#343 Jimmy Watson - John McAfee's Bodyguard Reveals the Dead Man's Switch

Jimmy Watson is a former Marine, Blackwater contractor, Navy SEAL, and former head of security, CEO, and close confidant to John McAfee. He joined McAfee’s inner circle in 2017 and experienced firsthand the legal turmoil, paranoia, and instability surrounding him. After leaving that world and battling addiction and personal loss, Watson returned to his Christian faith and now speaks about faith, purpose, and helping others out of destructive cycles. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Privacy Isn't Paranoia. It's Protection. Download Glacier - https://srs.site/glacierapp Ready to upgrade your life? Head to bubsnaturals.com/srs and use code SHAWN for 20% off Get $10 off your first order at https://ponchooutdoors.com/shawnryan when you enter your email. One thing to pack, five ways to power! Get 10% Off @Ridge with code SRS at https://www. Ridge.com/SRS #Ridgepod Jimmy Watson Links: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/MightyWarrior282 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@MightyWarrior282/videos Book - https://a.co/d/0jgr1NJP Mighty Warrior Performance - https://mightywarriorperformance.com Linktree - https://linktr.ee/Mightywarrior282 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Speaker 01

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• 1:06Speaker 02

  You know, because I've kind of done the part of, you know, the circuit, and this is on another level.

• 1:10Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, thank you, dude.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Everything.

• 1:12Shawn Ryan?

  Well, got a killer team, awesome team, and it wasn't always like this, so.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:20Shawn Ryan?

  Started off in the attic.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  So. Yeah, that's what he was telling me, your guy, man. He said, this happened, you were just sending in hard drives?

• 1:29Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, before that, it was me and my wife. And I was sitting here running sound while I was interviewing, and my wife, we had these cameras that would only record 30 minutes at a time. And so my wife would run back and forth and reset the cameras, depending on who's talking.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  My girl was such, she goes, Sean Ryan, she goes, how he, uh, how he becomes like this? How he do it? Boy, how he do it? You know, like, she talks like that. I'm like, how he do it? Like, you mean, how is he like a millionaire? How, how, how do he become successful? I said, he, he, he's got a badass show, and he's super intelligent, smart about it, and your marketing and everything. There's a lot that goes into it. And also, you got in. I'm sure the timing is good, too, but I don't know.

• 2:13Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I don't know, man. Probably.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  You got in a while.

• 2:17Shawn Ryan?

  I just, when I did it, I was like, I gotta, I'm just gonna do it different than everybody else. Everybody had a purple curtain. You know, the Joe Rogan curtain?

• 2:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27Shawn Ryan?

  And everybody had the headphones.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  You're right.

• 2:29Shawn Ryan?

  I was the first one to come on here, and I was like, I'm gonna learn how to edit. I'm gonna do previews as promotional pieces. Nobody was doing that. Nobody had like a set like this, where there was not a mic shoved in your face and headphones. And so I just wanted to make it very relaxed.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean? And so, and now, like, everybody's doing it, which is great, you know, lifted the whole industry.

• 2:55Speaker 02

  Right. I told myself, I was like, you know, I'm gonna tell Sean, just, I know you've been lied to a lot, so my, my number one goal is just not to lie today. You know what I'm saying, bro?

• 3:05Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  So try to eliminate some of that. You know, like, because I saw your interview, man, I laughed so hard. I can't imagine.

• 3:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I should have expected it.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Well, I, my biggest mistake in life, I think, is my trusting nature to me.

• 3:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Characteristic is to trust people, latch on to people quickly, and become friends, and a chameleon kind of, like, oh, yeah, we're best friends now, and I mean it. It's authentic, but, but, man, it's crushed me.

• 3:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I know what you mean.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  You know, my, you know, McAfee, John McAfee, he once told me, he said, "Son, you could be a billionaire." He goes, "But you got one problem." He said, "You could be such a good businessman." I said, "Sir, you name it, and I will, I will kill it right now, and I, because I want that success. You name my problem, and I'll get rid of it." I swear to God. He goes, "I'm sorry, son. You, you, there's no getting rid of this one." And I said, "Tell me, and I'll get rid of it." And he says, "No." And I said, "What then?" He said, "It's your heart." He said, "That's what's gonna, he said, "That's what's gonna get in the way, and you won't become as successful as you could be." And he was right, because I, I have these loyalty things still, and I'm better at it now.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  But once, he said, "You know, your biggest problem, Jimmy?" I said, "What, sir?" And he could look right through you and tell you about your whole life. He said, "You lift people on a pedestal so high, so far above you, that eventually, you can't hold anymore, and they just fall on you and crush you." And I mean, that was pretty much what I did in my ex-wife. I would hold people, and that's what McAfee did to me. He did that? What's that?

• 4:49Shawn Ryan?

  He would, he would, he cared about people.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  McAfee cared, he, he was very untrusting, and he didn't trust anybody, even his own wife, because, because she came to him. If you came to McAfee, he couldn't trust you. She was a prostitute in Miami, right when he came back from Belize, from being on the run. He sat down, and she approached him with her friend. And he said, "What are you two women up to tonight?" And they said, "Well, we've come to rob old white rich men." And he says, "Okay, you can stay, because you told me the truth, and your friend can leave." And so, everybody came to him, even his Green Beret, security guards were able to contact him and stuff. So I was the only one that he reached out to. I didn't know him.

• 5:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  He reached out to me. And that's where, and so the trust, so no matter what, no matter how paranoid he got about me, no matter if he called me a spy, no matter if he saw me take a letter from somebody outside, even if it's the lawn bill, he couldn't, he had, that's the one thing he, that I was different, was that I had never approached him, and I would remind him of that. I said, "Sir, you reach out to me." So he'd be like, "Fair enough."

• 6:03Shawn Ryan?

  Do you still think that little piece of advice is true, that you won't find extreme success because you're a good person? Because you have a heart? Because you lift people up? Because you care about people?

• 6:15Speaker 02

  I'm afraid so.

• 6:16Shawn Ryan?

  Really? You think that?

• 6:17Speaker 02

  I, I mean.

• 6:19Shawn Ryan?

  How do you define success?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, how do we define, how do I define success? I think success for me is, uh, lighting the torches of other people and getting my charge from that. If I can really, if I can actually change somebody's life with my story or the lighthouse mission of mine, then that will charge me up, right? But, but, and let's get real, success to me right now is, I mean, would be making billions of dollars. You know, the American, like, the, what everybody wants, right? There's still that in me.

• 6:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  You know? I've made millions of dollars before, and totally crashed and burned. Ruined it. I've had opportunities, Sean, opportunities of a life, and I've ruined them. So this time, I told God, this time, if or when you decide it's time again, I'm gonna do it your way. Because Jimmy's way is the road to hell.

• 7:22Shawn Ryan?

  I think he could still find all that and be a good person.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  100.

• 7:27Shawn Ryan?

  Because, you know, yeah, well, maybe he's made billions. I don't know what the guy was worth, to be honest. What was he worth?

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe. People call him a billionaire, but he probably, he sold McAfee for 700 million to, uh, yeah, 700 million.

• 7:46Shawn Ryan?

  So between all the investments and stuff afterwards, I'm sure he probably hit the billion mark. I don't know, you know what I mean? I think it's a longer path, like, just, and I'm nowhere even, even in that realm.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  I don't know, Sean, I've seen your setup, Sean, I don't.

• 8:02Shawn Ryan?

  But, but I do well, but it, it's, I just think it's a longer road, man. I mean, when I started this, I never made it about me. You know what I mean? It was always about somebody else. And I saw everybody's business that I brought on just race right past mine, because of my business. You know what I mean?

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 8:22Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, I mean, they were able to take it and run, you know what I mean? And, and develop something massive. But a lot of them never would have got the exposure if it wasn't for this, you know? And, and I used to, I used to just think to myself, like, what am I doing wrong here? I'm paying in time, in my money, in, in, in my heart and soul, you know what I mean? To lift these other guys up who came, who would never get this type of exposure. And, uh, but just, but I knew I was doing a good thing, and I knew they deserved it, you know what I mean? And, and I, I loved doing it, and I still do. I still get way more out of that than the financial aspect.

• 9:04Shawn Ryan?

  But I just knew, I was like, if I just keep doing it, if you just keep pumping enough good into the world, it's gonna come back around. And it took about.

• 9:15Shawn Ryan?

  What, two, two, three years and it came back around?

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Well, it came back around huge. You got the number one show or number two show bouncing back and forth?

• 9:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we're in top five.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 9:28Shawn Ryan?

  But, but, uh, so I don't know, man. Just keep that in mind. I'm sure screwing everybody over and not having a hard end and, and no feelings and all that kind of stuff. I think it's a much faster track, but I think it leads to a empty soul, which isn't success anyways.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Right. It's a fast track. Um, but one thing it taught me, Sean, was forgiveness. Um, I had to walk through a tremendous amount of forgiveness of my ex, uh, you for taking a ton of Bitcoin and, and money and all kinds of stuff. And, you know, think about every time Bitcoin goes up, right? When it's at a huge dip right now, but when it goes up, I had like, I had like a hundred Bitcoin at one time, like I had.

• 10:12Shawn Ryan?

  You had a hundred Bitcoin?

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Brother, I had, brother, I, I'm not joking. When I talk about money, I, you know, and, and I had so much. And so every time Bitcoin goes up, can you imagine? I have zero now. Can you imagine like the feelings of that? But so that's where I walk out that forgiveness piece, but God taught me some lessons. McAfee taught me lessons and that I, I take into my life now. That's created success. I consider success. Um, and those, and there's been a lot of life lessons, you know?

• 10:43Shawn Ryan?

  No bad.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  You know?

• 10:45Shawn Ryan?

  No bad. If you had a book, you're writing a book.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  But yeah, it's, it's been a, it's been like a, look what happened. So I got my story out there and, um, one of these big publishing companies picked it up, a, a major one, two words, something and something. Um, I won't put their name out, but they offered a big advance for my story and I needed it, Sean. I, I don't have the Bitcoin anymore. I don't have the money anymore. So I needed, I got my little baby. This is just a couple of years ago. Uh, and I said, okay, okay. And my agent was like, it's gonna happen, but they, and it was about to be sent. They said, they just need one little change to your story. They need to tweak it a little bit. I said, okay, let me know. I'll put the delete, hit the delete button. And they said, well, it's kind of the part about Jesus, how he met you. And I said, oh, no deal. I said, no deal.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  I said, I guess I'll have to write this sucker on my own.

• 11:35Shawn Ryan?

  Why, why is it that they always want that out?

• 11:37Speaker 02

  They want it out because it's the truth. They want the truth out to keep us guessing and keep us distorted and disillusioned.

• 11:46Shawn Ryan?

  It'll probably be that much bigger. I mean.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  Well, that's why it's only nine dollars because I wrote it. Hold fast, man.

• 11:53Shawn Ryan?

  But I mean, they did it to Mel Gibson.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:56Shawn Ryan?

  The passion, you know, they, nobody would fund them. Nobody would fund the guy, you know, everybody, they went after him, all those attacks, everything. They'll never watch it, like just discouraged him and tried to destroy him. And then the movie wound up breaking the record. It was like, what? Six hundred, six hundred million dollar movie or something? The Passion?

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 12:17Shawn Ryan?

  And it hasn't been broken until, I think it's just been the last couple of years. It was, it was undefeated with inflation for like 20, I think it's like 20 something years.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Goodness.

• 12:31Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean?

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Dang.

• 12:32Shawn Ryan?

  And they all self-funded, which is self-published.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm doing self-publish and, and no, I don't know what I'm doing mo- most of the time, but, but, um, I ha- I, I know how to tell a story at least and I can put it on paper. And my wife has been really encouraging to do it. She said, Jimmy, you gotta get this story. You got to get your story out to people. And, but I didn't, but I always said, Sean, if, if you're gonna, if, if you're, if a book is gonna come out, somebody else needs to write about you. Jesus, Hitler, Gandhi, Martin Luther. If you're that important, McAfee, baby, if you're that important, somebody writes a book about you. You don't write a book about yourself. So this is not a book about myself. It may seem like a little bit, but that's just to tell the breadcrumbs to the redemption.

• 13:20Shawn Ryan?

  Cool. When's this coming out?

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Uh, December 21st.

• 13:25Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, it's coming this year?

• 13:27Speaker 02

  People can, people can preorder it, but it's coming out this year, December 21st.

• 13:32Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. Right on. Well, we're gonna do somewhat of a life story on you right here.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. I'm so excited. And Sean, I realize you could have anybody on this show. Uh, DT, big, big Donald Trump. And, uh, so when you're, so when your awesome team called me and, and gave me this opportunity, I said, they said, well, do you have some time available? Like I'm real busy, right? And I'm like, let me check my schedule, you know? And I'm like, I will go there tonight in my underwear to go on Sean Ryan's show. As I, I mean, I, cause I've been praying for an opportunity to get my story out on a, on a, you know, larger scale.

• 14:06Shawn Ryan?

  Well, one, I'm glad you brought some clothes with you. No underwear to have here, man. Surely.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Thank you, Sean.

• 14:13Shawn Ryan?

  All right. So I'm gonna give you an introduction here. Jimmy Watson, you're a former Marine, Blackwater contractor, Navy SEAL and former head of security, CEO and confidant to the technology icon, John McAfee. In 2017, after years of war, covert operations, addiction and personal loss, you entered McAfee's world and quickly became part of his inner circle. Living through the paranoia, constant movement and legal chaos surrounding him. After leaving McAfee and reaching the darkest point of your life, you found your way back to God. Today, you use that experience to help guide others towards faith, purpose,

• 14:53Shawn Ryan?

  and a way out of their own darkness. And most importantly, obviously, you're a Christian, a father and a husband.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 15:02Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome to the show.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Thank you, Sean. Thank you, everybody.

• 15:06Shawn Ryan?

  So before we get started here, we got a couple of things to, uh, crank out here.

• 15:13Shawn Ryan?

  One, everybody gets these.

• 15:18Shawn Ryan?

  Vigilance Lee gummy bears.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Vigilance Lee gummy bears. All right.

• 15:22Shawn Ryan?

  Made in the USA. So yeah, when I was in my attic.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  This is great, man.

• 15:27Shawn Ryan?

  Couldn't get any advertisers. Nobody would touch me. Nobody would talk to me.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  But now.

• 15:31Shawn Ryan?

  So we made vigilantly gummy bears to sell.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Dang, man.

• 15:36Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, and they were wildly successful and we started a Patreon account.

• 15:42Speaker 02

  And what, what's all in this? What if I eat them all at one time? What will happen tonight in my hotel room?

• 15:47Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, you'll get a sugar high.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  You're sugar high.

• 15:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Nothing crazy.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is great. Thank you, Sean.

• 15:55Shawn Ryan?

  And then we got a Patreon account. So as I was saying, they've been with me since the beginning when I was in the attic. And, uh, dude, uh, they've been with us the whole time. And so they're the reason that I get to sit down with you here today. And so they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  I love this.

• 16:15Shawn Ryan?

  So this is from Michael. Our constitutional system begins with a simple premise. Governmental power ultimately derives from the people. So if you had the opportunity to speak from the heart to every American today, what would you impart to us about your own civic responsibility to turn this ship around together by majority? And actually become the change we keep demanding outside of ourselves.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Well, that's a good one. That's a good one. Um, I, I, I would start by getting on your knees and I don't mean to turn this into, my dad always said, you know, relig- religion is the worst thing that happened to Christianity. So remove religion out of it. I'm talking about a real, a real no joke meet with Jesus. We called it in the SEAL teams, remember? A guy would get in trouble and you'd say, oh dude, you're done, bro. You meet with Jesus. He's having a meet with Jesus. And it was like, you know, like he kicked in the door at the Disneyland retreat because he was so drunk. He thought somebody took his family hostage, right? Well, you know, a meet with Jesus is when, uh, for me is, is when you kind of come to your senses and,

• 17:25Speaker 02

  and you come out of your own delusions of grandeur and you go, God, just like my mom used to say, always pray, Jimmy, as you go on in your life. And I wasn't religious. I wasn't following Jesus. She said, always pray that you won't be the self-deceived. So pray first that you won't be self-deceived. If you, even if you're not praying to your God, whatever, pray that you won't be self-deceived because, um, we can be self-deceived to the point where we're so disillusioned. We're fighting online. We're fighting among our friends. We're fighting amongst each other. There's these vet wars going, all this weird stuff. And the whole time there's the people up at the top laughing at us and going, good job. Keep it divisive.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Anytime I see people fighting each other, anytime that I get involved in fighting people, I'm like, dude, this is exactly what they want. The government wants us. McAfee, you say the governor, the govern- it's the governor on your car from keeping you going faster. It's governing you. It's governing you. So here we are. We're divisive. Our nation is falling apart. Our, we're, we're in an economic crisis and people don't really realize it. But you go to the grocery store, uh, men are feeling inadequate about themselves because they're like, why, why can't I be like this guy? Why can't I have success? Well, it's not your fault. You're working your ass off. You, there's only so many hours in a day.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  The problem is the econ- the economy is destroyed. We're in an economic crisis and the crisis happens before the collapse. So I believe that every man must have a reckoning with God first and then, and then straighten himself out or he is gonna just be all over the place, like I was for so many years, running amok like a tornado, coming out, hitting, destroying this, come back up, come over here, ruin this. You know, whatever, self-sabotage. So getting right with ourself first.

• 19:23Shawn Ryan?

  I like that. I like that. It's a good answer to a deep question.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 19:32Shawn Ryan?

  We're all getting older, and that's not the problem. The problem is when your body starts keeping you from doing the things you still want to do. Like taking the best of your entire life. Training, traveling, long days, workouts, recovery. It adds up, and at a certain point, you start feeling it more. Sore joints, slow recovery, knees that don't feel the way they used to. That's why I take Bubz Naturals Collagen Peptides. Bubz has been a longtime partner of the show, and there's a reason I trust them. It's simple. It works into my routine, and it's a product I actually use. One scoop in my tea every morning. It blends in completely.

• 20:15Shawn Ryan?

  No taste, no grit, nothing complicated. And that's what I like about it. It's easy to stay consistent with, and consistency is the point. I've been taking it for a while now, and I genuinely noticed the difference. My knees feel stronger, my skin looks better, I bounce back faster after workouts, and I enjoy every single that I take. Part of why I trust Bubz is how seriously they take the product. Their collagen is NSF certified for sport, sourced from grass-fed cattle, clean, tested, and exactly what they say it is. And there's more to this brand than the product. Bubz was founded in honor of Navy SEAL Glenn "Bub" Doherty.

• 21:00Shawn Ryan?

  10% of profits go straight to helping veterans transition into civilian life. So when you buy this, you're not just supporting your joints and recovery, you're backing the people who served. Ready to upgrade your life? Head to bubsnaturals.com/srs and use code Shawn for 20% off.

• 21:24Shawn Ryan?

  All right, so let's get into your life story. You ready?

• 21:26Speaker 02

  I'm ready.

• 21:27Shawn Ryan?

  All right. Where'd you grow up?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  I grew up in West Texas, Muleshoe, M-U-L-E-S-H-O-E, Muleshoe. I think Lee Horsley was from there. And, but my dad had a thousand-acre farm.

• 21:40Shawn Ryan?

  A thousand-acre farm?

• 21:41Speaker 02

  I think it was almost 2,000, but I checked myself last night. I wanted to say 1,000, so it doesn't sound unbelievable. But it was, but it's dry land, an old farm in West Texas. And there used to be these arrowheads, these flint and arrowheads and buffalo bones, maybe Indian bones, I don't know, out on this field every time the wind would blow. And so I had this incredible childhood, uh, growing up on this farm, like just, um, like the Jungle Book, that little guy, Mowgli or whatever. And I would camp by myself, and I would dig holes out in the field with my little brother, and we would play army and war. We would make Molotov cocktails. My dad let us run them up. There's gasoline over here, tractor over here, we'd drive around tractors.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Um, and all while he was, he was, it was kind of going bankrupt, the farm. It was the old Muleshoe Ranch. There was Muleshoe Ranch houses. The originator for the bullwhip, uh, lived there. Uh, invented, yeah. And so we would go around and, and burn up pieces of the old ranch house. I mean, this is like museum stuff, and we're over there just destroying everything. But that's where I really learned to shoot, which would help me out. Uh, and I can remember my dad tell, rocking me when I was real little in the dark, and he would tell me Bible stories. And I didn't become religious, I wasn't following God. I was running from him most of my life, but those stories would play a major role in my life later on.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  He would talk about Joseph in the dungeon. And I would later on be able to kind of parallel my life to that in a way. Not that I was in a dungeon for 13 years, but that Count of Monte Cristo story, where you feel like you're being betrayed and things are falling apart around you. You're crashed up against the rocks one moment, you're shining in the light the next moment. And so this childhood was, I was kind of sheltered in a way from the world. I didn't know how hard it was gonna be, but I had a sense of God. I had a sense of duty to give back to God and sacrifice my life, perhaps, for a greater cause and go to war. Even as a little boy, I understood this, as weird as that is.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  And because, and maybe because my dad would sing the Green Beret song to me. He would play "Bye, ding, so on the cassette, sir's in this and only three will win the Green Beret." And he used to look at me and point at me, like silver wings upon my chest stuff. And so I thought I was a warrior, Shawn, from the time I was little.

• 24:13Shawn Ryan?

  Did he have military experience?

• 24:15Speaker 02

  He was a, a crop duster for years, a preacher judge, a Texas judge. And, um, he was in the army during Vietnam, but, but he, he was never in Vietnam, during Vietnam, 68, 69, I think, for two years. And then he got out on a farming hardship. He said, "Dad, get me out of here on a farmer's hardship." And so, but for some reason, he put this into me, and it was the right thing to do. It saved my life, or I would have been such a wild kid because I didn't understand school. I wasn't picking up what the other kids were putting down. Um, I was inadequate. Uh, I didn't understand what they were saying, math, numbers. I didn't have any understanding of it.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  So eventually they, at 14 years old, they, uh, I left school. My dad pulled me out of school.

• 25:07Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, at 14?

• 25:09Speaker 02

  At 14, maybe 13, yeah.

• 25:11Shawn Ryan?

  Why'd you get pulled out of school?

• 25:12Speaker 02

  My dad just came in with, uh, well, I had the record for detention hall. I had 99 days in detention. And you just sit there all day in detention, and, you know, they didn't know better back then. And I had the record for swats, for spankings. They used to swat you in Texas.

• 25:30Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  With a freaking board this big from the wood shop. And I'm talking, drill your ass, Shawn, so hard. It was the coach and the principal. He was the Texas high school coach and principal, and he would be, and wood shop teacher. And he had a paddle like this, and I can't believe this is, it's even legal back then. But he would bend you over, and me and my little brother got in trouble once. And he said, "Bend over the thing," and you had those little silky, track silkies on. And he hit my brother so hard, he went into the locker head first, and I busted out laughing, but it was so loud in that locker room when he hit him. I bust out laugh, laughing, but he hit me, and we had big old purple red welts on our legs. And we thought that was normal.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  And so eventually, my dad said, "Obviously, Jimmy, it just broke the, the school's record in detention and swats. Let's go ahead and figure something out for Jimmy."

• 26:25Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  School's not for him.

• 26:27Shawn Ryan?

  What about your mom?

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Oh, my mom was this beautiful Coca-Cola model, Braniff stewardess, brought to West Texas by my dad, deceived. My dad, my dad decided to put everything up, uh, everything away. He was running a Comanche lifestyle like I was, I think. And he said, you know, he gave it all to Jesus one day. And my mom did too at the same time, believe it or not. They both gave everything up. I am talking about everything, Shawn. And my dad literally went on a mission trip to India. He said it was the worst experience of his life, but he said, "No, I'm giving everything up to God." Keep in mind, he was a successful pilot, crop duster. I mean, making big bucks back in the day.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  He had land, everything. He gave everything up, gave his brand-new Mustang to a disabled girl in church. And he went on a mission trip to India, and he said, um, and he was coming back sleeping. Remember Adam in the garden is sleeping? When he, when he wakes up, there's his wife. He comes back from a trip from India, hears this beautiful stewardess, my mom, working for Braniff. And back then, it was no joke. It was hundreds and hundreds of women were, were, were looked at, and you had to keep a certain weight, and you had to be the most beautiful, model-like girl. And my, my, my mom would never go up to him, but he was sleeping, and the, and he just came off this terrible trip. He doesn't know why God sent him this terrible mission to India.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  He said people were literally living in dung houses. And he said he was coming back, and he was sleeping, and the preacher woke him up and said, "Wake up, you know, here's your wife, your wife's coming down here." And he said, "Ma'am, do you know Jesus?" And he had the big red Bible. And my mom was like, "Well, I just put everything up for him, and I'm on this." She was on a miserable trip. They met, and they'd been married for 45 years.

• 28:23Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding? Wow.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Beautiful relationship.

• 28:27Shawn Ryan?

  Still, still married today?

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Ill married today, going hardcore, been strong.

• 28:31Shawn Ryan?

  You close with them?

• 28:32Speaker 02

  I'm super close with them, Shawn, because of what I, what I went through. And they, uh...

• 28:53Speaker 02

  I wouldn't be here today.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  If it wasn't for them, literally in, you know, I wouldn't be here literally right now if they didn't uh, if they weren't so caring.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  And didn't take me back in at what thirty eight years old when I was on the run, when I got when I when I was arrested. They took me back into their house on a five million dollar promissory bond. And I always thought if if I was, if I didn't have parents like that to take me in, I would have killed, I would have off myself so fast. I was so done with life. I would have easily taken myself out, but because of their love.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  I kept going. Yeah, man.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Yep. We'll get to that point. Yeah, yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  So your dad yanked you out of school. Hey, yeah, my dad took me down to school and then my mom tricked me. My mom said, yeah, I've got a plan. I'm gonna send Jimmy to the summer camp. At fourteen years old in Austin, Texas, and uh, and we're gonna, and we're gonna just tell him it's a summer camp, but it was actually like a home. Uh, uh, uh, they called it the Texas Bible Institute, and it was basically a place. Where these forty year olds and thirty year old troubled men in and out of prison would come and stay and work. And like out of a work camp. And then the inner city kids would be bussed in from Houston at this big Bible college all summer in all, all, all year.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  And so they tricked me into going, Jimmy, you wanna go to the summer camp? But yeah. I go there after a week goes by, I've been cleaning toilets, I mean hardcore toilets, it's so miserable, Sean. I call my mom on this, they had no cell phones, I called, I called her on the, the pay phone. And um, I was like, Mom, it's, and it was hot, it's already hot in Austin, Texas, it's brutal in a laundromat, you know? Laundry's going off, I said, Ma, I said, it's been a week, you told me it's, it's a week, can, can you come get me? She goes, Jimmy, you're, you're gonna go ahead and stay there now for a while, okay? I gotta go, and I'm like, Ma, what? Ma, and, and this, this black kid came in.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  It was like, what's up, white honky, let's go, and it just started banging out right there, fight, you know, right out, right off the bat, didn't even hang up the phone.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  I end up, uh, I end up cleaning a hundred toilets, about a hundred toilets, I always say a hundred toilets, but it, okay, let's say it was fifty, let's say it was eighty, a hundred, whatever. About a hundred toilets a day, if I remember right. Holy cow. Four times a day. Four times a day? Morning, yeah, because they were bussing in these um. They were bussing in these hundreds, hundreds of um, from ninth ward Houston, these little kids, troubled kids. And I mean, they're just, you know, just shitting on the walls and, and doing crazy, who, God only knows what. And just, and so I would, I got it down to forty five seconds a toilet.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  So I could clean a whole toilet, I mean, from the top to the bottom in forty five seconds, and I'm talking flush with the cloth going down in the toilet in forty five seconds. And I mean, that thing you could eat off that sucker, man. Wow. I had two big bottles. I was an expert at cleaning toilets. And, and I was also running hard at night with a pack on, like a buck forty, man, I was really small guy, I was six foot buck forty. And uh, in uh, no, no athleticism, like the coach, my mom and dad begged the coach, high school or the junior high coach to play me one time. He said, ma'am, I would get kicked out of this school district if I played your son one time on this field.

• 32:36Speaker 02

  So I'm training hard, um, I get staph infection and boils all over my body, so it's kinda like a job, a picture of Job in the Bible, right? Where I'm suffering at such a young age in this camp for a year and a half at least, my mom and dad kept me there. And uh, I got to the point where I was feverish and I had boils, still got scars today on my arm and stuff from these boils, they would get real heavy and infected. And uh, even had one on the back of my head. And I really liked this girl, I saw this girl there, she was working there too, she was pretty. And she was sitting behind me and the one on the back of my head kinda went off, exploded, whatever, on the back, and that was over after that. You know, you ain't never getting a date, dog, you ain't clothes shop. You know?

• 33:22Speaker 02

  How old were you when you went to this place? Fourteen years. Fourteen years old? I turned fifteen there, had my birthday there. And then sixteen came around, I was still there, I think, and then it was time to go to Marine Corps. The Marine Corps? Well, I wanted to be a SEAL, but it was so far out there, remember, I had no education really. No normal, no real formal education, so, so I mean, I'm just like, I'm winging it. I mean, I got a seventeen on the ASVAP. At sixteen years old, a one seven, you can't get any worse than that on an ASVAP. And so it, it was really, it was really hurtful because I wanted to be a SEAL so bad, I had read these books.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Or a Green Beret or something, but my mind kinda shifted to be in a SEAL for some reason at some point, but it started out as Green Beret, my dad saying the Green Beret. Well, when I turned sixteen, I was able to get, the best day of my life, I think, was able to get my GED. So got my GED, and then my parents signed me in, I was the youngest recruit for probably the last, I mean, maybe ten, twenty years before that. You know, in Vietnam, they had younger guys, but I mean, I mean, I'm sixteen, barely turned seventeen. Wow, I didn't even know that was possible. Yeah, you could, you could, with your parents' signature, you can go in at seventeen. Wow, so you're in, you're at Marine Corps boot camp at seventeen years old? At seventeen years old. What'd your parents think? Were they happy that you were doing that?

• 34:50Speaker 02

  They were so proud of me, Sean, cuz I mean, I mean, if you're a kid out, sometimes people say, well, Jimmy, don't you think it's not good for little Johnny to go to the Marine Corps? Or this, or the military right now with all this stuff going on with Israel? Shut, what are you talking about? Like, like, if your, if your kid is, is not going anywhere in life, like the Bandidos once told me. If you ain't got nothing else in this life going on, you better put your kid somewhere, or he's a dead man anyways in this day and age. You, you know, but if they've got something going on, then don't go to the military, that's my, my thing. What year was this? What year did you join? Ninety nine. Ninety nine? I signed in ninety eight and I joined. Right on, right on. So how was boot camp? How was uh, Marine Corps?

• 35:34Speaker 02

  It was straight up hazing, it was just like Full Metal Jacket, I couldn't believe it. Did you like it? I, I hated it. Sean, it was terrible, they, they, I, I remember literally thinking in my head, Sean, I was like, well, at least they can't put their hands on you. And right when I thought that, and they're screaming, I've never heard guys scream like this, they were like. Like his in veins sticking out, and there, there are some of them, they're like.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Like a frog, you know, cuz they're ruining their vocal cords, and I remember thinking, well, one, there's no way they can keep this temple up. And number two, there's no way they could put their hands on you, so therefore I can make it through anything. Right when I thought that, I swear to you, the, the, the Joel and Sergeant turned around, Staff Sergeant McNulty, they, we called him McNutty. He turned around and he goes, who's the youngest recruit in here? And I go, just stupidly, just automatic response, I go, I am, cuz I knew I was, I said, I am Joel and Sergeant Staff Sergeant McNulty. And he came over there and slugged me in my, so like right here. In sternum? But yeah, sternum, and I buckled over and I remember just, there was nothing left in my, my lungs, I was like.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  And you know, and, and they kept that pace up, and they put their hands on us all the time. And that was two big mistakes I made early on in life.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  What'd you go in to do? Oh, three eleven infantry Marine. Nice. Oh, yeah, I picked, I picked a way, you know, oh, three eleven, and uh, and remember, there's no war, but I know I'm going to war in my mind. I've got it all planned out, I even told my dad, he goes, Jimmy, wars are not fought, people have to remember, you know, twenty years ago, whatever, people didn't think we were going to war again. Yeah, Desert Storm and some other stuff, anyways, um, my first deployment's on the USS Tarawa, old ship. And a big old LHA carrier with the, you know, carries like three thousand troops, all you do is, yeah, all you do is stand in line and chow, chow hall line all day.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  And um, uh, and my first deployment was to USS, uh, when the USS Cole got bombed. Oh, no kidding? Yeah, we happened to be going right by, right by the Yemen Harbor, Aiden, Gulf of Aiden. Literally right when it happened, we were twenty miles away, and we just turned our entire force, our mew. I think it was fifteen pew, maybe thirty five, I can't remember, but we turned our mew. And we got on the little black rubber boats, we thought we were special, you know, with M sixteens and stuff, and uh. Uh, cuz I was in a platoon, they called the Dirty Dozen, and they had a stay attached to us, the sniper, the snipers.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Uh, and uh, but we did circles around the, that was my first experience with death, the smell of death, war, like anything like that. I remember seeing the hole in the side of the USS Cole, and I thought, we're going to war over this. I thought. Damn, no shit, you were there, huh? I was there, recovered the bodies. You recovered the bodies? Uh, the divers recovered the bodies and we would put them into, they would either put the body, the parts in the, and I say this respectfully, put the parts in the body bag. And then we would pick it up, the body bag, put it into the boat, and then carry it to shore, and freezer trucks were there. And when they opened that door to the freezer trucks, man, they were so bad.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  And there wasn't even any bodies in it, I don't understand that, but we stood at attention and we would carry this, these body bags would just kinda droop. To the center, cuz it was nothing but pieces of people, these seventeen sailors. Shish. And I thought, Sean, I thought, man, this is terrible, it was horrible, something that I've never experienced in my life at such a young age. Is my first real experience with, and I thought, we're gonna go to war over this, something bad's gonna happen with this. Damn.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  How long were you there for? How long did that? Maybe thirty days. Thirty days? Forty days, because the Blue Marlin, they called him the Blue Marlin to come in, he was a massive ship. And it had to sink down and go underneath the USS Cole and come back up, and the Blue Marlin towed it away.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Where do you go from here? Goes, uh, keep, keep doing the deployment, keep going from there. Can't remember where we went all over the place. And then we, uh, came back. And now this is about, about nine months at, remember, uh, less than maybe a year happens from the nine, from the coal attack to nine 11. And I always thought nine 11 happened because we didn't do anything about the USS Cole. That's what my reasoning was and still kinda whatever. Doesn't really matter, I guess. But I came back and, uh, uh, immediately was sent on another deployment. And usually you get a break, but they just put me right back on another ship, back to back deployments. So we went out.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  And, uh, as we were out, we were right near Australia. Uh, and we got off the boat, we were partying. And the shore police started running past us and grabbing Marines, drunk Marines. And, and, and said, get back to the ship, get back to the ship yelling, we've just been attacked. And that's when nine 11 happened. Shush. So, yeah. And so we were literally, that's us. Uh, we were literally the first Marines, first Marine Division, uh, that were deployed to Pakistan first. To secure an airfield that was secret at the time. And, um,

• 41:27Speaker 02

  uh, that was so that the Tac P's, that was so the pair rescue could stage there for the bombings that would ensue in Afghanistan.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  And then we picked up shop after 10 days of there. And, uh, deployed straight into Camp Rhino, south of Kandahar. From the USS Pellou. And so I was maybe the seventh guy on the ground. I always like to say that. Wow. Uh, as a Marine, but the Rangers beat us there. Damn, how did that feel? It was, uh, ice cold, you know? Excited about it? So crazy, crazy excited. I was so excited, Sean, I, cause I knew I was meant for something, you know? And to see, to see that fulfilled. Even if I could be mentally wrong about that, it happened. So coincidence or not, I knew I was in the right place, you know?

• 42:18Speaker 02

  But I think I heard one of your interviews recently where you were like, you know, the SEALs wasn't what I thought it was gonna be. And that's exactly what I felt. I, I found myself just, I was lacking and I wanted real combat. But my deployment to Afghanistan was so boring. I think we killed a massive herd of camels that were coming into our wire at night. We just destroyed the camels. Um, we did long range patrols, just little to nothing, nothingness. And so I get out of the Marine Corps. I can't believe my experience. I'm like, I, I thought it was gonna go to war. I thought we were gonna be there like war three. We got relieved. There, I got sent home after seven months. So here I am back at Camp Porno.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  And I'm like, hell no at Camp Porno. It means, I think it's oven in Spanish. It's a hell, it's a, it's a terrible place. It's first Marine Division, the frozen chosen were stationed there. That was like our older brothers. And so I get out, Sean. I'm done with the Marine Corps. I've got to go to the SEALs or something. I've got to press forward and find that, that battle that was still on your head, huh? Yeah, but I was real disappointed because what happened, Sean, with me, and I think this is what happens to some veterans. Is I found myself lying to people about my deployment. People would say, Jimmy, you were the first over there to Afghanistan. And you went and fought for a country. How many people did you kill?

• 43:45Speaker 02

  And I'd be like, dude, I, I don't wanna talk about it. It was, it was crazy, man. It was, I found myself. I mean, here I am, what a 19 year old kid and that people are like talking about, I'm a hero for going over there and spending time and you must've saw crazy stuff, action. And I'm, and I found myself saying, you know what? I, I, yeah, I, I, I saw action over there. It was, it was really, but it was just this longing for like self to va- validate myself as a man. Like I wanted validation. And so I wasn't outright saying I killed, I got confirmed kills, but I was literally like, yeah, bro. It was, we were getting attacked all the time. It was crazy. And I left it that, like, like, I don't wanna talk about the type of thing. And that's how like desperate it was, you know? Yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 02

  Damn. So, so you got out? Got out. Yeah, got out. And Sean got out and, um, ended up, uh, I, I, I, my goal is to do the SEALs, but you know how things start to linger around, you start put it off. I had a lot of doubts about myself still. I mean, I had a lot of doubts about myself. I had no formal schooling. I failed, I failed the SEAL test now twice, by the way. Um, and, uh, You took the SEAL test when you were in? I, I took the SEAL test before the Marines. Okay. Right out of, you remember the, the, the terrible place, the cleaning toilets? So I went and took the SEAL test and I got a 17 on my ASVAB. Uh, not, I, I took the PST, which I bombed. Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  You know, the run and all that, not even close. And then the ASVAB was a terrible score. So I'd already taken that. And now I'm out of the Marines and, uh, I'm in my dad's living room on the farm, the old West Texas farm. And, uh, I turn on his TV. And there's, and it's like a nightmare for me. I see my junior Marines, three, one, uh, third battalion, first Marines, the Thundery Third, just stomping through Fallujah, the big push. Operation Phantom Fury.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  And here it is, those were my guys, those were my guys. And I see them fighting in Fallujah. I wanted to die. So this was what, 2003? Yeah, 2003 and four, right into three, up into, yep. And so my dad comes in and he catches me watching this and I'm just like paralyzed and I'm drinking, Posano out of a big jug. I'm drinking his wine. I'm talking about going on Prozac and seeing a psychologist. And my dad's like, what the hell are you talking about? He said, put down my bottle of wine. And I put it, I put it down. He says, Prozac psychologist? He goes, Jimmy, Jimmy, what are you talking about?

• 46:30Speaker 02

  He goes, you don't need Prozac. You don't need alcohol. You don't need a psychologist. He goes, you need to go find your war. And so, uh, I really took that to my heart, Sean.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  What did that mean? Actual war? No, I, I think it just meant go find your war. Like go find what, what gives you that energy and juice, man? Because this life is gonna be over real soon. Here, I'm 45, Sean, you know? I was that 17 year old kid, not too long ago. And, uh, to me, Sean, it meant go find a war. You better get your ass into action. So I'm rambunctious still. Um, I have a lot of doubts about myself. So I go, okay, you're right, Dad. I'm going all in. I'm gonna go to the SEALs. Uh, I take the test again. The ASVAB. Uh, and I'm, I'm, I'm just sweating it, Sean. I got test anxiety.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  I mean, the last time I made a, I think I, I took it twice before 17 to 38. Now this time it was a 48. And, but you could get one point waived to 49. And, uh, so she, she says, oh, you get one point waived to 49, but I needed a 50. And I sat there, Sean, and I begged this, this old lady that had marked my test up, she'd hand graded it. I begged her to give me that point. I said, please, I'll do anything, you know? And she was like, I'm sorry, son. I can't. And so, man, I was just, I was pretty devastated with that. And so I was walking out of the, of the, the room there.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  And this guy, it looked like a shadow with medals upon his chest, the silver wings, the beret. It was, uh, I guess he was a, he was a green beret, but recruiter or something. But he's standing there, big jack dude. And he, I walked by, I had my head down like this and he, he grabbed me like that, like, like stopped me. And I said, what, man? And he goes, hey. He goes, today's not your day, but maybe tomorrow is. I said, what does that? I said, what does that mean? He said, man, maybe the SEALs is not for you now. But maybe you go to a place called Blackwater. And then you go to the SEALs later on. He goes, you know what I'm talking about? I said, Blackwater? I said, what is that?

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Is that like the Rhodesian SAS? Cause I had read all about these different, rogue mercenary stuff and things. But I had heard about Blackwater just barely since 2004. And he goes, yeah, just go apply to Blackwater. They're doing crazy stuff right now, man. And I go, okay, how do I apply? He said, go get on Google or whatever. I can't remember how. I put my resume in, just this bullet point list of a bunch of bullshit, you know? Uh, and I, but I get accepted to go to the vetting process in Blackwater, Moyauk, North Carolina. Mm-hmm. Eric Prince is there. I mean, it's brand new. This is not, it's not a target factory still, but it's, it's pretty dang new.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  What'd you think of that place? Did you go there? Yeah, I went there. Obviously. Yeah, I went to the vetting process. I went, I went through all, it was hard, brother. What program was this? A, Was this the whips program? One and whips two. I went through whips one and went to.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. What's the difference? Uh, whips two is not like some test. You just come back. We, I was in Iraq when they made us go through whips two. I don't even know what that stands for anymore, but you come back, you get qualified whips two. Classes, but the first one, the first one, whips one, was the, the vetting course for Blackwater. And that one, I started maybe with 30 guys and we ended with maybe 10. 10. It was very challenging. We, I, I heard your interview about the CIA interview, uh, that your vetting process? And you were talking about the shooting? The, the, the, the shooting course and how difficult it was?

• 50:30Speaker 02

  I don't think ours was as hard as yours, but I, it, it sounded just like that, how hard it was. It was very difficult. Interesting. So this is the State Department contract? Diplomat, yep, Department of State, diplomatic mission, Blackwater. So how old were you when you went to that? I was, uh, um, were you even 21 yet? Oh, yeah. You were. I was 23. 23. 23. Yeah, cause Nesar was 27.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, four years.

• 51:04Shawn Ryan?

  How long were you doing that for?

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Four years. So I, I, I graduated the vetting process. I was in class fifteen and

• 51:14Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow. You were in there early.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Our, our, our instructors were the Karzai detail.

• 51:21Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  And Brimmer. Brimmer was still with mine, but Brimmer and Karzai. And so our guys were Green Berets and SEALs and stuff instructors. And so you talk about a chip on their shoulders. They looked at us like nothing. The very first day, the guy came in, they called him the angel of death because he would just come in and read your name off at the end of the night. And you just got the van and gone, like you were done. And so it was really pressure. I was all in. I'd already failed the SEAL thing. But um, I had matured a lot at that point and made it through the course, you know? And, and they asked me at the graduation, they asked me, when do you want to, when do you want to go to Iraq?

• 52:01Speaker 02

  And I said, now. And so they flew me out like literally the next day from Virginia. And I went from Virginia to Germany, Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Jordan, Amman, Jordan. And that's where my Blackwater time really kicks off crazy.

• 52:20Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean crazy?

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Well, uh, in Jordan, I walk in and there's this guy at the bar and he's got tattoos everywhere. He's got cut hair around his neck. And his scissors like tattooed on his neck. And he looks like maybe a, a former biker or something, but he was a Marine. And he was there for that on that contract as well, the DOS contract. And um, I meet him. I said, you, you here for Blackwater? He's like, yeah. You new? I said, yeah. He's, he was new too. So we're both new. So we, we swim buddied up at the bar there, drank all night. The next day, we get on a little, uh, we get on a, a airplane, a twin La Casa, I think it's called a twin La Casa eighty, something like that.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Two big diesel, total prop engines, um, not some big plane or thing. And, and I told this story before and people were like, dude, there's no way you were in Blackwater. We didn't, we didn't insert like that. I'm like, yeah, cause you weren't in, in the early years. You know, I'll tell you the wild, wild west here, dog, you know? And so me and him, maybe another guy got on there with our bags and they flew, I mean, like a thousand feet over the desert from Jordan. That he was really, it was really low. You could look out the window and you're just flying across the desert like fast. And then right when we got up to Baghdad, um, it, we went straight up in the air is like as high as that sucker could go before it almost stalled out. This guy was a white, white ponytail pilot, probably a Vietnam pilot.

• 53:47Speaker 02

  And we went straight up as high as you can go till the bird almost stalled out. And then he went straight down like a corkscrew. Right over the airfield. I remember the airfield just going like this. And he went like, do you? And I guess some kind of anti surface to air missile defense maneuvers, just to drop right down on it. But as we were coming down, I remember looking outside and Baghdad, you saw these black plumes of smoke coming up. It kind of looked like hell in a way. But for me, it was, it was just beautiful. It was a, a wonderful time. Cause I felt like invigorated, like my life was, I found my war.

• 54:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  So I get off the airplane with this guy with a tattoo on his neck. And I always say that you had a fifty fifty chance in Blackwater, a fifty percent survival rate. Because the reason why I say that is I got off the plane with this guy. And, and they, there's this rogue ragtag team. They didn't even have, some of the trucks weren't even armored, Sean, still. They had the metal cages that would shift and lock you in there. If you could burn alive, that happened. And so this rogue team picks us up. We go down route, route, route Irish, route Irish death road. The six miles to, to the, you know, you know, to the man camp. And uh, they opened the door and he gets out first, the guy with the tattoo on the neck. And we're in the man camp.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  And I get out right after him. We're brand new guys. And a, and a guy says, you, and he points at the guy, Bryce is his name, tattoo on the neck. He goes, you, you're going to Mosul. And he, he looked at me, he goes, you're staying here. And so I stayed. Two days later, um, I hear a guy talk about a team that just got blown to smithereens in Mosul.

• 55:33Shawn Ryan?

  And two days?

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Two days later. And I'm, I'm listening and I'm like, what the heck? And one of them was like, what are you, didn't you come in with the guy with the tattoo on his neck? And I said, yeah. They said, you know, the, the whole team's dead. They said, but him, the guy with the tattoo on his neck, the new guy, because he was the trunk monkey, they put him right in the back. Just told him to lay down and shut up. Uh, he was blown out the back and a piece of shrapnel went right here in his neck. He had to get a tracheotomy, flown out to Germany, but he lived. I still talk to him.

• 56:06Shawn Ryan?

  You still talk to him?

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause when I told the story, I had lost contact.

• 56:10Shawn Ryan?

  You reached out?

• 56:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. He goes, bro.

• 56:12Shawn Ryan?

  Somebody, he heard it. Damn, that's crazy how that happens, isn't it?

• 56:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:17Shawn Ryan?

  We've had a bunch of that kind of stuff happen.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  I bet you've been all kinds of reunion connections doing this.

• 56:25Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. We've, all kinds of people, you know, like yourself telling, telling their story and then some will reach us.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:36Shawn Ryan?

  Like I was, Chris Van Zant was one. I think that, I think it was the, I can't remember, somebody that was on the ship that was artillery in for like, it happens, it happens all the time.

• 56:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:47Shawn Ryan?

  It's cool to see it happen. I was the pilot on that op. I was this, I was the, like, it's just, it's really cool to see those connections happen.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's, it's kind of, it's one good thing about social media, you know, you can, you can reconnect with people.

• 57:01Shawn Ryan?

  So what, what are you thinking? I mean, you get brother upset because you didn't see any combat as a Marine and then you go to this and two days later.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Keep in mind.

• 57:09Shawn Ryan?

  We're getting killed.

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Keep in mind, I'm completely brainwashed.

• 57:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  I'm completely disillusioned, like, you know, uh, you know, people, people on social media will say, yo, you're, you're a bootlicker. It's like, yeah, bro, like you try, try actually doing it and being over there and doing what I did, you know? So I'm, what I'm thinking, Sean, is I'm thinking, dude, this is the most exciting time of my life. Like I can't even imagine this mindset now that I have a kid and that I've, that I've grown out of this. But at the time I was all in and most people were pro going into Iraq because we had nuclear bombs. So I'm all in, but I can't help but notice like the, the, the amount of money that has to fuel this war train. The, the, remember the concrete walls? Like you could pave ten highways in America with the concrete that they poured around the green zone.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  Uh, the, the tanks just to keep them alive and uh, which the insurgents were defeating and destroying. So um, here I am, I start running with my new Blackwater team in the same position, the old trunk monkey. They put, they say, you know, lay down, shut up, just observe and, and survive. And so we go out the first day out of the wire. And uh, the, the, I remember the driver was just had this ragtag red beard and, and just long hair. And he's smoking a cigarette with the, the window down and a freaking round just smashed center mass into his window and it just armored glass.

• 58:40Speaker 02

  And he just shattered, boom, just shattered the front window and the guy never flinched and just kept smoking. And nobody said a word, kind of like, it was kind of like, whoa, like that, like, whoa. And I'm going, what do you mean? Whoa, like what? Like, we just got freaking blasted, dog, like in the face. And, and literally never said a word about it. The debrief, it was like, yeah, that was kind of crazy, smoking still. And I'm just like, this is going to be rough, you know?

• 59:07Shawn Ryan?

  Geez.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  So I had to grow up faster.

• 59:09Shawn Ryan?

  So what was the, I mean, I know what the mission was.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 59:13Shawn Ryan?

  What, for the audience, what were you, what was the purpose?

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Well, people are always like, oh, it's a mercenary. Okay. You could call it whatever you want, but it's not really, because I did that later on in life. It's more of a, uh, it's a, it's a, under the Department of State, you, you got a black diplomatic passport. They had to justify you being under this contract for the Department of State. So they had to make us official first. So they gave us the rank of GS sixteen. They gave us black diplomatic passports. They made us official, hominist dominus. Now you are this guy who just, you're basically trading in your military uniform for civilian clothes and a beard. And now you have machine guns running around all crazy, belt fed machine guns. Uh, and, and, but the mission was to basically take

• 59:57Speaker 02

  uh, diplomatic uh, members from the Department of State, whether that's Conal, Lisa Rice, Dick Cheney, the under secretaries, whoever that be, uh, onto their little, their coffee meetings, to be honest. Downtown Baghdad, Iraq, risk an entire team just so that they can go have a little photo op or meet and greet. That's basically what it was. To all the ministries. And they were doing crazy stuff, Sean, when I first showed up. I mean, stuff that would blow people's mind. Like what? Like, the very first, like, my, my very first week or two in, in my first team, they were like, hey, we need two vol- two volunteers. And of course, I'm like, always, always, always volunteer for everything. I want to see the action.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  And they're like, you're gonna tomorrow, you're gonna meet with the little birds, you're gonna get on a li- little bird with your partner, your swim buddy. They're gonna fly you downtown Baghdad, drop you off on a ministry, one of the ministries, by ourselves, beat another guy. Two Blackwater guys. And then they leave, they just drop you off, leave. And, you know, you're gonna secure it, you know, find the exits, you know, find the entries and the exits, secure it, radio us in. And then we're gonna come in with the team. So you're like an advance party. You first in, last out type of thing. And I remember, I was like, the team leader said, hey, make sure you take, uh, these grenades. We weren't supposed to have grenades in Blackwater, but we had it all. He said, take these grenades with you in this bag.

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  He goes, take some extra water, take this map. He said, and, and, bro, don't get caught, don't get caught alive. He said, shoot yourself, dog. Like, don't, don't, don't go out like that. You know what I mean? And I was like, yeah, I got you, I got you. So he was basically saying, you know, don't, don't get caught alive. Yeah. If they, if they get you. What are you thinking about that? I was, I, I, I thought about it long and hard. And I was like, no matter what happens, Sean. If, if I get surrounded downtown Baghdad, me and this other guy, this Blackwater guy. And, and we get stormed, which eventually happened to two Aegis guys, and their heads were found floating in the Tigris River.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  If I get stormed, I'm gonna, I'm never gonna, I'm never gonna shoot my pistol much. I may shoot like, maybe like five times, pop, pop, pop, pop, and then turn it on myself. So I make sure that I have a round for myself. That was my plan. Cause I didn't want to go out like that, you know? I didn't want to be caught and, and, and tortured, you know?

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  But they, but they were doing these missions like this as an advance. Me and another guy all day long, sometimes, sitting in the Ministry of War by ourselves, until eventually, uh, you remember Aegis? Yeah. I mean, I don't know much about it. Two guys, a British contracting company, they, two guys from there got their, were, were kidnapped, doing a similar thing. I did not know that. And they were, their heads were found about two months later in the Tigris. Two months later? Yeah, it was a long time later. I was there with my girlfriend, watching the, the news and they said they found those guys' heads in the river. So who knows what happened to them. Horrible stuff. Damn.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  Damn. Horrible stuff. And so I started, Sean, doing all the positions I could. I volunteered for everything. Some of the hardest positions is driving, try, you know, being a tactical driver, being just, you know, and I didn't like that too much because you had to hit cars. And in, in, in, they had these massive bumpers welded onto the front of these trucks and these Hummers and these, these, um, SUVs. And they were all, they looked like an abstract art with colors all over the bumpers. From just smashing into cars, blue, red, whatever, white car. And that, that, that bumper would uh, open up a car, like a can opener. If like a van, a van, cause you know, they're, they're terrible drivers there.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  Uh, you could die for a small traffic infraction in Iraq. I always was amazed by that. You know, Kif, Kif, you keep going forward. You know, our rules of engagement were extremely loose. What were they? They, remember them? Oh, yeah. I remember very, very specifically, it was, um, if I feel like my life is in danger, or my team, or my, the equipment, um, Delhi forces authorized, no questions. No warning shots were allowed. Uh, that's it. It was the early days, man. That was early days. We, we, I literally would write down, I killed two military aged men today on, um,

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  on whatever route we were on, on the back of an MRE card, and turn it in. They'd say, Jimmy, we need your, we need your report. I said, I'm tired, I, I don't want to go up there to the embassy. They said, well, write it down on the back of this MRE, MRE card. They tore off a piece and I literally wrote it down. I killed two military aged men in a, in a white Corolla, da, da, da, da, da, da, today.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  And it was happening all the time because you couldn't risk, you couldn't risk getting vaporized. Like, people don't understand, a V-Bid going off, I can't remember how many thousands pound bomb that is, maybe two thousand pound bomb? I can't remember. A V-Bid? Yeah, or five hundred. Well, I don't think it matters. I think it's It doesn't matter, right? Vehicle borne IED. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But, but they always have like a certain amount of, you know, um, a weight to them with the explosion. And man, that sucker gets three hundred feet from you or closer, it's over. So what do you do? Yeah. You know, so you turn into a, uh, so you, our mentality was basically like, no matter what, you're coming home, no matter what.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  And it's me or them. And you saw guys buckle up and they got, they would get fired.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  How many, I mean, how long were you there before?

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  You started seeing people kill people? Was it immediate? Um, yeah, it was immediate. It was almost immediate. Well, you know, my buddy with the, with the, when, he got injured and then, and then maybe my, my, my second timeout, I was in the trunk monkey spot. Oh, man, you, you just reminded me of this. I haven't thought of this in years. Uh, I was in the trunk monkey spot with my, my squad automatic weapons, and we rounded this corner and we were in the hate truck. It's the, the, the back truck, you know, like a shark in the back. And these guys were D ringed in and in, you know, facing me, uh, left and right door gunner.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  And I think his name was Paul, or, or, he was an ex SEAL, and he was, he was a really great guy. But, uh, we ran around this corner, right into the venue, right as we were going into the venue. You don't want anything to happen right at, at the venue gate. It's like a nightmare. And right as we were turning in, he opened that door and he leaned out and just let that saw just rip off like that. And I saw a taxi just slam into a light pole. And I'm seeing this stuff, I'm like, oh my God. And I, I remember looking in and the guy, like, literally, like, I, I know, I haven't seen this before, but he was literally like, like, um, pumping blood out of these holes, individual holes in him, the taxi driver.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  And then we pulled into the venue and the gate closed, kinda, but was open. And we got out. And my, my, my team leader's like, what the hell happened? What, what's up? It's always chaos. Hey, this car came in on us, man. I'm sorry. I thought it was, I thought it was a V-Bid. And, um, that was perfectly justified. And this is the rules of the Department of State. And I'm standing there and my first experience with, with, with crazy stuff like this is, this guy comes in and he's stitched up, but he's walking and bleeding everywhere. And he comes and he falls at our, kind of falls at our feet by the gate. And we're just standing there and I'm like, I don't know what to do. And they don't know what to do. And, um, he was saying something.

• 1:07:59Speaker 02

  And all he wanted was a letter from us saying that he was not an insurgent at the hospital when he was taken to the hospital. Shit, man. Brother.

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  And it just gets worse from there. Do you remember the first time you had to kill somebody?

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  I shot so many cars, Sean. I shot, so I shot a lot, man. I did a lot.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  I did a lot, but I also had reasoning. I, I also had some, um, I, I also had a, a ability to not do it. I, I remember, um, I almost got fired for not killing this guy because, uh, I was the lead turret gunner. And, uh, with the two forty and the, the, my, my M4 and two oh three. And this guy started, the, I could tell these two guys were fighting in the car. They're yelling at each other in Arabic, you know? You know, they, they're aggressive. It's kind of dramatic. They're fighting and I'm watching them. And they're up, up, up above, and they start to back up into, into us. And as he starts to back up, I feel hands on my leg go, and they're squeezing me like, shoot this guy.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Like they grab my legs, like, kill him, because they're watching this, they can't do anything. And I, but I know that they're arguing and I see them arguing. I have every right, I could have easily sliced them both up through the back window. Easy day. But I, I just knew that there was absolutely one hundred percent chance they were just bullshit, they weren't paying attention. And so I, I just shot twice in their, in, in, and I guess it was gasoline started coming out. But I went pop, pop, and this automatic liquid started coming out the back. And they both just were so terrified. Cause they knew how close they were. And my team leader was like, good job, boss, man. But they called me in. And they say, hey, what did we say? There are no warning shots allowed. You could get fired and terminated from this contract for doing that again.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  I said, you're gonna fire me for having the judgment not to kill somebody when I know they weren't a bad guy? And they were like, that's right. No warning shots. I said, okay, next time. I said, next time I'll kill them both for you.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  That was it. I'm not trying to be badass, that, that's, I said, next time I'll, I won't do them a favor, I guess.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  And so that leads into many, many assaults, many firefights, many, uh, just continuous mayhem. Uh, especially on the

• 1:10:30Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't realize it was that bad on that side.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  Well, uh, there's the PSD side, which maybe a guy watching right now will say, well, I don't remember that. Well, because you were playing poker every night in the damn man camp chow hall and you were smart. I was stupid. I, I decided to continue to elevate myself and continue to volunteer and go into harder, more difficult, challenging things. Like the quick reaction force teams and the tactical support teams. Um, and, uh, it was all volunteer like normal, you know? And I felt like that's where the action is. So I naturally, my, my attitude gravitated towards the action.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  Towards what's going to give me action. I don't want to sit here all day. I don't want to sit in the man camp. I don't want to admin administrative job. I want to do stuff. I want to save people, by the way. I thought I was there for a righteous cause, by the way, still. And so, um, I end up being the turret gunner, the lead turret gunner for, uh, one of the big QRF teams. And that's all I did. All day run lead turret gun. I may started out as a rear and then worked my way up to lead. But just did that day in and day out, day in and day out, shooting cars, getting in ticks. Sometimes nothing.

• 1:11:48Shawn Ryan?

  So

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Ish, you know? Sometimes you come back and your water bottles next to your, you know, leak in and you're like, uh, thank God we didn't get shot at today. And you're looking and there's like a hole through the box. Where you, you, you know, you're going 50 miles an hour down the road. And you don't even hear around go cross and go into the box. And you're like that, that close, you know?

• 1:12:14Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:17Speaker 02

  But, but man, we were.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  We were in for a, a very painful lesson, you know?

• 1:12:24Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a quick break.

• 1:12:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:13:13Shawn Ryan?

  It moves well, it holds up, and it has the practical details that I like. It's got hidden zipper pockets, a built in lens cloth and sunglasses holders. The fit is a big part of it too. They've got regular, slim and tall options. So it's not one generic cut that either pulls under the arms or hangs like a trash bag. It actually fits right. And if the size is off, exchanges are easy with free returns. That's usually the test for me. If I wear something once and forget about it, it winds up in the back of the closet or the donation bin. If I keep grabbing it, that tells me everything I need to know. And Poncho is one of those shirts that I just keep grabbing for.

• 1:13:57Shawn Ryan?

  Go to ponchooutdoors.com/shawnryan. Enter your email and get $10 off and free shipping on your first order. Again, that's P O N C H O outdoors.com/shawnryan. Once you try one, you'll probably end up ordering a few more. That's what happened to me.

• 1:14:24Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:15:10Shawn Ryan?

  And remember, privacy isn't paranoia, it's protection.

• 1:15:21Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Jimmy, we're back from the break.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:24Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I gotta be honest. I wasn't expecting to go there with the Blackwater stuff. That's a, uh,

• 1:15:31Shawn Ryan?

  that's a hell of a, of a change of pace from what you're doing in the Marine Corps to that.

• 1:15:37Speaker 02

  Well, you know, Sean, I don't want to get, I don't want to come across as we were freaking just blazing and running and gunning every day. There's in war, you know very well that there's a shit ton of boredom. But then there's these action scenes that happen most of the time in the opposite way that you would think that they're happening. Now, we didn't do any night runs. Okay. It was all day. And, and on our day off, we'd have every, every third or fourth day off, uh, we would just go to the pool at Saddam Hussein's palace. And try to pick up on the army chicks or whatever, play on my little Nokia snake game phone. Um, and yeah, I, I would act busy like this. That was my, my trick. And the girls would be like, oh, those are Blackwater guys. They got beards and they don't have to salute the generals and

• 1:16:22Shawn Ryan?

  You weren't working on your MySpace account?

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  No, no, uh, yeah, yeah, MySpace, yeah. Oh, man, so.

• 1:16:32Shawn Ryan?

  You're like, oh yeah, I forgot about that.

• 1:16:34Speaker 02

  MySpace.

• 1:16:36Shawn Ryan?

  You had MySpace.

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  I had MySpace.

• 1:16:38Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody in Baghdad had MySpace. I wasn't having else to do.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  I had a crazy girl acting like, acting like it was me and her talking back and forth and she was married. Uh, and she was acting, I had no idea about this whatsoever. I was in Iraq fighting it out, duking it out in Blackwater. And I have this crazy girl that's literally like acting like me and her are together, going back and forth on MySpace. She had my, my profile responding to her profile and it wasn't even me. And I find this out and I'm just like, oh, bro. It's my first experience with social media, you know?

• 1:17:13Shawn Ryan?

  Baghdad was an interesting place back then.

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  Bro, there was parties all the time. People don't understand that.

• 1:17:18Shawn Ryan?

  I think you know what I thought was real. I mean, I, I, I don't think I've ever even talked. What was really, especially when I got to, when I got to GRS.

• 1:17:30Shawn Ryan?

  You would get these young women

• 1:17:35Shawn Ryan?

  who just got out of Harvard and Stanford and Brown and all these Ivy League schools. And you know, that's, that's a certain type.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:17:45Shawn Ryan?

  That goes there, you know?

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 1:17:48Shawn Ryan?

  And then they show up in the middle of Afghanistan. Or Yemen, or Iraq, or Pakistan, or insert war zone country. And then they made SEALs and Green Berets and recon guys and contractors. So they're like,

• 1:18:10Shawn Ryan?

  that's a fucking man.

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:18:13Shawn Ryan?

  And then it's like a switch flips.

• 1:18:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:18:16Shawn Ryan?

  I, I, and they want to need another man and another man and another man.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:18:22Shawn Ryan?

  And all of a sudden these Ivy League people, they're not attracted to those types anymore.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:18:29Shawn Ryan?

  And then the partying starts.

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. My, my girl, my girl was, uh, Canadian, that's from Stanley Baker, worked with Stanley Baker contractor. And she was the most, except for my wife now, you know, beautiful girl there at the time. I, I think, you know, a bunch of hair, beautiful body. And I mean, I just went straight up to her. She had never had a guy ever do that to her. Just, I was, I was dripping pool water on her. And she's reading her book, you know, like a huge nerd, you know, because she's been in college for most of her life. And she looks up at me and I'm like, hey, you wanna, you wanna, you wanna make out or something stupid, something crazy? And she's like, you're stupid, you know?

• 1:19:08Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, could you imagine coming like you go, you're coming from Harvard.

• 1:19:15Shawn Ryan?

  You know sweater vests and then and then you go and then you're in Baghdad. You see a bunch of guys come in with blood on their kid bullets all over the car. You know what I mean?

• 1:19:28Speaker 02

  Straight up warriors.

• 1:19:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And the first thing they want is a beer.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:33Shawn Ryan?

  It's like, what is that? My fucking man, that's what that is.

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:19:39Shawn Ryan?

  You just haven't been around that.

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, and these girl, these girls were blown away by that. I remember my girl talking to me and and we would sit there together at night, you know, with candles lit and incense.

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  Dude, this is in Baghdad, Iraq, man. Freaking rocket smashes down behind you. And and yeah, I used to see I I used to see her. She was my girlfriend in Iraq. I was seeing her every night. I'd do these crazy runs during the day. Rest, we we became like the nine one one force for the National Guard, the Army, Marines, not as much Marines. And, uh, but we're running and gunning all day, rescuing teams. And I would come back and tell her this crazy story and she was just like blown away by this. I mean, I was really getting puffed up, you know?

• 1:20:27Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  I I really felt thought I was something at the time. I really felt I was pretty cocky, you know?

• 1:20:32Shawn Ryan?

  But then you also, you know, you got the guys that fall in love with them.

• 1:20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, right.

• 1:20:37Shawn Ryan?

  And their agency girls.

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:20:39Shawn Ryan?

  It's like, and it's like, she loves me. It's like, she doesn't love you, dude. You're gonna rotate out and then there's gonna be another one. No, she loves me. Really? You don't even know her real name.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  You don't even know.

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  You don't even know her real name. I hope I hope your audience caught that. That was that was funny.

• 1:21:00Shawn Ryan?

  But, yeah. So.

• 1:21:04Shawn Ryan?

  So you were on the the Raven twenty three team.

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  Right, right. I was on Raven two six as as a eventual team leader of Raven two six. We're running and gunning and then all of a sudden they're like, uh, there's this Raven two three that needs a new team leader.

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  And so they bring me, they knew Haas, they knew I could control the team. I that's one thing I could do, because I just I I just knew what men wanted. I knew it. I knew what warriors need. And and so they brought me over and everybody's looking at me all cocky, like, who's this new, who's this guy to come over and be our team leader now? It'd be and and I mean, they wanted somebody like straight up raw that nobody really knew from another complete another tell, uh, cell in team to come run them. And they said, Haas, do whatever it takes. Iron these guys out. They're kind of a little rough, you know, out there. They're getting so little, it's they're getting a little rough out in the wire. That's what they told me. And I said, okay, and everybody's looking at me kind of like cocky and stuff. You can imagine like thirty guys

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  that are from all different backgrounds, SEALs, Rangers, badass guys, Rangers, all of them. And they're looking at me like, who's this guy, you know? And I remember I just stood in front of them. I don't know what came over me, but I was like, look, I was like, look, you may love me or hate me, but I'm gonna promise you three things. I said, you're gonna work. We're gonna work, guys. Because I knew guys were, I was pissed. I, you know, we were, we were, sometimes we'd sit there and listen to a team get smashed uh, and and just not do anything about it or or take our time. And I was like, guys, we are good at work. And by work, I mean, we're gonna freaking work. We're gonna answer every call we can. I don't care if you're changing your tire out there, we're going out. I don't care what happens. We're gonna go out and we're gonna set up the wall of steel. We're gonna drive our vehicles right between them and the wall of fire, the bullets.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  We that that was our SOP, a wall of steel. And so we're, and I said, we're gonna work. I said, you're gonna sleep more than me and you're gonna eat the best food around. Even if we have to go route, route Apache through the black routes in solder city, the band routes. And they were like, who the fuck is this guy? Who who's this guy? You know, uh, does he have the authority to do this? And and and, uh, one guy was like, you, you, you, you, you don't have the, you don't have the authority to fire us. Because and I, because I told him I'd fire your ass. I said, hey, bro. I said, open your mouth again and see what happens. I'll say the winner or all, winner or all, we used to say. You know, you're you'll be on the next flight out there. I said, I don't want any shenanigans. You're not gonna just kill people for the fun of it.

• 1:23:34Speaker 02

  You you know, it's got, we're here for a purpose to rescue teams. I was very rambunctious. Uh, and, uh, and and they gave me the full power, ominous dominus to to do this, Sean, to to fire. And and anybody can get fired at any moment by me, uh, and I had the power and authority to go out without asking, which plays a huge role later on.

• 1:24:00Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  You know, in in the Nesar Square.

• 1:24:03Shawn Ryan?

  So

• 1:24:05Shawn Ryan?

  I'm the only one to ever give those guys the opportunity to tell their side of that story. Nesar Square.

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 1:24:11Shawn Ryan?

  There's their pardons right up there. I'm sign their pardons.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  And you talk about coming full circle. Now I'm here and you gave those guys the chance to tell their story and their pardons on the wall? It's weird, man. Life is weird.

• 1:24:24Shawn Ryan?

  It is. I didn't even realize you were a part of that until I read the outline this morning.

• 1:24:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was the team leader.

• 1:24:30Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to go into that?

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  Uh, we we, uh, I can skim around. Uh, they got pardons. I got gag order in in, uh, what do they call it? Immunity only, uh, as long as I don't talk about it.

• 1:24:46Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:24:47Speaker 02

  You know, specifics what I did. But you can gather, I mean, if somebody wants to investigate it, they can gather kind of what I did, you know?

• 1:24:54Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  You can kind of gather from their, from their reports what happened.

• 1:24:59Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I don't wanna, I don't want to get anybody in trouble.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:03Shawn Ryan?

  So how did you?

• 1:25:07Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like there's a lot of killing going on.

• 1:25:10Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:25:11Shawn Ryan?

  How are you handling that? Sounds like it happened relatively fast. There was a decent amount of it.

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:25:18Shawn Ryan?

  How are you, how are you processing that? Are you processing it?

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  I'm not, I'm I'm not processing it because it's happening so fast around me. Um, in fact, the Raven two six team that I just leave, I I literally left and they get blown up. Their their lead truck gets hit by IED and hit it in a watermelon stand with a follow on attack of small arms. And so my homies, uh, the the the front two turret gunners, a dual turret. Uh, one of them loses half of his arm, the other one's shot out like a rocket onto his head. His head swollen up, he gets unrecognizable. And I'm going to the hospital seeing this.

• 1:26:05Speaker 02

  Holding these guys' hands, watching four army guys die and right in a row screaming out, you know, mom, mom, Jesus, Jesus. And just fading out. I saw that shit. And, uh, you know, the blood, blood all in the foyer of the Baghdad hospital flies on the stretchers. As you, as you come in, just stretcher stacks, uh, stretchers just stacked. We're answering the calls to the to the rockets now. We developed kind of an SOP while we're there. A rocket would hit and we run right to it no matter what, even if rockets were still hitting. Because I saw guys that got hit hiding from rockets. I was like, screw that, man.

• 1:26:45Speaker 02

  If you're gonna go out, you might as well go out like a, like a G, you know, you might as well go out like with with running, you know, out there. And so we were answering these calls and we would get there. People would be blown apart. Uh, it it, it's crazy how the mind works, Sean. I know you know this, uh, but you know, I blacked out a lot of the terrible stuff. Um, and only years later, through therapy and stuff, did it, did it come up. Like, I one time I, uh, there was, there was three rockets that hit, boom, boom, boom, like that. And we ran over there and there was just a pile of, uh, there was a pile of guts on fire, on fire. And there was a hand over here with a cell phone

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  and an arm in a, in a army doctor, medic, army medic, he looked like a purple smurf. He's sitting there like this. And I said, hey, I said, how many, how many? And he just goes like this, like held up his four fingers. And I just ran into that and I was so used to running into it. We ran over there and and I remember my buddy in front of me tried to jump over the the guts. And he fell and and and hit his back into the fire and the guts. You know, it was smoldering. And, um, I picked him up and he was just covered in this stuff and and, uh, I rounded a corner and there was a girl in a blue dress, just the weirdest stuff, a girl with a blue dress and top of her head was gone.

• 1:28:15Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  And I and I couldn't understand how she died because she was so far away from the explosion. And so I caught, I was caught by myself back there with her. It was just me and her. And this cold came over me. And I just looked at her, the blood was going, pulling, coagulating out of the top of her head. And I I remember I just was so confused, like a little, like NCIS investigator. I'm like, well, I didn't want to touch anything. And I looked up and part of the tree was sheared off. And all I could think of was maybe the shrapnel hit the tree and ca- came down on her or something weird. Anyways, picked her up, put her into bags as usual.

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  Sprayed out the trucks that that night with power washers and then go back out at the next day. Over and over and over. And eventually, I don't know, Sean, I just, I knew, I knew I was gonna get hit. I knew something, I knew something bad was gonna happen. I knew it was coming.

• 1:29:19Speaker 02

  They were giving me awards. They were saying Jimmy, good job. They called me Haas. Haas Band. Good job, bro. Do it again. Do it again. You don't got to ask us permission. Do it again. Go out there. I'm twenty seven years old. I thought I was a man back then. I thought I was a full grown badass warrior and uh

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

  I look back at that guy now and I'm like, Ben, he was a kid.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  I thought he knew what was going on.

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  And uh it uh it finally eventually caught up to me. And I had to make the call to go out that day. Uh I I already had shrapnel. I had shrapnel in my leg from a cheap Chinese ChiCom grenade. Um that I had stepped out of the truck and banged it out with some insurgents that that ran up on us. Ran up right us, right up on us. And I just opened the door like this because I knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to throw grenade in the turret. And you know grenade in the truck with the closed doors like that armored, it's over. And that's how I saw four army guys die. That grenade had gone in their turret and it boom like that, you know?

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  And they survived only to die a couple of hours later in front of me. And when I saw those four guys die, those army guys, I said, Sean, I said, I am not going to die like that on my life. I would go out fighting on my feet, then take a grenade in the turret. So when we pulled up to Almanot City Hall, it was a major exchange of gunfire. A guy, a guy in his pajamas, it looked like ran past the window. And I, and the truck shook like this, like an explosion, small. And like a grenade had missed and that's what he did. He threw the grenade and it bounced off the top of the turret. And the guy tried to smoke him and I jumped out. And that's when I took shrapnel. He, he must have thrown another grenade.

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  Uh and I threw a grenade over the wall and he, they smoked him, but um so I have this in my leg. My team that I just left is blown up. Guys are injured. Uh you have all these rockets going on at night. I know my time's coming. And by the way, the pile of guts that were on fire was the same guy from Indonesia or whatever that gave me my float, ice cream float Sunday every day. And he was so nice. I asked the next day, I said, where's that guy that gives me my ice cream? He said, that was him yesterday.

• 1:31:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. How many deployments did you do over there?

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  I don't know. Um I Baghdad was my permanent address. So I just stayed.

• 1:32:02Shawn Ryan?

  Stayed there.

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  Well, I I would do like nine months, uh nine months on, one month off. Six months, one month off, nine months, one month for, for almost four years.

• 1:32:14Shawn Ryan?

  What are you telling your parents? Are you still close to them at this point?

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were just, they just knew that I wasn't meant to do it. They were just like totally like, hey, man, Jimmy's doing his dream. Let him do it. And my mom was tough.

• 1:32:27Shawn Ryan?

  But did they know?

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  I don't think they knew to the extent, but they, they knew it was bad. Cause I, I liked a good story, so I would tell them some stuff, but not too crazy. Nothing, they didn't know the bad stuff. They didn't know how terrible it was, Sean. And um

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  and the day the Nesar Square happened, Baghdad's Bloody Sunday, they call it, you know, with the four guys that you brought in here. Uh they, I saw a big black plume of smoke and a, and a bomb went off and you could feel it. I was in the chaw hall and the windows vexed. Whoop like that, like you're on an airplane in turbulence. And I was like, it's over. Cause I, I just knew with things that were escalating, I just knew that my time was coming to an end there. And, and but I always did, I always did what I said I was gonna do. You're gonna work. You're gonna eat better. You're gonna sleep more than me. And I took the guys out.

• 1:33:28Speaker 02

  And we got to the checkpoint and Corey Wayne Scott, who later died, he's my tactical commander in the front truck. He said, Haas, what do you want to do? We have a team that's been attacked. They said, contact, contact, contact on the air, like they had been attacked. And I, I thought they had been blown up. And he says, Haas, what do you want to do? And I, uh he goes, we can go to this traffic circle and block it off while they come through. Cause you know, you, you know insurgents attack at these points. And I said, uh I said, hold on. And I waited and I knew if I said, go out, it was over, Sean. And a voice told me that, a voice said,

• 1:34:09Speaker 02

  if you do this, it's, it's gonna be bad. And I didn't know to the extent. We never do, do we? And, and that's when I, I said, go ahead and go. Cause I always did the more aggressive thing. I always leaned on the never die with a cold gun in your hand. And so we went out and that's when all hell broke loose. And that's when a lot of lives were changed. A lot of lives were, were, a lot of people were killed. And of course, those guys on Raven two, three.

• 1:34:42Shawn Ryan?

  Uh and you were out there with them?

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was the, I was the team leader. I was in the, I was in the third truck. You got maps, you got radios, trying to talk to the little birds and stuff, but all hell broke loose.

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  And but it was, it was my call. I, and I take, I take one hundred percent responsibility for it. Cause you can't be a leader and just take all the goodness and, and say, oh yeah, I did this, I'm this and that. No, if you want to be a leader and you want to step up the plate, even if it was that many years ago, you take the full brunt, you know?

• 1:35:22Speaker 02

  Even if it was the, a work, a nightmare. And I was blamed, you know, for making a call to go out. They said I, I disobeyed orders. I, I went against their calls. There were no orders. There was no calls. They had, they, they kept encouraging me to go out. So I just

• 1:35:41Speaker 02

  I made the decision to go out. Did it, did it, did it intercept an attack?

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  Or something else? I'll, we'll never know.

• 1:35:51Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think that was the wrong call?

• 1:35:54Speaker 02

  Um

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  uh considering, considering that how it ruined so many lives, yeah.

• 1:36:03Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  I mean, I could sit here today and say, no, man, Sean, no, that was the right call, but no.

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  No. I would have rather died that day than go through what those guys had to go through. Because it's one thing as a leader to lose guys on a team. But you imagine like the guys go to prison for life? Because of your choice? You're in eternal like torture. Your mind is tortured year after year. You can't enjoy anything. And, and I'm not even, not even woe is me now. Like it sounds like a pity party now. These guys had to go to prison because of my call. But, but really a couple of things. One of the guys, as you well know, Jeremy Ridgway, he turned.

• 1:36:55Speaker 02

  Uh and, and basically said it. Something else went on that day.

• 1:37:01Speaker 02

  And other guys said that. And of course, they, um the Raven two, three guys based off their counsel didn't testify and didn't fight back in a, in a testifying physical way. And when you do that, because I was in a lot of the courts watching this happen, being called in. You look like a killer. You look like a murderer. You're, you're far away from this jury that has no idea what war, not even a fraction of a, uh you know, they don't know what, what war is like or anything. And they're seeing these four white guys with shaven heads across a, all the way across the courtroom.

• 1:37:45Speaker 02

  And you're guilty. You're guilty. And based, but based off their Blackwater counsel, you know? Uh they were told not to say a word and, and I think that was the biggest mistake ever.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  Cause at that point, you've got to, you've got to, you've got to, you better

• 1:38:02Speaker 02

  you better open your mouth and fight for yourself.

• 1:38:05Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think if they would have said something, it would have changed the outcome?

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  No. So that's a great point.

• 1:38:11Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, the government deleted the, the evidence that supposedly proved their innocence. They deleted that drone footage of the entire incident. Only that slice of drone footage?

• 1:38:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:38:23Shawn Ryan?

  According to their account?

• 1:38:24Speaker 02

  Multiple, multiple FBI just later said that it was a sham. I, I, I, I don't think it would have changed the outcome. They were totally, they were one hundred percent railroaded. Uh they were heroes in my eyes. And uh for, for people can't even comprehend what they had to go through that day. But you know, people can't comprehend what, what war is like. They, they said, they sent an investigation team, the FBI, and they, they couldn't even leave their rooms to investigate the scene for a while because rockets were hitting in the distance. I said, how can you, how can you judge a crime scene if you can't even go look at it? Because I mean, think, think of the irony in that.

• 1:39:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:11Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I've thought about it. Many times, that interview.

• 1:39:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, really, it just really affected me.

• 1:39:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it affected me.

• 1:39:22Shawn Ryan?

  Made me feel different about the country.

• 1:39:25Speaker 02

  Oh, total betrayal, patrol.

• 1:39:28Shawn Ryan?

  Cause three of them got, I think three of them got thirty five years and then Nick Slatten got life.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  Y- y- yeah.

• 1:39:34Shawn Ryan?

  You know?

• 1:39:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:39:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:39:37Shawn Ryan?

  Do you keep in touch with those guys at all?

• 1:39:39Speaker 02

  Uh, two of them I do. And uh, and uh

• 1:39:47Speaker 02

  I, I, I, there's, I'm sure there's blame on me and, and it's, it's okay. I, I welcome it. I, I forcibly welcome it because I really take a lot. I take that real serious. Like you got, you have got to take responsible responsibility for all your actions. And even if it ruins you, you know? And so it, it, it was, it was obviously a, a very difficult time moving forward. Because I had to figure out what to do now. My lawyers were like, don't, don't worry Jimmy, they're not gonna come in. He had, there's nothing, they can't do anything. And then the FBI is coming to my house and I refused to talk to them. And that's how I could pass later on my SEAL stuff, my top secret stuff.

• 1:40:31Speaker 02

  Have the FBI ever visited you at your house? No, they had come to my mom's house. Have, have you ever spoken to the FBI? No, I never did. Never talked to them once. I, I said, get out of my house, my, my parents' house. And my lawyer was like, don't be rude to them, you know? Um, and so I never, never, so basically what happened was, um, it was a shit show, Sean. And, but, but it was a lot of conflicting word. Like my lawyer is saying, everything's okay. Don't worry. You know, there's nothing they could do to you. They got these SEAL things. And, and then on the news though, they're full steam ahead. Senator Obama is on there saying these guys need to burn.

• 1:41:14Speaker 02

  Uh, and then later on, we find out that Vice President Biden literally went back, went to Baghdad, Iraq and, and visited President Maliki at the time. And, and basically made a deal and said, although the case has been dispensed, trust me, we're going to burn these guys. We're gonna get them. And that's what they did.

• 1:41:37Speaker 02

  And that's why I'm in the, the SEALs now. So that was your last deployment with Blackwater? That was it. They flew me out directly after that. How long after your last deployment did you go to join the Navy? Um, I sat at home and, uh, I had a pain management doctor that was willing to give me fentanyl patches, everything I asked for, for, for nothing, for a little chicken scratch on my, on my leg. Little, little ball bearings, stuck in my leg for nothing. And, but I, I, I made it bigger than it was so I could get on, you know, get more fentanyl and stuff. Cause Dolly had me hooked and it was an escape for me.

• 1:42:18Speaker 02

  And I was able to escape this, this traumatic war, the deception, my own disillusionment, my, my brainwashing from the government. I'm able to just escape everything. My buddy taught me how to cut up oxycodone and snort it. And I thought that was just, uh, the best ever was having, uh, at the time. And I'm escaping, escaping, escaping. Uh, and, um, I'm drinking now. Jack Daniels, I'm taking 15 vodka a day. I'm taking, I'm cutting up one fentanyl patch because they were so heavy. They'd make you pass out and drool all over yourself. So I'd cut them up and put them on my leg. And, uh, so I'm completely just zoned out and I'm thinking, I have to end my life.

• 1:43:01Speaker 02

  So I start thinking of ways to end my life, uh, really, really thinking about how do I do this and not hurt, hurt my family? How do I do this and not, I had a rental house at the time. Do it maybe in the bathroom, but it still would be, you know, this kind of crazy stuff. And I was real serious. And, um, I remember my niece came up and she, she said, hey, you wanna watch a cartoon with me? And I, I said, yeah, you know, whatever, you know? And, uh, and I sat down with her and it was Finding Nemo. Wait, she came up to you as you were gonna commit suicide? No, no, she came up to me during this dark time. I was, I was, uh, if I stayed by myself, Sean, it was like the demons would come in and I could not be by myself.

• 1:43:46Speaker 02

  I couldn't live by myself. I couldn't be in a room by myself. So I stayed around my parents. I stayed around other life, living beings to stay alive. And, uh, my niece wanna watch Finding Nemo and I'm all jacked up. But I, and I, but I still had this burning desire to do the SEALs. But everybody told me, Jimmy, it's over. The SEALs, it's, it's almost impossible to get in. You know, it's, it's, it's hard. It's very difficult to do it with a clean, perfect record. But I have, I don't know if I'm gonna be arrested tomorrow by the FBI, stand trial with these guys. I don't know what's gonna happen. Uh, and, uh, uh, they're, and my lawyer starts saying, oh my God, Jimmy, the, uh, the, uh,

• 1:44:27Speaker 02

  they're, they're, they're, they're thinking about charging you now and, and with this, this, this, this, but they can't quite prove it. So I, I've got all this pressure against me and so I turn on Finding Nemo with my, my niece. I'm trying to be a good uncle, but I'm drinking and all jacked up, messed up at my parents' house. And I'm lost, man. And I remember it was about a fish or something swimming around in the deep dark ocean. It's almost impossible, right? But it, but the whole, the whole movie's about keep going, keep swimming. And all of a sudden the, the lights go out on the TV screen. It goes pitch black and I'm about to get up with my bottle of Jack.

• 1:45:06Speaker 02

  And I look and it, it said, keep, just, just keep swimming or just keep moving forward. And that hit me, I don't know why, but it just hit me. Uh, and it, sometimes it takes a, I say it takes a perspective change in our life. Just one little thing to, to flip your switch. And that for some reason, seeing that just keep moving forward, swimming, it hit me. Especially in relation to the SEALs. And so, man, a light went on, Sean. And I said, and I knew right then and there, if I don't get up off this couch and if I don't dump this shit right now, I'm gonna die. 100%, I am a dead man if I don't do something right.

• 1:45:50Speaker 02

  I mean, it had to be right now. I knew if I went one more second, it was lights out for me. So I got up from Finding Nemo, I dumped all my stuff. People later questioned like, well Jimmy, how, how could you get off fentanyl and stuff? I don't remember. I don't know. I don't remember going through horrible withdrawals. It was just some real bad cramping, but I was, just started running. I just started running and running and running till I threw up. And, um, I saw, I, I just put myself in a, a situation like of complete absolute delusion. Uh, uh, I blacked out everything, blacked out the Blackwater event like it never happened. I blacked out everything around me and said, I'm going for the SEALs.

• 1:46:36Speaker 02

  And it was, just looked impossible though. I mean, how were you masked? Did everybody around you know you were messed up? Or were you masking it pretty good? Your parents didn't know? My parents, I think my parents always knew stuff, but they never told me.

• 1:46:52Speaker 02

  I think they just did me the, the favor of not, I think they knew that it was real bad. It'd be like your uncle coming home from Vietnam and you, he's always messed up. But you know, he went through some stuff in the jungle. So you leave him alone. You know, I'm not, I'm not causing a riot. I'm not yelling, I'm not violent. I'm just done. I remember getting into a couple, you know, arguments with my dad.

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  Cause I was being loud or something, you know? No, nothing too crazy.

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  And so I go all in for the SEALs and I, and I make it by the grace of God, standing on shoulders of giants.

• 1:47:39Speaker 02

  And that really, really pissed off the FBI, pissed the DOJ off. Why? What do you mean it pissed them off? Well, they just, they dismissed the case in 2009. And I, I thread the needle to where I don't have to lie. I don't have to lie on anything. I never lied on my top secret clearance, all this stuff. I just thread the needle, right? Uh, and it's really weird situation. Cause you know, the DOJ probably thinks the team leader of the Blackwater thing, he's dead, he's gone. It's over for Jimmy Watson. He's got, his life is over. Well, I keep plugging away. I keep slugging out, keep swinging for the fences. I mean, it's against all odds. And, um, I, I get through training. I get my top secret clearance.

• 1:48:24Speaker 02

  I, I am, I'm in sniper school. I go to all volunteer unit, SDV, and then I go to sniper. And, and around that time, they drum up the case again, the Blackwater case. And my old lawyer, Monica Lewinsky's lawyer, Preston Burton. You know Monica Lewinsky? Remember him? I've heard of her. Her, her, her lawyer, the- She likes cigars. Yeah, cigars and blue dresses. Her, she, her lawyer, her defense lawyer was my defense lawyer for Blackwater. And he calls me up. He goes, Jimmy, man, I hate to say this, brother, but you're, you're getting called in, uh, to, uh, to testify.

• 1:49:07Speaker 02

  Uh, and he says, just don't lie. Just tell exactly how, what happened. And, um, and so I go in and I testify in my uniform. And these FBI are just like, how did this guy, wait, how, how did he become a SEAL? He was a Blackwater team leader. Now how did he become a SEAL? How did he, how does this happen? How does that work? You know, and I, and I, it was pretty extraordinary. To be standing there years later and the FBI hates you so much. And now you're testifying and, and my story, my testimony was not collaborating

• 1:49:52Speaker 02

  their side of the story, the, uh, the, the DOJ and the FBI. And they didn't like how my story was indirect. I can't say much, but it was a direct, uh, it was conflicting with Ridgeway's. It was the, you know, you know, in, in ways. Of course I wasn't, I didn't have a bird's eye view. I was kinda in, in the seat here. But anyways, my testimony did not help the DOJ, the FBI. And so they put their crosshairs on me and that plays on later on with Mcfield. Uh, nobody, I mean, very, what, Al Capone has had two FBI different cases come against him. Like I, it's like getting hit by lightning twice. And I had two different big investigations launched against me.

• 1:50:37Speaker 02

  And almost, almost successful too. So I go in and testify in my, the uniform. That creates a mistrial. And I can't, you know, say like, if it was because of my testimony, but it was brutal. And the jury was in tears after I left. So it, the DOJ-

• 1:51:02Speaker 02

  Are just in shock that I would testify like this, just absolutely in shock, direct conflicting their story. And my lawyer said, as long as you don't lie, you're okay. And, uh, and so they called my lawyer, they tell my lawyer and say, if Jimmy comes in and does that again, uh, we will destroy his SEAL career. We will, and they said, and Preston told me, I was at sniper school, had a broken ankle at sniper school. Uh, he said, um, Jimmy, these guys are not nice around, and they literally said that they're gonna come after your SEAL career. And it's coming from the very highest place that you can imagine. I said, highest place?

• 1:51:44Speaker 02

  He said, the very highest place you can imagine is coming from the top, that you better cooperate and nail these guys in the jail. You better go along with their story, and my lawyer's telling me this. Uh, geez. You better, you better cooperate with the FBI, or you're, they're gonna ruin your career. They may can't put you in jail, cuz they can't get you on the line, but they're gonna come after your career and destroy you. And I said, so be it, man. So be it. And so what did I do? Just like the movies, Goodfellas, you know, I'll hit you, I'll go to jail, I'll come out and I'll hit you again afterwards. And that's what I did. I went and testified the exact same way, in my uniform. And that's when, if I recall right, that's, that's

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  directly after that, um, I was at the top of my game, in my game. In, in, in the SDV, I was, I was a team leader, a sniper. I was by no mean the best guy there, but I was at, I was doing real well. And, uh, you know, doing real well, did a national tasking. Uh, and, uh, and, um, that's when they came in. And with the memo, the FBI wrote a memo to my commander and said that I had lied on the stand. All this crazy stuff. Can you imagine? He lied on this memo to say that I was lying. But if I, if you were just smart, if you had a brain, you'd say, well, if he was lying, why not charge him with perjury?

• 1:53:12Speaker 02

  But they didn't, and they, they came after my career. He wrote a nasty memo. And that sent me into a two-year fight that I, that is hard to imagine. I, I had to, I fought the Navy. My commander said that I only had 10 days left to get out of the Navy. He called me in the office, and I was at the top of my game at SDV. I was doing real well, and he called me in. After all that, he said, Jimmy, you have 10 days left to get out of the Navy. And I thought he was joking. I said, sir, what? I said, what? And he goes, hey, you have 10 days left to get out of the Navy. And I said, sir, I'm not going nowhere. And he said, no. And he, he shook, he says, you don't understand.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  He said, you're out of here. He goes, Admiral, um, Admiral, the, the top Admiral, I almost said his name. But that Admiral, the highest Admiral, said, you're out of here. And I said, I'm telling you right now, I'm not going nowhere. And he goes, I swear by, you know, in 10 days, you'll be out of here. In 10 days, I came in with my uniform on and slapped my commander on the back and said, hey, sir. And he was startled, and he looked at me, he said, yes? I was like, I'm still here. And that was my motto, I'm still here. And the only thing in my real burning drive, Sean, was that I just couldn't imagine him doing this to a, my sister, or somebody that wouldn't fight, you know?

• 1:54:43Speaker 02

  Just railroaded somebody like that.

• 1:54:48Speaker 02

  So what happened?

• 1:54:51Speaker 02

  Well, this is what happened. I launched an all-out war against the JAG, against everybody. I just became a ruthless, brutal, back in Baghdad, Iraq war dog. You know, I, I launched, um, uh, complaints. I, I, I wrote every freaking, uh, you name, you know, congressman, you name it, Senator in Texas, uh, attorney, it's been so long, but, um, inspector generals, all these. And I just launched paperwork and paperwork and paperwork and unlawful command, uh, unlawful command influence charges on, where they have to respond. And then, and then it buys you time. And my dad was a Texas judge, so he's encouraging me and telling me these things to do along the way.

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  And so this whole, so, uh, two, about, uh, I fought him for two years, the Navy. And every single month, they'd say, you know, you're out, this date, you're out this date. But I would make them, and I, I drawed out another, I'd spend another 15,000 on a lawyer. Then I started representing myself. And eventually, it came down to one of those, uh, admin boards.

• 1:56:02Speaker 02

  And, uh, but the three guys at the end of the admin board table, I won't name their names because I'm working on my forgiveness, but they, uh, uh, they had their orders from the Admiral to kick me out, no matter what my story was. And, uh, I knew that from a good friend who knew them, all the SEALs know each other, you know that. Um, and they dismissed me out of the Navy. They said, you're done. And, um, so I finally was packing my bags to get out of the Navy. My dad called me up, the old Texas judge, he's like, son. He's like, you got one more chance. He goes, file another complaint against them. He goes, file this complaint, this, a new complaint. And I said, dad, it's over, man. He says, no, if you do this, it'll buy you another 40 days.

• 1:56:48Speaker 02

  And I said, all right, why not, you know, do another 40 days with them? And so I filed another complaint. But this time, it was a new commander, uh, Perotto. And, um, he overturned their decision and kept me in the Navy.

• 1:57:06Speaker 02

  So now- What year is this? 2015?

• 1:57:16Speaker 02

  What was his name? Commander Perotto. He was an old, he was an old Mustang. He's enlisted first.

• 1:57:25Speaker 02

  Enlisted to captain.

• 1:57:32Speaker 02

  What was his first name? Do you know?

• 1:57:35Speaker 02

  Jean. No shit. Jean Perotto.

• 1:57:43Speaker 02

  I worked with him. He's the baddest motherfucker on the planet. Nobody, nobody would ever do what he did. I have never seen a guy with that ball, the kind of balls. He said,

• 1:57:58Speaker 02

  cuz he overturned the, the decision of the entire command to kick me out, Sean. And his boss is the Admiral, Admiral Losi. That told them to kick me out no matter what, for the FBI. Can you imagine that?

• 1:58:23Speaker 02

  And he calls me in.

• 1:58:27Speaker 02

  And I gave him a bunch of paperwork, and I said, sir. He goes, Jimmy, come in. And I came in, I'm limping, cuz I just, my body hurt, but I was fighting the Navy for two years, it was terrible. And I limped in, and he said, sit down, son. I said, no, I'll stand. And he looked at me, Commander Perotto, he said, I said, sit down. And I said, and I sat down. So we had a bad start, and he goes, what are you in here for? I said, sir, I know that you're not gonna, I know that you're not gonna help me. I know that you're not gonna overturn my case. I said, but I wanna let you know that, uh, that I would have been a good SEAL under you. He goes, I heard about you.

• 1:59:12Speaker 02

  He goes, you're the guy that got his dick caught in a belt sander? I said, that's right. He said, you're the guy that broke his ankle and went to the, tried out for damn neck and passed? This is the, the initial screen on a broken ankle. I said, that's right. And he, he said, I, he goes, well, don't ever tell me what I'm gonna do or not do. You understand me?

• 1:59:36Speaker 02

  And I said, yeah, okay. And I put my stuff down, and he called me on Christmas. And he said, I reviewed you, all of your stuff for 40 days. He goes, and I'm overturning the case, and I'm gonna keep you in and give you whatever team you wanna go to. He said, where do you wanna go? I said, the White Devils, Team 10.

• 1:59:56Speaker 02

  And he said, Roger that. He goes, they're gonna issue an apology when you get to the command. I came to the command, I walked in like a cockroach, Sean. After two years of hell, everybody thought I was done. And they, the, the, there was guys apologizing to me and shit, that he made apologize to me. And then, of course, it had to go through one more guy to get me complete, and that was Admiral Losi.

• 2:00:21Speaker 02

  But Admiral Losi was the original guy, but everybody thought, no, he, there's no way he's gonna go against Commander Perotto now, cuz it's, you know, it's, it's a really messed up, weird situation, right? And we wait, and he says, get this motherfucker out of here now, to, today. And that was the biggest mistake Admiral Losi made, ever, for his career. Because he didn't understand, he didn't understand, I was ready to die to stay in the SEALs. Not to be a SEAL anymore, but based off of principle in my fight against the FBI, cuz I saw him destroy Nick Slaton, Paul Slough, Dustin Heard, Donald Ball, all those guys.

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  I saw them, what they did to those guys' lives. They destroyed their lives, the FBI literally destroyed their lives in sleeps at night, not even knowing that they did it. I, I don't know if they do or not. But I saw what they did, and so I was in it for the blood. I was in it to die. I know that sounds insane, but, uh, when they said that this time Jimmy, even Commander Perotto said, I'm sorry, son, I did all I could do. I said, you're a G, bro, you will be remembered in, you'll be remembered in the Hall, Hall of Fame for these dudes that had balls. And, um, and, um, so they said, you're out of here in 10 days.

• 2:01:47Speaker 02

  Again, this is two years of this, and I said, I'm not going nowhere, Sean.

• 2:01:54Speaker 02

  And they said, you're going this time. And I said, I'm not going nowhere. And they said, what do you mean? I said, well, I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and I said, you, you, you promised that I'm out of here in two days? And he said, yeah, you're this, you're done this time. I said, well, tell Admiral Ossie the blood is on his hands, because I'm gonna kill myself now. You know, I did that. And, uh, and so my wife at the time called the ambulance and it was a big show. Big, big show. And I, I go to Emerald Coast Mental Health, because I was in Florida at the time. I stay in there and I'm trans, I'm, I'm lifelighted to Naval Balboa Medical Mental Health.

• 2:02:37Speaker 02

  And it was all to fight for principle. But at this point, I need the mental hospital, you know? Uh, so it's real, you know? And it's, uh, and so I stay in the Naval Balboa Mental Hospital for a year, approximately a year.

• 2:02:57Shawn Ryan?

  A year?

• 2:02:57Speaker 02

  A year. And Admiral Ossie finally sends two JAG officers to give me a message. And I tell my ex-wife, I said, baby, uh, you, so you should just leave me because, um, I'm gonna be in here for the rest of my life. I've, I've committed myself to this fight to the end. And Admiral, Admiral Ossie sends two messengers. And the, the two JAG officers come in, in their black uniforms, and they come in and I'm in the mental hospital. I have literally blue paint on me. I have my hairs. I'll try to find a picture for you guys, but my hair is crazy. I got the blue outfit on. I mean, I look insane. I have a huge beard. Nobody's telling me shit.

• 2:03:40Speaker 02

  I'm doing burpees all day in, in coloring and stuff and painting. And the JAG officer said, Jimmy, uh, we have a message for you from Admiral Ossie. Uh, that you have, that you could stay in here for the rest of your life. But the outcome will be the same. When you leave here, you are getting immediately terminated and kicked out. And they said, do you understand? And I looked at him and I said, I got finger painting in five minutes.

• 2:04:11Speaker 02

  Are we done? And they got the message that I guess that's how it is. So I turned around and I knew that my time was limited and the doctors were gonna go ahead and discharge me. And I felt like it was illegal for them to do this, but, um, and I'm sorry, some people may not understand this mentality, but still have to be there. And, uh, so they leave and I know that I have to take it to another level now. I have to take it to the, the, the highest level I can to, to prove a point. At this point, I don't even know what I'm fighting for, but I just know that it's not right what the FBI has done to me.

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  So I'm gonna go all in. And so, Sean, I go and, uh, I hung myself with a sheet.

• 2:04:58Shawn Ryan?

  You hung yourself?

• 2:04:59Speaker 02

  With a sheet.

• 2:05:00Shawn Ryan?

  With a sheet?

• 2:05:01Speaker 02

  With a real, like a real, like, uh, I, uh, took a sheet and I tied a knot in it every four inches. For a long time. I already pre-stated this, because I knew this was coming. And it's very, very difficult to do that, to do something to yourself in, um, in Naval Balboa Mental Health. They watch you. And there's, you know, your, your, your pin is like a piece of rubber. You know, there's nothing hard, there's nothing stiff. Your, your, your chair's weighed 200 pounds. You know, you can't pick things up. Uh, but I figured a way to do it. And there was a hole in the wall above my toilet, like this big. And I just stuffed it like I was loading a, a magazine, uh, with those knots. And then I launched my, I could put it on my head.

• 2:05:46Speaker 02

  And I thought, golly, man, you've never met a guy that wanted to live so bad and just be left alone and serve his country and give back to my country and give back to God. And here I am on a freaking toilet about to launch myself off, off the thing. I remember my, my, my roommate looked at me getting on the toilet with this thing on. And he just goes, oh, man. And he just walked outside and I just launched myself off the toilet.

• 2:06:21Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 2:06:22Speaker 02

  As hard as I could. And it fractured my neck legitimately.

• 2:06:32Shawn Ryan?

  Knowing that they would, I mean.

• 2:06:35Speaker 02

  Um, what? I think it was a 50 50.

• 2:06:39Shawn Ryan?

  You do this because you wanted to, did you wanna die so that it was blood on his hands?

• 2:06:43Speaker 02

  No, uh, I, I, I didn't wanna die, but I, I, but it was 50 50 maybe that I would die. Do it, or something really messed up to me, maybe lack of oxygen in my brain for a long time. So I wake up, I'm out, I'm out blackness. And I wake up and this, this nurse is, you know, on me. And she, she's screaming, but she's kinda choking me out with her foot is right here. And she, it was real tight and they, I fractured my neck. And the doctors now, the same ones that were gonna kick me out, they are crying, shaking. And it was a huge, huge deal. And they got back to Admiral Ossie.

• 2:07:25Speaker 02

  And he was like, leave Jimmy alone. Let him out. He can do whatever he wants now. Cause I said, the next thing is the Coronal Bridge at five o'clock. I'll jump off that thing if you let me out of here. That's how insane I was. And I was mad. It was bad. So they finally said, uh, leave him alone. And Admiral Ossie eventually, uh, he, um, he was charged or not charged, but he, it was found to be, he was found to have 11 or 17 complaints against him of unlawful command influence. And he was the only Admiral in the SEALs to ever not get their second S R. Or something like that.

• 2:08:08Speaker 02

  And, and it was, I think it was Senator Caskill that said, uh, that one too many complaints on him for unlawful command influence. And I know it was mine, that they broke the camel's back, you know?

• 2:08:20Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Wow. How did you get down?

• 2:08:26Speaker 02

  Hmm?

• 2:08:27Shawn Ryan?

  When you hung yourself?

• 2:08:29Speaker 02

  Um, I woke up on the ground, laying, laying in the corner, like with it, like stretched to the max.

• 2:08:38Speaker 02

  So I didn't, I didn't, I didn't actually hang. I launched myself and it was like, like.

• 2:08:46Shawn Ryan?

  Pulled it, pulled it out of the wall.

• 2:08:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But it was still in and they had to get it off. It was terrible. It was a nightmare. You know, it was a real nightmare. It was a real big show, you know?

• 2:08:58Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Wow.

• 2:09:05Shawn Ryan?

  Damn dude, that's, that's nuts.

• 2:09:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I look back and I, it's like, I wish I would've just, at times I would've just like walked away, like, what the hell was I doing? I was still fighting for a resemblance of honor and patriotism and strength, you know? But I look back at it just total, a lot of it was, uh.

• 2:09:32Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. John Perotto, huh?

• 2:09:36Speaker 02

  John Perotto, the man. A real man. You know him?

• 2:09:42Shawn Ryan?

  That's the same John Perotto. He was my OIC when I was in Baghdad and he was a awesome OIC.

• 2:09:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's probably him. He's old school. He was badass.

• 2:09:54Shawn Ryan?

  He had some shit leadership at SEAL Team 2. Jamie Sands was our SEAL. I don't know if you've heard of that guy.

• 2:10:00Speaker 02

  Uh-uh. It was terrible?

• 2:10:02Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, he was, he was, no, he wasn't. He was the XO, I think.

• 2:10:09Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 2:10:09Speaker 02

  No, that sounds about right.

• 2:10:10Shawn Ryan?

  I think he just got fired or something. Uh. Yeah, he's a horrible leader. Everybody in the SEAL Teams hates that guy.

• 2:10:18Speaker 02

  God, man.

• 2:10:20Shawn Ryan?

  Everybody. He made it way up. Of course he did, you know?

• 2:10:24Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:10:24Shawn Ryan?

  Typical officer that didn't do shit that went really far, high ranking.

• 2:10:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:10:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:31Speaker 02

  That, that's what pissed me off so bad about the imbalance. Here, I, I literally, literally blood, sweat and tears to get to the SEALs and to be a SEAL. But here's this officer that's like, uh, hand, kinda handed things on a silver platter, treated so differently. And he's able just to say, you're out of here in two days. And I thought that was so, uh, the unfairness to it. It was like the wrong guy to mess with, with me.

• 2:10:58Shawn Ryan?

  That's the first time I've heard of John Perotto since probably 2006.

• 2:11:03Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 2:11:04Shawn Ryan?

  And I always wondered what happened to him, but he, I, I thought he was just an amazing leader.

• 2:11:07Speaker 02

  He, he, he, it has to be him because if he was OIC with you, that makes sense. He would be a commander.

• 2:11:15Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it was 2006. I didn't realize he was a Mustang. I'm not sure on that. So it could, I'll show you a picture. I'll, I'll dig one up.

• 2:11:22Speaker 02

  Somebody told me that he was enlisted before, but maybe he wasn't.

• 2:11:27Shawn Ryan?

  He may have been.

• 2:11:27Speaker 02

  Maybe I got that off.

• 2:11:30Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh.

• 2:11:31Speaker 02

  He was bad, man. The baddest, I've never heard of any of the, who, I mean, can you imagine going against your boss for some guy that's gonna get kicked out anyways? But he just did it off of principle.

• 2:11:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah. He was doing it back then. He was an awesome dude. Awesome leader. Wow.

• 2:11:55Speaker 02

  You got a hell of a story, man. Yeah.

• 2:12:00Speaker 02

  Where are we going from here? Well, I, I think, um, I think it, it, it goes right into McAfee, you know? It's just a big transition to, to, you know, like I talked about the Joseph in the dungeon story, where he's betrayed by his brothers. He's betrayed by his, I felt like betrayed by my country. And Joseph was betrayed by his brothers. He's thrown in the dungeon. I'm thrown in the mental hospital. I go through the hanging. And then I get to my house in a, a valley center and I don't know what's gonna happen, but here comes the, the dungeon of the palace. Um, I have no idea that my life's about to change. I'm basically like crying out to God. I don't even know if God hears me or I know he's real. I never denied him.

• 2:12:42Speaker 02

  I never denied God, but I, I know he's real, but I know he's not with me or he's not answering me because of the hell that I've gone through. Uh, all of a sudden, my buddy TCav calls me out of nowhere and we had been doing some enforcing work together. What's that like? Getting people to pay money they owe to, to whoever they owe the money to, you know?

• 2:13:08Speaker 02

  How do you do that?

• 2:13:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. What does that mean? Who, who hires you to do that? Rich, rich dudes, you know, through connections like you, you know? Uh, I was called up and say, you want to go do this? This guy owes, you know, a billion bucks. He owes it. He's not paying it for the last, you know, year and a half. You know, he lives in Canada. Give me his address. Well, you, you go, you know, you go, you go up to him and, and you give him a, you give him a plastic card with the bank wire information on it and you just give it to him and, and maybe something happens, maybe something doesn't, you know, and you tell them, tell them, uh, you understand what this means? Yeah. Okay. Cause next time, you know, it's not gonna be this. And usually they pay.

• 2:13:54Speaker 02

  Because of- How do you even get into that? I don't know, Sean. I mean, you know, you know- So you get, you get kicked out of the SEAL teams? Well, I, I actually retired honorably, but, but honorable's not on a piece of paper. So. You retired on- I literally was able to retire. I, I, when they gave me a choice, after the hanging, they said, what do you want to do, Jimmy? I said, now I want to get out and I want to get a hundred percent medical. And they gave me, they said, whatever. They gave me all the bells and whistles, a hundred percent honorable, retired, everything. But honorable is not on a piece of paper. I always say that. I'm committed to that. So how, how long were you in?

• 2:14:38Speaker 02

  Uh, total seventeen years, but because that counts, my marine time counts inactive reserves and active. And then my, my SEAL time around maybe seventeen, seventeen and a half, maybe. So you probably, what'd you spend like twelve years, thirteen years in the SEAL teams? Eight years. Eight years. Eight total, yeah.

• 2:14:59Speaker 02

  Eight years in Marine Corps and eight years in? Yeah, a little over eight in the SEALs. Shit.

• 2:15:10Speaker 02

  And then, and then from that to enforcing, what'd you call it? Enforcer, being an enforcer. How do you get into that? Well, my homie, uh, TCav, me, we, he had a boss that owed, a guy owed money. And so we, uh, so I was like- You had a boss who was owed money? He had a boss that was owed money Okay. by another guy and that was living in Canada. Um, and, uh, we, we went, we went, we went up there and stayed for a while. And, you know, watched his business, watched his house, watched his business.

• 2:15:51Speaker 02

  And finally he came out. He didn't like to move around. He didn't like to come out. And finally he came out one day. And, uh, uh, and we, we, we followed him to his house. And luckily we didn't have to do anything too crazy. We just went up there and we grabbed him and we said, you know, you know, you're gonna pay this. You know what I mean? We, we, we're not Canadians, by the way. We flew all the way here for this. We found you and you're gonna pay this. Here's the wire information already, already all on this little nice card. You don't have to take it any further after this. All you have to do is pay and then nothing will happen to you. And they're like, okay, you know, okay, okay, okay. Cause that's scary, you know?

• 2:16:35Speaker 02

  Two guys like me and TCav to come up, you know, to, out of nowhere in Canada at your random, at your random house. That's crazy. It's far.

• 2:16:47Speaker 02

  How long were you doing that for? Not long, just a couple of months. What does that pay? Uh, well, that could be a percentage of the money that came in. You know, uh, could be, you know, fifty thousand each.

• 2:17:03Speaker 02

  You know, off a billion dollar deal. He just wants his money back. I mean, he's willing to pay us a lot because you're not gonna get that money back anyways.

• 2:17:14Speaker 02

  So I get a call from TCav. TCav's like, yo, yo, bro, you know, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm done with this, man. Last time was scary. He got pulled out of customs in Canada and I sat on the plane alone without him. And I was like, oh, we're gonna get, it's over. And so, uh, but he calls me, he goes, hey, you, you wanna, you wanna go be security for John McAfee? And I'm like, who's John McAfee? He's like, check your computer, doll. And I'm like, oh, the McAfee? McAfee antivirus guy? And he goes, yeah, he's got a nephew in the teams. And he called him saying that he's paranoid and he wants the best SEAL out there. Of course, I wasn't by any means nobody. I just got out though, you know, just, just out.

• 2:17:58Speaker 02

  And I, I had a payment due on my house, Sean. I would have done it for free almost just for an adventure, right? I, I mean, I, and think about what I went through. I hung myself. I have a, I had a fractured neck that had a heel. I go through all this shit in my life. You know, those guys, by the way, are they in prison right now? Can't even remember, but, but they will be, or they were. And I've been through all this shit and then he calls me with this opportunity with John McAfee. And so, he goes, don't worry. He, he'll probably pay you whatever you ask. So, so he'll call you. I said, okay, okay. I didn't think about it, Sean. And all of a sudden my phone rings. And I answer it and it's like, you know who this is, boy? I'm like, who's this guy calling boy? You know?

• 2:18:41Speaker 02

  He's a, he's like, it's John McAfee. I said, yeah, sir. I figured that's who you are. He said, uh, he got right down a brass tacks. He said, how much you charge? And I was like, he's real raspy, real harsh like that. And I just, I threw out five hundred to a thousand a day. It depends on the threat, I said. And I, I didn't know how to balance that. I was just going off of my Blackwater days. You know, how to price that. And he goes, what the, what the hell? He goes, I buy my green braids. I only pay them two hundred and fifty a day, damn it. Like, you're like, what kind of like hard ass value? And I don't know why, but I just was like, I was like, well, it's your life, sir.

• 2:19:22Speaker 02

  And I didn't know how much that was playing into his already paranoia and his emotions. And so that was a, that was a deal for him. He was like, okay, like be here tonight then. Because when I said it's your life and I played on his emotions without knowing it, I basically won the negotiation. And he wasn't used to losing because he, you could tell he didn't want to pay that money. But what he said, you know, when I said, well, it's your life, like take it or leave it. And he said, deal. He's at five hundred bucks, but you gotta be here tonight. You gotta leave tonight. I said, okay, where? And he says, I'll give you instructions. I fly into Lexington, Tennessee.

• 2:20:07Speaker 02

  I mean, Lexington, Tennessee, where the hell is that? It's a dump. There's like a Walmart. I'm sorry if somebody's from Lexington, Tennessee on, on the audience, but it, you, you don't, you don't think, you think you're gonna go, you think you're gonna be the guard of John, the iconoclad technology, iconoclad John McAfee? And he lives in Lexington, Tennessee. You think you're gonna go to Belize or Bali or somewhere? No. John McAfee picks Lexington, Tennessee. It's a big house. And it's tactically situated with a great, um, for great observation. It's up on a hill. It's got a huge clearing around it. Big fence and attack dogs, big canines and a, in a pit bull named Tequila.

• 2:20:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, people need tequila. And so I pull up there, man. Long story short, I pull up. Uh, I, uh, these dogs are running and jumping and hitting the fence at me. And they're like, and the guards like, yeah, they, they, they may bite you, man, you know, like, just, and I'm like, ah, Ben, I don't want to do this. But I, I need an adventure, Sean. I'm always looking for the adventure. So, uh, I walk in the, the room and these guards are everywhere playing on, they look like the stock market, the candlesticks going up and down. I later found out that's crypto. They're smoking weed, they're drinking whiskey. Uh, this is just not my environment. I'm, I'm used to having to, I'm, you know, in the seals, you would never drink with your pistol on.

• 2:21:35Speaker 02

  I mean, it just doesn't go together, right? I mean, unless you're in some weird situation like the island or something, but you're like, you know, you're, it was just odd to see. And so I wait there in the, the room, in the dark room, there's smoke everywhere. And my first meeting with John McAfee, he comes out the door, the guards are like, shh, because you're being recorded all the time. It's a very paranoid environment. And John McAfee comes out and he's got this salt pepper hair uh, with the blonde tips and crazy beard. And he, he comes out and he immediately tells me to go outside with him. And we go, and we go out and he takes me into the middle of the field.

• 2:22:14Speaker 02

  And, uh, he says, you, uh, you know, he looks at me and turns his face towards me with his eyes. He had these crazy crystal blue eyes. He was like, who's the most feared man on the battlefield? And I'm like, God, I gotta play this freaking game, you know, just to get paid. I'm like, I don't know, sir. And he's like, the oldest man. And I'm like, it's kind of cheesy, but kind of true, you know? And, uh, yeah, but when he said that, John, uh, I said, when he said that, Sean, I was like, you know, I'm just gonna take his freaking word for it. You know what? I'm gonna just go all in and play the game. If John McAfee says that he got raped by aliens

• 2:22:55Speaker 02

  last night, I'm abducted and whatever. I'm going to take his word for it. So that's the attitude I have. And that really worked out for me well. Because nobody else was taking him serious around him. And this guy was a genius and I already kind of knew that. And I knew he was playing games with these guys. And, um, and, and so he, he was a

• 2:23:21Speaker 02

  like a mad scientist genius guy. He was, he was incredible.

• 2:23:26Speaker 02

  He put me through tests. What kind of tests? Uh, he put the, the very first night. Um, remember they're, they're, they're moving around, they're playing this crypto market, talking about making money with their pistols on, drinking, it's loud. Who are these other guys? Some of them are, are, are extreme brays, Rangers, uh, I, I, I think maybe a couple of them lied about their, their background. Um, they said they were whatever. And I was like, yeah, okay. And they don't know who I am. And John McAfee texts me on my phone and says, hey, you're the only one I trust, even if it's not true. He texts me, you're the only one I trust. I don't trust anybody. I don't even trust my own wife, Janice.

• 2:24:07Speaker 02

  He goes, um, uh, I need you to be my eyes and ears. And that's what he tells me outside as well. Well, that night, I wake up and I go to bed with my pistol on my side right here. Not my finger on the trigger, but on my, with my loosely holding this, that forty shield. And I wake up and I see this like demon standing over me, like on the bed. And it's John McAfee staring down on me, straddling me with his feet on the bed. And I'm like sunken in. Yeah. And he's like, he's like looking down at me. And I have my, and I have that gun and I pointed at him. I'm like, I'm gonna kill this guy. And he's like, are you with me, son? Are you with me? And I'm like, I'm with you, sir. He goes, let's go. He jumped off the bed. We went upstairs.

• 2:24:52Speaker 02

  We stare out this, this glass, this, uh, this window at night and we're staring out into the night. And there's, um, he says, do you see it? And everybody's like, where, where, where? And he's got binoculars at night. Uh, and he's just, we're staring there for like, you know, the stipers, you can sit there behind glass forever, but it's, it's freaking boring. Terribly boring. And, uh, but John McAfee, he says, do you see it to a guy? And this guy was an ex Ranger, whatever. He grabbed the binoculars and he looked, he goes, yeah, yeah, I see it. It's flashing lights. John McAfee says, you see it, right? Yeah, it's flashing lights. And he goes, I see it. And then John McAfee looks at me and he goes, take a look. You see him?

• 2:25:35Speaker 02

  And I'm looking and I can't see anything, Sean. And I, and I just, I know that nothing's there. And, but everything in my body tells me, just say, yeah. Yeah, I see the lights too. You know what I mean? Because you could tell guys were playing off of his paranoia, his paranoia. And man, I thought, you know what? I'm gonna get fired, but I'm, I'm just gonna tell the truth. I'm just gonna be straight up. And so I just straight up was like, sir, I believe you, but I don't see lights. I don't. And he was like, are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking, he goes, they're right there. And I said, sir, I know, I, I just don't see him. The next day, he comes out with an envelope of cash. I could see envelope in the opening and I know that it's for me to fire me.

• 2:26:16Speaker 02

  He, he, because I know I'm done after that. It's real awkward. He walks outside. He hands me this envelope of cash and he goes, go give this to that guy that said there was a light out there last night. He goes, go fire him. He goes, there was no light. He goes, good job. He walked back in.

• 2:26:35Speaker 02

  And I knew right then and there, he was playing major head games with everybody.

• 2:26:42Speaker 02

  Why is he wasting his time playing head games? I don't know. I don't know, Sean. I think it was a mix of, uh, alcohol, certain drugs, maybe. Um, his own paranoia and then actual some truth behind it. Some truth to, because later on, as we were moving six times in two years, we would see. Six times in two years? Six times. We would move. Kind of like an Airbnb situation, but one of the times he literally left his entire, he had museum relics, like they belong in the Spisodian Institute. He literally would, he literally would say, are you with me, son?

• 2:27:28Speaker 02

  And I would be like, yes, sir, I'm with you. And he would say, okay, grab your bag, we're going. And I was like, sir, what about, what about your house? What about this museum? There's a two thousand five hundred year old Buddha doll. There's a samurai, uh, you know, the big head stuff. I mean, crazy stuff. And he said, leave it. He said, where you, how, where are you gonna go with that, Jimmy? You gonna take it with us? He said, we, we don't need it. And he would just literally leave. He left that whole house in Lexington, Tennessee with freaking relics in it. Wow. Never to return. He said, sell it. Uh, he said, sell it, try to sell it or something. Dirt cheap, whatever.

• 2:28:11Speaker 02

  He had, he had zero attachments to things or people. And that's what made him so dangerous. Because he had noth, no, um, he had no owed nobody.

• 2:28:27Speaker 02

  I don't understand.

• 2:28:33Speaker 02

  What are you thinking this whole time? How long, how much time had passed? So you meet him in Lexington, Tennessee? Yeah. How much time were you there for? About, well. Standing over in the middle of the night. Standing over in me, uh, Running it through these weird tests and. Running me through these tests with money and stuff. Sometimes he overpays me. And I tell him he overpaid me. He goes, I don't need it. The next time he grabs it from my hand. He goes, that's what I thought. You know, like the honesty game. He, I, I, at one point I'm like, sir, don't you need, don't you need my credentials? I mean, I was kind of proud of my career, you know, having this, having this fight and stay in like that and still have honorable on there. He goes, I don't need your DD two fourteen. You can fraud, you can create that out of, out of nothing. He goes, but give me your passport.

• 2:29:16Speaker 02

  And I was like, that's pretty wise. So I gave him my passport. He checked my passport, stuff like that. He was always doing weird stuff. He was a pretty smart guy. Uh, and the second, um, so I'm there for about a year, but during this time, I also asked him, like, like, one of the first days I'm there, he's got bags all by his door, these suitcases. Uh, on the second day that I'm there, and I said, sir, what, what, are, are you leaving somewhere? I was hoping we would leave somewhere besides Lexington. He said, well, Trump and Hillary were in that race against each other. You know, Hillary was kind of the, about to win it. He goes, if Hillary won, I was about to leave the country. I said, I said, why?

• 2:30:01Speaker 02

  And this is when I started to realize that we had so close similarities. And I think this is why I became so close with John McAfee. Uh, like a son almost, is because we had so many similarities in our stories. Uh, with the DOJ and corruption. And he goes, he goes, Jimmy, he goes, I have.

• 2:30:21Speaker 02

  Information, terabytes of information on, and he named her, and he named three or four other people in the DOJ that I knew about, that, that if, if I said their name right now, you'd say, oh yeah, I know. He goes, I, and he goes, and a bunch of other politicians. He goes, I have horrible, horrible stuff on these people. I have terrible stuff on them. And I didn't know what to believe at the time, Sean, but because of my situation and the, how the FBI had lied to my commander with the memo, I knew, and they, and he put those guys in prison from Blackwater, I knew that they were capable of anything. And so he tells me he has three terabytes of information, or a bunch of information on Hillary and

• 2:31:06Speaker 02

  others. Well, uh, a couple of days later, he brings out an envelope with these hard drives in it and a bunch of cash. He says, we're going to Miami. We go to Miami, me and him, in the group, in the group. And, uh, he hands it off to two guys in a cafe. The cash and the, in the hard drives. He says, I didn't see the hard drives, but he said this in the envelope, and big envelope, and the cash. He gives it to these two guys. He walks out and, and, uh, he, he said, son, I'll never forget, Sean. He said, son, if anything ever happens to me, I did not kill myself, and that information on all these

• 2:31:47Speaker 02

  people is going to be released. I later understood this as the dead man's, everybody kept talking about the dead man's, which here I am, having been part of it, didn't even know what it was. But so, so supposedly these two guys had this information and they were supposed to release it if anything happened to John McAfee, as crazy as that sounds. What, what was, what was in there? You know? I don't know. He said horrible, disgusting, terrible stuff. And now that we have seen the Epstein stuff, I, it, it feels like kind of along those lines. But I don't know for sure. I'm not going to sit here and say otherwise, you know? Let's take a quick break.

• 2:32:26Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:34:45Speaker 02

  So we're talking about how paranoid he is. Right. From the get-go, he's running through all these games. Right. Which I kinda get, but on the other hand, I don't. Well, he was, he was a brilliant tactician, and, uh, the thing that I, that I always say with John is everything he said always came true. It's outlandish and crazy as it sound. He would tell these wild stories, but it ended up coming true. So I, so after a while, you're just like, maybe this guy's on to something. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe, maybe I don't know anything. But I had an inclination to lean towards John with his stories because

• 2:35:26Speaker 02

  of my terrible experience with the FBI, knowing that they would destroy your life if they could. Why is he so paranoid, though? Well, so John was saying that bugs were in people's computers in the seventies. Can you imagine that? And everybody laughing at you all the time. He said, Jimmy, people used to laugh at me, and I would tell them, there's bugs in your computer, and you don't know it. And people laugh. And then he came up with a solution. Well, Napoleon said, you know, you want to be a great leader, point out a problem and then provide the solution. So maybe perhaps John McAfee created the problem, and then provided the solution, created the bug, and then created the antivirus, or perhaps he provided just the solution.

• 2:36:11Speaker 02

  But keep in mind, John McAfee was working on the Apollo mission. He had letters of commendation from Colin Powell, uh, thanking him for his work on the Patriot missiles, intercepting the Scuds, uh, during the Desert Storm. So he had a bunch of defense that can... Thank you for, oh yeah, thank you for your donation of computers. He was always donating the government all the kinds of, kinds of computers, and then spying on the government. So he had all this information. This is true stuff. This is not conspiracy. And, uh... He would donate gov, computers to the government. Donating computers to the government. Now, remember, I remember a programmer once

• 2:36:55Speaker 02

  tried to correct McAfee on something. He always had these genius programmer weirdos around him. You gotta be a real weirdo if you're an excellent programmer. And he had these, like, guy that, uh, and one of the programmers tried to correct him. He said, but, but John McAfee, uh, this, this. And John McAfee looked at him and said, silence! And he said, you, uh, don't understand that I was programming computers the size of your house before you were born. So don't speak to me unless I speak to you, okay? Everybody's like, damn. Like, he was programming computers the size, you know, computers used to be massive. There's pictures of him, uh, you know, with these big, you know, the big, and

• 2:37:35Speaker 02

  he was, he was a big proponent in iMessaging. McAfee kind of, McAfee antivirus overshadows the, all the real cool stuff he did. He was a big proponent in our iMessaging today. He invented a lot of stuff. Really? He was in Apple? He was all, yeah, he, he was good friends with Steve Jobs, real good friends with Steve Jobs. He, he was good friends with Bill Gates, except he said he would rather nail his toe to the floor and starve to death than have another dinner with Bill Gates. He was so boring. Hmm. Did he, guess he didn't see him on Epstein Island, huh? Yeah, exactly. And I guarantee you McAfee wasn't on the Epstein Island. You don't think so?

• 2:38:17Speaker 02

  He was so, and McAfee was, was, had a dark side. But I believe that McAfee was tremendously against the abuse of people and especially animals. And I think when you're so against the abuse of animals, it is a childhood inner thing going on where you're protective over human beings too. Like, he would rough me up sometimes. He slapped me once, like hard, boom, you know, after a business decision I made, uh, stuff like that. So, but he was real caring of his animals. And remember, John McAfee was accused of murdering his

• 2:38:58Speaker 02

  neighbor in Belize, and so he goes on the run, and he escaped the Belizeian government. And so that's when I meet up with him, right after he goes back from being on the run from the Belize government for... You meet up with him after that? Right after that. What's the story with that? Well, John McAfee literally took me in like a son, and part of maybe his grooming towards me, I don't know, he was calling me, uh, intelligent, and this is the first time I ever hear this, Sean. And so I go from hanging myself last year in the worst of the worst dungeon like Joseph, to in charge of his entire empire. And, uh, to the CEO of his company, because I'm, I'm just running everything. And I, sorry, I didn't hear your question. I was going somewhere.

• 2:39:42Speaker 02

  Doesn't matter. Keep going. Yeah. And so Oh, the story with the dogs. Oh, so John, John got to, you know, that, that three can keep a secret if two are dead thing? Like, everybody wants to tell their story or their secrets and they have to. And so, but John McAfee was the only one with these secrets. So who does he tell? Not Janice, maybe Janice, but for me. Who's Janice? His wife. But for me, he would get me, uh, he, he would start to drink and he would come sit next to me or he'd just start telling me stories, dark stories about how he killed his father. He killed his father? He, yes. And the way he describes it, I guarantee you did.

• 2:40:27Speaker 02

  I don't doubt him. How did he kill him? Why did he kill him? Well, he, he comes from an Irish descent and his dad was, uh, uh, uh, from war to a very, um, had PTSD, had seen some real bad stuff in war two and, um, and his dad would drink and beat his mom and beat him. And this goes into the neighbor story of Belize, um, why I think it's possible. But John was shaking one time. He had red bloodshot eyes and he was shaking, you know, drinking and he, and he leaned into me and it was like tears and he said, son, he goes, my, my grandpa, my grandpa was a good man, but my dad, he was a terrible man.

• 2:41:11Speaker 02

  He would beat me. He goes, one time he put my, made me put my arm out on the table and he hit me with, with a billy club and he, and he cracked my arm in half. And, uh, and he said, he beat my mom, son. He beat my mom. And I'd say, I'm sorry, sir. Like, I wouldn't know what to say, you know, I'd just sit there and listen. And he would just pour this stuff out and he said, and he says, and he said, my grandpa though was a good man and he taught me how to use a 22 long rifle. And he, he said, he taught, he taught me weapon safety. He taught me how to cross a fence with a long rifle. And he showed me how, you know, and he showed me how to accuracy shooting. And he said, he gave me this 22 Jim. And, um, he says, uh, and he says, but I watched my dad beat my mom over and over.

• 2:41:55Speaker 02

  And he put her in the hospital one time. And so I came up to him and I said, I said, you touch mom again, I'm gonna kill you. He goes, do you understand me? And it's very important to realize that John McAfee, one time I, in a business negotiation, I said, why don't you bluff him, sir? And he grabbed me, said, you'd never bluff. He was, there's a no bluff policy. He had a no bluff policy. He never bluffed nobody. If he said it, it was happening 100%. And so he said, uh, that he told his dad that if he, if he touched his mom one more time, he was gonna kill him. And his dad beat him for that. And he took the beating hard.

• 2:42:35Speaker 02

  And he said, the next time he put his mom in the hospital again, he said, he went in the back room, he picked up the long rifle. He said, he walked down the hallway and his dad was shaving with a razor, straight razor in the mirror with the shaving cream still on his face. His dad saw him in the mirror and he said, what the, what the hell are you gonna do with that boy? And John raised the rifle and pulled the trigger right behind his head. And he just dropped the rifle and ran out. And he just slumped over on the ground and he said, his neighbor came out and said, John, what have you, what have you done? And he goes, I just killed my dad. He goes, I just killed my dad. He just kept repeating it.

• 2:43:17Speaker 02

  And he, and he, he said, stay here. And his neighbor ran in there. Now, keep in mind, his neighbor's been hearing all this abuse, you know, they had real tight houses back in England. He was born in 1945 in England, but, uh, and so he's in there about 10 minutes and he comes out and he grabs John. He says, John, the police are coming. He says, you did not kill your dad. He killed himself. Do you understand me? And he slapped John around and John said, no, I did. He goes, no, you did not.

• 2:43:51Speaker 02

  And that was that. And the sad part about the story is John's own mother abandoned him after that. Because she knew what he had done for her. But her loyalty was with his father. So John was very capable of dealing out death and

• 2:44:15Speaker 02

  not having much hope in humanity and trust from his background.

• 2:44:22Speaker 02

  So what's the dog story? He loved his dog, Tequila, the pit bull, Tequila and these two canines and, uh, he, uh, he had dogs before this in Belize, right before I met him. I didn't know any of this at the time, but I, I knew there was rumor that he had killed. That was the big thing was that, that the neighbor poisoned John McAfee's dogs. And then the neighbor ends up getting shot in the back of the head with a shotgun. Um, and everybody kind of thought, figured it was McAfee. McAfee, of course, said, no, it wasn't me. Um, and, but one day we came back home. And one of the guards kind of shoved the dog, like kind of kicked the dog.

• 2:45:06Speaker 02

  And John McAfee said, you know what happens to people who hurt my dogs, right? And, uh, and he looked at me and he, and he said, you understand? And I said, I understand, sir. Like, I understand. So he was telling me, like, without telling me, I'll kill you, you know, if you mess with my dogs.

• 2:45:24Speaker 02

  Shit. And so you meet him right after this? I met him right after this. And, you know, John, he, he would donate a fire truck. He was a brilliant. He would donate a fire truck to each town that we went to and each town that he lived in before me too. And I said, so why you donate a, a fire truck? He said, son, he said, you don't ever donate to the police because it seems like bribery. He goes, but what you do to win the town over is you donate a fire truck. He goes, if you donate a fire truck, you can do anything in that town that you want to and nobody will ever say a damn word to you.

• 2:46:02Speaker 02

  And I said, okay. So he would donate a fire truck and then he said, um, and then something else about McAfee, he treated everybody equal. If you were a bum on the street, you, you might as well be a billionaire to him. A billionaire bum, didn't matter. So everybody was level to him. He didn't see color. His wife is a very well-known, uh, a prostitute from Miami that was super black woman. She's a very, very dark, uh, dark skinned colored woman, very, very dark. So he was colorblind. He didn't see color. He, he didn't judge. He, oh, he, he, he kind of knew you before you, uh, you even spoke. Like one time he said, son, come here. And, and I said, don't, uh, across from him.

• 2:46:44Speaker 02

  And he looked deep in my eyes and he said, son, he said, you're a lost ship in the dark, abysmal night at sea. And he painted this dark picture and I, I started kind of shaking and started, it hit me hard. This guy barely knew me, by the way. This is kind of in the beginning. And, and he went in this big explanation how I was this lost ship in the night floating around in the sea. And it hit me hard and it kind of made me emotional, triggered me. And he goes, how do I know? Cause I was asking him, how do I know? He goes, and he finished my sentence. He goes, how do I know? And I said, yes. And he said, because I am that lost ship.

• 2:47:26Speaker 02

  And so I, I had, whether it was through manipulation or whatever, he, he got me by the, I mean, I would have done anything for McAfee. After what I went through, he pulled me out of hell, I thought, and gave me everything. Bentley boat, houses, everything you can imagine was in my name, which at the time I thought was amazing. But he put everything in my name. And, uh, and I was making, I mean, just unbelievable amount of money. And so all of a sudden I go from the dungeon to the palace in charge.

• 2:48:06Speaker 02

  I, I got my own guards, you know, uh, not that I need them really, but I went McAfee and I'm the boss now. They're calling me boss and I'm like, don't call me boss. And McAfee reprimands me for that. And so they start, so, so he's like, don't ever correct somebody if they call you boss. What are you stupid? He goes, they call you boss, you're boss. He goes, there can only be one in charge, should be. And so he made me in charge. He goes, I'm retiring. I'm out. You're gonna do that. Cause he taught me everything in a very short period of time. It was very stressful. He taught me all about crypto and, and, and this and this and this and, and negotiating. But his negotiations were non-negotiable. So it was the easiest negotiation. I would just sit down with the Russians, some Russian, Russian oligarchs that wanted to do a major crypto deal.

• 2:48:51Speaker 02

  And they would come out with their vodka and girls. I'd say, save it, save it, save it. I said, we don't need that. He says, here are the terms. And then, no, no, no, buddy, drink. And I'd say, we can drink, we can do cocaine. We can, we can party with your girls all night, but the terms are the terms. It's non-negotiable. And they'd be like, who does this? McAfee. And he's to be paid every 24 hours. Is however you want to pay him. Wire, Bitcoin, Ethereum, every 24 hours. And if the payment doesn't go through, it's over. The deal's over. He was charging a hundred thousand dollars a tweet. One hundred thousand dollars a tweet. He had a million followers on Twitter and 75% of them did what he said to do like this.

• 2:49:35Speaker 02

  So can you imagine the power you have in crypto?

• 2:49:39Speaker 02

  So you name the coin of the day. The coin of the day is Doge.

• 2:49:44Speaker 02

  The Doge price rockets. He makes three or four million. I make a couple hundred thousand in one day. Shit. The coin of the day is red coin. It goes up a hundred, 200%. And then it falls back down. And so I wasn't in this at first, Sean, and then I thought, what the hell am I doing? Uh, John McAfee didn't coerce me into this. I said, sir, how do I do this? He goes, son, don't, he goes, don't ever ask for advice, you know, about this business. He goes, just do it. And so I started to do it on my own.

• 2:50:23Speaker 02

  I was picking out the coins. I was doing everything for him. He was looking for a certain volume, a certain mass. And his crypto traders were like, don't listen to Jimmy. He don't know what the hell is going on. He doesn't know about math. He doesn't know about math. He doesn't know the numbers. He doesn't know about crypto. And John would tell me this. And he'd say, Jimmy, what do you say? Are you sure about Red Coin? Are you sure about Doge, these coins? And I'd say, sir, it has nothing to do about math. That's where you messed up. And he'd say, how dare you? I was a mathematician and all this. And he goes, and all my crypto traders are saying that you're wrong on this coin pick. How it's gonna shoot. I said, you don't understand. You have the power and influence

• 2:51:07Speaker 02

  to move this and you don't realize it. I said, so you can go with me? And I was risking everything, Sean. He goes, I got $2 million on this. Are you sure? And he would go against his crypto traders and go with my word and the price would shoot up. Because it wasn't me, it was his power and influence. And I figured the numbers, and I was taking chances, a little risky too. Well, I was making him millions. And so now I become like his

• 2:51:35Speaker 02

  closest confidant, his lucky charm. His Irish luck thing. I have Irish in me. I mean, he luck and we're both like, like, he's like, Jimmy's my piece of like, and he's my protection. Now he won't even go to sleep without me around. And now I'm like, where's his wife at? With him, in the room. But if, but, but, but I would sleep real close to his door with the door cracked open. And, or but it was dangerous too, because he could shoot through the walls. He would shoot through the door. It was really dangerous environment. Shot through the glass one night. He would just shoot? Random shit. Just randomly shoot? Office pop.

• 2:52:17Speaker 02

  Just? Why? In the middle of the night? He said somebody was coming in his room?

• 2:52:23Speaker 02

  He's people, people, uh, uh, one time he took the shotgun and ran outside and just blasted underneath the house with slugs. Well, my room was the basement. And my wife at the time was in there. And I'm thinking, I'm gonna get my girl killed here. This is a horribly dangerous environment. Super volatile. So, long story short, Sean. Um, the only time, so I'm running his entire business. He's taught me everything. And I'm like his lucky charm, his son. We move into a mansion called The Love Boat, because it was done after the Love Boat series. It's a mansion that looks like a ship in a weird way. And it was, and it's just, it has an elevator, beautiful.

• 2:53:07Speaker 02

  And it was on the Ocracoke Sound where Blackbeard used to evade the British Man o' War ships in the shallows. It overlooked the sound. My office was huge. It was like this room right here. It had big glass looking over the sound. And I used to read about Blackbeard and the British Man o' War ships in the shallows. And when I was a kid, and here I am, come from West Texas. Now I'm running the whole McAfee empire. I've got so much money. I've got money. I got, I got money I don't even know what to do with. And now I'm, now I go from that seal with a handgun, not drinking, to doing blow speed up through a nasal spray. I'm doing everything and anything, all the time. And running this company.

• 2:53:52Speaker 02

  And, but I'm starting to get paranoid like him. I'm starting to lose touch with reality. Why are you getting paranoid? Probably because I was, you know, you know, Adderall is probably one of the worst freaking drugs out there. I tell you, you know, you stay up for three days and don't sleep, you know, you know, when you don't sleep for long periods of times, you start talking to your boots, you know? Uh, and I think that played into McAfee, staying up night after night. You start having chaotic episodes. Uh, I was crushing up Adderall. I was taking all kinds of stuff. His crypto traders were always having big piles of cocaine and girls everywhere. We were flying to Ibiza. We were, we were partying everywhere.

• 2:54:38Speaker 02

  Uh, partying with Russian oligarchs on their, on their private jet planes. Uh, he was keynote speaker at a lot of places. He would go for free. Because the business that we would pick up there and I would work while we were on these cruises and travel. I would do, I would have a line of 10, 15 businesses on the cruise, waiting to speak to me at the table. And I just sat there, drank and gave the terms. And I was getting 20%, 30% of it. Jeez. Yeah. So he was a wild, he was partier, wild man. He, he would not do drugs in front of anybody. Uh, so I, I, to be honest, I, I never saw him do drugs, Sean. It was almost like he was ashamed to do that in front of me.

• 2:55:21Speaker 02

  Like as like a dad figure. I know that sounds weird. And if he caught me doing it, he would have slapped me around. But we both knew that it was going on in the same house.

• 2:55:35Speaker 02

  You know?

• 2:55:37Speaker 02

  How many places did you guys move? Uh, I think we moved six times. One, two.

• 2:55:44Speaker 02

  Okay, five times. Where would you move? Where'd you go from Tennessee? Uh, Tennessee to Ocracoke. Ocracoke, uh, to Frisco to Ocracoke, back to Frisco, all along the North Carolina coast there, in the Love Mansion, the Love Boat.

• 2:56:00Speaker 02

  And so the only time I leave Janice, and this is when it gets weird. There's people visiting all the time. There's weirdos visiting all the time. Uh, there's the guys that look like they're working for the CIA visiting, you know, like people that just don't like in a suit and they go out in the field and talk for a long time with their hands like this. And I don't know if it's that he's involved in the mob, the Irish mob. I don't know, I don't know what's going on. His Uncle Carl was a major player for the Irish mob. We visited him in his office. He did time. He did two years in a fed and the feds never ratted him out. So he was a main man after that. Um, and, uh, so, uh, the only time I ever left John McAfee

• 2:56:45Speaker 02

  was one time and it was to take Janice, his wife, to the airport. She was gonna go see her brother that was in prison that was in a coma. He was beat to death in a coma in prison. And she was really hurt about that and in shock. John said, I trust you to take her, but please come back as soon as possible. Obviously. And he was had anxiety. And Janet said, why don't you have one of the other guards take, take me? Leave Jimmy here with you so you could be at peace. He said, no, I want Jimmy to take you because you're, you know, you know, and wife, you know. I, so I took him, I took her to the airport in Virginia. I drive back as fast as I can. I get back to the Love Boat Mansion. And the door's open.

• 2:57:30Speaker 02

  It, it, it's just an eerie feeling. I go in, it's hot. I'm like, what the hell? And I'm like, where's the guards? And one of the guards is super bright red. He's been on the boat all day. I said, where is the boss, the real, the real boss? He's like, he's in bed. I said, what are y'all doing? Y'all been drinking or what? He's like, we were out on the boat all day. I said, okay. And so I go to his room, John McAfee's room, and I'm cautious because you don't want to get shot. So in the, in the fatal funnel, the threshold, and I saw, I walk up on the side and the door's cracked open. I, I crack it open and he's, and he's butt necking on the bed. He sprawled out like this, just snoring, you know, sleeping, but heavy. I said, what the hell? So I gotta just go like this.

• 2:58:12Speaker 02

  And I go lay down on the couch and I slept right in front of his door on the couch. And he would always bust through that door at 6:00 AM in the morning. 6:00 AM in the morning comes around, nothing. I'm like, oh, thank God. I can sleep a little bit. 8:00 AM comes around, nothing. I go, oh, man, something's wrong. I get up. I go over the door and it's closed this time. It was open. It's closed. Like somebody closed it. I go and I open it and he's still in the same position, but he's black and blue. Like, like dead. Like, and making noises like this. He was like

• 2:58:49Speaker 02

  like rhythmic noises. And I'm like, Sean, I, I had it freaked out in battle. I, I, I, I was oddly comfortable in war. Weirdly comfortable. But that, right there, I don't know why, I freaked out. I screamed. I panicked. I, I, I, he was covered in urine. Black and blue, gasping. I knew it was over. I put my hands under him, 220 pounds. It was the heaviest lift I've ever done off of a soft bed, like onto the ground. I just fell back on me. And then I started doing CPR, screaming to the guards. The guards were not coming up. Um,

• 2:59:31Speaker 02

  and, uh, finally, you know, I got the guards to call the medics and they, they life flighted him out. And he goes on a ventilator, life support. For three days. And uh, and the whole time I'm just holding his hand and I'm praying to God. I'm like, God, please, please don't let John McAfee die. Please don't let him die. I don't even know what to do if he would die. Like, what would happen? Like, and, and the, and the, the doctors come in and say, listen, it's over. He's, he's pretty much dead. Uh,

• 3:00:06Speaker 02

  the, the, even if he does live, it looks like he's gonna be brain dead. And I, the, the first thought that came to my mind was, man, what, what a tragedy. This guy was this incredible storyteller. He knew Mandarin Chinese, Russian. He could do it in, in, you know, eighteenth century poetry. He could say it in different languages. He, he could just destroy interviewers and, and all kinds of stuff. He had all kinds of tricks. And, um, here he is dying or dead, you know, with a ventilator, this machine. His hands are tied like this. Kind of like that, you know, from grabbing the tube. And, um, I hold his hand for three days and three nights, pretty much. And I'm praying.

• 3:00:49Speaker 02

  And, uh, on the third day, the, the doctors are like, um, we didn't find anything in him. No drugs, nothing but a little trace amount of THC. They said, do you know what happened, Jimmy? Please tell us if you know something. And I said, I don't know anything. Of course, I'm gonna say that, but I really didn't know anything. I knew he was snorting like nootropics and weird different stuff, like different stuff, but, but they couldn't explain why he was like that. Uh, they didn't find any drugs in his system except for the THC. Uh, so on the third day,

• 3:01:26Speaker 02

  uh, he starts to like kick and growl, growl like,

• 3:01:32Speaker 02

  and I, and I can see his hands. This is the worst case situation for a guy like John McAfee, uh, to be in this situation with the, um, with the, his hands tied, you know, cause he's like anti all of this. And, um, he, he, he's motioning to, I finally understand he's motioning to write something. So I put a marker in his hand. I loosened his hands up. And he writes, I'm gonna kill you. And scribbled big.

• 3:01:58Shawn Ryan?

  You?

• 3:01:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'll kill you. Like that. And I said, sir, I said, sir, it's not me. I swear I didn't kill you. It can't be me. I said, I went to, I'm like trying to explain my situation to John and, and he's dying, you know? Uh, I'm like, sir, I, I don't know what happened to you. Okay. But I took Janice to the airport. I came back and found you like this. He's angry. He's so freaking mad, Sean. He's, he's just, you could tell he's growling and growling. And, and Janice gets there finally back from California. And Ja, and I said, Janice, I think he thinks I tried to kill him or somebody did. One of the guards, he's pissed. He's gonna do something crazy if he ever gets out of here. And so Janice demands,

• 3:02:41Speaker 02

  Janice believes that John is telling her to take out the ventilator. And so, uh, Janice goes to the, to the doctors and says, you better take that ventilator out of him. And now keep in mind, he's been out for three days and three nights. And now he's all of a sudden moving around. They said, if we take that out, it's over for him. Ninety percent chance his lungs are gonna collapse. And so she basically said she's gonna sue him. And I didn't wanna take it out even. I was like, golly, listen to him, man, cause it was so devastating. After, long story short, they, they go ahead and they, they take it out. They tell, I'll never forget the, the sounds he made. And they took it out. He was coughing up so much terrible stuff, infection and weird. And,

• 3:03:24Speaker 02

  and within a couple of hours, he's, he's like, give me a deck of cards. Uh, he wants to do his card tricks. He's got crazy tricks, you know, where he could just show you. He can name any card and show it to you. Name any card, pull tricks. He was crazy. So, um, when we get back to the house, Sean, I, I asked him, cause I'm curious. Yeah, I'm real curious all the time. I'm like, I'm like, sir, did you see anything? Did, did you see anything when you were out like that? And he looked at me abruptly and he said, don't, don't ever ask me that again. He was scared. He had experienced something in that three days that he didn't wanna talk about. But later on, he called me in his room and he said, uh, he said,

• 3:04:08Speaker 02

  son, I was flying at light speed across the ocean floor. Now, keep in mind, John McAfee, I don't know if you wanna call him an atheist. He, he didn't not believe in God whatsoever. Nothing. He said, I was flying over the ocean floor at light speed. He said, in every dark color in the world, the blacks, the browns, the grays, even dark purple and red, uh, and blood red was in the water, every dark color you could imagine. He says, and out of this water, as I'm going light speed across the ocean, he said, these hands in these tortured faces came out of the water and up at him, like they were coming from hell

• 3:04:48Speaker 02

  and pulling him down. And he said he was being pulled into this. He said it was, he said it was scary, son. He said it was real scary. He said, but then all of a sudden, he said, out of this corner of his eye, he said, every most beautiful color you could ever imagine in your life was in the sky. The turquoise, the pinks, the, the beautiful, you know, all the light colors up there. He says, and there was a white cloud, this bright white cloud. He said it had opened up as he was going right down into the ocean abyss. He says, and right when it was opening up, a voice said, come here. It's time. And he knew that it was time for his judgment. Keep in mind, he doesn't know God or anything.

• 3:05:33Speaker 02

  He said, but I knew, son, that I was about to be judged and my whole life was about to be judged. He said, and I screamed. He goes, it wasn't the hands that scared me. It wasn't the hell that scared me. It was the judgment that scared me. He goes, and I screamed. And he goes, that's when I woke up and I was looking at you.

• 3:05:54Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 3:06:00Shawn Ryan?

  He told you this in the hospital?

• 3:06:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, he told me this when we got back. Uh, he wouldn't say anything at the hospital. He told me never to ask him again.

• 3:06:12Shawn Ryan?

  So what wound up convincing him that you didn't try to kill him?

• 3:06:17Speaker 02

  Um, Janice had to talk to him a long time. And she said, just logically, think about it, John. Jimmy took me to the airport. And when he got back, you're, and I told him my part of the story and he chose to believe me. He chose to believe it.

• 3:06:39Speaker 02

  But it shook me up real bad.

• 3:06:40Shawn Ryan?

  You think somebody tried to kill him?

• 3:06:42Speaker 02

  He, he believes that somebody tried to kill him. He said that there was a prick in his toe when he put his shoe on. And that was a way that, uh, espionage, the guys that got killed before assassinated is they poison a, you know, a, um, uh, a little thing in his shoe or whatever. But that's about it. There was no explanation for his, uh, what happened to him. And I thought that was freaking weird. The chances and coincidences of me being gone that day and then coming back and he's like that, that's pretty far out there. That's pretty, you know?

• 3:07:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:19Speaker 02

  Wild.

• 3:07:22Shawn Ryan?

  How many times had you been with him when he thought somebody was trying to kill him or was just, it was just all the time?

• 3:07:30Speaker 02

  All, all the time. He always thought somebody was after him. We would have cars circle the house a lot, the same cars. We would run their tags. Uh, we were always counter surveillance. There, there was weird stuff. People, people, I mean, weird shit would happen. And, uh, like I admit it and I was not, I was very, I come kind of from a background of like logic, thinking logically, not conspiracy, you know? So for me, it was like, I always kind of was like doubting, but I was like, no, that was weird. That was freaking weird. Like there was to be a guy with a full blown camera, like you, like you're in the movies and he's spying on you. Like obvious with a full blown camera, like across the parking lot, taking pictures and then CS and then like,

• 3:08:14Speaker 02

  and then run and jump in a car and go, that's freaking weird. It's like, it sounds like a movie and it, it's ob, it's, it's weird, right? Like almost too obvious, too?

• 3:08:24Shawn Ryan?

  So what do we, what happens when he gets better? Does he get back on his feet?

• 3:08:29Speaker 02

  Gets back on his feet. Uncle Carl has told him to, he's the, the only guy he'd ever listed was Uncle Carl, the mob guy. And, uh, Uncle Carl told him, you've been drinking? And John McAfee said, yes, sir. And Uncle Carl said, you know, cut your drinking in half and you're smoking in half. And he said, yes, sir. And he did. He cut it to one bottle a day of Scotch and one pack of cigarettes. He wasn't two, two. So he cut everything in half. Uh, but things are just getting out of control and spiraling out of control for me and John. Like I'm doing all this business. I'm up all the time. I'm just running off of fumes, Sean. And it's, it's extremely not healthy. Me and my girl, our connection is non-existent. Like, I'm like thinking, I'm, I'm providing the best life in the world for you. I used to yell that at her.

• 3:09:13Speaker 02

  I'm providing everything for you. Uh, like, like, uh, there's nothing that you don't have. Nothing. Name it. You have bitcoins. You have this. And, um, and, and, but there was no connection. There was no dates. Not even mini golf. I could go out. I had too much stuff going on. No balance, uh, off my rocker. And, uh, I was gonna pay for that. And, uh, so, uh, John McAfee, um,

• 3:09:43Speaker 02

  basically has given me everything. And, uh, and it's all about to come crashing down on me real hard. Uh, and so one night, uh, basically one night.

• 3:09:55Shawn Ryan?

  What was he meeting with all the mobsters about? You know, you're talking about the Russian mob, the Irish mob. All these people, what, what would he meet with? I mean, he's a software antivirus guy.

• 3:10:05Speaker 02

  He just had, well.

• 3:10:10Speaker 02

  Uh, one of the famous guys for Whitey Bulger, who's in a lot of the recordings the FBI took. He was there at the house as part of our security. And he had a direct relation to John McAfee, like his nephew. Uh, and then Uncle Carl had direct connection to the Whitey Bulger in that, that the, the writer's mob. Uh, be in there lawyer and he didn't snitch out, he didn't. Uh, rat out when he was caught up and he had to do two years for him. So when he got out, he was, he became a super prominent lawyer. Um, and so there was all these weird connections all the time and people coming over to the house.

• 3:10:53Speaker 02

  The Russians were always wanting to do big deals with crypto. And they were willing to do anything for that shit. I had a guy trying to give me 400,000 just to tell him the coin of the day. And I brought him to McAfee and said, tell McAfee what you just told me, you know?

• 3:11:10Speaker 02

  I was, I was pretty loyal to a fault, you know?

• 3:11:17Speaker 02

  So continue, continue on. So basically, uh, I, I, I'm sitting there one night, Sean, and I don't know if it was God or. I, I don't know what happened. I just basically was sitting there in the middle of this beautiful office. I had all this stuff and, uh, and I just, I, I just kind of stopped writing, stopped doing my stuff. And I just stopped and, and I kind of felt like it's over. Like I just knew it was over. It's like, you know, it's over, right? I heard that, like, you know, it's over, right? And I was like, yeah. And, uh, of course, how reliable is this information based off of what I just said about? Doing Adderall and being up all the time, but I really felt in that moment.

• 3:11:59Speaker 02

  Uh, a voice tell me to just get out, get out of the house. You know, it's over. And so maybe it was running off by paranoia. Maybe I had turned into a little ma, a little mini McAfee. But I just ran from the house. I just took my shit and ran, bro. I, I left the gold. I left all my silver. I left everything and ran.

• 3:12:23Speaker 02

  And I just left and went back to Texas for three days out, out in the, the, the woods. I needed to separate and get out of there because I was, I started to become delusional. I started. He made it, he made it such a horrendous, terrible environment to live in. That you didn't know what was truth and what was real and what was, he had electronic shit everywhere. I'd come in and my drawers were undone. Uh, uh, I came in one day, I'm in a freaking arrow, as weird as this is, was. Had been shot through the window laying in my room, like a message. I'm Googling, what does arrow mean? You know, there's always something.

• 3:13:04Speaker 02

  There's a big things in, uh, I just look over and there's a big thing plugged into the wall in my room, electronic thing. You know, one day he calls me in, John calls me and he goes, look at this son. And I looked and I never went into his bedroom, but he called me into his bedroom and I looked at his phone. And it was like live streaming, everybody's text messages, live on his phone.

• 3:13:30Speaker 02

  Like it would be like if you had your, your personal phone show and show me and all, all your people here. Where, where you could see all their personal messages. He's sitting there watching this shit? Yes. And he, and he showed me and I, he just showed me briefly and I, and he, and he goes, what do you think? And I said, sir, I said, I am so sorry. Cause I, I was probably talking shit like this old bastard gonna run me into the ground. I said, I'm sorry, sir, if I said anything bad. He said, it's okay.

• 3:13:59Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 3:14:02Speaker 02

  So I mean, what do you do with that? Like, it's not just some crazy old man. It's somebody with unbelievable skills. And you asked me earlier, Sean, like, why would he do all this? If, if you're so brilliant, like John McAfee was, I think he looks at it as a game. And he's bored or something. And so he wants to create. Like just a, a world of chaos around him and manipulation and, and. And plants and people, because people would come over and. And say stuff to me like, Jimmy, you know that if John McAfee dies. There's a million dollars cash under his sink, right?

• 3:14:45Speaker 02

  And if he dies, let's not call the ambulance. Let's just me and you go and grab it. I'd snatch him up so fast. If we're saying that, like, was it a test? Like, at one, one point, I felt like, you know, I had never done LSD, by the way. Until I met my girl now. Sorry to put on a blast, but, but we, when I was on the run, I met Anastasia, my Moscow Russian beautiful princess, you know, and. Uh, and, uh, we went on this hiatus of LSD and, and, and different, different. You know, mushrooms and all these things and the festivals and Copan gone everywhere, me and her.

• 3:15:24Speaker 02

  And during that time, the only other time I had felt like what I felt like with her at the festival was when I was McAfee. And I remember I had a horrible trip for three days, like something crazy happened to me. And I thought I had a big paranoid, I thought I had a big PS, PTSD thing happen. I could hear machine guns, people walking around like a big firefight around me. And I came back and McAfee was like, son, it's okay, it's okay. And he had these three or four big pills that he told me were for reversing. Uh, horrible trips and stuff. And he tried, and he gave them to me. He said, take these, take them, take them. And he said, drink this and a big thing of Scotch. And, and I took it and I was okay after that.

• 3:16:10Speaker 02

  And I said, don't fuck with me again, man. I said, I said, sir, you, you, you're fucking with the wrong guy. Like I, I, I don't know what, I don't know what you did to me or why you would do that to me. And then I saw a documentary later on that he had drugged women and stuff. And so I'm, I'm like. He would never do that to me like that, like drug me like I pass out, but it was like he was pressing me.

• 3:16:35Speaker 02

  Why do you think he would do that? I think he was so untrusting, so paranoid that he had to test me all the time. I walked out of the house with my little dog, Tookie, the chihuahua to walk outside. I walked out just for a five minute break, Sean. I come back, this is at the big love boat mansion. I'm walking back, brother, and the, the, the neighbor starts walking towards me. I look at her and I say, stop right there. Don't come close to me. Don't come close to me. I don't, you know, don't walk towards me. I'm telling you, don't. And she's like, no, I have a letter for you. It's, it's, and I said, I don't want it. I'm not gonna accept it. We're not allowed to accept mail here. We don't accept mail. We don't get sued. We don't answer, no court, nothing ever. You wrap your phones in foil.

• 3:17:20Speaker 02

  She, she goes, it's your freaking bill for your lawn. You're not paying your lawn bill for, for, uh, Hernandez or whatever. And so I said, okay, give it to me. I grabbed it from her real quick. I go upstairs and McAfee is just. He's got his hand on his gun. He's just like pissed at me, red bloodshot eyes. In my chair, my nice chair that he gave me, that he would never sit in. He made that on purpose, but this time he's sitting on it on a power move. And he's like, how fucking dare you, son? He goes, I trusted you with everything. And, you know, big drama. And I'm like, sir, calm down. Uh, what, number one, you reached out to me. Number two, this is your bill. You gotta pay your freaking bills. It's $50 lawn bill. 50 bucks?

• 3:18:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, 50 bucks. And, and he's like, oh shit. He's like, well, pay that, David. And I'm like, no, you pay it, sir. You wanna kick me out of here? You wanna fire me? None, none of this shit's gonna get done anymore. I do everything. And so I would go back and forth with the banter a little bit, but not, not, not in a disrespectful way, but, but a little bit. But nobody else would dare do that. You know, we had that kind of relationship at that point. Cause he needed me and I needed him.

• 3:18:35Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. And, and.

• 3:18:38Speaker 02

  And so I end up leaving and I'm out on this farm for three days. Leaving is then you quit? Yeah, pretty much. I just left.

• 3:18:48Speaker 02

  And I call him back and I said, sir, I think I'm done. I said, all I want is, uh. You know, my 30% you owe me, uh, that we agreed on, cause he was a deal. He's a, a man of his word, you know, no bluff, man of your word. I said, all I want is that. He said, you fuck, you, you left me holding the bags. You beat, you, you know, all this stuff. How dare you? He goes, I knew, I knew I couldn't trust you. I knew, I knew I couldn't trust you. And I was like, sir, what, let's, let's stop all the games. Let's, let's stop all the games. Like you, you'll never, you never will trust me and I never backstab you. I was loyal to the, to the death for you, man. And you ran me into the ground and now this is the fallout from it. So I just want my 30% and be left go, gone.

• 3:19:31Speaker 02

  And he said, well, fuck you. You're not getting, you're not gonna get your 30%. And I said, okay. And so I got to think about it. I called him back and I said, hey, sir. I said, it, it, it took me about a day to come to terms. Cause I wanted to think about, cause it was real dangerous to mess with. Like you don't mess with a guy like a master chess player like McAfee.

• 3:19:53Speaker 02

  And then it dawned on me, Sean, I said, wait a second. I hold all the cards. Everything is in my name. If he doesn't give me my little 30%, I don't want his shit. But I have way more leverage than him.

• 3:20:10Speaker 02

  And so I decided to get cocky, you know, I drank some, I've got some whiskey in me. And I call him up, I said, hey, sir. And he goes, what? I said, now you listen to me, son. He goes, oh, yeah? I said, yeah, I said, you listen to me, I said, you're gonna do exactly what I tell you. And for the first time ever, I win. I said, you're smart, but you weren't this smart. And I said, now, this is what you're gonna do. I said, you're gonna give me thirty thirty percent, or I will freaking steamroll you into the ground with everything that I have of yours. All your property, everything is mine. And I said, do you understand me now? I'm treating him real bad.

• 3:20:55Speaker 02

  And he's like, are you done? And I said, yeah. He said, oh, you know that beautiful little princess of yours? Your, my ex-wife, which was my wife at the time. I said, yeah. He goes, she signed everything over to me, Jimmy.

• 3:21:12Speaker 02

  I said, shit. I said, I said, how? And he goes, you know what a power attorney is?

• 3:21:22Speaker 02

  And I said, I said, all I could say is, well done. I said, well done, sir. I said, you the boss. Now I will do whatever you say. And he goes, now, now, now I'm gonna do what I wanna do. I'll give you your thirty percent. He goes, but I'm gonna take a little off for your little disrespect, disrespectful phone call. Hey, you play big boy games? Bill, uh, JB Bonney, JB Bonney, the bull rider said, you, you play the game, you better get ready to endure the pain.

• 3:21:58Speaker 02

  Shit, so betrayal. But I kinda had it coming, you know? I could, I didn't have much to stand on, I didn't have much to fight back with. I didn't have a lot of leverage to fight back with, I, I couldn't say, how dare you? Of course, I did, I called my wife at the time. And keep in mind, this is, you know, always and forever, forever, always, our, our quote, our passwords, everything. You know, always and forever, forever and always love you. This is, this is a girl that I, I carried up the stairs in the SEAL teams when she broke her neck and I wiped her ass and bathed her. You know, one hour sleep at night as a team. Did she know, did she know that?

• 3:22:39Speaker 02

  I mean, then she totally, she totally one hundred percent went behind my back and signed everything over to John McAfee. I forgive her. And I, I don't even, I can't, I don't have much room to blame her because I just totally like separated from her. Now, you don't do that to somebody, of course, but, but, and trust me, I had my fallouts. I, I had my crying and, and on the ground, biting the carpet, grimacing and, you know, it was, it was a, it was hell to, to lose everything overnight. Literally, quite literally, everything overnight. I went from extreme millionaire to, uh, zero. I mean, not zero, but, but. Pretty much.

• 3:23:25Speaker 02

  Not much, not much, we have a bunch of. I, and but the betrayal, I said, like, I called my, I'm not gonna name her, but I said, I called her, I said, how, oh, there's, forget sitting there, the betrayal of that. I, I just, I couldn't imagine, like, everything we've been through for seven years in this teams and going through what we went through, the hanging and all that. And I, I said, I, I, I gave you everything and I was setting up a life for us, you know, I, all those twenty-three hour days, you know, were for you, you know? Um, that's how my mind is to provide and, and I said, why did you do it? She said, because it, it's, it's his stuff.

• 3:24:06Speaker 02

  And I'm like, what the, like, she was, like, just, like, somebody like, uh, brainwashed her. Yeah, and that's what he, he did, he did that to people. He had that effect on people. It's over after he gets a hold of you. Wow. So, so later on, Sean, I find out that, um, that, uh, there was a reason why she, she did that, you know, it was, uh, the payoff for her was Bitcoin. So she got a big payoff to sign everything over to him.

• 3:24:42Speaker 02

  And I played a game and I lost at that one. It was a hell of a ride, you know? What happened to him? Huh? What happened to him? Uh, John? Yeah.

• 3:24:57Speaker 02

  Uh, sorry, John McAfee goes on the run because he's already kinda on the run always anyways from himself. I'm at the ran, I'm at back of my place and I had a beautiful fifteen acres in California, a prime real estate right up in L.A., right next to L.A. Had a beautiful property and I'm out there by myself and, and I get a call and it's from the FBI, the two agents, they say they are. They say, Jimmy, and I'm out there shooting lizards off of rocks with my twenty-two rifle, that's all I would do all day is shoot. It's all the thing that would take my mind off. I would just shoot the twenty-two rifle all day for days after that McAfee, you know? Cause, cause I, I was in a kind of a shock of what happened to me.

• 3:25:42Speaker 02

  It was total, everything gone, my girl's gone, she, she won't even talk to me, like, it's, it's over. So she left with somebody, I don't know what happened. And, uh, like, just ghosted you. I'm talking like ghost, toast, everything, like, took care of, just, just, just. I, I looked at the bank accounts and I, it would take a forensic auditor to go through that. It looked like twenty bank accounts she had opened up and money just going like this, it, it, it happened real quick. And it was all set up, it was all like her little way to get out. Shish. But, um, like I said, I don't, I don't, I don't have any ill will towards her. I, I kinda like well played as well, I'm like, good job, you know, you know, did, you did what you gotta do, you know?

• 3:26:28Speaker 02

  It, it's, it's easier to say that now.

• 3:26:32Speaker 02

  Because my life has been redeemed, but it would be very hard to that point. So, um, two FBI agents call me and they say, Jimmy, will you come and talk to us? And I said, who is this? And they said, this is the FBI. I said, bullshit. I said, you know, I'm the FBI too, I said, to them. And I, and after my dealings with the FBI, I wasn't gonna play around. And they said, no, this is really the FBI. I said, prove it. They said, well, we went to your parents' house and your sister said to never, that you told her to never, under any circumstance, talk to the FBI. And I said, okay, that's, okay. I said, Roger that. And so, uh, I said, what do you want? And they said, we wanna talk to you about your time with McAfee. And I'm like, this cannot be happening to me.

• 3:27:18Speaker 02

  Who gets shunned by lightning twice? The Blackwater thing and now the FBI again? And you can imagine the shock of this? I was just like paralyzed with like, wait, the FBI is talking to me now again? And I think that they are literally investigating me now. And so they said, will you come up and see us tomorrow? And I said, one hundred percent, I wanna work with you guys, I would love to. And they said, you will? And I said, yeah, would love to. So when, when do you wanna meet? And they said, tomorrow, our secretary of the DOJ is gonna call you and set up a, she's gonna email you and set your, your tickets up. I said, okay, uh, can you get first class for me? Yeah, sure.

• 3:28:00Speaker 02

  Uh, the next day I go to the airport to catch my flight and I get on a plane to Colombia. And that's the last time I'm in America for two years. Wow, two years. I ghosted him, yeah, and that pissed him off.

• 3:28:16Speaker 02

  Almost two years, yeah.

• 3:28:19Speaker 02

  Why did they wanna talk to you about McAfee, do you think? Well, when I, when I, when I ghosted him, he was arrested almost simultaneously as me ghosted him. Really? So almost like me going to Washington DC, I felt like they were gonna arrest me there. So instead I go to Colombia and they arrest him like that. They arrest him, uh, going from Spain, Barcelona, I think, to Turkey, Istanbul. And so he's on the run, he gets caught. Now I'm on the run and they need, but they need both of us, uh, to really,

• 3:28:56Speaker 02

  uh, to either get me to turn on him or to, or what? I don't know, they need to get both of us, we're gonna stay in trial together, right? Um, so he gets put in a, a Spanish prison and I go on basically the run for, for, uh, I don't know how long it was, maybe close to two years. But either way, I'm staying in Medellin, Colombia, we talked about that a little bit. Um, and what else is there to do in Colombia? You know, for a gringo like me is to, uh, uh, do as much as drugs as possible, uh, cocaine. And party and escape, escape, escape, escape. And it's not like I'm trying to hide from the FBI.

• 3:29:40Speaker 02

  I know that they just picked up McAfee from Turkey to Istanbul, they could easily pick me up, eh, anywhere they want. And plus, I needed to work, I needed some cash. And so I started doing real mercenary work, not like Blackwater stuff, but kinda crazy stuff in, in, uh, in Nicaragua, in San Salvador, uh, to pick up money. Like what? So I was going through the airports. Like what? Like what? Uh, um.

• 3:30:14Speaker 02

  Like, uh, well, when I was in Medellin, I was doing the cocaine and all this. And I said, I need to pick up cash, right? And kinda like the enforcer thing, I called my buddy and I said, dude, do you in the teams? And I said, you know, you're only a couple of calls away from a gig, you know, some type of gig. Like if you want to get into it. And I said, bro, do you know anybody that is doing actual shit? Like mercenary type of stuff? And he goes, yeah, I know this guy who does this and this and this. I said, well, put me in contact with you. And just so happens, he go, this guy contacts me and he says, I'm gonna send you to another dude.

• 3:30:58Speaker 02

  He was in the teams, uh, at the highest levels. And, uh, and, uh, he's gonna text you on Telegram. And he said, to give you instructions. And I, I said, okay, you know? And I get a message on Telegram, it says, you, are you down? You down? And I said, yeah, I'm down. I said, yeah, I'm down. He goes, well, keep it short. Like, don't talk much. And I said, Kay, you know, Kay? He's like, he, he starts giving me instructions. He goes, go to, go to El Salvador. And he goes, I, I'll give you 10K to listen to the operation, to listen. And if you don't want to do it, you don't say another word, take the 10K or a little less than 10.

• 3:31:41Speaker 02

  So you don't have to declare to customs and go back home. All you have to do is come listen for 10K. And if you decide to do it, then we'll come together with another deal. I said, deal. So I go to, uh, El Salvador first, uh, and pick up some money for him, uh, through an, in a suitcase, which is really weird. Uh, and then I go to, I fly to Nicaragua and listen to their, their proposition. And it's a ex Mossad guy. And then it's a dirty from the, from the teams, from Red, Red Squadron. I think it was from Red Squadron. Sorry, Dirty, if I mess it up. But, um, he's there.

• 3:32:23Speaker 02

  Me and this Mossad guy claims me. And, uh, pretty, pretty gnarly, gnarly scar on him. He looks pretty rad, like he looks down, you know? And so I meet him at a coffee shop and I, and I, they said, come, come to Nicaragua as a Colombian. I'm sorry, come to Nicaragua as a, as a, um, a surfer or a volcano watcher, right? And so I go, okay, but I don't have a surfboard, you know? So I show up and they tell me about what they're gonna do. They said, now, listen to what we're gonna do. They said, we've been tasked by the El Salvador government to kidnap

• 3:33:02Speaker 02

  the ex-president of El Salvador, who is now exiled in Nicaragua, here in this country. But the problem is, and I said, no problem, easy, you know, snap, snap, snap. And we roll. And they're like, no, it's not that easy. They want him alive. And I said, they want him alive? They want us to, you know, take him alive out of the country? I said, how? I said, well, that's, they said, that's for us to, if you decide to do this with us, we have to come up with a plan. We got an Airbnb here, we're volcano watchers, surfers. Uh, we've got some contacts here. We already did a penetration test.

• 3:33:45Speaker 02

  His bodyguards didn't do anything when one of us walked up to him, but we think that compromised the situation. And I'm like, oh, man. They said, how much for this to happen? And I said, I, I don't know, man. 400 Gs, I don't know, you know, but you gotta wire it to my mom. And they're, you know, first, and they're like, we can't do that. It's gotta be after it's done. And they said, but there's a promise to us from the El Salvador government that you will, that we will get to take out the MS-13 gang. If we're successful at this, we'll go on the hunt for MS-13 members and just kill, kill as many as possible in El Salvador. Now, this is before the El Salvador picked up their gang.

• 3:34:25Speaker 02

  This is, and, and this is actually right under the new El Salvador president, because he promised within his first six months of office that he would get that ex-president of San Salvador, um, alive and stand trial. Because he had stole millions of dollars of the people's hard earned money and spent it on himself. So we were tasked to do it by ourselves. So we had a bunch of shots of ketamine. We had a bunch of different, a bunch of different stuff that we're gonna shoot him up with. We were gonna grab him, shoot him up with, uh, tape him to a, a surfboard, swim him out to a, to a cigar speedboat

• 3:35:08Speaker 02

  that we had got from a contact that was waiting there every night. And then, uh, link up with the, uh, El Salvador Navy that was gonna take him back into their country. And now we were flying back and forth, meeting with El Salvador government officials. We were, we were meeting with CIA guys from America here. I don't, I won't go into it too much, because it's connected to people now, uh, that are, that are here now. Um, but it was unsuccessful. I wish I had a really sexy story to tell you and everybody, but that's how you know it's true when it was absolutely unsuccessful. We tried, we really tried.

• 3:35:48Speaker 02

  And I said, if you wanted him dead, then we would have been able to do it, uh, easy, easy. He, uh, but the fact that they wanted him alive and he was in some compound with Nicaraguan pit bulls. I didn't even know existed. They're actually called Nicaraguan pit bulls, I guess, two of them. And to go in there and try to get him alive was an impossible task. Sheesh. And we tried. Let's take a quick break.

• 3:36:17Shawn Ryan?

  Airport, hotel lobby, coffee shop. You join the free wifi without thinking, because everybody else does. Understand what you just did. You put your traffic on a network that you don't own, that somebody else configured with people on it, you can't see. There's a term for that. Uncontrolled environment. I've worked in them. You don't go in without cover. Glacier's VPN encrypts everything leaving your phone the moment you switch it on. Your traffic, your location sealed, device to server. On their network, it's on.

• 3:37:01Shawn Ryan?

  Back on yours, it's off. That's not a setting, that's discipline. I'm a co-founder of this company. I didn't put my name on somebody else's product. I helped build the one that I needed. Glacier, download it on the App Store. And remember, privacy isn't paranoia, it's protection. Do you ever wonder what it takes to make an episode of the Sean Ryan Show? In this exclusive studio tour, I'm taking you behind the scenes for an in-depth look at every part of the operation. From the editing room in the main studio to the spaces where we film Range Day content and more.

• 3:37:46Shawn Ryan?

  You'll see how the show comes together, meet some of the people behind it and get a closer look at the work that happens off camera. When you become a paid member of the SRS Patreon community, you get more than just the podcast. Watch new episodes early alongside other members. Join monthly live shows with guest Q and As and submit questions, just like you see on the show, for upcoming guests on the Protector tier. You'll also unlock exclusive Range Day videos, behind the scenes content and premium ambience videos that you're not gonna find anywhere else.

• 3:38:25Shawn Ryan?

  Join the Patreon community today and get access to the full experience.

• 3:38:32Speaker 02

  All right, Jimmy, we're back from the break. Right. We're in South America. Right. What makes you want to go on the sailing trip here? Well, I'm, I'm, I'm so lost at this point. Uh, I, I think spiritually, mentally, physically exhausted. I went from the bottom of the barrel to the top of the palace with McAfee. And now I'm somewhere in purgatory, maybe? I started to think sometimes like, maybe I died in Iraq. Maybe I, I lost my life and I'm still being worked on in the streets of Iraq. Maybe I died and I'm in purgatory because my life is so unreal weird. And, and now I'm in Colombia by myself as an oil painter.

• 3:39:16Speaker 02

  And, um, you know, um, I, I was so lost, Sean, that it, at a, that at some point I decide, like, after like a three or four day coke binge, and I'm talking about running through lines, I mean wrecking coke by myself. Well, with a bunch of girls, I would, I would bring these girls and, and just party. And then, uh, they would leave and I would just wreck myself even further for days. And after about four days of this one time, days and nights, I decided I'm, I'm gonna baptize myself after a three or four day coke binge. And so I baptized myself in this big jacuzzi. Uh, and I came out and you know, that's the kind of mess I was in. Like, that's how effed up I was.

• 3:40:01Speaker 02

  Like, I was lost and I was, it was such a dark place. So I had to get out of Colombia. But the problem is every time I would travel, every, every time I would travel in the airport, you know, I had this horrible paranoia about me. But you know what they say about Russian spies? If you're a spy in Russia, you never break character. You don't even whistle an American tune in the shower while you're taking a shower. You never, ever break character. So I took that persona on, even though I knew they could arrest me. So in customs, they're always taking me out of the customs line by myself into a private room. They take my bag for an hour or so. I always miss my flight and they come back and they say, okay, Jimmy, go on your way. And you know, a normal person would be like, hey, what, I'm filming this.

• 3:40:45Speaker 02

  What the hell am I gonna put this on? How dare you? Me, I'm like, okay, thanks, you know? And so I know something's not, I think, you know, they're tracking me. Uh, and so I decide I'm gonna go to Spain and I'm gonna sell around the world. Not around the world, but around, you know, stay, stay out at sea as long as I can, for as long periods as I can. And just try to lose, you know, just, I just wanna be left alone. And maybe something will happen with the McAfee thing and they'll just lose, forget me. So I go learn to sell. I get my level one through four certification selling. I felt like I needed, you know, the old seal in me, the old soul, you know, Marine and SEAL, wanted, you know, to do it the proper way still, get the documentation, get certificated.

• 3:41:28Speaker 02

  You get certified, uh, in, in learn to sell. And so I learned to sell a forty-two foot bitto. And I'm out for about four or five days and I'm bobbing up and down in the sea at night around Ibiza, Spain and the coast. And I'm just like, oh my God, the sailor's life is not for me because you gotta deal with your demons out here. I mean, all day you're out there, you know, and you're, and you're having to live with all of this betrayal, my girl, all this crazy stuff. And so, um, I say, I gotta get me a girl. I gotta get me a good girl or something. I don't know. When I get off this boat, I get off the boat and I meet, that's when Anastasia comes into my life.

• 3:42:12Speaker 02

  Right after I get off this boat, I look like a piece of leather. This, the salty, I mean, I don't know how guys stay out there for so long on these, you know what I mean? It's like, it's not for me, brother. And so I get off and I, I find Anastasia and she's just like a breath of fresh air. She's just like this. I always joked around, my buddy once said, hey, you need to find you a Mongolian princess, bro. And I was like, Mongolian princess? That sounds freaking awesome. So I would jokingly say, I'm gonna marry a, a Mongolian princess. Well, you know, the Russian, the, you know, Genghis Khan made the Russians pay taxes for four hundred years, you know what I mean? And so there, there's that bloodline in the Russians. And my girl Anastasia, spelled with two I's, she walks up to me on her first little date

• 3:42:55Speaker 02

  and she's got, and she's like, my name is Anastasia, spelled with two I's. She says, I'm a, a direct descendant from Mongolia, Genghis Khan or something. And I was like, I love you, girl. Let's, let's, let's have babies right now, you know? Uh, you know, let's get pregnant, girl. And, uh, so she's like, so she's, um, uh, she shows me pictures on her phone. And I'm like, whoa, what is that? Is, you know, this is before AI, you know? Uh, and she's showing me these pictures of paradise, man. And I mean, this is what I've been searching for. Me on my own, I found Colombia, I found this place, Spain, but it wasn't what I, it wasn't what I was looking for. And, and she shows me these pictures of Koh Phangan, Thailand.

• 3:43:38Speaker 02

  I don't even wanna mention the name because, man, it's such an awesome paradise, man. It's, uh, but she shows me the pictures, I go, let's go there. And she doesn't, she doesn't know me from anybody. And she's like, uh, and I'm like, come on with me. I said, I'm not a serial killer, I swear. I said, I'll, I'll pay for everything. I'll pay for everything. You'll have the, I gotta make, I got money, I, you know, this, this, this, this. And she's like, okay. And so she doesn't show up the next day. And I, I figured that was gonna be the case. She probably saw the white powder in my nose, God only knows. She even said that I had white powder in my nose on our first date. And I had to go clean it out and I was like, oh, my bad, you know? And, uh, so I was, I was loose, man. And, but she showed up on like two days later. She was about to go back to Moscow.

• 3:44:24Speaker 02

  And she said, okay, you wanna go to Koh Phangan? And I said, yes. And so, I mean, it was like a breath of fresh air. Anything was better, you know? And so I go on this journey with her to Spain. Uh, we go through every single different kind of, you know, mushroom, all the, all the different trips you could have. Uh, well, no, not all, but almost all. And, uh, we, we're, we're there for a while and then all of a sudden COVID happens. I remember being with my girl laughing at people with the mask on in the airport. It's like, what the heck are people doing with these masks on? COVID, are you freaking kidding me? Well, you know, it happened.

• 3:45:06Speaker 02

  So I eventually, yeah, I'm doing Muay Thai training now. You know, I'm always going for the next validation piece, you know? And, uh, and so I'm doing some Muay Thai there. It, it keeps me from the drugs, you know, a little bit. Still doing Xanax and all kinds of stuff. I got like a pharmacy, walked around with a pharmacy with me all, all over the place. Uh, and, uh, I end up say, telling Anastasia, I gotta go home and I gotta see my mom. I just need to see my mom and then I'll meet you in Bali. Non extradition, non extraditionary country, which is bullshit. If you're thinking about going on the run right now, you know, it's a, there's no such thing as non extraditionary. They just do a deal with the government and get you.

• 3:45:51Speaker 02

  And so, uh, I go home to see my mom, uh, for, for two days. And I, I get my Bali visa, I go through to Asian, I'm getting this, this, this, this. And I, I just thank God I'm not arrested at the airport and I'm trying to stay low. And I'm like, mom, I need to talk to you. Let's go out to get coffee. And so we go to get coffee, me and my mom. And I sat in front of her, Sean, and I mean, I know there's probably listeners right now that have lost a loved one or had to say bye for the last time and know that feeling. And I, I, for me, I was telling my mom, bye, for the rest of my life this time. Cause I knew that I could never come back unless they somehow cleared this case or something.

• 3:46:36Speaker 02

  I found out good news, but it was too risky. And so I said, mom, I gotta go for the, you know, for a long haul. I don't know when the next time I'm gonna see you. And like any good mom, she said, well, I would rather you be out abroad and, uh,

• 3:46:57Speaker 02

  than sitting in prison for the rest of your life, you know? Yeah, cause McAfee was under heavy charges, you know? And, uh, uh, I knew the prison life wasn't for me. I, I just a caged animal, you know? No, man. And so, uh, I said, okay, mom. I said, I, I appreciate you understanding me. And we walked from there to the car and on the way to the car, Sean, I got this piece that came across me and I thought it was a drug kicking. I thought it was Xanax or something I took. And I know I didn't take anything because I wanted to be real sober with my mom. And, uh,

• 3:47:35Speaker 02

  uh, and this piece came across me and I said, dad must be praying for me. She goes, why? I said, I don't know, mom. I just know that everything's gonna be okay. Like, I know, like I just knew from that moment on that, like it was gonna be okay, my life. And man, right as I said that, about three or four black SUVs, not cop cars. I'm talking like black SUVs slam up, right up on, on me and my mom. The guy's got his finger on his trigger shaking and he said, Jimmy Watson? He opened the door, Jimmy Watson? And I say, yeah. And I put my hands out and they said, get on the ground. And they, about fifteen FBI plainclothes. I got video of it. You got a video of this?

• 3:48:20Speaker 02

  I, I will show you guys, yeah. My mom took video of it, a piece of it, yeah. Shit. They, you know, get me on the ground and everything. And, uh, uh, they, they, they said, we got him, we got him. They were so happy. And I said, oh, you guys are badass arresting a SEAL, yeah? And I was making fun of him and stuff, you know? And they were like, hey, shut up, you know, you know? They, they, and they didn't even really know what they were getting me for. I don't think they, they were just tasked to get me. They said I was an armed fugitive on the run, ex-David seal. And so I was considered horribly dangerous. It's really sad, huh?

• 3:48:59Speaker 02

  And that's why they had the Dallas SWAT team court on off, they had the Dallas SWAT team there, the court on off the whole area, they had the plainclothes guys. Wow. And they put me in handcuffs, Sean. And they put me in the backseat. And they were asking me questions, how many pull-ups can you do? You're in the SEALs? I said, take these handcuffs off and I'll show you, you know? I'm just like, I was trying to be humorous and joke around, but I knew my life is over. And, um, so there, so, um,

• 3:49:32Speaker 02

  Uh, they haul me to the county in Dallas and then straight, no court, nothing, just straight to the big fed, the big federal prison with the Tiger King. And I'm in the same pot as the Tiger King. I didn't see him really, but I heard he was in there. Because right when I, right when they, I mean, they had me in shackles, man. I'm talking foot to chain to hand, shackle, the whole thing like crazy. And they put me in solitary confinement for four days straight, four or five days straight. And that was my, that was their F you to me. For stiffing them on the first class tickets to Washington DC. Yeah, I said, fuck it. I said, fair enough. But it was pretty brutal.

• 3:50:18Speaker 02

  Solitary confinement for a guy like me fighting these demons. Oh, man, brother. And now I'm just pacing the walls of rage. I'm just like, fuck, my life is done. And, and I'm like, dude, I am gonna go to prison forever. And, and this is gonna be my life? And after about four or five days, I remember them, they said, you know, back up. And we're, we're talking in the hole, the shoe, no light. The bright, bright, bright lights during the day, but no outside. And, uh, and they bring me out into a little bit, and it looks like a dungeon in there. And, uh, I'm just like, damn, my life sucks.

• 3:51:01Speaker 02

  Like, wow, how you get to this, you're right? And, uh, you, you, I, I get taken into this little room and, and, and my dad is hired a lawyer, but I'm gonna pay him. You know, he said, you're paying this guy fifty thousand dollars. I found the best, I tried to find the best lawyer possible, the Feds lawyer. And Arnold is his name. And he looks at me and he said, uh, Jimmy, if you put a one, a one on a dice of a thousand sides. He goes, that's your chances, if I rolled it right now, of just doing two and a half years.

• 3:51:39Speaker 02

  He goes, you're going to do most likely 12 years. He goes, that's your best bet. And I, I was so mad. I said, I paid you fifty Gs to tell me this? I just, I just paid you fifty thousand for this? And he's like, Jimmy, you are done. And it's over. Uh, and I'm thinking, do I get another lawyer? I mean, but he was so cold with me. It was like, damn. He goes, I don't even think you can get a good deal with these guys. I mean, what is it? But you gotta wait till McAfee gets back. So McAfee's now in prison in the dungeon in, in Barcelona, Spain. And now they got me in the feds. Now,

• 3:52:21Speaker 02

  now the, now the FBI wants to keep me on lockdown like an animal. They wanna keep me and then transfer me from Dallas, not Dallas, Fort Worth, feds to, to, uh, uh, upstate New York or, or, or the Southern Manhattan district or in New York. They wanna keep me locked down. They, you know, transfer me pre-trial confinement. Because I'm a danger to society. There's two main things when you're on, when you're, when they're deciding whether or not to put you on house arrest on pre-trial confinement. Is, are you a danger to society? Okay, SEAL. You know, which we're not, but you know, we're looked at like that by them. And are you a, a flight risk? Well, I was a flight risk, you know, I wasn't anymore.

• 3:53:07Speaker 02

  And so they put me on, they, they, so I go in front of the judge, a Texas judge.

• 3:53:13Speaker 02

  And the DOJ is there to fight their case and keep me in. They wanna keep me on lockdown and I'm praying to God, my chances are slim though, just to go on house arrest. And so now I'm just fighting to go on house arrest for this pre-trial, so I can stand trial with McAfee. And, but it was a Texas judge. And they introduced me as a, a former SEAL. And he goes, wait, wait, wait, you say former SEAL? And, and they said, yes, on your honor. He said, y'all wanna do what to? Uh, we wanna transfer him to New York and keep him. This guy is a risk. This guy's no joke. He's been on the run for two years, sir. You know, and they really fight to keep me locked, locked down. He goes, we don't do that this south of the Mason Dixie. And they were like, damn.

• 3:53:58Speaker 02

  And so he said, release him. He's going on house arrest with his mom and dad.

• 3:54:03Speaker 02

  And he goes, you're gonna run, son? And I said, no, sir. He goes, you better not, or I'll fry your ass. And I said, runs that. And so they put me on house arrest and the FBI is mad again. They're angry. They keep losing in a way.

• 3:54:19Speaker 02

  And, uh, and so I go on house arrest. And now McAfee, at this time, and this is a very important part of the story that people are interested in, in, including myself and don't quite understand. But John McAfee from prison in Spain. He's been there for a long time by now. And from prison, he tweets, Janice, you know, people go, how do you tweet for prison? Well, you had your loved one tweet what you want. Tweets from prison, Sean. That if anything happens to me whatsoever, I did not kill myself. And if something does happen to me, the three terabytes of information that I have

• 3:55:04Speaker 02

  are located and it gives the exact address of the Surfside Miami condo, period. That's two weeks before his death. He feels death upon him. He feels the pressure. I've lived this in my mind, okay? Everybody sees the tweet. Everybody sees whacked on his arm. Everybody knows that if anything, he's made it very clear. I did not kill myself. And if anything happens to me, you know that it was not me, I want to live. And that if it does, the information is located at the Surfside condo. And he gives the address of this nice condominium in Miami. Okay?

• 3:55:50Shawn Ryan?

  Had you been there?

• 3:55:51Speaker 02

  I've never been there. Never.

• 3:55:55Speaker 02

  Two weeks later,

• 3:55:58Speaker 02

  on the day John McAfee's uh, loses his extradition case, meaning he's now being transferred to back to America to stand trial with me. That day,

• 3:56:12Speaker 02

  they find him dead in his prison cell, hung.

• 3:56:18Speaker 02

  Hung in a prison. On the day you find out you're leaving prison, just from my short stint in solitary confinement, the day you find, you find out that you're leaving your cell, you don't kill yourself.

• 3:56:35Speaker 02

  You're very happy to move from one place to another, even if it's a short distance. He's gonna get to go back to America. He loved the cameras. Sensationalism. He loved the drama. I mean, this was his show. He was gonna fight this tooth and nail. But he's found dead. And then the very, and then the same, uh, and then two hours, and then two hours after he's found hung in his prison cell, the Miami Surfside condo collapses.

• 3:57:08Shawn Ryan?

  What? The whole building?

• 3:57:09Speaker 02

  The building,

• 3:57:12Speaker 02

  the building collapses at 1:20 AM, I think, 1:30 AM, maybe 2:30, but two hours later, maybe. The building collapses, Sean. Some people go, oh, it was only partial. Building seven to the ground, homie, like, like, uh, collapsed.

• 3:57:32Speaker 02

  One engineer said, for a building to collapse like it did is like astronomical. And he's not even talking about the McAfee, he doesn't even know about the McAfee thing. He's just talking about structurally as an engineer for a building to building seven to go down? And I'm, I'm not one of these conspiracy guys. I'm just, I'm just telling you what happened. The building went down, crashed to the ground. And they had to explode parts of it, of course. And what makes it weirder

• 3:58:04Speaker 02

  not to pick on the people that are already been picked on every day for the last two years, but the IDF is sent in to investigate the, the building collapse. The, uh, an investigation team, you can, guys, people, please, please verify this, look it up. It's all over. The IDF Israeli investigation team is sent in to personally wall it off and handle it. And no one else is allowed to touch it. Uh, how, why, now, I don't, I'm not trying to say, I'm just telling you the facts, but I'm not trying to say anything. Just, I'm just, at this point, I'm just saying the facts.

• 3:58:46Speaker 02

  I'm not leading anybody into any kind of presumption of them doing it. I'm just saying. Because they're, because they're experts at, uh, buildings collapsing and killing a bunch of people.

• 3:59:01Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:59:02Speaker 02

  A hundred people are killed.

• 3:59:06Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 3:59:08Speaker 02

  And, and when you think about it, Sean, like, I, it took me days.

• 3:59:11Shawn Ryan?

  And then love and guess, we never heard anything about it ever again.

• 3:59:15Speaker 02

  No. No, not on Main Street, nothing. He literally said three terabytes of, like, and it was like the F C files are located in this address and then he's hung and then the building goes down two hours later.

• 3:59:30Speaker 02

  At 1:30 in the morning.

• 3:59:33Speaker 02

  And everybody knows about the Surfside condo. Everybody thinks it's weird. They, they eventually came up, oh, and then after we released all this information, by the way, Sean, the FBI, uh, the government come, it came out with some crazy explanation of why. It got so much heat, they had to come together with some crazy, the pool was leaking.

• 3:59:56Shawn Ryan?

  Pool was leaking?

• 3:59:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, there was a pool leak. You can, buildings do not, and we're talking like, like, this thing came crashing down and killed, uh, unfortunately a hundred people, I think.

• 4:00:12Shawn Ryan?

  So what do you think?

• 4:00:14Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know if it was McAfee's last F U trick. Master chess player.

• 4:00:24Speaker 02

  I think the chances of him offing himself. Or being Epstein, or whatever you want to call it, are freaking slim. I guess anything's possible in this life. I've learned that anything's possible. But um, I, I, I presume that maybe he was killed and then they, they uh, they, they, they were like, it's better if McAfee doesn't come home. So rush that in, rush it. It's not, it's not hard to green light somebody in prison. Everybody knows that by now. That's, that's nothing to do. So that's not, that's easy. That's an easy one. So that's very possible for him to be uh, uh, killed by somebody else.

• 4:01:09Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think they would level the building? Why wouldn't they just break in a condo and take the damn hard drive?

• 4:01:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. What he didn't name the actual condo door. He just said, in that building. Also, after I released the story on my social media, I did a story, a little story on it. They, they uh, a guy contacted me and he said he was the owner of a demo company and the government called him as the owner and said, would he do the job of the debris as good? And he said, yeah, I'll have all my trucks come to you. They said, no, no, no. We just want one truck and you have to drive. That's what he told me. He says, and, and you just do exactly like we tell you. And he, and he agreed to for a bunch of money and he would drive in.

• 4:01:58Speaker 02

  And anybody that knows about the Surfside condo knows it's weird. I mean, they had this thing walled. I mean, it was crazy. They had it guarded on lockdown. You couldn't come in, you couldn't go out. He said he would take his one truck with blacked out windows with a black tarp in the bed. Pull in one truck, just a little bit of debris would go in his truck. And then he would have to give him his phone and then he'd get back and then he would be escorted across Florida into another gated compound with guards. I know it sounds crazy. Take his phone. Black out the windows. Take this stuff off the, out the back of his truck and sit through it. And the IDF is doing this. It, for the most part, in the Surfside area.

• 4:02:41Speaker 02

  Why? I don't know.

• 4:02:50Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think he had on everybody?

• 4:02:53Speaker 02

  So, so McAfee had a no bluff policy. So he never, he wouldn't lie to you. Uh, now he would play games and deception and stuff, but that was different. When he told me that it was disgusting, vile, horrible shit on those people that he named in the high government, in the DOJ. I, I assume that's exactly what he meant. And lo and behold, there's been people that said that he was disgusting and vile and horrible back fee.

• 4:03:33Speaker 02

  But I always have said, the enemy always accuses you of the exact opposite of who you are. So I'm the killer of innocent people monster. I was literally in Iraq, Afghanistan to do a real job and save people. I really wanted to. Now I ended up doing horrible things in the process and not even meaning to. You're a liar, a cheat, a stealer. Well, Machiavelli said, never play fair in a game where everybody cheats. So you could call me that, but the crypto game, there was no old ladies

• 4:04:14Speaker 02

  with two, three computers looking like your studio here, you know, doing trades and getting robbed. These were highly proficient crypto players back in the day. You had to be on your A game. Programming nerds doing this stuff, trading crypto, lightning speed. And so everybody playing the game was in the game to pump and dump. Stuff that now, by the way, is considered perfectly okay to do.

• 4:04:48Shawn Ryan?

  How did it go? I mean, so what, what's the rest of your house, house arrest like?

• 4:04:53Speaker 02

  Okay, so, so

• 4:04:55Shawn Ryan?

  Trials or anything like that?

• 4:04:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, so um, the, this, I know this sounds crazy, but the same night that John McAfee dies, I wake up the next day, right? My, I wake up, my phone says McAfee has uh, I'm sorry, that night. Okay, I couldn't sleep all night. The McAfee, the night that McAfee dies. I, my mom told me, Sean, that no matter what, no matter how horrible it got, if you, I was dying in Iraq or Afghanistan to cry out to Jesus, to cry out to God. I'll never forget her saying that. She always would get me and say, Jimmy, remember? Before I would leave, she goes, just say, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, like three times, like loud.

• 4:05:37Speaker 02

  And man, I might as well be dying. I might as well be dead. I might as well be in Afghanistan, Iraq dead. So I, at three in the morning on house arrest, I yelled out, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Help me. I said, I'm not looking to get out of prison because I deserve it in some way or another, even if I did it or not, it doesn't matter. I deserve it, you know, whatever's coming, I deserve it. So I'm not asking to get out of prison. I'm asking for a real relationship with you. I just, I wanted something tangible, to feel something.

• 4:06:19Speaker 02

  I didn't care about prison, nothing. I, all I cared about was a real longing for something to happen. And the next day I wake up and I said, I'll do anything. Just please show up in my life. And uh, the next day I get a text from my lawyer that says McAfee's hung in prison, was found hung. And I can't even process it. I'm like, what? No, no, like no. And then, and then a call, a stranger calls me right after. And I just answer and he goes, Jimmy? And I said, yeah.

• 4:07:02Speaker 02

  He said, you want to go, you want to go to this place called Operation Restore Warrior? This, this, this retreat? And I said, no, man. I said, I, yeah, I would love to. I'm, I'm, I'm about to go to prison for 15 years though. I appreciate it, man. Thank you. I went to hang up. He said, no, no, wait, wait, wait. He goes, uh, we won't judge you. I said, no, you don't understand. A real judge is going to sentence me to prison. He goes, well, ask the judge if you could go to this retreat, a three day retreat. I don't know this guy. I don't know how I got my number, anything. He just says this and I said, I said, okay, okay. Cause I remember me crying out that night. I said, okay. And so I asked my lawyer and he goes, nah, Jimmy. I said, listen up. I said, listen to Arnold.

• 4:07:45Speaker 02

  You got 50,000 of my money. You, you're gonna do something for me. Come on now. I said, don't, you're, you know, this ain't going to trial. I'm gonna have to plea out and I'm gonna get like 12 years. I said, just do this one thing for me. Ask the judge if I could go to this three day retreat. He goes, okay, but he's gonna say no. I said, just please ask him, damn. He calls me back in an hour or two. It was real fast. He said, Jimmy? I don't know how to tell you this, but that Texas judge said, yeah, you can go. Just don't go, don't run anywhere. I already had R2D2 ankle brace. Everybody knows me from three years ago if they saw me with a, running around my mom's house. Yeah, my, my mom's house, I was running around with my Ranger panties on and R2D2, man.

• 4:08:30Speaker 02

  And uh, the probation officer was like, you know, you can't get this wet. I was like, good seals hate the water, you know? Like, no problem, bro. And uh, so I get to go to this place and uh, I come in the, the, the, the room and my hair kind of stands up a little bit. I'm like, man, I feel awkward in here, kind of weird, like weird, like, like, but good, strange. And uh, it's not normal. And I sat it down at this table and there's these people at this place. Uh, called Operation Restore Warrior. They have this cabin in Baltimore out of all places overlooking a duck pond. Like something you'd see Patriot Outdoors or something.

• 4:09:15Speaker 02

  In this wood cabin and I sat down and the owner happens to be there of this place. And he looked at me and he said, Jimmy, are you ready to meet Jesus here? And he's gonna tell you everything about your life and show you direction. And are you ready to meet him? And I bust out laughing at him. Cause he said for a hundred percent, there was a hundred percent chance he was gonna change my life forever here. And I laughed at him, Sean. I bust out laughing. I said, bro, I said, you, I said, you guys have to be careful who you tell that to. Cause you don't know who you're talking to. I said, what if that guy is going to prison for the rest of his life?

• 4:09:58Speaker 02

  You give him false hope like that. Don't tell people that shit. I, I scored him. I mocked him. I said, gee, he's gonna show up at this place. And he goes, Jimmy? He, he never changed. He said, Jimmy, do you believe that Jesus died and went to, died and rose again on the third day, in three days? And I looked at him, I said, I think so. I think so. He says, then anything's possible. So I went outside. I kind of, I kind of laughed at him and I went outside. And I, I just put down my guard again and I went back into that guy crying out like my mom told me to. And I said, I said, Jesus, if you're real, I'm, I think you are.

• 4:10:42Speaker 02

  But if you're real, real, all I'm asking for, I'm not asking to get out of prison. I know I'm going and I know I've done a bunch of terrible shit. And I know, I know I'm guilty as charged on all accounts. For either responsible for guys going to prison for life or the death of many people in war. And so I said, take your best shot, go ahead, but I just want to feel you one time.

• 4:11:22Speaker 02

  Nothing happened, but the next day, the next day, they called me in. The next, the very next day, they

• 4:11:34Speaker 02

  said today's the day where you're gonna meet Jesus and he's gonna tell you things and they, I said, I'm sorry, can I get a tissue? Yeah.

• 4:12:20Speaker 02

  Okay, and so the next day, they call, there's only three or four of us at this thing. It's real small. I don't understand it. I don't even know where I am, Baltimore, at this duck reserve. But I didn't know Baltimore even had duck reserves. And I, there's a room and they tell us to wait and I'm always last in my life. My last name is Watson, W. So I'm always last. I'm always, you know, like the last guy in military, everything. So I'm used to waiting. So here I am, I'm the last person to go into this room. But a guy will go into this room, he'll stay there for like an hour or two and then leave in shambles.

• 4:12:59Speaker 02

  Like a truck freight train hitting, like, like a snot coming down to the ground. You know, just like, like barely able to walk out. And I'm like, oh, hell no. I ain't down with this. I said, I swear on my life, I, I will walk out of there like a, I'll walk in as a man, I'm walking out as a man. There's nothing you can tell me this life that I haven't experienced, that I haven't seen, that I haven't done. And, and there's no way you could say something to me to get me emotional and cry like this. Nothing, there's no, no chance. And so I prepared for it, embraced for any kind of weird shit they were gonna do. But the second guy goes in, the last guy goes in and they all come out in shambles.

• 4:13:41Speaker 02

  Red snot coming out, eh, eh, and I'm like, I'm like pussy. Like, that's kind of what I was thinking, like pussy, you know, sorry for language, but I go in and these two guys are sitting there, they kind of remind me of cops, you know, cause they just got in there clean cut. And they got their little notepad and I'm like, I ain't saying shit to these guys, you know what I mean? This could be a setup, you know, whatever. And so I'm real paranoid and they say, this guy named Daniel goes, okay, Jimmy, uh, can you tell us about your, and, and by the way, I'm broken too. My left shoulder's like destroyed. But my, I feel like something's in my, my body, like, like, like, like I'm just all messed up too.

• 4:14:24Speaker 02

  You know, on top of everything else. And I'm thinking, Jesus, how can you meet me here? And even do something while I'm in so much pain as well? Like my body's in pain, my mind's in pain, I'm tormented. So I sit down in front of them and they said, Jimmy, will you tell us your story, please? And I said, you, you don't want to hear the whole thing, man. I promise you. They said, well, just tell us like, go through it and we're gonna write some things down. This is what we do here. And by the way, we don't know your last name. They don't know my last name. The recruiter knows your last name that brought you in, but they purposely don't know your last name. They just know me as Jimmy. They don't know my story. They see the big ankle bracelet on it and I told them a little bit.

• 4:15:06Speaker 02

  And so I, I start going through my story nonchalantly. It's kind of boring. And I just want to get through it and I'm thinking, the hell is this? Like, who cares? Boring. And all of a sudden, uh, Daniel says, Jimmy, uh, you skipped over a part of your story. And I said, no, I didn't. Like it's cool as an ice, as cool as ice. Like I'm playing a game. I said, no, I didn't. He goes, yeah, you did. And I said, no, I said, let's move on. He goes, well, he goes, you, you skipped the story of the love boat, the love shack. It's called the love shack, right? And I,

• 4:15:48Speaker 02

  I stopped and I, I said, well, I guess this interview's over. And they said, no, why, why, why? I said, well, I said, I don't know what kind of game you're playing here. I don't know. I don't know how you know about McAfee's mansion? We called it, we called it the nickname. He said the nickname of it, the love shack. It was the love boat series. We called it the love shack. And he said, was that at the love shack? When he said, was that that? I thought, hell no, I'm out.

• 4:16:15Speaker 02

  Because people, they, they think they want a psych, a psychic and stuff and, but when somebody actually says something real, that's like that, that hits, triggers you. I said, what the hell? And I said, how do you know about the love shack? And he goes, this is what we do here, Jimmy. Sit down. And I said, hell no. I said, I'll stand. I said, he goes, will you tell us more of your story? I said, no, hell, I said, no, hell no. I said, if, if you know so much about me, I said, finish it out. If you're so bull, if you're so freaking, if you, if you, if you, if there's a real God here, Jesus, then finish the story. Don't just say love shack. It's a big deal. You can look, you could find that out somehow through somebody.

• 4:17:00Speaker 02

  And they looked at each other. They said, oh, but Jordan nodded to Daniel. Daniel goes, okay. He goes, well, he goes, you, you walk up to the love shack. You called it the love shack, the love boat? You walk up to it and there's a screen door and you open it. And when you walk in, there's a bathtub on the right, a big hot tub. And then there's three steps up and actually threw a guy off that three steps before. There was three steps up and then a, a cherry wooden door. And you walk in and I go, so, I'm like, okay. And it was so accurate though. It was like he was reading the blueprints of this love house.

• 4:17:41Speaker 02

  And I said, okay. And I'm like, kind of, I shake my, something like, okay, okay, go ahead. I said, and tell me more. He goes, well, there's an elevator on the right side covered by a cherry door. A secret elevator that goes up and down. I mean, who, who, how would you know this, right? And I go, and he said, there's a, an armory where you used to keep weapons in a gray metal door. And it's covered by a cherry door. And I said, so, and? And he goes, well, you go up the stairs on the second level of the house. And I'm like, okay, that's pretty damn, that's okay.

• 4:18:20Speaker 02

  Uh, and he said, and every room is named with a, he goes, he's like grabbing like this. He goes, a Latin long, a grid coordinates? I said, a Latin long. A Latin long. Every room had a Latin long on it. It was Tahiti, Thailand. It was different names above the rooms. It's a beautiful home. My room was amazing. I said, okay. He says, and then you go up another flight of stairs to the third deck. And I said, yeah. I said, I just know it. He says, and there's a big

• 4:18:54Speaker 02

  shit. And I finish, I go, shit, there you are. He said, yeah. And I go, I said, that's not good enough, man. I said, you're gonna have to tell me more. I said, tell me more. If you know so much about my life. I said, tell me more. And, and he just is describing this house that I was in, the love shack with, with John McAfee to the T. Exactly. Every single detail, like he's watching it on a TV, not even looking at me, kind of looking past me. And he says, uh, uh, there's boats that come up to the house in a canal, in a waterway, boats that come up and down. And I said, I said, and now, now Sean, I'm shaking. I'm so, I'm furious, man.

• 4:19:38Speaker 02

  Because if somebody really tells you about a time in your life that not really many other people know about, that's something. It's not your birthday. It's not your social security number. It's something real. It's a, it's something that nobody else knows about. And so I yelled at him. I said, if you know so much about me, I said, tell me more, tell me everything. And he goes, okay. He said, um, there's, uh, your office looked over a sound, a beautiful sound and even called it a sound. And I, that's what it was, a sound. And I, I yelled one more time and the last time I said,

• 4:20:19Speaker 02

  and I'm, and I'm spit mad. They said they were terrified. I'm standing up and I said, if you know so much about me, I said, tell me everything. Tell me about my life. He said, okay. He said, there was a path that you used to walk down by yourself at night that only you know about.

• 4:20:43Speaker 02

  And I just fell back.

• 4:20:47Speaker 02

  Just. Wow. Stop.

• 4:20:53Speaker 02

  Cause he, he told me about a path that I would cry out to God on.

• 4:21:00Speaker 02

  I would cry out to Jesus on.

• 4:21:03Speaker 02

  Are you serious? I'm dead serious. And I fell back and I walked out of that room just like those other three guys.

• 4:21:13Speaker 02

  If people ask me, how is this possible? And I say, just like the blind man that was healed by Jesus. They asked him, who did this to you? They were mad. Who healed you? Who made you see? The Pharisees, he says, I don't know. But I was blind. And I speak.

• 4:21:35Speaker 02

  And I see. So I don't care what anybody says, man. That's what happened. And so a lot of people have a reason not to believe, maybe. But I have no reason because what it showed me was that you can run from yourself. Your whole life. You can run from the law for a couple of years. But you cannot run from God because he's in every dark corner and he's with you. No matter what, man. In all your shame and guilt, he's with you. So no matter what happens in this life, no matter how much you lose, no matter who betrays you.

• 4:22:12Speaker 02

  No matter how guilty or shameful things that you've done.

• 4:22:17Speaker 02

  How deep and horrible your sin is. If you crack your heart open this much and you believe he's with you. And that perspective change makes you a powerhouse. A warrior that is unstoppable.

• 4:22:37Speaker 02

  And uh, and after this uh, meeting. Uh, Daniel said,

• 4:22:46Speaker 02

  after this experience, I've just crushed. I'm laying there. And I, I even thought about not saying this part because I was afraid people may not believe the whole story if I say this. But I'm gonna say, uh, Jordan now switches from Daniel to Jordan. He says, and uh, he is Jimmy, you have a, you have a kind of like a sword sticking out of your shoulder, something sticky out. Like he could see into the demonic world. That I had been wounded or something through my own sin or open doors. And that, and I'm not saying all pain comes from sin. But I'm just telling you that I was. It's like he pulled the sword out. Way in. Yeah. And he touched my shoulder and said, can I touch you and remove it?

• 4:23:31Speaker 02

  And I said, yes. I, I, what option do I have? I just was like, I was like this and he touched my shoulder and prayed and it went away. That pain went away.

• 4:23:46Speaker 02

  And then Daniel said, one last thing, Jimmy, before you leave. And I don't know if I could even take anymore.

• 4:23:54Speaker 02

  I don't even know if I can tell you more. It was such a hit. I'm just leather. He goes, one last thing, Jimmy. He said, I see a chessboard in the sky. He said, I see pieces being moved around. You've been like a pawn your whole life. God has been moving you. And this is for people that are listening right now. People, you, you, God will move you. And position you like a chess game. And the enemy will think that he's got you. He's destroyed you forever. And then he said, and all I hear is checkmate, Jimmy. I said, well, what does checkmate mean? He says, I don't know, but I think it means that your case will be dismissed. I said, that's not possible. That is not possible. All this may be possible, but that's not. He said, checkmate.

• 4:24:40Speaker 02

  When I got home, Sean.

• 4:24:43Speaker 02

  My lawyer called me. And the first thing he said to me was, Jimmy. I said, yes, Arnold. It was never good news with him. He said, checkmate.

• 4:24:56Speaker 02

  And I said, I said, what did you say? I said, what did you say? He goes, Jimmy, don't you be, don't you know what checkmate means? He goes, ah, forget that. Forget what I said. He goes, it means your case is gonna get dismissed. He said, Jimmy, I've never seen this in my whole life as a DOJ prosecutor turned major defense lawyer in Texas. He goes, I've never seen it once. And I said, this is what Jesus told me. He thought I went crazy. He was like, Jimmy, Jimmy, say this. He goes, but he did say, he goes, uh, say a prayer for me, Jimmy, if that be true. I said, okay. And it's not like it was easy going after that. It's like I dropped off two sea bags of bricks. Hardcore and I stood up a new man.

• 4:25:41Speaker 02

  I've never seen an airport so clean and nice as Baltimore airport. And that place ain't nice, you know? But I was just a new perspective. It, it wasn't like a, it wasn't like Jesus literally like came to touch me. It was like a dude. It was a perspective shift, a real no joke perspective change. Like if you know 100% that God is with you.

• 4:26:00Speaker 02

  It's life altering change. I was like an eagle flying over the granite cage in Sean. And so it took months for my case to finally dissolve out. It was dismissed. But it just, the paperwork at the DOJ is long. So I spent uh, almost two years on house arrest. But it was the best time of my life. And I was restored. Everything was restored to be bloody, not, not like I was, but you know, uh, okay, I'm okay. My girl, we finally got to meet up and uh, and we stuck together. We have a beautiful little two-year-old son, Jacob. And a beautiful life in Florida, South Florida, South Beach.

• 4:26:45Speaker 02

  And my life has been totally redeemed and restored. And I had one in what else?

• 4:26:55Speaker 02

  Wow, dude. Yeah.

• 4:26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the FBI just were like, leave him alone. The head prosecutor's name was Sampson. I'll never forget. He wanted to destroy me. He told my lawyer to tell me that he had never lost a case in his life in the DOJ. They were like the, the, the top of the seals of the DOJ, and my lawyer was like, it's true. There's no fighting these guys. They are so bad.

• 4:27:26Speaker 02

  And uh, he went from saying he wanted to destroy my life and steamroll me. He could care less about me. He literally told me that. To writing the most beautiful letter of release.

• 4:27:39Speaker 02

  And I don't know why. It's like an angel visited him in the night or something. And Arnold, I said, Arnold, how's that possible? It's Sampson wrote this? He goes, Jimmy, I don't know, man. He goes, I don't get it. It's weird. He had a big shift of favor towards you. And I wrote him an email. You're not supposed to do that. But I said, thank you, Sampson, for sparing my life. And he said, no problem. He said, I wish you real well, Jimmy.

• 4:28:19Speaker 02

  How long ago was that? And that was 2022, 23. I think that was a good four years. That's a solid four years ago now.

• 4:28:33Speaker 02

  And it's not like, it's not like, I never want to come across like these are all great all the time. You know, we deal with all kinds of pain and pressures and things, the world and temptations come back around. And all kinds of things, but I'll tell you. I have, no matter what happens to me, heaven or hell. Uh, here's, here, here stands a man, here sits a man who, here sits a man who has no, no excuse. I have no choice. Others may have a choice to believe or not, but I have been left with no other reason but to believe because, and it is very biblical. Because just so happens that Nathaniel is one of the disciples of Jesus. And

• 4:29:20Speaker 02

  as Nathaniel was coming up to Jesus for the first time, Nathaniel says to his buddy, there's, this is not the real Jesus, not the real Messiah. And as he's coming up, he goes, can anything good come from Nazareth? And he's mocking Jesus, but as he's walking up, Jesus goes, hey, Nathaniel, here comes a man of, with no gall. There's no deception in him. And Nathaniel says, how do you know me? It's kind of arrogant, you know? He says, how do you know me? And Jesus says, because I saw you under the fig tree before you came.

• 4:29:53Speaker 02

  And he saw me on that path where nobody else knew about. And I would cry out to God on.

• 4:30:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man.

• 4:30:18Shawn Ryan?

  That is some powerful stuff.

• 4:30:22Speaker 02

  Total redemption, death to rebirth. And that's the message, the lighthouse.

• 4:30:30Speaker 02

  You know?

• 4:30:32Speaker 02

  And there's so many guys and girls right now that are that are lost. Because they don't understand this message. How can it be true? I just pray that somebody doesn't have to go through what I did. To get to that point of reconciliation.

• 4:30:58Speaker 02

  It's the true message of grace and hope.

• 4:31:04Speaker 02

  And freedom.

• 4:31:10Shawn Ryan?

  I'm speechless.

• 4:31:17Shawn Ryan?

  Have you have you ever tried to contact those two guys again?

• 4:31:23Shawn Ryan?

  Daniel?

• 4:31:25Speaker 02

  Brother, I haven't spoken to Daniel in a long time. And he texts me yesterday as I was covering the show. He said, Jimmy, you want to help us out with maybe some some bud raising for ORW? You know, I was like, dude, one hundred percent, bro. I'll help you with whatever I can. That what a crazy. I didn't know organizations like this existed in days. But I have, you know, Daniel, he's got a gift, obviously. But Jordan didn't have this. Jordan's real gifted too, a very powerful guy. But but but Daniel had this gift of seeing.

• 4:32:11Speaker 02

  And I was real curious about it. I said, Daniel, what did you see? Like, what are you, what's going on? And he goes, bro, I don't know. He goes, uh, he goes, I just do what the Holy Spirit tells me. And he said, but, uh, he goes, but your case is weird. He goes, I've only had that specifically that clear of a vision twice. Being I was a, there was a country music star that many people know. But he kept that secret, of course. He said that that what he saw was really, really terrible stuff that they did in the in the country music business. It it sacrifices and stuff. And yeah, that country music star was arrogant.

• 4:32:54Speaker 02

  And but what he told him about what he had done in a hotel room. As far as witchcraft and stuff they do at the high levels

• 4:33:03Speaker 02

  of Hollywood. He was left with no other way out, but like me.

• 4:33:13Speaker 02

  But to believe.

• 4:33:18Shawn Ryan?

  I gotta look these guys up.

• 4:33:21Speaker 02

  ORW, they've helped. It's a small.

• 4:33:26Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like it.

• 4:33:27Speaker 02

  Small unit. But they pray, I didn't know this, but they cared so much about me as an individual, they fast and they pray for each person per class.

• 4:33:41Speaker 02

  I'm probably not supposed to say that, but for a couple, for sometimes a week or two before they come.

• 4:33:46Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever done that? Fasted?

• 4:33:49Speaker 02

  I did. I fasted for maybe twenty one days, one time.

• 4:33:55Shawn Ryan?

  You did a twenty one day fast?

• 4:33:57Speaker 02

  I did a twenty one day fast. Um, and

• 4:34:07Speaker 02

  everybody was like, are we gonna eat? They were scared, like, it's dangerous, Jimmy. What are you doing? I said, God, God will tell me when to eat. And around twenty one days, I started getting comfortable with it. And I walked in this hotel and the guy looks at me and he goes, you look like a man of God. Here's our free buffet. It's forty dollars. You should take it. And I said, brother, that's that's for me right there. And I ate it, ate it, ate. But weird stuff like that, yeah.

• 4:34:44Speaker 02

  But I tell you, coming here hasn't been easy, Sean.

• 4:34:48Speaker 02

  There's been a lot of very difficult, strange things that have happened to me lately. Um, and and things don't happen to me like that. I feel very secure, very at peace with my security, like, uh, safety, you know? Uh, I'm not an anxious person. I have a really healthy lifestyle. Sober, healthy, nice. But, uh, the the last two nights before coming here on this show, it's been just hell. Weird, weird, weird stuff. And I'm like praying and stuff in my room and I'm like laughing about it. Because I know it doesn't have any power over me.

• 4:35:32Speaker 02

  Like, I know that it's not a fifty fifty, it's not a forty nine, fifty one battle. It's a, it's a it's a done deal. When he said it's finished on the cross, it's finished. But the demons, they're like hyenas, you know? There's some weird things that happened to me in my hotel room and stuff, just weird stuff.

• 4:35:49Shawn Ryan?

  What's happening?

• 4:35:51Speaker 02

  Well, one night

• 4:35:51Shawn Ryan?

  Through this stuff right now?

• 4:35:53Speaker 02

  Huh?

• 4:35:53Shawn Ryan?

  I'm going through this stuff right now.

• 4:35:55Speaker 02

  You're going through it right now?

• 4:35:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:35:57Speaker 02

  Can you share it?

• 4:36:00Shawn Ryan?

  I've shared a little bit of it.

• 4:36:03Shawn Ryan?

  I'm gonna wait till

• 4:36:10Shawn Ryan?

  it dies down.

• 4:36:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:36:12Shawn Ryan?

  Before I do a whole thing on it. But I want to clear mine before I do it.

• 4:36:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:36:17Shawn Ryan?

  But it's been supernatural shit.

• 4:36:19Speaker 02

  That's been happening around you or to you, you think?

• 4:36:22Shawn Ryan?

  Both.

• 4:36:24Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 4:36:26Speaker 02

  Is it scary?

• 4:36:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yes and no.

• 4:36:36Shawn Ryan?

  I know what it is.

• 4:36:41Shawn Ryan?

  Makes it all more real, I mean, it's it makes it all.

• 4:36:48Shawn Ryan?

  It just strengthens you.

• 4:36:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:36:51Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean?

• 4:36:52Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 4:36:54Shawn Ryan?

  It's almost like

• 4:36:57Shawn Ryan?

  I don't even need a reminder anymore. But it's like

• 4:37:02Shawn Ryan?

  stuff starts happening and it's like, oh.

• 4:37:08Shawn Ryan?

  It's almost like, um,

• 4:37:11Shawn Ryan?

  no matter how scary it can be, it's like a a bump in faith.

• 4:37:18Speaker 02

  Right. It kind of, it kind of lets you know that you're on to something, right? Like, you kind of like, it's like an indicator that you're on the right path. It's like my parents used to say, the devil always overplays his hand. He always gives too much because he can't control people. And they'll do too much or this. And so you can kind of understand you're on the right path when bad things are happening. Right?

• 4:37:45Shawn Ryan?

  I've had picture frames fly off the wall at me. I've had

• 4:37:54Shawn Ryan?

  severe allergic reactions to communion, like immediately after I take it, like immediately, seconds.

• 4:38:03Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah.

• 4:38:08Shawn Ryan?

  All kinds of stuff.

• 4:38:12Speaker 02

  That's that's crazy, man. Because the last two nights, my, my, my condo in Miami, it was like somebody came over with the symbols and crashed them in my face. And I woke up and that, I don't, I don't ever have bad dreams anymore, that kind of stuff. But that was like somebody was standing there as I was looking into the dark. And I was like, go away. And I prayed. Like, it didn't affect me. And then it happened again. Like, he timed it till right when I was about to sleep. And then it happened to be in the hotel room last night, the stand just launched across the the room in the like, the the nightstand

• 4:38:55Speaker 02

  literally goes boom, boom, boom, and fell like, it's not possible, man.

• 4:38:59Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:39:00Speaker 02

  It's somebody literally like a freaking linebackers in my room hit it. And I tried to ignore it, but it shook me up.

• 4:39:09Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, that kind of stuff, I mean, it just, uh,

• 4:39:15Shawn Ryan?

  I don't like it, you know?

• 4:39:19Shawn Ryan?

  Scares the hell out of me in the moment.

• 4:39:21Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 4:39:23Shawn Ryan?

  Especially when it's in the middle of the night. But, uh,

• 4:39:30Shawn Ryan?

  but

• 4:39:34Shawn Ryan?

  but when it settles down, I'm, I'm actually, uh, thankful that it happened.

• 4:39:41Shawn Ryan?

  Does that make sense?

• 4:39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 4:39:46Speaker 02

  There

• 4:39:48Shawn Ryan?

  Because if that shit's real,

• 4:39:51Shawn Ryan?

  you know, then the other's real.

• 4:39:53Speaker 02

  Well, it Yeah, I, I think one of the things that a lot of people are right now, they're confused at our economy, at our, at our lives, at what's going on with politics. But but it makes it a lot easier when you put it in two baskets, good and evil. For me. It's like God is not the author of chaos and confusion. So I know, okay, that's not a a good thing happening. It's a dark evil thing.

• 4:40:23Speaker 02

  But I also know whom the sun sets free is free indeed. And I have to repeat that to myself a lot.

• 4:40:31Shawn Ryan?

  You know, at the beginning of this, we were talking about success and what it is and

• 4:40:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:40:36Shawn Ryan?

  You'd mentioned being a billionaire.

• 4:40:40Shawn Ryan?

  And you ran around with a billionaire for I don't know how many years and then completely, totally miserable.

• 4:40:47Speaker 02

  Miserable.

• 4:40:49Shawn Ryan?

  I don't I've been around a lot of them now, you know, from this.

• 4:40:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:40:58Shawn Ryan?

  I gotta be honest, not very many of them seem like happy people.

• 4:41:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's very rare, isn't it? Like, what is your perception, you think? Is you, do you ever meet that some that seem like they have it together?

• 4:41:14Speaker 02

  Out of all the people you've interviewed?

• 4:41:19Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe, maybe some of them, but.

• 4:41:29Shawn Ryan?

  I think it's also living in a cage.

• 4:41:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:41:38Shawn Ryan?

  I think real success is just being free, man.

• 4:41:41Speaker 02

  Free.

• 4:41:44Speaker 02

  I've, I've never felt.

• 4:41:45Shawn Ryan?

  It's giving.

• 4:41:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:41:47Shawn Ryan?

  It's giving. Give, give, give, give, give, give, give. Just give.

• 4:41:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:41:52Shawn Ryan?

  Like, that's, that's what makes me feel the best.

• 4:41:57Shawn Ryan?

  Every time I do it.

• 4:42:00Shawn Ryan?

  I just feel great. Every time I, every time.

• 4:42:06Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 4:42:07Shawn Ryan?

  We've had all kinds of success here. We've hit number one several times. We're a top five podcast. We've got billions of views. We're at number one on YouTube all the time.

• 4:42:23Shawn Ryan?

  None of that shit really matters to me.

• 4:42:28Shawn Ryan?

  What matters is like,

• 4:42:33Shawn Ryan?

  that the success enables me to make somebody's day and pull them out of a dark spot. Or

• 4:42:43Shawn Ryan?

  you just give them something in their life that they're lacking, that they, that's a, that's a necessity or that makes it, makes it better for their family or worse. Things like that, man. Far outweigh the materialistic bullshit.

• 4:42:58Speaker 02

  You, you've helped a lot of people, to include myself, uh, to, to come on here with, uh,

• 4:43:08Speaker 02

  and it, and it, it's kind of lonely though, too, isn't it? Because the, the, uh, the kickback, the return, I know we're not supposed to expect a return, that's why. But, but I think that's why, that's what messed back the up is not being able to process that people are not as nice as you, not as loyal as you, not as giving as you, and not as thankful as you. I've dealt with a lot of hurt in my life.

• 4:43:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I used to deal with that. I still do a little bit, but you just, uh, you, you, what I'm learning, I haven't learned it all the way yet, but once you do the deed, you have to look away.

• 4:43:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:43:51Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean? Because of four years,

• 4:43:56Shawn Ryan?

  decades, I've always, I've, I've, I've always struggled with resentment and I've always said, I've gone to therapy about it. I've had all kinds of talks and priests and ministers and pastors and therapists and

• 4:44:14Shawn Ryan?

  it always, you know, like you can't, uh, expect, you can't expect anything in return. You can't have expectations. And I've always said, like, I don't have an expectation. There's no expectation in my head.

• 4:44:30Shawn Ryan?

  But I guess there was.

• 4:44:31Speaker 02

  Right, because you still, yeah.

• 4:44:33Shawn Ryan?

  And, and, and so I think the key is when you do give, when it, you know,

• 4:44:43Shawn Ryan?

  you, you have to look away after you give. At least I do. I have to look away after I give, otherwise

• 4:44:52Shawn Ryan?

  it'll set in.

• 4:44:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, if, if I find myself seeking validation from person, place, or thing, especially like my, my girl, like if I find myself getting hurt in any way about anything, I know that I'm seeking validation from something else other than the Father, the only one who can validate, the real Father in heaven. And, uh, so I'm always having to align myself back with, why did I get hurt? Oh, because I was, I was wanting her to do something for me when she doesn't even know how. They've proven women, they can't even validate a man. They don't even know how. Because men won't respect. Women don't even know what respect is. They don't even know what respect means.

• 4:45:37Speaker 02

  My girl literally is like, what does it mean? Not because she's Russian, but literally like, what is, what is this? She's trying to make me explain respect, trying to explain respect. And it sounds idiot, it sounds ridiculous. It means that you have to treat me like a, uh, you know what I mean? You're like, you don't get a gig, you know, like what the hell? So, you know.

• 4:46:05Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think your new purpose is?

• 4:46:08Speaker 02

  Man, I'm gonna fulfill this mission till the day I die. I'm gonna do my best, Sean. I, I'm not, I can't. You know, I used to make big promises and, uh, and under deliver, but that, the, you know, I, I heard God, uh, very, very loud, uh, clearly right after that encounter with Jesus. And I said, what would you have me do now? And he says, you will be a lighthouse to my people.

• 4:46:37Speaker 02

  And, uh, and I said, oh my God. I said, what do lighthouses do? And he said, I remember, he says, you know all about lighthouses? And my response, Sean, was lighthouses are for sale. Because back if he had tasked me to buy a lighthouse for him, and I searched to and fro this world, and unless you're Elon Musk or yourself perhaps, with major connections and, and things, you cannot purchase a real lighthouse, a real one, because they're on federal property, they're taken care of.

• 4:47:20Speaker 02

  And I think the problem with a lot of Christians today or whoever out there is, they don't like things to be for sale. They don't, you know, freely I give, freely I receive, you know, like you can't sell God's word. And so,

• 4:47:42Speaker 02

  you know, I like to consider my, myself a lighthouse. I, I, I peddle into that. I'm about peddling the lighthouse mission. I have to work in other areas, you know, my, my peptide business, whatever, but I, I, I, uh, I think to be a lighthouse, to light other people's torches at such a time as this, to motivate men uh, and women with that, I don't know, a spirit of

• 4:48:08Speaker 02

  the same spirit that was in,

• 4:48:11Speaker 02

  you know, David, uh, the same spirit that was in King Jehu, uh, all these.

• 4:48:20Speaker 02

  I think, I think it's lacking. I think people forget the power that they, that they can behold as an individual with, with literal faith as a mustard seed, just a little tiny bit. And we can move mountains, man. And if we could all grasp this, it's, it would, we would be a force to be reckoned with, man.

• 4:48:43Shawn Ryan?

  Well, if you can't buy one, then you gotta build it.

• 4:48:47Speaker 02

  You gotta build it. That's right.

• 4:48:51Speaker 02

  So I'm, I'm all about with wisdom, counsel, and, and, uh, moving in whatever way God wants me to move now, you know?

• 4:49:08Shawn Ryan?

  You're off to a hell of a start, man.

• 4:49:10Speaker 02

  Thanks, Sean. I appreciate you, man. For having me on, you know?

• 4:49:16Shawn Ryan?

  That was some powerful, powerful stuff.

• 4:49:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:49:20Shawn Ryan?

  Especially at the end here.

• 4:49:23Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 4:49:26Speaker 02

  By the word of their testimony and by the blood of the lamb, they broke through all evil. And that's what Revelations, I think it's eight, says, that literally by the word of our testimony and by acknowledging who did it, Jesus, you know, chains of darkness can be broken up. I mean, I already feel amazing right now, just talking about afterwards. It's been a long day here, but you know, something about it is freeing, you know?

• 4:49:57Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man. Cause you just gave.

• 4:50:01Speaker 02

  Gave that, yeah, that's right. That's spot on, man.

• 4:50:05Shawn Ryan?

  You were in with a prayer?

• 4:50:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a great idea, actually. What's hoping you're gonna do?

• 4:50:13Shawn Ryan?

  You wanna lead it?

• 4:50:14Speaker 02

  Go ahead. You, you wanna go her?

• 4:50:16Shawn Ryan?

  How about you do it?

• 4:50:17Speaker 02

  Okay, all right. All right. Uh, dearly Father, I just thank you for bringing myself and Sean Ryan's team together and his entire audience and everybody that's listening right now. Father God, I pray right now that you would show up in everybody's life in a special way that heard this message today. And that no matter what they've been through in their life, no matter what loss or betrayal or thing that is bad that they thought that happened to them, I thank you that you literally work all things together for the good for those who love you. And all we have to do today is crack our heart open just a tiny bit

• 4:51:00Speaker 02

  and receive the power and spirit of the line of Judah, so that we can walk out of here on a warrior's path, in a warrior's way today. And I thank you for healing to course through the veins of every person that's lost right now out there and that's listening to this. In Jesus' mighty name.

• 4:51:22Shawn Ryan?

  I got one more thing.

• 4:51:23Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 4:51:25Shawn Ryan?

  I just said, I said you helped Jimmy build his lighthouse. Amen.

• 4:51:32Speaker 02

  Amen. In Jesus' name.

• 4:51:36Shawn Ryan?

  Jimmy?

• 4:51:37Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 4:51:37Shawn Ryan?

  It was an honor, brother.

• 4:51:38Speaker 02

  Brother, it was, uh,

• 4:51:55Shawn Ryan?

  No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.