CCW Safe Podcast- Episode 72: Rittenhouse Trial

Video version of the podcast:

Transcript:

Rob High: Hi, welcome back to the CCW Safe Podcast. I’m Rob High in Oklahoma city, joined by Phil Naman in California. Phil, how are you doing, sir?

Phil Naman: I’m doing great. I’m pretty excited about Thanksgiving here. I’m trying to find things to look forward to, and a deep fried Turkey is one of them. Absolutely.

Rob: I couldn’t argue that. I would be looking forward to it as well. Are you the cook at Thanksgiving at your house?

Phil: Yes. I do man the deep fryer. I don’t do anything else, maybe pour some wine. Other than that, the deep fryer is my domain. I think my wife likes it that way because I’m outside for at least an hour. It worked out good for her too.

Rob: Just as she planned. You been following the proceedings with the jury deliberations in the Rittenhouse case.

Phil: Rittenhouse, Rittenhouse. Oh yes, that thing in Wisconsin. Yes. Slightly, huh?

Rob: [inaudible 00:01:12] guy.

Phil: Sorry?

Rob: I said the the young guy from Wisconsin.

Phil: Yes. We talked about it last week, and I think we’re going to be talking about it for quite some time just how amazing everything can line up. In this particular case we witnessed, I think we talked about the shooting last time, we talked about what he was involved in, what he did, the restraint that it appears he showed, the people who were attacking him. We’ve covered that, I think pretty well, but just like you always say with CCW Safe is you fight for your life twice. You fight for your life, then you fight for your freedom. That’s what we’re witnessing here in this jury trial and this deliberation, and this district attorney up there in Wisconsin.

Rob: It’s been a little eyeopening. You and I have talked about it. I’m retired from law enforcement, I was an investigator myself. I’ve always had such tremendous faith in our process in the system. I’ve had a couple occasions personally to witness that I was actively involved in that went against all the things that I hold dear as far as that process. It should be a fair, impartial defense. Everybody’s entitled to a fair legal defense.

Phil: Especially the guilty people. We want to expunge all opportunities to acquit somebody so that when we know that they are convicted, they are guilty.

Rob: I agree with that. I’ve mentioned I would rather see a guilty person walk than to ever think that we had incarcerated an innocent person. I know that it’s happened. There’s too many documented cases. I know the possibility is out there, but I worked so hard personally to not ever have something like that. I don’t know that I could live with that on my conscience, that I took part in an innocent person being incarcerated.

Phil: Especially knowingly doing something on purpose. To sway a jury purposely, misleading things. I think that’s the fact. Could you have arrested somebody who did not commit the crime? Yes. Could you put somebody on trial who did not commit the crime? Yes. Do you want them to go to jail for a crime that did not commit? No. Has law enforcement been wrong where you’ve arrested somebody, put him on trial, and he didn’t do it? Yes. Have there been times when somebody’s been guilty and walked away? I don’t know, if the glove fits you must have acquit, something like that? Yes.

We’ve seen people who have had a high probability of committing a crime, either through jury nullification or incompetence, walk away from things. We want to see– I personally, this is Phil Naman’s opinion, I want to see justice done. I want to see it even. I want to see it across the board. I don’t want to see political ranks not being held to the same standards as everybody else. I don’t want to see rich people getting better than other people. We should all have the same opportunity to be represented. Yes, a legal defense is extremely expensive.

If you have a lot of money, your chances of beating something are far higher than if you don’t, that’s the reality of the world. It’s something we always have to think about. CCW Safe we talk about, first you fight for your life. Do whatever it takes to survive an altercation. They don’t say that, I said that. If you’re fighting for your life and life of your family, you need to do whatever it takes to survive that. That’s an important feature, but as we’ve seen in some cases, not that I would mention any offhand, but in some cases, a political wind may be brewing in the district attorney’s office, and you may have something pushed upon a situation that shouldn’t be there.

Now, have you seen anything maybe you’d want to comment on, and I don’t know, let’s just take this little case in Wisconsin, any kind of behavior there that you find quite unique.

Rob: [chuckles]You’ve got judges and attorneys, and law enforcement, and everybody that should be working together towards the truth. That’s really what we’re sworn to do. It’s not necessarily working to get the conviction, I’m trying to figure out what really happened. We have citizens that are drawn from that that get to help us make those decisions. They come in, they’re impartial, they’re not experts in the areas. You have a prosecution and you have a defense, and everybody gets to, “I’m going to present my case and the evidence that supports the reason we filed these charges.”

The defense is coming in and they’re trying to discredit or tell me why we’ve got the wrong guy, it wasn’t premeditated, we tried to do this on purpose thing, it’s something that just resulted. Whether we’re talking about the Rittenhouse case or what. To me, the safety and the security of those citizen jurors is such a big deal. In this particular case, we’ve had influences from both sides, from Rittenhouse supporters and from the people that want him found guilty. People not connected or affiliated, or associated with this case outside of just opinions.

To have somebody come in– I don’t know if our listeners all know, but doxxing is a new phenomenon. It is something where I’m going to find your information and I’m going to are putting it out there, whether it’s your name and your address, and Phil drives this kind of car. I’m doing that really as a threat, hoping that somebody else will pick up on this and come back for you.

Phil: Or not even that Phil drives this kind of car, but Phil’s kids go to this school.

Rob: Yes.

Phil: Here’s some pictures of them, those kind of things.

Rob: At the onset of this trial, you have somebody that’s coming through saying, “We have cameras in the courtroom. We’re going to get this information out on these jurors.” This guy’s doing this on social media platforms. It’s not like he’s an unknown and anonymous, he’s very publicly doing this. That threatens everything about our judicial system, because those citizen jurors are what make our system go.

Have they made good choices or bad choices over time, it depends on how a jury pool is selected. There’s so many things that go into things like that now. Used to you just go in and argue things out, and through questioning, attorneys from both sides can determine whether or not this guy’s going to have biases against this kind of case. You want to get those people off your jury.

Interviewer: Yes. Jury selections are very important because it should be a jury of your peers, not 12 people who want to be there to prove a point or to drive a political agenda.

Rob: Absolutely. We always talk about the coverages that we provide at CCW Safe. That’s something we don’t spend a lot of time putting out there, but aside from just your court costs and all those things and your attorney fees and expert fees things you know that are going to come at a cost, we’re also providing real-time jury consultants. We’ve got social–

Interviewer: Use-of-force experts.

Rob: Yes. A social media management consultant. You guys know that Don West is our national trial counsel. Don is as good as you’ll ever going to find. He’s just amazing. To have him on our team is just second to none, in my opinion. To put things out there, where you’ve got these threats against these jurors, we’re getting their pictures out there, we’re going to put their information out there, and this is not just coming from the people that want to see Rittenhouse convicted, it’s come from the other side as well.

There was somebody that was doxxing somebody and saying that they were a juror, and the man starting to have received threats, and his family is being threatened, and he’s not a juror. They made a mistake. It’s such a threat to our entire system. I know the state of Oklahoma last year made it a criminal act to go after and dox police officers during the riots and protests, and things last summer. There were people that were going through neighborhoods, and police officers that had take-home vehicles and things like that, people are out there taking pictures of the vehicle and the house, and putting the house information out there on social media.

That’s really threatening, and it’s against the law in Oklahoma now. It’s something that really has to be in place for those people that are citizen jurors. These guys are under threat for doing nothing more than what they’re required to do by law. We absolutely owe it to them to protect them. It’s just crazy to me that when these people are known, we need to go after them with the full force and effect of law enforcement, and hold them accountable for doing that.

Interviewer: That’s one of the issues we have here in California is they don’t go after the bad guys with the full force and effect of law enforcement. They continually let them out of jail. Murderers do not get executed in California, they commuted all the sentences. Basically, even though we have a death penalty, it’ll never be enforced here. That’s even if you get convicted of life imprisonment or the death penalty. Most of the time, it’s three to five and you’re out on the street again to cause whatever new mayhem you’re allowed to do. Everything’s played down.

It’s really a mess and I hope that the rest of the country gets back to enforcing the laws as they’re intended, and not to have these– Well, in Los Angeles County, we have Gascon. We’ve talked about him before as a district attorney. He’s trying to release a guy who was 17 years old and shot another gang member, and killed him. He got a 50-year sentence, he wants him out after six. That means the guy is 25 years old. As a police officer, if you have a gang member in the age bracket of 18 to 40 versus somebody who’s 60, when are they more likely to commit another violent crime, Rob? just throw it out there? That’s peak time, right?

Rob: Just from my experience that is in their wheelhouse, at that young age.

Interviewer: Yes, so let’s get them back out on the streets. He found out, you can commit murder and just going to get out anyway, so, boy, that was a big deterrent there, right? One of the other things I think we should talk about is the importance of the coverage with CCW Safe and why it’s different from other people who say that they’re offering CCW coverage or self-defense coverages out there. Unlimited criminal and civil proceeding coverage, unlimited. If you had to pay for the defense that Kyle Rittenhouse is getting, I don’t know who’s funding it or how, you’re looking at $1 million to $2 million. All of the different–

Rob: I saw yesterday.

Phil: Sorry?

Rob: I saw yesterday, the estimation right now is $2 million on this case.

Interviewer: Do you think a 17-year-old has that?

Rob: No. We discussed that last week, and we were thinking in the $750,000 range.

Interviewer: To 1,500, yes, something in that range. It’s $2 million.

Rob: Yes. It’s just the amount of money and resources that it takes to do this, it’s just mind-blowing. I’ve mentioned I was working a case on a stand-your-ground case, a civilian self-defense case in Oklahoma. At the conclusion of that, the gentleman was acquitted. I just asked him if he wouldn’t mind sharing with me what his defense cost. This has been seven years ago? He told me that it was over $600,000, and it just floored me. I had no earthly idea how much it would cost to do this. You’re talking about CCW Safe versus other companies. Number one–

Interviewer: There’s some very important distinctions. I really think that this case just highlights them like crazy.

Rob: Certainly. We talked a little bit last week about I’m going to wave a flag over here and go, “Hey, we’re going to cover you for this much civil liability.” If you’re found guilty criminally, it doesn’t matter how much coverage you have civil liability-wise.

Interviewer: You’re in jail.

Rob: Yes, you’re in jail. It doesn’t matter. You’ll have guys out there that say we’re going to cover $250,000 of your criminal trial fees, or $500,000 of your criminal trial fees. Those are like a wasting insurance policy. As we start paying stuff, those numbers immediately start subtracting, and my fund goes down and down and down and down. There’s other providers out there that you have to come up and fund your defense, and they reimburse you after you win.

Interviewer: Let’s touch on that. A lot of guys– I shouldn’t say it that way. Excuse me if I started off that way. When you hear the term, $250,000 in coverage, it may seem like that’s a lot of money. That is, and it is a ton of money. It’s not a lot of money when it comes to legal fees and legal expertise. That’s the sad part. Your money does– Talk about inflation. It’s more expensive than gasoline. $250,000, although it is a large sum of money, and everybody would love to have an extra 250,000 right here just so we can go buy more guns, it doesn’t go very far in legal coverage.

500,000, that’s twice as much as a 250,000, it still doesn’t go as far. I don’t know if there’s any coverages involved at all in this situation, but let’s just say that the gentleman, the young man, Rittenhouse, is on trial, and he has $250,000 worth of coverage for this. It gets chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. All of a sudden, he’s spent. He’s 17 years old. What if the attorneys are like, “We’re not working without any money”? They don’t have to continue to work. Where does this leave the guy? You’re high and dry.

That’s this 17 year old, and that’s an extreme example. Say you’re a small business owner and you had to defend your store because somebody’s trying to arm-robbery you, and now you’re up for whatever good citizen award that the DA wants to punish you with. All of a sudden, you’re selling your store. You’re selling your house. You’re going bankrupt to stay out of jail. A reimbursement plan– That’s only if you’re found innocent. If the court goes against you, they don’t pay a dime, and you have to defend it all yourself.

It’s like, “Why would I waste any time looking at a plan like that when there are other options available?” I don’t want this just to sound like an infomercial, but I want people to understand that there is a huge difference in what you need versus what’s being sold. What you need, what’s being sold. It’s an important thing. Cost factor is almost the same across the board, but the benefits to you and your family, and anybody left behind, are really what’s important. That’s why CCW Safe, they’re sponsored to my show, Firing Line Radio Show. They’re a sponsor because I believe that they’re the best. They have the best plans and they have the best coverage, unlimited criminal and civil.

Stop there. Where’s the competition? Not there. That’s why we always want to take a look at that. CCW Safe, I’m very proud to be involved with them and have them sponsor my show. It’s so illuminating when you see this stuff on television, this trial that’s going on here. We just talked about the doxxing of the jurors. Maybe we should take a quick break, we’ll pick up these other points because they’re going to take a little bit longer than two minutes. Go to break on this, and then we’ll go through some of the other things that we got to witness with this televised trial.

Rob: Yes. Sounds good. We’ll be right back, thank you.

Phil: With the magic of recording, we’re back.

Rob: Welcome back to the CCW Safe Podcast. I’m Rob High, here with my co-host, Phil Naman. We are going over a little bit regarding the Rittenhouse trial. As the jurors are out deliberating now, we should have a verdict by the time this podcast is published. We have been discussing some of the things that we’ve seen through the course of this trial, including threats to dox the jurors, and things like that. There’s other things that have been a little troubling, concerning the practice [crosstalk]–

Phil: The behavior of the prosecutors, right? The behavior of the prosecutors. They have to come out and say that. We are both very much pro law enforcement, you lived it, I’ve always supported it. It’s really hard to find somebody more supportive of the police department than I am, unless they’ve pulled me over for speeding, then we got to talk. [chuckles] “It wasn’t me, I know a guy. I barely got here, I don’t know.” Anyway, the point on this is you see this behavior, and it’s hard to believe that this is a professional prosecutor doing some of these things.

I had Stan on my show several times. One of the things that keeps coming up, that he always wants to talk about, is the subject of brandishing a weapon. A lot of guys, they may use a firearm in self-defense. They don’t fire it but they brandished it. You’re in law enforcement. What is the definition, or at least a working definition, of brandishing a weapon?

Rob: It’s one of those that I can do a lawful display of a firearm. Just more than anything, it’s going to be followed with my articulations. I don’t want to be involved in this, please back away, you’re causing me to have fear for my own safety, for the safety of these people around me. Typically, typically, that’s enough. It’s when that guy really doesn’t know what he’s doing with this firearm, he doesn’t understand the legalities. He pulls that thing out, and he shoves it in your face, and he goes, “If you don’t back off, I’ll kill you.” The whole thing, the whole rationale in his mind is making that okay is, I’m going to scare you and intimidate you, and get you to stop.

Phil: Brandishing, in my layman terms, would be to display a firearm with the intent of intimidating somebody into an action.

Rob: Certainly.

Phil: If I were to walk into the San Bernardino Municipal Courthouse up the road here, or Superior Courthouse, unpack my briefcase, pulled out an AR-15, unloaded, no magazine, and just pointed it at the jury, and said, “I really would like you to see things my way,” could that be slightly a little bit of a brandishing kind of an idea? What I’m getting at, if you haven’t seen this already, it’s upon every single meme in the world, this prosecutor up there in Kenosha, took the weapon, the AR-15. There was no magazine in it, I didn’t see anybody the action. There was no magazine in it.

He shouldered it, pointed it at the jury, put his finger on the trigger, and was letting them know what it looks like to be on the business end of an AR-15. Why? To intimidate their decisions. That is unbelievable behavior. If you point, not in self-defense, but if you take your weapon and you point it at somebody, that, in some cases, can be considered assault with a deadly weapon. You don’t have a–

Rob: Yes.

Phil: Right?

Rob: State. Those charges go across the board. [crosstalk]

Phil: Brandishing.

Rob: Aggravated assault.

Phil: I would have loved to have seen the bailiff walk over and put him in cuffs. That just would have been perfect. [laughs] “You’re under arrest for brandishing, assault with a deadly weapon.”

Rob: I know defense counselors, I know prosecutors, I know investigators. Everybody is doing the same head scratch, going, “What did he just do?”

Phil: He did it to intimidate them.

Rob: It was to drive his point home. I don’t know why it would be illegal to do it over here, but it’s legal for him to do it over here. That’s amazing.

Phil: The other guy, the person who got his arm shot, Gaige Grosskreutz, he had a felony expunged. I think we called him a felon before. He did have a felony but it was expunged. He wasn’t a current felon, he was a previous felon. This guy’s running around with a firearm, on the streets, and he most certainly shouldn’t have. He obviously had a firearm he shouldn’t have had, carrying in a way he shouldn’t have had, but he was never charged with a crime. Why?

Rob: It’s also one of those that– The way that they would have gone after him in a prosecution, had he been on trial for things that he did that night, they would have roasted him for these things. I’m okay with an expungement if you can satisfy whatever requirements are to get something expunged and removed, man, that’s just part of our legal process. I support that actually. It doesn’t make the fact that he’s got an expungement, that he’s a stand-up guy, and he’s making great decisions, and he’s doing things like this. Fortunately, he actually told the truth on the stand when they question him under cross.

Phil: He had to, it was on video. You couldn’t deny what was sitting right there. Exactly.

Rob: When your hands were up, did he shoot? No.

Phil: When you drew your weapon and tried to kill him, did he shoot you?

Rob: Isn’t it true that he didn’t shoot you until you pointed your gun at him? Yes, that’s true. You just made a self-defense case for him.

Phil: Then the same guy goes on some of the media, some the news stations, says, “I didn’t say that. No, it didn’t really happen.” Just direct lie. Here he is on video, saying, “Yes, yes, yes.” Very clear, precise questions. He comes back out and he goes, “No, that’s not what happened. No, not what happened.” Jeez.

Rob: If you went with his initial interviews with the police. That’s why I was saying, if the prosecution had gone after him to charge him in this case, they would have gone after him about the fact that he initially lied about even having a gun. He lied about ever having pointed the gun. Everything he said initially was a cover-up, trying to keep himself [crosstak]

Phil: The district attorney. What’s his name? Bingham? Binger? Anyway.

Rob: Binger.

Phil: Binger. He says initially that this guy, Gaige, was trying to pull his firearm away from him, and was shot in the elbow. He bladed away from Kyle Rittenhouse and was shot in the elbow. That’s pretty good shooting there. It’s like that movie with Angelina Jolie where if you whip the gun really fast, you can shoot around corners, because that’s what he would have had to have done to get around his body to hit him in the elbow. There are so many lies.

It’s a personal thing, it’s not CCW Safe, a personal thing for me. I’d just love to see people held accountable for this because, man, they’re destroying our legal system. They’re destroying our trust in our legal system when they do this with impunity. I’m really hoping that we see an acquittal or a mistrial with prejudice. Those are the only two just things that could come out of this based on the facts of the case, from what I’ve seen.

Rob: There are so many outside influences. The whole doxxing thing, the whole threats to your jurors, coupled with, suddenly you have people– You don’t completely give over all of your evidence to the defense in discovery.

Phil: That can cause a mistrial right there.

Rob: People don’t realize that you’ve got a really small window to get that stuff to them. We were talking off-the-air that it took 15 months to get to trial with this case, which is actually pretty expedient. A lot of that had to do with the publicity around it and how it blew up. It’s there, I don’t know. You get to a point with your so driven for a win, versus the truth. It’s troubling to me. It really brings into question a lot of things in our political climate. These are things that the silent majority has lost. You’ve lost the right to be silent.

We’ve remained silent for so long that people are coming in and changing the way things were set up to operate, fairly and impartially. To go so far beyond that you’re willing to just twist the rules for a win, that’s not the judicial process. That’s not how we do this thing.

Phil: That’s the way some third-world dictatorships work, right?

Rob: It is, or has been previous, but–

Phil: What separates us is we’ve always had the respect for the rule of law. We’ve talked about this on my show quite a bit is the reason there aren’t– There’s 330 million people in the US, and over half of them are armed. The reason there’s not 175 million mass shootings a day is because we put ourselves in self-control under the law. We respect the law, we self-regulate. The reason we don’t steal cars, the reason you don’t commit fraud, the lie, is you self-regulate. You have a higher thing that’s important in your life that you submit to. You self-regulate. On the other side, when somebody is doing whatever it takes to win, it breaks the whole system.

Rob: It’s no longer fair and impartial. If I can just go in and just make stuff up, that’s just crazy.

Phil: With impunity. It’s the part– With impunity. The guy wants to come in there and just talk nonsense, but then he gets disbarred, okay, that’s fine. If he’s going to be celebrated and be a MSNBC talking political head, and commenting for $500,000 a year on all the other trials that are in– What was his downside? He got to try to do something that does not appear to be totally ethically and legal, and by the rules, and he’s rewarded for it. That’s what’s such a– I think in the Bible, it’s Psalm 72 that talk– I need to go read it again because I got to get myself squared away on this again. Maybe it’s 73.

It’s important that we want to see– The American ethos is we want to see rights upheld, we want to see justice done, fair play. That’s the most important thing that we always want to see. If you’re playing a game of hoops and somebody’s fouling all the time, and he’s not calling on themselves, you won’t invite that guy back. You don’t want to be involved with somebody like that. We self-regulate even a game of three-on-three basketball, because that’s how we live in an organized society.

Rob: What are some of the other things you’ve seen through this trial that have made you scratch your head?

Phil: I saw one of the district attorneys make the comment that because Kyle had a firearm, he gave up his right to self-defense, and that he should just have put the gun down and taken on a mob. Now, some of us have had experience with more than one attacker at a time, but 20, 30, 50? Come on. You’re not Bruce Lee. None of that is real. To comment that he should have just taken a beating, where is that your right in life? You have the right to take a beating. You don’t have the right to self-defense, you have the right to take a beating. Obviously, I have no words. I’m a talk show host, and I have no words. Help me with this.

Rob: It’s incomprehensible, that’s exactly what it is. I don’t have the verbiage to describe the disgust for some of the things I’ve seen in this case.

Phil: Let’s turn him a little bit on his head, and let’s say that this–

Rob: Talk about a minor should take that beating. He’s a kid at the time. He’s still a kid.

Phil: Let’s turn it around. Let’s say that, in fact, this was not Kyle. This was that DA’s mom riding on a subway in New York City, and somebody wants her purse. She should just take a beating, right? “Everybody gets punched in the nose every now and then, mom.”

Rob: It’s absurd.

Phil: What, she has no right to self-defense? This is your mom. If everything’s equal, if that kid has no right to self-defense, your mom has no right to self-defense. What are you saying there? Are you just making noise to try and confuse the jury?

Rob: I’ve seen defense counsel do stuff like this when they absolutely have nothing for their case. Absolutely, there’s just not a defense. Your guy is a three-strikes guy. When he goes down, he’s going away. You’ve got no valid defense, so you just start throwing stuff up at the wall hoping something sticks and it distracts the jury. To see a prosecution do this is just incredibly troubling to me. We can twist things in all sorts of ways. The one that caught my attention was when the prosecutor just grabbed a hold of the term “full metal jacket ammunition”. “You knew you were using full metal jacket ammunition.”

Phil: There’s been so many of these, I even forgot about that one.

Rob: Guys, if you’re going to shoot me with a AR, if there’s any way you can possibly ensure that it’s got full metal jacket ammunition, I’ll appreciate it.

Phil: Now, we need to go back six days earlier when that same guy was saying, “Use hollow-point ammunition, which is meant to explode.” Full metal jackets, hollow– Which one wasn’t it? He was wrong about the hollow points meant to explode, they expand. Varmint bullets are different, but I don’t think that’s what this was, I think this is regular 5.56 55 grain Ball ammo. Obviously, that close of an interaction, there’s so many foot-pounds of energy coming out of a rifle, that’s why this gentle person’s arm vaporized. It’s soft tissue versus 2500 foot-pounds of energy. That is going to happen whether it’s full metal jacket or not.

The prosecutor, again, is showing his idea, or his lack of knowledge that, “It’s full metal jacket.” That sounds terrible. It’s a terrible movie, Full Metal Jacket. He was just talking about how hollow points go in and explode. Now, which one was it, because they are two complete opposite types of projectiles. The same guy is making the same case two different ways. He’s like, “Maybe six of the juries were like this and the other six were like this. They’ll come together, we’ll baffle ’em with baloney,” instead of– There’s no dazzling with brilliance, we’re baffling them with baloney.

Rob: [chuckles] I was shocked. We discussed this a little bit last week, I was shocked they put such a young person on the stand. At the same time, I was really pretty impressed with his ability to pause and get his thoughts together, and answer questions. He really didn’t allow himself to get bullied terribly. When you started pressing and pressing, and pressing, and you’re looking for a yes or no answer from him, and he refused to give a yes or no answer. Yes, if this happened, I knew he would take my firearm and get away from me and he was and he would kill me with it. You have other witnesses that were close enough to be able to back up the fact that there were threats made against him.

Phil: Those witnesses were on the other side. Those witnesses were guys trying to corral him in prior to the shooting of Mr Rosenbaum. When they threw the Molotov cocktail at him, chased him across the parking lot and trapped him, there was two or three other guys with bats or some other weapon that had closed off his avenue of escape. Then when he came back around, Rosenbaum was there. He grabbed his rifle says “Hi, how are you? We’d like to buy some Girl Scout cookies,” and tried to grab his rifle. That’s all what happened there. Don’t ask how Rosenbaum got the Girl Scout cookies, because we’re not allowed to bring that up.

Rob: We touched on the criminal histories of some of the involved in this thing, and the criminal histories–

Phil: There’s four people involved, three of them with criminal histories.

Rob: Even though that stuff bothers us, it has no bearing on whether or not this was a self-defense case or not. Obviously, it wasn’t a minister that was shot and killed in the thing, but it’s not anything that’s going to have any bearing on whether the case was justifiable or not.

Phil: No, the actions have to speak for themselves.

Rob: The actions themselves, absolutely. That’s what we’re basing this whole thing on. That’s what we judge this case on. When we throw in these extracurricular things, you wait until closing arguments before– I don’t know where this comes from but finally, we have a high-resolution copy of this drone footage. Where did that come from on the final–?

Phil: That came from because it was an Android then it went to an Apple phone. It just automatically compressed itself and cleaned itself up.

Rob: That’s amazing.

Phil: That’s what the airdrop feature does on your phone. You didn’t know that? Oh, yes, it just happens all time. Find that out just walking on the street.

Rob: Yes, just truly amazing.

Phil: Well, let’s go back to your days on the force. You have this information and you don’t give it to your DA because it could exonerate the other guy, and they find out about it. Where’s your pension?

Rob: I’m guilty of a crime.

Phil: You’re fired.

Rob: Yes, I’m guilty of a crime. That’s just part of keeping these things fair, because there are going to be times that you may come across something in your investigation that you can’t explain, but it does not support everything that you’re trying to prove.

Phil: What that comes down to exactly your premise before. yYu want the guilty people to go to jail. You just want the facts to be heard, if the facts come out that, “Hey, I really thought that Joe Blow did X. I really did and I don’t like him, and I really did,” but the fact come out that he didn’t. He didn’t. That has to be the responsible stance of law– It is the responsible stance of law enforcement, they don’t pin stuff on people. It’s not Boss Hogg and The Dukes of Hazzard, it’s just, “I’m going to get those boys, I’ll make something up it.” Come on, you guys are too busy, you’re running 20 calls behind all the time, who’s got time to make stuff up on somebody?

I think the law enforcement does the best they can. Anyway, I think they’re doing a heck of a job. I think this situation that we’re seeing here is of an animal of a different feather, is what’s going on in this courtroom, to mix metaphors.

Rob: We have somebody making a request for a $2 million bond on a 17-year-old without even a complete investigation being presented to you. That’s something that makes me scratch my head.

Phil: Did he make bond or was he actually in custody this entire time?

Rob: No, he did make bond. I think they probably did a bond reduction hearing or something like that as well. To be so influenced by, I don’t know if you want to go, court of public opinion or the winds of political change. Because obviously, this was something that was a result of a law enforcement shooting that happened in that town, that’s since been deemed to be a justifiable shooting, but because of the climate and the way things have gone for the last two years, three years, it was something that became very contentious.

We have so much outside influence now. I don’t have an issue with the fact that this was investigated but I think you make a full complete investigation before you start setting up your prosecution. It’s not a win-at-all-cost thing. It never has been, never should be. It should be, let’s do the most thorough investigation we can and see if we can come down to what the truth is.

Phil: Maybe a thing to note here. You’re saying it’s not a win-at-all-cost thing, I think if the facts line up 100% this direction, then you use all those facts, press the case 100%. It’s not, “I want this to happen. I’ll use my salesmanship to the jury. Oh, by the way, you ever looked down the barrel of AR 15? This is what it looks like. Hey, guys, this is what–” Scare the heck out of them, or you’re going to be doxxed, or you are going to do this. That salesmanship trying to win as opposed to explaining the facts, this is what happened, A to B, this is what happened, here’s what he did, here’s what he didn’t do. You’re seeing a guy just trying to sell the jury.

Rob: Either the facts all line up and support your case or they don’t. I never felt like I– I was only a piece of the puzzle.

Phil: You did your job, pushed it on.

Rob: Yes. I move all of that information on to the prosecutor’s office, they make the determination on whether charges are being filed. A lot of people don’t even have the understanding of that, “The police filed charges and they did this and this.” No we did an investigation-

Phil: We turned in our reports, to DA files and charges.

Rob: -we entered the facts. The District Attorney’s office or the grand jury or who– They made the determination that charges would be filed in this case and this is the way it goes. Even still, because I’ve got the professionals from the defense side, and I’ve got the professionals from the prosecution side. The defense has investigators as well, they’re working the case just like we are. Once they have my information, they want to discredit it and disprove it and show–

Phil: That’s their job that’s their job.

Rob: That’s their job.

Phil: I think we just need to–

Rob: It goes to those fair, impartial jurors, those citizen jurors, because we want people that are of the community, of the same standards. This is what we do where we live. That’s the people I want to sit in judgment against me, it is.

Phil: Again, I think we need to come back full circle on this. We’ve talked about this case, everybody’s seen it, everybody has at least two opinions on it. We’re going to find out how that comes down, but it comes down to the fact that if you ever have to defend your life, and I hope you never do, if you ever have to defend your life, you’re going to make sure that you have the coverage you need to defend your freedom, because that’s what we’re watching here. We’re watching a 17 year old have to have his freedom defended after he had to defend his life. CCW Safe, it’s my choice, unlimited criminal and civil proceeding costs. What else you going to say?

Rob: Aside from the fact that you have those things in place which is huge, our team is unmatched–

Phil: The experts like yourself and Don West and some of the other people I’ve met over there. Don’t worry folks, I’m not one of your experts. [laughs] You’re safe, you’re in better hands.

Rob: Our critical response team manager, Gary Eastridge, has been involved in law enforcement since the ’70s. He retired as a homicide investigator. He did a contract for the UN, and worked overseas, teaching other international law enforcement guys how to investigate homicides, he’s done it all over the world. If you’re involved in something that you’ve had to defend yourself that’s resulted in serious bodily injury or death, we are the ones that are coming to you. That’s just the team that we’ve put in place to assist you through those early days.

That’s something that’s really critical that nobody else has. Nobody. I couldn’t begin to count the hundreds of shootings I’ve actively been a part of investigating. It’s just something that know what you’re buying, know what service you’re getting, and understand that you have people throughout our organization that are as good as anybody you could find in the country. That’s a very big deal. We’re always thankful for our members, it’s an honor that they trust us, and it’s something that we take very, very seriously.

Phil: All right. Have a happy Thanksgiving.

Rob: You guys enjoy your holidays, we will see you next week. We appreciate you so much. Thank you for tuning in.

Phil: I think I’ll be fatter next week. I don’t know if it’s possible, but I’ll probably be fatter after Thanksgiving, even next week.

Rob: I’m going to work on it.

Phil: All right. God bless.

Rob: Take care.