. I wrote my first program when I was five, sold my first program when I was 12, was a full-time

[10:03] engineer at a tech company at 18 working on network infrastructure and data security kind of topics. So I was intimately familiar with network and data security from the other side, from the defensive side. Before the attack, I was a data security coordinator at a Massachusetts biotech company, and I did business continuity disaster recovery planning for health and other organizations right up through the Fortune 500. So I knew what would and would not be a risk to human life, and my jury refused to convict me. The government charged me with impacting or

[10:37] potentially impacting the medical diagnosis treatment or care of one or more individuals, and the jury ultimately refused to convict me on that account. So they got me for just financial damage, but that was kind of the narrative the government used as a cudgel. This guy risked children's lives, but at the end of the day, they failed to prove that to a jury in a courtroom where they had every advantage where I wasn't even allowed to argue that I acted in the defense of another person's life. These two prosecutors, David Diadio and Seth Costow, were unable to prove the ethical core of their case to a jury. When the pelleteer situation

[11:12] came to my attention and it was obvious to me that this girl was going to die if something was not done, I figured I'd rather run the rapids than deal with my conscience if something happened to her, and I knew that I could have done something and chose not to do so. Donnie Reynolds and his circumstances likewise became a focus of Marty's conscience once they met and became acquainted at Terre Haute. Once again, Marty saw an abuse of power and chose to do something about it. I had a total idea of four companies. He was involved with

[11:42] trucking. He was involved with some high-end cars. So it looks like, to me, that through the high-end car stuff, some of the original informants on Fast and Furious came to learn about Donnie and came to learn about his firearms permits. And this was around the time when they were looking for strawman purchasers for Fast and Furious. Operation Fast and Furious was originally known

[12:12] as the ATF Gun Walking scandal. Back in 2006, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was under pressure because of its focus on arresting low-level dealers and sellers of unregistered or unlicensed guns. Many of those guns ended up in the hands of members of Mexican drug cartels. So the pressure was on ATF to overlook those initial gun sales and then track the movement of the guns up the chain of command to see where they ended up. That's what the Bureau did. They

[12:44] traced the guns movement, but then didn't really do anything about it. Here are some of the details. Beginning in 2006, ATF agents in Arizona began allowing licensed gun dealers to make technically illegal sales to straw buyers hoping to track the sales back to the cartels and then make high-level arrests. By 2011, after the sale of 2,000 guns, not a single cartel member had been arrested, and only 710 of the guns had been recovered. The rest were just

[13:18] missing. To make matters worse, several of the guns were found near the scene of the murder of a Border Patrol agent and Congress was calling for heads to roll. Without any ability to get to the cartels, ATF and the Justice Department began focusing on the little guys again. By then, it was all about the Justice Department's saving face. Dozens of arrests came out of Fast and Furious, largely over the violation of three different gun sales laws, and most of the sentences for those offenses were in the range of three years probation, up to eight years in prison.

[13:54] By all accounts, ATF agents hated the operation from the start. Their job, after all, is to interdict weapons, not to let them just walk into the arms of the cartels, but that was the order from the Justice Department. In the end, when everything fell apart, when Congress demanded answers, the department began looking for scapegoats, and if that scapegoat could take the fall for the murder of a federal agent, so much the better. And that is how Donnie Reynolds Jr. showed up on the Department of Justice's Fast and Furious radar. Well, the thing is,

[14:27] the war on drugs is what made these cartels powerful. I think it was two customs and border protection and one Border Patrol agent, and untold numbers of civilians south of the border. And the Mexican government's still looking for answers in terms of how this all kind of happened. The Obama administration asserted executive privilege to quash a legislative subpoena from the House while the House was investigating the operation. Biden was potentially involved because he was there at the time in the Obama administration. Donnie, if he gets his Brady material, his discovery material, potentially there are some very interesting answers in that material that

[15:02] Donnie's defense was owed before trial to talk about the credibility of some of these witnesses who testified were produced to trial to testify against him were some of the same names and same surnames that we see mentioned in some of the very limited Fast and Furious stuff that has since surfaced. And it looks like Donnie was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They needed people who would look authentic to the cartels as the people to pass off these weapons. And now you have Donnie, he's got to deal with universal records, right? He's an antique

[15:37] firearms collector. He's in the high end cars, right? He's a great guy potentially for the Justice Department to try to put undercover to the cartels as the source for these weapons. He's got a great story, a great front that they would not have been able to build otherwise with a different person. But Donnie refuses to play ball. And so they bury Donnie. Now, just a reminder, what Marty is saying is conjecture. We don't have notarized receipts that say this is what the Justice Department did. We just have the end result. An innocent man,

[16:45] anything. In fact, he was an athlete and he did everything he could do to run the business. Marty got us felt. And I think they assumed, you know, black hip hop mogul with guns, they were going to find drugs, which they didn't. Funny thing, as these law enforcement officers tossed the Reynolds' houses and violated their privacy and their rights, they did so without a search warrant. Oh, they had a search warrant with them. It just wasn't filled out or signed by a judge

[17:20] or legitimate, therefore. Donald Reynolds Sr. The search warrant wasn't signed by a judge. And later, the search warrant was signed by a judge. They made the search warrant up at my kitchen table. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know much about that. But I would think that if you gave me a search warrant at my house, that search warrant would be the same as if I went to pick it up at the court house. They are too late. Or I went to get a copy of the search warrant.

[17:57] And my search warrant was different from the search warrant they had on file. The mention earlier, I was in the military and I grew up taught to respect authorities, the government and everything. And one of the things I did was went to the military. I was, I was really surprised that the government would use such tactics as is gone. And I'm getting more surprised as time went along. Then there were Donnie Jr.'s guns, the ones the government

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[26:40] reaching out to people ever since this began and the story remains the same that he is for whatever reason not able to to do that I don't know you can't we hadn't been told us when this thing started it just kept getting bigger and deeper and deeper and as it as it progressed we are where we are right now it did get bigger and bigger and bigger and in part it became bigger because Donnie would not flip there was nobody to flip on right we all we all

[27:16] believe he's innocent they kept saying well we'll give you a deal if you flip he didn't flip and then the prosecution made a recommendation of something like 15 years or 20 years and then he gets essentially a life sentence and in the federal system there is no parole or probation you you get 15 off for good behavior but 15 off 75 years big deal to be 100 years old

[27:46] how did that happen and why do you think that happened one I'll tell you one thing that happened in the court she mentioned the court they we didn't get to hear a lot we weren't right up front with the testimony because they said she had said something to Donnie or something and we had to go outside of the courtroom during part of the trial and I think that was uh by design uh so we couldn't hear and see you know the gestures and everything that was going on

[28:18] and and that's one reason I can't answer your question to a point life plus 75 years why on earth did Donnie Reynolds with no previous offenses of any kind no record whatsoever gets such a staggeringly harsh prison sentence life plus 75 years yeah longer than El Chapo Marty goddess felt but they never found any drugs on Donnie and there's no accusation that he

[28:49] ever hurt anybody he's more dangerous to them than El Chapo in some ways because he stands to implicate them if his stuff comes out people in power are going out of power potentially going to prison so they view Donnie as a bigger threat than El Chapo and they're just desperately hoping that the whole thing doesn't bust open and all the scandal come out because like Donnie's case is not the only case there that stands to implicate some very high of people when the police

[29:22] came at first they attempted to kick the door in but whoever was attempting to kick the door I guess they didn't know what they were doing and didn't get the door to open up so that when they proceeded to enter the home they had my father lay on the ground and the agent proceeded to put his nine millimeter handguns to the back of my head that's the voice of a Donnie Reynolds Donnie Jr's son he might be this terrible story's most heartbreaking victim consider the repercussions of being eight eight and having federal law

[29:53] enforcement point a gun at your head while barking at you to get on the floor when you're not the son of a drug lord not living the life of an actual crime family it could be pretty shocking when the authorities crash into your house looking for drugs that aren't there had his father's trial been fair it still would probably have impacted young Adonis they pointed a gun at his head but nothing about the trial or anything surrounding it or anything since the night they raided his

[30:24] father's and his grandparents houses has been even remotely fair not to Donnie Reynolds or his parents or his children Adonis went from a future filled with athletic promise to a future filled with uncertainty instead before they came to the house my life was amazing I've always been in the sports like I ran a a u-track I was in multiple different tournaments I was doing things with football tracks soccer growing up so my dad never missed a beat when it came to that any type of

[30:57] organized sports or any type of school activities or anything that he could be present for he was there for I have four championship I have four state rings I have this jersey right here from the scf championship in my xfl trials with the Orlando guardians I found an excellent athletic career issues different circumstances prevented me from excelling to where I wanted to be with everything that happened with my father's situation it pulled a lot of my college scholarship

[31:28] offers off of the table my dad and my grandmothers was really kept the family like close knit together on a daily basis I know that my family is struggling mentally with having to deal with this but I just feel like sometimes I have to try to carry the weight on my back to absorb a lot of the stress that was going on it's hard for me to find meaningful employment to keep myself afloat mcdonald's won't even hire me so it's just like I work specific jobs that I can

[32:01] work as long as I can until they terminate you the nightmare continued and got worse suddenly adonis found himself attracting the undue attention of local law enforcement because of who he was I've been beat on by the police on multiple different occasions incarceration from getting pulled over at traffic stops I've been pulled over by undercover police officers in Knoxville that's one of the main reasons why I left because I value my safety and I value my life a lot and I'm not going to allow myself to be unalived by a police officer

[32:37] in my skin unalived by a police officer that's a chilling way to put it don't you think Donnie and I are in pretty regular touch uh he'll send me an email and sometimes it'll take a day to get to me sometimes it'll take 10 days to get to me he'll send me mail sometimes it arrives sometimes it just disappears into the air as though he never sent it even though it has a tracking number on it and sometimes it's emails we we don't get them and his phone calls are

[33:10] just once a week or sometimes twice a week I don't know what they what they have privileges or whatever anyway but it's really restricted on his phone conversations and stuff still using the tournament with an online sports book time to ditch the app and join Koushie America's number one prediction market platform Koushie is live and regulated in all 50 states on Koushie you're trading against peers in a live market meaning there's no house and as the probability changes you can
