The system isn’t built for you to win. It’s built to stop you from trying.

Amy Nelson and Alex Little in the TARGET studio

About the show

Nobody thinks it will be them. Then the phone rings. Or the target letter arrives. Or it’s 5 a.m. and the FBI is at the door.

TARGET is a podcast about what it means to be in the crosshairs of the federal government. Alex Little spent years inside the machine, federal prosecutor and CIA analyst, before crossing over to defend the people it hunts. Amy Nelson’s husband spent 4 years under federal investigation: raids, frozen accounts, front-page headlines. Never charged.

Friends for 25 years. Then lawyer and client. Now they sit down with the people who’ve lived it: the indicted and the acquitted, the pardoned and the convicted. The story starts on day one. Nobody relitigates the case. The only question that matters: what do you wish you’d known before it began?

From Litson PLLC in Nashville. Premieres Thursday, September 24, then new episodes every Thursday.

Watch the trailer

The hosts

Alex Little

Former federal prosecutor and CIA analyst. Now defends the people the machine hunts.

Alex Little is the founding and managing partner of Litson PLLC in Nashville. He spent years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 2 federal districts, leading national security and white-collar investigations and trying dozens of cases before federal juries. Before that, he was a CIA political analyst and worked with President Jimmy Carter at The Carter Center on peace negotiations in Sudan. He clerked for Judge Marsha S. Berzon on the Ninth Circuit and earned his law degree at Georgetown. Today he defends people and companies facing federal investigations, and he wanted a show about what that experience does to them.

Amy Nelson

Former litigator and venture-backed founder. Then the FBI came to her door.

Amy Nelson spent 10 years as a litigator, then left law to build companies. She raised $30 million in venture capital for The Riveter, launched SaksWorks for Saks Fifth Avenue (later acquired by Convene), and was named to the Inc. Female Founders 100. She was a Forbes columnist and hosted iHeart’s What’s Her Story podcast. In 2020, the FBI came to her door. Her husband spent the next 4 years as the target of a federal investigation. Their savings were seized. They sold their house to pay lawyers. He was never charged. She tells that story in her TEDx talk, “FBI Agents Do Not Ring the Doorbell.” She is the mother of 4 daughters. She knows what the machine does to the people standing next to its target.

Amy’s TEDx talk

Amy on the morning the FBI came to her door, and the 4 years that followed.