Title: Ep.82 — Choosing Truth Over Career
Show: Dr. Johann D'Souza
Date: 2025-09-06
URL: https://youtu.be/rzDSowz83y8
Duration: 36:00

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[00:00] They put me in the actual prison with the pedophiles and the mafia dons and the drug kingpins. What should I do? And he said, "Oh my god." He says, "Well, we can file a motion, but it'll be 2 years before we get a court date and you'll be home by then." He said, "Buddy, I'm sorry. You're just going to have to tough it out." >> This is Virtuous Leaders, the podcast for based Catholics who will speak truth, do good, or die trying. Here's the show. [Music]

[00:32] So, you were a former CIA agent who was persecuted by our own government for telling the truth. You knew you were facing forces both powerful and corrupt. Why did you choose to do the right thing? >> Well, I um I wish I could tell you that it was solely for altruistic purposes and it wasn't in the beginning. It w it became so later because I doubled down. But in the beginning,

[01:04] this torture program was so egregiously wrong. It was so obviously unethical, immoral, illegal that I thought certainly somebody's going to come out and say something right. Somebody's going to come out and blow the whistle. And nobody did. And I kept waiting for somebody to do it and nobody did. And then finally in December of 2007, Brian Ross from ABC News called me and said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubeda. I said that was absolutely untrue. I was the

[01:35] only person who was kind to Abu Zuba and in fact I've never laid a hand on any prisoner ever. And he said, "Well, you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself." And so I decided in the week between that call and actually going on ABC News that I would simply tell the truth. and he whatever he asked of me, I was going to tell the truth. Well, as soon as the as soon as I I gave that interview and as I always say, the weight of the entire US government fell on my head, I um I doubled down and the

[02:09] deeper I got into it, the more I was convinced I was right and they were wrong, that history was going to judge us, and that I was going to stick by my guns. And that's what I did. And now here we are all these years later and I was right. I'm glad I did it. >> Wow, you were right. So this is this is what I want to focus on. You had an excellent interview with Tucker Carlson and the details of the

[02:40] story. I want to get into the the inner life of that decision and working through that decision because I think increasingly we're in a situation where we are going to be asked to make sacrifices to speak the truth and do and do the good. >> So first thing you had a week up to that ABC interview in which you decided I I will speak the truth. >> What was going through your head during that week? you I presume you're weighing

[03:12] the pros and cons and the suffering that would result. >> Yeah. I never I never wanted to go public. It was something that was forced on me. And I thought I thought, you know, generations are going to look back on this. Generations of my own family, uh children that had not yet been born to me. Uh grandchildren I've, you know, not yet met. And I want them to be able to say to

[03:43] their children and grandchildren that I had done the right thing. And I thought if they're going to out me like this, if they're going to make this a public spectacle, then I'm going to be on the right side of it. And you know, at first at first it was it was difficult in that just the statement that the CIA was torturing prisoners was so controversial and so polarizing that even before I I encountered any legal trouble, friends

[04:14] and even family members began walking away from me. And so you really get to see who your true friends are, who your real supporters are. And then when charges were filed against me when was it 3 years later that really puts things into perspective. And so, you know, as as odd as it might sound, it was almost a culling exercise

[04:45] where I was able to dispatch fake people, phonies, from my life and focus on the people who really loved and supported me. On top of that, I'm going to be careful with my language here because of the wording of my divorce decree. You know, there are some people committed to the long run. There are some people who take the words for better or for worse seriously. And though there are others who do not.

[05:17] And so as difficult of an experience as this became, I feel like I'm a better and stronger person because of it. >> Wow. I was not expecting that. Thank you for sharing that. And I I appreciate actually hearing that because I I was disappointed when I heard that that divorce happened. And but I'm happy to hear that at least reading between the lines, you had the desire to be faithful.

[05:47] >> Oh boy, did I. Yeah. Uh you I My parents were married for let's see 42 years when my dad passed away and my parents were deeply in love with each other. I just I grew up assuming that everybody was like that. >> You know, when when life throws you a curve, you band together and you deal with it. I thought not everybody's like that. Some head for

[06:19] the hills and go into self-preservation mode at the expense of of everyone and everything else. So, you suffered a lot internally and externally. >> It's been bad. Yeah, it's been bad. On top of the fact that the that the Obama Justice Department seized my federal pension after 20 years of service. So, I'm going to have to work until the day I die unless Donald Trump elects to give me a pardon. Yeah. >> Why hasn't he?

[06:49] >> I don't know. I don't know. I feel like I'm that close and I'm in touch with very important people who uh are in Trump's immediate orbit. So, I'm I'm hoping that this is just a question of timing. Uh I don't know. We'll see. I don't know. >> Okay. I Man, I I really hope he has something captured. >> Yeah. Me, too. Me, too. We'll see.

[07:20] >> Yeah. Um, just out of respect for the delicacy of your situation, I I won't ask you to comment too much on that. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. >> Yeah. Okay. So, I'm very curious. So, you did spend a couple years in prison. >> What was that like? >> Yeah, it was surreal. I spent 23 months in a federal prison, an actual prison. You know, when I was being sentenced, my attorney stood up and said, um,

[07:52] well, they they didn't say they asked the judge to send me to a minimum security work camp. And in a minimum security camp, the camps are always attached to a higher security prison because in the event of a riot or a lockdown, it's the people at the camp that do the laundry and do the cooking and do the mopping and the sweeping and stuff like that. So the prosecutors had no objection and the judge then ordered that I be sent to a minimum security work camp. Now there are no bars on the windows. The doors are unlocked. Most of the the inmates

[08:24] work in town at the local university. You're just on your honor not to run away. >> That that's the gig that Epstein got. >> No, he got even better. He got house arrest. >> Oh, okay. >> In his own in his own home. >> Okay. >> Yeah. So, this is what Gain Maxwell has right now. She's got minimum security. Even though she's a convicted child sex predator and they're not permitted in minimum security camps, she's in a minimum security camp. So, figure that out. Anyway, I go to the camp. What you

[08:56] do, it's very odd. This is why I use the word surreal. You just drive up to the prison and knock on the door and say you're there to turn yourself in. >> It's It's weird. So, I mean, unless it's a violent crime, in which case they cuff you in the courtroom and then just take you. Um, you're just, you know, they send you a letter and they say, "On this date, at this time, turn yourself in." So, I drove up there with a couple of my attorneys, a documentary film crew, my cousin and his son knock on the door,

[09:29] they say, "You have to go across the street to the prison. They'll process you and then they'll walk you back over here." I said, "Okay, fine." So, I go across the street to the prison. They put me through security and then they start taking me around to the back of the actual prison. I said, "No, no, I'm supposed to be at the camp across the street." And the guard laughed at me and he said, "Not according to my paperwork. You're not." >> Oh my gosh. >> And I told myself, "Take it easy. There's nothing you can do. If you raise

[09:59] a stink, they're going to put you in solitary." So, I didn't say a word. Well, it took me 4 days to get access to a phone. And I called my lead attorney and I said, "Hey, they put me in the actual prison with the pedophiles and the mafia dons and the drug kingpins. What should I do?" And he said, "Oh my god." He says, "Well, we can file a motion, but it'll be 2 years before we get a court date and you'll be home by then." He said, "Buddy, I'm sorry. You're just going to have to tough it out." >> Oh my gosh. What?

[10:30] >> And so I decided, you know what? I'm trained for this. I've lived in far worse places than a low security prison in Lorettto, Pennsylvania. So, I just decided to rely on my on my CIA training to keep myself safe and at the top of the social heap. That's what I did. It was hard work, but it worked out. >> That's fascinating. What did you do to to achieve those goals? I wrote a book while I was in prison called Doing Time

[11:02] Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison. And I take these 20 lessons that they taught us in CIA training, and I showed how I applied each and every one of these lessons to prison life. I mean, some of them, even in CIA training, we used to say them as a joke, like admit nothing, deny everything, make counter accusations. That was kind of a joke, but it was a real thing in prison. Lessons like, "Let others do your dirty work. Never draw

[11:34] attention to yourself. Seek and utilize available cover." And it worked. It worked. Do you remember, you you might be a little bit too young, but there was an HBO show that started in 2000 called Oz. And it was a a show about prison, about this maximum security penitentiary in I think it was Illinois. And they had a a unit in it called Oz where they brought together three mob guys, three Nazis, three black nationalists, you know, all these different gangs and sort

[12:07] of forced them to get along with each other. And of course they didn't. It was just chaos and murder and mayhem. But there was one character in there who was Irish and he was independent. He wasn't in any gang. That was me. I had to play them one off the other and make sure that I never got wrapped up in the fighting and the bickering and the shanks and the, you know, all that craziness that they were constantly plotting against each other. In the end, I was allied with the Italians. They

[12:39] adopted me, but I was mostly independent and just looked out for myself. >> What was the scariest situation you were in? There was a serial killer in my unit, a guy that was a long-distance truck driver. And so his nickname was truck. And he had this bad habit of picking up prostitutes at truck stops and having sex with them and then strangling them because he didn't want to pay. And one of the girls that he strangled was 16 and she actually lived and she was able to identify him. So he ended up with two

[13:13] consecutive 20-year terms. So, I met him when he was about 35 years into this 40-year sentence for reasons that were never clear to me. He constantly sought my approval. Constantly. He started off by saying that he had been in the CIA. And I was like, "Dude, you don't even have teeth and you can't see." I didn't know what he was in for. So, I was very disrespectful to him. And people would come up to me and say, "Hey, listen. He's a dangerous so, you should back

[13:44] off. The Italians told me that. So, I stopped insulting him. And then he would do things like, "Hey, John, I saved you a seat in the TV room to watch the football game." I said, "Oh, thanks, Truck. Hey, John. I know you listen to classic rock. There's a new station at 1600 a.m. Oh, thanks, Truck. Appreciate it." He hated pedophiles more than anything, and it was because he was a pedophile. So, while this is taking place, there's an opening in my cell,

[14:15] right? One of the guys got transferred out. And when there's an opening in your cell, all the cellmates get together and you interview people who want to move into your cell. So, rule number one, no pedophiles. None. Rule number two, no rats. So, if you're not a rat and you're not a pedophile, I want to make sure that you're you're clean, you keep your space clean, you don't smell bad, you're not an [ __ ] and then, you know, maybe we'll let you into our cell. And then we all go to

[14:47] >> they were fourman cells, but they stuffed six of us in there. So, six people in a fourman cell. So, this guy from Pittsburgh says he wants to move into our cell. And we used to call him Cat in the Hat because he had a really oblong head. It was like freakish. And I said, "What's your crime? You're not a pedophile, right?" And he said, "No, I'm not a pedophile." I said, "What's your crime?" He says, "Murder for hire." And I said, "Ooh, I'm not sure I like that either. What were the circumstances of

[15:17] that?" And he said, "Oh, I hired a hitman." He said, "I owed the mafia $100,000 in gambling debts, so I took out a life insurance policy on my business partner, and I hired a hitman to kill him, and I got caught." I said, "That's that's not cool." So, I went down to the law library and I looked him up and the case was much more complicated than that. Like, all of that was true. He hired the hitman and then he got caught within days of the murder cuz who else? You just took a $100,000 life insurance policy out on your

[15:47] partner and boom, like magic, he gets assassinated. So, of course, they're going to arrest you. He immediately ratted out the hitman and he saved himself. So instead of life without parole or the federal death penalty, he got 20 years. And then it just so happened that the hitman had a heart attack while awaiting trial and died. So the feds had to respect the deal that they made with Cat in the Hat. So I told Cat in the Hat, "You're a rat. I have documentary proof you're a rat and you're not moving into my cell." Okay.

[16:20] Couple days later, I get called to the lieutenant's office. Normally, you never ever want to get called to the lieutenant's office cuz you're probably going to solitary. But I got called because NPR wanted to interview me and I had to sign a release. So, I go down there, I sign the release, I go back up to the TV room, and I'm sitting next to truck and Cat in the Hat is sitting three feet away from me and he didn't see that I was sitting by him. And he turned to the guy next to him and he says, "Did you hear Kuryaku got called

[16:52] down to the lieutenant's office?" He goes, "That guy's a [ __ ] rat. He went down there to rat us out." I didn't react at all. And Truck said, "Did you just hear that guy?" He said, "You're a [ __ ] rat." And I said, "An hour ago, I heard him say that you were a pedophile." Which was totally untrue. But remember the rule, let others do your dirty work. Don't attract attention to yourself. Without saying a word, truck got up, walked the three feet over there, and beat him to within an inch of

[17:26] his life. Cat in the Hat spent 6 weeks in the hospital. Truck got five more years added to his term and was upgraded to a medium security prison. And then when Cat in the Hat got back, people had told him what happened. He came to me to apologize and I said, "Listen, I'm going to say one final thing to you. If I ever hear my name cross your lips ever again, you're dead. Do you understand?" And he said, "Yes, I understand." That could

[17:58] have gone bad for me in a couple of different ways, but I was able to manipulate this guy to zero out my problems, and nobody was ever able to point the finger at me. That's what the CIA taught me to do. >> Well, that's really dark. >> It's an ugly place. I didn't mean to make you speechless. >> I don't want to go to prison, that's for sure. >> No, it's not good. There's no such thing as clubfed. I hate when I hear that term. Prison is prison. There's no such

[18:30] thing as clubfed. Yeah, you're not going to play golf or tennis or do gardening. You're in [ __ ] prison where they humiliate you, they emasculate you, and they make you count the days until you can get out. And even then, you're not really free. So, yeah, it's not it's not good. >> What do you mean even then you're not really free? >> Well, then you've got 3 years, 5 years, 10 years of of probation. Pedophiles have a lifetime of probation. You're not

[19:00] free to travel. you're not free to really do anything without asking a court, you know, multiple times to allow you to go out there and make a living. It's awful. You know, I'm trying to make a living when I get out and I get invited, for example, to give a speech in Berlin and I'm going to make five grand or 10 grand or whatever it was and the judge is like, "Nope, no travel." Like, why you you're telling me that I have to go to Safeway and get a job as a

[19:30] as a, you know, a shelf stalker for $8 an hour, but I can make 10 grand giving one speech in Berlin. And you say, "No, just because I'm a bad guy and I need to be punished." Either you want me to make a living or you don't want me to make a living. And by the way, I have five children. And then they're like, "Okay, okay." But then you have to turn your passport in as soon as you get back. Like, okay, why? And that was a constant fight. Constant. >> You did your time. >> Oh, yeah. They don't care. They don't care. I'll tell you another story. I

[20:02] just told this yesterday on on my own podcast. When I got out of prison, listen, I take I take civil liberties very very seriously. So, when I got out of prison, I immediately applied to have my voting rights reinstated. So, it's not a sexy process. You just go to the website of the Secretary of State of your state. So, I live in Virginia and I filled out the form and it said it takes about 2 weeks to get your voting rights reinstated. Well, 3 weeks later, I hadn't heard anything. So, I called the Secretary of State's toll-free

[20:33] number. And this guy answers, "Yeah, may I help you?" I said, "Yeah, I applied to have my voting rights restored. It's been 3 weeks. I haven't heard anything." "Oh, what's your case number?" So, I gave him my case number and he goes, "Oh, oh, like he recognizes me, right?" He said, "Listen, it's in process. No problems. it's going to take about another week. And I said, "Oh, okay. Thank you. I'm up the phone." A week later, 7:00 in the morning, my doorbell rings and I'm up getting the kids ready for school. So, I go to the door and

[21:04] it's a courier and he's got this big 11 by14 cardboard envelope and he hands it to me. It's from the Secretary of State's office. I pull out this paper and it's a big pardon decree where the governor of Virginia has pardoned me. I hadn't applied for a pardon, but apparently he followed my case and thought I got screwed. >> So, he just took it upon himself to pardon me, which was the loveliest >> gesture. I wish Terry McAuliffe would run run for president. I would vote for

[21:35] him just for that kindness. So, I get this big certificate with the gold seal and the governor's signature. So, he reinstates my voting rights and reinstates my state gun rights. Now, I don't have my federal gun rights back, so it it was just a a nice gesture. So, I go down to the courthouse and it was a Friday and it's the last day to register to vote. So, I go to fill out the form. It says, "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" And I said, "Yes." "Have you had your voting rights reinstated?"

[22:07] "Yes." And this woman calls me around to the side very discreetly and she says, "I notice you checked the two boxes." And I said, "Yeah." And she said, 'The man who handles cases like yours, he's on vacation today. And I said, 'Oh no. I said, today's the last day to register and I want to vote on Tuesday. And she said, don't worry about it. We'll take care of it. And so on Monday, the day before the election, my doorbell rings again and it's the guy from the courthouse came to my house with a voter

[22:40] registration card >> and said, "Congratulations." I said, "You see, now this is exactly how the system should be. This, not the way the feds run it." This was incredible. I'm so grateful to those people. I mean, these are kind of like nameless bureaucrats and former Governor Terry McAuliff. I'm forever grateful for them and what they did. So, I'm curious about what it's like psychologically to and correct me if I'm wrong, but plead guilty for a

[23:11] crime you did not commit. Well, that's that's a good question actually. And then in the hearing where I had to change my plea from not guilty to guilty, you you stand up in front of the judge and she says, "Are you here to change your plea?" And you say, "Yes." "Are you pleading guilty?" "Yes." "Are you in fact guilty of the crime with which you were charged?" And I said, "No. And she says to my attorney, "Counselor, you may want to have a word with your client." And he says, "Loud enough for the stenographer to hear." He

[23:42] said, "You have to say you're guilty." And I said, "But I'm not guilty. I just want the deal." And he said, "I know, but you have to say you're guilty." So I said to the judge, "Sure, I'm guilty. I did it." She said, "You don't sound too convincing." I said, "Well, I I did it. I'm guilty and so I'm pleading guilty." I mean, what are you going to do? I I say all the time there there's this the old joke that you know half of the people in prison are are innocent. Well, guess what? I met a lot of people in prison who are innocent. A lot. But do

[24:13] you roll the dice? If you're being, for example, for me, I was offered two years. I was looking at 45 years. Do you roll the dice knowing that the government wins 98.2% of its cases? >> Wow. >> You can't. And so, are you guilty? Guilty. Sure, why not? I'm guilty. >> Wow, that's terrifying. >> It's bad. Mhm. It's bad. Yes. >> Well, this is adding evidence to the hypothesis that we live in a dystopia.

[24:45] >> Oh, let me let me add one other thing just to give you an example. There was a guy in my housing unit, Pat Winter. Never in my two years did I ever see somebody who was more out of place in prison than Pat Winter. This guy had nine children. Wow. He was a devout Catholic. Never missed church, even in the prison chapel every single Sunday. And I said to him one day, "Pat, what are you in here for anyway?" And he

[25:15] said, "Ason." I said, "Aarson?" I said, 'You really don't seem like a guy who would go out in the middle of the night and set set something on fire.' He said, 'Well, I I didn't. I said, 'Well, what happened? And he said that he married this rich guy's daughter and they had nine kids and Pat never went to college. He was like a mechanic or a body shop guy, barely making ends meet. But his

[25:45] father-in-law is supplementing his income, right? Helping him pay for all this. His father-in-law never liked him because he was less than what the father-in-law wanted for his daughter, right? So the father-in-law comes to Pat one day and says, "Listen, I want you to set fire to this building that I own. I want to collect the insurance money on it." And Pat says, "Well, that's illegal." He said, "I know, but I'm going to give you X amount of money and you're going to be able to use it as a down payment on a house and your kids

[26:16] need to go to school and whatever." So Pat just went and set the building on fire >> and got caught. >> Yeah. And I said, "And let me guess, you didn't rat out your father-in-law." He said, "Of course not." He said, "I never opened my mouth. I just took it and I got five years." I said, "Five years in prison, nine kids at home, and your father-in-law let you rot in prison for doing his dirty work." But that's typical. I mean, that there is nothing unusual about that story. That was typical.

[26:46] >> So, amidst all this darkness, and I kind of feel like I'm getting secondary drama just from listening to this. >> I know, right? >> I can't imagine what what you experienced. >> Where did your values come from after all this? He said you you don't regret it. Where did your values come from for this? >> Oh, my parents and my grandparents. My parents and my father's parents. Yeah. We were a very strong nuclear family. I come from a family of immigrants. All four of my grandparents came from the island of roads and were so incredibly

[27:18] grateful to the United States for giving them, you know, an opportunity to thrive. When my grandparents left Greece, there were no jobs. There wasn't enough housing. There wasn't enough food to feed everybody. And so the government was actively encouraging young people to just leave. Go to the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, just just leave. And so they left in 1931 on my dad's side, 1934 on my mom's side. My grandparents, my

[27:49] dad's father especially, was such a deep believer in the American dream, the American experiment, that he instilled in us this notion that we have to give back, right? We have to pay the country back for what it did for us. And so I only considered public service. It never even crossed my mind to go into the private sector. And then at the same time they sort of instilled in us this

[28:19] notion that life is complicated but even with life's complications deep down we all know the difference between right and wrong. All of us do right it may be a difficult decision to take to do the right thing but we know what's right. And so without being you know Mr. Goody two shoes I always tried to do the right thing. Well, when it came to the torture program, I felt so strongly about it, like it was so clearly wrong. I thought, you know, if

[28:51] you look back through history where I especially if you look back just at the CIA where the CIA took actions or implemented operations that were clearly wrong, that always ends up being revealed to the public. The truth always comes out. Always. Sometimes it takes years, decades, but the truth always comes out. And I thought, I've got to be on the right side of this because I was involved, right? I was one of those people there

[29:22] at the creation of the torture program. And you know, I thought, well, historians are going to look at this someday and they're going to say, "This Kiryaku guy, why didn't he ever say anything? Why didn't he ever try to stop it?" And I thought, now they're wrong and I'm right and I'm going for it. And so that's what I did. But it was really because of the strength that my parents and grandparents gave me that allowed me to do it. >> How much of an impact does I presume you're Orthodox? How much of an impact does that have?

[29:53] >> Yes, very very much. Very much. I take my faith seriously. I even keep a picture of a 20th century saint, St. Necarios of Aena. I keep in my wallet so that he's close to me. >> Nice. >> I've sort of adopted him as my as my patron saint for a couple of reasons. When I was first assigned to to Athens as the counterterrorism officer, I was doing a joint operation with the Greek National Intelligence Service and we went out to the island of Auna many

[30:25] hours before we really needed to. But we were afraid, oh, there's going to be, you know, choppy waves and we're not going to be able to get on the boat. And we had to do this operation. So, we go out like 6 hours early. And of course, the sea was like oil. So, we just, you know, skimmed right across the the water to the island. And one of the Greek the senior Greek officers said to me, "Have you ever been to the home of St. Nectarios?" And I said, "No, I would love to see the home of St. Nectarios." So, we went to the monastery and the

[30:55] home and there's a little chapel. His body is there and his bishop's crown and all his possessions, his family photos, his clothes. So, we went and this senior Greek officer told the mother superior, it's not a monastery, it's a convent. He told the mother superior, "We're from the Greek intelligence service and we have an American Greek Orthodox and he would like to see the saints home." They let me sit on his bed. They let me sit at his desk. It was just so cool. And

[31:28] one of the reasons why I was so attracted to his story was he had been a young priest and he became a young bishop in Cairo or in Alexandria rather within the the patriarchet of Alexandria. But because he was so young and moving up so quickly, jealous priests started a rumor that he was having sex with female parishioners was totally untrue. And he was stripped of his bishop Rick and he was expelled from Egypt and sent back to Greece. He was

[31:59] penniless. Back then priests didn't work for the government. There were no pensions. You know, whatever donations you got in the tray on Sunday, that's what you lived on. So he even went hungry and over the next 50 years built this convent and a church and you know etc etc. All those 50 years he prayed for God to forgive the people who had lied about him. He never accused them. He never felt sorry for himself. It was

[32:31] all about forgiveness. And I thought, man, over 50 years. All he did was want to forgive these people. They ruined his life. He would have been the patriarch. And he forgave them. And I thought, if he can forgive them, then I certainly can forgive the people who wronged me. And then at the same time, people are sending me biographies. I never read so much in my life as I read in prison. There's nothing else to do. So, you know, I'm reading a biography of Nelson

[33:02] Mandela, a biography of Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King's last personal assistant used to write me letters. We corresponded back and forth. He's passed away now. He sent me not just a biography of King, but he sent me a biography of King that he had written. And so, I thought, "Wow, these people suffered so much more than I did. I can certainly just consider what happened to me. Water under the bridge." So that's what I did. >> Okay. Well, I got to ask, maybe ending

[33:32] it on a lighter note. What was it like being on Tucker? >> Oh, you know, he's the sweetest guy. He's really a genuinely sweet, kind, and downto-earth guy. When he was at Fox, I was on his show maybe a dozen times, and one of the things that I really liked about his show was that it was a longer form. I go on the Jesse Waters show a lot now and I'm on for literally 15 seconds literally. Like

[34:02] that's the longest I've been on. 15 seconds with Tucker. I go on 15 minutes, 20 minutes and we sit there and talk and then we go to commercial. We talk during the commercial and we became friends. And so he gave me his cell number. I gave him my cell number. We would call and chat or text. And he's just a totally downto- earthth sweet guy. He mentioned one time he said, "You and I probably disagree on 95% of the issues." And I said, "We may. We may,

[34:34] but I think we probably don't. I think we're probably closer on issues than you realize. Not because I'm farther to the right than I acknowledge." I said, "You're farther to the left than you acknowledge." And so, we remain friends all this time. and he's actively helped me try to get a pardon over the course of three administrations now. Trump, Biden, Trump. And um and he called me and said, "Hey, why don't you come up?" He he he's

[35:04] moved he sold his house in Washington. He moved to Maine. And he said, "Why don't you come up to Maine? We'll spend a couple days and we'll do like a a really long form interview." And so I did. And he was absolutely wonderful. Just a wonderful guy. I'm proud to call him a friend. And you know, in Washington, there's a famous uh saying from Harry Truman, if you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog, right? But but Tucker's different. He's a genuine guy. >> Amazing. Hope I have the privilege of

[35:35] meeting him one day. >> You'll like him a lot. >> Well, th this was this was amazing, John. Thank you for your witness to the truth. >> Thank you. Thank you for for having me. I'm very happy to have been able to tell these stories. Thanks for that. >> I'm praying for your pardon. >> Thank you. Me, too. Fingers crossed. There's got to be somebody out there that could whisper into Donald Trump's ear. There's got to be. We'll see. >> Yeah. All right, Matt.

[36:05] >> Yeah. Thank you. Take care of yourself. >> Welcome. Take care. >> Thanks for listening. Please like, subscribe, and share with your friends. See you next time.
