An FBI Arrest, a Rejected Plea Deal, and a RICO Conviction

Matt: There was a pounding on our door at 6 a.m. My wife ran down to see who it was, and, uh, came back upstairs and said, “The FBI is here.” I would have to go in open court and under oath admit to something that I know is not true, and that’s illegal. That’s perjury. And she just said, “You’re not doing that. That’s… No way. We’re fighting this thing.” Made me spend an entire year of my life in a place that I was never supposed to go in the first place, um, and nobody cared.

Alex: This happens much more often, I think, than people realize especially in these sorts of cases with defendants who have never been in the system before, who don’t understand just how it can just grind you down emotionally and mentally.

Matt: My father passed away while I was in prison, and I was not able to attend his funeral.

Amy: If you could go back to yourself standing on that porch at 6:00 in the morning, or to the next person who finds themself there with handcuffs on their wrist, what advice would you give them?

Alex: I’m Alex Little, a former federal prosecutor who now is a defense lawyer that stands on the other side of the courtroom defending clients.

Amy: And I’m Amy Nelson, a former Wall Street lawyer and entrepreneur who never touched criminal law until the FBI knocked on my door, and I had to walk my husband through a four-year DOJ investigation.

Alex: This is the TARGET podcast.

Amy: Matt Borges spent his life at the top of Ohio politics, an insider in every way, but in July 2020, he was arrested by FBI agents one morning in what they call the state’s largest corruption scandal in history. This is the story of how Matt became a target. Matt, take us back to 2020. What was the first sign for you that the government was investigating your work?

Matt: Yeah, we had no idea that any of us was under investigation at the time. Um, I was getting up in the morning, uh, to go down to Cincinnati to meet with a new client, and, uh, meet my colleagues, and then drive down to Cincinnati together, and before we even kinda got our day started, there was a pounding on our door at 6 a.m. My wife ran down to see who it was, and, uh, came back upstairs and said, “The FBI is here.” And I just remember thinking to myself, “Well, I wonder what they would wanna talk to me about.” Like, what, what information I might have that they’d be interested in. Um, I came downstairs, and they asked me to step outside, put handcuffs on me, and took me to the car, and took me downtown. I kept asking, “Can someone tell me what this is about? Can someone tell me what’s going on?” And they wouldn’t say. And it was a couple hours until we found out what we were even being accused of doing.

Amy: What-

Matt: And then over the course of the next hours, days, weeks, years, um, you know, we got a much clearer picture.

Amy: What wa- Do you remember what you felt in that moment when they put handcuffs on your wrists?

Matt: I do, and, um, I’ve, I’ve talked about this. Uh, I really just thought, “Someone has made a mistake.” Someone thinks that I was involved in something that I wasn’t. I, I certainly wasn’t wondering if anyone had ever been looking into the legislation that we had been supportive of or, um, all the things that had come afterwards. I wasn’t thinking to myself, “Gee, I, I hope no one ever finds out about A, B, or C… or that we were associating with certain people.” I will give the government credit. They were conducting an in- in- a clandestine investigation, and neither did anyone else, and they weren’t go- going out and taking interviews, you know, witness statements or anything like that until after we were arrested. We were all… Uh, there were five of us initially charged, and we were all arrested at the same time and brought downtown and processed together.

Alex: Let me ask about that. Was there a sense that when you thought, hey, they had make an… They, they had made a mistake, later in the case, were you were like, “Gosh, if they had just come to us before, we could have explained all this. It would’ve made sense”? I mean, d-d- was there ever a disconnect from you around, “Why didn’t they just ask me?”

Matt: Oh, of course, and that unraveled throughout the course of the next several weeks, months, years as we got closer to trial, um, because we learned things about their investigation, that they knew certain things were not as they believed them to be. And one of the issues that we had, it was a pretty extraordinary set of circumstances, was when I r- initially read the criminal complaint, we were given a copy of it before we were sent home from the Marshal’s office that day. And it attributed a number of quotes to me that I just knew that I had never made.

Alex: God, that’s-

Matt: I mean-

Alex: so frustrating. Again, you’re like-

Matt: Later on-

Alex: “There must be a mistake.” I mean, it must have been the same feeling like, “What?”

Matt: And so here are the mistakes that I feel like at some point in time, we’ve all b- we all believe in this process, and we all believe in the justice system. And when we just explained to, whether it’s the Department of Justice or the judge, that these, these were mistakes, and these were quotes that they were using to establish my criminal intent, and they were just things that I hadn’t said, um, and things that other people had said. And when we eventually, and this took a long time, as you know, for discovery to be produced, years later when we were getting ready to go to trial, and they, they gave us the, the copies of the recordings, we did listen to those recordings, and in fact, I had not said those things. And so we, we made a motion to… Uh, the very first motion we were able to… When motion practice started in our case, we made, the very first motion we made was to say, “Hey, they attributed a bunch of statements to Matt Borges, who hadn’t said these things, and they used those to establish his criminal intent.” Mm-hmm, and I really believed, guys, I absolutely believed in my heart that that was gonna be the end of it, that that the judge would rule on that motion, and just like you see on TV the, uh, prosecutors would be chided for their Um, you know, kind of d- misinformation and, um, and that would be the end of it. And then what happened was the judge ruled that it didn’t matter that I hadn’t said those things. They were gonna, they were allowed to proceed with their case, and that was really the first time that I’ve said to myself, “We got a real problem here.”

Amy: We’ll, we’ll get back to that moment, because I think that is incredibly important, and for anybody who’s, like, walked through the system, that moment happens to most of us, right? Where we realize, wow, the system doesn’t work as we’ve thought it did our entire lives. But back to that, that very first day, what did you w- what happened after you were taken in and you were processed? Then what? So you’re there, you’re with your co-defendants who y- you’re realizing are your co-defendants for the first time. You are you know, you were processed. How long are you in a room with them? When do you get to go home? And then how did you find a lawyer?

Matt: Um, as I was being taken to the car, I turned to my wife, who was standing in the driveway, and said, “Call Carl,” who, Carl Schneider, who was, uh, my trial attorney, my primary trial attorney. And, um, I didn’t really know who else’s name to say in that moment. I know my wife had known Carl for many years, we’re social friends. Um, and, uh, I just said c- “Call Carl and see what’s going on.” I knew he practiced in federal court and does criminal defense. Um, and so Carl was, it w- right on, he was Johnny on the spot that afternoon. And the first thing they did is they take the, since it was 6 a.m. and the marshal’s office wasn’t open yet they took us all down to the FBI field office, and we had to wait there. And so, uh, when the car pulled in, again, they still hadn’t told me anything about what we were being arrested for, what the charges were, anything. Um, I looked over and I saw one of the, one of, what eventually became one of my co-defendants getting out of another car. And I knew I had worked on him with really, on only really one project. And I said, “Oh, this must be something to do with House Bill 6,” which is the legislation that became the s- the focus of this criminal, uh, investigation. And then, uh, and then that thought was confirmed about, uh, well, a few hours later. The, the marshal’s office did open, so they drove us over there and, um, I walked in and I looked to my left and I saw the speaker of the Ohio House sitting in a jail cell. And I said, “Well, that’s what it has to be. It’s what it must be.”

Alex: Nuts.

Matt: So they ended up putting us all together… all five of us, uh, who had, who were arrested that morning, together in, in the same cell. We all sat there looking at each other saying, “What is this all about?” What we did not know at the time was that one of the gentlemen who was in that cell had already agreed to be a cooperator.

Alex: Ah.

Matt: And that one of the other gentlemen, unfortunately, who I was sitting across, that was the last time I’d ever see him alive. He killed himself a, a few months later, rather than go through what we’ve all had to go through for the last, uh, several years now.

Alex: Definitely wanna go back and talk about that, ’cause I think it really speaks to the tragedy that, it happens so often in these cases, really unnecessarily. Um, but you mentioned sort of finding your lawyer. You knew someone you trusted. Uh, did you get a sense later that that was unusual, that you were sort of fortunate to have someone you knew and trusted? And, and, um, what did you observe the other people, other defendants go through in trying to figure out who to hire and how to find someone to trust in this process?

Matt: Um, I don’t think that our co-defendants had a, a, a lot of trouble finding someone. Um, I think that the speaker ended up with counsel he was unfamiliar with, mostly because the people that he, uh, had reached out to initially had conflicts.

Alex: Right. Mm-hmm.

Matt: So, um, they weren’t able to represent him in the criminal case. Um, but eventually he, he found appropriate counsel and, and, um, what ended up happening was, uh, there again, there were five of us initially charged. Uh, two decided to cooperate and took a plea deal, uh, coo- uh, testified against us at trial. I was also offered the, the same plea deal, but turned it down. Um, just believed that we were gonna, that the, the system would eventually work and we would we would be vindicated if we proceeded. Um, I wasn’t going to admit to something that I hadn’t done.

Alex: Yep. Mm-hmm.

Matt: And, um, and so two people took the deal and testified against us. The speaker and I went on trial, and then unfortunately, the, the fifth, uh, co-defendant killed himself. And then later, uh, a few years later, a sixth person was added to the conspiracy, and unfortunately, he killed himself, too.

Alex: Ugh. I, I mean, I, this happens much more often, I think, than people realize especially in these sorts of cases with defendants who have never been in the system before, who don’t understand just how it can just grind you down emotionally and mentally. It is so dangerous, I think, in terms of folks who have any preexisting mental health condition, and it can certainly, y- you know, create huge issues in those who haven’t had any issues with mental health. What do you remember about learning that that had happened? Did you get a sense that, like, uh, it’s tragic, but I understand it, or was it out of the blue? I mean, walk us through, kind of, you, you have a weird, you, when you’re in a case, you have an, an unusual relationship with co-defendants, especially if you knew, knew them previously. Um, so walk us through kind of what it was like to be on the other end of, of experiencing that.

Matt: Leaving that day, leaving the, we were all processed one by one and allowed to leave. They, they didn’t try to hold anyone over. Um, so we were allowed to be released, pending our trial. Actually, we hadn’t even been indicted at that point in time yet. We were just arrested, um, per the criminal complaint that had been filed, and then the indictment came many days later. But, uh, leaving that day, I felt like there was a sense among all of us that we’re gonna fight this thing, and we’re gonna prove that there was never any conspiracy to break any law whatsoever. So as things began to unravel, I’m… Several months later, I’m offered a plea deal, um, which my lawyers thought was extremely generous, uh, just based on the fact that we were all charged with one count of a RICO conspiracy, which carries with it a, a statutory maximum of 20 years. And so they don’t really often go around, apparently, offering six months to defendants to, um, to, to testify and, uh, to, to cooperate with the government. And then also, they would, they agreed they would not oppose a recommendation of home confinement, so the possibility of never having to go to prison at all.

Alex: Hmm.

Matt: It would still depend on what the judge decided. Of course, but that was the deal that we were being offered. I turned it down. I talked to my wife. She said, “We’re not doing that.” “You’re not gonna go and admit to something you didn’t do. We’re, you know, we’re, we’re gonna fight this thing.” Believing the others would fight it, too. So finding out some weeks later that two people had taken the deal was deflating. And then another one of our co-defendants, m- unfortunately, committed suicide. Um, this pit in your stomach just starts getting deeper and larger, and you, y- you feel like th- th- this is not going the way I b- always believed that, uh, this system would work when you’re charged with something you truly fundamentally believe you didn’t do.

Amy: When your, when you found out your co-defendant had taken his life, where were you? And, and how well did you know him?

Matt: I knew him for decades. Um, we hadn’t always had the closest relationship, but I had a tremendous amount of respect for his career. And, um, and we were working together, uh, on, on projects and, and getting along just fine at that stage in our relationship. And I actually got a text message from a reporter saying, “Have you heard?” Uh, and so I called. Quickly before I answered the reporter’s text message, I called a friend who I knew was very close with this gentleman, Neil Clark, and, uh, she was sobbing. And I immediately knew, well, this, this, the news is true. And it just, you know, unfortunately, it, things just continued to get worse from there-

Amy: Well-

Matt: as we went through the process.

Alex: The, the part of this I think people forget is, like, even though you’re a case number, you’re an, you know, to the, the folks in the system, you are a defendant, right? That’s the primarily how they know you. You were a real person. You had a family. You were doing a job. Your life was going well before this morning when the FBI knocks on your door. Could you give us a sense of, like, what is your life like the day before this? I mean, you’ve been living in the after, right, for the last number of years. What was life like for you the day before? ’Cause I think one thing people don’t have a sense of till they live it is just the extreme shift that happens. It’s almost like the day before and after an earthquake, right? Everything looks really nice. You know, the ground is, is, is clear, and the next day, you know, there’s this huge rift. What was that? W- what was life like for you, you know, FBI day minus one?

Matt: Yeah, it’s interesting that you raise that because I remember sitting in the… This is before I’d even been taken into the, mm, to the marshal’s office, still sitting in the FBI field office and, and understanding that life as I knew it was over. Mm. Just because I had been arrested. I’m not naive. Um, I had served as the chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. We had, I’d been through many, many, many political campaigns. I thought I had at least a decent rudimentary understanding of the way the justice system worked. I’d helped people get elected, judges, uh, prosecutors, attorney generals, and just because I’d been around that world, I’d never practiced in, i- in that way at all myself. But I, I, I thought I knew a little bit about… And I, I think everyone thinks they know a little bit about the the justice system. And, and then they come up, you know, a rude awakening. But the, but the, the, the realization was kind of coming to me throughout the morning that clients, you know, the, the, the, the, the work I had been doing on advocacy for clients was over. And I remember thinking to myself, “Oh, I’m gonna have to resign from the Columbus State Board of Trustees.” I really have enjoyed governor, the governor had appointed me to the board of trustees for our local community college, and I loved being part of that board. I’d only been there for a couple of months, and I, I couldn’t wait to l- learn more and be part of the expansion of the school and hopefully be part of something that I think is very beneficial to our community. And it was just things like that, that you’re suddenly starting to realize, like, “Well, that’s over. That’s, that part of life is over.” I know the governor’s gonna want me to resign from, just, just from having, even if I’m-

Alex: Even if you’re innocent

Matt: absolved.

Alex: Even if it’s a mistake.

Matt: Yeah. Right. Just the, the stigma of having been arrested, and of course, within maybe 48 hours, I had an email saying, “Please get me your resignation letter.” Which I obliged. I understood the, and I also had been around politics long enough to know that, mm, that I, I wasn’t gonna impose myself on anyone else at that point in time. People who I’d helped get elected to office, I cared about them. I, I, I, I, uh, en- enjoyed watching them succeed, helping them succeed, and I certainly wasn’t gonna go now and start saying, “Hey, you need to take a public position and support me. You need to come out and make this public statement.” Uh, I wasn’t gonna do that. I got home. I talked to Kate, my wife, and we kinda went through, “Here’s where we stand, and here’s what we have saved, and thank goodness we aren’t in a lot of debt, and, mm, this is what it’s gonna take to get through these next at least few months,” uh, which we hoped would, would maybe be all of it. Um-

Amy: Now, I-

Matt: And it wasn’t

Alex: I’m glad you mentioned your wife. I think people also don’t realize a lot of times that it’s not a single person who gets indicted, it’s the family, right? If you’re charged, the whole family goes through it. You’re the one at the chair, you’re the one that has to serve time, but the whole family is really subject to this. Um, y- you mentioned also sort of deciding not to take a plea, and I wanna kinda walk through the family dynamics of that. I mean, obviously, the decision about whether or not you have to go away to jail or that you have to plead guilty has the effects broadly beyond just you. How did you have that discussion? Who took part in that for you? Who was at the table when you were m- like, figurativ- figuratively or, or literally, when you’re walking through, do I decide to take a plea, plead guilty to this, or do I fight this? And how did you sort of think through that as a group?

Matt: So I, it’s, it’s gonna dovetail into a topic I know we’re gonna get into, um, which is understanding the charges, you know the, the things that you’ve been charged with. Some of that was still very unclear to us in, in a, in a RICO conspiracy case, and then specifically with this concept of honest services fraud, I know we’ll talk about. Um, but I, but I, I really wanted to have two critical conversations. One was to digest all the facts with my lawyer. And, and, uh, by then it was, it was not only Carl, but another, uh, gentleman who had kinda taken the lead on, on the case. Um, and just kinda say to him, “You guys look at the facts. Take a look at what we’ve been charged with, and if you tell me you think that I have broken the law, then I wanna do the right thing. I wanna go ahead and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll cooperate, I’ll take the plea, I’ll do whatever I need to do.” And they said, “We don’t, we don’t think that you have. We’ve, you know. We can’t tell you that we think you’ve broken the law.”

Alex: And, and for folks-

Matt: And-

Alex: who are listening who don’t know what that is, I mean, what were the facts they were alleging that was a crime here? ’Cause it, I, I think it’s important for folks who don’t know this case to realize it wasn’t unreasonable for you to think that, right?

Amy: Yeah, and one thing, Matt, when you tell this, you know, one thing that’s always stuck out to me is y- your specific role in this very broad story.

Matt: Right. Yeah. Uh, so the underlying crime that was alleged here was the passage of a piece of legislation that the speaker of the Ohio House had championed. It was called House Bill 6. It was a bill that would basically save two nuclear power plants that were, uh, widely rumored to be going out of business, and, um, their incredible importance to the, uh, electricity grid and, and, and power supply for Ohio, uh, citizens, um, we didn’t, m- many of us did not wanna see that happen. So there was legislation that was designed to, uh, to, to help make sure that didn’t happen, um, and that’s the bill that was passed. And so the, the crime that was alleged, uh, or the underlying crime was that the only reason the speaker had agreed to pass this legislation was because he had been bribed to do so. Now, in my role, nobody ever alleged that I was part of the bribe, the, the giving or the taking of the bribe. But the p- what they do is they charge this as a conspiracy, and under the racketeering, uh, uh, conspiracy law, um, as long as they can demonstrate that you knew that someone else either was doing or was inte- had intended to do something illegal, and you helped that, that, what they call an enterprise, in any way, in any way, doing something legal or illegal, doesn’t matter, um, you’re, you’re also, you could be convicted of racketeering conspiracy. And so understanding that I wasn’t part of Team Householder, I wasn’t an elected official, I had no role in the passage of the bill whatsoever, um, we kinda looked at my conduct and said, “Well, what are they charging me? Like, what, how do they think that I’m involved in this?” And, um, my lawyers looked at it, and I, and I, I, I, I wanted to be very clear with them, “Tell me if you think I’m guilty, please, and I will accept responsibility and take my punishment.”

Alex: But to be clear, and what you were doing-

Matt: And they said, “No”

Alex: the only reason you’re sort of connected to this bill is because you’ve been asked to raise money for a sort of outside group to do advertising and support for the, the effort. Is that right?

Matt: No. I wasn’t raising money for them. Um, what happened was after the legislation was passed, uh, Ohioans have the right to bring any bill to referendum.

Alex: Referendum, yeah.

Matt: And so there was a referendum effort that was undertaken, and this is kinda where I enter the picture, um, because I helped the company and the legislators fight the referendum and make sure that it didn’t qualify for the ballot. We believed it was not a legal referendum. Uh in Ohio, anything that is, uh, it’s in the c- Ohio Constitution that anything that is considered a tax can’t be brought to referendum. And, uh, we tried hard to make sure that the Supreme Court and that our attorney general and secretary of state understood that what had happened here, this bailout legislation, was, was legally, technically a tax, and, uh, worked very hard to keep that from getting to the ballot, which it did not. So then the legislation takes effect, uh, and then we all went back to life, and about six months later, believing that, hey, this was something, a, a project I’d been in, involved with, uh, in the past, um, we got that knock on our door, and-

Alex: But, but I guess to be clear-

Matt: that’s when things changed

Alex: the, the specific thing you’re doing, though, is just standard political work that someone in your position does.

Amy: That, that Matt has been doing for decades.

Alex: That you’ve been doing forever and ever. And I think that’s the part, like, when you sit down at the kitchen table and ask that question “Did I do something illegal?” It’s not as if there was a back room with money and paper bags. You were, you were running this kind of anti-referendum campaign as a l- you know, doing your standard political lobbying work, and nothing about that would ever have given you a red flag or a warning bell that, “Hey, I could go to jail for five years.”

Matt: Absolutely not.

Amy: Yeah. So you had that conversation with your attorneys, and then you said there was a second critical conversation you wanted to have in deciding whether or not to plea.

Matt: Yeah, that’s then talking to Kate, talking to my wife, and saying, “Here’s everything. Here’s what we’ve been told. Um, and now they’ve made me an offer.” And so they waited about four months, and this is, I think, pretty standard practice. They arrest you, they watch your life kind of unravel-

Amy: Hmm

Matt: and then they let you sit for a while kind of digesting your new reality. Um, and, uh, I think in December of that year, I believe it was December, uh, we, I just got a phone call one night from my attorney saying, “We just got a phone call, and they’re making this offer.” Um, and, uh, I said, “Well, uh, let me talk to my wife and call you back.” And so I went and sat with Kate, and I also understood, like you’re s- like you’re talking about, the, the, the toll that it takes on your family. And I said, “We can end this thing tomorrow.” “But, but I’m gonna have to go and, you know, and, and in my opinion, break the law for the first time in this entire process. I would have to go in open court and under oath admit to something that I know is not true, and that’s illegal. That’s perjury. Um, but I also am gonna have to then accept the stigma of being a convicted felon and all these things and w-” And she just said, “You’re not doing that. That’s, no way. We’re fighting this thing. Don’t. No. You didn’t break the law.” “We’re, you know, we’re, we’re gonna fight it.” And, um, I said, “Okay.” And that’s what I wanted, and I would have expected, honestly, to hear from her. But had she s- in that moment, had she said, “Can’t do this. Please. This is just too much. We can’t run the risk of you having to go to prison or who knows what could happen. Can we please just get this over with?” I would’ve called back and said, “Give me the paperwork. I’ll sign the deal.”

Amy: And-

Matt: But that’s not how it went, so we, we decided to fight. I think the prosecutor, I think the U.S. attorney, we said no, and he couldn’t believe it.

Amy: Yeah. This might be too personal, and if, if you don’t wanna answer, I completely understand, but you also had, you know, you have older children, but you still had a child at home. How did, how did that factor in?

Matt: I mean, you wanna demonstrate to your children that, and to your wife and to your family and friends and neighbors, that y- you’re, you’re gonna be somebody who will stand up and fight for yourself when you know you’ve been accused of something that you know you didn’t do. Um, it’s really hard to go back later and explain to someone, “Well, I didn’t really do it, but I had to take a deal.” And there certainly are people who understand that, um, when, why people have to do that. I understand why people fear the system and decide to take, uh, you know, maybe what you might call the easy way out. Um, and I said, “No, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, we’re gonna show the world that we fight.” And, um, again, had I been told, uh, you know, “Maybe you didn’t mean to break the law here. Maybe there was no in…” You know, whatever, but you, but that’s patently illegal. You can’t do this. You can’t have those conversations. You can’t be involved in when people are exchanging money or whatever it was. Um, you certainly are, are guilty of, of this. Um, I, I go, and I, I take the, I, I take the plea and do what I need to do. But, um, you know, our, our daughter, who’s a- autistic, um, I think was, uh, eight or nine the, and was awake and, and in the house and looking at us the morning I was arrested um, just trying to see what’s going on. Where are they taking Dad? We, we, we, we did try very hard to, to not, uh, you know, to, to make sure that, uh, that, that didn’t impact the family dynamic too much and then proceed with what we needed to do. And, um, and but, of course, that, you know, those are the things, those are the only things you really care about. How, how does it, how does it impact, uh, the people around me, the people I love? And, um, I think we, we just decided that ev- everyone wanted to see us fight for this, and so that’s what we did.

Amy: What did life look like those months between going home the day you were arrested and going to trial? Like, what did you do every day?

Matt: Well, so unfortunately, it was right when COVID started, so everyone was kind of stuck in their homes for a while anyway. And then I had this kind of isolating me even more. Um, I wanted very much to be out among people, among friends, but I didn’t feel so much like I had disappeared from the world because everyone had kind of disappeared at that stage.

Amy: You’re like, “Just me too. Just a different-”

Matt: Yeah, right.

Amy: “I have a different ailment that I’m facing.”

Matt: Yeah, it just, it, it wasn’t as obvious that I was sort of not around um, when no one was around. But one thing that was really kind of happening was my understanding of what I thought I believed about the judicial process, the justice system, was changing almost on a daily basis. All these things I thought I, I knew. A- as Americans, we believe these things. We have rights. My rights will protect me from this ever happening because I’ll get a speedy trial. That’s right there in the Constitution. I’ll get the right to confront my accusers. That’s right there in the Constitut- All these things we believe are true, and then when those things just start not happening, I mean, it was, it, th- th- that was maybe the scariest and possibly even the saddest part was just realizing that all these things we, we, we believe about our rights and about how we’d be protected from something if this happened, uh, when a judge decides not to give you a trial for three years and, and when a judge decides-

Amy: You don’t realize there’s an asterisk on each one of those, right? There’s this asterisk-

Matt: Yeah, and it, it, it-

Amy: only the lawyers and judges see, and it says “Oh, by the way, the government gets the benefit of the doubt, and we’re gonna do what they wanna do. And, and don’t worry, um, you know, there are some ways that we can sort of get around these, these rights and rules.”

Matt: Yeah. And, um, let me pivot for a moment and kind of, if you don’t mind.

Amy: No, please.

Matt: I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go a, a little bit into the future and just tell you a quick story about, um, what happened once I actually went to prison. Um, after I was convicted, and we’ll get back to the, to the story leading up to that, I promise, but, um, I was sent to… I was remanded at, uh, at my sentencing, which is unusual for a white collar-

Amy: Very unusual

Matt: non-violent. Um, but the judge knew the media was in the room, and it was a very high-profile case, and he did what he did. Most white collar defendants are allowed to do what’s called self-surrender. And I wasn’t, I wasn’t given that opportunity. So they cuffed me and took me from the courtroom that day and put me in the Butler County Jail in, uh, suburban Cincinnati for 30 days, uh, in solitary confinement. And, uh, so that’s how I started the process. Then I was flown to Oklahoma City, which everyone is in the federal system. Wherever you’re going, they fly to Oklahoma City. I was only there for two nights, thank goodness, because I’ve heard-

Amy: That’s terrible

Matt: horror stories of people being-

Amy: It’s one of the worst places in the country, for sure

Matt: being stuck there for months, but I was not. Two nights and then I get flown to, uh, Milan, Michigan. We couldn’t understand why I wasn’t sent to, um, a minimum security camp, which is where non-violent offenders go. I had what are called camp points. When they could count up the, the points, the custody points, and it wasn’t until a few months later that I found out that the Justice Department, um, had, had, uh, classified me based on, um, the, what, what they alleged that there had been an allegation of violent robbery in my case.

Amy: Oh, my God.

Matt: And of course there was not. Um, but when I went in to talk to my case manager, so o- one of the, one of the charges that was included was something called extortion under color of official right, which is a non-violent type of extortion, but it falls under the Hobbs Act, which also includes-

Amy: Bank robbery

Matt: robbery.

Amy: Literally bank robbery.

Matt: Yeah. Correct. Violent robbery. And so because the Hobbs Act was referenced, my case manager pointed to his computer screen and said, “The word robbery is in your, your”-

Amy: Unbelievable

Matt: “uh, case description, and until that word comes off my screen, you’re not going anywhere. You know, you’re staying here.” So, so what they ended up doing was they, they s- they sent me to a prison for people who were violent for people who were murderers, who were, um-

Amy: Unbelievable

Matt: who were child molesters, who were, uh, uh, you know, a custody level way above where I was supposed to go. Explaining to probation that this had happened, explaining to my case manager, the Bureau of Prisons, even eventually writing the judge and saying, “Can you please…” I filed what’s called a motion to correct the record under Rule 36 to say, “Please, you know, just, just explain to someone that there was no allegation ever of violent robbery in our case, and they’ll, and they’ll send me to the appropriate…” And, and, you know, regardless of how people feel about anyone’s case, a- a- and, and I’m not trying to re-litigate what happened. What happened to us happened. It’s over. We’re… We, we made it through. We’re stronger in a lot of ways, um, after it. Um, and so th- this isn’t about re-litigating what happened, but I think this story about being misdesignated to a, to a much higher security facility is important because I wrote the judge, asked him to correct the record and just let the bureaucrats know that I was in the wrong place, and he denied that motion… excoriated me for even asking, accused me in his decision of asking for things that I hadn’t asked for. Um, and so everybody knew, everybody in my situation knew that the information in that report was incorrect. But nobody would fix it. Nobody. They all pointed fingers at each other and said, “No, until they do,” they, you know, “I can’t fix it. They have to…” And so that kind of level of inhumanity of incompetence of indifference to someone’s rights, again, you might feel how you feel about our case. Anyone who thinks that we were guilty and believes that we sh- should have been punished would at least agree that we should have been punished commensurate with the crime that we actually committed or that they believe we committed. But in this case, this robbery allegation. So I tell that story a lot because I think it helps give people an understanding of apply that level of indifference and incompetence through the entire process. And now all of a sudden you’re talking about a system. Systems are people, right? The justice system is not a monolith. It’s a, it’s a group of… But people are imperfect, and they have all kinds of different motivations and um, considerations and things they are and aren’t willing to do or not do, and, um, and so that well, made me spend an entire year of my life in a place that I was never supposed to go in the first place. Um, and nobody cared. Nobody would do anything about it. So, uh, and, and that’s not to complain. That’s not to cast doubt on the system or whatever. But I think it, it, you know, a conversation like this is important because we need to get to a place where w- we can be proud of the process and the system because we’re, we, we, we can, we can give it the, the, the level of respect that it deserves and the, the, the power that it has over over people’s lives. People’s lives get, you know, upended. Uh, you get separated from your family. You lose careers and freedom, and families can sometimes be destroyed. Haven’t thank, thank goodness ours was not. Um, but I saw it happen to, a, a lot to guys, and it’s, it’s that kind of thing, that, that, that story kind of illustrates what we saw throughout the process the en- the, the, the entire time that we went through this.

Amy: And I think, you know, some people will listen and say, “Well, I would never get caught up in something like this.” But Matt, like you were doing work you had done for decades, and somehow we end up in a situation where that consulting work is being portrayed as both bank robbery and mafia racketeering because the RICO laws were drafted to stop the mafia, and I, like, that should speak to people. Because if you, if you are just doing the work that-

Alex: Is your professional expertise. And that can be construed in this way. It should be-

Matt: Yeah, and look, I-

Alex: talking to everyone.

Matt: People will, u- u- and understandably so, I was this way for a long time myself, the, you know, supporting the tough-on-crime candidates and, and policies and whatnot, very much so myself. Had a, uh, until you get a, a, an insider’s view of how the process really works, you think you know things about the process, and you don’t. And so people will understandably say, “Hey, you had a trial. You were convicted.” “You kind of deserve what you got. Don’t whine about where they put you. Don’t whine about what you were charged with. You, you got a chance to, to, to prove your innocence, and you were convicted,” and, you know. I mean, even family members sometimes feel that way. Um, th- they don’t know kinda what goes into the soup, how the how the, um, how the decisions get made. And the other thing I would say is if you ever had a loved one, a family member, a colleague be put through a process like this, you’d feel differently. Being and knowing what can happen, unfortunately, to people in the system, um, you suddenly would find yourself not so indifferent to, uh, the things that people go through. Yeah, and just to kind of, again, restate, I’m not speaking out or having these kinds of conversations because I’m angry at the system or because I, I want revenge or wanna re-litigate things in public. I, I have a tremendous amount of respect for our jud… It’s the best in the world, and we need to understand that, but it needs to be worthy of the power that we give it. And, um, that means that people who behave in ways that maybe aren’t, uh, always the most prudent, um, should be held accountable for that, and, um, unfortunately, they’re not.

Alex: Well, and there’s also this randomness to the process. I mean, I think-

Matt: Oh, God, yeah

Alex: you know, we, we represented you before the Supreme Court. Ul- ultimately, the Supreme Court did not take your appeal because they only take, you know, 1 out of 10,000 cases or 1 out of 1,000 cases. Um, but I think it’s likely to happen the next five years, the Supreme Court will take a case like yours and say that the conviction that, that put you in prison for these years was unconstitutional, and the randomness, the fact that you didn’t get the benefit of that, is just luck and chance. And I think people miss that about the system, too, that same, the same people can have very different results just because of luck and randomness. Matt, I have a question about that, like criminal investigations do not start in a vacuum. How… Do you know how this started?

Matt: I do. Um, when the, uh, when the, uh, discovery was turned over to us, we were able to listen to a lot of recorded conversations, some of which were recorded conversations of mine, um, and a, and a, and an informant had come to the FBI and said, “Th- th- this guy’s saying things to me that he shouldn’t be saying.” Um, again, I’ll go back and kind of, you know, give you a little bit of a story that, um, I, I doubt you know mm, but I think is a- another thing that’s inter- that’s interesting. Um, back at the beginning when we made that motion to say, “Hey, you’re using in your criminal complaint and ultimately indictment comments that this defendant did not make.” Um, what we did in that motion, we tried to, tried to strike what we call surplusage, which would’ve ended the case against me, but also said, “Hey, if you said these things in the complaint, you probably said them to the grand jury, too.” “And so that could have poisoned that process, so let’s see what you said to the grand jury.” Judge, of course, denies that. But let me just tell you what, let me s- There’s an, an interesting aside to this story because later on when discovery is, is produced, the prosecutors turned over the grand jury testimony to us which is extremely unusual. Now, it turns out that we believe the reason that they did that was because at the time, these things called Brady violations were, were the one, the cases that were actually being won by defendants, and they wanted to guard themselves against a, a, a charge of not turning over exculpatory evidence, so they turn that over. We find out by looking at the grand jury testimony that they did lie to the grand jury. They went and in, in, in the, in the complaint, they said that I had, um, m- made these comments and that they indeed, um, established my criminal intent. They then went, ’cause since the, since the investigation had been clandestine, they hadn’t talked to any of the other witnesses yet. We had the recording of them going and talking to the witness who I was supposedly speaking about and saying, “Hey, was Borges talking to you about these things?” And he said, “No, that’s not what he was talking about at all.” But now they know that what they’ve alleged in the criminal complaint was not accurate. They go a couple of days later to the grand jury, and they tell the grand jury the same story anyway.

Alex: That’s insane.

Matt: So-

Alex: That’s insane

Matt: they then turn around and make a motion to the judge to exclude all of that from the trial. So they’ve, they’ve dodged their Brady violation by turning this exculpatory evidence over, but then they just ask the trial judge, “Don’t let him use it at trial,” and he didn’t. Um-

Alex: That’s insane. So just to be clear for folks at home, the, they lied to the grand jury about information they knew was false, presented it to get an indictment, and then told the judge, “Well, I don’t want the jury to hear about these bad things that I’ve done by lying to the other jurors, so don’t let them find out about it.” I mean, that’s, that’s the state of our criminal justice system in federal courts, which is far more protective and more procedures than most state courts. It’s nuts. It’s so wild.

Matt: But, uh, but again, pointing these things out, the, the, the stuff about my, uh, misdesignation, for example, that’s, th- there, there’s no disputed fact in any of that. That’s exactly what happened. Um, pointing these things out is, again, I, I don’t want to, uh, sow seeds of doubt. I don’t want people to lose confidence in the system. I’d actually prefer that we improve the system so people do have the appropriate amount of confidence in it, but they also need to understand, I think, sometimes that bad actors and bad decisions and the ability to manipulate trials and the law sometimes prevents a jury from ever hearing the full story. So when there’s people who say, “Hey, you got a trial. Jury convicted you I think what they don’t sometimes maybe have a, a, a good enough appreciation for is that trials, I always believed all my life, that a trial is your opportunity to get to the truth, to get everything out there, to tell your side of the story. You’ve been accused of X, but no, there’s another side of this. And unfortunately, a lot of times that’s not what trials are. Trials are won and lost before the jury is even seated because the judge decides what the jury can ever hear. And so in our case, the jury really only ever heard the prosecutor’s side of the story, and I don’t blame that jury one bit for the conclusion that they reached. It quite frankly is the conclusion I would have reached had I only heard one side of the story. But for example, I’ll just give you a quick example, um, the, the, the fact that the alleged illegal behavior, uh, I had discussed in detail with an attorney, um, and you know, the fourth word of, uh, the RICO statute is intent. Anyone with intent to mm, y- y- you’re, it, it, as, as you know, as, as a lot of people know, advice of counsel is a, an affirmative defense for an intent crime. Um, the prosecutors went to the judge and said, “We don’t want any testimony about, uh, any conversations with lawyers to be admitted.” And he said, “You’re right. They, you, they, they can’t raise… Uh, not only can they not raise an advice of counsel defense, they can’t even mention a single time that they talked to lawyers at all. We don’t want the jury to ever hear that.”

Alex: Yeah, it’s, it’s just insane.

Matt: So-

Alex: I think that people… The, the way that I communicate this to, to sort of folks out- outside the system is we know there are hundreds of murder cases where the wrong person has been convicted. I, I represented one individual where we proved a different person committed the murder. In all of those cases, the jury looked at the facts and said, “Okay, beyond a reasonable doubt, that guy did it,” who we know now later didn’t do it. If that is the result in a situation where the jury’s trying really hard to get it right ’cause they know the stakes think about the thousands of times the jury gets it wrong when the stakes, so to speak, on a case are lesser. Um, you, you can’t deny that that happens.

Matt: Let me just, you know… Here, here’s an interest. I, I, I, I, I’m still a creature of politics, and I still love to at least follow it and from a different vantage point these days than I did for my whole career. But I was looking at some polling data. Uh, just about a year ago, the Pew Research Center, uh, had a poll, and it, and it, and it, it was gauging people’s opinions of the federal government. And they asked people, “How often do you think the federal government kinda gets it right?” And, and 17% of Americans said most of the time or almost always the federal government gets it right, and that broke, it broke down to 15% who said most of the time and 2% of Americans who said the, the federal government always gets it right. And when you look at the dysfunction in Washington and the bureaucracies that we all have to deal with, um, on different things, it’s, it’s not hard to see why. However, the Federal Justice Department, you know, the Department of Justice wins 97% of their cases. Only 2% of people indicted by the, by the Justice Department go to trial. And 85% of them lose. And so somehow with this general understanding that the federal government can’t do anything right, the public is, is inclined to believe that the Justice Department gets it right, you know, and, and it will accept that, that, that, yeah, 97% of the time they’re, “Oh, you’re all just criminals anyway.” “You just got caught.”

Alex: But it, it’s a-

Matt: And so-

Alex: It’s a great point, but wouldn’t you think as a political consultant or somebody who follows politics as much as you do that that just means the court has a really good brand? That like, you know, that you walk in there, you’ve got the wood walls, the robe, the whole pageantry of it. You’ve got years of, you know, movies and TV talking about that, you know, justice prevails and the system is correct, and it works well, without getting into the n- nitty-gritty details about keeping evidence out like you talked about, so that you’re primed as a juror to walk in there and to think, “This is different. This isn’t like going to the DMV. This isn’t like going and paying taxes or having to deal with somebody at the Social Security Administration. These folks kinda know what they’re doing.” So they’ve got a great brand. I do think it’s a brand because of, I think, what’s gone on with President Trump and his cases and just the general, um, I think, difference in the political attacks based on, uh, criminal cases lately. That’s changing, but, but don’t you think that’s the answer, that it’s just really good branding?

Matt: Yeah, look, I mean, I, I, as a political consultant who, again, I helped… I w- was on the Republican side of the aisle. I worked on criminal justice reform measures myself. I helped get, uh, elect judges, prosecutors, attorneys general, and I was always on the tough on crime part of that equation. You don’t get appointed to a federal judgeship unless you s- appear before one of those Senate committees and say, “Yeah, we’re gonna be tough on criminals.” And so that’s, that’s what… And, and in fairness, that is what the public is expecting. That’s what they want. And so in some ways, the public is getting what they want because these judges are always, always, always going to be skewed toward, uh, the prosecution side. And look, I mean, again, on, on T- I watch Law & Order. Like, we’ve all seen it. And in the, in some of those episodes, the prosecutors do something, they talk to someone they’re not supposed to, they, uh they use a statement they weren’t supposed to get. They, uh, they, they, they, they don’t Mirandize someone, whatever it is. On TV, in fantasy, in Hollywood, they go to the judge, and the judge says, “Oh, well, that evide- and that evidence can’t be used, and we have to…” And, and that’s not, unfortunately, the, the reality. Where you point out the things that, uh, you wanna say, and, um, you want, you, and, and the judges don’t have, they, they don’t wanna hear that argument. So, um, tho- tho- those were, those were disappointing realizations for me to come to. And, um, again, when, when you’re, when you’re trying to win a Win a game. We’re trying to… Let, let’s say you’re, let’s say you’re the Dodgers, and, you know, you can spend more money than everybody else because that’s the system. And so you buy up the m- the players. You have a billion-dollar payroll. You win the last two World Series. Um, w- we get it, and we defendants are the, are the small market team paying for our own defense, not having the you know, the, the, the-

Amy: You are the Washington-

Matt: legions of lawyers who, who are paid for by the government.

Amy: Well-

Matt: But what you want in the end is the umpire to call a fair game, right?

Amy: Yes. Right.

Matt: And if the if you’re the Dodgers and the umpire calls every pitch you throw a strike and every pitch the other side throws is a ball, it just becomes impossible to win.

Amy: Well, I think it’s the Washington Generals and the Globetrotters. Right? And you switch sports.

Matt: Oh, yeah.

Amy: Like, the, the Globetrotters are the federal prosecutors, and you, you know, you defendants are kind of marched out there like the Generals, and y- everybody boos when you come out. You may hit some great shots, but we know what the result’s gonna be.

Matt: Yeah. And again, I, I’m, I’m not, I’m not whining about my case. I don’t want to-

Amy: Yeah, no

Matt: I don’t wanna try to, again, try to relitigate what happened. Um, I think most of the people who know us and love us and care about us kind of don’t really care one way or the other. Um, they know what we’ve been through and how we’ve survived it, and that’s what really does matter in in these kinds of things, mm, especially given the tragic situations that occurred, you know, with other people in our, in our case. And, and the other co-defendant that I went on trial with, you know, he got 20 years. He’s still in prison. Which is so wild.

Amy: Mm-hmm, which is nuts.

Matt: And, uh-

Amy: It’s nuts

Matt: it’s cold comfort to defendants when they think they’ve had an issue ruled against them incorrectly, uh, by the trial judge or even by an appeals judge that maybe one day you can get to the Supreme Court because we tried, didn’t make it. Um, I, I thank you guys eternally for all the effort you put into putting together what I thought was one of the best written and most cogent arguments that, that could’ve been made in our case, and, and it, and it… The, the court didn’t take it, um, and, and we just move, we’re moving on with life. But, you know, for my co-defendant, that was his lifeline. That was his last chance to have, uh, maybe the, the law pried, uh, applied i- in a, in the way we believed was proper, and, um, and that’s, that’s over for him now.

Amy: Matt, what do you think you used in your heart and your history to get through this? Because it is an endurance race. What helped you?

Matt: Well, I have an extraordinary wife-

Amy: You do

Matt: um, Amy, as you know.

Amy: You do.

Matt: And, uh, and I appreciate your friendship and conversations with her through the years, uh, while I was gone. And, um, it’s in those moments when things seem like they’re the darkest where you have to have those conversations with yourself and with your loved ones and say, uh, “We’re gonna get through this.” “We’re… Whatever we, whatever it is we need to do, m- m- no matter what it means, no matter what small way I can be there for you, I’m gonna be there for you.” Um, we were separated physically. We were, um… It was difficult sometimes for us to even talk. Those first few chaotic weeks that I, and months, that I was gone, sometimes she didn’t know where I was. Um And, uh, and those things are scary. And, uh, and, uh, it, it, it, it was, it was, it was challenging. It was difficult. I’d say, you know, it was interesting, I was asked, um, in another interview a week or so ago if I was ever scared during the process. And I said no. And-

Amy: Hmm

Matt: um, a couple people have come to me afterwards and said, “How is… That’s not possible.” “You, you had to have been scared.” And the truth is that I really wasn’t. But what I missed the opportunity to say was, while I wasn’t necessarily scared then, I was sad. And it was… It’s sad to be away from your… It’s sad to miss first days of school and Christmas and birthdays. My father passed away while I was in prison. And I was not able to attend his funeral. And, and has, still haven’t been out there yet, um, to, to, to hug my mom and, uh, grieve together and be by his graveside. I’ve asked the BOP to approve a furlough to go there, and they said no.

Amy: Ugh.

Matt: Um-

Amy: Well, you, you just missed a wedding.

Matt: We missed a wedding. Uh, again, f- uh, followed all the rules. Did ask what, did what BOP asked me to do, and then made a application we all thought was gonna be approved, and they said no to that, too. So I didn’t get to go, um, to our son’s wedding down in Georgia. It was still beautiful, and they’ve been i- incredibly supportive and understanding through something that’s really, really difficult to digest and understand. Um, but you, but you really have to… You, you have to gird yourself. You have to, you have to put yourself, um, with those people and say, “How are we gonna, how are we gonna get through this together? What are we gonna do?” And what… You know, there, there’s a part of our story that, um, is, is, you know, very rewarding and fulfilling because through this process, this thing that’s happened in our lives, um, we’ve come out stronger in a lot of ways. Uh the, the bond between, uh, the boys and their mother has just gotten so s- much stronger. Um, people have showered us with kindness. Uh, it’s just been incredible to experience. And, and, you know, we… When you have everything taken away from you, which I had everything, you know, career freedom, um, uh, reputation, you name it, I have nothing to offer these people in return, and they’re showing up at our house. They’re, they’re s- they’re, they’re wiring Kate money. They’re, they’re saying kind things. They’re just being supportive. Amy, l- all the things you’ve done, reaching out. Alex, I mean, you guys being there for us and, and offering to take our case and, and move forward. I mean, uh, it, it’s almost hard to, to, to, to process all of the kindness that we’ve been shown that maybe wasn’t in spite of what happened. It’s actually because of what happened. And so I’m never gonna sit here and tell you that I feel grateful about what happened to us, but for all of the beauty that we’ve been exposed to because of it I tell the story sometimes, I wish I could go back in time, back into that jail cell on that very first morning, the last time I saw Neil Clark alive. And look across from him and say, “Neil, these next five years are going to be really hard. They’re gonna be really hard, but they end. We’ll get through it.” And, um, I d- I couldn’t. I didn’t say that to him. I never got the opportunity to. I have no idea if it would’ve made any difference. And people make decisions that, for reasons you have no… I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna pretend to know what was going on in his life. But sometimes you worry that people don’t want to go through this process because they do know that they’re not gonna get a fair shake. And, uh, they worry about what that’s gonna do to their lives, their families, their reputations, their careers. Um, and I want people to have more confidence in the system, and I think that’s what, uh, th- they deserve, and we all deserve to have. So, um, you know, uh, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve been through a lot, and a lot of it has been very difficult. And for the most part, it’s been very sad, but we’ve also had this other side of the coin that’s been rewarding and fulfilling and happy and incredible in different ways. And, um, the more we can just try to lean into that part of it, it’s very, it’s very hard to do sometimes.

Alex: Yeah, let me ask that. How-

Matt: But the more we were able to do that, the, the, the better it was for us.

Alex: We talk to a lot of folks on this podcast who have, you know, they’ve had a case dismissed. They’ve gotten a pardon. They’ve won an appeal. They’ve made the same decisions to, you know, to not plead guilty, to fight, and it’s worked out at the end. They get the sort of happy ending. You know, you haven’t had that happy ending, at least not yet. And I wonder, you s- you, though, have such an inspiring story because of your resilience, because you’ve been able to view it that way. What, what do you think you’d tell to other people in your situation? Not just, “Hey, it’s, it’s gonna get, be okay. You’re gonna get through this,” but what is, besides your family, what has been that driving force inside you that’s allowed you to have this perspective and to feel like there is gonna be a day when the sun comes up, and, and now to really embrace that?

Matt: Well, I mean, I think I, I’m, I’m not chasing the pot of gold. Um, I really wanted this to end with the Matt Board just did nothing wrong uh, story to be told publicly. Um, I don’t know when I figured out that that wasn’t in the cards for us, that just wasn’t something that was likely to happen. Um, and so it became more of a process of, um, asking yourself, like, “Who are you really?” Like, “What is it that you want in life? What is, what are the real motivations that you have?” When they take everything from you, everything including your freedom, you don’t have to look too far to get that answer because it’s the stuff you miss and the stuff you don’t. I never missed work. Now, I missed my family. Um, I tell the story sometimes, uh, that while I was at the detention center in Milan, where I was for 75 days before they found a bed for me at the prison next door, that I was never supposed to go to in the fir- first place. But while I was in that detention center, my, um, my cellmate was a convicted murderer.

Amy: Oh, damn.

Matt: And, uh, while I was there, the first debate of the Rep- on the Republican side of the 2024 cycle, it was still summer of 2023, but it was the ’24 cycle occurred up in Milwaukee. And, uh, it was, Trump hadn’t participated, but it was, uh, Vivek, and it was, uh, uh, it was, uh, uh, Ron DeSantis and some of the other also-rans from that year, um, were part of it. And I looked up at the screen. I’m sitting there with, with my khakis on with my fellow federal inmates… saying, eight years ago, I hosted that event in Cleveland.

Amy: Oh, my God.

Matt: And eight years later, here I am, and who would’ve saw life going in this direction? Um, and so it was, it was, it was an amazing moment to grasp. But then, what, what helped me through that was there was no part of me, in any way, that said to, that said, “Oh, I wish I was there.” “I wish I had been,” you know, “I wish I was the one negotiating with Fox or talking to the candidates about rules or to…” I didn’t miss work. I missed being home. I just wanted to be home. And so-

Alex: What a lesson

Matt: as we’re going through the difficult stuff, they hand you a piece of paper when you get there that has on it a date, the earliest possible date you can get home. Assuming nothing else works out. You know, you don’t get, uh, you win an appeal in the meantime or anything else, your case gets overturned, or you get pardoned or something. Um, and so you start working toward that date, motivated by that love, by those relationships, by your ability to put a little bit of something extra into their existence every day, even from the bleak and remote place that you are. Uh, Kate and I got into a cadence of s- a daily email, and we sent, I sent one to her every day, a weekly song that we would try to find some inspiration for. Um, stories about, uh, believe it or not, uh, even in some of the awful places you have to go, funny things happen around you all the time.

Alex: That’s right.

Matt: And so sharing that stuff and trying to keep, uh, be strong, and, um, and she’d come visit, and, and she’d ask me for things, and I would try to make sure that whatever little I could give, I would give and, and do that. And, and that’s what anchors us. That’s what, that, that’s what gets you through it, um, finding those moments of things that are fulfilling and can bring you happiness and leaning into those.

Amy: Matt, you’re still on federal supervision.

Matt: Correct.

Amy: What does that mean?

Alex: Yeah, what’s that like?

Matt: I am now. I’m home. I, uh, I was released from Morgantown in October of ’25. Um, in the federal system, as you r- I’m sure know, if you’re a nonviolent, white-collar, uh, defendant, you can serve up to a year of your sentence in the community. Not everybody gets the year. Um, fortunately, I did get the full year. Uh, and that was broken up into three months in a halfway house, which was only about seven minutes from where we live, so it was very convenient for us. Um, and then, uh, the, the remaining nine months on home confinement. So, um, that’s where I’m, I’m still serving that part of the sentence. Uh, it allows me to be around my family, sleep in my own bed um, be there for my kids, uh, help with homework, um, and then of course, you’re also able to, uh, go to work. I’m at work. Um, I, I work downtown in a marketing firm. Um, and, you know, it’s in a professional en- environment. I get to see friends and go out to lunches and dinners and spend time with the family. And so you get to do those kinds of things, but they’re, they, they’re, they’re monitoring you, of course. You have to ask for permission, get that permission, go where you say you’re gonna go come back at the time they require you to come back. But I’ll tell you, when you’re gone from your family for 27 months, if this is what they tell you you gotta do to be able to be around your family-

Alex: You do it.

Matt: I, I’ll take, I’ll take, I’ll wear two of these, you know? Do whatever I have to do. Um, so, uh, it’s a… I think a lot of people look at it objectively and say, “Oh, I would never wanna live that way,” and you probably wouldn’t unless, unless-

Alex: Unless you gave it a turn, right

Matt: unless you’re left with no alternative. Yes. So, um, I try to remain grateful. But sometimes it c- look, the, the process can be frustrating. Staff doesn’t always get everything right, and things happen, and you’ve gotta deal with bureaucracy, and, uh, um, um, it, it’s, it’s, it can, it can be challenging. But I try to remain grateful just for the fact that, uh, I’m gonna drive home from work this afternoon. I’m gonna get home. I’m gonna give Kate the biggest hug.

Amy: If you could go back to yourself standing on that porch at 6:00 in the morning, or to the next person who finds themself there with handcuffs on their wrist, what advice would you give them?

Matt: Trust yourself. Ask yourself the question, who are you? W- w- what is it that you want really in life? And then trust the answer. You know, find the answer and trust it. Um, I don’t… I… Look, I’m telling these stories about the fights we had, the arguments we could raise, the, the, the, the plea deal I turned down, the, the… I lost all of those things. The jury convicted us. We, I went to prison for 27 months. Um, there’s a downside to fighting, obviously. I wasn’t naive. I knew that was a possibility. So I’m not trying to sugarcoat anything in, in any way. Um, but, um, you know, uh, uh, are you willing to, to, to risk it because you’re, you’re, you’re confident in, um, you know, who you really truly are in the end of the day? And, and that’s, you know, uh, that was a question that we had to, to ask ourselves. And so anyone who, uh, is facing something like this i- in the, in the future, you know, you, you gotta understand there, there could be downsides to to wanting to fight, to thinking, “I always… I’ll win,” um, because the process doesn’t go the way you’ve maybe led your life believing that it, it’s likely to go. Um, and so, uh, the, but, but the other thing is g- given the fact, uh, accepting the fact that we went through all this and we didn’t win. We, we made the argument all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and even though they didn’t tell us why, they told us they weren’t taking our case, I don’t regret the decisions we made because we made those decisions grounded in who we really are, who we want to believe we are, who we truly do believe, not what we want the world to think we are but what we ac- who we actually are. And, um that’s what led us to make the decisions that we made, which ultimately, like I said, did not work out for us. Um, and so, uh, but because of that, you, you, you don’t wanna end the s- the process saying to yourself, “Oh, man, what if? What if I had just fought? What if I had just-” You know, my world would be different if I had… Sometimes people serving long prison sentences say, “I shoulda taken that deal I got offered.” You know, that kind of thing. I understand that too. So it really is, becomes, you, you, you, you got, you might not know the answer in that very moment, but you’re gonna go on a journey to explore and find out what those answers are. Find them, trust them, and, um, don’t look back.

Alex: It, it’s just beautiful. I mean, I, I’ll say, I think we are n… It’s the best sort of testimony I’ve heard, that we are not what happens to us, we are who we choose to be, and you are an absolute testament to that. And I, I appreciate you taking your time talking to us. Um, this has been just really lovely. I mean, I, I, I’ve not seen anyone who has gone through the process, been on this side of it, endured what you have, have this level of perspective, and, um, it’s, it’s really beautiful. I, I appreciate it.

Matt: Well, that’s so kind of you to say, and thanks for letting me come on and talk about this. And, um, I think shedding more light on this process will help make it better, and ultimately, that’s, I think, what we all wanna see happen.

Alex: Absolutely.

Amy: Thank you, Matt.

Alex: Thank you.

Matt: Thank you so much.

Alex: This is the TARGET podcast. Every week we’re gonna sit down with someone who’s been in the crosshairs of an investigation, sometimes federal, sometimes state. People have been indicted, exonerated in some cases, some who’ve been pardoned, some who’ve been convicted, and some who’ve been acquitted.

Amy: This isn’t about guilt or innocence. It’s about what they wish they’d known on day one.

Alex: Every single one of the people we’re going to talk to has a day one story. That’s ’cause most people don’t understand how this system works.

Amy: Until they’re standing inside of it.